Monday 31 October 2005

Happy days

Yesterday's result against Dundee United put Celtic back at the top of the table. It's been quite a turnaround since the dark days of late August. And we're playing some good football. My highlight of yesterday's game [WMV] was Petrov kicking the goalpost when Beattie didn't pass to him. So things are looking good. Hearts are trying to help us by sacking their coach and Rangers are helping too by keeping theirs.

But I don't think that Rangers are out of it. Any team that can blow a five point lead in four games, can blow a 10 point lead in 24 games. But the bookies disagree.

Sunday 30 October 2005

This week's TV

Winter must be near - the TV schedules are improving. This week sees a new documentary/drama about Rome (Wednesday), a new comedy about TV news (Monday), and a repeat of Jonathon Miller's wonderful series about Atheism (Monday). A few of the most shocking movies are also shown this week - including Audition (tonight), The Shining (Friday) and Misery (Thursday). And there's some fantastic comedy on Tuesday.

Friday 28 October 2005

The Daily Show

Anyone seen "The Daily Show" on More4 at 8:30pm.
Its US show hosted by John Stewart which takes a look at the news that day in US.
As US shows go its liberal, poking fun at the Government.
It can be patchy as a lot of it refers to US politicians that a UK audience might not know, and some of the skits are lame, but the reason to watch it is the way it lampoons Bush and his cabal.
The chilling thing is that Bush comes across as a bigger idiot than before (which is saying something). There was one clip where it showed Bush interviewing US invasion soldiers in Baghdad, he could hardly string two words together. It was cringingly embarrasing. The icing on the cake was that they showed another clip of one of his aides before hand, rehearsing the dialogue whith the soldiers, even down to anticipating the "off the cuff" joke by the C in C.

I know that if the show made any difference the network would pull it, and I agree with everything Chomsky says on ways of manufacturing consent, but its good to see some opposition.

Did anyone see Morgan Spurlock's documentary last night about living on US minimum wage for 30 days?

Tuesday 25 October 2005

The 25 Most Shocking Moments in Movie History

Premiere Magazine has an article on the 25 most shocking moments in movies. It includes some classics but omits some really scary moments. The scene I can't watch is the one in Misery when Kathy Bates breaks the James Caan's ankles.

Monday 24 October 2005

DVD

Anyone seen any decent DVD's recently.

Best British film EVER is Dead Man's Shoes

http://www.godwillforgivethem.com/

It's a small film in terms of budget and setting but deals with large themes - justice, culpability, guilt...

Paddy Considine gives a chilling performance (he out Bickels Bickel).

Watching it in the cinema left me very emotional and when I spoke about it to Eve (I saw it alone in London) I would well up with emotion.

Sunday 16 October 2005

Celtic v Hearts

It was an excellent game yesterday. I was impressed with Hearts who I thought played like a European team (so did Gordon Strachan). Their midfield in particular was excellent, causing our defence all sorts of problems with clever through balls.

But I thought that we played well too. Camara was excellent and Sutton and Beattie played well together for most of the game. But Telfer was poor and Denis may be right about this guy. It was good to see Thompson and Lennon substitued - something MON never did. Nakamura continues to disappoint. He seems like a luxury that we can't afford and playing him feels like playing with 10 men.

It was a bonus that TFOD dropped two points today. The combination of Celtic and Rangers being weaker than usual and Hearts being considerably better than normal should make it a close league. Any one of the three teams could win it.

Tuesday 11 October 2005

Dark matter refuted

An earlier post complained about dark matter and I came across this paper which explains galactic rotation without resorting to dark matter. I won't pretend to understand the paper but any explanation seems to me to be better than dark matter. I'm reading a book just now that is incredibly irritating in the way it presumes that ideas like dark matter, the Big Bang and black holes to be true.

Friday 7 October 2005

Skype

Using the Internet as a telephone (called VOIP) has been in the news recently. Skype is the best known VOIP service. I tried Skype about 18 months ago and was not impressed. But I downloaded the latest version a few weeks ago - what an improvement.

Skype is free between Skype users (anywhere in the world) but you can also call land-lines for a small fee. The international dialling charges are a fraction of the large telecomms companies. The rates are also good to UK land and mobile numbers. But the best thing about it is the call quality. Skype-to-Skype is outstanding. Skype to landline is the same as an ordinary telephone. And it supports conference call (including a mix of Skype and landlines) for up to four people.

Skype also supports a number of extensions to make calling from Outlook or Internet Explorer very simple (turning every telephone number into a Skype link).

Skype solved a problem for me. My telephone bills were astronomical a few months ago so I took drastic action and barred out-going calls. But Skype allowed me to give the girls telephone credit (I give them 10 Euros at a time) so they now use Skype to phone their friends - and I get to control my phone bill.

My Skype username is "bobbyelliott" or you can call me using the button below (leave voicemail if I'm not online).

Call me!

Monday 3 October 2005

Weekend in Lochgoilhead

We had a great weekend in Lochgoilhead. Diggy, Stephen and Gerry arrived on Friday evening. Me, John and Denis arrived Saturday morning. And Griff arrived Saturday evening.

We spent the time swimming, golfing, walking and drinking.

The place is beautiful...

Diggy's hospitality was fantastic but he took it too far...


We didn't feel too good on Sunday morning...