So this weekend sees the Formula one season get going after the cancellation of the Bahrain GP.
And events in Bahrain have kinda backed up what I was talking about a couple of weeks ago. A country where dozens of peaceful demonstrators are shot to death and neighbouring countries with equally despotic leaders are asked to send troops in to crush the rebellion doesn't really sound like the sort of place I want my sport to be endorsing. Unless it resolves in the direction of giving the people greater say in the running of their own country, I think we should be staying away.
Anyway, at least the Australian GP should be going ahead.
I've been trying to keep up with the F1 stuff during the off-season, though I tend to forget about it. The new cars look a little different - they've got a longer wheel base, to give them more room for these KERS systems. This seems to have manifested itself as a longer, pointier nose on most cars, which seems a little odd, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.
I must say I'm not sure about the whole re-inclusion of KERS as well as this rear-wing idea. KERS was okay as a concept, but they way it was implemented when it first came in seemed to make it a bit of a damp squib. If it had been a done more simply, such as they could only use it to overtake, and it had been more powerful, I think it would have worked better.
And the rear-wing idea seems to be even more complicated - you can only use it if you're within a certain distance of the car in front, and only on a designated straight, but not within x laps of the start and they can't use it to defend. I've a horrible feeling we're going to see a few people hang around behind the car in front until the very last lap and then use it to blast past and get points they don't really deserve.
What's more annoying is these all seem to be sops to the real problem that the cars have become horribly reliant on aerodynamic down force, which prevents them getting close enough to each other. Hopefully the rule changes proposed for future years - the introduction of ground effect in particular will sort that out, though.
After going on about whether I would watch the MotoGP last Friday, the practicalities of the situation actually prevented me from doing so - I'd forgotten it was being shown quite late on the Sunday as it was in foreign climes, so in the end I recorded it and will have to catch up later on.
Friday, 25 March 2011
Thursday, 24 March 2011
the punisher: war zone
This weekend's rental, Punisher: War Zone got a bit of a drubbing from the critics and was something of a flop at the box office.
However, I actually quite enjoyed it.
I mean, I don't think it was a particularly great film in the sense of being a deep story, but it basically did exactly what was written on the tin and I enjoyed it for that. I think also that a point made in the commentary track by the director was a good one and that many of the critics were probably completely unfamiliar with the tone and nature of the comics it was based so they kinda missed the point.
I think probably they did miss the point, but I'm not sure it's fair to expect them to make themselves familiar with the specific source material. To be frank, although I'd probably still say the punisher was one of my favourite characters, I've not read any of the comics in a very long time. In particular, I'm completely unfamiliar with the war zone comic this is essentially an adaptation of.
I think a big part of my interest in the punisher is the muddle of contradictions of the character. For those unfamiliar, he's basically bent on revenge after mobsters killed his family. And yet, unlike the rest of the Marvel canon, that revenge takes the form of killing criminals - and we're talking ordinary criminals, rather than super villains. Frank Castle is a mass murderer, but he's a mass murderer of people who break the law.
But for me there's all sorts of interest levels within that - where does he draw the line? Would he kill someone who parked illegally? When he's killing hardened mob bosses who the traditional justice system doesn't catch, you can kind of see it as justifiable, but what about a mugger or a junkie?
He has an appallingly fascist outlook, and yet he's supposed to have been a loving family man. These are the things that always interested me about the character, but they're not really explored in the film. The approach that tends to be focused on is that he really did love his family and is bent on revenge and wants to eradicate crime in order to make the world safe for other families.
This film follows that route, as I presume the comic did, and for what it is, it does work. And I think you really have to bear that in mind when watching it.
Although, to be fair, the film does have some weird contradictions in it. Early on, the mob bosses are depicted as weirdly stereotypical and when the Jigsaw character gets going he's weirdly camp. He actually reminded me a lot of Batman's Joker character and there did seem to be a desire to play it for laughs, which did work, but wasn't quite what I was expecting.
I dunno - a character like that can be a really fine balance, but I think the difference is that the Joker has that maniacal humour built into him, whereas the Jigsaw I knew was always just a really mean bastard.
However, I actually quite enjoyed it.
I mean, I don't think it was a particularly great film in the sense of being a deep story, but it basically did exactly what was written on the tin and I enjoyed it for that. I think also that a point made in the commentary track by the director was a good one and that many of the critics were probably completely unfamiliar with the tone and nature of the comics it was based so they kinda missed the point.
I think probably they did miss the point, but I'm not sure it's fair to expect them to make themselves familiar with the specific source material. To be frank, although I'd probably still say the punisher was one of my favourite characters, I've not read any of the comics in a very long time. In particular, I'm completely unfamiliar with the war zone comic this is essentially an adaptation of.
I think a big part of my interest in the punisher is the muddle of contradictions of the character. For those unfamiliar, he's basically bent on revenge after mobsters killed his family. And yet, unlike the rest of the Marvel canon, that revenge takes the form of killing criminals - and we're talking ordinary criminals, rather than super villains. Frank Castle is a mass murderer, but he's a mass murderer of people who break the law.
But for me there's all sorts of interest levels within that - where does he draw the line? Would he kill someone who parked illegally? When he's killing hardened mob bosses who the traditional justice system doesn't catch, you can kind of see it as justifiable, but what about a mugger or a junkie?
He has an appallingly fascist outlook, and yet he's supposed to have been a loving family man. These are the things that always interested me about the character, but they're not really explored in the film. The approach that tends to be focused on is that he really did love his family and is bent on revenge and wants to eradicate crime in order to make the world safe for other families.
This film follows that route, as I presume the comic did, and for what it is, it does work. And I think you really have to bear that in mind when watching it.
Although, to be fair, the film does have some weird contradictions in it. Early on, the mob bosses are depicted as weirdly stereotypical and when the Jigsaw character gets going he's weirdly camp. He actually reminded me a lot of Batman's Joker character and there did seem to be a desire to play it for laughs, which did work, but wasn't quite what I was expecting.
I dunno - a character like that can be a really fine balance, but I think the difference is that the Joker has that maniacal humour built into him, whereas the Jigsaw I knew was always just a really mean bastard.
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
so what to do?
I've dedicated the last couple of days to trying to understand why I've been self-sabotaging my own diet.
I'm not entirely sure I articulated it very well, but the basic point is that I've been really noticing the weight loss this last few weeks. Before Christmas I personally was a little surprised by the apparent lack of difference, but in the last few weeks there have been a lot of signs.
The most apparent one and the one that I think scared me into comfort eating (I think that's what I've really been doing - I don't think I've actually been engaged in self-sabotage, it's just that's the net effect) was the changes I can see in my reflection, but there have been others. These have included the fact that all of my clothes are really loose, the fact I've started to be able to feel the structure of my underling muscles and bones beneath all the flab when I rub or scratch myself and the fact I can now walk quite long distances at a good pace and that there's much less need for recovery afterwards.
I think it's probably my dogged sticking to my exercise routine that's actually compensated for the comfort eating I've been doing, so I don't think there's any problem with that side of things. If I'm honest, the walking can seem like quite chore some times, especially if the weather is inclement, but I'm always glad I went for a walk when I get back.
So the bit I need to fix is the eating.
In particular, I've been tending to splurge out in the evenings and generally my eating has gone a bit wonky at the weekends.
For the evenings I think the fix mainly comes down to the application of willpower. It's how I managed to get myself to start this process and it's how I need to get myself out of it. I do think I might start adding in some extra fruit during the week nights. Wednesday lunch I pop into town in order to do some domestic stuff, including popping into Sainsbury's to get any bits I need.
This opens me up to the temptation of buying bad stuff (usually from the bakery section, baked goods being one of my real weaknesses) but I think instead I'll try to buy some healthy fruit or, in particular, salad stuff.
Now that the winter seems to finally be lifting, we're getting into salad season and I think this is also a key to the weekend as well. I mentioned before I was trying to eat up my stockpiles (this was probably the start of the whole comfort eating thing, though I didn't realise it) and I've been doing this at the weekends, so I need to shift the focus away from these and on to salads and things of that ilk.
While I like salad it's not something I find I can really eat during the chillier months. There's something about that combination of cold food and cold weather that turns me off, but if the thermometer keeps ascending then I think I'll be okay to make the switch.
I'm not entirely sure I articulated it very well, but the basic point is that I've been really noticing the weight loss this last few weeks. Before Christmas I personally was a little surprised by the apparent lack of difference, but in the last few weeks there have been a lot of signs.
The most apparent one and the one that I think scared me into comfort eating (I think that's what I've really been doing - I don't think I've actually been engaged in self-sabotage, it's just that's the net effect) was the changes I can see in my reflection, but there have been others. These have included the fact that all of my clothes are really loose, the fact I've started to be able to feel the structure of my underling muscles and bones beneath all the flab when I rub or scratch myself and the fact I can now walk quite long distances at a good pace and that there's much less need for recovery afterwards.
I think it's probably my dogged sticking to my exercise routine that's actually compensated for the comfort eating I've been doing, so I don't think there's any problem with that side of things. If I'm honest, the walking can seem like quite chore some times, especially if the weather is inclement, but I'm always glad I went for a walk when I get back.
So the bit I need to fix is the eating.
In particular, I've been tending to splurge out in the evenings and generally my eating has gone a bit wonky at the weekends.
For the evenings I think the fix mainly comes down to the application of willpower. It's how I managed to get myself to start this process and it's how I need to get myself out of it. I do think I might start adding in some extra fruit during the week nights. Wednesday lunch I pop into town in order to do some domestic stuff, including popping into Sainsbury's to get any bits I need.
This opens me up to the temptation of buying bad stuff (usually from the bakery section, baked goods being one of my real weaknesses) but I think instead I'll try to buy some healthy fruit or, in particular, salad stuff.
Now that the winter seems to finally be lifting, we're getting into salad season and I think this is also a key to the weekend as well. I mentioned before I was trying to eat up my stockpiles (this was probably the start of the whole comfort eating thing, though I didn't realise it) and I've been doing this at the weekends, so I need to shift the focus away from these and on to salads and things of that ilk.
While I like salad it's not something I find I can really eat during the chillier months. There's something about that combination of cold food and cold weather that turns me off, but if the thermometer keeps ascending then I think I'll be okay to make the switch.
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
the different me in the mirror
As mentioned yesterday, I've been sabotaging my own weight loss.
I think the root cause of this is actually something that I've been thinking about for a while now, in that I look different.
As I discussed in my set of posts about how the weight loss was planned and started a few weeks ago, part of the reason for loosing the weight is a desire not too look so bad. I don't want to be a fat blob any more - or, at the very least, I don't want to be a morbidly obese blob anymore; I'll decide if I mind being a simply fat blob when I eventually get there.
Anyway, the point is that loosing weight obviously changes how you look and this is a part of why I want to loose the weight.
Back when I was in uni doing my Physics degree, one of the subjects we covered was something called Fourier analysis. I won't try to explain this, but the prof explaining it mentioned that he had a theory that we all have mental Fourier filters.
These filters act on the image we see in the mirror, in order to kind of "smooth out" the bad bits (clearly this is for normal perceptions, not those with things like Anorexia). This he suggested was why most people can look at themselves in the mirror, but instantly hate seeing ourselves in photos - in a mirror your image is reversed, so your filter is based on that reversed image.
A simpler way to think about it is that the things we see in the mirror every day we get used to.
Now as I mentioned a few weeks ago I've been fat for most of my life, so my filter is processing out that fatness. I don't see a blob in the mirror, but I do in photos (oh boy do I).
Having lost what amounts to around a fifth of my entire body weight these filters have therefore started to be presented with a similar problem when I see myself in the mirror. I keep catching my reflection and seeing parts of my body that didn't used to look like that and because my filter isn't adjusted yet, it's oddly alarming.
You know, this is actually proving really difficult to explain, because I'm also fully aware that my initial blobness is entirely self-inflicted. If someone is injured and gets a big, nasty scar on their face, it's a whole different ball game to if you spent your life sat on your arse eating pies.
My point is that even though those bits that didn't used to look like that are the beginnings of the changes I want to see I think they've also been alarming me in a similar way that the face-scar would. You can understand the face scar thing, because it's your brain alerting you to something you need to pay attention to - something could be wrong that you need to sort out. It's just my brain is doing that even though the underlying change is a good one that I want.
I think the root cause of this is actually something that I've been thinking about for a while now, in that I look different.
As I discussed in my set of posts about how the weight loss was planned and started a few weeks ago, part of the reason for loosing the weight is a desire not too look so bad. I don't want to be a fat blob any more - or, at the very least, I don't want to be a morbidly obese blob anymore; I'll decide if I mind being a simply fat blob when I eventually get there.
Anyway, the point is that loosing weight obviously changes how you look and this is a part of why I want to loose the weight.
Back when I was in uni doing my Physics degree, one of the subjects we covered was something called Fourier analysis. I won't try to explain this, but the prof explaining it mentioned that he had a theory that we all have mental Fourier filters.
These filters act on the image we see in the mirror, in order to kind of "smooth out" the bad bits (clearly this is for normal perceptions, not those with things like Anorexia). This he suggested was why most people can look at themselves in the mirror, but instantly hate seeing ourselves in photos - in a mirror your image is reversed, so your filter is based on that reversed image.
A simpler way to think about it is that the things we see in the mirror every day we get used to.
Now as I mentioned a few weeks ago I've been fat for most of my life, so my filter is processing out that fatness. I don't see a blob in the mirror, but I do in photos (oh boy do I).
Having lost what amounts to around a fifth of my entire body weight these filters have therefore started to be presented with a similar problem when I see myself in the mirror. I keep catching my reflection and seeing parts of my body that didn't used to look like that and because my filter isn't adjusted yet, it's oddly alarming.
You know, this is actually proving really difficult to explain, because I'm also fully aware that my initial blobness is entirely self-inflicted. If someone is injured and gets a big, nasty scar on their face, it's a whole different ball game to if you spent your life sat on your arse eating pies.
My point is that even though those bits that didn't used to look like that are the beginnings of the changes I want to see I think they've also been alarming me in a similar way that the face-scar would. You can understand the face scar thing, because it's your brain alerting you to something you need to pay attention to - something could be wrong that you need to sort out. It's just my brain is doing that even though the underlying change is a good one that I want.
Monday, 21 March 2011
self sabotage
I think I might have been engaged in some sabotaging my own weight loss.
Over the last few weeks, while I have been loosing weight, the rate of loss has declined rapidly. And every week I seem to have some sort of reason for why this has happened.
But I'm used to this behaviour from me.
I'm quite good at the creation of reason and justification. It would be too harsh to call it lying as such, but it's in the same ballpark. I'm good at generating excuses. So my dietary slips have been written off as "unavoidable" due to various things.
And while these things have genuinely happened, as I say, it's more of the same generation of reasonable excuses that I'm so very good at. I suppose a familiar word for it would be "spin" - the presentation of facts in such a way that they support the viewpoint you're presenting, or at the least obscure the viewpoint you don't want people to see.
I think this came to a head in the later part of this last week when I released I was going totally off-plan with my diet. I ate loads of stuff that I really shouldn't, giving in to temptation several times. But what made it apparent I was making excuses for myself was that this time there really was no excuse I could come up with to explain it away.
I ate this stuff because I was slipping back into old patterns of behaviour.
Now depending on how you want to take it, I either was or wasn't punished for this. When I weighed myself on Sunday, I found that I had lost no weight - I again weighed 20 stone (well, I actually weighed exactly 20 stone, so may have gained that 0.2 pounds it showed I was under last week, but as noted, I rounded that up, so it was no change).
So I was either punished because I undermined the dieting/exercise activity I did that would have resulted in a drop or I got away with it in that my splurging on bad food didn't make me gain weight. Either way, it made my target of 19 stone by around my birthday a little more difficult, which is why I decided to do this "confessional" type post.
I think this slippage relates primarily to a weird affect I'm finding from the weight loss, which I'll continue with tomorrow
Over the last few weeks, while I have been loosing weight, the rate of loss has declined rapidly. And every week I seem to have some sort of reason for why this has happened.
But I'm used to this behaviour from me.
I'm quite good at the creation of reason and justification. It would be too harsh to call it lying as such, but it's in the same ballpark. I'm good at generating excuses. So my dietary slips have been written off as "unavoidable" due to various things.
And while these things have genuinely happened, as I say, it's more of the same generation of reasonable excuses that I'm so very good at. I suppose a familiar word for it would be "spin" - the presentation of facts in such a way that they support the viewpoint you're presenting, or at the least obscure the viewpoint you don't want people to see.
I think this came to a head in the later part of this last week when I released I was going totally off-plan with my diet. I ate loads of stuff that I really shouldn't, giving in to temptation several times. But what made it apparent I was making excuses for myself was that this time there really was no excuse I could come up with to explain it away.
I ate this stuff because I was slipping back into old patterns of behaviour.
Now depending on how you want to take it, I either was or wasn't punished for this. When I weighed myself on Sunday, I found that I had lost no weight - I again weighed 20 stone (well, I actually weighed exactly 20 stone, so may have gained that 0.2 pounds it showed I was under last week, but as noted, I rounded that up, so it was no change).
So I was either punished because I undermined the dieting/exercise activity I did that would have resulted in a drop or I got away with it in that my splurging on bad food didn't make me gain weight. Either way, it made my target of 19 stone by around my birthday a little more difficult, which is why I decided to do this "confessional" type post.
I think this slippage relates primarily to a weird affect I'm finding from the weight loss, which I'll continue with tomorrow
Friday, 18 March 2011
start of moto gp season
This weekend sees the start of the MotoGP season.
I'm rather in two minds about whether to follow the MotoGP season this year. The problem I've got is that it's going to add quite a few more hours of stuff to watch this year and I'm not sure I want to expend that time.
I've sorta been hoping that this summer would represent a bit of a "turning point" in terms of my unwatched DVD pile. I was hoping that I would roll on my new found desire to get stuff done that I've been putting to good use for the scanning into watching these DVDs.
I have actually been trying to watch some DVD stuff in the evenings and I've been doing okay, but my hope was that when it gets round to summer and interesting telly stuff dries up, I'll be able to use that time to make some sort of impression on it.
This hope is further boosted by the whole crunchyroll thing. Now that I've been tackling most of the new anime via the legal and paid for route of crunchyroll, I'm hoping that has a huge knock-on effect in terms of the DVDs or buy. Or rather, it will massively reduce the number of anime DVDs I buy (indeed, it may eradicate them altogether).
Of course, this will help me financially too - not only will I be able to sell stuff I've watched on e-bay, but crunchyroll only costs about £60 an entire year, and I can easily spend that every month on DVDs.
To this end, I've already been getting into quite a brutal mindset for the telly I watch at the moment. Once a week I like to set up all the stuff I want to watch on pre-record. This then allows me to take a look at the list and see how much of it there is and what stuff there is. If it's too much or there's some things on there I perhaps didn't like enough to keep them going, then I'll delete them.
Comedies in particular have tended to got the chop. I'm not sure if I'm becoming less tolerant, or I used to be overly-tolerant, but I've even found myself dropping things without completing the first episode.
So I think I'll suck it and see with the MotoGP season - give it maybe a couple of races and if it proves too much of a time burden or isn't that interesting, then I'll probably drop it.
I'm rather in two minds about whether to follow the MotoGP season this year. The problem I've got is that it's going to add quite a few more hours of stuff to watch this year and I'm not sure I want to expend that time.
I've sorta been hoping that this summer would represent a bit of a "turning point" in terms of my unwatched DVD pile. I was hoping that I would roll on my new found desire to get stuff done that I've been putting to good use for the scanning into watching these DVDs.
I have actually been trying to watch some DVD stuff in the evenings and I've been doing okay, but my hope was that when it gets round to summer and interesting telly stuff dries up, I'll be able to use that time to make some sort of impression on it.
This hope is further boosted by the whole crunchyroll thing. Now that I've been tackling most of the new anime via the legal and paid for route of crunchyroll, I'm hoping that has a huge knock-on effect in terms of the DVDs or buy. Or rather, it will massively reduce the number of anime DVDs I buy (indeed, it may eradicate them altogether).
Of course, this will help me financially too - not only will I be able to sell stuff I've watched on e-bay, but crunchyroll only costs about £60 an entire year, and I can easily spend that every month on DVDs.
To this end, I've already been getting into quite a brutal mindset for the telly I watch at the moment. Once a week I like to set up all the stuff I want to watch on pre-record. This then allows me to take a look at the list and see how much of it there is and what stuff there is. If it's too much or there's some things on there I perhaps didn't like enough to keep them going, then I'll delete them.
Comedies in particular have tended to got the chop. I'm not sure if I'm becoming less tolerant, or I used to be overly-tolerant, but I've even found myself dropping things without completing the first episode.
So I think I'll suck it and see with the MotoGP season - give it maybe a couple of races and if it proves too much of a time burden or isn't that interesting, then I'll probably drop it.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
weight loss
Some surprises for this weekend's weigh in.
The first was that, despite the extra pancakes on Tuesday and a gnawing fear that the previous weekend's "curry and chips" episodes would catch up with me, I actually lost 3 pounds.
Well, I say I lost three pounds, one of the other surprises was that my scales suddenly started weighing in fractions, so actually it was apparently telling me I'd lost 3.2 pounds.
This actually took me below 20 stone, which I think is what triggered the inclusion of the decimal point.
I'm not explaining this well.
Basically, when I got on the scales on Sunday morning, they gave me a reading of 19 stone, 13.8 pounds.
As I read the display my initial surprise was that I apparently now weighed under 20 stone, which meant I must have lost more than 3 pounds, because I weighed 20 stone 3 pounds the week before.
Then, as my eyes continued to scan across the display (it's a digital thing), I couldn't make head-nor-tales of it, since it seemed to be saying 19 stone 138 pounds. Then I realised there was a decimal point between the 3 and 8 so it was actually saying 13.8 pounds.
This puzzled me, since the scale has never shown decimals like this before - it's always been full stones and pounds. I therefore initially assumed it was an error, so I hoped off, reset it and hoped back on - same reading. Wow.
It then occurred to me that the decimals might have been triggered by the fact I'd gone under 20 stone - perhaps it starts rounding off when you go above that. Certainly this would explain why I'd never seen it before.
It then also occurred to me that if that was the case, I didn't actually know how much I'd lose, since I could have weighed anything from 20 stone 2.5 pounds to 20 stone 3.4 pounds and it would have still shown 20 stone 3 pounds.
In other words, despite apparently going below 20 stone, I'm going to be on shaky ground if I now start operating in decimal places, so rounding it takes me back up to 20 stone.
Still, it's nice to finally hit the 20 stone mark, and I'm now only about a stone off of my Birthday/Easter target, which is good.
The first was that, despite the extra pancakes on Tuesday and a gnawing fear that the previous weekend's "curry and chips" episodes would catch up with me, I actually lost 3 pounds.
Well, I say I lost three pounds, one of the other surprises was that my scales suddenly started weighing in fractions, so actually it was apparently telling me I'd lost 3.2 pounds.
This actually took me below 20 stone, which I think is what triggered the inclusion of the decimal point.
I'm not explaining this well.
Basically, when I got on the scales on Sunday morning, they gave me a reading of 19 stone, 13.8 pounds.
As I read the display my initial surprise was that I apparently now weighed under 20 stone, which meant I must have lost more than 3 pounds, because I weighed 20 stone 3 pounds the week before.
Then, as my eyes continued to scan across the display (it's a digital thing), I couldn't make head-nor-tales of it, since it seemed to be saying 19 stone 138 pounds. Then I realised there was a decimal point between the 3 and 8 so it was actually saying 13.8 pounds.
This puzzled me, since the scale has never shown decimals like this before - it's always been full stones and pounds. I therefore initially assumed it was an error, so I hoped off, reset it and hoped back on - same reading. Wow.
It then occurred to me that the decimals might have been triggered by the fact I'd gone under 20 stone - perhaps it starts rounding off when you go above that. Certainly this would explain why I'd never seen it before.
It then also occurred to me that if that was the case, I didn't actually know how much I'd lose, since I could have weighed anything from 20 stone 2.5 pounds to 20 stone 3.4 pounds and it would have still shown 20 stone 3 pounds.
In other words, despite apparently going below 20 stone, I'm going to be on shaky ground if I now start operating in decimal places, so rounding it takes me back up to 20 stone.
Still, it's nice to finally hit the 20 stone mark, and I'm now only about a stone off of my Birthday/Easter target, which is good.
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
kiss kiss bang bang
I'd always though that Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was a nickname the Japanese used for James Bond.
According to Wikipedia, however, it actually originates from an Italian movie poster for a Bond film, although I do know the Japanese use it. The point is that it's for Bond, and so I'd assumed this film would be some sort of secret agent thing. I mean, I knew it was a comedy, and I was right about that, but it turned out not to be a secret agent thing at all.
In fact, it's more of a film noire thing.
It also turned out to be a rather black comedy. And a surprisingly good one, as it raised more than a few chuckles from me.
One other thing that was interesting is that the film kinda plays with breaking the fourth wall. Basically, the narrator is aware of the audience and talks to them directly, but it's more like you're watching the film with him at home and he's chipping in with some comments.
So in other words, it's mostly as if he's on our side of the fourth wall; however, occasionally he'll interact with the film in such a way that he's both in the film and kind of like an omnipotent being as well. Basically, this is best demonstrated when he asks a couple of extras in the film to move out of the way so the camera can see something.
I've always been a sucker for that kind of stuff, so I really enjoyed this aspect of the film.
I also particularly enjoyed the way it plays with film noire conventions. I can't confess to knowing that much about film noire, but most of the tropes and clichés are sufficiently familiar to most people that it's understandable what it's doing.
But it still essentially plays it straight - the plot twists and coincidences aren't done in a jokey way, it's just that the film acknowledges they are things familiar to us all from years of watching movies.
The film is also a good length and is very well paced - you never feel it's bogging down or getting stuck and it manages to juggle its main plot and a whole bunch of subplots very well. Perhaps the only thing I'd have liked would have been a bit more about Val Kilmer's character, as he tends to turn up only when he's needed to advance a particular element of the plot, but that's not really a bigy.
About the only thing I didn't like about this was a complete lack of any extras on the DVD - there wasn't even a short featurette or trailers.
According to Wikipedia, however, it actually originates from an Italian movie poster for a Bond film, although I do know the Japanese use it. The point is that it's for Bond, and so I'd assumed this film would be some sort of secret agent thing. I mean, I knew it was a comedy, and I was right about that, but it turned out not to be a secret agent thing at all.
In fact, it's more of a film noire thing.
It also turned out to be a rather black comedy. And a surprisingly good one, as it raised more than a few chuckles from me.
One other thing that was interesting is that the film kinda plays with breaking the fourth wall. Basically, the narrator is aware of the audience and talks to them directly, but it's more like you're watching the film with him at home and he's chipping in with some comments.
So in other words, it's mostly as if he's on our side of the fourth wall; however, occasionally he'll interact with the film in such a way that he's both in the film and kind of like an omnipotent being as well. Basically, this is best demonstrated when he asks a couple of extras in the film to move out of the way so the camera can see something.
I've always been a sucker for that kind of stuff, so I really enjoyed this aspect of the film.
I also particularly enjoyed the way it plays with film noire conventions. I can't confess to knowing that much about film noire, but most of the tropes and clichés are sufficiently familiar to most people that it's understandable what it's doing.
But it still essentially plays it straight - the plot twists and coincidences aren't done in a jokey way, it's just that the film acknowledges they are things familiar to us all from years of watching movies.
The film is also a good length and is very well paced - you never feel it's bogging down or getting stuck and it manages to juggle its main plot and a whole bunch of subplots very well. Perhaps the only thing I'd have liked would have been a bit more about Val Kilmer's character, as he tends to turn up only when he's needed to advance a particular element of the plot, but that's not really a bigy.
About the only thing I didn't like about this was a complete lack of any extras on the DVD - there wasn't even a short featurette or trailers.
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
scanning or not
As with most weekends recently, I had "do lots of scanning" on my to do list.
However, actually I only scanned three things, although I did spend an awful lot of hours working on the scans. Basically, I realised I was rapidly running out of hard-drive space, espcially since I try to keep multiple copies of things, in case of drive crashes.
I therefore attached the stack of scans that I need to run through photostitch in order to stick them together. This is something I've not been looking forward to, although I think now I have a strategy for doign them that is about as efficient as it gets.
Basically, I run through them all, trying to stich them together as they are, with no processing at all. This is one of those tasks that becomes mechanistic, as in, click this button, type here, click that button, wait a moment, check the result, click here, type there, rinse and repeat.
The key part is that I've now managed to work out a way for the checking to be done as quickly and simply as possible. However, it's still the case that the bit where it's processing the scans is still too short for me to practically whatch anime, like I do when I'm doing the scanning. Also, it's not the sort of job that I can do both pretty much simultaneously as the checking does require my full attention.
Anyway, point is I run through the scans liek that, which succesfully sticks together probably 80%. One thing I did discover is that I appear to have missed a few scans, so I had to scan those. This was made slightly difficult as I did them a while ago and couldn't remmeber the scan settings I was using - I've been experimentign with the settings to see what reults I liked best.
With the remaning 20% the results can be very random, which has been the source of my main frustration, because I just can't work out why it's stumbling over them. And the degree of stumble seems utterly random as well - sometimes it will align things not quite right, but then other times it will horribly distort everything so that it looks like some sort of weird piece of modern art.
What I usually do at this point is close photoshop down, so it clears out the RAM (I've noticed it tends to fill up the RAM with junk like a total bastard). I then restart and give the remainder another go. This usually gives me good results for aroudn half that are left - for some reason if you give it a second go like this on some scans, it will make a much better go of it.
The remainder that are left need manual intervention and thankfully I seem to have now hit upon a method that works consistently.
It can roughly be summed up as consistent cropping. Essecnailly, what I do is pick a particular edge (so along the right side of the magazine, for example) and crop the images such that this edge is consistent and parrallel across the two images. I also try to trim off the very edge of all of the scans where the pages break across the page.
For some reason, this manual lining up combined with giving the program a "fresh start" seems to consistenly give good results. Of course, when you think about it I'm actually doing half the job of the program for the pictures, so it's not surprising it works, just surprising that the program falls over then doing it on those images, but not the rest.
I managed to process 4 Nyan Types and 3 animages over the course of the weekend. Now to be fair, if I'd been scanning I'd have speant more time doing it and I had alreayd processed a chunk of the scans for those magazines, but I think it takes roughly a third of the time to stitch the scans as it does to scan them in the first place.
That's adds quite a lot, but is better than I feared.
However, actually I only scanned three things, although I did spend an awful lot of hours working on the scans. Basically, I realised I was rapidly running out of hard-drive space, espcially since I try to keep multiple copies of things, in case of drive crashes.
I therefore attached the stack of scans that I need to run through photostitch in order to stick them together. This is something I've not been looking forward to, although I think now I have a strategy for doign them that is about as efficient as it gets.
Basically, I run through them all, trying to stich them together as they are, with no processing at all. This is one of those tasks that becomes mechanistic, as in, click this button, type here, click that button, wait a moment, check the result, click here, type there, rinse and repeat.
The key part is that I've now managed to work out a way for the checking to be done as quickly and simply as possible. However, it's still the case that the bit where it's processing the scans is still too short for me to practically whatch anime, like I do when I'm doing the scanning. Also, it's not the sort of job that I can do both pretty much simultaneously as the checking does require my full attention.
Anyway, point is I run through the scans liek that, which succesfully sticks together probably 80%. One thing I did discover is that I appear to have missed a few scans, so I had to scan those. This was made slightly difficult as I did them a while ago and couldn't remmeber the scan settings I was using - I've been experimentign with the settings to see what reults I liked best.
With the remaning 20% the results can be very random, which has been the source of my main frustration, because I just can't work out why it's stumbling over them. And the degree of stumble seems utterly random as well - sometimes it will align things not quite right, but then other times it will horribly distort everything so that it looks like some sort of weird piece of modern art.
What I usually do at this point is close photoshop down, so it clears out the RAM (I've noticed it tends to fill up the RAM with junk like a total bastard). I then restart and give the remainder another go. This usually gives me good results for aroudn half that are left - for some reason if you give it a second go like this on some scans, it will make a much better go of it.
The remainder that are left need manual intervention and thankfully I seem to have now hit upon a method that works consistently.
It can roughly be summed up as consistent cropping. Essecnailly, what I do is pick a particular edge (so along the right side of the magazine, for example) and crop the images such that this edge is consistent and parrallel across the two images. I also try to trim off the very edge of all of the scans where the pages break across the page.
For some reason, this manual lining up combined with giving the program a "fresh start" seems to consistenly give good results. Of course, when you think about it I'm actually doing half the job of the program for the pictures, so it's not surprising it works, just surprising that the program falls over then doing it on those images, but not the rest.
I managed to process 4 Nyan Types and 3 animages over the course of the weekend. Now to be fair, if I'd been scanning I'd have speant more time doing it and I had alreayd processed a chunk of the scans for those magazines, but I think it takes roughly a third of the time to stitch the scans as it does to scan them in the first place.
That's adds quite a lot, but is better than I feared.
Monday, 14 March 2011
running costs
I think I mentioned the other day how I don't tend to focus on current events in this blog. Generally it's a fairly light blog about the boring stuff I get up to. However, since I count watching anime and reading manga amongst my favourite past-times and tend to think of myself as a bit of a Japanophile, it seems churlish not to at least acknowledge the horrible-ness that was last Friday's Earthquake and Tsunami.
Earthquakes are pretty horrible, but Tsunami's have to be one of the scariest natural disasters you can imagine. I mean, many other disasters you can protect against, or there can be sufficient warning to evacuate, but something like that happening so close to the Japanese coast meant a heck of a lot of people have unfortunately lost their lives.
Anyway, back to me and the petty concerns of my life.
Last Friday I put my car in for a service and MOT. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with the car, so it past the MOT, but I did need some new brakes, which meant the total rose to a rather eye watering £440.
However, this is only the start of a couple of months of car related expense that's really going to hammer my wallet. Next up, I need a new set of tyres. This wouldn't be so bad, except that apparently my car is the only one that uses this particular model of tyre. That makes them slightly more expensive, but also really difficult to find. Really I need 4 new tyres and they're likely to be about £140 each with the higher VAT rate.
The next expense will be my insurance. This will cost me about £500. I could get it cheaper, but it would mean things like abandoning my no claims protection and increasing my voluntary excess. From experience, these are all things that sound un-necessary, but then if you have an accident it means it ends up costing you five times as much in the long run.
Lastly will be my car tax. This is the one I resent the most - why the hell do I have to pay a separate car tax, given the amount of tax there is on petrol? It's absolutely ridiculous. Especially with it being a flat fee. I mean, it is reduced depending on your carbon emissions, but the reality of carbon emissions is that it's actually more to do with how you drive, rather than the numbers in the brochure.
I mean, someone I know has recently got a hybrid, so has far lover car tax, yet he's only been getting about 43 miles to the gallon. I don't think I've ever gotten les than 45 miles to the gallon, yet my car tax is higher.
I can't remember how much my car tax is, but it's somewhere in the region of £150, so when you tot all that up, it's all going to set me back the best part of £1,750.
This isn't cheap, but a big part of the problem is that I've made a rod for my own back. See, the car I own is actually what was the top of the line, and that's a big part of why it's so expensive. If I'd had the bog standard model, the tyres would be at least 1/3rd cheaper, and the brakes would be drum brakes, which last a lot longer and are a lot cheaper. Also, the official carbon count would be lower, reducing the tax, and because it would fundamentally be a cheaper car I'm sure the insurance would be lower too.
Earthquakes are pretty horrible, but Tsunami's have to be one of the scariest natural disasters you can imagine. I mean, many other disasters you can protect against, or there can be sufficient warning to evacuate, but something like that happening so close to the Japanese coast meant a heck of a lot of people have unfortunately lost their lives.
Anyway, back to me and the petty concerns of my life.
Last Friday I put my car in for a service and MOT. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with the car, so it past the MOT, but I did need some new brakes, which meant the total rose to a rather eye watering £440.
However, this is only the start of a couple of months of car related expense that's really going to hammer my wallet. Next up, I need a new set of tyres. This wouldn't be so bad, except that apparently my car is the only one that uses this particular model of tyre. That makes them slightly more expensive, but also really difficult to find. Really I need 4 new tyres and they're likely to be about £140 each with the higher VAT rate.
The next expense will be my insurance. This will cost me about £500. I could get it cheaper, but it would mean things like abandoning my no claims protection and increasing my voluntary excess. From experience, these are all things that sound un-necessary, but then if you have an accident it means it ends up costing you five times as much in the long run.
Lastly will be my car tax. This is the one I resent the most - why the hell do I have to pay a separate car tax, given the amount of tax there is on petrol? It's absolutely ridiculous. Especially with it being a flat fee. I mean, it is reduced depending on your carbon emissions, but the reality of carbon emissions is that it's actually more to do with how you drive, rather than the numbers in the brochure.
I mean, someone I know has recently got a hybrid, so has far lover car tax, yet he's only been getting about 43 miles to the gallon. I don't think I've ever gotten les than 45 miles to the gallon, yet my car tax is higher.
I can't remember how much my car tax is, but it's somewhere in the region of £150, so when you tot all that up, it's all going to set me back the best part of £1,750.
This isn't cheap, but a big part of the problem is that I've made a rod for my own back. See, the car I own is actually what was the top of the line, and that's a big part of why it's so expensive. If I'd had the bog standard model, the tyres would be at least 1/3rd cheaper, and the brakes would be drum brakes, which last a lot longer and are a lot cheaper. Also, the official carbon count would be lower, reducing the tax, and because it would fundamentally be a cheaper car I'm sure the insurance would be lower too.
Friday, 11 March 2011
routine
When I wrote Wednesday's pancake post, I actually meant to mention my weekly routine too, but it became one of those super-huge posts, so I thought I'd chop it in two and post the rest today.
Pancake Tuesday obviously represented a dietary divergence (given the chicken curry wasn't a disaster I'm also hoping the extra pancakes don't pox me up this week), but it also represented a break from a routine I've been trying to stick to these last few weeks.
I talked the other week about how I was cracking on with the scanning, and part of this has been achieved by doing scanning in the evenings during the week. I mean, I do most of the scanning at the weekend, but I've been boosting it with scanning during the week in the evenings too.
Essentially, the routine breaks down like this:
Monday, Wednesday and Friday are telly watching days and Tuesday and Thursday are scanning days.
On Monday I try to watch live telly. Generally speaking, the gadget show is on on Mondays, so I often watch that, but otherwise there's usually some telly that's on I want to watch, but if not I can watch something I recorded. I also bake bread on Monday, to have for lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Tuesday is a scanning day, but it's also the day I prep my washing to take to the laundrette on Wednesday lunch. I also tend to do the washing up that I've got (the diet means that I actually generate very little washing up during the week). Nowadays I watch anime on crunchyroll, but I used to watch fansubs and will have to start on them again as I'm getting quite a backlog of fansubs.
Wednesday is a telly day and I watch stuff I've recorded. A big advantage to doing this on Wednesday is I don't have the random bits and pieces I mentioned above, so I can watch a good three hours of stuff. I might put away the washing up I've picked up at the laundrette, but usually I save that sort of stuff for Friday.
Thursday is another scanning day and again I'll also do any washing up. Again, I watch anime on crunchyroll while I scan.
Friday is a telly watching day, but it's also a day when I do a bunch of chores, so I won't necessarily watch that much telly. Typical things I'll do include putting away my washing, cleaning my work shoes, prepping stuff for the weekend and the next week. All pretty boring, but y doing them Friday evening, I don't have to worry about them come the weekend. I'll also sometimes do my food shop on Friday - this kinda depends on what mood I'm in, how busy the weekend will be and how much I need to buy.
It's quite an efficient routine. I'm quite the fan of imposing routine as I find it helps me achieve things. I mean, I've been getting so much scanning/animu watching done I'm actually generating backlogs of scans to process and reviews to write, as mentioned last week.
Pancake Tuesday obviously represented a dietary divergence (given the chicken curry wasn't a disaster I'm also hoping the extra pancakes don't pox me up this week), but it also represented a break from a routine I've been trying to stick to these last few weeks.
I talked the other week about how I was cracking on with the scanning, and part of this has been achieved by doing scanning in the evenings during the week. I mean, I do most of the scanning at the weekend, but I've been boosting it with scanning during the week in the evenings too.
Essentially, the routine breaks down like this:
Monday, Wednesday and Friday are telly watching days and Tuesday and Thursday are scanning days.
On Monday I try to watch live telly. Generally speaking, the gadget show is on on Mondays, so I often watch that, but otherwise there's usually some telly that's on I want to watch, but if not I can watch something I recorded. I also bake bread on Monday, to have for lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Tuesday is a scanning day, but it's also the day I prep my washing to take to the laundrette on Wednesday lunch. I also tend to do the washing up that I've got (the diet means that I actually generate very little washing up during the week). Nowadays I watch anime on crunchyroll, but I used to watch fansubs and will have to start on them again as I'm getting quite a backlog of fansubs.
Wednesday is a telly day and I watch stuff I've recorded. A big advantage to doing this on Wednesday is I don't have the random bits and pieces I mentioned above, so I can watch a good three hours of stuff. I might put away the washing up I've picked up at the laundrette, but usually I save that sort of stuff for Friday.
Thursday is another scanning day and again I'll also do any washing up. Again, I watch anime on crunchyroll while I scan.
Friday is a telly watching day, but it's also a day when I do a bunch of chores, so I won't necessarily watch that much telly. Typical things I'll do include putting away my washing, cleaning my work shoes, prepping stuff for the weekend and the next week. All pretty boring, but y doing them Friday evening, I don't have to worry about them come the weekend. I'll also sometimes do my food shop on Friday - this kinda depends on what mood I'm in, how busy the weekend will be and how much I need to buy.
It's quite an efficient routine. I'm quite the fan of imposing routine as I find it helps me achieve things. I mean, I've been getting so much scanning/animu watching done I'm actually generating backlogs of scans to process and reviews to write, as mentioned last week.
Thursday, 10 March 2011
vanilla sky
Vanilla Sky is a remake of a Spanish film called "Abres los Ojos" or "Open your Eyes".
Well, actually, in the commentary, the director, Cameron Crow, keeps calling it a cover version. This I think is partly because he's big into music (he used to be a Music Journalist), but also because, from what I've heard, it's almost identical to the original.
I have to confess I wasn't quite as impressed with Vanilla Sky as I think it wanted me to be. Now whether this is due to the original story or something they did (or didn't do) in this cover, I don't know and I wouldn't say I actively disliked the film, but I did find it to be a bit lacking.
I think my big problem with it really was that it lacked ambiguity.
I know that's a bit of an odd thing to say, because if you do some searching around there appear to be quite a lot of theories as to what's happening, and I can see most of them, although I think it's actually fairly clear what the intended truth is, no my problem comes at the end.
I'm going to have to get into spoiler territory here, because the central crux of the film is existentialism - what is reality and how do we know what's real? In this case, the reality is being contrasted with dreams, or more specifically a lucid dream, which is where you can control your own dream.
Anyway, the point seems to be that the main character David ends up in a Lucid Dream and quite where that happens in the narrative of the film seems to be the source of the debate as to what's going on. But to me, what would have been (and is always) a more interesting take on this sort of existentialism is the possibility of whether things are real or not.
So was he really dreaming or not?
The film leaves little doubt that yes, he was dreaming and it's only really mysterious as to when that happens and also whether he wants to stay in that situation. I therefore found it unsatisfying.
But also, I was a bit troubled by the central theme of the film. The "message" (if you will) of the film seems to revolve so squarely around looks it seemed a little distasteful to me. I think it was meant to be about accepting who you are and that looks don't matter, yet it also seems to undermine these as well. Similarly, is it about someone who's narcissistic, yet also hates himself for being narcissistic? If so, why, in the end, does it seem to validate the narcissism?
Oh and for a sci-fi nerd kicker - if you're in cryogenic suspension (that is, deep frozen), how can you dream? And even if that were possible, if you're in cryogenic suspension for a very long time does that dream keep repeating on a loop? And how would they know there was a problem?
Well, actually, in the commentary, the director, Cameron Crow, keeps calling it a cover version. This I think is partly because he's big into music (he used to be a Music Journalist), but also because, from what I've heard, it's almost identical to the original.
I have to confess I wasn't quite as impressed with Vanilla Sky as I think it wanted me to be. Now whether this is due to the original story or something they did (or didn't do) in this cover, I don't know and I wouldn't say I actively disliked the film, but I did find it to be a bit lacking.
I think my big problem with it really was that it lacked ambiguity.
I know that's a bit of an odd thing to say, because if you do some searching around there appear to be quite a lot of theories as to what's happening, and I can see most of them, although I think it's actually fairly clear what the intended truth is, no my problem comes at the end.
I'm going to have to get into spoiler territory here, because the central crux of the film is existentialism - what is reality and how do we know what's real? In this case, the reality is being contrasted with dreams, or more specifically a lucid dream, which is where you can control your own dream.
Anyway, the point seems to be that the main character David ends up in a Lucid Dream and quite where that happens in the narrative of the film seems to be the source of the debate as to what's going on. But to me, what would have been (and is always) a more interesting take on this sort of existentialism is the possibility of whether things are real or not.
So was he really dreaming or not?
The film leaves little doubt that yes, he was dreaming and it's only really mysterious as to when that happens and also whether he wants to stay in that situation. I therefore found it unsatisfying.
But also, I was a bit troubled by the central theme of the film. The "message" (if you will) of the film seems to revolve so squarely around looks it seemed a little distasteful to me. I think it was meant to be about accepting who you are and that looks don't matter, yet it also seems to undermine these as well. Similarly, is it about someone who's narcissistic, yet also hates himself for being narcissistic? If so, why, in the end, does it seem to validate the narcissism?
Oh and for a sci-fi nerd kicker - if you're in cryogenic suspension (that is, deep frozen), how can you dream? And even if that were possible, if you're in cryogenic suspension for a very long time does that dream keep repeating on a loop? And how would they know there was a problem?
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
pancake day
I think, technically, pancake day is called Shrove Tuesday and precedes Ash Wednesday and the beginning of lent.
Lent, I believe, is meant to be the period of fasting Christians go though before Easter. I think it's something to do with Jebus wandering the desert. I believe the idea was that pancakes were a way of eating up stuff like eggs and milk before lent.
These may or may not be right - I don't do religion, so I could well have mixed up some stuff.
Anyway, the real point is it's an opportunity to eat pancakes (or really what most people tend to have are the thin crepes, rather than the thicker pancakes or some recipes). I love pancakes, and have them almost without fail for my Sunday (treat day) breakfast.
My pancake recipe is a bit divergent from the normal recipe. There are plenty of recipes for pancakes, all of which involve eggs, flour and milk, but the difference with what I do is decrease the amount of egg and milk (which I also thin with water). This reduces the fat content, but also means the resultant pancakes are a little thicker than usual, which I prefer. Essentially, my batter ends up being like double cream, rather than single cream as is the norm.
In recent months I've tended to have the pancakes with fruit. When I do my main food shopping, which is usually Friday evening or Saturday morning, I try to buy berries. One of the things I found when researching my diet was that, on the whole, berries have very few calories.
So strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries - I can eat loads of them without much fear of ruining my diet. Well, so long as I tear clear of any sort of accompaniment, like cream or ice cream or sugar. But then I love berries on there own, so I don't mind that.
Actually, one thing I can and do like to do is chuck a load of berries in with a sliced up apple and poor on a low-fat yoghurt. Sort of like a very simple fruit salad. Obviously, this does make the calorie count noticeably higher, but then it's also pretty much a meal.
Anyway, point is I've tended to team my Sunday pancakes with fresh fruit. However, back when I first started this tradition I actually used to generally have lime juice. I know the normal accompaniment most people think of is lemon juice and I would have that too, but I prefer limes to lemons, so I would normally have that (you can buy bottles of the juice).
So last night I reverted to having lime juice, as obviously I didn't have any berries. But what it did dredge up in me was memories of when we were kids and my mum would cook up a batch of pancakes for pancake day. What we used to have then was orange juice, freshly squeezed from actual oranges. I remember it was a really nice combination, so this weekend I might buy an orange or two (and a juicer!) and have that for Sunday.
Lent, I believe, is meant to be the period of fasting Christians go though before Easter. I think it's something to do with Jebus wandering the desert. I believe the idea was that pancakes were a way of eating up stuff like eggs and milk before lent.
These may or may not be right - I don't do religion, so I could well have mixed up some stuff.
Anyway, the real point is it's an opportunity to eat pancakes (or really what most people tend to have are the thin crepes, rather than the thicker pancakes or some recipes). I love pancakes, and have them almost without fail for my Sunday (treat day) breakfast.
My pancake recipe is a bit divergent from the normal recipe. There are plenty of recipes for pancakes, all of which involve eggs, flour and milk, but the difference with what I do is decrease the amount of egg and milk (which I also thin with water). This reduces the fat content, but also means the resultant pancakes are a little thicker than usual, which I prefer. Essentially, my batter ends up being like double cream, rather than single cream as is the norm.
In recent months I've tended to have the pancakes with fruit. When I do my main food shopping, which is usually Friday evening or Saturday morning, I try to buy berries. One of the things I found when researching my diet was that, on the whole, berries have very few calories.
So strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries - I can eat loads of them without much fear of ruining my diet. Well, so long as I tear clear of any sort of accompaniment, like cream or ice cream or sugar. But then I love berries on there own, so I don't mind that.
Actually, one thing I can and do like to do is chuck a load of berries in with a sliced up apple and poor on a low-fat yoghurt. Sort of like a very simple fruit salad. Obviously, this does make the calorie count noticeably higher, but then it's also pretty much a meal.
Anyway, point is I've tended to team my Sunday pancakes with fresh fruit. However, back when I first started this tradition I actually used to generally have lime juice. I know the normal accompaniment most people think of is lemon juice and I would have that too, but I prefer limes to lemons, so I would normally have that (you can buy bottles of the juice).
So last night I reverted to having lime juice, as obviously I didn't have any berries. But what it did dredge up in me was memories of when we were kids and my mum would cook up a batch of pancakes for pancake day. What we used to have then was orange juice, freshly squeezed from actual oranges. I remember it was a really nice combination, so this weekend I might buy an orange or two (and a juicer!) and have that for Sunday.
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
curry and chips
The weigh in this last Sunday revealed I had lost one more pound.
Not a huge amount again, but I was actually somewhat pleased by this, as last week I ate several rather bad things.
The first bad thing I ate was a curry, which I had on Thursday as I went out for dinner. Curtailing my eating out activities has been a part of the diet, as generally most eating out involves quite a lot of calories.
I could probably have limited the calories if I'd had a vegetable curry and avoided having a naan and those poppadoms where you dip them into the sauces and a sorbet for dessert. But I didn't do any of those things - I had a Chicken Rogan Josh, one of those naans that has the coconut in it, several poppadoms liberally dipped and a lemon sorbet.
It was, to be frank, an enormous feast that I'd probably have struggled to eat even pre-diet . I guess on the upside it was so big I was rather full for and so ate less around it, but that was somewhat hampered by the fact that Friday involved a pub lunch at work to celebrate someone's birthday. And I had gammon, egg and chips.
So yeah, quite a bit of pigging out last week, unfortunately, so I was rather pleased that I'd still managed to loose a pound.
I do wonder when I have these slips what would have happened if I hadn't slipped. I mean, it seems fairly certain I would have lost more weight, but how much? Are we talking not enough to show up or several extra pounds?
I dunno - I guess what I'm saying is that I ended up with a weird mix of feeling - pleased I'd still lost weight, despite going off-plan, guilty that I could have lost more, puzzled as to whether I could eat a curry every week and still loose weight, but then worried about how long the diet would last if I did that and only lost 1 pound a week from now on.
Not a huge amount again, but I was actually somewhat pleased by this, as last week I ate several rather bad things.
The first bad thing I ate was a curry, which I had on Thursday as I went out for dinner. Curtailing my eating out activities has been a part of the diet, as generally most eating out involves quite a lot of calories.
I could probably have limited the calories if I'd had a vegetable curry and avoided having a naan and those poppadoms where you dip them into the sauces and a sorbet for dessert. But I didn't do any of those things - I had a Chicken Rogan Josh, one of those naans that has the coconut in it, several poppadoms liberally dipped and a lemon sorbet.
It was, to be frank, an enormous feast that I'd probably have struggled to eat even pre-diet . I guess on the upside it was so big I was rather full for and so ate less around it, but that was somewhat hampered by the fact that Friday involved a pub lunch at work to celebrate someone's birthday. And I had gammon, egg and chips.
So yeah, quite a bit of pigging out last week, unfortunately, so I was rather pleased that I'd still managed to loose a pound.
I do wonder when I have these slips what would have happened if I hadn't slipped. I mean, it seems fairly certain I would have lost more weight, but how much? Are we talking not enough to show up or several extra pounds?
I dunno - I guess what I'm saying is that I ended up with a weird mix of feeling - pleased I'd still lost weight, despite going off-plan, guilty that I could have lost more, puzzled as to whether I could eat a curry every week and still loose weight, but then worried about how long the diet would last if I did that and only lost 1 pound a week from now on.
Monday, 7 March 2011
f1 pause
So this next weekend should have seen the start of the 2011 F1 Grand Prix season with the opener in Bahrain.
That, of course, is not happening, what with all these foreigners demanding stuff like freedom or expression and free and fair elections - I mean, the cheek of it! It's all very well trying to throw off your oppressors and all, but interfering with the F! season is quite beyond the pail.
I'm joking, obviously, but it does somewhat highlight one of the other problems with Bernie's rush to get to different places around the world. Part of the reason is clearly a desire to expand the sport's fan-base and to give manufactures, sponsors and brands access to new and developing markets.
I've no real problem with these ideas, as they make some sense, but it has created a few issues. One of my main one is that most of the new circuits are poor, not least of all because Hermann Tilk designs them all and while I wouldn't want to say he was entirely the reason for them being rubbish, it can't be a good thing that exactly the same person designs them all.
But the problem highlighted by the Bahrain GP is Bernie's apparently eager willingness to go for dodgy regimes. I mean, if you look at a list of the newer circuits, a good chunk of them are happening in countries that lack freedom for their population and/or have appalling records on human rights. What seems to distinguish quite a few of them is the willingness by the person or people in charge to blow huge wodges of what you could argue should be the people's money on having their own GP.
Now don't get me wrong, F1 is an expensive game, especially nowadays when safety has to be so good and their are demands for high-end facilities. In a sense, F1 has become a victim of its own success in this regard. My main point is that it's a real shame that this therefore means that all the dodgiest parts of the world are the only ones who seem to be able (or should that be willing) to spend this sort of money.
That, of course, is not happening, what with all these foreigners demanding stuff like freedom or expression and free and fair elections - I mean, the cheek of it! It's all very well trying to throw off your oppressors and all, but interfering with the F! season is quite beyond the pail.
I'm joking, obviously, but it does somewhat highlight one of the other problems with Bernie's rush to get to different places around the world. Part of the reason is clearly a desire to expand the sport's fan-base and to give manufactures, sponsors and brands access to new and developing markets.
I've no real problem with these ideas, as they make some sense, but it has created a few issues. One of my main one is that most of the new circuits are poor, not least of all because Hermann Tilk designs them all and while I wouldn't want to say he was entirely the reason for them being rubbish, it can't be a good thing that exactly the same person designs them all.
But the problem highlighted by the Bahrain GP is Bernie's apparently eager willingness to go for dodgy regimes. I mean, if you look at a list of the newer circuits, a good chunk of them are happening in countries that lack freedom for their population and/or have appalling records on human rights. What seems to distinguish quite a few of them is the willingness by the person or people in charge to blow huge wodges of what you could argue should be the people's money on having their own GP.
Now don't get me wrong, F1 is an expensive game, especially nowadays when safety has to be so good and their are demands for high-end facilities. In a sense, F1 has become a victim of its own success in this regard. My main point is that it's a real shame that this therefore means that all the dodgiest parts of the world are the only ones who seem to be able (or should that be willing) to spend this sort of money.
Friday, 4 March 2011
that wasn't what i wanted to talk about
How posts end up being about something else.
Generally speaking I pre-write my blog entries.
I do this for a variety of reasons. Among them are the fact that some days I have a bit more spare time than others; the blog isn't structured such that it follows something on a daily basis - I very rarely mention current affairs, and when I do it tends to be in a more considered, after-the-fact way and it gives me a chance to self-edit and spell check.
What I find interesting, though, is the fact that despite pre-writing them in this way (I have a word document on a USB stick I keep it all on) and therefore, in theory, planning out what I want to talk about, I end up writing blogs that don't actually do this.
This week is a classic example.
Monday's blog was supposed to be about how I ended up with a mild case of jogger's nipple. Jogger's nipple is, as the name suggests, an ailment that affects joggers and is to do with how their shirts rub against their nipples as they run, chaffing their nipples and causing them discomfort.
I got a bit of that on my Sunday walk, but the reason was because of the rain. I got so wet that my shirt really chaffed my nipple and caused me said ailment. And that meant I had to explain about how heavy the rain was. But then I realised I would have to start with how come I was so far away from home that I got that wet in the first place.
By the time I'd written all the pre-amble I'd gone over a page and realised I was into too-long post territory.
What makes this worse is that really I was going to use the jogger's nipple to explain about how last week I seemed to spend the whole week either injured or injuring myself. I whacked my foot, did something to my urethra, bought some new shoes which rubbed my heals quite badly and my legs ached like bastards from Friday until Monday.
This was meant to act as something of a pre-amble to the fact that I only lost 1 pound last week. Hardly surprising as I therefore couldn't do my usual exercise and wasn't as strict with the diet as I can be (I didn't go nuts or anything, but did have a few little treats to celebrate reaching my first target).
As I mentioned yesterday, Tuesday was supposed to be about talking about the new anime season. I think this is the first season I've ever really followed anime shows as they've been broadcast, used crunchyroll properly and watched anime on my computer legally.
But the thing was I felt I should firstly briefly explain about my new scanning process, because I've watched it all while scanning. But that meant I gave myself the opportunity to talk about photostitch, which has become a bit of a pet frustration/rant topic of mine, because I just don't understand how to get it to produce consistently good results (oops - nearly went off again there).
So yeah, it can be funny sometimes how, even though I plan and pre-write I still end up going off-topic.
Generally speaking I pre-write my blog entries.
I do this for a variety of reasons. Among them are the fact that some days I have a bit more spare time than others; the blog isn't structured such that it follows something on a daily basis - I very rarely mention current affairs, and when I do it tends to be in a more considered, after-the-fact way and it gives me a chance to self-edit and spell check.
What I find interesting, though, is the fact that despite pre-writing them in this way (I have a word document on a USB stick I keep it all on) and therefore, in theory, planning out what I want to talk about, I end up writing blogs that don't actually do this.
This week is a classic example.
Monday's blog was supposed to be about how I ended up with a mild case of jogger's nipple. Jogger's nipple is, as the name suggests, an ailment that affects joggers and is to do with how their shirts rub against their nipples as they run, chaffing their nipples and causing them discomfort.
I got a bit of that on my Sunday walk, but the reason was because of the rain. I got so wet that my shirt really chaffed my nipple and caused me said ailment. And that meant I had to explain about how heavy the rain was. But then I realised I would have to start with how come I was so far away from home that I got that wet in the first place.
By the time I'd written all the pre-amble I'd gone over a page and realised I was into too-long post territory.
What makes this worse is that really I was going to use the jogger's nipple to explain about how last week I seemed to spend the whole week either injured or injuring myself. I whacked my foot, did something to my urethra, bought some new shoes which rubbed my heals quite badly and my legs ached like bastards from Friday until Monday.
This was meant to act as something of a pre-amble to the fact that I only lost 1 pound last week. Hardly surprising as I therefore couldn't do my usual exercise and wasn't as strict with the diet as I can be (I didn't go nuts or anything, but did have a few little treats to celebrate reaching my first target).
As I mentioned yesterday, Tuesday was supposed to be about talking about the new anime season. I think this is the first season I've ever really followed anime shows as they've been broadcast, used crunchyroll properly and watched anime on my computer legally.
But the thing was I felt I should firstly briefly explain about my new scanning process, because I've watched it all while scanning. But that meant I gave myself the opportunity to talk about photostitch, which has become a bit of a pet frustration/rant topic of mine, because I just don't understand how to get it to produce consistently good results (oops - nearly went off again there).
So yeah, it can be funny sometimes how, even though I plan and pre-write I still end up going off-topic.
Thursday, 3 March 2011
(sc)animu part 2
What I was actually intending to talk about on Tuesday was all the animu I've watched while I've been scanning.
Specifically I wanted to do a quick run through of the shows from the most recent couple of seasons that I'm either watching at the moment or watched a bit of and dropped. These are actually all via crunchyroll - a site I still dislike, but that I've gotten used to. I've actually also got quite a lot of fansubs I need to plough through too, but for the moment I've been concentrating on crunchyroll.
Gosick
The mysteries are duffers, but the relationship between the characters is interesting. It's also nice that it didn't go down the harem or even the fan-service routes. Not that I dislike either (au contraire), but it really wouldn't have worked for this show. It could do with introducing a Moriarty, though.
Hourou Musoku (Wandering Son)
I have to confess I've found this a little confusing - the anime dumps you right in the middle of things and I'm pretty sure would work 100 time better if you're already familiar with the manga (which, apparently, starts at the beginning). But it's a very sensitive, poignant story that's boosted by some staggeringly beautiful imagery.
Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? (Is this a zombie?)
This and the next show, Dragon Crisis are both based on Light Novels and it really shows - both are jam-packed with clichés and tropes so heavily used I could probably write them myself. However, I think over the years I've come to expect this from Light Novels, so my expectations have become suitably lowered, plus, and this is always a plus, they're available legally for free. If I was buying the shows, well, actually, no, I wouldn't buy them.
Dragon Crisis
Of the two, I think I prefer Zombie, because it takes itself less seriously, the fan-service is slightly better and the animation is more consistent. In Dragon Crisis you get bits of intensely good animation which have clearly been paid for by having entire episodes of people standing still and talking. However, Dragon Crisis does redeem itself by not really being a harem show. I think your mileage will vary, especially if you're a loli fan.
Level E
It turns out that Level E is a comedy/parody type show. Although I had no idea what it would be, I have to admit I wasn't expecting that. Neither was I expecting it to be so consistently good.
Beelzebub
Comedy is always the most subjective of things and unlike Level E, while a few things made me chuckle, the constant repeating of the same "baby cries and then electrocutes them" gag got very tedious, very quickly.
Rio Rainbow Gate
Oh dear. Looked like it was going to be a cheesecake fan-service show, and while that is there, it was weak, with poor character designs and cheap animation. The framing was also so cliché it was painful. this is one of those shows that's so average it's horrible - you can't even enjoy it for being bad.
Tantei Opera Milky Holmes
This really didn't do anything for me. It seemed to have a really jarring mix of fan-service and kid's-show style cutesy, but also it looked like it was going to involve mysteries (the "Holmes" in the title) but then didn't have any and was more like a crap magical girl show.
Demon King Daimao
I only watched one episode of this, as the crunchyroll is heavily and ham-fistedly censored. It seemed like it would be an okay fan-service / harem-comedy show without that, although the animation looked like a bit of a victim of a low budget.
I've also watched quite a lot of shows on crunchyroll that I've completed. I've decided to do more thorough reviews for these, almost certainly via this blog, rather than on trismugistus.com, but I though I'd do a bullet list and one sentence summary here:
Specifically I wanted to do a quick run through of the shows from the most recent couple of seasons that I'm either watching at the moment or watched a bit of and dropped. These are actually all via crunchyroll - a site I still dislike, but that I've gotten used to. I've actually also got quite a lot of fansubs I need to plough through too, but for the moment I've been concentrating on crunchyroll.
Gosick
The mysteries are duffers, but the relationship between the characters is interesting. It's also nice that it didn't go down the harem or even the fan-service routes. Not that I dislike either (au contraire), but it really wouldn't have worked for this show. It could do with introducing a Moriarty, though.
Hourou Musoku (Wandering Son)
I have to confess I've found this a little confusing - the anime dumps you right in the middle of things and I'm pretty sure would work 100 time better if you're already familiar with the manga (which, apparently, starts at the beginning). But it's a very sensitive, poignant story that's boosted by some staggeringly beautiful imagery.
Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? (Is this a zombie?)
This and the next show, Dragon Crisis are both based on Light Novels and it really shows - both are jam-packed with clichés and tropes so heavily used I could probably write them myself. However, I think over the years I've come to expect this from Light Novels, so my expectations have become suitably lowered, plus, and this is always a plus, they're available legally for free. If I was buying the shows, well, actually, no, I wouldn't buy them.
Dragon Crisis
Of the two, I think I prefer Zombie, because it takes itself less seriously, the fan-service is slightly better and the animation is more consistent. In Dragon Crisis you get bits of intensely good animation which have clearly been paid for by having entire episodes of people standing still and talking. However, Dragon Crisis does redeem itself by not really being a harem show. I think your mileage will vary, especially if you're a loli fan.
Level E
It turns out that Level E is a comedy/parody type show. Although I had no idea what it would be, I have to admit I wasn't expecting that. Neither was I expecting it to be so consistently good.
Beelzebub
Comedy is always the most subjective of things and unlike Level E, while a few things made me chuckle, the constant repeating of the same "baby cries and then electrocutes them" gag got very tedious, very quickly.
Rio Rainbow Gate
Oh dear. Looked like it was going to be a cheesecake fan-service show, and while that is there, it was weak, with poor character designs and cheap animation. The framing was also so cliché it was painful. this is one of those shows that's so average it's horrible - you can't even enjoy it for being bad.
Tantei Opera Milky Holmes
This really didn't do anything for me. It seemed to have a really jarring mix of fan-service and kid's-show style cutesy, but also it looked like it was going to involve mysteries (the "Holmes" in the title) but then didn't have any and was more like a crap magical girl show.
Demon King Daimao
I only watched one episode of this, as the crunchyroll is heavily and ham-fistedly censored. It seemed like it would be an okay fan-service / harem-comedy show without that, although the animation looked like a bit of a victim of a low budget.
I've also watched quite a lot of shows on crunchyroll that I've completed. I've decided to do more thorough reviews for these, almost certainly via this blog, rather than on trismugistus.com, but I though I'd do a bullet list and one sentence summary here:
- Giant Killing: Quite good, but flagged a bit towards the end. Also clearly a second season was intended.
- Asobi Ni Ikuyo: Didn't really get it. Is it meant to be parody? Poor one if it is. The ham-fisted fan-service censorship has the feel that it's meant to be a joke, but if so it's just an annoying one. Saved by a satisfactory conclusion.
- Occult Academy: Promising, but a little directionless.
- Omamori Himari: Enjoyable fan-service heavy harem show with a good conclusion.
- Chu-Bra: Rather weird - feels aimed at younger audience with a 'life lessons' style, but for perverts.
- Panty & Stocking: Meandering, unfunny, toilet-dwelling rubbish, frankly, until the demon sisters appear, and even then only really has flashes of quality.
- Fortune Arterial: When the vampire stuff kicks in it raises it above being a bit wet, but until then it's horribly dull. Even after it's not that much better. Rubbish ending.
- Time of Eve (Eve no Jikan): It's proper Isaac Asimov sci-fi stuff.
- Shinryaku! Ika Musume (Squid Girl): This is a fun, bubbly sort of comedy show, but I have to confess it all felt a bit aimless to me - if it had managed to get in some proper environmental stuff, which the first episode suggested might be a theme, then I think I might have liked it a bit more.
- Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai (The World God only Knows):- Manages to have it's cake and eat it - we get all sorts of moe tropes, but there's a clever, grown up element to it as well.
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
sherlock holmes
There was no rental DVD this weekend, so instead I watched the recent Guy Ritchie/Robert Downy Jr/Jude Law version of Sherlock Holmes.
This was actually my first proper Blu-Ray, having got my computer with a Blu-Ray set up a couple of weeks back (what a faff that was!) and I have to say it was, slightly surprisingly, a pleasant one.
This was slightly surprising, because I went in expecting not to like their version of Holmes. I'd heard talk of it being a "re-imagining" and that can be dangerous word. What I found was a rather entertaining and more faithful than expected version.
I can't pretend to be an expert on Sherlock Holmes. He's one of those characters where everybody knows who he is, but on the whole it's based mainly on acquired knowledge or the films they've seen. I do know that in films he's often presented as being older and less active than he was in the books. This is even more true of Watson, who's often depicted as being quite a lot older and fatter than Holmes.
In fact, when solving cases, Holmes and Watson were always dashing around and getting involved in fisticuffs. And Holmes of course is a master of disguises.
However, I'm not sure this was quite to the extent depicted in this film - there was clearly a desire to make Holmes something of an action hero, rather than spending all his time thinking about things and examining clues. Of course he does those too, but the focus is clearly on the running around and the fighting, rather than the thinking.
They've also tried to shoe-horn in a bit of a love interest and there's an interesting elevation of Watson to similar levels of deductive powers as Holmes. So they have changed stuff, but I think it all still works. The key is that this increased action and the sops to more conventional films all hang off a genuinely well thought out and executed plot with a reasonable mystery.
Visually and stylistically it all works - my first full Blu-Ray experience was good from this point of view.
If I was to make one criticism it would actually be with Downey Jr's accent. No, actually, that's not quite it - his accent is basically fine, my issue with more with how he's speaking.
For some reason they've gone for something akin to received pronunciation. You know all those old clips of people talking on the BBC where they speak in an oddly clear, almost accent-less way? That's received English.
Why I had a problem with this is because the whole point of it being received is that nobody actually ever spoke like that - it's an adopted style, so why would Holmes talk like that?
What also didn't help was that there seemed to be an attempt to include something of Johnny Depp's weird way of talking in Pirates of the Caribbean. This worked for that character, but doesn't make any sense for Holes.
It's a minor thing, really, but it did grate somewhat.
This was actually my first proper Blu-Ray, having got my computer with a Blu-Ray set up a couple of weeks back (what a faff that was!) and I have to say it was, slightly surprisingly, a pleasant one.
This was slightly surprising, because I went in expecting not to like their version of Holmes. I'd heard talk of it being a "re-imagining" and that can be dangerous word. What I found was a rather entertaining and more faithful than expected version.
I can't pretend to be an expert on Sherlock Holmes. He's one of those characters where everybody knows who he is, but on the whole it's based mainly on acquired knowledge or the films they've seen. I do know that in films he's often presented as being older and less active than he was in the books. This is even more true of Watson, who's often depicted as being quite a lot older and fatter than Holmes.
In fact, when solving cases, Holmes and Watson were always dashing around and getting involved in fisticuffs. And Holmes of course is a master of disguises.
However, I'm not sure this was quite to the extent depicted in this film - there was clearly a desire to make Holmes something of an action hero, rather than spending all his time thinking about things and examining clues. Of course he does those too, but the focus is clearly on the running around and the fighting, rather than the thinking.
They've also tried to shoe-horn in a bit of a love interest and there's an interesting elevation of Watson to similar levels of deductive powers as Holmes. So they have changed stuff, but I think it all still works. The key is that this increased action and the sops to more conventional films all hang off a genuinely well thought out and executed plot with a reasonable mystery.
Visually and stylistically it all works - my first full Blu-Ray experience was good from this point of view.
If I was to make one criticism it would actually be with Downey Jr's accent. No, actually, that's not quite it - his accent is basically fine, my issue with more with how he's speaking.
For some reason they've gone for something akin to received pronunciation. You know all those old clips of people talking on the BBC where they speak in an oddly clear, almost accent-less way? That's received English.
Why I had a problem with this is because the whole point of it being received is that nobody actually ever spoke like that - it's an adopted style, so why would Holmes talk like that?
What also didn't help was that there seemed to be an attempt to include something of Johnny Depp's weird way of talking in Pirates of the Caribbean. This worked for that character, but doesn't make any sense for Holes.
It's a minor thing, really, but it did grate somewhat.
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
(sc)animu
This last few weeks I've been doing loads of scanning.
What's been good is I've really been sticking with it. Since the backlog started to grow I've had a couple of session where I did a few magazines, but nothing like I needed to in order to make a decent impression in it.
The backlog was getting really quite stupid - I had getting on for a years worth of magazines to scan by the time I decided to get my act together and by the time I got my new process flowing it had grown to around 15 months.
I've still got 15 months worth of new types, but for everything else I've taken it down to about 9 or 10 months. Of course, new types traditionally have the most images in them, so that's perhaps not quite as good as it sounds, but the main point is that I'm eating through the backlog at a much faster pace than I'm receiving new magazines.
In fact, my hope is that (barring any unforeseen problems) I'll be up to date by Easter. Given that Easter isn't until the weekend before my birthday this year, that's sounds closer than it is, but I think it's a goal that's strikes a good balance between realism and ambition.
I mean, even if I still have a few magazines left by then, all the bank holidays should give me the chance to finish them off. And there is a potentially big hurdle that could scupper my timings though.
That hurdle is the whole scan-stitching process.
My new scanning process is based around my new computer, which I ended up with after my games-machine update. I now use an A4 scanner, which means all of the magazine pages need scanning in two parts (all the Japanese anime mags are printed on pages larger than A4) and then using the automatic photostitch to stick them together.
Now I have been playing with my process, experimenting to see what works best in terms of input to the automatic photo-stitch thing in photoshop, but the results have been mixed. The main success has been that I've realised a lot of the pre-processing I've been doing is essentially un-necessary.
When I started with this new set up, I was making sure to crop and align each of the scans so that they would be 'easier' for it to stick together. However, it turns out that this is basically unnecessary - it doesn't appear to make a jot of difference to the end results.
This is good, because it's meant I've really been able to speed up the actual scanning. I managed to belt through 4 whole animedias in about a week, for example, which is really helping me catch up.
Except what it's also doing is creating a huge number of files that I'll then need to go back to in order to stick together and finish off. Now this would be okay, but it's a horribly tedious process.
But also, it's the type of job that can't be done while doing something else as well. While I scan I watch anime (which is what I'd intended this post to be about, but I've dribbled on so long I'm going to break the posts into two!), but I can't do that with photostitch. The actual automatic bit of the process is at that sort of length where it's not instant, but not long enough for you to let it run while you do something else.
But also, this is where the bad side to photo-stitch comes in - I can't for the life of me work out a way to get it to perform consistently. A lot of the time it's great, but then every so often it will just throw a total wobbler and repeatedly make a complete arse of sticking things together.
This wouldn't be bad if I could work out why and how to avoid it, but I can't. About the only thing that seems to consistently cause it a problem is when two images are quite simple (e.g. big block of colour), but even this doesn't universally cause it grief.
Anyway, the point is that I could end up in a situation where I simply transfer a backlog of unscanned magazines into a backlog of unstitched pictures.
What's been good is I've really been sticking with it. Since the backlog started to grow I've had a couple of session where I did a few magazines, but nothing like I needed to in order to make a decent impression in it.
The backlog was getting really quite stupid - I had getting on for a years worth of magazines to scan by the time I decided to get my act together and by the time I got my new process flowing it had grown to around 15 months.
I've still got 15 months worth of new types, but for everything else I've taken it down to about 9 or 10 months. Of course, new types traditionally have the most images in them, so that's perhaps not quite as good as it sounds, but the main point is that I'm eating through the backlog at a much faster pace than I'm receiving new magazines.
In fact, my hope is that (barring any unforeseen problems) I'll be up to date by Easter. Given that Easter isn't until the weekend before my birthday this year, that's sounds closer than it is, but I think it's a goal that's strikes a good balance between realism and ambition.
I mean, even if I still have a few magazines left by then, all the bank holidays should give me the chance to finish them off. And there is a potentially big hurdle that could scupper my timings though.
That hurdle is the whole scan-stitching process.
My new scanning process is based around my new computer, which I ended up with after my games-machine update. I now use an A4 scanner, which means all of the magazine pages need scanning in two parts (all the Japanese anime mags are printed on pages larger than A4) and then using the automatic photostitch to stick them together.
Now I have been playing with my process, experimenting to see what works best in terms of input to the automatic photo-stitch thing in photoshop, but the results have been mixed. The main success has been that I've realised a lot of the pre-processing I've been doing is essentially un-necessary.
When I started with this new set up, I was making sure to crop and align each of the scans so that they would be 'easier' for it to stick together. However, it turns out that this is basically unnecessary - it doesn't appear to make a jot of difference to the end results.
This is good, because it's meant I've really been able to speed up the actual scanning. I managed to belt through 4 whole animedias in about a week, for example, which is really helping me catch up.
Except what it's also doing is creating a huge number of files that I'll then need to go back to in order to stick together and finish off. Now this would be okay, but it's a horribly tedious process.
But also, it's the type of job that can't be done while doing something else as well. While I scan I watch anime (which is what I'd intended this post to be about, but I've dribbled on so long I'm going to break the posts into two!), but I can't do that with photostitch. The actual automatic bit of the process is at that sort of length where it's not instant, but not long enough for you to let it run while you do something else.
But also, this is where the bad side to photo-stitch comes in - I can't for the life of me work out a way to get it to perform consistently. A lot of the time it's great, but then every so often it will just throw a total wobbler and repeatedly make a complete arse of sticking things together.
This wouldn't be bad if I could work out why and how to avoid it, but I can't. About the only thing that seems to consistently cause it a problem is when two images are quite simple (e.g. big block of colour), but even this doesn't universally cause it grief.
Anyway, the point is that I could end up in a situation where I simply transfer a backlog of unscanned magazines into a backlog of unstitched pictures.
Monday, 28 February 2011
mildly moist
At the weekend I like to go for several long walks.
In particular, I like to go for a reasonably long walk just after lunch on both Saturday and Sunday. I also try to go for a shorter walk on Saturday and Sunday morning, but this can be disrupted by my schedule or the weather or, to be frank, if I'm feeling tired or unwell.
However, these shorter walks are bonuses, and it's the main big walk that really counts. I've talked about them before, but roughly speaking they're always based around where I live, so that I can just grab my keys and my MP3 player and go. I like to do them without dragging loads of accoutrements around and by doing them around where I live I know I'm always a reasonably short distance from home should I need to go back.
Now one of the things I've been trying to do with the walks is build up my distance. In fact, distance is my primary concern, and I try not to clock watch. Of course, watching the clock is useful - walking faster burns more calories - but I don't tend to think along the lines of doing a 45 minute walk, it's more about doing a 5km walk, or whatever.
But if you think about it these aspirations are slightly contradictory - how can I increase my distance, but still keep within a reasonable distance of home? Well, I could walk round in circles, and generally speaking most of my routes do involve circles, but eventually you get into the situation of repeating the loops, which is boring.
As such, I've been trying to go down some new routes, which are also circles, but which are bigger circles. In particular, I've been exploring the roads that (broadly) lead down to Sainsbury's and Farnham.
However, I've hit a bit of a snag over the last few weekends, and it's to do with the weather.
This last Sunday I set off on my walk, but, at what I was intending to be half way, it suddenly started raining. And I mean properly raining. I got very wet, very quickly.
At one point I stopped and waited under a bus shelter, but after 5 minutes it was becoming apparent that it wasn't a quick shower. Indeed, it actually continued to rain until I went to bed, but it meant I'd have to head home. But of course I was half way out on quite a long walk. If I'd have simply turned round it would pretty much have been the same distance.
What made the situation worse this last Sunday was I'd only take my light coat and not my hat. When I'd set off it was sunny and the forecast I'd seen the day before had said it would be sunny all day.
When a similar situation happened a couple of weeks back, I at least had my heavy coat and my hat. On Sunday, my coat was rendered ineffective after about ten minutes and I got so wet rain was dribbling down my face and my glasses were completely obscured. It actually reminded me of the more miserable experiences of school sports.
Hopefully of course the weather will improve and it won't be an issue. Or at least, it won't be an issue until the summer, when, presumably, I'll be moaning that it's too hot :).
From my perspective at the moment, though, I'm praying for the warm weather to roll on. For now, I've had quite enough of all the bone-chilling weather and rain, to be frank.
In particular, I like to go for a reasonably long walk just after lunch on both Saturday and Sunday. I also try to go for a shorter walk on Saturday and Sunday morning, but this can be disrupted by my schedule or the weather or, to be frank, if I'm feeling tired or unwell.
However, these shorter walks are bonuses, and it's the main big walk that really counts. I've talked about them before, but roughly speaking they're always based around where I live, so that I can just grab my keys and my MP3 player and go. I like to do them without dragging loads of accoutrements around and by doing them around where I live I know I'm always a reasonably short distance from home should I need to go back.
Now one of the things I've been trying to do with the walks is build up my distance. In fact, distance is my primary concern, and I try not to clock watch. Of course, watching the clock is useful - walking faster burns more calories - but I don't tend to think along the lines of doing a 45 minute walk, it's more about doing a 5km walk, or whatever.
But if you think about it these aspirations are slightly contradictory - how can I increase my distance, but still keep within a reasonable distance of home? Well, I could walk round in circles, and generally speaking most of my routes do involve circles, but eventually you get into the situation of repeating the loops, which is boring.
As such, I've been trying to go down some new routes, which are also circles, but which are bigger circles. In particular, I've been exploring the roads that (broadly) lead down to Sainsbury's and Farnham.
However, I've hit a bit of a snag over the last few weekends, and it's to do with the weather.
This last Sunday I set off on my walk, but, at what I was intending to be half way, it suddenly started raining. And I mean properly raining. I got very wet, very quickly.
At one point I stopped and waited under a bus shelter, but after 5 minutes it was becoming apparent that it wasn't a quick shower. Indeed, it actually continued to rain until I went to bed, but it meant I'd have to head home. But of course I was half way out on quite a long walk. If I'd have simply turned round it would pretty much have been the same distance.
What made the situation worse this last Sunday was I'd only take my light coat and not my hat. When I'd set off it was sunny and the forecast I'd seen the day before had said it would be sunny all day.
When a similar situation happened a couple of weeks back, I at least had my heavy coat and my hat. On Sunday, my coat was rendered ineffective after about ten minutes and I got so wet rain was dribbling down my face and my glasses were completely obscured. It actually reminded me of the more miserable experiences of school sports.
Hopefully of course the weather will improve and it won't be an issue. Or at least, it won't be an issue until the summer, when, presumably, I'll be moaning that it's too hot :).
From my perspective at the moment, though, I'm praying for the warm weather to roll on. For now, I've had quite enough of all the bone-chilling weather and rain, to be frank.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)