Archive for April, 2004

Weird dreams #3

Published by
Armand
April 30, 2004 in Media & Marketing, Miscellany, Personal and Television. 0 Comments

I know there’s been a slightly overload of techie/geeky posts lately, so here’s one that’s just plain eccentric. I’ve had odd dreams before, but last night’s was a two-parter, full on Captain Weird of dreams (well, three parts, but part three was too disturbing to be spoken of. Ever. Again.)

Part the first: I was a kind of Radar O’Reilly/Captain Piers hybrid figure from M*A*S*H, and the 4077th had been substantially disbanded as everyone’s tours of duty had come to an end. Only BJ, me and (oddly enough) Colonel Henry Blake remained. So I helped them get home, somehow, by persuading Icore that the 4077th was useless when not a team, and that team had gone. They were happy to go home, and grateful to me for my manipulative scheming.

Part the second: My brother decided to have a party themed on Imperial Russia (don’t ask me how that works, I’m not quite sure, but it involved caviar and vodka - and funny hats) - and I was meant to be leaving the house but couldn’t quite manage it. The flat was much bigger than the one we actually live in, but structurally similar, and during my failure to leave, I kept wandering past a section that had been modelled like a McDonald’s and inhabited entirely by Koreans eating cheeseburgers.

It’s possible that my latter dream was a subconscious commentary on the state of globalisation, the death of ideology and the resurrection of the bizarre themed party, and the former simply my desire to be the hero acting out. Then again, its possible that I just like to dance the dream of the surreal.

[Listening to: The Remedy - Jason Mraz - Waiting For My Rocket To Come (04:17)]

Ferrett Hammock

Published by
Armand
April 29, 2004 in Miscellany and Technology. 0 Comments

Alright, I happened to click through to the US Google site for a change, and curiousity took me through to Froogle, Google’s extremely punny comparison shopping site. I then noticed that it had this listed as a recently found item.

How odd the people of the Interweb are.

[Listening to: Couldn't Get It Right - Fun Lovin' Criminals - Mimosa (03:47)]

KKriegertastic

Published by
Armand
April 29, 2004 in Gaming and Media & Marketing. 0 Comments

Check out this game! The graphics may not look amazing from this screenshot, but have a look on the main site and click on some of the full res ones!

What’s impressive is not the graphics per se, but the fact that the entire game package weighs in at just under 100KB, which, for the not technically inclined, is very, very small. I downloaded and ran the beta on my machine (an Athlon 2000XP, 512MB RAM, Geforce3), which was sadly too far below the minimum spec to be useful in any real way, but gave an indication of the game’s potential.

The game engine dynamically generates textures for the game, sucking up vast amounts of RAM but virtually no hard disk space. It’s a clever little algorithm.

Trés impressionant.

via James, creator of Mcfensive Google.

[Listening to: Mysterious Ways - U2 (04:03)]

Redder than the Sun

Published by
Armand
April 28, 2004 in Blog, Current affairs, Miscellany and Technology. 0 Comments

Labour: I see redAlright, this is a post about two things. First, it’s about New Labour: some chaps called Tim Ireland and Balders, who I believe are friends of Chris, have put together a really excellent video presentation (warning: its a 1.3MB flash video, with good noise) outlining exactly where Labour has failed to deliver, and why the Tories would have been worse. It’s entitled, or at least themed, “I see red”. It goes by quickly, but is damn entertaining, damn informative and extremely well done. Check it out.

The second thing I’m blogging about is, well, again, blogging. A meta-level post: the point being, why regurgitate stuff on my blog that Chris has already posted on his, and no doubt has been blogged about everywhere else in the world? Well, because that’s how memes propogate: a meme, a viral piece of knowledge, is as successful as it is profligate: by my talking about it to my somewhat esoteric audience (which does include more people than just Chris and Tom, honest - about 5,000 hits this month, I think), the various Blog tracking services (Technorati, Blogdex etc.,) track the popularity of certain memes and rank them accordingly - they do this by scanning blogs with ‘bots - web programs that trawl for information. In fact, a substantial part of the traffic this site has seen is due to these network agents.

It’s really a remarkable way to track the progression of an idea - hence these remarks.

The impacts to branding, guerilla marketing and dirty tricks campaigners are reasonably obvious, but fortunately most good memes are still free and free of commercial sponsorship. Be interesting to see how it goes; the Blog seems to be on the up-and-up in terms of popularity (every loser has one), and increasingly communities of well read, well thought people doing more than rant about random internet crap are popping up. Watch this space.

[Listening to: Don't Hate The Playa - Ice-T (04:04)]

you know what’s good about Maggie Gyllenhaal

Published by
Armand
April 28, 2004 in Film and Media & Marketing. 0 Comments

…other than the fact that her name’s ludicrously hard to spell?

Everything.

But its because of Secretary, the 2002 movie by little-known director Steven Shainberg, that I’m saying this.

Finally seen yet another in my list of movies-to-be-seen (I will watch Donnie Darko v. soon!), and deeply enjoyed it. Here’s what you get: recently discharged from a mental institution, from a family imposed stay following their near-fatal discovery of her more self-damaging tendencies, Lee Holloway (Maggie-dear) looks for a way to put meaning into her life, and begins to find it in the routine tedium of an administrative job. “It’s boring, very boring. You’re over qualified, really,” says Mr Gray (James Spader), clearly selling the job well. “I like boring,” is Lee’s simple reply, and on they go. What follows is an absolutely bizarre courtship, complicated by Lee’s semi-autistic fiancee (also the victim of a nervous breakdown), and the progression of Mr Gray’s relationship with Lee Holloway from curt boss and fragile employee to (literal) sadist and (literal, but empowered) masochist.

And then they fall in love.

I don’t know how this holds up in terms of authenticity, but the film does what I require from film: it tells a story well, with believeable (albeit improbable) characters and a strong narrative drive, with superb acting on all parts, even the more minor characters. Jeremy Davies, who plays Peter, Lee’s fiancee, provides the same delightfully quirky semi-autistic performance he gave in Solaris, Steve Soderbergh’s remake of the 1972 movie of the same name. Maggie and James are both solid, too.

Highly recommended (though probably not for younger audiences).

[Listening to: Tonight, Tonight - Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (04:15)]

Damn critics

Published by
Armand
April 27, 2004 in Blog, Miscellany, Music and Technology. 0 Comments

Man, some random dude surfed to my site and reviewed my crummy demo track. Doesn’t anyone read the notes alongside it: that its my first attempt at solo recording and I *know* it sucks? Oh, and I *know* I can’t sing?

What’re we going to do next, go and beat up some six year olds for saying that ‘Britney is Great’ on the internet? Although I’m vaguely touched that he felt it needed reviewing. I mean, life’s too long to not spend reviewing random amateur demo tracks you’ve scoured the net for.

Not that I’m bitter. Hrumph.

[Listening to: Wonderboy - Tenacious D - Tenacious D (04:09)]

The commercialisation of the British institution

Published by
Armand
April 26, 2004 in Media & Marketing, Miscellany and Television. 0 Comments

Parky’s moving to ITV. No static links yet, but the Broadcastnow reports that Parkinson is moving away from the home he’s had at the BBC for the last 33 years.

First the Boat Race, now Michael Parkinson. What next? What’s the BBC to do?

It’s particularly interesting in the light of recent fuss over the Beeb’s funding and over distributing license fees between commercial and non-commercial ventures (i.e. ITV and C4 could be getting some of our license fee payments). Ofcom is stretching its arm.

It’s fascinating, really. The broadcast National Identity of the UK is redefining itself, and the BBC seems to be struggling to keep up.

[Listening to: Erasure - A Little Respect (03:33)]

Passionately pointless

Published by
Armand
April 26, 2004 in Film and Media & Marketing. 0 Comments

I finally watched The Passion of the Christ. No moral outrage, oddly enough: I see what the fuss was about, and am glad to have seen the film for that reason, but on calm reflection found nothing morally objectionable about the film. I do, on the other hand, have some slight artistic outrage at the limited aesthetic values of the film.

What were Mel’s motivations? He claims to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit - of course I think that’s less than likely. It seemed more likely that Mel was making a personal effort to stir up Christianity as a whole; which I don’t find laudable, but certainly don’t think should be beyond his rights (although I don’t doubt that Mel believes that the Holy Spirit directed the film…).

The film, though, isn’t one with a good story: which is tragic, given that most of the stories about Jesus, whether you’re a Christian or not, are fascinating. The story of the big JC’s final hours is diminished by emphasizing the brutal torture rather than making an attempt at cohesive, coherent narrative flow. The torture/flashback sequences get, for want of a better word, somewhat tortured after about 30 minutes, and I found it remarkably difficult to empathize with Jesus’ reticence; which was just irritating.

I think most of the cries of “anti-semite” were overstated. It is true that Pilate’s role in Jesus’ torture and crucifixion is played down; but, in fact, the performance of Pilate was superb, and it was an interesting perspective, if one without massive historical evidence. But the Jews were hardly made out to be vicious psychopaths - only Caiaphas, really, and his motivation would be clear to anyone with any inkling of the story. Mob psychology is clearly the order of the day.

In short, furore aside, you’d be better off watching the 1973 Jesus Christ Superstar. It has a better grasp of the themes of Jesus’ life, the tragedy of Jesus’ death and a coherent flow from one to the other, not to mention some very funky tunes. The Passion seems more like a manic snuff film than anything else; but I guess, if that’s your thing, then go for it.

[Listening to: The Look Of Love - Diana Krall - Live In Paris (05:00)]

On the interpretation of dreams

Published by
Armand
April 22, 2004 in Miscellany and Personal. 0 Comments

Last night, I had the strangest dream (apologies to Art & Paul). I stole a Bentley from a guy called Olly, drove it off a cliff, helped Olly recover it and then stole it again.

(a) I don’t like or aspire to Bentley-ownership (no, really: I aspire towards Mercedes ownership, that’s my poncey dream-car - specifically a 1993 SL320, in black)
(b) I don’t know or have any particular angst towards anyone called Olly
(c) The Bentley was manual transmission. I don’t think Bentley do that.

It was weird. It was very Bonnie-and-Clyde (without a Bonnie, sadly), and very high adrenaline. Weird.

[Listening to: In the Jailhouse Now - Soggy Bottom Boys - O Brother, Where Art Thou? (03:36)]

A9 exercise in brand extension

Published by
Armand
April 22, 2004 in Technology. 0 Comments

Amazon have launched an interesting new search service, powered by Google but with the ability to keep histories of your searches online, to search within the pages of books, and a number of other interesting features. I’m going to try it out for a few days and post an opinion soon, but its definitely an interesting idea.

[Listening to: AC/DC - For Those About To Rock (05:45)]

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