watch tHe skies

So my latest book is “The Photoreading Whole Mind System”, by Paul Scheele. The system was invented by Paul Scheele to help people read books rapidly, and designed as an adaptation of speed reading, which Scheele described as requiring much practice and being tiring to the mind. The distinguishing feature of PhotoReading is that it is claimed to make use of the unconscious mind to rapidly absorb material, as opposed to conventional reading or speed reading, which utilises the conscious mind.

PhotoReading is divided into five main steps:

1. Defining your purpose for reading
2. Previewing the book
3. Photoreading
4. Activation
5. Rapid reading

In the first step, the reader defines his or her purpose for reading the material he or she wishes to PhotoRead. After that, he or she “previews” the book by reading key headings and subtitles to get a feel for the book. The third step, which can be considered to be the key of the system, is the actual PhotoReading step, in which the reader adopts a style of reading the book which is purported to allow the information to flow directly to the unconscious mind.

The idea is then to “activate” the information, allowing the conscious mind to extract information directly from the unconscious photos of the book. Is it bobbins? Well, I don’t know, I’m still reading step 2, but I’ll let you know if it works. It is actually based on some fairly simple NLP presuppositions, that the unconscious has a far greater ability to absorb and process information than the conscious mind has. Quite whether the difference is 25,000 words a minute remains to be seen. But even if it doubled your reading and comprehension speed, it would be very useful in today’s world of information overload. Given the number of books I seem to be reading simulataneously, a book in ten minutes would be very, very handy

A military manoeuver left Ben with Granny this afternoon, freeing Jenny and I to head over to the flix to see Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. Twenty or so years since we last saw the Man of Steel on the silver screen, unknown Brandon Routh steps up to fill Christopher Reeve’s considerable red boots.

Set after Superman II, and sensibly ignoring the risible Superman III and Superman IV, we seen Kal-El return to Earth after five years’ visiting the remains of Krypton. In the meantime, the world has moved on, and Superman is a distant memory, even in the mind of Lois Lane, who now has a child and a partner (James Marsden). In the meantime, Lex Luthor, menacingly played by Kevin Spacey, has gotten out of prison and is busy scheming world domination, using Krypton technology.

It was a tough thing to do, to reinvigorate a franchise with so much baggage - a legendary original movie, the one that effectively created the superhero movie genre, a legendary on screen character, in Christopher Reeve’s Superman, and a franchise crushed by two poor sequels. So Singer’s vision carefully works on the memorable imagery from the original film; the chemistry between Superman and Lois, whilst portraying Superman as a vulnerable person who, despite his incredible powers, cannot find respite from the feeling of isolation and loneliness from being the only one of his kind. This theme is mirrored in Lex Luthor’s evil scheming to recreate Krypton on earth, killing millions in the process, and making plenty of bucks in the process. Yet Superman is so distracted by the fact that the love of his life has moved on, that all clues pointing to another dastardly scheme from chrome-dome are completely missed, as he mopes about a bit, catching criminals.

It’s a bit of an odd movie. It’s quite long and a lot of the running time is attributed to talking. The set pieces, when they occur, are pretty awesome. The reintroduction of Superman, during which he rescues a space shuttle and 777 from certain death, is mindblowing - exciting, scary, and pure Superman, the way we remember him, all accompanied by John Williams’ awe-inspiring score. Then there is Supes and Lois’ abridged flight above Metropolis, a little nod to the original movie, that is just lovely to see as a fan of the original.

Overall it is a fun movie for fans of the original film. I’m not sure that it will bring a whole new audience to the character, it is a little oddly paced and the script lacks a little punch, I have a couple of gripes about it, mainly that it falls flat after the resolution of the main threat, Lois fails to react to a very odd situation in any way sensible, and the Lex Luthor situation is left way too open, even if they are planning for a sequel. Overall, it could have been a little shorter, a little less loving of the original movie, and had a little more action in it. Routh is great as Superman, bringing warmth and strength to him whilst retaining much of Reeve’s portrayal. Kate Bosworth does a decent enough job as Lois Lane, but she doesn’t really compare to Margot Kidder’s ballsy version in the original movies. Kevin Spacey’s Luthor is similar to Gene Hackman’s but with more menace.

As I said, reviving the franchise was a tough challenge, and as such, Superman Returns does well. It won’t blow your mind, but it will probably remind you why most people love the character, and it wipes any bad tastes from Supermans III and IV. Let’s not wait so long for the next chapter, maybe Superman v Batman?

Literally only weeks after my post about the upcoming electric car conspiracy movie, Who killed the electric car? I stumble upon a new car company in the US selling what is, for an intents and purposes, a electric Lotus Elise. Doing 0-60 in 4 seconds and with a range of 250 miles, the Tesla Roadster is some upgrade on the Sinclair C5.

Despite being assembled in the UK by Lotus, there doesn’t appear to be any short-term intent to sell them over here. The US market is obviously bigger and more sensitive about their fuel prices (after all, we’ve been fleeced sideways for too long on that issue).

It does come with a few issues, in particular the need for a 70amp source at home to charge it. However I suspect that the largest barrier to its introduction here will be the government’s inability to earn any tax from its fuel. If we can all fuel our cars from home, then where will they get the money to spend on pointless consultants in the public sector? There will probably be a need to have a charger professionally installed with a seperate meter so that the power companies can then charge out car recharging at a seperate rate…. nasty. here’s hoping that by the time it or its siblings arrive in the UK, that they come with solar cell panelling…

Well apologies for the site going AWOL yesterday, but it would appear that some loser spammer hacked my account and sent millions of spam emails, causing my host to be less than happy with me, like it’s my fault. It just goes to show you - buy cheap hosting and you get cheap customer service. After all my site is not exactly a hotbed of adverts for viagra now is it?

Spam is big business and wastes an awful lot of time and money, but I guess it isn’t going away. Even so I can’t believe that spammers can actually make that much money. I mean if you have to go to the extent of hacking someone’s account just to send the emails, which takes precious time, and then expect a 0.001% return (or something similar) on emails sent, then you have to either be making a big profit on each item you sell, or you are a fool.

Sadly it is probably the latter.

Well this weekend we had our first trip to Olan Mills for Ben to look cute and for us to fork out a tonne of cash. I must say that despite sitting in a room filled with chav parents and annoying children for an hour, and then being fleeced sideways and paying £100 to get the images on CD (!), the end result is pretty cool, and one can see a preview here on this very site. Click on the thumbnail to have a butcher’s.

As I’ve said recently, I’m reading Secrets of Self-Hypnosis, by Adam Eason. In the book (well worth a read by the way), he suggests an idea he got from Joseph Murphy’s The Power Of The Unconscious Mind. The idea is that your mind is a garden, and that you are responsible for this upkeep.

I like this analogy because it represents the way that we change organically, and the fact that left untendered, the garden will become overgrown, messy and full of weeds. But, you may say, I can’t reach the gnarled trees at the back, deep in my subconscious. Well I guess the answer is to tidy up the bushes in front of them so you can reach them! In the same way that sorting out an unmaintained garden is a slow, deliberate project, you can’t change who you are overnight, but you can, little by little, shape the garden to be the way you want it to be.

It’s funny that computer scientists aspire to creating true artificial intelligence; a computer that can learn and exist, adapt to new situations and environments and have a sense of being. And yet so many of us don’t consciously maintain our own minds, we just let new programs be written without reviewing their suitability for new situations, or doing anything to correct them or bring them in line with the person that we want to be to achieve the things that we want to achieve..?

Well we got around to catching the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel at the weekend. Going to the cinema is a lot of a deal with a little baby, we used to go at a whim, but now everything must be planned like a military manoeuver. Take baby to Granny between feeds, express enough milk to cover estimated absence (3 hours), take all toys and prams and nappies and equipment. And then after all that, remember to actually go to the cinema to watch the film.

So we did in fact arrive in time to watch the film, and once I had persuaded Jenny that the phone would work in the cinema on silent, allaying fears that her Mum wouldn’t be able to contact us in the event of an emergency, we actually got a chance to enjoy the film.

And enjoy it we did, two and a half hours of pirate fun in the vein of the first movie. Sure, there is a lot of plot (after all this is part 1 of a 2 part movie, with the third installment, At World’s End, coming next summer), and it wouldn really help if you have recently watched the first movie before you go to see this one, but it is an absolute blast. (more…)

Well another World Cup has been and gone, some great goals, some upsets, another England penalty shootout failure as predicted on these very pages!

Star(s) of the tournament for me were the african teams. Both Ghana and the Ivory Coast played with an excited vigour that seems missing from most teams, and I think that in 4 years’ time, with a little more wisdom and experience, these teams will be hard to beat.

It seems almost poetic that the Italian team won in the end, given the massive upheaval to their domestic game from the corruption trial. In the end, I didn’t care that much who won, as long as Portugal didn’t. Perhaps I am biased but their antics to me were unprofessional, and I hope that Ronaldo enjoys a year of taunting that will make Beckham’s annus horriblus look like a trip to a day spa.

And finally, before I put the World Cup to bed, I thought I would point you at an interesting article over at Adam Eason’s blog. I’m reading Adam’s book ‘The secrets of self-hypnosis’ at the moment, and he has posted an article about how the body language of the England team suggested that they were highly unlikely to win the penalty shootout. Well worth a read. I would imagine that many of the tools we talk about on this site would be perfect for preparing for such moments, and given the huge amounts of cash available to the England team, perhaps they might think about using NLP to help us win a penalty shootout for a change!

And so it’s goodbye Sven, hello Steve McClaren. And hopefully goodbye to diamond formations, multiple substitutions, treating the captain’s armband like a hot potato and hello to some national pride being more, or as important as the obscenely fat wages that our so-called heroes earn each week.

Another anniversary of a terrorist attack. More innocent lives lost and more families losing loved ones. My thoughts are with all of the people affected by the events a year ago and I hope that we are one year closer to winning the war on terror.

Caught Ant & Dec’s foray in to movie making with Alien Autopsy. Based on the story of Ray Santilli, it is the story of Ray and Gary (Ant and Dec), who, having bought genuine footage of the Roswell autopsy, find that the reel has degraded by the time they return to England. Driven by the need to satisfy their investor, they resort to “remaking” the footage, and end up making a fortune from TV stations all over the world.

It’s an entertaining enough story, with a gentle British humour running throughout. However, it does suffer a little from sticking to the apparent story instead of giving it the beginning, middle and end that movies require. For example, a major character, who potentially causes a big problem for our heroes, is conveniently bumped off. Now, maybe this is true, but it doesn’t make for a good movie, does it?

Also, it assumes to some level that viewers remember the hoax. I don’t really, maybe vaguely, but it was a long time ago. Finally it tries to be a little too clever with the discussions with the film-maker, trying to link it to the film itself, if you know what I mean.

All of the main actors do well, and it is fun when they are mocking up the movie, but after that it seems unsure of which way to go, and moves from a comedy to a straight story with few laughs, drama or tension. Therefore we sit and wait out the end titles, when we see the real Ray and Gary, who tell us how clever they are. Thanks guys, that cements my opinion that you are the only people who think about how clever you are.

All in all, an ok film that has promise but fails to deliver. Hire it to see Ant and Dec, but you will be upset if you invest in your own copy.