In some kind of HEL

I’m in Helsinki. This is good.

I’m awake. This is not so good

Left Laura’s flat yesterday at 1pm and proceeded to visit pretty
much every bomb site via the northern line, to drop her off at Euston so
she could return to her parents and then on to Paddington by bus to meet
Robot101. Rather surprisingly we managed to meet up without too much
hanging around and then catch the slightly slower, but much cheaper
Heathrow Connect. The train is on the departures board as being to
“Hayes & Harlington. Also stops at Heathrow.” despite
heathrow being beyond Hayes. It might as well have added “but don’t tell
any one”. I suspect Heathrow
Express might have words if they advertised
going to Heathrow too much. I really don’t think it is worth paying
14.00GBP over 9.50GBP for the ten minutes less it takes for the non-stop
service.

Met up with various other people at Heathrow consisting of Scott James
Remnant, Steve McIntyre, Rob Taylor, Phil Hands and Simon Kelley. Flight
delayed by 25 minutes, although it was about 18:40 befre we actually
took off. Arrived in Helsinki around midnight, only to find it doing
some impression of dusk. Surprised to be met by Jesus and other locals
so we didn’t need to work out the busses, even though various people had
been organised enough to print out the lovely photographic guide to
HUT.

It’s now 8am localtime so time for breakfast. It has no right being
this bright, this early in the morning.

GUADEC 6

Yesterday my employers, Runtime Collective, decided
that it might be a good idea if one of us attended GUADEC, and as I was
the only one that could make it, I am going on a trip to Stuttgart.
Yesterday afternoon was spent frantically hunting around for train
tickets. Managed to find tickets going out on Saturday evening and a
sleeper from Paris to Stuttgart arriving at 6:20 and returning Tuesday
night, Wednesday morning. Annoyingly we have seats on the overnight to
Stuttgart, but bunk beds on the way back. Fortunately, they had run out
of standard Eurostar tickets, so we get to go first class for the same
price. Should make up for spending 8 hours trying to sleep in a
seat.

Things in particular I want to see are keithp’s talk on the future of
X, Owen’s talk on Cairo and jdub’s talk on Project Topaz. Seeing as this
is a work trip, mjg59’s powermanagement, the Linux Desktop Migration and
the Public Sector Desktops will be required viewing too.

Oh and I’ve managed to drap lauranat along to be my official
translator, seeing as my only german phrase is likely to get me arrested
for perversion. That and the fact that she would have actually killed me
if I’d gone to Germany without her. Now I wonder if I can get work to
pay for her train ticket …

Donnie Dark – Director’s Cut

Finally got around to watching the director’s cut of Donnie Darko.
Overall I think it is an improvement on the theatrical release,
especially with the addition of the pages from the Philosophy of Time
Travel interspersed throughout the film. It makes it a little easier to
understand what is going on and the film feels more like it makes sense.

Two changes bothered me though. One was the changed graphics as time
is reversed and the montage during the party. They reminded me a little
bit too much of Robocop and Terminator. The other thing, which, for me,
really let the film down was the changing of music from Echo and the
Bunnymen – The Killing Moon to INXS – Never Tear Us Apart in the opening
scenes. I’ve blogged
previously about how I really enjoyed the opening
scenes to this film and I just didn’t feel that INXS gave the scene the
same magical quality that the original did. It is a shame, because it
let down what was otherwise a really good Director’s Cut.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Warning: Spoilers

Just finished watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again. I
never really agreed with the ending of the film when I watched it at the
cinema. Something about it didn’t quite sit right with me. The last
10-15 minutes felt a little bit tacked on and didn’t quite fit with the
rest of the film. I don’t know if this is because I wanted it to end
differently. I always felt that they shouldn’t have found out that they
erased each other. I think they should have just fallen in love with
each other without knowing that they had already fallen in and out of
love with each other before. I think at the time I felt as if they had
rewritten the ending after initial screenings

Having seen it a second time, I think I have changed my mind and
think that the ending works a lot better than I thought initially. They
decide that they want to be with each other even though they know that
they are likely to find massive faults with each other in the
future.