University College, Durham: respected seat of learning, my foot
Brunsh
May 3, ’08
5:12 PM
WALL-E: You know, for kids
May 1, ’08
10:59 AM
One of the films I’m most looking forward to this summer is WALL-E. Sure, Iron Man looks awesome, Speed Racer looks like, well, speed, and The Dark Knight will be pretty much unmissable. But WALL-E is just, well, you’ll see:
You need the free Macromedia Flash Player to watch this video. Download it here.
If you’re reading this in a feedreader, or in Facebook or the like, you’ll have to click through to the actual post. Make sure you do, though – it’s awesome.
Distracted
Apr 18, ’08
5:06 PM
So, no real bloggy-news for quite a while. Sorry about that. Well, actually, no, I’m not.
It’s just coming to the end of the Easter vacation. Term restarts on Monday; I’m heading up to Durham on Sunday. My Finals start in just under three weeks’ time. I have three essays due by the end of next week, all in various degrees of completion (one on Proust is slowly killing me). Yes, I should be essay-writing now, yet for some reason I’m blogging. Go me. During this vacation, my procastinatory (definitely a word) exercises have reached heights previously unimaginable.
Anyway, that’s all going on. I’m fairly confident about most of my Finals – my marks so far for my French modules are fairly good and I’m well on track for a 2:1. Arabic, though, worries me, although I’ve pretty much come to the point where nothing I can do is going to change it. Que sera, sera, I think.
And for the last couple of months I’ve been rather distracted, anyway, by something. Or someone. *grin*
More news eventually, promise…
You know it’s gone to far when…
Apr 11, ’08
1:16 PM
…the Channel 4 News gets rickrolled:
Bizarre. See also this terribly earnest BBC News report…
Proust
Apr 8, ’08
4:13 PM
Don’t get me wrong: Marcel Proust was a genius. His works are terribly important in the context of literary history. But what the Dickens is he on about here..?
But, when nothing of an old past endures, after the death of the people, after the destruction of the things, alone, more frail but more alive, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on top of the remains of everything else, bearing unfaltering, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.
To be fair, once you work out what he’s talking about, it’s quite a beautiful sentiment about the power of taste and smell to bring back long-forgotten memories. But seriously: 17 commas in 65 words? That’s overkill. “Their almost impalpable droplet”? Huh?
Gah
Apr 2, ’08
10:44 PM
Having just got Mika out of my head, I’ve now got Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Nnow” stuck in there.
Cadbury’s: I love you, you know I do, but if you must continue to produce those awesome adverts with annoyingly addictive music, I may have to end it. Don’t push me.
Debate hijack
Apr 2, ’08
7:26 PM
Not entirely sure what’s going on here… but it’s worth a watch.
Sergey Brin, utterly bemused, in the background – quality.
Flying penguins
Apr 1, ’08
10:27 AM
When the BBC decides to do an April Fools joke, they don’t take any shortcuts. This new trail for the iPlayer, for example: Terry Jones discovers flying penguins in Antarctica.
Beautifully shot, seamless CGI, tongue firmly in cheek. A true successor to the legendary spaghetti trees. I love the confused toucan.
Even better, I think someone at the Telegraph may have had a sense of humour bypass and is reporting the penguins as actual news… EDIT: nope, it seems to be a joke shared by the Beeb, the Telegraph and (bizarrely) the Mirror, who went a bit far with the joke (the last paragraph spoils it somewhat, I think).
(If you’re outside the UK, you won’t be able to see the iPlayer video linked above – try this mirror at YouTube or this one, also at YouTube).
