Friday 8 May 2009

well now

I was in a really bad mood all day yesterday.

I'm guessing the root cause of this was the other day where I had a silly amount of work to do. But it was weird - initially when I got up in the morning I was in a really bright and chipper mood.

However, the journey to work was rubbish. I got stuck in a jam at the Shepherd & Flock roundabout. Now, one of the reasons I set off for work as early as I do is to avoid this roundabout's busiest period. But for some reason yesterday morning it was horrible - queueing like it always does at more normal rush-hour times. Contrast that with this morning, when I was slightly later getting there and yet drove straight through with literally only 1 car to wait behind.

Then, on the bit of the A31 that leads down from the traffic lights on the dual carriageway bit there was some woman whose car had packed up. It was just at a distance from the lights that everyone can get up to full speed (50 limit) so with people pulling into our lane to get around her (there's no hard shoulder) I had to slam on. There are a lot of trucks that use that bit in the morning, so I couldn't tell why we were slamming on until I was parallel with her car.

Then, when I was approaching the Alton roundabout some silly person in a red car was sat in my blind-spot not quite overtaking me, but not flashing to let me out either (I have to turn right at the roundabout into Alton). So I had to just pull out and pretty much cut her up.

As I'm then driving through the industrial estate the car is following me and it occurs to me - one of my work colleagues drives the same car. More thorough look in the mirror and yup, it's my work colleague who I'd cut up.

One of the things I like about being first in is the up-to half hour it gives me to settle in without anybody else there. Because of the bid needing to be in there were several other people in the office already. One of whom immediately asked me a question before I'd even gotten my cup of coffee.

Nobody should ever talk to me before I get my morning coffee.

And to cap it all off, when doing one of my morning jobs I grabbed the wrong thing and so had to run back upstairs to get the right thing, so I was really rather flustered.

So with all that crap I wasn't in a very bright mood. Though I'm also sure the reason I stayed in the bad mood was because I was so knackered.

I'm still not exactly recovered. I'm really looking to the weekend and having a good, hard sit down.

Thursday 7 May 2009

too much to do

Yesterday I did something like an 10-hour day at work.

Now, this wasn't a usual format day, wither. Usually I take an hour for lunch - I only took 45 mins yesterday. Also, I'll typically spend a good chunk of the day procrastinating. These are the usual things everyone does in an office day - it's why everyone should work 4 day weeks, because nobody can do 5 solid days of proper work.

Anyway, yesterday was different. From 8am I was pretty much heads down (I had my earphones in - a sure-fire sign I'm trying to not be distracted) until about 6:15pm. That pretty much means I must have done 8 solid hours of work if you factor in lunch, getting coffee, taking a pee, and a little bit of time uploading the blog here, for example (it's just not possible to work solid without breaks - when I'm busy those are only 5 minute chunks, though, just to remind myself I've not gone insane).

When I went home last night I could actually feel my mental faculties almost running on empty.

Today I'm therefore a little worse for wear.

My brain feels a little fuzzy and I'm already feeling myself getting distracted by stuff.

Hopefully I won't be needed to keep working on the thing I was doing yesterday. Maybe just a little bt of it. I've other stuff I can do, plus I'm apparantly supposed to be having a teleconference meeting thing at some point.

I hate teleconferences - I have a thing about phones in that I find them unpleasent to use. I don't know why, but I've always had it. It's a little difficult to describe, though, so I won't bother here. Maybe another day.

Wednesday 6 May 2009

futurama-thon

This week's rental DVD was... well, actually nothing.

Owing to how the rentals work, I occasionally have weekends where there is no DVD for me to watch. Which is not necessarily a bad thing as it lets me catch up on other stuff.

The odd thing this time, though, was the lining up with my 4 day weekend. This meant I ended up basically spending an entire day watching futurama. Or more specifically, the straight-to-DVD feature-length futurama DVDs.

Yes, all four of them (though admittedly I'm still sorta watching the last one during the evenings of this week). So I thought I'd do some mini-reviews:

Bender's Big Score

Yeah.

There's a particularly funny bit at the beginning of this film that addresses the cancellation of the show. After that things get... complicated. And dense.

A while back I reviewed the Simpson's movie. I'm not sure if I actually said it then, but one of the problems it seemed to have was trying to cram in all the series characters. A bit like spot-the-famous face.

The problem with this was it ended up being a case of shoe-horning every one in. And it was a mistake. I can see the temptation: give all the fans of comic-book guy his one minute in the limelight, to make them happy, for example.

The trouble is that it's not how story works. Sticking in gags, especially non-sequitor ones involving random characters, works in a half-hour TV show, but it doesn't work in a feature-length movie.

The reason? Well imagine someone telling you a story about something that happened to them. If the whole story lasts two minutes, you'll forgive them if they went off on a tangent for 30 seconds. If the story lasts half an hour, you'll be pissed off if ten of those minutes were off on tangents.

Or at least, it's a problem here because you know the tangent only really exists to get that character into the movie. It's not a random tangent, it's a planned tangent.

Also, the story, being time travel, gets quite complicated, so it didn't really need time being lost on random tangents.

The Beast with a Billion Backs

Interestingly, this actually follows on directly from the previous film.

Well, no, actually that's not true - it follows on, but it would seem six-months or so have elapsed since the first film. Certainly, Fry acquires a new girlfriend... even though in the last film he was jealous over Leela and also their relationship was sort of affirmed in a weird way.

Anyway, a few slight oddities like that aside, it's a much better episode. The gag-per-minute rate is much, much higher and, crucially, it doesn't try to do too much. The story is of a reasonably sensible complexity, so it gives a bit more room for gags.

Also, it does genuinely feel like a sensible single, feature length episode. The others end up feeling a bit like three regular episodes stuck together - like a 3 parter edited together.

Bender's Game

If I was ranking the four movie this one would come in third - Big Score is at the bottom for the problems I mentioned. This one is second from last for different reasons.

First off it feels the most like several individual episodes stuck together. Especially since half way through it flips into a kind of alternate reality.

But the biggest problem is the alternate reality itself. Futurama is generally in that sphere of affectionate parody. Normally it's focused on science fiction, but occasionally veers into fantasy - specifically Dungeons & Dragons.

Now I'm not the biggest fan of fantasy, especially of the D&D type with orks and dragons and stuff. I mean, it's okay at times and in small doses, but often I find it a bit limited and therefore sometimes dull.

So to me Futurama doing D&D should be crammed full of good gags - there's so much potential material it's almost silly. And yet there's very little in the way of gaggery.

I think the problem was that on the whole the writers like D&D (some of the special features indicate it was popular amongst some) so they didn't go for it like they should have. Instead, the D&D stuff is mainly all about plot. I mean even the stuff at the beginning with the kids playing actual D&D didn't have gags in it - no-one even called them nerds.

Into the Wild Green Yonder

Of the four movies this was probably the closest to feeling like a proper Futurama episode.

The non-sequitor gag was back in abundance and while there were environmental and feminist themes, it did the thing of making gags about both sides.

I'd have to say the end was a bit hockey, though. It felt too much like a "neat wrapping up" where it could have done with a little sting or gag in there to let you know it's still Futurama.

Overall the four movies have bucket load of extras. I'm not sure that watching them all in such an intense fashion like I did is such a good idea, though - a bit of fatigue sets in. I'd say watch them over a few days, rather than all in one day.

Tuesday 5 May 2009

slightly older, but no wiser

Well now, long time no blog.

Or at least it seems that way - really it's only been 4 days, 2 of which were the weekend in which I don't normally blog anyway. But still, feels like a long time.

Or maybe not.

Maybe it's because I'm now officially one year older.

I'm feeling thoroughly rested this morning. It was good to have the time off. As usual, I'd made a gigantic "to do" list. And as usual I only got about half of it done.

My normal to do lists I have for the weekend are honed and perfected things. I've learnt over the years what I can achieve in the given time. But when a long weekend pops up I suddenly start adding in loads of extra stuff.

Now really I could have achieve it all, however, that's not the issue. The issue is that a long weekend is there to relax - watch a bit of telly or a DVD, maybe clean the car - those sorts of things. So by adding in to many chore-like activities I'm defeating the purpose of that and I tend to rebel against it.

Anyway, the point is I didn't do everything I wanted to do, but did achieve everything I had to do and also a few I didn't have to but were kinda nice to do.

Specifically on Sunday I finally sat down and watched the last bit of telly recorded on my PVR - Red Riding. Throughout all of Sunday evening and Monday day it was totally empty. It did acquire a few things last night, admittedly, but those are the usual culprits.

And generally on the whole telly has calmed down a lot - there's only about 9 things across the entire week I'll watch, which is down to a third what it was. Plus three of those end this week or next week.

I may finally return to trawling through anime DVDs!

Anyway, I watched Red Riding as I say. It was a three-part job, each of which was adapted from a different book in a series and each of which was two hours long, so not a small amount of screen time.

If I'm honest and I'd watched part 1 at the time it was broadcast I'm not sure I would have watched the other two parts. It was kinda rubbish.

The filming style was very... stylistic, shall we say? I'm not sure there was a room that hadn't been filled with smoke from a dry ice machine in the entire thing. I get why - grim up north, gloomy, but it was a bit over the top.

Also, the narrative was confusing. Partly this was due to the style, but partly it was because we didn't really spend any time getting to know the main character. We were just dumped in at a certain point and left to figure things out. Now in some ways this is good writing, but in others it's confusing because we've also got to figure out the murders as well, and it's difficult to do both.

Certainly in the other two parts the main characters are introduced more normally - we get to see a little of their lives before they become wrapped up in the main mystery.

And that's one of the reasons the other two parts were much better. The other reason was that the mystery is more clearly framed in the other two parts.

In the first, the character is bumbling around not really knowing what he's doing. But then equally he's portrayed as being this go-getter reporter. And also as a womanising shag-monster.

Now I know complex characters are good, but as I say - this is a mystery crime drama thing, so if we're focusing on working out this complex character, then what happens to that part? It gets short shrift.

But as I say, the other two parts are much better.

Although there are some holes left. I think this is probably a reflection of the fact that it's adapting a series of books - I'd guess it would need to have been 12 hours long to get it all in, so it's inevitable that some bits get left out or fudged.

My last real criticism is that the timeline jumps around a lot. Now this isn't fundamentally a problem except it's jumping around by only a few years. So normally where you'd use things like fashion or hairstyle to clue you in as to when something is, those things aren't really changing all that much so it's difficult to tell.

For example, someone can get into their car in 1983 and then in the next scene they're getting out of their car in 1980. You can see how that might be confusing.

But overall it pretty much does what it says on the tin - horrible murders and appalling police corruption & incompetence.