The old year is dead long live the New Year… 2008 in lists

Well one of us had to…

2008 was the year that:

• I got back on the horse only to get kicked straight back off
• I gained independance only for it to bite me in the ass
• I had my first holiday in a decade when I really should have scratched the idea

So yeah, kicked scratched and bitten throughout the year, but I’m strangely optimistic about 2009. Maybe its a mix of a crappy end to the year and the sights of good things to come. I guess in fairness 2008 did have it’s up sides:

• Finally understanding the relevance of ‘Swallow Tattoo’
• Picking up a pen again
• Renewing old friendships and making some new ones.

My most listened albums:

• Los Campesinos – Hold on now youngster
• Kings of Leon – Only by the night
• Placebo – Black Market Music

Favourite Gigs:

• Futureheads
• Long Blondes
• BOTY Final

Fabourite Books:

• Duma Key – Stephen King
• The Threat to Reason – Dan Hind
• The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss

Tags: books, gigs, lists, music, new year

Tilt Shifting Straight to My Heart

Tilt shifting is the art of using a special lens, usually used by architecture photographers, to create incredibly shallow depths of field in images. The resulting images look like they’re of miniatures, rather than full size subjects.

Unfortunately real tilt shift lenses cost an insane amount of money, even old M42 and K mount ones, but you can still try this using technique with Dennison Bertram’s homebrew solution. You can also Photochop the same effect, but where’s the fun?

My favourite use of this effect is in Metal Heart below; just like Micro Machines but, y’know, awesomer. Check out Keith Loutit’s other videos. The man has a sharp eye. Also, great music track.

Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Tags: cars, monster trucks, photo geek, photography, video

On Being a Weak Ass Foreigner

Ahh, the fun of Xbox Live. So many gamers to meet and play with in the spirit of cooperation and having fun; but this story is not about that.

I like to play Gears of War 2 online. I like playing as a giant tank of a thing that can somehow compress my body mass down to nothing. I like having a gun with a chainsaw on it. I like playing Horde mode where a bunch of guys team up against waves of baddies. But tonight I decided to venture into the player versus player lands; I suck very hard at it, but I have a good time and I’ve chatted to some genuinely nice people while playing. This time however I fell foul of the old trap that is the Thoroughly Wasted American Teen.

If you’re not familiar with Gears 2, the matchmaking is a little wonky. Ideally you’ll be matched with players of a similar skill, but that seems to be broken at the moment. Signing up to a game of King of the Hill I was paired with a team of one-bar newbies, meaning none of us had been playing very long. There were four of us, the one more experienced player had quit the match in short order leaving us squared up against five experienced players. I don’t mind playing against people who are better than me, I like to think I have that much humility.

Like four bound PoWs we watched as our fate was decided, it was then that WyteDro decided that we weren’t worth his precious game time and attempted to make us quit. Mr. Dro was on the opposite side, and from his profile looked to be a bit of an obsessive. He began his hissy fit with an incomprehensible jumble of Live’s 3 favourite words. Daunted by this tantrum-level tirade another two of my team left the lobby. Not to be dissuaded only one whos’e name I’ve now forgotten and myself remained to face this child and his mute cronies; in retrospect I believe they were quiet out of shame.

“Quit you weak-ass bitches, quit already,” was the first sentence that young WyteDro managed to chain together. I did not quit, nor did my colleague.
“Fawking weak-ass bitches quit already” just in case we hadn’t heard. Still we did not leave the match, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching Supernanny is that it’s best to deal with such problems head on. Biting my tongue I sat and waited for the match to start, but that apparently was not good enough.
“Fawking matched up against fawking weak bitch ass pussy faggots” our friend managed to spout forth, reaching into the depths of his grammar parser. I kid you not.

By this point I was in stitches. I had landed on the goldmine; the one person who can stereotype a whole subset of Live users. I had seen the depths of filth that Live can offer and all I could do was laugh.
“What an erudite explaination of events friend, thank you!” I intoned into my headset. Immediately the reply came.
“Fawk you, you fawking pussy ass foreigner”

That was it, I was broken. It was the vitriol in the guy’s voice, like he believed he was his bulky testosterone-and-steroid abusing avatar. I sat and giggled into my headset. I think he said more but I’m sorry to say that I had stopped concentrating at that point.

It was then that the match began. As I spawned I noticed that the one man left on my team had gone. I understood the futility of carrying on, sure I could mute Dro but where’s the fun in having my ass handed to me by 5 experienced players? I quit and did my duty to my fellow gamers by filing a complaint. While I was doing so I decided to check out the profile of this pinnacle of idiocity; his motto was ‘Wanna buy my dope?’ Smashing. Sensing blood in the water I had a peek at his public profile too:

“Look I’m white I just wanna puff puff pass I dont want to hear you get butthurt so keep your weak emotions 2 yourself no1 cares its a game so what if you call bs deal with it remember its a game its not REAL oh yeah wytecurtis is my myspace url so you can find out how sexy nice I’am”

From his mannerisms I thought he’d be some football player, a manly man, so I found his myspace page. Curtis: you lose at the internet. 19 year olds should spend more time figuring out how to use punctuation and not trying so very hard to be the most steretypical white young american fool.

Tags: 3 words, games, online, steretype, white trash, xbox, xbox live

Remember the Christmas Special?

http://www.themovieblog.com/2008/12/star-wars-on-stage

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!

Star Wars is so over.

Tags: film, geek, george lucas kills my youth, movies, stage productions

DN-Nay!!

The European Court of Human Rights delivered it’s verdict today in the case of two men from Yorkshire who’s fingerprints and DNA were kept on the National DNA Database even though they were never convicted of any crime.

Thankfully, in my humble opinion, it has voted unanimously (yes boys and girls, that’s 17 to zero) that it is a breach of European human rights law for the Police to keep innocent people’s fingerprints and DNA information on their massive big brother type database. Score one for freedom and liberty :o)

The "Lick it, it's your's" rule moves from the playground to the streets of London

The Court made a very strongly worded statement, which basically said this is a really bad idea and that they are shocked that a government in a democratic society would even think about doing such a thing in an indescriminate way like this. They go-on to say, if someone’s committed a crime then it seems reasonable (to a point), but keeping the fingerprints and DNA of innocent people is simply unjustifiable in any context.

The Government are playing it down, but this was the highest court in Europe (The Grand Chamber no less, from which all judgements are final) and they awarded the two complainants £36k in compensation, so me thinks the law will change pretty soon else we might have may more cases brought (baring in mind that there are over 4 million samples on the DNA DB and 20% are those of innocent people)…

Sorry, if this isn’t interesting to you all (though it really should be) but it is very important to me (e.g. I was literally praying about it all day) and I’m so glad/relieved that it’s gone the way it justly should have. I’m sure you’ll hear this in the news anyway, but I couldn’t let it pass without shouting about it and hopefully discussing it with you all…

I can’t believe I’m writing this, but thank the merciful heavens for Europe…

Verdict in full

Tags: big brother, DNA, justice, law, liberty, lick-it law, police

Eclectic light orchestra

I’m here to talk about music. While I’d like to think of myself as a child of the eighties, what this also entails is that I was a socially retarded young adult of the nineties. Between the age’s of 10 and 14 is the era in which I cobbled together what is for the most part still my opinion regarding what constitutes as great music.

The key factor that sets this era apart from all others was that I got my first record player, that’s right RECORD player, It’s from this era that my love of vinyl originates. After quickly getting bored with my own paltry collection of the time I quickly moved on to raiding my parents record collections. It was here I found some of what are still my favourite albums, Deep Purple’s Made in Japan, Led Zeppelin II and Houses of the Holy, Jailbreak by Thin Lizzy and, lest we forget 12 Gold Bars by Status Quo.

I’m not here today to give more praise to any of these albums, today I want to talk to you about the other Vinyl that had a profound influence on me, I’m here to talk about Now That’s What I Call Music 26.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the Now series of compilation albums, started as a joint venture between publishers EMI and Universal in 1983 the series has gone on to sell over 100 million copies world wide and currently stands at volume 71.

God forbid, I’m in no way here to suggest that any of the Now series had the same effect on the music industry as Led Zeppelin II did, but to me Now 26 had a lasting effect that many other critically acclaimed albums haven’t.

Now 26 is responsible for a phenomenon which anyone who’s been with me in a pub with a jukebox will no doubt have witnessed first hand, the eclectic mix. The secret to any good eclectic mix of music is to make the changes as aggressive and constant as possible so that eventually the bumps start to resemble level road. By trying to shoe-horn four months of music into forty tracks the editors of Now 26 have created an album which lurches across tracks from artist as diverse as Frankie Goes to Hollywood, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Belinda Carlisle, Radiohead and Meatloaf, and that’s just one disc of a two disc album. The lunacy becomes so profound that it starts to resemble genius.

While the Now series is far from perfect (Robbie Williams is the most prolific contributor to the series with 29 entries.) I wish them well and hope they long continue allowing young listeners to hear a wide range of musical styles before finally settling on one to call their own.

Now 26 was released at the end of 1993 and marks what I now know to be my last few months in the musical wilderness, February of the following year Green Day released Dookie and the rest, as they say is history.

Tags: blogging, music

Die MechaHitler, Die!

Being the self respecting geeks that we are, we all play a role playing games and I have the dubious honor of acting as the GM for most of these.  One of the games I’ve always wanted to run is called wushu.

Wushu is a little different to other RPGs in that players describe what their characters do, not what they hope they’ll do if the dice go their way. It’s then up to the GM to interpret the level of success based on a simple dice mechanic. Wushu is also free, the core rules simply describe how to play, and don’t give you any fluff to mess around with; leaving you to create your own setting.

To that end, Ado and I came up with a pulp setting with WW2, time travel a-la Back to the Future, robots and lasers. Mulling this over today I brain dumped this short story. (Also this is about as far as i ever got with NaNoWriMo) I know the prose is horrible and it changes a bit from first to third person, but I don’t care, it’s setting fluff. Think the old Commando Comics:

Danny Williams was huddled in the ruins of what he took to be an old Cafe Bar, inexpertly cramming another clip into his Browning in the dark. A shot pinged off the runed stonework his squad were holed up in, Dan flinched and looked around the faces of his mates, the 2nd Derbyshire infantry. Crouched in the rain he could barely make out the forms of his squaddies.

They’d been sent to France just two days earlier, much to the surprise of the commanding officers. The 2nd had been ordered to support an armoured unit’s advance directly into Paris, an odd move considering France was on the verge of surrender and unwilling to commit any military resources to defend it’s capital. The Brits had been holed up at one end of the muddy cratered mess that was once the Champ de Mars, losing and gaining ground on an hourly basis. Their orders were to take the Eiffel Tower at all costs, a job hampered by Hun snipers stationed along the tower’s many platforms and the mechanised support at it’s base.

Intellegence reports suggested a large installation was being built between the tower’s latticed legs, although up until now Danny hadn’t been able to see anything, between the cannon smoke and omnipresent threat of snipers all anyone could do was focus on the task at hand and move forward building by building. Sergeant Warwick, a stocky man with a bristly mustache nodded to Danny who immediately brought the thick barrel of the Browning up and over his head and began blind firing at the old shoe shop opposite. As the bark of the Browning began, the rest of the squad lept up and rushed the building. As Danny stood, better not to shoot his own squaddies, he saw his schoolmate Mick Lownes put one Hun to the knife as another of the filthy buggers drew a bead on him.

“Mick!” Danny shouted as he sprayed a mass of bullets at the Nazi bastard. A fine red mist let him know he’d hit his mark, but not before a shot had struck just wide of his friend.
“Fuckin’ hell!” exclaimed Mick, turning to Danny with an accusing look. Danny shrugged, he’d got him, hadn’t he?

A minute or so later the squad was regrouping in the once German occupied shop; Warwick sported a bloody nose slowly congealing in the Sergeant’s mustache, the result of a rifle butt to the face. Arthur from Sutton-in-Ash wasn’t so lucky, a bullet had hit him in the chest and his breathing was ragged, little flecks of blood showed on his lips.

“Poor bugger,” remarked Mick, “you reckon he’ll be alright?”
“Aye, we’ve had worse ‘n that stood up and fighting within’t hour!” said Danny, not sure at all.

Their field surgeon “Lanky” Langton was administering adrenaline and doing what he could to staunch the flow of blood from Arthur’s chest. Turning away, Danny crouched up beside the Sergeant.
“What do you think Sarge?”

Warwick had his field binoculars resting on the remains of a wall, surveying the 50 metre run to the next building. “Dunno lad,” he said gruffly, “leaves us in’t open for a stretch, still, no sign of ‘em over there.”

A second later the Sergeant lowered the binoculars and turned to the squad, his back still to the solid brickwork of the shop. “Alright lads, on to the next one” he intoned, his voice calm and measured, as if signalling the start of a new shift back home. At his word the men stacked up against whatever cover they could, hunkered down but ready to move.

“Alright Dan, let ‘em have it” said the Sarge, and on command Danny brought the Browning up to fire as he’d done a hundred times previously, but this time something caused him to stop before pulling the trigger.

A loud screeching had begun to echo across the no man’s land of the Champs and mere seconds later a a crack like thunder rang out, shattering whatever windows were left along the boulevards. A fork of lighning had hit the Eiffel Tower, it’s afterimage burned into Danny’s eyes. This wasn’t what had caused him to pause though, suddenly the image of the Tower was obscured by the form of a giant man.

As he blinked, furiously trying to clear the spots from his eyes Danny began to resolve that it was no man blocking his view, but a gigantic machine, easily three quartes of the Tower’s height. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen, and he could do nothing but stare as the towering mechanical man took it’s first pondering step forwards onto the Champs de Mars.

“What the bloody hell…” muttered Mick staring at the giant beast. The rain streaked his face with the filth from days of fighting.

“Take it easy boys, we’ve still got a job to do” Warwick shouted over the cloying whine of the machine. Danny refocussed and and began spraying the opposite building with automatic fire. Seconds later the rest of his mates were out from cover and running across the expanse. The first couple of of squaddies to reach the building vaulted inside and began clearing the rooms, as more of his mates streamed across the open gound. It was only as the last few were leaving cover to make the run, and Danny was standing to follow that he saw with horror that the monstrous figure was staring at him, a single slit of glowing red rather than eyes. It raised it’s arm, the end made from a latticework of metal, began to glow.

“Down!” Screamed Danny, but before the word had left his lips the projectile had hit the building opposite him. The there was no time to think, seconds later Danny Williams and the rest of his squad were torn to pieces by the force of the impact and flying rubble.

Tags: Die MechaHitler Die, geek, RPGs, writing, wtf?