Blog
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Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
It’s not often something so different comes along and grabs my attention, I mean most of the movies I watch are your typical action/adventure/comedy fares, but Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait is more of an art project than a movie.
It’s so surprisingly simple and amazingly executed, one game, one man and 17 cameras… For 90 minutes you follow Zinedine Zidane, arguably one of the greatest footballers to grace the field, during a game between Real Madrid and Villarreal on April 23rd 2005. Now while for some of you, this might sound boring, but seeing Zidane in action is like poerty in motion. To best describe this is like Sky Sports Interactive PlayerCam on steroids.
During the course of the game you see Zidane stroll around, coming in and out the game with those little touches he’s famous for, setting up a goal by beating three men and guiding a pinpoint cross and the relief that brings not only to Real Madrid, but their supporters too. You also see how little he interacts with his team, in the first half he barely says a word, in the second he loosens up, sharing a joke with Roberto Carlos, talking to David Beckham as opposed to his usual “heys” when calling for the ball. Ultimately you also see his temperamental side, that so famously appeared during last years World Cup final, as he is sent off in the final minutes for lashing out at an opponent during a heated moment, bizarrely he is applauded by the Bernabeu crowd as he exits the field…
Another thing to point out is the soundtrack by Mogwai which complements the action on the pitch, taking over the sounds of the crowd, leaving only the sound of Zidanes beathing and the crunch of the grass under his feet before rising to crescendos drowning out everything else. It just works, that’s all I can say.
If you’re a fan of the beautiful game, this is highly recommended, if not then you best avoid as you will probably be bored within 5 minutes, but if you can last past those first 5 minutes, you’ll be rewarded. It’s just a shame you have to go out and find a movie like this, I have no idea what kind of release it’ll get over here, I had to download a copy of it in order to see it…
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Ketchup!
So what’s happened in the week since snow day? Well, we unpacked a little bit more, Robyn started her new job, we hung out with Jill and Ryan and their friends on Saturday night after my mum’s cousin and her family drove down from Raleigh to paint a bathroom, I then started my new job and started a wicked chain of events that involves a 6:30am wake up call for us to fight over who uses the shower as we both have to leave at around 7:30, alas in very different directions, we found a vet for the cats in case they fall sick and now we’re in the process of shifting car insurance from Georgia to North Carolina, then we’ll change our licenses over and eventually the car registrations.
So yeah, moving house is damn stressful.
I’m actually enjoying my new job, it’s nothing glamorous as it’s web design/development, but the first few days have been great. I also enjoy the commute, strangely, even though I hit traffic as I roll onto I-77 before it branches out from 2 lanes to 4. It’s really quite tranquil believe it or not, once it’s branched out I’m cruising as a nice 70/75mph (try doing that anywhere in Atlanta during morning commute, if you do ever manage to reach it, you won’t get very far) and as the sunrises I see the Charlotte skyline come over the horizon, pass uptown, swing a left at Bank of America Stadium and I’m there… 25 minutes to go 20 miles, 20 minutes on the way back… I used to do that to go less than 9 miles in Atlanta.
We’ve also been planning the visit of my mum and Helen in late March, unfortunately they booked their flights before we found out about moving to here so they’re still flying to Atlanta, luckily Robyn’s mom has agreed to pick them up and take them to their lake house near Milledgeville and we’ll pick them up the next day. Also it’s unfortunate Robyn and I both have to work, hopefully Birkdale Village, where we live, as well as Charlotte and the surrounding area will keep them occupied for a few days at least, we’re also planning a trip to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, which should be nice…
The only downside is we need to be fully unpacked before they arrive, we haven’t even touched the guest bedroom boxes yet.
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Anna Nicole Smith 1967 – 2007
Anna Nicole Smith has died near Miami, Florida at the age of 39. The buxom, platinum-blonde Texan former Guess spokeswoman was found unconscious in a room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, north of Miami, WFOR television reported in the US.
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186 Million Eyes
Peyton Manning had a lot of witnesses to his soggy super win, with the estimated 93.2 million viewers representing the second most-watched Super Bowl broadcast ever. Only the 1996 Super Bowl between Dallas and Pittsburgh, which had 94.1 million viewers, had a bigger audience, according to Nielsen Media Research on Monday. Behind that 1996 game and the M-A-S-H series finale, Sunday’s game was the third most-watched program in television history.
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Groundhog Day
Punxsutawney Phil, The Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators and Weather Prophet Extraordinary didn’t saw his shadow today, meaning it’s gonna be an early spring. The last time Phil failed to see his shadow was in 1999.
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Snow Day
After spending 3 years in Georgia, the most snow I ever saw was either a very light dusting, a little ice storm or fake. One week after moving to Carolina and it’s a proverbial winter wonderland. And you know what? There was no hoarding of bread and milk like in Atlanta at the slightest hint of cold weather, no proclamations of the impending apocalypse from Glen Burns on channel 2, actually it reminded me of winters back home, a few inches of snow and a day off school, no harm no foul.
Now it’s easing off, the rain is coming in and it’s all turning to slush, but for a few hours it was so pretty, even Sally looked on in wonder…
Originally uploaded by FLC.
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No Skool Like the Old Skool
Yes, I’m finally back online, well I have been for a few days now but unpacking stuff takes away from my catching up time, so imagine my surprise when a full scale mutiny is going on at Flickr… Now I’d like to think of myself as old skool flickr, I joined early summer 2004, I don’t remember exactly when, but damn, some people will seriously get their panties in a wad over the most trivial of shit.
- In our ongoing efforts to Make Flickr Better™, we’re introducing two additional limits: the new maximum number of contacts is 3,000 contacts (good luck with that), and each photo on Flickr can have a maximum of 75 tags.
- On March 15th, 2007 we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.
So basically it’s a few limits and a new login…
Let me say this once and once only.
Big Whoop!
Really, if you’ve more than 3,000 contacts and are tagging photos with 75 individual tags, you really need to get out more and smell the flowers you’re taking pictures of. One of the complainers has over 19,000 contacts (all marked as friends no less, I know this because I never even heard of him til today, but he’s already marked me as a “friend”) and has photos with a tag list as long as “War and Peace,” I’m unsure if thats fanatical devotion or a supreme waste of time, I think my most tagged photo has like, maybe 7 tags? And I’ve got like 170 contacts (only 40 are marked as Friends as it’s people I’ve actually interacted with in real life). So I think of myself as the average user, and these new limits don’t matter much to me, I’m not going to be all up in arms, laying awake at night in a cold sweat worrying about the going’s on of an online community. Call me old fashioned if you will.
As for the Yahoo ID, if you’ve been online for at least 5 years, chances are you have a Yahoo ID of some sort… Back in the day there was nearly no way around it. And folks, you’ve known this day was coming for over a year, so why you bitching now? I switched over once the Flickr Mobile site changed and you know what? It hasn’t changed my Flickr experience one bit, if anything it’s made it easier as my phone now remembers my Yahoo ID a lot better than the old skool cookie session id. Plus I’ve never seen the Yahoo login screen since I switched over, except when logging in on other computers that is. No complaints from me.
So this is basically a tiny proportion of the Flickr user base rattling their cages and creating a storm in a teacup, I guess they have nothing better to do?
