About time for another blog entry I feel, something today spe­ci­fi­cally focu­sed on the lovely new chan­ges made by the BBFC (film clas­si­fi­ca­tion com­pany in Bri­tain) and the First bus com­pany in Bris­tol, England. 

A few months back I watched one of this year’s grea­test films, Bat­man Begins. I tho­roughly enjo­yed the fea­ture and plan to see it again with my girl­friend at a local IMAX thea­tre. Howe­ver, during the more vio­lent and scary aspects of the film my thoughts deba­ted the choice of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. In Bri­tain, Bat­man Begins has been rated with the fairly recently crea­ted 12A cer­ti­fi­cate (after the Spider-man vio­lence debacle). 

Chil­dren under the age of 12 will be able to see a ‘12A’ film at the cinema if they are accom­pa­nied by a per­son of 18 years or over. The adult must watch the film with the child or chil­dren and not just pay for the tic­ket.

This means that a six year old would be allo­wed in to watch this film. A nag­ging child des­pe­ra­tely wan­ting to see the latest super hero flick would be the most likely can­di­date. Howe­ver, if I were a parent there would be some sce­nes I would just not want my child to see. For ins­tance the sca­rec­row and drug indu­ced hallu­ci­na­tions. Most of the vio­lence and battle sce­nes con­sis­ted mostly of quick camera chan­ges and flashes and these didn’t bother me. It was more the frigh­te­ning aspects and the­mes that some of my twenty something friends were afraid of that bothe­red me. Intro­du­cing drug indu­ced para­noia and scary hallu­ci­na­tions to a young child could really scar(e) them and keep them up at night. I ques­tio­ned why a sim­ple 12 rating was not used, anyone over the age of 12 would love this movie. Had this film been relea­sed in the early nine­ties a 15 cer­ti­fi­cate would be guaranteed. 

I have now retur­ned from seeing the latest War of the Worlds adap­ta­tion by Spiel­berg. There were no vio­lent sce­nes, bad lan­guage or sex acts in this movie and there were fan­tas­tic spe­cial effects, com­bine this with Spiel­berg and a 12A rating and you’d think this would be a per­fect movie for a group of eight year old’s and a birth­day party. In fact it was a simi­lar com­bi­na­tion that led me to take my girl­friend on a date to see this flick. We sett­led down with our Fanta and cho­co­late but­tons hoping for another fan­tas­tic sum­mer block­bus­ter. We were gra­vely disap­poin­ted (the ending… seriously wtf, Spiel­berg you douche). I’d read inter­views that tal­ked about how ‘berg would con­cen­trate on the human and dra­ma­tic aspects of an alien inva­sion and he did exactly that. There may be some spoi­lers below, so don’t read on if you are afraid of me rui­ning moments. Dys­func­tio­nal fami­lies, a lazy yet loving father, dis­traught chil­dren faced with death on a mas­sive scale, ima­ges of mul­ti­ple dead bodies flo­wing down a river, humans being tur­ned to dust, crazy luna­tic hitch hikers fran­ti­cally attac­king the only wor­king car resul­ting in gun shots and mur­der, insa­nity and mur­der for sur­vi­val, boo­ming sirens and shud­der­some aliens, humans being ground into fer­ti­li­zer and spra­yed across fields, com­plete hope­less­ness, fear and death. These were the the­mes of the movie that were inc­re­dibly rea­lis­tic and terrif­ying, such that my twenty year old date cowe­red behind her hands for much of the second half of the movie. I was shoc­ked at the bru­tal rea­lity of parts of the movie and if this was the aim of Spiel­berg then I applaud him in his suc­cess (although all those narrow esca­pes were ridi­cu­lous). Once again my thoughts tur­ned to the rating of this movie. It was 12A. If I were a parent there would be no way I would ever let my son or daugh­ter watch this movie, even if they were over 12. The the­mes in this motion pic­ture are simply things an eight year old should not be con­fron­ted with in the search for enter­tain­ment. What were the BBFC thin­king? A film cer­ti­fi­cate should be a guide to parents and in this country also a gover­ned res­tric­tion. Five years ago this movie would have been a 15 or even 18 cer­ti­fi­cate yet today a six year old can see this with his igno­rant misin­for­med parents. By the time I am a parent I’m going to have to watch all the films they might want to see befo­rehand just in case they are not sui­ta­ble. Wha­te­ver hap­pe­ned to standards?

BBFC and the 12A certificate

Moving on, to another note enti­rely. Today I tra­ve­lled into Bris­tol city cen­tre to enjoy the day in town. In lac­king means of trans­por­ta­tion we deci­ded to take the “First” bus (bad­ger line). It used to cost £3 for a sin­gle during rush hour and £2 off peak. Howe­ver since June 28th pri­ces have gone up. Now off peak tra­vel costs us £3.60 each and a mas­sive £5 return. A 40 minute bus jour­ney into town and back for two costs us £10. Com­pa­ring this to the bus I take to uni­ver­sity which takes 50 minu­tes and costs £1.80 return (each) during peak periods and the coach tic­kets to Lon­don (return) that cost £16.50 then you see that this price is extor­tio­nate. Where a short trip to the next suburb used to cost £1 it now costs three. No won­der peo­ple don’t want to use public transport.

I’m done, stick a fork in me. (Why doesn’t blog­ger create £ signs without the anno­ying A-hat before it?)

What Is Konfabulator?

Kon­fa­bu­la­tor is a JavaSc­ript run­time engine for Win­dows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Wid­gets that can do pretty much wha­te­ver you want them to. Wid­gets can be alarm clocks, cal­cu­la­tors, can tell you your WiFi sig­nal strength, will fetch the latest stock quo­tes for your pre­fe­rred sym­bols, and even give your current local weather. 

What sets Kon­fa­bu­la­tor apart from other scrip­ting appli­ca­tions is that it takes full advan­tage of today’s advan­ced graphics. This allows Wid­gets to blend fluidly into your desk­top without the cons­traints of tra­di­tio­nal win­dow bor­ders. Toss in some sli­ding and fading, and these little guys are right at home in Win­dows XP and Mac OS X.

I deci­ded to ins­tall and expe­ri­ment. Pre­viously I have used rain­me­ter and samu­rize clients to dis­play infor­ma­tion on my desk­top. Such clients have been slightly anno­ying to posi­tion, con­gi­fure and match with my current theme. Kon­fab’ comes with seve­ral pre­con­fi­gu­red wid­gets for you to use; an ana­lo­gue clock, CPU moni­tor, Wifi sig­nal moni­tor, weather fore­casts and various others. I used to have a weather add-on for Rain­me­ter yet the advan­ced con­fi­gu­ra­tion and work to find the local fore­cast code num­ber was not worth the hassle of the fore­cast only sho­wing every 3 reboots. So I tried this aspect first, I ente­red my home town and country and there it was, the fore­cast in all it’s sim­ple and bri­lliant glory, directly to my desk­top. It also shows the current stage of the moon’s cycle and puts tem­pe­ra­tu­res in a METRIC for­mat. Next up, time to browse the third-party wid­gets (http://​www​.wid​get​ga​llery​.com/).

Here I found an iTu­nes remote that looks like an empty cd jewel case. Upon pla­ying it shows the album cover in the ID3 tag, if not tag exists the wid­get searches Ama­zon for an appro­priate cover. Upon rolling over the top half a set of con­trols to change track, etc… appear, rolling over the bot­tom half brings up the pro­gress bar, track name and artist name. Sim­ple and elo­quent. It also has some advan­ced fea­tu­res such as hiding itself when iTu­nes is clo­sed, brin­ging itself to the front upon track change and hot­keys for con­trol. It also has three spea­rate sizes for album covers, in the screenshot below it’s on the middle set­ting. So here’s an image of my current desk­top, click for larger.

A goon over at forums.somethin­gaw­ful.com poin­ted this out to me and I relished the idea of having one of these so much that I deci­ded to make a blog entry about it. At the moment this is only a con­cept piece, howe­ver there are patents pen­ding and from the forums thread their is sig­ni­fi­cant inte­rest in such a pro­duct. It is inge­nious without a doubt. 

“Every key of the Opti­mus key­board is a stand-alone dis­play sho­wing exactly what it is con­tro­lling at this very moment.”

“Addi­tio­nal block of keys on the left is meant for switching bet­ween pro­grams or modes”

Stan­dard key­board in English, same key­board dif­fe­rent dis­play when pla­ying Quake, sho­wing the controls.

The pos­si­bi­li­ties of this are end­less. So many times I have pla­yed video games and for­got­ten the con­trols, had dif­fi­culty remem­be­ring key­board short­cuts, wan­ted impro­ved func­tio­na­lity and quick (and obvious) one key com­mands (I have this to some extent with my MS natu­ral key­board but you need to remem­ber each button’s func­tion). This key­board can also be sold inter­na­tio­nally as it incor­po­ra­tes very easily all the dif­fe­rent setups and arran­ge­ments of keys and cha­rac­ters, i.e. the Rus­sian or Greek alpha­bets. It’s a sim­ple aid and solu­tion to com­mon key memo­ri­za­tion pro­blems, cus­to­mi­za­tion and adap­ta­bi­lity and it looks inc­re­dibly cool. I want one.

Ima­ges © 1995–2005 Art. Lebedev Stu­dio