My specifications for the perfect stereo have not nearly been matched by any company. Just buying one with bluetooth and USB plug and play will set me back £280. Thus I have set a task for myself: to build my own. This may take 5 years going by my track record but I see it as a feasible effort. So, what are my aims for this ultimate stereo system?

At the moment I use my PC for all of my music, whether it be listening to last.fm stations or mp3s via the highly flexible and brilliant foobar2000. I don't like having to have my pc on to listen to music, especially as it has a tendency to make fan noise, consume power and all the other failings of my four year old PC (which is standing up remarkably well).

Functions I want:

• Wireless connectivity to play internet, last.fm stations and send playback statistics to the last.fm service.
• Wireless or bluetooth connectivity to quickly sync' newly downloaded files from PC to the stereo's harddrive.
• USB Plug and play for mp3 players, etc, built in ipod dock
• Bluetooth connectivity to transfer files to my phone and other devices
• DAB Digital Radio Tuner, Short range FM output
• DVD-Audio, MP3-CD, CD playback and DVD/CD burning capabilities (preferably tray-less for sexiness).
• MP3, FLAC, WAV, OGG, M4A, AC3, WMA, etc.
• A bluetooth remote (possibly using Wii controller)
• Tape deck (yeah I still love that analogue fix)
• Recording functions
• LCD colour display that shows album art, artist image, now playing information and playlist info - essentially what my foobar shows (that's the costly bit and touch screen is only a dream), spectrum analyser.
• 5.1 surround sound compatibility, Bass and Treble control
• 100 GB HDD internal and support for external HDDs
• Phono and digital audio, headphone jack and microphone plugs
• Ideally all running using Foobar2000, but that needs windows et al.

I have a multitude of speakers ready for use, so the system will be designed to work around them.

I am not asking much of myself.

Here's my top 10 list as best as I can remember. All of these films had 2006 UK release dates, some may have come out in 2005 in the states.

1. The Squid and the Whale
2. The Departed
3. Manderlay
4. Children of Men
5. Brick
6. Capote
7. Marie Antoinette
8. The Prestige
9. Superman Returns
10. Pan's Labyrinth

I'm sure a glaring omission will appear to me as soon as I post this. I am ashamed to say I have not yet seen Little Miss Sunshine or Borat.

Ahh, today saw the release of the Wii trial browser powered by Opera; just as I was lamenting the pains of having to use my sisters laptop to check my emails over this holiday season. Even though it is just a trial I am very impressed so far; full support for Gmail and Google Reader AJAX and out of the box Flash support that lets me watch YouTube on the television or load up my Last.fm personal radio station whilst I potter about. Improvements should include tabbed browsing and a box somewhere on the page that says what site or address you are visiting/on for security purposes, but I am sure these are in the works. On pages when the Wii decides it can't cope the page disappears and the main browser page appears in its place without warning - this is my only annoyance so far. I'll hold off on a proper review until the full product is released, however I can say this is a tidy little version to keep us going until then.

The ease and speed with which everything loads on the Wii is also a good point to note, especially after having fallen out with my PSP due to its excessive and ridiculous load times or even my PS2 and Xbox loading times. It makes it very easy just to turn on, play some Wii tennis and then leave, a quick 5 minute game is exactly that, not a quick 5 minute game plus 10 minutes of loading and options screens.

A friend has bought me 1000 wii points to buy some games on the Virtual Console, I think I'll be getting bomberman 93 at some point when I get a few more controllers but until then i'll wait to see what else comes out. I can't wait for Mario Kart 64.

Following my enjoyment of Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal, my first experience of his work, I decided to raid the SRC at the library for more delights. I chose Persona, (above), Wild Strawberries (below) and The Silence (bottom), placed in order of favourites.

Persona has become an instant top five movie of mine for its incredible performances and eye opening insights into knowledge and perceived knowledge of ourselves and others and the resulting affects they have on our actions. It follows the story of a nurse (Alma, Bibi Andersson) and her patient (Vogler, Liv Ullmann), a patient that has seemingly decided not to talk-though we don’t know why, as they retreat to a silent empty seaside locale in attempts to improve Vogler’s condition.

As a good healthy student I purchased myself a rounded, tasty and nutritious Celeriac from Tesco (for those not in the know, this is the base of Celery, the thing we use to do all those kiddy dye experiments). In my halls of residence I have a three shelf cupboard and place fresh veg’ on the top and in the middle. These shelves are above my level of sight. Following a week or so I bought some onions, pasta, veg’ etc. which began to obscure the turnip like vegetable from view. Come today and I reached to the back to fetch one of the onions needed to make a Con Carne mix, alas it looked wet and a little rotten on one side. No worries, I shall get another onion - this too, despite being fresher, showed the same symptoms. Upon closer inspection I now noticed a yellowy celeriac smegma covering the base of the shelf and dripping down to the lower levels. This brown, gooey yuck reeked of a celery that had traveled the world of Hades and returned via the slums of vegetable purgatory, where all the unwanted Brussel Sprouts are tormented.

Now I grew distressed - this seeping atrocity had infiltrated my pasta reserves, the parsnips, the onions, the malt loaf, the apples, the potatoes and most importantly the dry noodles. These noodles now escaped their packaging; as liquid brought them to life they splayed across the bottom shelf as if worms escaping an apocalypse. It was at this point I rediscovered my gag reflex. The offending Celeriac itself, instead of being a firm and solid spherical object more closely resembled a spongy and disgusting sea creature of the nether world.

It is beyond me how it could have reached that condition, now that everything has been removed it all stinks to a point that is unbearable. Yet I had been happily using the cupboard for many days before without noticing the slightest of problems. Maybe those onions were absorbing the smell, who knows. Anyway, I must dash as I am to play Scattergories.

May the horrors of the Celeriac be now known to you. Have a pleasant evening.

“The first image he spoke to me about was the one of the three children on a road in Iceland in 1965.
He said that for him it was the image of happiness and also that he had tried several times to link it to other images, but it never worked.
He wrote me:
one day I’ll have to put it all alone at the beginning of a film with a long stretch of black; If they have not seen the happiness in the image, at least they will see the black.”

“I think of a world where each memory can create its own legend.”

I really cannot think how to put into words my sentiments towards this part documentary, part fiction, seemingly science fiction mosaic of stunning and obscure footage that is accompanied by an easy-to-listen to narration questioning time, memory and space and the instantly recognizable Isao Tomita accompaniment. Once more my intellect and interest has been stimulated by dialogue and striking, impacting visual imagery that I shall forever carry with me. The single framed direct stare of the girl on the street, the Icelandic conclusion, the Zone, the man from 4001 where total recall is memory anesthesised and the bobbing heads of the sleeping Japanese commuters that are paralleled with the Asian confrontation of Horror in film.

Sans Soleil is a work of lingering and subtle beauty that percolates through my bloodstream, informing the hours and days, changing the things and ways I see… - Jonathan Rimorin.

For discussions and a script write up head here.

Here’s a collection of artist images collected from last.fm:
Artist Images (1890)

Terrestrial has updated his track info mod component to allow quick and easy image rotations, upon my request and within an hour of making that request which is quite astonishing. Anyway, these new found super powers enable us to create sexy image reflections which fade out using a simple transparent to black (or whatever colour) PNG overlay.

My latest design efforts see a scalable version of this with top left artist images. The artwork itself acts as a Play or Pause button, unless the cover art does not exist, in such a case the button action calls up a Custom Run script Cover Downloader which uses Amazon to find album art images and save them to the audio file directory. Similarly, when artist images do not exist a custom run GetArtistImg script that I created downloads the image and saves it as %artist%.jpg etc.

I’m always adding functions and tweaking it so it’s not quite done yet, but here are some screenshots:

The Seventh Seal, or Det Sjunde Inseglet in its home tongue, is the first of Bergman’s features I have encountered after I decided to take it out on loan from the university library. Within it a man seeks answers about life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Reaper during the Black Plague. The YouTube video above shows their first meeting and the commencement of the game, sadly there are no subtitles so you better go away and learn Swedish. Or:

KNIGHT:Who are you?
DEATH: I am Death.
KNIGHT: Have you come for me?
DEATH: I have been walking by your side for a long time.
KNIGHT:That I know.
DEATH:Are you prepared?
KNIGHT:My body is frightened, but I am not.
DEATH:Well, there is no shame in that.
KNIGHT: Wait a moment.
DEATH: That’s what they all say. I grant no reprieves.
KNIGHT:You play chess, don’t you?
DEATH:How did you know that?
KNIGHT: I have seen it in paintings and heard it sung in ballads.
DEATH:Yes, in fact I’m quite a good chess player.
KNIGHT: But you can’t be better than I am.
DEATH :Why do you want to play chess with me?
KNIGHT: I have my reasons.
DEATH: That is your privilege.

The assortment of characters and their theological and philosophical arguments combined with quirky, humorous and interesting interactions created within me the exact same sentiments I had when I read Voltaire’s Candide. That feeling of discovering, through reading or watching, something utterly brilliant and enlightening whilst being thoroughly entertained both through humour and intellectual stimulation.

Matt Huls’ review at IMDB encapsulates my feelings in a nice package of four paragraphs:

The mysteries of religion and death have long been a popular focus among artists of all media, including film. And while many films question these mysteries, they seldom provide any real insight into the world of the unknown. In Ingmar Bergman’s THE SEVENTH SEAL, these mysteries are not only questioned; they are dissected, splayed, and scrutinized.

THE SEVENTH SEAL could very well serve as sort of a manifesto for existentialism. Its deep acuity and haunting imagery is powerful enough to jar even passive viewers out of their complacency and force them to examine their own reality. The delicately crafted story centers around a 14th century knight named Antonius Block and his ongoing game of chess with a shadowy, hooded figure: Death. Bergman uses this allegory not just to personify death, but to illustrate the lengths man will go to in order to avoid it. In the end, however, Death is a much better player than any of us, and though he may humor some of his opponents by letting them think that they have the advantage, the end result is inevitable: Death always wins. No matter how skillfully we plan our moves or how determined we are to win, we can never beat Death.

In Antonius’s search for answers, he encounters a variety of very unique characters, each with their own outlook on life, death, faith, fear and love. Their commentary on such matters is often dryly funny and always brilliant, continuously and effectively challenging our perceptions of the world around us. For me, the dialogue was definitely the high point of the film, as it was extremely thought-provoking and carefully constructed throughout. Almost every line spoken is, in one way or another, daunting and unforgettable. Jöns’s description of love as “the blackest of all plagues” is a quote that will forever be engraved in my mind.

THE SEVENTH SEAL truly is a remarkable accomplishment in the world of cinema. It is a deep, mesmerizing, and darkly beautiful work of art. More importantly, THE SEVENTH SEAL is one of those rare movies that doesn’t just entertain, but also has the power to change the way one thinks.

I have now picked up Wild Strawberries to watch ASAP.

I caught this last Friday in a sell out screening at Warwick Arts Centre. Guillermo Del Toro has really created something quite special, combining a magnificent and provoking tale of civil war with the fantasy realms of a trapped young girl, Ofelia. Not for the faint of heart, but drag them along anyway.