Diablo III

Blizzard reports: [edited]

Two decades have passed since the demonic denizens, Diablo, Mephisto, and Baal, wandered the world of Sanctuary in a vicious rampage to shackle humanity into unholy slavery. Yet for those who battled the Prime Evils directly, the memory fades slowly and the wounds of the soul still burn.

When Deckard Cain returns to the ruins of Tristram's Cathedral seeking clues to new stirrings of evil, a comet from the heavens strikes the very ground where Diablo once entered the world. The comet carries a dark omen in its fiery being and it calls the heroes of Sanctuary to defend the mortal world against the rising powers of the Burning Hells – and even the failing luminaries of the High Heavens itself.

- - - - -

Brett's 2p'orth: Diablo was one of the earliest decent action role-playing games available on the Mac. As with all Blizzard games, Diablo III will ship for both Windows and Mac simultaneously. No firm release date yet however.

Thanks to Sky for the link
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The Kingdom

I saw this on IMDB a while ago, and was struck by the range of reactions to it. Some loved it, some hated it, some were plain indifferent. So, I put it in the middle of my Amazon/LoveFilm rental list and forgot about it.

It arrived in the post last week. I'm not sure why, as it was still WAY down the list, but I decided to watch it with the kidz after a Saturday outing to Brent Cross.

Jamie Foxx plays a FBI agent leading a strike team (Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman) into Saudi Arabia to find a gang of terrorists who have attacked American employees working in the Middle East.

The film alternates between an almost documentary style, complete with grainy images and wobbly hand-held camera work, and blistering, full-on battles that owe more to computer game cut-scenes than real-life.

The acting is good, Garner is particularly adept at demonstrating the mixture of emotions that the situations demand. And there is one particularly messy (and prolonged) fight sequence that had us all jumping, squirming and 'arrghh-ing'.

The strength and weakness of the film is that it tries to be sympathetic to everyone. The good side to this is that you are made aware of the 'grey-ness' of the situation. The downside is that with no real questions being asked or answered, you are left with an unsatisfying vagueness, an ellipsis rather than a full stop or a question mark.
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Super Smash Bros Brawl

It finally arrived in the UK. I drove into Harrow this afternoon to pick up my reserved copy from Game. My children arrived from Lincoln around 8pm. They started playing it around 8.10pm. It's 10pm and they're still playing it. It is as mad as its predecessors, and just as much fun. It's the kind of game only Nintendo makes, impossible to describe, only making sense when you play or watch it.
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Bye bye Windows XP

Microsoft reports: [edited]

Last year you told us you weren't quite ready to say goodbye to Windows XP. We listened. That's why we delayed our plan to stop selling it until June 30, 2008.

We love that you love Windows XP. We've seen it on our website, in e-mails, and through independent online petition drives. Our engineers work hard to build innovative software that empowers our customers. It's nice when you tell us we've made a difference.

But our commitment to innovation sometimes means making tough choices. This is one of them. After careful consultation with our customers and industry partners, we've decided to proceed with our plan to phase out Windows XP in June. It'll be a long goodbye. We plan to provide support for Windows XP until 2014.
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Magical posters

The Library of Congress has a comprehensive collection of vintage 'performing arts' posters. Wonderfully creepy stuff.
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A couple of suggested neologisms

Onomatopoeia is a late Latin word, formed from the Greek 'onomatopoios' meaning 'coiner of names', (onomat-, name + poiein, to make). In English it is used to describe the group of words like 'buzz' and 'bang' that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.

When my children didn't know everything I used to enjoy teaching them 'big words'. When this word's turn arrived the discussion quickly moved to which words were (and weren't) onomatopoeic. What about 'murmur'? Or 'rustle'?

And then there are words that definitely aren't onomatopoeic, but somehow 'sound right', like 'hug' and 'squeeze'.

And there is also a (tiny) group of words that don't sound right at all. Like the word 'pulchritudinous', which means 'beautiful', but sounds like it should mean 'butt ugly'. (Proud Dad Moment: my eldest daughter once submitted 'regurgitudinous' to her English teacher as part of a neologism assignment. It means 'to be beautifully brought up'.)

I created a couple of new words for these categories, 'appronym' and 'contranym'. However, a quick Google showed that they were already taken ('appronym' was originally a generic term for surnames describing the profession of an individual, and has now come to mean an acronym that is composed of words that are appropriate to the meaning of the acronym itself, and 'contranym' is a word that can mean the opposite of itself, such as 'clip' or 'cleave').

So, here are my suggestions. For words that sound appropriate, 'paramatopoeic', and for words that don't, 'anamatopoeic'.

Wodyareckon?
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Pentax K20D

Digital Photography Review have published a positive in-depth review of Pentax's radically upgraded, affordable, semi-pro DSLR.
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Moving skyscraper

BBC reports [edited]

The world's first moving building, a 80-storey tower with revolving floors giving an shifting shape, will be built in Dubai, its architect says. The Dynamic Tower design is made up of 80 pre-fabricated apartments which will spin independently of one another.

The 420-metre building's apartments would spin a full 360 degrees, at voice command, around a central column by means of 79 giant power-generating wind turbines located between each floor.

The slender building would be energy self-sufficient as the turbines would produce enough electricity to power the entire building and even feed extra power back into the grid, said the Italian architect at the unveiling of the project in New York.
The apartments, which will take between one and three hours to make a complete rotation, will cost from $3.7m to $36m.

The skyscraper will cost an estimated $700m to build and should be up and running in Dubai in 2010.

Thanks to Tim Roberts for the link
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Wordle

Wordle is...

"a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

Thanks to Antony for bringing this to my attention, and for the image, which is a 'Wordle' of his PhD thesis.
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Free Glastonbury 2008 album

The Guardian is offering 15 free music tracks to download featuring artists who are playing Glastonbury this year, including UNKLE, Neon Neon, Foals, Glasvegas, CSS and White Denim.

Thanks to Julie for the link
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Steamroller art

Raphael Uhrweiller and Mayumi Otero of France's Ecole supérieure des arts décoratifs (ESAD) have made huge woodcut art prints with the help of a 17 ton steamroller. Click here for a photo gallery.

via boingboing
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How to nap

The Boston Globe has published a graphical outline of suggestions for catching up on sleep.
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Peruvian madness

zerega reports: [edited]

In Perú from Huánuco to Tingo Maria, where the road from the Pacific coast across the Andes finds its way towards the Amazon lowlands, near the top of the last mountain pass. From there, soapbox rider can enjoy a vertical 1000 meters of gravity-assisted ride.

As these kids help stranded truck drivers along the road, they're called bomberos (firemen). They transport drinks, food and spare parts.

ZU from Perú adds:

"I use that highway to get to work, I saw a lot of those children. They have had many fatal accidents.
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Forvik, population 1, declares independence

Yahoo! reports: [edited]

The owner of a tiny island in off Scotland has declared its independence from the United Kingdom, saying he wanted the territory, population one, to be a crown dependency like the Channel Islands.

In a declaration on his Web site, Stuart Hill, who owns the 2.5 acre island of Forvik in the Shetland Islands in the North Sea, said he no longer recognised the authority of the government or the European Union, and cited a centuries-old royal marriage dowry deal as the basis for his claim.

Hill, 65, has lived in the Shetland Islands on the edge of the Atlantic since 2001, when his boat capsized there during an unsuccessful attempted to circumnavigate Britain.

He is Forvik's only resident, and his home is a tent on the storm-battered island. He says on his website that he plans to create Forvik's own currency, print his own stamps and raise his own flag.

"There will be no income tax, VAT, council tax, corporation tax, or any of the other taxes instituted by the British government," Hill wrote.
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Olympic starting gun gives positional advantage

New Scientist reports: [edited]

When Olympic sprinters dash down the track in Beijing this August, the fastest athlete may not take home the gold medal. Current start-gun technology gives athletes on the inside lanes an unfair advantage right off the blocks.

Sound from the starter gun is known to take longer to reach athletes who start from the outside lanes than their competitors on the inside. Now a new study suggests that competitors nearest the gun have another advantage – the loudness of the bang shocks them into starting more quickly.

Together, these extra boosts may amount to more than a tenth of a second in some races, which is easily enough to make the difference between gold and silver.
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LG to release 'Ugliest Phone in the World'

It's called the LG KS360. It's a revolting salmon pink colour. It has a really tacky qwerty keyboard. If you want to know more details, why?
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I.J.K.C.S. synopsis

The Editing Room has produced an irreverent and insightful synopsis to the latest (last?) in the Indiana Jones franchise.
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Stranger Than Fiction

The best way to watch this film is to know as little about it as possible before watching it. Like 'Being John Malkovich', it is a surreal and involving film that (if you give it time) will draw you in to its fascinating, confusing and illuminating world.

If you love literature (and especially if you love analysing literature) this film is a must. If you hate literature (especially the analysis of it) grit your teeth and stick with it, you may learn something.

Actors-wise, Will Ferrel is at his most engaging and appealing. Emma Thompson is awesomely damaged and fragile. Queen Latifa is intelligent and sympathetic. Dustin Hoffman is uncharacteristically self-effacing and vulnerable. And Maggie Gyllenhal is going to marry me. No. Really. She is.
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London, Somerset, London 21- and 22-6-08

Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dying Bed - Josh White
Are You A Souljah? - Alabama 3 (feat Nam and Rev. B Atwell)
John William Gordon - John William Gordon
Wisconsin - Bon Iver
Paper and Glue - Emma Pollock
Sleep [Instrumental] - Kimya Dawson
Under The Night - Sam Phillips
Do the Strand - Roxy Music
Into The Sunshine - El Perro Del Mar
Fly - Alabama 3 (feat. Devlin Love)
So Far - feat. LT - Miguel Migs
Trouble Everywhere I Roam - Sippie Wallace (with Little Brother Montgomery, Roosevel Sykes)
The Sun Is An Old Friend - El Perro Del Mar
Sally, Don't You Cry - Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Piano 2 - Kristin Hersh
Who Built The Road - Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
The Raven - Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Throwing In - Thea Gilmore
Madrid - Johnny Irion
I.O.U. (7" Version) - Freeez
Take My Heart - Soko
Ballantines - Aimee Mann
Anyone Else But You - Michael Cera & Ellen Page
Sugar Baby - Kristin Hersh
In The Mirror - Nada Surf
Fall Of The Pigs - COLISEUM
Loose Lips - Kimya Dawson
Take Care - Johnny Irion
Somebody's Baby - El Perro Del Mar
Contagious - Gangstagrass
I Wanna Go Home (Live) - Van Morrison, Lonnie Donegan & Chris Barber
How She Could Sing The Wildwood Flower - Emmylou Harris
Somewhere Along the Way - Nat King Cole
Someday I'll Understand (Love Will Be My Mirror) - El Perro Del Mar
Old Five And Dimers Like Me - Emmylou Harris
Jorge Regula - The Moldy Peaches
Steels Gonna Be The Death Of Me - Gangstagrass
Need Your Needs - Georgie James
Sea Of Love [Remastered Version] - Cat Power
Take That Ride - Emmylou Harris
Blue Badger Abuser - Half Man Half Biscuit
Sing for Your Supper - Cathy Davey
Know What You Mean - Chungking
To be lonely - Joan As Police Woman
Good Voodoo - The Teenage Prayers
The Airways - Castle Project
All I Want Is You - Barry Louis Polisar
Love Thing - Dee Carstensen
Watching Out Of This World - Sam Phillips
Shake It Down - Sam Phillips
A Well Respected Man - The Kinks
My Pyramid - Gangstagrass
Grey Shallows - Neptune
Black Flag - Duchess Says
Ballad Of Helenkeller And Rip Van Winkle - The Moldy Peaches
Trouble - Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Things ain't like they used to be - The Black Keys
Piano 1 - Kristin Hersh
Baby, Lets Play House - Elvis Presley
Mina do condominio - Pierre Aderne
Broken Afternoon - The Helio Sequence
Mentirosos - Pistolera
I'm Mighty Tight Woman - Sippie Wallace (with Little Brother Montgomery, Roosevel Sykes)
Good Cry - Johnny Irion
Forgotten - Neil Diamond
The Middle Of The Road - Alabama 3
Awkward Game - Gabriella Cilmi
Inside The Golden Egg - El Perro Del Mar
Lucky Number Nine - The Moldy Peaches
Kid Fears - Indigo Girls
I Know What I'm Looking For Now - Tift Merritt
Leafy Mysteries - Paul Weller
Under the Gun - Kristin Hersh
This Time Around - Dee Carstensen
Twisted Nerve - Be Your Own Pet
Hopes Too High - Tift Merritt
The Klan - Alabama 3 (feat. Brian Jackson and MC Pablo)
White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
Nothing Gold - Faux Fox
Tell Me Something True - Tift Merritt
Dearest - Buddy Holly
Fashion Crisis Hits New York - The Frank & Walters
You Can't Steal A Gift - El Perro Del Mar
Kids Now - Sonny Rollins
Bedroom Blues - Sippie Wallace (with Little Brother Montgomery, Roosevel Sykes)
Greenwood Laddie/Mrs. Capron’s Reel/Tune - Eliza Carthy
Lucky - Robert Palmer
Winter - Kristin Hersh
What a Wonderful Man - My Morning Jacket
True Believer - Aimee Mann
Not Enough - Emmylou Harris
Halfway To Paradise - Nick Lowe
Rich Kid Blues - The Raconteurs
The Wolves (Act I and II) - Bon Iver
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Hancock

The second Hancock trailer has just been uploaded. I find it hard to like Will Smith, but this looks like an intriguing twist on the superhero genre. And I bet there is at least one scene where he has to run, REALLY fast!
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