It seems that my musing duties must now be extended to cover Jeff (the person formally known as Option 2). We were all in the lab last night, doing our thing, ostensibly frantically working on our projects, but also having a laugh and generally doing whatever we could to avoid work. Fairly frequently I had to wheel the chair to the other side of the lab to give Tilly a hand, and whilst over there one time, I couldn’t help but hear Jeff berating his machine – calling it all sorts of unpleasant names you wouldn’t think that a nice young lad like him knew. Since I didn’t want to return to my own project, I volunteered my services, which were gratefully accepted. I just had to look at the machine and it worked! He swears blind he had been doing exactly the same thing for the past half an hour, but that it hadn’t worked for him. Lol. I went like that for the rest of the evening – he’d ask for help, I’d look at the machine, and it would work. If only my powers would extend toward my own project!

Once more, no time (or inclination) for a proper post on a topic that has caught my eye, so here’s another list of things that have amused me in the past few days:

• So unbelievably cute!!!!!! Trailer for March of the Penguins. Though in some of the shots it looks like a bloke inside a penguin suit, I’m sure!
• Ah, the irony: Microsoft Xbox 360 is actually two Mac G5’s! Ok, so this is just a demo for the E3 tech show, but still. Kinda funny, huh?
• Can I have one! ‘Real’ R2D2
• So the BM has a sense of humour! Good on them I say 🙂
• Sometimes you can take things that step too far: Darth Tater
• George Galloway, as diplomatic as ever: when speaking to the Senate sub-committee on Tuesday, said the following “I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice.” Ouch.
• Woot, woot, woot!!!!!! American cities pledge to cut greenhouse gases. I take it back America, all is forgiven.
• NYT to charge subscription. Not sure if this is going to include charging for the headlines or not, but you can be damn sure I won’t be paying $50 a year. I’ve barely come to terms with having to register with these frelling sites! On the plus side though, my daily news-reading time will be drastically reduced.
• Just click. Trust me. Funny. (David Pogue singing, especially listen to ‘Happily Addicted to the Web’, and ‘America Online the Beautiful’, ‘I Just Called to Say I Bought You’)

Now I understand the need to trail films – sometimes they are the most enjoyable bit of a film – but to trail a film an entire year (and a day) before it is released?! That is possibly a mite excessive, don’t you think? Well, whatever you, me, and the rest of the sane world may think, the first trail for the ‘Da Vinci Code’ is now online.

Have they even started shooting the film yet? Got a finalised screen play? Things have been known to go wrong – The Man Who Killed Don Quixote anyone? (The epic trouble Terry Gilliam et al experienced in the 6 days they tried to shoot are wonderfully documented in ‘Lost In La Mancha’ if you are interested).

Whilst it isn’t the most revealing trail ever – not a single clip of, you know, acting or anything – it smacks ever so slightly of trying to keep us interested before everyone realises how awful the book really is (in every sense of the word, I really was in awe at how bad it was) and all desire to see a film about it dissipates like the plot did when exposed to the merest breath of logic. The question does remain – how are the good people at Sony going to keep us hooked for an entire year (yes, and this bears repeating, a year)?

Answers on a postcard please.
(Not worth it really, but if you must, link to the trail)

Mwhahahahaha!
My cunning plan has worked: Moose is now a self-proclaimed RSS junkie as well.
Seeing as how I think RSS is a good thing, I thought it would be good of me to make public what the RSS feed for this site is (working on the prinicple that, if I don’t tell you, someone is going to end up yelling at me). If you scroll down the page a bit, on the right hand side of the screen, below the archive section, is a little orange button marked “XML, RSS Feed”. If you have an RSS reader already, then you will know what to do. If you don’t, get a news reader, copy the link (it should end in xml), and subscribe to the feed. Easy as that. Now you will always know when my next monumentally over long rant has been posted. I won’t list here all the newsreaders that are out there – just do a google.

I do have one favour to ask – when (if) anyone does subscribe to the RSS feed, could they let me know if they get just the first few lines of the post, or the entire thing. I should have it set up so that only the title and the first 255 characters get syndicated, but blogger is being a bit silly, and I want to check.

Toodles, enjoy!

– edit: apparently the first picture wasn’t platypussy enough. And yes, I have a reason for wanting a picture of a platypus, other than it just being a cool name for an animal! –

Once more, it is going to be an odd’s-and-sod’s type of post. Once more, this is because I really should be doing other things (ie reading lots and lots of articles). Also, I have no one burning thing that I must share with you…

I am anticipating any joke you could make, and none of them are funny.*

In a round about way, though, this does bring me to the first thing that I want to share: RSS.
It’s been around for a little while now, but it took me till this time last week till I realised that it was quite a snazzy idea. Everyday I get the headlines from the morning papers and newsites emailed to me, and then I spend a happy hour or so in the morning reading the news, checking up on Empire, seeing if there are any new trailers to watch, reading my favourite blogs, and so on. It’s become a routine. All well and good. There is a wasp flying around the jam-pot of paradise though. Keeping up to date now means that (on average) it takes me two hours from first opening my eyes in the morning until I am at a point that I want to start work. As I tend to wake up around 8am, this means I am not working till 10am at the earliest! Given fast approaching deadlines for three pieces of major work, and the fact that I seem incapable of working any later than 7pm, this is definately not a good thing.

I come from a family and friend group where we’ve always talked about current affairs. Not at least having a vague knowledge of what is happening in the world is a disinherit-able offense, and also leads to boring recursive dinner time conversation, so not reading the headlines is not an option. Also, I would have a lot less to say on this blog (by the end of the post you might be wishing that this was the case, but tough). In a vain effort to slim down the time I spend trawling the newspapers and the like, I have finally got around to subscribing to some RSS feeds. It took me about an five minutes before I would willingly bear its children. I love it! I found some odd things I wouldn’t have seen otherwise and, as it keeps checking throughout the day, I am now also up to date with world events. Woot! Also, many blogs now have RSS feeds, which means that I don’t have to keep checking them every day – I trust that if there is a new post, my new friend NewsFire will let me know. Colour me surprised, a genuinely useful application of XML.

I have also come rather late in life to the joy of post-it notes. I never understood them before. What was wrong with scribbling notes on pieces of paper, or keeping track of them on the laptop? What was the point of the little gluey bits? Then I decided one day to slice a standard post-it into three, and discovered that they were superb for marking places in journals, books, etc. I know, the rest of the world knew about this aeons ago, but I’m slow, ok? And then there is the handieness of being able to scribble a quick thought on a post-it note, then affix it to the wall… Above my desk I now have three sections, all bristling with post-it notes: dissertation; ACS essay; Spatial Tech essay. Perhaps worrylingly, dissertation has the most notes, and it is due in last, but -shrug- Post-it notes are fun. Sadly, cheap post-it notes don’t work as well as the original. They just don’t stick!

There is new Mittens & Snowdrop genius: here. Mittens & Snowdrop & the Tin of Sweetcorn.

Cas’ favourite gadget of the moment: her pretty fold-up passive speakers. I rediscovered the alarm function of my iPod about a month ago – waking up to nice music instead of evil beeping alarm clock! (And the plus is I actually have to get out of bed to turn it off, rather than leaning over, hitting snooze, or just throwing it across the room. Honestly, I’ve got through three alarm clocks that way). The problem was that, at the time, the iPod was plugged into some active speakers that, whilst giving great sound quality, had a just-audible hum that got VERY annoying when trying to sleep. The solution was to find these snazzy little passive speakers. I just set the alarm at night, plug in these speakers to the headphone socket, and I have music to wake up to in the morning without the buzzing (and glowing power light) of the big beasties. Not great sound quality, but you don’t need that first thing in the morning! They also fold up all nice and pretty 😀 I am so easily pleased.
open
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It was my Unofficial Birthday on the 8th of May. Don’t worry – I wasn’t expecting people to remember, which is good, because very few people did. I won’t go into now why I have an Unofficial Birthday, just accept that I have some good reasons for not liking to celebrate my real birthday, and one year Torkling decided that I should have a second birthday that I did celebrate. That plan fell slightly flat because I don’t celebrate either to be truthful, but I did get a surprise pressie this year – the Basil’s (Fred, Burt, and Delilah) and the Mystery It’s from Moose. They are currently growing happily on my windowsill, keeping The Spider Plant Formerly Known as George (tSPKaG) company. When I know what the Mystery It’s are (Moose is being mean and won’t tell) I will let you know.

Going to the gym must be paying off – I am loosing weight on finger! Honestly! I have one ring that I never take off, and it has started to get a bit loose lately. Pity that the rest of me is staying resolutely the same size it has been for a while, but I am definitely not putting on weight, and my aerobic fitness is improved, so I suppose I should be happy.

Direct quote here: “(Go to) www.rathergood.com. It’s way cool, especially as you can download the ‘We Like the Moon’ song!! Now time to look at some disturbing cats!!!” This is indeed word for word the way Jeff described the site, and who am I to argue?

Sharon Stone has said she lost a part in the film Mr Deeds while waiting for Basic Instinct 2’s production to start. Now, you have to ask, should she really be that bothered? The only reason that I even remember such a film was made (and I never saw it by the way) is because I saw a trail for it on the 50 First Date’s dvd that I rewatched recently. If I was a movie star, (which I’m not by the way, in case you weren’t sure), I would be thankful that I didn’t star/feature in that film!

Once again, American’s have no taste: Monster In Law tops box office. Though I have to admit, I am tempted to watch it if only for the Jane Fonda-smashing-J Lo’s-face-into-a-cake scene.

Best description of Wallace and Grommit so far – “League of Gentlemen meets Last Of the Summer Wine”

I’m already a convert to the BBC’s radio player, though I would like the time range extended beyond one week, and the thought of being able to download (legally) tv shows I missed sounds positively wonderful. Though having to watch them on the computer would be a bit of a drag – new seating arrangements would be needed. Whilst my stool is wonderful for back pain and RSI whilst typing, it mainly accomplishes this by having so little padding you can’t physically sit on it for longer than an hour before loosing all sensation below the waist! (yes, I know it looks a bit like an instrument of torture, but it means I can now actually sit at my computer for most of the day, do work, and still be able to move ten hours later).

As of today, I am officially Tilly’s muse! I haven’t checked with him yet to see what the pay scale is, if I get benefits, or what sort of work is required of me (I do have a hazy idea that muses’ should wear diaphanous middle-eastern costumes, and if that is the case, all I would inspire is mild nausea). Being a muse might be cool though – it looks like I can’t get anything good written/created of my own, so at least I am aiding (and abetting) other people. Though on the creative front, I did spend most of yesterday writing something! It was meant to be a one page introductory scene to something, but it just wrote itself, and the next time I looked it was six pages long and five characters I weren’t expecting had appeared! I do love writing when it goes well like that. I just wish that my writers block hadn’t decided to end it’s two year siege of my creativity just when I have three huge assignments due in…

Talking of which, once again this post has grown to mammoth proportions, so I had better stop and post it before you all die of boredom reading it.

*Made you look! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Moose had a go at me for making her keep skipping to the end of a long post to read a footnote. I’d like to say that they are part of an on-going ploy to make publishers realise how annoying footnotes are, but this one is just because I am mean.)**

**I fully expect retribution for this from the Not So Tame American Historian, but at the time I wrote this, it seemed worth the hassle. Tee Hee.

I don’t know why this amused me, but it did. I opened up a new pack of quick-cook spaghetti today (no matter what it says on the packet, normal pasta always takes nearer 20 minutes than 10 to cook) and was confronted by a curly piece of spaghetti. But, I hear you cry, isn’t spaghetti meant to be curly? Or at least wiggly? Yes, it is when it is cooked. This was a dry piece direct from the packet, surrounded by it’s very straight friends. In a very tenuous link to the continued homosexual penguin debate (thank you Chris :D) you could say it was bent.*

Being the sad individual that I am, I took a photo of this anomalous piece of pasta. You’ll have to trust me when I say that this is the state in which I took it from the pack. And that there’s been no photoshop other than some minor colour correction to try (and fail) to overcome my inadequacies as a photographer.

*I feel I should appologise for my sense of humour (or lack of it). In my defence, it has been a VERY long few days.

Not a coherent post today, due to me actually doing some work for once! But this little collection of interesting bits and pieces has been building up on in my ‘blog-bits’ file for a week or so now. Time for a clear out… Oh, and before I forget, for the purposes of this blog, in a pathetic attempt to mask his real identity, Option Two will now be referred to as ‘Jeff’. Naming him ‘Jeff’ isn’t quite as odd as it might appear at first glance, but it is still a million miles away from his real name. And slightly less insulting than ‘Option Two’.

• A pic of the queen talking to Tony Blair. I’ve just realised – why is she carrying her handbag when she is indoors in her own home?
• I said this like weeks ago: the iPod might no longer be cool… See, the NYT agrees with me!
• A new favourite site: Eddie Izzard.Com. Don’t know why it has taken me so long to find the site, but it has. Go, watch clips, the man is a comedic genius.
• Possibly the coolest things made out of lego ever: the Lego Harpsicord
• Ok, I can’t get to the full story because I am not registering for another frelling news site, but exploding iPods… What will they think of next?
• I am, increasingly, of the opinion that penguins have an ulterior motive and are, to all intents and purposes, evil. Now, I find out that can also be gay. Gay Penguins story. Story courtesy of Mata on his blog.
• Surprise, surprise, anti-cellulite creams, and amino-acid enhancing shampoos, don’t actually work. Well, I could have told them that!
• RSS is my new friend – without it, I doubt I would have found this.

Just got back from watching Kingdom of Heaven. I’ll do my best not to give too much away, and I won’t even bother giving a synopsis because, unless you’ve kept your head firmly under the pillow these last few weeks/months, you know pretty much all there is to know about it anyway. My thoughts? Well, it’s a Ridley Scott epic, so of course the cinematography is scrumptuous. There are the (by now) obligatory ‘fight in the snowy woods’ scene, and ‘women standing in random field of wheat’ scene, but those aside I liked it. Jeremy Irons was great, as was Edward Norton in probably one of the most publicized non-credited roles of the decade. Brendan Gleeson was wonderfully insane and over the top, ditto Marton Csokas (Guy de Lusignan). I’ve always been a fan of Alexander Siddig since the DS9 days, so it was good to see him again, but both he and David Thewlis weren’t on the screen enough. Yes it was a little thin on plot in places and you did feel like large chunks were missing, and when the frell did Orlando Bloom become such a good engineer? For a blacksmith he sure knew how to handle a siege!

Orly himself as a leading actor? Hmmmm. He’s improving, but considering his inability to act in either LOTR or Pirates, that wouldn’t be hard. I still want to shake him so he uses more than one voice and an intonation above a whisper at times, but give him a few years and he might make it. Moose even had to admit that at one point, when he was all dishevelled from digging a well (because of course people who had lived in the desert for centuries wouldn’t know about irrigation), and when seen from a bit of a distance, she could see what some of the fuss was about.

All in all, gaping plot holes, slightly two dimensional characters, and the odd spurty-blood scene aside, I liked it infinitely more than either Troy or Alexander, but not quite as much as Gladiator. Not sure about it reinventing the epic, but it was fun.

Three and Half Penguins. (It was a four, but on sober reflection (and re-reading of the rating system) it wasn’t quite up to a 4P.)