Mssv

My first chemicals arrived today! It may come as a surprise to many, but it isn’t the case (not entirely, anyway) that I just hang around in Oxford waiting for interesting things to happen - occasionally I do some real research. In preparation for an experiment on the mouse visual system, I’ve ordered a bunch [...]

I saw Lost in Translation with a few friends this afternoon. I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film ever since I heard about it months ago, and my expectations reached soaring heights as it received universally positive reviews. I was a little worried, consequently, that even a great film would turn out to be [...]

Tomorrow I’m off to London with a motley crew of friends to see the Lord of the Rings exhibition at the Science Museum, one day before it leaves this country and heads to New York. I’m definitely looking forward to it; I wasn’t that keen on The Fellowship of the Ring, and while I enjoyed [...]

And the award for the most inappropriate music in a movie trailer goes to Peter Pan which used an instrumental version of ‘Clocks’ by Coldplay. What were they thinking? Other than the fact that Coldplay are popular these days, I can think of no reason why they used them as backing music. Don’t get me [...]

I have long wanted to see a movie - any movie - in which the audience applauds at the end. I’ve always thought I’d have to go to America to do this since they are certainly more unrestrained than the English, but at the end of watching Return of the King in London on the [...]

iBook G4 800mhz: £750
Airport Extreme card: £70
Bluetooth module: £30
Watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with friends on a two hour coach journey along the M25 in the rain: Priceless
There are some things computers can’t do. For everything else, there’s Apple.
(Oh yeah, and I heard you can do work on these things as well…)

Some excellent news - it seems that Mary Doria Russell’s novel The Sparrow is on track to being made as a movie. This is particularly good news because the studio concerned appears to actually understand the novel, as opposed to Universal, who originally optioned the screenplay and were going to hack it to pieces.

On Johnny Depp becoming the front-runner for Willy Wonka in Tim Burton’s new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie (from TrekToday forum):
Tim Burton?
Roald Dahl?
C’mon folks, this is a match made in heaven. I’m looking forward to it. Tim Burton is probably my favorite director. Although I’d prefer Christopher Walken to Johnny Depp. Just imagine…
“You…fat boy…what [...]

I’m writing this from the improbably clean and tidy Singapore International Airport. I’ve just gotten off a 13 hour flight from Manchester, and I’m feeling surprisingly okay; Singapore Airline is pretty good. The plane had a very impressive entertainment system with the usual complement of movies and TV shows, but more importantly, they had about [...]

When someone says to you, “I need to make sure I can get back in time to Cambridge,” and your first reaction is that of a genuine stunned silence and an incredulous, “You’re travelling back in time?” you know you’ve been watching too many time travel movies.