Category Archives: Uncategorized

BitTorrent.

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18°C, mixed, but nice.
CA: 20.
Blimey- I have an email that warns of copyright violation on my home internet account. So this evening, I spent my time adding filters to the firewall. The time consuming part is where legitimate services become blocked and I have to allow them.

Service- ADSL Broadband Service has been used to download copyright material. The infringing material relating to-

Evidentiary Information:
Initial Infringement Timestamp: 06 Jun 2013 11:43:24 GMT
Recent Infringement Timestamp: 06 Jun 2013 11:43:24 GMT
Infringers IP Address: 79.123.77.16
Protocol: BitTorrent
Infringed Work: Paranormal Activity 4
Infringing File Name: Paranormal Activity 4 (2012) [1080p]
Infringing File Size: 1611048660
Bay ID: e468159c10d0e6f1da3c1a5fe55175112f0b7109|1611048660
Port ID: 50474

Film: Lebanon

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3°C, light rain.
Film: Lebanon, set entirely within a tank during the 1982 war. In many ways it reminded me of Das Boot. A small number of men encased in a steel shell, dripping with oil and dirty water. Some of them viewed the horrors outside through telescopic gun-sights.
The sense of claustrophobia is similar: though I say that, the tank looked bigger inside than I would have expected. The stress and conflict between the crew was there too.
So yeah, a good film.

A film for my birthday.

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7°C, sun became rain later. Heavy.
From now, get used to the idea that I’m forty-eight years old.

Staunton Harold, Leics

I’m 48 too.


Film: Amour. Not everybody’s choice of film on a thoroughly middle-aged birthday, a film about old age and death. It is rightly much written about in the press, since it won big prizes at Cannes. Ties are plenty of links to read up on so I won’t add much here.
I found myself thinking while the film was on, an easy thing to do in such a measured film were a major theme was time. I thought about the rather slow section mid-film and whether it was deliberately slow because the character’s lives were slow while trapped in their situation.
Spoiler alert:
Continue reading →

Leaf mold.

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10°C, dry, SW.
Got my energy back, so rode home quickly and raked 8 bags of cherry tree leaves. Making leaf mold is such a good way to use up all those clothes bags that come through the door each week. I get 2 or 3 each week, and there is no way of knowing which ones come from fake charity collectors. So rather than add to the re-cycling bin, they make a good way to store the piles of leaves. The bags even have ready-made breather holes.
image

Smart phone

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17°C sunny.
Got a new phone today.
This is going to take some getting used to. I got a Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 in the end. For this post, I’m trying the touch screen T9 keypad. Finding the apostrophe in mid-sentence is rather tricky. Phones like this can cost tonnes but I chose the Mini 2. Physically more practical, though the keys on the touch screen are very small.
Impressive features are the GPS, wireless internet and mapping. Perhaps the lasting judgement will come from the valueof any apps, like this WordPress one.

Related articles

Peleliu layered

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19°C, showers later.

Peleliu looks much better in FSX. The island, like most in the Pacific is built on a seamount (a volcano), with some jungle and edged with coral reefs. Waves actually break offshore over the reefs and not so much on the beaches which is the tricky bit in FSX. 

This screenshot shows it from the top, there should be shallow white water with coral to the right (East side). After all these years I have learnt new stuff about the way the sim handles water. The sea surface is generic but tiles placed underneath give the water its colour. FSX documentation is uneven on this, but it claims to cover everything from muddy river deltas to oceanic depths with or without plankton. There are, it’s said, sixty textures to choose from.

Peleliu

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18°C, wind & sunny bits

Ill and off work but after a monster sleep, you find me feeling better.

Making Scenery for FSX like old times. The default land texture for Peleliu in the Pacific is a joke. It should be all tropical jungle, but MS have put dry farmland on the little coral & volcanic island.

What is should be like is closer to this:
 The island’s shape is still wrong, but I’m not sure how much more I want to do on this one. There is plenty of detail that could be added, there are coral reefs, beaches with black sands and channels in shallow waters (The German Channel) and of course, other small islands slightly to the north. Visually, the result could be rather appealing. All this tropical island paradise conceals a grim human history- The Battle for Peleliu during WW2. The US Marines invaded and forced the Japanese occupying forces out with a huge loss of life to both sides. The jungles now conceal tank wrecks, demolished bunkers and crashed planes. There are, of course, memorials on important sites there.
I’ve been watching a series called Pacific on blu-ray which tells the story from the USA side.

So there is an ugly story hidden under the canopy of palm trees on this beautiful tropical island paradise.

Caravaggio

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14°C, sunny bits & windy

Film: Carravagio by Derek Jarman. A good film has the ability to occupy your thoughts for the next day, or even days after that. Carravagio had some good ingredients- the cinematography was matched to the painter’s style. The sets were minimal and no scenes were shot outside. Rooms were mostly bare and light to draw ling inky black shadows just like the paintings. Tenebrist in style, apparently. Tilda Swinton supported along with various other well known British actors. In a few places, modern props were used to disconcerting effect.

Today, I’m left wondering why this film failed to light any spark in me. A few times I even looked ay he video player’s remaining time display. Not a good sign.

Never Let Me Go

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11°C Sun CK:44 miles.

From the same writer who gave us Remains Of The Day, this is a sad but beautifully shot film with a rather forgettable name. For me, the film stood out for the feeling of inevitable doom, and a haunting resignation in the characters who knew and accepted their fate.
I loved it,  but many commentators on the web have pinned it as a poor relation to the book. I tend to feel that this criticism is unfair. A book takes, what, fifteen hours to read? To compare with a film that lasts 90 minutes is no real comparison in my view. I’d have been happy with a longer cut than this, it could easily sustain a 2 or 2½ hour film.

Can you tell that I’m reluctant to give away any synopsis of this one, so make do with the trailer

VIDEO:Trailer

The Artist

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3°C, light cloud. light wind

Film: The Artist. A lot of people will be put off going to see this film. It’s black & white, barely any sound, and it’s a homage to pre-talkie cinema and worst of all, it’s only the art-house cinemas that have the courage to show it. A lot of people are going to miss a real gem there. They probably fear it as an art-house difficult cult film. But it’s not, it’s utterly charming, old fashioned love story shot with a nostalgic fondness for the “golden age of film”. There are many ways that the film plays games with the audience, there are visual tricks, jokes, teases and no doubt- references to films of the 1920s. There are times when it’s hugely heart-lifting, moving and funny too. This is a pure feel-good film that lacks the insincere kitsch of many others. It’s so good that it may even convert many of us who believe the old films were naïve, childish and played to a simple audience.