Here is a picture of my Indiana Jones Minecraft character. The Cylon version is staying at home to look over my lounge. Indiana is based in my work room. He looks great, I am happy to have him.
Cylon
It’s a Cylon Minecraft character made from cardboard and painted. I didn’t make this, it was made for me and I feel proud to be the owner of a Minecraft Cylon. It matches the Cylon in my dining room.
For those of you unsure of what a Cylon is, then you should go here. For those of you unsure of what Minecraft is, go here.
Also, for those of you who haven’t seen the BSG series you might want to know that “Nothing but the rain” is a quotation from that series.
“What can you hear, Starbuck?”, asks Adama.
“Nothing but the rain.”, she replies.
Avengers – Age Of Ultron
So, I went to see this film last night. As ever I rated this film on IMDB, you should read this communication before moaning about my rating system.
I rated Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) 6/10 #IMDb http://t.co/X91ogrVXTl
— Ian Parish (@iparish) April 24, 2015
Overall I enjoyed this film. I don’t think it was as good as the first film. The action sequences were perfectly fine although nothing really stood out for me. The buddy aspect of the film was ok but the best parts of that were dealt with in the first film.
Look, this is a solid superhero film and works very well. It is probably better than most of the standalone films that have been released, it just wasn’t as good as the first film. Sorry.
Science Reporting Rage
I am annoyed.
The BBC are arseholes. The headline and photo ALL imply that plucking makes hair grow in humans. Here’s the first few paragraphs. With my emphasis.
Plucking hairs in a precise pattern can make even more pop up in their place, a US study suggests. Playing with the density of hair removed altered how serious an injury the body recognised and in turn how much hair regrew. The team managed to regenerate 1,300 hairs by plucking 200, in the study using mice reported in Cell journal. Experts said it was “really nice science” but were uncertain if it could lead to a cure for human baldness. Half of men have male-pattern baldness by the age of 50. The team at the University of Southern California were investigating how hair follicles communicate with each other to decide on the scale of repair job needed.
So, with only a single reference to the fact that the study was in MICE and lots of human type text and a picture this article screams that plucking in humans will cause hair growth.
Ok, so it happens in mice. So fucking what. When they can show it works in humans I may interested in knowing about it. Not for myself although I am mostly bald, I’d rather have less hair.
This is extremely poor reporting. There is no need for this article. It is a waste of time.
Thunderbirds Are Go
So people. What I thought of Thunderbirds Are Go:
Oh my! @ThunderbirdsHQ was so awesome. I loved it and I loved watching it with my kids. Brilliant!
— Ian Parish (@iparish) April 4, 2015
Quite simple really. I loved it.
The show looked brilliant. The mix of miniatures and CGI was perfect. For a great example of where this works well you could see Moon. For examples of where just CGI doesn’t work see Star Wars Episodes 1-3. The whole look was organic, more natural than pure CGI.
I have no idea of which Tracy brother is which. I just can’t do similar faces and names. I will probably end up knowing them by colour. Quite clearly Kayo, Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward and Parker were obvious. The others? No idea. My facial recognition fails me completely.
The vehicles looked and sounded brilliant. I had two “moments”. The first was when TB2 took off from Tracy Island and there were a couple of “boom” sounds that made me shiver. Then, and this is just brilliant, when TB1 flew there were condensation clouds behind shock waves that made my hairs stand on end. Yes, I am that much of a nerd.
Who cares if the story was over the top, that’s just what we want. Overall, this was a great piece of television. It is something I am really looking forward to sharing with my children The wait for something like this has been too long!
Nerd Stuff:
The animators have been very clever. They have given the humans a slightly shiny face in homage to the plastic models of the original series AND at the same time they have avoided falling into the UNCANNY VALLEY. Well done. Any more realistic and people would have felt an urge to throw up and turn off. Also, creating a smooth surface with certain reflective properties saves a ton of rendering time.
If you aren’t sure then think about why in Toy Story ALL the characters have plastic faces [rendering time] and then think about Monsters Inc, only one character has hair, why? Rendering time and computer power. I saw a documentary about Pixar where they essentially said that if they tried to re-create Cars using the computer power available when they made Toy Story the rendering would have taken around 2000 years. Computers are awesome.
[I had watched the Reggie Yates documentary called No Strings Attached, but I got bored. It was a modern documentary with reviews and reminders bracketing every advert break and that ruined it. Not worth watching.]
Disaster Area Gig 20 March 2015
So, here’re some photos from the Disaster Area gig on the 20 March. Our set list, although small, was perfectly formed.
- Detroit Rock City
- Symphony of Destruction
The quality of these photos is terrible, mainly because they’ve come from the Disaster Area Facebook page. If you really want to see more head over to that stuff. As I’ve explained before: I don’t do Facebook.
Insurgent
I went to see Insurgent. It’s the second film in the Divergent series [if that’s what they are called]. I rated the film on IMDB, as usual, and you should read this communication for a better understanding of how I rate films, it’s subjective you see. I reviewed Divergent.
I rated Insurgent (2015) 6/10 #IMDb http://t.co/9LN5sHiHhv
— Ian Parish (@iparish) March 20, 2015
I’m not entirely sure this film had a stand out moment. It was a quite pedestrian storyline. I have a feeling it could have been made more exciting, but I may be suffering from YAL overload. You see, I watched Maze Runner recently. It’s probably fair to say that the overall plot of the films are exactly the same. I’m not sure the youth can claim this kind of dystopian future for themselves, but then every generation needs their own films and music to claim. We have to give the youth these views so that they feel empowered to contribute and change the system.
I feel a certain nostalgia for the badfuture films of the 70s and 80s. Granted, we did have a cold war and the threat of death within four minutes [if you were lucky] but we also needed the films to promote social change. The problem as I see it is that the wrong kind of social change happened. I’ve a sneaking suspicion that politics, power and greed gets in the way.
The poor youth of today constantly worried about the extremely low probability of being killed by a murderer [or terrorist as we now call them if they are a little different to us], they must find it very upsetting. Bollocks. It’s been worse in the past. It’ll get worse again.
Anyway, the film was OK. Nothing brilliant.
GT BD
Gran Turismo is a wonderful game. If you log in on your birthday you get a car from the year of your birth. Me? I was born in 1972. This is the car I got. Sheer beauty.
Lego 23 Model 60032
Here’s another, these are like buses!
East Kent Coast
Some pictures from the East Kent Coast.
