will it never end?

Well, I was a particularly good little boy this w/end and I did a shed load of scanning.

In fact, I actually did a count at the end of Sunday and I'd done a total of 189 scans. This was across 5 artbooks... One of which actually reminded me why the whole scanning thing had pretty much ground to a halt: of those 189 scans, it must have had about 89 of them. In one artbook.

I mean, that's great--everyone who buys artbooks loves it when they're jam-packed with pretty colour pictures--but it also kinda makes the book feel like a chore to scan. I mean, with a book like that, you can be going at it for 2 or 3 hours and then think to yourself "How am I doing? I must be nearly finished." Then you count up how many scans you've done and got left and you find you're only half way through :/.

Anyway, the good news is that the artbook pile is at least 1/3rd, if not half as big as it used to be.

I've been continuing in my game of anime catch-up while I've been scanning. I'm hopeful that if I can stick with the scanning during the next few weeks I can clear the entire backlog of series before the new (October) season's fansubs really get going.

This w/end I watched:

• Special A - very good. Another from the plethora of shoujo manga adaptations that seem to have exploded forth this season. But this one is distinctly different. I mean, it's got pretty-boy style art and the premise is daft, like most shoujo stuff, but this is more of a traditional romance job. And I was actually quite impressed. It's not really new or original as such--I've seen just about everything here before--but it's got gusto and puts a nice spin on the whole scenario. And it's pretty funny too.
  
• Tetsuwan Birdy Decode - okay/good. It's got an interesting premise, I'll give it that. And it does generally feel like it has the potential to be quite good--the bad-guys are quite interesting, especially. But I dunno, it just felt like it lacked something. I think maybe it's because the whole Birdy character wasn't really explored much at all. I only watched my usual 3 eps and maybe it gets a bit more involved later, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
  
• Koihime†Musou - okay. It's basically the same idea as ikki tousen--taking the whole "romance of the three (four?) kingdoms" thing and replacing the characters with hot chicks. And hot chicks means boobs, jiggling and lots of baths, obviously. Yes, it's a fan-service show, as you can guess. I dunno--it didn't really do much for me other than the t&a, though.
  
• Natsume Yuujin-chou - awesome. Yujin-chou means "book of friends;" the friends in question being ayakashi, which are like spirits. It's based around that whole thing of knowing someone's "true name" gives you power over them. This was really very good indeed--it's the type of show that only anime does. Partly that's because it's routed in Eastern mystic traditions like I say, but also because it baulks all sorts of traditional story-telling structures and just does its own thing.
  

Maybe I've gone soft recently, but the above shows and a few others recently have kinda restored my faith in anime a bit. I mean, I never really lost my faith, but a little while ago we had Gurren Lagann and Code Geass in quick succession and I dunno, everything looked a little less good (and, possibly more importantly, like hoary old retreads) by comparison.

These shows have confirmed that they can still produce stuff that's interesting and different.

nody blackered

I'm bloody knackered.

Couple of nights ago I had a really broken sleep--it took me ages to get to sleep and then I was suddenly wide awake at 4'o'clock and I couldn't get back to sleep. I probably only got about 4 hours sleep, which is no where near enough. I need a good 7-8 hours a night and getting less really fucks me up for a good couple of days after.

I've not been helping myself, though. There's been a bit of a situation at work where I've not been able to start a piece of work that really needs to be done as soon as possible. As such, I've been doing all this prep work so that it's "ready to go" and it's been driving me a bit potty, tbh--I keep working myself round in loops :/.

I've also been getting really stuck into this new vector I've been working on. It's almost become an obsession and is really eating away what little spare time I have. But I'm literally only a few tweaks away from completing it. Here's a preview:



I've also been doing some scanning of a couple of artbooks (during the week--I know!) though they were deliberately ones with only a couple of good pics. I also sampled another of the new anime shows:

• Sekirei - goodish. I struggled a little with deciding whether I liked this or not. It's got a huge heap-load of fan-service, which is good, animation was pretty good too, but--and I feel weird when I have to say this about a fan-service show--the plot really needed to get a shift on. One of those I'd probably buy but then sell on.

The only plan I have for the weekend are to get my Dad a b'day present and card, as it's his birthday next week. I'll probably do some more scanning, though, as I feel a need to lift that particular "burden" from my shoulders.

i hate when that happens

I think I mentioned a little while back that I was starting to feel the old walling bug gripping me again.

I've been working on a Soul Eater wall after I found the series to me quite enjoyable the other week. It seemed to have some reasonable scans that I got some ideas for.

I've not really been experiencing wallers block--it's not so much that I've been stuck for ideas, it's more like the ideas I've been having have been way beyond my ability. Previously I'd probably have launched into them anyway, struggled for months and than been disappointed with the outcome.

Recently I've just been not starting.

But anyway, I saw some SE scans, got some ideas and started. I actually started with a simple one where I was basically just recreating the scan, just to get into the swing of things.

And someone's beaten me to the punch :(.

Basically, this wall by halcyontwilight is what I've been working on.

I mean, mine's different, but I've been doing the same idea--recreated the scan.

It kinda takes the momentum out of me continuing. I mean, one of the reasons I've often picked unpopular series to wall is because I basically know that no-one else will use the scan before me.

I'm not actually a very talented artist and have only a few skills when it comes to photoshop, so I'm very slow. That makes walling popular series dangerous, as there's a good chance someone will use the scan first.

Of course that doesn't stop me using it; it's just I always like to feel there's something exclusive or individual about my walls. I mean, heck, they're never actually any good, so at the least they can be unique on some level.

Ah well, I'll guess I'll finish it, but it's just annoying. Especially when the other person did such a good job :/.

rise of the wooden cgi 'actor'

So this last w/end I watched Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

As it goes it was a big improvement over the first film. Origin films are always tricky--the FF's origin especially is a bit on the ropey side, so they didn't have much to work with. Plus when you read the long-running comics the origin stuff is often quite different to how the characters are in their "steady state".

This film the FF where much more like the 'should be' as it were. The Thing and Johnny Storm especially were pretty much spot on.

Plus Jessica Alba is smoking hot (though I still think she looks weird with blonde hair--she should be less tanned to make it look better, I think).

Anyway, although it was better, the film was a little disappointing if I'm honest. The problem was the bad guys.

As the name suggests, the Silver Surfer was introduced, but also Galactus. Both were very disappointing.

The problem with Galactus was really that he was underused. Plus, being a reader of Marvel Comics I know what he's meant to look like so the way he was depicted here was just a slap in the face--he wasn't depicted. He was basically just a cloud.

The reason for that was made clear on the commentary tracks--they're doing a silver surfer film, so they wanted to leave it up to them how they depict Galactus.

Plus, as I say, he wasn't in it enough. He's there at the end trashing a planet, but they made the mistake of not showing us the planet's inhabitants--it was all done from space. That means there was nothing to really connect us to the danger.

The Silver Surfer looked spectacular and was in it plenty, but he was totally wooden. They said it was one of them virtual actors, but to me he actually looked like it was done with animatronics. His face was just totally blank throughout and he hardly moved.

self-pimpage: chika

Thought I'd do some shameless self-promotional type pimpage today :p.

This last w/end I uploaded a new vector of the main chika from Dragonaut - The Resonance. Can't remember her name for some reason, but you can dl a psd or jpg of the vector here.

You can also grab a png version over at AP here if that format suits you better.

I used the girl in two walls, which you can dl here. The walls aren't exactly spectacular, I have to admit. The planet became weirdly oversaturated with too bright colours. I did a version without it, but that's ended up looking a little plain, unfortunately.

I was working on some site updates over the w/end actually, although they were reviews, rather than walls or vectors.

I'm trying to get a bit more back into walling, etc (more on that later), but I've got 6 reviews set up as updates, plus one more left from the last batch.

Here's a weird statistic for you - once all those seven are up I will have a total of 60 reviews up on my site. That seems pretty impressive... well, to me at least :).

scannerific

Well, as I said on Friday I didn't have any specific plans, but a lot of options. I basically went for scanning and got through newtype, animedia and animage. Given that it's the cusp of a new season that meant there were loads of spreads and pics--I did over 150 scans in total, and my back could really feel it.

I also watched a few things while I was scanning:

• He is My Master: pretty good. It's not from the new season but an older show I dl'ed recently. I've read some of the manga and it was an interesting adaptation--they've tweaked it quite a bit (they being Gainax, I believe). But it's still chock full of fan-service, which can only be a good thing.
• Himitsu - Top Secret: very good. I was a bit surprised by this. I didn't know anything about it going in and was very pleasantly surprised. I've got to say the animation is a little ropey, but both the concept and story are very strong.
• Antique Bakery: very good. This I was also surprised about. I'd pegged this as yet another BL series (more on that below), but it wasn't really. I mean, it had elements of that in it, but there was more to it than that.
• Golgo 13: reasonable. Now this I did have expectations going into--those being that it would be utterly awful. And as far as that's concerned I was surprised... but that doesn't mean it was good, just that it wasn't awful. It was cheesy as hell, but I dunno, there was a certain appeal, I guess.

I've never really thought of myself as being anti-yaoi or Boy-Love or anything, but I must admit I've been rather amazed by the number of series that have been BL series (or at least have had elements of it) this last season (since April).

I dunno if it's just that I've ended up watching those ones first, but rather than the usual surfeit of high-school romantic comedies / harem and other shounen focused series, this last season we seem to be drowning in BL and shoujo.

On the one hand I'm glad about that--variety is the spice of life, even if generally BL doesn't appeal to me, but on the other hand it's a little annoying. I mean, why the sudden surge? It's like they're all trend chasing, which is a little disheartening.

choices, choices

I've no particular plans for the weekend, but a lot of options.

The only thing I do have to do is clean my bedsit and do a bunch of ironing. Otherwise I can do whatever.

There's certainly some scanning to do--newtype et al turned up at the beginning of the week, plus there's all the artbooks that need seeing to, as always. It never ends, scanning. I mean only the other day I was trawling through otaku.co.uk looking for new artbooks and I found about a dozen or so I'd like--I've not even cleared the 15 or so that I've got debound and waiting to go and I'm already planning my next purchases :/.

In the old days I would have just bought them there and then, but I think I'm learning a bit more discipline. Chopping up your credit cards has that effect on you using them :/.

Loads of anime to watch too, especially with the new season rapidly approaching. I think there's something like a dozen shows from this last season that I need to peruse--that's a good few hours there and would tie up well with the scanning.

Plus there's also all the anime I've bought. I really need to get into those piles so I can get e-baying again and generate some more 'bonus cash'.

Then there's all these reviews I've got written. I've got about 7 reviews stacked up and ready to go. By my reckoning that should take trismugistus.com the best part of the way to christmas alone.

Then there's my old scans - I should process them, get scan-city.org on track, as it's a total waste of money having it sat there doing nothing at all :/.

Plus on that front I think I might have caught a bit of a walling bug again--I've certainly got a good few projects in mind. My big stickler on walling has actually been vectoring. After that blog a while back where I was saying I really love it, the flip-side is I'm a bit of a perfectionist, which means it takes me bloody ages to finish a vector.

Which reminds me, I've been thinking about getting photoshop cs3. Well, actually I've been thinking about getting the full adobe "image product", which means photoshop, illustrate (which is for doing proper vectors) and some other programs. It's the best part of £1,000, though :/.

Plus I should finish off the Company of Heroes expansion. I should really tackle some more games, actually. Again, partly so I can e-bay some of them, but also because the chrimbalo season is approaching and there's quite a few new games I have on pre-order. Plus of course gaming is fun :).

collected volumes

I've been getting rather annoyed recently with the western anime companies.

The reason is that they keep putting out "collected volumes" almost immediately after releasing the last of the individual volumes. And guess what--the collected volumes are of course a lot cheaper than the individual volumes. I mean, they are different--the collected volumes are often thin packs and so have only one cover and no inserts, etc, but it's such a total pain in the arse.

The collected versions hack the resale potential of the individual volumes. I mean, if I buy 6 disks for £14 that's £84. Maybe you'd hope to resell at a third, so that's £28. Well if there's a collected set that's only £30 or so, then that's never going to happen, is it? You'll be lucky to clear £15, which is barely the cost of one disk.

I mean, collected volumes have always been a bit annoying for that affect, but they at least used to give it a year-or-so. Now, you can have just received the last volume and you can already buy the collected version. It gives you no opportunity to resell at a decent price.

But it actually looks like it's going in a good direction. Quite a few series are just being released in collected format to begin with--sometimes as half collections, with "part 1" and then "part 2" of a season. This is obviously a total win situation for us consumers. The collected volumes do represent excellent value for money and of course even if they're re-released as a complete collection the resale isn't so horribly impacted.

manga, manga everywhere

I'm a big fan of manga.

Manga are Japanese comic books, if you're not in the know. Manga is accepted in Japan in a way that comics aren't in the west, so it's basically okay to read manga over there, and it's very popular.

In fact, it's so popular that vast quantities of it are churned out every week. The format is different to American comics, where individual books have fairly small page counts and are published on their own. Manga comes out in huge collected volumes, with up to a dozen independent stories running at the same time in each of these books.

The books are themed, of course. So they may be aimed at young men (shounen) or young girls (shoujo). But, to some extent, the content within that varies. I mean, there are constraints, obviously, but it doesn't mean the mag that carries naruto is all about ninjas, although most its series are action oriented.

The schedules of manga can be quite punishing as I understand it--they're monthly or weekly. The weekly ones have fewer pages, but both schedules mean greater output is required from the artist than in the west, which is why they have assistants. The assistants take on similar roles to inkers and colourists (manga is black and white, so they use screen tone--probably digitally nowadays) in the west.

They also put out what are called tankobon, which are collected volumes of the particular series. These are what get translated and put out by the western companies, like Viz, Tokyopop or Dark Horse.

Anyway, the problem with these for me is that the companies are often playing catch-up when they first start putting out a series. So in Japan, the Tankobon basically might come out every six-months, or nine-months, or yearly or whatever. But for the western versions they almost never pick them up at the beginning.

Partly, or course, that's because manga in the west is still relatively knew, and with all that output in Japan you might license a series that's already git 17 tankobon out. That means you've a huge "backlog" of stuff to put out.

So they pump it out--one every other month isn't uncommon for the hit series. That can make it a pretty expensive undertaking for me.

It also means that at some point they will catch up with the Japanese manga. So, unless the series has already finished there comes a point where they suddenly change to a six/nine/twelve-month release schedule, which is then really frustrating.

What this means is that you end up with the weird situation where on my manga list I have around 20 series 'on the go'; but on my anime list I never have more than 3 or 4.

I just can't figure it

I'd never really been in to figures.

Figures (or figurines if you prefer) are sort of like half-way between dolls and models. A doll has moveable parts and is pretty much meant for playing with. A model has to be assembled, but once finished is more for decorative purposes.

A figurine doesn't have moveable parts and you don't assemble it. It's pre-moulded plastic and is assembled and painted at the factory. They're basically only for looking at.

Which is pretty much why I'd never been into them. I make models (well, I used to--I haven't done any actual modelling in years) and used to get dolls when I was a kid (well, actually, technically they're called action figures (Star Wars toys, basically) but really they're virtually the same thing--dolls for boys). But that whole "you just look at them" thing about figurines didn't really appeal.

I say didn't because I have loads of them now.

I dunno what it was that kick-started it. I think it was partly because I love Ugetsu Hakua's artwork so much, and especially his designs for BakuTen, that I wanted to get a couple of the figures. They were pretty cheap as well, I seem to remember.

Then it just sort of snowballed. I got those first figures from United Publications, but one of the sites I use the most (and would highly recommend), cd-japan, has a big section of its site devoted to figures. They also send out newsletters each week with all the pre-order figures and I dunno, I liked the BakuTen ones so much I just sort of bought more.

I like them all and I don't regret any of the purchases, but some of them are pretty expensive. Obviously, importing from Japan isn't cheap as such anyway, but some of the figures can be the best part of £100. That's a lot of money for something that you just sit and look at :/.

Anyway, I mention this because my latest purchase turned up last week--Ringo Noyamano from Air Gear dressed as the "Masked Hentai"--and it kinda occurred to me that this figure has sort of stepped past that line of displaying the figures and looking at them. What she's wearing is beyond "skimpy" and into pornographic (hence 'Masked Hentai' :/) so where can I put it that it wouldn't raise more than a few eyebrows?

Not that I specifically care what other people think about me, it's more to save them the embarrassment of seeing it :/.

row, row, fight da powah!

So the big plan for the w/end was to do lots of scanning, and for once things pretty much went as planned.

Over the w/end I'd estimate I did 150 scans. But here's the thing - I didn't scan any artbooks, as such. Obviously, the first thing I scanned was the new megami, but instead of then tackling artbooks I polished a few related things I needed to do.

One of them was scanning anime and manga covers. I do this partly because I sell a lot of things off on e-bay, but also, I like to use them as pics for my reviews over at trigsmugistus.com. There were quite a few to do. Over the last few weeks I've written reviews of Ai Yori Aoshi, GUNxSWORD, Witchblade, Girls Bravo (manga), Eiken (manga) and Genshiken (manga) and they all needs pics to accompany them, which meant scanning all the covers.

The other thing I scanned was megami deluxe 10. Megami deluxe is an odd mag - it's six-monthly and collects together all the posters in megami over the preceding months, plus a few things from animedia. So you're getting stuff you've already got and they're smaller, but they're also cleaner (i.e. there are no folds).

It's a huge undertaking scanning wise--there were around 80 pages to scan, so you can see why I didn't get any artbooks done as well.

Anyway, some long sessions scanning mean I've also been watching fansubs:

• Ikkitousen: Great Guardians - fairly good. Watch the 2nd ep (the fansubs seem to end there due to licensing) and it seems to continue being fairly decent. The decision to go with an original story seems to work better that when they're adapting the manga.
• Chocolate Underground - okay. I think this is a kid's show, actually, as it seems to have educational stuff in it about where chocolate is from, etc. It was fairly decent, but not hugely engaging.
• Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief (Nijuu Mensou no Musume) - okay. I was only able to watch one episode of this, presumably due to licensing stuff, and it was also subbed in Italian (No, I don't speak Italian) :/. From what I saw it seemed okay, but as I say I couldn't really understand the dialogue, although the basics of what was happening were fairly clear.
• Gosenzosama Banbanzai! - this was awful. It's a really old show that happened to get some fansubs, but it was really poor. The problem was that the characters tended to stand still babbling on about crap for ten minutes at a time. And I really do mean ten minute stretches of them just standing there jabbering away and me falling asleep.
• Soul Eater - fairly good. I'd read somewhere this was just an animu version of Harry Potter. Now, I can't claim to be hugely familiar with Harry, having only seen the movies, but it didn't really seem that way to me. Overall, I'd probably buy it, tbh--some very funny stuff and the animation was really lovely.
• Slayers Revolution - good. More slayers, basically. Tonally it's the same stuff, character designs are unchanged. Voice actors seem different, but then I'm more used to the English dub actors, tbh. If you like other slayers stuff, you'll like this; and since I do, I did :).
• Penguin no Mondai - not very good, sorta. When I watched the first episode I initially thought I'd stumbled across a hidden gem. But after that first episode and an initial novelty factor, it really annoyed me. I think this might also have been a kids show, but what I do know is it's actually computer animation (it's filtered to make it look flat) and it didn't really look right.
  

But the other big thing I did--and the reason for the title of this entry--is I finished watching Tenden Toppa Gurren Lagann. Oh. My. God. What a truly awesome show this is. I must admit, the second 'arc' (episodes 10-18) had me a little worried as they were a bit all over the place, but this last 'arc' (episodes 19-27) was back to being totally awesome.

Row, row, fight da powah! indeed.

28 weeks later

So I watched 28 weeks later on rental last night, which is the sequel to 28 days later.

It was pretty good. There were some good scares and it was quite streamlined--there weren't many flat points. The ending especially was quite good, a nice sting that lent an irony to the rest of the film, although it was a little predictable.

It did sort of lack a point, though. In the first film, following the initial stuff there was a clear point of trying to escape to somewhere safe.

In this second one, I dunno, I guess there was a point, but it seemed a little random. The whole immunity of the mother thing almost seemed to be wrapped up in a suggestion that somehow she was somehow keeping the infection suppressed so that she could give it to her husband & family.

When you combine that with the husband's behaviour after infection (he seemed to be consciously targeting his kids), I dunno, it didn't chime well with the infection as established in the previous film as being about mindless rage. There was also almost a suggestion that the virus was somehow controlling them to act that way, or that the virus had come up with a grand plan to infect the world.

It was a little odd in that respect. A more traditional route to go might have been to have the US military conducting experiments on the infected to see if they could use them as weapons. I'd have bought that sort of plot-line, but the "rage family" thing didn't quite work for me. Still, it was quite good as a horror film.

so now it's winter?

I can't figure this weather out at all--summer seemed all over the place, with some days hot enough for me to break out the aircon, but a lot of rain and cold days too.

Now I think it's meant to be autumn, but it seems we've skipped that and gone straight to winter--the mornings are really dark and it's cold and rainy all the time. In fact, it's been so cold I've considered putting the heating on occasionally, but instead I've broken out the winter jumpers.

I've been catching up with a lot of telly this week. Some of the highlights have included "the hairy bakers" which is a play on words--the series is normally the hairy bikers, but this series has been about baking, which is a subject close to my heart.

I like the hairy bikers, but the show is an odd mix of stuff. It's basically a cookery show, but the way it's delivered is almost high camp, although the idea is that these are two big hairy blokes who ride motorcycles.

Another highlight has been "mutual friends". This is a comedy drama starring Alexander Armstrong and that skinny young fella off of Hustle as well as a bunch of other people who you don't initially recognise but then go "oh yeah, that's her/him off of...". I must admit I was expecting this to be utterly awful. I can't remember the last time I saw a comedy drama that was actually any good--it's been a while.

Which isn't to say mutual friends covers any new ground as such. It's not really innovative in terms of its subject matter, but the jokes are good and it's well done.

What else? Oh yeah, the other thing has been a series of shows around surgery. The quality of the shows has varied quite a bit, but they're mostly interesting. One thing I have liked about the shows is that they're fairly impartial in their outlook.

By that I mean they're not fawning over the doctors and they don't hesitate to make the point that maybe some new technique sounded like a good idea, but clearly wasn't (or was flawed) and several patients died.

They're not for the squeamish, though--the blood really flies in some of the shows.

I got the new megami last week and just got some e-mails saying newtype et al are on the way. I don't think that means I'll have them for the w/end, though. However, my big plan for the w/end is to do a lot of scanning, I think.

There's a bit of an ulterior motive to that, though--I'm way, way behind on the new anime season. It's getting to the stage where the external HDD I keep them on is nearly full and I really need to burn some off to DVD. Plus the new season of shows starts in October, which means there will be a flood of new fansubs in some six-weeks or so.

Extra, Extra!

Something else I did last w/end was properly finish off some of the anime I've been watching recently.

Slightly bizarrely, and I'm not sure I've ever been in this position before, I had loads of extras to plough through. I mean, that never happens with anime--extras generally just run to clean opening and closing credits.

Agent Aika R-16 had interviews with original Japanese cast members and director and character designed as well as interviews with the English dub actors.

Black Lagoon had a music video and an interview with the English dub casts (all a bit light for an entire separate disk :/).

But Witchblade had the most - interviews with the original Japanese cast members and a series of 20-minute-ish documentaries talking to the Top Cow people.

Not sure about Aika, but I'll definitely be reviewing the other too, although I may roll Black Lagoon up together with Second Barrage. I understand they're not really particularly 'distinct' as seasons--more like one of those full seasons done in two parts you get with anime. Plus it's several distinct individual story-lines anyway.

Plus Funimation are pumping Second Barrage out one disk a month so it makes sense. As I noted before, it's just the Geneon release, but distributed by Funimation. I'm also hopefully about to get my grubby mitts on the last part of Gurren Lagann too.

Funimation seems to be on the verge of taking over the world. I've mixed feelings about that--if it means I can get hold of anime DVDs then it has to be a good thing, but if I'm honest I've never been that big a fan of Funimation. They seem to be the company most responsible for buggered about translations, although they are also the company that often offers the most extras/freebies and best episode-per-disk count.

If they get the last Welcome to NHK and Red Garden disks out--and they're consistent with the old releases--then I may be swayed.

Black Dahlia

Watched Black Dahlia this last w/end - rental job.

I have to say, if I'm honest, I thought it was rubbish.

Now, the whole point of a crime-thriller/drama type thing is that it's about the murder(s). Yes, there will be personal stuff about the detectives or whatever, but the focus has to be on them trying to capture the murderer.

Black Dahlia seemed to be about anything but the murder. The whole plot just seemed to be tacked on to a bunch of hugely melodramatic (and rather implausible) relationships and shags there related. There were so many sub-plots and related goings-on it just lost all focus.

And what's worse is that most of these sub-plots were utterly irrelevant. I mean, a good sub-plot illuminates the main story in some way. These were all just useless.

The biggest crime it committed though was that in the 'last real' we get a whole series of ridiculous "plot twists" that just result in a totally bizarre explanation for the murder. I mean, seriously, it's just the most ludicrous solution ever. Especially since the body was mutilated--there's no real reason given for these mutilations, and that's got to be a part of the plot. If weird things are done to the body there has to be a reason given for them.

It's not real life, where bizarre stuff happens for no real reason, it's a story--you have to answer that stuff or you're taking the piss. And Black Dahlia was definitely taking the piss.

interweb? doesn't-ever-fucking-work-right-web more like

The internet here at work is shit.

It's impossible to go a week without the connection either grinding to halt, or just totally not working. And when it does work it's as slow as a geriatric snail.

I wouldn't mind (it's not like it's my connection) except I know the company pays a fortune for it and it rankles a bit knowing we pay so much for so very little.

Anyway, a fairly random w/end, if I'm honest. I'll do some more specific blog entries about some of the stuff later in the week, but I guess the main one following on from my last post is that I completed Company of Heroes.

My opinion is basically unchanged--pretty good game, but I felt a little disconnected. Interestingly I also started the sequel/expansion "Opposing Fronts" and this was much more personalised. You actually play one of the commanders and the briefings refer to you as that character, so I guess it must have been a common criticism.

Installing O.F. was a bit of a nightmare--there were something like six patches that it needed to download and install and all bar one of them was huge. Most were like 130-odd meg. Luckily my connection at home is a hell of a lot better than a t work so dl'ing files that size isn't hugely problematic.

But still, it was hugely frustrating. Mainly because why hadn't they rolled all the updates up into one patch? Maybe because it would have been nearly a gig, but I bet some of them overlapped.

Training Shmaining

My posting on here has been erratic this week--I've posted the posts I would have, but they've not really been one-a-day like usual.

The reason for that is because I have been working on a training course. And it's not been a whole lot of fun.

The idea is that one of the companies we do work for wants to get a better idea of how the work we do works... er, if you can unpick that sentence, more power to you :/. The training started off as a bit of a weird thing in the proposal we responded to. It was aimed at them essentially receiving enough training to do the work we do themselves.

That seemed like a very dumb idea to us. One of the fundamental points it ignores is that if you're not the sort of person who is adept at stats, then you're just never going to 'get it'.

I know in these ages of equality and stuff we're not supposed to say stuff like this, but the fundamental truth is that different people's brains are wired in different ways. And that means that some people will never be any good at some things. Sure, they might be able to work hard and gain some competency, but there's a huge gap between that and having a natural ability at something.

Anyway, it never quite panned out that way and so instead, we've given a mini "introductory" session. It's been hell putting it together--balancing elements of what the person will be able to grasp and actually covering some useful stuff.

And there were some worrying signs--asking of questions we'd actually answered in material we'd already covered, for example. But I think some of it sunk in.

It definitely put paid to any possible notion of me becoming a teacher. Not that I've ever wanted to be a teacher, but this confirmed it's definitely not something I have a natural affinity for.

And this joyous week of work has been capped off with me having to put myself forward for some SPSS seminar rubbish.

Basically, they're just a massive hard-sell for SPSS add-ons, but the boss seems to think it's going to be useful. Really I wanted to say 'no' to going, but I always worry about--being overly negative, not wanting to "advance" myself. Better to just grit my teeth and bear it and then say it was useless afterwards, I think.

Plus it's on a Friday, so it's not a bad day out of the office to have.

witche-brade-oh

Or witchblade if you're not hampered by Japanese phonetics :).

I finished watching this the other day. It was surprisingly good. It was yet another one of those shows I'd seen the first couple of eps of and then purchased blind.

I'm not sure it ever quite got to being great as there were a lot of niggles I had with the show. It's perfect review material from that point of view :).

What I would say, however, is it was extraordinarily good value for money. The disks all had slip-covers and booklets, there was a soundtrack free with the box set. Each disk also had several extras, and we're talking proper meaty extras--not just textless songs.

gamering-ism

I don't talk much in the old blog about gaming.

Well, there was that obsession with Civ3 a while back, but that was a separate issue. The main reason I don't talk about it is I don't do a lot of it.

I have a slightly love/hate relationship with gaming. There are a few reasons for that. One of the most important is that the types of games I enjoy tend to be those that you have to really get involved with to get the most out of.

I mainly play real-time strategy (RTS) and first-person shooters (FPS). Both of which generally have levels that last a long time. A good RTS level can take hours and so can an FPS level, especially if it's some way into the game and it's getting more difficult.

This means to really play the game you need a good few hours and I generally don't have that much free time kicking about.

Another reason is that I'm just not very good at games. It's not so much that I get annoyed with dying or anything, it's more that I'm just not very good. So I get shot a lot in FPS's for example, which if the game mechanics aren't kind means I die and then that means restarting.

Also, I can get annoyed at some of the bizarre attempts at realism. One of my "favourites" is the 'you can only carry two guns' thing. This just seems patently ridiculous to me--it' a game, just give me bigger pockets. I mean, how realistic is it that I can survive a shot-gun blast at point-blank range, and yet oh-no, I can only carry two guns.

I also worry slightly about gaming--I mean, is it a grown up activity or not? I mean, if I still played with toy trucks or Star Wars figures people would think I was werid right? So isn't playing computer games on a par with that? Shouldn't I just read a good book instead?

Anyway, this entry was a bit inspired because I spent most of Sunday gaming. I was playing Company of Heroes, which is an RTS.

I picked this up actually mainly because I understand that Dawn of War 2 will use the CoH game engine and I wanted to check it out.

I can't say I've been wonderfully enamoured. Not that it's a bad game or that it doesn't look gorgeous or play well, it's just I'm not really feeling it. I mean, I don't quite feel connected to it--there's no individual character that I can relate to.

The game uses an entire company of soldiers (Able company) and it's kind hard getting to feel that I have a vested stake in their activities. It's like the classic trick is to have 'hero' characters--leaders or special characters who stand out and give you that feeling, but here there aren't. If one unit gets mown down by machine guns, I just build another.

They also don't do the classic C&C trick of referring to me the player as "Commander" or anything. In fact the briefings are all phrased as "we need to do this stuff" not "you need to do this stuff" even though it's me that's controlling everything.

I just hope they include hero characters in DoW2 - the stuff I've seems to suggest they will.

who watches the watchers of the watchmen?

I finished reading Watchmen this last w/end.

I'm kinda unchanged in my opinions on Alan Moore, being that I'm not his biggest fan. I know a lot of people love his stuff, and more power to them, it's just for me he doesn't quite work.

The problem I find is he doesn't really seem to write comic books--he seems to write novellas that someone else then draws accompanying pictures for. They're very words and there's very little real reliance on visual story telling, which is really what comics are all about.

Really, the purest form of comics would have no speech at all. And it's like the decision in watchmen to not have sound effects--it's backwards, really to be a proper pure comics, s-fx should be the only text.

Which isn't to say that watchmen doesn't achieve what it set out to do--it's got a complex, interweaving plot and lots of sub-texts and all sorts of other clever things. I'm just not sure that makes it an entertaining comic book.

It's also far too dense as a 12-part comic book--really it's 24 part comic book (or novella, as a mentioned) that's been squeezed into 12 parts by the clever use of tiny panels.

I could go on with loads of other tiny quibbles, but those are my main feelings.