Monthly Archives: October 2009

Geffen is coming, look busy!

Now my dears, I realise I have been neglecting you due to my increasing workload at university. Fear not, for I have a number of treats and delights edible for your edification coming very soon. I’m even killing two birds with one stone as I intend to put my first Spark (Reading Uni student newspaper) on here as a blog post, I’ll come to more detail on that later, now something much more vital –

YOUR INTERNET IS BEING CUT OFF!

Yes, my friends, that is the stark warning that you may (but probably won’t) be getting through your post box (well, not if the Royal Mail strikes continue) very soon as the now defunct French ‘three-strikes’, or as they called it there ‘tres fúckups’, policy to combat illegal file-sharing will shortly become law.

Yes, clutch your keyboards in horror as I elaborate. This policy, which as I said was briefly introduced and swiftly chucked out in France, means that if you are caught torrenting, downloading, file sharing or even simply holding a microphone up to a radio (I expect) once, twice, three times the charm and you will lose your internet connection. Ironic then that the man in the government advocating this through mouthfuls of wine (courtesy of music tycoon David Geffen) is none other than Peter Mandelson, the twice disgraced, twice resigned, ‘voice of the people (in the music industry’)’. I would very much like to see this policy applied to government disgraces and watch him tumble.

The governments sheer lack of understanding about how anything with a microchip works is apparent in this PDF document outlining the proposals, courtesy of The Guardian.

What does this mean for you and me, well exactly as it says on the tin. You will lose your internet connection for a variable amount of time (most likely dependent on the scale of the “offence”) but you will have the right to appeal, of course, and go through all manner of tedious bureaucracy and costs before you might be able to watch bad Woody Allen impressions on YouTube again. For ISPs, it means it becomes a legal requirement for them to turn over the data of suspected file-sharers, the slightest implication of illicit activities (which, as we know, can be perfectly legitimate) means an entirely different type of tedium reserved especially for the providers, who then have to backtrack their records and drag up who was using the IP address at the time and all manner of things from their voluminous plethora of data, all of which will cost a lot of employee time and money. Then there’s the government body to monitor and manage these cases, and the cost of an entirely new branch of Ofcom is added to the mix. From what I can gather, none of these costs are going to be covered by the entertainment industry, who are pushing their considerable weight around to get these policies in place. Now, you’ve hopefully noticed that every mention of cost has been emblazoned with an extra layer of black gloss to point out just how much these proposals will cost and, given how taxes work, the British taxpayer will be fitting the bill to assist what could be their own prosecution.

Now, many of you will gasp with horror at this, and rightfully so, but(just as an aside) I do hope many of you have the good sense to not start beating the “internet access should be a human right drum”. I, personally, don’t think that access to the internet should be a human right for one very simple reason, it’s a commodity, a product, and entirely non-essential. Human rights, by the very nature and, indeed, definition, dictate the basic needs of each and every human being to survive, maintain dignity, be free and unrepressed. What possible liberty do you think is being taken away by not being able to add another inane comment to some viral video? If we start adding unnecessary shit to the requirements of human rights then how far are we willing to go? Should, under that same logic, mobile phones become a human right? A computer (Interesting to note that right to web access requires, indeed demands, that access to a web-enabled device of some manner to be available under the same right)? An iPod? Camera? TV?

Don’t think for a moment that I am supporting the government on the human rights issue, because my argument works both ways. The internet can’t be a human right because it’s a product, something you can buy or not buy, take it or leave it, we don’t (necessarily) need it. However, if this is true then the government shouldn’t, they apparently will but nevertheless, have any control or power to cut it off due to misuse. I know that Finland has just made 1Mb broadband a human right, but this is a mistake, I feel, reaching deep into the depth of the slippery slope.

I can’t imagine, for a moment, that ISPs are taking this lying down. Because for each and every penny, second and manpower that put in, just to fulfil their now legal obligations, they are potentially losing a customer. It is purely counter-productive for them because they have no way of making money from this and will inevitably lose a customer (I don’t imagine that the ‘criminal’ will be forced to still pay their ISPs for internet that they can’t use). Ofcom surely don’t want to have to deal with the complaints from parents demanding that their internet be restored (possibly so that they can do their job) after their teenager torrented an episode of ‘Family Guy’. There is also an enormously high risk of false positives here as it is painfully difficult to track filesharing, which is why many do it knowing full well the risk of prosecution, leading to a lot of innocent people without a web connection. The odds of getting caught are so low, and I take it that success and prosecution targets at the new department will be so high (in an attempt to justify the cost no doubt) that there’s a risk of the body getting a bit slap-dash with trying to make only genuine prosecutions. I may be wrong.

And amongst all the crap that these proposals create, who’s happy? Not the voters, not the consumers, not the ISPs, not the entertainment industry (despite what they’ll tell you, every illegally downloaded track does not equate to one lost sale) when they realise the flaw of this plan, not the government having to deal with the execution, or the backlash, of this. Nobody, well except the tycoon who (convenientally)  took Mandelson on holiday just before Lord Peter started advocating three-strikes. Of course, we are taking food right out of the mouth of these billionaires, they are being forced to live in abject poverty because of you thieving bastards. How could you be so cruel? He’s down to regular caviar!

I am not advocating illegal downloading, filesharing and torrenting as the right thing to do. But just look at the incredible lengths that our elected government is going to simply to satisfy, essentially, one man. Isn’t this report simply highlighting how easily our elected representatives can be bought if your wallet’s big enough, Mandelson is a blatant illustration of this. Politicians hardly represent the moral high-ground when it comes to not paying for things, but that is no matter, the point is that any intelligent person in the government can see, simply from observation, that these plans are an exercise in futility and simply pandering to the big cash monster enrapturing them all that is the entertainment industry, forcing them to look as though they’re doing something (Geffen is coming, look busy).

Copyright infringement, on an industrial scale that profits the wrong people, deserves prosecution. Watching a few episodes of a TV show online does not. The internet is not the government’s to cut off, nor our own to claim it as a right. Our leaders should not so easily bought, nor should we have to fit the bill for it.

Good Night!

The God Delusion – An apatheist’s review

Hmm, perhaps the term apatheist isn’t a clear reference, it’s a perhaps bad play-on-words with the term apathetic as what I intend to here blog about is a tentative subject which commonly gets a comment or two so I will explain. I am going to review ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins, which I finished reading a few weeks ago. But I want to make it clear I am not, repeat NOT, trying to make this into another Christianity-Atheism debate and merely want to review this book from a non-subjective, an apathetic, view.

image

The God Delusion is Richard Dawkins in-depth discussion about the existence of God. Investigating where it comes from, what we can learn from it and, above all, whether or not God exists.

I say discussion, though it is clear even to a moron that Dawkins has firmly made up his mind on the matter, with cheekily titled chapters such as “Why there almost certainly is no God”. However, he does fairly look at the evidence that religious groups (the book is unashamedly aimed at Christianity but there are still numerous references to other religions) give for believing in God and expertly dashes them.

I’ll illustrate, the classic argument of evolution vs. creation is a point that Dawkins talks about greatly, himself being a biologist. He systematically picks up and examines each and, to my vast knowledge, every argument and “evidence” that creationists give to show that there was an intelligent force, which they choose to believe was the God of the Holy Bible (peculiar how they have to make that additional clause distinction for the “one true god”), that created and fine-tuned the planet some 6000 years ago, created animals and then humans as a superior species on the planet. Dawkins, as scientists do, picks up and plays around with the notion, toys with  it, has fun and draws conclusions upon it, before he looks at the evidence that his prodding, poking and his own scientific knowledge before, with a melancholy sigh at not learning something new about his planet, setting it aside and concluding that it is not so and clearly explains why, it’s hard to fault him here.

As a side-note, it is always baffling to me the amount of hysteria surrounding Dawkins by Christian groups suggesting that he was responsible for the conception of Nazism in Germany long after his death due to his conclusions in Origins when it is Christianity that assumes that Man is superior to animals. As I said, I’m not interested in sparking off another debate but it is a noteworthy parallel all the same. Undoubtedly, that will cause somebody to say “But, weren’t Hitler and Stalin atheists?” Well, ignoring the fact that it’s never been proven, they both had moustaches too, what of it?

This leads me on, conveniently, onto morality. Some Christians repeatedly argue that we need religion to base our morals on. Though I have never bought this for a moment, Dawkins manner of illustrating this point is truly captivating, with examples that, though they sound ludicrous, tap into some inherent and base understanding of right and wrong.

The book is dedicated to Dawkins friend, writer Douglas Adams (of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as well as various Doctor Who episodes), and the wit and comic timing that Adams gives in whatever he writes (many of his comments on religion are used in the book) is channelled expertly through Dawkins, using this to great effect to simultaneously satirise and expose religions more ridiculous side, it pains me that I do not have my copy to hand (a good book reviewer I turned out to be) but it’s a very entertaining book in itself and worth reading for some Adam-esque humour.

Of course, I too must look at the dark side of this book. Simply because I’m an atheist doesn’t mean that I must agree with every word in this book, much in the same way that most modern Christians are no longer word-perfect literal about the Bible. I don’t think anyone, least of all Dawkins, would want everyone to agree entirely with him or else it risks spawning an entirely new pseudo-religion. So it is with confidence, indeed glee, that I jump into my criticism of this book, and perhaps it will unfortunately double-up as a criticism of Dawkins himself, in that he can be unbelievably scathing and cocky about some Christian viewpoints, taking his humour into the realms of bad taste. Towards the end of the book, for example, he investigates the fear of death and shows how Christians have a tendency to be far more reluctant to accept the end of their life than atheists, despite the former’s firm belief that they are venturing unto paradise. It is, I’ll admit, an interesting point, but the humour with which Dawkins injects this point, suggesting that the terminal patient should be congratulated at the news of their impending demise among other crass comments. Intriguing a point though it is, how can Dawkins honestly make a point for his views from each person’s fear of death, might not someone fear death not because they do/don’t fear almighty judgement, but because maybe they have a family that needs them. This research doesn’t, as far as I can see, take into account any variable factors besides Christian/Atheist and Scared/Not Scared, which seems to basic a result to go by.

Despite this, Dawkins writes a very persuasive, informed and entertaining book, making me eager to read more of his work. There are some points which, with their logical argument, evidence and comparable examples of the “absurd” (see Bertrand Russell’s teapot or the Flying Spaghetti Monster for examples).

Some reviews have said that this book “will not leave you unchanged” and that is certainly true. Whether it will change your beliefs entirely, in any direction, depends mainly on your current religious standpoint. My own was near enough where it is having read it, just a step or two further from the delusion that there is a God in the Biblical sense. Despite Dawkin’s confident introduction, I’m afraid I must contradict him in that I don’t feel it will change anyone’s view, fundamentalist Christians won’t listen or even want to listen to contradictory evidence, most modern Christians will listen and accept most of what he says but I doubt his arguments are persuasive enough to shake beliefs that far, but I may be wrong. Atheists will simply have more bullets in their arsenal to use when they’re next shot at to repent their wicked ways (an archaic reference I know, but illustrative all the same). Agnostics may be moved by this, but the thing that made them agnostics in the first place (namely, the fear of ‘what if I’m wrong’) is too strong a gravitational pull, I feel, to pull them out of orbit.

Overall, a delightful, intriguing and fantastic read that I recommend whatever your religious view. I cannot recommend this book any higher, read it and feel yourself thinking, emoting and considering with each word. When you put it down, the words will ring in your head and your own thoughts will rise up, revitalised by this concise and clear piece, it’ll make a thinker out of you.

Hyper-Mania

Make a twat of yourself on Question Time you racist nutjob, my friends! After a brief radio silence, I have returned to my keyboard once again!

I realised that I’ve been neglecting you, indeed, starving you of my opinions, reviews and general geekery – which I know you all crave like sugar and spend many a day constantly checking your RSS feeds for your next fix.

It pains me then that I must disappoint for now. But I felt I owe it to you to explain why, this is not yet another assertion that I’m switching to a different blog or anything just a quick update on what I’m doing.

Firstly, the blog. You may’ve noticed the look of the site has gone walkabout, which is my fault entirely – an error when updating the version of wordpress installed on the server – hopefully Louis would be so kind as to put the theme back soon but I know he’s busy at the moment so no rush at all. Secondly, I’m yet to investigate fully but I believe that maybe matgreenfield.com now works in university buildings and halls, or at least it is for me. I’m yet to look into this fully but fantastic if it works.

Secondly, my university course. As you may know, I am at Reading University studying Computer Science, and it’s keeping me occupied to say the least. I know that more work is to come and obviously that is my priority. Those of you who’ve followed this blog since the beginning (I know there are a few of you out there) may remember I started this blog just after I finished college, so juggling the blog and my education is something new to me, and indeed a juggling act in which my education must be caught first if I fail to co-ordinate properly.

Thirdly, in preparation for what I hope will be a very prosperous career in technology journalism after finishing my course, I’m doing what I can to boost my CV in terms of media and outside-course activities – namely joining the uni newspaper (who, at mine and others suggestion, will hopefully be starting off a technology section). I’m also looking into information on writing skills (I’ve taken yet another diversion from my ongoing book list to read “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” by Lynne Truss), the uni television station (who I hear are looking for people to work on a new gadget review show) among a wealth of other stuff going on.

That is not to say, by any means, that I will specifically avoid writing posts and will do so whenever I can, just the pace that I managed to maintain over the summer will be notably reduced.

Coming up, I will finally get around to reviewing Windows 7 (though in the meantime, I reviewed the Release Candidate a few months back), a piece on language and writing inspired, in part, by Truss as well as discussions I’ve heard recently, a review of “The God Delusion” and Tech-Squared makes a triumphant return to your earholes. Stick around, I have cookies for you!

Windows Live Writer – A Practical Review

Good Afternoon, again (You’ll understand why again later). I recently read a rave review about a new application on the Windows Live suite, Windows Live Writer, which had installed itself sneakily on my machine when I last updated Live Messenger. It’s not very often that you go to download a new piece of software and find it’s already on your computer, now that’s service!

livewriter

Windows Live Writer is a blog integration tool that links itself to your blog, supporting all the major blogging platforms, including WordPress (a-thank-you), allowing you to write blog posts with all the creature comforts of Microsoft Word, just as if you were writing a document before posting it online. Features from this include a spell-checker (good for me), standard text formatting tools and previews of how a post will look online before it’s published.

livewriterscreen

I thought the best way to test out the quality of the program is to write an actual blog post, indeed one reviewing the software itself, to my blog and see how it goes. If you look closely at this screenshot, you’ll notice that it’s content is different to this post, that’s because when I was tinkering with the settings (trying to get it to post to two blogs at once) it crashed on me. Lacking an autosave or recovery system, that meant that the post was lost forever. The software does come with options to save drafts as you go both locally and directly to the drafts area on your web server, but neither will save unless you elect to, so keep saving just as you would with any old document, even though Office comes with an autosave function.

As well as the normal old top menu buttons that Microsoft have been gradually phasing out with more recent versions of Office, the word processor facade is re-enforced by the text formatting tools giving everything you’d expect and/or need for a normal blog. It also comes with a few mission-specific buttons for starting/opening/saving new posts. The side menu, which oddly is on the right instead of left, as is normal for most WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors, is half a view of recent posts, drafts and links to the blog, and half an insert menu, pre-loaded with all the normal things you would put on a blog post. Clicking “Add a plug-in” takes you to the Microsoft website, specifically a page about available plug-ins and extra functions that are free and, I’d expect, easy to install.

The bottom menu is more interesting, as it has all the admin stuff that I should (but don’t due to laziness) be putting on each post, including categories, tags and publish dates, which are easy to input and are attached to your post just as with a normal post. It also has tabs to see the post you’re working on in various views, edit, preview and source (which churns up your bog-standard HTML coding).

As a piece of kit I’m whelmed (not over or under). It’s a useful little tool, particularly if I can get it to post to both incarnations of my blog and save me having to do constant re-posts, but it’s nothing to write home about. It’s useful for saving me a bit of hassle and may become my main method for writing blog posts, but if I find another version of this application with even slightly better features, I’m jumping ship.

What it really needs is more layout functions. I’m able to do the standard stuff but inserting images with the software, as I have done above, doesn’t come out the same on the edit mode as it does in the preview, and may look different still when published. For example, if I moved an image around a block of text, it’d be interesting to see the text work around the image, like if I wanted a small image central in this paragraph and text all around it, rather than just the entire paragraph shifting around it, above or below.

Here’s an instructional video from Microsoft on using Writer:

My main reason for writing about this software is because of the impact it has on me and my writing. This is the first blog integration tool I’ve ever been persuaded to use and it has a lot of tools that will make my posts easier to deal with in the future. But the proof is in the pudding, so try it out for yourself and comment below.

In other words, I’m too lazy and have too much Uni work to do to properly finish this post off so I’m passing the buck. I plan to write a post in the next few days on Windows 7 when it’s released on Thursday. I’ve downloaded my free copy that I get for being a student from my university, but after the backlash that Microsoft got from early Vista adopters, I’m going to wait a bit and let MS work out the kinks and quickly throw out a few updates before I delve into the land of Windows 7 on my only fully functioning laptop, but I’ll still do an initial thoughts post and later a review.

Time to hit the books, unfortunately one of my text books is 800 pages so it hurts a bit to hit them…………bad joke I know.

Makeshift Kangaroo

Hi all, I’m writing this in the peaceful serenity and serene peacefulness of the Reading University campus (and using their wifi) because I can, frankly. If you are aware of the problems of accessing my main .com blog from universities, then you’ll understand why this post won’t appear on that site until I return to my flat. I’m returning to Horsham this weekend just for a visit so perhaps I’ll stumble upon the solution there.

I read a news story not one hour ago, regarding Channel 4 (a broadcasting company in the UK) and their deal with Google to provide full television shows and content on YouTube, probably ad-supported (much like the channel itself). Like all the major broadcasters in the UK, they have their own Video-on-Demand (VoD) service online with which they stream full shows (with interspliced short ad-breaks). The big difference between this channel’s VoD and the one run by the BBC, the iPlayer, is that television shows are available from the time they were broadcast and remain (supposedly) available indefinetely, whereas the iPlayer streams programmes for a limited time after initial broadcast, most of the time one week.

For a bit more background, there was a recent project between the aforementioned British broadcasters to provide a single, universal VoD service that would stream all the broadcaster’s content (details are sketchy) in one place. The project was codenamed Project Kangaroo and came to an untimely end when the Competition Commission deemed that a universal service run by all the broadcasters could be “too powerful” and expressed fears that the service could “hurt competition”. The project was ended but subsequently bought by another company in July who said they would launch in the coming months, no such development appeared and there was no indication of how the formal blocks imposed on the project by the CC would be dealt with.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

I heard about Kangaroo when it was in it’s initial stages and was excited by it, as a teenager I watch a lot of TV but socialise, meaning that it’s a pain to have to keep switching between websites and services to get the show I’m looking for when I miss something. The idea of a universal service was delicious and it was disappointing to hear of it’s blockage. But if Channel 4 are willing, and (thanks to Google, only time you’ll hear me say that) able, to put their entire back-catalogue on YouTube, and will run in parallel with 4oD (their own catch-up website) to put new shows online shortly after broadcast, then doesn’t it follow that other broadcasters can to? What do we get then? Why, my friend, we have a universal platform for VoD!

Of course, there are problems to overcome. First, and foremost, the BBC will have to get off their license-fee-funded high horse and put their content on indefinetely (and backlog their old shows if they so choose), which will probably never happen, and then they have nothing to lose from putting the same content on YouTube as well. It wasn’t clear, while Project Kangaroo was still somewhere in the mist, how the Beeb were to run their online content with Kangaroo, given that Channel 4 would undoubtedly have their content on there permanentely and the BBC may not have agreed to do this also, but there is certainly the scope for them to do so which would be the way for the BBC to get full shows on YouTube. Once they’re on-board, it’s quite likely that the other main broadcasters (ITV, Five and Sky) would follow suit, and if they didn’t it wouldn’t really matter (all you’d really miss is Corrie, Neighbours, Gadget Show, Fifth Gear and Futurama). But if they did.

There you have it, a Video-on-Demand service on one univeral platform, which most internet users are familiar with and already know and love. This could be easily acheived without any discussion or deals between the main broadcasters themselves and all they would need is the go-ahead from YouTube (arguably a broadcaster in their own right). This would also avoid all the crap and red-tape from the Competition Commission as long as it’s only ever seen as several individual deals between the broadcasters and Google and never as a joint venture and be far easier to manage if it’s each channel working their own account on the Tube.

This would be the ultimate makeshift Project Kangaroo, and far more convenient than the travesty of watching the universal VoD service in the USA, Hulu, attempting to get it’s act together for a UK service (they were allowed in the US so presumebly avoid the bureaucracy here). It would be far more adaptable and keep up to date with changes on YouTube and with online video content delivery technology in general, without the BBC or any other channel having to shell out to beef up their technology.

Now I think about it, the BBC might as well opt to put their shows on YouTube, it’s mostly already pirated anyhow! Plus, if you don’t pay your license fee, though you can’t watch live tv, you are still allowed to watch BBC iPlayer, so there’s no loss of income by joining this than there is with just iPlayer on it’s own, in fact it’ll probably break up or share out the server demands on the BBC that ISPs are so pissed off about (yes, I know iPlayer is peer-to-peer but the point still stands) and reduce the BBC’s bandwidth cost considerably, so the Beeb could actually save money by doing this.

This is staring them in the face, why don’t they do it!

In other news, I finished The God Delusion the other day and have made a sizeable dent in The Great Gatsby. In any other context you probably wouldn’t consider 30 pages sizeable but given that Gatsby is only about 200 pages, small by most standards, it’s a respectable chunk. I’m hoping to finish it at the weekend to free up shelf space in my flat and add it to my shelf at home – I’m proud of that collection.

Speaking of awesome things, namely me, I was saved £30 today. When I was on the verge, indeed the very pinnacle, of buying Windows 7 Home Premium edition online using my Student Discount to get it cheap. I realised I had to go to my lecture where, talking to someone, I discovered that the University had an educational license to distribute Windows software for FREE. Better yet, it’s available now, so when I’m home for the weekend I will take advantage of the fast internet connection in comparison to here to download the installation file and upgrade my laptop (so I call it because I can upgrade without it deleting my files/programs). At home it will take hours, here it will take days, to download. Now all I need to do is work out how to uninstall my Windows 7 RC dual-boot install, presumebly I can delete the partition that has the OS installed on it but I’m worried it’ll screw up my boot menu that appears when i start up my laptop with which I select an OS installed on the hard drive (7/Vista). If anyone can help, let me know.

Oh and also does anyone know a good image host, I currently use turboimagehost to quickly put my images online so that I can embed or link them into blog posts but the one I use now is pretty unreliable (if you can’t see the picture of John Barrowman on my last post then it’s down again and my point is proven) so if anyone knows a similar but more efficient image host comment and let me know (I have flickr but it takes too long to sign in and I’d rather have a quick and easy one).

I’ve run out of sign off ideas! Goodbye!

I Am What I Am!

As I mentioned in my last (and by last i mean second to last) post, John Barrowman is/was appearing at the Waterstones in Reading to sign copies of his newly released book ‘I Am What I Am’ (named after the famous song from ‘La Cage Aux Folles’, which John either did or is still starring in on the West End). I expressed doubts that I would go to the effort and spend the money of the book to meet him………..but of course I went – do you lot not know me by now!

John BarrowmanHe was sort of round a corner so it was nearly time for me to go up when I saw him, but I got the best picture I could nonetheless, this was well timed on my part because he was posing for a newspaper photographer and was smiling and the like.

When I went up, he greeted me and signed my book and asked how I was, for some reason I lied that I had skipped college to be here, he laughed and said “That’s Ok, you’re not working yet, but you will be!” he added. Why is it that I seem to get educational advice off every celebrity I meet, when my dad met Sylvester McCoy and got his autograph for me, they apparentely had a chat and mentioned that my A-levels were coming up, so Sylvester signed “Good Luck” on the card. I’m going on the basis that if I’ve got one Doctor actor’s autograph, I’ve got all eleven (who would’ve thought you could get William Hartnell’s autograph in 2008).

John (Barrowman) Hancock He then signed my book, there had been a woman meeting everyone at the start (or end, whatever) of the queue and putting in post-it notes of people’s names so that he would spell it correctly. This was great for me, meant I could have my name signed the way I prefer it.

So yes, a splendid afternoon. John is evidentely a very nice bloke.

3D – A Reprise

In case you haven’t read it already, here’s my original post on 3D films/tv/web content that’s worth a read so you can understand my jumping off point for this post!

Last night, I finally saw Up, the new Disney-Pixar film, in 3D. My initial skepticism when it comes to 3D content was dampened by the knowledge that the 3D in this context is done in something called “Disney Digital 3D” which isn’t actually a 3D format, just the name they apply to their own 3D technology. I cannot perfectly explain how it works as well as I can for the anaglyph (red/blue) 3D tech but I’ve got a few vague ideas (and a pair of the glasses to play around with) but I have to admit that it looks fantastic.

Consider myself converted……..well not quite, I’ll continue…

(I have done what I can to avoid major spoilers but be warned they may crop up, I totally recommend seeing this movie!)

Up 3D glasses - I don't know if they're based on the protagonist's own glasses or just the standard shape The film itself revolves around an elderly man, Carl, who spends most of his life, along with his wife, dreaming of following in the footsteps of his hero in travelling to South America. Just before they are ready to leave for their adventure, Carl’s wife, Ellie, passes away, and Carl becomes a recluse living in his house of memories while the rest of the world around him is slowly torn down and rebuilt as a city. Just after the builders succeed in getting him removed from his house, where they want to build a new development, Carl decides to tie up his house to a brigade of helium balloons and take off for South America. Along the way he runs into a young boy, Russell, who happened to be standing on Carl’s porch when the house takes off, a large tropical bird and a talking dog, called Dug (possibly the best character in the film) and stumbles upon a plot by someone Carl thought he could trust.

Now, to the reason I write this, it has been well advertised that this film can be seen in either 2D or 3D, and so from that you’d assume that the film is best viewed in 3D because practically every 3D film released ever has had specially choreographed action to have objects coming out at the camera all the time to take advantage of the immersive 3D experience. This is, happily, not the case, and I will come to why in a moment, but now a bit of background.

3D movies have been around for a very long time, but it is not mainstream enough yet to have warranted different types of 3D movie or any variation upon the title of 3D film. I think this is a folly because, after my experience of ‘Up’ last night, I can see two very distinct categories of 3D film:

This is the first, the ones where the story is so cheap because the studio have spent all their money on the 3D technology, so want to get their money’s worth by having objects and actors ‘reach out’ of the screen and make it more “immersive”.

This example, found on a quick Bing search (I’m still using Bing), is an example of the repeated and eye-watering use of the 3D technology that, far from making you feel immersed in the film, simply makes you cross your eyes. By the end of a film like this you’re wholeheartedly sick from the optical and mental beating induced by having to focus on such a rapidly changing array of big-screen illusions as you try to keep up with the constant motion and sensory confusion of the objects flying at you. As I have mentioned, this type (in contrast to it’s opponent to whom I shall come in a moment) has not been identified as different, nor named differentely. Though this won’t catch on, the title I shall give this is ‘Frontal 3D’ – where the “screen layer”, so to speak, is the background and every other object is superimposed (triple-dimensionally) onto it. I realise, of course, that this is a promotional image that isn’t entirely representative of the 3D in the film itself but I use it simply to make a point of the kind of 3D I take issue with.

The opposite that I can see of this is a type of 3D film (like Up) where the screen continues to fufill it’s 2D film task of being the window from which we see all the action, but unlike 2D-films there is depth beyond the screen so that it is deeper than the 2D equivalent. A good example would be this:

This screenshot, taken from ‘Up’, is a far more (in my opinion) sophisticated way of conducting 3D technology in films (obviously you can’t view this image in 3D, but you can guess how it might be seen), instead of having everything coming out of the screen at you, it is more of a layered experience – this isn’t the best image example I can give but – you would have the house interior and Carl as the primary ‘screen layer’, the biplanes (which are piloted by dogs – see the movie) as a secondary layer beyond that, the blimp as a tertiary layer and the sky as the background. It’s hard to imagine from my description I admit, but with the 3D technology in place it gives a much better experience and is much more pleasing to watch. For the sake of naming the types, I’ll give this type of 3D the title of ‘Layered 3D’.

Pop-Up BookI suppose you could liken the whole thing to a window that you’re watching real action through, or better yet childs pop-up book, where there are several layers with different parts of the overall vista on it that, when looked at from the correct angle (or through polarised lenses in this case) give an extra layer of depth. The juicy difference here is the movement of the objects, which is far more immersive to me. The obvious problem of this is that objects themselves are not quite so rounded as you’d expect, Carl’s nose doesn’t feel a whole lot closer than his face though you can see that there has been 3D applied to objects within these layers I have suggested like in frontal 3D films, but it’s far more subtle. That is not to say that ‘Up’ was devoid of those classic 3D movie moments where things come out at you (usually hands, fingers or objects), but it was done far less than is common practice 3D movie and the experience saved me the eyestrain or headaches that many commonly complain about 3D.

It occurs to me now that one major difference between the examples I have given is the way in which these films were made, but I should (and can) address it, in that one is a live action 3D film and one is digital. The frontal 3D example I have given is a live-action film yes, but for the most part, what vague recollections I have of “Spy Kids 3D” from my childhood is that the majority, if not all, of the 3D action takes place in a green-screen ‘gaming world’, and so most of the 3D content is CG. Personally, I have never seen an entirely live-action 3D movie, though I know that they exist, and I feel that no adult would want to sit through a “grown up” 3D movie (which relates back to my childish gimmick conclusion in my earlier post), other than horror films (which, I add, still use CG in places) where the extra dimension is again used as a gimmick for people who want to be more scared. For example, there is absolutely no reason that a romcom would need to be 3D – you would look stupid to suggest it – and that is what will hold it back from becoming absolutely mainstream, as with the two films I used as examples, and, indeed, my pop-up book analogy, 3D will most likely find a home with childrens films, in particular animated films – Disney and Pixar must be joyous – and enjoy the occasional cocktail party with the horror films. Though I originally wrote off 3D as a gimmick on the whole, I know will concede that it can be a success now that they’ve started doing it right, and I hope the example used in ‘Up’ will become the standard practice.

Disney, along with a number of other film companies, are planning to make 3D far more mainstream, with practically all Disney releases between now and, at least, the end of the year, being released in Disney Digital 3D as well as 2D. If these future releases (which includes Step Up 3, the 3D release that nobody asked for) are released using the same technique that I have, for the moment, titled as Layered 3D, then I think that they will do very well indeed, and their success may help to drive the cost down of seeing a 3D film (last night’s trip was £2 more expensive than the 2D version, but I saw it anyway in the name of investigative journalism!).

I have mentioned frequently that 3D films tend to have more focus on the gimmicks than the storyline, and it could be argued that it was true in this film. The villain wasn’t quite so villainous, the main meat of the film was quite short, though the background stuff we saw of Carl before gave the character much more depth – please excuse the pun and so I think it was salvaged by that. Disney must be paying by the evil cackle now, because the antagonist was weak (and quite easily vanquished) and probably didn’t deserve his fate, somewhat ambiguous though it is (I’m not giving it away, however, see the friggin movie). However, in this case at least, I don’t think this was down to degraded storytelling due to the cost of 3D – because in every aspect besides the villain it’s a very delightful movie and I recommend seeing it highly – and simply a somewhat lacklustre blip in the movie that would’ve occured anyway, regardless of the format they presented it in.

You have witnessed my partial conversion to be more sympathetic towards 3D movies – may the excellent example set by ‘Up’ and the techniques therein become the standard – then it’d be worth looking like Joe 90 everytime you went to the cinema!

I am the one and only!

Though I try to avoid mentioning my personal life in my blog, I have a section of this site dedicated to famous people who I have either met or have seen perform live, which is really just there to help me remember but nevertheless. Adding to it now I should mention several new additions, all of which have occured (or are about to occur) this or last week.

Fresher’s Ball, at University, was on Thursday – themed ‘Black and White’ so bust out the shirts and ties in opposing colours. Chesney Hawkes (a one-hit wonder from the late eighties and early nineties, whose famous song, as mentioned in the title, was released the year I was born) – it’s really a shame that he wasn’t more famous because the guy’s clearly talented but was unfortunate to get stuck with a really memorable song early on and not being able to break away from that. My sister is just old enough to remember the guy clearly so she’s more of a fan than me but I went nevertheless and cheered at him playing more recent songs by other bands before (eventually) getting to the reason we were all there. He also bought along with him Oasis’, Liam Gallagher, who just appeared for no reason, performed ‘Don’t look back in anger’ and then left. After Chesney, Blazing Squad also appeared but nobody was interested so they left pretty sharpish. Here’s a picture I got of Hawkes and Gallagher –

Chesney Hawkes and Liam Gallagher

I don’t really know what Gallagher was doing hanging out with Chesney Hawkes – it’s like Satan following around a Care Bear!

So that’s 3 new famous people/group to add to my list, though I only add Blazing Squad as a matter of principle to list all of them even though I only glanced over once and didn’t pay them much heed.

More importantly, however, is who I’m ABOUT to meet – as you know I’ve moved to the city of Reading to attend university. It’s a pretty big city with a pretty big shopping centre and (thankfully for me) a pretty big Waterstones. Now guess who’s signing copies of his new book tomorrow at the Reading Waterstones…..

John Barrowman!

I have initial doubts over whether or not to go, mainly because I’ve got lectures until 1 and he turns up at 1, so when I do get there I’ll be queueing for ages. But I’ll probably still go just to say I’ve met John Barrowman!

We can upgrade him, better, faster, stronger….

Recently, the BBC broadcast a documentary by legendary poet Simon Armitage about the culture of repeatedly upgrading consumer technology every few years. I could embed the entire documentary below but it would be distracting so (after you have read this) go over the the iPlayer and watch the documentary ‘Upgrade Me’, which will be available for a few more days. This was very interesting but there were a few points that Armitage doesn’t explore as much as I think he should’ve done. But first I’ll give you a brief background.

Armitage explores how quickly (and with ever-accelerating pace) gadgets that we buy are traded in or otherwise thrown away in favour of more functional and complicated technology, beginning with a rummage around his house to find old gadgets that he had owned over the years, explaining their origins and use (or lack thereof) and visits a refuge tip to look at the amount of gadgets he finds there and how most of it would’ve been brand new, cutting edge, only a few years ago. He does not, however, say that there’s anything wrong with it, as he rightly puts “without upgrading we’d still be stuck in the dark ages”, but (does a fairly middle-aged man thing) compares the sentimentality and robustness of technology during his childhood in comparison to now. One of the points that intrigued me the most is he suggests that we upgrade so often that we lose all memories and attachment to the device, or else don’t have it for long enough to develop an attachment before we part with it in favour of a better model. I’m not sure if this is true.

If you’re an avid reader of this blog, you’ll be aware that I am constantly talking about what phone I should get now that my time to upgrade has come around again (the fact that most people upgrade their phones as soon as they can, regardless of functional use, was one of Armitage’s main points), and I’m eager to get a new phone with bright shiny features like a smartphone OS, full QWERTY keyboard and GPS, few of which have any additional use, but is assumed to be required on a modern phone.

Another broadcast show, as part of BBC Four’s technology season, was “The Life and Death of the Mobile Phone” and amid the disgustingly sentimonious voice that it gave to the phone it followed it did make an interesting point, and I think my opinion of gadgets and upgrading is related. My mobile, for example, carries around 400 texts that I’ve received since I last did a mass-deletion in August, it has been the messenger for good and bad news, has heard me whisper my darkest secrets into it, seen my facebook and has generally been a go-between for my social life, throughout being just as functional and seldom failing. I feel an attachment to the device for such a thing. However, my iPod (third generation nano) is, though a newer device than my phone, a run-down, half-broken soon to fail completely device and I feel nothing in buying a new one simply because of the functional and practical benefits of doing so. Now, you may (as I commonly do) blame Apple for producing a device that fails quite soon into it’s life and ties me into using iTunes as my main library – with the specific intention that I should have to buy another iPod to continue with my pain-stakingly set up library. But perhaps iTunes is the point here.

My phone is set up and adjusted for the needs I have developed over the years, the correct ringtone, wallpaper, menu colour and holds sparodic texts that I have received that I want to keep. iTunes, however, allows me to basically clone my iPods contents and settings, as the moment I plug in a new model, it automatically syncs the library I was previously syncing with the old model, and so I can continue using the new model with a pretty easy transition and with little or no direct transference of files from one device to the other, as I would have to with a new phone. Congratulate or blame Apple for having such software as you will, but does that mean that upgrading is only a sentimental thing if you notice a transition? I don’t think that’s entirely true, because functionality will invariably differ, but there is still strong evidence to say that emoting with an inanimate object, such as my phone, wouldn’t happen if I could just zap everything from my old phone across in one fell swoop.

But then, there’s always the fear, the same as you commonly get with a new school, new house or even just a new doctor who, that it won’t be as good once you upgrade. As you may’ve noticed I recentely upgraded my blog, in a sense, and could’ve done so months ago, the only thing that held me back was the fear that things wouldn’t be the same on a new site, or that something unexpected or annoying would happen that made the new thing a pain to use (such as not being to access it from university halls, stupid education system). The mentality of “I’m comfortable with this, I’ll stick to what I know” is all too common, particularly with older or less tech-enthused people, my mother (for example) spent years using the same phone, which got so quickly warn down, and only upgraded when she absolutely had to, for fear of having to get used to a new system. Perhaps this is the correct mentality, mainly because of the waste it produces by scrapping our phones every couple of years, and this was, indeed, the classic way of doing things. I read an article by Shakespearean actor Richard Briers in which he mentions his distaste for the digital revolution against technologies that, though archaic (indeed ancient) by modern standards, work perfectly well for his needs (among other reasons, including the loud train conversations of people using mobiles).

Briers and Armitage (who uses an iPhone and was not opposed per se, merely curious about the upgrade culture) make me think in this case. I feel sometimes like I should’ve been born in the 1940′s as I have a great love and appreciation of the classic methods, such as why I won’t buy an Amazon Kindle (I love the smell of books too much) but neither men, nor me, can deny that utmost convenience comes from making things smaller and easier to carry, and that the resultant rudeness of people on mobile phones is an etiquette that some people choose to ignore regardless of what gadgetry their using. I’m sure when the portable radio was invented and music radio became the norm, that older people were complaining of rudeness then too. It’s not the gadget that’s the problem when it comes to etiquette, it remains (now and forever) dependent on the user, fact is some people are just rude naturally, regardless of if that’s expressed through loud phone conversations or loud playing gramophones. We may lose attachment to devices that only enter our lives for a relatively fleeting time, but in the end it’s simply a combination of metals and plastics that does our bidding, feels no emotion (regardless of how we may feel towards it) and will do exactly the same functions in my pocket or in a skip. Then allowing me to obtain a range of new features that are usually infinitely more useful to me, I don’t just buy the first shiny phone I see, I look at the features (such as needing GPS to get around Reading easier).

Upgrading, defined (by me) as switching something old for a newer equivalent for advantageous reasons, is a fact of life, not just technology. It happens in daily routines (would you hold onto an empty toothpaste tube for sentimental reasons?), relationships (not saying anything there), lifestyles (marry into money anyone?) and, as we have seen, technology. As I have oft-quoted, Armitage said in the documentary “If we didn’t upgrade, we’d still be in the dark ages” and inevitably older, archaic technologies will be phased out in favour of more convenient, practical or useful things at an ever-accelerating pace (who still has a video cassette player, and that was less than a decade ago). It can, and has, made our lives easier, taken away grievances we had with older machines and given us new ones to gripe with, this is the way it has been since (corny as this sounds) the dawn of man, and it will continue to do so. But the one thing that everyone has failed to mention in this discussion is that, though people will complain that old tech was built to last, they’re not being forced (yet) to upgrade, if you like what you’ve got, by all means stick with it, but anyone who wants to will upgrade with relish.

I’m going to go to O2 tomorrow, see about upgrading my phone.

Kindle in the UK – Reader’s Dream, Collector’s Nightmare!

Amazon Kindle in the UKIn tech news (as I sometimes talk about), the Amazon Kindle, the eBook reader from the infamous internet superstore that shares it’s name, is to be released in the UK after months of speculation…………..sort of. Months of expecting the Kindle have been delayed by the inability to find a UK phone carrier willing to make a deal with Amazon to offer free wireless internet to anyone who buys a Kindle so that they can take advantage of the eBook store that Amazon provides have finally been put to rest by an unlikely source. Instead of wasting their time talking to UK providers, they went closer to home and talked to communication giant AT&T, who (coincidentally) have deals with three major UK providers (O2, Orange and Vodafone) to provide this free data plan by sharing use of their technology (meaning you still download books from America but have a signal in the UK), though why they didn’t do that in the first place and give us UK Kindle months ago is baffling. If you buy a Kindle, however, you do so from the American Amazon store, in fact you have to go to it via Amazon.com, and pay a bit extra to have it shipped to the UK which, along with an import tax, is all included in Amazon’s price of £217.

Currently, however, there is no UK Kindle eBook store, and all books have to be bought via the American store. This is only temporary though as Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, did confirm a UK eBook store for the Kindle which will show the cost of books in sterling instead of dollars. As I’ve mentioned, the Kindle accesses 3G internet with which to download books via UK masts which link directly to the AT&T service in the States, so data charges are immense (very lucky that the data is free on the Kindle eh?) but for that same reason (supposedly) the web browser on all models shipped to the UK will be removed so that people cannot access websites and blogs through their Kindle and avoid adding more to the already hefty bill that Amazon is fitting to provide this service.

For an eBook reader, £217 is damn good. Most high quality readers I have seen thus far are around the same price and don’t include the free data, many you have to download from a computer and put onto the reader, and both to make sales and meet demand, Amazon’s decision is a risky one. If people are put off by the good, but still high, price of the reader, and very few UK citizens buy an imported Kindle, Amazon will have to try and match an expensive data cost on flimsy sales (anyone who has taken their 3G phone abroad will know how costly it is, now consider that on a multi-national corporation scale). I am sympathetic to Amazon for trying to hard to meet the customer demand for Kindle’s in the UK going to such extreme and risky lengths, I will probably not buy one (if you read this blog often you’ll know I’m a fan of the old-school paperbacks) though I enjoy the concept and hope it works out for them.

There is very little way I can end this post conclusively, a lot of detail on the UK Kindle is yet to be revealed, so here’s a related CollegeHumor video –

Until next time!