Today I saw Stealth. It's a slightly lacklustre film with perhaps a weak story. Though, as is common lately, the digital imagery is quite compelling - the film makers obviously spent a lot of effort making the aircraft believable.

There are two main technological items of unknown - the aircraft are hypersonic single seaters with one being flown by an artificial intelligence, this aircraft having adaptive air surfaces and the AI itself, a quantum computer.

Though from this comes mainly a story of love and survival with typical martyrdom of certain characters, namely one of the 'flyboys' and the AI. It seems film makers AIs are not prone to survival. Mix into that some betrayal and earning trust and that's mainly it, apart from the flying.

The dogfight sequences, though, are a little ludicrous. A box-standard fighter-bomber up against a hypersonic futuristic plane and it wasn't over in seconds?

If you don't like flying or naval intrigue don't bother with it. Though the usual 'black-box' approach towards computing has been taken along with the 'it better be tested.... oh look it's gone haywire' cliche.

Well one thing I've been looking for is a Blog tool - I'm currently trying Journler, which is a Journal as well as a Blogger but I don't know yet if it's what I'm after, though I could just write what I want which would be a good start at programming in something other than Java, unless of course I did it in Java, which would be kind of mad but logical I think.

I've not written in a while. I've bought myself an iBook and I've been moving things like email and documents from my PC to my iBook.

I prefer this thing but it's not the only computer, though I'm still learning about it.

My new job is going very well - I'm just about to pass my 3 month probation period, with other things, though it feels like I've been there much longer.

ICE

Written 2005.7.21@1730

There has been some discussion about people adding In Case of Emergency numbers to mobile phones. The major problem is that any number stored using letters J to Z will usually come up with the Ice name rather than the real one. I guess it's not much of a hardship, though using an underscore or dash in front of the word might help. Though how you could add a name of the victim and the called person I'm not sure but the recent calls list would help. Adding an owner memo I think would be helpful too.

Mongolian BBQ

Written 2005.6.14@1903

http://www.themongolianbbq.co.uk/

On a whim went with Julie. The food is ok and the cocktails not much better. Though I'm getting a cold, which I'm not happy about.

Just over one week before the end of the modules. Then it's dissertation time. I still have no idea.

Now this race would be cool!

Moontastic

Don't forget to zoom in

All new http://www.macminute.com/2005/07/09/ipod-flea/ :)

Travel chaos in London

There have been a number of explosions reported - 2 on trains and 1 confirmed perhaps a total of 3 on buses.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4659093.stm

I'm OK but worried about the people who have been caught or hurt due to panic.

I got to thinking on the way to work how to calculate a square root without the aid of a calculator. At one point I was getting into algebra (I got from x=a*a to x/a=a and got confused and so gave up). When I got home I remembered decided to check it out. It turns out the answer is... guess. The ever helpful Dr Math (http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/52609.html) has some answers but essentially that's it.

Now perhaps a better question is why was I trying to calculate a square root while walking along sipping my morning coffee? Maybe later :)

Shredder

I bought a small manual paper shredder today, obviously for destroying those sensitive bits of pulp. While I don't have anything to shred right now (mountain of paperwork) I toyed with the idea of the irony of testing the shredder by shredding the instructions. Why is this interesting? It isn't, but I thought it was funny.

CityLink and stuff

They appear to be useless. Two numbers listed have been changed - even the ones on their own website! An 0870 number is now 020 8768 4024 and the Beckenham number is now 020 8659 9743. But at least there was someone there. GAH. I'm not sure why I'm putting this here...

It's a nice if warm and muggy day in London. Looking like more hosepipe bans ahead, which doesn't bother me much as I don't have a garden.

Only one more week of modules to go for my degree! Each 8 week module has been worth 15 points. Module points make up 120 points of my degree, with a total requirement of 180. The rest of the degree is 60 points of project work and dissertation. So far my grades have been 'B' for all the modules (which are provisional grades until graduation) which if I keep it up I think I should get a 2.1 which I'd be very happy with, though just passing would be OK.

D(on't) NS

Today I had an annoying time when getting home. Network name lookups intermittently failed, meaning browsing would get some bits but not others. Gah. Time to switch provider perhaps.

Well after about 10 minutes I found my own Googlewhack.

archivator taxidermy

Though I'm not sure about the first word and also by posting this I most likely will break it. But hey, that's not the point.

Silver Surfer