Author: Rory

Posted on

Innsbruck

As many of you know, I’ve been in Innsbruck in Austria since Monday, giddily drinking in the promises of new and improving Google technology.

Never in my life have I seen so many demos and previews of so many amazing products and so much cutting edge technology that I wasn’t allowed to talk about. Over the last couple of days I’ve shifted from an eager, childlike curiosity about how everything is implemented, what technology its based on, where and how it runs—to a resigned sense that there’s not a great deal of hope that I’m going to understand the answers to any of those questions. But boy do I want to use it!

This evening I leave Innsbruck for Soelden, where we’ll be joined by all of the non-engineers for a day of skiing and partying. I’ve never skied before, but I’m generally a fan of going downhill so I think I’ll enjoy it.

Posted on

21

A generous person would regard it as a positive trait of mine—forgiveness, the ability to grant the benefit of the doubt—that I can tell everyone who will listen that a movie looks like it’ll suck harder than a $10 whore but then I’ll go tosee it anyway. As it turns out, 21 sucked a lot less than I expected. It’s based on the book, Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, which I read and really quite enjoyed some years ago.

The movie diverges significantly from the book, which itself is a true(ish) story, but this turns out to its advantage in my view. The movie introduces an antagonist in the form of Laurence Fishbourne’s Vegas security consultant, and wedges in the mandatory love interest too, neither of which I remember from the book. These changes ultimately make the story a better fit for the movie medium, though they’re a little more on the formulaic side than any of us would have wanted.

In fact the whole movies looks like it came off the end of a production line, with fewer surprises than a transparent Kinder egg, but if it doesn’t stand out as fantastic it also doesn’t stand out as terrible. The gambling and maths angle appealed to me, and made it that much more enjoyable. In the end I wouldn’t be confident in recommending it to someone who didn’t share those interests.

Maybe sit it out and go play the slots instead.

Posted on

Fail

I’ve been following the Fail Blog for some time without mentioning it here, but today’s post was just too wonderful to keep to myself.

How many people had a hand in designing and manufacturing this monstrosity (I mean the switch, not the religion)? From the positioning I assume that it’s turned on.

Posted on

Not Always Right

From Not Always Right:

(The phone rings at around 6-ish.)
Me: “Hello, this is D-…”
(I hear loud crying in the background.)
Man: “Hello, Disney World? I’m just calling to say that if my children don’t finish their vegetables in the next five minutes, we won’t be visiting you this year.”
Me: “I… er… what?”
Man (whispering): “Thank you.”
*click*

Posted on

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko

From the prelude to Tim Ferriss’s short interview with former Al Gore speech-writer Dan Pink, the trailer for Pink’s new book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko. It’s a business book in Manga format.

Posted on

Patrick Stewart to Appear in Hamlet

I’m surprised to discover that I haven’t mentioned this on the blog before. I’m just putting it here mainly as a reminder to myself, but maybe some of you will be interested too: Patrick Stewart will be appearing in a Royal Shakespeare Company performance of Hamlet in Stratford-upon-Avon from July to November this year. He’ll play Claudius, the same role he played in the BBC production I watched when I studied Hamlet in school. The following is from the RSC‘s website:

Patrick Stewart returns to the RSC to play Claudius. He last appeared with the Company to great acclaim during the Complete Works Festival as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra and Prospero in The Tempest.

Hamlet plays in repertoire at The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from 24 July – 15 November 2008.

Proudly powered by WordPress