Phone Booth

A long overdue trip to the cinema with Rich and Paul. I was really looking forward to this one...

First I had to sit through a new BMW "advert". I thought it was poo. However, a quick look around www.bmwfilms.com revealed there were 2 more. 'Hostage' looks a lot better.

Then the trailers. I hate trailers.

Finally, the film. It started badly. Any producer of a film that contains footage of a satelite in space that makes a whooooshing sound as it flies past the camera obviously hasn't been here or here. I don't care if it "looks and sounds good". Shut up and spend more effort on other things, like the rest of the film introduction.

So after the whooooshing noises of the satellite came those generic bleeping noises always heard when electronic equipment appears in films (we're still in space by the way).

Zoom into planet Earth. Now that looked good... uh oh, the camera has flown into a circuit board in a mobile phone... cue more stupid sound effects (this time DTMF noises).

OK, griping over. When the film finally got started, I really enjoyed it. In case you don't know, the bulk of it is set around a man in a ...... Phone Booth! It was something different and I was entertained all the way through. Certainly give it a try if you can.

This guy has re-written the rulebook. And then had it shredded.

I'm saving my sanity while finishing off some coursework thanks to a few downloaded mpegs from www.tango.tv.

I liked the advert for Tango with the man in the diving suit helmet, and when I saw the barrel one I think I wet myself laughing, so I decided to go in search of them to download for my own private viewing pleasure.

As it turned out they are on the Tango website, although I found it an absolute nightmare to navigate. Worth it in the end though.

The porcupine ad is also funny; meanwhile I'm saving seal.mpg as a treat for when I get this cak work out of the way.

Public Service

Why don't the government put a bounty on the head of anyone involved in sending out spam txt msgs?

Kill a txt
spammer n
get £s 4 u
& ur m8s!

Summer Holiday 2003

Plans for this year's summer holiday have been in the pipeline for some time now. I'd had my heart set on a villa in Tuscany, but Italy seems to be a rather expensive place to visit, so I've now come round to the idea of a Greek Island instead.

The first option was Laganas in Zante, but that looks a bit too 18-30 so the favourite at the moment is Panorama Apartments in Lassi, Kefalonia. Looks nice, especially Myrtos Beach which was apparently used in the film of Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

Easter Egg

My girlfriend bought me a Harry Potter easter egg today because

a) it was cheap (being after Easter and all)

b) she knows I don't like Harry Potter.

I love you, Lisa.

Secret of the Vitruvian Man

Whilst trying to find out the name of the Leonardo da Vinci sketch that the graphic on my home page is based on, I found this.

Films to miss

This weekend I saw "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and "Showtime". As you may or may not know, I'm no fan of Harry Potter so wasn't so surprised that the film was cak. It was a shame to see a De Niro/ Murphy film be so lame though.

All your flaky software are belong to SUN

Dammit dammit dammit. I hate it when I end up wasting half a day trying to get some software to install because of some stupid error.

But, being the supreme master of fixing other people's mess, I have now got things moving.

Situation: Installing Sun ONE Studio 4 update 1, Mobile Edition

Error Message: "A suitable JVM could not be found. Please run the installer again using the option -is:javahome "

Problem: A suitable JVM IS installed you fool.

Failed attempt: ffj_me_win32.exe -is:javahome "C:Program Files\Javaj2re1.4.1_02\"

Solution(!): ffj_me_win32.exe -is:javahome "\Program Files\Javaj2re1.4.1_02\"

Dumb eh?