January 2004 Archives

Hollywood Reporter is running a story about the casting of the Hitchikers film. We already knew that Martin Freeman would playing Arthur but this story adds Mos Def as Ford and Zooey Deschanel as Trillian. It also confirms Stephen Moore as the voice of Marvin.

Not sure how I feel about Disney making a film version of H2G2. I have a hard enough time dealing with "new" Lord of the Rings fans who have only seen the films, it's going to be worse when there are new crowd of H2G2 fans who have missed out on the radio show, the books and the TV show.

And, of course, it will almost certainly introduce a new version of the story which will almost but not quite entirely contradict all of the others.

According to Arthur Smith writing in today's Guardian I live in the trendiest place in Britain.

Of course, I already knew that.

All this discussion about university tuition fees is of more than academic(!) interest to me. My step-daughter is currently doing the first year of her A levels and has every intention of going on to university after that.

Whilst, of course, there's no question of her not being able to go, we'd obviously be happier if it didn't cost us £3000 a year.

However, the news coverage last night pointed out that these plans are going to be implemented on courses starting in 2006. And she'll be starting in 2005. So that's ok then.

Unless she decides to take a gap year first. I've been telling her that's a good idea. I may have to revise that message.

You are no doubt aware that the Odeon web site is broken in a number of ways. It has all sorts of flashy animations that server no purpose other than to prevent the site working on any browser but Internet Explorer.

And now it seems that it's giving out bad information as well.

Yesterday my local Odeon were showing a preview of Big Fish whcih my step-daughter and I wanted to see. So using her computer (because it's the only one in the house with IE installed) I go to the site and book two tickets. The web site tells me that the performance starts at 9:30pm.

We arrive at the cinema at 9:15pm and I put my credit card into the ticket dispensing machine and it gives me two tickets. But the tickets say that the programme starts at 8:35pm. I assume that this is the adverts and trailers and that the film itself will start at 9:30pm as I've been told, so we wander off to find our screen. When we go in, the film has already started, so we go off in search of cinema staff to find out what is going on.

Eventually we persuade a chap in the box office that we're not mad and that the web site told us that the show started at 9:30pm, despite his protests that "the posters all say 8:35pm" and he gave us a refund.

But I'm definitely going to write to Odeon to complain about what happened. I wonder if I can get their address from their web site.

A few days ago I happened to catch the video for Boys Don't Cry on one of the music channels and it reminded me that I haven't listened to anywhere near enough Cure music recently.

So I set to on ripping all of my Cure CDs, but I strongly suspect that a number of the earlier ones have vanished into the dpeths of Sixteen-Year-Old Stepdaughter's bedroom. Which is good as she's showing impeccable musical taste.

But it means that I've been listening to things like Wild Mood Swings and Bloodflowers, neither of which I've really listened to before. And they're both really rather good.

And I've discovered that there's a 4 CD boxed set of B sides and rarities coming out soon. See what you miss when you don't keep up with this stuff.

In WH Smith's yesterday I was given a free sample copy of Zoo Weekly magazine ("for men who like girls, football and funny stuff") and against my better judgement I decided to read it.

It's the most juvenile and sexist pile of trash that it's ever been my misfortune to read. I really hope that there isn't enough of a market for it to do well, but I have a horrible feeling that I'm going to be disappointed there.

I spent some time yesterday at the Natural History Museum. In the grounds they have an exhibition based on Earth From The Air, a book of fabulous photographs that have been taken by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. There are some examples online here.

The book containing the photos was in every bookshop late last year, but the photos in the exhibition are far bigger. Seeing them at this size gives them far more impact. I'd really recommend going to see them before the exhibition closes in "late spring".

If you don't read Bad Science in the Guardian every Thursday, then you should really start. Every week they expose ridiculous pseudo-scientific claims made by the advertising industry.

I mention it this week in order to link to story on Oxygiser. This is a) because you should all read it and b) in to help to increase its Google rating (as discussed in the final paragraph).

Nice piece of "almost English" on a tag that was attached to jacket I bought in Camden this week.

This item is handmade any variation in colour can occur. Please treat as our attraction.

Two days ago I went to see Cold Mountain (nice cinematography, well acted, but ultimately rather dull) and saw a trailer for Tim Burton's Big Fish. This trailer contains a couple of seconds of "I've Seen All Good People" by Yes, which I haven't heard for far too many years. Yesterday I'm in HMV and they have The Yes Album (which includes that song) in their sale for £4.99. So I bought it.

Now I'm getting a huge urge to listen to Tales From Topographic Oceans :)

Last night we watched Texas Teenage Virgins. Thanks to ex-Governer George bush, it's apparently illegal for schools to teach sex education. This, of course, is leading to soaring rates of teen pregnancy, but the religious right are insistant that they are doing the right thing. Teens are encouraged to take a "purity pledge" saying that they won't have sex until they are married. Sixteen-year-old-stepdaughter and I watched in complete amazement. Of course it was unintentionally funny in many places[1] but ultimately it is deeply scary.

Sixteen-year-old-stepdaughter has some great views on christianity in general. And she has no worries about expressing them.

TV Narrator: Teenagers in Texas talk to god to give them the strength to keep their pledge.
16-y-o-s: Talking to god is a bit pointless, he's not going to answer.
Me: well christians would say that he talks to them.
16-y-o-s: They're such liars.

[1] One teenage boy described his personal method for sticking to the rules as "stay out of the box". By this he meant an imaginary box box drawn round a woman's torso. I don't think he knew the other meaning of "box".

I finally went to see The Weather Project yesterday. I think that of the four large works that the Tate Modern has had in the Turbine Room this is my favourite - with Kapoor's Marsyas a close second.

The Turbine Room is such a huge space that any work of art built on that scale is bound to be impressive in some way. It's been a great addition to London's arts scene.

I've been playing with a BMI calculator. At my current weight and height, my BMI is 30.4 which is (just) in the obese range. The good news tho' is that I only need to be an inch taller to move into the overweight range.

And if I can gain eight inches, my BMI will be in the normal range.

So another target for this yer will be to get taller.

It seems that Milton Keynes may well expand massively over the next 20 years.

My wife lived in Milton Keynes when I met her. I've been there many times. An expanded Millton Keynes is a very fightening prospect.

The nice man from DHL has just delivered a box containing many copies of the Badger book. This is one of my favourite parts of the book-writing process.

I've got two articles to write this week and a number of other important things to do (not least of which is to find a new job) but while reading an Observer article I found a link to www.1837online.com and now it looks increasingly unlikely that I'll achieve anything useful today.

Usual stuff.

• Lose weight, get fit (as Bob Mills once said "like most fat blokes, I'd do anything to lose weight - with the obvious exceptions of eating less or doing exercise").
• Write more - not just here and not just technical stuff. I'd like to finish the NaNoWriMo novel that crashed and burned in November and I've also got an idea for a screenplay.
• Spend less time on the computer and more time with my family - tho' that may conflict with the previous resolution :-/

Another thing that happened just before christmas. I lost an Ebay auction for a VHS copy of the old animated version of The Return of the King. I'm sure it's complete rubbish, but i've never seen it and it's always annoyed me that The Lord of the Rings only told half of the story. If anyone has a copy, I'd love to borrow it.

Been a while since I wrote, so here's a quick catch-up.

I left Guardian Unlimited just before christmas. In my last week there I re-engineered their RSS software so that they can easily produce an RSS feed for just about any page on their site. This seemed to get many people rather excited, so maybe we'll see the results soon.

So I'm out of work. If anyone wants a Perl consultant/developer/writer/trainer then please let me know.

The TT book went to the printers a couple of weeks ago. Should be in bookshops very soon. There will be a few articles appearing in various places to promote it soon.

The main reason for not writing for a while was that my server died completely and I spent some time recreating all the sites from backups. One side effect as that for two or three days I got no email at all. This was extremely refreshing! If you sent me email around the 20th December and it bounced back, then please try again as it all works again now.

While flicking thru the channels on New Year's Eve, I came across The Rutles. It's sad to realise that I've got the kind of mind that still remembers the names of all of the Rutles and (what's worse) most of the lyrics of the songs at least twenty years since I last saw it.

I'm currently listening to Rory McLeod. I'd forgotten how brilliant he was. Everyone should go listen to Angry Love.