Chindie

I think that is their main philosophical standpoint but also in practical terms they have a lot of gas/oil/weapons deals with Syria which will go when Assad does. That, amongst other things. China and Russia don't really give a shit about the philosophical angle - if they could guarentee that they would be the first foot in the door with the new chaps in charge when Assad is strung up, with new contracts the new man is eager to sign, Assad would be in the ground by now. Because they care about Syria and Assad being customers and salesmen to them. And Russia in particular cares about Syria being one of the few nations in the region that they have much influence over at all. Russia knows that if the Assad regime falls the West will be all over whoever takes over with offers of new arms deals and eying up the Syrian resources in return for a nice friendly relationship. They would like to maintain some (a?) allies in a region that is rapidly becoming a sphere of US dominance. Anywho, Turkey have invoked Article 4 of the NATO charter, which basically means they've called a meeting of members to decide what action they should take following the Phantom being downed. That would be a meeting you would kill to be a fly on the wall for, it'd be a very, very interesting round table chat. Mostly because I rather suspect the big NATO boys, particularly us and the US, have no desire at all to put any military effort into that situation and prefer the soft approach to the big stick.

Season 2 is definitely weaker than 1 imo but still very good. Episode 9 is a corker. Possibly the greatest success of that show is just how much is can manage to make you hate some of the characters. S2E5 is the episode where the editors 'Cut, to tits!' button breaks. Esme Bianco (aka Ros)... drooldrooldrool... terrible, terrible things.

I don't like the snobbery of there being 'a right way' to play football, and if Villa were winning week on week I wouldn't care how they managed it in honestly. But as a neutral, theres definitely styles I like more than others. And as good and successful as Spain are, I can't stand the way play. Give me less talent and more straightforward drive any time.

England are the final hope of having an exciting game in this round. I'll be genuinely disappointed if Spain win this tournament. I know they're the best and everything but **** hell, I can't think of a dominant team over the years as boring as this lot.

I'm beginning to think I'd sooner have had the French just not bother to play the second half. Same result achieved and something more interesting could have been shown on the telly. A film maybe.

Come on France, at least score, make it slightly interesting.

I find attractive high quality football exciting. :winkold: I find Spain's particular brand quite astonishingly dull.

I wish I could enjoy watching Spain. For the love of all that is holy, France, win.

Imax is very expensive. The kit is basically hired, and because of the difficulties they have meeting the standards they want (mostly caused by the actual film - the film being huge causes loads of problems when developing a projector to show it, and then the projector itself has it's own eccentricities which of course adds to the cost. And the film itself costs obscene money, 35mm is expensive to produce for a feature film, Imax standard stuff is even worse and you need more of it) the cost of that kit is massive. Couple that to the fact the benefit of Imax is best seen when the film is shot to it's standards (which is expensive, of course), so very few directors bother, and because of the lack of Imax screens and lack of people queuing up to watch Imax films (because the benefits don't matter to most of the public - 'a film's a film') studios/Imax don't go out of their way to bring a massive array of titles to Imax... ...and it becomes unsurprising that a lot of Imax cinemas don't work out. Avatar only really did well at Imax because Avatar itself was somewhat marketed a visually extraordinary film that Imax made the most of. The Giant Screen appears to have gotten round a lot of those problems. They've got their own projector system, a very very good one it seems, it's digital so they don't have to worry about the problems that arise with proper film as getting hold of digital films, even at the high standard the massive screen needs, is nothing compared to the cost of getting actual film... As far as I can tell, the Giant Screen should more or less run like any other small cinema now. Which like the_Rev says, is pretty cool. They're basically an indie cinema with world class kit.

I was going to get Dawnguard day 1 but the (as expected) 1600 MS Point pricetag and my being uncertain that it's going to be a great add on to the game will probably see me hold off for a Live sale.

Just looked this up. It turns out that when Millenium Point ditched Imax, they chose to install a new projector system, which is a 4k digital projector which is actually better than Imax's own digital projector (they go for a 2k projector/dual set up for 3d), amongst other updates including a new screen, which may be a little smaller from what I've read but still enormous. Given that the Giant Screen only tends to show Imax stuff anyway... I think the difference is going to be negligible (although it seems part of the reason they went with non-Imax kit is to allow them to show a wider range of stuff... which they don't appear to have done much at all). Basically if you use 'Imax' to mean 'Dirty great screen and incredible picture quality', rather than specifically to mean Imax specific technical standards shown in an Imax specific venue, you're probably not going to notice any difference.

Greeks in being absolutely terrible shocker. Germans supposedly had 82% possession. That's mental.

Maybe. Personally I think I **** it up. Which could be a chance of a job down the drain. On something so **** arbitrary. **** sake. I've had enough of this shit.

Average is being kind to him.

Well I've just done the test. What the ****. 5 sets of 5 questions with a time limit that slowly dropped, starting at 9 seconds for each question, down to 5. The questions? Match the string of letters/numbers to the selection opposite, find the matching one as fast as possible. The string starts out with 5 differing numbers, which is easy, and gradually gets longer and having more letters and numbers with similar shapes and with more very similar strings of letters and and numbers in the options as it goes on, and of course you get less time. I'm genuinely at a loss what that could tell you about how well I could manage the job it's allegedly for. I also know I averaged probably 3 out of 5 on the sets and consistently did so for the practises. I dunno if thats good or not. Anyone capable of doing that perfectly though, is probably dangerous or ill.

Having done a few practice numeracy competency tests, I'm still shit at them. Fingers crossed I don't need to do one...

Oh I know thats a bad thing to do, and I actively try not to, but my mind has basically become... trained, I guess... to look around questions to see where the question is leading or what it's actually getting at. I blame A Level and university education - a lot of exams I did when I was doing those qualifications had an annoying habit of not directly asking a question, they ask a question that they expect you interpret to provide certain avenues of answers, and they used to give hints to what they wanted in the question but never directly say them, so what I always ended up doing, whilst I planned answers, was deconstructing the question to try to work out what it really wanted me to say. I now really struggle not to do it. Which throws me on psychometric questionnaires. I'm getting better at it though. I still dislike them though, just ona fundamental level it's like participating in your own being pigeonholed. I can't help thinking that each one of the tests has a specific result for different types of person, probably labelled 'Ideal candidate' right down to 'Potential mass murderer'.

Limbo is a glorious game, gorgeous and dripping in atmosphere.

I've got some SHL competency tests to do for a job application. I **** hate these things. I'm unsure what the exact ones they're expecting me to do are, but if it involves the numeracy ones I may as well give up now. I'm not bad at maths, though it was never my favourite subject (the best description I can think of is that I would often do things the long way round in my head for maths which no-one else would understand) despite getting an A at GCSE and being perfectly able to do any commonly used maths day to day. But these tests always flummox me. They give obscure graphs and charts, that you'd never use IRL because it makes interpreting the data more of a task than anyone designing them would actually do, and set it to a time limit as well. I'm not so bad at the logical reasoning ones, though I still don't like them. And I never trust psychometric things because I always by habit, somehow, look for the 'seams' and try to work out what the questions would like me to answer them. Even when I try not to. Unfortunately I need to do them. :|

I can't comment from experience, because I've never been to an Imax (though Batman is doing his best to convince me to rectify this), but I do know about about Imax tech. It's more than just a really big screen. It's a really big screen with pretty much unprecedented picture quality, because they use a much larger film which allows them to have much higher resolutions (incredibly high), which in turn means you can sit far closer to the screen (despite the size). They also tend to have really top quality sound systems. Their 3D is usually held to be the best as well, although it uses active shutter glasses instead of the cheap polarising ones you usually see and buy at the cinema. They've been moving into digital which has caused some problems, but I understand that even that hasn't hampered Imax being considered amongst the best for image quality (despite digital having a reputation for just not looking quite as good as film). If you've got the Dark Knight on bluray, you can see a little of the difference. A few scenes of the Dark Knight got shot in Imax and when those scenes appear on the disc you can notice a different 'feel' to the scenes, even with the HD transfer. Multiply that many, many times over and thats what the Imax experience is meant to be. Nolan is a huge fan of Imax and thinks it should be the standard cinema pushes, not 3d. He's filmed about 50 minutes of the Dark Knight Rises in Imax film directly and I've heard from people who saw the Dark Knight at Imax (which had far less Imax footage), that those scenes were particularly stunning. I think it might be worth the effort to go to an Imax for the Dark Knight Rises... I'm hoping to convince a few friends it's worthwhile.

You might remember that it was getting rumoured very very heavily, right before Nintendo's E3 conference, that they would reveal a new 3DS, a 3DS XL maybe. And then they didn't. Well, they could have. Much larger machine, bigger battery (which it needed, badly), bigger screens... I can't quite escape the feeling, though, that if I didn't want a 3DS because of flaws it has, I'm not going to want this. There's also loads of talk they're not shipping a power adapter with it. I can't believe they'd be that stupid, but lets see. Sell a console that requires charging... without a charger... **** that, Nintendo.

The Lovely Bones is a hideous film imo. It's message is basically 'Being brutally murdered ultimately makes a young girl happier'.

Oh and this has done the rounds today, won't be news to many here I suspect but worth a post just for the ludicrously outrageous mental-ness involved. You wonder why Vodafone's UK base isn't currently surrounding by a torch wielding baying mob, somehow.

Cameron has been stupendously naive in singling out Carr, it's just opening up himself for criticism. A bit stupid, really, though I guess refreshing that he's not smart enough to be rather more careful how he's dealt with this. On Jimmy Carr himself... the apology today almost annoys me more than the act itself.

I think it might have been someone here that got me to look at Louis C.K. a while back. I wouldn't say he was one of my top favourites but I do find him funny and occasionally quite profound. On Youtube theres a 3 part radio interview he did with a couple of guys where they talk about consumerism and how its constant march forward has made the world a worse place which is worth a listen. It's not massively funny, theres a few moments of cynical humour that can raise a chuckle and it's very US centric, but it's well worth a listen. I'll shove a link here if I can find it. It could have turned into 3 guys the wrong side of 40 whinging about how the world's gone to hell in a handcart but it doesn't in the end. It gives you a really good idea of where C.K. comes from and that his comedy is drawn from a genuine world view. EDIT - found the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N95IMKRkcBw, links to the other 2 in the responses