It Also Animates!

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was given a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet as a Christmas present, and I showed off my first piece of serious Bamboo-based artwork.  Today I decided to move ahead with another semi-related project which I've been thinking about for a couple of weeks: an experimental animation using the Bamboo, the GIMP and Sony Vegas.  I started drawing the test scene this morning, and finished animating it around mid-afternoon, and it came out looking like this:

As rumoured in the aforementioned previous post, the clip features Elbows Dude, a heavily-stylised character who had featured in just one previous work, a one-off comic strip from 2006 which was called The Short Adventure of Elbows Dude and was about Elbows Dude flexing his elbows a lot and generally being in a comic strip.  That's him in the picture above - no, he's the green one, silly; the purple ones are dead cows.  And to satisfy the historically-curious among you, here's his debut outing:

Fun fact: I've never published that thing before, perhaps because I thought nobody would get it.

I've got a few other Elbows Dude-related story ideas drifting around, which have been festering in my head since about 2010, and now (along with today's segment) have semi-congealed into something approaching a plot, albeit a really surreal one.  Hence the clip I've just made will - hopefully - go on to serve as the opening of a larger production.

Now, I could be all mean and make you wait for the whole film to come out, but I'm not feeling mean today.  So rather than keep you all on tenterhooks waiting to find out what the animation actually looks like, I decided to use the existing segment as a teaser trailer for the film.  Alright, hush the clamour already - here's your video:



Confused?  Yeah.  Me too.  I have no idea why it's raining cows in there.

Just you wait until you see the rest...


- The Colclough

Trailerish

Having mentioned in my last post that I've finished video editing for Root Hill on Camera 2012, it occurred to me that I should stick the trailer on ye blog, for completeness' sake if nothing else.



Not much else to say here right now, only the trailer.  And if you didn't like it, then just be grateful you didn't see the first draft.  It was pretty terrible.

Normal blogging service will resume whenever it resumes.


- The Colclough

What the Wacom Can Do

After a minor case of unsubtle hinting, I was given a Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch graphics tablet for Christmas.  I hadn't really used graphics tablets much before, and my last attempt (borrowing Tim's tablet, which is also a Wacom) produced this rather unimpressive bit of scribble:

A concept sketch for Fort Paradox 115: my first graphics-tablet drawing.  Srsly.

However, I was pretty sure that my initial failures were just teething trouble.  After all, I spent my first two or three weeks in The GIMP being hopelessly confused and (whisper it!) almost missing Photoshop, of all things - before it suddenly clicked one day, and I've been using the program for all sorts of things ever since.  I expected a similar thing would happen with the tablet, if I had one of my own and was able to get some practice.

It looks like I expected right.  This morning, I finished this (a rather better piece of scribble, if I say so myself):

Blue in the Firelight, January 2013

I almost crashed GIMP during the production process, as the image had so many layers; in the end I fixed the problem by separating the thing out into three different files - one with the initial compositional layers, a second to tidy up the line art, and a third to add the colour.  You can see a higher-resolution version of the finished picture on my DeviantArt page, and you might notice it cropping up as my new avatar on DeviantArt and on Steam.

Where next?   Well - here's a bit of good news for the Root Hill attendees among you - I'm very nearly finished the Root Hill On Camera 2012 DVD: the video segments are rendered, the disc menus are authored, and the print components have been designed.  All that remains is to produce the physical copies and get them in the post.  And once that little project (little... haha, right) is off my slate, I'm planning to try and get back to animating something.  So many ideas drifting around right now, including Papercuts episodes 5 onwards (waiting on script delivery from a guest writer or two), Arbitrary Stopframe Series 2 (waiting on... um... me getting round to it), The Murkum Show (working title, waiting on me figuring out what it's actually about apart from having lots of Doctor Murkum in it), and the long-planned Fishy Business remake Empire of the Pond (which has recently seen some movement on the test-illustrations front).  But more recently, the idea occurred to me that I should try doing a quick-and-dirty (that fatal phrase...) graphics-tablet cel animation featuring my little-known character Elbows Dude in a variety of improbable scrapes, which he solves with his elbow powers.  Right now, I honestly don't know which route I'll be going down next, but all five of them have some appeal, so I'll hopefully be picking one and getting down to business before too long.  Watch this space!


- The Colclough

Landmarks, Challenges and Ze Future

Okay, I missed it.

As in, I wrote my 150th post on this blog, back on Tuesday, and didn't even realise I was doing it.  In my webcomic Cylinder and Miserable it's a long-standing joke that the characters stop to comment on the passage of strip numbers every 50th episode, or more recently they make a point of complaining about the long-standing joke, or just make a point of refusing to comment altogether.  But over here on A White Horizon, I didn't even know I was doing #150 until after I'd hit the 'publish' button.

Still, you could argue that 150 is only a half-landmark, and the next 'proper' one is #200 (which I'll try and make a point of doing something special for, although I'd probably be hard-pushed to do anything as impressive as Sam's 200th post back in June), so I'm not too upset about my failure to spot it.

That, and Tim said he nearly died laughing at what turned out to be my 150th, and I guess a blog post that almost kills your best friend is fairly momentous, even if not quite in the right way, so you could say the landmark didn't quite go unmarked after all...


That was the Landmarks bit.  Now for a comment on Challenges.

As you may have noticed, my first blog post of 2011 was my first of 11 submissions in the "First 11 for '11" challenge against Hannah, and my first blog post of 2012 was my announcement of the free-for-all "First 12 for '12" challenge, which I ended up losing pretty badly to Hannah, Sam and Tim.

As you may also have noticed, this is my third post of 2013, Sam and Tim have also been blogging since the Auld Lang Syne was sung, and none of us have mentioned any "First 13 for '13".  Which is because it isn't happening.  I'd forgotten about the whole thing, Sam had opined that a speed-based challenge probably isn't the best approach (and I've been thinking he's right), and Tim said he's too busy to take part in any blog challenges this winter.  So all things considered, we decided not to bother.

It's also worth noting that Hannah hasn't blogged once since the 24th of last February (almost 11 months ago, do the math), and sad as it may be, it rather seems that the world's greatest sheep-obsessive blog is dead.  Particularly poignant and stuff for me, as hannahlikessheepbaa was really the blog which inspired this one in the first place.  It's largely her fault I blog, and largely my fault Tim blogs, so A White Horizon and OpenCGDA have lost their spiritual parent and spiritual grandparent respectively.


And that leads me on to the last of my three points: Ze Future, or Ze Lack of Future, for a certain other blog.

In light of the impact made by hannahlikessheepbaa.blogspot.com, I think it would be fitting for the blog's surviving friends and relations to give it a dignified send-off, and to that purpose I intend to arrange a virtual funeral.  I was thinking that everyone who has appreciated Hannah's blog over the years could join together on the anniversary of its last known sign of life (i.e. on the 24th of this February) to pay their respects by writing about the general significance of Hannah's blog to them and about which of her posts they liked best and why.  I thought we could also propose a selection of music which would embody the memory of the departed and express our feelings at their departure, and round the whole thing off with a virtual post-funeral lunch comprising food items chosen for their relevance to Hannah's blog.  I'm nominating This Is Gallifrey and fish-custard in the latter two categories...

I seem to remember discussing the funeral idea with somebody already, but I can't remember who it was.  Anybody who has any fondness for Hannah's blog will of course be welcome to attend / participate.

Obviously, if the corpse suddenly comes back to life then that would radically change the funeral plans (maybe rework them as a resurrection party?), but until that happens, I'm planning to proceed on the assumption that the funeral is a thing.


- The Colclough

What's a Desktop?

I got one of those phone calls this afternoon, where they claim to be from Microsoft and want to talk to you about your computer problem (taking advantage of the fact that most people who have a computer have Windows and/or a problem, usually both), with a view to getting you to pay for some alleged 'repair service' which will actually do more damage to the machine than good, and let the perpetrators run off with your credit card details.

I spotted the guy immediately - the combination of a thick Indian accent and the (always dubious) opening line "Hello, I'm calling from Microsoft; am I right in thinking you are the primary user of your computer?" - and since I knew the Accented One was a miserable low-life trying to pull a fast one on me, I decided I could justify wasting a few minutes of his time by pretending to be a tech-illiterate moron.  Five minutes spent trying to help me find my own mouse would be five minutes less for the cad to maraud around and prey on someone more vulnerable.  That, and I thought it'd be fun.

Needless to say, I fully appreciate the irony inherent in the notion of me playing the tech-illiterate moron, seeing as the computer is by far my most frequently-used tool, and I basically got my current job (coming up to its one-year anniversary next month!) on the grounds that I can speak HTML and I showed promise at navigating the shop's database.  But just for a few minutes, I carefully suppressed years of deeply-ingrained Windows-user know-how, and pretended I didn't have a clue.

"There's this thing out there that will infect your computer as soon as you go on the internet.  It affects all versions of Windows," the Accent informed me in apparent earnest.  "Oh dear," I muttered in fake worry, "that sounds pretty bad.  I guess I'd better let you give me a hand..."  And so we began.  I don't claim that what follows is a verbatim transcript, but it does summarise the more interesting points.

"Can you be in front of your computer right now?" the Accent asked me.  I was already there - having been using it when the phone rang - so I decided not to bother over-complicating that step.  "Yes," I said, "I'm there".  "Good," said the Accent.

"Right: is it a desktop or a laptop computer?" the Accent asked me.  "What's the difference?" I replied.  After making him explain two or three times, I finally 'deduced' what I'd known all along: it's all in separate bits spread all over the desk with cables between then, so it's a desktop.  I then feigned surprise at the 'realisation' that a desktop computer is called that because it's non-portable and stays permanently on the top of the desk.

"Which version of Windows do you have?" the Accent asked me.  "How do I find out?" I replied.  And then I muddied the waters further by saying I'd heard that there was this thing called Linux which you could get instead of Windows, and how would I know if I had that?  Mumble, mumble... we never did work out that I'm running Windows at all, never mind getting down to finnicky details like XP x64 Pro.

I pushed the OS question a bit further by asking "What happens if I've got Linux?  Will it still get The Problem?"  "Yes," the Accent said, "it'll be much worse."  Oh, really - I thought - well, thank goodness I'm not running Linux in your imaginary scam-world then.  I could have been in trouble.

"Could you go to the screen that comes up when you turn the computer on?" the Accent asked me.  "Oh," said I, "but I always have the screen on when I turn the computer on.  Otherwise I can't use the computer!"  Apparently put off for a moment by this unfortunate spot of ambiguity in the English language, the Accent changed his tack a bit: "Can you go to your main screen?"  "Um... I've only got one.  Some of my friends have two, but I don't."

"What can you see on your screen right now?"  I happened to be staring at Windows Media Player 11, so I said in dim-but-happy mode "I can see my music!" and merrily launched into a string of pointless questions as to whether the quantity or even the selection of music could affect the computer's vulnerability to The Problem.  I even started reading out the contents of my library, but only got as far as "some Adiemus albums, and the soundtrack from that Portal 2 game, and" before being interrupted by the next question.

"How old are you?" asked the Accent.  I feigned worry again and asked if I was going to be in trouble because of a legal minimum age for using a computer, to which the Accent said "No, no, I'm not talking about anything illegal."  This remark provided me the opportunity to slip in the knowing question (albeit still disguised under the vapid manner I'd been keeping up for the previous few minutes) "Are you sure?"  I don't know whether or not he picked up on the subtle aspertion being cast against his alleged Microsoft credentials, but if he did, he didn't let on.

"So," I blustered on, "does the computer know how old I am and behave differently based on my age?" I was somewhat taken aback by his answer - in retrospect, I think the Accent must have decided I was really stupid and thought it would be easier to just play along: "Yes, it does."  "Oh," I mumbled.

Anyway, I honestly don't know why he felt he needed to know my age, and I didn't much fancy telling him.  So I decided to bend the truth.  Well, alright, I guess misquoting your age by seven years goes beyond 'bending the truth' and counts as outright fibbing, doesn't it.  I claimed I was 17, and I think that was the point where the pudding got over-egged.  His Accentedness didn't buy it for one moment.  "No, you don't sound 17," he said.  In retrospect, I should have asked how old he thought I sounded - was he going by the timbre of my voice and cottoning on that I'm actually in my mid-20s, or was he going by the implausible stupidity of my responses to his questions and thinking I was more like 7?  I guess I'll never know.

I claimed I was really 17, but I have a throat condition that makes my voice sound unusual. And at this point, the Accent had obviously had enough, because he muttered something which I couldn't quite make out for certain, but which sounded a lot like "I think you've got a few other conditions as well," before telling me to "Have a nice day, sir," and hanging up.

One can only speculate as to how much longer I might have been able to keep it going if I'd come clean and said I'm 24...

Looking back on the conversation, the best bit was probably one of the earliest ones, but I thought I'd save it for last in the writeup: when he asked if I was the primary user of my computer, I said I was, but I said I sometimes let the hamster have a go too.  Needless to say, the Accent seemed to have trouble knowing what to make of this.  But while it may sound like the least realistic thing I said in the whole phone call, the beauty of it is that it's arguably true, at least in a manner of speaking.  Okay, so Dusty doesn't exactly 'have a go on the computer' as such, but he does sometimes walk across my keyboard and accidentally press the odd key with his feet.  So you could say he's 'on the computer', even if only in the crudely physical sense of standing on the controls.

As a coda to the story: once I hung up, I found myself shaking.  I suspect it was a physical reaction to the strain of suppressing my usually-dominant honest streak and telling barefaced lies for a solid eight-and-a-half minutes.  Strange and fascinating.

Anyway, shakes aside, I very much suspect (and certainly hope) that my Accented friend had the worst of the conversation!


- The Colclough

From One Weeks' Vantage

Okay, been a week (what, already?) since 2012 shuffled off its mortal coil.  I always said the Mayans were wrong and I'd make it to Event 2013, and here I am.  Here, more to the point, we all are.

Thought I'd do a little write-up on the past year, and have a brief ponder on what might be coming up...


2012

I turned 24.  I remained weird.  I also remained single.  I didn't remain unemployed though, as you might have read in these pages back in February.

I nearly lost my computer.  But it got fixed in the end, so all's well, and all that.

We obtained our seventh hamster back in January, and he has been entertaining us with his nuttiness ever since.  And chewing the carpets.

The Jubilee happened.  Celebrations in my area got rather washed out, but sometimes that's life.  Now I'm busy rooting for Her Majesty to reach the end of her 64th year on the throne and overtake Victoria as the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

The Olympics happened.  I enjoyed the event, mostly.  It was interesting to see that that at one point the USA decided to report the medals table using a different algorithm to everybody else in order to pretend that they were on top, when really we all knew China were leading - almost as if the whole nation was throwing a huge collective strop because being in second place out of 200-odd nations just wasn't good enough for them, dammit Jim.  Us Brits, meanwhile, were perfectly happy with third rank - or at least I was.  I thought the closing ceremony was a washout - okay, it's some overpaid morons singing naff songs; even Imagine is massively over-rated, what's the fuss about here? - but thought most of the opening show was brilliant, and the actual sporting in between managed to grip even me, who hasn't a drop of sporting blood in my body.

I made some interesting discoveries about animation - most importantly, the fact that paper cutout animation is actually a lot slower and more difficult than you might think.  My animation output for 2011 comprised 13 episodes of Arbitrary Stopframe, but 2012 managed only 4 episodes of Papercuts.  Although to be fair, Papercuts episodes feature dialogue (with the consequent burden of lip-synch work), and each have three times the runtime of actual animation (i.e. not counting title and credit sequences) of an AS episode, so when you do the maths they work out relatively close.

That was my film output - what of the intake?  Records indicate (yes, I keep records) that I went to the cinema four times in 2012, to see The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (visually top-notch, as one would expect from an Aardman feature, but disappointingly weak in the story department, and less funny than it should have been), Avengers Assemble (don't get me started, I could eulogise for ages, especially about Phil 'Agent' Coulson), Brave (not quite Pixar's best, but still pretty good), and finally The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (overlong, yes, but largely enjoyable, especially the performances of Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis.  Sorry about the inevitable disagreements betwixt us, Sam, but I did like it).  I've lost count of all the things I've seen on TV / DVD / Blu-ray, but highlights have included Galaxy Quest on Blu-ray, Sherlock season 2, the first half of the first season of The West Wing, my first time watching full seasons of The Apprentice (s8) and Young Apprentice (s3), and of course Seven Samurai.  Not so much a highlight, but still of note, the first few episodes of Star Trek TNG.  So far, at least half of them have been really awful - but I kept watching because I'm a bit of a completist sometimes.  The Dreaded Moffat has been very cruel and only given us six episodes of Doctor Who this year, instead of the 14 we should have had, but at least the first half of Series 33/7 has been an improvement over the sloppily-written debacle of 2011's Series 32/6.

I finished publishing Cylinder and Miserable Series 2, and started on Series 3.  Didn't end up resuming Grace and Caffeine or starting my planned Brothers in Shells prequel spin-off yet.

I also met a guy called Wayne, and we've been writing a sitcom whose basic premise is The Screwtape Letters mashed up with The Terminator, and laced with a liberal dollop of up-to-the-minute financial corruption.  More on that later, maybe...

And to round things off, I won 2 out of 5 podium spots for best post, and second ranking on the Best Blog of the Year list, in Sam's 2012 blogroll review, which I have to say was a very nice cap to the blogging year.


2013?

In short, goodness knows.  There are 51 more weeks to go before 2014 starts, and 51 weeks is a very, very long time, both in politics and elsewhere.

On the animation front, I'm hoping to get X-Battles GT5 finished soon.  Beyond that, Papercuts episodes 5 to 9 are all in various stages of being written, but none are ready to go yet, so I might be taking a break from the show and producing something else next.  Possibly more AS, and/or possibly the long-brewing Empire of the Pond, given a helping hand by my new graphics tablet.  Or maybe something about Murkum, animated entirely in Lego - but I don't have a workable screen story for that project yet, so you'll have to wait.  On a related note, Tim, Sarah and I finished Alpha One's Winter Wonderland back in the summer, and shot a fifth X-Battles GT short in October (nearly finished, just waiting for some more sound-editing work).

Hoping to finish writing Cylinder and Miserable Series 3 this year.  Might get round to doing one of those other comic-strip things I mentioned.  Might not.  Don't know.

Looking forward to Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Monsters University, and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.  Waiting to see what the reviews are like.  Need to catch up with Skyfall on DVD/BR sometime.

I've known people who took less than 51 weeks between meeting their future spouse for the first time ever, and getting back from their honeymoon.  Not to say I expect to marry in 2013; far from it, I've long since given up any actual hope or expectation on that front, but I know enough about probability - and about God's sometimes inexplicable sense of humour - to recognise that I can't absolutely rule out any traces of possibility.

Can but wait and see!


- The Colclough

The Storm Has Subsided

My goodness, that was slow and awkward.  Script written in February, voices recorded in June, and it still took until December to complete the fourth episode of Papercuts.  I usually count the production time from the voice recording session, which gives Pedroelectric a total of nearly six months, shattering the four-month record set by Episode 2 Germination Without Authorisation back in the summer.

I think the killer factor was the technical complexity - or rather, not so much the technical complexity in itself, but more the fact that the complexity made the task seem more daunting, and put me off from knuckling down and getting on with it.  As I wrote in the episode's YouTube description: don't write animation scripts with thunderstorms in them.  The rain, thunder and lightning did nothing to ease the convoluted process of bringing this story to the screen.  This might have been a good opportunity to point out that unlike the previous three instalments, which I wrote myself, this one was co-scripted by Tim... but then again I don't think I can shift the blame for the thunderstorm, as that was my idea anyway.  Tim was the one who suggested that they should be watching TV, and that Pedro should be sent up the aerial to fix it, and that the Captain should try to make some commercial use of Pedro's electrified condition, but I have to hold up my hand and admit that the basic concept of Pedro getting electrified in a thunderstorm was entirely my fault.

The previous three episodes were achieved almost entirely through an honest-to-goodness single-pass cutout process (the passage-of-time ideograms and the space scene in Episode 3 Jalapeno to the Skies were exceptions), with any given frame usually being a single unaltered photo.  But this time round, something like half of the film comprises multi-layered material, with the stuff on the TV screen, the rain, the various lightning flashes and electric sparks, and the non-speaking extra in the penultimate scene all being either composited or outright computer-generated after the fact.  That probably went a long way towards slowing me down, because it not only requires twice the amount of material to be shot, but requires both plates to be designed with a view to synchronising them in post.  It's finnicky enough designing a set to function at the right scale and so on even when it's only for a single-layer shot.

But as I also mentioned in the YouTube description, I think it was worth the effort.  Not only am I pleased with the storyline, I also think Pedroelectric has turned out as the most visually interesting episode to date, and perhaps the most aurally interesting as well.

The soundscape includes all sorts of weird and wonderful things this time round: a rainstick, a sheet of cartridge paper (the lounge set, as a matter of fact), white noise artificially generated by Audacity 2, a stapler, a cushion borrowed from our leather sofa being smacked really hard with a metre stick, my grandparents' un-lubricated driveway gate several years ago, the plug of the family vacuum cleaner (you wouldn't believe how hard it was to record the sound of a cable being picked up or put down), me eating Doritos a lot louder than I usually do, and me doing a move which I can only describe as trying to spit as sharply as possible from somewhere underneath my tongue.  Also watch out for Millimetre's dialogue - somewhere in this episode is the first occasion where I actually thought about what he's trying to say, and based his screeches off an actual sentence or two.  I'd be very interested to hear whether you can figure out where or what any of these items are...

Musically, Pedroelectric retains the main theme as usual, and revisits Pedro's heroic sting from Episode 1 Lemon Juice for the Captain, but also introduces the longest new piece of incidental music to date, titled Windmill and Flower.  I don't know if the show the trio are watching on their TV is a documentary about green energy (which is what the script says) or if it's metamorphosed into a really bizarre meta-cartoon within the cartoon, per Itchy & Scratchy.  I'll leave it to you to decide which interpretation of Windmill and Flower you prefer.

It seems I never got round to embedding Episodes 2 or 3 on the blog, so I'll do that first, and then wrap up the proceedings for today with the debut of Episode 4:








- The Colclough

This Is All Sam's Fault

Although I should point out that when I say "Sam's fault", I mean that in the nicest way possible.  Not really a 'fault' in the conventional sense at all, just that it's largely down to Sam.

I'm talking about my increasing interest in Asian (mainly Japanese) cinema.

Admittedly, my first introduction to Asian cinema came from a director I don't remember Sam ever mentioning, namely a pair of films from animator Hayao Miyazaki.  Specifically, these were his feature directorial debut Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), and his Oscar-winner Spirited Away (2001).  The first was a relatively gentle introduction to far-eastern cinema, albeit a slightly surreal experience, as the film is set in a version of middle Europe filtered through a lens of Japanese cultural perception and storytelling.  The other was only the second film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature (following debut winner Shrek), after the category's belated inauguration in the 2001/2002 season, and is a much more wholeheartedly Japanese work, drawing heavily on traditional Shinto religious imagery.

But then came Sam.  Over the four years since I first met him, I have not only discovered more of his fascination with the Kaiju genre in particular and Japanese cinema in general, but I've slowly started getting drawn into seeing some of the films for myself.  He gave me a DVD copy of the original Godzilla (1954) as a Christmas present last year, and I bought a copy of the more recent South Korean film The Host (2006) on his recommendation.  And I liked both of them.

Despite the move towards the monsters, however, there remained a very significant gap in my education - I hadn't seen a single film by the man who is perhaps the most famed Japanese director of all, Akira Kurosawa.

Yes, that Kurosawa - as in, the man whose 1958 film The Hidden Fortress is often cited as the primary inspiration for Star Wars.

Back in August I obtained a copy of what may well be his other most famous film, Seven Samurai (1954), once again on Sam's advice.  I must admit that when I finally sat down to watch it last week, I had my reservations, mainly due to the fact that the film (even with some material still thought to be missing) runs to 190 minutes long, and I had found the American remake (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) somewhat unengaging and overlong.  I needn't have worried, though - Seven Samurai proves once again the already-well-established principle that remakes, especially American ones, tend to be something of a disimprovement.  The Japanese original did feel long (unsurprisingly), but remained engaging throughout despite being in fullframe, black-and-white and a foreign language.  Character motivations and actions made a lot more sense in their original context, and the pacing was much snappier.

I won't go into too much detail on the film's history, structure etc (Sam has already done all of that, and I don't see how I could improve on his writeup); I just wanted to post something to say, relatively quickly, that I've now seen it too, and I liked it.  And to say thank you to Sam for the tip!

Now to get hold of Godzilla Raids Again and/or The Hidden Fortress...


- The Colclough

That Impossible Monday

I've been on YouTube for 5 years plus, and over the course of those years I've sometimes wondered what it would feel like to open my emails one Monday morning and find my inbox swamped with YT notifications after one of my videos somehow managed to go viral over the weekend.

Well, one can dream.  It's never happened.

Until yesterday, it sort of did - except not on YouTube.

My Mondays usually start somewhere around 9am, but I was brought to half an hour early yesterday, as Ben popped in and said something (sorta casual, as you do) about all those votes and comments that one of my recently-published Portal 2 custom maps had been getting.  Well, the last time I checked, my most popular map had achieved something like a dozen views, seven or so people playing it, few enough votes (in either direction) that you could count them on one hand, and around two comments.  It had been about a week since I last logged into Steam - a week, on my Steam account, is usually just about long enough for absolutely nothing to happen - but my still-not-quite-awake brain thought it heard Ben say something about 'nearly 2000 votes'.  I would probably have fallen out of bed, except that I'm in the rather sensible habit of sleeping towards the middle of the mattress, rather than hanging off one side.

8:30 may count as 'a bit too early' on ordinary days, but Ben wasn't joking, so it seemed that this wasn't ordinary days.  I promptly decided that if I really had got literally thousands of people playing one of my maps, then this was clearly worth getting out of bed half an hour early for.  Sure enough, I fired up Steam and found some 57 messages, nearly all of them comments on Cliffs of Insanity, and stats boxes showing it had been one of the 3 or so most popular P2 custom maps for the last several days.  Someone even had a screencapture video on YouTube showing themself solving the map - which I have, needless to say, added to my favourites list.  And somebody else left a comment in Russian.

The numbers kept going up, some of them by the hundreds, over the rest of the day, and were still rising this morning.

And just as I was all fired up in test-chamber-building mode, somebody somewhere in the deeper recesses of Valve went and broke something.  As of first thing this morning, I can load Steam perfectly well, thank you very much, but Portal 2 won't start for love nor money; I get an error every single time saying that "the Steam servers are too busy to handle your request for Portal 2" - which doesn't make a great deal of sense seeing that I had the game already working 24 hours ago.  Quite annoying timing.

I digress.  The main point of all this was to say what had happened, and to comment that it all feels really weird after all those years of obscurity.  Really, really weird.

But not unpleasant.


- The Colclough

Who and Why

So, apparently the massive, greedy, faceless corporate giant that is Disney has bought out the most famous and successful independent filmmaker in the world - and as if that's not enough, they immediately scheduled Episode VII for release in the summer of 2015, just two and a half years from now.  As Sarah said at the beginning of her email (which was how I found out about it all), "Oh, dear..."

We're talking, of course, about the company which seems almost literally unable to handle the idea of not making a sequel to any film which got seen by a paying audience of more than 3 people.  Except Prince Caspian, for some reason.  They've been known to pillage their archives as far back as the 1940s, going so far as to produce Bambi II in 2006 - yes, you read that right, Bambi II - a direct-to-video (and I don't doubt utterly worthless) sequel to the original film which had been around since 1942.  Apparently it holds the record for the longest time gap between a film and its sequel, but the real issue is that Disney felt it had to exist at all.

There seems to be a school of thought out there which holds that Star Wars creator George Lucas himself had become something of a money-grubbing corporate fiend of late, but whether or not that is true, he at least had the decency not to bother making Episode VII.  House of Mouse, of course, saw a cash cow and promptly rushed in with the largest milking bucket they could find.  We don't know who's writing the new film(s), or who will be directing them, but to my nose (and those of many others, it seems) it all smells like a particularly rotten case of lucrative-release-date-first-and-shaky-plot-later.  What really irks is the wording of the news piece, which suggests that Disney aren't just looking to make a new trilogy, but that Ep VII would be "followed by episodes eight and nine and then one new movie every two or three years".  In other words, just keep churning them out, mindlessly and endlessly, for the rest of eternity - somewhat like how Shrek ended up.

All bleak and terrible, then?  Likely, but not definite.  There are, in my opinion, a small handful of directors out there (presently numbering 3, although I can't say I've thought it through too comprehensively) who I can't rule out as unavailable (Joss Whedon is too busy making Avengers 2, for example) whose hiring could turn the Third Trilogy into potentially-not-disastrous news, and whose names I shall present in alphabetic order, along with my thoughts on why they might be able to redeem the new sequel(s) from Mouse's rancid avarice...

• Brad Bird: has directed 4 feature films to date, and all of them have been critically lauded and/or massively successful.  Basically all were both, except that Warner never bothered to market The Iron Giant properly, so most people have never heard of it and it didn't get the fame or the box-office numbers that it deserved.  The success of Bird's films probably has a lot to do with what another writer has called "his vice-grip on storytelling mechanics" - I can't think of any way to improve on that description.  Bird started in animation but proved with Mission: Impossible IV that he can do live-action as well, and right now I have no idea what Bird is doing with himself, so he might even be available to take on Star Wars VII.
• Kenneth Branagh: not remotely the obvious choice to direct a superhero movie - Thor could have been a disaster on so many levels - but somehow it all came together and worked out surprisingly well.  I suspect Branagh's famously Shakespearian background could stand him in good stead to handle the philosophical and quasi-religious undertones of the galaxy far, far away.
• Gore Verbinski: proved with the first Pirates of the Caribbean, and with Rango, that he can make a very good film so long as he has a decent script before (and not after - Dead Man's Chest...) the cameras start to roll.  Main strengths include his visual sensibilities (the Pirates sequels still looked fantastic, even when the plot structure was teetering dangerously) and his wit - imagine the director who crafted Jack Sparrow working with Harrison Ford to portray a much older but still smuggler-ish-at-heart Han Solo, and you should be able to see why I put Verbinski on my list.

Might come up with some more names later, but can't promise.

But for now, of course, we'll all just have to wait and see.


- The Colclough

Comics That Weren't

Last Saturday, I found myself editing the Yateley Baptist Church notice sheet for the first time in about 16 months.  It was due to restart after its usual summer hiatus, and the editorship had boomeranged back to me due to the spiralling work commitments of the guy who had taken it over last spring.  (Speaking of which: it seems to be a dangerous thing to pray that someone will get a job - sometimes they get rather more job than the prayer meeting bargained for!)

Well, so far, so run-of-the-mill.  But there was a bit of empty space left over, and I toyed with the idea of re-printing one of the 178 existing Grace and Caffeine strips.  I re-read the archives, and failed to pick one that I liked as a re-starting point, so the idea went to the cutting-room floor.  I never considered writing a new one - I've had a few ideas for future episodes in the two years since packing the project in, and slowly accumulated them in various notebooks, and I remain open to the possibility of doing a fifth season at some point, but I'm already working on too many different things at the moment and have no intention of adding Grace and Caffeine Year 5 to that list until a couple of the current items have been cleared off it.  Maybe someday, though.

Then my addled brain got onto the statistics: if I'd carried on with the 48-episodes-per-year thing, I'd have got to 274 before stopping for this summer, and produced #275 over this last weekend.  By that logic, there are almost a hundred G&C strips which could have been by now, but weren't / aren't.

Since G&C has been stopped for so long, its 178-strip 'runtime' was overtaken earlier this year by Brothers in Shells, which interestingly enough began life as an ink-and-paper comic but has now made the transition to a fully-digital production workflow, which I expect G&C would also do if/when I get round to drawing Year 5.  And speaking of Brothers in Shells: that notice sheet wasn't the only thing coming back from a summer hiatus over the last few days.  Tim's strange and wonderful snails-in-space webcomic is also back online as of yesterday, and once again features those pesky Tavuc getting the worst of George Darlan's 'benevolence'.  Which made me happy.

Go and read it.  Now.


- The Colclough

Daleks and Happiness

Yes: Daleks and happiness.

Not, I will admit, a combination that happens often. But on Saturday night, it did.

I liked Asylum of the Daleks.  I haven't got round to my habitual re-watching on iPlayer with the subtitles on, but my impression (quite a distinct impression, at that) after the initial screening of the Season 33 / New Series 7 opener was a positive one.

As might have been hinted in previous posts on this blog, I was less than ecstatic with the way Doctor Who Season 32 / New Series 6 turned out.  As time has moved on, and the first two Matt Smith seasons have become more and more a matter of hindsight, my liking for 31/5 has remained undiminished, but my dissatisfaction with 32/6 has become increasingly definite.  Not to say it was without its moments - I thought The Doctor's Wife was mostly very good, and The Girl Who Waited was excellent (pleased to hear rumours that Tom MacRae has written another script, for the second half of 33/7) - but the season had some pretty naff episodes, and on the whole, I thought it was badly structured.

And then, there was the massive wait for the new season.  All those months without Who.

But it was worth the wait.  I think the fundamental problem with Moffat's episodes for 32/6 was that he was so busy trying to string together his massive River-centric arc that he forgot to make sure each individual story was satisfying in its own right.  Some of them, in my opinion, definitely weren't, with the main culprits being A Good Man Goes to War and The Wedding of River Song.  I was therefore relieved when he announced a few months back that 33/7 would be a lot less arc- and cliffhanger-driven, with each episode being more of a standalone adventure - and that's exactly what Asylum of the Daleks turned out to be.  Yes, it sets up some big questions for the rest of the season, but the story hangs together in and of itself, and I came away feeling that I had seen a proper, complete story, rather than only the first bit of something.  It manages to be as intriguing as last year's opener The Impossible Astronaut, but without also being as frustrating.

Mixed feelings on the revised title sequence, but that's a minor thing.  The point is that the episode itself works.  I would rank it as Moffat's best script for the show since 31/5 finale The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang, and - possibly - the best of the eight DW season opener episodes I've seen.

In my opinion, RTD was at his best during his first season, and at his worst during his second, with the third and fourth recovering somewhat.  Moffat's first two seasons followed the same pattern, and if Asylum is anything to go by, then it looks like he might be following the third-season-recovery pattern too.

Which is why, for me at least, Daleks and happiness have coincided.


- The Colclough

Delayed Writeup

Somewhere in mid-sermon last Sunday morning, Ray brought up an analogy (I can't remember who he said he was quoting), which was something to this effect:
You could stay indoors your whole life, studying the sun as a theoretical object in enormous detail, and you could even write the definitive work on the subject.  But imagine what a book you could write once you'd actually gone outside one day and felt the sun's heat for yourself!

I happened to be sitting next to a window, with some bright patches of sunlight across my left arm.

For some of us (a lot of us, even?) in the West, faith is much like the study of the sun from indoors.  And before anybody else thinks I'm pointing the finger at them, I should point out that I'm only writing this to point it at myself.  It took more than 24 hours for the realisation to sink in, but it struck home on Monday evening: I could write a magnificent book on the sun, metaphorically speaking, but I suspect it'd be somewhat on the cold side.  Which is not a good feeling.

For me, it seems, spiritual sunburn is still very much in the offing.


- The Colclough

Apologies for the Delays...

Hello all.

I'd like to apologise for recent patchiness in the updating of www.yateleybaptist.com and http://cylinderandmiserable.webs.com.  The hosting site, Webs, seems to have been going downhill lately, and over the last few days it's refused to even let me log in half the time, which has (obviously) been getting on my nerves, and is why last Sunday's sermons still aren't up, and C&M hasn't updated this morning.  Will try again in the evening when I'm back from work.

I've been thinking about moving to a different host and generally restructuring my websites a bit under a custom domain name.  More news on that when I've made my mind up.


In other, largely unrelated news: I've been busy.  Much cartooning, some painting, and so on.  Definitely got things to show you; I'm just that busy making stuff that I haven't got round to uploading any of it 8p


- The Colclough

All Quiet at the Front End of the Camera

It's been a mere (yeah, right) three and a half months since I recorded the dialogue for the first two episodes of Papercuts, way back on the first of March.  I've had several patches since then when I felt as if there was far too much work involved in the project and it was all taking far too long and I wanted to just pack it all in and cancel the show.

However, after 48 hours of focussed work on the project (it's amazing what you can achieve in 48 hours of focussed work sometimes), I've fnally finished Episode 1, and very nearly finished Episode 2... and then jumped straight back in and started recording dialogue for Production Block B (i.e. Episodes 3 and 4).

A large part of Thursday was spent filming the last bits of Production Block A: specifically, Ep 2 Scene 10, then the last snippets of the title sequence with the ink barely dried on the background I was using, and last but not least Ep 2 Scene 11.  Rounded off the day with a bit of editing.

Yesterday was all about the noise.  Depending what time of day you dropped in, you would have seen me scuttling in and out of my room clutching various ill-gotten gains including the old clock of the mantelpiece, the cutlery drawer, a plastic bucket full of dirt, a full watering can, and a trowel... not to mention the various strange sounds I ended up making a capella.  I also pestered Tim into writing a snippet of incidental music for Episode 1, so that I could complete and publish the episode.  Which, about an hour after I should have been in bed, is just what I did.

Here's what all the fuss has been about - or at least, the first instalment of it:



Episode 2 is complete apart from one track of incidental music, which I'm hoping Tim might be able to sort out while I'm in Kent over the next week, and the general plan is to publish the second instalment about two weeks after the first one, followed by the third as soon as it's ready.  Beyond that, I don't really know yet.  If the scripts for episodes 5, 6 and maybe 7 are ready to go by the time I finish making 4, then I might go straight into Production Block C.  Otherwise, I might look at re-starting Arbitrary Stopframe.  But don't take any of that as final - the only definite decision I've made so far is to stick with Papercuts until at least Episode 4 is finished.

I'm really hoping the second pair of episodes won't take as long as the first did.  I do have a bit of a head start this time in terms of major sets already existing, and things like that.  Watch this space.


In unrelated news, I've been meaning to do a post about how I might have handled certain challenges from The Apprentice Series 8, but that'll have to wait for at least another week, if it happens at all.  And I'm sure I've got some drawings and paintings that I haven't shown you.  Must try and remember to do that before too long...


- The Colclough

Chips for the Eyeballs

As in microchips.  But before I get on to that...

I've lost.  Again.  But at least this time it was only a loss by one post, not by 8 or 9 or something ridiculous.  Congratulations, Tim - and happy birthday for tomorrow!

Anyway, I'd decided to save the most interesting one for last - Question 6: If you could add one piece of tech to your body, what would it be?

So many choices!  Rocket boosters in the heels?  Super-strength grip equipment threaded through the arms?  Coffee dispenser attached to the side of the head?

No.  The details are a bit hazy at this point (I'm hoping to clarify them for myself as I write my way through this post), but I'm pretty clear on the general area of interest: optics.  It'd have to be something to do with visual perception.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who's ever looked at a scene and wished there was an easy way of retaining the current retinal image for subsequent review and dissemination, without needing to pull out, calibrate and activate an external camera.  In short, some way of hitting 'save' on whatever you're seeing at a given moment.  A device attached to the optic nerve to read and transmit its signals, with a remote gadget which can 1) activate the save function, and 2) serve as storage for the image(s) - preferably with advanced biometrics built into the controls, to stop anybody else being able to hack it and use it to snoop on my retina.  That's one of the most appealing options.

A variant on the theme, however, would be a device which did much the same thing (generated a computer-readable image out of my nervous system), but working in reverse, i.e. extracting images coming out of my brain instead of ones heading into it.  I suppose I could summarise what I'm thinking of as a GIMP / Photoshop variant built into, or at least controlled by, the visual part of my imagination, again with an external USB-compatible storage device.  Something that would enable me to author whatever image I want just by thinking about it.

Another variant which occurred to me would be to have the brain-controlled thingy, but attached to a live projected output as well as / instead of the storage device.  But then again, I'm not sure if that'd be much of an advantage relative to having the storage version and then plugging the storage unit into a computer with a projector attached to it.

Perhaps I could compromise and have a device which allows you to record from your optic nerve and/or use thought control to generate images, with a remote USB gadget which can either store the images for later, or feed them directly into your computer with its specially-adapted version of the GIMP.  Is that too much power to fit within the remit of "one piece of tech"?  If not, then that's my answer.  If it's too much, then I think I'd settle for the one that lets you record from the optic nerve.

So there you go.

You all thought I'd go for the cigarette lighter built into my thumb, didn't you?  Well, gotcha.


The final stats:

• Last 10 for 17 status: 10 down, nil to go.  Second place.
• Latest book read: still The Kink and I
• Latest film/TV watched: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
• Latest music listened to: I can't remember
• Latest edible item eaten: cream cake
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook, Firefox (tabs: Tim's games post from last week; Blogger Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post)
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable Episode 1479

- The Colclough

The Penultimate Question

One of the downsides to writing our questions for this challenge without knowing what questions would be coming the other way, is that one or two of the questions overlap a bit.  This is a case in point - Question 3: What's your favourite online game? - since Tim has already answered a question about which computer game he considers to be the best.

Well, in the version of the question which I have to answer, the field is narrowed somewhat, as it specifies an online game rather than the more general 'computer game'.  And since I don't play that many online games, this query could prove a tricky one to answer.

I like Portal.  So it would seem logical to say my favourite online game is Portal: The Flash Version, which is very very similar except in 2D instead of 3D.  Only problem with that is, it isn't my favourite.  It has problems.  Or at least, I have problems with it.  The main issue I have with that game is the difficulty curve - out of its 40 levels, I can walk through the first 30 with no trouble at all.  The next five are a bit more of a challenge, but nothing insurmountable.  Even the one which is labelled "may cause frustration!" isn't as hard as it looks, once you've assessed it and figured out the portalling sequence.  But then comes Level 36 - and as far as I'm concerned that's where it all goes to pieces.  I've attempted that level numerous times, and never passed it.  This coming from someone who's beaten the final boss levels in both of the official Portal games multiple times each.  The near-impossibility of getting through the last five levels leaves me deeply reluctant to cite this game as a favourite.

I've dabbled with a few other online games, but to be honest, most of them don't manage to hold my attention beyond a handful of levels.  A lot of them seem to fall into an awkward middle ground, where their basic logic is more complex than that of, say, Minesweeper, but without feeling as intellectual and without reaching a degree of complexity where it actually feels like a properly complicated game - if that makes any sense?

I've dabbled very briefly with some of the ones Tim mentioned in his post earlier this week, and one of them might emerge as a new favourite, but I haven't played any of them enough to make that sort of call yet.

So in short, at least for the time being, the answer is that I don't have a favourite online game.

Sorry to be so disingenuous.


Stats, for the next-to-last time:

• Last 10 for 17 status: 9 down, just 1 more to go
• Latest book read: still The Kink and I
• Latest film/TV watched: The Apprentice series 8 episode 8
• Latest music listened to: Requiem by Karl Jenkins, unless you count whatever was on Radio 2 earlier today
• Latest edible item eaten: chicken nuggets
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook, Firefox (tabs: MatNav 6.1; Blogspot Create Post)
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable Episode 1477, Fort Paradox Episode 112

- The Colclough

Speaking of Genres

May as well get the two questions about bad film and telly out of the way at the same time - Question 5: What is the naffest film genre?

To my mind, there are two principal contestants here.  But I'll come on to that in a minute.  For starters, I'd like to explain why I'm not choosing some of the ones I'm not choosing.

Unlike the other question, we're now dealing with whole genres in broad strokes, and some of them simply contain too many cool films to count as collectively naff.  Science fiction, for example, would include Logan's Run (which was a pile of incoherent drivel), the two Matrix sequels (which were sloppily written, and unnecessarily confusing even by the brain-warping standards of their parent film), and Star Trek movies I, V, X and XI; but on the other hand, it includes Star Wars, Star Trek II and IV, Jurassic Park, and the original Matrix, which means that the genre, considered collectively, is still very cool.

There are various other genres which have their fair share of creakingly awful movies, but a compensatory (sometimes more-than-compensatory) collection of really good ones:

• the Action genre - cursed with all sorts of brainless dreck (I had so much fun reading the scathing reviews of Abduction earlier this year), but redeemed by a healthy enough clutch of other films.
• the Comedy genre - there are several people out there who seem to think that 'comedy' consists of being crude and unpleasant, and the net result is (to me at least) very offputting.  But then there are other films which really are funny, from The Princess Bride to Galaxy Quest.
• the Drama genre - some examples are really slow and boring, and To Kill a Mockingbird was dragged down by, of all things, the fact that its three child actors had quite literally the most infuriating accents I've ever heard coming out of the mouths of human beings.  But then you get the likes of 12 Angry Men - most of the film is about 12 men bickering in an office-ish room, but they're the jury on a murder trial and the whole thing is much more engaging than you might expect.
• the Superhero genre - cursed with Superman III, Batman & Robin, X-Men: The Last Stand, and  Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer; but redeemed by the likes of Nolan's Batman, X-Men 2, Thor and The Avengers.

Animation is not a genre.  Brad Bird (arguably one of the greatest animation directors of all time, what with having made The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille) has threatened dire consequences on anybody who says otherwise, and I really don't want to get dire consequenced by an angry version of Brad Bird.  But even if I was rash enough to risk Bird's wrath by calling animation a genre, I'd never dream of calling it "the naffest genre" - after all, it's got Brad Bird's work to bouy it up.

To me, the two naffest film genres are Horror, and Romance.

• Horror, because I don't like watching people get stalked / dismembered / bled copiously / all that other gruesome stuff tht horror films trade on.  I don't see the point in going to see a film just to get scared, and my mean streak, although existent, is nowhere near wide enough for me to want to see a film which is primarily about people suffering.  Therefore, Horror is a bad genre.
• Many films have a romantic subplot, but it's usually the most pointless and annoying aspect of the movie, and I can't think of many (if any at all) which were solely or principally about the wuv, which weren't atrocious.  I mentioned The Princess Bride above - yes, it's a fairy-tale love story, but it's equally a comedy, and the 50/50 blend works.  What doesn't work is a movie which is entirely about how s/he's so very cute, and... um, yeah, s/he's really cute.  That's not why cinema was invented.  Cinema was invented primarily for dramatic spectacle, and if soapy wuv stories have to exist at all, then they should be confined to the small screen.  Therefore, Romance is a bad genre.

Paradoxically, I'm told that certain films (e.g. Shaun of the Dead) have combined these two bad genres, infused with a sizeable dash of irony, and managed to turn up something good.  But I haven't seen one of those, so I can't comment.

I'm honestly not sure that I could say which of those two is actually naffer, but given a choice I'd take the wuv story over the splatter flick, mainly because it'd be less likely to induce grisly nightmares.  So if you insist on me distilling this down to a one-word answer, then Horror.


Stats:

• Last 10 for 17 status: 8 down, 2 to go
• Latest book read: still The Kink and I
• Latest film/TV watched: The Apprentice series 8 episode 8
• Latest music listened to: Requiem by Karl Jenkins, currently on speakers
• Latest edible item eaten: jambolaya
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook and Word 2007, Firefox (tabs: MatNav 6.1, twice; Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post), Windows Media Player 11, Windows File Browser
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable Episode 1476

- The Colclough

The Baddest of the Box

I've still got two questions about bad film and telly, so I ought to get at least one of those out of the way, not to mention that Tim's just answered a question about telly and I may as well follow suit.  Which means it's back to the beginning, with Question 1: What is the most ghastly mainstream TV show of modern times?

97% of my soul wants to say The X Factor.  You might have gathered from my previous posts that I'm no fan of pop in general, so any show that actively promotes it has got to be a bad thing.  In particular, a massive show that drags umpteen million people into its audience and persuades a lot of them to part with a heap of cash to make phone votes on an 0900 number is a very bad thing indeed.

Plus, of course, it's one of the ghastly brainchildren of Simon Cowell, who is (not committed, just is) a crime against humanity.

But I'll admit that that's just a kneejerk reaction.  I'm just throwing that answer out there without thinking about it much, and I suppose I should really do some brainjuicing and make sure I didn't miss something even worse.

I'm sure that if I were to spend any length of time watching CBBC or (shudder) Ceebeebies, I'd come across all sorts of brain-numbing drivel vomited forth in the name of keeping the little ones entertained.  Keeping them braindead, more like.  I've had the misfortune, while passing through the living room, to catch snippets of several recent children's shows which have left me with no desire at all to see any more of the shows in question.  However, I suspect the 'mainstream' aspect of the question might disallow kiddie programming.

If you were to slightly rephrase the question and deal with entire genres of shows, then it'd be easier - and, rather curiously, it would eliminate the show which stands as my kneejerk choice for worst show ever.  If you assess reality / talent shows as a whole, then granted you have the ilk of The X Factor and Big Brother, but you've also got things like The Apprentice, which while not perfect has nevertheless been keeping me amused over the last few weeks.  I think I'd have to say the most irredeemable mainstream TV genre is probably the soap opera, as Tim already pointed out earlier this afternoon.  There may be the occasional decent reality show, but there are definitely no good soap operas.

However, the question wasn't about genres, it was about a specific show.  And, while the soaps collectively are a vile and repulsive waste of broadcast bandwidth, no one of them taken individually is quite foul enough to knock Cowell's pop 'talent' hunt off of the top spot, in my opinion.

I'll probably think of a better answer to this question either five seconds after hitting the 'publish' button, or else at nearly two o'clock tomorrow morning.  But for now, I'm going to stick with my gut feeling and go with the answer that 97% of my soul wants to give: the ghastliest mainstream TV show of modern times is, after all, The X Factor.


Stats:

• Last 10 for 17 status: 7 down, 3 to go
• Latest book read: still The Kink and I
• Latest film/TV watched: The Apprentice series 8 episode 8
• Latest music listened to: Diamond Music by Karl Jenkins, currently on speakers
• Latest edible item eaten: jam tarts
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post; MatNav 6.1), Windows Media Player 11
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable Episode 1476

- The Colclough

Battle of the Battle-Proof Thingies

Okay... I'm half-way through Tim's "Last 10 for 17" challenge, so I think it's time to repeat the question list and colour-code the ones I've already answered and the ones I haven't:

1. What is the most ghastly mainstream TV show of modern times?
2. Cheese or democracy: which would you go without for five years?
3. What's your favourite online game?
4. If a=9, b=30 and c=25, what does x equal?
5. What is the naffest film genre?
6. If you could add one piece of tech to your body, what would it be?
7. What's the worst pop song you've ever heard?
8. If, overnight, you could be bestowed with grade 8-level ability on any musical instrument you liked, what would it be?
9. If you had to join the armed forces, what department would you choose to serve in?
10. Who would win if the Galactic Empire fought the Borg, the Daleks fought the New Arpathian Principality, and then the winners went on to fight each other?

Meanwhile, Tim was (at last check) half-way through his questions as well, so I'll repeat those with the same colour scheme:

1. Let's cut through the myths and rumours: what's actually your favourite food?
2. What's the best computer game ever, and why?
3. If you could take over one TV show and fix its problems, which one would you pick?
4. Various things are supposed to end this year, including (some say) life on planet Earth - which ending are you most looking forward to?
5. If you were to leave Wales, where would you go instead?
6. What's your favourite cartoon?
7. Who is/was the greatest composer of all time, in your opinion?
8. Hamsters or Goldfish?
9. If I had a child (yes, I know... just pretend, ok?), what name would you LEAST want me to give it, and why?
10. Which character or story, out of all the ones that you've written, are you most pleased with, and why?

 So far, the contest has involved Tim gaining a 1-answer lead, and then me equalising - five times in a row.  Let's see if I can get my sixth out before he manages his!


Since I just answered Question 8, and then Question 9, it seems logical that my next step should be to deal with Question 10: Who would win if the Galactic Empire fought the Borg, the Daleks fought the New Arpathian Principality, and then the winners went on to fight each other?

To clarify what the question is about for the benefit of those suffering from sci-fi ignorance (or at least suffering from incomplete initiation), and to set the scene for the ensuing tiff:

• the Galactic Empire are the baddies in Star Wars, powerful enough to rule an entire galaxy all but unopposed for decades.  Mostly runs on clone troopers, with assorted AT-AT walkers, speeder bikes, and other nifty battle tech.  Oh yes, and they have Darth Vader as their conveniently angry, asthmatic, lightsabre-wielding figurehead, and a Death Star, just in case they ever feel like wiping out the odd planet here and there.
• the Borg are those cyborg types out of Star Trek who are virtually impossible to defeat because as soon as you use a weapon on one of their drones, the rest of the collective learn from the 'mistake' and instantaneously adapt their armour to become impenetrable to the weapon in question.  Also fond of assimilating people, which basically seems to be a fancy-pants way of nicking their soldiers and technology.
• the Daleks are those ones out of Doctor Who which look slightly like oversized pepper grinders with a bad attitude and a deadly toilet plunger thing on the front.  But you wouldn't say that to a Dalek, because they're much more dangerous and deadly than their appearance (especially the New Paradigm's appearance) might suggest.
• The New Arpathian Principality, which I suspect most of you didn't know about until now, are the primary villains in the latest phase of the history of Universe XGT, equipped with a massive superiority complex (like the other three groups mentioned here, I guess), and more importantly a vastly advanced system of medical/regenerative technology which makes them very nearly immortal.

I think I can, at least, make a pretty confident statement as to who would be in the final.  Allow me to explain...

Semi-Final One: the Galactic Empire vs the Borg.  First off, I'd like to point out that I'm much more into Star Wars than I am into Star Trek, and part of me wants to leap to conclusions and say the Galactic Empire would win.  However, that would ignore the vitally important fact that the Borg can assimilate stuff and develop immunities with frightening rapidity.  No matter how good your clone troopers and their blaster rifles, you still only get one shot before the Trekkie cyborgs adapt and render them useless.  And it's no use saying "Aha!  But the Empire have a Death Star!", because the same principle applies on spacecraft level - the Death Star might get to take down one cube, but next thing you know all the other cubes have adapted, become immune, and then figured out how to return fire in kind, reducing Tarkin's magnificent battle station to a fireworks show in a few seconds flat.  Again.  The Borg win.

Semi-Final Two: the Daleks vs the Arpathians.  I think this would be a similar story - sure the Daleks could kill some Arpathians, but the Arpathians in question would then be revived.  It would be a war of attrition for the most part, but the nature of the Arpathians' "Revival Matrix" would mean that Arpathian casualties were only temporary, while any Dalek losses would be a tad more permenant, so the angry pepper mills would lose in the end.  The Principality wins.

And finally, the Final!  (My goodness, what a rotten pun I just did.)  The Borg face off against the Arpathians - and as far as I can see, this is the point where it all starts getting a bit less obvious.  The assimilators face the immortals.  I'm going to have to think through this slowly, one step at a time.  Borg kills Arpathian - Matrix activates and Arpathian revives.  Arpathian kills Borg - Collective adapts and becomes immune to Arpathian weapon.  Borg attempts assimilation - Matrix registers this as a death, and reverts the Arpathian to their original state, cancelling assimilation.  Um... to be honest, as far as I can see, those are the only three moves worth trying, and they're all useless, so it might be a stand-off.

Net result (unless I missed something important?): the whole quad-continuity war ends with a bunch of Borg and a bunch of Arpathians glaring at each other across a room/field/whatever, absolutely unable to do anything about each other's continued existence, and getting annoyed.

So maybe it's just down to who walks away first from sheer frustration?


Stats:

• Last 10 for 17 status: 6 down, 4 to go - I'm ahead for the first time in the whole race!
• Latest book read: still The Kink and I
• Latest film/TV watched: still Logan's Run, but I plan to change that soon
• Latest music listened to: Adiemus I: Songs of Sanctuary by Karl Jenkins, currenlty on speakers
• Latest edible item eaten: Pineapple and Coconut Sponge Pudding
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post; MatNav 6.1), Windows Media Player 11
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable Episode 1475

- The Colclough

Jobs with Explodey Stuff

This is one of the harder ones, but once I've done it I'll be at the half-way point of this little challenge - Question 9: If you had to join the armed forces, what department would you choose to serve in?

Up front: none of them appeal.  I really don't think the life military would suit me.

However, the question does make it pretty clear that this isn't about volunteering; it's about conscription.

Am I allowed to pick the propaganda department?  I'm not that great at moving fast (except for the odd very short sprint), especially not at moving fast with any precision, and would be unlikely to be of much use in the heat of battle; meanwhile although it may not be the sort of thing one goes around admitting to most of the time, I suspect I might not be that bad at manipulating the truth into propaganda, so if I could get away with making motivational posters and doctoring the headlines for morale-boosting purposes, I would probably be able to make myself much more useful than would be possible if I was out on the front line making "do I shoot that thing right now or don't I" decisions on the spur of the moment.

That would be my first choice.  But since this post is still on the short side, let's assume I can't do propaganda and I actually have to be out on the front doing something a bit more directly battle-ish.

Eek.

I think I'd have to write off the navy straight away, not for any emotional reasons, more because I've never really tested myself for seaworthiness, but there are some bad cases of seasick-prone-ness in the family, and it's as likely as not that I've inherited some of that.  I wouldn't write off the RAF quite so instantaneously, but I suspect the RAF would write me off without a moment's hesitation, as my driving is (I admit it) somewhat bumpy, occasionally aggressive, and with a whole third dimension to go wrong in, chances are my piloting would be absolutely abysmal.  Not to mention that when you're scooting around the stratosphere at 1000 mph in some super-jet, you have to make critical decisions blisteringly fast, which I think I already mentioned I'm not good at doing.  Too prone to panic under pressure... as you'd already know if you've ever been in the car with me driving on the motorway...

Which kinda leaves the infantry, and heck knows I don't like the sound of that.  However, I've already brought up the topic of driving - since the army are supposed to be tough as nails, that should mean they can withstand my dodgy motoring, so maybe I should join the logistics corps and punish a truck.

For lack of a better answer, that's where I'll leave it for now: I think I'd be a driver and beat the tar out of an army truck.


Stats:

• Last 10 for 17 status: 5 down, 5 to go.  Half-way there, but once again I'm re-equalising with Tim.  Haven't managed to be ahead yet!
• Latest book read: still The Kink and I
• Latest film/TV watched: still Logan's Run
• Latest music listened to: some ghastly mess I overheard on Radio 2 at the shop
• Latest edible item eaten: Pineapple and Coconut Sponge Pudding
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post; MatNav 6.1)
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable Episode 1475

- The Colclough

Those Tunes I Don't Know

Time to tackle Question 8: If, overnight, you could be bestowed with grade 8-level ability on any musical instrument you liked, what would it be?

As background factoids for those who don't already know, I studied the piano up to grade 4 (along with music theory up to grade 5), but gave it up when I started sixth form.  I never really looked back - much.  I decided that I'd prefer to invest my efforts into forms of expression which stay when you've finished them, e.g. drawing, painting, animating, writing.  The trouble I had with music was that I'd play the piece right once, but then when I tried to repeat it five minutes later it'd all go hideously wrong.  That got extremely annoying.  The hard-earned performance goodness never stuck around for long.

But what if, as Question 8 suggests, I could cheat the system and instantaneously gain grade 8 skillage on any instrument of my choice?  Which one would I pick?

Well, obviously it would make sense at face value to say the piano, since I already went there once.  That would lay to rest those occasional minor moments of regret which I just claimed not to have.  I do have one once in a very long time, but only once in a very long time.  And there remains the fact that I still regard the piano (and certain relatives) as the most logical of all musical instruments, in the sense that each key makes one note, and each note has one key.  That, and you don't have to breathe any specific way, which is the main reason I'd be unlikely to pick a woodwind or a brass instrument.

However, the piano does have certain drawbacks, the most obvious being its size.  The piano is hardly the most portable thing ever invented, and I suspect that if I could play an instrument at grade 8 level, then I might want to carry it around with me sometimes.  To Root Hill, maybe (yes, sheepbaa, I'm looking at that flute).  I know ThePianoGuys have managed to get their instruments into all sorts of obscure and inaccessible landscapes, but most people can't afford that sort of logistical undertaking for their Broadwood Grand, can they?  There is also the small issue of having something like 200 strings to worry about at tuning time.

So if it wasn't going to be a piano... hmm.  *strokes beard*

I've thought occasionally that I might like to play the harp or the marimba.  But those thoughts never got thought out much, just idly toyed with.  And they still have size and weight issues.  If I was going to pick a wind instrument, it'd be a woodwind - I like the sound of woodwinds better than brass, generally speaking, and at an uneducated guess, I'd say probably not as heavy.  This is probably where Tim tells me they're actually heavier...

But all that aside, I suspect I mind wind up in the string section.  The violin has the attraction that you can use its case, in conjunction with a big coat and the right kind of hat, to pretend you're in the mafia and you're going to kill people in seedy bars (yes, I admit it, my mind is mildly warped... not that I'd really kill people in seedy bars, you understand).  Or I might just pick the cello, purely and simply for the fact that Tim's spent several years slaving over that instrument and I wouldn't have to.  Mwahaha.

Although there are certain rules to which Tim and I subscribe, and which have a certain intricate connection to the fundamental fabric of the universe, which means that me cheating my way to grade 8 on the cello might be a slightly ill-advised thing to do...

So for now, I think I'll stick with the piano.


Stats:

• Last 10 for 17 status: 4 down, 6 to go.  Nearly half-way.
• Latest book read: still The Kink and I
• Latest film/TV watched: still Logan's Run
• Latest music listened to: Somewhere Over the Rainbow cover by ThePianoGuys
• Latest edible item eaten: Biscuit
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Create Post; YouTube)
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable Episode 1474

- The Colclough

Cheese or Democracy

This is probably one of the oddest questions I've ever been asked, so I should have fun writing up my answer.  Question 2: Cheese or democracy - which would you go without for five years?

Of course, the good responsible citizen's answer would have to be "go without cheese".  To say that you value your toasted cheddar sandwiches above your political freedom would be to disregard the sacrifices of those who... um... sacrificed stuff, to earn the vote for the rest of us, and so on and so forth, blah blah blah.

But that sort of logic (while sound and patriotic) doesn't make for a very entertaining blog post, does it?

There's a case to be made for saying I can actually choose to keep the cheese, and it goes something like this: in between elections, we seem to have relatively little sway over our government.  We can jump up and down and complain that something's a terrible idea, and they just push it through anyway.  T. Blair was pretty good at that, as you may remember.  So with the current fixed-term parliament, you could argue that we're more or less going without democracy for five years anyway.

Besides, cheese is integral to lots of other things.  You can't have a Staffordshire cheese and bacon oatcake without cheese, because otherwise it'd just be a Staffordshire bacon oatcake - which is still good, but not as good as the version with cheddar in it, in much the same way that a sponge cake is good but a sponge cake with jam in is better.  You can't have Wallace & Gromit without cheese, because Wallace's love of cheese (and his consequent propensity to make rash decisions for cheese-based motives every so often) is one of his most important character traits - after all, their first adventure was all about going to the moon to get some cheese because the moon's made of cheese, wasn't it?  And that leads me onto another important point: the moon is (at least allegedly) made of cheese, and therefore to go without cheese for five years would mean spending those five years without moonlight, and without any tides, which in turn would wreak havoc on the marine ecosystem (how can a turtle come to lay its eggs on the spring tide, if there aren't any spring tides?), and thereby possibly set up a domino effect leading to the collapse of all life on earth.

Therefore, on balance, I think I might actually say "go without democracy".  Even if I only do it for the sake of the turtles.

I'm deeply curious as to how Tim will vote on this one!


Stats:

• Last 10 for 17 status: 3 down, 7 to go.
• Latest book read: still The Kink and I
• Latest film/TV watched: still Logan's Run
• Latest music listened to: still that thing by Yanni, I think
• Latest edible item eaten: Chilli con carne
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post; MatNav 6.1)
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable Episode 1474

- The Colclough

Implausible Extrapolation?

No, I'm not about to go off on a rant about the flawed logic involved in deriving a macroevolutionary hypothesis from the observable processes of microevolution.  I'm going to answer Tim's obscure mathematical query, Question 4: If a=9, b=30 and c=25, what does x equal?

Part of me just wants to say 42.

But despite the inherent sci-fi coolness of that answer, it might be cheating.

Also, I have a cleverer theory, and it goes something like this:

• For any given string of numbers, however random, you should be able to construct a triangle of differences.
• First off, the numbers themselves are 9, 30 and 25.
• Therefore, the differences between consecutive numbers in the sequence are 21 and -5.
• Therefore, the difference between the differences is -26.
• So we now have a triangle, like so:

9          30          25

21          -5

-26

• If each row is extrapolated towards the right, assuming the difference between the differences is a constant -26, we get something like this:

9          30          25         -6         -63         -146 ...

21          -5          -31          -57          -83 ...

-26          -26          -26          -26 ...

• Assuming a to be the first number, b to be the second and c to be the third, it seems logical to say that x must be the 24th, since it is the 24th letter of the alphabet.
• x, i.e. the 24th value in a sequence which begins with 9 and has a difference between differences of -26
• And if this line of logic is followed far enough, you can determine the value of the nth number in the sequence, for any n.
• I think the formula works out as...
• *insert a longish pause while I try and fail to boil all those numbers down to a simple equation*
• Well, what I've got so far is " n(x) = ( n(2) - n(1) ) + ", which isn't even a complete equation, and I'm pretty sure it would still be wrong even if I'd bothered to finish it.
• Stuff this for a lark; I'm going to fire up Excel and get it to calculate x for me!
• My helpful spreadsheet program tells me that the 24th number in this sequence, i.e. x, is -6086.
• x must therefore be -6086.  Because Microsoft Excel 2007 says so.
• Tada!

Okay, that was arcane.

Perhaps I should have settled for '42'?


Compulsory Stats:

• Last 10 for 17 status: neck and neck, each with 2 down, 8 to go.
• Latest book read: still The Kink and I
• Latest film/TV watched: Logan's Run - absolutely dreadful film; don't bother watching it!
• Latest music listened to: something by Yanni
• Latest edible item eaten: Smarties, and cinnamon hot chocolate
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook, Word and Excel 2007, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post; MatNav 6.1)
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable Episode 1473

- The Colclough

Gah! Trailing Already...

Tim has challenged me to a little blog race.  I won't bother repeating the intro, I'll just link you to his post.  We've only just started, and as of right now I'm already one post behind.

As per the Twenty Questions challenge I had against Hannah last summer, it's a "here-are-questions-now-answer-them"-type race.  The 10 questions which I need to answer over the next week are:

1. What is the most ghastly mainstream TV show of modern times?
2. Cheese or democracy: which would you go without for five years?
3. What's your favourite online game?
4. If a=9, b=30 and c=25, what does x equal?
5. What is the naffest film genre?
6. If you could add one piece of tech to your body, what would it be?
7. What's the worst pop song you've ever heard?
8. If, overnight, you could be bestowed with grade 8-level ability on any musical instrument you liked, what would it be?
9. If you had to join the armed forces, what department would you choose to serve in?
10. Who would win if the Galactic Empire fought the Borg, the Daleks fought the New Arpathian Principality, and then the winners went on to fight each other?

As per last time, some of these are going to be easier than others.  And just because it's the easiest one to answer, I'm going to start with Question 7, What's the worst pop song you've ever heard?

That's very easy.  Thanks to Radio 2, I now have a shortlist of most hated pop songs.  Most of them are ones the Radio 2 types have been playing ad nauseam over the last few weeks, and I hate them partly because of the horrific repetition, and partly because they're excruciatingly depressing.  Nearly every pop song I've heard seems to be about a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, and more specifically most of them seem to be about a relationship gone sour.  What a complete, pathetic lack of imagination.  Can't you think of anything else to sing about?  Why can't you sing about, say, science and cake?

I won't give you links to any of the songs.  The whole point of this post is that I hate them all and never want to hear them again, so it would be gratuitously cruel to give you a link and make it easier for you to suffer.

Anyway, the current shortlist is as follows, in reverse order:

• Somewhere around #6 or #7: We Take Care of Our Own by Bruce Springsteen.  Not too relationship-y, just hated for being really miserable.
• Tied with the above entry: American Pie by Don McLean.  Hated for being overly long, overly cryptic, pretty darn miserable and perhaps (if I heard the lyrics right) vaguely blasphemous.  Weird Al's Star Wars-themed parody is millions better, mostly because the lyrics make more sense and it's a lot more cheerful.
• Circa #4 or #5: Love Will Set You Free, as performed by Engelbert Humperdinck (what a name - he really must have had sadistic parents) and apparently intended as Britain's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest 2012.  For a song whose title revolves around love and freedom, it sounds really dismal, almost as though the composer and vocalist are both resigned to a life without love or freedom.  Unless the whole of the rest of Europe is even worse, or depression is in vogue with the Eurovision judges this year, then I can only assume the UK entry's committee are deliberately planning to lose.  Not that I follow Eurovision or care who wins, mind you.
• Circa #3 or #4: one that I don't know the title or composer of, but the chorus involves the phrase "I love you, I love you, I love you", moaned as if it was the saddest damn thing ever to happen.  I hate it for much the same reasons as Love Will Set You Free, except slightly more so.
• #2: Masterpiece by Madonna.  Apparently the song is written from the perspective of a lover to their beloved, but it's so badly done that the first few times I heard it I assumed that the singer bitterly hated the addressee and wanted to kill them.  Then I looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered that it's meant to be about Edward VIII from Wallis Simpson's point of view, and it started annoying me even more.  I mean, it's all very well for some silly American popster to write soppy wuv song about the cutesie romance of the king who gave up his throne to be with his darling, but my view of the whole affair is much more negative, more or less in line with The King's Speech, and I consequently find the song somewhat repulsive.
• #1: Somebody That I Used to Know by the implausibly-named 'Gotye'.  Probably the most miserable song I've ever heard, and infuriatingly prone to getting stuck inside the grey matter, and therefore the most hated.  If you've never heard it, don't go looking for it.  Just be grateful for your blissful ignorance.

So there you have it.  The list is open for revision, subject to the discovery of other, even more depressing songs, and/or to Radio 2's next choice of irrational obsession.


Compulsory Stats:

• Last 10 for 17 status: neck and neck, each with 1 down and 9 to go.
• Latest book read: The Kink and I by one James D Mallory Jr, M.D.
• Latest film/TV watched: All Creatures Great and Small series 1 episode 10
• Latest music listened to: Machinarium OST by Tomas 'Floex' Dvorak
• Latest edible item eaten: apricot and ginger pudding
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post), Skype
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable Episode 1473

- The Colclough