seasonal norm?

For the last couple of days the weather's almost been mild.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's been warm and there's been plenty of rain, so it's not been great weather, but it has definitely not been as cold as it has these last few months.

As I understand it this almost-mild spell has been rather restricted to the South, with plenty of snow and cold weather further north, but then I don't live there. I live in the South and down here it's not been too bad.

The bad news is that looking at the forecasts it's meant to get cold again next week, but for now I'm enjoying not freezing to death at work at the very least.

It was fully my intention this week to watch some anime. However, for the early part of the week I focused more on watching some things I'd recorded. My logic was that this weekend is going to be quite a busy one, so the more stuff I could clear the better.

That's all fine, but then I'd completely forgotten about something. Anno 1404 - Venice turned up yesterday. Of course, if I was sensible I would have held back and watched the anime as I'd promised myself. But of course I didn't do that. I installed the game and gave it a quick go.

I was a little disappointed by one thing if I'm honest - there's no new campaign, which is the story-based version of the game.

Instead they've introduced a lot more Scenarios. The first one of these I played did feature an animated cut scene like the campaign has, so my guess would be they've built cut scenes for all of the scenarios, but I don't know.

What they have introduced, as per the name, is a whole load of new stuff that mainly relates to Venice. There's a bunch of new NPCs, which by the looks of things includes a new equivalent to the Occident and Orient quest givers for Venice.

There also appears to be multiplayer, which is of little interest to me. But the big introduction of interest to me seems to be 'espionage', which allows you to plant spies and to undertake sabotage missions. This looks interesting, but I have to confess in the sample I played in that first scenario there was something that puzzled me.

If the idea is that these are secret espionage missions then it seemed odd that the player I was doing them on keeping sending me messages about loosing reputation for conducting them. I mean, I understood some of these when he caught my spy, but it also seemed like I got them when the spy successfully completed his mission.

Maybe it was my not understanding it properly, but doesn't that kinda defeat the point? If he knows it's me all the time then they're hardly secret espionage missions are they :/.

Anyway, the big point here is that I can already feel that I'm going to end up being a naughty boy and playing Venice this weekend.

ripping good time

The other day I was ordering a was browsing Amazon for a couple of CDs (yes, I still buy CDs! How very old school of me!) when it occurred to me I hadn't mentioned the completing of a grand project.

A lot of this time this blog is all about how rubbish I am at completing or doing stuff. I'm supposed to be an anime fan, but I can't be bothered watching all my anime DVDs. I'm supposed to be buying the anime mags so I can scan them, but can't be arsed. I'm supposed to enjoy reading, but instead of reading the books I buy, I read manga instead. I'm supposed to be a gamer, but fixate on 1 game and play that to the exclusion of all others. And all the other stuff.

Well, the project in question was also a bit of a victim of this effect to. The project in question was the ripping of all of my CD collection to MP3.

I used to be really into music, but when after Uni I kinda rediscovered anime and manga and what gave way was my interest in music. Plus, at the time the bands I was most into had all either broken up or had started releasing crap.

What I'm saying is that my music collection used to be huge, given the amount of time I'd been building it, but since Uni I've hardly bought anything, so I guess now it's just big.

Anyway, the idea was that given the MP3 player I got for my thirtieth I should start ripping my CDs. I started on this and got a long way, but then I hit a problem.

The ripping program I was using has a database that looks up the album and track titles and it covered 95% of my CDs. Admittedly it wasn't perfect - some of the album names especially are a bit wonky - but it was good enough.

But then I found that some of my CDs weren't in there. And I also found that tying the stuff in was horribly tortuous. So I put these to the side and did the rest. There weren't many, but enough that once I'd completed the others I kept making excuse to not do them.

Well recently I made the time and ripped them plus the few newer CDs I'd bought since putting the project on hold. Now, interestingly and technically, I also found about half a dozen disks that had some sort of copy protection on them, so I've not ripped them, but I'm pretty happy to say that I've completed the project.

It's kinda a good feeling to really finish something.

the incredible hulk

This has to be one of the quickest reboots in the history of reboots.

The Incredible Hulk is not a sequel to "Hulk", the Ang Lee movie from 2003. Interestingly, though, it's also not an origin story, as such. Indeed, the origin stuff is covered across the opening title sequence.

Instead, we get what would work quite well as a sequel movie, except that the origin movie wasn't made. Or, to put it another way, if you've seen the Ang Lee movie which does have origin stuff in it, but instead of making a sequel to that, they switched back to the comic, but made a sequel.

I know - it's a bit confusing when you actually think about it.

Not the movie itself that is - the movie is relatively simple, story-wise - but the meta-textual stuff. The real world and outside stuff.

And to some extent that stuff is detectable in the movie. The main feeling you get is that they're trying to cram all the stuff into this movie from the comics and the TV series that Ang Lee either didn't want to or decided not to include in the first one.

Some examples are that Lou Ferrigno (who played the hulk in the TV show) pops up in a cameo, there's a tiny burst of the TV show's theme and that the iconic line "Hulk Smash!" makes it into the film. There are quite a few others that you'll pick up on if you know the comic or the TV series and these add a nice, fun layer to this film that perhaps wasn't there in the original.

But this is where things get a little weird - the film tries to both have its cake and eat it. It tries to be that fun, comic-book film that wasn't really the case in the first one (although, weirdly, the first one was shot to look like a comic, even though it wasn't really a comic book film in tone), but it also tries to be a bit more serious.

There are quite a few heavy scenes between Bruce and Betty, for example and they try to play up the tragic nature of being the Hulk. But I dunno, it doesn't quite sit well here. Edward Norton's performance in particular is played pretty straight and while it works in and of itself, it seems to jar a bit with the more comic-booky stuff.

In a way, it's like he thought he was in a sequel to the Ang Lee movie, where the producers (Marvel) were trying to bring in more of the fun, fan-favourite comic book and TV stuff. I got the feeling then that the director was caught in the middle a bit - trying to do both and kinda agreeing with both sides and keep them happy at the same time.

I think I'm being a bit overly analytical here. This stuff doesn't really detract from the film as a whole, which is basically okay.

Part of the trouble with the hulk, and it was particularly evident in the TV show, is that basically it's a rather simple, repetitive story. Bruce Banner can't have a proper life with the woman he loves because when he gets angry he turns into a huge green monster that smashes stuff up. So instead, he spends his life looking for a cure and (obviously, otherwise the whole story would stop) not finding it. That's also why he doesn't just go and live in a monastery or deep in the woods - he needs a cure so he can be with Betty.

It's also why over the years they've had to do so much buggering about with that basic story. It's repetitive and predictable unless you start doing stuff like make the hulk intelligent.

Its also why they pitch him against all sorts of good and bad guys - it at least gives him something different to do.

too much food

Dinner last night was a bit weird.

When I went home for Christmas my Dad gave me a bunch of food. This happens every Christmas, because, even though he doesn't buy excessive amounts, he still buys too much stuff. Basically, it's because he's buying extra things on top of what he normally buys anyway.

But also recently, he's started giving me meat. The reason is that a friend of his gives him meat (it's complicated) and because he can't eat it all, he bungs it in the freezer and then passes it on to me when I visit.

Now this is fine in concept, only he doesn't really tend to think it through enough. So, for example, last time he gave me some pork chops. This would be great - ideal even, because obviously you can do as many chops as you need, right? Except he froze all four chops as one lump.

That's a lot of chops in anyone's book and it also means you can't cook them individually under the grill or anything. I effectively had to treat them as a large roast, but then they're rubbish like that, because they're very bony and fatty, so you can't really keep the leftovers. In other words, I cooked the whole thing, but could only eat the main meat part of the chop.

Plus, I don't know about you, but I can't just eat a chop on its own as a meal, so I ended up doing a full roast, so it's really a big meal. So anyway, I informed him of this when I next saw him and he now freezes the chops individually.

However, at Christmas he game me a proper roasting joint of pork. It was a big joint and I finally decided this weekend to tackle it.

One of the things about pork I find is that it doesn't really shrink. Most meats do - if you roast beef, for example, what comes out of the oven will be up to a third smaller that what went in, in my experience. But that doesn't seem to work for pork - what come out is roughly the size of what went in.

I could easily have gotten four meals off of this joint, but instead I had big portions and did three meals. In other words, on Saturday I cooked a full roast that featured pork, apple sauce, gravy, Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, carrots and peas.

From that, I ended up with cold meat, Yorkshires, apple sauce and the gravy, so on Sunday I reheated those and did some more roast potatoes, carrots and peas and had another roast.

But then Monday I obviously still had meat, Yorkshires, apple sauce and gravy left, so what to do?

Normally when I do a roast, what I do is I have the Saturday and Sunday roast, but then I make a stew on Monday, half of which I can keep and have on Tuesday. I don't do it that often - perhaps once a month? - as it's complicated and time consuming, but it also represents great value for money. Generally speaking home cooking is always cheaper, especially when your most expensive ingredient (the meat) goes a long way.

Anyway, the problem was that I don't really like making stews with pork. My stew recipe works for dark meats - beef and lamb, in particular - but it's not so good for white meats like pork and chicken.

That meant only one option - do more potatoes and carrots and have another 'roast' (I actually boiled the potatoes as it was quicker - well I steamed them technically, but you know what I mean).

So rather bizarrely I've eaten full roast dinner for three days in a row. I still feel a bit full now :/.

good intentions

I had seriously good intentions this weekend.

The first part of the plan was to give my dad a call on Saturday, and I did that. Unfortunately, the call was a really long one - 2 hours, in fact, so it basically ate up my entire Saturday morning, which was a bit inconvenient.

The second part of the plan was to finally finish off watching all of the stuff I've recorded over the last couple of weeks. For example, I recorded both a Midsommer Murders and the last Wallander some time back and I haven't had the chance to watch them.

Mainly this is because my ironing schedule has gone to pot in recent weeks. Normally, I like to watch a good crime mystery while I do my ironing. Midsommer Murders is particularly good ironing viewing.

Well, this weekend I had a huge pile of ironing to do, so I figured I'd take the opportunity to at least watch one of them. If you know Midsommer Murders, then you'll know they're about 2 hours long, as broadcast. Well, when you skip the ads, you find they're actually only about 1.5 hours long.

Also, the Wallenders (these are the BBC ones) are about an hour and a half too. So I figured one of them would get me through the ironing.

I watched both. To be fair, I couldn't iron continuously - my arm starts to ache after a while - but still, even given that, I spent the best part of three hours ironing and watching them.

The final part of my genuine good intentions plan therefore didn't come to proper fruition. This part involved me actually sitting down and doing some scanning.

My plan wasn't to be stupid about it - just do one magazine or something. Make a start - that was the key. Even given the amount of spare time I'd used up with the phone and ironing, I figured I could do one magazine.

However, what I didn't count on was that I've gotten a long way out of touch.

What I'd forgotten or failed to realise was that the unscanned magazines stretched back to September last year. In other words, I had all of the months mags from September 2009 to March 2010 stacked up.

That means I've got 7 issues of Megami, 7 issues of New Type, 7 issues of Animedia and 7 issues of Animage for a starter. I also found 2 issue of Nyan Type (the megami 'bishoujo' rival from New Type) and 3 artbooks in the same pile.

That's a lot of magazines and it meant a lot of sorting out. Before I can scan, I have to take the magazines apart, removing staples, etc. This makes it about 200 times easier to scan them and also means I can chuck away the cheap black and white pages all the mags have in them, but it is a time consuming process. It's also a process that's way better to do in a block, rather than while I'm scanning.

Well, sorting, tidying, taking them apart and all that jazz took me the best part of two hours. And what's more, I didn't have enough time to do the animage's. Unlike the other mags, animage is glue-bound. Taking them apart therefore involves use of an iron to melt the glue. This is a pain in the arse, but it actually makes scanning animage a really simple and easy process, so to be fair it is kinda swings and roundabouts.

So yea - no scanning done, but I've done a big chunk of the prep, so when I do get around to it (and I really am determined to do it now) I'll be pretty much ready to roll straight out of the gate.