Hitachi finger-vein scanner to replace car key News - PC Advisor
Sounds like a great idea until you read that different fingers will be programmed for different functions. Makes you wonder which finger most people would programme for paying congestion/parking charges...
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Best Laugh in Months
Once more George Bush made me laugh out loud. True, it was more ironic than usual, but a good laugh is always welcome.
This time it was watching him try to tell the world that Turkey had to seek a better option that sending troops into Iraq. He said Washington was
What a fucking hypocrite.
The best part was that you could see even he knew it. He was practically squirming. In a week when he vetoed $35 billion for sick children in America then requested $45 billion to continue the occupation of Iraq (That's about $14m per hour!), perhaps he was just thinking about how they might mess up their economy. America was never threatened by real terror attacks from Iraq, but Turkey actually is being attacked by Kurds from Iraq. Whatever the rights & wrongs of that situation they have a more defined 'right' to invade than the coalition ever did.
Pity he never thought to look for 'a better way to deal with the issue' when he started his own invasion and took the world one more step along the road to oblivion.
This time it was watching him try to tell the world that Turkey had to seek a better option that sending troops into Iraq. He said Washington was
"making it clear to Turkey it is not in their interest to send more troops in... there is a better way to deal with the issue".
What a fucking hypocrite.
The best part was that you could see even he knew it. He was practically squirming. In a week when he vetoed $35 billion for sick children in America then requested $45 billion to continue the occupation of Iraq (That's about $14m per hour!), perhaps he was just thinking about how they might mess up their economy. America was never threatened by real terror attacks from Iraq, but Turkey actually is being attacked by Kurds from Iraq. Whatever the rights & wrongs of that situation they have a more defined 'right' to invade than the coalition ever did.
Pity he never thought to look for 'a better way to deal with the issue' when he started his own invasion and took the world one more step along the road to oblivion.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Review: Last Legion
It's good to see that Di Laurentis films are carrying on in the same style as always: crap.
True, it's the kind of crap I like, so it's not necessarily a bad description in relation to their films.
Usually.
In this case, thought I really can't make up my mind about it. It has a good, one might even say great, cast. They mostly do a pretty good job. The fights are excellent and it looks pretty good. Yet I just couldn't settle into it.
There is one big issue I have with this film that I must get out of the way from the beginning. Racism.
It is set during the fall of the Roman Empire to the Goths and supposedly explains the origin of Excalibur (and it sort of does, but I rather preferred the idea of it being a magical weapon bestowed upon the Pendragon line by the sithe, not a really good sword made from bits of an asteroid. That's just personal preference, though). Apparently it all happened rather quickly and around a few short battles. Many of the characters are said to be either Roman or Celtic and these good and noble races are depicted with cast members of all representatives of the latter playing Celts. Apart from Scots because they play the Goths and are played as uncouth, psychopathic, barbarians. For some reason, despite actually being Scottish, many of their accents sound fake. Go figure. Kevin McKidd has perpetrated this oddity in the past. When I first heard him in Grand Theft Auto I was shocked to discover that it actually was him it sounded so fake.
Yet, I'm ambivalent about the use of Scots as the bad guys. Hey, at least it made the villains a discrete racial unit and it meant that many Scots (the usual suspects, mind you) got work out of it.
Ashiwarya Rai is good in it, but - as with almost all women playing warriors - she's just not physically believable. As always her gender is disguised, but you can tell a mile off it's a woman. Frankly, she's just too elegant, beautiful and well-groomed to be believable as a warrior. She still has a really good manicure! And where did they get than standard roman leather breastplate with mouldings in it for her breasts? For that matter, where did the boots with rubber soles come from?
Much of the digital work, again, looks shoddy. I'm beginning to think that this is an artifact of HiDef as it surely can't be every effects house making the same look intentionally. In this case there are shots so badly out of focus they made my eyes cross!
Oh, and Hadrian's wall faces the wrong way. The side with the Roman defenders on it is the Pictish side.
True, it's the kind of crap I like, so it's not necessarily a bad description in relation to their films.
Usually.
In this case, thought I really can't make up my mind about it. It has a good, one might even say great, cast. They mostly do a pretty good job. The fights are excellent and it looks pretty good. Yet I just couldn't settle into it.
There is one big issue I have with this film that I must get out of the way from the beginning. Racism.
It is set during the fall of the Roman Empire to the Goths and supposedly explains the origin of Excalibur (and it sort of does, but I rather preferred the idea of it being a magical weapon bestowed upon the Pendragon line by the sithe, not a really good sword made from bits of an asteroid. That's just personal preference, though). Apparently it all happened rather quickly and around a few short battles. Many of the characters are said to be either Roman or Celtic and these good and noble races are depicted with cast members of all representatives of the latter playing Celts. Apart from Scots because they play the Goths and are played as uncouth, psychopathic, barbarians. For some reason, despite actually being Scottish, many of their accents sound fake. Go figure. Kevin McKidd has perpetrated this oddity in the past. When I first heard him in Grand Theft Auto I was shocked to discover that it actually was him it sounded so fake.
Yet, I'm ambivalent about the use of Scots as the bad guys. Hey, at least it made the villains a discrete racial unit and it meant that many Scots (the usual suspects, mind you) got work out of it.
Ashiwarya Rai is good in it, but - as with almost all women playing warriors - she's just not physically believable. As always her gender is disguised, but you can tell a mile off it's a woman. Frankly, she's just too elegant, beautiful and well-groomed to be believable as a warrior. She still has a really good manicure! And where did they get than standard roman leather breastplate with mouldings in it for her breasts? For that matter, where did the boots with rubber soles come from?
Much of the digital work, again, looks shoddy. I'm beginning to think that this is an artifact of HiDef as it surely can't be every effects house making the same look intentionally. In this case there are shots so badly out of focus they made my eyes cross!
Oh, and Hadrian's wall faces the wrong way. The side with the Roman defenders on it is the Pictish side.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Review: Stardust
With more imagination in five minutes than J.K. managed to give Harry Potter in the entire series this film is just a wonderful tale.
It tugs the heart-strings in the right places without ever becoming mawkish, it has thrilling fight scenes often done in ways you'd not expect to see them. It has modern morality right in amongst the fairy-tale elements and they all blend pretty-well seamlessly. The acting is excellent, the effects dramatic and the scripting sharp and witty.
See it.
Are there no problems for me to gripe about?
Of course there are!
Some of the digital backgrounds are piss-poor. The just don't blend well with the action and it looks like someone went far too heavily on the 'add noise' button in the editor. Ricky Gervais is every bit as tedious as he was at the Diana concert and having two in-jokes which were about as unsubtle as the man himself within the time his three minute first scene took was pathetically self-indulgent. I wonder who wrote them in?
That brings me to another gripe. To listen to many of the comments made about this film you'd think that Jane Goldman gave birth to it herself rather than doing (an admittedly excellent job of) the screenplay. It's a Neil Gaiman story and his imagination knows no bounds. I've not read Stardust but I shall certainly have a look. I have heard quite a lot of negativity about it, though. I'll let you know my totally unhumble opinion.
It tugs the heart-strings in the right places without ever becoming mawkish, it has thrilling fight scenes often done in ways you'd not expect to see them. It has modern morality right in amongst the fairy-tale elements and they all blend pretty-well seamlessly. The acting is excellent, the effects dramatic and the scripting sharp and witty.
See it.
Are there no problems for me to gripe about?
Of course there are!
Some of the digital backgrounds are piss-poor. The just don't blend well with the action and it looks like someone went far too heavily on the 'add noise' button in the editor. Ricky Gervais is every bit as tedious as he was at the Diana concert and having two in-jokes which were about as unsubtle as the man himself within the time his three minute first scene took was pathetically self-indulgent. I wonder who wrote them in?
That brings me to another gripe. To listen to many of the comments made about this film you'd think that Jane Goldman gave birth to it herself rather than doing (an admittedly excellent job of) the screenplay. It's a Neil Gaiman story and his imagination knows no bounds. I've not read Stardust but I shall certainly have a look. I have heard quite a lot of negativity about it, though. I'll let you know my totally unhumble opinion.
Monday, October 08, 2007
I'm Back
Finally got the PC sorted out.
Admittedly, since it went online last week, I've spent more time playing Lego Star Wars II than I have in reconfiguring the machine and getting on with the the work I need to do, but hey! I've not been able to game for two months. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
I've also missed a load of great stuff to blog on and I may get around to talking about some of it soon.
Ish.
Admittedly, since it went online last week, I've spent more time playing Lego Star Wars II than I have in reconfiguring the machine and getting on with the the work I need to do, but hey! I've not been able to game for two months. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
I've also missed a load of great stuff to blog on and I may get around to talking about some of it soon.
Ish.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
PC
I've ordered the stuff, it's even arrived, and yet I'm still sitting in the library.
I've just not had a moment since the box arrived from Novatech. With any luck I'll at least get a look in it tonight. Trouble is, I've not had 5 minutes since the kit arrived. Teaching in Edinburgh all week, running around after the people-carrier and trying to get work has just left me without enough time to do it.
Oh! I've arsed up the order, having got a 256Mb model rather than a 512Mb version of the graphics card. Why the various iterations weren't listed on the same page, never mind beside each other I do not know. Their loss, though. The other one was a good deal dearer.
I've just not had a moment since the box arrived from Novatech. With any luck I'll at least get a look in it tonight. Trouble is, I've not had 5 minutes since the kit arrived. Teaching in Edinburgh all week, running around after the people-carrier and trying to get work has just left me without enough time to do it.
Oh! I've arsed up the order, having got a 256Mb model rather than a 512Mb version of the graphics card. Why the various iterations weren't listed on the same page, never mind beside each other I do not know. Their loss, though. The other one was a good deal dearer.
Eek!
Today, I had my 1st proper job interview in about 20 years.
The joys of impending fatherhood. Oh well, at least I'll finally have some money coming in on a regular basis. You'll notice that I'm confident enough in getting it...
Biggest problem is that, being for NHS24, I'll be providing 'out-of-hours' cover, so back to nights and holiday weekends and so on. Yet another reason I'm going to have to have driving lessons and buy a car. I knew having a baby was going to be dear, but I didn't realise that getting a job to fund having a baby was going to be so bloody expensive!
The joys of impending fatherhood. Oh well, at least I'll finally have some money coming in on a regular basis. You'll notice that I'm confident enough in getting it...
Biggest problem is that, being for NHS24, I'll be providing 'out-of-hours' cover, so back to nights and holiday weekends and so on. Yet another reason I'm going to have to have driving lessons and buy a car. I knew having a baby was going to be dear, but I didn't realise that getting a job to fund having a baby was going to be so bloody expensive!
Friday, September 14, 2007
How Hard Can It Be?
The search for a new PC continues. I spent 2 hours in Hillhead Library with Cairnsie & still haven't ordered anything. It seems that most of the research I've done is pretty useless when it comes to actually doing the purchasing. All the websites that do bundles &c use their own codes for, especially, motherboards & memory.
If I wanted to go to the individual manufacturers & order separately I could get the components I've traced. Getting what I want in the combination I'd like from Novatech or Ebuyer is impossible. I can't even figure out what some of the pre-build places offer. This used to be sooo much easier!
If I wanted to go to the individual manufacturers & order separately I could get the components I've traced. Getting what I want in the combination I'd like from Novatech or Ebuyer is impossible. I can't even figure out what some of the pre-build places offer. This used to be sooo much easier!
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Annoying!
Just realised I'd already done that last post. Sadly, I can't delete it as the button doesn't work on the PDA.
Boom!
Posting may well be limited for the next wee while as the new 2Gb memory stick I bought from eBay shorted out itself, the rest of my memory and the motherboard. So much for trying to save money and only upgrade a bit.
Well, at least I'll be back at the cutting edge of computing for a while. About a fortnight, probably.
Well, at least I'll be back at the cutting edge of computing for a while. About a fortnight, probably.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
