Monthly Archives: December 2002

LOTR TTT (Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers)

Posted on by

Woo hoo! I just saw the Lord Of The Rings : The Two Towers today. It is absolutely brilliant! It’s as good, if not better, than the first. There are a lot more battle scenes in it for you action fans. But the best for me was Gollum. The effects were fantastic. As a main character for quite a few scenes throughout the film, you don’t even notice the CGI work. I’m not sure whether Andy Serkis just did the voice or acted as Gollum in some scenes, but I was totally impressed.
I thought the Ents were too thin, but otherwise excellent, their slow deliberate ways were understandably glossed over in the film, in fact quite a section of the book concerning the Ents was missing.
The story about Eowyn of Rohan (played by Miranda Otto) was almost completely missing too.

All in all this is a must see film. Recommended!

The Shelters of Stone

Posted on by

I missed mentioning at the time but I finished The Shelters of Stone last week. What an excellent book! Ms Auel has really tightened up her story telling. Whilst there were plenty of the long-winded technically accurate descriptive passages as in the earlier books; there was plenty more ‘meat’ in this one. There are a couple of good new characters introduced in this one too. One in particular has the potential to develop into a major player in the story. For a while at least. Was it worth waiting 10 years? I don’t think so. But I do appreciate Ms Auel had other things to do besides write books. However it is a very good book.

Recommended. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another 10 years for the next one.

Google vs. Evil

Posted on by

There is a fantastic article over at wired called Google vs. Evil: A Losing Battle? by Josh McHugh.

The world’s biggest, best-loved search engine owes its success to supreme technology and a simple rule: Don’t be evil. Now the geek icon is finding that moral compromise is just the cost of doing big business.

It’s a fascinating look at the politics of being a preferred reference for the majority of internet users.

Today, Internet users spend about 15 million hours a month on the site. Google.com logs more than 28 million visitors each month, nearly as many as Yahoo! and MSN. Nearly four out of five Internet searches happen on Google or on sites that license its technology.

It then goes on to muse about some of the pressures which could come to bear if Google were ever to go public.
It’s a long article (five pages) but well worth the read.

A Day of Leisure

Posted on by

Ha ha, I’ve had a pretty lazy day today. I didn’t really do too much of anything unti l I had to collect Jamie from school. I did get a phone call from work though!
This evening Jamie went to see a pantomime at the newly restored Plaza in Stockport. I didn’t collect her until 10pm. A very late night for a school night!