Link Latte #5

Ok – this is the time of year when everything gets to be a bit problematic. “Situations” arise. Wheels come off… so basically I spent the whole time hiding under the bed etc. I watched the whole of Season 3 of “The Thick Of It” on Youtube, back to back, 3 times. It’s utter genius.

And again, there is catching up to do. Pieces to pick up.

The following caught my eye – or were left hanging, jotted down on forgotten tabs; helplessly drifting icebergs of memory. Gulf-stream-bound. Towards the sun.

1) The Future of Mac Users.

As devices and interfaces shrink in size, so too will the people who use them – it’s obvious when you think about it… in the end, the main thing that limited the shrinkage of computer keyboards was the size of the fingers – so we made fingers smaller.

(via)

Of course your heads will become proportionately bigger, but never mind about that – it’s all part of the general evolutionary drift…

Square-eyes are the latest craze
Twice the size
And double-glazed

as a man far wiser than myself once said.

2) Glittery Solar Cells

Everybody’s been going on about these, so I will too. Out there on the internets there are vast grey oceans of cynicism about new advances in solar tech, because we keep hearing about them, but never see them. And by ‘see’ of course I mean ‘buy’. When you go down your “Jolly Roger’s Electronics Emporium” the solar cells look just like the ones that turned up like a rash in 1980s calculators. Expensive oblongs of tempered silicon, which are as weak as fuck. Like trying to power your house with a radiometer.

So my prediction? The same thing that happened to calculators will happen to… everything. One day you’ll find yourself in an airport-departure-lounge-shopping-area and you’ll notice that EVERYTHING has a solar charger. You’ll look down from the ascending plane, and notice that every roof has grown a collector, just like calculators did in the 80s. It’s a comin.

3) and it will create another financial bubble.

4) Tilt-Shift iPhone App

Because I’m interested in hardware memes, and tilt-shift is a hardware meme – although not a terribly useful one, so it probably won’t last forever.

5) A cat pushing a speaker over

Albeit a fairly weird looking cat.

6) Underwater Spaceships.

Apparently there is a community of Aqua-Modelers. which is cool. Communities of fringe-people-making-stuff are hot-houses of innovation.

The other thing to note… as lamented by Crunchgear. “Unfortunately, these models aren’t for sale”.

Is that unfortunate? It is if you want to buy one I suppose… if you’re like me though, and you don’t want to buy one… but you ARE something of an anti-copyright punchup-artist… well… it’s actually good news, because it demonstrates that people/artists (same thing really) DO innovate regardless of whether Companies Can Make Money Out Of It, and anyone who says otherwise is a deluded/lying cunt, and can fuck off.

7) The Hunt For Gollum

Really? I can’t believe you did that. THFG is a new (2009) LOTR fanfic movie… and in some ways it’s really rather good – which is to say it’s a hell of a lot better than any other fanfic film I’ve seen, and apparently it only cost $5k, which I read somewhere – that I now can’t find (o yes I can), and can no longer believe.

All the reviews seem to be gushing etc – except mine I suppose.

First though, I’ll start by saying that anyone who actually makes a movie, is automatically catapulted into a league far above mere mortals and critics and such – Soho (London, Paris, New York, Rome) is filled with bars and cafes filled with people wanking on about the movie they’re going to make/going to write… and none of them fucking do it. I’ve been to film schools/courses about 4 times and the most I’ve managed is about 10 minutes worth. So respect. Seriously.

That said, there’s something about fanfic films that remind me of kids playing at being grown-ups. They know the characters, they talk in deep voices… but somewhere between the writing and the acting what comes out is people playing. I don’t know how it happens… It’s almost as though everyone is in love with (and honoured to be) the character they’re playing – rather than hating their life and wishing they were dead. That and zero character-arc I guess… because by the time the character has emerged from their “blockbuster”, their character arc has been completed.

Fuck me, there’s another one.

Something else to note though – check out the top selling movies by decade

Two things stand out:

a) More and more and more money is made by Hollywood with every passing decade
b) There is less and less originality of character

Which is to say, Hollywood has cottoned on to the fact that people will go to see movies where they already know the characters. Hollywood has become a billion-dollar fanfic machine.

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8) that’s enough for now

9) no really

10) there’s no more. Maybe later etc.