Twenty over five

You can never have enough handbags

This was my explanation to Little Miss R as wife took us on a fourth lap of the John Lewis Tula circuit. That’s the price you pay for getting to do anything you want. We spent longer doing “a quick bit of shopping” than we did at the cinema and that can’t be right; especially since shopping is inherently dangerous for the sleeping partner. If you’re a coward like me you have a stock of non-committal answers to the never ending stream of questions on the subject of “what do you think”; as if I’m going to fall for that.

No, I needed to be back with my GPS - who’d have thought you could spend fifty pounds on something cheap and tacky that turns out to be so much more? Never mind that I knew the way home, I just like being ordered around and there was a whole library of cheap television waiting for me at home.

I have a BT Vision box. From this it can be surmised I'm either astute in my television viewing, I find Rupert Murdoch's continual and cynical undermining of the BBC repulsive or I'm too tight to cough up for Sky. One cool service with BT is the large number of programmes 'on demand'; programming you stream over the net. BT uses your phone line whilst Virgin Media have a similar service over cable. I'm in awe that it works so well.

Thus I've been able to watch 20 episodes of The Office in less than five days - isn't technology wonderful? One day I had a crush on Pam, the next, somewhat disturbingly it was Angela and no doubt it’ll soon be Dwight;I mean, who wouldn't? From this it can be surmised I'm either astute in my television viewing, I need to get out more or I'm too tight to cough up for the cinema.

Send in the clown

Many years ago I found myself looking at a performance issue with a new version of software. Re-written from the ground up and in a newer version of the language, it was running much slower than the component it replaced. It turned out the problem wasn't the code but the interaction between the client and server process. With only a single thread of execution (it was that long ago) a disproportionate amount of time was spent with the client requesting and the server providing 'progress updates'. The change from significantly slower to significantly faster performance was achieved with the alteration of a single line; the client process would request a 'progress update' once every five seconds, rather than 20 times every second.

Over a dozen years later and I'm at it again, only this time I'm the 'single thread of execution' and the numerous task reminders popping up on my screen are the work I'm keeping in the air whilst I carefully inch forward; either that or an elaborate April fool. I feel a circus act, not entirely sure why, but certain I must.

Truth is beauty, beauty is... computer generated

I’m never sure of the relevance of how art is created, but I was pulled in by the knowledge that this video is entirely computer generated. Personally I’m drawn by the aesthetic, so after a few minutes of “that’s impressive” I was able to enjoy the art as a whole, the video supported by the use of a Michael Nyman score (who composed the music for Gattaca and Wonderland). However despite reading Alex Roman's explanation I don't really understand, I only know it is vast and I am touched with sadness; for it is beauty against which I am insignificant.

Online schizophrenic tweet

At one point I added a tweet feed if only to figure out how. "How" proved to be fairly straight forward, I'm having a problem with "why". Or maybe it's a problem with "how" do you find people you might be interested in following? I'm a little snotty with a method requiring such a short attention span and isn't the whole "follow a stranger" thing kind of wrong? Well obviously I'm doing this for research / everyone else is doing it / I'm desperate / I'm sad / I'm desperately sad / I have something unique to say...

Worse; over a month ago and for some totally inexplicable reason I created another account. I spent a long time setting one up, trying to find a unique name, which I still don’t like, created a background (because I'm like that) and then posted three tweets. I've still only posted three tweets. Is that the correct terminology? So that's two accounts; one under my 'real' identity, which hardly affords the unexpurgated truth - and one for an assumed character of some past historical figure. I had this notion of becoming urbane and witty but it's hardly original and a notion doesn't make you become so; it's there should I inherit the trait through accident.

So I'm back to searching on favourite films; The Fountain is a good start but Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind matches everyone on the planet. Better to search on some older classics; Now Voyager, The Browning Version, but I don't have the patience and my mind inevitably wanders. Isn't unexpurgated a terrific word?

Perfectly normal paranoia

In the spirit of enlightenment and in true socialist fashion I’m going to pigeon-hole everyone into one of the following groups:

1. Ignorance is bliss.
2. It might never happen and there’s nothing you can do about it.
3. It is going to happen and there’s nothing you can do about it.
4. Run for your lives.

For those who posit "there is something you can do about it"… do I really need to say where they belong?

It's then I remember:

You know, all this explains a lot of things. All my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was.

Thankfully I read this (or maybe saw the BBC series) at a young age and it helped explain those occasional moments in my life when it appeared the world around me was going to sh*t. Because as the wonderfully named Slartibartfast put it:

…that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.

The soundtrack of my life

So Before Sunrise and Reality Bites were disappointments, but in his defence he featured in a really great film, Gattaca. Admittedly Ethan Hawke isn’t the reason this film is so good but he deserves praise for not messing it up. Sometimes that’s enough; I, Robot for example was a huge let-down not through being bad, but because it could have been so much better. Gattaca delivered partially down to the story but I mostly remember the music. Michael Nyman composed the score for this and another great film, Wonderland. Two films with completely different subjects but alike with musical scores of such sadness; sorrow has rarely been so beautifully expressed. One film that of a clinically clean dystopian future, the other of a grimy depressing present; and I love them both – it must be down to my sunny personality. Not exactly the soundtrack of my life, but there's definitely a theme.

Shhh…

Against expectations I found time to watch Wings of Desire, but I needed a couple of strong coffees as I was feeling very tired. I’ll pay for that later. It was poetic, hypnotic and I liked the background; but if I were to make one criticism it would be the scene at the bar/lounge - too many words. I can’t think of another way to phrase that and I know it makes me sound like a Neanderthal, an opinion that will be hardened when I mention another film with the same problem; Before Sunrise. In all other respects it’s an unfair comparison since it was one minor quibble of a film that was otherwise excellent; whereas Before Sunrise, consumed with its own importance, was self indulgent crap - though I’ll bet fans of Dawson’s Creek loved it.

Ouch, that sounds a bit harsh doesn’t it? It’s the last film I can remember not watching to the end. I’m fanatical about such things, even complete rubbish, so I must have had some kind of allergic reaction to stop after less than half an hour. But hey, I’ll be magnanimous, I’ll give it a second chance, I just pray that at some point Ethan Hawke pauses for breath. It was the second time he’d let me down, having gone to see Reality Bites at the cinema and being tempted to walk out after – oh – about thirty minutes. Annoying, but I’d paid good money (whatever that means) so I endured the tale of obnoxious-little-jerk meets girl, obnoxious-little-jerk wins girl; I guess it was back in the days when being an obnoxious little jerk was – like – cool – yeah?