Bookcrossing.com - set your books free
I've been a member for a while of the site bookcrossing.com, but today I set my first book free! Bookcrossing is an online database of books that have been read, logged, and then placed in release spots in your area to find another reader. It's international and release spots can be anywhere from a cafe, a supermarket or a dentist's waiting room. If all goes well, and about 25% of the released books get found, then the next reader can enter a journal entry on the book, and pass it on.
I chose H.G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon and released it on Western Road at the bus stop outside the Nero. I felt a bit suspicious, like I was planting a bomb but hopefully someone will pick it up, read the note on the inside cover and take it home. I've also signed up for alerts for other books released in Brighton and Hove so hopefully I shall be able to catch a new one soon! It's free to sign up and participate and I feel it's a perfect way to make sure books don't sit around languishing on your shelves but get read more than once.
How to download DRM-free video from BBC iPlayer
Updated 15th March: Below will no longer work for iPlayer downloads. :( With scripting - iPlayer behaviour can still be mimicked to get the goodies. Read the bottom of the comments for links to alternative methods.
Updated 9th March: Have corrected the bookmarklet which seemed to be getting cut short when you dragged it to your toolbar. Also tested with the Mac OS X and works for me using VLC as the player.
Yes it's true. The new version of iPlayer for the iPhone delivers mpeg4's without the "You have 4 more hours to watch this show", self-destructing DRM of the Windows Media version. They are 480x272 which is decent, and a 45 minute show comes in around 160MB.
You have to jump through a few hoops to download these, but once it's set up it's easy to download whenever you want, so bear with me.
- First you'll want to make your browser appear as if it's an iPhone. I'm working with Firefox, so sorry if this isn't your browser. Download one of the many handy Firefox plugins, The User Agent Switcher.
- After installation and browser restart, add a new User Agent and supply the following information (Tools > User Agent Switcher > Options > Options)
- Description: iPhone
- User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en)
- App Name: AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko)
- App Version: Version/3.0
- Platform: Mobile/1A542a Safari/419.3
- Now switch to having your browser masquerading as the iphone (Tools > User Agent Switcher -> iphone)
- Fire up an iPlayer page of choice.
- Find out the URL that links to the video by dragging this handy bookmarklet to your Bookmarks Toolbar Folder. iPlayerURL2
- Click the bookmarklet and the the URL you want should appear under the title of the video on the iPlayer page.
- Paste this into a new Firefox tab, the iPlayer site will respond and it will begin to download in your browser. This is a pain, so hit the stop button ("X" in a circle), and instead save the page (File > Save page as..)
- Bingo, your Downloads window should now pop open to show you the progress of the download, and the mpeg4 is yours forever to keep! You will want to download and play them in VLC which is by far the most accommodating of all the players, and is free.
Don't forget to reset your user agent back to default, otherwise you may find you're viewing iPhone mobile versions of web pages.
Also, not all the iPlayer content is yet available yet as the service was only launched Friday 7th March. I'm not sure if the BBC was meaning to release DRM free files, so this information may not be useful forever.
Thanks to PainInTheTech for the User Agent info, and Irregular Shed for his discovery of this iPlayer "feature".
Here's The Sky at Night playing in VLC on a Mac
Labels: Mac tips, tv, windows tips
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Bonaparte's Retreat
Been working on a brand new, high production value promo for the "new sound", that of Fuggs Few, with their red hot single Bonaparte's retreat (or er, Napoleon's Retreat as their version is called). Find it in good record stores near you soon.
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There Will Be Blood reviewed - mild spoilers
It annoys me when I read such gushing reviews of a film when you feel like the reviewer is diligently acting as a film critic, a peculiarly removed spectator, one who ticks boxes but essentially misses some of the key aspects of the cinema experience.
Yes, it's epic. Yes, the cinematography is fabulous. Yes, Daniel Day Lewis deserves recognition for his raw screen presence. But this film is far from perfect.
Firstly the plot. I will happily admit I did not feel at all restless in it's 2.5 hour length, but I found myself wondering afterwards, just what exactly happened in all that time? There are really only 4 or 5 key sequences that are actually memorable in the development of the plot about oil man Daniel Plainview. So much more could have occurred to add weight and depth and story, if not to the character of Plainview, to his colleagues, or his workers, or the villagers whose lives would surely have changed immeasurably by the newly created industry on their land. At one point we suspect we may learn about this as he promises the villagers schools and roads and employment at a town meeting, but none of this is ever revisited and we are none the wiser.
Plainview's past is wantonly overlooked, this man we spend so much time with. Surely the story is essentially one man's decent into a morally devoid madness of capitalism and greed. The problem being, he was never truly drawn for us from the start. We don't know his past, just his entry and further career in the oil business. Along the journey we are given few insights to work with.
It doesn't take long to establish Plainview is a driven, unscrupulous business man, but is he really the evil, cold hearted bastard we are meant to despise? Yes, he does some rather underhand deals impacting the inhabitants of the oil rich territories he purchases. He may have exacted some rather vicious crimes on individuals, but it doesn't really shock or evolve a great deal and his crimes (economic and violent) were surely very common in those ruthless times.
The appearance of his brother is a regrettably short interlude in Daniel's stoic, isolated existence whilst his relationship with his son, although strained and confused, didn't strike me as terribly unusual, or even that moving. I'll consent that the clash between the young preacher Eli and Plainview reached some worthy emotional pitches, but this too, could have been explored more.
I think one of the key problems is that There Will Be Blood knowingly breaks one of the key rules of Hollywood, it refrains from offering us any characters we will truly like, or can actively relate to. It does succeed in the only alternative, making interesting characters, or is that character? Daniel Plainview is terribly watchable, with his awkward limp and angry facial tics, he masterfully holds the attention. That however is entirely due to the power of Daniel Day Lewis, certainly not the writing. Nor is Paul Dano's minister, initially creepy enough, much help. Although the faith healing scene is eerie and darkly fascinating, Eli becomes quickly one dimensional and, eventually gives the impression of being mildly irritating, spoilt whiner.
In the end, despite the truly awesome black comedy of the final scene, I feel an absence of any emotion. I was slightly warmed that the preacher with the small mouth gets what he had coming to him, but I neither cheer nor mourn the final psychological position of Daniel Plainview. It just is. Perhaps that is the point but after the fever pitch, emotional whirlwind of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, it felt remarkably flat, cold.
So, There Will Be Blood, incredibly well executed technically but ultimately unsatisfying and lacking humanity. It brings me back to The Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men, where humanity, or the complete lack of it, was a key motif. A much more likeable film.
I'll leave you with my favourite scene from No Country for Old Men, that of Chigurh in the Gas Station. Enjoy.
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New Indiana Jones teaser trailer
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull trailer at Yahoo.
I have just returned home from (co-incidentally) watching Raiders of the Lost Ark on a friend's projector. Great film and almost timeless thanks to the 40's styling, and lack of dependence on available CG effects except for the odd dodgy key and some Ghostbusters-esque rotoscoped energy beams.
After one watch of the new teaser it looks like they've gone with some improbable, big impact CG (that ridiculous looking car chase on the edge of a mountain?) which saddens me. Somehow, the old stunts of Raiders are all the more exciting and believable as someone actually performed all the jumps, falls, and sliding-along-under-the-truck shenanigans. I still have time for Harrison, although has anyone noticed these days that when speaking his face stays strangely immobile, or there is at least a noticeable sluggishness to his expressions? Is this merely age? Would Han Solo botox? I like to think not.
Labels: films
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