The Daily Grind

Clearing out some browser tabs:

• Many moons ago, I did a summer job working in computational chemistry research. Here’s the abstract and catalogue data for the paper that came out of that work. Would have been nice if they’d got my name right. Tsk.

• This is just lovely. I miss the days when computers booted into command prompts, and within half-a-dozen lines of BASIC you could be drawing dots and lines on the screens. Many happy hours were spent with my Amstrad drawing Sierpinski gaskets, for example.

• iMovie’08 supports more cameras than I’d expected. Here’s the list.

• My chum Matt’s new site for his company, Camouflaged Learning, is, like the man himself, hilarious. Sadly, they still don’t offer educational resources for marine cephalopods. For shame!

• I made these for Flossie the other week. They’re nothing like the ones from my local deli, let alone those we scarfed at ECSITE in Lisbon last year, but they were still quite scrummy.

• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a hoot. But if you’ve seen the film, you really should read this abridged version. Viciously brilliant.

• In a similar vein, I thoroughly enjoyed playing my way through Bioware’s fabulous Mass Effect, and subsequently found this fanfiction skewering priceless. Though if you’ve not played the game, Bioware’s previous work, or watched a raft of mostly British SF over the years, the references might escape you.

• Speaking of British SF: I finished watching Blake’s 7 last night. Blimey. It’s still astonishingly, dreadfully bad in so many respects, and yet… mighty fine too, in its own way. Bleak.

• Pretty! Lots of lovely stuff about Kuler, also from Veerle. I never quite understand how the Adobe that came up with Kuler is the same Adobe that came up with the Creative Suite Update Installer Installer Update nightmare.

• I’m a geek about many things, including aeroplanes. Flossie is also a geek about many things, including barnacles. Happily, there’s little overlap between our geekdoms, and hence little conflict. However, we did idly wonder what might happen if we found the mid-point between our geekeries.
  According to /usr/share/dict/words, the mid-point of ‘aeroplane’ and ‘barnacle’ is ‘aortectasis.’ Handy to know: luckily, neither of us is a medic.

• RelatedMail – plugin for Mail.app that shows you messages related to the one you’re reading. I haven’t yet been brave enough to install it, but it looks like it might be dashed useful.

That’s enough for now.

You know that scene in Shaun of the Dead, where Shaun walks to the corner shop and fails to notice that everyone around him is either dead or zombified?

I think that just happened to me in the local Co-op.

Glasgow can be a funny place, sometimes.

Exactly what I need! Yay!

Free! Double yay!

From here.

Apparently my previous post – a crass comparison of video editing to wood turning which singularly failed to ape the style of Comrade Coombes and was spectacularly poorly-punctuated – was last week reproduced on the back of a meeting agenda circulated amongst post-production staff at BBC Scotland.

Comments on the blatherings: none.

Luckily, the text wasn’t attributed. For once, I’m happy to have my CC license badge (right column) ignored and my material plain ripped-off, even by the BBC.

Sometimes editing video is rather like carving wood.

The woodcarver starts with a blank form, a lump of tree that suggests… something. They might see it, in their minds eye, as a suggestion: a shadow or ghost. Or they might, in a flickering glance askew, glimpse the finished article.

But it’s not there. Not yet. It must be revealed… or found. Imposed?

So one sloughs away the outer layer, the detritus that has played its part, of supporting the essential internals. Sloughs and hacks and chops and lops and cares, hoping and trusting that the process will clarify rather than obscure.

And repeat.

And repeat.

Until… there! Do you see? No? No!

More. Invert. Rotate. Walk around, return.

There. Definitely there.

Yes.

More digital celluloid sawdust hits the cutting-room floor, and the work is revealed.

And now we finesse, and polish, and seal.

Enter about:robots in the address bar.

Via Danny O’Brien.

For the record (and a day late):

Nope, didn’t see that coming. The ending, that is – Davros had been telegraphed months ago. Not entirely sure I’m happy, since Tennant pretty much rocks, but there we go. I guess we’ll see what happens next week.

Also: damn, but this series needs a better script editor. My hunch is that Davies is a great producer, but I’m sorry, the show falls into the Battlestar Galactica trap of having lousily-uneven pacing and over-ambitious storylines. As a result, huge swathes of material have to be cut, and with all that goes any semblance of character continuity. The first half of this episode was insane. ‘Breakneck’ I can cope with, but this was plain broken. Yet amongst all the ‘Wait, she said what? Why?!’ moments, there was still time for not one but three ‘We know who you are’ reprise gags? Oh, come on.

I guess the hope is that the production machinery is sufficiently well-oiled that the series can more-or-less run itself (which in practice means that the production manager needs to be hard as nails). In that situation, the job Moffat is inheriting isn’t to mould and shape a franchise: all that heavy lifting has been done for him. It’s to shape a series.

The concern, then, is that Moffat has written some outstanding scripts… but how will he cope with a larger project? Jekyll was a good sign, but still, it’s a big step.

Fingers crossed. I never like the end of Who series, as the big cliffhanger/world-in-peril stuff doesn’t really fit the character or show in my book. So I guess I’ll grit my teeth through whatever happens next week, then… roll on 2010. Or something.

Look, people:

• Glasgow-Flossie’s current abode: 408 miles, as the Google bird flies (ie. via motorways).
• Glasgow-Flossie’s next place of work: 150 miles, similarly.

This is still long-distance.

Yes, it’ll be nice. Yes, it’s a distance one can complete, one-directionally, in an evening. Rather than in a day.

But it’s still long-distance.

Sheesh.

There’s mounting evidence that Flossie and I are – whisper it – a geek couple. The latest data point: neither of us pointed the other to this xkcd strip, we assumed the other had seen it, and were both slightly spooked that … er … most of those panels we can claim as accurate. Not sure about the skateboard at the end – does the jet-powered mountain board I commissioned a few years back count?

Anyway: here’s the original Discovery ident, and I note there are plans to get xkcd fans to make their own version, collectively.

Hmm. The BIG Event isn’t that far off…

Oh.

Canon EF 50mm ƒ/1.4 USM: RRP £310.
Canon EF 50mm ƒ/1.8 II: RRP £90.
Nikon AF 50mm ƒ/1.4D: RRP £250.
Nikon AF 50mm ƒ/1.8: RRP £90.

Compare:

Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 EX DG HSM: RRP £380.

Er… what?

This had better be a little stonker of a lens.