What the hell kind of hair brained scheme is this......

.... the BBC News Europe website reports of a scheme to give sunlight to a previously sunshine starved village in the Italian alps a few rays during the winter months.

Amazing solution to a weird problem where the slopes of the surrounding Alps cut the winter sun from falling onto the village for nearly 3 months from the middle of November.

"The mayor of Viganella, Italy, holds a computer that controls a giant mirror on the hillside behind. The steel mirror tracks the sun’s movements, reflecting light into the town. Viganella used to suffer from a complete lack of direct sunlight in winter."

Can something related to James Bond be nerdy?

... can't make my mind up whether this new watch from Omega is one for the nerds & hence to be avoided, or whether in fact, it's a tasteful homage to Bond for the watch collector?

As a Rolex fan, I'm not 100% convinced by the Omega, but I will have a look at it in the flesh & see if it's all that it's made out to be.

It's the 2nd in a series of watches by Omega, the first being shown here has a face that it made to look like the barrelling of a gun, al la the opening titles of most of the Bond films.

Limited production runs don't appear to bump the price up from the standard base models of the SeaMaster 300 & SeaMaster Planet Oceanwatch, but they all don't come in cheap as they are all at least £1,600+

As I write this, I am thinking that they look more and more nerdy and thus a bad idea, although the 2nd watch does look a bit more useable than the 1st.

UPDATE : Christmas Shopping in Basingstoke on Saturday, I found that 2 jewellers had a good selection of the Omega range in stock, including the SeaMaster & Planet Oceanwatch models. Sadly the SeaMaster dissapointed, but the Planet Oceanwatch looks pretty cool, but build quality isn't as good as Rolex. I think I'll give them a miss.

Casino Royale.....

...... I have been to see the new Bond movie, and in my opinion it is brilliant, so much so, that I will be going back to see it again next week.

Daniel Craigs first outing as Bond is convincing & a quality performance. Same sort of formula for the film, an excellent villain (Mads Mikkelsen) glamourous girls (Eva Green and the beautiful Caterina Murino [see right]), very cool guns, gadgets [this time a defibrillator!?], fast cars [keep to Aston Martin please!], watches [Omega Seamaster Professional 300M , though this should go back to Rolex Submariner imho] and amazing settings (the house on the lake in the last scene is just stunning), but somehow it's different. Bond gets a real fight, the opening scene in B&W is filmed a bit like Lock Stock..., another scene where Bond strangles a villain to death is quite graphic, and probably makes it more than a 12A cert in my opinion. It's all very different to the previous Bond movies where the likes of Roger Moore didn't get a hair out of place when tackling a villain like Jaws.

Production has already started on the next installment, currently with the imaginative working title of "Bond 22", scheduled release date is now Nov 7th 2008, so only another year to wait!

I would highly recommend a click to the excellent fan website called MI6, packed full of all sorts of news, history, wonderful facts & information.