While doing our fortnightly shopping at Coles this evening, I noticed that (not for the first time) that not all of the TVs showing the ads over and over (and over and over) were working as well as I’m sure Coles had planned.

The application running the advert loops on at least four of the TVs in two different aisles had crashed — in two different ways. From what I can remember (and I wasn’t really paying attention, which now isn’t helping as I attempt to recall), the software they were using is called “Mediabox” or similar.

So there you have it. What other public displays have you seen crashed? I recall seeing a large screen that regularly ran trailers at Village Knox in a crashed state. There’s a whole heap more over at windowscrash.com if you’re still interested.

Update: Just as I hit “submit” on this post, The Comedy Channel died and had a “please stand by” type message for around 5 minutes. I wonder if it’s me?

As suggested to me by Trav, I picked up Only Forward from the local library and gave it a whirl.

Very briefly, the story revolves around a guy in the future who has to find someone who’s been kidnapped. The interesting thing about the city in which he lives is that it’s divided into “Neighbourhoods” (it’s spelled correctly, by the way; the author’s British). Each Neighbourhood is like a small, self-contained city focused on one specific thing. “Sound”, for instance, is completely devoid of sound; no one is allowed to make noise except for one hour a day. “Colour” has walls that change colour to compliment whatever gaudy outfit you’re wearing; again, it has an hour a day where everything’s black.

There is a major change to the story around halfway through the book when it begins to focus in the character’s adventures in “Jeamland” (a dream land) which I didn’t find as compelling as the first half — I kept wanting the story to switch back to the city, which I found more engaging.

The way in which the story is told is great, however. It’s told as if you were sitting at a bar with the guy telling you the story in a casual manner.

Ultimately, I found the big switch to be a bit of a letdown. I think there was probably enough ideas, imagination and storytelling that it could have been two separate novels. In the end, I still enjoyed it but can only think of what may have been.

Next up is Jack Faust, which is based on the German Faust tale; there are a lot of works based on Faust and this one sounds interesting. I also have One of Us up next, which is by the same author as Only Forward.

The latest film from Studio Ghibli, Howl’s Moving Castle is currently showing. We watch all films at Village Cinemas (not sure why, I guess Hoyts and other cinemas aren’t conveniently located for us) and the film was only showing at one cinema (Jam Factory) and only one session per day — 11:10am.

Such an “early” session on a Sunday meant that we missed the first minute or so — I blame the dopey girl selling us the tickets, and the fact that the ads/previews were much shorter than expected (only 5 minutes!). Still, with adults at kid’s prices, and our discount card as well, the tickets were cheap. Plus we got two $7.50 ticket vouchers to use at any Village Cinema; not sure when they expire. From then on, though, we were pretty-much transfixed to the screen for the next two hours. There was some sort of children’s party there, which meant a few loud kids but eventually they settled down.

The look of the film is typical Miyazaki, with it’s “steampunk” type machines, and late 19th/early 20th century French look. A few characters or scenes seemed “borrowed” from other Ghibli films (the big-nosed old lady from Spirited Away, the transforming half-person half-bird also from Spirited Away were the first two that came to mind) but the huge, lumbering, steam-powered machines are always a treat to see.

Once the film finished, we made our way to Ay Oriental Tea House, which is across the road from Bridie O’Reilly’s (I assume everyone knows where that is) and had some great dim sum. Justine had a flower-based tea which looked like it had dandelions in it; I had a “Gunpowder” green tea (so called because the buds look like gunpowder before they’re added to the tea).

We had 2 servings of vegetarian dumplings, as well as pork dumplings (which I squirted everywhere each time I took a bite ;), fish dumplings, prawn rolls and vegetarian rolls. The rolls weren’t so good, but the dumplings were excellent. We got tired of waiting for the custard buns we ordered. Normally, the dim sum is served a la carte (i.e. you order it) but today the waitresses walked around with plates full of it and offered you some of whatever they were carrying at the time every few minutes. Great stuff, except that the fried stuff never made it to where we were sitting.

‘Twas a lovely way to pass a few, lazy hours on a Sunday.

I’d been wanting to get one for a while, but hadn’t gotten around to it; so yesterday, we bought one of those dirt-cheap Boules sets you’ve probably seen around the place.

Since it was such a nice day yesterday, Justine and I played a few rounds of petanque outside in our back yard. If you’ve never heard of petanque, imagine lawn bowls except instead of rolling the ball you can also chuck the bell as close to the jack as possible. It can be played in pretty much any surface but is usually sand or gravel.

It’s quite a fun little game and rather relaxing if you don’t try to rush through a game. For some reason I thought it was Italian but it’s actually French (the name sort of gives it away, though I didn’t know that petanque was the game we were playing until a bit later on).

Since the boules are quite heavy (not sure how heavy ours are, but generally they weigh between 650g and 800g each according to the earlier-posted Wikipedia article), I might recommend that if you try to juggle them like I did, you might not want to accidentally have one land on your finger.

Since it’s been a couple of slow news months, I thought I might talk about a few books I’ve read recently. I mentioned the other week that I’d read Fahrenheit 451 on the plane over to Perth, so I’ll start with that.

Fahrenheit 451 revolves around “Guy Montag”, who is a fireman sometime in the future. Firemen in the future don’t put out fires, however, they start them! The premise of the story is that books have been banned and anyone found hiding books will have them burned by the firemen. A major part of the story is that everyone is being told how to think, what to buy, what they should like, and so on. By the end of the (rather short) book, Guy realises that he wants to have his own free will and attempts to go about making it a reality. Doesn’t take long to read; the story wasn’t particularly exciting but it was an interesting commentary on consumerism and possible removal of free will.

A few months back I read Ender’s Game. It seems a lot of people are divided on whether this book’s good or bad. The main reason for the division, I think, is that it centres around a number of young children (6 or 7) who seem to have incredible intelligence. The story is about one particular young kid, Ender Wiggin. Ender is taken to an orbiting space station which is a school for brilliant young children and forced to learn at a pretty rapid pace. I’d say many people don’t like the book simply because it is quite a stretch to believe that a child so young would have the abilities Ender is given throughout the course of the story. He is constantly outsmarting many adults and beating up children twice his age and I found it quite tough to believe this would be possible; I think good sci-fi has some believability, no matter how “out there” the premise. The story, however, is the main reason I did like the book. There’s a pretty good twist right near the end of the book which I didn’t see coming. I’d recommend the book with the caveat that you might need to take a few large leaps of faith with some of the story’s aspects.

Next up is Ender’s Shadow. This book is a “sequel” to Ender’s Game, insofar as it was written after the first book. The story, however, is a “parellel story” which means it revolves around a different character during the same course of events as the first book. The main character — Bean — is basically another Ender Wiggin, except a bit younger and he comes into the story a bit later than Ender. I didn’t find Ender’s Shadow as good as Ender’s Game, but I think that it’s a worthwhile read if you enjoyed Ender’s Game.

Last one for now is I Am Legend, which I finished reading last night. The story was written in the mid-50s, and is set in the near-future (well, the past now, as it’s set in the late 70s). People have come down with vampirism, and Robert Nevill is the only (at least as far as he knows) person left “alive”. He’s barricaded his house and hides every night while the vampires attempt to enter his house (they’re not particularly smart in this book; I kept imagining a cross between zombies and vampires). During the day he drives stakes into any vampires he finds, while trying to keep his house setup to keep the vampires away. I really liked this book and was a bit disappointed that it was so short. The isolation of the main character is portrayed quite well and it makes you wonder what you’d do in a similar situation.

Next in the list to read is Only Forward, recommended to me by Trav.

Last night we finally got around to watching Serenity. The film was all the way back in Knox’s smallest cinema (which is still large compared to others I’ve been in, but still) and probably about half full.

After watching trailers for movies like Doom (I’m not sure if I should be excited about this film or not… probably not) and seeing half the crowd jump up and down with excitement, I knew we were in some pretty geeky company.

The film is basically a continuation of the series. It wasn’t touched on a lot in the series, but River is a pretty important character. She’s the main character of this movie, and it shows her prior to boarding the Serenity (which isn’t explained much in the series) and also details the source of her power.

It’s a bit hard to say whether the story contained within the film is the original plan for the series, but it all fits together regardless.

I very much enjoyed the film, and can’t wait to see what eventuates. I suspect it may be part of a trilogy of planned films, though it’s tough to see where they will go with the story after this if that’s the case; there aren’t a lot of loose threads left which is good on one hand (it ties up the series nicely) but bad on the other — no more Firefly. Very enjoyable; worth a watch if you like sci-fi at all.

I should have never told Justine about the Nintendo DS game, Nintendogs. I told her about it a few weeks back, and since then have been getting sly “so when are you getting a DS?” type remarks.

Well, we now have a “limited edition” (cough) blue Nintendo DS with the “Labrador and Friends” version of Nintendogs (there’s three versions; all have the exact same content except that you start off with certain breeds available). Justine was the first to play it, and bought a small white toy poodle which she’s called “Lucky”. By Sunday, we had enough to buy another dog (we wanted one each) so I got a shiba uni. I couldn’t think of a good name so I looked over at our DVD rack. After deciding not to call him “Indiana”, “Austin”, “Fight Club” or “Munchausen”, I decided on “Monty” when my eyes fell on my Holy Grail DVD.

“Monty” has so far won first prize in the Expert Class while “Lucky” has third prize in the Master Class (one above Expert). “Monty” also wears a hat.

The second of the lenses I ordered a few weeks back was sitting at my desk when I arrived this morning, so I intend to give it a bit of a whirl tonight. It’s a lot smaller than I expected, and extremely light.