Kiran's Musings

All good TV shows should come to an end

2011-01-16T23:55:00.007Z

Last year saw the return of one of my favourite TV shows: Futurama. I was apprehensive about the new series - after all it's been away for 7 years! The writers had scattered to other shows (including the geek-tastic Big Bang Theory) and the show seemed to have vanished into the wild blue yonder. Thankfully the return was, at least in my eyes, a success. The style of humour seemed to be slightly different, but there were a lot of good ideas and science fiction behind the stories. The series is just coming out on DVD (and BluRay!) so be sure to check it out if you haven't seen it.

It got me thinking about TV shows and the thought I have that a lot of shows should stop after about 3 seasons. I'm going to use several US shows to illustrate my point. I know people get very attached to and defensive about their favourite shows so I don't want to cause any offence. As with every rule, there are some exceptions, but I'll get onto them later.

Friends.
Last year I finally got around to buying the complete series of Friends on DVD (spurred on by the knowledge that E4 will finally stop showing the repeats later this year). After sitting on my shelf for 3 or 4 months I've finally started ripping the episodes and watching them (just to make sure they encoded correctly, naturally) and I'm reminded how amazing the early episodes are. The scripts have the perfect combination of wit, slapstick, perfect timing and warmth. Looking back a lot of the setups, lines and jokes may seem stale and predictable but at the time, Friends was the pioneer and has now been copied by most sit-coms. By the end of the first season, Friends had established itself as a megahit. The first 3 seasons seemed to get better and better and spawned some classic episodes. From Joey's début in the musical Freud!, to the ongoing will-they-won't-they between Ross and Rachel which in itself seemed to form the main story arc and threw up some unexpected and surprisingly heartfelt episodes in the form of TOW the list and TOW the morning after. In fact, season 3 ended at a nice cliffhanger for the couple. Season 4 began straight away with a seeming desire to blow apart the previous arcs in a fairly unrealistic way. I'm not sure if the writers changed, but it seemed like more and more episodes become featured around the previously subtle traits of the characters. Monica became completely obsessive-compulsive (a trait mentioned in an early episode), Phoebe became an over-the-top hippie weirdo rather than being endearingly kooky, Ross became very annoying and whiny instead of simply having his hands full with life and Joey became a complete idiot instead of a little slow. The show seemed to rely on these character traits, slapstick and in-jokes to get by. By this time, most of us were invested in the characters and couldn't stop watching. The show carried on for many more years and thankfully improved again in time for its swansong season. Over the years (and thanks to E4 showing the series again and again) even the middle seasons are like comfort viewing now.

Scrubs.
At one point during university, Scrubs was my favourite show. Again, like Friends, it married a razor sharp wit and jokes that hit home perfectly with an undercurrent of drama. In fact, while Friends could occasionally pulled the emotional rug from under you, Scrubs seemed to be able to combine the humour with the regular dramas of interns coping with hospital life - mostly learning how to deal with death - fairly regularly. In the very first episode we see J.D. struggle with simply dealing with real life patients and carrying out simple procedures. The early episode My Old Lady sees the doctors struggle to cope with working against the odds. Even by season 3, we were getting phenomenal episodes such as My lucky night and My Screw Up. In fact, it seemed like the show was being nudged towards going out on a high at the end of season 3 as some characters got married and some got together, but as the show was renewed it seemed like the writers had to go to ridiculous lengths to keep the stories going and from season 4 onward, something was different and gradually became more and more zany, relying on in-jokes and slapstick.Even when the main cast decided they'd had enough after season 8, the writers and creator couldn't let go and carried on with new characters. Needless to say, most of the viewers had left and the "new look" show was cancelled after one season.

24
24 hit the a post 9/11 world (even though it had been created before) and instantly became a big hit. The main hook of the show was that it was set in real time. So when an advert break came up you saw a split screen of the various plot threads with a timer before and after the break. However, it still cheated as in the US a standard "1 hour" show lasts about 43 minutes if you account for all the adverts during the show. "Ah, but you said the timer accounted for the adverts!" I hear you shout, but even including the adverts, the show only lasted around 50 minutes. This is due to the adverts before and after the episode. Still, at least the intent was there. It quickly became clear that a great deal of time and love had been spent by the creators planning the twisting plot of the show in a way that most episodes could end with a cliff-hanger. Indeed, although there were still a lot of plot holes so big you could drive the QE2 through them, everything fitted together so well and the pacing worked really well. For the first 13 episodes. In the US it's common for shows to only be given 13 episodes at first (either they are cancelled halfway through a 26 week season or they start halfway through through the season to replace a cancelled show). While the first 13 episodes definitely rounded off the plot and left an opening for the show to continue (a new "bigger" bad guy pulling the strings was introduced) it seemed like the creators almost didn't expect to get to finish the season. As such the 2nd half feels very static at first with some very dialogue-heavy episodes and the writers clearly didn't know what to do with some of the characters. Thus we had the old chestnut of a character getting amnesia and another ended the day having been kidnapped about three times! The second series surely wouldn't repeat this mistake, would it? After all, the show was so popular it was almost guaranteed a complete season. The writers upped the tension and the cliff hanger's became bigger. The first episode ending featured the infamous "I need a hacksaw" line and the plot of terrorists planning to detonate a nuclear bomb in LA certainly upped the stakes from the assassination plot-line of the first season. Again though the plot line shifted in a much weaker direction in the second half. Again, there was a character the writers didn't know what to do with. After being chased by a mountain lion (no, really) she was yet again kidnapped before finally having her pointless plot removed from the story. Series 3 upped the ante again, this time involving a virus that could kill millions across the country. Some clever writing in the first third misdirected viewers who may have thought the plot was retreading old ground, but by the end there was something clearly wrong with the way the show was put together. Each episode tried to up the tension leading to one infected man getting out into LA at large, infecting more people in a shop. Suddenly the writers seemed to realise there wasn't a way to finish this off easily, so the whole plot strand seemed to go away and was solved off screen. Still, the ending showed how big the show had become with the USAF providing F/A-18 jets for the show and a spectacular battle leading to capture of the main antagonist. The ending of the season didn't have a cliff hanger and finally showed Jack struggling to cope with what he's been through in the past 24 hours. By this point the real time aspect was starting to slip as well. Again, it would have been good to finish the show here, but it carried on. Again, some episodes had fantastic action and tension, but by now the entire country had been threatened with a deadly virus and subsequent plots felt like they were just rehashing the same ground. It also became easy to telegraph what was going to happen. Key witnesses would die just before giving the crucial evidence, Jack would shout "dammit!" a lot and amazingly there would be some crucial event at one minute to the hour every hour for 24 hours...

The Simpsons
This is the big one. It's also the exception to the rule in some ways. The Simpsons started in 1989 as a spinoff from the Tracey Ullman Show and was the simple story of tales involving an average American family. The catchy look of the show (why were the characters yellow?) and the high quality of the scripts and writing ensured The Simpsons became a big hit. Essentially, the show is based around the lives of a dysfunctional family. Initially, people assumed Bart was the main character, but over time it emerged that the whole family were the protagonists of the show. The plots were simple things, such as Homer loosing his job and feeling guilty for being unable to provide for his family, Lisa becoming depressed at all the bad things in the world, Bart being bullied at school and Marge becoming frustrated by how her family treats her. The show was carried by the writing. The script again had the magic combination of wit, charm, humour, parody and above all, heart. Often times, the second or third plot-lines were hilarious accompaniments for more heartfelt main storylines (such as Homer vs. Bart at video boxing in Moaning Lisa). Going back and watching the early series shows that voices weren't locked down, the animation was a bit dodgy, but these steadily improved until the 3rd season where the show locked down it's look and sound. Looking at The Simpsons today it's become a pale shade of its former self. Where pop culture references used to be slid in in sight gags of short scenes, they often form the basis of whole episodes, there is much more slapstick humour and a lot of the modern episode plots often reference the fact that they have pretty much completely abandoned any semblance of being about an average family. In the finale of season 1, after being made took idiotic on tv, Homer turns to Marge and says. "Lord help me, I'm just not that bright," and that is the whole point of of the show. All the characters are flawed in some way, but they always love each other and make things right in the end. There are many examples in the early seasons, but a great one is Homer embarrassing and then angering Lisa in Lisa's substitute leading to the classic lines "Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand," from Homer and "You, Sir, are a baboon!" from Lisa. By season 10 Homer is quite literally an idiot, doing things that he knows will harm his family (normally involving quitting his job so the main plot of the show can occur) and a lot of the humour has shifted to slapstick generally involving Homer being hit over the head a lot.
As season 2 progressed, the writers fleshed out the town of Springfield and its other inhabitants. This rich list of characters is quite possibly why The Simpsons remained such high quality for so long. Guest stars initially didn't want to be credited (or was it they were embarrassed about being in a cartoon) meaning early appearances by Dustin Hoffman and even Michael Jackson weren't made a big deal of. Today, guest stars either completely direct the plot or are put in in such a jarring way as to make little sense. A great example of this is The regina monologues where the Simpsons go to England, meaning they inevitably run into a long line of British guest stars as, of course, everyone does when they go to London on holiday(!)
I think can actually point to the episode where the seeds were sown for the demise of the show and that episode is Marge vs. the monorail in season 4. The episode was written by Conan O'Brien and has a fairly wacky main story, but the humour is kept simple and grounded. Shortly after this O'Brien left the show to host his own chat show. Over the years more writers attempted to make the stories wackier and use more pop-culture gags like that episode had, but they lacked the finesse of O'Brien and gradually the wackiness became a staple of the show. The show was still really strong in my mind until season 8. Episodes such as boy scoutz 'n da hood and And Maggie makes three are among the standouts in seasons full of excellent episodes.
Season 8 gets off to a good start with the Bond-villain inspired You only move twice which is a fan favourite, but season 8 was where it seemed the writers drew a lot of "inspiration" from pop culture. We had the James Bond episode, a Rocky episode, an X-files episode, a Mary Poppins episode, a Frasier episode and even a Lassie episode. To my mind season 7 is the last top quality season and then seasons 8-10 begin the downward trend.

No, I won't fix your computer...

2010-10-24T18:02:00.004+01:00

I'm a geek. There's no getting around it. I know about computers and the internet, electrical items like PVRs, TVs and the like and, of course, science. In fact, I have a Ph.D. in the latter. So how did it happen? Why did it happen? It pretty much happened because I just wanted technology to work the way I wanted. When I was 10 I got a NES. It was so simple, just pop in the cartridge and press the power button. When we finally got a PC, it was back in the days of DOS. Getting games to work was surprisingly hard work. Firstly you had to know the DOS commands - even simple things like "cd games" and "cd\" had to be learnt. Then there was memory management... Those who know about DOS days will know all about memory management. It wasn't just how much memory you had, it was all about how it was assigned. There was base memory, expanded memory, XMS and EMS. All this was controlled by two files that were run when your computer booted. I spent many days going through them with a fine tooth comb trying to free up as much memory as possible. Was this fun? Not really, it was dull and time consuming and all I wanted was was to play my games. If you recognise this kind of screen, you'll know the kind of thing I'm talking about. By the time Windows '95 came out, you no longer had to worry about all that stuff, but now you had to manage with games that still wanted DOS. Not only that, but with the added burden of Windows, there was a constant need to avoid start-up programs and even desktop wallpapers as they sucked up precious computing resources. Once again, there was a whole heap of little tweaks that would bit-by-bit improve performance. As before, all this wasn't particularly fun, but if I wanted to get my games to work (short of buying a new computer which I couldn't even remotely afford) they were necessary. Of course, these days computers are so powerful you don't have to worry about trying to scrounge every last KB of memory and MB of disk space.

Likewise, about 6 years ago I moved to a smartphone made by the then-little known manufacturer HTC. It ran Windows mobile 2003, and again had the potential to be tweaked. This time, not to coax more performance out of it, but to enable more functionality in the form of applications. Again, this wasn't a simple process and beyond adding TomTom for satnav, I didn't really customise it much more as it was such as hassle.

Today, there tend to be two types of people - those who want to tinker with everything and those who just want things to work. Since moving to Apple products, I'm sort of now straddling the divide - I understand all the ins-and-outs of the technology, but I know that specifications aren't everything and how easy things are to use are just as important. Of course, manufacturers are willing to market the Hell out of both sides. Apple prides itself on it's user friendliness and slogan "it just works." It tends to hide specifications away from the public for things such as it's iPhone and iPad products and just show the speed and UI off to entice people in. Other manufacturers tend to push specifications a lot more and this can lead intense rivalries between fans of certain companies or products. These fanboi battles have become a lot more commonplace and intense thanks to the internet and various discussion forums. At the heart of these battles seems to be a built-in desire to defend what you have bought to reassure yourself that you made the right decision. Over the years manufacturers have pushed certain specifications to grab attention.

The bit-wars
In the early 90s a new generation of games console was unleashed to replace the incumbent systems of the times. The Master System was replaced by the Megadrive and eventually the NES was replaced by the SNES. While the old systems were 8-bit, the new machines were 16-bit. This essentially meant the graphics were better but it was a hard sell to justify getting a new console to your parents. The next generation brought 32-bit and even "64-bit" consoles to try and get gamers' cash. Strangely, bits haven't been mentioned again since the late 90s. This AVGN video about the Atari Jaguar (the first "64-bit" console) says everything...

The megapixel wars
Early digital cameras were quite low quality things. 0.3 megapixel sensors meant that although photos looked good on monitors at the time, they weren't really suited to printing out decent sized pictures. As technology improved we quickly got to 2 megapixels at which point excellent quality 5x7" photos could be obtained. At 5 megapixels, 8x10" became realistic and at 7-8 megapixels, even 20x30" became possible. At this point, it's unlikely the average consumer would need any more than this, but the manufacturers went further and soon 12 megapixel cameras appeared and were marketed as being better. Unfortunately they were often worse because although more pixels should mean more detail, the size of the sensor didn't change. this meant the pixels became much smaller. The outcome of this was they were more susceptible to noise (sometimes called grain). Every generation the cameras gained improved sensitivity and processing to reduce noise and improve image quality, but this was all but cancelled out by the shrink in pixel size. Thankfully, the manufacturers realised this was a loosing battle and the megapixel wars stopped. In cameras. They have now started up again in mobile phones. Once again people seem to be taken in by this. In mobile phones there is an added futility to it all as often the lens itself won't be very good so all the megapixels in the world wouldn't help. Thankfully some manufacturers are learning. Indeed, Apple's iPhone4 shipped with "only" a 5 megapixel camera, but had a high quality sensor so produced high quality images.

The business of nostalgia

2010-06-03T23:17:00.005+01:00

Sorry it's bit a while since I've updated this blog. I try to write about things that interest me or things that are an event in my life that I'd like to keep a record of - preserving a great deal of my thoughts and memories for the ages. Unfortunately, for the last few weeks and months I've been in a weird state. I've been unable to transcribe what I wanted to write into words. In fact, as I type this, there are several posts sitting, unfinished as I suffered a block. I'm going to have another go now with a post about nostalgia.

In early January, the BBC showed a series of programs looking at the last decade and investigating the trends that emerged. One of the major trends was a reluctance of people to grow up and their desire to cling to their childhoods. Certainly nostalgia has become a big business as companies realise that money can be made from this desire. Weirdly this seemed to coincide with my time as an undergraduate. It always seems that trends have followed what I'm interested in. It may be that most of the time, it's in fact me following trends, but this time it definitely seemed the market trend followed on from my thoughts. Anyway, it's apparently commonplace to reminisce about your childhoods at university - it makes sense as everyone is roughly the same age so their pop-culture memories are likely to be the same. My friends and I talked about toys we used to play with and television shows we used to watch. Films aren't really included as they were available on video or on TV again and again. The real nostalgia-inducers were TV shows. In 1999, DVD hadn't taken off and was still expensive and there were very few TV VHS sets. Naturally we got talking about shows such as the A-Team, Knightrider and ThunderCats and other shows from the 80s. We even went so far as to set up a college society: Trevelyan Alternative Movie Plus Animated Cartoon Society (TAMPACS). At this point in history, several things were about to happen that would explode this nostalgia out of college rooms and into the mainstream. The first was the gradual rise of DVD. With it's simplified manufacturing procedure, the costs would rapidly fall so entire runs of TV shows became affordable. The second was the internet. For the first time, people could virtually gather in chatrooms and forums to reminisce and people began converting old VHS recordings into digital video and slowly, in this still pre-YouTube age of dial-up internet, it became possible to hear the opening and closing themes and even see the opening and closing titles of all those half-remembered childhood favourites. This was a chance to post your half-remembered parts of a forgotten show and Over the next few years there was an explosion of 80s tv shows released onto DVD riding the nostalgia wave. It wasn't just tv shows that enjoyed this collective desire to relive the past - retro gaming became big as a whole heap of 80s and 90s games came back onto the market in the various virtual console stores and retro compilation sets.

This is where the second part of this post comes in - how this nostalgia affects us. Most of these retro things such as forgotten TV shows, primitive video games and even music are from fairly sharply defined parts of our past. A further good example of this is magazines. In today's world, we have the internet with it's up to the minute news and information from around the world. However, back in the 90s I got most of my information about things I liked from magazines that, by their nature were out of date by the time they hit the news stands. I used to read a couple of console magazines religiously for about 4 years or so: Mean Machines (which became Nintendo Magazine System) and SuperPlay. They were published monthly and I used to read them from cover to cover, even if certain games didn't appeal to me. Although I still have the physical copies of these magazines, they have long since been boxed up in the attic. However, there is a Mean Machines archive and over Christmas I found a torrent for a complete set of SuperPlay scans. Reading back through these magazines gave me shots of pure nostalgia - and not just of reading the magazine, but memories of what was going on at that time. And it's occasionally some really random things that my mind has associated with these things. For example, when I see the November 1991 issue of Mean Machines, it really reminds me of the day I went to buy the magazine. I can picture walking into town (despite the fact that I have walked that same route thousands of times, I can still remember that day, for no particular reason) and buying it. It had the Megadrive game F22 Interceptor featured on the cover and came with a free model of MM editor Julian Rignall. I remember getting home and flicking through the magazine while I watched an episode of Star Trek: TNG. I can't remember what episode it was but I'd know it if I saw it again. Similarly, the issues of MM and SP I took with me to India are burned into my mind as they were all I had to entertain me over the weeks we were there. Moving on to TV shows, when I was about 9 or 10 there was a repeat of a show called Star Fleet on ITV every Saturday over lunchtime. I remember seeing it for the first time and going outside to play in the garden afterwards - it was when we still had a small rose tree on the small lawn. For months after that, I would try to make Lego models of the X-bomber and other ships from the show. Both times I remember it airing, I had the same problem - it finished its run when we were in India and our rubbish video could only record for two weeks (and it failed to do that most of the time!) so I never saw the end of the story. This would have been in 1990 at the latest. As the years passed by I forgot about Star Fleet, but eventually it came back to me at university and, thanks to the internet, I found the themes, intro videos and eventually the full series and all these memories came flooding back. In fact when I ordered the series as a series of VHS rips, when it arrived, I watched all 24 episodes in one go - something I'd never done before. Finally a rare example of a film. It was early December 1989 (I was 9) and one Saturday morning I began watching what I thought was a short animation. It started out in a small mining town and involved pirates and the government chasing these kids. Then we were shown a robot that had fallen from the sky which subsequently woke up. Eventually the action moved to a floating island and the pirates turned out to be good guys. It was epic at the time and it completely sucked me in. I didn't see that film again for over ten years. In fact it passed almost out of my memory except for occasionally remembering that sketchy outline, with the robot that fell from the sky being particularly memorable. Finally in 2002, I joined the DVD Forums and got involved in one of those "can you name this film?" threads. It turned out the film was Laputa: Castle in the sky - one on the early Studio Ghibli films. As luck had it the Studio Ghibli collection was in the process of being released in on DVD and within 6 months I had a region 3 DVD of Laputa winging its way to me. Watching it brought back all the memories: later on that Saturday, I went to see Father Christmas at the local village hall (which was odd as we normally went to a department store grotto with school) and I can still remember the small present I was given (a toy car). In fact, I could still pick that car out from all my others.

I've always been someone that can remember small things like this. On several occasions my friends have looked quizzically at me and asked "how do you remember stuff like that?" I don't know if other people experience the same experience when it comes to nostalgia, but I suspect they do. What makes it a completely unique experience from person to person, is that the memories triggered by nostalgia will always be different. Even people who experienced something together will have individual memories about it.

What is different in this day and age, is it's unlikely my story will be repeated - now there is such an abundance of retro and nostalgia businesses that everything from TV shows, to video games seems permanently available - from YouTube, through to DVD boxsets and virtual consoles means peoples' long-forgotten cult memories won't be so long-lost any more!

Visual tagging of music and it's manipulations

2010-05-09T22:04:00.009+01:00

Something that I've touched on several times is music and what trends I've gone through over the years. What I want to focus on now is how music can affect us, how it binds itself to fragments of our lives and how we can be fairly easily emotionally manipulated by music. There are several links in this post to tracks on Spotify, so if you don't have an account (or got hold of a free account), you'll have to make do with the YouTube links. Of course, all the examples I'm going to give are highly personal as you'd expect. The upshot, aside from maybe discovering some new music, is that these tracks will probably illicit no (or completely different) emotional responses.

Unless you watch a lot of the music channels, music is - by definition - an aural experience. The upshot of this is that when we begin to link music with sights, thoughts and feelings we experienced with the times when we acquainted ourselves with the music. Here are some examples from various points through my life from my Spotify "memories" playlist (in no particular order):

Kent - 400 Slag

(It's Swedish before you start thinking anything else!) From 2006, I first picked up on this song from my beloved Pandora (before the feed to the UK was killed) and the album was the first one I bought as a result of Pandora. It's a long, moody intro and the singer has a really smooth voice which is a bit melancholic. The fact that the song is in Swedish means that you really focus on the melody - especially the sweeping choruses. While it's not the best song on the album, it's a song that takes my mind back to 2006 and sitting in my room in House 3 at Trevs. I think the best way to describe that entire year would be nihilistic: I feel I was living without purpose. What should have been a really fun and exciting year just past me by. While the song perhaps sets a depressing picture, I don't really see it as such - just as an aural passport back to that ridiculous room right next to the boiler (which never turned off).

T'Pau - China in your hand

Obviously this is an old one. When I was younger, I went to a swimming club on Thursdays. I was quite good at swimming, especially breaststroke, but I just wasn't competitive. Also, I lacked stamina and I found myself always struggling by the end of the sessions. I didn't know anyone else that went, so combined with my crippling shyness, I didn't have any friends there either. I also found some of the exercises (such as backstroke leg-kicks) fairly claustrophobic (I guess cos I could see where I was going and my ears were underwater meaning I couldn't hear anything and I felt disoriented). All this meant I really didn't look forward to going at all. The session began at 7.30 which meant I just had time to see who was number one of Top of the Pops before I had to go. I guess T'Pau was one of the most catchy tracks from that era and the two things are linked.

Radiohead - Lucky

At this point in my life, I still cling to the belief that the best album I have ever heard is OK computer by Radiohead. To my mind no other album went on such a journey from the raucous, confused and fuzzy opening of Airbag through to the chilled out, lethargic The Tourist. It could be argued that perhaps 2007's In Rainbows finally surpassed it, but being a guitar fan, I think OK Computer still just about stands out as their best for me. Now, the year was ~~2007~~ 1997 (oh dear, that's a long time ago now!), and several of my friends who were into Radiohead were really excited about the release of OK Computer. Obviously at the time I was very impressionable and I immediately looked to see if any of my compilations had any of their songs as I wasn't familiar with them at all. I found that I had a CD with the track Just. It was a song that I'd skipped in the past as it was an immediate song. In fact, the intro to Just is a very confusing and intimidating beginning to a song. It seems strange now to say that a song intimidated me, but it did. I began to be intrigued by their style. Radiohead seem to be a very polarising band. In 1997, even more so. People either loved them or hated them. Thom Yorke's vocal style is very distinct and can take getting used to. After hearing Paranoid Android (the lead single from OK Computer) for the first time - and not being overly familiar with the band - it left me a bit cold, but there was something about the song nagging at me to go back to it. As OK Computer was released, Woolworths did it and The Bends for £20. I snapped them both up and set about listening to them. A week later I went on a family holiday to Rhodes which involved a night flight and arriving very early in the morning. The song that has perhaps the most immediacy is Lucky. It's a very desolate song, with the constant ringing of the guitar strings heard in the intro carrying on in the background all the way through the song almost like crickets. The tremelo effect of the lead guitar coming in and out throughout in the background and the choral synthesiser effects and backing vocals in the chorus all add to create a unique audio landscape. Travelling by bus across Rhodes from the airport at 5 am, I had my walkman playing this song when I peered through the curtains and saw a desolate rocky, barren desert outside. The view just perfectly fit with the music and this link has stayed in my mind ever since.

Hans Zimmer - Like a dog chasing cars

Back to 2008 and the release of The Dark Knight. I'd really enjoyed Batman Begins in 2005 as a great example of how far comic book movies had come in the last 10-15 years. Gotham was now a believable, gritty, crime-ridden city rather than the pantomime neon or overly Gothic creations seen before. Rumours were that The Dark Knight was even better but nothing could have prepared me for it. We drove down to Bradford to see the film at the IMAX screen. It was a pretty horrid day by the time we got there - overcast, raining and cold. The weather fit completely with the tone of the film. It was epic. Constantly tense, the music served to alternate between the schizophrenic, tension of the strings which marked out the Joker's presence, to the bursts of heroic theme which quickly transitioned back to a tension-raising version. By two thirds of the way through the film I felt completely emotionally drained. If anything, the film was too much to take in. This track I've chosen will always remind me of sitting in that cinema and being so overwhelmed with what was happening and the feelings carried over with me for days and are retained on repeat viewings.

Moby - Look back in

At the end of my 3rd year at Durham I felt quite depressed. The majority of my friends had finished their degrees and I knew the next year would be a very different experience. During that summer I began to rediscover some albums by listening to them in the dark. I suddenly found that effectively shutting off my visual inputs left me free to concentrate more on the music and let my mind wander to wherever the music took it. This short track from the album 18 was the one track that summed up this very reflective period in my life. It's very short at under 3 minutes in length, but has a dreamlike quality to it. The title - Look back in - captured how it made me feel: looking back over the last three years. I just wish it was a little longer. A lot of people didn't like the album 18 as they felt it was simply a poor rehash of Play, but there are a lot of really nice chilled out tracks such as One of these mornings and In this world.

So there you have it - some really wide ranging examples of a small selection of music that instantly transports me somewhere in my mind. I'm sure everyone has their own examples and I encourage you to think about them and use a service like Spotify to create playlists of them to send some emotional, nostalgic chills down your spine.

Of course, people know that music can act in this way and seek to take advantage of it. The obvious example is with soundtracks. As with my Dark Knight example, music can emphasise the impact of the moving pictures. It's hard to do, but try and find a dramatic scene from a film or show with and without the backing music and often it won't have the same impact without the music. Obviously, here the music is tailored specifically for the scene and scored to maximise any points or moments the director desires. A slightly less unique approach is that employed by advertisers. They know that music has the power to get straight through the logical part of your brain and wedge itself straight in the emotional part, which is exactly what they want so you don't question exactly why you need a new *thing* - you just want it! Often times, simplified, cut down arrangements can often get through to people. A good example of this is the John Lewis Christmas campaigns. Here are the 2008 and 2009 adverts

Both feature stripped back versions of famous songs. The irony is that the Sweet Child Of Mine cover was released as a single, but didn't actually work as a song as it's far too dull an arrangement to sustain interest beyond the runtime of the advert. The piano is one of the best solo instruments to achieve this effect of conjuring up the required emotion. I'll finish this off with a piano arrangement of a suite of music from one of my favourite films, Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Regular readers may remember that this film features large portions of silence, which Disney didn't think Western audiences would be comfortable with, so they actually commissioned the original composer to re-score these previously silent passages when the film came to be released in the West!

All change

2010-04-22T22:16:00.002+01:00

So. After ten years (with a nine month break in the middle) I'm finally leaving Durham. No, I've finally left Durham. How did this happen? Where am I now? Let me explain. For the past 2 years and 9 months I've been employed by Thorn Lighting and their parent company Zumtobel. The employment was on a fixed contract for the duration of the TOPLESS project (a 3 year project to develop white light-emitting polymer materials for lighting applications). Until Christmas last year I wasn't really thinking about the end of my contract. I was vaguely confident that more money would be forthcoming - either from Thorn or from Durham University to continue our promising work in the field of high-triplet hosts and novel soluble blue phosphorescent emitters. However, no such money materialised and although it looks like a Thorn-led follow-up to TOPLESS will gain public funding, it will most likely be mostly engineering-based with the chemistry/materials development handled outside the project. This situation meant that all the Durham-based workers (a total of 5) were facing the dole. Thankfully just about everyone manage to find alternate employment. I was fortunate that a job opened up at CDT in January and this time, after a 4 hour interview (with no breaks!) I was offered the job (3rd time's the charm). Of course this meant I was suddenly facing 3 weeks until I was due to start in Cambridge. This meant I had to tie up (or try to tie up) and hand over my work in Durham (i.e. lumping it onto other chemists), find somewhere to live in an unfamiliar city, pack up and move south. In the end I got a lucky break with packing the stuff up as we were able to negotiate a much cheaper extra months extension to our rent. This means I've still got a lot of stuff up in Durham for now.

It was pretty surreal packing up and coming home for Easter as it felt just like any other Easter, but I wouldn't be going back north to Durham, but east to Cambridge. Finding somewhere to live was interesting as Cambridge seems to be a city full of shared houses where you rent rooms rather than finding a flat between a few of you. This is in complete contrast to Durham where the onus is on renting out complete properties. Anyway I found a nice laid back house just off Chesterton Road which is a nice 35 minutes walk to work and 15 minute walk to the town centre. Hopefully these numbers will drop substantially once I bring my bike from home (assuming it hasn't fallen apart).

Having been in Durham for so long (and 6 years in the same lab/department) going into CDT was a complete change. Bigger fumehoods, different protocols, not knowing where anything is or how to submit samples for analysis. And this is just the chemistry - the meetings are a blur of acronyms - even for someone with 6 years OLED experience it's been a struggle to adapt, but I'm getting the hang of it. The work load started off light and has now ramped up to a level I'm still comfortable with - several targets and regular meetings/updates and polymers to be made. It's hard to believe I've just finished my third week. There are several other new starters on the chemistry side and there will likely be a few more in the next few months, but even so the company (at least the Cambridge office) is a lot smaller than I realised. This is mainly down to a lack of physical space of both desks and lab space. Everyone's really friendly and helpful and I'm sure before long I'll feel like I've been there for years.

Cambridge is really nice (it helps that I've arrived just as the weather is getting warmer). The tourists can be a bit much, but they tend to congregate around the town centre and the colleges in particular where everything is pedestrianised so it never feels too cramped. I haven't been punting yet, but I'm assured there will be company trips down the river to Grantchester over the summer and some evening punting sessions. I've just about figured out how to navigate around the different parts of the city (Google maps helps a lot), now I just have to remember where everything is!

I guess it still hasn't really sunk in that I've left Durham - it's all happened so quickly. I really miss everyone there and hopefully I'll be able to go back up for some weekends to see everyone and find out how they're all doing. It's always interesting to see how people get on when you leave - most of the time they don't even notice after a few weeks!

Anyway, my job is a permanent position (unless it turns out that I'm rubbish and get fired!) so hopefully there shouldn't be any more sudden changes unless I instigate them. And finally I have a pension (how grown up). The dental insurance means I might actually see a dentist for the first time in ages and I have the option of private health care too. Not too shabby.

Hopefully I'll start to feel the photography vibe again in my new surroundings which will enable to post some pictures of my new surroundings.

It's also a bit weird without most of my gadgets - my TV and other AV stuff will likely spend the next few months at my parents and once again I am living the minimalist lifestyle.

Anyway - till next time (and I'll try and update a bit more often!)

The joys (and pains) of media

2009-12-06T01:33:00.004Z

Isn't media great? Thankfully it's moved on from the 90s buzz-word of "multimedia". Everything from pictures, music, books, films all the way through to my old undergraduate lecture notes. This is the stuff that can provoke a wide range of emotional responses from nostalgia all the way through to relaxation. In the days of the 20th century all this media came in different forms: photographs, cassettes/CDs, vhs/DVD. In the early days on the 21st century people began converting to digital cameras which freed them from the shackles of being careful what shots to make to conserve film and having to print out (and then store) all their pictures. In the middle of the noughties people began to embrace digital music in the place of physical CDs to the point where the top40 was nearly abolished and many shops stopped selling all but the most popular singles. As we move towards the next decade, there is increased interest in video downloads and ebooks - in fact ebook readers are starting to be rammed down our throats this Christmas, but I can save that for another post. One outcome of this switch from the bulky analogue "physical" formats to the digital domain combined with the increases in codec performance and hard drive size is that people can now store all their media on their computer: full CD collections, a lifetimes photographs, home videos and DVDs. My parents have just bought a document scanner so I now have all my undergraduate notes in pdf format that I can take with me anywhere without needed to lug around the original folders of notes. I've also been able to jettison years of bank and credit card statements too.

I've written about this before in my piece on minimalist lifestyles. In the last few years I set about converting all my precious media into digital form. The majority of my DVDs are now in m4v format and all of my music has been ripped to mp3 (although I have just re-ripped it all to a lossless format for archival purposes). What I haven't really touched on (or thought about until this year) is data security. I was exposed to this in 2001 when my parents PC was stolen during a break-in. All my files (school projects, essays and reviews and emails) were lost. But I was actually quite lucky as that was at the beginning of the digital revolution and I didn't loose too much. I have noticed thought that people don't really think about keeping their media safe, as previously - short of their house burning down - it was fairly safe in physical formats. It's highly unlikely any burglars would be interested in you photo albums but they are interested in the computers that people have entrusted their whole media collections onto. With this goes all the emotional connections their media can trigger. If the computer breaks, is stolen or lost or corrupts all these things are put at risk. It used to be that we were lucky to be able to fit all our music on our computer at ridiculously low bitrates, and now we can fit all our 256 Kbps tracks onto our iPods. There's definitely something very liberating about having your whole music, film, book and photo collection contained on something smaller than a hardback book, but at the same time something that valuable must be fearsomely protected too.

A lot of people will say that hard drives are too expensive, but I would argue that spending a bit of money is a lot better than facing the loss of a media-filled drive. Photos of family, friends and holidays, large collections of emails, music collections and a whole heap of other personal files. I will advise some ways to properly protect your files.

The most obvious way is to simply buy a large external hard drive and copy all your files to it. The trouble with this approach is maintaining this backup as you add and update more media files. Solutions such as Time Machine for Mac offer a good way of keeping an incremental backup (so older versions of files are preserved as well as new ones) or SyncToy for windows (for simple synchronisation of drives) are free solutions. Simply doing this will put you ahead of 90% of people who have no backup at all - a 1 TB USB drive costs about £60-65 at the moment. If you share media between several computers, a NAS (i.e. a hard drive that plugs into your network router) is a good option as anyone on your network can access the files. More expensive models offer two or more drives and offer so-called data redundancy. The idea is that with two (or more) drives, if one drive dies, the data is still on the other one (obviously your storage is equal to the size of the smallest drive) and with three or more drives, the data is spread across them in such a way that any drive failing won't result in a loss of files.

A lot of people rely on these multidisk NAS solutions but it isn't foolproof. If more than one drives dies, or the unit itself dies, or you are robbed or your house burns down you're equally stuffed. Unless you genuinely need more than a couple of terabytes of storage I'd simply recommend a simple NAS such as this one and then also buy a USB drive which you can use to back up the NAS automatically at set periods and then store at another location such as work. To be really thorough, buy 2 USB drives, keep one at home to back up the NAS and one at work changing them over every week or so. This may seem over the top, but for under £250 you can have a secure 1 TB setup (a 1 TB NAS and 2 1 TB USB drives).

The other alternative that probably isn't feasible at the moment for bulk media backups is cloud storage. More and more firms are offering storage space that can be accessed through the internet and backed up using commercial systems. Of course, the downsides to this are a monthly fee for sizeable amounts of storage and the insanely low upload speed most people in the UK see (our "fast" connection offers us 1 Mbps upload compared to 14 Mbps download). For small files (such as documents) I can recommend Dropbox which offers 2 GB of cloud storage for free. Your files can be accessed from any device running dropbox (PCs, Macs, linux, phones).

India Part 3

2009-12-06T01:32:00.005Z

On our final day in Agra, we took a trip out to Fatehpur Sikri about 30 miles away that is a town founded by a Moghal Emperor and then mysteriously abandoned 15 years later. As our booked taxi driver dropped us off at the foot of the hill, a Rickshaw took us up to the gates of the city. Again we were "compelled" to take a guide with us, and we explored the first few areas of the city. The weather was beautiful and cool and the city serene. That is, until we approached the final section of the city set next to the main road. The area was sprawling with hawkers who followed us round all the way up to the entrance trying to sell us tat. Things didn't improve that much on the inside as a whole different set of hawkers attacked us. As we approached Tomb of Salim Chishti, where you can attach a thread to make a wish we were informed that to make a wish you had to buy a cloth from the hawker (an official person our guide informed us). After picking a purple silk-style handkerchief we were informed that this particular "cloth" would cost us over Rs: 1200 (about £30). Unsurprisingly we passed on this "offer" and even though we were told this was a "very reasonable price" we moved on. Most upsetting for my mother who had come back to untie her thread as her wish (to return to Fatehpur Sikri).

Anyway, with our tour complete we headed back out and down the hill to await our taxi back to Agra. We bundled into the taxi with a different driver and headed back. After about 20 minutes our driver pulled off the main road and into a small restaurant, where he announced that due to union rules he had to have a half hour break. What this essentially meant was that the restaurant we had stopped at was paying our driver a kickback to bring tourists to them. Unfortunately for our driver, who disappeared into a back room, the four of us sat down for half an hour and had one bottle of Pepsi between us. After half an hour (presumably during which time our driver was getting a bollocking for bringing tight-wads to the restaurant) we set off again. Driving past the small shanty towns the amazing thing was the amount of advertising. Nearly every settlement had adverts for Pepsi or Colgate on the sides of the shacks, not papered up like we're familiar with, but painted on. The odds of such products being available in these shanty towns was slim to none. When we got back to the air-conditioned luxury, Emma and I decided to take to the streets and explore Agra by foot. When we reached the hotel gate we were faced with a 50:50 left-right choice. We made the wrong choice. After about a quarter of a mile, the only things we had found were a dead, bloated dog in the drain and a very annoying cycle-rickshaw driver who followed us for about a mile and a half as we doubled back on ourselves and headed the other way. He seemed quite insistent that there was no point walking and that we should pay him to drive us. Eventually we lost him down a narrow side street. The city is basically a sprawl around its cultural sites and there really isn't much else on view bar open sewers and poverty. We caught site of monkeys leaping from roof to roof and views into random bric-a-brac stores and homes. One friendly local approached us for a chat to practise his English, but were relieved to get back to the hotel: as the Wikitravel guide notes: "After getting off the streets of Agra and into your hotel, you won't want to go back anyway."

We head back to the station and got the train back to Delhi, which was livened up by some kind of creepy crawly crawling round the carriage. The following day, we headed out for lunch with more relatives I hadn't seen in years - this time a former Indian Ambassador. After lunch we raced back to the airport only to find our flight had been cancelled and we'd been shunted to the next flight.

The final week in Bombay consisted of seeing more relatives - some of whom looked very old and some of whom hardly seemed to have changed at all, eating a lot of good food and me getting a tailored suit made and, of course, swimming. Towards the end of the week Emma and I headed into town early to get the boat from the Gateway to Elephanta island - something else we used to do every year. The slow boat chugged out to the island for about an hour and then we walked up the long stairs to the caves where ancient stone carvings of the ancient gods Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver) and Shiva (the destroyer) which date back to the 9th century and have mostly survived despite the Portuguese using them as target practice in the 17th century. This time after fighting our way through the guides on the way up, we were met by an official guide inside (with a price of Rs 0).

After watching the local monkeys playing for a bit we caught the boat back to the mainland and had lunch at a local Chinese restaurant and an abortive visit the the famous (and now infamous) Taj Mahal hotel.

By the end of the week it was finally time for the dinner at the Racecourse to celebrate my Aunt's 70th birthday attended by several of my Aunt and Uncle's friends from the Willingdon club. With such an exclusive history and an even longer waiting list for membership, the club certainly hosts the elite of Mumbai. Finally it was time to head home. The chaos at the airport seemed to be worse than I remember. The airport still operates a policy of only passengers being allowed in the building so the drop-off area is overrun with relatives and queues to get in. This was going to be interesting since we didn't have a ticket (just our e-ticket number). Thankfully, the guard seemed to realise that the big suitcases we had signalled that we were going to be catching a flight and let us in. The terminal is still being "upgraded" and the place was simply a mess. An overrun mess. As in Schiphol on the way out, we all had to be interviewed by US security as we were flying a US airline and then finally, just before midnight we were off.

And that was it. But not quite. I woke up somewhere near Eastern Germany. With only about 90 minutes I assumed we had missed breakfast, but then something didn't seem right as the lights were still down. As we passed central Germany the lights suddenly came on and the flight attendants began serving breakfast. Luckily we were near the front of the queue, but before even half our cabin had even been served, the captain came over the intercom announcing we were beginning our decent into Amsterdam. As we slowed and descended over northern Holland, the stewardesses began saying "Someone should call him!" to each other. Eventually, everybody had been served, but then the captain came back over the intercom to tell the flight crew to take their seats. For a second it looked like we'd be making a landing with our breakfast. Even at the point the cabin crew seemed to think they'd be okay until the wheels came down and one remarked "We're not going to make it!" No kidding. Suddenly the engines roared as full climb throttle was applied and we overshot the runway in a missed approach after someone had presumably told the captain that the economy cabins were still tucking in to breakfast. After circling to allow the consumption, we finally landed at Schiphol. The crew didn't say a word as we filed off. When we arrived back into Birmingham the same weird sound and feeling that I remember from my previous visits came back. The sound was order: no horns blaring, no cars driving inches from where we walked, disciplined (sort of) driving and the feeling was cold. It's almost as much of a system shock returning to the UK after a fortnight in India as it is getting there in the first place!

India part 2

2009-10-15T21:13:00.010+01:00

We woke up feeling refreshed - if a bit sweaty. The time of year we had visited was the awkward change-over between the humid and wet monsoon and the cooler "winter". We were still in the humid period so had to sleep with the window open and, of course, with a festival going on meant that firecrackers were let off until the early hours. The house certainly hadn't changed in the plumbing department, with the bathing options being a weak dribble of water from a shower head, or a bucket bath. Venturing out into Dadar soon revealed that apart from the flyover that had been built over the circle, nothing much had changed at all. The weird store that seemed to sell everything was still there, the grocery stores were still there. The flower sellers were still there and the beggars were still there. Actually - I'll embellish a bit - the flyover now meant you didn't take your life into your hands (as much) every time you crossed the road. The lack of patience combined with the driving attitude means that if you are half way across a road and the lights turn green, the drivers won't wait for you...

Today was the last day of the Ganpati festival where people took their Ganpatis (idols shaped like Ganesh, the elephant-headed god) and cast them into the sea. This lasted all day with various vans and carts heading towards the sea loaded with clay Ganpatis and whole families. This carried on into the night with bright lights, music and many more firecrackers.

The rest of the week involved getting reacquainted with the city - from the area around the house to downtown. The restaurants, the hanging gardens and Marine Drive and the planetarium (complete with the school tour from hell). Then there was The Club. Every day, my aunt and uncle go to the prestigious Willingdon club where my aunt plays cards and my uncles plays snooker. As a child, we used to go to use the open-air swimming pool. Some years my father actually became a temporary member so we could go more often and children were never allowed in the clubhouse itself. Now I could finally see what all the fuss was about. After a visit to the nearby museum, we arrived for a swim as guests. I haven't swum in years, but it all came back instantly. This time, instead of sitting around the pool afterwards, I was thrilled to finally see the inside of the club. The bar was a modern area with plasma tvs and sweet, sweet air conditioning. Meeting other members of the club reinforces the exclusivity. You may think that a members sports club in a country where many people survive on less than $1 a day would be affordable for a young professional such as myself. I think it's safe to say Emma and I were gob-smacked to find membership cost upwards of £10,000 a year!

One of our tasks for the week was to sort out an excursion. Even though I had been to India many times before, I'd still never been out of the state of Maharashtra. This would change as, combined with the power of the internet and the abundance of low-cost airlines we sorted out a few days in Delhi and Agra.

After experiencing Ryanair, I didn't have high hopes for the Indian variety, but Kingfisher actually puts KLM to shame. New planes, seatback tv screens even on internal flights, good quality food (with metal cutlery) and good crew. Upon arriving in Delhi we were met by our host, my father's nephew Indivar who is an academic at a local university. We piled into his small Tata car and set out across Delhi. After leaving the airport, it immediately became clear that while it was obviously still bonkers, Delhi was a lot less intense and mad than Bombay. The university itself is set in - what to westerners - appears to be a massive amount of wild countryside.

Around Indivar's university-provided accommodation was a family of peacocks, several of which made an appearance. Indivar showed us around the sites, including a Sikh temple and an iron pillar that despite being constructed in 1600-odd years ago hadn't rusted. Sadly, the "magic" reason seems to have been unravelled. We enrolled on an official whistle-stop tour of some sights - including the red fort and Ghandi's tomb that were conducted at break-neck speed.

The trip to Agra would be by train. We had booked first class, but I don't think Emma was ready for what that entailed. As we arrived at the station early in the morning it was already a hive of activity. After finding our platform we discovered it was littered with travellers carrying more baggage that could feasibly fit into the train, hawkers selling their wares and the odd rat running around. As we boarded the train, all thoughts of a western-style first class didn't so much fade from our heads as they were crushed with a mallet. It was like economy on a plane, but without padding on the seats, broken recline mechanisms, tray tables that fell down every five minutes, a lack of A/C and the only entertainment consisted of the sellers that would come through the carriage every so often selling dubious-looking food and drink. After a few hours we arrived in Agra and took a taxi to our hotel for the stay, The Taj hotel. As we entered the hotel, it was like walking into an oasis. Clean white marble, gentle A/C and a good shower. The hotel was called the Taj View and as we reached our room we were happy to discover the hotel lived up to its name.

After an hour or so to enjoy our first decent shower in ten days, we headed back out into the madness and heat to take a rickshaw to the Taj. Rickshaws are awesome fun - it's basically a small moped with a 3-(small) person seat at the back. This means they have the turning circle of a unicycle and combined with the driving discipline meant the we were frequently in danger of falling out as the driver pulled off another ridiculous cornering move.

As we arrived at the drop-off I was amazed that India's best-known tourist attraction and one of the wonders of the modern world can only be accessed by small back streets. We had a few hundred yards to walk through a bazaar full of merchants all of whom didn't seem to want to take no for an answer. As we approached the entrance a new nuisance became evident in the "local tour guides" offering to give us a narrated tour. If you've seen Slumdog Millionaire, this isn't too far from the truth. After paying about 20 times more to enter the grounds than Indians (surely I should have had half off?) we were suddenly in a different world. Yes, there were lots of tourists and their guides, but the oppressiveness of the small streets had given way to a large court yard and as we walked towards the archway the famous view of the gleaming marble shrine came into view. Somehow marble manages to change colour in different lights in a way few other materials can manage. The monument itself seemed to gleam.

Emma and I left my parents to their guide (you have to give in to them else they will follow you round the whole thing - it's easier just to give them 50p and take their narration). After slowly walking around and through the Taj Mahal the sun had shifted and the monument took on a golden appearance as we headed out. The incredible thing about the Taj Mahal is that it is situated in the middle of an industrial city. In fact, from the Taj View, the Taj appears nestled among towers, chimneys and factories, but when you in the boundaries of the Taj you simply can't see any of that - it's as if the Taj Mahal grounds are surrounded by trees. The view across the river is to the proposed site of the black Taj Mahal that was planned as the mausoleum of Shah Jahan - the man who built the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum to his wife. Unfortunately he was deposed and imprisoned in the nearby Agra Fort by his son. Our trip took us on to the Fort and then back to the hotel for an awesome world-cuisine buffet.

India part 1

2009-10-13T23:38:00.003+01:00

Right, let's try and get this blog back on track. The first big update from just over a year ago(!) was the trip Emma and I took with my family to India. I used to go for 3 or 4 weeks every year until I was 14. This means it had been 14 years since the last visit. My parents had been a couple of times in recent times and I had been reliably informed that everything had changed in Bombay (sorry - I don't call it Mumbai, much like it's residents) and it had become much more Westernised. Thus I approached it with an open mind whilst recollecting the madness I remembered and Emma had no idea what was coming. My parents flew out a week before us (and it rained every day that week), so our trip began at 5am on a Saturday morning when our taxi arrived to take us to Birmingham airport. The "Eurohub" looks a bit sorry for itself these days and BA have fully abandoned Birmingham. We were soon on the KLM flight to Amrsterdam which was even quicker than from Newcastle, although Emma was developing a reaction to her new contact lenses rendering her partially blind for the day. This did facilitate hiding the madness later on. Our flight on to Bombay was with KLM's partner NWA (which always makes me laugh) and before we were allowed on the plane, everyone was taken to a table with their party and asked further security questions - talk about paranoia - the plane wasn't even going anywhere near the US. The flight passed fairly quickly (~9 hours) and we were soon descending over the sea towards Bombay. If the city had modernised, then they still hadn't cleared the slums from the airport perimeter. It still seems very surprising that we were really scrutinised before being allowed anywhere near a plane, yet there is a shanty town that could house anyone and anything is right up to the airport perimeter fence. As predicted, despite pleas to remain seated until the plane had come to a standstill at the terminal, most of the Indian contingent of the flight was up out of their seats trying to unload their baggage from the overhead bins almost as soon as the plane was off the runway. As we left the plane that nostalgically familiar heat wave hit me straight in the face. As we got to the terminal, nothing much seemed to have changed - they still seemed to be rebuilding the terminal and there was the familiar feeling that absolute chaos was only seconds away. Baggage collection led to at least a couple of people learning why you shouldn't stand close to the luggage belt unless you're retrieving bags as one traveller strugled to remove a case just large enough to hold a full-grown elephant, the momentum of the belt took it straight into a couple of unsuspecting punters standing nearby - the first of which got it straight in the crotch. Whilst I tried to keep a straight face, I saw out bags and we were away. My parents had arrived with a driver to take us back to the house in Dadar and even though it was just about midnight, there was a hot and heavy atmosphere (and a LOT of people milling around). We were led to the large car that would take us back and as we piled in, the rain began. We had inadvertently arrived at the end of the Ganpati festival and the roads were strewn with fairy lights and people on the streets. Emma was still suffering from a lack of long distance vision, so she was eased into the bonkers visuals. The main problem in Bombay is that there are far too many people. This is evidenced by the scores of people milling into the roads as there is no room on the pavements. Within minutes the first "change" revealed itself - the roads which were washed away in the recent floods had been "temporarily" rebuilt with bricks rather than tarmac. I suspect they're going to be in place until they too are washed away. The first beneficial change I noticed was the construction of flyovers on the highway which negated the need for traffic lights every few hundred metres.

It's remarkable how much more things seem complicated as you grow up. When I was younger I used to just sit in the cars and look at the sites. Now I am a qualified driver I sat open mouthed at the standard of driving which I will attempt to describe. There are (or, were) lane markings that are completely ignored - if a car fits into a space, it will. Red traffic lights seem to be considered as optional - which is something I don't remember from before. The cars are an eclectic mix of the old (Fiats and Ambassadors), old-ish (Suzuki Marutis) and modern Tata and East Asian cars. The majority of them don't have wing mirrors. For the older cars, this was a design "feature", for newer cars, they likely didn't survive the drive home from the garage. Given the tight packing that drivers seem to favour, there is a matter of centimetres between vehicles. That lack of spacial awareness is compensated for by the horn. If you approach a vehicle from behind - you blow your horn to let the driver know you are there. As you overtake a vehicle, you blow your horn to make sure the driver doesn't pull into you. If the driver is slightly slow at pulling away from a traffic light, you blow your horn. If the day of the week has an "a" in it, you blow your horn. And for added amusement, sounding your horn is illegal. If you very go to India and consider hiring a car, just don't. Someone who actually learned to drive using mirrors wouldn't survive 10 minutes.
Anyway, we arrived in Dadar after about 30 minutes and I met my Aunt and Uncle who I hadn't seen since 1996. The house was built by my Grandfather and is a 3-storey building. My memories of it were that my uncle's parents lived on the bottom floor, my aunt and uncle (and us when we were there) lived on the first floor and my grandparents lived on the top floor. The house was in need of refurbishing back in the 80s and I remember sitting on the stairs peeling paint off the walls (something that was sooooo satisfying to do when you got a big piece off) and it hasn't been touched up since. Due to deaths it's now just my aunt and uncle there now along with the servants. The crazy thing with the servants is how they live. They sleep on the floor in the kitchen (even though they must be in at least their 40s and there are several unoccupied beds), they have an outhouse toilet (even though there are 3 toilets in the house), they hand-scrub the washing (even though there is a washing machine) and they are expected to do the shopping and cook all the food. One of the servants actually left to go and work in a textile mill, but came back because his life was better as a servant.

Anyway, I've typed for a long time and still only described up to the first night. I'll try to be more concise in the next parts.

The AppleTV

2009-02-22T15:44:00.003Z

It started last summer when I was sitting around talking with some friends about what a pain a large media collection is. With music - a lot of people have migrated over to mp3 and I have to say that with a decent ripper (EAC) and compressing to 192 kbps VBR I struggle to tell the difference between the mp3 and the CD - I can tell there is a difference, but can't tell which is better. This means my CDs can be stored somewhere in a big box. Someday I'd like to go back and re-rip them to FLAC or some other lossless file to have a perfect digital copy for archival purposes. The trouble is DVDs. Initially, having a big collection was something to be proud of, but as I've moved around, transporting all my disks was starting to be a handful. Unfortunately, unlike CDs, a full DVD rip would take up 6-8 GB per disk, and at a collection of some 300 discs, that can add up. We talked about how there should be a way to have your DVDs on a hard disc allowing you to box up the discs in long term storage. I didn't know it then, but such a solution already existed. When Apple launched the AppleTV it flopped. They tried again with updated software and the response was still tepid. Then came tools such as Handbrake, which allowed you to compress films down. DVDs are encoded in MPEG2 which was developed in the early 90s so the technology looks pretty ancient today. The modern Blu-Ray discs tend to be encoded using something called H.264 which is much more efficient and allows you to get the same quality from a smaller file. Thus, using Handbrake it's possible to extract and compress down a 6-7 GB DVD film to a 1-2 GB mp4/m4v file. This file can then be "tagged" with metadata in the same way an mp3 file can using tools such as MetaX (mac/windows). It can retain multiple audio tracks (except DTS for now) so you still got 5.1 sound out and this can then be copied over to the AppleTV or streamed.

There are a few problems.

Firstly, this normally just preserves the film. There are no menus or extras (unless you rip the extras too). In theory I don't mind cos I normally only watch the extras once. Also, some discs with seamless branching have to have each version of the film encoded separately

Secondly, some of the tools (for example Subler to insert subtitles) are still Mac-only

Thirdly, Apple still only sells the aTV with a maximum drive of 160 GB. They also use old-styl drives so the maximum you can upgrade it to is 320 GB, so big collections still won't fit, and Apple still insists you can only stream stuff via iTunes which needs a PC on running iTunes. There are ways around this, such as using hacks to install things like XBMC which can stream from network hard drives.

Right now I've got all my music and most of my TV show DVDs stored on my aTV with my non-DTS films available to stream when my PC is on. I can see why Apple don't put large hard drives in the aTV - so you can copy music to it and use a bit of storage for rentals/buffering and rely on streaming from a large hard drive somewhere for videos - but I don't understand why they won't move away from requiring a PC to be on with iTunes running to do it. I'm hoping the next year will bring some solutions allowing me to rip my DTS films which will reduces the physical size of my collection. We are slowly creeping towards a total digital solution with books, papers, photos and films stored on "cheap" storage and kept in small boxes that can be connected to the internet allowing us access to our data anywhere in the world we can get a connection to the internet. I say, bring it on!

Foreign Conferences

2009-02-22T15:06:00.002Z

In 2008 I got to go to two international conferences. the first, in July, was the Fpi8 conference in Graz, Austria. The FPi series alternates between Europe, the US and Japan and Fpi8 marked my attendance of the complete set - Ithaca 2004, Osaka 2006 and now Graz. I was going with Martin, Mustafa and Pete from Chemistry and Torsten from CDT. While the others opted to fly down to Stansted and then out to graz, I thought of my FlyingBlue miles and flew to Austria via Amsterdam and then got the train to Graz. Both options turned out to work well and by the end of the Sunday we were all sitting down to a large Austrian meal under a large canvas roof. Soon, the rain developed into a full blown storm which made sitting outside interesting.

The difference between this and other conferences I had been to was that this time I was making an oral presentation rather than just defending a poster. Before that though I sat through 4 days of talks on functionalised pi-systems. Since Ithaca, academic interest has shifted from OLED materials to transistors (OTFT) and solar cells (OPV). Infact, most OELD talks were towards the end of the conference. The talk went well, even though I was introduced as "mister" grrr. The first one is supposed to be the hardest, so that boded well for the next conference. Instead of going on the organised excursions, Pete and I wandered around graz - which is a fairly small city - taking in all the sites from the weird "alien" buildings of the culture centre and the river-slug to the Schlossberg and clocktower that overlooks the city (taking the hillside train was a much better option than walking).

The second conference was at the start of September in Dresden. This time I was the only chemist in our visiting party made up of Andy, Olivier, Ben and mot of Andy's Ph.D. students. A flight via Dusseldorf left us in the tiny Dresden airport trying to figure out the ticket machine. It ended up stumping us. Our hotel was next to the train station and, apart from registering at the conference site, out first day and a half was free so we made good use of it wandering around the reconstructed Dresden.
Unlike blitzed cities in the UK, Dresden took a long time to be rebuilt and the extra care that's gone into it is evident - the buildings have been rebuilt to maintain a traditional feel rather than just throw up concrete buildings like we did. The end result is a much more pleasant cities than somewhere like Coventry.

A with Austria we enjoyed some excellent food - and took advantage of Andy's knowledge and contacts to get to some restaurants most tourists wouldn't including a Thai restaurant on the edge of the city and a chicken restaurant. The conference ws solely focussed on OLEDs with an emphasis on device physics and engineering, but there was still a bit of chemistry. The session my talk was in lost most of it's participants as the first 2 of 4 speakers hadn't shown up, but some of the audience had returned for my talk - which was a more complete version of the one from Graz. A Special mention has to go to the conference banquet which had some awesome food on offer, including the very moreish veal slices... Hopefully 2009 will bring a few more conferences my way.

Two Weddings

2009-02-22T14:40:00.002Z

In an effort to get the rest of last year blogged, here are a couple of big events from 2008. The first was the Wedding of college friends Matt and Mel in Melbourne near Derby. A group of us from Durham drove down on the Friday night to the East Midlands' Airport Travelodge (actually built into the service station). Luckily, our room didn't overlook the Burger King. Not only was I a wedding guest, but I had also agreed to act as one of the two photographers for the day. When we rolled up to the church I was handed a d-SLR and some memory cards and had a few minutes to get used to how it worked and figure out the different shooting modes before I was off taking pictures of the area and guests. I won't go on about the ceremony as I'll just post some pictures (more on my Flickr site). I will say that as a photographer I didn't get the chance to relax and chill out until the meal, after which I handed over the camera and became just a guest again. Of the hundreds of shots Caz and I took, a lot turned out really well which I'm happy about.

The second wedding was over the summer in Durham and saw Alan and Lucy get married. This time I was involved as an usher which simply involved shepherding guests around at the church and then the reception. This time it was a pretty miserable day with rain and drizzle throughout the ceremony. As we arrived at St Mary's College for the reception the sun broke out and the afternoon and evening was very sunny and warm so the drinks reception took place outside. Again, more pictures are on Flickr.

A review of last year's tech predictions

2009-01-02T00:32:00.005Z

There's more 2008 updates on they (and more photos have made their way onto Flickr. In the meantime, here's a review of how I did with my 2008 tech predictions.

Small computers

In many ways this prediction hasn't come to fruition as the new Mac Mini isn't scheduled to be launched until next week and the only other supplier, Acer, hasn't really pushed it's small systems. In fact, it's looking like small computers will arrive in the form of "all-in-ones" such as the iMac and Dell One and, more immediately, laptops which have started selling in larger numbers than desktops. The days of the massive, loud tower case are definitely numbered.
As a side I mentioned the Asus EEE PC - a cheap, small "nettop" laptop that I predicted would take the world by storm and this was a success - you can't move now for 9-10" low powered laptops in the £2-300 range. Their success has certainly annoyed a lot of people. Sony complained that it meant they would lose profits trying to sell a small laptop for over £1000. It also meant that people started to question the need to upgrade their computers when all they wanted to do was surf the net and run a word processor which panicked Microsoft who have had a keep extending the life of Windows XP.

E-Paper

This one is split across the world. In the US, E-paper is very popular thanks to the Amazon Kindle - an ebook that allows you to buy books from Amazon anywhere via a built-in shop. Unfortunately, E-book pricing still doesn't seem to reflect the lack of materials compared to a paper book. Sony released a new Reader that was better than the old 505, which may explain why the Reader was finally launched in the UK. Of course, the model we got was last year's 505 model (no doubt collected up from the rest of the world) and at £200 it's not exactly cheap. Still, it's apparently selling well through Waterstones. Next year will see the release of the Plastic Logic Reader and no doubt the gradual reduction in price to where they might actually be worth it.

Personal GPS

A hit. As expected, the iPhone3G featured built in GPS. Out of the box, you've got Google Maps to use, but thanks to Apple's innovative App Store a large number of "location-based services" have sprung up allowing you to find just about anything where ever you are: ATMs, restaurants, nearby friends, public toilets... This has resulted in every other smartphone from HTC, Nokia, RIM etc coming with GPS and most mid-range Nokia phones. In the next year this will filter down to the low end phones from Nokia, Samsung, Lg and SonyEricsson. But to be honest, the iPhone is the one everyone wants.

Splashpower

This one is a massive failure. After years of failing to get any manufacturers on board, Splashpower went under in April. However, their patents have been bought up, so we may yet see products based on wireless charging.

Smartcards

Another slow-burner. These are being rolled out across transport networks throughout the country. With the credit-crisis, the banks haven't kept up the momentum in rolling out contactless payments outside of the City of London. Nevermind.

As a side, it seems most of my 2007 predictions have come to fruition in 2008. Digital photo frames have hit the mainstream, even if most of them use cheap screens. The next generation using OLEDs are now available (for a price). HSDPA is now built into almost every phone released and personal GPS is taking off and the Wii is running away from the XBox360 and PS3 in terms of sales.

I'm still thinking about my predictions for the year 2009, so until then Happy New Year!

Hong Kong part 3

2008-12-01T18:34:00.004Z

Our last full day in HK dawned and Emma and I headed back to Hong Kong island to have a look at the escalator to the mid-levels. The mid-levels are up the hill from the Central district and accessed via very windy roads. The escalator is the world's longest outdoor escalator rising a vertical distance of 135 m over a length of 800 m. There's only one lane of escalator which changes direction running downwards until 10 am and the upwards till midnight. There is also the normal option of stairs for when it's running the wrong way for you. We stopped off for breakfast at a small cafe a few hundred metres up the hill. The place soon filled up with rugby 7s fans from around the world dressed up in a variety of wacky costumes. After a fry-up to be proud of we set off back down the escalator to see one of the wet markets - traditional street markets selling food.

There was loads of fresh fruit and vegetables, more live seafood for sale and all sorts of meat - including chickens' feet.

At the end of the market we finally caught one of Hong Kong's old trams through Central to the Bank of China, the iconic "triangle" building. The trams are pretty jerky and very narrow, but they keep going.

The Bank of China has a viewing platform which afforded us fantastic views over Central and Admiralty. Even more surprising was that the bank was open on a Saturday! More importantly though was that the fog had lifted for the first time.

For our final excursion we took a bus to the south of the island to Stanley. As the double-decker bus started climbing up the hills the roads started getting more winding and narrower. As we came down the other side of the hill, the road quality deteriorated and the ride became more akin to a roller-coaster with as we worked our way past the luxury houses to Stanley. Stanley is famous for its market and once again the area turned out to be full of knock-off shops and overly priced restaurants and westernised bars along the China Sea front. We went for a dim-sum restaurant, tucked away behind the market, hoping it might be a hidden gem. We even went for the chicken-feet. We were disappointed on both fronts. Chickens' feet are probably the most pointless food ever - there is more bone and gristle than meat.

The bus back came through a tunnel rather than the hill-top road and was much less hair-raising. We traversed the bay on the Star Ferry again to wait for dusk and the symphony of lights. This time I was able to get some nice photos without fog.

We took the ferry back to the island for our final meal out in an very old restaurant that slowly descended into farce. The waiter seem confused by our order (two different set meals), but seemed to grasp the idea in the end. After a while the first meal's first course (bird's nest soup) arrived. A few minutes later, nothing else had arrived, so we questioned where the other meal was. The waiter got across that he'd thought only one of us was eating, but we convinced him we both wanted food. He came back a few moments later and thrust a spoon at Emma and then went away again. After a few minutes it became clear he wasn't coming back with any more food and had assumed that we were being cheap-wads and sharing one meal between two. After calling over a different waiter we finally got the message across and soon were tucking into roast pigeon. Unfortunately, the main dish was pretty rank. As as final "insult" to the restaurant, their oldest waiter - who looked about 80 - nearly tripped over whilst serving our desert. We gulped down the desert, paid up and ran before we caused any other mishaps.

Hong Kong is like a real culture smash between east and west - the British influences are clearly there and they fall away quickly the further into Kowloon you go. It's a very good starting point for people who want to explore east Asia for the first time. There was so much we didn't have time for - notably the New Territories, but these are more Cantonese than British and off the main tourist trail. Maybe next time.

The next day we got up and took the MTR for the final time to Hong Kong and got the skytrain back to the Airport for the flight back home. This time, Air France had remembered our seat bookings, but of course there had to be a problem and that was that the already mediocre entertainment system refused to play any films leading to a 12 hour flight where we had to entertain ourselves. Still at least we'd get home in one piece.

Or were we? Despite have a 4 hour layover in Paris, which was extended by an hours delay, we arrived in Manchester to find an entire crate of luggage had been left on the tarmac in Paris. Nevermind, Air France had the pleasure of couriering my bag from Manchester to Durham. Take that!

Hong Kong part 2

2008-11-30T19:37:00.005Z

After exploring Central and Admiralty, our 2nd full day started off walking around Kowloon. There are two main roads that run north to south and are rammed with electronics stores. We walked north on Nathan road taking in all the sites and sounds. Unfortunately a lot of these were Indians offering me suits and Emma Thai massages. Seriously, every 20 metres another one popped up with an offer. We found another out-of-the-way restaurant downstairs in a random building. Unlike the packed Town Hall dim-sum place, this place was practically empty. Once again, we ended up ordering far too much - the mixed noodles we thought was a side turned out to be a full dish so in total we'd accidentally ordered four full dishes for two of us...

After lunch we carried on before heading across to the Museum of Hong Kong. The fixed exhibit was the traditional "history of..." exhibition charting Hong Kong from perhistoria to modern (well, the 90s) times. As ever, Britain played a large part in Hong Kong's history by breaking down the Chinese by importing drugs to the area and advancing towards to capital until the Chinese capitulated and signed over first Hong Kong island and then Kowloon and the New Territories to Britain.

The second exhibit seemed to be about banking (and HSBC in particular, of course) so we skipped out to go to the adjacent science museum to finally see the National Geographic young wildlife photographer of the year exhibition that we'd missed out on in London last year.

Once we had finished browsing through the impressive collection, we headed back to the docks. As we waited for night to fall we popped into an amusement arcade and went head to head on Mario Kart GP2, which was as fun as ever.

Hong Kong is famous for it's night-time harbour sound and light show a symphony of lights which holds the world record for the longest daily sound and light show. Every day at 8pm music is piped onto the Avenue of Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui and the lights on buildings on the island flash and lasers shine into the sky in time with the music. It's pretty cheesy, but every day crowds line up, people set up camera tripods and everyone waits for the show to start. The mist still hung over the island so the view wasn't as clear as in the pictures. We wandered up the Avenue of Stars - the HK equivalent of the Hollywood Walk of Fame and stopped off for a drink in one of the many quayside bars and then wandered back while taking in the light show.

Also on the avenue was a display of the Olympic mascots, which seemed to all be pandas. Some of the sports they were partaking in were obvious, but some were more confusing...

Once the show was over we decided to cross the harbour and take the train up to The Peak. The train runs on a pulley system, but even so the track was seriously steep. Starting at the base of the hill the journey ran uphill at steep angle. We started out at "ground level" and soon were rising above the sky-scrapers towards the summit. The Peak is predictably tourist trap-esque and the centre is full of tacky over-priced souvenir shops and places like Hard Rock Cafe. We went to one of the over priced restaurants which was pretty nice, but seemed to be lacking the live music indicated by the guide book. We got a seat with a view (again foggy) and a menu full of the promise of freshly cooked food. After ordering, the waiter returned to inform us that Emma's choice had run out so a replacement was ordered. After a few minutes, our meals turned up. A few minutes later another waiter arrived with Emma's original choice. He seemed very confused that we both had food, but unfortunately didn't decide to leave the extra meal with us.

After we got back to sea level we decided to go for a walk over the many elevated walkways back to Central, stopping to get some "lines of lights" photos along the way.

The next day we took the MTR out to Lantau island, adjacent to the new airport and took the cable car out to Ngong Ping, home of the world's largest outdoor bronze Buddha. There seem to be so many of these things around that there needs to be multiple categories to have records in. Biggest/smallest, indoors/outdoors, bronze...

The journey takes about 20 minutes and gives an aerial view of the new airport, before going over the hills of Lantau island to Ngong Ping village. If the Peak was a tourist trap, then Ngong Ping is a tourist death-trap. The entire cable car complex has been built to look old, but they did a pretty poor job as everything looks like it's made out of plastic. Overpriced cafes and souvenir shops line the path to the monastery at the foot of the steps up to the Buddha itself.

Apparently Buddha like oranges, so there were plenty of orange bushes around and small piles of offerings in front of the statues. Then we started up the hundreds of stairs. I know I'm not that fit, but daaaaaaaaaaaamn there was a lot of stairs.

After getting the cable car back to Tung Chung, we walked around the shopping centre there taking in another supermarket, complete with more live fish tanks and piles of durian fruits.

That evening we ventured back to Yau Ma Tei to take in a night market. Essentially, it was a market along a street full of stalls selling tat, knocked off toys and clothes. Afterwards we were guided into another random building, up a staircase and into a first floor restaurant, practically invisible from the street (in fact, it took us several attempts to find the building). This was another traditional place, full of Cantonese where very few of the waiters spoke English. We ordered the duck pancakes and a whole sliced duck arrived.

Afterwards we wandered back towards the harbour. As we neared the harbour we passed the Sheraton hotel. After my experiences in Frankfurt and Sheraton Preferred Guest card in my wallet I dragged Emma inside for a drink. The bar was on the top floor with an amazing view over the harbour. Of course, the drinks of choice were cocktails - margaritas, daiquiri and other strong vodka drinks that looked pretty space-age under the mood lighting. Very Lost In Translation

Hong Kong part 1

2008-11-02T20:56:00.010Z

So this was my 2nd East Asian holiday in as many months following my return to Japan in February. Emma and I had decided that Hong Kong was top of our "cities to visit" list so we'd booked in the post Christmas sale. After getting the parking centre bus to the terminal in Manchester it appeared that we'd walked into a building site. Online check-in promised to remove the queues, but now we simply queue at the "baggage drop" desk instead. Indeed, at Manchester there appeared to be one check-in machine shared between KLM and Air France. The staff manning the machine didn't seem to understandthat we had checked in online, but didn't have boarding passes. Eventually he ushered us towards the queue. Hopefully I'll get to Silver status this year and the business check-in will await.

The next challenge was to pick up our money. After finding the Thomas Cook booth, it turned out that the money simply wasn't there as they had "forgotten" to order it. The girl thought that they may have some in another terminal so she called and informed us that someone was "running" over with it. We still had to get through security and it was getting close to the departure time. Eventually someone came ambling round the corner and we got about half of the money we'd ordered. Thomas Cook seem to be gradually replacing TravelEx in airports so in future we've decided to simply use ATMs to get cash. We rushed through security and had 10 minutes in the shops before we were ushered onto the 737. 40 minutes later we were over the channel and descending into Paris. Of course, we landed on the runway furthest fom the terminal and when we disembarked, there was actually someone to walk us from Terminal 2E where our HKG flight was to go from. CDG is a really badly laid-out airport. Terminal 2 has 6 sub terminals, some of which need a bus to get between and the signage is pretty bad. Half of 2E was still closed after a roof collapsed several years ago. To our absolute disgust, Air France had completely ignored the seats we'd selected and put us into random seats. The very unhelpful desk attendent said - tough, you turned up late so you get what's left, completely ignoring the fact that we'd pre-booked seats. Thankfully, once on board, a much more helpful stewardess arranged for us to sit next to each other - but no window seat:( - The 777 left on time and we set about the IFE system. Unlike KLM with it's AVOD system, the AF planes mostly have multichannel but are limited to about 7 films, 3 of which were French. Once again, the plan was to stay awake all the way through the shortened night and sleep when we arrived. We just about managed it and 12 hours later we were descending through the fog into Hong Kong. The famous old Kowloon airport is closed so there was no flying through the tower blocks. We entered the country, got our bags and emerged into the arrival hall, completely unaware of what to expect. We had been told there would be a bus straight to the hotel, but we couldn't see one. Instead we took the train to Hong Kong island and bought our Octopus cards (equivalent of the Oyster card and the world's first publicly used smart-card). By now it was dark and we were soon into Kowloon going past massive docks and a multitude of tower blocks.

We got off and followed the signs to our hotel bus. We were the only ones on it and it dropped us outside the Metropark in Mongkok. Something didn't feel right, and so it turned out to be as we were actually supposed to be at the Metropark Mongkok near Prince Edward station... That's just confusing. We took a taxi to the right hotel and checked in. Our room was tiny (as most Hong Kong hotel rooms apparently are) so we didn't stay long and set out to walk to a "nearby" set of recommended restaurants. Half an hour later and we were still walking along the main road which separates Kowloon from the New Territories with no end in sight.

We decided to go for Thai and found the restaurant. Having no knowledge of Cantonese, thankfully the waitresses spoke enough English to take our order. Or so we though. despite ordering chilli prawns what actually turned up was chilli crab claws. We didn't fancy trying to sort out the confusion so just ate what was brought and it was fantastic. We carried on with dessert and bubble tea (tea with tapioca balls) and eventually set about the long walk back with a stop-off at a kwik-E-mart. Our hotel is right next to a flyover and during the walk back I started to get a feel for the area. The British influence is obvious - driving on the left, road names. The Asian "feel" of the place was obvious too and at the same time it reminded me a bit of Bombay with rubbish overflowing underneath the flyover. By this point we'd been up about 30 hours so we finally headed to bed with a full plan for the next day.

We got up (perfectly in sync with Hong Kong time) and headed to the MTR just across the street. The system is light, breezy and clean. The trains are frequent and in no time we arrived at Tsim Sha Tsui which is at the end of Kowloon. From the station we walked the few hundred metres to the docks where we took our first of many journeys across the bay to Hong Kong island on the Star Ferry. We paid the extra HK$0.5 for the top deck. The famous view of the island was diluted due to mist which is very common at this time of year. Amongst the international banks, Calvin Klein are building a new skyscraper and at the moment a giant underwear model is being draped over the building and is possibly the biggest advert I've ever seen. The crossing only takes 10 minutes or so and we were soon walking onto Hong Kong island. Immediately, everything seemed a bit more British than Kowloon. Straight away we were among the skyscrapers: HSBC, the Bank of China and the rest and with the help of our guide book aimed towards Hong Kong park which housed the Tea Museum (in the oldest colonial-style building left in HK), a botanical garden, a Tai Chi garden complete with a tall tower which gave us some great views of the skyscrapers, Kowloon and a flock of cockatoos that happened to land nearby.

Next was the avery that housed a whole host of colourful birds. By this time we were getting pretty hungry so we walked back through Admiralty to the Town Hall, where we eventually found the dim sum restaurant we were looking for.

We had no idea what we were in store for but we knew dim sum is the food Hong Kong is famous for. We were ushered to a table and as soon as we sat down trolleys started appearing, the little old Chinese ladies pushing them were offering us various dishes (that we couldn't see as they had lids on). We didn't have a clue what was going on and just said yes to everything whilst at the same time trying to order our drinks from a menu. Thankfully, all the dishes we had inadvertently chosen proved to be excellent (prawn and chicken gyozas, spring rolls, duck) and we were soon waiting for the trolleys to come around again, but we never had a repeat of the initial double-trolley extravaganza. Soups, more dumplings and the weird and disgusting buns (gooey white puff with a weird yellow paste in the middle) and more kept coming off the trolleys until we were sated. After struggling out of the room we walked back to Admiralty and into a shopping centre. I love looking round foreign supermarkets - especially in Asia and this one was no different. Sections dedicated to areas from all over the continent and the fish counter was amazing - full of tanks and boxes of live fishes - you pick the ones you want and you know it's fresh. After marvelling at the choice, we settled on some on some fresh juice drinks (made in front of us) and wandered around the rest of the shops. We strolled back though the streets to a backstreet bar in Admiralty enjoyed a couple of cocktails in the happy hour.

Wednesdays in Hong Kong are synonymous with horse racing and a trip to the track to take in the floodlit races was high on our list. Sadly as we got there it all seemed a bit quiet and as we walked the length of the stand to find the visitors entrance it began to dawn on us that it was closed. It turned out that racing was having a week off due to the rugby world sevens tournament teams training at the track. We headed back into town looking for another of the recommended restaurants, which turned out to be closed for refurbishment. This wasn't our night so we eventually piled into a kaiten sushi restaurant just before 11. It definitely wasn't our night as they switched off the conveyor at 11 before we'd had a chance to take anything so we ended up ordering from the menu.

The last of Tokyo

2008-05-16T00:22:00.003+01:00

Dawn broke on our last full day in Japan. The Daily Yomiuri arrived with news of HD-DVD's demise and we headed down, once again, to the Kiwk-e-mart for breakfast. Before setting out, we managed to check in for out flights – Japan seems completely topsy turvy with regards to internet access – in room wifi was free, but the communal PCs charged £1 for 10 minutes which is the exact opposite of Western hotels. Of course, with no wifi devices, we ended up racing through websites at break-neck speed trying to find the best seats and finish checking in before our credit ran out. We finally set out to the museum in Ueno – apparently the only museum in Tokyo worth visiting according to the Lonely Planet. We walked through a large cherry tree-filled arena to the museum. Amazingly, with money running low, we were gifted a pair of entrance tickets to not only the museum, but also the special exhibit from a couple who hadn't had time to go into the exhibit. After getting confused and buying some superfluous entry tickets, being told we'd bought superfluous tickets and getting a refund for said superfluous tickets we finally got into the museum. We wandered through halls of Japanese artefacts and tales of the past we ventured into the special exhibit. It's a very good job we didn't pay for it as the entire thing was a display of Japanese literature and other manuscripts – entirely in kanji with no English descriptors.

Eventually we had seen it all and headed back via Mos Burger to get packing. We had agreed to meet James in Shibuya for a big night, so being packed for the early departure was essential. We met up outside the station and wandered into Shibuya. Once again we found a restaurant on an upper floor with no obvious (ie English) sign it was there. This time we picked out a Korean all you can eat BBQ. Once again we went for the all-you-can-consume option - £15 for food and only £5 for all your can drink for 2 hours! Needless to say we totally cleaned up. These restaurants have no equivalent in the UK and it's not hard to see why. Within half an hour, we had completely incinerated most of the food to the point where our chopsticks caught fire. The entire atmosphere was smoky with the charring of other people meals. On the floors above and below the situation was no doubt being repeated and in Nanny State UK it's several steps beyond feasible. After the 2 hours had expired we were absolutely stuffed. We had definitely come out winners in the value for money game. James lead us to a nearby gaijin bar that was full of foreigners. Set out like an American bar, Japanese girls wandered around taking orders and when I said full it was very full. It was the most offensive place I've seen in ages: typically loud Americans dressed like gangstas. James reminisced about frequenting places like this before finding them equally offensive. After debating getting the last train home (especially for James who had some stupidly small amount of money to live on for 2 weeks) we decided to find an izhkaya. We settled down to a quiet beer and snacks. Or so we thought... The couple at the next table – or more specifically, the guy – cottoned on to us as English speakers and decided to practice his English on us much to the embarrassment of his girlfriend. His English was extremely broken and he ended up talking to James in Japanese before trying with us again. For some reason, in his inebriated state he decided I was the spitting image of a Japanese cheesy celebrity. After getting me to repeat his catchphrase for the next hour or so we decided to bail. As we left, James reassured me that I did in fact look nothing like the celebrity... For all it's advances over the West, Tokyo still suffers from a train network that shuts down at midnight. Spending the night in a karaoke booth was looking like the best option when we decided a taxi would be the best option as we definitely had a sofa that James could crash on for the night. We found a taxi but it appeared to be sans driver. It would have been better if he hadn't appeared, as when he did he was clearly half cut. He stumbled into the car to find the button to open the door. Eventually we were driving through Tokyo back to Ikebukuro. After a final visit to the Kwik-e-mart, we retired to the hotel. We then realised that the sofa we definitely had was in fact in the Sapporo hotel an the Tokyo Metropolitan only had an armchair. No doubt this is what comes from about 5 hours constant drinking. After passing out we woke up early and finished packing before heading out to Nippori to catch the Skyliner to the airport. Getting off at Nippori we heard the platform melodies for the last time. The current Skyliner trains were designed in the 80s and it shows – very boxy and lots of plastic. An hour later we pulled back into the underground station at Narita airport. We'd had to wait longer than we'd anticipated at Nippori and time before our flights was getting short. Unfortunately, the station is in the sub-basement and departures is on the upper levels which meant a lot of slow escalator rides as time ticked away. Further joy awaited me as we reached the check in floor – my flight had actually been allocated an earlier departure time – just 35 minutes away. James ran off to the BA desk as I traversed the concourse eventually finding the Air France desk at the far end. The staff looked confused when I started to put my stuff through the x-ray machine. They looked even more confused when I explained I was on the flight leaving in half an hour. Thankfully as I'd already checked in online there weren't any problems (maybe they were just confused in general) and soon we had been relieved of our suitcases and were heading downstairs to join the back of a massive queue (a BA 747, AF 777 and KLM 777 were all due to leave within 15 minutes of each other) to get through passport control. Time ticked on and just as we were next to be seen, they announced that our flights were being fast tracked. Even so I made time to go to the toilet. I said goodbye to James and boarded the 777-200. After all the rush we ended up being late pushing back anyway. After push back the captain applied forward thrust to the engines and from my window I saw a load of smoke shoot out of the back. Even James saw it from his plane. Not the most inspiring start to a journey. The AF inflight entertainment system is behind that of KLM's AVOD system so I only had a handful of films to keep me entertained. Pretty soon were over France and slowing down (these planes slow down pretty quickly which always makes me feel it's about to stall) on approach to Paris. Even though the return flight is against the winds I had once again managed to avoid the need to use the toilet. Score! Charles De Gaulle is a pretty bland airport and the less said about the plane back to Newcastle the better. I was soon back in Durham – thankfully I'd again hardcore'd the trip and beat the jet lag! Yes!

More of Tokyo

2008-05-09T00:07:00.004+01:00

After an early night we got up at the obscene time of 5 am to head across town to the Tsukiji fish market. Somehow, despite the hour, there were a lot of people around and they weren't pissed salarymen coming home from karaoke! We caught a train to Shinjuku at 5.30 and then got the subway across to Tsukiji.

Thankfully, we weren't exposed to the horror of Tokyo rush hour and we got there at about 6.15. After coming out of the station we smelled the fish straight away and followed someone carrying a large bag and wearing large wellingtons. He lead us to the outskirts of the markets. Swarming around were a fleet of speeding carts – essentially Segway scooters with trailers for driving around fish at high speeds. After avoiding death and navigating through the lorry bays we were amongst the fish. The narrow pathways were filled with people going about their business. The smell wasn't as strong as you might expect as all the fish was exceedingly fresh. We carried on deeper into the market and after playing real life Frogger with another lane of carts we found the tuna auctions. The floor was covered with frozen tunas, just in from the boats. Potential buyers were swarming around hacking at the tails to inspect the colour of the meat. A single auctioneer stood on a box conducting the auctions at breakneck speed. Needless to say we had no idea what was going on. Luckily for us this was before the recent clampdowns on tourists.

One by one the tunas were dragged away and loaded onto carts. With each tuna costing the same as a small car, there was clearly a large amount of money flying around. We wandered away and on our subsequent wanderings saw what became of the tunas – some people took hatchets to them, some used band saws and some just attacked them with very sharp knives.

The range of seafood on display was amazing – a lot of it was still alive in tanks. The entire market was full of activity and the small passageways between stalls frequently became blocked by people eager to examine the wares on offer. As we left, the motorised carts became less frequent and we began to stop worrying about being run down by boxes of fish. Most of the sushi joints in the market were rammed, but the lonely planet guided us to a restaurant a few hundred metres away that was almost empty. We ordered the platter which came with a wide selection from the common through to the unusual. we set about it until only 2 were left: crab paste and salmon roe. We decided to take one each... In hindsight, we shouldn't have left these until last.

We emerged to find it was still only 7 am. We got the subway back to Shinjuku – again without any sign of a Tokyo rush hour. As with the rest of East Asia, nothing really opens until around 10 am so we wandered around Shinjuku's red light district taking some of the back roads walking through the seedy areas complete with strip clubs and back alley bars. In the early hours of daylight, the streets were peaceful and uneventful.

I am a big fan of the classic Jrock band X Japan. They are the latest band to hop on the reunion bandwagon despite the death of lead guitarist Hide. The reason I mention this is that I'm fairly sure we nearly got run down by their tour bus (a big black bus with X Japan decorations all over it) just outside Bic Camera. We meandered back to the Government building to get a daytime view. Thanks to the crisp cool February weather we got some great views of Fuji San. We had a look around the nearest multi-storey Bic Camera store marvelling at all the gadgets. Surprisingly, there was a lot of xbox360 stuff despite it selling less that 3000 units per week. More expected was the whole host of BluRay equipment and not so much HD-DVD. Eventually we took the train out to Mitaka and, after stopping at the kwik-e-mart to get some more biscuits, walked down the small river to the Studio Ghibli museum. James had never seen a film from the Studio before, but the museum is very inspirational – even though it's all in Japanese. It's a shame that the film we saw, the whale hunt wasn't as good as the day I harvested a star, but the museum is still an excellent introduction to the animation basics and production. We walked back through Inokahira Park before getting lunch in one of the many French-style bakeries.
That evening, we met up with James' friend James (confusing?) and his girlfriend. James did 2 years on JET before going back to the UK and working for Accenture where he met James. He's now back in Japan doing an MBA (in Japanese!) We met up at Shinjuku and then went for shabu shabu – the traditional Mongolian self-cooking style at one of the many restaurants hidden away on the upper floor of the buildings. These are the places that foreigners never find. We set about an all you can eat/drink in 90 minutes deal getting through more than our fair share of beers and plates of meat. Afterwards we went for karaoke before catching the last train back to Ikebukuro. I haven't improved at karaoke since the last time.

Due to our very early start and late finish, we had a late start on Friday. We got our brunch from the kwik-e-mart before heading out to Tokyo station to wander around the Imperial Palace gardens. The temperature had picked up so we walked to our next destination: the Tokyo stock exchange. The exchange was computerised in the 1990s so visitors can wander around – the only people there were the computer security staff there to ensure no one hacked in and the news teams who report the financial news from the exchange historically. As seems to be the style of the time, the stock market lost ground whilst we were there.

We caught the subway to Ginza to look around the Sony building. As someone who works with OLEDs I was interested to see if they had the X-EL1 on display. The centre featured a LOT of large LCDs playing the Spiderman 3 trailer on endless replay. The X-EL1 was indeed on display. The picture quality was amazing – the clarity and “realness” of the picture was only let down by the small size (11”) and low resolution (960x540) compared to the cost (200,000yen), but once the cost comes down, they are definitely the future.

From here we decided to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine where recent Japanese prime ministers have drawn condemnation from Japan's neighbours for visiting. Various war criminals are enshrined there, but never ones to shirk away from controversy we went anyway.

The shrine appeared like most others. The Yūshūkan museum was adjacent, where the exhibits claim the Pacific War was fought in self-defence and hosts many war relics alongside a memorial to Radhabinod Pal – a justice who, the memorial claimed, rallied against the war crimes trials following the war. As the shrine closed we walked away from the setting sun and walked toward Akiba. On the way we stopped at another vending machine restaurant for our first taste of katsu kare – a dish almost entirely unlike curry. We carried on our way through the musical instrument district before hitting Akiba just as the last light from the day vanished, playing up the neon and overwhelming noise even more.

We browsed around the various shops – electrical, manga and toys/collectables half looking at the items on sale, half looking at the clientèle buying the goods. Not the otaku we were maybe expecting, but tired looking salarymen on their way home from work, browsing through the rows of scantily clad manga statuettes as if it were the most normal thing in the world: and in this city, it is.

Tokyo days one and two

2008-05-02T00:43:00.006+01:00

We landed at Haneda and retrieved our luggage. In Japan they actually check you have taken the right suitcase – I've often wondered if you could just take any bag you liked from the carousels. After finding where to buy a Suica card (The information people pronounced it say-ka and didn't understand us when we asked for a su-we-ka card. We took the monorail into the centre of Tokyo and then the Yamanote line to Ikebukuro where our hotel is. Anyone who's been to Tokyo will know that some of the stations are mini cities and Ikebukuro is no different. There are 2 department stores – Tobu and Seibu which used to be the biggest in the world. We found our hotel – the 4* Metropolitan – just a few yards from the station exit. It was a very fancy hotel and our room was big and had a nice LCD tv and a fantastic view out towards Shinjuku.

Thanks to BA we were paying £58/night for a room which should have been £150! After dumping our stuff, we headed out for some food and travelled the few stops to Shinjuku and took in the vast amounts of neon. We walked out to the government building and looked down on Tokyo by night – the gentle pulsating of the red aeroplane warning lights on all the buildings is ubiquitous and very soothing. Only one tower was open so we walked back into Shinjuku to get some food. We settled on an anonymous vending machine cafe – you buy a ticket from a vending machines (complete with pictures of the food), give it to a waiter and then wait for your food to arrive.

We both went for the steak option and settled back over an Asahi to watch the tired salarymen traipse in on their way home from the office. In fact, as we walked through Shinjuku station we came across a middle aged salaryman sprawled on the stairs at about 8pm – clearly hammered with a look of shear confusion on his face as he tried to understand why his legs wouldn't work.

We woke up the next morning to find a copy of the Daily Yomiuri outside our room. This paper, would come to sum up our time here – today there was a feature on how the Sapporo sculptures had been torn down with jcbs to prevent them weakening and falling on passers by – maybe we should have sacked off the beer museum... We set out to tour the west of the city and started by getting the train to Shibuya. We walked past Hachiko and across the scramble crossing and down the street to Tower Records – it's gone bust in the rest of the world but noone seems to have told the Japanese – this time around the Jpop floor made a lot more sense to me, even if the prices are still shocking. We carried on toward Harajuku and walked through Yoyogi park and to the Meiji shrine. Afterwards we walked through Harajuku and found a small cafe for lunch.

In the afternoon we caught the automatic railway across Tokyo Bay to the feminine-sounding Venus Fort shopping centre. Out here was the Toyota Web showcase where Toyota show off their range of cars and a range of attractions for people of all ages. We took a ride on the Gran Turismo driving simulator, walked through some F1 exhibitions and then walked past the giant ferris wheel to the Toyota technology centre. Here there was an exhibition about how various aspects of cars had evolved, from steering wheels to gear sticks and, more amusingly, Toyota's vision of the future.

At the doorway is a robot whose only function seems to be to play a trumpet (which it wasn't doing). In the same mould as the homeless robots from Futurama, you can only guess at the reason a trumpet-playing robot was even conceived, never mind built. Also on show were a very odd personal vehicle that Toyota can see us all driving very soon. It's essentially a chair on wheels where by the wheels move apart and the chair slants the faster you go. The conceptual cgi video shows people driving these things on the motorway overtaking lorries. I don't think it's be safe going 20 mph in one of these let alone at motorway speeds. To our amazement, there was a prototype available to try out in a small area of floor. Unfortunately, you needed a Japanese driving licence. There were also a worryingly large amount of fire extinguishers lying around the edge of the driving arena which didn't inspire any confidence. Alongside was Toyota's “chair-on-legs” prototype. Looking like a cross between the powerloader from Aliens and ED-209 from Robocop, this wasn't in working form, but it doesn't look like the most comfortable ride. Just outside the museum was another arcade. We followed up our poor show in Sapporo with an equally poor show on the DJ game. Luckily, this time noone saw us.

We ventured into the Venus Fort to try to find somewhere to eat but finding a very creepy pet shop with the animals crammed into small boxes awaiting an owner. Unfortunately with most people living in very small flats themselves, they may be waiting quite a while. We eventually found an okonomiyaki restaurant and then slunk out of the very pink shopping centre.

Sapporo snow festival 2008

2008-04-23T00:23:00.003+01:00

It was a trip that I didn't think would happen. Over the previous 6 months the trip had been on again and off again pretty regularly. Eventually, a last minute decision saw James and I book flights and hotels. It was on. We decided to take the hard option and meet in Tokyo rather than a hub airport en route as James could get a cheap deal (and hotel) on BA where as I opted for AirFrance-KLM. The first order of business was to actually get to the airport. I left my car at one of the nearby airparks and got the bus to the airport. Despite the 10am KLM flight being very popular I was the only one on the bus. As always I'd checked in online to reserve my precious window seat. After wandering around duty free for a while I took my seat on the 737-400 and soon we were off to Amsterdam. The flight landed on time but as the arrival runway was the new one it took another 30 minutes to taxi to the stand. A quick check of the screens showed my onward flight was on time and I had a couple of hours to kill. After wandering the lengths on Schiphol I did the most important thing I did that day – I went to the toilet. Going to the toilet on planes is just about my least favourite thing ever so anything I can do to reduce the possibility of needing to go is essential. We boarded the 777-200ER – even though I was one of the last to board there were still some of the free papers left. The KLM 777 fleet has a great AVOD system – there's about 80 films to choose from. As part of my “beat jet-lag” plan, I watched a load of films: Michael Clayton, Stardust and Superbad were among the offerings I watched. Like last time were only offered one meal and at about 2/3 distance we were offered the usual AF-KLM choice of “cup noodle or ice cream.” As I was expecting this my answer to the question was, “both please.” In what seemed like no time at all we crossed the coastline of northern Japan.

The northern regions were under a blanket covering of snow which certainly boded well for the Snow Festival. Soon we descended as we hit the east coast and spun round to land at Narita. After getting off and finding my legs didn't really work (and visiting the toilet) I got through immigration and got my bags. James' flight was the next one due on the luggage belt so I sat and waited (much to the puzzlement of the Narita staff). Brits started arriving and more and more came but no James. Just as my mind was starting to believe our decision to meet here was a bad one he turned up. We got through customs and went down to the trains. After trying to be sold a bus ticket to Haneda (3 times the cost of a train ticket) we managed to get a train timetable. For a country with one of the world's most famous train services, you'd have thought there would be a direct train between the two airports, but no. We had to get the local commuter service which stopped at every intermediate station. After an hour we still hadn't reached the changeover station and were finding merely being awake tiring. Eventually we limped into Aoto and changed trains. Pretty soon we were at the internal airport Haneda. After finding that the automatic check-in machines weren't as easy to decrypt as the train ticket machines we checked in the regular way. We still had several hours so we wandered up to the viewing area. It's like how UK airports used to be – free and close-up views of the apron and runways. We went back down to a conbini (from this point on, conbinis will be referred to as “kwik-e-marts”) and bought some sushi. Haneda used to be Tokyo's main airport so it's pretty big. It took us 20 minutes to walk to the gate (and this terminal was only for JAL flights: ANA has its own terminal). We boarded the 767 and found that there were only about 30 people on the flight so we could choose where to sit. The plane had pilot cam, that allowed us to get a pilot's -eye view, but after taking off the long day caught up and we fell asleep. Soon we arrived in Sapporo and there was a lot of snow. Despite Tokyo-Sapporo being one of the busiest routes in the world, Sapporo airport is pretty small. The train link to the city was easier to work out than our cross-Tokyo journey and soon we were at the main station.

Thankfully our £150/night hotel (the perils of booking late in Snow Festival season)was very close and we were soon in our cramped (but plush) room. To continue the “beat jet-lag” plan we had to stay awake for a few more hours so we ventured out into the cold to check out the festival. We headed to the Sapporo tower and soon were among the ice sculptures. To say some of them were big is a massive understatement. The big ones are carved from 20x20x20m snow cubes. They depict various things from promotional items (prince Caspian) to just random collages of world landmarks. As it was dark, the sculptures had light shows and one had a small booth with children playing music. At first we though they were simply playing keyboards along to a backing track, but it soon turned out that they were also playing all the percussion, selecting individual drums via a battery of foot pedals. I dread to think how many hours a day these kids had to practice, but it was amazing and a bit spooky. The main street is very long so eventually we headed down a side street and found a MOS Burger. We wandered back to the hotel via a Kwik-e-mart where James purchased a box a of chocolate-covered Leibniz biscuits that were destined to become the snack of choice for the whole trip.

We woke the next day at a good time (jet-lag beaten-Yes!) and soon set off (via a kwik-e-mart for a sushi breakfast), taking the subway to odori koen. We had a wander around the park which was under several inches of snow. It was the end of the Snow Festival so there were plenty of snowmen and other displays still around. Then we started walking back towards town taking in the “smaller” ice sculptures, along the way shelling out 500jpy for possibly the worst sake in Japan. Soon we were drawn into the enticing environment of an arcade. The ground floor contained the usual grabber and print club machines, but as we ventured downstairs we found the real games. As I found out on my last trip, traditional arcade games have given way to shooters and rhythm games with the odd 1 on 1 fighting game knocking around. The level of skill on display was amazing (as ever) with small girls blitzing through the DJ game and skinny geeky-looking guys getting perfects on Guitar Freaks. Eventually, when noone was looking we sneaked on and had a quick go on Drum Mania (easy level of course). After feeling pretty smug with our good scores we were shown hos it's done of hard. We fared a bit better on HOTD4 and then got the hell out.

We continued back to the main street and continued browsing through the vast amount of sculptures. We had the local speciality (well, one of them as we couldn't afford the hairy crab) miso ramen from a side stall. The sculptures became smaller – the entries from the unlikely snow-sculpting nations of Hawaii, Singapore and Malaysia joined other country's entries in the sculpture competition and there were more smaller displays including those featuring Totoro, hello Kitty and Space Invaders. The week had taken its toll on some of them though giving us a glimpse of the insides – including a wooden frame. Is that cheating? I don't know. We also so a sculptor repairing a castle. Now by this point it was COLD. Taking you hands out of your gloves was unbearable after a couple of minutes, but this guy was happily reshaping beams of snow and fixing them them on - he can't have gone home with too many fingers.

We headed back to the hotel via a 100jpy shop and then back to the shopping centre around the station. We settled on an okonomiyaki place in the food court of the big department store. After 2 years of trying to make them myself from the vast array of recipes on the internet this was my chance to see how it's actually made – the secret seems to be yams instead of flour. Afterwards we headed out to find an izakaya. After completely failing to find the recommended places from the Lonely Planet guide we settle on a back street place – thankfully it had an all-you-can-drink offer so we had 2 hours to drink more than 4 pints which we managed – I know who won that one. On our way back to the hotel we stumbled across the clock that our guidebook described as "the most famous sight in Sapporo" and "One of the top 3 disappointments in Japan." As we weren't especially looking forward to seeing it it didn't really disappoint us.

We got up for our last day in Sapporo. Although we'd heard rumours that the snow sculptures we demolished on the day after the festival ended, we decided to go to the Sapporo beer museum. We got the subway out and trudged through the snow to the museum. We got in and after some broken English and equally broken Japanese we were ushered into the lift and up to the 1st floor where we found precisely none of the exhibit was in English. We finally found the reason we'd gone when we got to the sampling section taking a selection of 5 beers (including the Hokkaido-only version).

We headed back to town, got some tempura for lunch and then caught the train back to the airport in Chitose. Whilst our flights out had been near-empty, we weren't so lucky on the way back – and ANA 747 was filling up rapidly and our 777 was bursting at the seems as we were hemmed in the middle seats (3-4-3 seat configuration in a plane designed for 3-3-3!). And both ANA and JAL fly at least one flight an hour to Tokyo each!

Next up - Tokyo! Now if I could just stop playing Mario Kart Wii long enough to write it!

The St Helen's House (half) years

2008-04-15T00:44:00.006+01:00

So, it's been quite a while since I last wrote a proper update. As most people in the UK will remember, last summer was a complete washout – I think I only went to 2 bbqs! At the end of August I went down to London to catch Prince at one of his O2 residency appearances. After months of faffing around with tickets – who's going and – more importantly – when? I booked 3 tickets for myself, James and someone else. as the tickets were sold out I figured there's be loads of people who wanted to go, but as the day drew close, both everyone both James and I knew who lived in or around London declined the tickets. Eventually I put an add on the DVDForums, but didn't hear anything. The O2 dome was crawling with security looking out for touts. We were beginning to get the feeling that we weren't going to be able to shift the ticket, when my phone went. It was someone from the DVDForums who wanted the ticket. He'd been 5 times already during the run, but still hadn't seen Prince at an aftershow party so wanted to try again. We met up and went in. The O2 dome is amazingly big – the upper levels now have a warning that you shouldn't book tickets if you are scared of heights. We were head on the the stage and about 30' back. I was a bit nervous as I'd never really been into Prince before the summer and still didn't know a lot of the songs. Thankfully, Prince treated all the different nights like greatest hits performances. Starting out with 1999 the band was awesome and Prince certainly knows how to play guitar. Sadly he tried to wedge lots of songs in so some were cut down versions. In among were some gems such as acapella performances and the favourites such as Purple Rain and Kiss. Just when it seemed to be over the band returned and knocked out a cracking version of Let's go crazy.

After that work got a load better – after our project's Q2 meeting in Cambridge I went back into the labs in Durham to do some synthetic work. It was supposed to be for 3 months (lab insurance and fume cupboard space is expensive) but I'm still there as I type this making polymers and other cool things.

I went on a few trips with Emma – firstly we went up to Bamburgh Castle via the beach and Seahouses and then in November we went down to London to see Matt and Mel. We went out and had some great food (Chinese in Soho, Lebanese in Kensington, Mexican in Angel, random things in Borough Maeket) and took some trips to Greenwich (more than one) to see the planetarium (after the demise of the planetarium at Madame Tussauds) and around the South Bank. We even had a awkward moment where, on leaving, we got locked in their garden with no way out. We eventually climbed a fence into the neighbours' garden (complete with suitcases) to get out. Random.

At the end of October I went to a conference in Frankfurt with some of the Thorn and Durham teams. I've always loved air travel and not understood how people get bored and fed up with it. However, flying inside Europe on these small planes really felt like being on a bus – and KLM have some really strange sandwich fillings...

The conference was ok (a bit too industrial so we didn't really get a lot of information beyond results. The hotel was really nice though (and at E175/night it should have been). The banquet was a bit of a joke as tickets sold out really quickly and when we got there it was a really small room with a German oompah band in the corner.

December brought our Q3 meeting and another nice hotel – this time in Grantham. I could get used to this lifestyle.

Eventually December came and we spent an tiring few days cleaning the flat before we left. It was a very odd development – the flats were over £300k each and there wasn't enough parking for everyone and if you wanted it it added £17k to the flat price. Our landlady hadn't paid so I had to park up at Trevs resulting in 20 minute walks to get to and from the car. The flat was really nice and new, but the finish was lacking – the bathroom had no shower(!), there was damp coming through the wall, the dishwasher was plumbed in wrong, the grill tripped the electrics and I've never really liked the idea of a combined kitchen/living room.

Overall it was a cool 6 months or so. Obviously, as I didn't find time to update the blog!

Predictions for the technology hits of 2008

2008-01-04T21:42:00.000Z

I think I did pretty well in my predictions for 2007, so here are some things I think will start to become big in 2008:

"small" computers

For some reason, even though technology is shrinking, the outward appearance of PCs hasn't changed since the early 90s. Although the classic ATX format has the increasingly popular microATX offspring, most PCs sold by Dell and PC World still retain the "big box" appearance of the tower case. In the old days this was due to the fact that everything, from a printer port to sound needed an add-in card. These days all these add-ins are integrated onto the motherboard itself. In fact, unless you want a graphics card for gaming there is no need for any add-in cards. Sadly at the moment these cards suck up a lot of power and generate a lot of heat which work best with large cases. Several years ago several companies - led by Shuttle - designed small form factor (SFF) systems utilising clever thermal management to enable modern processors and graphics cards to fit in small shoe-box sized boxes. The downsides were the cost and the amount of noise they generated (larger fans that are quieter don't physically fit). As the price of PCs fell dramatically, these systems looked even more expensive and now only Shuttle still offer a range of them and even these are getting bigger in an effort to support the latest, fastest graphics cards. In the last 2 years it has once again fallen to Apple - populiser of the MP3 player - to release the Mac Mini. This is a super small computer that runs almost silently. It achieves this by having an external power supply which doesn't need a cooling fan, use of special low power (but still quick) processor and integration of all the features such as graphics, sound, wifi, usb etc onto the motherboard. Apple have even managed to squeeze in a DVDR/W drive. But where to go from here? At Apple's Macworld conference later this month it is expected that a new Mac Mini will be unveiled - it may get a name change but it is expected to use the new Intel chipsets to further improve power efficiency and improve performance. If the performance is improved so that the new HD formats can be played from it, combined with Apple's desire to have a machine sitting under your TV from which you buy films from iTunes to watch on your TV, we may end up with a very capable (except gaming) weenie machine.

In the world of laptops too, prices have fallen significantly with once exception: lightweight laptops. If you don't mind lugging round 3 kg of laptop then you can get a decent one for £400, but if you want true portability the price rockets to around £1000. That was until Asus came out with the EEE PC. Made from old chips that Asus got for cheap, the laptop is close to 1 kg and costs only £220. People may scoff at the specs - a Celeron 900 processor that is underclocked, a 7" screen and only 4Gb of storage but they're missing the point. You can install Windows on it and the hard drive is a solid-state drive which is much faster than a traditional hard drive. The included Linux system boots in 15 seconds. The storage can be boosted with USB sticks or SD cards (which go upto 32 Gb these days). There's a built in webcam and microphone, vga output and wifi built in so the EEE PC is a truly mobile PC. The device has been so popular that it was sold out for most of December. This means that other manufacturers will take notice and begin to prep their own microlaptops. In the next few days Asus will be releasing details about their 2nd gen EEE, rumoured to include an 8.9" 1024x600 screen (compared to a cramped 800x480 on the original) and built in wireless broadband (WiMAX in the US and perhaps HSDPA in the EU).

I'm not that hopeful that small PCs will catch on this year, but the EEE PC will ensure people start to take notice.

E-paper

I mentioned this in my review of last year's predictions. It consists of a layer of balls that are white on one side and black on the other. Applying voltage across them cause them to align. Thus you can create images. The displays are bistable - they only consume power when they are changed so once an image has been set it will remain that way even when the batteries run out. At the moment the technology is used for text-based displays. The Motorola F3 is a cheap, long-lasting mobile phone and things like the Sony Reader promise to revolutionise the book. E-paper is much easier to read, appearing like regular paper - it isn't backlit so it doesn't strain your eyes over long periods. The Sony reader allows you to download books and store them on SD cards (you can fit a lot of books into 1 Gb). The device itself is about the same size as a paperback book and you navigate through books by "turning" pages. The technology has an ~1 second response time and the display resets to white before the new page appears. This has put a lot of people off, but it is reported that, just like physically turning a page, you stop noticing it. The device isn't currently available outside of the US, but the idea of this and a little box of SD cards is much more in line with my minimalist life idea. Amazon US recently released the Kindle - a similar kind of device which proved very popular in the US so the interest is there.

The next big thing to happen is flexible E-paper. This uses the same system, but whilst the TFTs that drive the current range of E-paper are based on silicon and therefore inflexible, several companies, including Cambridge's Plastic Logic, have created printable plastic TFTs that allow for flexible devices - a prototype of which is shown below.

I've a more advanced prototype in the flesh and it's very impressive. It is envisioned as being a business tool at first to allow the displaying of email attachments and to receive newspapers via a wireless subscription. The newspapers lost out in a major way to the onset of the internet which they didn't perceive as a threat, so they're not going to make the same mistake with E-paper. Plastic Logic have built an assembly plant in Dresden and the first products are expected to hit the shelves next Christmas so flexible readers could be a big hit in 2009!. The other big development is colour with several companies reporting successful laboratory tests.

Eventually these designs will be scaled up - imagine the giant advertising boards; instead of having a team of workmen to replace the posters one bit at a time, just upload a new image and they automatically update and once updated, they consume no power until they need to be changed again.

Personal GPS

It was a bit of a no-show last year - the technology was there but manufacturers chose to disable the feature. Logic dictates that this is simply so they can enable GPS in the next handsets that will launch in May/June and immediately create desire for the new models. The real driver though will be if the 2nd Apple iphone incorporates GPS (which it almost certainly will) - ever since the iPhone was announced, we've seen a slew of touch screen phones released, but none have matched the iPhone's specs (HVGA resolution and a multitouch screen) so companies are clearly influenced by Apple. At the moment GPS is a high end feature (such as the N95, Tytn II, Touch Cruise) but it will certainly filter down to the mainstream handsets this year and with it we'll see many more GPS-applications such as texting friends your location and navigating using Google maps or simply tagging photos with GPS coordinates. Now a GPS chip costs $1 so there really isn't any excuse.

Splashpower

I've been following this company on and off for several years now but it seems like 2008 could finally be the big year for them. They have developed a way of charging electronic devices by electromagnetic induction. How this works is that you plug a mousepad sized pad into the mains and then simply place items on it to charge - there is no need to plug in anything other than the pad. They claim a power efficiency of >90% and that charging speed is independent of the number of devices on the pad. It certainly sounds appealing as things like remote controls, MP3 players, phones and every other portable battery containing device could be sold without an AC adaptor. No doubt some people will say it's a return to the days when electrical items came without plugs, but it should drop the cost of the items in the first place and smaller, portable pads should be available for travelling - but if it really takes off, then hotels and the like will probably provide pads in-room. It should also help cut down the amount of wasted power attributed to phone chargers left plugged in 24/7. Eventually devices will come with compatible batteries already installed, but until then adaptors will be made available. It's taken the company a long time to get anything to the market and I think it's down to negotiating with companies to make their devices compatible. Splashpower are demonstrating their stuff at CES next week so hopefully we'll finally get a release date for the pads.

Smart cards

I touched on this last year with my prediction that contacless payment cards would take off. That didn't quite prove true unless you live or work in the city of London where the system was fully rolled out. This time around I'm predicting the rise of smart cards in general. Whilst the Oyster card has ensured that smart cards will always have a place in the UK, the rest of the country is so far missing out. This is set to change this year as Oyster-like cards are to be rolled out on the Birmingham transport system - this year for buses and next year for trains - it's a system that makes a massive amount of sense as it will cut fare-dodgers and speed upto the endless queues at New Street at peak times. The first to benefit will be the OAPs - including my parents - who will receive their free buses smart cards this Easter. It'll probably be the first time my parents have ever been at the front of a technology roll-out. In addition to this the wave and pay trials should reach out to the rest of the country by the end of the year. How popular it will be I don't know - it depends on retailer take-up. Of course, anyone applying for a passport will get a form of smart card in the form of the new RFID passports which is in itself a form of smart card. The plastic electronics industry is still trying to get the cost of a printed RFID tag under 1 cent before they start to challenge the old-skool barcode - don't expect that to happen this year.

Also keep an eye out for converging personal devices: The new iPod touch is simply and iPhone without the phone part (it still has the internet facilities) or another way of looking at it is that the iPhone is a slightly lower capacity iPod (16 Gb vs 8 Gb). Expect to see the 2nd gen iPhone sport HSDPA, built in GPS, and 16 Gb flash memory. And a high price. The iPhone hasn't taken off in the UK as we're not used to paying so much for phones - an iPhone costs £900 in all including the contract. The US are used to getting didged for phones so they lapped it up.

Results of my futurology predictions

2008-01-02T01:00:00.001Z

Right so it's been a year since my first go at futurology so let's see how I did...

Digital photo frames

They certainly have increased massively in popularity (if not quality). The main sticking points seem to be non standard aspect ratios (some are 16:9, some are 4:3 some are 3:2) so the pictures require formatting or people will look odd, high power requirements so most will only work from the mains. The prices have come down and it's been possible to get a 7" screen for around £35. They are popping up in more and more places and are appealing to a much broader market than before. Their popularity will only increase and slowly but surely larger versions (upto 12") are making their way onto the market. The next evolution will come with the development of e-ink. With this technology displaying a picture uses no energy - energy is only used to change the picture. There'll be more about this later. Black and white e-ink products are already on the market and colour-displays have been prototyped. I'll have more about e-ink in my predictions for 2008.
Result: partly successful

Contactless payments

The wave and pay system has been rolled out in London, but in a much smaller area than predicted: it is really only useful within the city, but it will be rolled out further over 2008. Travel anywhere on the tube and you will see ads for the Barclay One-pulse credit card that combines wave and pay with an oyster card so this may well become very popular in London this year. For the rest of the country however I'm not sure how long it will take as the banks are only planning to issue 5m cards this year and HSBC in Durham didn't even have any details of any north east trials.
result: predicted too early

HSDPA

A bit hard to tell what to think of this one. Most 3G phones released this year have been HSDPA-enabled. Pretty much all the phones released since May are capable of connecting to the net at 3.6Mbps which is almost as fast as the average UK broadband speeds. The speeds are set to double to 7.2Mbps (and maybe even 14.4Mbps) in 2008 and indeed over the summer most of the UK phone networks began to take mobile data access a lot more seriously. Certainly 3, Vodafone and T-mobile offer USB HSDPA modems for accessing the internet from a laptop anywhere with a mobile phone signal and all the networks have launched "unlimited" data packages to connect to the internet from your phones. The term unlimited varies wildly with 3 being the most generous offering 1Gb of data for £5/month, followed T-mobile offering 1Gb for £12.50/month (The cheaper £7.50 option apparently is fixed at a much slower speed than HSDPA is capable of), O2 allow 200Mb for £7.50/month and Vodafone offer 120Mb for £7.50 whilst Orange bring up the rear demanding £8/month for a paltry 30Mb. So once again, we have the facilities to make a massive jump forward in information access, but only if we're prepared to pay for it. Expect HSDPA routers to become a lot cheaper in 2008 and perhaps higher data allowances.
result: success - but who will pay for it?

Personal GPS

Now I will admit defeat on this one. Sales of in car, stand-alone GPS units must have gone through the roof this year with the big brand, Tomtom, finally breaking under the £100 barrier putting it in the realm of impulse purchase. However, my prediction was about personal GPS ie built into mobile phones. At the moment you get the best from sat-nav if a mobile phone is involved cos the phone can download traffic updates and send them to the main unit via bluetooth which will then seamlessly direct you around traffic jams. I can see the bigger companies like Tomtom integrating a sim card into new in car units and do this without the need for a phone or data charges (much like the Amazon Kindle reader does with books). But back to my prediction that most mobile phones would have GPS in them by the end of the year. It was looking good, the N95 launched with GPS and even a lower end Nokia 6110 had GPS. All the new HTC phones were run my the Qualcomm 7200 chip that includes, among other things, built in GPS and wifi. Sure enough all the new phones (Tytn II, Touch Dual and S730) were shown with fully functioning GPS and wifi, but for some reason the final devices lacked GPS (Touch Dual and S730) and wifi (Touch Dual). The phones good switch these functions on, but HTC had removed the antennae making the features useless. This seems a bit odd as it would increase the appeal of the phones. Furthermore the follow up to the very successful K800i, the K850i - widely rumoured to have GPS - was released GPS-less. The cynical would say that the GPS features were only disabled to provide the ability to release "upgraded" models in 6 months. The years big release, the iPhone was also GPS-less so this perhaps took the pressure off other manufacturers. I'll extend this prediction to next year.
result: failed due to lazy companies

Wii

Here's the unmitigated success of my predictions. It wasn't easy to find a Wii after Christmas. I kept missing stock refreshes online and most batches sold out within minutes. I finally got my Wii in late January and it was fantastic. The demand kept up and Wiis were hard to come by until the summer and suer enough once Christmas rolled around again they were once again nowhere to be found. It's not just the UK, in the week before Christmas 1.5 million Wiis were sold around the world - that's 1.5 million in a week. The only thing more popular was the DS lite which sold over 2 million in a week. By comparison the PS3 sold around 600K and the PSP sold 725K. Take that Sony. It seems the combination of a low (well-ish) price and broad appeal have hit a nerve. I heard stories of people's parents buying Wiis and having Wii parties with their friends. While there was a dearth of party games, Paper Mario, Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime 3 and the sublime Super Mario Galaxy ensured it catered to the gamers too. As the bloggers favoured animated Gif below says - these Nintendo consoles are printing money (just as the PS3 eats it). Even though they're slightly creepy, they crack me up every time I see them.

The next year starts off with the release of Wii fit, complete with balance board, that Nintendo can use to cash in on the whole after Christmas exercise fad so expect the console sales to keep on accelerating away from the competition.

result: definitely a success.

I'll post my predictions for 2008 in the next couple of days.

Updates are coming

2008-01-01T15:42:00.000Z

I know it's been over four months since my last update here, but I've been being sociable and haven't had the internet at home so updates have been dificult. They are coming in the next few days. In the mean time I wish everyone a happy New Year and all the best for 2008. I've also updated 4 months worth of photos to my Flickr account so click the link on the right to see them.

Rainbow

2007-08-13T10:08:00.001+01:00

After most of June and July being a complete washout, the weather seems to be showing some signs of getting around to summer. This means that most showers are followed by bright sunshine - Emma and I spotted this while walking down South Street a few weeks ago.

Graduation and alumni weekend - a double header

2007-08-13T09:42:00.000+01:00

The 29th June 2007 marked my second Durham graduation. I've written about how the first was a big let-down, so this time I wasn't expecting as much but it turned out really well. I met my parents in town and we went to Oldfields for lunch which was really nice - the food was great and we were there at the same time as Matt and his entourage and Nick from Engineering.

After that Matt and I walked over to Palace Green to gown up. For some reason they had a multitude of PhD gowns there, but only a select few sizes of hat - this resulted in Matt and I having hats that shifted around a lot over the afternoon. We filed over to the Castle where we met up with the other graduands - along with the other PhD and undergraduate chemists we were also paired with historians. The PhD chemists were split between those from my year who had managed to get submitted in time and those left over from the year before. This included Carl and Lue so there was a total of 4 Trevs' chemists getting their PhDs.

After we were paraded across to the cathedral we were seated in the EXTREMELY narrow seats. They were connected together but clearly weren't meant to be used by adults when in this configuration. With us all rammed in the temperature started to go up dramatically and the gowns and hats didn't help at all. As the ceremony started the historians were called up first. Once again it was quite fun to watch the different techniques used to shake Bill Bryson's hand. Some people looked embarrassed to be there and tried to get off the stage as quickly as possible without looking Bill in the face, others sneaked in the two-hand shake. As our cramped conditions became almost unbearable the historians seemed to keep on coming. Finally they were finished and attention turned to the chemists. Once again as we got ever-closer to the front of the queue the nerves began to appear - were our hats on straight (a new problem since the first graduation), how many steps were there and could we navigate them without falling over and most importantly of all you had to go up at the right moment
and hope they pronounced your name right. right. There were no major foul-ups and when we got back to the seats I decided to leave a spare seat to alleviate the cramped conditions. This seemed to throw a lot of people off as they weren't sat where they had been before. Bill Bryson gave his speech, which although funny was pretty short and apparently an almost word-for-word repeat of his speeches from previous years.

After we got out of the cathedral we all managed to stay in roughly the same place so we got in a lot of group photos and then we tracked down Bill Bryson and got our picture taken with him. We bumped in Maggie and our college tutor John which was nice and a lot of our chemistry friends turned up to see us. All in all it was a lot better than the chaos of 2003.

After this we bundled off the parents and handed back the gowns (our graduation was the last of the week so we couldn't wander around town in the gowns) and headed over to the New Inn. This day also marked the start of Trevs' alumni weekend so the New Inn slowly started filling up with familiar face from recent years. Eventually we dragged ourselves up the hill and into the bar. We got chatting to various people and after a few hours went out to experience Love Shack for the first time - it was pretty rammed and we didn't get back until about 3am. The next day brought the relief of brunch and then a free day until the formal. Alumni weekend is all about the drinking these days - the only events are the buffet in the bar on the Friday and the formal/late license on the Saturday. We turned up to the drinks reception and found a surprisingly large number of 1999 matriculants there.

We had a really good formal chatting to those around us at the table. Afterwards we slipped back into our old formal routine of mingling and chatting to people, dancing round the bar and ending up on the cobbles chatting to even more people. We had an amazing night and the best part was that although I had looked forward to seeing certain people - Matt, Mel, Alan, Brett and Sarah etc. it was really fun chatting to all those people that Matt and I used to chat to in the bar and formals like Gareth and Fran. It was really good to catch up with all those people that I will probably only hear from very rarely.

The next day, absolutely everyone I saw looked like death warmed up. Which was amusing. All in all the weekend was absolutely amazing and the only bad point was that it had to end. Roll on next year (although no more graduations for me now.)

The working world

2007-08-13T09:12:00.000+01:00

So it's been what - 9 weeks? I've been living the working life back up in Durham. For the first month I stayed with my former housemate Ollie in deepest darkest Gilesgate. Amazingly, following 5 years of being lazy (getting up-wise anyway) dragging myself up at 7.20am every morning hasn't been too bad. My journey to work only took 20 minutes, but half of that was simply getting from Gilesgate to the New Inn - from there it's fine. Straight away I joined up with my prospective housemates Emma and Barry to find some more permanent accommodation. We took in new town houses (all with problems despite being new). In the end we found a flat in the brand new apartments on South Street where the old city library used to be. For £66/week it's ours for 6 months - completely furnished (and we are taking plush here - LCD tv, dishwasher new beds and bedding). Sure enough there are some issues (no shower and the dishwasher has "issues") and the landlords are pretty slow but there haven't been any real problems yet. Parking is an issue, but my journey to work has been reduced to 15 minutes including a walk up the hill to my car.

The job. Well I'm sure it hits everybody when they first start a new job - I spent the first day thinking how much I hated it and how I was going to quit and go back to trying to get a lab-based job. Of course, these thoughts have just about passed and I now see it as a tremendous opportunity. To bring people who don't know up to speed, I'm working for Thorn Lighting (one of the UK and Europe's biggest lighting firms) in a small team (just 3 people!) alongside teams from Durham university (including my PhD supervisor) and Sumation from Cambridge/Japan to work out a path to bringing out a commercial white-light OLED. There's plenty of competition - in Europe there's Philips and Osram, in the US there's UDC, Eastman-Kodak and GE and in the Far East Konica-Minolta.

I'm starting to understand several things about how the real world works. Firstly it's absolutely full of people over-exaggerating everything. The reason for this is simple - money. If you are trying to get money out of someone for your project they are more likely to give it to you if you play up what your work could lead to. At the moment the in-thing in research grant applications is climate change - simply find a way of getting that phrase into a research proposal and people will fall over themselves to give you cash. In our case, apparently our team has "a substantial number of chemists and physicists" working on it - in reality we've got 2 and a half chemists and 3 physicists. Likewise when it comes to reporting results everyone will be very selectve about what they report - for example konica-minolta have reported a white-OLED with a luminous efficiency of 64 lm/W which is very good, but there is no mention of the lifetimes which leads us to believe that it simply dies after a few hours - not the most useful thing ever then. Our main European rivals, the Olla project, have showcased 15cm squared tiles of light, but on closer inspection you can tell it's made up from smaller panels.

Secondly, it's not what you know - it's who you know. A lot of our job seems to be networking with other people in the industry and keeping our fingers in various pies. It almost seems like our future careers depend on it. Our project has a budget of £3.3 million over 3 years, but other projects in the US and Europe are having millions poured into them fairly regularly. It seems fairly clear that our parent company, Zumtobel, isn't particularly interested in taking this project further than the initial 3 years. My guess is they'll listen to our report, but with new production plants costing over £10m they'll simply buy in products from other companies and our team will be cut loose. My aim is to move on to the company I originally wanted to work for: CDT/Sumation. Sumation is the name for the chemistry wing that is a joint venture between CDT and the Sumitumo chemical company of Japan. In fact, just a few weeks ago Sumitomo acquired the rest of CDT for $285m. The position of senior chemist seems like it would be ideal for me - input into the chemistry on all Sumations projects, the prospect of travelling to Japan for work exchanges and meetings, worldwide travel to various conferences and trade shows and being very visible in the OLED community that is becoming more important every year.

One of the benefits of having worked in Durham for so long is that I can see through all the BS we're being fed. The trouble we've got is that Sumation are banging out new materials at a rate of knots but they refuse to tell us what they are (and as a chemist that is really frustrating) where as Durham aren't quite as quick. Having worked alongside them for the last 4 years I know when they are taking us for a ride. I get the feeling there is a lot of sitting around going on. Academia simply wants to get in money and do the work they want to do and it's partially our job to make them do what we want them to do. Thankfully since they are so close to us we can easily keep an eye on them. It's sad that I've realised this as I used to think that industry was unreasonably demanding but it turns out that academia is fairly unfocussed. It means I can't look at academic research the same as before - sort of like how Christmas changes when you "know" about Father Christmas.

Moments of excitement so far: getting my corporate credit card (haha!), the team meetings (especially the meals out - the last one was at Bistro21), going anywhere in my boss' car (a beefy Volvo S80 that he frequently rags - 80mph in 3rd gear anyone?) and our trip over to Manchester in the company Zafirer - a naughty 1.9 turbo diesel estate that loves to cruise at 90...

So 9 weeks in and 50% of the time I'm really excited about the possibilities this job may lead to (both for the technology/science and my own career) and 50% of the time I'm bored cos we've don't have so much to do at the moment (hence these updates). I'll report more in due course. In the mean time, here's a partial team photo.

L-R Igor (Durham chemist), Tom (Sumation chemist), Torsten (Sumation chemist), Andy (Durham physics supervisor), Ben (Durham physicist just back from Singapore), me, Fernando (Durham physicist), Olivier (Thorn physicist) and Geoff (Thorn supervisor).

once more unto the breach

2007-06-03T01:39:00.000+01:00

Once again I find myself packing to move. This time it's not so bad as it's only for an intermediate month-long period where I'll be living with Ollie and Rich. After that I'll move in with Emma and Barry for 6 or 7 months and beyond that who knows? Essentially I have two lists - one of things I'll need for a month and a second for things to bring up later when I'm more settled. Back in 1999 I had no idea what to pack for 9 weeks of term but over the next 4 years I became adept at cramming almost everything I would need during term into my parents' car (plus me and my parents). In 2003 I had to pack for 3 solid years of being away which wasn't too bad as I tried to shrink down the number of things I needed. This time I'm adopting my minimalist approach and have got it down to a suitcase, a box, a bag and my PC. Yep - my guitars are staying put for now. It still feels weird as this is the 3rd time I'm "leaving home" and as I try to extract and pair all my socks from the airing cupboard and decide which clothes to leave behind it strikes me that this could be the last time.

So I probably won't update this site for a month or so as I'll probably be limited to having the internet at work, but you never know.

Whatever happened to...chocolate edition

2007-05-16T22:37:00.000+01:00

As Cadburys promotes its new creme egg dairy milk bar it's got me thinking that the chocolate industry is afraid of taking risks. What was the last NEW chocolate bar that you can remember being launched? It's a tough one and I'd have to say it might have been the Nestle Maverick bar from 1997. Since then, it seems that every new release has been on the back of the old Cadbury Dairy Milk (cdm) bars. Certain "new" releases have simply been the withdrawal of an old favourite to be replaced with another cdm flavour. Old favourites have such as caramel and wispa have been withdrawn to be replace by cdm with caramel and cdm bubbly and cdm varieties such as biscuit, mint chip, double choc, wafer and even creme egg have appeared. It just seems Cadbury isn't willing to take the time to come up with and develop new brands beyond the classic cdm. What's even more upsetting is that offshoots of the discontinued bars (such as the fantastic wispa gold) have had no replacement. It isn't just Cadbury who are doing it - Nestle and Mars play the same tricks too - Nestle bring out various updates of aero and kit-kat whilst Mars gets ample use out of the Mars and Galazy lines.

And don't get me started about standardising names. If it was called Snickers everywhere else in the world - why launch as Marathon in the UK?! Same goes for starburst/opal fruits. Turning the classic smarties cylindrical tube to a hexagonal tube - what was that about?

But does anyone remember the following discontinued range of treats:

Vice Versas - white chocolate centres with a brown sugar coating or, well - vice versa. They were supposed to target galaxy minstrels but ended up being cancelled, relaunched years later and then discontinued again...

Pretzel flips - here's an odd one. Salted mini pretzels covered in milk chocolate or white chocolate fudge. They appeared, got us hooked and then vanished into the night.

Cadbury's astros - the supposed alternative to M&Ms. The packaging screamed "cigarette box" and the centre biscuit was very unpleasant if it went soggy.

Cabury jestives - an ordinary chocolate digestive not enough? how about with Cadbury milk chocolate? how about with cdm chunks in the biscuit too. They single handedly turned the world of chocolate-coated biscuit snacks on its head. Just about pipping chocolate hob-nobs to the "best biscuit" prize these have suddenly disappeared to be replaced with very dull regular Cadbury chocolate digestives. Boo!

Still, I'm sure I remember seeing the old Fry's Turkish delight advert on tv in the last couple of years. I'm guessing the old Cadburys fudge adverts won't get that treatment - "a finger of fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat." Quite.

PhD - over and out

2007-05-16T21:50:00.000+01:00

Most people will tell you that a PhD takes three years. These people are wrong. Even if you were to finish your thesis and hand it in on the last day of the three years (like Matt did) it just won't go away. A few months later there's the viva, then you have to find the drive to do your corrections and get them approved followed by the arduous task of printing and binding multiple copies and finally the trip to submit them. On paper it all sounds like nothing compared to three years of work followed by writing a book, but it's really not that straight forward. A lot of supervisors will push their students really hard during the three years and then leave them to their own devices with the writeup. This means, if you aren't careful it can drag on and on and could even turn into something that just seems like it will never end. After all my issues during my final year, the one thing I clung on to was my determination to have the write up finished by Christmas. I'd seen far too many people not submit until the following summer - even Amy form my group who seemed to have nearly finished writing when she left took 8 months to submit. Thankfully, due to my ruthless efficiency at writing I managed that feat with a good two weeks to spare (in fact, if it hadn't been for a mix up with my supervisor I would have been done and dusted within 5 weeks of leaving). The plan back in September '05 was to start planning the write up over Easter and start writing soon after in the spare hours I had during the day. Those who know me will know what I think about plans...and sure enough Easter came and went with no planning done at all. It got to the start of July and I was starting to get worried as not only had I not started writing, but I hadn't started planning yet. The new plan became to have the literature review done and the rest planned out by the time I left. This time I exceeded expectations and left having completed 4 and a half out of seven chapters. Oh - and the Edison quote from the start - that took a few days of searching to decide on.

Halfway through my second year I was found my life and my chemistry were going pretty well and I told my lab-mate Carl that I wasn't scared of the idea of the viva. He didn't believe me but as the time drew closer I was actually terrified - not of the viva, but about how little work I'd done for it. Once it was done I was sent away with a list of typos and a couple of figures to tweak and 10 days later I had an approved thesis. With "the worst" behind me I took my foot off the gas pedal which was a mistake. I hunted around for the best paper to print on (which is so anal for something that is going to sit on a shelf for eternity). This was where I started to run into problems. The university "insists" on certain standards for the layout of a thesis - all the official guidelines tell us to ensure that our theses conform to BS4821. Unfortunately this standard was withfrawn in the 1990s and there is nowhere on the web that will tell you what the damn thing actually said! The graduate school weren't very helpful either; "we don't have a copy in Durham - Newcastle University library may have a copy." Well that's very helpful. Eventually I just decided to print it the way I'd done it. Thankfully I could get it bound at Birmingham university. Durham must be the only university in the country to not have a binding service. Even the local pronaprint won't touch theses. I mean come on - the library must do a shedload of binding with all the journals it gets not to mention the money to be made from the many thousands of students needed theses, projects, dissertations and reports binding. No wonder Durham seems to be leaking money all over the place. The final hurdle was sorting out the attached CD. I had three different sets of instructions on the requirements for CDs - it's as if the grad school simply forgot they'd already written requirements for CDs and wrote new ones. Twice. Eventually I just picked one and went with it.

This had taken nearly three months from the date of my viva - it should have been done in about a week. I imagined all sorts of grand things happening when I finally submitted my hardbound copies, but all that happened was the lady at the grad school desk simply took them off my and wandered off - I had to call her back just to get a receipt. A bit underwhelming. The thing is, Matt who handed in his thesis to be assesed in September only handed in his hardbound copies about a week before me in the end. My advice to anyone writing up - don't slack off once you get the viva out of the way - I was fairly well organised and it still took me three months to finish up everything - just go for it and finish it off. As it is my PhD has taken me 3 years, 6 months, and 25 days from start to finish (and I still have to sort out all the graduation stuff). I feel really sorry for all the physicists who have had their funding extended to 4 years - if they drag their feet over the write up even a little their PhD will consume half a decade of their life - more if the write up drags on and that's really scary. This is just training, not our life's work!

More advice? Ok - here's something I really wish someone had said to me along the way. Everyone needs to feel special at some point. I guess when you start a PhD you're really excited and feel different from our friends who left university after their degrees, but after a while it seems like everyone around you is doing a PhD too and it can feel like what you're doing is fairly common. I don't have the actual figure, but I hazard a guess that maybe 1% (if that) of the UK population has a PhD - what we're all doing is something amazing that very few people will ever get the chance to do and what you yourself is doing is probably something that a handful of people on Earth will be working on. I hope that gives you some kind of comfort in the struggle ahead.

The sad thing is that even though it's the 21st century, all the British Library will keep is a microfilm record of the title and contents pages. If someone wants a copy, then the BL will have to ring up Durham and some poor gimp will have to go and dig the thesis out of the depository and photocopy it. Wouldn't it have just been simpler for the BL to ask for a copy in PDF format? I know I'm potentially loosing royalty fees by doing this, but if you want a read of my thesis just click the link below.

clicky

Over the last few years I've been as happy as I've ever been, as unhappy as I've ever been and every point in between. I've always managed to get on with my work. I lot of people drop out, a lot of people take an age over the write up and lots more finish and then never want to do the subject again. I am not one of these people.

Unknown Quantity

2007-05-09T16:50:00.000+01:00

So as I mentioned a few weeks ago I've been listening to our old Unknown Quantity CDs again. For those that don't know, Unknown Quantity was the name of the band I was in at school. Ever since I was young I was fascinated by the guitar and eventually I started going to a guitar group class after school in Bromsgrove. Unfortunately I was only 10 at the time and I had a full-sized classical guitar so my hands were far too small so I got really frustrated and mostly just messed around with my friend. Once I was going to KES my parents made me take classical lessons which I hated so I never practised. Grade exams were a major stress and eventually I failed grade 2. Initially I thought this was the end of my guitar "career" but a few years later one of my friends at school took up the electric guitar and began playing during lunch periods in the class room. Suddenly I realised that playing guitar didn't have to be about studying and learning pieces I had no interest in. I went back to my classical and with the help of "the internet" I started learning chords and spent a week or so moving from one to another until it became second nature. Two of my friends, James mentioned that he played the drums and Phil subsequently took up the guitar. In a few months we were sitting around and James said "so I suppose we should have a band practice then" and Unknown Quantity was born.
Eventually we found a permanent bassist in another friend, Raj. A little over a month later we were playing our first gig.

The gigs came every so often but over the summer we concentrated on writing our own songs. Thankfully we had Phil, who in addition to being a fantastic singer was fairly adept at writing songs. At the end of August 1998 we booked into Junction 7 studios in Great Bar for three days to record our first CD, The End EP. The name was us trying to be clever as it meant our first releaes would be called The End. We bought 200 CDs and actually managed to sell about 2/3 of them and so the following summer we returned with more ambitious songs for four days. This time around the name caused us some problems. We rejected naming it after a song and other titles suggested were Funky Monks (after the sound engineer Dennis suggested that the backing vocals on the first track sounded like monks) and Snake: 357 (during the recording we were getting our first experience of Snake on the Nokia 5110 and 357 was our best score). It's a good job we didn't go with that 'cos 357 is a rubbish score. Eventually we settled on The Blue EP after the cool (and at the time unusual blue colour of the writing side of the CDs). The gigs kept on coming including one at The Flapper & Firkin the day before Idlewild played there. We also made it into the NME gig listings. A few years ago James and I worked out the tracklist for a "greatest hits" CD and amazingly, the two EP names came together to give The Blend - perfect. The tracks from The Blend are available to download by clicking the links below.

The way things used to be
The first track on both The Blue EP and The Blend is a pretty short track. Phil left recording the vocals until last to get a more rough, raspy tone and the backing vocals over the second verse and outro were described by Dennis as sounding "like monks". I'm still happy with the funky wah-outro.

Simple minds
A track from The Blue EP that came together from two different ideas - the rocky intro and chorus and the palm-muted verses. The backing vocals and extra guitar overdubs were a result of our experience recording The End EP. This is one song where I'd really like to go back and record a different lead track - more subtle during the verse and faster during the solo. To those that are interested, the effect on Phil's voice in the chorus came from a Zoom 505 pedal with BL-distortion at a gain of 1/30. So, even those cheap multifunction pedals got some use.

Receipt
This is the big one. One of the first songs we wrote. Whilst Phil wrote the lyrics for all the other songs, I pitched the main lyric for this one - If life came with a receipt would you take it back? (at Selly Oak station, 1998). This actually became a fan favourite early on and is still a very good song. When recording The Blue EP we recorded a new version of Receipt with more overdubs and keyboard, but it didn't sound as good as the original - even with the mysteriously loud drum beat at 3.40'.

Nearly
People can say things that ruin songs. My roommate at Trevs told me that someone had ruined the Radiohead song Lucky for him by getting him to associate the line "I'm on a roll" with Thom Yorke standing on a giant loaf of bread. For us it was Dennis with some of his takes on our songs' lyrics. "Nellie? Who's Nellie?" he asked after hearing the chorus of this song where Phil bellows out "Nearly!" A finger picked opening leads to a nice 3 chord progression. I'm still happy with the solo although I should have been more adamant that it be turned up in the mix. "It's REM-like" said Dennis - "needs more balls" says I. We added more to the song afterwards and I still love the non-linear fashion of it.

Without You
This resulted from Phil and James messing around. Phil was playing Climbing up the walls by Radiohead and James kept telling him to "go higher" resulting in the A-D-E-G chorus sequence. This is one of the tracks that underwent the biggest transformation in the studio. Dennis encouraged us to break away from the same sound all the way through the record and as such we played around a lot with this one. The start is the result of hitting the body and necks of our guitars with everything from our hands to coins as well as the use of a Ugandan thumb piano that Phil's sister had lent to us. The lazy-dreamy lead guitar uses a heap of reverb whilst the overdriven guitar effect that comes in on the chorus was achieved by James lying on the floor and plugging in my guitar just as I played the chord. It took a lot of takes as I kept moving my guitar and it's only just occurred to me that it would have been a lot simpler to plug the other end of the lead into the amp instead. Finally the snare drum was given an echo which gave the impression of bats flapping around your head. Thankfully, we learnt to achieve most of these effects when we played live. It's under 3 minutes, but it's almost the perfect angst-song about loss.

Is it real?
After The End EP we took it easy on new songs and by the time we played the Farce & Firkin this was the only thing we had come up with. It's a playful pop song with a catchy start-stop rhythm part. The lead part almost wrote itself, but by the time it came to record the song for The Blue EP I still hadn't completely figured the solo. The one you hear on the CD is largely improvised and ends with a nice harmonising with the bridge-lead part. Unfortunately, for the life of me I can't remember how to play this at all.

Set on you
I longed for us to come up with a song or cover whereby when we played live Raj and James could start off and then I would come on and join in and then finally Phil would arrive. Instead we used the This Life theme as our opening to every gig. The verses of Set on you are based around a chord progression from that theme and the Fraggle Rock-esque chorus came from an idea I had floating around. Dennis' comment: "I will sit on you? What?"

R-song (remix)
This was the first song we wrote together. Phil had come up with the chords and lyrics and at one band practice we tried playing along for about 10 minutes and then pouring over the results listening for parts we liked. Amazingly, the first bit of lead I played was a hit (although it took me a while to remember what I'd actually played). The song became known as Our song as it was the only song of our own and later shortened to R-song. However, at this point we didn't have a bassist so when we played our first gig we simply played the song without bass. When we tried it in the studio it simply sounded wrong and anaemic without the bass so Dennis suggest we loose the drums and make it lo-fi. As a result James recorded a tambourine track and the lead was heavily compressed and lowered to create a very dreamy texture hence the (remix). Unfortunately, Dennis decided to fade the song out despite the fact that it had an ending. There are a lot of other songs that do this, but it's something I don't like - if a song has an actual ending, then let us hear it.

Back on track
There are some songs that have a moment - a split second where the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The bit in Fix you by Coldplay where the drums and piano come in on the outro is a good example. Back on track is the song on The Blue EP that has our "moment". At 2.19' the smooth overdriven guitar chords make way for a return to the picking melody of the intro, but heavier complete with the pacing drumbeat. That makes no sense, but you'll understand when you hear it. James and I spotted (heard?) the potential when we were listening to one of the many run-throughs and worked on making it really stand out. In the studio, Phil decided to add the keyboard parts that we'd never really heard as a part of the song and, unlike the remix of Receipt, they worked really well. The end of the solo has got one of those "what happened there?" moments where the note is cut and then reappears as a harmonic. When planning set lists for gigs we always put Back on track after several quieter songs as it was a way of getting back on track with the heavier songs. One of my favourites.

The End
Title track from The End EP and in my opinion a bit of a mess. How I know that is because most of my lead part was improvised from basic ideas. Lyrically too I don't think this was among our best. The thing I do love though is Phil's guitar tone. The studio had an old Marshall 4040 stack, but Phil had just acquired a Marshall jtm610 - a 60w valve amp with 3 10" speakers. We nicknamed it "the big one" as it was absolutely massive. In the lull after the first chorus you can hear it sustain the rhythm guitar before it suddenly roars back into life at 2.08 - one of our favourite "moments" from The End EP.

Touch
This is the song that shows how far we'd come in the year since The End EP. Although Phil had the first ideas for the song in 1998 (I first heard the basic idea after the ridiculous "challenge of management" course we went on). Over the year it evolved with James creating the drums from a sequencing program we bought for him. Although we used minidisc to carry the track to the studio we had to use the old-fashioned 3.5mm jack cable to get it on and off the MD in the first place so we were a bit anxious about whether it would be good enough quality. Thankfully Dennis gave it the thumbs up and we were in business. Originally there was supposed to be a slide guitar part over the second verse, but the action on our guitars was too low and it just sounded awful. The remnants of this can be heard behind the "I am there" line. Dennis nearly (Nellie!) ruined the song again by saying "Posh girls don't say 'I'm cuming,' they say 'I'm there'" - thankfully I managed to get past that. The lead part in the second verse is based on REMs Drive the unfortunate triangle beat at the end (which we hated pretty much straight away) was our homage to OK Computer. Even the "yip-yip-yeah"s are likeable and the effect on Phil's voice is a "bathroom reverb". This song is by far my favourite - it sounds different and adventurous and for once I was actually fascinated by the lyrics. Depending on how you read them the song takes on radically different tones. Taken at face value the lyrics such as "I would reach for the sky, but I couldn't touch you" conjure up the impression of a love song, but if you dig a little deeper, it can also take on a much creepier interpretation as a song about stalking; "when your world falls apart...I am there." I guess the meaning depends on your outlook, but I frequently flit between the two ideas.

Fade Away
This was Phil's pet solo project. He wrote and performed it himself and was keen to use multiple vocal tracks to harmonise which led to much more on The Blue EP. In fact, when playing live, the rest of the band sometimes joined the audience for this song. Dennis' comment to the line "You shattered my fears" was "what was that? You shat on my face?"...

There are so many more memories - manhandling Phil's "big one" around (it was the heaviest thing known to man), arriving at the Bromsgrove battle of the bands (with James covered in Disney plasters) to find most of the crowd consisted of people wearing hoodies with slogans such as "I am the god of fuck" and thinking "oh dear...", meeting the PA guy at a gig who introduced us to his assistant whose first contribution to the conversation was to break wind very loudly (we may have gone to KES, but we weren't above fart jokes), the really nerdy time vs rock graphs we use to draw when planning set lists (OK this was normally me and Phil) and that's before all the tales from the studio such as Phil walking through Birmingham with £400 in his shoes (Dennis wanted cash payment and Phil was afraid of getting mugged) and the time we first went to look around the studio; Dennis told us that he had helped other bands out and gave us the example of a band who had the lyric "there's a knock at the door" followed by a few snare drum hits. Dennis told us he'd convinced them to change the lyric to "there's a door at the knock" to "shake things up a bit" which seemed ok to us. Then about two hours later we suddenly though "What?!?" The biggest thing though was the end of the first day at the studio when we went into the sound booth to hear what we'd done on Receipt. Upto this point we'd only heard ourselves via a tape recorder that changed the pitch on playback and had an auto-levelling microphone (so when the drums came in the volume of the other instruments went down) and even just hearing the basic track (drums, bass and one guitar) was absolutely amazing. We knew we'd done something special as it sounded not only amazing, but very professional too. A little known fact is that Receipt and Without you made it into the mp3.com top100 (with Without you reaching #52).

Sadly we haven't actually played together since we recorded The Blue EP as we've been scattered around the country ever since. Next year however I'd love to get back together and play a gig in August/September to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of The End EP. Whether or not this happens remains to be seen.

Printers of the (near) future

2007-03-23T00:05:00.000Z

As someone who recently had to print out nearly 800 sides worth of theses I know how monotonous it is waiting for the printer to get through a large job. A colour laser printer took 45 minutes to print 120 colour pages - not exactly quick. In addition, anyone who has ever printed off an A0 poster from a plotter will testify that they're not quick (at around half an inch per minute it always results in the yearly battle between chemistry and biology finalists at Durham).

However Memjet, a startup company, is claiming to have invented printers that can print 4x6" photos at 30 photos/minute, A4 colour at 60 page/minute and large scale posters at 1 foot/second. It sounds good on paper (sorry), but they've released a video showing the printers in action and the demonstrations have been witnessed by third parties too. The most incredible thing though is the price - a regular A4 printer is going to cost under $200...

'06 AKA the music post

2007-03-09T00:23:00.000Z

All the links in the following post got to videos. I've tried to link to live performances where possible. If you enjoy some of the new bands I encourage you to join Pandora (if you don't live in the US simply enter 90210 as the zip code) and discover even more!

Before I became a massive film fan, my biggest passion was music. At school I was pretty much just into British indie. My school wasn't exactly awash with people going out and discovering unknown bands so we pretty much followed what Jo Whiley and Steve Lamaq offered up for us: so we went through Blur, Oasis, the Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Garbage and the album that everyone born from 1978-1984 seems to have been issued with: Alanis Morisette - Jagged Little Pill. In fact the more adventurous of us were fans of Radiohead and the real music fans were the ones who tracked down all the Oasis B-sides...

The fantastic thing about university was that I was suddenly thrown into the mix with people from all over the country, and indeed, the world. This brought a whole new selection of music that I'd never considered. My next door neighbour for example was also a massive Radiohead fan and gave me a tape with a load of b-sides. He broadened my taste in rock by introducing me to bands such as Faith No More, Limp Bizkit, The Lemonheads and rock outfits like Soulfly and Orgy. Then my friend on the adjacent landing introduced me to Moby. At the time Play had been out for over a year and had done nothing in the charts so when a group of us went to see him live it was before he hit the big time and the gig was in the wonderfully intimate venue of Newcastle student union. Within weeks he was playing Wembley. Also that year I discovered Muse and, with some advice from a friend from home, Coldplay and Doves. In the second year I was finally introduced to Pink Floyd who I'd never have got into otherwise. Honestly, I think most people get into these old bands through their parents but mine don't seem to like modern music so I've had to do all the leg (or ear) work myself. The third year brought about the discovery of Ben Folds Five and Lemonjelly.

Moby with Feeling So Real at Glastonbury 2000

It's along time since these discoveries and so many "next big thing" bands have dropped away. My friend told me to look through an old copy of Select magazine from my first year and see the bands that had vanished. Sure enough whatever happened to: Travis (ok they have a new album due soon), JJ72, Feeder, Gomez, Nine Inch Nails, Embrace and Supergrass?

I've written before about the power of the internet and how it's shrinking the world. With sites like Youtube and Pandora it's very easy to find new music. 2006 for me was the year of the foreign band. Being English it's easy and a bit arrogant to assume that the only music that's worth listening to is in English. However it's pretty liberating to realise the most countries have their own music scene. Right at the start of the year we were exposed to Norweigan music as an acoustic session kicked off at the bar we happened to be in in Oslo one night. I got into "Scando-rock" and now own albums by Poor Rich Ones (Norway), Kent (Sweden) and Sigur Ros (Iceland) - click the links for some videos.

Kent and Den döda vinkeln (the dead angle)

Given I was in Japan for 2 weeks I was a bit disappointed with how little Jpop I actually heard. In fact the only songs I heard were the 2 from the film Nana - and that was on the flight over. All was not lost however as I was bitten by the bug as soon as I imported the DS game Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. The whole game is based around 15 Jpop songs from the last 20 years or so; from some I'd heard before (The Blue Hearts and L'arc en Ciel) to the kitsch girl group with a constant revolving door of members: Morning Musume (warning: this link leads to very cheesy Jpop) and reliable indie groups B'z and the Yellow Monkey. A combination of Pandora and Youtube led me to pick up several albums - a couple by L'arc en Ciel and a couple by Yaida Hitomi who really puts me in mind of a cross between Natalie Imbruglia (in that her songs are very catchy and a cut above generic pop and she has a very capable backing band), Alanis Morisette (similar voice) and Garbage (the backing band, Diamond Head, are all studio producers).

Yaiko and the amazing Over the Distance

I'm still trying to track down some B'z and Yellow Monkey albums and I'd love to get hold of some X Japan. X Japan are the band that started the whole visual kei movement in Japan and are sort of a cross between Megadeath, Guns n' Roses and the Scorpions. They vary between speed rock, power ballads and classical-esque songs and were huge influences on a wide range of western artists.

X Japan with the power ballad Endless Rain.

As I've mentioned (again and again) the soundtracks to various Zach Braff productions (Garden State and Scrubs) have been an invaluable source of new music inspiration. So far I've discovered Colin Hay, Imogen Heap and Frou Frou, Josh Radin, The Shins, The Postal Service, Rhett Miller and Cary Brothers. Late 2006 brought another Braff-created OST for the film The Last Kiss. Once again it features a cross of well known bands (Snow Patrol, Coldplay, Turin Breaks and Aimee Mann) and less known artists (Josh Radin, Athlete, Rachel Yamagata and Remy Zero). Its very much a stripped back album and Chocolate by Snow Patrol is about as rocky as it gets. However, there are some amazing songs such as Radin's duet with Schuyler Fisk Paperweight and Ray LaMontagne's Hold You In My Arms.

Josh Radin and Schuyler Fisk duet on Paperweight - the most beautiful song I've heard in ages.

So, since getting into music in the mid 90s, I just needed to get to university to develop an ear for music beyond indie. My 1st year roommate told me "When I met you you were indie-boy." Now my tastes have broadened to nearly all extremes. At the moment I'm very fond of acoustic singer songwriters such as Colin Hay and Josh Radin, but at the same time I love rock bands such as Black Stone Cherry and Muse. From the samples of Lemonjelly and the Go! Team to the urgency of the nu-metal/hip hop Jay-Z/Linkin Park crossover Collision Course. I can even just about take jazz and country music now too.

LemonJelly with The Staunton Lick

Linkin Park vs Jay-Z with Jigga What/Faint

It seems weird, but modern indie seems to have gone too mainstream. Bands like The Kaiserchiefs, Snow Patrol and The Killers are prime Radio 1 fodder. The weird thing is they are very middle of the road. Snow Patrol's last album Final Straw is very good up to about track 8, but it just keeps going and the good momentum it built up is lost and whenever I've seen them playing, the singer always seems heavily out of tune which doesn't help. The Killers too had a great 7 or 8 songs on their first album, but the rest of it along with the few songs I've heard off Sam's Town just don't appeal. Even old favourites such as Weezer are putting out very iffy albums - I honestly can't remember the last time I listened to the 2nd half of Make Believe. It seems like a lot of bands have forgotten how to make an album and instead just bundle a load of songs together on a CD.

The best thing happening in indie at the moment is Bloc Party. I got into them late last year (about 18 months late). When I first heard them I didn't like it but there was something about it that kept me coming back for another listen.

Bloc Party's tv debut with Helicopter

Muse are the other big British band of the moment. I was actually a bit disappointed with Absolution - there were some great songs like Time Is Running Out and Hysteria but there were a lot of forgettable songs. I got my first taste of 2006's Black Holes and Revelations in my ryokan room in Tokyo via the music video for Supermassive Black Hole. The sound was so different to anything they'd done before and was skirting into Prince territory - no bad thing. When the album came out a lot of people were disappointed, myself included. Sure tracks such as Knights of Cydonia were instant classics but Supermassive... was the only song with a new sound, Soldier's Poem completely broke the flow of the album and there weren't any songs that jumped out at you in the way something like Cave or Plug-in Baby did. However, over time the album really grew on me and it's down to the subtleties in the tracks. Take a song like Map Of The Problematique: it's the same 4 chords all the way through but little things like the step-filter on the introduction and the background guitar lines really make the track stand out.

Map of the Problematique by Muse

Perhaps drifting a bit from indie are Doves who are quite happy to ignore genres and just release their songs. Their albums drift between indie and chill-out with ease and I'm always looking forward to what they will produce next.

Doves on Jools Holland with Pounding

I don't know what bands and artists are going to attract my attention next. Thanks to the web the chances are they may not even have been heard of in this country. For example, The Fray are just launching their album over here, but I heard current single How To Save A Life a year ago via a Scrubs episode.

Finally I have to mention a few more albums I'm really eager to pick up. Fred Deakin, half of LemonJelly, has released a 3CD mix album called Triptych which sounds pretty amazing and I still have to pick up the new Shins album, Wincing The Night Away. I've heard very mixed reports about the new Bloc Party album but I'll give it a go.

That's part 1 done. Part 2 will be about why music is so important to me. It'll probably appear here rather than this blog (there you go Lue - something will appear there).

Minimalist lifestyles

2007-02-21T01:57:00.000Z

Something that's become apparent to me since I got home is the relatively small amount of stuff I regularly use. I mean, most of my friends who were in my year would have got houses in 2002 whilst I've been living out of one room. And anyone who saw my room in House 3 at Trevs will know how small that was. But instead of seeing this as a drag it's really liberating. I've been trying to help my parents clean out our house and the amount of crap they keep for no reason is unbelievable. By living in such a small environment for so many years I've become accustomed to streamlining my stuff. I still find it really hard to throw things away - especially things with nostalgia value but you've got to do it. It's like 5 minutes of anguish after you bin it and that's it - you don't miss it. Matt and I coined the term minimalist lifestyle to reflect the lifestyle we've been living. I really love the idea of having one suitcase of clothes, a backpack of other items, a laptop and one trunk for shipping other things. In fact, when it looked like I might spend 6 months in the US teaching I was really excited to try out my ideas. Buy a laptop, put all my films into a 240-disc wallet, have all my music on my ipod, a suitcase of clothes and perhaps a trunk with slightly bulkier stuff. I used to think about taking a guitar as it's become so important in my life, but after seeing this I probably wouldn't even need one of those.

(watch all the way through cos when I saw it I thought "blah blah, whatever," but the sound is so good that I'm going to have to get this). My parents have filled the house with books but I love the idea of ebooks - Sony have already introduced their e-reader. Instead of shelves and shelves of books, imagine a device about the area of an A4 piece of paper that can hold as many books as you can fit onto a memory card. My friend Spike seems to have taken the opposite view. He moved to Australia for 3 years and decided to take as much of his stuff with him as possible to the point that one of his trunks had problems at customs due to the antique pistols in them...

I know that I'll probably get overrun with important documents and end up with a house full of crap, but it's nice to dream.

Durham, vivas and camera phones

2007-02-21T00:43:00.000Z

The thing I remember most about my graduation is what an anticlimax it was. No, let me go further than that - it was a massive let down. The week leading up to it was severely lacking in atmosphere in college - everyone seemed worn down and tired and as soon as people's parents arrived that was it. In addition to having to get up at 6.30am to get to Palace Green in time for the 7am gown fitting (read: no hot water in college) as we came out from the ceremony all my friends scattered and everything got muddled into a big confusing mess - then it was over. When I walked back to my office after my viva a little over ten days ago I was feeling the same thing. I'd been anticipating this moment for nearly 4 years - 3 years of work and half a year of writing had been wrapped up and "OK'd". In my 5th year I remember thinking that this moment would fill me with sheer elation. It didn't.

In the days and hours leading up to the viva I was actually starting to get really worried about how un-worried I was about it all. After all, this was the test to determine whether the last 3 years of work had been up to the right standard. I did a shockingly low amount of revision. I know Matt spent 2 months revising if I'm honest I think I probably did about a weeks worth. In fact, when I read my thesis through the night before it was actually the first time I'd read it since handing it in. The viva itself was incredibly quick only 1hr45 which is shorter than the average. To my surprise my external examiner started off my telling me that they had been really impressed by my thesis and didn't see any problems with it. Straight away this knocked me off balance as it was the last thing I expected. It felt awful as I took a long time to answer some of the questions and there were some (it felt like most of them) where I had to say "I'm not sure". Looking back, all the questions I struggled on were on pretty simple things and all the questions I breezed through involved the complex stuff. Thankfully there were only a few mistakes and I struggled through a couple of mechansims. At 1hr40 my external examiner said he was done. I couldn't believe it was over, but then invited my internal examiner to ask some questions. I settled down and figured I was only half way through, but amazingly there was only one more question. I couldn't believe it when they asked me to step outside. The deliberation took less than a minute and then I was a doctor.

It didn't really feel over. I've come to realise I need to let go of it - in the last 15 months or so I've just about made myself physically sick worrying about my work - why didn't my reaction work? Would it mean I fail or have to do more lab work? It felt like I was running out of time and starting to panic. My PhD has been such a large part of my life for the last 3 and a half years. I brought it home with me, I'd go into the lab in the evenings and weekends if I needed to. In the last year especially I tried to keep my mind on work to see if I could turn my run of luck around. I just assumed that it was like this for everyone - but of course it's not. In the "real world" people really can leave their jobs at work. To me I feel really disappointed with my last year's work, but taking my work as a whole it looks ok. As predicted, all the congratulations I got was of the "we expected you to pass" variety rather than the "wow I'm so happy for you" variety.

So yes, the feeling of elation was missing but at least I got to see my friends again. On my first night back I met up with Brett and Tim and went out for some (ok, quite a few) drinks. The next day I went out for lunch with the girls from my group which is always nice. My biggest regret about my PhD was not being able to get my group out more often. Apart from Christmas meals I think it may have only happened 3 times in 3 years and the shame was we had a good time when we did make it out. Oh well. In addition to the chemistry crowd, Matt had made the journey up from London and Alan was around too. I even managed to get Kate from my lab out for a bit too. The night followed the tried and tested path of the New Inn followed by pizza, Jimmy Allen's, Chase and Klute. It was like I'd never left - how I've missed the dodgy green double vodka-pseudo Red Bulls in Klute. The next day I met up with the chemists again and went for lunch in the new section of the Gala complex and then in the evening had a night in Trevs with Matt and Emma. The nostalgia of Pizza Perfect was in attendance (along with the piss-poor free Lambrini) and the next day I went to dinner at Khairul's house with the chemists after which we sat around and chatted. It was simple moments like this that I miss so much. We had about 10 PhD chemists (and Lou) sat around in their sitting room talking - something that we'd done a load before and not really something that would seem that special - but once you leave it's so rare you actually see 5 of your friends.

I have to mention mobile phones again - my small camera's screen has packed in and I didn't fancy hauling my Canon round so I relied on my friends' camera phones. My phone may be able to tell me about the public transport networks in every city in the world and have sat-nav, but the camera is just rubbish. The photos in this post have come straight from Emma's phone - armed with a Carl Zeiss lens and xenon flash. I'm seriously impressed with the quality - especially the ones from Klute. I may have to invest soon.

Just as when I went up in December it felt like I'd never left and all the things I've loved about my PhD came back whilst talking to people. I've met people from Australia, Germany, France, Thailand, Japan, China, Malaysia, Holland and loads more countries, I've loved every minute of teaching the undergraduates, I've travelled to the USA and Japan to see some of the top people in my area talk, I've learnt to take nothing at face value, I still feel young and even though I was really scared about my work there was never a moment when I didn't love it and that's the most important thing. A lot of people my age already hate their jobs and a lot of others are indifferent to them. Even at my hight of failures I was always excited to go into work to see if my reaction had worked. Now, if only I could feel excited about my result - I've got 4 months until graduation #2.

Over

2007-02-11T23:56:00.000Z

I passed. I am now (just about) Dr Kiran. Now to get all my bank cards ammended...

Belief

2007-02-08T20:09:00.000Z

So it's come down to this. I'm sat in the university library. In just under 18 hours I'll be going into my PhD viva. It's essentially the last hurdle to the completion of the work that began all those years ago in 2003. Essentially an examiner from another university (Strathclyde) and an examiner from Durham will spend around 3 hours discussing my thesis and work with me. This boils down to them asking lots of questions to test my knowledge of the subject and related areas.

I'm not overly nervous, but I'm getting the feeling I used to get before exam results - I'm pretty sure it's going to be OK, but what if it's not?. Everyone I've seen has offered up a "Good luck, I'm sure you'll be fine." but I just feel like I need someone to go further than that and tell me that they believe in me and that I will get through this and perhaps even more important be proud of me when/if I do well. Otherwise what is it? - just another piece of paper to stick on the wall and a couple more letters after my name. Being a doctor seemed a really cool thing to be three years ago, but now I can't quite remember why...

So - come on me!

My problem with...education

2007-02-04T16:25:00.000Z

So, by this time next week I will hopefully have passed the final hurdle to become a doctor. This is just about the end of the education chain in the this country and I've been thinking about all the problems it has. This is mostly coming from a science point of view, but it's probably very similar for other subjects. I was always told that staying in education would boost your options and get you onto the employment ladder at a higher level.

So anyway, I arrived at uni with a high A grade in chemistry. I was weary but at the same time confident that I'd be ok. At A-level it seemed like a single straight path towards the goal and as such progress was steady. A degree on the other hand is more akin to trying to get to the centre of a circle taking many different paths at once. Many different courses ran at the same time apparently bearing no relationship to each other in the least. Where as A-levels are designed to a national curriculum, degrees are made up of what each university decides is relevant and taught be people whose job isn't to teach. Lectures are just that: lectures. There is no effort to make sure the audience understood the content. It becomes so easy to get fixated on individual courses and forget what it all means. For example, most people will recognise the chemical structure of benzene - a hexagon whose vertices represent a carbon atom and the edges of which represent bonds. It's all too easy to forget that in reality these lines aren't really there - they are just a cloud of electrons that's holding the atoms together. In one course we learn how molecules in a fluid stretch, twist and concertina. Other course make no mention of this at all, but it still happens. All the courses are linked, but no one tells you that.

The biggest problem though is that, unlike subjects like maths and physics where it's entirely possible to get near-perfect marks, chemistry's questions can have very vague answers. It becomes a common struggle to keep getting decent grade. In other subjects you can cover up on or two bad modules and still get a high degree, but in chemistry it always felt like one mess up would drag you down. Nowhere was this felt more than in the practical classes. Arguably this is what chemistry is all about. All the courses simply showed reactions as being A + B goes to C with some explanation of how. What they didn't tell you was how to get A and B into the right states to interact and how to separate C from the mixture of A, B and other assorted crap. The reaction is the easy part - it's the separation and purification that causes all the headaches. I can still remember the fear that ran through lab sessions. People would go to demonstrators if their reaction was a slightly different colour from their friends', people would worry about which layer was the organic layer in extractions and absolutely no one knew how to work the vacuum pump trolleys. As the second year came it got worse - 2-day experiments brought the prospect of getting to the end of nearly 12 hours of lab work and then loosing your product at the end. There were good demonstrators and bad demonstrators. I remember one who told me that if we didn't operate the vacuum pumps correctly they would "blow up and take your legs off". Not really what you want to hear. Another demonstrator would quite happily wreck your experiment and then cheerfully proclaim "oh well, there's still time to start again." The grading system didn't exactly work wonders either. We got a memo from a lecturer saying it was actually against university policy to give grades as opposed to marks but they were going to do it anyway. Getting back a lab report with A+ initially seemed pretty good, but then you realised that was only 15/20 with absolutely no indication of where the last 25% had been dropped. In a subject like chemistry, every mark counts. Worse still, it now transpires that natural scientists can actually finish their degree (incorporating chemistry) without setting foot in a chemistry lab. How has that happened? When I started my PhD and went back into labs as a demonstrator I saw the fear again. I also tried to be helpful. I tried to explain to people why they were adding what they were adding. Once you know it makes sense and will help you with every other reaction, but there were still a lot of demonstrators who would simply fob the students off with non-committal answers.

My main beef though is with opportunities after university. Far too many people are lured into accountancy and other such mass graduate-employers. There always seems to be worries that not enough people are taking sciences, but I'm finding it pretty hard to get a decent job. The area I'm into is growing rapidly and there is a lot of money in it. Just apparently not in the UK though. One of my friends from my group recently left chemistry after a 3 year post-doc stint to take up teaching. I've got nothing against people teaching if they want to do it, but I get the feeling people are being driven to it by a lack of opportunities. My friend had basically reached the end of apparent career path in the UK and made the switch. The teaching adverts all about helping to develop the next generation of world-class students. But what happens when these world-class students reach the end of their education? What if they are forced back to teaching? How does that benefit anyone? It brings up a thought that sometimes keeps me awake. How many Einsteins and Schrodingers have not lived up to their potential cos they chose a different path from the one where their talents lay. Imagine if you yourself had done a different degree or taken a different job. Would you have changed the world? It's that kind of thinking that does your head in.

bits 'n' pieces

2007-01-23T20:53:00.000Z

So here's what's been happening recently.

I went down to Newbury a few weeks ago to meet up with some school friends. Good times (and the apparently near-mythical "cheese and potato" dish from the local curry house) were had. We finally made it to James' favourite end-of-night venue, Liquid (for the Durham people, think Rixies, but with southern prices). Accenture pays for James to stay in a very nice new flat complete with broadband and Sky.

I finally got a date for my viva which is the 9th February at 2pm. One way or another I'm going to be absolutely hammered by about 9pm that night and with a bit of luck I might actually be a doctor.

I finally got my hands on a Wii today. I'll put up some videos of me flailing around later. Originally the controls were a let down and after all the hype I was almost as disappointed as when I found out that the free bottle of wine from Pizza Perfect was in fact Lambrini (it's not wine!!!!!), but thankfully a few tweaks of the sensitivity setting and I'm getting respectable scores in Wii bowling and Wii golf.

To complete my list of 2006 films I received and watched Little Miss Sunshine over the weekend. It's absolutely fabulous and fully deserves its Oscar nominations that were announced today. See it as soon as you can - it's got the line "Get me some porn; get me something really nasty too; I don't want any of that airbrushed shit." from the families grandfather so how can it be bad?

The UK pound is on a rampage and is so close to reaching the fabled £1=$2 mark. Unfortunately even if it does I'm too poor to go on a spending spree (or any kind of spree for that matter) and it also means that the 30,000-odd yen I've still got (value at time of purchase £150) is now worth considerably less...

My parents have picked up a bit of steam in tidying the house (it still feels very topsy turvy to say that). They seem to think that an hour a week will do it and for most people this might be true. However, if I were to say that whilst cleaning out a kitchen cupboard I found an OPEN packet of naan bread mix with a best before date of 1983 (yes that should read eighty three) you can maybe see the problem.

Finally, I've started listening to the Unknown Quantity "best of" album The Blend again. For those that don't know, Unknown Quantity was the name of the band I was in at school. We played quite a few gigs and recorded 2 CDs - and in 1998 that was pretty good going. It still fills me with wonder that we managed to do and I think those CDs probably still stand s the achievement I'm most proud of - 1st class degree? so what - nobody cared but me, but people actually seemed to like the songs. I'll try and find some hosting to share the songs and dig out the old photos in the next few days. So I'll finish with my one contribution to the lyrics: if life came with a receipt, would you take it back?

Futurology

2007-01-18T01:16:00.000Z

It's the start of the New Year and the CES has just finished in Las Vegas so I thought I'd give a quick prediction about what new technologies and gadgets we'll start using in our everyday lives this year. Who knows: if these predictions come true and the chemistry/OLED don't take off maybe I'll have found my life's calling.

Digital photo frames

There are very few new technologies that become standard inside of 10 years. Back in mid 90s the "cutting edge" of technology was a Sony camera with a 640x480 resolution (0.3 megapixels) that was large enough to include a floppy disc drive to store pictures. Today it's hard to even find a film camera. In fact, phones such as the SE K800i and Nokia N73 have Carl Zeiss equipped 3.2 megapixel cameras that produce better pictures than a lot of dedicated cameras. Suddenly you could take as many photos as you wanted (batteries and memory cards permitting) and only print the good ones. But you were still left with physical prints which had to be stored in albums. There's no point in photos if no one can see them, so whilst 2006 saw the rise of sites such as Flickr you still need to be at a computer to see the photos. Digital photo frames are simply LCD screens incorporated into a frame surround that can be set to display digital pictures and film clips. This lets one frame display several pictures for set amounts of time. Most include memory card slots so photos can be taken directly from the camera and some even feature wifi so photos can be downloaded from sites such as Flickr. At the moment the screens have pretty high ppi values but low screen sizes. The most common is 7" which is roughly equivalent to a 6"x4" photo. Not exactly large. Having been spoilt by the cheap, high quality prints Matt and I got last summer I'd hope for 8"x10" (~12") screens at a decent price soon. I've been tracking the prices of digital photo frames for a couple of years now and they are fast approaching the threshold of "impulse buy". They used to be £250, but prices have now fallen below £40. I'm going to predict that - like DAB radios a couple of years ago - these will be a very popular present at Christmas.

Contactless payments

First there was cash. Then came cheques - a "convenient" way to avoid carry large amounts of cash. Next came magnetic strip cards and most recently chip and pin. However this year will see the rolling out (in London at least) of the next form of payment - contactless. The technology is based on RFID chips that can be built into just about anything. Although the technology was first trailed in the UK in the mid 90s it broke through with the Octopus card in Hong Kong - the card allowed people to pay for transport and at some shops simply by waving a card over a detector. The idea was rolled out as the Suica card in Tokyo and the Oyster card in London and similar schemes in several other countries. Dealing in cash actually costs UK business a lot of money each year, so businesses will encourage the adoption of the system. The system is likely to be implemented as replacement debit card although the chip could be built into anything from ipods to phones. The idea is that if you want to buy things over £10 you need to use chip and pin, but for purchases under £10 simply waving the card near the reader will deduct payment from your account and obliterate queues in shops. For security, every tenth transaction will need a pin number, but any intervening chip and pin purchases will reset the counter. The National roll out will begin in London this summer and spread to the rest of the UK by 2008. The banks have stated that they want the 2012 Olympics to be the first cashless Olympics. Bit of a weird thing to want, but ok. As someone who never has enough cash on them this is a fantastic development. Cash is for poor people.

HSDPA

What does this even mean?!? This is one technology that will become ubiquitous without anyone realising. Put simply this is 3.5G mobile phone technology. 3G sort of died a publicity death - all the networks tried to advertise their collective £22bn investment with look - you can do really jerky video calls! Most of my friends with 3G phones tried it once and then never again. However, the real benefit of 3G (and the thing that allows the video calls to take place) is the increased data rate. Where as the internet access of 2G phones was the equivalent of a dial up modem, 3G phones cruised along at 384kbps - about 2/3 the speed of a residential broadband link in 2004. Still not particularly quick then, but with the introduction of HSDPA much of the country will be covered by a network allowing speeds of 3.6Mbps initially (roughly the same as the speed of today's residential broadband lines - fast enough to download an episode of 24 in ~12 minutes) and companies have promised that this will reach over 20Mbps by 2010 - fast enough to download that 24 episode in less than 5 seconds. It may sound as thrilling as a glass of tap water, but it may be the beginning of the end of the need for a fixed phone line. At present, if you want internet access you need either a BT phone line or cable - both of which have a monthly line rental. On top of this you then need to pay for your broadband. However, with a nationwide HSDPA network you could get rid of your fixed line and instead connect your phone or HSDPA router to your computer and get the same speeds (or even faster) that we get today. Add in an SIP socket on the router to allow free landline calls and free geographical numbers and BT will rue the day they sold O2. After my previous rant about data charges, more operators have started unlimited data plans. The latest is X-series from 3 which charges from £5/month for unlimited access including Skype and orb/sling access. Later in the year we may see the introduction of HSUPA (3.75G) which allows faster uploads.

Personal GPS

Sort of linked to the above. A few years ago GPS systems were featured in car adverts as an "optional extra". This extra usually cost nearly the same as the rest of the car. Since then there has been an explosion in stand alone "sat-nav" products. Systems such as TomTom still command a ridiculous price premium, whilst cheaper Garmin systems can readily be had for about £100. The main aim of CSR - one of the biggest wireless chip manufacturers - is to produce a GPS chip that costs $1. The size of the chips has been brought down to a few millimetres square and they are finding there way into many new devices. My GPS unit is about the same width and depth as my phone, but 2/3 the length. The chips are now so small that the forthcoming Nokia N95 "superphone" has a GPS chip built in. In addition there are already other phones with this technology such as the Orange M700 about to be unleashed. By the end of the year it seems likely that all the mid-to-high end phones from HTC, Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson will have HSDPA and GPS. No doubt operators will cut deals with various navigation software developers to let people use their mobiles for navigation, but it goes further than finding out how to drive the 5 miles to the cinema. Imagine you're trying to meet up with someone but don't know where they are. You can simply transmit your GPS location to them so they can find you easily. Need to know where the nearest cashpoint is? Your phone will guide you. Fancy some food? Your phone will let you know what's available in the area and then guide you to your chosen restaurant. No longer will blokes have to fear asking for directions cos soon we won't need to.

Wii

Ever since I got my NES back in 1990 I've been a Nintendo fan. At the time you were either a Nintendo fan or a Sega fan or a just rich kid who could afford both. After the SNES I left the console scene behind just as the Playstation was about to take gaming out of the teenagers' rooms and into the lounge of the 20-something. In my 5th year I decided to pick up a Gamecube as they were on the way out so I thought all the good games would get cheap (that and I wanted Mario Kart). Ironically, even though the cube did die out pretty soon afterwards, this just made the games rarer and more expensive whilst PS2 and xBox games are frequently £2. Anyway, games like the 2 Super Monkey Ball games and Pikmin got me back into gaming, so I was interested in the "next generation" consoles. However, whilst Microsoft and Sony raced ahead in their battle to beef up their consoles, Nintendo went another way. The new console, Wii, would be based around a controller originally meant as a cube add-on. Whilst Sony and Microsoft attempted to shove in the fastest cpus and latest gpus into their new behemoths, Nintendo was quite happy to let their console simply amount to a slightly updated Gamecube. However, whilst the other machines are certainly very powerful, most of that power simply goes on the HD graphics. The games themselves are just prettier versions of the same games everyone's seen before. In the meantime, Nintendo's Wii has come up with a brand new way to play games. Targeting the dreaded "over-30s" market as much as the traditional audience Nintendo realised that games should be fun to play. Even I'm a bit confused when handed a gamepad with 3 joysticks and 10 buttons. The Wii controller is simple. You wave it around and the built in motion sensor knows. Want to swing your character's tennis racquet? Just swing the controller - put on spin and control the power of the shot. Likewise for a golf club, baseball bat or even sword. Suddenly everything is a lot simpler. And it seems to be working. Word of mouth is spreading. Forums are crawling with talk of people's parents buying Wiis for themselves and stock is hard to track down - in the UK most online stores sell out within half an hour of stock being advertised. Compare this to the PS3's dodgy Japanese launch and underperforming US sales and Nintendo might just pull something special off.

I've got nothing against the PS3 - I just think gaming should be fun rather than a chore.Provided Nintendo avoids one pitfall, then Wii could end up in a LOT of homes this year. The crucial point is that Nintendo continues to ship good games for the system. It comes with a game called Wii Sports (except in Japan) that offers tennis, golf, baseball, boxing and bowling games. However, these are pretty limited (and baseball is actually just about the world's dullest game) so if Nintendo aren't careful the Wii won't gain the momentum that will make it one of the most talked about gadgets of the year. Now, if only I could get hold of one...I'll leave you with the E3 teaser:

Top films of 2006

2007-01-15T01:10:00.000Z

So - films that were actually released in 2006. I have to admit that I haven't seen that many. I've been alone most of the year and even though you don't talk and concentrate on the film, going to the cinema alone just feels wrong. As such there are several big films from this year that probably should be on this list. These include Cars, Little Miss Sunshine, Casino Royale, The Last Kiss and Munich. So without further sob stories onto the list of films I did see.

Syriana

Penned by Stephen Gaghan, writer of Traffic, comes the film that Got George Clooney his Oscar. Like his previous film based around the world of drugs, Syriana investigates the world around the black gold: oil. In 4 connected, interdependent stories we see the consequences of international demand for oil. The film begins with US oil firm Connex loosing a large contract in the Middle East after the country's Prince Nasir grants natural gas rights to a Chinese firm. As a result Connex lays off it's large immigrant workforce leaving them jobless and penniless in a foreign country. They attend an Islamic school in order to learn Arabic to improve their prospects where they are approached by a friendly cleric. Back in the US Connex merges with small oil firm Killen who have acquired rights to a Kazakh oilfield. The Dept of Justice suspects all is not as it seems. Jeffrey Wright's lawyer character is sent to investigate the deal and make sure the DoJ find no issues. In Europe, energy analyst Matt Damon is appointed as Prince Nasir's economic advisor to assist with Nasir's plan to reform his country and break free from dependence on the US. Concerned at the prospect of loosing their hold over the oil in the Middle East, the CIA appoint Georgy Clooney's character to assassinate Nasir, but when the mission fails they scapegoat him and start planning to rectify their mistake. Lots of people criticised the film as they found it hard to concentrate on the intertwining stories. It's a film that shows you the ugly reality of the west's dependence on oil and the strangle-hold they've got over the Middle East. Matt Damon tells Nasir: "You know what the business community thinks of you? They think that a hundred years ago you were living in tents out here in the desert chopping each other's heads off and that's where you'll be in another hundred years, so on behalf of my firm I accept your offer." Syriana shows that although terrorism is ideologically fuelled by hatred of the west's Middle East policies that suck the area's resources away, it finds its foot soldiers amongst poverty and desperation. The lack of a central character frustrated some, but it is the essence of the issue - there isn't really anyone "in charge" of the oil. The US government is interested in protecting its oil companies rather than the interests of the Middle East, allegiances are forged and betrayed. Up at the sharp end of the large corporations corruption is rife, but who watches the watchers? The film has a downbeat ending that, although tie up all the characters in the film, does nothing to change the situation.

Miami Vice

Now here's a film that split people right down the middle. Some loved it, some hated it. A lot of people were expecting Bad Boys 3 which this certainly isn't. I've never seen the original TV series, but I suspect it's nothing like this. Michael Mann has given this film a certain style - visually he sticks with shooting on digital video giving the film a distinct look - a non-film look and night scenes covered with grain. Story wise we drop in on the lives of a group of vice police headed by Rico and Tubbs. The film begins in the middle of a sting operation and we have no idea what's going on. Indeed, as the film goes on there is absolutely no character progression which have lead some to label this film as being "the death of cinematic narrative". But so what? This film simply covers one of the squads investigations - they are already bonded. Rico and Tubbs already know how each other will react so there's no Lethal Weapon-style unexpected behaviour. The plot involves the pair going undercover to flush out a mole who caused the death of two undercover FBI agents. To accomplish this they set themselves up as drug traffickers and begin to work their way up the drugs food chain. The action is sporadic, but retains the infamous Mann characteristics of realistic sound effects and shootouts. The violence isn't glamorised - there are no slow motion bodies flying through the air - just the realtime results of being shot. The film slowly builds up to the two big action set pieces at the end of the film. The middle of the film is perhaps a bit slow, but it's so beautifully shot and scored that it kept my attention easily. Perhaps one for the thriller market rather than the action market.

The Prestige

Plot twists. Some people spend their entire time whilst watching films trying to work out the plot twist. Personally, unless it's an obvious one I don't bother and just enjoy the film. If it's a good twist that fits the story then I'm impressed, but if it's merely a twist added for the sake of adding a twist then I'm glad I haven't bothered trying to work it out. Whilst watching the Prestige, it seems like the twist is revealed at about the halfway point but - as with the film's content - all is not what it seems. In Victorian London, two magicians perform a good magic act. Performer Angier (Hugh Jackman), his wife and assistant, audience plant Borden (Christian Bale) and the man who makes the tricks a reality - Cutter (Michael Caine). After the on-stage death of Angier's wife in a water-torture trick Angier blames Borden for tying a different knot. The magicians go their separate ways but harbour a rivalry that leads to them sabotaging each others acts leading to Borden loosing half a finger. Borden meets Sarah and they get married. After a while Borden opens a new show with a trick in which he appears to teleport across the stage. Angier and Cutter attempt to copy his act, but can't work out how he does it - it can't simply be a double as both the man going into the "send" box and the man who leaves the "receive" box are missing the same half-finger. Eventually Angier and Cutter hire Olivia (Scarlett Johansson) and copy the trick using a double. As Angier walks through the on stage door, a trap door opens and a lift propels his double behind the other door. As time goes on Angier grows angry that it's his double who takes "the prestige" (the audiences applause) every night whilst he himself is hidden below the stage. After more sabotaging from Borden incapacitates Angier he sends Olivia to spy on Borden and she successfully manages to obtain Borden's diary - which contains the details of his tricks. and states that a machine obtained from Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) makes the teleportation possible. In response, Angier sets out for America to seek out Tesla and aquire a machine of his own. Most of the story is told in flashback - the film opens with Borden sneaking behind the stage to see how Angier's new improved teleporting man trick works. Instead he sees Angier fall through the stage trapdoor into a waterbath and drown. Convicted of murder, Borden is sent to prison to await hanging, but once again - is everything what it seems? As I mentioned earlier, the twist about how the machine works is fairly obvious, but the other twists aren't so clear cut. After they are revealed you immediately see how they were set up. As Cutter comments "Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it because you're not really looking. You don't really want to know the secret... You want to be fooled." and so it is with the film. You want the twist to surprise you. The film takes great delight in showing how tricks were carried out. For example if you want to teleport a bird out of a cage, it's easier to kill the caged bird with a spring-loaded roof and use another one for the prestige. Chis Nolan is quickly becoming a director that can be relied upon to deliver. Whilst other newcomers such as Daron Aranofsky, Zach Braff and Jarod Hess are herelded as the next big thing, Nolan has already directed 4 amazing films - Memento, Insomnia and Batman Begins. Again, there are some spoilers so if you haven't seen the film, please don't read the following!

The presence of Borden's brother is hinted at many times throughtout the film. Does Borden not remember what knot he tied on Angier's wife because it was his brother doing it? We see Borden comment on how magic must be your life to be a good magician after they see the Chinese magician who pretends to be crippled. The repeated question "Do you love me?" from Borden's wife that is met with different answers depending on which brother is "playing" Borden that day is a playful way of suggesting the truth. The nature of Angier's final teleporting man trick makes you think about the nature of conciousness. Every night Angier effectively drowns himself and trusts that the clone that is created will be him. Not someone who has his appearance and memories, but actually him. I used to think about jumping into someone's mind and knowing everything they knew but forgetting everything you new. Would you still be you or would you be them? Would you even know anything had happened? I try not to think about it for too long as it makes my head hurt.

The Departed

I've already mentioned Infernal Affairs as one of the best non-2006 films I've seen this year and here is the US remake. Directed by Martin Scorsese and moved from Hong Kong to Boston, the story retells the tale of the race by moles on opposite sides of the law to uncover each other whilst adding some elements from the HK prequel IA2. Essentially the same story, with mob-man Sullivan (Matt Damon) infiltrating the police force, whilst the son of a crime associate, Costigan (Leo DiCaprio) joins the police force and is assigned to the undercover department run by Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wahlburg) and sent undercover into the gang of Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). The story plays out with scenes from IA ported over to the a US setting. Extra characters are introduced and a lot more of the backstory of the two moles is explored resulting in an extra hour of run time. It's a fine retelling with some twists not in the original film. Scorsese doesn't mess around with the violence which is a lot more brutal than the original. Perhaps it was needed to keep the western audiences interested. The violence is knocked up a notch compared to the original. Where as in IA we hear a shot and then see a slow-motion replay of the shooting, here we get, with no warning a shot that immediately blows the character's brains onto the wall behind him. At the same time though another character's death is shocking and almost un-expected in IA (the body lands on a car roof with no warning) - here we see the character being thrown off the roof and falling. Nicholson brings a more obvious mean, crazy streak to mob-boss Costello where as the original's Sam is much more calm - a businessman rather than a thug. There is one strange difference between the two versions. More spoilers I'm afraid.

In the original, The mob-mole in the police force decides to go straight and sees killing Sam as a way of accomplishing this - he chooses to be "good". In a way he is "rewarded" by getting away with it (until part 3). In The Departed the reason Sullivan kills Costello is because he finds out that Costello was an FBI informant. His character had no redemption - no decision to be good. However, he doesn't get away with it. The character of Dignam seems to have been created purely to swear a lot and then turn up at the end to kill Sullivan.

Children of men

One thing I love are films that don't pander to the lowest common denominator. Films that don't stop every few minutes to recap the plot for the audience. With Children of men we are thrown into Britain in the near future. Society has crumbled, the government has declared all immigrants illegal and they are being rounded up by the army and police. Society has largely broken down into lawlessness. The film opens with a BBC news report of the death of the world's youngest person - a South American 18 year old. We start to pick up that at some point humans suddenly became infertile. Why, what happened in the immediate aftermath and how society and other countries crumbled isn't explained - we are left to gather what clues we can from the scattered newspapers, government propaganda bulletins and news reports. If anyone has played Half Life 2, then the feeling is very similar to the opening third of that game where you arrive in City 17 not really knowing what is going on wit the population under the control of "civil protection". The plot centres around Theo Farren, a man who, like most people has a nothing life. He's on the verge of alcoholism and like most of the population he has lost hope. One day he is contacted by his ex wife, Julian who is the leader of the Fishes - a pseudo-terrorist group fighting for the rights of immigrants or "fujis". She asks him to use his family contacts to acquire transport papers to allow the young immigrant Kee to reach the Brighton coast. All Theo can acquire are papers allowing Kee to travel along with himself. So Theo, Kee, Julian and fishes Luke and Miriam set out from London. After the group are ambushed, they seek shelter at a fish safe house where Theo discovers Kee's secret: she's pregnant. As the fishes argue over how to use Kee's situation to their advantage Theo, Kee and Miriam escape and try to get Kee to Brighton where, supposedly, a boat from the Human Project - a collection of scientists trying to unravel the mystery of humans' infertility - awaits. Clive Owen is not noted for his his charisma. This worked to his advantage in things like the pulp fiction Sin City and the BMW shorts and so it does again here. Theo isn't a hero - he's just a guy who has lost just about everything in a world where the government distribute anti-depressants and suicide kits. He doesn't have to be the larger than life front man. The supporting actors are used sparingly and as a result shine in their time on screen. Director Alfonso Cuaron is on fine form and his style screams through. The colour palette is muted and the frequent violence is dealt with, like Miami vice in a very realistic matter-of-fact way. Early on we see a terrorist bomb explode in a cafe. As the dust clears we see the survivors staggering around missing limbs, we hear the falling of glass and car alarms blaring and we hear a high pitched ringing. The ringing continues through the title screen and follows us as Theo arrives at work, mimicking the real world effect of being close to a loud noise. The effect is repeated throughout the film. Characters who are fairly major die at the back or far sides of the screen with no almost no attention pad to them. The first scene also sets up the most impressive (and probably most overlooked) aspect of the camera direction: the long takes. Throughout the film there are 3 or 4 long scenes where the camera doesn't cut. We see the characters in the car talking, with the camera panning between all 5 occupants thanks to a specially designed camera rig, before - in the same shot - the car is attacked by a gang and the ensuing panic, escape and encounter with the police are shown without moving to a different camera. In the eightieth minute a group of characters exit from an archway and explore their surroundings before being ambushed and threatened with execution. A firefight erupts between the the ambushers and the army as Theo dives for cover where ever he can find it and chases after Kee. He runs down the street, through a bus after he is attacked from where he witnesses the army lay siege to a building with tanks before running into the building past the plethora of rpgs launched from inside, through the building searching for Kee. When he finally finds her on the 2nd floor, eight intense minutes have passed and the camera has not cut since they emerged from the archway. It's almost unbelievable - not only did they have to get the lines and acting performances right for 8 minutes, but a lot of stunts, pyrotechnics and movement had to happen. In addition, several characters from the start of the scene had to get to their positions for the end of the scene and be in the right place at the right time. Unbelievable stuff. The film had almost no hype because we got in the UK 4 months before the US, so the Hollywood hype machine hadn't started rolling. To back this up, the UK DVD is completely barebones. Boo.

We can guess Theo's fate as it adhears to the "if the hero's love interest dies, they will die after reaching their goal" that was defined in Gladiator. It would have been nice to show Theo finally finding some hope at the end of the film, but nevermind

Top non-2006 films of 2006

2007-01-01T01:18:00.000Z

As last year, I've prepared a list of my pick of the films from 2005 and before that I saw for the first time in 2006.

Whisper of the heart and The cat returns

You may think I'm cheating by bundling these two films together but they are truly companion pieces. Taking Mimi wo Sumaseba (Whisper of the heart) first, this film was a first for Ghibli in several ways. It was Ghibli's idea to bring to the fore a new young director who would one day take over from Miyazaki-san and Takahata-san who weren't getting any younger. It was decided that Yoshifumi Kondō - an animation director from earlier Ghibli films - would be the man to bring Aoi Hiiragi's manga to the big screen. As a new director, he brought with him a different feel to the film more akin to the films of Takahata than Miyazaki. From the opening rendition of Take me home, country roads there is a very different score than we have previously heard. The film is based around 14 year old schoolgirl Shizuku Tsukishima who is approaching her high school entrance exams. This probably means nothing to most British people, but it's the next step on the Japanese education conveyor of pressure. Good results lead to a good high school which in turn nearly guarantees a place at one of the prestigious universities which leads to many pointless jobs as サラリーマン (Salarymen). It reminds me of my school entrance exams - which would lead (in theory) to a place at Oxbridge and end with the most gifted, intelligent people in the land taking up the very un-useful positions of lawyers, bankers and accountants. However, Shizuku's mind isn't on her exams. A keen reader, Shizuku has started noticing that all the books she checks out of the library have been read by a Seiji Amasawa. She wonders who it is, but goes about her hobby of translating Western song lyrics into Japanese for her friends. One day on her way across Tokyo to deliver lunch to her father at the library, Shizuku notices a large cat riding the train with her. Excited that the cat gets off at her stop, she follows it into a small shop on a quiet back street. Here she meets the kind owner, Nishi-san, who shows her the treasures within. Of these, she is drawn to a small figurine of a cat called The Baron who's eyes appear to instil life into it. She eventually meets Seiji and after some brief, uncomfortable encounters they begin to get closer. Seiji's dream is to become a violin maker. Shizuku is amazed at his talent, but Seiji plays down his ability. He longs to travel to Italy where he can pursue his dream. He is accepted onto a two-month apprenticeship in Italy that will asses whether he has the skills to succeed in the long course. When he leaves, Shizuku is ashamed that she doesn't have any dreams and, inspired by Seiji, decides to write a book about The Baron. She starts to let her studies slide as she struggles to get the story written before Seiji returns so she can prove herself not only to him, but to herself too.

On paper it sounds simple - a teenage love story. The kind that were Disney to make it would be filled with comedy sidekicks and the like and actually put off everyone except teenage girls. Where this films succeeds is the idea of looking at this period of life from an adult's perspective. Miyazaki's screenplay allows director Kondō to impart onto screen the kind of subtle moments Ghibli are famous for. For example, the moment that Shizuku realises her love for Seiji - a point that would be hammered home in a Disney film, quite possibly with the aid of a song sung by talking animals - it is shown simply as Shizuku nestling her head against Seiji's back as he peddles her on his bike to watch the sunrise. Characters such as Nishi-san are fleshed out and even The Baron has a back story. Some have dismissed Whisper as a mere remake of Kiki's delivery service, but it's much more than that. It's about questioning whether what society dictates is the right path is right for you. It's about wanting to prove yourself, not just to you, but to someone else who has inspired you. Even if they are on the other side of the world. Whilst Miyazaki's films are frequently set in fantasy locations, Kondō sets Whisper firmly in the reality of mid-90s Tokyo. In fact, Shizuku lives in Tama Hills - the area being developed in Takahata's tanuki film, Pom poko. For the first time we experience a lively suburb in a Ghibli film. The animation pushes towards realism with the fantastic exception of sequences from Shizuku's story which were inspired and animated by Naohisa Inoue based on his fantasy land of Iblard. This style was revisited in the 2006 Ghibli museum short Hoshi o Katta Hi (The day I harvested a star). I strongly urge everyone to watch this film - it's beautiful and real: something that most people wouldn't believe an animated film could be. Sadly, the director Kondō passed away from a brain aneurysm three years after the film's release.

In 2005 I had the chance to go and see Neko no ongaeshi (The cat returns) at the cinema. I'm actually really glad I didn't cos I think I would have been very disappointed. Running at a mere 75 minutes, the story is a simple fantasy adventure - not the kind of thing you would expect from Studio Ghibli. However, once you have been primed by Whisper of the heart the film takes on much more significance. The story stars none other than The Baron from Nishi-san's shop so it is assumed that the story is one of Shizuku's. Thus it makes sense that it is short and simple as Shizuku is still starting out. No mention of any of the characters from Whisper beyond the cats is made to ensure that this film works as a stand alone entity for those who haven't seen the previous film. The story follows the adventures of Haru, a school girl who one day saves a cat from being run over. To her amazement, the cat rises to its hind legs and thanks her before running off. That night she is visited by a procession headed by the king of the cat kingdom. He tells her that the cat she saved was his son and the cats will thank her over the following days. As Haru is bombarded with boxes of mice and other gifts she is met by an envoy to the cat king. She is told that the cats will take her to their kingdom where she will marry the prince. Naturally Haru is a bit freaked out, but a strange soothing voice tells her to seek out the cat business centre. She is guided to a meeting with the large cat Muta (who made an appearance in Whisper) who leads her to the Baron in a hidden realm. Whilst they plan their strategy, the cats arrive and take Haru and Muta to the cat kingdom. As Haru spends more time in the kingdom she begins to resemble a cat more and more. The Baron eventually finds the cat kingdom and must plan an escape for not only Haru, but himself and Muta as well. The film was originally meant to be a 45-minute short, but ended up as a film as Miyazaki and producer Suzuki were impressed with director Hiroyuki Morita's dedication in storyboarding his ideas. As a standalone film, it's nowhere near the usual Ghibli standards - the animation isn't as smooth, the characters not as detailed and once Haru reaches the cat kingdom, the slow building pace accelerates to the film's climax. Knowing that that this is supposed to represent Shizuku's work is an extra excitement. We see how the Baron has been made into the hero and the large train-riding cat Moon has his character from Whisper transcribed here as Shizuku imagined him - a cat with more than one identity who is primarily concerned with himself. If I had one wish, it would have been that the story featured was based on the one we see Shizuku working on in Whisper that featured the land of Iblard.

Infernal affairs

I'd heard many good things about the Infernal Affairs trilogy. In fact, when I saw a trailer for US film The departed I immediately thought of the Hong Kong film. Eventually I decided to buy it and see what all the fuss was about before the Western remake hit the screens. Set in Hong Kong in first years of the 21st century Infernal affairs tells the story of the police force's struggle against the criminal gang headed up by big boss Sam. Both sides think they have the perfect weapon - a man on the inside. Sam sent several of his men to sign up to the police force and one of them, Ming, has rapidly risen through the ranks. In the meantime, undercover officer Yan has infiltrated several criminal gangs. Now he is a trusted lieutenant in Sam's. The only man who knows his true identity is Inspector Wong to help maintain his cover. Both men feed information back to their superiors keeping the situation at an uneasy stalemate. Things come to a head when the police attempt to swoop on a drug deal between Sam and some Thais. Yan conveys the progress of the deal to the waiting police force, whilst Ming is able to warn Sam that a raid is about to happen. The result is that both Wong and Sam realise they have a traitor in their midst. Sam turns to Yan and The police to Ming to try and uncover the moles. Both realise that the only way they can succeed is to unmask each other to their real bosses. The only problem is, after so long undercover do they still feel they want to keep up their double lives? This is a film that really reinforces the idea of the thriller. It's not full of violence like the HK-films of John Woo, it's all about ratcheting up the suspense until something has to give. (Spoilers follow - to read highlight the box)

Sam's idea to flush out the mole in his ranks leads to the death of Inspector Wong. The moment of his death is a complete shock and as Yan turns around to see the body, we can see him suddenly realise that he is now completely alone - noone else knows he is really a police officer and Wong's computer files are encrypted, much to Ming's annoyance.

At the same time, Ming is settling down with his girlfriend and begins to question his loyalty to Sam. The film is a brisk 101 minutes and is paced perfectly. By the end of the film both characters have decided on their futures, but they are dependent on each other - Yan needs his identity back and Ming needs to know that his status remains hidden. It comes to a head with a tense meeting on top of a building which leads to the film's big ending. The ending is a complete surprise and in fact the film required an alternative ending to be filmed to allow it to be shown in mainline China as the authorities were uncomfortable with the implications.

Oldboy

Moving east to one of the first K-films I've seen. I remember several of my friends getting excited by this film's DVD release back in 2005, but it wasn't until Film4 showed it that I got to see it. It forms the second part of Chan-wook Park's revenge trilogy. The film starts with Dae-su Oh drunk in a police station. His friend arrives to bail him out and take him home to his wife and young daughter. As he calls them to let them know Dae-su is coming home, he leaves the phone box to discover that Dae-su has simply vanished. Dae-su comes around in a small locked hotel room. He is imprisoned in this room for 15 years without seeing another human except on the TV in the room, whenever he becomes violent or suicidal he is gassed. Whilst he is imprisoned he learns that his wife has been murdered and his daughter sent to live with foster parents. Dae-su trains himself by shadow boxing and punching his prison's walls. One day, he is suddenly released with no explanation. Clothed, given a mobile phone and money he stumbles into a sushi bar and passes out in front of the young chef Mido who takes him in. He soon discovers that his kidnapper still has plans for him and he is told that by a man called Woo-jin that unless he can find the reason for his imprisonment in 5 days Mido will be killed. Despite their large age-difference they feel an attraction and Mido agrees to help Dae-su in gaining his revenge. Dae-su eventually tracks down the prison where he was being held and "extracts" information about his captor. His escape from the prison involves the infamous "corridor fight scene" - a long unbroken one-take fight scene in the prison's hallway as Dae-su is attacked by the prison guards. He and Mido follow more clues, becoming even closer and eventually sleeping together. Finally Dae-su discovers the truth behind why Woo-jin imprisoned him. He confronts Woo-jin but Woo-jin is prepared and turns the tables not only on Dae-su, but turns around the whole plot of the film. I won't spoil the ending, but I do encourage you to watch this film as an excellent example of how to script, plan and shoot a film.

Nana

Moving even further east we reach Japan and the phenomenon that has swept the country in the last few years - Nana. It's the story of two girls called Nana who meet on a train as they move to Tokyo. Nana Osaki is moving to try and make it with her band, The Black Stones and Nana Komatsu is moving to be with her boyfriend who is at college in Tokyo. They are completely opposite in character; Osaki is strong willed and determined to prove herself whilst Komatsu is heavily dependent on others. Eventually they decide to live together. The film is split into two parts - Komatsu learning to be more assertive and take control of her life after she discovers her boyfriend is cheating on her. The second half focuses on Osaki's journey to face her past and her ex-boyfriend Ren who left their old band to join popular group Trapnest. The film is based on the original manga and as with many films based on long-running series, the film doesn't have a definite ending, which will lead on to plenty of sequels. Whilst the Nana phenomenon is fairly unknown outside of the East, it is constantly being touted as the next big thing that will hit the West. The two Nana's are played by Mika Nakashima - a popular Jpop artist - and Aoi Miyazaki - popular Japanese actress. There are certain films that stick with you for some reason. It's clear they're not the best film in the world, but it stays in your head. This is one of those films. I saw it about a KLM flight to Osaka on a 5" LCD panel with crap headphones. I didn't think much of it at the time, but by the time I made my return flight a few weeks later I felt the urge to watch it again. It's sort of like having the last song you heard in the morning stick in your head. The pacing of the film is pretty slow and the split between the two stories is extremely jarring, but the main song from the film (here) is extremely catchy and the OST has a pleasing mournful tone that completely fits with the film. Mika Nakashima is well known as a Jpop singer, but Nana's band is a Jrock band. Their main song is penned by L'arc en Ciel frontman Hyde and has both an edge and some nice guitar work. Strangely, the main song by the Jrock band Trapnest (here) is unbelievably pop-based. I know that for a lot of Jrock banks their bark is worse than their bite (it's all about visuals), but would even a visual-kei band play something like this?
The sequel to the film was widely anticipated, but much of the original cast (including Aoi Miyazaki) haven't returned. The theme song this time sounds a lot more pop rather than rock (judge for yourself here). Sadly, I smell a straight-to-DVD release.

Durham: a reprise

2006-12-17T01:26:00.000Z

So a couple of weeks ago now I made the long journey (never take a train on Sundays) back up to Durham. Walking through town and getting back to House 3 it was as if I'd never left. Of course, Matt was out so I had to wander around in the rain for a bit but eventually I found him and got the spare key. I wandered into the bar and everything was the same - same bar staff, same students (strangely, there were hardly any 1st years around) so I sat with a couple of 4th years and caught up on what had been happening.

Over the next week I finished off my thesis, printed and bound it (a lot more fidley than it sounds. Nothing is more frustrating than having to reprint 25 pages cos there's a dash missing in the header), had a meeting with a prospective employer, went out to lunch with the girls from my group and of course, the weeks big event: Blondie's viva. He passed and is now Dr Matt Cartwright subject to completing his corrections. This of course meant that a large night out with the chemists was in the offing leading us from the New Inn to the union, Varsity, Jimmy Alan's and finally Klute.

By Friday the effect of living amongst a new generation of freshers and their dirty germs had hit me and my head felt like it was going to implode. That night was the group Christmas meal and I had managed to get myself invited.

We went across to the New Inn at 5 to start the drinking before heading to Bella Italia. Kara ended up sitting opposite Martin who is infamous for ordering lots of wine, only having a glass himself and dishing out the rest to those around him. About 10 minutes in and she was hammered. As it was an evening meal, only 4 of us made it to the pub afterwards and pretty soon we were down to me, Kara and the 4th year Laura who stayed the course until chucking out time. After two months of not drinking, two nights in a row was surprisingly doable. On the way home I chatted to Laura about the group and she told me that the group had been pretty dull until they heard I was coming back at which point they started discussing going out for lunch and to the pub. Maybe I did leave a mark and they didn't just think I was dickhead alcoholic.

Over the weekend I just chilled out with the chemists around Durham and heard about Alan's plan to get a Bengal leopard cat - even when he's settled down, he just can't be normal. Finally on Monday I submitted my thesis and headed home. I didn't have a camera on me, so the only evidence of my thesis is this really bad camera phone shot (I really need a new phone - possibly one of those N73s with 3MP Carl Zeiss lens...).

Most upsettingly I had to give back my laptop. Now this has been pissing me off for a while now. It was taking longer and longer to boot up, it no longer went into standby when you shut the lid, it occasionally couldn't find my wifi network even right next to the aerial and had the occasional issue with Endnote, but it was mine: it even made the trip to Japan with me in May meaning it's more well-travelled than half the group.

Being back in Durham was like a second nature and with all the chemists it felt like nothing had changed. However, Trevs seemed a little bit deserted. I realise that it's the people that make it special. Last year was bad enough with a load of people I didn't know, but now I'm pretty much left knowing only postgrads and 4th years amongst some token 3rd years from my bar days. Next year it could well just be the physicists that I know. It'll be the same with chemists - almost all of my friends are now 3rd years and will leave in September. Time to move on. Ironically, I could spend the next few years in the same area, but more on that later.

Also, being at Trevs but living out of a bag was very weird. For the last three years I've lived full time at Trevs, but I guess my permanent address was still in Bromsgrove along with a load of my stuff. Next year I'm going to have to face the complete move to a new permanent address. Scary.

Pandora's Box

2006-12-16T01:40:00.000Z

After extolling the virtues of the personalised internet radio station Pandora, I've discovered the next step: Pandora's Box. The main failing for me of Pandora is that you need to keep a separate window or tab open to keep it going and it's al too easy to accidentally close it or find it getting in the way. Pandora's box simply opens a dedicated window that can be minimised to and controlled from the system tray. It works a treat and even better: it's free!

Get it here

Advertisments

2006-12-16T00:54:00.000Z

Beyond the sight of Christmas trees starting to spring up in October, there is one easy way to feel the approach of the festive season: adverts. Thankfully, for the last 7 years I've been away during this silly season and have hardly watched any television at all, but this year I've seen it all. Last summer I set about the job of copying all our old VCR tapes to DVD and the most enjoyable part of this was seeing all the old adverts from the 80s. They really knew how to make them back then - no celebrities, bad hairstyles and simple premises. I have to say that my family are an advertiser's worst nightmare - my father doesn't understand any of the ads, my mother remembers them, but can't remember what brand they're for and I just mercilessly pick holes in them. Take the modern advert for the Vauxhaul Astra with all the cars flying all over the place - did anyone actually stop and think "this looks absolutely ridiculous!"? There's a bit in it where a chain of CGI Astras perform various choreographed manoeuvre's. Unfortunately it looks about as realistic as a Japanese Elvis. Saab on the, other hand, actually did this in real-life back in the 80s as shown below:

It's almost as if advertisers can't be bothered any more and just give their CGI people a free reign. But of course when it comes to Christmas we get the big promotional adverts. First up is the unfortunate case of Sony's PSP adverts. Sony clearly booked a lot of slots in the belief that they'd be pushing the new PS3 for all it's worth. The PS3 won't be with us for at least 3 months so Sony have had to push their PSP: after all it's being slaughtered by the Nintendo DS both here and abroad. Unfortunately they have come up with the most annoying characters known to man (the dustballs). If you haven't yet seen them (Sony have booked a LOT of slots) then play the video below.

Of course the one thing that never fails to appear ad-infinitum around this time of year are those tossing fragrance adverts - you know the ones: get various celebrities to ponce around and deliver a catchphrase that has nothing to do with the scent at all. To be fair, it must be a challenge to sell something that is entirely based on smell via a medium that's solely interpreted by the visual and aural senses, but why do they keep showing the same ads year on year? That "I see a man; it's chance. Take it!" gets me so angry and the one with the guy running across the bollards in time with the waves has me secretly hoping he falls and gets a large bit of concrete trying to insert itself into his crotch. And to finish, they're still wheeling out that Baz Luhrman/Nicole Kidman Chanel one that cost $45m to make. Apparently in the cinema it still carries credits at the end. What always amazes me is people fall for it. Of course, if people knew that behind the fancy names like Brut, Fabergé and the like were actually companies such as Proctor and Gamble or Unilever and that the scents were designed in massive chemical factories on the New Jersey turnpike they may not be so will to splash out £50 upwards on 50 ml of organic solution.

It's not 100% bad though. I'll finish on a positive (before all those sofa/kitchen sale adverts start next week) with two adverts that I actually like. The first is another Vauxhal advert. It's the ones for the Astra/Corsa with the muppet-like characters that simply say "C'Mon!" At first it bugges the crap out of me, but I and severa others have grown to love them - especially the really gruff one who mutters things under his breath before shouting the obligatory line. Sean Paul actually suits the soundtrack (I never thought I'd say that) so have a glance below.

Secondly is the 2006 Debenhams Christmas advert. The whole theme is a modern take of Father Christmas - instead of being a fat man with a long white beard in the traditional red suit, he's portraid as a young, slim man with a grey goatee and sharp red suit who body pops his way through his "grotto" (read: stylish house) before setting out on Cristmas Eve not on a reindeer pulled sleigh, but a flying snowmobile. It's not on YouTube yet, but if for some reason you haven't seen it you can do so here and the music (a modern version of Santa Baby) can be downloaded from the same page. In a world of dull, uninspired, cynical adverts, it's nice to know at least some companies are coming up with innovative adverts. Oh, and if you're ever left wondering what the music used in adverts was, try this site.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

2006-12-06T22:36:00.000Z

My last haircut was at the start of August. When it's just been cut it's too short and when it gets longer it gaves wavy and just looks like a mess. In fact when I got back to Durham I was told by at least 3 people how bad it looked.

From this...

to this...

There's always one day when I catch a glance in the mirror and actually think my hair looks good short and then the next day it's back to being bad. The same thing happens when it gets slightly longer.

Bigs cops. Small town. Moderate violence.

2006-12-02T00:23:00.000Z

I'm not one to advertise upcoming films on here, but I have to mention Hot Fuzz. Brought to us by the team behind Shaun of the Dead, this promises to send up buddy cop films in the same way Shaun... sent up the Zombie genre. The full trailer has just been released and is available to view here. Go now ModemMan!

London Baby!

2006-11-22T18:29:00.000Z

It's official: being at home sucks. Over the PhD years I've become adept at being self sufficient. Cooking, shopping, cleaning, managing my time. Now I've been home for 6 weeks and I don't know where the time is going - it's too easy to just sit back and let my parents go about their business. Finally last week I met up with some friends: firstly some chemists who were attending an RSC event at Birmingham and then I went down to London to see Matt and Mel.

After getting over the ridiculously low train fare (£9.90 for a return) I quickly remembered how expensive the tube is. I met up with Matt at Waterloo and we wandered along the south bank taking in the sights (including someone trying to rob one of the living statues). We were supposed to go to an anime festival, but we arrived to find it had closed. A day early. Sounds like it hadn't been so successful which is a shame.

Despite having the world's cuisine available to us we settled on Wetherspoon's beer and burger offer for lunch. There were a lot of people waiting around in Leicester Square when we went in and as we ate vans turned up and began constructing barriers. It dawned on us that it was the Bond première that night. By the time we left, most of the square had been cordoned off. We wandered of through Soho and China town before finding a quiet, cheap pub just off Picadilly Circus. Finally we went to Covent Garden to meet Mel where we were flyered with coupons offering us free drinks at a new bar. It looked pretty dodgy from the outside, but once we went in it turned out to be an American diner theme bar. And the place was full of people claiming their free drinks and then leaving. Of course we did the same - who says you don't get anything for free.

After meeting Mel we ate at Wagamama and went back to their house in Wimbledon.

The next day was spent exploring Wimbledon although for some reason we didn't go to the tennis club. Strange.

Thursday brought about a trip to the Tate Modern. After crossing the infamous Millennium Bridge (very slippery) we entered and were greeted by the giant slides of "Test site". They can say what they want about art, but this exhibit is essentially a giant helter skelter. After the sheer naffness of the exhibition I saw at the Baltic Gallery in Newcastle last year I wasn't expecting anything special. Thankfully most of the displays were pretty good (barring some bizarre audio/visual affairs). We trogged up to the 7th floor cafe (by foot - not a good idea) and sat enjoying the view across to St Paul's on the north bank.

We went downstairs to met Mozza who's just got back from two months in Australia. We found a pub in the city and settled down into the comfy leather chairs. Within the hour the place was rammed with lawyers, bankers and other assorted yuppies.

The next day, we'd agreed to meet up with Mozza at Borough Market. However, 6 or 7 pints after 6 weeks of sobriety lead to the inevitable late-start. My friend Jim lives in Borough, but I'd never been to the market. It's absolutely amazing. Wandering round there was so much variety of food on offer - from exotic cheeses, Guinness sausages, venison burgers through to teas from around the world and even shark heads.

Finally it was time to head home and once again I made the near-fatal mistake of deciding to walk up the stairs in Marylebone. The Bakerloo line is one of the deeper ones and half way up I lost feeling in my legs.

Updates

2006-10-26T01:29:00.000+01:00

Sony...Since my rant, the battery recall has escalated. In addition Sony have been forced to cut the launch price of the PS3 in Japan. This has meant Sony's predicted profits have been cut by 53%! Income is down an amazing 94%! This is before any other manufacturers claim compensation. In addition their BluRay player has been further delayed until December, and yesterday they successfully managed to close down one of the most popular importing companies down. Despite the company in question being based in Hong Kong (so technically they aren't importing - simply selling products to people abroad) it was ruled that they were breaking the law. In revenge, they have published a list of Sony executives who imported PSPs from them last year before their UK launch. Sony's statement after the result of the case included the phrase "Ultimately, we're trying to protect consumers from being sold hardware that does not conform to strict EU or UK consumer safety standards, due to voltage supply differences et cetera". Odd because PSPs carry CE approved power supplies from Sony that can be used all over the world. Of course, the way their laptop batteries have been going maybe there are some safety issues.

Ghibli...Reviews of their August film Gedo Senki (Tales of Earthsea) haven't been positive at all. Hasn't put me off wanting to see it though. Could be a while though as it can't be released in the US (who will produce the English dub) until 2009. In related news, Film4 has been showing further Ghibli films including the fantastic, magical Whisper of the Heart complete with its original Japanese dub.

Home...It's been over three weeks now. I'm worryingly used to it by now - it's worrying because I love being self sufficient - the cooking, shopping and cleaning but once you've spent a few weeks living with your parents again you get used to be lazy again. Thesis-wise I'm nearly done - I'm waiting on my supervisor getting back to me on the two chapters I sent him. My pet project is helping my parents tidy the house. It's absolutely unbelievable - after getting so much shit for having an untidy room when I was younger, it's amazing to look at the house. There are piles of papers everywhere, business cards from the 80s, years worth of Tesco points statements and catalogues. They are complete hoarders (getting them to buy a new kettle after finding the current one had lost most of its inside coating and sported a green filament was very hard) but I'll beat it out of them.

Comfort TV

2006-10-09T01:37:00.000+01:00

It's been over a week now and so far I've just about managed to get my stuff sorted out. I've even managed to do a bit of work, but that starts properly tomorrow. In my prior post I mentioned the lack of decent TV. In fact, since I started my PhD I've actively avoided watching new programs - the OC, Lost, One Tree Hill, Invasion - I've managed to avoid getting hooked. I've stuck to Scrubs, Family Guy and 24; and I download those. What I have realised is that there is some stuff that I watch over and over. Thanks to C4, E4 and abc1 I've found myself watching a heavy dose of Scrubs and Friends. They are waht I class as comfort TV - things I've seen so many times before, but feel safe watching again.

E4 show 2 Friends episodes a day and get through a series every 12 days (that means they show the whole thing about 2 and a half times a year). The jokes are memorable and its still funny even after all these years. At the moment we've just got to the start of season 3 which is probably the best. To my delight it was favourite episode; "The one where no one's ready" which is very cunningly a real-time episode based around Ross' attempts to get his friends ready to attend a dinner function at the museum with the whole episode (apart from the epilogue) set in Monica's apartment. It's also the episode most quoted by my friends and I at university - chair stealers are greeted with "In the words of A. A. Milne, get out of my chair dilhole!" or "Right, give me your underwear" whilst the stealer normally replied with "you went to Spain" and cries of "drink the fat" were not uncommon. Friends is the ultimate feel-good program, the ups and down's of the characters lives are mainly played for laughs. Even though, there are some major story developments, they are all pretty cheesey with the exception of the first Ross and Rachel breakup in season 3's "The one the morning after" where the comedy is very much downplayed in the second half of the episode. These two episodes explain why season 3 is probably my favourite.

Scrubs has gained in popularity over the last few years. I started watching from the start and feel quite proud of it. The humour is very different from Friends and the best episodes are often very bittersweet. From the very first episode the young doctors are forced to deal with death, but it's the forth episode, my old lady that really shows how uplifting the episodes can be - at the start the 3 new doctors are each introduced their new patient as the narration informs us that on average 1 in 3 patients dies. There's an awful moment about 2/3 of the way through the show where you realise all the patients will die, but somehow the fact that all the doctors take something from the day fills you with hope. Inspirational use of music (as frequently mentioned before) often elevates episodes to classic standard; my philosophy features the cast performing a Colin Hay song, my sex buddy finishes with Del Amitri's "Tell her this" as JD struggles to open up to Elliot. my screw up is frequently referenced as the best Scrubs episode due to the Sixth Sense-esque plot and recent episodes such as my cabbage and my lunch in which the previously infalable Dr Cox has his confidence shaken.

Friends has now finished so we are left with 10 seasons and perpetual rumours of one-off specials and Scrubs enters its 6th and possibly last season in January (Zach Braff has stated he wants to concentrate on films). Infinitely rewatchable, comforting and it's always far too easy to watch them again thanks to their heavy rotation of the Freeview channels than it is to do work on my thesis, get back to learning Japanese, look for jobs or do any of the things that seem like hard work.

One last time

2006-10-03T23:42:00.000+01:00

Throughout the last year I've finally started going on nights out with chemists. The best nights have always stemmed from very innocuous beginnings such as chemSoc lectures or poster presentations. These inevitably lead to the realisation that it's 10pm, we've been drinking for 5 hours and not yet eaten anything. These always go on to be fantastic nights. On Thursday, Blondie and I organised another night out to celebrate the end of our time in Durham. Comprising our friends from Trevs who were still around and as many of the chemists as we could muster. Starting out in the New Inn we moved on through The Court Inn, perenial favourite the Swan and 3 before the survivors moved onto Chase and finally Walkabout.

The New Inn and the Swan and 3 have been favourites since our undergrad days whilst Chase has become our favourite post-11pm haunt over the year. My "Vote for Pedro" tshirt even attracted some attention. This is where things went to the dark side with the cheap double vodka and fake Red Bulls. How many of these we actually got through I don't think anyone knows. Thankfully, we didn't get onto the cocktails or Jagermeister like normal. What was very sad is how Blondie's group and other chemists made a big deal about him leaving including cakes and cards, where as my group couldn't have cared less that I was leaving. I've always felt on the fringe this past year (and before) - I sway wildly between feeling accepted and as an outsider and I've finished mostly on the fence between the 2.

The next day the vokda-fake Red Bulls had their revenge as I woke up a 6.30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Eventually I got up at 7.30 and wondered downstairs to be greeted by alan dancing around in his pants. I've seen it before, but this is likely to be the last time we are all so carefree.

It's been a very trying year - possibly the hardest year I've had to deal with - but it's nights out like these that have probably kept me sane in the face of a great deal of stress.

Packing up and moving home

2006-10-01T16:37:00.000+01:00

It's finally over. After seven years my time at Trevs has officially ended. I woke up in my room on Wesnesday, as it has been for the last 15 months. Everything seemed normal. By the end of that day I had started packing away my stuff - even though I've lived in the house's smallest room I've still got 3 years worth of accumulated crap. The big things like books, folders and DVDs packed away easily, but it was the small things that really made the room my own. Whether it be the notes left on my door, my "junior server of the year" tankard or even things like my fast fret jar that's now a pen holder, these were the things that I noticed every day and made it my room. Indeed, when I woke up on Thursday it was only my pictures and posters on the walls that still made it my room. As I packed these away, the room reverted back to being a college room. The subtle difference in how sounds reverberated was a reminder of its emptyness.

Thursday evening brought about our leaving do. An assortment of chemists and Trevs students gathered at the New Inn at 5.30 to celebrate the passing of myself and Blondie which you can read more about in the last post or next post - I'm not really sure what's happening.

Unfortunately, all the cheap vodka-red bulls took their toll as I woke up at 6.30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Blondie and I walked down to the department for the last time. I finished off cleaning out my desk and lab space and handed back my lab keys (although the £75 deposit refund looks like it will be mostly swallowed by the chrge for continuation). Eventually Matt had handed in his thesis and I had handed in my thesis title.

We said goodbye to Matt and dropped off our House 3 keys before getting a taxi to the station for our respective trains south. Blondie and I met on our first day in Durham and now 6 years, 362 days later here we were on our last day in Durham getting trains 20 minutes apart. Our friend Emma had accompanied us so we all said our goodbyes and caught our trains. It was nice to be seen off as it meant we didn't just annonymously leave Durham by ourselves.

I've been at home for a couple of days now and it's exactly like I thought it would be - I feel like I'm going back to Durham soon and I can't get used to the fact that I don't have to do anymore practical work for my PhD. Hopefully I get most of it written in the next few weeks and begin the fine tuning for the week after for a submission in late October. I decorated my bedroom just before my PhD so it really doesn't feel like my room at all anymore. In many ways "my room" is gone for ever.

I'm already bored and I hate television. I'd be quite happy to never watch it again. Desite Freeview having nearly 40 channels, there's either nothing on or they schedule 3 decent films at the same time. In my first 12 hours here I saw a load of adverts for the first time and now I'm fed up to the back teeth with them. The fact that my parents seem happy to witter away the nights watching ITV3 is almost unbearable. The good thing is it's made me even more anxious to get finished up and find a job so I can move out. I finally feel like I can be self sufficient, but I'm probably just kidding myself.

My problem with...Sony

2006-09-19T00:16:00.000+01:00

EDIT - In honour of having this rant made a Blog of the Day I've gone through and fixed some mistakes and added more links. Enjoy!

Well, it seems like the rants have been flowing over the past few weeks. Here's one I've been thinking about for ages. Back in the day, Sony used to be a company that charged a premium for it's products, but they were good quality and if you wanted the best (without going upto super expensive brands) Sony was what you'd go for. In addition, Sony had a hand in bringing a lot of everyday technologies to market. Sony in fact became a world-wide brand on the back of transister radios that were shipped to the US and Europe in the 50s. Sony had a hand in the invention of the CD, 3.5" floppy disc and of course, the walkman.

Of course, success tends to breed arrogance and even back in the 80s this was seen in the form of the betamax vs vhs battle. Sony developed the technically superior betamax system but was so keen to keep the technology to itself (which lead to higher prices) that the public took vhs as the better option. As JVC allowed the vhs technology to be licenced, most electronics companies produced vhs machines rather than expensive betamax systems. The market flooded with cheaper vhs players and tapes. Sony had tried to push a proprietry format onto the consumer and failed. This legacy may soon be repeated, but more on that later.

In the 90s, Sony released 2 formats which should now be dominant in the world. The first was the minidisc. Released in 1992 as a digital upgrade to the cassette. It featured all the benefits of CDs (no quality loss, instant track skips and content information can be stored) with the flexibility of recorable tapes. In fact, once you had recorded them, you could split tracks, reorganise the running order and combine tracks. Unfortunately, Sony once again decided to try and keep the market for itself, so for the first few years the only recorders you could buy were Sony ones. And, holding a monopoly lead to high prices. As minidiscs started to wane, Sony finally lowered it's licencing fees and recorders from other companies began to appear and drive down prices. Unfortunately, pre recorded MDs died pretty soon after - CD players had become ubiquitous and most of the time a CD of an album and a blank MD cost less than the MD album and could be played in more places. It didn't help that it was only Sony Music artists that had their albums released on MD. Ironically, it was at this point that the original idea for MD took off. Amateur bands started embracing MD as a recording medium and blank disc sales took off. In Japan, MDs are only now being overhauled by MP3 players so on a trip around Akihabara in May it was quite surprising to see MD recorders still comanding prices of over £100 whilst more advanced devices fail to reach even £50 on eBay in the UK.

The second format is Super Audio CD. Introduced in 1999, it had the potential to replace CDs, offering superior sound quality compared to CDs and its equally unsuccessful rival, DVD-Audio. Releases can be made a hybrid discs that feature the SACD data held on a layer below a regular CD layer, allowing playback of the standard CD version in a CD player, but also allows the high quality mix to be played back on SACD players. This would seem to be the ideal situation as it would allow you to build your SACD collection wihout sacrificing the ability to play the albums on standard CD players. Unfortunately, Sony once again seem to be imposing a licence fee that puts off most labels from releasing in this format. Even though there are over 4000 SACD titles out there, the publics awareness of this format is practically non-existant.

Further attempts to push proprietry formats (that would essential "lock" people into buying further Sony products) included mp3 players that didn't actually play mp3s (only the Sony ATRAC format), memory cards that only worked in Sony products (whilst SD and CF cards have a much larger compatibility) lead many people to swear off buying Sony cameras and UMDs - films that could only be played on PSPs with no extras for 2-3 times the cost of a DVD.

In recent years, the build quality of Sony products has steadily decreased despite their price premium remaining intact. The build quality of most brands has decreased (after all, if stuff breaks sooner, we'll need to replace it more often) but Sony have taken it to a new level. From televisions sold as "future-proof" that can't even pick up digital teletext or all the freeview channels and have been abandoned by Sony to Playstations with laser diodes that stop functioning after a year. Sony's first foray into LCD televisions provided absolutely no future-proofing as the entire line weren't HD ready - a decsion that left many peoples £1300 tvs obsolete before they'd even got them home. The reason? Film studios (including Sony's) demanding that HD content be distributed via a certain connector that Sony didn't see fit to include.

It's widely rumoured that the only part of Sony that makes money anymore is the Playstation. After being betrayed by Nintendo over a planned CD addon for the SNES, Sony continued developing the machine and released the Playstation against the overpriced and underspecced Sega Saturn and the N64 with it's overpriced games. The playstation 2 promised revolutionary performance due to its "emotion engine", but in actual fact, the machine was less powerful than all three of its competitors (Sega's Dreamcast, Nintendo's Gamecube and Microsoft's xBox). However, Sony had the money to ensure that the most popular games remained exclusive to its console. Sony have been making strong claims about the new PS3 console. Unfortunately, many claims have amounted to nothing. Initially the PS3 and xBox360 were to be released within a few months of each other and be roughly equivalent in power. Microsoft pressed ahead with a worldwide launch last Christmas opting to stick with the DVD format whilst Sony, convinced the PS3 would sell no matter what, took the opportunity to include their new BluRay format in PS3. This seems to have backfired big time for Sony. Rumours (as linked to) of the components being too big to fit into the case, overheating and reports that most of the development team had been fired kept cropping up. Firstly the release was pushed back 6 months as the specifications for the new format were yet to be finished, the specs of the console were lowered due to stability and yield problems (ie if you make 100 chips, and only 20 of them work at the desired speed, do you press ahead and loose money on the chips that don't work or do you lower the specs so that maybe 40 of the chips work?). At the recent E3 exhibition, Sony proceeded to shock even their hardcore fans by announcing a $599/£425 pricetag for the PS3 and giving one of the most embarrasing press conferences in history. Have a look at this video.

Pretty funny stuff ("new features such as real-time weapon change", "based on famous battles that actually took place in ancient Japan - so here's this giant enemy crab")

Further bad news came with the release of the first BluRay player - the picture quality wasn't up to the standard of it's rival format, HD-DVD. And HD-DVD was half the price of BluRay. Suddenly the decision to include BluRay in PS3 was looking like a massive gamble that could lead to the failure of both the BluRay and Playstation brands. If BluRay fails to win the HD war then Sony has needlessly held up the release of the console by over a year and introduced a massive cost that even they admit will take it out of the price of most households. Should the PS3 fail to make an impact, then Sony's Trojan Horse tactics of getting BluRay into the homes of the masses will have failed. Finally, problems building the diode for the drives has meant that the worldwide availability of PS3 this Christmas will be limited to 100,000 in Japan (the 2 year old Nintendo DS sells this number every week) and 400,000 in the US with Europe missing out until 2007. This also means there will be a shortage of BluRay players too.

The major problem is simply that Sony, as a company, is far too big. It has its finger in too many pies: electronics, film studios, music labels and gaming and it's this that has lead to Sony's many recent problems. When designing the BluRay format, rather than developing a system that the consumer would want, Sony's movie studios got involved and started designing the system around the restrictive needs of the studio. Without the pressure to include BluRay, the PS3 could have launched last year and at a much more competitive price. Sony music's desire to control how people can listen to music they've bought has caused Sony to loose it's hold on the market that the Walkman enjoyed to Apple and countless others. Then stupid ideas such as the root-kit fiasco and creating ficticious film critics to give good reviews to Sony studio films and most recently the unfortunate discovery that laptops fitted with Sony batteries could burst into flames at any moment don't do the overall brand any favours at all. The only real way out is to properly split up the company and let the electronics company get on with designing products that the consumer wants, the gaming division to make use of the best technology around at the time and not pin their hopes to a white elephant and the music label to loose customers by itself without draging down the rest of the company.

Europe gets screwed over again

2006-09-15T18:17:00.000+01:00

In the world of the entertainment business, Europe is the poor cousin of the US and East Asia. TVs are much more advanced and cheaper elsewhere. Earlier this month, Sony effectively gave Europe a kick in the teeth by delaying the new Playstation until March 2007 after promising a worldwide launch in November. Despite the population of the EU being greater than that of the US and Japan put together (462m vs 300m + 128m) - and that's without non EU countries - our traditions of different taxes and even more annoyingly, different languages, ensures we get the thin end of the wedge everytime.
Today it was Nintendo's turn to bend us over. The new Wii console's launch has been anonunced around the world over the last few days. On Tuesday, it was launched in Japan with a price of ¥25000 (£113). Yesterday, it was America's turn - $250 (£132) but this included the Wii sports game that the Japanese wouldn't get. Today it was Nintendo of Europe's turn. Most people were confident we'd see a price between £130 and £150. Unfortunately, Nintendo decided to go with €250 (£168) and £180 for the UK Now firstly, why is our version so much more expensive than the US - it's £35 more for the same package! Secondly, Why do we Brits have the privalage of paying £12 more than the Irish, French and other European countries? For the last year, Nintendo have been trumpeting the fact that the Wii was going to be the machine that got "non-gamers" into gaming; a machine that anyone, young or old, could pick up and play with straight away. The unique controller was at the heart of this as was the fact that it wasn't as powerful as the new Microsoft and Sony machines, therefore it could be a lot cheaper. Now we have got to the point where it's only £20 cheaper than the xBox360 and once you've factored in another Wiimote (£40) - after all, this is supposed to be enjoyed by the whole family - there's very little to choose between the costs. Nintendo dropped the price of the Gamecube just before it's UK launch, but a repeat of that will be seen as Nintendo admitting they got it wrong.

After Nintendo's arrogance over it's #1 position in the 90s it's now only #3. Sony's supply problems gave them a big chance to gain ground , but it seems (especially in Europe) they've missed something of an open goal. Personally i intend to stick to my guns on this one and import a machine the the US - after our success with importing our DS Lites from Australia (which would have been an easy import from Japan if it hadn't been for stock shortages) it seems like the only way to go as even if it get's hit by customs it'd still be £20 cheaper than our native model. And available 3 weeks earlier.

The "what we did on my birthday" post

2006-09-12T02:07:00.000+01:00

The main even for my birthday was something we'd had planned to do since I got back from japan and typed '"karaoke box" + Newcastle' into Google. Eight of us gathered at Newcastle station for the short walk to the so-called Korean BBQ restaurant that boasted free karaoke rooms. After arriving at the street we found no such place - odd. After 5 minutes of wandering around aimlessly, we rang them and they told us to wait by Richer Sounds and someone would "come and get us". Our resident drama queen, Matt, immediately started phrophesising doom but, true to their word we were met and walked back to the restaurant - now no longer a Korean place (even though all the review cam out in May), but instead サガワ (Sagawa), an upmarket Japanese resturant. Suddenly we felt less stupid for failing to find a restaurant on a 20m long road.

We were led up to our private room where our table (for some reason shped like a boat) was waiting. Whilst the rest of the party noticed the floor height chairs and lack of leg room, my attention was drawn to the 42" RPTV in the corner of the room, already knocking out cheesy renditions of classic songs. The next thing we noticed was the lcd screen attached to the karaoke machine was displaying a screen saver featuring various pictures of bikini idols. If you don't know what they are, have a search of Google and become enlightened.

The drinks menu purported the availability of 2 litre cans of Asahi - surely a printing error, but no - we eventually got through 6 of these beasts (in addition to sake). We decided to get a selection of sushi for everyone to try which proved successful although Brett claimed he couls still taste the fish eggs the following day. The mains arrived and were duly finished with much slurping of ramen. Attention was now turned to the entertainment equipment in the corner. After being shown how to not put the player into Cantonese, we got started. Rather than being a hard drive-based machine, this was a DVD player with (I presume) CD+G support. There were songs in Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and English so the selection of songs we knew was a bit limited. The usual positive feedback loop of upping the microphone volume followed by the music volume followed. Catherine started us off and immediately put us to shame with a worryingly in-tune version of My way. As more beer was consumed, people became much more willing to "sing" and this kept going for another 2 hours. By the end, I suddenly realised that you could hear our room from the other end of the restuarant and in the toilets...

The classics kept coming, and soon the duets and group efforts began.

Eventually, Matt and Hugh had to be dragged awayand the not insubstantial £250 was settled (~ £80 was beer). Everyone agreed it had been a good night. We got the stupidly early last train (10.45pm) back and then decided to go to Chase. Somehow, despite going to the bar for a 4-pint pitcher, Blondie manage to reappear with 6 pints which we set about until about 1.

It was a great night and I think a few people were a bit dubious about the whole karaoke part were converted. What wasn't part of the plan was going out with the chemists the following night until 1 and then drinking till 4.30am the night after at the Trevs 40th anniversary. Whoops. Sunday didn't really happen after that.

The "thoughts on my birthday" post

2006-09-09T13:17:00.000+01:00

I'm still going over the pictures from the 7th, so the "what I did on my birthday" post is work in progress. When I was a lot younger, my parents used to organise parties for me and invite loads of my friends from school. When I was about 12 I switched to going bowling with friends and then finally to going out into Birmingham at 17. When I first came to uni all my friends were very efficient at sending me cards, but they soon got pretty lax. My 22nd birthday was on the same day as my cousin's wedding. That side of my family had clearly forgotten it was my birthday and I only got 3 cards - and only a couple of friends even called/texted me. My 24th birthday was pretty good too cos even though I was in Durham (my first birthday away from home), there were loads of people around - Matt, Mel, Brooks, Matt, Tim, Carl etc so it was great. Then last year, there was noone around - even Matt who had been around most of the summer was away on his pre-PhD trip. As a result I got about 5 cards. It doesn't help that I have a really small family, but it was nice this year to round up a group of people and go out for a good night out and introduce them to something I'd discovered earlier this year (more on that in the next post). My opinion now is that I don't tell my old friends when it's my birthday - they're old enough now to keep records of these sorts of things.

So anyway, I'm now 26 and my time as a student is pretty much up. I've bought my last young person's railcard and am finishing up my lab work. I still don't feel old, in fact I think my drinking capacity has recently started in increase again if nights out in the last few months are anything to go by. This year has been a very mixed one - I've endured some hardships, at time felt completely alone and found out some things about myself, but on the other side I've made some great new friends, both at chemistry and college, and I felt more a part of the chemistry group, rather than a hanger-on. I've had a couple of amazing trips and after abstaining from traveling for a long time, I've been bitten by the traveling bug - perhaps part-inspired by my taking up of photography. I've also rediscovered cooking. After being spoilt in my 2nd year with a new kitchen I've endured a string of cramped, underequiped kitchens and pantries. Now, thanks to house 3 and Blondie's ワガママ (Wagamama) cookbook. The beauty of it is that once you can prepare the sauces in advance, so for most of the year we've had tubs of teppanyaki, yaki soba and chili sauces sat in our fridge waiting to go. Similarly, after a few dodgy examples, Blondie and I have mastered the okonomiyaki cabbage-pancake. The secret ingredients are sugar and miso paste and once Blondie managed to source some authentic sauce (sorry) they are tasting pretty authentic (to the Osakan style ones I experienced anyway).

so yes, a mixed year. I'll try to get up pics from the 7th soon.

Published - finally

2006-08-29T02:04:00.000+01:00

A bit of a crosspost with my OLEDs blog, but I don't really care. As of the 24th August my first paper entitled New electroluminescent bipolar compounds for balanced charge-transport and tuneable colour in organic light emitting diodes: triphenylamine–oxadiazole–fluorene triad molecules appeared online at the Journal of Materials Chemistry. Those of you at academic institutions can follow the link and access an html version of it (pdf will follow). The rest of you can still follow the link and see the abstract (and supplimentary info). This has been based on work I did this time last year and remarkably, I'm the first of my friends in chemistry to get a paper out. I feel so special! Hopefully I'll get some more out soon (but not as first author) and I look forward to the day I find out that it's been cited and when the Web of Knowledge updates so I can search for myself!

Pandora

2006-08-23T01:33:00.000+01:00

Browsing through TIME magazine's list of "cool websites of the year" I was intrigued by the entry for Pandora. I'd briefly heard about this a while ago, but never actually investigated it properly. Now I'm hooked. The idea is that you tell it some bands and songs you like and it creates a custom radio station based on what you tell it. Don't like the song it's playing - let it know and it'll skip to the next track and play similar songs less frequently. Especially like a track - Pandora will find similar songs and play them more frequently. The more often you tell it what you do and don't like, the better the service.

Those with long memories will remember my post from last September about how I was getting stuck in a musical rut. Now I have Pandora to suggest from an increadibly wide range of music from many artists I've never heard of. It's allowed my to follow up my new found love of J-Rock (thanks to the Ouendan soundtrack) and Scandanavian rock (thanks to the Poor Rich Ones album). Thanks to Pandora, I'm going to buy albums by L'arc En Ciel and Kent. It's also nice to listen to as I type up my thesis.

The downsides aren't very many. Pandora operates via flash so there's no need to install anything. Because the music is actually licenced, you can rewind or relisten to tracks (you have to wait until they are played again) and you are only allowed a certain number of skips per hour. But, once registered you can have upto 100 different stations so this really shouldn't be a problem. After about 10 or so songs it asks you to register. Currently, it is only available for US residents but the makers clearly don't care about this as the only proof they require is a valid US zip code - not overly difficult to get off the net or even just make up.

Our supersized photos

2006-08-20T02:17:00.000+01:00

After months of not getting around to it, Blondie and I finally sent off some photos to ProAm Imaging for enlargement. Thing thing that had put me off initially was the fact that I only had a 2MP camera. Since then I've got my 7MP A620 and been on some great trips. The attraction of ProAm is the prices - 8"x10" for 40p, and large 12"x18" prints for £1. They're a pretty retro company with no web submission forms and a paper order form that you have to send in. After a bit of hassle cropping and getting pixel densities correct we sent off the CD and waited. This week they came back and I'm glad to say they're fantastic. Most of mine are adorning my wall so here's a picture of them - for those of can't really visualise, most of the picture are 8"x10".

The lustre/matt option cuts down on reflections from a glossy covering that seems to blight my other digital prints.
They are so impressive that we've discovered they make very good (and cheap) gifts so I wouldn't be surprised if people receive these as presents (maybe with a clip frame if they're lucky) for a while.