Blade Runner 25th Anniversary

by Ian Posted on October 3, 2007

blade runner
OK, I’m a bit slow off the mark here, but I was reading tonight that Ridley Scott’s cult film Blade Runner has been restored and is being re-released for the 25th anniversary of its original release. ‘For the new director’s cut, the special-effects footage was digitally scanned at 8,000 lines per frame, four times the resolution of most restorations, and then meticulously retouched. The results look almost 3-D.’

I love this film and have lost track of the number of times I have seen it. I much prefer the earlier Director’s cut released in 1992 to the original version with Harrison Ford’s voiceover.

The film is based on Philip K. Dick’s novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?‘ and is set in Los Angeles in 2019. Harrison Ford plays a cop named Deckard who comes out of retirement to hunt down and eliminate four androids who have escaped from off planet colonies and have travelled to Earth to confront their designer.

Amazon have the new version available for pre-order as either a 2-disc version with some extras or the 5 disc ultimate collectors’ edition. The 5 disc version contains all
of the previous versions of the film. Both are due for release on 3rd December. My copy of the 5 disc set is on order.

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Successful hunting

by Ian Posted on September 21, 2007

family tree
I was looking at the passenger lists on FindMyPast and found that they had put the next decade 1930-1939 online.

I first searched for my father and found both him (aged 1.5) and my grandmother on MV Apapa travelling 1st class to Lagos 28th April 1937

I also found my grandfather travelling every 2 years to Lagos, Nigeria.

  • 13th August 1930 on MV Apapa age 33, proof reader residing at 24 Lewis Road, Sheatham SW16
  • 6th April 1932 on MV Accra age 34, printer residing at 243 Giston Lane, Aston W4
  • 4th April 1934 on MV Accra age 37, printer residing at Long Marston, Tring. He is travelling this time with Lillian age 26. This must be their honeymoon as they were married on the 1st April.
  • 3rd June 1936 on MV Apapa age 17 (hmm that can’t be right), printer residing at Queen’s Head, Long Marston, Tring, Herts.
  • 18th May 1938 on MV Apapa age 41, printer residing at Queen’s Head, Long Marston, Tring, Herts.

Unfortunately, only the outbound passenger lists are available, so I don’t have details of the return trips. This means I don’t know how long he was away at a time.

I haven’t been able to find an outbound trip to Sierra Leone where he died in 1939. I’m guessing he may have travelled back from Lagos, Nigeria to Freetown, Sierra Leone some time during 1939.

Posted in FamilyTree | 1 Comment

Arrr! Shiver me timbers

by Ian Posted on September 19, 2007

pirate
`Tis official. Today be International Talk Like a Swashbuckler tide.

Th’ photos be at th’ International Talk Like A Swashbuckler Tide gallery on Flickr

Th’ Howto section has basic an’ advanced gentleman o’ fortune lingo coverin’ such terms as avast! an’ arrr!

Translated:

It’s official. Today is International Talk Like a Pirate day.

The photos are at the International Talk Like A Pirate Day gallery on Flickr

The Howto section has basic and advanced pirate lingo covering such terms as avast! and arrr!

Posted in Fun | Comments Off on Arrr! Shiver me timbers

Trillian reconnection problem

by Ian Posted on September 10, 2007

I use Trillian as my instant messaging client. It allows me to be signed in with both Yahoo and Microsoft messaging without having to have two clients running.

A problem I had been having with it was after waking my laptop from hibernation, the Microsoft connection would fail to reconnect. Yahoo would reconnect without problem, but Microsoft would keep trying for about 10 minutes before finally failing. If I did a Global Disconnect before hibernating and then a Global Reconnect after waking it up, then everything worked fine.

Well it worked fine providing I remembered to reconnect after waking up. This didn’t always happen, as my post a few days ago about my unexpected Plugoo message shows.

Continue reading →

Posted in Software | 36 Comments

My blog reviewed

by Ian Posted on September 9, 2007

review
Recently Randa Clay at Randa Clay Design held a Pimp My Blog contest. I already had Randa in my list of blogs that I read and was also subscribed to her RSS feed, so I entered the contest. I was pleasantly surprised (and a bit nervous) to receive an email from Randa letting me know that I had won a blog review.

I had told Randa that I was interested in growing the readership of my blog. Randa observed that most of my post are personal and that the blog would need to have more focus if I am to provide value outside a small circle of family and friends. I can relate to this, as many times I do not put a great deal of effort into posting more than ‘this happened today’ type posts. I’ll have to think about how best to achieve this.

Randa suggested that migrating to WordPress with a sharp theme would be a improvement on the design side. I’m not a designer, so I don’t know what specifically doesn’t work, but the migration to WordPress is something that I have been considering for a while.

You can read Randa’s full review of Failure is the Key to Success on her blog. Thanks for the review Randa and your useful suggestions. I will try to incorporate them in the coming weeks.

Posted in Blogging | Tagged | 6 Comments

Unexpected Plugoo message

by Ian Posted on September 7, 2007

I restarted my laptop this evening and when I did, Trillian signed in automatically. On my blog contact page and on my profile page on cre8Buzz I have my Plugoo widget which appears as a contact in instant messaging and allow anyone to chat with me when I am online. If I am not signed in, it allows a message to be left for me and I receive this when I next sign in.

Anyway, I don’t think I have signed into Trillian for the last few days, so when I signed in this evening I had a couple of messages.

One was from ex Mediaeval Baebes member Karen Lupton providing me updated information. This was totally unexpected; I know there have been several views of the Mediaeval Baebes post and the links from it, but I wasn’t expecting any Baebe or former Baebe to visit. I have updated Karen’s information on the original post. Thanks Karen.

Posted in General, Music | 4 Comments