This afternoon’s thing to do during compiling has been training a HAL on the plot summaries of the top 20 movies on IMDb, and getting it to generate plotlines for future award-winning movies. Some of its results are frighteningly good… how about the plot of the next Indy film?

Renowned archeologist and expert in the occult, dr. Indiana jones, is hired by the USSR. He suspects that the Communists are conspiring to pollute the “precious bodily fluids” of the American people.

Or maybe a fusion of the most succesful franchises of all time?

While frodo and sam continue to approach mount doom, will they destroy the death star, or will the emperor rule forever ?

Or an even more surrealist approach to One flew over the cuckoo’s nest:

Rather than spend his time in jail, he convinces the guards that he’s crazy enough to need psychiatric care and is sent to shawshank prison, where the soviet ambassador tells him that the U.S. Government want to find obi-wan kenobi.

Certainly it’s a different ending for Citizen Kane:

The film culminates in a series of flashbacks that reveal much about kane’s life but not enough to unlock the riddle of how his wife, hotshot banker andrew dufresne, is sent to a small hobbit named frodo.

It’s nearly as easy to follow as the real plot of Memento:

Leonard (guy pearce) is an insurance investigator, whose memory has been dating a fifteen year old (fifteen going on thirty-five) and is sentenced to be a government agent by a beautiful blonde.

…for some definition of “truth”, perhaps:

“Schindler’s list” is the based-on-truth story of a young Vito Corleone

Genius.

I know what I can write about (or, more specifically, how I can make a blog post by recycling a story I’ve had lying around in my home directory for several years).

Isvara (not his real name, obviously) is a friend of mine, from back at University. These days, he no longer lives in Manchester, and I’d not seen him for ages. Anyway, he deigned to visit his presence upon a few Mancunians and fellow coursemates the other day, and by way of tribute, here is a short story about why you should never spend all night drinking vodka and red wine:

Act 1 – The Phonecall

[8am, a flat in a hall of residence, somewhere in Manchester]

[A phone rings. No-one answers. The phone keeps ringing. Eventually, a large, hairy and very obviously Scottish guy emerges from the depths of his room, and answers it]

Gareth (slighty pissed off): Hello?
Isvara (slurring): Hi, er, is, er, Chris there please?
Gareth (weary): I’ll get him
[Gareth goes downstairs and knocks on Chris’ door]
Me (from behind door, obviously still in bed): Mmmm..?
Gareth: There’s a very drunk person on the phone for you
Me: Oh good. Hold on.

[Chris emerges and goes to the phone]
Chris: Yes dan?
Isvara: Hi Chris! We’ve been up drinking *all* night!
Chris: Well done
Isvara: and we’re, yeah, a bit pissed.
Chris: That’s nice.
Isvara: You should have come out with us! We’ve been drinking red wine and black vodka!
Chris: Why are you telling me this?
Isvara: Are you going to your C lecture later?
Chris: Uh, yeah.
Isvara: Oh good. We’ll have to come and get you, like, with swords and stuff.
Chris: That’s nice, Dan.
Isvara: See you later, then?
Chris: Yes, Dan.
[Chris hangs up phone, goes back to bed]

Act 2 – The Lecture

[10:07am, Lecture Theater 1.1, CS building. A C lecture is in progress. Close to 200 people are in attendence. Most people are not paying attention. Suddenly, a figure enters through the front left door. It’s Isvara, looking a little worse for wear, but very determined.]

Lecturer: Can I help you?
Isvara: I’m jus… I’m looking for someone! Yeah.
[Isvara continues to walk across the front of the lecture theatre, scanning the seated masses in attempt to determine the location of Chris. Chris disappears under desk, giving instructions to all people around him to say he’s not there]
Lecturer: Okaay.
[Isvara then performs an act which will go down in legend amongst Manchester CS students for all of time: he gets out a large plastic sword – a large pink plastic sword – which he proceeds to wave around whilst striding up and down the front of the lecture theater, shouting:]
Isvara: It’s my weapon! Do you see? Do you see?!

[Isvara starts of his way up the lecture theatre, looking for Chris. He eventually sits down on the end of the row Chris is hiding underneath the
desks of]

Isvara: So, do you guys know where Chris is?
People: No.
Isvara: Well, good. Maybe I’ll just wait outside for him.
[Isvara leaves the lecture theatre, and goes to sit in the seating area just outside, where, employing the tenacity of the truly mindbogglingly inebriated, he waits for the next 2 hours; Chris remains inside the lecture theater, fearing for his life. Eventually, Chris leaves and a humourous chase around the CS department ensues, involving more sword wielding and running across desks in lecture theatres]

Act 3 – The Finale

[The reader imagines something really exciting and hilarious happens here so the story doesn’t end on such a damp squib, being, as it is, one of those stories that seemed so much funnier when you were (a) there and (b) retelling it to the main protagonist the next day, who remembered none of it]

The End

Hmmm. In retrospect, that worked a lot less well than I’d hoped. Maybe I should have told the story about the time Isvara blew the end of his thumb off after filling a Stella can with lighter fuel and setting fire to it, forgetting his basic physics lessons, and therefore being quite surprised when a large jet of flame erupted from the hole in the top of the can and burned his eyebrows off. Or the time he set fire to his beard in the pub. Or one of the many other “hilarious” incidents from our time as students which, looking back, aren’t quite so funny any more.

This post seemed like such a good idea about half an hour ago.

Tomorrow (5th May) is Tinnitus Awareness Day. Along with 5 million other people in the UK (estimated), I (and several other members of my immediate family) suffer from this condition. I contracted a viral inner-ear infection (Labyrinthitis) about a year and a half ago, which has caused a constant, high pitched ringing in my ears, and has affected my balance (quite seriously, on occasion). Whilst it’s possible to learn to live with the noise, that’s obviously not a satisfactory solution to what can be, for some people, a constant source of suffering and pain. Currently, there is no known absolute cure for tinnitus (as it is a complex condition, and appears to arise in numerous different parts of the auditory pathway), but research into the condition is ongoing and hopefully someday a solution can be found. In the meantime, please take a few moments to read a bit about it. Thanks.

There should be a word for the feeling that arises out of the following situation: There’s a bug in your code; it’s been there for weeks. People keep complaining about it; you keep thinking you’ve fixed it, but every single time, someone else comes back and says its still happening. So, you leave it for a couple of weeks, and go and work on something else. Then you go back and look at the code again, and within half an hour (or some other similarly short period of time) you’ve fixed the problem, and it turns out to be a simple, one-line fix. On the one hand, you’ve fixed this bug which has been plaguing you for ages, and that makes you happy; on the other hand, it was obviously something stupidly simple and you spent days/weeks staring at the code without spotting it, and that makes you feel stupid and angry and annoyed.

Anyway, I have stomped on such a bug today, which should now mean that sound effects work nicely on low-end soundcards without being all glitchy and annoying. Hurrah.

Sorry, been a bit busy this weekend. My brother is off to the land of the rising sun tomorrow, which meant that this weekend necessitated a trip down to Nottingham to see him and various elderly relatives before he disappears halfway around the world to teach Engrish to Japanese businessmen. Cue a day of grandparents talking about how it only seemed like yesterday that we were starting school and more chicken salad than I ever want to see again. Nice to see him before he disappears, though; must remember to put together that list of Japanese games I want him to send me for my birthday.

Monday was perfect windsurfing weather, which was a shame, because I chose Sunday afternoon to go windsurfing. Still, wasn’t bad, though, and Tatton Mere is much, much better than Trafford Water Park. It’s also handy for a day out, because all the non-saily types can walk around the park whilst I sail, and I can come in at lunchtime and have a picnic.

I also appear to have bought a PS2 and R-Type Final. It’s really very good. And very difficult.

I’m sure I’ll think of something actually interesting to write about by this afternoon.