Peter Howard is Wintermute, mythologist

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

31December2005 [directLink] [movies]

Saw Narnia with the cousins yesterday; the kids all enjoyed it so they’re obviously doing something right. But a few things bothered me… The actual realisation of the world of Narnia was spectacular; I thought it captured the world and its creatures really well. And in doing that, it appealed to all my good memories of Narnia.

BUT… As an adaptation of a book, it was pretty terrible. Sure, it kept all the major plot points, and didn’t take liberties with the story or its meaning, which I appreciated. But it relied on the viewer to have read the book, or at least to have seen the old BBC mini-series. Huge chunks of dialogue were glossed over or cut completely, and then referred to later as if they had been there. And characters appeared without introduction, on the assumption that the viewer knew who they were supposed to be. The problem, of course, is that many people, like myself, haven’t read the books or seen the old adaptations in a very long time. This can be relied upon to make a not-entirely-faithful recreation, but not to fill in the gaps in storytelling.

So in terms of storytelling, not a very good adaptation. The casting was very well done though; the kids were at least passable — or not annoying anyway. The creation of magical creatures was good for the nostalgia, but, particularly in the battle scenes, seemed a bit much like stock-standard fantasy-adventure special effects. Though the effects in the old BBC version were nowhere near as good, they captured the mystical nature of Narnia far better. The army in the BBC version was full of mystical creatures: driads, naiads, fauns, centaurs and more; but other than some (very cool) centaurs, this version’s army seemed full of people with funny-looking faces in standard fantasy armour. (A brief glimpse of a centaur wielding two swords — as he didn’t need one hand free to steer his horse — looked very amazing - fantasy done right.)

Anyway, it also got me thinking about the recent (big) fantasy movies, Potter, Narnia, and Lord of the Rings, all of which _required_ the viewer to have a decent understanding of the original material… They’ve only worked because the original materials have large, and somewhat rabid fanbases. What I’d like to see is some fantasy that doesn’t assume the viewer knows the background! The makers can assume some knowledge: having seen or read Potter and LotR, a viewer will know certain fantasy conventions… But I want to see fantasy movies made from wholly original material, and/or from more obscure fantasy material, that doesn’t expect the viewer to read up on the background stories first.

Updates

29December2005 [directLink] [personal]

Am currently in England with Jenni and David and the cousins. Didn’t get all the editing finished on my project before leaving, but had lost inspiration in the last couple days and didn’t want to lug the laptop around, so will finish it off when I get back to Reims — have a couple days, it’ll work fine…

Christmas here was good, but rather English, and thus, foreign to me. It’s been worth it though, having always wanted an ‘English’ Christmas. No snow here, but still the possibility that it’ll come. The ground outside is white with frost anyway.

Have also been working on a redesign for the site. Am not sure I even want to change it, mainly because the rather neutral colour scheme works really well with the randomly-loaded banner photos. A change will mean having only a couple of images with colour schemes to match… Anyway, have some basics uploaded here. Don’t click any of the links, I haven’t built any other pages… Also just reproduced the text from the last ?bits post; it’s not loading from the database just now.

Casablanca

19December2005 [directLink] [movies]

All I can say is: the is the first ‘classic’ I’ve _ever_ seen that I’ve actually enjoyed. Entertaining, and well made. Though I had to cringe every time they dropped another oft-quoted line.

On top of all the classic quotes, was some interesting dialogue in there about the war - around the whole question of whether or not one should get involved. Also really liked the way they put together a bar full of outcasts.

Wow. I’m surprised, really. Am glad though, as I can’t keep disagreeing with people’s estimation of ‘classic’.

Search Term Spam

17December2005 [directLink] [search]

Time for some more bizarre and completely irrelevant search terms; these are just some of the ways people have found my site in the last couple months:

• harry potter philosopher stone movie cathedral crypt (there wasn’t even a cathedral in that movie?)
• anchorage history mural
• what to wear in winter in europe (shorts and a t-shirt, duh)
• hate microsoft (no I don’t)
• the jedi order europe (obviously, this was not the site he was looking for)
• the flu may mutate (and indeed it may)
• welsh morality
• charlie and the chocolate factory slash
• poem xiv (real specific)
• confused barcelona
• romantic sunset silhouette
• pride and prejudice script 2005 (note that I’m just confusing the search engines even more, this is a term that came up months ago, but now with ‘2005’ tacked on the end)
• renewing an expired carte de sejour
• eating inside buckingham palace (what the?)
• christmas celebrations in pais vasco traditions clothing rituals food etc
• and best of all,
  geekiest people

Crazy stuff… though what’s scarier is the terms that actually match things: I get lots of hits to my ‘Hi! I’m an Introvert’ essay, some of which came from people actually searching on ‘hi i’m an introvert’, or even ‘undoing introversion’… But, why would anyone go typing that into a search engine?

Public Schooling, Religion, A Manifesto

17December2005 [directLink] [myth]

a few thoughts on public schooling… a lot to do with religion and state stuff

1. public schools SHOULD NOT promote ANY religious values/teachings. They SHOULD, however, teach basic ethics (preferably as a separate class, as well as worked into the syllabus). They should also teach Philosophy, and ‘Religion’ as an overview of world religions — possibly as an offshoot/sub-section of Philosophy.

2. Religious schools should teach their own Religion/Belief System as an individual subject. They should ALSO teach Philosophy, containing material on world religions and Ethics (independent of religious systems). Further, they should be FREE to modify ALL individual subjects taught based on their Religious beliefs. Parents should know/easily be able to find out what a school’s religious stance is, and how that may vary from the ‘public’ syllabus.

3. There are two main subject areas I see being affected, potentially dramatically, by such policy: Science (particularly in regards to little-e ethics, and evolution) and Sexual Health. The State should NOT control what is taught, but SHOULD set basic humanist standards for public schooling. In regards science: this would mean a class should be taught the scientific theories along with their shortcomings, and the basic ethical discussions. A religious school should be free to condemn embryonic stem cell research in a science class, with (necessarily) follow-up in a Religion class. A public school should cover the ethical issues, and may cover religious objections. It is important that in a science class, the public school shouldn’t dismiss ethical concerns.

And in the case of sexual health: a public school SHOULD teach about disease and the various options available, but should NOT assume abstinence (in fact, it should probably assume that its students are experimenting, and should educate against worst-case-scenarios). A religious school SHOULD be free to assume abstinence, and leave teaching other sexual health scenarios to individuals and their families (the families of course knowing what the school teaches).

//this is all predicated on my basic belief that the government should fund ALL education EQUALLY, regardless of whether a parent chooses to send their child to a public, private, or sectarian school. Thus, if a parent doesn’t like what is being taught in a public school, it shouldn’t be difficult to transfer to a school with shared beliefs.

And related, any government-funded or -sponsored public awareness campaigns should work from _very_ basic ethical expectations, with respect for Religious beliefs. This would mean they should fund abortions as a public health issue, but should not actively promote them. Nor should the government declare abortions immoral. There should however, be more debate about the ethics of abortion (taking into account all parties: particularly the mother and the unborn child), without making explicit religious assertions.

Essentially, the state should be agnostic and humanist. ANY state-controlled education should be agnostic. (Atheists of the sort that are just as bad as fundamentalist christians should just go to private schools with shared beliefs). And it’s really important: all education options SHOULD be funded equally by the State. Obviously there’d still be private schools with significant fees, and facilities to match, but it’d also mean sectarian interests would be able to establish schools running at similar costs to public schooling, thus not costing the community nor families anything extra.

My Snow Coloured Dreams

15December2005 [directLink] [personal]

The year in France is coming to its end, and Reims is getting quiet. The five Aussies just had a week of ‘lasts’ - our final week all together in Reims. Two of the girls have now left for their Christmas holidays, one leaves tomorrow, and one Saturday. I’ve now done coffee out for the last couple days; everything is feeling very final. One day left and I’ll be left here alone, with another five days here before I’m off to England for Christmas.

The finality is really sinking in now, provoking a rash of introspection. My head has emptied and been refilled multiple times in the last week — some of the results I’ve put online, a lot is jotted on paper and in notebooks all over the place. The other night I couldn’t sleep; got up and wrote out three pages of notes.

I’m sitting here listening to (and looping) Linkin Park’s My December, with an overwhelming urge to find meaning in song lyrics. Should say that linking December and ‘snow coloured dreams’ finally makes sense… not that it’s snowed, but this has become a month of introspection, something I find extremely unusual in comparison to the summer months back home.

And I’d give it all away
Just to have somewhere to go to
Give it all away
To have someone to come home to

This is my December
These are my snow coloured dreams
This is me pretending
This is all I need

***

My sincere apologies

***

Every time I try to sleep I find myself thinking about going home.
And thinking “This is It.”
But what is It? It exists within a void. My mind runs over the same scenarios: figuring out what to do with my stuff, packing, the airport, leaving the girls and continuing alone from Hong Kong. Then I arrive home late, stay up for a couple hours on the buzz, and crash.

And that’s it. There is nothing between now and then. And there is no tomorrow. It is as though I am aware that that short period of time is so important, but cannot see past it. Those words of the Oracle: “we cannot see beyond the choices we don’t understand”.

While awake, the only time I do think of the ‘tomorrow’, I see myself sitting at the table, with family around: I’m not sure where, just so much more around than they’ve been all year. And I am unable to speak, unable to relate. I tell them, silently; I need time to adjust before I can begin to be a part of a family again.

Australian Identity and Online Writing

11December2005 [directLink] [myth]

Warning: Essay follows; this is what happens when the brain dumps core

A couple of events have recently got me thinking about Australian blogs, and what is most worthy of notice is that I had _never_ even thought of using ‘Australian’ as an identifier when talking about a blog. Sure, many blogs are clearly ‘American’, and that’s a whole ‘nother issue, but I hadn’t noticed anywhere else in the online world building an identity around nationality.

The first event was a contest run by a webhost who shall remain nameless to find ‘Australia’s best blog’, or more specifically, its reporting. The contest featured a A$10,000 prize, and at first I dismissed it. One the one hand, it seemed a cheap grab for publicity in Australian media, and on the other, it seemed absurd to try and locate a ‘best blog’ anywhere, let alone in Australia. My feelings haven’t changed, but the reporting of the event on the Razor blog on the SMH/Age got me thinking (and I had other thoughts brewing on the Razor site itself).

The second event was the retirement from journalism of Margo Kingston, author of ‘Not Happy John’, and online identity behind the Webdiary site, formerly a blog hosted by SMH, since a site for independent journalism.

There are all sorts of things I could say about the blog competition, but what I’m really interested in is the idea of nationality. What about a blog makes it Australian? The very nature of the internet is that one is no longer tied to location nor to national identity. My site has a .au extension, which I specifically chose, because I do want a basic Australian identity - mainly to distinguish from the American monopoly on the .com extension. But in the past year, I’ve been writing from France, on a .au site which is hosted in America. And further, I’ve been watching France and the United States more than I have Australia - certainly I haven’t been reading Australian sites as a ‘local’ (I wrote more on reading local newspapers recently). What I mean to say is, I don’t consider my site ‘Australian’. And, perhaps because the sites I read skew towards the American (and a few European), rather than Australian, I’d considered that normal. The few Australian sites I read regularly are involved with techie circles based out of Silicon Valley.

But then along comes this competition, and a rather odd selection of blogs come in the top ten. The winner was an audio artist, then there are rather standard personal blogs, and (more bizarrely) tightly focussed product blogs (the annoying kind that support themselves by advertising, and probably made plenty out of this comp). The people running the comp argue that they want to show just how diverse blogs can be, but I suspect they missed the point (or perhaps two points) entirely. The Razor site had lots to say about the judging process (its writer being on the judging panel), and the comments there were all over the place, but largely very critical of the selection of winner. What’s odd is that people didn’t like that an artist won - they wanted the prize to go to a ‘normal’ person (probably because then they could all hold on to their fantasies that they could win next year). But sure blogs can be diverse, and they can be artistic, but an award should go to someone who demonstrates the power of blogging: someone with influence, or someone who demonstrates a keen insight into a particular subject matter (so I’m not ruling out product blogs!). The second point they missed has to do with Australian identity - the few top blogs I looked at didn’t show _any_ signs of Australian identity, they were just blogs like any else. On the one hand the comp (and the Australian sites and bloggers that supported it) seems terribly introspective, and demonstrates a rather old-fashioned/old-media understanding of what blogging is about (I’m not going to make the mistake of worshipping blogging as citizen’s journalism, but there’s surely material that competes with journalistic writing!), and on the other hand: if you’re going to have a comp focus on Australia, why not demonstrate some sort of Australian identity?!

Now the question of journalism raises some interesting issues that I’ve not really seen dealt with, and barely even noticed outside of Australia. This relates both to Razor (and Bleeding Edge, a blog run by the same author) and to Webdiary, both at one time hosted under the SMH/Age banner. Perhaps I see a problem here because I’m _used_ to a clear distinction between journalism and blogging, as the old media in the States and the bloggers there like to position themselves at loggerheads (that whole opposition-al thing is so American). Now, my understanding is that the authors of Razor (a tech blog) and of Webdiary (a political blog), have journalism backgrounds, hence the Fairfax connection. But neither site ever came across as a journalist blogging, which is a shame, and certainly cause for confusion under the SMH masthead. Webdiary ran with the SMH for some time, before moving to be independent, with crazy ideals of independent/citizen journalism (hehe, the aussie left appropriating the american left once more, forgetting about the huge differences in cultural/social context, but I digress). I think moving away from the SMH was the right move, as the material they were running shouldn’t be connected to a major newspaper, but of course, the material got even worse without _some_ editorial oversight and I soon stopped reading. The site became absurdly anti-government, and freed from any illusions of journalistic integrity started presenting far more assertion than fact. But, just to confuse things a little, the site stuck with the moderated comments system inherited from the SMH - and it wasn’t simply approving non-spam comments, it was as bad as an old-media ‘Letters to the Editor’ page, where the sites moderators carefully selected what ran, killing any chance for dialogue. It’s no surprise that the site _didn’t_ last as an independent though: Margo Kingston expected a journalist’s salary (she was constantly referred to as a journalist, despite that fact that she was no longer employed by the paper), and was running the equivalent of a lefty rag without a business model. I have _no_ idea where they expected to make any money, nor how they expected to expand their audience enough to support them when they catered to such a niche!

The vibe I get/got from both Razor and Webdiary is actually quite disappointing: as if combining the arrogance of a journalist who believes their education backs up anything they have to say, and a blogger who believes their independence boosts their integrity. Both authors try and be familiar with the readers (blogger), while insulting their intelligence when it suits (journalist). Worse, because they’re ‘bloggers’ not journalists, they seem to think they’re not responsible when they misreport things!

Anyway, I’ve ranted enough about these sites, and I’ll admit that there may be other great Australian voices out there. But what bugs me is the bizarre introverted, nationalistic voices, and the rather absurd combination of journalism and blogging. I think Fairfax deserves praise for its experiment in blogging, but should either cut its bloggers off before they worsen their reputation, or (far better) publish bloggers under a different banner/brand, and get clear on their identity: if they’re not newspaper columnists, run them as ‘bloggers’, and don’t worry about the connotations of amateurism. Of course, they don’t have to be called bloggers: they’re just online writers. But importantly, they shouldn’t be hiding behind the veils of journalism.

So to summarise and somehow tie this rant back to Australian identity: it bugs me that Australian blogs are represented by these people: either as personal blogs with no real identity, or in the guise of journalism (when it suits). If we are to develop _any_ Australian identity online (which I’m not convinced is necessary, but anyway), it should be with good writers who demonstrate a particular flair for writing online. Online writing is _not_ journalism, it can also be art, and it is also open and personal. But when it’s just someone’s personal diary, it’s only a blog (and it belongs on blogger.com).

Of course, most of the best Australian writers online are probably those who I don’t even realise (except tangentially) are actually Australian: because online writing is international, and old borders are more and more meaningless.

Dumping Core

11December2005 [directLink] [personal]
This item was changed on 11December2005

Ok, brain is full, desperately need to dump core to make space… Been doing lots of reading, thinking about all sorts of disparate issues, and lots is happening in the real world, prompting further random thoughts. This means I’ll throw out a bunch of ?bits entries (makes up for running dry over the last week), though I can’t promise all of them will make it past ‘preview’ mode…

1. Australia and Blogs (updated: warning: long essay)
2. US-Centrism; or Locating the Blogosphere (admittedly related, but somewhat tangential to the above)
3. The GYM and Portals
4. Film-maker, Artist, Geek, Prophet
5. Concluding the year, Introversion, &c.
6. Hack to disable that annoying Flickr Badge
7. Mysterious Packages Part II

I’ll update this post as I add the above, though there’s a good chance the more introspective topics won’t go up just yet, they probably need a bit of time

And in a slight change that most readers won’t even notice: I changed ?bits=blog to ?bits=personal, because what I do isn’t a blog, and I don’t really like the word anyway. I’m going to have to throw up a site map of sorts just to explain the different areas anyway, but ‘personal’ is a descriptor that makes a lot of sense.

Edit: no longer going to post the Flickr badge hack separately, as it will be near impossible to Google anyway, so am putting it here

Anyway, a number of sites are starting to include a rather irritating ‘Flickr Badge’, a small Flash app that loads images from the owner’s photo album. What’s annoying is that it won’t sit still, constantly calling new thumbnails from Flickr. So I wrote a little hack to get rid of the thing. First, copy and paste the following code into a new text file:

/* block that annoying flickr badge! */

div.zg_div { display: none !important;}

Save the file as something like userStyle.css, or flickrStyle.css. Then in your web browser preferences/settings, find the ‘accessibility’ section. The locations vary from browser to browser, but you’re looking for something that allows you to specify a ‘user stylesheet’. Select the file you just saved. (After restarting) The browser will render the flickr badge invisible on any site with the standard flickr code. (The possibilities of user-defined stylesheets are actually quite extensive; I’d always thought of them as things to specify a different font and color; I’ll be sure to report back any other little convenient hacks here anyway)

Mysterious Packages Part II

11December2005 [directLink] [personal]

or, More Reasons to Worship the Internet

Following-up my previous post, and with pictures… We tried the Stormhoek Shiraz at our Christmas dinner (celebrated early on the Eve of St Nick’s as we won’t be in Reims for Christmas proper). I don’t know what it sells for so it’s difficult to compare to the rather cheap French wine we’ve been drinking. Certainly a nice drop in any case.

Stormhoek also get bonus points just for what they’ve done. The bottle came with a little booklet from Hugh Macleod talking about Disruptive Marketing. It’s yet to be seen what effect sending wine freebies to a bunch of bloggers will have in the real world, but he’s certainly created a buzz online. It’s an interesting way of doing marketing, and has backfired on people in the past: some companies have been exposed for paying bloggers to write about them, which is the ultimate crime - sending free wine with, officially, no strings attached is nowhere near as bad, and after all, if the wine tasted awful the world would find out pretty quickly.

But it also reminds me of the movie Serenity, and its legion of Browncoats - supporters who campaigned to have the movie made after the TV series was cancelled. The studio responded, turning it into a movie, assuming that all the online buzz would translate into profits… And well, they were wrong. My take on it was that the Browncoats tended to talk amongst themselves, they didn’t take the message to the wider market… (and that’s something that was bothering me about the scheme from early on). Further, because of all the buzz, the studio didn’t bother putting any money into marketing, only causing the movie to bomb even worse!

Received my 2nd mysterious package a couple days ago (was fortunately sent by post so I just had to go round the corner to the Post Office to pick it up!). Having been at a Perplex City meetup in London back in September, and been on the winning team for a quiz thing they did, Mind Candy owed me a prize. They sent me a Perplex City ‘starter kit’, with a few more cards, a card album, a magazine (with more puzzles!) and a CD, called The Silver City.

I do have to say though, that this is just what I needed to get back into Perplex City. I’ve not really been playing since the summer holiday, though I’ve been watching a couple in-game sites and an update site just to see what’s been happening. But this little package has me interested in the story again, and I’ve finally signed up on the perplexcity.com site. Anyway, the winning factor was the CD: it’s (very surprisingly) really good! I’ve been looping it over the last couple days. An hour long (a shock in itself, I was half expecting a 20-minute sampler), funky and very atmospheric dance tracks. And of course, there’s all sorts of story to tie it into Perplex City: the CD was created by a rather controversial artist who goes by the name of Viard, then banned for sale in Perplex City as it’s supposedly mind-altering. The Perplexian record company leaked it to Earth instead. Plus there’s a message hiding at the end talking about conspiracies and arranging secret meetings… I still might not ‘play’ for a little longer, but I’m definitely interested again.

What I Want From the Future

08December2005 [directLink] [wishlist]

This started life inside my head as a gadget wishlist, but it relates to a few other things. Anyway, for starters, I want a ‘chatter’ device, a Perplex City ‘key’… I want a phone-slash-PDA-slash-media-player, with always-on net connectivity. In short, I want one device that does:

• Phone: I don’t actually use a mobile a lot, certainly not for making long phone calls, but I want to be able to receive calls and to SMS, and I don’t want to have to carry a separate and rarely used device just to do so
• PDA: I need more than your basic phone functions, but not a lot more: a calendar, task-list, contacts database and notes/memos; I don’t need to work on Office documents (don’t use Office anyway!)
• Media Player: audio is most-important, I still don’t see an attraction in portable video; more importantly, I have to be able to play audio for long durations without draining the battery unnecessarily (eg, by not turning the screen off when it’s not in use)
• Web Browser and Feed Reader: I want a separate feed reader so I can keep updated whilst offline, and a web browser so I can check emails, do blog posts, etc, wherever I am
• WiFi: to facilitate the above
• External media: eg, an SD card slot so I can move things around, store music and images, etc
• Bluetooth and basic peripheral support: want to be able to type on a larger-sized keyboard and talk on a portable headset
• Battery: I want to be able to do all the above for a few hours every day and only have to charge overnight, and if I’m going out overnight I should still be able to use basic phone/pda/music functions (I’m willing to compromise on WiFi and Bluetooth as they’re obvious battery drains)
• Oh and a Camera: I used to think it was ridiculous, but now that phones are coming with 2MP cameras I’m thinking it’ll work - if I want a decent image I’ll take a beefy camera out, but there are plenty of times I just want a snap, even just to capture some info or an interesting film idea

But… There’s something wrong with the market: we have the technology to make such a device, but there’s a bizarre idea that business people want phone and email, or that home users want phone and (needlessly glitzy) multimedia, but barely anyone links all the things together. I don’t want either… Oh and worse, because ‘home users’ want those annoying flashy-but-useless phones, the alternatives are marked way up just because they’re for ‘business’. Bah

And finally, thinking bout this one got me thinking about some of the other things I want… And top of that list: I want to be able to sit down and read a newspaper. I read plenty of news and blog feeds, and I can handle the _occasional_ podcast (though normally not a fan as I can’t skim over them anywhere near as easily as text). But for reading _local_ news, have to go with something on paper… Same goes for the TV news for that matter. I’ve spent the year away from Australia, and it’s really hard to keep up with the news there: reading the news online is just like any other news source anywhere else in the world, meaning that I’m not able to focus on the ‘local’. But if I get a paper in front of me it’s much easier to skim headlines and get an idea of what’s going on in that part of the world…

Sometimes all this technology just doesn’t give me what I want.

Mysterious Packages

03December2005 [directLink] [personal]

Couple of days ago found a DHL sticker on my letterbox, saying they’d tried to deliver a package. Had absolutely no idea what it was, so I jumped onto their website and tried the Tracking function, but the number was rather messily handwritten so I wasn’t getting any results. Called them up the next day to arrange a delivery, number was still no good, so gave my name and address. Still couldn’t find anything in their system, or perhaps just wouldn’t tell me, as I couldn’t say where it had come from (maybe Australia, maybe England)… The woman on the other end then gave up on French and spoke English instead, but to no avail. Eventually I left my mobile number so the courier could call when he arrived, as my door/intercom thing doesn’t work (I don’t normally take deliveries, I just pick them up at the post office).

By this stage my ARG-playing brain is working overtime, coming up with theories as to what it could be… It had been my birthday, but this was a couple weeks later already. Eventually got back on the DHL site and tried some variations on the tracking number, eventually finding it (what I thought was a 4 was actually a 1!). The package had come from London, making me think it must be something Perplex City/Mind Candy related. Also discovered that the courier had attempted delivery twice previously, the first time over a week before! But had either not bothered leaving a slip, or it had been peeled off by someone else in the building (rather strange to leave the thing stuck on the outside of the letterbox instead of slipped inside!).

Anyway, having no idea what the package even was, let alone when it was coming, I forced myself to get up rather early in the morning, not wanting to run downstairs half-dressed/-asleep. Eventually arrived soon after midday. Turns out it was a bottle of Stormhoek Shiraz, that I’d completely forgotten was coming. I’d signed up (a couple months ago) for a free bottle over on gapingvoid as part of a promotion for ‘French bloggers’ (neither of which I particularly identify as, but why not). I’ll be trying the red with our Christmas dinner early next week (St Nick’s), and will report back.

As a nice conclusion to the whole saga, today I received a letter from Mind Candy saying there’s a package on the way.

I just hope they sent it by post and not courier.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

02December2005 [directLink] [movies]

Saw the new Potter movie last night. It’s been a long time since I read the book (ie, not since it first came out), but it certainly felt faithful to the story and its characters. Dumbledore is changing though, an effect of the change of actor (though in the last movie he tried to act more like his predecessor). Also caught lots of hints that make much more sense in the wake of the sixth book, and am not sure if they were put there deliberately.

I realised however, as the movie neared its end, that it hadn’t felt as though much actually happened in the fourth book, and the movie suffers somewhat for it. Certainly it had more content than the first three, but the fact that so much could be dropped entirely for the adaptation just demonstrates how unnecessary it was. It’s not surprising though in a series of seven: the first three set the scene but plot points were always resolved, the middle book is _just_ there to bring back Voldemort (the occurence of both the Quidditch World Cup AND the Twi-Wizard Tournament always felt overblown).

I’ve heard a lot of people say they preferred the third book, and now I understand why. I kind of flew threw the first three books just before the fourth came out; since then I’ve been reading as they’re released, which affects my impression of the books. But having seen the third and fourth movie adaptations, I can certainly see why: Azkaban has a much more pleasing story arc, and much deeper character development. Though I should add that I remember the fifth book as leaving a much deeper impression on me than any of the others. I should go back and read it to try and articulate why…

The Universal Library

02December2005 [directLink] [myth]

A follow-up of sorts to Turing’s Cathedral from George Dyson. The Universal Library talks about some of the implications of Google Book Search project. It gets at one of the problems that’s been nagging me for a couple weeks now: that most books aren’t about ‘search’. Dyson concludes that, of course, we still need authors. And a couple interesting quotes:

In their combination of mortal, physical embodiment with immortal, disembodied knowledge, books are the mirror of ourselves. Books are not mere physical objects. They have a life of their own. Wholesale scanning, we fear, will strip our books of their souls.

The Universal Library promises us a repository for the souls of all existing books - and the resurrection of all titles that have gone extinct.