Greg Rutter's Second Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced

A wonderful lost of some of the most populat memes and viral content. http://www.youshouldhavealsoseenthis.com/

From Kath

Input Out

I stopped subscribing to the Economist a year ago, a lack of time (and money), meant I wasnt really getting any value out the subscription. Since then every so often they send me a copy of intelligent life, which is a nice magazine, though I would not buy it (unless someone hands me a big pay rise).

There were afew stories which caught my eye, first was the history of news. The permese is we live in a post news age where news escencially propogates across television and the internet, repackages by various sites. Where PR agents and publisists essencially procuce the news news. An example of this is Newsbeat on Radio one which is so short it escencially a few sounsd bites, or single view of news.

I find it all very depressing that we seem to have shrugged off journalism in favor of sensationalism and populism. Everytime I log into my hotmail account I get to see the joys of MSN, view the awful slide shows of the X best / worsed cars / dressed / some other fad.

On Some Faraway Beach

Had to work yesterday which was something of a pain. Our American developer was over in the UK so we met in a meeting room at the Britannia hotel in Offerton. I had been dreading it but it was actually a very productive and useful day. Our ex developer joined us to go over some work, being in the same room was very helpful.
Afterwards we went to the pub so Martin could catch the West Ham game, I stayed for the first half, but wanted to get back to watch the Rugby.
England were at times exciting to watch scoring the only try. Unfortunately as usual they were ill disciplined and gave away stupid penalties. Ending in a frustrating 12-10 loss to France crowning them as a Gran Slam winners.
Phil and Caroline came round for a drink and a chat. The had been out for an Italian meal in Poynton, sounded very nice.

Pi Day

Yesterday was Pi Day (at least if you write the date in American format MM DD YYYY) 3142010. In celebration Martina invited me round for dinner, and some of her apple pie. It was very tasty.


We chatted a lot about searching for jobs, the dishonesty of recruitment consultants, and the general insanity of the job market.

isn't that worth fighting for, isn't that worth dying for

I had a night of films this evening. Starting with a release from last year I watched Pandorum. It is a tense psychological thriller set on board a spaceship. I liked the idea, of the characters waking up with no memories. The cinematography was brilliant, but the pacing was a bit off the characters running to save the ship from nuclear disaster.

Next up was the 2003 release, Matrix Reloaded. Rather like the Phantom Menace, I couldn't wait to see it when I did though I walked out disappointed. I forgot how ridiculous the Freeway scene was. It is amazing was so over the top, I cant imagine even David Cameron would actually build several miles of Freeway at several million per mile just to create a scene.

I remember reading a review after the Matrix said the directors saw Charlies Angels. They believed that it copied the Matrix so much, it made them wan to make a film which couldn't be copied. Which they did really no one has tried to do bullet time on such a scale as say the scene where Neo does battle with the Frenchman's henchmen. I guess it was that overambition that lets the Matrix sequels down. There were so many ideas and they tried to explore so many of them that ultimately you end up with unintelligible scenes like Neo meeting the Architect.

The final film of the evening was from the end of the 90's ExistenZ. One thing I really notice now when I see a film from the 90 is that unlike today the actors look a bit more like people rather than looking like the spend their lives in the gym. ExistenZ explores the ideas of alternate realities, how our reality is defined by our mind. The Matrix tried the same thing but I think David Cronenberg takes it to the depths.

Zeppelin

Finally got the my blog ported to blogger website. It has been a bit of a journey, I still need to upgrade the template and change a few more settings. You might also notice that the URL has changes from http://www.johncooke.info/blog to http://blog.johncooke.info Thats he way blogger want it to be set up.

Had a few issued with the feeds over the few days, just in case anyone subscribes via RSS the feed name has changed so please update your settings.

For now I am staying with blogger I want to see what I can get out of it, and switching to wordpress presented a while different set of problems.

Beautiful day without you

As you might have notices blog has moved (for the time being) to blogger.com so I now have the wonderful (sic) blogsearch and next button displayed at the top, cheers google. I am debating whether to switch to a self hosted Wordpress installation or not, the URL shouldn't change again though.

Not much been happening recently, I am something of a cash flow crisis at the moment, have to watch every penny until I can get things turned around, of lots of nights spent at home, or at the gym.

Kath has arranged to make the journey here over Easter. I cant wait to see her again, we speak everyday on Skype or the phone but it is a pale imitation to being with her. I usually send her pictures of my dinner so she can ensure I am taking care of myself. Fortunately my culinary skills have improved greatly since I moved out. She has become one of the most important and precious things in my life, the pain of separation is well worth the moment we spend together.

Workwise I have been working hard, did a massive update on works website last night which actually appears to have worked quite well, hurrah. I despair at my company though, how so much effort can give so little return, and the same mistakes can be allowed to be repeated just boggles my mind.

I cant believe how petty some people out there are, in the last couple of months evertime I put out my paper recycling bag for collection, when I return home the bag is gone. Now I can believe once that it blew away, but this week there wasn't any wind on Wednesday. Which means either one of my neighbours thinks its funny to steal or, or worse they are so weak minded that they think its better to steal than contact the council. Newsflash, one phonecall to the rather nice sounding lady at the council office and they will give you a new one, they are already costed into the council tax bill FFS!

Triangle Walks | Video

Triangle Walks | Video

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