I forgot to blog about this earlier in the week, but the 150th episode of the gadget show aired last Monday.
I've mentioned before that I really like the show and I basically realised watching the special episode that I must have pretty much seen them all. During the course of Monday's show they repeated some of the challenges they'd done that either hadn't worked well or they thought could be done better.
One of these was to do a bullet-time type shot and they said during it that it was attempted in the first ever show, and I remembered it, so that must mean I've been watching from the beginning. Now for most shows that 150 would mean 'd been watching it for decades, but the gadget show tends to air in quite long runs, and it's not unusual for them to have a couple of series a year, so in reality it's been running for about 6 years.
But still, that's a fair old amount of time, and I still find it interesting and entertaining, so yeah, good job.
They've actually put out a special edition magazine, that's I think is intended to mark the occasion. I've also a suspicion it's also intended to test the waters to see if there's the market for a regular magazine, but either way I picked it up yesterday.
It's quite good, but I have to admit it's a bit lightweight. That's not necessarily a bad thing of course, because it makes it easier for me to read, especially given my always limited time, but it'd have been nice to have a few more in-depth articles.
This weekend is the Chinese Grand Prix, which will absorb a good chunk of my time and otherwise it's a fairly mundane weekend. To be honest, a relatively boring one would be okay for me this week as I've been working my arse off all week.
Friday, 16 April 2010
Thursday, 15 April 2010
america, but not as we know it
Recently I've been reading Gunsmith Cats: Burst, which is a sequel to Gunsmith Cats by Kenichi Sonoda.
The original Gunsmith Cats manga was one of those that just sort of stopped. By that I mean, because the series never had an overarching plot, but was instead a series of consecutive stories, there was no 'final wrap up' to the last story.
I liked the original GSC a great deal. It had a bit of warped view of America, but the stories were good, the characters generally interesting and the artwork very nice.
After GSC, Sonoda went on to do Cannon God Exaxxion. This was more of a SF show, but with the typical Sonoda touches. I also liked this series a great deal, but I guess it wasn't as popular as Black Horse basically pulled the plug on publishing it and I never got to read the end. To be honest, I've never really forgiven them for this, especially as they were just 2 volumes from completion.
Anyway, I guess Exaxxion was one of those 'I've got to get this story out of my system' sorts of things, because afterwards, Sonoda went back to GSC with Burst.
And to be perfectly frank, I'm not really quite getting it.
I dunno if my tastes have changed radically or I'm just not quite in the mood for it, but I'm finding GSC not to be up to the high standards I remember of GSC. I think part of the problem might be that it's so long since I read the original and this is a proper sequel.
There was no re-introduction of characters or gentle ease you in approach - I think it just picked up from where the original left of. And I don't remember where that was, so I've been a little lost.
What I'll probably do is dig out the old GSC and give it a read.
One thing that is definitely annoying me, though, is the errors in Burst. For example, there's one bit where Rally refers to a magazine as a "clip". Now for a normal person that's a perfectly okay excuse to make, but Rally is supposed to be a total gun-nut, to the extent that she owns a gun store.
There is no way someone like that would erroneously refer to a magazine as a clip. Now to be fair, that could be a boo-boo on the part of the translators, but I dunno. I mean, there's another bit where a huge error is made in relation to blanks, saying that a blank could never be used in an automatic as it wouldn't cycle the action.
This is clearly wrong - I mean, they don't constantly fire live rounds in films. Plus I know someone who was an army cadet and they use blanks all the time with no problems.
Now maybe there are different grades of blanks and some work and some don't, but that's not what it says.
The original Gunsmith Cats manga was one of those that just sort of stopped. By that I mean, because the series never had an overarching plot, but was instead a series of consecutive stories, there was no 'final wrap up' to the last story.
I liked the original GSC a great deal. It had a bit of warped view of America, but the stories were good, the characters generally interesting and the artwork very nice.
After GSC, Sonoda went on to do Cannon God Exaxxion. This was more of a SF show, but with the typical Sonoda touches. I also liked this series a great deal, but I guess it wasn't as popular as Black Horse basically pulled the plug on publishing it and I never got to read the end. To be honest, I've never really forgiven them for this, especially as they were just 2 volumes from completion.
Anyway, I guess Exaxxion was one of those 'I've got to get this story out of my system' sorts of things, because afterwards, Sonoda went back to GSC with Burst.
And to be perfectly frank, I'm not really quite getting it.
I dunno if my tastes have changed radically or I'm just not quite in the mood for it, but I'm finding GSC not to be up to the high standards I remember of GSC. I think part of the problem might be that it's so long since I read the original and this is a proper sequel.
There was no re-introduction of characters or gentle ease you in approach - I think it just picked up from where the original left of. And I don't remember where that was, so I've been a little lost.
What I'll probably do is dig out the old GSC and give it a read.
One thing that is definitely annoying me, though, is the errors in Burst. For example, there's one bit where Rally refers to a magazine as a "clip". Now for a normal person that's a perfectly okay excuse to make, but Rally is supposed to be a total gun-nut, to the extent that she owns a gun store.
There is no way someone like that would erroneously refer to a magazine as a clip. Now to be fair, that could be a boo-boo on the part of the translators, but I dunno. I mean, there's another bit where a huge error is made in relation to blanks, saying that a blank could never be used in an automatic as it wouldn't cycle the action.
This is clearly wrong - I mean, they don't constantly fire live rounds in films. Plus I know someone who was an army cadet and they use blanks all the time with no problems.
Now maybe there are different grades of blanks and some work and some don't, but that's not what it says.
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
death race
This weekend's DVD rental... was watched last night.
What with the wedding and the hangover, I both didn't have the time and in all honesty really couldn't be arsed to watch my rental DVDs.
And it is DVDs plural - for some odd reason I got a bonus DVD rental the other month. I tried to get them to send it so that it would arrive sensibly, but I made a total mess of it and it turned up after Easter for this last weekend when there was the wedding.
Anyway, what I basically did was watch the first of the DVDs - death race - last night. I didn't get through all the extras, but I watched the actual film.
And it wasn't very good.
The main problem with it was that the story just didn't work. It was clumsy and it didn't hang together properly. But weirdly, it managed to be clumsy, despite wallowing around in what should have been a really clichéd plot.
Part of the problem I think was that because they knew it was a clichéd plot they thought they could skip bits. So, as a really good example, when Jenson's wife is killed and he's framed for the murder, we then skip 6 months into the future.
In other words, we don't get to see him grieving, we don't get the heart-string pulling scenes of his baby being taken away, we don't even get to see the court case or anything. So it's flat. We don't really know why we should care.
Oh, and mentioning the time-slip also brings up the films other major problem - it's full of stuff where you think "Hang on, that doesn't make sense." or "But what about..."
So, in this case him being framed is actually a pretty lousy job. Any kind of forensic investigation or proper detective work would show up all sorts of problems. Which would be fine, if we'd seen that the police were incompetent or corrupt, or that they've gotten rid of trial by jury or whatever. The actual explanation could be anything, but we don't see it, so it just becomes a massive plot hole.
And the film is absolutely riddled with them.
Plus, where it could have made up for this, it also lets itself down.
If it had been chock full of sex and violence then it wouldn't have mattered as much, because it would have been a trashy film that you just enjoy for that. But it isn't - it tries to be a proper film instead, but it just falls short. Don't get me wrong - there's quite a bit of stuff like that, but it's a lot tamer than it could have been.
What with the wedding and the hangover, I both didn't have the time and in all honesty really couldn't be arsed to watch my rental DVDs.
And it is DVDs plural - for some odd reason I got a bonus DVD rental the other month. I tried to get them to send it so that it would arrive sensibly, but I made a total mess of it and it turned up after Easter for this last weekend when there was the wedding.
Anyway, what I basically did was watch the first of the DVDs - death race - last night. I didn't get through all the extras, but I watched the actual film.
And it wasn't very good.
The main problem with it was that the story just didn't work. It was clumsy and it didn't hang together properly. But weirdly, it managed to be clumsy, despite wallowing around in what should have been a really clichéd plot.
Part of the problem I think was that because they knew it was a clichéd plot they thought they could skip bits. So, as a really good example, when Jenson's wife is killed and he's framed for the murder, we then skip 6 months into the future.
In other words, we don't get to see him grieving, we don't get the heart-string pulling scenes of his baby being taken away, we don't even get to see the court case or anything. So it's flat. We don't really know why we should care.
Oh, and mentioning the time-slip also brings up the films other major problem - it's full of stuff where you think "Hang on, that doesn't make sense." or "But what about..."
So, in this case him being framed is actually a pretty lousy job. Any kind of forensic investigation or proper detective work would show up all sorts of problems. Which would be fine, if we'd seen that the police were incompetent or corrupt, or that they've gotten rid of trial by jury or whatever. The actual explanation could be anything, but we don't see it, so it just becomes a massive plot hole.
And the film is absolutely riddled with them.
Plus, where it could have made up for this, it also lets itself down.
If it had been chock full of sex and violence then it wouldn't have mattered as much, because it would have been a trashy film that you just enjoy for that. But it isn't - it tries to be a proper film instead, but it just falls short. Don't get me wrong - there's quite a bit of stuff like that, but it's a lot tamer than it could have been.
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
poltergeist
I had the weirdest time when I was trying to get to sleep last night.
If I wasn't a rationalist I'd have probably said I was experiencing some poltergeist activity.
It started with a weird flash of light. I was laying on my front at the time and it seemed to almost explode from the wall behind me.
The next weird thing was that I could hear what sounded like wind, but not quite. Sometimes there are random gusts of wind that give a very distinct set of noises in my bedsit, and this was kinda like some of them, but not entirely.
The nest thing was another set of noises that almost sounded like someone moving about in the roof-space that connects my bedsit to the main house. We've had mice in there before and it was nothing like them. They make scratches noises and this was much more like something big moving around, but not in a floorboard-creaking sort of way.
At that point I put my earplugs in, but not more than 10 minutes after that I suddenly heard what sounded like a knocking noise.
Because my doorbell is shit, my landlord does knock on my door when he needs to talk to me. However, because this was late at night there should have been an accompanying light from under the door if it was him, but there wasn't.
The other thing I discovered was that my duvet was upside down. I'm sure you've got or have seen a duvet, and if you have then you know that at one end there's always a means of fastening the duvet cover once you've put the actual duvet inside.
In my case, my duvet covers button up and I like to keep the buttoned end down the bottom of my bed, at the foot end. Indeed, it's one of my many little idiosyncrasies / pathologies that I have to have the buttoned end at the bottom.
Weird then that I discovered the buttons at the head end. Weirder still that at no point since putting on the cover have I turned it round. Neither have I pushed it off during the night and had to pull it back off.
So what was it all about?
A poltergeist?
Paranoia and/or the random workings of a sleep-deprived and/or booze-addled mind?
A random collection of events that were actually unconnected, except for their proximity in time?
Well, clearly it was the latter combined with a bit of the second one, since ghosts don't exist.
If I wasn't a rationalist I'd have probably said I was experiencing some poltergeist activity.
It started with a weird flash of light. I was laying on my front at the time and it seemed to almost explode from the wall behind me.
The next weird thing was that I could hear what sounded like wind, but not quite. Sometimes there are random gusts of wind that give a very distinct set of noises in my bedsit, and this was kinda like some of them, but not entirely.
The nest thing was another set of noises that almost sounded like someone moving about in the roof-space that connects my bedsit to the main house. We've had mice in there before and it was nothing like them. They make scratches noises and this was much more like something big moving around, but not in a floorboard-creaking sort of way.
At that point I put my earplugs in, but not more than 10 minutes after that I suddenly heard what sounded like a knocking noise.
Because my doorbell is shit, my landlord does knock on my door when he needs to talk to me. However, because this was late at night there should have been an accompanying light from under the door if it was him, but there wasn't.
The other thing I discovered was that my duvet was upside down. I'm sure you've got or have seen a duvet, and if you have then you know that at one end there's always a means of fastening the duvet cover once you've put the actual duvet inside.
In my case, my duvet covers button up and I like to keep the buttoned end down the bottom of my bed, at the foot end. Indeed, it's one of my many little idiosyncrasies / pathologies that I have to have the buttoned end at the bottom.
Weird then that I discovered the buttons at the head end. Weirder still that at no point since putting on the cover have I turned it round. Neither have I pushed it off during the night and had to pull it back off.
So what was it all about?
A poltergeist?
Paranoia and/or the random workings of a sleep-deprived and/or booze-addled mind?
A random collection of events that were actually unconnected, except for their proximity in time?
Well, clearly it was the latter combined with a bit of the second one, since ghosts don't exist.
Monday, 12 April 2010
the wedding
It wasn't bad, in the end.
Since I'm pathologically incapable of being late, I was the first of the work people to arrive. That meant I didn't really know who I was supposed to be looking out for, apart from the bride.
It turned out there were 2 wedding receptions on the go at the hotel, so I therefore kinda joined the wrong one. Really this wasn't my fault, because the staff were cataclysmically useless at showing me where to go. Plus, as I say, there was no-one I recognised who I could use to clue me in.
Anyway, after wandering about, I eventually found the right group and then people from work started turning up and I didn't feel like a lost soul.
I walked down to Farnham, and I'd not quite appreciated how far it was. I think I mentioned last week how I've been trying to at least do a bit of walking and I basically figured this would be a similar saunter.
Well, where my little walks have been around 30 minutes long in my proper walking shoes, this ended up being the best part of an hour in my work shoes. I had prepped by putting some plasters on the main areas I get blisters, but of course that means I've ended up with some sore bit (not really blisters) where I wasn't expecting to.
Thankfully a work colleague gave me a lift home, and that was a really good thing both from a foot ache and booze point of view. I got really rather drunk, I have to confess. I'm not sure how many I actually sunk, but my best guess is six plus a couple of glasses of champagne.
Now really that's not a lot, but it's a long time since I've had a proper drinking session. In fact I was so drunk at the end I' afraid if I had walked home I would have ended up in an accident or something. I could in theory have gotten a taxi, but I honestly don't know where there is a taxi rank in Farnham.
Anyway, the do itself turned out to be okay. I mean, I didn't really know anybody apart from work people, but they had a band on and they played lots of rock and roll standards, so at least it wasn't a night filled with Agado.
Since I'm pathologically incapable of being late, I was the first of the work people to arrive. That meant I didn't really know who I was supposed to be looking out for, apart from the bride.
It turned out there were 2 wedding receptions on the go at the hotel, so I therefore kinda joined the wrong one. Really this wasn't my fault, because the staff were cataclysmically useless at showing me where to go. Plus, as I say, there was no-one I recognised who I could use to clue me in.
Anyway, after wandering about, I eventually found the right group and then people from work started turning up and I didn't feel like a lost soul.
I walked down to Farnham, and I'd not quite appreciated how far it was. I think I mentioned last week how I've been trying to at least do a bit of walking and I basically figured this would be a similar saunter.
Well, where my little walks have been around 30 minutes long in my proper walking shoes, this ended up being the best part of an hour in my work shoes. I had prepped by putting some plasters on the main areas I get blisters, but of course that means I've ended up with some sore bit (not really blisters) where I wasn't expecting to.
Thankfully a work colleague gave me a lift home, and that was a really good thing both from a foot ache and booze point of view. I got really rather drunk, I have to confess. I'm not sure how many I actually sunk, but my best guess is six plus a couple of glasses of champagne.
Now really that's not a lot, but it's a long time since I've had a proper drinking session. In fact I was so drunk at the end I' afraid if I had walked home I would have ended up in an accident or something. I could in theory have gotten a taxi, but I honestly don't know where there is a taxi rank in Farnham.
Anyway, the do itself turned out to be okay. I mean, I didn't really know anybody apart from work people, but they had a band on and they played lots of rock and roll standards, so at least it wasn't a night filled with Agado.
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