The second album by Biffy Clyro took only one day to record, yet sounds as highly produced as any other modern rock album. Titled “The Vertigo Of Bliss“, it is not as immediately catchy as their previous efforts but the pay-off comes in the long term.

After a few listenings, it becomes clear that it’s a more mature album with enough hooked chorus to make each song of anthemic proportions. All I can do is recommend it, and their previous album “Blackened Sky“. Fantastic stuff.

There are a few styles of blog posts. Note: this is not a comprehensive list.

• Personal – Posts about the writers personal life. I tend to avoid these as much as possible.
• Subject-based – Take a subject (film, music, web design etc) and write about it, or a subset thereof (a particular film, song, technique etc). I do a fair few in this style, and always have.
• Link-based – A collection of links to other interesting stuff on the net, maybe with a small amount of commentary. This is what the rest of this post is about.

When I started this site, there were practically no link-based posts. I didn’t really think them to have much value, preferring to add something to the blogosphere rather than just passing on other information.

A while ago, I realised this was a mistake. There is nothing wrong with being a conduit for useful entries. In fact, it’s one of the biggest contributions you can make to the blogosphere. By the simple act of linking to something you find interesting or useful, you help bind the web and allow others to discover articles that they find interesting. As link theory suggests, the more people linking to something, the more people will see it. This effect rises exponentially.

So really, there is no shame in having links based posts. You’re just doing your part to keep everything fresh and good. Nice work!

Simon Willison has been talking about comment authentication, even building a prototype (which seems to act a little flaky to me – but it is just a prototype). I like the idea, but it will always have trust issues and currently has a reasonably high entry barrier.

For one, you have to trust the server doing the authentication work and storage. If it is comprimised (either by the human running it or through technical means), then the whole system becomes worthless. This is obviously a big concern for such a comment authentication system, and one which is very difficult to overcome (although, I’m pretty sure Simon can be trusted).

The current implementation, however, has a high barrier entry. It requires that a person has an email address and control of a website. The former is not so much a problem, but the latter is. How many web users actually have a website? I’d imagine it’s a fairly small percentage. On this, the system severely falls down.

I’ll keep watching this one for when I eventually provide comments (hopefully not as far away as it could be).

Double Whammy has some promising ingredients; a lead played by Denis Leary, and support from Steve Buscemi. There are also some very poor ingredients: Liz Hurley, “quirky” characters, a half-baked plot, and plot strands that don’t really go anywhere.

Although the preparation is well-done, the film seems to have gone flat somewhere in the middle. Rather than do something well, it tries to cater for everyone; which just doesn’t work. Those plot strands I mentioned earlier? Too many things going on that are only half done, some quite disconcerting in their lack of conclusion.

For example, a rival cop gets suspicious about a suspect’s credibility (he says as much). It’s obvious that he would do some investigation into the matter. Do we see it or hear anything about it again? No. Very annoying.

It didn’t have to be like this. Rather than slow bake everything haphazardly, one or two elements could have been done to perfection. It’s a true shame that the better bits didn’t get a chance to simmer through, because this could’ve been a great film.

Buffalo Soldiers begins a bit like a very dark version of Sergeant Bilko: soldiers bored in the army getting up to various scams behind the backs of the incompetent commander, until someone new arrives and tries to catch them. But with drugs, guns and industrial cleaner replacing the odd poker game.

It’s funny, and well-paced, with only a very discontinuities.

The biggest problem, as with many modern films, is the insistence on a happy ending. There’s a very clear, obvious and satisfying ending that gets stepped over to provide that Hollywood happiness that seems to be essential to film makers these days. The film suffers for it.