TV

Everyone on Big Brother appears to be a vapid retard.
That is all.

It was my birthday on Sunday. Alison and I had celebrated a bit on Saturday night by having a nice meal (toad in the hole - get in) and watching The Departed on DVD. The film was pretty good. I'm not sure it was Oscar good, but the Academy have passed Scorsese by so many times that I guess they had to give him best director sooner or later.

My actual birthday was less eventful, barring a trip to feed the ducks, marred only by a swan biting Alison and scaring little Beth. The only present I actually received was a nice new watch, all the rest was gifts of money which I'm now deciding how to spend... books, DVDs, CDs, games... so much to choose from! But I digress... Sunday night was spent travelling to London for another week of training, so I actually ended up spending the evening of my birthday in a hotel room on my own. Rubbish.

The week away has gone OK so far. The training has been pretty interesting, and it's good to see people. I went out last night and caught up with some friends from uni, which was fun. They nagged me to get signed up on Facebook, so I'll have to see about that at some point. I'm going out again tomorrow night for a little farewell do for some people who've quit the training course. It is quite fun, but it still pretty much sucks being stuck in a hotel on my own every evening. Boo.

I've just watched some of a TV programme about the infamous size zero, with the lovely Louise Redknapp crash dieting to slim down to that size. Pretty weird having been the typical teenager finding her very attractive, and having in fact seen her in person, every bit as beautiful as in any photograph; then seeing her trying desperately to lose weight and wind up looking utterly terrible for it. The program wasn't as hard hitting as I'd have liked - I find the whole thin women/anorexia/bulimia/dieting quite scary - but it was still pretty interesting. I don't see things changing any time soon though - I expect women will keep trying to be thin and winding up worse looking for it. Rubbish. It's not attractive, and for goodness sake, I think I speak for most men when I say we like having something to get hold of. Anyway.

I got the tube the other day, as you do in London, and there was a busker at Tottenham Court Road who was pretty damn good. Most buskers are fairly forgettable, but this woman was playing the guitar admirably and had a nice voice... she kinda reminded me of some kind of cross betwen Jewel and Lene Marlin or something. She was good enough to stop and listen to and indeed miss my train and have to wait for another one. I bought her CD, though I don't actually have a CD player here so I'll have to wait till I get home for that. She was called Dana Immanuel and she has a Myspace page over here, which I warn you will play the charmingly titled "Motherf*cking whore", so perhaps not one for work, eh? Anyway. That was interesting, and unusually impulsive for me, given that I normally don't buy anything without extensive research to insure I'm getting my money's worth.

So... that's about it for now. It's eleven at night, so I'm going to go to sleep I think. Good night.

Right then. It's about time I blogged properly, so here goes. I'm going to waffle about what I'm up to at the moment, and then post pics of Beth at the end, so if you're just here for the baby pictures, skip ahead.

So... life then. Work is going well. It's really quite busy. I've got lots of work to be getting on with, which is pretty cool. It's at a pretty good pace which means I'm always under enough pressure to be motivated, without it feeling too overwhelming. This is a good thing. I've been hearing some horror stories of some of my fellow trainees in other offices not having anything to do. One guy told me he'd spent the afternoon practising how fast he could say "Peter Piper". He got it down to 5.2 seconds, apparently. Impressive, but not exactly what he's there for. I might be off to visit a client sometime this coming week, which would be my first, and I might have a business trip to London a week or so later to learn something complicated. Exciting stuff. I am, as tragic as it may seem, really enjoying this job. For all my concerns about spending my life as an accountant, it's actually pretty good so far. Good stuff.

I spent some of my hard earned cash on a Nintendo DS Lite. It's easily one of the best things I've ever bought. I picked it up on ebay and it came with Nintendogs and that Brain Training game that you've probably seen people playing on the train/bus/plane/helicopter to work. Those two are pretty cool, especially Nintendogs. The whole stylus and touch screen thing is cool, even if it is just a contrived way of getting a mouse onto a handheld console. It's pretty neat to be able to talk to the dog with the mic and teach it tricks, and stroke it to say well done. Nifty. I've since picked up a few more games, including Phoenix Wright, a mad little visual novel type game about a lawyer, which Marilyn Manson, of all people, loves. So there you go. I like it so much I sold a bunch of stuff and bought one for Alison as well. Admittedly there is the ulterior motive that I need someone to play Mario Kart against, but she's been getting into it for herself, especially this mad little game called Cooking Mama which is, as the name suggests, all about cooking. Cooking Japanese meals. As you do. So, that's pretty cool. Heartily recommended. Buy a DS Lite. Or buy me loads of games for mine. I'm not too fussed which.

I picked up the new Muse album too. It's taking a bit of a time to get into, as it's a bit more obscure than Absolution. It's good, just a bit crazy. I think it'll grow on me. It's certainly very musically accomplished, to say the least.

We watched Good Night And Good Luck last night, George Clooney's film about the news reporting on McCarthyism in the 50s. It was very good, well written and well acted. It was quite concise, which bothered me slightly, as I could have watched a lot more of it. The subject matter was certainly very interesting, and I like the sentiment that TV and journalism should be honest and challenging. I found the closing line of the film very strong:

"This instrument [television] can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire, but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box."

I don't know if I mentioned it at the time, but I remember thinking that sort of thing when I watched Gunther von Hagens autopsy programmes on Channel 4. It was astounding to me that TV could be so educational, when primarily it's just utterly forgettable crap, if I can be frank. As sci fi author Sturgeon noted, 90% of everything is crud. Now, autopsies are certainly different to political awareness, but I think the point stands. It would be nice if TV could actually challenge us once in a while. Anyway. It was a good film.

Things with Ali and Beth are good. Beth has been a bit ill, which has been hard work for Ali. She had some kind of bug or something that was making her sick, which was pretty gross and fairly distressing for her. She's come through that now, and is back to being cheerful, which is good. Ali and Beth are having fun, so that's cool. Beth is getting pretty good at sitting up, as well as picking things up and holding them, and putting everything in her mouth! She's trying to feed herself when Ali gives her pureed fruit and veg, which is entertaining if extremely messy. So... here's some photos!



This is back when Ali first started giving Beth some solid food, nearly two months ago. She's just had some passion fruit and was very pleased with it!



Here's Ali holding Beth, who's wearing a little snowsuit that my sister bought for her. It's really cute. It has a giraffe on it, which you can't see in the photo, and it's really snuggly and warm.



Here's me with Beth who's in a little dress that Ali got for her for like £2 or something, thanks to a handy voucher. Nice.



Here's Beth in her door bouncer. It's a proper life saver - she loves bouncing up and down, and it can keep her entertained for quite a while, so you can get on with something in the meantime. It also helps with getting the burps out of her!



Here's Beth on a swing. She has to be kinda wedged in (hence the blanket) but she really likes it. She starts giggling and grinning. Very cute.



Ali has found that Beth can be quite easily entertained by giving her random items to play with and look at. So, here's Beth having a look at the whisk. Tasty...



Lastly, here's me and Beth out on a walk just this afternoon. We went out to a place called Pennington Flash, which is a nature reserve type place with a big lake, and saw all the ducks and geese and suchlike. I carried Beth round in a little harness on my front and she had a great time looking at everything.

So... there you go. That's about enough for now! See you again soon.

If you don't care about computer games you'll want to skip down till I start talking about Sigur Ros... If you do, then feel free to read on.

I finished playing through the Prince Of Persia series over the weekend. As I've mentioned in the past I love the first game in the series, so it made sense to pick up the following two when I had the money. Once again, I'm late getting round to playing them, but that's the way it goes when you have to buy all this stuff second hand on ebay...

So, Warrior Within was OK. I got a bit hacked off with all the emphasis on the combat - sure, it looks fairly nifty to leap over a sand monsters head, steal his axe and then cut his head off with it in slow motion, but that's not really what I'm here for, you know? That's not really my thing. The combat actually put me off the game for a while, as I first tried playing it about 6 months ago, but laid off it until I got hold of a gamepad which actually made it feasible to play. So... the combat annoyed me somewhat. The gothic, dark, angsty setting was a bit too emo for my liking, and the improbably clad, large breasted women did rather make me wonder whether the focus group behind the game had an average age of above 13. On the plus side, behind all the drek the platforming, puzzle solving side of the game is still there. The time travel aspect works well and the level design is good. So on the whole the game probably scores about 7/10 for me, which surprised me somewhat given how negative some people are about it.

Then I moved on to play The Two Thrones. It's better than Warrior Within, but still not as good as Sands Of Time, sad to say. The setting is brighter, and the Prince is less of an angry bastard, so that's nice. The levels are still good, and the plot is far more engaging than WW, which brings things back into line with the quality of the original game. The challenging combat system is still there, but the addition of speed killing (a technique that allows you to stealthily kill enemies before they get a chance to react) means you can avoid much of the frustrating, button mashing combat that Warrior Within often descended into. The game wraps up the trilogy nicely, and ties everything together. I'd give it 8/10.

So, neither game is as good as the original (which I'd give a 10/10 rating to without hesitation) but they're certainly not bad. Perhaps it's just a pity that the series peaked so early - with such a fine start it was almost inevitable that any sequel would have to be truly masterful to live up to it.

Right... let's talk about something else...

I got the Sigur Ros album off ebay for the rather low price of... about £6 if I recall. I'd heard people go on about them, but it wasn't until I found out that the brilliant music on the BBC's excellent Planet Earth series was by them that I decided to splash out. It's a bit of a weird one to be honest... If I'm quite brutal with it, it's actually kind of like listening to a baby's mobile that's playing the original, full version of Radiohead's Treefingers. It's nice and relaxing, and it certainly makes a nice change, but I'm still not sure what I make of it overall.

The baby is due in 40 days. That's pretty soon, which is kinda scary. We have our first ante-natal class tonight, so I get to learn all about birth and such like. I'll try to post again tomorrow to let you know how it goes.

So, I'm visiting my parents. I'm back on the Wirral for the weekend, mostly to fix computers at my dad's church and possibly to help my parents unpack, as they have just moved house.

So, last night I drove up from Leicester to Pensby. While driving, I listened to the original radio shows of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy on tape. A thought occurred to me... A thought that is tremendously geeky. Disturbingly, a quick search at Google suggests that while I may not be the first person to ever conceive of such a thing, I am very possibly the first person to write about them on the web. I think this probably makes it doubly geeky.

So, here goes...

Some, all or none of you will know that part of the plot of Hitch-Hikers... centres around a quest to find the ultimate question to the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. It is necessary to discover the question after a fancy computer spends 7 1/2 million years figuring out the answer, only to come up with 42, which is unsatisfactory to say the least.

Hold up, let's go back a bit. The fancy computer spent 7 1/2 million years coming up with this answer? The thought that occurred to me was this:

What has happened to Moore's Law?

Broadly speaking, Moore's Law states that every 18 months the number of transistors in a computer chip doubles. This is a gross simplification, but it will serve for the purpose of this discussion. If we assume (inaccurately) that doubling the number of transistors in a computer doubles it's power and thereby halves the time needed to solve any given problem, then it should be obvious that to wait 7.5 million years for Deep Thought to arrive at the answer is foolish. It would be simpler to wait 18 months, from which point one would only have to wait 3.75 million years for the answer. Better still, wait for 3 years, and then you only have to wait for just under 2 million years for the answer. Better still, wait for... ah, you get the idea.

So, what is the optimum time to wait until building the computer, such that the time till the answer arrives is minimal? Well, if we let t be the time till the answer is produced and x be the number of iterations of Moore's Law, then we get this equation:

t = 1.5x + (7.5*10^6)/(2^x)

Yes, it would look better if I did it as an image or something, but I can't be bothered.

Differentiating with respect to x will allow us to find the lowest amount of time needed. This a bit hard to differentiate. I did it after midnight last night while very tired and slightly drunk after having a can of cider. As luck would have it my uni maths notes were in my room. Brilliant.

You get something like:

0 = 1.5 + (7.5*10^6)*ln(2^x)*ln2*e^(xln2)
^
EDIT: This is wrong. See Izz' comment below for correct answer.

Now, if anyone can figure out how to solve that without resorting to numerical methods then they're a better mathematician than I.

Anyway. A bit of scribbling on the back of an envelope suggests that the optimal number of iterations is somewhere around 22. In that case, you wait 33 years before building the computer, in which timeframe computing power has increased by a factor of 2^22 (=4194304) so the time taken to solve the problem is only 1.78 years. The total time to get the answer is then 34.78 years, rather than 7.5 million years.

So, they'd have been better off if they'd known about Moore's Law.

How's that for geeky
I commend anyone who has read this far. You are probably as much of a geek as me!

Honestly, who buys this garbage? Fools. It's your fault Top Of The Pops has moved to graveyard shift on Sunday night between Songs Of Praise and whatever action/drama film Channel 5 is showing.

Stupid music buying public.

When the new single by Nelly (bling blinging "R&B" star) uses a sample of True by Spandau Ballet, you know somethings not quite right. I mean, was the song really any good the first time round? Not really. Does it adequately prop up Nelly singing about some woman with man trouble? Not really. For that matter, do R&B stars sing about anything but men with women trouble, or women with men trouble? Not really. But I digress. The song is terrible, and the sample only lends further lameness to it. As a Radio 1 listener this morning pointed out, it sounds like something Goldie Lookin' Chain might attempt.

Kylie Minogue has breast cancer. Which sucks for her. It looks like she'll make it through pretty easily though, as they've caught it early. Call me a cynic, but I suspect this will garner a lot of attention from middle aged men praying that her beautiful figure stays intact.

The real big news, of course, is the Iraq soldiers Amarillo parody video. You may have heard about it on the news last night. The Amarillo single by Tony Christie, released for comic relief with a quality video by Peter Kay, is clearly loved by the British public if the charts are anything to go by. Since when do singles stay at number 1 for seven weeks? What is this, 1993? Anyway. Apparently some squaddies out in Iraq decided they liked the song too, and recorded themselves re-enacting Peter Kay's video. Only it's called Armadillo this time around, because apparently there's a few of them in Iraq. Anyway. They then sent the video to all their friends and so on, which crashed the MOD's e-mail system. Awesome! After some scratching around on the 'net this morning, I have managed to find a site where you can download the video in full, but by the looks of things it's getting clobbered so you might still have to hunt around the 'net if you want to see it. It's quality. I'd put it up on this site, but I'd like my bandwidth to last to the end of the month, not just the hour! Enjoy.

Channel 4 had a Top 100 Albums show on last night. It was quite interesting. You can take a look at the programme details here, which also has links to the original nominations and - more importantly - the results. As you might gather, the poll was done by drawing up a shortlist of 125 nominated albums, and then getting the public to vote for their favourite albums from the selection. While probably easier than letting everyone vote for any old thing, it does obviously limit what can be voted for, so perhaps it's a bit flawed. You also have to question the sanity of the people doing the original nominating, when The Libertines make it into the top 125. They're not really my thing, so maybe the album is great and I just don't know it, but I still find it slightly dubious that they would get in at number 50, putting it above Margin Gaye, Dusty Springfield, Public Enemy... I could go on, but all I'd be doing is listing most of the bottom half of the results page.

This of course leads into the other problem with these kind of polls - the more recent stuff will invariably do disproportionately well. There are certainly many more young people voting in these polls who've never even heard of Nick Drake or Jeff Buckley, who will thus end up voting up Oasis, or even Blur for that matter. Even then, the older generation may be less likely to vote for some of the stuff they grew up with, when the newer stuff is fresher in their minds. The top 20, for example, has two Oasis albums, a Blur album, Parachutes by Coldplay (!) and even Alanis Morisette's not-actually-her-debut-even-though-everyone-thinks-it-is Jagged Little Pill one place above Led Zepellin IV. Hmm.

Now, about 7 years ago Q Magazine ran a top 100 albums chart, allowing the readers to vote for anything ever. The number 1 on that chart, was OK Computer, by Radiohead. At the time, I thought that this was a case of the fresh things getting to the top of the heap. Yes, OK Computer is a great album, no doubt. It's experimental and different and emotional and it takes you to all manner of weird musical places. Is it the best album ever? Well, I don't know. Channel 4 viewers clearly think so, as it came top of their little rundown. This time it's a bit more interesting, as it's getting on for 8 years since OK Computer was released. That's not quite so fresh anymore, is it?

I don't know if it is the best album. I certainly like it a lot, but at the same time I appreciate that it's not exactly accessible and certainly not for everyone. I guess I'll have to wait another 30 years and see if it's still topping charts.

I watched Top Of The Tops on Friday. G4 (who oh so sadly don't have a website I can link you to) were on it singing their cover of Creep by Radiohead. Hearing them sing:

I'm a creep

I'm a weirdo

What the hell am I doing here?

I don't belong here

was almost too much for me to bear. I almost choked on the irony that was issuing forth unstoppably from the TV.

Talking of choking, I had a dream last night about trying to eat a slug. It was only small, but the damn thing was sticking onto my tongue so I couldn't swallow it. So that was a pretty rubbish dream on the whole.

If I gave my wife Spam for our anniversary I don't think she'd be too pleased. I think the advert (if you've not seen it, it's at the aforelinked site) may contain some measure of irony.

In other spam news, some dumbass is spamming my blog comments with nonsense about free online poker. I've put a few things in place to prevent this, so it shouldn't happen any more. However, on the off chance that you make a comment with, say, "poker" or "texas" in it, then it will need validating by me before it shows up, so don't panic when your crucial comment about anything besides free online casinos doesn't show up immediately. Can't think quite when that might occur, but there we go.

... a Channel 4/Channel 5 collaboration:

The 100 best 'X superlative Y' shows of all time!

Including such classics as "The 100 best adverts featuring a camel", "The nation's 25 favourite toilet rolls" and "The 50 worst mobile phone ringtones of all time". Hosted by Jimmy Carr, who has to do these shows because his stand up work is that bad.

Honestly, do we never grow tired of these programs?

Probably the most frustrating thing is that it's patently obvious who or what will win from the outset. Best number 1 ever? Bohemian Rhapsody, obviously. Best cartoon ever? Simpsons, obviously. Top of the all new 10 Commandments list? Well, to be fair that one was a surprise, as the winner was "Treat others as you would like to be treated" which not only appears in the Old Testament Law (Lev. 19:18) but is also quoted by Jesus (Matt. 22:36-40) as summing up all the other commandments. Not that Channel 4 mentioned this, but never mind.

Anyway. I guess this isn't really news. Rubbish shows on TV? You think?

Jobwise, so far so good BTW.

Alison went away for the weekend, to visit a friend she was at uni with.

So while she was away I... did the ironing, hoovered the house, watered the plants and cleaned the bathroom. Hmm. Married life must be getting to me.

Sure, I also spent 4 hours in my dressing gown playing Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (good game, looking forward to Chaos Theory in the near future), watched too much TV, stayed up late and didn't cook anything more sophisticated than cheese and tomato toasties but even so... cleaning the bathroom? Man.

Anyway.

I saw that Golf GTI advert again last night. They now appear to have edited out the bit with the dodgy jump on the lamp post. I understand why they did it, as it's badly edited (when he jumps he's one way round, then they change shot to show him hanging onto the lamp post and he's the other way round - d'oh!) but it's a bit of a shame too as the move looks pretty cool.

Also, what's the deal with some dance music becoming quite likable? I mean, normally I can't stand the trashy dance music that gets into the charts, but in the past 6 months or so we've had Call On Me by Eric Prydz, My My My by Armand Van Helden, Shine by the Lovefreaks (sampling ELO - woohoo!) and now some song about catching a falling star or some such nonsense. 4 dance tracks I like in 6 months? At the turn of the century it could take 6 years to find that many bearable dance songs. I'll try to keep a check on myself, in case this peculiar infection spreads, but in the mean time if anyone catches me in Woolworths buying Ultimate Trance Trip Hop Hits 2006 Big Beats Edition, then please beat some sense into me.

Right. This is a bit random and waffly, so I'm going to go home before I get snowed into this miserable school.

The new Volkswagen Golf GTI advert is awesome.

You may have seen it on the TV by now. It's also available at numerous places on the internet, such as over at The Guardian's website. If you've not seen it, check it out!

It's a reworking of Gene Kelly dancing in Singing In The Rain, from back in the mists of time. It's been redone with a bunch of break dancers, kitted out in the same suit as he wore and with wigs and so on, with Gene's face composited onto the video. It's not a perfect job, and you can easily see that the face mapping is not seamless, and there's a stupid bit of editing when he jumps onto the lamp-post but at the end of the day who cares? It's just damn cool and never mind the little flaws.

It's a nice step forward for this kind of computer technology. They've been claiming for a while that they could do things like put Marilyn Monroe in a film using old footage and computer trickery, and this seems like quite a step in that direction. Not sure how useful it is to be able to "resurrect" dead actors, but I'm sure we'll find out.

In other advert news, there was an ad on the TV for ebay last night. Now, I'm a huge fan of ebay, and have bought and sold many things on there in the past, but it still seems weird to see it advertised on the TV. It's weird to see some parts of the internet, and specifically the web, becoming so... mainstream. I know it's been growing, and loads of people have been getting hooked up lately, but adverts on the TV for an auction site? That seems like quite a step to me.