I’ve been wanting to redesign Solitude for quite some time now but I figured since my post rate has dropped to a few month in recent times that I should concentrate on getting the post rate back up first.

That said, I had always been picking apart other designs and storing away my favourite snippets; the odd comment layout, a neat footer section, some interesting navigation etc. From that, and a few things I had done in my previous job with grid layouts, I had a pretty good idea how I wanted the new design to look. I wanted it to be relatively minimalist, with clean lines and an orderly and obvious grid layout.

I noticed two different websites, about 2 months apart, that had a lot of the features that I wanted, and noticed that they were oddly similar. A little investigation turned up that they were both using variants on a pre-built WordPress theme called Tarski. It was then that I decided that I’d be better off taking that theme too, and tuning it over time to fully achieve the effect I wanted. It was already 90% of the way there.

I consider the design to be a work in progress, though it’s perfectly serviceable as-is and will only be worked on slowly. Let me know if you have any suggestions for it. The first thing to go will be the header, as I’ve long had a particular image in mind for this.

Fun facts:

• This is my first redesign (beyond seasonal variants) since September 2004 when I introduced the previous design, Hazy Morning.
• Hazy Morning had that big “flower” in the top right, as some people pointed out? It was actually a heavy processed and sharpened picture of the sun.
• The header image I have in mind for the new theme I created in 2006. I just didn’t come up with what I wanted for the rest of the design until now.

You’ll be seeing the finishing touches sooner or later.

It’s February and the film fight is already a few weeks late. This does not bode well, but let’s see how it goes anyway.

Revolutionary Road is a difficult to watch, and delightfully so. The film centers on a failing relationship between a couple whose dreams are further away than they can stomach to reach, causing resentment and tension. It’s that tension that brings this film to life; the arguing, and picking, and ugliness of a once beautiful marriage worn down to a tiredness. It’s well-acted and lovingly shot, forcing us to watch some uncomfortable situations. The only place it really falls down is in the ending, where a cut a few minutes earlier could have avoided some unnecessarily tying up of loose ends. A great film. (See my Revolutionary Road Twitter review).

It’s a shame to see a great idea hampered by a some pretty clunky writing, but that’s what Doubt happens in doubt. The plot revolves around a priest who is accused of being indecent with a young boy in his care, and the nun who condemns him without any great degree of evidence. The story isn’t so much about innocence and guilt, as much as it’s about a witch hunt; a feeling that something is wrong being enough to make them wrong. The leads, again, provide strong performances, but they’re let down by some pretty weak writing. The wind as a metaphor for change? I can’t think of anything more trite. This is a good film, but with some pretty noticeable flaws. (See my Doubt Twitter review).

I like a good yarn, and that’s exactly what we get with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Every facet of the story, a tale of a man being born old and growing backwards, is larger than life and simple; much like Tim Burton’s Big Fish, but a touch less magical (save the central conceit). Sure, it’s not very deep, and some of it doesn’t really make sense, but it’s a fun story and told well enough that it doesn’t really matter. It looks the part, and is worth seeing, even if just to gawk at the fact that the lead’s head is entirely digital. (See my Curious Case of Benjamin Button Twitter review).

You’d like to believe that Anvil: The Story of Anvil is a mockumentary in the style of Spinal Tap for certain parts, but it isn’t. The band featured here, Anvil, never made it big in their youth but, unlike most bands, have never given up their dream. That’s what this documentary is about: the reality of never giving up on something you want more than anything else. It’s painful at times (you know exactly what a record label A&R guy means by “we’ll call you”, but the band are oblivious) and sometimes very earnest, but it’s enjoyable nonetheless. (See my Anvil Twitter review).

Finally, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is, well, a mess of a film. While Penelope Cruz shines through in the role that won her best supporting actress this year, the rest of the cast either fail to sell themselves or are simply unable to. Almost every major scene is undermind by a cold, flat narration that, rather than allow the actresses to emote and for the camera to capture the atmosphre, tells us frankly and plainly what every one is thinking and feeling. This is the worst kind of tell-don’t-show storytelling, and much of the movie comes across as self-indulgent yet empty. Avoid. (See my Vicky Cristina Barcelona Twitter review).

There are a few contenders this month but the winner is… Revolutionary Road. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are reunited in a winning combination.

As an aside, I also saw Winslet’s The Reader this month, but not at the cinema. It’s a great film, if a little long-winded in places; she puts in a solid performance, but the real depth lies with the main character.

I’m sure most people will have heard of it already but Spotify is probably the most interesting music service I’ve seen since the Napster days (the first version of Napster that is, not the current one).

You find an invite for it (there are plenty freely available just now), sign-up for free and you can then access a massive back catalogue of music to stream whenever you like. The streaming seems very reliable, and the selection is pretty good: this isn’t just small artists, all the major labels are represented. The cost? You either take it for free and listen to the occassional advert (all seem pretty unobtrusive so far), or pay £10 a month to stop the adverts.

It’s different from something like last.fm‘s streaming service, because you queue up a list of songs that you want to hear, rather than just starting somewhere and having new music pushed at you (which is not a bad thing in and of itself).

If Spotify is successful, then it’ll be a game-changer. I won’t be surprised if, within a few years, Spotify is the way to get music, just as YouTube is the way to get video and Google is the way to find information. You won’t buy new music when you want to hear that one song you’ve not heard in a while, you’ll Spotify it.

It’s fair to say I like it and I think it works incredibly, having tried it on Windows, Mac and on Linux (via WINE). It looks pretty slick across the board. It does, however, have some odd behaviour in places, which I’d like to detail.

The playback functionality is built around the idea of a “play queue”: a list that holds all the songs you’ve selected to play. When they’ve played, they leave the queue and appear in your history. That’s pretty straightforward, but the manner in which you add songs to the queue is, on occassion, counter-intuitive. This is going to take a little explanation.

There are two broad routes for finding music to add to the queue. You can either use a playlist (which, neatly, are shareable over the web), or you can use the fairly comprehensive search options. Once you’ve found the music you want with either route, you then have two actions you can take: play (the default action) and queue. The difference between the two, and how they interact with the two find methods causes some issues.

Problem #1: There are two different types of queue item. This is lengthy but keep with me, it’ll help you understand the rest. Let’s say you search for and find an album. You double-click the first track and start listening. As it finishes, Spotify automatically plays the next track as it has added the whole album to the play queue. Satisfied that it’ll keep going you make another selection and queue it i.e. not “play” it straight away as you want to hear all the items from the first album which, after all, you can see in your play queue. When the next song starts you might be surprised to learn that the next track to play is not the next track from the first album, it’s the first track from your second selection.

What happened? Well, it turns out Spotify has active and passive queue items. On any search, a play will actively queue the item you selected and passively queue everything else. The play queue is sorted so that passively queued items are always after actively queued items. Using the play action creates one active item and potentially many passive items. Using the queue action creates an active item for every item you have selected.

When you made your first album selection (using the play action), the first item was actively queued and the rest were passively queued. When you made your second selection (using the queue action), it jumped in front of all those other tracks. That’s pretty counter-intuitive, and is Problem #1.

You might think, “Ok, I understand that and can avoid it”. Well, slow down, there’s more.

Problem #2: You can’t play an entire selection. If you thought that the solution to the above problem was to select the entire first album and use the play action, you’d be mistaken. Although Spotify will let you make a selection and use the play action while on that selection, it really only plays one of the tracks i.e. it ignores the fact you have made a selection. You can make a selection, use the queue action, and then delete everything before it already in your play queue, but that’s a bit of a roundabout way of doing things. Better behaviour? Enable the play action to operate over a selection, or disable it when a selection has been made. Or, model intents by adding a “Queue album” action.

Problem #3: Queing passive queue items makes copies of them. So maybe you thought the solution is to use the play action on the first item, thus passively queueing the rest, going to the play queue and selecting queue on the remaining items? Well, that works. You’ll have the entire thing actively queued. The problem is that actively queuing something like that doesn’t remove the passive copy. As soon as the entire album finishes, you’ll probably be surprised to hear the second track onwards again. The passive items weren’t removed, they were just copied to the active part of the queue. Better behaviour? Making a passive item an active item (using the queue action) should jusy promote it, and not copy it.

Problem #4: Passive queue items can’t be removed easily. Maybe you thought the solution to problem #3 is to just remove the passive items from the queue, thus leaving one active copy. I’m afraid not. You cannot remove passively queued items, without wiping out your entire play queue. This is a massive cause of irritation. Better behaviour? Activate the delete option for all items, thus allowing the removal of passive items.

Problem #5: Search and passive queuing can interact too broadly. You’ve learned to jump through the hoops above and now know how to queue things properly. Good. Let’s say you want to hear one song, and do a search for it. The search results return 10 similarly titled tracks and the one you wanted. You play the one you wanted. Can you guess what happens? Those completely unrelated tracks by unrelated artists in unrelated genres all got passively queued and you’re now listening to them. Best of all, because of problem #4 you can’t remove them without wiping out your queue entirely. Better behaviour? Restrict the passive queueing of items such that only items from the same artist/album get passively queued when searching by artist or track. A special case here is when the track is from a compilation, where you might want to queue the whole thing.

Now, I know that comes across as negative, but let me reiterate that I really like Spotify (I’ve been listening to genre:britpop on it whilst writing this), and would just like to see some basic usability improvements.

Here’s hoping the service makes it.

A film fight that’s on time? Why, it must be January. 4 films this month:

Che Part One is the new Ernesto “Che” Guevera biopic, by Steven Soderbergh, telling the story of the retaking of Cuba (up until the assault on the capital), interspersed with his much later stay visting the UN. It’s an odd film, lacking a conventional narrative and structure when there are several pretty obvious choices that could have been picked. Instead we see moments, snatches of time throughout the Cuban uprising. The real problem with Che Part One is that there is no depth to any of these fragments. We get a problem, and then someone explaining the solution, and rarely any decisive action. This is tell-not-show storytelling at it’s worst. The last act is it’s best, as it’s the most regular: showing an assault on a beleagured region, and the defining points throughout the siege. Had the rest of the film been like this, it would have been much better. (See my Che Part one Twitter review).

Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire deserves the praise its been getting recently. We get the reasonably compelling story of a young boy, raised in poverty and in devastating conditions, and how he grows into a young man. The story is let down somewhat by a weak final act, and an entirely unnecessary love interest. However, the film looks the part: we get shot after shot of beautiful scenery and top notch direction. The art team behind this (from the cinematographers to the sound team) have done a marvellous job. A feel good movie worthy of your time. (See my Slumdog Millionaire Twitter review).

Darren Aronofsky has another masterpiece on his hands with his  fantastic (and woefully under Oscar nominated) new move, The Wrestler. The story focusses on a former champion wrestler, and the toll he has paid physically and mentally for his glory. The pain and detrimental effects pervade throughout his life, scraping by at the bottom of the barrel with only an estranged daughter and a stripper to keep him sane. This is not a cheery film in the slightest, as you might guess, but it is stunning. Mickey Rourke puts in a near perfect performance as the title character, bringing both empathy and warmth to a man who has himself to blame for his self-destructive tendencies. Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood also put in fantastic shows as the stripper and daugher respectively. An excellent movie, and an early pick for film of the year. (See my The Wrestler Twitter review).

Finally, Milk is the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly homosexual US politician in a time when a witch hunt was being fought in the States. While the story is a good one and tragic in parts, it’s Sean Penn’s performance that really makes this film. He manages to convey a convincing multi-dimensional character on his rise to power with sympathy and dignity. Where the film falls down is in the editing and pacing. There are some pretty stunning shots, but it nearly gets blundered by being over long while lacking depth on many of the ancilliary characters. Again, we sometimes get told about progression a little too much, rather than seeing it. Still, it’s strengths outweight it’s weaknesses and we get left with an enjoyable and uplifting film. Worth seeing. (See my Milk Twitter review).

And the winner is… The Wrestler. Aronofsky has another masterpiece on his hands.

The other day I did something I’ve never done before: written to an MEP. Below follows my message to them, with regards my views on copyright extension and why the proposed Term Extension directive is a mistake.

Dear [My MEPs],

I am writing to you all today because you represent me in the European Parliament. As such, I would like to bring to your attention my concern (a concern shared by many others) over the proposed extensions to European Copyright law (the Term Extension Directive).

This new directive would mean that copyright for sound recordings would be increased from the current 50 years to 95 years. This runs counter to the purpose of copyright, which is to protect public interest (the creation of new materials) in the long term by protecting commercial interests (being able to generate revenue from new material created) in the short term. By extending the term, the public interest will not be served.

Recordings are already easily lost within the 50 year limit. By extending the terms, we risk losing many recordings where the originals simply won’t be archived; and we will not be able to retrieve them. We lose the advantages that come from having a society whose culture heritage we can take, reshape and rework.

Consider the musical works that do not live in copyright, those of the great composers like Mozart and Vivaldi. It would be a tragedy had their music been lost to short-sighted money making. It will be a tragedy if we lose the work of artists now.

The stated purpose of the extension (to increase revenues to smaller artists) can be shown to be a fallacy. Most artists will receive only a small amount of extra revenue (between 0.5 and 26 Euros), and the vast majority of money will go straight to record labels and larger recording artists whose interests do not need protected further.

Independent reviews (Gower, Hugenholtz) have shown that this directive is harmful to our heritage and is against the interests of the vast majority of the European community.

I urge you to do the right thing: register against this directive.

Yours sincerely,

Gary Fleming