"Yeah... check out twitter, facebook, whatever. You'll soon see what I'm talking about.

That flash just now? That's half the world's population gone. Disappeared. At random.
Things will keep working for a while now. We have so much stuff automated these days. And half the population is still quite a lot. So you might think things will work out.

But there will be another flash in a few months time. And another half will disappear. And then another.

You wanna know how I know? I have been through all this before. Yeah, some joker of a God put me back into the beginning of all this for some reason.
I don't know why and I'm not gonna try to figure it out. Again. I'm not giving you any more advice. Find yourself another 'leader' if you need one.
I'm off to make the best of the situation. You'd be surprised how many store security guys disappear in the first wave..."

RIP Moebius

A new rule for fantasy writers: if you can't write a better elf than Glorfindel, don't write about elves! 

One of the most touching art videos ever. Do watch.

http://artmuseum.pl/filmoteka/?l=0&id=179


"A film about problems with individual memory and the gradual degeneration of collective memory. During his stay in Tel Aviv in 2003, Żmijewski contacted a number of Polish Jews who had left Poland – the land of their ancestors – shortly before or during WWII. He asked them to recall and sing the songs of their youth. The protagonists recall all kinds of melodies: cavalry songs, pre-war pop hits, the polish national anthem. Żmijewski shows a world that is irrevocably becoming past. Our Songbook is one of the most moving and meaningful projects of the Polish art of recent years, and one that has found a reflection in the debates on national identity and Polish-Jewish history. Żmijewski broadens the field of art with his films, treating art as a tool for remembering, generating knowledge, and calling it into question."

One of the greatest shocks of my life was the discovery, circa 2007, that not everyone on the internet had read the Lord of the Rings.

Oh ffs, #Google. Get your act together.
I got the new toolbar. Now Reader is even further down the list, after Music and Offers which I can't even use here in the UK!

I've just remembered I still have a livejournal account and there seems to be people there. Hello, lj people ! :)Jakub Kaliszewski @ Google+

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/19/catholic-church-sold-child

I laid me down upon a bank,
Where Love lay sleeping;
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping.

Then I went to the heath and the wild,
To the thistles and thorns of the waste;
And they told me how they were beguiled,
Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

"So it came about that the freemen chose them another king, Sweyn, the queen’s brother, who still held to his sacrifices to idols, and was called Sacrifice-Sweyn. Before him king Ingi was forced to fly the land into West-Gothland; but the end of their dealings was, that king Ingi took the house over Sweyn’s head and burnt him inside it. After that he took all the land under him and put an end to many of the barbaric practices"

I wonder if burning relatives alive was considered one of the barbaric practices...

So, a guy sleeps with an underage girl whom everyone in court (including judge and the prosecutor) thinks looks like 16 year old, behaves like 16 year old, claims is 16 years old and sleeps around not minding anything... is declared not guilty and released - but still gets on the sex offenders register?

God I feel like I've become possessed by the ghost of Murphy's Law.

So since today until the end of the week, we rent two flats in London at the same time.

What we spend on rent we save on moving, though. Since both flats are in the same building. We're even using the old wi-fi router now, as the signal travels through the walls.

Neat, huh?

Fun fact: in September 1939, after sinking of SS Athenia by German U-Boat (first non-Polish casualties of the war), 40% of polled Americans believed the Brits have sunk the ship themselves for propaganda reasons.

See, you don't need internet to have conspiracy nuts aplenty!

Paypal gave me back the money for Phone A.

Headset for HTC doesn't work with HTC. Maybe the Nokia one will... Anybody wants a cheap HTC headset? 

 
His writing skills are getting abysmally worse and worse. The man wants 'epic' but he just doesn't get 'epic'. The man writes entire worlds into his stories, but he doesn't know how to work worlds. He knows people and characters, but not worlds, not masses of people. 

Why mention the whole world in a story when you're only going to show Britain? Every nation, every culture would react differently. There's no way all would oblige in the same way. Riots in the suburbs? There would be WARS breaking out. How exactly would British PM or US general convince Russians, Indians or Chinese to do what they did? How would aforementioned nations manage to do anything of the sort with their crumbling infrastructure? 
We focus on individuals and they play well but the world shown in the background is just shambles. 

It's a good thing RTD hasn't shown the Last Time War yet, although I bet he will eventually. And that will suck balls more than anything ever did. 

Great skua
Arctic skua
Common tern
Sandwich tern
Puffin
Red-throated diver
Merlin
Short-eared owl
Twit
Stonechat
Crossbill
Guillemot
Razorbill
Fulmar
Oystercatcher
Lapwing
Common gull
Herring gull
Kittiwake
Gannett
Harrier (unknown)
Curlew
Tufted duck
Greylag goose

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Suddenly got warmer. Runes in Maeshowe fantastic-more interesting than the empty grave itself. Felt like inside Trollshaws.
Overall Orkney very much like Eriador: barren wasteland full of ruins of ancient civilizations...
Stonehenge eat your heart out.
Had to go and 'buy the internet' as talkmobile cheated us out of money.our own company! Scapa flow still full of ships.Found the last well for ships sailing to Canada in colonial days, v.impressive! all those people perished in the arctic drank their last fresh water here. Going to see wrecks of German Imperial Fleet today.

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posting from the new phone for the first time! we're staying on a campsite on the beach of south ronaldsay. the car's fantastic - and we didn't freeze :)
ami still sleeping ... we're really far north-the sun doesn't set until 11pm! weather typical but still no rain so far. proper holidaying starts today.

Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com

...or how we tried to live in XXIth century and failed.

Around May we've decided to buy ourselves a cool new smartphone. HTC Touch HD, to be precise.

First we tried the proper way: through a contract with a phone provider. On first try, we've failed an online credit check.

Meanwhile, I had my wallet stolen and all my cards locked.

In Orange salon, we've failed credit checks again. We were told to make the checks ourselves through Experian or Equifax to see what's going on.

After getting back the new credit cards, I've done both checks. All turned out nothing wrong (after a few days of them learning how to read royal mail addresses). We went to Orange again, and failed the credit check again.

Not willing to pay £500+ for new sim-free phone, we turned to eBay. It was mid-June by then, a month has passed. And here the story really took off.

Looking for a bargain, we found the phone for £330 with pre-installed Garmin software, slightly used. Cool!

We got the phone. Let's call it Phone A. Just the handset. The charger was a generic mini-usb one. And the Garmin software was a pirate CD of Garmin software FOR NOKIA.

I've checked IMEI - the phone A was reported stolen.

I've opened a paypal dispute and demanded a refund. The seller agreed, if I sent him the phone back. So I did (stupidly). Next day he claimed the phone arrived damaged and demanded money for repairs FROM ME.

I've escalated dispute to a claim. I have no phone A, and no 300 pounds. Now I'm waiting for the response from PayPal which they say will be on July 19th.

Meanwhile, still wanting the phone for holidays, we bought another phone, phone B. £320, used, boxed with all accessories.

Phone B was lost in post.

Royal Mail takes 15 days to say whether a Special Delivery is lost or not. After 15 days, instead of a refund, the seller offered to send another phone - phone C - under the same conditions. I agreed.

What we got was, again, just a handset, but at least this time it had original pouch and charger. That was all.

I demanded refund for cables and accessories. The data cable was apparently 'in post'. For the headset, I got a refund and bought a replacement in an online shop.

I got a Nokia headset instead. The replacement will be dispatched 'tonight'.

So now, after two months and spending some 700 pounds, the situation is as follows:

Phone A is back at the seller, with whom I have a claim dispute over PayPal.

Phone B is lost, presumably stolen, somewhere on its way from Essex to London.

Phone C is here, but with no original accessories except for charger, and a useless Nokia headset.

And we're leaving for holidays today, so no chance to improve any of that. 



So much for online shopping.

PS: And now Royal Mail decided to NOT deliver our GPS software on time for holidays WHICH WAS THE WHOLE REASON FOR BUYING THE FRAKKING PHONE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

- 70% of the population would turn gay, because it's just so much more fun

- The remaining 30% would be kept as slaves for procreation purposes, and because gays love to take children and turn them gay

- After a slave couple, forced to procreate through drug addiction, gave IVF birth throuh Cesarean section to a desired number of babies, all their other pregnancies would be automatically aborted

- Once the mother would reach non-procreative age, she would be euthanasied

- And everyone would be constantly high. And worship Satan.

The coverage of Afghan War in British media is really quite pathetic. The only thing the tv and newspapers are all interested in is that the British soldiers are dying. You'd think they just sit all day in their camps and get mortared, or drive around trucks and get blown up by mines.

What's happened to good old war reporting?
There's a war in Afghanistan. You may disagree with it, but that's the fact. There are battles. People are dying. Recently, there's a massive offensive on Taliban, allegedly one of the largest ones since the war - something we only know from US coverage, not from local news. And the Brits fight on its right flank in the Panther's Claw operation (I know that from wikipedia, not from BBC). Of course some people will die. Dozens, possibly hundreds more die on the other side. That's what happens in the war. But no, the only thing you'll hear is 'another british soldier dead'. Why? What was he doing? In what context? What's going on with the war? Are we winning? Are we losing? Are we in a stalemate? 

We don't know that. Instead we're treated, of course, to a stream of interviews with friends and families of the dead, the meaningless eulogies (of course he was 'brave'. they don't take cowards to the war!)  the dreaded 24-hour news 'human angle'. The human angle that is torn out of context, blown out of proportion, treated everytime as a separate, unrelated event. Our poor boys, sent to die for 'incomprehensible reasons', because the media do nothing to make these reasons even the slightest bit comprehensible.

No wonder modern democracies lose all their wars.

 So after a month of looking all over West London, we've unexpectedly decided on a flat that's... one floor above ours. 

Foxtons estate agents are ASSHOLES*.

*) even greater than any other estate agents

... if the burqa is just "an expression of culture and tradition" instead of instrument of oppression - why are their husbands wearing jeans and t-shirts? 

Ooh, Jack Dee hosts "I Haven't A Clue" ! Might be a better choice than the last one...

Marlon Brando vs Laurence Olivier

Richard Burton vs Laurence Olivier

By baka_oni_ri :)

♥

Whoever came up with the idea of a 'kitchenette' in a flat should be beaten repeatedly with a two-hob electric oven.

"In 2000, a biography of Elizabeth Taylor suggested that Richard Burton may have had an affair with Laurence Olivier"

Now who will draw me a slash of THAT? 

Watching "Omohide Poro Poro" for the first time after ten years (only now I feel I can really appreciate that low-key movie) I think I've finally nailed what makes Japan the best-portrayed nation in cinema. Why I seem to have known every street, every house, every garden as if I've lived there for years, something I never experienced even in London, even in the most victorian-Hammer-Horror-style parts down in Southwark; or Paris; or Warsaw. Somehow, all these cities which I've seen countless times on celluloid, always seem faker than they really are.
Not so Japan, which I've rarely seen in any other form than animation.

A live-action movie will simply be never as detailed and thorough with backgrounds as an animation - especially Ghibli-style, or any old-school 80's/early 90's animation. Two crucial things make the animation better suited for portraying real cities and landscapes:

- Camera focus. Unless you use some very special tricks, you will never get the camera focused equally on the characters and background, and on every single element of background. What you need in a live movie are long shots or even total shots establishing the scenery; a shot of Manhattan, a shot of Kilimanjaro, and then we're back to the characters. In animation like Poro Poro you can read every neon and newspaper headline in the shop window as the action happens in the foreground.

- Limited use of close-ups and crowd shots. There's no shame in having an entire cell showing just a lonely silhouette against an empty street in the rain. A distant car on a mountain road. Two kids playing in the park - somewhere on the horizon. That way you don't get that beautifully hand-crafted background is full visible. Since you don't pay the actors, you don't need to justify their fee by having them constantly in the middle of the screen.

Of course, the natural advantages of painting over photograph also play part, unless you compare against a really artistic and crafted movies - a cell painter has full freedom of selecting what he wants to show and how. He can focus on that which creates the real mood and feeling of the scene, instead of just photo-realistic rendition. The water-colour style of Takahata's movies is perfectly suited for that, since the graphics can just smoothly vanish in the white blur.

Anyway, what I'm saying is - if any of you've seen Omoide Poro Poro a long time ago, say, when you just started watching Ghibli movies and thought "oh, this is different... I'm not sure I like it all that much" - try and watch it again now. It's a real grown-up movie and should only be watched by grown-ups.

Turns out "The Black Smoke Band" which played for War of the Worlds consists of:

Herbie Flower on bass ("Space Oddity", "Walk on the Wild Side")
Chris Spedding on lead guitar (Roxy Music, Elton John)
Gordon Marshall on drums (The Moody Blues tour drummer)
Julia Thornton on harp and xylophone (Roxy Music tour harpist)

And a few session guitarists and a keyboard-player from Mike and the Mechanics.

That's quite a neat line-up there. And Chris Thompson, lead vocals of "Manfred Mann's Earth Band". And of course Justin Hayward. And a holographic Richard Burton.

Judging by the average audience age, most of the people would remember the original WotW album, or even the original Moody Blues and Manfred Mann line-ups. Which must've been rather neat for them.

I've been ranting about this for the last hour, and I need to vent now.

THE FUCK is wrong with people who come up with computer and phone models and other electronics? Why can't they learn anything from Apple's marketing division? 

I don't fucking care whether a notebook is called XG5t58.5 or GT3943.13. I want to know what I can expect from that model. And I don't need a dozen crappy netbooks, I just want one that is good. I don't want to have to delve into wikipedia to learn that the difference between Samsung Visio and Samsung Pisio is 0.5 MP more on camera. 

And when I finally decide what I want from my computer or phone, I want to be able to go into store and buy it. This particular model, not something else, not "almost like". I want to be free from googling EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DETAIL of a phone or notebook to determine whether I want Acer 5054235 with GeForce 9443 or Asus 321114234 with Radeon 100051. Especially since the morons in the shop will never be able to tell me the difference anyway!


Normally, seeing as it's a big business managed by big business people, I would think that maybe they know what they're doing. Maybe they know something I don't know about how to run an electronics company. But then I look at Apple's market share and brand awareness, and remember that there is no Iphone 5455 VIX and Iphone 1100.BT+, there's just Iphone 1, 2 and 3. And there's Macbook Air, and Macbook Pro in the shop, not Macbook MC240LL/A. Yes, the MacBooks have model numbers as well, but you know what? I DON'T NEED TO FUCKING KNOW THAT. 

And what happened with Asus EEE line? It started off so good, you had Eee 900 with 9 inch screen and Eee 1000 with 10 inch screen. And that was ALL we needed to know when buying it. Now there's 1000H, 1000HA, 1002HA, 1000HE, and shitfuckload of other crap with no significant difference in price or quality. The hell? Why not produce just ONE GOOD NETBOOK ? 

And you can't even market these things properly! All Apple has to do is market "Iphone" or "MacBook". One ad for everything. One shop for everything. It saves money and produces brand awareness. Two concepts nobody else in electronics world seems to be familiar with, apparently. 

Etc. etc. Ugh.

The cart squeaked up the greasy and damp trackway, filled with ore, pushed by a tired, ragged halfling. Finally, they've arrived at the top of the mine, where other hobbits proceeded to unload it.

A Snaga guard barked at the hobbits. "Well, that's the end for today!", thought Sam, and staggered off to his barracks.

It was evening meal time, and they were served the same vile gruel as every day for the last ten years. Suddenly, the barrack door opened and, as all the slaves stood to attention, uruk-hai captain threw something that looked like a whimpering bundle of dirty clothes on the floor.

Sam and others approached, curiously. The newcomer stretched himself on the floor, shivering, crawling. He looked almost unhuman, with wild, bulging eyes and thin white skin on skeleton-like hands.

"They call that a replacement? He won't last much longer than that Brandybuck kid!," groaned the foreman, kicked the new guest lightly and returned to his gruel.
"Precioussss...", the poor creature hissed, scowling in pain. Something in the voice seemed familiar to Sam. He looked carefully at the face of the other hobbit.

"Master Baggins?", he asked finally, surprised. Madness disappeared for a brief moment from the eyes of the new slave and it seemed to try to remember something; in the end, it just shook his hand and stared wildly around again. "Preciousss...?" it repeated.

"You know this... hobbit?" the foreman asked, hesitating.

"It's Frodo Baggins. I used to work for him as a gardener in the old days. He went mad and disappeared some time before the War started. Just like his uncle a few years before. Family of loons, all of them."

This is a quite new thing, and I'm sure whatever marketing guys they have at Opera they will explain it better than I can - or better yet, if you install it and try to play with it, you'll see immediately why it's such a great idea. I say 'idea' not a product, because a) it's obviously in a very early beta stage (how do you turn PHP on in the web server?) and b) I'm sure there's many, many limitations that will appear along the way. But it already has plenty of 'wow' factor; maybe there are other applications that enable you to easily host a webserver, mp3 host, photo gallery, chat and message board from your own PC all at the same time (name two?)  but Opera gets extra points for style, ease of use and mainstream following. 
Combine that with in-browser VNC and Google Gears and your browser really turns into the most powerful tool you will ever need. 

Of course, it will probably get hacked into oblivion once it goes live and we'll never hear of it again - until Apple buys it and releases it in black... 

I'm sorry to say that, Stephen, but you're a crap host for "I'm sorry I haven't a clue".

You're not supposed to LIKE the contestants!

Okay, so I liked T4: Salvation. In fact, I liked it a lot. I know for some reason I'm in a minority, but them's the facts.

It was very well made and photographed. Special effects were much more realistic than in the last two, and not just because we have better computers. Okay, so it didn't have (real) Arnie and humour, as everyone noticed, but then it's not your typical Terminator movie and everyone should be prepared for that. It's a WAR movie, that takes place after a nuclear holocaust. Just how many jokes can you tell in that situation? And for how many episodes should the Governator be chasing something or be chased by something? We know it couldn't work for the fourth time - it didn't work for the third time, after all.

Yelchin was better than in Star Trek. And Bale was better than in Batmans. It was an action movie, so there was a lot of siliness - but come on, you don't go to watch the Terminator to look for the plot holes! That's like looking for plot holes in a Doctor Who series finale. The Terminators still throw main characters around to kill them, which still doesn't work. But that's proper! 

All in all, thoroughly enjoyable. Light years ahead of T3, and if you're not into camp, actually better than T2.

2 Pirate Party members in MEP !