buzzcut

I didn't really post much last week.

That was primarily due to a double whammy of having to get back up to speed / pick up all sorts of stuff that had happened while I was away and applying for jobs.  The applying for jobs bit was the thing that took up most of the spare time I would usually use to do things like write my blog posts.

I finally finished doing my CV while I was on holiday.  The tricky part was coming up with some stuff to match the technical sections in my CV.  I've basically divided the CV up into two parts - technical stuff and bid writing stuff.

The technical part was easy to populate because I could just take the material I use for my work CV (I get put into bids and obviously do technical work as a contractor like I did earlier in the year) and tweak it so it was a bit more appropriate to the format, etc.

The difficult bit was the bid writer side, because I only really do that internally to my company so there was no pre-existing material.  The real challenge was dividing both up in such a way that they matched stylistically.

The technical stuff easily divides up into a series of discrete projects, but the bid writing was better divided up into areas of activity with each project as a single example of me doing that.

In the end I came up with what I think is a relatively smart CV that brings out both sides quite well.  My idea was that by making a CV like that I could adapt it if I wanted to do a technical or bid writing job.

Bid writing is of more interest to me.  I think.  It's certainly been a lot easier going through the job descriptions on the websites and thinking whether I could do the role or not.

The technical / analytical searches have generally produced loads more results (probably a ratio of 20 to 1!) but the big problem is that I don't have much of the specific experience with the analytical software like SPSS, SAS or SQL.  So while I could learn and probably have all the other skills, that means it's not even worth applying.

One thing that's also been interesting is the salaries.  The analyst roles are reasonably well paid, but it's broadly similar to my current salary.  Unless, that is, it's in the financial sector, and then the money goes quite high.  For the bid writing roles the worst salaries are equivalent to what I'm currently on and generally are a bit higher (backing up one of my issues where I currently work).

As part of this whole process I also had a rather significant haircut - the buzzcut of the title.

I've been thinking about getting it all trimmed off for a while as I've actually started to thin on top.  This wouldn't be so bad but unfortunately my hair is really fluffy and tends to stick straight up unless it's more than an inch long or so.  The trouble there is when it gets that long it tends to acquire some weird curliness, but only in certain parts.  My sideburns get very curly, but more on the right than the left, for example.

The buzzcut is also super easy to maintain and I can also now do it myself, saving myself money.  I mean, it's not a lot of money, but given how long a haircut takes it's surprisingly expensive.  We're talking an equivalent day rate in the order of £350 a day and that's a lot for the type of level of work it is.

I am a little worried though as I fear it makes me look too aggressive / thuggish.  A part of the issue is that, while my hair is thinning it's not receding, but also I have quite dark hair so it's not a subtle thing.

singapore GP

Sebastian Vettel very nearly took the championship this weekend.

Well, let's be frank - he has the championship, but there's a mathematical chance that Button could win it.  However, it's so slim a chance that it's negligible - Button would have to win every single race from here on out (a couple of the circuits - Japan definitely - suit the Red Bull car down to the ground) and Vettel would have to score no points at all.

Or, to put it even more bluntly, if Seb scores one more point in the entire rest of the season, then he takes the championship.  So it's his.

The Grand Prix itself was okay.  It was still horribly long and there wasn't a huge amount of overtaking.  Most of that overtaking came from DRS, KERS and the tyres.  Let's be frank - it's a terribly boring race that the excellent new rules helped to make okay.

Lewis was a bit in the wars again.  Massa must think Lewis has a personal grudge against him, as he keeps ending up the victim.  But then he must wonder at his luck full stop as everyone keeps crashing into him - Webber at Monza, for example.

I think the punishment for Lewis was very harsh, but you can understand it, as he did virtually ruined Massa's race.

I've gotta say I do think the Stewards are very inconsistent.  Schumacher got the lightest slap on the wrist at Monza and Lewis has ended up with a penalty simply because it's very difficult to see exactly where the tip of your front wing is.

Anyway, I also got my haircut as planned.

I don't actually enjoy getting my haircut.  I do get it cut at the same place, so I'm a bit more used to the girls they have and the environs now, but it's still something I just don't feel comfortable with.

My guess is that this is in no small part because my mum used to cut my hair.  I don't mean in a random way - she used to be a hairdresser (I believe she used to have her own hairdressers before the bank stopped the funding/overdraft or something like that).  As such, I've essentially grown up without the need to get used to a non-family member fiddling about with your hair and a sharp pair of scissors.

One thing that does puzzle me is, despite having the exact same cut type (number 2/3 on the back and sides, season and weather depending, and scissor trim on the top) it looks different depending on who's done it.  A key difference is how high up they take the trimming bit - some do only a sort of lower chunk that doesn't go above my temples, but others take it right up the full side of my head.

Weirdly I ran into the girl who used to do my favourite version when I was out on one of my longer walks.  I thought she'd been sacked or moved on, but she said she'd had an operation and that's why she'd not been in.

sing a pore (or is that bore?)

Singapore Grand Prix this weekend.

I’m guessing it will also be he weekend when Sebastian Vettel gets his hands on the championship.

It will also likely be another very big challenge for the new rules as Singapore is a dire race usually.  Like Valencia and Monaco it’s on a tight street circuit and therefore ends to produce dull races.  Unlike Monaco, Valencia was still dull and I would guess Singapore will be too.

A big part of the problem has been the length in Singapore - laps take such a long time that the race usually drags on for ages.

But we’ll see - who knows, maybe it will be a good one.  Of particular interest is the other part of how I've written the title.  According to the weather thing the BBC does for the next race it's basically been raining all week in Singapore.  Usually rain adds a bit of spice, but given that Singapore is a night race, illuminated by great big spotlights, I'm unsure quite what will happen if it rains.

Other plans for the weekend are relatively simple.  I need to buy my dad a present.  What he's asked for can only really be picked up in a shop so I can actually pick things up and have a look at them.

I also really need a haircut.  I get this weird thing with my sideburn area where they become very curly when my hair gets too long.  It's odd - there's a point where they suddenly become curly.

Well, I say that.  Maybe it's more that I suddenly notice it's happened.

I've been watching a lot of telly in the evenings and, as I mentioned before, I trimmed out quite a few programmes.  Also, some others have come to an end.  I'm therefore hoping I can do some scanning and, in particular, get back up to speed with anime stuff.

I'd quite like to plough through the fansubs I've got.  I mentioned before that unfortunately, this season, there seemed to be a retro step that meant more stuff was only really accessible via fansub.  Well, the new season is rolling around, so the hard drive I use to hold fansubs is very nearly full because of the combination of all the shows I've downloaded and my poor watch rate.

bits and bobs

Kind of a bits and bobs weekend this last weekend.

Which was good - after last week's huge physical exertions I didn't really fancy doing anything much. I got my hair cut, which is good, dumped a load of cardboard at the local tip and did some shopping and a load of ironing and those were pretty much all of the fixed tasks I had to do.

The rest of the weekend was pretty much spent watching telly, walking and scanning while watching anime.

I seem to be getting a bit of a backlog of telly shows and I was initially puzzled as to why, but I think it's to do with the time of year - there's always more of interest to me on during winter - and the fact I'm spending a lot of my time scanning. As discussed last week, the new scanning process is a lot slower, so although I'm spending a lot of time doing it, I am only proceeding at a steady pace with the actual scans.

I must confess I'm in two minds about this. A part of me thinks the results are sufficiently better that I should keep going, another part of me thinks that I'm so far behind that I should dust off the old scanner and use it to get caught up.

To give you some idea of the scale of how far behind I am, I need to scan one more nyan type and then I'll be a third of the way through 2010. In other words I'll still have 8 months of 2010 and everything so far from 2011 to do just in order to catch up to the present day.

Of course it's bound to take several months to get through them - more at my current pace - so that will add quite a few mags onto the back end.

I dunno - really am in two minds. Which I have to confess aren't helped by the fact that, in order to use my old scanner I will have to buy a new heat sink for my old computer. Due to what can only be described as a double-header of stupidity and incompetence, the old heat sink is both knackered and doesn't fit into the case my old machine ended up in anyway.

Trouble there is we're talking seriously old bits of kit. That does actually mean the heat sinks I looked at were really cheap, but also most of the models weren't actually in-stock.

I'm also rather worried that the photstitch thing seems to be really erratic, especially when it comes to posters. A lot of the magazines give away large posters and two of them - megami and nyan type - are almost nothing but posters. With the A4 scanner I have to break these up into at least 4 bits and sticking these together seems to cause real problems for photostitch.

I've a horrible feeling the best solution is going to be to scan magazine pages via the new method and posters via the old. That way I'll either be able to scan them as one like I used to or do them in halves so that only 2 bits need stitching together.

So yeah, decisions to make.

short sack and bides

I really need a haircut - I'm getting a serious case of mop-hair - so hopefully I'll get the chance to pop down the barbers this weekend and get a trim.

My landlord has been away on his winter holiday for the last two weeks and should be getting back today. Not sure what time, but I guess he'll back by the time I get back from work.

He actually went to Sharm El Sheikh, which is where they had all those shark attacks a while ago. I recommended avoiding swimming, as you would.

His absence was actually what spurred me into sorting through the boxes last weekend, as it can be rather disruptive with me leaving them all over the place, so I tend to like to use the opportunity of them going away to sort through them. Rather annoyingly, though, although he's been away for the best part of two weeks, his holiday only overlapped with one weekend.

He went on a Monday and is coming back today - a Friday, so that's only weekend. It'd have been better for my aching muscles (it took until Wednesday before I could really say they were feeling okay again) if I'd been able to spread it over two weekends.

The only other thing I've got to do this weekend is tackle the huge pile of ironing that's built up. This shouldn't be too great a task and I can watch telly while I iron, so it's no great shakes. What I'm hoping to do is more scanning, probably doing a few more animages.

If I'm honest I'm not wholly enamoured of the new scanning process.

Basically, the post-computer update situation means that I've now got a new, reasonably powerful PC running windows 7 as my regular machine. I've bought and installed Photoshop CS5 and a new Cannon scanner.

The big problem I had was that my old A3 scanner is not compatible with windows 7. But also, I was never really happy with the quality of the scans it produced. It was massively convenient to be able to scan an entire poster that the Japanese magazines give away in one go, but the end result was not that brilliant. It was also relatively slow and obviously quite cumbersome piece of kit. To be fair, it was a cheap scanner, so I shouldn't be too harsh given the advantages it gave me.

Anyway, point is that the new system involves using an A4 scanner, but making use of the photo-stitching tool that was introduced some time around CS2. The results are mixed.

First off, the scanner is a lot quicker and gives better image quality than the old A4 scanner. But I now have to scan every page at least twice - 4 times for the posters. The reason fro this (and why I bought an A3 scanner in the first place) is that all of the Japanese anime magazines are in weird sizes - they're all slightly bigger than A4, so you can't scan a page in a single go.

The net effect then is that scanning takes longer because although it's quicker it's not that much quicker, but also because I'm having to crop and save twice as many pictures.

However, there's also a whole new step where I have to load up the images and put them through the photostich process to stick them together. This obviously add a whole load of extra time, but also the results are really random.

Sometime you load things up and set it going and the results are perfect. Other times, they're rubbish. Most of the time they need some manual tweak - a slight nudge of one of the pictures to get it to line up properly. And of course this is even more time consuming, but also can be very frustrating.

So yeah - it's a real mixed bag.

tired but not knackered

As the heading suggests, today I feel tired, but not knackered.

This is a little odd, because the weekend was intensely knackering, and I'd normally expect that sort of thing to carry over.

The knackering bits started with me having to clean bed-sit, having not cleaned it in several weeks. I've spent most of the last few weekends trying to sort stuff and that's not left a lot of time to do any cleaning, so things were rather grimy - I had to Hoover the floor twice, for example.

I then decided to take the bull by the horns and do some scanning. Something my sorting out again highlighted was the huge pile of un-scanned magazines, which keeps growing. I realised that my heroic trudge through all the megamis was so long ago that I'd actually received two new issue of megami since then.

The result of this horn-bull paradigm thingy was that I ploughed through 8 or 9 (I actually lost track :/) issues of animedia. Now animedia of course is the famously light anime mag, generally having the fewest scannable images, but we're still taking what must have been the best part of 10 hours of scanning across the weekend.

That also means I watched a heck of a lot of anime on fansubs - I'd do the summaries tomorrow - which is all rather mentally exhausting.

And on top of that I went for another walk on Sunday! Now I can't speak for the entire country, but down here in southern England is was a veritable scorcher yesterday (supposedly it'll be even hotter today).

For some reason, although this made me slightly trepidatious about the walk, I still went out wearing my jeans. I dunno why I did that - I have plenty of shorts I could have worn that I'm sure would have been cooler.

In the end the walk wasn't as bad as I'd feared, even with the unsuitable attire. I think what helped was that there was quite a lot of shade and the bit that's up the hill had a nice breeze.

I still can't walk up that hill without a couple of pauses to catch my breath, but I guess the point is that it was not much worse given the elevated temperature. Also, it didn't seem to take me as long to recover when I got back as it has done in the past, which I hope is a good sign.

The last entry on the list was the temperature last night. As is often the way when the temperature suddenly goes up I haven't had a hair cut in ages, which is never a help. Of course the new thinner duvet I bought in Friday's spending spree is not here yet, and I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't turn up until the end of the week

I therefore decide to take matters into my own hands a bit and I used some ice packs to pre-cool my bed and to cool my pillow especially (think hot water bottle but in reverse). It was pretty successful as I got off fairly quickly.

The ultimate solution of course is to get the air conditioner out, but there are two problems there. First off the temperature is apparently going to drop for later in the week, but also with my sorting out still ongoing, it's going to be something like a logistical nightmare to get it out.

I therefore put down the fact that I'm tired to the fact that I did a lot of stuff over the weekend and the fact that I'm not knackered to the fact that you tend to sleep better if you've tired yourself out.

mr mop

God, I need a haircut.

My hair's got to the really annoying stage where it just looks shit however I wash or comb it. It's also acting as a massive heat blanket, making me hot and sweaty when it's not actually that warm.

I should have had it cut one the last few weekends, but I've mentioned before that I find having it cut really unpleasant. Plus it seems to cost more each time I go.

I've been doing some scanning through the week. I've actually been trying to stay on top of telly this week (loads of stuff I've been following ends this week so I'm kinda prepping for a spare-time boost to... well, I'm not sure - maybe I'll get on top of the scanning or watch some DVDs?), so it's perhaps not been as much as I could have done, but some is better than none.

I've also been watching anime independently as well as what I've watched while scanning, so here are the low-downs:

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Wow.

I'm not really sure how to expand on that.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 is about an earthquake. Well, no, actually it's about people being impacted by a really big earthquake.

How can I put this? Where you might have expected all the money and effort to have gone into getting the earthquake right and animating it well, it's quite clear that just as much effort has gone into developing the characters and plot. The characters feel real - now admittedly they're not things you won't have seen done before, but they're done so well and portrayed so vividly they feel totally real.

Indeed, the realness is such that I almost found myself blubbing at a few points. Indeed, I'm struggling not to compare it to the masterworks of Miyazaki - there's a real flavour of what he manages to capture in films like Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service.

This is probably one of the best anime I've seen in ages.


Bakemonogatori

For some while now I've been bemoaning the current fad in anime to adapt "Light Novels".

My main issue with these light novels is that they seem to almost completely lack originality. I've tended to assume this was because of the nature of the beast - light novels are, as the name suggests "easy readers" and tend to rely on heavily worn ideas. To say they're quite a clichéd bunch is to hit the nail on the head.

However, Bakemonogatari - which is another of the same ilk if you hadn't guessed already - seems to be offering something a bit different. But there's a bit of a catch - it's being made by SHAFT and a lot of what makes Bakemonogatari interesting is the visual style and presentation.

Since Light Novels are textual in nature, it's hard to see how this is coming from the book and not the company making it. But that said, the plot seems fairly interesting from what I sampled. Well, I say the plot - it's a little difficult to be sure quite what the plot is if I'm honest. I'm sure it'd become clearer later, but at the moment I'm not really sure what's going on.

So I guess really it's the characters that carried my interest in what I sampled.


Canaan

Y'know, something odd sometimes happens when I run through fansubs like this.

For some reason, I tend to get runs of good and bad shows. Why this happens I don't know - I'm selecting what to watch on about as random a basis as I can, yet I'll still end up watching several rubbish shows in a row and then several good ones in a row.

The upshot of which is that this is the third good show in a row.

I have to admit, though, that I found Canaan nearly as confusing as Bakemonogatari. I say nearly because there's clearly a plot kicking about in Canaan, it's just they're hiding it away to give some mystery. Bakemonogatari I just wasn't really sure where it was going.

But also like Bakemonogatari, there's enough other good stuff to keep my interest despite the confusingness of the plot. For example, Canaan also seems to be packed full of interesting characters and, most surprisingly, humour. I really wasn't expecting it to have anything funny in it from what I've seen magazine wise, but it was actually quite funny in places.


Kuruneko

Well this is a bit of an oddity. Apparently it's an anime based on a blog - you don't get that every day!

As the title suggests - neko means cat - the blog is about cats. The anime is a series of very short episodes - maybe about 2mins each - which you'd expect from a blog and they're pretty much random, humorous anecdotes about cat ownership.

The animation is relatively crude, in a Rhubarb and Custard sort of way, and like that cartoon it has a lot of charm for it.

Overall it's sort of Chii-esque, but where that has a narrative because it's a fictional story, this is a bit more random (and a bit more 'realistic') and therefore didn't quite peak my interest in the same way. I guess if it was freely streamed somewhere it'd be worth a watch, especially as it's so short.


Umi Monogatari ~Anata ga Ite Kureta Koto~

Wasn't 100% sure about this one.

The first episode was kinda okay. Certainly the blonde underwater chick (I'm hesitating to use the word mermaid as it wasn't entirely clear that's what she was supposed to be) was totally hot and the land-dwelling girl was an interesting character. It was also quite funny and the story seemed to be okay.

But then in episode two things went spectacularly downhill.

First off, it suddenly became a magical girl show. This seemed to be a bit left-field to me. But worse than that, the story became a bit dodgy - both in terms of what it was and how it was being told.

The main crime was that a talking turtle appeared and proceeded to talk full advantage of his ability to talk in order to cram tonnes of relatively uninteresting exposition into our lugholes. To make it worse, he didn't seem to explain some stuff that then got used later in the story.

So I dunno - I'd probably keep watching, but I've a strong feeling the scales would slowly tip towards it not being a very good show.


Souten Kouro

I actually quite enjoyed this.

It's loosely inspired by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (they love a bit of Three Kingdoms in Japan) and it's probably fair to say that it's a bit on the melodramatic side.

It's also probably fair to say that the animation is of a fairly poor standard. If I was being kinda I'd go for highly stylised, but it's also fairly clear they were a bit strapped for cash.

Oh and it's all in the bloody dark again. Partly, I think to cover up the nasty and nudey bits for broadcast reasons, but also to hide the animation a bit. Plus of course, darkness = drama. I'm actually kinda surprised in didn't rain rose petals (or real rain even) during my sample, but then that is a bit girly and this is more melodrama for men in tone.

But setting those aside, I actually kinda liked it. Although I think I'd have to absorb it in small doses - I imagine watching this much melodrama in a short period of time might have a negative affect on your opinion of it.


AIKa ZERO

Let's do a short one: Basically if you've seen and liked the recent AIKa R16 then AIKa ZERO won't disappoint.

If you've not seen it you may like it if any of the following tickly your fancy: excessive fan-service, panty shots, hot young girls, panty shots, chick fights or panty shots. Plus, oddly for this sort of show, the story is okay too.

Oh, and there are quite a lot of panty-shots.

crammed with stuff

Busy weekend.

I finally got my hair cut, so I no longer look like I've got an unruly mop stuck to my head. And the price has gone up again. When I first came here you used to get change from a tenner for a haircut. Now it costs £12.50. I know that's still not a massive amount, but it's a significant leap in a short period of time - especially when you include a tip.

And the Grand Prix season kicked off this weekend with the Australian Grand Prix. Now it may just be because there have been so many rule changes, rather than the nature of those changes, but it was a really good race - there was loads of overtaking. Hamilton, for example, started off at the back as he had to change his gearbox and ended up third.

Let's hope this bodes well for the season as a whole and is due to the cars now being able to overtake properly. Certainly there seemed ot be a lot of evidence for this with cars getting close behind and getting the traditional 'tow' followed by a burst around to overtake.

I also did some scanning. The main thing I needed to do was scan the covers of the DVD series I've watched recently, since I've had them up on e-bay for sale. I did manage to scan megami (the new one should be with me soon!) and animedia as well.

While I scanned I watched some anime (it's interesting doing it on my widescreen monitor - there's enough desktop real estate that I can have everything open without the windows overlapping).

White Album was distinctly okay. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting of the show - I'd seen a few visuals and it seemed like it was set in the world of 'idols' which is a bizarre Japanese system, but what I hadn't been expecting was a harem anime.

And that's basically what it is when you decompose it - there's a central guy and lots of cute girls seem to be in love with him for no apparent reason. He's also got a hapless mate who fancies one of the girls.

But here's the thing - I think what they've tried to do is make a more 'adult' harem show. And I mean adult in the sense of a grown up story, rather than pornographic. Indeed, it pretty much lacks anything resembling fan-service, which is technically a core element of a proper harem show.

Now this might be okay, but there's a really weird ambience to the show. It's incredibly miserable all the time for no apparent reason. I mean, it's not like rubbish things actually happen to the characters, they're all just very melancholy. It's odd. And it affects the pacing too, which was very slow.

But then the show looks pretty - it's nicely animated and the character designs are nice. Also the characters seem quite interesting... apart from being miserable. Maybe I'm being too harsh.

Maria + Holic was disappointing. It's by the same studio that did Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei (SHAFT) and more than that it's directed by the same guy. It's also an adaptation of a slightly demented manga. They also appear to have used a lot of the same tricks that they pulled on zetsubo sensei and so visually Maria Holic is absolutely nothing to complain about (it has possibly the greatest opening credit animation ever).

Maybe, therefore, the problem was that I was expecting too much, but overall I found the series flat. I kept waiting for the gags to happen, but it seemed to lack anything resembling punchlines. As I say, maybe a bit of time and distance will make me like it more if I ever get the chance to watch it on DVD or something.

Hetalia - Axis Powers was really quite poor.

Maybe it was another show where I was also hoping for a bit much and maybe my knowledge of world history is a bit lacking, but the show doesn't really make a lot of sense.

It's also kinda offensive, but the problem is it's not wilfully offensive and neither is it being ironic. How can I explain? It's a bit like things like golliwogs and black & white minstrels. Looking back on them they're appallingly offensive and I'm sure to black people at the time they were offensive, but for most white people they just didn't think about it.

It's more like a general ignorance and thoughtlessness, rather than either deliberately being nasty or being ironic.

romic celief

Today is "Red Nose Day" - the day devoted to people engaging in hilarious antics in a bid to raise oodles of cash for Comic Relief.

I've no particular beef with comic relief. I used to watch it years ago, even did a bit of fundraising, although my general interest has waned.

I'm not a big believer in charity. It's always felt a bit wrong to me - not so much because I don't think the causes are worthy, but more because I don't think there should be any need for it. In other words, I think those things done by charity are often so important that they should be being paid for by Governments. My take on the issue is that part of the reason I pay taxes is so that the government will take care of most, if not all of that stuff.

But anyway, I did actually donate this year. Nothing huge, but I texted in a few times in support of the Kilimanjaro climb. I did this mainly because fellow lard-arse, Chris Moyles was dragging his arse up the mountain, so I thought I'd show my support.

The anime mags turned up yesterday, which was nice, so I'll get to scan them in this weekend. I should also really get my hair cut - it's starting to get a bit unweildy. If I ever won the lottery one of the odder things I would do is start trimming my hair again.

I've had a variety of very bad haircuts over the years, btu the one I really liked most was having my hair trimmed "number 1" all over. That's a bit like a longer skin-head type cut if you've never seen one. I just foudn it so much easier not having hair, but the problem was it made me look "evil" or "like a thug" (the words of my friends) and since that's not a good thing when you're having business meetings, etc, I basically try to maintain a 'short, side-parting' type cut.

I splattered a lot of ant powder mid-week and since then I've not seen a single ant. I don't know that it's actually finished them off, so I think I'll stock up on powder just in case they find some other way in. I've still no actual idea how they're getting in or if they've nested somewhere close by, so I'll just have to maintain vigalence.

My other plan for the weekend is to sort out my computer desk. Since I got the big LCD monitor I've freed up a lot of desk real-estate so I can have a re-arrange. But also it's exposed a lot of nooks and crannies so I need to give it a good dust around as well.

chilly

So this weekend I got my haircut.

I went for the shorter version, with the sides trimmed with trimmers, rather than a scissor cut all over, so it's pretty short (I normally get the trimmer haircut during summer). As such I can't work out whether it was proper cold this w/end or if it was just the sudden lack of hair.

I know I had the heating on all day Saturday, although it was only on at "1 bar" - which is half power - and then Sunday I only put it on in the evening. So it could well have been just chilly but with me feeling it more because of the lack of hair.

I also did a mega-shop on Saturday.

It was so big I used one of those proper full-size trolleys. Being single I never use those - but this time I had all sorts of big packs, like six-packs of pop and water and big value boxes of stuff. As I said, I was trying to get ahead of myself with Chrimbalo fast approaching. I've got loads of pasts and rice and stuff in the freezer now, so hopefully it should be more a job of making sure supplies don't get too low before then.

Then it was back to the gaff for cleaning duties. I thoroughly clean my bedsit every two-weeks. I think that's enough for a single person, but it does take me all day, especially with all the sundries like ironing and changing my towels and bins and stuff.

Anyway, the point is that I did that and all was going swimmingly - I was really cracking on and was going to have loads of time to do stuff, but I fell into a bit of a trap. Unfortunately, it took ages for the kitchen and bathroom floors to dry (it being cold) and I was totally stuck waiting while they did... so I thought I'd have a quick go on Civ3... and it kinda poxed up the whole rest of the weekend, so instead of doing more useful stuff, like scanning or walling or making new updates for my webstes, I basically just plaed Civ3. I didn't even really clear the backlog of TV I've got.

Bugger :(.

mags, hair and shopping

This month's newtype, animage and animedia turned up yesterday.

Two of them - newtype and animage - are absolutely dripping with pictures from the new season of shows and I'm very impressed. The other, animedia, is actually kinda rubbish. I sometimes wonder why I keep buying it - it's always very poor in terms of scans. But then it's not like it's reprinting other scans - if I didn't get it I wouldn't see those images. Still, as the anime magazines go, it's definitely the worst one I get.

I'm in desperate need of a haircut - my hair is really rather long and I'm starting to get that uncomfortable sweaty thing I get when it gets this long. Of course that's also a factor of being morbidly obese, but that's no reason not to avoid a haircut.

Looks like I'll have a busy w/end as I'll have to get a haircut and go shopping on top of a bunch of stuff I've got to do anyway.

I should also start hoarding for Christmas. I know chrimbalo is a long way away, but I like to get stuff like fozen food, tins and pasta all hoarded up well in advance, because shopping around Christmas can be such a nightmare.

I remember once going to Sainsburys to get some food one Christmas and the queues were so long I didn't get to the front of queue before my lunch ended. I ended up having to buy some manky sarnis at the petrol station on the way home :/. So now I like to stock up the freezer and cupboards well in advance.

weekend of dooooooooom

Well, not really.

I've yet another day off work tomorrow and Monday is one of the UK's few Bank Holidays so I've got a mega four-day weekend.

I'm not sure whether to put together a mega-plan or just play it by ear. There's quite a few things I want to do, but also I could do with just sitting down and chilling, tbh. One thing I definitely need to do is get a haircut and I need to pick some dry-cleaning up, so I will do those on Friday and I could turn it into something of a proper shopping trip--I need some new trainers, for example. Hmm.

Trouble is, after my whole going a bit nuts buying animu the other day I've now gone a bit nuts buying manga so I don't want to spend too much money. At least I had an excuse with the animu (ADV and Geneon going tits up). Here I really haven't, as the series I've ordered aren't old or going out of print or anything.

Speaking of Geneon--Black Lagoon disk1 turned up last night. I got the special edition with the steelcase book (as I did for the 1st Barrage) and guess what--it's got Geneon's name plastered all over it. Even though it's now being released by Funimation.

I'm guessing I had the wrong end of the stick a little. Basically, what I think has happened is that Funimation have simply taken over the distribution rights for the series that Geneon had on the go. Newer licences I guess may be treated differently, but at least it means good continuity of releases. I'd also guess that the ADV shows they picked up may be a little different as ADV properly lost the rights to those shows.

Oh, and also, the cover of the steelcase features photos of a model dressed as Revy, and man is it hawt.

didn't quite do it

Bit of a weird weekend--had lots planned, but didn't quite do those specific things, but did closely related stuff instead.

I was planning to scan all the new mags, but haven't scanned any of them. But I did do some scanning--I scanned the DVD covers for Genshiken, Ai Yori Aoshi and GUNxSWORD, which I'll use for reviews and stuff. Also, I went through all my artbooks and unglued them so that I can scan them, which is a very tedious and time consuming process (you heat the spines with an iron to melt the glue and then pull out the pages).

I'd planned to phone my Dad, which I did, but due to circumstances I had to cut the call short and didn't quite get to talk to him about everything I'd wanted. Plus he had some questions about my freeview box, so that took most of the time up.

I'd also planned to go out to a particular pub for a few beers, and I did go out, but ended up around a friends place and was driving so didn't have any beers.

I'd planned to get a haircut, but due to needing to collect a parcel from Farnham Post Office and also wanting to send a couple of e-bay parcels I didn't get the chance. Plus it occurred to me I've got next Friday off, so I can just do it then.

The parcel I picked up had Gurren Lagann set 2 in it, but also had Aika R-16: Virgin Missions in it. As I'd mentioned before I'd planned to watch Black Lagoon this w/end. I was actually planning to cane it and watch the whole 1st season, but instead I watched the original Aika that I remembered I had still to watch as well as R-16.

Surprisingly, both shows turned out to be pretty good. The original is pretty old, so the animation is not the greatest, but what it does have--action, comedy and fan-service are there in spades. R-16 is meant to be a prequal, but it actually kinda doesn't quite make sense with the continuity, but it's no biggy as the show is also more of the same--action, comedy and fan-service.

I did also get stuck into Black Lagoon as well, though, and am now half way through. It's very good, though I've a feeling I still prefer the manga, but there's not much in it.

Dunno--I know I did stuff, but because I'm a list-oriented person because the stuff I didn't wasn't quite to plan it makes it feel like I've not achieved anything.

It's like, I put a load of stuff on e-bay too (I've been doing so much e-baying recently I'm almost out of stuff to sell :/) but because I put it all on in one day and (I now realise) a bit early in the day for my usual target audience, it doesn't quite feel like I've done it properly.

moptop

I'm in desperate need of a haircut.

The excuse I've been using to avoid getting one is that the weather's so damnably changeable at the moment, I could find myself with a short summer cut when it's snowing outside. However, the real reason I'm avoiding it is I just plain don't like having my hair cut.

I've never been able to fully pin down why this is, but I think there are several factors. Firstly is the whole idea of a stranger with a sharp object very close to my head. That's never good.

Then there's the invasion of personal space issue to go along with that. I'm not good with that sort of thing.

Plus I always think I look really daft with a fresh haircut. It seems to take a while for the do to "bed in" as it were.

But I think one of the main reasons is that my mum used to cut my hair. Now this wasn't some random mum haircut thing - my mum used to be a hairdresser, so she knew what she was doing. But it did mean I hadn't ever had a haircut at a Barbers until my mum died a few years back.

So, in other words, it's not something I'm really used to in the way most people are, having not grown up with people cutting my hair.