Recently I've been trying to find examples of good modern Chinese music. It's been a hard search. Most Chinese music appears to be made entirely for the karaoke market. The reason for this is probably one of simple economies - the karaoke market in China is huge. Almost everyone takes part in it, both men and women, young and old. Karaoke centres are vast buildings with hundreds of private rooms where people go to sing on all manner of occasions - with friends, lovers, even on business.
TV is also full of karaoke-style shows. At any moment of the day it is likely that somewhere there is a TV station in China broadcasting amateur singing. It's taken very seriously, with big competitions and major prizes. Often a popular karaoke singer will go on to start a successful pop career. It even goes deep inside the state with CCTV7 broadcasting the unintentionally funny army karaoke show (or at least, that's my interpretation of it).
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I'll admit a certain liking towards end-of-the-world movies. For me there's something irresistible in seeing what happens when everything goes wrong and Bruce Willis doesn't manage to save the day. It was with delight that I watched 28 Days Later, a 2002 movie by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland about a horrible blood-spitting disease that strikes Britain. Maybe it was the bleak London vistas, maybe it was the unrelenting music and in-your-face video, or maybe it was just the fact that it was a great budget movie that packed a big punch.
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Most of us have a good selection of electronic gadgets gracing our home. TVs, DVD players, TIVOs, home theatre systems, the list goes on. Almost all of these will have an individual remote control requiring not only a home (just where did you put that remote?), but batteries and in many situations the ability to navigate a particular action (such as watching a DVD) across multiple controls.
With this in mind I set about reviewing the Logitech Harmony 555 Universal Remote Control.
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The Christmas and New Year season is finally over, and I've made it out alive. Time for an update.
Christmas itself was very peaceful. Christmas eve was spent walking around a park in 25 degree sunshine, and eating water chestnut ice-cream. Definatley a big change from the artic conditions that occurred back in Europe. Christmas day was spent watching movies, and eating as much food as could be managed at La Seine - a very fine French restaurant that had a lunch-time 'all-you-can-eat' buffet. As is usual at this time of the year, I ate too much, and had a very bloated night and little to eat the next day. Still, well worth the money, and the mini quiche tartlets really were to die for (so much so that the chef-on-prowl commented he couldn't look for fear of eating them all).
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The other week I managed to watch a pretty bad series of horror stories, all wrapped together in a film called The Necronomicon. I knew it was going to be a bad movie even before it started, but I was still looking forward to it because it’s based upon the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.
For those unfamiliar with this author, he was a reclusive American writer who wrote in the mid-1920's. His specialty was horror writing, but a horror unlike almost everything else in the genre. If you have any familiarity with Edgar-Allen Poe then you'll know the style. We're talking dark brooding horror, focusing on insanity and the human mind. Lovecraft managed to create his own shadow world which looked like ours, but contained unimaginable evils waiting to break free.
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I've been churning through a lot of books recently and so I thought I'd talk about some here.
First up is Dr. Zhivago. I'll admit a distinct liking for Russian literature, ever since Crime & Punishment blew me away. The country is so big and has so much history. I just wish I could explore it all. As I do not possess an unlimited budget I have to make do with whatever books I can get my hands on, and this was provided by Boris Pasternak.
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I watched several movies over the weekend, courtesy of my flat mate making a bumper trip to the video rental store. His tastes could easily be described as eclectic - old romance, sci-fi, and Benny Hill are not an average choice.
Movie one was Woman Of The Year. This is a very old black and white movie starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn and it falls squarely in the 'romantic comedy' category. Normally I make a quick retreat from such movies, but this was a lot of fun and certainly a lot better than most modern varieties.
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I watched two movies at the weekend and I still don't know what to think of them. The first was Roman Polanski's The Tenant. I've not watched many Polanski movies and even though I enjoyed my flat-mates story about meeting him at a wedding last year, he was always someone I heard a lot about, but never quite managed to see.
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On the flight back I experienced an occurrence of what is now known as 'air rage', although I prefer the term 'stupid drunk person'. A man, one seat over from me, began the 11 hour flight by drinking from a bottle of Whiskey he had secreted in the front pouch. While this was initially met with the thought ‘are you kidding me?’ it did become more worrying when he'd drunk nearly half of a 1.5L bottle within a few hours.
This incident made me think about what would happen if he turned violent. My first thought was that either the flight staff, or some passengers, would restrain him. However, the man was big, and obviously a bodybuilder, so I couldn't imagine that happening without problems.
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Notebooks are not usually big on upgrade potential. The parts are difficult to obtain, are generally more expensive, and people are nervous about opening up an expensive piece of equipment.
One of the few upgrades paths is the optical drive. Typically a notebook will have a CD burner, possibly with DVD reading capabilities. The latest notebooks will undoubtedly contain a DVD burner, but the great majority will be lacking this feature. Enter the Panasonic UJ-845!
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