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Avatar. Last night I went to see this over hyped movie. What a lot of rubbish. My first outing to the cinema since ‘Quantum of Solace’ reminded me why I stopped going to the cinema. The only reason I bought into it was the whole 3D thing. So after the Odeon had flushed me for £10.40 a person, I sat in my uncomfortable seat, with my overpriced popcorn, in a packed cinema, adorned my silly 3D glasses and got ready for the trailers.

Having never experienced a 3D movie before, I have to admit I was quite impressed by the trailers. Yes is was straining my eyes a bit but it was really quite immersive. But then Avatar started, all 3 hours of it. Typical James Cameron, 3 hour snore fests, just like all the Lord of the Rings films. When will you people learn? The more you hype these movies up, the more you are giving Hollywood credence to this idea that 3 hours is acceptable for a movie, it’s not. 2 hours is ample time to tell the story well, and 2 hours is long at the best of times.
The one thing I will say is that the visuals in the movie were tremendous, but they are definitely not good enough to prop up the weak story for 3 hours. If you are on the same boat as me, and curious about 3D movies having never seen one, do yourself a favour and just don’t bother with Avatar. More will come in the future with equal, if not better, visuals and hopefully not 3 hours long. That’s Avatar in a nutshell really, if it was released 3 or 4 years down the line, when 3D was just the norm, there is no way it would get the same reviews, it would probably lose 10-20% off its metacritic score straight away in my opinion.

New year resolution : Boycott James Cameron movies and/or movies longer than 2 hours.

Like I explained 3 years ago, I don’t do new years resolutions on the whole. But here’s one I’m going to try. To stop using “www” before every web address I type in. This will be a battle of will power more than anything. Overcome a 12 year habit.

It was a stupid idea in the first place, and for that reason most sites don’t even require it. Whilst I was searching for the no-www campaign, a campaign specifically about getting rid of “www”, I came across a story on the subject from 2005. Ironically, this site had “www” before its domain, but the premise of the article suggests that typing www costs the economy billions of dollars in wasted time. This got me thinking. I’ve got 12 years of web usage behind me now. Say I typed “www” 20 times a day, which is not too unrealistic given my job and my obsession with silicon. Between 1 and 2 seconds each time, lets call it 1.5 seconds. Less, say 1 day a week, for downtime throughout the year.

So 1.5secs x 6days x 52weeks x 12years / 60 = 93.6 minutes

I’ve wasted 1.5 hours of my life typing letters that mean nothing!!!

I urge you to try the challenge. See if you can stay www free for a week. I will report my sins in the comments, it will be a hard one to break.

I know what you are thinking. You wasted 2 minutes of your life reading this post. I wasted 30 writing it.

Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Philip Hammond said: "Middle Britain won’t forget that it was Gordon Brown who destroyed their pensions, increased their taxes and crippled social mobility.

Don’t let the door hit you on the arse, Gordo. Set the election date and put us all our misery.

Steve Jobs once said “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower”. Let me tell you Steve, your iPhone team are about to be tested on that front very shortly. Just before I explain, I want to take you through my mobile phone history to date, so I can reference it.

Ok, since 2002 I have been buying best of breed smartphones, the K800 aside. 2002 – 2007 belonged to Microsoft, but in 2007 it’s fair to say that Apple knocked them out the park with the iPhone. At the beginning of 2009 though, Google introduced Android. And here I am with my new Google Nexus One device running Android 2.1. So let before you run out and buy your iPhone, like all the other sheep, here’s 10 reasons why I think Android will topple the iPhone.

1. Firstly, you might have read differing reviews about the Nexus One. The people that reviewed it didn’t use it as their primary device for a length of time, I suspect. It took some getting used to, but after a while you realise you are actually de-iPhoneising, its not a fault of the phone.

2. The iPhone was never designed for the thousands of apps it enjoys now. Everything you see has been bolted on as an after thought. If you start to live with the iPhone day in, day out you will know what I mean. The phone doesn’t run applications in the background unless they are sanctioned by Apple, for example. It can’t effectively multi-task unless you are using Apple applications. Like most things Apple the phone was meant to be a closed loop environment. Apple owes a lot to the guys that originally hacked the iPhone for the success it enjoys with apps now.

3. The iPhone is only going to ever come in 1 or 2 varieties, get some originality for god sakes.

4. Cost. All Apple products have the Apple tax on top. The Nexus One is a premium device but there are plenty of Google phones out there that won’t break the bank.

5. Google are the biggest internet content provider in the world and believe me they know best when it comes to delivering it. Android has built in voice recognition throughout the phone (those of you who are 3GS owners will know this feels tacked onto iPhone OS). The Google integration is seen throughout the phone. Also, because integration is designed from the ground up, other cool features like Facebook/Android contact live merging occurs…now your contacts update their own info in your phonebook via Facebook.

6. Widgets: because the apps are allowed to run in their full glory in the background, they can run as widgets on your desktop. Sports scores, news, weather, share prices, all live, you name it. Yes background apps have a trade off with battery life but they are good when used sparingly.

7. Google Latitude, another great background application that checks in with Google Maps every few minutes to update your whereabouts. This becomes pretty cool if a lot of your friends start using it, as the phone will alert you when they are unknowingly close by.

8. Locale : an app that lets you trigger events based on your location. Teach the app where you office is and it can switch the phone to silent mode and redirect calls for you. Teach it where your home is and it can turn on your PC on as you get get home. These type apps are really pioneering mobile computing for the next decade, you wont see this on iPhone any time soon unless Apple decide to make a stab at it.

9. No iTunes. It was worth getting an Android phone for this alone. iTunes is one of the worst pieces of junk Apple has ever done. Yes it might have made them fortunes but it was the device requirements driving that, and certainly not the interface. 

10. Free turn by turn navigation. Does what it says on the tin and you don’t need to pay tens of pounds for it either. Oh and it uses Google Maps to do it, so its always got the latest road maps.

So there you have it. I’m an Android user now, lets see how the next few years pan out for me. Apple would need to do something special for me to go back. In the mobile space, Apple is the over bearing parent that doesn’t let you climb trees or ride your bike with no hands. For this reason I’ve lost interest in their phone products, it was all a bit too simple. Not simple, like easy. Simple, like Simple Simon.

Just some minor criticisms of my Nexus One and Android before I finish. Firstly the hardware which is made by HTC :

- It would have been nice to have a camera button on the side

- The home button is annoyingly close to the virtual space bar and can be thumbed too easily at times

- Screen smudge resistance is no where as good as the 3GS

- Charging LEDs are 2003 and tacky, luckily there are no other annoying LEDs

- The engraving is actually just a white sticker transfer, which could be better

- USB cable should be designed to sit flush with the handset when inserted, although impending dock might fix this annoyance

And for Android and Google :

- Allowing the handset manufacturer/network to pay royalty costs for essential add-ons is a stupid idea. Multi-touch and Exchange Mail, Contacts AND Calendar should be in by default, paid by Google. 

- Only allowing apps to be installed to the resident flash memory is a bad idea unless you enforce a high baseline. This limits the phones capabilities and restricts developers. A stupid way to do piracy protection.

- Mobile provider APN’s should be in there by default. When buying a SIM free android I shouldn’t have to look up the operators APN’s.

- There should be a one press ‘email compose’ button in the email app, similar to the SMS app. Also Gmail app and Email app should share same look.

Ok I’m nit picking now, but I wanted to give a fair assessment of both.

Well two weeks into twenty ten, we should be in full swing now right? Yes, just as I wondered back in June 2009, I’ve started prefixing the year with “twenty” rather than “two thousand and”. Was a simple equation in the end, syllables.

Here’s a quick prediction for this year, that ‘Fireflies’ song that is knocking about just now. You will grow to want to kill the guys in the ‘Owl City’ band come December. I can see that song being used all over TV and radio this year, same way as that annoying Take That song was used all last year. Heard this song twice and it already irritates the hell out of me, loathed to even link to it actually.

Riverside motha clucker

I would hate to be a movie writer, the pressure to come up with something original. We’ve only had about 100 years of film making, what’s it going to be like for the guys in 2110? Surely there are a finite amount of ideas, concepts and plots, when will they dry up?

Well I’m afraid to say that day might already have come. This summer……at theatre near you……3 people go up a ski lift……no-one thought to check everyone was off……and now they are stuck because there’s a bank holiday……left to freeze to death!

Yes, I kid you not, Frozen is a movie on the way. Look out your crisp 5 pound notes for cinema tickets and get your popcorn ready. Check out the trailer over here.

No wonder I stopped going to the cinema.

Remember I predicted this 3 years ago.

One thing that has stunned me about the start of the ice age, however, is this image that NASA release today of the UK. Breath taking:

One of the things that pisses me off with our nation is real ‘sit on the fence’ mentality our government seems to have painted us with. The last PM to really have any sort of strong stance was old Maggie. One minute we are dancing about with the yanks over in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting a war that is too big for us,  thinking we are the big boys of the world who can dole out punches. The next we are pissing our pants over something trivial.

The sad truth is the United Kingdom is no longer the super power it once was. The days of the empire are long gone, its time for us to come to terms with that and start scaling back the amount we spunk on aid to 3rd world nations, aswell as the crazy amount we spend on defence. Start reinvesting that money back home. The Gerries are a great example of how to eat humble pie. Roasted after WWII they have re-invented themselves into quite a modest country now in less than a century, not to mention they are the biggest economy in Europe.

If we are not going to do that, we need to get back on the offensive. I sat and read this article with disgust today. Now I fully appreciate the Icelandic people here, they are looking out for themselves. What they need to understand though is their main export was financial services before the boom, so they effectively stole out of our pocket, to the tune of £3.5 billion. Yes, because the UK government bailed out these savers, it was out our pocket.

So what do our illustrious government do in a bid to get the money back……”give us back our lunch money or I’m going to tell on you”. Absolutely pathetic. I tell you what might sharpen the attention of the Icelandic’s, a couple of laser guided tomahawks right down the jacksy of their precious geysir. Let’s go to war with the thieving bastards, let’s sort the men from the boys.

Here me out here, before you think I’m daft, we fought tooth and nail for the Falkland Isles which pumps out a whopping GDP of $75 million per annum. Chump change compared to the £3.5 billion these turkeys owe us. I’m not some kind of crazed war monger, I just want to see a big of dig back in the country, it’s like watching a car crash is slow motion living here sometimes.

I think this article sums up everything I hate about Britain right now. So its a great article, at the same time its one of the worst pieces of journalism I’ve ever read. Nah I take that back, its the worst. Followed by the Gordon Ramsay linked on the right hand side.

Enjoy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1230876/Chris-Moyles-sparks-Twitter-surge-posts-photo-pregnant-hosts-ripped-jeans-online.html

P.S. Can you comment if anyone actually figures out what the story is.

I talked about my 2020 predictions in my last post. I’ll move these to a static page for reference when I get a chance but let’s get them formalised in writing for now. Just the 3 at the moment:

- Scotland will be independent by 31st December 2020

- Usain Bolt will not beat his 100m Record and it will be intact as of January 1st 2020 (conscious of the Olympics that year where I’m not willing to rule out it will be broken)

- Twitter will not be round as of 31st December 2020

If you’ve got any, chuck them in the hat.