any loss is good

The weekend weigh in revealed a one pound loss.

This is not a huge amount and usually I'd probably express surprise at it, especially given that I did plenty of walking and didn't really go off the rails diet wise.

Except that I realised that actually I did. See, because I weigh myself on Sunday morning, the previous week's weigh in would not have fully represented my food splooge. The splooge continued all weekend - in fact, Sunday was probably the worst day.

That therefore meant that I'd started the week very badly and the rest of the week was partly about making up for that bad start. I'm therefore relatively pleased with the one pound loss, although it does mean I'm starting to feel like things are stagnating.

I dunno, I'm rather worried that some switch has been flipped in my brain that says "actually, we've lost loads of weight now, so let's stop". The reality is that I still have a very long way to go. Hopefully, this week, which has been going quite well so far, will set things back on track. I may even finally reach my pre-chrimbo target!

The other thing I wanted to mention is that I think I've discovered a new route to walk. It basically takes me down to the Sainsbury's at the big roundabout down the road and gives me some more options. I think I was beginning to get a bit bored of my old route, especially as it was a bit random in where it took me.

I've actually been thinking about walking to either Aldershot or Farnham and back. I'm actually pretty sure my big walks I do at the weekend are actually of a similar length to walking to Aldershot/Farnham (I live equidistant from both), but I've got a bit of a mental block when it comes to certain walks.

I think it's because I've done them so often by car, I think they're further than they are. One thing I do know is that Aldershot would be a lot more difficult to Farnham. While both would require going up hill, Farnham involves more in the way of gentle slopes that Aldershot, where you've got to go up some quite steep hills.

Which is all fine and good - going up hills is good exercise and just what I need, but I think I've got a nagging worry about going too far in one direction. My fear is that I'll give myself a blister or find I've walked too far and then have the daunting prospect of having to walk back.

My normal routes generally involve going in circles around where I live and all of them have options whereby I can cut my walk short and go fairly quickly home if such a problem arises (and it has). By going in a straight line to Farnham or Aldershot those options disappear. I can obviously turn around early, but it's not quite the same thing.

This is made especially worrying when you consider I don't carry my phone or wallet when I walk - I just take my MP3 player with audio books on, my keys and my pedometer (well, and my clothes, obviously).

But as I say, I think this is far more a mental barrier than real issue.

fantastic mr fox

Hmm.

I'm not quite sure what my final opinion is of Fantastic Mr Fox.

I should perhaps give a little background in that I was a big fan of Roald Dahl's children's book when I was young. I've never read any of his non-kids books and if I'm honest I only have fairly vague memories of the books I did read, but I do recall enjoying them a great deal.

My memory of the story of Fantastic Mr Fox was that the basic plot was of the fox in question as a master-thief who concentrated his efforts on three rather unpleasant farmers. These farmers then decide to kill him and end up trying to dig him out of his hole.

But Fox and his family dig themselves away from the farmers, who then set about besieging the hole. Meanwhile Fox discovers all the other animals are suffering to and eventually comes up with a plan that saves them all.

Now this story is basically there in film, but is embellished somewhat. This is not surprising, as the above story would make a better short feature than a full-length film. And I think, on balance, I liked and approved of the additions and tweaks.

The emphasis is changed a little, but not in a bad way, and the characters feel a lot more fleshed out and... well, grown up, and it's here I start to get a little uneasy.

See, the original book is for children. And this is an animated film (the stop-motion style really suits it and it works well) and, while being an animation fan I'm the first to argue that 'animation is not just for kids', I'm pretty sure this is aimed at a family audience.

At least I think it should have been - if you're adapting a children's book and using stop-motion, surely you're making a family film, right?

Except this doesn't feel like a kid's film. Now I don't mean that from the point of view of the story being too adult - while I do think it was grown up, I don't think any but the youngest of children would fail to follow the plot, although perhaps some of the themes are more suited to older kids. No, the problem is with the style.

And it's also here I run up against a bit of a problem, because it's a little difficult for me to explain.

You know how comedy often has labels you can apply? Slapstick is a good example. If a film is a slapstick then you know it's going to be full of physical comedy. Well, this film falls into a particular comedy style, but I haven't a clue what the label is.

Basically, it's a kind of knowing, ironic style, where jokes are delivered as asides, rather than proper gags. I'm tempted to say it's reminiscent of Woody Allen's stuff, but that's not quite it. As I say, difficult to describe, but my point is that it's not something I would associate with a children's film. It feels more like a film aimed at an older audience.

And that was why I was left unsure - was it a kid's film or not? I liked it, but it seemed like an odd adaptation.

you mean I don't have to work?

So this weekend I actually got a weekend and didn't have to work.

It was a pretty busy weekend as I had to catch up on stuff that I obviously hadn't been able to do having lost my previous weekend to work.

I had intended to 'relax' this weekend, which I'd mainly meant to be sitting and catching up with some of the TV I'd not found the time to watch. However, actually I went for some fairly long walks and also spent most of my time scanning.

I've really been making an effort to catch up with the scanning and have also been consciously making an effort to watch stuff on crunchyroll. On one level this is daft as I should really be watching DVDs so I can put them on e-bay.

On another it's daft that I've been paying for crunchyroll and not watching it. Especially now that CR has been showing just about every new anime each season, but some of them only for limited times. This means I've discovered quite a few series that I probably would have liked and had a legal avenue to watch, but that opportunity has now past.

It has, however, presented me with an odd problem. Because I'm so far behind there's a glut of stuff available for me to watch and I've found myself struggling to pick something to watch. Should I watch all the new stuff and 'keep up' or should I go for the oldest shows and work my way forward? Or maybe I should watch shows from recent seasons and that could be removed (I'm working on assumption that if a show's been up ages, the license means it will be there for a while yet)?

In the end I've ended up going for a bit of a mix - there's some new shows I'm 'following' (I think that's the phrase - my watching habits tend to mean I prefer to watch complete series all in one go), some old shows I've decided to watch ASAP and some more recent shows I marathoned.

I have to confess I'm still not a big fan of the CR site itself and the community aspect of it seems to be pretty much passing me by, but I have been finding the actual show streaming and watching to be a success. I guess having access to fast cable has its uses.

In terms of the scanning I ploughed through 3 Nyan types over the weekend, which is really good. I've actually only been focusing on doing the scanning itself. The whole thing of stitching the scans together will have to come later, my aim is solely on eating up the pile of unscanned magazines for now.

Plus the stitching process seems to fit poorly with watching fansubs - it wither takes too much active attention or is too short a process to fit chunks of anime around. Leaving it does mean I'm taking up huge chunks of disk space, though, so I may have to have a big session of just scan-stitching at some point, in order to clear some room.

just let me sleep

Big plan for the weekend is, to put it simply, to relax.

Today is the 12th straight day that I've been at work and I have to admit I'm loosing the plot a bit. What really hasn't helped is that the stuff I've been doing during these days at work is quite stressful.

Having worked last weekend in order to finish one bid for a framework, I've then shifted onto another bid for another framework. This one is nearly as important as the last one, and I've been feeling really worried that our offering may not past muster.

See, the problem is that this is effectively a re-compete for a framework that we used to hold, and I'm not at all sure that they want to give us a slot on the new version. My worry is founded on the fact that we didn't win hardly any work last time we were on the framework, so they may want us off to try and give someone else a shot at it.

So I've been really worried.

What doesn't help is that I'm now really tired and getting very inefficient and sloppy. I'm quite sure if I hadn't been here last weekend I would have finished this new bid by Wednesday, but I've really been struggling.

Hopefully I should finally cross all the i's and dot all the t's today, and then I can have a proper weekend of sleeping and (shock, horror) not working.

I might even take the opportunity to finally set up my Blu-Ray player and experience the joys of High-Def.

cream cake? don't mind if I do... several times...

Yes, as I hinted on Tuesday I had a seriously bad week, last week.

No, that's not actually true. It started off as a spectacularly good week - I stuck 100% to my diet and have also worked out a way for me to do a reasonable bit of walking during the week and I took full advantage of this.

See, I had that goal of finally hitting my first target weight and it was my initial aim to loose the four pounds needed to in one week, rather than the two dictated by my new plan.

The trouble started on Friday night. See, having had a super start to the week, from Friday night until Sunday night I totally fell of the wagon. And I really do mean that - when alcoholics use that phrase, you know it means that they didn't just have 1 pint, they went on some huge bender.

In my case I consumed several cream cakes and supermarket sandwiches (which are always deceptive as you tend to think sarnis are healthy, but they're not) and even several packets of 'normal' crisps.

It really was similar to a binge. And what made it worse was because I was spending all my time at work, sat on my arse, I wasn't doing any significant walking either.

The net result of this was that when I weighed myself on Sunday I hadn't actually lost a single pound. In other words, all that being good was then counter-balanced by my being bad.

To be honest, I've actually a sneaking suspicion that I would have lost one pound if I'd been able to muster the energy to go for a walk first thing Sunday morning. Normally, first thing Saturday and Sunday morning I like to go for a walk, but this last Sunday I was sufficiently shattered that I just laid there until it was apparent I needed to get up to go to work.

Previously when I've failed to do the Sunday walk I've then lost a surprising amount the next week, backing up my point that weighing yourself in exactly the same circumstances each week is highly important.

saw vi

The saw franchise seems to have disappeared right up its own fundament.

The problem is that over the series it's tried to develop a story, but in each film it also tries to have a twist. This stems back to the first film, where at the end it's revealed one of the people in it isn't quite what you thought he was (avoiding spoilers).

The problem with the first twist is it wasn't really that good a twist. It's actually hard to really call it a twist - it was more like a surprise than a twist. But the presence of this surprise seems to have led the makers to put in one or more twists in all the subsequent films.

But each film is actually a proper sequel, supposedly revealing more about Jigsaw and the saw world, so by this film we've ended up with a back story that's so convoluted it's gone beyond confusing. I mean, it's even gotten to the stage that Jigsaw almost doesn't appear in the films - he's certainly not the man directly responsible for a lot of the traps.

It also seems to have lost site of what the traps are supposed to be about. They're supposed to be trials where people's will to live is tested and thereby they become reformed - learning to treasure life because they see it's true value. In later films they seem to become more about pitching people against each other.

There's much more of a strand of people deciding each other's fates, rather than their own. And many of the traps seem unfair - they're either escapable or, like I say, pitching two people against each other with the outcome that one of them must die due to the others actions. In earlier films it seemed more like the weight of responsibility was on your own choices affecting yourself, rather than other people.

But as I say, the real problem is that the back-story has gotten so convoluted and complicated that unless you're a really big fan or you happen to have watched the earlier films recently, you don't really know what's going on. Certainly I've been getting rather confused by it all.

What makes this all rather understandable is that in the commentary for one of the films it's revealed that actually there wasn't any sort of a grand plan. Instead, they write the films as they come and either leave open bits for other films to pick up and do with what they want or they try to take a different view-point on something that's already happened in order to generate their twist and to layer the films in together.

You can therefore see how things have gotten so complicated - without that overall plan, they've written themselves into a bit of a muddle.

butterfly

My boss - the one I have to say I'm still rather resentful of for not letting me go home early yesterday - described the cause of a lot of the last week's stress as a "butterfly".

What she meant by this was that whenever something new and shiny came along, he was off, following it, rather than focusing on the things that needed to be done. So basically, instead of finishing off a job he was doing, or setting a prioritised list and running down it methodically, he only focused on the things that interested him or that appeared in his inbox.

This was a real problem, because the job he'd been brought in to do was work on a big new framework that could potentially be worth a lot of money over the next few years. So in other words, we want to win it and to do that you need to answer all the questions well.

So last Monday we had this session where we went through and looked at what was left to do. And there was loads - any question he hadn't fancied the look of he'd left and so we ended up divvying the work up between us.

And so I ended up having to come in to do loads of stuff over the weekend.

The thing is though, he didn't actually seem all that bad with the technical stuff, it was more that he just wasn't up to the job of holding multiple streams of activity in his head at once. He wasn't a manager, in other words.

Which was a shame, but also horrible for me as I spent huge chunks of the weekend working where I could have been doing other stuff.

I also seriously "fell off the wagon" in terms of my diet, but I'll talk about that later in the week.

more work? what a nice surprise!

A big part of me didn't think I'd be here this afternoon.

This part of me is rather optimistic.

It's the part of me that was hoping that, having worked all weekend, my boss would turn around and say - "Mark, why don't you pop off home a bit early?"

This part of me's optimism has come crashing up against the reality that my boss isn't that sort of a person. The other person who's sort of my boss is that sort of person. As soon as the last i had been crossed and t had been dotted on the bid we've been working on he would have sent me on.

This is because he trusts me and he knows how to manage people. He would also have us working flexi, since he knows that it's results and output that counts, not the presence of a bum on a seat. My boss doesn't. My boss doesn't have that level of trust or that level of understanding. To her if the bum isn't on the seat during the allotted hours, you're slacking.

And unfortunately the understanding boss isn't here today, so here I am, having worked something in the order of 15 hours over the weekend, still sat at work, waiting for 5.30 to roll around so I can finally go home.

Well, actually, I'm writing this blog entry. And I'll probably pre-write several other blog entries too. That's how I get my own back, you see - I do other stuff during the day. If I was able to work flexi, and my getting in at 8am meant I could go home at 4:30, then I wouldn't. But it doesn't, so I do.

What's made this all rather annoying is the fact that I shouldn't have had to work this weekend.

This is where I get onto what I was talking about on Friday, but more on that later, as I'll end today's blog post here.

shattered

This week has been absolutely horrendous, because we've been trying to rescue a bid and I'm absolutely shattered.

The presence of longer posts this week compared to last week has actually been something of an illusion - I was able to pre-write most of them before the poo hit the proverbial oscillating air redistribution system.

Today's, however, I've literally just slapped together, and I've not a lot of time, so I'll cut it short and then have a really big whinge session next week about what went wrong and why it's all been a bit horrible.

robin hood

Turns out I sort of lied when I said I would only do the one film I enjoyed that we watched at my dad's. The other films we watched were a film called Zathura, which is essentially Jumanji in space (it's deliberately that - the book it's based on is the sorta sequel to Jumanji, and you shouldn't think it's rubbish because I describe that way or because I'm not reviewing it - it was actually surprisingly good - it's just I need to get caught up) and the Russell Crow/Ridley Scott version of Robin Hood.

The reason I wasn't going to review this one was simply because I couldn't remember what it was we watched. A more accurate way to put it might be that it was sufficiently poor that I blanked it out.

The main problem with it, I think, was that it wasn't really Robin Hood.

Now actually the Robin Hood that tends to be thought of as being 'proper' Robin Hood isn't actually the original Robin Hood. The Hood of the original stories was an outlaw who robbed from the rich, but past that everything else, from the giving to the poor to being Earl of Loxley and Prince John and Richard the Lionheart - all that - is actually a later update.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they should have made that original story, what I'm really getting at is that they've made neither. They haven't gone back to that original source, nor have they made a new version of the more familiar rich-poor-currency-interface story.

Instead they've kind of taken elements and grafted them onto another story. If this were set in another time period and you changed the characters names, it might just have worked. It could have worked in the sense that you'd have had familiar elements that would have been references for you to pick up.

Instead, by calling it Robin Hood, you end up with something that feels like they threw something together around the themes.

It doesn't help that the story lacks any real compelling element to it (and unfortunately relies heavily on coincidence). For example, I'm not sure if it's deliberate, but they seem to be trying to muddy the waters as to who the bad guys are and quite what their motives are. Rather than the simple antagonist of the bad Prince John, there's something here about the French.

It even goes to the extent at the end of having the French invade. Only it's a pretty crap invasion and also... well, it actually looks like the D-day landings as covered by the beginning of Saving Private Ryan. And I mean it properly looks like them - the French apparently had very similar landing craft to the allies in 1945.

Which is a big part of its problem - why are the French even part of it and why are they staging a reconstruction of the D-Day landings in Ye Olde England?

It's just confused and confusing.

Oh, and Russell Crow's accent is all over the place.

nearly there

When I say nearly there, I mean I've nearly reached the target I set before Christmas.

Yes, it's the weekly weigh-in post and I've nearly made the official (well sort of) transition from being morbidly obese to just plain obese! Hoo... ray?

Anyway, the weekly weigh-in revealed a further loss of 3 pounds over the course of last week, which I was pleasantly pleased with. I've worked out that if I loose an average of 3 pounds a week then I should reach my next target broadly on schedule.

My next target is a bit looser than my original target. Basically I want to roughly get to the half way point between obesity and just being overweight by my birthday.

Hmm... This actually seems to be getting more and more complicated to explain without having posted those celebratory posts I was talking about last week. I definitely need to tweak those and get them posted. What I'm hoping is that I can loose the last four pounds I need to this week, hit the target and then post the tweaked celebratory posts next week.

Even if I don't make it this week then it will surely only be the week after, so things should become clearer in terms of what I'm on about with the weight loss targets pretty soon.

For now, what I think I will say is that my main intended target is to hit 18 stone by my birthday. However, I'm rather aware that this year Easter is extremely late - literally the week before my birthday. But also, this year I'm going to the British Grand Prix, which is in July.

The plan to go to the GP was hatched pretty late and has left me in something of a quandary holiday wise. With the lateness of Easter and the extra bank holiday for the royal wedding I'm unsure if it's a good idea to take time off then. See, the issue is that the kids will be off and I imagine a lot of parents will take the couple of extra days need to make it a proper holiday.

But also if I'm now going to the Grand Prix, should I take some time off then? If I do both that won't leave me with a lot of holiday, so what should I do about my usual late summer holiday?

The reason these are important is that my goals and plans were formulated based on Easter/birthday and late summer holiday, but now I have the British GP as another node point.

I need to have a think about it all.

iron man 2

There seems to be a great tendency in comic book film to produce over-complicated sequels.

The first film in a comic-book franchise always has to cover the origin story. If the hero has powers, it generally has to show how he got them, or otherwise show how he got to his default 'hero' position. This isn't universally true - in X-Men most of the heroes already have their powers, but even their you get some origins or at least explanation of what mutants are.

But essentially, origin stories are covered by part 1. Because this will take up a good chunk of the story, there will only be enough space for one villain.

Now when it comes time for the sequel, we've already had the origin story, so there's now a big chunk of time free for an extra villain or two - right? Well yes, but the problem is it's actually really complicated to do multiple villains, not least of all because villains also need origin stories.

What I'm driving at is that there's a tendency to overfill sequels with villains, rather than come up with a proper, emotionally involving story for the hero. So, a good sequel, like Spiderman 2, only has one villain - Doc Ok - but has an emotionally engaging story for the hero to replace the origin story. A bad sequel, like Spiderman 3, crams itself so full of villains that the hero's story dwindles to nothing and all those villains get short-shrift too.

Iron Man 2 somehow manages to not have too many villains, but at the same time still somehow manages to have too much stuff into it that it doesn't really work. The problem here, though, seems to be forcing too much into the hero's own story.

So you've got him being killed by his chest energy thing, giving up control of his company, running some sort of weird expo thing, exploring his relationship with his dad, being recruited (ish) by Nick Fury to the Avengers, developing his relationship with Pepper and even being responsible for world peace (!) ... and the list goes on. They've crammed the film so full of stuff for Tony, that all of it seems to get short shrift.

And the villain ends up feeling like an add-on simply because they needed an excuse for some special effects. This is especially annoying when you consider that the idea of the villain is closely linked to his dad. It could have been so much more involving.

But what adds insult to injury is that the most interesting thing about Tony Stark - his drinking problem - isn't really even there. Well, it's sort of there, but it's not clear. I think the problem was that they wanted to hint at it, but because it had to be a U/Pg film, they couldn't really include it properly.

So yeah, to be frank, it ends up being a big old mess, even to the extent that the sharp wit that runs through the first film is a bit lacking in this second film.

Shame really, because it looks great and the acting's great - the plot just doesn't quite work.

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.

inception

My dad has broadband from BT and as part of the package he gets a set-top box that has freeview on it, but it also gives him access to movies that he can stream. He has to pay for them of course - it's effectively a streaming rental.

Anyway, over the Chrimbo period we watched a few films, but rather than review all of them I thought I'd just do the one that was most entertaining, which was Christopher Nolan's Inception.

Obviously I'd been aware of Inception as it had quite a buzz about it, as they say, and I knew it had something to do with dreams. I should also note that I have a bit of a tricky time with Nolan's stuff - some of it I've really enjoyed, like Memento, other stuff I wasn't as impressed as everybody else seemed to be, like his Batman films, and then some I thought was rubbish, like Insomnia.

What I wasn't expecting from Inception was that it was going to be quite so complicated.

The film actually involves what are actually something like shared, lucid dreams - although they're still basically dreams, the people in them know they're dreams and can construct and manipulate them. This is already quite a complicated concept to get your head around as to how it works in the film, but later on they then go into dreams within dreams and things get really complicated.

By the end I think I'm right in saying you've got a triple-dream sandwich, where there's a dream within a dream, within a dream. It's complicated enough to write, let alone watch.

And what adds even more confusion is that this is all a mission to implant a thought in somebody's head, but to do so in such a way that they believe it's an original thought that they came up with themselves, rather than an implanted thought. Which is what the title is about - the inception of an idea.

So yeah - complicated, and so with the potential to be too confusing to understand. But it somehow manages to just stay on the side of the line that keeps it understandable.

I think part of how it does this is by treating the adults as intelligent people. So it doesn't feel the need to constantly explain everything - it does tell you stuff, but that's more about the mechanics than the fundamental plot or ideas. Instead it shows you the story and then lets you work stuff out for yourself.

So yeah, I thought it was really quite good - clever, with a good mix of action and ideas.

down, not up

I thought I'd switch things up this week and post reviews on Tuesday and Thursday, in order to help me catch up. I also think I've decided to do reviews of crunchyroll shows on here, rather than on my website proper. Actually, the whole website refresh thing has hit a bit of a brick wall, so dunno what's ultimately going to happen with the site.

Anyway, point is today I'm going to do the weekly weight post.

Last week I was anticipating a small gain or, at best, no change, but actually I had a two pound loss. This loss actually takes me below where I was before my chrimbo splurge.

I must admit I'm actually at a bit of a loss to explain the Christmas splurge. Or at least, at a bit of a loss to explain why the net effect has been so minimal.

Last time I went off-diet was when I had my holiday at the end of last summer. On that occasion I was pretty good for the beginning of the week and did lots of walking throughout the week, but at the end of the week I went seriously "off piste" and ate lots of junk. This had the effect of meaning the week was effectively nullified - I lost and gained nothing.

This last Chrimbo, I essentially stopped my diet, but exercise was partly scuppered by the weather, but also self-sabotaged by my being silly about not building up the distance I was walking. The point being that I didn't do a spectacular amount of exercise, ate fairly badly and have ended up roughly where I started.

My theory last week was to do with slow bowels, and I still basically believe that, but I also wonder if the decreased size of my stomach had a roll to play. See, while I was eating badly, I have to admit I was struggling to eat the sorts of volumes of food I remember eating pre-diet.

There were quite a few days where I'd eat a really big roast lunch (as previously mentioned I came back from my dad with way more roast stuff that I was expecting) and then I'd be so full I would only eat a little bit extra later on. The difficulty there is that the little bit extra would tend to be a few sweets or biscuits, so I dunno.

Anyway, I'm over-analysing. The point is I lost a couple of pounds and lesson learned - I won't make any sort of prediction about this next weekend. It could go up or down or stay the same.

paprika

Paprika was directed by a guy called Satoshi Kon.

Sadly, Satoshi Kon recently passed away. He was well known outside of Japan, particularly among anime fans, as a bit of an innovative genius. Satoshi Kon also directed a film called Perfect Blue, which was probably the first anime film I ever saw that told me anime could do proper films.

Well, that's not quite true - Akira was the first film to do it; Perfect Blue was the film that showed it wasn't a one off fluke.

Paprika has been on my rental list for a while, so when it recently turned up it was therefore tinged with a little bit of sadness.

The film does show flashes of that genius I was mentioning, but it's unfortunately not entirely a success. The problem, really, is it's shot through with a lot of techno-babble and a rather confused plot. The plot is also a little over-dense - it's adapted from a novel and has the feeling of trying to include too much in the time it has.

Paprika is essentially about dreams.

A device has been invented that seems to allow people to enter, control and manipulate their dreams at will. However, in doing so, the device also seems to enable a degree of mind control. The victims of this control then occupy a kind of waking dream state, where they're dreaming, but still running around - a bit like a kind of sleep-walking.

The good side of it is that this dream-world allows for a fluid grasp on reality that seems to suit animation and Satoshi Kon perfectly. The bad side is that the above plot is quite complicated and convoluted and there's a bit too much focus on the technology, and not quite enough on the people.

Which is a shame, as when the film is firing on all cylinders during the dream sequences, it's quite spectacular. Indeed, I'd whole-heartedly recommend catching it just for these bits alone.

There is one other criticism I would make, though - come of the voices don't really match the characters. In particular, the super-fat genius guy seems to have a too light, high pitched child-like voice and the main woman seems to have a bit too 'girly' a voice.

In the case of the fat guy, I think this is supposed to reflect his character, but both voices do just seem to jar with what's on screen. I dunno - it's difficult to explain, and these styles of voices are roughly carried over into the American dub, so I get the feeling it's deliberate, but for me it didn't quite work.

rain, rain

Rain, rain, go away, come back another day.

Not sure if this seems insensitive given what's happened in Australia and Brazil, but we seem to have been rained on constantly for weeks now. Obviously nothing like the scale of what they've had and they are massive tragedies, but this is my blog so I can only really talk about what's happening to me.

This morning's journey to work was horrible. We've had rain in some form pretty much every day for several weeks, but this morning it was really coming down. And given I set off for work in the dark and just when the traffic's starting to build for rush hour, you can guess why it wasn't much fun.

There's one part of the A31 in particular that seems to form a stream with even the slightest rain. Today it was like driving through a small river. I was actually overtaking a slow moving vehicle and managed to just be in its spray when we hit the river and my windscreen was completely wiped out by it. It took two or three swipes before I could see again, which was not nice.

I guess about the only good thing to say about it is that at least it's coming down as rain and not snow!

Oh - on that note, last weekend when I went shopping the snow had finally cleared from Tesco's car park. It obviously snowed some time back, and they'd piled it all up and the mound they created took ages to go - it was rather bizarre seeing it when it was turning mild and all the other snow had gone, but there was this big pile of nearly black snow.

This last weekend was predicted to be a little bit of a respite from the rain and although it did drizzle a couple of times, I took the combined opportunity of my landlord being away on his winter holiday to sort through some of the boxes in the shed.

My two main goals were to move some stuff that's drifted into my flat back out to the shed and to sort out the blue boxes, which contain my scanned magazines and artbooks. I did these, but it was incredibly hard work and I'm still aching badly today.

What I didn't do was sort all of the boxes. I'd hoped to make a complete list of what was in every box and to wrap everything up in plastic bags, but this proved to be just too much to achieve in one day. I did more than half of it, but when it got to dinner time and I was still way off I decided to quite while I was ahead.

On Sunday I also cleaned the car and, because it was flat-cleaning weekend but I'd been so busy with the boxes, I cleaned my flat then too. It was, to be frank, quite the painful experience as I really ached on the Sunday.

Anyway, at least now I've got a bunch of stuff identified to e-bay, so I can get that ball rolling. Well, assuming we're not going to get a sudden covering of snow as I seem to remember happened last year.

got ahead of myself

One of the slightly annoying things about not meeting my weight target is that I'd actually pre-written a whole load of celebratory posts.

I'd basically done a weeks worth that discussed how much I'd lost, how I'd done it and what the plan was for the coming year. Obviously these became rather scuppered, because I didn't actually meet my target (by some way) and so hadn't lost what I said and it somewhat ballsed up the plan for the future.

I think what I'll do is re-work these and post them when I do finally meet that target, as the target is a bit of a milestone anyway, since it represents a transition from morbid obesity to just plain old obesity. Still not a good weight to be, and there's some debate as to how accurate and representative the indicator I'm using is, but I think it's good to mark these things.

As I think I mentioned before Christmas, I did basically loose some 40 pounds, which is the best part of 3 stones, which is great, although it does highlight how big I was that this still didn't take me out of the morbid obesity zone.

I also completely failed to do a lot of the stuff I'd planned to over Chrimbo.

Usually, I try to ensure I do a back up of my electronic files when I have these holidays (usually I do it at Chrimbo, Easter and then my 'summer' holiday, which is usually actually more like an autumn holiday). I did do the essential backing up, but it's usually accompanied by some specific sorting and tidying as well as some redundancy stuff (having multiple copies in case both the original and other copies go tits-up).

It was this stuff that I failed to do. I also failed to watch much in the way of DVDs (anime or regular), which was another thing I'd decided was important. I'd thought I really should watch stuff, because at the least, if the weather stays improved I can start e-baying again.

But I didn't do that either. What I did do was sort of inspired by the back up and another thing I've been crap at - scanning.

Basically, the back-ups I did took absolutely ages - several days. The reason was because I've got so much stuff on my hard-drives it takes yonks to copy it all. But also, there's a hell of a lot of duplication, and some stuff in particular I know isn't properly organised.

The thing I ended up focusing on were my scans - all those scans I've done of Japanese magazines over the last 4 years. I thought if I could properly sort them out I'd be able to go through them and see what I could perhaps upload to animepaper and possibly even my own scan site.

The big problem I'd given myself was that I hadn't named things properly. A lot of scans were just numbered sequentially, so I couldn't search to see what Sengoku Basara scans I had, for example. But also, I'd been horribly inconsistent in terms of how I'd named things and then there was the age old problem of not being able to identify series at the time.

So I thought Id' go through and sort them. Only it turned out this was the job of weeks, not hours as I'd initially hoped. And that was with the discovery that windows 7 actually has some features that make the process pretty damn smooth.

Anyway, the point is I did manage to go through all the scans and rename and standardise everything but a small handful of stuff. And it seems to have done the trick a bit - I'm quite keen to get caught up with my backlog of magazines and have so far scanned 4 animages over the last week or so.

too busy

Again, just too busy to post yesterday.

Thought today I should make an effort and at least do my weekly weigh-in post.

Basically, I was rather stunned to discover I'd apparently lost 7 pounds. Having apparently gained 8 weeks over the Chrimbo fortnight, this means the net weight change since my last vaguely 'on course' diet week was a gain of 1 pound.

Now if I'd gone bonkers last week and done loads of walking and eaten nothing, I'd have sort of understood this apparent drop back. However, I didn't do those things, so I was rather stunned.

My theory as to what was going on is a little crude as it essentially revolves around bowel movements. You may want to skip ahead to the end.

The theory was that a big part of the gain was actually due to, shall we say "unprocessed", food in my bowels. Or, to put it more bluntly, having eaten a lot it was taking a while for all the waste to make its way through my system.

I know that may sound a bit odd, but I've always suffered from rather 'slow' bowels and am prone to constipation at the best of times. So going from a long term diet which involved pretty decent levels of fibre to a couple of weeks of eating a lot of not very good stuff it's not beyond the realms of possibility that I was afflicted with slow bowels.

Also, to get to the point again, I had really noticed a decline in the frequency and size of my bowel movements while on the diet (if you eat little, you're hardly going to do a lot of pooing) and then last week I was shitting for England. I was actually worried that I'd run out of toilet paper before I got a chance to go to the shops at one point.

So yeah, slightly bizarrely, my theory is that I had somehow managed to store, like, 5 or 6 pounds of poo. I know - doesn't sound very likely does it, but all I can say is that I've no other explanation of such a big increase and sudden decrease.

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if I have another gain this week. I am now pretty much back on the diet proper, but at the beginning of the week there were still quite a few bad things left to eat. Actually, past tense is wrong there - there is still plenty more left, but everything else is suited to long-term storage (that is, they're frozen or tinned, or dried packets, etc) so I can consume them in a trickle and compensate for the calories a lot easier.

only tuesday, but...

I'm knackered.

Main problem is that I've come back to work and there's been so much to do. Talk about diving in at the deep end...

And it's kinda scuppered the whole blogging thing, both from the point of view of I've not got the time to do it, but I've also not got the inclination.

But there's also another factor at work. A factor that I always encounter at the beginning of a new year, or actually after a holiday. This extra factor is summed up best as "too much to talk about and not knowing where to start".

A good example is the small reviews I post about the DVDs I rent and watch. Since the last one I put on here I've actually watched 3 rented DVDs, with a fourth winging its way to me as I type. But also, while I was at my dad's over chrimbo we used his BT box thing to watch a bunch of movies, so I could also write reviews about them too.

But that's loads and so I don't know where to start, just like after every holiday. And then add to that I also don't have a lot of time nor inclination because of all the work I need to do and you can see why the blog unfortunately seems to be staling a bit.

well this is rubbish

Couldn't post on Friday and can't really post today either, because I'm horribly, horribly busy, which is totally rubbish.

There's absolutely loads on at work and all of it's time sensitive and rather critical, so I'm having to actually do stuff all day, rather than blog. I know - what is the world coming too?

and so, 2011...

Well, I'm back to work today.

I think most people tend to go back to work straight after the new year bank holiday (assuming they were off), but I always like to take a couple of extra days. I find it helps me ease back into the normal routines and gives me a chance to do last minute stuff before I'm back to work.

There was a distinct possibility that I would be returning to work at a different location this year. Basically, I've been put forward for a contract opportunity, that's based down in Portsmouth. I had assumed, since I hadn't heard anything, that I hadn't got it, but this morning I found out that the decision was delayed.

So there's still that possibility, but for now, it's back to regular work at the regular place.

So I guess I should give a brief round-up of the winter break.

Essentially, I didn't do very much at all.

I went down to visit my dad over the actual Chrimbo period, then the rest of the time was spent relaxing, basically. I did pop out to a few dos, but I have to say it wasn't with much enthusiasm. I dunno, it was quite quiet.

One thing I would say is that my diet went absolutely pear shaped. This was due to a number of factors.

First off, my dad sent me home with far more food than I was expecting. Every year he buys too much, but this year was just silly. He'd got a turkey crown, which is joint that just consists of the breast meat, basically, and it was enormous. This turkey must have been the size of a small child.

I personally took home enough meat that I ate turkey for 5 days, and I'd only taken away a third of what was left when I was home. But also, he sent me away with loads of veg and sweets and all sorts. I've actually still got half of it - the stuff that will keep for longer.

The big problem with this was that I'd stocked up myself anyway, and also it forced me eating specific meals, since lots of it was fresh and would go off quickly if not eaten. So, basically, I ate loads and still have loads left.

Another big problem was walking. Basically, before Chrimbo, we'd had a lot of snow and this meant my walking was drastically reduced. But crucially, they'd also had lots of snow in Devon, so when I was down there I couldn't go for any walks either. In fact, I virtually didn't leave the house.

When I got back, the snow rapidly disappointed, so I tried to suddenly launch into a load of walking, but that totally back-fired, because where I've generally reduced my walking because its winter and hadn't done any walking in several weeks, my feet seemed to have softened up and I got some really nasty blisters.

What I should have done was start with smaller walks and build up, but I didn't - first day I would walk I did two big walks totalling more than 14,000 steps for the day. So yeah, I managed to self-sabotage.

The upshot of all this is that I'd put on a massive 8 pounds over the two weeks between my weigh-ins before Christmas and then last weekend. And I'm expecting a further gain this weekend, too.

So yeah - guess I need to get back on that, to say the least!

chrimbalo cheer and merry wishings

Well, this is pretty much it for me for the year.

It's my last day of work until a good way into the new year and I should imagine I won't be blogging again until then.

So to anyone that reads the blog, hope you have a good Christmas and New Year period and I hope 2011 turns out to be a good one for you.

bloody hard work

So this last Saturday the snow I was worried about turned up.

It was rather surreal, actually, as I went for my usual Saturday morning walk and it was bloody cold, but totally snow free. Then, just as I was coming up the road to where I live a few flakes started.

I then effectively went back to bed (well, had my breakfast and, because I'd done everything I needed to like shopping and buying petrol during the week before, I just sort of lounged about instead of having a shower and getting up properly) and watched some telly. When I eventually got up for my shower, I glanced out of the window and there was a good 2 inches of snow covering everything.

It was quite a shock just how quickly it had come down, and by the time it eventually stopped, it was a good three inches deep. That was at about lunchtime and I considered going out and clearing some of it away. However, I wasn't sure if any more was expected, and also I had to clean the bed-sit and by the time I was done it was pretty much dark.

When I got up on Sunday, there'd been no overnight snow, but it had clearly been a super cold one, as the snow that had fallen had compacted down quite a bit. The forecasts were saying no new snow was due, so I therefore decided mid-morning to get out and do a bit of snow clearing.

If you've ever done this, you'll know it's incredibly hard work. The weird thing is that snow doesn't weigh very much, but shovelling it around is still really hard. I'd actually bought a spade to put in the car, but it turned out to be a bit rubbish, as the surface of the shovel head was too smooth, so the snow slipped off, inefficiently.

However, my landlord had left a yard broom out and I found that to be much more effective. It's odd - I've always found sweeping the snow is much more effective at clearing it, but it's even harder work, even though you're not lifting anything. You also have to be clever about it, as if you start in the wrong place you end up with a big mound that you then have to shovel anyway.

So yeah, cleared the snow for about an hour and a half and then went for a huge lie down, as I was utterly shattered.

The other thing I did of note this weekend was lots of cooking.

Specifically, I made two lots of my amazing bolognaise sauce. I did one lot on Saturday and one on Sunday. I obviously ate some on each of those days, but I bagged up and froze the rest.

My cupboards and freezer are now stuffed with loads of food, including stuff that needs next to no cooking and other stuff that is basically just ingredients. After last year when I got stuck in and found my pack-rat tendencies a real life saver, this year I've deliberately stocked up so that if I get stuck in like I did again I can last ages.

The only thing I won't have is fresh fruit and veg, so it won't be ideal, but I can still go for a good long while on my "stores". Hopefully, if things go well, I'll be able to get down to Devon to see my dad for Christmas, and then on the way back I can shop and get a big load of said fresh fruit and veg that will last me for a good while.

Oh, and mentioning cooking, I completely forgot to blog about this when it was happening, but a few weeks ago, I discovered I'd bought the most amazing box of eggs.

Basically, every two weeks I buy a new six pack of eggs, and then eat three every week. I actually have all of them on Sunday, which has been my (small) treat day and I use one to make pancakes in the morning and have two as boiled egg sarnis in the evening.

Anyway, this box of six eggs contained five with double-yokes. It was the weirdest thing - cracking open or cutting into the egg to discover it was yet another double-yoker. I'm guessing that it was to do with how they sort them, but it was very freaky.

Oh, and I should also say that, when I weighed myself on Sunday I had gained a pound in weight. Given I was unable to do any walking past Saturday morning and how big work Christmas dinner was, I'm not too surprised at this, and I think it's now pretty much official that the diet is on hold.

Given I've lost more than 40 pounds (about 3 stone) I'm not too bothered about a few weeks of small gain over Christmas, though it would have been nice to hit my target.

work chrimbo lunch

Today is the day of the work Christmas lunch.

One of the nice things about the company I work for is that we get little perks like this. We also go to the pub for lunch when it's someone's birthday, and it's always paid for by the company, which I think is a nice little perk.

Recently, though, there's been a tendency for the bosses to try to use the Chrimbo lunch as a business opportunity. So, basically they invite along lots of people they want to butter up, if you will. It's gotten to the stage in recent years where these people actually outnumber the people I work with.

I shouldn't complain, but it hardly makes it a situation where you feel like letting your hair down.

I've not much else to say today, either.

I do have two worries for this coming weekend.

First off, there's the Sunday weigh-in, which I'm again not expecting to go well. I'm starting to think I should just formally say the diet and weight loss is officially "on hold". I mean, I'll still try to avoid massively consuming food and I'll walk when I can, but that kinda feeds into my second worry.

Which is the weather - forecasts have been predicting a return of the snow around here (I believe it's never actually left some places) for the weekend.

I don't really care if this poxes up work on Monday and Tuesday, but it'll be a bit of a disaster if it's still having an impact later in the week, as I'm supposed to drive down to Devon for the family get together.

only thursday?

Wow - it's only Thursday.

I feel like yesterday should have been Friday. I'm getting to the stage where I could really do with a break from work. But my last day at work isn't until next Tuesday.

In fact, to be honest, I'm not sure I can really be bothered to write any more today.

into the blue

The weekend's movie rental was Into The Blue.

To be perfectly frank it was okay - nothing spectacular, but equally not terrible either. Actually, if I'm honest, it felt weirdly like a TV movie, rather than a proper Hollywood film.

I mean - think extended Baywatch episode and you're almost there.

And really the stuff it does well is the whole water-based filming. There are a lot of shots of very good looking (well, the women are a bit skinny for my taste) people swimming about in not very many clothes. And you get to see a lot of sea life and it's all very well shot and enjoyable to watch. Much like those montage bits in Baywatch.

The plot is less solid - it does basically work, but it relies on quite a few conveniences and expositional scenes that I'm not sure if I really bought. It's full of what I've heard called movie logic - it works at the time you're watching it, but when you think back afterwards, you realise it doesn't really hold up.

There was quite a nice twist towards the end, but more because it had successfully sold a dummy and even there, how it gets to that twist and disposes of the dummy is a bit ham-fisted. Not sure that really makes sense, but I don't want to spoiler anything.

I think it was also a bit long at an hour and 45 minutes. I think chopping 15 minutes off that - and there were a few sub-plots that could easily have been dumped. Indeed, there seemed to be a few elements that looked they kinda had been half dumped, as they didn't really have any pay-off.

But if I was to make one really big criticism it was that there wasn't really any reason to care about these people. At the end when everything comes up roses, it doesn't really feel like they deserve the pay-off that they get.

I'm also not entirely sure that it makes sense when you look back at the reasoning that got them into the pickle they find themselves in in the first place. But the point is more that these people aren't really doing all that badly in the first place, and when they get greedy they aren't really punished for that greed, just very unlucky, if that makes sense.

So given that pickle they end up in is almost entirely of their own making, it doesn't really endear them to you. If they'd been doing it for nobler goals than simply greed, I think I would have liked it better.

no change

So last weekends weigh-in revealed I'd not lost any weight whatsoever.

This didn't really come as a surprise, but was a bit disappointing.

There were reasons I wasn't expecting any change, and they relate mainly to what I ate. Basically, last week marked the beginning of the influx of sweats and other treats at work. And while I resisted for a while, I still ate a few bits and bobs and then on Friday I totally caved in and ate several biscuits and several sweets.

What makes that really bad is that the snow was still hanging around and I was unable even to go for my short lunchtime walks. The previous weekend was also really badly affected, as I talked about last week, so overall my exercise was also down.

Now, I tend not to think of the exercise as my primary means of loosing weight, but I do tend to think of it as a way of keeping my metabolism up. Doing exercise raises your metabolism, which is the primary way you burn calories.

In other words, the double whammy of eating badly and not doing much exercising was why I didn't loose weight.

And, to be perfectly frank, I'm not expecting next week's weigh in to go well either. This Friday is the work Christmas lunch, where I'll be eating a really big, calorie rich dinner, and the odds are several people will bring in some snacks and treat too. So yeah, a bad week is likely this week too.

What I'm hoping for in order to reach my target weight is that after that I'm on holiday, and so can stay away from snacks and treats, but also do lots of walking. Except, the weather forecasts are not looking promising - the snowy conditions are predicted to return and could well bugger me up.

In other words there's the real chance that I may well be facing a forced abandonment of my plans.

crap-tabulous

I felt really crappy this last weekend.

I'm not really sure why, though. I think a big part of it was that the end of the week wasn't all that great at work. I'd basically made a mistake on one of the projects and on another project I was really struggling t get my head around some numbers, where I thought it would be a quick job.

Also, things were pretty distracting last week - there was a lot of coming and going and general activity in the office. Ours is a small office, as we're only a small company, but it's open plan and the location of my desk means that any activity can be very distracting.

We've also had a new person start work and, if I'm totally honest, I'm not all that keen on her. She's basically joined because someone else is about to go off on maternity leave and she seems to be struggling to really come up to speed on how stuff works.

Now, to be fair, this isn't totally unexpected. How we do stuff is all about stuff in people's heads, where really it should be written down and formalised. I mean, the mistake I made was essentially as a result of my not quite getting the right end of a particular stick and using the wrong document as a template.

Now really, we shouldn't have multiple independent templates that are so close as to be easily confused, but we do, so I can understand why she's struggling. But it means she's asking a lot of questions and that can be pretty distracting.

But also this last weekend I was finally able to go out for some walks and, in attempt to make up for the previous week, I did a couple of long walks and found myself aching a bit. And that, combined with a more general fatigue, meant I wasn't feeling particularly on-form physically either.

So yeah, have to say it was a bit of a miracle I did anything this last weekend other than stay in bed.

it's officially christmas

Well, it's officially Christmas - the Radio Times Christmas listings came out this week.

Nothing makes Chrimbo feel like it's here quite like buying the Christmas edition of the Radio Times. To be frank, not even the day itself feels quite as Christmassy as going through the Radio Times seeing what's on and marking out the stuff I want to watch.

And speaking of Christmas, my sister has pulled one of her classic manoeuvres.

For some reason, my sister has this weird attitude whereby everybody else is made of money, but she's so poor she can't spend any of her own. So usually I'll receive an e-mail from her asking me what I want but, either via subtext or an outright statement she'll suggest that she's not got much money to spend.

I'll happily oblige by providing a list that contains a variety of options, none of which is that expensive, but that can also be sensibly combined to make whatever sort of value she can spend.

Which is all fair enough, and sometimes she does a reciprocal thing. But also sometimes she executes one of here classic manoeuvres.

I should note here that my family long since abandoned the notion of guessing what we want - we all just ask each other. So much easier. And my tactic of providing options maintains some element of surprise to the gifts.

So this year she's asked for an FM transmitter. These are small things you attach to an MP3 player and that broadcast the signal so you can then pick it up via your car aerial. In other words they let you play your MP3s through your car radio.

The reason (well, if you can call it that) she wants this is because the CD player in her car has apparently packed up.

But here's the thing - she doesn't actually own an MP3 player.

So what she really wants is an MP3 player and one of these transmitter things. Only she's decided on which model she wants, and of course she's picked out what are about the most expensive versions. So we're talking Apple.

Being one of my sister's classic manoeuvres she actually wanted an iPod Nano, but specifically not the most recent version of the Nano, but the previous model Which of course they don't make anymore and so is at a premium.

But even if we don't get her that we're still talking an over-priced Apple Touch or something like that.

And that's all that's on her list - there's no "If you can't afford it here are some options for books or DVDs."

Classic.

website refresh

For the last few weeks I've been trying to update my website.

Most of my updates are of the basic content kind - predominantly nowadays that means adding a new review. But this update is slightly different, because I want to do two things.

First off, I want to tweak the design. I've been pretty happy with my most recent site design, so it's not a radical departure, more of a spruce up. For some reason, every time I do a redesign I strive to make things simpler. I'm not sure why this is - probably partly because I associate simplicity with elegance - but also maybe because I find when I'm doing a regular update there'll be some niggle that makes it slightly inefficient.

So that's one thing and it would normally take a little while to implement a simple design tweak like this.

But the other thing I want to do is a kind of a triumvirate of "r"s - I want to restructure, repurpose and review.

By restructure I mean I want to tweak the internal layout of folders and files so that it's more logical and easier to work with when I add new stuff.

By re-purpose I mean I want to change the focus of the my site. Essentially, I want to make trismugistus.com, which is my main site and the only one I really update any more, a stand-alone reviews site.

And by review I mean I want to go through all my reviews and check the content. Over the years I've veered all over the place in terms of a standard layout for the reviews, but also I want to go through and correct all the typos and errors I've made.

And it's this very last bit that I'm stuck on. I've done a new design, I've tweaked all the folder structures and page layouts and I've adjusted things so that trismugistus.com is solely a review site. And then I started going through the reviews and it's taken ages.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that it's quite tedious. I think one of the main reasons I have lots of reviews with these types of errors in is because while I'll happily bash the review out, I don't then enjoy going through it and giving it a proper edit. It's just quicker and easier to stick it up on the site. So now I'm compressing this boring editing process down into a big chunk and it's horrendously dull.

I've also found I had far more reviews than I realised - there are dozens of the things, and for each one you're talking about a thousand words. That means it's like editing and proof-reading a small novel.

So yeah, a site refresh is coming, but it may be Christmas before I find enough time to devote to completing it :/.

no rental again

Due to a weird alignment of rental periods and days in the month I didn't have a rental DVD to watch yet again this week.

However, I have been watching some anime, so I thought I'd give some brief thoughts on those instead.


Claymore

I noted when I mentioned I was watching Claymore how close it was to the manga, and this proved to be the case right up until the last few episodes, when it departed somewhat. Though even there it wasn't a massive departure.

The real difference was that it jumped ahead to a confrontation that's likely to finish the manga, but still seems many volumes off even today.

I have to say that even though the anime did stick very close, what it added really made it worthwhile. It sounds daft, but the use of colour and animation really did add an extra layer, and the soundtrack was especially clever.

Funimation also did a cracking job with the dub, so I really enjoyed it. My enjoyment was such that even though the end of the show wasn't really an end (it screams 'second series') I still liked it.


Giant Killing

I watched Giant Killing via crunchyroll.

I'm not entirely sure why I chose this as the series to watch over the other stuff that's on crunchyroll. I think part of it was that where it ended was very early in some major plot arcs, so I was intrigued to see how they played out. Also it seemed like the exact sort of show I should watch on crunchyroll - quite entertaining, but nothing I'd ever buy.

The plot arcs mentioned developed pretty well and I enjoyed the first 12-15 or so episodes quite a lot.

However, after that point I have to confess my enthusiasm flagged. The problem was that the beginning had been quite detailed and followed everything, but then later on it skipped ahead big chunks of time. Also, a bit like Claymore it didn't really end. It didn't skip ahead to, for example, the last match in the season or a cup final.

I mean, the last match is showed was important and climactic, but in a mid-point of a bigger arc way, rather than as a proper end to the season. In other words, like Claymore, it felt like a second seasons would be needed.


Strike Witches

Strike Witches did end properly, although it too set up a sequel, though in this case I know the sequel exists, so that's not too bad. And as I say, this first season did end with a proper conclusion.

In fact, it ended with what was a pretty clear conclusion. A lot of the time in anime endings can be quite weak and from what I understand this reflects cultural attitudes and differences - the Japanese tend to prefer things that way, if you will.

I was actually quite surprised with myself over Strike Witches as I watched the whole thing across 2 days. The reason for this heavy watching was because I really enjoyed the show.

To be frank, it's packed full of fan-service, and I don't just mean of the ecchi variety, though there is plenty of that. No, this has huge aerial battles, genuine humour, geekiness, and just about everything else you'd want to be in a show. But the key is that it doesn't feel cynical.

Let's put it another way - they've worked hard to give it a coherent and interesting plot instead of just relying on the fan-service to bring in the viewers.

justifiably worried

I was very worried about my weigh-in this last Sunday.

And I think that worry was entirely justified, though in the end it came to nothing. Well, I say that, there's the distinct possibility that there may be a delayed effect that shows up next weekend, but certainly my weigh in was good news, as I'd lost another two pounds.

It's weird - last week I was terribly disappointed at a loss of two pounds and this week I am hugely pleased at exactly the same weight loss.

The reason is that this last week was a bad week. And it essentially comes back to the snow again.

As mentioned yesterday, I was snowed in on Thursday and that meant I did nothing - I mustn't have walked more than a couple of hundred steps, if that. In Friday I suppose looking back on it I did have the exertion of digging myself out in the morning, but at the time it really didn't seem like that. At the time it again felt like I didn't really do anything.

But also, because I was stuck in and how I discovered the cock-up I'd made I was feeling a little depressed. I think this was made worse by my having got up really early to try to fix the error and therefore being tired. Anyway, the point is that when I did hat bit of shopping on Friday I picked up a pack of cookies (we're talking the ones baked in-store by Sainsbury's.

Now cookies and other baked goods of a similar ilk have been one of my particular weaknesses over the years, so this was definitely me giving into temptation. I've no idea how many calories each cookie has, but we must be talking in the ballpark of 200 each, and there were five of them. So, in other words they were a huge calorie boost during a time when I wasn't really able to do my normal exercise.

Now if I'd not been in the frame of mind I was, then maybe I would have tried to compensate. I could have the cookies, say, if I had them as replacements for other things. But I didn't do that - I ate what I normally would, and also had the cookies.

To compound the problems, while the snow did clear throughout Saturday it wasn't really until the afternoon that it was really noticeable. I therefore didn't go for my usual morning walk and my afternoon walk was much shorter than I usually do.

To be fair it was also a little scary as the footpaths were among the last to clear. Indeed, even on Sunday there were still big patches of ice that made walking a bit dodgy. I did do a fairly reasonable walk on Sunday afternoon, and did walk in the morning, but both were shorter than I'd usually do. And all the walking involved bits of taking it steady or otherwise trying to avoid slippy conditions where I usually try to walk at a decent pace.

So yeah, I was fully expecting that come Sunday morning I would discover I'd not lost anything or - even worse - put weight on. I think it would have been a blow, but not a catastrophic one, as there were understandable problems.

What this does do is put into doubt whether I'll hit my target for the end of the year. Not because I'm deliberately going to abandon my diet or stop walking altogether, but certainly if the snow returns I may find circumstances overtake me.

If this does happen I'm not too concerned and won't be disappointed, it was more of a realisation that this could happen and I therefore shouldn't worry if it does. After all, I've so much to loose that I'm probably going to be dieting for all of next year, so I'll have plenty of time to make up any shortfall.

brrr

So at the tail end of last week, we finally copped some of the snow that has been causing chaos across the rest of the UK.

I'm pretty sure the council didn't do any gritting at all. There was certainly no signs of the classic evidence of gritting. I shouldn't be surprised by that as I don't think they ever spend the money. They're shit the council.

Thursday had a classic snow day moment, where, having heard the forecasts and seen no snow before I went to bed I woke up to find a veritable winter wonderland outside. It wasn't as bad as we got it last year, but it still stopped me getting out. Where I live is down an un-adopted road, which basically means it gets no through traffic, only residents, and many of the residents happen to be retired, so they don't tend to go out much anyway.

Luckily I can actually work from home, although the system for doing this is pretty clunky, it gets the job done. Especially since it means I can simply e-mail stuff back to myself at home from work.

Not that I had a lot on - the timing was such that I was essentially finishing one thing and then would be asking my boss for something new to work on, except I couldn't really do that.

What I mainly did instead was play about with my new scanner-photoshop combo. I'll talk about that in a later, mainly as I'm still undecided how it's all going to work, but it certainly killed the day.

Well, except for discovering I'd made a gigantic cock-up. It's not really worth going into the details, but let's just say that a document I produced was supposed to be limited to 20 pages long, but was more than double that. And it needed to go by the end of the day, and was being reviewed, so there was no chance for me to fix it.

Except there was. If my boss had called me back, I could have sorted it out, especially since, due to the weather, they said you could send an electronic submission up until the Friday deadline.

On Friday I woke up incredibly early, mainly I think, because this was playing on my mind. I therefore decided to see if I could make a 20 page version, and spent ages tweaking it to get it inside the limit. This I eventually did and was quite pleased with myself.

Only problem was my boss had already sent the previous version, so I had to phone them up, blame the problems on the weather and ask if I could submit a version 2. They seemed happy with this, so I decided to try to make it to work and sort things out from there.

There'd been no extra snow and what snow there was seemed to have compacted due to freezing overnight. Also, the traffic that had been on the roads had probably helped to clear them up. I set off quite late - after 9 - having dug my car out and eventually arrived at about 10.

Only to discover I'd made a monumental cock-up - I'd not attached the 2nd version of the document to my e-mail back and so now I had t basically go back home after only a couple of hours, meaning the whole trip was a complete waste of time!

Still, I used the opportunity to do a bit of food shopping as a just in case exercise. The forecasters had said it would warm up a little over the weekend, clearing the snow, but I thought it best not to risk it and do it while I was out.

In the end it did warm and has cleared enough for normality to return, but better safe than sorry.

weight for it

Bit later in the week than I would normally post about it, but last weekends weigh in revealed a further two pound loss.

If I'm totally honest I was actually slightly disappointed with this. But I don't really know why. I dunno - it's odd, but after I'd weighed myself I saw the new weight and for some reason I was convinced I'd actually put on weight.

However, when I fired up my spreadsheet I use to keep track of things, it actually turned out to be a two pound loss. But weirdly, this didn't change my outlook - part of my brain didn't seem to accept I'd lost weight and instead remained convinced I'd gained.

It's very odd.

My only guess as to why this is that I'd been thinking out the amount I hoped to loose that week and it was three pounds, rather than two. Or, to put it another way, I'd been hopping I hit a certain weight at the weekend and I think I got confused that it was my weight from the week before.

So, when I saw my new weight was 1 pound over this, I thought I'd gained weight, where in fact I'd just forgotten what my weight had been before.

I must say that the pace I've lot weight at I have become confused on more than a few occasions. Especially in terms of how much I've lost. If someone asks me, I really struggle to think about it, because I've not been tracking it in that way.

To me, I've been logging and thinking about my actual weight - especially in terms of what it is now and what it needs to be in the future. So I'd have to go and look at how much I'd actually lost.

Which I've just done and it turns out to be a total of 42 pounds, which it turns out is exactly 3 stones. I hadn't planned that as a milestone, but it just shows you how much I've lost so far.

And I've really not that far to go to meet my target- a further (checks spreadsheet) 9 pounds, which is only just over half a stone. So given my ultimate goal is to hit that weight by the new year, which is 5 weeks off, I'm well on my way there.

Indeed, I don't see why I won't make it even with the slippage I'm allowing myself over the Christmas period. Which should all be good things to think about, but as I say, I still cant' shake this nagging disappointment over last week's result.

And does definitely worry me for this next weekend's weigh in is the terrible weather. It's been a real struggle not to eat more and to eat more warming winter foods, and when you add in the fact I've really struggle to do the walking I should be doing because of the bitter cold I'm not expecting this weekend to go well.

taking the good with the bad

Delayed from yesterday, due to snow!

And here's the continuation of the manga catch-up:


Something I really should drop is Asu No Yoichi: Samurai Harem. This is another series engaged in artificial story extension, and it's also making a real bad job of it.

I mean we've just been through a whole thing of the main characters joining the dram club at school and putting on a play. The whole section was dull and uninteresting and after a chunk of chapters ended up with them leaving the drama club. So, in other words, the whole thing was essentially pointless!

At least the fanservice has stayed away from being creepy. Well, what fan-service there's been - it's noticeably tailed off over this recent arc.

I really should drop it.


Anyway, on a brighter note, there's been some really good news about Tenjho Tenge. Basically, Viz have announced that they've picked it up after CMX dropped it - http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-11-15/viz-adds-tenjo-tenge-school-fighting-manga .

Overall, I'm really pleased, although it is tinged with a bit of annoyance. See, famously (or I should really say infamously), CMX's release of TenTen was really heavily edited. And Viz have announced that they will be releasing the series uncut.

This is great in that we get to read the proper series, but annoying because it means I will have to buy the whole thing again. This is slightly tempered by the fact that they will be releasing the series as double-volumes, but then that's undermined by the fact that I now need to e-bay the entire series and I bet it will be really difficult to sell, because everyone knows a better version will be coming out soon.

So yeah - real mixed bag of feelings.


But not really any good news for Moyashimon, which I'm pretty sure is yet another series I was enjoying that Yen Press have dropped. To be frank, their serial offending on this front is really starting to piss me off. A bit of commitment on their parts would not go amiss.

And okay, I know they tend to release quirky, niche titles, but seriously, if the business case for putting them out is so weak that they get dropped after only a few volumes, I'd rather they didn't bother in the first place.


A new series that I've picked up but that I've got a strong feeling won't work out is Cross Game. The ray of hope is that the show is coming out via Viz, who are bigger and more able to cope with poor sales. Also, they're putting it out in three-volume collections and there are only 17 single volumes, so they might be able to sneak the whole thing out before anyone realises it's a Baseball manga.

In actual fact, it's hardly a baseball manga at all. Really it's a coming of age and slice of life type series that happens to feature baseball. It' also really good, although perhaps a little slowly paced. I think it deserves to do well, but that not the sort of thing that means it won't.


The other new series I started is Omamori Himari. I picked it up because I quite liked the episodes of the anime I watched. However, while the plot seems to be the same, I have to confess I think I prefer the anime.

The manga is... I dunno, oddly drawn. The artwork isn't bad as such, it's more that the character design is very reminiscent of that generic porn game/dating sim style. It's difficult to explain, but it's just not a style I particularly like. I think I'll give it a few volumes, but I may well simply watch the rest of anime (it's another one on crunchyroll) and leave it at that.

What certainly doesn't help is that the story is extremely generic instant girlfriend harem type stuff with a rather dull and uninteresting protagonist. If it had had more going for it than that I think I might have overlooked the art, but to be frank, the artwork was most of what I liked about the anime and it's radically different to the manga.

cod: black ops

This weekend there was no DVD rental, as there occasionally isn't due to how my package works out. So for this week's mini review I thought I'd give some thoughts on the recently released Call of Duty: Black Ops.

I've actually been buying and playing CoD since the beginning. I believe the only entry in the series I haven't played is the third one, because I seem to remember that was a console exclusive. Back then the original CoD was a PC-only first-person shooter that put you in the thick of the most interesting battles of WW2.

From the beginning there were several interesting ideas in CoD. One was that although you always played the allies, you switched between different factions. So, sometimes you'd be playing as an American, sometimes a Brit and other times as a Russian.

Another interesting idea was that of pre-designed set-pieces. At certain points in the game, control would either be rested from you entirely, or you would essentially be ferried down a particular path. Sometimes these were like cut-scenes, but interactive cut-scenes, and at others more getting to be in the really cool moments from films. In fact, sometimes these were clearly just scenes from films that they'd made part of the game, but that was always part of the appeal.

Another interesting element was vehicles. Rather than the approach of some games where you would jump into a vehicle when you wanted, CoD's approach was more that at certain points you transfer into a section that is a vehicle-based level or part of a level.

The reason for this is because CoD has always really been a guided path shooter. There's very little exploration in CoD games and enemy attacks are planned and involve random spawn points. In the modern gaming world these are very old-fashioned techniques, but CoD has pushed through because it's generally has a good, engaging story.

And on the whole I'm glad to say that Black Ops is more of the same. It maintains all the familiar CoD aspects of guided paths, random enemy spawning, interactive cut scenes, playing moments from films and a well thought out and interesting story.

If I was to make one criticism on this front it's that they've taken things a bit far. At times it can feel a bit like you're not really playing the game so much as pressing a key in order to let the game continue. There aren't too many of these, though, and there's lots of fun to be had.

Another thing that is a little confusing is how quickly and how much you jump around. It's a result of how they're doing the story, but it can be a little disorientating going from the North Pole straight to the jungles of Vietnam. And it's also a little odd how the same black ops people seems to get involved in just about every conflict since the second World War.

And there are some fundamental flaws in the baddies plan, which I won't discuss for spoilers. But overall, as a game, it's good and enjoyable - especially when you get to duel-wield, which works really well. It also looks amazing and you even get a bonus zombies game, which is surprisingly tense.

So yeah, I enjoyed it more than MW2 and it's certainly longer to play, although perhaps not perfect.

full metal manga

Last week I was going to do a round-up of some of the manga I'd been reading but ran out of space and energy, so I though I'd go though it now.


First off, as I mentioned, I've been reading my way into Fullmetal Alchemist. I don't think I really need to explain what FMA is, as it's one of those ubiquitous shows that everybody's either seen or read. Well, except for me.

I've seen a couple of episodes of the Brotherhood version and will probably buy that somewhere down the line, but although I knew of the show it never really crossed my path. But then I decided I should get it, bought the first volume, which I thought was good enough to pursue, and so bought the rest.

Obviously I was therefore in big scale catch-up mode and there are now 23 volumes released in English, so I've quite a bit to get through in order to be current. I'm up to book 10 and I'm generally enjoying it.

I have to confess I have been a bit struck by my traditionally feeling of "Is this quite as good as everyone proclaims it to be?"

Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying, but I'm not sure it's at the top of my favourites list, shall we say. One thing I do think is clever is that it has a consistent, ongoing narrative that advances at a decent pace. With a lot of manga like this you get artificial story extension (I'm looking at you, Naruto, Bleach and DBZ), but here, while that is definitely going on, it's handled in a much more intelligent and well done way.

It' snot so much artificial extension, as sensible, well considered extension.


Next, a couple of ongoing series I'm still enjoying. First there's Kimi Ni Todoke (From Me to You). I'm definitely still liking this, but I think this is also engaged in story extension and I'm not sure it's being handled in as good a way. It struck me actually to be having a similar issue as Kare Kano.

In that manga, the main characters were really interesting and it was a clever story, but really that story resolved itself within a few volumes. There was then a big middle section that mostly focused on the (less interesting) peripheral characters before coming back to finish off the main character's story.

I'm pretty sure Todoke is going to do the same and we're just switching focus to the other characters. It's still well done, so I'll stick with it, but part of me wishes it had just wrapped itself up in a few neat volumes.


The second ongoing series is Natsume's Book of Friends. Weirdly, having just complained about story extension of a main over-arching plot, my slight criticism of Natsume is that it doesn't really have an overarching plot.

The series is essentially a collection of short stories and it works well at doing that, but it can make things feel very bitty. I still love the book, though, and dearly wish someone would license the series for DVDs. It's actually on crunchyroll, but is region locked to the US :(.


Next I though I'd mention Toshokan Senso: Love & War. I was seriously considering dropping this, but the second volumes was a lot better than the first. I think part of the problem was that because the first volume covered what I saw of the manga, but radically shifted things about, this disconcerted me. Now that it's into stuff I haven't seen I think it's easier for me to understand, though it still has the problem that a lot of shoujo has of poorly flowing speech and panel layouts.


Okay, as usual when I do one of these catch-ups, the post is getting huge, so I'm snipping it in half and I'll post the rest later.

winter clothes

So if you are a fellow occupant of the UK and assuming you don't live in some sort of hermetically-sealed, climate-controlled bubble, I'm sure you've probably noticed the rather sharp downturn in the temperature of recent times.

Or, to put it more succinctly, Holy Mary mother of Jebus H Chrimble it's been cold.

Even though I believe we are now technically in winter (I always loose track with the seasons) it's not normally until after Christmas that the really cold weather bites. It's like even though I think summer starts in June, it's normally August that's the hottest month - or something like that.

Anyway, the point is that it's been really properly cold over the last week or so. And that means I've been re-introduced to the problems of excess clothing.

Well, not excess clothing, but the problem of having to put on lots and lots of clothing.

See, the real issue is that where I work seems to be really bad at retaining heat. It's okay up to a certain point every year, but then after that it never really seems to warm up. I think the reason for this is a combination of factors.

Firstly, it's a big, open plan office, making it difficult to heat. Second, it has a lot of big windows through which heat can escape. Third, the roof insulation is inadequate, again, allowing heat to escape. Fourth, the central heating provision is inadequate, so there's not enough heat provided. And lastly, the boss tries to save money by setting the timing to the minimum we can get away with.

This means that the office is normally cold during winter, so I have to wrap up in lots of clothes. Specifically I end up wearing the following:A vest;

• A T-shirt;
• A jumper;
• A second pair of socks; and
• My suit jacket.

These are all in addition to my clothing for the rest of the year, which consists of boxers, socks, work shirt and suit trousers.

And this all creates the problem that getting dressed in the morning takes at least an 10 minutes and is a total pain. Especially since I also wear a baseball cap, gloves and a coat when I'm outside.

It all becomes a bit tedious eventually. And what makes this even more annoying is that my flat can get really cold as well, so I end up wearing jumpers and extra clothes there too.

I've always said as a general principal I enjoy winter and colder weather, but I think really, I enjoy winter from the perspective of being toasty and warm inside and looking out the window. And in my current work/living circumstances, I don't spend enough time in that state.