Which meant that Christmas Eve Eve, the one time that everybody comes back from their various corners of the country to Poole, had come and gone. For this, the 5th year of what is now a regular event, we hired the upstairs of Jazzy’s on Poole Quay for our little get together and despite starting late and finishing early, I believe it was a wholly enjoyable evening all round.
In contrast to last years dancing in jaks, the bar with it’s lights and decorations, wood finishings and log fire was a proper venue and I proud to say that many people did adhere to the hula black tie dress code, with some going above and beyond the call of duty. I’ll apologise here and now if anyone felt the music was what you were expecting, but even our over organising couldn’t anticipate the problems that were had. I’ll also apologise if anyone felt they missed out because Turin Brakes were cut from my short set!
A few photos can be seen in the xmas eve eve gallery.
So, to those of you who came and are staying around, I look forward to seeing you before you jet back off around the country and to everybody, whether you were there or not:
Have a fantastic Christmas People.
When you cut through people’s view that Christmas is about receiving objects of indiscriminate value, most people will tell you that Christmas is about food and drink. It’s about eating so much that you then feel the need to join a gym in the New Year to stop your conscience pestering you. It’s in this spirit of opulence that the large coffee chains have brought out special Christmas coffee’s which I feel it is my duty to test and then ‘review’. Let’s begin.
The two beverages in question are Starbucks‘ Gingerbread Latte and Costa’s in no way copied Spiced Ginger Latte. Despite their incredibly similar names and theoretically similar contents, the two things share very little in common (apart from the fact that the ginger flavour has been added to give the coffee the spiced flavour associated with Christmas though mince pies and other festive treats).
The Starbucks offering comes in the same old white mug that you get in every branch (that hasn’t run out and are having to use the takeaway cups) and doesn’t immediately taste all too different to an ordinary latte. The ginger flavour instead gives a warm aftertaste which is actually quite nice, but would be better enjoyed in front of a roaring log fire instead of in a busy coffee shop where you couldn’t even hear the music over the general chatter of customers. The only issue I had with my coffee (which I seem to have frequently in Starbucks) is that it doesn’t stay hot for long. This may be deliberate, it may be carelessness, but I expect my coffee to retain some heat until I’ve finished it, and I don’t even drink it that slowly.
In comparison, the Costa latte is presented in one of those tall glass ‘mugs’. Personally, I don’t like these because they really don’t hold all that much and when the contents isn’t strongly coloured, it just looks a bit odd. But at least they provide a spoon instead of a lolly stick, although they might as well have not bothered, because there’s no way you can reach the bottom of the glass with the small spoon. You also get the cream topping thrown in at Costa, but as cream on top of any coffee dilutes the taste and ends up with me making a complete mess, I tend to decline the offer. Now, it may be that the person serving almost forgot to add the ginger flavour syrup and then the small spoon meant that it never got stirred in, but the flavour just wasn’t enough for me. Sure, you could taste there was something extra in there (and as Polonium-210 doesn’t taste spicy I wasn’t worried) but it didn’t have enough of a taste to make me not think I should have ordered a mocha instead. But it did at least stay warm.
All of which means we’re in somewhat of a situation, with each product seeming to need elements from the other in order to make it perfect, but somehow I doubt the management of either company is going to listen to my ranting. We’ll just have to wait until next year to see whether if anyone takes note of my findings and makes improvements. That’ll be a no then.
For almost as long as this site has existed there has been a page dedicated to fancy pictures that I’ve created with various 3d computer modelling tools, in fact it’s only just disappeared. Why did it disappear? Probably because I hadn’t created anything in more than a year and it was looking just a little old.
Most people believe that home made high quality 3d images created on your pc (or mac) are impossible, a few tallented individuals believe it’s their job to prove these people wrong, other people spend their time trying to blow the whole idea out of the window. The people at planetside are one example of this. I’ve had an old version of their terragen software on my pc for a while, and even created some nice landscapes with it, but didn’t think highly enough of the output to show it to the world on here.
This week, they released a preview of the second version of the software, billing it as ‘cutting edge landscape visualisation software’ and as it doesn’t cost anything for non commercial use, I though I’d give it a little go. The results of an hours play and a few hours rendering are above (except if you’re reading the front page in which case you’ll need to click on the title above to get the full post).
For a download of only 2.3mb, this is good stuff. Sure, you need some talent or practise to get results that come close to being photorealistic, but the average man can still produce something worth looking at and then finally render the scene at a maximum resolution of 800×600 (which is just a silly limitation). People of similar graphical inquisitiveness, hop on over to www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/tg2/tg2tp/index.html to get your fill, everyone else; feel free to stare for just a moment before moving on.
“buy a cd and rip it” but bill, we already do and you do know it is technically illegal in the uk?
why if saints keep winning… no, it’s not worth thinking about
I must admit that I’ve not been to the cinema half as much as I’d liked recently, while many things have simply not appealed to me, there is also quite a few films that I’ve forgotten about or didn’t get around to seeing at the right time. Still, a new James Bond film is something you feel you have to make an effort to see on the big screen, even if you have the feeling it’s not going to be as good as you hoped. Irrespective of when I get around to posting this, I’m writing this having just got back from seeing Casino Royale (spell checking does take time you know!)
Waiting a few weeks to let the initial rush settle down meant I got time to hear other people’s opinions of this so I kind of knew what to expect. If only it were that simple. Everyone has their own opinion of a typical bond film. Mine is this: There’s a man, who often has something wrong with his face. He either wants to destroy all/most/some of the world or use some huge but simple scheme to make an awful lot of money, sometimes both. There’s also a girl, she’s either another spy or is somehow connected to the bad guy, but will end up with bond at the end. Into this is mixed a handful of explosions, shots of lcd timers counting down a body count only second to that of Jack Bauer.
Sadly, whoever put this together (and I’m not sure how much it follows the original) seem to have a different opinion. Sure the bad man with the problem face is in and yes there are a few action scenes (see later) but other than bad guy Le Chiffre and 007 (who Daniel Craig actually plays rather well) there are no characters who I felt anything for at all, which is ok I suppose because they mostly end up dead. The film roars along until the midpoint, when some people play cards for a while and then everything falls apart. Perhaps it was written for tv, an hours worth of action and some padding to fill in the extra time required. Anyone who has watched 24 or any of the other government/spy based tv shows will see the double crosses coming and the bits where any character attempts to describe their emotions or feelings belongs in a different film, one where people have paid to see them. That said, the action scenes (building site, airport and house) are rather brilliant, fewer explosions than I would have liked, but still better than any from the Brosnan era.
So, good? The first half yes, the second half I could have done without. Gritty? It’s no Bourne Identity and even that series isn’t half as good as the books. Worth seeing? Yes, but sorry chaps, this is one less dvd sale you’re going to get. Now, when is Jack Bauer going to save America and the world almost single handedly again?
Today marks me being in my current job for a whole year. Scary, and a shame it wasn’t marked with any cake!
On Friday, the ex boss of an airline released a report commissioned by the government department for making money which stated that if we in this country want to keep the roads flowing in the future then we’re going to have to pay for the privilege of using them.
While the report is designed to look at economic factors (like how much less work people can’t do when they’re sat in their car and not at their desk), it does appear to be yet another report from people who have everything to gain from their own conclusions. Of course businesses would like there to be less congestion, people could get between meetings that much faster and businesses would be prepared to pay the fee to use the roads. In the same way (and from the other transport news story of the week) the train companies are hardly going to make a case for reducing their prices. Their business isn’t to provide a public service, but to make a profit for their shareholders and still have enough to pay the government for the rights to overcharge their passengers.
But from the perspective from someone who only uses the roads to get to and from work and then totter around at other times, the whole idea seems nonsense. Firstly, let’s do some maths:
Based on quick statistics if we take…
Number of people 17+ with driving licences - 72% 1
Number of people 16+ - 19% 2
Population Total (2005) - 60,000,000
Number of drivers - 60,000,000 * 0.72 * 0.81 = 34,992,000
Number of registered vehicles - 32,897,000 3
The difference 34,992,000 - 32,897,000 = 2,095,000
So there is only 2 million more theoretical drivers in this country then vehicles registered on the roads, so if those people bought a car, the number of vehicles would rise by 0.5%. Which means that without a major change in road usage, congestion can only go up by that amount, assuming of course that nobody uses public transport. Add to this that the number of new cars registered in this country has been falling since 2002 and you could conclude that anyone who says that congestion is going to get x times worse in the next y years is possibly a little way out.
Secondly, let’s just think of the main reasons for congestion on the roads. Road works, breakdowns, accidents surely cause an awful lot of it. Add badly designed networks and junctions and that’s going to be another large chunk. Busses stopping to let people on/off don’t help. I wouldn’t be surprised if the amount of congestion caused by sheer number of cars on the same stretch of road isn’t half as big as it’s made out to be.
Add to this that last time I checked, a pay as you drive system already exists, it’s called fuel tax. It’s just that in its current state, people can choose where on the pay scale they want to sit by the car they choose to drive.
So, while we might improve the country immeasurably by fitting a black box to every vehicle, it’ll be at best a small part of the solution with a hefty price tag attached. Let’s instead stop wasting money on even dreaming up these ideas and instead spend it on things that might make a difference, like convincing people to stop jamming their brakes on every time they see a speed camera, out of sheer guilt. Then we’d all get from a to b a little faster.
1 http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1093
2 http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=949
3 http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents/
downloadable/dft_transstats_611685.pdf
