New Year & New Blog
Sunday, 17 January 2010
It's 2010 and I feel it's time for a change so I'll be posting on my new blog at http://blog.johnantoni.com and tweeting addictively on twitter as usual.
I've made a few New Year's resolutions which with a bit of luck should stick to, and yes the book's finally underway; hope to finish that this year.
Come along and enjoy the ride,
Take care all :-)
Last flight of the Victor jet plane
Sunday, 18 October 2009
At the Cold War Jets open day, at Bruntingthorpe. The Victor XM715 (aka 'Teasin Tina') had a short sortie to the bottom of Brunty's runway. One amazing sight, it brought back memories of air shows back in the 80's and 90's, no one was hurt, the Victor was ok and the crew were a little 'red faced', not bad for the ol' girl.
Courtesy of jetnoiseforever
Watchmen Opening Credits + Review
Saturday, 14 March 2009
--------- Spoiler Warning ---------
I've just read the writeup Total Film gave Watchmen and I have to agree it is a lot to take in if you're new to the story and haven't read the book.
From the opening credits which setup the backstory (see below) you instantly get a feeling these guy's really put a lot of love and effort into creating this masterpiece. Ok, it isn't for everybody, the good guys don't always win and not every cloud has that silver-lining but then the world we live in isn't such a pretty picture when you look between the lines. The superheroes are flawed, mothman goes insane and is carted off to the asylum, the comedian isn't nice with the ladies, and the Night-owl has performance issues, not to mention Rorschach's poor people skills.
This is definitely not another comic-book movie.
I went to see this recently with my fiancee Michelle and a couple of my friends and the reaction was very varied. Some thought it was too long (3hrs), some thought it was too slow and took too long to get to the action. One guy next to us kept dozing off but for me I was just in awe, I was really taken back by the attention of detail the cast and crew underwent to re-create the comic on the big screen perfectly. Some bits were altered and a few were left out (like the explanation of Rorschach's mask), but so much was crammed into those 3 hours that you could never get in just one sitting.
From the start it felt like watching Blade Runner with the rain, neon lights and dark corners. Then we see Rorschach picking up the pieces of The Comedian's untimely death, then visiting Dr Manhattan's laboratory where we meet Sally Jupiter and so on. There's lots of cameo's with Annie Liebovitz photographing Adrian Viedt, Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon, Andy Warhol and then all those little characters and locations from the book The Gunga-Diner, The Newspaper Stand, the kid sitting on the corner reading his comic, The Frontiersman, Moloch's place all beautifully rendered straight out of the book and acted superbly. No big name star trying to steal the limelight, just a solid and truthful rendering given life on the silver screen.
Looking back I can't even imagine the kind of problems they must have had creating this, just keeping it quiet must have been a security nightmare. And then making sure it was done correctly and without people changing things to fit in product placements or such, Zack Snyder must have called in some pretty big favours to keep it's vision. The casting must have been difficult, what I found staggering was the level of detail they gave even tiny two second props was just incredible. If anything this film's destined for an oscar for the art work & costumes alone.
I also loved the choice of songs, Bob Dylan's 'Times are a Changing' was a perfect choice for the opening setup. Then Hendrix 'All Along the Watchtower' when things were getting hairy. Didn't quite get the lovescene song, and to be honest it was a little funny, but the prison scene was absolutely spot on, disturbing and dark.
I'm off to see it with my old boss next week, can't wait. It was exactly what I hoped for in a film. Gritty, dark and artistic. 5 out of 5 easily.
Courtesy of yU+Co
Heath Ledger wins Best Supporting Actor
Monday, 09 February 2009
"and the bafta award for best supporting actor goes to........ Heath Ledger for Dark Knight"
Well done Heath Ledger, you've set the standard in acting for years to come. You're dedication and obsession to produce the most energetic and exciting performances will last on celuloid for years to come.
You're the man, and we miss you.
Well done
Iron Man up for two golden boys
Friday, 06 February 2009
Going thru my twitter, just saw Iron Man's got nominated for two oscars!
- Best Sound Editing
- Best Visual Effects
Along with that Hugh Jackman's hosting this years event in place of Billy Crystal, I'm sure a song will be in the works knowing Hugh.
...maybe even the odd medley,
The 81st Oscars ceremony happens in 16 days (Febuary 22nd) and will be available to UK viewers via SKY MOVIES from 1AM onwards.
Doctor Who? Matt Smith apparently
Sunday, 04 January 2009
The BBC today announced that Matt Smith has been cast in the role of the Doctor in the iconic BBC series Doctor Who. Smith will be the eleventh Time Lord and will take over from David Tennant who leaves the show at the end of 2009. He will be seen in the forthcoming fifth series that will be broadcast in 2010. The fifth series will also have a new lead writer and Executive Producer in the form of the BAFTA award winning writer Steven Moffat who is taking over from Russell T Davies. Moffat will be joined by Piers Wenger who will be the new Executive Producer for BBC Wales making the show.
Following David Tennant's decision to step down at the end of 2009, the team behind the new series set about casting the new Doctor so that new adventures could be created and scripts written with Matt in mind.
The identity of the new Doctor was revealed on a special edition of Doctor Who Confidential that was broadcast on BBC One on January 3rd at 17.35hrs. In it Smith revealed his initial reaction at taking on such a legendary role and his thoughts on what direction the Doctor might now be going with him playing the part. Matt Smith said of his new role "I'm just so excited about the journey that is in front of me. It's a wonderful privilege and challenge that I hope I will thrive on. I feel proud and honoured to have been given this opportunity to join a team of people that has worked so tirelessly to make the show so thrilling.
"David Tennant has made the role his own, brilliantly with grace, talent and persistent dedication. I hope to learn from the standards set by him. The challenge for me is to do justice to the show's illustrious past, my predecessors and most importantly to those who watch it. I really cannot wait."
Lead writer and Executive Producer Steven Moffat said "The Doctor is a very special part, and it takes a very special actor to play him. You need to be old and young at the same time, a boffin and an action hero, a cheeky schoolboy and the wise old man of the universe. As soon as Matt walked through the door and blew us away with a bold and brand new take on the Time Lord, we knew we had our man. 2010 is a long time away but rest assured the Eleventh Doctor is coming - and the universe has never been so safe."
Piers Wenger, Head Of Drama, BBC Wales added "With two hearts, a ferocious mind and over 900 years of experience behind him, it's not every 26 year old actor who can take on a role like the Doctor but within moments of meeting Matt he showed the skill and imagination needed to create a Doctor all of his own. It's just the beginning of the journey for Matt but with Steven Moffat's scripts and the expertise of the production team in Cardiff behind him, there is no one more perfect than him to be taking the TARDIS to exciting new futures when the series returns in 2010."
Ben Stephenson, Controller BBC Drama added "I am delighted to see Matt take on this iconic role. It will see him continuing his relationship with the BBC following his performances in Ruby In The Smoke and Party Animals, and his upcoming role in Moses Jones. The combination of Matt, Steven and Piers will, I know, take Doctor Who onto new and even dizzier heights."
Jay Hunt, Controller. BBC ONE said "Matt Smith will be a mesmerising eleventh Time Lord, true to the spirit of the show. He is a worthy successor to David Tennant who has been utterly remarkable in the role and promises to continue to be in next year's four special episodes."
Michelle isn't too happy, something along the lines of "eww!! he's fugly! I'm not watching that!"
I was hedging my bets on James McAvoy taking the lead, well he did say he needed a break from film.
I hope for his sake David passes on a few of his traits and tidbits as he really made the role so enjoyable to watch.
:-(
Main story courtesy of BBC - Doctor Who News
Armistice Day
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
(photo taken at JUNO beach in Normandy, France)
In 2006 me & Michelle took a week from work to tour Normandy and visit the war memorials and locations key to Operation Overlord. It was a very humbling experience that really took home the impact and scale of what people sacrificed for our freedom.
Photos
In 2008 we plan to do the same in Belgium and visit Yepres and the fields of World War I
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
by John McCrae, May 1915
Thank's all,
A Change Has Come to America
Wednesday, 05 November 2008
Best thing all year!
Vote Obama
Wednesday, 05 November 2008
polling day in the USA, fingers crossed he should win it ;-)
Ubuntu Ibex 8.10 Beta - updated
Sunday, 12 October 2008
Last night I upgraded my laptop's o/s to the new Ibex 8.10 release, not yet official still in beta but so far very stable.
This can be done via,
sudo update-manager -d
...then choosing the new distribution 8.10 from the top of the update manager dialog, you'll need about 1 hour for it to download & install. Be around for some of the dialogs; one of which will ask you if you want to merge or replace your network script (i clicked merge) after which you should be ok.
It comes with a lot of new updates and a major interface overhaul.
There's now a fallback linux kernel if the main one should fail (like ArchLinux), more windows-like logout panel, better hibernation and a new theme called NewHuman (see screenshot above).
Along with this there's available from the repository,
- VLC 0.94 (with a more graphical control panel)
- GIMP 2.6 (much more professional)
- Gnome 2.24 (with tabbed browsing)
- GEdit 2.24
...and a ton of other newer packages, Mercurial is also updated along with the Kernel so any new hardware should be properly recognised.
After the install I had to reboot obviously, on rebooting my wifi no longer worked, so after another reboot that came back. Did an update & upgrade for any newer packages and so far other than the battery indicator applet crashing a couple of times nothing majorly serious.
Eclipse is still at 3.2 in the repository, along with NetBeans at 6.1 so that's a little bit of a bummer. However NetBeans does come with an easier installer so just grab the latest nightly build for that, Eclipse Ganymede and 3.2 are proving a little flakey at the moment.
Interface-wise it is a heck of a lot better than the previous release and although unofficially available I would recommend grabbing a copy, definitely worth the effort.
Update
Just done an update,
- In the repositories is Flash Player 10.
- On bootup instead of saying 'kernel alive.. etc..', they've replaced it with 'Starting up...'; nice.
- The Installer is now graphical with a very osx partition manager and new logout screens and graphics.
- On that end when you login the screen doesn't go blank then show the desktop but stay Ubuntu Brown then show the desktop.
- Stick a dvd in first-time and like Windows it'll ask you what you want to open it with, vlc, totem, etc.
- Plus you've got some nice new default wallpapers available.
Did have a problem with the NewHuman theme, after doing a safe-upgrade I lost the theme, although I did find a replacement;
- Dust Theme
..you need to download the Murrine debian package for the distro you're using, install it, then download + install the Dust Theme.
Other than that this release is shaping up pretty nicely!
OpenOffice 3
Found this good guide to replacing OpenOffice 2.4.1 with the latest 3.0 release, pretty simple.
Basically add this to your repository then update and upgrade & you should have the new build.
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main
Firefox 3.1 alpha
Add this to your repository to grab Firefox 3.1
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ubuntu intrepid main
LHC Goes Live, so does Matilda
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Matilda
After many months of frustration with Typo, I finally bit the bullet and have been spending the past couple of evenings cooking up my replacement called Matilda.
It's nowhere complete, with a lot of things still to add but I eventually hope to push it to the GitHub repository and let others break it apart; but only when I'm happy with it.
To ease the transition I've also been using Google's WebMaster Sitemap tool to track dead 404 links still out there in the ether so they will point to somewhere rather than an error page.
Got logging for any 404's beyond the one's I've countered for so sooner or later things should ease up.
Admin side is a bit simplistic, but usable, need to put in RSS & ATOM feed generators and FeedBurner integration; but so far looking (fingers-crossed) good.
...if anything what took the most time was writting the Typo -> Matilda importer.
Keep you posted,
On set with The Incredible Hulk
Wednesday, 18 June 2008
--- spoiler alert -- you have been warned -- spoiler alert ---
Just came out after seeing The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton and Liv Tyler, and it certainly brings back memories from our holiday in Toronto Canada last year.
Culver [Toronto] University, the Bioligy University and more importantly that time when we were walking thru the PATH (Toronto's pedestrian network) and walking onto that so-called 'Critical Incident' set.
I can remember us walking thru those turnstyle doors, American Eagle shopping bags and my fiancee Michelle in-tow, then being presented with that dramatic scene outside. In front of us stood the large dome entrance flanked to the left by a New York fire truck, to our right the NYPD; with the building in front flanked by US Army troops armed to the teeth, guns going off and a director screaming to get us off set.
The blurb was that they were filming a pilot for some new US crime tv series called 'Critical Incident' similar to CSI, in reality after seeing the finished product it was in fact the newly realised Incredible Hulk. The scene in question is where the abomination is created, a real freak of nature and bad medicine and a total headache for our hero Bruce Banner.
One guess which ED it is, and no it's not the horse ;-)
Ok, these aren't the best of shots but it does prove Toronto's one amazing city and home to some of the nicest people; plus it's cheaper to shoot there than NY. So on that note, let's have a stroll around to see what other delights can be seen in the film.
Doubling up as big green's home. Toronto University is an awesome sight to behold and has been used in many other films (Good Will Hunting), the architecture and history embedded within these walls has brought us such things as the first pacemaker, the chemical laser and the extraction of insulin.
It's actually broken up into several blocks and is home to some of the brightest minds on the planet, with regular features in Newsweek.
Strolling thru campus crossing Queens Park, it's such a relaxing place to visit but really needs a good day to explore thoroughly.
If you wander you may see Leslie Nielsen's photo on one of the buildings, he studied at Lorne Greene's Academy of Radio Arts before winning a scholarship to New York.
The huge Robards library is built in the shape of a peacock, and stands 14 story's high; housing rare works and first editions it provides the facilities for young minds to take flight.
Awesome stuff, still can't believe our luck!
