wee doors banging

In January this year I went along to a past pupil’s night at Grosvenor High School, an alma mater of mine, in Cameronian Drive, Belfast. The old school buildings were being pulled down and new buildings erected on a site in Marina Park just behind them. Yesterday we were all invited to go back to skool again and take a look around those brand new buildings.

Kick-Ass, if you’ve been living under a cinematic rock recently, is an action movie directed by Matthew Vaughan based on the graphic novel series of the same name created by Mark Millar. I’ve seen the movie and make no mistake, it boots bottom. It’s Superbad meets Batman Begins, with a generous sprinkling of Kill Bill. It’s enormously entertaining in an over the top comic book kind of way. Great performances from the young cast and old codger Nicolas Cage, perfect comic timing and a kick-ass soundtrack make it a fun way to spend two hours.

But Christopher Tookey of the Daily Mail disagrees. He thinks it’s child pornography.

Doctor Who returned to the nation’s screens recently for the fifth series of the modern (post 2005) era. A new lead actor, Matt Smith, plays the eleventh incarnation of The Doctor and the appropriately titled first episode, “Eleventh Hour”, has been well received by critics and the series’ many fans alike.

That’s all very nice, but the return of Who has left me wondering, where’s the grown up science fiction on UK television?

I like to keep abreast of new technology, and recently I came across some new research from a group of networking boffins based in Silicone Valley that outlined a relatively simple plan to enlarge the volume of data the internet can carry.

The computing pioneers of the 1940s could not have envisaged the recent surge of bandwidth heavy internet applications such as music and video streaming, online gaming, social networking and so on. The binary systems they invented, while adequate for the requirements of the past, are creaking at the seams under these modern workloads.

The new research describes a plan to break away from the outdated and limiting two-value binary principles, by adopting instead three valued trinary logic.

Did you make any New Year Resolutions? 2010 is now almost a month old, how are they working out for you so far? Were your resolutions wooly and vague enough that you’re finding it difficult to answer? Maybe you’re not being SMART.

From 1984-1991 I had the good fortune to attend Grosvenor High School in Cameronian Drive, East Belfast. The 1950′s buildings are now being replaced by a new school, and as a special farewell gift to past pupils (and staff) it was was opened for an afternoon to allow us to wander around and remember our school days.

Yes folks, it’s that time of year again. Time for the second annual (I can call it “annual” now that I’ve done a second one) Wee Doors Banging Christmas Card Of The Year awards. Cue crowd sample. Cue dancing girls.

2009 has passed us by, and to commemorate the old year I’ve picked out some of my favourite personal images from the past twelve months.

I’ve never really done New Year Resolutions. Well that’s not strictly true, but the best I came up with last year was “eat more cheese” so it might as well be. I think I know why too; I’m very much a “river person” who “may not have a concrete plan with measurable goals” and is “happiest and most fulfilled when they are wading in a rich river of interest”. This is all very well, but it can mean that I find it hard to complete anything significant.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the launch of Public Records Office of Northern Ireland’s new searchable archive of Belfast Street Directories. I’ve now uploaded some coverage of the launch event, originally broadcast on UTV on 23rd September 2009.