cable confusion

Yesterday was a near-total right-off.

I was just so tired from the intensity of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I could hardly even see straight, let alone do anything useful. I'm also pretty shattered today, but then I didn't help myself by playing Anno quite late into the night - dunno why I did that as I knew what the consequences would be.

I do feel a bit better, though, so hopefully I can get something done.

Tomorrow looks like it's going to be a bit manic, though.

Recently, they've been digging up the roads in the town (well, village is more accurate) where I normally do my shopping. This has caused traffic chaos so where I normally slip my shopping in during my lunch break, it's meant that I've been having to do it very early on a Saturday.

I mean, there are advantages to shopping very early on a Saturday, but generally I find the advantages offered by shopping during the week tend to outweigh these.

But anyway, the point is that I've got the shopping to do, but I've slowly been adding more and more other stuff too. First off, I'll need to fill up with petrol, which isn't a huge hassle, but it's easier if I do it before the shopping, which means getting up super early.

Then I need to go to the post office, but the slight problem is it's a bit of a triple-whammy. First off I need to get some photos done for my passport (this means I'll have to shave either tonight or tomorrow morning) and then I need to post a parcel for an e-bay auction thing and finally I need to collect a parcel because there's a customs charge to pay.

What makes it annoying is that the first two are best done in Alton, but the last has to be done in Farnham. I'm very tempted to pay the customs charge online and then basically go from there - they'll try to deliver it and if I'm lucky my landlord Jon will be in to collect it. If not, it at least puts the problem off for a week and I can collect it next week when thins will hopefully be a bit less busy.

And they get even busier when I get home after the post office, because I'm supposed to be experimenting with my landlord's broadband. I mentioned before that I was looking at trying to get cable, well it turned out that this was impossible.

Basically, Virgin said they don't allow two separate accounts at the same address (my place is a self-contained annex and so has the exact same address as the main residence). Why the won't is a bit of a mystery to me. BT will let you have multiple accounts at the same address - that's what I've got now.

So that seemed to put a serious kibosh on things until John offered that we run a cable from hi box right the way through to my place and that should let me plug into his broadband. If it all works it means I should be able to cancel my broadband at least.

I've actually been giving serious consideration to stopping my phone line as well. Ideally what I'd like to do is just have a mobile (indeed, I'd actually like to switch to a pay as you go mobile as well, rather than be on contract).

I dunno - I need to think about that a bit before I go ahead.

But anyway, the first step is the broadband, so I'm going to test my laptop on John's router and see how we go. If it works, then he's going to see if he can run a long cable into my place and if so then I may well be sorted.

son of rambow

Hmm.

Unlike yesterday's Blood Diamond, where I went in expecting it to be poor and really liked it, Son of Rambow I'd heard a lot of good stuff about and, well, I was a little disappointed if I'm honest.

I dunno - it just never really seemed to get going for me.

One of the problems I had was that you'd get a scene that was very realistic - this is what school is really like, but then suddenly there'd be a moment in it that was totally unrealistic. Or the entire next scene would just be daft.

There were also quite a few jokes that seemed to fall a bit flat to me. It reminded me quite a lot of Napoleon Dynamite, in that it kept feeling like I'd not quite got the gag. I mean, it wasn't that bad - I did find plenty of it funny - but it was that sort of thing.

But the thing is there were some truly excellent moments in it.

One of the characters was an artist with a huge and vivid imagination and every so often it sort of slipped into showing his imagination. There was a particularly effective dream sequence, for example, and another where he was travelling along in a car and his drawing were animated onto the surrounding fields.

These moments I absolutely loved - it was imaginative and lovely and clever all at the same time.

But other bits just didn't work for me. The whole issue of the same character being brought up in a weird religious sect just didn't really work.

Another element that didn't' quite gel was some of the dialogue. The main characters were all kids and some of the dialogue was perfectly framed for their age, but other bits were too grown up.

Not so much in the sentiments and feeling, but in how eloquently they were expressed. This was especially true for the scruff-bag/ruffian character - I had no problem with him being smart, but they way he talked needed to be less well rounded and clever in order to suit his character.

The problem is that makes me feel like a cynical, miserable git. What I mean is I didn't quite enjoy the film as much as I thought I was going to, but I'm left with a nagging feeling that maybe I was just not in the right frame of mind to enjoy it, rather than is being actively bad.

blood diamond

Last week with all the photos I didn't post a review of my weekly DVD rental and today is a little less manic, so here it is. I'll probably do this weeks rental tomorrow.

For some reason I went into this expecting it to be rather bad.

I don't know why I thought that, but I did, and overall I'd say I was wrong - it was actually pretty good.

There are some slightly patchy elements, though.

One of the most glaring is the question who's the star? Who's story is this?

Well, Di Caprio is the biggest name and you could also therefore argue that he's the star. He's not the nicest of characters, so I guess anti-hero might be the best phrase to use, but ultimately in the end he doesn't' feel like the star - he's more of a scene stealing support.

Similarly, the framing device for the whole film is that of a family that's torn apart by the civil war. A civil war that's fuelled by an illegal diamond trade.

But as I say, it's more of a framing device - it lends impetus to the story and allows us to follow a thread that lets us get a grip on the real story, but it's also at many times a secondary element. The father, whose looking for his family and then specifically his son who's been taken by the rebels adds a lot of emotional depth, but he and it also don't feel like the star.

The female journalist takes a supporting role, so what about that title element - the blood diamond?

Well again, it's not really the start of the show. It's the McGuffin - the thing everyone is searching for and chasing, but in many senses what it actually is is irrelevant.

And I would also argue that the whole idea of corporate greed, the civil war, political machinations and man's inhumanity to man that form powerful elements to the story are also not quite the star.

The star, in my opinion, was Africa.

In a David Lean Lawrence of Arabia type happening, it seems the film falls in love with Africa more than it does the story or the players in the actual movie. And this is an Africa of equal parts beauty and dynamism as it is brutality and cruelty.

So yeah, I really quite enjoyed the film. They only bit I didn't like came towards the end. The film's violence was portrayed quite realistically up until a helicopter attack that's towards the end. for some reason it suddenly got very 'Hollywood' at that point with lots of squibs and earth exploding up as bullets hit.

This kinda lost my respect a bit, as it came across more like an episode of the A-Team :/.

still maxed out

I'm still snowed under and am barely getting the chance to even think abotu the blog, let alone write any new entries.

It may be a case of disregard the blog this week, I think.

fecking hell

I'd thought today I might do a bonus post for the holiday pics.

I took a few photos as I was coming back on the coach on the last day - not many, but there's a few pretty things to look at.

However, today has just been fucking manic. It's only Monday, but it feels like Friday with all the dashing around I've been doing.

And the rest of the week doesn't exactly look like it's going to quiet down any so blog posts may be few and far between.