Last day of July! Just a quick entry – found a very impressive retailer of Region 1 DVDs: North American DVD. I ordered Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Friday 20th, and it arrived on Friday 27th, with total cost of UKP 15.84 (and this was one of their more expensive DVDs). The online environment is a bit lacking – no account or order status or anything like that, but the service speaks for itself.

Saw Searching for Bobby Fischer over the weekend (On a region 1 DVD – my PS2 chipping worked!!!!). Very enjoyable film, although the friend who lent it to me led me to believe there was a romantic/emotional subtext involving a woman, which I spent the whole film looking for!! Going to watch it again this weekend before sending it back – worth a view though.

A very pleasing little number – Reese Witherspoon is suprisingly good too – but I can’t help thinking that this is a story and script which deserves the stage.
But very engaging and funny, can’t really fault the acting or screenplay. Definitly worth watching if it’s your thing!

A moderate film; not really enough plot or action to satisfy, and only one significant car chase in a film where 50 high-performance cars are stolen!

Meant to say – saw Shrek last week at the cinema (superb film – go see!), and then Gone in 60 Seconds on DVD (a moderate film; not really enough plot or action to satisfy, and only one significant car chase in a film where 50 high-performance cars are stolen!).

Also played my first Playstation 2 game (Sky Odyessy) which is fun, but also very frustrating as it is sort of half a flight simulator, only with the useful aspects of flight-sims missing (such as an artifical horizon on the HUD). Was glad I only rented it (would be worth picking up for a tenner, I guess, but not worth 30 or 40 quid).

Last of all I chipped my PS2 to play all-region DVDs and output them in RGB. The RGB fix works, but haven’t tested the region coding bypass (see channeltechnology.com).

Very exciting week – had my first paper published (at my first computing conference), and found out that one of my patents has been granted!

Well and truly broken my enigma losing streak; although there have been a couple of tricky ones recently, which I didn’t do. Last week’s (1141: Powers of Two) was good, haven’t started this week’s yet.

Summer School two weeks ago, photoshoot this morning, and then away at a conference Monday and Tuesday – what a busy life we lead!

Long time without an update – mainly ‘cos nothing’s happened!

Did find a very good online gaming site; check out itsyourturn.com

Fun, but also very frustrating as it is sort of half a flight simulator, only with the useful aspects of flight-sims missing (such as an artifical horizon on the HUD). Was glad I only rented it (would be worth picking up for a tenner, I guess, but not worth 30 or 40 quid).

Ok Enigma this week – used the computer as a calculator.
I’m away all next week in Guildford at the BVMA/EPSRC Computer Vision Summer School. Should be good.
European Grand Prix this weekend too.