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Finally, Mechannibals has a transmission slot. Monday September 5^th, 8pm, BBC2, and weekly thereafter. I saw the first show a few weeks ago, and it’s a hoot, so I’m looking forward to the rest.

While I was making Mechannibals, I didn’t have much chance to catch up with the wider world online. As a result NetNewsWire faithfully syphoned up a ridiculous number of unread blog posts… most of which I never read.

This morning, it topped well over 4,500 unread. This afternoon, I’ve managed to get it back down to: none. Oh happy, happy day.

Quite how I can avoid that ever happening again, I’ve no idea. And really, I should have been trying to do the same with my email inbox. Maybe next weekend, since I seem to have have a zillion or so open browser tabs, each containing an interesting article. Drat.

[update: Tee-hee. I just tried to command+tab to NetNewsWire, and suffered a moment of confusion. Without the red-flashed ‘unread posts’ count, I didn’t recognise the icon.]

Mac-using readers (ie. Colin, my dad, and… actually, that might be it. But hey, that’s 50%!) should check out this list of the Mac software you should know about.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more weird: Christopher Walken for President, 2008. I have no idea whether it’s for real, but if it is – who’s the dream ticket running mate?

[update: A Technorati search shows an awful lot of bloggers asking ‘is this for real?’ My guess is ‘no,’ but it still has the air of something that starts as a joke but turns out to have been true all along in retrospect. I’m trying to start something similar around the news that Joss Whedon is going to remake all six Star Wars films.]

Favourite site of the day: Maopost. Chinese propaganda posters; just like you imagine old Soviet-era posters to have been, only for the most part, they weren’t. There’s also a Maopost Dashboard widget.

One of these days, I’ll get around to defining a category for these sorts of comment+link posts, and either running them in a sidebar or inline but in a different style. Hmm…

Drat drat drat. I think I just turned down a job on Scrappy Races.

That is to say: an old chum called me to find out what I’m up to because they might have a producer/director job going (on a maybe/not sure basis); the dates clashed; I gave them the number of a director chappie anyway just in case.

Three hours later that chappie rang me. “I think I start on Monday.”

Um… bother. I’d have enjoyed that. Ah, well – I’m otherwise engaged, nothing to be done about it. All good karma, or whatever.

A wonderfully cynical – but in fact rather cogent – piece on the evident pointlessness of manned space flight, at least as currently practiced by NASA. Yes, it’s hugely exciting and all, but… why do we bother? (via Kottke).

Only touched on is the common notion that the manned programme is there mainly to secure funding for NASA, and hence that the (relatively straightforward to justify) unmanned programme couldn’t exist without it. While that may have been the case back in the eighties and early nineties, NASA have had some notable successes of late. Smashing things into comets, driving robots around Mars, visiting Titan – not only are these remarkable achievements, they’re actually exciting too.

As a geeky child of the seventies I was as excited as the next kid about Columbia, and the idea of actually going to space was hugely thrilling. Heck, I came within about two weeks of starting a degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics, though come to think of it that may have had more to do with a certain Lightning at Paull airshow one year (and maybe Airfix) than the Shuttle.

But today – do kids get the same kick out of manned spaceflight as we did back then? One could form a plausible hypothesis thus: in a post-Robot Wars, pervasive internet world, children are now so accustomed to indirect experience that it really is the mission content that’s significant. Sending people up to spin a few pencils, grow some crystals, and regrout their own spaceship is just… dull. Besides, if you really want to travel into space, NASA isn’t your ticket – Branson and Rutan are. What they’re doing is far more thrilling than the Shuttle, no?

Would a really bold space agency have decided that ‘Return to Flight’ was a pointless exercise and declared that they had more important stuff to do?

And here’s a really big idea: if it’s the mission content that’s important, does that mean that ‘the medium is the message’… is obsolete?

Time for breakfast. It’s too early on a Sunday to be writing things like that.

Ow!

I just sliced my thumb open on a yoghurt pot lid. There’s blood everywhere, and it ruddy hurts! Ow ow ow!

So… Extras, right? Did they:

• (a.) Dress the entire crew in costume and use them as the extras? (which would have been hugely confusing on set but could have been quite a laugh), or:
• (b.) Use extras conventionally, and then not credit them?

If (b.), is that (i.) ironic, a (ii.) missed trick, or (iii.) plain rude?

I have a similar reaction to Extras as I did to The Office. I think it’s a terribly clever idea, I chuckle merrily for about the first four minutes of each show, then about ten minutes in I find myself in the kitchen washing up. It’s not that I dislike it, I guess I just don’t find it entertaining. Weird.

One of the goodies in my recent-ish monster Amazon parcel was a DVD of Lost in Translation, which the regular reader (singular, I fear) may recall I absolutely adored in the cinema. Quite why I hadn’t got around to watching it is something of a mystery. Perhaps I was scared I wouldn’t like it as much the second time around, but I needn’t have worried. I still think it’s sparsely beautiful and boasts unreasonably wonderful photography. But I’m still most impressed that it manages to capture on film a state of ennui that, by rights, should exist only in one’s mind: a magnificent achievement. While I can see why many people dislike it, I’m not amongst them.

Incidentally, buried in the film trivia over at the IMDB lies this gem:

The redheaded lounge singer wasn’t a professional actress, but rather the real-life lounge singer of the Hotel where the cast and crew were staying at, and they thought her performance of the “Scarborough Fair” fit the theme of the film so well, they asked her to be in the movie

….which is pretty much the definition of ‘glorious understatement’ in that the point is exquisitely clear, and yet goes entirely unmentioned. Which is, of course, the story of the film.

Ah, happy hap… GIANT KILLER ROBOTS! ARRRGHHHH!

(only one person will understand that, so you’d better ruddy well post a comment, you slacker.)