BobBigMac

Books, books, dead tree books

I’ve been reading books on my kindle for almost 2 years now, and in all that time have not read a single ‘real’ book. With the cost of shipping, the unnecessary fuel I know it uses, and organising the volume on my shelves, it’s just not worth it.

I picked up a name for real books a while back on the kindle forums for these increasingly outdated volumes: “dead tree books”. It kinda sums it up pretty well, what’s the point of wasting paper when I have a wonderful gadget on which I can read on for weeks (current is about 3 weeks and still at 30% battery) between charges and can carry about the weight of a paperpack with hundreds of novels, short-story collections and even hard-to-find sci-fi mags (Asimov’s and Analog) all in easily convertible formats.

When I bought the kindle, I thought I’d miss that ‘new book smell’, but honestly, I really don’t (the leather-cover makes a decent substitute), and I’m reading more than ever :)

Sucker Punched by Robot Samurai Nazi Dragons

I’ve waited a LONG time for the ‘perfect action movie’, and for a long while, I think Sucker Punch is the closest we’re going to get.

It may not be 100% perfect, but 99% is pretty close: hot girls with ample cleavage and short-skirted ass waving, tons of guns, explosions aplenty and a body count to marvel at. Clockwork Nazis are of course… awesome, with samurai giants and fire-breathing dragons just to balance it out.

Top all that with a reasonably developed plot (for a hot-girl-based action movie) some underlying abuse themes to keep the bleeding-hearts happy, and a rationally unhappy ending. All in all, pretty awesome flick… Go see it :)

Buried

One of the things which can turn a good movie into a great one is the soundtrack.

Likewise, one of the things which can turn a good movie into a steaming pile of manure, is the soundtrack.

Buried fits into the latter category: the premise, and the dialog were both compelling, the problem being that when the dialog really matters all you can hear is the melodramatic soundtrack.

Whoever scored this movie should never work again, they completely ruined it, don’t waste your time on it.

in the dark of night every atheist half believes

Quote: Edward Young (or Frank Gallagher)

Now I’m not a religious person, in fact most of the time I think it’s complete bunk. But I’m not an atheist, never have been. Denying anything to the point of absolute certainty is just plain impractical, given how often new discoveries are made and the world is turned anew.

So what do I believe? I often wonder myself, as I know the bible, the koran, the torah, and every other ‘holy’ text is ‘cursed by the methods of man’ and are mostly built to control the populace, for good and for bad. Though there is a message throughout them all of being better, helping more, of sharing and working for good. The darker beings misappropriate and misguide, and everyone is the poorer for it.

Sometimes I ‘might’ believe in a creator, although I’m pretty damn sure it’s not some bearded dude in the sky, as I often think something had to have come before the universe we know: but I don’t know if it’s simple because my small human brain can’t conceive of the absence of anything, or if my fanciful imagination would just like to invisage some being greater than our flawed human selves.

One thing I do know for sure, it’s not watching us, it doesn’t particularly care… after all, why would it?

We’re just the goldfish in somebody else’s bowl.

Answer your emails please!

I send quite a lot of emails, and sometimes end up sending them to people who don’t ‘particularly’ like me.

This is usually because someone (or sometimes many people) using one of my tools or websites has specifically requested something which requires me to contact these other people.

I just wanted to mention… sometimes a “No” is fine. I’d even settle for a “No. Please go f*&^ yourself” as a reasonable response. When I ask you a question, or for a favour, or for something you don’t want to, or can’t give me: please just say no.

Don’t leave me waiting for 3 freaking months before I eventually have to bug you until you like me even less just to get a straight answer… it doesn’t have to be a nice answer, or an answer I will like, but if you don’t send me any answer then I AM going to keep on at you.

Oh, and don’t lie, I will catch you out, then you will like me even less, but I’ll cover that in another post :) Be honest and I will understand.

The Life of a Cat…

Oh sometimes I wish I was a cat. Sleep all day, sleep all night, eat when you’re hungry, and have your own tiny door which don’t even need to worry about whether you’ll lose the key if you have a bit too much ‘nip.

And you get to be REALLY cute all the time, and if you’re somehow managing to have a bad day you can scratch people and they just put it down to you ‘being a cat’.

Yes, maybe the dog gets to lounge around too, but if he wants to go out he has the indignity of a leash, and of being, well, a moron.

A cat has freedom, self-respect, company when it wants it and peace when it doesn’t, fancy food and plenty of sleep.

Oh what a wonderful life it must be to be cat :)

Be pessimistic, sometimes.

I release new products, ranges, software or other stuff quite often, I’m one of those people who has to have 100 projects on the go at any one time.

When I first started out with my own business, every release or every new project was ‘going to change the world’, or at least my small part of it… but one thing you learn when you’re running your own business, is that 90% of your ideas are crap. Really crap… so crap, it probably wasn’t worth having the idea in the first place.

So when you have a new idea for a project, or product, software, photography shoot, marketing method, networking thingy, a plan or anything else… get behind it, and go at it with everything you’ve got, but remember: be pessimistic sometimes.

It will make failing a lot easier to turn into a learning experience… and after all, failure is what eventually makes winners :)

As tall as a field-mouse on stilts giving a piggyback to a dolphin…

Ever notice in newspapers, magazines and blogs, that there are always some pretty strange units of measurement to describe the size of things?

Presumably this is an effort to make the size ‘relatable’ for the average idiot who doesn’t know how big 75 meters (67.5 yards) is… Well that’s roughly the size of 15 double-decker buses, or the distance of a 1 hour crawl across broken glass with your arms and legs tied.

I recently saw the ‘iPods’ used as a unit of measurement… wtf! For starters… Which iPod? It also didn’t specify the iPod’s orientation. I’ve also seen the distance between the earth and the moon described as a stack of dollar-bills, how many blue whales would need to be layed end-to-end to match the height of the new Burj tower, and even seen time compared to how long it would take to drive between Manchester and London 1000 times… really… yes REALLY.

Please, next time you need to come up with an inventive way to describe a number and can’t face writing lots of zeros: consider scientific notation, it’s not exactly rocket science ;)

Sorry for my poor [insert-language]

Please don’t apologise for your ‘poor english’.

It’s far far better than my russian, polish, german, italian, french, spanish, hungarian, svensk, or any other language except english.

I get quite a lot of emails from russia and poland (where a lot of stock photographers are) and almost all of them apologise for their english. Please don’t, I understand, and if I wasn’t so crap at languages I’d learn at least a bit of yours, but I just have not talent for it.

So once and for all, I apologise for my poor <your-language>, and thank you for learning mine to a point at which we can communicate :)

Things I don’t care about…

1. Football: what a load of pointless twaddle. Playing it is fine, great, fun even, but who won what cup, when and who scored how many goals. Which footballer sleeps with prostitutes or just crashed his ridiculously expensive car… I just frankly don’t give a shit. My only football knowledge is that Uruguay won the first world cup, and I don’t even care about that.
2. Boring people: Please leave me alone. I don’t care if you’re a chartered accountant or if you just ran a half-marathon. I’m not exactly Mr. Exciting, but I keep it to myself or blog about it for fun, I don’t tell strangers all about it whilst waiting for the train.
3. Old school-mates. Yes, we were in school together, and by all means I’ll add you on facebook; but don’t bother posting on my wall, I don’t care about you at all and I’m not going to waste my time. Everyone I wanted to keep in touch with, I have.
4. How many awards you have, how much you earn, how good you are at your job, or how many followers you have on twitter. Keep it for your headstone, because I don’t need to prop up your failing ego and will never say “oh how amazing”… I might say “oh how nice for you” whilst rolling my eyes and rolling a cig so I have a reason to walk outside… ie. away from you.
5. What you think about me: Sometimes I’m a dick, sometimes I’m a really nice guy, if I don’t like you, you’ll probably think I’m a dick. I’m ok with that and I don’t care if you’re not.

That’s all for now :)