Rossini

Born on the 29th, but this isn't a leap year, so I'll post a salutation to Gioachino Antonio Rossini today. He would have been 217 years old.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Dir: Andrew Adamson.

I watched this the other day on DVD, and wasn't really expecting much of anything. Consequently I wasn't disappointed when the film turned out to be yet another dazzling special effects laden display of mediocrity. I enjoyed some of the scenes, and some of the creature effects (though I do so miss the old Jim Henson days) and one or two of the characters were appealing in their portrayal. I especially liked the dwarves (see image below) played by Peter Dinklage (L) and the excellent Warwick Davis (R).

I also liked the overall look of the Talmeranians, who seemed to be a hybrid of central European medieval and classical Greek, though I really hated their machine gun trebuchets. I've noticed that in the last ten years or so, trebuchets in Hollywood movies have gotten bigger and more unrealistic with each passing movie. I put this down to one-up-manship and an urge for ever greater spectacle. Suffice to say that a trebuchet has a limited range, can only fire once every 5-20 minutes, depending on size and the ability of its crew, and is not a weapon that can simply be wheeled into place and start firing without preparation.


My biggest problem with this film however, hinges on its entire premise. As I watched it, I was struck by how bizarre it is, grotesque even, to watch young children engaging in battle, hacking and slashing adults to death with swords. And the more I think about it, the more grotesque I find it. I wouldn't watch a film that showed children engaged in sex, so why am I watching a film that shows children engaged in killing?

I actually can't remember having read the original book, though I think I did at some point. I was never really a fan of CS Lewis, though I read 'The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe', and 'The Magicians Nephew' several times in my childhood. Even then they struck me as second rate (when compared to comparable works, such as 'The Hobbit, and 'Wizard of Earthsea').

More building projects

In preperation for Takshendal chapter 6, I have recently completed three anciliary Iron age farm buildings, a shed (A) a guest house (B) and a sty (C), and I've also started a new wooden building. I'm also seriously contemplating two new urban buildings, including a stable and guest house for my inn, and another town house (see sketch below) both of which will feature in the next Takshendal campaign titled 'Captain Fouquet'.

Well said Vaclav Klaus!

Diagram Prize. 2008.

Back in September last year, I posted about the oddest book title awards by Booksellers magazine.

Now, the BBC has posted this years short list of contestors for the prize:

• Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy L Cheney and Robert M Seyfarth

• Curbside Consultation of the Colon by Brooks D Cash

• The Large Sieve and its Applications by Emmanuel Kowalski

• Strip and Knit with Style by Mark Hordyszynski

• Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring by Lietai Yang

• The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais by Professor Philip M Parker

Personally I think the award should go to Curbside Consultation of the Colon.

Interesting aircraft: XB-70 'Valkyrie'

The XB-70 'Valkyrie', was a prototype, high altitude strategic bomber, designed specifically to launch nuclear attacks against targets in the Soviet Union. Only two were ever built as anti aircraft missile development, and the advent of cheaper and more efficient intercontinental ballistic missiles made the XB-70 redundant. Capable of reaching speeds in excess of mach 3, the XB-70 programme was quickly cancelled, and the two prototypes were used instead for testing. One crashed in 1966, but the other still exists at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Ohio.

I like this aircraft because, apart from being technologically impressive, its also so beautiful, and so big. It looks like some one made a warrior version of the Concord. The whole aircraft screams power and grace. Too bad they never built more of them, but on second thoughts, considering what this aircraft was intended to do, I think I can live with it having never reached operational status.

Its also interesting to note that the fictional Soviet aircraft Firefox, in the film of the same name bears a close resemblence to the xb-70 'Valkyrie'







Parts 2, 3, 4, 5.

Raiders of the Golden Anaconda. Part two: The Lair

Player One	Player Three
Rocketman ’Mad Dog’ Mitchell Sancho Gutiérrez Captain Ortiz Marcel Messnier 10 x militia infantry (inc 1 LMG) + 3 grenades	Helga 8 x Schwartzepfele paratroopers (rifles) 2 x Schwartzepfele paratroopers (smg) +6 grenades
Player Two
Moros Angelica (SMG) Marco (pistol) Ernesto (SMG) 12 x Bandits (rifles) 1 truck 1 home made tank (a forestry tractor with steel plates bolted to it, and a single forward firing LMG) 2 d6 grenades

It took a while but I finally got around to finishing this mini campaign. The first part was a game I'd made for my brother Peter back in Feb 2008, and since then there'd been no chance to play the second half until today when Rasmus asked if there wasn't any chance of a small skirmish game. There was, despite the short notice as this game was lying waiting.

We played this game like the first as another three way skirmish, just to be consistent. Rasmus played Moros, defending the camp, Palle played Rocketman (now with a better weapon and an additional +1 for his armoured jacket) and I played Helga.

Rocketman won this game, largely by virtue of having to cover the distance to the camp whilst Helga and her Germans having penetrated from the rear, engaged Moros and his men in a surprise attack. This almost worked, but then Rasmus turned his home made tank on Helga and my force was wiped out. By the time Captain Ortiz and his men reached firing range, quite a significant proportion of Moros's force had been engaged, and were facing the wrong direction. Essentially Palle had to play a similar situation to Peter in the previous game, but having more experience of playing Rocketman he managed to take advantage of the chaos Helga was creating by her sneak attack.

Considering he was hemmed in, and facing two fronts, Rasmus played extremely well. Eventually the home made tank got taken out by Rocketman, but by then time was fast running out any way and he'd already blown Helga away. The Germans were completely marginalised in a hanger and their attrition rate was horrendous. I had four elements left at the end of the game. Palle played Rocketman very well, having learned from past mistakes not to land where he could be shot at by multiple elements, and even managed to role play the character some what (refusing to shoot a lady in the back)

The three way game system meant that each player fought with an advantage against one of the other players, but a disadvantage over the third. I hadn't actually realised this until Rasmus moved the tank to face Helga and she couldn't move away before it was his turn to fire.

Palle - moves
Rasmus - shoots
Jan - moves
Palle - shoots
Rasmus - moves
Jan - shoots

I doubt we'll do many three way games in the future. The additional time needed for a third player to move and shoot slows the game down too much, though having fewer elements might work better. Tonights game moved at a fairly decent pace, and we almost accomplished the game within the alloted four hours, but had we played two sides instead of three, I think we'd have finished and with time to spare.

Rocketman takes out the 'home made tank'

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Freja's thought for the day...

"Diesel trains are even more dangerous than dinosaurs"

(Spoken with great conviction whilst watching Thomas the Tank Engine)

Its official...

...I don't like Macs.

You couldn't make this stuff up

Not only is Lord Achmed not elected, technically neither is Gordon Brown...

Kingdom of the Grail

This is one of AA Attanasio's older books, and I'd never heard of it before I picked it up, used, at Amazon. I bought it on the strength of Attanasio's previous books 'Arc of the Dream' and 'Wyvern', both of which I liked, but I was rather disapointed with this book.

Attanasio attempts to create a story around an implausible, but not impossible scenario. A Norman baroness of the Welsh Marches is ousted by her own son and sent off on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Scheming revenge along the way she finds a young Jewish woman named Rachel Tibbon who resembles her in her youth and through various circumstances she arranges for the young woman to take her place and return home masquerading as the old baroness, rejuvenated by having drunk of the holy grail.

Upon her arrival Rachel Tibbon goes through a series of adventures which test her resolve and force her to confront her own terrible past.

I didn't like the book because the characters were 'too American', by which I mean they reminded me of the characters from an episode of 'Xena the Warrior Princess', with American cultural values and personality traits injected to make the characters 'understandable' rather than characters of the European middle ages. Since Attanasio is an American, then this ought not surprise, but it did. It made the book dull, and the climax became very predictable and thus uninteresting.

Magne Sejr Kjølby Kristensen

Here he is at last. Our little son, Magne (pronounced mauna) Sejr (pronounced sire). Magne was one of the sons of Thor, and Sejr is the Danish word for victory, similar as to the English name Victor. He was born last night (8Feb) and weighed 3.88 kg and measured 55cm long. The top picture was taken roughly an hour after he was born and the one below about five hours after. He looks much like Freja, but has very different fingers, which he curls and flexes constantly, as if they were baby octopii.

The politics of story telling

Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji speaking on the politics and history of story telling and identity issues facing the world today. Very interesting, and quite amusing. This is the sort of stuff they ought to show on DR instead of imams and socialists debating how bad Pia Kærsgaard is. Ironic that is free to download on You Tube whilst DR's rubbish will cost me thousands of kroner in enforced fee's. And here I was thinking Communism was dead.

Happy birthday Felix

Today is the two hundredth birthday of my most illustrious ancestor (as far as I know) Felix Mendelssohn. My mothers family are apparently descended from his sister Fanny. Personally I have never really cared for most of Mendelssohn's music, which I find rather tepid and uninspiring, but he did write a few beautiful pieces in his time, no doubt about that. Here to celebrate his birthday is Mendlessohn's brilliant overture, "Die Hebriden" (Fingal's Cave).

Bach: a teenage deterent!

If your ever having trouble with teenagers, here is the remedy: Johann Sebastian Bach

Staying recently in a South Yorkshire town called Rotherham—described in one guidebook as “murky,” an inadequate word for the place—I was interested to read in the local newspaper how the proprietors of some stores are preventing hooligans from gathering outside to intimidate and rob customers. They play Bach over loudspeakers, and this disperses the youths in short order; they flee the way Count Dracula fled before holy water, garlic flowers, and crucifixes. The proprietors had previously tried a high-pitched noise generator whose mosquito-like whine only those younger than 20 could detect. This method, too, proved effective, but the owners abandoned it out of fear that it might damage the youths’ hearing and infringe upon their human rights, leading to claims for compensation.

There is surely something deeply emblematic about the use of one of the great glories of Western civilization, the music of Bach, to prevent the young inheritors of that civilization from committing crimes.

Link

moif world update: fever

As I write this, the sweat is running off me. With only three days to go before Mette is due to give birth, I am amuck with illness and running a temperature. Way to go moif! As usual, I can't be bothered lying in bed so I'm working from home, prepping pictures for a customer, ignoring the pain in my head (thank you treo) and generally pushing myself to get better. Mette's mom always says its better to just keep going when your ill and I must admit, it feels better to put on some good loud music and burn brightly than mope around in bed with a throbbing head.

Here is what I'm listening to right now...

Artist of the Month: Ilya Repin

My my time does travel fast when your having fun. Its already February and time to feature another favourite artist. In keeping with last month, February is dedicated to another great Russian artist, and why not?, Ilya Repin. As usual I knew Repin's work long before I ever heard his name. The painting above attracted my attention as a child and I've loved it since for ever. Its called 'Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire' and it shows the Cossacks telling the Turkish emperor where to go after he demanded their surrender. I didn't know that when I first saw the painting though. I was attracted to the general composition of the image, and the way the various characters in it were displayed. Repin actually intended the picture to be a study in laughter, and that's quite obvious when you examine it in detail. When it was finished after 11 years of work, 'Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks...' was the most expensive painting ever sold in Russia. Czar Alexander III bought it for 35,000 rubles.


Repin is perhaps the most famous Russian artist after Kandinsky, though in point of fact Repin was born in the Ukraine so he's technically not a Russian at all. Like Vasnetsov, Repin was a key figure of the Russian revivalist movement, but his most famous works transcend that genre, showing a depth of psychology and realism that you just don't find in most Russian art of the nineteenth century. Regard the picture below as an example. It is the 'Easter Procession in the Region of Kursk' and is a mirror on contemporary Russia, showing the various social strata and the conflicts between them. '17 October' is another example of how Repin uses an apparently straight forward painting to illustrate contemporary reality. Whats interesting about '17 October' is the prominence of the Russian colours in a painting meant to illustrate the birth of communism. A lot of Repin's work is like this. Layers of obscure social detail, often hidden by the mist of time, just waiting to be deciphered by the adventurous art student.