animu challenge

Well I finished gatekeepers.

I've got to say I'm mildly impressed. I don't think it's the greatest anime ever made, but it's a long way from the worst as well. There are a few niggley points I had - especially with the main bad guy - but expect a basically positive review some time in the future over on trismugistus.com.

The animu challenge of actually sitting down and watching DVDs has got off to a reasonable start then. I guess I averaged 2 disks a night (gatekeepers was 24 eps across 8 disks) so about 6 episodes-ish a night. That's not at all bad given all the stuff I have to do.

Now to watch the sequel - gatekeepers 21. Only, I've actually already seen it. I know, that's a bit odd, isn't it? But I kinda ended up buying without realising it was a sequel. I'm guessing now, having seen the original show it will make more sense, though :).

All this anime watching does sorta mean I lost a bit of momentum on the script I was writing. This kinda opened a slot for me to do one of the more frustrating things I do. Rather than finish the script and then think about redrafts I got suckered into reading some "how to" sites.

One is written by a very successful screenwriter so he knows what he's talking about.

The slightly odd thing is that I kinda managed to tick lots of boxes without having really read these before. However, the annoying this is I've now started to pick my work apart and find flaws with it before I've even finished it. Clearly this is bad because to be a writer, first you must write, and you can only say you've written if you finish.

Ah well, I'm sure I'll crack this one day.

I'll possibly get my hair cut this weekend. I'm also planning to have a crack at making soem carrot and pineapple muffins.

I've been on something of a cooking spree lately. I'm not sure what's inspired it, but I've been making stuff like spaghetti bolognese, liver and bacon, toad in the hole - this is rather than relying on buying pre-made / microwave meals type stuff.

It's been pretty successful, actually, so this weekend I though I might tackle some muffin recipe. I've found muffins to be tricky in the past. Cakes are pretty easy - all cake recipes rely on using a fixed 1:1:1 ratio of eggs, S.R. flour and sugar. Muffins replace the eggs with things like vegetable oil and you use plain flour but with bicarbonate of soda instead of S.R. flour. They're more complicated, in other words, so fingers crossed.