Just a quick update today as I’m rather busy with various things (what changes?!). Well done to the Mozilla Firefox team for reaching the 25 million downloads mark yesterday (in just 99 days) - it’s a pretty big aachievement and very well deserved!
“We’re not going to stop at 25 million either. There are still hundreds of millions of people suffering the IE experience and that’s going to change. If you know of people that are tired of the pop-ups, tired of the adware and spyware, tired of viewing the web through the distorted goggles of a browser from the last century, then take a minute to show them there’s a better browser available today, one that puts the power back in the hands of the users rather than the web badguy flavor of the month.”
I hate to rant on about this but if you haven’t tried it yet what are you waiting for? A prime example would be the other day when my Dad called me because the family computer had been infected with some horrible spyware which had got in through Internet Explorer - not any more with Firefox! Download it here now!
I’m off to London tomorrow for some job-finding related business and probably wont be back till late on Saturday night so wont be directly contactable via IM/email till then. Please pray for favourable conditions on the British railways over the next couple of days as I’ll be relying on them pretty heavily!
Oh, and if you haven’t already seen it, here’s a better quality version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trailer which appeared on Amazon the other day. Enjoy 
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I’m not sure why but I’m feeling unusually grotty today, I just hope I’m not going down with something. You probably wont have noticed but I upgraded the site to the new stable release or WordPress 1.5 and restored the photo galleries (well, most of the anyway!).
I got hold of the photos I took over weekend in Newcastle so I thought I’d share a few:
It was a particually grey and windy day - not exactly prime weather for photography! On the same day Tony Blair and his cronies were in town for their spring conference so there were police everywhere. I don’t mean just a few more than normal but literally hundreds wandering around all over the place looking cold and board (you can hardly blame them!).
Unfortunately the work on display at the Baltic right now was of a pretty poor standard compared to what I’ve seen in the past. The ‘Peninsula‘ exhibition by Phyllida Barlow was particularly pretentious and to my mind presented the worst side of contemporary art - that which pretends to be something beyond what it really is - just plane awful. I think the description which went with it pretty much says everything:
“This new work is based on a series of recently realised projects which have combined physical precariousness with emotional intensity - to a point where the structures appear to be on the verge of collapse or implosion”
Please don’t insult everyones intelligence. I’ve seen better GCSE school projects. This is simply a poor joke. If I’ve made a fundamental misinterpretation of it then feel free to correct me!
I took a few interesting shots of reflections which turned out OK but they could have done with a little more colour in them. All of my family are reflected in the shot above, some more than once! Can you work out who’s who?
No… nor can I!
Elsewhere: Strange things are going on in New York’s Central Park. Check out a some photos of the newly unveiled ‘Gates‘ which can even be seen from space! More info here.
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Had quite a nice weekend with my family coming to visit. I would show you the cool photos I took but since they’re on my dad’s camera (I forgot mine when we went out today!) they’ll have to wait for another time 
Well done to my Dad for having a research paper he’s written (the first in many years from what I gather) accepted for an international conference on respiratory medicine. I have absolutely no idea what it’s all about but it’s quite impressive!
I had a lot to say today but for some reason or other it’s all just drained from my mind, must be the chronic exhaustion setting in again! Instead I’ll just leave you with a few cool links:
- Father Amorth - A day in the life of the most senior exorcist for the Vatican.
- I ate my iPod Shuffle - “Next time you need a snacky-treat, Think different - iPod appetit“!!
- Balloon v1.0 - Build your own Linux powered weather balloon (like you do). I love little projects like this, Genius!
- Night-Vision - New advances using colour substitution turn night into day. Pretty psychedelic if you ask me.
- Fractile Networks - Look the same up close or far away. Now you know! Interesting if you’re studying these sorts of things (like I am allegedly).
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What do you get when you mix a Shakespearian tragedy with one of the most terrifying psychological thrillers of the 20th Century? Possibly Ring 0. Although it bears about as much resemblance to its predecessors (or successors depending on your view) as a cow does to a chicken it manages to bring new light to this classic series.
Ring 0 is a prequel to the origional Ringu, set 30 years before it in Sadako’s lifetime. It’s difficult to place it in a specific genre as it’s neither horror nor costume drama but rather a combination of both. Although it is nowhere near as shocking or chilling as the others it answers just about all the questions you’ve been wondering and wraps things up quite nicely.
The story basically revolves around Sadako and her troubled history. We learn that she isn’t quite as evil as might have been imagined and that she does actually have a human side which has been suppressed by previous traumas. The story is fairly slow paced but as it unravels we discover that even nastier things are lurking in the background which will soon come into play as the body-count begins to stack up!
The cinematography is nothing special and at times feels a little flat but there are some nice flash-back sequences using a grainy sepia film effect which work quite well. Having said this the film does exhibit a certain sense of tragic beauty which is brought home in the final scene where Sadako meets her end in a shocking and quite upsetting way, due to it’s brutality served upon someone who was innocent.
Overall it’s good but not brilliant, worth seeing if you liked the original (7/10). You can find a more in depth review here.
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Meta: Taken using a Tungsten filter, ISO 50, 1/99 sec, f/4.9.
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