Jo Ramsay

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:52:03 GMT

Had enough of superhero films yet?

I keep thinking that I have, but then they come out with more that I want to see. I do want to catch The Dark Knight.

Bex also pointed me to this trailer for The Watchmen, due out next year. (This is the high res version)

Rob watched it and said "Perfect!" a lot and "They're going to do it right!"

I said, "Oo Robert Downey Junior."

edited to add: It isn't actually RDjr, but another actor who looks a lot like him.

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:16:13 GMT

Yay, bag returned to its rightful place at my side. I still feel like a dork but a very lucky one.

Lost Property at Waterloo were great. They'd cut up all my cards and put them into a little plastic bag inside the bag, and also counted up all my spare change and removed it (they gave me a chit for the money which I turned in at the ticket office to get the cash back).

And karma says that I spent some of this weekend at Waterloo, so I'm going with Vick to see Mamma Mia next weekend :) Abba ftw.

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:22:29 GMT

Phoned up lost property at Waterloo just now and described my bag and where I had left it and what was in it. The guy went off to check and .... found it.

Off to Waterloo now to go collect it! (Hopefully)

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:26:19 GMT

Who is the dork that left their bag on the train today?

Yup, twas me. Call it "the iPod's revenge". Have changed locks, reported missing cards and passport (don't ask). I think it's the actual bag I will miss most though. Calling Waterloo Lost Property on Monday but I don't hold out much hope.

On the bright side, I'd forgotten to take my mobile phone with me (again) so that lives to annoy me another day.

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:11:32 GMT

iPhone 3G launch is a failure. Oh, I never saw that coming :)

All the iPhone fuss

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:20:15 GMT

Argh, anyone else getting sick of all the iPhone hype? Yes, it's a neat but overpriced device with a very nice UI.

No it is not worldchanging that lots of people have written apps for it. The iPhone is still tiny with respect to number of units sold. It makes up a very very small part of the smartphone market. That means that there are millions of other non-iPhones out there with similar (or better) capabilities that people have also written lots and lots of third party software for.

Yes, that includes games. And for the record, I would much much prefer to play games on the DS because that's what it's for.

I am getting very tired of the media struggling to get as far up Apple's arse as it can. I expect the hype will lead to more being sold but right now, it is not that big of a deal. And I applaud Apple for being able to sell luxury smartphones in a recession. I think Square-Enix's game for the iPod is much more interesting. (ie. The iPod being genuinely huge in the market and not just fluffed up by the press.)

As always, it's iTunes that's the big story, not the devices it serves. And the fact that Apple has managed to railroad all of their users into using it, and corralled the third party vendors into doing that too. And it has a nice and easily accessible UI and is easy to buy things from.

Should you publish your rejection letters?

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 05:06:41 GMT

What if they are racist?

The link is to a story about a scifi writer who had a story rejected with some strong anti-muslim comments (one of the characters in the story was a fanatical terrorist so the editor assumed that the author has RL views hating on muslims, agreeing with his own.)

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:42:42 GMT

I really enjoyed the last episode of Doctor Who last week. Yes, it was a big crazy mess with gaping plotholes but damn if that man can't spin a story. And I did have tears in my eyes at the end.

But check out this blog for a funny summary, with screenshots.

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 04:46:10 GMT

There's a nice Q&A session with Russell T Davies on the BBC side at the moment. He doesn't give anything away though (although he won't be writing any more episodes.)

They also have an article discussing how spoilers are kept hidden.

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:12:45 GMT

As part of a study to do with violence against women, all members of the welsh assembly were sent a survey to fill in.

3 of them reported that they had been raped at some point in their lives but not reported it.

So why did the BBC title the story "Three Welsh Politicians 'raped'" (with inverted commas around the word rape)? Was it not really rape? What are they trying to imply here exactly?

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:38:28 GMT

Still on the theme of computer games, here's a really good interview with the devs of Fallout 3.

The reason I've been reading so much computer games news lately is because of the Warhammer Online blog I'm writing with bexfiles. Its been really good fun and I still can't quite believe we're getting 300ish hits a day.

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:47:05 GMT

Went to see Candide yesterday at the ENO. The production was absolutely amazing, and somehow, I still don't know quite how, but they managed to turn it into a relevant parable for the modern age.

I think I felt my jaw drop for the scene where 4 ex-presidents/prime ministers (Tony Blair, George Bush, and a russian and a french one I couldn't name but they had full masks on so I should have been able to) in their swimming trunks were floating around on inflatable beds and singing about how they wanted a less stressful life.

edited to add: Banned from La Scala for being 'too edgy'

Then they reinstated it the day after.

The director commented: "Everyone's going to sit back and think about this," the director said "I'm interested in making sure we have the best of all possible Candides at La Scala." *rimshot*

If you get the chance, go see it.

In other news .... DIABLO III. I have a soft spot for D2 because I used to play it a lot with Rob when he first moved in with me, before we got engaged. And I'm so stupidly excited about this sequel :)

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:44:20 GMT

Woken up this morning by very loud and very bored cat who wanted to play. She's not normally that loud.

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:26:15 GMT

Fan of Battlestar Galactica? Check out Tor's free ebook this month -- it's Battlestar Galactica by Jeffrey Carver

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:41:36 GMT

Oo, Nokia bought Symbian. (They used to be majority owners but this move means they bought the other companies out.)

Aaand, they're going to make it the basis of a royalty free platform. And Vodaphone, Samsung, AT&T and TI are all on board.

It's interesting at this point to note who isn't. Sony-Ericsson (who have Symbian phones out at the moment), Motorola, and of course Apple (because they have their own o/s) aren't named.

And the elephant in the closet is google's much-vaunted but little seen open-source platform, Android.

I wonder how the ex-Symbian owner companies feel about having Symbian in their phones now. To be fair, Nokia always did account for the majority of symbian phones in the market. I remember murmurs that they were planning to ditch it in favour of open source solutions, I guess that won't happen now so symbian is pretty secure.

Doctor Who

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:59:31 GMT

If you don't mind spoilers, check out the second trailer here for this week's episode.

I think Russell Davies has been in fine form recently, loved the last couple of episodes. He really does get something special out of the actors.

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:38:59 GMT

First day of the new gateway system at the CAB. I had volunteered to help on reception and it was very very hectic indeed. I was glad that I was there and I think they all were also.

We had loads of people in, had to explain that we didn't have a walk -in service for interviews any more, give out lots of forms to fill in, sit down with several people to talk through their issues and help with the forms, sit down with a couple of others to show them how to use the computers, check loads of quick queries with the supervisor so I could check we were referring people to the right places.

But ... it was fun. I hope all the people who came in felt that even if they didn't get what they had hoped for, there were people on reception who took their details and their queries and made sure that they were understood.

I was commenting to the other receptionist that we should try to make a few notes on what worked and what didn't, since it was new to everyone. So I redesigned the form we had to use to tick off who had been through reception and for what, and wrote down a couple of suggestions to make to the bureau manager. (The main one is that I think we need at least one experienced adviser running 5-10 min gateway interviews at reception to keep the load off the supervisor.)

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 06:28:13 GMT

For all the adipose fans ... you know you wanted some

Off to try to create an adipose in Spore!

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:10:03 GMT

Is this the beginning of the end for cancer?

I don't recall having thought this before but having read that .... I wonder if we will have an effective cure for cancer within my lifetime.

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:06:38 GMT

Walked past the Christian Science shop on my way through Reading this morning and they had a big article in the window with the headline, "Prayer paves a practical way out of consumer debt." (if you want to read the article, google that headline, but I'm not doing them the favour of linking to it.)

No. Really it doesn't.

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:00:52 GMT

The free trial Spore Creature Creator is available for download. You can use it to create your own cute creatures, animate them, upload them to the spore site to compare with other players, etc.

And it's kind of fun. I am currently trying to make a creature that does not look like a potato with legs.

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 04:23:57 GMT

Ads for GenCon UK are up. They've dropped the prices this year and not charging for playing games either -- apparently due to the outcry last year.

There will be lots of D&D4e running and they are also going to have a board games library again (which we enjoyed last year).

There is also a GenCon pub quiz, which may be terrifyingly hard.

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:22:46 GMT

Word of the Week: pander

Death of the Week: poisoned from kissing a poisoned skull, then forced to watch your beloved spouse engaging in adultery with your bastard son, then stabbed to death gleefully by someone yelling "treason! treason!" and kicking you in the gut. They don't write em like that any more!

Went to see The Revengers Tragedy on Wednesday with fechtbuch and wascallyweasel and some of their friends. We really enjoyed it, the production was very lively (which was probably good as I have a gut feel that the play itself may not have stood all that well on its own) and the actors were giving it some welly.

But every time someone referred to the title character as a pander, my mind kept throwing up images of cuddly black and white bears.

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:09:08 GMT

Excerpts from the Fighting Monsters blog are being published in Community Care Magazine soon. It is an awesome blog which discusses some of the day to day issues faced as a social worker, and social policy issues around them.

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:10:58 GMT

Is the £100 iPhone on the horizon for Christmas? And would I want one anyway? (no.)

Don't get overexcited about this. If they do it, expect to be tied in to a very expensive monthly sub for a very long time indeed.

I gotta say, if I was a manufacturer of expensive luxury gadgets and I saw a recession coming on, I'd be looking to sell cheapie options too.