So the big question for the weekend is will it be a bit cooler?
It's been very hot this last week, but not only that, it's been very humid and sticky too - especially at night.
I'm not sure if it's quite capped Nice/Monaco yet, but then for one thing this week I've obviously been at work, rather than sat out in the sun. While it's still hot, being sat in the sun is hotter still.
Also, I've the advantage at home of having the air conditioner. So wile it's horribly hot when I get back from work, within an hour or so my air con has cooled it down to something resembling warm. Then by the evening it can be veritably frosty in my bedroom.
I actually did a bit of an experiment the last two nights. Normally I try to keep my bedroom door closed when I use the aircon, in an attempt to make and keep that room as cold as possible. The problem with this seems to be that as soon as the aircon goes off it heats up very quickly.
What I tried was opening the door and also using fans to try to blow the hot kitchen air into the bedroom. My theory was that by cooling the whole place it would mean the bedroom would stay cooler for longer at night - there'd be no rush of hot air in from the kitchen.
I think it worked, though less successfully last night. I dunno, it can be difficult to really tell because you can't really account for the effects of natural variations.
Anyway, I'm hoping for a bit of a respite this weekend at least. A couple of cooler days would go down well. Especially as this weekend is a cleaning weekend, so finger's crossed.
But either way, I'm going to try to get my hair cut. Longer hair is not so good in warm weather.
I've been having a few weird experiences with the old bread maker. I've been trying to diversify away from the white bread and on Wednesday tried a brown loaf. It didn't quite go to plan, shall we say?
The problem was that it didn't really rise as much as I was expecting. The rising agent in bread is yeast, which gives off carbon dioxide as it ferments. Trouble with yeast is it's alive, but the form you buy it in is a kind of inert form.
But it does mean that it can 'die' or also be activated too early by exposure to water. I've been trying to run the bread machine so that it produces a loaf when I get back from work, but that means I obviously couldn't check the progress of this first brown loaf.
I've therefore no idea if I cocked up or if the yeast was knackered or what. But basically the bread came out almost slab like. It wasn't quite like unleavened bread, but it certainly wasn't fluffy and light like all the white loaves I've had so far.
But there is another factor of course - I've no idea how sitting in this natural heat waiting on the timer is affecting the process. What I did do was try a normal white loaf last night, but not using the timer.
It went okay - the loaf is light and fluffy, so I don't think the yeast is too blame. Maybe it was just the heat evaporating the water?
Friday, 3 July 2009
Thursday, 2 July 2009
bb10 is no more
I've mentioned before that on Thursday nights there's currently a ridiculous number of programmes that I want to watch. I also mentioned that two of them weren't very good.
Well, on Monday I summoned up the courage and deleted them from my PVR's recording schedule. At the same time I had a bit of a think and also came to the decision that I'm dumping bb10.
Part of me is missing it, but a bigger part of me is relieved that I've freed up so much viewing time. It's already paying dividends, because I immediately started watching Battlestar Galactica.
I'd heard good things about the new Battlestar, and so far I've seen nothing to make me disagree. If I'm brutally honest, the original miniseries wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped.
I mean it was in no way bad, but I was slightly left wondering why people had said it was so great. However, starting on Series 1 it became very apparent that it was a very good series.
And I think this difference was actually something of a falsity, caused by what they did to the miniseries on DVD. Even though it's a miniseries, it's been edited into one single entity. In other words, they've presented it as a (very nearly) 3 hour film.
To be frank, it's too long - I had to watch it in two halves. But also, because of the way American television has to be written to incorporate advert breaks it generally has a very clear 3 act structure. Because of the perceived button-bashing nature of American viewers, they like to go to the ad break with a big suspense moment that will encourage viewers to watch again after the ads.
So, if an hour-long show has 3 ad breaks, you end up with 2 big "act break" moments that will encourage viewers to come back. Plus, with it being a mini-series, each episode is of course going to end on a cliff-hanger too.
But that means when you edit, say, 4 of them all together you end up with 12 act breaks :/. Now that's fine in one sense, but it kinda makes the thing a bit exhausting to view. When you watch a normal show and marathon a 4 ep DVD you'll get the credits in there, telling you "okay, now you can go pee" or get a drink or whatever, or you're are at least aware that you're watching a new ep and can refocus your attention.
With it all edited together, these climactic act-break moments keep happening, but there's no respite - the thing just keeps rolling. And that makes it a little fatiguing to watch.
In other words, what I'm saying is, oddly, if it was broken up, I think I'd have enjoyed it more. But it was still good.
Well, on Monday I summoned up the courage and deleted them from my PVR's recording schedule. At the same time I had a bit of a think and also came to the decision that I'm dumping bb10.
Part of me is missing it, but a bigger part of me is relieved that I've freed up so much viewing time. It's already paying dividends, because I immediately started watching Battlestar Galactica.
I'd heard good things about the new Battlestar, and so far I've seen nothing to make me disagree. If I'm brutally honest, the original miniseries wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped.
I mean it was in no way bad, but I was slightly left wondering why people had said it was so great. However, starting on Series 1 it became very apparent that it was a very good series.
And I think this difference was actually something of a falsity, caused by what they did to the miniseries on DVD. Even though it's a miniseries, it's been edited into one single entity. In other words, they've presented it as a (very nearly) 3 hour film.
To be frank, it's too long - I had to watch it in two halves. But also, because of the way American television has to be written to incorporate advert breaks it generally has a very clear 3 act structure. Because of the perceived button-bashing nature of American viewers, they like to go to the ad break with a big suspense moment that will encourage viewers to watch again after the ads.
So, if an hour-long show has 3 ad breaks, you end up with 2 big "act break" moments that will encourage viewers to come back. Plus, with it being a mini-series, each episode is of course going to end on a cliff-hanger too.
But that means when you edit, say, 4 of them all together you end up with 12 act breaks :/. Now that's fine in one sense, but it kinda makes the thing a bit exhausting to view. When you watch a normal show and marathon a 4 ep DVD you'll get the credits in there, telling you "okay, now you can go pee" or get a drink or whatever, or you're are at least aware that you're watching a new ep and can refocus your attention.
With it all edited together, these climactic act-break moments keep happening, but there's no respite - the thing just keeps rolling. And that makes it a little fatiguing to watch.
In other words, what I'm saying is, oddly, if it was broken up, I think I'd have enjoyed it more. But it was still good.
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
iron man
doo, doo, doo-do-do, dodee-dodee-dodee-duh-doo-doo-doo.
Er, that's supposed to be a sort of sing-along version of the riff to Sabbath's Iron Man.
Well, anyway, moving right along...
I've never been that big a fan of Iron Man.
I've read the comic a few times, and Marvel are great ones for crossovers, so I've encountered him sometimes in the other books I've read. I dunno - he never really appealed to me, I guess. The thing I liked about the superheroes I tended to follow was that they were more along the lines of greatness-thrust-upon-them.
So I really liked Spiderman - an nerdy kid who has superpowers thrust upon him. He struggles with life just as much - if not more - as he does supervillains. I also really like Wolverine.
Wolverine always had the air that he was dragged into being a superhero because some internal moral compass could never stand to see bad triumph over good and only he could fix it. If he could, he'd happily step back and let others fix it, but when it came down to it, he did what needed to be done.
I also used to like the Punisher. I've not kept up with the newer versions, but the Punisher again was very much like Wolverine. The Punisher tended to deal in real-world crime of course, but there are a lot of similarities again.
One of the problems with Iron Man for me I think was the whole aspect of him being a weapons dealer. It was never clear to me quite how that worked - in the comics he still traded weapons (I think), yet in his spare time he was a vigilante superhero?
Also, the whole rich playboy aspect jarred with what I preferred. Spiderman was a nerdy kid who had to work to pay his bills and struggled with girlfriends, Wolverine I guess had a benefactor in Professor X but was a difficult, surly character who was difficult to love and Punisher could only leave by using the money he got from organised criminals he killed and of course had no love in his life since his family was murdered.
Tony Stark could buy half of the planet and was so damnable handsome, he could have any woman at the click of his fingers. Yeah, great from a power-fantasy point of view, but not my cup of tea.
What they cleverly do in the Iron Man film is iron out all of these issues.
So he's a weapons dealer, but he undergoes a crisis of faith, as it were. He becomes the victim of his own weapons.
He's a shagmonster, sleeping with all and sundry, but then we get to see he's actually probably in love with someone and it's suggested he shags around because he's lonely.
Now to some extent, these ideas are a little familiar, but this is where story telling and execution become of paramount importance. I mean, think about it - how many adaptations of Shakespeare's plays have there been? And, more relevantly, how many works "based on" those stories?
See, the point often isn't necessarily to do something new, but to do it well. And here they really did it well.
The cast is just about perfect - Downey Jr is brilliant as Tony Stark in particular. The effects in particular are spectacular - CGI has so come of age you virtually can't tell it's CGI anymore.
Also, there's a perfect blending between humour and seriousness, just the right amount of action and the right pitch in terms of tone and pathos.
It's not quite as good as Spiderman 2, but this has got to be up there amongst the best Superhero movies I've seen so far.
What's especially interesting is that the deleted scenes are on the disc as extras and I think that every cut they made was right. Sometimes you watch the deleted scenes and think - oh, they should have left that in as it explains better or whatever, but here everything they chopped out made it better.
Er, that's supposed to be a sort of sing-along version of the riff to Sabbath's Iron Man.
Well, anyway, moving right along...
I've never been that big a fan of Iron Man.
I've read the comic a few times, and Marvel are great ones for crossovers, so I've encountered him sometimes in the other books I've read. I dunno - he never really appealed to me, I guess. The thing I liked about the superheroes I tended to follow was that they were more along the lines of greatness-thrust-upon-them.
So I really liked Spiderman - an nerdy kid who has superpowers thrust upon him. He struggles with life just as much - if not more - as he does supervillains. I also really like Wolverine.
Wolverine always had the air that he was dragged into being a superhero because some internal moral compass could never stand to see bad triumph over good and only he could fix it. If he could, he'd happily step back and let others fix it, but when it came down to it, he did what needed to be done.
I also used to like the Punisher. I've not kept up with the newer versions, but the Punisher again was very much like Wolverine. The Punisher tended to deal in real-world crime of course, but there are a lot of similarities again.
One of the problems with Iron Man for me I think was the whole aspect of him being a weapons dealer. It was never clear to me quite how that worked - in the comics he still traded weapons (I think), yet in his spare time he was a vigilante superhero?
Also, the whole rich playboy aspect jarred with what I preferred. Spiderman was a nerdy kid who had to work to pay his bills and struggled with girlfriends, Wolverine I guess had a benefactor in Professor X but was a difficult, surly character who was difficult to love and Punisher could only leave by using the money he got from organised criminals he killed and of course had no love in his life since his family was murdered.
Tony Stark could buy half of the planet and was so damnable handsome, he could have any woman at the click of his fingers. Yeah, great from a power-fantasy point of view, but not my cup of tea.
What they cleverly do in the Iron Man film is iron out all of these issues.
So he's a weapons dealer, but he undergoes a crisis of faith, as it were. He becomes the victim of his own weapons.
He's a shagmonster, sleeping with all and sundry, but then we get to see he's actually probably in love with someone and it's suggested he shags around because he's lonely.
Now to some extent, these ideas are a little familiar, but this is where story telling and execution become of paramount importance. I mean, think about it - how many adaptations of Shakespeare's plays have there been? And, more relevantly, how many works "based on" those stories?
See, the point often isn't necessarily to do something new, but to do it well. And here they really did it well.
The cast is just about perfect - Downey Jr is brilliant as Tony Stark in particular. The effects in particular are spectacular - CGI has so come of age you virtually can't tell it's CGI anymore.
Also, there's a perfect blending between humour and seriousness, just the right amount of action and the right pitch in terms of tone and pathos.
It's not quite as good as Spiderman 2, but this has got to be up there amongst the best Superhero movies I've seen so far.
What's especially interesting is that the deleted scenes are on the disc as extras and I think that every cut they made was right. Sometimes you watch the deleted scenes and think - oh, they should have left that in as it explains better or whatever, but here everything they chopped out made it better.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
empowered volume 5
When I got back on Friday I was greeted by a pleasant sight - the latest volume of Empowered had turned up.
Empowered is by Adam Warren, who I'm something of a fan of. His drawing style is what's called (or now called - there's something of a plethora of different terms for it) Original English-Language Manga, or OEL.
In other words, he draws in a manga style. It's not an entirely traditional manga style - over the years Warren's style has grown and developed as you'd expect of any artist - but manga-influenced, nonetheless.
Empowered is his latest project - it's been going for a few years now, and this is the fifth volume. Give-or-take, each volume of Emp is better than the last, although my personal opinion was that it dipped a little in volume 4.
Perhaps that's something of a reflection of how much I enjoyed vol3, but I think it was more to do with the extended fight at the end of the volume. It wasn't bad or anything, it just felt a bit 'been there, done that' for some reason - superheroes fighting for huge page counts is in every other book too.
Anyway, the point is that volume 5 is an absolute cracker. It too has a long chapter at the end, which also involves a big old superhero fight, but here Warren does what he's best at in Emp and kinda subverts that. Basically, it all goes tits up and they get wiped out in five minutes and then the rest of the story is about Emp simply trying to survive. Also, we get some true heroism in the form of people sacrificing themselves to save others.
See, there's nothing wrong with Emp using powers to do the superhero thing like in Vol 4, it's just that the book works better when it's subverting (that's really the wrong word, but I can't think of a better one) that idea and showing the other side. The Emp et al being human side.
I mean, in a sense, that's the core theme of the book - if Emp's very fragile suit gets torn up, she looses her powers, yet she still leaps into danger. And also, even when it does get torn up and she looses her powers she still manages to save the day. It's all about the true heroism.
Anyway, enough of the deeper analysis stuff.
What's also great about this volume is that it contains a good balance of "other stuff" too. As the volumes have progressed, the number of characters has greatly increased, as you'd imagine, and quite a few of them are more than just background characters. They're not quite stars of the book, but they're a bit more than supporting characters.
One of my favourites is the caged Demonwolf, a mega-powerful evil entity in the Lovecraftian vein who Emp trapped inside a sort of bondage belt thing. He now basically lives on Emp's coffee table and is essentially just a voice.
But what a voice - he has quite the way of words and is often used by Warren to narrate stories. These take the form of more fanciful/possibly-fictitious accounts through to more realistic narration.
What particularly amused me this volume is that the Demonwolf relates a story and quotes some of the character, but what they say gets processed through Demonwolf speak and becomes very humorous.
There's also a good chunk of Ninjette in the book and a character called Ocelotina recurs too.
This is actually an advantage of the way the book is structured. The book is written as a proper graphic novel, rather than being a collection of individual comic books. This means that chapter length varies, which means a shorter (or longer) chapter featuring a secondary character can be included without needing to batter it into the required page count.
So yeah, check it out.
The last few pages put a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye - if there's any higher recommendation than that, I don't know what it is.
Empowered is by Adam Warren, who I'm something of a fan of. His drawing style is what's called (or now called - there's something of a plethora of different terms for it) Original English-Language Manga, or OEL.
In other words, he draws in a manga style. It's not an entirely traditional manga style - over the years Warren's style has grown and developed as you'd expect of any artist - but manga-influenced, nonetheless.
Empowered is his latest project - it's been going for a few years now, and this is the fifth volume. Give-or-take, each volume of Emp is better than the last, although my personal opinion was that it dipped a little in volume 4.
Perhaps that's something of a reflection of how much I enjoyed vol3, but I think it was more to do with the extended fight at the end of the volume. It wasn't bad or anything, it just felt a bit 'been there, done that' for some reason - superheroes fighting for huge page counts is in every other book too.
Anyway, the point is that volume 5 is an absolute cracker. It too has a long chapter at the end, which also involves a big old superhero fight, but here Warren does what he's best at in Emp and kinda subverts that. Basically, it all goes tits up and they get wiped out in five minutes and then the rest of the story is about Emp simply trying to survive. Also, we get some true heroism in the form of people sacrificing themselves to save others.
See, there's nothing wrong with Emp using powers to do the superhero thing like in Vol 4, it's just that the book works better when it's subverting (that's really the wrong word, but I can't think of a better one) that idea and showing the other side. The Emp et al being human side.
I mean, in a sense, that's the core theme of the book - if Emp's very fragile suit gets torn up, she looses her powers, yet she still leaps into danger. And also, even when it does get torn up and she looses her powers she still manages to save the day. It's all about the true heroism.
Anyway, enough of the deeper analysis stuff.
What's also great about this volume is that it contains a good balance of "other stuff" too. As the volumes have progressed, the number of characters has greatly increased, as you'd imagine, and quite a few of them are more than just background characters. They're not quite stars of the book, but they're a bit more than supporting characters.
One of my favourites is the caged Demonwolf, a mega-powerful evil entity in the Lovecraftian vein who Emp trapped inside a sort of bondage belt thing. He now basically lives on Emp's coffee table and is essentially just a voice.
But what a voice - he has quite the way of words and is often used by Warren to narrate stories. These take the form of more fanciful/possibly-fictitious accounts through to more realistic narration.
What particularly amused me this volume is that the Demonwolf relates a story and quotes some of the character, but what they say gets processed through Demonwolf speak and becomes very humorous.
There's also a good chunk of Ninjette in the book and a character called Ocelotina recurs too.
This is actually an advantage of the way the book is structured. The book is written as a proper graphic novel, rather than being a collection of individual comic books. This means that chapter length varies, which means a shorter (or longer) chapter featuring a secondary character can be included without needing to batter it into the required page count.
So yeah, check it out.
The last few pages put a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye - if there's any higher recommendation than that, I don't know what it is.
Monday, 29 June 2009
phew, what a scorcher
God, it was hot on Saturday.
I managed to get the car washed and polished, but with hindsight, waiting until Sunday would have been the better decision. It was cloudier and a bit cooler on Sunday, so it would have been a more pleasant experience, but not by much, I think.
Saturday spurred me into breaking out the air conditioner on Sunday morning. I think this is going to be a very good thing, as the forecast is for a bit of a heat wave this week.
If this is the case it does mean I made a bit of a tactical error. I was thinking about getting a haircut on Saturday, but in the end was too lazy to bother (I have to get up very early to get to the hairdresser before any sort of queue forms). Whilst I'm not desperate for a haircut, shedding a bit on the top might help if it is going to be scorching.
Sunday I also did a huge amount of scanning and finished all of the magazines. Don't get me wrong, I still have a lot of scanning to do, but it was nice to finish the magazines. I actually put the scanner away as I'm kinda sick of looking at it, but it'll have to come out again soon.
While I scanned I watched some fansubs of course:
I watched some more Hatsukoi Limited. I actually kinda spoiled this for myself a bit by reading the manga online. What happened was I thought I'd see what the manga was like and if it was available in the west, but during my investigations I found it on a scanslation site and also discovered it was only 4 volumes long.
These discoveries kinda meant I ended up reading the whole thing. It was good, but it meant I knew what was coming next in the manga. However, interestingly they've tweaked the anime quite a bit and I actually the think the tweaks are something of an improvement, and definitely flesh things out a bit more.
Oh, and I also discovered it's by the same manga-ka who did Strawberry 100%. The art style is still gorgeous, but it's better than 100% as the plot strands advance in a much more succinct and direct way. There's none of that fannying about and tooing and froing that gets annoying in 100%.
Asura Cryin was kinda rubbish. I mean, it wasn't actively bad, but it was such a generic mish-mash of stuff you've seen before that it was very dull.
There's actually a quote I once heard that went something along the lines of "I'd rather be confused for 10 minutes than bored for 10 seconds" and in a way Asura Cryin tries to follow that principle. It starts off with all sort of weird stuff that you don't really know quite what's going on.
For example, the main character has a female ghost that follows him about. Or another example is a weird girl that turns up and gives him a suitcase. Or the other weird girl that breaks in that night, using magic and threatens him.
But the problem is that all of these surprising elements are basically standard anime elements. I mean, if I'd never seen any anime before ever then maybe it would work, but as it is I was able to guess most of the twists before they happened.
I then watched one episode of something called Jewelpet. This show is definitely not aimed at me - it's aimed at little girls and not only that, but it's raison d'etre is selling toys to young girls. Think Transformers, Pokemon, Beyblade, etc - it's a show aimed at flogging toys.
It was also quite poorly (cheaply) animated and wasn't exactly based on an original concept - there are these magical creatures that look like jewels lost around the earth and you have to go and find them.
However, more in my age group is Sengoku Basara. I have to admit that on some level I was a little disappointed by Sengoku Basara, because it was exactly what I was expecting.
I know that sounds weird, but I think I was secretly hoping for a bit more of a surprise element to it. I mean, what's there is all perfectly good, but if it had whipped out something extra - something a bit more bonkers maybe - I'd have liked it more.
Also, I was a little unsure how serious it was meant to be. There were some thing that were quite comical, but I wasn't sure how much of the rest of the show was supposed to be taken in that vein. For example, there's a really hot ninja who has a sort of 'love-explosion' moment where the background goes pink and she makes an orgasmic face. Which was quite funny, but a lot of the rest of the show was played with straight faces.
But don't get me wrong - I liked it, just probably not as much as I'd hoped.
I managed to get the car washed and polished, but with hindsight, waiting until Sunday would have been the better decision. It was cloudier and a bit cooler on Sunday, so it would have been a more pleasant experience, but not by much, I think.
Saturday spurred me into breaking out the air conditioner on Sunday morning. I think this is going to be a very good thing, as the forecast is for a bit of a heat wave this week.
If this is the case it does mean I made a bit of a tactical error. I was thinking about getting a haircut on Saturday, but in the end was too lazy to bother (I have to get up very early to get to the hairdresser before any sort of queue forms). Whilst I'm not desperate for a haircut, shedding a bit on the top might help if it is going to be scorching.
Sunday I also did a huge amount of scanning and finished all of the magazines. Don't get me wrong, I still have a lot of scanning to do, but it was nice to finish the magazines. I actually put the scanner away as I'm kinda sick of looking at it, but it'll have to come out again soon.
While I scanned I watched some fansubs of course:
I watched some more Hatsukoi Limited. I actually kinda spoiled this for myself a bit by reading the manga online. What happened was I thought I'd see what the manga was like and if it was available in the west, but during my investigations I found it on a scanslation site and also discovered it was only 4 volumes long.
These discoveries kinda meant I ended up reading the whole thing. It was good, but it meant I knew what was coming next in the manga. However, interestingly they've tweaked the anime quite a bit and I actually the think the tweaks are something of an improvement, and definitely flesh things out a bit more.
Oh, and I also discovered it's by the same manga-ka who did Strawberry 100%. The art style is still gorgeous, but it's better than 100% as the plot strands advance in a much more succinct and direct way. There's none of that fannying about and tooing and froing that gets annoying in 100%.
Asura Cryin was kinda rubbish. I mean, it wasn't actively bad, but it was such a generic mish-mash of stuff you've seen before that it was very dull.
There's actually a quote I once heard that went something along the lines of "I'd rather be confused for 10 minutes than bored for 10 seconds" and in a way Asura Cryin tries to follow that principle. It starts off with all sort of weird stuff that you don't really know quite what's going on.
For example, the main character has a female ghost that follows him about. Or another example is a weird girl that turns up and gives him a suitcase. Or the other weird girl that breaks in that night, using magic and threatens him.
But the problem is that all of these surprising elements are basically standard anime elements. I mean, if I'd never seen any anime before ever then maybe it would work, but as it is I was able to guess most of the twists before they happened.
I then watched one episode of something called Jewelpet. This show is definitely not aimed at me - it's aimed at little girls and not only that, but it's raison d'etre is selling toys to young girls. Think Transformers, Pokemon, Beyblade, etc - it's a show aimed at flogging toys.
It was also quite poorly (cheaply) animated and wasn't exactly based on an original concept - there are these magical creatures that look like jewels lost around the earth and you have to go and find them.
However, more in my age group is Sengoku Basara. I have to admit that on some level I was a little disappointed by Sengoku Basara, because it was exactly what I was expecting.
I know that sounds weird, but I think I was secretly hoping for a bit more of a surprise element to it. I mean, what's there is all perfectly good, but if it had whipped out something extra - something a bit more bonkers maybe - I'd have liked it more.
Also, I was a little unsure how serious it was meant to be. There were some thing that were quite comical, but I wasn't sure how much of the rest of the show was supposed to be taken in that vein. For example, there's a really hot ninja who has a sort of 'love-explosion' moment where the background goes pink and she makes an orgasmic face. Which was quite funny, but a lot of the rest of the show was played with straight faces.
But don't get me wrong - I liked it, just probably not as much as I'd hoped.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)