BeedyG

I watched Slumdog Millionaire and I was very impressed. I don’t watch many films in the cinema (the cheapskate in me usually just files films I like the look of away in the “will rent from Lovefilm later” category) but I’m very glad I was convinced by my friends recommendations to go and watch this film.
From the TV adverts I’d the impression that this was some sort of rags to riches story using “Who want to be a Millionaire” as a Deus Ex machina, but instead it’s a very clever film that uses the TV show format to tell the life story of a young muslim man from the slums of Mumbai (Bombay in his early childhood). I haven’t seen the squalor of these slums conveyed with the same impact before – there are images, like the child wading through a rubbish choked river, that stick in your mind long after the film has ended. It really made me think about what the lives of people living in these conditions are like – so a little shaming and thought provoking. It also has a few scenes set from the other side of an indian call centre – which certainly made me question the way I’ve interacted with them in the past.
Although in some places harrowing, this is a great feel good film and I heavily recommend it – go and watch it now – you won’t regret it!

I’ve been doing a fair bit of stuff with wordpress at work but most of the plugins and themes I’ve written haven’t been releasable – this is my first plugin which is.

Multiple Comment Moderation

This is a simple plugin which allows you to set a number of moderated posts a subscriber to your Blog needs before their comments do not need to be pre-moderated before appearing.

It’s pretty basic at the moment, but I’ll add an options screen (so you can define the number of moderated comments needed – which at the moment is hardcoded to 3) and when I’m happy with it see if I can get it hosted at wordpress.org, which would be nice.

download v0.2 here

This actually works now – before it affected everybody, admin the post author etc now it works as supposed to (and is smaller to boot) next step to add the admin panel

Last Friday I had one of those Brighton evenings. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of living in our fair town you’ll know what I mean; an evening where the high rents, freezing weather and constant feeling you’re too old or uncool pay off and you remember why you put put up with them, an evening where you make the most of the great pubs and brilliant night life and have fabulous eveing you could only have in Brighton. I went to see The Two Wrongies Christmas Special at the the basement, a lovely establishment where I’m pretty sure I saw a Jamie Hewlitt exhibition a couple of years ago.

It was a show in a barely renovated basement of an old warehouse. The place was clean and the bar stocked with wonderful Dark Star bottles. You might notice it’s taken me a while to describe the Two Wrongies, and for good reason. It’s easiest if I say what the effects were: by the end my jaw was sore from laughing, I’d pondered on topics usually anethema to me and was left dazed by being brought into the world of wrongness inhabitted by these two funnny, beautiful, and sometimes naked women. They have a great show, their dance is joyfully synchronised and their comedic timing is spot on. Words really can’t do them justice (and these definitely can’t) but if you ever get a chance to see them peform, grasp it like you’d grasp an imaginary partner in the air sex olympics.

I was catching my normal train into work this morning and happened to observe an interesting exchange between two fo my fellow commuters. In the style of Michael Holden’s All Ears I shall relate it to you.

It’s a packed train on a cold day. I get the same train every day and recognise the faces of roughly half the other commuters. Man1 is a new face to me, tall and smart with a one length beard and haircut style. Man2 is a regular on the train, a short broad man who seems to be putting a lot of pressure on his pinstripe suit and open collared shirt.

Man1 : Gets up from his seat opposite Man 2 and moves to another part of the carriage.

Man2 : Looks pointedly at Man 1.

Man1: (surprised) “Oh – you coughed in my face, should really put your hand over you mouth.”

Man2: “Well you ought to shut your mouth. You should shut up”

Man1: (still calmly) “You coughed in my face, I don’t want to catch your germs.”

Man2: “Well you ought to shave, that’s unhygenic”

Man1: “What are you talking… You silly Bugger”.

(there’s a pointed silence where Man2 stares intently at Man1)

Man2: (obviously not happy with the way the previous exchange had peetered out) “You should be careful who you speak to. You’ll get yourself in trouble opening your loudmouth like that. And you had your feet on the seats.”

Man1: “No I didn’t, you’re just making things up now.”

Man2: (embarassing himself even further) “You’re just embarassing yourself even further, you should aplogise.”

Man1: (surprisingly still calm) “I am sorry, that you coughed in my face.”

Man2: (surprisingly at a loss for words since he really should have seen that coming) “Well.” (Subdued he returned to his paper, which was the Telegraph of course.)

Calm returned to the train and we all carried on, relieved that they hadn’t come to blows. I shall be sure to move seats if Man2 ever sits opposite me in the future.

Just wondering if anybody else thiks comments which require a Google/Blogger sign in are a bit off. I’m not against using a verified system to identify people, but I do think you’re got to allow people to commment anonymously, but I am NOT going to give you the username and password to my Googlemail or Blogger account. I don’t care if you’re using a safe plugin that never gives the owner of the site access to the details, the problem is I could knock up a bogus one of those in about an hour – sorry I don’t think there has ever been a post which could possibly be worth making me risk that information just to leave a comment.

It’s becoming pretty clear that my relationship with Fallout 3 is going to become a love hate one. It all started over a year ago when Eurogamer hosted a teaser trailer for Bethseda’s futuristic RPG. I absolutely loved the music which played, “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire” by the The Ink Spots. I hadn’t heard of the Ink Spots but I liked the song so much I bought their ‘Best of’ (it was only a fiver, which is the beauty of old music) and it has become one of my favourite albums, especially enjoyable relaxiing with a glass of red wine. Hear for yourself below

It’s a brilliant trailer and since I had loved Bethseda’s 2 previous RPGs Morrowind and Oblivion (The Elder Scrolls III and IV) I was hooked. Knowing that it was going to be over a year till it was due to be released I read up on what it was about and also the 2 previous games. Liking what I saw, I bought both (also only a fiver – there’s a lot to be said for being behind the times) to get me in the mood and tide me over till the release date. They are great games and I was a bit annoyed I’d missed them the first time round – I was reminded of Exile (if anyone remembers that) with a dark, dystopian futuristic bent. By now I was anticipating Fallout 3 with the same eagerness I’d had for Bioshock.

Skip forward to 3rd November (it was released on the 31st October, but I had a heavy Halloween weekend) and I got my finally got my hands on the game. The intoduction level is genius – you start off being born! When you finally get outside the graphics are amazing. But. This game is has some serious issues. Sometimes you can play for maybe half an hour without encountering a stutter, but sometimes it can be as little as a minute before you’re left wondering if it’s crashed or not – which it also does a lot. The music in game is great – and even better when you tune into local radio stations which play 30’s and 40’s music (“Anything Goes” by Cole Porter is one of my favourites) including a few Ink Spots songs, but everytime the song on the radio changes the games pauses. This ruins the immmersion, plus turning the radio off doesn’t help, it still pauses in the same spots where you can tell that if you were still listening to the radio the song would change. Besides the radio is a great feature and really adds to the atmosphere as you pick your way through the beautifully decayed, radiation ravaged landscape.

It says a lot for how good the game is (or would be if it worked) that I’ve persevered with this unstable state of affairs for over 2 weeks now. There is no mistaking that this is a great game – but I’ve got to realise that at the moment I’m only seeing the greatness through small windows of unbroken play. Hopefully they’ll release a patch that fixes some of these problems soon (Oblivion had trouble on release too) but until then I’m backing up my save games and uninstalling.

It’s au revoir rather than goodbye

I’ve finally upgraded wordpress for BeedyG and changed the layout of the site. I’ve been doing so much wordpress stuff at work that I decided that I might as well just put the whole site into Wordpress and be done with it.

For anyone who is thinking of starting their own website i would definitely recommend wordpress – it’s quick and easy to use and it is so customisable that you really are only limited by your imagination.

NB After getting the install done I think I’m entitled to go and play Fallout 3 for a few hours – Posting shall resume in the morning!