It was probably to do with licensing, but the original Scandic-Noir version of Humans didn't get screened here in the UK.
I happened to watch it when I picked up a Canadian set of the DVD some time ago. The Canadian version is the original Swedish dialogue (or French) and English subtitles.
For a British audience the Swedish + subtitles would usually work well and grab a mid-evening audience on, say, BBC2 or Channel 4.
Instead, they are screening a UK-remake which I suspect is also destined for America. It is a well-filmed very similar storyline so far although the scene orders have been switched around.
I gather writers Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley from Spooks handled the adaptation, which keeps the parallel present day, but with robots. We also get known faces as some of the main roles.
The Scandinavian original starts with a woodland twisty road, a Volvo, lots of dark fir trees and a rainy, dark, dramatic incident. It's a quicker setup for one of the main early plot-lines.
The UK version starts with a scene similar to something from I, Robot, with lines of partially-clad pristine robots in a warehouse, but with a recognisable type of DIY shopping trolley.
The premise of these stories is no secret, with machines overtaking human processing speed and then being capable of human emulation.
'The singularity is near', is the premise, which goes back to the thoughts of von Neumann, Minsky and others in the 1950s, when the possibilities of clever artificial intelligence were first debated.
Ray Kurzweil attempted to plot the increase in AI ten years ago, predicting AI insect brain by around now, a mouse brain by 2020 and the human brain by around 2030.
I look back to the 'neats vs scruffies' arguments of artificial intelligence, where neat logic is all mathematically pure and scruffy is pragmatic.
Anything that starts with a human builder is going to have both neat and scruffy it (note the Swedish machine sports a 2012 USB socket), so we'll have to see how this version plays out in this 2.0 upgrade path of these hubots.
I was reading a post a few days ago about what and where to save things into the Cloud. This idea that all of our data can be secured in a vast database in the sky.
Like many, I do use the Cloud in its various forms for some things. Much of my music collection is stashed away in it and some of my videos, too.
But it's all stuff that is commercially available and relocatable.
I still back up my own stuff to my own system. Now I realise I'm probably extreme compared with many who might just take an occasional hard drive copy of their work in progress.
Here at rashbre central we've got spinning RAID arrays with redundant disk drives, so that if one fails then everything still works. On the backup system if two disks fail then it still works.
My first disk drives many years ago were when two hard drives might have held 30 Megabytes of data. That's less than a CD's worth of MP3 music nowadays. I seem to remember it seemed vast at the time, on TRS80 LDOS.
I'm told that the 26 million books of the US Library of Congress are about 10 Terabytes of data, so we've come a long way.
Today, as I replace a defective drive in one of the rashbre central RAIDs, I notice that it is designated as capable of holding around 6 Terabytes of data. That'd be over half the Library of Congress then?
But not really, of course.
This particular RAID has 5 of these 6 Terabyte units which could be a theoretical 30 Terabytes. With the safety duplication etc, I get about 16 Terabytes of storage from it and currently use about 40%. Forget about world libraries, that's just rashbre central.
True that this is just a backup unit and there's another one like it with the Active data on it.
Rebuilding the 30 Terabyte RAID whilst it was still running took about 25 hours. It was still fully usable, although the various flashing lights on it could be a little unsettling.
It's why I still prefer to keep my own data on my own systems.
Putting it out to the cloud and then needing to do some sort of recovery could be interesting.
I've no idea how long it would take or whether there would be some distant help desk telling me that I've used the wrong software or something. A bit like they attempt to do sometimes when I say I'm using a Mac.
I was checking the bike with its revised gears and temporary flat pedals today (Cranks Mallets).
I always keep close to base when I first take a bike out that I've adjusted.
Today I had the camera switched on, so come join this extract from my journey around the country lanes and some dedicated cycle track. I've added lightly edited Moody Blues soundtrack, which mysteriously came into my head and seemed to fit the relaxed sunshine.
I used to notice them frequently in Moscow, but now we seem to have a few on the London streets as well. Large black SUV cars with blue flashing lights.
I'm not talking about routine plain clothed police cars, which some how still give off an 'official' look, rather more the kind that have American style rectangular flashing lights and are from manufacturers less associated with police business in the UK. SUVs with names like Nissan Navara, for example, which was the one that passed me today.
In Moscow, there was a whole secondary market in fake police car lights to get through the maddening traffic. These so-called migalka were supposed to be for official purposes. I think the going rate to be backhander 'upgraded' to a VIP was about $10,000. The cars with these lights would then also use the wrong side of the road to charge down ongoing traffic in an attempt to get through jams.
Here, in London, I assume that the ones I've seen are official, although there's something that doesn't seem quite right. If it was embassy cars, you'd expect them to have diplomatic plates or at least CD stickers. If it's the Americans, the cars would be Chevrolets or something similar.
I know the police drive a wide variety of incognito vehicles, but there's usually a consistency to their extra lights. It makes these black vehicles stand out as different. I guess they are probably armed response or similar, but it is somehow puzzling.
Tuesday evening and along to Union Chapel, for an Amanda Palmer gig. Despite some attempt at pre-planning, I was late, missing the pre-gig build up and heading upstairs to the often less crowded part of the Chapel.
The show was just underway, although Amanda hadn't yet arrived on stage. This was to turn out to be a well-constructed three hour set, with Amanda and various friends on stage during different parts of the show. It opened with Perhaps Contraption as a riotous band filling the stage, rocking it to the rafters.
When the six-month pregnant Amanda appeared, she started unaccompanied with an Irish folk ballad, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, one that I don't remember hearing her sing before.
Then to work with the grand piano, mixing familiar songs from across her extremely varied catalogue. The show was also being beamed out live to patreon viewers and so there was a strange kind of twitter background as people offered song suggestions from far and wide.
About half way through, Caitlin Moran appeared for a reading and some banter with Amanda. Well-known writer Caitlin chatted humorously and with edge about their combined experiences.
Then more from Amanda, joined later on stage by Whitney Moses who dramatically noticed that Amanda was pregnant before joining her to cover Garfunkel and Oates song 'Pregnant women are smug'.
Three hours blasted past, with a warm and appreciative audience, including a finale with 'Leeds United', and creating the perfect excuse for the rest of her accomplices to rejoin the stage. A fun, raucous and entertaining evening.
The realisation that the London to Brighton bike ride is only a couple of weeks away has prompted me to further pedalling action. Tonight, I've slightly creaky legs from cycling. I describe it as the 'Spotty Dog walk' but get mainly mystified stares.
To explain, I decided to find a copy of an ancient episode of The Woodentops, which features Spotty Dog (the biggest spotty dog you ever did see) doing this walk. It's about six minutes into the video, which is like a strange soothing balm from another planet.
Relax with a cup of tea and a Hobnob marine of a biscuit to dunk whilst marvelling at this excerpt from slow television.
A fairly easy life-edit is to not bother to follow football/soccer.
I watch the occasional big game (in a half-hearted sort of way), but because I'm not in sales the rest is optional and leaves plenty of space for other things.
Recent events are re-inforcing my view of the racketeering of the whole industry, with the flow of bribes passing from one group of gangsters to the next in an orchestrated series of moves. I seem to remember writing a small item about the low-end of this back in 2006 - 'Bung' I recollect. This is altogether more industrial, with FIFA seemingly able to offer a mafia-like career progression for some of its more influential roles.
Learn the ropes as a bagman to the Don, before becoming his replacement. Set up a consigliere as operational fixer to manage decisions via a bunch of caporegime who handle the blocks of votes.
Sound familiar? It could be the Sopranos, or maybe it's the way international football is run nowadays?
The prior FIFA chief João Havelange and now Sepp Blatter appear to have presided over a global ring of money laundering, bribes and other corruption, mainly leveraged from the huge input financial streams of sponsors like Adidas, Sony, Visa, Coca-Cola and other household names.
As a quick check, I counted the recent list of FIFA indictments for some keywords...
launder = 25 times.
kickback = 26 times.
bribe = 116 times.
conspiracy/conspirator = 393 times
criminal counts = 47
Approximately, and yet I can't help feeling that this is only a part of the picture.
Back in Havelange's day he officially resigned on grounds of ill health, about the same time that his collapsed ISL company was being investigated for paying CHF 185 million in 'personal commissions' related to the World Cup.
Being a Swiss company, this form of commercial bribe was still legal at the time. It was also prudent to have another company or two like Sicuretta to allegedly skim the odd $50m with Ricardo Teixeira, his then son-in-law, for a rainy day. It was also handy that the ISL proceedings were cut short, although the exchange of a suspected further CHF5.5m to grease this was never proven.
In The Sopranos, there's an early episode when in poker Tony wins access to a 'civilian' buddy's sportsware business. They quickly order everything on credit, take delivery, steal it to sell cheap and then crash the company. These mafia plot-lines are simplistic and low key compared with what appears to be possible on the next rung of the ladder.
So if FIFA knew about Havelange's approach back in 1998, who was his closest man...Yes, you've guessed it. Herr Blatter. That would be the man who was determined to clean up, but perhaps he was speaking colloquially. And after 17 years has just said so again, along with a great Scorsese-esque line: I forgive but I don't forget.
But most of this isn't new news and people like Andrew Jennings have been reporting it for years. I suppose the hit on the wallet to the US IRS might be the reason for the latest attention?
Going back to the nature of an organised -er- crime syndicate, there has to be structure and it has to be constructed in a way to create co-dependencies. Support me or you go down as well.
Of course, I'm referring to The Sopranos here, there'd never be anything like it in FIFA.
I swapped the tyres over on the carbon bike. I've moved from 23mm to 25mm, which doesn't sound much of a difference but rather increases the comfort at little expense to the rolling resistance. Yes, the garage was filled with the heady aroma of sticky chilli compound from the Continental Grand Prix SP4000S Mark II. Would it be possible to have a much longer name for a bike tyre?
If I was a better cyclist then maybe the wider profile of this tyre (more rubber in it so heavier) would slow me down, but at my level it just makes the ride smoother.
I've also done some cassette juggling, moving the SRAM Red 11x26 to the Fulcrum Zero wheels which still have 23mm tyres and putting the 25mm tyres on the DT Swiss with the climber's kit 11x32 gearing (Phew!) There...it's like having two bikes for the price of one and a quarter. Swap the wheels and it's a different bike.
I have to mention the brilliant VAR tyre levers, which I've been using. They are easily the best I've ever used and make a sometimes annoying job into something where worrying about the placement of the tyre logo on the rim starts to take precedence over the chore of pinging the tyre into place.
I enjoy visiting Disney's parks. There's a sense of optimism that starts from the first moment. Some of it uses uplifting and familiar tunes, other parts are just the way the parks bustle joyfully, encouraging interactions with their happy inhabitants.
So I was intrigued to see Tomorrowland recently. It seemed like a reason to go to the BFI IMAX, on the roundabout by Waterloo.
And after a curious face-to-camera start with George Clooney, we soon dropped into the middle of the World Fair in 1960's New York.
I say that, but it was like wandering around in Disneyworld's Tomorrowland, parts of Epcot and the Magic Kingdom. The right backdrops, the right tunes. The Carousel of Progress playing "It's a great big beautiful tomorrow" and a trip in a water craft accompanied with "It's a small world after all".
I've noticed that Disney plays around with its opening logo credits and the version for this movie didn't have Cinderella's castle at all. Instead there was a series of other tall and often spiked buildings.
And kerpow, we were soon in and amongst them in a swirling and revolving multi dimensional world. We might have needed a vacuum-cleaner powered jet-pack to get there, but it all made sense in this story of an optimist and a pessimist.
Can we change the probability of outcomes? That is the question. Why revel in dystopian future outlooks, when a change of spirit could lead to a more attractive self-fulfilling prophesy?
We all know that old mantra 'every day in every way I am getting better and better...', so why make 'Death Planet IV: the revenge of Undead', and such similar narratives?
I don't generally watch the Marvel Comic type movies which rely upon goody vs baddy both vested with general purpose extensible super-powers. Tomorrowland has some of that going on, with a classic overlord portrayed by Hugh Laurie touting his British accent, idioms and sticky-up collars on his uniform.
There's plenty of gadgets, starting with the homely inventions of the 1960s and moving towards probability gauges that would go well in Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy. Actually at one point a robot in a store is wearing a tee-shirt with a partially concealed "Don't Panic" motif.
There's a predictability about the main good versus evil theme playing out and proper female role for Britt Robertson, playing Casey Newton. There's an added sparkle of the robot girl Athena (played by Raffey Cassidy), who acted as a sort of recruiter for optimists.
Being a Disney movie, there's a worked out tidy conclusion, which also provides some circle of life type moments. There wasn't really any political engagement with the projected futures, nor any real 'get out of Dodge' solutions towards 'save the world'. Probably way too much to expect from this kind of story telling, which has more of a 'like to teach the world to sing' kind of ending.
My slight niggle was that the end didn't some how return to the theme park, although we can spot little elements of it (like Space Mountain on the left here) in the future.
So, sing along with the Carousel of Progress, or watch the teaser below:
So there's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Just a dream away
The way in to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is past the statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds. On this occasion his paintbrush appears to conduct Conrad Shawcross' metallic tetrahedrons entitled The Dappled Light of the Sun. You need to walk right underneath this mighty work to sense its true effect.
The exhibition has run annually since 1769 and this time opens properly on Monday, but I had an invitation to the preview, which had a bit of a party atmosphere. I'm not sure, but I don't think they have alcohol flowing on the normal days, but I could be wrong?
Anyway, it's the show where well-known artists and regular members of the public have a chance to show work together. This year I think 12,000 submissions were sliced down into 1,200 exhibited works. They've gone for impact this year, with strident colours right from the entry staircase and amongst the enormous variety of works displayed in the various rooms. Altogether, there's about ten rooms containing the artwork, with each room individually curated.
There's a small guide book listing every piece, but I prefer to get the bigger catalogue, which doesn't have everything neatly arranged by number, but gives more of a sense of the whole show.
Even for the preview, it could get a little busy at times, although when it opens fully, there may well be lines along Piccadilly for the first few days, like in the RA publicity picture.
I like this exhibition and enjoyed wandering around.
There's plenty to look at, a few personal treasures to spot, a chance for some people spotting and *tsk* some good conversations to overhear.
I've decided to show a few of the pieces that caught my eye. You'll have to excuse that I took their pictures on my phone, to escape too much attention.
If you'd like a wider view, there's a gallery of some of the other early visitors, standing by various artworks here.
In my case, sometimes it's the smaller items like this woodcut from Eileen Cooper. It's called 'Crazy'. Judging from the little dots already on it, it would seem to be a popular piece. Eileen's exhibiting another lovely piece too, called Dancing and Solitude.
Then this one above, which, for me has a sort of London vibe, with the umbrella business and all. Looks like the City, on a windy and rainy evening. I need to check the catalogue though, because there doesn't seem to be any red in the painting, so it might be abroad somewhere?
Or how about something bigger? As ye sow shall ye reap: An allegory, by Prof Michael Sandle. This one below needs a ten minute pause to get ones head around...
And then there's something smaller but prismatically eye-catching. A sculpture in resin from Anish Kapoor. He of the big squiggly red Orbit at the Olympic Park.
I'd be looking out for something triangular, too. This fits the bill, although I can't help thinking it would be better in orange? But that's just me. Sorry, Alan Charlton (but I like it anyway).
There's a piece from Grayson Perry too, another of his rich tapestries. This one riffs off a quiet Essex theme, notice the detailing in the woman's charm bracelet. The three Essex seax are there, looking like scimitars. You can see the quiet sadness in the eye of the man, too.
And, there is so much more, but I'll have to stop.
Just these few items make a show in itself. If I return for another visit after it quietens down in 2-3 weeks, then I'm sure I'll have a whole other view point.
And meantime, here's a video with a few snips from the preview party. Spot the celebrities, who were out in force.
Today sees the publication of the Edinburgh Fringe programme, and one should be winging its way to rashbre central right now. Until then, I have to look at this picture of a stack of them on the floor in Edinburgh.
Of course, its possible to download a copy from here as well as to get the App, but the full experience really requires all 440 pages in the hand and a highlighter pen.
To make things slightly simpler, there's an excellent show on page 141.
But I would say that, wouldn't I?
Yesterday I tried out a new venue (to me at any rate), The Jetty, which is set along the River Thames, near North Greenwich tube, a five minute walk from the Dome.
Heartbreak Hotel is immersively set in a hotel, and after getting our check-in rooms (mine was 101), we made our way into the hotel lobby complete with bar and an area for snacks. Some of tables have telephones and it is possible to chatter to hotel staff on these house phones.
Then, at the appointed time, along with others, I was shown to my room, whose number 101 didn't escape me. Others left for another area and room 666.
Being a heartbreak hotel, we were led along a dingy corridor, before meeting an inspirational leader from A.C.H.E. who explained to us that whatever our problems were, we'd come out of the experience feeling better. I looked at the peeling wallpaper in the corridor and smiled as a second inspirationalist started talking to us from a jittery recording on a small television monitor, before about ten of us were led into one of the dimly-lit rooms.
It was one of those hotel-rooms that would do in an emergency, if you were, say, escaping from the law, or had all your money stolen. Although, it's fair to say that there were a couple of champagne flutes on one of the shelves.
And so the action started, as a couple entered the room, with the woman taking a similarly negative view of this rather over-used location. They were the first of some partly lost souls we met during the evening, whose all-too-human narratives and experiences overlapped in various ways.
I won't describe plot, except to say that I discovered we were on a sort of Möbius loop of a storyline, which played out across the various rooms we visited.
This was the first performance night for the show, and there were a few unintentionally rough edges. There was some clever atmosphere, with ghosts in the walls and a point where the connection from one room to another was via the wardrobes (although it should be said it was a simpler process than a Punchdrunk wardrobe in similar circumstances).
In some immersive productions, the audience can self select their routes around the environment. For Heartbreak Hotel, there was a predefined 'run on rails' routing from scene to scene, so once through the wardrobe, for example, there was no going back.
Oh yes, and being a hotel, with lots of bedrooms, one has to expect that there might be all manner of things occurring behind the closed doors. Oh yes. The trailer gives a few clues.
Being the preview, we witnessed a couple of glitches. In one scene a bed collapsed. Whilst dramatic, judging from the sound of breaking timber, I'm not sure that it was supposed to and the returning guest seemed to use superhuman effort to attempt to push it back together for the next version of that scene.
In another area, the sequencing stalled. We were in a large, dilapidated, communal tiled bathroom and had watched a variety of scenes including one where cocaine was chopped as two of the guests swapped remarks about their lives. Unfortunately, our extraction from this particular segment didn't occur and we watched it all again, except that the fella with the coke couldn't find it the second time causing some slightly ragged sequencing.
After the second playing of the segment (which also featured others passing through the room, including a mysterious and slightly panicked looking bell-hop), we were fast-forwarded through another distorted room, along a beach and up a stairway to what became outdoors at the end of the jetty.
Here we heard about the impact of the programme we'd been experiencing, its personal tailoring and a few words from a rebellious hotel-maid who had made it through the all of the steps.
What did I think of it? I wanted it to work, and willed it to be successful, but at the moment there are teething problems. Most of this is a matter of tightening the bolts on what I assume is still a preview.
I'll constructively mention a few things here, because it may help the production.
The hotel-like greeting at the ticketing works well and starts the mood.
The wind whipping against the structure of the Jetty creates a fairly unique ambience ideally suited to a Heartbreak Hotel.
The bar area needs sorting out. Not taking cash was a strange situation, even for a heartbreak hotel. The payment card machines were also erratic, and not in a good way.
The waiting time at the beginning could be made into more of the immersion. A few simple actions built into the pre-start could re-inforce the experience. Guests flamboyantly arriving, business with baggage, use of the phones. Some corny customer protocols like a hotel would improve this too and could ice-break the guests.
The confidence and assertion of the minor characters leading people around needs to be stronger. The guests are intentionally confused anyway, when being marshalled into 'blocks' to be moved into rooms and this could be slicker.
There needs to be some way to check that groups of guests don't get stranded (like we were) and effectively see the same long segment twice. Easiest is perhaps to ensure one group has entirely left before another one enters.
Scenes need a recovery mode, so that if something goes wrong, there is a way to reset. Maybe that just comes with time and practice of the scene?
Voice projection. Mostly this worked well, although there were a couple of times after things had apparently failed, when the voices became quiet, more as if the characters were unsure of their lines rather than as something done for dramatic effect. This can lose the energy of the production.
I realise that some of the above list could come across as negative. It's not intended to be; in the spirit of the show, as I said earlier, I'm willing it to be successful.
It takes a courage and ingenuity to try something as logistically challenging and I wish the cast, crew and staff every success as they hone this run, which lasts until August, I believe.
