Are Women Human? and Cheese Problems Solved

The Bookseller oddest title of the year short-list has been announced with some very strange titles capturing the eye of the judges. Unfortunately my book, Up Yours You One Eyed Bastard didnt make the list, and the sequel, Screw You And The Horse You Rode In On is outside the publishing date.

Heres the titles that made the cut :

I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen
How to Write a How to Write Book
Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
Cheese Problems Solved
If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs
People who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood

Although these titles are weird, they werent the only ones. Horace Bent, diarist and custodian of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book title said "I must pay homage to those books that narrowly missed out on a shortlist place. These were, in no particular order: Drawing and Painting the Undead; Stafford Pageant: The Exciting Innovative Years 1901–1952; and Tiles of the Unexpected: A Study of Six Miles of Geometric Tile Patterns on the London Underground.

All sound like they are positively thrilling reads, and I do hope that the authors will try again next year. Honourable mention should also go to two titles that were ruled out because they were published too long ago: an unlikely-sounding HR manual called Squid Recruitment Dynamics, and the fascinating anthropological tome Glory Remembered: Wooden Headgear of Alaska Sea Hunters."

It astounds me that someone has the time to sit down and write a book about this stuff. My tinfoil hat is off to them for spending the time to put finger to keyboard.

Via theBookseller and Stuff

Megatron busted for dope smuggling - claims amnesia

You know, its always funny to see what people will claim to try and get out of being convicted. In our good old wacky New Zealand, a plucky young chap named Nicholas (last name not given for fear of shaming whole family) has happily gone down that path.

The young man was by all accounts a standard Uni student, but after an alleged knock to the noggin, he lost his mind, legally changed his name to Megatron and transformed (ha ha) into the mindless drug hoover we see today.

Why Megatron? Why not? There's probably many other names you could use in the same situation (going out of your freaking mind) but that's as good as any other. Maybe Trainspotting was a bit obvious, and Orient Express was taken.

Needless to say, after a failed attempt at drug smuggling, he was nabbed in Canada, deported back to New Zealand, and put before a judge who duly sent him down for 6 years and 6 months. He is not being held in suspended animation underneath the Hoover Dam, but rather he is more likely at Paremoremo being nervous in the shower.

I wonder if Starscream, Barricade and Rawhide are coming to break him out?

Via Stuff

Turn on, Jack In, Tune Out - future upgrade may be difficult\costly

Johnny Mnemonic eat your heart out - looks like thought controlled computer interaction is not far off. A company called Emotiv has unveiled a new Gaming Headset which uses the brainwaves in your freaking head to control action on the screen. While still in the "box moves roughly where I want it to" stage, this will quickly advance to the "jacking in" as described so vividly in cyberpunk novels such as The Neuromancer by William Gibson.

Widespread use will allow peoples dreams and experiences being recorded to be viewed by others (Strange Days). Youtube will expand to cover live streaming from people, and news cameramen will be out of work. Eventually this will lead to neural lace's being inserted into our heads (Iain M. Banks novels on the Culture) and we will use our new found machine power to accelerate the growth and potential of the human race to record our entire brain onto crystals and share lots of pr0n.

Either way, I reckon this has to be one of the most amazing releases I've read about in a wee while - pretty cool when you think where this could take us. Although can you image trying to get a new upgrade for the circuitry in your head?

Read the article on News.com.au here and check out the company site Emotiv.com here.

Ricky Gervais believes in Darwin

Here is a neat article written by Ricky Gervais about becoming an Atheist. I like Ricky Gervais, his comedy shows The Office and Extras are very funny but I think the best insight into who he is, his comedy and his beliefs comes from listening to his podcast\radio shows.

Hearing Ricky try to explain to friend Karl Pilkington the theories about life is a comedy sketch in itself. Just the other day I was listening to one his podcasts and Karl truly believed that a stick insect had 'shagged' a stick in order for it to take on the characteristics rather than evolve.

Not many celebrities have actually come out and said they are atheists, its a bit of a taboo thing to do. I think it is great, and more celebs should follow his lead. Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant (his collaborator) are both advocates for the scientific and have both mentioned their disbelief in such hocus pocus as Magic, Ghosts, Religion and other non scientifically proven theories. Hopefully they will continue to explain it to Karl the Layman thus entertaining the masses for a while longer.
If you get a chance then do listen to the podcasts, they are available on itunes and other media.

Rubber poop monster stalks sewerage plant workers

I reckon this is the weirdest thing I have read today. A sewerage plant in Eastbourne, East Sussex, called in a scam artist, err I mean paranormal investigator Michael Kingscote, to check out their plant after sightings of a "zombie-like figure who roams the tunnels". Right - whatever. If we disregard the obvious explanations of some homeless guy wandering around, or over-active imagination, I reckon it leaves us with one possibility. Someone has stolen the rubber poop monster outfit from Kevin Smiths film Dogma, and is stalking the workers for some nefarious reason ala Scooby Doo

Yes, the Golgothan is back and he's bad. Scaring sewerage plant workers is obviously part of some enormous devilish scheme to take over the world and turn it into the next plane of Hell. Or another Starbucks.

Or it could be someone dressed as the Golgothan, scaring people away from the sewerage plant because its not out in the middle of nowhere like most sewerage plants no no - its in the middle of a city, next to the Bank. And they are tunnelling in to steal the Crown Jewels, which just happen to be there temporarily for cleaning, under the cover of darkness, using the monster to scare off workers who might uncover their fiendish plan. But the plucky team of psychic investigators, some who are ex-navy seals, uncover the crafty plot, and blow up the plant to save the jewels from the thieves. Cue big explosion, cue people diving left and right to escape fireball, cue short sharp shower of shit.

Shit - I think I just came up with a new movie plot. What's Michael Bay's phone number again?

XKCD - funny funny funny.

Check out the XKCD website if you haven't already for some super funny webtoons. Heres a couple of examples to whet yer whistle.

Michael Bay is Awesome!!!

Michael Bay gets a bad rap these days for his over the top, overly long and poorly scripted movies.

I for one actually dont mind the numbingly blatent action and fireball explosions that seem to crop up in his films. The Rock was great, Armageddon was ridiculous, The island was actually quite clever and Transformers was not bad. In saying that here is a video for an internet fibre optic company that he is endorsing. It is quite witty. After the Jump.

Poor polling leads to inconclusive results - BTW Go the Canes.

Rugby. Lifeblood of our small nation at the bottom of the South pacific. Or is it? According to a poll presented on Stuff today, more Kiwi's are turning away from Rugger and doing, well, who gives a shit really. My point is that its yet another example of poor opinion polling and poor journalism. Combined they create a bullshit article that plays on the ever present undercurrent of malaise we feel every year when the rugby season starts.

So, this article in Stuff is titled "Kiwi's losing interest in Rugby". That's nice. And on what amazingly insightful piece of investigative journalism do they base the revelation on? A poll. Well, after being polled a few times, I know the calibre of questions the most pollsters ask. They are generally slanted in some way, whether they mean to or not, and will probably skew the results towards a specific outcome. This particular one asked people whether or not they would be taking more, less or the same interest in rugby this year compared to previous ones.

Ok, not very specific, but not only that, they list the results and then talk about MORE people feeling bummed about rugby this year. Sorry? Did I miss something? You asked a small sample of people (500 which is minuscule) one question and are now drawing a different result? They asked people if they would be more or less interested in rugby, but this does not tell you if this is different to LAST year. Or the year before. At no time does it point to historical data. The only thing you can tell from this poll is that for a small sample of people, 29% were less interested, 54% the same and 14% were more interested.

To get an accurate result, to answer the question on whether people are more or less interested in rugby this year, compared to other years, they would need to poll a LOT more people every year, at the same time of year, and compare the data from each year.

They also draw conclusions based on irrelevant fact. They state that this is because we got so much rugger last year, and that we lost the world cup. Yes - I said it. We screwed the pooch. Farted with the new girlfriend and fluffed the blanket. We George W. Bushed it. We came a gutser. We ballsed it up. It was, by all accounts, a bit of a booboo. But, I still support the All Blacks - they are a fantastic bunch of strapping lads who could've taken those South African finalists with one arm tied behind their backs any day.

I digress. Anyway, the point is, this is baseless conjecture - its like me taking a poll of the neighbourhood on cat's and then using this information to conclude a point about dogs. The information may seem to be related, but unless you actually ask the specific question, its just a guess.

You may say at this point, "What the hell do you care?" and you'd be right. I don't. But I wanted to talk about rugby without being all "Go the 'canes!" and sound like a sports nut.

Ahem

GO THE CANES!!

Kevin Smith looks a bit Southparky

Being a fan of Kevin Smith, I enjoy his podcast he releases every week with Scott Mosier call Smodcast. He's got it on hiatus at the moment while he's filming his new flick Zack and Miri make a Porno, but its usually there to download every Tuesday. He's very open with his life, sharing things that the average person probably wouldn't, but its kind of refreshing. For those of you who do subscribe to Big Kev's verbal wonderland, or if you are wanting to get into it, here's a YouTube vid using snippets of the Smodcast put to animation.

Not sure who this guy is who made it, but its bloody good. Check out Kevin Smiths fan site Quickstop Entertainment, and his online diary (which gets updated when he's not filming) for an in depth view into Kevin Smith's life.



For more amusement, check out how Kev deals with a heckler from the crowd at the Comicon in 2007. Even if you're not a fan of Kevin Smith, its still a good laugh.

NASA urged to focus on sending people to Mars.

An interesting article over at NewScientist.com suggests that maybe NASA’s plan to go to the Moon by 2020 is not as important as going to Mars. It is true that many people think that if the Space Shuttle was not developed back in the 70’s it would have freed up money and resources to accomplish just this feat. We could have had a presence on Mars as early as the mid eighties had we not been languishing around in Low Earth Orbit. Now a group of space experts and NASA officials say that NASA should return the focus on getting to the red Planet and scale down the plans for a permanent settlement.

Far Cry Movie all kinds of crap

Uwe Boll, director of such classic movies as Bloodrayne (huh?) Blackwoods (who?) and Sanctimony (what?) has released a trailer for his upcoming movie Far Cry. Yes, based directly on the award wining PC game which rocked all kinds of awesome all over my PC, is a movie which will undoubtedly cause me to vomit uncontrollably all over my PC. And not because its a gore fest, more a worst-movie-ever fest.

See the trailer in all its terrible glory below. Who keeps getting this guy to make movies? Everything he touches turns to crap, although to give him some credit, most of it was crap to start with.

I think this will be a straight to DVD release and rank alongside Doom as yet another bad PC game to movie translation.

The Fan Edits - Sometime Better than the Real Thing

I stumbled across this website the other day, http://www.fanedit.org/. It is a site where a bunch of people that love movies but think that the originals need a little tweaking. So the edit them down themselves and the make them available to to the public to download.

I am not usually into this sort of thing as I feel most films I like are perfect the way they are. But in saying that I was fascinated when I read the list of edits that one guy had made to the Star Wars Special Editions that came out on DVD in 2004. There are some new scenes that he has created and edited in that fill in a few inconsistancies such as using the Imperial March theme which was never in the original. He has upped the ante on some of the space battles and done some colour correction. Overall it is a very good look at Star Wars the way that many fans would have liked it. And yes, in this version Han shoots first. I have included a couple of screenshots of the new stuff so you can see what I am getting at.

List of changes and edits:
1 - Star Wars Logo: originally it receded way too quickly so this has been slowed down to match the speed in the rest of the saga.
2 - The crawl appears slightly earlier now, as it did pre ANH, so it appears at the correct music cue that Williams’ intended, and how I remember it.
3 - As the camera pans down to Tatooine you now see the 3 moons instead of just 2
4 - Tatooine now rotates slightly as the ships fly overhead
5 - Re-coloured all lasers
6 - Removed the horrible blue hazing as the stardestroyers engine come into view
7 - Changed the explosion as the Tantive IV is hit to remove a lot of the smoke.
8 - Added a jerk to the motion of the Tantive IV as it is hit
9 - Speeded up the star field in that shot so the Tantive IV seems to be moving as fast as it did in previous shots.
10 - Colour correction of the whole film to remove the blue tint. The Tantive IV’s walls are now white.
11 - Re-coloured R2’s dome lights throughout the movie so they match closer to the rest of the saga. The front light now blinks from red to blue.
12 - Re-edited the Tantive IV corridor battle to fix continuity issues where troopers die more than once.
13- Added blaster flashes to all blasters that have them missing as they fire.
14 - Added blast flashes to the troopers where they are hit
15 - Corrected issues where the blasters flash as if they were fired on set but no laser bolts were present. Added the lasers to fix this throughout.
16 - Fixed the jump cut where 3PO & R2 cross the corridor on the Tantive IV & the doorway explodes.
17 - When Vader enters the Tantive IV a Stormtrooper lets go of the head of a dead trooper but that you can see that the actor slowly lowers his head. This has been fixed and the troopers head now drops at speed more like a dead body.
18 - Added blinking lights to Vader’s chest plate
19 - Vader’s eyes re-coloured to remove the red tint.
20 - When 3PO is looking for R2 a trooper falls to the floor behind him as if he has been shot but there is no laser fire. Added some lasers & a flash as the trooper is hit.
21 - Smoothed / fixed the jump cut as R2 extends his third leg and heads for 3PO & the one where he leaves 3PO
22 - Fixed the error in the scene where Vader is strangling Antilles the trooper in the background changes position in one shot. Originally his legs are closed and his blaster is in a totally different position.
23 - Fixed an FX issue when Leia is hit by the stun blaster the glow effect is missing on part of her dress.
24 - In the scene where R2 presses the button to open the pod door you now see his arm retract
25 - Re-coloured the interior of the escape pod to blue due to continuity issues in this scene.
26 - As the escape pod blasts off it now begins to rotate as it does in the rest of the shots
27 - When the imperial commander says “hold your fire” the trajectory of the escape pod has been changed so it is heading downwards and away from the ship instead or just heading straight which caused a continuity error in the next shot as we see the underbelly of the stardestroyer , which means it was heading downwards.
28 - Changed the stars & stardestroyer view from inside the pod so the ship & stars now recede at different rates
29 - You now see the escape pod enter the atmosphere of Tatooine.
30 - Every FX shot has been either touched up or redone in some form or another, but too many to mention every one.
31 - On Tatooine the escape pod canopy has been re-coloured to remove the odd blue colour
32 - In the some scenes the sky has been changed to match other shots.
33 - Added the sandcrawler from the OUT to replace the static shots when 3P0 thinks he is rescued
34 - Completely new canyon wipe so the rocky surroundings that R2 travels through matches closer to what Tatooine looks like in the PT. Also brightened the scene slightly
35 - Fixed a shot of R2 after he is captured where you see the mark of a restraining bolt before it is attached. In some previous shots it is also somewhat visible but I was unable to fix this.
36 - Fixed a placement continuity error with the restraining bolt that the Jawas fix to R2
37 - Added a battle droid to the scrap inside the Sandcrawler. Also brightened up the inside scenes Fixed
38 - Fixed R2’s eye dome in the shot inside the sandcrawler where it looks like you can see Kenny Baker inside.
39 - Inside the sandcrawler 3PO’s eyes blink as he stands. Fixed
40 - Re-coloured the sky in the SE shots of the sandtroopers & Sandcrawler so the colour the sky is less saturated and closer matches the sky we see at the homestead.
41 - When Beru calls to Luke as they are about to inspect the droids, bushes appear & disappear from shot to shot. Removed the bushes from the shots of Luke to fix this error.
42 - Removed a wire visible coming out of 3PO’s neck while Owen talks to him at the sale
43 - Removed the repeated shot of R2 & the red R5 unit to fix a continuity error. Replaced with a new shot.
44 - Fixed the pink sky effect just before this scene fades out.
45 - Added the missing glow from R2’s holo light in the garage.
46 - Brightened & desiderated the sunset scene.
47 - Fixed the colour problem in the shot where 3PO jumps as Luke activates the restraining bolt in the garage. In the 2004 DVDs this shot was sepia. An example of some very bad colour problems with these DVDs.
48 - As Luke races out of the Garage to use his macrobinoculars I have added 3PO running out of the doorway to fix an error that he suddenly appears out of nowhere.
49 - New macrobinocular graphics that add in 3PO. All other macrobinocular graphics changed too.
50 - Removed the droids tracks from a previous take make it look like it is being pulled along by a cord.
51 - When Owen shouts Luke the Treadwell droid is in a totally different place than the previous shot and a fly lands on the camera lens. Fixed both issues.
52 - In the shot where the Tusken raiders see Luke’s speeder travelling through the canyon the speeder suddenly seems to speed up towards the end and looks unnatural. Recomposited the speeder to fix this.
53 - Re-coloured the sky in some shots when Ben rescues Luke so it is more blue instead of very grey/ white, which it isn’t in the shot where Ben scares the Tusken raiders.
54 - Smoothed the jump cut where Luke ignites the sabre in Obi-Wan’s hut
55 - Added the missing ornament on Ben’s table in the shot of Leia’s hologram.
56 -Added the missing cloak on the wall behind Luke as he ignites the sabre.
57 - Re-edited the whole “Ben’s Home” not only to fix the continuity errors but also because the conversation about the force and Luke’s father is now all together and flows better instead of being split into 2 separate conversations. It now starts off with the viewing of the hologram and fixes the continuity problems.
58 - Added a new death Star sequence prior to the conference room scene to give the death star a better reveal. It now orbits a planet in all shots up until it is reported that it is fully operational.
59 - Changed the torture droids syringe arm. Removed the writings and added a laser effect.
60 - Mos Eisley approach re-edited. Removed some of the creatures on the first shot & extended the path of the landspeeder so it now fully enters the town.
61 - Completely removed the Ronto/ Jawa sequence.
62 - Removed the probe droid hit but the worker droid.
63 - Removed both Rontos from the checkpoint scene.
64 - Removed the probe droid from this scene also
65 - Fixed the ship that flies in front of the vaporator making it look tiny.
66 - When Luke looks over to the cantina it is heavily cast in shadow but as they approach there are no shadows. This has been fixed.
67 - Added facial movements to some cantina creatures.
68 - In the shot where you see Ponda Babba’s severed arm I have removed the blood & replaced the hand with the hoof like one we see him with in other shots.
69 -More facial movements & blinks for Greedo
70 -HAN SHOOTS FIRST!! Greedo no longer shoots either.
71 - Removed the Jabba scene
72 - As they approach docking bay 94 you see R2 at the side of 3PO but as the camera pans and he goes out of shot you suddenly see him appear again from a different direction, which would be impossible for him to appear so quickly. Fixed this error
73 - Re-added the fade wipe as they approach the falcon.
74 - Added the falcons dish in the docking bay shot and expanded the docking bay.
75 – Slightly re-edited the docking bay shootout to fix some continuity issues
76 - Fixed the issues with Hans “wobbly” wrist as he fires
77 - Added the missing middle strut to all the Falcons cockpit window scenes.
78 - Added the blue glow back to the Falcons engines.
79 - As the falcon escapes Tatooine it now actually does some manoeuvres instead of “listing lazily to the left”80 - New Alderaan for all the viewscreen shots81 - New Alderaan explosion
82 - Re-rotoscoped all lightsabres and fixed Luke’s green & wobbly sabre during the training session.
83 - Re-composited the holo chess character so they look more like holograms now.
84 - In close-up shots of R2 the background has the control light from the Death Star interior. These shots now have the correct background.
85 - Fixed the jump cut as Luke turns off his sabre.
86 - Added the colour to the remotes laser that was missing from the 2004 DVD’s
87 - In the scene where Vader says “I told you she would never….” he gestures after he has stopped talking. This has been fixed.
88 - More asteroids when the Falcon reaches the Alderaan system
89 - New docking bays for exterior shots to match the new interior ones.
90 - Removed the blue screen pole that is visible as the Falcon enters the docking bay and the girder crane in the top left which isn’t there when you see the interior of the docking bay
91 - Added a glow to the shield light to all shots of the docking bay interior.
92 - Added the censored shot of the officer being hit as they break into the control room.
93 - Re-coloured the displays in the control room so they are no longer black & white
94 - The Death Star’s interiors are now metallic grey instead of the horrible blue.
95 - When Han, Luke & chewy wait at the elevator a trooper walks past them wearing a light coloured uniform but in the next shot it is a dark uniform. Re-coloured the light uniform to fix this.
96 - Added the censored shot of the officer being hit in the detention cell shootout.
97 - In the final shots of this sequence a trooper falls down the stairs but only the scenery was hit. The trooper now gets hit.
98 - In the scene where the stormtroopers are about to blast their way into the detention cell, the elevator door has visible signs that it has been rigged for to blast apart and looks a mess. Fixed this issue.
99 - New tractor beam matte shots.
100 - Recomposited the SE shot of the many stormtroopers as Han chases them to look more natural
101 - New wider shot of Luke & Leia as they swing across the chasm. They now look to be a lot higher up.
102 - Re-edited the lightsabre duel to give it a faster pace
103 - The lightsabre impact flashes cover both characters even though it should only be visible in front of the character closest to the camera. This has been fixed
104 - Removed the visible power cable from the lightsabre up Ben’s sleeve
105 - As Han & chewy reach the docking bay you can see the shadows of Luke & Leia awaiting their cue. Removed the shadows.
106 - Replaced the dummy of Ben as Vader kills him. You now see his face and Vader actually slices through him and you see him disappear.
107 – Removed the bar holding R2’s legs in place when the droids head for the falcon
108 - When Luke blasts the control panel the door blast door closes, but in the next shot it closes again. This has been fixed.
109 - As the Falcon leaves the docking bay it originally left very slowly even though the engines ignite and it should have accelerated faster. It does now.
110 - Fixed the wobbly holotable as Luke gets up to head to the gun port.
111 - Removed the horribly bad motion blur from the shots of Luke & Han in the gun port as the TIEs approach
112 - Redone the TIE battle sequence so the falcon no longer appears to be just sitting there and added a few new shots.
113 - Brand new explosions for TIES in this sequence
114 - Added a faster moving star field to all interior window shots of the gun port including shots that were missing a star field.
115 - When 3PO is entangled in the wires after the battle, again the close up of R2 has the death star interior background. It now has the correct Falcon corridor background.
116 - After the battle you now see the falcon enter hyperspace.
117 - Added the Hyperspace wormhole to the cockpit sequence.
118 - The Falcon now can be seen exiting hyperspace as it approaches Yavin.
119 - In the shot of the Falcon as it flies over the trees on Yavin IV the clouds have been changed to matched the rest of the sequence. I’ve also added the falcons shadow on the trees as it flies over.
120 - New interior shot of the Hanger bay. Removed the cardboard fighters and given the hanger greater depth.
121 - Fixed the following flip shots as they step off the transport vehicle.
122 - New Death Star schematics.
123 - Darkened the rebel briefing scene and once it is over the lighting becomes brighter.
124 - New up to date briefing room graphics for the display.
125 - A lot of the Rebel pilots have Blue insignias on their helmets but there is no blue squadron in the final draft. Re-coloured all blue insignias to red.
126 - The shot of Yavin & the Death star following the briefing room scene has been changed so that Yavin matches the SE Yavin
127 - When we see Han loading up his reward the Y-wing in the background is missing one of its engines because only half the ship was built. This has been fixed.
128 - Fixed the horrible jump cut of R2 as he is loaded into the X-Wing while Luke talks to Biggs & Red Leader.
129 - Added an extra stripe to one of the high view X-Wing shots to remove the repeated red leader X-Wing shots
130 - As the X-wing lifts off it now flies forward and not just straight up.
131 - As Luke leaves the temple you can now see the exterior of the temple from the rear cockpit window.
132 - Re-edited all Rebel command centre shots to fix issues where the image has been flipped (you can tell because 3PO’s dent on his head keeps swapping sides) Also Leia keeps changing position.
133 - Added Yavin to the rear cockpit windows of the fighters as they report in and to various shots throughout the battle.
134 - Ships engines are now again red and not pink.
135 - Re-coloured R2 so his dome is now blue and not black in all space shots.
136 - Fixed few flip shots of various pilots during the battle (the microphone keeps swapping sides)
137 - Added new shots throughout the sequence including a whole new TIE battle sequence
138 - The rebel command centre table now includes holograms
139 - The death star countdown clock & viewscreen is also a brand new updated display.
140 - The window at the back of Vader’s cockpit has been blacked out because there should be no window.
141 - Fixed issues where ships were missing in numerous scenes in the trench run when they should be in view. This includes both TIES & X-wings
142 - Fixed the issue with the Trench approach where the shots clearly change from a flat matte to a model shot after the flash and really jumps out at you. It flows together between both sources better now. Also both times we see it they used the same shot. Each one now has slight differences to them.
143 - When Vader fires at Luke and hits R2 he is actually firing beneath the X-wing but then next shot he hits R2 which would have been impossible. This issue has been fixed
144 - When R2 Is hit the next shot you can see no smoke or damage through Luke’s cockpit window. This has been fixed
145 - Added damage to R2s body to match the shot where he is unloaded from the X-Wing later.
146 - Re-coloured bit X-wing & TIE targeting displays
147 - A lot of shots throughout the Death Star battle the cockpit shots just have a plain black background. All cockpit shots now show what should be visible outside.
148 - When Red Leader is killed I’ve you see an explosion but nothing makes it. I’ve added the x-wing hitting the surface.
149 - Removed all of the “swinging TIES2 seen in the rear cockpit windows. The TIEs now more naturally according to the scene
150 - A very slight edit to the Biggs death scene. Luke now reacts better to the death of his friend.
151 - When the Falcon comes to the rescue and hits the left hand TIE fighter the laser both never actually hits the TIE fighter. This has been fixed
152 - You now see the death star begin to fire as it explodes
153 - New death Star explosion shot that integrates brand new footage and OUT and removed the shock wave ring.
154 - When Vader spins out of control you can now see stars through his cockpit windows.
155 - Chewie now gets a medal
156 - Brand new end credits that include the Revisited credits and also every member of OT.com that contributed in the forums up until the second week in November 2007

Mighty Mighty Boosh in Mighty Tighty Whitey Movie

For those of you in the know, and hip with the weird TV series scene, the cult TV series Mighty Boosh is making a movie. For the others who have been living under a rock, in the dark, or just outside of England, I'd advise you to catch up with the rest of the enlightened souls and download that shit right now!

Yes, Vince Noir and Howard Moon are in production at the moment to grace the silver screen with their presence.

Stars Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt have signed a deal with BBC Films to bring the cult series to the big screen.
The show focuses on friends Vince Noir (Fielding) and Howard Moon (Barratt), who embark on a series of magical adventures.
The pair are currently working on a script for the movie, which is likely to begin filming early next year.

Sounds good. Sounds wacky, zany and madcap. Possibly with lashings of ginger beer, dance scenes with wolves of the Arctic, and and maybe a boxing match with a kangaroo.

Indiana Jones and who gives a shit - its Indy!

The trailer for the new Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull movie has been released. Looks very CGI in some places I reckon, but who gives a crap really - he's back!

Check out the trailer via Yahoo below - looks like a winner!

Cartoon Madness - Jebus and Mo' Ham

Check out Jesus and Mo cartoons. Excellent stuff.

Movie Review : the Hoax

Movie : The Hoax
Director : Lasse Hallström
Starring : Richard Gere, Marcia Gay Harden, Stanley Tucci, Alfred Molina
Plot : In what would cause a fantastic media frenzy, Clifford Irving (Gere) sells his bogus biography of Howard Hughes to a premiere publishing house in the early 1970s.
My Rating : ★★

Now let me start out by saying I'm not a big fan of Richard Gere. I cant remember the last movie I liked with him in it, and the last one I can recall is The Jackal with Bruce Willis. And that movie sucked on too many levels to write about.

Based on a true story, Gere plays Clifford Irving, a washed up writer on his last legs who decides in a spur of the moment decision to con one of the largest publishing houses in America. He convinces them, with the help of some handwritten letters and his research assistant Dick Suskind (Alfred Molina) that he is writing a biography of Howard Hughes. For those who don't know, Hughes was the multi-millionaire portrayed by Leonardo Di Caprio in Scorcese's flick The Aviator.

I was unsure what to make of The Hoax, as I didn't know much about it, but it was easy to watch, and if you could ignore Gere's hammy acting it wasn't a bad movie. I got a few laughs out of it, and you could say I didn't feel like I had irretrievably lost any of my life watching it. There are some good performances by Molina and Stanley Tucci, and the movie ambles along at a rather nice pace.

Once I had finished it, I was curious how accurate it was, and I checked out the central character Clifford Irving on Wikipedia. Its interesting to see how far it deviates from real life - here's a quote from Irving about the movie :

I was hired by the producers as technical adviser to the movie, but after reading the final script I asked that my name be removed from the movie credits. I didn't want anyone to believe that I had contributed to such a historically cock-eyed story where the main character, almost by coincidence, happens to bear my name. It's hard to believe that sophisticated Manhattan publishers would fall for the nonsense this guy spouts in order to convince them that the moon is made of Stilton cheese. As played by Richard Gere – an actor I admire – Movie Clifford is desperate and humourless, a washed-up hack writer who lives in a conservative New York suburb. In fact I had a multi-book contract with my publisher and enjoyed the good life on Ibiza, a sunny Mediterranean island where I owned a beautiful 15-room farmhouse. Movie Clifford has the energy of a not-too-bright psychopath. If I were that man, I'd shoot myself.

It does highlight a question that always poses itself whenever I see a movie that has "based on actual events" on the poster or plot outline. Its a lovely way of saying "we took something that happened and Hollywooded it, and now it bears virtually no resemblance to reality". It happens almost too much now that I take everything I see on the silver screen with a grain of salt.

Anyhow, I'm not sure how to recommend this movie - but I'd say if its on telly in a year or two, or on cable which you've already paid for, then give it a look.

Looking good for Jebus : Getting tight with the Man

I saw an article on Stuff where a TopShop outlet store in Singapore has pulled a range of cosmetics from its shelves due to irate christian dickheads. The range called Lookin' Good for Jesus is made by an American Company and include, a "virtuous vanilla" lip balm, hand and body cream and a mirrored Jesus statuette. They feature a drawing of Jesus flanked by two adoring women and carry slogans such as "Get tight with Christ", "Get His Attention" and "Redeem Your Reputation and More".

I guess two things stand out here - yet again we pussy foot around religion for no reason and its made by an American company - supposedly one of the most christian countries on earth, so why does it offend christians?

If it was a slogan calling for the murder of religious people, then yes - they would be within their rights to complain. But its not - its bloody makeup. Apparently the irate customer said "that the products trivialised Jesus Christ and Christianity." Not surprising when dealing with a trivial subject.

The shop has pulled the product stating "We don't want to offend our customers" which means that they dont really give a shit about christianity, just the fact that they have money. A more honest answer would have been "we don't want to stop people spending money here"

Its a pretty funny idea though - makeup to help you pull the son of god? That's some serious gold digging there.

Via Stuff

Australia good place for the apocalypse

Apart from all the doom sayers and "Repent all ye sinners - the end is nigh" type people, most people live their lives without the fear that the world will end tomorrow in some cataclysmic event of global proportions. But that doesn't mean we can't write books or make movies about it.

IO9 did a nice post recently on why Australia is the best place for the End of the World, and even tagged New Zealand in the process. The Quiet Earth starring Bruno Lawrence was filmed here and is rated as one of the best PA (post apocalyptic) movies of all time.

Its an amusing piece, so get amongst it. Also see the Quiet Earth website, dedicated to all things PA.

Elephants and moths evolve at blink of an eye

In a lovely little example of human intervention becoming a factor in evolution I read about today, it appears the bollworm moth has developed a resistance to Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). "WTF?" you might say - well, Bt is a common soil bacterium that is well known for its insecticidal properties, especially against moths and butterflies. We have used it in many genetically modified plants to stop pests, such as the Bollworm Moth (cotton plant eater) and the Tuber Moth (muncher of potatoes), from destroying our lovely plants and veges.

I think its important to say a little bit about GE here, and say that I support GE, but I also support the requirement for strict controls. We need to balance the need for the advancement of genetic based science and safety of the general populous. Some people advocate a wholesale ban on GE food, and others say we should just go for it - I reckon neither position is correct, but there should be a happy middle ground.

Anyway, it has become apparent that the Bollworm moth has produced a new population that is slowly increasing in size, that is resistant to the effects of BT. Although its interesting how fast this happened since the wholesale adoption of the GE cotton plants, its not surprising in the least. A simple fact of evolution is if you put some kind of life and death pressure on a population, it will likely adapt to avoid that pressure. In this case, the Bollworm moth population was originally dominated by individuals who were not resistant to BT, as it was not a major pressure on their environment. With mans intervention, and the massive introduction of GE crops using the BT gene, that pressure became critical to their survival. As the non-resistant bugs died out, they left the individuals who were resistant to BT and they mated, were more successful in their environment, and are now dominating the Bollworm moth gene pool.

What's that got to do with elephants you ask? Well, a similar thing seems to have happened there too. With the mass killings by ivory hunters, elephants with large tusks were no longer successful in the elephant population (cause they were being shot). Tuskless elephants were not targeted, so they became more dominant in their population. This is a lot slower than the moths as their life cycle is slower, so new generations take longer to produce offspring which carry the selected genes.

"African ivory hunters, by killing only tusked elephants, have given a much larger chance of mating to elephants with small tusks or no tusks at all. The propagation of the absent-tusk gene has resulted in the birth of large numbers of tuskless elephants, now approaching 30% in some populations (compare with a rate of about 1% in 1930). Tusklessness, once a very rare genetic abnormality, has become a widespread hereditary trait." (Wikipedia)

Again, when you line up the facts this is not surprising. We see it every day in all organisms on earth from bacteria (MRSA) to shellfish (mussels) - sometimes fast, sometimes slow depending on the pressures on the population. This is why its a never ending battle against pests and diseases, and why we need to make sure we dont stop investigating genetics. If we are to stay ahead in the genetic arms race, we need to know everything we can about the mechanism's and triggers for evolution. Yay for GE and Genetic research.

Via IO9

Iain M. Banks has new book, and there was much rejoicing

The powerhouse of science-fiction that is Iain M. Banks has pumped out another Culture based novel called Matter. If you enjoy a good Science fiction novel or 30, then I fully recommend Iain M. Banks. His series of novels based around the decadent civilisation called The Culture is one of the best glimpses into and AI influenced future that I have ever read. He has also released several other Sci-fi non-Culture novels (Against a Dark Background, Feersum Endjun, The Algebraist) which are also excellent.

I recently finished reading The Algebraist and it was well written and thought provoking. I connected with the main characters, and found the alien races living in the gas giants a fascinating concept. He has an amazing way to describe an alien race that sounds unfathomable, and you are able to understand the human based races inability to deal with an alien culture.

Along with his Sci-Fi stuff he also releases standard Fiction novels under the name Iain Banks, all of which are interesting and thought provoking novels.

I will definitely be hooking into this one, but as a teaser see here for an extract and see below for the blurb.


In a world renowned within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, it means returning to a place she’d thought abandoned forever. Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has become an agent of the Culture’s Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilisations throughout the greater galaxy. Concealing her new identity - and her particular set of abilities - might be a dangerous strategy. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else’s war is never a simple matter.