Episode 64: “We need some time to talk”

I love me some Doctor Who! So here’s some more lovely David Tennant:

Sorry, for not posting the last couple of weeks. Since BarCamp I’ve been sick as anything, spending most days in bed and only last Thursday I finally was out and about again. Enough about that though, yesterday I went to Stonehenge!

Trish had some Dutch/Danish friends coming over for a few days and had the great idea to hire a car for the whole day to visit Stonehenge. Strangely, the only car rental hire big enough to fit six people and which didn’t close at 1pm, was the Sheraton Hotel near Heathrow. Ehm, why? Wouldn’t it just make sense that people would want to hire a car for trips for the entire Saturday? Anyhow, traveling to Heathrow, taking the (expensive) bus to the hotel and filling in all the paperwork took a bit longer than expected, so we only really left London around 11:30. Then we got slighty lost detoured along the way, so we arrived at Stonehenge at about 1.

I’m still trying to rack my brain about what to actually say about Stonehenge. It’s pretty impressive, but, well, they’re just a bunch of giant rocks. Cool to see and to experience, but that’s all there is to it. Big rocks in practically the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by lots and lots of grass. That being said, Stonehenge is one of those places you have to have been to yourself. It’s just part of The List (you know the one with the Colosseum and the Pyramids of Gizeh) and now I can finally cross it off. Don’t get me wrong though, I didn’t only go there for the sake of going there. It’s a brilliant piece of ancient creativity and the awe and mystery that still surround it have always intrigued me.

After admiring Stonehenge (including a short sunbath), we decided we should drive to Bath in an attempt to see the Roman baths. Because of road works and a detour, halfway there we stumbled on a small quaint village and stopped to have lunch/dinner there. It was a beautiful little town with a small canal winding through it and (although I say so myself) I made some pretty nice photos there. It might have been a bit too relaxing there, cause by the time we were ready to continue our journey it was already 5 o’clock.

Which of course meant that we only arrived in Bath around 6 (including driving around the center trying to find a place to park). And of course all the museums and the Roman baths were already closed. So I can say I’ve been to Bath, but I haven’t actually seen that much of it yet. It’s definitely worth another (proper) visit, but I’ll make sure I’ll do my research first and actually check out the closing times etc.

All in all, it was a great day out. And I’ve finally seen something of the UK outside of London, which wasn’t a BarCamp. I’ll have to figure out what our next trip is (I think Bath), but if anybody has any ideas I’m open to suggestions. I’ve got more photos up on Flickr and Cristiano’s got photos and this funny little video of our trip:

Interesting links for June 5th:

• 70 Amazing Business Cards – I love my Moo cards, but some of these business cards are so clever; they’re sure to get your attention.
• The Letter in the Pond – Guy buys a new house and digs up the pond in the backyard, cause it’s too dangerous for his kids. Underneath it, he finds a laminated letter to whoever “destroyed” the pond. Brilliant!
• Writing Assignment – Funny story about a writing assignment where two students were randomly matched and had to co-write a piece together. First one does a paragraph, then the other and son on. The result is hilarious.
• Hair Hats: Animal Magnetisms – Weird, weird hats made out of hair. Can you see a celebrity wearing something like this??

I haven’t blogged for the last couple of days, because of a not-so-fantastic combination of being extremely busy and sick. Last Thursday I had the first Geek Dinner I in part had organized (meaning I was “working” for most of the evening) and then last weekend I attended BarCamp London 4. Added to that, I caught some bug at the Geek Dinner, so since then I haven’t been feeling that well, spending Friday, yesterday and today in bed. Despite being sick though, I had a great time at BarCamp London 4!

With all the fuss surrounding the sign-up for this BarCamp, I was going in with my fingers crossed hoping it would turn out to be a good BarCamp. And it was. There were some minor “glitches” which I’ll come back to later, but overall it was a great experience. This time it was held at the GCap offices in Leicester Square and was organized excellently by GCap’s Ross Bruniges. I’ve split this post up in two parts (this doesn’t necessarily mean though Day 1 and Day 2), cause it just got too long.

Breakfast, Registration and Lunch

So last Saturday morning together with Cristiano and some Dutch friends who were specially here for BarCamp (Reinier, Martijn and Joost) I made my way to London’s cinema center. We were there quite early (9ish) to first grab some breakfast at a small cafe near Leicester Square, meeting up with Simon and Kevin. Completely satisfied by a yummy traditional English breakfast, we then headed to the GCap building, where the BarCamp magic (well, the registration at least) was about to start.

After registering, we found much to our delight that the venue had a roof terrace and spent the next hour waiting there till the intro talk began. As always we got a general dos and don’ts speech (“fires are bad”), a thank you to the sponsors and the “every single person in the room introduces themselves”, which takes like forever. After the talk, lunch was served and everybody got to fill in the session boards. Osmosoft sponsored the lunch, a great batch of Pret-A-Manger sandwiches and salads. I decided to do my talk in the very first slot, getting it quickly over and done with. Btw, I won’t write about every single session I went to; just the main ones that stood out for me.

My Talk: Probabilities Explained Through Poker, Werewolf and Deal Or No Deal

I noticed at previous geek gatherings that a lot of people don’t get their probabilities right and thought it might be interesting to do a hands-on session on that topic with some easy and cool examples. Idea was great, execution though… not that great. I hadn’t prepared that much (just some examples) and during my talk I fell silent way too often. Plus I don’t think I actually know/play enough poker to say a lot about it. I might do this talk another time, but I’ll have to polish it up a great deal. Cristiano actually filmed the entire thing (and a lot of the other sessions), so you can watch it here:

The Quest for a Open Source Event Management Solution
I went to this session expecting a demo of an event manager, which for me was interesting with Cristiano having just created his own event manager for the Geek Dinners. Instead though it was about gathering people together who are all interested in helping on an open source event manager. There wasn’t anything implemented yet; it was about how a general “use for every type of event” solution could be created.

Faceball Tournament

If you don’t know what Faceball is, check the official website out. The main idea is to hit the other person in the face with a pink or blue Flickr ball (don’t worry they’re very soft). I wasn’t planning to participate, but after seeing all the previous people play, I wanted to know for myself how difficult it was. Surprisingly though, while I didn’t win (Cristiano beat me in the semi-final), I did get the highest score! I’ve got a bunch of Faceball photos up on my Flickr and the video of it here, only the grand finale is missing. Cristiano won though and got us two Flickr pro accounts.

Beauty in Web Design

This was a great (and pretty) presentation from Cennydd on what beauty is and how we should attempt to create beauty in websites. He showed a couple of great examples of how art is perceived and how beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. My short description doesn’t do it justice and I wished I had recorded this, although sometime this month podcasts should be coming out from all the sessions. For the mean time, check out the slides on SlideShare.

The rest of this blog post will follow tomorrow or sometime later, once the videos become available. To check out the videos we already have, head over the Vimeo BarCampLondon4 Channel. I’ve also got more photos up on Flickr.

Interesting links for May 28th:

• IGN: Joss Whedon: Inside Dollhouse – Interview with Joss Whedon about his upcoming serie with Eliza Dushku, Dollhouse. I am looking forward to this new series, but so far I haven’t seen Whedon’s humour in the trailer. And that’s what’s gonna make or break it for me.
• IGN: Joss Whedon’s Horrible Future – Another interview (well, I’m guessing it’s actually the same interview, but they split it) with Joss Whedon, this time about Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I get a big stupid grin on my face every time I see that title. Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog 😀
• Battlestar Galactica’s Ron Moore Talks Football, Religion, and What He’s Up to Next – Another interview with Battlestar Galactica writer Ron Moore. No spoilers at all about upcoming episodes, but some interesting tidbits from the beginning of the series.
• Pirate?s Booty – Funny little behind-the-scenes look at a guy playing the Jack Sparrow character at a Disneyland park.
• Sex and The City Fans are Female Trekkies? – An interesting article discussing whether or not hardcore Sex and The City fans are geeks. They can quote entire episodes, knows weird trivia facts, recreate “costumes” from the show… isn’t this just like Trekkies or Star Wars fans?

Episode 63: “They drift for hundred’s of miles…”

I love Lee Pace ever since seeing him in Wonderfalls (a vastly underrated series, btw) and I’m so happy Pushing Daisies is giving him his great break. He starred last year in this short film (or is it a long ad?) calling attention to the plight of the polar bears:

Interesting links for May 25th:

• 10 Harrison Ford Films You Must See Where He?s Not Named Indy Or Han – I love me some Harrison Ford. I’ve actually seen most of these movies, 7 out of 10. Sabrina is one of my little guilty pleasures.
• Zoe Saldana Talks To io9 – Interview with Zoe Saldana about her upcoming roles in JJ Abrahms’ Star Trek and James Cameron’s Avatar. Now those are going to be two of the great summer movies from next year!
• Film Experience Blog: Game Time: The Eyes Have It – Little guessing game where you have to guess (recognize) the actresses from only their eyes. “Easy” I thought, but it’s pretty tough. I only got 3 right…

After seeing Iron Man and the special tidbit after the end-credits, I decided to finally try and delve into the world of the comic book geek. One of the comics I picked up was The Ultimates: Volume 1 Super-Human, a re-imagining of the Marvel’s superhero team the Avengers. Why this comic? Because the Avengers movies coming out in 2010 and 2011 is rumoured to be based on it and for once I wanted to read the comic before seeing the movie.

Since the announcement of these two movies a couple weeks ago, the rumours and fan speculations on the casting have began to increase. First, we heard Matthew McConaughey was in the running for Captain America. Then that Marvel wants Brad Pitt as Thor. The Empire Blog even has a list of potential Captain America candidates. On fan sites, the theories range from Paul Walker as Captain America and Maggie Q as Wasp to Dominic Purcell as Thor. The casting of this movie has got the geek crowd reeling and it’s fun watching everybody come up with their own ideas on who should play the parts.

The casting of three characters are set already: Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Edward Norton as Bruce Banner (the Hulk) and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. They haven’t actually confirmed yet that they will be in those movies, but I’m being the optimist here and believing they won’t pull out of it. By the way, I love that the artists used Sam Jac’s likeness in the comic (mind you, before the movie came out) and it’s perfect he agreed to playing the movie character.

What nobody so far has mentioned though is that the characters in “The Ultimates” actually have a discussion about who should play them if there’s ever a movie! Here’s the dialogue:

Nick Fury: Hey, did you hear you’ve been optioned as a movie? Betty Ross was telling me they’re already in discussions with Brad Pitt about a three picture deal to play Captain America.

Captain America (Steve Rogers): Who’s Brad Pitt?

Giant-Man (Henry Pym): What, are you serious? My God. This might not be such a disaster after all, huh? Who do you think they could get to play you, Nick?

Nick Fury: Why, Mister Samuel L. Jackson, of course. That’s not even open to debate, Doctor Pym. And I’ll tell you the one guy who could do a convincing Tony Stark — From Hell’s Johnny Depp.

Wasp (Janet Pym): What? Depp’s too much of a pretty-boy. Stark’s a crazy kind of Howard Hughes character. I’d rather see someone with more of an eccentric range.

Nick Fury: Don’t underestimate Depp, Mrs. Pym. A lot of people tag him with that pretty-boy label, but he’s actually one of the most accomplished actors in Hollywood at the moment. Picture him doing Ed Wood in an Iron Man suit and you’ve got Tony Stark up there in celluloid, baby.

Giant-Man (Henry Pym): Yeah, I could see that. You know, you’ve actually got a real knack for this casting thing, Nick. Who do you think they could get to play me?

Nick Fury: Oh, that’s easy. Lantern-jawed Matthew McConoughey, of course.

Wasp (Janet Pym): What about me?

Nick Fury: Heck, who else but Miss Lucy Liu?

Wasp (Janet Pym): Oh, naturally. Even though she looks absolutely nothing like me, she’d be great because all Asian people are basically identical, right? Who’d be your back-up choice, General? Bruce Lee?

Captain America (Steve Rogers): Who’s Bruce Lee?

The characters then go on to make fun of Bruce Banner (the Hulk), claiming he could be played by “Woody Allen”, “the creepy, little kid from the Sixth Sense”, “Stuart Little” and “Steve Buscemi”. While I don’t think any of this casting will actually come to pass (besides the Samuel L. Jackson one of course), it’s still interesting to see this piece of dialogue.

Now a question for you, dear readers: who would you cast for these movies?

I’ve given some thought into how I want to review this movie. On the one side I want to give my normal spoiler-free review, but on the other hand I want to go a bit deeper into it, singing it’s praises and nitpicking it’s faults. So I’ve decided to actually do two reviews. One for the people who haven’t seen it yet, so without spoilers, but a quick “is it any good or not?”. And one where I don’t have to care about spoilers, where I can just speak my mind mind about certain scenes, characters, etc. The review you’re reading now is the spoiler-free one; you can expect the other one in the next couple of days.

In Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull (from now on I’m just calling it Indy 4) 20 years have past since the previous movie; the year is 1957 and the United States and the Soviet Union are approaching the height of the Cold War. The film opens at a military warehouse in the Nevada Desert, where Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is coerced into helping the Soviets find a mysterious artifact. Led by Colonel-Doctor Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), the Soviets believe the Crystal Skull could grant them the ultimate power and Indy does what he can to stop them.

The opinions on Indy 4 are so mixed and I can understand why: this is not a film everybody will love or hate. While some people may be on the extremes, I think most will be caught in the big wasteland between, not completely writing it off and hating it, but also not proclaiming it as the greatest movie ever made. It’s been 15 hours ago since I saw Indy 4 (including a good night’s sleep) and I’m still analyzing and going over the movie in my mind, trying to figure out how I precisely feel about it.

The best part of the movie are the action seqeunces. Indy 4 has some fun, exciting scenes and nobody can deny the brilliance of those moments. The car chase (this is not a spoiler, it’s an Indiana Jones movie, you knew there would be a car chase) in particular is exhilarating, except for some minor monkeying around. The whole film is beautifully shot, in and outside those action scenes. Indy 4 cleverly makes use of reflections and shadows, creating a visually stunning movie.

Acting wise the film is solid. The cast are all comfortable in their roles and you can see the delight they must have had while filming this. Harrison Ford may look his age, but his Indy is still as charming and kicking ass as no other. Spielberg and Lucas weren’t lying when they said the character would stay true to its roots. Indiana Jones remains the same Indiana Jones, even though he’s now a little older and slightly slower. I was expecting the worst of Shia LaBeouf, but his character Mutt Williams fit into the movie. I’m warming up to his performances and I do think he could go on to do great things (as long as one of them isn’t an Indy spin-off). Karen Allen literally lit up the screen whenever she was on; mainly because of a big goofy grin I couldn’t fail to love (I can see though that some people might find it irritating). Cate Blanchett is lovely as the evil Soviet agent. Yeah, lovely, not really a compliment for an “evil” character. While there wasn’t anything wrong with her performance, her character missed the intensity of the “bad guy” you love to hate. But that’s got more to do with the script than anything else.

And that’s where the Indy 4 suffers: the script. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’m not going to go into detail here, but the plot feels shaky at the best of times. Especially the last act is what withholds me from truly loving this movie. What I don’t understand is that the reason Spielberg and Lucas waited so long with making Indy 4 is that they were waiting for a “good” script. If this was a good script, how the hell did the bad ones look like?

I can’t say if you will enjoy Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull. This is one movie everybody must see, just to determine their own opinion on it. It goes without saying you should see it in the cinema; visually the movie is outstanding and for that alone I would recommend it. It’s a great summer movie and a worthy Indiana Jones movie, but I can’t help but wonder how will we look back at Indy 4 in 20 years time?

Interesting links for May 21st through May 22nd:

• Jet Set Ready Go: Can You Match The Stewardess Uniform To The Airline? – A Stewardess outfit quiz! How can you not enjoy this? It’s a bit easy though, if you know a bit of world culture/fasshion. I got 10/12.
• Windmills of My Mind: “The name’s Jones, Indiana Jones.” – An interesting article comparing Indiana Jones with James Bond.
• The Penguin Blog: Naomi Alderman on Unfiction – Special guest post by Naomi Alderman about her experiences working on the We Tell Stories hidden 7th story. As one of the players, it’s great to see the other side of the journey.
• Extinction Timeline – This image shows an extinction timeline from 1950 to 2050. So it’s part real facts and part prediction. I don’t agree with some of the prediction though. Death extinct by 2050?? No, it will take way longer to get us some immortality.
• 15 scifi movies 15 famous architectural locations – A cool list of 15 architectural locations used for sci-fi movies. Some obvious (Battersea powerstation), some not so obvious (the Mayan temple for Star Wars? I really don’t remember this).