A Quick (and Hopefully Painless) Ride Through Ruby (with Cartoon Foxes)

Staggeringly fantastic.

Good budget RTS that will play on my antiquated home PC

Age of Mythology! What do you think Seumas?

I wasn't that impressed with Empire Earth, I thought it was a bit amateurish (particularly the artwork).

Harsh Times

Another xfm competition, another film preview. This time it was at the Soho Screening Rooms. We walked in and some guy asked "you here for Harsh Times?", a question that should be answered carefully when travelling around Soho but we assumed he meant the film. No names were taken and it did occur to me that we might just have popped in to ask directions and ended up with a couple of free beers and a film. When we wandered through to the screening room there weren't enough seats for everyone, so perhaps some people had done just that.

So, what's Harsh Times about? It's about a war veteran (Christian Bale), and his friends, trying to find gainful employment and his gradual self-destruction.

Well, that wasn't much of a review, now was it? The trouble is that there isn't really a great deal to say about the film itself, without drawing comparisons with films like (inevitably) Taxi Driver. The filming was Ok, the music was Ok, the plot was as described above, the acting was good, with some liberal dashings of rather dark humour, giving the feel of a British film at times. And, well, that's about it.

Harsh Times does keep your attention throughout but at the end I was left with the feeling that it hadn't really delivered anything new: almost a sense I'd seen it before. I don't want to give the impression that it was a bad film, and I certainly don't regret watching it, but then I didn't pay anything and had free beer, so YMMV.

It's out in cinemas on Friday 18th (tomorrow). Worth watching if you're a bit bored and have nothing else on, or if you're a Bale fan. Otherwise, wait till it's on FilmFour I guess.

The retro police state

Someone has sent me a couple of public security posters - one from from Baltimore, another from London. Odd that both have got such a distinctive mid 20th century style to them, immediately suggestive of totalitarianism and Orwell's (as opposed to Channel 4's) Big Brother.

Couple of interesting articles from yesterday's Telegraph

Med 'may get too hot for holidays'

With average temperatures expected to rise by up to six degrees [by 2080], we could be spending our summers in Ireland, northern France, the Baltics and southern Scandinavia, and avoiding Mediterranean beaches except in spring and autumn...

Another approach to Fitzrovian Tuesday's favorite subject - significant global warming is expected, no question, and hey! we might need to change our holiday plans in 74 years.

Over-reacting to terror is no way to defeat it

Excellent op-ed by Sam Leith on last week's shenanigans.

Global warming

That's hot

'It's serious (and interesting) but don't panic'

I reckon Fitzrovian Tuesdays falls into the alarmism and (occaisonally) the comic nihilism camps...

Googling the Google

Just been reading about Google Base and Google Checkout, now launching in US, coming here soon, to take on eBay and Paypal. They really are becoming all-encompassing.

As quoted in Wired:

"A recent post on Slashdot.org puts it neatly: 'In a few years, you'll be driving your Google to the Google to buy some Google for your Google.' "

Lego Robots

Lego robots! Cool. Tom, John - get one for your kids, pretend its for them...

Technology will save us

Those exponents of the Californian Ideology at Wired magazine on the Next Green Revolution, and how technology will save the day. Hope they're right.

Why we must give up flying

Interesting article by Nicholas Crane in today's Torygraph. It should be a no brainer but at the same time I can't think of anyone I know personally who has made a decision not to fly on environmental/moral grounds. We're probably going down to Cornwall later this year and google maps puts the drive time from Edinburgh at around 12 and a half hours - got a feeling we'll be Easyjetting to Bristol or Exeter...

Btw is there a good word to use that means "environmental/moral" in the context of the above para? Can't think of one at the moment (maybe not had enough coffee yet).

UK 108th in new ‘Happy Planet Index’

A new global measure of progress, the ‘Happy Planet Index’, reveals for the first time that happiness doesn’t have to cost the Earth. It shows that people can live long, happy lives without using more than their fair share of the Earth’s resources. The new international ranking of the environmental impact and well-being reveals a very different picture of the wealth, and poverty, of nations, says the New Economics Foundation.

[Btw, I can no longer post to this blog using the 'blog this' button on Google toolbar, and when I try to add comments they generally don't work either. Any ideas why? I'm using Firefox, but did recently allow a bunch of MS security updates, which might be responsible.]

Farewell to Pure and the Venue

Photoset on Flickr.

Runaway tipping points of no return

Great discussion of the term "tipping point" from RealClimate.

All you need is love

Interesting article.

With no power comes no responsibility

Clerks 2 - hurrah!

Online turn based (ie not real-time) chess

At www.itsyourturn.com. Anyone fancy a game?

LRB World Cup Blog

John Lanchester's World Cup blog for the London Review of Books. Not quite the Ally McCoist/Ian Wright level of punditry. It's obviously a lot better than that, but I think there is a danger in trying to get too intellectual about football...

New Scientist Technology Blog

A few interesting stories on the New Scientist Technology Blog this week. Including: schoolkids who are using high frequency mobile ringtones, because old teachers can't hear them; Google's plans to get your computer to listen to what you're watching on TV (starting to get a bit intrusive, I feel); and online gaming doing a deal with US cable TV so that you can watch people playing Halo on the telly, as a spectator.

Age of Genius

Just watched this - Andrew Marr does the Scottish Enlightenment on BBC4. Totally great. Knew it was on, should have linked to it on here *before* it was actually broadcast (doh) - anyone else catch it?