You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Names, Pics, Austen, Letters

We've been messing about setting up a connection to the States so we can transfer the entire movie digitally, but since this is the sort of thing that it's important to be belt-and-suspenders about, we've also bought a bunch of firewire drives and cases, so that we can put a reel on a bunch of disks, put it in a Pelican box, and have someone fly it over to the States as hand luggage. (Viva la Sneakernet, yo!) The reason I thought readers might be interested is the naming convention we've used. I've talked about naming schemes before, but I've not been able to talk about specifics -- however, I can't see any security concerns about people outside Weta finding out that we've called them after My Little Ponies(tm).

I guess the question that most of you are asking is -- which ponies? According to my notes, in the event of a critical infrastructure emergency, the giant ape may end up relying on Sprinkles, Bubbles, Starflower, Peachblossom and Sugarbell to spring into action!

(Well, they're distinctively different from all the other machine-names around here, they're not going to offend anyone at Universal, and they're easy to type, pronounce and memorize. And now we'll never, ever end up using them to name a series of desktop machines.)

***

Here's an odd idea that seems obvious once pointed out -- real life/magazine juxtaposition. I mean, now that digital cameras have made taking pictures essentially free, why not do stuff like this?

The thing that this reminded me of was that ad campaign for camera phones, where you could place you head in the middle of some cheesy scene (and so fill an empty space with an empty space, so to speak); but what that campaign said to me was, "We can bring all the fun and class of a run-down 1970 British seaside resort right into your pocket!" Whereas doing this sort of stuff recontexualizes the things in magazines we've often trained ourselves to tune out completely.

Yeah, I said "recontextualizes" in a blog post. What are you gonna do, send the anti-PoMo guerrilla mimes to take me down? I figure that there is plenty of post-modern pretension in LiveJournal for them to deal with; and if they ever get around to me, well, I'll just show them how I'm in a glass box, and make faces at them, at which point they'll sit there with the mimed assult rifles and nunchuku, biding their time while I run out of air, until they get tired of waiting and fall asleep.

Er, I think my train of thought got derailed somewhere back there.

***

I've just finished watching the BBC adaptation of Pride & Predjudice, soggy Colin Firth and all. (I was actually underwhelmed by Firth's manly charms, but I doubt I'm the target audience.) I'm sure it will startle precisely no-one that I very much enjoyed it, though I felt quite sorry for the awkward middle sister (Mary?) and the next-to-youngest child (Kitty). I wouldn't be at all unhappy if I ended up like the father. ;)

One of things that I found interesting is how much they actually managed to retain in Bride & Prejudice, while making it distinctively Indian -- substituting the piano/singing for that crazy snake dance, for example. Thinking about this led me to wonder: how many modern Jane Austin adaptations are there? I know of B&P, and Clueless is an excellent adaptation of Emma; are there any others?

***

I've finished getting the second letter to an acceptable level, so the second pair of letters have been published at the same place. I hope that the next one goes up with a similar rapidity, but I somehow doubt it. :)

Only 26 days until all the work has to be out the door, and I've got to finish the new database infrastructure before then. I should really start working weekends again.

Furniture, Car, Letters

One of the problems with updating infrequently is that I forget where I first saw things. For example, I'm not sure who first pointed me at Ixi, so I'm not sure who I can thank for exposing me to the Stoolpants.

Some of the other suggestions fail for cultural, rather than asthetic reasons. Putting your bum or feet on a table or desk (especially one that people might eat off of) isn't okay at all in Maori culture -- teacher friends of mine have said that they've gotten very adept at perching on the backs of chairs. So Akira's sofa, while a nifty idea, makes me go a bit "bleargh". It's a better name than "Stoolpants", though.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have Zombie Pinup girls, where people dress up as... sexy zombies. Peoples is weird.

***

I've had my car back for a little while, and while I'm finding it odd to get into a habit of checking the radiator and oil every morning before I start, at least this reassures me that nothing is going wrong. I've driven up to Kapiti (to see Debz students put on the play And Then They Were None, which was very well done -- much kudos to Debz and her drama student crew), and the car behaved itself fine. It can be a bit grumbly when first starting up, but this may be because the garage set the idling speed quite low when the choke is on.

Okay, I am forced to admit that I only have the haziest and most general idea of how a choke works, how idling speeds might be set, and car things in general. Forget being the car-equivalent of someone who uses prepackaged web authoring software, rather than writing them raw in a text editor as the good Lord intended; I'm the guy who's only just discovered you can type in the address bar of your browser. Oh noes! ;)

It goes back to the garage briefly in a few weeks to be checked over; but so far, everything is looking good. (touch wood)

***

I've been talking to an old friend who's currently in Newcastle (when she's not swanning around Britain and the Continent). We've been looking at reviving an old collaborative fiction thing that we started back when I was still working for Vic Uni; it was inspired by Sorcery and Cecilia, insofar as the central conceit is a series of letters passed back and forth between two correspondents. Since she is a Real Author who has gone to writing courses and the like, whereas my writing background could charitably be characterized as "minimal", I'm somewhat anxious; but since it's only for fun, and we're going for a "sci-fi period-piece" feel, I hope to acquit myself reasonably.

A link? Um... all right, but A Game of Letters is all in a bit of a state of flux. Comments aren't enabled for visitors, and there's only the first letter back and forth so far, because I'm in the middle of rewriting Gideon's second letter... anyway, it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and it's likely to move glacially slowly, but I thought I'd mention it.

QB&W, Indy, Car

I have lots of excellent random non-fiction (Mauve, for example, and The Surgeon of Crowthorne, and various Steven Pinker books), but I'm afraid I don't have Napoleon's Buttons -- sorry, Gif! (Napoleon's Buttons is a pop-science book about seventeen important discoveries in chemistry, and their consequences in world history.)

One of the books I do have, and that I finished reading this morning, is Queen Bees & Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman. This is written to help parents understand their teenage daughter (and, to a lesser extent, son), but is also interesting from a anthropological perspective. From what I can see, being a teenage girl can suck pretty hard.

It's an interesting book -- the fact that it is sprinkled with quotes from girls to illustrate, affirm or elaborate on the points being made gives it an authentic feel, and there are plenty of examples as well; many of these examples are broken down and analysed from the point of view of each of the participants, and Wiseman has concrete suggestions about how to deal with the situation as all of the girls, and as their parents. As well as looking at how and why girls (and boys) interact, and the lessons they're being taught by those interactions, she notes things that parents can say or do that will tend to make them switch off and ignore what's being said.

From the point of view of someone for whom the issues are abstract, it's a very interesting read -- very much like reading about another history or culture (which, in fact, it is). I imagine that I'd find it even more interesting and valuable if I had ever been a teenage girl, or if I had a daughter. :) It certainly made me appreciate once again how relatively mild my teenage years were.

***

Speaking of teenagers, I was standing outside Expressoholic with a male friend last night, waiting for the others to come out. A group of three girls stopped next to us, and looked like they were going to talk, and my first thought was, "Oh dear, they're going to ask us to buy them alcohol." In actual fact, they wanted us to come along to a nearby strip-club and pay $20 to see them jelly-wrestling. It was very surreal, and made more so by the fact that they just kept talking to us... I guess it would be somewhat dispiriting to look for customers on a rainy Thursday evening.

Unsurprisingly, I caught a bus home soon after. :)

***

To change tack completely, if you ever wondered what happened to the Zepplin menu holders from The Last Crusade, or wanted to get some gold-rimmed glasses as seen in the classroom scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or wondered what was in the beetles in the banquet in The Temple of Doom, then the site you've been looking for is Indy Gear, the Indiana Jones equipment resource. This is exactly the kind of thing that the web is good at, and it's nice to see it done well.

I'm strongly tempted to watch the movies again. :)

Oh, and speaking of movies -- here's the guys who did the crash in Serenity, Zoic's take on what was easy and hard, and Rhythm and Hues talking about the generator scene. "That's a little too fabulous." Heh. :)

***

I have my car back, and it is warranted, registered, and repaired to within an inch of its life. I'm tempted to post the complete list of everything that has been done to the poor beast, but suffice to say that every morning I've got to check the oil and radiator level, and keep a close eye on the engine temperature to make sure everything is working as expected. I'll be going back in a month get bits of the engine tightened, but hopefully this is the end of the saga -- and after $2400 and significant down-time, I'm not going to mess around now. :)

Apparently the way that I normally use it, which is quite short intra-city trips, is the least efficient way -- it much prefers being driven long distances. I guess getting a scooter wouldn't be such a silly idea after all. :)

Flamethrower, Briscoes, Clifton

I was thinking about movies, and how if you were making some kind of post-apocalypse style movie, it would be kind of cool to get a bunch of the same sort of people who enter Scrapheap Challenge to make you working stuff. Or the people who build crazy things and then post the plans online -- like this guy's flamethrower. And it would make a natural special feature for the DVD -- after all, we already know that the making of these kinds of things can make good TV. ;)

Of course, it might be harder to work this sort of thing into a typical RomCom -- but that just makes it cooler if you did. Maybe the quirky friend or sidekick can be a tinkerer? Or having the argument between the romantic leads while they're fighting in giant homemade mecha?

Oh, man, now I have this idea for a version of The Pirates of Penzance, except the pirates are a biker gang, and Fredrick has stayed with the gang so long because the leader had custody of him (though a hilarious yet legally binding mix-up), but he is now going to go and become a cop. I guess the General would become a Governer, and... okay, I'm putting way too much thought into this. ;)

***

The Lyall Bay Briscoes opened yesterday, and there was a flier with a 50%-off and three 30%-off vouchers in it. (You couldn't get electrical stuff with the 50% voucher.) What lead to my downfall was that they were handing out fliers at the store door, so I could go through twice...

I know I didn't really need a set of good cutlery, but it's nice to know that I now have something other than the ones with the bright yellow plastic handles. And I kinda needed a floor-lamp over by the DVDs. And an electric fan will be good in the coming summer months. And since I can't find the awesome clock my sister gave me, I needed a wall clock, and it was only $8 (down from $35). And I needed to update my wine-storage situation.

I have no justification for the icecream maker or the ice shaver, though. Well, maybe I can make a case for the icecream maker saving me money in the long-term, since I won't need to buy icecream; but as for the other appliance, my ice isn't even that hairy, so what does it need a shaver for? ;) Actually, I have a number of different fruit syrups, so being able to make shaved ice will be quite handy. Plus, of course, it'll be useful for fancy alcoholic drinks -- even if the cartoon penguin on the front runs counter to the whole "sophisticated" tone that you generally want for cocktails.

In my defence, I want to make it clear that there were several items that I thought about buying, and chose not to -- I decided I didn't need a waffle-maker, not even one that made waffles shaped like penguins. And I don't eat enough bread to justify a bread-maker, and I really don't need to clutter up my bench with one of those sandwich press/grill things.

And I bought no crockery or glassware! Well, except for a set of margarita glasses. But otherwise, nothing. And it was all on sale!

Hmm. I think I'm lucky that my natural laziness will protect me from going and buying things too often. :)

***

I just finished the new book by Jane Clifton, Political Animals. It was interesting, and I enjoyed reading it, but there were certainly times when I wished I had a concordance -- she's been writing on politics for nearly thirty years, and she's quite happy to assume that you remember Tuku Morgan's expensive underpants scandal, or Winston back when he was a National MP, and my memory for this sort of thing is fuzzy in the extreme. Presumably, this is the result of her experience as a periodical columnist -- she's got a very conversational style, and a good conversationalist doesn't spend time telling you what you already know.

Do I feel I understand our politicians and political process more, having read the book? Yep -- I feel like I have a better handle on Winston Peters, and why we have the leaders and cabinets we do. And it made me wish, yet again, that local government were more glamourous, or at least that it was easier to pay attention and care, and get others to do the same. Councils are getting more and more power, and we've had plenty of examples of how ideology and bees in mayoral bonnets can override consultation and/or common-sense. (Though I guess the fact that we're not going to be tearing up the streets, shutting down roads and throwing money away on street racing means that they're not completely unswayable.) But I get the feeling that local bodies are much more static than Parliment, and most council members are going to stay in once they get there -- so even if good people stand, they'll probably get discouraged before they get in.

Anyway, quite a fun, mildly autobiographical book by an author I always enjoy reading. :)

Tune in next time for my thoughts on what I'm reading now -- Queen Bees & Wannabes.

SciFi News, Machinima, Coffee

While I'm on a linking jag -- popping a waterballon in zero-g? Yeah, that sounds kinda cool. :) And a website that takes a sci-fi eye to the news? If it tells me that the US Military are planning on building Thunderbird 2, it gets thumbs up in my book. :)

Oh, and there's an article about that nifty automatic door that I've mentioned to people -- with some background about where automatic doors first appeared in science-fiction. (Jules Verne's 1889 novella In the Year 2889, as it happens.)

And in crazy comic links -- Dr McNinja! He's a doctor! And a ninja! And he doesn't hire night janitors!

***

Our participation in the Halo movie looks to be much more official now, which has kicked speculation about who's going to be kept on into high gear. They've actually pulled finger and told two or three I.T. people that they won't be being asked back, and one of the Systems team was leaving to spend more time with his kids and being a musician. I'm fairly sure that I'll be asked back, but it's never certain; I'll see what they offer me, and make sure my C.V. is up to scratch, and wait until the end of November.

Getting back to Halo -- there's an interesting article on machinema (which has to be one of the ugliest neologisms that I've seen for a while), which talks about how much easier it is to evoke humour than drama using game engines. Basically, they contend that the key limitation is how much emotion can be shown -- the polarized helments or fixed expressions makes it difficult to show how the characters feel. On the other hand, I remember Pixar doing some remarkable things animating swivel-arm lamps.

***

And finally, I'm not a coffee drinker, but I can appreciate how
good-looking a cup of the stuff can be made. On the other hand -- unless you leave the tea-bag in for a half-hour, you're not likely to mess up a nice cup of gumboot tea.

One huge exception to the "tea is easier" rule is international flights -- I've yet to have a cup that wasn't stewed beyond belief. Apparently, this is to do with the reduced atmospheric pressure, which lets water boil at too low a temperature to properly steep the leaves. This reminds me of an anecdote that I was told, many moons ago -- apparently British Airways have developed a device to make tea under pressure, so you can get a decent cup mid-flight, and a extra-super-special-safe toaster (since aircraft authorities tend to frown on exposed heating elements). A cup of tea and toast might not sound like much, but after 20 hours in the air...

Good luck to friends and family flying internationally in the next 2-3 months! :)

Flash games, Reverting

A hoodie that makes you look like the thug of the lamest of supervillains, CutPriceman? Um... maybe not such a good idea.

Something that is a good idea (where "good idea" equals "opportunity to have time sucked away from you like a maddened vaccum-cleaner") is Little Fluffy Industries, which many of you may have seen. They review games available on the net like Grow Cube and Vexed, and it's really not a good idea to look at these at work. :)

Not from a "eww" perspective, but from a "are we paying you to do that?" one. :)

***

I seem to be reverting. On Saturday I managed to lock myself out of my house -- and it turns out that leaving a spare key with your parents isn't much help if none of you know which of the hundred-odd keys it is. (This has been fixed with a quick bit of Dremmel-work on the part of Dad. I suggested engraving "jazzmaster_sv", in honour of my Singstar homies, but Dad just got his quizzical-eyebrow look, so we went for something shorter. :)

And I managed to leave the van's lights on this morning, so the battery is as dead as a dead thing -- something it's very hard to do with my usual car. At least I haven't managed to lock the keys inside the van yet. I choose to see this not as "Svend is a dumbass," but rather, "Svend has produced a useful learning opportunity for his younger brother, who is learning to drive." And I bet he hasn't even bought me a present to say thank you...

Oh, and I got horribly lost in Upper Hutt while trying to find Pinehaven; being lost in the Hutt Valley is another thing that I haven't done in a while. And luckily, that brings the ways I've reverted up to three, so there's no need for me to do any more. You here that, Universe? ;)

***

I'm editing this blog on my laptop while sitting in my lounge. Technology is an awesome, awesome thing. I love wireless.

Chickens, The Italian Job, Car

Random image and comic link -- Savage Chickens, the premier two-chickens-talking-on-a-post-it-note comic that I know of. Sometimes it doesn't quite work, but I found it more funny than not.

"Brevity is the soul of wit."
"Brevity: wit's soul."
"Oh shut up."

***

I watched three movies this weekend -- the original The Italian Job, the remake, and The Tuxedo.

I can see why The Italian Job became a cult classic. There's a lot of impressive stunt work, and it has a sense of fun -- bringing Noel Coward out of retirement to play the powerful and royalist criminal mastermind operating from inside prison works really well. I'm not a big fan of the Carry On-style humour, so having Benny Hill as a computer expert obsessed by large women didn't work for me; but I can see where they were shooting for. It's a messy movie, and some of the rewrites show through a little -- the computer guy is bundled off to the police station and is never seen again, for example -- and some of the attitudes have dated a little (such as the rampant nationalism). But there are enough cool bits to more than make up for the questionable or bad, and there are brief sprinkles of brilliance, like, "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!" or "It's a very difficult job and the only way to get through it is we all work together as a team. And that means you do everything I say."

And I'd rank having a character called "Camp Freddie" in a bright pink suit and ruffles as a good bit, rather than an outdated one. ;) Oh, and the theme song at the end is dead catchy, as you'd expect from Quincy Jones.

The remake taught me several things:

(1) "Remake" can mean "shot for shot" (e.g. Psycho), or "take two non-thematic elements of the movie (e.g. a car-chase with minis and the McGuffin of gold bars) and do whatever." The first felt like lads having a lark, similar to the recent Ocean's Eleven remake; the second moved between serious heist/revenge movie and something slightly more goofy... not always completely successfully. (Some of the flashbacks, in particular, felt like a different movie.)

(2) Seth Green and Mos Def can be really funny. Not something that I ever really doubted, but still, nice to know.

(3) Never trust Edward Norton. Well -- yeah, of course. I have trust issues with Matt Damon (thanks to The Talented Mr Ripley), but I don't think I've ever seen Norton in anything where he didn't betray someone. No, wait -- I think I might have seen Death to Smoochy. But in general, Norton == sneaky Sam. (Apparently he appears here courtesy of contractual obligations, which may be why he's not as good as usual.)

There were lots of things that I thought worked really well -- exchanges like this one, for instance:

Left Ear: This dude got dogs. I don't do dogs... I had a real bad experience, man.
Charlie Croker: What happened?
Left Ear: I had. A bad. Experience. Damn it. I'M deaf.

Nice. :) But -- I'm not sure the things that the people who made the movie think are important are the same things I do. For example, it was obviously a big deal to them that they shut down Holywood Boulevard to do the stunts, and had the minis driving on the Walk of Fame, but it's all Big Generic American City to me -- I might be able to recogize San Fransico's hills, but that's it. Ironically, they have an exotic city chase -- the scenes in Venice at the beginning were much tenser in some ways. And they made a big deal about not having any CGI -- in an interview, the director was saying that people came up afterwards and asked whether certain things were CGI. He seemed to think it was a triumph to be able to say, "No, that was all real," and in some sense it was; in another sense, it just meant that was a place where you might have been able to save some money and time, as well as not risking the lives of people on the cast and crew for no good reason. If people think it's been faked while they're watching, it doesn't really matter whether it actually was or not.

(Having said that -- you'd want really, really good CGI, which might make the practical route the best way to go. But that's a financial consideration, rather than stylistic one.)

I don't want to sound too down on either of these movies -- they're both good fun, and worth watching. But they are flawed.

And speaking of flawed -- I went into The Tuxedo with low, low, low expectations. But it's actually not a bad little Jackie Chan movie. Let me rephrase -- I don't know that it's a good movie, but I actually enjoyed it. :) The science was so terrible that I actually felt my brain go, "Oh, right, this makes no sense," and turn off -- it might have bothered me ten years ago, but I'm more tolerant of "we're just using sciencey words for magic" now. And Jennifer Love-Hewitt's character had some fun moments, and comes across as a relatively strong character.

It's not his best movie -- in fact, it's probably in his bottom 10. But it looked like they had fun making it, and I'm glad I saw it, and I may well watch it again.

***

I got another call from the garage. I'm not getting the car back until next week, and all up it will have cost the better part of $2k to get it fixed. Even if I were thinking of selling it, it would be worth getting it done; but it's $2k that's not going into my mortgage, so I'll pause to grieve a little.

[pause]

And I'm done. :) Hey, it must be getting towards the end of my first fixed term. I've not managed to pay off as much as I'd hoped in my first year, but I've not done too badly; and I have high hopes for doing better next year. I suspect I'd do a lot better if I could pay directly into my revolving credit account, but you can't have everything... I'll have to talk to The One Who Knows when it comes time to shuffle things around.

Yes, yes, I'm the only one who cares about my mortgage. Look, it's important to me. :)

Pain, Party, Movies

I had a tooth pulled out yesterday. I've been surprisingly okay with it so far.

I'd been in a fairly large amount of pain since Thursday. Getting the house and catering ready and throwing the party on Friday was not made easier by this; thank goodness it was a fairly small party, with only 25-30 people. (It does mean that I have quite a bit of leftover food, but I hope to manage to use it up before it goes off, and beer keeps fairly well. :) I'm not a great fan of taking pain medication, but I'd managed to blow through more than a box of Nurophen, as well as several paracetamol and a number of codine. The dentist had said to get in contact if the pain persisted, and this seemed to count.

I made it through Monday, though I ended up going home a half-hour early because of lack of concentration thanks to pain. (I've been quite lucky, in that I don't seem to have had many problems falling asleep.) Yesterday, as well as I learning valuable lessons about not looking at the tools dentists are putting in your mouth, I seem to be in significantly less pain. And weirdly enough, having a tooth pulled out appears to be cheaper than having it drilled.

In related costing-Svend-money news, it looks like the problem with my car is indeed a head gasket replacement, most likely caused by the age of the car -- that's $280 for the gasket set, plus the reconditioner's time, plus the garage's... so that's $800-$1k, plus the $500-odd that it's already needed for the warrant. So I guess I won't be putting that money on my mortgage after all. :)

***

Returning to the party briefly, i think it went quite well. The wind didn't encourage people to hang out in the backyard, but there were enough people to make the lounge/kitchen feel full without being too crowded. Not a very good turn-out from work -- given I ended up competing with Monthlies, that didn't surprise me that much -- but I did get the Editorial department turning up! And what's more, when asked for the makings of martinis, I was able to deliver; and they were suitably impressed by my crazy glassware. Some of them also chatted with my other friends, and said some very nice things about me.

(It also made me realise that all of the cocktails I know how to make off the top of my head could easily be My Little Pony names -- Stormy and Toffee Apple, for example, could easily slip into the Hasbro line-up. I guess I should expand my range. :)

Anyway, Editorial had arrived late, and the other people had basically left by midnight -- which meant they were able to drag me into Motel to say goodbye to a Weta person. I stayed for a couple of hours, walked home, and went to bed after a quick tidy-up (putting things in the fridge, rinsing and stacked dishes, and washing out bottles and putting them in the recycle bin). This meant that all I had to do the next morning was to mop the floor and wipe a few surfaces, and the house was actually cleaner than it had been before the party. :)

***

This Subtrate" java applet is pretty cool. Someone suggested that this is what Wellington city planners used to decide on the street layout; this gives them entirely too much credit. ;)

***

A final note about work -- it looks like we will have something to do after Kong, after all. I'm not sure how much of a challenge the Halo movie will be, and I doubt that we'll be in contention for an Oscar for our special-effects work; but as Flanders and Swan say, "It all makes work for the working-man to do." The one tricky thing is that there might not actually be that much work there -- a lot of the work at the beginning of the pipeline will have been done, and they probably don't want to deviate too much from the look of the game. Of course, they may end up coopting the Jane & the Dragon, which is the Digital Effects group within Weta Workshop, so who knows.

Still, hopefully that'll give us something to do, and The Lovely Bones will probably employ a few more people. But I hope we get something big too, since there are lots of artists that it would be a pity to lose.