I loved this movie but, the more I reflect on it, the less I like it. There's no doubt that Frances McDormand deserves every accolade - she's one of those rare actors who can completely inhabit a character and makes the screen light up. Chloé Zhao's direction is subtle and sublime, giving us a tender and touching portrait of a community cast adrift. I always find it hard watching stories featuring people who continually make poor decisions. And I find it even more upsetting when you can see …
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I am a vain man. For a few years, I've been tracking academic papers which cite my blog posts. Recently, someone let me know that they'd found one of GitHub repos in a paper they'd read. It hadn't even occurred to me to search for those! So, shove your GitHub URl into Google Scholar - https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=github.com/edent - and you'll see if any repos have made it into academia. Have you spotted any of your code in interesting places? Let me know in the comments ☺ Leigh D…
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Search back through this blog and you'll find dozens of posts about QR codes. Back in the day, I was a freelance "Mobile Internet" consultant. I'd rock up to companies and say "you know you can get the Web on your phone, right? It's going to be the next big thing!" And people would pay me handsomely for that advice. I'd also talk about apps - "You don't need one, but if you're going to develop one, here's what you need to know." It was like pushing on an open door. My final pitch was…
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I remember being blown away by the original Matrix. I was an impressionable teenager and it absolutely melted my mind. The story was recycled from a hundred different sci-fi tropes that I was already familiar with - but the direction and effects were outstanding. Nowadays, of course, CGI is par for the course. Literally any film-maker with a laptop can churn out effects a hundred times better than the original movie. So directors have to rely on story if they want to make an impact. I…
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"Alexa… timer for fifteen minutes." The problem with the English language is that it is full of homophones, or semi-homophones. 15 and 50 sound basically the same. Humans have a hard time distinguishing them. So there's no wonder that voice assistants also have difficulty. Recently, I've noticed that my wife and I have adopted a very specific accent when talking to our Alexa. Certain constants are emphasised, phonemes are executed with precision, and pauses between words subtly lengthened - a…
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What a dull and plodding movie. It is utterly devoid of joy, wonder, and excitement. Instead, we get obviously bored actors reciting tediously incomprehensible exposition for two hours. It's Captain Planet for the modern age. Only with their powers combined can our calculatedly-diverse cast defeat the baddies! So just like every other MCU story. The eponymous Eternals are aliens masquerading as gods - so far, so Erich von Däniken. But, somehow Palpatine returned their old enemies have come …
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As previously discussed, I'm doing the Certified Blockchain Professional course. It is self-directed learning, so I'm going through it at my own pace. In order to consolidate my learning, and help organise my thoughts, I'm blogging about my reflections on each module. These are mostly notes to myself - but I hope if you find something interesting (or incorrect) that you'll leave a comment. Part of the problem with this book is that it is so credulous. It takes almost everything at face value…
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I wish I was clever enough to get all the symbolism of this movie! Dev Patel is consistently one of the best British actors of the modern age. He doesn't just carry this film - he elevates it. Usually I'd tire of an actor being in every single shot, but he has this gift of remaining interesting and allowing the focus to flow to the other characters. It feels like the sort of movie that Terry Gilliam would make - if he could be persuaded to reign in the excess. Or Quentin Tarintino if he could …
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These tetrominoes are built from emoji and have roughly the same colour as the pieces from Tetris. They are not accessible to people with screen readers. But they're quite fun if you want to play Tetris via a text-only medium. ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🟦 ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🟦 ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🟦 ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🟦 ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️ 🟩⬛️🟧⬛️⬛️🟥🟥⬛️⬛️⬛️ 🟩🟩🟧⬛️🟨🟨🟥🟥⬛️⬛️ 🟫🟩🟧🟧🟨🟨⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️ 🟫🟫🟫🟧🟪🟫🟫🟥🟦⬛️ 🟦🟧🟧🟧🟪🟪🟥🟥🟦⬛️ 🟦🟨🟨🟩🟪🟦🟥⬛️🟦⬛️ And the individual pieces: 🟦 🟦 🟦 🟦 🟩 🟩🟩 ⬛️🟩 🟨🟨 🟨🟨 🟪 🟪🟪 🟪 ⬛️🟥 🟥🟥 🟥 ⬛️🟫 ⬛️🟫 🟫🟫 …
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Some of you may be familiar with the Feynman Algorithm. It is a general technique to solve any problem. The steps are as follows: Write down the problem. Think real hard. Write down the solution. Easy! As part of my MSc, I have to write a series of assignments. These are essays with a strict word count and an even stricter marking scheme. I'm proud that I've successfully developed a technique for writing these assignments. I've noticed that a number of students don't know where to begin…
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If you enjoyed this, I would thoroughly recommend that you watch シン・ゴジラ (Shin Godzilla) - a brilliant Japanese film about the bureaucracy involved in the Japanese state's reaction to a Godzilla attack. It's a biting satire - expertly showcasing the number of photocopiers it would take to organise the response. Brilliant film! Don't Look Up is a lot less subtle. But, it does have the A-List of comedy giving it their all. I keep forgetting that Leonardo DiCaprio is such a great actor. The whole c…
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Sometimes - only sometimes - slowness is a feature, not a bug. A few weeks ago, I was reading about a purported use for "smart contracts". If your plane is cancelled, a smart-contract could automatically pay out your travel insurance, the millisecond the cancellation was reported. Nifty, right‽ Slowness for crap reasons There are plenty of processes which are slow for annoying reasons. The insurance company is slow in the hope that you won't pursue your claim. That's good for their b…
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