Xmas is coming.

Well the decorations are up at work and fucksgiving* is over for another year which means it must be Christmas soon.  Had my first party of the season held in the carvery way out in the sticks (opposite Polhill in Badgers Mount).  Quite busy there to be honest and at times felt like I should jack it all in and go home, really don't like crowds and social situations much but stuck it out and didn't do too badly in the end.   Top tip get a refillable Pepsi so you can keep coming back and it won't cost you anything to top up, especially good for designated drivers, non drinkers and keeping children hyperactive all night.

Pretty good food and the like we had turkey complete with Yorkshire puddings which aren't traditional but damned tasty, also they had toffee ice cream complete with a big round wafer (a google search tells me its a stroopwafel) which was lovely.  Although I don't much care for toffees as sweets, anything toffee / caramel flavoured gets my seal of approval this includes Dulce de Leche as well.

Next event will be our annual works  trying to drink yourself into a stupor because its xmas and that, I'll think I'll feign Ebola to get out of this as I never really enjoy it as much as other folks do.

*edit forgot to say that fucksgiving is my name for thanksgiving do to the amount of fucks I give about thanksgiving.

Youtube and Junk Tour

Well it looks like Youtube are gearing up for some changes and that.  If you are wondering what I'm on about, I'll explain.  In the week they provided an option to how your subscriptions are laid out, either as a group listing or as it normally is as a list. On the downside they completely removed the ability to see all subscriber activity, which if you are lazy like me allows you to discover some channels worth a damn and see what your "friends" like on YT.   Personally I still would like them to drop Google + their failed Facebook and reinstate the preview system that they used circa 2010 or so.  It allowed you to see the first four pages of videos of a subscribers channel and let you look to see if they were worth subscribing to or not, and was genuinely useful.

Junk Tour Lewisham.

Not much to really add today except quite a bit of rap and Happy Hardcore, including Reacts Hardcore Cheddar compilation for sale along with some more tougher Gabber and non gay hardcore. Lewisham is one of those towns where they have a massive immigrant population, indeed when I was a kid they had large Caribbean community as well as a decent bootsale in the Car Park on a Sunday (long defunct).  On a side note they had a Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service on sale and as I'm a sucker for Ghibli films this had to be bought.  Possibly Phil Hartman's finest hour as he provided the voice for the Disney dub of this, you may remember him as Lionel Hutz or Troy McClure from The Simpsons back when it could do no wrong. Its about 3'' tall and has the proper tags and what looks like a Steiff button on its back complete with tag.  I'll add a picture as its quite cute and all.

Ex Machina

First of all I would like to say a few words about Paris and the recent terrorism atrocity there, Sorry man, we had 7/7 way back so kinda know how it feels.  Stuff will get better and that you just need to pick up where you left off and don't let some  V.A.G.I.S.I.L Islamtard cunts stop you from living your lives.

The side bar has a slight updating with some excellent writing from the Males Of Games blog.  Its a critical look at the rise of Feminism in gaming and reminds me of Sargon Of Akkads channel on Youtube (similar content and the like).  If you are a Gamergater or just impartial like myself then please check it out.

Finally we lost Warren Mitchell, A.K.A Alf Garnett.  Til Death Us Do Part and In Sickness and In Health both class sitcoms and to be honest a satire on racism that went over the heads of many who took it to heart much to writer Johnny Speights dismay.  Will probably look up some stuff on Youtube later as they are still funny.

Ex Machina.

Finally got round to seeing this seeing as its Children in  Need or as its know in our house as quick turn over to ITV before Pudsey spots us.  I'll not spoil the film or give away the ending but I will say this its got some of the best music I've heard in a film in ages so much so that I'm going to track down the OST its that good.

The film stars a guy called Caleb who wins a lottery at his place of work (he has a boring office job as a programmer or coder as we must call it now) to become a guinea pig for an A.I project out in the middle of nowhere.  Dropped off by chopper he is given a key card to a hi tech log cabin in the woods and is met by reclusive programming genius Nathan who gives him the tour of the place telling him some rooms are off limits and what he will be doing there.  Essentially there to test his A.I (called Ava) a robot woman created in his lab, he has a one to one meeting with her and gradually begins a relationship with her.  The power cuts that the building is plagued with are caused by her and in the one to one sessions she confides in him when the power is down that Nathan is not what he seems.  Things become fraught when he sides with her instead of Nathan, and his servant a mute Japanese girl called Kyoko and things go from bad to worse...

Caleb.

Initially I thought his character reminded me of erstwhile CBBC anchor Andy Crane who used to do the broom cupboard. Took me to the near end of the film to work out who he reminded me of  Trip from indie game Facade.  He has that same look and manner if you've ever seen it in action, and I suggest you do. Even more spooky is  that Ava does look a bit like Grace in this as well with her short cropped hair. 

Nathan.

Reclusive programmer at the quite obviously not Google, Bluebook search engine (possibly named after the UFO project Bluebook of the same name.) indeed this is what he based Ava's A.I on.  Almost permanently pissed due to the whopping amounts of alcohol he drinks in the film.  A key plot piece takes place when he gets absolutely paralytic and Caleb steals his passkey.  Not the most sympathetic of characters, he does have a few redeeming qualities.

Ava.

A robotic A.I life form who gradually earns the trust of Caleb and that. Possessing a devastating intellect and and composed of parts composed in Nathans lab she is the Android host of his A.I software.  I've said in passing that she reminds me of Grace from facade and that's due to her short hair.  She does get longer hair at the end as like I said she is an Android, so its essentially a wig she wears.  I can't really talk about her personality without spoiling the ending, she does spark up a relationship with Caleb which turns romantic and they talk about dates and such its not a rom com or a chick flick as there is still awkwardness in there.

Kyoko.

Essentially Nathans servant she does menial chores around the house and is implied to have a sexual relationship with Nathan although not really his girlfriend.  She doesn't speak and you can kinda guess what she is if you think about it, and what Nathan actually does seeing as he built Ava in a lab below ground.

Music.

This is what I really wanted to talk about as its the first time I've ever seen a film with a totally dark Ambient soundtrack.   The film score is by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury and is totally good, there are some external tunes such as a bit of OMD or Oliver Cheatam when Nathan and Kyoko are dancing in a room, but forget that.  It reminds me of Aphex Twin SAW 2 in places and with some of the harder minimal techno pieces almost like Plastikman or Surgeon (Anthony Child) in places, in fact I had to wait to the credits rolled to see if they were on the sound track but wasn't. Like I said this is something special and is definitely on my favourite list of films.

Bad luck and trouble and Bros.

We have been unlucky of late, not only a few things not turning out well, a found Xbox 360 turning out to have about a billion faults (to be fair its an Xbox 360 and a launch model at that as far as I'm concerned they're all fucked) and a loss of a bag this weekend while out record hunting containing some great stuff from Sounds Of The Universe Records.

Will have to look to see if there are tracks/ downloads for Jared Wilson Ghost Miners 2 and Patrick Cowley's Muscle Up a compilation of tracks from Fox Videos gay porno series.  Juno has snips of 6+7 and Youtube has 8 + 9.  Muscle up may be more problematic as they say nowadays though there should be more stuff coming out as its recently released. 

Pretty sure I lost it either in the arcade on Wardour street or the Japan Center its the only two places I really set my bags down. The time I realised it had gone was on the tube and couldn't really go back to check which was a cunt and a half. 

On the other hand I have a few oddities from Camden such as some old obscure techno (mainly Cari Lekebusch) and 18 minutes of Bros.  Yes Bros.

Matt and Luke Goss were the equivalent of One Direction for 80's kids although slightly less punchable then Harry Styles and co, they were still not the wisest thing for a boy to like.  So why did I pick this up, first of all of all the records I have of this they seem to be single sided and this has music on both sides so a bit of detective work is required, oh and Shep Pettibone is on edit duties so this shouldn't be too harsh on the old ears. 

Sort of remember Bros fans had this thing of putting Grolsch bottle tops on their shoes a bit pointless but there you go, incidentally they are now film stars and have a residency in Vegas which is nice.

Maths stuff.

Been watching Dave Gorman's Modern Life is Goodish on Dave.  Its either that or bastard Casualty and to be honest its no contest at all.  Its a good poke at modern life, and this week was about market research in all its glory, if you can find clips of this, the segment on YouGov is a real eye opener.  Its got me thinking about some maths based stuff (yes America it has an S at the end unlike Lego which doesn't) and a few ads and things. Oh and you'll also learn some stuff about how to do base maths but not division as I can't divide.

The first up is various beauty product ads, if you note the small print on the bottom of them, they give trial sizes (which are often small) expressed as a percentage of people taking part.  Take for instance some junk from L'Oreal, a new Jizz facial cream with new amino acid a (it doesn't exist of course), they'll give the trial size, lets say 186 women and a percentage, oh put it at 86% of those that were happy with it.  

Now of course on TV that stuff is blink and miss it gone but we have numbers written down so we can work it out.  Warning for those maths averse its going to get a lot harder, you will want a pencil and paper at hand to work stuff out, hopefully you'll learn stuff.  I had to work this out for myself though some was taught at school.

10% of 186 is 18.6 (top tip. to find 10 percent of anything follow these rules.  
 How to find 10% of anything.
If it ends in anything other than a 0 put a dot between the last two digits.
If it ends in a 0 simply remove the end 0 to find 10% of everything.
Oh and if  your number is just a single digit put 0. in front of it. this should get you 10% of anything.

You can then multiply 18.6 by 8 to get this
18.6
x8
-----
148.8
-----
10x8= 80 Start with the largest first this is the 1 that makes up 18 as you can see its really a 10.
8x8= 64 Next start with the next largest.
0.6 x8 = 4.8 finally the lowest if its a number like this you can use normal multiplication 6x8 and add a dot between the 4 and the 8 to get the right result.
Finally with all the results in you can add them together.

80
64 +
  4.8 to get 148.8

Incidentally the way I add is no different except you should be looking for things to make 10 naturally. If you have a few numbers such as 8, 3, 7 and 2 you would add the 8 and 2 and 7 and 3 together to make 20.  In that case where there is no natural split you can make 10 out the 8 and 6 by taking 2 off the 6 and adding it to the 8 leaving 4 to add making it 14.

Now with 80% worked out you can find  out the remaining 6% by breaking that 186 into a 1% chunk and you do that the same way you did 10% except you place the decimal point behind the first number, in this case behind the 1 like this. 1.86.  If its a single digit you  put 00. in front of it.

You can multiply 1.86 by 6 to get this.
1.86
x6
 11.16
Which breaks down from the front like so.
6
4.80  remember that it'll need a decimal between the 4 and 8 here
0.36  this one requires a 0. in front of it to make it work.

Finally you can add together 148.8 and 11.16 to make 159.96.
which adds together like this.

148.8
  11.16
--------
159.96
--------
As you can see (and what those with calculators have worked out 5 paragraphs back) that it doesn't break down to a perfect number and in this case the ad would round it up to the nearest whole number.  So the tag line would be: 86% of 180 women tested 160 liked new L'Oreal Jizz facial to the other.