It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here. Racial barriers have been smashed down, and history has been made. Yes, that’s right! Lewis Hamilton is the first black F1 champ! Yay!

Also Obama has won. Double yay! I don’t expect he’ll be allowed to follow through with as much change as he has promised, but he represents something important that may yet turn America around.

Back in 2006 I wrote about the things in Casino Royale that geeks will notice and query. Apache logs have confirmed that there is great curiosity about such things, so I present the same for Quantum of Solace, which I saw today in Bath.

(Begin spoilers)

1. At the performance of Tosca in Bregenz, where Bond eavesdrops on the Quantum organisation, there is a sign displaying “299 792 458 m/s”. That’s the speed of light, in metres per second. At least, I think that’s the number. I only caught that it was 9 digits long, began with “299″ and ended with “m/s”. I also have no idea what it’s doing there. It must be an opera thing, but there’s only one kind of Opera geeks are traditionally interested in. (Update 2008-11-24: An excellent answer from Yahoo Answers! It’s artwork by one Cerith Wyn Evans apparently.)
2. The phone used by Bond is allegedly a Sony-Ericsson Cybershot C902. The body may well be, but the resolving power of its camera is science fiction. At the above-mentioned opera scene, Bond takes a photo of the bad guys from the other side of the crowd, in near-darkness. That must make the sensor something like 5 gigapixel capable of ISO 64000000. At least he doesn’t try to make it play a Blu-Ray Mini-Disc or something.
3. On the other hand, the phone with the huge 5″+ screen and slide-out keyboard, used by one of the MI6 folk (I think; I was confused during most of the film) says Cybershot on it, but it’s an imaginary gadget.
4. MI6’s awesome tabletop computers look like fakey Minority Report clones, but they’re closer to Microsoft Surface units, which although not exactly available to the public, are real.
5. The writers seem to have used the “Hydrogen = Hindenburg = Boom” theory of fuel cells. Real hydrogen tanks are built of sturdy stuff and should stand up to a bullet without exploding.

That’s all. The film just wasn’t as much of a nerdfest as its predecessor. Verdict: watch it anyway because it’s Bond.