Scotland

We have just returned from a (very) small Island in Scotland, surrounded by impressive scenery, actual wildlife (cuckoos that sound just like cuckoos - if you see what I mean), plush accommodation and all very middle of nowhereish. Lovely. However it means two things: one, I am unable to write about the usual hanging around town things as I saw no one except family (and that is a whole other blog in itself) and did very little except walk and lounge, and two that although I had a fantastic time, I did in fact sigh a little sigh of relief when we arrived back amongst the concrete and the shops.

Also I have lost my phone to computer cable and can't transfer pictures which means that the visual aspect of this will be a lot less interesting until I find it.

Designers at the ICA

We went to the ICA to see a design show/discussion, Joff's idea as he is doing a product design course. I was sort of interested and sort of dreading it. My dread was confirmed when we arrived for a 7 pm start only to sit for half an hour wathcing 2 (very young) blokes with deisgner head stubble, fiddling with their laptops. When one of them got out his phone and was playing with both at the same time I was ready to leave. Eventually they started and their communication skills matched my expectations, not good. However once they got round to showing their work it was a completely different story. The event is set up to showcase mainly digital designers and their pet projects, in other words the things they would like to be doing when they are not designing car ads. The presentations we saw ranged from a short film, an idea for a digital art display, an interactive table and a truly astounding car ad (yes I know, it was a car ad but it was amazing). All of the designers were men and all pretty much looked under 30 and all seemed to be running their own companies. Easy to knock, but the skill they displayed was really impressive, it involved hour upon hour of doing complicated things with computers which I inherently think of as dull and tedious, mainly becuase I don't have a hope in hell of understanding it, but the work they produced was very creative and changed my opinion of both computer geeks and designers.

Broadband

After six months in the dial up wilderness I am back on broadband (hence the sudden burst of posts) and it is sooo good to be back.

Zodiac - it's a killer!

The film Zodiac has had nothing less than 4 star reviews and so I was looking forward to seeing it with great excitment, however after 2 and a half hours of watching it my excitment had turned to head nodding boredom. I admit I was tired already and I do have a habit of falling asleep in films with anything less than ear drum shattering jaw dropping action (although I like to think of myself as an arthouse lover, I think I am naturally more of a blockbuster type). This is a film about the fruitless search for a serial killer, who may or may not have killed anything from 4 - 40 people. They don't find him. Which would havebeen ok if anything else actually happened, like character development or stuff like that, but no such luck. A disparate group of police (or cops as they say over there) pursue the Zodiac as he taunts them with a seemingly endless chain of letters and codes to break (nothing duller than watching someone crack a code on film - witness the DA Vinci Code). They start off obsessed and end up obsessed and fired. Yes, the detail is impressive, the look of it inviting and the first 2 murder scenes are pretty scary, but that is not enought to carry over 2 hours of mumbling, bumbling interminable searching.