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Rob Hallam

Glasgow University graduate. I have wide-ranging interests - please see my about page either here or at roberthallam.com.

300: The Film, The Workout

  • Rob Hallam 

So I saw the film 300 yesterday. It’s a pretty entertaining film; I’ve always had a predilection for ancient Greek and Roman history – especially Sparta, Lacedaemonia, and the Pelopennesian Peninsula. Of course, people tended to snort derisively whenever I mentioned this, but when they see this film I’m sure their tone will change. If you want to see a film with a good bit of action and reasonable attempt at a plot, I’d heartily recommend it.

Now for the workout. Looking like the actors in 300 do (see below) takes a serious workout, and a buttload of determination to boot.Read More »300: The Film, The Workout

Mosaic Generator

Okay, we’ve all seen those big posters in tourist-y shops of well known images (Millennium Falcon, Steve McQueen, some jam…) that are – on closer inspection – made up of lots of mini-images in a mosaic-esque effect. If the artist is really clever, they will use related images to build up the bigger image; in the Millennium Falcon example, they used scenes from Star Wars. I think you get the idea.

Well now you can reproduce the hard work and hours of effort by simply using a slightly AJAXified website. You supply the image file (it supports PNG, GIF, JPG and JPEG files) and it will produce an image concatenated together from a bunch of Flickr photos. Being the curious sort, I naturally tried it out – the resulting images are quite impressive.Read More »Mosaic Generator

You know you have cheap hardware when…

So finally bit the “but it’s over £100” bullet and bought a new TFT monitor the other day. The monitor in question was a nice-looking 19-incher for roughly £110 (with free shipping to boot). I ordered it from eBuyer, choosing the delivery option that equated to “get it to me whenever”.

Two days later I got my delivery.Read More »You know you have cheap hardware when…

Tom and Jerry Music

  • Rob Hallam 

Preamble: Yes, I know that arguably this post falls into the class of “pointless stuff I generally detest”, but I figured it might interest someone else looking for the info.

This morning my hi-fi alarm went off (as usual), was tuned into some kind of classical music station (as usual), and just about failed to wake me up (as usual). What was unusual was that as I was half asleep listening to the static-filled music – my hi-fi has no aerial to speak of; it’s a wonder it gets any reception at all – was that I recognized the piece that was playing. While I didn’t know its name or even the composer, I could clearly see the scene from the Tom and Jerry cartoon Mice Follies in which it featured. The scene is the one where Tom is effortlessly keeping up with Jerry and Nibbles’ skating while dodging chairs and various other part of furniture. At the end I just about made out the presenter mentioning Strauss and “spring”.Read More »Tom and Jerry Music

Spore Part I

Finally, Will Wright and his cadre of demoscene hackers has created something that I’ve wanted since I first started playing games. Spore lets you take a species from molecule to intergalactic civilization an a free-form manner. The game is both evolutionary and revolutionary (and I use the latter term cautiously) in a number of ways.Read More »Spore Part I