Happy Hogmanay everybody! Where the hell has 2008 gone? It seems like only a week or so since El Kat and I sauntered out to see Big Country at the ABC. There’s still no sign of the new album they were talking about at the gig either.
Archive for December, 2008
The Deadly iTendering Process
Published December 30, 2008 Finances , Shopping , The Tendering Process 2 CommentsIn spite of, or maybe because of, my wage slave status I’ve been giving a lot of consideration to buying a Macbook on hire purchase. It would be pure indulgence of course as I don’t need it. It doesn’t really do anything that a windows laptop couldn’t and it’s expensive for the specifications, but damn it, it’s pretty as hell.
The only reason I’m giving any serious credence to the idea is because I’ve discovered that employees of The Work get a variable discount at the online apple store. According to the discount page I can get the smallest of new aluminium body Macbooks for £872.85 instead of the normal £929.00 retail price. That’s about 8% of a saving over the retail. At the other end of the spectrum I could choose to get the highest rated of the Macbook Pro’s for £1754.90 instead of the retail price of £1908.00 which again is an 8% saving on the price. It’s not much of a discount to be fair, but any discount at all is better than a kick in the balls from Gavin Hastings.
Now the Apple Store has a wee info box that claims I could own the Aluminium MacBook I mentioned for as little as £23.84 a month over 36 months. That means in the long run it would cost about £858.24 for a machine that I could get for £872.85 with the corporate discount rate. This seems a fairly questionable to me though.
Why would Apple make a loss on the hire purchase option when everyone else in the world is milking it for all it’s worth? As a cynical Ayrshireman I went looking for the small print and found the fatal line hidden halfway down the page: “Typical APR of 15.7%”. In my previous experience only Bill Gates himself would be given the typical APR on a loan, but I’ll use it in my calculations as I’ve no idea what rate they would offer me.
First of all I’d like to say that APR is a slippery customer. It’s not as simple as adding 3×15.7% onto the amount of the loan and having a cup of tea. Thankfully the good people at Microsoft included a formula in Excel that calculates the final payable amount for you.
If you’re interested the formula in question is called PMT() and you use it with the following arguments:
=PMT(Monthly_Interest_Rate, Number_Of_Monthly_Repayments, Loan_Amount, End_Value, Payments_Due)
I’ve paraphrased the argument names a bit to make them clearer. To make use of the formula you need to divide the APR by 12 to get the monthly rate and plug this into Monthly_Interest_Rate. The rest are fairly straightforward: Number_Of_Monthly_Repayments is the number of months that the loan will run for. Loan_Amount is the original amount you’re borrowing; End_Value should normally be zero as it’s the goal you’re shooting for. Payments due is optional and sets if the payments are due at the beginning or end of the loan period. This formula will give you the approximate monthly repayments that you’ll really be paying. These figures might vary a bit from what the lender decides due to other factors, but it serves as a good guide as to what the repayments and total are going to be.
What about the results though? Well according to my excel based calculations my actual monthly repayments, assuming an APR of 15.7% and a loan amount of only £872.85, would be £30.56 which is £6.72 a month more than the Apple Store info box claims. A quick multiplication by 36 for the number of months of the loan gives a final total cost of £1,100.08 for my brand spanking new Macbook. That’s a difference of £227.23 or roughly 20.5% extra on top of the original cost.
I still want it though. These figures change nothing. This is just the infamous TENDERING PROCESS in action.
EDIT – If you’re curious the top of the line Macbook Pro at £1754.90 would have repayments of £61.44 with a total £2,211.75 payable by the end of the 36 months.
WordPress is Dead, Long Live WordPress
Published December 30, 2008 Humour , Internet , Site Leave a CommentINT. GREYKODIAK’S HOOSE – NIGHT
GREYKODIAK is sitting at his computer gesticulating at the screen. He moons the WORDPRESS 2.6 admin screen.
WordPress 2.6 isn’t impressed.
GREYKODIAK
Wordpress 2.6 I hate you and everything you stand for!WORDPRESS 2.6
Get it up ye!!MCDOWALL enters via Microsoft Messenger.
MCDOWALLL
YE! Howzit?GREYKODIAK
Awricht! Though ah’ve the RAGE!MCDOWALL
😮GREYKODIAK
Aye! The WordPress GOWK-MACHINE continues to DEFY ME!MCDOWALL
😮GREYKODIAK
Therefore I doth humbly request the activation of yer deadly FTP POWERS that I may VANQUISH IT’S PISH!WORDPRESS 2.6
Wait a minute here!GREYKODIAK
Shut it you!MCDOWALL
DAMN YE!GREYKODIAK
No you ya JAPANESE FECHTING BASS!MCDOWALL
😮 It’s oan!Greykodiak does some technical jiggery-pokery.
WORDPRESS 2.6
NOOOOOOO!GREYKODIAK
Aye!WordPress 2.6 dies in a fire, a fire with extra fire on.
WORDPRESS 2.7 enters and dances a JIG.
Yes I’ve updated WordPress to 2.7, and it blows the socks off the bugged version of 2.6 I was using before.
I was doing a bit of financial investigation today with my online banking system and worked out a distressing fact about my money. I won’t get into the actual figures but in 2008 almost a quarter of the money that I’ve spent has gone on paying off my credit cards and my infamous Cahoot flexible loan. In true office worker style I’ve rigged up a pie chart that gives a basic breakdown of my finances for the year.
The coding is fairly straightforward. Rent is the rent on my flat which is by far the biggest chunk Messages cover’s food etc. and bills covers the electricity, council tax, TV license, phone bills and broadband etc. Cash covers the times I’ve been to an ATM and withdrawn money. The debt heading covers the infernal credit cards and loan. Extras are basically anything that isn’t needed for day to day survival. It’s disheartening to see that even after a year of making a concerted effort to diminish the damn thing it’s still swallowing a sizable chunk of my income. Hopefully 2009 will be the year that shrinks this to a far more acceptable size.
I’ve been hearing some interesting rumours of a new game from Ubisoft called I Am Alive set in Chicago after what appears to be a major earthquake. There was a trailer released at E3 back in the summer, but I don’t remember hearing anything about it. Probably because it was swept aside by the hype surrounding Left4dead, STALKER: Clear Sky, Crysis Warhead, Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 amongst others.
No real details about the game have surfaced other than the fact it will be out on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and the PC. There have been a few rumours and hints from the developers that it won’t be a traditional first person shooter, or a platform game. I hope the story lives up to the promise of the trailer it could be an interesting game.
While reading slashfilm.com I came across a post about a forthcoming animated movie called 9. It’s a post apocalyptic tale based on an Oscar nominated ten minute short film by Shane Acker. Interestingly the protagonists are tiny humanoids that look almost as though they’ve been knitted from wool. They are the last survivors of a world apparently destroyed when humanity’s machines turned against us. The tiny ragdoll beings are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that humanity was not destroyed in vain.
The original short itself is available to watch on Youtube but you can view it below:
Unfortunately 9 won’t be out in the cinemas until the 9th of September next year. Yes, that’s right, 9 will be out on 9/9/9. How witty are these Hollywood marketing gurus eh? Marketing BS aside though take a look at the trailer and judge for yourselves.
I think you’ll agree it looks awesome, and I can’t wait to see if the entire movie lives up to the promises of the clip.
A happy Christmas to one and all in internet-land. Wherever and with whomever you may be spending the holidays.
And now a message from our sponsors.
Tonight I find myself in quandary with my infamous script about two likely lads that discover a spaceship. I’ve managed to make it through the first act quite well, and their characters are well established. I’ve even managed to get them out into the middle of nowhere. They were well on their way to finding, and taking ownership of the spaceship, but now I’ve hit a brick wall.
Even in a fantastical world where two guys can stumble across an alien spaceship it’s very difficult to hide it in the first place. At least it’s very difficult to hide one big enough to fulfil the needs of the story. I’ve already tried just having the thing sitting out there waiting for them to find it. I’ve had it fall from the sky unannounced. I’ve even just now tried burying it in a cave, but it’s not working out at all. The discovery of the space ship is supposed to be the first major plot point. It’s the turning point of their story and it’s going to be the cause of, and perhaps solution to, all their problems.
It’s frustrating that I know what happens when they explore it. I have no problem with much of the middle part of the story either, or even the ending, but I just can get them to find the damn ship. I suppose at least the whole thing has come a long way from it almost landing on top of them in the middle of Glasgow green, but it’s still not the level of believability I was looking for.
Right now I’m toying with two other ideas. Firstly, they don’t find the ship itself. Instead they find a communication device or some kind of remote control abandoned years ago by the ship’s owners. This device when accidentally activated calls the ship to their current position from wherever it was hidden. Seems fairly plausible and may be easier to work into the story than trying to find a hundred metre long spaceship in the middle of the Campsie Fells.
Second option is for them to find some kind of teleportation device left out by the ship’s original owners. This then takes them to wherever the vessel is hidden, be it underground, Antarctica or the surface of Mars.
Neither option allows for any kind of slow realisation that they’ve found a spaceship though and I feel the second version with its magical teleporter mcguffin is a plot device I could easily abuse if feeling lazy. Look what happened to Star Trek and Star Gate after all.
I might take a rest for the night and see what jumps into my head after the excitement of Christmas morning is past.
After finding out about penny auction websites through an article on the BBC I’ve found myself fascinated and more than a little tempted by the apparent bargains on sites like www.madbid.com and www.swoopo.co.uk.
The premise is deceptively simple though the exact mechanism in play varies slightly between the various types of sites. Each item has a countdown timer and every bid only raises the price by a single penny. When the timer reaches zero the player with the highest bid wins the item even if the bid is only a single penny. The winner only pays the final bid price and the delivery fees. Like I said, it’s deceptively simple isn’t it?
If the system were that easy though it would all just be down to a matter of timing the bids correctly so that you were the last one in before the timer run out. Nothing is ever that simple though. The timer isn’t static. It increases with every bid. In the case of Madbid each auction has a certain countdown timer that resets everytime a bid is made. In Swoopo’s case each bid adds a random amount of time onto the current clock. The end result is that by bidding at the last second you instantly give the other players a chance to jump in. Multiple bids at the last minute can set the clock back further and further until you have to sit for ten minutes or more to see it reach the end. This process can go on forever as well. In one random auction for a macbook it started about 10PM and when I visited the next day it had ground on until nearly 3AM the next morning. There’s no denying that the lucky winners often pick up a bargain though. You only have to look at the listings of finished auctions to get an idea of the money saved. Ultimately though the amount spent on bids for all of these items far outweighs the money one person saves. It’s a clever system that no doubt makes a fortune for the people running it.
Since I’m a cynical type I naturally wondered what the catch was and I decided to take a look. First off you’ve probably noticed that I’ve called the people bidding players instead of customers. This was deliberate as there seems to quite a lot of skill and a fair element of random chance involved in winning. Still I can see the temptation in playing, if not the sense.
I vaguely remember starting out on my first screenwriting adventure during my last at university nearly five years ago. At the time I thought I had a killer idea for a script based around various characters and players on the European server of the MMORPG Jumpgate. I had managed to get myself heavily involved in various aspects of the online community surrounding the game and it seemed a natural progression at the time. It was actually an outgrowth of some pieces of very mediocre fan-fiction that I had written for the forums. Maybe it’s an act of providence that none of them have survived the infamous hard disk crash of 2006
Well that’s not strictly true. There are a few parts of an earlier draft that survived. The text below is an example of the opening scene, and it sort of sets the tone for what follows. The entire fragment is about 60 pages. It was well on the way to being a completed first draft when the European server closed and I jumped ship for Eve Online. In the cold hard light of day though. It’s somewhere between clichéd SCI-FI Channel movie of the week and some fairly poor name dropping fan-fiction.
EXT. TRI MUNITIONS FACILITY – NIGHT
A large industrial complex surrounded by guard towers and razor wire, searchlights sweep across the surrounding desert.
KARL "WRAITH" MORRIS a slim, athletic man in his early twenties, dressed in black fatigues. He is lying prone outside the base as a searchlight passes nearby.
He observes the nearest guard tower through the telescopic sight of a futuristic sniper rifle.
WRAITH
(Into throat mic)
Boss it’s getting uncomfortable out here, what’s taking so long?
MAGNUS (V.O.)
Keep your nerve kid, we’re almost ready.
(beat)
OK kid take them out.
WRAITH
Yes sir.
Wraith settles the cross-hair on one of the two GUARDS inside.
MAGNUS (V.O.)
We’ll be with you in three minutes kid…
Through the sight Wraith sees the guards are busy watching the TV.
Wraith fires.
The powerful rifle easily hits the mark killing the first guard.
The other guard spins to see his partner fall to the floor and reaches for an alarm panel.
WRAITH
Oh no you don’t.
Wraith shoots true, the man falls.
WRAITH
(into throat mic)
All clear boss.
MAGNUS (V.O.)
Good kid, cavalry is on it’s way.
A large ARMORED PERSONNEL CARRIER rolls into view, it’s painted completely black, a hatch on the side opens.
STEVEN MAGNUS steps out, 30’s, strong and imposing with the look of a hardened soldier, unlike his men he is dressed casually and is smoking a large cigar.
He pulls a pair of bolt cutters from the APC.
A dozen BLACK HAND troopers exit, dressed in black fatigues they carry an array of futuristic looking weapons and equipment, they immediately fan out around the APC.
MAGNUS
On with the show!
He strides over to the fence and cuts his way through.
MAGNUS
Kid you’re with me. Jackson, Ramirez and Rhodes will cover us, the rest of you guys get back to the bus.
The troopers take positions around the APC, Magnus strides through the hole in the fence Wraith, JACKSON, RAMIREZ and RHODES follow cautiously.
MAGNUS
I don’t believe I’m out here doing jobs for that son of a bitch pirate.
WRAITH
Sir?
MAGNUS
Teach kid, Robert Teach. It’s his fault we’re out here in this damn desert, that and a lousy run of poker hands.
WRAITH
What exactly are we doing out here anyway sir?
MAGNUS
Don’t worry kid, you and I are about to break into a classified TRI facility and steal some advanced plasma cannon prototypes.
WRAITH
(surprised)
Won’t they be well guarded?
MAGNUS
(grins)
I hope so…
Ramirez and Rhodes exchange knowing looks.
They sneak across the open ground from the fence toward a nearby warehouse evading several patrols.
The group stops, watching warily around as Magnus inspects the electronic lock.
MAGNUS
Sealed up tight, Jackson see what you can do with this.
Jackson takes several tools from his belt and starts to work on the locking mechanism.
JACKSON
This is some high tech sir, will take a few minutes to bypass.
(beat)
What the hell?
The panel sends a burst of electricity through Jackson, he falls dead. At the same moment an alarm klaxon rings out and searchlights snap onto Magnus and his group.
MAGNUS
Damn it, why can’t anything ever be easy nowadays. Rhodes throw me some det-packs.
Rhodes pulls explosives from his pack and hands them to Magnus who quickly attaches them to the door.
MAGNUS
Everyone down!
Incidentally it turns out that it’s incredibly hard work to format a script to display properly in WordPress.
The first lesson that I learned is that, contrary to my assumptions, writing a screenplay is hard work. It’s another of life’s strange paradoxes: it actually takes more effort to write less. In a piece of normal written fiction you can delve deep into the minds and psyches of the characters. When you’re writing in first person the protagonist’s internal monologues can range over several paragraphs. In a screenplay it’s the exact opposite. You can’t see inside a character’s head, you can’t convey their emotions with words.
With a screenplay it’s a completely different kettle of fish. You’re writing a story that’s meant to be seen. If you write it as though you were writing a book or short story it actually comes across as slow moving, dialogue heavy nonsense. You have to summon up consise dialogue and action that allows the audience to understand what is happening. People don’t brood darkly for hours in films: they smash things up. Essentially to learn to write a screenplay I had to unlearn a lot of lessons that I had picked up in the course of decades while writing works of narrative fiction.
The script above is bad for many reasons. There’s an overuse of parentheses to force certain mannerisms, actions and tones from the character (and by extension the actor playing the character). For example:
WRAITH
(surprised)
Won’t they be well guarded?
This is a common mistake for narrative writers attempting screenplay, and it’s a hard practice to break. As a fiction writer you feel a degree of ownership over your own creations. You have worked on the characters for so long, melding their thoughts, their mannerisms and their voice that it can be difficult to let the actor do their job. Good dialogue, they say, should be obvious. If the scene is well written and the words well crafted then there’s no need for wasting words telling an actor or even a reader what tone the character is speaking in.
I hope my latest efforts are better.
GreyKodiak 