Late last night (our time) the BBC reported that the famous Albert R. Broccoli stage has burnt down for the second time in its 30 year history. It took 8 fire trucks to put out the blaze. Latest reports state that the roof of the building has collapsed.
The stage was constructed specifically for the supertanker scenes for the 1970’s flick The Spy Who Loved Me. At the time there was no stage large enough to hold the massive set so Broccoli simply told the production designer, Ken Adam to build the set then design the sound stage around the set.
Then in 1984 when A View To A Kill was beginning principal filming, the stage burnt down during filming of Ridley Scott’s Legend. It took 3 weeks demolish what was left of the stage and the stage was rebuilt in 14 weeks while filming of other scenes in A View To A Kill took place.
I wonder if it will be rebuilt. What interests me more than anything else is if it does get rebuilt, will the use more modern construction techniques? It would be sad to see the worlds largest soundstage and an important piece of British cinema history lost again do to cost cutting.
BBC Story
I’ve not had a good run with Motorola, many moons ago I owned a V60i. Great phone except for the crashing after every call requiring a restart. Then early last year the phone was stolen from my desk at work. Police were called and a fuss was kicked up about it but the phone was never found.
In April last year I purchased a Motorola V3 Razr outright for $900.00. While the phone has served me well over the past year again it has been flaky at the best of times. Relying on the phone for my business more and more I cannot afford to loose a potential client because I’m resetting the phone.
Over the last few days I haven’t been able to make or receive calls on my phone because the keypad no longer works. I’m so annoyed with the piss poor quality of the phone that I’ve decided that this will be the last Motorola I buy. Ever. At the end of this sentence. The last one. Now.
Nokia here I come.
Nothing special except I finally got a haircut after four months. I’m one of those people who after a few weeks has the whole wooly mammoth thing going down. I have to walk around with a hat or beanie now, I didn’t realise how cold it is!
Welcome to series two of TGI Fridays, incoherent ranting at its bestest.
Today’s TGI award goes to VicRoads. I’ve written about my experiences with the death trap intersection between Puckle St and Mt Alexander Road. I decided to ring VicRoads because
a) I was bored and
b) I’m a fine, upstanding member of the community*
As a guide, check out this google map. To get to the bus & tram interchange you have to cross from the corner of Puckle St and Mt Alexander Road to the reserved section in the middle. Oncoming traffic from Dean St in some rooly rare situations gets a right hand turn into Mt Road the same time that pedestrians get the green to cross the road.
Now you’re probably say what’s wrong with that? Well because of the way that the intersection is designed plus peak hour, motorists take the turn too quickly and don’t give way to pedestrians. What makes it’s worse is the number of elderly people who cannot jump clear of the cars.
So now you understand the problem, what will VicRoads do about it? Spend $15,000 of your tax payer money to install another, yes, another set of arrow lights for motorists coming from Dean St. This is in lieu of changing the sequence of lights which would involve either disabling the pedestrians lights or disabling the right arrow for motorists.
Talk about stupidity.
*someone smells bullshit
Following on from the unashamed business whoring series I bring you the latest chapter. The relaunch of the web site has so far gone reasonably well. I’m in the process of taking out ads in the local paper and doing the whole marketing thang.
I mentioned in the last post that I tacked on an e-commerce store but have since dumped it because of the several hours a week it takes to maintain. Luckily I got a few sales out of it otherwise it would have been a completely futile exercise.
Only thing that was retained from the store was the media centre PC site. I like the concept of a computer that fits seamlessly into the lounge room. We have a custom machine that acts as a digital video recorder setup in the lounge.
Unfortunately, the price of the computers themselves is so high due to the cost of the most basic component: the enclosures. The Ultimate media centre PC enclosure costs me $800 to buy which is a large chunk of the $2499 price.
Visit the page.
Christina Aguilera, where the hell did it all go wrong? First she went through the teen pop star phase. Then the skanky, grandma kissin’, wedding dress wearing phase. Now she’s got the 1930’s Gwen Stephani look-alike thing going down, your friend and humble narrator could be forgiven for thinking that this is a radical attempt to wipe out the memory of the earlier two phases.
I was on the bus this morning heading into work and on the way past the Dawson St police complex, I saw this woman riding her bike sans helmet. These six rather well built officers who were standing outside stopped the woman and booked her. Great stuff.
Still writing about my love / hate relationship with Apple, one of the great parts about Apple’s operating system is that is does not stymy innovation or creativity.
The concept is simple, copied often and often done without elegance. I have a fairly large collection of CD’s and DVD’s distributed between the lounge, the study and work. The idea of having a visual database to maintain order and information has always been a pipe dream because most programs designed to perform that function are poorly implemented and ugly.
Delicious Library by Delicious Monster makes light work sorting your DVD’s, CD’s Books and Games. The idea is simple: key in the name of the product you want to store and Library will search teh intrawebs for a picture and details including an Amazon review. You can also create sub groups (like in iTunes) to sort by Genre, anything. The software also allows you to add borrowers who have borrowed a particular item and gives you reminders for when they need to be returned. The visual design is fantastic and it is so simple that even my mum can use it.
One problem that I have is the integration with Amazon. In my opinion, things like the American retail value, reviews and shipping price are not really important or relevant to me. You should be able to disable or hide the Amazon fields. The other limitation is you cannot create custom fields. While the fields that are already in the details window are fairly descriptive they do not allow for me to add any other information.
Barring those two little sticking points any self-respecting Mac user with a large media stash and $19.00 to spare should buy this fantastic program.
Buy the way that is my work CD stash. I know, I know I have a horrible taste in music. 4.5 Stars.
One great thing about the route 506 is that it links you to two drug infested stank holes (Moonee Ponds & Westgarth) via one convenient bus ride. Over the last few weeks the number of drug dealers and addicts has risen that I cannot find any excuse to continue taking public transportation.
The other incidence relate to students on public transportation. I remember not long ago, when the situation got out of hand and the olde secondary school, our school plus any school that were related to us were blackbanned from travelling on public transportation. It took almost six months before the school was able to charter buses to take students to various transit points around the local area.
Last week, I had to go to Burwood to visit a friend who had recently moved up that way. Took the Alamein train and on the way home some students from Camberwell Secondary were throwing Tomatos and Eggs at train, from the platform! Later another student poured a can of lemonade over the handles of the train doors. Now seriously if my school got blackbanned for being rude to a bus driver, this must be some sort of precedent.
Tonight on the way home we had screaming Xavier college students cunts running around causing a general clusterfuck. Gawd. Why is public transportation going down the shitter? Because of cunts like these. Anyway who dares me to ring the schools up and abuse the principals of the colleges Come on bets of all currencies accepted.
Have you ever been on a tram and seen something so disgusting you want to hurl?
I took the number 8 tram from Glenlyon road into the city because during off peak periods its not as busy. At Lygon St this couple came aboard and sat opposite me. They were talking for a while and then all of a sudden start necking one another. At one point it looked like they were gonna strip and do it there and there. But alas, a sex depraved geek can never get his way. Really it looked like something out of a dracula movie - not very natural at all.
So what does one do when placed into that situation? The only mature thing was to stare out the window and try to keep a straight face.
On the way home, there was an aboriginal guy playing his Dijareedoo on the tram. Sounded great. I wonder if he busks or performs in the city.
