The new Star Trek film rocks.

Everything that mattered was right, and many of the things that didn't matter as well (they even did the sideburns).

However, I have a problem with Scotty, it's quite simply that Simon Pegg + scottish accent = Wee Hughie from The Boys and that brings to mind all sorts of very strange crossovers.

So I found this file, last modified 10 June 1997, on a set of back ups and it's a pub quiz that I ran in Balliol bar. In fact considering the date I suspect that this is the night that pink_weasel first clapped eyes on me and thought "nice guy, shame about the jumper".

People on facebook and twitter said that they wanted to see the quiz, so here goes.
( Onwards to the quiz )

Went to see 10,000 BC this afternoon. Oh boy, history, biology, geography, astronomy - they all get a hammering in this film. I can't be bothered to even start listing everything that was goofy here.

It was one of the most by-the-numbers renditions of (the easy to understand bits of) Joseph Campbell's monomyth that I'd seen in a while. I smiled at the bemusement when hunter-gatherers first came across the evidence of agriculture, but of course in Campbell's scheme there has to be a 'boon' to take back home at the end (sorry, that was a spoiler). There were also bits lifted from the Bible, Stargate, Conan and 300, just in case the mention of Campbell misled you into thinking there were highbrow sources being used.

The action and CGI were very good, the actors managed to keep straight face. It's not a bad movie in the sense that it's exciting and visual, but it's certainly one to watch with the brain switched off.

Oh, by the way, the Doctor Who and Star Trek trailers look amazing on the big screen.

There's a pro-creationism, anti-science movie called Expelled, in which a number of prominent scientists were conned into providing interviews by the producers describing a very different and more balanced movie. One of these scientists, PZ Myers, tried to attend a screening and was turned away on instructions from the producers, but there's a twist. To see why this was as about a perfect own goal as can be, read his account of the evening.

There's a film about to open (on my birthday as it happens) called Shoot ’Em Up and the posters for it have infested bus stops all over London. And everytime I see them something niggles me. The problem is that the posters, indeed all art for the film that I've seen, use a left single quotation mark ‘ in place of the apostrophe ’.

(Yes, anyone who examines the code of this page will see that the only way to produce a typographically correct apostrophe on the WWW is to use the right single quotation mark character - it's a long and messy story and I won't go into it now except to note that the typographically incorrect but now traditional ‘apostrophe’ ' is now recommended for SEO because that's what people are able to type into search forms.)

I saw this Build Your Own Stonehenge kit in the shop yesterday. A miniature Stonehenge. How Spinal Tap is that?

And on Amazon: "20 used & new available" ... does anyone want a second hand Stonehenge?

ObWargames: Not sure of the scale but I suppose it would work quite well with 6mm or smaller figures. Or with a 28mm rock band...

Went down the Croydon yesterday, bought two mauve shirts (what was I thinking?) and then went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - not a lot to say about that, a did a fair job of making a decent film out of a book that's more teenage grumpiness than actual plot. It's now quite clear that some of the teenagers simply can't act and that some of the veteran thesps can't be bothered to do anything except ham it up. Excellent special effects with the exception of the CGI creatures which still look like they're made of plasticine.

But before the film they showed a trailer for the film adaptation of Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising.

Oh dear.

You see I don't care what sort of changes they make to Harry Potter, or how they redesign the Transformers, but when you start messing around with The Dark is Rising you're messing with something very important from my childhood.

Firefly

The miniature in some shots is Captain Nathan from Heresy Miniatures (adds to potential shopping list foir Salute tomorrow) and he's "heroic 28mm" scale, so 30-35mm tall. That makes that paper model of the Serenity quite big.

I must post the conclusion of the City Link saga and an unexpected piece of good customer service from another company that happened soon afterwards, but for now it's enough to know that I got my new computer and have been busy installing software.

First thing I installed was anti-virus (that's a lie, first thing was Opera to make downloading all the other things less of a pain). But so far I haven't installed a firewall, so I'm running with AVG Anti-Virus and Windows Firewall. I'd like a better firewall but I don't know what to pick.

On my old laptop I've been using Kaspersky Anti-Hacker which is a bit old but reliable. This came as part of System Mechanic which I've found to be very handy. But, Iolo have produced a new version of System Mechanic and I get a spam pop up everytime I start it. I e-mailed them asking where I could a change log for the new version and they haven't replied, but from the web site it looks like Kaspersky is no longer part of the package. I'm not sure whether to buy the latest Kaspersky product, or the latest version of System Mechanic, or both, or something else entirely. Any advice for a free or cheap firewall for a Windows XP machine?

I also have installed a BitTorrent client yet. The one built into Opera downloads much slower than the standalone ones I've used before. Which have mainly been Azureus, but that seems to have a memory leak in it somewhere 'cos even when I shut it down completely the system is still clogged up until I reboot (or use System Mechanic to reclaim the RAM). I keep on hearing about μTorrent, is that any good? What's your BitTorrent client of choice?

Finally, is there a site out there that could be described as LibraryThing for DVDs? I've found DVD Spot but it's not really tickling my web 2.0 fabcy in the way that LT does. I could use Squirl, indeed I could use Squirl for just about any collection, but I'd like to see if there's anything a bit more specialised first.

I saw 300 yesterday. Is it historically inaccurate? Yes. Does it illogically put modern notions of freedom and democracy into the mouths of the Spartans? Yes. Does it look like a montage from Braveheart, Gladiator and Lord of the Rings? Yes. Does any of that really matter? No, 'cos it's just a damn good heroic action movie in its own right.

Everyone seems to want to read some sort of modern political message into this film. As the heroic Spartans are shown both supporting "modern western" values against an eastern religious tyranny and as supporting native defenders against overwhelming foreign invaders, it is hence seen as both supporting the US against Islamic fundamentalism, and as supporting the Iraqi insurgents against the US occupation. Considering these contradictory interpretations it seems that if the makes intended it as a comment on the war against terror/war in Iraq then they didn't do a very good job of getting their message across.

Screw all that, this is a movie about violence, heroism and warriors. It's visually stunning and full of blood and guts and thrills. The first battle scene, with the two forces pushing and shoving, shield-to-shield, stabbing and slashing, is one of the best depictions of pre-gunpowder warfare that I've ever seen. After that things stray into heroic fantasy territory, rather like a big budget Xena with lots (really, lots) of blood splatter.

Not going to be everyone's taste, but if you like this sort of thing, you'll probably love this one.

So, there's big project X at work, that's eating up all available time for the next few months. Them emergency Y crops up and the solution to that could easily be incorporated as part of X, but it will probably need to be fixed sooner. And then long standing problem Z raises several of its hydra headed forms at once. Gah. I just know I'm going to be in a bad mood all weekend even though I'm going to be trying hard not to think about work at all.

This afternoon we're off to see Hot Fuzz. It had better be bloody funny.

This popped up on my Word Press dashboard today: Web 2.0 or Star Wars. I got 35 out of 43. Not sure which side of my geekery helped the most.

Had a fantastic long weekend, four days of relaxing and enjoying ourselves.

Thursday night, left work and headed down to Croydon where ate at Wagamama's (the Salmon Ramen is very good) before going to see Mitchell and Webb at the Fairfield Halls. I think this is the third time I've been to that particular venue - the first was to see Victor Borge some twenty years ago, and the second was to see the Rocky Horror Show about eight years ago. Anyway, Mitchell and Webb were just as good live as on the telly - some familiar sketches (taken to new extremes in a few cases) and some I didn't recognise from the TV series.

Friday, we went up to the British Museum to see The Past from Above exhibition. Really breath taking stuff that really brought home just how vast the extent of human history is. Most parts of the world have see who knows how many lifetimes lived, with not a single line in the history that most of us know.

Also at the BM, was a (relatively) recently reopened gallery dedicated to the Enlightenment and hence the birth of the museum itself. It does a very good job of emulating what the BM is like in our secret thoughts - all book lined walls and eclectic displays.

Saturday, pink_weasel went to play at the Tate whilst I stayed home and read comics. But I did find time to visit West Norwood's first ever farmer's market (it's going to be a regular event every two weeks) where I picked up some cheese and some welsh dragon sausages (pork and leek and chili). In the evening I left a very knackered Lettice in bed and went to Giroscope's birthday bash in fitzrovia - Duke of York, for beer Palms of Goa for curry; and finally The Fitzroy Tavern, for more beer.

Sunday was a quiet day at home - my dad brought the second of two leather chairs, Lettice poured dye all over a book (on purpose) and we started watching Doctor Who - The Invasion (with the missing episodes filled in by animation). Though not the best animation in the world it captured the likenesses of the main characters well and was, of course, cleaner and smoother than the surviving '60s live action episodes.

Today, we lay around in bed and then went to Croydon again to see Casino Royale. Possible the best Bond film ever. Certainly the best since the '60s. Having a actor who can actually act certainly helps. It will be interesting to see what they do next time, now that they've done the whole "how Bond becomes Bond" bit, will they find something suitably interesting for Craig to get his teeth into for the sequel?

Phew. Back to work tomorrow where with any luck I'll be holding second interviews for my assistant. With luck we'll be able to make someone an offer at the end of the week and have them start very early in the new year. Which will mean that I should be able to take more than two days off next time.

Via TMP.

Right, hello, does this thing still work? Oh good.

Um, me, yes, what have I been up to? Ohhh, um, er, okay, not much actually, but enough, if you know what I mean. Which you probably don't, 'cos I'm being incoherent. Oh well, Sunday mornings are made for incoherence. Looks at clock. Ah, I've got six minutes to write this post or I'll have to start being coherent.

Yesterday, pink_weasel and I went down to sunny Surrey to see my parents. Lunch at The Plough at Blackbrook, good as ever though they seem to be getting a bit over ambitious with the menu. Then shifting furniture so that the floor in the dining room can be ripped up and the damp problem finally solved after all these years.

Back home with new footstool to go with the chair we liberated last time we were down there. Faffed about for a bit and then...

How amazing was Doctor Who?

Wow. Brilliant. Proper review type thingy later.

This afternoon off to see Pirates at the cinema in Croydon. And this week we have a Bollywood movie being filmed in the office, whilst we're working; an Idle Spec meeting; and the office summer party at some OTT bar/restaurant/lounge place up in Camden; and if I'm not too hungover the next day back up to North London to see Drill Queen play. Gah.

Bugger. 12:01. Time to start making sense.

[Update] - Interesting, Word Press is stuck on GMT so I manually edited the time stamp on this post to make sense in relation to the content. But as that's in the future as far as Word Press is concerned it isn't displaying the post. I hope it will display in an hour's time. Anyone know of a WP hack to make it understand daylight saving? Otherwise, well changing the time zone setting twice a year is the sort of thing more likely to be forgotten than not.