It’s not immediately after the DSEi but it is after. So here is the story of yesterday:
Arriving on the docklands light railway to the ExCeL exibition I was surrounded by serious looking people in suits. As we got off the train, a passenger on the train at the platform opposite shouted ‘YOUR WORK IS DEATH’ just as the doors on his carrige closed. There was an incredible police and security presence and that was all I saw of protesters all day. In the queue to go through the four levels of security checks, there was a banner advertising sniper bullets. It had a picture of a beer mat that had been shot four times at a distance of 1.2km. Seems the protester on the train was right!
So I wandered round the excibition for the rest of the day, checking out the competition and looking at pistols, knives, sub-machine guns, mortars, grenades, millitary swords, sniper rifles, cruise missiles, remote controlled mounted machine guns, all kinds of vehicles and many other weapons. Death certainly was the order of the day. There was some very cool communication and intergration technology on display too, which I really enjoyed looking at. I also got to heaft a sub-machine gun on the Heckler and Kosh stand, it was heavier that I was expecting!

The people there were almost as interesting as the stands, millitary looking people from all areas, Pakistan, South Africa, Canada, Switzerland, to name but a few. People in uniforms too, navy, army, police and ambulance. All in all it was a combination of very cool and slightly scary.

The food wasn’t great either.

Today I am going to DSEi which is a defense exhibition in London.
That’s defense as in military not as in self.

Anyway, I’ve got mixed feelings about it, on the one had I’ll be excited to see all the technology and to see where my company fits in the grand scheme of things. On the other hand I’m slightly nervous because there will be people protesting the event.
I’ve checked the protesters plans and they are peaceful, which is good. Personally I don’t think they could be anything but really, if you’re protesting agains violence and war then any violence on your part completely destroys your point. Ironically I completely agree with the protesters, the arms trade seem to be a bad idea most of the time.
Anyway, I’m hoping that I’ll see nothing of it, seeing as their plans are to chain themselves to the carriges of the underground (inside of course). Given the terrorist bombings of not so long ago, I can’t really see the police allowing people to hang around on the tube chained up for ages.

Well we’ll see, I’ll let you know how it went when I get back.

Films have many amazing effects these days, but there are two (as of today) that are causing me concern.
The first one is people falling down the stairs. Now I’m lucky enough to have never actually fallen down the stairs myself, I don’t know anyone that has and I’ve never even been told first hand of someone that has. So my problem is: how dangerous is falling down the stairs???
The movie portrayal of it can vary wildly from being a bit of a cheap laugh to instant death. This bothers me, and has done for some time, but has never stuck me as being enough to warrent a post all of its own. Which of course brings me to…

The second, this is nose bleeds. Not the protrayal in this case, but the exection. How do they actually do it! There stands actor/actress (obviously they can be sitting or lying too), and then, a small trickle of ‘blood’ comes out of their nose. I can quite easily imagine that in some cases this effect is acheived by doing a close-up of a fake nose and then everything becomes easy. The thing that bothers me is when it’s not a close-up, I really can’t imagine that the actor/actress has tubing going up their nose. Do they just get some fake blood up their nose somehow and then quickly yell ‘action’ before it starts to dribble out again? Do the method actors go to the extreme of getting high blood pressure and taking up heroine to weaken the inner walls of their nose sufficiently so that they can have a nose blood ‘on cue’?
No, the problem is flummoxing me to the extreme and the more I think about it, the more I want to delve into the problem.
If you know how these are done, please sate my curiousity before I get angsty.

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*ding* (cheesy smile)

Speed cameras on the motorway are stupid. In towns speed cameras are deffinately a good idea when well placed, but on the open motorway it is not speed that causes accidents. It is my belief that tailgating, or following too closely, is what causes accidents on the motorway.

So here is the idea, a camera that catches and fines drivers that are following too closely. Thought needs to be put into this idea however, a simple measure of distance between cars would lead to a lot of false fines during a traffic jam for example. A measure of time between cars instead would work, when learning to drive I was told of the ‘two second rule’ whereby the time between the car in front passing a stationry object by the side of the road and you passing the same object should be two seconds. With the modern cars of today and the need to be realistic about the number of people fined, I would suggest that a gap of one second should suffice for the safety camera.

So thereit is, in a nutshell. The only thing now is to think of a decent name for it. Speed camera does roll off the tongue so well.

I have had, in my time, some pretty good ideas. At least in my opinion. Now seeing as I don’t have the drive or the inclination to actually follow them through.

So the idea is to release the ideas into the world in the hope that perhaps someone else will make use or take inspiration from these thoughts.

Well it’s been quite a while since my last post!!

Some reasons that may or may not sate your desire for explinations:

My main computer is currently monitor-less as the monitor I have is all packed up ready to be exchanged under warrenty. It’s been in that state for over a week now which is really rather frustrating. Viewsonic have promised that it’ll arrive either today or tomorrow, but I must admit I’m slightly sceptical.

Changing broadband providers has not been quite as smooth as I’d hoped. The switch over happened on wednesday and I still haven’t got my new connection working. With a little luck I’ll be able to fix it this evening, now that I have apparenly vital IP addresses to enter into my router.

Lazy.

Busy.

Spent an enjoyable weekend in Loughborough.

Lazy.

That about sums it up!

Yesterday I took a drive to an area called Virginia Water, with the intention of taking some photos. Picturesque place is Virginia Water. In an attempt to be prepared I took all three of my lenses. Including my super long lens. My thought was that perhaps I’d be able to take pictures of some wildlife. Seems that the wildlife of Virginia Water had a memo about this, and had constructed a plan. The plan was this.

Pose.
Wait, until Rob is nearly ready.
Run.

Every rabbit and every squirrel had recieved this memo an acted on it with skill. Finding the perfect pose, in the ideal early evening light, waiting. Nibbling a nut or twitching a nose, these animals were teasing me!!!

Still, at least I had a relaxing walk.

Well last night I watched the ‘pilot’ of the hit US TV drama Lost. Although to be honest I don’t think it was a pilot in the normal sense of the word. By this I mean, they didn’t create a realistic airplane wreck with explosions and collapses, and they didn’t go out to a big ol’ jungle type island and film lots of exiting things on the offchance that it’d be taken up by a TV company.
No I think of it as more of a feature length introduction.

That’s not the point, the point is WOW I can see my self getting quickly addicted to this series!
Several times while watching I was think ‘Oh no don’t go cheese on me this is getting good’. Everytime they did NOT go cheese, instead leaving vital factors to the imagination.

What’s that? You need an example?
O.K. right at the end of the first episode you see a vauge reflection in a pool of a dead guy in a tree. The characters see it too and all look up. ‘How does something like that happen?’ Asks one of the characters (or words to that effect I can’t remember exactly).
Do they pan up to cheesy effects?

No they cut, end of episode.
What happens? Indeed what did happen? Immediately you want to know more. Genius!
Almost as genius as me making the point but without giving away any of the plot 🙂

At the weekend I encountered a spider of hideous size on the landing. This is real world by the way, not World of Warcraft.

FEAR!

It’s not that I’m phobic about spiders or anything, indeed up to a certain size they don’t really both me at all. However as they get bigger I get more and more apprehensive around them.
It could and probably would be argued that fearing spiders in Britain makes no sense, seeing as there are no dangerous one’s around. Even the biggest (that haven’t been imported) are pretty small in the global spider scheme of things. I don’t even have a good fearful childhood memory to justify my fear. Unlike with dogs; my dad got bitten by a dog when I was very small (roughly five if I had to guess).
Anyway, this spider. Huge. I’m talking the size of a grape. With legs that could possibly feel slightly cramped if it were at the bottom of a pint glass. (Well you think of a better way of describing it!)
I took the normal course of action, tried to sweep it up into a dustpan and throw it out the window (if you want to live and thrive and all that). Unfortunately it jumped out of the pan before I got near the window and scuttled behind a chest of draws in Mikes room (who is yet to move in).
I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and left it there, carefully closing the door behind me. It may die of starvation there. Or it may catch some moths.

I hope it catches some moths because they are really annoying. In fact I’m becoming convinced that it’s because of moths that I’ve got a large hold in the elbow of one of my favourite jumpers.
And before you leap to the defence of moths, I know that it’s not the actual moths, but the larvae they lay that eats cloths.