Month: April 2019
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Record Store Day 2019
Record Store Day 2019 Record Store Day 2019 redux. Record Store Day has moved away from its origins, to drive music fans into independent record stores and support independent record labels in a time of iTunes and Spotify. For various reasons I didn’t do any any vinyl shopping but used The Vinyl Store to compile…
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Dragged Across Concrete
In sharp contrast to the wall-to-wall kinetic-driven nature of action films in general; Dragged Across Concrete is a well-paced crime film. The role of smartphone shot video dragged it kicking and screaming into the modern day via Rodney King. The film reminded me of a number of others: Dragged Across Concrete owes a lot to…
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Hellboy reboot and flawed superhero films
I got to see the Hellboy reboot. Make no mistake it’s flawed. It doesn’t have the synchronicity with the source material of Guillermo del Toro’s adaptations. It was great to see Daniel Dae Kim on film, but his English accent wasn’t great. It was right up there with Dick Van Dyk. There was an ensemble…
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RESIST + more things
RESIST – counter disinformation tool – published by UK government. There needs to be more done beyond this document however. Secondly, much of the disinformation in the UK is from within the country supporting anti-vaccination, Islamic fundementalism, Islamophobia, the far left and the far right. RESIST feels like a start rather than a solution. This…
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The Apple – Qualcomm deal post
The Apple and Qualcomm deal ceased legal hostilities and lots of people have kicked around theories. But no one seems to definitively know what happened. And what the implications are for Apple.
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Easter & things from last week
Easter Week has mean’t that I’ve been exceptionally busy closing things before taking the long weekend break. Easter isn’t a huge holiday in the Carroll household, but its the first break that we get since the Christmas holiday, so always welcome. For many students in Europe Easter signals a hard push on revision in advance…
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What Happened by Hilary Clinton
I just had a chance to read What Happened am glad that I didn’t pay good money for this book. I found it both insightful and disappointing in equal measures. Clinton conveys her emotion really well. She also deeply loves power and policy. I don’t mean that in a megalomaniac way; but in a deep…
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Is Brexit bad for Europe + more
Judy Asks: Is Brexit Bad for Europe? – Carnegie Europe – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – interesting take on Brexit from a US perspective. Is Brexit bad for Europe focuses on the EUs role on the world stage including regional and global security. According to my reading of Is Brexit bad for Europe there…
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Chinese typing + more things
The complexity of Chinese typing. Chinese typing relies extensively on predictive text technology. It is even more problematic that Chinese people are forgetting what some characters look like. The idea of memory trade-off is interesting. It is also worthwhile considering when one thinks about Chinese internet behaviour and the popularity of gaming (because chat can…