Saturday - Touristing in London Town

I thought I'd blow the cobwebs off a bit today and went for a walk in London.


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It was all a bit meandering, but one shop I do like to browse is Daunt Books in Cheapside, not far from St Mary-le-Bow Church. It's one of the few independents left in the City and has a delightful sprung floor, like walking on the deck of a ship. I bought a pub guide to London, published by CAMRA:

I walked down Fleet Street and took in some of the architecture, notably the art deco of the Daily Express building:

I noticed that there seem to be a lot of clocks in Fleet Street:

The first is Gog and Magog outside St. Dunstan-in-the-West and the other The Royal Courts of Justice.

Oxfam Friday - It's Gonna Rain!

Mark asked me to pull a shift upstairs this morning, which I was more than happy to do. It started lashing it down towards the end and I had to walk back through the rain. It put me in mind of this:

Steve Reich is a composer of the minimalist school (like Philip Glass, more famous for his piano compositions which turn up in movies). I'd heard of the piece before as it's cited as an influence on modern sampling, but it cropped up on Howard Goodall's BBC series The Story of Music. It was made in 1965, but it sounds like it was made last week.

There wasn't much trade in the shop, but I managed to play Ibrahim Ferrer's Buenos Hermanos all the way through:

Dates

Date formats are a bit of a problem in software and xkcd has published a little cartoon to explain...

So now you know.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Yup, another Nick Cage film. Johnny Blaze is asked to guard a young boy who may be the key to removing the demon possessing him.

With a plot that must have taken all of twenty minutes to write, Nicolas Cage again gets acted off the set, this time by Ciarán Hinds and Idris Elba, and, to some extent, by himself as the demon. There's a fair abount of bangs and crashes and good stunt work, but there's the feeling that this could have been a much better film in the hands of, oh, I don't know, Johnny Depp? Still, it's better than watching Keanu Reeves trying to be Klaatu.

A Trip To Greenwich To See The London AI Futurists

For the inauguration of the new London AI Futurists, I attended a meeting at the Forum in Greenwich.

I took the DLR from Stratford to Cutty Sark, which took me through Docklands:

I must have been about seven or eight when I was last in Greenwich. It's a bit like a theme park, with Sainsbury's, M&S, etc., but that changed rapidly as I walked down the road towards the Forum.

The meeting was titled "Human Uniqueness or Simply Repeating Patterns?" and was given by a rather nervous German called Rob Wenzel.

His idea for the future of Artificial Intelligence was to model human personalities via the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator system. This gives sixteen broad types, each one matching another as the "ideal" partner. Thus an AI can be matched to an individual person and we could then relate to them better. Yes, folks, Genuine People Personalities (Marvin the Paranoid Android) might be a way of implementing AI for real. What was dissapointing was that Robert did not go further and explain his ideas for how it would be implemented, only that they serve as a guide for the future.

On the way back I passed through North Greenwich on the way to the tube station and saw the cable car system across the Thames near the Millenium Dome.

It was a long weary way home as the District line had engineering works and I was glad to get back to Chez Lemon.

The Eastleigh By-election

I'm a great one for statistics and the recent by-election (admit it: do you know where in Hampshire Eastleigh is? It's a suburb of Southampton, basically) had made me curious about the voting turn-out and the results.

	2010			2013
Party	Votes	Share of Vote	Share of Electorate	Votes	Share of Vote	Share of Electorate	Change from Previous
Liberal Democrat	24966	46.53%	32.25%	13342	32.06%	16.93%	-46.56%
Conservative	21102	39.33%	27.26%	10559	25.37%	13.40%	-49.96%
Labour	5153	9.60%	6.66%	4088	9.82%	5.19%	-20.67%
UKIP	1933	3.60%	2.50%	11571	27.80%	14.68%	498.60%
Other	496	0.92%	0.64%	2056	4.94%	2.61%
Total	53650		69.30%	41616		52.80%	-22.43%
Electorate	77417			78818			1.81%

Source Wikipedia.

The first thing you notice is the massive drop in turnout, more than 20%, even though the electorate has increased slightly. This gives lie to the supposition that immigration issues, which UKIP campaigned on, have made people vote who hadn't previously. It may well have turned people off voting. In more general terms, though, you can see that the successful candidate only represents one in six of the electorate. Democracy in action.

Secondly, you can see the massive increase in votes for UKIP, which has been made much of in the press. If even half of the UKIP vote had gone to the Conservatives, they would have got nearly 40% and won, so it's easy to see why Ed might be smiling at this point. However, the Labour party might have to deal with UKIP on their own turf.

New Lego - Waiter!

While in Chelmsford today, I got judged and served!

The waiter reminded me of this old Madness number:

Have a nice weekend!

George Orwell and a Knight at the Opera

On the way back from college, I popped into Bluewater to have a nice cup of coffee and nosey about. In Waterstones, they had a display of that non-South African author George Orwell. They had Politics and the English Language in pamphlet form for 99p. Bargain!

It's one of his best essays and most readable, after Lion and the Unicorn. It can be read in it's entirety here, and it's especially good for people who know English as a second language. Radio 4 have also been running a series on the author recently.

I also stopped in the Lego shop and found a Knight!

He seems a cheerful chappie, doesn't he.

Black Mirror

Unless you don't watch TV at all, or are just simply not interested, there's a TV series called Black Mirror on Channel 4. It's science fiction of the near future, what Charlie Brooker, who's behind it and writes most of the episodes, calls "the way we might be living in 10 minutes' time if we're clumsy".

They're not bad stories, some quite chilling, but they're the sort of stories a hipster/creative from Shoreditch might come up with if they've been reading J.G. Ballard (not as bad as it sounds). And, like all science fiction, it's not really about the future, but about the hopes, dreams, fears and anxieties that we have in the present.

Google Books on Storyville

As part of a Stoyville series on the internet, the first was about Google's attempts to digitise the whole printed word.

It strikes me how amazingly naive the librarians involved were. You'd think that they would know at least a little about copyright law and how it applied to the digitisation process. That Google seemed as naive was also a surprise, although I imagine that they just thought it would be covered by Fair Use. It's also interesting to see where the problems were. If Google had left alone copyrighted material and, well, anything in French and German, it might have been a very different story.

Oxfam Friday - It's a Cop Out

I did a morning shift at the shop after Mark had been let down by Georgina, so I got to play some more tunes on the top deck, including some serious Bob Marley and the Wailers!

Afterwards I was caught by the fuzz!

Zodiac

After the murders of two couples in 1960's San Fransisco, the press are sent letters purporting to be from the killer.

This is a film based on the book of the same name by Robert Graysmith and tells of the author's obsession with the case, although, even at the end, the killer's identity is still in doubt.

It's not a bad film, but it does fail to intrigue and it drags a little. Instead of being as pre-occupied with search for the killer's identity as he was, I just ended up feeling sorry for Graysmith's wife.

Oxfam Wednesday

Anne, Mark's boss, had asked me to put in an afternoon shift upstairs, so I got a look at what it was like on a Wednesday. Not that much different from Tuesday, really, but I got to see our music expert, Dave, who I hadn't seen in a long while. He's got a new display, in place of the old cassette shelves:

As you can see, one or two classic albums.

I played some more free-bee's. The only ones of note were Pond's Elegant Design and this cover of the Neil Young Harvest track Old Man by Villagers:

There was also this track by Wolf People, which I rather liked:

New Lego - Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Beers!

I got a new Lego Minifigure, this time Caesar himself!

He doesn't look happy, does he? Veni, Vidi, Grumpi.

Oxfam Tuesday

I was asked by Mark to do Tuesday afternoon again, but this time upstairs. There was a brisk trade and played some free-bee CD's that had come off magazines (Uncut, Mojo, The Word [now defunct], etc.), which can't be sold by the shop. One of the tracks which caught my ear was Desert Raven by Jonathan Wilson:

Another was by Paul Simon, which is quite a foot-tapper.

Others were The Silver Seas, The Men and White Denim, who seem like a fun band, judging by this (I heard "Say What You Want", but couldn't find a decent video for that).

Saturday - A Singularitarian Utopia Or A New Dark Age?

Today I went to see this presentation by Ian Pearson.

He began by saying that the perceived problems of the future, global warming, overpopulation, resource scarcity, etc. would be solved by various technological fixes and inventions. Amongst these would be the technologies leading to the singularity, which, he said, would be sooner than people think. He described a system of what he called a "gel" computer, a group of small modules networked together in a transparent gel using small lasers. This is technology available now, or soon-ish within the next few years. He also detailed smart organic cells ("smart yogurt"; I kid you not) which would also be enabled to network and evolve themselves (Greg Bear detailed something similar in the novel Blood Music).

All this is very positive, but there are downsides and he highlighted these in the second half of the presentation. He noted that it's possible that what he called a "Stepford Society" would evolve. This is one where criminals cannot be punished because they cannot be identified, having learnt to remove themselves from the systems which track everyone, while honest citizens are increasingly punished for petty misdemeanours as they can be caught. He then went on to describe what he called a "Dark Age of Anti-knowledge", where rumours and half-truths get promulgated by social networking and knowledge bases without being rigorously tested.

All-in-all, it was a good presentation, but a lot of the ideas were not really related to the singularity as such.

Friday - ...and another Special

I popped into the shop today on my way past and informed Mark that next week I was available as it was half term. While there, John said he had another Penguin Special, and an unusual one:

S88 from 1941 (this is the revised version from 1943). He also told me that quite a few people were after early Penguins and one was after 1^st editions of the first 100. A true collector! I checked my meagre collection and I don't have any 1^st editions, only a 1^st reprint at best.

Oxfam Tuesday - Another Special

Back down on the bottom deck this afternoon. John had managed to find another special, S142:

It doesn't have a dust cover, which stopped with S57 in 1940. Still in good nick, though.

All quiet today, trade-wise. Mark asked me to price up some games and RPG's which had been way overpriced. Two of the games were extensions of an RPG called Legend of the Five Rings (L5R):

It's a fantasy RPG based on feudal Japan. I'd heard of it a while ago and was a little curious and the extensions are very professional. There's also a collectable card game.

Sunday Board Games Club - Spartacus and Coup

It's been a few months since I was at the games club, so I was looking forward to it. One of the regulars, Jason, who brought Frag a few months back, had Spartacus ("a game of blood and treachery"):

No so much blood, really, but a fair bit of treachery, and we soon set about stabbing each other in the back, almost to the point where the action in the arena didn't really have anything to do with it. Quite a good game.

Jason also had Coup, which we played a few hands of:

It's an odd game, mostly bluff. You have two face cards and your actions are based on what cards you have, or rather, say you have. Other players can then call your bluff, but only at the cost of losing one of their own cards. If you have enough money, you can call a coup and a player loses a card. It took a little getting used to, but was quite entertaining. I'm not even a natural bluffer, but it soon brought it out.

The Avengers

Well, I got to watch the Avengers, at long last, and jolly good it was too!

Probably the ultimate pizza movie with lots of bangs and crashes, a real rollercoaster ride, and a not half-bad plot either, from Joss Whedon, that doesn't let up. The acting is pretty good as well and there is some room for it, particularly Loki (Tom Hiddleston). It's just a shame I didn't get to see it in 3D.

Friday - More Lego

I've bought a few more Lego Mini-figures. A bit of an improvement:

A mermaid, what looks like an astronaut (or a robot?) and an alien of some kind. With a club.

I was in the Lego shop in Bluewater the other day and they have this little workbench with a kind of hopper in the middle. You can mix and match heads, bodys and legs to make you're own custom figure for £3.50 each. Nice!

Skyfall Redux

While web browsing, I found this group who do "honest" film trailers. Their latest is on the recent Bond film:

Although I don't agree with all of it, they do have a point.

Oxfam Tuesday - Penguin Specials and Subbuteo

Mark asked me to do a shift downstairs today, where the action is. There was a bit of a surprise, though. I'd mentioned to John in the past that I was interested in Penguin Specials that came out from 1938 to the end of the war (there were some later) and he managed to find one:

It's number S26 and in very good nick.

There was the usual banter. We were talking about forged notes at one point and John said "Fivers are ten-a-penny", to which we all fell about.

With working on the bottom deck, there was no music as such, so I went all metal on the way back and listened to The Brain Police:

Rock On!

I was talking to Mark about Subbuteo, the football playing game:

Apparently, Mark said, the name is derived from Latin name of the Hobby falcon, (Falco subbuteo). You learn something every day working for Oxfam.

Saturday - A Trip Through London

Today I went into London to go for a drink with some former collegues. As it was such a bright, shiny day, I thought I'd take the camera:

Apparently, this route (15) is running the old routemasters.

What the fourth plinth is meant to represent I'm not sure. It's called "Powerless Structures, Fig. 101". I prefer the ship in the bottle.

American Gangster

Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) inherits a drug empire from his boss and decides to cut out the middle men by smuggling heroin directly from Vietnam using the coffins of dead servicemen unaware he is being tracked by a detective (Russell Crowe) and his team.

Based on a true story, it's a very good film, with hints of The French Connection. Washington dominates as an increasingly paranoid Lucas, enemies both within and without, but Crowe is good as his nemesis. The 70's are also suitably evoked with a really good, authentic soundtrack.

Sesame Street vs. The Beastie Boys

I saw this delightful video over at Boing Boing. It works rather well:

Cookie monster!

Meades on MagLev

Continuing on from the last posting, I found this:

BBC Newsnight Feature: Maglev from Amirani Media on Vimeo.

It sounds pretty futuristic, and how successful other maglev installations have been I don't know, but there are lots of proposals. By the way, 400kph is 250mph.

The Joy Of Essex

I was watching a BBC documentary by Jonathan Meades on the modern history and architecture of Essex. No, seriously.

Essex has been used as a kind of experiment by various utiopian idealists over the years (the above is the old Bata factory in East Tilbury, whose worker housing is still occupied), mostly without success, but it has lead to some amazingly good modern architecture:

Meades' also points out that Essex is used by people from London as an escape and that the buildings reflect this. His opinions do grate a little, but he isn't boring. And he is right, in a way. Essex is very much out there.

The American

It's a while since I've watched any George Clooney movies. A gun maker tries to lay low in a small Italian town.

This is a good thriller, if a little slow paced. I think the idea is to rachet up the tension, but it just makes it a little bit dull. Clooney is good, but it's the supporting cast which make the film, especially Violante Placido as his girlfriend. I get the feeling, however, that Clooney wanted to make a movie which would give him the excuse to spend a lot of time in a rather beautiful part of Italy, for which I can't blame him.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

This is another film with Nicolas Cage in it. Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel) finds himself apprenticed as a modern day Merlin.

Not a bad pizza film. Cage is acted off the set by both Alfred Molina and the special effects, which are rather good, probably because it's a Disney movie. Even the plot is quite good, mixing the "magic" of Tesla coils and high voltage electricity with the more traditional kind. There's even a live remake of the Mickey Mouse Fantasia scene, something to warm the heart of any who remember the original.

The Day The Earth Stood Still

This is one of my favourite all-time movies. Er... no, not quite. This is a remake of one of my favourite all-time movies.

Quite apart from the awful idea of remaking one of the best movies of all time... well, no, actually, I think that's bad enough. I don't know where to begin to slag it off. I'll try another tack. I'll try to say what was good about it.

....

No, that's not working, either. I'll try just short word groups and you'll be able to figure it out for yourself.

• Keanu Reeves as Klaatu;
• Gort as a nanotech swarm;
• American military attacking aliens with Predator drones (like firing arrows at a tank; seriously!);
• Everything else.

The best thing about the original film was that it tried to appeal to our better nature, while the remake just condemns our worst. The threat from old Gort is implied, while the new Gort wipes out entire towns and cities. The old movie was subtle, while the new is heavy handed and crass.

Actually, that may be the one good thing about this movie: it makes you realise how good the old one was. Not that I needed to know.

Oxfam Friday

Mark asked me to do Friday morning at the shop and I served behind the upstairs till until 1PM. I was in a bit of an OCD mood and sorted out the spare DVD's, making sure everything was up to stock and, in particular, that any surplus wasn't taking up room. For example, we had seven Spiderman's, so I reduced that to three. I'll be surprised if we sell them.

Michelle said hello and asked me whether the pricing on some graphic novels was correct. I thought so, but I thought one was a bit pricey and might not sell: it was Marvel X-Men-type-thing, but you never know. There wasn't anything of interest in the pile, nothing to to cause me to say "wow!", which was a shame, but that's the trade for you. At least, unlike Utopia, the new TV drama on Channel 4, no-one is trying to kill anybody over them:

I'm trying desperately to like it (any TV series based around people reading a comic book is worth a look), but it's just too violent.

While I was in Chelmsford, I noticed these Lego Minifigures that you can get for £2. I bought a couple just to see what they're like. I think I was a bit unlucky, because I got Maid Marion and a cheerleader.

Better luck next time. Speaking of Lego, I found this a few years back:

How To Make A Rail Gun

I found this funny video on YouTube, via Boing, Boing!:

He's quite clearly a good engineer, but a sane enough chap to see that his screw-ups are at least as important as his successes. And funnier. And the rail gun works...

Dungeons & Dragons

Despite liking most RPG's, the more obscure the better, I've never had much liking for D&D. I don't quite know why. Maybe it's not really having much time for the source material, that is fantasy novels. It was always Traveller for me, but I must admit, I am glad that Wizards of the Coast, who now own the D&D licence, have done the decent thing and, together with DriveThruRPG, released the original basic set in pdf format:

There's even an introduction adventure for free!

Tax Tsunami Up!

I was talking at the weekend about tax cuts. It's always strange that those advocating tax cuts seem to be the ones who will benefit the most, i.e. rich people, and it reminded me of a Keith Knight cartoon (he's a big ice hockey fan as well).

The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp

If I'm a bit lax prioritising my LoveFilm subscription, it occasionally throws up a DVD I'm not expecting. This time it was a Powell & Pressburger classic.

It tells the story of a old general harking back to a bygone age, while trying to fight a new kind of war. The film is meant to be sentimental, melancholy and nostalgic, but sometimes I think it's just sad. Blimp has illusions about war that are not shared even by his friends and is clearly out of his depth. Apparently, Churchill didn't like it (possibly because he thought Blimp was a caracature of himself) and tried to have it banned.

The House I Live In

This is a film, through BBC's Storyville, about the American drug war.

It starts with the director's, Eugene Jarecki, interest in his childhood nanny's family. What he ends up with is a study of America itself, economic, social, and racial, through the medium of the war on drugs and drug laws.

The drug laws target minorities; opium laws in California were targeted against the Chinese minority in the 19^th century; cocaine against blacks in the industrial cities in the 1930's; marijuana laws against Mexican agricultural workers in the south west; crack-cocaine laws against inner city blacks (again) in the 1980's. Now methamphetamine laws are targeting poor white people: one chap was in jail for life without parole for trafficking 3oz because he had two previous convictions (the "three strike" rule).

It's also interesting to see who benefits from the war on drugs, with one commentator saying that for some it's been a success.

It's a very powerful and thought provoking film that I think anyone who has an opinion on drugs, from whatever direction, should see.

Monday - A Day Off

Due to the snow, Bromley College, like a lot of schools and colleges around the U.K., has closed rather than risk broken ankles and the legal/insurance problems that go with it. This means I have another day at home, although there will be a trip to the local superstore to get provisions at some point.

We've also got another C Test on Thursday, so I've got to revise for that.

Here's a suitable cartoon:

Sweet Home Alabama - The Southern Rock Saga

I've just been watching this on BBC iPlayer. I'd never heard of The Allman Brothers before, but they sound like a really kickin' band:

Rock on!

Sunday - Snow Job

The forecast snow finally arrived today and has coated BasVegas and the rest of Essex.

And it's still snowing (with a forecast of more) so it looks like I'm going to have to dig out the Fatmobile tomorrow!

Coda: Someone has actually done one of my favourite Calvin & Hobbes cartoons for real!

Saturday - The Symbiosis Of Man And Machine

Today I attended a lecture given by Peter Cochrane and organised by the London Futurists.

The problems we face are becoming increasingly complex and are outstripping our capabilities to solve them without the aid of machines, specifically computers. As the physical problems have been solved by physical machines (the steam engine, aircraft, etc.), so our mental problems (mathematical, creative, philosophical and even ethical) will be solved, and are being solved, by computers and software. This is a good thing and our attitude needs to change accordingly if the human race is to survive. Peter gave the example of Aaron Swartz, someone who in any other field would be lauded and have roads named after him, but got tangled up in laws designed for the 19^th century rather than the 21^st.

His talk covered changes in technology that would be most likely to impact on the future and what impact that might be. Specifically, he looked at 3D printing and biology and that AI will soon be available as a cloud service.

Peter Cochrane is a very good speaker and his talk was levened by amusing anecdotes. For example, he once hired a theologist and when H.R. questioned it he said it was for someone to pray for success on the project.

All in all, it was a very good lecture with a lively Q&A afterwards.

Season Of The Witch

Another Nicolas Cage movie. Two Crusader veterans (Cage and Ron Perlman) are given the task of escorting a woman accused of witchcraft to an isolated monastery for trial and judgement, little suspecting the horror about to enfold them.

The film is a little bit dull; the special effects are not as good as they could have been; and Cage is outclassed by Perlman, as you would expect by now. The plot is also a bit pedestrian. All in all, a poor pizza movie.

Reminds me of this, though:

36 and Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

I snagged a couple of DVD's from the shop (Cowboys & Aliens had been bagged by a customer). First up, F.A.Q. About Time Travel:

Billed as a Shaun of The Dead for time travel, which means that it all takes place in a pub. I can't quite bring myself to like it that much. The plot's okay, and the paradoxes work well enough, but it seems that the plot is the only joke in it and that's told over and over again.

There are a fair number of films about time travel, but one of the more serious ones is Primer.

Each "copy" of the protagonists tries to make sure no paradoxes occur and repair the ones that do. The film is really confusing and takes some time to understand (and I'm not that sure I do now), but there is a rather good explanation on Wikipedia and one or two graphs around, so it has a cult following.

36 is a French cops-and-robbers movie. Two rival detectives try to take down a hardened gang of armed robbers with devastating consequences for both of them.

A really good cop drama, Daniel Auteuil plays Vrinks, head of the BRI (a sort of Flying Squad). Gérard Depardieu plays Klein, head of the rival BRB, as much an antagonist as the criminals. It ends up a bit like The Count of Monte Cristo, with lots of twists and turns and a surprise ending. Based on a true story.

...And Even Colder Today

-5.5°C!!!!!!

Brass Monkeys are doomed as a species.

However, the green Ringnecked Parakeets in Bromley do seem to have survived the cold as I spotted one flying this morning.

Wednesday - Fog Over The Thames

I was travelling over the QE2 bridge this morning on the way to college. There was the forlorn howl of brass monkeys (-2.5°C!!) and the Thames was shrouded in fog. It was like we were on a bridge over the clouds. Spooky!

No helicopters, though.

What on earth possessed someone to fly in this weather is beyond me.

Oxfam Tuesday - The Dandy Warhols and Neil Young

An uneventful day at the shop, so much so that we closed early. Again, we didn't take much, although better than last week. The administration of HMV was a topic both amongst the staff and with the customers. It just seemed like another casualty of the economy, but given that you can get almost anything online now, I'm surprised they've been in business for as long as they have.

I played 13 Tales From Urban Bohemia by the Dandy Warhols, which I hadn't heard for a while, and is a very good album.

I also listened to Neil Young's After The Gold Rush, something from my adolesence, and then it was a few years old.

It's always been a good album and it sounds even better today.

Ladybird

I saw this on Facebook this morning:

Amazing!

2046

The sequel to In The Mood For Love finds Chow (Tony Leung) liasing with numerous women in an effort to get over his lost love, while writing a science fiction story.

A much more passionate story than the previous one, but the relationships Chow has seem empty: he doesn't seem to feel much for them in spite of what they might feel for him. And there are a lot of them.

Not a bad film, if a little over long. One delight is Zhang Ziyi (who played the blind girl from House of Flying Daggers) as one of his liasons, an antagonistic party girl, but Faye Wong is good as his neighbour's daughter who helps him with his writing.

Also, if all female androids are going to look like Faye Wong, the future's going to be pretty cool.

Sunday - Trying To Catch The Light

It started off sunny today so I thought I'd take a short trip to Shoeburyness to try and take some photographs while the light was good. The clouds soon came over while I was half way there, but the gloom had a strange effect on what light there was and I took some dramatic shots of the Isle of Grain:

All very primeval!

The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

After their latest train robbery, the James gang split up and head their separate ways.

Brad Pitt does surprisingly well as an increasingly weary, paranoid and unpredictable Jesse James. However, it's the Ford brothers, played by Casey Afflek and Sam Rockwell, who make the film, realising it's only a matter of time before Jesse turns on them.

It is an incredibly slow film, though, and the assassination couldn't come soon enough.

I'm Not There

I picked this up at the shop the other day. Can't say I like it, 'cause I don't.

The idea is to represent Bob Dylan's life, music and writings in film, but it's a bit of a mess. The film's searching for a coherent narrative where there probably isn't one. I once saw Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which had Bob Dylan in a role that looked as if it was written just to get him in the picture, and that was the same.

On the positive side, he's written a lot of songs, mostly made famous by other people. He has a really good taste in music, eclectic, as shown by the radio show that he hosts. It's probably best to judge the man by his music and not what others say of him, or even what he says of himself.

Bus 174

On 12^th June 2000, a man gets on bus in Rio de Janeiro, bungles the robbery he planned on the occupants, and takes them hostage.

This is a fascinating and disturbing film to watch. As the hostage situation develops, the background of the robber unfolds: a former "invisible" street child turned petty criminal; witnessing his mother being murdered; years in, and escapes from, hellish jails; surviving a massacre in which six of his friends were killed (of the 60 who survived, 40 were subsequently murdered or "disappeared").

The police are also shown as amazingly incompetent, even the highly trained special squad. Initially, both the public and the press are allowed to approach the bus and are still only kept a short distance away throughout the drama. The police don't have any radio equipment and have to communicate face-to-face or using hand signals. The police chief is told to keep the hostage taker alive, limiting his options. There are three negotiators, confusing the robber. As you can imagine, it doesn't end well.

Oxfam Thursday

A bit of a dull shift at the shop. I decided to fill out the DVD shelves a bit and sort them as best I could, all the while listening to The Go! Team, Proof of Youth:

I asked Mark about the drop in trade, and he put it down to the season and the economy.

Solomon Kane

Solomon Kane avoids going to Hell for his crimes by swearing never to take another life. Fate conspires to give him a chance at redemption by rescuing a kidnapped girl from the clutches of a sorcerer in league with the Devil.

Not a bad pizza movie, with shades of Hellboy. Purefoy gives it his all, there's lots of fettlin', and the 17^th Century never looked so grim. Reminds me a bit of this, though:

Tuesday - A Walk In London To See The Starman

I thought I'd go into London today for a long walk and to photograph something before it's removed. I started off at Fenchurch Street and walked to St. Paul's, picking up lunch as I went.


View Larger Map

I rested a while and ate my sandwiches in the gardens outside. It was overcast, so the pictures aren't brilliant, but it wasn't that cold either.

I continued via the Embankment, past Cleopatra's Needle:

and on through Trafalgar Square past Admiralty Arch to see the Yuri Gagarin monument.

It's a copy of one in Russia and was unveiled by his daughter, Elena. The monument is due to be moved to Greenwich near the observatory sometime in the next few months, so I was lucky.

Think on this: he was the first person ever to leave our little speck of dust. All those imaginings of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and the rest are embodied in this man and his statue. What they dreamt of, he did it. It should be a bigger monument.

I finished the day by walking to the V&A and having cream tea, which was very welcome and ended an inspiring day just right.

Monday - Haircut, Ska and a Free Book!

I usually go for my haircuts to a place opposite Southend Central station. It's run by two women, but today the boyfriend of one was left in charge. He's an illustrated man, be-tattooed and close-cropped, and very professional. He did me a decent short-back-and-slap, and applied a hair tonic and orange-scented wax, so I smell fantastic! He was also playing some fine Jamaican Ska on the CD player (or Rocksteady, anyway):

He reckoned it was coming back in fashion. Suits me!

I also popped into Waterstones and got a free book! Well, not exactly. I've been getting this card stamped every time I go in and buy a book there and before Christmas I managed to fill up one of the cards so they gave me a £10 voucher. I went there today and bought a book I've had my eye on for a while:

I also paid the difference, £1.99, with what I had on my normal points card, so I got it without paying!

Rule #1 - Never Change The Deal

One of my favourite films, The Trainspotter, is now a TV series.

Looks OK and even has the same dry wit of the original. Plus it has car chases, good looking women, car chases, martial arts and car chases, so what's not to like. Jason's in The Expandables franchise now, so they've got someone else to do it. I wonder if the new film is as bad as the first...

Oh, yes. Can't see Mickey or Eric (although he was killed in the previous film, so maybe that's why: he could've come back as his twin brother looking for revenge), so it might not be as up-market. Still, it has Jeanclaudevandamme and Chuck Norris to add a bit of class. I don't think American's will be changing their second amendment any time soon.

Reverse Cipher Puzzle - Part 2

Looking at the formulae, you can see that in the subtraction we have, in the rightmost column, S - S = R, so R = 0 (zero). Going to the complex formula, you can see that subtracting O from TO gives a multiple of 10, so ignoring whatever T might be for the moment, (E + S) = 10. If you look at the addition, in the rightmost column, (S + O) = U (+ 10) (that is possibly 10). In the next column we have E + S, which we know is 10, so J is either zero or 1. It can't be zero because that's R, so it must be 1.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0
J									R

Looking at the subtraction again, we've got another formula, (E - S) = T, the second column from the right. Using what we already know about E and S, we can say:

E - S = T

E - (10 - E) = T

2E - 10 = T

2E = T + 10

E = (T + 10) / 2

So for E to be a whole number, and a single digit, T must be even.

T	E	S
2	6	4
4	7	3
6	8	2
8	9	1

T can't be 8 as S can't be 1 (it's J). In the subtraction, the third column from the right has T + E + 1 = U (+ 10), the 1 being carried over from (E + S). Plugging this into the table we get:

T	E	S	U
2	6	4	9
4	7	3	12 (or 2 + 10)
6	8	2	15 (or 5 + 10)

Remember the first formula, (S + O) = U + 10, we got from the subtraction? We substitute 10 = (E + S) as before:

S + O = U + 10

S + O = U + S + E

(removing S each side)

O = U + E

Using this to get values for O:

T	E	S	U	O
2	6	4	9	(6 + 9) = 15
4	7	3	2	(2 + 7) = 9
6	8	2	5	(5 + 8) = 13

O must be a single digit, so it can't be 15 or 13, leaving us with:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0
J	U	S	T			E		O	R

Putting what we know into the addition, we get 374473 + 73F739 = 1113212 and making the obvious subtraction, 1113212 - 374473 = 738739, gives F = 8, leaving C and I.

Doing the same to the subtraction, 74873 - IC233 = 18C40, the third column from the right, 8 - 2 = 6, so C = 6 and I is 5:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0
J	U	S	T	I	C	E	F	O	R

Which makes our formulae:

47737 * 65 = 3102905	374473 + 738739 = 1113212
74873 - 56233 = 18640	((7 + 3) * 4) + 9 = 49

Reverse Cipher Puzzles

When I was a kid, there was a small book on codes and ciphers which got me interested in the whole thing. Normally, you would have a substitution cipher which substitutes numbers for letters, but the book had some puzzles which did it the other way around. For example, say you had the sum:

136732 + 643637 = 780369

You could replace the numbers with letters and try to figure out which letters stood for which numbers.

ACFGCB + FDCFCG = GHJCFI

Have a go at these:

TEESE * CI = SJRUORI	SETTES + ESFESO = JJJSUJU
ETFES - ICUSS = JFCTR	((E + S) * T) + O = TO

All use the same substitutions.

Matt Test

My erstwhile colleague Mr. Laver is sitting a Microsoft Certification test on Thursday, which he needs no luck at all to pass. While we were discussing a C bug problem, he introduced me to IDEOne, an online source code editor which has the novel feature of being able to embed the code into your own web site:


So... why does this code compile and run but the length function only produces zero no matter what string is input?

Slow Cooker Revolution

I have a small slow cooker and I've been doing the usual chilli's and casseroles, with the odd baked potato. I've been looking for a good cook book on the subject and with my Christmas money (thanks, Sis) I bought this from our local, friendly, tax-dodging book dealer:

It was delivered this morning and a jolly good read it is too. It's by the PBS show America's Test Kitchen, who apply scientific expertise and a critical eye to cooking, and each recipe in the book has a "why this works" section as well as general tips for working with slow cookers (microwave ovens are handy, it turns out). Recommended!

New Year 2013

I'm back safe and sound at Chez Lemon after ringing in the New Year with my relatives. It wasn't without a bang, though.

Within a few hours of landing one of the neighbours, Lynne, popped round to say that one of the ridge tiles on the roof had slipped off in the high winds over Christmas and was perched precariously on the guttering.

Dad went up on the ladder and pulled it off as it threatened to fall any minute. Despite the size, about 18" long, it's fairly light and you can lift it with one hand.

He had thought about repairing it himself, but reconsidered when he saw the situation and will get someone in when the wind dies down a little.

New Year was spent at my Uncle and Auntie's, watching TV and the local fireworks, which were a bit muted. I think most people have spent the money on Christmas and budgeted wisely, unlike Osbourne and co.

I hope everyone had a nice New Year and that the future is better than the past for all of us, not just people with lots of money.

Oh, and I watched Kenny Everett on New Years Eve.