I've not blogged for a long time now but finally a major event has occured... At 5am on monday 25th August 2008 Adriana Shaughnessy Akil was born. I'm so happy I can't explain it. I'll be posting a bit more often now and much of it will be to do with Adriana and how she grows.
New Scientist have some videos on their site of elastic bands being twanged, taken using high speed cameras. Beleive it or not, for me this is actually work related. Honestly, it really is!
Thanks to Richard I managed to get a ticket for the game last night. Actually there was quite a few of us that went as there seemed to be quite a few tickets being offered around the Sony offices. Gavin won two tickets and offered to bring Yolanda. Thanks Gavin! I took a couple of snaps with my cameraphone but I've not got an easy way of taking the photos off my phone at the moment. So I'll add the pics to this post later. Oh yeah...it was a great match! I was sitting about 20 rows behind the goal in the KOP. Great atmosphere, lots of singing. I hope they can keep the momentum going now for the premiership matches too.
Video CV of the worlds greatest twit. Allegedly this was leaked by a recruitment agency and he is thinking of suing.
If you have ever thought that the 'Universal Translator' from science fiction movies was a great idea that was centuries off from reality then you might be interested to know that scientists are developing a translation device that can translate in real time from one language to another. It literally reads your lips and then translates what you have said into the language you wish to speak. Amazing how much science fiction becomes science fact. (link)
On the way home from the gym last night, we were asked for directions from some guys from London. After giving them the directions we walked off as one of them made a strange comment, "watch out for the guy on the wall" he said.
I couldn't see anything at that point so I was some weird joke that I didn't get and just walked on. We were most the way along Dale Street and Yolanda was the first one to spot him, clinging to the side of a building about two stories up! He seemed to be in distress. It didn't look to me like he was trying to kill himself but more that he had been trying to do something he clearly wasn't able to do. Maybe he was trying to break into the building? He was a particularly useless cat-burglar if that was his aim.
Anyway... I went over along with another guy who had just walked out of a pub. There was an old woman there who was calling the police on her mobile. The guy was telling us all to go away and kind of crying. She kept trying to talk to him but that jus seemed to aggravate him. So the guy and I said nothing to him.
Next thing the police arrived. We described how he had been there for 5 or 6 mins and I asked the police woman if they had any kind of sheet that we could pull out so he could jump into it. They didn't. Another guy in a suit appeared on the scene around this time and the second police officer went inside the building to try and talk to him from a nearby window. All he got from him was "Go away, Fuck off!".
Next thing another police car arrived and then two other police cars blocked off Dale street. The two new officers just started trying to move us away from the scene. One of them was a big guy who was a bit strange. He told the guy from the pub, “please move along, we are just cleaning up the area”. I thought this was a strange thing to say.
Anyway, before leaving I noticed that inside the building being climbed there was a huge pile of green transparent bags full of paper for recycling. I suggested to the second female police officer that they should get the bags and pile them up under the guy in case he falls so that they might break his fall a little. By this stage he’s climbed up even further and is now about 2.5/3 stories high clinging to the front of the building.
The police women do what I suggested and pile the bags under him. Just after they finished piling the bags and as the fire engine is just arriving the guy either slips or makes a jump for it! He lands on the bags and they break his fall a bit but it was still a long way down. He’s lying on the ground but appears to be conscious and the police women are talking to him. The guy in the suit tells me that my idea might just have saved the guys life. I can see that he’s going to be alright so I leave.
Now I’m not telling the story as though I’m some kind of hero. I’m telling this because I was shocked at the way there was four trained police officers on the scene and not one of them seemed to have a clue of what they were doing. All they were focusing on was making sure that the people that were on the scene were moved back from the area. Other than that they didn’t seem concerned about the possibility that this guy could fall at any second, or make any effort to try and think how to get him down or break his fall. Let’s put it this way…I don’t think I’d fancy leaving my life in the hands of these guys.
If I hear anything about the guy in the local paper on whether he was ok or not, or what the hell he was doing there in the first place. I’ll post it in the coming days.
Recently YouTube has come under fire from Japanese media companies to remove 30,000 copyright infringing clips from it's database. (via)
And now the Premier League has told the 101greatgoals.blogspot.com web site to stop putting clips of premiership goals on YouTube. It seems YouTube themselves disabled the clips but new links popped up on the 101greatgoals.blogspot.com web site. The web site is battling to keep going despite the attacks and it's going to be interesting to see how it all pans out as it could set the tone for the future of YouTube. (via)
We all knew this was inevitable and this is why Chad Hurley and Steve Chen sold to Google before the going got tough. A smart move on their part. But it is also now clear that some major revenue sharing deals were signed before the sale to Google than mean that not all the media corporation content will be removed from YouTube.
It's going to be interesting to see the fate of YouTube. I think it will last but only as long as it evolves. If it stands still it will be left behind like so much else . The internet users are fickle, and if something new and shiny comes along then we'll all be off there quick as a flash.
I was sent this link to the Philips Bodygroom Advert by my friend Henry. Thanks Henry!
I received the new Richard Dawkins book, The God Delusion, for my birthday from James and Vanessa, thanks guys! I can't say that I'm that familiar with him but so far I have to agree with much of what he says. I suggest you get the book and make you own decisions. However... It is compulsary to read the book and not just slag it off with out giving it due consideration, like so many people out there seem to be doing.
Thanks Rob for this. It really brightened up my morning. See the article here. (EDIT) Video no longer available...and it was all a fake anyway...as if we didn't know that anyway. Didn't make it any less funny though did it?
Or De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté to give it its French title. I watched this on DVD recently and thoroughly enjoyed it. The plot is a little far fetched but it's carried off with skill by all those involved. It's a moody film with juxtaposing elements of violence and gentle piano playing.
I watched it based on the fact that it won some awards, but didn't read too much about it before watching it sI i wasn't sure what to expect. Let's put it this way, I was not disappointed.
Recently a good friend of mine, Yannis Tzioumakis, published a book on American Independant Cinema. Yannis is a senior lecturer in screen studies at John Moores University in Liverpool. If you are interested in buying his book click here.
There you go Yannis! I've done my bit of promotional work for you. Although I'll be surprised if it has a huge effect on your already impressive sales figures.
Obviously we are a long way off from the I Robot scenario but it's a tantalizing idea never the less. There are a number of things that I hope to see and do in my lifetime and walking talking robots is one of them. I suspect this comes from my love of Star Wars. The other thing I'd like is to go into space. With Branson making progress on his space tourism project, I think that this is likely to be something I'll achieve in my life time. It may be towards the end of my life but beggars can't be choosers.
I came across this photostream some time ago when browsing through Flickr.
This is the actual house from the movie. The photos were taken by a girl named Oppo Hash who was born near there. Her Flickr page is here if you fancy having a look at more of her photos. She's got some really nice ones with lots of colour saturation.
Images from the NASA HiRISE project are available here. Click on the image to get a closer view of the opportunity rover on Mars.
