Author: Ian

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Gravity

I went to see this film and was rather excited about it. When I go to the cinema I generally don’t watch the trailers. Most trailers seem to give too much away about the film and if you see them once then you don’t need to see them again. If it is a film of which I am already aware and am looking forward to then I won’t watch the trailer and I will continue to read my book (on the Kindle app). Occasionally there’s a trailer that makes me look up and Gravity was one like that. Firstly it’s in space and I like space stuff. Secondly it was directed by . This was enough to make me very excited. Since I first saw the trailer I have avoided seeing it advertised since, I don’t want to know any more about the film.

I was rather worried that my expectations for this film were going to be too high. I have seen a number of films where I have been overly looking forward to them and have ultimately been disappointed as the film didn’t live up to expectations.

I needn’t have worried.

The opening shot was awesome [literally]. The rest of the film was beautifully filmed. It looks just stunningly gorgeous. I even decided to see it in 3D and in the past this has tended to remove something from the film but this was really well done. I won’t write too much because the trailer is so minimal and I don’t want to give anything away up in this section. Basically, apart from some simple scientific issues, this film is absolutely brilliant. I’d even go see it again. I am happy with the scientific short-cuts, as the film would not have worked or flowed as well if it had been truly simulated.

Go see this film. I dare you to be disappointed.

SPOILER ALERT

 

 

 

 

 

A couple of errors I picked up on. You can’t get out of a space suit in about a minute. It takes about an hour to get the whole thing on so this was a little imperfect. When returning to Earth the astronauts have their backs to the ground, Bullock’s return was filmed in such a way as to imply she was heading face down, or facing the direction of motion. There’s more analysis over at Phil Plait’s blog pages at Slate.com

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Ender’s Game

Wow!

I have bought the book but will read it after seeing the film. I’m currently working my way through Ringworld by Larry Niven. Back to the film:

It was ace. I really enjoyed it. I didn’t know a great deal about it before I went. I’d had a small synopsis from a friend and so went with a complete open mind. I loved it. The visuals were really good and the story was rather excellent. Go and see it.

I’m trying desperately to not give anything away but for me there were two moments when my jaw hit the floor. I guess if you’ve read the book you’ll know what these are.

It was great.

 

I don’t like the descriptions by the press of it being Harry Potter in space. That’s not what it is about. It’s a story with a wonderful political background and reflects on the politics of the time. Whereas Harry Potter is just the latest in a long line of book series that sell lots, it a generational thing. Every generation has “their” Harry Potter, or Famous Five, or Swallows and Amazons. My main issue was that Ender looked like a young Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory and I had to work hard to remove that thought as I watched.

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Personal Air Conditioning

Last June I was in a new lecture theatre at the University of Kent in Canterbury. It was a nice room and well designed, apart from the positioning of the projector screens. One thing that I found surprising (and expensive) was the personal air blowing device. It’s either that or the designers have included some form of personal-gas-recovery-system to save attendees from other people’s smells!

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Such A Waste

I had a lovely time at a wedding in June or at least people tell me so, I don’t remember much of it at all. Anyway, the hotel room had sugar lumps for coffee and tea but each one was individually wrapped in plastic. What a waste!

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Who shall I address this too?

Yes, I know it’s grammatically incorrect. But that’s the point, read on dear Fooyah follower. I am sure that this is wrong and someone should be sacked for putting this on posters [if this poster is written correctly then tweet me or something and I’ll withdraw this post in shame]:

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The correct version of this is:

Who’s stolen our lions?

I’m never really sure who to blame in these situations. It’s a bit like the problem with sign writers. If they are given instructions telling them what to write and it’s grammatically incorrect do sign writers have a duty to correct the English or to put what the customer has written on a sign? It probably doesn’t matter as most people wouldn’t be bothered by something as trivial as a spelling mistake or grammar. But these things are important. There’s a proper way to write information to ensure that meaning is as accurate as possible.

Language is there so we can communicate effectively. What happens to society when newspapers are unable to write properly?

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H.G.

It was nice to see a plaque up on the side of a building in Baker Street that wasn’t dedicated to a fictional detective.

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I have to say that for half the time I was looking at this I had an image of H.G. from the television show Warehouse 13. A good programme.

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The Devil Is Female – Reaper

Reaper is a DJ whose music comes under the genres of aggrotech or hellectro. I like that sort of music and have done since I saw Combichrist play at Wembley Arena supporting Rammstein. The Benelux countries have some excellent things of which to be proud and this music style is one of them. What else would you expect from an area of land that has been conquered and fought over so often.

The Devil Is Female is an awesome album. I love it. The album cover is scary enough to make me feel uncomfortable – just the point of art (create emotion). The opening song is a good old dance-floor filler. Good beats and a simple repeated melody. The album makes the most spectacular turn upwards with the second song:
X-Junkie
The happy dance beat and melody underlie disturbing lyrics. I am not going to go into much detail here. You should listen to it. What you should most definitely not do is listen to the song on the tube with any women around you. Just listen on your own, somewhere.
Now, the album does include a number of remixes of X-Junkie and I can forgive that as the rest of this guy’s work is really good. Happy for him to indulge himself a little on this album.
Other highlights:
She Is A Devil And A Whore
190
Execution Of Your Mind

Hellectro isn’t for everyone. Thank goodness. I like how exclusive it is.

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Parking Signals

This Fooyah.net communication is to give some advice on how to give signals when someone else is parking their car. To me this seems an obvious thing to do, but so many people don’t do it so it needs explaining. This is partly made irrelevant by “parking sensors” but then I don’t really agree with them in the same way I don’t agree with automatic headlights. If you can’t park your car you shouldn’t be driving. I know technology is there to make life easier but let’s face facts: some people aren’t good enough to warrant owning a driving licence.

The Situation

You want to park in a tight spot and need someone to give you hand signals so you know where your car is in relation to other (fixed) objects, another car or fence post.

Bad picture of car parking

The Wrong Hand Signal Method

The person guiding you into your parking spot waves their hand backwards and forwards. This gives you, as the driver, absolutely no information and all the power and control is in the hands of a potential moron who is helping you park.

Bad Parking Signals

The Correct Hand Signal Method

This method relies on the helper being able to indicate distance by just looking at the gap but it gives you are driver information and the ability to control the situation. The hands are held apart roughly the same distance that is between your car and the obstruction. As a driver you now know distance and rate of closure. You, as the driver, can decide when you are close enough and also have overall control of the situation. This method should be taught to everyone.

Good Parking Signals

So, there you have it. How to give parking signals. I don’t even want to begin to explain what bumpers are for!

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Device – Device

This album is from the singer dude from Disturbed. Let’s face it, it sounds like a Disturbed album. It’s good. Not outstanding, but good.

He does have a song with a woman singing along with him. I don’t like that.

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Escape Plan

This film was better than the trailers would make out. It was quite good fun although had one MASSIVE and annoying misunderstanding of science. Stallone and Schwarzenegger were both quite entertaining and the whole film worked well. If you want 90 or so minutes of fun and a little plot then it’s well worth the time-investment.

SPOILER ALERT – Do not read any further unless you want to know!

The idea of a prison owned and run by very rich people is sensible enough. Prisons are already run by profit making private companies so I don’t have any issues with that. The main premise of the prison was to keep these people out of society (and to gain information from them). But, this seemed a little expensive. If these people are as bad as thought then it would be massively cheaper just to kill them. There’s no point in keeping them alive (unless you need some information from them and that could be done much cheaper). Is it more morally right to keep people detained without trial instead of killing them, when the bottom line is profit I don’t think so.
It would have been nice to see Stallone’s partner suffer a little more with dirty objects as the film made it quite clear he was very OCD about dirt.
Generally the film was quite accurate to reality. A prison on a ship, done that, there were prison ships on the Medway during the Napoleonic wars. A constantly moving ship in the ocean? No problem with that. Do the prisoners know they are on a ship? Happy that it could be kept from them although every ship I’ve ever been on vibrates with the thump of the engine. It has been a while though.

My Biggest Problem with this film:

The Coriolis effect does NOT, I repeat NOT make the water flow down a plug hole or toilet in a particular direction. If you understand physics a little you would know why. I’m not going to debunk that particular part of the film here. JFGI. Sometimes I hate script writers, ignorance is not an excuse for messing up the science.

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