Russian Reactor Dreams

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I blame Sky One. I had a dream last night that I had been made in charge of a Russian nuclear reactor. They had given me a bright yellow survival suit outfit (like they wear in the movies). I was sitting at home in this thing (trying it out for comfort) and reading through some reports which were all written in Russian on bright yellow paper. They seemed to have the Russian for "Urgent" and "Danger of explosion" written all over them, although I'm not completely sure as I can't read the language.

I was just inspecting a datestamp on one of the more impressive looking warnings, and trying to find out if it was in the future or the past (not sure how Russians order their dates) when number one wife looked over my shoulder at the page.

"You ought to get one of those" she said, pointing at a picture of a complicated thing that looked like a reactor seal or something. "It only costs 25". I looked at the number and was about to explain that 25 could mean feet high, million Roubles (or kopecks or whatever) or years old when I heard an alarm in the distance....

Fortunately, at this point I woke up.

Uncontrolled Laughter

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01ComputerUncontrolled

Not sure how to interpret this message.

Did a talk today for our ACE event, where we invite local students from local schools to take a look  at our university. It went very well, and the audience were great.  The Middleton Hall, where I gave the talk, has this really posh presenter control thing which I got to play with. And I used my new laser pointer. To point at things! Wow! (perhaps I am too easily impressed - even at my age). Anyhoo, we had a good time, and I'm doing it all over again next week.  Just hope that the dog behaves better next time.

02TheMan

Before the talk, the shadow of "the man".

03Digby

The audience being wowed by Digby, again. Digby has his own group on my Flickr site if you want to see more pictues of him in inaction.

Spoiler Spoiler

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01bongo friendee
Sans Spoiler...

Do you want a spoiler for your Bongo Friendee? Dave next door  does, but then there are other people out on the internet who do as well. With one minute left the item was priced at 51 quid. I was under instructions to go as far as 70 so, in the last minute of bidding with only seconds to go, I fired off my one and only bid.

And somebody else got the spoiler for 93.50.   Wah.

The DaVinci Code as a force for good

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Went to see "The DaVinci Code" tonight. I'm the one person left who hasn't read the book, (I did this specially so I could approach the film with an open mind). It is an OK film staring Tom Hanks, his hair (which I think deserves special billing) and Audrey Tatou (who seems to have attended the "Allo Allo" school of acting specially for her part). It was directed by that red headed kid from Happy Days.

I knew something was up when one of the dodgy cardinals turned out to be Dr. Octopus from Spiderman. OK, so he had dropped down to the normal number of limbs but there was no mistaking that leer and wonky accent.  Things got even stranger when the symbol of one of the mysterious sects turned out to be the same as is used by the Boy Scouts in the UK. In fact I remember having a woggle with the same emblem on when I was a kid. If  only I'd known what I was getting into....

Then we were into a maelstrom of double dealing detectives, secret banks, image processed artworks, strange codes, flights across europe and lots of other staples of the adventure movie.  The killer albino monk with a penchant for Mr. Whippy added a certain extra something to the proceedings, although I've been wondering how you fight against someone who enjoys pain as much as he seemed to. Give him a cushion? Perhaps a nice cup of tea? Tricky.

Everything moved at breakneck speed, almost in real time. Nobody paused for breath. I only saw them actually eat once, and that was interrupted by a raid by the french police. These people had the stamina of true academics.  Normally there is a lull in the action when you get to know the characters a bit. Not in this film. I don't think that Audrey got to take her coat off at any point.

Even with my lack of foreknowledge spotting the baddie turned out to be even easier than usual. A clue: It isn't Tom. Or Audrey.

There has been a lot of talk in the press about how the underlying tenet of the movie strikes at the very heart of the christian religion. Well, all I can say is that any church that feels under threat from a very implausible story with holes in it through which you could drive a double decker bus with an oil tanker on its roof rack is indeed in trouble.

If you sit through it to the end (and everybody in the packed cinema seemed to manage this) you will find a rather uplifting message concerning the importance of faith above all else.  Which only added value to the experience.

Dalby Noise Reduction

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01BrideStonesSign

Went to the Dalby Forest today. The weather forecast was pretty horrible, it is a Bank Holiday and so we knew we were taking a gamble. But it paid off. Weather was great and it was very quiet when we arrived. We had a walk around the Bridestones. These are lumps of stone which for some reason or other haven't eroded like the rest of the valley. So they stick up out of the ground in a rather impressive way.

04Stones

By midday we confidently expected to be underneath a lot of rain, but as it turned out we weren't.  We even had a chance to walk around Staindale Lake.

08Lake

There are more pictures on Flickr.

On the way round the walk we bumped into a few people who had also ignored the weather forecast and sallied forth. They always seemed to be chatting about something. We discussed things you culd say to be overheard by someone as they pass you on a country walk:

  • "...we buried it quite a long way from the footpath. I don't think anyone will find it in a hurry...."
  • "...apparently the plan is to put runway one just over that hill....."
  • "...and they say that even today he wanders the moors looking for victims..."

Table Tennis for XBOX 360

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There is only one game that I will claim to be any good at. Oh, I can play tennis, and squash, and I have even been  known to turn up to (as opposed to play) rugby and cricket. My game of choice is table tennis. I have been known to beat people at that game. And I really, and I mean really, enjoy playing it.

So the XBOX 360 Table Tennis game by Rockstar was of more than passing interest to me. Particularly as it only costs thirty quid. This means of course that I have bought a copy.  And I have spent the last couple of hours playing it.  It is very, very, very, very good. Have I mentioned it is good?

The controls are simple, but you can do a lot with them. You have to watch the other player and the way they hit the ball to work out what it  is going to do.  Where you are standing affects how much you can do. I've found myself taking part in the game in just the same way as I do in the real one.  

The presentation is not particularly impressive, but everything is as it should be. The animation of the players is smooth and I like the way that their clothes flap about. The sound is spot on, you can get a feel for what is going on by the noise the ball makes as it hits the table and the bat.

I've won one tournament and it was fun. I've not quite got the hang of the controls yet, I tend to forget to make my player swing his bat, so that he just stands there like a dummy as the ball whizzes past. But I'm pretty sure that I'll get the hang of things quite soon. I've played a couple of XBOX Live games (lost one won one) and the experience was very smooth.

You can have a lot of fun with a simple bat and a ball. What Rockstar have done is taken that fun and put it into a video game. If you have an XBOX and a liking for ball games you should get this game.

He who Dares Loses

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In an effort to stop my Archos AV500 from becoming a paperweight in a week or so when all the protected content stops working I today put the pedal to the metal and made it into a paperweight a bit early. The idea was that perhaps a complete formatting might make it work as a Windows Media device. I'd still have to retransfer all my protected content over, but at least I would know where I stood....

Wrong. My Archos just took the formatting in its stride, destroyed all my content and then refused to work anyway.  I feel like one of those high priests who have just despatched a couple of virgins to the gods and found that it is still raining. Blarst.

Archos technical support are adamant that it is a hardware problem and are suggesting I take it back to the shop. I think this is because they have a sadistic desire to see me tangle with Dixons customer support. Or perhaps they are rather cunningly inviting me to live with the problem.  Not sure what to do now.