Ape::Tracks

Hedgehog in the mist

The most beautiful animation ever made.

Hedgehog In The Fog (or mist) by Sergei Kozlov and Yuri Norstein.

YouTube really doesn't do it justice.

La Princesse

La Princesse (1)
Originally uploaded by BinaryApe

We went to Liverpool on Sunday to see La Princesse. La Machine brought La Princesse to Liverpool as one of the 'Capital of Culture 2008' events.

We arrived to find a huge crowd watching a spider that was still asleep - the afternoon event had been cancelled. The crowd stayed, watching the spider.

I've not really been to Liverpool city centre before, so we went for a wander for a few hours and had a rather good meal at a nice Chinese restaraunt called Yeut Ben, then went back to Lime Street to watch La Princesse as she woke up.

The evening was absolutely wonderful, not just the spider itself but the music and the crowd. La Princesse was a truly fantastic work of engineering but had personality too, from the excellent performance of her operators.

I'm also really pleased that I managed to get some photos from the back of the crowd, in the dark. The video clip above was taken as La Princesse approached the end of her visit.

Evil crumbles at her touch

Camera-shy Anne Diamond carefully reviews the excellent adult game 'Resident Evil 4'

This game shouldn't be allowed to be sold, even to adults

and gets so angry that games begin to dematerialise in her hands.

An excellent example of terrible image editing and lazy proofing, via Photoshop Disasters. Also, notice the Daily Mail's clever trick of scanning and uploading bits of their own newspaper.

Link: Anne Diamond gives her chilling verdict (Daily Mail)

Castlerigg Sunset

Sunset 10
Originally uploaded by BinaryApe

We've been away on a short holiday in the Lake District, with the aim of getting some fresh air and exercise, and some photography practise too if the weather was good.

The first evening at the hotel we witnessed a fantastic sunset. I've not seen rays radiating from a sunset before - very beautiful, and it resembled photos of the aurora borealis. They were slowly moving as we watched. Crepuscular rays?

Another guest at our hotel took an excellent photo of the same sunset from Castlerigg Stone Circle.

Newtonmas Wandering, 2007

Whitworth Street
Originally uploaded by BinaryApe

Another walk around an almost deserted Manchester, relatively early in the morning, with a little fog this time.

Two surprises: rather unseasonal roses growing in Castlefield, and seeing a kingfisher in Castlefield. Earlier this year I thought I'd seen a kingfisher zipping down the Ashton Canal but almost convinced myself I was mistaken. This time it was quite definitely a kingfisher. Their feathers are bright seen against a rural background, against grey concrete and black canal water they're almost dazzling. I failed to photograph the roses (A. managed it) and the kingfisher was almost impossible to follow with the eye, nevermind a camera.

In about 20 years of living in Warwickshire I saw one kingfisher. This year in Manchester I've seen kingfishers twice. I suppose Manchester's post-industrial canals are now much cleaner than the rural rivers of 1970s Warwickshire, even if they're rather less verdant.

What were the skies like when you were young?

"grey... monotonous..."

Link: Alan Parker covers The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds (Via D-Notice)

'Little Fluffy Clouds' would be on my Desert Island Discs selection, at least once.

A narrowboat called Lyra

I've just posted a comment on an earlier post mentioning that I'd recently seen a narrowboat named after Lyra, a character from His Dark Materials. Out of curiosity I searched Google to see if anyone else had mentioned it and found that the crew have a weblog! Here's the entry for the day I saw the boat. Narrowboat Lyra is travelling around Britain's canals from August 2006 to August 2007. The weblog is a fascinating diary of their journey and has plenty of photos.

I see canal boats going past everyday and grew up near a canal but apart from a couple of brief trips on canal boats at The Black Country Museum I've never really travelled by narrowboat. I think a narrowboat holiday might become an ambition.

Manchester has a lot of dodgy looking locks that would seem to make canal travel rather slow and tedious but we still gets lots of cheerfully crewed boats chugging through. Maybe I'm just too lazy.

Link: Narrowboat Lyra

Lyra, Airships and Bears, Oh My!

'His Dark Materials: Northern Lights' trailer! Woo! (Well, it's 'The Golden Compass' now, following the book's American title, and not quite the same as the book, but definitely Woo all the same.)

It looks good, but I'm still concerned: I've been wondering how they'll convincingly show a talking polar bear (lets face it, they don't have the jaw, teeth lips, etc for it it look "normal") and I'm still not convinced from the trailer. Where are all the demon animals? I thought the Texan balloonist was younger... But I'm still eagerly looking forward to this. At the very least it should encourage more people to enjoy the books. Pullman himself has said "All the important scenes are there and will have their full value." Fingers crossed.

(Via His Dark Materials from Ben Hammersley) [I too will be very surprised if they get away with showing one particular small scene in the third book. Although I'm hoping it might make it to a DVD extended edition :-)]

Dexter learns to walk

and survives impolite pokes in the chest from another robot without falling over

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CQ5AKaEi3U]

More information about Dexter

Vision of Christ

I'm trying to avoid posting stuff like this if I can, but the easily amused/Fortean researcher parts of me are profoundly impressed by this simulacrum, where the image of Christ appears on a dog's bottom.

Link: Get Behind Jesus