Bad, sad, mad ad's

"Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes is a truly great song. I've loved it ever since I first heard it, not way back when it was first released but when it was included in the soundtrack for that excellent movie Grosse Point Blank. So imagine my delight when I heard it just the other day on TV... sad to say, that delight was short-lived. First of all, the song is being used to advertise Foster's lager. Bad enough, right? But listen closer - it's not even the Violent Femmes but some (admittedly eerily accurate) soundalike band, or assembly of session musos. Pretty sad, I'd say. And then listen closer still - the lyrics have been changed! "I'm high as a kite" has become "I'm flying a kite" and "strung out" has become "hung out". Despite it's perky, upbeat, Summer sound this is supposed to be a song about heroin! Guess the Foster's account exec's didn't want that association for their anaemic Aussie brew. Use the song if you must, but change the words? That makes me mad... cursed advertisements!

To discover the original VF version of this song, download it here. Now!

Play well

Okay, so if the computer I wrote about in my last post was the predominant plaything of my teenage years, then the equivalent rose-tinted nostalgia-inducing memory from the 70s was undoubtedly Lego. I was a Lego fiend, completing models in double quick time and then designing my own. I remember designing a pocket TV in Lego some years before Casio and Sinclair started making their commercial offerings - I think they pinched my design!

Not sure if I want to admit this in public, but I was a member of the Lego Builders' Club. I recall the membership badge being made of brass and reassuringly heavy. And my family took a trip to Denmark, predominantly so that we could go to Legoland - this was back in the day before there was one near Windsor. And being the 70s, shopping malls were few and far between, so any trip to the Westwood Co-op Hypermarket near Ramsgate was already exciting for a small boy from out in the sticks, but the prospect of coming home with a precious new box of Lego made it all the more so. I was particularly keen on the "space" range of models (my favourite being the 928, pictured). They were very obviously inspired by Star Wars, although the actual Star Wars franchise they have now didn't exist back then.

You might wonder what's triggered this sudden Lego-fest of a post - I read an article in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago that covered Lego-related blogs, some of which I'm happy to reproduce for you here...

• Brothers Brick - a good generalist Lego portal
• Spite Your Face - movie parodies in Lego form
• Vignette Bricks - lots of compact Lego dioramas
• The Brick Testament - the bible, in Lego form. No, really...
• From Bricks to Bothans - one of the best of many Lego/Star Wars sites
• Reasonably Clever - home to the 50 bricks or less contest
• Brickshelf - features Lego versions of movie posters

And there are loads more. For example, a quick search of YouTube reveals lots of short movies where Lego has been used in stop-motion special effects. Some people have a lot of time on their hands, I guess... said he, writing a pointless blog of mindless drivel that no-one reads...

Footnote: In case you're wondering, the Danish for "play well" is leg godt, hence....

Going back to my roots

I work in IT, I think I've mentioned that before. I've been working in IT for more years than I care to remember, and before that I studied it at Uni, back in the day when essays were still written on paper, with a pen. But before all that, my personal computing history began way back in the early 1980s with the wonderful Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. Okay, so before that I'd used a Sinclair ZX81 for about an hour one day in my last year at primary school, but the first computer I owned, the first I really got into and, crucially, the first I properly programmed was the 99/4A.

Now when I got the 99/4A (Summer 1983, if memory serves), it was already on its way out. Other, more affordable and more powerful computers were muscling in. The VIC-20 and its big brother, the Commodore 64, were both popular, as was the Dragon 32 and the BBC Model B (which we had a few of at school). And of course the daddy of them all, the machine you had to have if you wanted to swap games, was the Sinclair Spectrum 48K.

So I was using obsolete technology from the off, but it didn't matter because my 99/4A felt like a proper computer. Okay, so it only had 16K, paltry when compared to the Speccy or C64, and it was a bit slow (its programming language was interpreted, not compiled, you see). But it had build quality, a brushed aluminium finish and a proper, decent keyboard. It had an expansion slot, kind of like the USB port of its day, that you could plug all kinds of things into, including more RAM or a speech synthesizer (incredible for its day), but mainly games. Great games. I remember one game of Parsec lasting over five hours, as I racked up more than nine million points. And Munchman (guess what? A clone of Pacman) was another classic. Happy days...

The other great thing about the 99/4A is that it came with a detailed reference guide for its programming language, TI-Basic. This was one way of learning how to program, but I supplemented that by buying Home Computing Weekly because this printed the code for whole programs that people like me (the script kiddies of our day, perhaps) could steadfastly type into our machines, save them to cassette tape (yes, really), and so create our own game libraries. I still remember the very distinctive sound of those ASCII characters being written to tape. And because these programs were usually only two or three hundred lines at most, you could reverse-engineer them to work out what commands were doing, why, and in what order. And that's how I really learnt to program. Before very long, I was writing my own games, starting with text-based "adventure" games, as they were optimistically known ("In Search of El-Doradon Gold" was my best effort in this genre, which one kid at school asked if I could translate for his Spectrum - ha!), before moving to simple, catch-the-falling-object style graphical games. Programming became more fun than playing the end-product - it became the game itself.

And that's how I was hooked. Texas Instruments stopped making the 99/4A the same year I got one, and as the months rolled on the programs in Home Computing Weekly that were in TI-Basic, and could be run with only 16K, became fewer and fewer. In the end, I became very reliant on one particular company, Parco Electrics in Honiton, Devon. In fact, I cherished them as they continued to support the 99/4A - they even started publishing their own magazine for enthusiasts like me, with programs, tips, game high-score charts, and more. I saved the money from my paper-round to buy things from Parco, often games of varying quality. There was a last hurrah, when Parker Brothers licensed some Nintendo games for distribution as plug-in 99/4A cartridges - Popeye was the best of these and, like Parsec, it ate up the hours. As obsolescence really kicked in though, and the flow of new games dried up, what was left behind was an interest in computing and an aptitude for programming. And the rest, like my 99/4A (now gathering dust in a cupboard at my parents' house, along with untold cartridges, oxidised tapes and a killer joystick), is history.

Minghella and Clarke

The deaths of film director Anthony Minghella and science-fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke were reported yesterday. Both make me sad, in different ways.

Minghella will inevitably always be best known for directing the Oscar-winning The English Patient but for me his best work was the film adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley, which he wrote the screenplay for as well as directed. Beyond loving Ripley, I am sad for Minghella's death because he was only 54, and dying from a haemorrhage following surgery for cancer of the neck and tonsils sounds a horrible way to go, all in all.

Clarke's death saddens me in a different way. He was 90, and so had had a good innings, and the last few years of his life he was wheelchair-bound - I suspect he himself wasn't scared of dying any more. And what an accomplished life - on top of the books, films and television work for which he was so well known, he worked on the development of radar during the Second World War (then a top secret) and soon after correctly foresaw the advent of satellite communications, even specifying the height such satellites would have to reach to maintain geostationary orbit. In fact, his 1945 article in Wireless World was so accurate that when the first commercial satellites were launched twenty years later they could not be patented! And then, of course, a short story of his became the kernel of 2001: A Space Odyssey, not just one of the great sci-fi films of all time but one of the great films of any genre. So a life full of achievement and a ripe old age - what's to be sad about then? Just this: as a teenage boy in the Eighties, I devoured Clarke's books. That time, and those books, are over now. Sadness all round then.

Hypocrisy

I am obsessive about recycling. I have energy-efficient lightbulbs. I refuse unwanted carrier bags, and re-use the ones I cannot avoid until they are only fit for the bin, and then I use them as bin-liners. I have a thing in my cistern that reduces water consumption with every flush, and I wash my clothes at 30°C. Speaking of which, all my cleaning products are from the Ecover range. I even compost. At work, I am sometimes jokingly referred to as the company's token eco-warrior, and not just because I introduced green computing initiatives throughout the organisation, but also because I have been known to fish plastic cups out of the ordinary bin in the canteen and transfer them to the recycle bin.

But then I spoil it all by getting in my 225bhp, 0 to 60 in oh-my-god sports car to drive the one and a half miles from house to office. A hypocrite? Maybe. A lippy hippy? Perhaps. Or just flawed, like everyone else? Almost certainly.

Ida Maria is... stella(r)!

I've mentioned them before, but Ida Maria are a brilliant band, and the recent Times interview with the wonderful Ida herself is all the excuse I need to mention them again. Even if it wasn't, their next single "Stella" is released on March 10th too. Utterly recommended.

Whole lotta shakin' goin' on

In the small hours of this morning, I was woken from my sofa-sleep by a rattling and banging that lasted about ten seconds. In my sleep-addled state I thought, "What are next door banging on about now?". Turns out that I had been woken by an earthquake, measuring 5.2 on the Richter Scale. At least I didn't sleep through it.

Work your proper hours

Today is "Work Your Proper Hours Day", apparently - this is the day when the average person who does unpaid overtime here in the UK finishes the unpaid days they do every year, and starts earning for themselves. If you agree that's something worth celebrating, whilst acknowledging that it's also a pretty sorry state of affairs, you may want to read more at worksmart.org.uk/workyourproperhoursday.

There - a whole blog post without emotional frailty, or solipsist teen-like angst. It can be done.

A thousand fireworks

I didn't receive a Valentine's card, but then why would I? I did receive a chocolate croissant for breakfast, waiting for me before work on the wing mirror of my car in a non-Valentine's/Valentine's surprise gesture that really touched me. But that's all.

I did send a card though, and this is what it had written on it:

You are the spark that lit a thousand fireworks;
Bursting and fizzing,
Writing your name across my heart.

This is a quote from Anna Maughan who, I discovered from Francesca, is a director at Urban Graphic, the company behind the Scrawl range of cards that I am more than happy to recommend to you.

I wrote a poem of my own for inside the card, a haiku, but that's personal and I'm not going to reproduce it here. And though I left the card anonymous, and disguised my handwriting, the haiku and other clues were enough for the recipient to work out (with enough certainty to text a thank you) that it was from me. I love the idea of an anonymous card, but what's the point in making it impossible to work out who the sender is? For then the unrequited will surely always remain unrequited?

As it is, despite my clues, the unrequited remains unrequited anyway, but that's another story. On a lighter (?) note, tomorrow I plan to test my theory that saying "I ate a microwaved ready-meal for one" is a sure-fire way to stop people asking how you spent your Valentine's evening.

Not Film 2008... but a film review anyway: "Lust, Caution"

Lust, Caution is the latest release from acclaimed director Ang Lee. Set in occupied Shanghai during the Second World War, this is the story of a young woman who is recruited to act as a honey trap in a plot to assassinate a Japanese collaborator. Complications ensue when the honey trap, Wong (played by Wei Tang, by some way the best thing in this movie), falls for the untouchable Mr Yee.

For every crouching tiger on Ang Lee's CV there is an incredible hulk, and this is a mixed bag too. Yes, it is a wonderfully evocative period piece, but what of the plot? Based on a short story, the credits tell us, one cannot help but wish the film had been a lot shorter too - it is either too long (a good 45 minutes over the top) or just too slow to sustain interest over a running time that tops two and a half hours. Much has been made of the graphic sex scenes, as the cinematic embodiment of a desire that is out of control. Well, maybe, but to me they felt cold, evoking not passion but soft porn, albeit beautifully shot and artfully framed. Rather than leaving me pondering the nature of desire, it just left me wondering how Wong had got into that position...

There is a lot to admire in the way this film has been made and how it looks on screen, but there are plenty of problems too - the mah-jongg scenes feel annoyingly plentiful and wilfully studied, and not enough is made of scenes that could serve to illustrate exactly why the resistance felt the need to undertake such a convoluted assassination plot in the first place. Throw in the fact that the pivotal theme in the storyline, that of Wong falling for Yee, just doesn't feel credible and you are left with a movie that left this reviewer feeling little in the way of lust, but sadly plenty of caution.

Lust, Caution is still on general release, so scurry along to your local independent cinema and make your own mind up. It'll be out on DVD soon too.