Political Penguin

I’m writing this post more in the way of a public awareness message than anything else, with the hope that at least it will help some people understand some of the risks they take and how they could easily avoid them – plus a bit of philosophising about the issue and basically blaming Twitter’s methodology for it.

Anyone who partakes in the usage of Twitter will probably have become aware of a distinct increase over the last couple of days of spam messages, mostly ones received as direct messages (private ones) from their followers. At best it’s just a little annoying as they seem to fall into two categories. The “you look silly on this website” and the “I’m having the best sex ever, find out how” variety. Obviously spam to entice people to click on the truncated attached link, and by the looks of things it’s been pretty successful.

This is important because although most of us can laugh these off, change our passwords and move on, if you happen to be a high profile person or a company with a specific corporate image to maintain, the throwbacks can be damaging if played correctly by competitors or adversaries.

How all this shit works:

Knocking about Twitter you pick up on people spitting out accusations of “someone’s hacked my password” and the like. Let’s be realistic here. There ain’t no spotty nerd in his bedroom running John the Ripper with Openwall’s wordlist against your account because if they were, your account would lock up anyway. Although no one seems to be pinning it on a specific cause, odds on, it’s a plain old fashioned cross site scripting (XSS) attack.

So as I’m aiming this post at the generally not so geeky crowd, here’s how it goes:

You are logged into your Twitter account in your web browser. You click on a link, it takes you to a dodgy site that runs a nasty bit of Javascript against your browser and hey presto, your Twitter account has been hijacked.

The remedy is simple, change your password and the world will once again become a better place, however we really shouldn’t need a remedy as we should, with a little bit of knowledge be able to protect ourselves a lot better, quite easily.

First up, the web browser. Some are good, some are shite. If you’re using Internet Explorer 6 then you may as well give up and your best option is to avoid Twitter all together or never ever click on a truncated link.

Some web browser come with in-built XSS preventative measures. If you like the Microsoft variety of browser then at least make sure you’re using IE8. Opera is also very good by default at protecting you, as is Firefox (I have no idea about the capabilities of Safari or Chrome as I don’t use them nor particularly care).

However, if you want to be completely safe, there is only really one option, disabling Javascript all together.

This is fairly easy in the settings of any browser but as so much on the World Wide Web depends on Javascript it will adversely affect your browsing, so you won’t be able to seen YouTube vids and some menus may disappear and the like. Obviously that’s probably a non-starter for most people so here’s the Penguin’s recommendation (which he uses himself).

Go here and download the Firefox web browser.

Then go here and type “NoScript” into the search box, click return and it’s the first result.

What you’ll end up with is something like this, a browser with a button with a little ‘S’ on it at the bottom. (big arrow):

When you first visit a site it will have Javascript deactivated by default so you’re safe. When you visit a site you know and trust, a simple click of the little ‘S’ brings up a list of the active Javascript for which you can choose to allow or not allow for that site. It takes a little getting used to when first starting out but as it remembers what you’ve allowed or chosen not to allow; after a week or so you’ll probably not notice it for most of your visited sites.

So there we go, the best way to stop spamming your mates about how good your sex life is or how they look funny on this or that website and it won’t cost a penny and you’ll probably have a much better web browser than the one you’ve got as a plus too.

Final note on security and browser, it’s a no-brainer to most technically astute people, but do check what version of the browser you’re using and see if there’s a newer one available. It’s not much harder than clicking the ‘help’ menu looking at ‘about’ noting the number and Googling for said browser to see if there’s a new version available.

On to the blame game now.

It’s Twitter’s fault, simple as. OK, I’m being mischievous. Being unkind, it’s actually the fault of people clicking on dodgy links and using crap web browsers but I’d like to pose a suppositon if I may.

For many years people have become savvy to the old e-mail from person pretending to be your bank, please go here and enter your details so we can validate you and empty your bank account of cash while we’re at it scams.

E-mail clients got better at detecting it as well but mostly people became aware that the e-mail they got from NatWest Bank with a link to www.nigerian-fraud-please-give-us-your-money.com probably wasn’t kosher. The hint was in the URL. (PS, I’ve not checked but if anyone actually has registered that domain, I am not specifically accusing you of fraud, it’s just and example). (Should also make clear I am not blaming or wishing to stigmatise the country of Nigeria nor its population but sadly a lot of these scams seem to come or pretend to come from there).

The problem with Twitter and it’s users inherent higher risk of being duped comes from a fundamental flaw/feature of how it works; the 140 character limit.

We know why it’s there and where it came from, it’s the heritage of text messaging mobile phone usage but it inherently applies a constriction on the number characters available and thus a desire to abbreviate.

URL shorteners like bit.ly were relatively rare before the explosion in Twitter (and other such-like services) usage but they are now the default option for anyone wanting to link to a website on Twitter.

They do their best to cut out dodgy links but with their enormous usage, reality dictates that it’s a losing battle as there simply isn’t the resources available to them to check every link people create.

The best solution for Twitter would be to allow Tweets of more than 140 characters for those that include a URL link so that people can actually see what they’re clicking on, however whether they’d ever allow such a thing is anyone’s guess but it would go a long way to negating this issue.

In the mean time, security measures are best placed at the user level, hence why I’ve penned this post to spread a little awareness.

If you do use a Twitter client as opposed to the web interface you’ll be better protected (as long as you don’t also happen to be logged into Twitter on you browser as well). However if you want to maximise your security then the Firefox web browser with the NoScript addon is about as good as it gets.

Let’s hope this little post helps a few people not DM their friends about how great their sex life is or how funny they look on some site.

Just giving it a bit of a whirl to see how it is. Looking quite good so far. Might even rpompt me in to blogging more, who knows?

I have a confession to make. I’m an addict. Since I first owned a mobile phone in 1997 I have diligently upgraded my handset at every available opportunity. As soon as the contract runs out I get these little pangs of anticipation and an insatiable urge to start looking around for something new.

This is in many respects completely out of character to the rest of my persona. I’m a consummate re-user of old bits of stuff. I had (still do) a Sony Walkman circa 1989 that was by default music player right up until I first got a mobile phone with an FM radio on it sometime around 2001. I keep bits of old wood (much to Mrs Penguin’s annoyance) on the off-chance they might come in useful one day for something and absolutely everything else in my consumer habits from computers, to tellies (got a Decca Colour that is at least 27 years old) through to clothes I will make do and mend or use till completely knackered and or unrepairable.

Partly this is down to a desire to not overly impact upon the natural resources of our little planet but mostly it’s down to being brought up that way – poor.

So without too many other aspects of my consumer lifestyle being dominated by a constant desire to buy more, mobiles are the one little vice in life and I’m happy to admit it.

The point of this post is more thinking out aloud rather than anything else because it’s that time again. My contract expired a month ago and I’m getting the shakes again for a new handset. The only problem this time around is that with all my previous upgrades there’s always been something more alluring knocking around and with equal measure, something about my current handset that I could pick fault with (with the exception of my first ever phone) but that’s really not the case this time around.

So without further ado, I thought it would be helpful to do a bit of a rundown and comment on every handset I’ve ever had.

Nokia 8110:

The venerable Nokia 8110 AKA the ‘Banana Phone’ AKA the ‘Matrix phone’ (Yes, I know the photo is of an 8110i for the zealots but the phone is identical on the outside apart from ‘Nokia’ being written in white on the 8110 and dark grey on the 8110i)

My first ever mobile and well, it was great. It might only have had the capacity to store 12 text messages and look a bit retro by today’s standard with its sticky out aerial but it was an ace phone. Virtually indestructible (I did once drop it on concrete and snap the sliding out section off but no worry it popped back on and worked fine).

I really did like this bit of kit and I’d probably still have it lying around somewhere had it not been for an encounter with some muggers in Estonia but hey ho, that’s life and shit sometimes happens.

Compared to what was around at the time it was a very nice stylish phone and after seeing the horrendous menu structure on friends Motorola phones the logical and well thought out user interface was just perfect.

Nokia 6110:

Not the prettiest of handsets ever produced but typical of the time. What it lacked in outward appearances it made up for in added functionality over the 8110.

Again building on a nicely laid out menu structure, more memory capacity, generally faster performance and a few niceties like the ability to store one solitary personalised ringtone that had to virtually be forced on to the handset through the not so perfect bit of software in Nokia Cellular Data Suite but at the time that was something really cool.

Long before late night telly was festooned with adverts for ringtones and background pictures of naked ladies, a world before Jamster or whatever the hell it’s called, this phone could have a personalised ringtone and in a world of ‘Nokia Tune’ coming out from half the handsets you’d come across in the street, that was something special.

Yes, me and my Dutch mate Rudolf were indeed probably some of the first people to start knocking up our own ringtones and when the Soviet Union anthem goes off in a bar in Finland, you don’t half get some strange looks. Not quite as strange as when we were once in a bar and a Soviet Union anthem ringtone went off and it wasn’t our phone, but that’s what happens when you flog it to Radiolinja and they start punting it out to customers.

Note, soon after this I switched to Maamme as my ringtone, the little ‘.wav’ audio file having stayed with me right up until a couple of months ago until I accidentally wiped it doing a firmware upgrade on my current phone. So now I have a new version of Maamme which I’m not quite so keen on. (Note to self, check old phones donated to parents to see if it’s still on one of those).

Sadly this phone got nicked in the mugging incident too although it wasn’t as great a loss as the 8110.

Ericsson GA628:

After having both the other phones nicked I was on the verge of cancelling my contract but O2 or as we used to call it in the olden days, BT Cellnet said they’d send me a replacement for free if I didn’t cancel and it wouldn’t be considered an upgrade so my contract would stay the same.

They didn’t say what they’d send me but this is what turned up.

Without doubt the most useless, crappy, hideous mobile phone I have ever had the unfortunate experience of using.

There is nothing remotely endearing about the handset. It was heavy, thick, looked shite, had a useless menu system, even though the battery was huge, it’s talktime was crap, even though the aerial was huge the signal was crap and the charger connector was loose.

Put simply, this is the worst phone I’ve ever owned and probably went some way towards ensuring I never bought anything from Ericsson/Sony Ericsson ever since.

It was so crap that a few years later when my boss broke his phone and I lent it to him, he had to selotape phone numbers on the back of the battery because he couldn’t use the memory system to store them as it was so rubbish.

Did I mention, this phone was crap?

Nokia 6150:

There’s not a lot I can really say about the Nokia 6150. It was essentially a 6110 on steroids in both outward appearance and inner functionality.

I really did quite like it a lot at the time and I have a suspicion it may still be lying in a box in the attic somewhere.

Eventually after a lot of use it did start getting a bit funny. Mainly down the the battery coming a bit loose. I could probably have got a new battery to fix the problem but got a new phone instead.

All in all though, a nice usable phone with some good enterprise touches which probably represents how phone since it started to diverge into handsets aimed at different market segments.

Nokia 8210:

My first strictly speaking candybar phone without the big old aerial sticking out the top.

Still to date my lightest and smallest phone which was both a good thing and bad.

It carried on the traditional functionality of the 6110/6150 in a smaller package but if I’m honest it was probably too small and light for me that I used to get paranoid it had slipped out of my trouser pocket as I couldn’t feel the damn thing.

That said, it was well built and took a fair few knocks in its time and I believe is still working to this day with a friend in Malta after having a prolonged loan period to my mate Wally in Walsall.

Nice phone apart from the size and weight.

Ericsson T18:

I did state I’d never own another Ericsson after how crap the GA628 was and this remains technically true in that I never owned this phone but thought I should include phones that I’ve also used.

This was a works phone. It was crap, the menu system was almost as bad as the GA628 but it had a whopping 2 lines instead of 1. It was heavy and the battery was crap.

That’s about all that can be said of this handset.

Nokia 6510i:

It was  the first phone I owned that had an FM radio (pretty sure there wasn’t one on theNokia 8210) and which finally consigned my Sony Walkman to the shelf of doom.

Another classic candybar but heavier and a bit larger than the 8210 which was nice.

Functionality wise it was pretty much the same but did have one horribly addictive space shooter game on it that I must have wasted hours of my life on doing the daily commute.

Not a great deal to say about it, simply another incarnation of the same sort of feature set as the 8210 but was a generally nicer phone to mill around with.

This phone did teach me the very important lesson of keeping mobile phone in a different pocket to my house keys as by the time I’d finished with it, almost all the metallic paint had been scratched back to the not so impressive looking white plastic underneath.

Nokia 9200 Communicator:

Another works phone, but one I chose this time and well, it was bloody brilliant (for its time).

The keyboard was a bit rubbery and almost Spectrun ZX 48K-ish but functionality wise, it was a world away from everything I’d had before and ushered in my first ever usage of mobilei internet, which as the contract covered 0845 numbers meant it was effectively free if dial-up was a pants really.

My only regret with this phone was not using it to its full potential but it did set me along the road to where I am these days in terms of what I find important in a handset.

Nokia 8910:

For the pedants, yes, this is a picture of an 8910i, the obvious differential being the colour screen as opposed to the grey scale screen on the 8910.

I have mixed feelings abouth this phone. In many respects I liked it, but in others I didn’t.

It was a pricey handset and eventually the spring-loaded slider mechanism got quite touchy, in that over time the metal clips stopping it from springing up had worn down meaning it would open very easily or not stay shut properly.

Just after I’d upgraded from it, the keypad went bandy and overall it wasn’t as good or highly specced as the 6510i that it replaced. Bit of a disappointment of a phone really, but it did teach me to start looking more at the full tech specification sheet of phones rather than outward appearances. It is also the first of only two phones I’ve ever owned that has had a technical problem with it. (I don’t include the loose battery on the 6150)

Nokia 6230i:

This phone represents my shift towards a fairly consistant appreciation of the business orientated Nokia range, from the 6000 series through to the E Series handsets where functionality and capability has been a key aspect of any handset purchase ever since.

It also represents the first time I started to look at phones, less as what they come with, but more with what’s going on underneath and the first time I heard about Symbian (of which this ran Symbian S40) and a realisation of how important the software of phones was becoming.

It was also the first phone I owned that had a camera which even way back then could do video, of which the first ever home vid of my son was done on. The resolution wasn’t much to speak of but the still camera, even at 1.3Megapixels turned out surprisingly good snaps.

I really liked this phone and it is happily working away to this day in the safe hands of my father.

Note:

There’s a bit of an interruption in my upgrade schedule at this point in time because it’s when Mrs Penguin moved in and so we started down the road of alternating upgrade on my contract so technically speaking, the next phone I had was a Nokia N73 but she nabbed it and apart from fixing the odd thing on it for her, I never really got to use it which wasn’t a problem as I was still very happy with my 6230i.

I will note though that although a hideous looking phone, the N73 was a very good multimedia phone that even by todays standards isn’t exactly that far off the mark and the video quality on it was probably better than Mrs Penguin’s current phone.

Back to the list – the Nokia E65:

We’re entering the true smartphone era with this handset and a continuation for my appreciation of business orientated Nokia phones.

With it’s slider form factor hankering back to my old 8110 I have to admit I really did like this phone. It was pretty powerful and very good at multitasking running Symbian S60 3rd Edition.

It was also the first phone I used properly online with a data tarriff as prices were starting to get reasonable in the UK market.

It was the first phone I discovered how many applications there were actually available for mobile phones and the first I ever used Opera Mini on.

Put simply, this was a really ace phone but with my increased use of applications and in particular, mobile web access came a realisation that despite how fast I am at typing on a T9 configuration keypad, it was just that little bit annoying and I was looking for a QWERTY solution.

It’s also the first phone that I started regularly looking out for things like firmware updates which also made me realise the limitations of a network purchased phone when O2 can’t be bothered to punt out an update when Nokia release one.

It’s the first phone I ever used Nemesis on to change the product number and install default firmware upgrades and rid the phone of those bloody bubbles.

This phone represents a lot of firsts for me and even now when I decide to turn it on again to try something out, it impresses me with both its build quality and general performance for what is a pretty old phone these days.

This phone is currently in Germany as I forgot to bring it back from holidays, I hope to see it again soon.

The only criticism I’d lay at this phone is the battery life wasn’t as good as it could be. It did need recharging at the end of every day after being used with multiple applications. This by the way was the second phone that I’ve ever had a technical fault on, microphone went a bit screwey on it but it was fixed and worked fine ever since.

Right up to the present – my trusty Nokia E90 Communicator:

It’s hard to know where to start with this phone. It is my current handset and has been faithfully by my side for the last 18 months.

Barring a few bits of chipping in the exterior and D-Pad paintwork it’s in good nick and I really did expect the hinges to get looser over time but they’ve stayed solid.

It like the E65 runs on Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 which gives it a massive selection of applications that are available for it although with it’s dual screen configuration this does cause the odd problem with a few but none that have bothered me.

The QWERTY keyboard is easily the best I’ve ever tried on any phone, past, present, hard or touchscreen, it’s perfect with the allignments of ever key obviously well thought out (that shift key below the ‘@’ symbol key, spot on).

It’s fair to say that general online usage, reading, feeds, Twittering, this phone has replaced my desktop. It’s not a complete desktop replacement, there’s things it doesn’t lend itself perfectly to doing but they’re few and far between.

By todays standards it’s speed is suffering a little against modern handsets but it is getting a bit long in the tooth as a design.

It is the first phone I’ve had that’s had GPS in it which has opened up a new world of daft little things to do with my phone.

In short, I really, really, really like this phone and if Nokia bought out a handset identical in form factor, upped the processor, RAM and memory (mine’s got an 8Gb chip in it), ditch the D-Pad and install a slightly deeper touchscreen, switch it to USB rechargable and fix the completely crap camera button I’d snap it up in no time irrespective of whether it’s running Symbian S60 5th Edition or Maemo 5/6.

Just to note, the battery on this thing is huge and lasts very well, unless you’re canning it on GPS and running wifi/3.5g, while listening to MP3′s all at the same time.

So where to now?

The simple approach would be to stick with the E90. It’s got no faults, hardware wise and runs quite nicely but the upgrade urge is very strong.

The problem I have this time around is that there are things I’ve come to appreciate which draw me away from the routine of call up operator and see what they’ve got and upgrade to it.

Firmware:

The main reason for this lies in operator customised firmware. I know operators may wish to tweak handset firmware to optimise it for their networks but I’ve not noticed any difference in performance between my O2 firmwares and my virgin Nokia firmwares, if anything at least the phones seem to run faster without the O2 stuff on them.

This is also important with the firmware upgrade cycle. My E90 was stuck on the 212.xxx firmware for ages because O2 wouldn’t update it until I complained and they bought out version 300.xxx by which time version 400.xxx was out. In the end I did a Nemesis job on it to get it to the latest Nokia produced firmware and it runs far better and definitely more stable than the 300.xxx firmware from O2.

This very much pushes me towards buying an unbranded sim-free handset in the future where my primary concern on firmware is what the manufacturer pushes out. I also quite like the idea of not being tied to a stupidly long contract as these have slowly moved from 12 months, to 18 months to 24 months over recent years and even arguing discounts for long standing custom is getting a bit of a pain these days. A simple cheaper tarriff with no lock-ins is starting to look preferable.

Software: (or as it seems to be called these days – apps)

I need a reasonably good selection and the focus of them is on functionality and productivity, not games or farting noises. I’m probably in that class of business user when it comes to things I need to run on my phone whether they’re pre-packaged as I’ve come to be used to with 6000 and E-Series Nokia phones or ones I can download from somewhere. There’s probably only about a dozen applications I need on my phone to cover various areas of usage for regular use and a dozen more for on-off usage or specialised functions but on-going development of applications for the handset is important which means something running an OS with a reasonable community/in-house company behind it.

Hardware specifications:

Has to be obviously better than my current E90, so faster, more RAM, not that fussed about memory really, 8Gb is more than I need now anyway unless I start putting loads of movies on the phone. 5Megapixel camera seems to be the reasonable standard for a good smartphone these days, GPS obviously, all the connectivity options as well and a hard QWERTY keyboard. I recognise you can get touchscreen QWERTY’s but I generally haven’t liked them. Haptic feedback ones aren’t so bad like on Mrs Penguin’s 5800 but a QWERTY with proper buttons is a probably a must, at least this time round and I’ll see how good the touchscreen ones get in the future. Must also have a touchscreen for OS navigation and browsing.

OS:

Linked in heavily with the development and community support, has to have reasonable backing and definitely has to be able to multi-task, there is no debate about that. The OS being open source is also a distinct advantage from both ideological/practical reasons and the sad geeky hackery perspective.

Price:

Not too much, but obviously recognise something good is going to cost a fair bit of wonga.

Form factor:

I’m not that fussed on form factor apart from obviously prefering to have a hardware QWERTY keyboard is going to impact on this a lot and pretty much means a side slide-out keyboard ala Sony Ericsson Satio/Nokia N900, a bottom slide out QWERTY ala Palm Pre or a front side one like the Nokia E71/72 or Blackberry style. I should note, I’m not that keen on narrow QWERTY’s like the Blackberry/Nokia E71/72, I do prefer a wider orientated keyboard.

Display:

I think this is an area that’s often overlooked but having had the E90 and used other ‘smartphones’ I have come to the conclusion that any mobile device aimed at internet usage should have a minimum width resolution of 800pixels. I’m happy to accept that maybe it’s just me that thinks this but most of these phones sport around the 640pixel width displays and rely to some extent on making up for that by using innovative zoom features. I’ve never used the zoom feature on my E90 because the screen displays website fine.

For me, 640 pixels was my Amstrad 1640 circa 1990. Most websites are designed with resolutions of 800-1024pixels in mind and the best results from mobile browsing, taking into account how hard it would currently be to get a 1024pixel width display on a phone, then 800pixels is very much preferable. I’m not so fussed about the vertical resolution, 353pixels on the E90 has been fine but it’s a strange ratio and something a little bit taller would be nice.

Battery life:

I want good performance obviously.

Other odds and sods:

Less important but do need a mention. I am a bit of a greenie at heart, so extra bonus points go to stuff made by companies with good environmental records, produced in Europe. Sorry I can’t say Britain here but apart from those really stupidly expensive ones with diamonds and crap on them and a hotchpotch of weird, generally crappy custom made for network jobbies, we don’t make mobiles in this country.

So who’s in the running of the current or due to start coming out soon handsets:

Blackberry Storm 2/Curve:

I’ve never owned a Blackberry, probably on account of the orientation of their keyboards more than anything else. I recognise they’re solidly well built bits of kit with a good OS and user functionality but I’m reticent about one.

Mainly due to the proprietary/corporate nature of the way they work. I like open standards and minimal lock-ins.

There’s plenty of applications available, but there’s just that keyboard issue. I might consider the Storm 2 if the touchscreen keyboard were something special but that’s to be seen. I thought the Storm 1 had the most horrendous touchscreen keyboard I’ve ever used; more akin to banging on a piece of plexiglass that any sense of feedback.

Might be fun to try as something new but it’s not that far up on the list as things stand unless the Storm 2 is something brilliant.

Palm Pre:

The latest hyped bit of kit. I get tetchie about handsets that get hyped up, particularly in the US media. Hardware wise it looks well specced and the user interface seems very polished. I’m just not sure about this Web OS. It’s looks nice and functional but is there the developer community behind it or not?

I think in the case of the Palm Pre, in very much the same vein as an Android phone when the first one came out, I’d sit back and see what happens for a bit to see if it’s a viable proposition. Personally I can’t see what all the fuss is about, but perhaps I’m a boring old techie.

Nokia N97:

I’m getting a bit tired now, so enough of the pictures.

Earlier this year I have to admit I anticipated the N97 as the most likely replacement for my E90. It is a very good handset in many ways, I really do like the innovative angled hinge for the slide out keyboard but after having tried it out a couple of times there’s just too much about it that I would pick fault with.

The keyboard isn’t really that pleasant to use. I’m still humming and ahhing about this whole off-set space bar layout but I could probably live with that. However the keyboard on the N97 seemed tiny compared to my E90, and just didn’t look right. My two pence on what they should have done; ditch the D-Pad, it’s not needed and make the QWERTY larger and easier to use. It’s interesting to note that this seems to have been the approach with the N97 Mini but I’m not contemplating buying that anyway.

Added into this so hardware specs on the RAM, processor side which although with the latest firmware don’t impact heavily on performance, it’s still not much of a leg up from what I’ve got, so I’m definitely not going to get the N97.

Iphone 3GS:

I guess it’s compulsory to mention the fruit machine phone in any run down of higher end mobiles these days.

Simple, can’t multi-task, doesn’t have a hardware qwerty, a desktop UI that amounts to a layout of icons is so dated, locked down proprietary OS and one single monopoly vendor of applications, doesn’t support Flash, stupidly expensive and rip-off contracts by O2 (yes I know it’s coming to other networks soon, we’ll see how much they charge); answer’s no.

Sony Ericsson Satio:

I have to admit I really like the look of this phone. It has a very high specification and a lovely looking keyboard. It is probably my number 2 choice of any phone out there, or likely to be out there in the very near future. There are only really two major drawbacks to it. It’s not getting good reviews on battery life and there’s a question mark over how much upgrading or commitment there’s going to be to the software on it as it’s a highly customised version of Symbian S60 5th Edition.

Samsung Omnia HD i8910:

Again a phone I really do like. Samsung have done a great job customising the Symian OS on it and it’s solid in almost every area apart from the obvious lack of a hardware keyboard which pretty much puts it out of the picture.

Some form of Google Android based phone:

I haven’t rounded on one model in particular although the obvious would be the HTC Hero. I have to admit, I don’t quite get Android. I know everyone seems to rave about it being Linux based and open and all that but it looks more like a proprietary OS built on top of a Linux stack to me. I could be completely wrong but I also recognise that Google is coming at the market from being a service provider that is tryin to punt out hardware that compliments those services.

The problem is, apart from search and occasional maps, I don’t really used any of Google’s services so there’s not that much attraction to me. I’m also wary of the whole app store culture which has been why I’ve quite liked the open and varied marketplace for Symbian applications up until now.

Update:

I actually started penning this post last night but didn’t get round to finishing it. Since then I’ve been doing a bit of thinking and ‘if’ I get a new mobile phone, it’s going to be this one:

Nokia N900:

First up, it’s not perfect. I’m still not convinced about that smallish three line QWERTY with off-set space bar but it doesn’t look like there’s a direct replacement for the E90 Communicator coming along any time soon.

There’s a double edged sword in the OS, running Maemo 5. The downside being it’s brand new (yes Maemo’s been around for ages but version 5 was a major revision) and applications for it are obviously still quite light given that it’s the only phone in the world that runs that OS and hasn’t even been released yet.

There’s also looking to the future, which is obviously QT and it’s using GTK. That said, QT has already been ported to it so this probably won’t be a problem but something to consider.

There’s also the issue of how long it will be developed for with the N920 probably emerging in the first half of next year which I’ll admit does look very nice but it lacks the hardware QWERTY that I, at least currently, prefer.

I was a bit concerned about the battery in it. Still am. I’m used to pretty good lengthy usage out of my E90 with a 1,500 mAh battery and this takes a 1,320mAh battery. However it has had some good reviews on the battery strength so this may be a case of the OS being optimised to negate this issue. Still think Nokia should have put the BP-4L battery in it, if only so I had a couple of spare lying around.

That’s about it on the negatives, on the positives however:

It will be the most powerful handset available on the raw processing/RAM side. I’m not going to start wittering on about OMAP, ARM11 and virtualised RAM but the specs are good, very good.

However, even though it was a minus point in one sense, the Maemo OS is a massive plus which probably outweighs everything.

I actually really like the Symbian OS in all it’s current and recent flavours. It’s solid, has mammoth amounts of customisability and options hidden away in its labyrinthine menus. It has masses of application written for it, some of which I really do enjoy, like Opera Mini and JoikuSpot. (If you have a Symbian based phone with wifi, then I highly recommend checking out Joikuspot. Brilliant application that can save a fortune in dongles, and no I don’t work for or get any kickbacks from them, it’s just really good).

However what I really anticipate, should I decide to get the phone is having a handset that runs a Linux based OS. I’ve fancied one for a few years but LIMO phones never really impressed me. The openness of the OS is an increasingly important thing to me. I don’t necessarily intend to crack the software on it, there should really be no reason to need to crack the software on a phone if it’s open enough but I do fancy a tinker around. A command line would be very nice to see. The ability to add in other Codec’s (I’m talking Oggs here) would be very nice. I know it doesn’t support them by default but that should while away an evening trying – probably.

So to run down, it’s got the QWERTY keyboard, an 800pixel width screen, is a significant step up in performance over my E90 and runs and open source Linux based OS. Oh, and until the 21st of October I can pre-order it for £424.15 as opposed to the normal list price of £499 so I have a day or two to decide on it. I’m still a bit wary of ordering a phone I’ve not used, but that price offer seems too good to miss and if I don’t like it, then I still have a 14 day cooling off period in which to send it back.

Sometimes it’s hard being a parent or perhaps it’s part of my own fault of being over critical of everything that I do but part of parenting for me seems to be almost an overbearing desire to do the best that I can for my kids (I’d assume that really should be the case for ever parent but it obviously isn’t sadly) and in some way make up for the things that I missed out on in my own childhood.

One area I’ve always been particularly worried about is reading and within that, the reading of fiction. I’ll admit I’m not a big book reader in the literature department. I’ve probably never read any of the ‘classics’ and with only a few exceptions, fiction bores me stupid at the best of times. That doesn’t mean I’m uneducated or culturally illiterate, merely I’m not much interested in fiction that appear in written form.

When I was at school and the other children were reading about kids adventures and; well, actually I don’t know as I never read any of that stuff but the covers always seemed to have pictures of children doing various activities, while I had my nose firmly rooted into the non-fiction section reading up on astronomy, planets, military aircraft and the distribution and proliferation of nuclear weapon.

Note: I have no idea why my primary school had a book about the distribution of nuclear weapons in their library but they did, and I was probably the only kid there who ever read it.

About as close to fiction as I got was a slight obsession with reading one book that was very large, about A3 size that had pictures of fantasy space ships in it with various technical schematic information about payloads, weight, engine thrust and weapons (my favourite was the one that looked like a robot that had lasers where a mouth would be and ripped planets up). I truly wish I could remember the name, because it was ace and I’d love to get hold of it. Suggestions are very welcome as to what this book might be on such a skimpy description.

At home we didn’t have a great deal of story books when I look back. As far as fiction went, it was Amelia Jane Again and that was about it. Not that there weren’t books in the house but they were distinctly non-fiction stuff, although I doubt reading the Haynes Manual for a Morris Mini-Minor added a great deal to my literary acumen. (Although I could change the bulbs and plugs on one at a very early age).

This leads me to being a parent and doing the whole reading thing with, particularly my son. He seems to show great talent for technical, mathematical and logical problem solving which mimics how I was at a young age. He’s started being creative with ‘little’ Lego which is great too; but he doesn’t show much interest in reading and letters.

I can’t complain really because I never showed much interest in reading at his age, only later coming to it when I realised that reading equalled the ability to amass large amounts of completely pointless information that may at best come in handy for a pub quiz 20 or so odd years later.

However that led me to realise that like my parents house, there wasn’t really a great deal of fiction lying around our house. Plenty of textbooks if he’s up for a reading on political theory and international history but apart from some of Mrs Penguin’s books about elves (of which a fair number are in German) there’s not much for him to go at.

So the other day I decided it was about time to try and get him into a bit of reading and off I toddled to get some of the ‘children classics’ or at least I think they are anyway as I never read any of them when I were a lad.

So it was Meg and Mog, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Where The Wild Things Are. I can’t say I know really what books to get him next although I’m open to suggestions but when it comes out I intend to get him Morris the Mankiest Monster as he loves stuff about monsters.

So that’s a small little personal post which I don’t do very often but is nice from time to time. One Penguin’s attempt to be a good dad and hopefully inspire his son into a bit of fiction reading – although I think I’m far past ever taking up an interest myself.

As I’m finally getting away from things, relaxing as I am in a bit of Europe in the flatlands that constitute that stretch of countryside where Germany meets Poland; I’m getting down to a few things that I haven’t been able to in the last few weeks. One of which is a little review of a film I caught just before leaving the rain-swept island of Blighty.

I popped up to the Lighthouse cinema in Wolverhampton to catch the first screening of the Lars Von Trier film; Antichrist.

I’d caught a preview of it a few weeks earlier and thought it looked interesting but I’m not really one for the cinema, although that might be changing. Even with that, I hadn’t specifically intended to go and see the film until I read this rather idiotic film review in the Daily Mail (interesting to note all the highly critical comments have been deleted – do love our wonderful open free press in this country) which was nicely taken apart over at Mailwatch.

Spurred on by the outrage at a film he’d not bothered to watch and making false claims about an institution he clearly hadn’t done any research on I thought it my moral duty to actually go along and see the film for myself because, well I’m an adult and I can quite happily make my own mind up about things without the help of reactionary moralising right-wing journalists who can’t do their job properly.

Now for those who haven’t read a film review by me in the past, here’s the layout. I do the first part which is pretty much what you’d expect in any review. I’m more prone to emphasis on things like cinematography, lighting, sound, music scores than actors performances. We all emphasise different things that we take away from films so just to let you know where my angle usually comes from.

After that there’ll be a nice bit of white space until I talk about other aspects of the film which will include elements of the plot and scenes that contain spoilers. You’ve been warned and there’ll be another warning later on so if you haven’t seen the film and don’t want to know various elements about it then you’ll have the opportunity not to scroll down any further.

The film centres around two main characters played by, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe who while having sex, their young son accidentally falls to his death from their open apartment window.

Now at this point I’ll add that I didn’t at any point in the film catch the characters calling each other by their name which I could just have forgotten or not noticed but for the sake of this review, we’ll just refer to them as he/she as there are practically no other characters in the film, save for their son and various other representations of other humans here and there.

She appears to take the death of her son very badly, blaming herself and to all intents and purposes suffers a breakdown in which she is hospitalised and put on various medication. He (although it appears not a clinical psychiatrist, probably a psychologist) gets her checked out of the hospital to try and treat her himself.

At first this centres around their apartment but upon learning aspects of her troubles it moves on to a forest retreat/cabin called Eden where he tries to get her to face up to her demons.

Once there, a whole load of weird and scary stuff happens.

The film is split into (from memory) five parts, a prologue, three chapters and an epilogue.

I’d like to mention specifically the prologue and to a lesser extent the epilogue which are shot completely differently to the rest of the film. Although concentrating on the prologue as I have to admit, I really didn’t understand the epilogue, they are some of the most beautiful pieces of cinematography I have seen in a very long time. They’re simply stunningly well done; slow motion in black & white with some amazing bits of focus work (which presumably are digital special effects given that I understand the film was shot in digital rather than celluloid).

The style changes for the chapter elements of the film, reverting to full colour but here I found one of only a small number of things I disliked about the film. Perhaps it’s just me, but I really don’t do the whole fly-on-the-wall shaky camera thing. I found it offsetting for probably the first 20 minutes of the film which is a shame because after that it settles down into a more regular filming style. I can understand it was used to specifically emphasise elements of the film but I’m just not a fan of it.

When the film moved into the woods stage I was a little apprehensive. I did get the feeling that it was going to go all Blairwitch on me as up to that point it was still doing the shaky camera work. I know a lot of people raved about how the Blairwitch Project was terribly scary but it bored me to tears although as someone who’s lived in a Nordic country with lots of forests, (or technically speaking, one bloody big forest) the first thing you learn is there’s nothing to be scared about in the woods, except possibly bears.

Thankfully it didn’t turn out like that and it settled down to be a nice little artistically done horror film with some scenes that would make you jump a bit or wince if you happen to be a male of the species. Parts to particularly look out for are the talking fox, what I’ll call the ‘realisation scene’ (more on that later) and the stunning bit of the lady walking across the bridge who I’m not sure who it’s supposed to be or represent but did look a bit like Björk.

The musical score to the film is very well down. Relying on classical music, particular reference must go to the score in the prologue and epilogue which is truly beautiful and if anyone knows what it is then please do tell me as I’d like to get it. In other sections of the film it’s there when its needed to be and conspicuous by its absence which adds a grittier and starker edge to the film when other horror films would roll out something to get the senses going.

On the cinematography front, although it’s done in digital, it doesn’t feel like it. Put simply, it’s probably the best bit of digital work I’ve seen with meticulous attention to detail especially with some of the forest sequences.

Over to the acting side, although admittedly it’s rarely the thing in a film I look for most, there’s some really good performances in particular Charlotte Gainsbourg and although I’m not particularly keen on Willem Dafoe he is also very strong.

So what’s all the fuss about?

I guess it’s obligatory to refer to the matter that this film’s stirred up the hairs on the back of the neck of a few critics and general right-wing moralising folk. The general criticism seems to be that it’s sick and has got a lot a scenes of people ‘doing it’ in it.

I’m a pretty liberal kind of guy when it comes to such matters and I’ve never quite understood that while depiction of full frontal female nudity doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem, the slight hint of a bloke with a stiffy gets people up in arms. I’m an adult male, I have two kids, I know what an erect penis looks like and short of a very small section of the entire global human population, so does everyone else.

The actual sex scenes in the film are very brief or fleeting clips and are certainly not erotic or arousing so I really don’t see what all the fuss is about. There are only two scenes in the film that could be considered a bit on the rough side, the female genital mutilation scene which lasts all of 1-2 seconds and the masturbating a penis that ejaculates blood scene of which the former if cut out would have left a slight ‘huh’ feeling in the subsequent scene and the latter I’ll mention a bit about later.

All in all, it’s a bit of a disjointed film that leaves you wondering about it at the end and doesn’t provide specific explanations (especially the epilogue) but I appreciate that as not every film should end all happy and concluded.

A couple of notes (some of which are sartorial):

If you have a problem with bad things happening to small children (like my missus) then this film probably isn’t for you.

The film gets extra special recommendations for inventive use of a grinding wheel in a horror film.

The couple have completely no idea of suitable clothing to go and spend time in the woods, I mean, come on, a full on winter coat in a wet close environment?

That bloody oak tree must have a hell of a lot of acorns on it.

A lot has been thrown at this film, the usual criticisms of it being potentially damaging to people that you get when anything mildly controversial pops up (not that in an enlightened world anything in it should be controversial). From a personal perspective I didn’t suddenly go all mentally twisted on emerging from the cinema but moreover felt a great protective emotion towards my children and a desire to double-check safety gates, windows and that my kids have their shoes on the right way round.

Further section below (contains spoilers – you have been warned)

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What you don’t get the impression of when watching the trailers to the film is that it’s a deeply psychological film at heart. Yes, it’s artistic, and definitely can be placed into the horror genre although only really for the last chapter of the film, must of the screenplay revolves around the psychological malaise of the female lead and her husband’s attempt at trying to find out what she is truly scared of most.

As the film progresses there’s a realisation that something’s not quite right about ‘her’. I’ll claim to be a bit of a smart arse here and say that I had my suspicions right after she claimed that the child could open the safety gate. Perhaps it’s being a parent of small kids myself but the first thing that sprung into my mind during the prologue is how the hell could you leave a safety gate unlocked, because it sure as hell looked unlocked to me. In addition to that, it would have to be a thoroughly rubbish safety gate as although my three year old know how to open our safety gate, he can’t because it requires a requisite amount of strength and physical manipulation that he doesn’t have yet.

We do of course learn that she had deliberately left the gate unlocked, presumably the window as well and witnessed her son fall to his death without reacting. She is in the truest form of the horror genre a bit of a psychopathic nutcase.

The ‘realisation scene’ I alluded to before is where this becomes clear, that the book/thesis she was working on at the cabin the year before had fundamentally twisted her mind and the study of the demonisation of women in history (which is the best way I can put it) internalised that belief on herself to the extent that she becomes a sadistic torturer of her son.

Whether the fears and pain that she portrays in parts of the film are real or part of a complicated act I’m not entirely sure but that true psychotic rage that appears towards the end of the film I haven’t witnessed since watching Switchblade Romance a few years back. (which is also a good film BTW, cracking bit of French horror – in the true slasher genre).

As far as horror gore goes, there are two particular scenes, one of which I’ve already mentioned that bring a pretty gruesome addition to any horror film. The first of which being where she (putting it as best as I can) seduces him into sex only to throw a bloody great log at his family jewels. Resulting in him being completely laid out (a scene that no man viewing would not wince at). Whereupon she proceeds to masturbate him till he ejaculates blood.

The second being immediately afterwards where she realises that eventually he will wake up and so needs to disable him somehow.

Most horror films would have found some handy chains, rope or gaffer tape to hand at this point but the film gets very ingenious. She instead finds a grinding wheel. Takes it out of its frame, drills a hole through his leg and bolts it on while helpfully throwing the wrench away. Yes, it’s gruesome but hideously inventive.

He of course does eventually get free and kills her which you kind of get the feeling is what she wanted him to do as she’d had ample opportunity to see he off and wouldn’t have bothered rescuing him.

All in all, it’s a good film. Beautifully done in parts, grittily gruesome in others. Worth seeing if you a generally into horror/psychological films. Possibly not suitable for people with closed minds or those who believe what they read in the Daily Mail.

More to come if I get a bit of free time.

All images on this site unless otherwise stated are free to use under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License. (Just in case you wondered)

Right, I think I’ve stated my position fair and squarely on this issue then. Let’s get down to business of why?

I’d intended to pen this post but I’ve been pipped to it in many of the aspects I was going to cover by the venerable Luciana Berger over on her new blog who covers the main points well. So in addition to reiterating them I’d like to concentrate more on the dynamics of what would actually go on in such a case.

The argument for open primaries goes something along the lines of it engages the unwashed masses in politics by letting them choose a candidate for a political party as opposed to the opportunity they have at present to actually elect someone to be their MP which they get anyway every 4 or 5 years. So the question is what exactly does this add to the political process? Advocates like David Lammy MP will tell you it’s all about concert hall style speeches the likes of which politicos romanticise about from the 50′s and 60′s. Suddenly all these people who can’t be bothered even voting in elections that determine the future of our schools, hospitals, tax rates, defence, are suddenly going to turn up to listen to people talking ‘at’ them in some big venue and British democracy is suddenly saved from apathy and disengagement.

The other argument that I picked up on today was the statement that it cost nothing to knock on doors which is a lovely quaint idea of the way an open primary system would work but completely lacking the cold hard reality that is politics. We should also note that yes, financially it costs nothing to knock on someone’s door but it does cost time so those who’ve got spare time to indulge their political asperations are straight away at an advantage over the poor buggers of us that have to work long hard hours to feed our kids and pay our mortgages as opposed to, lets say, the independently wealthy.

So are we going to see a massive flood of people suddenly enthused to engage in open primaries? No. The Tories got a 24% turnout for their little headline grabbing stunt which puts in on a par with the turnout you’d expect in a local government by-election which are usually pretty miserable examples of British democratic involvement in action.

Who is it that open primaries actually benefit? I think we can assume it’s not the time poor wage slave average Joe type. Those ‘normal’ people we’re always on about not getting enough of in Parliament. Is it the single mother with two kids living off benefits? Probably not either. The “Party Political” structure isn’t perfect and it too can be criticised for having a middle class bias but if there’s one sure fire way of excluding working class people from entering Parliament then it’s open primaries.

Let’s run through the dynamics of this.

Constituency, let’s call it Walsall North as it’s mine needs to find some candidates for the next election for the three main parties. Barring a by-election loss in the 70′s, Walsall North has been a Labour seat for as far back in time as it’s likely to matter. Odds on, even in a really bad year for Labour, it will return a Labour MP and the majority of seats in the UK rarely change hands under our current voting system which means if you fancy knocking about the corridors of power representing the people of Walsall North, there’s not much point standing for Tories or the little Libdemmers round here.

So pretty much, in a seat like this, it’s all about the Labour open primary and anyone with designs on the seat will be going for the Labour nomination. We’re going to assume there’s some sort of qualifying criteria like actually being a member of the Labour Party and so the only real difference amounts to lots of people choosing the candidate versus local party members. Those lots of people, not necessarily being Labour supporters so we hit our first obstacle. What stops large swathes of voters or an organised operation by another party picking a really crap candidate in an attempt to damage the prospects of that party in a particular seat?

Then we have to address how people put themselves forward and campaign with particular reference to costs involved. Assuming just anyone can put themselves forward then the ballot paper is going to get very long indeed. What is the timescale involved in such a process? This is important because it takes a bit of time to knock on 30-40 odd thousands doors in a constituency after people’s support. Which brings us to the most important element. Campaigning.

If a candidate wishes to obtain, let’s say our hypothetical Labour nomination for Walsall North then they’re not going to knock on everyone’s door because they can’t – at least on their own. Even if the old style concert hall address is being set up then how are people going to know about it to come along? We’re back to the main focus of political campaigning; publicity. Anyone who has ever done campaigning knows it’s not easy and it certainly isn’t cheap. We rightfully have limits on spending during election campaigning in this country but they’re not exactly hard to circumnavigate. Advocates of open primaries think that there can be effective controls on spending but anyone who witnessed the Tories key seat strategy at the 2005 General Election will tell you what absolute rubbish this is. Guess what? The Tories won seats off Labour where they outspent us massively. Whether you like it or not, money talks in politics and it doesn’t matter if you tell candidates they can’t spend more than X amount of money during a 4 week primary campaign if they’ve spent half a million quid on campaigning in the two years prior to that, and spend it they will. Especially if they happen to have backers with deep pockets.

Which brings us nicely on to our next subject.Who’ll be behind the candidates with the chequebook? We don’t have to look far to realise where this leads. A quick glance across the Atlantic to the US and we know. The lobby firms. Big companies with vested interests all willing to bankroll candidates. British democracy isn’t perfect by a long way, but it’s a damn sight better than anything that we’re likely to get copying the Americans.

That’s not to say that money is the be all and end all of the situation. Exposure doesn’t necessarily require vast sums of money because some people will be able to achieve publicity without it although odds on, these people will then attract the money as a good bet by those currying for favour. We’re talking celebrities here folks. From those with national exposure down to the local celeb or even journalist type who are already in a position to command personal publicity in their own right. Odds on they’re not going to be particularly poor working class people either if they’re in that line of work.

There’s a final group of people who open primaries would benefit. Although again, they’re unlikely to be poor or working class but those who work in ‘the business’. PR people, marketeers. People with the technical savvy involved in publicity.

So just so we can recap. Open primaries benefit the rich/independently wealthy, celebrities who can get publicity and professional PR and marketing people. Anyone who complains about the current stock of people sitting on the green benches might want to consider how much they’d like them being populated by people from those backgrounds instead.

The Party Political system isn’t broken. It’s taken some heavy knocks recently which haven’t been essentially its fault, more that of a select minority of politicians whose actions have tarred both others and the Party Politics system in general.

Party Politics isn’t about a select group of people sitting in smoke filled rooms secretly deciding the fate of the prols at the door (The Labour Party banned smoking in meetings years ago). Anyone who wants to take part is free to do so if they wish and only in exceptional cases would an application for membership be turned down of which there’s a full right of appeal process. The point is that in general people aren’t paying up to join political parties so they can be involved in deciding candidates.

There’s a valid argument about why people should pay to become party members to have a right in selecting a candidate. However we have to look at how and who would run primaries?

Assuming it were run by individual parties who have to somehow be able to ballot everyone in a constituency and more importantly afford to do it. This is not cheap and someone’s got to pay for it somewhere along the line. There’s not a party in the country that could afford to run open primaries in all constituencies, it’s simply too costly so we either end up with it being run by someone like the local authority on their behalf which equals council tax monies being spent on what I’m sure the right would describe as a waste of taxpayers money (of which I’d actually agree in this case as I’d rather it be spent on stuff that benefits society like youth services and schools) or the state nationally bunging the political parties enough money to run them which equals state funded parties and well yes, someone’s got to pay for that too. However unlike the present system where those who wish to participate can sign up and pay their dues to a political party, the whole population ends up paying so probably a small minority of voters can do the same.

What we must also realise is that in our multi-party system we can’t discriminate against any party if they were to decide to run an open primary for their Parliamentary candidate. So although there is obvious attention given to the main two parties, what is there to stop a minority party, and lets pick a horrid little one at random, say the BNP from saying they want an open primary and dear Government funding person, can we have X amount of thousands of pounds to run one and mail everyone in the constituency while we’re at it? Wonder how a load of ballot papers and freepost candidate literature for the BNP would go down in David Lammy’s constituency?

Right, that’s enough food for thought for tonight. I may well come back to this issue when I’ve got a bit more time.

I’ll also note that I asked David Lammy MP via Twitter if he would put himself up for an open primary. He didn’t respond.

A final note for those in any party advocating such a system but expecially to my fellow comrades. Anyone can go out and campaign for a political party. I don’t think any party excludes people from campagining for them because let’s be honest, all parties are desperate for help doing things like leafletting and knocking on doors. If selecting candidates doesn’t require party membership then short of perhaps the people who want to be candidates (who we’ll presume will have to be party members to put themselves forward) and the terminally meeting obsessed masochistic. What’s the point in being a member anymore? How do you think membership of political parties and their funding streams are going to be affected by all this?

Popped of to the pictures the other day to catch the film Moon while I was trying to kill some time waiting for a train and thought I’d do a little review on it.

I don’t go to the cinema a great deal which is a shame but I’m rather glad I dropped in to see this film on nothing more of a basis than having seen a trailer for it a few weeks previously and thought it looked interesting.

A brief synopsis of the film pretty much goes like this. Sam Bell, played by Sam Rockwell is the sole resident of a mining installation called Sarang on the moon where he generally keeps all the automated harvesters (they really do resemble like combine harvesters) running smoothly while they plough up and collect ‘Helium 3′ from the lunar surface which is a revolutionary energy supply that has solved the Earth’s energy problems. His routine follows driving out to pick up the canisters and then shooting them off back to earth.

He’s coming to the end of a 3 year mission where he has only had a robotic companion Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey) for company and can look forward to returning to Earth to see his wife and 3 year old daughter when things start getting a bit strange.

That’s about all that can be said about the plot without giving anything away and there’s a great deal of other things of note in the film so I’ll go through the main components of what makes a film special.

Cinematography:

We all have things we look for specifically in films that attract us. For some it’s the way the actors interact, for others it’s the scripting. Personally myself, I’ve always been a bit of a cinematography kind of guy which may in some way be attributable to a bit of a background in light engineering, or quite possibly not.

In the case of Moon I was pretty impressed. We’re not talking about a film with a huge budget, we’re talking a low budget British flick here but it’s done extremely well. There are probably only around half a dozen actual sets in the moon base that are used for filming but the usage of those spaces with the camera are well done. As are some beautiful camera panning work. Although it was a little strange at first and I’m moving more into the realms of special effects but the film has effectively already started before the credits are finished at the beginning. We know the usual routine is some introduction section, possibly involving landscapes or a generated background but the way various people’s position and names were superimposed onto various wall panels I thought was a particularly nice touch even though they were still appearing as the film was obviously already underway.

If we move on to special effects and sets in general then there’s some really good stuff but just a few seconds of the film don’t quite clinch it convincingly. If we’re talking the internal sets then there’s a lot in there that wouldn’t look out of place as a mixture between Kubrick’s 2001 – A Space Odessey and Red Dwarf series 3 onwards (when they got a new set). It does however work wonderfully and there’s nothing in there that would make anyone think that a mining station on the moon wouldn’t look like that. When the film switches to external shots, lunar landscapes, the harvesters and the ‘rovers’ for lack of a better descriptive word that Sam uses to travel about in then there’s a few slips. Think Red Dwarf series 1-2 and you’re not far off the style that you’ll experience. That shouldn’t in any way be taken as a criticism, it’s just the style which is very well executed. However there are a few seconds in the film when little things like how you would expect the interaction between the rover and lunar surface taking into account the differential in gravity that it just doesn’t quite look right and gives that “I’m looking at a model here aren’t I feel”.

As I also used to dabble a bit in the old sound engineering I do like a good score to a film and in the case of Moon, it’s not disappointing. The vast bulk of which takes the form on simple piano music to set the various scenes with perhaps only one instance where I felt it was a little overdone. It is also notable the one (I think) exception to this which is the introduction of a bit of a track by Katrina and the Waves which represents possibly the funniest scene in the film. That said, this is a rather serious film so there’s not much that’s funny in it apart from possibly the varying smiley faces (we don’t call them acid men anymore do we) on the digital display of the robot Gerty.

Acting wise there’s not much to really mention as the film has (barring the odd flashback to Earth moment and the very long distance telephone call scene) effectively only one actor in it and he plays the role brilliantly.

After catching the trailers I’d thought there’d be more interaction between Sam and Gerty in a sort of patient therapist kind of interaction but Gerty doesn’t play such a central role and hense there’s not exactly a massive amount of dialogue to analyse coming from Kevin Spacey. This film is first and foremost about one single character and I quite like that as a bit of a change from the usual run of the mill movie.

That’s about it for Moon apart from I’m going to do a bit more but it will involve spoilers but you’ve been forewarned about it so if you haven’t seen the film don’t scroll down. If you have or don’t mind then do scroll down. Final point. Go and see it, it’s good.

Moon – Review (this section contains spoilers, do not read if you don’t want to know various bits of the plot that could ruin the surprises or outcome of the film)

As I noted, I’d expected a lot more of the interaction between Sam and Gerty but upon actually seeing the film, you realise it’s the interaction between Sam and Sam which at first has you wondering whether you’re just seeing him going a bit mental and imagining things through to the realisation that there’s something a lot dodgier going on involving cloning.

I like the way almost from the outset of the film you can tell something is not quite right from in particular, the slight glitches in the recorded transmissions from Sam’s wife back on Earth. The way there is a certain element of mistrust in the Gerty robot character right up until the end of which the ‘kick me’ post-it note touch was good.

Things that I didn’t understand about the film:

This is a one man lunar station – why the hell does it have a ping pong table?

I don’t frequent Labourlist very often but was led there today on account of this article which I’ve reproduced in full below. I even registered to leave a response but just on the off-chance it doesn’t get through I thought I reproduce it here as I’m really quite bewildered to understand how such an article would appear on a ‘Labour’ site in the first place.
Bill Dewison wrote:

If I offered you a cocktail which included in its ingredients formaldehyde, aluminum phosphate, ammonium sulfate, washed sheep red blood cells, embryonic fluid from chickens and thimerosal, what would be your initial reaction? Would you gladly accept this concoction of animal byproducts, heavy metals and chemicals without question?

It is more than possible you lack the relevant knowledge of chemistry, biology and metallurgy to identify what all those ingredients are, as do I, so I decided to look up one of these; thimerosol. It is a mercury-containing compound (an organomercurial) that has been in use since the 1930s. There have been concerns raised regarding its use, or specifically more than a little concern about its effect on the male and female reproductive systems. To quote the OEHHA ‘The scientific evidence that PMA and Thimerosal cause reproductive toxcitity is clear and voluminous’.

Why would any of this be relevant to you? Well if you have children, the chances are you’ve already allowed these chemicals, animal byproducts and heavy metals to be injected into them. They are present in modern vaccines, vaccines given to newly born children right through to the age of 18 years of age. But why should we worry? Surely these vaccines have been thoroughly researched and tested to ensure that they are safe long before they are given to the population?

My wife has recently given birth to our daughter and inbetween changing nappies, cleaning clothes, changing nappies and have I mentioned changing nappies, we are discussing the implications of immunising our child against potentially fatal diseases. It is something I would imagine many parents discuss and with an 18 month old son, it is something we seem to have talked about nonstop over the past 2 years. As a couple we are faced with the dilemma of believing what we are told by the medical authorities or questioning what we give our children in the same way we would question what foods to give them, what the environment around them is and how we go about educating them.

Our primary worry is the sheer number of vaccines contained in a single injection, but also the number of injections our children are given in one sitting. Our daughter can not for instance be injected with the tetanus jab by itself, we can not opt to have measles and mumps seperately or even to have the injections themselves spread out over a longer time period. Considering the age of our children, they are after all still developing, their internal organs are yet to fully form and their immune systems are not operating at full capacity. I feel our concerns are justified, regardless of the scare stories proliferated by our media here in Britain.

The media does tend to rule the roost these days in terms of what we see and hear, and it does seem that everyday we are presented with conflicting health related advice or information, much of which is grossly exagerated to sell the story to the public. For instance, take the measles virus, are you aware that in the past 17 years there has been one death in relation to measles? This death, tragic as it is, was a 13 year old boy who was taking immunosuppresive drugs for a lung condition.  Although this particular case was reported correctly by the media, it led to numerous stories of measle epidemics. It has been noted that the media in general have exagerated figures by as much as 700% to sensationalise their story which does nothing but damage to the messages the government is trying to convey to parents just like me.

That said, it can not be ignored what is happening with regards to immunisation and the serious questions still to be answered. Why, following the injection of vaccines in America, has the American government paid out millions of dollars to parents of children who have had adverse effects to these vaccines, but at the same time accepted no responsibility? If we follow America on things like immunisation and it has been reported often that parents who have refused to sign consent forms for vaccinations have been accused of child abuse for doing so, will we follow America on that one?

Once a child is injected with a vaccine we can not remove that vaccine from their system, so isn’t it about time this was debated with parents in a realistic manner? Before the National MMR Vaccine Catch-up Campaign was launched, providing PCTs (Primary Care Trusts) with additional funding of £30,000 each, wouldn’t it have been prudent to discuss some of the concerns of parents about the MMR? And long before we start to have decisions made about unvaccinated children entering the school system, what is wrong with a discussion about injecting them with a certain vaccines that contains 62.5 mcg of mercury which is 78 times the safe level?

My response:

Bill, this is my first comment on this site, I even registered just to leave it as I don’t come here very often so I’m going to put things in your terms.

Have you heard of the following:

Phosphorus (makes nice stuff like organophosphates and nerve warfare agents), Sodium (one of those alkali metals the science teachers used to put in water at school and it fizzed around), Potassium (another alkali metal from the school classroom, it’s the one that goes mental and really reacts violently when placed in water), Chlorine (used in disinfectants like bleach and handy for keeping the nasties out of swimming pools, the Germans also found a handy use for it during the first world war to gas allied soldiers as when entering the lungs it forms hydrochloric acid), sulphur (used in detergents and fungicides), cobalt (used in Lithium Ion batteries), lead (going to assume you’ve heard how nasty this stuff can be to us humans).

Can we agree that there’s some pretty nasty stuff up there? Good. Apart from all those substances are found naturally in the human body, yours, mine, everyone’s (unless that have a particular deficiency for some reason or another which incidentally usually causes problems).

Going down the route of picking up a list of various nasties and turning it into an argument about ‘you wouldn’t want this kind of stuff in your body would you’ is scientifically disingenuous. There’s lots of stuff out there that’s really rather bad for us fleshies, but it all a question of proportion. Some of it’s no problem at all and completely vital to our existence and good functioning but you wouldn’t want too much of it of course.

As for your use of statistics over one death from measles in the last 17 years, do you think perhaps, there might be a reason there’s only been one death in that time? Vaccination possibly? The death rate from measles is circa 3 in every thousand, pretty low odds but a right bummer if you happen to be one of those three. Not to mention other complications that include varying levels of blindness and if caught in adult males; infertility. You mention about your daughter but not your son. If you haven’t had him vaccinated and he manages to get through childhood without catching it but gets it in his 20′s and then finds out he can’t have kids or you’re not going to get any little grand kids to play around with, how exactly are you or him going to feel based on the decisions that you’ve taken on what looks like taking notice of ill-informed woo-mongering?

As a Labour type, such as myself, don’t you also consider that you have a civic duty to your community/society as a whole? To prevent serious outbreaks of measles we need to maintain a vaccination rate of circa 85-90%. When it dips below that we start seeing it coming back. Just say for instance you child gets it because they’re not vaccinated but they don’t suffer any side-effects and recover fine. Great for you as a relieved parent, but lets just say for instance they pass it on to their best friend at school whose parent also decided not to vaccinate their kid and they die. Hypothetical and an extreme case scenario I know but tell me, how exactly would you feel when you run into your kids best friend’s parents in the supermarket?

You make an interesting point about combined vaccinations, the MMR being probably the most debated on account of a completely useless and hideously flawed/fiddled bit of ‘research’ in 1998 that got the media into a frenzy and probably accounts for the falling levels of vaccination in particular relation to measles. The best example of the use of the MMR vaccine probably comes from Finland who adopted it early and effectively eradicated the diseases from the population with no reports of any side-effects. MMR is recommended by the (WHO) World Health Organisation and for all those paranoid ‘big pharma companies are evil’ conspiracy theorists, WHO aren’t exactly known for being uncritical of their industry’s practices.

On a personal note and as a parent with kids, 3 and 1. We’ve had all their vaccinations done because although there is never any 100% guarantee in anything in life, the alternative odds of complications and even death sure as hell aren’t very attractive to us.

On a final point, I’ve had measles, it’s crap, really crap. It probably didn’t help having whooping cough at exactly the same time when I was 4 years old. My mother sat at my beside for nearly a month nursing me back to health and I had to have daily visits by my GP. If you fancy doing that with your kids then by all means be my guest – I won’t.

I’ve been tagged by Dave Cole with a meme. The task is to explain why your phone is your phone in exactly 139 words. For me a phone is a tool so my phone is mine simply because of what it does so I thought the best way to explain why it’s my phone is to say what it does/what I do with it. Here goes:

This is my mobile phone. It really is, if you look closely you can see how I’ve worn some of the chrome plating off the D pad through constant use. It is my little window on the online world, I read almost all my news on it, I even sometimes blog from it, I upload photos, geotag stuff and draw funny shapes on maps with it. It does e-mail nicely with html and images and everything.

It’s my default camera and can open all kinds of documents. It’s quite possibly more powerful than the desktop I had 3 years ago. I can watch movies on it and livestream video to the net which is nice. I can turn it into an encrypted wifi hotspot for the netbook. It also does Twitter and can send text messages and even call people.

Disclaimer: No, I don’t work for Nokia but I do truly love this phone which is quite possibly the best phone ever made. I will tag Tygerland and Mrs Penguin.