Electro-magnetic Induction

Via Boing-Boing, I found this rather cool way of explaining electro-magnetic induction (the way electric motors work) using high temperature super-conductors and a moebius strip of magnets.

Nikola Tesla and Eric Laithwaite would be proud!

Butterflies in London

Every year for the past few years, during the summer, The Natural History Museum hosts a live butterfly exhibition in a special marquee outside. Called Sensational Butterflies, you can see them hatching and flying about. It's a great opportunity to take some photographs, which I did.

I also managed to get a shot of one hatching out in the special frame they've made for the purpose:

They can be quite tame and one was even perched on a girl's hand:

If you are thinking of going with a camera, be careful of the humidity fogging up the lens as mine did initially. It might be worth waiting until the lens is clear before shooting.

I did quite a trek through London by the end of the day, so I was glad to get back to BasVegas:


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Looper

Continuing the Summer of Cinema, I got this through my LoveFilm subscription. In a dystopian future, an assassin (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), or Looper of the title, finds himself in trouble with his employers when his future self (Bruce Willis) outwits him.

Not a bad movie, if a little over long for my taste. Gordon-Levitt spends most of the movie hanging around a farm looking at a loss for something to do, while Bruce Willis does his thing and shoots up the rest of the cast. One particular pleasure, though, is Gordon-Levitt's impression of Bruce Willis. Given Willis's limited range, I couldn't see them doing it the other way around.

The problem with the plot is that it exhibits a twist on the Grandfather paradox, which states that time travel does not work because if it does, you could go back in time and kill your own Grandfather before your father was born, thus preventing your birth and preventing you going back in time and killing your own Grandfather. In Looper, you can't forsee the future in such a way that you can change it and thus prevent yourself seeing the future.

Sorry. Just got a bit carried away there. You enjoy the movie and don't try to get your head around all the time-travel stuff. Otherwise, you'll end up trying to figure out Primer.

New Lego - Commander Decorated

I got some new lego minifigs from series 10 today:

The rings on the sailor's sleeve indicate he's a Commander in the RN: four rings is a Captain.

I also got another Penguin Special from John at the shop the other day:

S209 from 1962, just as the Wall went up and the Cuban Missile Crisis was looming. It's weird to think that an entire generation has no recollection of the Cold War.

Faster

Whatever it is, just Faster! My LoveFilm Instant is a bit wonkey at the moment, but I managed to watch this through it. A former getaway driver (Dwayne Johnson) is released from jail and seeks revenge on the men who killed his brother and tried to kill him.

It's not a bad revenge film with a really good twist at the end that I didn't see coming and two decent car chases, enough to be called Drive. There are one or two problems with it though. The first is good ol' Dwayne, who can't really act that well. He tries his best, poor love, but he's up against Billy Bob Thornton, who seems baffled as to why he's in the same movie. Second was the assassin going through a existentialist crisis, which was just silly and distracting. Overall, everyone seems just a little weary, but maybe a better director would have made something superior, perhaps the Coen brothers?

Debugging In Python

After an afternoon shift in the shop on Monday, I went into town to see Antonio Cavallo's presentation on debugging tools for Python.

He took us through four different examples and the different techniques used to debug them, in particular the use of the remote debugger, rpdb, to debug multi-threaded python applications, and gdb to debug calls to external C libraries. The latter was interesting because it revealed that the Python interpreter is written in C!.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - "Kiss My Axe"

Another from my LoveFilm subscription, Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) reflects on his secret life in the midst of a bloody civil war.

Yeah, I enjoyed it. Yes, it's silly, but the acting is more than reasonable, with Rufus Sewell and Dominic Cooper adding a touch of class as Lincoln's nemesis and mentor respectively, and it makes a good "what-if" along the lines of Kim Newman's Anno Dracula books. The action scenes are well done, as are the martial arts, and it's not a bad pizza movie. If you want serious, go and watch Daniel Day-Lewis overact: it's not half as much fun!

Oh, the Slaine reference? Yeah, Slaine McRoth's 30 this year and Pat Mills has written "Book of Scars" as a kind of anniversary:

There's an interview with him here. It's a big axe!

Law Abiding Citizen

Another film through my subscription. Ten years after his wife and daughter are murdered in a home invasion, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) returns to exact revenge on the killers and the corrupt and compromised judicial system that short-changed him.

Not a bad pizza movie, if a little grisly at times. Butler gives it his all, portraying a man turned into a monster, but Jamie Foxx looks like he was sleepwalking through the film. Ultimately, though, the film seems to lack anyone to empathise with. Who are the bad guys really? Is this just about revenge or is there a higher principal involved? And, if so, what?

Saturday - 2045: Conscious avatars or wishful thinking?

Today I went to see a review of the Global Futures 2045, an international conference in New York's Lincoln Centre, hosted by the London Futurists.

David Wood, who normally MC's the meetings, gave the presentation, up on the fifth floor of Birbeck College. The conference was set up by a Russian millionaire, Dmitry Itskov, and seemed to be mostly about the advances in cybernetics which seems to be in line with the sponsors aims. He's proposed the idea of moving our minds into Avatars (like the movie) in a five step programme over the next thirty years or so.

It was also a state-of-the-art conference as well, with a heavy emphasis on neuroscience and prosthetics, including a video of a Cambridgeshire man, Nigel Ackland, who lost his right hand and part of the arm in an accident and had it replaced with an advanced prosthesis:

The presentation was well done by David, but, as was pointed out in the Q&A afterwards, his emphasis was on the technological, the "hard" science, rather than the spiritual or psychological, the "soft" science. Also, two of the things missing, which were purported to be amongst the aims of the conference, were future society and culture.

Oxfam Thursday - Blagging, Nails and a Bit of Naughtiness!

I'm doing quite a few shifts in the shop at the moment, at least twice a week, and mostly downstairs, so hardly worth a mention. Yesterday, however, we had a chap come in with a donation, but there was a twist:

Customer (Geezer): "If I give you these books, can you let me have one in exchange?"
Me: "'Fraid not, mate. That's not how it works."
Geezer: "You sure?"
Me: "Positive. Take my word for it."

He was a bit disgruntled, but donated the books anyway.

John and Michelle were in. Michelle had some new nails, with little butterflies printed on them, which I commented on. John showed me some books which were quite rare and one of these was from The Olympia Press:

Formerly, certain books were banned from being published in the U.K., the Marquis de Sade's, Henry Miller's, etc. To get them, you had to go to France and The Olympia Press published them in English. The dust jackets were reversable and were white on the other side with no markings, so you could get them through customs without them being noticed.

I finished early and went to a seminar in London, at Skills Matter, called The Rise and Fall of Mutable State, given by Malcom Sparks. It was a short talk about one of the features of functional programming languages and a little on the history of programming (everyone's heard of Turing by now, but who's heard of Alonzo Church?). There was a lengthy Q&A afterwards, with lots of talk about Clojure and an extension for Java called Guava. I'm surprised no-one mentioned Java 8, which is purported to have more functional support.

Man of Steel - "Welcome to the Planet"

More Summer of Cinema with the Superman reboot in 3D. Clarke Kent faces his ultimate challenge when his Kryptonian past catches up with him and the people of Earth.

Absolutely fantastic. I enjoyed every minute, although it was a bit exhausting. Henry Cavill was good as Superman (he's a big, chunky lad!), coming to terms with his destiny, Amy Adams as Lois Lane was as cute and sparky as you'd expect, but it was Russell Crowe as Jor El and Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent that gave the film it's class acting, Crowe especially relishing the role. Michael Shannon's Zod was also notable, making the character less of a meglomaniac than Terence Stamp's version and more someone driven to save his people whatever the cost.

However, it was the Giger envisioning of Krypton was what made it special for me: it was a suprise and felt absolutely right, giving Krypton an organic, metalic, insectoid, alien look, working especally well in 3D.

Highly recommended: go and see it and be as gobsmacked as I was!

Mission Impossible 4 - Ghost Protocol

Continuing the Summer of Cinema, via my LoveFilm subscription, I watched the latest IMF offering. Ethan Hunt and his IMF team, implicated in bombing the Kremlin, chase after the culprits to prevent nuclear war between Russia and America.

A superior pizza movie, and exciting enough, although Simon Pegg doesn't look the part (he does get to shoot somebody, though) and his humour grates a little, making the film feel like a kind of "Carry On Mission Impossible" at times.

The set pieces are great including Tom Cruise hanging off the worlds tallest building, breaking into The Kremlin (using a sort of portable Ames room: very clever) and a chase in a car storage building in Mumbai. The supporting cast is good as well, including Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton. Michael Nyqvist isn't bad as the villain, but it required someone to chew the scenery a little more, and Léa Seydoux, as an assassin for hire, was grossly underused. Recommended, however.

Sunday Games Club - Sheepie Sleepy and Louis' Cards

Back at the Jugged Hare for another Playtest meeting. First was a game from a professional games company, Andrew Sage, called Sheepie Sleepy.

The product manager for the game, Jazz (a woman), was there to field test it. It's quite a nice little game, charming, with little sheep on the dice. The idea is that you try to get a good night's sleep by counting sheep, but there are things to keep you awake, such as coffee and other people snoring. I liked it.

Next was Louis' Cards:

A sort of multi-rule card game (same cards but different rules depending on what kind of game you play). Coraline's a graphic arts student and she was testing her design. The memory game was the best for me, but the other two, a counting game and a reaction-style game, were more popular with the others. The design intrigued one of the players, Andrew, who showed us some of the ones he's had made by a print firm over in the States called Printer Studio. Very professionally done.

The Bourne Legacy - Thriller in Manila

Another from my LoveFilm subscription, in the wake of the exposure of the CIA assassin programs Treadstone and Blackbriar through Jason Bourne, another program is being shut down...

A sort-of remake of the original movie, with Jeremy Renner as the genetically enhanced assassin and Rachel Weisz as the doctor caught up in the fallout. It's got some really good action sequences, and such a good car/motorbike chase it ought to have been called Drive. The supporting cast is good, lead by Edward Norton, but despite being a reasonable pizza movie, there's always a comparison with the original, so much so that there are references to events from the Bourne Ultimatum going on in the background. It's as if to say, "you're watching this, but there's a much better movie going on over there."

Everybody Get Their Hands in the Air. This is a Mashup!

(Sorry about that).

I read a book, recommended via Boing Boing, a while back called "Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling" by Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola.

It was a bit long winded, but the gist of the book is that, essentially, it's become almost impossible to use sampling as a way of creating music commercially without breaking copyright in some way shape or form. An example given was that "Paul's Boutique", a Bestie Boys album, has so many samples in it that, because of restrictions in copyright law, it would now cost far too much to make. So artists have three options:

1. Make the music and wear a pair of brown trousers, hoping that you, your lawyers, the sampled artists lawyers and whoever else is interested can come to some agreement;
2. Restrict the music to only a few samples and pay the fee for those;
3. Make it for free. This way, although you don't make any money (and might be able to avoid paying for the copyright, under fair use), you can increase your reputation and get some practice at the same time.

The Kleptones do this quite well, with their Queen mashup, "Night at the Hip-Hopera", as have Girl Talk, and now djBC has mixed the Beasties with The Beatles (The Beastles) and produced "Ill Submarine".

I don't pretend that mashups are particularly creative or have much artistic merit, although it does take a lot of skill to make them, but they are fun.

New Lego - First of the Mohicans

I got some new Lego Minifigs the other day:

There's been a study going round from some University in New Zealand saying that the faces of the figures are getting angrier. The Mohican doesn't look exactly happy.

Total Recall

This is the remake of the 1990 Arnie film through my LoveFilm subscription. In a world devastated by chemical warfare, Doug Quaid finds his life torn apart when he goes to Rekall to have new memories implanted.

Despite the fantastic special effects (lots of car chases through the sky and an amazing shootout in a labyrinthine lift shaft), and the hints at Bladerunner, I don't think it compares too well to the original movie. Mainly this is because the supporting actors in the original were so strong: Beckinsdale is no Sharon Stone, and the Michael Ironside character isn't there to chew the scenery. Bryan Cranston is good as the villain, but Bill Nighy looks as if he's just got out of bed (and why does he have an American accent if it's supposed to be Britain?). There doesn't seem to be any real energy in the film, which is a shame.

The Eagle (of the Ninth (Legion))

When I was a kid, there was a book by Rosemary Suttcliffe called "The Eagle of the Ninth", about a Roman centurion who went into the wilds north of Hadrian's wall to determine the fate of his father's legion and retrieve it's Eagle. It was made into a film a while ago and I saw it in the shop the other day and bought it:

It's not a bad film, if a little slow in places, and not as grizzly as Centurion nor as silly as King Arthur or The Last Legion. A decent pizza movie, even if you've not read the book.

The Expendables 2

I'm afraid so. The Expandables are back. Think of it as me performing a public service: I watch it so you don't have to.

How bad is it? Chuck Norris tells jokes; Jeanclaudevandamme tries desperately to be really mean, and not to laugh at the same time; Bruce Willis and Arnold try to out-badly-act each other and get beaten by Sly; everyone looks either embarrassed or bored (Jet Li was so embarrassed, he left after ten minutes). Unlike the last movie, even being teeth-grindingly awful can't save it, and it didn't work then.

I'm not saying "Don't watch it", but if you do, I did warn you.

Oxfam Tuesday - Motown and U2

I did a second shift upstairs at the shop this afternoon. I saw Lee on the way out and had a bit of a chinwag about the music. A young lady was looking for a present for her father the other day and didn't know what was appropriate other than "old school". When she looked over at a stack of records she said "Oh, Stevie Wonder! I've heard of him!" It just felt sort of sad, but Lee pointed out that he sees kids coming in who really know their vinyl, "Labels and everything".

Luckily, I found a Motown sampler from Uncut:

The first track was a Martha & the Vandella's classic:

Oh, I sold the young lady "Songs in the Key of Life" and a classic Diana Ross:

I also found a U2 album to play, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb", which is OK.

Not to everyone's taste, I know, but I've always got a soft spot for them.

Untangling the Web

After an afternoon shift at the shop, I popped into town to attend the June meeting of the Untangle the Web meetup group at the Google campus.

The first presentation was by David Little regarding the techniques used in user-centred web design. In particular, he emphasised the research and testing by users.

The second presentation was by Laura Kalbag and was about web design theory:

Actually, it was mostly about typography, a subject close to my heart, and was really informative. I'd never really thought too much about the differences within the different types (serif/sans/script) before, but Laura demonstrated her points very well, in particular that font cannot be separated from page content and that Lorem Ipsum is best not used at all for this reason.

Hanna

This is available through LoveFilm Instant, although I have seen it in the shop. Hanna has been brought up by her father, an ex-CIA agent, in the wilds of Finland to exact revenge for her mother's death.

Not a bad film, if a little creepy for some vague reason. I think this may be because the title role is played by Saoirse Ronan (who played the younger Briony in Atonement) as a kind of lethal innocent. It's got a good supporting cast, with Cate Blanchett as her nemesis and and Eric Bana as her father. I just kept getting the feeling that Social Services ought be have been involved at some point.

PGP, etc.

Thanks to revelations about the American National Security Agency (their GCHQ) and assurances from William Hague (about our GCHQ), there seems to be a lot of paranoia going around.

If you want to secure your emails, there's a system called PGP, Pretty Good Privacy. It's an encryption system that's been aroung for the last fifteen years or so, but it's still fairly solid and has gone through numerous upgrades. It's available in open source form from GNU Privacy Guard.

I've created a public key and placed it at the bottom of the blog if you want to use it to secure any emails to me.

The Harder They Come

After listening to the title track in the shop the other day, I thought I'd get the original film through my LoveFilm subscription.

Ivan Martin (Jimmy Cliff) comes to Kingston from the countryside to try and make his fortune singing, but ends up being exploited by a corrupt society and turns to crime.

It's an incredibly difficult film to follow without sub-titles, but that does give it an authentic feel. It's based on a true story.

MagLev in Japan - The 300mph Train!

Yup, them there Japanese have got themselves a 300mph train and have used MagLev to do it:

That's London to Manchester in about 40 minutes. Yumm!!

Super 8

A rather nice little film, courtesy of my LoveFilm subscription, written and directed by J.J. Abrams. Five kids in the 1980's try to make their own horror film (thus the title), but end up in a horror film of their own.

Obviously an homage to his own adolescence, this is a really good pizza movie, with nice nostalgic touches. Very recommended.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Taking advantage of Cheap Tuesday at Empire, I went to see the latest Star Trek. All together now: Kkhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnn!!!

Yup, the second movie in the reboot has lots of knowing nods to the second Star Trek movie, it's tongue firmly in cheek. Cumberbatch is just right as Kirks' adversary, not too over the top. Shame the Klingons didn't get much of a look in, though. I thoughly enjoyed it and it looked good in 3D, the special effects being utilised to the max. Firmly recommended.

Oxfam Monday - Paintballing in Black and White

Yesterday, I did a morning shift on the bottom deck as June was having a long weekend. Uneventful, although I met Hugh, our arts expert, who I hadn't seen in a while.

I did get some new Lego from W.H. Smiths:

Reminds me of this:

It seemed to be permanently on the jukebox at Liverpool Uni. Student Union during the 1980's.

Africar

No, not a misspelling.

I'm a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and, as part of the membership, I get the E&T magazine. This months issue is a special on technology in Africa and one of the articles concerns the Africar, a concerted effort in the 1980's to build a car suitable for Africa's road system.

The article, by Nick Smith, is an interview with it's original designer Tony Howarth. Calling him "a bit of a character" is an understatement, but the idea and implementation cries out to taken up by serious money.

Atonement

As part of my LoveFilm subscription, this has been gathering dust for the best part of a year, so I finally got round to watching it. An adaption of the book by Ian McEwan, it's a fiction story about a fiction story; about authors and their works; about an act of childish, jealous cruelty and it's consequences.

I can't say I really warm to it. It's well acted, the casting of the protagonist Briony Tallis is very good, and the set pieces of the Dunkirk beaches very evocative but, like a lot of adaptions, the literary devices don't work very well on the screen. Also the leads don't seem to spark passionately as you think they might. It's a film with a hollow center.

Oxdam Friday - The Outward Urge

Down on the bottom deck this morning, and fairly uneventful. I bought a book from one of John's stock that I had a long time ago, but has since disappeared. This isn't the original Penguin cover, nor the one I had from  1980, but from 1973:

1962	1970	1980

It's about the Troon family, space explorers in the 21^st and 22^nd centuries.

Thursday - Radical Abundance with Eric Drexler

Yesterday evening I went to a presentation by Eric Drexler, hosted by The London Futurists.

About twenty years ago, I read the first book by Drexler, called "The Engines of Creation", setting the scene for nanotechnology. A lot has happened in the years since then, and I was looking forward to what he had to say.

Unfortunately, he was a little ill-prepared for the presentation and seemed to hedge around the subject, preferring to read from the book he's just written. Fortunately, when the Q&A session came around he was asked specific questions and was a little more forthcoming. Even so, it was disappointing.