I was talking to someone the other day on Twitter about whether the Poison song’s title was Nothing or Nuthin But A Good Time… yes this is what I fill my day with. Â Both of us were wrong, or maybe Poison themselves were wrong:
The Proof-read version of Nothin’ But A Good Time -I’ve assumed that any spelling mistakes are the fault of the lyrics site that I found these… my tracked changes are in italics and in red - sorry colour blind people - let me know if it’s too hard to read.
Now listen Excuse me everyone, could I have your attention please?
Not a dime I don’t have any money,  I can’t pay my rent I’m unable to pay my rentÂ
I can barely make it through the week
Saturday night I’d like to make my girl (make my girl what? Â a bagel?… Pssst… Mmmm right, OK he means what!? Â Well that’s inappropriate anyway.)
But right now I cant make ends meet
Im always workin slavinworking, slaving every day Gotta I really need to get away from that same old same old
I need a chance just to get away
If you could hear me think this is what Id say (hear me think? Â isn’t that called talking?) Â
Chorus: I Dont need nothin anything exceptbut a good time
How can I resist Aint lookin I’m not looking for nothinanything but a good time
And it dontdoesn’t get any better than this
They say I spend my money on women and wine
But I couldnt tell you where I spent last night (see that’s not good, maybe you have a problem, do you need to talk to someone, a group maybe, need a hug?)
Im really sorry about the shape that I’m in
I just like my fun every now and then
Im always workin slavin every day
Gotta get away from that same old same old
I need a chance just to get away
If you could hear me think this is what Id say (… we’ve already talked about this section)
Chorus
You see I raise a toast to all of us
Who are breakin breaking our backs every day (… ummm take a look at Poison’s photo at the top of the page and tell me if you think dudes out there digging ditches and stuff feel a kinship with Poison and their breaking their backs…)
If wantin wanting the good life is such a crime (mmmmm I’m still concerned with how hard Poison were doing it)
Lord, then put me away (God isn’t really a part of the judicial system, well he shouldn’t be, of course there are the underlying principles but…)
Heres to ya
I can’t believe I forgot two shows last night when I was writing about what I’m watching. Arjan reminded me when he mentioned Heroes, so here is the follow up…
Heroes
OMG I love Heroes. Forget that the second season was a dog, that had a bearded Jack Bauer show up I wouldn’t have been surprised*. They admitted their mistakes, promised to fix them and I’m gullible hopeful enough that they may just make a worthy follow up to Season One (one of the greatest seasons of a show ever). And the first two episodes really haven’t failed me so far, I’m still cautious but I’m quite excited to see new powers, old powers, villains and Sylar. Tracey hates Sylar, in a ‘I’m bored’ kind of way rather than he is pure evil. Have to see cousin Larry on this one because all you bastards keep putting spoilers out there.
Robotech
A while back I indulged my inner child (lol that’s funny…) and picked up some animation boxsets that were cheap, Star Blazers (my Mum and I loved this show), Battle of the Planets and Robotech. I’ve put Season One on in the background whilst I’ve been doing stuff and have constantly found myself being sucked into the adventures of Rick Hunter.  I have very vivid memories of my Mum referring to Rick as a dirty stop out because of the love triangle he finds himself in (we preferred Lisa).
But I can totally see how this could be made into a movie, it has action, pathos, a great cast of characters and surprising humour. Obviously the show itself doesn’t hold up as well as it could, it was hacked together for American markets and I wonder how much storyline remained intact.  When you watch them one after another you notice that a quarter of the show is dedicated to recapping the previous episode.
There are clearly some great concepts and ideas in there.
I’m sure there are other shows that I’m currently watching but have forgotten.Â
*Off hand remark referring to my general apathy towards Season Six of 24 and how I feel that they made a perfectly good must see TV show into a god I hope next season is better than this one TV show.
I’ve been meaning to write up my thoughts on a bunch of TV shows that I’ve been watching of late, with the writer’s strike well behind us the light is beginning to flicker again on the screen.
I will do my best to avoid spoilers, but you know how it is, I could inadvertently let something slip.
True Blood
Oh wow I love this show, I wasn’t going to watch it originally but there was a bit of a drought the week that it started and I figured why not, I can watch a vampire show. Â I don’t normally go into vampire related stuff as I’m not a big fan of the Anne Rice direction that vamps have gone in of late.
This show is amazing, it’s really interesting, the characters are all intriguing and it’s keeping me guessing. Â It’s just really well made, it has set up its atmosphere quicker and better than any show where the town is such an important aspect of the tone of the show.
Fringe
X-Files has a successor, it’s from the guy who brought us Lost and is bringing us Star Trek. Â There’s a lot of love in this room right now for a bunch of shows and none more so than Fringe. Â I loved The Night Stalker, I actually grew up with that show and when X-Files came along and I loved that show too (for a few seasons).
Now Fringe has come and filled the place in my heart (sorry never got into Supernatural though I do plan on watching it) and two episodes in and I’m hooked. Â The old professor is just simply brilliant and fun, and it’s nice to see Pacey doing so well on TV again.
90210
It gets two more episodes to convince me, it has already fallen off my cousin Larry list because they are fast tracking the show so we’re only a week behind and I can dodge spoilers for this fairly well. Â No I do not believe that he is the father of Kelly’s child, it doesn’t make sense and he wouldn’t have run off like that. Â I doubt we’ll ever see him back on the show either.
House
I’m watching the first episode of the new season as I write this, he is more annoying this season, I’m sick of the petulant child routine, can’t he just be brilliant and simply uber smug? Â Doubt I’ll watch this regularly again. Â God he just went home in protest of Wilson leaving, his patient is dying, this show really kind of sucks…
Stargate Atlantis
Yaaawn. After a really cool first episode the show has begun a slide, my attention has waned since hearing about the cancellation. Â It doesn’t seem to be going anywhere though I did like the episode the other week where we got a little insight into the politics behind the Wraith. Â I’ll keep watching but I doubt I’ll mourn the passing as much as I did Enterprise’s.
Entourage
They’re back bitches! Â Last season felt tired to me and when I heard that Don was making a comeback I really didn’t have much hope for the show. Â But the first three episodes have put me completely at ease and reminded me why I love this show. Â After such a long absence they have really come back with renewed energy. Â Plenty of Aquaman references and you all know how much I dig Aquaman.
Boston Legal
I’m still watching the non-fast-tracked episodes from last season and probably will wait to see if they start showing the new season straight away. Â I love Spader and Shatner in this but I’ve got a feeling that the next and final season was probably the right time to end it, the characters seem to be in a bit of a holding pattern showing only occasional hints of their brilliance. Â I hope for this next season they will bring out the big guns of story telling and give Denny Crane the right send off.
I read that this is the last season of E.R. coming up too, they apparently want to bring back as many originals as possible to celebrate including Clooney, I really hope they do all come back and I’ll watch, I’ll definitely watch that!
I’ve managed to increase my reading speed from around 270 words per minute (wpm) to just over 500 wpm.  My goal is that by the end of the week I will have it up around the 650 mark.  Obviously practise is huge part of the process and I needed to find a book that I was generally interested in but not desperate to read if reading quickly was a disaster and left me with no recollection of what I was reading.  So I grabbed Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, figuring that it wouldn’t hurt to read that and if it were a little dry then at least I was getting the speed reading a workout in exactly the way that I wanted - get something read before I get distracted by whatever new shiny thing comes along.
Fortunately the book rather than being a chore to read has come as a revelation to me and has opened my mind up to some of the fantastic concepts and promise of Web 2.0. Â As I’ve gone through it I haven’t been missing any of the concepts and yet have still maintained just under double my normal reading rate.
One of the practises though of getting real value out of speed reading is collaboration, a topic found quite heavily in Wikinomics.  You read a book quickly whilst others read books of their own quickly and then you present the core concepts and ideas of each book to each other, thus allowing you to grapple with a lot of information in a fraction of the time.
Since I’m not in one of those study groups I figured I would just share some of the key concepts here, maybe you’ll get something out of it, I certainly will and since it’s my house I can do what I want.
One of the first parts of the book talks about the benefits in open collaboration to corporations and individuals. Â How the idea of being transparent with your intellectual property can lead to financial rewards rather than failure. Â It talks about companies that have begun sharing what was once closely guarded secrets are now reaping the rewards of having the whole web community as their research and development department and by shifting their revenue avenues making more profit.
There is a company that I had a very small role in evaluating last year called Squiz, specifically we were looking at their open source CMS solution MySource Matrix. Â It took a little bit to get used to the idea that the company itself was developing an open source product that anyone can download, install themselves and configure to suit their needs.
Surely the company would sink because they are giving their product away for free, which actually wasn’t the case at all, their product was the value add that they offered as they are the absolute experts in the product. Â You can, if you are so inclined spend the time trying to configure the system yourself, but they can do it quickly and more efficiently than you probably can. Â They can also customise modules for you, build up new capabilities and train your people. Â This is where they can make their money. Â
The key thing about this whole situation though is that everyone benefits from improvements made to open source framework. Â The Squiz research and development team is their entire client base and as people tear the software apart and make improvements, the framework gets better and better. Â They then can focus on delivering their services to the clients who are driving the direction of the CMS.
At least that’s how I imagine the theory works and if it isn’t exactly that way it still makes in my mind good business.
You see you can look at it in a non-info-tech scenario to illustrate why open sourcing your product isn’t the end of the world or profit:
Plumbing.
There is no army of lawyers and corporations trying to keep you from understanding how plumbing works, there are about a million books on do it yourself plumbing etc. Â You can buy the tools and the materials from your local hardware store without licensing or signing non-disclosure agreements. Â There is nothing stopping you from learning everything there is to know about plumbing. Â
But some of us just are no good at plumbing, I don’t imagine it is easy for one minute. Â I don’t personally have the inclination or the time to learn how or to develop the skill-set. Â Which is no problem because there are plumbers. Â Plumbers who are very good at what they do and can make a decent living selling their skills. Â But they don’t sell you the secret of plumbing, because there is no secret, in fact most plumbers I’ve ever dealt with are more than happy to tell me what the problem actually is and how they’re going to fix it.
There will always be plumbers, despite the source code of plumbing being available. Â I imagine the same for software.
On the weekend Tracey and I love going out for breakfast, the cooking facilities where we currently live leave a lot to be desired and so we are limited. Â Neither of us can stomach toast as I’m pretty certain our systems don’t handle bread very well (I’m supposed to avoid generally anyway thanks to the high GI of the stuff).
So we go out in search of the perfect actually make that an ‘adequate‘ place to eat. Â Unfortunately more often than not we find ourselves at shopping centres and eating in cafes that have no business calling themselves cafes.
I expect that if you are going to serve breakfast food in any way, shape or form then your ‘kitchen’Â requires a hotplate. Â End of fucking story. Â People want stuff that has been cooked on a hotplate. Â Eggs should be cooked on a hotplate, fried or scrambled. Â Mushrooms should be fried on a hotplate, not dipped in hot oil the night before and heated up in the oven.
But the ultimate betrayal, the worst offence in my mind is to get an egg mixture, put it in a plastic dish, place that dish into a microwave, use the microwave to cook the egg mixture and then mix it up with a knife so that it resembles scrambled eggs.
The texture for one is not correct, there are little air bubbles throughout that give it an awfully undesirable appearance. Â The second thing is the taste is bland, really bland. Â Now the ‘cafe‘ that we went to could argue and say people like the eggs that way, I mean people have different tastes etc. Â The five plates of scrambled eggs that I saw get left almost untouched during an hour period should be a hint to the ‘chef‘ that something isn’t working.
Then whilst you’re at it if you have thin toast with margarine placed underneath microwaved abominations they will become very quickly soggy and inedible.
Coffee Club Carindale I’m looking directly at you.
If you cannot possibly spare the extra metre or so for a hotplate and you don’t hire actual cooks then you should just serve coffee and cake, don’t try and be something you ain’t.
I wrote a really long piece about Shatner’s and the fan’s behaviour regarding his involvement in the new Star Trek film, it made me really mad, made me not like Shatner, made me sick of hearing about him, so I deleted it and wrote an abridged version.
JJ Abrams had this very reasonable thing to say about Shatner’s involvement or lack of in the film:
“It was very tricky. We actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn’t quite feel right. The bigger thing was that he was very vocal that he didn’t want to do a cameo. We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves. The truth is, the story that we were telling required a certain adherence to the ‘Trek’ canon and consistency of storytelling. It’s funny — a lot of the people who were proclaiming that he must be in this movie were the same people saying it must adhere to canon. Well, his character died on screen. Maybe a smarter group of filmmakers could have figured out how to resolve that.”
All very reasonable in my mind. Â This movie is not about a 77 year old Captain Kirk being brought back to life, it’s about a young Kirk and his crew. Â Shatner apparently is upset because no one offered him a part, well because they never officially had a part I suspect, I mean they tried to write one in but it didn’t work. Â You don’t offer someone a role when you don’t have it, besides which Shatner has been quite vocal in the past and I’m sure in private that he wouldn’t do a cameo. Â So this video makes me like Shatner quite a bit less than I was already starting to. Â I mean really, get a life.
There was a song that came out a couple of years ago that promoted the piece of advice that you should always wear sun block. Â Apparently music and song is not the way to get an idea through to me because much to Tracey’s irritation I almost never wear sunscreen.
What can I say, when the whole metrosexual thing started going around I assumed that I would get on board, I mean you’re supposed to be rather interested in yourself and I’ve always had a remarkable ego so it seemed like a naturally good match.
I’m like the worst metrosexual ever though.
I mean there’s so much bloody trimming, plucking, creams etc. Â It’s exhausting. Â I have a hair conditioner that is supposedly a leave in conditioner. Â That’s right, I put it in and then walk around with conditioner in my hair….?
I’m not keen on shaving either, I shave and then two minutes later there is a shadow. Honestly I was born in the wrong era, I would have killed it in Miami Vice!
Then there is beta hydroxy acid, which apparently I’m supposed to put on my face.
Beta hydroxy acid.
I’m pretty certain acid in the face is how Two Face got started.
Reading one of the reviews of the Steven Gould novel Jumper it said it was nice to see that an old idea can still be taken to new places. Â It is this observation that most resonates with me when I think about how much fun Jumper the book was. Â Being able to teleport oneself to anywhere in the world isn’t a new concept in science fiction, something that Gould himself in an act of pure class says at the end of the book. Â Doesn’t mean it isn’t a cool concept though.
When I saw the movie Jumper I really enjoyed it, it was a pleasant distraction and a cool idea. Â It also had one of the coolest posters based on the opening scene in the film which in my opinion didn’t pull it off quite so well as the poster. Â
The thing is though, the book is not the movie, not by a long shot. Â The names are the same, the first half hour generally follows some of the novel and the concept of ‘jumping’ is obviously there but they are two completely different beasts. Â A lot like the comic and the film version of Wanted.
It doesn’t worry me to be honest, there is the novel which is brilliant and then there is the movie which was enjoyable enough, I will address this further though in a second as I went back and watched the movie again since finishing the book the other day.  It is a testament to the casting that I easily pictured the actors from the film in the roles except for Sam Jackson who’s character is a completely different entity.
The book focuses on the aspects of the storyline that most interested me from the film anyway, how Davy survives and builds his life after he runs away from home.  This was a much more interesting story than the stuff that was added into the film.  It’s certainly a lot more fleshed out in the novel and I think his backstory is stronger.  Secondary characters also benefit from the novel especially Millie who is introduced in a completely different way and Davy’s father is built upon too, helping to create a much more vivid world.
Something that did strike me though, especially considering I was reading this around the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the US is the plot involving terrorism. Â In a bittersweet irony the World Trade Centre does get a mention in a sequence involving a terrorist being dropped off the edge to scare him. Â I can’t help but wonder if the story would have been the same in the post 9/11 world.
So as I mentioned before that I went and watched the film again, pretty much straight after reading the book and it really served to show up the soft points in the film. Â The book doesn’t have the annoying Griffin character or any other jumpers, there is no secret army that Davy’s Mum is a part of and in fact her story line is a lot better in the novel. Â Some of the really cool effects though from the film don’t make it into the book (the bus scene for instance) but the whole ‘how does jumping work’ is not satisfying to me in the movie, not well enough explained and is actually slightly different to how it works in the book.
Maybe a simpler concept film would have worked better, the book never tries to over complicate itself and it’s in this strong basic story telling that the book really works.
At the very least I was able to cheer myself up with the latest site from the LOLCats people ROFL RAZZI. Â I’m fairly sure this would have gone on behind the scenes:
There is no army of lawyers and corporations trying to keep you from understanding how plumbing works, there are about a million books on do it yourself plumbing etc. Â You can buy the tools and the materials from your local hardware store without licensing or signing non-disclosure agreements. Â There is nothing stopping you from learning everything there is to know about plumbing. Â 
But the ultimate betrayal, the worst offence in my mind is to get an egg mixture, put it in a plastic dish, place that dish into a microwave, use the microwave to cook the egg mixture and then mix it up with a knife so that it resembles scrambled eggs.
