Improving Prometheus

One real thing pretty much ruins Prometheus (the new "Alien" prequal) and that is the appearance of the character Peter Wayland.

His character really does nothing to move the plot along and frankly the money spent on his make-up and sfx on his walking suit were all money wasted in my opinion.

We are introduced to him in hologram form near the start of the movie as he briefs the crew aboard the Prometheus.
This appearance could be removed from the movie without any effort.

The effect was costly and I genuinely believe Wayland is a complete waste of time.
His only real need is he wishes to live longer, his scene of him meeting the "Engineers" is equally pointless.
All it does is get several faceless characters killed and gets a ship launched that be be achieved in many other ways, much more cheaply.

I believe by cutting Mr Wayland from the movie you can remove the lull that his discovery causes and improve the pacing of the film.  It doesn't need to be slowed down when it is.

Prometheus suffers because it has no real proper ending, the "end" is basically a set-up for a second movie.

Generally the film looks amazing, with a better and proper ending it could be vastly improved.

Ghost Hunters S08E13

First show since Grant left.


Grant edited wholesale out of the opening credits now.

Steve becomes the new Grant.
Love the "did you hear the huge noise?" (nothing at all was audible)
Then Steve & Jason go into the corridor. Then they cut to Adam & Amy (notorious for clumpy shoes) on the floor above them.

Oh, and FYI neither Jason or Steve appeared to be carrying any kind of eqpt right at the start apart from their lights & what ever J had on his shoulder?
Headcams finally?
IR lamp and some tiny camera by the looks of it. Didn't look capable of video tho?

Nice to see Tango straight into lying in less than 11 minutes?
"Go for Britt & Dave"
"Where are you?"
"We're both in the van".
Actually, Dave, Britt JUST went in the building.

So either you are lying or the editors are making you look like a liar with the way they cut.
Britt helpfully reappears in the very next shot.
Way to make Tango look like a complete prat there though, editor!

And STILL screwing around playing stupid practical jokes on each other?
Please to note Britt (Mr "I've been fired once already") suggested it but his sidekick was Idiot boy Tango who always causes trouble.

Again I will say, Brian Harnois was fired for less than that.
In fact it's worth repeating to see if it might sink in. Brian Harnois was fired for less than that.

Hagar? Not very horrible ;-P
Couldn't resist, sorry.
Oh, and thanks for showing us Amy's clumpy boots (CONFIRM!) and that another woman, also possibly with heavy shoes is with them.


Hagar scratched off camera. Calling fake right away on that, sorry.
Someone we've never seen before is mysteriously scratched twice?

Here's how her interview to get hired probably went:- "You wanted interns for your tv show, what will I do?"
"Oh, you protect Amy, make sure Britt doesn't do anything stupid and lie when we ask you to."

Jason "I'm gonna go in with Amy in just a minute."
Then Steve ruins the mood by dumping on the pregnant woman by saying "We worry for your safety, Hagar."

Translation:- "We don't give a toss about our pregnant team member"

Amy has conversation that's interupted by an off camera walkie talkie.
No-one tags it. Very unprofessional to not only screw up an active shot but to ruin any potential audio for evidence.
Anything recorded audio-wise after this is suspect.

Britt looks VERY guilty when asked if he was inside after Amy is sure she saw something.
Frankly Amy should have bailed a whole lot earlier, I'd have left her in the van at Command Central.

Voices after Adam says "Where's that coming from", sounds female and a long way away.
Keeps on even as Britt says "something moving" pointing off camera.

Hagar scratched off camera yet again tummy, neck and back. Totally disregarded as fake by now.

Shadow passing light seen off camera.
Yet Britt is clearly pointing HIS camera that way.
Again the editor making them look stupid and unprofessional.
Either use Britt's footage or just edit that scene out wholesale.

Adam "The tapping behind you is new." And made no sound at all, Mr Super Hearing.

"Why are you scratching me." As we then catch Hagar scratching her own arm. BUSTED.

"We tried to keep the amount of people down to a minimum." Jason outright lies to the client.
At one point only Britt & Steve were the only 2 team members NOT inside.
And each team has at least 1 camera and sound guy and we now know someone from production too.

Things may have changed but a lot has stayed the same.

The mystery of the self replicating file (hopefully) solved!

For the last 7 or so days I have been struggling with a folder that suddenly appeared on one of my USB drives.  I didn't put it there, I didn't give it permission to be there so I was most put out.

The source folder was called qtcurve

So I did what most people would do, I deleted it.  But it came back.  So I deleted it again.  And it came back. Again. So I Googled it so see what caused it.  Google says possibly Linux.  As I'm a Windows XP user who has never even SEEN Linux I say not likely.

So I have to use my memory (not easy for me, my short term memory is TERRIBLE) and try to remember what has been installed or updated recently. Then I remember I've recently updated Quicktime. qtcurve, QuickTime. 

Hmmm, suspect. 
The alarm bells start going off.

So I Google "Is it safe to uninstall Quicktime"?  Turns out its used for  Mov files (pretty much obselete now) and Itunes which I don't use.  So off it goes.  Then the folder comes back.

So I do a more detailed check, bits of Apple software are still lurking.  I uninstall all of them, I've already checked I safely can.
And it STILL comes back. So now I'm thinking virus or spyware.  So I do a search of my main hard drive to see if the folder exists there too.  Several minutes later. 

DING DING DING! We have a match!

It's part of ebook convertor & reader Calibre.
So as a very annoyed person I ask on Facebook how to get rid of the annoying little git.

preferences -> look and feel-> interface style-> default.
According to the very nice and very helpful person on Facebook who I apologise to for sounding sarcastic.  I was literally about to bin my PC at that point.

So I've followed those instructions & hopefully won't be seeing any more of that folder.
If you have the same problem, hopefully this will help you get rid of it quicker than I struggled to.

Amazon Kindle ebook download problems?

Are you finding that no matter what you do Amazon won't send you AZW files any more? It's defaulting to the "will be delivered via Whispernet" message?

Well, It seems that I was the very first person to have or report this issue to Amazon UK and it appears that the problem is caused by your "My Kindle" archive being full so there's no space to back-up the book you are buying to.

The archive will hold 500 ebooks and no more.
So if you aer having these problems then you need to delete at least 50-100 titles from your My Kindle archive.

And then you will be able to download AZW files as normal.

Problem solved.