Stuff'n'nonsense #6

I'm writing this one while watching First Orbit - the movie. It's a real time recreation of Yuri Gagarin's pioneering first orbit, shot entirely in space from on board the International Space Station. The film combines this new footage with Gagarin's original mission audio and a new musical score by composer Philip Sheppard. It's over 90 minutes long, and it's as close as you'll ever get to seeing that incredible historic moment when mankind first left this planet. Sit back, fire it up full screen on the biggest device you've got, and enjoy the incredible feeling of an entire space mission. Just imagine what it must have been like for Gagarin, up there for the first time, seeing things no human being had ever seen before.

They've disabled embedding, so you'll have to just click through. Oh hang on, wait, read the rest of my blog first!

• Today is a moment I've been waiting for for about six years. My friend Damien Valentine, announced that his new feature film, Chronicles of Humanity, will be released on April 26, and will have its theatrical debut at the Little Theatre Cinema in Bath. It's a sci-fi epic featuring several of my friends, and also Felicia Day, who you may recognise from The Guild, Dollhouse, Dr Horrible, and so on. That's pretty damn cool. What's even cooler is that he funded and made the whole film himself.
  And coolest of all, from my point of view, he did it with Moviestorm. When we started creating it, we said that one day, we wanted to see a Moviestorm movie in the cinema, and now it's finally happening. Damien - thanks, and congratulations!
  If you can't make it to the cinema, don't worry, you can watch Chronicles of Humanity online as a Web series.
• One of the films I'm most looking forward to is Luc Besson's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. Described as Indiana Jones crossed with The Mummy and Amelie, this looks right up my street. I love the close of this review: "I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending this film, I’m just not sure who to." Me, that's who! Looks like a perfect date movie for us.

• I stumbled across this book today after seeing a tweet about it. Oh My God What Happened And What Should I Do? It's a neat book about digital marketing, well-written, concise, and informative - well worth picking up. What's really clever is that you can buy it for money from Amazon, or buy it for free if you tweet about it. Err, no-brainer. I'll have it for nothing, thanks. And because I'm lazy, I'll leave their default tweet "This Book helps you to move into the Digital era of awesomeness. Download it for free: http://bit.ly/4R9rth" instead of writing "I haven't actually read this book yet but it looks cool and it's free if I write this tweet." Cunning, huh? And they've shifted 150,000 copies that way. Made no money, true, but they've built an audience very, very fast.
• Now this is something I like. Your Taxpayer Receipt, courtesy of the White House. Punch in some data on how much tax you paid, and it'll tell you where all the money is going; how much on defence, hospitals, schools, etc. More governments should do that.
• Did you know Newfoundland has its own time zone? They're an hour and a half ahead of Florida.
• Got writer's block? Deal with it.

I appear to have done something bad to my foot, which got slightly squished during the kitten-trapped-under-garage-door incident a few weeks ago. It feels much like it did when I fell off a motorcycle many years ago - not broken, but possibly a cracked bone, which hurts like hell and isn't going away. I've now got it bandaged up, and am trying to walk or stand on it as little as possible.

At least we have a mostly quiet weekend ahead of us: the main event is Ginger and Joe's Florida wedding reception on Saturday. They got married last weekend up north, and are having a second do down here this weekend.

We're also meeting with a bunch of people to kick around ideas for future art shows in Orlando. There's been a sudden resurgence of enthusiasm, mostly thanks to Ben Sawinski, and a whole load of new opportunities have started popping up.

Apart from that, I'm thinking I'll spend the weekend with my foot propped up, either catching up on movies, reading, or maybe even writing something at long last... Well, when I say writing, I mean other than my blog (6 articles this week), corporate stuff (28 articles) and emails (178 since Tuesday). I mean like maybe a story, or a script, or some lyrics.

Oh, and if you were wondering, we never made it to the Colombian restaurant. There's still a pile of paperwork on the office floor, so we haven't earned it yet. Damn.

Now you can go and watch Gagarin orbit the earth.

Stuff'n'nonsense #4

I'm going to kick today's S&N off with a real blast from my past. I thought this had disappeared from the Internet for ever, but I should know better. Nothing vanishes from the Internet. This is a movie I made 11 years ago with Robert Llewellyn (Kryten from Red Dwarf). Okay, so that's the hype. The reality is that it was a short promo movie for a mobile phone game I designed at nGame. It was written and created by Charlie Dancey and Pavel Douglas (whose main claim to fame, in my eyes at least, is that he was in a Bond movie), and I had a small bit part, doing an off-screen voice. Music was by Manny Elias from Tears for Fears.

Anyway, without further ado, I present to you... Alien Fish Exchange: The Movie.

I'm actually really proud of that game. People loved it, even though it was a silly little WAP game which eventually made it onto interactive TV in several countries. In fact, one person loved it so much that he recreated the entire game, and you can go right ahead and download it. (Disclaimer:I haven't played it, so I have no idea whether it's at all faithful to the original or whether it'll turn your computer into a pile of steaming slime.)

Right, that's enough of the shameless self-promotion. On with the random bits and pieces.

• Film news: it looks like there's finally going to be a film version of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but mostly I'm thinking that's good, because I wanted to like the books, but found them totally unreadable. My dad loved them, and tried to get me to read them, but I just couldn't get through them.
  Mind you, he also had a complete collection of Gor books. I did read those. Several times. I preferred them to Anne McCaffrey.
  Errr, moving swiftly on...
• Ah, Dita von Teese in a Wonderbra. Much better.
  Now click on through to watch the new Wonderbra TV advert for their strapless bras. It's a great advert. And, as one commenter said, if this really works on my DDs, then I want two in every colour they do. So, whether you're a lady or a gentleman, click on through and enjoy.
• So you want to make a movie. How hard can it be? Check out this wonderful flowchart from Canal+. It's pretty much spot on, and very funny. And click around to find a bunch of similar ones from the same designer.
• And more silly infographics (who the hell invented that word anyway?). How men and women perceive colour. Guilty as charged, m'lud.
• Tonight's cooking has turned into something of an extravaganza. Singaporean fish curry for tonight, then I'm starting a tapas frenzy ready for lunch tomorrow. Chorizo & chickpea salad, red peppers with capers, chorizo in red wine, aubergine dip, mixed bean dip, and tuna, egg & potato salad. At least I won't have to cook for the next two days, apart from the bread. Well, that's the theory, anyway.

OK, that's it. Back to the kitchen. But let me leave you with a Gorean slave girl, in memory of my adolescence.

Stuff'n'nonsense #3

I don't really feel much like blogging today. Today can be pretty much summed up with the acronym wombat: waste of money, brains and time. But still, I'll share with you the goodness I've found around the Net today.

But first, some news. We confirmed yesterday that there will be no more Ferox shows at Taste for the foreseeable future. We're going ahead with the April 29 show as planned, but after that, we'll be looking for other venues. Taste gave us a great start last April, but it's time to find somewhere else. We'll let you know as soon as we have anything definite.

• 50 years of space today. The Russians still regard it as a priority, unlike the West. And check out how they boasted about it back then. Meanwhile, our space program is more concerned with prog rock - Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson will be doing a live duet with an astronaut. That's cool, and all, but hardly earth-shattering.
• So why aren't we doing anything in space? Because we're spending abso-bloody-lutely everything we've got on the military. Check out this little chart. Don't need schools, hospitals, roads, scientific research, or any of that Commie crap - we need MORE WEAPONS!
  The military accounts for 20% of the American budget, and it's going up year on year. That's about 1.4 trillion dollars. (I can't even say that out loud without doing a Dr Evil face, it's such an absurd number.) Coincidentally, the US budget deficit increased by 1.4 trillion dollars last year...
  To put that in perspective, the US accounts for over 40% of the entire world's military spending. That's six times more than China. Eleven times more than the UK. Twelve times more than Russia. Over one thousand times more than Libya.
  I honestly can't conceive of a situation where anyone would need that much military power, unless they seriously expected to take on the whole of the rest of the world in a slam-bang knock-down fight to the finish. And if that happened, it would go nuclear anyway, and it wouldn't matter who won.
  If you want to reduce government spending, then the tea partiers should start here. And here's The Economist agreeing with me.
  (P.S. Note to the UK. Why the hell do we need to be spending that much on our military? We are the third biggest spender. Do we really need to be outspending Russia, for crying out loud? Get rid of the war toys, and fix the damn country's real problems. We're not the Empire any more.)
• Okay, enough of that. Let's get weird. You're probably aware of angler fish, possibly the ugliest creatures on the planet. But did you have any idea how totally weird the male angler fish is? He kisses the female, his lips turn to glue, his face melts, and... no, I'm not going to spoil the surprise with what happens next. You'll have to click through, but believe me, it is possibly the grossest thing in the entire animal kingdom.
• Writers - you'll love this. The Periodic Table of Storytelling. All the cliches, beautifully categorised. Print it out, and put it by your desk.
• Book time. Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe. If you click that, you can get it for free. Whee! Best bit of the book for me was this:
  "It's all about being an advocate for the user. I observe what users do, and how they do it, figure out what they're trying to to, and then boss the engineers around, trying to get them to remove the barriers they've erected because engineers are all high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff."
  That's what I used to do, before some bastard turned me into a sales and marketing guy. (That means you still observe the users, but the engineers tell you to fuck off, because it's only marketing, and nobody likes marketing.)
• And how's about this for a book? If it's the way comics are going, I like it. Nemesis, the Motion Comic.
• And lastly, wtf has happened to Facebook? You now can't like, share or comment anything which didn't originate from Facebook itself. Check out the screenshot - there's no way to interact with that post!
  So if you're posting from Twitter or su.pr or some other feed system, or using a "share on Facebook" link on a site, nobody can respond to what you write. I'm really hoping that's a glitch, because that seriously reduces the number of potential conversations, which seems to be totally against the spirit of social media.

I'll end with this little snippet from Freda. My tribe. I love you all.

However your life develops after you come together with your tribe, you can be assured that its members will stand at your side. On the surface, your tribe may seem to be nothing more than a loose-knit group of friends and acquaintances to whom you ally yourself. Yet when you look deeper, you will discover that your tribe grounds you and provides you with a sense of community that ultimately fulfills many of your most basic human needs.

Stuff'n'nonsense #2

As Vaughn said earlier today, Facebook status detox is no joke. Well, I've resisted all day, and here's what I would have posted if I'd just kept clicking the SHARE button, plus some odds and ends thrown in. There's, uh, quite a lot of it.

• Tomorrow (or maybe today by the time you read this) is the 50th anniversary of Gagarin going into space. Here's a few things you may not have known about Gagarin's flight.
  Returning to a theme from yesterday, it's actually quite depressing in some ways. Half a century in space, and we're still amazed by space shuttle launches. It was designed about 40 years ago. I think we've lost the plot somewhere. Weren't we supposed to have space stations, space hotels, space elevators, and be mining the asteroid belts on our way to our first colonies by now?
  And why isn't the day being marked with some huge fanfare? It's one of the biggest milestones in human achievement. Yes, I know he was a Russian. So what? This is bigger than politics. The man was a true hero of the world, not just of the Soviet Union.
• Got a problem with wind power? Don't like those ugly windmills? Well, here's what the Union of Concerned Scientists has to say to you. And so do I. I would have loved for someone to put a windmill on the ridge behind my house when I lived in Somerset. And here, too, if they could make them hurricane-resistant.
  
  

Frankly, I think windmills look a lot prettier than power stations, they don't fill the air with smoke, and they don't explode or dump vast amounts of radiation into the environment when things go wrong. If I were running the show, I'd have windmills and solar panels in everyone's back yard. Seriously. On every roof and every hillside.
• Some days, you realize life really is a joke. Here's a great selection from Cracked - one of my favorite sites these days - of absurd jokes that came true. Stupid things like, err, Ronald Reagan becoming President. Like that would ever happen!
• Speaking of absurdity, check out these fashions from the NY fashion week. Really? People get paid to design, make and wear this crap? Click through and be aghast.
• On a more serious note, this should give pro-democracy activists cause for concern. The Egyptians recently got rid of their corrupt dictator who wouldn't tolerate dissent, and replaced him with an interim ruling council made up of the Armed Forces. A 26-year old pacifist blogger dared to criticize them, and their immediate response was to jail him for three years. So, that's an improvement then, is it?
  And staying on the subject of Egypt's corrupt dictator, I was amused, in a not very amused way, to read that Mubarak has threatened to sue anyone who accuses him of corruption. He'd like it known that all his money - all $30 billion of it - was legitimately earned during his time in office, and he did not use his political office to aid him. You have to admire a man who can make $30bn in 30 years as a hobby, don't you?
• Last night, I read an L. Ron Hubbard book. No, don't laugh. I'm not turning into a Scientologist. Fear is a horror novel from his early writing career, and it's actually quite good, in a sort of Ray Bradbury / Robert Bloch way. I'm tempted to find some more of his earlier works.
• On the playlist today, Bob Dylan's Desire popped up. I've never liked Dylan, apart from that one album, but I haven't heard it since my school days. I was pleased to find that I still enjoyed it, and ended up singing - well, humming, since I couldn't remember the words - along to One More Cup of Coffee. I couldn't get into any of his other stuff, though. I then spent the rest of the morning listening to the Rolling Stones, who, believe it or not I barely know other than the classics.
• I'm really pleased that finally my series of blog posts on using Moviestorm in schools has started. It was a lot of fun to write, and I enjoyed thinking up ways to use Moviestorm. I've got the first few in the queue, and there's about another 30 half-written. I'm now hoping to get round to the other series I'm working on, which is a series of exercises aimed at film students who want to practice their techniques. The first few of those are part written, just waiting for me to shoot the videos that accompany them.
• Okay, here comes the food section. For dinner last night we ended up at Smokey Bones. They've redone the menu: a few new items, and a lot of things no longer available, but the food's still good. However, we discovered that in the same plaza there's a Colombian and a Peruvian restaurant. I know next to nothing about South American food, so I'm quite intrigued by both of these places. (And no, they don't have guinea pig on the menu. Damn.)
  We've allotted the whole of tomorrow to Draco Felis paperwork, and we've promised ourselves that as a reward for getting everything filed, we'll treat ourselves to dinner at the Colombian place, Los Portales. Just the two of us. We need it.
  Tonight, we ate at a Polish place, Polonia, on 17/92 up near us. Well recommended - tasty food, good portions, classic Polish dishes. The kiszka (blood pudding) was surprisingly good, and the wazanki (noodles, bacon, kielbasa & cabbage) was absolutely delicious. Good selection of Polish beer too.
• And still on the subject of food, here's a great article about expiration dates. You know when it says Best Before or Use By? That does not mean the food is bad after that date. Food producers and retailers are making you throw away perfectly good food by making you think it's no longer edible. And different states and countries have different regulations, which confuses things still further. Obviously, don't eat food that has spoiled, but don't just go by the date on the packet.

And I'm going to end with a rant. Kids having mobile phones - it's a great idea. It's reassuring to know they can call you, or you can call them (assuming they remember to charge the bloody thing). But what's not a good idea is allowing kids to make arrangements with each other, instead of adults talking to each other. If Child wants to visit Friend, then telling Child to call Friend and sort it out is an absolute, guaranteed recipe for disaster. Here's what will happen:

• Friend won't speak to Parent about this proposed visit. Child will arrive unexpectedly, and Parent will wonder what the hell is going on. The situation will be exacerbated when it transpires that Friend invited Child to stay for a meal, sleep over or join them on a family outing, without Parent's knowledge. Parent will freak out, and Self (or Spouse) will have to go and fetch Child, probably at most inconvenient time, leading to tears all round.
• Child will not relay vital information back to Self. Either child will arrive without necessary item for family outing (cash for ticket, bathing suit, etc), or Self will fail to arrive at the agreed collection time, due to not knowing about it.
• Child and Friend will agree a time and place to meet up that doesn't work for Self or Parent. One family will end up hanging around waiting for the other, get irritated, and day will be ruined. Alternatively, Child and Friend will make arrangements without consulting Self or Parent, and then get hugely disappointed when told it's not possible.

The answer's simple. Any arrangement made between Child and Friend is deemed to be meaningless. It only counts if it's agreed between Self (or Spouse) and Parent. So don't cop out by getting the kids to sort stuff out. Deal with it. It will save hassle in the long run.

OK, that's me done for the day. More stuff'n'nonsense tomorrow, probably involving food, spaceships, books, and everyday life.

Why I am not a Buddhist

Earlier this year, I seriously asked myself whether 2011 would be the year I came out and admitted to myself that I am, actually, a Buddhist. My religious/spiritual beliefs are somewhat confusing, even to me. I’ve always felt somewhat religious, even though I know that it’s all a crock, and I’m pretty much a hardcore rationalist. However, no religion I’ve ever found actually seems to suit me.

I’m a bit pagan, in that I do tend to observe the Celtic seasonal festivals, but that’s more to do with marking the passage of time than anything mystical. I’ve messed around with various occult systems, and have found them to be, on occasion, a good way to deal with psychological issues and personal development. (I don’t, for example, believe that casting spells can have any effect; on the other hand, making talismans in a ritual fashion can concentrate the mind wonderfully and help you to focus on the problem you’re trying to address.) I’m definitely not a believer in “big church” religion, and I’m totally opposed to following religious laws that can’t be justified in a modern context, no matter how sensible they were when first conceived.

Since I was about 13, though, I’ve had a fascination with Buddhism, particularly Zen. What I liked most about it was that it was much more about understanding your own mind and learning to live in the world than anything I normally think of as a religion. The Dalai Lama couldn’t be much more different to the Pope – he’s always talking about compassion, kindness, and understanding, not calling down damnation on those who doesn’t follow some archaic teachings, or who follow them in a slightly different way.

Earlier this year, I went to an Open Day at one of our local Buddhist temples. (The Chinese one, not the Thai one in the picture above.). As always, I was struck by the peace and tranquility, and by the friendliness of everyone, priests and visitors alike. After wandering around for a while, I figured that maybe after thirty years, I should just stop wavering and try being a practicing Buddhist. So of course, I wavered. I loaded myself up with all the free literature I could find, and decided to read a bit more before committing myself. After all, I know plenty about Buddhism, but very little about what it means to be a Buddhist.

Two months later, I’ve decided it’s not for me after all. Of all the religions I’ve flirted with, Buddhism’s still the one I feel most comfortable with, but I wouldn’t be honest with myself if I said it was something I can actually accept. Here’s why.

• Belief in authority: many Buddhist teachings rely on the words of past masters. It feels like some old-time school where all you’re required to do is to learn selected quotes from Aristotle or Aquinas and parrot them back unquestioningly. That’s not enough for me. Just because Lama so-and-so said something doesn’t, to my mind, make it true. However, that’s often all you get.
• Too many myths: traditional Buddhism is full of mythology. There’s a firm belief in ghosts and other supernatural elements. While I love myths and stories, I can’t make myself believe in them. (Strangely, I have very little problem accepting the idea of karma, but deities as literal beings? Not for me.)
• Belief in parables: a typical Buddhist teaching method is the parable. Someone does something bad and misfortune befalls him; someone else does something good and he is rewarded. Those kind of stories are fine as kids’ fairy tales, but that’s not something I can accept as part of a serious belief system. It’s one thing when they’re presented as allegory (which Christian parables generally are), but not when they’re presented as literal truth.
• Reliance on lists: the final straw for me was the extensive lists enumerating all sorts of things. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but those annoyed me. For example, one book I had listed the 80 characteristics of a Bodhisattva. They just seemed to me like lists of adjectives, especially when they started repeating themselves (e.g. neat hair, tidy hair, clean hair, well-trimmed hair). That seems to me like one thing: Bodhisattvas look after their hair. What’s the point in making me learn four ways to say the same thing? It just felt, well, childish. And then they started listing clean nails, well-trimmed nails, clean face, clean skin, clean feet, and so on. Okay, okay, I get it! Bodhisattvas have personal hygiene!
  It was the same with various other lists; they didn’t seem to tell me anything, just weird metaphysical categorization of things for no apparent reason. Like lists of postures you can adopt while meditating (sitting, lying, standing, kneeling, walking, etc) or times of day you can meditate (before dawn, at dawn, after dawn, mid-morning, etc), which basically boil down to “you can do this any way you like, any time you like”. It feels like false wisdom – lots of words, signifying nothing.

Now, I’m absolutely not knocking Buddhism. If the world had more practicing Buddhists in it, it would be a much nicer place. I still believe that the Buddhist principles of compassion, duty, and awareness are the way I want to live my life. I just can’t truthfully say that I believe in the religious trappings with which those principles are presented.

I’ll still have my smiling Buddhas by my desk and by my bed, though. Right next to the Ganesha, the mandalas, the Tree of Life, and the Celtic talismans. There’s something in all religions. Just not the religious bit. Not for me, anyway.

Holy Land Experience

A few weeks ago, we went to the Holy Land Experience, just to see what's actually behind those fake Roman walls.

Well, it was an experience, there’s no denying that. It’s one of Orlando’s lesser known theme parks. (Well, legally, HLE is a church, which means it doesn’t have to pay taxes, even though it rakes in an absolute fortune. Nice deal if you can get it.)

It was pretty much what you’d expect from a theme park. Plastic religious stuff, presentations about as sophisticated as an elementary school play, overpriced refreshments, and people dressed up in silly costumes. That, however, isn’t what interested me.

What I was mainly there for was the people-watching and to understand the way Christianity is presented in America. There was one huge church group there, and it was refreshing to see that many of the teenagers were giggling as much as we were when faced with giant plastic whales, cardboard cut-out Jesus, and a gift shop full of cheesy souvenirs.

On the other hand, there were people simply in awe at the re-enactment of the Tabernacle in the wilderness when the Ark of the Covenant was revealed (was I really the only person in the room having an Indiana Jones moment?) and they actually broke into applause when paintings of various prophets were unveiled at the end of a tour chronicling the development of the Bible. And when it came to the Passion, many of them turned away in genuine tears at the crucifixion, and there were shouts of Hallelujah when Jesus came back like a disco star at the end complete with shiny robes and finger pointed to heaven like John Travolta.

I’ve never witnessed that level of religious fervor before, and it was truly bizarre to see it in a place that was obviously so commercialized and fake. I can understand it at somewhere like the Wailing Wall, Lourdes, Mecca or somewhere with actual religious significance, but at a cheesy 15-minute performance at a theme park in Florida?

Wow.

Now, I’m pretty well read when it comes to religion, even though I’m not a Christian. My mum, who was there with me, did divinity and theology at university, and is even more familiar with the source materials. The Christianity presented at HLE is a complete distortion of and is riddled with lies, myths, and completely fallacious logic.

For example, at the exhibition of the history of the Bible, they showed us some Mesopotamian cuneiform writings, and explained how these proved the literal truth of the Bible. There was one tablet which chronicled Sennacherib’s destruction of a Hebrew army. This corresponds exactly with the Biblical account of the same battle, which proves that the Bible is historically accurate, and therefore accurate in all other respects. There’s just one small difference between the Assyrian and Jewish accounts; the Assyrians say they won the battle, the Jews say the Angel of the Lord slaughtered the Assyrians. This, apparently, not only attests to the truth of the Bible, but proves the superiority of God. To which the audience all nodded and praised the Lord.

Let’s just review that for a second. What they actually said was, “We can prove the Bible is true because it completely disagrees with all other historical sources?” Yet nobody questioned the logic. Not to mention the fact that even if the Bible did agree with the historical sources in this one respect, that does not mean that the rest of the book is automatically true.

Or how about the statement that the Bible was copied by hand many times, but there was never a single error or change? That’s just provably false, as any Biblical scholar will tell you. But this “fact” was put forward as proof that the Bible is truly miraculous, and again, the audience applauded and praised the Lord some more. And they didn’t even notice when two minutes later they were told about the different versions of the Gospels...

And their version of Christianity doesn’t even follow the damn Bible anyway. Where were the two thieves at the crucifixion? What happened to the bit of the story where Pilate offered to let Jesus go, but the people chose to release someone else? Conveniently snipped in the interests of drama. And those plastic animals going into the Ark two by two? That’s not actually what it says in the book.

The LORD then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female. (Genesis 7, 1-3)

And of course, all those paintings of Jewish prophets and apostles? Not a trace of a Semitic gene among them. They were all blond, with blow-dried hair, pale-skinned, and looking like Charlton Heston. It’s completely pandering to Western stereotypes.

Basically this is Christianity taken from a Victorian children’s Bible and turned into easily digestible family entertainment, based on misreadings of the texts and fallacious extrapolations dressed up to sound like learned teachings. It was exactly what I expected, but it still bemuses me that over half the people in this country believe that it’s the literal truth, it’s the word of God, and it’s the cornerstone of their faith.

That’s the true horror of the Holy Land Experience.

Netflix PS3 upgrade is a big step backwards

Netflix is getting worse and worse. Apart from the fact that the service quality is degrading (frequent stops and poor image quality, and the new imposition of the limited number of devices that nobody had ever heard of before), they've just released a pointless user interface "upgrade" for the PS3 version that makes it considerably harder to use.

This screenshot shows four different Netflix layouts. We used to have the top right one. Now we have the bottom right one.

In detail:

• Instead of showing 25 films per page, they now show 8. You can only scroll through them 3 at a time instead of 5, so scrolling through lists is 50% slower. Since we have about 200 movies bookmarked, and each scroll takes about 3 seconds to perform, it takes several minutes to get through our list.
• They also removed the side menu allowing you to access different genres, and now you have to scroll through 15 pages of recommendations before you even get to the categories.
• Even worse, the categories are unordered and they removed the sub-genres, so you now have to scroll through *all* foreign movies (3 at a time) rather than being able to go for, say, French comedies. That means scrolling through 1500 movies instead of 50, which is simply unbearable.

In other words, it's now incredibly slow and inefficient to use, and I cannot see any benefit to the user in doing it this way. It's a typical case of an upgrade for the sake of it.

Looks like I'm not the only person who's fed up either. Here are some extracts from the PS3 forums.

I also hate the change. What I do now is use my PC to search Netflix, and then add anything that I'm interested in to my instant queue.

The new menu stinks! I've only had netflix for a week.The old menu that allowed you to browse thousands of titles in an endless amount of sub categories was awesome. It allowed me to see programming that I could never find with the stupid, useless,regressed, going backwards setup that is in place now.It is completely rediculous to have to browse titles on your pc then search them on your ps3.

OMG this new menu is on purpose! I signed up with Netflix a few days ago and i had a menu that i could drill down through genres and find exactly what i wanted, then at some point this afternoon it changed to this crap. I just got off the phone with customer service from netflix and the guy told me this was a change they made based on customers who preferred it. I told him it's terrible and that having to search on the laptop and then back to the PS3 is redundant and a waste of time.

I also find the menu change to be annoying, they took an awesome service and made it intolerable. I also must use my PC and set it in my instant queue, they need to fix it back.

I used to love Netflix. Now I'm finding myself questioning every day whether it's worth the hassle. I'm off to post a couple of formal complaints on their FB page:

New PS3 Layout

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6275848869&topic=16559

PS3 UI

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6275848869&topic=16301