Random Transient Noise Bursts with Announcements

The Northampton Ibis^HAbyss

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:48:10 GMT

If there's a Newcon 5 I'm staying in The Park, I don't know if it was better or worse in most respects but surely they can't be as incompetent about the billing.

Other than that the weekend was good.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:05:10 GMT

Has anybody else noticed that all those junk phone calls about mortgages and consolidating debts have stopped. Clearly they can no longer borrow the money themselves so it's not even worth trying to sell loans to us.

You know you're busy when...

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:57:46 GMT

It's almost one o'clock and you've only just started Firefox, and that's because you want to see if there are any good virtual desktop solutions for Windows XP you might actually be allowed to install.

Films so far.

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:37:43 GMT

Right, I'd better catch up before I've seen so many things that I can no longer remember all of them.

On Saturday I saw Sleep Furiously which was (as the director was keen to assert) not a documentary of rural life in the Welsh valleys with a surprisingly restful soundtrack by Aphex Twin. I can see his point about it being more a non-linear narrative than an attempt to make some factual record of life, and it was interesting seeing how the community had accepted incomers. The parallels between it and Colonsay were quite obvious even though the two places were so different in many ways.

I also saw The Lark, which was an incredibly low budget (£12,000), horror-ish film from Cornwall. It was one of those films that left you wondering at the end exactly what germ of reality lurked at the centre of it all, and how much was simply in the minds of the characters. You could write the whole thing off as in the protagonist Niamh's head except for one character whose actions make that hard to do—in the end it must be either all more in her head than you thought, or more of it must be real than you'd like to think.

On Sunday I saw a selection of the more surreal and abstract pieces of Machinima which both showed what the medium can produce and some of its biggest weaknesses—people need to practice recording dialogue more, not just to improving their acting skills but also so they don't have obvious clipping in the soundtrack. I also saw Preserve (Rezerwat) which was a surprisingly affectionate look at life in a run down neighbourhood of Praga in Warsaw. It is interesting to contrast the ending of this with that of Be Kind, Rewind as they are both about the fate of run down communities but take quite different courses.

Yesterday was Katyn (about the massacre of Polish offices by the Russians in 1940), The Garden (with a short A Piece Of My Sky Is Missing), a selection of shorts, and Pageant which was a highly entertaining documentary about the Miss Gay America Pageant. I'll try and write some more about those later.

First film of the festival.

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 00:00:36 GMT

Due to work and things being sold out I couldn't go to either of the films I might have yesterday, but I did make it to Life For Sale this evening. I admire anybody who decide that they want to understand Tarkovski's films better and what they really need to do this is to convert from Catholicism to Russian Orthodox—that's some serious dedication. The film itself was excellent, a fantastic tale of three young down and outs who sell their future, childhood, and soul, on ebay, and what happens to them when they've done so.

It was especially interesting hearing how the ending was changed and the film re-cut after the reaction of audiences in test screenings, and it has a brilliant soundtrack provided by the Tiger Lillies. I knew I'd heard of them somewhere, and I've finally found an old note to myself to find a record by them that was played on Mixing It about 6 years ago.

I definitely had far too much coffee today, I still feel horribly awake and it's one in the morning.

I may not know where anything is…

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:49:06 GMT

But at least it's all in the same place. I just spent half an hour looking for a particular bit of mail that arrived a couple of days ago, and then when I found it (in a neat little stack on top of the Mac by my desk) it was with all the other things which I'd managed to mislay over the last couple of weeks.

Completism, and its impossibility.

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:59:48 GMT

I realised today that I have CDs by Grizzly Bear, Panda Bear, and Polar Bear, and thought this suggested some obvious attempts at completeness. Sadly and surprisingly there is no band called Black Bear; Brown Bear seem to exist and have one CD which I could even buy (though not through Amazon); Water Bear (who are a classical ensemble) have 3 CDs, but seem equally hard to buy; and if you think I'm going to buy a Care Bears record you're very much mistake - Bears is plural and we're only dealing with the singular here.

Tidying, rearranging, and furniture moving.

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:49:01 GMT

Well, since half my friends list seems to be either moving house or rearranging stuff in their current place (presumably a bout of antipodean spring cleaning) I guess I'll post what I've been done.

I have taken a bunch of stuff off the Ivar shelves in the living room, moved a bookcase that had been hiding upstairs and is the perfect size for DVD boxes downstairs, rearranged the Ivar shelves a bit, put a load of DVDs on the bookcase, and realised this still doesn't really solve the shelving problem.

The end result is I have slightly more accessible stuff in the living room but still not enough space for the CDs, a big pile of technical books hiding in the wardrobe in the spare room, a pile of books by the bed that is getting silly, and still no sensible place to keep the cookery books downstairs.

Anybody going to Ikea in the near future?

Aw fuck.

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 11:54:30 GMT

David Foster Wallace is Dead. Lots of people will mention Infinite Jest, which is I guess what he's best know for, but I suggest everybody pick up one of his books of essays, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again is superb.

Tests about tests.

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:01:28 GMT

I'm writing tests to test that tests fail correctly. So far I'm mostly finding ways in which things incorrectly don't fail, fail but for entirely the wrong reason, or fail for the right reason but having tested the wrong test. I feel this whole job is getting decidedly meta.

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:54:31 GMT

Happy birthday bugshaw

I think I'm both pleased and depressed.

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:44:54 GMT

Braid is one of the most brilliant games I think I've ever come across, it's only on the 360 at the moment but will be coming to the PC hopefully later this year, and I thoroughly recommend it.

So what is depressing me? Well the story is subtle and I think represents many things on different levels, and I find it slightly sad that people are arguing over whether it's about a or b when it's very clearly about both, and a whole lot of other things as well.

Anyway, trying to do this without talking about the narrative, it's a platform based puzzle game with each world's puzzled structured round some form of time manipulation mirroring the theme of the text that introduces the level. The first world you enter has a simple rewind mechanic (useful for when you have to fall a long way and land on an object but otherwise not that special), the next world introduces irreversible actions and objects (e.g. you picked up that key, and no amount of rewinding will cause you to drop it again), but it's the thrid world which is about memory and place which I think is the most wonderful. In that world time is dependent on your position, move left and it rewinds, move right and fast forwards, and opening a door whilst going left is an impossibility.

Curse you Apple!

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:58:55 GMT

There is apparently a nice port of PuTTY to the iPhone called pTerm but it doesn't appear to be on the UK app store yet.

Urg, I think I'm going to be sick...

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:51:20 GMT

Dear web designers, if you change something's style on a mouse over event then make sure it doesn't change size, or you might discover the mouse isn't over it again very quickly, at which point it will return to it's normal style and the mouse will be over it, and it will change size again so the mouse isn't over it...

Seeing half a page turn into a blurry vibrating mass as it tries to reflow to take account of this is one of the most horrible sites I've ever seen.

Oh, and before the militant Mouse Interface Liberation Front pipe up, this was actually an entirely reasonable use of mouse over to provide some quick shorts which could also be reached by clicking on the link itself. It's just the style that could do with a fix.

I want new legs!

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:52:50 GMT

Apparently walking nine miles every day to get to the folk festival and back, and dancing like loon while there, has left my legs feeling like lead.

The Dark Knight.

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:32:29 GMT

I remember when I was a kid I went and saw the Tim Burton Batman film, and compared to the 60s TV stuff it was dark, and it was great.

Compared to The Dark Knight that film was bright and cheerful. Heath Ledger's joker is far more sinister in his craziness than Jack Nichelson ever was, and the lack of an origin story in the film combined with his own lies about it works very well.

I hope they do another Batman film in this style and do it well, I'd hate to see the series do a, "Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin," descent into awfulness.

The Dark Knight.

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:34:58 GMT

Am I the only person on my friends list who hasn't seen this yet? I'm intending to go to the 8 pm showing at the Vue this evening if anybody is interested in joining me.

Edit number 2: Now booked tickets for myself and fivemack at 7 pm.

Frankly I'm amazed ADSL is working at all.

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:27:05 GMT

Because the phone line certainly isn't working as a phone line.

Why didn't I test that first?

You almost get the feeling they don't want people to upgrade.

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:31:52 GMT

It is quite easy to get an iPhone 3G from Apple or from Carphone Warehouse, but you can only upgrade from an original iPhone via O2's retail stores which appear to pretty much zero stock of the 16GB model. They had said they were expecting considerably more stock from last Friday onwards, and they did have some 8GB stock on Friday, but both Cambridge stores seem to be completely sold out now and checking in town they don't expect stock till Thursday or Friday.

It's almost like they want to sell all the limited stock to brand new customers rather than upgraders. :-)

Okay, who dried out my wet string?

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:25:32 GMT

My ADSL line went from about 3.5 Mbps bandwidth down to 288Kbps, sometime round about lunchtime yesterday, still perfectly usable for web browsing but painful for downloading stuff. Anybody know if BT will do anything in such cases?

Mercury shortlist.

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:17:55 GMT

Adele - 19
British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
Burial - Untrue
Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Estelle - Shine
Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim
Neon Neon - Stainless Style
Portico Quartet - Knee-Deep In The North Sea
Rachel Unthank & The Winterset - The Bairns
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement

I fear that Rachel Unthank is simply their as the token folk act, but it would be excellent if they won it.

Something never before seen on the internet…

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:49:25 GMT

Culture, morality, and patriotism.

I don't know which category Gonzo's orchestral chickens fall under but I'm torn between laughing and agreeing with Statler and Waldorf.

They are taking their revenge.

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:06:56 GMT

I fear the day they can get poison and radioactive triggers.

Oh bugger.

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:25:42 GMT

I know I was pretty busy with stuff during June, but that's not really an excuse, and I know I talked to my dad before his birthday to ask what he wanted, and I remember cursing Amazon because the items I found on his wish list weren't available, and I think at that point getting suggestions that were available got added to the to-do list.

Uh, and that seems to be where it stayed.

Time for a grovelling phone call methinks.

The strangeness of company press conferences at E3.

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:56:38 GMT

None of the three big console manufacturers wants to mention any cross platform game unless it was previously exclusive to one of their rivals. So although Microsoft had things to announce they'd mostly been leaked in advance so nobody cares, Sony hardly announced anything, and Nintendo apparently announced a lot of things like cookery guides for the DS. So once the obsessive press conference watchers got over those little disappointments they pinned their hopes on the various publishers and developers announcements.

Capcom talked about a film of a game rather than any games, and Bungie's announcement was cancelled entirely. Other things may have happened but the people who would normally tell me such things all seem to be too busy sobbing quietly into their keyboards while saying, "TGS will be amazing," over and over again.

Dear gaming industry, please do new and interesting stuff before Yahtzee is reduced to reviewing old episodes of Zero Punctuation.