Or crashed, or the usual Xmas small print of
"batteries not included" wasn't spotted
by the ESA chaps at Darmstadt.
Whatever, I've been following the Beagle's
progress or otherwise on the Beagle team's
Weblog
(no feed unforch), and
news pages.
However, I'm pleased to see that the Beagle itself is
rather smarter than the ESA chaps and not only has
managed to avoid the frames and tables tag-soup hell
of the official site, but it's also managed to setup it's
own blog
on BlogSpot. I guess it feels somewhat superior
to the ESA folks who've landed it on a hostile planet with
such a very limited selection of MP3s, so it's decided to
do its own thing communication wise.
Well you wouldn't necessarily think so from the numerous
adverts claiming
"Piracy supports terrorism",
"Piracy funds organised crime",
"Piracy supports George Bush"
(I made that last one up, but it's the most plausible of
the bunch), shown before the
Return of The King
the other night.
Further thoughts about the unpleasant cramped conditions
in the cinema, and the way the whole experience left a nasty
taste in the mouth has made me realise how deep a hole the movie
business has dug itself into.
The average cinema today is certainly encouraging
piracy; let's face it, why on earth should someone pay good
money to spend an evening in an unpleasant environment?
Here's some things I don't want to experience when I go to see
a film:
A big shed multiplex cinema miles from anywhere - I'd like
to eat somewhere reasonable before watching a film, in my
experience decent restaurants are rarely based on retail
parks or industrial estates
Buckets of carbonated drinks - what can can I say other
than yuck?
Overpriced fast food - ditto, food poisoning whilst being ripped
off
Cramped conditions - if land in the UK cost £1
million per square foot maybe I could understand the need
to cram someone into 5 or 6 square feet, but it doesn't
cost anything like that, so give us enough room to sit down!
Here's some things I'd like to see:
Town centre location - access to decent food, accessibility,
and even cutting down on the need for people to drive, all good
things
Bar - enjoying a glass of wine or a pint with the film is a
very civilised way to pass the time, maybe it hasn't got the
profit margins of sugared water, but who's the target audience?
Penniless yoofs, or adults?
Comfortable seating - make it enjoyable and people come
back, make it a crap experience and people write stuff like this
Good heating and aircon - seems obvious, if only it was...
My
local cinema
fulfilled many of these needs, but it's closed down - it needed a
refurb and with another new cinema being built within 50m I guess
the refurb wasn't viewed as being profitable enough, and I bet they
can make more money by turning it back into part of the
restaurant. Damn :-(
In best Thauvin style here's a micro-review of the latest
Tolkein Lord of The Rings epic movie Return of The King.
3.5 stars, slightly better than
Erik's view,
but it's still no masterpiece. IMO this is possibly the weakest of
the three LoTR films, more Hollywood than some of the others
in that the numerous lengthy battle scenes just seemed to be
used as filler (some of these so vacuous I was half expecting
Arnold or Bruce Willis to appear). I'm told the ending doesn't
match the book, this certainly seems likely, it has the
"feel-good factor" nonsense so beloved of Hollywood,
frankly it almost looks like they filmed a proper ending and then
got pulled back into the studios to add a different twee ending
for the RIAA.
The Reg points out
the continuity errors,
and I've got one other major gripe, the nearest cinema for
me was
Canterbury Odeon.
To book I had use their almost inaccessible automated phone
service where they proceeded to take the most roundabout
possible route (on an expensive but not quite premium rate
phone call), and then they still had the audacity to charge a
booking fee! To cap it all the cinema may have had a refurb
recently, but it was still dirty and stuffy with
insufficient seating room for an adult - I'm 5'8" and
I was very cramped, something that doesn't even
happen to me in economy airtravel!
Next time I'm voting with my feet, let's face it the
Odeon's criminally inaccesible website
should have indicated their customer service intentions in
big red lights!
One of the highlights of today's Wi-Fi day on
Mobitopia
is Chris Davies'Pocket Hotspot
a gorgeously useful little device, if I had the spare cash I'd buy one
off Chris tomorrow.
Martin's
ride on *the*
Wi-Fi train
was great too, and for him to get an interview on board with the CEO of
GNER was just brilliant.
It's Wi-Fi day over on
Mobitopia
for no reason in particular, it could be entertaining!
Martin
will probably out-trump us all if his little adventure comes off
successfully, that's certainly worth looking out for.
Yet again it's critical of them, I don't know why, but this pains me; I
feel like a parent scolding their child. I have no financial (or other)
involvement with Three, but I really want them to succeed, how or
why can an individual become so enthusiastic (and so disappointed) by a
mere corporation?
Ewan's
got hold of a
Siemens SX1,
and I'm very jealous, however I should be seeing him very soon so
I ought to be able to prise it out of his fingers for a quick play.
That should be very interesting, I wonder, is it going to be good
enough to take the Series 60 crown from the
SendoX?
As he said "Well, it's about time a transvestite potter won the
Turner Prize...", what a classic line for an acceptance
speech, it certainly makes the usual crap from Hollywood for the Oscars look
even more trite than usual. Grayson Perry, you're a star!
Anyway back to the art, Grayson Perry's pottery is exceptional work,
classic art from tortured soul. The Chapman brothers' work whilst widely
touted seems more like a juvenile lavatory joke in comparison.
So here it is, it only came into the house last night, and it's not
covered in lights and stuff yet. Vital statistics are 4'9" (1.45m) tall
and prickly!
Sure it looks a bit lost in this view, but with the kids and dog
running around I really don't need anything else for them to fall
over.
So
it's
closed down, and taken my millions with it...
I was one of the earliest users of BlogShares back in
March
2003
and registered user number 6, although I have to admit barely touching my
portfolio in the last few months.
Despite working in the financial industry writing software for the
best part of two decades I didn't get a lot of the strategies and methods
used by BlogShares, maybe that's what dulled my enthusiasm. Anyway it was
fun whilst it lasted, I wonder what
Seyed
is up to next?
Supporters of the so called "smaller clubs" have long been
frustrated by the media bias towards the likes of Manchester Utd,
but it gets a bit much when they can't even face up to reporting
the true score...
If you're wondering, Man Utd lost
2-0
last night, not
their first loss
of the season and undoubtedly not their last.
Sure TGV is a bit brute force and ignorance - lots of power, and
special extra straight trackbeds - but if a little more tech wizardry
was added to this formula, even better performance could be achieved,
after all the much maligned
APT
ran at 155mph (249kp/h) on conventional tracks back in 1979 with what we
would now think of as stone-age technology.
Update : Fixed the TGV speed (doh!), and found
this interesting page
from the BBC saying that the APT hit 162.2mph back in 1979.
Useful stuff time:
SchemaWeb
a site collecting RDF schemas, particularly useful schemas for
FOAF, both serious stuff like Eric Vitiello's
relationship schema
that extends foaf:knows and fun stuff like the
Beer
and
Pub
ontologies.
No sign of
LOAF
there yet, looks like the LOAF project team are slackers... :-)
So it's December already, I'm not sure how that sneaked up so quickly!
Anyway,
November
was a duff month on Mobitopia for postings, so here's some stats to use as
a light(ish) stick to beat some of the slackers (including myself)
with.
