Lost for words

I am about to be comprehensively mugged at Scrabulous on Facebook by nyarbaggytep. I have two letters left to make up over 88 points. Unless the most amazing piece of inspiration and luck hits me, I can't see me getting that back...

The rot set in when she played "Bewet" on a triple word score, which is not in any dictionary I know of except the Scrabulous one. Thereafter I retaliated with the equally improbable "Bedunce" but it was too little too late.

Ah, me. Some good words, but not enough double and/or triple word scores, I feel.

Bum.

Lost for words

I am about to be comprehensively mugged at Scrabulous on Facebook by nyarbaggytep. I have two letters left to make up over 88 points. Unless the most amazing piece of inspiration and luck hits me, I can't see me getting that back...

The rot set in when she played "Bewet" on a triple word score, which is not in any dictionary I know of except the Scrabulous one. Thereafter I retaliated with the equally improbable "Bedunce" but it was too little too late.

Ah, me. Some good words, but not enough double and/or triple word scores, I feel.

Bum.

Special Effects

It's a long time since I have watched any Babylon 5. We were at a loose end tonight between finishing the meal and the carbs sending Furtle to sleep, so we decided to put a Babylon 5 TV movie on. Furtle has seen the TV series, but none of the made for TV movies. I thought we'd start at the beginning and watch er... In The Beginning, which covers the Earth - Minbari war. The movie was released nine years ago in 1998.

Nine years is a long time in the world of computer graphics. I fondly remember being blown away by the effects on Babylon 5, and thinking how clever they were to use computers to achieve the effects for tens of thousands of dollars that Paramount equalled on Deep Space 9 by using (largely) models costing around a million dollars an episode. Well, it worked out well at the time. In the end, however, I suspect that Paramount have beaten Warner Brothers. The effects on Babylon 5 look dated. They are not exactly hokey yet, but give it another five years... A shot of a ship moving past a planet to dock with a space station looked like the graphics for a superior computer game rather than a TV series. Watchable, but could be better. In a few years they will not be watchable, except with nostalgic eyes. Considering how long stop-motion photography lasted (Good old Harryhausen), it's a shame to see perfectly good entertainment start to lose credibility so quickly because of the march of technology.

I should dig out some DS9 from 1998 and see how that's fared.

Special Effects

It's a long time since I have watched any Babylon 5. We were at a loose end tonight between finishing the meal and the carbs sending Furtle to sleep, so we decided to put a Babylon 5 TV movie on. Furtle has seen the TV series, but none of the made for TV movies. I thought we'd start at the beginning and watch er... In The Beginning, which covers the Earth - Minbari war. The movie was released nine years ago in 1998.

Nine years is a long time in the world of computer graphics. I fondly remember being blown away by the effects on Babylon 5, and thinking how clever they were to use computers to achieve the effects for tens of thousands of dollars that Paramount equalled on Deep Space 9 by using (largely) models costing around a million dollars an episode. Well, it worked out well at the time. In the end, however, I suspect that Paramount have beaten Warner Brothers. The effects on Babylon 5 look dated. They are not exactly hokey yet, but give it another five years... A shot of a ship moving past a planet to dock with a space station looked like the graphics for a superior computer game rather than a TV series. Watchable, but could be better. In a few years they will not be watchable, except with nostalgic eyes. Considering how long stop-motion photography lasted (Good old Harryhausen), it's a shame to see perfectly good entertainment start to lose credibility so quickly because of the march of technology.

I should dig out some DS9 from 1998 and see how that's fared.

Pictures from Wales (Part 1)

I haven't got around to downloading and sorting the pictures from my camera, yet, that I took during my week away. I have, however, just downloaded two from my Razr V3. I continue to be impressed by the quality that you can get from a phone camera these days!


This is sunset over Cardigan Bay on the evening of 3 September. I suspect that a higher resolution camera would have made it look somewhat less like a nuclear bomb going off, but I like it. I think I have some better photos from later nights on my Sony Cybershot. I'll look them out and see.


Here we see my Dear Old Mum holding the grinning cat doorstop I found for Furtle in the mill crafts shop at Dinas Mawddwy, where we stopped off on the way there and back for a cup of tea. You just can't help but grin back.

Everything you (never) wanted to know about Dinas Mawddwy!

Pictures from Wales (Part 1)

I haven't got around to downloading and sorting the pictures from my camera, yet, that I took during my week away. I have, however, just downloaded two from my Razr V3. I continue to be impressed by the quality that you can get from a phone camera these days!


This is sunset over Cardigan Bay on the evening of 3 September. I suspect that a higher resolution camera would have made it look somewhat less like a nuclear bomb going off, but I like it. I think I have some better photos from later nights on my Sony Cybershot. I'll look them out and see.


Here we see my Dear Old Mum holding the grinning cat doorstop I found for Furtle in the mill crafts shop at Dinas Mawddwy, where we stopped off on the way there and back for a cup of tea. You just can't help but grin back.

Everything you (never) wanted to know about Dinas Mawddwy!