The Magic Roundabout
Yahoo! News - 'Magic Roundabout' Spins Again in Animated Film
It gained cult status in Britain after the BBC asked Eric Thompson -- father of Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson -- to create a version in English. Ignoring the original script, Thompson made up his own words to match the pictures.
The result, by turns naive and surreal, made the series required watching for children as well as adults, who saw in it a thinly-veiled allusion to 1960s drug culture -- something its creator always denied.
Posted by dave on 03 February 2005 at 09:02. TrackBack (0) Comments (0)
Appleseed
From the Apple movie trailers site: Appleseed.
Posted by dave on 29 January 2005 at 13:23. TrackBack (0) Comments (0)
Liberation of Death Camps
Today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps.
On Making Light, We Never Knew takes apart the myth that the world was ignorant of Hitler's plan.
Posted by dave on 26 January 2005 at 13:04. TrackBack (0) Comments (0)
Europe vs America
Europe vs America, by Tony Judt.
As a consequence, Americans live shorter lives than West Europeans. Their children are more likely to die in infancy: the US ranks twenty-sixth among industrial nations in infant mortality, with a rate double that of Sweden, higher than Slovenia's, and only just ahead of Lithuania's—and this despite spending 15 percent of US gross domestic product on "health care"
via the Sideshow.
Posted by dave on 25 January 2005 at 13:26. TrackBack (0) Comments (0)
Mini-mac
Today, Apple released a bunch of new things including the Mac mini.
One area where the mini-macs could make a killing is as video conferencing machines.
I've been experimenting with iChat to AIM and the results are very patchy - the PC end of the connection gets very poor audio and video quality unless the interconnecting bandwidth is very high — like a T1 on each end.
The Mac end is reportedly very good. Even with a good connection, the PC user gets a small little window, while the Mac user gets to resize the window and has more control over what's going on.
Mac to Mac is much better, or so I'm told, even when the bandwidth is poor.
With the next OS X release, four-way chat will be possible, something beyond AIM at the moment.
OSX Tiger with four-way iChat and an iSight on a mini-mac sounds like a good, inexpensive solution for multi-way video conferencing. And ten-way audio conferencing.
Posted by dave on 12 January 2005 at 23:22. TrackBack (0) Comments (1)
Tsunami Fundraiser @ Carnegies
Just received a communication on the musician's grapevine:
This Saturday there will be live music in Carnegies (Lockhart Road, Wanchai) in aid of the Tsunami Disaster appeal. Carnegies will be giving 50% of takings to Oxfam and there will be donation boxes around the bar so that you can chip in with much needed extra dosh. See you there.
Carnegie's Presents:
TSUNAMI RELIEF
Two of Hong Kong's Best Live Bands,
One Night Only
9th State
Tunnel Vision
w/ Special Guests
Your Donations and Half of Every Purchase to OXFAM
This Saturday Night (8th Jan.), 9PM
Posted by dave on 06 January 2005 at 16:09. TrackBack (0) Comments (0)
Happy New Year
A happy and prosperous new year to all.
Posted by dave on 03 January 2005 at 13:34. TrackBack (0) Comments (0)
Hong Kong Blogging
Lamma is illuminated again as HKMacs moves to blogspot.com and escapes the clutches of PCCW.
Posted by dave on 29 December 2004 at 09:31. TrackBack (0) Comments (1)
Happy Christmas!
Happy Christmas to all! (Please subsitute appropriate festival if Christmas isn't something you celebrate.)
Posted by dave on 25 December 2004 at 18:11. TrackBack (0) Comments (0)
Gourami
On of my Blue Gourami swims in the deep blue of the moonlight bulb. An Albino Tiger Barb can be seen in the background.
Posted by dave on 19 December 2004 at 12:00. TrackBack (0) Comments (0)
Buying Cameras in Tsim Sha Tsui
There's another story in the South China Unlinkable Morning Post about people who've been ripped off buying a camera along Nathan Road.
Tourists tell court they were duped over camera
ELAINE WU
Two British tourists flew from London to testify yesterday about how they were duped into buying a camera for twice its normal price.
Advertising managers Nigel Down and his partner Nicola Katav appeared in Kowloon City Court as witnesses in the trial of salesman Yu Wai-tung, of Union Digital World, Tsim Sha Tsui.
Yu, 41, had pleaded not guilty before magistrate Bruce McNair to a charge of attempted fraud for inducing Mr Down to buying a camera for $11,500 on May 1.
Mr Down, a regular business traveller to Hong Kong since 1992, told the court he was duped into buying the 6.3-megapixel Fuji FinePix S7000 camera after Yu told him it had a resolution of 16 megapixels.
Mr Down first bought a Nikon D70 digital camera for $7,000 on Ms Katav's credit card. But he was convinced by Yu that the Fuji model was better, so the salesman ripped up the credit card docket to void the transaction, the court heard. Mr Down was then told he had to pay an extra $960 to buy a Memory Stick device for the camera.
"I thought we were being naive at this point because the credit card was being swiped so many times," Ms Katav said.
It was only after police in the course of an investigation entered the shop and talked to Yu that the couple found out what was going on, the court heard. Yu told one Fuji camera only cost $5,000 and the $11,500 Mr Down paid included a printer and camera lens. But the couple told the court they had not been told about the accessories.
The trial continues on Monday.
The guy's been coming to Hong Kong since 1992 and still hasn't figured out that camera shops along Nathan Road are criminals? Is he thick? Has he never read a single guidebook? Every guidebook that I've read stresses taking great care when buying cameras and electronics in Tsim Sha Tsui. If you ask anyone who actually lives here where to buy a camera, only a complete dribbling idiot would suggest Nathan Road. (Most locals would head for Mong Kok, or Stanley Street in Central.)
Please note that I'm not attempting to justify the actions of the camera shop scum. These guys are thieves and the cumulative damage they have done to Hong Kong's reputation is probably in the millions of dollars worth of people who will never come back or who spread negative word of mouth after being ripped off here.
However, where they are and what they do is pretty much common knowledge. Everyone knows that you have to be careful buying a camera in Tsim Sha Tsui. Everyone knows that they rip off tourists.
The bait and switch tactic used in this case is the classic tactic used by the unscrupulous operators: the victim is quoted a pretty good price for something, but is then told that that price is for an older model, or that there's a far better model for just a few dollars more.
Another point here is that you have to know what you're buying. The D70 is a DSLR, i.e. it's a camera which allows you to use all compatible Nikon lenses. The Fuji is a good camera, but it has a built-in lens. The markets for these two cameras are very different, and it's hard to see someone who wanted a DSLR changing his mind at the last minute and going for the Fuji.
(Note that the pictures are from the Sing Pao, not the SCMP, as the SCMP didn't have any pictures accompanying the article.)