Alasdair

No, I am in fact off to Scotland for a long weekend. See some of you there, I hope. The rest of you, try not to break the place while I'm gone.

I have seen it, therefore I must share my opinion with you all. That's how these things work.

So, yeah, very nearly as good as everyone said. Well, everyone whose opinions retained some sense of perspective - anyone claiming it was a work of legendary cinema and "OMG best Mo!vie evaaaar!!!1!" obviously needs a slap and some heavy medication, because they're plainly over-excitiable. Best superhero movie I can think of, though. Ledger's performance is stunningly good - he is absolutely the best Joker seen outside of the comic, and never mine stealing his scene, he picks up the entire movie, wraps it in a bright red bow, and walks off with it under his arm, whistling nonchalantly - but I'm honestly not sure about Oscar worthy. I think he might get it on the grounds of being very bloody good, and dead, but if he'd lived, I'm sure the Academy would have felt he had better performances to come, and largely ignored this one.

I could have done without the car chase in the middle. I've never understood why every bloody Bat-movie has a Batmobile sequence, because (and I admit, I don't read the Bat-comics closely) I can't recall it getting a serious outing in the comics in that sort of context. It's just sort of a thing Batman has to get around, you know? Yes, they made it work as much more than an action sequence, but still - every Bat movie, a car chase. And car chases just aren't that interesting. Maybe it's just me. Anyway, moving on.

Gary Oldman and Aaron Eckhart are also predictably superb, and I'm going to swerve here, because one of my criticisms of the movie is that Batman feels a little hollow this time around, and I think I've just worked out why Bale-as-Batman felt a little underwhelming this time out - all the emotional weight is carried by Wayne, Gordon and Dent. Whenever Batman's about he feels kind of like a void - a black-armoured violence machine. I can see it's part of the "forces of nature" parallel that's being set up between Batman and the Joker, but the problem is that the Joker is so scene-stealing that Batman's left looking a bit lacking in response. Also, it's a man in a rubber bat suit, and look, I have suspended my disbelief from a very high ceiling, and I know what I'm watching and everything, but I say again: a man in a rubber bat suit. And I don't care how good the actor is - when all he's got to emote with is best described as "some of his chin", you're never going to get his best work.

Anyway, yeah: It's a really, really good superhero movie. I don't think there's been better, and there's certainly never been a better Bat-movie. Go. I know I'll be going again.

• Guinea pig festival
  Aww, lookit the little fluffy Guinea Pigs. So cute! So fluffy! In their funny outfits! It’s not often the Torygraphy impresses me, but I do love the way this set of photos is structured…
  (tags: photography peru festival)

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

Get up from desk to respond to courier arriving, removing headphones as I do so, discarding them on desk without really looking.

Return to desk to discover that whatever way I flung them down, they have landed in my mug of coffee, where they have been marinading nicely for the last five minutes.

• Party laser blinds ravers
  On the one hand: poor bastards. On t’other, oh my god, the jokes…
  (tags: russia news gurningidiots)

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

• Steven Shaviro on Mark Millar’s WANTED
  One of the few people I know who really has Twitter cracked. His stream is made up of short critiques and quick ideas, usually very sharp and on target. This is a good example, neatly summarising the key problem with the work. He’s well worth reading.
  (tags: comic criticism twitter)
• Drug use in the UK: ten drug users tell their stories | Grauniad
  Interesting cross section of society. The overall view skews a bit anti, but when you’re talking about smack and crack in places, it’s going to be hard not to, I guess.
  (tags: drugs interesting uk)
• Dex Summarizes Dr Horrible So I Don’t Have To
  Short: it’s a light puff piece that is the following things: predicatable, slightly amusing, and elevated by the actors rather than the writing. Please breathe out now, over-excited nerds. Go and watch something, worth getting agitated over.
  (tags: whedon dex criticism)
• Open the Future: Needed: Game Masters/Community Leaders for Superstruct
  I’m going to spend an hour or two thinking about this tonight, and see if I can come up with a reasonable forecast/application. I imagine the other applicants will be better qualified, but it’d be a fun thing to even try to do.
  (tags: futurism games)

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

I have had a cold all fucking week. I could have done without it in quite a big way. The worst would appear to be over, and my nose has stopped streaming and I am no long feeling quite so much like twice-warmed shit, but I am in total sinus agony at the moment - I am congested to fuck, and no matter how often I blow my nose, I cannot seem to relieve the agonising pressure around my eyes.

Does anyone have any suggestions for things I can do to relieve said pressure, even if it's just a particularly effective brand of decongestant or method of administering it? Because right now, drilling holes in the front of my face seems like a very attractive option.

• Battersea Power Station - A New Energy for London
  Well, I know what I’m doing on Saturday.
  (tags: architecture london photography)

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

OK, for those of you who haven't started gouging your eyes out at the very idea...

What, *everyone*?

Yeah, OK. You can put 'em back in, I'm only kidding. I'm not naked. (As far as you know, anyway.) But a few people have asked about my tattoos recently (since I got my latest, unsurprisingly), and since you're either very distant, or not someone I'm comfortable being naked in front of (read: another human being), I thought I'd post a few photos. You will see nothing to appall you in any of them - they're all cropped to show off nothing but the tattoo.

( Right Arm )

( Heart )

( Left Thigh )

And yes, I'm already planning the next one. I know what I want it to say, and if past experience is anything to go by, I'll wake up in a year or two knowing exactly what style I want and where I want it.

• Rare ‘Star-Making Machine’ Found In Distant Universe
  Just read that headline a few times. Go on. Now: that’s not science-fiction. It’s, y’know, a real thing. Tell me that’s not enough awesome for a week, right there. That’s cheered me right up, that has.
  (tags: science space stars awesome)

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

• Graffiti artist Banksy unmasked … as a former public schoolboy from middle-class suburbia
  I feel unclean linking to the Dail Heil, especially for a non-story like this “rebellious artist is middle class public schoolboy shocker”, but I remain a fan of Banksy’s work, and will be interested to see what impact this has on his future efforts.
  (tags: banksy art graffiti)
• The Magistrate’s Blog: Deliberate Misinformation
  Counterbalance - here’s the sort of crappy sensationalist headline that the Express likes to run with, about the decaying state of out society “Buglars to be let off” type stuff, being shredded by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
  (tags: law media)

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

The only thing the iPhone has been missing, as far as I'm concerned is a decent To Do list application. On my desktops and laptop, I use Things, which is just about the best To Do app I've found. I could sing it's praises for quite some time.

So I have been eagerly awaiting the 2.0 upgrade, and the app store, because I have been waiting for Things to be available on my phone, making it truly The Promised Phone. So after a certain amount of impatient waiting, I upgraded my iPhone at lunch, and swiftly paid the six quid for Things on my phone.

The fucking thing does not appear to sync with my Mac. It's a completely standalone app. Sure, I now have a decent To Do app on my phone. But if I can't keep in sync with a master list on a desktop, it's really only going to be of limited use. Bollocks.

• Anarchogeek: The ascendancy of Hacker News & the gentrification of geek news communities
  Good metaphor. I get my geek news through blogs instead of community-type sites for this sort of reason - the window where the site is gentrified enough that the a-geeks don’t annoy me but the masses and the attendant noise/churn haven’t arrived is small.
  (tags: internet culture community social)

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

• Warren Ellis » The Patchwork Years
  This is an idea I want to revisit. I know a number of very creative people, and see no reason why a bunch of us should not get together and make something clever.
  (tags: blogging content)
• British Journal of Photography - Home Secretary green lights restrictions on photography
  Very very angry now.
  (tags: evil_empire photography uk)

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

And I feel less rubbish than I did at the weekend, but still not yet human again. Apologies to the various social things I didn't make it to, but staying in and shifting the damn cold was rather more important to me. I still have lungs full of mucus, but at least my head is more or less unfogged. Which is good, as I have a load of stuff to organise this week.

• Every looked at anything you’d prefer not to admit to on You Tube?
  Well, now Viacom is going to know about it. This, right here is why Google is dangerous. They may try not to do evil, but they can be compelled to hand over vast amounts of their oh-so-nice-honest data to people who are much more evil.
  (tags: evil_empire viacom youtube lawsuit)

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

Hancock: bland. Funny in places, more-or-less the right side of sentimental in others and satisfyingly explodey. Will Smith is, well, Will Smith, but in the quite watchable way, rather than the in need of a slap way. It's not a bad film. It's just another bland Hollywood action film without much bite.

Weekend: I feel slightly like I'm coming down with a cold. Obviously, I'm not, because I have stuff to do, but I've been feeling a bit run down, and unusually wheezy for the last two days, to the point that I'm actually carrying my inhaler on me, which I generally forget to do. Still, I think a weekend of not-doing-very-much might be a good idea - nothing that involves leaving the house other than maybe a trip to the shops. I've got organising of stuff to do anyway.

What're your plans for the weekend?

• Punitive psychiatry in the Soviet Union - Wikipedia
  Doing a bit of research. There may be a few links in this vein coming.
  (tags: ussr research psychiatry experiments)
• OSNAZ - Wikipedia
  I won’t bother to commenting on these, they’re just for me, not stuff I think it’s worth other people looking at, unless you’re facsinated by the nasty bits of Soviet Russia.
  (tags: ussr research spies specialforces)
• Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services - Wikipedia
  (tags: ussr research poison)
• Pyotr Grigorenko - Wikipedia
  (tags: ussr research)
• Oleg Kalugin - Wikipedia
  (tags: ussr research)
• A Brief Numerology Of London
  Diamond Geezer explains some of the significance of the numbers 1-30 in the context of London
  (tags: london numbers reference)

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

At around 5 am this morning, I semi-woke, looked at the clock, and then "realised" (in the way that one does when one is still mostly asleep, and actually still dreaming a bit) that it was Saturday, December 17th, (not even a real date this year) and that I had just begun a week off work, in the run up to Christmas. I fell back into my pillows and blissful unconsciousness with a grateful sigh.

So the alarm clock came as something of a nasty shock.

• Google Buries Central London In Rice As Part Of World’s Worst Publicity Stunt
  It’s possible I have become confused about the metaphor here. Still, this is worth a look if you’d like to get an idea of the scale of Google’s operation. It’s slightly terrifying. And full of rice.
  (tags: google visualization funny)
• Image Fulgurator
  Someone get me one of these, at once. Not to screw with other people’s photography, you understand. But screwing with my own photos sounds like fun to me.
  (tags: graffiti hack photography art)
• SkillShare Forum - CSS Beauty - Vanilla plugins…
  Useful set of plugins to add features to to Vanilla forums.
  (tags: plugins vanilla)

This entry was originally published at my workblog.