I've got a new blog!

And I've just now posted the first post on it:

lostmoya.wordpress.com

Come along and let me know what you think.

I'm leaving this blog here for now but am attempting to transfer over all the content to the wordpress blog. I'll update in a minute to let you know how that goes...

UPDATE: The export over into wordpress was fine. There are a few formatting issues which I need to sort out, but other than that it was relatively pain-free. I'll be updating over at wordpress from now on, so hop over there if you want to read what's on my mind.

I'm sick of blogspot

I've finally had enough of the interface, lack of tag support and the dearth of customisation options here. I've been messing around with several templates today -- not one of which I liked -- and they all displayed differently on Firefox and IE anyway. The upshot of it all is that I just can't get things looking the way I want them. Plus, I really want tags in order to get mah web 2.0 freak awn!

So, enough is enough. I've made my decision.

I'm going to up sticks and move the whole blog over to wordpress, once I think of a decent blog name.

UPDATE: My new wordpress blog will be at: lostmoya.wordpress.com It's just the default template at the moment, but I'll post back here when I get things up and running properly.

Dead Man's Chest: Ask A Ninja

If your response to my review of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest on Monday was all a bit tl;dr, here's a shorter, yet infinitely more entertaining take on the film:



Ask A Ninja's review of POTC:DMC.

Pirates 2 walks plank made of lame...

Well, it's not that bad, but it's not a patch (arrr!) on the first one. Frankly, I'm terribly disappointed because I was looking forward to the visual thrill-ride of the summer. And I suppose it is a visual thrill-ride. Unfortunately, it's not a lot else.

On paper it should be fantastic! All the essential ingredients are there: Keira Knightley; Johnny Depp's superb swaggering, self-absorbed Captain Jack Sparrow; pirates; undead pirates (again); some stunning action set-pieces; more pirates; tribes of hungry cannibals; an enormous ship-guzzling sea monster; bleeding-edge see-gee-eye™ FX; buckle and swash; a search for hidden treasure; pirates... er, did I mention Keira Knightley?... Yep, it seems as if Dead Man's Chest has it all.

So what's wrong with it, then?

Pretty much everything else, really. For a start, there are very few laughs, especially when compared with the first film. It seems like the script is so weighed down by all the plotlines (see below) they forgot to leave any room for the funneh. Johnny Depp's first-rate delivery manages to squeeze out a laugh or two; as does Mackenzie Crook, who's back as Ragetti. Other than that, it's a fairly straight-faced affair -- apart from the jawdropping effects, of course.

My biggest beef with the film, though, is the plot -- and, by the looks of Rotten Tomatoes, that's pretty much everyone else's problem with it, too. There's just too much of it. It's difficult to critique in detail without giving away spoilers, but suffice to say that there are about five or six major plot arcs which all intersect, diverge, and then come back together at various points throughout the film. Pretty convoluted for a summer blockbuster, right? I mean, we're talking Jerry Bruckheimer, not Robert Altman here. But even that's not the problem; I can handle convoluted. The trouble with POTC 2 is this: by the end of the film none of these plots get resolved.

Let me give a little spoileriffic example of just how convoluted things get: The movie opens with Will Turner (yet another simpering pseudo-dish performance from Orlando Bloom) and his fiancée Elizabeth Swann getting thrown into jail by the evil head honcho of the East India Trading Company, Lord Bennett, and sentenced to death. In reality though, Bennett just wants to get his hands on Jack's magical compass. Keeping Elizabeth in jail as leverage, Bennett sends Turner to find Sparrow and retrieve the compass.

Meanwhile, Jack's got himself in a spot of bother with Davy Jones (a practically unrecognisable Bill Nighy on top form). He's calling Jack in to repay an old debt with 100 years of service on Jones' undead pirate ship. To save his skin, Jack's trying to find the key to Davy Jones' chest (using the aforementioned compass). Now, while Will's looking for Jack and Jack's looking for the key, Elizabeth manages to get out of jail -- eluding a shadowy assassin sent by Bennett -- and stow away on another ship to try and find Will. Once aboard, she disguises herself as a man and uses her empty dress to covince the crew that the ship's haunted so they'll sail to Tortuga, which is where Jack ends up trying to recruit a crew to find an alternate method of repaying his debt to Jones. But Will, who by this time has already got the 411 from Jack, is aboard Davy Jones' ship, searching for the key to his chest. Still following along?

Bear in mind that this is all just a preface to the main body of the film, which also includes several subplots, and you begin to get an idea of just how complicated things get. And, as I'm fond of saying in relation to computer games, complexity does not equal depth. Or fun, for that matter...

Understandably, given all this baggage, the film clocks in at a butt-numbing 2 and a half hours. Sure, the first one was pretty long, but it never felt like it, partly because you always knew where it was going. However, I rarely knew where Dead Man's Chest was heading, and most of these plots within plots within subplots are just left hanging at the end in anticipation of the sequel next summer. As one reviewer put it, the whole thing's nothing more than an "overture to yet another sequel".

Related to the plot problem is pacing. POTC 2 is all over the place. One minute it's dragging its heels as a sassy voodoo witch tries to imbue Will Turner with a sense of "destiny", the next you're enjoying a stunning set-piece as Jack makes his escape from cannibal island. Once again, the film isn't terrible; there are some memorable moments and jawdropping scenes, but it struggles to sustain interest where its predecessor did so effortlessly. 5/10.

The man who traded a paperclip for a house

Kyle Macdonald has finally managed to trade his way from a single red paperclip:


to a three-bedroomed house in Kipling, Saskatchewan, Canada in just one year and 14 trades:



You can read the full story on Kyle's blog (via Boingboing).

I remember hearing about this back when he was up to a white van, and to be honest I was impressed that he'd got that far. Of course, it might be just as well to gloss over the fact that he somehow managed to get from that van to a KISS snow globe on the way to the house (who knew the "Knights In Satan's Service" even endorsed snow globes?). Fortunately for Kyle, he met someone who happened to be a dedicated snow globe collector -- and also a kind of famous actor. But taking this kind of risk is what the whole project was all about: relative value. Kyle sums it up like this:

"What's more important to a man dying of thirst in the desert - one million dollars or a glass of water? So all I gotta do now is find somebody who needs a "drink". (The KISS snowglobe is filled with water - well, a water-ish substance, at least.) What I'm trying to say here is that I strongly believe that one person's trash is another person's treasure."

What I like about this story is that it neatly illustrates how just a catchy idea and the internet -- plus a canny head for handling press and publicity -- can lead to fame, fortune and a damn good yarn.

Live Insects Challenge Humans in Bizarre Computer Game

In Wim van Eck's project, humans square off against real crickets in a modified version of Pac-Man:

Full story at livescience.
(from Digg)

The best thing about this article is the deadpan implication that we may be able to use this project as some kind of pre-emptive training for fighting real-life alien bug wars in the future:

"If we're going to fight insectile aliens, we certainly need to start somewhere; Wim van Eck's project is a fine beginning."

I guess the next challenge will be figuring out how to make World of Antcraft so that we can hook the potential offworld invaders on endlessly levelling up their virtual buggy avatar. Then, when they run out of credits to pay their monthly subscription to Blizzard, we can kick their worthless insectoid hides off our planet -- by that time, of course, their formerly strong multi-limbed bodies will have decayed and grown weak from months of inactivity sitting around playing an MMORPG.

Bring it on!

It's Hammertime once again!

YES!

http://mchammer.blogspot.com/
(from some comments on a Digg post)


Apparently, he released a new album in February -- "Look, Look, Look (Lookx3)" -- which is now available via I-Tunes. You can watch the hilarious video for the single at Google Video, but what's really worth reading is his blog (linked above). Some choice quotes are below (warning: those who look back fondly on a time when wearing enormous clown pants was seen as hip may experience intense feelings of disillusionment):

"My dreads, my bald head, and my grill are a part of me. They are not "me" because I am not what I wear. They are to me as war paint is to a warrior. My dance is my cry. Feel my power and yet witness my grace. I speak through the dance."

"There is no age requirement or limit and no respect of persons to this dance. If you relate to the conditions and recognize the symptoms join in. I'm hyphy. Hyper. I can't stop moving."

"I MC Hammer am back dancing because the world needs to dance and Hip Hop needs leadership. No leadership is like no father. Wisdom comes from living life."

Word.

Yep, these are the actual words of MC "Please don't hurt 'em" Hammer, back to teach us the dance of life with a fairly pedestrian hip-hop song. Wonders never cease.

But, seriously, on the rest of his blog there are some pretty heartwarming stories and pics of him with his boy. And, hey, I can't rag on him too hard because the bottom line is the guy's clearly passionate about what he's doing. I'm just not entirely sure what that is.

So this is the new Hammer: Before it was "2 Legit 2 Quit!". Now it's "Feel the power; witness the grace!". Not quite as punchy, but at least he ditched the pants.

Modern music is too loud for its own good

So says one blogger:

Why the "loudness wars" are killing today's music.
(via reddit)

"Record labels for decades have tried to make records louder, on the mostly-correct theory that louder music is more likely to pull you in on first listen. But the way you make music louder is via "compression" ... Compression shrinks the difference between the peaks and valleys, so there's less dynamic range [but w]hen a song has less dynamic range, even if it's louder we are -- paradoxically -- more likely to tune it out"

This is a summary of a much longer article from Stylus Magazine by Nick Southall. The conclusion there is pretty depressing, if a little sensationalist:

"[W]hen is it desirable for music to be at a consistent volume? When it's not being actively listened to; i.e. when it's intended as background music. Sudden (or even gradual) dynamic changes in ambient volume disturb people from what they are otherwise doing (shopping, eating, working) by making them pay attention to the fluctuating sound rather than the task in hand ... So it is with music too—it may grab your attention more effectively at the start, but it's ultimately easier to ignore too. All music becomes background music if it's at one flat level, no matter how loud. And flat, hypnotic background music is a form of social control."

Leaving aside the "OMG! Record companies are using music to CONTROL OUR MINDS!!!1" hyperbole for a second, he's spot on. At the risk of sounding like an out-of-touch old-timer, I happened to be listening to a random mix on Winamp while reading through this article and it played a relatively old (c. 1991) Orbital track back to back with a recent track by M83. They're both great bands, but the M83 track was ear-splittingly loud in comparison to the Orbital one. It's a crude example, particularly because mp3s are hardly the be all and end all of musical quality, but it illustrates the point.

Of course loud music is better, but like the man says: "If you want to listen to something loud, there’s a simple method—turn it up."

Déjà Vu, Again and Again

What's a déjà vu? Turns out it's a bit more complicated than a glitch in the matrix:

"Take a moment to remember what happened during your day yesterday. Images and sounds begin to flash through your mind: people you spoke to, places you went, meals you ate. One scene cues up another, leading you on vivid tangents as you cycle through the day. Now ask yourself: how do you know that you are remembering those images as they happened?"

Full story.
(from Digg)

There's a rare condition called "déjà vécu" which is like having déjà vu all the time. This New York Times article is a long, but very interesting read which gives an insight into the world of the sufferer and the scientists seeking to understand how our memories work.

Linguistic myth-busting

Stop, collaborate and listen! Linguistlist is a free resource which I've used frequently in my postgraduate studies, and very occasionally it turns up something that's potentially interesting to the layman. Like this story about dispelling some popular language myths:

Linguistics, Anybody?
(via linguistlist)

The idea that language is "getting worse" or that it is somehow being corrupted from its "true form" is typically associated with some idea of a "golden age" where everyone was polite and spoke "properly". It also often correlates with a negative attitude towards whatever is the latest fad: TV, internet, videogames or texting (SMS messaging). And then there's the kids: It's usually the perceived laziness and poor education of teenagers (and/or the lower classes) which is seen as responsible for language standards being "worse than they were in my day".

There are a couple of responses to this misguided view. First, language changes. It always has done and it always will: this is axiomatic. Sure, there will always be people -- like Jonathan Swift -- who see it as their duty to stop change from happening, but you can't stop the tide. Just look at the writing style and lexis in Swift's "Proposal...", for example: constructions like "some few" seem awkward today, yet they were quite standard when Swift was writing.

Second, the idea that language is somehow "getting worse" begs the question "worse at what?" or "worse in what way?". If you believe -- as many do -- that language is for communication, then the logical conclusion is that people who speak "poor English" are not able to communicate their ideas as effectively or with the same nuance or subtlety as others. And the implied argument is that, one day, if we let this disgraceful slip in standards continue, we may all be reduced to speaking like savages! For shame!

This is utter rubbish of course. If language change is inevitable, it is equally inevitable that people will always want to communicate. It's in our nature. What those who advocate linguistic preservation often fail to recognize is that the groups they chastise for dragging standards down have invariably created a new code that is an order of magnitude more effective than the standard one for their situation. I'm thinking of text-speak in particular here. Much as we might bemoan the rise of "r u ok?", "c u l8r" and "lol", you can't deny it is an astonishingly efficient way of communicating with limited characters on a small screen. The other amazing thing about it is that no one taught people how to do this: the kids made it up on their own when confronted with a situation which potentially limits their capacity to talk to each other. Why would they do that if they weren't primarily concerned with effective and efficient communication amongst their peers?

Of course there must be different standards for different communicative situations. I've marked several undergraduate essays down for including txt-ish when it wasn't appropriate. But, as far as I'm concerned, viewing language change as inevitable doesn't necessarily commit you to an "anything goes, anytime" policy. Text-speak is not as effective at communicating in an academic context. Simple as that, lol.

So why are all these myths about language so common? The linked article suggests it may be because linguistics simply isn't taught in schools. I'd have to agree. Where it is taught -- at least in the UK -- it's usually part of the rather nebulous subject "English Language", which is often seen as the easy option in high school. I seem to remember that's why I chose it at A-level (it's all about writing stories, innit?).

But there's much more to linguistics than analysing the language of adverts or knowing the difference between a noun and a verb (and, judging by some of the students I've taught over the last few years, even that topic isn't covered any more). And you don't have to speak more than one language to study linguistics: trust me, I should know!

Linguistics needs to be part of the basic school cirriculum at the very least to stop these kinds of myths from perpetuating. What's more, it'll help when students who come to university know the difference between a subject and a direct object. Syntax ftw!

Library phone answerers survive the Internet

I found this rather sweet:

"Anyone, of any age, from anywhere can telephone 212-340-0849 and ask New York Public Library researchers almost any question."

And they only have five minutes to answer. Take that Internet!

Full story (Cnet news).
(from Digg)

Eon8.com = elaborate social experiment

So, it's not an evil underground terror network ready to unleash untold destruction on the major population centres of the world after all. Nor even a viral marketing scheme for the next James Bond film or Halo 3:


www.eon8.com (original website - now just shows a list of mirrors)

(See official Eon8 fansite for the full lowdown.)

For six months leading up to yesterday (1st July), the website www.eon8.com displayed -- in ominous black and white -- a simple map of the world and and a timer counting down to zero. The other links on the main page (now taken offline due to massive amounts of Slashdot and ytmnd traffic) led to areas which required a password for access.

In addition to the site itself, the creator made a number of mysterious posts on a variety of forums which consisted of little more than random codes and indecipherable messages. Once the geek and tech communities of the web caught on, there was rampant speculation as to the site's purpose. I guess most people believed it was probably some sort of hoax (after all, what top secret government agency or terror organisation publicises their plan to bring about the END OF THE WORLD by creating a website for it?), but that still didn't stop the hackers and codebreakers trying to work out what on earth was going on.

I only found out about this last week after viewing a bunch of alternately hilarious and ridiculously portentous ytmnds about the phenomenon. Turns out it was all a social experiment designed to see how people react to very little information. The guy who created it -- a web designer from Florida variously called Mike or Chris -- said he was "disappointed that people expected the worst":

"For many people, being faced with a countdown timer was an instant reason to try to shut down or hack the site. This is a worrying reaction, that if someone doesn't understand something they must destroy it. As a result, the servers have been hit quite hard these last few days, but luckily 99% of the 'hackers' could easily be described as 'l4me n00bs'. Another worrying example of paranoia was how quickly people would jump to conclusions, such as telephoning the registered owner of a dog seen in a photograph on a server that hosts a page that links to eon8."

So there you have it: what we don't understand we must destroy. Human nature, lol.