The who Avatar hype machine is beyond insane. When it was people claiming how awesome it would be because James Cameron was Directing it was silly. When critics and other in the industry started buying into the hype it was surprising. When reviews started saying how awesome it was despite critics usually flaying alive any film with such a heavy focus on special effects over plot it was stupid. When people got abused by Avatards on internet forums for saying they enjoyed it but it wasn’t ‘all that’ it was pathetic fanboyism. When Avatar’s initially didn’t blow the box office away and we got headlines like “Avatar almost breaks records” it was ridiculous. And when people started naming their kids Pandora (presumably they will have a stalker named Adrian when they get older) and getting depressed because they couldn’t live in the CGI world Avatar had created it was simply sad. Now I am beginning to think money is involved. Read the rest of this entry »

Opera users (All 6 of them) are more fanatical and delusional than Apple Zealots (with frankly less justification) and they annoy the crap out of me with the way they hijack every browser discussion on the internet. Try to discuss the various merits of TraceMonkey and V8 (they’re fast right?) and some muppet will throw in some totally irrelevant observation about Opera. Try and compare and contrast IE7’s and IE8’s rendering engines and some Opera user will appear to talk about how standard compliant Opera is. New version of a Browser with a new feature or a new Firefox extension? Then expect to see hundreds of comments of how Opera does the same thing already. Though they will forget to mention it doesn’t do it (whatever it is) anywhere near as well.

They are a bunch of entitled whiners, the Newcastle supporters of computing. Opera deserves to win everything and have praise heaped upon it. I tried to think of some non-UK centric equivalents but I couldn’t come up with anything. My sport knowledge is somewhat limited because, you know, I’m a geek. Feel free to post international equivalents to Newcastle football supporters in the comments.

Opera users please can you answer me this damned question. If Opera is so brilliant why isn’t everyone using it? Or at least have more people using it than are using Chrome, which came out like yesterday. Let me guess an evil Firefox/Google/Microsoft conspiracy? Stupid users? Or are you going for the Opera user change their Browser identity string to get around lazy/corrupt Web Developer’s who try and block them from viewing websites? How can a browser that has been around longer than most others have such a small user base? How shit must the Opera marketing people be? The problem is that Opera scratches no particular itch. It isn’t just there, familiar and convenient like IE or Safari, it isn’t extendible to the same extent as Firefox and it isn’t as lean and as technically excellent as Chrome. Any Web Developer worth his salt will have Firefox and a host of Web Developer centric extensions installed so they can’t even count on the tech crowd any more. Though it might help if Opera spent more time working on the basic Web Browser features and stopped adding useless crap like bittorrent clients and web servers. They can’t find a niche so are desperate to create one, and failing miserably.

By the way Unite in Opera 10 is rubbish. Virtually useless (doubly so because nobody else uses it) and clumsy to use.

For the record I used to pay for Opera back in the day, you know when it was still a good browser. Before they got Fisher Price to re-design the interface (twice) and started adding every trendy gimmick they could get their hands on in a desperate attempt to make their product matter. I’ve also installed every major release version of Opera since version 3 because as a professional Web Developer I do my testing properly. I’ve not seen a single reason to use any release of Opera as my main browser since version 6.

There have recently been lots of complaints that ‘Stargate: Universe’ is sexist. Frankly I am sick of deplorable sexism in Science Fiction. It isn’t coming from the writer or producers but from the double standard wielding hypocrites in Science Fiction fandom. We had snifters of the same thing about BSG. So many people think SGU is sexist because the characters in it are reacting and behaving like real people rather than the Ancient Greece style heroes that have previously made up the characters of a Stargate show. Rather than having a decade long period of sexual tension that can only exist in fiction the SGU characters just do it and get it out of the way. Now I love Stargate’s SG1 and Atlantis but I’ve never ever expected them to be overly realistic. Sometimes the characters behaved realistically but more often than not the show was Spider-man and Deadpool in space. It was a light show with quite a high level of comedy. SGU is neither of these things.

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This past week I have watched a fair few DVD’s. Things like Doctor Who Series 4, Spaced Series 1 & 2, The Incredible Hulk, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Eddie Izzard’s Boxset, Gremlins, Hot Fuzz and so on and so forth. I’ve decided that DVD’s as they stand at the moment should shoulder a great deal of blame for sending people off to pirate films and TV shows. I’ve had a nightmare just getting to the bloody film. It is a mix of the usual complaints that you have read on the internet and some of my own special insanity. Here is what pisses me off about DVD’s:

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I thought I would let the dust settle and allow myself time to gain a sense of perspective before I blogged on this. Anyone who has seen my twitter feed has seen my initial reaction. I’d like to say it my opinion has changed but it hasn’t. It may have mellowed and I have however become slightly more rational about it but it hasn’t changed. I should now be able to put my thoughts into readable sentences. In the long run I still think this is a bad thing. In all possibility it might well turn out to be the worst thing that could have happen to Marvel other than bankruptcy. I’ll break it down into the three main areas this will cover and address them in turn.

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For pities sake stop referencing 1984 whenever a government does or is reported to do anything you don’t like. Especially if it has anything to do with cameras. It is so damned cliched now it no longer marks you (if it ever did) as a intelligent and witty individual opposing government tyranny. Quite the opposite in fact because when you do it you just look like a pseudo-intellectual douche-bag. Why because 1984 has quite a specific setting that we are nowhere near replicating. Why? Because in 1984 it is the minority middle classes that are subjugated by the upper classes to prevent revolution. It works on the premise that revolution is always started by the Bourgeoisie. The working class masses are pretty much left to their own devices. In modern Britain half the damned country is now middle class and it is the middle classes who actually run the damned country. Whenever anyone comes up with a hair-brained scheme involving CCTV it is always to protect the middle class from the criminal elements of the evil, chavy working  (I use the term loosely as not all of them actually work) classes. That is not the situation in 1984! We are no more close to the situation in 1984 than we are to that in ‘Brave New World’. Which in my opinion is the better damned book.

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