Monday, November 24, 2003
I've been watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos series and two things have struck me about it... one thing that might be epxected, and another that rather surprised me.First, I'm rather stunned at how well a tv show produced almost 24 years has stood the test of time and still makes such compelling viewing today.
Secondly, and this is something of an odd observation, I couldn't help but notice how Carl Sagan's style of speaking, in tone, pace and delivery is extremely similar to that of Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith in The Matrix series. Is this just a coinsidence, or did Weaving find Sagan's narration so gripping that he copeid the style as closely as he possibly could? I wouldn't be surprised.
Whatever... great series, and if you've never seen it, you really should.
Steve 2:21 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, November 21, 2003
It's time for me to be a bit contencious and opinionated, since I haven't done that in a while.I spent most of my day yesterday performing the duties of channel operator/moderator in the #england chatroom on irc.undernet.org yesterday, and during this time came to a grim conclusion.
The terrorists carrying out these bombing campaigns really do know what they're doing.
I don't mean the technical aspects of delivering and detonating the bombs, but in achieving a reaction favourable to their goals. The main factor in this is the actual nations most of their targets are in... or rather the people of those nations.
What do I mean? Let me explain what happened yesterday.
Two bombs went off in Istanbul yesterday, destroying the British Consulate and HSBC bank... both soft targets. english and turkish citizens were killed.
Within the hour, the #england chatroom was inundated with turks screaming "Kill all english!... kill all murderers!" and suchlike.
So... the fact that it was english targets that were struck, and no doubt by turkish bombers, the fact that turks were killed too caused a significant number of turks to blame the english. I'm in no doubt that this is no accident. The fact that english citizens were killed is purely to legitimise the attack... it was necesary to the goals of the bombers that turks be killed too, to achieve the exact reaction observed yesterday.
So a few raging turks in a chatroom is no big deal, and easilly handled, but it's this emotional and completely irrational (or even downright stupid) nature of the people in the nations being targetted that causes wider problems. These are the kind of people who in their rage will take up arms and join the very terrorists who have killed their own countrymen. I'm not just talking about Turkey either... look at what's happening in Iraq, it's exactly the same phenomenon... and it's going to get worse.
This is idle speculation now, but I tend to believe that human beings are by nature pretty stupid. Combine the ill concieved invasion of Iraq and the attitudes that brought it about, with the actions being displayed now by the terrorists and populations of those countries being attacked, and it seems conceievable that all out world war is not that far off. Not a declared war... but random and extreme violence throughout the world, so that nowhere is safe, and no-one knows who is enemy and who is friend. Bombings here, retaliatory airstrikes there... much like Israel/Palestine, but on a global basis.
Insane.
Steve 2:15 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
What a laid back and enjoyable week it's turning out to be.So far it's mostly consisted of playing silly buggers in the #england undernet chatroom, where I've had a right old laugh... and playing some Crystal Method albums I recently burned to CD at full blast.
Pretty uneventful by most normal people's standards, but I'm loving it.
Lets hope the rest of the week is as much fun.
Steve 11:42 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, November 15, 2003
Web design can be as easy or as hard as you choose to make it, but this week I learned exactly how tricky optimising a site to get a good search engine ranking can be.I spoke a few weeks ago about a site that had knocked one of my pages off of the top slot at google.
Needless to say, something had to be done about this, and past experience has shown me that my web page has an abnormally strong influence on the s/e rank of the sites it links to, so.... hehehe.
I delinked the site that was beating me, and hey-presto, that site dropped out of the running completely.
Back to the number one spot then? Well, yeah.... for all of 3 days.
It seems one other change I made when I delinked that other site has had a dramatic effect on my positioning. From number one to number five... all because I changed one word in the title to try and broaden the search terms that would produce a result.
Oh well... I've changed it back again, and now gotta wait another week to two to see if the change has worked, or if I'm totally screwed.
Steve 1:28 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, November 13, 2003
I haven't posted in a few days, so it's probably time I did.Kinda hard to find anything to write though. I guess the words that comes to mind right now are consolidation and evaluation, along with a huge helping of procrastination.
I should probably go find some proper work. I just did a calculation, and assuming my income remains stable where it is right now, I can *just* afford to make ends meet, but it's a very fine line, and not one I'm entirely comfortable with.
We'll see.
The prospect of actually working for a living (or part of my living) rather fills me with horror and dread.
Other than that, most of the rest of my life is conducted online, with the occasional intervention by 'real life' friends dropping round to make sure I'm still alive, and to keep me up to date on gossip.
Labels: work
Steve 3:28 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, November 09, 2003
TV commercials.How annoying.
Every once in a blue moon though the advertisers come up with something a little bit special, be it clever, or just hysterically funny.
So, Whiskas catfood in pouches.
The cat's down on the floor munching away happily when all of a sudden you hear bagpipes. The cat looks up for a second and on the kitchen worktop is a mouse in a kilt playing bagpipes, doing it's very best to distract the cat from it's dinner.
Failing to distract the cat with the music, the mouse clutches the bottom of his kilt in his little hands, lifts it up high and flashes at the cat.
Now the cat may not have been impressed or even amused, but I fell off my chair laughing.
Steve 11:14 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, November 06, 2003
So, Matrix Revolutions then.... tricky one.I love the Matrix series, have done ever since a friend told me I had to watch it, and wasn't allowed to see Star Wars instead. Good call Penny.
Now everyone knows the first film was seriously ground breaking stuff, it kicked arse, and all the more so for managing it without any major media hype. So when Reloaded came out, it had a lot to live up to, and though it's not perfect, it did pretty well. It didn't break any new ground, and probably created a lot more questions than it answered, but that's what the second film in a trilogy always does... leaves you with an uncomfortable edgy feeling.
Revolutions though... that's what you want to know about.
Is it amazing? Does it answer all of the questions brought up by Reloaded? Does it do justice to the legend that The Matrix has become, or do they get it all wrong?
Well......
The battle for Zion against the Sentinals is the single most breathtaking piece of movie footage I have ever seen.... EVER!
But..... yes, I said but, and it's a truly huge B U T ....
Everything else about this film is wrong. Absolutely everything.
This film is like a rock star who has come to believe his own hype and as such, has lost the magic that made him special in the first place. It's pompous, overblown and not nearly as good as it thinks it is.
I frequently found myself impatient for the actors to get off the screen so I could watch more sentinals doing their thing, and that's just not right.
So many scenes were obviously tacked on, their only purpose being as devices to move us on to the next big set piece. There's no flow... it's like "Okay, we have the big fight between so and so and so and so... how can we get to that point?"
And the questions we've been waiting for the answers to since Reloaded... do we get answers? Do we hell!
In the first two movies, there was a certain logic that worked, that explained the bizarre things that happened... in Revolutions, that logic appears to have been thrown out of the window.
At the end of the day, they got it wrong, and for me at least, have spoiled what was a fascinating series of movies.
Should you avoid seeing it?
Well... no, and for one reason alone... the battle for Zion. Your eyes will burst out of your head, your jaw will hit the floor, and you WILL utter the words "Holy Shit!"
Just ignore the rest of the film, 'cause though it pains me greatly to say it, it's bullshit.
Labels: movies
Steve 8:14 PM [+] (0) comments
Something about standing on the balcony at 2am and looking arcoss the skyline... I always find myself doing that when I'm fed up.
Something about it, maybe because I've done it so often, it just leaves me feeling like it doesn't matter whether there's anyone about, or if I'm alone, if I'm working or not, if I'm loaded or broke... whatever... nothing much seems to mean anything to me anymore, and that sucks.
Standing there looking across town thinking "So what?"
I dunno. Maybe it's nicotine withdrawl. Maybe it's one failed relationship too many. Maybe I'm just a whiney git and feeling sorry for myself for no really good reason.
Fuck it.
Time to sit back and watch Blade Runner. It won't make me feel better, but it suits my mood perfectly.
Steve 2:03 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
So you have two women standing in the snow, one wearing a white kimono, the other in an orange bikers outfit with dark stripes, not unlike that worn by Bruce Lee in Game of Death (and surely no coinsidence)... both are armed with saumurai swords, and a pounding oriental style disco beat sets the mood.What in the world is going on?
Simple... God exists, and his name is Quentin Tarantino.
I consider myself fortunate to have an extensive library of movies, my tastes being varied and often unusual, to the extent that I am familiar with chinese and japanese heroic bloodshed and yukaza movies popularised by the likes of John Woo and Tekashi Kitano, american ultraviolent gangster movies by the likes of Martin Scorsese, and numerous Manga (anime) gorefests.
Now, take all of these, mix together with an absolute killer soundtrack, add a little David Lychesque weirdness, and simmer to perfection.
Tarantino has already proved he has a talent for taking a genre and making it his own... Resevior Dogs is in truth an almost straight copy of Ringo Lam's City On Fire... but this.... this is something entirely different. This is no mere pastiche of a recognised genre... this is a truly valid masterpiece of that genre, while adding its own recognisable twist without diluting the basic content.
Ummm... just for anyone who hasn't figured it out, and as someone who likes to think he knows what he's talking about on such matters... I can honestly say Kill Bill Volume One is an absolute work of art. Easilly the best film released this year... and there've been some VERY good ones.
Labels: movies
Steve 11:41 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, November 03, 2003
I'm back to playing Gran Turismo 3 again.I'm so close to completing the game, it's almost painful. 98.4% completed.
Predictably, the final piece I need to complete is the hardest... time trials.
10 circuits in 10 cars, and I have to beat the record times set by the programming team. If they actually set these times by playing the game, as opposed to just setting an arbitrary time, then they're very good... though you'd rather expect that.
It's not impossible though... I've beaten the first two times, and am about to start on the third.
Fingers crossed.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 11:21 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, November 02, 2003
Is there some universal law that dictates "a person shall only realise the pilot light in the gas boiler has blown out *after* they have filled the bath with cold water"?*Grumble* *Mutter* *Mumble* Stupid gas boiler.
In other news... actually, there really is no other news. Life is just kinda bimbling along in a very non-descript manner at the moment.
So how are things with you?
Labels: annoyed
Steve 11:00 AM [+] (0) comments
The Benway Empire |
 |