Month: July 2004

I seem to be in Sussex, or wherever the heck this is. Herstmonceux Castle, at any rate, way down on the far side of London and a heck of a long way from Glasgow. However, it’s the venue for the annual gathering of the British Interactive Group, which goes at least part-way to explaining my presence.

‘Twas a rather nice trip down, actually, watching hot air balloons around Oxford and a parachute drop from a Hercules somewhere vaguely near Lyneham. Herstmonceux Castle itself is an atmospheric place, squatting in the dark behind its moat, guarded by bats. The bats are rather large, actually – too big for pipistrelles?

 

I get about four phone calls a day, (presumably) from direct marketing types – it’s not clear exactly who, because they’re usually machine-dialled and there’s nobody at the other end.

So: Telephone Preference Service. Let’s see if it makes a difference. Takes 28 days to propagate, apparently.

[Update: Ironically, the confirmation email sent out by the TPS uses some sort of hash in the ‘reply-to’ address. As a result, it got caught by my junk email filter. D’oh! Incidentally – there’s no check in place (that I can see) to ensure that the numbers I’ve registered are actually mine. I’m not registering anyone else for ‘no junk phone calls’ could ever be classed as a malicious act, but it’s still a little weird that it’d be so easy, no?]

No, actually, scratch that. My favourite film of the week has to be the trailer for Blake’s Junction 7, which looks (a.) absolutely ridiculous, (b.) rather funny, and (c.) made with the sort of production values I wish somebody on the Thunderbirds movie had understood. You can view the trailer here, and a few stills here.

As an aside, I’m glad someone is pressing ahead with B7 production: looks like the heralded sequel series might be undergoing some tough times.

Oh, and while I’m on the short film posting frenzy: Spite Your Face, makers of all that wonderful Lego goodness, have released their latest commission – Spiderman 2. In, yes, Lego.

Ah, the joys of bandwidth. One gets to spend precious time at places like iFilm and AtomFilms. Fave of the week: Pink Five Strikes Back, sequel to the zero-budget Star Wars fan film, Pink Five. It helps if you’re at least a bit of a Star Wars geek.

Orkut (adj.) An idea that, while initially promising, turns out to be naff or plain broken.

…about as duff as I’d feared. Actually, no, it’s really really really…

[sigh]

It’s like this: the Tracy brothers always were dreadfully two-dimensional characters. Clean-cut Astronaut heroes for a simpler time, perhaps, though one suspects they were flimsy even for the 1960s. No, what was cool about Thunderbirds was – durr – the Thunderbirds. The machines.

There’s something undeniably category-A cool about blasting halfway across the planet in a nuclear-fuelled green behemoth, and then (da-da-daaa!) Saving Lives! (hurrah!). That’s ‘Cool’ in a small-boy’s-dream, most-definitely-capital-C sort of way. Forty years on, the Thunderbirds are, still, amazingly, unbelievably, rip-roaringly cool.

So – picture the scene: you’re writing the movie, and that’s the legacy on which you’re drawing. What do you do? Do you:

1. Run with it. Rely on the Thunderbirds being the stars, and have them do amazing things.
2. Re-imagine the Tracy brothers and their story, perhaps concentrating on one or two.
   — or —
3. Bring in a bunch of kids to form some sort of ‘International Rescue Junior’ squad.

Hmm… let me think. No, I don’t think I’d pick option (c), personally. And I’d certainly do my best to avoid trowelling on a layer of dialogue cliché so thick that nothing resembling a performance could possibly escape. And I’d ensure we saw the Thunderbirds make more than one bona-fide rescue in the entire film, thank you very much.

Despite it all, the Thunderbirds do still manage to be rip-roaringly cool, Thunderbird 2 in particular being absolutely stunning. But the script and story do nothing to help these real stars gleam. A crushingly missed opportunity. The only other saving grace is Sophia Myles’ hilariously saucy Lady Penelope, whose improbable costume changes and artfully-raised eyebrow make the most of it all.

Worth seeing for the action shots – take a nap during the rest. Oh, and tell me – just what is Thunderbird 3 for? It’s very very fast, and… orange. Apart from that – what? Beats me, always has done.

…as an Aussie friend of mine was fond of saying. Rather often.

It’s now a week since I returned to Glasgow, and I’ve been… er… what have I been doing? It’s really not clear. Lots of good food, a few games of The Settlers of Catan with unsuspecting chums, and… er… not a whole lot else.

However, I have been gradually catching up on net stuff, via renewed acquaintance with the miracle that is broadband. Something like 3000 emails have been dealt with (no, I’m not joking – though most of them were mailing list stuff that I simply ‘marked as read,’ and today I trawled somewhat over 1000 blog stories in NetNewsWire. So that’s that done, though I’m still woefully behind with email anyway, it seems.

Anyway – something the geeks amongst you might find useful: use 5 or 13-character WEP passwords (for 40 and 128-bit encryption respectively), and hardware from any vendor will apparently apply the same hashing. Now they ruddy well tell us! [sigh]. (via Steven Frank, who had much the same response as me. How much time has the world wasted mis-transcribing hex WEP keys?)

I slightly overdid the pork chops (marinated in sage, lemon and garlic oil), and put a dash too much cumin in with the carrots (baked with thyme and white wine), but overall… damn, that was a fine meal.

It’s very good to be on holiday. Breakfast was croissant, coffee, and the Guardian in the local espresso bar, then I ambled around the neighbourhood investigating greengrocers (‘Ooh! Celeriac!’), and then… well, that’s been about it, really.

Marvellous.

Those of you who’ve seen the Espionage series proposal will understand why I’m frustrated by Spy. It’s heading in a very different direction, but still closes the door for that particular idea, I think. A pity: Espionage was originally drafted four years ago. Time to take that other version of the idea directly to the commissioners, I think.

Er… if you’ve no idea what I’m talking about: sorry.

I’m back in Glasgow.