Picture 4000

This is my 4,000th picture on Flickr. No idea why I took it. Apparently they are doing two for one on shower products.....

Friday Four Fifteen Club Meets Again

We all met up again to talk constructor chaining. Had some of the best questions ever. And I think the numbers are picking up too.

What you need to know

If you are a student at Hull wondering why we teach you what we do, take a look at this.

Portion Control

I followed a butcher's van to work today. Writ large across the back was the impressive claim "Specialists in Portion Control". I thought this sounded great. I can just imagine how it works.

The scene, an Embassy Banquet. Posh types with beautiful girls on their arms are milling around around making small talk and dancing to a small orchestra which is playing expensive tunes. In the corner a white hatted master chef is serving food with an immaculate silver service. Suddenly a man bursts through the crowd to the table:

Man: "Nobody move!"

The orchestra falls silent. Every body stops moving. All eyes turn to the man, who reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a warrant card with a shiny silver badge on it.

Man: "Mike Zuton. Portion Control."

The crowd gasps in amazement and fear.

Mike Zuton, to the chef: "You. Step away from that ladle."

The chef lays the ladle down and steps back, his eyes flicking around nervously. Mike Zuton pulls a small measuring jug from his pocket, fills the ladle with steaming soup and then empties it into the jug. There is absolute silence in the room as he carefully scrutinises the scale on the side.

Mike Zuton: "Just as I thought. Five mills over. You're going down this time Maurice"

Chef: "But, but, I swear it was an honest mistake"

Mike Zuton: "Yeah, right. Just like those extra Ferrero Rocher you've been sneaking onto the desert trolley. The ambassador isn't made of money you know."

Mike Zuton gets a whistle out of his pocket and blows a loud blast. Twenty uniformed officers burst through the french windows.

Mike Zuton: "Captain, get the Baguette Squad down into the kitchen, and remember, anything over fifteen centimetres, I want to know about it...."

..and so on.

Then again, perhaps it isn't like that at all.

Cloverfield

One of Rob's movie rules is "The better the build up to the monster, the bigger the let down when you actually get to see it". Cloverfield doesn't break this rule. The look of the film itself is excellent. If a giant monster did attack New York, and the only document left was hand-held video footage from  someone underneath it, it would probably look a lot like Cloverfield.  Except for the monsters, which had the air of poorly rendered video game characters. They even had little monsterettes which looked like they were there just for the underground scenes. For my money it would would have been better if you never actually saw the monsters. Now that would have been scary.

Films have been made using camcorders before but they don't usually centre all the action entirely around camcorder footage shot by one of the participants. All the camcorder owner cliches are there, from not knowing how to use the camera to leaving it switched on by mistake.

The action starts at a party packed full of "Beautiful People" (tm). To be honest, this goes on a bit, setting up a romantic sub-plot. However, once the monsters turn up things happen very quickly indeed. And one by one the Beautiful People are picked off. The acting from the case of unknowns is very good, although it must have been very hard work for the young cast staying scared all the time.  Perhaps the reason there are no older, more unfit,  characters is that they would not be able to survive the making of the film.

If you like monster movies, you should see Cloverfield. Some of the scenes are excellent, and there are some really scary moments. But I don't think it will keep you awake for long at night. Not if you've played Doom or Quake.