It's kind of fitting that the last PotW of the year is another late one; at least it's in the right year. I'm staying with the theme of "my sister puts up far too many decorations", but at least they're tasteful. This particular decoration is on the kissing bough hanging up at just the right height for me to smack my head on it every time I walk past. We've had several adventures with these in recent years, especially as I've slept in the same room in which they hang. Many's the time that I've looked up and wondered whether I'd be able to get out of the way if this heavy ball of holly and ivy decided to plummet towards my head.
Luckily, though, that's yet to happen, so I've taken the opportunity to go Christmassy again. We may have as long as possible to go until next Christmas, and I may therefore be about to re-enter Grinch mode. So I think I'll make the most of it. Have a great New Year's Eve, people - see you tomorrow for a review of the year.
Monday, 31 December 2007
Picture of the Week: #52
Monday, 24 December 2007
Best if he tells it in his own words.
68Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people.
69 He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David
70 (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
71 salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us—
72 to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant,
73 the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
74 to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear
75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
76And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
77 to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins,
78 because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
79 to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.
Merry Christmas.
Sunday, 23 December 2007
Picture of the Week: #51
I know this picture's not very festive, but I have an annoying tendency to forget my camera every time I'm going off to do something Christmassy. Luckily, I think this should at least fall under the "interesting" category.
These four photos are all of the same table. The table in question is in the waiting room at my local train station, which is where I was yesterday on my way back to Oxford for the day. First up, it's a weird place to put it. There's no apparent reason why there should be a table in the waiting room - there's nothing on the table, and no chairs around it. It seems to be just taking up space. Secondly, although I'm no judge of these things it looks practically antique, and leaving it among the commuters seems like a poor idea, to say the least.
Friday, 21 December 2007
Today, a simple blog post. Tomorrow, THE WORLD!
There's been something of a glut of superhero movies over the past few years. On the whole, this has been a bad thing - comic books thrive on having short, simply-told stories in each issue, which makes it a bit difficult to both introduce the character and tell that story in the same film. (This is, incidentally, why sequels to superhero films can be better than the original. I found X-Men 3 to be much more fun than the original movie, largely because we didn't have to be walked through the interminable backstories of what felt like fifty different characters individually.)
One of the good things about superhero films is that they generally have the I-want-to-be-them factor. All it takes is for one character to have an incredibly cool ability, and suddenly the film has an effect way beyond its running time, as the audience gets to imagine what they would do with that ability. The film producers are almost certainly aware of this (it's the key to selling vast quantities of merchandise), but this doesn't explain why they always give certain types of power to certain roles in the film. There are some pretty subtle reasons for this - I'll go through them one by one.
(By the way, I'm aware that most of these creative decisions are actually made by the writer of the original comic book. I'm focusing on the films because my experience of comic books is precisely zero.)
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
Picture of the Week: #50
Yes, I know, this one's very late too. The reason for this is so unbelievable that I'm not even going to bother putting it on the Internet - suffice to say that I was planning to take a photo much like this last week anyway, so I reckon it'll do.
My family would probably be very quick to tell me that I'm rather Grinch-like when it comes to Christmas. I cannot stand Christmas movies, or Christmas specials of otherwise acceptable TV shows in which everyone ends up gathered around the Christmas tree looking misty-eyed. When I was living in Oxford last year, my house had absolutely nothing Christmassy about it. Contrast that with my sister's student house, which sported a tree and little lights everywhere, and large Lego toys scattered over the floor.
Unsurprisingly, it's also my sister who's decorated the tree this year. For the past few years she's been running the operation with ruthless efficiency, stringing popcorn chains instead of tinsel and allowing nothing within half a mile of the branches unless it's either a) red, b) gold or c) vaguely rustic-looking. To top it all off, there are currently slices of orange drying on the radiator, ready to add that extra fruity note to the decorations.
Much as I mock, though, I have to admit - it does look very good. My Grinchy exterior may just be melted by the time Christmas Day rolls around.
Thursday, 13 December 2007
Male perfumes all smell of industrial alcohol mixed with old leather, for some reason. I'm not really tempted.
The Christmas season is approaching (some would say that it's been here for the past few weeks), and it's amazing how much changes to reflect that. Obviously shops start putting up expensive yet oddly tasteless displays, and the radio starts playing "All I Want For Christmas Is You" on endless repeat, but there are some other, more subtle effects.
(Incidentally, it was around this time of year in 2005 that Madonna began following me around. Seriously, "Hung Up" was playing in every single shop I went into when on a Christmas shopping expedition. It made a bad experience considerably worse.)
One of these effects can be seen in TV adverts. For most of the year, there's a decent spread of different types of adverts. There's plenty of cars, food, clothes and so on being constantly offered for our consideration, and even if they're not very good adverts they're usually at least comprehensible.
At Christmas, however, things suddenly change, as the perfume market goes into overdrive. Apparently, it's around now that the perfume companies start to realise that they don't stand a chance of recouping all their losses over the year (don't believe me? When was the last time you bought perfume because you wanted to buy it, rather than as a gift for someone else?) and immediately hire an ad agency to remind everyone that now would be the perfect time to send a loved one the subtle message that they don't smell so good. Result: endless perfume ads, filling every advert break until the audience screams "ENOUGH with the perfume! Try to sell me a car or something!"
Sunday, 9 December 2007
Picture of the Week: #49
The more observant among you may have noticed that this isn't your average view-out-the-back-of-the-house photo. That's right, there's a tractor there.
Oh, and a large fluorescent yellow helicopter. More specifically, the Essex Air Ambulance. We get helicopters overhead quite a bit (I can recognise a military Chinook by sound alone), but I think this is the only time I've seen one in the field, and it's certainly the first time I've seen the Air Ambulance. There's quite a few of these around the country, and I think they're an awesome idea. They're certainly well-used - the Essex one claims to be in use 3-5 times per day, and must have saved countless lives so far. If and when I eventually start earning a regular income, I'll certainly be contributing to their £105,000 per month operating costs.
Helicopters in general are very odd things, really. Aeroplanes are strange enough, but at least there's something vaguely understandable about the idea of making something go fast along so that it will also go up. I've been re-reading Conan Doyle's classic The Lost World recently, and can't help but wonder what someone unfamiliar with helicopters would think if they had been watching when the ambulance lifted itself gently off the grass the other day, spun on the spot and drifted off over the trees. Perhaps they'd have described it in the same kind of style that Conan Doyle uses to describe his protagonist Malone's first view of dinosaurs - a monstrous beast, the ferocious blades on its upper surface beating furiously as it struggles into the sky.
Tuesday, 4 December 2007
All together now: Tooooooons. Games! EEEE-mail...
A brief word of warning: This post is going to be pretty much incomprehensible if you're unfamiliar with the source material that I'm talking about. Yes, more so than usual. Sorry.
Anyone who spends any more time than is absolutely necessary on the Internet is likely to have come across Homestar Runner at some point, even if just in passing. For a site without a vast amount in the way of content, and with zero advertising, this is pretty surprising. In fact, the entire site bucks the trend of almost everything else you'll find online - it hosts only Flash cartoons and games, all of which are created in-house, allows no user input whatsoever, and has retained the same basic design for years. Oh, and its creators make their living off it. Did I mention the complete lack of advertising?
So how does a firmly Web 1.0 site survive on a Web 2.0 internet? One possibility is that success simply begets success. HR has been running for over seven years now (for comparison, Google has been live for about eight), and consequently has a massive merchandise-purchasing fanbase. That kind of thing ends up being self-perpetuating. The other reason, and it's one that the site's fans would heartily agree with, is that the content is extremely good. Given the vast numbers of Flash cartoons floating around on the web, and their generally remarkably poor quality, it's refreshing to find a series full of well-animated and funny films and games.
Sunday, 2 December 2007
Picture of the Week: #48
As you may be able to tell from the large ship-like object in the background, this photo was taken by the sea. In Harwich, to be precise, one of the busiest container ports in the UK. The large, whale-tail-like object in the foreground is something that I didn't expect to see in such a modern trade centre; it's the end of an anchor, concreted into the ground at the seafront, right next to an old lighthouse (behind me when I took the photo).
Whenever something new and exciting comes along, there's a tendency to pay so much attention to that new thing that anything before it gets forgotten. This frequently leads to history repeating itself; no-one apparently learnt from Vietnam that it's a bad idea to pour troops into a situation from which there's no obvious exit, for example.
With that in mind, I really like the way that the people of Harwich have had the good sense to put something as simple and as important as an anchor in their midst, as a monument to the past; it's within sight of the vast Chinese container ships and the towering cranes, constantly yet quietly reminding everyone there that this is where it all came from. And, perhaps one day, all that will be left.
Saturday, 1 December 2007
Next stop, Vegas...or maybe not.
I've recently been introduced to Gpokr (a very Web 2.0 site, complete with diagonal stripes, lower case titles and a marked aversion to including all necessary vowels), which is essentially an online poker site. Now, I know that online poker is immensely addictive, destructive and illegal in a number of places. Happily, though, Gpokr doesn't use real money.
Although you might think that this takes away some of the atmosphere, I'm not sure there was very much to get rid of in the first place. Poker is the type of game that should really be played either in smoke-filled seedy bars, against people called "The Kid" or "Slow-Eye Johnson", or in exclusive Monte Carlo casinos against James Bond. Call me a purist if you like, but I don't really think you get the same feeling from clicking the "raise" button to put a .gif image of some chips onto a green oval. It's a similar story with the names of the players - I'm just not intimidated by someone called "xxxbiggCHIPwinnrxxx".
Not having real money does change one thing, of course - no-one really cares if they lose. It's not remotely unusual to see people going all-in on their first hand at a table and losing the lot, then suddenly and mysteriously appearing back at the same table with another $1,500 and doing it all over again. Having unlimited chip refills is probably mainly to blame, although the very many people with multiple accounts don't help either. It would make even the most generous person suspicious to see "sUpErPlAyEr-1" vanish, to be replaced seconds later by "sUpErPlAyEr-15"; it's the online equivalent of returning to the table with an extravagant moustache and saying "Pheel? Who ees thees Pheel? I am hees looong-loost cousin, Antonio!"
Still, it's a fun diversion for a while. It's also a great way of letting me know that I should never, ever take up professional gambling. How do I know this? Well, in roughly two weeks my total net losses have come out to $5,050.
Not a sound investment, really.
