Monthly Archives: January 2006

Movies & TV

Chocolate and Spirits

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We had a bit of an odd mix of entertainment tonight. We started off with the recently released Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which I picked up on DVD this week, and then went straight from that into the spooky first episode of the new series of Sea of Souls on BBC1.

Amazingly for someone who reads as many books as she does, Beth has never read the book although I suspect she might be picking up a copy now. To be honest I can’t remember if I’ve ever actually read the novel, but I do know the play having appeared as an Oompa-Loompa in a production when I was a good deal smaller!

We both thought the film was fantastic, and as far as I can tell, stuck closely to the plot of the book, unlike the previous movie version. (Wikipedia has details of the differences between the book and the two films.) We thought Johnny Depp was excellent as Willy Wonka himself, producing a decidedly eccentric character, right from the first time you see him, just after the welcoming puppet show catches fire. You also get the impression really doesn’t much like children! The film is filled with small details and gags, such as the 2001 homage in the TV room, and the way Wonka quite frequently walks into the door of his glass elevator. Some of the jokes are pretty quick, blink and you’ll miss them, such as what Wonka does when Veruca Salt’s father gives him his card. There is also a moment when the elevator is taking them through the factory when Wonka says “and this is our puppet hospital – it’s pretty newâ€? as an Oompa-Loompa wheels one of the burnt puppets from earlier into shot. I’m sure with just one viewing we’ve missed some of the visual jokes, so I guess we’ll have to watch again to see if we can spot any more.

Sea Of Souls - Series 1 [2004]
Sea Of Souls - Series 2

Sea of Souls of course was totally different. I’ve blogged before about how much we enjoyed the second series, however with the format change this year, going to one episode stories rather than the two part stories we’ve had before, I wasn’t sure if it might not end up rushed. I’m glad to say that we weren’t disappointed by this first episode. It kicks off with two recently bereaved parents holding a seance to try and contact their dead son. However things go wrong, and the husband is thrown back against a wall and says he thinks something came up from the table into his mouth when questioned by the team at the parapsychology unit of Clyde University. The team think he’s probably suffering from some mental illness brought on by the bereavement, however then things start getting really weird. The couple is visited by Police, who have CCTV footage of the man visiting a local college, where he had been reported as a peeping tom, looking in a window. However he remembers nothing, and thought he was at home the whole night. He also starts to get flashbacks of somebody else drowning in a locked car. As the episode goes on he switches personalities several times, and it seems that he has been possessed by the spirit of a criminal, murdered by his partner in crime, and who has come back for revenge. Really spooky stuff, and well up to the standard of the previous series. Both previous series are available on DVD, and if you’re new to the show are recommended for getting the back story, as this series seems to jump straight in.

Cars

Fixed Under Warranty

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The Volkswagen dealer fixed the problem with the indicator light under warranty today. When I collected the car at lunchtime (sadly not cleaned this time) the service assistant said that it was pretty unlikely to have been a bulb, but they had to let me know that it could be a chargeable item if it was. In this case they replaced the whole indicator module.

Now the only mystery to solve is quite how the radio keeps retuning itself to 210FM whenever the car goes in to the dealer. Do they have a deal with the radio station or something? 😉

Politics

What a Difference a Few Hours Makes

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So only a few hours ago I was writing about the current crisis in the Liberal Democrats, and then within hours it has all changed.

Both yesterday and today, Kennedy was going to stick it out, and let the members decide, and the real prospects for a new leader were all remaining loyal, offering the prospect of a total unknown as the opposition put forward by the rebel MP’s. Then this afternoon, Kennedy did what ultimately is probably best for the party, and during a dignified and statesman like press conference stood aside.

Sir Menzies Campbell is now acting leader, and has put his name forward for the leadership election. There is talk that nobody will stand against him, but I believe that would be a mistake, certainly I would be keen to see Simon Hughes put his name forward.

However, I think the words of Lembit Opik sum up what a lot of people are thinking at the moment:

Unfortunately some fellow parliamentarians felt it was in their gift to force him out without an all-member ballot…

It has been divisive, and I have got some very strong words to say which I will now share quietly and privately, about the performance of some of my colleagues.

They have violated the values of some of the party, and crucially they have given the impression their words and their views are more important than the electorate which chose him in the first place.

And that, I do not think, was very constitutional.

And Alex Salmond, leader of the SNP has also been quick with his response:

Charles Kennedy confronted his problems and appealed for support – but his MPs have responded by knifing him in the front.

Julius Caesar was better treated by Brutus than Charles Kennedy by his colleagues.

My only hope now is that the party can be pulled together and get back on track pretty quickly, and can put this behind them – rather than this being the start of a slow slide into Conservative style arguments and quick change leaders. Certainly a look at the comments on the BBC News Have Your Say show a large number of people who are just as disgusted with the treatment of Kennedy as the person I know who is considering their membership. There is a lot of work to do to get back on track, fingers crossed it can all get done and it’s not another eight decades before the Liberal Democrats get another good result.

Computers/Technology, Pictures

Shozu Support Round 2

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After my first exchange with the Shozu support team yesterday, I wasn’t expecting a reply until next week. However I was most surprised when a reply popped into my inbox early this afternoon, together with another nice e-mail from Andy Tiller.

Anyway, Gerard, the support person confessed to being mystified as to why it wasn’t working, and made some more suggestions, again none of which worked. However alongside this I did some more experimenting, one experiment being to use my PDA to download the relevant files, both of which came down without a problem, despite using the same connection on the phone.

I also succeeded in getting the Shozu application installed, but it produced an error on it’s first screen because it didn’t have unrestricted access to the internet, despite my having given it the highest settings available. All of this rang a few bells with issues we’ve had at work with getting .Net applications to work – basically weird behaviour for no apparent reason.

After this I did some digging around the Mobile Java sites, and also took a look at Beth’s Sony Ericsson phone too. The main difference proved to be buried deep in the internet settings, on the Java Certificates page. On Beth’s phone, she had certificates from GeoTrust and Thawte, whereas I had just the one – marked SonyEricsson. I’m now pretty certain that this is the source of the problem, as a looking at the .jad file that Shozu uses reveals that the application is signed, so the Download Failed error is actually somewhat misleading – in actual fact the signed file has failed validation, and it is this same problem that is stopping the manually installed copy running too.

At this point I thought I’d see about manually installing the certificates myself – as both the required certificates are available from the relevant sites. Both were recognised by the phone when I transferred them, but both only installed into the trusted certificates folder, without appearing in the Java certificates. A bit more reading and I found the answer in this SonyEricsson support posting:

As specified in MIDP 2.0, it is not allowed to download new root certificates to the device. New root certificates can only be added to the phone at production/customization. A firmware upgrade of the phone can include new root certificates specified by Sony Ericsson.

So, if at this point you’re wondering why my phone doesn’t have the relevant certificates, if they’re so common, you might like to take a read of this blog entry I posted last June – basically O2 were sending out K750i’s that wouldn’t connect to the internet, so faced with not having the phone, or replacing the firmware, I de-branded the phone and installed the standard, fully working firmware. However it looks like the firmware image I used to fix the phone was lacking the relevant certificates, so in order to get it to work, I need to find a firmware that includes them, or the relevant customisation file – neither of which I can find.

Anyway, since re-flashing the phone costs €10 a go, and currently aside from Shozu everything else works fine (indeed I can still upload pictures from the phone to Flickr – just via the Mac instead) I won’t be loosing much sleep over it, just one of those things I guess. Having said that, it will probably be a bit of a disappointment to Andy Tiller who aside from his e-mail, also looked me up on Flickr. Although there is now only six months to wait until I’m due another phone upgrade anyway, and by that point the fantastic looking SonyEricsson P990 will be about. 🙂

MobLog, Pictures

FTSE 100 Company Brought to a Halt by Calendar

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Yesterday, in a scene that I guess was repeated all across the company, our floor was temporarily brought to a halt by the arrival of the company 2006 desk calendar.

The design has gone over a couple of revisions in recent years, and for the past two has been a tri-fold card with a series of small pictures of various aspects of company business, that slotted easily into a triangular structure to sit on the desk.

2006 Calendar

This year we had a new design, with a glossy panoramic shot of one of our wind-farms on one side, and the calendar on the other. There was also a helpful bit of double sided tape already attached to one end to roll it into a tube.

This of course produced the intelligence test that brought people to a halt whilst they tried to work out which way it was supposed to go together – dates out, or wind farm… In fact it was quite amusing as people came back watching them experimentally roll it one way, and then the other. Needless to say that there were a few people trying to mount the calendar up in such a way as to see both.

Channel 9 Guy Visits Windfarm

Having said that, the nice panoramic shot did give me an opportunity to have a bit of fun with my Channel 9 Guy – although the fact that he is casting a shadow over the wind-farm behind is a bit of a giveaway – as is the corner of the slip case for my PDA on which he is sitting.

Incidentally, if you’re in the market for a calendar, I spotted that Firebox are importing the classic Despair Calendar from the US. Along with twelve of the best of the motivational poster send ups produced by Despair Inc it also includes a vast selection of notable dates, like December 23rd 1690, when astronomer Royal John Flamstead made the first recorded observation of Uranus, thinking it was a star. However it wasn’t until almost one hundred years later, on March 13th, 1781, that the planet was actually ‘discovered’ by William Herschel. Certainly something to keep you entertained for the next year.