Today

Today was a mixed day.

The weather was sunny and unusually warm at 21C. A lovely day to be outside. However, due to work I saw very little of it. Usually I would have time to sit outside in such weather at lunchtime, however, today I had to attend a lunchtime meeting. At least I got to cycle into work and back again in my t-shirt.

I think I managed to see the sunshine outside for about 10 minutes in the whole day. What a waste.

One good thing, though. A number of months ago, when OpenSolaris was initially released, I signed up for a free t-shirt. I had thought that as it hadn’t arrived by June that Sun had lost my order. Today it arrived! It only took about 40 days in the postage to get over from the ‘states. I might wear it tomorrow.

I think I must have fallen through a time warp…

Because there was nothing else on the box this evening I just had the Sunday repeat of “Top of the Pops” on and it seemed like it was stuck in some kind of late 70’s/early 80’s time frame.

In the top ten there are two early punk sounding songs, including the no.1 from Artic Monkeys which sounds very like early The Clash. Add to this a song from Goldfrapp with analogue synths in the same vein as early 80’s electro-pop, such as Depeche Mode (who are also back, apparently) and the Sugar Babes sounding more and more like a group from the Kim Wilde school and I think you get the picture.

Oh, and another surprise… McFly can actually play their instruments… and sing.. live. OK, their songs aren’t much cop (though far better than many at the moment and far better than Robbie Williams’ curent song writer), but hey, when they grow up they may even fix this. 🙂

Railway mania

A posting in the dpreview D50/D70 forum inspired me to return to Didcot Railway Centre to take more pictures after my original shoot in July 2002.

As it happens, today was a steam day and in addition the Flying Scotsman visited as part of an excursion it was pulling from Birmingham.

The resulting photos can be found here.

[Update]

OK, I think I should include one of the pictures as a taster…

Flying Scotsman and Earl Bathurst in steam.

Serenity

I’ve just returned home from watching “Serenity” at the Ozone Multiplex as Grim wasn’t available to see it on Thursday evening. All I can say is, “Oh, my God!” If you’ve not seen it already then do so.

It’s definitely a good film even if you generally don’t like SciFi, ‘cos this is definitely not your normal stuff. It’s hard edged, funny, harrowing and character driven with some action and space ships thrown in. What it isn’t is sugary Star Trek or hammy Star Wars or even “Sleeping in the Light” Babylon 5.

There’s not a lot I can say without giving spoilers, so I’ll wrap up by saying that it’s not only the character Mal who can be brutal and callous when he has to be, Joss Wheedon can be too. And no-one (except perhaps to a degree Kaylee) gets to live happily every after.

[Update]

I think that this review does a very good summary.