Outlook

Just recovered from an Outlook 2000 inbox meltdown...

Although I managed to fix problems (got speedy and helpful advice from Mark Voss...) with that email program, I lost all messages from last month, and the folder-sorting rules turned up DOA (and will need writing again).

It could have been much worse if I had needed to un/ re-install Outlook from scratch! Who'd have thought M$ would stick a 2GB size limit (after which it simply corrupts!) on Outlook's PST file? Looks like I will have to get back into the auto-archiving habit, to prevent a repeat of this Outlook failure.

So... 10,000+ messages (many with xMB attachments). Where else to store them?
I just knew someone would suggest Gmail (and they did).
;D

Watching

Since my old Hitachi TV set had recently developed quite annoying faults, I decided it was overdue for a 21st century replacement. After failing to get a Toshiba special offer (which sold out, very quickly!), I eventually chose a Sony D3500 series 40-inch digital LCD panel (model # KDL40). Product reviews had nothing but praise for the Sony TV range's 'Bravia' engine, and its screen contrast ratio 16000:1 was greater than specs of several other brands and models I considered. Sony also offered more connections, including two HDMI sockets, two SCART, one for a PC, various amps, and other components.

This new high-definition widescreen television certainly looks impressive, as a piece of consumer tech (taking up much less space than old bulky CRT), and for watching movies on. Adding to my existing kit of Sanyo multi-region DVD player, Orion DVD recorder, and trusty old Hitachi VHS machine, I also bought a Samsung BDP1400 blu-ray player, which does a fantastic job of automatically upscaling standard DVDs (region 2 or region-free discs, only!), but really comes into its own when outputting the content of blu-ray discs (region B only) at full HD 1080p to Sony's TV.

Picture and sound quality is astounding, which takes some getting used to (having so many tiny details now clearly visible on a big-screen TV can be distracting). As others who've converted to blu-ray and HD TV have said, there's simply no going back to cathode-ray viewing after experiencing hi-def digital at home, and the differences in viewing quality are particularly notable when looking at the playback of old video for comparison. Even a first-generation VHS copy looks quite fuzzy.

Cloudbusting

Intriguing New Scientist article here about clouds spotted before earthquakes. Amused by added comments, too, which include one from 'Cloud Appreciation Society' (I wonder about their attention span)!

Clarke RIP

Arthur C. Clarke was one of 20th century literature's three giants of science fiction. (The other two were Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein.) Clarke died, at the grand age of 90, on Wednesday 19th March (though news reached UK while it was still Tuesday) and it's a very saddening thought for genre fans reflecting on how the author of classic novels - like 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Childhood's End, produced such powerfully imaginative books that he was largely responsible for introducing them to SF in the first place, and making his readers life-long fans and followers of the genre's unique sense-of-wonder. (When I was a kid, it was Clarke's Earthlight which got me hooked on reading SF!)

When reading (and reviewing for Starburst #171), Odyssey, Neil McAleer's authorised biography of Clarke, I noted that it presented an essentially positive view of Clarke, without any muck-raking (Clarke's autobiography Astounding Days paints a similarly rosy picture), but that did not - and still doesn't - suggest that any negative comments were due, anyway. And it's worth remembering it was Clarke who attained a "cosmic eloquence" in his SF books and lectures that still remains unequalled in the field and the genre canon. With that in mind, I think that any number of human flaws and character faults should be overlooked. Clarke's single-volume Collected Stories is a treasure house of imaginative SF lore and it's changing focus over decades, and it reveals much about the genre's development as fantastic literature.

I've always found it fascinating to compare the film 2001 with the novel version, one being a genuine work of art by Stanley Kubrick (see here), and the other being a kind of distillation of Clarke's views on some of the big questions (about life-as-we-know-it, the ever-surprising universe, and everything..?), some of which remain unanswered in 21st century. Although it's obviously a great shame that so little of Clarke's boundless optimism has survived the various social changes of the millennium, there can be no doubt that his visionary input into SF is a vital guiding light as we lurch towards whatever future state (or complete mess?) the world gets into next.

MindFlesh

Revelatory sequences concerning the protagonist’s boyhood underscore the incandescent psycho-eroticism of MindFlesh by Robert Pratten (the maker of London Voodoo, interviewed for The ZONE). Any précis probably sounds laughable, incomprehensible, or worse… London taxi driver, Chris (Peter Bramhill, ‘bugboy’ in LovecraCked!), inexplicably magicks up his own dream goddess (Carole Derrien), and incurs the wrath of nasty aliens policing dimensional rifts. The demons start killing Chris’ friends. Enthralment. Kinky sex. Body-horror. Explicit pleasure/ pain, and blah. See?

Adapted from William Scheinman’s novel White Light, this is a double-sleaze Hellraiser dish with a side order of Society madness. Cronenberg weirdness? Ah, yes, old Crony might well be proud of his obvious influence here. He might even drool. Not too many horror films are daring enough to prompt fans to wonder, however briefly, about the sanity of the filmmakers. Even fewer new auteurs manage to hit the ground running with only their second feature. Writer-director Pratten allows his imagination free rein here (breaking with good taste like a bulldozer in a china shop), and the mature cast play along, bravely.

If you want to experience a raft of darkly whimsical surprises, acid-head flavoured grotesquery and perversion, in a mere 75 minutes of jaw-dropping fun and crazy sense-twisting games, here’s a 21st century brand of SF atrocity exhibit X that contrasts pretence with honesty, balances delight and disgust, exposes the shadowy aspects of human souls, and opens up the head of its main character with unflinching surgical precision.

Checkout the maker's website at zenfilms.com for more info, trailer, and latest updates.