New Bell’s Ad

Another day, another video. But that’s the way the internet is going these days, isn’t it? Static pictures and mere words are becoming less trendy and with better speed (ha!) and greater bandwidth (haha!), video are where it’s at.

And this one is pretty cool. The new Bell’s Whisky ad from King James:

Very nice. Give those guys… well… you know.

Tomorrow, less video, more photos. Probably.

Embrace coming back

One of my favourite bands from the 1990s are making a bit of a comeback. they have a new single out in a couple of weeks and a new album (their first in 7 (seven) years) out in April. This is good news and the new stuff sounds quite good too. This is even better news.

Here’s the touching, curious video for Refugees, set in Huddersfield by the look of it.
Never mind.

You may remember Embrace from such hits as Come Back To What You Know, All You Good Good People and the hauntingly beautiful Fireworks.

I enjoyed the whole 80s revival thing, and I have high hopes ready to be crushed that this is the beginning of a 90s revival, which I would surely enjoy even more.

Darkskies: Another Manx timelapse

I mentioned here that the Isle of Man has the largest concentration of Dark Sky sites in the British Isles. Well, now Glenn Whorral has documented some of these in a beautiful timelapse video:

Very pretty. It loses a mark or two because the music isn’t by Ludovico Einaudi, (it’s by Adrian Kelley), but otherwise, beautiful stuff.

Other timelapse videos on 6000 miles… 

What’s The Problem With That?

From the Guardian, this:

tgrI don’t think that this is breaking news to anyone, really. But while the Guardian uses the word “admits”, as if it’s some sort of dirty secret, executive producer Andy Wilman is refreshingly open about the whole thing:

He said the show offers “an hour a week where absolutely nothing is achieved, but the path to nine-year-old escapism is briefly lit up”. He added: “Most TV shows that have been going for as long as ours refresh themselves by forcibly injecting new elements into the format, but on Top Gear we keep ourselves young by ageing. You’re watching an organic journey of those three going through their motoring lives.

No-one actually watches Top Gear for reviews of the vehicles on there, do they? Sure – back in the late 70s and 80s, that’s what it was about, but since Clarkson and Hammond took over in 2002 (and were joined by May after the first season of the relaunch), it’s pure entertainment, tenuously linked to cars.

Willman vowed that upcoming shows won’t tamper with the childish formula, offering a rally in supermarket aisles, a tank smashing through a building and a drive round a nuclear site.

See?

I wouldn’t really class myself as “middle-aged”, nor as having “a mental age of nine” (others may disagree on both these points), but I’ll certainly be tuning in when Season 21 begins next month in SA.

Dizzy new heights

There was altogether too much undissipated energy coursing through the veins of the younger members of the 6000 family this morning, and so a dissipation intervention was required.

City Rock was it. Indoor rock climbing with literally thousands of those weird plastic artificial hand and foot holds plastered across overhanging plywood walls and fibreglass cliff faces.

At R125 per child, it’s not cheap, and even then you’re limited as to what they are able to do. There are four automatic belay lines which they can use and then there are a few walls where they can free climb. But if you want to use the rest of the facilities, you need to hire an instructor to help you along, and that’s an additional R150 per hour.

For two kids for an hour, that’s R400 (about €0.57 at today’s exchange rate *weeps*). Plenty wonga, especially as Scoop wouldn’t climb higher than about 3 metres even when attached to several tonnes of warehouse.
So we didn’t do that today.

That said, the kids did enjoy themselves a lot. Alex especially wanted to climb all of the things, and ended up frustrated by the roof, so maybe we’ll look to share an instructor one day in the future.
In the meantime, plenty of excess energy was dissipated and the rest of the afternoon and evening passed off without any problems.

Intervention successful.