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If I'm online... Please don't randomly add me to Skype without asking first, or at least having enough detail in your profile to let me know you're not a spammer.
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And, no, it’s not a fake. Check out the video below -- though clicking through to the site proper may be your best bet. There’s a drop-down beneath it which gives many options for different 3D standards/methods including “cross-eyed”. Not the healthiest way to view 3D but it does work if you cross them just right. The full page for the video is here. Unfortunately, there’s no option for the RealD 3D glasses I have from the cinema. Shame! ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b6dc15da-3f9a-49ff-b1c1-d6d2f770c2d3)
The single most expensive advertising blocks in TV in the US are during the Superbowl. Google bought one and broadcast the one featured below. All of the ads they made are available to have a look at on YouTube (they’re called “searchstories“), but I really think they picked by far the best. It’s a simple, beautiful little story. But half the skill is not in telling a tale, it’s in how you do it. Look at Avatar which, I maintain, has a very weak story but is told in a rather amazing fashion. Or indeed, at the silent video I posted a few weeks ago. This is simple, but really clever. Enjoy Parisian Love…
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 Immunet Just a couple of links to things that may interest people: I’ve told loads of people in the past not to install more than one anti-virus solution at a time. They get in each other’s way, slow the system down and generally create a mess. Well, Immunet’s different. It’s very low footprint and is happy alongside quite a few existing products which boosts your protection – they recommend Norton, AVG, McAfee and Microsoft Security Essentials. The other difference is in how the product works. You don’t download updates all the time, but do need to be connected to the internet. The “virus archive” is stored online in the cloud, shared by all users. This way if a new virus is discovered, all users are notified instantly. Any new programs which are installed are checked online before the installation proceeds. This will help protect against spyware sneakily installing itself and nips potential problems in the bud. I’ve just installed it and will see how it runs. Oh, and it’s Windows-only. I’ve no idea if they’re planning a Mac or Linux port. A great site for some beautiful artwork. There are 650 free desktop wallpapers on this site, and the “low-quality” versions are available to download in a variety of resolutions. If you want high quality you can buy a subscription, which at the moment is on a special deal – lifetime for $19.99. Having said that the so-called “low quality” ones are stunning. Definitely worth checking out to spruce up your PC. Related articles by Zemanta
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 Invictus (honestly!) Four Film Friday this time – Invictus, Youth in Revolt, Astro Boy and Edge of Darkness. I’ll try to get through them quickly… Invictus Plot-in-a-nutshell: Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) becomes President of South Africa and decides to use the upcoming Rugby World Cup as a means of unifying the country. I don’t like rugby, on the whole. This worked in my favour going into this film as it’s based on real events and I didn’t know what the outcome would be as I had no idea who won the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Clint Eastwood directs, Freeman is – as ever – simply superb and Matt Damon captains the Springboks. How close is it to what really happened? Who knows. I’m sure there are certain key scenes and events which mirror history but there’s always room for dramatisation (Wikipedia has a small list). Thankfully it’s not overly-sentimental or symbolic, though it does push this from time to time. Both Freeman and Damon pull off decent accents although some of the other actors appear somewhat stilted, especially towards the beginning of the movie. This is a good film. Not overstated, not grandstanding, and a very good story. The obvious link between a battered country finding its feet and being led by someone who’s overcoming the odds is very much mirrored by their rugby team’s efforts. If I have a complaint, it’s the huge over-use of slow-motion to enhance “dramatic effect” near the end. Youth in Revolt Plot-in-a-nutshell: Boy meets girl, boy has to become bad boy to get girl, boy goes a little too far… Michael Cera plays two parts in this film – Nick and the alter-ego Francois that he creates to get the girl, Sheeni (Portia Doubleday). The only other film I’ve seen Cera in was Superbad and that lived up to its title. Youth in Revolt is marginally better but still lacks greatness. If there’s one thing that stands out, it’s the amusing animated segments interspersed throughout the live action. They don’t really add to the story, but they’re amusing and the one at the start got one of the loudest laughs in the theatre. It’s worth watching the one over the end credits as well. Amusing in places, messy in others. Next! Astro Boy Plot-in-a-nutshell: Scientist creates uber-bad killer robot, and also a robotic replica of his dead son. Cue obvious battle. I’m not a Manga geek so I don’t know how this hold up to the original, however it’s kind of “OK” as a CGI Hollywood version. There’s no denying the quality of the voice cast: Nicolas Cage, Donald Sutherland, Samuel L. Jackson, Bill Nighy, Charlize Theron… However, the script needs more work. Or more jokes. Visually it’s nice, but CGI films are all starting to look a little samey now. There’s no real imagination in Astro Boy. If you want a mechanical visual feast, check out Robots from a few years back. The kids will like its simplicity, but adults will miss the added depths, double meanings and references present in films such as Toy Story or Planet 51. Edge of Darkness Plot-in-a-nutshell – a cop’s daughter is gunned down in front of him on his doorstep, so he sets out to find out who did it This film is based on a BBC drama from some years ago which I vaguely recall watching. Obviously, it’s been shifted to the US but well re-written to make it fit both geographically and in a modern timeline. However, while the drama had several hour-long episodes to fit everything in, the film version has only 117 minutes. As a result, Mel Gibson’s efforts to locate his daughter’s killer and work his way through the conspiracy tree is often a little messy. Ray Winstone’s role is rather hard to pin down. We know he’s there but who the hell actually is he? Other than an English guy who swears a lot (i.e. he’s playing himself again). The film begins well enough, but the thrills and spills promised by the trailer really don’t occur. There’s a lot of soul-searching and threats by Gibson’s character mixed with very occasional bursts of fast driving. It is a drama, not an action thriller – but the trailer is misleading. It’s a good story, too. But as I said it’s compressed into too short a time. Some questions are left unanswered while other bits of evidence are thrown in and the viewer is left wondering where they came from. Well-acted, good story but just not suited for film form without better scripting. Related articles by Zemanta
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 Facebook - at least the logo's not changed A large number of people received the new facebook layout yesterday. I gather this was facebook’s “6th birthday present” to its users. Some had had it since earlier in the year and others still haven’t got it – but will. There are a lot of ways of looking at the design, but the single biggest flaw is that things have changed. It’s not so much what they have changed into, but the fact that things people have become used to have been moved or tweeked for no discernible reason. This might not sound like a big deal to a lot of people, but I know of one user who’s dyslexic. For him to get used to finding something that’s moved from one corner to another is a big deal – he uses interfaces by memorising the location of things, not by visually recognising them. He has to relearn the interface from scratch – and for what purpose? None that I can ascertain. I don’t use facebook to any great depth, so what I’ve spotted is likely to be fairly superficial. However, none of it makes any sense to me. First up is shifting the bottom bar around. The chat area is still at the bottom of the screen while the rest of the bar has been removed. Notifications are now in the top left instead of the bottom right. This does give an extra line of screen real estate. I think. Or is the top now a little larger? However, it’s this particular move that’s caused problems for my dyslexic friend (and I’m sure many like him). My particular bugbear is that I can’t be bothered with the news feed. It’s a mess and I really couldn’t care two hoots who is giving stupid virtual gifts to who, or who’s just got a highscore on some crappy game. I just want status updates. In the previous version, I went to the correct area and dragged “Status” to the top of the list. Henceforth when I visited my “Home” area, I received status updates. This is no longer possible. “Home” now takes me to News Feed. It won’t even default to “Most Recent” so I have a completely useless splatter of informational crap that is of no use whatsoever. I now have to go into “Friends” in the leftmost column. This in itself is badly-designed as there’s no indication whatsoever that “Friends” opens up sub-menus. There is a reason we have design standards, such as little boxes with “+” in them, or arrows with move from right-pointing to down-pointing. It’s simple design practise which facebook have chosen to ignore. Once there, I’m stuck in the default Friends page and I then click on the newly-appeared “Status Updates” menu item to get what I used to find by simply clicking “Home” in the past. As far as I can tell, there is no way to set this as my default view. Given that the press release from facebook read as follows:
I would take issue with the use of “easily find”. Something that’s easily found should be immediately apparent, not located by means of a random search. I would also be tempted to say that the left hand columns isn’t a menu – it’s a list. Until you click on it and realise it just looks like a list. Sure, it’s functional. There’s no denying the new look is tidier and reduces redundancy (there were so many ways on one screen to do the same thing before). But it’s very poor design. For a brand new user it lacks indication of the functionality of certain areas and for experienced users it’s moved things too far from where they were before with no obvious indication of where to look to find them. As an aside, I think it’s badly programmed as well. This may just be coincidence, but when I left my browser (Chrome) on the Status Update page for about 11 hours yesterday when I was out, I came home to find that it was using stupid amounts of memory and froze. I never had this issue with the old design. Related articles by Zemanta
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If I'm in the UK, then this will be updated very regularly. If I'm elsewhere in the world, this is more likely to be correct.
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