Birthday meme

Seen on slaminsky.

Instructions: Go to Wikipedia. Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal.

26 September

Events

1957 - Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story opens on Broadway

1961 - Bob Dylan makes his public debut.

1969 - The Beatles album Abbey Road is released in the UK.

Births

1888 - T. S. Eliot, American-born writer and editor, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1965)

1936 - Winnie Mandela, South African anti-apartheid activist (and corrupt politician)

Death

1820 - Daniel Boone, American frontiersman (b. 1734)

The future of broadcasting in a portable age

I came across an interesting article earlier and although I linked to it in the new 'interesting' section I decided to blog it as well - just in case anyone missed the link.

Who knows what the future will bring in terms of digital media but it's fantastic to see an organisation as big and as established as the BBC embracing the changes that are happening. Going as far as looking at reducing the established durations of certain programs to allow the to be consumed more easily on portable media players.

I have GOT to get myself an iPod. I feel like a Luddite.

2006 Flora London Marathon

2006 Flora London Marathon
Originally uploaded by Ian Wilson.

I woke up this morning to the sudden realization that the London marathon would be passing by just a few hundred meters from my front door in a few hours. So I postponed breakfast, grabbed my camera and headed out the door, meeting up with Lindsay, Vilj, and Bruce by coincidence a bit later on.

I'm not exactly a marathon fan but it was an easy opportunity to see one of the great distance events in the world. And I'll admit, watching all the joe-averages who had committed to running the event (especially the ones running for charity) made me feel like a right lazy bastard. Almost to the point that I made the commitment to run it myself next year.

But not quite.

Silent Hill: You'll want your 2 hours and 7 minutes back

"It's this unwavering fidelity to the source material that is also the film's biggest problem."

"The problem is, Hill gets lost in the foaming desire by Gans to maintain the movement and depth of the game, leaving the action lifeless and dreadfully repetitive."

"It's like a video game - the visual effects and the setting are carefully constructed, but without that core element provided by the player: a reason to care."

Reviews complements of Rotten Tomatoes.

It's all completely true. As someone who is a huge fan of the Silent Hill games the movie left me bored and uninspired. I wouldn't even want to hazard a guess at what someone who had no knowledge of the games would have felt like after 2 hours of it constanty referencing it's source material.

While as a player it's petrifying and macabre to explore Silent Hill alone in the mist, the same can't be said for watching an actress run down endless empty corridors searching for her daughter. It just doesn't generate the same emotional investment.

The mistake the film makes is to remain too true to it's source material. Historically games adapt poorly to cinema, and Silent Hill in particular fails as a stand-alone film. Don't get me wrong, it does have it's share of creepy moments and as a previous player of the series it was great to see some of the classic characters brought to life. Unfortunately these moments where few and far between and barely connected by plotline. So hardcore followers of the series might like to watch it just to say they have, but for the rest of cinema going population this particular flick has absolutely nothing to offer.

2/10 in my book.

Good old braai!

Good old braai
Originally uploaded by Ian Wilson.

Nope, you're mistaken - it's still pretty chilly here in London and I haven't been out to a braai in ages. This is just an old pic from varsity days that I'm using to check my new flickr settings.

The redesign is moving alone nicely now and more content should (note I say 'should'!) start to appear over the next couple of days. Time permitting of course.

I still don't have an over-riding idea of what the site will look like when it's done. I have some vaguish ideas of what I want and I'm just going with them at the moment. I've managed to get the page to scale down decently into a 800x600 window, which I like. Not so sure about the static header right now but I have some ideas.

Otherwise not much news. I'm currently as poor as a church mouse after my company extracted payment for both my company car and my previous pre-contract car this month. That kind of caught me off guard and I'm now in the middle of a stuggle to get my beer tokens back from the clutches of the corporation.

Being financially challenged on the same month that you're due to move into your new flat is not a good idea. We may have to delay the flat warming party till next month. Although it's not such a bad thing really - the weather will be better and we can braai and drink beer in the sun.

Tonight I'm off to catch Silent Hill, the movie. It's going to go one of two ways: either be a great edge of seat horror raising the same fears and emotions that the games did; or be a brain shatteringly crap adaptation with bad acting and poor plotline. I'm expecting the latter but holding out for a suprise.

Shared calendars

Shared calendar
Originally uploaded by Ian Wilson.

Nat and I share a calendar complements of Google. I logged in today to find her [pink] entry coinciding with my [bue] entry.

Hope you all are invited.

I added the webcam bit later. Be sure to smile though.

It begins

Yes, the redesign has begun. As always on foolstop the design happens live, because I don't know any other way.

So far things are looking good. I've managed to get the header fixed in Firefox using the position tag in the stylesheet, although the same can't be said of IE. The fixed header may play a much larger role in the final version but for now I'm just trying to get everthing tagged correctly.

Chelsea Vs West Ham

2006.04.09_Chelsea V WestHam
Originally uploaded by Ian Wilson.

This was my first live Premiership game! It was absolutely fantastic, both for the fact that the match itself was great and that the atmosphere was unbeatable.

There was also the matter of Executive suite tickets and free food and beer.

I was expecting a live football match to be very similiar to a live cricket or rugby - you know that the atmosphere is going to be great, but you also know that you're going to miss most of the game because you can't see what's going on down on the pitch, or in the ruck, from where you're sitting. Football ended up being very different in that you can actually follow pretty much everything that happens down on the pitch.

Unless, like me, you're looking in the opposite direction when Maniches' foul gets him sent off.

Yes I did!

I just scored a free box ticket to Chelsea V. West Ham at Stamford Bridge this Sunday.

My company sponsors the Premiership (and some individual players) and usually has a box at the games. I got home just in time to intercept an invitation to go to the game, open to the first person to reply to the message. Luckily I was home early.

No I wasn't sciving!

*Update:

One nil to West Ham and Chelsea down to 10 men after 20 minutes. You would have thought West Ham had it. What went wrong? Final score Chelsea 4 - 1 West Ham.

Cycle route

Cycle route
Originally uploaded by Ian Wilson.

I took the bike out today to Dover for a bit of a ride. Nearly killed myself in the process.

The problem with linear cycle routes is that it's great fun cycling on the way out, and you keep exploring more and more and pushing yourself further and further. But then you have to come back. And it's boring as all hell. And every time you went downhill hill before you now have to ride uphill. The last 5 miles were murder - all uphill, against the wind, after already cycling for 30 [miles that is, not minutes]. I cursed everything and everyone I could think of... not that it made it any easier.

My route was part of the National Cycle Route 1, between Dover and Sandwich - not that I would recommend cycling all the way there and back again unless you're pretty accomplished already. There was some pretty good views on the way and I got some reasonable photo's.

Hey hey! It's boat race time again tomorrow and Nat and I are heading out to watch it... and meeting Danzor to the best of my knowledge.

PS. Flickr photo blogging it shit. I can't work out how to blog multiple photo's and it doesn't have HTML shortcuts. Poo.

You know it's love when...

You have 5 rashers of bacon left to make 2 sandwiches with.

You give your partner the one with 3 rashers.