Transformers
Posted: Mon 30 July, 2007 Filed under: Reviews(ish) 2 Comments »What can you say about the Transformers film? It’s loud, hyperfast, utterly ridiculous, with dollops of American sentimentality that leave you choking, they’re so bad. The speed of the action makes you come out feeling like you’ve spent 90 minutes on the world’s fastest rollercoaster. Insanely fast, in fact.
But then again, what else did you expect from a film directed by Michael Bay, and based on a cartoon in the first place?
However, it’s also two and a half hours of pretty much non-stop action alongside some of the best special effects I’ve seen in ages. The robots don’t look like they’re computer generated – and it’s all done so well that you actually do suspend disbelief (well, until you’re given the chance to think about it, anyway) – it feels like the robots were just filmed as part of the action. And that’s impressive, however you look at it, and however you feel about American action films.
Mind you, it’s also interesting, seeing the way that some films now seem to be showing the law-enforcement agencies as being not always the good guys. Mind you, the person playing the part of the lead FBI-faction agency should’ve been shot at birth. He is awful, and the ‘performance’ (if you can call it that) jars with pretty much the rest of the film.
All told though, it’s a fantastic film, far more fun than either Spiderman 3 or Pirates 3 – both of which should have been fun, but weren’t. Both of those films felt far longer than their actual running time, whereas Transformers managed to feel like 90 minutes while actually being an hour longer than that.
iPlayer
Posted: Sun 29 July, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Getting Organised, Reviews(ish) 1 Comment »So yes, I’m signed up with the BBC’s iPlayer TV on demand. I’ve tried the Channel 4 version, 4oD, which is OK, so I thought I’d give the BBC one a go too.
And so far it seems to be OK. The “zoom” doesn’t work on my machine, leaving you with just ‘diddy’ screen or full screen, but one assumes that’s a bug fix that’ll come along soon. The actual playback quality is pretty impressive, and while the library of available programmes isn’t currently all that great, it’s not bad either. And of course there’ll be more stuff as time goes on.
All told, an interesting idea. Now it just remains to be seen whether I’ll actually use it…
Die Hard 4.0
Posted: Thu 5 July, 2007 Filed under: Reviews(ish) Leave a comment »Die Hard 4 is a very silly film. It’s also highly entertaining, and well worth the money to go see it.
Well, so long as you enjoyed any of the other Die Hard films, of course. If you didn’t, don’t bother – it’s more of the same.
We both thoroughly enjoyed it though.
Changing Phones
Posted: Tue 19 June, 2007 Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Reviews(ish) 3 Comments »I’ve finally given up on the mini-XDA (a rebranded iMate K-JAM) PDA/Phone I got last year, and organised an ‘upgrade’ phone. (OK, technically it’s a ‘downgrade’, from PDA to normal phone-type phone, but there we go)
I got the XDA back in February last year, so I’ve had it nigh-on eighteen months, which counts (to me) as a fair crack of the whip. And as a PDA-type device, it’s great. In fact, in general it’s a pretty good device. The keyboard is great, and has managed to handle my heavy-thumbed style for a year and a half without showing any excessive wear, or any problems with the keys themselves. I can still type text messages and emails with no problem at all, the hinge/slide mechanism is still solid (despite feeling really plastic and fragile) and all told it’s a fantastic bit of kit.
So why am I changing it? Simply, it comes down to one thing. Windows Mobile 5®™. Which is an utter piece of shit, and should be dragged out back, beaten soundly, then shot. Repeatedly. And then (if there’s a voodoo priest around) it should be reanimated, beaten again, and shot again. Just to make sure.
Now in fairness, some of the problem is also down to the (slow) processor and memory on the XDA. But that’s only maybe 10% of the problem. The rest is Windows Mobile. The biggest issue is that it crashes. Regularly. Like once every couple of days. And when it crashes, it does so silently and invisibly. You don’t get a warning, or a Blue Screen of Death, it just completely locks up. This also means that I get to miss calls, text messages and the like. The only way you know it’s crashed is when you try and do something, only to see that it’s locked up, and is in need of a restart.
And that’s the thing I hate the most about the XDA – it needs to have that restart every couple of days at most. One of the things that kills it the most is – are you ready for this – recharging the battery. It’s not the only thing that kills it, but it’s certainly the most regular one. Connect the charger, leave it to charge up, and there we go, crashed. Other things kill it too, but they’re more random. Hell, it’s been known that just swapping the screen from vertical to horizontal format has crashed it.
In short, Windows Mobile 5 is (in the context of the XDA) about as stable as a tower-block made of jelly.
And that is why I’m taking a step back, and getting a Sony Ericsson K800i instead.
@Media Day One – thoughts
Posted: Mon 11 June, 2007 Filed under: @Media2007, Reviews(ish), Thoughts 2 Comments »For the Thursday, these are the presentations I saw…
- Jesse James Garrett : Beyond Ajax
- Molly E. Holzschlag : Broken World: Solving the Browser Problem
- Nate Koechly : High Performance Web Pages
- Dan Cederholm : Interface Design Juggling
- Mark Boulton : Five Simple Steps to Better Typography
- Joe Clark : When Accessibility Is Not Your Problem
*Clicky* on the ‘more’ link to see what I thought…
Read the rest of this entry »
@Media – First thoughts
Posted: Sun 10 June, 2007 Filed under: @Media2007, Reviews(ish), Thoughts Leave a comment »So, @Media 2007. Was it any good?
The short answer? Yes, absolutely. Was it worth the (roughly) £700 for it ?(including the price of the conference, hotel for two nights, and train ticket etc.) Again, to me, a resounding yes. Mind you, I just wish that- when you consider the amount of money spent per person– for the conference, the food wasn’t such generic slop, despite being a different supplier to last year. Then again, I said that last year too…
That’s the basic summary – I’ll be writing more over the next couple of days about the presentations I saw, and some thoughts about them. Call me Mr Comprehensive…