John C. Kirk

11:57 pm - Iron Man

Tonight I went off to the cinema to watch Iron Man; for reasons that aren't entirely clear, I wound up with a free ticket, which was nice. As for the film itself, I thought it was excellent: a good story, with a strong cast. The special effects are excellent, so it really benefits from being shown on the big screen. They made a few changes from the comics, but in each case I thought that the film version was at least as good as the original, so I'm not going to complain about them "getting it wrong". The villain's motivation seemed a bit hazy towards the end, but I can live with that; the only thing I'd have added is the theme tune from the 1990s animated series (terrible cartoon, but good music). The credits are quite long (almost 10 minutes), but it's definitely worth sitting through them for the short extra scene at the end.

Now that I've watched that, it's motivated me to re-read some of my "Iron Man" comics, particularly from his pre-"Iron Bastard" days (i.e. prior to the "Civil War" event). I haven't read them consistently over the years, but I did like the issues that Kurt Busiek wrote; sadly, they haven't been reprinted in paperback/hardback (yet). If you liked the film, I'd also recommend the Acclaim issues of "X-O Manowar". More specifically, the start of the series and the end of the series were excellent, with a few dire issues in the middle; once I've re-read them, I'll update this post with more specifics.

04:51 pm - Football funnies

Some things that amused me at the football match today (Crystal Palace vs Bristol City):

One of the fans was wearing a T-shirt that said "I have the body of a god" in big letters. Then it had a small picture of Buddha underneath.

The Palace fans chanted "You're Welsh, and you know you are" at the Bristol fans. That seems pretty random; it's clearly not true, and if it was true (e.g. when Palace plays Cardiff) then it wouldn't be taken as an insult.

Another chant was "Stand up, if you love Palace, stand up, if you love Palace" (etc.). This earned a rebuttal from other Palace supporters: a few of the guys in the wheelchair area shouted back "Are you taking the piss?"

At one point in the game, a Bristol player kicked the ball in the air, and a Palace player ducked out of the way so it was successfully passed to the Bristol player behind him. (The alternative would have been to head it.) When even the hardcore Palace fans are groaning, that's not a good sign! Putting that in perspective, they will normally applaud when someone aims for the goal but the ball bounces off the crossbar; as Raymond Chen said (The economics of soccer penalty kicks), "it means that the opposing goalie didn't even have to be there".

( Look away now if you don't want to know the final score )

More generally, it's quite common for football players to "take a dive", i.e. pretend to be injured when there's nothing wrong with them, so that they can get a penalty or have a player from the opposing team sent off. However, this doesn't always go according to plan, so I've seen a few cases where someone is lying on the ground and nobody else is paying any attention, so the game carries on without them. In a situation like this, the "injured" player has a bit of a dilemma:
a) If they get back up and carry on playing, that makes it blatantly obvious that they were faking the injury.
b) If they carry on lying there, they feel a bit stupid, and may get trodden on.
It's quite entertaining to watch their faces as they try to figure a way out; the standard solution is that they'll struggle manfully to their feet and then limp back to the game before making a miraculous recovery.

01:12 am - Downloader-UA.h

There have been a couple of virus warnings in the news today:
Half a million infections of latest Trojan (MSN)
Fake media file snares PC users (BBC)

The basic gist is that there are fake mp3/mpeg files circulating on peer-to-peer filesharing networks. I.e. if you use a program like LimeWire to download a music file or video clip, you may not actually get what you thought. Instead, when you try to play the file, it installs adware on your machine.

I'm sure that I'll have several people contacting me about this tomorrow, so how bad is it?

( Read more... )

All in all, I'd say that there's no need to panic, but make sure you read any message boxes carefully rather than hitting "OK" as a reflex.

11:50 pm - Cycling machines

As I've mentioned before, I'm trying to get back into shape by doing a bit more exercise. The Fitbug is working out quite well, since it gives me a specific target to aim for (revised each week): it started out at 5000 steps/day, and I'm now up to 6900. I don't hit my target every day, but that's ok; it acts as an incentive, and I do modify my behaviour accordingly. I now have a pretty good idea of how many steps it takes to go certain distances (e.g. it's about 2000 steps from the railway station to my flat), so I'll often choose to walk rather than taking the bus.

The main disadvantage to the 'bug is that it treats all steps equally, so walking downhill is the same as running uphill with a heavy rucksack. It more or less evens out, but I did an SJA duty recently (at a netball tournament) where I was on my feet for about 7 hours, mostly standing still; that meant that I missed my target, but I didn't really feel like going for an extra walk when I got home just to make up the quota. I got a bit of extra exercise by fetching balls that had gone off the court; my colleague was quite amused because every time I threw a ball back I'd stick my right foot out behind me (bending my right knee). I wasn't aware that I was doing it, so I'm not quite sure how I developed that habit!

Today I decided to try out another "RPM" class at the gym (cycling machines). It's been a couple of years since I last did one, so the time seemed right. ( Fear the lycra! )

04:45 pm - Drug trials in the news

On 13th April, two of the Sunday papers reported on problems with a clinical drug trial at Parexel:
Volunteers ill after drug tests (The Sun)
Drug test scandal returns (The Sunday Express)

( Read more... )

Yesterday, the Sunday Express printed a retraction:

In fact, we now accept that the incidents mentioned related to a significantly different version of the study drug and trials conducted in the USA in 2000 and 2002 by a company unconnected to PAREXEL.

01:00 am - Open source software

Free software is a funny thing, partly because it tends to spark off "holy wars", so it can be hard to focus on the practical issues when you've got people shouting about their vision of purity. I like this blog post (a parody), which applies those principles to cars: The transmission tax.

Most of the people reading this are probably aware of the basic principles, but here's a quick recap. ( Read more... )

As an ideology, I think it's slightly flawed. For instance, I am free to inspect the Firefox source code if I want to. Looking at a couple of sources (e.g. here and here), that's at least 2 million lines of code. Let's say that I could read one line of code per second; working for 8 hours a day, it would take me 70 days to read it all. So, if I used all my annual leave solely for that, and devoted every weekend to it, I could be done in about six months. Given that I have other things to do with my time, I don't think there's any way I can keep up with the changes, and I'm an IT professional, so this clearly isn't practical for the average home user. That means that you wind up relying on other people to do the inspection/changes. For a big project like Firefox, that's probably a safe bet, but there are plenty of smaller projects that don't attract the same level of attention. Still, that's not a reason to keep a program closed source, it just means you should be a bit sceptical towards the zealots.

It can also be a bit tricky to install this software in a company; Raymond Chen has written a couple of blog entries about that (Solving one problem by creating a bigger problem and If you work at a company, it's not your computer any more). This comment is particularly significant:

I don't know what the issues are with using perl. That's why you have to ask the lawyers. Some IT departments also don't like it when people run unauthorized software on their work computers.

Some packages may contain restrictions such as "The terms of this license apply to anything produced with the aid of this packages," or "For non-commercial use only." And if you redistribute the packages with your own product, then things get really interesting. (Who is liable if a security hole or patent infringement is found in that package?)

01:09 pm - Domain name registration

Today I needed to register a new domain name, so I had a look around at the various companies who offer this service. My own domain is registered with UK Shells, but that's mainly aimed at people who use their hosting services, so I investigated some other options.

UKreg looked quite promising: cheap prices, and a handy tool to check on which domain names are available and suggest options. In order to register a domain name, you need to have an account, so I went through the steps of creating one. The final step says:

We need your card details to activate your account.
We will not charge your card at this stage.

12:49 am - Funny links

Another random collection of links that made me smile...

I recently read through the Casey and Andy archives. These are based on the cartoonist and his friend in real-life; they describe themselves as mad scientists, and invented cross country water skis. I recommend this strip in particular, since it's independent of the rest and almost made me spit my drink out in laughter.

Tonight I came across the song "Michaela Strachan" (by "Scouting For Girls"):



This includes the lyric "You broke my heart when I was 12".

Speaking of films, one of my friends from St John Ambulance made a YouTube video recently: I love the city of LONDON (tour). He said that he'd like to get as many hits as possible, so please take a look if you have a few minutes to spare.

09:02 pm - Dr Who

The new series of Dr Who started last night on BBC1, and I thought it was a decent episode, although it had a few flaws. I also enjoyed the Christmas episode, which I never got round to commenting on: I was quite surprised to see a trailer for that in the cinema last year, and I do like the new theme tune.

Generally, I'm trying to be a bit more selective about what I watch: I didn't bother with series 2 of Torchwood, since the first series was so bad; I've heard a few people saying that the second series was better, but I don't miss it. I also gave up on The Sarah Jane Adventures part-way through; there's nothing wrong with it, but it is really aimed at a younger audience, which is fair enough. Anyway, I'm sticking with Dr Who; even though I may nitpick a bit, I still look forward to watching it each week. I particularly liked seeing Bernard Cribbins in both episodes, so hopefully he'll be appearing again.

( Christmas episode, including spoilers for 'Beowulf', the Trek novel 'Metamorphosis', and 'The Bicentennial Man' )

( Partners in Crime )

As I say, I do enjoy the series; I just think that there's some room for improvement.

02:19 am - Catching the fitness bug

Following up on my previous post about PruHealth, my gym membership is now up and running. ( Logistics )

( Stuff that may offend fat activists )

Aside from the gym, I recently bought a Fitbug (pedometer) through PruHealth. I got a big discount through them (it only cost £15 rather than the £100 RRP), and I earn "Vitality points" if I do enough steps in a day (which helps me to get a discount on my insurance premiums next year).

Looking at the bug itself, I'm pretty impressed. ( Read more... )

I mentioned Vitality Points, so is this thing actually going to pay for itself? Well, yes and no; in hindsight, I should have read through the documentation in a bit more detail before I bought it, but I still think that it's worthwhile. ( Read more... )

All in all, I think everything's going according to plan, so I should be able to get fitter and save money.

11:09 am - April Fools Day

I normally do Google searches using the box in IE7, but when I noticed today's date I went to their home page for a change. They have a good track record of amusing ideas, and this year is no exception: they're recruiting for Virgle pioneers (to colonise Mars). That's actually something that sounds vaguely plausible, so I'd be quite tempted to really apply for that in a few years; it makes sense that computer skills and first aid experience would be a useful combination.

However, even though I was aware of the date, I've been fished in by a few other sites...

( Hidden to preserve the surprise )

11:15 pm - City living

Today I've been off sick with the dreaded Man Cold. I skived off SJA last night so that I could have an early night with some soup, then stayed in bed today until 4pm. I'm over the worst of it now, but it's left me feeling feeble, so I've been lazing around the flat for the rest of the day rather than doing anything energetic.

With that in mind, I watched Build a new life in the country tonight; this episode was about a couple from Sheffield who buy an old church in Scotland and renovate it into a house. This was a pleasant enough program: it was "reality TV" without being emotional porn (look, they're arguing and crying!). I've heard of a few people who live in converted churches, and I can see the appeal, although I'm not so keen on this particular building; the walls were made of tin (rather than stone) and they lost the benefit of high ceilings when they split it into two floors. (In my current flat, I can't quite reach the ceiling even if I stand on my toes and stretch out my arms.) Still, each to their own.

More generally, I've been thinking recently about the difference between living in urban and rural areas. For instance, when I went on holiday recently, we drove down to Gatwick while it was still dark outside. Once we got clear of the built-up area, I looked up at the stars, and couldn't remember the last time I'd actually seen them. This is because of the "perma-noon effect" of light pollution, and I can normally read the title of books in my bedroom when the curtains are closed and the lights are off. That's not the case in all of London, but it's certainly the way I've lived over the last few years.

In the novel Quarantine (by Greg Egan), the idea is that our solar system has been sealed in a huge bubble, so we're basically cut off from the rest of the universe. In practical terms, this just means that people can't see the stars anymore, and doesn't really have any impact on day to day life. If that happened in real life, I wonder how much coverage it would get in the media? I've heard complaints that the newspapers (and BBC website) are disproportionately focussed on London, so if the average city-dweller couldn't tell the difference then would it attract much attention?

I recently read the graphic novel Pride of Baghdad (by Brian K. Vaughan); this is based on a true story, about a group of lions who escape from a zoo in Baghdad during the Iraq war. Anyway, at one point the leader is reminiscing about sunsets, and he mentions the sun dipping below the horizon; this prompts the young cub to ask "What's a horizon?", since their enclosure doesn't have one. In fact, this is true for all cities (unless you're very high up), and it's strange to think that some people will live like that for their whole lives. I've got used to it, but I do like open spaces.

Really, I think I'm still a country boy at heart. I've lived in London for the last 12 years, but I grew up in Sussex and lived on top of a hill in Durham. One of the main things I remember about Henfield (the last village I lived in) is that I could basically cycle for 10 minutes in any direction and be surrounded by fields. Having said that, there are advantages to living in the city, which I've also come to take for granted. For instance, when I lived near West Kensington I could get home at 2am and see five chip shops still open near the tube station, whereas when I went on holiday to Cheshire a few years ago most of the restaurants closed by 7pm. Similarly, the job prospects are better in cities, particularly for IT work. So, I'm not planning any major upheavals in the imminent future, but I don't intend to stay in London for the rest of my life.

01:35 am - Linux, beanbag

I've had a fairly productive weekend so far, tidying up my flat.

While I was shuffling books around between bookcases (so that similar ones are together), I came across my copy of the Red Hat Linux 9 Bible. I bought this back in October 2003, the idea being that I could set up my PC to dual-boot between Windows and Linux, and learn how to use it properly. However, I never got round to that, and wound up dual-booting between XP and Vista instead. Anyway, is that book still useful? Or would I be better off starting from scratch with a newer book if/when I get round to trying it out?

According to Wikipedia, Red Hat Linux has now been discontinued; this reminds me of what happened in Durham (in 1994), when I tried out the Yggdrasil distribution. Are there any current distributions which are likely to stay the course?

Meanwhile, I've been thinking about my beanbag sofa. It's very comfy, but it also takes up quite a lot of space, and I don't use it much; I hate to admit it, but I think I'd be better off without it. Would anyone else like it? It has a couple of small tears (about 1cm across) which I've covered with sellotape; it's still perfectly useable, but I don't think I'd get much for it on Ebay, so it's free to a good home. (Maybe the ICSF library?) You will need a car to collect it!

11:52 pm - Trapped in a world he never made

baratron recently linked to "A Fantasy" (a story by Brian McNaught); the original link no longer works, but there's another copy here. Basically, it's a thought experiment about what it would be like to be heterosexual in a world where almost everyone is homosexual: the idea is to gain a bit of empathy for what homosexual people have to deal with in our world. Taking it at face value, I think it's quite effective. I wouldn't feel comfortable living like that, and I can imagine how liberating it would be to dicover other people like you, who won't condemn you.

To a lesser extent, I've seen something similar with anosmia. There's no public outcry against it, but there's also very little public awareness of it. This is where the internet comes in useful, since you can find other people from a niche group, and it's quite a relief to realise that you're not alone.

Having said that, I can't help nitpicking the premise of this fantasy world. I think it would be a good basis for an SF story, but as it stands there are lots of unanswered questions. ( Read more... )

Still, leaving that aside, is this behaviour a valid reflection of the real world? It's hard for me to say, since I'm not gay, so I haven't had the relevant experiences. Still, I'm a bit dubious about it. The equivalent would be a closet homosexual who doesn't want to reveal his/her real lover, so as far as everyone else is concerned he/she is a single heterosexual. That cover story is an accurate description of me, so presumably I should encounter some of the same situations as this hypothetical person.

For instance, "you panic when people attempt to fix you up with their brother or sister". (I'm making small changes to the text/formatting in these quotes, for clarity.) I don't think anyone's ever tried to fix me up with their sister, or any other female acquaintance for that matter. I'm not complaining, and this may just be specific to me, but do other people have to fend off blind dates on a daily basis? Or putting it another way, do you frequently try to play matchmaker for your single friends?

The story also describes a situation where you have a "flatmate" who is actually your secret lover; when they are in an accident, and get rushed to hospital, you only find out about it later. So, you go to visit them, but you have to restrain yourself to avoid blowing your cover. "Do you go into the intensive-care unit, or do you sit outside and wait?"

When I first moved to London, I shared a two bedroom flat with a male friend from Durham. We lived together for a year, then a few months later I moved into a different two bedroom maisonette with another male friend from Durham, and we lived together for the following four years. If either of them had been taken to hospital with serious injuries then of course I would have visited them; that's what friends do, and I'm sure they'd have done the same for me. I wouldn't have worried about people thinking we were gay, although admittedly I wouldn't have been kissing my flatmates. I can understand why people would get cautious after a lifetime of bad experiences, but I also think it's possible to cross the line into paranoia, where the limits on your behaviour are self-imposed rather than coming from the people around you.

Some people have asked me whether I'm gay over the years; that's out of general interest rather than as a pickup line (e.g. from the girls I shared a house with in Oxfordshire). On balance, I take that as a compliment, since it implies that they were surprised I didn't have a girlfriend. So, even when people thought that I was gay, I didn't have to deal with any abuse; I realise that not everyone is quite so tolerant, but I also don't think it's a universal problem.

The story also asks "What if every book you ever read, every movie you ever saw, every billboard you ever passed featured the beauty and joy of gay love?" This implies that every book/movie/billboard in our world features the beauty and joy of heterosexual love. Really? All of them? I understand hyperbole, so if the author really means "The vast majority, with a tiny proportion of exceptions" then that's fair enough. For films, he may have a point, depending on how you define it; even where a love story isn't the main plot, it tends to appear somewhere. For books, I'm a lot more dubious; I've read plenty of reference books which don't mention love at all. Even if you restrict it to novels, I still think there are plenty of exceptions. For instance, I grew up reading the "Adventure" series (by Willard Price), about two brothers who travel the world capturing animals for zoos, and I don't remember any romances. Similarly, the "Jennings" series (by Anthony Buckeridge) are set in a boarding school for boys, and the main characters are too young to have any interest in girls. So, I suspect that what you encounter depends on what you choose to read. Still, I've only read a small proportion of the books out there, so my experiences may be unrepresentative.

As for billboards, this is where I can hopefully be a bit more objective, since I will see the same adverts as everyone else in the same place, so it's determined by geography rather than personal preference. As an exercise, yesterday I took photos of all the billboards that I passed on my way to work, between Willesden Junction station and Central Middlesex Hospital.

( Photos )

As I mentioned before, I'm not in favour of any kind of quota system for demographic groups. On the other hand, I don't think that the adverts are dramatically skewed towards heterosexuals, so it's a bit of a moot point. Still, maybe I'm wrong, and I'm just blinded by my own Privilege. I also recognise that this is a ridiculously small sample set for statistical analysis, and that things may be different eleswhere. So, what do the rest of you think?

( Poll )

I don't mean to dismiss the original story, and I agree with tackling injustice where you encounter it, but I think there's a risk of damaging your credibility if you exaggerate problems.

10:45 pm - Cheese!

When I was in the supermarket last month, I came across some half-price cheese (presumably left over from Christmas), each one sold as a "truckle". I like cheese, and that's a funny name, so I bought a couple; I realised later that it had reminded me of "bowtruckles" (magical creatures in the Harry Potter books). Anyway, these truckles are squat cylindrical blocks of cheese, covered in wax, so they look a bit like tyres. The ones I bought were only 100g, but I gather you can get bigger ones. The main challenge I had was trying to figure out how to open them! The approach I used was to slice off a small piece (a "chord" as seen from above), then peel the rest of the wax away, which came off fairly easily. Anyway, they're interesting as a novelty item, and I haven't come across "Wensleydale with Pineapple" before, but I couldn't taste any difference compared to the normal packaging methods.

More recently, a colleague at work approached me: she knew that I liked cheese, and she'd just bought some Stinking Bishop (as featured in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit but it turned out that the smell was just too overpowering. Fortunately, that's not a problem for me, since the smell is irrelevant. I normally tend towards bland food (e.g. I don't like curries), but I do like strong flavours in cheese, so I was happy to take it off her hands. I've tried a small piece, which was nice, and I'm now leaving it out of the fridge for two hours as recommended. As with the truckles, the name amuses me; since the cheese is named after the perry it's soaked in, you may be able to buy it at a real ale festival.

Man cannot live on cheese alone, but it's certainly tempting to try...

12:55 am - Password security

When I signed up with Facebook last year, I mentioned that I didn't like the "find friends" option. Basically, it asks you to give them the password for your webmail account so that they can look at your address book and see whether any of your friends are already registered. I, however, was disinclined to acquiesce to their request; with my password, they would be able to impersonate me (sending emails on my behalf), intercept incoming emails, and even lock me out of my own account. I'm not saying that the Facebook programmers in particular would necessarily do any of these things, but I prefer to be cautious about handing out that type of information.

This may seem a bit paranoid, but I read an interesting post today at Coding Horror: A Question of Programming Ethics. Basically, somebody wrote a shareware program called "G-Archiver" that will store a backup copy of your GMail messages on your hard drive; in order for this to work, you obviously have to provide your password. However, it turns out that the program was emailing all these passwords back to the programmer. Oops.

In fairness, you need to type your password into your computer somehow if you want to get at your email; this could be through a web browser or a dedicated email application (e.g. Outlook Express). So, you have to make the trade-off: who do you trust? Personally, I'm willing to trust Microsoft applications, although I know that other people disagree. I'm also willing to trust Firefox. However, open source isn't a panacea; just because something can be read, that doesn't mean that anyone has actually read it, particularly if it's obscure. It's also worth mentioning that the same thing could be done on other platforms (e.g. a Mac); this isn't a virus, it's the program doing exactly what it was designed to do.

07:20 pm - Pru Health

As I mentioned in January, I cancelled my gym membership so that I could re-join via Pru Health. I signed up with Pru last week, and received my welcome pack this morning; it all looks quite encouraging, particularly their "Vitality points" discount. The basic idea is that I can earn points for each healthy thing I do, and if I accumulate enough points during the year then I get a discount on the following year's premiums. In particular, if I go to the gym twice a week (to get cheap membership there), that would earn me 1000 points, which would give me a 50% discount next year.

The catch is that the discount is based on this year's premiums, so I may need to check the small print. Since I'm already on a 27% discount, does that mean that I save 50% of the full price (£48.52/month) or 50% of the 73% that I'm paying (£35.42/month)? I.e. would I wind up paying £24.26 or £30.81 per month? Still, if I get to save money on two separate memberships from the same activity (and get fitter in the process), that has to be a good thing.
Edit: I get the discount on the full price - more info in follow-up post.

There are a few other ways to earn vitality points, one of which is to fill out a "Personal Health Review" on their website. Unfortunately, I think they have a slight glitch in their system. When they asked me for my height and weight, I entered these in metric: 1.86m and 102kg. However, when I saw the summary at the end, it said:

Weight: 102kg
Height: 1.86ft
Body Mass Index (BMI): 16.5
Goal BMI: 20.0 - 25.0

I don't think many people would say that I'm too thin at the moment. It's possible that I chose the wrong option by mistake (although I don't think so), but even if I did then I'd expect their website to reject implausible values; 1.86 feet = 1'10", and Verne Troyer ("Mini Me") is 2'8", so I'd be surprised if there are any adults that short. Also, if I'm overweight at my height then reducing my height should increase my BMI. Doing the calculation myself, 57cm and 102kg means a BMI of 314!

Ah well, never mind. I've reported this to them, so hopefully they can investigate it and sort it out.

03:36 pm - Tickling the ivories

When I was at primary school, I played the recorder for a while (like most children), but I was never very good at it. My main problem was that I couldn't read the music, so I relied on copying the teacher's finger movements, which meant that I was always half a note behind everyone else.

When I went off to secondary school, I took up the piano, and this worked a lot better. Actually, I initially wanted to learn the violin, because that's what Sherlock Holmes played, but my parents encouraged me to take piano lessons instead so that I could sing at the same time. Looking back on it now, CH had very good music facilities, which I didn't fully appreciate at the time. For instance, lessons in any band instrument were free: this meant that there was a good pool of talent available for the school band. (That's marching band rather than rock band.) Also, if you were in the band or the choir then you got free lessons in any instrument. After a few years I passed the Grade 3 test, but my music teacher felt that I'd peaked there, so I wouldn't be able to pass Grade 4, and I stopped taking lessons. Still, I kept my hand in by playing for fun, and I kept this up when I went off to university; both places had practice rooms available where I could get free access to pianos.

( Digital keyboards )

03:23 pm - Problems with Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo EVi 2535

If you want to record TV programs, there are a few different options.

( Brief description of VCRs, Sky+, and PVRs )

My old VCR broke last year, and I decided to look for an alternate solution rather than getting it repaired. I specifically wanted to get a Windows Vista Media Centre PC, mainly because it helps my career if I can get extra experience in the new versions of Windows. I chose the Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo EVi 2535, which I ordered from Play.com. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a bad idea, so if anyone else is considering this then I have to advise against it.

( Long description of problems so far and attempted solutions )

Edit: I've now spoken to Play, and they refuse to take the machine back because it's outside the 28 days; according to them, the description on their website is technically accurate and the machine isn't faulty. So, it looks like I'm stuck with it.

11:48 pm - National Treasure: Book of Secrets

I went off to the cinema tonight to watch National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which I really enjoyed. It's a completely ridiculous film, but it's fun; if you liked the first one, then I recommend watching this one too. (In fact, it's made me want to re-watch the first one.) It's also similar to the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, which makes sense given the production team. It's not exactly cerebral, since you don't get the chance to figure out the puzzles for yourself, but you do get to think "Hey, that's nifty". There's no extra scene after the end credits, so don't bother hanging around unless you want to listen to the music.

Aside from the film itself, there were various adverts and trailers beforehand. They started out with the latest Orange advert, this time featuring Snoop Dogg; you can see the advert on the Guardian website. This series of adverts has developed a bit in the last few years, at least from my point of view. Initially, they started out by taking a well known actor with a reasonable (if self-indulgent) idea for a film, and then trying to shoe-horn mobile phones into the plot; the whole point was to side with the actor, and see the Orange team as idiots. More recently, they've been playing up the angle that the Orange team are providing the funding for the (fictional) films, and therefore that they're entitled to get some say in how their money is spent. Also, since the Orange trio are getting increasingly familiar, that makes them more sympathetic. However, this new advert is the first time when I've come down completely on their side, rooting for them against the celebrity. This is mainly because I despise the "gangsta rap" genre, so I was sitting there thinking "Yeah, you tell him!"; I also liked the fact that the lead Orange guy stood his ground, refusing to be intimidated. I'm not sure whether this was quite what the advert intended, but it worked for me.

The first trailer was for The Other Boleyn Girl. It looks quite pretty, and I thought that The Queen (by the same writer) was very good; I don't normally watch period dramas, but I might take a look at this one when it comes out on DVD. In the meantime, I'll see about borrowing the novel from the library.

The next trailer was for Sex and the City: The Movie. I think not; I'm not really the target audience, since I never watched the TV series, and all I know about it is that the cast apparently hate each other. Mind you, the trailer seemed to be slightly confused about whether it's "coming soon" or "next year".

Next up, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. This looks excellent, so I definitely want to see it in the cinema; the only downside is that it's not due out until the end of June.

Finally, Speed Racer. Again, I think that I'm not really the target audience for this; it reminds me of the trailer I saw for Underdog a while back, in that both characters seem to be fairly well known in America but I don't think either TV series has ever been shown in the UK (at least on terrestrial). Also, I think they're both aimed at young children.

So, two out of four isn't a bad ratio, and bodes well for future entertainment.