Keen observers of Solitude will have noticed that it has been over a month since the last random links post. Well, that’s because I’ve been working on the all new Random Links sidebar.
From now on, random links will appear in the sidebar (have a look at the left side of the main page). It even has an RSS feed.
Although the entries in it right now are over a month old (I’ve been busy), expect a lot of updates.
Just a quick pointer to Daily Dinosaur Comics – an online comic about dinosaurs featuring the exact same drawing every day with different words. Some great quotes:
My friend, thigh fives are a ridiculous way of expressing enthusiasm. I am aware of this!
Funny stuff.
The Blade series has done it all backwards. It started on a high that proved to big to top, and has conceded ground over the course of the series. Blade Trinity, the third and (hopefully) final part, does not regress this trend.
The original film had a powerful main villain who became a God (played by Stephen Dorff), the second had Luke Goss as the tortured head of the Reapers (a character that had more depth than the original’s Deacon Frost), and Blade Trinity has Dracula (only in it for the name) and a bunch of annoying vampires with vague motivations.
The original film had some decent sword and gunplay. The sequel had seamless live action to CG (with great use of depth of field) long before The Matrix Reloaded touted it for the ‘burlyman’ sequence. The third film has some lo-fi fights, nothing impressive. For what is essentially an action film, it got it all wrong.
More than anything this film suffered due to its lineage. That is not to say it is a bad film (the humour was hit or miss but still an appreciated addition), it was just lacklustre compared to what has gone before.
The premise of Churchill: The Hollywood Years (that Winston Churchill was actually an American marine, rather than a British statesman) is quite an astute piece of satire on the Americanisation of history (U-571, anyone?). It does, however, fall down in one key respect: there is nowhere near enough material to fill a film, even one as short as this.
While there are some amusing moments (none readily come to mind, but there was some laughter), it does get to be a bit cringeworthy. This is not just because of the ridiculous ideas, but the truly awful acting on display by everyone; there’s slapstick and bizarre, and there’s just plain shite. This falls in the latter category far too often.
It’s not dramatic, it’s not character-driven, and it’s not funny enough to have warranted more than a recurring character in a sketch-show. Had the writer gone down that route, we’d have a fairly well-liked character. As it is, Churchill is a bit too drawn out to be entertaining.
So, Google have got a new toy. Google Suggest uses some funky javascript to get the top results for your request as you type it, character by character. Although it was a little sluggish at first (slow connection that was being used to download a lot at the same time), it works pretty well.
Just for fun, figure out your own Google Length Weighting. Type in your name, character by character, until a search result appears in the suggestions which will list you at the top (spaces count towards the count). The number of characters is your Google Length Weighting. At the moment, I’m about a 7. What are you?
Update: Of course, within twenty minutes of posting, I find out that someone else has had the same idea. Ned Batchelder has the same Google Suggest game (sans numbers).
Update 2: As it is with all things hackery, good suggestions get made. That is why we now have the Google Suggest Firefox Extension. It’s proof of concept at the moment, but I’m sure it’ll be taken further.