tl;dr

I want some headphones that:
- sound OK
- fit like my Sennheiser CX-30s
- have the button/microphone thing like my pack-in Apple headphones
- aren’t outrageously expensive, say, £30 or so

Why do these not seem to exist? CX30s are widely available for £15 so it’s not impossible to meet these price points. I don’t believe in spending any more on out-and-about headphones, as they are likely to get damaged or lost. Plus, there’s not much point in buying high-end headphones for use on a train. For that reason I also prefer canalphones for noise isolation and portability (I find in-ear headphones very uncomfortable, whereas canalphones are fine).

Why don’t these seem to exist? Ultimate Buds UB3 look like they’d fit the bill but I can’t find a UK stockist. I’m on the verge of chopping up my Apple headphones and grafting Sennheiser drivers on. Bah. Bah, I say!

Personal, Tech, iPhone Tech

I am trying to convince Toby to buy an Xbox 360, so I keep sending him good deals, like this one:

Personal Funny

In a blog entry on Telecoms.com, James Middleton writes:

More crazy money talk was being bandied around in the world of social networking this week as it emerged that Web 2.0 giant Facebook has been eyeing up Twitter as a potential acquisition.

Facebook, much the darling of the mobile space at present, if recent deals are anything to go by, is believed to have considered snapping up the micro blogging tool, but walked away over a high price tag.

How high? Anything up to $500m if some reports are to be believed – which injects a certain irony into the situation as potential suitors for Facebook, like Yahoo, have in the past been driven off by a high price tag themselves.

Around this time last year, Facebook was apparently valued at around $15bn, after Microsoft paid out $240m for a 1.6 per cent stake in the site. But the problem with these valuations is that there is little substance to them, as well as the fact they are tied to services that don’t make any money yet.

The implication here is that Twitter is demanding silly money – more than $500m – to sell out, but this is incorrect. In fact Mr Middleton’s second point — that these valuations have little substance — was what nixed the Twitter-Facebook deal. Facebook did indeed offer $500m, but that value was to be paid entirely in Facebook stock, valued at the same rates the Microsoft deal where at. Twitter baulked at this, showing skepticism that Facebook is worth $15bn — skepticism that Mr Middleton shares. This has been widely covered (e.g. in Valleywag and by Kara Swisher). The latter notes:

The $500 million offered was in an all-stock form, said sources on both sides, at the $15 billion valuation that came from the Microsoft’s investment in the company last October.

The Twitter side felt that figure was inflated and the shares should be valued at the lower figures that have also been reported for Facebook’s true valuation, more in the $5 billion range.

That would have given the deal a $150 million price tag, which was seen as too low, especially since it was in Facebook stock and not cash initially.

In fact, Twitter wanted cash, which some sources say was offered by Facebook in the $50 to $100 million range, in addition to stock, but taking too much stock was still a major issue.

It seems to me that, far from Mr Middleton’s implication that Twitter is looking for ridiculous valuations, Twitter actually shares his suspicion of valuations like the $15bn for Facebook. As John Gruber notes, “I’m not sure I’d sell a sandwich in exchange for Facebook stock”.

Professional

Graham Linehan, in addition to co-creating the ace Father Ted, is also writer and producer of the even acer The IT Crowd. Season 3 of this starts tonight. From his blog:

Anyone who wants to start being nasty about me or the actors or the show, this is not the place. There are several sites out there where you can get your hate on and no-one will just instantly mark your comment as spam.  And best of luck with getting that script commissioned!

Heh, well played sir!

Personal TV

Great Western trains have a livery where lots of placenames are sort of woven into a pattern running down the side. It’s a cute idea, showing the range of places you can go on their trains. Places like those in the picture for example.

I am amused by the juxtaposition of Little Slaughter and Valley of the Rocks. Clearly, Little Slaughter is a scary place to live. Not as scary as Huge Slaughter of course, but still the kind of town were some Real Bad Shit could go down at any second. Not a place to ever let your guard down, that’s for sure. If you told your co-workers casually one day that you were going to Little Slaughter on your holidays, you can bet they’d stop discussing you on their coffee breaks.

But the other place, Valley of the Rocks? “Valley of the Rocks”? Come on guys, you’re going to have to work harder than that to pull the punters in. I live in South Wales, I’ve seen a lot of valleys in my time and I assure you rock was not in short supply in any of them. Take a cue from the other guys, go for Vally of the Untimely Demises of something. Decimation Depression. Bloodbath Basin. Jazz it up a bit! That’s what people want now, a bit of local colour.

Personal

A note to future-me, who is going to forget the funny syntax of the /l switch:

msiexec /i Package.msi /l*v Install.log

Personal, Professional

Continuing the fine traditions of stupid American Cooking embodied by the Luther Burger, m’learned friend Range Rover Wrecker Matt brings to my attention the concept of “chicken fried bacon”. “Chicken fried” seems to be some sort of stupid US slang for the process of deep frying something coated in breadcrumbs; its usually done to tenderised steak, so you end up with something similar to a Wiener Schnitzel.

However, as visionary Glen Kusak, winner of the State Fair of Texas “best taste” award notes:

Everything in Texas is chicken fried and bacon makes everything better so we thought we’d put the two together

So what does it look like? Watch this. Pay close attention to the onion rings at around 1:05 into the video, and the chicken fried bacon itself appears at 1:30.

Yes, that’s right: they are battering and deep frying bacon now. And they have onion rings big enough to serve as a makeshift belt, presumably because your heaving gut just broke the one you wore on your way to the diner. That’s doubly convenient! I have to try this. Quick! To the intercontinental conveyancing device! No need to pack — we’re not going to fit in these clothes when we’re done anyway!

Bacon, Food Food

The subject of Star Control II came up in conversaton recently and it prompted me to go and check up on The Ur-Quan Masters. For those not in the know, the original producers of the game released all source code and game assets to the 3DO version (which had full voice and enhanced graphical assets compared to the other 16-bit versions). The only thing it doesn’t have is the name, as that’s trademarked by Activision. Following that release, a project sprang up to get the game playable on a number of platforms; that project is called The Ur-Quan Masters.

Well, turns out UQM is basically complete; it seems to be a perfect version of SC2. All downloads are here for Windows/Mac/Linux. I however have been playing the PSP port which, although suffering from a streched screen ratio, seems otherwise perfect. And more compelling than any of the PSP games on there.

And now, in further excellent Star Control news, Stardock are apparantly trying to get the rights to produce a sequel. Fingers crossed, that could be excellent.

If you don’t know what Star Control II was, for shame! IGN named Star Control II the 17th best game of all time, and Gamespot named it one of the greatest games of all time. It’s excellent! Star Control I was a top-down space fighting game; you chose a ship and fought, one on one, with another one in an Asteroids-ish playfield. Strategic depth came from the choice of ships and how you used their weapons, which had varying effects and powers against specific other ships.

Star Control II then did something completely bonkers, by taking that entire first game and making it just a part of a sprawling space epic. In SCII, you travel the galaxy, exploring star systems, conquering planets, juggling resources, and interacting with alien species in frequently very funny dialog trees. In many ways it was years ahead of its time — for example, it has real consequences; piss off an alien race with poor diplomacy choices and they won’t join up with you in rebelling against your slave lords. Well worth checking out.

Personal Games

From my mate Pete:

Personal Funny, TV

As long-time readers will be aware, I’m a dribbling Watchmen fanboy and am eagerly awaiting next year’s film adaptation. With principle photography wrapped some time ago now, and (I presume) post-production work either done or nearly done (based on the 03/06/09 release date), more information is starting to appear.

First up is this information from mtv.com that the ending has been changed. Not sure how I feel about this; it’s possible, or perhaps even probable, that the giant space squid concept is goofy looking on film, and I appreciate that they have to be able to sell the film to people who haven’t read the book. Director Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead, 300) is at least promising that “in the ‘new’ ending, the moral dilemma [is] the same, but the mechanics [are] different” — and I think that theme, the rightness or wrongness of the master plan, is more important than how that plan will work.

Meanwhile, they have released some extremely cool promotional posters, one per major character. Two notes about these. Firstly, the bold quote on Veidt’s poster, “A world at peace. There had to be sacrifices.” does reinforce Snyder’s claim that the climax of the film is thematically unchanged, even if the content is different.

Less good though is the character ages, particularly with the shots of Nite Owl and the Silk Spectre. According to some internet site I just found to save me pouring through the book, Laurie Jupiter should be 36 in 1985 when the film is set. Dan Dreiberg’s birthday isn’t given but he started as the second Nite Owl in 1962, making him in his early 40s in 1985. Both actors just look too young in those shots for me, and in the trailers showing the jail break sequence. And that’s not just a style point; Nite Owl’s podgy middle age is a defining part of his character in the book.

Back to the good, it would appear to have enough runtime to be doing the book’s complex overlapping stories justice. Snyder again, in a different mtv.com interview: “‘Run time now is right around 2 hours and 43 minutes,’ he said, adding that he doesn’t expect it to get much shorter.” I’d be worried if it were much shorter; I don’t think you could cram it in and still have it make sense. They’ve already removed the Black Freighter, which will be released as an animated standalone DVD (which is a very nifty solution, I think).

And now more bad! (This is a real rollercoaster of a blog post today). There’s a game coming. Why is this bad? Well, mostly because movie tie-in games almost always stink up the joint; they are almost always rushed to market to meet an enforced ship date (to coincide with the film) and written by second-tier developers. Hello, Deadline Games. More specifically, what’s great about Watchmen is the literary depth — not something computer games have traditionally excelled in. What’s not so great about Watchmen is the action, as there is (by comic book standards) very little; this is probably why the game is a prequel which promises to “flesh out the backstory of the comics a little more”. So now it needs original writing to the calibre of that in the book. I’ll be very shocked if this isn’t tripe.

Still, I’m an optimist. I’ll certainly be going to see this movie, and if it stinks, well, I can write lots of snotty blog posts about it. It’s a win-win situation! See? Told you I’m an optimist. I’ll close with Kevin Smith’s view of the film from an interview on SuicideGirls.com, based on the early cut he’s seen:

When I watched the movie, the biggest impression I walked away with was, “This could totally be Pulp Fiction to some degree.” For the mainstream audience, when Pulp Fiction came along, they said, “Okay, I know crime thrillers. I know the genre, kind of.” But this is a movie that spins it with this left of center view. With Watchmen, you’ve got people very familiar with the comic-book format of the movie, but it takes this left of center view of it. People who love the comic book are definitely going to go in droves, but I think they’re going to get a lot of people who would never see this movie, based on the buzz factor. It’s the goods, man. It’s a really smart, intelligent film. It’s just like reading the book, but a movie.

Personal Movies