I've been pretty slack with the link posting, so you're getting all of June's links at once. As always, you can get my links directly from delicious.

( Oodles of links )

I beg you, people of the south west of England, vote for the Cornish Separatists! Just for the utter hilarity - http://www.mebyonkernow.org/

I got a response from Vue regarding my complaint on Sunday. There is a confidentiality notice at the bottom of the email requesting I not share the content and I'll respect that, so will not copy the whole thing into a public forum. I am however free to précis it however I damn well please.

To summarise however, their response is "tough".

They open with offering "apologies for any inconvenience caused to you during your recent visit to the cinema". That's an interesting phrase. "any" - well yes, you know that I was grieved by something, I took the time to write you a ridiculously long letter. Saying 'any' implies you're not sure there was anything wrong. "inconvenience" - I wasn't complaining about inconvenience as such, I was complaining about a terrible "experience". Inconveniences are things that you get through to get to the experience... what cinema is selling is an experience.

More specifically regarding the difficulty with the "ATM machines" they suggest using the till points allowing me to purchase food and tickets without queueing twice - utterly missing the point that I didn't want to queue once let alone twice! They say the "advise arriving approximately 20 minutes prior to performance" (although they don't say *where* they advise that. Well, yes, it took me pretty much dead on 20 minutes to get my ticket so that was a good estimate... but again missing the point of WHY does it take 20 minutes.

Regarding the trailers apparently this is something to do with the showing being digital and therefore not having trailers. Sounds pretty ridiculous to me that there's any distinction between digital and regular.

To Vue's credit that they do thank me for my comments and assure me that comments will be passed on to the manager and a turnaround of slightly over 1 working day is impressive.

HOWEVER they basically argued with my comments and missed or ignored the key point of "This was not a pleasant experience". I do not religiously believe the customer is always right, I believe the customer is frequently ill informed and occasionally outright dumb. However when a paying, customer takes the time to write you a long explanation of why they had a bad experience, you cannot argue with that. The experience was BAD, it's not fixable after the fact by telling me that I should have just gone and stood in a different (longer) queue.

Finally I'm a little pissed I wasn't even sent any vouchers. I did not complain because I wanted something free and I acknowledge that maybe it would sound a bit stupid if they said "sorry you had a shit time, have another crap time but this time have it for free", but wouldn't it be much better for them to just say "we're sorry the experience was not all it could have been, we think this was an isolated bad day maybe due to poor staffing or other random events. We'd appreciate it if you gave us another chance"?

The following rant has just been sent to the lovely customer services people at Vue cinemas. I look forward to being completely ignored.


I've just had a really miserable experience in your Acton cinema, not the first time to be honest, but this is the worst experience I've had in a very long time.

1) In the foyer of the cinema are 3 touch screen ticket machines and a kiosk with 4 or 5 windows. When we arrived for the 5pm, Saturday showing of Star Trek there was ONE machine working and NO kiosk windows open. There were five food counters open which were also selling tickets, but they were breath-takingly slow queues for those were even slower moving. With three of us, we divided up to each queue in a different place. Eventually a manager turned up and managed to activate a second machine which had RUN OUT OF PAPER! It took us 15 minutes to buy tickets.

2) The ticket machine was not easy to use, it insisted on asking me which seats we wanted, but wouldn't actually allow me to select seats. Eventually I just hit 'next' and that passed it through happily. It turned out there wasn't actually allocated seating for the film, so it should never have even asked about the seats. Each person in the queue had this issue I would imagine, slowing things down even further.

3) Queuing. The Acton cinema has a very large foyer with plenty of space for intelligent queuing systems. Instead it uses the old school "one queue per counter" method, which is hugely inefficient and frustrating. There's plenty of space for one queue to then split for each counter, speeding the whole thing up and preventing the person just trying to buy tickets from getting stuck behind someone wanting complicated food orders.

4) This is a strange complaint... but when we eventually made it into the cinema at a couple of minutes past 5, the 5pm showing had already started. I've become somewhat accustomed to half an hour of adverts and trailers, and actually really like the trailers. More of a problem was the fact that the cinema was completely pitch black when we arrived to a reasonably full cinema and had to try to find 3 seats. For the first 15 minutes of the film it was hard to pay attention as people stumbled in and tried to find ever decreasing seats. If you're going to change the now assumed system that a 5pm showing means the adverts start at 5, the lights remain on low setting and people have 20 minutes to get sorted - then you need to make a lot of noise about it (I checked the website and it doesn't seem to mention it).

5) This one is a bit tricky for you to deal with. But at a time when I'm being encouraged (or nagged!) to go to the cinema instead of downloading films (which I actually don't do) the cinema experience needs to be a positive one. I was already pretty annoyed due to all the above, but had hoped that once I sat down I would be able to appreciate the film. Sadly the other visitors to your cinema did not seem to feel the same way. There were several groups of people shamelessly talking throughout the film, other people looking at their phones projecting patches of light in the cinema. The noise level of people eating popcorn (and the disaster zone the place looked like afterwards) indicates a horrifying lack of manners.

Now I realise that the rudeness of the general public is not really your responsibility, but I would really like to see cinemas have 'stewards' or something similar - people who sit in the cinema watching films (not a difficult job to sell) and make sure that things are running ok. I've been in plenty of showings that have had technical faults and relied on the audience member getting up and wandering the halls trying to find someone to report the issue (while missing a chunk of the film they've paid for). I can't imagine you'd have to pay much more than the minimum wage to someone to watch films all day and occasionally ask people to stop talking. Even just a simple 'alert' button to summon a steward to the cinema without having to wander the halls.

Going to the cinema is not a cheap thing to do, myself and two friends paid nearly 25 pounds for the pleasure of being put into a really bad mood. For that amount of money I expect a certain quality of service. If you were promoting yourself as a "budget cinema" then understaffing would be acceptable, but for a cinema that even has "Superior Seats" I expect polite, efficient service, a clean, uncluttered building and a pleasant viewing experience.

I am a big fan of movies, but increasingly end up only going to see big special effects movies for which the benefits of the big screen overwhelm my hatred of your cinema. My bad mood is nothing to do with the film, which I thought was superb. The "Cinema experience" now comes to mean something entirely different and it's not something that will discourage people from pirating films or just legally waiting for a dvd.

Have a look at this video: http://geekadvancement.com/
"The reality is, while geek seems to be the new chic and is spreading its wings in the land of mainstream culture, us native geeks are still a misunderstood community. What better time to share with the world what we are really all about!" (from their about page)

I came across this via Wil Wheaton's blog post:

After watching the video yesterday, I was impressed by the production values, and I thought it was really awesome that it was just one small part of a larger project. I love that the whole thing is supposed to encourage literacy (if you really look for the links) and intends to support a good cause. As a writer, I certainly want more people to be readers!

But as I watched it a second and a third time, something didn't feel quite right to me. I couldn't put my finger on it, until e-mail started flooding in from people who could: this was supposed to be about refuting stereotypes and celebrating the things we love, but it ends up feeling like we're trying to convince the Cool Kids that we're really just like them, and a promotional opportunity for celebrities who don't know a damn thing about our geek culture, and don't care about the people who create and live in it.

I agreed with Wil's initial response (I don't know how to refer to him - Mr Wheaton, @wilw, the esteemed gentleman?), I thought it was a nice little video - well made, funny and cute. But it didn't really sit right with me for some reason. So I re-watched it 10 or 12 times.

The first thing that struck me was it started out in negative terms, with people saying what they *don't* do and implying that the things they don't do are sad and pathetic. "I DON'T play D&D or Magic the Gathering" and Wil's own "I speak python and css, not Klingon". Both seem to be trying a bit too hard to distance the New Geek from the old school Geek. They say "this is what geeks are seen to be, this is what people think they do... but we don't do that". It's as someone saw that geeks were about to become cool and that the cool kids should therefore want to be geeks. But then remembered they'd been mocking geeks for years so they must simultaneously embrace the cool while distancing from the pathetic.

I re-watched it yet again, and realised my core objection... the opening screen defines geek as:
- A person who is interested in technology, especially computing and new media
- who has chosen concentration rather than conformity
- one who passionately pursues skill and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance

But they don't talk about that in the video, they're not talking about being geeks, they're talking about being a subsection of geek - social media junkies. Being a geek is about more than twittering, podcasting, and using facebook. What makes Stephen Fry a geek isn't that he twitters, it's that he's interested in technology and ideas and he twittered EARLY. Ashton Kutcher and MC Hammer may twitter, but it doesn't make them geeks.

To embrace the life you need to do more than just use the tools. One of the people says "Just because you own a Nintendo wii, does not make you a geek". Well just 'cos you have a twitter account doesn't make you a geek either. As sammoore said when we were discussing this concept "using twitter to keep on top of your personal productivity system which brings together google calander, remember the milk and the moleskin notebook in your pocket is being the geek". Telling me you're getting on a plane to New York does not qualify you.

Being a geek is about using twitter because it's interesting, not because it's popular. It's about finding xkcd funny and scarily accurate. It's about a heartfelt discussion about Manic Miner, Elite or Pong. It's about wanting an iphone, or an eee, or a smaller, faster doodad despite the fact that your current large clunky doodad fulfills the actual need. It's about getting lost in ThinkGeek for 20 minutes when all you wanted was a link to illustrate a point. It's about spending 3 hours re-watching a video and writing a blog post on why it annoys you.

I think this is a classic example of a project starting out cool with a focused message and then gradually getting more and more muddled. I'm sure most of the people in that video really are true geeks, but it doesn't come across terribly well with that edit and script. They lost sight of the core message somewhere along the way and once it's gone it's very hard to fight it back.

Wow - it would seem to be over a month since I sorted out my links! Some of these are now painfully old.
( loadsa links )

We're proud to announce the arrival of several (somewhere between 7 and 10) bouncing baby bristlenose plecos.



Eggs appeared in the 'hatching shell' about a week ago with daddy pleco guarding and frantically flapping at them. Mummy pleco having done her bit sodded off to make the most of having first dibs at all the food. Tiny little plecos emerged on Saturday and now they're happily zipping about the tank and glomming* onto anything they can catch. They started off pretty transparent, but have now mostly coloured up and look like teeny tiny (about 12mm long) replicas of Mummy and Daddy (who are about 6cm long). As offspring of Mr and Mrs Glom, they are hereby called Glomessimals (or possibly Glomlets, Glomicules or Glomites).

More photos will appear here I would imagine

*Glomming - the process of a pleco attaching it's mouth onto something (eg the glass side of the tank) and maneuvering about the surface.

One little 'm' in a headline turns a story from not very exciting, to comedy gold.

I find there's something indulgent about settling in for a good read. Most of the time reading for me is something done in short bursts. When I worked in central London it used to be this was while commuting to work, now that I have to drive to work though, reading on the commute tends to scare my passenger. Daily reading is now restricted to a couple of chapters before switching the light out at night, a good way to gradually slow the brain down and distract it from thinking about the day just gone or the one to come.

My special treat to myself comes at the weekend though, when first thing on a Saturday morning, me and my book walk into Ealing to sit for a glorious solitary hour in Starbucks. This last weekend I was particularly struck by just how much I adore my Saturday morning routine. I loaded up my ipod and set off into town listening to the Radio 4 Friday Night Comedy podcast which is the perfect length to cover the walk there and back. There were a few people out on the common jogging and walking dogs, but it's pretty quiet at 9am on a Saturday, no one to get scared by the crazy woman laughing to herself. I find there's a satisfaction in getting up 'early' on a Saturday, as if you're somehow cheating the universe into giving you a longer weekend then you're really allowed.

I was greeted at Starbucks by one of the regular weekend baristas and we had a pleasant chat about the pleasant weather while she prepared my usual order. I headed to my usual table in the window asking the other early morning reader if he would mind sharing. He perfectly understood that it was accepted behaviour to ask to share a table with comfy seats in preference to one of the empty hard seated tables and we two complete strangers shared a coffee table and two armchairs in companionable silence.

So with my cinnamon swirl, grande chai tea latte and my book I settled into the giant comfy chair and resisted the urge to make a very satisfied "hmmmm" noise. This is my completely guilt free 'Me' time. Sitting at home, even in the garden just doesn't feel the same way, although you try to ignore it you know that there's a mountain of chores loitering nearby, waiting to be done. But in Starbucks, there really is no choice but to sit and read until you've finished your drink. A grande chai latte will last me pretty much exactly an hour. A tall is acceptable for a quick mid-week lunch break, a venti required only on very rare traumatic days, but for a Saturday morning a grande is just right.

This means an hour of unashamed reading. Not until my hour is nearly up do I start evaluating the length of each new chapter to see if it's acceptable to start reading it. Too often when I read before sleeping I end up really wanting the chapter to end because my eyes are closing. It's not the book's fault, it's simple biology and I feel bad for the book. But for daytime reading there's no such force and I can read for hours on end if I can outlast the guilt.

Sitting in Starbucks last Saturday morning I had one of those moments of perfect happiness, reading a book that has not only been on my to-read list for about a decade but has very happily turned out to be truly excellent. Everything faded away except for my latte, my cake and the vivid creation of characters, issues and events which I had never experienced. I sank deeper into my book and my chair until I finally reached the end of my drink and gradually resurfaced to confront the real world - the one outside of my book and outside of my Starbucks.

Links of the increasingly random timeperiod. ( read more )

So apparently it's not enough to take the satnav holder off the windscreen of your car and throw it in the back somewhere, the little arseholes will still break your window to get into the glove box and steal it. Does it not occur to them that if I've gone to the effort of removing the holder, I probably haven't just then thrown the damn satnav into the glovebox? Apparently not, 'cos they decided to smash my window anyway. Of course they probably wouldn't have done that if I'd been able to park outside my own house, not 20m down the road, but hey, who am I to say next door shouldn't be able to park all three of their cars within eyesight. Even more ridiculous are the facts that I have the cheapest satnav in the world, if they could get more than 20quid for it I'd be astonished and secondly, there's no space in my glove box for the damn thing even if I did want to put it there 'cos the glovebox is perfectly designed to hold the owner's manual, the special nut thingies for the tyres and a small amount of air.

So yeah, going to work this morning was somewhat derailed by the gaping hole in the side of my car and the glass everywhere. Oh well, that's why I have fully comp insurance and the number for Autoglass on speed dial (I've had a chip treated and a whole new windscreen in the last year). I gave up on work completely and took the day off, my bad mood was unlikely to lead to productivity and happy client relations.

Autoglass man turned up at 4ish and set to work with a jaunty "oo a new corsa, I haven't worked on one of these before". An hour later he was less than impressed with the new models. Apparently (as he said to his mate on the phone when he called for help) they've modelled the impossible to access window mountings on the Pergeut. Excellent, they're absolutely renowed for how wonderfully friendly they are to service.

So, yeah. Not so much. Apparnetly the mechanism is totally buggered. There was a lot of poking it with various sizes of screwdrivers and a fair amount of swearing. Eventually he concluded that the only way to fix it was to drill the door panel off completely which he couldn't do without voiding my warranty. So he wedged my window in place so it's secure overnight and safe enough to drive 'a short distance' and advised me to ring up Vauxhall.

Vauxhall were the least helpful people I've encountered today up to and possibly even including the git who broke the window in the first place. West End Vauxhall at Staples Corner (naming and shaming here) who I bought the car from were very eager for me to bring it in for service... but not until Monday. Well I need the car on Sunday and I also would rather like (sort of) to be able to go to work on Monday. Oh and also - if they do the inspection and it turns out the issue isn't covered under waranty that'll cost me 50 quid just for the inspection. "Is that ok?", "Not really, but I guess I don't have much choice". So I accepted the appointment but said I'd phone round to see if anyone else could do it on Sat.

Phoned West End Vauxhall Edgeware Road and eventually was put through to the same woman I'd just spoken to who told me that branch was closed.

Phone Richmond branch - Service dept was busy

Phone Southall branch - no answer at all.

Phone Fulham branch - more helpful person here. He could see the car tomorrow but started getting a bit edgy about the warranty. He pointed out that the warranty is only for defects and whatnot, not accidental damage so it was extremely unlikely the issue would be covered under warranty. So I'd have to pay for the fixes, the price being anything from 50 quid upwards. He was most determined that I could bring it in to "just have a look". So I booked an appointment. Mostly because I was just so relieved anyone could see me tomorrow!

Then realise that's dumb. Right, phone autoglass, get a smidge emotional with a lovely guy in customer services who was extremely helpful and understanding about the person having a small nervous breakdown. By this point it's 5.15 so he gives me the number of the branch I need to talk to and wishes me luck.

Right, now we're on to phonecall 12 or so, the Harrow branch of Autoglass. They at least knew what the situation was as their technician had phoned. Yes they would be able to fix it (well that got a little less confident as the conversation went on...) but no they didn't have any appointments until... Tuesday. I may have given a somewhat hysterical sob at that point. "Um, wait a sec, let me see... I'll call back in 10 minutes? OK?" Yes, fine. Whatever.

That's where I started writing this blog, sitting on the stairs snivelling. Nice man from Autoglass phoned back about halfway through to let me know that he could get me a mobile guy out on Monday morning. Which is apparently as good as it's going to get. So I thanked him profusely and tried not to shudder too much when he wished me "a good weekend madam".

So now I'm still sat on the stairs snivelling and blogging. Trying to work out alternatives for my Sunday driving plans and what hte hell I'm going to do about work on Monday, where amongst other things I had two morning meetings and my quarterly appraisal scheduled. I was also supposed to be going out tonight, but now think I'm going to go to bed and wish this awful awful week to end.

Lots of links for you this week! ( read more )

Pictures
MBARI News Release - Researchers solve mystery of deep-sea fish with tubular eyes and transparent head
There are some very very odd things in the ocean, this one actually kinda freaks me out!

GIANT STINGRAY PICTURE: Largest Freshwater Fish?
A 7 foot diameter stingway was captured and released in Thailand as part of the National Geographic "Megafishes Project" which is a brilliant project name!

Carnival - The Big Picture - Boston.com
Amazingly colourful photos from carnivals around the world. #29 is a particularly impressive photo.

Junior Snailio Sniffs an Eye Stalk
I wouldn't have thought snails could be cute, but this one really manages it

APOD: 2009 February 19 - Mauna Kea Milky Way Panorama
Beautiful panorama of the stars from 4,200m up a volcano in Hawaii

35 Beautiful Examples Of Animals Photography | Inspiration | Smashing Magazine
The colours in these photos are amazing


Videos
VIDEO: Penguins (Cutely) Count Selves
A smart way to count penguins, I found the variety of penguin toys used to demonstrate the techniques amusing.

YouTube - Mylo's Bathtub Antics - VERY funny
Keep watching... Don't know why on earth the cat does this, but apparently it does so frequently.

Snake regurgitates hippo
Seriously! Look at the title! This is one of the most revolting things I've ever seen and yet somehow couldn't bring myself to stop watching

HowStuffWorks Videos "Destroyed in Seconds: Mountain Top Copter Crash"
Video footage of an amazing helicopter crash - everyone survived (the voiceover is a little tasteless imho, but it's an amazing video so I'm posting it here anyway)

Cute Overload! :) Why Cats Suck at Jenga
There's something very calming about watching the inevitable

50 Incredible Stop Motion Videos | Inspiration | Smashing Magazine
There's some great videos in here - some I've seen before, but lots of new ones too. i love the clay chess pieces

YouTube - The Rookies: Kylie, Age 4 1/2
The cutest Microsoft advert ever!


Interesting
LEGO Business Card | Geekdad from Wired.com
Lego has the coolest business cards ever! What a genius idea!

“Cat Lovers Personals, Dating, Social Networking for Cat Lovers PURRsonals.com
This is either complete genius or utterly terrifying. Actually it's probably both

Seth's Blog: Sorry, you can't be our customer
I went to see Seth in London and this post is semi-inspired by a question asked yesterday. It's a very very good point and exceptionally difficult to actually pull off.


Useful
Apparently I haven't found anything useful in the last couple of weeks. That says it all really ;0)


Fun
Block Drop Puzzle Game
Pretty and weirdly soothing little puzzle game

Paper Critters
I happily wasted 15 min building one of these critters to sit on my desk

Get Madame Fate FREE! walkthrough, review, discussion, hints and tips at Jay is Games
Free game! There's a find the object game and some sort of building game, both available through Big FIsh Games for free (for a limited period) with the coupon codes on this page

Play With Spider - Flash 3D - OneMotion.com
Adorable spider to customise and play with

The First Worldwide Website Where Nothing Happens
Interesting marketing/viral concept from KitKat

Pictures
How I Made a 1,474-Megapixel Photo During President Obama's Inaugural Address | David Bergman -- ALL ACCESS -- sports, concert, and music photographer
A giant panaramic image of the inaugural address made up of 220 photos stitched together.

More of London from above, at night - The Big Picture - Boston.com
Aerial photos of London, this time by night showing off the beautiful lights and patterns.

.:troop ies365 - a set on Flickr
A photo a day staring four stormtrooper mini-figs. Very cute, funny and well shot.

PHOTO IN THE NEWS: Koala Rescued From Australia Fires
The cutest picture ever! I've seen it in a few places but National Geographic has some further info on Sam the koala


Videos
Official Band From TV Website Videos
Band From TV are a band made up of actors from shows like House, Desperate Housewives and Heroes. All their earnings go to charity... and they're actually pretty good!

Time-lapse of a 9-month-old at play
This is so cute, brownian baby motion!

Timelapse video of city night-lights from the window of a plane
This is a beautiful video, although the turbulance looks a little scary at times

Robin Hood's "Oo De Lally," Translated Into 13 Languages - Waxy.org
I love this Disney film and it's funny to see the song translated into all these languages.

VIDEO: Foxes on a trampoline - Boing Boing
A couple of young foxes having a confusing if entertaining time on a trampoline

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
The Onion are a bunch of very very bitter and very very funny people. Beware - the language is a little, um, colourful.

'Every Car You Chase'
A brilliantly done mashup of Snow Patrol and The Police. A combination of genius on the part of the editor and laziness on the part of the songwriters?


Interesting
101 Of A Wolf: My Full 101 List
101 goals for 1001 days. This is an impressive ambition with an interesting balance of education, experience, generosity and challenge. Good luck!

Nikon D3 Cut In Half « Tokyobling’s Blog
How on earth did they do this? The sheer amount of glass terrifies me as well.

Will Young on Question Time: A good deal more interesting than Geoff Hoon | Media | guardian.co.uk
An amusing take on the pros and cons of Will Young on Question Time

FBI Investigates 9 Million ATM Scam
I'm a lot more impressed at the co-ordination of this crime than I really should be.

Life at Wal-Mart
An interesting article about a positive experience working at Wal-Mart, not sure one positive experience overcomes the numerous negative stories, but it's a nice piece of journalism to actually go and experience it for yourself.


Useful
100 (Really) Beautiful iPhone Wallpapers | Graphics | Smashing Magazine
iphone wallpapers for James... or me if I ever get round to buying one.

Prepay or Travelcard
Really really useful site to calculate whether it's better to buy a travelcard or just use your Oyster prepay. The example I put in for my old job proved I'd made the right decision on prepay, but I was surprised at the size of the saving!

Extraordinary Uses for 16 Ordinary Household Items - Womansday.com
There's some really good tips in here that I'd not come across.

Fences is a Seriously Awesome Desktop Icon Organizer [Downloads]
I've just installed this and it's immediately tidied my desktop impressively. How long it will last I don't know.

The Web Design Sketchbook now released for sale! | Paranaiv / Are Sundnes
A cunning idea - a sketchbook with generic web-browser and web-banner outlines built in

Lovely Charts | Free online diagramming application
This looks like a pretty nice and entirely free (with registration) online tool to make flow diagrams, site maps and wireframes

Self-Adhesive Magnetic Tape [Office Supplies Fetish]
Turn any surface magnetic! Not sure how well it works, but I was so excited to see a Lifehacker post where for once the tool is more easily available in the UK than the US, that I couldn't resist posting it!


Fun
Virgin: the world's best passenger complaint letter? - Telegraph
I've had some bad airplane food in my time, but this one takes the crime- scene-biscuit!

YouTube - 2009 Oscars Interactive Photo Hunt!
Using YouTube to build a "spot the difference" game seems a little extreme (and a little tedious to be honest), but it's a cool use of the technology.

Cov ert Ops:, I don’t know what
Lolcat genius

LEGO Battles break out on DS this summer
Sounds like a new strategy game for the DS involving building lego buildings and characters to fight. Why did no one do this years ago?

Nee Naw - Big Announcement
Nee Naw not only got a promotion and a book deal, but also came out of the... something and turns out to be a girl! I don't know why that makes me happy, but it does.

Birdseye - Plate Up Game
Stickee did this! Surprisingly hard little game and tasty looking fish finger recipies.


And finally - don't go to this one unless you can laugh out loud without drawing attention and have no fear of losing an hour!
F*** My Life - FML : Your everyday life stories.

I started the day with a flat tyre at 7.30am in the rain. First it took me 10 minutes to get the jack out of the bag as it was wedged in, then couldn't get the sodding tyre off because of the ridiculous hubcap system on the Corsa. Was just about to give up and ring the RAC when a good samaritan from a tyre company pulled up in his fully kitted out van and sorted it all out.

Several hours and several hand washes later and I'm still covered in grime and an impressive collection of irritating nicks and bruises.

I started this post out with the subject "I don't like Mondays" planning to have a whine. But you know what, as I typed about it the most memorable bit of the whole experience is that some kind soul stopped to help out. I'm trying to find the name of the tyre company, I think it was Swanwick or Stanwick or something like that. It does make the world a nicer place knowing there are people that will stop in the rain to help out.

Inauguration Special
GeoEye › Inauguration
Epic resolution aerial images of the the National Mall showing the crowds watching inuguration.

CNN.com - Special Reports - The 44th President - The Moment
A giant photosynth of the moment Obama took the oath of office. I'm not entirely convinced by photosynth personally, but it's a lovely collaborative way to record the moment.

Obama's West Wing: Can reality match the liberal White House fantasy? | World news | The Guardian
A character by character break down comparing Obama's west wing with The West Wing. There's a floor plan too - I love that National Security Advisor and the Press secretary both have bigger offices than the Vice President

Inaugural preparations - The Big Picture - Boston.com
Beautiful photos from Washington (mostly) as final preperations for Obama's inauguration are put in place. The scale of this is quite amazing.

Inaugural Luncheon Recipes Available as Free Download [Cooking]
I love that the new US government is so open source and freedom of information that they've even shared the recipies used for the Inaugural Luncheon online for free.

Dopplr presents the Personal Annual Report 2008: freshly generated for you, and Barack Obama…
My Dopplr travel report wasn't nearly as interesting as Obama's one was.

The Way the Future Blogs » Blog Archive » Happy Inauguration Day, President Obama
Frederik Pohl, one of my favourite 'classic' sf writers has started a blog at the youthful age of 89. These are his thoughts on Inauguration Day, I wish I could express mine so eloquently.

Word Cloud Analysis of Obama's Inaugural Speech Compared to Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Lincoln's - ReadWriteWeb
This is really fascinating! Compare that Obama uses People as much as Bush used Americans, that for Obama 'world' is only slightly smaller than 'america', which for Bush I couldn't even find 'world' on his map.

Poster: 389 Years Ago (updated).
It's a bit difficult to read at first, but it's got some scary and some inspiring numbers in it once you get the hang of it.


Pictures
Icy days and nights - The Big Picture - Boston.com
Beautiful photos from the Harbin Ice Festival and icey locations around the world.

Frozen Bubbles
Apparently if it's cold enough you can create soap bubbles that will freeze. This doesn't really go into details, but the photos are beautiful.

Dragon cake on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
The words 'giant' and 'dragon' don't really do justice to this absolutely huge cake. Don't think I'd want to eat it though.

Applied Geometry
This is a bit excessive just to make a £1 profit from the trolley lock thingies.

Transportation Fail
I think this rather impressive vehicle load is a success rather than a fail actually!

MAKE: Blog: Umbrellas bloom in the neighborhood
A really cheerful piece of 'art'. Hopefully it doesn't confuse the poor tree when spring comes.


Videos
No Exit Strategy Whatsoever
This 'disaster in slow motion' made me laugh out loud

Video: History of the Internet - ReadWriteWeb
An 8 minute video outlining the history of the internet with very simple but very well done animations.

YouTube - Evolution of Technology - HQ (Saturn Commercial)
This looks like an impressive piece of animation, although the video quality is pretty poor.

Cat interrupts TV weather forecast - Telegraph
A cat invades the weather forecast and gets a cuddle as a reward. Awww...

J.J. Abrams' mystery box | Video on TED.com
Not sure f I've tagged this one before, but I found it when I was looking for something else. He's a great speaker and talks about how stories are all about mysteries and how technology helps him tell his mysteries.

Where the Hell is Matt? The videogame edition - Boing Boing
Exploring the worlds of gaming with crazy dancing!

YouTube - Frozen Waffles Have It Bad
Hilarious, although somewhat disturbing too. I worry about some people's brains.
Wealthy meerkat in comparethemarket.com ad campaign - Brand Republic News - Brand Republic
Genius viral marketing campaign for Compare the Market.com, very cute. Go to CompareTheMeerkat.com for the full experience.


Useful
50 Ways to Help the Planet
Some of these are stating the obvious, but they state it very well.

Plantable Greeting Cards from Botanical PaperWorks
What a brilliant idea - beautiful paper that has seeds in it, so you can plant it and grow things. Really lovely.

Flickr Collection on Getty: Why I’m Not Taking Part
Getty Images are apparently approaching flickr photographers to put their images into a pool on Getty. This is a carefully considered response from one photographer of why they won't be participating.


Interesting
London V2 Rocket Sites...Mapped - Londonist
Londonist has created a googlemap indicating a number of the V2 bomb sites across London.

UKC Articles - Mountain Rescue - The Truth
A very candid article about how the Llanberis (and presumably other) Mountain Rescue teams operate without almost no support. Fascinating, concerning and inspiring.

Top Gear's the Stig: the truth is out there
One of the best kept secrets in television has been solved. The linked to article doesn't reveal the identity (at least not in the main article, maybe the comments do), but does link to a revealing newspaper article. This makes me a bit sad.

BuddyTV Slideshow | Top 100 TV Shows of the Past 20 Years, 100-76
They have some fairly strict rules for what can and can't count, meaning I'm not sure that it doesn't mean that there are actually only 100 shows of any note eligable... but there's some good stuff in here too.

Fake Viral Videos: Is This Good Marketing?
Another popular viral video has been revealed as a fake, Read Write Web feels this style of advertising is misleading and damaging to trust, but do most people care?


Fun
Purple squirrel baffles experts - Telegraph
"Dr Mike Edwards, an English teacher, said: 'I was sitting in my classroom and looked out the window and saw it sitting on the fence. I had to do a double take. Since then it's been a bit of a regular at the school - everyone's seen it.'"

English Russia » A Puzzle on the House
What an inspired idea - painting a giant crossword puzzle on the side of a building and putting clues around the city.

DealExtreme: $27.37 USB Dragon Dual Shock Scary Gamepad (with 12-button and 2 analog sticks)
Fear the tacky horror!

We guard the gates of HELL!
Lolcats make me lol

No Pants 2k9 at Improv Everywhere
One day a year - pantless (well, trouserless) people invade the New York subway (and other subways around the world). What a wonderful if utterly bizarre idea!

iSketch
Pictionary online. It's a bit chuggy at times and you have to beware idiots like any of these online forum thingies, but it's weirdly addictive

I finally got around to watching the inauguration ceremony tonight, my Sky box in a fit of right-wing ness refused to record it on Tuesday and I had to wait for it to turn up on iplayer.

The BBC production was pretty week I thought, the graphics of the manic blue and red bubbles was really tacky, looked like that thing you do at school to make ugly paper out of water with ink and bubbles. I wasn't particularly impressed by the commentary and reporting teams either, they talked over things and failed to talk over the silent bits. I'm not sure whether it was the iplayer encoding or actually the live feed, but bits were also out of focus and with awful colour balance/exposures too. I had been looking forward to watching the BBC coverage as I thought they'd do a nice job and have some interesting commentary, this felt amateurish.

I found the constant commenting on the fact that Obama is the first black president to be a little annoying. I'm not sure I can put it into words properly. It seems hypocritical somehow to be commenting on the colour of his skin as an indication that the colour of his skin doesn't matter anymore. There is so much more to this man than the fact he is black (like he fact he is actually of mixed race parents), the biggest contrast between the 44th president and the 43rd is not skin colour! He did not win the election because he's black, or despite the fact that he's black... he won it because of a lot of complex elements and making it a one issue campaign does a diservice to all involved. I understand it's an important milestone, but I'm not sure I heard the word 'democrat' a single time during the commentary.

On a less serious note - George Bush Snr looked pretty heavily medicated, Jimmy Carter looked perky and spry on the other hand. Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair apparently because he strained his back packing boxes. Hillary Clinton looked like she'd plastered her smile and Michelle Obama looked like she was wearing curtains.

I was intrigued by the singing of My Country Tis of Thee. It turns out the song has a couple of interesting connections. Martin Luther King Jr referenced it in his I Have A Dream speech. It was also sung by Marian Anderson on the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after she had been refused permission to sing at a concert in a white school and Eleanor Roosevelt helped arrange a new concert for her, attended by 75,000 people.

John Williams's Air and Simple Gifts (an arrangement of The Lord of the Dance) was beautiful and the musicians looked to be having so much fun... it's a real shame they were miming because it was too cold for the instruments. It felt like a strange piece of music to play, I was expecting something a lot more powerful, loud and boastful, instead it was simple, uplifting and joyful. Also it was so cool to me that Yo-Yo Ma played for President Bartlett on the West Wing too

The swearing in itself was something of a comedy of errors. Honestly it's like 8 lines! Although apparently the presidency changes at noon regardless of whether Obama had said the oath or not!

The inaugural address had a lot to live up to and delivered pretty impressively. I liked that the crowd, or at least those near the microphones had the decency to not boo the thanking of Bush for his service. It was an interesting, gutsy and impressive declaration of intent; not holding back in telling off pretty much everyone. I like the language used to give digs - "we have chosen hope over fear", "As for our common defence, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." I loved the mention that the US is made up not just of different religions - but also non-believers. It was eloquent, it was intelligent, it was inspiring... it was like watching a Bartlett speech. "All this we can do. All this we will do." - God I hope so!

After that, anything would be a bit of a let down , but I could definitely have lived without the poetry... maybe it was actually brilliant and I just didn't get it, maybe it was just badly delivered... but it kinda killed the mood.

The benediction took a while to get going, but was powerful when it did. The ending making everyone laugh and say amen together was perfect.

Sadly after that there was a slightly chaotic playing of Sousa (I think the Liberty Bell?) which seemed to have two bands playing a couple of bars out of synch, maybe it was a PA failure. Then it was back to inane chattering from the BBC 'experts' and the Helicopter of Happiness taking Bush away to a happy retirement dribbling into his golf shirt.

Well I should really be going to bed, but one final check of lj revealed billyabbott had posted a film list. So there goes the early night.

So of imdb's ever shifting top 250, I've seen 125, which a satisfyingly exact, but slightly disappointing half. I thought it was going to be higher than that actually, but there's quite a few obscure things on there. I was doing pretty well in the top 50, missing only a few foreign ones (I'm not good with subtitles) and one that isn't even out in the UK yet. But things drop off quite fast. I'll keep ploughing through Good films (although a large number of these I didn't think anywhere near as good as the population of imdb do) with the aid of Lovefilm - I picked off Braveheart and Gandhi just last week.

( Full list )

Pictures
Flickr: Far side Re-enactments
Recreations of Far Side comic strips. I'm not sure if this is funny ha ha or funny peculiar.
The World From Above: The Beauty Of Aerial Photography
A beautiful selection of photographs from planes, high buildings, satellites and even the space station.
The year 2008 in photographs (part 1 of 3) - The Big Picture - Boston.com
This blog always has some amazing pictures, these are the most amazing amazing photos of the year

Videos
Bike parking system in Japan - Boing Boing
Genius way of storing lots of bikes in a relatively small space. Seriously, the future is here!
Best Of 2008: Hear 2008's Top 25 Pop Songs in One Mashup
A brilliantly done edit of 25 pop songs and their videos from 2008 - I think this might actually be better than any of the songs by themselves.
Classical music performed by the Muppets: Ode to Beeker and the Blue Gonzo Chicken Waltz
Genius! Absolute genius!
ITV wispa
Stickee did the website, but a lot of very strange people did the advert itself!


Useful
10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs
There's some very nice suggestions for simple ways to improve usability on modern websites without damaging design.
LucidChart - Online Collaborative Flow Chart Application - Home
Free online thingy to build flowcharts. I use flowcharts a lot and thankfully have access to Visio to do them, but a free tool could be very useful
Firebox.com - CrapWrap
A brilliant servce that offers non-professional wrapping for gifts so it looks like you did it yourself.


Interesting
Charles Platt on life in prison - Boing Boing
A fascinating article on the US prison system, the author offers up some interesting questions although I'm not sure I agree with him completely.
What is viral marketing?
Very interesting summary of what something has to do to be a true piece of viral marketing. There's some of Seth Godin's usual back slapping to wade through though.


Fun
Recycle old, broken crayons into fun new shapes | Chica and Jo
A fun sounding idea to turn old scraps of crayons into fund new ones.
List Of The Day: Fugly Ass Christmas Sweaters Of The Day
The horror!
Open Sesame - The Daily WTF
A genius solution created by pure Geek Power
Store won't put kid's controversial name on cake - Boing Boing
I really do fear the world sometimes. 'Fun' isn't really the right category, but in the absence of an 'absolutely terrifying' category.
ThinkGeek :: Homemade Peanut Butter Factory
This is possibly the most wonderful kitchen appliance ever, and I don't even particularly like peanut butter.
Google Earth Blog: New York City in Photo-Realistic 3D Now in Google Earth
The level of detail in google maps is getting truly terrifying
Holiday Freelance Comic #84 - FreelanceSwitch - The Freelance Blog
A little carol for freelance web designers
XKCD - Cuttlefish
There are no words for just how brilliant this strip is!
The Colossal Squid Exhibition - Build A Squid - Interactive
Build your own squid. Mine's called Bluey and is very cute ;0)
ThinkGeek :: Enough Social Interaction Doormat / Floormat
This is brilliant! I love the neighbourly code of conduct too

21 - 6/10 * The American President - 6/10 Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward... - 6/10 Atonement - 7/10 Batman Begins - 8/10 Blood Diamond - 7/10 Burn After Reading - 5/10 * The Chronicals of Narnia: Prince Caspian - 6/10 * Cloverfield - 7/10 * The Dark Knight - 9/10 * Dead Poets Society - 7/10 Definitely, Maybe - 6/10 * Fantastic Four - The Rise of the Silver Surfer - 4/10 Election - 7/10 Ella Enchanted - 7/10 Enchanted - 7/10 Fail Safe - 8/10 Falling Down - 8/10 Flags of Our Fathers - 7/10 Flushed Away - 6/10 Fools Rush In - 5/10 Get Carter - 6/10 The Golden Compass - 7/10 * Gone With the Wind - 8/10 The Good Shepherd - 4/10 Hairspray - 6/10 Hancock - 7/10 * Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - 8/10 Hellboy - 6/10 Hellboy II: The Golden Army - 8/10 * High Noon - 5/10 I Am Legend - 6/10 Igby Goes Down - 7/10 The Incredibles -7/10 The Illusionist - 9/10 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 5/10 * Inkheart - 5/10 * Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) - 5/10 Iron Man - 8/10 * Jumper - 6/10 *

Juno - 7/10 Kinky Boots - 9/10 Knocked Up - 5/10 Kung Fu Panda - 6/10 * The Last King of Scotland - 8/10 The Last Kiss - 5/10 Leatherheads - 7/10 * Letters from Iwo Jima - 8/10 Madagascar - 6/10 Michael Clayton - 8/10 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - 9/10 The Muppet Christmas Carol - 8/10 Napoleon Dynamite - 3/10 No Country for Old Men - 6/10 Notes on a Scandal - 8/10 Ocean's Thirteen - 5/10 Office Space - 7/10 Over the Hedge - 5/10 Planet of the Apes (1968) - 7/10 Ratatouille - 7/10 Robin Hood (Disney) - 8/10 Run Fatboy Run - 7/10 Running With Scissors - 4/10 A Scanner Darkly - 6/10 The Science of Sleep - 6/10 Shaun of the Dead - 7/10 Smokin' Aces - 6/10 Son of Rambow - 7/10 Stardust - 9/10 Starter for 10 - 6/10 The Sting - 7/10 Stranger Than Fiction - 9/10 Swiss Family Robinson - 5/10 The Terminator - 5/10 The Third Man - 6/10 TMNT - 6/10 Transamerica - 9/10 Vertigo - 5/10 WALL-E - 9/10 * Young Frankenstein - 4/10

By the numbers
78 films in total
67 films that were new to me
53 films via LoveFilm (really getting my money's worth from unlimited dvds, one at a time)
42 films I consider good
32 films I consider mediocre
15 from imdb's top 250 (as of Jan 1st 2008)
3 Oscar winners
5 Films I consider bad
16 2008 films (marked with *)
5 Films off the new American Film Institute top 100 films
12 films seen in the cinema (13 if I could both viewings of WALL-E)
6 George Clooney films
0 films with William H. Macy - what's going on?!


Best Film
There are a few new films with 9/10 (I don't do 10/10 on principle), many of them excellent for different reason. Transamerica and Mr Smith Goes to Washington are both very well told stories with some impressive performances. Stranger Than Fiction and The Illusionist are both odd ideas again very well told. Stardust and Kinky Boots are pure fun while Dark Knight is another excellent Batman film. My film of the year however is WALL-E, It's beautifully designed, completely adorable, laugh out loud funny and just lovely. I've seen it three times this year and would happily watch it again tonight.

Worst Film
I've watched some poor films this year but the two standouts were ones that I thought would be really good. Napoleon Dynamite is apparently a 7/10 on imdb, but I found it completely tedious and didn't even finish it. The Good Shepherd is another 7/10 on imdb which to me was just three hours of dull greyness.

Best performances
Heath Ledger was completely amazing as the Joker, blowing Christian Bale completely off the screen. Felicity Huffman was brilliant as an extremely complex character in Transamerica, and Chiwetel Ejiofor played a similarly complex character with great charm and humour in Kinky Boots. I enjoyed Will Smith's performances in I Am Legend and Hancock and as always George Clooney was wonderful in all his roles, from goofy comedy in Leatherheads to Proper Acting in Michael Clayton. Other notables - Ellen Page in Juno, Judy Dench in Notes on a Scandal, Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy in Last King of Scotland, Ken Watanabe in Letters from Iwo Jima and Robert Downey Jnr in Iron Man


Miscellaneous Awards
"Comedy Accent Awards" - In an otherwise superb film, the voice effects on Batman in the Dark Knight was ridiculously bad. Leonardo DiCaprio's accent in Blood Diamond was pretty jarring too.
"Does What it Says on the Tin Award" - Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. When your title has given away the whole plot, you don't really need the film to be nearly three hours long.
"Nice concept, shame about the writing" - Inkheart, lovely idea, plot full of mile wide holes.
"Quirky and Good" - Stranger Than Fiction
"Quirky and Crap" - Running with Scissors
"Quirky and Crap AND French" - Science of Sleep
"Not Nearly as Bad As I Expected" - Gone with the Wind
"Just as Bad as I Expected" - Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer
"You Can Do Better (I Think)" - Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up, a miserable film with an almost offensively awful plot which is wasting her talents. At least I think she has talents..