Joe blogs

This is a customer announcement

2007-11-28T13:25:09Z

I was treated to this excellent passenger announcement first-hand on the way home from a visit to Chester. This is as near to verbatim as I can remember it:

"I'd like to welcome new customers aboard the train. Also, I would like to reassure any customers who may have noticed the two-tone alarm a few minutes ago. This is the sound of the customer assistance alarm, activated by a button inside the customer toilets. The button is clearly labelled 'ALARM' in large, red letters. It does not operate the flush, or the door lock. I would like to advise customers to, in general, read the labels next to buttons before pressing them; not only on the train, but in your day-to-day lives as well. Otherwise, one day you may press the 'auto-destruct' button. Thank you."

International communication

2007-09-28T09:53:39Z

Dear Americans,

Please stop using your school "grade" system to describe people's ages, when you are communicating with the English-speaking world at large. We don't know what you mean. Our school systems are different to yours. Describing as some children as "ninth graders" is incomprehensible to us.

Certainly, I can look up the meaning if I really want to, but it's impolite to expect me to do that when you could just as easily use the universally understood "years old" system.

The various other English-speaking countries around the world do not expect foreigners to know the arbitrary naming schemes they apply to their school years, and neither should you.

Thanking you in advance,

Joe

queue rage

2007-09-05T11:57:50Z

I needed to replace my Oyster card, which had developed a large crack and thus stopped working. I queued up for a while, and the chap behind the counter gave me a huge form to fill in, so I stepped aside to let people behind me get their tickets while I dealt with the form.

When I'd finished filling in the form, I waited until the customer currently at the counter had finished, and then stepped forward to hand the form over. The guy who was next in line looked a bit put-out, and said "There's a queue," indignantly.

"Yes," I said, "and I was ahead of you in the queue, but I had to fill in a form, so I stepped aside to do that, and now I've finished, so I've come back."

I said this perfectly civilly, thinking he must have simply not noticed what was going on ahead of him while he waited in the queue, but while I was still talking, he talked over me, saying "CALM DOWN," loudly and slowly, as if he was talking to some kind of deranged psychopath on the verge of a murderous rampage.

Really, I was perfectly calm until he said that, but being interrupted, and talked down to, and vaguely threatened, even, made me a lot less calm, and it took all of my self-control to not yell "I AM CALM!" at him, in a deliberately ironic but still quite shouty kind of a way. So I said nothing at all and just ignored him.

Patronising git.

4: Rise of the Silver Surfer

2007-06-28T21:01:04Z

Silver Surfer was pretty good, I thought. It's a PG-rated comic book movie, and behaves as such, but it's a good one.

Lots of bonus points for the Surfer himself being exactly how I remember him from my Dad's old comic books; origin, appearance, manner, all present and correct.

xXx

2007-06-25T14:40:12Z

xXx: I got it for £2 from the supermarket bargain bucket, on the grounds that I've never seen it but I always meant to, and, you know, only two quid!

Having seen it I genuinely feel that it wasn't in fact worth anything like £2. It was just a series of things exploding, for two hours. Things exploding are fine, and indeed I was adequately entertained for the first hour, but after that, I really started to miss those things called "characters" and "plot" that I have come to expect from movies, and became extremely bored.

It's a shame, because it starts well, with a tuxedo-wearing Bond-style spy getting his arse handed to him by a load of tattooed thugs and the agency concluding that they need "a new type of agent," which would be a perfectly fine way to start a film if they'd gone on to follow it up with an actual film rather than the aforementioned series of explosions.

Radio fame

2007-06-05T12:23:51Z

I was on BBC Radio London. It was a phone-in on the topic of the healing power of prayer.

Pirates 3

2007-05-30T12:47:01Z

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End had approximately four good moments scattered throughout three hours of mostly uninteresting nonsense.

Too much wrong with it to go into really, but one particular complaint - Davy Jones, the terrifying villain of the second movie, is unceremoniously reduced to an utterly pathetic blustering drip. There's a bit where he knocks a cup of tea out of someone's hand. Oooooh, scary. That's like having Darth Vader give someone a Chinese burn.

My Dæmon!

2007-05-16T11:43:52Z

So, on the one hand I got an Osprey, which is cool, but on the other hand, apparently I am "modest and humble", which, well, I don't know, does that sound like me?

28 Weeks Later

2007-05-16T08:05:30Z

Saw 28 Weeks Later last night. Still recovering.

I tend to be a little bit easily spooked when it comes to horror movies, and so, it turns out, I really shouldn't have gone to see 28 Weeks Later. It was much, much too horrible for me. I suspect there was probably a good movie in there if for some reason you like seeing prolonged gruesome violence, but, seriously, things happened that I really didn't need to see. Indeed, many of them I did not see, because I looked away.

No more horror movies for me.

Man of Mode

2007-03-03T17:29:17Z

I saw Man of Mode last night at the National Theatre in London and it was excellent. Highly recommended to anyone who can get to it. The cheapest tickets are £10 which is an absolute steal; you do have to sit in the narrow seats with no arm rests, but they're right at the front, ten quid, what a bargain.

It's a Restoration comedy. For the first two or three minutes I felt like the olde worlde language might be a problem but then I tuned in. The play was hilarious. Not in a "oh how terribly clever" kind of way but in a "laughing all the way through" kind of way. Highly recommended (just in case that wasn't already clear).

Happy birthday to me

2007-01-17T10:07:21Z

Here are some pictures from my birthday party, hooray!

(click on the images to see larger versions)

Movie reviews

2006-12-22T11:54:14Z

Stranger than fiction: Clever and witty and touching and happy and sad. Also, Dustin Hoffman's in it. I liked it a lot.

Pan's Labyrinth: Pretty good. Less time spent in fantasy land than I had expected. Time spent in reality even more brutal than I expected, and I'd been told it was brutal. My hypersensitivity to overlong movies kicked in very early, and I spent the first hour or so wishing the thing would pick up the pace a bit, but the last third of the movie seemed to move along nicely. Some great moments, and fine performances, but I don't think it really spoke to me, somehow. I don't feel inclined to rave about it as some (all?) critics have.

tenminjoe @ 2006-11-27T12:53:00

2006-11-27T12:53:59Z

As the mornings get darker, I wish to alert you all to something I wrote a little while ago about dawn simulators, not just because it's brilliantly written, but because it truly does make my winter so much happier, and I want you all to be happy too.

Movie reviews

2006-11-13T21:34:21Z

The Prestige - Firstly, the poster I see everywhere is rubbish. The movie's excellent, though - a couple of 19th Century stage magicians have a grudge against each other and, er, lots of stuff happens. One of those "plotty" films that I love so much, plus I love magic, so, you know, sold.

The Departed - Pretty good, Marky Mark is excellent but not in it enough, stays remarkably close to the original (Infernal Affairs) including lots of key scenes replicated almost identically. The "bad guy pretending to be a cop" character's motivation is different though, and the ending is a bit different to match. Also, right, Leonardo DiCaprio's face is really annoying. Overall, very good, but I think Infernal Affairs was better, really.

Firefox 2.0 problem

2006-10-25T15:39:44Z

When I select some text, and do right-click to select "search google for selection", then OH NO, now it doesn't necessarily use google; it uses whatever search engine I have currently selected up in the search toolbar. I keep searching wikipedia and the IMDB for things by mistake. ANNOYING. Anyone figured out how to fix that yet? I want it to always use google for the "selection" search, regardless of what I do with the toolbar search.

I ♥ Huckabees

2006-10-25T12:19:36Z

I was expecting this to be a marmite movie, a love-it-or-hate-it thing, but as it was I thought it was quite fun, without actually loving it.

I'm pretty much game for anything with Dustin Hoffman in it I think.

Decepticons, follow me!

2006-08-13T19:35:15Z

This may be the greatest Transformer in the history of time, and he will be mine!

films again

2006-08-13T19:31:16Z

Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story. Weird, clever, funny, liked it.

Infernal Affairs. Excellent, twisty, cops vs Triads thriller. Took four of us to keep track of the plot but that's alright. Currently in the process of being remade in Hollywood, starring Jack Nicholson, amongst others. Trailer for the Hollywood version looks alright, actually, save perhaps Jack Nicholson being very very Jack Nicholson-ish.

The Recruit. This film appeared to think it was an excellent twisty thriller but seeing it the day after Infernal Affairs made it abundantly clear that it was not. Oh well.

Zoolander

2006-08-01T12:56:07Z

There's a newly free film channel in the UK (FilmFour), so I'm spending a lot of time in front of the telly these days.

Zoolander - Pretty funny. My favourite bit was when his idiot buddies are frolicking in the sun, spraying petrol on each other.

Some friends are coming over to watch "Infernal Affairs" tomorrow night, looking forward to that.

Duck Soup

2006-07-30T19:31:16Z

Saw the ol' Marx Brothers flick Duck Soup today. Passed the time, but it shows its age (unsurprisingly). A few good laughs scattered around in it though - my favourite:

"When were you born?"

"I can't remember, I was just a little baby."

Film catch-up

2006-07-25T12:13:29Z

I got behind on these somehow, quick catch-up:

X-Men 3: Surprisingly good, largely because Ian McKellan carries it.

Thank You For Smoking: Pretty good, but not great. Funny, but not nearly as dark as I was hoping or as some reviewers seem to think it is.

The Island: Really, really stupid. An insult to my intelligence. And thus bad. Nice effects though.

Pirates 2: Not as good as the first one, really suffers badly from not having a proper ending, but quite a lot of fun along the way. Bloom and Knightley still can't act, Depp is still hilarious.

Superman Returns: I really liked it, but I am, arguably, a total sucker for that kind of thing. There are pictures in my Mum's photo album of the day I refused to change out of my Superman outfit before heading to school.

Takeshis': Maybe if you're a die-hard Takeshi fan this is terribly clever and knowing and witty, but I've only seen a couple of his things and it was largely total nonsense to me.

Final Destination 3: Pretty rubbish, really. The series peaked with the second installment, I guess. It's weird how FD2 was able to be a really fun film by simply taking all the good stuff out of FD1 and doing more of it, and yet FD3 somehow doesn't make the effort.

Capote: Hard going at times but excellent.

VoIP

2006-06-10T10:50:26Z

I've just replaced my ADSL with cable internet.

Previously, I was forced to have a BT landline so that I could have ADSL over it, despite not having any burning need for a landline. Now that I don't need it for ADSL, I'm wondering if I can replace the landline with some kind of VoIP trickery.

I resent paying BT £10.50/month for a landline that I hardly ever use (and which, incidentally, has intermittent crackly interference on it, despite my attempts to get such repaired).

All I need is the ability to make calls to a landline or a mobile at sane rates, so that I can talk to my parents for half an hour without it being expensive, or chat to friends on mobiles without calling from my own mobile at 35p/minute.

The odd thing is that my initial thought was "Yay I will free myself from the tyranny of BT!" and then it turns out BT offer a VoIP thing ("Broadband Talk") for £3/month that lets you talk to landlines for free and to mobiles for reasonable rates. You even get an incoming number, but it's got a weird "05" prefix. Anyway, incoming number is beside the point, the idea is people will call my mobile and if I want to chat to them I'll call them back.

Drawbacks of BT's thing - 12 month contract, requires me to pay £30 up front for a magic box. So, total cost for first year not a great saving on the landline, but quite a lot cheaper in the long run (assuming they continue to offer the service, etc).

There seem to be various "IP Telephones" available which I think one could in theory configure to work with any VoIP provider that offers SIP (the standard VoIP protocol thingy). They're quite expensive (~£50 ish) but maybe once I had one of those I could keep using it for years and years, versus BT's proprietary box thingy which they might stop supporting.

So, the basic goals:

i) Don't want to have to turn my PC on to make a phone call (rules Skype out I think - even the various "Skype Handsets" all seem to be designed to plug into a PC that's running Skype).

ii) Want to be able to call landlines/mobiles at reasonable rate.

iii) Want to pay significantly less than £10/month for this.

Any thoughts?

Brick

2006-05-28T10:38:58Z

Saw Brick last night and it was excellent.

Kind of a Chinatown-esque film noir thingy, only all the characters are in high school. It's not like the movie goes on about it though ("oh, look, they're in school, how delightfully witty"), it's just a kind of unusual setting for an excellent detective story. Twisty story, too. I really like having to concentrate to follow the plot; such a nice change from the average movie where the ending is a foregone conclusion.

Beautifully shot, witty, never a dull moment. Highly recommended.

geekery of the weekery

2006-05-21T22:32:49Z

The BBC offer loads of radio shows on their "Listen Again" page, which is all very lovely and everything, but I have no desire whatsoever to listen to radio shows whilst sat in front of my computer.

What I want is to listen to them on my iPod. Turns out the BBC do offer a very limited set of shows as podcasts (Mark Kermode's film reviews are worth anyone's time, and "Digital Planet" is interesting too if you like that sort of thing) but the rest of the stuff is only accessible via the streaming from Listen Again, almost certainly for copyright reasons. Theoretically, the Listen Again stuff isn't a "download" - you're not supposed to be able to save it, just to listen "live".

Of course, with the right tools, almost anything is possible, and so, ahah, I solved the problem. I wrote a perl script which downloads the shows I want, converts them to MP3s, and then publishes them as podcasts on my local webserver, so I can subscribe to them in iTunes just like any other podcast. Hooray!

Having done this, of course, I find out that "Just a Minute", "The News Quiz", and "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" are all off air at the moment. But they'll be back. And I'll be READY.

The Sultan's Elephant

2006-05-06T15:34:31Z

Anyone in London who has not yet been to see the gigantic mechanical elephant that's currently wandering around: I urge you to do so.

Here are the details of its movements.