It’s a fantastic place to visit, I’ve been maybe half a dozen times or so over the past decade. You mention that it is falling apart now, as inded it is, but you should have seen it way back when I first visited! They have done a huge amount of work to restore Blocks A & B. The Bombe rebuild was also an extremely interesting project put on purely by volunteers.

C, D & G of course still need significant funding, alongside many of the Huts. I still wish to try and visit and explore D & G at some point for photography purposes though, while they are in their current state.

It’s worth looking out for their special event days where they allow you to visit the wireless station itself in the attic of the house.

I should also state that there is no word more apt than hero to describe Alan Turing. Educating people of this fact, and of his work, is the best way to honour his memory, not some half-hearted apology for the appalling way he was treated.

Sorry about that, I don’t usually like getting overly serious, but in this case I feel it’s justified. :)

Thankfully it didn’t go down the race division/social commentary route, the tribal African merc gangs who take advice from witch doctors and eat alien body parts to gain strength might have gotten them into trouble.

“[alien] making a blender and a microwave. K done.”

But then it sunk into bio-horror with the generic extremities falling off. The [SPOILERS] idea of him being kidnapped by his in-law, and the scenes where they research the weaponry were interesting enough [END SPOILERS], but it then sank into the typical action film with the evil, evil sith efricken mercenary.

Oh yeah, and Wikus’ wife was clearly acted by the producer’s girlfriend or something. She was one of the least compelling reasons that he should try and save himself, and the main one as well.

@Roinin08, yeah Christopher was a great character, and in some senses more human than Wikus.

Christopher actually gets chalked up as one of my favorite new characters of 2009, mainly because he was so damn smart. After watching the way the other prawns reacted to the MNU agents, and then watching how Christopher called out Wikus’ slimy bureaucratic bullshit, I found myself honestly caring about the character, (especially when he freaked out at the threat of his kid being taken away.)

I also loved the fact that I thought Wikus was one of the biggest whole-hearted assholes ever to be placed as a protagonist in an action film, with his redeemable qualities almost only being that he’s just a normal guy, with an otherwise normal life. At the beginning, my first thought was “I can’t believe we’re supposed to follow this guy,” but by twenty minutes in I’d grown attached to him.

Overall, I don’t think the gore bit was necessary, I just kind of accept gore in things like this. The body horror was a bit much for me sometimes, like when his nails come off. OMG OMG EW EW EW etc. I think it was a pretty great character showcase for the two leads, Wikas and Christopher, and the kid was so cute! I would totally have kids if they’d be super smart crustaceans with big eyes.

thanks. :)

As for section 8, I looked on Metacritic, and it got surprisngly average reviews :\ Although if it’s on a steam sale which it probably will be this weekend, I’ll pick it up as the demo was good stuff :D

I suspect he would not have loathed the film if it was just brainless, superficial nonsense. But he loved because it had social commentary as well, not instead of. In other words, I belive you and he share the same view.

I love hearing about little things like station 10. Humbling little bits of history, happening in incorgorus places that I never knew of before.

District 9 again was amazing for the way it combined dumbness with a little bit of smarts to provide something well worth watching. That and Wikus was a breath of fresh fooking air as a lead character.

A lot of people played for 5 minutes and gave up, the game requires more time before it’s finer points become clear.

bleh.

But how can you be ‘pleased to apologise’? One dictionary defines it as an ‘expression of regret…’.

I can’t help but feel that watching the British Government [Sic] is like watching a rather more British version of Downfall.

Also, Section 8 is awesome fun; I thoroughly enjoyed the beta.

Section 8 is a glorious, perfectly natural evolution of the Battlefield series and the lack of press it has received is criminal. There are server stability and balance issues but they are minor twinges nibbling at the edge of the spectacular cake that game is. What I love more than anything else is that kills are almost non-existent in terms of score. S8 is a game about working together and accomplishing objectives, not jetpacking about and knocking each other off. It’s sent more than a few “hardcore” FPS fans into a frothing rage on the community forums, but fuck ’em. If there were more FPSes like Section 8, the genre would be in a better place.

Wikus is one of the best protagonists in a sci-fi film for ages. He’s pleasingly fickle, and thus pretty human. Fookin’ prawns though, eh?

Shame about the mysterious GFWL launch issues, really. What a lark when my brother couldn’t play his Steam copy for a day until I manually deleted a few crucial files the uninstaller didn’t catch! Ho ho ho! Having thought I’d seen the entire exhibition floor, I was surprised on the second day to see South Peak Interactive on the map. I thought I’d swing by to see their setup, have a go or two on Section 8 and how PR guys behaved when their game was having DRM launch issues, but it turned out the map was out of date and their booth was supposed to be where the mechanical bull ride was. I think that’s a metaphor, but I can’t see for what. Oh, and the shotty’s inexplicably shit. Oh well.

It’s just the weaselly style of the wording on the Turing apology that bothers me, not the substance; I think that if you’re going to apologise to ghosts for the sins of people who three generations previously occupied some analogue of your elected public office, basically the only moral course available is to speak in terms of pride. If, for example, my government were to ever formally apologise for slavery, I hope the President’s speech would also follow the form ‘I’m proud that we’ve reached the point where I can apologise for this, and what’s more be actively called upon to do so by you my constituents. To the best of my ability as an elected voice of the people, I apologise to the millions of people who were and continue to be hurt by this stain on my nation’s honour. Let us never forget our institutional crime, and continue to work against it.’

Much fun poking will no doubt ensue.

I visited about seven years ago. Sad to hear it’s falling apart.