Last time I was in Santa Barbara, the condo I was put in had no TV. Well, it had a TV but the picture was terrible. If you already knew what the program was about you could sometimes tell what was possibly happening. Being of an engineering disposition, I had a look round the back of the TV and it looked like the cable had been yanked really hard at some point and someone had glued it back in position. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to have done a good job, if indeed any job at all, of reconnecting the electrical pathways between the cable connector and the innards of the TV set. By jiggling the connector around I could get a merely poor picture, with at least audible audio, but since I had to remain at the back of the TV to maintain that position its contribution to my viewing experience was limited. More unfortunately still, it seemed the repairer had reconnected the cable to the connector while the glue was still wet, and thus the cable was glued into the back of the set, while electrically disconnected.
Fortunately DVD players could be had for $30 and a membership PLUS 1 month’s unlimited movie rental from the local Blockbuster was only $14.50 or something. Here follows a lightning review of my viewing.
13/10/05
FRENCH CONNECTION, THE
Good cop movie, violent, but maybe not gratuitously so. It has a great nihilistic edge to it. Dvd extras are interesting too, seeing the actual new york cops the film is based on.
LAST SAMURAI, THE
Tom Cruise’s Dances With Wolves has him the idealistic hero caught up in sympathy with a culture destined to be wiped out. Cruise’s character is less squeaky clean though. The Samurai are treated respectfully, even reverentially in the film. Enough action to satisfy the vacant hollywoodgoer, but also poetry, cherry blossoms, a muted suppressed-love story… great film.
15/10/04
SNAKE IN THE MONKEY’S SHADOW
Early Hong Kong Kung Fu flick. Like Drunken Master but no jokes or Jackie Chan. Some great kung fu. Cool/Terrible movie.
SHIRI
Korean action flick. Pap.
16/10/04
KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE
Silly. First movie by the people who made Airplane. Funny, dated, features norks. Yay!
MASTER & COMMANDER: FAR SIDE OF THE WOOOOORLD
Probably rubbish, but I enjoyed it lots. Seemed to be too eager to educate us about interestin’ nautical facts. Cool that the officers were little kiddies and stuff. Great bit between the captain and his best friend the Doctor, when their lives’ ambitions come into conflict.
17/11/04
DAY AFTER TOMORROW, THE
Surprisingly intelligent (for hollywood - don’t get your hopes up!) pic. Wins bonus points for having British people with (a) real British accents (b) credible British behaviour (c) a distinct lack of a penchant for treachery and planting of bombs. Also contains a note of humility toward the 3rd world. Revelation!
TUXEDO, THE - WIDESCREEN
W00t! Tall Claire recommended this to me a LONG time ago as a great Jackie Chan flick, and I was not let down. Extremely enjoyable, plenty of what Jackie does best, and surprisingly little of what Jackie does badly. Outtakes are fun at the end watching his buffy-a-like assistant cracking up every time she looks at his face.
18/10/04
SHAOLIN DOLEMITE - THE MOVIE
I like crap movies, as long as they’re funny-crap, or cool-crap. This was so crap is was funny crap, then it wasn’t funny, then (for me) it was so not funny it was funny again. I’m glad I got this for free, and I’m glad I had something else to do while I watched it. It has ninjas, shao-lin, magic, voodoo, throwing stars, a prince, a ninja ho’ who can fight with her boobs, and a demon in dress socks. And davy crockett. You decide.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS
Great performances and one of those touching plots, stopped just short of sick-making pathos. Great characters. Main downside was lead girl’s bizarre accent that seemed to scoot around the country from Derby to Manchester.
20/10/04
MURIEL’S WEDDING
Had seen this before but forgotten what happened in it. Most enjoyable. A bit of a chick flick but with enough comedy for non-chicks.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11
Yay michael moore. If middle america had watched this surely the election would have gone the other way.
26/10/04
STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN
What can I say, this documentary covers the lifestyles of the session guys who were the motown sound. They would seemingly play all the time, getting out of the studio sessions and straight down to the jazz club where they would improv all night. My appreciation of motown music has skyrocketed after watching this. There was no dubbing, no correcting of mistakes, everything had to be done live. These guys played on just about every motown hit from its inception to the mid ’70s. “More no.1 hits than the Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys and Elvis combined”
Wow. Thanks to Mikey for recommending this.
THE SCORE
Highly enjoyable heist movie with a little bit of depth and some cool twists in the tail.
28/10/04
SUPERSIZE ME
Watch this. I did. Buy a pedometer. I did. Cut down your junk food. I did. A bit.
TOUCHING THE VOID
Well made adaptation of the amazing book of the mind-numbing true story of a guy who fell down a mountain twice in one freezing evening and survived. I feel more sorry for the guy who left him for dead, then found out he wasn’t.
30/10/04
A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
At least three movies here. Tedious family drama with a sci-fi edge; ‘oo-no don’t kill the cute monster’ E.T.-type action tearjerker; and “My God, it’s full of stars!” bullshit at the end. Despite all this, enjoyed it a lot. The world is pretty convincing, the characters fun, and little (but fast growing) Haley-joel Osment fantastic in his kicked-puppy-but-this-time-a-robot-kicked-puppy role.
STARSHIP TROUPERS
Disappointed. Expected a braindead romp with big aliens and sort of got it, but it insisted on adding a shallowly-treated teen romance. Direction didn’t quite pull off the twists in the love story. For some reason, finding out the director was Dutch seemed to explain a lot.
01/11/04
SCHOOL OF ROCK
Started off weak but built. Diring the credits we get a real jam with some of the kids from the school of rock. Possibly the best bit.
KUNG POW! ENTER THE FIST
Ace ventura without the subtlety. If I’d been in company I would have been embarassed but as I was alone I laughed like a loon!
Musing on the whining shites on the radio complaining about speed cameras being a “stealth tax”. Oops did I show a bias?
The attitude mystified me at first. My gut response was: if you don’t want to get fined, DON’T SPEED. IT’S ALREADY ILLEGAL. Don’t complain about getting charged for doing something illegal.
I’ve been reluctant to blog this one, as there are so many facets and gotchas to the subject that it won’t be covered satisfactorily in a single post and will likely end in much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But I didn’t have any other thoughts even half-finished today so I thought I’d have a stab at this one.
The most amazing thing to me is the way the police are now at the mercy of public opinion and feel they have to sell speed cameras (erm, safety cameras) to us.
Oh, we only put them on accident blackspots, and we paint them bright yellow so you can drive recklessly when you know you’re not going to get caught.
Translation: speeding is fine except in these particular locations.
Correction: SPEEDING IS ALREADY ILLEGAL. DON’T DO IT AND YOU WON’T PAY FINES
What about the poor souls who don’t realise they are speeding? There is a very real issue here, in that “the regulations” forbid putting up 30 MPH signs in a 30 limit (except where it’s the end of a 20 limit) this has an economic justification: 30 IS the national speed limit in built-up areas, so it is a waste of money to erect signs to that effect. I think this is misguided and local authorities should be allowed to put up reinforcing signs where they know people can tend to speed (dual carriageway? wide straight road entering outskirts of town?)
Why don’t speed cameras stop people speeding. Here’s a psychological mechanism by which we are encouraged to speed: If we don’t speed, we don’t get caught. But that guy’s speeding and he’s beaten me through the lights. That guy’s speeding and he’s passed this dirty great lorry I’m stuck behind. Speeding has clear and visible benefits. It takes an unusual or even abnormal amount of self-control not to speed. So most of us do. When the camera gets us, it’s SO much more unfair, because what is the alternative? Willingly making yourself weaker than your fellow road user? Allowing people to OVERTAKE you?
OK so I descended into satire by the end of that paragraph, but these petty insecurities are there, in the little shrew brain buried deep within your complex human one. It’s called peer pressure. Everybody’s doing 80 on the motorways. I drive a small car and much below 70 makes me very nervous as there are more hazards approaching in my mirrors than in front of me where I can see clearly. Answer? Accelerate. Put the majority of hazards in your windscreen and deal with them.
Now put that all on hold, and imagine an alternative world, where that peer pressure is removed. You see a 50 sign and you slow gently to 50 MPH as do all the people around you. you don’t feel anxious, weak, disadvantaged, insecure, but cosy, co-operating with the other traffic in patiently tolerating this minor speed reduction.
Seems to me the key item to deal with is the perceived fairness of the situation. Eliminating peer pressure is one important component. How do you stop people speeding?
ENFORCE SPEED LIMITS
If you knew that speeding would cost you money, you wouldn’t do it. There wouldn’t be any sense of injustice in being passed by someone who was speeding, you’d thing “poor sod, that’s going to cost him an arm and a leg”. For all I care, put the police on a bonus scheme the more speeding tickets they issue. Let them keep 10%.
IF YOU DON’T SPEED YOU WON’T GET FINED
There’s scope for corruption there, but less than you might think, since the police don’t get to choose where the speed limits and signs go. This brings us to the second important component of perceived fairness:
FAIR LIMITS AND CLEAR SIGNS
20 limits outside schools should apply only at times when children are present, and have a light to indicate when the 20 limit does NOT apply. Why “not”? Because if the light fails, you don’t want people to be caught speeding without knowing they were speeding.
Add 10-15 MPH to speed limits on motorways and trunk roads
Allow 30 sign to be repeated where local authorities deem appropriate
There would be a LOT of debugging to do with the nation’s signs. Our current culture allows us to disregard signs we think are not justified. We would need a channel to report issues with signs, preferably where we could find out the progress of our suggestion. Hmm… where can we- oo look! the internet!
If we were to put as much effort into improving the placement of our speed limits as we currently do at haranguing the police about enforcing them, it’d be looking very good in a year or two, and near defect-free in five.
HOW DO YOU ENFORCE IT?
Many more speed cameras. Call them speed cameras not safety cameras. IF YOU DO NOT SPEED, YOU WILL NOT PAY. A system like the P�age on french autoroutes: you take a ticket on the on-ramp, and you present it on the off-ramp. If that ticket made its journey too fast, you sped. This is far safer than a speed camera since it reduces your average speed. of course this can be abused by stopping at services for a meal to increase your time, but then prices at motorway services are punitive anyway.
HOW DO YOU IMPLEMENT THIS?
This would involve a culture change in the British driver. The Brit mentality values fairness above the law (visit the USA if you disagree). A phased implementation could easily descend into chaos, whereas an instant implementation would be impossible. I think zones should be created in which the new rules apply, and all signs within that area simply be tagged with a red rectangle with STRICT written in it. This could be applied to traffic lights today, but that’s a separate blog entry.
Walking into work today, made brief eye contact with a guy, whose half-eaten sausage roll promptly slid out of its wrapper onto the pavement. I quickly averted my eyes since, as any man knows, the only thing worse than dropping your food on the floor is having someone see you do something stupid.
I was suddenly seized by the urge to buy him another sausage roll. Then I thought: it’s not that sad, it was only full of toxins anyway. He’s probably made a nett gain by failing to eat the whole of it.
Then I thought of the pig, who lived its whole life in crowded squalor, culminating in that sausage roll. Then I WAS sad.
I almost certainly did 10,000 steps yesterday. I walked/bussed in, which led to a ped reading of 5293 by the end of the working day. I then forgot to clip the pedometer on to go home, which was about an hour’s walk. By my calculations that’s ~6000 steps.
And an awful lot of time walking.
Hmm. I have suspected for a while I have a slight bipolar tendency. I have periods of intense creativity and periods of intense inertia whereas some folk seem to be able to smooth it out and be productive, to a greater or lesser extent, consistently.
Today I was singing along to the Shania Twain advert in the morning; wrote two songs while driving, but forgot them on account of not being near a recording device; thought of a use for the motor in the clapped-out duplexer unit the IT guy gave me to dispose of and re-invented a means of autonomous robot navigation; noted that if everyone in the company adopted one spoon and never shared it we would have more spoons left in the drawer than we did this morning; noted that having one bottle of milk open, while marginally reducing milk availability in the case of more than one person in the kitchen at a time, almost guaranteed that milk would be drunk before it went off, whereas allowing two open bottles of milk positively encouraged milk to go off (because, should one bottle be identifiable as the older one, people were more likely to drink from the newer, thus the older one becomes even older); and wrote a REALLY long sentence in my blog.
Also thoroughly enjoyed these pages by someone who seems to be subject to similar ebbs and flows:
This morning I caught the bus in. It involved 20 minutes walking, 5 minutes on the bus, and another 10 minutes on foot. The 20 minute walk counted just over 2000 steps. I tend to get a background of 3000-3500 steps so I ought to find an extra hour and a quarter for walking in the day to make up for the remaining 6500-7000.
I KNEW our office’s last location was ideal. It was a pleasant 35 minute walk. The new office’s route takes me down a long main road rather than backstreets, river, cyclepath, fields, and university campus.
Maybe it’s time to look for a job at the science park again…
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the enquiry and sorry for the slight delay in getting back to
you.
We don’t normally carry the Moller Skycar in stock, indeed the next (and
first!) consignment may be some months if not a year or two away.
The car has been tested in the air and deposits can be accepted though
at the moment we can only direct people to the manufacturers website for
more information http://www.moller.com/
Sorry I can’t be more helpful.
Best Regards
Matt Shone
http://www.firebox.com
t: [elided]
f: [elided]
e: [elided]
On Thu, 2004-11-18 at 02:56, Steve Carter wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was interested in more information about a Moller Skycar M400. As a
> skycar would be a significant investment I was wondering whether it was
> possible for customers to view or operate one prior to ordering?
>
> I note your website states they are currently out-of-stock. Do you normally
> carry them in stock? At what sort of rate do you expect to move them? When
> are you expecting the next consignment?
>
> Regards,
>
> Steve Carter M.Eng
Tonight marks two occasions:
1) I did 10,000 steps in a day for the first time since buying the pedometer. I hear this is the minimum you need to stay healthy.
2) I got 147 comments on my blog. After deleting all the ones relating to poker and not being relevant to the posts they were commenting on, it was narrowed down to 1. Thanks lisa!
My bloggificational urges come in batches. I’ll have a dry spell for a week or two, then one day I’ll have 11 Important Thoughts that seem to all be worthy of bloggificationalness. Time to try out the ’save as draft’ feature in wordpress I guess!
This post was written: yesterday.
This has come up twice in the last 24 hours. It’s time I made a stand.
Or at least a blog entry.
In cartroo’s blog, besides the perfectly justified tirade against a piece of BBC non-reporting (I pay my license fee for what? To fund this tripe and VERY expensive and expansive adverts for more BBC channels, for which I’m ALSO already paying…?)
uh where was I… besides this tirade, he mentions this article. In ‘the future’ commuters will be cutting each other up in 3 dimensions. This comes up from time to time. In the late ’90s I came upon the latest breakthrough skykar that was available imminently and would run on regular gasoline etc. etc. etc. Eventually it turned out even slightly more interesting than that.
- Looks pretty interesting
- Hmm. some sort of foolishness has been occurring
- Highly experienced
- Volantor, from the French Voler, to fly. Interestingly Voleur means literally ‘flyer’ but really means ‘Thief’
- Riiight. You shifted all the mollers you had, eh?
Hmm. Couldn’t resist sending this one.
Hi,
I was interested in more information about a Moller Skycar M400. As a skycar would be a significant investment I was wondering whether it was possible for customers to view or operate one prior to ordering?
I note your website states they are currently out-of-stock. Do you normally carry them in stock? At what sort of rate do you expect to move them? When are you expecting the next consignment?
Regards,
Steve Carter M.Eng
- TechTV vault on the moller skycar. contains actual footage of skycar lifting off the ground at the end of a taut cable attached a … um .. crane!!!
- Moller’s Biog
- The man himself, in his early saucer
Well, he seems sincere. But he also seems deluded.