I just – literally, an hour ago – arrived home from seeing Cesar Milan at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham. Now…why would I see that, you ask? Well, simple. I love dogs. I don’t own one for the simple reason that in my life, I’ve not lived in one place for longer than 4 years, so I don’t think owning a dog would be fair to it…however, I still love seeing dogs and being around them, and I watch The Dog Whisperer on Nat Geo Wild HD all the time, so I thought it would be fun to go along and see him live. It’s not something that would interest everyone, but I enjoyed it and it was quite good to hear him talk about training dogs, and so on.
Anyway, so, I thought I’d make this quick post as a couple of people asked me why I was there on Twitter, and I can’t really fit that into 140 characters.
While we’re on the subject of Birmingham, in the past week I’ve actually been there three times. I saw Cesar tonight (well, it’s 00:20 now, so last night), Jimmy Carr at the Symphony Hall on Saturday, and Alice in Wonderland in 3D at one of Sky’s special preview screenings last Thursday, which was quite good. They sent out an email to Sky Movies subscribers for free tickets, so I went along and saw it, along with the premier which they were showing live from London, which was pretty cool. So yeah. That’s all for now.
First up, since I got my projector, I’ve been using my PC’s speakers and swapping HDMI cables around to watch stuff, since the projector only has one HDMI input (most sub-£1000 projectors only have one jack which isn’t really that surprising, since they’re designed to be used alongside a receiver of some kind for the sound). Now that’s all very well and good, but if you have a PC, Sky+HD box, and an Xbox 360 all using HDMI, it gets to be quite annoying. Now, the obvious thing that I could do would be to buy an HDMI switch, but then I’d still be using my PC speakers. Which is another problem since I was swapping the audio cables around as well, and there’s no remote for them either. And they sounded odd coming from the wrong side of the bedroom when I was using them for the projector.
So, I did a little shopping around and settled on either the Sony SRT-DN1000 or Onkyo TX-SR577 AV receiver, and some Mordaunt Short 902i speakers. I chose the receiver because (both models) have 4 HDMI ports, they can decode HD audio formats such as DTS HD Master Audio, and they both look decent enough. I was originally going to get the Sony model, but Richer Sounds had sold out of it so I decided on the Onkyo. Really, the only thing that was making me want to choose the Sony over the Onkyo was that the Sony looks nicer, it has an on-screen GUI (which, honestly, I can go without), and, well, it’s a Sony, and I have a lot of trust in Sony because they make very good quality gear – our downstairs TV setup is completely Sony, aside from the Sky+HD box. However, like I said, RS had sold out of the Sony so I went with the Onkyo. I suppose the Sony has one more thing that I would have liked now that I’ve played with the Onkyo, and that is you can rename the inputs – for example, instead of the receiver showing “CBL/SAT”, it can show “Sky+HD”. Sadly, the Onkyo doesn’t have this feature, so I’ll have to do without it. It’s not a must have, but it’s a nice thing to have nonetheless. Another thing I like about the Sony is that if the audio format switches, it says so on the display, in big letters, for a few seconds – the Onkyo, on the other hand, shows a tiny little icon on the display that you can only see if you’re close up. Again, it’s not a major feature, but it’s another “nice” thing to have. Overall, the receiver is pretty decent. It has a good selection of features, and it does the job well.
Onto the speakers. I decided to get a pair of Mordaunt Short 902i speakers, for several reasons. First of all, they’re decent sized bookshelf speakers so they negate the need for me to have a subwoofer. As out house is, quite literally, made out of paper, you can hear every bang downstairs from my bedroom, and vice versa, which means that a subwoofer wouldn’t do much other than annoy everyone downstairs (or next door). The MS speakers pack enough of a punch to not need a subwoofer, in my opinion, which is great. Hell, even if I lived in a soundproof room I don’t think I’d bother with a subwoofer – on their own they’re extremely good. And of course the other reason I got them is because they’ve been praised about all over the place, and they’ve got a 5 star review over at What Hi-Fi. Do I like them? Hell yes! They’re fantastic, amazing, and awesome – the clarity is fantastic and you can really hear the detail in music, movies and TV shows. And for the price they better be.
Finally, I got a Dell U2410. Yes, I got another 24″ monitor. I know, I know, I had a Dell 2407WFP-HC a year or two ago, which I sold, however I did and still do regret doing so, hence why I’ve gone and purchased the U2410. However, in my opinion (and from what I can see I’m actually the only person on earth who likes it), it looks a lot nicer than the 2407WFP did. The U2410’s stand is a big rectangle block (with the usual tilt/swivel/rotate features), and the monitor itself is completely black, with a touch of dark grey around the edge and on the stand. The menu and control buttons are also different, they’re now touch-based. I can’t say that this works all that well (it often ignores your finger tapping on them), but most of the time it behaves and you don’t really use it that often so, hey, it’s no big deal – the power button is actually a physical one so that’s fine. The screen itself is, from what I can remember, a bit better quality than the old one, and brighter, but otherwise it’s pretty much the same thing. The Samsung 205BW that I was using before for my PC is still on my desk, but mostly as a secondary screen for watching TV on more than anything else. I don’t really have an actual need for it but I don’t want to dump it in the garage or sell it or anything, so it can live on my desk for now.
So, that’s about it. Now all I need is a bigger bedroom. Or at the very least, a wider one.
Oh, and there aren’t any photos of the speakers or receiver that I have which are decent enough, because they’re not really all that interesting to look at…and I can’t seem to get a good photo of them, so, yeah, lol.
A week or two ago, I sent a tweet to @imaxbirmingham on Twitter and asked if I could have a tour of the projection room. I’ve only ever seen projection rooms by looking through the window, and I’ve never seen an IMAX projector in person, so I thought it was worth a go to ask – and it was! The next day, I got an email from their PR manager, Caroline, asking if I’d like to go along one day and see it, as a special once-off treat. So, yesterday (30th Jan), I went along to Birmingham with my dad (he expressed an interest in coming along), and met up with Caroline’s colleague, Sally, who gave us a tour.
So, up we went in the escalator to the 5th floor, which is the upper part of the IMAX theatre, normally off limits to normal visitors. The 4th floor is where you usually exit the theatre, and the 5th is all the behind the scenes stuff. Walking out the escalator, there was a small hand-operated forklift (for lifting the film reels), about 50 boxes of the Harry Potter film, and a few large metal cases with film reels in them. Quick explanation: when they get the film, it’s in boxes, so it has to be manually spliced together into one long film. Anyway, moving on, down the hall we went, and into the projection room!
So, the projection room. First and foremost is the huge IMAX projector – it’s MUCH larger than a 35mm projector, and along with the film reels behind it, it takes up a lot of room, as you can see:
The projector itself is pretty much the same basic idea as any other projector, just bigger. The first thing you notice are the pipes coming out the back of it – the big one is for air cooling, the smaller ones are for water cooling, mainly for the £3,500 Xenon bulb (which, while we’re at it, only lasts 900 hours, which isn’t much compared to, say, my home projector). In fact, the cooling is so critical that there’s a pump room next to the projection room, which has backup pumps if needed, and uses its own dedicated water supply from (I presume) the council. The air also has another role – somehow, through some fancy complicated method, it uses compressed air to keep the film rock solid steady. If you go to and IMAX flick yourself, doubtless you’ll notice that. Compared to normal cinemas, it pretty much doesn’t move at all. Impressive stuff.
Next, obviously, is the 70mm film. Since Avatar 3D was about to be shown, it was loaded into the projector, almost ready to go. As it’s a 3D title, there’s a separate reel of film for both the left and right eye. These run through the projector around the front and then pop out the other side to go back onto two separate reels. The way they do it, is that the film is loaded from the centre of the reel. This means that once it’s done, there’s no need to rewind the reel back to the start point, unlike normal cinemas. This obviously saves time, which is a bonus, plus it means the film doesn’t suffer the extra stress – especially for something like Avatar, which they’ve sold over 51,000 tickets for, which is a lot of screenings.
In the same room they also have a selection of the other currently showing titles – such as Deep Sea, Space Station, and so on.
Now for the noisy part. The audio. It’s pretty simple really. The audio isn’t on the film itself, it’s delivered digitally, either on a DVD or HDD, and stored on one of the servers (two HDDs, one of which is a backup). The IMAX projector sends out a pulse to the server every so often, so the sound is always kept in sync. The soundtrack is a six channel mix, which is then delivered to all of the sixteen power amplifiers, and then to the bi-amped speakers within the theatre. So, obviously, it’s quite loud. And since there’s a DVD drive and microphones hooked up to it all, you actually could have a karaoke night if you rented the cinema.
And a video of the control panel for the whole system (which I got to start the film with myself! ):
Finally, as well as the IMAX projector, there are two other projectors next to it – a 35mm projector, which is used for the pre-show trailers (eg, Pearl and Dean advertising), as well as a generic office-style projector which they use to show the PowerPoint presentation that shows upcoming films at the IMAX and other announcements.
And, of course, here’s a video of the projector in action. It’s very loud – if you’re standing next to it it sounds like a generator. And it’s not even loud compared to the pump room I mentioned earlier – that’s much louder.
So, that’s the projection room. Anyway, walking back out into the lobby and around the maze of passages, I also saw their dishwasher. Yes, a dishwasher. Technically, it’s not used for dishes, but it’s a big silver machine about the length of a car, which washes and dries off all the 3D glasses after they’re used, so they’re nice and clean for new people to use. They’re then carted back out to the lobby, where they’re handed out for the next screening. And lastly, we looked at the back of the screen itself – nothing much back there, it’s mostly just scaffolding holding up the screen (which, indecently, had to be lowered in through the roof when they built it because it’s so large), along with some surprisingly small speakers. The screen itself is silver, with millions of tiny holes in it for the sound to pass through (which most, if not all theatres have anyway). And that’s it!
An interesting thing (I hope I’m allowed to say this ) that Sally mentioned is that she’s flying off to Belgium in the next few weeks to go and find out more about the new digital IMAX projectors, to maybe upgrade the theatre to at a later date. That would mean that the projector wouldn’t need the huge reels behind it, nor would they need all the film either, as the films would then be delivered on a simple hard drive. And one hard drive is a lot better than 50 boxes of heavy plastic! Plus, of course, you get the benefits of going digital – the film doesn’t degrade, the quality is better, and so on.
Overall, it was very interesting seeing all the different parts of the cinema, finding out how it all works, and seeing it all in action, so I would like to, of course, say a big thank you to Sally, Caroline, and the rest of the people at Millennium Point for letting me go and see it all.
Note: All the images shown have further notes explaining them on Flickr, so be sure to click through to see them.
I’ve heard about it before, years ago, when someone hid one under a bridge (it was on the news), but I pretty much ignored it. Then a while ago, someone I follow on Twitter (yum9me) started tweeting about it so I thought “hm, sounds interesting”. Anyway, I decided to try it out recently, so I downloaded the “lite” (free) version of the Geocaching app for the iPhone, and gave it a go. Anyway, it’s quite fun – I started off with one in London – the South Bank Lion geocache, which is near the Lion opposite Big Ben. I found another two today, in Birmingham, and it’s quite fun – and depending on where it is – pretty easy to do.
The whole idea around the “sport”, if you can call it that, is that you find GPS co-ordinates for a cache, plug them into your GPS unit (I use my iPhone), and then go searching. For example, next time you’re in, say, Iceland, you could attempt to find this cache. The cache itself is usually something small – the inner city ones are generally either a film canister, or a tiny plastic ziplock bag, and the country ones are usually a bit bigger, such as a container the size of a mug or a small box. Inside is anything from a log only, to other stuff like a coin or something similar. You can even hide your own cache if you want to, as long as you follow the rules and so on (eg, you have to put it on public property and it has to say what it is, etc). I might do that one day – there are a few spots I can think of around where I ride my bike that might be quite good.
I mean yes, it is ultimately a pointless sport, but it’s fun to do nonetheless. I’ve found 3 so far and I haven’t even started on the ones in Stafford…which I’ll do when the weather gets a bit better (it’s freezing cold at the moment and it’s raining now).
I’ve moved hosts, yet again. When I first got william-hook.com in October 2005, I was hosted with A Small Orange. However I later moved away from them in 2008, to Minthost, as they were cheaper (and faster too), and then again a few months ago I again moved to Fr3d’s server, as he was, well, free. However, Fr3d has decided to start charging (and, tbh, too much. ), so I’ve moved back to ASO. Actually, I’ve put half my site elsewhere. All the big files that I had hosted on my blog I’ve put on another server I have access to, which has plenty of space available , but my blog itself (which is only 30MB) I’m hosting with ASO. The upside is that I can fit into the $25/year plan, so the hosting overall doesn’t cost me much now. The only thing I’m worried about now is that when I used to be on ASO, the server I was on eventually got pretty slow, so I’m hoping that won’t happen again. If it does I can probably ask to be moved to another server but for now, it seems fine, which is good.
The one thing I am keeping with Fr3d is that he’s hosting a Microsoft Exchange mailbox for me. The mail I don’t really care about (I primarily use Gmail), but it does mean that my contacts and calendars are synced between my PC, Mac, and iPhone, which is awesome – and at £20/year it’s much cheaper than Apple’s MobileMe).
Anyway, so, yes, if you’re reading this, you’re seeing my blog hosted with ASO. If you’re not, your DNS server suck and you should switch to OpenDNS.
Twitter. Retweets. If you know what I’m talking about, read on. If you don’t, go to the next post. Simple as that. And yes, this is a rant, because it really irritates me that some people refuse to use it simply because they can’t comment on Tweets, yet that very person keeps retweeting verbatim tweets from someone without making any comments. So uh, why not use the new method, duh? Anyway, to business.
Why you should NOT use Twitter’s new RT method:
It doesn’t allow for commenting on Tweets. Okay, yes, fair point, but about 1 out of every 20 retweets that I ever do have a comment from me, so really, it doesn’t bother me. And most of the time, it doesn’t need a comment. If you retweeted someone, well, you either liked their tweet, or found it funny, or useful, or nice. There’s no need to say that. Really. I get it.
Twitter could “fix” this by adding some kind of “comment” tweet attatched to it, but honestly, I don’t see the need. As it is, I rarely want to comment on retweets, so…whatever.
Why you SHOULD use Twitter’s new RT method:
Duplicates. I follow over 200 people, many of whom know each other – for example, I follow the iTweetReply (iPhone app) team. This consists of three developers, plus the iTweetReply Twitter account and the Syncode Twitter account. When one of these Tweets, do I really need to see the same thing, but retweeted five times? Five times? Five times? Five times? Five times? Yeah, exactly. Sure it might be getting you more exposure, but in the end it’s just pissing me off (and doubtless other people as well).
Annoying people who RT too much. Thankfully, none of my followers retweet stuff so much that I want to disable them, but it’s there if I ever do. I’m close to switching off retweets for one person, but, alas, they’re still using the old method. Yet their personal tweets are interesting, so I don’t want to unfollow them.
You and your company, product, or business. I follow you. You tweet about your personal life. I like this. You also retweet almost everything about your product or company says. Which I don’t care about because I don’t use it or I use a different product. This doesn’t really come under retweets, but it’s almost as bad. I don’t really need to know when your product has a new feature or website or information about it or stats…if I wanted to know this, I would follow your product’s Twitter account. Not you. And then when you did retweet it, using the new method, I could see that tweet, once, and that’s it. Okay?
It’s easier to keep track of. On Twitter’s website, it shows information about your retweets. Including stuff like how many people retweeted something, which of your tweets have been retweeted, and so on. It’s like a super mini version of Google Analytics, but for retweets!
It’s less annoying. I love Twitter’s “mentions” feature. It lets me see who has mentioned me in a tweet, or sent me a reply. What I don’t like is when 50 people* retweet something of mine, and then I get 50 mentions of something that I said. Really, I don’t need to see all that. Even more so when every @reply to me is sent via push notifications to my iPhone – it becomes annoying.
It’s a Twitter feature. It’s there to be used, so use it! Remember when @replies were changed to mentions? Everyone cried and said it was a horrible thing and the world would end. 2 months later, no one said anything, because guess what, it works. Once Twitter refine the new retweet method (by adding commenting like I explained above – which other people want), and most, if not all Twitter clients implement it, I would hope that everyone switches over to using it, because it’s great.
*as if I’m that popular. The most I’ve ever had has been about 20 people, and that was only once. Still, god knows what it would be like if I was famous. I’d stab my eyes out.
Ah, Birmingham. Some people love it, some people hate it. Personally, I both love and hate it. I love the fact that it has a nice cinema, an IMAX, a pretty nice shopping centre, an Apple Store, two nice big arenas, and so on, but I hate the fact that, outside of that, it’s a ugly dump of a city. Seriously, outside the recent development, there’s nothing remotely making me want to live there, or even drive though it. AT ALL.
MacBook.
Anyway, enough of that. So, on Monday the 16th of November, on the exact day that my warranty expired, I decided to finally get my MacBook fixed. Yeah, this is the problem I had. It took me a whole year to get it fixed. Honestly, the problem was there, and it was bugging me, but I just seemed to live with it for the year until the last minute – it’s safe to say that it’s now all fixed, and the keyboard is nice and matte again (it had turned shiny from one year of use), and of coursed, fixed.
The problem is that when I went on the 16th, two days later, I got a cold – most likely because I went into Birmingham in the freezing wind with not much on at all. T-shirt and a hoodie, that’s it. So it’s my fault. I had a sore throat/nose, but I was in bed (and, er, on the computer when mum wasn’t looking ) for about a week. Anyway, I was up and about from the 25th Nov again, and only now do I feel almost 100%. I’m still coughing slightly but for the most part I feel fine.
MIIIIIIIICHAEL MCINTYREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!
Take two. I had planned to go before (see here), but my dad actually broke his leg in August, so sadly we (we = me and parents) had to cut short the whole journey and not go. However, I got some more tickets for the 30th Nov (which is technically yesterday) and saw him then, but at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham instead of the O2. End result? Awesome. Funny as ever and it was great seeing him live. If he ever goes on tour again (and I presume he will), I’ll be going again for sure.
We (we = myself and mum) decided to go by car instead of the train as, well, it’s easier (and last time I went to the NIA, for Cirque Du Soleil, it was actually pretty much dead quiet when we came out). Or so I thought. Half the problem is that by train, there’s a one mile or so walk to the arena, and in the freezing wind, it’s bloody cold. Plus it’s Birmingham so we wouldn’t have made it back to the train anyway, due to stabbing.
Right, so, car journey down was okay. Not brilliant – I mean, the M6, at 6pm, on a weekday, yeah, there’s bound to be some traffic, and there was. It wasn’t too bad though – about a ten minute delay in total. And I managed to botch up the TomTom’s directions a little. All in all, though, that was fine. So, we went in, saw Mr McIntyre, and because our seats were in block 11 in the arena, we made it out and to the car within about 5 minutes of the end of the show. Perfect. So, we back out the bay parking bay, drive around the corner (we were on the roof of the parking garage), and end up behind a queue of cars. For an hour. Yes, an HOUR. I managed to listen to Robbie Williams’ entire new album in the car. One song after that, and we were finally out. It turns out they decided to empty the entire car park, level by level, before we managed to get out of it all. Lovely. Anyway, as soon as we were out, it was fine, until about 5 minutes later when we hit the rest of the traffic. Oh boy.
So, 45 minutes later and we finally were on the M6 and doing more than 40mph. Half the problem with the traffic jam is that the idiot roadworkers decided to close off half of the “expressway” between the central Birmingham area and the M6, for roadworks (At 11pm? At least wait until midnight!), so we had to go around the long route. Anyway, once we were on the last stretch of the expressway to the M6, it was fine…and then we arrived at the M6. Europe’s busiest motorway. Oh, yeah, and due to roadworks, they had turned it into a one lane road travelling at a whopping 10mph. Amazingly enough, they were ACTUALLY THERE, and ACTUALLY WORKING. I almost fainted. Yet, alas, only about 300 meters worth of roadworks required (I counted) 14 miles of motorway to be slowed down to 50mph, and have cones and warning signs and so on all the way along it. What the hell for? As Jeremy Clarkson said on Top Gear this past weekend, surely the point of dropping the limit to 50 is to protect the workforce? What workforce? Why not put the speed limit back up to 70 when they’re not there (so…all the time).
Anyway, that’s enough ranting. End of the day, Michael McIntyre was brilliant and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Also, note to self: take the train next time.
Sky. If you live outside the UK, you’ll know it’s that thing above you that’s usually either blue, grey, white, or black. Water falls out of it sometimes, and other times, planes do.
Except if you live inside the UK, you’ll know I’m talking about Sky. Yes, them. So, why am I talking about Sky? Well, simple. I want to complain. I like complaining.
So at the moment, we have Sky’s “full” package. Which means we get all the “entertainment” packs – stuff like entertainment, documentaries, music, kids shows, news, etc. That’s the base price of £22.50 a month. Which, for the range of channels, isn’t too bad. It’s pretty much everything except movies and sports. Which we also get. Which brings the total up to £47.50 per month. Okay, so that’s expensive, but my dad loves the sports, and I watch a fair few movies, so we do use it. Then, of course, we have Sky’s HD box, with access to the HD channels…which is another £9.75 per month. So far, the total is £57.25 per month. Yeah, we’re starting to get expensive here.
Now, my parents almost always watch boring crap (I don’t have any interest in Strictly Come Dancing or Football / Rugby / etc, okay?), so I have my own Sky+HD box in my bedroom. Which means that we have a multiroom subscription (£9.75/month), and a second “HD” subscription (£9.75/month). So right now, we pay £76.75 per month. Which is US$127, CA$134, EU€85, or AU$139.
Oh, and I wouldn’t mind watching Sky News on my iPhone – Sky have an iPhone app that can do that (along with sports), which is £6 a month for non-customers…and actual customers. So you want to charge another £6 on top of that £76 we already pay? Um, no. If I buy a Slingbox, it’s more complicated, but it’ll cost the same over two years and it gives me access to ALL channels.
I would consider this to be on the high end of things – it’s a lot of money to pay for only TV (no broadband or phone), and yet…after all that, I hate the Sky+HD box. I hate their service in general. The content itself is great, but the rest of Sky….no.
Way to Go by Rogue Traders
