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| I didn't think I'd make it, but I managed to see
Unbreakable
before anyone could reveal the ending to me. (Sixth Sense
looks rather clumsy and irritating when you know the twist, which I
did before I saw it, annoyingly. Feh.)
Splendid film, anyway. A tad badly-paced and under-explained, but a
rarity for bounding onwards slightly faster than the audience can
catch up - trying to work out the significance of upside-down camera
shots whilst keeping up with the film itself is, for me, the hallmark
of a good thing. And it's a thoroughly interesting and
multi-faceted plot. Ambiguous enough to be worth watching even if
someone has blurted the ending at you.
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| An evening of Brazil
last night; rather less coherent a film than I remembered it being, although
I'd not seen it for six or seven years. Thoroughly beautiful retro-futuristic
scenery and props, though, all madly-inefficient mechanical wiring and tiny
monochrome monitors behind magnifying screens, propping up a fearsomely
overcomplicated bureaucracy that you can all-too-easily imagine the
evolution of. A horribly fascinating world to escape to for an hour and
a half.
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| The maximum dosage of the throat sweets I'm taking is, apparently,
a mighty eighty lozenges per twenty-four hours. They're even selling
multi-flavoured packs, these days. Surely all this just dents their
placebo effect, showing them up as the boiled sweets they really are? I'd be much
more in awe of them if they were dark green and had a label saying "If you take
more than ten of these in a single day you will die."
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| Children see maths teachers as
"scruffy nerds",
scientists as "unfashionable geeks".
Which is perhaps a bit harsh and generalising, but kids are harsh
and generalising. And it cuts both ways - being a train driver is quite a
dull job when you get down to it, but that doesn't mean we should be stamping
out juvenile idealisation of the role.
The "researchers" say themselves that enjoyment of a
subject is the key thing, which is exactly the point - if a child
finds a subject fascinating, they won't care about turning into a particular teacher
or vague stereotype, they'll just see it as part of their own life and interests.
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| Unnerving - doing my occasional check on aloud.com for gigs I might not have heard
about, I found that The Divine Comedy
were doing a couple of dates in London later this month. Phoning up to
buy tickets, they only had, er, two left.
I daresay other ticket places still have a few, though, if anyone reading
this is as much of a fan and was just as ignorant of their gigging.
Full details posted to Decent
Things.
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| Well, three days into the 21st century and there's still no real sign of
aluminium-foil jumpsuits, personal jet-packs or lunar holidays. I suppose stupid little
metal scooters might please the futurists of the past, but I get the feeling
this wasn't really what I expected the year 2001 to be. Yes, my younger self
would probably find the modern technology quite lovely, and be impressed that
I was working in an area of computing that barely existed ten years ago, but
it just doesn't feel as futuristic as it should. Inevitable consequence, I
suppose, of getting there a day at a time. I daresay I'll be just as unimpressed
by 2050.
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| After my grumbling about the difficulty of making original objects for The Sims,
Ole reminds me that Creatures
had an aspect of game-object creation. I have actually got a copy, I just became
rather infuriated with the Tamagotchi-style inanity of the thing and gave
up on it. Maybe I'll dig it out and make some Triffids.
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| Interesting Straight Dope article about the
nocebo
effect, evil twin of placebo.
| I don't know if I slept through my alarm or managed to turn it off without
the luxury of consciousness, this morning, but either way I awoke with five whole
minutes to assemble myself and snare a bus. This doesn't seem the best of
portents for 2001, really.
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| The Sims Transmogrifier
is a cunning piece of software that
lets you export any object from The Sims
and, without too much faffing around, completely alter its appearance
before putting it back into the game.
Previous project; changing a chess table into a
Mornington
Crescent Table. Current project; daffodils into Triffids.
A pity there's no easy way to reprogram interaction and reaction,
though; manually editing the files to change messages seems to be
the feasible limit. Disappointing. Carving new objects is much
more fun than actually playing the game.
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| For what it's worth, a few predictions for the year ahead:-
- Mad carrot disease. Critical elements of BSE found in vegetable
crops as a result of tainted bonemeal being used as fertilizer. World
Governments tentatively start putting money into finding a cure for CJD,
rather than just snidely banning each other's exports.
- Coach disaster. With Railtrack still not getting their
act together, train-fearing commuters turn to an
increasingly busy National Express, and a single over-worked driver
is enough to bring about public outrage. Public again choose to
ignore consistent number of deaths caused by privately-owned cars.
- Mobile phone harrassment. Bored hackers put up a site that
uses Lycos's SMS system to cron-job anonymous text messages to your
enemies in the middle of the night. Surprisingly few victims realise
anything is amiss.
- Who Wants To Be a Dot-Com Millionaire? Ill-conceived
Internet-linked TV quiz show hacked to smithereens during first live
broadcast.
- Mobile phone virus. Abusing phones' engineer maintenance
codes, a virus sweeps through Europe's mobile phone networks, phoning
a random person from each phone's recent-call log to pass itself on.
Mobile companies issue security
patches for newer models of phone, but are unable to do anything
about the older ones, which continue to bounce the virus back and
forth whenever switched on. Customers encouraged to upgrade to new
phones. Virus suspected to be manufactured by phone companies
themselves.
- Text-message wristwatches. Compass-point buttons allow
characters to be typed symbolically. Option to convert "c u l8r"
brevity to coherent English upon reception almost completely unused.
- Mobile phone trivia. Call a free number
run by the phone company, answer a few trivia questions, listen to
some adverts and win extra credit for your phone.
- Mobile phone cancer. Research shows sterility in people
who've been keeping phones in trouser pockets or handbags for the past
couple of years, and hefty brain tumours springing up in trivia-quiz
addicts.
- Big Brother. New "reality show" open to anyone; applicants
pay to have cameras fitted in their house, programme producers
selecting a few at random for possible filming. Chosen house is
monitored and recorded for a month, then broadcast. Huge prize money,
micro-celebrity shrapnel, increased public acceptance of in-home
cameras, thousands of takers for the next series.
- Flood, drought, flood. Waters rise again during the winter
thaws, but drop even further as we crawl into a summer heatwave. Water
authorities impose hosepipe ban to incredulity of public, and take
action to improve water flow to resevoirs; 'improvements' make for
even worse flooding in autumn. Widespread disaster and looting.
- Florida recount. After an independent recount establishes
that Gore received by far the most votes after all, not even counting
those miscast or waylaid by police. Americans protest on the streets.
Bush declares martial law.
- NATO abolished. And replaced by huge pre-targetted missiles
set along the east coast of America.
- GM contamination. Over-zealous eco-warriors enthusiastically
smash a high-security research compound to pieces, unwittingly releasing
toxin-resistant, high-growth, super-weed seeds into the wild. All natural
crops are overgrown, majority of wildlife poisoned, mankind blinded,
Triffids conquer the world.
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