Millbank space aliens find a parking spot

I'm watching the Torchwood series this week, albeit slightly later than the original screening times. The aliens have decided to land in London in the Security Services HQ at Thames House by Vauxhall Bridge.

I'm just not so sure that this type of alien would attract as much attention in London as the one in the television series. Sure, the children freezing and chanting might get noticed, but a smoke filled glass tank with some thrashing tentacles? in London??

There's stuff like this happening every day.

Whether its silver painted statues walking around, over sized beer bottles having parties on open topped buses or just generally people with tentacles walking about, there's still plenty of Londoners who would take this in their stride. I know I've seen that gunk on walls and windows as I walk around too. I'll grant that in the TV series they blocked off the north side of the Embankment, but everyone knows that there's a cone army on continual manoeuvres in the central area.

So it could all kick off tomorrow when the aliens get angry and the tank of poison gas explodes, but at the moment I'm wondering whether the aliens got MI5 to build them a rooftop parking spot and flew in to avoid paying the Congestion Charge?

I shall still watch though, and keep a sofa handy in case I do need something to hide behind.

bagging a bug bag for face faceoff

I keep a reusable bag in the car boot for when I'm buying a few groceries or similar. I should estimate I've bought around ten of the bags at different times, but they seem to disappear of their own accord, long before they've worn out. So today I bought yet another one to restock the car. It also gave me an excuse to experiment with Apple's new iPhoto face recognition software.

I noticed that iPhoto lets you access an Aperture library, which is where I keep my photos stored. I grabbed 2-3 folders of maybe 100 pictures with a few consistent faces, taught the names to iPhoto and it then ran through the pictures getting the names mainly right. It missed a few but didn't guess any incorrectly.

Hmm, I thought, maybe it uses shapes and dates. So I then tried it with the ladybird on the shopping bag. I taught it the name and showed it 4 almost identical photos of the ladybird. It didn't have a clue. So it seem that the Face recognition isn't going to be fooled too easily with alien shapes.

My next experiment will be with the new ironic film soundtrack loops available in Garageband.