Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Whats the password?

The university Library has just installed a barcode swipe system, where by you're not allowed into the building unless you wave your library card at a scanner. Which seems to me a little over protective; they've always had some turnstiles to stop people from running in or out and some security system system to stop people stealing books, but now they want to make sure that only university students are in there.



Now I could be wrong but I suspect that the people of Lincoln have much better things to do with their time then sneak into the university's library and look at the books. Most kids of a troublesome ilk won't decided that for laughs they'll go and look at some academic books they're not technically allowed to see. And as you can't actually borrow a book without a card all you could previously do was look at the book inside the building. Which hardly seems a massive security threat; library's aren't exactly the hang-out of choice, and reading a book inside isn't that bad surely?



Then again the security around here does seem to be a bit over the top. The changing rooms in some shop here (can't remember which) has three separate locks on the doors! Three? One wonders who complained that one lock wasn't enough, and then also requested a third because they didn't feel safe with two. Which seems to be paranoia in the extreme, especially considering there's a huge gap under the door large enough for any idiot to crawl through. Even with twelve inch deadbolts on the door anyone with the ability to lie down has incredibly easy access.



Interestingly as well as the locks the room also has a 'Press for Assistance' button. You know just in case you can't fit your jeans on, and you need some help. Of course you might think this is in case someone collapses on the floor, but the buttons so high you'd never reach it from there. I think the most likely reason for the assistance button is in case you can't re-open the door when you've uber-locked it.



However, going back to security, I suppose its not just here that has stupid security. One of the train stations I passed through recently had a big wooden door on the station with a huge sign saying "Security by Safe Force"(Or something) and a huge shiny padlock on which seems smart (unless its just a cupboard of brooms). Of course all the signs and shiny locks mean nothing if you lock the padlock around the clip on the door, but not also the door frame. Essentially making it nothing more then an insurance-waving decoration.



Still. Makes more sense then on a Library.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Its raining, I'm rambeling.

I don't like the rain. Stupid rain. It's all cold and dark and wet and just generally rainy. Not to mention the worst thing about rain. Its noise. I was writing my short film screenplay earlier until I was distracted by the rain. Each drop of water banging on the window was going "Look at me, look at me! Stop your work and LOOK AT MEEE!"



Rain does have a problem though. See no-one really cares about rain that much. Technically it brings as much life and use into the world as the sun; we eat plants and they need water just as much as they need light. Yet everyone's far more appreciative of the sun. When it rains we all run indoors. We hide our heads and move quickly away mumbling about the stupid weather. Yet in the sun we lie down, expose as much skin as possible, and start praising its heat and warmth.



Not to mention rains portrayal in films. Whenever there's an assassination in a film they'll show it raining. Whenever someones marriage breaks down it'll be raining. Whenever anything dark or dramatic or ultimately negative happens, it'll be raining. In fact I've often thought how easy it must be to be a weatherman in Hollywood; "Tomorrow if you feel sad or unhappy, I'm afraid you can expect a cloudy day with very heavy rain fall. But if you've got a big celebration, you're feeling on top of the world, or just have plans to walk in slow-motion down a street to a cheerful sound track, well it'll be a gorgeous sun like you've never seen. Goodnight."



I think this is why rain is so annoying. It wants our attention, because all we do is ignore or negativise it. If your chief competitor got its own day named after it, and songs that cheer it along, giving it hat-based prizes, you'd get a bit noisy and jealous. Especially if you get a song telling you to 'go away' as well. anyone would make annoying noise in that circumstance.



But really it should learn to control itself a bit more. The sun has been the more important one for years, rain should really have got over it by now. Okay so the un has been worshipped as a god by many different civilisations and cultures, but rain has been called a god too. Yes, that civilasation may have worshipped bread, ducks and rocks as gods also, but it still kinda counts. And think of all the rain-dances performed? Everyone loves a good dance performed in their name. Take that as your recognition.



Its not that I don't want rain to protest. I think anyone would, but I should just learn to accept it. I readily agree that rain is over-looked and underappreciated, its just that its noise is annoying. And whilst I support its cause I don't do work all that often, so when I am I'd quite like it to be quite for a bit. And in fact if it also would keep its protest down when I want to listen to something or when I'm trying to sleep that'd be nice. In fact if it could also stop raining when I'm out walking anywhere that'd be pleasing. I mean I do support its cause and all, so it would be good if it'd support me and be less noisy and well, a little less... rubbish.



In fact it could just try being a bit more like the sun. The suns all quite and nowhere near as wet. Although I suppose the sun does cause skin cancer. And rather then keep me awake at night, its the sun that wakes me up in the morning.... Not to mention sun burn...



Hey! What's the suns big problem? Everyone likes the sun, yet its actually being rather evil. Rain may be annoying but I think I might actually like it more then the sun.



Stupid sun.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Silly, odd or mildly amusing titles of Nanowrimo novels

Having failed to really get going on this years Nanowrimo I found myself looking though the list of titles. Here are a selection more interesting then most. I've put a link to the author after each title in case you want to read it.

  • Friends Help You Hide the Bodies (maurice)
  • where the devil shovels coal (mermaid_radio)
  • The Amazing Lance and his Sleepy-Time Adventures (Neliamne)
  • Alpha Male, Beta Test (rpatty)
  • Secret Agent Sixty-Two (feline)
  • Plan B (Tentative) (idunno)
  • Goat (MichelleP)
  • My Pants Are So Tuesday (ezral1)
  • Pretentiously "Untitled" for Now (Holly_Jahangiri)
  • I Have No Title (damina)
  • The 5 People I'm Going to Meet in Hell (jodyl127)
  • The Twice-Failed Quest (Aerden)
  • Child of God (maybe) (Darice)
  • The Popcorn Kernel (Betty)
  • The Business of Ferrets (Zippygirl)
  • Afternoon Snack of the Living Dead (Mousme)
  • All the Good Titles Are Gone (AnnChovi)
  • Memoirs of a Slightly Psychic English Teacher (omouse)
  • Undercover Godmother (hoosier_red)
  • Left to Right, Horizontal then Vertical (Omnipresence)
  • A Plumber's Guide to Growing Up (Loonstruck)
  • The Evil Robot Monkey Chronicles (beth)
  • The Amazing Adventures of (a yet-to-be named) Superhero (Otla Felc)
  • The Incredible Inter-Dimensional Adventures of Dr. Robert Soong and his Pulchritudinous Lab Assistant, Valerie (justgabe)
  • Bugger Me If I Know (No,that's not really it) (subgirl74)
  • I Can't Dignify This Drivel With A Title Yet (Shake)
  • 660, The Stepfather of the Beast (Suibhne Geilt)
  • part of some of the whole truth of the matter (vrgrrl)
  • The Treasure Map of the Future (seafauna)
  • The Yet-Untitled Ironic Suicide Note Novel (nortylaK)
  • Time, Destiny, and Other Headaches (Dark)
  • Untitled-With-The-Word- "Thunder"-Somewhere-In-The-Title, or "Napoleonic Killer Robots" (Lizbetann)
  • I am a perfectly normal human worm baby. (StephieSama)
  • Songs and Stories about Dental Hygeine. Volume III (a_fuzzy_bunny)
  • The Dark Evil Walking Dead Undead Army of Evil Darkness (DrFrag)
  • And Then The World Broke Apart (banai)
  • Snakes Don't Climb: A True Narrative That Has Been Entirely Made Up (Cathy Marciniak)
(These probably arn't the best titles from the site but with 1,500+ pages to go through I challenge you to prove me wrong.)

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Postman Pat gets Asbestosis

Apparently the Post Office aren't very happy about this website, the online home of the Asbestos Watchdog. This is because the watchdog are a group of people encouraging you to send them asbestos though the mail.



There are several things you could say are wrong with this; the Post office unsurprisingly is mostly concerned with the sending through the mail part. I however take issue with other instructions on the site; it suggests when sending this through the mail to use a "tea-spoon sized sample". This I suppose is to make sure no-one sends them a large bucket of asbestos, but they say nothing about what to do with the tea-spoon after you gather the sample. Should one wash it? Throw it away? Lick it clean? Being as it tells you to "wear gloves and wash your hands", you'd possibly want to err on the side of caution. But would leaving the spoon on the washing-up pile be potentially life-threatening? People could be unnecessarily throwing away a tea-spoon from a wedding
gift tea set when washing it over in the next week would be more then
enough. They should really make more instructions here.. How safe is safe? Should the spoon be washed more then once, just washed once thoroughly only used for guests you're not that fond of? Or is asbestos perfectly safe to eat? These questions go unanswered.



Also the site asks that you send your sample in a bag along with a £20 donation. A donation? Donation implies a voluntary giving, expecting no return. If you have to pay £20 that is a fee. If the amount was variable then maybe it'd make sense to call it a donation; but a fixed amount for a fixed service is paying. When I go into a shop and buy a DVD I am paying them stupid amounts of money for something that cost a fraction of the price to produce. I can't try to argue that the price is too high, because that's how paying works. I either accept their price and leave product in hand, or go home without and buy the DVD online.

If you pay a set amount and get a set something in return that in my book is called paying. Calling it a donation doesn't make it so. (Like say, calling things a loan when they're not).



Anyway, back to the Post Office who claim that sending asbestos through the post is dangerous and irresponsible. Well personally I think it could actually be a good thing for the Post Office. Tell all the staff about it and it might provide actual motivation for them to send post through the system quicker. No-one wants an asbestos parcel hanging round the sorting office, and I'd bet postmen would deliver the post quicker too. Who knows, people might get their morning mail actually in the morning.Not to mention those who find it interesting to go through your letters and remove things would probably be slightly discouraged.



In fact sending asbestos through the mail seems actually quite a good thing; just sending it to a place that doesn't require a compulsorily 'donation' or fails to instruct you in after-use tea-spoon care. I sense an intresting business opportunity...





Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Flashback to Lost

When the people who write Lost sat down and started on it I bet they spared very little thought to the negative effect such a show might have on student scriptwriting. Or to put it another way; the positive effect they've put on telling a story using flashbacks.

Reading other peoples scripts from my course a scarily large percentage of them feature flashbacks, or flashbacks within flashbacks, or flash-backs within a flashback, flashing-back to a flashback. I've absolutely no idea how they expect anyone to ever understand their plot; most of them don't even have any link into the flashback, so you're pretty much left guessing where you are in the time line.

Clearly someone should have said:
"Remember, its okay for the Lost writers to make it up as they go along, and worry about endings or making any form of sense later. They have several years to tell their story in. You have 10 minutes. Make it make sense."
Really when writing a 10 minute film it would be smart to make that 10 minutes the most exciting collection of minutes in that persons life; not 10 minutes where they sit about reflecting on exciting things that happened a while back.

Of course that's a total over oversimplification; Flashbacks are fine when used well. Its just not when you use them because Lost does. Also in my complaint list were the frequent shots of topless men; very long winded romancing stories; overuse of guns and the appearance of non-related polar bears.

Well I'd better get over this flashback hating soon. Aiming to watch The Prestige tonight.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

How to make a very dry pizza.

  1. Get some dough. This should be mushy and smell strange and be covered by a bubble of clingfilm.
  2. Pop the clingfilm and then find a surface. This surface must be clean so if necessary clean it. It should also be large enough to make a triangular circle on.
  3. Now get loads of flour and sprinkle liberally all over the surface. It makes you wonder why we cleaned it doesn't it?
  4. Take dough and squish badly. Sprinkle more flour everywhere. Then do more squishing. This is called needing. Well it would be if that's what you were doing. Its what you're trying to do. But what you actually do is called squishing. Sprinkle some flour to see if that'll help.
  5. Then add more flour, this time to some wood. Using the wood squish the dough to a sort of triangleish circle shape. Don't worry to much about the shape at this time. You'll deform it picking it up anyway.
  6. Peal a cheese. Then leave it to dry.
  7. Pick the doughy circley trinagley mess up. Done well this should deform and stick to the surface. Should have used more flour shouldn't you?
  8. Place the doughy thing onto a metal thing which should be a bad fit.
  9. add tomato stuff slopping it down so it goes everywhere. Spread the tomato gunk around the dough with a spoon, reclaiming the spread about bits if there's no longer enough. (You are permitted to leave the bits that are on your eyebrows if you wish.)
  10. Add the pealed cheese. Again slopping the ingredient down randomly works well. Give yourself bonus points if a cheese slice lands on the tomato on your eyebrows.
  11. Try to fold the dough over on itself. This should cause tomato to try to escape and be difficult unless you actually levelled the dough evenly in the bit when we shaped it.
  12. Place thing in oven. Leave to cook for an amount of time.
  13. Take out and eat. Complain about high levels of dryness. Lots. Because it will be really dry. No-one knows why it'll be dry. Perhaps you'll die.

Have fun.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Fireworks Night

To celebrate November the 5th today I shall let a firework have a platform for speech:

"Bang, screech, boom, swoosh, explode, screeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaammmmm, disappointing silence, pretty colours, boom, bang, rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-boom, blow-up with stars, kerblamo."

(Please make your own Awwww!'s and Ohhhhh!'s. Thank you.)

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Ginger Bread Men

I think there should be a new law stating all ginger bread men should be labelled on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is soft and 10 is hard. This is a direct result of the incredibly disappointing man I bought today.

I know one of the bakery's round here does very nice ginger people, soft enough that they don't even stand up straight, but not quite loose enough to break without some force. I think I'd rate them at about 3. Clearly however, whichever that fantastic bakery is it was not the place I went in today. I chomped down on their product instantly fracturing three teeth, without even making a dent on the baked man's head. If my system of number ratings had been involved I could have seen the 10 warning and saved myself from this steel like monstrosity. I eventually cut into the thing using a diamond saw and a team of eight assistants. I've also submitted a piece of it to the patent board as a new idea for bullet proof clothing. I also tried actually eating some. It was like eating nails. I could of died.

And this is why we need a system people. Health and safety is at risk; If a ginger bread sized hole were to appear in a train track right before a train was to pass you would expect anyone to leap into action, plugging the hole with a ginger bread man from the nearest shop. But whilst a 10 man would hold and carry all passengers to sweet smelling safely, a 3 rated man would be disastrous. Without the rating system you wouldn't know which is which, and placing the wrong type on the track would result in a catastrophic accident and the waste of a perfectly made ginger bread man. And does anyone really want that?