Well, as predicted on Tuesday I've marathoned Season 5 of Lost.
In fact I've not so much marathoned it as veritably gorged on it. Season 5 consisted of 17 episodes (the last being a double-episode) and over the course of the week I've watched every single episode.
I've not finished the set yet, technically, as there are a few commentaries and a handful of other extras to go through, but I've finished watching the actual show. And I have to say it's a corker.
A while back they announced that Lost was going to have a definite end and they committed to actually going right through to the end no matter what. That's actually quite a rare thing for American TV, which is kinda a shame because you can really see the benefits in this season of Lost.
For example, it actually feels like they're building towards an end now, rather than slipping in extra stuff that, while I wouldn't call it filler, certainly delayed them getting around to finishing stuff off. But now it feels like we're building towards something.
Hopefully we're building towards some proper answers to the mysteries. There are two things I'm slightly worried about for the next season - 1) Are they going to give proper answers to the key things? 2) Are those answers going to be satisfying?
In a way those questions are the wrong way around, by which I mean are the answers satisfying is the more important question. If we end up with another Battlestar Galactica, where the final season winds up being a big kick in the teeth then I won't be happy and would therefore prefer if they left things open ended instead.
I don't think that will happen - there have been a lot of fairly big hints in season 5 and I think I get where it's going, but we'll have to see.
One of the things I have noticed about Lost is that people don't tend to explain stuff to each other. Sometimes this makes sense - if you started to explain it then the other person would ask so many questions you'd get bogged down when it's critical they do whatever now.
But often it does feel a bit trite - Character A: "But why?" Character B: "I can't explain that to you now." - happens so often and sometimes when there is actually time to explain.
But overall I've really enjoyed it. I especially liked the way they did some of the self-interaction - the whole area of time travel can become very complicated and it's easy to create paradoxes, but what they did here made paradoxes the whole focus of the show. Can you change the past or not?
Interesting stuff.
Of course this whole thing means I now have a hard-drive full of stuff to watch on my PVR. Considering my big objective this weekend is to tick off loads of little things I've either been putting off or been too lazy to do, it could make things interesting for me too :/.
Friday, 30 October 2009
Thursday, 29 October 2009
website change
I mentioned a little while ago that trismugistus.com had come up for renewal and although I'd never get rid of that site I might get rid of my other sites.
Well I think I've come up with a sort of half-way house. I've created a digital-bondage blog and uploaded all my walls there.
Well, I say all my walls, I've not uploaded all of the various resolutions I have on dig-bon. My plan was, where I had multiple resolutions, I was only going to upload the largest version.
However, it quickly became apparent that this involved too much effort. See, the problem was that while I know the main 4:3 ration walls off by heart (1600*1200, 1280*960, 1024*768, etc), I can't remember the 16:9 and 16:10 ones.
As such, rather than go through the tedious job of working out which was which, instead I just pruned out all the smaller 4:3 walls.
Anyway, the point is that I'm going to get rid of the main digital-bondage site, but I'll be replacing any links or references to it with links to the digital-bondage blog. That way I can keep my walls online and available, but it doesn't cost me any money.
I think with scan-city.org I'm just going to get rid of it completely. I guess I could do something similar in terms of a blog, but the problem is it would need a huge amount of space and while I can get it cheaply, it's also a lot of hassle. Especially when you consider I've basically not done any scanning in something like 3 months and am seriously considering giving it up as a hobby altogether.
I'll make some more concrete decisions on that front later.
I've been trying to watch a bit of animu this week. One of the things I've been watching is Baccano. I was deadly afraid I'd over-hyped it in my own mind and I wouldn't enjoy it as much as I remembered from watching the fansubs.
Well I have been enjoying it, but one thing I have found is that the English dub is terrible, because many of the actors are trying to put on New York accents (or should that be "Nu Yoik" accents?) and the level of success is... variable to say the least.
The other thing I've been watching is a bit of Saki on Crunchyroll. I've been kinda enjoying it, but I got really confused and had to look up what Japanese Mahjong was all about.
The site I did that via was this one which has loads of pictures to help you see what's going on.
Initially watching Saki I'd thought it was me being dumb, because it seemed really complicated, but looking at the game on that site it turns out that no, Japanese Mahjong is really complicated.
I mean there's loads of rules just to determine who sits where and who starts before you even start playing the actual game :/.
Well I think I've come up with a sort of half-way house. I've created a digital-bondage blog and uploaded all my walls there.
Well, I say all my walls, I've not uploaded all of the various resolutions I have on dig-bon. My plan was, where I had multiple resolutions, I was only going to upload the largest version.
However, it quickly became apparent that this involved too much effort. See, the problem was that while I know the main 4:3 ration walls off by heart (1600*1200, 1280*960, 1024*768, etc), I can't remember the 16:9 and 16:10 ones.
As such, rather than go through the tedious job of working out which was which, instead I just pruned out all the smaller 4:3 walls.
Anyway, the point is that I'm going to get rid of the main digital-bondage site, but I'll be replacing any links or references to it with links to the digital-bondage blog. That way I can keep my walls online and available, but it doesn't cost me any money.
I think with scan-city.org I'm just going to get rid of it completely. I guess I could do something similar in terms of a blog, but the problem is it would need a huge amount of space and while I can get it cheaply, it's also a lot of hassle. Especially when you consider I've basically not done any scanning in something like 3 months and am seriously considering giving it up as a hobby altogether.
I'll make some more concrete decisions on that front later.
I've been trying to watch a bit of animu this week. One of the things I've been watching is Baccano. I was deadly afraid I'd over-hyped it in my own mind and I wouldn't enjoy it as much as I remembered from watching the fansubs.
Well I have been enjoying it, but one thing I have found is that the English dub is terrible, because many of the actors are trying to put on New York accents (or should that be "Nu Yoik" accents?) and the level of success is... variable to say the least.
The other thing I've been watching is a bit of Saki on Crunchyroll. I've been kinda enjoying it, but I got really confused and had to look up what Japanese Mahjong was all about.
The site I did that via was this one which has loads of pictures to help you see what's going on.
Initially watching Saki I'd thought it was me being dumb, because it seemed really complicated, but looking at the game on that site it turns out that no, Japanese Mahjong is really complicated.
I mean there's loads of rules just to determine who sits where and who starts before you even start playing the actual game :/.
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
men in black
DVD rentalage was a bit of a retro-trip this week with Men In Black.
The reason for the rental was that I've never properly watched MiB all the way through. I mean, I think I've pretty much seen most of it at one time or another, but I don't recall ever managing to sit and watch it all the way through.
However, I'm guessing that most people have seen it by now, so I'm not sure I really need to go into much depth here. Especially since I basically agree with what other people have said - it's a really funny film.
What makes it so good is that the comedy is very well played. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones make for a really good pairing. Jones is a really good straight man who plays it so straight it would seem almost weird if it wasn't contrasted by Smith who's performance is very high energy.
It's also quite clever. I must admit one thing I didn't appreciate was that it was based on a comic book. I don't think it was a direct adaptation, more taking the general ideas and working them into a film.
The rental edition I watched was boosted by a couple of really good commentaries. By the looks of things it was a special edition 2-disk thing as there's clearly more content on a second disk (this wasn't sent to me and was separately listed on my rental list, but I removed it).
Anyway, one of the commentaries is sort of a Mystery Theatre 3000 thing. That won't make much sense to most people, but basically silhouettes of the director and Tommy Lee Jones are projected at the bottom of the screen (a bit like subtitles) and stuff is drawn on the screen too.
It doesn't really enhance the actual commentary track as such, but it was a nice little feature I'd not seen before.
Anyway, the basic point is that I really enjoyed the film and if you've never seen it before it's well worth a watch.
The reason for the rental was that I've never properly watched MiB all the way through. I mean, I think I've pretty much seen most of it at one time or another, but I don't recall ever managing to sit and watch it all the way through.
However, I'm guessing that most people have seen it by now, so I'm not sure I really need to go into much depth here. Especially since I basically agree with what other people have said - it's a really funny film.
What makes it so good is that the comedy is very well played. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones make for a really good pairing. Jones is a really good straight man who plays it so straight it would seem almost weird if it wasn't contrasted by Smith who's performance is very high energy.
It's also quite clever. I must admit one thing I didn't appreciate was that it was based on a comic book. I don't think it was a direct adaptation, more taking the general ideas and working them into a film.
The rental edition I watched was boosted by a couple of really good commentaries. By the looks of things it was a special edition 2-disk thing as there's clearly more content on a second disk (this wasn't sent to me and was separately listed on my rental list, but I removed it).
Anyway, one of the commentaries is sort of a Mystery Theatre 3000 thing. That won't make much sense to most people, but basically silhouettes of the director and Tommy Lee Jones are projected at the bottom of the screen (a bit like subtitles) and stuff is drawn on the screen too.
It doesn't really enhance the actual commentary track as such, but it was a nice little feature I'd not seen before.
Anyway, the basic point is that I really enjoyed the film and if you've never seen it before it's well worth a watch.
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
telly trimming
The other night I surveyed my DVD shelves.
I discovered I have the following to watch:
18 Full anime series (meaning 20+episode long series)
16 Half anime series (meaning around 13 episode long series)
10 Anime films and OAV sets
21 Feature films
23 British TV series (normally 6 episodes)
27 American TV series (normally 20+ episodes)
If you do some simple maths and don't get hung up on details, that means I have at least 600 solid hours of stuff to watch. Or, to put it another way, if I were to spend 6 hours a day watching stuff (i.e. approximately a 'working day') it would take 100 solid days to get through it all.
Or, to keep with the working week thing, it would take approximately 6-months operating on a 9-to-5 Monday-to-Friday schedule to watch all of the DVDs I have on my shelves.
And that's just to watch the primary content. Part of the reason I buy TV show and film DVDs is because of extras. If you therefore say that for every hour of normal stuff there's half an hour of extras it could mean an extra 3 months just spent watching extras.
Also, I think that's a massive underestimate, because I'm mostly rounding down. Plus, if you include things like annual leave and Bank Holidays, I reckon it would take an entire working year to plough through my unwatched DVDs.
(Presumably in this fictional job I'm spending my free time reading books and manga :/.)
Or, to put things in a monetary vein, if you say each film cost an average of £10, a US/British TV series an average of £40, and that an anime series costs an average of £60 for a half series and £100 for a full series (this one is complicated because of the modern trend of releasing things in economical box sets, but most of my stuff isn't in said box sets) then that gives a monetary value of:
31 * £10 = £310
50 * £40 = £2000
60 * £60 = £3600
18 * £100 = £1800
That's approximately £8,000
I reckon I can probably average a return (meaning profit after all the fees and postage) of 25% on e-bay, so that means I could be sitting on about £2,000.
I wasn't intending to go on like that, but the basic point is I have tonnes of DVDs to watch and suddenly a couple of weeks ago loads of new shows I was interested in started on the TV.
As such, with the above situation brought into focus I've decided to stop watching some of them. (It also kinda puts my decision to subscribe to Crunchyroll into a whole knew light doesn't it? I mean, I've tonnes of stuff to watch, yet I'm subscribing (yes, that means paying) for even more stuff. I'm insane.)
The casualties include True Blood, Generation Kill and Flash Forward.
I have to say I'm a little bit regretful that I have to drop them, but with the backlog and all the other stuff that's on I just don't think I can justify spending the time they require to watch. Especially since none of them blew me away.
True Blood was probably the one I was most disappointed with. The main problem I had with it was the tone seemed to be all over the place. One minute it was kooky comedy, the next a veritable "bodice ripper" and then it would shift into high school type humour.
I dunno, it was like it was meant to be a parody that forgot it was a parody.
Generation Kill was, quite frankly, a bit dull and Flash Forward just felt like a low-rent Lost.
And speaking of lost, season 5 has just been sent to me.
Which is where I start to get annoyed with myself, because I bet I'll start marathoning Lost this evening and I'll probably have it finished by the end of the weekend.
That's annoying because if I can do it with Lost, why the hell don't I do it in a more general sense and plough though all these DVDs?
The answer is "because I'm an idiot," obviously.
I discovered I have the following to watch:
18 Full anime series (meaning 20+episode long series)
16 Half anime series (meaning around 13 episode long series)
10 Anime films and OAV sets
21 Feature films
23 British TV series (normally 6 episodes)
27 American TV series (normally 20+ episodes)
If you do some simple maths and don't get hung up on details, that means I have at least 600 solid hours of stuff to watch. Or, to put it another way, if I were to spend 6 hours a day watching stuff (i.e. approximately a 'working day') it would take 100 solid days to get through it all.
Or, to keep with the working week thing, it would take approximately 6-months operating on a 9-to-5 Monday-to-Friday schedule to watch all of the DVDs I have on my shelves.
And that's just to watch the primary content. Part of the reason I buy TV show and film DVDs is because of extras. If you therefore say that for every hour of normal stuff there's half an hour of extras it could mean an extra 3 months just spent watching extras.
Also, I think that's a massive underestimate, because I'm mostly rounding down. Plus, if you include things like annual leave and Bank Holidays, I reckon it would take an entire working year to plough through my unwatched DVDs.
(Presumably in this fictional job I'm spending my free time reading books and manga :/.)
Or, to put things in a monetary vein, if you say each film cost an average of £10, a US/British TV series an average of £40, and that an anime series costs an average of £60 for a half series and £100 for a full series (this one is complicated because of the modern trend of releasing things in economical box sets, but most of my stuff isn't in said box sets) then that gives a monetary value of:
31 * £10 = £310
50 * £40 = £2000
60 * £60 = £3600
18 * £100 = £1800
That's approximately £8,000
I reckon I can probably average a return (meaning profit after all the fees and postage) of 25% on e-bay, so that means I could be sitting on about £2,000.
I wasn't intending to go on like that, but the basic point is I have tonnes of DVDs to watch and suddenly a couple of weeks ago loads of new shows I was interested in started on the TV.
As such, with the above situation brought into focus I've decided to stop watching some of them. (It also kinda puts my decision to subscribe to Crunchyroll into a whole knew light doesn't it? I mean, I've tonnes of stuff to watch, yet I'm subscribing (yes, that means paying) for even more stuff. I'm insane.)
The casualties include True Blood, Generation Kill and Flash Forward.
I have to say I'm a little bit regretful that I have to drop them, but with the backlog and all the other stuff that's on I just don't think I can justify spending the time they require to watch. Especially since none of them blew me away.
True Blood was probably the one I was most disappointed with. The main problem I had with it was the tone seemed to be all over the place. One minute it was kooky comedy, the next a veritable "bodice ripper" and then it would shift into high school type humour.
I dunno, it was like it was meant to be a parody that forgot it was a parody.
Generation Kill was, quite frankly, a bit dull and Flash Forward just felt like a low-rent Lost.
And speaking of lost, season 5 has just been sent to me.
Which is where I start to get annoyed with myself, because I bet I'll start marathoning Lost this evening and I'll probably have it finished by the end of the weekend.
That's annoying because if I can do it with Lost, why the hell don't I do it in a more general sense and plough though all these DVDs?
The answer is "because I'm an idiot," obviously.
Monday, 26 October 2009
recovering
The pain in my back eased a bit through the weekend.
The weirdest thing was that on Saturday I had a load of cleaning to do and it seemed that the more activity I did, the better my back felt. So having done loads on Saturday, on Sunday I woke up and it was almost gone. But then, during the day I spent quite a few hours playing Anno (naughty me!) and my back started aching again.
I mean it might be the chair I've got at home I guess. It's quite a good one, but it may not be set up properly or something. Not that I really know how to set it up properly :/.
Sunday saw Valantino Rossi win the 2009 MotoGP championship (that's the bike equivalent of F1 for the uninitiated) so congrats are due to him. It was actually his 7th world championship in that class, which is quite the record. While it's not necessarily appropriate to compare across vehicle types, it puts him up there in the topmost ranks of the best drivers and riders ever, if not at the very top, so well done that man. Not sure what the whole chicken/egg thing was about, though.
And speaking of motor racing, the British F1 GP looks to be going through more turmoil.
In theory, Donnington was going to be hosting the event this year, but unfortunately they seem to have had a bit of bad timing in that just as they were planning to take it on, the whole financial crisis broke. And given that they needed a heck of a lot of cash to update the facilities, this was a big problem. They've had quite a few extensions but it looks like they've just not been able to raise the required cash.
Silverstone has put itself forward as the only other potential venue, but the problem there is that they've not been willing to stump up the cash to pay Bernie to host the event. Indeed, that's almost where the whole Donnington thing came from - Silverstone were after a discount and Bernie said no.
The discount isn't without precedent - both Monaco and Monza get discounts as the 'traditional homes' of F1. And given that most of the teams are located in Britain and Silverstone was the first circuit ever to hold a formula 1 championship race in 1950, it's not an unreasonable claim.
Bernie's stance? Sign it and pay up, because we don't need a British F1 GP.
I do hope they get it sorted - it would be a shame if it didn't happen and if it is going to happen then they need to get it sorted quick so whoever hosts it can start selling tickets!
The weirdest thing was that on Saturday I had a load of cleaning to do and it seemed that the more activity I did, the better my back felt. So having done loads on Saturday, on Sunday I woke up and it was almost gone. But then, during the day I spent quite a few hours playing Anno (naughty me!) and my back started aching again.
I mean it might be the chair I've got at home I guess. It's quite a good one, but it may not be set up properly or something. Not that I really know how to set it up properly :/.
Sunday saw Valantino Rossi win the 2009 MotoGP championship (that's the bike equivalent of F1 for the uninitiated) so congrats are due to him. It was actually his 7th world championship in that class, which is quite the record. While it's not necessarily appropriate to compare across vehicle types, it puts him up there in the topmost ranks of the best drivers and riders ever, if not at the very top, so well done that man. Not sure what the whole chicken/egg thing was about, though.
And speaking of motor racing, the British F1 GP looks to be going through more turmoil.
In theory, Donnington was going to be hosting the event this year, but unfortunately they seem to have had a bit of bad timing in that just as they were planning to take it on, the whole financial crisis broke. And given that they needed a heck of a lot of cash to update the facilities, this was a big problem. They've had quite a few extensions but it looks like they've just not been able to raise the required cash.
Silverstone has put itself forward as the only other potential venue, but the problem there is that they've not been willing to stump up the cash to pay Bernie to host the event. Indeed, that's almost where the whole Donnington thing came from - Silverstone were after a discount and Bernie said no.
The discount isn't without precedent - both Monaco and Monza get discounts as the 'traditional homes' of F1. And given that most of the teams are located in Britain and Silverstone was the first circuit ever to hold a formula 1 championship race in 1950, it's not an unreasonable claim.
Bernie's stance? Sign it and pay up, because we don't need a British F1 GP.
I do hope they get it sorted - it would be a shame if it didn't happen and if it is going to happen then they need to get it sorted quick so whoever hosts it can start selling tickets!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)