abu dhabi

It's been a weird F1 season this year.

At the start of the year everyone said McLaren's car was clearly the best.  Red Bull were badly affected by the rule change, as they were getting maximum benefit from exhaust blown diffusers.  Ferrari had taken some big risks, but they hadn't quite worked and the car was believed to be horribly difficult to drive.

However, McLaren failed to capitalise on their advantage.  They had a lot of finger trouble (particularly in pit stops) and some mechanical reliability problems.  But Lewis was relatively consistent and they hung in there.

Red Bull weren't winning everything in sight, but they continued their phenomenal reliability and were still in touch.  Ferrari had Alonso and Alonso was able to compensate for the car's problems and was also consistent.

And with the rule's stability the mid-field teams were now up there challenging for podium positions and the back-field teams were all doing quite well.  Mercedes had a brilliant idea, but it turned out it wasn't quite so brilliant.

Races that are usually terrible have actually been good (Valencia was great; this last weekend's Abu Dhabi GP was also really good, though more on that in a minute).

So as we came into the second part of the season all this seemed to mean that Alonso, with phenomenal reliability, his clear talent and some tweaks to help correct the car seemed like winning the championship.

But then he was taken out of two races in incidents and Red Bull have Adrian Newey and it's always dangerous to count him out, so they seemed to have taken a huge step forward and Vettel returned to race dominating form.

This weekend Red Bull had the opportunity to clench the constructor’s championship and also stretch their lead in the driver's championship.  But then it all kicked off - Lewis was on fire and took pole, Vettel had practice issues and was only third.  But during qualifying he was asked to stop out on track and FIA scrutiny revealed too little fuel in the tank, so he was demoted to the back.

But Red Bull decided to tweak the car, meaning he started in the pit lane - as bad as things can get bar not actually starting.  And yet he finished third!

It can be quite puzzling when that happens - a clear example being Button at the wet Canada when he was stone-dead last and went on to win.  The thing is, though, you have to remember that during most races they try to nurse the engine and gearbox as the regulations punish them if they have to change/use too many.

Well, if you're starting from the pit lane and it's nearly the end of the season you are going to take a different view: let's crank the engine up, hang the gearbox and tweak the car for overtaking, rather than leading.  Of course they may pay a price for that later, but once you've won the championships it doesn't matter, does it?

Of course he was helped quite a lot by two safety cars and for some reason this year Abu Dhabi, which famously had the race where Vettel won because Alonso couldn't overtake Petrov, was jam-packed with overtaking.  And good overtaking - not easy drive pasts due to DRS, though clearly the DRS was helping the overtakes.

Still, from a championship point of view it would have been better if Vettel had been further behind Alonso.  The gap is closed, but Alonso is still 10 points behind with only two races left.

abu dhabi grand prix

Well, I thought last weekend's race was poor, so I'm bracing myself for a real bore-fest this weekend.

It's the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this weekend and so far it's been a real snooze fest each time it's been held.

I take the point that F1 is supposed to be a world championship, but so many really dull racetracks in the Middle East (and mostly pretty dodgy parts of the Middle East at that) can't be a good thing either.  I mean if it's supposed to be a World Championship, why no Russian race?  Or African race?  Or more South American races?

Because the dictators in those parts of the world don't have enough cash or the desire (or maybe the common sense!) to throw it at Bernie, obviously.

It's the second to last double-header too, with a weekend off next week followed by the last two races as a double header (Austin, the new track and Brazil, the traditional closer).  I think the championship could well go down to the wire in that Ferrari will remain relatively competitive, but Red Bull just slightly better and therefore winning in the end.

Of course anything can happen - there's been a lot more unreliability this year than there has been in recent years - but barring problems and accidents I don't see how Ferrari will really be able to catch-up.  Much of their success was really due to Alonso, consistency and reliability and Newey's big brain and Vettel's particular talent for leading & controlling races probably just manages to trump those things.

One of the things that has been amusing me just recently, though is that other drivers have clearly cottoned on to Vettel's love of putting his name in the record books at each circuit.  He clearly not only loves to win but also likes to get the fastest lap as well, so the other drivers seem to have been deliberately trying to take that off him, even when they can't win the race.

So last weekend Vettel put in a super quick lap on the last lap but Alonso also did the fastest lap as the last lap so he took it off him, but then Jenson Button did a fastest lap too, clearly with the intent of taking it off him as well.  The weekend before Webber clearly did a fastest lap towards the end just to take it off of Seb too.

simcity moving closer

So the new version of SimCity is moving closer.

Current release date appears to still be February 2013.  I'd wondered if it might slip or perhaps if it was tied in to something (only thing I can think of in February is Valentine's Day).  You'd think they might try to hit an important date or get it out for Christmas, but I guess the date they've given is based on realism and not rushing it out.  Hopefully, anyway - I wouldn't mind if it slipped so long as it means a better product at the end.

Anyway, it's looking good from what they've shown on the website and various places.  In particular my big concern about SimCity 4000 I expressed before was that it was full of horrible micro-management.  Not meaning micro-management is horrible, but that the way you had to go about the micromanagement was horrible.

In the new game engine they've developed there's a lot more in the way of clever graphics to show you the numbers.  Now sometimes this can be quite a token effort, but here they appear to have done it in a really sensible and easy to use way - at least, that's what it looks like from the gameplay footage.

I have to say it doesn't look massively different to SimCity Societies (or SimCity 4000 for that matter) but then those games looked pretty good.

One thing they do appear to have developed is the idea that your city sits in a region - you can either control all cities in the region or other people can control other cities.  I'm pretty sure this was in SimCity 4000, but there was a thing on the site where people were asking questions and the implication was that this was new.

My guess is I'm miss-remembering quite how it worked in 4000 - perhaps although multiple people could control cities they interaction between them was minimal?  Certainly in the new game it appears to be going more for a specialisation idea.  So one city might be industrial, another residential and a third all about education.  In a sense then this means that the region kinda operates like a single big city, or a network of interconnected towns.

It sounds interesting either way - interactions sound like they might be quite complex and multi-faceted.  Although only if you want them to be seemed to be the implication - you could have them all isolated.

There seem to be some changes, though.  You can no longer terraform.  The way they explained it was that it gives it more of a puzzle element, which makes some sense.  I never used to be that big into terraforming anyway.

However, a slightly odd change is the lack of subways.  They appear to have trains, buses, boats and even trams, but apparently subways have gone.  I'm not quite sure why - subways could presumably be represented in some fairly simple ways.  Perhaps they're saving it for an extension or as downloadable content?

I mean, it's not a big loss, just a bit unusual.

Still, it's looking good.  And hopefully it will be a game I will play properly, rather than sitting on my shelf like all the others!

scream 4

I really liked the original scream.

As I'm sure everyone knows, the clever thing about scream 1 was the meta-textual stuff.  Or to put it another way it constantly referred to classic slasher films, yet was a slasher film in and of itself.  In particular it played with the idea that many of the victims were slasher fans and new all about such films as Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street.

It was very well done - it didn't step too far over the line of reasonable-ness, yet it had plenty of fun with the format too.  It managed to work as a story as well as a slasher film and a meditation on both.

Screams 2 and 3 were less good.  They were written by the same guy and tried to bring in the types of things that happen in sequels (the second was almost unrelated, but the third brought it back to the origin, for example).  It also got even more met textual in that in the Scream universe the events of the first film spawned a film series called "stab" (a film-within-a-film).

Those sequels were okay - the trouble with any sequel of course is that people who come to them are doing so because they enjoyed the first film, so the temptation is to give them basically the same thing, but of course then they know what to expect.  While the plots weren't exactly predictable and "the same" the basic idea - the meta-textual thing - had to be the same, so it made them fairly predictable.

Scream 4 essentially tries to do what Scream did, but this time including the idea of self-referencing and meta-textuality.  In other words if Scream was "what would happen if a slasher film happened in real life?" then Scream 4 is "what would happen if a slasher film happened in real life if a slasher film had already happened in real life and been absorbed into the milieu?"

You probably see the problem - certainly I think the problem I had writing that paragraph (and I therefore assume you had reading it) hints at the underlying difficulties.  It's become too complicated.  It's meta-text of meta-text.  It's like a self-parody of a self-parody: it could be brilliant or (as here) it could just feel like it's derivative with too many bells and whistles added on.

Don't get me wrong - there are still some good killings and thrills, it's just that you can get those in any good slasher film.  The bits that made Scream stand out when double-heaped end up making this film feel overly complicated.

it's christmas

I was actually planning to blog about this a few weeks back, but Christmas seems to have arrived already.

I noticed while I was on holiday at the end of September that the big supermarket already had a few Christmas things out, but I kinda dismissed it as it's a huge supermarket and it was only one or two tins f biscuits that looked a bit Christmassy.

However, while shopping in the local Sainsbury's last week and then the big Tesco up the road a couple of days later (nowhere seems to sell Crunchy Bran, which is one of my favourite cereals) there were some proper areas that seemed to be sprouting multiple Christmas things.

Every year it seems to get worse - I mean, seriously, September is ridiculously early isn't it?  That's a quarter of a year before the event.  And both Halloween and Bonfire night still a month away - it's just taking the piss.

The thing is though, people must buy this stuff.  I'm sure supermarkets wouldn't waste space on Chrimbo stuff if nobody bought it; so who the hell buys it this early?

The other thing I wanted to mention on the Christmas front is that it snowed this last weekend.  And I don't mean in a general sense in the UK - it snowed where I live.

Every Saturday morning I do my washing at the laundrette and once I've transferred it over to the Tumble Dryer I usually go for a short walk around the estate (while it's washing I read a book).  Well this time weekend it was bitterly cold and as I was coming up the hill a small flurry of snow started.

We're only talking tiny bits and it wasn't settling or anything, but still snow.  It had stopped by the time I got to the top of the hill and I don't think it snowed again.

It's a bit of a worrying sign, actually - I was hoping we might finally get a mild winter, having suffered really cold ones for the last few years.  I've also not really been prepping for winter; particularly in terms of electricity - there's only a little bit of electricity on the meter and when it gets properly cold heating really sucks away at the power.

To be fair, given I was expecting to change jobs and therefore move, I've been tending to keep the meter quite low all year, but I'd better ramp it up just in case winter is a cold one.  I'm now certainly not going to be moving or doing anything change-wise until next year.

indian snore prix

Indian Grand Prix this last weekend and it was a pretty rubbish race.

It was a race the BBC only showed highlights of and unlike some of the others it was probably a race that really only deserved highlights.  I listened on the radio and watched the TV coverage.  The clocks went back, which made pre-setting the recording difficult, but then coverage started at about 9:30 so I was up and about anyway.

I actually did some stuff on the computer while it was on but didn't really miss anything.  Indeed, the radio coverage seemed to focus quite a lot on other stuff, rather than what was (not) happening on track.

What was weird is they seemed to big up the race quite a bit beforehand.  I guess when you're spending lots of money to show races you're not going to do the race down, but I seem to recall last year wasn't that great either.  Quite whey they were describing it as one of Tilka's best and a circuit the driver's love I'm not sure.

Well, I guess what the driver's love and what the spectators love can be quite different things, but still, it was a bit of a damp squib of a race by all accounts.

What was interesting is that the TV coverage flattered the race - they trimmed out so much of the dull stuff that it seemed much more exciting than it was.  What was really telling having listened to both is that the highlights didn't have any exciting bits missing - in a really exciting race they would have had to make choices about what to leave out for want of time, but here they had to put in some of the less exciting moments to pad it out.

Unfortunately from a championship point of view Vettel also extended his lead - not by much and he very nearly got scuppered by a technical problem at the end, but still, it now looks like Vettel and Red Bull really have the momentum.

patchy

Posting this week has been patchy as I've been rushed off my feet.

Obviously I've already mentioned that I came in last Sunday, and a big part of what I've been doing this week has been as a result of that.  The thing I finished I've then proceeded to roll-out to the rest of the staff.

Now ideally I would have done that at a single session, but that was just not practical, so I've done two sessions already and I've probably got two more pending.  It's all been quite tiring, particularly since I've also had the "day job" to do as well.

As a result, I'm shattered - thank God the clocks go back this weekend and I can get an extra hours kip!

It's the Indian Grand Prix this weekend.

It's only the second year, but I don't particularly remember it being a good race last year.  There was overtaking, but I seem to recall it was basically all as a result of the DRS.

I'll also hopefully do a bit of general TV watching, as last weekend's "bonus work" didn't help clear it down any.

eating tweak

So I've tweaked how and what I eat in an attempt to get the diet going again.

The tweak, essentially, is that I have cereal for lunch.  Now we're talking "proper" cereal here - not coco puffs or corn flakes or something, but high-fibre healthy jobs.

There were two real factors in the decision.

The first was that I noticed cereal contains very few calories.  There's that old gag that the cardboard box has more calories in it that the contents, but generally speaking high-fibre cereals are pretty low in calories.  Recommended portion sizes vary but they generally only come in at 200 calories.  Now obviously what they say is a portion and what most people eat are a bit different, but even if you double the amount we're still only talking 400 calories.

If you team it with skimmed milk as well then that helps too (some portions on the box include the calories for semi-skimmed milk).  So the bowl I have is generally a very big bowl, but I reckon even worse case we're talking 500 calories max (I tend to like to mix several cereals together).

That compares to around 1,000 calories for the sandwich-based meal I used to have (and still do some days, to be fair).  Now the idea of the sandwich-based meal was that this was the single big meal of the day.  That worked in the first diet phase, but just recently I've really struggled to limit my dinner to a small meal.

With the cereal lunch I can eat a reasonable dinner without it being a problem - and if I only have a small dinner then that helps even more.

The second factor is that I noticed I was doing okay in terms of hunger with just my bowl of cereal for breakfast.  I therefore thought that maybe if I had cereal at lunch then I wouldn't get hungry, and it turns out it works.

I mean, I've had a few days where I was peckish, but I haven't ended up starving hungry.  Of course I didn't with sandwiches ever, but then that's what makes the evening eating annoying - I'm not hungry, as such, but I eat anyway.

But then that's always been one of my main problems - always eating, even when I'm not hungry.  Eating is just something I do - and if I'm not eating then I'm probably thinking about what I'm going to have for my next meal.

Anyway, initial results have been okay - 1 pound lost in the first week and 3 pounds this last week.  I guess moment of truth will be this weekend as I think 3 weeks losing in a row is a good sign it's working.

a sunday of fun

So things haven't really been going quite as planned at work.

The main problem has been this issue that I was meant to be taking some time to develop a bunch of tools and processes for me/us to use.  However, in order to do that I needed totally clear decks.  And I never got totally clear decks.

Really I reckon if I had been able to clear the decks I could have gotten it done in about a week, but instead it's been months of me doing tiny bits and then having to work on something else.  It also hasn't helped that I keep being hit by bombshells, which is to say people keep throwing things at me that change the whole point of what I'm doing.

A very good example is we're meant to be getting a new contact manager.  That's fair enough - it's long overdue - but the idea, apparently, is to use it to do a lot of stuff automatically.  And much of that overlaps with what I'm supposed to be developing.

However, even though I was told we were getting it, many weeks have gone by and they're only just starting work on it.  And it'll be months before its' ready.

So what am I meat to do in the meantime?

And this keeps happening.

My decision each time is to re-do what I've already done so it's a bit more flexible and then basically just plough on - I need this stuff to get done, and as soon as possible.  If it changes later, then it changes.  For now it needs finishing.

And it was with that thought in mind that I came in this Sunday and finished off some really big chunks of it.  Indeed it's almost ready to "launch", although I have just discovered I've deleted something I shouldn't have, but I can recreate that.

Of course it'll be a long way from properly finished in the way I want it to be, but the basics will be in place, and I can crack on with more normal stuff until some of these other changes pan out.

Sunday was actually hugely productive - without the distractions of the normal office (some elements of the office in particular) I got loads done.  As I say, not finished, but a lot done.

Of course it doesn't help me address my stack of unwatched TV programmes, though I did come in late today to compensate a bit.

And nobody's paying me for Sundays... remind me again why I'm still working here?

nowt to do

This weekend I'm going to try and do a bit of catching up.

As I've blogged before I've got quite a lot of TV stuff unwatched so I'm going to try and clear some of that.  I was intending to watch quite a bit last weekend, but I didn't have as much free time as I'd initially envisaged, plus I ended up doing a lot of internet stuff.

This was good as I'd quite a bit of that backed up too, but it all took a surprisingly long time.  A lot of it was actually reading newsletters and articles by various people I follow on the net and it struck me that I used to do all that stuff while I was at work.

You know what it's like - you take ten minutes to read an article or a newsletter e-mail.  But just recently I've been so busy that I don't have that time spare any more.  Sometimes I don't have time to do anything except work - and that's with me getting in at 08:00 and going home at 18:00.

I therefore now find myself having to do all that stuff at home in big chunks because it's all gotten stacked up.

I mean, in some ways it's good to be busy at work, but in others it's tedious to basically do nothing but work all the time.

It's no wonder I don't watch any anime and I end up with stacks of DVDs and Blu-Rays to watch - I barely had time to watch a few of them before, nowadays I barely have time to read the e-mails telling me the DVDs have been dispatched!

more on shaving

So I’ve not actually made the jump yet and bought a DE razor yet.

A big part of the problem is I’m not exactly sure what to buy.  You see when you use cartridge blades you have only two real options - but he official blades, or buy the knock offs, but the knock offs take a while to turn up (part of the real reason new types are launched, I’m sure).  So you lack choice.

For DE you’re drowned in choice.  There are loads of different razors - three different construction types and then several manufacturers of each.  But there also different types of blade too (stainless steel, carbon steel, different types of coating, different styles, different manufacturers).  And here’s the thing - apparently what works for you may not work for me.

I actually bought a book (on the kindle), mainly so I could learn about how to shave, but most of the book is actually taken up with stuff about all the different types of razors and products.  Because it’s not just razors, it’s products too - there’s brushes (badger, boar and horse hairs, different sizes, different manufacturers), pre-shave oils (loads of different types and makes) shaving creams  and soaps (different makes, different styles, different scents, different ways of getting lathers from them) shaving soaps (high-glycerine, but loads of variety again), styptic sticks, powers, alum blocks...

And I didn’t even mention the use of ancillary accessories like bowls and mugs to help you work up a lather and moisturisers for after you're shaved.

It’s a bit of a minefield.  And as I said before - all of it appears to be “this works for me, but may not work for you” stuff (or “your mileage may vary” YMMV as the book calls it).

As such I’ve kinda been in compromise territory - I’ve implemented a few things to see if they help me, but I’ve not gone the whole hog.  I mean I think I’ve finally narrowed down most of what I want to buy, but I’ve only pulled the trigger on some of it.  Most of what I’ve bought o far or am going to buy next is focused on the pre-have prep.

My theory is that I should be able to tell if these things actually help me with cartridge razors.  So I found the brush to be okay, but I’ve now switched from the chemical type shaving gel to a shaving soap to see if the two make much difference.  However, I’m also aware that one of the things that is recommended for the shave problems I have is a hot towel (like in proper barbershops) and I need to add this in before I’m happy that I’m giving all of the pre-shave things a fair chance (I’m going to buy some towels tomorrow as I type this and so will start using them this week).

I’m going to give them a go until the end of the month to see what difference it makes - can I do more passes and not have so many skin problems?  That sort of thing.  The end of the month is when my current cartridges run out so I’ll probably team up buying some more with buying a DE razor and some blades when my paycheque hits.  I don’t want to be without cartridges in case I have real problems with DE, but hopefully things will work out.

I’m trying not to expect too much of it, but it’s proving a little difficult.

the three musketeers

What a poor film.

Paul W S Anderson seems to have a bit of a thing for churning out generic stuff.  He's not actually listed as a writer on this film, but it's a film very much in that style.

What they're tried to do here is a bid of a modern things in the old world vibe.  So one of the main things they use in the film is a flying galleon (as in like a zeppelin).  It's the slapping on of baubles, bells and whistles for no real gain or benefit - which seems to be quite the Anderson trait.

There are some good things in the film.

There's a sequence towards the front end which is like something out of the Civilization series or risk and is pretty cool.  The special effects are generally very good, though the water at the beginning looks a bit fake.  Also James Cordon is good and brings some genuine comic relief.  Also the bad guys are quite nasty, though you never really feel they're actually going to win at any point.

The real problem with the film is that the key elements - Dartanian and the three Musketeers are actually a bit meh.  I don't know if it's because they're very generic or because they're quite flat as characters, but I never really felt any connection - or, indeed, sympathy - with them.

After the opening sequence I think we're supposed to believe that the Musketeers have sort of been fired or put out to pasture.  But it's in no way convincing - they're clearly still in the King's favour.

There's also a fairly major tweak the basic plot.  It's a tweak I think has been used before, where the reason for them going to England is essentially flipped on its head, but I didn't mind that too much.

The flip does also allow Anderson to give the wife a bigger role (Mila Jovavic).  She plays the role well enough, but unfortunately she's the focus for much of the "new stuff shoved into the past".  So there's one sequence where she's basically doing a whole Mission Impossible stealing things riff.

I mean, it doesn't go so far as doing the whole zip wire lowers but stops inches from setting of the alarm, but it might as well have.  And that's kinda my problem - there's nothing here that doesn't feel like you've seen it a dozen times before.  It's all a bit cliché, but I didn't really feel any sense of irony to it, so it ends up feeling quite flat.

a good shave

I mentioned before that I’ve been investigating shaving technique.

Currently I use what are called cartridge razors.  As the name suggests you buy a cartridge that clips into the handle.  You know the sort of thing - they’re heavily advertised, so it would be difficult not to know about them.

I actually have two - a Mach3, which has 3 blades and a Fusion Pro, which has 5.  The Mach 3 I’ve had years but my Dad got me the Fusion at Christmas.

And I think it’s really the Fusion Pro that’s been a big part of why I’ve been looking at the whole issue.  The cartridges are staggeringly expensive - around £14 for 8, so nearly £2 each!

Now if I could get plenty of shaves out of then that might be okay, but I don’t- I can get 3 good shaves and then one okay shave.  I know that’s a lot less than other men, but my beard is incredibly tough and very dense.  If I try to get more shaves than that then I just end up with horrible razor burn.

So if we say 4 shaves per blade then that’s 50p a shave.  If you say I have to shave about 200 times a year that’s £100 on blades alone.  Add in shower gel and aftershave balm and I must spend £150 a year on shaving.  That’s a lot of money.

The Mach 3 is a bit better in price terms in some ways, but I get fewer good shaves out of each blade, so it becomes a bit swings and roundabouts.

Now if it was a good shave then I wouldn’t mind, but in all honesty it isn’t.  To shave closely I have to take multiple passes, going with and against the grain.  However, this causes me to get razor burn, razor bumps, in-grown hairs and all sorts.  My neck is a particular problem area - the hair grows up on my neck, meaning it’s difficult to go with and against the grain and not miss bits.

One of the weir things with cartridge razors is they’re big - a good 1cm wide, so the front blade is in a different place to the back blade and it’s difficult to know where you’re shaving.

The compromise I’ve come to is a light shave each day - I take one pass and it involves going with the grain on my neck (so up) and against the grain on my chin and cheeks (so up again).  But with my beard being so thick and heavy and dark I therefore get five ‘o’clock shadow my mid-day.

It’s all a bit rubbish really, which is why I’ve been reading up about the possibility of going for a Double Edge (DE) safety razor - going old skool, basically.

I’ll continue later in the week.

oppa gangnam style?

Korean Grand Prix this last weekend.

As I was talking about last Friday the race is held at a time that means it's on pretty damn early here in the UK.  That’s a bit of a mixed bag - it means I can record it and watch it when I want in the morning or afternoon.  However, it also means that I have to be careful not to overhear the result and I also have to be weary in case the race over-runs: it’s been wet the last two years.

I thought the race itself was okay.  There was quite a lot of overtaking, though a lot of it was due to the DRS.  I mean, sometimes it just provided a bit of help, but other times the entire overtake was due to the DRS, which is a bit artificial, but it wasn’t so bad that the person couldn’t fight back - that’s when the DRS is bad.

Unfortunately, Lewis and Jenson had bad races.  Jenson got hit by Kobayashi on the first lap (he also hit Rosberg at the same time and was given a penalty).  To be honest, both of the Saubers were weirdly over the top - Kobayashi’s accident was almost of the same style as Grosjean’s recent problems - way too eager, trying to win the whole race on the first lap.  And Perez seemed to be displaying a weird level of inexperience, given he has been quite calm and sensible so far.  It’s like he’s trying to prove himself, even though he's already signed for McLaren.

Anyway, Jenson hadn’t qualified well and then got taken out, so a poor race.  Lewis qualified well, but apparently he had a suspension failure quite early in the race. He tried to fight, but it was clear he was a bit of a lame duck.  Then a few laps from the end after he’d had to take a new set of tyres and was trying to claw a few places back he ran over a bit of AstroTurf and took it with him!

Apparently they’d only just stuck it down the night before, which is pretty poor - you shouldn’t be sticking things to the track between qualifying and race unless it's an absolute necessity.

It was a great race for Red Bull, though.  They took the front row in qualifying and after a swap at the start; they never looked in doubt of finishing anything other than first and second.  It puts Vettel in the lead in the championship, some six points ahead of Alonso, who finished third, followed by a resurgent Massa.

Clearly the updates Red Bull made recently have just given them that little edge and with Vettel just in a position to pounce in the championship and a little bad luck on Alonso’s part then it’s something of a turn-around.

A two week gap now until the next race, which is a bit of a relief to be honest - holiday followed by two weekends filled with Grand Prix's has meant I’ve felt like I’ve not stopped in weeks.  Particularly since I’ve been horribly busy at work too.

korea

Korea this weekend.

It's a bit of an odd one Korea - in many ways.

My Dad doesn't like it - he thinks it's on a par with Valencia.  I don't really agree - I don't think it's that bad.  I mean, it's no Spa or Canada, but I think some of the races have been okay.

It's also a bit unusual circuit in that it's sort of a bit like a street circuit.  Apparently have of the circuit is driven on, but more because it's part of an industrial area, so it's not driven on a lot.  It's a little like Canada in that sense - it's not a full-time race course, but then neither is it a pure street circuit.

But it's also slightly schizophrenic in terms of its layout - part of the circuit has very close walls that are very Monaco-like but then another part of it is quite open (well, from memory - certainly I recall some bits with walls and some bits with grass).

And then there's the time it's held - the race starts at about 4PM local time, I believe, which is quite late for a Grand Prix - the races can be anything up to 2 hours long so it has ended some years at twilight, but there's no lights like at Abu Dhabi and Singapore.  If there was rain and they wanted to delay the race or pause it then it runs a real risk of it getting dark.

It's odd, actually - Abu Dhabi and Singapore are held at those times because it puts them in the normal slot for Grand Prix's in the European time zone (2PM-ish in the UK).  But for Korea it means it starts at about 7AM, rather than 5AM here - I don't really see how that makes much of a different.

So yeah, it could be interesting for all sorts of reasons.

And I've definitely made enough room on my PVR to record it.  Last night I watched an old-ish BTCC race day.  I usually watch the highlights as the full race day can be around 7 hours long (they show all the races at the circuit - not just the BTCC) but ITV fiddling with the naming (British Touring Car Championship versus BTCC) and I couldn't find them so recorded the full thing.

Anyway, deleting that freed a huge chunk that will happily cover all the Grand Prix stuff.  Plus I also discovered a program I was recording but hadn't yet got to see was a bit rubbish so I deleted all of them and that freed up 4 hours.

Still, huge amount not watched, so it may be a lazy weekend of sitting on my arse watching telly.  Bliss.

up

It's always trickier to write positive reviews than it is negative.

Generally with negative reviews you can detail at least one thing (but usually more) that you didn't like, explain why you didn't like it.  Maybe you can even give ways in which it could have been better.

Even with positive reviews there's normally some stuff I didn't like, or perhaps felt could be a bit better.

In the case of Up this is very difficult.  I mean, I wouldn't say it was perfect, but the things that aren't quite right about it are so minor as to be inconsequential.

For example, a big part of the story is that the main character lifts his house using a couple of hundred helium balloons.  In reality this would be next to impossible - certainly it would be financially ruinous, let alone where he got all that helium in the first place (yes he worked as a balloon seller, but he'd have to be a pretty poor balloon seller to have that much Helium left over).

Others might be that he somehow steers the house and that he gets up a fair lick of speed (he gets from the US to South America in a couple of hours - airline speeds).

But quibbling about that sort of thing is a pretty rocky road - you might as well ask why he doesn't actually look like an actual human.  It's a silly thing to be worrying over because being scientifically (or anatomically) accurate isn't what story telling is about.

And it's really the strength of that story that makes Up so good.  Y'know it's something Pixar get right almost all of the time - yes they do the really clever, impressive CGI stuff, but they really work hard at the story too.

In this case the good story is really boosted by some great characters - Carl, Russell and the Dog Dug are really great characters.

As I was saying, it's tough to write positive reviews and I'm running out of things to say.

Y'know this review is actually a cop, because I've used the exact same technique before when I've not been able to find anything to really say about a good film.

box sorting

No blog yesterday as at the point I was going to start writing it I was handed something to do.

That something was a bit of a mess and took all afternoon to get even vaguely on the right track.  It actually poxed up all my afternoon, to be honest, but there you go.

This last weekend was incredibly busy.  As well as the Korean Grand Prix and all the recorded telly I had to watch I also had to do deal with a huge pile of washing (all my holiday stuff plus the work week), sort out the boxes / shed situation and clean my car.

Well, cleaning my car was not something I had to do, but I wanted to do it to take advantage of my landlord being on holiday.  Three days later it's unfortunately now dirtier than it was.  There's some house building going on near the industrial estate where I work and they've been digging out a huge amount of earth and leaving trails of muck all over the roads, so with it being rainy it's made a right mess of everyone's car - it's like everyone in the estate goes rallying to get home!

I did also need to sort my boot contents out after the holiday, so I did that too.

The boxes was a bit unfortunate - I'd actually planned to do it anyway as I usually do when my landlord goes away at this time of year, but he also left me a note basically asking me to do it, which made it a priority task.  However, the weather was crappy across the week and it been my intention to spread it out a bit.

What I'd been hopping to do was most of the box moving and some of the more basic sorting in the evenings during the week.  However, rain and dark is not really the best combination for doing it.

As such that meant I had to do the whole thing at the weekend - a weekend when I had a big long list of other stuff to do as well.

Now I did basically do it, but it was pretty poor in terms of really sorting out, tidying up and identifying things to e-bay.  Really I've just moved a load of crap from my bedsit out to the shed and ensured what's in the shed is properly boxed and stacked.

It's a little frustrating from several perspectives, but it is what it is.

It does emphasise to me that I need to move now that I've decided to stay working where I am.  Indeed, I've decided I really need to move to Alton, though first I need to not spend my pay rise for a few months so I can build up a deposit!

japanese grand prix

Well, that's made things interesting!

It was the Japanese Grand Prix this last weekend and the very first corner caused all sorts of interesting things.  There appeared to be at least 3 accidents going on (it may have been 4), which is actually quite common at Suzuka - everyone piles down to the first corner which is high speed but then the second corner is basically right after and that is very slow, so you tend to get a lot accidents.

Anyway, of most interest was Alonso, whose luck appears to have run out and he ended up facing backwards with a rear tyre completely gone and a stalled engine.  It was a relatively small incident with Kimi and was really neither of their faults but it's thrown the championship wide open.

Particularly as Vettel went on to win the race, which means he's now only four points behind with 5 races still to go.  The Red Bull also looked particularly quick, as it basically dominated practice, qualifying and the race.  If Webber hadn't have been one of those in an accident at the start it could easily have been a 1-2 for them.

I guess it just goes to prove the old thing of never betting against Adrian Newey, who I believe is the most winning-est designer in Formula 1.  According to Garry Anderson on the beeb's team they've come up with a rather clever idea that actually achieves what Mercedes "double DRS" was supposed to in a simpler, more efficient and more effective way.

Unfortunately Lewis had a bit of a problem in the race, as he had set the car up wrongly and he was rather uncompetitive.  This affected his qualifying too as he was quite a way down the grid.  It's difficult to see how he will now make up ground on Vettel and Alonso for the championship.

Massa finished second, which was partly due to a great start (avoiding all the accidents) but then he was consistent and quick during the race too.  It therefore looks like Ferrari will keep Massa on next year.  I have to say I was sort of suspecting they would - the focus is on Alonso as Number 1 driver, as is the Ferrari way, and having someone come in who may challenge has not historically been how they like to do things.

Kamui Kobayashi finished third on the podium.  I think a few more laps and Jenson might have taken him, but still, it was quite an achievement.  The Sauber car (and team) has been really strong all year and seems to have really come into its own now, but Kamui has been a bit unlucky.  Though I also think their highly tactical approach doesn't really suit his style - he's more about all-out overtaking manoeuvres.

The noise from the crowd when he crossed the line was amazing - it almost drowned out the cars!  I've only ever heard shouts like that from the British crowd before.

So yeah, looking like a good end to the season and it's all quite squeezed in - the next race, Korea, is this next weekend.

I should note obviously the thing about Lewis as well, but I thought I'd actually blog about it later (if at all).

nihon grand prix

Japanese grand prix this weekend.

Unfortunately, this is the second big victim of the BBC's deal.  The Japanese Grand Prix is usually quite a good one, particularly when it's held at the Suzuka circuit as it has been the last few years.

It's not quite a big a victim this time, since the practice sessions, qualifying and the race are all being broadcast on 5Live / 5Live extra.  Some of the ones where they've done highlights they've not kept to this promise they made pre-season (notably Canada).  And certainly I don't think there are any other big sporting events on to 'get in the way'.

However, there will be an annoying challenge, in that because it's in Japan the events are held very early in the morning (our time).  Now sports reporters on the news are particularly chronic when it comes to F1 - football they'll do stuff like say "if you don't want to know the result turn over" or at the very least there's a bit of a pre-amble for you to change over.  With F1 they'll launch straight in with "Lewis Hamilton has won the British Grand Prix..."

And online is no better - the headline will be "Lewis Hamilton wins in Britain" and you'll obviously see it instantly without even trying.  It becomes a nightmare of trying to avoid hearing the news, which is very difficult when you actually have to do it - my alarm clock is a radio alarm and news at the weekend can be rather oddly distributed instead of being on the hour.

I'm still pretty much sticking with Alonso for the title.  I think the others will squabble too much over points and while the Ferrari seems to have dropped back somewhat in terms of pace, Alonso is still picking up healthy points at each race.  The reliability of the Ferrari has been extraordinary when you think about it - they've had very few retirements between both drivers, particularly when it counts on race day.

It will be quite the busy weekend, actually, as there's the race, but also my landlord is on holiday (again!) and I've got a bit of a mission to have a sort out with my boxes out in the shed.  It's just the right time of year to do it (so long as the rain holds off) since the temperature is generally about right for lots of box lifting and shifting.

pay hooray

The pay issue has been sorted.

You may recall that my car/travel allowance was forgotten about for my first pay, but my second pay has it in there and makes up the missing amount too, so it's all resolved now.

Not that this has stopped me from spending the money like it was going out of fashion.

To be fair I had put a lot of things on hold because I was cash strapped, and with the change it's not exactly un-natural to then want to buy that stuff.  Still, if I was sensible I'd have waited a little while - after all, when you've held fast on buying a new electric toothbrush for 6 months already, a few extra weeks isn't going to make a huge difference.

I guess it didn't help that my holiday was at the end of the month so when I got paid I was there with a bit of time on my hands and a very picturesque little Devon village to wandering around and one thing led to another...  That sounds like the description for something else entirely.

On the up-side I've bought almost all that I was holding fire on (I had a notion of getting Double Edge Safety Razor and seeing if I could get a better shave - I talked about it before) so the next couple of months I shouldn't need to do any sort of a big spending splurge.  I mean, it's not like it's a couple of months until Christmas or anything...  :/

I seem to have needed up with a huge amount of unwatched TV.  While I was on holiday I didn't watch hardly any TV (the place I usually stay has awful reception) but also the week before I went I spent quite a few of my evenings doing preparatory stuff so I've virtually got two entire weeks of TV unwatched.

It's actually the second time ever that my PVR's hard-drive has shown as going over the half-way point (I have about 45% free).  I mean, I'm obviously not at the stage of having to delete stuff to make space, but with Grand Prix's both this and next weekend it's going to be a struggle to find the time to watch it all.

super 8

I don't think it's any secret that super 8 is a bit of a homage to Spielberg and Lucas when they were at the height of their family-friendly film fare.

By that I mean films like ET, Indiana Jones and the Goonies - that sort of thing.  It's also something of a homage to the Super 8 film medium.  Super 8 was a small format film (8mm as opposed to the 35mm traditionally associated with theatrical films) that came on cheap cartridges that you could get developed at drugstores and then edit together.

The film is set in that period when those films were about and super 8 was the medium movie geeks used to make their own short films.  And that's the basic idea that underpins the movie - a group of friends making a movie for a school competition, but in the tradition of such movies they get wrapped up in a bigger plot.

I think the film was generally well received and I'm not going to go against that tide of opinion.  It's well made and the story is interesting; it works as a homage and, crucially it has well rounded characters and there's a real human level to the drama as well as the big SF spectacle side of it.

Indeed, that's its real strength and in terms of the whole homage thing, that's where it really pays homage to that era of film - they had the human drama as well as the spectacle.  The characters and the journey they went on was interesting and not given short shrift to a bunch of explosions and effects in the way that these big modern films often are.

However, there were a couple of things that didn't quite seem to work in the film.  I may be getting a bit spoilery here, but there's an odd bit missing to do with the Super 8 film of the title.

Basically the kids witness this big train accident because they're filming their film where it happens.  Later the army turns up as what the train is carrying is related to them and they clearly discover the bits and pieces the kids left behind.  They also pick up the tyre tracks of the car the kids used to get there and then leave.

Now I assumed this would be a plot point - they would track down the kids via the Super 8 stuff or the car.  And indeed they do seem to find the car based on the tracks.  But neither leads to anything - there's no scene where the film directly leads to the army confronting the kids and then warning them off - it's weird that it gets set up and then doesn't pay off.  I mean, it's not something that's in the deleted scenes and they don't say in the commentary that it was chopped out or anything.

The other thing is that the ending is weirdly flat.  I mean, it makes some sense and it's not unreasonable, it's just it sort of lacks spectacle.  I think it also didn't help that the army side of it isn't tied up in the conclusion as well - a key part of that side of the story resolves a lot earlier and so they just end up seeming like spectators.  They essentially stop being a threat so the end is not dramatic in that there's no 'defeat' side to it, if that makes sense.

There are a few others things to (for example, was the alien collecting and eating people?  If so, why? If not then what was it doing with them?), but they're all actually rather minor things as it's a good film.

a (long) short list

I'd obviously put together one of my famous to do lists for my holiday.

One of the main things I wanted to do was watch some of the fansubs I have failed to keep up with.  I did watch a few things, although not as much as I'd hoped.  However, I was sensible to watch things that haven't been licensed since they take up more room (for licensed stuff I generally only download a couple of episodes to sample them).

I also watched Nausicaa and Howl's Moving Castle on DVD.  I've had them for ages but have failed to find time to watch them.  I liked both, but they won't be going into my permanent collection - for Nausicaa I think he's done the same basic themes better elsewhere (Mononoke in particular) and Howl's was enjoyable, but lacked depth.

One of the things I wanted to try was my new portable Blu-Ray drive.  This is an external type drive for a computer, rather than a stand-alone portable player.  Weirdly it has a thing that says you can essentially run Blu-rays directly into TVs from it via USB, but then contradictorily it requires two USB sockets when you plug it in to a computer in order to power it, so how can it run okay on a TV when you only plug it into one USB slot?

Also, it moaned horribly about my laptop's graphics card not providing hardware acceleration (fair enough, it is an old laptop) so how can a TV run Blu-Ray disks direct?

Anyway, my laptop wasn't really man enough for the job of playing Blu-Rays.  The drive came with Power DVD, which basically refused to play the disks at all without the hardware acceleration and even when using the other player (the open source Korean one - I forget the name) the playback was horribly jittery.  However, the other thing this drive gives me, which in some ways is more important, is the ability to play DVDs multi-region.

Well, the drive itself doesn't, but AnyDVD is able to get around the region coding issue.  I discovered last time I took a holiday with the intent of watching some anime (the vast majority of my collection being Region 1) that my laptop's internal DVD drive is essentially built in such a way that it can't be gotten around - once you use up your allowed number of changes, that's it.

The other thing I wanted to do was catch up on reading - I've ended up with a lot of manga that I wanted to read.  I'd also managed to accumulate several magazines, all of which I finished.  I also read World War Z, which I got on the kindle.  It's really very good - even if you don't like zombies it's done in such a way that the fact it's zombies is mostly sort of incidental.  It's difficult to explain, but I can see why it's been such a hit.  Quite how they'll make a film of it and make it exciting I'm not sure, though.

I say I read them all - I read all that I took, which is the majority, but I've some more manga at home I need to read.  Most of this is actually in hardback or very large size format, which is why it was difficult to take with me.

rather damp

I'm back off of holiday.

And I have a bit of a case of post-holiday blues if I'm honest.  I think it's particularly affected by the work related situation (looking for a job, getting an offer, turning it down, expecting things to improve) this year.

The holiday was gone in a flash.

It rained quite a bit and if the rain had been accompanied by thunder and lightning that would have been an even more cool statement, but it was mostly just regular rain and lots of it.

It wasn't quite as bad as up north.  The forecasts had been very bad before the week and I think the rain they got was basically predicted to also badly hit the south West.  Well it got it on the Sunday when I drove down, but then Monday it was actually rather bright.

Indeed, although it was wetter than was ideal compared to what the forecasts had said it wasn't actually all that bad.  It was only really Wednesday where it poxed things up - I'd planned a beach walk day and it rained almost constantly so I couldn't really do that.

Generally I did lots of walking.  For the first couple of days I was also very good with diet as I was expecting that when I went to my Dad's at the end of the week I'd end up eating badly, and this was the case, so I think overall it's all sort of balanced out.

However what was very clear to me is how much fitter I am.  The walks I did were generally a breeze and they were of a similar length to last year when I found them much more challenging. Indeed I did further walks more often and felt fine.

I've not much else to say - I didn't take any pictures with the weather.  I also tried a new route home, which was a lot more fun to drive, but was also therefore more tiring as it required a lot more concentration.

holiday

I'm off on holiday next week.

I would usually take the first week in October, but there was a bit of a conflagration of events at work which meant I was asked to take a week either side.  A week later would put it just that wrong side of getting into the chilly weather so I went for the last week in September.

My plan for this holiday is basically the same as all my late summer holidays.  I'll be spending a week in Devon, partly with my Dad (it's his birthday this time of year) and partly just in a random bit of Devon where I'll be doing lots of walking.

I'm sure I'll also be taking far too many books, manga, magazines, DVDs and fansubs with me to consume in the time available as per usual as well.  Actually my plan this time is to focus on the last of those - fansubs.

Since my hobby of scanning in anime magazine basically collapsed my watching of fansubs has also virtually stopped as well.  I used to cheekily watch a few at work as well, but I'm so busy nowadays that's almost impossible.

I'm therefore hoping to get through a good chunk of them (mainly 2 or 3 episode samplers) over this break.  I've also come up with a plan for how I might re-invigorate the scanning hobby as it was something I used to quite enjoy doing, even if I also complained about it a lot.

Anyway, obviously no blogging next week while I'm away.  I may take a few pictures while I'm out walking and upload them afterwards, but I'm not too hopeful - the forecast for the week is looking quite damp so I'm kinda expecting that I won't be taking my camera out with me.

singasnore

This weekend it's the Singapore Grand Prix.

It has the uniqueness of being F1's only night race (one of the Arab ones happens in the evening, but Singapore is properly in the night).  And that's about it.

It's a street race has all the traditional street race issue - narrow, almost impossible to overtake, boring layout, slow and too long.

As you may be able to tell I'm not really looking forward to it.  Of course I may be proven wrong.  Valencia is usually as dull as dishwater, but this year it was a cracker.

However, I've had the feeling in the last few races that the close-ness and random-ness that has tended to characterise this season has started to settle down a bit.  The top teams have started to distance themselves from the pack.  Saying that it's not a big difference - Sauber did spectacularly well at Monza, for example.

Apparently they put on some interesting events for the spectators at Singapore - they have a big concert with big-name stars and there's a big Ferris wheel you can go in.  I'm not sure if that's generally open to the public outside of the races, but certainly during the race you have to get special tickets for it.

But even with that I don't I'd fancy going.  I assume it would be horribly hot and humid, even at night and I'm not sure I really see any particular appeal of watching F1 cars at night.  So it doesn't appeal on the telly and it doesn't appeal as one to go too - it's therefore a bit of a classic of Bernie's new era or tracks!

The championship overall remains in real contention.  Alonso has a big lead and is consistently getting the best out of a car that still isn't the best, even with the improvements Ferrari has made.  However, McLaren seem to have finally gotten over their mid-season "jitters".

They started the season with the best car and two of the best drivers, but a combination of issues (pit stops, crashes, unreliability) and perhaps either not updating the car in the right direction or letting others catch up seems to have put them further back than you would have expected at the start of the year.

Singapore actually sits on its own, but it's the only one that does in this final stretch - the last two were double headers and all of the remaining six are too.  It's going to be an intense end of the season!

arrietty

I have to confess that I've never been a huge fan of the borrowers.

I mean, I'm not saying I actively dislike it; it's just something that's never really appealed to me.  I don't really know why - it's a fairly neat idea and clearly has enduring appeal, but I dunno, it's just never really clicked with me.

I am actually really referring to adaptations there.  I know it was originally a series of books, but I've never read any of them.  Perhaps I would like it more if I did.  However, I have seen several adaptations - in particular a series by the BBC when I was a kid.

I mention all this to give background.  And also just in case you didn't realise that Arrietty is an adaptation of The Borrowers.  Arrietty is essentially the lead character, but it's interesting Ghibli went with that as a title, rather than The Borrowers.

Especially since it seems like a reasonably faithful adaption to the core of the story.  I obviously say that not having read them, but the adaptations all seem to have the same core story too, so I'm guessing it's to that far odd.

Perhaps they did it to help make it feel a bit more unique given that they're relocated it to Japan.  I don't really see this as a big issue myself.  Moving it to Japan hasn't been accompanied by any weird changes to the basic ideas so localising it probably makes sense from a sales point of view.

Another thing to note is that Arrietty isn't a Miyazaki film - people tend to assume all Ghibli output is Miyazaki and he was the Exec Producer, the originator of the idea to adapt The Borrowers and the screenwriter so he had a big part to play but the film is directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi.

Interestingly Hiromasa was actually responsible (key animation) for one of the bits I enjoyed most in Ponyo where the fish escape from submarine.  And Arrietty has some really nice touches in the animation, although I have to confess some of it was also a bit clunky - the budget perhaps didn't quite match the ambition.

It's also perfectly reasonable, and is particularly suitable for a younger audience.  The real problem with it is that it lacks a bit of depth.  Unlike previous Miyazaki penned stories there isn't really much in the way of depth - it's all there on the surface.

So yeah, nice enough, but I'm not sure I'd want to watch it again and again.

re-arrangement

So I thought I'd blog today about the sort out of my telly corner I did while I was setting up the BT vision box.

Basically the BT vision box represented something of a crunch point for the TV stack, particularly in terms of plugs.  I have a long-lead gang plug that has six sockets and surge protection and in days gone past this was plenty for the TV corner.  However, just recently I've added a few things to it that meant I've actually changed another ganger off it too.

But even with this extra capacity I didn't have a slot for the BT vision box.  Part of the problem has become redundancy versus convenience.

A while back I decided to get Blu-Ray, but I was not keen on the players and proper multi-region machines cost an absolute fortune.  There are machines where, like with some DVD players, you could essentially 'crack' them to be multi-region, but this generally involves farting about with firm-ware that you constantly have to update.

My solution then was to get a PC I could use as a media centre.  I blogged at the time how this turned out to be a huge faff as well, but I've come to a point of it working okay.

Now being what it is this PC can obviously play multi-region DVDs, but because of the faff involved I ended up keeping my multi-region DVD player.  I'm not really explaining this very well. Basically when trying to add the BT vision box I already had these electrical devices to account for:

A 6-point surge protected ganger with the following plugged in:

• TV
• PVR
• DVD player
• Dolby digital Amp
• Sub-Woofer
• four point ganger

The four plug ganger had the PC plugged in but meant I could also plug in the following as needed:

• 2 * lamps on timers (my landlord is paranoid about security and likes me to have these on during winter)
• Bass guitar amp
• VCR (yes, kicking it old school)

So as you can see at worst case that adds up to more sockets that I had available.  In practice I never needed all things on at all times, but faffing about around the back of stuff to unplug things (and making sure you got the right plug!) was a pain.

There were also a couple of other issues.  Firstly my picture through my PVR (via the aerial input) has been quite poor lately.  It has a lot of interference and no amount of switching plugs and cables seemed to fix it.  The solution was simple - use the SCART, but they were in an unknown box in the shed.

Secondly I don't use my VCR at all - now that we've switched over to digital I don't need to keep it as a back-up.

Thirdly there was the redundancy of having the DVD player and the PC.

And lastly my Amp has only 2 optical digital inputs.  As such a bit of rationalisation was in order and I decided to have a bit of a clean-up too.

I've taken the VCR out of the loop, but in the end I decided not to get rid of the DVD player.  Instead I've switched the optical cable it had to the box.  My theory now is that if I want to just quickly watch a DVD the player is there, but if I want to watch it properly with the full sound thing I will have to use the PC.

Hopefully as I get used to it I will find the DVD becomes properly redundant like the VCR.  However, part of the issue there is I've been using a wireless mouse and keyboard and while the keyboard works well, the mouse is a pain as I like to take the batteries out and that means re-synching it every time I use it.

I also found my other SCART cables and plugged the PVR in via SCART.  The noise is all gone and the picture is a little better, though as I was afraid it has a few issues with up-scaling, but then that's a pretty standard issue many people have.

So there you have it - my only plugging in I need to do is for the base amp / lamps and I'm fine with those.  Although as mentioned yesterday the BT box's LEDs are incredibly bright and it's weirdly fronted so I can't easily block the light.  I may try and stick some tape over it (I'm unsure if this is where the receiver is for the remote signal) or simply plug it in when needed.

fuzzier than expected

So I spent some time this weekend setting up and playing with the BT vision + box.

First disappointment is that the "+" doesn't stand for HD.  Indeed complaints abound on BT's support site that BT vision isn't HD.

Well, I say it isn't HD - some of the on demand type content is HD, so the box is obviously capable of outputting HD.  It's just that the Freeview side of it isn't HD.  Which is bonkers.  you could understand it when if first launched, but why put out a new bit of kit that has some HD on demand content and HDMI and optical audio connectors but only has SD tuners - it even has two tuners so can record two things simultaneously, but it's not HD. Weird.

The second disappointment is that some of the content only appears to be available if you get the 'unlimited' package.  Note that even though it's "unlimited", there's still stuff you can only get by paying for it.  So it's unlimited apart from the limitations.

Now I understood this going in - it says on the website you have to pay for some bits if you've not got the unlimited package.  that's fine - pay for what you want.  Except the granularity suggested by the website is very broad - films not available at all, everything else you pay 50p and up for.  Except that's not actually true - some of the non-film bits you also can't get unless you have the unlimited package.  And I mean not at all - you can't pay to get them individually, you need the full unlimited package.

The third disappointment wasn't so much a disappointment, but that getting this unlimited package would not be particularly good value.  Okay, you get all that stuff in the package, but most of it I've either seen or don't really want to see.  I mean there's stuff I'd like to see, but not enough to make unlimited good value for money by a long way.  Certainly not since most of the stuff I'd want to see you can pay for.

On the up side, the stuff available via the full-on paying methods (i.e. you pay irrespective of which package you've got) isn't too bad at all.  There's a reasonable selection of films, for example.

However, unlike the other films you can only get via unlimited it wasn't at all clear if they were available in HD.  Certainly some of the trailers looked quite high definition, but that may just be because the trailer is at a higher bit rate.  I shall have to give the searching another go and see if that reveals the answer, or just give it a try if not.

Another up-side was that the iPlayer and the other catch-up devices work quite well.  Well, iPlayer crashed the time I tried to give it a go properly, but then it's crashed when I've used it normally too.

A good thing there of course is that iPlayer is available in HD so those programs I can't watch as HD on Freeview I can't watch on the catch-up.  And since I record and watch back 95% of my viewing that should suit me fine.

The last disappointment is the amount of light it puts out.  Now this is a bit of a specific to me one, but I live in a bedsit, which means my TV stuff is in the same room as me.  I also have difficulty sleeping when there are bright sources of light and the vision box really pumps out a lot of light.

Now I'm used to that to some extent and am adept at covering panels with clocks on at night to block the light.  The problem is the vision box has a weird curvy front panel and it's so bright that this didn't really work last night.  I'll have a fiddle over the next few days, but I've a feeling I may end up unplugging it and only plugging it back in when I want to watch some on-demand stuff.

Overall then I'm a bit disappointed - I certainly don't think it's worth £4 a month.  I mean my PVR is way better at doing Freeview and easier to use and the few things the vision box does better are actually really only at their best if you pay 3 times that.

a new vision

I think I forgot yesterday to explain why a shaving brush may help with my shaving.

Basically, the idea of shaving foam is that it does two things - it lubricates the blade as it passes across the skin, but the second is more relevant in that it essentially holds the hairs up off the skin surface.

Beard hair has a tendency to lay flat to the surface of the skin and this is one of the things that makes it difficult to shave.  For me this seems particularly acute - my beard hair lies very flat and I also have some weird changes in direction of hair, particularly on my neck where the bottom part grows up and the rest grows down (well, sideways, actually).

This is also particularly ironic for me as my head hair tends to stick straight up for a good half an inch before the weight eventually pulls it down, and even then it's super fluffy.  This was okay when I was younger, but recently I've started to thin and it looks odd because you can see my scalp, even though the hair is long.  This actually prompted me to trim it off.

Anyway, the idea is that by using a brush you really get in and around the hairs, helping to hold them up.  When applying the foam with your fingers, the big flat surface of your fingers has a tendency to flatten the hairs.

That's the theory, anyway - we shall see if it helps.

I recently got myself BT Vision.

They've had a special offer on where it's only £4 a month and the box is free.  Now obviously I already have Freeview - and, indeed, the PVR I've got is a Humax one, which is generally regarded to be the best make.  My dad has BT vision and a Humax digibox and says the Humax is way better and he's obviously been able to compare things long-term.

However, my PVR is not High definition and this Freeview is (well, I think it is - I haven't actually plugged it in yet, but more on that in a mo).  It's also got this new on-demand service.  This is the one that was announced a little while ago - I can't for the life of me remember the name they gave it, but it involves several of the big players.

As I mentioned I've not actually started the box up yet.  My first problem is that I obviously need a clear period where I'm not watching or recording stuff and so that's put out most of the evening.  But also I have a box of AV cables which I will need to play with various configurations and that's in the garage so I'll need to get it out.  I'll also need to find my longer network cable as the one they supplied is about 20cm too short.

I'm therefore going to play with it this weekend.  The thing I'm not sure about is to do with pass-through of signal.  A while back I was having real problems with my PVR in that the signal was breaking up.  However, by chance I discovered that by switching it around with my VCR (so it really was a while ago!) the signal improved massively.

So I'm not sure if I should split the signal and send it through both boxes independently (the BT vision has a HDMI connector - hence my assumption it's HD) or if it'll be okay passing the signal through.

I'll also probably take the opportunity to have a bit of clean around - a lot of dust tends to accumulate around the TV area.

unusual purchasing

There hasn't been any news on the missing slice of my pay packet.

I think my boss is going to try to just sort it out for this month and not give me the missing amount for last month.  Yet another disappointment.

Either way, with my wage increase I've been looking at loosening the old economic belt a bit and considering a few unusual purchases.  Well, unusual for me - most are pretty normal for normal people who don't spend all their money on DVDs and books.

By that I mean clothes in that I have been looking at the various options for refreshing my work wardrobe in particular, but also a few other clothing and related things I need - a new dressing gown, in particular, for example.

Anyway, the one I specifically wanted to mention was that I'm looking at buying a shaving brush.

When I first started work I only shaved every other day.  I don't mean I could get away with only shaving every other day as my beard is thick, dark, and grows quickly, but that I used to just go to work with stubble.

However, as I got older and as I've thinned down a bit, it's began to look like I was growing a full beard every other day.  As such, I started shaving every day (well, work day).  This meant I had to slightly adapt my shaving style as I used to close shave, but if I close shave every day I'm much more likely to get razor burn and stuff.

However, I've been somewhat disappointed with the results and one of the things I've been looking at as a possible solution is getting a proper shaving brush.

The best brushes are apparently made from badger hair and are surprisingly expensive.  I mean, some obviously cost a fortune because of branding or whatever, but even cheap ones are several pounds.  When you consider how "old technology" they are that's pretty expensive.

Another thing I've been looking at is mu whole teeth cleaning regime.  Primarily I've been looking at getting a good electric toothbrush.  I used to have a cheap one and it was okay, but it was battery powered (as in normal A4s) and after only a week or two you would be able to feel that the power was going down, even though I used the batteries with the power testers on them and they would say the battery was still 90% okay.

As such I've been looking at getting a proper rechargeable one, but there are so many different types it's quite confusing.  Particularly since it seems like a relatively simple thing - the head oscillates, cleans teeth, done.

Lastly that I'll mention is a nose hair trimmer.

I bought a cheap one a while back when the nose hair issue was at a point where plucking them was more agony than I could take and it did okay for a while, but again, it's battery powered and quickly deteriorates in effectiveness.

I also got free one when I bought my hair trimmer, but it has a weirdly long guard on the blades and so leaves the hairs really long.  Okay, they're not really long, but they're long enough that it defeats the point of using the trimmer.

The problem here is almost the opposite of the toothbrushes - there seem to be very few models and most are quite poorly reviewed and rated.  As such it's difficult finding one that's not too expensive but also does the job.

transformers: revenge of the fallen

Oh dear.

I said when I reviewed it that I didn't hate the first Transformers film.  It was by the much-hated Michael Bay and it seemed to draw a fair amount of flack, but I personally thought it was okay as a popcorn action movie.

Don't get me wrong - there were a few things that didn't quite work for me and they fiddled with stuff in a way that also didn't quite work (Bumblebee isn't a VW bug?), but it was an enjoyable enough action movie with big giant transforming robots.  There was also some internal logic to the thing, particularly as it went for a fairly simple story.

The second film is an abomination, particularly in this case because the plot is horrible and almost nothing makes any sense.

I guess I should warn for spoilers as I thought I'd lay out some of the more annoying ones.

A particularly galling thing was when the decepticons revive megatron.  At the end of the first film they dumped him and some of the other decepticons at the bottom of the Marianas Trench (I think - certainly into the sea).  Quite why they did this instead of smashing them to atoms I'm not sure, but in this film to revive them all they do is send down some repairing robots who stitch them back together and all's fine.

Clearly being killed, broken up, and dumped at the bottom of the ocean, subjecting their metal bodies to salt water, incredible cold and staggering pressure is absolutely no problem for your average decepticon...  So why didn't Prime tell them to do something more effective!

Of course later on in the film, when Prime dies, they have to go through some rigmarole involving an ancient artefact and a sock (don't ask) to revive him.  Yeah, because consistency is for pussies!

Then there's the bit where the decepticons go after Buster with a human-impersonating Decepticon.  A human impersonating decepticon who is incredibly realistic.  Because of course if you were able to impersonate humans you wouldn't do something like impersonate all the world leaders and take over the place.  No, you'd impersonate a hot chick in order to try to get at some knowledge Buster has.

Then there's the whole thing about Megatron working for some uber-evil dude who lives on the moon.  Yeah, the uber-evil dude who there's no mention of in the first film at all.

The uber-evil dude who all the other primes in ancient times (eh?) had to sacrifice themselves to create what is basically a key for his uber-evil device that he was going to use to kill life in the galaxy instead of kicking his ass.  Y'know, the uber-evil device hidden inside the pyramids that we've never spotted before.

What the fuck is this bull-shit?

disappointed

I was rather disappointed with my weigh in this last Sunday.

I thought I'd done quite well during the week with only a few relatively small slips.  However, I'd only lost a pound, which was quite disappointing.  Particularly since my weight has been see-sawing around without any real gain or loss for a good few months now.

Having said that, when I think back at the week I can see that the small slips I'd felt I'd made were actually probably much bigger than I'd really thought.  I ate a few too many sweet things and it all adds up.  Also I'd really struggled with the walking.

Well, I'd actually really struggled with sleeping, having had a night where I'd basically been unable to get to sleep at all and with this then being followed up by a night where I'd woken up incredibly early.  Usually when I have a bad night the next night I sleep like I'm in coma, but this time I woke up at 4:30AM, a good two hours before I usually get up.

And this waking up early pattern suddenly seems to have become something of a norm - with the exception of Sunday I've been wide awake at least an hour before my alarm was due.  I've actually started to suspect that something is going on, like someone is getting up early for wake and making a noise that wakes me up, but I've no real evidence for that and besides, I usually sleep with earplugs in.

Anyway, the point is that the lack of sleep left me very tired and therefore in no real mood to do much walking during the week.  Now usually there's a compensation when I'm suffering from insomnia in that I burn a lot of calories when I'm awake lots of hours like that, but in this case I'm not sure it's quite worked like that.

It was all rather disappointing, as I say.

In fact, I got rather depressed about it all on Sunday and ended up buying some actual proper chocolate bars when my walk took me past Sainsbury's and scarfing them.  I felt bad... but also good.

What's been particularly frustrating over the last few months is that I've not been losing weight.  I still do lots of walking and it's not like I'm eating loads of bad stuff like I used to, but I don't seem to lose weight.

I mean, don't get me wrong - I know bad bits I'm eating and the walking are cancelling each other out, but the depressing part of it is that it's not loads of naughty eating, it's just a bit.  It's like I can't even have a bit of fun.

the crucible of speed

Monza is the fastest circuit in the current F1 calendar.

That also makes it the shortest race and usually doesn't last much more than an hour.  I also have it logged in my memory as not normally being a particularly good race - with so few corners and most of the corners there are being chicanes, overtaking opportunities should be relatively low in number.

It's not like there's a big technical section where a driver can make a mistake and allow his rival to catch.  And knowing where to defend is hardly a stretch of the imagination - the handful of corners.  And yet in recent years it's produced some really good opportunities.  And it's generally true that overtaking tends to happen when you have a fast straight and then a tight bend and Monza has a few of those.

This last weekend it was a good race.  There was plenty of overtaking, a few incidents and even a few strategic elements that came into play.  The last of these was particularly surprising as, being such a simple circuit, you would think strategy was minimal.

However, it was strategy that basically let Perez get to second place.  The problem was that the degradation of performance of the tyres meant that towards the end the front runners - who were by then all on very old harder tyres - were easy meat for Perez who'd used the harder tyres on his first stint and stayed out for a long time on them.  That meant he had fresher softer tyres, which are quicker, and he didn't have to worry too much about making them last.

But the front runners were faced with a dilemma - if they came in for new tyres they'd have ended up behind they're closes rivals on circuit who didn't with no guarantees of being able to overtake them.  The gamble worked out for Hamilton who was just far enough in front to stay that way for the end of the race, but Alonso and Massa both ended up being overtaken.

I have to say this race was probably the first really big victim of the BBCs new program pattern.  They only showed highlights and, as mentioned, the race itself is only just over an hour long, so what they showed was only about 45 minutes (I think _ I didn't time it).

They did broadcast both race and practice on Radio 5 live, so I listened to those, but they didn't broadcast any of the practice sessions at all.  None of them were on TV, obviously, but they also didn't put them on 5live or Sports Extra.  I'm pretty sure they weren't on the internet either in anything but "text update" format.

Now if it had been a total duffer that would have been okay, but clearly it was actually quite entertaining.  And that's one of the big problems with this only showing highlights for some races - there's no real way of predicting which are going to be the good races.

Take Valencia - it's always been as dull as dishwater and the BBC said they'd show the full thing.  But then they lucked out and this year it was really good for once!

monza

Well, Monza this weekend.

It's in quick succession with Belgium as one of these double headers.  We've a few of these now until the end of the season.

I have to confess Monza is not usually a great race.  I guess in its favour it is usually one of the shortest!  The circuit is basically quite simple, and they get very high speeds on the long straights (though a few chicanes have been introduced to slow them down over the years).  It's quite Italian in that sense, I suppose.

However, it does mean that there isn't much in the way of opportunities for overtaking and so it can be quite processional, but as I say not too long winded.

The highlight of Monza is usually the tiffosi who are basically the Italian fans.  They're rather partisan, being biased in favour of Ferrari.  I can recall quite a few races where good chunks of the crowd upped and left after both of the Ferraris crashed out!

I'm hoping Lewis does quite well.  He started the season well with lots of consistency, but just recently he's been in a few incidents that have cost him quite a few points.  I'm still of the opinion that Alonso is probably going to win, but if there is to be a proper battle for the championship I would rather it was between him and Alonso.

I've actually got a feeling that what will happen is that the others will essentially end up taking lots of points off of each other, a bit like last year.

ruined shoes?

One of the things I was going to blog about last week but didn't was the weather and walking.

On the bank holiday weekend we got some horrible weather on the Saturday afternoon.  I'd seen the forecasts, but they were quite vague and the weather in the morning was okay.  As I mentioned I worked very late on the Friday so I ended up quite delayed on the Saturday and it was a bit later in the afternoon before I went for my walk.

I had to go down to Sainsbury's to pick up some bits and as I was walking down it was still okay, though you could see the clouds building for a bit of a storm.  Well, as I got to Sainsbury's (it's about two miles away) the heavens opened and I got a bit wet but then headed inside and bought the bits I needed.

When I came out it was still pretty heavy, but I hung around and waited for it to dry up.  There was then a bit of a break and so I thought I would give it a go at getting back.  My route was also quite tree-lined so I was hoping I'd stay fairly sheltered.

Well the first thing was that when the rain came back it was a full-on thunderstorm.  I'm not fundamentally afraid of thunderstorms like some are, but I get a bit nervous when I'm out in one.  Not from a point of view of being hit by lightning, but if it hits a tree or something nearby.  So my route being tree-lined made me quite nervous, especially since my plan to try to avoid getting wet was to shelter under trees.

Now initially the rain wasn't too bad - I've walked in worse and not been fussed.  However, it wasn't long before it was absolutely hammering it down.  I mean, it was monsoon-like stuff with gobbets of rain hammering down.  It was that level of rain where even if you stand under a tree it offers no protection at all as the rain just blasts through.

This step up happened about half-way home and initially I tried to shelter, but it quickly became obvious that I was getting just as wet as if I was still moving.  I therefore set off home and got extremely wet.

I was oddly reminiscent of last year, actually, when I also got stuck in a thunderstorm and got soaked.  At that time I bought a cheap poncho with the idea of carrying it with me if rain was threatened, but obviously I'd left it at home.

I also doubt if it would have sorted the real issue I had and that was that my relatively new walking shoes filled up with water.  The real problem here is that the shoes are too big and I have to wear an extra pair of walking socks (weirdly my shoe size seems to have shrunk with the weight I've lost - I think it may be due to my feet being less wide due to a smaller load being pushed down on them: they're certainly not shorter.  However, I think this means there was a route for the water to seep in having run down my legs.

That might seem extreme, but as I say it was a hell of a lot of rain that fell - it was streaming down me and every single part of me was soaked.

Now these shoes are Gore-Tex, which is kinda waterproof, and they obviously have a rubber soul, and these two things meant that the boots actually ended up acting like buckets - I could feel water squishing about in them and when I took them off they were full of water on top of my socks being wringing wet.

I was so wet it took tree full days for everything to dry out having hung it up with the dehumidifier going fairly constantly.

I was therefore rather worried that I might have destroyed this almost new and very expensive boots, but I tried them out this weekend and they seem totally fine.  I guess because I dried them out thoroughly they're okay.

captain america

Captain America has never really been my thing.

It's obviously quite a jingo-istic thing - I mean, he's not Captain Humanity or Captain United Nations, is he?  He's Captain America.  And that's always made him very "truth, justice and the American way."

All of which of course works under the assumption that "the American way" is on the same level as truth and justice, and, indeed, that they're somehow synonymous: that truth and justice equal the American way.  I was never really convinced that was entirely the case and of course Cap represents those things.

Of course, being the first movie (well, excluding the other adaptation) this one tells Cap's origin story and that revolves around World War 2 and the Red Skull.  In this case it also involves HYDRA and a bit of Norse technology.  The later obviously ties it to the Thor franchise but the former is interesting.

In the comics HYDRA has always been a fascist organisation, but it never really originated in Nazi Germany.  Here it's basically the Red Skull's pet scientific organisation.  This works fine enough, especially as they ditch the silly bright costumes and properly retool them as Nazis.

In fact overall I have to say I quite enjoyed the film, despite my reservations.  It's just nuanced enough, particularly in regards the whole "representing America" thing that it works.  It actually manages to make something of a point in this regard and plays out how you might expect a Captain America to actually be used by the government.

The goodness comes through as being entirely down to him as a person, rather than any sort of jingo-istic thing.  However, there is a weird element to it in that it basically has the message that if you're a weakling you can't fight, which seems odd - anyone can be trained up.  Also, he seems smart enough, so could he not go into the engineering corps or something?

There is also a weird element that results from this aspect of the film.  Clearly they needed both a small version and a big version and it makes more sense that the guy they employ is bigger and they just use digital trickery and other effects to make him look smaller for the first part.  This works brilliantly - he really looks good.

What doesn't work is the voice.  A bigger person will generally have a deeper voice simply because of how the resonance works.  But they didn't adjust his voice at all when he's small, so you have this big deep, manly voice, coming from this little pip-squeak dude and I found it very disconcerting.

But apart from that I actually really enjoyed it.

getting what's due

I've obviously been blogging about my job hunt and its conclusion (staying where I am) so I thought I might give a little update.

The stuff I mentioned last week as to why I hadn't blogged is actually part of the same thing - the stuff I was working on is part of the new arrangement.

This new job (or tweaked job) actually started at the beginning of August but it was only really last week that I was able to start work on it.  It went okay for an initial stab, but it really emphasised to me how much there is to be done.

The other thing I wanted to briefly mention about it was that my salary took a big step up (though not as big as if I'd have moved, though as I mentioned there's the possibility of a big slice of cake later).  However, I did not receive all I was due when pay came around.

The issue seems to revolve around a part of my salary that's really intended for me to get a company car.  At the time we were discussing it I said I liked the idea but I've only just paid off my current car so I'd want a little time before getting a new one.  However, in the other job offer this was covered by having a car allowance that is given as part of salary or a car as I saw fit and then adjusted as the circumstances required.

My current company agreed to the same thing, though at a much lower value (but then the other job was in London so I would have had a fair old cost of travel); however, when my pay packet turned up it was short by this exact amount.  Now while we're not talking life-changing sums of money, it's not a lump of cash I would want to be without!

I've flagged the issue, but so far it's not been resolved.  I guess sometimes these things happen, but I did make it clear when we were in discussions that salary was a big concern, since I'd not had a pay rise in more than 5 years.

The whole thing of capitalism is we're supposed to get money in exchange for out labour.

crash, bang wallop

It was the Belgium grand prix this weekend, from the famous Spa Francorchamps circuit.

And it was an incident packed race.  I think a route of this was Friday, when it basically rained really hard all day.  However, the forecasts also said it was going to be dry for Saturday and Sunday.  This meant that the teams had no real motive for doing any running.

Using the Friday practice sessions for testing was basically pointless since they would tend not to get representative results, there was no point setting the car up for a wet race, the drivers weren't going to need any practice for wet driving and being wet meant there was a good chance they'd have an accident which would cause them real headaches.

All of this meant that they really only had the one hour practice session on Saturday morning to set their cars up.  This in turn meant that the qualifying session was a bit on the random side - most of the cars you'd expect to be up the front weren't.  For example, Vettel and Webber both finished ended up outside the top ten but Kamui Kobayashi in the Sauber was second on the grid.

Not to take anything away from anyone - this year with the stable rules that only really removed the blown diffuser has meant that everyone has been a lot closer - add in the difficult tyres and you have this championship.

The race itself was therefore set up for a lot of battles, since many cars were 'out of position' and Spa is somewhere you can overtake (and not just in the DRS zone).  However, unfortunately Romain Grosgean also caused a big accident on the trace down to the first corner.

He's actually a bit of a one for getting into accidents at the start.  I think he's actually said that he gets a bit too excited and tends to act a bit rashly.  Certainly he was clearly in error on Sunday, as he moved over so far that an accident was almost inevitable.

It was a particular pity on Sunday since he took several of the championship contenders out.  It was quite a scary accident actually, as Grosjean's car was lifted into the air (often a consequence of wheels clashing, as here) but because it was a rear wheel he was also spun in the air and of course the cars are a lot longer than they are wide.

You could actually see wheel marks on Alonso's car that were close to where his head is.  It's one of the difficulties of open cockpit racing, but then there are always issues over them getting trapped in the cockpit if it's covered - being a close-fitting cockpit, rather than an open space inside a car can cause problems.  Especially where fire is always a risk - that's how a lot of drivers used to die in the bad old days.

Anyway, race itself was good and I guess the up-side with Alonso being knocked out is that it closes the championship up a bit.

And we go again this next weekend - there are actually a lot of double-headers until the end of the year, which is going to play havoc with my schedule, but there you go.