Retro TV

With number one wife out for the evening number one son and I had free access to the big telly, and so a night of retro TV was in order.

First up was Thunderbirds, a puppet series which had me enthralled in the 1960's. I must admit it looked pretty darned good on the large screen, and the remastered sound was fantastic. Even after all these years it still packs a punch. In the episode that we watched all the trouble was caused by a "World Navy" exercise which went wrong when a missile strayed off course. Until now the idea of a world navy seemed quite sensible, but tonight I was wondering just who they would be fighting against. Anyhoo, it all ended well, although there were some rather large explosions. The really weird thing was that as we were watching a story of a gas rig in peril there was a real life drama of the same ilk playing itself out in the North Sea less than a hundred miles away.

Next we fired up "The Prisoner", a strange spy series of the sixties which was filmed in the wonderful Portmerion (which I really must visit one of these days). This stands up pretty well, it seems no more or less silly than things like "24" or Prison Break, with a cast of all the greatest TV actors of the time. Familiar faces kept popping up all over the place. Great fun.

Good Evening Mr Bond

Went to see the new James Bond movie tonight. A bit late, but we've only just got around to it. Well worth the trip though. Perhaps the best Bond movie that I've ever seen (and I've seen most of them - apart from a couple of the well dodgy Roger Moore ones). The action starts at frantic and then never lets up. The plot is good too, rather than a tale involving far fetched world domination with expendable chaps in coloured boiler suits on enormous sets we have just some very nasty people with cash flow problems.

The film manages to get the feel of how Bond should be and seems truer to the books than anything else, even matching the plot of the original Casino Royale story pretty closely. One thing to note though, Bond doesn't do much for local property values. Early in the film he causes a substantial amount of collateral damage on a building site and towards the end there is some serious mayhem aboard (and I do mean aboard) a block of flats in Venice.

If you want to see why the new Bond has been so highly praised you should go and see the film. If you want to see a high quality action film, with good production values and a twisty, gnarly, plot, you should go and see the film.

Vista is a Scroll Wheel

I've had Vista running for a couple of weeks now. I'll not deny that I've had problems, but I reckon that most of these are down to the fact I'm using pre-release drivers for my particular hardware. Hopefully by the time Vista is turned loose on the world these will have been fixed.

Anyhoo, I like it. It is a bit like the scroll wheel on the mouse. I remember the first time that I got a mouse with a scroll wheel. At first I couldn't see much point, but as I used more applications which supported it I got to use it more and more. Some time back I used some very old programs which did not support it and I found them very hard to get to grips with.

Vista is like that. Its usefulness kind of creeps up on you. I like the 3D effects. I like the way that I'm finding it easier to move between folders, see what files I've selected and navigate around running programs. When I use an XP machine it feels clunky and less elegant and I'm now glad to get back to Vista.

I've stressed it really hard, with loads of simultaneous applications doing lots of different things and it just seems to come back for more. Drivers not withstanding, this is one solid operating system.

And, like the scroll wheel, I reckon it is going to be the way that we use computers for some time to come.

Delinquent Children

Number one son keeps getting busted by the police. One of his little prangs has just cost me 34,000 dollars and things have now got a lot worse. He's gone and bought a motorbike. Fortunately this is not real, this is Test Drive Unlimited for the XBOX 360, which is slowly taking over our lives. We've won a few races, run a few errands, bought a new house and spent a while exploring the neighbourhood.

I'm impressed with this game. The graphics are very believable, and the roads go on for ever. You start to explore places just to find out what is round the next corner. Perhaps we'll soon identify a few haunts to hang out at and get to know some of the locals.

If you like driving games and exploration you should track down a copy. Maybe we'll meet up in Hawaii.

Five Things to Know About Me

I've never been "tagged" before. But all that has changed. Alfred from Microsoft has tagged me. The idea is that I have to write five things about myself that you probably don't know. And then tag other bloggers to get them to do the same. A bit like a chain letter. Without the chain. Or the letter. So, here goes:

1. I once had a whole page of poetry published in "The Indepedent", a UK national daily newspaper. It was illustrated by Heath, a famous cartoonist. It was in 1987 and was fallout from my first ever lecture in rhyme. I have a copy of the paper in my office, one of my most treasured possessions. It is getting a bit yellow now, I must scan it sometime.
2. I used to present on Hospital Radio. My show was called "Better by Miles" as I remember. After the wonderfullness of the title it was all downhill from there.... I made my own jingle machine using eight track tapes and still have some recordings in the loft. And they are staying there.
3. I wrote the software which puts datestamps on bottles of Budweiser beer (I'm very proud of this). It controls a special disk drive which puts metal masks in the way of a very powerful laser which blasts ink off bottle labels as they fly past. I do Asahi Beer as well, in addition to Cadburys Roses, Wheetabix and a bunch of other stuff.
4. I teach Sunday School. I've been going to our local methodist church religiously every week for years. I'm not particularly evangelical, it is just that for me a universe with a god in it makes more sense than one without.
5. I own a pinball machine. Oh yes. It is a Twilight Zone from 1993, one of the best machines ever made and great fun to carry up flights of stairs.

And now I have to pass the tag on to other people. I'm going to tag Jay Wakefield, Matt Jones, Carrie Francis, Geoff MacDonald and David Grey.