Four years old?

Recently, if you ask Gerry what age he is, he will tell you that he is four years old. In fact, he is only 3.5 years old. At first, you might think that he has trouble counting up to four.

The truth is far more illuminating.

Several of Gerry's friends from school turned four recently. Their parents decided to have a birthday party and invited the classmates to the party. After seeing all the fuss and presents received by his friends, Gerry immediately started to declare that he was four years old as well!


Here you can see Gerry with one of the birthday boys. The birthday was at McDonalds and it was the first time that Gerry has ever stepped within the golden arches.


This is Gerry watching the entertainment provided by McD's.


Of course, no family picture collection would be complete without a pic of Gordon! Just in case it isn't clear from the chairs and tables, this wasn't taken at Maccy D's.

Huzzah! Another rare photo of me holding Gordon without him crying. I also can't help but wonder what he and Gerry are talking about.

And to top it off, here is a close up of Gordon. I'm told he looks just like me which is frankly insulting - I'm much more handsome!

RIP Michael Jackson

Quick update - by now, you probably already know that Michael Jackson has passed away.

I know Jacko's popularity is at an all time low and that he has had some major problems and some monumentally poor decisions over his career. Despite this, his music and dance skills were a constant part of my life growing up and, in spite of all his problems and bad press, I still have a massive amount of respect for his creativity and talent.

The sad thing is that all the celebrities and people I looked up to as a child are slowly dieing off. Really makes me feel old, ya know?

Wow - this blog is getting so morbid lately.

RIP David Eddings

I actually noticed this several weeks ago but for some reason forgot to post about it. In essence, David Eddings passed away earlier this month.

When I was a kid, David Eddings used to be one of my favourite authors. I can't remember when I first read his Belgariad series of books but I do recall I was instantly captivated by the story and the characters that he had created. I also recall I reread the Belgariad so often that the books themselves are now in pretty poor shape.

Looking at the wikipedia entry for Eddings, I realise that I have read almost everything that he has published. The only books on that list which I haven't read are The Rivan Codex and Regina's Song.

Admittedly, I was disappointed with some of his later work - I felt the characterisation and dialogue of new characters was too samey compared with his earlier work. Despite this, I have a massive amount of respect for Eddings and an obvious soft spot for his work. The reality is that, even as I felt disappointed while reading the Dreamer series, I also felt elated in visiting a world created by one of the authors who absolutely shaped and defined my childhood.

Alice and Kev

Strange - I actually scheduled the below post for last Thursday but for some reason, it never actually posted. Anyway, here is what I wrote for you last Thurs.

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It never ceases to amaze me how creative some people can be with their video games. I've talked before about machinima, which is the art of taking a game engine and using it to create a video. In the previous blog post about machinima, I was talking specifically about Red vs Blue which is a comedy video series made using the Halo game but another popular video game used for machinima is The Sims (a virtual life simulator released by EA).

In the past, there have been some pretty good machinima done using The Sims 2. In particular, creating music videos using The Sims 2 seems to be really popular. A couple of good examples that I've seen are When You're Gone, Space Oddity and Thriller.

Just in case you didn't know, EA has recently released The Sims 3 - the latest update in their multi-million unit selling franchise and already, some enterprising bloggers have gone about to see what the new game lets them create. Which finally brings us to the point of this post - Alice and Kev.

Alice and Kev is a blog created by a game design student in the UK detailing the exploits of a homeless father and daughter in The Sims 3. Kev is hot headed, mean spirited, inappropriate and insane while Alice is a kind hearted clumsy loser. Straight away, you can tell we are headed for comedy gold.

Despite the comedy potential, what really makes the blog stand out is the quality of the screenshots posted in the blog. Alice, with no home, no money and a horrible father, often has difficulty coping with school and life in general and the screenshots do an excellent job of capturing her mood as she struggles with her daily life. Considering all the situations talked about in the blog actually happened in game, the level of emotion shown on the characters faces is incredible. At varying times, you can clearly see that she is sad, hopeful, angry, resentful, determined - it all comes out from just looking at her face.

Another interesting point is that reading the blog almost feels like watching soaps again. When I was a kid, I used to watch Neighbours religiously. Just to show my age - I not only recall the Scott and Charlene wedding, I also recall watching Scott meet Charlene, or rather her fist, for the first time. Perhaps this is part of the reason why I enjoy reading the exploits of Alice - at some level, it reminds me of my childhood watching soaps on British TV. Of course, the other possibility is that I'm a sicko who derives satisfaction from the misery of others...

Teeth of the Tiger

I've read quite of few of the Tom Clancy books and have to admit that I do think he is a very good writer of political/military fiction. The latest book of his that I just finished reading was Teeth of the Tiger. Unfortunately, I also think its one of the weakest books in his Ryanverse series.

The premise behind the book is that Jack Ryan, in his last act as President, sets up a completely new black ops agency to protect America's interests. The new agency is so black that it doesn't show up at all in any government books which is managed by the new agency being privately funded and with no government oversight.

At the start of the book, the new agency is just intelligence gathering. The book itself deals with how the new agency finds and trains some field agents to act as assassins and covers their first mission to its successful conclusion (ie death of their designated target). Although this sounds like a promising idea, it falls flat for several reasons.

First, the new agency manages to find a new drug which can covertly kill people while making it look like the victim had a heart attack. The drug is so successful because it subsequently breaks down in the victims body so that even a skilled pathologist wouldn't find the drug unless said pathologist was specifically looking for the drug or was an alumni of the TV show CSI.

In other words, a successful mission is a dead victim with no-one the wiser. While this may sound great to real life field agents, the result is that the book just fizzles out at the end with the bad guy being dead and no real "bang" to the ending. It also doesn't help that the people who get assassinated are just middle men and not the real power behind the latest attack on the US which just serves to make the ending feel like the middle part of the story.

Clancy tries to get around this by having the last victim realise that he has been assassinated (after delivery of the drug) which leads to him pulling a knife on Jack Ryan Jr but the scene never really manages to build any tension. By that point, you know the guy is gonna be dead in 10 seconds and that Ryan Jr has about as much chance of dieing as I have of getting intimate with Megan Fox.

Which leads nicely into my second gripe. The main characters in this book are Jack Ryan Jr (son of Jack Ryan) as well as two brothers who just happen to be cousins of Jack Ryan Jr. The main cast are all exceptionally bright or skilled obviously which helps deflect any accusations of nepotism but really, you would have expected Clancy to branch out a bit further than the family of Jack Ryan. I mean, I know this is the Ryanverse and all but still...

All in all, a relatively disappointing entry from Tom Clancy. It was a good book and had a lot of the classic Tom Clancy elements. Unfortunately, the story just fizzled out at the end.

Gordon - out and about

Time passes and Gordon reaches another milestone.


Here, you can see that he is practicing his pressup's. Man, if I could get away with doing pressups like that, I would be able to do 100 easily!


We do take Gordon out of the house occasionally. Not as much as we used to take Gerry but he does get some outside action. You can see he is clearly ecstatic to be out of the house...


And this is a REAL milestone. The first picture where both daddy and baby are looking at the camera!


Didn't last long though - as you can see, he has already been distracted by other more enticing sights!


And just to prove that we aren't neglecting Gerry, here you can see him pushing the baby around in the stroller. As you can imagine, Gordon didn't get much of an afternoon nap that day!

techdirt

I recently came across a new blog called techdirt. The blog "offers insight into news stories about changes in government policy, technology and legal issues that affect companies' ability to innovate and grow".

The blog basically looks at the impact of new technology and new culture in how companies conduct business. It regularly calls out companies which don't adapt to new trends and offers insightful and useful ideas/opinions on better ways that these companies could do business. As a nerd in the business world, you can probably already see why I love this blog so much!

Another reason I love this blog is that so many of their opinions resonate very clearly with my own (and even when they don't, their viewpoint is still considered and well argued). Just a couple of recent articles by way of example.

Auditor liability
This article actually talks about the liability of a security auditor. However, the issue itself is identical to the issue faced by financial auditors - at which point does the auditor become liable for a breakdown in the audited company?

Too often in the current litigious environment that we are in, any failure is automatically pinned on the auditor (in some cases, simply because the auditor has deep pockets). Even when legal action isn't taken, the general public view is that it is the auditors fault because they signed off and should have spotted any irregularity or fraud or whatever the hell caused the company to fail. Bullshit.

The last line in the article sums up my view perfectly:

"It seems like in the absence of clear negligence on the part of the auditor, that it's a bit extreme to put any liability on the auditor."

Thriving in the new digital age
As you can expect for a blog about "technology" and "companies' ability to innovate and grow", there are a lot of articles about how companies can survive in the new digital age (and also about what companies are currently doing wrong). I've linked to several articles below which illustrate this below but there are loads more at the site:

Newspapers colluding over paywall?
Making money from music

And a couple of other links just because I hate the copyright lobby:
Copyright is to protect innovation - not to restrict it
These are "copyright defenders"?

The overall gist of the articles is that the world has changed. The problem is that the old companies, who were previously highly successful, are now in deep trouble because they haven't changed with the world. Instead of trying to come up with a new business model that works, they instead focus their efforts on trying to protect their old business model which invariably ends up alienating their fans.

Again, I couldn't help but marvel at how much I was nodding my head as I was reading these articles. Maybe its because I (kinda) have a consulting background but this just seems so obvious to me. One of the big things we always talk about in our company is that the world is changing and we have to change as well in order to understand and meet the needs of our clients otherwise we become irrelevant (followed soon after by company closure etc).

In short, the cheese has moved and its time to get with the program!

Angels and Demons - the movie

As you know, I read the novel Angels and Demons last year and really enjoyed it so I was really looking forward to watching the movie. I went to see it last week and, despite what some of the film critics have said, I thought it was a good movie. I wasn't disappointed at all and I think Ron Howard has done a good job (again). I think the movie does a great job of capturing the spirit and suspense of the novel.

Also, can you believe that I had no idea Ewan McGregor was playing the part of the Camerlengo? I guess it goes to show the star power of Tom Hanks that all the promotional material shows and mentions Tom Hanks while Ewan McGregor, who is also a famous actor in his own right now, is completely ignored.


By the way, massive spoilers ahead so don't read on if you haven't watched the movie AND read the book yet.




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Still here? Good - hope you enjoyed the book and movie!

I had a friend who went to see this movie before I did. She hadn't read the book and was able to see the movie with a completely fresh mind. Her comment was that she really enjoyed it until she found out that the Camerlengo was the bad guy. At that point, she was so caught by surprise that she had difficulty adjusting to the new reality (or should that be new moviety?) particularly as he acts completely different (her words - not mine).

Other than being a testament to Ewan McGregors acting ability, now that I've seen the film, this statement does surprise me a bit. Although the Camerlengo is revealed to be the bad guy in the video at the end, the way he acts is consistent with how he has acted all along. He doesn't suddenly become a menacing figure. All that changes is that he now tells you his true feelings - but the style of delivery (ie the acting) is consistent with how the Camerlengo has acted all along.


Also, isn't the whole point of a plot twist to catch you by surprise? Granted, the best plot twist should have some clues so that when it happens, you go "ooh, that's why he did that earlier!" which the film didn't really have (or at least, I didn't spot them) but still. And this actually ties in with my main regret with the film (note I said regret and not disappointment).


The film version doesn't really take any time to explain why the Camerlengo became so radical. It's left to the audience to accept that the Camerlengo was a radical (even though he was a favourite of the Pope) simply because he was a radical and disagreed with the Popes view on the ideological implications of the God particle. Granted, there was a throwaway line in the film about how his parents died as a result of a bomb incident which led to the Pope adopting him (this was before the Pope became the Pope) - but as I said, it was a throwaway line in the film and its significance wasn't really touched upon (Yes, I am aware of Chekov's Gun - but I don't think it applies in this case as the significance doesn't really become clear at the end either).


The advantage of the novel in this respect is that it does explain the events that led to the Camerlengo snapping. It goes into a lot more detail about his strict mother ("Never break a promise to God" or something like that), about the impact to him as a result of the bombing (antimatter being a potentially huge bomb has implications to the Camerlengo) and critically, how he believed that the Pope had broken his vow of chastity (ie the Pope broke a promise to God) which was a critical moment in him becoming radical (or at least, that was my interpretation of it).


Of course, its possible to do this in a book but extremely hard to do well in a movie (you run the risk of bogging down the movie with details) hence why I said regret instead of disappointment. Overall, a definite thumbs up for this movie.