So Sunday morning I looked out the window and noticed my landlord buggering about with his caravan.
And then Sunday afternoon he knocks and my door and explains how they'll be setting off tomorrow (Monday) and here' the key to look after his place.
Which presumably means I'll get home and they'll be gone. And I'm left slightly puzzled as to whether I'm going bonkers or he's just changed the date. He didn't mention he did and I was in the middle of dinner (he's got a hell of a knack of knocking on my door while I'm eating or just about to take something out of the oven) so I didn't ask, but I'm pretty sure he said he was heading off on the 1st of July.
I dunno, maybe he didn't say that date or maybe he changed it because of the rain, it just gets very confusing is all.
I'm now about half of the way through Matter. It's very good, but I have to admit it feels like it's a little padded. Well I say that, in the midpoint, Banks is essentially juggling 4 plot-threads at the same time and it keeps moving between them in a sort of languid way.
No, that's not right - it's like every time we switch narrative you shift into a different gear. Some of the stuff is told almost in a summary way, while other bits are told at a very leisurely pace. It's not a bad thing, because Banks's stuff is always very entertaining and readable, it's just that when I reached page 300 and realised I'm only half way through I think I sort of which he'd only had 3 plot threads, if you see what I mean.
My little toe on my foot ached like a bugger on Friday, and then Sunday it itched like mad. This is the one that I banged and while scratching it bits of scar tissue were coming away. That usually means it's all healed if the old scar tissue is breaking away, but it doesn't half make things look messy.
And speaking of Friday we went to the pub at lunch for a work colleagues birthday. I wouldn't usually mention this sort of thing, but it was a slightly bizarre experience. We went to a pub called the French Horn, which we've been to a handful of times over the ten years I've worked here.
Usually I associate it with being very busy at lunch - it's a well known gastro pub, but we were virtually the only people in there. And perhaps the explanation was that the food was really odd.
I had belly pork, which was reasonable enough, but it had this sauce with it that I thought was going to be normal apple sauce, but it was actually a sort of creamy sauce that was apple flavoured. Also, the crackling on the top was weirdly chewy where I normally associate it with being crispy.
And then the pudding. I had a fruit crumble and it turned up and was crunchy. At first, I thought this must be in the crumble, but then the actual fruit bit had crunchy stuff in it too. Now I can't be sure because the fruit was obviously brightly coloured and the crumble was covered in custard, but I'm pretty sure these crunchy bits were peanuts.
Yes, that's right, peanuts in a fruit crumble. It was just plain wrong and, tbh, slightly unpleasent.
oh that holiday
So Sunday morning I looked out the window and noticed my landlord buggering about with his caravan.
And then Sunday afternoon he knocks and my door and explains how they'll be setting off tomorrow (Monday) and here' the key to look after his place.
Which presumably means I'll get home and they'll be gone. And I'm left slightly puzzled as to whether I'm going bonkers or he's just changed the date. He didn't mention he did and I was in the middle of dinner (he's got a hell of a knack of knocking on my door while I'm eating or just about to take something out of the oven) so I didn't ask, but I'm pretty sure he said he was heading off on the 1st of July.
I dunno, maybe he didn't say that date or maybe he changed it because of the rain, it just gets very confusing is all.
I'm now about half of the way through Matter. It's very good, but I have to admit it feels like it's a little padded. Well I say that, in the midpoint, Banks is essentially juggling 4 plot-threads at the same time and it keeps moving between them in a sort of languid way.
No, that's not right - it's like every time we switch narrative you shift into a different gear. Some of the stuff is told almost in a summary way, while other bits are told at a very leisurely pace. It's not a bad thing, because Banks's stuff is always very entertaining and readable, it's just that when I reached page 300 and realised I'm only half way through I think I sort of which he'd only had 3 plot threads, if you see what I mean.
My little toe on my foot ached like a bugger on Friday, and then Sunday it itched like mad. This is the one that I banged and while scratching it bits of scar tissue were coming away. That usually means it's all healed if the old scar tissue is breaking away, but it doesn't half make things look messy.
And speaking of Friday we went to the pub at lunch for a work colleagues birthday. I wouldn't usually mention this sort of thing, but it was a slightly bizarre experience. We went to a pub called the French Horn, which we've been to a handful of times over the ten years I've worked here.
Usually I associate it with being very busy at lunch - it's a well known gastro pub, but we were virtually the only people in there. And perhaps the explanation was that the food was really odd.
I had belly pork, which was reasonable enough, but it had this sauce with it that I thought was going to be normal apple sauce, but it was actually a sort of creamy sauce that was apple flavoured. Also, the crackling on the top was weirdly chewy where I normally associate it with being crispy.
And then the pudding. I had a fruit crumble and it turned up and was crunchy. At first, I thought this must be in the crumble, but then the actual fruit bit had crunchy stuff in it too. Now I can't be sure because the fruit was obviously brightly coloured and the crumble was covered in custard, but I'm pretty sure these crunchy bits were peanuts.
Yes, that's right, peanuts in a fruit crumble. It was just plain wrong and, tbh, slightly unpleasent.
Monday, 5 July 2010
Friday, 2 July 2010
holiday, what holiday?
My landlord told me last week sometime that he was off on holiday (again).
This holiday was supposed to start on the 1st of July, which was yesterday. But when I came home his caravan was still there.
Don't you just hate when people don't do what they say they're going to?
To be totally fair to him, I think he may have cancelled it because of the weather. The holiday was in North Wales and there was heavy rain forecast for there for last night and today.
But still, it's a pain in the arse. I guess a part of it is because he's retired, so he's got that leeway to just change his plans as he wants. If it was fixed holiday off from work, he wouldn't have that freedom.
You might be able to tell I've sort of run out of stuff to say this week :/.
No real plans for this weekend - bit of cleaning and other domestics are needed. I'm not really sure what the weather is up to is part of the problem. It's been horribly humid this last week and I understand that's going to clam down, but I dunno. So far today it's looked like it's about to rain all day, but there's not been a drop.
This holiday was supposed to start on the 1st of July, which was yesterday. But when I came home his caravan was still there.
Don't you just hate when people don't do what they say they're going to?
To be totally fair to him, I think he may have cancelled it because of the weather. The holiday was in North Wales and there was heavy rain forecast for there for last night and today.
But still, it's a pain in the arse. I guess a part of it is because he's retired, so he's got that leeway to just change his plans as he wants. If it was fixed holiday off from work, he wouldn't have that freedom.
You might be able to tell I've sort of run out of stuff to say this week :/.
No real plans for this weekend - bit of cleaning and other domestics are needed. I'm not really sure what the weather is up to is part of the problem. It's been horribly humid this last week and I understand that's going to clam down, but I dunno. So far today it's looked like it's about to rain all day, but there's not been a drop.
Thursday, 1 July 2010
doctor whoisit
So last week marked the end of the latest season of the revamped Doctor Who.
The season has been a pretty good one. There weren't any proper stinkers as there have been in previous seasons. There were a few things I was disappointed about, though.
First off they buggered about with the theme tune in a totally unnecessary and, frankly, rubbish way. It sort of took on a drum-and-base feel at the beginning and in my opinion ruined it. I can understand wanting to tweak things to signify the beginning of a new era, and I can see that a tweak to the music is a lot cheaper than tweaking the visuals or totally revamping, but they really should have left well alone.
Also, I have to come down in the camp of not being a new fan of the new Daleks. The new ones are bigger, which is okay, but they're also colour-coded. I can't remember what they're supposed to mean (this is part of the problem - unless the colour coding 'makes sense' based on what they are you're likely to forget it) but the idea presumably is that each colour corresponds to a type of Dalek.
Which is another part of the problem - part of what the Daleks are about is that they're meant to be a reflection of that part of Nazism that was concerned with racial purity. Daleks see themselves as the best race and a pure race, so they want to exterminate all other races. But surely that means genetically they're all nearly identical, meaning specialisation should essentially be un-necessary - they're all equally good at everything.
But also, the Daleks are now a veritable riot of rainbow colours (taste the rainbow indeed) and a bright yellow Dalek is just not as scary as a utilitarian metallic one.
One thing I think has been a struggle this last year is the relationship with the companion. I think there was a decision to be made about keeping the idea of the companion and Doctor loving each other (or unrequited love) and going back to the old days where it was more about a platonic friendship.
So you ended up with a bit of an odd situation at one point where Amy basically threw herself at the Doctor... on the very night of her wedding to Rory. The problem with this is I'm not sure that really reflected very well on her. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for complicated relationships, but did it really fit with how she was depicted throughout the rest of the series? I'm not sure it did.
My last niggle was the whole paradoxes thing. The eventual conclusion of the story played a fairly typical trick of making it so that 'none of it had ever happened' but the problem is that just creates even more paradoxes.
I dunno - I kinda didn't mind that in the RTD era, but I think I was expecting a bit more in the ways of reliable hard-SF chops from Moffat. I guess the real point there is that it's a Saturday teatime entertainment show, not a proper hard-SF show and never has been.
The season has been a pretty good one. There weren't any proper stinkers as there have been in previous seasons. There were a few things I was disappointed about, though.
First off they buggered about with the theme tune in a totally unnecessary and, frankly, rubbish way. It sort of took on a drum-and-base feel at the beginning and in my opinion ruined it. I can understand wanting to tweak things to signify the beginning of a new era, and I can see that a tweak to the music is a lot cheaper than tweaking the visuals or totally revamping, but they really should have left well alone.
Also, I have to come down in the camp of not being a new fan of the new Daleks. The new ones are bigger, which is okay, but they're also colour-coded. I can't remember what they're supposed to mean (this is part of the problem - unless the colour coding 'makes sense' based on what they are you're likely to forget it) but the idea presumably is that each colour corresponds to a type of Dalek.
Which is another part of the problem - part of what the Daleks are about is that they're meant to be a reflection of that part of Nazism that was concerned with racial purity. Daleks see themselves as the best race and a pure race, so they want to exterminate all other races. But surely that means genetically they're all nearly identical, meaning specialisation should essentially be un-necessary - they're all equally good at everything.
But also, the Daleks are now a veritable riot of rainbow colours (taste the rainbow indeed) and a bright yellow Dalek is just not as scary as a utilitarian metallic one.
One thing I think has been a struggle this last year is the relationship with the companion. I think there was a decision to be made about keeping the idea of the companion and Doctor loving each other (or unrequited love) and going back to the old days where it was more about a platonic friendship.
So you ended up with a bit of an odd situation at one point where Amy basically threw herself at the Doctor... on the very night of her wedding to Rory. The problem with this is I'm not sure that really reflected very well on her. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for complicated relationships, but did it really fit with how she was depicted throughout the rest of the series? I'm not sure it did.
My last niggle was the whole paradoxes thing. The eventual conclusion of the story played a fairly typical trick of making it so that 'none of it had ever happened' but the problem is that just creates even more paradoxes.
I dunno - I kinda didn't mind that in the RTD era, but I think I was expecting a bit more in the ways of reliable hard-SF chops from Moffat. I guess the real point there is that it's a Saturday teatime entertainment show, not a proper hard-SF show and never has been.
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
saw v
Is it me, or does it feel like the saw series has been going on forever?
In reality, the first film came out in 2004 and they've been releasing 1 new one each year since then. Saw 5 was therefore last year's entry in the series.
I came quite late to the saw series - I obviously knew about them, but I hadn't seen any of them until fairly recently. I think part of this was because of that label of being 'torture porn'.
I mean, it's a brutally descriptive label and I'm not sure I fancied the idea of watching torture done in an appealing way. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy a good horror movie and torture is a suitably horrendous thing to feature in a horror movie, it was just that porn tag that made it seem like something I wouldn't like.
However, a while back I thought I might as well find out what they were really like, so I put them on my rental list. Now sometimes, the way the rental list works there's a real risk of getting the films out of order, but I was lucky enough to get them in order, and also to get them in fairly quick succession.
So in other words, I watched 1, 2, 3 and 4 in order and within a short space of time. As it turned out, I think this helped quite a bit, because the torture porn label was not quite accurate.
What I mean is that the films turned out to have much more in the way of story than I'd anticipated. The torture was actually a result of the bad guy putting people into lethal games where generally they (or someone important to them) had to endure some sort of physical pain in order to win the game. If they lost, then they (or the someone else) would be killed in generally quite nasty ways.
So to start with, the central gimmick of the film is already pretty complicated. Normally the central core of these horror franchises is quite simple, but here you have an interesting basic premise - I mean, as Jigsaw himself points out, he never actually kills people, unlike every other killer in these horror films.
Also, as the series progressed there were more than a few twists that actually worked and it was revealed that there was a proper back-story and that there were accomplices and copycats and all sorts. They also tended to play about with the timelines, so sometimes it turned out you'd seen things in non-chronological order, of things you thought were simultaneous were actually far apart.
It was also pretty much the case that everyone that died was - how to put it? Deserving? Generally, these people were nasty criminals or had escaped justice or whatever. And in Jigsaw's traps they also had a genuine chance - if they did what they had to and what they were told to, then they would survive.
However, this seemed to change in the fourth film - some of the people that got killed were not given a chance, or they did not really deserve to die. Or at the least, the justifications changed gear - where previously they, I dunno, got away with a hit-and-run, in 4 some of the people were being punished for things like not getting over their grief. Also, some of the traps became fiendishly complicated, or over-complicated.
Unfortunately, 5 seems to continue this trend. Some of the people in the traps haven't necessarily done anything particularly bad. There's a world of difference between someone who escaped justice for a proper crime and simply not doing what Jigsaw says.
On the upside, the plot of 5 is simpler than it was in 4, where it became incredibly complicated. Unfortunately, this simplicity is also at the expense of it being interesting. Although it reveals a bit more depth and gives some back-story, the problem is that this back-story isn't hugely interesting.
What doesn't help either is that the franchise is now almost totally impenetrable to the outsider. I mean, given the gap between me watching this film and 4, I was rather lost myself, and I've seen all the films.
The only real saver is that the actual traps themselves are still as good as ever (well, excepting that aspect of fairness).
In reality, the first film came out in 2004 and they've been releasing 1 new one each year since then. Saw 5 was therefore last year's entry in the series.
I came quite late to the saw series - I obviously knew about them, but I hadn't seen any of them until fairly recently. I think part of this was because of that label of being 'torture porn'.
I mean, it's a brutally descriptive label and I'm not sure I fancied the idea of watching torture done in an appealing way. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy a good horror movie and torture is a suitably horrendous thing to feature in a horror movie, it was just that porn tag that made it seem like something I wouldn't like.
However, a while back I thought I might as well find out what they were really like, so I put them on my rental list. Now sometimes, the way the rental list works there's a real risk of getting the films out of order, but I was lucky enough to get them in order, and also to get them in fairly quick succession.
So in other words, I watched 1, 2, 3 and 4 in order and within a short space of time. As it turned out, I think this helped quite a bit, because the torture porn label was not quite accurate.
What I mean is that the films turned out to have much more in the way of story than I'd anticipated. The torture was actually a result of the bad guy putting people into lethal games where generally they (or someone important to them) had to endure some sort of physical pain in order to win the game. If they lost, then they (or the someone else) would be killed in generally quite nasty ways.
So to start with, the central gimmick of the film is already pretty complicated. Normally the central core of these horror franchises is quite simple, but here you have an interesting basic premise - I mean, as Jigsaw himself points out, he never actually kills people, unlike every other killer in these horror films.
Also, as the series progressed there were more than a few twists that actually worked and it was revealed that there was a proper back-story and that there were accomplices and copycats and all sorts. They also tended to play about with the timelines, so sometimes it turned out you'd seen things in non-chronological order, of things you thought were simultaneous were actually far apart.
It was also pretty much the case that everyone that died was - how to put it? Deserving? Generally, these people were nasty criminals or had escaped justice or whatever. And in Jigsaw's traps they also had a genuine chance - if they did what they had to and what they were told to, then they would survive.
However, this seemed to change in the fourth film - some of the people that got killed were not given a chance, or they did not really deserve to die. Or at the least, the justifications changed gear - where previously they, I dunno, got away with a hit-and-run, in 4 some of the people were being punished for things like not getting over their grief. Also, some of the traps became fiendishly complicated, or over-complicated.
Unfortunately, 5 seems to continue this trend. Some of the people in the traps haven't necessarily done anything particularly bad. There's a world of difference between someone who escaped justice for a proper crime and simply not doing what Jigsaw says.
On the upside, the plot of 5 is simpler than it was in 4, where it became incredibly complicated. Unfortunately, this simplicity is also at the expense of it being interesting. Although it reveals a bit more depth and gives some back-story, the problem is that this back-story isn't hugely interesting.
What doesn't help either is that the franchise is now almost totally impenetrable to the outsider. I mean, given the gap between me watching this film and 4, I was rather lost myself, and I've seen all the films.
The only real saver is that the actual traps themselves are still as good as ever (well, excepting that aspect of fairness).
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
toe-day only
I whacked my toe at some point on Friday morning or Saturday night. I don't really remember what time it was as I'd woken up in the middle of the night and was wondering about without turning the light on - hence why I whacked my toe.
It hurt when I did it, obviously, but it was only when I was getting back into bed that I realised I'd done some proper damage. As I slid my foot into bed it felt strangely wet, so I turned the light on and saw I'd left a streak of blood on the duvet.
We're not talking pints of the stuff here, but an inspection of the toe showed I'd actually broken the skin and it was all bruised and angry looking. It wasn't really painful anymore (well, it smarted when I poked it) but it was a bit of a mess, so I whacked a plaster on it and went back to bed.
When I got up on Saturday morning, it was a much less comfortable experience. I had to take the next load of stuff down the recycling place, and that meant putting some trainers on, which put constant pressure on my poor damaged pinky.
I plastered it up again, as it wasn't in any way healed and when I got back and removed the plaster it was a bit of a mess. It looked like it was mainly plasma that had leaked out, rather than blood as such, but it was definitely a mess.
It's not doing too badly now - I still get a bit of a twinge if I bump it, but nothing too bad. Certainly I'm not hobbling while I walk :/.
The Valencia Grand Prix was on over the weekend.
Well, actually, if you're a sports fan it was a bit of a mad one - Wimbledon is ongoing of course, and the world cup is in full swing (I'm not really interested in either, but understand that that manically depressed Scot is still 'in it' and that Eng-Ger-Land received a trashing from the Germans and so are very much not) but it was a bumper crop for us petrol heads as well, because the Assen (Dutch) MotoGP was on as well.
Assen was on Saturday and I have to say, it was a bit dull. This is a remarkable turn-up for MotoGP, where it's almost always a great race with loads of overtaking and daredevilry. But as they hinted at on the commentary, the layout of the circuit doesn't lend itself to overtaking and while it wasn't processional like F1 can become, it wasn't as exciting as usual.
What made this even more bizarre was that Valencia is usually incredibly dull. This is it's third year and in both previous years there have been only a handful of attempts to overtake, most ending in failure. Well, bizarrely this year the race was actually quite interesting. I mean, I don't think I'd go as far as to say it was up there with the likes of Canada, but it was a lot better than usual. And Mark Webber had one of those horrible moments that the drivers must dread - check it out on the BBC site if you haven't seen it.
Next up is the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. The bikes seemed to do well around the new arena circuit (it was apparently designed with bikes in mind) so now we get to see if it adds anything to F1 as well.
And speaking of petrol heads, a new series of Top Gear kicked off on Sunday. Mixed reaction from me - the bit with Jezza in the Reliant Robin 3-wheeler was funny, but had that overly set-up thing going on. The joke was he kept rolling it, which was good, but every time he did some celebrity just happened to be there to flip him back over, which was odd.
But then they got a new reasonably priced car and did the thing of inviting a bunch of celebs to come and have a go, in order to put some times on the board. This was good and funny, but felt oddly rushed - like they'd only decided to do it at the last moment. When they last changed the reasonably priced car I'm sure more celebs turned up to have a go.
There was also a bit on James May driving up the Iceland volcano, which was good, but seemed a bit short. The news was better - the last few series it seems to have weirdly veered into being the TG boys try their hand at stand-up, where it's better when it's actually about cars and proper news and then they can make funny comments.
It hurt when I did it, obviously, but it was only when I was getting back into bed that I realised I'd done some proper damage. As I slid my foot into bed it felt strangely wet, so I turned the light on and saw I'd left a streak of blood on the duvet.
We're not talking pints of the stuff here, but an inspection of the toe showed I'd actually broken the skin and it was all bruised and angry looking. It wasn't really painful anymore (well, it smarted when I poked it) but it was a bit of a mess, so I whacked a plaster on it and went back to bed.
When I got up on Saturday morning, it was a much less comfortable experience. I had to take the next load of stuff down the recycling place, and that meant putting some trainers on, which put constant pressure on my poor damaged pinky.
I plastered it up again, as it wasn't in any way healed and when I got back and removed the plaster it was a bit of a mess. It looked like it was mainly plasma that had leaked out, rather than blood as such, but it was definitely a mess.
It's not doing too badly now - I still get a bit of a twinge if I bump it, but nothing too bad. Certainly I'm not hobbling while I walk :/.
The Valencia Grand Prix was on over the weekend.
Well, actually, if you're a sports fan it was a bit of a mad one - Wimbledon is ongoing of course, and the world cup is in full swing (I'm not really interested in either, but understand that that manically depressed Scot is still 'in it' and that Eng-Ger-Land received a trashing from the Germans and so are very much not) but it was a bumper crop for us petrol heads as well, because the Assen (Dutch) MotoGP was on as well.
Assen was on Saturday and I have to say, it was a bit dull. This is a remarkable turn-up for MotoGP, where it's almost always a great race with loads of overtaking and daredevilry. But as they hinted at on the commentary, the layout of the circuit doesn't lend itself to overtaking and while it wasn't processional like F1 can become, it wasn't as exciting as usual.
What made this even more bizarre was that Valencia is usually incredibly dull. This is it's third year and in both previous years there have been only a handful of attempts to overtake, most ending in failure. Well, bizarrely this year the race was actually quite interesting. I mean, I don't think I'd go as far as to say it was up there with the likes of Canada, but it was a lot better than usual. And Mark Webber had one of those horrible moments that the drivers must dread - check it out on the BBC site if you haven't seen it.
Next up is the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. The bikes seemed to do well around the new arena circuit (it was apparently designed with bikes in mind) so now we get to see if it adds anything to F1 as well.
And speaking of petrol heads, a new series of Top Gear kicked off on Sunday. Mixed reaction from me - the bit with Jezza in the Reliant Robin 3-wheeler was funny, but had that overly set-up thing going on. The joke was he kept rolling it, which was good, but every time he did some celebrity just happened to be there to flip him back over, which was odd.
But then they got a new reasonably priced car and did the thing of inviting a bunch of celebs to come and have a go, in order to put some times on the board. This was good and funny, but felt oddly rushed - like they'd only decided to do it at the last moment. When they last changed the reasonably priced car I'm sure more celebs turned up to have a go.
There was also a bit on James May driving up the Iceland volcano, which was good, but seemed a bit short. The news was better - the last few series it seems to have weirdly veered into being the TG boys try their hand at stand-up, where it's better when it's actually about cars and proper news and then they can make funny comments.
Monday, 28 June 2010
return of the aircon
So this weekend I rediscovered the sheer, unbridled joy of running my air conditioner.
Over the last 3 or 4 years my aircon unit has pretty much just sat there, taking up space, because we've not had the weather to justify using it. However, last week it was rather warm and then all forecasts pointed to it being properly hot over the weekend.
After I got back from the shops on Saturday morning I therefore attached the hose and its fitting, which take the hot air outside, and fired her up on Saturday morning. God, it was glorious.
I ran the aircon continuously all day Saturday and Sunday and was super cool. On Saturday it even got to the stage where I was turning the temperature setting up, because I was actually starting to feel a little cold. I think this was because, while was pretty warm, it wasn't as hot as it can be.
When I bought the aircon it was because it was consistently into the mid-to-high thirties and it was staying warm all night. It was also horrendously humid, which is the thing that really kills me. However, this last weekend I think it only just got into the thirties, which is hot, don't get me wrong, but it's not the sorts of temperatures where my aircon struggles to keep my bedsit cool.
Indeed, I was able to keep the internal doors open and keep the entire bedsit cool, where I remember when I first got it I had to close all the doors just to keep my main sleeping/living room cool.
I also remember that as soon as it was switched off, the room instantly heated back up, whereas this last weekend, the room stayed fairly cool for quite a while afterwards.
That's one of the downsides - as soon as you turn it off, the room starts to warm up again. I think a big part of it is because the bricks heat up in the sun during the day, so in the evenings they release a lot of heat. Certainly it's warmer than outside temperatures would suggest it should be.
So why don't I leave it on overnight? Well, it's extremely noisy. I always find it difficult to sleep when there's noise - the small fan in my PVR can keep me up, so think what it's like when I've got the aircon going. And it's also very drying - the cooling also comes with dehumidifying effects, and while I don't like humidity, that sort of extreme drying can give me very dry eyes, which is very uncomfortable.
Still, I'm more than happy to put up with these effects while I'm awake, especially when it makes my room so pleasantly cool.
Over the last 3 or 4 years my aircon unit has pretty much just sat there, taking up space, because we've not had the weather to justify using it. However, last week it was rather warm and then all forecasts pointed to it being properly hot over the weekend.
After I got back from the shops on Saturday morning I therefore attached the hose and its fitting, which take the hot air outside, and fired her up on Saturday morning. God, it was glorious.
I ran the aircon continuously all day Saturday and Sunday and was super cool. On Saturday it even got to the stage where I was turning the temperature setting up, because I was actually starting to feel a little cold. I think this was because, while was pretty warm, it wasn't as hot as it can be.
When I bought the aircon it was because it was consistently into the mid-to-high thirties and it was staying warm all night. It was also horrendously humid, which is the thing that really kills me. However, this last weekend I think it only just got into the thirties, which is hot, don't get me wrong, but it's not the sorts of temperatures where my aircon struggles to keep my bedsit cool.
Indeed, I was able to keep the internal doors open and keep the entire bedsit cool, where I remember when I first got it I had to close all the doors just to keep my main sleeping/living room cool.
I also remember that as soon as it was switched off, the room instantly heated back up, whereas this last weekend, the room stayed fairly cool for quite a while afterwards.
That's one of the downsides - as soon as you turn it off, the room starts to warm up again. I think a big part of it is because the bricks heat up in the sun during the day, so in the evenings they release a lot of heat. Certainly it's warmer than outside temperatures would suggest it should be.
So why don't I leave it on overnight? Well, it's extremely noisy. I always find it difficult to sleep when there's noise - the small fan in my PVR can keep me up, so think what it's like when I've got the aircon going. And it's also very drying - the cooling also comes with dehumidifying effects, and while I don't like humidity, that sort of extreme drying can give me very dry eyes, which is very uncomfortable.
Still, I'm more than happy to put up with these effects while I'm awake, especially when it makes my room so pleasantly cool.
Friday, 25 June 2010
actual bona fide dvd watching
So this week it happened.
Come Tuesday night there was nothing I fancied watching on telly and the only things I had on my PVR were some huge long dramas that I just didn't have the time or energy to watch. Which could mean only one thing - I would have to watch something on DVD.
Being a little tired my energy levels suggested a film was out, so I plumped for some anime of all things. I know, how about that, eh? Actually watching some anime on DVD. It's almost like I've got dozens of series sat on DVD waiting to be watched - no, I know, what a preposterous notion.
The series I picked - and there was no real reason for it, just a random selection - was Samurai Champloo. Ages ago I read a manga version of Samurai Champloo, but it was only 2 volumes and while the character designs were pretty faithful, there was a note from the manga-ka saying it was deliberately different to the anime, although I did enjoy it.
The only other thing I knew about Champloo was that it was by Manglobe and I quite enjoyed what I'd seen of Michiko to Hatchin and this expectation was backed up by the fact I don't think I've ever seen anyone say anything bad about it.
It feels like there's a giant "but..." coming, doesn't it?
Well there kinda is.
I mean, I wouldn't say I've not liked it, but it's more like it's not quite what I was expecting. What I was expecting was something a bit more madcap than what I got. I mean, I didn't think it would be a comedy, but I thought it would have more humour in it, if you see what I mean.
And the first section of the first ep sort of backed this up - it did a gag about 'one day earlier' (it's a little difficult to explain) but since then it's been more dry than I was expecting. I dunno, I think I was expecting to find it funny, but have barely cracked a smile. Later episodes have been better in this regard, but I dunno, the start was a bit flat.
And that doesn't mean there hasn't been plenty to enjoy - the characters are nice (although they feel a little under-developed at this stage - who Jin and Mugen actually are has not been explained at all) and the episodic stories around a longer story arc seems to be working quite well. The animation is very stylistic and the whole thing feels alive with creativity (even if the music is arsebiscuits), it's just not as funny as I was expecting, and since that's all I was expecting I've felt a little disappointed.
Come Tuesday night there was nothing I fancied watching on telly and the only things I had on my PVR were some huge long dramas that I just didn't have the time or energy to watch. Which could mean only one thing - I would have to watch something on DVD.
Being a little tired my energy levels suggested a film was out, so I plumped for some anime of all things. I know, how about that, eh? Actually watching some anime on DVD. It's almost like I've got dozens of series sat on DVD waiting to be watched - no, I know, what a preposterous notion.
The series I picked - and there was no real reason for it, just a random selection - was Samurai Champloo. Ages ago I read a manga version of Samurai Champloo, but it was only 2 volumes and while the character designs were pretty faithful, there was a note from the manga-ka saying it was deliberately different to the anime, although I did enjoy it.
The only other thing I knew about Champloo was that it was by Manglobe and I quite enjoyed what I'd seen of Michiko to Hatchin and this expectation was backed up by the fact I don't think I've ever seen anyone say anything bad about it.
It feels like there's a giant "but..." coming, doesn't it?
Well there kinda is.
I mean, I wouldn't say I've not liked it, but it's more like it's not quite what I was expecting. What I was expecting was something a bit more madcap than what I got. I mean, I didn't think it would be a comedy, but I thought it would have more humour in it, if you see what I mean.
And the first section of the first ep sort of backed this up - it did a gag about 'one day earlier' (it's a little difficult to explain) but since then it's been more dry than I was expecting. I dunno, I think I was expecting to find it funny, but have barely cracked a smile. Later episodes have been better in this regard, but I dunno, the start was a bit flat.
And that doesn't mean there hasn't been plenty to enjoy - the characters are nice (although they feel a little under-developed at this stage - who Jin and Mugen actually are has not been explained at all) and the episodic stories around a longer story arc seems to be working quite well. The animation is very stylistic and the whole thing feels alive with creativity (even if the music is arsebiscuits), it's just not as funny as I was expecting, and since that's all I was expecting I've felt a little disappointed.
Thursday, 24 June 2010
more about the sun, it seems
I figured out what I was blathering on about on Tuesday. Or that is to say, I figured out what I was supposed to be blathering on about: lack of sleep.
Basically, when it gets to this time of year I have real trouble sleeping. I mean, all this week it's still really light at 9pm, and that confuses me. For the rest of the year by 9pm it's usually dark, and my brain can go "oh look, it's dark, must be time to sleep".
But this time of year, I find myself going to bed and there's loads of light streaming in through the curtains. It's weird - it's like if you have a lie in at the weekend and you kind of drift into consciousness and it's clearly proper daytime outside, but you're still in bed.
Except it's at night, so I'm tired and want to go to sleep, but another part of my brian is saying actually it's not dark so it's not time for bed yet. What makes it worse, I think is British Summer Time/daylight savings. Without that, it would be dark at a more reasonable time.
Anyway, the upshot is that for a couple of weeks I'm going to be struggling to get to sleep.
I recently started a new book.
I've been a bit derelict with my reading for a while now. This isn't anything unusual - I tend to go in cycles of reading a lot and then nothing for ages. Usually I snap into a reading phase when I get a book I'm excited about reading. In this case that book is "Matter" by Ian M Banks.
I'm a big fan of Banks's sci-fi books - especially the culture novels, which this is one of. I get the impression he'd kind of put the culture (and possibly SF) stuff to bed, but I guess he's found a story he wants to tell... and it's a bit one. The book is some 600 pages long, which I'm pretty sure is the biggest book he's done.
I'm about a fifth of the way through and I'm enjoying it so far. It's really starting to get going - there was quite a lot of establishing stuff to start with, but now the main plot has really kicked in.
I've not actually read any of Banks's non-SF books, although I received his first - Wasp Factory - as a present for my last birthday and am intent on starting them. Banks has a great prose style, which is very readable, so I'm sure I'll enjoy them despite not being SF.
Basically, when it gets to this time of year I have real trouble sleeping. I mean, all this week it's still really light at 9pm, and that confuses me. For the rest of the year by 9pm it's usually dark, and my brain can go "oh look, it's dark, must be time to sleep".
But this time of year, I find myself going to bed and there's loads of light streaming in through the curtains. It's weird - it's like if you have a lie in at the weekend and you kind of drift into consciousness and it's clearly proper daytime outside, but you're still in bed.
Except it's at night, so I'm tired and want to go to sleep, but another part of my brian is saying actually it's not dark so it's not time for bed yet. What makes it worse, I think is British Summer Time/daylight savings. Without that, it would be dark at a more reasonable time.
Anyway, the upshot is that for a couple of weeks I'm going to be struggling to get to sleep.
I recently started a new book.
I've been a bit derelict with my reading for a while now. This isn't anything unusual - I tend to go in cycles of reading a lot and then nothing for ages. Usually I snap into a reading phase when I get a book I'm excited about reading. In this case that book is "Matter" by Ian M Banks.
I'm a big fan of Banks's sci-fi books - especially the culture novels, which this is one of. I get the impression he'd kind of put the culture (and possibly SF) stuff to bed, but I guess he's found a story he wants to tell... and it's a bit one. The book is some 600 pages long, which I'm pretty sure is the biggest book he's done.
I'm about a fifth of the way through and I'm enjoying it so far. It's really starting to get going - there was quite a lot of establishing stuff to start with, but now the main plot has really kicked in.
I've not actually read any of Banks's non-SF books, although I received his first - Wasp Factory - as a present for my last birthday and am intent on starting them. Banks has a great prose style, which is very readable, so I'm sure I'll enjoy them despite not being SF.
more about the sun, it seems
I figured out what I was blathering on about on Tuesday. Or that is to say, I figured out what I was supposed to be blathering on about: lack of sleep.
Basically, when it gets to this time of year I have real trouble sleeping. I mean, all this week it's still really light at 9pm, and that confuses me. For the rest of the year by 9pm it's usually dark, and my brain can go "oh look, it's dark, must be time to sleep".
But this time of year, I find myself going to bed and there's loads of light streaming in through the curtains. It's weird - it's like if you have a lie in at the weekend and you kind of drift into consciousness and it's clearly proper daytime outside, but you're still in bed.
Except it's at night, so I'm tired and want to go to sleep, but another part of my brian is saying actually it's not dark so it's not time for bed yet. What makes it worse, I think is British Summer Time/daylight savings. Without that, it would be dark at a more reasonable time.
Anyway, the upshot is that for a couple of weeks I'm going to be struggling to get to sleep.
I recently started a new book.
I've been a bit derelict with my reading for a while now. This isn't anything unusual - I tend to go in cycles of reading a lot and then nothing for ages. Usually I snap into a reading phase when I get a book I'm excited about reading. In this case that book is "Matter" by Ian M Banks.
I'm a big fan of Banks's sci-fi books - especially the culture novels, which this is one of. I get the impression he'd kind of put the culture (and possibly SF) stuff to bed, but I guess he's found a story he wants to tell... and it's a bit one. The book is some 600 pages long, which I'm pretty sure is the biggest book he's done.
I'm about a fifth of the way through and I'm enjoying it so far. It's really starting to get going - there was quite a lot of establishing stuff to start with, but now the main plot has really kicked in.
I've not actually read any of Banks's non-SF books, although I received his first - Wasp Factory - as a present for my last birthday and am intent on starting them. Banks has a great prose style, which is very readable, so I'm sure I'll enjoy them despite not being SF.
Basically, when it gets to this time of year I have real trouble sleeping. I mean, all this week it's still really light at 9pm, and that confuses me. For the rest of the year by 9pm it's usually dark, and my brain can go "oh look, it's dark, must be time to sleep".
But this time of year, I find myself going to bed and there's loads of light streaming in through the curtains. It's weird - it's like if you have a lie in at the weekend and you kind of drift into consciousness and it's clearly proper daytime outside, but you're still in bed.
Except it's at night, so I'm tired and want to go to sleep, but another part of my brian is saying actually it's not dark so it's not time for bed yet. What makes it worse, I think is British Summer Time/daylight savings. Without that, it would be dark at a more reasonable time.
Anyway, the upshot is that for a couple of weeks I'm going to be struggling to get to sleep.
I recently started a new book.
I've been a bit derelict with my reading for a while now. This isn't anything unusual - I tend to go in cycles of reading a lot and then nothing for ages. Usually I snap into a reading phase when I get a book I'm excited about reading. In this case that book is "Matter" by Ian M Banks.
I'm a big fan of Banks's sci-fi books - especially the culture novels, which this is one of. I get the impression he'd kind of put the culture (and possibly SF) stuff to bed, but I guess he's found a story he wants to tell... and it's a bit one. The book is some 600 pages long, which I'm pretty sure is the biggest book he's done.
I'm about a fifth of the way through and I'm enjoying it so far. It's really starting to get going - there was quite a lot of establishing stuff to start with, but now the main plot has really kicked in.
I've not actually read any of Banks's non-SF books, although I received his first - Wasp Factory - as a present for my last birthday and am intent on starting them. Banks has a great prose style, which is very readable, so I'm sure I'll enjoy them despite not being SF.
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
in the loop
One of the best British comedies in years is a satirical show called "The Thick of It."
Thick of it is in many ways a modern version of Yes Minister, but it's also its own distinct beast. For one thing its focus is much more on 'spin' than the working of government, which was the focus of yes minister. In other words, it's more a product of its time - that isn't to say spin has never existed, just that it's something people are probably more aware of.
Thick of it also has other modern trappings - it's filmed in a sort of mockumentary style. Well, actually it isn't really, because in mockumentary, part of the point is that the characters are aware they're in a documentary - think of David Brent playing to the camera in The Office - whereas in thick of it, it's more like the camera is a traditional 'extra body in the room', but the filming style is quite jerky and full of quick-pans and crash zooms. This is clever because it lends the whole proceedings a 'live and as it happens' feeling.
Also, the language is very coarse. One character in particular - Malcolm Tucker - is rather gifted in the ways of rude language, shall we say?
Anyway, the point is that in the loop is essentially an offshoot of the thick of it. However, it's not a film version of the TV show - it features some of the same characters and just about all of the same actors, but it's canonical, if you see what I mean.
So, for example, Malcolm Tucker is there and is essentially the same character as in the TV show, but the guy who plays Ollie in the TV show is now playing a character called Toby. Toby is a similar character to Ollie, with a similar job, but is also slightly different in that he behaves a bit more unpleasantly.
So, the basic point is that it's still the thick of it, but it's also slightly different. One of the major differences is the scale - clearly with an hour and a half to fill, rather than just half an hour, a much bigger subject is needed, and they don't come much bigger than war.
In this case, although it's not explicitly stated, the war in question is that in Iraq. As I say, they never actually mention Iraq, but there is mention of the middle East and if you know anything about what went on in the build up to Iraq then you'll soon see the parallels (and parody) that in the loop is making.
In particular, the end game involving a report and a dossier of intelligence hits the issue right on the nose. And the stage for this is much bigger - much of the action takes place in Washington DC and the dossier part happens in the UN, which is New York.
So given I hailed The Thick Of It as one of the best British comedies in recent years, what did I think of In The Loop?
Well I'm glad to say I enjoyed it immensely. It really hasn't lost anything in the translation to the big screen and they've cleverly managed to maintain what makes the thick of it so good whilst also not pandering to moviedom or running out of steam.
If you like the thick of it or political satire in general it's well worth a watch.
Thick of it is in many ways a modern version of Yes Minister, but it's also its own distinct beast. For one thing its focus is much more on 'spin' than the working of government, which was the focus of yes minister. In other words, it's more a product of its time - that isn't to say spin has never existed, just that it's something people are probably more aware of.
Thick of it also has other modern trappings - it's filmed in a sort of mockumentary style. Well, actually it isn't really, because in mockumentary, part of the point is that the characters are aware they're in a documentary - think of David Brent playing to the camera in The Office - whereas in thick of it, it's more like the camera is a traditional 'extra body in the room', but the filming style is quite jerky and full of quick-pans and crash zooms. This is clever because it lends the whole proceedings a 'live and as it happens' feeling.
Also, the language is very coarse. One character in particular - Malcolm Tucker - is rather gifted in the ways of rude language, shall we say?
Anyway, the point is that in the loop is essentially an offshoot of the thick of it. However, it's not a film version of the TV show - it features some of the same characters and just about all of the same actors, but it's canonical, if you see what I mean.
So, for example, Malcolm Tucker is there and is essentially the same character as in the TV show, but the guy who plays Ollie in the TV show is now playing a character called Toby. Toby is a similar character to Ollie, with a similar job, but is also slightly different in that he behaves a bit more unpleasantly.
So, the basic point is that it's still the thick of it, but it's also slightly different. One of the major differences is the scale - clearly with an hour and a half to fill, rather than just half an hour, a much bigger subject is needed, and they don't come much bigger than war.
In this case, although it's not explicitly stated, the war in question is that in Iraq. As I say, they never actually mention Iraq, but there is mention of the middle East and if you know anything about what went on in the build up to Iraq then you'll soon see the parallels (and parody) that in the loop is making.
In particular, the end game involving a report and a dossier of intelligence hits the issue right on the nose. And the stage for this is much bigger - much of the action takes place in Washington DC and the dossier part happens in the UN, which is New York.
So given I hailed The Thick Of It as one of the best British comedies in recent years, what did I think of In The Loop?
Well I'm glad to say I enjoyed it immensely. It really hasn't lost anything in the translation to the big screen and they've cleverly managed to maintain what makes the thick of it so good whilst also not pandering to moviedom or running out of steam.
If you like the thick of it or political satire in general it's well worth a watch.
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
summer may be here
The weather forecasts suggest that summer may be arriving. The suggestion is it's going to be warm and sunny for the rest of the week at least, and possibly beyond.
The is slightly weird, because yesterday, Monday the 21st of June, was the official mid-point of summer. The day itself was the Summer Solstice, which is the day with the longest period of sunlight and is apparently named because the Sun (the "Sol" part) appears to hang in the air at mid-day (the "stice").
Each of the seasons are exactly 1 quarter of a year long (so about 3 months) and their centres are marked by the solstice's and the equinox's. The Solstice's mark the 'maximums' of the year, with Summer having the longest day and winter having the longest night.
The Equinox's are the points of equality(Equi - Equal + Nox - Night) where the day and night are exactly the same length. They mark the mid-points of Spring and Autumn.
But hat causes these and what causes seasons? Well, many people believe that summer and winter are caused by the proximity of the Earth to the Sun. I'm not sure where this comes from, but could be because the Earth's orbit is not perfectly circular, but is instead an ellipse.
However, this isn't what causes the seasons or the change of the length of the day. That's due to the fact that the Earth's axis is tilted. Because it's tilted, that means that the northern and southern hemisphere are exposed to different amounts of sunlight.
Now if you think of the earth like a chicken on a spit-roast over a fire, you can see that if the spit was tilted, the chicken would not cook evenly. Well those are the seasons - the tilting means each hemisphere spends disproportionately longer in the sun than the other as the year goes on. It's also why once you get far enough north or south you have days where the sun never sets and never rises.
I'm not sure quite why I'm blathering on about this stuff, other than I find it fascinating.
I also guess I'm going to have to start using the old aircon. Luckily a side effect of all the sorting out has been that my aircon is now set up and ready to go - I won't need to spend a sweaty half hour moving crap out of the way so that I can turn it on this evening.
The is slightly weird, because yesterday, Monday the 21st of June, was the official mid-point of summer. The day itself was the Summer Solstice, which is the day with the longest period of sunlight and is apparently named because the Sun (the "Sol" part) appears to hang in the air at mid-day (the "stice").
Each of the seasons are exactly 1 quarter of a year long (so about 3 months) and their centres are marked by the solstice's and the equinox's. The Solstice's mark the 'maximums' of the year, with Summer having the longest day and winter having the longest night.
The Equinox's are the points of equality(Equi - Equal + Nox - Night) where the day and night are exactly the same length. They mark the mid-points of Spring and Autumn.
But hat causes these and what causes seasons? Well, many people believe that summer and winter are caused by the proximity of the Earth to the Sun. I'm not sure where this comes from, but could be because the Earth's orbit is not perfectly circular, but is instead an ellipse.
However, this isn't what causes the seasons or the change of the length of the day. That's due to the fact that the Earth's axis is tilted. Because it's tilted, that means that the northern and southern hemisphere are exposed to different amounts of sunlight.
Now if you think of the earth like a chicken on a spit-roast over a fire, you can see that if the spit was tilted, the chicken would not cook evenly. Well those are the seasons - the tilting means each hemisphere spends disproportionately longer in the sun than the other as the year goes on. It's also why once you get far enough north or south you have days where the sun never sets and never rises.
I'm not sure quite why I'm blathering on about this stuff, other than I find it fascinating.
I also guess I'm going to have to start using the old aircon. Luckily a side effect of all the sorting out has been that my aircon is now set up and ready to go - I won't need to spend a sweaty half hour moving crap out of the way so that I can turn it on this evening.
Monday, 21 June 2010
sort it out
So I spent a good chunk of my weekend engaged in yet more sorting out and I can thankfully report that I have finished... sort of.
The entire bottom left corner of my room is now given over to boxes. To give you some idea of how much stuff we're talking out, combined with what's in the attic at the moment there are a total of 15 of the 50litre boxes and 30 of the 30 litre ones.
Now to be fair, quite a fee of the 50 litre ones are full of stuff that they shouldn't be. Basically, there are all the things I should have scanned and there's all the stuff I need to get onto e-bay. There's even a box with things like a keyboard and mouse in for when I set up my TV PC (my new TV is sort of also like a monitor and so I can connect up one of my old machines - I've been meaning to do this for ages and should allow me to watch stuff like fan subs in a more comfortable way).
Anyway, those are only the boxes that are full. While I was sorting out, I got some spare boxes, so that things like the DVDs on my bookshelf can be easily stuck in boxes and put in the attic for when my landlord wants to decorate. The problem with that is I only considered things like my DVDs and forgot about other stuff like my clothes. I'm guessing I may therefore need to buy even more boxes to put those in when the time comes.
One thing this whole exercise has brought home to me is just how much stuff I still own. When I moved out of my family home I remember there being a lot of stuff, and what's slightly dispiriting about all this is realising that I've still got loads of that stuff.
The point being that it's essentially of no use to me and I doubt very much it will sell on e-bay. So why have I been lugging it around in boxes and tripping over it all these years?
Two reasons - firstly is my hoarder mentality, where I struggle to throw things away, but second, the other thing this whole sorting exercise has brought home to me is just how much physical effort is involved. This shit is heavy and it's tiring moving boxes around, especially in my tiny bed-sit where emptying one box becomes this logistical nightmare of having to fill others or take stuff back-and-forth from the kitchen.
Which is why the 'fun' really starts now - I seriously need to get rid of all this crap. Whether it be in the bin, down the tip or on e-bay.
The entire bottom left corner of my room is now given over to boxes. To give you some idea of how much stuff we're talking out, combined with what's in the attic at the moment there are a total of 15 of the 50litre boxes and 30 of the 30 litre ones.
Now to be fair, quite a fee of the 50 litre ones are full of stuff that they shouldn't be. Basically, there are all the things I should have scanned and there's all the stuff I need to get onto e-bay. There's even a box with things like a keyboard and mouse in for when I set up my TV PC (my new TV is sort of also like a monitor and so I can connect up one of my old machines - I've been meaning to do this for ages and should allow me to watch stuff like fan subs in a more comfortable way).
Anyway, those are only the boxes that are full. While I was sorting out, I got some spare boxes, so that things like the DVDs on my bookshelf can be easily stuck in boxes and put in the attic for when my landlord wants to decorate. The problem with that is I only considered things like my DVDs and forgot about other stuff like my clothes. I'm guessing I may therefore need to buy even more boxes to put those in when the time comes.
One thing this whole exercise has brought home to me is just how much stuff I still own. When I moved out of my family home I remember there being a lot of stuff, and what's slightly dispiriting about all this is realising that I've still got loads of that stuff.
The point being that it's essentially of no use to me and I doubt very much it will sell on e-bay. So why have I been lugging it around in boxes and tripping over it all these years?
Two reasons - firstly is my hoarder mentality, where I struggle to throw things away, but second, the other thing this whole sorting exercise has brought home to me is just how much physical effort is involved. This shit is heavy and it's tiring moving boxes around, especially in my tiny bed-sit where emptying one box becomes this logistical nightmare of having to fill others or take stuff back-and-forth from the kitchen.
Which is why the 'fun' really starts now - I seriously need to get rid of all this crap. Whether it be in the bin, down the tip or on e-bay.
Friday, 18 June 2010
yet more boxes
Well I acquired more boxes, which pretty much sets what I'm going to be doing this weekend. I'm kinda just hoping that I've finally got enough now - it'll be tedious if I get half way through and realise I need yet more!
Apart from that I've got a weird list of stuff I need to do. My Dad gets back from Canada this weekend and he's buying my old monitor off me. That means that at some point I'll have to drop what I'm doing and take the monitor to him. Because he's flying from Heathrow, it means he won't be that far away, so he's decided to go the long way round and we can meet up and I can give him the monitor.
I've given him some basic instructions and they should put him on roads he knows from when we used to go to Devon on holiday, but I wouldn't be surprised if he gets lost. My basic idea was to take him slightly off route and meet up with him at the large Sainsbury's that's down the road from me. Trouble is Dad's never the best with directions and it can be a bit confusing round there with all the roundabouts.
But adding on to that is the fact that he's not computer literate, so I'll need to sit down and write him some instructions as to how to connect up the monitor and, more importantly, set up his desktop so it does the new resolution. That should be interesting.
Most of the rest of the weekend will be spent being domestic, I think. With all this time spent sorting out I've not done any cleaning or ironing in ages. Well, I'm assuming there that I get the sorting down fairly quickly - if it drags I won't have any room to set the iron up, which means I could be wearing a lot of scruffy shirts at work next week!
Hopefully I'll be able to do the ironing while the MotoGP is on this Sunday. It's the British MotoGP, I think, which means it'll be my first proper look at the new Silverstone circuit.
Apart from that I've got a weird list of stuff I need to do. My Dad gets back from Canada this weekend and he's buying my old monitor off me. That means that at some point I'll have to drop what I'm doing and take the monitor to him. Because he's flying from Heathrow, it means he won't be that far away, so he's decided to go the long way round and we can meet up and I can give him the monitor.
I've given him some basic instructions and they should put him on roads he knows from when we used to go to Devon on holiday, but I wouldn't be surprised if he gets lost. My basic idea was to take him slightly off route and meet up with him at the large Sainsbury's that's down the road from me. Trouble is Dad's never the best with directions and it can be a bit confusing round there with all the roundabouts.
But adding on to that is the fact that he's not computer literate, so I'll need to sit down and write him some instructions as to how to connect up the monitor and, more importantly, set up his desktop so it does the new resolution. That should be interesting.
Most of the rest of the weekend will be spent being domestic, I think. With all this time spent sorting out I've not done any cleaning or ironing in ages. Well, I'm assuming there that I get the sorting down fairly quickly - if it drags I won't have any room to set the iron up, which means I could be wearing a lot of scruffy shirts at work next week!
Hopefully I'll be able to do the ironing while the MotoGP is on this Sunday. It's the British MotoGP, I think, which means it'll be my first proper look at the new Silverstone circuit.
Thursday, 17 June 2010
civ5
I learned recently that Civilization 5 is in production.
I have mixed feeling about this. I mean, I love the civ series and have devoted untold hours to playing it, so it's always good that there's a new entry in the franchise.
However, my fear comes because I wasn't that big a fan of Civ4. I mean, it was okay, but it kinda did away with the things that I love to do in Civ. See, I like to make gigantic, sprawling empires where every city has every improvement and they're all as big and productive as they can be.
In Civ4, these aspects were kinda done away with - the emphasis of the game was on much smaller worlds (I think the huge map in Civ4 was broadly equivalent to the normal one in Civ3) and you were supposed to specialise your cities to either focus on Science or religion or whatever.
This is fine, but didn't really appeal to me too much. The problem comes in that Civ4 was generally hailed as the best Civ ever and had universally glowing reviews. This suggests (and what I've seen and read supports this) that Civ5 will continue and develop those aspects of the game even more.
There are some other radical changes. The most notable is that the map square have been replaced by hexagons. I think this is probably a good idea, on balance. However, what they've also done is made it so that each square can only have 1 unit in it. Also, cities can no longer be garrisoned by units. This seems like a bit of a mixed bag.
Stacks of Doom were always a bit of a bugbear in the game - you could literally put hundreds of units on the same square and it was a true moment of dread to see the AI advancing two to three hundred tanks towards you.
However, it does mean that things could get logistically very confusing. I mean, if you've got a big army, it'll be easy to get really confused if you're trying to re-adjust your forces to attack or defend on a different flank. Also, how do things like air power work? Surely Jets and Bombers will have to live in cities or on aircraft carriers? And where will you store ICBMs?
Plus it's hardly realistic is it? If a signal tile is big enough to represent a city like London, then surely you can fit dozens of units that sort of space? And what about choke points? Choke points on continents were often crucial to effective defence on many a map I've played.
I dunno - it could be good or it could be horrible.
One good thing they seem to be doing is improving the diplomacy. Diplomacy was always vital to games, but it's often been a bit predictable or limited. It sounds like they're making it so the AI is cleverer - hopefully this also relates to the actual game play and tactics as well.
But the upshot is it looks like my autumn could basically disappear :).
I have mixed feeling about this. I mean, I love the civ series and have devoted untold hours to playing it, so it's always good that there's a new entry in the franchise.
However, my fear comes because I wasn't that big a fan of Civ4. I mean, it was okay, but it kinda did away with the things that I love to do in Civ. See, I like to make gigantic, sprawling empires where every city has every improvement and they're all as big and productive as they can be.
In Civ4, these aspects were kinda done away with - the emphasis of the game was on much smaller worlds (I think the huge map in Civ4 was broadly equivalent to the normal one in Civ3) and you were supposed to specialise your cities to either focus on Science or religion or whatever.
This is fine, but didn't really appeal to me too much. The problem comes in that Civ4 was generally hailed as the best Civ ever and had universally glowing reviews. This suggests (and what I've seen and read supports this) that Civ5 will continue and develop those aspects of the game even more.
There are some other radical changes. The most notable is that the map square have been replaced by hexagons. I think this is probably a good idea, on balance. However, what they've also done is made it so that each square can only have 1 unit in it. Also, cities can no longer be garrisoned by units. This seems like a bit of a mixed bag.
Stacks of Doom were always a bit of a bugbear in the game - you could literally put hundreds of units on the same square and it was a true moment of dread to see the AI advancing two to three hundred tanks towards you.
However, it does mean that things could get logistically very confusing. I mean, if you've got a big army, it'll be easy to get really confused if you're trying to re-adjust your forces to attack or defend on a different flank. Also, how do things like air power work? Surely Jets and Bombers will have to live in cities or on aircraft carriers? And where will you store ICBMs?
Plus it's hardly realistic is it? If a signal tile is big enough to represent a city like London, then surely you can fit dozens of units that sort of space? And what about choke points? Choke points on continents were often crucial to effective defence on many a map I've played.
I dunno - it could be good or it could be horrible.
One good thing they seem to be doing is improving the diplomacy. Diplomacy was always vital to games, but it's often been a bit predictable or limited. It sounds like they're making it so the AI is cleverer - hopefully this also relates to the actual game play and tactics as well.
But the upshot is it looks like my autumn could basically disappear :).
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
adaptation
I have something of a blind-spot for the word adaptation. To me, the word should be "adaption".
I don't know why I think this - the proper word makes sense and everything, it's just, I dunno, it seems like it's got too many syllables.
(According to a google search I've just done, adaption is a word and is also another word for adaptation - this is weird, because I've never seen it used and the spell checker corrects it to adaptation.)
Anyway, the film is written by Charlie Kaufman, who is, simply put, one of the best screen-writers ever. Kaufman was responsible for Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which are two of my favourite films.
This is a really hard review to write, because the film is really complex. Or at least, it's complex when you really start to look at it - on the surface it's relatively straight-forward.
The straight-forward version is the story of Charlie Kaufman trying to adapt a book called the Orchid Thief. This is a real-life, non-fiction book, written by a real person about a guy called John Laroche who wanted to clone a very rare orchid that grows in the Florida swamps.
However, the film is a blend of this non-fiction narrative with a fictional one. Which is where it gets complicated. Basically, the film is about the process of adaptation that Charlie Kaufman goes through in adapting what he comes to realise is an un-adaptable book.
The book it seems is a real life account and doesn't have a proper narrative thread. And yet the nature of mainstream movie making is that it's all about narrative. There's a brilliant part close to the beginning where Kaufman is basically in a lunch meeting, telling the person he's doing the adaptation about all the things he doesn't want to put in the movie because he wants it to be about "real life" and real life isn't like that.
And yet as the problem of adapting the un-adaptable rears its head, Kaufman transitions into that very story he didn't want to write. But the way this is done is so clever you don't really realise what's going on.
What makes it even more interesting is that it's not clear if Kaufman is being really disparaging about such writing or whether in a way he's admitting that in the end he's unable to transcend it. Effectively, he's asking the question, rather than giving the answer.
So we have a very weird mix of a film - real events are mixed with fictional ones and the plot twists around, looping back on itself in a complex way.
I don't know why I think this - the proper word makes sense and everything, it's just, I dunno, it seems like it's got too many syllables.
(According to a google search I've just done, adaption is a word and is also another word for adaptation - this is weird, because I've never seen it used and the spell checker corrects it to adaptation.)
Anyway, the film is written by Charlie Kaufman, who is, simply put, one of the best screen-writers ever. Kaufman was responsible for Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which are two of my favourite films.
This is a really hard review to write, because the film is really complex. Or at least, it's complex when you really start to look at it - on the surface it's relatively straight-forward.
The straight-forward version is the story of Charlie Kaufman trying to adapt a book called the Orchid Thief. This is a real-life, non-fiction book, written by a real person about a guy called John Laroche who wanted to clone a very rare orchid that grows in the Florida swamps.
However, the film is a blend of this non-fiction narrative with a fictional one. Which is where it gets complicated. Basically, the film is about the process of adaptation that Charlie Kaufman goes through in adapting what he comes to realise is an un-adaptable book.
The book it seems is a real life account and doesn't have a proper narrative thread. And yet the nature of mainstream movie making is that it's all about narrative. There's a brilliant part close to the beginning where Kaufman is basically in a lunch meeting, telling the person he's doing the adaptation about all the things he doesn't want to put in the movie because he wants it to be about "real life" and real life isn't like that.
And yet as the problem of adapting the un-adaptable rears its head, Kaufman transitions into that very story he didn't want to write. But the way this is done is so clever you don't really realise what's going on.
What makes it even more interesting is that it's not clear if Kaufman is being really disparaging about such writing or whether in a way he's admitting that in the end he's unable to transcend it. Effectively, he's asking the question, rather than giving the answer.
So we have a very weird mix of a film - real events are mixed with fictional ones and the plot twists around, looping back on itself in a complex way.
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
canadian gp
It was the Canadian Grand Prix last weekend, and it was an absolute belter.
The Canadian Grand Prix often produces some classic races and it was a real shame it was off the calendar last year.
To be fair, part of the reason it does produce classic races is one of those artificial things, a bit like when it rains. Rain always produces an interesting race, because tyre strategies go haywire and of course the drivers struggle with grip.
Well, the circuit for the Canadian GP is a bit of a weird one - it's built on a man-made island that was created with the spoil from when they built the Montreal subway. That means that, while it is designed as a proper circuit, it's also a public park and people can drive on it.
This means that few other races are held on the circuit, but it also means the tarmac is not like normal racing tarmac. The stuff they use on racetracks is a lot stickier and softer than they use on normal roads. In that way, it's a lot like a street circuit, like Monaco.
It's also like a street circuit because there aren't really any run-off areas - there's barriers and walls right next to the circuit. But, unlike a normal street circuit, the track is quite wide like a proper circuit and has proper bends and chicanes in. It's a kind of hybrid between a street circuit and a proper race track.
And those factors contribute to it being an interesting race - the tarmac means the tyre strategies can go bonkers, like we saw this last weekend and the circuit itself lends itself to exciting racing, providing a real challenge to the drivers and also good opportunities for overtaking.
And my Dad was there. He's gone on a combined race weekend holiday to Canada, which lasts for about 10 days. The first bit is at Montreal for the race and this second week is in Quebec, I think - he told me, but I have an awful memory.
I'd have loved to have gone too, but it would have cost a fortune and I'm still reeling from the expense of Monaco last year :/.
The Canadian Grand Prix often produces some classic races and it was a real shame it was off the calendar last year.
To be fair, part of the reason it does produce classic races is one of those artificial things, a bit like when it rains. Rain always produces an interesting race, because tyre strategies go haywire and of course the drivers struggle with grip.
Well, the circuit for the Canadian GP is a bit of a weird one - it's built on a man-made island that was created with the spoil from when they built the Montreal subway. That means that, while it is designed as a proper circuit, it's also a public park and people can drive on it.
This means that few other races are held on the circuit, but it also means the tarmac is not like normal racing tarmac. The stuff they use on racetracks is a lot stickier and softer than they use on normal roads. In that way, it's a lot like a street circuit, like Monaco.
It's also like a street circuit because there aren't really any run-off areas - there's barriers and walls right next to the circuit. But, unlike a normal street circuit, the track is quite wide like a proper circuit and has proper bends and chicanes in. It's a kind of hybrid between a street circuit and a proper race track.
And those factors contribute to it being an interesting race - the tarmac means the tyre strategies can go bonkers, like we saw this last weekend and the circuit itself lends itself to exciting racing, providing a real challenge to the drivers and also good opportunities for overtaking.
And my Dad was there. He's gone on a combined race weekend holiday to Canada, which lasts for about 10 days. The first bit is at Montreal for the race and this second week is in Quebec, I think - he told me, but I have an awful memory.
I'd have loved to have gone too, but it would have cost a fortune and I'm still reeling from the expense of Monaco last year :/.
Monday, 14 June 2010
aches and pains
Well, back to work and, quite frankly, I could do with the rest! I woke up on Sunday and I think just about every muscle I've got ached, and I'm still not fully fixed today.
The reason for the aches and pains are twofold - first off I did a huge amount of sorting out, but then I also decided to give my car a thoroughly good clean.
My initial plan for the weekend was just to do the sorting out, but I it was a little unrealistic to genuinely think I could do it all. I mean, to be frank, it's one of those jobs that never ends, but also I'd forgotten that my landlord was going on holiday, so there was no way to get anything into the attic.
As well as this I discovered I still didn't have enough plastic stacking crates - I must own more than 20 of them now, but I still need more! See the problem was I tackled the stuff under my bed and I had forgotten just how much was under there. In the end I ended up filling 7 of the smaller crates and putting them under the bed. They work quite well, but in order to support the bed beams (don't ask) stuff has to be sticking out of the top. This means that I need spare crates for if and when I take them out.
This is also the issue for quite a few things - I kinda realised it was one thing to transfer all the stuff I've had in big cardboard to stacking crates, but what about all the stuff I use day-to-day? That needs to have boxes ready and waiting to.
Does that sound odd? I guess it comes back to the point that my landlord want to decorate the flat, which means that everything needs to be able to go in the attic, even if I'm using it in the meantime. I need that extra capacity so I can just chuck it in the boxes and then stick it away in the attic while he decorates.
Also, I'm having a bit of a problem in that the boxes, although great for lifting stuff and convenient, aren't as space efficient as cardboard boxes. You can fill and stack a cardboard box so that it's 100% full and takes up no unnecessary space, but a plastic stacking box 'wastes' space because of how they go together. It's not a big deal, but it does mean I keep underestimating how many I need, hence the need for more.
But the key thing is I am on the very cusp of having boxes for everything. I can do the other type of sorting out (deciding what to keep, throw away or sell) in slower time.
The car cleaning was partly a way of doing something productive in my box-deficient state and partly because my car really needed it.
It was a full-on clean:
The first and last were pretty much without surprises, but cleaning the car body turned out to be rather more painful than I'd expected.
The problem was tar spots.
Basically, I think what's causing them is all the road patching they've done to fill potholes. I'm guessing loose bits come off as you drive over it and your tyres tend to fling it back. All of the tar-spots were in a similar area just behind each of my wheels.
I'd noticed them a while back when I gave the car a quick wipe, so I decided I was going to sort them as part of this big clean. There are several products you can use to get rid of them, but I think they're all essentially turpentine-based solvents. It doesn't damage your paintwork, but dissolves them tar.
Well, eventually it dissolves the tar. What it turns out you also need to invest is a lot of elbow grease, as you need to really rub it on. Twice. See, you rub it on and it starts to dissolve it, then you have to run again to really get rid of the spots. And this is all at basically ground level, so there's loads of rubbing while bending over, so you can see why, combined with all the box-lugging, I've buggered up my wimpy muscles.
Don't get me wrong, though the product itself was good, it was just that I hadn't appreciated how hard it would be and just how many tar spots there were.
The reason for the aches and pains are twofold - first off I did a huge amount of sorting out, but then I also decided to give my car a thoroughly good clean.
My initial plan for the weekend was just to do the sorting out, but I it was a little unrealistic to genuinely think I could do it all. I mean, to be frank, it's one of those jobs that never ends, but also I'd forgotten that my landlord was going on holiday, so there was no way to get anything into the attic.
As well as this I discovered I still didn't have enough plastic stacking crates - I must own more than 20 of them now, but I still need more! See the problem was I tackled the stuff under my bed and I had forgotten just how much was under there. In the end I ended up filling 7 of the smaller crates and putting them under the bed. They work quite well, but in order to support the bed beams (don't ask) stuff has to be sticking out of the top. This means that I need spare crates for if and when I take them out.
This is also the issue for quite a few things - I kinda realised it was one thing to transfer all the stuff I've had in big cardboard to stacking crates, but what about all the stuff I use day-to-day? That needs to have boxes ready and waiting to.
Does that sound odd? I guess it comes back to the point that my landlord want to decorate the flat, which means that everything needs to be able to go in the attic, even if I'm using it in the meantime. I need that extra capacity so I can just chuck it in the boxes and then stick it away in the attic while he decorates.
Also, I'm having a bit of a problem in that the boxes, although great for lifting stuff and convenient, aren't as space efficient as cardboard boxes. You can fill and stack a cardboard box so that it's 100% full and takes up no unnecessary space, but a plastic stacking box 'wastes' space because of how they go together. It's not a big deal, but it does mean I keep underestimating how many I need, hence the need for more.
But the key thing is I am on the very cusp of having boxes for everything. I can do the other type of sorting out (deciding what to keep, throw away or sell) in slower time.
The car cleaning was partly a way of doing something productive in my box-deficient state and partly because my car really needed it.
It was a full-on clean:
- Full alloy wheel clean and polish.
- Full car body clean and polish.
- Full hoover out and surface clean inside.
The first and last were pretty much without surprises, but cleaning the car body turned out to be rather more painful than I'd expected.
The problem was tar spots.
Basically, I think what's causing them is all the road patching they've done to fill potholes. I'm guessing loose bits come off as you drive over it and your tyres tend to fling it back. All of the tar-spots were in a similar area just behind each of my wheels.
I'd noticed them a while back when I gave the car a quick wipe, so I decided I was going to sort them as part of this big clean. There are several products you can use to get rid of them, but I think they're all essentially turpentine-based solvents. It doesn't damage your paintwork, but dissolves them tar.
Well, eventually it dissolves the tar. What it turns out you also need to invest is a lot of elbow grease, as you need to really rub it on. Twice. See, you rub it on and it starts to dissolve it, then you have to run again to really get rid of the spots. And this is all at basically ground level, so there's loads of rubbing while bending over, so you can see why, combined with all the box-lugging, I've buggered up my wimpy muscles.
Don't get me wrong, though the product itself was good, it was just that I hadn't appreciated how hard it would be and just how many tar spots there were.
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
telly 2
And here's the second part.
You Have Been Watching
Clearly, you have to like Charlie Brooker before you even consider watching this. Especially since, although it's presented as a panel show, it's a bit of half-arsed version. I mean, there are normally very few actual questions asked of the guests and more time is spent giving what are more like mini-reviews.
It works, but they appear to have tweaked the format a little from the first series, and I'm not sure I like the tweaks. In the first season the guests watched episodes of the shows being discussed, but I think they've scaled that back a bit this year - perhaps only showing them 1 episode and asking questions about the whole series.
This okay, but Brooker watches them all (he's a TV critic after all) so the balance has shifted more towards him talking, where the guests said more in the first series.
Also, they had something called TV club last year where they told you what to watch and you could put your opinions and stuff. This has basically been dumped, although to be fair, it wasn't a crucial bit of the show.
The Big Bang Theory s3
The Big Bang Theory is consistently the funniest show on TV. I'd say its only real rival is 30Rock, and that's not shown on a channel I can watch easily.
Oh, Channel 4 are always up to their usual scheduling shenanigans of course, but the mighty power of schedule searching that my PVR enables, combined with my already exhaustive scouring of Radio Times each week ensures I don't miss any episodes.
I think one of the things I like most about the show is that for once it actually manages to depict scientists and nerds in an unapologetic and non-fanciful way. I've ranted many times before about Hollywood depictions of scientists and nerds, but Big Bang Theory doesn't do that - it's got a proper understanding geekiness and geekdom.
The Mentalist s2
The mentalist is a bit of an odd beast.
Basically, it's a crime mystery job (I love a good crime mystery) and generally speaking, each episode is self contained. There's a murder or two and the main guy, Jane, solves it, often engaging his mentalist abilities - think Derren Brown.
Anyway, these are all fine and good, but then there's also supposed to be a couple of plot threads that work across the episodes. For Jane, this is basically to do with a serial killer called Red John who killed his wife and child.
Now this is clearly quite a dark thread, but the individual episodes are often jolly and light-hearted. It's like there's an intention for them to be entirely stand alone, but then every so often you get a full Red John episode or a small arc. If this were an anime, I'd probably end up thinking of the normal episodes as filler, because tonally they just don't match with the Red John ones.
But in a way it still works - the reason for Jane being there and how he behaves is actually explained by the Red John stuff.
I dunno, it's difficult to explain in a short space, but basically the show works. The stand-alone episodes work as crime mystery stories and the Red John episodes work as a long-running plot. My only thing is I wish the two were a bit better integrated - it's like they completely forget about Red John while they work on the individual cases.
Doctor Who
The Steven Moffat run Doctor Who continues to be enjoyable.
If I'm totally honest, I have had a few niggles. The biggest one was probably the Rory character. Rory was engaged to Amy, the Doctor's new assistant, indeed, the Doctor actually took her away on the very night before her wedding.
He even went and picked up Rory, who was in a few episodes and was heavily involved in the plots - not just a bystander. And then a few weeks back they killed him off.
Well, actually they didn't just kill him off, he was touched by some sort of time rift thing and completely 'disappeared' from all-time. He not only died, but he ceased to ever have existed.
If they'd simply killed him that would have created paradoxes - there was some stuff of him in the future - but to cause him to cease to exist is the mother of all paradoxes. He was about to marry Amy and has been her friend since childhood - how does that all now work?
Hopefully, the overarching plot to the series will sort it all out. Certainly the overall series plot has been better integrated into the series than back in the RTD days.
You Have Been Watching
Clearly, you have to like Charlie Brooker before you even consider watching this. Especially since, although it's presented as a panel show, it's a bit of half-arsed version. I mean, there are normally very few actual questions asked of the guests and more time is spent giving what are more like mini-reviews.
It works, but they appear to have tweaked the format a little from the first series, and I'm not sure I like the tweaks. In the first season the guests watched episodes of the shows being discussed, but I think they've scaled that back a bit this year - perhaps only showing them 1 episode and asking questions about the whole series.
This okay, but Brooker watches them all (he's a TV critic after all) so the balance has shifted more towards him talking, where the guests said more in the first series.
Also, they had something called TV club last year where they told you what to watch and you could put your opinions and stuff. This has basically been dumped, although to be fair, it wasn't a crucial bit of the show.
The Big Bang Theory s3
The Big Bang Theory is consistently the funniest show on TV. I'd say its only real rival is 30Rock, and that's not shown on a channel I can watch easily.
Oh, Channel 4 are always up to their usual scheduling shenanigans of course, but the mighty power of schedule searching that my PVR enables, combined with my already exhaustive scouring of Radio Times each week ensures I don't miss any episodes.
I think one of the things I like most about the show is that for once it actually manages to depict scientists and nerds in an unapologetic and non-fanciful way. I've ranted many times before about Hollywood depictions of scientists and nerds, but Big Bang Theory doesn't do that - it's got a proper understanding geekiness and geekdom.
The Mentalist s2
The mentalist is a bit of an odd beast.
Basically, it's a crime mystery job (I love a good crime mystery) and generally speaking, each episode is self contained. There's a murder or two and the main guy, Jane, solves it, often engaging his mentalist abilities - think Derren Brown.
Anyway, these are all fine and good, but then there's also supposed to be a couple of plot threads that work across the episodes. For Jane, this is basically to do with a serial killer called Red John who killed his wife and child.
Now this is clearly quite a dark thread, but the individual episodes are often jolly and light-hearted. It's like there's an intention for them to be entirely stand alone, but then every so often you get a full Red John episode or a small arc. If this were an anime, I'd probably end up thinking of the normal episodes as filler, because tonally they just don't match with the Red John ones.
But in a way it still works - the reason for Jane being there and how he behaves is actually explained by the Red John stuff.
I dunno, it's difficult to explain in a short space, but basically the show works. The stand-alone episodes work as crime mystery stories and the Red John episodes work as a long-running plot. My only thing is I wish the two were a bit better integrated - it's like they completely forget about Red John while they work on the individual cases.
Doctor Who
The Steven Moffat run Doctor Who continues to be enjoyable.
If I'm totally honest, I have had a few niggles. The biggest one was probably the Rory character. Rory was engaged to Amy, the Doctor's new assistant, indeed, the Doctor actually took her away on the very night before her wedding.
He even went and picked up Rory, who was in a few episodes and was heavily involved in the plots - not just a bystander. And then a few weeks back they killed him off.
Well, actually they didn't just kill him off, he was touched by some sort of time rift thing and completely 'disappeared' from all-time. He not only died, but he ceased to ever have existed.
If they'd simply killed him that would have created paradoxes - there was some stuff of him in the future - but to cause him to cease to exist is the mother of all paradoxes. He was about to marry Amy and has been her friend since childhood - how does that all now work?
Hopefully, the overarching plot to the series will sort it all out. Certainly the overall series plot has been better integrated into the series than back in the RTD days.
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
telly 1
As promised, I thought I'd do a bit of rounding up of some of the telly I've been watching over the last few weeks.
Derren Brown Investigates
The name is pretty self-explanatory here - Derren Brown, who famously does a lot of mind-reading and psychic type magic, investigated several people claiming psychic powers or similar things. Brown of course, doesn't pretend it's real, but these other people do.
There were 3 episodes. In the first, he met up with a Liverpudlian psychic, in the second he went on a sort of course that purports to give you the ability to see without using your eyes (especially to allow blind people to see).
These two episodes were pretty much what you'd expect - exposures of conmen/frauds. The only thing I'd really say about this was that in a way, Derren was too nice.
I don't mean he should have been actively aggressive towards them - the main aim was to give them enough rope to hang themselves with, which they did - but he should at least have called them on things a bit more. For example, in the psychic one, he set up a reading with a woman which the psychic did really badly at. But at the beginning, Derren asked her to use a false name, which suggested at some point he was going to say to the psychic - how come none of the ghosts mentioned her real name? - but he never did.
However, in the third show this soft approach actually worked well, because this third was a ghost hunter and the guy genuinely believed in ghosts. I mean, proper conviction about the existence of spirits.
Now while this is a bonkers belief, unlike the other two, it was clear he wasn't trying to exploit people (he'd never accepted a penny from someone he'd helped) and genuinely wanted to help them. Clearly, Derren found no actual evidence, but his soft approach worked a lot better.
Luther
I was a little apprehensive about Luther, which is a new detective job.
I love a good crime thriller/mystery, but I tend to get a bit worried when words like 'dark' and 'brooding' are bandied about. It's one thing for the crimes to be dark, but things tend to get a bit messy when you start making your character dark too. Look at Waking the Dead, which does some great mysteries, but seems to have lost the plot when it comes to the main character Boyd.
And there are echoes of those sorts of problems with Luther - his home life is a bit messy and there are suggestions he's not exactly arrow straight in everything he does. However, to be fair, they brought those elements in fairly gently, and instead focused on the actual murders.
In the latter episodes they have kinda ramped these overall plot threads up and I think they might have gone a bit far, but overall the show was better than I was expecting.
Story of Science
This was an interesting documentary series.
The basic idea was to present science and scientific discovery in a more realistic 'of it's times' series of events, rather than as a kind of guided process. Essentially what it's saying is that, science if often presented as a series of logical steps that lead inevitably towards an end goal.
The reality of course is that the people themselves aren't thinking like that - they're doing experiments, coming up with ideas or whatever in the context of their time and what interests them. So someone who's trying to work out the movement of the planets in the heavens comes up with the idea of elliptical orbits around the Sun, but because it was against popular opinion, it didn't become accepted.
Dollhouse s2
I can't honestly say I was that impressed by the first series of Dollhouse, the most recent offering from Joss Whedon.
It seemed like a reasonable idea, but the main problem was a lack of any really strong arc to it. The idea seemed to be that some of the dolls - especially Echo - were beginning to, I dunno, develop proper personalities, rather than just being totally blank slates.
The I dunno is quite important - it wasn't clear quite what was happening and that was the problem, especially in the early shows, where it focused on being a very episodic format. Think "monster of the week" only "doll of the week".
Also, people said it got a lot better towards the end and while I'd say it did improve a bit, it wasn't like it suddenly took a leap up to excellent - more like a gentle incline up to okay.
There was one ray of hope. There was an 'epilogue' episode at the end, which hinted at much more story. The second season is a huge improvement, with a more consistent and flowing arc. It's even managed to throw in a few curveballs which the first season really lacked.
Derren Brown Investigates
The name is pretty self-explanatory here - Derren Brown, who famously does a lot of mind-reading and psychic type magic, investigated several people claiming psychic powers or similar things. Brown of course, doesn't pretend it's real, but these other people do.
There were 3 episodes. In the first, he met up with a Liverpudlian psychic, in the second he went on a sort of course that purports to give you the ability to see without using your eyes (especially to allow blind people to see).
These two episodes were pretty much what you'd expect - exposures of conmen/frauds. The only thing I'd really say about this was that in a way, Derren was too nice.
I don't mean he should have been actively aggressive towards them - the main aim was to give them enough rope to hang themselves with, which they did - but he should at least have called them on things a bit more. For example, in the psychic one, he set up a reading with a woman which the psychic did really badly at. But at the beginning, Derren asked her to use a false name, which suggested at some point he was going to say to the psychic - how come none of the ghosts mentioned her real name? - but he never did.
However, in the third show this soft approach actually worked well, because this third was a ghost hunter and the guy genuinely believed in ghosts. I mean, proper conviction about the existence of spirits.
Now while this is a bonkers belief, unlike the other two, it was clear he wasn't trying to exploit people (he'd never accepted a penny from someone he'd helped) and genuinely wanted to help them. Clearly, Derren found no actual evidence, but his soft approach worked a lot better.
Luther
I was a little apprehensive about Luther, which is a new detective job.
I love a good crime thriller/mystery, but I tend to get a bit worried when words like 'dark' and 'brooding' are bandied about. It's one thing for the crimes to be dark, but things tend to get a bit messy when you start making your character dark too. Look at Waking the Dead, which does some great mysteries, but seems to have lost the plot when it comes to the main character Boyd.
And there are echoes of those sorts of problems with Luther - his home life is a bit messy and there are suggestions he's not exactly arrow straight in everything he does. However, to be fair, they brought those elements in fairly gently, and instead focused on the actual murders.
In the latter episodes they have kinda ramped these overall plot threads up and I think they might have gone a bit far, but overall the show was better than I was expecting.
Story of Science
This was an interesting documentary series.
The basic idea was to present science and scientific discovery in a more realistic 'of it's times' series of events, rather than as a kind of guided process. Essentially what it's saying is that, science if often presented as a series of logical steps that lead inevitably towards an end goal.
The reality of course is that the people themselves aren't thinking like that - they're doing experiments, coming up with ideas or whatever in the context of their time and what interests them. So someone who's trying to work out the movement of the planets in the heavens comes up with the idea of elliptical orbits around the Sun, but because it was against popular opinion, it didn't become accepted.
Dollhouse s2
I can't honestly say I was that impressed by the first series of Dollhouse, the most recent offering from Joss Whedon.
It seemed like a reasonable idea, but the main problem was a lack of any really strong arc to it. The idea seemed to be that some of the dolls - especially Echo - were beginning to, I dunno, develop proper personalities, rather than just being totally blank slates.
The I dunno is quite important - it wasn't clear quite what was happening and that was the problem, especially in the early shows, where it focused on being a very episodic format. Think "monster of the week" only "doll of the week".
Also, people said it got a lot better towards the end and while I'd say it did improve a bit, it wasn't like it suddenly took a leap up to excellent - more like a gentle incline up to okay.
There was one ray of hope. There was an 'epilogue' episode at the end, which hinted at much more story. The second season is a huge improvement, with a more consistent and flowing arc. It's even managed to throw in a few curveballs which the first season really lacked.
Monday, 7 June 2010
face slicer
I cut myself shaving on Saturday. I've not done that in years. It was above my top lip and it bled like a bugger - cuts on your face often do, for some reason.
It wasn't a big cut and because razors are obviously sharp, it was a clean cut and it didn't really hurt. I saw a few people noticing it, though. I guess it's just in that sort of position where you tend to look more - I think eyes and mouth tend to be where you look more closely.
It was a surprisingly successful weekend. Surprising and successful, because although I didn't do quite what I'd planned, I did achieve a lot. Basically, I'd thought the best plan was to get some scanning done, but in the end I did a big chunk of the sorting out I've got left to do.
I'm not really sure what started me off, but after I'd done my cleaning on Saturday I just sort of rolled on and started going through some of the boxes I've got left. I even started to move some of the furniture around, although given how hot and muggy it was on Saturday I kinda abandoned that.
I think because I've got this Thursday and Friday off and my plan is to have it all essentially finished this next weekend I just sort of wanted to get a head start on it.
What also helped is that I reviewed the telly for the upcoming week and there is almost nothing on. I think there are a total of 7 things I want to watch/record across the entirety of this next week, which must be about a third of what I normally watch. And it only really ramps up at the weekend because the Canadian Grand Prix is on.
Hopefully, if this continues it should be a super productive summer . I'll get all my sorting done and then spend the summer dumping stuff on e-bay and watching the DVD backlog.
And speaking of TV stuff, I thought for tomorrow and Wednesday I'd do some summary round-up reviews of the shows I've been watching.
It wasn't a big cut and because razors are obviously sharp, it was a clean cut and it didn't really hurt. I saw a few people noticing it, though. I guess it's just in that sort of position where you tend to look more - I think eyes and mouth tend to be where you look more closely.
It was a surprisingly successful weekend. Surprising and successful, because although I didn't do quite what I'd planned, I did achieve a lot. Basically, I'd thought the best plan was to get some scanning done, but in the end I did a big chunk of the sorting out I've got left to do.
I'm not really sure what started me off, but after I'd done my cleaning on Saturday I just sort of rolled on and started going through some of the boxes I've got left. I even started to move some of the furniture around, although given how hot and muggy it was on Saturday I kinda abandoned that.
I think because I've got this Thursday and Friday off and my plan is to have it all essentially finished this next weekend I just sort of wanted to get a head start on it.
What also helped is that I reviewed the telly for the upcoming week and there is almost nothing on. I think there are a total of 7 things I want to watch/record across the entirety of this next week, which must be about a third of what I normally watch. And it only really ramps up at the weekend because the Canadian Grand Prix is on.
Hopefully, if this continues it should be a super productive summer . I'll get all my sorting done and then spend the summer dumping stuff on e-bay and watching the DVD backlog.
And speaking of TV stuff, I thought for tomorrow and Wednesday I'd do some summary round-up reviews of the shows I've been watching.
Friday, 4 June 2010
already?
It's Friday already? How the heck did that happen?
Feels like only yesterday it was Thursday. Oh no, wait, yesterday was Thursday.
Looks like it's going to be a sunny weekend. I've not got any special plans, though I do need to do some cleaning. There's a MotoGP race on Sunday I believe, and I want to go for another one of my walks.
Unfortunately, the walks have become a bit fortnightly, mainly because when there's a F1 GP on that means there's loads of stuff - 3 practices, qualifying and the race itself, all of which I have to watch across the weekend. I mean, I could leave it, but the problem then would be people spoilering it.
Next week is going to be a short one - I've got the Thursday and Friday off, so just a 3 day week, which will be nice.
Oh, one thing I realised I hadn't mentioned - Eurovision.
We finished stone dead last, and to be perfectly frank I'm not hugely surprised. Well, surprised we were last as there were some real duffers in there that got way more points than they deserved, but not surprised that we didn't do well.
Our song was very poor. I generally don't pay attention to Eurovision until the night itself, so I hadn't heard the song beforehand. Supposedly it was written by Stock & Waterman, of 1980s Stock, Aitken & Waterman, who produced all those cheesy pop songs of the 80s.
The problem there was it just wasn't up to those standards - if it had been an 80s cheesefest, maybe it would have at least been distinctive, but it was just totally non-descript. And it didn't help that they seemed to have got a small boy to sing it, who seemed nice enough, but really lacked any impact.
I suppose at least this year's song wasn't one of those "this is what we think Europop sounds like" jobs.
Feels like only yesterday it was Thursday. Oh no, wait, yesterday was Thursday.
Looks like it's going to be a sunny weekend. I've not got any special plans, though I do need to do some cleaning. There's a MotoGP race on Sunday I believe, and I want to go for another one of my walks.
Unfortunately, the walks have become a bit fortnightly, mainly because when there's a F1 GP on that means there's loads of stuff - 3 practices, qualifying and the race itself, all of which I have to watch across the weekend. I mean, I could leave it, but the problem then would be people spoilering it.
Next week is going to be a short one - I've got the Thursday and Friday off, so just a 3 day week, which will be nice.
Oh, one thing I realised I hadn't mentioned - Eurovision.
We finished stone dead last, and to be perfectly frank I'm not hugely surprised. Well, surprised we were last as there were some real duffers in there that got way more points than they deserved, but not surprised that we didn't do well.
Our song was very poor. I generally don't pay attention to Eurovision until the night itself, so I hadn't heard the song beforehand. Supposedly it was written by Stock & Waterman, of 1980s Stock, Aitken & Waterman, who produced all those cheesy pop songs of the 80s.
The problem there was it just wasn't up to those standards - if it had been an 80s cheesefest, maybe it would have at least been distinctive, but it was just totally non-descript. And it didn't help that they seemed to have got a small boy to sing it, who seemed nice enough, but really lacked any impact.
I suppose at least this year's song wasn't one of those "this is what we think Europop sounds like" jobs.
Thursday, 3 June 2010
new duvet
I got my new duvet the other week. It's incredibly thin. They use something called "togs" to rate duvets for warmth and this is a 4.5 tog duvet. What that means is that it's only just thicker than a blanket.
Now that may sound daft - why not just use a blanket, or a regular sheet? Well for some reason I cannot get to sleep unless I've got a duvet on me. I've tried many times in years past to sleep without any covers or just a sheet and I cannot do it. There's obviously some psychological thing going on that means I just can't.
I'm actually pretty neurotic when it comes to sleeping - I have a whole host of... well, I suppose rituals would be the word, that are essentially there to ensure I go to sleep.
Basically, a summary of the basic ritual goes something like-
First off, I ensure all curtains are fully closed and that all lights are turned off or covered over. Now I don't just mean normal lights. You know how a lot of electrical appliance have some sort of LED that indicates they're in standby, or they have a digital clock or something that emits light? Well I can't have those shinning at me.
It's kinda like a brightness threshold - below a certain level I'm happy, but above and the light will keep me up. This can be so bad for me that I actually have to pin black bin bags to the curtains in my bed-sit, because they're white and crap at blocking out light in the summer or if my landlord leaves a light on.
I then read for at least 10 minutes. This is actually a bit of an odd one, because I know a lot of guides for people with insomnia say you shouldn't do anything stimulating, like read or watch TV before bed. But I dunno, it works for me.
What makes it really ritualistic is that I have to be laying on my side and I have to be in my nightclothes. If I'm not, then it's just ordinary reading and it doesn't help.
After reading I switch off the light and continue to lay on my side. Here, I'm consciously trying clear my mind. I try to force out anything resembling active thought and concentrate on stillness and nothing.
It's also at this stage that any noise will become apparent. Like light, I can't put up with noise while I'm trying to sleep, so if there's a party going on somewhere or my PVR is whirring away, I'll put in my earplugs.
This 'calming down' can last anywhere from 5minutes to half an hour, but once I'm relaxed, I'll turn onto my front and that's when I'll drift off.
At least, I assume I drift off. What will actually happen is the next thing I'll be aware of is waking up. This will usually take one of two forms - waking up very early, desperate for a piss, or wake up about 15 minutes before my alarm is due to go off (also needing a pee).
You'll notice there's no mention of dreaming - I can count the number of dreams I remember on one hand. I sometimes have a sort of a daydream experience while I'm waiting for my alarm to go off, but I've never really thought of these as dreams as they're entirely and actively controlled by my mind.
I believe there's something called lucid dreaming where you know you're dreaming, but it's not like that - it's more like I actively think up a scenario or idea and then muck about with it. So much more like a daydream or fantasy than a dream.
Anyway, this new duvet is great - it's light enough to keep me cool, but weighty enough to fulfil my need for a duvet. My other one is a massive 13.5 togs, which I think is about the maximum. Quite where I'm going to put it, I'm not sure, but it looks like the weather is on the turn, so I don't think I'll need it for ages now.
Now that may sound daft - why not just use a blanket, or a regular sheet? Well for some reason I cannot get to sleep unless I've got a duvet on me. I've tried many times in years past to sleep without any covers or just a sheet and I cannot do it. There's obviously some psychological thing going on that means I just can't.
I'm actually pretty neurotic when it comes to sleeping - I have a whole host of... well, I suppose rituals would be the word, that are essentially there to ensure I go to sleep.
Basically, a summary of the basic ritual goes something like-
First off, I ensure all curtains are fully closed and that all lights are turned off or covered over. Now I don't just mean normal lights. You know how a lot of electrical appliance have some sort of LED that indicates they're in standby, or they have a digital clock or something that emits light? Well I can't have those shinning at me.
It's kinda like a brightness threshold - below a certain level I'm happy, but above and the light will keep me up. This can be so bad for me that I actually have to pin black bin bags to the curtains in my bed-sit, because they're white and crap at blocking out light in the summer or if my landlord leaves a light on.
I then read for at least 10 minutes. This is actually a bit of an odd one, because I know a lot of guides for people with insomnia say you shouldn't do anything stimulating, like read or watch TV before bed. But I dunno, it works for me.
What makes it really ritualistic is that I have to be laying on my side and I have to be in my nightclothes. If I'm not, then it's just ordinary reading and it doesn't help.
After reading I switch off the light and continue to lay on my side. Here, I'm consciously trying clear my mind. I try to force out anything resembling active thought and concentrate on stillness and nothing.
It's also at this stage that any noise will become apparent. Like light, I can't put up with noise while I'm trying to sleep, so if there's a party going on somewhere or my PVR is whirring away, I'll put in my earplugs.
This 'calming down' can last anywhere from 5minutes to half an hour, but once I'm relaxed, I'll turn onto my front and that's when I'll drift off.
At least, I assume I drift off. What will actually happen is the next thing I'll be aware of is waking up. This will usually take one of two forms - waking up very early, desperate for a piss, or wake up about 15 minutes before my alarm is due to go off (also needing a pee).
You'll notice there's no mention of dreaming - I can count the number of dreams I remember on one hand. I sometimes have a sort of a daydream experience while I'm waiting for my alarm to go off, but I've never really thought of these as dreams as they're entirely and actively controlled by my mind.
I believe there's something called lucid dreaming where you know you're dreaming, but it's not like that - it's more like I actively think up a scenario or idea and then muck about with it. So much more like a daydream or fantasy than a dream.
Anyway, this new duvet is great - it's light enough to keep me cool, but weighty enough to fulfil my need for a duvet. My other one is a massive 13.5 togs, which I think is about the maximum. Quite where I'm going to put it, I'm not sure, but it looks like the weather is on the turn, so I don't think I'll need it for ages now.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
drag me to hell
Sam Raimi is possibly best known for two things - the Spiderman trilogy and the Evil Dead films. Of course he's done a whole load of other stuff too - Raimi wrote and directed Darkman, for example and was also producer on the western adaptation of the Japanese horror The Grudge.
But probably most important here are Spiderman and the Evil Dead films - the first because it's what shot Raimi into a position where the bigger studios would be willing to fund a film like this (afaik, the Spiderman films have generated something like $2.5billion in revenue). The second because it represents a kind of spiritual predecessor to this film.
Anyway, the basic point is if you've seen the Evil Dead movies then this is very much in their vein - it's basically a horror film, but with strong comedic elements. I don't think it's really right to say it's a black comedy - black comedy is more similar to satire, where the humour here is of a more slapstick nature - specifically the three stooges.
So what's different about drag me to hell?
Well, for starters there's a heavier focus on the horror aspects. This isn't really a bad thing as it means the humour tends to come out of left field and therefore has a bigger impact. It also tends to build into it - so the scary stuff will be building and building, and then it will reach a point of absurdity and you'll find yourself laughing. Or you'll be expecting an even bigger fright and instead something silly will happen.
There's also a fine line at times between gross out and comic - in anyone else but Raimi's hands I think some bits would simply have been stomach churning, but the way he handles it you end up giggling instead.
Overall, I therefore enjoyed it. I think the story works particularly well - I mean, it's not a masterpiece, but it hangs together in a coherent fashion and makes sense.
I would level a few criticism at it, though. Firstly, the horror is slightly dampened by the reliance on 'shock' moments. By these I mean the old bogey-man jumps out of the closet and the soundtrack is filled with loud, shrieking violins.
These are fine, but it could have done with a few false shocks - ones that turn out not to happen or to actually be benign things.
It also wimps out a bit with the blood sacrifice - not so much because it doesn't show it, but that the main character doesn't really feel any remorse or regret about it.
And the shock ending was a little odd - firstly the key element was so telegraphed it kinda rendered the scenes before it oddly redundant. But also, and not wanting to spoiler, but the nature of the shock kinda left an odd feeling.
But those don't spoil what is a thoroughly enjoyable, entertaining film that's well worth checking out.
(I love it when I end these mini reviews like that - it's like I'm pretending t be a proper critic :P)
But probably most important here are Spiderman and the Evil Dead films - the first because it's what shot Raimi into a position where the bigger studios would be willing to fund a film like this (afaik, the Spiderman films have generated something like $2.5billion in revenue). The second because it represents a kind of spiritual predecessor to this film.
Anyway, the basic point is if you've seen the Evil Dead movies then this is very much in their vein - it's basically a horror film, but with strong comedic elements. I don't think it's really right to say it's a black comedy - black comedy is more similar to satire, where the humour here is of a more slapstick nature - specifically the three stooges.
So what's different about drag me to hell?
Well, for starters there's a heavier focus on the horror aspects. This isn't really a bad thing as it means the humour tends to come out of left field and therefore has a bigger impact. It also tends to build into it - so the scary stuff will be building and building, and then it will reach a point of absurdity and you'll find yourself laughing. Or you'll be expecting an even bigger fright and instead something silly will happen.
There's also a fine line at times between gross out and comic - in anyone else but Raimi's hands I think some bits would simply have been stomach churning, but the way he handles it you end up giggling instead.
Overall, I therefore enjoyed it. I think the story works particularly well - I mean, it's not a masterpiece, but it hangs together in a coherent fashion and makes sense.
I would level a few criticism at it, though. Firstly, the horror is slightly dampened by the reliance on 'shock' moments. By these I mean the old bogey-man jumps out of the closet and the soundtrack is filled with loud, shrieking violins.
These are fine, but it could have done with a few false shocks - ones that turn out not to happen or to actually be benign things.
It also wimps out a bit with the blood sacrifice - not so much because it doesn't show it, but that the main character doesn't really feel any remorse or regret about it.
And the shock ending was a little odd - firstly the key element was so telegraphed it kinda rendered the scenes before it oddly redundant. But also, and not wanting to spoiler, but the nature of the shock kinda left an odd feeling.
But those don't spoil what is a thoroughly enjoyable, entertaining film that's well worth checking out.
(I love it when I end these mini reviews like that - it's like I'm pretending t be a proper critic :P)
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
wasted weekend
And I don't mean wasted as in booze soaked, I mean wasted as in opportunity.
I'd been hoping going into the weekend that I would do some scanning. That was the plan - I would start to tackle the New Types after the kick-start I had doing loads of animedias the other week.
My backup plan, for if and when I got really bored of scanning was I'd continue sorting my room a bit. I've not really progressed the room sorting very much, because I've had all sorts of stuff that needed to go down the recycling centre.
Well, one thing that was fixed on the schedule for early Saturday morning was a second trip to the recycling place to dispose of most of the rest of the stuff. This was fixed because I also wanted to get a haircut and I was desperate to clear some space at least (I can now see my settee for the first time in months!).
Well I did neither of those.
I didn't even do something useful like watch anime DVDs. I did set my new telly up, although even that was in a half-arsed, quick-fix way - I've not unplugged and removed the old one, just put it on a chair :/.
So what did I do?
I gamed. I must have spent about half of all my waking hours across the bank holiday playing computer games.
Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the gaming, I just kinda feel a bit regretful that that's all I did.
To be fair, I did get some stuff done. for example, there was a risk I could have failed to watch Eurovision or the GP, and that would have caused me some severe scheduling problems. I mean as it is, despite them totalling something like 10 hours of viewing and me watching several other things recorded I've still come out with more recorded telly that I went in.
The good thing on this front is that more than half of the shows I've been following are on their last episodes this week and next. Given that the world cup starts in a fortnight that bodes very well for my hope that I'll be fully able to engage in catch-up over the summer.
I'd been hoping going into the weekend that I would do some scanning. That was the plan - I would start to tackle the New Types after the kick-start I had doing loads of animedias the other week.
My backup plan, for if and when I got really bored of scanning was I'd continue sorting my room a bit. I've not really progressed the room sorting very much, because I've had all sorts of stuff that needed to go down the recycling centre.
Well, one thing that was fixed on the schedule for early Saturday morning was a second trip to the recycling place to dispose of most of the rest of the stuff. This was fixed because I also wanted to get a haircut and I was desperate to clear some space at least (I can now see my settee for the first time in months!).
Well I did neither of those.
I didn't even do something useful like watch anime DVDs. I did set my new telly up, although even that was in a half-arsed, quick-fix way - I've not unplugged and removed the old one, just put it on a chair :/.
So what did I do?
I gamed. I must have spent about half of all my waking hours across the bank holiday playing computer games.
Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the gaming, I just kinda feel a bit regretful that that's all I did.
To be fair, I did get some stuff done. for example, there was a risk I could have failed to watch Eurovision or the GP, and that would have caused me some severe scheduling problems. I mean as it is, despite them totalling something like 10 hours of viewing and me watching several other things recorded I've still come out with more recorded telly that I went in.
The good thing on this front is that more than half of the shows I've been following are on their last episodes this week and next. Given that the world cup starts in a fortnight that bodes very well for my hope that I'll be fully able to engage in catch-up over the summer.
Friday, 28 May 2010
telly turn-off
This summer I'm sincerely hoping that there is absolutely nothing of note on television.
That's from my perspective of course. If you're a reality TV fan, general sports fan or more specifically a fan of football or tennis then your opinion will differ drastically.
What I'm basically saying is that this year appears to be something of a planetary alignment of TV I'm not interested in:
And then I'm sure there's various other reality crap on too - X-factor, strictly arse biscuits, I'm a celebrity, stove my head in with a pipe... clearly I don't actually know what's on, but the point is I'm fairly sure there's other reality crap that runs across the summer. Even if there isn't the above three will hopefully fill the schedules for a good few months.
Of course the reality is that with the BBC's extensive coverage of F1 and their reasonable coverage of MotoGP my sport quota does rise dramatically over the summer, but the main point is that the normal lull in new and original shows should be magnified this summer.
So why is this a good thing?
Because if there's nothing for me to watch/record then I will have even fewer reasons to avoid attacking my unwatched DVD pile. And this is a very good thing because the unwatched DVD pile is stupidly big and I keep avoiding it.
It's like last weekend - a big part of the reason I was able to scan stuff with reckless abandon was because I'd been really careful during the week to actually watch most of what I recorded. And there are clear signs of my recording schedule petering out - lots of shows I'm watching have only 1 or 2 weeks to go, all of which seem to coincide rather neatly with the above dates.
This next weekend is a Bank Holiday, so I'll be back on Tuesday, hopefully with even more tales of how dull and boring--er, I mean packed my weekend was with overdue box-ticking activities. And it's also Eurovision - my yearly opportunity to give my camp side an airing.
That's from my perspective of course. If you're a reality TV fan, general sports fan or more specifically a fan of football or tennis then your opinion will differ drastically.
What I'm basically saying is that this year appears to be something of a planetary alignment of TV I'm not interested in:
- - The World cup runs 11 June - 11 July
- - Wimbledon runs 28 June - 4 July
- - Big Brother runs June - August (I guess)
And then I'm sure there's various other reality crap on too - X-factor, strictly arse biscuits, I'm a celebrity, stove my head in with a pipe... clearly I don't actually know what's on, but the point is I'm fairly sure there's other reality crap that runs across the summer. Even if there isn't the above three will hopefully fill the schedules for a good few months.
Of course the reality is that with the BBC's extensive coverage of F1 and their reasonable coverage of MotoGP my sport quota does rise dramatically over the summer, but the main point is that the normal lull in new and original shows should be magnified this summer.
So why is this a good thing?
Because if there's nothing for me to watch/record then I will have even fewer reasons to avoid attacking my unwatched DVD pile. And this is a very good thing because the unwatched DVD pile is stupidly big and I keep avoiding it.
It's like last weekend - a big part of the reason I was able to scan stuff with reckless abandon was because I'd been really careful during the week to actually watch most of what I recorded. And there are clear signs of my recording schedule petering out - lots of shows I'm watching have only 1 or 2 weeks to go, all of which seem to coincide rather neatly with the above dates.
This next weekend is a Bank Holiday, so I'll be back on Tuesday, hopefully with even more tales of how dull and boring--er, I mean packed my weekend was with overdue box-ticking activities. And it's also Eurovision - my yearly opportunity to give my camp side an airing.
Thursday, 27 May 2010
mu continuation
I walloped my head last night and have a big ol' bruise for my troubles. Rather embarrassingly, I managed to bash my head whilst sitting down on the toilet. It's a manoeuvre I've executed perfectly and without injuries millions of times before, but yesterday I managed to bang my head on the damn towel rail.
See, I've noticed whenever I injure myself, it's always got an embarrassing element to it. It's like when I did my back in - I trapped a nerve whilst bending down to clean the wheel of my car. Even I'm embarrassed at that and I'm the one that suffered the weeks of constant agony and sleep deprivation that went with it.
Anyway, here's the rest of the summaries for the fansubs I watched:
11eyes
What was surprising about 11eyes wasn't so much what it was and what it was about, it was that I quite liked it.
If I had to guess while I was watching it, I would have said this was adapted from a light novel. Having now had the opportunity to look it up on Google, it actually turns out to be based on a visual novel.
Visual novels are a kind of half way house between properly interactive games and novels. Basically you click through loads of dialogue and events and stuff and then generally there are one or two decision points that allow the game to branch in a particular direction.
The reason I'd have said Light Novel is that 11eyes has that old problem of feeling like a bunch of cool stuff the writer/artist likes thrown together and draped across an overly-familiar plot.
However, where usually this really turns me off, here I found myself enjoying it. Perhaps it's because it's a visual novel so there were subtle differences to the way light novels go about their business. Perhaps I'm simply being worn down by all the adaptations of these types of things there have been recently.
Or perhaps I was simply coming off the back of two really disappointing shows to find something vaguely okay-ish so I didn't hate it.
Hyakko
I wasn't expecting much going into Hyakko. I'd already sampled the OVA that came after this and while it was somewhat amusing it was also a bit of a non-event. I appreciate that this is a slice of life type show, but throughout the entire OAV two characters basically just sat in a shop eating cakes.
Rather pleasantly then, the series has a bit more variety of scenery with more characters at the very least. It's also still definitely a slice of life show set in high school and we've seen loads of them over the years, but Id' say this was a fairly reasonable example of the genre.
I mean, it's not earth-shatteringly good, but equally it's not utterly awful.
Konnichiwa Anne
I've never read Anne of Green Gables. Indeed, I know next to nothing about it.
And confusingly this is not an adaptation of it, although I understand there is one.
According to wikipedia, the original Anne book also had several sequels and this isn't an adaptation of those either. This is an adaptation of a prequel book. A prequel not written by the original author.
Yeah, I'm scratching my head too, but really, that doesn't matter, because you don't need to know anything about those books or who wrote them to watch the show.
I think if I was a child I would really have liked this show. As a very old person I liked what it was trying to achieve but found the actual presentation/style a bit simplistic.
Which isn't to say the stories where simplistic, just that the show has a feeling of being aimed at younger children. Though to be fair, the content is somewhat adult in places - Anne's alcoholic adoptive father hits his wife in several occasions, for example.
And that was the other thing - all bar one of Anne's adoptive family are so unpleasant (both towards her and generally) I kept wanted to get in there and give them a slap (or at the least a damn good talking too) myself.
Perhaps that level of engagement is a hallmark of good storytelling, but in the end I found it somewhat frustrating. Maybe it's the sort of show where the end gives you some sort of closure to those feelings, but odds are I'll never find out.
Durarara!!
And so for the big one.
I'd been kinda saving durarara until last as I'd heard a lot of really good things about it. In particular I'd heard it was similar to Baccano, one of the best shows in recent years.
Well from what I watched (and to cap off this theme of surprises) it didn't seem anything like Baccano.
Baccano does a lot of buggering about in terms of telling its stories in parallel and out of sequence. You can easily slip from 1931 back to 1930 and then forward to 1932 across a handful of scenes. For a simple western analogy it's a bit like Pulp Fiction, where there's a single story that's been chopped into bits and we're watching the bits out of sequence.
Durarara doesn't do that. What Durarara does (well, in the first 2 episodes - I've not seen beyond that) is more similar to Boogiepop phantom, where the same period of time is being covered, but from different people's perspectives. There is a recent western film analogy, but I can't for the life of me recall what it was - I seem to remember it had Matthew Fox of Lost fame in it, though.
The other big surprise is that Baccano is quite high energy. It's got quite a lot of funny stuff in and generally the presentation is an upbeat, brightly coloured one, which contrasts beautifully with the extreme violence and sinister undertones that pervade the story.
Durarara is more straight out dark and moody.
But the thing is I still liked it. Indeed, I think I liked it more because it wasn't simply "Baccano: the remake".
See, I've noticed whenever I injure myself, it's always got an embarrassing element to it. It's like when I did my back in - I trapped a nerve whilst bending down to clean the wheel of my car. Even I'm embarrassed at that and I'm the one that suffered the weeks of constant agony and sleep deprivation that went with it.
Anyway, here's the rest of the summaries for the fansubs I watched:
11eyes
What was surprising about 11eyes wasn't so much what it was and what it was about, it was that I quite liked it.
If I had to guess while I was watching it, I would have said this was adapted from a light novel. Having now had the opportunity to look it up on Google, it actually turns out to be based on a visual novel.
Visual novels are a kind of half way house between properly interactive games and novels. Basically you click through loads of dialogue and events and stuff and then generally there are one or two decision points that allow the game to branch in a particular direction.
The reason I'd have said Light Novel is that 11eyes has that old problem of feeling like a bunch of cool stuff the writer/artist likes thrown together and draped across an overly-familiar plot.
However, where usually this really turns me off, here I found myself enjoying it. Perhaps it's because it's a visual novel so there were subtle differences to the way light novels go about their business. Perhaps I'm simply being worn down by all the adaptations of these types of things there have been recently.
Or perhaps I was simply coming off the back of two really disappointing shows to find something vaguely okay-ish so I didn't hate it.
Hyakko
I wasn't expecting much going into Hyakko. I'd already sampled the OVA that came after this and while it was somewhat amusing it was also a bit of a non-event. I appreciate that this is a slice of life type show, but throughout the entire OAV two characters basically just sat in a shop eating cakes.
Rather pleasantly then, the series has a bit more variety of scenery with more characters at the very least. It's also still definitely a slice of life show set in high school and we've seen loads of them over the years, but Id' say this was a fairly reasonable example of the genre.
I mean, it's not earth-shatteringly good, but equally it's not utterly awful.
Konnichiwa Anne
I've never read Anne of Green Gables. Indeed, I know next to nothing about it.
And confusingly this is not an adaptation of it, although I understand there is one.
According to wikipedia, the original Anne book also had several sequels and this isn't an adaptation of those either. This is an adaptation of a prequel book. A prequel not written by the original author.
Yeah, I'm scratching my head too, but really, that doesn't matter, because you don't need to know anything about those books or who wrote them to watch the show.
I think if I was a child I would really have liked this show. As a very old person I liked what it was trying to achieve but found the actual presentation/style a bit simplistic.
Which isn't to say the stories where simplistic, just that the show has a feeling of being aimed at younger children. Though to be fair, the content is somewhat adult in places - Anne's alcoholic adoptive father hits his wife in several occasions, for example.
And that was the other thing - all bar one of Anne's adoptive family are so unpleasant (both towards her and generally) I kept wanted to get in there and give them a slap (or at the least a damn good talking too) myself.
Perhaps that level of engagement is a hallmark of good storytelling, but in the end I found it somewhat frustrating. Maybe it's the sort of show where the end gives you some sort of closure to those feelings, but odds are I'll never find out.
Durarara!!
And so for the big one.
I'd been kinda saving durarara until last as I'd heard a lot of really good things about it. In particular I'd heard it was similar to Baccano, one of the best shows in recent years.
Well from what I watched (and to cap off this theme of surprises) it didn't seem anything like Baccano.
Baccano does a lot of buggering about in terms of telling its stories in parallel and out of sequence. You can easily slip from 1931 back to 1930 and then forward to 1932 across a handful of scenes. For a simple western analogy it's a bit like Pulp Fiction, where there's a single story that's been chopped into bits and we're watching the bits out of sequence.
Durarara doesn't do that. What Durarara does (well, in the first 2 episodes - I've not seen beyond that) is more similar to Boogiepop phantom, where the same period of time is being covered, but from different people's perspectives. There is a recent western film analogy, but I can't for the life of me recall what it was - I seem to remember it had Matthew Fox of Lost fame in it, though.
The other big surprise is that Baccano is quite high energy. It's got quite a lot of funny stuff in and generally the presentation is an upbeat, brightly coloured one, which contrasts beautifully with the extreme violence and sinister undertones that pervade the story.
Durarara is more straight out dark and moody.
But the thing is I still liked it. Indeed, I think I liked it more because it wasn't simply "Baccano: the remake".
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
crank 2: high voltage
Last week I reviewed (or randomly dribbled about, whichever you prefer) Lesbian Vampire Killers.
My main thought was that it had gotten a critical panning, but that I'd actually kinda enjoyed it.
This week's movie kinda follows the same pattern. I remember there being quite a few bad reviews, most especially I remember comments along the lines of it being not as good as the first.
Those reviews are wrong.
I loved the first Crank - it was delightfully and wilfully bonkers, but not in a comedic sense, although it was plenty funny. No, the bonkers-ness was in the pacing - the film absolutely pelted along, barely giving you any time to stop and think.
The basic feel of the first film was that of a video game. I'm not unique in thinking this, indeed, the game actually has bits of computer animation in it. But it's the nature of these bits of computer animation that really clued you in as to what Crank was.
Back in the early days of home computing the games were more anarchic and bonkers. Modern day gaming is a huge multi-billion pound business and a lot of the games tend to focus on being realistic and are horribly complicated to make. Back then, when computers were low on power anyone could make a 'state of the art' game.
And that led to some truly daft ideas. I remember one game where your mission was essentially to go around being a bastard, playing tricks on people.
And that's what Crank was - it was the movie equivalent of that old computer game spirit.
Crank 2 then cranks this basic idea up (ho ho ho, I'm a comic genius) and expands it. Crank 2 is not only a bonkers video game, but it's also throwing in all sorts of other stuff that was around in my youth too.
And some of it is bizarre - I mean, there's one scene that apes the men in rubber suits antics of the Godzilla movies. The characters wear caricature masks of themselves and do battle, destroying the miniature set by falling on it in the process.
But there's also an element of taking things up a gear (whoops, missed another opportunity for a cranking gag). Think of it this way - with the first film they were trying to make a full-on 18 certificate film.
And they succeeded with this. However, imagine they hadn't and they'd actually ended up with a 15 certificate. So they then make Crank 2 and so the thought process is something like "let's make it as extreme as we can so that it can't possibly end up with a 15".
And this they do - there's more violence, more swearing, more sex and nudity. About the only thing it doesn't push is drug abuse.
So yeah, I'd recommend you watch the first film if you haven't and if you like that then this is a very worthy sequel.
My main thought was that it had gotten a critical panning, but that I'd actually kinda enjoyed it.
This week's movie kinda follows the same pattern. I remember there being quite a few bad reviews, most especially I remember comments along the lines of it being not as good as the first.
Those reviews are wrong.
I loved the first Crank - it was delightfully and wilfully bonkers, but not in a comedic sense, although it was plenty funny. No, the bonkers-ness was in the pacing - the film absolutely pelted along, barely giving you any time to stop and think.
The basic feel of the first film was that of a video game. I'm not unique in thinking this, indeed, the game actually has bits of computer animation in it. But it's the nature of these bits of computer animation that really clued you in as to what Crank was.
Back in the early days of home computing the games were more anarchic and bonkers. Modern day gaming is a huge multi-billion pound business and a lot of the games tend to focus on being realistic and are horribly complicated to make. Back then, when computers were low on power anyone could make a 'state of the art' game.
And that led to some truly daft ideas. I remember one game where your mission was essentially to go around being a bastard, playing tricks on people.
And that's what Crank was - it was the movie equivalent of that old computer game spirit.
Crank 2 then cranks this basic idea up (ho ho ho, I'm a comic genius) and expands it. Crank 2 is not only a bonkers video game, but it's also throwing in all sorts of other stuff that was around in my youth too.
And some of it is bizarre - I mean, there's one scene that apes the men in rubber suits antics of the Godzilla movies. The characters wear caricature masks of themselves and do battle, destroying the miniature set by falling on it in the process.
But there's also an element of taking things up a gear (whoops, missed another opportunity for a cranking gag). Think of it this way - with the first film they were trying to make a full-on 18 certificate film.
And they succeeded with this. However, imagine they hadn't and they'd actually ended up with a 15 certificate. So they then make Crank 2 and so the thought process is something like "let's make it as extreme as we can so that it can't possibly end up with a 15".
And this they do - there's more violence, more swearing, more sex and nudity. About the only thing it doesn't push is drug abuse.
So yeah, I'd recommend you watch the first film if you haven't and if you like that then this is a very worthy sequel.
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
animu splosion
As mentioned yesterday this last weekend was hugely productive and every spare minute was basically crammed with me scanning animedias and watching fansubs. Indeed, I've now managed to sample all of the shows available via fansub from the 2009/10 season, which is a very good thing.
I also managed to do this without completely ignoring normal telly or not doing other stuff I needed to do. So it probably points to a flaw in my character that I was slightly disappointed I didn't get to watch any anime on DVD.
Anyway, as mentioned yesterday, here's the roundup of all the fansubs I watched and my brief opinions on them:
Tatakau Shisho - The Book of Bantorra
If I was to summarise my feelings on all the fansubs I watched I could basically use one word - surprising. I think just about every show was a surprise - sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad.
With Book of Bantorra I wasn't expecting much, but I was rather surprised to find it seemed quite interesting.
One of the reasons for my surprise was that the first couple of episodes did a lot of info dumping. This is one of those shows with a made-up, mumbo-jumbo setting that throws mystical and other powers around like they're bouncy balls.
Now usually I don't like this sort of thing, but was surprised to find two things of interest. First off the main character is not a heroic character or even, based on initial impressions either one of the good guys or particularly special.
The other thing of interest was the head of the hero characters was actually something of a bitch. She was unpleasant to her subordinates and seemed to revel in the violence she dished out, yet she's presented as being the head of the forces of good. She'd actually have slotted right into Black Lagoon.
So yeah, not necessarily a sophisticated premise, but some surprisingly interesting characters.
Natsu no Arashi!
The surprise with Natsu No Arashi was that I didn't really like the first episode, but I quite enjoyed the second.
The problem was that the second episodes was set well after the second and involves time travelling and people walking through walls and all sorts of random stuff. It did have some funny moments and the time travel was quite cleverly done, but it also felt like you were being dumped into the middle of a bunch of storylines and no-one was helping you understand them, which made it really frustrating.
However, the second episode jumped back to the beginning of the story and made a lot more sense, so I enjoyed it a lot more.
Which isn't to say I thought it was great. I didn't particularly take to the character designs, for example, and it didn't really give any impression of having an overarching plot. But still, I'd probably buy it and it was made by SHAFT whose stuff is always worth a look.
Katanagatari
Now Katanagatari was the first of two shows where the surprise was not a pleasant one. I'd fully expected going into this that I'd enjoy it.
It seemed to have some quirky character designs and artwork and I'm all up for a bit of that. It seemed to have some sort of feudal Japan thing going on and I wouldn't be a bit of a Japanophile if that didn't appeal. There was even a hint that it was basically a love story from what I'd heard and I'm a sucker for a bit of a love story.
The big surprise was how tedious it turned out to be.
The first episode was about 50 minutes long (presumably an hour when broadcast), but it didn't seem like they'd given them twice as much money to animate it. Indeed, it looked more like they'd give them half the normal amount of money, because there were huge stretches of people just talking.
And while they were talking it often didn't even show faces - there were loads of slow panning shots across random static things like tea pots. What made this worse was that the dialogue was often kinda dull - there was a bucket load of info dumping and even when the bad guy turned up I thought they were going to try and talk each other to death, rather than fight.
And then they did fight you got very little actual action.
It was terminally dull. Perhaps the second episode is shorter and more action-oriented. The file size would suggested not and I just couldn't be bothered to find out.
Winter Sonata
And it's a similar story with Winter Sonata.
Now to be fair, this one didn't have any suggestion that it was going to have action so the fact it didn't wasn't any sort of a let down. Also, this one definitely was intended to be a straight up romance.
My problem with it was that it was that it was so melodramatic it was almost comical. Except it wasn't comical, it was annoying.
It was like a soap opera, only one of those Mexican soap operas where everything is stupidly high drama. Only where those have a wide range of emotional over-exaggerations, Winter Sonata was entirely fixated on maudlin and melancholy.
Blimey, this is eating through words - I'll continue tomorrow.
Actually, no, tomorrow is movie rental review day, so make that Thursday!
I also managed to do this without completely ignoring normal telly or not doing other stuff I needed to do. So it probably points to a flaw in my character that I was slightly disappointed I didn't get to watch any anime on DVD.
Anyway, as mentioned yesterday, here's the roundup of all the fansubs I watched and my brief opinions on them:
Tatakau Shisho - The Book of Bantorra
If I was to summarise my feelings on all the fansubs I watched I could basically use one word - surprising. I think just about every show was a surprise - sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad.
With Book of Bantorra I wasn't expecting much, but I was rather surprised to find it seemed quite interesting.
One of the reasons for my surprise was that the first couple of episodes did a lot of info dumping. This is one of those shows with a made-up, mumbo-jumbo setting that throws mystical and other powers around like they're bouncy balls.
Now usually I don't like this sort of thing, but was surprised to find two things of interest. First off the main character is not a heroic character or even, based on initial impressions either one of the good guys or particularly special.
The other thing of interest was the head of the hero characters was actually something of a bitch. She was unpleasant to her subordinates and seemed to revel in the violence she dished out, yet she's presented as being the head of the forces of good. She'd actually have slotted right into Black Lagoon.
So yeah, not necessarily a sophisticated premise, but some surprisingly interesting characters.
Natsu no Arashi!
The surprise with Natsu No Arashi was that I didn't really like the first episode, but I quite enjoyed the second.
The problem was that the second episodes was set well after the second and involves time travelling and people walking through walls and all sorts of random stuff. It did have some funny moments and the time travel was quite cleverly done, but it also felt like you were being dumped into the middle of a bunch of storylines and no-one was helping you understand them, which made it really frustrating.
However, the second episode jumped back to the beginning of the story and made a lot more sense, so I enjoyed it a lot more.
Which isn't to say I thought it was great. I didn't particularly take to the character designs, for example, and it didn't really give any impression of having an overarching plot. But still, I'd probably buy it and it was made by SHAFT whose stuff is always worth a look.
Katanagatari
Now Katanagatari was the first of two shows where the surprise was not a pleasant one. I'd fully expected going into this that I'd enjoy it.
It seemed to have some quirky character designs and artwork and I'm all up for a bit of that. It seemed to have some sort of feudal Japan thing going on and I wouldn't be a bit of a Japanophile if that didn't appeal. There was even a hint that it was basically a love story from what I'd heard and I'm a sucker for a bit of a love story.
The big surprise was how tedious it turned out to be.
The first episode was about 50 minutes long (presumably an hour when broadcast), but it didn't seem like they'd given them twice as much money to animate it. Indeed, it looked more like they'd give them half the normal amount of money, because there were huge stretches of people just talking.
And while they were talking it often didn't even show faces - there were loads of slow panning shots across random static things like tea pots. What made this worse was that the dialogue was often kinda dull - there was a bucket load of info dumping and even when the bad guy turned up I thought they were going to try and talk each other to death, rather than fight.
And then they did fight you got very little actual action.
It was terminally dull. Perhaps the second episode is shorter and more action-oriented. The file size would suggested not and I just couldn't be bothered to find out.
Winter Sonata
And it's a similar story with Winter Sonata.
Now to be fair, this one didn't have any suggestion that it was going to have action so the fact it didn't wasn't any sort of a let down. Also, this one definitely was intended to be a straight up romance.
My problem with it was that it was that it was so melodramatic it was almost comical. Except it wasn't comical, it was annoying.
It was like a soap opera, only one of those Mexican soap operas where everything is stupidly high drama. Only where those have a wide range of emotional over-exaggerations, Winter Sonata was entirely fixated on maudlin and melancholy.
Blimey, this is eating through words - I'll continue tomorrow.
Actually, no, tomorrow is movie rental review day, so make that Thursday!
Monday, 24 May 2010
tired but not knackered
As the heading suggests, today I feel tired, but not knackered.
This is a little odd, because the weekend was intensely knackering, and I'd normally expect that sort of thing to carry over.
The knackering bits started with me having to clean bed-sit, having not cleaned it in several weeks. I've spent most of the last few weekends trying to sort stuff and that's not left a lot of time to do any cleaning, so things were rather grimy - I had to Hoover the floor twice, for example.
I then decided to take the bull by the horns and do some scanning. Something my sorting out again highlighted was the huge pile of un-scanned magazines, which keeps growing. I realised that my heroic trudge through all the megamis was so long ago that I'd actually received two new issue of megami since then.
The result of this horn-bull paradigm thingy was that I ploughed through 8 or 9 (I actually lost track :/) issues of animedia. Now animedia of course is the famously light anime mag, generally having the fewest scannable images, but we're still taking what must have been the best part of 10 hours of scanning across the weekend.
That also means I watched a heck of a lot of anime on fansubs - I'd do the summaries tomorrow - which is all rather mentally exhausting.
And on top of that I went for another walk on Sunday! Now I can't speak for the entire country, but down here in southern England is was a veritable scorcher yesterday (supposedly it'll be even hotter today).
For some reason, although this made me slightly trepidatious about the walk, I still went out wearing my jeans. I dunno why I did that - I have plenty of shorts I could have worn that I'm sure would have been cooler.
In the end the walk wasn't as bad as I'd feared, even with the unsuitable attire. I think what helped was that there was quite a lot of shade and the bit that's up the hill had a nice breeze.
I still can't walk up that hill without a couple of pauses to catch my breath, but I guess the point is that it was not much worse given the elevated temperature. Also, it didn't seem to take me as long to recover when I got back as it has done in the past, which I hope is a good sign.
The last entry on the list was the temperature last night. As is often the way when the temperature suddenly goes up I haven't had a hair cut in ages, which is never a help. Of course the new thinner duvet I bought in Friday's spending spree is not here yet, and I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't turn up until the end of the week
I therefore decide to take matters into my own hands a bit and I used some ice packs to pre-cool my bed and to cool my pillow especially (think hot water bottle but in reverse). It was pretty successful as I got off fairly quickly.
The ultimate solution of course is to get the air conditioner out, but there are two problems there. First off the temperature is apparently going to drop for later in the week, but also with my sorting out still ongoing, it's going to be something like a logistical nightmare to get it out.
I therefore put down the fact that I'm tired to the fact that I did a lot of stuff over the weekend and the fact that I'm not knackered to the fact that you tend to sleep better if you've tired yourself out.
This is a little odd, because the weekend was intensely knackering, and I'd normally expect that sort of thing to carry over.
The knackering bits started with me having to clean bed-sit, having not cleaned it in several weeks. I've spent most of the last few weekends trying to sort stuff and that's not left a lot of time to do any cleaning, so things were rather grimy - I had to Hoover the floor twice, for example.
I then decided to take the bull by the horns and do some scanning. Something my sorting out again highlighted was the huge pile of un-scanned magazines, which keeps growing. I realised that my heroic trudge through all the megamis was so long ago that I'd actually received two new issue of megami since then.
The result of this horn-bull paradigm thingy was that I ploughed through 8 or 9 (I actually lost track :/) issues of animedia. Now animedia of course is the famously light anime mag, generally having the fewest scannable images, but we're still taking what must have been the best part of 10 hours of scanning across the weekend.
That also means I watched a heck of a lot of anime on fansubs - I'd do the summaries tomorrow - which is all rather mentally exhausting.
And on top of that I went for another walk on Sunday! Now I can't speak for the entire country, but down here in southern England is was a veritable scorcher yesterday (supposedly it'll be even hotter today).
For some reason, although this made me slightly trepidatious about the walk, I still went out wearing my jeans. I dunno why I did that - I have plenty of shorts I could have worn that I'm sure would have been cooler.
In the end the walk wasn't as bad as I'd feared, even with the unsuitable attire. I think what helped was that there was quite a lot of shade and the bit that's up the hill had a nice breeze.
I still can't walk up that hill without a couple of pauses to catch my breath, but I guess the point is that it was not much worse given the elevated temperature. Also, it didn't seem to take me as long to recover when I got back as it has done in the past, which I hope is a good sign.
The last entry on the list was the temperature last night. As is often the way when the temperature suddenly goes up I haven't had a hair cut in ages, which is never a help. Of course the new thinner duvet I bought in Friday's spending spree is not here yet, and I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't turn up until the end of the week
I therefore decide to take matters into my own hands a bit and I used some ice packs to pre-cool my bed and to cool my pillow especially (think hot water bottle but in reverse). It was pretty successful as I got off fairly quickly.
The ultimate solution of course is to get the air conditioner out, but there are two problems there. First off the temperature is apparently going to drop for later in the week, but also with my sorting out still ongoing, it's going to be something like a logistical nightmare to get it out.
I therefore put down the fact that I'm tired to the fact that I did a lot of stuff over the weekend and the fact that I'm not knackered to the fact that you tend to sleep better if you've tired yourself out.
Friday, 21 May 2010
wallet ouchies
I've just been on something of a spending spree.
Some of what I've bought it necessary. Other stuff I've kinda convinced myself is necessary but probably isn't.
First thing I bought was a new TV. This is not necessary in so far as I have a perfectly functional telly already. But there are a couple of problems.
First off it's a 15" CRT. This means it's quite small and I'm getting sick of not being able to make out some details very well. It's also not widescreen, and basically now I have freeview everything is output in widescreen, which means that even though it was 15 inch it wasn't really, because of letterboxing.
The second thing is at some point in the relatively near future I want to step into the High Def world. This will likely mean buying a Blu Ray player, but could also involve HD-freeview or a game consoles.
The only real downside is that I've had to buy an LCD. The main reason I've held back was that in my opinion CRT is still a better display technology than LCD or plasma. And while OLED is clearly awesome and the future, it's also really early in its development and incredibly expensive.
My next purchase is a new duvet. This is definitely necessary now that it's starting to look like summer may actually happen this year. I can't sleep without a duvet of some kind and my big thick one I got for Christmas would probably end up killing me.
To go along with this I bought another bed sheet cover thing, which should be useful with the summer months and my increased sweating.
I also bought some new socks. This is another of those probably not necessary as I have socks, but at least a third of them have whacking great holes in and it's starting to make me look like a tramp.
The last purchase was some new writable DVDs and two new portable hard drives. These are another borderline thing. I am rapidly running out of burnable DVDs, but not to the extent that I need them now; however, I thought I might as well since I was blowing my cash and like I say I will need them imminently.
The portable HDDs are a little more tricky to justify. I realised a while back that the portable HDDs that I'd bought solely for the purposes of backing up have actually become regularly used things. Now I try my best to subscribe to the whole multiple independent back-ups thing, but I've kinda realised that I'm just not doing that in practice, hence me buying some new drives.
See, I can convince myself of anything if I try hard enough.
Some of what I've bought it necessary. Other stuff I've kinda convinced myself is necessary but probably isn't.
First thing I bought was a new TV. This is not necessary in so far as I have a perfectly functional telly already. But there are a couple of problems.
First off it's a 15" CRT. This means it's quite small and I'm getting sick of not being able to make out some details very well. It's also not widescreen, and basically now I have freeview everything is output in widescreen, which means that even though it was 15 inch it wasn't really, because of letterboxing.
The second thing is at some point in the relatively near future I want to step into the High Def world. This will likely mean buying a Blu Ray player, but could also involve HD-freeview or a game consoles.
The only real downside is that I've had to buy an LCD. The main reason I've held back was that in my opinion CRT is still a better display technology than LCD or plasma. And while OLED is clearly awesome and the future, it's also really early in its development and incredibly expensive.
My next purchase is a new duvet. This is definitely necessary now that it's starting to look like summer may actually happen this year. I can't sleep without a duvet of some kind and my big thick one I got for Christmas would probably end up killing me.
To go along with this I bought another bed sheet cover thing, which should be useful with the summer months and my increased sweating.
I also bought some new socks. This is another of those probably not necessary as I have socks, but at least a third of them have whacking great holes in and it's starting to make me look like a tramp.
The last purchase was some new writable DVDs and two new portable hard drives. These are another borderline thing. I am rapidly running out of burnable DVDs, but not to the extent that I need them now; however, I thought I might as well since I was blowing my cash and like I say I will need them imminently.
The portable HDDs are a little more tricky to justify. I realised a while back that the portable HDDs that I'd bought solely for the purposes of backing up have actually become regularly used things. Now I try my best to subscribe to the whole multiple independent back-ups thing, but I've kinda realised that I'm just not doing that in practice, hence me buying some new drives.
See, I can convince myself of anything if I try hard enough.
Thursday, 20 May 2010
well that was... fun?
Some people are walking disaster areas.
On Tuesday we received an invitation to submit a proposal and the guy running it is a complete and total numpty. Almost everything he did or asked for was either stupid or contradictory.
For example, the ITT turned up and they'd changed the title, but didn't tell us. We'd previously done an expression of interest for it and it was called something else then. So when my boss got this she thought it was something new and wasted a day before she realised.
Then the deadline for the ITT was Thursday. By post. They'd given us less than 3 days to put together an entire ITT. My boss had to basically bully the guy into excepting an electronic version, even though all of our other customers are happy to take electronic versions with hard copy to follow.
And it wasn't a simple ITT, it had all sorts of little bits and bobs and nauseating, un-necessary crap to it. The best example of this is that it required that the document have 3 sections, 2 of which contained pricing information.
Fair enough, because what you normally end up doing is producing a priced and un-priced version, where you blank out the pricing information. However, they didn't want a priced version. That's right - we put these things in the ITT only to blank them out. They then wanted the bits with the price on separately!
It's just been ridiculous, and all basically caused by this guy.
On Tuesday we received an invitation to submit a proposal and the guy running it is a complete and total numpty. Almost everything he did or asked for was either stupid or contradictory.
For example, the ITT turned up and they'd changed the title, but didn't tell us. We'd previously done an expression of interest for it and it was called something else then. So when my boss got this she thought it was something new and wasted a day before she realised.
Then the deadline for the ITT was Thursday. By post. They'd given us less than 3 days to put together an entire ITT. My boss had to basically bully the guy into excepting an electronic version, even though all of our other customers are happy to take electronic versions with hard copy to follow.
And it wasn't a simple ITT, it had all sorts of little bits and bobs and nauseating, un-necessary crap to it. The best example of this is that it required that the document have 3 sections, 2 of which contained pricing information.
Fair enough, because what you normally end up doing is producing a priced and un-priced version, where you blank out the pricing information. However, they didn't want a priced version. That's right - we put these things in the ITT only to blank them out. They then wanted the bits with the price on separately!
It's just been ridiculous, and all basically caused by this guy.
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
lesbian vampire killers
When Lesbian Vampire Killers (LVK) came out I seem to remember it got a mauling from the critics.
And if I'm being totally honest I can sort of understand that, but I also think that in time-honoured critic fashion, slating it seems to miss the point somewhat. LVK is, in essence, an exploitation movie very much in the Hammer Horror vein. The clue to this really is in the title.
What makes it work is that it's a very modern take on this genre. How to put this? It never actually breaks the fourth wall, but when the main characters played by Horne and Corden find themselves in the middle of a Hammer Horror film there's a degree of self awareness to it.
I mean, it's not that they behave unrealistically, it's more like they behave as if they expect the late Jeremy Beadle to suddenly pull off his fake beard and for a cameraman to walk out. It's difficult to explain - it's a tonal thing. It's like all the other characters are living in a Hammer Horror film and a couple of outsiders have wandered into it and they're not quite so sure.
The director makes an interesting point in the commentary that at no point did he think he was making a scary film. He was always making a comedy film that just happened to have a horror setting. But not like the Scary Movie films - this isn't a parody, it's more like a comedy homage to Hammer.
The reason that's particularly interesting is that the film presents itself like a straight horror/exploitation movie just like Hammer used to make, but it isn't - it's full of jokes and by playing it straight I think it works.
I'm kind of working this round to saying something fairly simple: I wasn't expecting to, but I quite liked it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it was a work of genius, the comedy bowls almost entirely at the lowest common denominator and it doesn't make any bones about its exploitation shtick - the film is veritably dripping in hot chicks in skimpy clothes kissing each other. But what I'm getting at is that there's a degree of self-awareness to it all.
The only thing I think I'd really criticise is it flirts with a degree of misogyny that it doesn't properly acknowledge.
I mean, the film is about a lesbian queen of vampires who, in stereotypical lesbian fashion hates men and, when biting women not only turns them into vampires, but also turns them into lesbians as well. The only way to defeat her is with a special sword. A sword that, if you didn't already pick up the on penis/sword thing, has a cock for a handle.
So the only way to beat a lesbian is with the power of a man. Or, the insinuation is that penis is the only thing that can turn a lesbian.
To some extent I'm over-egging this and such an undertone probably would appear in an exploitation-horror film, my problem is more that it's not really acknowledged in the film. Where you've got an element of that 'knowing wink' to everything else, this isn't really even brought up.
And if I'm being totally honest I can sort of understand that, but I also think that in time-honoured critic fashion, slating it seems to miss the point somewhat. LVK is, in essence, an exploitation movie very much in the Hammer Horror vein. The clue to this really is in the title.
What makes it work is that it's a very modern take on this genre. How to put this? It never actually breaks the fourth wall, but when the main characters played by Horne and Corden find themselves in the middle of a Hammer Horror film there's a degree of self awareness to it.
I mean, it's not that they behave unrealistically, it's more like they behave as if they expect the late Jeremy Beadle to suddenly pull off his fake beard and for a cameraman to walk out. It's difficult to explain - it's a tonal thing. It's like all the other characters are living in a Hammer Horror film and a couple of outsiders have wandered into it and they're not quite so sure.
The director makes an interesting point in the commentary that at no point did he think he was making a scary film. He was always making a comedy film that just happened to have a horror setting. But not like the Scary Movie films - this isn't a parody, it's more like a comedy homage to Hammer.
The reason that's particularly interesting is that the film presents itself like a straight horror/exploitation movie just like Hammer used to make, but it isn't - it's full of jokes and by playing it straight I think it works.
I'm kind of working this round to saying something fairly simple: I wasn't expecting to, but I quite liked it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it was a work of genius, the comedy bowls almost entirely at the lowest common denominator and it doesn't make any bones about its exploitation shtick - the film is veritably dripping in hot chicks in skimpy clothes kissing each other. But what I'm getting at is that there's a degree of self-awareness to it all.
The only thing I think I'd really criticise is it flirts with a degree of misogyny that it doesn't properly acknowledge.
I mean, the film is about a lesbian queen of vampires who, in stereotypical lesbian fashion hates men and, when biting women not only turns them into vampires, but also turns them into lesbians as well. The only way to defeat her is with a special sword. A sword that, if you didn't already pick up the on penis/sword thing, has a cock for a handle.
So the only way to beat a lesbian is with the power of a man. Or, the insinuation is that penis is the only thing that can turn a lesbian.
To some extent I'm over-egging this and such an undertone probably would appear in an exploitation-horror film, my problem is more that it's not really acknowledged in the film. Where you've got an element of that 'knowing wink' to everything else, this isn't really even brought up.
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
monaco
So last weekend it was the Monaco Grand Prix.
It was a reasonable race by Monaco standards that was probably helped out by Fernando Alonso crashing in Saturday practice. This meant he had no car for the Qualifying, so had to start from the pits, putting him stone-dead last.
This therefore meant he could take his mandatory pit stop very early and then blast his way up the pack. In Monaco tyre wear is normally quite slight and so this didn't hamper him, but also meant when others eventually took their stops they would have ended up behind him. although many of the teams realised and so brought their guys in early.
It also meant Alonso had to do lots of overtaking (very difficult in Monaco's narrow streets), giving the cameras something to watch.
Anyway, the main thing I wanted to mention about it was that last year I was at the Monaco GP. This gave the viewing experience a little extra something I think - seeing on telly the bits I actually saw myself a year ago.
One of the things you really don't grasp on telly is the elevation changes of the circuit. At one part of the race they're driving past the harbour so are literally at sea level, but the famous Casino Square is actually at the top of a small mountain. There's therefore a long section where they drive up this steep incline that you just can't appreciate on telly - it has to be a 45% angle they go up.
Something that also occurred to me is that the Monaco GP is probably best watched from the in car shots. I mean, there's still no more overtaking, but you get a better appreciation of what it's like driving through the narrow streets with solid barriers just inches away.
I think this year the temperatures were a lot milder than when we were there. If I'm honest the stifling heat and humidity was the only real dampener to last year's trip.
My dad is actually going to the Canadian Grand Prix this year. Well, he's booked the trip, but it coincides with one of the BA strikes (I don't know if it's a BA flight, but I would imagine so) and there's the ever-looming threat of the volcanic ash.
Apparently the last time that volcano went up it was erupting continuously for 2 solid years or something, so it could become a permanent feature of air travel for quite a while.
And speaking of cars and... dust (yeah, okay, world's most tenuous segue ever) I cleaned my car this last weekend.
Well, I say cleaned, it was more like a very quick wipe down. It's been ages since I cleaned my car and it was getting to the stage where you couldn't tell if it was grey or brown. Also there were quite a few bird droppings on it and it's not good to leave those on for long as they damage the paint.
It still really needs a good, thorough clean, though.
My landlord was actually supposed to have gone on holiday this week and last and it was my original plan to give it a good clean during that time. However, in the end he wasn't well so has postponed it and I think this is good as in reality I don't think I'd have had the time - as I say, I only really found time to give it a quick wipe down on Sunday, so Id' never have fit in a full clean.
It was a reasonable race by Monaco standards that was probably helped out by Fernando Alonso crashing in Saturday practice. This meant he had no car for the Qualifying, so had to start from the pits, putting him stone-dead last.
This therefore meant he could take his mandatory pit stop very early and then blast his way up the pack. In Monaco tyre wear is normally quite slight and so this didn't hamper him, but also meant when others eventually took their stops they would have ended up behind him. although many of the teams realised and so brought their guys in early.
It also meant Alonso had to do lots of overtaking (very difficult in Monaco's narrow streets), giving the cameras something to watch.
Anyway, the main thing I wanted to mention about it was that last year I was at the Monaco GP. This gave the viewing experience a little extra something I think - seeing on telly the bits I actually saw myself a year ago.
One of the things you really don't grasp on telly is the elevation changes of the circuit. At one part of the race they're driving past the harbour so are literally at sea level, but the famous Casino Square is actually at the top of a small mountain. There's therefore a long section where they drive up this steep incline that you just can't appreciate on telly - it has to be a 45% angle they go up.
Something that also occurred to me is that the Monaco GP is probably best watched from the in car shots. I mean, there's still no more overtaking, but you get a better appreciation of what it's like driving through the narrow streets with solid barriers just inches away.
I think this year the temperatures were a lot milder than when we were there. If I'm honest the stifling heat and humidity was the only real dampener to last year's trip.
My dad is actually going to the Canadian Grand Prix this year. Well, he's booked the trip, but it coincides with one of the BA strikes (I don't know if it's a BA flight, but I would imagine so) and there's the ever-looming threat of the volcanic ash.
Apparently the last time that volcano went up it was erupting continuously for 2 solid years or something, so it could become a permanent feature of air travel for quite a while.
And speaking of cars and... dust (yeah, okay, world's most tenuous segue ever) I cleaned my car this last weekend.
Well, I say cleaned, it was more like a very quick wipe down. It's been ages since I cleaned my car and it was getting to the stage where you couldn't tell if it was grey or brown. Also there were quite a few bird droppings on it and it's not good to leave those on for long as they damage the paint.
It still really needs a good, thorough clean, though.
My landlord was actually supposed to have gone on holiday this week and last and it was my original plan to give it a good clean during that time. However, in the end he wasn't well so has postponed it and I think this is good as in reality I don't think I'd have had the time - as I say, I only really found time to give it a quick wipe down on Sunday, so Id' never have fit in a full clean.
Monday, 17 May 2010
still a bit rubbish
Guess what I did on Saturday?
No, not that, you filthy degenerate...
Having read through my own pathetic dribblings on Friday after posting them I got a grip and took some rubbish down the recycling place.
You may recall that I'd investigated the Alton recycling centre as a possible option given I work just down the road from it and as part of my investigations I'd discovered it actually opens at 8am on Saturday as well.
My local one in Farnham doesn't open until 9am at weekends, which is just getting into that zone where most people are becoming active. One of the advantages of my body-clock being fixated on an early start is that it gives me the perfect opportunity to go and do stuff like shopping really early at the weekend.
So what I did was load the car up on Saturday and take it all to Alton recycling centre. This turned out to be slightly scarier than I'd thought it would be, because it seemed the police where doing a speeding check thing on the A31 in Farnham. That meant I had to drive past a load of coppers with my car dodgily full of boxes and stuff.
I'm never sure if loading your car in this was is quite legal. I think it probably comes down to one of those it should be "safe" things, which essentially means a judgement call. Anyway, they didn't stop me so I pootled on down there and unloaded my stuff.
The Alton place is a lot better designed than the Farnham one. At Farnham you have to climb stairs to be able to throw your stuff in the big containers (which if I'm honest didn't help with my laziness problem) but at Alton the containers are lower down so you're at the right level to just chuck your stuff in.
As it turned out, and kinda as I'd been expecting, a good chunk of my rubbish went into the 'domestic waste' bin, which basically means it was landfill and not recycling as I'd expected.
The other thing Id' suspected was that the old electrical bits and bobs don't actually go in a container at all. Instead, you basically dump them in an area close to the workers hut thing. My guess is that they go through this stuff to see what it's made of and if it still works and stuff.
And to give you some idea of just how much crap I've accumulated, even though I packed my car as full as was sensible and I've still got loads of crap to chuck. Now admittedly my car is only a micra, but that's a lot of rubbish given the size of my bedsit. And on top of that, I've still got loads of sorting out to do and there's therefore bound to be loads more of crap to chuck.
No, not that, you filthy degenerate...
Having read through my own pathetic dribblings on Friday after posting them I got a grip and took some rubbish down the recycling place.
You may recall that I'd investigated the Alton recycling centre as a possible option given I work just down the road from it and as part of my investigations I'd discovered it actually opens at 8am on Saturday as well.
My local one in Farnham doesn't open until 9am at weekends, which is just getting into that zone where most people are becoming active. One of the advantages of my body-clock being fixated on an early start is that it gives me the perfect opportunity to go and do stuff like shopping really early at the weekend.
So what I did was load the car up on Saturday and take it all to Alton recycling centre. This turned out to be slightly scarier than I'd thought it would be, because it seemed the police where doing a speeding check thing on the A31 in Farnham. That meant I had to drive past a load of coppers with my car dodgily full of boxes and stuff.
I'm never sure if loading your car in this was is quite legal. I think it probably comes down to one of those it should be "safe" things, which essentially means a judgement call. Anyway, they didn't stop me so I pootled on down there and unloaded my stuff.
The Alton place is a lot better designed than the Farnham one. At Farnham you have to climb stairs to be able to throw your stuff in the big containers (which if I'm honest didn't help with my laziness problem) but at Alton the containers are lower down so you're at the right level to just chuck your stuff in.
As it turned out, and kinda as I'd been expecting, a good chunk of my rubbish went into the 'domestic waste' bin, which basically means it was landfill and not recycling as I'd expected.
The other thing Id' suspected was that the old electrical bits and bobs don't actually go in a container at all. Instead, you basically dump them in an area close to the workers hut thing. My guess is that they go through this stuff to see what it's made of and if it still works and stuff.
And to give you some idea of just how much crap I've accumulated, even though I packed my car as full as was sensible and I've still got loads of crap to chuck. Now admittedly my car is only a micra, but that's a lot of rubbish given the size of my bedsit. And on top of that, I've still got loads of sorting out to do and there's therefore bound to be loads more of crap to chuck.
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