Sound and Fury

Charlie Brooker is a little bit awesome. And here is why.

I’ve spent hours watching bits off the Adam and Joe show and Charlie Brooker’s screenwipe…

No work have I done.

Happy ANZAC day
Australian haiku chaps
also New Zealand

I should find that list of maths haikus I made last year instead of listening to measure theory lectures;

A finite union
of disjoint rectangles is
elementary

Or maybe I shouldn’t…

Also, I’m having a problem with my new USB memory stick thinger. Ubuntu doesn’t like unmounting it properly and randomly deletes data off it when I remove it… I unmount it but the light remains flashing… I tried some bug workaround I was directed to on the Ubuntu forums, but it didn’t fix the problem… Le sigh.

So that’s my exams finished for now. Which is cool. Time to work on the ol’ essays again now. Yippee! I am actually glad I’m not revising any more maths for now. It’s good to be back to the reading and writing.

I bought a 1 gig USB memory stick thinger a couple of days ago. It’s tiny! It’s smaller than my thumb and has eight billion little ones and zeroes in it. It cost 16 quid. That’s 1 five thousandth of a penny per little one or zero.

Watched Rat Race just now. It was quite funny, but they missed a trick not having Rowan Atkinson fall asleep when he was crowd surfing at the end… Really want to watch Wayne’s World again. It was on TV right after Swordfish a few nights ago, but I didn’t stay up to watch it… Should have done. I’ve seen Wayne’s World loads though. I still prefer it to Austin Powers.

Had an exam today, have another tomorrow. Today’s was significantly better than tomorrow’s is going to be. Measure Theory sucks. Or rather, our notes suck and the exam is going to be a real bitchwhore of an exam.

Have downloaded various PDFs and read various wikipedia articles relating to Category Theory and Topos Theory. Why? I don’t really know.  I suppose I needed something to put on my USB stick thinger…

Just watched Swordfish on channel 4. The best part about it was the ad for snickers with Mr T in it during one of the breaks. It was great. But the film itself is a bit poo. I’ve seen it before, but watching it again, it is quite mediocre. I made a list of things that made me go “meh”;

• Why does the Finnish hacker Axel Torvalds speak German and not Finnish to the dude the embassy sent him?
• Why would you ever need six computer screens at one time?
• What do all those visualisations on the computer screens mean? What are they supposed to represent?
• If turning off the bomb jackets really was as easy as flicking a switch, why hadn’t the hostages tried it and escaped?
• For $400m to turn into $9 billion in 15 years it has to earn 25% per annum…

Also the film is embarrassing in places because it was written before the September 11 attacks. “Someone must bring the war to them [the terrorists]” proclaims Travolta. Later he says “We will make terrorism so horrific noone would dare attack America.” Quite inappropriate considering how disastrous “bringing the war to them” actually was…

But that Mr T ad was great. It’s not on Youtube yet. I’m sure it will be shortly. When it is I’ll post about it here. In the meantime, here are some Guinness ads. Enjoy responsibly.

In other news, I watched The Sting recently. Now there is a good film. And not many PGs get away with using the words “shit” and “nigger.” I’d seen this before as well but in french, so it was nice to see it again and understand it all… People back then knew how to dress. I wish those sharp suits and spats were still in fashion. Would that not be awesome? I would in fact love to own a full dress suit; top hat and tails. I’d have a pocket watch on a gold chain and I’d wander round with my cane. I’d cut a dashing figure. It would be great…

Tonight in Midsomer Murders somebody was killed by having fake vintage wine thrown at them by a miniature replica trebuchet. That is easily the most imaginative revenge killing I have ever encountered…

Saw Phantom of the Opera in London last night. Was thoroughly confused but entertained nonetheless. I’m disappointed they reveal the phantom’s disfigurement. It’s always less scary once it’s explicit. No matter how good the make-up is, it’ll never be as good as your imagination coupled with your fear of the unknown. Many many films go downhill once the monster is revealed; Ginger Snaps, Jeepers Creepers… OK, so they’re pretty poor films to start with, but still… Seven is scary at the end precisely because Kevin Spacey does not look like the monster you expect.

Incidentally, there is a film called Killer Condom. My second favourite intriguingly bizarre movie title. After SARS Wars; Bangkok Zombie Crisis, which I believe I have mentioned before…

Came across this in New Scentist which I thought was interesting. Haven’t actually read it yet (just the bit in NS) but it sounds like Reichenbach’s “relativity of geometry” was just the tip of the iceberg. Interesting to look into for my Philosophy of Science essay…

Bought some CDs yesterday; Pantera, Led Zeppelin and Dub Pistols. Happy with Pantera, Very pleased with Led Zep but massively disappointed by the new Dub Pistols. It’s got nothing on Point Blank.

Finished Illium. Interesting and I kind of want to read the sequel, but its no revelation space… Now reading the new Umberto Eco novel…

Studying for my topology exam next Tuesday. Not really looking forward to it that much, but its measure theory the day after, so that puts things in perspective. There’s a new section on covering spaces that hasn’t been in previous years so there are no past exam papers. That makes it harder to revise. I’m quietly confident that I can be ready by the time of the exam. Though it does depend somewhat on how much time measure theory takes up…

I got my Hegel essay back and got 68 which I’m pretty pleased with. Would be nice to get a first for the finished product. I also got an old essay back that I’d forgotten about. I thought it was a terrible essay. Far too short and a bit rambling. Also I had fitted in the words “badger” and “aubergine” into it at the suggestion of my housemate. But I got 64 for that, which is twice what I was expecting.

Also… Tapas. mmm. Damn. I missed the simpsons.

I just watched Louis Theroux and the most hated family in America. The scariest thing I have seen on television since Richard Dawkins’ two part God-bashing diatribe last year. They had signs declaiming that Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Princess Diana were “fag-enablers.” They picket the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq with signs saying “God hates fags” and so on. Scary scary stuff. The unshakable, bullet proof conviction of the people was genuinely terrifying. It would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been so menacing. Chris Morris would never have dreamed up something so absurd, so ridiculous. They had little kids of seven holding signs saying “Thank God for IEDs” (IEDs; Improvised Explosive Device are roadside bombs responsible for a large proportion of the casualties in Iraq and Afganistan) Louis Theroux is great though. He has such a wonderfully unshakable air of mild bemusement. He’s a bit of a hero for putting up with those scary people for so long. I would not have been able to take it. I’d have run away…

So I didn’t watch Deliverance yesterday. I watched About Schmidt and half of Batman instead. Because they were on the telly. Today I have actually added some content to my essay! Not enough yet, but it’s better than I thought I would do. I’m not enjoying this Hegel essay half as much as I enjoyed doing the philosophy of science one. Oh well. It’s still better than doing an exam. I want to submit this essay on Monday so that I can have it back with comments by the time I do the final version next month.

Google’s April Fool joke this year is a bit rubbish. Kind of disappointing. xkcd’s is awesome though. Facebook’s livepoke thing was funny-ish, i suppose
I was reading something in Scientific American about how our universe could actually only have two dimensions and be like a hologram or something. I’ll have to read it again but it sounds like the number of spatial dimensions we have is less fixed than it would appear…