Let’s get this out of the way. The Hangover Part II really is quite a good movie. Rotten Tomatoes is giving it a bit of hard time at 35%. Bad Teacher is sitting at a 44% rating, and that isn’t anywhere close to being as good.

The plotline is mostly the same, but what do you expect, the movie is called The Hangover. Despite this, everything still feels fresh and new, and nothing feels forced.

This is definitely one of the funniest films of the year, but even without the comedy, the scripting and cinematography is still top notch.

Read more at Thomas Clulow dot com

After 5 years of use, it was finally time to retire my ageing Core Duo MacBook and upgrade the home office setup.

Old setup:
Mid 2006 MacBook
2.0GHz Intel Core Duo
2GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM
Intel GMA 950 Integrated Graphics
Dell 24″ 1920×1080 Monitor
JBL Creature II Speakers
Apple Wireless Keyboard and Wireless Magic Mouse

New setup:
Mid 2010 iMac
3.2GHz Intel Core i3
8GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5670 Discrete Graphics
Built-in 27″ 2560×1440 Monitor
Built-in speakers
Apple Wireless Keyboard and Wireless Magic Mouse

External Drives:
1x LaCie 2TB USB 2.0 Neil Poulton HDD
1x Wester Digital 1TB FireWire 800 MyBook Studio Edition HDD
2x LaCie 500GB FireWire 800 Big Disk Extreme HDD

Other Crap:
Griffin Powermate
Apple iPhone 2G Dock
Apple Universal Dock
EPSON Stylus SX200 Printer/Scanner

As part of the upgrade, I also threw out four IKEA desks and replaced them with one much larger IKEA desk and a two-drawer filing cabinet. Things are now much neater and less cluttered, and productivity has skyrocketed!

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I opened my copy of Mass Effect 2 the other day and was pleasantly surprised to find a nice little bonus for us new game buyers. The game ships with a one time redeemable code which grants you access to a load of free downloadable content available from the game’s launch. Players buying a used second hand copy of the game can choose to buy this DLC separately through Xbox Live if they want access to it.

It’s a great idea that will hopefully catch on for future game releases. New buyers get a nice bonus, and second hand buyers can still can still get huge discounts. Everyone’s happy!

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I’m going to be bold and predict that within three years time Apple will have released a multitouch desktop computer running a much evolved form of the iPhone OS. Why? Well because it’s the next logical thing. Computers have remained fundamentally unchanged for the last 30 years and no one apart from Apple seems to have any interest in moving things along.

Currently when we interact with a desktop computer, we grab hold of a large movable chunk of plastic and move it across a tabletop. This causes a virtual pointing device to move around on the computer screen. Pressing down on the chunk of plastic causes the virtual pointing device to press down on whatever interface element is currently underneath it on the computer screen. It works this way because when the graphical user interface was conceived, touchscreen technology was nonexistent.

Fast forward now to 2010, a time when touchscreen technology is plentiful and the 2 biggest operating system manufacturers are battling for market share. Microsoft has released Windows 7 with claimed ‘Tablet PC’ support featuring handwriting recognition and, well, nothing else at all. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this – http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/features/tablet-pc.aspx. So, there we have it. Microsoft says we should all try and use regular mouse interfaces with our giant fingertips.

Apple on the other hand decided to take a few minutes out of their day to come up with the following realisation: “A finger is not the same as a mouse.” It’s a simple realisation, but it’s one that forces you to redesign every single user interface you’ve ever made. Not a small feat by any means, but it’s exactly what Apple did when they introduced the iPhone in 2007.

The iPhone showed the world how touch screen interfaces could be designed by using all new finger specific interface elements. The text loupe, scroll picker, toggle switches, flick scrolling, slide to unlock. All these design ideas started out on the iPhone and are now finally finding their way onto numerous other touch screen devices.

It makes sense then that Apple would incorporate most, if not all, of these interface ideas in the iPad. And yes, it does in many ways resemble a giant iPod touch, but that’s the point! The iPod touch is a miniature multitouch computer and the iPad is just a slightly bigger multitouch computer. Of course the bigger screen size allows the interface to be more advanced, but since it’s still specially designed for human fingers, it works in a very similar way to the iPod touch.

Multitouch has the potential to revolutionise computing, but for that to happen we have to throw away all our preconceived notions of how computers are supposed to work. The iPad is simply a stepping stone to help us on our way.

Read more at Thomas Clulow dot com

I’ve had most of these pictures ready to go for a while now but I decided to spend a bit of time putting a couple of panoramas together. Hopefully the results are worth it.

The full set is available here, but here’s a couple of my personal favourites:

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So, with a ridiculous number of films under my belt, I present to you my list of what I reckon are the top 10 movies of 2009. Ordered unconventionally from best to least best, here are my picks:

1. Avatar – RT: 84%

Okay, so no real surprises here I guess. Completely mediocre plot aside, this movie was nothing short of spectacular. If you get the chance to catch it in 3D then do it, otherwise you’ll probably have to get the Blu-ray since the torrent is unlikely to do it justice.

2. 500 Days of Summer – RT: 87%

More like 95 minutes of awesome! Well, more or less. It’s a seriously good offbeat romantic comedy with a healthy dose of novel film techniques thrown in for good measure.

3. District 9 – RT: 90%

The underdog of the year. Not your typical alien/sci-fi movie, and it’s worth checking out for that reason alone.

4. Inglorious Basterds – RT: 88%

A little overhyped but hey, it’s Tarantino, of course it’s going to be overhyped but that doesn’t stop it from being actually really quite good. The opening 10-15 minutes alone are enough to push this into the top 10.

5. Moon – RT: 89%

It’s fairly likely that most of you have never even heard of this movie, and that’s a shame. It’s not the most exciting movie in the world, but it’s really very good, in a mysterious kind of way. Saying anymore will probably just ruin the experience, so I’ll leave it at that.

6. Sherlock Holmes – RT: 69%

Sherlock Holmes was a lot like a late Christmas present, mainly because it came out on boxing day. Actually, that’s probably the only aspect that bears any resemblance to a late Christmas present so its probably best to just ignore all that. Sherlock Holmes is nothing like Snatch or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and that is a good thing. Snatch and Lock Stock were good movies, but they were both pretty much the exact SAME movie. Guy Ritchie came up with something far more original, and it worked out great.

7. Up – RT: 98%

This year’s summer Pixar movie bizarrely wasn’t released in the UK until October despite its American release taking place a full 3 months earlier. As a result, I’m punishing it by putting it in 7th place… Just kidding. I usually rate Pixar movies much higher than this, but something about Up just didn’t quite do it for me. It certainly had more than its fair share of awesome moments, but a lot of it was also kind of ‘meh’.

8. The Brothers Bloom – RT: 64%

If anyone else out there apart from me has actually seen or heard of this movie, I will literally remove this sentence. The Brothers Bloom is a fun, quirky, and mostly unheard of movie about 2 professional con artists. Unfortunately I’m a little hazy on the details, so you’ll just have to check it out for yourself and report back.

9. Watchmen – RT: 64%

‘Watchmen came out in 2009?’ That was the exact question I asked myself when compiling this list, and it turns out the answer is yes, (obviously). It came out last January. For those that don’t know, Watchmen is a near perfect adaptation of the graphic novel by the same name. And when I say perfect adaption, I mean it. Almost all the scenes in the movie are lifted directly out of the comic book with EVERY detail intact. Fans of the book could not have asked for more, which is lucky for me since I’m a huge fan of the book.

10. The Hangover – RT: 78%

Easily the funniest comedy of the year! Luckily for me, the title pretty much describes the entire premise of this film. Not only is it hilariously funny throughout, it also contains a healthy amount of plot to keep the whole thing together. I’d say this potentially rivals even the great Pineapple Express in terms of pure enjoyment.

Honourable Mentions:
Paranormal Activity – RT: 82%
Zombieland – RT: 89%

Paranormal Activity amazingly managed to live up to all its hype, and Zombieland made me wish there was one more space on my list.

All in all 2009 turned out to be a great year for film and I’m very much hoping 2010 will turn out the same way.

Read more at Thomas Clulow dot com

Firstly, my final semester at Heriot-University!
Secondly, I’ll be kicking some serious web design ass to try and combat extreme financial hardship.
Lastly, I’ll be making iPhone apps.

Also, blogging. I foolishly decided to take part in Project52, meaning there will be at least one decent blog post appearing here every week. This week was a warm up, obviously, so serious blogging commences next week when I reveal the ten greatest movies of 2009!

Read more at Thomas Clulow dot com

A partially implemented iPhone game:

And a feeble attempt at computer animation using 3ds Max:
[flv]http://www.thomasclulow.com/downloads/3ds-dog.mp4[/flv]
Direct MP4 Video Download

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I’m a sucker for good UI design and Tweetie 2 for iPhone is no exception. The specific UI feature that impressed me the most is their list refresh mechanism. Exciting right?

As you might have guessed, Tweetie is a Twitter client, and the primary use for a Twitter client is viewing a list of tweets. This list of tweets changes over time so the UI should have a refresh button of some form. Back when Tweetie 1 was released, it was one of the first apps to integrate the refresh button into the list view as a hidden item at the top, a trend which has now taken off and can be seen in many other apps like Facebook for iPhone. To refresh the list of tweets, you would scroll to the the top of the current list, then keep on going to reveal a refresh button or link. This is pretty good since the most recent tweet is always at the top of the list and if you want to see even more recent tweets, it makes sense that you would try to scroll up even further.

But, this requires you to perform 2 actions. You have to scroll beyond the top of the list and then you have to press the refresh button. Tweetie 2 solves this in the best possible way. Scrolling beyond the top of a a list in Tweetie 2 reveals a handy little instruction and animated graphic that instructs you to scroll up further and then release your finger to refresh the list. This is the ultimate solution since performing it requires almost no thought or input from the user. The user can just scroll off the top of the list and it will automatically refresh and load more items.

In my view, this solution is so perfect and intuitive that I can easily see this becoming a design convention in pretty much all 3rd party apps with a refresh mechanism. In fact, I think it’s so good that I wouldn’t even be surprised if Apple starts adopting it in their own applications.

Read more at Thomas Clulow dot com

In my opinion, Flash is the worst thing to happen to the internet since IE. It eats up CPU, causes crashes and makes it far too easy for banner ads to annoy the hell out of you. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just stop your browser loading them in an unobtrusive and elegant manner?

Well yes it would, and that is exactly what ClickToFlash aims to do.

It installs just like a regular internet plug-in and replaces every occurrence of Flash on a webpage with a nice little Flash icon. Clicking the icon activates the Flash plugin for that item.

Here it is in action on the Cineworld homepage. I never realised people actually used Flash to render fonts!

ClickToFlash also has a neat little trick up it’s sleeve when it comes to playing video on YouTube. A quick change to the settings allows ClickToFlash to play back the H.264 stream natively as if it were embedded using the new HTML 5 video tags.

Pretty awesome. Now Safari doesn’t crash every ten minutes and as a bonus I can finally watch YouTube HD without it sucking up 200% of my CPU.

Read more at Thomas Clulow dot com