Olympic Shooting - just mind the flowers.

There I was, chatting with my mum yesterday, who was letting off steam and having a good old rant about the Olympics (actually, a source of comment all day), when we moved onto the subject of the forthcoming London Olympics in 2012.

"I think it's ridiculous, they're building all new sites for the Olympics, you know."
"What?" I replied, "Aren't they using Wembly Stadium?"
"No, they're building a new stadium for the thing. And the shooting too, building a whole new site for that, which they're going to take down at the end of the Olympics, because they're worried about guns. Why don't they just use sites, they've already got? We've got Wisley for shooting!"

Just as long as they watch out for the flowers!

Going to the Movies

So what happened? Last year, just as soon as I mentioned that I was single again, there was a flurry of interest. Invitations came, minor flirting happened.

But it was all too soon. I wanted time to regain my equilibrium. Find my chi. Stretch out alone in the king size bed, and feel nothing there. I wasn't ready to start looking for the next man - yet!

I'm still not ready for anything serious, but I want to go to the Movies. There are films I want to see which aren't suitable for my girls, and while I did enjoy Wall-e very much, the thought of having to sit through High School Musical 3 fills me, as you can possibly imagine, with horror. I want to go and see Hellboy II. I wanted to go and see Wanted (Angelina Jolie and guns - nuff said) ,but missed it. I want to go and see The Mummy 3 - it's got Terracotta Warriors, I'm hard pressed how it can get any better. I missed the latest Indiana Jones movie because the girls didn't want to go. The summer is filled with blockbusters, and I can't find a film buddy.

It's not just the silly blockbusters, although, as you can see, there's a certain excitement generated at the thought of going to see some of them. I want to go and see slightly odd films. Not as odd, you understand, as The Fountain, a film so obscure and strange that I still have no idea what it was all about. I love foreign films - especially those from the east. The Chinese have produced some gloriously beautiful films. Hero - all those beautiful colours, and an ending requiring a boxful of tissues. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - equally beautiful, and with wonderful story.

And what of Anime, I hear you cry? I'm getting to that. I LOVE Anime! Is it just me, or do the Japanese really have the most way out imagination in the world? I can imagine the conversation in Hollywood...

"So, I've got this idea for a movie."
"OK - let's hear it!"
"Right, it's set in the future, not too far..."
"Oooh, Sci-fi - I like it!"
"And there are these kids..."
"Good, appeals to all age groups - I'm getting ya!"
"And they all have a little implant which allows them to connect to the web."
"OK - I'm still on-board."
"And these glasses which allow them to see what they're accessing with their virtual keyboards, which they can't see unless they've got their glasses on..."
"Yes..."
"And the whole space around them is created in cyber space, but sometimes the space gets corrupted, so someone's created these big ol' virus programs which go round trying to re-format the corrupted space..."
"Say wha'?"
"No, stay with me! But there's a problem because the virus programs can actually affect the kids, if they're caught by them while wearing their glasses..."
"NEXT!"
"And they've got these little cyber-pets, which they can't touch, and can't see without their glasses..."
"Bye now, missing you already!"

This is actually the premise behind Denou Coil (which I found on the net not that long ago), and it's really that weird! But it's got a great story. Obviously someone would grumble about the lack of tactile feedback on a virtual keyboard... Although most of the Anime I've seen is a) suitable for children and b) far too big to be contained in anything as short as a film, there have been some wonderful films - the most notable being those created by Miyazaki.

So, this is my crie de coeur - I want to go to the MOVIES!

Whining about Windows

My soon-to-be-ex husband bought my in-laws a computer a few weeks ago. This is a big deal, you know (apart from the seemingly generous gesture), because it's taken them years, literally years of prevarication to get to this point. The number of times I've sat with Margaret at my computer as we looked up something she wanted to find, and had been saving for weeks to ask me, escapes me. They'd come for Sunday lunch, and we'd end up spending the afternoon on the interweb, looking for things. I'll never forget Eric's first foray onto eBay, where he bought, with some glee, some golf clubs from the US for the usual bargain price. Margaret and I had located an old friend of hers, not through Friends Reunited in the end, but by Googling her name!

I'd tried to set up a computer for them so they could dial up the internets and browse eBay, send emails, read my blog etc. Unfortunately it was a very old machine, and I was trying to use Linux to set up a Modem I'd been assured would work. Since my knowledge of Linux is still very limited, you can imagine how pathetic it was a couple of years ago while I was trying this project.

So, you can see - it's a big deal.

But where, I hear you cry, does the whining come in?

Last week, just after we'd returned from France, and were still shaking the sand out of EVERYTHING, I got a call from my mum-in-law. I thought this was a call for a chat, and settled down to do justice to a good chit-chat, but was surprised to find that the real reason for the call was to ask for help on the computer. So I put on my computer solving hat, and asked for the symptoms. It turned out to be a pretty big problem - Vista wouldn't let them log on. I don't know about you, but being able to log on to my computer is a pretty fundamental part of it all.

The message "The user profile service service failed the logon"(sic) produced a page full of results on the aforementioned Google, showing me quickly that this is a known problem. A Known Problem? Yet, not a Fixed problem, apparently. And, according to the dates of the entries, a well-know-for-at-least-the-last-8-months problem.

What the hell are Microsoft playing at? This is not a user fixable problem, although when the aforementioned soon-to-be-ex husband went down there to help, with his good computer knowledge (c'mon, can you really see me having married a guy with no computer skills? Really?) it was a relatively simple task to get Windows to start up in Safe Mode, and restore the system to a previous point. But why wasn't this easier for Margaret and Eric to find? I tried to talk them through starting up in Safe Mode, but somehow this didn't work and since I couldn't see what was going on, and don't know Vista very well, it all worked to confound me. Fixing problems aside - why on earth is this problem still rearing it's hideously ugly head, a year (oh yes, a whole bloody year) after it was first talked about on the web? This is, as previously mentioned, a pretty fundamental issue.

You can cope, as an end user, with a lot of things going wrong with your computer, if you can login. If an application goes tits-up, well, you can attempt to uninstall and re-install it. As long as you can login. If your internet connection dies, if you can login to the computer, you can attempt to talk to your router, try pinging something external - IF YOU CAN LOGIN!