Free movies

Thanks to Vodafone, we now have so much upload/download data available to use each month that we'd barely be able to use it in two months, let alone one.  We've gone from having only 5 gb a month (which we were running over regularly) with Orcon, to 20 gb with Vodafone, which we also began to run over slightly (!), to having 80 gb, which is just far too much.  We'd have to be online watching movies all day long to use it.

Anyway, I do watch the occasional movie online, if it's free.  There's a great site called Open Culture which lists hundreds of free feature-length movies, and shorts, as well as all sorts of other educational programmes.  Some of the older movies aren't much to write home about, to be honest, but there are several of Hitchcock's older movies available, which I've caught up on, such as Jamaica Inn (one of his worst) and Juno and the Paycock.

I discovered the other night that there was a TV feature-length film called Breaking the Code available.  It's about Alan Turing, the man who basically invented the computer, although he was also well-known as a brilliant mathematician, and code-breaker.  (He worked on breaking Hitler's Enigma Code, at Bletchley Park.)

Turing was also homosexual, and his admission of this (which seems rather ridiculously done in the film) brought him not only to court but to a 'punishment' of having to take oestrogen to reduce his male desires.   It didn't work, of course, and he died unexpectedly a few years later: it was officially listed as suicide for many years, but recent investigation considers it may be more likely that he accidentally killed himself by eating an apple that had cyanide on it.  He was an experimenter in all sorts of scientific fields.

Turing is played by Derek Jacobi in the film.  Jacobi is one of the best of British actors, and he does very well with his role as Turing.   However there is a major problem.  Turing is at most only in his thirties when the film takes place but at the time of filming, Jacobi was 58.  You're too often aware of his real age, even though he doesn't always look quite so old.  In some scenes it's irrelevant, but in the scenes with the young man with whom he has a brief affair, and the young woman who's fallen in love with him, his age is a barrier to real belief in the story.  (Incidentally, Prunella Scales plays his mother in the film: she was born in 1932.  Jacobi in 1938.)

Nevertheless, this is an interesting film, and has an excellent cast.  The long explanation of some mathematical problem that takes place in the middle of the film will probably leave many viewers gasping for breath, but in general things are straightforward - mathematically.  The film leans a little heavily on the homosexual aspects, I think: Turing was a good deal more than a homosexual who happened to be a brilliant mathematician.

Fair Trading?

If you're a Vodafone customer, and you've gone onto one of their broadband plans where you get 20 gbs for a month, and you manage to use slightly more than the 20 gbs (in the latest case because of iPhone upgrades) you are penalised by Vodafone if you want to keep on at broadband speed.  The alternative is dial-up speed, which these days is useless if you work on the Internet to any great degree, as I do.

In order to keep your broadband speed, you have to double your normal usage, and pay a premium for it.  We're on a plan that gives us 20 gbs a month, so that means we have to pay another $20 and get another 20 gbs.  The only problem is, our 'anniversary' date (the date the normal gbs run out each month) is only two days away.   Can we keep the extra gbs we've paid for?   Nope.  They all vanish and we start from scratch again, as though we hadn't paid for anything extra.  

Last time this happened, we had some blow-out because my son and his fiancée were staying with us, and used a lot of our broadband with uploading videos to the Net.   We bought the extra gbs and I watched some movies online.   However, while this was pleasurable, after a fashion, it was just an attempt to use up something I didn't really want in the first place.

This time, because we have only two days to go in our 'month', there's no way we'll use up the additional broadband.  So Vodafone gets $20 in its pocket and doesn't have to pay for much in the way of broadband to its supplier.   I talked to the customer service woman at Vodafone and she says they get complaints about this all the time, and they pass on the feedback about it all the time.  So far it hasn't made any difference.

I wouldn't object to paying for two or three gbs at a dollar a gb.   That would seem reasonable at this time of the month.  But no, Vodafone has decided that if you go over, you get penalised heavily, or go back to the dark ages of dial-up.   Here's the official line from Vodafone when you pay for this additional broadband:

• You can only buy one double your data block a month.
• Double your data blocks are charged on a full-month basis.
• Double your data blocks expire on your data allowance anniversary date, so make sure you use up all of your data before your allowance gets reset.
• If you change plans or close your account before you've used all of the extra data you'll still be charged.

 Make sure we use up our data allowance before the reset?   Yeah, right.

The musical moving forward

My collaborator and I sat down earlier this week and re-considered the date for putting on the musical. She's keen to do it this year, say in September, while there's still some impetus behind it from a few others who have so far been involved. Plus, waiting around another year for me to finish the music isn't perhaps very exciting for her.

That night I didn't sleep very well, between thinking about the fact that I'll be out of a job officially by the end of February 2011, that my wife and I will then be on a considerably leaner income, and that if I'm to get this music written in the next few months that's quite an ask.

At least that's how I viewed it then. The collaborator has since realised that the Rugby World Cup is due here in Sept/Oct, and that puts Sept pretty much out of the picture in terms of presenting anything theatre-wise. Too many people may have their brains elsewhere. So she's wondering about late August as a production date. Crikey, that gives me even less time.

On the other hand, I have about 25% of the music written - and a good deal of that scored for a pit orchestra - and there will be repetitions and repeats of themes, and borrowing of bits of music from the original version of the musical (the 30-year-old version), so perhaps it's not such a big ask. Especially if I concentrate on the piano score version rather than trying also to orchestrate as I go.

It may be a good thing that I won't be working after February! Sounds like I'll have more than enough on my plate...but also less income. Hmmmmm.

Neither my wife or I are keen to work regularly anymore, in some ways. I've been working for 50 years (apart from two stints when I was out of work previously, one of six months, and one of about three), and she's been working since she was 15. Admittedly she's had more time out than I have, with being at home looking after very young children (three under five at one point). That has to be counted as good solid work (although it was less restricted than having to go to an actual job), so in a sense she's been working for 46 years as well.

Neither of us are averse to work, but I think we're at the stage where working on our own terms may be more preferable than being under a boss and having to do so many hours a week. Time will tell, as will the state of the income. She wondered about the possibility of running a small business from home; that's fine if we can find something that doesn't lose money, and that doesn't require us to be on deck 24/7. Perhaps we could look at small business phone systems to see if it's possible to work from wherever we are....on the beach, out in the middle of nowhere, walking the dog in the open air...? Vodafone gives the impression that it's possible to work from anywhere, but when my wife and I went for a walk with the dog this morning, 2 degrees wasn't working on the mobile, and they run through Vodafone, I believe.

Anyway, this is all a bit of a wander; what I need to get on and do, whatever happens with the musical, is draw up a bit more of a plan of attack in regard to the music than I have done so far. Up till now it's been a matter of writing some of the songs I knew would fit in at various points, and then going back to the beginning and writing from there. It's a workable approach, and has been successful for the most part, but I'm at the point now where things need to cohere even further.

Off I go to cohere!

Photo by Jorge Franganillo

Over to degrees

My wife and I are just switching to the 2Degrees network, but both had about $4 on our Vodafone cards.  So we thought we'd use them up.  I rang my daughter in Auckland and we chatted and chatted and still no sign of the card coming to an end.   Finally she had to ring off and put the kids to bed.   And even then there was still $2 left.   So my wife rang a good friend of hers in Christchurch, and within a minute had run out of money!    How does that work?

Now I have to register with 2Degrees - we've already got a couple of their sim cards - and no doubt that'll be fiddly.  Maybe not!

Meantime I'm coping with the new Google version of Blogger, where they've made some changes - some good, like a button for links which, most oddly, never existed before; and some not so good like not being able to pick up photos off your own PC.   When you click on the add picture button it offers you a choice of getting something straight off an Url (or 'a URL' as they put it) or via Picasa - but online, not off your computer as I discovered after I'd installed Picasa - or from the pictures that you've already got on your blogs.   Weird.   Seemingly this is a bug that they're supposed to be fixing. Let's hope they hurry. 

Now why I'd want to write about an Epson receipt printer I'm not entirely sure.   One of the joys of blogging is that you find yourself writing about all sorts of things you know next to nothing about.   Which requires research, which I sometimes do...sometimes well, and sometimes not.   The latter is one of those occasions.   A receipt printer is one used for Eftpos machines - as I'm sure you all know without my having to present you with any of my research - and they make that whining little noise as though it was some kind of pain to present you with a receipt.  

They're ubiquitous.   There now.  That's enough.  Plus I managed to sneak in a decently long and suitably incomprehensible word.