Dear @ClubCOMUtils – fix these upload speeds!

Test result from just now:
Media_httpspeedtestne_zbjii

I can live with the download speed; I really don’t need it to be super fast, just reliable and not prone to congestion. However, nine months ago I used to get this:

Media_httpspeedtestne_scbjh

Stability hasn’t really improved, the service is still prone to congestion in the evenings and over weekends, and it’s still really, really expensive.

Posted via email from Richii

No Bully For You, Kid: F-Words Earn Bullying Doc an ‘R’ | Wired.com

The director of Bully, a documentary about bullying in schools, says he does not want to water down his film’s message by editing out the rough language that earned it an R rating.

His stance means it will be much harder for the movie to be seen by its target audience: bullied kids.

“It’s a film for them, it’s about them,” Bully director Lee Hirsch said in a phone interview with Wired.com. Hirsch says the harsh talk is essential to get across how bad bullying can be for children picked on for being “geeks” or for being “different” in other ways. “That’s why the irony is so incredible — it’s like they can’t see a film that’s real based on what’s happening all over the place. The language is real.”

Dear Film Classification Boards,

Please take the time to consider a work in its own context, and come up with a rating accordingly.

“Bully” is not a work of fiction, filled with gratuitous swearing to try and appear cool. It is a documentary that accurately portrays how kids and teens talk and act.

This is a film that every child – certainly, every high school student – should be able to see. Every school should have a copy in their library. Ideally we’d be able to get Lee Hirsch around the world to localise it for each region.

MPAA: revise this decision now. Let this movie been seen.

Posted via email from Richii

Maybe the Kessel run in twelve parsecs is actually correct…

I hate doing expenses – the mindless tedium of it all just kills me. So, I was procrastinating by catching up on Twitter, and found this little gem courtesy of Mark Hamill – Batman if created by Dr Suess at http://www.bitrebels.com/design/batman-the-joker-if-dr-seuss-created-them/. It's great, check it out.

That article links to another Dr Suess mashup, this time Star Wars: http://www.bitrebels.com/design/star-wars-if-dr-seuss-had-created-it/. Also great and worth checking out.

Anyway, the Star Wars one includes a reference to the (in)famous line from Han Solo about making the Kessel run in under twelve parsecs. As all good geeks know a parsec is a measure of distance, not time. (It's defined as the distance from the sun to an astronomical object which has a parallax angle of one arcsecond. Or about 3.26 light years, if that helps. Totally irrelevent to this discussion, but I'm a geek and have an uncontrollable urge to impart information.)

This line in the movie has caused a great deal of angst among geeks, because Han is talking like, "Check out my ship, it's so fast, less than twelve parsecs!" but we all know that it's not a measure of time at all, and so doesn't really make any sense.

Or does it?

The Star Wars universe makes good use of hyperspace as a way of travelling vast distances. Most people just assume it's some way of moving very quickly, an assumption that is aided by the streaky star visual effects.

But what if hyperspace means bending space to reduce the distance you need to actually travel?

Let's assume that the Kessel run is an actual distance of 100 light years. The Millennium Falcon can do it in less than 12 parsecs, or 39.12 light years. Maybe that's the new way to show how fast you are; you take a known distance and show what you can reduce it to. 

Enough of my rambling. Go check out those links.

Posted via email from Richii

Lost In Space’s Tufeld Dies

The actor who voiced The Robot from classic 1960s TV show Lost In Space has died at the age of 85.

Character actor Dick Tufeld passed away at a Los Angeles hospital on Sunday after a battle with Parkinson’s disease.

Very sad; I grew up on re-runs of Lost In Space, and always held out hope they’d try another movie, only this time one that didn’t suck.

Posted via email from Richii