Second Shot

Glorious days in Sony-land as they win a legal case against import company Lik-Sang over “infringed copyright and trademark laws by selling Japanese PSPs to European consumers”, and stuff about the handhelds and consoles not being tested for European markets, not being able to play PAL games and DVDs, and other such blantantly obvious issues.

Sony then hit back saying that Lik-Sang never turned up for court and so why should it be our fault (or something to that effect). And so Lik-Sang is lost forever.

Now, I won’t argue the point of importing stock, copyright laws, etc. as I don’t know enough to take sides. But what I will say is that Sony’s spin (or whatever reason to take the focus away from the legal issue) in saying that imported machines won’t play PAL items and that by clamping down they are taking care of their customers is an absolutely crap excuse. I mean, if we’re importing games and machines, don’t Sony think that we might already know the ins-and-outs of what importing means and its results.

Who else, other than gamers, are going to be importing items, using the internet in such an au fait manner? We are old enough (we have to be at least 18-yrs otherwise we can’t get a credit card, for fuck’s sake) to make our own choices in life without your ‘help’, Sony. Just get out of our faces and go back to fucking up your PS3 launch. In fact, that’s probably the reason for all the importing on your products because you can’t even manage to launch in all three major continents in less than six months. Wise-up as to why gamers need to import and realise that you’re getting our bloody money anyway.

Now bugger off and sort out those blue lasers.

A couple of weeks back, a colleague made the decision to leave the Building Services industry for something a little different. It was pretty short notice and even he hadn’t planned it long before the announcement. Yesterday we went for drinks and today was his last day at work.

He’s a smart guy and taught me quite a bit, especially near the beginning of my employment on a particular project that is still giving us a headache. I never really worked directly for him, more working with him and assisting, but he made sure that anyone working with him was on equal ground. What’s more is that he was one of the longest serving employees at our new business group but never made himself any more than a new employee (i.e. me) or any less than a senior engineer.

I don’t think I thanked him properly when I went to have a chat with him before I went off home today, but I suppose my working with him to ease his own workload is a way of presenting the same gratitude.

Best wishes for the future, Steve.

It’s surprising how many people actually think of the same things but don’t bother to say anything – except for comedians. Last Thursday was comedy night on BBC with ‘Extras’ and ‘That Mitchell and Webb Look’ (and ‘Mock the Week’ but I don’t think it that funny). Still have to watch Extras at some point, but TMaWL had one particular sketch that I was thinking about the night before.

Just what the hell do people in toothbrush companies do all day? Seriously, it’s just a stick with bristles on it – different shaped profiles and whatnot – but a stick-n-bristles item nonetheless. They only ever release a new idea every few months, sometimes once a year, so what about the rest of the time?

TMaWL didn’t really answer that question but, boy, was it a great parody. The classic boardroom meeting, getting their creative team to think up new ideas, and the super ‘tell them what they have to do’ idea of getting people to brush their tongue. Oh yes indeed, they’ve reached the latest instalment in the great story of toothbrushland. And I bet they do all that in real-life.

There is no moral to this post, other than the fact that I have a very topical mind (in a comedy sort of way). The End.

There are days when all the work done is seemingly productive but it all falls down at the final hurdle. Today wasn’t one of the those days. It was one of those where you kick the first hurdle and spill out all over the place, tripping up everyone else with you.

Well, okay, it wasn’t that bad, but my senior is pretty stressed out with the workload and the air of overwhelming importance of everything is getting to me. It’s not that he’s passing the workload to me, it’s just his body language telling me that nothing will be enough for the next-day’s meeting. The thing is that there’s little that I can do beyond what he gives me to do – mainly because I’m so inexperienced (but also don’t get paid enough to stick around for the late hours).

What I do is probably pretty useful, but at times it just doesn’t feel like it’s enough and I feel pretty bad is someone else gets shafted because of something or rather (even if it’s not related to me – it’s worse if it is). I don’t know, it’s not great having such a feeling on the tube home.

Mind, the day didn’t start all that well because the bloody Hammersmith and City tubes were delayed and I had to make a long-winded trip to get to work. By the time it was 9am, I was still 20-minutes from Hammersmith. I couldn’t be arsed to care at that point. Thank God I’m on flexitime.

Last weekend was Clerks II weekend and, having seen a number of Kevin Smith’s films in recent months, was a must-see to… see… how things have fared for shop-clerks duo, Dante and Randal. It was 12 years ago since their last proper outing, and with a number of cult-classic films under his belt and having heard that Clerks II was given an eight minute standing ovation at its very first full-length preview, there couldn’t possibly be anything to lose.

And indeed there wasn’t, though as enjoyable as it was, it just didn’t seem quite classic enough. It follows a style similar to other Smith film, the focus of two or three people going about their daily lives and telling of their stories. And how life is just generally never fantastic unless you make it so. For die-hard fans of Smith, there’s nothing to lose as it is good. For those interested in satirical comedy, it’ll be okay. But otherwise, it’ll probably totally throw you and you’ll wonder what the point of it all was.

For me, it just didn’t seem to work quite as well as his previous films; there seemed a slight lack of connection between the viewers and the actors. And then there was the song-and-dance routine which I think was totally out of character for a Smith film, although he was probably poking fun at something. It was humourous, ridiculous and quite (funnily-)disturbing in parts, and was a good romp through life-changing views of the clerks.

The cameos that frequent in Smith’s films were there, namely Ben Affleck and Jason Lee, making extremely brief appearances and practically no contribution to the story. In fact, them showing up had quite the opposite effect and detracted from the quality of Clerks II – Smith really should have tried to put them in a little bit more, although understandably with Dante and Randal working as burger-flippers at Mooby’s it’ll be difficult to make sense for patronages to stay longer than necessary.

If you like Smith films, then you’ll like this. But it’s probably not a good choice to get you to be a Smith fan.