Watched a borrowed DVD last night that turned out to be a pirate copy. This one was filmed in a cinema, you could hear people coughing and sometimes talking. The little parasite must have been sitting near the back with the videocam, because the bassy loud bits drowned out any clarity so that quite a few passages of dialogue were difficult to follow  There was a hollow loss of mid-range sounds that is common in cinemas, but the colour was off key too. At first I considered that the film was shot in a nostalgic desaturated colour-space, with added grain.
Cinemas frequently show videos pleading for people to avoid pirate videos, but I don’t think they need to bother. What I saw last night wasn’t really a proper film, certainly nothing that could compete with the product that film producers are trying to sell. I don’t see any reason to buy a disks from a pirate dealer because the genuine DVDs are don’t cost much anyway.

New game: Far Cry 2, driving around in the African savannah.
Real life, cycling around Warwickshire for 65 miles. One of them makes you fit

The writer was Russian, you’d never guess.

Paris, Je T’aime: utterly charming film, a series of short stories with the obvious backdrop. Some were more french in flavour, some less so.
Overall, they reflected the multinational city in a set of moving, sometimes tragic set pieces. A beautiful film.

Coen Brothers: Fargo– I’m seeing a pattern now, the landscape is different in this film, but its role is the same. This one is funnier than the last one (No country for Old men).
I’m tired and don’t really know why; well, I do but can’t confide. There is someone out there.
The iPod collection is growing rapidly with generous loans from Peter. The gadget has developed a dominantly melancholic mood; that’s my iPod!
Somebody Loves You

New film to add to the top ten: The Reader: based on the Bernard Schlink book. I’m left so stunned that I can’t really make much of a post here. With a background of Germany dealing with it’s recent history, the relationship is however, inseparable from that background so it is not really a background at all. Their story looks at an impossible relationship that spans a whole lifetime.
In fact I have just deleted most of this post because it is best to meet this film with no fore-knowledge. Go and see it, just as an incentive– there are no car chases, no shooting so special effects.

20°C, light clouds

The map is from Microsoft, it is capable of showing more detail, but you have ot follow the link to see it. It appears that the recent maps are more detailed than the flight sim; both owned by Microsoft.
Eastern Siberia, just so you know. Though in the middle of the world’s largest continent, there is water everywhere.

Firefox: get version 3.5+ if you use this and a multicore processor- it now seems to multithread evenly on all four here. That is good, it means that the browser is nearly as fast as Google Chrome.
FSX-scenery: as long as they are relatively simple, making airstrips for this flight simulator doesn’t take long. I got six started or done yesterday. Okay, I admit, it was a monster session on a day of pouring rain.

• UESS_Cherskiy
• UEBB Batagay
• UHMK_Keperveyem
• UEBW_Verhojansk
• UHMI Mys Schmidta (aka Moyale on Nth coast of E Siberia)
• UEST_Tiksi (finished a while ago, but includes detailed replacement for the River Lena delta)

Most of these strips are next to rivers, some are old cold-war bomber bases with very long runways, most are semi-derelict. Some are closed.
Siberians don’t usually live far from a river (it’s transport, food and somewhere to drive in the long winter months). These landacapes are obviously remote, barren and frighteningly beautiful- to use an old-fashioined word- ‘sublime’.
AVsim’s library is back online so there will be available there soon. I may as well use Live’s Skydrive here to host them too.
Weird lands; have a look in Google-Earth.

There is no bridge connecting Pevek to the island; okay so what?
But how do you remove the erroneous bridge in FSX flight sim?

Any suggestions?