Newstocks

Muzzling your critics

First, appeal to race by accusing your critics of asking "plantation questions".

Second, use the courts to shut them up, appealing all the way to the Privy Council if necessary.

Third, intimidate and arrest the country's financial watchdog.

Fourth, pull funding from critical media outlets.

Fifth, shut down debate in the House of Assembly whenever Opposition MPs get too critical.

Sixth, avoid answering inconvenient Parliamentary questions by strong-arming the Speaker into quashing them.

What next?

The Order of the Shrill

I joined it. Stuart Hayward joined it, as he demonstrates again today. Some say Larry Burchall has joined it too. In fact, I think most columnists and bloggers in Bermuda are now members.

What am I talking about? The Bermuda chapter of the Order of the Shrill, made up of "those who were once sane, fair, and balanced, but who have been driven into shrill unholy madness by one or more of the mendacity, malevolence, incompetence, or simple disconnection from reality of the [Ewart Brown] administration".

And I suspect that the longer the Premiership of Ewart Brown continues before some members of the PLP with some balls step up and put an end to it, the more members it's going to attract.

Swinging with grandma and grandad

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The game that thinks it's a movie

One of the biggest upcoming titles on the PS3 is, apparently, Metal Gear Solid 4. Lots of people seem to be getting very excited about it. I don't understand why.

Admittedly, I've not played any of the previous titles in the series, but based on the dull introductory video ("war has changed" - yawn), which looked little different from any other shooter set in the Middle East, and now the news that there are several cut-scenes in the game that are approaching 90 minutes long, I remained resolutely unimpressed.

In the words of one of the commenters on Ars Technica, referring to the game's developer Hideo Kojima, "If he wanted to make a movie that's what he should have done. Games are meant to be played."

Quite.

Yawn

Battlestar Galactica is becoming self-absorbed and dull.

Still catching up on the last few week's episodes, last night we watched this season's fifth episode, "The Road Less Travelled". Despite this being the show's final season, it was another episode in which not much happened.

I'm tired of Kara Thrace and her crazy, wall-painting antics. I'm tired of Gaius Baltar and his incomprehensible religious gibberish (given his role on New Caprica I struggle to understand why anyone sees him as messianic). Can we move on already?

I used to look forward to every new episode of this show, even during the somewhat uneven third season. Now, not so much. Needless to say, Mandy is having even more trouble staying interested than I am.

Please God don't let this be another X-Files that starts with a bang but ends with a whimper.

Microsoft search: you couldn't pay me to use it

I've yet to meet a Microsoft search tool that I like. Without exception, they're slow and ineffective, and I avoid them as much as I can. I use Copernic for desktop search instead of Vista's built-in facility, Google for searching the web, and GMail's web-based search when I need to find a message in my personal email accounts. The only time I rely on a Microsoft tool for is for searching my work email in Outlook 2007. Unfortunately that refuses to look in most of my mail folders due to some obscure indexing problem that, despite my best efforts, I have been unable to fix.

So the news that Microsoft is going to start effectively paying people who buy things they find through Microsoft's Live Search (but only in the US, natch) made me laugh. OK, so companies give cash incentives to use their products all the time, but when it's a Microsoft search product that's involved it's hard not to be scornful.

Going potty

Mummy and granny seem to have decided that it's time to start getting Aidan potty trained. Apparently he did his first poo on a potty yesterday, and everyone was very excited.

Ugh. When I think about all the sitting around we're now going to be doing while waiting for him to go, the clean-up operation required afterwards, and the reliance on finding a sanitary toilet when we're out, I wonder why the rush.

Really, diapers seem so much easier.

Another US-only music store

When I read this morning that Napster has launched an online music store selling DRM-free music for the same price as iTunes, I got pretty excited.

Then I discovered that, like Amazon's MP3 store, it's US only (and seems to be checking your IP address to determine this).

For frak's sake. How long will it take to dismantle the bureaucratic obstacles currently preventing the full potential of digital downloads from being realised? How long before all such services make all their content available worldwide?

"Uh Oh!"

Aidan has a new phrase.

Our next job is to teach him that, however cute he may be when he says it, it doesn't excuse him deliberately throwing stuff on the floor.

Yikes!

Bermuda is being invaded by millipedes!

Indiana Jones and the Theatre of Crap Sound

Uh oh. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is going to be showing at the Little "muffled sound is perfectly normal" Theatre.

Can anyone who has been there recently testify that their sound system has been sorted out? If not, maybe I'll just wait for it on Blu-ray or Apple TV instead.

House proud

Aidan now has a new place to hang out. And best of all, it comes with its own phone!

Overload

I have too many things on my to-do lists right now. It's partly due to my parents' recent visit, but mainly due to me (as usual) trying to do too much.

Games to be played include, on the PC, Puzzle Quest (which I'm still obsessive-compulsively working my way through) and Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts. At my prompting, my dad has also downloaded the excellent (and free) Trackmania Nations Forever, so I want to spend some time racing him too, if the latency isn't too bad. On the PS3 I still have GTA IV, Ratchet and Clank, and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, plus a shed-load of demos that I haven't looked at or want to play more of, including GRiD and DiRT. I'm really enjoying the PS3's driving games and want to find some more time to play them so I can justify shelling out for a Logitech G25 wheel.

Podcasts to be listened to include the last week of the Radio 4 Today program, the last five months of In Our Time, the last couple of News Quizes, and a bunch PC Gamer podcasts (which are just as entertaining as the magazine itself). The only time I get to listen is when I'm in the car or on the bus or, in the case of the lengthier, more cerebral In Our Times, when I'm ironing. I think I'm going to have to do a lot more ironing if I ever want to catch up.

Books to be read include Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (still only about a quarter of the way through, still quite enjoying it), after which I have Iain (M.) Banks' latest sci-fi novel Matter lined up. Reading only gets done when I'm on the bus to or from work and not listening to any podcasts, so the two of them will probably last me the rest of the year.

TV shows to be caught up on include the all of the current season of Doctor Who, the last two weeks of Battlestar Galactica, the final four episodes of Pushing Daisies (which my parents put me onto), and most of the first seasons of Dexter and The Riches (downloaded the first episodes from iTunes several weeks ago and haven't had chance to watch any more since). That's in between watching new episodes of Lost and old episodes of the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Ah well, at least Survivor has finished now.

And let's not mention the couple of videos that I still need to make time to edit into something watchable.

I suppose I should find some time to spend with my wife and son too.

Too. Damn. Much. To. Do.

At the end of the End-to-End

Mandy took part in the Middle-to-End walk on Saturday, and ended up raising over $250 for Bermuda charities. Thanks to all who sponsored her!

Kindermusik

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