Why remake Day Of The Triffids?

~ Inquisitor

I mean, it was already remade quite recently, and successfully; the only reason the BBC possibly thinks this is a good idea is that they don’t know about it. See, the people who remade it changed the title. To 28 Days Later.

28 Days Later is effectively Triffids with fast zombies instead of plants – from eye operation, to deserted London, right down to the villainous military guys. And because it’s really a very good movie, and since the 70s Triffids adaptation (minus good-enough-at-the-time plant SFX) is really very well done, why remake? Because of 28 Days nicking all the best imagery that hadn’t already been taken by the 70s adaptation, you’ll just be repeating the idea rather than providing anything new.

Still, I don’t know exactly what they’re thinking, so I hope that in the future this doubt will sound like someone complaining about the rumours about the new Doctor Who or Battlestar Galactica before we actually got to see them. That’s my hope, anyway.

Pillocks on 606

~ Inquisitor ~ 1 Comment

Whose smart idea was it to put up 606 message boards on the Sol Campbell racism controversy without once, as far as I can see, actually describing what the hell happened anywhere visible? The only people to actually report what was being said are of all people the Daily Mail, and The Guardian has a description of the chant as used in 2006. It’s all way beyond the line – a combination of homophobia (aimed at a straight man!) and lynching references in a song based on “Lord of the Dance” and a jolly chant along the lines that he’s a black guy who likes it up him.

Usual stupidity here, but good to see it called out for once – Croatia only got fined £15,000 for full-on racist chanting at the England team, despite their long history of such things. Message boards on things like this are invariably filled with “anti-PC” bores, idiots and occasionally someone with sense. Sometimes it’s worth deconstructing, so what are the shining wits (sic) on 606 saying?

comment by sandcastlejim (U7681251) / posted Yesterday

it’s just a bit of banter – sticks and stones and all that. the world has gone soft.

Uh-huh. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but threatening a footballer with lynching and AIDS (not necessarily in that order) because he left your team on a Bosman seven years ago after saying he wouldn’t is perfectly A-OK. Got it. Right.

You are a moron, aren’t you?

comment by With Big Phil We Must (U7876572) / posted 8 Hours Ago

does anyone think that the media and football clubs are becoming a bit too Feminized ?

i mean football has always been like this maybe its deemed as racial but if a former club cant give an ex player stick then whats the point goin to a game ..its all about Banter a release from pressure of work/home going to a game its for fun and enjoyment
In this matter i think people are being too politically correct and as hard as it is for me to say i think Sours fans did nothing wrong …and nothing more abusive than most teams fans give to old players who left to join a hated rival

You wont be able to cheer a goal soon

Or at least I hope that you won’t. And it’s “feminised”, at least if you’re not American; it doesn’t have a capital and it doesn’t have a “z”.

And that’s a really poor insult, too. “The worst thing I can say about you… is that you’re like a girl! GIRL!”

comment by Deadly Ledley (U2941764) / posted 3 Hours Ago

the lord of the dance song isnt racist

if the player was prepared to sell out his own fans, he should be prepared to take the backlash. By responding like this, he has shown that he has a fragile mind and can’t handle the boo boys

Oh dear. This one’s a snide reference to the man’s depressive episode in early 2006. How low can you go?

Actually, why should I even bother? They’re really condemning themselves. The real pillocks here are the BBC for opening up a message board where no useful Internet discussion can ever be achieved (see also Have Your Say, scotsman.com and any long thread on Comment Is Free.) The others are just attracted to it.

First Google Chrome impressions

~ Inquisitor ~ 2 Comments

It’s BSD licensed. It seems to be fairly fast. It imported my current Firefox 3.0 profile without a hitch. The tabs support middle-click close and are very fast to do so. It even fits into Vista’s Glass style properly, which the screenshots previously shown didn’t make obvious:

Google Chrome on Vista with tabs open
Google Chrome on Vista with tabs open

In fact, I’ve already run into an annoying issue with it – if you delete all the text from the WordPress text field, it deselects the field – but it’s not exactly lethal.

Chrome’s multiprocessing isn’t a joke either. Right now, I have seven tabs open – with nine processes showing in Task Manager. Close one and it goes down to eight. Total memory usage appears to be about 150% that of Firefox, but process size appears to depend on how complex the page is – a new Firefox 3.0 on my desktop machine with the same tabs open as Chrome uses 63MB while Chrome uses a total of 98MB, with some of the page process sizes being as low as 1MB and the biggest appearing to be the main application (36MB). HQ Youtube videos play absolutely fine in the background. It doesn’t experience the same slowdown as Firefox when opening multiple pages at the same time either and trying to work with another. It’s a very competent beta.

It even has a rather nice object inspection window that reminds me of Firebug:

The inspector in Google Chrome - looking at my WordPress page.
The inspector in Google Chrome - looking at my WordPress page.

This includes a time/size graphing facility too, and you can edit those CSS properties in-line. They have been thorough.

Remember when Safari came out for the Mac and was a step ahead of almost everything else? Chrome is like that for Windows and it’ll be like that for any platform it comes out on. It’s quick, slim-looking and uses animation sparingly and well. It’s obviously had a whole lot of thought put into it and, being open source, it should hopefully have so much more.

(Poking around in its install directory – incredibly, it installs direct to your local profile on Vista, which is probably a violation of something – reveals a “Themes” directory with a single .dll in it, a “Resources” directory with the JavaScript-based inspector in it, Google Gears as a .dll plugin and an updater. No doubt there’s more goodies deep in there.)

But in short, what it needs is Adblock Plus (or equivalent) and a Mac version for my laptop and it’ll be my main browser. Come on, Google, do your best.

And you thought they were Communist

~ Inquisitor

When China’s design for the opening ceremony comes straight from the same chauvinist impulse that brought us Paris Hilton, Zoo and Nuts, My Super Sweet 16 and The Swan:

A pretty girl who won national fame after singing at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games was only miming.

[…]

But the singer was Yang Peiyi, who was not allowed to appear because she is not as “flawless” as nine-year-old Lin.

The show’s musical director said Lin was used because it was in the best interests of the country.

— BBC News, “China Olympic ceremony star mimed” (12th August 2008)

Now, if this had happened at an opening ceremony in a less authoritarian country, they’d have said “the best interests of the Games”, but it would otherwise have been an identical reaction. We can’t have anything imperfect, after all; bad for the sponsors. Could be embarrassing.

Wouldn’t it have been so much better if it was imperfect? That’s what we should have for 2012; we shouldn’t try to do an outrageously expensive media spectacle that’s likely to go wrong and fall flat, we should do something from the heart that if it goes wrong it just seems more endearing. The Eddie the Eagle of opening ceremonies, rather than the Terminal 5.

Why not, anyway? It would be better than telling a nine year-old that she can’t sing for the country because she’s apparently got crooked teeth, and that she’ll have to go without the credit for her own skill while the front gets all the headlines. It is a disgusting attitude, isn’t it?

War!

~ Inquisitor

Russia has invaded Georgia and is apparently bombing civilian targets. It’s like the old Russia never left. In the meantime, CNN is showing Wolf Blitzer moaning repetitively about John Edwards shagging a campaign employee in 2006 for a short period of time. How meaningful.

I’m back, by the way. I’ve had a bunch of failed drafts over the last few months, but that should soon be over. So more blogging coming soon…

Worst (mainstream) album cover of 2008

~ Inquisitor

I can pretty much tell you what it’s going to be already: Velocifero by Ladytron (link to Amazon).

It’s really awful, isn’t it? The inner art is better and the spine is OK at least, so it’s not a dead loss. HMV and Virgin “zavvi” are hiding the album deep in the racks and only Fopp appears brave enough to show the thing in its front-facing new albums section, so it does look like it’s not going to sell very much offline. What’s worse is that it’s a pretty good album and deserves a whole lot better.

Still, might sell a bit on iTunes.

(The mainstream exception in the title is for stuff where by definition the covers are appalling: garage bands and a whole lot of punk and metal. Ladytron, however, are on Nettwerk, who should know better.)

Is it just me…

~ Inquisitor

…or wasn’t Indiana Jones and the Belated Sequel (insert that crystal skull thing here) actually not that bad? Definitely not worth the fanboy outrage you can see on AICN, and most certainly not prequel awful; it’s actually quite endearingly old-school. And Shia LaBeouf isn’t nearly as bad as he was in Transformers, although he most certainly is unnecessary.

It does get a whole lot better once Karen Allen turns up, though. And John Hurt always does a good nutbag. And… oh, what the hell, it’s OK. You could definitely do worse right now.

Eurovision 2008 liveblogging

~ Inquisitor

Arse, Twitter’s down. So I’ll be liveblogging here for you all.

  • (19:57) Trailer break on BBC1.
  • (19:58) An apology over last year’s Making Your Mind Up. Wow. Nice black screen they’re using for these. Shame it didn’t affect the outcome, really.
  • (19:59) It’s here!
  • (20:00) The Confluence of Sound, according to Wogan and the title screen.
  • (20:01) They’re showing translations on the Virgin Media standard subtitles this year! YES! And that Serbian lady’s cleaned up a bit…
  • (20:02) Prayer/It burns my sore lips like a fire…
  • (20:03) Twitter’s back up, so I’m over there. If it goes down again, see you again here.

Coming up tonight – Eurovision 2008 liveblogging

~ Inquisitor

Later tonight, why not come over to Twitter and watch my Eurovision 2008 live blog? (If Twitter’s not working, I’ll do it here.) I like Sebastian Tellier. I don’t think our entry’s the worst thing we’ve ever put in; not when our last few included Scooch and Daz Sampson. Who knows, we might even come in halfway through the table… hah.

What follows behind the “continue reading” link is a reprint of my Twittering for the Your Decision show with added explanatory and exclamatory comments.

Continue reading “Coming up tonight – Eurovision 2008 liveblogging” →

New look

~ Inquisitor

Haven’t switched theme for a while, but this one looks a lot less clashy and readable than the last one. Advice welcome.

It’s not perfect, but then what is?