D4D

It's better to stay quiet and be thought an idiot than to speak up and leave no doubt

Archive for the month “January, 2010”

31 Jan 2010

Longer Days, Shorter Nights

One of the things that’s been good about the end of January has been seeing the days lengthening again. I know, it’s something that happens every year, and every year I appreciate it.

Over the weekend I was able to go out and give corn to the chickens at 4.30. A couple of weeks previously it was already dark by then, and they were getting locked up for the night at that time. In the mornings when I go up to let them out before I leave for work I now don’t need to take the torch up with me in order to do so.

It’s now dark at about 5.30 or so, and getting better every day. Soon I’ll be able to see the house in daylight when I leave and when I come back. (Currently it’s OK when I leave, pitch-black when I get home)

This is A Very Good Thing.

Posted by lyle in Animals, Domestic | Leave a Comment
30 Jan 2010

Newsworthy

Today a lot of the mainstream media are bleating on about the England captain, John Terry. Apparently he’s had an affair, and the other person was the girlfriend (or ex-girlfriend – sources vary currently) of another player at Chelsea (Wayne Bridge, if that means anything)

Now bear in mind that I couldn’t identify John Terry in a line-up. Hell, I didn’t even know he played for Chelsea.

But I still really don’t see how this is newsworthy. Sure, he’s been a fuckwit, and being a fuckwit the the partner (or ex-partner) of one of your team-mates is even more fuckwitted. But is it news? No, not really.

The other side of it is that he’s supposedly going to lose the captaincy of England because of this – and again, I don’t quite see how the two are related. As Adrian said, it could be that the friction between Terry and Bridge would affect the team at the World Cup – assuming Bridge is on the team, and I can’t comment on that one, as I’ve no feckin’ clue. (And don’t really care, either)

To me though, it’s still not news. It’s not relevant to the world in general (it’s not like Tony Fuckbag Bliar and the Iraq War, for example) and really there’s only three or four people that are affected by it – Terry, his wife, Bridge, and the other woman. That’s it. No-one else cares.

So why is it in all the papers, and every news broadcast? Maybe I’ve missed something, I don’t know.

Posted by lyle in Cynicism, Media, News, Thoughts | Leave a Comment
29 Jan 2010
2 Comments

Creative

When I went to see “Avatar”, I got in in time to see some of the adverts before things started – not just the trailers and ads, but the localised ones that show while people are coming in.

I don’t know how much they cost – they’re just basic flat ads with not much happening – but one caught my irritation all the same. It was for a company called Selesti, and was just a plain white page with blue text saying “We make websites”, and some contact details.

It was pretty much the dullest ad in the set – an achievement in itself – and really surprised me. For a company that’s supposed to be all creative and whizzy, the ad didn’t speak of any of that. It actually conveyed “We paid for this, but really couldn’t be arsed to do anything with it”.  Even if they’d used “We Write Websites” it would’ve been better, and would’ve at least implied the connection to www. addresses/domains. But no, “We make websites”.

I wonder how much business Selesti have gained through this ad at the cinema? Even more, I wonder how much they’ve lost…

Posted by lyle in Advertising, Agency Idiocy, Creativity, Cynicism, Thoughts
27 Jan 2010

Avatar

After wanting to see it for a while, I finally went to see “Avatar” last night. I even managed to get to see the 3D version, which made it the first “Real3D” film I’ve seen.

In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting much from the film – most of the reviews I’d seen made far more of the technology and so on in the film than of the film itself – but I was pleasantly surprised.  Sure, it’s a bit too long, could do with losing about 20 minutes of trite shite, and has some deeply vile sickly-sweet bits for American audiences, but overall it’s pretty damn good.

In fact probably my biggest bugbear with it was the name of the wondrous material that was being mined on Pandora – “Unobtainium”. I mean, please. It’s not unobtainable – it’s fucking difficult to get, fine. Call it “fuckingdifficultium” or something. But “Unobtanium”? Sheesh – just make up something new, don’t try for sounding cool – and miss it by a mile. I do realise there’s a cultural history for calling things Unobtainium – but for a film that’s trying to be fresh and new, it just seems to be something that harks back to the 50s/60s, an in-joke that’s just not very funny.

So yes, there’s little bits that irritate – and the occasional bit of “Look! It’s 3D!” that grates – but in general it’s actually a pretty good film.

The director, James Cameron, has brought in a number of his standard themes – particularly Evil Big Company going ahead with plans at the expense of other less capitalistic influences (survival, global dynamics etc. etc.) – which makes it quite interesting in the current situation with global warming etc., and the awareness of “Going Green”, which is itself quite a major theme of the film.

As for the effects, and the way it’s filmed, I think it probably is one of the more radical developments in film/cinema history – I found myself thinking back to it, wondering how some of the stuff was done at all. In that context, it’s remarkable – in a similar way to when “The Matrix” came out, with effects no-one had really seen before. Avatar’s the same – it’s not quite “the next thing from colour”, but it’s pretty remarkable all the same.

All told, it’s a good film. Not a great one- although that’s really what it aspires to be – but pretty good all the same.

Posted by lyle in Media, Reviews(ish), Thoughts | Leave a Comment
26 Jan 2010

Broken Heels

While driving to/from work, I have the radio on, and currently it tends to be Radio One. (I know, I’m not in the target market, blah blah – I still can’t stand R2, and can’t currently be arsed with my own music choices)  One of the tracks that seems to be always played at some point in the drive is Alexandra Burke’s “Broken Heels” , which has lyrics that drive me barmy.

The lyrics in question are

All the ladies tell their fellas we can do what they do,

We can do it even better in broken heels

And that’s rubbish.I don’t have a problem with a song about women doing stuff better than men, that’s fine. But to say “We can do it even better in broken heels” is crap. That’s saying “We can do it well in normal shoes, but we can do it even better when the shoes are broken”

What I think it should read is “We can even do it better in broken heels” – implying that even with a handicap of broken heels, they can still do the job better than blokes.

I know, I’m a) pedantic and b) need to get out more.  Guilty as charged.

But saying

Posted by lyle in Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts | Leave a Comment
24 Jan 2010

Hunger Games

Over the Festering Season, I read a book called “Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins. It’s written for young adults, but has a lot of levels to the story. For me it’s a better book than Twilight (and much better than the sequels) and with a lot more ideas.

The basic premise is based in an America that’s had some un-named armageddon, and is left with twelve “Districts” ruled over by “The Capitol”, which is portrayed as a decadent seat of government while the Districts are much poorer, but all their produce goes to support the Capitol. The Hunger Games themselves are an annual televised event where a boy and girl from each of the Districts is selected by Lottery to be the Champions for the District, and are then put against each other in an arena, forced to survive and kill the others until only one winner remains.

It’s got a lot of very subversive ideas within the book, and I was really impressed by it, so I’ve also bought the second part of the trilogy, called “Catching Fire“, which I’ve just finished.  Again, very subversive, continuing the themes of the evil Government that cares nothing for the people involved, just for keeping the status quo, and keeping the security of their own privileged positions.

What’s annoyed me more though is that the final part of the trilogy won’t be published ’til at least August this year. And I really don’t want to have to wait that long to find out how it all works out in the end.

Posted by lyle in Domestic, Reviews(ish) | Leave a Comment
23 Jan 2010

Shit, Meet Fan

It’s been a quiet couple of days here on D4D™, and with good reason.

On Thursday, the database at work died in spectacular fashion. It’s been getting shaky for a while, but this week it keeled over totally, and since then I’ve been putting in silly hours getting things back to something approaching usable.

The problems are many, but basically the entire site – user-facing and company-facing – is database-driven. Without the database, there’s no business. It just grinds to a halt. So it’s been a case of “fix the essential bits, deal with the rest later”.

The other main problem is that the database was originally written as a proof-of-concept, a basic thing that’s then been extended and extended. Think of the original as a bungalow. The current site, all built off that bungalow, is the size of an airport, and all balanced on the roof of that original bungalow.

Because it wasn’t written with “the big picture” in mind, some of it is downright fucking nasty- and I suspect the original developer was also learning as he went along. For example, there were no date columns in there ’til I came along – instead it all used some very dodgy string-handling to figure out dates.

One of the main tables in the database now has 170,000 records in it. Which (in the database scheme of things) is nothing. Well, until you realise that each of those 170,000 records has 180 fields in it. That one database table is 600Mb in size. Oops.

So the last couple of days have been spent in Database Intensive Care. I’m through the brunt of it now, but it’s meant that other things – food, sleep, relaxation, D4D™ – have taken a back seat. I’m still going to be working on stuff around this for the next week, but things should be a bit calmer now that the urgent repairs are done, and it’s now more a case of fixing the underlying issues.

Thank fuck my assessment isn’t next week.

Posted by lyle in D4D™, Domestic, Geeky, Technology, Work-related | Leave a Comment

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