We're inclined to disagree...

Aug 6, 2002 · 1 minute read

News Corporation is planning a 24-hour ‘reality TV’ channel. This depresses me.

Why is it called 'reality' anyway? When was the last time you were shoved in a house with ten other people who you've never seen before and made to perform tasks for other people's amusement? Or whisked off to a desert island to test your marriage vows? Is it just that this sort of event programming is cheap, easy to produce, and thee's no hassle over negotiating contracts, as you have people lining up ready for their chance to be famous (despite that none of the winners of these shows have lasted more than a few months longer than their final appearance)? No, I'm sure it has nothing to do with that...

HyperCrisis!

Aug 5, 2002 · 2 minute read

My one regret about my brief falling out with DC after the 'Superman Incident' is that I didn't get to do my Hypercrisis series at DC to explain all this stuff and set up a whole new playground. It's the one thing I could still be arsed doing with classical superheroes. If I ever go back, I'll explain the whole Hypertime thing and recreate the Challengers of the Unknown as Challengers: Beyond the Unknown.

It's one thing I still want to do. It had a monster eating the first few years of the 21st century and Superman building a bridge across this gaping hole in time. A bridge made of events. The Guardians of The Multiverse and a new Green Lantern Corps made up of parallel reality Green Lanterns, the Superman Squad and the mystery of the Unknown Superman of 2150 etc, etc. There's a huge synopsis filled with outrageous stuff.

When I grow up, I want to be Grant Morrison.

The Internet continues to find ways to make me part with my money. Today, it's a fantastic album by The Polyphonic Spree (the link goes to their website, but I got more information by using Google). Imagine what would happen if Godspeed You Black Emperor woke up to a perfect summer day, and decided that, hey, it's all gonna work out. You'd probably get something like Soldier . Definitely worth a listen.

One week to go...

Aug 4, 2002 · 1 minute read

…and I still haven’t heard from the Housing department. I’m not scared. Oh no.

Not much to talk about, really. It is a Sunday, after all. Watched The Hot Rock, which was a fun heist film written by William Goldman. Also hacked Drag and Drop support into my little Blogging application, so I don't have to type links anymore. My next task is to integrate spell-checking, leading me back into the Bonobo nightmare.

Apple and Open Source

Aug 3, 2002 · 2 minute read

I’m not sure I understand what Dave is saying here. But anyway, reasons why open source types might like Apple (although Slashdot is always filled with anti-Apple vitriol whenever they post a story):

• Apple is viewed as the only real competitor to Microsoft on the desktop. The "enemy of my enemy is my friend" feeling applies here.


• For the most part, the Open Source community is comprised of hackers who love seeing a great hack or a paradigm shift in computing. Apple's innovation with Lisa/Macintosh (and before you start shouting at me - yes I know about PARC, but even the people who were there at the time say that Apple did much more than simply steal WIMP from PARC) was such a shift. That Microsoft basically stole the interface for Windows 95 helps to reinforce the first point.


• Finally, yes, Apple isn't an Open Source company. However, they do release products under an open source licence. They also contribute improvements to the GCC compiler. I would imagine this endears them to the community somewhat.

As for the rest of Dave's rant, I fail to see who he's talking about. Most of the open source proponents that rose to fame during the dot-com boom had no problems with working with proprietry companies, and believed that the worlds should co-exist and cooperate. The only person who fits Dave's description is Richard Stallman, who has been around for over twenty years, and isn't going anywhere. I also don't understand the section about how open source excluded many well-intentioned hard-working developers. Surely, open source is more inclusive than the traditional methods of software development? The only reason I can think of people being excluded is for patent/trademark issues, like with the Mono Project. This has less to do with Open Source, and more a damning indictment on how the software industry abuses patent/trademark law to prevent competition.

I'm a good girl, I am

Aug 2, 2002 · 2 minute read

The MPAA is currently spreading word about how ‘thieves’ on the Internet are stealing the livelihoods by sharing movies, and how copyright laws need to be strengthened and extended, to last for "forever minus one day" (The US Constitution demands that limits must be set on copyright terms). Meanwhile, the film companies seem to be sitting idly whilst some of the great works of the 20th century are rotting away in their vaults.

The master camera negative of My Fair Lady was found in a quake-riddled vault in California eight years ago, forgotten, slowly decomposing. This wasn't an obscure film that had been langushing out of the public consciousness. This was a huge, $20 million dollar film, one of the last productions that Jack L. Warner ever undertook, and garnered eight Oscars at the 1965 Ceremony. And yet here it was, disintegrating. In this case, a happy ending was found; a restartion team was formed, and they managed to produce a new, digitally-enhanced print which is almost the equal of the original 1964 print.

However, other famous films have not been so lucky. At the moment, the prints for The Alamo, and It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World will be completely lost by next year. The Nun's Story is apparently in a bad way. And yet, very few people seem to care.

It's galling to see the movie companies clamouring for infinite copyright terms when they're prepared to let some of the greatest works of Western art in the 20th Century rot behind closed doors.

The British Museum Is Falling Down

Aug 1, 2002 · 3 minute read

There was an interesting report on Newsnight last night which got me thinking about the differences between the Internet and ‘real life’. The current director of the British Museum, Robert Anderson, is standing down, and the report by Julian Spalding labasted the Museum for not organising the Museum in a more interesting (to him, anyway) fashion. One of his examples was that the Tribute Penny, was buried in a glass case with many other coins, and should be given a section all to itself. Anderson pointed out that the Penny was part of a much larger display explaing howthe idea of money, and how it has developed through the ages.

Who's right? They both are.

How do you group things like the Penny, Vietnamese art, ancient writings, and all the myraid of items at the Museum? There's just so many ways of doing it, all providing perfectly fine classifications, but which may appeal to some people more than others. For a more mundane example, think of all the different ways you can organise your music collection (I have the honour of being called a freak by Jo Whiley about the order of my CDs, so I speak with some authority). You could do it alphabetically, by title or by artist. There's a chronological option, either by release date or purchase date, thus providing snapshots of music of the time or the music you were listening to respectively. You could group by the movement that a band belongs to (Britpop, post-rock, pop, and so on), or simply by the colour of the album. Each classification provides a slightly different view of your music collection, which also seems to alter your reaction to your collection (an album that may have been swamped in the alphabet classification may stand out when albums are organised by year, for example).

The problem is that changing these classifications is normally a tough job. Computers, however, allow us to change our view of things on a whim. The Internet Movie Database is a great example of this. Looking at the entry at My Fair Lady, we get reams of information about the film, but it has links which make us look at the film differently. With one click, we can see how it releates to Audrey Hepburns's career. Another click shows us that is part of the latter part of George Cukor's directorial life, whilst yet another click takes us to a list of films released in 1964. Completely different ways of looking at the film, which would require major physical upheavals in the real world, but extremely simple given a computer and a hypertext system.

Erm, yes. No, I don't get out much. Why do you ask?

Interesting Times

Aug 1, 2002 · 2 minute read

When was the last time that the publication of a single comic changed evrything? Was it ten years ago, when Youngblood #1 signalled the speculator boom? Fifteen years ago, when Watchmen #1 cast a mature and accomplished look at superheroes? Forty years since Stan Lee's Fantastic Four announced the Marvel Age? Showcase #4? Detective Comics #27? Action Comics #1?

Shonen Jump #1 is being published in November. In Japan, it has a readership of 3.4 million every week. It will be in every Suncoast store in the USA. It is being published on a returnable basis. It's cheap, crammed full of exciting, energetic manga, and it has the possibility to change everything.

With a price tag of $4.95 for 240 pages, the Marvel/DC newsstand selection will be slaughtered. Children will go for the value, rather than spending $2.25 on a (admittedly very lovely) 22-page New X-Men. pamphlet. Retailers, especially in the more traditional outlets (bookstores, newsagents) will prefer the higher profit margin that Jump will provide, and the fact that Viz will be making the comic returnable just adds to the appeal.

Shonen Jump will feature series such as Cartoon Network's popular Dragonball Z and Yu-Gi-Oh, meaning that advertisers will be more plentiful than other publishers whose audience often skews the wrong side of thirty.

Viz Communications could own the US comic industry within two years.

Fasten your seatbelts. The Japanese are coming.

Hmm.

Jul 31, 2002 · 1 minute read

I really do wish I didn’t turn bright red every time I talked to someone. It’s rather annoying.

Audrey Hepburn's accent in The Unforgiven is a work of Dick Van Dyke proportions.

Less than two weeks to go...

Jul 30, 2002 · 3 minute read

The movie marathon continues apace. Latest update:

• The Young Wives' Tale - A typical British farce, not something that often appears in Audrey Hepburn filmographies. It's not very good at all, to be honest; Hepburn only has about five minutes of screentime in the whole film, and her character is almost completely superfluous to the plot. Not worth seeking out.


• The audio commentary of Scream 3 helped me to broaden my dislike of the film beyond 'Kevin Williamson didn't write it'. They only had Neve Campbell for 20 days of filming, and knowing this it becomes clear that Neve's character, the focus for the previous films, has only three real scenes in the entire film, and the rest has to be carried by the comedy-relief haracters of Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox), and Dewy (David Arquette), which doesn't quite work. That the script was still being written as they were shooting didn't help matters either.


• The Secret People - an interesting, if confused 1952 film about terrorism. The moral is smashed into the audience with all the sublety of a jackhammer, and the last fifteen minutes seem to come out of nowhere in particular, but it has a nice style and some interesting scenes. You can get a DVD copy from Amazon Japan (Region 2). Again, be warned - Hepburn isn't really a major character in the film, although she's more integral to the plot than in The Young Wives' Tale.


• Sabrina. I think I love the film a little more every time I watch it. A perfect fairytale, and possibly the least cyncial film Billy Wilder ever made.


• Love In The Afternoon - Whilst I like the central conceit here (international playboy made jealous by imaginary tales of a 19 year old cello student), the fact that Gary Cooper looks like he's three days away from being Hepburn's grandfather completely kills the film for me. If Wilder's original plan of getting Cary Grant to play the male lead had succeeded, I think I would have liked the film quite a bit more than I did.


• In The Mood For Love - Despite the fact that my copy was taped on a dodgy video recorder from ITVDigital's interesting interpretation of high-quality digital video (somewhat akin to watching an out-of-focus projector through clingfilm), the film is simply beautiful, infused with a quiet sadness, with an ending that would not be allowed in Western cinema today. Find a copy (Criterion have a lovely DVD available) today. Wong Kar Wei has done some work with DJ Shadow - have a look here for the wonderful video for 'Six Days'.

In response to our lamentations on Lauren's current TV projects, Simon Tyers sends Flossie and myself to this link, where she defends Mary Poppins's honour and makes the case for seven-year old alcoholics. That's much more like it.

Surprisingly sturdy

Jul 28, 2002 · 2 minute read

They may look flimsy, but after having one bounce on my foot, I can assure you that Visors are quite solid.

Does anybody else sometimes have difficulty reading certain Region 2 DVDs in a Panasonic SR-8585 DVD-ROM drive? My copies of My Fair Lady, Butch Cassidy, and certain West Wing discs don't like playing, and cause the drive to make weird clicking noises.

Floss talks about the gradual decline of Lauren Laverne. I have to agree with everything he's saying - I made a concerted effort to listen to her Saturday show on Xfm, but it's horrible. Nothing like her stand-in performances on the Evening Session a few years back. It's going to get worse before it gets better as well, seeing as she starts the new Channel 5 Pop! programme this week. Someone needs to lock her in a recording studio...

Not that anybody cares about my opinion, but I'd like to join in the growing chorus of approval on Mozilla's tabbed browsing features. Contary to mpt's complaining, I find them intuitive and extremely helpful in organising my browsing sessions. Last night, for example, I had two Mozilla windows, one reading a Slashdot discussion about good books for Computer Scientists and the links I followed from that article, and the other viewing some updated weblogs. If I was letting the window manager handle things, I would have had over twenty windows on-screen. This would create a hideous and hard-to-navigate clutter on my desktop - the tabs make it a breeze.