Geek's Guide to London

Blade Runner @ BFI

2008-10-02T09:37:00.001-07:00

So what’s better than watching the Blade Runner: the final cut? (the Matrix series, but for this blogpost, this answer is not admissible).

The answer to that one, ladies and gents, in to get to see and listen to the producer of the movie talk about it. That’s right, soon after Harrison Ford realised his android fetish (on the rather small screen at the BFI, map below), the stage was graced by Michael Deeley, who spoke about various movies (including the Italian Job and Wickerman, among others) and especially on Ridley Scott’s Ground breaking film (if your wondering, which one that is, re-read the title of the post).

While movie buff’s might already know most of what I am going to say, I was quite shocked by two things: first, that the first two attempts to change ‘Do androids dream of electric sheep?’, a book by Phillip k Dick, into a movie were rejected by Deeley (the third attempt and the various re-releases became Blade Runner) and second, that the lack of CGI is what makes this particular movie do ‘organic’ and real. While these revelations make sense in retrospective, they are hard to reach on your own. For sure, Blade Runner, was THE movie that brought Cyberpunk and dystopic-dark Sci-fi into popular thought, but it was its believability that made this possible. In comparison, sure the Matrix series seems to be a more thought out project, however with it’s clean cut neon indulgence and slick black leather, it feels purely created or generated (It can be argued that this was the purpose behind the movie). Blade Runner’s backgrounds, on the contrary, look like they were grown. In a essence, it looks like all the metal-plastic junk on all the sets, were created when the garbage disposal of the city failed; they don’t like they were put there on purpose. This makes background then becomes the perfect stage for a nearly drained out, police approved killer, to look for his deranged and murderous victims and to eventually fall in love with one of them.

Yes, I can go on, on this topic for the next 50 years.
My geek suggestion, make your way to the BFI and see what they’re playing. Since BFI is celebrating its 75 anniversary, you can get hold of good yet cheap tickets. And if you’re lucky, you might just bump into a producer/ director.

I will also use this oppourtunity to introduce the 'Cyberpunk Review'. They talk about this movie here.

The BFI website is:http://www.bfi.org.uk/ (this map is for their Southbank hall)

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Graphic Novels and Manga

2008-09-30T04:21:00.000-07:00

OK, all grown up in the house, you call them comics once more, and ill just have to take up my batman stance and brood about it for the rest of my life. Since that's what the dark knight does most of the times, I will enjoy the brooding from a very very high building's terrace, while you pray that I dont jump off.

Since we've cleared that, lets return to the thoroughly mature and adult aspect of graphic novels. Finding graphic novels, inst very difficult, in fact most book shops seem to have a small collection. Yet two things are difficult to find: back issues and underground comics. Thats where Orbital Comics come in. This store actually has three dedicated shops, with in walking distance from each other, that concentrate on the pillars of graphic culture: Comics, Manga and Designer Toys. Since action figures (hey, grown ups, these toys arent for children, so stop grinning), arent my forte, I didnt make the effort to check this store out. The other two are a must see.

Orbital Comics and Collectibles, as the western comic store is called, is has a tiny store front that is squeezed between a restaurant and a travel agent. If you dont look hard enough you will miss it (and walk past it a couple of times, before some bemused shopkeeper helps you out). The door leads to a basement that is full of the latest comics, back issues and underground publications, that are arranged according to publishers. Although I found this standard classification slightly difficult to comprehend, hey V for vendetta should be in 'V' according to me, the staff are very helpful. In fact, they seem to be walking talking wikipedias on graphic novels and related dark arts!

The manga store is easier to find. Its in a new-ish looking building right next to a shop that sells movie collectibles. This store is all manga, but concentrates more on the newer drawing from the eastern hemisphere. Thats is to say that I did not find any Akira or Ghost in the shell manga, and to be honest that really hurt. Anyway, the staff have introduced me to something called 'Eden', I am now waiting for the first issue to reach the store. While Major Kusunagi cannot be replaced, I hope there I can find some good material in the cyberpunk and postcyberpunk genre. (If you know any, lemme know.)

For the uninitiated, make your way to the graphic side of things at this store!

PS: this store is selling the Watchmen comics for at least 5 pounds less than Forbidden plant.

PPS: these pictures are all from the official site.

The stores are all around Charing Cross Road

their official website is at: http://www.orbitalcomics.com/
For directions look at map below :

Barcamp 5 London: Spillover

2008-09-28T12:38:00.000-07:00

What happens when you put 20 computer geeks, WiFi access, truck loads of coffee and a projector?

You get an unconference. While the concept of having an unstructured geek-meet isnt new, barcamps always tend to offer a peek into some of the most interesting things that people are doing with computing, the web and almost anything that they can get their hands on. The Barcamp 5: spillover wasnt an exception.

Thanks to delayed tubes, the start of the weekend and most people having gone to the barcamp (instead of the spillover), this particular meet brought together smaller but more enthusiastic groups. (Hey, if you make your way even if most of the city is sleeping or paralysed, you got to be enthusiastic right?) As a result the talks on Hansard, Drupal and 'understanding how to understand user requirements' (yes this the best way to make you understand what was said), brought together speakers who were prepared to volley and parry any jargon-laden query that was shot at them.

So what does all this mean? This means that if youre a geek and you thing you have cred, walk into the next barcamp and prove your mettle.

Here is some of the list of people who spoke (and write well too!)
•Cher Devey, spoke on how most web application developers are forgetting the human aspect before coding new features and software.

•Conard Taylor, Spoke on how to gauge what user's want before you create a knowledge aggregating web app, he did this through a possible game like scenario.

•Ishriya Paireepairit, spoke on Drupal.

•'The geek lawyer', whose real name now eludes me, spoke on how you stop the british government from asking you to give up your digital signature, thereby granting them access to all your private files.

•Robert Brook, spoke about Hansard and the various simple but monumental tasks that need to be done in with it.

(Thank you Harry for organising this brilliant event!)

The pictures that I have used here have been taken by Ishriya.
The event was held at the British Computer Society, which is at:

The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA. (see map below)

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Listening Post @ Science Museum

2008-09-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

Dictum no 1:"If a city has a science museum, you must go to it" .
So as soon as I got to London, I decided to make my way to the other side of the Victoria and Albert museum. Yet as I stepped into the large airy halls, it wasn’t the air conditioned draft that hit me, it was age. Sure the museum is fun, but only if you are in the early double digits of life. Otherwise, you walk through the halls, hoping that WallE will run in and compact everything into cubes of waste. Sorry curator, but this place is getting old!

Yet there is one gem in this steam engine obsessed museum: the Listening Post. With the help of tiny and noisy displays hung on parallel wires, chunks of real time chat data are streamed into one cacophonous, almost steampunk inspired, display. While the unaware chat away on the web, this conniving art display, steals their typed words and displays them, on a wide galaxy of tiny screens. While the almost-neon letters chatter into formation, they give a feeling of the matrix streaming in front of your eyes. Unrelated words nudge each other to form coherent sentences in the viewer's mind, shockingly making us aware of the banality of our instant communication, and the sheer emotion that flows through the 'information' super highway.
Unconvinced? Watch the video....

Travel tip: please carry sugary treats for bored adults.

The museum website: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/

Video Courtsey: kapschamedia

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Robot Love: Hamleys and Model Zone

2008-09-26T04:04:00.000-07:00

Positronic brains of R Giskard, the sheer annoying attitude of Optimus Prime, the dustiness of Wall-E and the T series of terminator, Robots are as robot does. We the creators, watch in amazement as our electro-mechanical children take over the world….
Ok technophobes, your fix for the day is done, You can go home now.

For the others, the slightly more IC inclined, robotics conjures up memories of metallic benevolence or steel fisted terror. The drive to built the next robot Jeeves, is enough to gallivanting across the city, looking for the perfect stepper motors and the associated gear arrangements. For me, London harboured one distinct Robot safe house (if they need one that is): Hamley’s. With its fantastic red colours and the floor upon floor of boxes shining with mechanical creatures waiting to pounce, Hamley’s doesn’t give the felling of a robot builders paradise. And its not. Period. It’s a frustrating and fruitless exercise. When a store doesn’t have Lego Mindstorms, it should be closed down. This should be a law: ‘Toy Stores without Lego Mindstorms will be burnt and the owners will be made to put out the flame with a can of Petrol’ .

So it was with total disgust, that I walked out of Hamley’s, just itching to send one of my robot buddies to tear the store down. Then I came across Model Zone in High Holborn. Sure it isn’t as flashy as Hamleys, but it is a builders paradise. This store has model planes, full miniature railways and a wide selection of Meccano robots. While the prices of the Meccano are the same in almost every store, I feel that the Model Zone was slightly cheaper than Hamleys. The catch is that this store has no Lego, what so ever. Hold back the riots, they never claimed to have any Lego either.

Stores aside, I think I have fallen in love with the Meccano Spykees. the fact that they are WiFi compatible just makes them more appealing. The price tag, seems a bit prohibitive though. Yes, I would like to know about any builder’s con that happens in the city.. so if you know, just lemme know through the link on the bottom left corner.

Coming back to Legos, I think I’ll just have to go to Lego Land!

Both these stores have their own sites (the Hamley’s site sucks even more than the store):
www.hamleys.com
http://www.modelzone.co.uk/
Directions to both the stores are on the maps:

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Forbidden Planet

2008-09-25T05:31:00.000-07:00

Its isn’t just the name, ‘forbidden planet’, that makes me want to go to it; it sounds like the BDSM capital of the known universe, that’s incentive enough. Unfortunately for the leather inspired, and fortunately for BSG lovers, this mega store stays away from the sex part of things. It focuses more on the ‘Sexy’ part of things: namely Starbuck. For the uninitiated, this store holds almost every sci-fi fetish known to geek-kind: from a full-scale-all wired-almost naked-posters of major Kusunagi (ghost in the shell), action figures, t-shirts that praise the gods of outer worlds, trekkie stuff, star wars memorabilia and book shop that includes every genre, subgenre and their underground illegitimate children ( I found cyberpunk, that isn’t even traceable online…).

I was amazed at the magazine and comic collection that the store has to offer. While Heroes comics seem to be making their rounds every where (watch the latest episode here), things like the Matrix comics are available now for a fraction of the price! Unfortunately this older-for-cheaper section requires the searching skills of google and the patience of those who are yet to discover caffeine (translation: seek and you might just find). While most Hollywood notables are available here, the upcoming Watchmen movie has ensured that the comics remain at a painful £20. (I’d still download for free).

Sure for those who don’t like to depend on material things, this store hold little. But then again, it is a ‘store’, you come to buy. At least that’s what you get told for hanging around too much!

PS lots of authors keep coming here for book signings, so keep checking the official site.

PPS: the pictures used in this post are from google images, I will put up my own pictures after i get a camera!

More information is available at: http://www.forbiddenplanet.com/fp
Address: 179 Shaftesbury Ave, Camden, London WC2H, UK (see map)

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GiGo testing

2008-09-24T15:23:00.001-07:00

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its strange writing like this cause i think thats this is a bit too
large!!!!! why doesnt the text come back to the regular size????