i finally watch the hunger games

I just got around to watching ‘The Hunger Games’. I gather the target market is similar to the Twilight films. They were not my cup of blood tea although I did like Being Human (UK version) which was another vampire type series.

I actually sought out The Hunger Games thinking I might enjoy it. Strictly, it is more of a teen-flick and the de-rated violence has ensured it's needed 12 Certificate.

The premise is a sort of ultraviolent X factor gone mad TV show that is used by foppish alphas to keep the manual working epsilons in check via fear. In a re-defined and slightly future USA, pick two people from each of 12 redefined US areas and in a fight to the death let the last person left standing be declared a winner.

We get the heroine and hero(ish) person defined from the start and watch the handheld shaky camera carnage as they fight their way to the end of the TV show, leaving 22 other undeveloped characters dead in the woods.

And that’s about it. No real commentary on the totalitarianism and no other resolutions - there’s a franchise to feed.

I initially had high hopes, but I found the run-on-rails plot-line started to drag soon after they disappeared into the forest. We got a series of well known war film scenes replayed with bows and arrows.

I preferred the bow and arrow quirkiness of the much lower budget and far more interesting movie ‘Hanna’. A next-generation super-heroine flick.

But Hunger Games is a film that’s made north of $400m already, so the producers and marketeers clearly know what keeps the X factor generation happy.

cycling moments

Coincidentally, after my post yesterday, I read FAQ's concurrent blog entry about cycling.

It reminded me of a few of my own non-expert observations during cycling.

City Version

• Recognise that fixies are generally ridden by quick people. Some commuter lanes (like the Embankment around rush-hour) can be very competitive.
• Other cyclists will, in general, be faster than me.
• My own fixie is more or less a vanity project. I have even flipped the rear wheel so that it can freewheel. And yes, it has proper brakes.
• The weight of the security and safety devices needed for London are around 1/3 of the bike's weight.
• Stay away from the left hand side of big vehicles and expect car doors to spring open at a moment's notice.
• Don't tell anyone where your secure secret bike parking spot is located.
• For entertainment, it is worth stopping with the Brompton foldable bike around Westminster or Buckingham Palace and collapsing and reassembling it. There will be tourists genuinely interested in the process. The reassemble with a 'rear-wheel-flip' is particularly crowd pleasing.
• The Brompton's hub gear is surprisingly useful.

Country Version

• Overtaking in hilly countryside needs to be ego-less. The elderly couple or the tourers with laden panniers will inevitably re-appear. It is best to hop off and adjust something.
• The countryside route long hills often have alternative quieter routes which are just as difficult but with less people around to watch the struggle.
• There is a ping-whizz sound from fast cyclists as they overtake.
• It's courteous to make noises when otherwise stealthily overtaking joggers and pedestrians in quiet lanes
• It's good to say hello to people moving at similar speeds in the other direction

Everywhere

• There is a point where getting wet ceases to matter. It is better to just smile in such circumstances and watch motorists give a wide berth.
• Everyone has already heard all the smug quotes about the right clothing.
• Surprisingly small adjustments to the saddle and even the handlebar height can make quite a difference to the amount of aches and pain.
• A small camera is better than a mobile phone when needing an excuse to stop for a rest because it can look more obviously purposeful.
• Take the small bag with the spare bits, mini pump, emergency £10 note and all-in-one tool.
• Even a heavily squashed Nutri-grain bar at the bottom of a rucksack can be extremely welcome after a certain amount of pedalling.

I'm sure there's more and I may come back to add some at a later date.

cycling update

I've been keeping the cycling going, when possible, and just uploaded some more stats from the little Garmin gadget on the handlebars. Amazingly, despite the European vacation gap, I managed to keep up with my minimum of 160 miles per month in August (262 miles).

I've already passed my original target for 2012 (miles and calories) but back in January when I set it I said that I'd low-ball the target so that I could feel good about being ahead rather than always trying to catch up.

The interesting thing now is that I'm within sight of the 3,000 mile mark for 2012, which is a kind flattened version of London to Athens, zig-zagging via Paris, Frankfurt, Munich, Rome, Venice and Zagreb. I shall nonetheless consider it as my own Olympian journey when I click over the 3,000 mile mark some time in the next month or so.

No gold medals, but maybe a chocolate wagon wheel* when I get there.

* The XXL sized Olympic medals this year remind me of chocolate wagon wheels, although I suspect the currently sold wagon wheels are smaller nowadays. I will test them in due course.

Below: The truth about wagon wheels

a weekend at home

We'd sort of agreed that this would be a quiet, stay at home kind of weekend rather than gadding about. It's probably at least 6-7 weeks since we spent the whole time at home and it means a few things can get done around the place.

I realise this means the highlight is more likely to be the delivery of the Ocado groceries than, say, a trip in a cable car, but you should see that organic broccoli.

So it's become an opportunity to watch some of the uplifting Paralympics on telly and be quietly pleased that the coverage has maintained a good quality, albeit with fewer channels now it has moved to Channel 4. Kudos to whoever came up with that canal-boat C4 ident that flows to a view of the stadium.

Like many, I'm not familiar with all the special classifications used and there's some more noticeable differences in the speeds among athletes, but it's still exciting to watch.

The challenge now will be to find a way to bottle the positivity created from both the Olympics and Paralympics and to keep the sentiments flowing forward as we hit September and more normal news returns.

a clean machine

The iMac is back to full functionality using a modernised and streamlined selection of software. I could have simply run a restore from Time Capsule, but I'm glad I decided to clean up instead.

When I first started using Macs (quite a few years ago), I originally decided to see how far I could get with just the base software (e.g. OS/X, iLife and eventually iWork). It was a good plan although I did allow myself to add a few very basic utility items (mainly the Yellow Mug programs and a flickr uploader).

Then I added a few other Apple programs (Aperture for working with photos, Logic Pro for music mixing and Final Cut Studio for video)

Oh, and the inevitable Photoshop.

Aside from a few plugins from the likes of iZotope (music related) and Nik (Photo related) and that's it. The data (photos, music, videos, documents, spreadsheets etc.) are all stored elsewhere and are separately backed up.

So this cleanup has allowed me to revert to that streamlined format and I can now see how well it still works.

I suspect I now have fewer programs on the iMac than on my iPhone.

Cabaret opening night

We found ourselves in the Weimar Republic on Thursday evening. Okay, it wasn’t Berlin, we were in Bromley, having traversed about a hundred miles of back-streets to get to the Theatre because of a jammed motorway.

We were along to see the first night of a new production of Cabaret, the dark musical that starts at new year 1931 in pre-Second World War Berlin.

I think I’ve seen three very different versions of the stories by Christopher Isherwood, which is set mainly in apartments and at the KitKat Club during the time when Berlin was a pivot between a hedonistic cabarat world and the terrifying rise of the Nazi party.

I’m guessing most people are familiar with the film version of the story starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Grey. There’s many similarities in the stage version although the story lines chosen are different. The film musical is already dark but suffice to say the stage version is even darker with a most ‘un-Hollywood’ ending.

This version follows the story of the struggling American writer Cliff Bradshaw as he arrives in Berlin on New Year’s Eve and befriends Ernst who rapidly introduces him to the ways of Berlin.

He meets nightclub singer Sally Bowles and they share an apartment in a house full of colourful bohemian characters. There’s a parallel doomed love interest - different from the film version but entirely in keeping with the main story themes.

The backdrop of the increasingly violent persecution of Jews in Germany rachets up throughout the action.

The whole story telling is framed by the EmCee, who opens the show and provides narration becoming a sort of cipher for what is happening in Germany.

Will Young plays the chameleon of the EmCee, singing the difficult lyrics with deft Berlin intonation. Equally strong is Michelle Ryan playing a cut glass English Sally Bowles, also strongly singing tremendously well-known songs from the show.

There’s an excellent band who kick up a Kurt Weill-like atmosphere driven from John Kander’s musical score. There’s the additional songs that tell other parts of the story and are sung away from the KitKat Club.

The ensemble dancers and singers provide great energy, decadence and promiscuity both in the club scenes during cabaret performances and also in the various backstage and other moments.

The staging uses mainly black flats, lit to provide atmosphere, as well as plenty of Kabaret style flashing lights.

This being a first night, there were some attempts to involve the audience in parts of the show and I can see that this will develop as the cast get more fully into their roles. This could also be tricky, given the nature of some parts of the show.

I noticed that certain elements from the symbolism of what was happening in Germany had already been dialled down in the performance.

There’s no pictures yet from the show, which hasn’t reached Press Night status yet and it will be interesting to see how it develops as it moves to the London stage in a few weeks.

Not from the show, but clearly a musical influence from the time, I’ve picked this little 1930-ish recording of Lotte Lenya singing Kurt Weill's "Mackie Messer."

you've got the kind of nerve i like

As part of the 'fixing the iMac' project, I decided to clean up the iTunes library by de-duplicating some of the excess tunes. I think it's a factor of the number of devices that get plugged into the Mac and sometimes upload their tracks to the main list.

A side effect was that the next time the iPod in the car was plugged in, it wanted to be reset to the new library. Fair enough, it would be far more convenient to listen to the Decemberists without 20 copies of 'Eli the Barrowboy' popping up during the play sequence.

I left the rebuild to run overnight and plugged the iPod back into the car today. Just one thing I hadn't expected. My old default "won't offend anyone" Norah Jones startup was replaced by an intense nosebleed inducing Hed Kandi mashup when the iPod first boots.

It doesn't look good at traffic lights playing filthy disco and bomb blast bass lines as a default selection.

I've decided to go with something far more mellow by the delightful Tiny Ruins instead. The video version above is a live acoustic guitar take of the piano and double bass version on the album. It's one of those albums to play all through with a quiet glass of wine.

There's another chain reaction from the iMac incident - I've noticed the number of sundry disk drives that have sprouted and should really be rationalised. Worryingly, I can remember eventually getting to the first Terabyte of data but nowadays that seems to be a minimum increment (gulp).

reset to London co-ordinates

I suppose there comes a point when I need to post another straightforward London picture. The type with a bus and a taxi in it.

A sort of punctuation that the holiday type gadding around is coming to a close for a while and more normal work type things will resume.

We've actually had a few trips around different parts of London over the last few days. One day I was back on the Air Line - which I discovered others had thought was some sort of hoax, although I can vouch for its authenticity, having made four trips on it now.

I know it is supposed to be a sensible way to cross the Thames, but it is also a good tourist type trip, especially if coupled with a look around the Dome and maybe a trip along the river on one of the fast Clippers.

Suffice to say we've done all of these things over the last few days, including noticing the changes at the Dome for the Paralympics, which was all signposted and had various entry gates ready for use.

Across at Royal Docks there were more gates and systems linked with the ExCel centre, and I must admit at one point to getting confused at a roundabout that had been coned and nearly started to go around it the 'French' way.

Oops. But I do know I am back in London.

Really.

spooks hunted in Autumn

Early in the year I re-watched some of the Spooks series, which had run its course and finished after its ninth (?) series. We joked at the time about whether they'd need to come up with a privatised version next and 'lo' it appears to be so.

It looks as if the initial premise of the new series will be an agent Samantha being hunted a la Jason Bourne - with a dash of Homeland surveillance.

An observation about Spooks was it's London-centric nature and I think the new series starts here, although the private enterprise spin of should make it easier to move to other locations.

We shall see - although it's slightly worrying that it is already being advertised as an Autumn show. I like to think we are still in Summer.

in which i replace the disk in the iMac

I had to open up the iMac to fix the disk problem.

Fortunately everything was backed up, although I've decided its about time to reset it to a clean image instead of just restoring all the programs that have accumulated on it.

Opening an iMac is relatively straightforward (don't try this at home etc.)

The screws are behind the screen glass, which is held on with magnets. I just prized a corner with a guitar plectrum and then gently lifted the glass out.

Then it's the aluminium body screen, which is held in with torq screws. There's also a screw underneath where the memory goes. Its a phillips.

The metal body can then be lifted off, exposing the LCD screen screws, also torq. Undoing them gets down to the innards, but the screen is also held by three ribbon cables, including a very tricky one.

I decided to unscrew just the one to the left of the centre and then kind of 'open' the screen like a page from a book. That meant I only needed to undo one of the three cables.

Then it's easy to get to the disk, which has a small thermistor stuck to it with tape and sponge. The actual disk is only clipped in and easy to remove.

Undo the screw mount, transfer to another drive and put it all back together again. I blasted it with canned air before re-assembly. It took me about 45 minutes and I decided to upgrade the old 1Tb disk to 2Tb whilst I was inside the case.

And now its back in business, albeit with a rather streamlined software selection.

triple agito

Back in and around London now, enough to notice that all of the Olympic logos have been removed from the roads and signs.

The other broader logos and signs for the Paralympics are still in place as well as appearance of the different logo for the next set of events. As I passed under Tower Bridge I spotted the new logo in place being made ready to be lowered into view.

I understand that Paralympics is a separate series of events and has its own identity, but it did seem slightly strange to have so much additional work to switch everything over, rather than perhaps having an amalgam for the two events.

It must have taken quite a team to wipe out all the olympic lanes and the embedded logos more or less overnight, ahead of the different preparations for the next set of Games.

More later, but after I've figured out why (a) the water upstairs isn't flowing from the cold taps (airlock?) and (b) whether I need to replace the hard drive on the iMac which has suddenly developed the click of death and refuses to operate.

bubbly and homeward bound

Back to the UK today, via the Ferry from Calais. We decided to take a somewhat meandering route from Épernay, rather than just hitting the A26. I'd already adjusted the seats in the back of the car, which gave us some extra space for - er - Épernay produce.

We did actually visit a couple of the champagne houses, Mercier and Castellane. They both do good tours of their caves but the feeling is quite different in each of them. Mercier is multilingual with a video show and laser guided train around the 18 km of underground tunnels where the champagne is stored. There's also a focus on the early marketing of Mercier through to the huge barrel hauled by 24 oxen from Épernay to Paris for the World Exposition. We were told that Mercier is the most consumed champagne in France.

The nearby Castellane tour is French language only and the visit through the caves and factory is on foot. It shows the whole process, from initial fermentation of the grapes, right through to the labelling and packaging of the finished product.

The two adjacent visits together build a complementary picture of the creation of champagne and also of the sheer scale of the underground caves where the bottles are stored at a consistent 10 degrees C, some 30 metres below the ground.

There's dozens of champagne houses in Épernay and many of the hillsides are covered in the vines of the three main grape types of Pinot noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier.

So what could we do other than use some of the newly formed space in the back of the car to convey some of the local produce?