What’s this? It’s the end of February? Well then it must be time for my yearly blog post claiming that I’m BACK and you’d better get used to seeing more blog posts from now on.
Ah, that feels better. One job ticked off the to do list for another year. Check back in around 365 days for another absurdly optimistic blog post.
Next item: update Linked In and Facebook.
Hmm, 7 months and no posts. And my daughter is, let’s see, 7 months old. Interesting… Turns out being a parent is time-consuming. Who’d've thunk it?
But I’m back now. So get used to it! I’ve got lots to blog about. Not least the fact that I’m a dad!
For now though, this is just a quick post to say hello again, to make sure there’s something from 2010 on this blog, and to update you on the status of my website. It’s been updated too! Just a bit of a spit and polish at the moment: front page updated with some perl trickery, some new recommendations and a news entry. The exercise page has been updated too. Hopefully there’s going to be a couple more updates to the site this weekend. Some more blog posts, too.
And there are things afoot, too. Big things in the works. Hopefully coming soon, but knowing my life lately, probably not all that soon.
I grew very bored with the way my PC looked. Windows is just so bland! So I changed it to something marginally more interesting.
Here’s a screencapture:
It's my desktop!
The change has come in three parts.
First, I got a new background, which is mostly obscured by the photos. That’s a shame in some ways, because it’s a brilliant picture. (I’ve got it on my laptop too, though, so it’s not all bad.) I took it from the absolutely fantastic FargalEX‘s site. It’s this one. I’m very seriously considering buying a mug with one of his designs on. We’ve got too many mugs, but I’m sure one could get accidentally broken.
Then, on top of the background, I’ve got John’s Background Switcher, a brilliant free program which plasters your desktop with different images every so often. I’ve got it set to ‘snapshot scrapbook’, changing every hour. It’s displaying pictures we took on my honeymoon, but you can customise what pictures it shows to a surprising degree. As an example, it’ll grab random interesting photos off Flikr or Facebook if you ask it to, and you can change the number of pictures it displays too.
Finally, I’ve bought ObjectDock, which gives me a mac-like dock to replace my boring old start menu, and is again incredibly customisable. Currently the only interesting things I’ve told it to do is tell me the weather and give me a clock I can drag about the desktop, but I like it a lot.
So, yeah. Pretty pleased with my PC again!
I’ve sort of fallen out of the habit of watching films lately, which I feel is a shame. I do still watch trailers, but for some reason when the films are released I never get around to going to the cinema to see them. This must change.
However, this post isn’t about films, it’s about trailers. Ones I’ve watched recently and enjoyed.
1) Shutter Island.
It’s the new Scorsese film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo. According to Apple’s trailers site, ‘“Shutter Island” is the story of two U.S. marshals, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), who are summoned to a remote and barren island off the coast of Massachusetts to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a murderess from the island’s fortress-like hospital for the criminally insane.‘ It looks really good and quite weird, like Chandler on acid, which can only be a good thing. Plus, it’s Scorsese. So long as he isn’t in Gangs of New York mode, this should be fantastic.
2) The Road.
Based on a Cormack McCarthy (him what wrote No Country for Old Men) novel that I definitely must read, this also looks excellent. I had no idea what the story of The Road was, so the trailer really surprised me. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else who doesn’t know, so I won’t put the synopsis here. It’s on the Apple site (linked above) so you can read it if you want, but I recommend you don’t. This one’s got a bit of a dream cast, too: Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall, Guy Pierce, Charlize Theron and Garret Dillahunt (who’s good, but must be feeling pretty good about being in such exalted company).
3) Surrogates.
Bruce Willis action flick. Need I say more? Now, as any fule kno, Willis is fucking awesome. Brilliant in Moonlighting, brilliant in Blind Date, brilliant in Die Hard. He’s brilliant, even in films that aren’t. Right, now that the mancrush fawning is out of the way, here’s my half-assed synopsis of Surrogates: it’s the future, and everyone lives vicariously through their surrogate – an android version of themself (don’t ask why they aren’t all obese or how they procreate. It’s the future. There’s some sort of future magic that goes on there.) that lets them safely experience just about anything. Willis is a cop, investigating a murder. Someone was killed while interfacing with their surrogate (which isn’t supposed to be possible). Cue Willis having to figure out how, and of course stopping using his own surrogate himself. Feels like a sort of cross between Blade Runner, Minority Report (and no doubt other Philip K Dick films).
4) Moon
Sam Rockwell in what looks to be a cross between Solaris (hopefully the good version) and 2001: “It is the near future. Astronaut Sam Bell is living on the far side of the moon, completing a three-year contract with Lunar Industries to mine Earth’s primary source of energy, Helium-3. It is a lonely job, made harder by a broken satellite that allows no live communications home. Taped messages are all Sam can send and receive. Thankfully, his time on the moon is nearly over, and Sam will be reunited with his wife, Tess, and their three-year-old daughter, Eve, in only a few short weeks. Finally, he will leave the isolation of “Sarang,” the moon base that has been his home for so long, and he will finally have someone to talk to beyond “Gerty,” the base’s well-intentioned, but rather uncomplicated computer.” Except, y’know. Something goes wrong. Snarky comments aside, it looks very promising and it’s getting great receptions at film festivals.
5) Where The Wild Things Are
Never read the book (another one I must pick up soon), but this looks magical. Spike Jonze is directing. Something about a boy becoming friends with monsters. I expect some sort of “are the monsters real, or is the boy just escaping from his tough life to a magical fantasy world” type of thing, which will be a bit disappointing if that’s the case. Trailer looks awesome though.
6) Surveillance
David Lynch-produced drama, directed by Jennifer Lynch (David’s daughter, directed the excellent Boxing Helena). “It’s been a hell of a day on the highway. When Federal Officers Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond) and Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman) arrive at Captain Billing’s office, they have three sets of stories to figure out and a string of vicious murders to consider. One zealot cop, a strung out junkie and an eight year old girl all sit in testimony to the roadside rampage, but as the Feds begin to expose the fragile little details each witness conceals so carefully with a well practiced lie, they soon discover that uncovering ‘the truth’ can come at a very big cost…” Looks like a whodunnit and a whodunnwhat, with everyone telling a different story and the truth no doubt being something weird and/or disturbing. Hey, it’s the Lynches. What do you expect?
So, there you are. Watch those trailers. Enjoy!
Or at least the download speeds I’m getting are. I’m on Virgin Media‘s National service, and apparently I can get speeds of up to 6.5 megabits per second. Now, I live a ways away from the exchange, so I’m not actually expecting to get that sort of speed.
The Broadband Speed Checkers I’ve found back this up – they say I’m getting between 2 and 2.5 megabits per second. However, the download speeds I’m getting when I use iTunes, MSN or uTorrent aren’t even close to that. I’m getting an maximum of 50k a second, and it’s usually at about 10k. Them’s dial up speeds!
Virgin are well-known bittorrent throttlers, but I can’t find anything useful online about why my iTunes or MSN download speeds should be so slow. It’s starting to get irritating though.
Penny Arcade have done three strips that have nothing to do with their usual output, and their readers can vote for which one they should expand on.
My vote is definitely for Automata. The art is far more to my taste than either of the other two options and in my opinion, the writing’s quite a bit better too. Plus, it’s about robots in an alternate world prohibition! It’s all hard-boiled! How can you not want to read more of that?
Go and read the strips, then vote for Automata, please.
Actually, I’ve surprised myself by being inspired by it. (Not that I think I’m too good to be inspired by Penny Arcade, but it’s surprising because nothing I’m working on is remotely similar to Automata. I think it’s Tycho and Gabe’s obvious enthusiasm for doing these new, fresh strips)
I want to do lots more stuff of my own now (far more than I have time to do, especially with a baby due in five weeks). I’ve got several ideas banging on the inside of my skull, desperate to get out. They’ve been noted down in my ideas folder, and hopefully at some point they’ll be brought blinking into the light of existence. I’m also hard at work on a novel, called Secrets In The Green that I’m writing for my wife. I’m about half way through it, and I’ve got detailed chapter notes for around two thirds of the rest of it, and less-detailed notes for the final chapters. I’m currently back in research mode for it though, so actual writing progress has slowed. I’m really excited about it though.
I’m also doing a rewrite on a short story called The House Always Wins.
That reminds me. I really must update the site to reflect what’s going on!
Here are some good recommendations:
Smodcast – Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier waffling on for anything up to two hours. Hilarious. Honestly, some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever heard. If you’re a fan of their films, you must listen to this. If you’re not a fan of their films, I don’t want to know you.
Transmissions From Beyond – TTA Press’s podcast. Every week, hear a story taken from one of their magazines (usually Interzone or Black Static). Normally read by the author. Good stories, but you have to put up with a fair bit of variation in the sound quality. Hopefully you’ll hear me on there some day. I’ll try and source a decent microphone for the occasion.
Co Op – Games podcast (‘vod’ cast, I suppose, since it’s actually a video show) by a bunch of ex-1Up staff. The spiritual continuation of The 1Up Show, really. I can’t say I share their opinions on all subjects, but it’s about the only games show around that looks halfway professional (and they look all-the-way professional, to give them their due).
Giant Bombcast – More games. Only audio this time, but it’s worth listening to. Jeff Gerstmann (link added because you should read about the Gamespot firing controversy) and Ryan Davis started it, and about a year ago Vinny Caravella and Brad Shoemaker (all ex-Gamespot) talk. About games, mostly, but also films and general natter.
So there you go. Listen! Enjoy!
