rollycrunch round up

After yesterday, I thought I'd do a round up for everything on crunchyroll that I've watched from this season. As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I was getting a bit off-course with the scanning, so last week (and the weekend especially) I decided to concentrate on it. I ended up doing all 4 of the animages that mean I've now finished scanning everything from 2010 (yes!) and even did a couple of nyan types from 2011.

I watched crunchyroll stuff while I scanned, so I've done some round ups of my opinions so far. I've not really been watching stuff on AOD due to the size issues I mentioned before, and of course there's a bunch of stuff only available to me on fansub (I grow increasingly miffed with the anime companies for not embracing streaming for the west).


Gosick

Did I cover this last season? Think I did, but my opinion hasn't really changed - it could do with stronger mysteries for Victorique to solve. She is daawww cute, though.

Battle Girls - Time Paradox

Basically, this is inoffensive, time diverting pap, which is both its strength and its weakness. It's odd - I hated Rio Rainbow Gate, which was also from the same background (adaptation of a Pachinko game!) but this I've found watchable. I mean, I wouldn't buy it, but it's okay to watch on crunchyroll. It's really difficult to pin down why I like this, but nor Rio, though.

Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi (A Bridge to the Starry Skies)

This was total rubbish. It seemed to be trying to do "Harem, but realistic" and fails. It reminded me in that way of Winter Sonata. I mean, it's nothing like it story wise, but that pretty much failed too.

Hanasaku Iroha

This is a series that's clearly trying hard, but has left me a little unengaged so far, if I'm honest. I've let it slip a bit, so maybe I'll like it more when I get back to it.

Nichijou (My Ordinary Life)

Essentially this is a more surreal version of Azumanga Daioh. Mileage always varies with comedy, obviously, but I've been enjoying it on the whole. I find it works best in small doses, though. It's also a very nice production.

SKET Dance

Really this is a been there, done it series. Also, two of its main characters are of the shouty, hyperactive variety that usually turns me off. However, I actually quite like the show. I think it's mainly because it has an oddly subversive and self-deprecating element to it that sneaks in every so often.

Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai (We, Without Wings)

Without wings tried way too hard to be interesting and ended up being confusing dribble.

Deadman Wonderland

A new manglobe series, which is always worth watching, and this is no exception. I'm not entirely sure what it's about yet, which I'm not sure if that's intentional. There seems to have been a few info dumps, but not really explaining what's really happening, just giving you enough to be going on with.

Astarotte's Toy

Really not sure about this one. The premise has paedo-bait stamped over it, but the episodes themselves have quite a few nice, touching bits in them, and the story isn't actually all that bad. In a way it's a similar struggle I had with Chu-Bra, except because this is in paedo territory, I'm much less comfortable with it.

World God Only Knows 2

More of the same, really, which isn't any sort of a complain - I enjoyed the first season. It's probably best to actually think of this as one of those shows that's actually a full 20-odd episodes long, they're just making it in two halves.

Sekaiichi Hatsukoi

I was a bit surprised by this - it's clearly a shoujo romance job, but nobody got raped! Well, somebody got kissed against their will, but I found it difficult to dismiss this out of hand as I was expecting to be able to. I mean, it's not high on my to watch list, but I couldn't just dismiss it as not worth keeping going with.

fansub mayhem

I thought I'd post some mini reviews for the fansubs I've watched. There's a big long list, because I was kinda forced to watch them over Easter when the broadband failed.


MM

I actually think I would quite enjoy this, but ... how to put this? It's playing up to particular fetishes I find interest? So I would assume that if those fetishes were of no interest to you on any level, you wouldn't like this at all.

Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne—!!

I found this horribly cringe worthy. It's a show about a sister who has an extreme brother complex, which is something I have very little time for, but it was also very loud and shouty and it just didn't work for me at all.

Tamayura

I found this sweet, but it was very heavy on the moe. I understand they're going to do a full TV series of it, which may work, but it could drown in its own moe. The good thing about an OAV like this it's a relatively short burst.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

This was okay to start with - magical girl stuff. How they'd done the bad guys / monsters was really cool. I'd heard it was really popular, though, so I went on past my usual 2 episodes and there was a really nice twist into darker elements in the third episode, so the praise may well be deserved.

Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru

A SHAFT show, but I didn't initially realise that - it's not quite as whackily done as their usual stuff. I mean, it has definitely SHAFT stylistic bits, but the dial's not turned up to eleven, shall we say? I did enjoy it actually - it felt like fairly standard romantic comedy stuff, but with an interesting perspective and approach. It was quite funny too.

Shinrei Tantei Yakumo

This was one of those shows where if I did a bit of research I'd probably realise not to even bother trying it. It wasn't fundamentally bad, but it was clearly aimed at a female audience. The male character is a broody bugger with some psychic powers and it just has that feel of being aimed at a particular demographic, which I'm not a part of.

Starry Sky

And this one was even worse that Yakumo. Here it was aimed at a similar audience, this time using a reverse harem theme, but it was also shot through with a load of bunkum about astrology and mysticism that was just horrible and annoying and tedious and stupid.

ponyo

I have to confess going into ponyo I wasn't actually expecting to like it as much as I should.

I think a kind of universal thing that binds all anime fans is that we all like Ghibli. Unlike something like Akira, which has also achieved mainstream recognition, Ghibli and Miyazaki is universally loved by anime fans as well as achieving mainstream recognition.

Oh, I'm sure there are anime fans who don't like Miyazaki's stuff, but I'm sure they're much rarer than anime fans who don't like Akira.

However, the last Miyazaki film I saw was Spirited Away and I have to confess I didn't really like it as much as the critical acclaim it received would suggest I should. I did a review at the time, so I won't go on about it here, but because it had fallen short of the hype, I was a bit worried the same would be true with Ponyo.

It may have been because of this lower of expectations, but when I actually sat down to watch it I actually found it really rather enjoyable.

The first thing to note, though, is that of the Miyazaki films I've seen I'd say this is the most squarely aimed at a young audience. I'd say most of his other films have been aimed at a more general family audience, but the themes and content of this are more... basic is the wrong word - gentler maybe? Easier to grapple with is probably the best way to put it.

As a story it has universal appeal, but what lifts it is the clarity of the story telling craft and the flights of fantastic imagination and the gorgeousness of the imagination. In particular there's a real sense in which they manage to capture the living, breathing feel of the sea.

Something else that also really appealed were the two main characters - a young boy called Sosuke and the titular fish-girl, Ponyo. Sosuke really does feel like a small Japanese boy - gregarious and inquisitive, but with that respect for your elders thing that's such a part of Japanese life. Ponyo is a delightfully inquisitive 'genki' character and they make quite deliberate play of her being a 'fish out of water'.

If I was to make one criticism of the film it's quite how accepting some of the characters are as to what happens. The nature of Ponyo and what happens because of her and her parents methods of fixing it barely seems to raise an eyebrow from any of the characters.

This is perhaps a reflection of the Japanese view on life, but I think a bit more convincing would have been needed for them to truly go with things. The one character that does seem to have a harder time believing things is a somewhat sour, curmudgeonly character.

But overall I really enjoyed it.

one more for the road

Lost another pound this week.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.

A big part of me is pleased - loosing one pound is better than the opposite. But the pleasure is really more to do with the fact that last week didn't go well, diet or exercise wise.

Exercise was a problem for two reasons. At the beginning of the week I was suffering from soar feet, because the weekend walk had been a bit harsh on them. I'm finding it's taking quite a while to really break in these new shoes.

Later on in the week, I was suffering from extreme tiredness, because of a severe lack of sleep. Partly this was due to work as I was getting up extra early in order to cram in all the stuff I needed to do. But then also, on Wednesday night I was woken up with some severe gut pain. My guess is that this was due to overeating.

Which was the other problem - I've eaten loads this week. I'm guessing that because a lot of this was fruit, is part of the reason why my weight didn't go up. The other reason is I think when you lack sleep, your body tends to use up energy. Well, obviously, being awake burns more energy than being asleep, but also when you're tired I think I'm right in saying you need more calories to keep yourself going.

Of course there's a bit of a feedback loop going on there - when I'm tired I feel down and tend to eat worse food. And I've noticed that once I start eating badly I seem to get an attitude of "well, I've already blown this, so I might as well not bother." That's something I really need to be careful of.

So yeah, big part of me is pleased and surprised at loosing a pound, another part of me is a little disappointed that I managed to eat too much.

I dunno - I'm having a tough time of it, mentally, at the moment. I mean, I keep seeing the weight go in the right way, but I always end up thinking to myself about how much extra I could have lost if I'd just stuck to the diet/walking properly.

And yes, all reduction is good, but the slower I loose it, the longer it's going to take and the longer it will be before I can go back to eating normally and not being stressed over it all.

canadian grand prix

Well here's a novel thing.

I'm writing this at home on Sunday night. I often pre-write the later entries in the week, but this is the first time I've ever written one at home on a Sunday. Part of the reason for that is because I know I'm going to be mega busy on Monday, but the other part is that, in the background, the Canadian Grand Prix is on and nothing is happening.

That's not because it's been a boring race so far, it's because it's been red flagged, due to the weather. Now in the past a red flag used to mean the race was stopped, but nowadays it means it's paused, with the possibility of it being stopped later.

In this case, the heavens have opened in Canada and it's been chucking it down for the best part of an hour. They reckon it's going to get going again, but it's going to be very later. Indeed, as I type this the rain appears to be stopped, but there's usually a warning period before it actually kicks off.

Of course, rain always makes things more interesting, but sometimes it can be so heavy as to make it very unsafe. I mean, it's never safe in the rain, but not safe enough to race.

There was an added curiosity this year because of the change in tyre supplier to Pirelli so no-one had ever raced on their wet tyres. But they seem to have coped pretty well.

Canada doesn't normally need rain to make it interesting and it's certainly been an interesting race so far.

Lewis was in the thick of things, as per usual. He seemed to be a bit out of position from qualifying and there's a good chance that this was because McLaren pre-empted the rain and put on a higher down force rear wing than they would usually use at Canada. Canada is a high speed circuit with some very sharp bends. That means lower down force is needed so you can get good high speed on the straights.

Unfortunately, Lewis ended up crashing into Jenson

And that will probably do for my pre-writing - I'll just leave a bit of room to say how the race ended...

It ended very late - the broadcast started at 5pm, and they only crossed the line at 10pm - but it was well worth the wait, as it was a cracking race.

Most amazingly was Jenson Button, who suffered a drive through and, including that, went into the pits 6 times and ended up in last place behind a later safety car... and went on to win the race!

It was a remarkable performance with some excellent driving. It also again begs the question how did is happen? Was the McLaren that set up for the wet conditions? If so, an incredibly risky thing to do. Maybe the car is just that much better on this type of circuit? But then if it is, why the poor performance in qualifying?

of course we go there

Note that I pre-wrote this at the beginning of the week, so it doesn't reflect the later news about the Bahrain GP.

Towards the end of last week it was announced that the Bahrain Grand Prix, which was postponed from the start of the season due to the political unrest in the country, is to be slotted into where the Indian GP is currently sat. The Indian GP will be bumped to the end of the year.

It should be noted that this isn't due to any need to move the Indian GP - as I understand it, they're just dotting the t's and crossing the i's. Indeed, quite why they've gone for this approach is a bit of a mystery - plopping it on the end if we're going to have it at all would seem more sensible.

And that isn't to say I think having the Bahrain GP at all this year is in any way sensible.

Bahrain is unfortunately one of the countries where the remarkable "Arab Spring" seems to have come up against the rather less savoury powers of the jackbooted powers that be. The phrase "brutal crushing of decent" springs instantly to mind.

Now there is of course an argument that sport should be above such things as politics, but this, quite frankly is a ridiculous position. Sport - the pitting of individuals and teams against each other within a framework of agreed rules and conduct - should be exactly the sort of thing we use to express disapproval at such behaviour.

If you're not decent enough to treat people decently, you shouldn't get to play ball with the grown up kids.

It's frankly ridiculous that they're even considering it going ahead. But then I've talked before about how it's frankly ridiculous that F1 is a sport that's as cosy with the dodgy dictatorships of the world as it is.

Anyway, this weekend it's the Canadian GP, where I'm pretty sure they don't go around oppressing their population, so I'll be watching that.

Quite a lot of telly I've been watching has either come to an end this week or stops next week. I'm therefore hoping that we're about to start the quiet summer telly period (for me). I'm also hoping that I'll be watching lots of DVDs so I can then get them on e-bay.

I had a resort the other week, transferring DVDs and books around between my various shelves.

The reason I gave myself for doing this was because how I had them before was rather inefficient. And this was true - there were lots of big gaps, especially now that I've cleared a big chunk of my scanning backlog.

But another reason underneath that was that I needed to utilise that space, because I was running out of room with how I used to have them. In other words, the unwatched DVD pile has gown even bigger.

An unexpected benefit to the new layout is that said pile basically sits there in my eye line, nagging at me when I'm watching telly. And I think in part due to this pressure I've actually watched a few bits.

new iron

Here's a random one for you - I bought a new iron recently.

I've been rather impressed by it, actually. I had to get a new one because the old one started leaking. Well, I dropped it, so that's hardly surprising, but it was one of those leaks where it was a small dribble, so I kept using it for a while, but in the end I picked one up at Tesco for about £25.

The cost of bog standard electrical equipment is staggering nowadays. It really has become cheaper to buy new things than to get old stuff repaired, which can't be a good thing for the environment.

Especially when (and I don't know for sure with my iron, but I'm assuming) everything is made in China. The quantities of raw materials and then finished products transported around the globe is mind-blowing. All of it done using fossil fuels.

It's one of those extra 'bonus' problems of unrestrained global capitalism. The main one of course being the fact that the workers who put this stuff together in China probably can't actually afford to buy the stuff they make. Especially when it comes to high-end electrical goods.

And of course the fact that part of the way these manufacturers make money is because environmental regulations for pollutants are so lax in China, so they don't have to spend money cleaning up.

Wow - that was a tangent and a half.

All I was really going to talk about is that I've actually found the new iron to be really good. It seems to get hotter and stay hotter than my old one, and it glides over the clothes much more smoothly.

I've no idea if that's because iron technology has advanced, or this is a better model (or, more likely, the features that were on the better models are now routinely available on the cheap ones) or simply that it's newer and therefore not worn out in any way.

the a team

doo-do-doo do do do doo

I loved the a-team as a kid.

Really it was daft show. A group of American special forces who were convicted of "a crime they didn't commit" go around the US as hired guns, only not hired in the sense of being mercenaries. It was more along the lines of them saving the weak from criminals and thugs.

The episodes were extremely formulaic, picking on particularly bits and pieces and using them in most every episode. Some of the more famous things were BA's fear of flying and them drugging him to get him on planes and the fact that despite all the shooting of guns and explosions no one would ever be killed.

Then of course there was the fact that at some point the bad guys would capture and imprison the A Team, but they'd put them in a warehouse or garage with access to loads of stuff that they would use to create some sort of cool vehicle with improvised weapons that help them escape and/or bring victory.

I fully expected to hate this film.

My problem is that I didn't, but I also didn't really like it either.

Firstly, it's obviously updated. For example, in the original it was the Vietnam war, in this it's the recent war in Iraq. I didn't mind this too much.

But some of the same basic ideas are there.

In the original I remember it being very much an ensemble piece, with individual episodes focusing more on one or other of the characters. Here, most of the characters have sufficient time in the spotlight to give that feel.

Also, the basic character traits are there. Murdoch is a loony, but a genius pilot. Hannibal is the implacable tough-nut leader. Face is a babe magnet. B.A. is super strong.

But other things have been tweaked in ways that I wasn't entirely keen on.

As mentioned, the main idea of the original was that it involved saving the weak from the strong and the improvising of cool machines from spare parts after having been captured.

Well, the first part isn't there, because this actually focuses on the origin story - the imprisoned for "a crime they didn't commit bit", which I'm pretty sure they never showed in the original series. I think this was a mistake. What was cool about the A-Team was that they were already fugitives going round saving other people (thus proving they were actually good guys) where this is just about proving they were acting on orders.

Also the improvising of cool machines to escape has become putting together cool machines or weird ideas to achieve an objective. This was okay, but less good.

Which pretty much sums up my feeling on the entire thing - okay, but less good.

Oh, except for the sound - the sound mix was horrible. I actually had to put on the subtitles as I could barely make out what people were saying half he time.

And while it looked good there was an awful lot of CGI. While I've no issue with this fundamentally, it kinda feels against the basic spirit of the original show to be using CGI to achieve stunts.

fat bodies

There was a programme on last night called embarrassing fat bodies.

It's part of a series that basically gets people on who have medical problems. I remember watching the first series, which was more general.

I didn't watch anything after that first series for a couple of reasons. First off it was clearly bordering on exploitative telly. It fell just the wrong side of the line where shows are basically the equivalent of gawping at carnival freaks.

I mean, it was also trying to act in a public information way, giving medical advice and highlighting conditions and stuff, but the actual people featured on the show tended to have extreme versions, which was the other reason I stopped watching.

So, for example, there would be someone on who had athlete's foot. Only the person featured didn't just have it, they'd had it for years and instead of visiting their GP or even going down boots/superdrug/tescos and getting some over-the-counter creams or whatever, they'd left it. And of course it had gotten to the stage where their nails had become a deformed mess and it looked like their feet were being eaten away.

Then the doctor would prescribe them some simple treatment like a pill or a cream and that would clean it up in a couple of weeks I'd just end up wondering why the hell they'd let it get so bad.

Of course the ironic element to this is that I essentially did the same thing in regards to my weight. I just kept 'leaving it' for my entire life until I got to the stage of being 24 and a half stone.

Anyway, the version I came across last night was all about being overweight, so I thought I'd watch and see what was going on. Quite a lot of the stuff I talked about I already knew, but one thing they did have on there was a woman who'd lost more than half her entire bodyweight, having dropped some 14 stone and been fat her entire life. Which, broadly speaking, is what I'm doing.

Her problem was what I think I'm actually most worried about now, which was that she had huge amounts of loose skin. She was only about 40, but her skin drooped down like that of someone more than twice her age. She looked okay clothed, but it meant she had to be fully clothed all the time.

She ended up having several rounds of plastic surgery to trim all the spare skin away. Obviously what I worry about now is ending up with similar piles of loose skin.

My hope is that the big difference was that she lost all that weight very quickly, where my plan is to shed it quite slowly and steadily. In reality I think it's inevitable that I'll end up with excess skin. In the programme they basically said that if you're really big for a long time, when you loose that weight the skin basically doesn't go away and surgery is the only option.

I could use the above as an excuse for this month's weigh in - that I'm taking it gradually - but that wasn't the reason I didn't loose any weight this last week. The reason was because I had the bad boozy weekend before and I ate too much bad stuff.

I have to say that, knowing what I did eat, I'm actually a little bit relieved the weigh in was no change, but still, I need to make sure I get back on track.

I'm more worried about putting the weight back on than I am having a lot of loose skin.

feck me

Horribly busy at work today.

With the exception of very first thing, I think this is the first time I've even fired up firefox today. I usually at least get the chance to glance at the forums I frequent and check my e-mail and stuff.

Not today.

how does that work?

So as mentioned I didn't do much exercise last weekend and I drank beer on Saturday and we ate takeaway pizza.

And yet I'd still lost 1 pound when I weighed myself on Sunday. It hadn't even been a particularly good week to compensate. I guess there's the possibility I was horribly dehydrated when I weighed myself, but I didn't feel that way - more tired than dehydrated.

Still, happy to take a 1 pound loss and won't be too harsh on myself if the "bad living" shows up next weekend instead.

It feels like I've gotten way behind with the scanning. I seem to have lost a bit of momentum with it.

I mean, I have done quite a lot of catching up - I'm no longer 15 months behind, I'm now only about 6 months behind - but I've been feeling like I'm never going to catch up, so why even bother trying?

I mean, it's not that bad, but you get what I mean. I think to myself that I've so much of it to do, doing x instead of some scanning is hardly going to hurt. trouble is all that adds up and I'll soon be a stupid amount behind again.

Part of the problem I think was the all problems I had with the cable internet connection. That coincided with me being off around Easter and meant I couldn't watch crunchyroll stuff. At the time the new UK one - Anime On Demand - was just getting going too and those were what I really wanted to watch while I scanned.

Instead I watched (older) fansubs I'd downloaded, and while that was good and needed doing, it meant I've gotten some way behind with new season stuff where I'd hoped I was going to be fully up to date.

As mentioned there's also this AOD thing and while I have subscribed to it, I'm not hugely impressed. It only seems to work in either a small window or full-screen, even if you adjust the resolution setting. This really doesn't work for me with watching it while I'm scanning, because the window is too small to easily watch and read the subtitles and of course full screen means you can't practically do anything else at the same time.

It's also all over the place in terms of episode numbers. To be fair they launched it just when the earthquake hit Japan and it's a brand new thing, so it's understandable, but it's a bit confusing with the episode numbers they're on and how big a delay they have from Japanese screening.

Also I'm unsure about the whole "season pass" model.

I hope what they're getting at is a quarterly subscription model that's basically a similar idea to crunchyroll. What I'm slightly worried about is that once the season is over, the videos will basically expire. That's a pain for me because I watch anime quite randomly, so it might be several weeks before I get around to watching some things.

The advantage with crunchyroll's model is that they try to keep things on for as long as possible. So if you come along several seasons later you can still watch stuff. A "season pass" implies that previous season's content will not be available to you.

Monaco GP

Last weekend saw the Monaco Grand Prix.

It was the second Grand Prix in as many weeks, but now that it's back in Europe for a while that doesn't seem quite as bad - Spain is just down the road from Monaco. And of course both aren't far from where most teams are based, in the UK.

Monaco of course is a traditionally processional race.

It's held in the narrow streets of Monte Carlo and if it were proposed as a race today it would almost certainly be rejected as being unsafe / too risky. The cars travel within millimetres of the solid barriers (the famous phrase is that you need to leave the tyres manufacturers logo behind on the barriers to know you've had a good lap) with few run of areas and nothing in the way of gravel to slow them down should they fail to make a corner.

Of course, being so twisty and turn they don't really ever get up to full speed, but there's no margin for error at all. This is one of the reasons why many of the drivers like it - it's a technical challenge and for the spectators it's more about getting really close to the cars and soaking up the atmosphere than stuff like overtaking.

I went a couple of years ago and it really is an amazing, atmospheric race and spectacle.

And this year it was almost a good race as well. To be fair it was nowhere near as some of the previous races, but compared to the dull, processional races at Monaco I've seen it was a hell of a lot better.

For some reason (slower speed maybe?) the Pirelli tyres seemed to last longer than at previous races, despite them using the super soft and soft combo for the first time. Also of course the DRS zone was a bit redundant, although there's some suggestion it helped in one or two passes.

And there were quite a few overtakes, which is quite novelty for Monaco.

Unfortunately for Lewis Hamilton in particular his weren't the best executed of overtakes.

To be frank, Lewis is my favourite driver of the current crop. I think the grid has a lot of good drivers at the moment, but I love the fact Lewis is a proper racer, never content to give half measure and always all about taking people on track. He wants to rave everybody and try to beat them fair and square.

Lewis is also a bit of a demon around Monaco, loving the challenge of the circuit.

But in the last part of qualifying there was quite a nasty accident that spoiled his only planned attempt at a qualifying lap. then, when they came out again he didn't do so well but also made an error and so was demoted to 9th. Not great considering how difficult it is to overtake, even with the current rules.

But of course he went for it and ended up having a terrible time - two of his moves ended with collisions that were, to be frank, entirely his fault. He was being way too ambitious (which, as I say, is kinda why he love him). In particular, the crash was Massa he was way off even being alongside and they got quite badly tangled.

He got penalised for both of these. Also the team called him in at one point, but they didn't have the tyres ready for him.

He was also peripherally involved in a complicated accident that saw Petrov in the barriers and the race red flagged while they took him to hospital.

So things didn't go well.

Unfortunately he also made it a bit worse by giving an interview when he was clearly still very annoyed, blaming the other drivers for basically being rubbish and the stewards for being over-sensitive. Which he then made worse by making a reference to the Ali G thing of "is it cos I is black?"

He was clearly not being serious, but it was a rather cringeworthy foot-in-mouth moment.

burn after reading

Until about half way through Burn After Reading I wasn't at all sure if I liked it.

The main reason for this was that all the characters were either unlikeable or stupid or, mainly, both. Being a Coen Borthers film I was also expecting it to be darkly comic but it was also quite light on jokes.

However, a bit like the title (ooh, clever), it's a bit of a slow burner. There's a lot of build up and then about half way through things reach a kind of tipping point and just about everything flips into the ridiculous, with truly hilarious results.

Stupid people are quite a common theme in Coen Brothers films, although usually there's at least one character who's sensible or clever. Here the only people who come close to that are the CIA men, although they're not really major characters and even they come across as being a litte dumb.

What I think makes burn really work is the central stupidity - the mistaking of CD containing a fired CIA analyst's financial info and a copy of their memoires. This is mistaken for somethign valuable/secret by the two main chracters. The particularly clever bit is that a lot of the chracters fall into what you might call architypal roles are expected actions, despite this data not actually being of any interst.

So, for example, they try to sell the information to the Russains. This is the very much post cold war Russains. But it's like everybody forgets that the cold war is over and that they're not actually in a spy film. Liek they're acting on autopilot.

I'm finding it a bit difficult to explain and that's why it needs such a big build-up. Without that build up the farcical stuff would just seem bizarre. The punchlines need that much preamble in order to work.

You know really there's not a lot more I can say - I really enjoyed the film, but it took a while to really become funny.

My favourite characters were probably the CIA men. The scenes between Palmer and his boss had me in stitches. The palpable embarressment and bafflment of Palmer was rather delicious. The whole "We don't know why" "But we're the CIA" feel of it was just perfect.

more work then

Back to work then.

I already feel like I could do with another holiday. The whole Bank Holiday madness and my associated holidays at the beginning of this month seemed like a good idea, but I'm not entirely sure it really worked.

It certainly doesn't feel like I've had a proper holiday a few weeks ago.

Or maybe it's just general fatigue.

It was a tiring weekend. Saturday I went to see a couple of good friends who I knew from school and haven't seen for what must be 2 years. It was the Champions League final, which is a football thing and I don't really do football.

I stayed over that night and came back on the Sunday, getting back about mid-day, which gave me just enough time to shower and have some lunch and then it was the Monaco Grand Prix., which I'll talk about that a bit more later in the week.

The rest of Sunday was pretty much spent bumming around. I watched quite a lot of telly I'd recorded and also played some games. One thing I didn't really do that I should have was go for any walks.

On the Sunday I wouldn't really describe myself as hung over - I got a bit tipsy on Saturday, no more - it was more to do with lack of sleep. My body clock combined with strange surroundings meant I got up at 6:30, having only gone to bed at 2:30.

Monday I wasted, to be frank.

I watched some more telly and played some more games, and that was pretty much it. I did go for a walk, but it was just the one in the afternoon, and it wasn't a long one. It was weirdly humid out, which made sense when it started raining just as I was getting home, so I guess the humidity was the build up for the rain.

yet another bank holiday

Well, there's yet another Bank Holiday on Monday.

Of course really we're only gaining 1 extra day off across the year, it's just that there's also been an undue concentration of them in May.

Plans for the weekend involve watching the Monaco Grand Prix. I'm also supposed to be going to visit some friends who I realised the other day I haven't seen in about 4 years.

I've been horribly busy at work this last couple of days. I even got up half an hour early (that's half an hour earlier than my usual 6:30 wake up time) to get in as soon as I could this morning and I'm still only about half way through what I need to do, so I'll cut the post off here I think.

67 stone

I randomly came across a programme the other day where two ambulance drivers (they may well have been paramedics - I couldn't tell) were discussing the tools they use to move very big people.

The standard trolley they put in and out of the ambulance has a kind of extension thing that allows bigger people lay on it without fear of falling off. Apparently the trolley itself can take up to 75 stone in weight.

If people were bigger than that (!) they explained there's a kind of big bag they use that people can be zipped into. This has all sorts of handles that allow it to be picked up by multiple people and can allow them to carry someone who weighs 99 stone.

One imperial tonne is 160 stone, so that's nearly two thirds of a tonne.

Something else they said was they'd actually had to use the bag for a guy who weighed 67 stone, because of his shape. They'd had to leave open a flap on the bag because his belly was so big they couldn't close it.

I'm not posting this to offer any sort of opinion on this state of affairs. Indeed, as someone who used to weigh about 25 stone with a BMI that put him well into the morbidly obese range it would probably be best approached from a those without sin casting the first stone mindset.

What it did emphasise to me was how bad things could have gotten. My eating and exercise habits were such that my weight was an ever upward trajectory. And it's not good to be in a situation where, should you need to be rushed to hospital they first need to zip you into a bag and then find enough burly men to lift you.

This last week I lost 3 pounds. Well, I think actually it was more a case of losing about 2.5 pounds over the last two weeks.

resident evil degeneration

I've noticed this pattern before with the rentals I get sent.

Two rentals ago it was the most recent Resident Evil live action film (zombies), last time it was zombieland (zombies) and this time it was Resident Evil: Degeneration (zombies).

In particular I remember it happened with films featuring Jason Statham - I had several of them sent in quick succession. I don't fundamentally mind, but it is a bit weird that this themeing exists in whatever software it is that picks out which DVD to send you next. Well, I assume it's software - perhaps it's done by hand?

Degeneration is a CGI Resi movie made in Japan and that actually features some of the characters from the games and, I believe, is canon, which is to say it forms a proper part of the Resi game series stories, unlike the films.

I have to say, though, that it's not all that good. The main problem with it is that it just wasn't scary. A big part of why the Resi games that I played were scary was the intense atmosphere. They were played in a third person, fixed camera view that gave a cinematic feel and through the use of creepy music they built up a very intense atmosphere.

There are very few scenes that even try to be scary in Degeneration, and to be frank the almost total lack of gore also suggested to me that this was part of an attempt to get a relatively low rating.

Instead, the focus is on trying to be an action film. In this regard it sort of works, but I think the CGI aspect hampers it. I dunno, part of the fun of live action films is that it involves real people. I know these days a lot of CGI is used, but they still try to do lots of stunts and use the CGI to enhance it.

Here you can't really tell. I mean, it uses motion capture, but you don't really know if this is used in all the action parts or not.

Also, everything feels quite wooden. The CGI being used seems more on the level of that used in video game cut sequences, rather than that Final Fantasy film. I mean it looks okay, and it's great for monsters and the zombies, but the living humans didn't look good enough for me to really get into it properly.

Something else that didn't help was that the plot was a bit weak. I don't know if it has more resonance if you're properly familiar with all of the Resi games, but for me it all felt a bit predictable and overly familiar. There also seemed to be quite a few plot holes. A good example of this was the plane crashing into the terminal.

This isn't really a spoiler, since it's plastered all over the trailers, but a plane crashes into the terminal building where the zombie action is centred. Obviously, the human characters need to escape from the building, and there's going to be issues over zombies getting out. So wouldn't a plane crashing into a building leave a very big hole in it? Well, you would think so, but this doesn't really get mentioned as an escape route for either humans or zombies.

And there's lots of other stuff like that - things seem to happen (or don't happen) for reasons that don't really make much sense.
weight

web design software

So I've talked before about how I've switched all my domain name registrations to a new company and cancelled the hosting I had with the eventual intention of having hosting through the new people.

Part of the reason for the move is that the company in question are the ones we use at work and I got to see how they operate. Part of this is that I've been building a new website for work.

It's not the main website, but an additional one for a specific bit of work, but one of the key aspects was that we needed to be able to have users who could log in and out and use passwords to access certain bits of the site.

As part of the hosting this company provides, they give you a web design package called Serif X4 and investigations showed that this package gives you the ability to have user accounts. We therefore took the plunge and bought the hosting (which we'd need anyway, even if the design thing didn't work as we'd hoped) and I set about seeing if I could get it to do what we needed.

The answer to this question was, fundamentally, yes - we could have users and passwords and the whole thing. The way it works means that the details are held remotely on a secure web server hosted by the company (Serif, rather than the hosts).

Now obviously I've built websites before. I actually own a rather old version of Dreamweaver and have used that to build all of my websites. However, if I was going to get this program free with my hosting I thought it best to experiment with all the stuff it provides, not just what we needed for the work site.

And it's a bit of an odd beast.

The reason is that it's both quite powerful and quite limited all at the same time. I'll give you some examples.

Firstly, in the Dreamweaver I have, although it's What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) you're not that far removed from the basic html coding (I've only ever used the html in it). So a lot of it is done by arranging tables. By tables I mean the type of thing you have in word - you set the number of rows and columns and then you can do stuff to the tables or put stuff in the boxes you've created. And I think Word is the best analogy for how I've always used Dreamweaver.

In Serif you don't do that at all - you basically draw the site as if you were using MS Paint or Photoshop or a similar artist package. It's very much about the visual side of website designs.

Now that is very good on some levels, because you can quickly and relatively easily produce very appealing sites. It even provides you with templates that look quite good and you can fiddle with.

The difficulties come because of the content in sites like mine. The above works well if you're designing a relatively static site, but with mine with reviews with variable numbers of words, this produces unexpected challenges.

A good exemplar is the size of the page. When you design the page you fix the height and width. That means if you have a bit more or a bit less content you end up either going off the bottom or falling short and it has no way of the pages automatically adjusting to fit your content. You have to fiddle with some numbers in a dialogue box - you can't even simply drag the bottom of the page (I believe they added this in the next version).

And a similar problem pervades. So, for example, it gives you really simple an easy access to a forum that you can just drop onto your site. But, you can't adjust the design of the forum at all - it's a standard php forum and that's it. Well, you can do colours and through a tortuous back-end process can add bits and pieces, but it doesn't let you properly fiddle with it.

So as I say - it's at once very powerful and very restricted. You can easily create very pretty sites, but something as simple as adding text of variable length to pages is a real pain :/.

spanish f1 gp

Spanish Grand Prix this last weekend.

Spain is usually as dull as dishwater. It's one of the newer generations of tracks and it's not one of the better ones - it's very difficult to overtake. Indeed, the person who has pole position goes on to win the race more often than happened at Monaco.

This year, however, it was much more interesting. Clearly as a proper test for the new regulations it seems they've clearly brought some success. The Drag Reduction System (DRS - opening a flap on the rear wing to reduce drag and therefore give a speed boost) seems very temperamental/track sensitive.

Last week in Turkey it seemed to be too effective, with cars passing each other on the straights, making it way too easy. In China it worked perfectly, giving drivers the chance to be alongside in a corner and therefore battle it out. In Spain, despite it being used on a huge long straight it didn't really help at all, just like in Australia.

The problem seemed to be that in the corner before the straight it was difficult to follow another car closely. That meant that, by the time the DRS could be switched on, the other car was a long way in front and so the following driver didn't (in general) gain enough to even come close to passing.

What this did emphasise was the point that it's really the tyres that have had the biggest impact on racing this year. This is good, but I think they need to rethink it a bit. What I think would make things work better is if the harder compounds weren't so much slower than the softer ones and that they lasted ages.

That way you could have a proper battle between strategies - do you have only 1 stop and use the hard for ages, or lots of stops using the soft? This cant' really happen at the moment and is also worsened by the regs that limit the number of tyres the teams have. It also seems to be impacting qualifying quite a bit.

Anyway, the Spanish Grand Prix got off to a really interesting start with Alonso taking the lead with a spectacular bit of driving. Being the local boy, the crowd went mental - you could actually hear them above the sound of the cars, and each car is louder than a Jumbo jet.

This seemed to hold up the Red Bulls and I think also lead to the race being more interesting. To be fair, the Spanish was still less busy than previous races, emphasising that it is a less good track, but even so there was plenty going on.

In fact, still too much if I'm honest. I mean, Mark Webber, who started in pole ended up 4th and I have absolutely no idea how that happened. I mean, he didn't spin off or crash and I don't think there were any disastrous pit stops so how did that happen? It's almost like you need to watch 20-odd different versions of the race to work out what happened to each driver or cluster of drivers.

I dunno - it's just the wrong side of too much for me. But then would I have the sometimes dull, processional racing from recent years back? No, not at all, but it would be nice to find a balance between the two extremes.

up and down like the assyrian empire

So my weight went back down again this last weekend.

It wasn't quite enough to cancel out the gain I had, but any loss is good. I also think I had a bit of switch in mental attitude - having posted the numbers of what I'd lost and gotten used to what I now way, it doesn't feel as bad/poor as it did. I've also realised that I'm not that far from getting down into the sorts of weights where normal clothes will begin to fit me.

And speaking of clothes, I'm really desperate for some new stuff. I've been holding off because the idea of buying stuff and then having to buy the same stuff only a bit smaller in six months time and then buying it yet again six months after that is truly unappealing (and expensive sounding).

But it was my clothes that I think gave the game away at work.

My boss (who is that sort of person) asked me directly if I was loosing weight, so I had to fess up. I could hardly say no :/. And as he said, my clothes are "hanging" off me. He's also the sort of person that then went and told everybody.

I found the whole thing a little embarrassing. Not spectacularly so, but I'm never hugely comfortable about talking about that sort of personal stuff. I mean, there's some personal stuff I'm fine with discussing, but there's other stuff that I just don't like to talk about. And that extends outwards too - I'm not comfortable talking about those areas in other people's lives, even if they are.

I guess that makes me rather unusual - gossip and prurience is what keeps half the internet and all of the tabloid papers going.

This week I've been trying to increase my step count. I've been doing two laps around the industrial estate in the morning and then a slightly longer walk at lunch time. This has been successful, but if I want to take it any further it's clear I'll need to walk in the evenings, which may be difficult.

I actually didn't go for a walk last Sunday at all. This was because I'd washed the car on Saturday on top of walking, so I figured I'd done the exercise, but also, washing the car always involves lots of bending over which always leaves me with badly aching legs for a couple of days afterwards, because I've overstretched the ligaments.

I'm still breaking in my new walking shoes anyway, which will take a while, but hopefully they'll last me as long as the last pair I had like this.

one tenth as good

Well, the phone line interwebnets stuff turned up on Tuesday, as planned. It was waiting on the doorstep when I got back, so I plugged it all in. I'm of sufficient nerd level that I was able to do all this without looking in any of the manuals that came with it.

Almost as soon as it was all plugged in and ready to rock, there was a call on the landline which turned out to be an SMS (a text message, basically - if you send them to regular phone lines it reads them out to you) telling me it was all activated. I therefore fired up my machine and windows 7 sorted its life out and set up a second network (I really am impressed with windows 7).

Obviously I immediately downloaded some porn. I figured this was appropriate, but mainly it was a way for me to check the real download speed. I mean I also used an online speed tester, but I figured a real-life download would be a good way to see how it did.

At the time I first connected it the download speed was around the 1meg area. To put that into perspective the cable line is a 10meg line, which was confirmed by the speed checker, which had an extra 0 on it.

However, when I tested it this morning the speed was double what it was last night, so around 2meg. It was mentioned that to start with the connection speed would be all over the place, presumably as it works out what settings give it a good balance between speed and quality.

With the cable broadband crapping out all the time due to torrents I've gotten way behind, so I figured I should start straight away. My usual practice is to do a trawl for new torrent twice a week and then set them going first thing in the morning. Unless the connection fails like it has recently, this usually means they're all downloaded by the time I get back.

What I was hoping to do was have two networks running at the same time. I've mentioned that I use my landlords cable, well that's done via a long Ethernet cable that runs across the loft from my place to his. That plugs into his router, which is connected to his broadband modem for the cable.

I actually connect this incoming cable to a (rather old) network switch that I then plug all my machines into, giving them all access to the cable. However, it does mean that I have to set the network as a public one, preventing me doing any file or printer sharing, so that my landlord doesn't have access.

But all of the machines I use are sufficiently new/capable that they actually have two network connections. What I was therefore hoping was that I could effectively run the landline broadband line "in parallel" - get a new switch (actually the BT hub thing appears to have multiple Ethernet ports, so I think it can act as a hub) and plug it up in the same way using the secondary LAN ports on all the machines. This then also gives me the opportunity to create my own network with sharings.

This didn't really work when I tried it in the small play about I had. I mean, I was able to have both networks there and running on a machine - the problem was that it defaulted to using the landline internet, instead of the cable internet. This was not ideal, because of course the landline is way slower than the cable, so I want the default to be the cable.

This may work. You can actually turn the BT hub thing off, so when I'm torrenting or if the cable has crapped out I can turn the hub on and it should use the landline cable as a preferential thing. Otherwise, if it's turned off (I'll have to test this bit out) it should use the cable internet. This would have the added advantage that (assuming I buy a new switch) my own network will still exist, just I'll use the fast internet via the cable.

What I'm trying to avoid is the need to swap physical cables about all the time. I've had that set-up before and it's a right royal pain in the arse.

-----

I've mentioned before how I pre-write many of my blog posts. Well I wrote the above yesterday, having set the torrents going in the morning and seen everything working okay. When I got back all the torrents had finished, so all seemed well.

But this morning when I came to repeat the process (as I said, I've gotten a really big backlog of torrents) I couldn't connect to the internet at all. So I've had it less than 48 hours and already it's broken (or, I suspect, I've been cut off). Marvellous.

zombieland

One of my favourite films of all time is Shawn of the Dead.

Shawn of the dead was given the genre classification by its makers as a rom-zom-com, or a romantic comedy with zombies. And it was definitely that - if you'd taken away the zombies you'd have still had a romantic comedy, although you'd have had to introduce a new peril to replace the zombies.

Zombieland is more like a zom-com-rom, in that it's much more like a comedy-horror film with a more secondary romantic element. In that sense it's more like Evil Dead with a romantic element woven in. I use the term "woven in", rather than, say, "bolted on" because it's quite deftly done.

It doesn't feel like the romance is added on, more that if it weren't there the film wouldn't suffer too badly. It could easily have been an odd-couple style buddie movie if it didn't have the romantic element.

Indeed, I think that's probably where its strength lies - the relationship between the two male characters ("Talihasee" and "Columbus") is definitely the highlight of the film.

The zombies are of the modern, fast moving variety. As a general rule I'm not so keen on the fast moving zombie, but I've gotten to the point where I'm so used to seeing them now that it isn't a major issue with me any more. Though to be fair, they're actually more like the infected from 28 days later - not so much the re-animated dead as people infected with a virus that turns them into drugged-up psycho cannibals.

What I would say, however, is there aren't that many real scares, despite the emphasis on the post-apocalyptic/zombie element. I mean, there are a couple of jumps and there's a reasonable amount of gore, but there's not so much in the way of suspenseful or terrifying moment.

There are a lot of good jokes, though - it's a very funny film and it's pitched at a level of humour I always enjoy, as it's of the subtle wisecracking variety. Although I like it a lot, I struggle to find a term to really describe it properly, though.

Then of course there's that cameo from (Is what I'm about to say a spoiler? He's not really credited on the film and it was meant to be something of a surprise, but I'm sure everybody knows by now, right?) Bill Murray, which is just as good as everyone says. Particularly if you're of an age where you're familiar with Murray's early comedy roles.

Although actually if I'm totally honest, there was a better cameo for me personally - they use Metallica's for whom the bell tolls across the (frankly brilliant) title sequence. There was actually quite a lot of good music use in the film, actually.

all change

So late yesterday I finally got some messages through that my domains had all been transferred to the new registrar. I did some research on the interwebs and it seems to have taken a bit longer than is normal. I started the process last Monday and it's taken a full week to transfer, where most things seems to indicate it should only have taken three days.

I guess that's not a massively longer time, but it does add more behind one of the reasons I wanted to change - slow responsiveness. Also now that I can play with stuff properly on the control panel, I can see that the new host's user interface on the site is way easier to navigate and do stuff with.

I've also been investigating their hosting packages - like all hosts they offer different levels of stuff for different prices. They seems pretty good value, though obviously proof will be in the pudding - my last hosting was always cheap, but I wouldn't call them good value as it wasn't generally a pleasant and easy "relationship" (I'm struggling for a word to really cover it).

Today is also the day when, in theory, my landline broadband goes up. It was a bit of a pain to get it going, as I mentioned before. The basic problem is that although I knew the company I sued to have hosting with had been bought out by TalkTalk and they'd even changed their name to TalkTalk Business, it turns out they're still effectively run as a separate business and I had to contact them separately.

It took ages to work that out, but once I did getting the MAC was very quick. Though quite why they held on to it I'm not sure - I guess it costs money to get someone to properly release it.

I say it's the start day in theory, because I've not actually received the kit and they've sent me a couple of e-mails saying it could be midnight before it goes live. If I were without interwebs at all I think I'd be more anxious than I am.

Indeed, if I didn't have interwebs at all I think I'd be a bit annoyed and puzzled that it's taken about a week for it to all get sorted. I don't really know how complicated such things are, but this seems like a long time.

I should perhaps say I'm doing it with BT. Like any mega-huge corporation I'm sure there are the full range of good and bad experiences people have had with the, but this was just for convenience and ease. Obviously I've got a BT landline and it was just easy and fairly cheap to "flick the switch" on them giving me broadband too.

My plan is essentially to use it for torrents and as a back-up. It's guaranteed to be slower than the cable and it has a usage cap, but then the cable has a usage cap too. The real point is that for the past few weeks it's been obvious that it's my torrenting that's been killing the connection. In the last week I've deliberately not done any while I wait for the landline broadband and the cable internet hasn't been down once to my knowledge.

mad panic special

(My Thursday post about the websites and interweb seems to have reappeared - all very odd. My guess is they resorted to a back up or something.)

Wowser, what a horrible morning.

A bid needed to go away by 12 this morning and those can be a panic at the best of times, but this one was bonkers, as they'd given us a grand total of 3 working days to put together an entire ITT! That's totally insane - stuff that's marked urgent usually has at least a week turn-around time; 3 days for a full ITT is just plain unfair.

Of course everyone's in the same boat, but we're a small company. Big companies can obviously all on big numbers of people to veer and haul and do stuff, but that's obviously not a possibility for us. Luckily for me I was only peripherally involved, so I didn't loose my weekend.

Not that I was uninvolved, but my mad panic was this morning. The bid was via an electronic portal (uploading files, basically) and these are always horrible. I was responsible for putting together the final versions for upload and doing the actual upload.

It was a little nerve-wracking as the 12 'o'clock deadline rolled closer and closer and bits and pieces were still not quite finished. But we got it all uploaded and done in time.

My weekend itself was okay - nothing particularly exciting. One thing I did do was clean my car. I've not had much opportunity to clean it recently and what I though it was about time. I did it on the Saturday and the weather kept looking like it was about to piss down, but it held off while I was actually cleaning it.

The main thing I focused on was cleaning the inside (giving it a real good hoover out and wiping down the surfaces), the glass and the wheels. Obviously I also generally washed the car and the inside and alloy wheels are fairly obvious areas of attention, but the glass is also something I really needed to sort.

For some reason I find that most glass cleaners give very streaky results after a few weeks. Basically, dirt seems to slowly build up on the glass in the pattern of how the cleaner has dried. What I therefore do when I give the glass a proper clean is use a 'polish'. It smells quite a lot of turpentine and what you do is apply it and leave it to dry. Much like the polish you put on a car's metalwork it dries to leave a white chalk like substance that you then wipe off.

Although this is quite a lot of extra effort, the results are excellent - it gives a surface that remains streak free and completely "even" because the drying thing doesn't happen in the same way. It does also have the disadvantage of being quite expensive. In fact, actually all the stuff I use to clean my car is quite expensive, as I buy the Autoglym stuff.

It isn't cheap, but it really is good stuff.

up, not down

Unfortunately, blogger seems to have broken yesterday, which means I'm posting this very late, but also seems to have eaten my post yesterday.

It was basically about how I'm getting rid of the hosting for my websites and transferring my domains to a new registrar. I'll eventually resurect trismugistus.com at the least, but not for a while. It also mentioned how I'm going to be getting landline broadband as the cable I piggy-back has been really flakey lately. Actuyally, it was mostly saying about all the arse-painery these have either caused or been done in order to solve.

Anyway, on with today's scheduled post.

Dieting and exercise did not go well over my holiday.

In fact, they went so badly I came out of the holiday with a weigh in that was four pounds up on what it was when I went in.

This wasn't a surprising result, given the diet and walking problems, but it was disappointing. Last time I had an equivalent period of holiday was back in September, and I did loads of walking and only really let myself down by eating loads of junk food.

The difference was, in that previous holiday I was staying in a hotel (well, a travelodge job) so I had a much better control over what I did and was focused on doing the walks with fewer distractions. This holiday I was at home and so there was access to a myriad of distractions.

Of course I also ad my birthday in there, when I really let my hair down, so that was the most significant dietary slip. In that sense it wasn't as bad as when I pigged out on junk food last time, but then because I was doing far less walking, it clearly had a bigger impact.

I also found doing all that walking around where I live less enjoyable. Obviously I go for big walks at the weekend normally, but doing similar big walks every day got a bit boring. I think I should have driven to some other places and walked there, but then I was only just saying the other day how I didn't have enough time to do all the stuff I'd planned to - working out some different walks and driving to them and back would only have meant they would take longer.

I was also slightly hampered in that I bought some new walking shoes. These are actually a lot sturdier and therefore heavier than my last pair (which, presumably explains why the last pair started to fall apart in 6 months) and that's actually made walking the same distances a lot harder work. But then I guess that's good in a way.

But yeah, generally not good results for last week. And that's generally been my feeling about this period of weight loss since Christmas - it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere near as smoothly as it did last year. I think my desire flagged a bit and there were a lot more things getting in the way over this period. Maybe summer will bring better fortune?

The raw stats don't really back up my feeling, though. According to my spreadsheet, my net loss was a total of 28 pounds, or 2 stone, which is a good loss. It was a shorter period than last year, when I lost 35 pounds.

But then stats can lie - when I look at the numbers, the weird bump up and rapid fall away at Christmas effectively means it should be more like 42 pounds lost last year and 21 pounds lost this year - so 1 and a half stone.

Or another fact is that I've had two bits where I've actually gained weight this year and these add up to 7 pounds, so if I'd lost those then I'd have had a 35 pound loss across the period.

So I think my disappointment is justified. Don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased that I've lost a total of 63 pounds (or 4.5 stone) but I think I need to really take my diet and exercise seriously again if I'm not to loose heart. However, my next target is even more modest than my last one, in that I'd like to loose a further 1.5 stone by the lat August Bank Holiday.

The reason I've set this specific target is that 6 stone represents about half the total weight I need to loose and I actually kicked off my weight loss in August of last year. Also, I'm hoping that by setting a more sensible target if I'm able to beat it that can only be a good thing.

fate of the websites

I've decided to cancel the current hosting for all of my websites.

There were a host (ho ho) of reasons for doing this.

Partly it was to save spending the money. None of the sites were hugely expensive, but given how little use I currently make of them it's like pissing money down the drain.

Another reason is that the company they were registered with and that provides the hosting was rubbish. I don't know that the new company I'm switching to will be any good, but it will be a clean break. Customer service was particularly poor at the old place.

Also, the hosting was of disparate types and accessed through different means and using different tools (despite all being the same company - another reason I'm not keen), which made things very confusing. This gives me a chance to consolidate it all into one place.

I'm going to kept all of the domain name registrations, which I've also transferred to this other registration place. I fully intend to revive trismugistus.com at the very least, but not for a while - certainly I won't even think about it until I've finished the magazine scanning, which I see as my main hobby priority for the immediate future.

I'll probably see if I can't get the sites to redirect to my blogs, but I'm sure there'll be lots of feet dragging over the transfers and cancellations. Making it easier for customers might encourage them to change things, and then they'd loose your money!

I've also decided to get my own broadband again.

Piggybacking on my landlords cable is something of a double-edged sword.

The upside is that when it's running smoothly, it's super quick. I can get download speeds somewhere in the ballpark of 10meg, which is super groovy.

Unfortunately, the download cap is pretty stingy - when you've downloaded about a gig it throttles the connection back something chronic. Of course, from my point of view it's still pretty quick - going from 10 down to 2 is a big drop, but 2 is as quick as I've ever had using telephone landlines. So the net effect of this doesn't bother me too much.

What does cause me problems is that the connection regularly flakes out. I'm used to this of course - loosing synchronisation is quite common on landline broadband too (I was more surprised that you get it on cable too) - but the problem is that the modem and router are obviously in my landlords house.

So if he goes out or it's late at night or early in the morning, I have no internet. Also part of the reason he suggested me using it was because he hardly uses the internet, so even when he's in he may not notice. And I also feel I'm being a bit of a nuisance constantly knocking on his door just to ask him to reset the modem/router.

I have actually noticed just recently that when I set a bunch of torrents going the connection dies very quickly. I've in the habit of setting them going before I go to work and leaving them going until I come back, by which time they've finished. I'm not sure if this is some deliberate move by Virgin to cap me in another way or just coincidence, but it is rather suspicious.

And it also means I feel a bit guilty that I'm now regularly killing his internet. As such, my new plan is to get a fairly basic phone line broadband. I can use it for torrents if that is what's causing the problem and it also means I've got a back up.

Not that it proved simple either of course. Turns out that when I cancelled my landline broadband back in September last year they never properly released the line. And to make things more complicated, the ISP was bought out by Talk Talk, so I spent ages trying to find out who to talk too, let alone getting it sorted :/.

resident evil afterlife

There have been a number of attempts at 3D in film.

In the past this tended to rely on people having to wear differently coloured glasses (typically blue and red). The film would have both versions on it in different colours, but the filters would filter out one colour for each eye, giving a composite image that when combined by the brain was 3D.

This technique tended to be quite unpleasant for long term usage as was demanded by a film. Although the different views received by the brain were a good representation of 3D, the different colours was the thing that made it unpleasant.

Another big disadvantage was for those of us who where glasses. Us specy-types would really struggle with having to wear the flimsy cardboard glasses in conjunction with our normal glasses.

The more recent attempts have also used glasses, but the actual techniques have been slightly different. They again rely on a filtering process, so that different images are presented to each eye, but in some systems they use polarization and others they use a physical filter that flicks between each eye.

Apparently this has more satisfying results, because there's not the problem different colours going to each eye. I say apparently because I've never seen a 3D film. The reason comes back to the glasses - the newer versions seem to involve bigger glasses that fit over the top of your real glasses and I really don't fancy that.

Why do I mention all this? Well, Afterlife was shot in 3D and it suffers from the classic problem all 3D movies have when you watch them in regular old 2D. See, in action films you've always tended to get heavily designed sequences. This is inevitable because things like stunts and fights needs careful planning.

Well, what tends to happen in 3D films is you get an extra layer of planning where things are also worked out in order to give maximum 3D impact. But when you watch in 2D this just gives you a weird "slowed down", plodding feel to the scene, which is never good in an action film.

The actual plot of afterlife is okay, though it continues the slightly disappointing creep the series has undergone from horror to the aforementioned action/adventure genre. Also, since I've not played any of the Resi games since the second one, there's a lot of bits where I get the feeling those familiar with the games will go "oh, that's the thingy monster" but for me they're just other monsters. The zombies also feel like a bit of an afterthought - they're there, and they do play a roll but mostly it's about other monsters and humans, since with humans you can have proper gun fights.

As a stand alone film I think it works better than the last one, extinction, which was kinda dumb, but I'm not sure I'd really recommend it to anyone unfamiliar with either the games or the previous films.

post holiday round up

Got a bit better sleep last night, though I'm still tired as I'm effectively running at a deficit, but I thought I should post about what I got up to over the last few weeks and during my holiday and that.

As is my usual way, I put together a gigantic to do list / schedule thing. And as is my usual way there was way too much on it.

Usually with these lists I make two errors. Firstly, I underestimate the time things will take, and so think I can cram in more on any given day than I can, but also I'll usually make some fundamental error that then scuppers everything. That big error in this case was not allowing enough time for 'fun'.

By that I mean generic entertainment of any kind, be it watching telly or going out with friends. For some reason I put enough stuff in the schedule to (more than) fill all the available time so when it came to it I didn't have that time available because I was busy enjoying myself, if you see what I mean.

One thing that did surprise me, though, was that over the Easter weekend I'd assigned to giving my bedsit a spring clean and I managed to do this in the time. Usually with these sorts of cleans they're a classic example of my underestimating the time, winding up taking way longer than I think. But no, actually I managed to fit it all in, no problems.

The same can't be said about my main objective for the holiday, which was to get all my 2010 anime magazines scanned. To be fair, this did start well, as I scanned a load of mags in the first couple of days. However, I basically filled up my hard drive as a result and that meant I had to spend quite a lot of time processing the scans (using photostitch to stick them together).

This did give me an opportunity to play with photostitch and I've worked out how to make it give good results when it runs up against a scan it makes an arse of. I also think I've managed to tweak my technique such that it makes an arse of far less to start with. The root cause seems to be that at the edges of the scanner the bending of the page causes a brightening and a distortion of the image. So, by trimming that away, it does a better job. However, you still have to maintain enough overlap for it to work, so it's a bit of a black art.

I also established that it will work perfectly well with jpgs and that I can save the initial scans as maximum quality jpgs, stick them together then save the result as high quality jpgs and the end result is indistinguishable from my purer original method.

Of course all these took time and with my other errors over time allocation I'm still a fair way short of scanning all the 2010 magazines. I've basically got 3 new types (which always has the most things to scan) and 4 animages (which is always the easiest to scan) and then 2010 is done.

Of course that then means I have to move onto 2011, but assuming I get the above done by the middle of the year that will mean I'm effectively two thirds of the way through my backlog. Which gives you an idea of just how big the backlog was.

insomnia

I don't really suffer from insomnia.

Not as a proper condition like people know it, where the insomniac is plagued by an ongoing inability to sleep night after night.

I do, however, occasionally suffer with the odd night where I can't get to sleep. Sometimes it goes on for a couple of nights, but eventually my usual sleep routines will re-assert themselves. I think this is an occasional thing for most people.

I think it's probably more a symptom of stress or some other psychological effect. Certainly when I get a dose of it, as I did last night, the root cause seems to be an inability for my brain to 'shut off'.

Usually I'll lie there with stuff going around and around in my head, consciously aware that I need to clear and becalm my mind in order to get to sleep, but also unable to stop the whirlwind of thoughts that plague me.

The cause I would guess last night was my return to work today. I don't think it relates to any specific worry - I wasn't expecting anything specifically bad, troublesome or difficult to crop up, we're talking more an elevation of the general anxiety I carry about with me every day.

Which is why the thoughts I couldn't shut off weren't really about work. I think - it's a little difficult to recall what they specifically were now, but I remember thinking about the Turkish Grand Prix and also a lot about how I hadn't managed to do everything I'd set out to during holiday. I'll talk more about those later, I guess.

As a result of the insomnia, today I've obviously been rather tired. Generally speaking I'm one of those people who needs to get plenty of sleep or I feel awful all day. The weird thing I find though, is while I'm having the insomnia - lying there, thinking - I don't generally feel tired. The tiredness comes when I wake up after the short amount of sleep I do manage to get just before I wake up.

Normally, once I realise I'm having a bought of insomnia I usually get up for a bit and do something. This is never much more spectacular than read or, more often, bimble about on the web. I'll also usually make myself a cup of hot milk with a splash of honey.

It wouldn't surprise me if the official advice is that these are exactly what you're not supposed to do, but I find if I lie there continuing to fail to get to sleep I get increasingly annoyed and that makes it worse. If I get up for a bit and in some way try to draw a ling under the preceding hours I've found I sometimes then succeed in dropping off.

It wasn't wholly successful last night, but then I guess that's part of the nature of insomnia.

shinryaku! ika musume (squid girl)

When the main character in Squid Girl shows up, she talks a lot about how she's going to invade the human world and take over. The reason she gives for this is that humans are polluting the oceans and generally make a bit of a mess of the world.

The BBC recently ran a series called Human Planet. Interestingly, the idea of this was something along the lines of treating humanity as if it were the subject of a Nature Documentary. The episodes were divided up into the various habitats of the world (so, deserts, oceans, the frozen north, etc) and it showed some example so the strategies people use to survive.

I found the series to be a weird mixture of both fascinating stuff and appalling stuff. It was like for every clever idea or thing we've come up with, there was an example of us raping the natural environment - often, the two were one and the same. One of the things it tried to emphasise was that for most of the environments, the people were broadly in balance with the surroundings.

So, where they killed a whale every bit of that whale would be used and they'd only take a handful every year - sufficiently low numbers not to have an impact. This was only not true when it got around to modern, city-based living and things like mono-agriculture that are needed to support it.

Overall, I actually found the result a little depressing. It kinda backed up the notion that we're like a plague upon the planet.

I raise this because I think it may well have coloured my feelings about Squid Girl, which I watched at around the same time.

See, my problem was having turned up and given the feeling that it would at least involve some sort of environmental message, instead it was simply a daft comedy. Not that there's anything wrong with it being a daft comedy - it did raise quite a few smiles from me, after all - it's just it would have been nice if it had slipped in a few little environmental things as well.

I mean, okay, she spends quite a bit of her time picking up trash on the beach, but that's about the extent of it. Indeed, the overall theme of the show is more about how she becomes good friends with the humans she meets and how she almost abandons her squid-ness to become human.

In other words the sub-text was almost the exact opposite of what I was expecting - it was about how great humanity is.

Not that I was expecting it to come down badly on us, but tackling a few "issues" wouldn't have gone amiss. Even if it had avoided stuff like global warming, it could easily have gotten pollution in there. Heck, it could even just have been more head on about the rubbish on the beach.

chu-bra

Chu-bra is a very odd show.

In structure it's a bit like one of those cartoon shows for younger or teenage audiences where the characters experience problems and issues and thereby help the audience realise they're not the only ones having those problems. So, for example, they might enter puberty or have their first relationship with the opposite sex or hey, maybe the same sex - you get the idea.

But it's about underwear.

The title - Chu-bra - is one of those Japanese abbreviations like Cos-Play where they've truncated words to get it. So where Cosplay is Costume-Play, Chu-Bra is Choose Brassiere, as in choose your correct underwear.

The central character is a young girl who seems to be obsessed with underwear. In particular, with her friends and helping them pick the right underwear.

Now it should be noted that this does make her odd in the anime. She's not positioned as having normal interests that go un-remarked and occasional mileage is made of her essentially being like a lecherous old man.

Similarly there's a degree of weirdness over the ages of the characters - they're pretty young and the art style does emphasise their youthfulness. It isn't going so far as to be properly peado-bait or loli stuff, but there is some fan-service. Depending on how you generally feel about that sort of thing, it could easily be too much, but I dunno, it's not generally presented in a sexual way (the main character is oddly innocent) unless a point is being made or there's a gag to be had.

And don't let me hood-wink you - the series is about young girls and underwear.

But as I think you can tell I actually kinda liked it, but not for that reason. My liking it came back to the first point I was making about how it's like one of those 'growing up' and 'issue's shows and if you take it in that context, it hangs together rather well.

For example, it also explores things like friendship, first love, loneliness... as well as panties.

I dunno, there's a point to be heard that it's indefensibly pervy, but at the same time it's surprisingly well done.

asobi ni ikuyo (bombshells from the sky)

I make no bones of the fact that I enjoy fan-service. Indeed, it's a big part of the reason I watch anime.

I use that term in its broadest sense. By fan-service I mean everything from gratuitous gun-play, through giant mechs and on down to the flashing of female flesh. Generally speaking, though, the term fan-service is most normally trotted out as a criticism aimed at the amount of gratuitous nudity in a show.

As I say, I've no problem with it myself, but I will happily acknowledge that this kind of thing has gotten quite extreme in recent years. Indeed, nowadays, fan-service in regular shows has started to blur the line between soft-core pornography and mild titillation.

The reason for this escalation is to ensure sales to the Japanese Otaku. Piracy has been having a big impact over there too and one of the ways to help sales has been to push the level of fan-service that little bit further.

Why do I mention all this?

Well, it's because the increase in nudy bits has led to a bit of a problem with TV broadcasts. There's a lot of misunderstanding about how the anime market works in Japan. One of the things that most people don't know is that most anime is shown very late night on TV and that the producers often pay the TV companies to air it, which is backwards for most telly.

They do this because, in effect, the TV screening is a gigantic advert to get the otaku to buy the DVDs and Blu-Rays (well, plus all the figurines, bath-towels, hug pillows and other merchandising that's produced as well). So you've got a situation where they're screening it on TV, but they need to ramp up the fan-service to such a degree that it's not really broadcastable.

The answer is to censor the broadcast version. However, there's a tendency for this censoring to be extremely ham-fisted. Sun-rays, steam or even little "stickers" will be slapped over the naughty bits, but in such a way it's obvious they're artificial additions (I'm not sure if this obviousness is part of the approach, or just a hallmark of a low budget or what). You can therefore get the otaku interested and sell them uncensored DVDs, but still show it on TV.

It's probably still not clear why I mention all this - the reason is because there is no uncensored version of Asobi Ni Ikuyo, but it still has the ham-fisted censorship. So why?

Well, this cuts to the heart of my problem with the show.

See, I think it's meant to be something like a parody. It's meant to be taking the piss out of shows that do that. But where it becomes a problem is it appears to be trying to have its cake and eat it too. It's trying to give you that fan-service for the same reason, but also criticise it.

And it does this throughout - you get what sometimes appear to be parody elements, but often presented with a kind of affection too. I found it horribly confusing and more than a little annoying.

The only real saving grace is the ending, which resolves in a much more satisfying and definite way than is usual for harem shows.

easter

It's the first of the long bank holiday weekends from tomorrow.

Unlike half the country, I'm not taking next week off, so I'll be in work on the Tuesday to Thursday. I'm kinda hoping that they're really quiet as we've been so busy at work it's been stupid.

My plans for the Easter weekend are pretty boring.

My main intention is to do the whole swapping over of spring and winter clothes from the shed and also to give my bedsit a bit of a spring clean.

Actually that's not fully true. As per usual, I've put together a big old to do list/schedule thing and I've been way too ambitious about what's actually achievable in this one weekend. So I've also got it down to do all the backup stuff and to sort through my scans and other images (these make sense since I keep the backup drives in the shed) and to sort through the audio books and animes I need to burn. Plus I've also tentatively got giving the car a clean in there too.

But then I've also decided to do a roast to use up the hunk of meat that's been in my freezers since Christmas (part of the spring clean will involve defrosting the freezer, so a perfect time to use it) and getting my haircut and...

This is clearly way too much, but then it wouldn't be one of my holidays if I didn't have unrealistic expectations as to how much I can do in a day.

I was actually thinking that I might use the next few weeks to catch up on my reviews. I've written quite a few reviews that I should really post on the blog, so I may use the next few weeks to get them up.

I've actually been thinking I might get rid of all of my websites and just keep various blogs going. It seems daft having some of the websites and I'm perfectly happy with how this blog operates. It's a hell of a lot simpler to update, for example.

I'll probably hold onto my trismugistus.com domain, but just not have an actual website.

like a bloody see-saw

Well, as seems to have become the "pattern" recently, I can't quite figure out why this week's weigh in revealed what it did.

That revelation was that I'd apparently lost 1 pound, despite having eaten lots of very naughty stuff at the birthday celebrations on Saturday. That was also adding on to the fact that on that Saturday my pedometer registered fewer than 1,000 steps.

Usually at the weekend I try to go for a short walk in the morning of around 3,500 steps and then a longer walk in the afternoon that take the total squarely over 10,000 steps. So doing less than a tenth of that meant I was not burning many of the additional calories, or helping to maintain a high metabolism or any of that other useful stuff exercise does.

I did go for a particularly long walk on Sunday afternoon to try to compensate a bit, although that was obviously after I'd done my weigh in in the morning. Also, because I obviously got back very late I actually had a lie in on Sunday morning, rather than go for a walk, so the net number of steps wasn't really increased.

Anyway, obviously a loss is always good, so I'm not complaining, but in terms of my target of 19 stone by my birthday I'm quite a way off. My birthday is in 2 weeks and I'm 11 pounds away, which is unfeasible and would probably be a little dangerous to loose that much that quickly.

Luckily, I've obviously got lots of days off coming up, so I can do lots more walking and a brief blip for the actual day of my birthday aside, I should be much better placed to control my food intake.

Unfortunately, my proper holiday is after my birthday, so the real opportunity for doing some serious walking and dieting is technically after my target date, but I don't think it would be too bad if I got reasonably close to 19 stone for the weekend after my birthday.

I am definitely going to have to buy some new walking shoes, though. My current pair, which aren't very old at all, are already starting to fall apart. To be fair they were quite a cheap pair and I have gotten a lot of use out of them, but still, it would have been nice if they could have lasted longer. I should also probably get some new walking socks too - my current pairs have all got holes in.

I'm going to have a couple of sessions to get stuff for the Grand Prix later in the year, so I'll just add these to the list.

chinese grand prix

Well, as mentioned yesterday, it was the Chinese grand prix this last weekend.

It was another action-packed, non-stop race. I seem to recall the Chinese is normally one of the better ones among the newer circuits, but I don't recall it being quite as intensely busy as this year.

It seems pretty sure then that this increase in stuff is as a result of all the changes that they brought in for this season. The biggest impact seems to come from the Pirelli tyres, which have been specially designed to be nice and grippy for a relatively short period of time and then to "fall off a cliff", dramatically loosing grip.

This means that if you're on a newer set of tyres you'll stand a chance of catching and overtaking your opponents. And that means two things - firstly conserving and being kind to your tyres can pay dividends and secondly that tactics such as making sure you're on the right tyres at the right time become very important.

Now the first of these could potentially lead to an element of endurance racing. We've seen that Sauber have consistently managed to do fewer pit stops and this has meant they've tended to end up being higher up the order than you might otherwise expect.

Of course you could argue this leads to less exciting racing due to less overtaking, but actually I don't mind this, because a big part of F1 has always been the tactical element. The difference now is that the tactics can be played out in lots of different ways and involve the driver and dynamic decision making.

The problem with what happened to the tactical element in recent seasons is that all the teams would run simulations and computer models and all come up with the same results. Also, because bringing in your driver slightly later than the other guy was often the way to go, it meant things were predictable. Now, if he comes in sooner than you he'll have a lot more grip and may overtake you - it's more dynamic, more interesting.

Which again comes around the first point of conserving and being kind to your tyres. This weekend showed that Lewis Hamilton was able to create an advantage for himself by saving a set of fresh tyres for the actual race instead of using them in qualifying. This didn't detract from qualifying, but it did make things more exciting in the race.

It also involves the driver in the tactics more and again adds complexity and interest. I guess a way to think about it is that there are now so many permutations and options for drivers and teams that the predictive, simulation element of the tactics becomes much more difficult and less certain - it's not necessarily going to turn out as they'd planned.

These are all good changes that have really helped. It remains to be seen whether they'll only really enhance the racing at certain tracks. Australian didn't benefit so much, so I'm guessing some other circuits won't, but they do seem to have actually had the desired impact this year.

One weird thing though is it does actually emphasise the point about aerodynamics in a weird way. The cars have become so reliant on aero-based grip that clearly a much less artificial way to affect the racing might have been to give them bigger, fatter tyres.

Increasing the mechanical grip so that aero doesn't matter as much might have been a simpler way around it. Especially since they seem to be unable to find ways to really curb the aero.

two hours my arse

So, as mentioned on Friday, something a little different this last weekend, in that I went to see a friend whose birthday it was on Saturday.

The day's festivities started with me baking some chocolate cupcakes. These turned out okay - I was a little worried I'd make a mess of them as, with the diet and all, I've not done any baking in well over a year. The chocolate butter cream icing was the thing turned out to be the most difficult - I had to look up the recipe as Id' completely forgotten and when it came time to pipe it I had a bugger of a time remembering how to do a piping bag.

While I was baking I also watched the qualifying for the Chinese GP, which I'll talk about more tomorrow, but it meant I didn't set off until about 11. Google maps had the journey time down as two hours, but I dunno how they work that out.

The M1 was closed (and it still partly closed) due to a fire, so traffic was heavy in places, but also the widening work on the M25 which seems to have been going on for years was still poxing things up. But then even on the way back when there was no traffic it took be more than 2 and a half hours, so I dunno how they work it out, but it's clearly not realistic.

Anyway, the day itself mainly involved watching movies. Specifically we watched the Poseidon adventure (the 70s one), Hackers and a film called Lady in White.

I've seen the first two of these, but clearly not as many times as everyone else. It reminded me actually of when I was a student and how obsessed we all were with the Python films - many of us could quote the entire script, but I wasn't that familiar with these films.

I remember the Poseidon adventure as mainly being about the capsizing of the boat and the escape. That was obviously the main part of the film, but I was surprised by how much before it there was and how random it all seemed.

I mean, I think the idea was it was supposed to be a cruise ship, but most of the passengers seemed to be using it almost like a ferry - going to specific destinations. All of which were in the med, but almost everyone was an American. But on top of that there was apparently this 'company man' (boo, evil corporations) who was ordering the captain around (famously, Leslie Nielson before he moved into comedy) because they wanted to break the ship up and it was running late.

So it's taking all the passengers, yet it's on its way to the breakers. Weird. weirder still was the captain's obsession with ballast. It reminded me actually of the towering inferno, where the "company men" are responsible for cutting corners, which causes the fire in the sky scraper. There it makes sense as the cause, but here the 'company man' and the ballast thing seem irrelevant in the face of a giant wave hitting the ship.

I'm pretty sure I've ranted on here before about the sins Hackers commits in terms of its depiction of what computers can and can't do, though not specifically in regards to that film.

The last film, Lady in White, was a very strange beast. It was a really weird hybrid of a movie, being part ghost story and part murder mystery, but it also had some really odd stuff in it. A good example of this is that at one point the main character is strangled, but his near death experience seemed to involve him flying towards the sun, which seemed very random. There was also this weird thread to it about racism, with a "well the black guy clearly did it" attitude from the police that seemed like quite an afterthought.

The thing I found most odd about it was the tone. When I was a kid they sometimes used to show films on Friday afternoon in the kids TV slot. These were films squarely aimed at children and also had a strong "made for TV" feel. Well, this seemed very much like one of those films, but equally there was stuff in it that didn't really seem kid friendly - I mean, it was essentially about paedophile / child murderer :/.

Anyway, I had fun. The food was particularly good, with a home made pizza and delicious brownie cake.