Advent: Dec 1st

So here we go again, lets see if i can manage to keep up to date with this. Saying that I'm already a day late. So I'm going to keep the format from last year, google 'December First/Second/Third.....' and just use whatever image is on the first page. Though i doubt anything too exciting will happen. Way to sell yourself.

The first day of December didn't yield much. I shaved off my Movember attempt and it felt good to get rid of a ginger moustache that looked like i should be in the 80's or the 6th member of the Village People. I spent most of the day playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 which isn't worth the £40 price tag, it should have just been an add-on download for x amount of Microsoft points since it really wasn't anything substantial. The story and the set pieces were amazing but it was just a small follow up. I think 5 hours of game play and that was it finished. Compared with say Fallout which usually has about 30 hours of game play before you finish.....

The multiplayer is where its at for me, as was Modern Warfare 2. Playing against another person is always better and more unpredictable than playing with a AI. I never liked Zombies that much but i love Survival mode. Its brilliant, much like in Gears of War where you have to survive waves of enemies. On line is as usual, sometimes its good and fun, sometimes its just full of people hiding till you run round a corner.

I had work but was only for two events, so after the Grand Prix was ran i cycled home, played a bit more Call of Duty, watched a film and bed. Looking forward to (today) Friday as I'm going for drinks with people from work which has taken too long, 5 months and no alcohol with work people is odd. And then Saturday is my friend Kats birthday so mucho drinko to be had.

Tales of a Drunkard: Learning

Last night i went to Sahara in Reading for their EDS (Educated Drinkers of Sahara) night. The idea of the EDS is for the members to become educated about the drinks they provide. Which for this Drunkard is a nice respite from just necking drinks for the sake of it. This meeting was the year anniversary for the EDS so was special for them and the drink of choice was Tapatio Tequila. Along with the different Tequilas was a history lesson from Duncan, from Speciality Brands which was amazing. I had no idea where Tequila came from, where it was made and the different types of Tequila, so for me was a nice eye opener into a spirit which is usually just necked on a night out. So the presentation about this family owned distillery was informative and funny and with the tasting afterwards meant you were more appreciative of the drink.


The tasting of the spirit was akin to wine tasting. Little measures were poured into a wine glass, you let it breath then put your nose to it to pick out the different aromas. Then the tasting. The first glass was the Blanco  which was very spicy and very nice. A bit too spicy for me and this tequila is bottled a few weeks after its been made. The second glass was the Reposada which is aged for a few months and was a lot smoother to drink, not as peppery as the Blanco and was my favourite of the night. The third was the Anejo which again is aged at about 18months. This tequila was a little bit peppery than the Reposada but still smoother than the Blanco. There was a bit of a kick afterwards but again nice and smooth, which you could just sip all night.


They are the three Tequilas that Tapatio make, the fourth bottle and tequila we sampled was the Reservas de la Excelencia, the Family Reserve which was usually just available to drink at the distillery or in the local cafes/bars. Speciality Brands twisted their arms and managed to get bottles of it to sell. It has now been discontinued which made the drink that much nicer. It is aged for about 4 years but the one we had was aged for 7 years if i remember correctly and was so smooth. Not as spicy as the Blanco, smooth like the Reposada and full of flavour. By far the nicest Tequila i have ever had and will probably ever have.


As it was a birthday party of sorts there were party rings, chocolate fingers and hula hoops and marshmallows on offer and like someone said "Food fitting of a 3yr olds birthday". After thanking Duncan for an insight into the La Altena Distillery, which has been making Tequila for 70 years, we moved upstairs where Dan the manager made us some cocktails to enjoy and some made with the Tapatio tequila, we sipped, shared and enjoyed the company. Had a couple of birthday shots and i bought some rum daiquiris. Chatting to some of the people there we decided to get some drinks on the way home since we lived in the same direction so Hobgoblin for a nice pint of cider then a walk to Up the Junction for a nice beer. Always nice to meet new people and friendly ones at that. I got home about 11:30 after stopping off to take a couple of pictures in Palmer Park as it was really misty and looked amazing. Though both my DSLR and digital compact were out of battery so my trusty medium format camera was placed on the floor so who knows if it worked, might pop back there again.


So all in all a good educational drinking session was had. Can't wait for the next one.

The Internet

Ever since the inception of the Internet there has been wonderment that man has gazed upon. In this digital age EVERYTHING is at your fingertips if you know how to use it. Things from Michelangelo's blueprints to the Anarchists Cookbook, to everything in between. The amount of information at your disposal these days is far greater than that you could ever wish for from teachers and lecturers. You could, if you so see fit, learn more from the Internet than you could from school/college/university. But you would have sod all to show for it other than a Good Will Hunting take on life. Which some would say isn't a bad thing.

Together with the Pandora's box of information comes a sense of control, well there should be a sense of control, with the Internet. As Rule 34 states: There is porn of it, no exceptions. Basically if you have thought of it, there is porn. And that is the dark side of the Internet. With information becomes distortion. Years ago i downloaded a faces of death video off Kazaa. And that video still haunts me, whether it was true or not i still remember that video, the colours etc. This is what the Internet has become.

With the Internet, and notably through 4-chan, have become this sense of anonymity. You can say and do whatever the fuck you want with near on no repercussions, well nearly no implications. If you are old enough to remember ICQ or yahoo chat rooms before they became petri dishes of perverts, then you will know it was part of the explosion of talking to random people around the room. Chat rooms linked people, with either common subjects or in most cases perverted sexual endeavours. It was like having pen pals but without having to write and wait weeks for reply. Although written notes were more meaningful, digital counterparts were not only easier to reply to but meant you could get through a months conversation within a week or two.

With chat rooms and programs came websites and search engines. Before Facebook and google there was Myspace, Bebo, Anglefire, Geocities, Tucows, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves. People were able to make websites catered to their own sense of style and person. I myself had a site about conspiracy theories, a few of my friends had sites full of nonsensical wonderment and before Geocities closed its doors i downloaded by friends sites (Although you can download the entire geocities directory). All this basically gave birth to Twitter and Facebook that you no doubtly use day in and day out.

But how well do you know that person that you 'follow' or you added on Facebook? The Internet provides a safety net. You can be yourself, you can be someone different. How many times have you gone into town, to a club and though "Well being myself gets me nowhere so how bout i just make up someone" you can be anyone you want in real life but most people decide they would rather do that on the internet. Its easy to tell if someone is lying in real life because usually they trip up on what they say or sometimes you can just tell. However if you talk to someone online, how do you know who or what they are?

How do you know the person you talk to day in and day out is who they say they are. Do you really know that man/woman are who they say they are. What they do for a living is what they actually do etc. There is a degree of trust that you instill in someone, usually someone you don't know, yet you will gladly talk to someone, open up to them as if you knew them for years. Why? You wouldn't walk up to someone in a coffee shop and lay on them your life story or what you have been up to the previous week.

That person you might talk to online, be it Facebook/Skype/Twitter/AIM/MSN/Any other social networking site or program, how do you know they are who they say they are? How would you feel if after a year of talking to someone that they turn around and end up being not who you thought they were?

I have had the pleasure/displeasure of knowing someone for about 18-24 months. Talking to them pretty much daily, knowing them well enough to know that if they did or didn't say something, that i would know what they meant from that. How well do you know your family or friends that you know what they mean when they don't use words? Anyway you get to know someone, about their life and their family, and they do you. Its a pen pal relationship where you just talk to someone else in the world, which is what social media is all about really. But you develop feelings for someone, i mean who wouldn't if you ended up talking to someone day in and day out for a year or two. As trivial as conversations might be "I broke up with my boyfriend, i went on holiday, i had my mum visit, my day at work was shit" Its these interactions that make you develop attractions. 

But my initial question, somewhere up there, still beckons. How do you know how you talk to are who they say they are.

Now this is going to get way too personal for a blog post, well considering most of my other blog posts anyway. I have known girl named Lexi for about 2 years. A random occurrence and following on Twitter brought us together. We both had a love of geeky things such as games or the odd TV show/film. We connected over things such as family, life and tea. When i said things she listened and when she didn't say things i knew what she meant. Its the whole reading between the lines part of relationship i suppose? Knowing someone inside and out without meeting them is a concept a lot of people cant comprehend, and for a lot of people will understand fully. 

Anyway move on about 2 years, a few months ago, and i come upon a revelatory piece of information. There is a website called Tineye, that allows you to pretty much back trace an image. I use it to see if anyone is using my pictures that i upload on face book or my other blog that i use for photography. Anyway, like googling your own name, i used it on a picture of Lexi and was suddenly confronted with an entire google database of websites dedicated to this girl and her pictures. Which i hope you can understand is a fucking shock. Imagine finding a website dedicated to your friend, family member or girlfriend/boyfriend that you never knew about. It took me by shock. So if anyone reading this wondered why a month or so ago i was acting weird and depressed well that's your answer, in a way. 

Upon confronting Lexi i got a story about how she was once a model for Myspace and her pictures were used all over the place and yadda yadda bla bla a story was woven. Now the usual reason someone would fake who they were on the Internet would be because of low self esteem or many other psychological reasons i am not even going to bother going into. So this story was woven which seemed bollocks but also through knowing someone rather well seemed plausible. Heart said one thing, head said another. And upon pressing for actual information the story then changed. It changed to using Twitter and a picture of a model to see, psychologically, how people perceive online persona's. Which is a fucking good question, really. I mean whats stopping you from grabbing a picture and using it as your own persona? Common decency really.

So much bollocks later, about this that and the other, an actual person was found. Her name was still Lexi, but the picture was different. But the person was the same. And that's all that matters. The person you know is the same but the trust is gone. If one of my good friends turned round and relayed some piece of information that was a major contrast to who i knew and what i knew about them, i doubt i could ever trust them the same.

So there is a degree of doubt in everything and anything i knew about 'Lexi'. I can never fully trust that person like i used to. My feelings have changed but are still the same. I'd love to turn around and call her a psycho bitch that had no right to do that, but at the same time its the Internet. Whats stopping her or you? 

Yes for a day or three i was empty. Yes i know don't really like her as a person and that she doesnt mean the same to me as she did say 6 months ago. Yes i don't believe a single word she says anymore, not so much that its untrue, but that what right does she have to have me trust anything she says. But at the same point everything i have learnt about her is true. How do i know? I don't. But talking to someone for a long period of time you just know. Making up a persona is hard, changing your name or image is easy but changing who you are, your likes/dislikes, fears or desires is hard.

I really don't know where this blog was going, maybe i needed to get things off my chest or warn people of the dangers of the Internet? Kids growing up these days don't really know the dangers of the Internet. And i don't mean that pervert down the road that logs onto your Stickam broadcasts, i mean anything and everything you do is on the Internet. It ever goes away, and it can never be deleted. I may or may not have lost/left my job because of things i posted on here or facebook. Try googling your name and seeing what information comes up, its scary sometimes what you find out is available to everyone to see. 

The internet is a wonderful thing. It is a dangerous thing. It stretches the realm of understanding but it also constricts what you can perceive. It offers warmth, solace and caring. It also offers darkness, cold and subjection.

It is up to you how you use it. 

Cereal Killer

One thing growing up I enjoyed. Breakfast. Whether you ate it with your family talking about the days activities or you're sat discussing the news or like me you sat watching cartoons, it is usually a staple diet for most children and adults. It starts the day. Be it toast, porridge, cereal, coffee, tea, fruit, yogurt.

As your tastes change from being told what to eat and what you want to eat in the morning (Cold pizza is damn good in the morning) you forget the little things that set you up for the day. That cartoon, that comic or that toy. Wait, what? Toy? At breakfast? Are you overdosing on vitamin C, you don't have toys at breakfast, your not in hospital. But wait, that happened when I was a child. Was it a dream?

NO.
No it was not.

The time was when you raced to open a new box of cereal, either to cherry pick the toy or just for that chance. The older you got you realised that you could just reach in and grab the toy. Yes toy, I keep saying this word, but what do i mean toy?

Well back before retarded children started to put anything and everything into their mouths you were able to find toys in packs of cereal. Admittedly not as cool as American kids toys like decoder rings but still pretty awesome. The picture at the top is something most children in the UK must have seen/had as a kid. I have some toys in the loft I have seen recently and some were water squirters from The Mask and some Simpsons ones too. You got figures, reflectors, stickers, tazos. Lots of things were on offer to the breakfast children. But alas not anymore. The best you get are offers that give you money off other things.
I remember once there were three toys connected, the cutter obviously malfunctioned, it was Christmas, Easter and my Birthday all rolled in one. Three toys in one! AMAZING.

Fuck, I opened a bank account when I was 10 with Barclays, this offer was with Shreddies... You opened an account with something like 75p and Barclays added 25p to make a solid £1 and there you had it, one shiny new bank account. I still have this bank account, albeit it rather overdrawn, but this is the power of cereal. 16 years later I have this bank account, this was offered to me by a cereal company....

What has gone wrong, why do we not have toys. Surely parents should say "No Timmy don't put that replica of Nelsons column in your mouth, its not edible"

Kellogs, I implore you. Add toys back to your boxes of cereal. It will be the best thing you can do.

April 2012: The End of the World or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Loved My Robot Overlords

Don't be fooled by the robotic puppy dog eyes of Wall-E, he means to kill you. Or conveniently dispose of your rubbish in a silent manner. Or kill you. Or make a castle out of blocks of rubbish much like Minecraft. Or kill you.

The whole hubbub surrounding the April 2012 'We are all going to die' scenario is the Mayan calender pretty much predicted most things that happened in an interstellar manner. Up until 2012. Which most people took a sign of "Well they saw everything till then and nothing more, therefore we will die". But much like the Y2K virus which "Would set off all the nukes, therefore we die" it won't. Or will it?

Some troubling news has befallen me, and anyone else with an Internet connection. They are becoming self aware. Recently a Robot named Watson competed on Jeopardy and tied with one of the human competitors who was a reigning champion. Watson learned from his answers and for the most part got them right. When wordplay came into it he got confused and answered incorrectly. Now this learning robot also reminds me of a TED talk about a robot comedian. What was special with the comedian robot was it gauged the audiences response from both applause, laughter and silence and catered its comedy routine based on that. Another learning robot.

Coupled with Big Dog, The Xos Exoskeleton, Self Assembling Furniture, This Lifelike Robot mimicking facial expressions and Realistic Animatronic Eyeball, we are getting a hell of a lot closer with Self Aware Artificial Intelligence. Well its pretty much there really. There is something called a Singularity which is defined as:

A predicted future event in human history caused by the ever-increasing ability of new technology to speed up the rate at which new technology is developed

 This can be described by Amplified Intelligence, modifying the brain with implants, sort of the same way that bloke shoved a camera in his head. Though it was not meant to be as his body rejected it. So kinda pointless.

It can also be described by Artificial Intelligence too. By that we mean computers that can think for themselves and either update themselves to be smarter than us and itself or create machine to work for it. Which would be a scary day.

So it falls back to the 2012 scenario and i put this to you. At some point in our future this 'Singularity' WILL happen and when it does, if it is to lead towards Artificial Intelligence, then some point after the Self Aware computer will start creating other computers and machines. And so on and so forth, may be years or decades but it will happen. Now some point after that people will become frightened of this technology and will either revolt or regress. Yes it plays out like a science fiction film, but that is only because within science fiction lays science fact.

So going through the decades, maybe even centuries something will happen where traveling at the speed of light will happen. And with that is the possibility of time travel.
Now if you were this advanced computer and you knew humanity would revolt and pose a threat you would try and stop this. And the only people that foresaw this happening where an advanced civilization known as the Mayans. So you go back and kill them all. Thus stopping them from communicating what will inevitably happen in the future.

Yeah i know sound far fetched and preposterous. Fun to think about though eh?

Either way this singularity will occur. It will lead to revolutionary discoveries in medicine, science and human understanding. It will lead to a serene time within all. We will be able to feed the hungry, cure the sick and stop wars.
It could also bring about a time of never ending war. More powerful machines and weapons. Nanotechnology could be used in weapons where they are dropped on cities and people/buildings are devoured from within.

I hope to be alive when this happens. It will be amazing, and to be fair the past 25 years i have been alive have shown just how fast technology can progress. Computers have gone from being the size of rooms to the size of a credit card. Phones now have the capabilities of computers.

Hell the Internet. I am lucky to appreciate all of this around me as i have seen it grown. Kids now have all of this technology from the get go. But they abuse it. They are not learning and progressing. There is a 'Tech-Stalemate' We are not progressing as fast as the past few decades, that too will herald the singularity.

Life In Balance: Music and Film

 

So the post before kind of delved into how i feel about music and film, and what it does to both the cinema goer and the film itself.
One film combines both of these two beautifully and is called Koyaanisqatsi. It is am experimental film from 1982 that combines slow motion footage with time lapse stills to bring a Life Out of Balance, which is what Koyaanisqatsi means when translated (well thereabouts).
 
It won numerous awards, one of which was the Francis Ford Coppola endorsement and he is now credited as executive producer. The visual elements go from amazement, to haunting, to puzzlement. And the soundtrack from Phillip Glass compliments it brilliantly. The soundtrack is nearly as long as the film, film is 86mins and music is 76, but sometimes you don't know its there. It transitions the different segments of the film as it moves from the early stages showing the environment and humanity through the progression of war, atomic age, right up to the 'micro-ship' age at the end. All culminating in the final scene showing the ultimate price of technology and the progression of man. NB: Its not the challenger disaster which happened 4 years after.

Some of you might recognise some of the music from the first public trailer of GTA IV, or the scene from Watchmen where Dr Manhattan talks about his origins. Koyaanisqatsi has also appeared in parody on the Simpons where an Itchy and Scratchy show entitled Koyaanis-Scratchy: Death Out of Balance was shown. Madonnas 'Ray of Light' video also resembles the feel of Koyaanisqatsi.

The soundtrack was so popular that the Phillip Glass Ensemble toured while playing the music live over the film, pretty much like War of The Worlds, if you have ever seen that on its tour.

Koyaanisqatsi was the first in the 'Qatsi' trilogy which shows Life out of Balance. Powaqqatsi was the second and shows the Life in Transition, primarily third world countries and losing the fight of holding onto their traditions in the face of industrialization. The third is Naqoyqatsi which means Life at War and shows the  'transition from a natural environment to a technology-based industrial environment'.

All three films are cheap to pick up if you want to see what I'm talking about. Those less inclined to purchase them can view the film below courtesy of Google.

Admittedly i used to watch this stoned and concentrated more, as you cant really have a busy mind when watching it. Not that I'm suggesting you get stoned and watch it, just pay attention, don't discount it for being some arty film you wont get, people interpret what they see in different ways. Watch it, think about it, discuss it.

Music and Movies

To me the arts are a complicated thing. You have paintings for example, which some people just sit and stare trying to figure out the meaning. Maybe there isn't a meaning, maybe the artist just drew what popped into their head.
The same with photos. When someone takes a picture why does it have to convey the emotions the photographer was feeling or trying to capture. Why can't it be about capturing a moment in time before it flutters away never to be captured again.

Music in film and television is vital. It tells the audience whats happening. It reminds me of the Shifty eye dog episode of The Simpsons. Dramatic music makes him look sinister, though changing the music behind it would change it to a jovial nature or whimsical. How do you know he wasn't checking for traffic before he crossed the road?

Aside from music leading the narrative, i like when the soundtrack is part of the movie in more than a 'background noise' way. Films where the music and whats happening on screen are intertwined are brilliant. Recently there has been Inception, Tron: Legacy and Social Network that have all amazing soundtracks which i love listening to but are part of the film too.

Some films have also given me new bands to listen to. Wristcutters: A Love Story introduced me to Gogol Bordello, a band which i now love. Garden State introduced me to The Shins and Stir of Echoes introduced me to Rolling Stones via Paint it Black, the soundtrack to Juno, to me, was amazing. It determined the pace of the film, showed the same emotions as the characters.

As well as soundtracks having good bands, music that is made specifically to the film are detrimental to a good film. Who here cant hum the Superman Theme? Or the theme to Star Wars. John Williams and Danny Elfman played some of the best ones of my childhood. Which is why i suppose that Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Superman sound the same :)

Classic soundtrack overtures like the ones in Shawshank redemption, Gladiator, and even Star Trek are also brilliant to have in a film. To me a film that has stagnant score behind it, or music that doesn't fit anything that happens on screen is a flop.

This is the overlying music from JJ Abrams Star Trek.

Its the theme that plays over pretty much anything dramatic that happens in the film. Its haunting in a way but i love it.
Speaking of haunting music and the correlation between film and music, that will be addressed in my next post.
But i will leave you with my first love of music in movies/trailers and the one that got me more into what happens in film other than actors speaking.

This is a trailer for the 2007 film Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor) Its a brilliantly visual film, great story but this trailer is what did it for me. Lots of WTF moments happening at once and when the yellow bus enters the screen, that music that kicks in was it. The band are called M83 and that track made me search them out straight away. Give the film a watch and also the bands album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts.