Been watching some good old British comedy shows and one particular actor who’s been on a lot of them is the brilliant Mark Heap. Here’s a music video with him in it and its just great.

Not content with just the robots taking over the planet, I’ve been reading up a lot of articles on the big bang theory and the ultimate fate of the universe, which, though long after the robots have enslaved our planet, stripped it of all its resources and took to the stars, is the theory that the universe is actually expanding at an accelerating rate and eventually will be nothing but redshift to radiation. Gotta love science.

Anyway, been pretty shit still at keeping this constantly updated, which I still maintain is a robot conspiracy. Caught up with some friends over the weekend and managed to stay conscious through the most of a friend’s Samurai movie marathon and got to watch a few films that I’ve been meaning to watch for a long time. In particular is Hari-Kiri by Masaki Kobayashi which was just great and something I’ve got to get my own copy of sometime. Wonderful lighting and intense performances from all, check out his other film Kwaidan if you can sometime.

Also caught Watchmen which left me at a loss for an opinion for a few days and even now I’m not as close to deciding if I liked it or hated it. On one hand, the adaptation of the comic in terms of visuals and dialogue have been done brilliantly well and the film looks amazing and lots of the scenes reminded me of bits exactly in the books, on the other hand, that’s almost just saying that comics are nothing but movies that don’t move and I think that’s the growing attitude towards graphic novels which is stupid. While this worked in Sin City and 300 cause there was this macho attitude towards everything in the comics and that attitude was there on screen, Watchmen the comic is full of nuances and subtext and themes that just weren’t there on the screen. It was like a hollow doppleganger or carbon copy of the general plot and no soul behind it.

In saying all that actually, I think I’m getting closer to not hating Watchmen. Other gripes I had were that the pacing of the film was very off, the soundtrack (apart from the wonderful use of Dylan in the opening credits) was awful, the changed ending was terrible, most of the action scenes were boring and unnecessary and what the hell was up with Nixon’s nose? It was hard to pay attention to anything else when the damn thing was on screen.

I wanted to like the movie, I really did, and I admire Snyder for “staying true” to the comics, but in doing so, he’s just made a hollow moving picture version that made me want to go back to the comic and stay there.

Really, I should have posted this semi-review separately, but meh. Here’s a version of Watchmen I’m certainly glad they never did and yet strangely would have still watched it anyway…

Am currently editing a video for my friend Sash and introducing his Samurai Movie marathon this weekend, which is just fun and a good excercise to keep me working. Especially since I’m currently sick from work, which is really annoying, cause I get sick only once a year during the seasonal change from Summer to Winter, but that shouldn’t happen for a few more months. This flu is way too early and I blame it on global warming. To be fair, I do blame everything on global warming, well, I do if I can’t blame it on the robots first.

Last week there was a screening of the short film collection It Came From the Swamp at the Hamilton Gardens Summer Festival. I tried to attend it, but somehow got lost in the gardens and it seemed everyone I inquired had a different opinion of where exactly it was on the grounds. But from what I’ve heard, most screenings have gone down very well and Spit-Takes is a real crowd pleaser, which is great.

At the insistence of several people I’ve uploaded an old video made several years ago. Shot on no budget and for a university music video competition, this was just fun for all involved and turned out to be pretty much one of the only videos I can rewatch without cringing for some self concious reason.

So, without further blathering, I present “I Think I Can” with music by The Pillow.

So it takes an out of the blue, crippling flu to get me to finally update this blog. Plenty has gone on in the last two weeks, but I’ll just detail one thing for this post.

First off my wallet was stolen one night in the most bizzare of circumstances. One night, alone in my house, I was preparing to head into town for some drinks when I realised I’d need money for a taxi, so I pulled some notes out of my drawer and put it in my wallet and left it on my desk. I left the room for a few minutes to call a cab, grab another beer and then waited for the taxi for about ten minutes.

The cab arrives and as I was leaving, I realised I didn’t have my wallet and looking where I knew I last put it, it wasn’t there. Several minutes of frantically looking, I resorted to telling the driver to just go without me.

After turning my room inside out for an hour, I thought a bit on it. I knew the window by my desk was open at the time, so looking outside, I found a few other items that were in the grass, still dry (as it had been raining all night).

So the conclusion was that after seeing me put money in my wallet, it had been taken from my window. In all the time I’ve lived at this house, there’s never been a burglary or anything like this happening. Especially considering the place is down a long driveway and my room is not visible to anyone on the road.

The usual calling of cops and cancelling of cards happened pretty soon afterwards. But what was even more bizzare was several days later, my wallet turned up again in my car. Empty of money, but the cards were still inside. Strange? Very.

Now this no doubt made me paranoid of my own sense of time and space, but fact is I checked the car several times of the night of the theft. Even had a friend looking through the car a seperate time and finding nothing. So the theif must have taken the wallet and returned it several days later.

Certainly was one of the more stranger experiences I’ve had in a while. And I’m simply gonna assume the wallet was returned after the thief realized who they had stolen from and quaked in fear at the repercussions of what they had done and tried to make nice before Batman opened a can of whoop ass on them.

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. Currently in the process of packing and moving stuff and looking for new work and a place to at least temporarily stay.

Amusingly, in simple terms, at this point of writing, what’s left of our flat is in a slight state of limbo, not being fully sure which date our landlord has accepted our termination of the tenancy, we could have to move out by the end of this week or in a couple of weeks time.

I’ve at least got a place to store most of my many stuff that’ll soon be many stuff in boxes thanks to the kindness of people I know. Intending to take just the bare essentials, I’ll just have to sort myself out a place to temporarily stay while I continue to look like mad for a new job. Specifically in Auckland. So if anyone in Hamilton is keen to temporarily house an Asian with a loopy sleep pattern going half mad looking for a change of scene, flog me a txt or email.

Actually, the same goes for any media work in Auckland. Anyone reading this that knows of a position opening up, either in editing or camera/lighting, let me know so I can feed my many children and by children, I mean the mini robot army.

The goddamn heat at the moment is being a real bitch at the moment. Slowly, bit by bit, I’ve been getting more and more things to do and with the current heat wave, it’s really hard to do anything but sit around and bitch about the heat. That or blog about how damn hot it is.

Actually, I’ve been doing a lot of long distance driving in the last few weeks and most of it during the day. Actually, by some internal clock coincidence or something, most of this driving has been occurring when the sun is at just the right angle so that no matter which direction up or down from Hamilton I’ve been driving, there’s well enough sunlight on the drivers side to give me a tan on just my right arm. So now my right arm is quite darker than my left and I’m starting to feel a bit like Harvey fucking Two-Face and a lot less like Batman, which is causing quite a complex for my motives in fighting crime at night.

Anyway, over the weekend, I drank and saw off my friend Cameron who’s now taken off to live in Melbourne, Australia for the purpose of well, to be in Australia. It was about as close to a spur of the moment act as any act of changing lifestyles can be. Just short of grabbing a passport, burning your house to the ground and leaving an intricate puzzle that’ll stump investigators for decades. Cause that’s how I’d do it and so would Batman.

Anyway, I wish him the best of luck in his hunt for buried Nazi gold and we can follow his travels along in his blog at https://cameronscott.blogspot.com/

Ryan Adams was great. Though I’m not the biggest fan of his latest album, he still put on a great show and played a lot of personal favourites from previous albums. Well worth it.

I’m not going to Kings of Leon and just to save my sanity for that decision, I’ve convinced myself that they won’t play as many of their awesome songs from Aha Shake Heartbreak (which I still love and play constantly) and will instead perform more from their later albums which are nice, but not as awesome.

Meanwhile what I’m really looking forward to is The Kills in March. I just love this duo and their album Midnight Boom was one of my favourites of last year. Should definitely check it or… fuck, anything of theirs.

So onto the interesting stuff of the internet…

Is the Roman Pantheon a colossal sundial?

During the six months of winter, the light of the noon sun traces a path across the inside of the domed roof. During summer, with the sun higher in the sky, the shaft shines onto the lower walls and floor. At the two equinoxes, in March and September, the sunlight coming in through the hole strikes the junction between the roof and wall, above the Pantheon’s grand northern doorway (see diagram). A grille above the door allows a sliver of light through to the front courtyard – the only moment in the year that it sees sunlight if its main doors are closed (see diagram). [full article]

Alien world is slimmest and fastest known

Astronomers have found an extrasolar planet with the smallest diameter yet measured – it is no more than twice as wide as Earth. The rocky body is also the fastest known, whipping around its star in less than a day. [full article]

Giant Titanoboa snake ruled the earth after the dinosaurs

It weighed 1.25 tonnes and with a length of 45 feet or more it would have been able to take on and eat pretty much any other animal it came across.

The newly discovered type of snake, named Titanoboa in honour of its immense size, was for 10 million years the largest land predator on earth.

At least 28 individual specimens have been uncovered in Colombia and, with all of them being around 40 feet long, researchers said it is likely the species could have reached much further than 45 feet. [full article]

Bill Gates Unleashes Mosquito Swarm

TED, the annual gathering of the most pretentious people from the fields of technology, entertainment, and design, just got punk’d. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitos into the crowd.

Ending malaria is a particular passion of Gates’s, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions fighting the disease. But he apparently didn’t feel like TED attendees were taking the threat seriously. “Not only poor people should experience this,” Gates said as he let the bugs loose on his audience. [full article]

I wasn’t even aware of this new section of the copyright law in New Zealand, Section 92a:

…[Section 92A] says that ISPs have to cut people off the Internet if a music company accuses them of copyright infringement. There’s no trial, no proof, and no accountability on the record companies to get it right. This provision was inserted into the Bill by the government after the Select Committee had told it to do the opposite and then passed by a large majority in the House.

Nick Johnston of Dynamo Go just did a write up of it I’ll repost here and there are some other links to further reading.

We wish to express our position in relation to the upcoming New Zealand copyright law changes & illegal downloading in general. Despite being in a band and with members in APRA, we disagree with their stance and we support Creative Freedom New Zealand and any other groups who see what this bill really is: an infrigment on the freedom of all internet users in New Zealand.

Even though most of us in the band are left-leaning politically, it is disappointing to see such a ridiculous law ammendment go through parliament thanks to Judith Tizzard and the Labour supporters of the bill.

It is not the fault of illegal downloads that CD sales are dropping. As a person who has participated many a time in downloading music, it allowed me to discover just about all of my favourite artists today, which has often meant I’ve gone and bought their CDs and records. I’m not trying to say that everyone does this active balance between legal and illegal music listening; there are many that abuse their power to download for free and don’t support the artists who made the music. Although this seems a contradiction, I do not believe that a downloaded album means one lost CD sale. It is a mistake for record companies to believe that someone will pay $22-30 if they lose the ability to download it for free. For passive music listeners, its more than often too expensive to justify purchasing, and the problem of price can be blamed solely on the record companies, not the retailers.

Its time for the record companies to realise they should not back an archaic business model, its time to grow up. Back 10+ years ago, record companies could focus all of their resources on 10 or so major releases in a year, and make fortunes off it. But nowadays, people are more clued up thanks to the internet. It has allowed all of us to discover bands we would have never heard of. Despite this, they are still trying to focus on selling huge quantities of a few big releases, when really they should be focusing on moderate sales quantities on many releases. This would allow a lot more local talent to get the attention it deserves, but instead the local divisions of the big four record companies (Warner Music, Universal Music, Sony Music and EMI) would rather just focus on one or two ‘major’ acts. You need no look further than the way Warner focuses on The Feelers for local sales, or Sony focusing on Elemeno P, or EMI with Op Shop. Were it not for companies like Border Music New Zealand, there would be virtually no local music available to buy legally.

Bringing this topic back into relevance with the issue at hand, I believe the issue is best summed up with this statement on the Creative Freedom NZ website: [Record companies / Movie distributors are fighting] progress by demanding changes to Copyright laws. In effect, they say, “lock down the Internet so our 1960s way of doing business can still work in 2010.” In doing so, they erode civil liberties and hold back the discovery of the new business models.

To quote one more critique of the law changes, I leave you with the thoughts of Nathan Torkington (https://creativefreedom.org.nz/opportunity.html):

“When an individual fan wants our work enough to go through the hassle of finding a way to pirate it online, we see that as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to meet the fan, to connect them to the artist, and ultimately for the artist to be rewarded for their work. This opportunity will be squandered in the world of restrictions, distrust, and civil rights abuses that the middlemen companies want to institutionalise.”

Thank you for reading!

Nick

Another NZer not looking forward to February 28th.

For more reading:
https://creativefreedom.org.nz
https://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm/5845
https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=40731948387

An alleged bird smuggler had his feathers ruffled when airport customs officers seized two live pigeons stuffed into his tights.

They allegedly found in the man’s pocket a multi-vitamin container holding two birds eggs, and a further search revealed he was wearing tights with the two live birds stuffed inside, one in each leg. [full article]

I don’t even need to make a witty or comment or anything on this article. I mean, I’m sure the underground world of bird smuggling is something very serious grim and seedy, but… ha… get it? Seedy. Puns are awesome.

I’m going for a record number of frequent updates. Someone should give me medal.

New Scientist has an article on the 6 mysteries of our solar system. Depending on what you many or may not know, there are some obvious ones in there, but then again, the ones that you might not have known about can really make you go whoa, when the hell are those alien bastards gonna abduct me?

Actually, the damn aliens better abduct us soon cause there are now robots being built that are designed to eat pretty much anything and that are pretty much spells our doom…

A new type of autonomous robot will soon be loosed upon the land. A robot that forages, grazing on weeds and shrubbery, on rotten logs — even on dried out roadkill and other carcasses. This is DARPA’s EATR (Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot), by RTI. It will be fueled by the Cyclone external combustion engine that can run on virtually any type of dry carbonaceous material.

Can read the full article here. But mark my words, when the robots learn to breed (which I’ll bet their learning how to behind closed doors this very second), they’ll begin to develop an army of rat brain powered robodogs, robot snakes and chair climbing robot snakes that can also make use of their robot regenerating technology to take over this planet. You heard it here first.

And no, I don’t find it strange that I’ve bookmarked so many different articles that when pieced together, map out the future robot invasion.