I was in the shower yesterday when I felt my back go.
Several years ago I trapped a nerve in my back. It was total agony and I ended up taking several days off work.
Ever since then I've suffered with my back, getting twinges of discomfort every so often. It's never been as bad as when it originally went, but it can be pretty damn uncomfortable.
The nerve in question seems to run down my right buttock and I get the most discomfort at the very top of my bum, in what I think is roughly called the small of my back. The twinges are usually helped by changing the way I've been sitting or having a good lay down.
However, while bending in the shower to wash my legs, I felt that familiar sharp stab of pain that I had when I first trapped the nerve.
Being in the shower may sound like a rubbish/naff place to be putting your back out, but it's nothing compared to when I originally did it. That first time I cleaning my car, of all things.
I'd basically been bending over to wash the right front wheel of my car and as I straightened up there was a feeling like a rubber band snapping and then a surge of agonising pain. It actually took my breath away for a few moments and then I went and laid down for days.
This time wasn't quite that bad. I felt the twinge and a stab of pain, but it wasn't on a par with the first time.
I'm hopping that by being careful and taking a few pain killers I should be able to avoid the same scale of problem.
Friday 23 October 2009
Thursday 22 October 2009
a little more on the roll
'the roll' meaning Crunchyroll, that is.
I basically forgot to mention this on Tuesday, but the thing I'd quite like Crunchyroll to have more of is downloadable content.
As I mentioned, the streaming thing is not always the best option for me, but if I was able to download episodes that would be great.
I wouldn't even mind if they were relative small files (as in the video size - pixel width and height) or lower quality, I'd just much prefer that as a method of delivery to streaming. It would give me the flexibility that fansub downloads give me, and if this is really meant to be a fansub 'killer' I don't see any other way it can achieve that.
Which isn't to say that you can't download stuff on Crunchyroll. There are several series where you can download episodes. The difficulty with these is that you have to effectively buy the episodes. On some of them it's actually done as a 'donation', which is a bit of a weird phrase, because it's a mandatory donation :/.
The problem there is a bit chicken and egg - I don't know what the dl is going to be like, so it's risky to pay for it. While, as mentioned, I'm happy that free dl's could be poor quality and small files, if I'm paying directly for it, then I'd prefer to get a good product.
This is made a little worse with some of the show's streaming having expired, so now you can't even sample the show via streaming to see if it's worth buying.
In other words, it seems to me there's still some way to go before Crunchyroll truly becomes a 'pirate breaker'. Plus of course they'd need to have all the new shows on there, and I can't ever see that happening, though I guess could be possible if other companies offered other shows via different routes.
I basically forgot to mention this on Tuesday, but the thing I'd quite like Crunchyroll to have more of is downloadable content.
As I mentioned, the streaming thing is not always the best option for me, but if I was able to download episodes that would be great.
I wouldn't even mind if they were relative small files (as in the video size - pixel width and height) or lower quality, I'd just much prefer that as a method of delivery to streaming. It would give me the flexibility that fansub downloads give me, and if this is really meant to be a fansub 'killer' I don't see any other way it can achieve that.
Which isn't to say that you can't download stuff on Crunchyroll. There are several series where you can download episodes. The difficulty with these is that you have to effectively buy the episodes. On some of them it's actually done as a 'donation', which is a bit of a weird phrase, because it's a mandatory donation :/.
The problem there is a bit chicken and egg - I don't know what the dl is going to be like, so it's risky to pay for it. While, as mentioned, I'm happy that free dl's could be poor quality and small files, if I'm paying directly for it, then I'd prefer to get a good product.
This is made a little worse with some of the show's streaming having expired, so now you can't even sample the show via streaming to see if it's worth buying.
In other words, it seems to me there's still some way to go before Crunchyroll truly becomes a 'pirate breaker'. Plus of course they'd need to have all the new shows on there, and I can't ever see that happening, though I guess could be possible if other companies offered other shows via different routes.
Wednesday 21 October 2009
stealth
Militarily, stealth means not being detected.
A stealth plane is designed such that normal modes of detection are rendered difficult, if not impossible. So it means things like reducing heat signatures, in order than thermal imaging can't see you. It means designing your plane such that radar beams are bounced away, rather than back towards the sender. It means coating your plane in radar absorbent material. Stuff like that.
As such, the first ten minutes of the film kinda show you that 'stealth' is perhaps the poorest name for the film Stealth as you could get. Within those first ten minutes, the supposedly stealthy aircraft get locked onto by two missiles and fired at with reasonable accuracy by various radar-guided AAA.
They also fly so low as to be easily visible to their targets. Not to mention the aerobatic, stunt-like antics they engage in on that mission.
It's fair to say then that stealth isn't the most militarily accurate film. But then, to be really fair, I don't think it was the goal of stealth to be militarily accurate. The goal was more one of entertainment.
And in this regard it generally succeeds. The action stuff is thrilling; Jessica Biel's bottom is a delight to behold and the plot is passable.
Passable is about all I'd give it, though. The problem is it feels a bit too sanitized and a bit too familiar.
So there's a bit of a rather predictable romantic frisson between Biel's bottom and the main character. The other guy in the team is black and, well, let's just say it's fairly predictable what happens to him.
There's also an AI system in one of the planes that, and I don't want to get too spoilery here, 'goes haywire'. Then there's the team's boss who, again, not wanting to get too spoilery, but kinda does what you might expect him to do.
And that's the problem I had - there's nothing here that you haven't seen plenty of times before. Admittedly it doesn't do it badly, and the film is very pretty to look at (especially in the Alba department), but ultimately it's a fairly vacuous experience.
But it was the sanitisation that pushed things over the edge for me.
The point of these planes, it would seem, is that they're fighter-bombers. So as well as all the dog fighting they do, their role is also one of dropping bombs on bad guys.
In this case, the bad guys are nondescript 'terrorists'. Ooh, nasty men. Not that we're given any actual evidence that they're nasty men. We're just told they're terrorists and then the 'good guys' drop bombs on them.
We know they're good guys because a) they're all-American pilots and b) they go to extraordinary lengths to avoid killing civilians/non-combatants.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind them showing soldiers disobeying orders, it's just here it seems a bit extreme here. The issue of collateral damage and civilian deaths seems to be ignored by the commanding officers, when in reality they'd not be like that.
It just leaves an odd taste in the mouth
A stealth plane is designed such that normal modes of detection are rendered difficult, if not impossible. So it means things like reducing heat signatures, in order than thermal imaging can't see you. It means designing your plane such that radar beams are bounced away, rather than back towards the sender. It means coating your plane in radar absorbent material. Stuff like that.
As such, the first ten minutes of the film kinda show you that 'stealth' is perhaps the poorest name for the film Stealth as you could get. Within those first ten minutes, the supposedly stealthy aircraft get locked onto by two missiles and fired at with reasonable accuracy by various radar-guided AAA.
They also fly so low as to be easily visible to their targets. Not to mention the aerobatic, stunt-like antics they engage in on that mission.
It's fair to say then that stealth isn't the most militarily accurate film. But then, to be really fair, I don't think it was the goal of stealth to be militarily accurate. The goal was more one of entertainment.
And in this regard it generally succeeds. The action stuff is thrilling; Jessica Biel's bottom is a delight to behold and the plot is passable.
Passable is about all I'd give it, though. The problem is it feels a bit too sanitized and a bit too familiar.
So there's a bit of a rather predictable romantic frisson between Biel's bottom and the main character. The other guy in the team is black and, well, let's just say it's fairly predictable what happens to him.
There's also an AI system in one of the planes that, and I don't want to get too spoilery here, 'goes haywire'. Then there's the team's boss who, again, not wanting to get too spoilery, but kinda does what you might expect him to do.
And that's the problem I had - there's nothing here that you haven't seen plenty of times before. Admittedly it doesn't do it badly, and the film is very pretty to look at (especially in the Alba department), but ultimately it's a fairly vacuous experience.
But it was the sanitisation that pushed things over the edge for me.
The point of these planes, it would seem, is that they're fighter-bombers. So as well as all the dog fighting they do, their role is also one of dropping bombs on bad guys.
In this case, the bad guys are nondescript 'terrorists'. Ooh, nasty men. Not that we're given any actual evidence that they're nasty men. We're just told they're terrorists and then the 'good guys' drop bombs on them.
We know they're good guys because a) they're all-American pilots and b) they go to extraordinary lengths to avoid killing civilians/non-combatants.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind them showing soldiers disobeying orders, it's just here it seems a bit extreme here. The issue of collateral damage and civilian deaths seems to be ignored by the commanding officers, when in reality they'd not be like that.
It just leaves an odd taste in the mouth
Tuesday 20 October 2009
the leap of doom
I took the plunge this last weekend and got myself a Crunchyroll subscription.
Currently I'm in the two-week free-trial period, but after that they start billing me $6.99 a month. I reckon should be about £4 a year, or it's probably best to think about it as £50 a year.
Now that's not cheap as such, but the point is to watch plenty of stuff in order that it starts to represent good value for money. My inaugural viewing under my subscription was the first four eps of Chi's New Address, which is a super-cute show about a young kitten.
Four episodes sounds a lot, but it's not that much, as each episode is only about 3 minutes long.
I've actually been a member of crunchyroll for ages - I joined slightly before it went legit, I think. I've also blogged about it before and I won't bother repeating my hatred of the site's structure and layout, the point is that I didn't really need to subscribe.
You can watch stuff on crunchyroll just by being a member. But the subscription gains you access to shows a week earlier and to a HQ version.
Now for me these are not necessarily the greatest of gains. Given my schedule, I don't generally have the spare time to follow shows in a fashion that would mean getting episodes a week earlier was a good thing. Also, when you add to that the fact that I actually prefer to watch shows in blocks, if not as whole seasons right through, then this really isn't a great gain.
The HQ versions are also not so useful.
For anyone that doesn't know, crunchyroll is a streaming site. Now, there appear to be two types of streaming - firstly, there's what I call 'pre-load' screening, which is how YouTube works.
You go to a video and it loads the video up once you press play. This gives you the option to pause the video and wait for it to load completely before starting. This is the best type of streaming if you're on a relatively slow connection like me.
Crunchyroll uses what I call iPlayer-style streaming. For this type of streaming, you simply get delivered what it is you're watching as you're watching it. So if you pause, it doesn't load up any more, it just waits until you press play again.
Now don't get me wrong, I love iPlayer and it's a system that does work for me. Just. If I'm watching iPlayer I can't do anything else on the interwebs. And it does have advantages - you can skip straight to where you want and it doesn't go bonkers, for example. I'd also guess it helps the company from a bandwidth point of view, as it's not sending you loads of stuff that you may then not watch because you closed the video or whatever.
The problem is that it's not as good as iPlayer. Even with a fair-wind, it can still stutter for me on the lower quality feeds. The higher quality therefore seems to be a constantly-stuttering nightmare. I'm guessing this has something to do with the relative size and quality of infrastructure available to the BBC compared to crunchyroll.
So why did I subscribe if these things aren't particularly beneficial to me?
Well, mainly because it means I'm contributing cash towards a hobby I love. The whole point of sites like this is that they're aimed at doing away with fansubs and all the illegality that involves.
It's a conscience saver, basically.
But there is also anther reason.
I was actually considering subscribing last year when loads of new shows were announced on crunchyroll. But the problem was that many of these, including some it turned out I really liked, were not licensed for anywhere other than the US.
This meant I couldn't watch them. And that really annoyed me.
Well this year there are even more shows are available on crunchyroll. Plus, more of them appear to be available in the UK (as far as I can work out only 2 of the new season shows aren't available in the UK), so I decided to subscribe and to actively try to watch stuff on there.
Of course the region problem remains, in general. If you go here then all the stuff in light grey is not available in the UK (assuming, that is, you're in the UK - if not, light grey still means not available in your region, but I've no idea how many there will be, if any).
But at least there's plenty I can watch now.
Currently I'm in the two-week free-trial period, but after that they start billing me $6.99 a month. I reckon should be about £4 a year, or it's probably best to think about it as £50 a year.
Now that's not cheap as such, but the point is to watch plenty of stuff in order that it starts to represent good value for money. My inaugural viewing under my subscription was the first four eps of Chi's New Address, which is a super-cute show about a young kitten.
Four episodes sounds a lot, but it's not that much, as each episode is only about 3 minutes long.
I've actually been a member of crunchyroll for ages - I joined slightly before it went legit, I think. I've also blogged about it before and I won't bother repeating my hatred of the site's structure and layout, the point is that I didn't really need to subscribe.
You can watch stuff on crunchyroll just by being a member. But the subscription gains you access to shows a week earlier and to a HQ version.
Now for me these are not necessarily the greatest of gains. Given my schedule, I don't generally have the spare time to follow shows in a fashion that would mean getting episodes a week earlier was a good thing. Also, when you add to that the fact that I actually prefer to watch shows in blocks, if not as whole seasons right through, then this really isn't a great gain.
The HQ versions are also not so useful.
For anyone that doesn't know, crunchyroll is a streaming site. Now, there appear to be two types of streaming - firstly, there's what I call 'pre-load' screening, which is how YouTube works.
You go to a video and it loads the video up once you press play. This gives you the option to pause the video and wait for it to load completely before starting. This is the best type of streaming if you're on a relatively slow connection like me.
Crunchyroll uses what I call iPlayer-style streaming. For this type of streaming, you simply get delivered what it is you're watching as you're watching it. So if you pause, it doesn't load up any more, it just waits until you press play again.
Now don't get me wrong, I love iPlayer and it's a system that does work for me. Just. If I'm watching iPlayer I can't do anything else on the interwebs. And it does have advantages - you can skip straight to where you want and it doesn't go bonkers, for example. I'd also guess it helps the company from a bandwidth point of view, as it's not sending you loads of stuff that you may then not watch because you closed the video or whatever.
The problem is that it's not as good as iPlayer. Even with a fair-wind, it can still stutter for me on the lower quality feeds. The higher quality therefore seems to be a constantly-stuttering nightmare. I'm guessing this has something to do with the relative size and quality of infrastructure available to the BBC compared to crunchyroll.
So why did I subscribe if these things aren't particularly beneficial to me?
Well, mainly because it means I'm contributing cash towards a hobby I love. The whole point of sites like this is that they're aimed at doing away with fansubs and all the illegality that involves.
It's a conscience saver, basically.
But there is also anther reason.
I was actually considering subscribing last year when loads of new shows were announced on crunchyroll. But the problem was that many of these, including some it turned out I really liked, were not licensed for anywhere other than the US.
This meant I couldn't watch them. And that really annoyed me.
Well this year there are even more shows are available on crunchyroll. Plus, more of them appear to be available in the UK (as far as I can work out only 2 of the new season shows aren't available in the UK), so I decided to subscribe and to actively try to watch stuff on there.
Of course the region problem remains, in general. If you go here then all the stuff in light grey is not available in the UK (assuming, that is, you're in the UK - if not, light grey still means not available in your region, but I've no idea how many there will be, if any).
But at least there's plenty I can watch now.
Monday 19 October 2009
well done that man
So Jenson Button has been crowned F1 World Champion 2009.
It was a cracking race. Interlagos (Brazil) usually is a cracker, with incidents a plenty and the sort of circuit where overtaking is a very real option.
And Jenson had a truly great drive that pretty much put paid to the criticisms that have been floating about. Whilst I wouldn't really count myself as properly critical, I've certainly thought Jenson's performance had gone off the boil a bit in the last few races.
It's one thing if your car is a bit crap or deosn't suit the circuit when everyone else's does, it's quite another when your team-mate, who's in an almost identical car, is regularly beating you in qualifying and during the race.
It's difficult to know quite what the issue was - a desire to play-it-safe that resulted in over-caution, or a loss of nerves or confidence generally, but Jenson's really not been actively winning the championship so much as others have been failing to catch him up.
But he put an end to such criticism this last weekend with a stellar drive and some excellent over-taking manoeuvres. I mean, he didn't win, but after a another dismal qualifying he did a really good job when it counted and got the points he needed. So many congratulations to him and the team, who've become the first new-entrant team to win the constructor's championship in their first year (I bet Honda are really kicking themselves).
Oh and speaking of qualifying - that was a dismal effort. I mean, it was exciting and interesting (they've really cracked qualifying this year - as Eddie Jordan pointed out, it's often been better than the race itself) when the cars where out, but it took 2 and 3/4 hour to get through 45 mins of actual track action.
From what Bernie Eccleston said the implication was there's no contingency plan in the rules for when something like this happens. In theory, they just keep going until it's finished, but what if it ends up getting dark?
I thinkt hey need to sort that out.
It was a cracking race. Interlagos (Brazil) usually is a cracker, with incidents a plenty and the sort of circuit where overtaking is a very real option.
And Jenson had a truly great drive that pretty much put paid to the criticisms that have been floating about. Whilst I wouldn't really count myself as properly critical, I've certainly thought Jenson's performance had gone off the boil a bit in the last few races.
It's one thing if your car is a bit crap or deosn't suit the circuit when everyone else's does, it's quite another when your team-mate, who's in an almost identical car, is regularly beating you in qualifying and during the race.
It's difficult to know quite what the issue was - a desire to play-it-safe that resulted in over-caution, or a loss of nerves or confidence generally, but Jenson's really not been actively winning the championship so much as others have been failing to catch him up.
But he put an end to such criticism this last weekend with a stellar drive and some excellent over-taking manoeuvres. I mean, he didn't win, but after a another dismal qualifying he did a really good job when it counted and got the points he needed. So many congratulations to him and the team, who've become the first new-entrant team to win the constructor's championship in their first year (I bet Honda are really kicking themselves).
Oh and speaking of qualifying - that was a dismal effort. I mean, it was exciting and interesting (they've really cracked qualifying this year - as Eddie Jordan pointed out, it's often been better than the race itself) when the cars where out, but it took 2 and 3/4 hour to get through 45 mins of actual track action.
From what Bernie Eccleston said the implication was there's no contingency plan in the rules for when something like this happens. In theory, they just keep going until it's finished, but what if it ends up getting dark?
I thinkt hey need to sort that out.
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