Chapter 6 of the World Wide Web

This week is late, and not very long. The reason it's late and not very long is because I became a mother on Thursday. The little gentleman was four days early, so was a bit of a surprise. Seeing as I had been pressuring him for weeks to arrive on the 10th (you know, for 10/12/14), it hardly seems fair to blame him. Anyway. Here is the internet, last week, now. 

I'm afraid we're going to look at space again. I know I go on about space, but just...just...OK? Here is a cinematic tribute to that big old...space out there. Odd that Contact isn't in there. Thought that was very beautiful, and man! Talk about a twist. 

I love this flashback to my youth, in the shape of a cassette tape achieve called Tapedeck. "apedeck.org is a project of neckcns.com, built to showcase the amazing beauty and (sometimes) weirdness found in the designs of the common audio tape cassette."

This is from 2012, but so what if it's old?! 

London's Crossrail project is churning out some stunning images. What I'd give to get into one of those tunnels. 

Mad Max is looking really good. I'm actually looking forward to this. 

Well that's it for this week as I think I have a good excuse so there. 

Ze Internet. Chapter 5

This week went incredibly quickly and nothing really amazing happened. To me, at least. All kinds of crap happened out there in the world. Don't get me started on America and their trigger happy cops. Our baby hasn't appeared yet, which is, quite understandably I think, all that I'm waiting for right now, so while I wait, you can look at this week's selection of crap from the internet. Lots of videos this week for some reason. Watch them. Do it. 

Let's revisit space to start with. Face it; you can never have enough. This is extremely beautiful, and quite thought provoking. 

Here's some more space. Well, typography and space. It's a great post about typography in Alien, a movie with a tagline so perfectly terrifying that it still gives me the shivers, 28 years after I first read it. 

Now let's look at brains! How strange to see one like this instead of the usual grey, solidified lump we get to see. I must admit I was shocked to see it so...gloopy. 

Where there's brains, there's zombies. This is an excellent zombie short from 2013.

And back to space. This is a nice cartoon of 'The most astounding fact', originally spoken by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Almost better hearing him say it. 

Here is what London would look like if we turned off all the lights. I find this so captivating. I long to spend time where there is zero light pollution. The closest I came was this summer, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We were listening to one of the park rangers give a short lecture about the canyon, when I just happened to look up and there, in all its wonderful glory, was the Milky Way. I didn't have my camera with me, and wasn't sure how I'd go about taking a photo even if I did (pretty sure there's more to it than wide angle lens and long exposure. Or is there?), so instead I just sat open mouthed, gazing upwards at the night sky. It was magical. 

OK, final space related thing this week, that new Star Wars trailer.

And now for something completely different. 

Have a good weekend. 

Internet. Chapter 4

This week I rant about Jurassic World (which was almost about human-dinosaurs hybrids soldiers). That's at the end so you don't have to sit through it, but you should read it anyway and agree with me, because I'm sure you'll agree. 

Let's start with something really depressing. Here's some dude from One Direction 'meeting' his fans. I've only ever asked one famous person for their autograph (Tracey Ullman. She told me I'd made her day). 

Do you agree with these 80 moments that shaped the world? I think I do. 

Women can't play football.

Centipedes and millipedes. Never liked either of them, and now I really don't like millipedes.  

The Snowman is sacred to me. I watch it each and every year without fail, and usually cry too, because I'm a big baby. This should make me furious, but it doesn't. 

Well, I mean, why not. 

Lovely, lovely, lovely art deco ads for Rolls Royce. 

They say this is by a man called Simon Beck, but I'm sure it's aliens. Just like crop circles. Apparently Simon walks 20 - 30 km a day to create these patterns. They're very nice. 

That now very famous note from LEGO (which is real).

OK, here's my rant. 

The trailer for Jurassic World came out this week. Now, you might recall me saying that I went to see Jurassic Park eight times in the cinema. This is true, but not entirely my fault. It came out during the summer holidays, and I just so happened to be going through a popular phase when lots of people came to visit me at my parents house in the countryside. All my friends lived in London, so I'd basically grab any chance for a visit. My social life was....limited. Anyway, every time some came to visit they'd ask if we could see Jurassic Park, and I, because I was so nice, said 'but of course'.

It was never boring. Not once did I get tired of seeing it, and I am perfectly happy to watch it today. In fact, I am willing to watch it and might watch it again soon, come to think of it... It is an excellent film. The effects are spectacular, the shocks and scares real enough to make adults clench their buttocks (but not too scary for children), and the lack of gore - something hard to do in films that want to shock today - isn't noticeable until you notice it and then it's quite surprising for a film which features a fair few people getting eaten. The dialogue might not win any Oscars, but it works. The actors work, the roles work, the chemistry works, and it's a great split between content for adults and content for kids. There are many stand out moments - the water on the dashboard, the whole kids trapped in the car scene (constricting iris to glass roof - Christ the whole thing is brilliant, not to mention seriously bum clenching), the 'clever girl' moment, the entire raptors in kitchen scene, basically any scene with Jeff Goldblum, but especially the chaos theory one, the first time we/they see a dinosaur, and of course, the moment the T-rex kills the raptors, and a banner reading 'When dinosaurs ruled the earth' floats down. I actually wanted to clap when I saw that, and I'm not a cinema clapper. 

I'm pretty sure there are more great scenes, but let's face it - you might as well just watch the film. I absolutely loved the fact that the park's shop featured Jurassic Park merchandise that of course you could later buy in real shops in the real world. Life imitating art...or...something even more profound. In short, I love this film. I've actually never really thought about it so much, but there you go. 

So you can imagine my disappointment when I saw the Jurassic World trailer. There seems to be far too many rip offs from the original, and as much as I love Chris Pratt, he just doesn't quite come across....right in this trailer. Obviously, what annoyed me the most is the fact that the big bad is a genetically modified dinosaur. What in God's name do we need that for? One of the biggest - if not the biggest - reasons the first film worked so well was because dinosaurs are basically really bloody scary. They have lived. We know they're big, scaly, toothy and essentially just made for killing and eating and other bad stuff you don't want to be at the wrong end of. The idea of them unleashed on us is really bloody scary. As soon as you bring in something man-made, the fear factor drops about 90%. It's not real. It's never lived. It's all make believe. It's just another monster movie - not necessarily a bad thing at all, but why the need to make something believable, unbelievable? Why bring in something fake when there are so many good things to work with? Presumably it's because if they didn't, it would basically be a complete and utter rehash of Jurassic Park, instead of a 90% rehash of Jurassic Park.

I, as you might guess, am unimpressed. I'll see it, I'll definitely watch it, but I'm telling you now - I won't see it eight times. 

See you next week.