watch tHe skies

Well the lousy artex patch that the Kitchen fitters did has gone, as we shelled out the best part of £200 to get the ceiling skimmed and coved. Looks lovely, and will look even more lovely when I get around to painting it and the end wall.

“Mr Jol, sir?”

“Yes Robbie?”

“We can’t do it, we can’t get more points than Arsenal…”

“Why is that?”

“Because we are Spurs, we are rubbish, West Ham are much better than us!”

“Okay, fair point, let’s er, pretend to have food poisoning and get the game postponed…”

“Good idea Mr Jol, sir, and if we do have to play at least we have a good excuse for being cr@p.”

And so it passed, that Spurs did falter at the final hurdle and The Arsenal jumped in to fourth place, taking the final Champions’ League spot.

And so the curtain closed on Highbury after all of those years, finishing off with a big celebration and the great line from that bloke who played Curly Watts “and now we are off to Ashburton Grove, but we are going to drop by in Paris to pick something up on the way”. Sweet.

Well during the two very good episodes of Lost shown on channel four last tuesday, I noticed an very strange ad for an organisation called the Hanso Foundation, a kind of scientific research group. After visiting their website I googled them and it turns out that they are part of the Lost Experience, a kind of interactive game allowing you to dig further in to the Lost mythos. Ringing the number in the ad gives you a password that allows you to hack in the Hanso intranet and read some very disturbing letters about disease control.

At this time I have no idea about the relevance of this to the TV show, but as the game will progress over the weeks and months, it will be worth checking back. To get up to speed you can visit the unofficial Lost Experience website and catch up with some of the clues without spending hours messing about on the interweb.

Jo Whiley (BBC Radio 1) also mentioned that the shark from episode 2 had that wierd logo on its tail fin. The logo looks like a Feng Shui Ba Gua with a yin-yang in the middle. These logos were present on all of the food in the Larder that Kate was locked in to, so it looks like the organisation running the bunker, that differs from that of the Hanso foundation. For more regular information on all of the goings on, it is worth checking out the Channel 4 official Lost blog and a Dallas-based blog on the subject.
Oh and finally don’t write a blog post whilst listening to the Hanso website music. You are feeling drowsy, very drowsy….

Due date has come and gone…

No sign of baby yet. He \ she seems to be quite content to stay put for the meantime. Moving about a lot but nothing to see here yet. Bags are packed and waiting at the door, baby seat is installed and ready, even the kitchen is nearly done, we are just short of an actual baby!

I recently caught Kurt “Equilibrium” Wimmer’s Ultraviolet. Set in the far future, the world is controlled by a totalitarian governement led by Vicecardinum Ferdinand Daxus (Nick Chinlund), who is raging aware against a sub-species of human infected with Hemophagia, a blood disease descended from the Vampire virus.

As Daxus prepares to execute his master plan by unleashing a weapon that will restore order, the weapon itself if stolen by an agent of the Hemophages, the deadly and partially undressed Violet (scifi regular Milla Jovovich ). However, Violet soon discovers that the weapon is not quite what was expected, and is in fact a little boy, who holds the key to the Vicecardinum’s end game. (more…)

Saw this blog post over at technorati about the new Accenture screen at Chicago O’Hare airport. A 10′x7′ touchscreen allows users to move images about and manipulate the information. It looks a lot like the screen used by Tom Cruise in Minority Report.

Interestingly, with the introduction of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags in to passenger tickets at many airports, screens like this can present customised information to the user based on nationality, journey plan, previous trips and spend profile, which is frighteningly close to the scene in Minority Report where Tom walks down the corridor and is bombarded by personalised adverts.

Of course airports are already using biometrics to track passengers. Face identification is under test at Heathrow Airport, and Schiphol Airport allows frequent flyers to bypass security using retinal scanning. With the increasing demand for identity tracking in public places, many of the gadgets and gizmos we’ve seen in recent scifi movies are here for real or on their way.

So there we have it. Steve McClaren has been named England manager. If his England team plays with twice the verve and flair of his Middlesborough team then we will be begging Graham Taylor to come back by Christmas.

Ok to be fair he has managed to get Middlesborough to the UEFA cup final and I genuinely hope that he can take England somewhere, but I was just hoping for someone with a little more savvy. We need someone who has the tactical experience to match our team’s abilities, and there is little I have seen from his club resume to suggest that he can turn our prima donnas in to a coherent, successful national side.

Good luck to him, the English England manager.

“Hello, we were expecting the cheque for the balance on the kitchen”

“Were you? But we are still waiting for the fridge?”

“Yes, but can you send the cheque in the meantime?”

“Er, no, fit our fridge and you can have your cheque.”

And strangely, after waiting weeks for the NEFF fridge, it arrives next day. So finally we have the kitchen furniture finished. Ceiling gets skimmed on tuesday and the floor is coming the week after. Nearly there…

George Lucas, who is famously quoted as stating that the original “Han shoots first” versions of the Star Wars movies would never be re-released, is obviously short of cash.

The multi-billionaire clearly intends to buy his own planet and is running short of ideas on how to milk the Star Wars fans any further because according to SciFi.com, the original movies are being released on DVD for a limited time, up until Christmas.

It will be nice to see these classic versions again, without the subsequent jiggery-pokery, in particular the whole Han \ Greedo shootout, which spoils the Special Edition of Episode IV for me.

“With great power, comes great responsibility”, said Peter Parker’s Uncle. Words that he and his alter-ego, Spider-man, live by. Good words to guide a good soul, I feel, and yet it seems that every member of our governmental cabinet have either never watched Spider-Man or they feel that pursuing the Green Goblin’s agenda would suit them better.

It seems to me to be perfect sense to act like a model citizen if you are in the public eye, and yet it would seem to me that the only people who actually aspire to being politicians are the perverted, drunken, drug-addict or incompetent minority of the country who are the very last people on the planet that we would actually want to have any power at all, let alone to decide on our behalf how the country should be run.

Perhaps there should be some sort of entrance exam to becoming a politician; Are you any of the following: alcoholic, pervert, junkie, bigot, easily led? If you ticked one of these then you cannot be a politician. If you ticked more than one then move directly to Parliament…

I just don’t understand why politicians don’t accept that their position comes at a price, to put aside their personality quirks and act in the best interests of the people that they represent. And if they fall by the wayside through indiscretions (cough Prescott) or sheer incompetence (cough cough Clarke) then they should be made to step aside and let someone with greater commitment to the needs of the country to have a pop at screwing up.

However, perhaps I am being a little mean. Was it Lord Acton who said Power tends to corrupt? Perhaps these people began as honest, hardworking people with a genuine drive to make Britain a better place, and that it is simply the process of attaining, wielding and abusing power that they creep slowly towards the dark side.