monaco pics 3

So here it is - day 3, race day.

Let's crack straight in shall we with the establishing shots. These are where we sat on day 3:











For these next ones I'm actually hanging out over the side of the stand, which I can assure you I didn't really enjoy as I have a serious fear of heights:







Monaco is so small that there's not much room for, well, anything, really. So instead of the paddocks (where the teams 'live' being in the pits, they're a ways off to the side. These shots are aimed at the paddocks, but you can't really see them, as such:



This is actually the 'RED Bull experience'. Whether that means 'overly sweet with and with an unpleasant after-taste', I can't confirm.



Hubba-hubba:



The next lot of shots are all of the pits:





















We were actually facing 'the rock' from this stand:







Here's one of the support races with Porsches:



Note how the red and white thing is there to keep them in the race-track and not skip the corner. The curbs are not much of a deterrent at all for an ordinary road car:



And some GP2 action:



Note the red and white thing has gone now:



This is them wheeling the Red Bull into the garage. At most circuits they don't need to bother, because the paddocks are right there, but as mentioned, Monaco is so tiny they can't fit them in:





Before the race they have a pit walk about where people can wander around the pits. If you can see anyone famous, let me know:



And here's the driver's parade. See if you can spot anyone you recognise:



And here, finally, is some F1 race action:



Not that I took many photos during the actual race, because you're so focused on the racing, you forget to:



A Ferrari skipping the corner. They got told off for skipping this corner:



A pit stop. On telly, pit stops look quite smooth and well-oiled, but in real life they're barely controlled chaos:



And here was one of the more exciting events: Kovalainan crashed his car right next to us:











And that's pretty much it, really. Here's a shot of Button holding his trophy aloft as shown on the big screen:

monaco pics 2

So here's the photos for day 2 of our little excursion to the Monaco GP this last May.

Again, clicking the pics should take you to the full album to have a look through.

On day 2 we were in casino square. If you look at the photos yesterday there's one where I refer to the hill being really steep. Well, that hill leads up to casino square, which is where we were on day2.

There's only one stand up there and it has to be the most comfortable stand I've ever been in. The seats are moulded to a bucket/back-side shape and while that may sound uncomfortable, it's actually exactly the opposite. Unlike all the other days where I got a numb-bum and a slightly sore back, on day 2 I was fine.

The first shots are the establishers, then. Building on the right of Casino square:



Big crane, big screen, expensive casino:



Man with natty t-shirt distracts me from the point of the photo:



Over to the left of the stand. Quite empty at the mo, but it soon filled up:



Some close up now. First off the restaurant:



Next the big screen, which was unfortunately covered by the arm of the camera crane thing:



And a shot of the crane. Crane's are very important at Monaco as there's little in the way of run-off:



And the casino:



A side street to the right of the stand:



And this is the track. So that must mean it's time for some car action:



I've actually mixed these together - they're from both the morning practice session as well as the actual qualifying. From your point of view, I figure a shot of an F1 car is a shot of an F1 car :/.











So, halfway through the day was luncheon and this gives me an opportunity to show you the gardens that were out the back of the stand. I have to say it was incredibly civilised being in this stand. And no, shots of statue cocks was not my intention, it just happened to be the closest statue to where we crashed out over lunch.



In the afternoon was qualifying, so here's some more cars.





Of course, for qualifying, the crowds filled up. Here's some people on the balcony and in the restaurant. This is one of the things that gives Monaco the atmosphere it has.





Some more car action and then guess what happened?



Lewis Hamilton binned it just up the road from us. And here he is, walking back to the pits, helmet still on because he knows it was entirely his own fault:





And here's two more cars failing to crash like Lewis:





Overall, I'd probably say that day 2 was my favourite day (the actual race not withstanding).

monaco pics

Well, here's the good stuff - pics of the Monaco trip. Really it was only about two months ago, but it already feels like ages.

You should be able to click these pics and it'll take you to the full photo album if you want to go through them there. The versions in the photo album are 1024*768 res.

So, first off, here are some establishing shots of where we were sat on the Thursday morning. We were at a place called Tabac, which is called that because there's a tabac (a tobacconists) under the road in a subway walkway.









From where we were we could see the top of 'the rock' as it's called. I understand there's a palace up there:



And we could see the harbour pretty well:



Monaco's pretty damn compact, and I guess they always need to save about as much space as they can. This is a little golf buggy that's done up as a fire truck!



So anyway: the important stuff!

Here's a Brawn coming around the corner:



And a Renault doing the same:



Not sure who this is, but then I was more focused on trying to get the "whizzing past" effect. This also demonstrates just how close you are to the track and the cars at Monaco. You don't get anywhere near as close as this at any other circuit.



And here's a shot of the rear-end of a car as it blasts down past piscine. I think this was a Renault:



But Formula 1 is not all that happens on race weekends. Here's the rear-end of the GP2 cars as they go around on their parade lap:



And here's a front-shot of a GP2 car. Notice just how similar they are to F1 cars - it's meant as one of the feeder formulas for F1.



And off they go away from us:



But wait, who's this:



Why, it's Martin Brundle and David Coulthard of the BBC's commentary and formally of driving about in F1 cars fame:



And here's Coulthard staring 'right down the barrel' as it were. There's a good chance he was looking right at us, rather than this being a coincidence, because my Dad was almost totally unable to see them.

I don't mean that he couldn't see them because his view was obstructed, I mean he was looking, but despite both me and my sister pointing them out, he couldn't spot them. Since me and my sister were pointing at them, he may have noticed and wondered what was going on :/.



So anyway, that was morning practice. After lunch we moved to the next door stand, which was one of the good things about the whole harbour area - the seating wasn't assigned, so you could sit basically where you want, and there were about 6 or so stands.

These are some establishing shots. As you can see, we're much closer to the piscine area here than tabac.







And here's more of those yachts. Millions and millions of pounds worth of yachts. And these are the small ones :/.



This is a long shot of the tabac corner now, because of how far we've moved down:



And the cars whizzed past in the afternoon session:



And that's your lot for today. Hopefully I'll be able to bring you day 2 either tomorrow or the day after. Day 2 is actually the Saturday - Friday there's no F1 action, so that was when we went to Cannes. Although I took my camera, I was sufficiently unimpressed that I didn't take any photos.

the joyous return to work

So I'm back at work.

Hurrah, obviously.

The weekend was pretty productive. I'd say I got most everything ticked off. Partly that's because some of them didn't take as long as I was dreading.

I also got a bonus thing done - I put a load of stuff on for e-bay auction when I hadn't planned to do that at all. I didn't put everything on that I identified for my to sell this, although that was kinda deliberate.

Experience has taught me that having too much stuff ending at the same time is a little counter-productive. I get very confused as to what's paid and what's owed, and it ends up with huge a amount of, often heavy parcels and numerous trips to the post office. Chopping it up into more manageable chunks makes life so much easier.

But it's not all good news. I utterly failed to do any scanning whatsoever. That also meant I failed to make any headway on the growing list of new anime shows I need to sample. I also failed to watch any new anime and read a paltry amount of manga, where I'd hoped to really crack into a series.

I don't really even have the excuse that there wasn't enough time. If I'd been a bit more ruthless with all my Anno playing, I'd have had the time to at least do something.

But then the counter to that, of course, is that it was a holiday - I should be allowed to have some fun, right?

Hopefully, over the next couple of days I might be bringing you some photos from my Monaco adventure, but don't hold your breath, as I'm feeling a bit lazy, if I'm honest.

two-finger typist

I'm a two-finger typist.

I basically use my two index fingers to type all the letters, though my thumb does the space bar and I use my little finger for holding the shift and control buttons. I'm quite quick, but it's more because I've kinda learned the keyboard than because it's an inherently quick technique.

One of the things with touch typing is it gives you the ability to not look at the keys while you type. Well, I've learned the keyboard to such a degree that I can almost do this with my two fingers. Especially if I kinda relax my brain. If I think about it too much, I start to loose the ability.

However, I make a lot of errors, but they're errors caused by a specific thing - my left finger hand seems to be quicker than my right.

The best example of this is the word "of". I virtually never actually type of. I type "fo", because my left finger gets to the 'f' just before my right finger can get to the 'o'.

Anyway, this is my last post for the week, as I have Friday and Monday off work. Hurrah and Huzzah!

Let's just hope I don't blow all my time doing useless stuff and actually get some things done. It'd be good to come out of a weekend 'ahead' for once.

the end of furuba

I'm on the verge of polishing off Fruits Basket, or furuba as it's known.

I've kinda not read furuba for a very long time, but now that it's finished publication I've gotten around to finishing it. That should reflect badly on the manga, btw - I really enjoy it, it's just, I dunno, I kinda stopped reading.

There are a variety of reasons for that.

First and foremost is probably that I found it very emotionally draining. I'm a bit of a soft-touch when it comes to drama and I cry all the time, like some sort of big girl's blouse, but that's how I am. Furuba is/was a veritable blub-fest for me, and not always in a sad way. A lot of it's crying for joy.

There's also quite strong emotional connection in there for me - my mum died of cancer and there's a lot of lost parents stuff in Furuba (not always through death - it's more of a general theme).

So yeah, it got to the stage that I was blubbing a lot and while I enjoyed it I wanted to take a break.

Another issue was that it doesn't really work broken up. No, that's the wrong way of saying it - it's more like it works far better read continuously. I was experiencing a heck of a lot of frustration with the 6-month wait between volumes, so it seemed sensible to build them up.

I then discovered that the series ended with volume 23 and it then seemed sensible to wait until I had them all before reading again. What I didn't really think about was that meant, with 6-month gaps, it would be around 4 years before I would start again :/.

A problem I've always had with furuba is the sheer number of characters. I mean, it's based on Chinese zodiac, so you've got at least 12 main characters for starters. When you add in the other main characters and the secondary characters, and the occasional/incidental characters, there must be 30 characters you need to keep on top of.

That's a heck of a lot for my meagre brain. Especially when they all have unusual (to me as a westerner) names. When two characters are discussing an off-screen third is when I struggle the most. I'm often referring back to the front of the book where some fo the main characters are listed out, though it's a long way from being comprehensive.

The above may all read like criticism, but a lot of it isn't really.

I mean, lots of characters has made for lots of interesting plotlines, for example. And my rubbishness with names is my own problem, not the fault of the manga.

So yeah, I've been really reading it with some gusto and remembering why I liked it so much too.

you have new construction options

The old Anno obsession doesn't seem to be abating.

Even though I did my best to abstain, I still played for several hours over the weekend. Several hours that could have been put to better use, but that's my life, I guess.

I'm this close to finishing the quest (you can't see but I held my thumb and index finger really close together then). I've got just one more chapter to do. I didn't start it yet, because it turns out it's some timed missions and I didn't want to get trapped into playing it for that long.

Instead I tried one of the scenarios. This was an opportunity to try out some fo the theories I've been developing about the placement of things.

One thing I've discovered is it's easy to get trapped into getting carried away with your industries and neglect enlarging your population. The problem with this is that you rapidly run out of cash.

The basic idea of Anno is that you produce goods that your population needs. Some of these, like basic food and drink they can take raw (so fish and spices they take as-is), but others you have to process.

However, things ramp up in complexity. So your population starts as peasants, with only pretty basic needs, but they then become citizens, with slightly more complex needs. Some of these needs require you to do processing.

So they need clothes, like linen garments. Well, you can't grow linen garments, but you can grow hemp, which a weaver can weave into linen garments.

But one of the tricky things about it is that you can't manufacture hemp until you've got some citizens in your population that need it. This means you can't pre-build: the need arises before the means of fulfilling it.

To add further complication, there's two types of population in the game: the occident (i.e. what you start with - the West) and the orient (the Middle East). Eventually you end up with settlements of both of these across your islands. Islands are clearly delineated too: green occident ones and desert orient ones.

But here's the thing: some of the goods are inter-linked. The easiest example of this is spices. You can only grow spices on orient islands, but oriental people don't have spices as one of their needs, occidental people do, so you have to grow it in the orient and ship it to your occidental population.

However, there are things the orient doesn't have. For example, you need 'tools' to build almost everything, but tools are made from iron, which is only found on occidental islands.

Add into that fertilities - you can only grow certain things on certain islands - and the fact that you can only get advanced oriental buildings by 'buying' higher diplomatic ranks and you can see how complex things can get very quickly.

Which is where I come unstuck - I get so carried away with the industrial stuff, I forget to keep building my population properly and my accounts go into the negative (red). Now in some ways that doesn't matter - the game doesn't end if you run out of cash - but it does mean you can't build new stuff... like new houses to increase your income :/.

Oh - forgot to mention yesterday that the bread pudding was something of a success. Certainly it was very edible, although somewhat ironically, since the recipe was essentially custard + bread, it could have done with some custard to accompany it - instead, I used the left-over double cream, which was good, but some custard would have been better, I think.

how much? blimey.

Bit of an odd weekend.

It was my intention to do a whole bunch of stuff and, to be fair, I did do a whole bunch of stuff. The oddness was that some of the things I did took absolutely ages, which meant that there just wasn't the time to do everything I planned.

I think part of the problem was that I remembered that this weekend I've got a four day weekend. So, rather than cut my loses on the things that took a long time, I went ahead with them anyway, thinking that I could play catch-up next weekend.

The big problem with this is that I then end up with far too much to do at the weekend, especially when my primary aim is likely to be to relax.

One of the things I really do have to do but didn't get the time to is move some credit card debt around. I've not really been paying proper attention to them and one of them hit a (low) limit and I don't want to incur any over-the-limit charges. I could increase the limit, I guess, but that would be a little counter-productive.

A thing I did do - and one of the ones that took a lot more time than anticipated - was sort out my e-bay auctions. I've ranted before about the utterly retarded thing e-bay has done with postage costs.

I have a work around using the "courier" option, but the problem with it is that it means it's a lot more effort, because I have to actively ask people what postage they want (generally I offer 1st class recorded and regular second class). This generally adds a whole bunch of steps into the process that mean it takes longer.

But anyway, the thing I wanted to mention is that the e-baying went surprisingly well. I mean, there was the usual thing of stuff selling for meagre amounts, like 5p or £1 when they cost me twenty time that, but a couple of things actual sold for half-decent prices. So yeah, it's not all bad news.

I've been trying to work out ways I can slice out extra spending. One of them was to kill off my AOL subscription. This was originally for dial-up modem that I kept in case my broadband went totally tits up.

However, in all the years I've had broadband it's only gone tits up to that degree twice, and even then the time it took to fix wasn't enough for me to break out the dial-up. Plus we have broadband at work (admittedly it's just about the world's slowest broadband, but it's quicker than dial-up).

Also, there were two other factors. Firstly, I'd heard it was a nightmare to get them to cancel and secondly they were planning switching it to "broadband" and charging more than double.

Obviously, the second one didn't make sense - my broadband wasn't with them, so I dunno how they figured it was broadband, but the more intriguing one was that cancelling my subscription was actually incredibly easy. It just took one two-minute phone call. I phoned up, asked to cancel, they did it. It was really that simple :/.

At the time I was worried they'd done something sneaky and maybe not cancelled it properly, but it seems they have ad I've not been charged since.

Another thing I'm thinking of cutting down or reducing is my phones. I have a subscription phone, but I should really switch to a pay-as-you-go service, because I just don't use it enough to justify the expense.

And also I need to investigate my BT landline - they suddenly seem to have basically doubled my bill for no apparent reason :/.

ankles and uunties

I realised something as I was driving in to work this morning: I didn't post a blog entry yesterday.

I've no real excuse for not having done one - I just kinda forgot :/.

Also as I was driving in this morning, Chris Moyles made a spoonerism slip that lead to the title of this blog. It still makes me smile.

A spoonerism, in case you're wondering, is where you switch the first letters/syllables of a phrase - so fucking hell becomes hucking fell, for example. My family has something of a long history with the spoonerism. For some reason it's one of those things we just used to do.

One of the appeals is how it can both turn words into other words (in the above example, fell is an actual word) and words into nearly words ('hucking' sounds like it should be something, but isn't).

This weekend I am going to attempt a new cooking extravaganza: bread pudding! The recipe I have is really simple. Not that bread pudding is complicated in any recipe by the sound of things, but this one seems particularly simple.

The jist of it is "Put buttered bread and home-made custard in a pan and bake for half-an-hour or so." I've never made home-made custard before, but when I found out what the basic recipe was I was intrigued to have a go. It turned out to basically be egg yolk, sugar, double cream and milk. That actually sounds easier than instant custard.

I've never had much luck with instant custard if I'm honest. It's weird in a way, because it's so simple. I mean I can make the stuff where you just put water on it (though even then usually end up with a bit of powdery stuff that I've not dissolved properly) but the more complex version with heating milk, adding the powder and sugar I always seem to make a complete arse of, so we'll see how I get on with the proper custard.

The blogs pretty rambley today, huh?

I've watched two more eps of BSG in between my marathon Anno sessions. It was really depressing. It was meant to be depressing - that's not a depression brought on by the quality of the show or the impending end of the show. It's depressing in the sense that everybody is miserable - indeed, one of the characters actually kills themselves so that's what I mean.

I'm going to try very hard to abstain from Anno this weekend. My hope is that this weekend I'll go hell-for-leather and get loads of stuff ticked off and then next weekend I'll hopefully be clear to play it solidly.

How successful I'll be I don't know.

indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull

Er... yeah.

I'm not sure quite what to say about this as I both really enjoyed it and got really annoyed by it.

I think I'll take my usual approach of moaning on about the stuff I didn't like and then undermining myself at the end by going "However, I actually kinda enjoyed it too".

So, stuff that annoyed me.

First off, although I don't expect an Indiana Jones film to be 'realistic', what I do expect is for the stunts to seem like actual people are doing them and they're not all CGI.

I've mentioned before that I've embraced GCI after some initial scepticism, but let's face it: Indi films are all about doing practical effects. As a film series they are a massive homage to early cinema - specifically the cinema adventure serials. Those films couldn't possibly have had a lick of CGI, so Indi should have as little as possible too.

Most especially in terms of stunts. I didn't mind them doing CGI for things like the nuke blast or the aliens, but to have bits where clearly CGI was used to make the stunts seem 'doable' or more dangerous than they actually were was not good.

The most glaring example involved a tree, a car and a river. It just looked so fake and so naff it was laughable, but not in a good way.

There were quite a lot of (often furry) critters in the movie too. Specifically some rodenty chipmunk/prairie dog things, some monkeys and some ants play fairly significant roles.

The chipmunks I quite liked - they were used for comedic effect only and it worked. The ants were a bit dodgy. It worked on some levels, but it was also a rather uninspired and flat sequence generally. It also seemed to have quite a few logical holes that made it seem a bit daft.

The monkeys, however, were really poor.

They made no sense, they lead to something that made no sense and was both daft and unrealistic and they seemed very cheesy. I mean, why the hell would these monkeys suddenly decide to help Mutt? It was just utterly random. Plus, of the three they looked the most obviously CGI.

What else?

Russians instead of Nazi? Fair enough, but they should have been emphasising they were Communists, not Russians. Just like they emphasised they were Nazis, not Germans.

The head Russian was a good evil character, but she seemed a little, I dunno, nice? It could have done with a few scenes of her heartlessly killing her minions or something to really make her seem nasty. Her death was a bit rubbish too.

Also, there seemed to be a weird relationship with Indi and the Communists. He didn't really resist them enough and seemed to help them out in too straight a fashion. Normally you'd expect him to help with an eye to setting up his escape route, but instead his escape routes seemed more improvised.

Indi having a son was good - that worked - but the return of Marion less so. She seemed very flighty and random - not how I remember her at all.

But lastly, the thing that really made me think the film was a big meh was the lack of humour. It just seemed to be playing things to seriously, too po-facedly. A lot of the gags miss-fired and too much seemed funny not because it was meant to be but because it looked daft or made no sense.

Where was the witty repartee between the good guys and bad guys? Where were the something happens to Indi that's both scary and funny? Where was the shoots the swordsman bit or the goes to shoot the swordsman but find he's lost his gun bits?

So there you go, it just leaves me to say that despite all that, I still kind enjoyed it. Indi firing on three cylinders is still Indi.

at last

Had something of a breakthrough with Anno last night.

A big part of the reason I was playing it so much was that I was effectively flummoxed by the fifth chapter in the campaign. For some reason, the 5th chapter seemed to increase exponentially, both in terms of difficulty and time taken.

The breakthrough was that I finally completed it last night on my third go. Don't get me wrong, I've been enjoying it and I still like the game, it's just that it emphasises again the disadvantages of both the lack of a manual and the way the missions in the chapters aren't quite like tutorials.

The difficult was that it kept adding more and more stuff to do or achieve. This meant that were you'd gone all out to achieve the last mission, any errors or silly things you'd done to get it done in a timely fashion then became a bit of problem.

For example, you ended up finding that the wheat fields you'd placed to finish mission 3 where then right in the way of you completing mission 4. But there was now nowhere else to put them unless you removed all of your hemp fields. But you couldn't do that because you desperately needed ropes in order to complete mission 2 :/.

Since there were so many complex mission, as I was getting to the end it kept getting to a stage where it was an almost impossible task to finish. Well, without completely redoing all my towns and when you're faced with that option it seemed better to simply restart and plan better from the beginning.

Anyway, the point is I finished the chapter and I think there's a chance I may be happy to put Anno on hold for a while until I can knock some other stuff on the head.

I also discovered last night that two of the things I'd recorded and not had a chance to watch were actually totally unwatchable. Why were they unwatchable? Because of this bloody weather. The wind and rain is playing total havoc with my reception and it's getting beyond a joke now.

I just don't understand why it's so bad - it's like my normal reception is just on the cusp of being okay and any little thing tips it over. This would actually make some sense if I'm honest - the reception on normal terrestrial has never been that great.

Roll on digital switch-over. When they finally do that, the broadcast signal strength will be turned up (if it was on maximum now it would interfere with normal telly, apparently) and so it should get a lot better.

time management

Guess what I did this weekend?

It's not as interesting as you may think. I played Anno 1404.

This was not entirely a good thing as it means I didn't do a load of stuff that really I needed to get done. So basically I've essentially created a whole bunch of problems for myself.

One of these could be a big problem, but isn't at the moment. The others are minor problems that represent my total inability to control my own life on some level.

That sounds massively dramatic and it is in the sense that I've massively over-dramatised some minor niggles. But the thing is I'm actually kinda annoyed at myself for doing this.

If I'm honest, part of the problem is that I didn't predict I was going to do it. If I'd thought about it properly I'd have made an attempt to clear some of these to do things before the weekend, leaving the weekend free for some guilt-trip free entertainment.

Ah well. One day I'll get the knack of things.

This weekend saw something of a bizarre Grand Prix.

First off, things went rather badly on Saturday with Felippe Massa being involved in a bit of a freak accident. He was hit on the crash helmet by a rather heavy metal spring that had fallen off the back of Rubens Baricchello's car after his suspension failed.

It was a weird convergence of both good and bad luck.

Obviously it was bad luck to hit the spring - if he'd been slightly further up or down the track it wouldn't have hit him at all. But equally, it was lucky it hit him where it did - if it had struck him on the visor of his helmet, then at the least it would have blinded him, if not killed him outright.

Having hit him it's likely he blacked out )his skull was apparently fractured) and his car continued straight on, running into a tyre wall. This represents another weird piece of luck - he could have hit a concrete barrier or Armco and that part of the accident would have been a lot more severe. But then equally it could have happened in a slow part of the circuit and he may not have even lost consciousness.

I ended up recording the MotoGP race - as mentioned my current Anno obsession demanded more of my time - but I've heard it was really good. It was wet, apparently, and they were falling off all over the shop :/.

drizzle, drizzle everywhere

It's been quite wet here just recently.

I think every day over the last month or so it's rained a bit. It's quite the turnaround from the heat wave we had at the beginning of summer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I broke out my aircon during the heat wave, but it's kinda annoying that I've not had any cause to use it since. Not that I'm generally a fan of hot weather - showery summers suit me fine - but I'm English, so complaining about the weather (whatever it may be) is practically a legal requirement.

I had a real good session last nigh on Anno.

I'm increasingly impressed by the game if I'm honest. The Scenario is very well put together in that it teaches you stuff at a good pace, but also the story is quite entertaining too.

It's also very clever - it throws quite a lot of stuff at you (sub-tasks), but not enough for you to feel totally overwhelmed. It's strange in a way, because even though it's real time, these sub-tasks aren't time limited (or at least, I've not encountered one that is). But you do still feel compelled to do them as quick as you can.

It also gives the game a similar feeling to the "just one more turn" thing you get in Civilization. Even though it's not turned based. These tasks make you think - I'll just finish this one task. But then when you do you get another one - it's quite clever.

Plans for the weekend are slightly complicated by the fact that both the next Formula one race in Hungary and the British MotoGP race are on. That basically rights off Sunday afternoon in its entirety. Maybe I'll do some ironing while they're on so I don't feel like I'm not achieving anything.

What I do really need to do is get this stuff on e-bay. It's getting in the way a bit now, as well as representing trapped cash.

I also need to at least start on the last series of BSG. I've been taking something of a hiatus from it this week as I really did get a bit burned out watching it so intensely. However, there is another reason for me putting it on hold - I've been trying to watch some of the telly I record live.

Now that's not because I'm feeling guilty at recording so much, it's because of the weather. That rainy weather has been joined this week by lots of wind and the combination of the two has really poxed up my digital reception.

And when digital reception goes, it really goes. Analogue you get a bit of static, but the stuff is still basically watchable. With digital it has a sort of threshold - it's fine and then suddenly becomes totally unwatchable.

This is a real disaster for me, as there's a lot of stuff I watch that's only shown on BBC3 or E4 or whatever, and I hate missing episodes.

I've even started using my old VCR again to try to make sure I don't miss a few vital things.

anno (domini that is)

So Anno 1404 turned up on Tuesday.

I can't say I did much more than in install it on Tuesday. I've been feeling very run down this last week. I dunno if it's been a knock-on from the intense work of the last few weeks, but it's taken me half a week to feel even vaguely normal again.

Anyway, I had a bit more of a play last night and I'm fairly impressed. There have been a few niggles, though.

One of the most obvious was the complete rubbishness that was the manual. Traditionally, complex strategy games come with a fairly decent manual. This is because they can be quite complex, but also because they tend to launch you straight into that complexity without anything much to really cushion the blow.

They compensate for this with a manual that explains the basics. Plus, the type of person that plays this sort of game tends to be the sort of person who will generally read a manual.

However, Anno's manual is rubbish. It virtually just tells you how to install and start the game.

I was unimpressed - this might be okay for someone who's never played Anno before, but for newbie's like myself it feels like you're being dropped off the deep end.

However, it turns out that the campaign mode actually acts as a "trainer" as well. It's broken up into missions, with each mission having a series of sub-tasks. These sub-tasks act as guides for playing the game, as well as providing an enjoyable narrative story.

It's quite clever, though it would have helped if the manual indicated this or perhaps the other game play modes (scenarios and 'sand-box) could only be unlocked once you'd played the campaign through a bit?

Anyway, I played for a good couple of hours and really quite enjoyed myself. There were a few quirks and oddities - for example, after I quit I realised it hadn't asked me if I wanted to save the game. I'm therefore guessing I lost all of my progress since the last save :/.

One thing I will say is the game looks gorgeous. The buildings and people and environment are very detailed, but, interestingly, they're still clear and distinct. Sometimes when you get so much detail it becomes unclear what's what - you can't tell the cathedral from the houses - but here it's really easy to see what's what, even when you're zoomed out.

It's also interesting to play the game in real time.

My major previous experience with a game like this is Civilization, which is very much turn-based. This is like Civilization meets real-time-strategy. It's initially a little disconcerting, but in the end works very well.

So yeah, I'm looking forward to really getting stuck in.

As seems to be traditional for summer I'm having some financial problems. I was horribly afraid of this. I've spent so much money in the first half of this year with Monaco, my Dad's 65th and my Sister's 30th. If I'm honest it's kinda frustrating, as financially things were going quite well, especially over the winter period.

I really need to work out what I'm doing with my credit cards for one thing - things seem to have gotten very cock-eyed.

Plus it's imperative that I get some stuff shifted on e-bay. Even if this brings only a small cash injection it'll really help.

jumper

What do you get if you cross a kangaroo with a sheep?

A wholly jumper.

That has absolutely no relevance to the film in question, but is one of the few jokes I can remember. I'm not one for jokes, which isn't to say I don't find them funny or that I have no sense of humour, just I never remember them. I also find people who can trot out dozens of them to be a bit tedious.

Tedious might be taking it a bit far, but the film Jumper isn't all that good either.

It's difficult to put your finger on one reason why, though - it's more like a combination of little things.

First off, the hero, David, is not entirely likeable.

At the beginning he's a nerd who gets bullied. He's got a crush on a girl too, which he doesn't really act on. David's mother is missing, having left when he was five. It's also hinted that David is being physically abused by his father, but unfortunately not in any strong or clear way.

These then are apparently his motivations for his actions following his discovery that he has this power of jumping - the ability to create 'wormholes' and thereby teleport himself elsewhere.

Instead, he robs a bank and proceeds to enjoy the proverbial life of Riley. So, in other words, he doesn't do anything good with the money, or anything specifically bad, he has fun. It's therefore hard to give a shit about him.

This is where the cracks are starting to appear.

David doesn't use his powers to get revenge on his bullies. He doesn't use them to impress the girl. He doesn't' use them to find his mother. He doesn't use them to punish his dad.

Instead he runs away. Now if this were a proper theme - that running away doesn't solve you problems - that would be fine, but it really isn't a theme. It makes no sense.

Just like Samuel Jackson's character Cox makes little to no sense. He's a Paladin who hunts jumpers and kills them. Why, exactly?

We learn nothing about Jackson, the Paladins or their organisation. They are just "the bad guys".

But not only that, when David encounters the bad guys he suddenly decides he needs to go back home and hook up with the girl again. Why, exactly? Surely putting her in danger is a spectacularly dumb thing to do.

I could go on. For example, David with his life of Riley jumps to London and pulls a hot blonde. He's a man with no small amount of swagger and confidence. It also paints him as a bit of a shit, but the main point is that when going back to see the girl he starts acting like a nerd again. This just seems bizarre.

I dunno. They could have done such a better job, but as it is, the film is just sort of inoffensive, bland and a little predictable.

cod: world at war

I've lost count of how many times I've stormed the Reichstag.

Not literally, of course - I don't think the current German government would appreciate me running in there firing an MP40 and sticking the soviet flag on the roof - but in terms of playing games I've done it quite a few times.

In this case it was as part of Call of Duty: World at War, which I mentioned briefly at the end of yesterdays post.

I'm a big fan of the CoD series. There are some moments and missions that really stand out as things I remember from my gaming history. It's always managed to hit a great balance between enjoyable missions and keeping a good representation of the actual conflict.

In this case, there's a newish element, in that the American missions are centred around the war in the pacific. You play a marine as they try to take the various Islands leading up towards the Japanese mainland.

It means lots of jungle fighting, but more than that it means having to deal with Banzai attackers.

CoD has always had attack dogs in it, and they've always been my least favourite element, because if you let them get too close you're almost certainly dead. You can shoot them of course, but once in close range you have to try to time your attack to grab their throat - it was always bloody tricky.

The Banzai guys are quite similar - they pop out of hidden ditches or come running over the top of walls or down trenches and you have a very short time to shoot them before they're on you and stabbing you with their bayonet's or whatever.

Once you get the hang of it they're a bit easier to deal with than the dogs, but no less heart-in-the-mouth scary.

What else?

Well they ramped up the blood-and-guts. CoD: Modern Warfare was one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, and this is clearly using the same engine, so you get amazing visuals and almost life-like character models, but to go along with that they've increased the variety and nastiness of injuries that happen - so blowing people's hands off is a new one and people dragging themselves along the floor while bleeding out is another.

It certainly makes things pretty atmospheric I have to say, though perhaps not for the feint hearted, although you can turn the gore off.

Another great element is the graphics they've used to represent the story elements. They're very modern in style with swooping graphics showing maps of progress, and representing statistics and stuff. It's a really nice touch.

There's a great inclusion of genuine peril in the story-telling too - you get nearly killed on several occasions and it's initially difficult to tell that these are actually part of the story, rather than you just dieing again. It's very cleaver.

There are a couple of downsides, though.

As mentioned, the Russian mission pretty much retreads old ground - heading for Berlin. I mean, it's good to be back in good old Nazi-killing CoD territory, but it would have been nice to have something a bit different.

I guess part of the problem there is that the end of the War in the Pacific is a bit rubbish from a game play/climax point of view - they nuke Japan, rather than there being a proper invasion. So I guess they needed something with a proper 'end' and the Reichstag is a good, if obvious candidate.

But the real problem is it's too short.

If I'm honest, to me it almost felt like an expansion pack for Modern Warfare, albeit one with a complete overhaul and a different story, but still - it didn't feel big enough.

This was especially true for the tank and plane missions. CoD has had these before of course (indeed, again it could be a criticism that these don't really represent anything particularly new) but here there's only one of each - one tank mission and one plane mission and that's it. Before you'd at least get two or three missions, in order to form a proper narrative element. Here, they just feel like bolt-ons.

Don't get me wrong, though - I really enjoyed playing it, just I think having two afternoon's worth of game play, rather than one would have been better.

to do lists

I'm a great maker of to do lists.

I think I've probably mentioned this before, but every weekend I put together a to do list. It has a lot of stuff that repeats on it. Indeed, there's so much repeating stuff that I have a file with all the repeating stuff listed out.

To make that weekend's actual to do list I therefore start by copying in all of that stuff and then editing, deleting and adding to it as appropriate. Some of the stuff on the list is more optional than others - I mean, going food shopping is pretty necessary, otherwise I wouldn't have anything to eat, but something like doing some scanning is less vital.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I try to do the list sensibly - I pace stuff out so that there's plenty of time. But then what I end up doing is trying to do as much on Saturday as that then leaves Sunday open as being more like a 'free day'.

This weekend was no exception. As an example, I'd put wash the car on Sunday morning, but instead gave my car a quick wash on Saturday afternoon. That meant the morning was then free for me to do what I wanted.

Initially I'd thought I would spend most of Sunday scanning. With all four of the Japanese magazines here, I didn't want to get behind again, so I thought I'd do that.

But weirdly, I had a very strong hankering to play a video game. I'm not entirely sure why - I think maybe it was to do something different. I've been intensely watching BSG as recent blog posts will attest and had done a lot of catch-up scanning, so I think I was just in the mood to do something different.

But another factor I think was that I actually ordered a new game on Friday - it's called Anno 1404 (as in Anno Domini, like 'AD' on a date, so 1404AD) and is sort of like Civilization meets SimCity. I also discovered that the Red Alert 3 expansion has been out for a few months, but it's only available as a download.

So I think also there was an element of guilt there too, that yet again I'm spending money on games without actually tackling the ones I've already bought and not played.

Which is all a bit besides the point - what did I play?

Well initially I dusted off a game called Desert Rats versus Afrika Korps. Actually, that's not true as initially I spent a good few hours applying updates to my games machine as it's been ages since I updated it. But in terms of games I tried to play Rats again.

I say again, because I've tried to play it before, without much success. This time was no different - the game is almost impossible. That is to say, it's impossible for me - I'm guessing someone who's good at games might just find it 'challenging', but for me, who's rubbish, it's impossible.

It therefore wasn't long before I'd uninstalled it and put it in the e-bay/bin box.

But I still had a hankering for some gamering, so I next installed Call of Duty: World at War.

It was good, but this blog post is already quite long and drivelly, so I'll discuss it in more depth tomorrow, I think.

bsg nears completion

Well I'm still pretty knackered, as might be expected.

Last night I finished what's been labelled as the fourth BSG series here in the UK. It isn't really - due to the writers strike a while back the full season 4 got split in half.

However, the box set did include Razor. Razor was kinda billed as a movie, but it isn't really - it's much more like an extended episode. It's not like the miniseries, which is multiple-episodes stuck together - this is like a proper feature length episode.

But it is very much an episode. There's a commentary track on it, which is nice, where they discuss the origins. It seems the intent was for it to be stand-alone, but I'm not sure it would really work as a stand-alone thing. You'd need to have some background knowledge of the new BSG to really follow along.

This is best evidenced by the fact that at the front it has a "previously on BSG" montage. If you need one of those, then you're not stand-alone.

Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy the episode as I did, just it didn't quite do what it said on the tin.

The main part of Razor was about Pegasus - the other Battlestar that turned up during the show. The basic idea was it filled in some of the background for Pegasus and some of the gaps between episodes of the main BSG.

To some extent this was good, although if you've been watching the show, you do actually know quite a lot of it. They didn't really re-invent or modify the back-story that was presented in the main show. There were a couple of fascinating tweaks, though. Plus the newer stuff was all, er... new.

In terms of the first 10 eps they're definitely up to the usual high standard. The only thing I would say is that things and people really change. The bravery I mentioned before goes into over-drive: people we've come to depend on as being certain things get all flipped around and half the show gets turned on its head.

This is really good, but it does also mean you really have to pay attention.

Weekend plans are nothing spectacular - there's the new mags to scan and more website update stuff to be working on of course. I'm tempted to finish the last box of BSG stuff, though.

Obviously I'm curious to see how it ends, but I'm also kinda aware how much of my time it's absorbed in a very intense way - I've really been going at it hammer and tongs and other stuff has been suffering a bit if I'm honest.

tired

I've been working my nuts off this week.

The reason is that there's a proposal I'm working on that needs to go out the door this next Friday. What's made it difficult is two things.

First off, they only gave a very short period of time for the ITT to be written in - just a few weeks. But secondly, we've had to use some outside expertise to form a team and it's been like herding cats.

Even when they did eventually produce some stuff, it really hasn't been up to par, so I've had to rewrite a lot of it, which is never fun.

It's been really hard work.

And what's made it even less fun is that there's a much more important activity going on as well. We've been invited to interview for another thing we're bidding for and it's a really quite important piece of work, so a lot of attention has been focused on that.

Indeed, I've been working so hard that today feels like Friday - it's like I've done a full 5 days of work in a 4 day period. This effect is really confusing me, actually - I keep thinking 'tonight I can have a rest' type thoughts, when really I can't :(.

Newtype, animedia and animage turned up this week, but I've hardly had a chance to even look at them. One thing that was a bit odd was that Newtype came with a figurine. It's not a large figurine, but equally it's not small - maybe 4 or 5 inches tall?

She's actually a character in Evangelion, only she's completely new to me, and I've seen the Eva series and the first movie, so she must be a new character in the Eva remake movies. She's another pilot - at least she's dressed a bit like a pilot (the plug suit she's wearing is not quite like other pilot's suits) and I've seen her pictured with Rei so I'm guessing she's a new pilot.

Intriguing.

And speaking of figures, I had something of a surprise yesterday - a figure turned up that I wasn't expecting!

I've moaned before that I keep getting walloped for customs charges on figures I've been buying directly from Japan, well this figure was no different. I got a note saying a customs charge was due.

Oh, actually that reminds me - I decided to try paying online for it, rather than in-person. It was a mixed bag - initially, the website wouldn't accept any of my credit cards at all. It just would not play ball.

However, I retried it a couple of days later and it worked. But - and this was where things got a bit weird - there was no reference number on the note I'd been left. But I figured what the hell and paid the amount anyway.

A couple of days later and I hadn't seen any sign of the parcel so was thinking I'd have to go to the post office and argue about it, when it arrived. How they tied up that it was this parcel and I'd paid without a reference number I'm not sure, but success was had.

But what was the surprise? Well, I hadn't been excepting it - what I was actually expecting was a DVD, so quite where the DVD I was expecting has gotten too, I don't know. I did receive another note saying there's another parcel, with customs due, so maybe that's it?

Dunno.

But what I will say is that the figure is excellent. It's of Yoko from Gurren Lagann and if I'm honest, her face isn't the best - it looks a bit big and cute compared to how she is in the show. What makes up for that is all the details and extras in the model - her gun comes as loads of separate parts and you assemble it, but what this also means is you can assemble different options/variants too. Plus, you get a second facial expression, several different hair variations and some bits of clothes that are optional too (not in a rude and nude way!).

Plus, it's a really weighty piece and feels and looks like it's solid and well made. It's probably one of the best figurines I own - all that from something I wasn't expecting!

death proof

Death Proof is the other half of the Grindhouse double-bill that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez attempted a few years back. Rodriquez's half was Planet Terror, which I reviewed a couple of weeks back.

It's kinda cool I've gotten to review Death Proof so soon afterwards - the system seems to have worked out well on this occasion.

I mentioned before that while I like QT's stuff, I'm not one of his uber-fans. Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs were very good, but I've had issues with all of his other stuff I've seen.

My main thing is with the dialogue, which, ironically, I think is one of the things people praise about his stuff. But anyway, my problem is that he sometimes ends up with these big, unwieldy monologues that the actors struggle to really say. Or at least, they can say them but they have to do it really fast, or the film would be an hour longer.

And because of that they end up sounding like QT himself. It's like QT has stepped into the film just to deliver this big monologue and it feels disjointed. What QT does tend to excel at is banter type dialogue - humorous back and forth stuff between characters.

Anyway, the point is that the same things happen in Death Proof, with some unwieldy monologues and some great banter.

However, I enjoyed Death Proof a great deal. I think it hits the mark much better than Planet Terror did. Where Plant Terror came across as being a John Carpenter film not directed by John Carpenter, Death Proof does come across much more as just a film within a particular genre.

It does have the same incongruous time elements that Planet Terror had - everything seems like it's straight out of the seventies until suddenly they whip out a mobile phone and start texting each other.

But the main point of the film - the car chases are really great. They're exciting, funny, scary - everything they're intended to be. It seems that QT has a definite flair for this type of action that was lacking in the Kill Bill movies.

In the Kill Bill movies he tried to 1) out kung-fu Hong Kong cinema and 2) out chop-sokey Japanese cinema. On count 1 he didn't quite out-do them, but made a good film in that category. On count 2, in my opinion, he failed miserably.

Death Proof was his attempt to outdo the car-chase genre and you know what? I think he just about did it.

It was certainly an enjoyable film. Although if I'm honest, I have to admit I found the ending a little disappointing - it just sort of stopped :/.

bsg s3

So I finished season 3 of Battlestar Galatica over the weekend and have now started on the final season.

Season 3 was good, although I think I preferred season 2 if I'm honest.

The main problem, I think, was that season 3 took a bit of an odd path with the Cylons. The basic set-up of BSG is that the Cylons are trying to kill the humans.

But, in S3, they sort of decide not to kill the humans. Ish. Instead, they sort of try to live n harmony with us. Only they make an appalling hash of the job. And for sentient machines it was a surprisingly big hash.

Don't get me wrong - I understood it, it just seemed like too much of a switch; too much of a back-peddle. Also, the main problem, was that after that things became unclear.

Once the humans had escaped, where the Cylons now back to killing the humans? Or... what? They didn't seem to state their new course of action, other than apparently deciding to have the same end-goal as the humans... for no apparent reason.

I dunno, it became a bit confusing and illogical if I'm honest. And if you make the main threat illogical and confusing, it sort of eases up the pressure on the good guys.

The other slight niggle I had was that there are now so many balls in the air that some of the plot-lines got short-shrift.

So, for example, a big chunk of the first half focused on Baltar, but then in the second half he virtually disappeared, apart from the very end, when suddenly it was all about him again.

This is sort of fine and the norm for episodic television, except that he was totally forgotten. There weren't even many little asides about "Oh, what are we going to do about him?".

But there is a slight problem that's a bit worse than that, and if I'm honest it's been throughout the show. It's that characters are a bit inconsistent week-on-week.

I can best explain this with Lee Adama (Apollo). So one week he's all fine and dandy - a super pilot killing Cylons.

Then, the next week we get an episode depicting him as emotional wreck, where he's trying to replace a woman he loved but hurt and lost with a prostitute.

Okay, fine - the first episode is perhaps showing his veneer of normality. Except that the second episode ends a bit badly and he should at least be a bit cut up and distracted the next time we see him.

But he's not - he's back to being a hero-type fighter-jock.

Until the fourth episode, when suddenly he's behaving like an insensitive love-rat type cad and a bounder.

Then he's back to hero-type fighter-jock.

It gets a little annoying. I mean it's not quite as bad as that makes it sound, but it is there.

I mean, another example is Dee and Billy. Initially, they seem to be a young couple in love, but then for some reason that's never really explained, Dee becomes interested in Apollo and basically jumps his bones. It would have been fine if they'd layered in that secretly she loved Apollo, but they didn't - it's more like a sudden change in her personality.

But as niggles go these are relatively minor things. I'm guessing if I'd been watching it on a weekly basis they also wouldn't have been so obvious.

Also, I think more time elapses between episodes than you would normally assume. I've been assuming episodes happen properly sequentially - like the next day, but I think actually it's more like a chunk of eps happen sequentially, then there's more of a gap, then another chunk.

lookit

Look, I actually updated my website - http://www.trismugistus.com/

There's a new review on there. Well, I say new. It's new in the sense that it's new to the website. It's actually a very old review - let's put it this way: the review in question covers four volumes of the manga Rosario+Vampire. I recently finished volume 7 of that manga, and they don't exactly release them every month.

Still, it's good to have an update on the site. I even did a bit of work on some more updates. Unfortunately, the appalling tediousness of processing images for the reviews meant I didn't get as far as I'd have liked. I always forget just how long it takes to do them.

The downside is that I've still nothing really to update on the walling side - indeed, I've little in the ways of genuine motivation to even feel particularly guilty about that. What it odes mean is for the foreseeable future, my updates are going to be entirely review based.

Something else I managed to do while working on the updates was listen to the new Green Day album.

I gave it a couple of listens and I have to say that so far, while I like it, it's not one of their best. The main problem I'm having is that it sounds very familiar - they seem to have pinched (or pinched and tweaked) a lot of riffs from other songs.

Saying that, I've noticed it before with Green Day and I don't fundamentally have a problem with it, because they normally add a big fat Green Day stamp to the songs too. But here, it feels more like they didn't bother so much with the big fat stamp and used a small one instead.

It's difficult to explain and as I say, I don't dislike the album, but still, it feels like it could have been more.

It also doesn't help that the production seems a bit off - it's hard to tell what the lyrics are in a lot of places, which is never normally the case with Green Day. Also, because I can't tell what he's singing half the time, it means the album doesn't quite seem to have a cohesive theme. I mean, it's presented like a concept album, but I can't really tell what the concept was - not like American Idiot or Warning anyway.

So a little disappointing on that front.

I was also disappointed that I didn't get more done over the weekend. It wasn't a particularly busy one, but I dunno, the time seemed to slip away from me a bit. For example, I didn't do anything e-bay wise.

Also, even though I watched quite a bit of recorded telly, I've still a massive list of stuff on my PVR.

Partly that's because of my obsessive BSG watching, of course, but also the BBC decided to do one of those 5-parts-in-5-days things with the 3rd season of Torchwood.

It gets on my tits when they do stuff like that. I can understand it in some ways, but for me it's a totally impractical thing - I'd need weeks of advance notice to keep up with that as a schedule thing.

Still, it's one of the big advantage of PVRs - you can record all of the stuff in great quality and watch it back when you have the time. You can of course record stuff with normal VCRs, but the quality is poorer and you'd end up with several tapes kicking about for ages, which is far less practical.

bobbage and bittage

Got an e-mail yesterday saying newtype, animage and animedia were on there way. This seems far too soon to me - I'm sure they're not normally published until the 10th, but if I get them before the weekend then that will be quite useful as I could potentially get them scanned.

Dunno - it's seeming likely to be quite a bity weekend at the moment, with quite a few things I either need to (mostly cleaning and shopping related) or could do. Here's a sample:

The portable hard-drive I use for storing the fansubs I download is rapidly filling up. There's quite a few shows that I've either kyboshed or have come to a natural end, so there's plenty I can burn to DVD.

It's a bit of a tedious job at times, though, is burning DVDs. But it needs to be done.

Then there's e-baying: I've got a stacker-box full of stuff now that could do with e-baying. Some of it's a little unlikely to sell as it's not from popular anime or manga series, so I've not a huge hope of making a lot money, but even a small cash injection wouldn't hurt now.

e-baying is tedious to get started. There's all the farting about with taking, then cropping and resizing the photos. Plus there's weighing them and working out the postage costs (Royal Mail seems to increase the price of something every couple of months :/). And then there's writing the actual auction notes - I've a template, but it's still rather tedious.

I should also do a batch of ironing. It's not desperately necessary, because recently I've bought a few new shirts and I've plenty to spare, but the recent heat wave caused me to use up all my short-sleeve shirts. I've now got them back from the laundrettes, so I'd like to get them ironed in case we get another hot spell.

Then there's scanning of course - megami is here and the other mags are a possibility, but I've also got a couple of artbooks I should scan.

And mentioning the scans, I need to archive the scans I took in recent months. That always takes ages as I have to work out what series stuff is from.

There's the German Grand Prix this weekend too. I shall watch that, obviously, but there's also the US motoGP that was on last week. I've not had a chance to watch that - being in the states, it was naturally on quite late here in the UK.

Then of course there's my original plan - updating the website stuffs. Part of me feels I should hold back on the websites until my walling picks up a bit more, but I dunno it's been a long time without any updates.

I'd also thought about giving the car a quick clean as well - this summer weather really brings out the bugs, which seem to be magnetically attracted to my bumper. But the forecast isn't so good this weekend, so it may not be possible.

My, what an exciting life I lead!

there is no god

Extract from "Why I Am Not A Christian" by Bertrand Russell:

"Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have been talking to you about are not what really moves people. What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason.

"Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing people's desire for a belief in God."

This is a remarkably succinct summation of my own views on the matter and it was some 82 years ago this point was made, making it around two and a half times older than me.

All religion is based on fear.

The fear of the unknown and the fear of death. In some ways religion is therefore in a similar vein to one of Bertrand's own areas of expertise - Philosophy. In the same way that Rene Descartes stripped things back to "Cognito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am), religion attempts the same thing.

I think therefore I am works like this. Do I exist? Well, if I did not exist I wouldn't be able to wonder if I exist or not. Therefore, I must exist.

It's possible to pick this statement apart to some degree, but let's take it as read for now. What religion does is use a very similar line of thinking - and this applies to all religions, but the monotheistic are the easiest to work through as an example, and also probably the most prevalent fantasies at this time.

It says that this book (the bible, Qur'an, Torah, whatever) exists. It says that this book contains the word of God, as transcribed by a profit (or a mystic or a witness to the events - the exact person varies). Therefore God must exist.

Without God, these words could not have been transcribed or these events could not have happened, therefore God must exist.

When you come down to it, this is the basic argument for the existence of God, as defined by monotheistic religions.

The problem is that this argument does not hold water for one simple reason: we all know that people are perfectly capable of making stuff up.

In fact, there are multi-billion pound industries based solely on the fact that people are extremely good at making stuff up. Indeed, the level of imagination shown in most religious texts almost proves the very point.

We also know that people are entirely capable of making stuff up and, crucially, actually believing that it really happened. We also know that drugs can induce hallucinations and altered states of perception. We also know that some people hunger after power and influence.

You would think that, given even low intelligence, these clear flaws in the process would have put religion to rest some time ago.

The problem is explained by what Russell talked about:

1) People are taught to believe in God from childhood.

It is difficult to break this ingrained learning. Take the simple case of abused children - they sometimes grow up and abuse their own children in a horrifying vicious circle.

In addition, and somewhat ironically, religion is able to pervert the very liberalism that tolerates its existence. Society (schools and teachers) do not want to cause offence. We are all told that religious freedom is our choice.

This means any attempt to break the cycle of illogic results in cries of oppression from the religious. The irony comes in that all of these monotheistic religions preach conversion - it is the job of believers to force/compel/persuade others to convert to their religion: for them, religious intolerance is part of the very religion itself.

This prevents critical examination of the facts. It even seems to have gotten to the stage that science is being taught in an "optional" way, as if it is just one possible explanation of events and religions represent another. This is such a preposterous notion it beggars belief.

2) God as Big Brother

Religion acts on fear.

Fear is a very powerful emotion - possibly the most powerful.

Everyone is afraid of death. It seems cruel and arbitrary that, at some point in the future, I will die. It seems cruel and arbitrary that the people I love will also die.

Is it not, therefore, a comforting thought that I have an everlasting soul? And that my soul will live on in some form? Possibly it will even get to go to a super-nice heaven.

This is why it's very difficult to argue against God and religion and heaven.

Whatever arguments you make against Religion & God - how illogical it is, how ridiculous, how contradictory, how flawed, how dangerous and damaging - this is what it comes back to: people are afraid of death.

They don't want to die and they don't want their friends & family to die. But they know they will, so they take comfort in something that makes them the promise that, if they believe, if they have faith, then death won't really be the end that it seems.

It's a difficult thing to argue against that and therefore to successfully convince people when this fear is the core problem. In a sense, what have they to gain but uncertainty if they act rationally and logically and stop believing?

non reviewage

Now normally I would do a mini-review of the weekend's rental title today.

However, there was no rental title this weekend. The way my rental account is set up I actually only get 3 DVDs a month and by this weekend I'd watched them all.

Usually, I would take the opportunity to watch something else - perhaps one of my bought DVDs - but as is probably obvious from the gushing posts I've been making about it just recently, the only thing I really watched this weekend was BSG. Indeed, it was a close call for me actually even managing to watch my usual chunk of recorded telly so heavily into BSG was I.

You'll be glad to know that I've started on season 3, but I don't really propose to talk about it again. Trouble is, I'm not really in the frame of mind to post one of my more 'discussion' or 'issue' based posts, so I'm afraid it's going to be more life drivel.

It's been raining quite a bit the last few days. It's also noticeably cooler. I know that not all of the country experienced a heatwave last week, but I for one am glad of the change. It's been so much more pleasant.

Last night I got home to discover my landlord had returned.

This was somewhat earlier than expected. I mentioned the early return to him and he said it was a day earlier than planned, due to the rain nearly washing them out. However, I'm positive that the note he left me said they were going to be away for much, much longer - several more weeks.

But he then indicated they would be going away again very soon. I'm guessing they were either originally planning to roll both breaks into one, or he simply got confused and put the wrong date.

It puts a kibosh on a couple of things I had planned, but nothing spectacular.

The latest megami turned up on Monday.

I could have had it last Friday, but for some reason they left one of those "missed you while you were out" notes. I dunno why they bothered doing that - it fits perfectly easily through the letterbox and doesn't require a signature.

However, one of the good things about TNT, the courier, is you can go online with the note and specifically tell them to leave it on the doorstep (or wherever). I did this on Friday and was hoping they'd deliver it on Saturday (I spent all morning glancing out if the window in the hopes of seeing them) but it was Monday they re-attempted delivery.

I'll hopefully get it scanned this weekend along with some other bits and pieces I need to scan, but the priority is still on getting my website rolling again.

manga scans

I finished season 2 of BSG.

Well, that's not quite true - I've still the extras to go through, so while I've the show I've not 'finished' the DVD set yet.

I think one of the things that's impressed me the most is that the show isn't afraid to take a few risks. One of the things a lot of episodic television relies on is the return to the norm or the preservation of the status quo. In other words, our heroes don't die and our baddies never win.

But with BSG it's more complicated. I mean, just as a simple example that isn't really spoilering too much, the baddies do kinda win and they do so at the very start of the show. I mean, the first ep has the baddies wiping out 99.9% of humanity - that's not at all far off a big tick in the win column.

And there's plenty of that as the show goes along too - at the end of series 2 the status quo gets knocked so far off axis that it's a genuine shock.

Another example is that what you would classically see as being a dramatic series end type episode occurs a third of the way through season 2 and what it actually does end on is much more of a punch in the gut affair.

It's really brave is what I'm saying, and it's better for it.

Anyway, despite my growing BSG obsession, the weekend wasn't entirely a bust in terms of getting stuff done.

I managed to tick off most of the stuff on my to do list, one of the most important being that I scanned a whole load of manga covers.

I'd normally talk about the anime I watched while I scanned at this point, but scanning manga covers is always too complicated an activity to allow me to watch any anime. But what it does mean is I can finally finish off a whole load of reviews I've written for my website.

Making all the pictures for my reviews is a horribly tedious affair. I mean, scanning them is a pain to start with, but then there's the long process of resizing them and cropping them for the reviews. It's all stuff that sounds simple, but in practice ends up being both mind-numbing and very long winded.

But hopefully what I'll do is have a long session of it this next weekend and then start updating the site again.

There's unfortunately been no movement from me on making any walls, or even vectoring some scans, so I doubt I'll be having updates for anything except the reviews for a good while.

I'm not sure if this represents an effective end to my walling 'career' or not. I'm certainly very de-motivated when it comes to the whole walling thing.

But then, truth be told I've been quite de-motivated to do anything. I mean, I've hardly written anything (creatively, I mean) I've not exactly been keeping on top of updating my websites and I've been struggling to keep up with the scanning.

I can't understand where all the time goes :/.

bsg

I think I may have been getting a little obsessed with Battlestar Galactica.

This is BSG the remake/re-imagining, btw, not the original series. I have vague memories of the original BSG, mainly centring around the dogfights in space and also people holding blasters and shooting the Cylons.

At the time I wasn't aware of it, but looking back it's easy to see how it was a bandwagon-jumping exercise for Star Wars. Indeed, looking back at it they seem to have gotten awful close to copyright infringements on more than a few occasions.

I mean the Cylon centurions look like Storm troopers who have been painted silver and the viper fighters that the good guys use look a lot like miniature X-wing fighters. But still, even then it had something - it wasn't a complete dearth of interesting ideas.

As I say, I don't remember it too well, but I do remember enjoying the episodes I watched.

I was therefore a little sceptical about the remake. I, like many I'm sure, am generally sceptical about remakes anyway, but I'd heard very good things, so I bought the DVDs. It also helped that I heard the show would end with a definite end - I like series that have a definite end, rather than the whole rubbish American system of trigger-happy cancellations.

Anyway, as I think I mentioned last week, it's a real belter of a show. Indeed, in some ways I think now that I'm almost through season 2 I'd say this second season was the best of the lot. That's quite rare that a show gets better with each season.

The only thing I can't really get my head around is the episode count. The miniseries as I noted was shown as a single thing on he DVD, and then the 1st series was a fairly standard 13 episodes. But then it all goes a bit weird.

Season 2 is 20 episodes long. Season 3 is also 20 episodes long. Then Season 4 goes very odd - halfway through there's a sort of separate 'film' like entity called Razor, but then it got walloped by the writer's strike so it stops. There's then what they're calling Season 5 in the UK, but is really the rest of Season 3.

It's all a bit odd - I'm more used to 22, 24 or 26 as the longer series lengths for American shows.

It doesn't affect the quality, though - indeed, I think you could argue that less episodes would lend itself to better quality. I do confess I was actually afraid it would end up looking a little Mickey Mouse and it would be a case of praising the story over the visual side of things.

I couldn't have been more wrong - as well as excellent writing, the show really looks great as well. Especially the CG - the CG is verging on movie-level goodness, witch is remarkable for a TV series.