Bomber's Camcorder err... Corner

Elv asked a while ago about camcorders. I've long coveted the idea of buying one of these and becoming some sort of guerrilla film maker and becoming famous, or something. Lack fo cinematic talent has worked wonders as a cautionary influence so all I've done is dribbled and never bought. From my experience dribbling one thing is clear; camcorders these days are the nuts. Used to be if you wanted one that didn't need a shoulder strap you'd have to pay 2000 USD+. Nowadays it's more like 400. What this means to me is that you need to go for the geek factor as, at these prices, you can afford the top of the range. Elv mate, I assume you want the following from your camcorder;

• Small
• Good quality image
• Cool looking
• Bragging rights

theer's only one choice, a compact 3CCD camcorder. For the uninitiated, most camcorders record all colours onto one sensor (CCD) a 3CCD model splits the light into Red Green and Blue and records them separately. Colour saturation and definition are (supposed to be) greatly improved and all Pro video camera have this, which adds legitimacy to the pose factor. Most importantly; they have "3CCD" writen in big silver letters on the side, which looks cool. You might ask "why not buy a normal one and just put a 3CCD sticker on it?" Well, you could but that would be like owniong a Beemer 316M, now wouldn't it. Again, 5 years back you needed a truck (and a mortgage) to carry one of these babies round in and, cool as they make you look, the back ache might make you question the trade-off. Nowadays, you can (almost) fit one in your pocket and they can be had for less than a grand.

As for hands-on advice, I can't really give you any as, well, I haven't got one. However, CNET have several and they review them here. They recommend the Panasonic PV-GS250 at 700-1,000 USD street but for bragging rights, it's got to be the JVC Everio GZ-MC500. First off, JVC is a cool brand. Don't know why, it just is. Second, the camera itself looks cool and finally it doesn't take a tape but writes direct to a hard drive, making it unique and therefore currently unbeatable in the bragging rights stakes. The cost is higher (around 1,500 USD) but I rekon that's a small price to pay for this much cool.

The boss has invited us out to dimsum today, so gadget shopping in the Wan Chai CC is off. No worries as I'm cutting out early and off to bangkok for a weekend of sex shows catching up with friends.

Bomber out

News time again

Engaget runs this story about an underwater camera system saving a kid who blacked out in a swimming pool in Wales. Apparently it’s a pilot scheme, which explains why they’re installing it in Wales, I suppose.

The Poseidon system … uses a series of overhead and underwater cameras to track movement in a pool. When a swimmer disappears beneath the surface, software triggers an alert, which can help a lifeguard reach the victim more quickly. In this case, the computer issued an alert within 10 seconds after the girl, who was swimming in the deep end of a 12-foot deep pool, sank to the bottom

They don’t mention whether it has automagic turd spotting capabilities.

Gadget wise and they have this little beauty from a research dept at Phillips. All a bit first gen, actually pre first gen, they don’t plan to market the thing, it’s been produced “to stimulate consumer feedback”.

I’ll give you some feedback; “I WANT ONE!!!”

Shockingly enough the press here, which is all bought from US networks, is saturated with some story about it raining a lot in the Southern States. Now I know what Don McLean drove his Chevy to. I’d always wondered about that. In all seriousness, it looks really bad over there and I understand that New Orleans was a very beautiful town, but didn’t they think that, just possibly, building a city below sea level in a tornado zone was a little risky? Perhaps that’s why they filled it with so many poor people.

Finally for today, a lovely story of the British service industry in which a Royal mail telephone customer (apparently the RM sell phone time now..?) was told in a letter that; “Failure to pay will result in you being hospitalized”. Nice.

That’s all for now. I’m off to Bangkok to meet up with Jezza tomorrow and then back for the final 2 week climb up hill to the dizzy heights of finally leaving this place.

Bomber out

Bomber's movie spot

At last it's here! The unwanted spot that you've all been scratching subconsciously worrying that it might erupt into an actual pustulescence, it's bomber's movie spot!

I saw Sin City and a very interesting remix of Batman Begins last week. Sin City first;




Clive "can you tell I'm not American?" Owen

Not having read the originals, I came to this mostly impressed with the visual style of the trailer and ad art and the promise of skull crushing violence in strip clubs. Sadly I feel a little let down. The visual style is certainly excellent and engaging, for sure we are going to see more of this sort of "retro decolourisation", the blood effects (which were rendered in white, sort of like IR photos) are very effective, the highlighting of the myriad scars on display is great and what they've done with Mickey Rourke's face is phenomenal. Clearly they decided to accentuate the disasterous plastic surgery rather than hide it; a definite top drawer decision there. The acting is of a particular style; it's Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer with an extra dollop of flat foot on top. This is where I have my first problem with the movie. The style (certainly for the male roles) is fully hammed up to match the athmosphere and the problem is that, from what I saw, Mickey Rourke is the only one who really manages to pull it off. Benicio Del Toro is definitely up to the task, but doesn't stay alive long enough to make an impact, Bruce Willis almost manages (but not quite) and Clive Owen proves that he could have almost matched Rourke but can't do an american accent. As for the females, they were all dressed like strippers the whole time so I wasn't really listening. Oh, and the bespectacled killer dude, well all I could think of was "You look hungry Mr Frodo, sir" and the spell (such as it was) was broken. As if this wasn't enough, I felt completely let down by the potential / end product ratio of the plot. The movie is based on 4 different stories happening at overlapping times, each of which provide a slice of Sin City life. Each stands alone OK, but we are constantly reminded of common threads that run through all the stories, especially the Roark family, who I think appear in all of them, mostly in positions of abused power; Mayor, bishop - guess what he's in to and Mayor's son. Mr Frodo's character is some sort of controlled psycho used for political assassinations by the Roarks, or something. This had a huge potential to intermingle the plot lines of the different storeies and create a really tight whole (ooh err) all very Pulp Fiction but it never happened. The closest they get is all being in the same strip joint at the same time, once, at the end of the movie. :"what of the skull crushing violence in strip clubs?" I hear you cry. Well, the violence could be violent but I was never carried away with it. At one point, one of the characters tortures another one by cutting his armes and legs off and feeding them to an alsacian, then letting the dog start to knaw on the stumps. This should have been fucking brilliant but it just left me wondering where the other bottle of red wine was. Which brings me to probably my fundamental problem with thius film (apart from the plot and the acting) and that's the rythm of the story. It just seemed to bump along withouit ever catching light. Theer are several very violent scenes (although sadly missing a hammer fight) but the timing of them left me flat, when it could have kept the whole show pumping. Perhaps that was just down to my state of mind at the time but I'll have to watch it again to see.

In the end I thought this movie was a great idea, technically superb but badly executed in the plot / character department. Except for Mickey Rourke, who was God. I'll watch it again, but only because I can't believe I had built myself up so much to be so dissapointed and perhaps I wasn't paying attention while I was watching. And I fucking paid for it on DVD, so I suppose I should get my money's worth.

On to Batman, which I did not pay for on DVD, although perhaps I should have done...

I've been dabbling in P2P stuff, choking up the office network and such, and thought I'd have a go at downloading a movie to put on my PSP. My attempts at DVD ripping have not yet been wholly succesful, although we are getting there, and I thought this would be a good short cut to see what a movie looks like on the little fella. Having missed batty begins in the cinema, I gave that a whirl. After download and conversion (PSP has a non standard file format or something, wouldn't you guess it from Sony...) I decided to watch some on the bus home last night.

Well I never; I never knew that the latest Batman movie started with two girls, one with now ubiquitous small of back surfer tat, which must have been quite ground breaking back in the 40s when batty was a boy, "enjoying" themselves on a beach towel. Phew, I thought, perhaps not exactly public transport material but if this is the start, what happens when batty flies in to teach them a thing or two about public nudity and gives them a good going over with his batterang... Actually, I never got to find out. Two minutes in and one bird decided to squat over the other bird and it all went shitinplasticbaginmouth-tastic (only no plastic bag) and I realised that I had been had.

Bugger

Bomber out

3 weeks and counting, Elv and Vicki convert and Lantau Beach on a Sunday

 

Morning all, I now have oficially 3 weeks left. Tax is declared billed and paid (the only way to get my final salary before I leave) all that is left is to make my solemn oath of departure and then apply for my MPF reimbursement … oh, and work for 16 ½ more excrusciating days. Bugger.

 

Many congrats to Elv and Vicki on the arrival of Naomi. I’m more than nervous of the idea that Elv has by default converted to fatherhood. On the other hand, my abject terror at the concept of Dave’s conversion last year turned out to be unfounded so what do I know. Describing the umbilical cord as looking like calamari was a particularly nice touch Elv. Thanks for the image.

 

Yesterday I was stuck in my room considering a day on the PS2 and the small voice in the back of my head quietly whispering “sitting all day in your boxers pretending you can drive a REAL car, you sad sad little man” finally broke through the reverie so I called up sweaty Mark and we went for a barbie on Lantau Beach in, wat for it, Lantau. It was a lovely day, especially after the last 2 weeks when it seems to have been constant bath time outside and the beer went down awfully well with the lamb chops (a snip at 10 HKD each from our fritendly local chippy, who may actually be a better butcher than chippy, but never mind). Topping thte afternoon off with 2 large seabreezes (a large cocktail in the China Bear meaning a pint) I was completely blur by 6 and magnificently hungover by 10, at which point I suferred a Mac-attack and went out in search of the golden Arches. Of course there must be 150 Macdonalds in the North point area but the only one I could find was f---ing shut so I had to put up with some wholly inferior “singapore style” fried beehoon served by a bloke in fishwive’s boots and with a cigarrete hanging from his mouth. A litre of water and a gramme if Neurofen and I was bright as a button this morning, so the exercise, as a whole, was a resounding success. Hurrah for getting pissed on Sunday and not paying for it Monday morning!

 

I leave you with this cautionary tale about F---ing; the moral being watch what you call your village, you humourless Austrian p--ck.

 

Bomber out