Today we're having a "clear-out day" at RED. I'm not sure what this entails so I've pre-written this as I'm pretty sure it won't involve much computer use in its execution. It's more likely to be about sorting through paper folders and chucking stuff away.
As I say, pre-writing this some way ahead, but it's my current plan to have another crack at the stacking crates I filled during my sort out. I don't think I mentioned it on the blog, but a couple of weeks ago I started going through the boxes of comics. I'm pretty sure that no-one will be interested in buying them, but I feel this is the weekend to get at least some of them up on e-bay.
Once I've established there's no interest I can then take them down the recycling centre and dispose of them. I reckon this should free up around half of the stacking crates and will be a big step forward towards finally clearing my life clag.
I'll also be looking forward to the last episode of Sherlock. I was a little worried about this, because, as the name implies, it's a modern reworking of Sherlock Holmes. It's being done partly by Steven Moffat of Doctor Who fame and actually turned out to be really good.
It's essentially a crime thriller series, but there's just enough Holmesy-ness in there to make it feel like Sherlock Holes, without veering into parody or anything like that.
And speaking of telly, the latest series of Top Gear finished last week. The preceding episode was a belter, so a hard act to follow, but this one sort of worked. My only criticism would be the un-necessary and obvious silly-ness in the challenge. The boys were tasked with buying cheap-ish British Sports Cars and given a number of challenges in the usual way (the whole challenges gets points and then tallying them up at the end, which, surely, is the whole point of the challenges, seems to have totally disappeared) but then in each challenge they had a completely stupid silly bit, like blowing a car up or filling it with water.
These were okay in the way blowing anything up is entertaining, but for me they undermined the point of the piece and again acted as blatant scripted moments.
Friday, 6 August 2010
Thursday, 5 August 2010
matter
So I finished Matter, by Ian M Banks.
I should perhaps say up front that I'm really gorging to spoiler it in the below discussion, so if you've not read it and think you might want to, probably best to not read on.
If I'm honest, I was a little disappointed.
There were two main reasons for this. First off, given that the novel is well over 500 pages, it's a little disappointing that the "end game" feels really short and truncated and rushed. And second, that endgame kinda wasn't really worth it.
I think this novel is quite close in style to Excession. In excession, the Culture basically encountered an "Outside Context Problem". The idea of an OCP is something that's just so far outside of your perception of the world it causes more than a few problems. Banks apparently got the idea from playing the game civilisation.
To paraphrase - imagine you're a tribe on a beautiful continent and you've managed to work yourself up into a functioning society with a religion and the ability to build nice houses and do clever stuff like irrigation. You're also the dominant force on the continent - the other tribes are all either friendly or subjugated and everything's going swimmingly, thanks.
And then over the horizon come some big iron ships filled pale looking fellows that carry sticks that make a lot of noise and cause your mighty warriors to drop dead. Then they announce you've been "discovered" and you're all subjects of the emperor now and he's quite keen on gold tributes and these holly men would like to have a chat with your priests.
Well, that was all a great idea, but I didn't really like the Excession book. My problem was the pacing - there seemed to be tonnes of set-up and then the whole action part was compressed into half a dozen pages at the end. Plus, that end wasn't all that satisfying anyway.
And that's the exact same problem with Matter - there are hundreds of pages of what feels like build up and then the end is all wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am.
What makes this especially annoying is that quite a lot of that set-up period is wasted on blind alleys. For example, Ferbin goes looking for this guy who helped his father, but when he finds him, he can't help at all. It makes it feel like an excuse for Banks to just go on a few flights of fancy and come up with weird stuff to entertain. Think Tom Bombadill in LotR - totally pointless and un-necessary, but the author's having fun.
There's also a hell of a lot of stuff being layered in that I think is meant to explain what happens at the end. The problem is that this actually undermines the surprise of the ending. But also, even through there's so much of this setting up, the actual end still ends up with a whole bunch of unanswered questions.
So, this thing they dig up turns out to be an Iln machine that then tries to destroy the Shellworld.
Okay, fair enough, but why is never explained at all. Now that's not so bad, as it's a relic of an ancient race, and a bit like real archaeology you're left guessing (note that nobody really has a good guess in the book). However, what makes no sense is why the Iln put this Shellworld destroying machine on the Shellworld in the first place and didn't just blow the place up.
Why do that? And the place they find it appears to have been custom built to house it. Was that done by the Iln or someone else? If so, there's no hint of who did it.
There's just so many unanswered questions it becomes annoying. Now often Banks will cleverly use the Prologue and Epilogue to answer these sorts of questions, but here he doesn't.
I dunno, it feels like he wrote a 1,000 page novel and the publishers said "look - we can go to about 600 pages, but that's about it" and so he took a hatchet to the back end and it ends up kinda not working.
I don't actually think that's true - I think actually the short, truncated nature of the endgame is supposed to act as a deliberate contrast. Part of the feel of the theme of the book is about contrasting the different civilisation advancement levels and, like excession, when the relatively backward people of the Shellworld finally uncover this ancient, yet advanced thing the shift of gear is a way of emphasising contrast. Their problems, in a sense, are petty on a galactic scale, yet also no less important.
My real problem is it feels like he's re-treading old ground and also the old ground of a novel I didn't really like that much.
I should perhaps say up front that I'm really gorging to spoiler it in the below discussion, so if you've not read it and think you might want to, probably best to not read on.
If I'm honest, I was a little disappointed.
There were two main reasons for this. First off, given that the novel is well over 500 pages, it's a little disappointing that the "end game" feels really short and truncated and rushed. And second, that endgame kinda wasn't really worth it.
I think this novel is quite close in style to Excession. In excession, the Culture basically encountered an "Outside Context Problem". The idea of an OCP is something that's just so far outside of your perception of the world it causes more than a few problems. Banks apparently got the idea from playing the game civilisation.
To paraphrase - imagine you're a tribe on a beautiful continent and you've managed to work yourself up into a functioning society with a religion and the ability to build nice houses and do clever stuff like irrigation. You're also the dominant force on the continent - the other tribes are all either friendly or subjugated and everything's going swimmingly, thanks.
And then over the horizon come some big iron ships filled pale looking fellows that carry sticks that make a lot of noise and cause your mighty warriors to drop dead. Then they announce you've been "discovered" and you're all subjects of the emperor now and he's quite keen on gold tributes and these holly men would like to have a chat with your priests.
Well, that was all a great idea, but I didn't really like the Excession book. My problem was the pacing - there seemed to be tonnes of set-up and then the whole action part was compressed into half a dozen pages at the end. Plus, that end wasn't all that satisfying anyway.
And that's the exact same problem with Matter - there are hundreds of pages of what feels like build up and then the end is all wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am.
What makes this especially annoying is that quite a lot of that set-up period is wasted on blind alleys. For example, Ferbin goes looking for this guy who helped his father, but when he finds him, he can't help at all. It makes it feel like an excuse for Banks to just go on a few flights of fancy and come up with weird stuff to entertain. Think Tom Bombadill in LotR - totally pointless and un-necessary, but the author's having fun.
There's also a hell of a lot of stuff being layered in that I think is meant to explain what happens at the end. The problem is that this actually undermines the surprise of the ending. But also, even through there's so much of this setting up, the actual end still ends up with a whole bunch of unanswered questions.
So, this thing they dig up turns out to be an Iln machine that then tries to destroy the Shellworld.
Okay, fair enough, but why is never explained at all. Now that's not so bad, as it's a relic of an ancient race, and a bit like real archaeology you're left guessing (note that nobody really has a good guess in the book). However, what makes no sense is why the Iln put this Shellworld destroying machine on the Shellworld in the first place and didn't just blow the place up.
Why do that? And the place they find it appears to have been custom built to house it. Was that done by the Iln or someone else? If so, there's no hint of who did it.
There's just so many unanswered questions it becomes annoying. Now often Banks will cleverly use the Prologue and Epilogue to answer these sorts of questions, but here he doesn't.
I dunno, it feels like he wrote a 1,000 page novel and the publishers said "look - we can go to about 600 pages, but that's about it" and so he took a hatchet to the back end and it ends up kinda not working.
I don't actually think that's true - I think actually the short, truncated nature of the endgame is supposed to act as a deliberate contrast. Part of the feel of the theme of the book is about contrasting the different civilisation advancement levels and, like excession, when the relatively backward people of the Shellworld finally uncover this ancient, yet advanced thing the shift of gear is a way of emphasising contrast. Their problems, in a sense, are petty on a galactic scale, yet also no less important.
My real problem is it feels like he's re-treading old ground and also the old ground of a novel I didn't really like that much.
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
human nature
Oh dear.
I think I've made it pretty clear that I've really enjoyed the Charlie Kaufman films I've seen. Been John Malkovich was brilliantly inventive and funny. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was clever and genuinely touching. Adaptation was multi-layered and twistedly self-referential.
Okay, I'd only seen three, but then only six films he's scripted have been made. I therefore endeavoured to rent the others, and the first that turned up was Human Nature.
And it's not as good as the others.
The problem is that it's slightly too surreal. There's a strong surrealist element to all the other films of course, but here the surrealism is handled a little differently. In the other films, you can kind of believe them and the surrealism is in-built. In Human Nature the surreal element is not wrapped up in anything believable.
Let's put it this way - in Human Nature one of the central characters is a scientist who's obsessed with manners and is trying to teach animals to have manners. His basic theory runs something along the lines that if he can teach animals manners then eventually he can teach humans manners too.
This is plainly bonkers - he's human, his adoptive parents who instilled this obsession with manners in him were human. He ends up going out with a human girl whose manners he corrects. And how would he ever get his research funded?
Then you've got a girl who grows loads of hair as if she were an ape. In one bizarre scene she suddenly breaks out in song like the film is going to be a musical. But it isn't. She, apparently, becomes a writer, despite completely isolating herself away in a woods where, one assumes, there's no access to paper or a pencil, or a typewriter, or a computer, let alone a phone to call an agent or a post office to post her manuscripts from.
Oh, and eventually she decides to get electrolysis, but in the mean time shaves herself, but her boyfriend doesn't notice.
It's all just weird and there's not the aforementioned trick of wrapping it up in just enough normalcy to make you buy it. And you need to buy it, because the wider points he's making fall on deaf ears if it's just a silly movie of people being stupid.
I think I've made it pretty clear that I've really enjoyed the Charlie Kaufman films I've seen. Been John Malkovich was brilliantly inventive and funny. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was clever and genuinely touching. Adaptation was multi-layered and twistedly self-referential.
Okay, I'd only seen three, but then only six films he's scripted have been made. I therefore endeavoured to rent the others, and the first that turned up was Human Nature.
And it's not as good as the others.
The problem is that it's slightly too surreal. There's a strong surrealist element to all the other films of course, but here the surrealism is handled a little differently. In the other films, you can kind of believe them and the surrealism is in-built. In Human Nature the surreal element is not wrapped up in anything believable.
Let's put it this way - in Human Nature one of the central characters is a scientist who's obsessed with manners and is trying to teach animals to have manners. His basic theory runs something along the lines that if he can teach animals manners then eventually he can teach humans manners too.
This is plainly bonkers - he's human, his adoptive parents who instilled this obsession with manners in him were human. He ends up going out with a human girl whose manners he corrects. And how would he ever get his research funded?
Then you've got a girl who grows loads of hair as if she were an ape. In one bizarre scene she suddenly breaks out in song like the film is going to be a musical. But it isn't. She, apparently, becomes a writer, despite completely isolating herself away in a woods where, one assumes, there's no access to paper or a pencil, or a typewriter, or a computer, let alone a phone to call an agent or a post office to post her manuscripts from.
Oh, and eventually she decides to get electrolysis, but in the mean time shaves herself, but her boyfriend doesn't notice.
It's all just weird and there's not the aforementioned trick of wrapping it up in just enough normalcy to make you buy it. And you need to buy it, because the wider points he's making fall on deaf ears if it's just a silly movie of people being stupid.
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
biscuits
Isn't it funny how people can have completely different attitudes and approaches to the simplest of things? A classic example of this, I think, is biscuits.
Now for me, a stale biscuit is the work of Satan.
But, when biscuits do go stale, one of the changes in their character is a shift from crispy and crunchy to soggy and moist. This, fundamentally, is why I hate stale biscuits. A biscuit should snap when you twist it, not bend. That's why, despite all the chocolate and wafery-ness, a kit Kat is still a biscuit, where a mars bar is a chocolate bar. And why a Jaffa Cake is a cake.
However, I'm a great fan of the dunked biscuits. Indeed, when at home and given access to both tea (or coffee) and biscuits, I will inevitably enjoy a session of dunking one into the other.
There's an art to the perfect dunk. You have to time it so that the biscuit is suitably wetened, but not so much that it collapses and half you biscuit falls into your tea. But here's the contradiction - clearly, when dunked, a biscuit is very wet indeed, and I like this. But I hat stale biscuits.
An anti-dunker made this point to me and really they're correct. I was left floundering with the half-hearted riposte of words to the effect that "no, they're not the same" when really the difference is not all that great. But for me the point remains - dunked biscuits are good, but stale biscuits are bad.
If a biscuit has gone even slightly stale I will reject it like an implanted kidney. Biscuit staleness is caused by air getting to the biscuit - a biscuit will only stay crisp if it is protected from the moisture filled terror that is the atmosphere in general. There are several ways to achieve this. First off, you can buy a proper biscuit barrel. These have a little container filled with special moisture absorbing crystals that dry out the air in the tin when the lid is closed.
Alternatively, you can do what I do and ensure that the biscuits effectively remain properly packed in the wrapping the came in. To do this, you only open the biscuits at the top (not the entire pack) and then carefully seal them closed by twisting the loose wrapping and adding sufficient air-tight cling film to prevent deadly atmosphere contamination.
I'm very careful about the above and I know of nobody who likes a stale biscuit, so you'd think other people would be to.
But they aren't. At work, people will brig biscuits in and proceed to open the entire pack and put it into the tin we have. If this were a proper biscuit tin it would be okay, but it isn't, so as quickly as the next day the biscuits will have gone stale. And all they needed to do was take adequate precautions, but I guess they have different attitudes and do different things.
I mean, one person put some biscuits into the fridge. The fridge of all places! That's just asking for trouble. They weren't even chocolate biscuits.
Now for me, a stale biscuit is the work of Satan.
But, when biscuits do go stale, one of the changes in their character is a shift from crispy and crunchy to soggy and moist. This, fundamentally, is why I hate stale biscuits. A biscuit should snap when you twist it, not bend. That's why, despite all the chocolate and wafery-ness, a kit Kat is still a biscuit, where a mars bar is a chocolate bar. And why a Jaffa Cake is a cake.
However, I'm a great fan of the dunked biscuits. Indeed, when at home and given access to both tea (or coffee) and biscuits, I will inevitably enjoy a session of dunking one into the other.
There's an art to the perfect dunk. You have to time it so that the biscuit is suitably wetened, but not so much that it collapses and half you biscuit falls into your tea. But here's the contradiction - clearly, when dunked, a biscuit is very wet indeed, and I like this. But I hat stale biscuits.
An anti-dunker made this point to me and really they're correct. I was left floundering with the half-hearted riposte of words to the effect that "no, they're not the same" when really the difference is not all that great. But for me the point remains - dunked biscuits are good, but stale biscuits are bad.
If a biscuit has gone even slightly stale I will reject it like an implanted kidney. Biscuit staleness is caused by air getting to the biscuit - a biscuit will only stay crisp if it is protected from the moisture filled terror that is the atmosphere in general. There are several ways to achieve this. First off, you can buy a proper biscuit barrel. These have a little container filled with special moisture absorbing crystals that dry out the air in the tin when the lid is closed.
Alternatively, you can do what I do and ensure that the biscuits effectively remain properly packed in the wrapping the came in. To do this, you only open the biscuits at the top (not the entire pack) and then carefully seal them closed by twisting the loose wrapping and adding sufficient air-tight cling film to prevent deadly atmosphere contamination.
I'm very careful about the above and I know of nobody who likes a stale biscuit, so you'd think other people would be to.
But they aren't. At work, people will brig biscuits in and proceed to open the entire pack and put it into the tin we have. If this were a proper biscuit tin it would be okay, but it isn't, so as quickly as the next day the biscuits will have gone stale. And all they needed to do was take adequate precautions, but I guess they have different attitudes and do different things.
I mean, one person put some biscuits into the fridge. The fridge of all places! That's just asking for trouble. They weren't even chocolate biscuits.
Monday, 2 August 2010
odds and sods
Bit of an odds and sods weekend.
The Hungarian Grand Prix was on Sunday, but I generally also watch the practice sessions and qualifying as well as the build-up on the BBC. This means a Grand Prix weekend actually means roughly an additional 8 hours of TV viewing. To be fair, I often watch it only in the sense of having it on while I'm also engaged in other stuff too - especially for the practice sessions.
And when it's something like the Hungarian Grand Prix I'll also do stuff during the actual race too, using the PVR pause function to build up a buffer and skip-back if I miss anything important. The reason for this is that Hungary is usually pretty dull. It's really difficult to overtake - they call it Monaco without the buildings - and so it often processional, although it's apparently a good one to actually go to as a spectator.
It's saying something about this season that even this year's Hungarian and Monaco GPs have been quite good.
Another thing I did was lots of scanning. I've now finished all the New Types. Actually that's not at all true - I finished the New Types that I'd put together in a batch about 4 months ago, so I've still got all the New Types I've received since then to do.
I also unglued all the animage's in the same big batch. This takes ages, but once done I'm hoping my old memories of blasting through animages proves true and I can get them done surprisingly quickly.
Anyway, point is I watched some more fansubs while I scanned.
Hime Chen! Otogi Chikku Idol Lilpri
This is one of those shows aimed at little girls. And when I say aimed at, I mean I get the distinct impression it's aimed at relieving them of their pocket money to buy toys and stuff.
I have to be honest - I didn't really get much further than about half way through as it's just not my cup of tea. But then it would be a bit weird
Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru
I wasn't really impressed by this wither. Not because it was another kid's shows - let's put it this way: If it had said it was written by CLAMP, I wouldn't have been surprised.
Actually, I would have been surprised, because although CLAMP constantly (and annoyingly) recycle their character designs, they don't tend to recycle their plots. Which is to say, this is seemed to be pretty much exactly the same as CLAMP's X series.
It was also clearly a very shoujo series with a lot of bishounen, so you can see why it just wasn't my cup of tea.
Giant Killing
I think I might secretly be a sports anime fan.
Considering I don't really like the majority of sports, this is something of a surprise for me, but I can't argue with the facts. Over the last few months I've sampled a good few sports based anime and I've pretty much enjoyed them all. I mean Giant Killing is a football anime of all things, and I even enjoyed that.
To be fair, I think this is actually because the sports anime I've watched bear little to no resemblance to the actual sports depicted. I think there's a tendency for what I've sampled to depict everything as if it was a game of chess, rather than as the actual sport. So since I like chess, I'm using that as my excuse
Senkou no Night Raid
Surprisingly, this was the last anime (well, fansubbed anime) of the spring season I've watched and usually the last few shows I watch are the dregs - stuff I didn't fancy so left until last.
I knew next to nothing about Senko and was surprised to find it's a bit of a hybrid between a spy thriller and a psychic powers fantasy, all set in 1930s China. This is the only dodgy element - as I understand it, China in the 1930s was occupied by the Japanese and they were not a particularly pleasant occupying force, so I'm slightly worried there's a bit of a revisionist slant, because the Japanese aren't exactly being portrayed in a bad light.
Still, setting that aside this seems like an intelligent and engaging story, so I think on balance it gets the thumbs up.
The Hungarian Grand Prix was on Sunday, but I generally also watch the practice sessions and qualifying as well as the build-up on the BBC. This means a Grand Prix weekend actually means roughly an additional 8 hours of TV viewing. To be fair, I often watch it only in the sense of having it on while I'm also engaged in other stuff too - especially for the practice sessions.
And when it's something like the Hungarian Grand Prix I'll also do stuff during the actual race too, using the PVR pause function to build up a buffer and skip-back if I miss anything important. The reason for this is that Hungary is usually pretty dull. It's really difficult to overtake - they call it Monaco without the buildings - and so it often processional, although it's apparently a good one to actually go to as a spectator.
It's saying something about this season that even this year's Hungarian and Monaco GPs have been quite good.
Another thing I did was lots of scanning. I've now finished all the New Types. Actually that's not at all true - I finished the New Types that I'd put together in a batch about 4 months ago, so I've still got all the New Types I've received since then to do.
I also unglued all the animage's in the same big batch. This takes ages, but once done I'm hoping my old memories of blasting through animages proves true and I can get them done surprisingly quickly.
Anyway, point is I watched some more fansubs while I scanned.
Hime Chen! Otogi Chikku Idol Lilpri
This is one of those shows aimed at little girls. And when I say aimed at, I mean I get the distinct impression it's aimed at relieving them of their pocket money to buy toys and stuff.
I have to be honest - I didn't really get much further than about half way through as it's just not my cup of tea. But then it would be a bit weird
Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru
I wasn't really impressed by this wither. Not because it was another kid's shows - let's put it this way: If it had said it was written by CLAMP, I wouldn't have been surprised.
Actually, I would have been surprised, because although CLAMP constantly (and annoyingly) recycle their character designs, they don't tend to recycle their plots. Which is to say, this is seemed to be pretty much exactly the same as CLAMP's X series.
It was also clearly a very shoujo series with a lot of bishounen, so you can see why it just wasn't my cup of tea.
Giant Killing
I think I might secretly be a sports anime fan.
Considering I don't really like the majority of sports, this is something of a surprise for me, but I can't argue with the facts. Over the last few months I've sampled a good few sports based anime and I've pretty much enjoyed them all. I mean Giant Killing is a football anime of all things, and I even enjoyed that.
To be fair, I think this is actually because the sports anime I've watched bear little to no resemblance to the actual sports depicted. I think there's a tendency for what I've sampled to depict everything as if it was a game of chess, rather than as the actual sport. So since I like chess, I'm using that as my excuse
Senkou no Night Raid
Surprisingly, this was the last anime (well, fansubbed anime) of the spring season I've watched and usually the last few shows I watch are the dregs - stuff I didn't fancy so left until last.
I knew next to nothing about Senko and was surprised to find it's a bit of a hybrid between a spy thriller and a psychic powers fantasy, all set in 1930s China. This is the only dodgy element - as I understand it, China in the 1930s was occupied by the Japanese and they were not a particularly pleasant occupying force, so I'm slightly worried there's a bit of a revisionist slant, because the Japanese aren't exactly being portrayed in a bad light.
Still, setting that aside this seems like an intelligent and engaging story, so I think on balance it gets the thumbs up.
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