Vivid Sydney Opera House

IMG_6363, originally uploaded by kpcmobile.

I saw this while I was driving home last night, it looked fairly cool. (Unfortunately I didn't have a camera, but Flickr will provide)

Money Bomb

Soviet Revolutionaries, originally uploaded by Dunechaser.

There is an interesting piece over at the New York Magazine from a guy that work on the software that helped plough Wall St., and the rest of the financial planet into the ground.

There’s nothing inherently flawed about securitization. Done correctly and conservatively, it increases the efficiency with which banks can loan money and tailor risks to the needs of investors.

It kinda reminds me of Homer Simpson :

Marge: I really think this is a bad idea.
Homer: Marge, I agree with you -- in theory. In theory, communism
works. In theory.
-- Pros and cons of keeping the elephant, "Bart Gets an Elephant"

Expanded here.

May the Forth be with you

Alan Partridge is dead

Alan Partridge is dead, originally uploaded by cloudsoup.

I went to see Steve Coogan live on Friday night. While it is great to see some one you loved perform, I was left a little deflated when it was all over. The SMH seems to agree with my assessment that the performance was less than stellar. My feeling is that he has spent the last 10 years as a million dollar actor he has lost the connection with the source of his characters. Paul Calf has always been gruff and uncouth, but it now felt like Coogan was doing and impersonation of some one else doing the character, and not very well. However his Portuguese crooner character Tony Ferrino, which I hadn't seen much of in the past was very successful.

Cycling in Sydney

Missing the fall, originally uploaded by Meredith James.

There is an interesting piece in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning describing the frustration of cycling around Sydney. I haven't cycled every where that they describe but it does capture quite accurately my experiences around the city. Half assed cycle lanes with bad approaches. In many cases it is little more than painting a white line the the centre of a pedestrian footpath. It is usually on the outside which unsurprisingly the same place people leave their bins on collection day. Sydney is not an enjoyable city to cycle.

I have solved Global Warming

Nuke 3, originally uploaded by Pierre J..

Following Barack Obama's call to abolish all nuclear weapons, there is an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald stating :

Even a limited regional nuclear war involving 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs - just 0.03 per cent of the explosive power of the world's nuclear arsenal, would kill tens of millions of people and cause severe climatic consequences for a decade or more.

Cooling and darkening - with shorter growing seasons, less rainfall and increased ultraviolet radiation.

Well there's you answer. While you are getting rid of your nuclear weapons, set off a few in a remote desert some where and solve global warming problem at the same time, Sorted! Just don't forget your sun screen though.

Update : Looks like Wired is on the same wavelength as me at the moment with this post : 7 (Crazy) Civilian Uses for Nuclear Bombs

10x10 Matrix

I missed it by 2 days, but 10 years ago, on the 31st of March 1999, The Matrix had it's US theatrical release. I can't believe it has been that long. 1999 was also the year of The Phantom Menace, The Sixth Sense and Fight Club's. In my mind it was a high water mark year for blockbuster movies of quality (Phantom Menace non-withstanding) that wasn't reached again until a few years ago.

I still remember the absolute electric feeling of walking out of the cinema after the first time I saw the Matrix on the big screen. That are scenes in The Matrix that other movies, including it's own sequels, have tried to replicate, but never matched. People obviously point to the bullet time effect, however the lobby fire fight, kung-fu training and helicopter is still awesome today.

So will this year be remembered as well in 10 years, there are an interesting crop of movies on the slate, The Watchmen has already had a go (I enjoyed it), we are going to have a few months filled with Terminator Salvation, Star Trek, Wolverine, Transformers and G.I. Joe so hopefully there will be one or two in there.

I’m Confused

Max Mosely, president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), has come out and says he feels he has lost dignity due to the revelations of his participation in an alleged Nazi-themed sadomasochistic orgy.<smh.com.au>

This is where I get confused, based on the above photograph, it appears that losing ones dignity is exactly what he wanted, so to me it sounds like he got great value for money, or have I missed some thing?

We miss you Calvin

I have always been a big Calvin and Hobbes fan. I can’t believe it has been 14 years since the last comic was published. (from Coffee and cigarettes)

Watchmen Babies in V for Vacation

 

 
Watchmen Babies
Originally uploaded by Douglas Kastle

This is a cleaned up version of the Simpsons cover as presented by Milhouse to Alan Moore.

Bondi Color Background

 

I was recently discussing with some one the colors seen around Bondi been very distinct. So I decided to see if I could create a color only background that evoked those colors. I used actually photos of Bondi to pull out the colors and the gradiant blend tool in GIMP. Feel free to download the image the above should link to a high res version.

Bondi Background
Originally uploaded by Douglas Kastle

 

Bob Monkhouse

Bob Monkhouse, originally uploaded by rattlingdjs.

"They laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian. They're not laughing now."

Photosynth play

I had my first play with photosynth. I have to say I was looking forward to this for a while. My base images are of the castle in Ballinskelligs, Kerry, Ireland. I have visited there on two separate occasions in the past 2 years and taken a few pictures. While there are a lot of matches between many images photosynth has the lot broken up in a number of different groups. This means photosynth could not relate all the groups together, even though they are for a fact in the same location. It's good now that it is out I just hope that microsoft build on it, rather than put it on the shelf and forget it like a bad idea. I have a stack of images I took for stitching I have to run through to see how it performs.

D'ems fightin' words

I came across the article last week that detailed the genetic map of europe. Biologists have constructed a genetic map of Europe showing the degree of relatedness between its various populations.

I also keep an eye on the strange maps blog which posted the above image from the original article. However in part of the listed analysis on that blog states :

...the Irish population almost doesn’t show any characteristics that would distinguish it from the British one.

Jaysus, that's not going to go down well at all, at all!

George Lucas in Carbonite

George Lucas in Carbonite, originally uploaded by bonniegrrl.

Photo By Bonnie Burton -- Starwars.com

Cobra Commander

IMG_8888, originally uploaded by MikeRollerson.

This is one cool shot of a Cobra Commander at Comic Con, will the movie version match? COBRA!

Enough with the Franchises

It has been 3 weeks since I saw the most recent Indiana Jones movie. As I Road Runner away from that bizarre event(most of that movie has disappeared from my head already). I have been forced to re-evaluate a few of my ideas in life. Most importantly continuing on of TV and movie franchises.

This has been a long time coming, I really should be at the door way after walking out of the premiere screening (in Cork, Ireland mind) of Highlander 2 in 1991. As big a fan of the original movie and to have an original movie that explicitly precludes a sequel, "There can be only one" and all that. But they did make a sequel, 4 of them in fact, a TV series and some weird animation efforts too. While Highlander 2 has done the rounds for a long time as an example of bad (very bad) sequel it can't even handle a candle to the most recent release Highlander : The Source, will some one please invent brain rubbers.

Roll forward to just before the end of the millennium. Knowing that the end of civilisation was at hand starting 1/1/00 (Y2K) the only thing that I thought could keep me going in the post-apocalyptic landscape would be the memory of this next Star Wars movie that Georgie boy was making. I remember waiting for most of the decade for this to come along. I'll never forget the excitement of the trailer that came out a few months earlier, the movie was going to be awesome. When "The Phantom Menace" finally came out I have to say I was under whelmed. Admittedly no movie could ever be a good as the Star Wars movie that had been built up in my head. The remaining movies were better but I personally felt they lack soul of the original and George Lucas has been thought a lesson with the 100s of millions he no doubt earned. This is probably why Indiana Jones was resurrected, pants load of money to be made.

So with all this I was interested to read this week that J Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, has decided that he is no longer going to try and keep the Babylon 5 storyline of drip feed life support. Last year there was a Direct to DVD released of two short stories called Babylon 5 The Lost Tales which was well received financially and there was talk of doing more, but JMS (as he is known) has called it and posted a statement to the rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated group

So I've let everyone up here know that I'm not interested in doing any
more low-budget DVDs. I'm not interested in doing any low-budget
cable things or small computer games. The only thing I would be
interested in doing regarding Babylon 5 from this point on is a full-
featured, big-budget feature film.

It's that or nothing.

...

At the end of the day, for me, it's not just a matter of getting more
B5. It's a matter of getting more *good* B5 that respects what came
before it and doesn't have to compromise visually or in terms of
action.

I feel I have to agree with him. I would even go further and tell him to leave Babylon 5 alone. It's done, it's great (well mostly). He set out to tell the story he wanted and, after a fashion, he did.

People, and probably movie execs, are afraid of new things which is why we have a litany of sequels, TV remakes, reboots, comic book adaptions etc. Where are the movies you walk out of and say "WTF was that, it was AWESOME". The last great year of that, for me, was the year of the menace, 1999, a year that also gave us "The Matrix", "Fight Club", "The Sixth Sense" and "American Beauty". "The Matrix" is a example of good idea devalued by sequels, the original movie is still potent nearly 10 years later I can't say that of the sequels. Not all these attempts have been failures mind the the re-boots of both James Bond and Batman have been financially and more importantly critically successful.

So with this I say goodbye to the universe of Babylon 5 as it hopefully goes beyond the rim.

I Drink Your Milkshake

Found over on the SnorgTees website, I like it!

Boba Fett aging

Boba Fett aging, originally uploaded by T.Oechsner.

Stormy

^-^, originally uploaded by Yves29.