Model Citizen

  Well, 1 month after ordering I finally have my Marantz IS201 Docking station.

It took so long as Marantz do NOT sell over the internet. You have to go in store and order. It's one of their safety measures for the customer having a place to go to for support. Maybe a bit strange in this day and age, but if they are that concerned over the customers satisfaction I'm not complaining. 

Why wait so long for this £100 model instead of a cheaoer Belkin version? The Marantz supports on screen menu navigation. That's right. At the push of a button you can have a screen menu on your monitor/Plasma that navigates through albums/playlists etc. If you dont want to do that, just hit the button and navigate with the iPod menu on the iPod, all by remote of course. The sound is of course superb. Also, those clever Marantz boys have made the connection area seperate so you can hide all the cables a distance off from the dock.

My only quibble, and it is a small one, is the remote seemed a bit tricky to pick up signal wise from where I wanted it positioned. But seeing as I was adding the remote codes to my Phillips Pronto Pro, which handles it effortlessly this is pretty small stuff.

Looks great, sounds great and with operation through your TV from the comfort of your armchair, superb. 

Unbelievable. The people in the shop could'nt seem to grasp that i was one of the few people in the world that had managed to live without a mobile phone till now.

If I was going to buy one, which i needed to for work related things, then I wanted to get one with a pretty good camera.

I bought the Sony Ericsson K800i

It's a good phone as far as I can tell, but the 3.2 MP camera is excellent. Not that great in darx situations, but for portraits and landscapes in good conditions it's as good as my 8MP Olympus.

Here's a shot of the kids inside with only natural lighting coming in.

I dont know, boys and their toys eh!

p.s. my iPod Dock from marantz should be ready at the end of the month, I'll write how that goes. 

Last 3 films.

I've not seen any movies for ages. I've been watching American TV series for months and months. Veronica Mars 1 & 2, 24 series 6, all excellent and highly recommended.
So, before I make a start on Life on Mars 1 & 2 I thought I'd try and get through some of my movies that have been piling up.

The Science Of Sleep

????One of those films that I felt a little bit bad about not loving. I think it's supposed to be brilliant, but I was struggling to keep up with the "is he awake or is this a dream". The story is very basic about 2 neighbours Stephan and Stephanie who don't sort of fall in love. It all gets a bit weird. There are some funny moments but I had one of those apocryphal moments 10 seconds before it finished when i said, "oh no, they're not going to leave it there are they!?"

I'm afraid out of 5 I'd only give this 2 at most.

Die Hard 4

Superb. A really good action flick. It's based on computer hacking, which is'nt the most exciting cinema experience, but it's very, very good. Bruce still has it, even at 60+ or however old he is. The only bits that don't quite sit right are when he reverts to the original character, talking to himself or making that laugh. When he's in Sin City mode he's perfect.
4 out of 5

Miami Vice

NO NO NO! How can you make a movie of this series with absolutely no nod to the original. Not even the music. Come on, you've got to have the music! The only similarity I came up with was the quiet voices that leave you wondering "what did he say?". A real mish-mash of a movie, even without the Miami Vice name tag.
I'd give it a 1.