Messages

"You bastards said this was going to be a GOOD movie! ARRGHHH!"

Futsie Matt.

"Matt just couldn't take it any more when asked to sign yet more autographs related to Doctor Who."

Every one of the Autobots has to suddenly blend into their surroundings and go unnoticed and what do they do?

Quite. It might have looked a bit suspicious if there were suddenly a load of cars parked by the house, but less so than massive robots wandering about. Still, that opening with the helicopter flying in, transforming and then taking apart that army base was exactly right for a Transformers film. At least the series started on a high.

Shame she doesn't have an iPad Air, otherwise I'd have just recommended a Logitech Ultrathin.

What email service does she use?

Much as I loved Skyfall and all the things you got in it that weren't in normal Bond films, I am slightly worried that the same writing team is onboard.  You expect Bond plots to be bonkers but after the opening sequence, huge swathes of Skyfall made absolutely no-sense whatsoever.

It pretty much guarantees I won't be watching it. Casino Royale was clearly a blip for that writing team—a smart, well-written, solid outlier; Skyfall was a confused mess and one of the most misogynistic films I've ever had the misfortune to see. "Bond rapes a sex-trafficked woman in the shower and then later casually quips as she's shot in the head!" "Effective female field agent (although she can't drive because LOL WOMEN CAN'T DRIVE) decides to chuck in MEN'S WORK become a secretary!" "Tune in next time for 90 minutes of Bond making grunting noises while sitting there just watching tits, which might actually be a bit less horrible."

I'm not sure some of the Transformers movies are flat-out bad so much as missed opportunities. The first film's broadly good, and could have been a solid slice of sci-fi fare had it been de-Bayed a bit. Dial down the stupid comedy moments (Autobots 'hiding' around the house) and nuke the rampant sexism. I recall the second one was pretty bad and the third just boring, but the last one also had the basis for a decent film. Early on, there's the foundation of some decent and dark sci-fi. Bits of the script actually work very well. But, again, Bay does his Bay thing, and we get awful stereotype Autobots, faceless Decepticons, truly awful sexism (including, truly bizarrely, an argument about statutory rape that was entirely unnecessary), and a run-time that's ludicrously long. You kind of wonder how a different director could have at least worked with a couple of those films and come up with something interesting.

As for Terminator, I've watched them all and also that TV show with Lena Headey. I still consider the first a great piece of relatively low-budget grimy sci-fi. It's a focussed, tight piece of techno-horror. The second film is comparatively flabby and flashy, the Aliens to Terminator's Alien. After that, it all goes off the boil a bit. The TV show was watchable but rarely essential, the third movie had an interesting premise but I recall it being quite dull to watch, and the fourth one had some decent ideas here and there but was full of cliche, although I'm not sure it deserved quite as negative a response as it got.

As for this reboot, the premise just looks weirdly goofy, but I'm sure we'll all watch it anyway...

It's OK—you'll be rescued from that thought when the NHS is sold off and you have to sell your new house to pay for hospital treatment.

Ah. And reading the Telegraph piece, that's a curious use of the word 'victory'. More like only getting punched in the face nine times rather than ten.

That's my understanding of it, having read around a bit: if you're using a payment provider, the onus is on THEM to deal with this crap. The problem is when you are doing the card transactions (such as some software/service devs I know).

It's entirely random anyway. One friend said his kids have watched all sorts, but one was recently properly freaked out, by all things, due to a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode.

Still, it's something I'll learn in time, although mini-IP is currently only five months old and already well-versed in design shows, Doctor Who and QI.

I guess it depends what you use it for. However, I have a 27-inch iMac and have long used A6 Graphires. I use it instead of a mouse for a pointing device, because I otherwise get RSI. Accuracy doesn't seem to be a problem.

I've never heard of Wordery before, but that looks like a good bet to at least try in the future. As for the NC, I'm happy going direct and not against paying full cover-price (versus online discounts), but then when the costs mount up due to postage, it's harder to justify now we've a mini-IP in the house.

Form my understanding, if you use a payment provider, the onus is on them to deal with VAT changes; if not, you're screwed. It's a terrible change, ostensibly to benefit small businesses and stop larger ones getting away with selling from places with lower VAT levels; but the reality is the rules will do the opposite.

[Ichabod]

The ending of Ichabod was a bit odd. It was good, certainly, but not the sort of ending I expected. Felt a little rushed. Still think there's a real disconnect between the tone here and the early stories when there was no mention of any meta-narrative shenanigans whatsoever, considering how heavily the story leant on them towards the end.

Mm. I've really enjoyed this series from the start, but these past few episodes just felt... off. The bones are there of a decent conclusion, but, I dunno, it was like it was trying to be a bit clever, whereas before Ichabod had been a quite elegant and streamlined piece of writing.

Stickleback gets nice and creepy. I've got no clue what's Stickleback's going to do next week, which is nice - I hate being able to second-guess an ending.

This series has been so good that it's convinced me to buy the second trade, because I want all this stuff collected as soon as possible. The art is fantastic, the script keeps twisting and turning, and I also love that I've no idea what's going to happen next.

Yep. It's also similarly poisonous. I suffer from SAD in the darker months, and was absolutely thrilled when the Lighter Later campaign secured a surprising level of cross-party support for a private member's bill on looking into changing the British timezone. The bill, had it got anywhere, would have resulted in a report on feasibility, which itself could have eventually triggered a trial run of no clocks changing for a few years (i.e. always staying on summer time), or the UK moving to CET (matching France's timezone). Naturally, there are issues with that (not least morning darkness in the far north), but the benefits could also be huge.

The Tories, Lib Dems and Labour were all basically in favour of at least the report (if not terribly enthusiastic—there weren't really any major advocates), with the Tories then adding any change would require the agreement of every component part of the UK, clearly not wanting to piss off the Scots with the then looming referendum. But the Scots didn't scupper anything—instead, some fuckwit Tory from Cornwall used the bill as a means to argue Cornwall should have an opt-out and therefore become a UK region (or even country) by the backdoor. The bill was filibustered and died.