The Blog of Tom

I went to the “world premiere” of the Spider-Man 3 teaser trailer last night at the Vue cinema, Leicester Square. I wasn’t invited because of my prestige in the film industry, but rather because I’m unemployed and was hanging around Forbidden Planet at two o’clock on a thursday afternoon.

Anyway, it all looks very exciting. Black alien costume. little snippets of the Sandman, Peter and MJ’s relationship is on the rocks. Yada, yada, yada. I’m sure I’ll go and see it when it comes out, as will most other stunted perma-teens of my generation.

What’s interesting, though, is that they gave out CD-ROMs with Quicktime files of the trailer to distribute. I guess this means that studios are looking to turn file-sharing to their advantage. (They also gave me a natty hat, which will go straight onto eBay.)

I was going to post loads of pictures here, but the trailer’s already on Quicktime trailers, so I don’t suppose there’s much point.

Oh, alright. Just one…

I don’t usually buy the London Evening Standard, but would do if it had more headlines like this:

REVENGE OF JCB MANIAC

A man on a revenge mission destroyed a house and three cars with a mechanical digger today.
He drove the machine at a three-bedroom house in Essex while a woman was inside, tearing a hole in the wall.
As she scrambled clear he ripped the house apart before turning his attention to two cars parked outside. A police car which tried to block his path was smashed up too. He ignored officers’ pleas to stop.
It is believed the man was in dispute with the couple over a £36,000 caravan.

Now, that’s what I call news. I have a sudden desire to learn how to drive a JCB…

The combination of sweltering heat and World Cup football has done serious damage to my productivity levels. For some reason, I started wondering what British newspapers would look like if they were reformatted into a vertical style, in the way that Japanese and Chinese ones are.

Right click and “Save as…”

Using the June 2nd edition of Metro, the free paper distributed in London, I reformatted the content in Adobe InDesign and published a PDF here for your pleasure.

My laptop is dying and I can’t afford a replacement. Luckily, some very clever people are working on the “$130 laptop”.

Although it’s being made for the third world, I really, really want one. There’s something about the orangeness and those weird ears coming out of the top that reminds me of playschool. Hey, I’m impoverished enough to qualify for one, aren’t I?

Oh, hang on - I’ve got running water, a place to live, free healthcare and enough to eat. That probably means I’m out of the running. Still, the question remains as to whether people in Africa would rather have a free laptop or any one of the things I just mentioned.

While we’re on the subject of weird little computers, I also saw this:

A complete PC that fits into a plug socket. I can’t think of anything to say about it, but I thought it was pretty smart.

The Brian Jacket Letdown have released their debut mini-album, “Hooves” and I strongly recommend that everybody in the world buys a copy.

You can get it from Genepool Records, Amazon, or it’s available for download on iTunes.