I mentioned a while back that I’d gotten myself BT broadband.
Well, unfortunately I recently had to boost my package to the unlimited downloads one. This is quite a lot more expensive (the broadband bit of the package basically doubles), but there was no way I was going to be able to keep within the bandwidth limit, and they charge you a huge amount for each gb you go over.
There are two basic problems that have really brought this to the fore. well, actually there’s one problem, but it has a couple of facets.
That problem is the entire reason I got the BT broadband in the first place- fansubs.
As I’ve explained before, I got the Bt broadband because I was hammering my landlords connection so hard and so often that it seemed to be causing the line to fall over on a very regular basis. When this happened it meant I had no internet access at all, sometimes for quite long periods of time.
Also, my usage was clearly causing the line to hit its limit often, so when my landlord used it he’d get really slow speeds. Therefore, by transferring my fansub downloading to another line, I’d stop being an arse.
But then two problems cropped up. Firstly, the shower broke. As I explained at the time, that meant I couldn't download any fansubs because my computer is underneath the hatch to get access to the stopcocks. And because it was out for a week, I created a big backlog of stuff.
The other problem is that this year there seems to have been a real problem over shows that have been picked up for legal streaming. I try to be a good boy and only dl shows that haven’t been picked up by crunchyroll and AOD. However, this year a whole raft of stuff either wasn’t licensed at all or was licensed, but I was region locked out of.
A new service called Nico Nico started, which seemed to take several shows and I found the site basically unusable. But then quite a bit of stuff on crunchyroll was region locked and then there was this big announcement that most of it was going to be on AOD.
I’m not sure I buy into the conspiracy theories that it wasn’t picked up by crunchyroll for the UK because of AOD, but what was definitely true was that it was ages before AOD announced they had them and then literally months before they started appearing.
On top of that, AOD’s site has been crushingly slow, making it unusual and there’s still the problem that AOD's content can only be viewed full screen or in a tiny window, making it a much less practical site for me.
In other words, I seem to have reverted back to downloading just about everything.
And things seemed to be going so well :(
But it did mean that last month I was hammering the connection and I had to increase the bandwidth allowance.
What made this slightly more annoying was that when I tried to rest the payment direct debit thing, it wouldn’t let me set it to a sensible level. It had this weird thing of one page was recommending a sensible amount, but then when I went onto the page to change it, it insisted I couldn’t take it below a different “recommended” amount that was £10 more than the other recommended amount. I put the higher recommended amount in quotes, because if you it acts as a fixed minimum value, it’s not really a recommendation is it?
Still, I guess if a large credit build up because of this stupid flaw in the system, I’ll eventually be able to set it lower.
Friday, 9 September 2011
Thursday, 8 September 2011
tweaks to blogger & drafts
They appear to have tweaked the layout and structure of blogger.
Generally speaking I often find myself having quite conservative reactions to changes like this. I try to be open minded, but it’s difficult sometimes, especially if you’re talking about something that works perfectly well (or suits your needs perfectly). Change for change’s sake is rubbish - if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Of course, sometimes you only realise it was broke after they fix it, but this isn’t one of those cases. However, I have to say I actually quite like these changes they’ve made. They’ve added some stuff that, while not necessary, is quite nice/useful, and they’ve not broken anything.
It also looks prettier and feels more involved and a smidge more professional. As I say, I don’t think it is actually changed much, but it has a nicer, cleaner feel to it.
I’ve not played with everything yet, but certainly the stats are nice. Being a numbers nerd, stats are always nice, of course.
The new layout also showed me that something odd had happened to some of my posts. Whether in fact they were fine before and got broken by the change I can’t know for sure, but I actually think it was some problem that I hadn’t realised.
Basically, quite a few (around a dozen over the years) of my posts had not been published. Instead, they’ve been saved as drafts. Quite why these particular posts never got published, I don’t know, but it was fairly clear from the page view counter they hadn’t been.
As I say, it was a bit of a random selection and I thought I was in the habit of always checking the blog once I’d published a new entry, but clearly something had gone wrong somewhere.
It would also explain a discrepancy I noticed a few times before, where two of the numbers that showed the number of blog posts didn’t quite seem to add up. I can’t remember the exact phrasing, but it was something along the lines of the number of posts and the number of entries were different, because one must have been including all these drafts where the other wasn't.
Generally speaking I often find myself having quite conservative reactions to changes like this. I try to be open minded, but it’s difficult sometimes, especially if you’re talking about something that works perfectly well (or suits your needs perfectly). Change for change’s sake is rubbish - if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Of course, sometimes you only realise it was broke after they fix it, but this isn’t one of those cases. However, I have to say I actually quite like these changes they’ve made. They’ve added some stuff that, while not necessary, is quite nice/useful, and they’ve not broken anything.
It also looks prettier and feels more involved and a smidge more professional. As I say, I don’t think it is actually changed much, but it has a nicer, cleaner feel to it.
I’ve not played with everything yet, but certainly the stats are nice. Being a numbers nerd, stats are always nice, of course.
The new layout also showed me that something odd had happened to some of my posts. Whether in fact they were fine before and got broken by the change I can’t know for sure, but I actually think it was some problem that I hadn’t realised.
Basically, quite a few (around a dozen over the years) of my posts had not been published. Instead, they’ve been saved as drafts. Quite why these particular posts never got published, I don’t know, but it was fairly clear from the page view counter they hadn’t been.
As I say, it was a bit of a random selection and I thought I was in the habit of always checking the blog once I’d published a new entry, but clearly something had gone wrong somewhere.
It would also explain a discrepancy I noticed a few times before, where two of the numbers that showed the number of blog posts didn’t quite seem to add up. I can’t remember the exact phrasing, but it was something along the lines of the number of posts and the number of entries were different, because one must have been including all these drafts where the other wasn't.
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
signs
I kinda new what signs was about before I watched it.
In fact, actually, you can pretty much tell what signs is about from the title and the box / poster art. However, being an M Night Shyamalan film, I was also expecting some sort of twist. Or, more specifically, I knew the film was about aliens, but I was expecting some sort of twist on that.
And while there was a twist, it wasn't really concerned with the aliens, as such. So the aliens didn't turn out to actually be humans from the future or friendly but misunderstood or anything like that - the aliens were pretty much as presented. The twist was more subtle than that, and I think it worked.
In fact, I was actually surprised as I wasn't really expecting to like signs, but I actually quite enjoyed it. Despite the clear indication that it's a story about aliens, he still manages to build a good feeling of suspense and tension and, crucially, it feels quite real. It feels like, if aliens were to come here, this might be a possible way it plays out.
Well, I say that - there's a bit of a reveal at the end that doesn't quite make sense. It's not the twist, as such, and I won't spoiler it, although some simple Google searching will probably reveal it to you if you feel so inclined. But basically it's a bit of an odd idea that actually made the aliens a bit crap. If you know much about science it would also make it impossible to be on the planet at all, but it's not too big a thing.
The film stars Mel Gibson of course and he gives a good performance. It's a little difficult nowadays not to think of the whole anti-Semitic drunkenness thing of course, but after a while you get used to his character being quite a subtle, gentle person.
The DVD had some pretty good extras too. There's a nice making of featurette and an interesting commentary. Shyamalan is quite a talkative chap, which is always good. Some directors can be rather quiet on commentaries, which I've always thought of as a bit odd as surely it's your chance to explain stuff about this film that you've invested a big chunk of your life in and, presumably, had an eventful time making.
I've not much else to say, really - I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
In fact, actually, you can pretty much tell what signs is about from the title and the box / poster art. However, being an M Night Shyamalan film, I was also expecting some sort of twist. Or, more specifically, I knew the film was about aliens, but I was expecting some sort of twist on that.
And while there was a twist, it wasn't really concerned with the aliens, as such. So the aliens didn't turn out to actually be humans from the future or friendly but misunderstood or anything like that - the aliens were pretty much as presented. The twist was more subtle than that, and I think it worked.
In fact, I was actually surprised as I wasn't really expecting to like signs, but I actually quite enjoyed it. Despite the clear indication that it's a story about aliens, he still manages to build a good feeling of suspense and tension and, crucially, it feels quite real. It feels like, if aliens were to come here, this might be a possible way it plays out.
Well, I say that - there's a bit of a reveal at the end that doesn't quite make sense. It's not the twist, as such, and I won't spoiler it, although some simple Google searching will probably reveal it to you if you feel so inclined. But basically it's a bit of an odd idea that actually made the aliens a bit crap. If you know much about science it would also make it impossible to be on the planet at all, but it's not too big a thing.
The film stars Mel Gibson of course and he gives a good performance. It's a little difficult nowadays not to think of the whole anti-Semitic drunkenness thing of course, but after a while you get used to his character being quite a subtle, gentle person.
The DVD had some pretty good extras too. There's a nice making of featurette and an interesting commentary. Shyamalan is quite a talkative chap, which is always good. Some directors can be rather quiet on commentaries, which I've always thought of as a bit odd as surely it's your chance to explain stuff about this film that you've invested a big chunk of your life in and, presumably, had an eventful time making.
I've not much else to say, really - I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
new regimen
My new regimen seems to be working okay. Well, ish.
An unfortunate downside seems to be that the Sunday after the cleaning weekend I end up shattered. It’s difficult to say for sure that it’s entirely down to the new regimen, but it seems very likely.
The problem with being sure is I’ve not been doing it very long and of course this last weekend I was coming off the back of a very tiring week (hard work and lack of sleep). But certainly as Sunday dawned it was real struggle to get out of bed and the morning was pretty rubbish. I perked up a bit in the afternoon following a particularly strong coffee, but it didn’t seem to last very long.
Certainly I didn't do any scanning, though I sat down and thought about starting, but in the end I slobbed out in front of a film.
Hopefully that's compensate for a bit by the fact that the other weekend is basically free of stuff to do apart from watch the grand prix.
Total Wipeout is back. Well, ish. It seems to have started with two celebrity specials, which the telly listing clearly indicated were episodes 11 & 12 of 12, so they were meant to come last. I thought maybe I’d missed the series, but a quick it of googling suggested that no, they’d simply shown the la two episode first.
The seem to have added some good new stuff for the earlier rounds, but the final section - the wipeout zone - is still far too easy. Indeed, they may have made the one bit of it that was tricky (a long roe swing) easier, y replacing it with some not very fast moving turntables.
The gadget show is also back. Well, ish. It’s now on Friday evenings instead of Monday. I can't say that so far I’m impressed with the new slot. I can't really fit watching it live into my schedule, which means it’s become just another program I watch at the weekend.
Leaving it until Monday might be an idea, but I dunno, if there's a problem with the recording (it’s on 5) the repeat is at the weekend, so I’d have missed it. I guess I could record both, just in case. Roll on proper digital switchover next year (only two years after when it was meant to happen!).
They’ve tweaked the competition, which now involves a celeb naming stuff, which works okay, but takes up quite a lot of time. Otherwise it’s the same basic stuff, so I’m pleased it’s back.
Bit of a random one today. Well, ish.
Hopefully the return of regular schedule fixtures like these with the drawing in nights and my new regimen will help to get me back to my dieting ways and also kick me back into doing things like scanning during the week. I figured out that a big part of my problem recently has been that I've been pissing about in the evenings with complicated (and regrettably high calorie) foodstuff so I’ve lost all the time I seemed to gain last year.
An unfortunate downside seems to be that the Sunday after the cleaning weekend I end up shattered. It’s difficult to say for sure that it’s entirely down to the new regimen, but it seems very likely.
The problem with being sure is I’ve not been doing it very long and of course this last weekend I was coming off the back of a very tiring week (hard work and lack of sleep). But certainly as Sunday dawned it was real struggle to get out of bed and the morning was pretty rubbish. I perked up a bit in the afternoon following a particularly strong coffee, but it didn’t seem to last very long.
Certainly I didn't do any scanning, though I sat down and thought about starting, but in the end I slobbed out in front of a film.
Hopefully that's compensate for a bit by the fact that the other weekend is basically free of stuff to do apart from watch the grand prix.
Total Wipeout is back. Well, ish. It seems to have started with two celebrity specials, which the telly listing clearly indicated were episodes 11 & 12 of 12, so they were meant to come last. I thought maybe I’d missed the series, but a quick it of googling suggested that no, they’d simply shown the la two episode first.
The seem to have added some good new stuff for the earlier rounds, but the final section - the wipeout zone - is still far too easy. Indeed, they may have made the one bit of it that was tricky (a long roe swing) easier, y replacing it with some not very fast moving turntables.
The gadget show is also back. Well, ish. It’s now on Friday evenings instead of Monday. I can't say that so far I’m impressed with the new slot. I can't really fit watching it live into my schedule, which means it’s become just another program I watch at the weekend.
Leaving it until Monday might be an idea, but I dunno, if there's a problem with the recording (it’s on 5) the repeat is at the weekend, so I’d have missed it. I guess I could record both, just in case. Roll on proper digital switchover next year (only two years after when it was meant to happen!).
They’ve tweaked the competition, which now involves a celeb naming stuff, which works okay, but takes up quite a lot of time. Otherwise it’s the same basic stuff, so I’m pleased it’s back.
Bit of a random one today. Well, ish.
Hopefully the return of regular schedule fixtures like these with the drawing in nights and my new regimen will help to get me back to my dieting ways and also kick me back into doing things like scanning during the week. I figured out that a big part of my problem recently has been that I've been pissing about in the evenings with complicated (and regrettably high calorie) foodstuff so I’ve lost all the time I seemed to gain last year.
Monday, 5 September 2011
damp enough for you, sir?
I got an absolute soaking on yesterday afternoon’s walk.
I’d checked the forecast the day before, so I kinda new rain was forecast. In fact, to be honest, I was actually hoping for a bit of rain.
My afternoon walk on Saturday had been rather sticky. It was surprisingly warm for the time of year (are we going to have an Indian summer, I wonder?) and I’d thought a little sprinkling of rain might not go amiss.
When I set off I took my cap as it was just starting to spot with rain and for about three quarters of the walk it kept spotting on and off. It was also pretty muggy again, so these spots were actually quite welcome.
I didn’t take any sort of coat or other rain protection, though, as I figured if it did rain properly I wasn’t going to be that far from home and I could possibly duck under cover if needed. But this was a bit of a mistake.
When it started raining, it quickly changed into a deluge and I got very wet very quickly. Also, the timing was very unfortunate, as I was a good way from any decent cover and by the time I reached cover, I was so wet, stopping wouldn’t have made much difference. I’d have just ended up being cold and wet for ages, before having to set off in the wet anyway (it continued raining for hours).
I therefore continued on and the rain managed to somehow get even heavier. As I was coming down the bit that leads to where I live, there were rivers running down the road and everything. It was a veritable monsoon.
This, of course, had that weird side effect of that super-pleasant feeling you get when you come in out of the rain and dry off and change into fresh clothes. It’s a really oddly pleasant experience.
To emphasise just how wet it was, my clothes were still sopping wet when I went to bed and rather damp when I checked them after I got up.
In other weight/diet/exercise news, I unfortunately put on the best part of a pound at my weigh in. To be honest, I’m actually surprised I only put on a pound, considering the crap I ate. My guess is that my long walk on Monday and my sleepless night and resultant fatigue burnt off a lot of the crap I ate.
I think, basically, it’s a good thing I’m ending one diet period and starting a new one. Hopefully, it will effectively draw a line under my recent poor performance (only 10 pounds lost across the period, less than half compared to the other periods). My new plan is very ambitious, as I’m aiming to be “fat” by Chrimbo.
Obviously I’m already fat, but what I mean is I want to take myself out of obese and down into overweight.
If I make it, it will be great, but if not my next target for my birthday will stand a good chance of achieving this goal. Once I’m down into overweight, I can hopefully look at slowing down, if not stopping the dieting.
While part of me wants to become normal weight, several other parts of me have very good counter points. One big one is that if I get properly thin I’ll have real problems with loose skin. Another is that while being obese is a noticeable health risk, simply being overweight is much, much less bad.
Thee are other points too, but those are the key ones.
I’d checked the forecast the day before, so I kinda new rain was forecast. In fact, to be honest, I was actually hoping for a bit of rain.
My afternoon walk on Saturday had been rather sticky. It was surprisingly warm for the time of year (are we going to have an Indian summer, I wonder?) and I’d thought a little sprinkling of rain might not go amiss.
When I set off I took my cap as it was just starting to spot with rain and for about three quarters of the walk it kept spotting on and off. It was also pretty muggy again, so these spots were actually quite welcome.
I didn’t take any sort of coat or other rain protection, though, as I figured if it did rain properly I wasn’t going to be that far from home and I could possibly duck under cover if needed. But this was a bit of a mistake.
When it started raining, it quickly changed into a deluge and I got very wet very quickly. Also, the timing was very unfortunate, as I was a good way from any decent cover and by the time I reached cover, I was so wet, stopping wouldn’t have made much difference. I’d have just ended up being cold and wet for ages, before having to set off in the wet anyway (it continued raining for hours).
I therefore continued on and the rain managed to somehow get even heavier. As I was coming down the bit that leads to where I live, there were rivers running down the road and everything. It was a veritable monsoon.
This, of course, had that weird side effect of that super-pleasant feeling you get when you come in out of the rain and dry off and change into fresh clothes. It’s a really oddly pleasant experience.
To emphasise just how wet it was, my clothes were still sopping wet when I went to bed and rather damp when I checked them after I got up.
In other weight/diet/exercise news, I unfortunately put on the best part of a pound at my weigh in. To be honest, I’m actually surprised I only put on a pound, considering the crap I ate. My guess is that my long walk on Monday and my sleepless night and resultant fatigue burnt off a lot of the crap I ate.
I think, basically, it’s a good thing I’m ending one diet period and starting a new one. Hopefully, it will effectively draw a line under my recent poor performance (only 10 pounds lost across the period, less than half compared to the other periods). My new plan is very ambitious, as I’m aiming to be “fat” by Chrimbo.
Obviously I’m already fat, but what I mean is I want to take myself out of obese and down into overweight.
If I make it, it will be great, but if not my next target for my birthday will stand a good chance of achieving this goal. Once I’m down into overweight, I can hopefully look at slowing down, if not stopping the dieting.
While part of me wants to become normal weight, several other parts of me have very good counter points. One big one is that if I get properly thin I’ll have real problems with loose skin. Another is that while being obese is a noticeable health risk, simply being overweight is much, much less bad.
Thee are other points too, but those are the key ones.
Friday, 2 September 2011
another day missed
So obviously there was no bloggage post yesterday.
Hopefully the reasons are pretty obvious. Having had very little sleep on the Tuesday night, Wednesday was a bit of a right off, so stuff got pushed forward to Thursday. I also had two meetings on Thursday, so they sucked up loads of time too.
And of course I was still pretty tired on Thursday, so I pretty much went straight to bed when I got home. I certainly wasn't up for writing my blog post in the evening.
So work has been horrible just recently. It feels a lot like I'm just managing to keep my nose bobbing above the water as the flood comes pouring in. Luckily I've not had to sacrifice any other weekends, but if any more stuff comes in for me to do I'm really going to struggle. And it's pretty fortunate that one of my colleagues is now back in the office and she's super competent and has helped by picking a load of stuff up that I might have had to be more involved in.
But what else has happened?
Well, I lost another pound at the last weekend, which was a very nice surprise. However, my guess is I'll have put it back on, as I've really been eating badly this week. I'm not beating myself up too much, though, because with work being really heavy and the whole lack of sleep it's probably a natural (but obviously not desirable) knock-on effect.
Also there was the Spa Grand Prix last weekend, which I've not really talked about.
It was okay. I have to confess I was a bit disappointed with the outcome, and for some reason the latter half of the race was a bit dull. If I'm honest, though, I was a bit distracted when I watched it. As I mentioned before I'd watched loads of telly and I think I was reaching overload by the time I sat down to watch the race itself.
The biggest disappointment, though, was Lewis, who managed to crash into Kamui Kobayashi. IT looked like he basically wasn't paying enough attention and thought he was fully past Kobayashi. However, he wasn't so he essentially drove into him. It happened right at the end of one of the fastest straights, so was a big accident and took him out of the race.
It's a cleaning weekend coming up. I'm not entirely sure if do the cleaning myself is really saving me money. The problem is that I'm pretty sure the machines in the local laundrette are more expensive than those where I used to go, so where I save in some ways, I loose out in others.
I think long term there'll be a saving, but it's not going to represent a massive windfall of cash.
And I could do with one of those - I got a letter the other day that my electricity is going up by 11%, which is an enormous price hike. Yay for capitalism, right?
Hopefully the reasons are pretty obvious. Having had very little sleep on the Tuesday night, Wednesday was a bit of a right off, so stuff got pushed forward to Thursday. I also had two meetings on Thursday, so they sucked up loads of time too.
And of course I was still pretty tired on Thursday, so I pretty much went straight to bed when I got home. I certainly wasn't up for writing my blog post in the evening.
So work has been horrible just recently. It feels a lot like I'm just managing to keep my nose bobbing above the water as the flood comes pouring in. Luckily I've not had to sacrifice any other weekends, but if any more stuff comes in for me to do I'm really going to struggle. And it's pretty fortunate that one of my colleagues is now back in the office and she's super competent and has helped by picking a load of stuff up that I might have had to be more involved in.
But what else has happened?
Well, I lost another pound at the last weekend, which was a very nice surprise. However, my guess is I'll have put it back on, as I've really been eating badly this week. I'm not beating myself up too much, though, because with work being really heavy and the whole lack of sleep it's probably a natural (but obviously not desirable) knock-on effect.
Also there was the Spa Grand Prix last weekend, which I've not really talked about.
It was okay. I have to confess I was a bit disappointed with the outcome, and for some reason the latter half of the race was a bit dull. If I'm honest, though, I was a bit distracted when I watched it. As I mentioned before I'd watched loads of telly and I think I was reaching overload by the time I sat down to watch the race itself.
The biggest disappointment, though, was Lewis, who managed to crash into Kamui Kobayashi. IT looked like he basically wasn't paying enough attention and thought he was fully past Kobayashi. However, he wasn't so he essentially drove into him. It happened right at the end of one of the fastest straights, so was a big accident and took him out of the race.
It's a cleaning weekend coming up. I'm not entirely sure if do the cleaning myself is really saving me money. The problem is that I'm pretty sure the machines in the local laundrette are more expensive than those where I used to go, so where I save in some ways, I loose out in others.
I think long term there'll be a saving, but it's not going to represent a massive windfall of cash.
And I could do with one of those - I got a letter the other day that my electricity is going up by 11%, which is an enormous price hike. Yay for capitalism, right?
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
insomnomnia
Horrible night last night, as I think I got about an hour's sleep.
The worst aspect of it was that I don't really know why. My best guess is that it was a combination of factors; these being eating too much, not doing any exercise, spending all day driving and a meeting.
Basically, I had a meeting all the way down in Dorchester, which meant I spent around 5 hours on the road yesterday. It was a useful meeting, but it did mean all my usual routines were blown apart.
Also, by the time I got back it was so late I did the classic of going to the supermarket to get something to eat and, being starving by that time, bought a load of crap. A load of high calorie crap. High calorie crap I then ate a loads of. And of course, having been sat down driving all day I didn't do any walking.
So I think the insomnia was brought on by a load of energy (both nervous as a result of the meeting, and physical as a result of high calorie food late at night and nothing to burn it off.
It's a pretty flimsy bit of reasoning, but certainly the more traditional causes of my insomnia (nervousness, excitement and late night caffeine consumption) weren't present at all, so I don't have any better reasons.
Anyway, upshot is I'm shattered today and am barely able to concentrate on my work, let alone proper blog posts.
The worst aspect of it was that I don't really know why. My best guess is that it was a combination of factors; these being eating too much, not doing any exercise, spending all day driving and a meeting.
Basically, I had a meeting all the way down in Dorchester, which meant I spent around 5 hours on the road yesterday. It was a useful meeting, but it did mean all my usual routines were blown apart.
Also, by the time I got back it was so late I did the classic of going to the supermarket to get something to eat and, being starving by that time, bought a load of crap. A load of high calorie crap. High calorie crap I then ate a loads of. And of course, having been sat down driving all day I didn't do any walking.
So I think the insomnia was brought on by a load of energy (both nervous as a result of the meeting, and physical as a result of high calorie food late at night and nothing to burn it off.
It's a pretty flimsy bit of reasoning, but certainly the more traditional causes of my insomnia (nervousness, excitement and late night caffeine consumption) weren't present at all, so I don't have any better reasons.
Anyway, upshot is I'm shattered today and am barely able to concentrate on my work, let alone proper blog posts.
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
three double u's
Does that make six u's or three w's?
Anyway, my entire bank holiday weekend can be summed up as Watching, Walking and... er... Scanning... Widiculous amounts of scanning?
Er, yeah, no, it doesn't really work. But it's still true.
On Saturday and Sunday I essentially spent all my time watching stuff. It was the Belgium Grand Prix, so that involved loads of hours of watching practice, qualifying and the race (I'm going to miss this depth of coverage when it's gone).
But I also had loads of stuff recorded from the past week that I watched. If I'm totally honest I'm not entirely sure how I managed to stack up quite so much unwatched stuff last week. I mean, it's not like I watched loads of anime DVDs and I didn't do any scanning during the week.
I think the honest truth is a high degree of fatigue brought on by work. It's been so manic these last few weeks I think basically I was getting home quite late, having something to eat, doing only a little bit of stuff and then going to bed. Either that or somebody shaved a few hours off each day.
Going for more extended walks is something I like to do at weekends, but I figured this weekend would be a good chance to really pump in the steps. As I've discussed before I use a pedometer to try to keep an eye on the number of steps I do.
This weekend I went for three long walks - one each on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The Saturday and Sunday walks were two of my normal walks, but on Monday I did one of the super long/hard ones that I'd been doing before I went to the British Grand Prix.
It was quite knackering, I have to say. The Monday walk on its own was about 8,500 steps, which is quite a way. When you add in the steps I do as part of normal weekend stuff, I was a good way above 10,000 steps each day.
I think most people have heard of the 10,000 steps thing before. To be frank, it's actually a huge distance - if each step is just 50cm, it's around 5km, which is a big way. My steps are about 60cm, so that's more like 6km, which is a long way. Also, I walk at about 100 steps a minute, so it's about 100 minutes or 1h40mins of walking.
I think you can pick up from the above that the suggestions of doing 10,000 every day are a little unrealistic in the modern world. Spending more than an hour and a half every day walking is quite unlikely for anyone who works in an office and has to commute to work. I therefore use 10,000 as my guide for the weekends/days off and 5,000 for normal days, which I (roughly) manage to achieve.
I hadn't actually thought I'd get round to scanning at all this weekend. And if it had been a normal weekend I wouldn't. Basically, I spent a good number of hours at it on Monday, having managed to watch most of what I needed to across the weekend. I could have watched torchwood, which I've been recording but not got the chance to start yet, but I was a bit sick of watching telly so scanned, instead (where I obviously watched anime while I scanned... is that ironic or just me being daft?).
Anyway, my entire bank holiday weekend can be summed up as Watching, Walking and... er... Scanning... Widiculous amounts of scanning?
Er, yeah, no, it doesn't really work. But it's still true.
On Saturday and Sunday I essentially spent all my time watching stuff. It was the Belgium Grand Prix, so that involved loads of hours of watching practice, qualifying and the race (I'm going to miss this depth of coverage when it's gone).
But I also had loads of stuff recorded from the past week that I watched. If I'm totally honest I'm not entirely sure how I managed to stack up quite so much unwatched stuff last week. I mean, it's not like I watched loads of anime DVDs and I didn't do any scanning during the week.
I think the honest truth is a high degree of fatigue brought on by work. It's been so manic these last few weeks I think basically I was getting home quite late, having something to eat, doing only a little bit of stuff and then going to bed. Either that or somebody shaved a few hours off each day.
Going for more extended walks is something I like to do at weekends, but I figured this weekend would be a good chance to really pump in the steps. As I've discussed before I use a pedometer to try to keep an eye on the number of steps I do.
This weekend I went for three long walks - one each on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The Saturday and Sunday walks were two of my normal walks, but on Monday I did one of the super long/hard ones that I'd been doing before I went to the British Grand Prix.
It was quite knackering, I have to say. The Monday walk on its own was about 8,500 steps, which is quite a way. When you add in the steps I do as part of normal weekend stuff, I was a good way above 10,000 steps each day.
I think most people have heard of the 10,000 steps thing before. To be frank, it's actually a huge distance - if each step is just 50cm, it's around 5km, which is a big way. My steps are about 60cm, so that's more like 6km, which is a long way. Also, I walk at about 100 steps a minute, so it's about 100 minutes or 1h40mins of walking.
I think you can pick up from the above that the suggestions of doing 10,000 every day are a little unrealistic in the modern world. Spending more than an hour and a half every day walking is quite unlikely for anyone who works in an office and has to commute to work. I therefore use 10,000 as my guide for the weekends/days off and 5,000 for normal days, which I (roughly) manage to achieve.
I hadn't actually thought I'd get round to scanning at all this weekend. And if it had been a normal weekend I wouldn't. Basically, I spent a good number of hours at it on Monday, having managed to watch most of what I needed to across the weekend. I could have watched torchwood, which I've been recording but not got the chance to start yet, but I was a bit sick of watching telly so scanned, instead (where I obviously watched anime while I scanned... is that ironic or just me being daft?).
Friday, 26 August 2011
returne des grand prix
So F1 Grand Prix is back.
The first race post-summer break is the famous Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, which is always a cracker. My dad and sister have actually been to the race. When they went it was bitterly cold and very wet and they were sat on top of the famous big hill, so it was a bit of a miserable experience, though they naturally enjoyed the actual racing.
They tell me that apparently waffles and chips (which are actually a Belgium invention) form the mainstay of the Belgium diet as that's what every food place seemed to sell.
But anyway, that's beside the point.
I'm hoping for a good race. Spa usually produces a good race and there's always the possibility of a sprinkling of rain (I don't know if all of northern Europe has had similar weather to us, but rain this weekend seems like a fairly good bet if it has). Also, the Red Bulls seem to have been a bit on the back foot the last couple of races, so we'll have to see if they can pull it back.
I can't actually remember if Spa suits their car or not, but certainly it's been clear the last few races that Ferrari and McLaren have caught up a lot. Webber also seems to have found his feet a bit.
I still think Sebastian Vettel is a shoe-in for the title, though. He's got such a lead it will be difficult for the others to catch up, especially if they're all in contention and therefore effectively taking points off each other, rather than Vettel. I don't mind that - I think Vettel put in such a string of brilliant performances at the start of the year he would be a deserving winner, but it makes it more interesting if it goes later in the season before being decided.
As I've said before, we've had an odd situation where all the races have been interesting this year, thanks mainly to the new tyre regs, but the championship has been a little dull because Vettel did so well at the start.
If I'm honest, each race being interesting is more appealing to me, so I've enjoyed this season a great deal.
The first race post-summer break is the famous Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, which is always a cracker. My dad and sister have actually been to the race. When they went it was bitterly cold and very wet and they were sat on top of the famous big hill, so it was a bit of a miserable experience, though they naturally enjoyed the actual racing.
They tell me that apparently waffles and chips (which are actually a Belgium invention) form the mainstay of the Belgium diet as that's what every food place seemed to sell.
But anyway, that's beside the point.
I'm hoping for a good race. Spa usually produces a good race and there's always the possibility of a sprinkling of rain (I don't know if all of northern Europe has had similar weather to us, but rain this weekend seems like a fairly good bet if it has). Also, the Red Bulls seem to have been a bit on the back foot the last couple of races, so we'll have to see if they can pull it back.
I can't actually remember if Spa suits their car or not, but certainly it's been clear the last few races that Ferrari and McLaren have caught up a lot. Webber also seems to have found his feet a bit.
I still think Sebastian Vettel is a shoe-in for the title, though. He's got such a lead it will be difficult for the others to catch up, especially if they're all in contention and therefore effectively taking points off each other, rather than Vettel. I don't mind that - I think Vettel put in such a string of brilliant performances at the start of the year he would be a deserving winner, but it makes it more interesting if it goes later in the season before being decided.
As I've said before, we've had an odd situation where all the races have been interesting this year, thanks mainly to the new tyre regs, but the championship has been a little dull because Vettel did so well at the start.
If I'm honest, each race being interesting is more appealing to me, so I've enjoyed this season a great deal.
Thursday, 25 August 2011
a surprise loss
Obviously one of the things I didn't manage to cover last week was the old diet.
It's not gone particularly brilliantly, mainly as I continue to not stick to my diet properly. If I wasn't exercising I think I'd probably gain weight, but since I am, I've broadly been staying constant when I've had a bad week.
That basically covers what I should have posted last week. This week it went better than expected in that I lost a pound. I'm not just 2 and a half pounds away from 19 stone, which is the new, revised-revised target I set for August Bank Holiday, which is when I switch into the next phase of the diet.
If I reach it, I'll basically have lost one stone across this dieting period, which is good in the sense that I have lost weight, but quite poor because I've lost much more than that in previous dieting periods of similar length.
I've mainly put the problems down to the combined effect of more social eating and drinking and, to be frank, a slip in my commitment to not eating crap. I'm hoping I've turned a bit of corner on that front, as I feel much keener to loose weight and stick more closely to a lower calorie intake than I have done in recent weeks.
Of course, the acid test is actually what happens next time I go into a supermarket and am faced with the temptation of buying stuff.
Hmm, that was a lot shorter than anticipated, so I'll stick in a random observation. Basically, while I've been wandering around my usual walking patch near my home and up into Farnham and Aldershot, I've been really struck with how overgrown everything has become.
This year, with its wet summer and bursts of hot weather seems to have really suited some of the plants and there's lots of bits on my walk where I have to duck down to avoid the overgrown shrubbery.
In particular, raspberries seem to be absolutely thriving, with loads of big bushes weighed down by loads of berries. I'm very tempted to go and pick some, but the problem is how I would fit it into my walk if I did it then. I'd need to take a container with me and of course I try to walk at a decent pace, so there's a good chance they'd get bounced about and damaged.
I think if I decide to go on a picking session I'll have to pop down in the car, park up and then grab a load.
It's not gone particularly brilliantly, mainly as I continue to not stick to my diet properly. If I wasn't exercising I think I'd probably gain weight, but since I am, I've broadly been staying constant when I've had a bad week.
That basically covers what I should have posted last week. This week it went better than expected in that I lost a pound. I'm not just 2 and a half pounds away from 19 stone, which is the new, revised-revised target I set for August Bank Holiday, which is when I switch into the next phase of the diet.
If I reach it, I'll basically have lost one stone across this dieting period, which is good in the sense that I have lost weight, but quite poor because I've lost much more than that in previous dieting periods of similar length.
I've mainly put the problems down to the combined effect of more social eating and drinking and, to be frank, a slip in my commitment to not eating crap. I'm hoping I've turned a bit of corner on that front, as I feel much keener to loose weight and stick more closely to a lower calorie intake than I have done in recent weeks.
Of course, the acid test is actually what happens next time I go into a supermarket and am faced with the temptation of buying stuff.
Hmm, that was a lot shorter than anticipated, so I'll stick in a random observation. Basically, while I've been wandering around my usual walking patch near my home and up into Farnham and Aldershot, I've been really struck with how overgrown everything has become.
This year, with its wet summer and bursts of hot weather seems to have really suited some of the plants and there's lots of bits on my walk where I have to duck down to avoid the overgrown shrubbery.
In particular, raspberries seem to be absolutely thriving, with loads of big bushes weighed down by loads of berries. I'm very tempted to go and pick some, but the problem is how I would fit it into my walk if I did it then. I'd need to take a container with me and of course I try to walk at a decent pace, so there's a good chance they'd get bounced about and damaged.
I think if I decide to go on a picking session I'll have to pop down in the car, park up and then grab a load.
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
127 hours
Really, 127 hours has a very simple plot.
I don't think I'm spoilering it if I say it's about a guy who gets his arm stuck in a weird accident and spends 127 hours trapped. I also don't think it's a spoiler to say how he eventually got out, but I won't in case you don't know.
Given that very simple plot, how would you go about making a film of it? You've got to portray the fact that he's there for an incredibly long time (5 and a bit days) but not be boring about it. Well, clearly you've got flashback, but you could also try to show what other people are doing - his friends, family and co-workers.
Trouble is, he didn't tell anyone where he was going, so they wouldn't have started to even miss him for a good few days (he went at the weekend) and then they'd probably have waited a while before filing a missing person's report and then it'd be a while before anyone actually started searching.
In the film he does meet to pretty girls who invite him to a party, which he obviously misses, so you could have worked that up into something, but I'm not sure how closely that reflects reality (the film is based on real life and the book about it - "between a rock and a hard place").
Also, they took the decision to focus only on him once he was trapped. Now they do utilise flashbacks and hallucinations, but the point is there were no other real-word characters in the film after he got trapped.
The point I'm making is that while the whole film has an inherently tense structure, because it was such a long time it could have been horribly boring. What saves it is clearly the fact that he didn't give up and constantly tried to free himself.
And that works because the central performance by James Franco is really convincing. You really feel like he gives it his all in trying to escape and you really go through the highs and lows with him. And there are highs and lows - little moments of joy he experiences and some surprisingly comedic stuff.
Now while I'm sure it's not 100% accurate to the real world, they're quite clear in the excellent commentary that the dialogue is based on real stuff and captures the spirit of things if not the exact occurrences (it couldn't be 127 hours long, after all).
Also, interestingly, chunks of it were actually recorded. The real guy - Aron - was somewhat of a pioneer in that he used to record himself doing the extreme sports stuff he used to get up to. That's quite common nowadays, but back in the early 2000's people weren't really doing it, although new compact digital cameras were just starting to make an appearance.
I have to say I really enjoyed the film. It was pitched just right and it's very clever how they put it together.
I don't think I'm spoilering it if I say it's about a guy who gets his arm stuck in a weird accident and spends 127 hours trapped. I also don't think it's a spoiler to say how he eventually got out, but I won't in case you don't know.
Given that very simple plot, how would you go about making a film of it? You've got to portray the fact that he's there for an incredibly long time (5 and a bit days) but not be boring about it. Well, clearly you've got flashback, but you could also try to show what other people are doing - his friends, family and co-workers.
Trouble is, he didn't tell anyone where he was going, so they wouldn't have started to even miss him for a good few days (he went at the weekend) and then they'd probably have waited a while before filing a missing person's report and then it'd be a while before anyone actually started searching.
In the film he does meet to pretty girls who invite him to a party, which he obviously misses, so you could have worked that up into something, but I'm not sure how closely that reflects reality (the film is based on real life and the book about it - "between a rock and a hard place").
Also, they took the decision to focus only on him once he was trapped. Now they do utilise flashbacks and hallucinations, but the point is there were no other real-word characters in the film after he got trapped.
The point I'm making is that while the whole film has an inherently tense structure, because it was such a long time it could have been horribly boring. What saves it is clearly the fact that he didn't give up and constantly tried to free himself.
And that works because the central performance by James Franco is really convincing. You really feel like he gives it his all in trying to escape and you really go through the highs and lows with him. And there are highs and lows - little moments of joy he experiences and some surprisingly comedic stuff.
Now while I'm sure it's not 100% accurate to the real world, they're quite clear in the excellent commentary that the dialogue is based on real stuff and captures the spirit of things if not the exact occurrences (it couldn't be 127 hours long, after all).
Also, interestingly, chunks of it were actually recorded. The real guy - Aron - was somewhat of a pioneer in that he used to record himself doing the extreme sports stuff he used to get up to. That's quite common nowadays, but back in the early 2000's people weren't really doing it, although new compact digital cameras were just starting to make an appearance.
I have to say I really enjoyed the film. It was pitched just right and it's very clever how they put it together.
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
animu
Thought I'd do a broad update on the animu situation.
I've actually been watching loads recently, and most of it has been DVDs. I could probably have watched more, but not a lot more. And to be fair, it has been part of the reason I've not done so much scanning or some other bits - there are only a finite number of hours in the week, after all.
One thing I did try to do was re-arrange my shelves in order to make it easy to access the stuff I think I should watch first. This didn't really work properly as my shelves have so much stuff on them there's two layers of stuff - one in front of the other. I therefore couldn't decide whether I should do it in terms of height (top shelf is to watch first, second next, etc) or depth (stuff in front is to watch first). In the end it was a bit of a mix of both.
What made this more confusing is I decided to try to include both books and non-anime DVDs in the mix as well. When you factor in that I've got two sets of shelves of very different dimensions it all proved too much for my brain and the short amount of time I'd allowed to do it, so really it's just a mess now. I think I may have another go and take a slightly different approach.
What I have hit upon s a strategy for watching stuff. Basically what I've done is picked out a couple of series and stacked them up right next to my DVD player. The key innovation is that I watch 1 DVD from series 1, then 1 from series 2, then back to series 1, then back to series 2.
I've also blended together half and full seasons. This is really made possible by the fact that most of the series I've got are of the new variety where 13 episodes are covered in just 2 disks. It helps me because it gives me decent chunks of series to watch (I can watch half a disk (3 eps - about an hour) or a full disk (6/7 eps - about 2 hours)) but I don't tend to suffer series fatigue where I become disinterested because I've watched 9 episodes on a row or similar.
One of the things I found with crunchyroll is I get a bit lost if I try to watch multiple series a single episode at a time each week. Instead, I found it better to watch a bunch of eps of 1 series 1 week, then a bunch of another series the next week and so on and so forth until I get back the first series where there's now a new stack of episodes to watch.
Of course I've let crunchyroll slip. I obviously had the period where I didn't have a shower and I talked at the time about how that poxed me up. I then broke my scanner lid and while I could have limped on it was horribly annoying to use, so I just bought another one.
I'm therefore well behind with the latest stuff. Indeed, I'm still behind with last season and have barely registered the new season stuff. One thing I have noticed is that a whole bunch of shows that were supposedly picked up by Anime-on-Demand with a big "we've got these shows, they'll start NEXT WEEK" seems to have resulted in nothing. Certainly none of the shows they announced have started and that announcement was at least a month ago.
I mean, I don't fundamentally mind the delay, but if you announce they'll start NEXT WEEK and a month later they're nowhere in sight, that's a bit off.
And it doesn't help that the AOD site seems to be crushingly slow just recently. I know they're part of ANN and ANN had horrible hosting troubles and since they came back they've been really poor too, but it's really obviously a bad thing when you're tying to stream content.
I was actually intending to do some rounds up of the actual shows I've watched, but I guess this is already super long. I actually think I'm going to try to sit down and do a bunch of reviews at the weekend - I've now loads of long reviews that I should do and loads of short reviews too.
I was actually think I should come up with a plan for my websites. I can't possibly afford to get hosting for them at the moment, but it would be quite nice to have a fully 'working' site ready to go when I do eventually decide to bring them back.
I've actually been watching loads recently, and most of it has been DVDs. I could probably have watched more, but not a lot more. And to be fair, it has been part of the reason I've not done so much scanning or some other bits - there are only a finite number of hours in the week, after all.
One thing I did try to do was re-arrange my shelves in order to make it easy to access the stuff I think I should watch first. This didn't really work properly as my shelves have so much stuff on them there's two layers of stuff - one in front of the other. I therefore couldn't decide whether I should do it in terms of height (top shelf is to watch first, second next, etc) or depth (stuff in front is to watch first). In the end it was a bit of a mix of both.
What made this more confusing is I decided to try to include both books and non-anime DVDs in the mix as well. When you factor in that I've got two sets of shelves of very different dimensions it all proved too much for my brain and the short amount of time I'd allowed to do it, so really it's just a mess now. I think I may have another go and take a slightly different approach.
What I have hit upon s a strategy for watching stuff. Basically what I've done is picked out a couple of series and stacked them up right next to my DVD player. The key innovation is that I watch 1 DVD from series 1, then 1 from series 2, then back to series 1, then back to series 2.
I've also blended together half and full seasons. This is really made possible by the fact that most of the series I've got are of the new variety where 13 episodes are covered in just 2 disks. It helps me because it gives me decent chunks of series to watch (I can watch half a disk (3 eps - about an hour) or a full disk (6/7 eps - about 2 hours)) but I don't tend to suffer series fatigue where I become disinterested because I've watched 9 episodes on a row or similar.
One of the things I found with crunchyroll is I get a bit lost if I try to watch multiple series a single episode at a time each week. Instead, I found it better to watch a bunch of eps of 1 series 1 week, then a bunch of another series the next week and so on and so forth until I get back the first series where there's now a new stack of episodes to watch.
Of course I've let crunchyroll slip. I obviously had the period where I didn't have a shower and I talked at the time about how that poxed me up. I then broke my scanner lid and while I could have limped on it was horribly annoying to use, so I just bought another one.
I'm therefore well behind with the latest stuff. Indeed, I'm still behind with last season and have barely registered the new season stuff. One thing I have noticed is that a whole bunch of shows that were supposedly picked up by Anime-on-Demand with a big "we've got these shows, they'll start NEXT WEEK" seems to have resulted in nothing. Certainly none of the shows they announced have started and that announcement was at least a month ago.
I mean, I don't fundamentally mind the delay, but if you announce they'll start NEXT WEEK and a month later they're nowhere in sight, that's a bit off.
And it doesn't help that the AOD site seems to be crushingly slow just recently. I know they're part of ANN and ANN had horrible hosting troubles and since they came back they've been really poor too, but it's really obviously a bad thing when you're tying to stream content.
I was actually intending to do some rounds up of the actual shows I've watched, but I guess this is already super long. I actually think I'm going to try to sit down and do a bunch of reviews at the weekend - I've now loads of long reviews that I should do and loads of short reviews too.
I was actually think I should come up with a plan for my websites. I can't possibly afford to get hosting for them at the moment, but it would be quite nice to have a fully 'working' site ready to go when I do eventually decide to bring them back.
Monday, 22 August 2011
what a week
Last week was bonkers.
It actually started the week before, and I ended up working most of the Saturday, just in order to get everything done in time. See, during last week I had several meetings that meant I effectively 'lost' one and a half days.
Also, quite a lot of the stuff I do is rather time critical, so I often end up in situations where three different things are all due on the same day, or thing x has to be done for Monday or we miss the proverbial boat. It was an example of the latter that meant I had to come in on the Saturday - I just had to do something before Monday and there was no chance of me doing it before the weekend.
I've also tried to kick off a new schedule for my weekends, as I've started doing my own washing, as I think I mentioned before.
Basically, what I've tried to do is make it so that I have one weekend where I do virtually everything and then the next weekend I do virtually nothing. The idea is that I'll align the virtually nothing weekends with the Grand Prixs.
This of course was before the news that the BBC will only be showing a chopped down version of the GPs next year, but it still remains as an idea. Even when we move out of the GP season I think I'll still keep it going as it means I can use the non-doing stuff weekend to really focus on some other activity.
Anyway, the point of the above is that it was a non-doing stuff weekend where I came in, so it didn't pox me up too much. What it did mean was that on Sunday I was knackered and did virtually nothing. I didn't even go out for a walk in the afternoon. I also ate pretty badly on the Saturday, probably as a comforting thing.
The week went okay - I had loads to do, but I think the Saturday helped a lot as I didn't have to stay late. Also, we got an extension on one of the things I was doing, so Friday became much less of a panic and allowed me to finish off a bunch of other stuff that needed doing.
This week looks much calmer and emphasises the point, really - last week bonkers busy, this week, not so much. I actually really wish I worked flexi at times like this - sacrificing weekends and working long weeks wouldn't be so bad if I knew I could do fewer hours when it's quiet or have extra days off.
It actually started the week before, and I ended up working most of the Saturday, just in order to get everything done in time. See, during last week I had several meetings that meant I effectively 'lost' one and a half days.
Also, quite a lot of the stuff I do is rather time critical, so I often end up in situations where three different things are all due on the same day, or thing x has to be done for Monday or we miss the proverbial boat. It was an example of the latter that meant I had to come in on the Saturday - I just had to do something before Monday and there was no chance of me doing it before the weekend.
I've also tried to kick off a new schedule for my weekends, as I've started doing my own washing, as I think I mentioned before.
Basically, what I've tried to do is make it so that I have one weekend where I do virtually everything and then the next weekend I do virtually nothing. The idea is that I'll align the virtually nothing weekends with the Grand Prixs.
This of course was before the news that the BBC will only be showing a chopped down version of the GPs next year, but it still remains as an idea. Even when we move out of the GP season I think I'll still keep it going as it means I can use the non-doing stuff weekend to really focus on some other activity.
Anyway, the point of the above is that it was a non-doing stuff weekend where I came in, so it didn't pox me up too much. What it did mean was that on Sunday I was knackered and did virtually nothing. I didn't even go out for a walk in the afternoon. I also ate pretty badly on the Saturday, probably as a comforting thing.
The week went okay - I had loads to do, but I think the Saturday helped a lot as I didn't have to stay late. Also, we got an extension on one of the things I was doing, so Friday became much less of a panic and allowed me to finish off a bunch of other stuff that needed doing.
This week looks much calmer and emphasises the point, really - last week bonkers busy, this week, not so much. I actually really wish I worked flexi at times like this - sacrificing weekends and working long weeks wouldn't be so bad if I knew I could do fewer hours when it's quiet or have extra days off.
Friday, 19 August 2011
battle royale
was out at meeting all day yesterday, but here's another review I had 'stacked up'.
When I do these reviews I often like to take a look at see what the critical reaction was. I don't do that in order to parrot back a similar view, it's more to see if people also enjoyed/disliked it or if my views are different.
But I also like to look up some of the history/background, partly so I sound more knowledgeable, but also so I don't make any boo-boos.
In the case of Battle Royale I already knew it was based on a book, but didn't really know how close an adaptation it was or anything like that. It turns out that it's pretty faithful, especially in terms of the killing and the end, but a couple of the things that have change actually represent things that I always had problems with.
I've seen Battle Royale before and I'm not entirely sure why it was on my rental list, but there you go. One thing I wasn't expecting was how poor a DVD it was. It actually had what are known as hard subs (it's Japanese, if you didn't know) - the subtitles are actually printed on the negative, like they would have been at the cinema or on a VHS tape.
In actual fact, I'm pretty sure it's simply a direct port from a VHS copy to DVD - it certainly doesn't look like a very high quality transfer. Although, interestingly, the film itself doesn't really appear to have aged that much - it still looks fairly contemporary. The effects are also pretty good still - I know it was an early user of digital blood splatter, and it still looks pretty good.
Anyway, the real point is that I discovered that one of the things about the film I always had a problem with - the set-up - was actually something that was changed from the book.
The book is set in a dystopian authoritarian "Greater Asian Empire" and the idea is that the Battle Royale itself, where a class of kids is forced to fight each other to the death, is used to keep the population cowed and fearful. It's done under the excuse of a military testing thing, but that's its real purpose - instilling fear of the authorities in the population.
This makes sense.
In the film we get an set up that civilisation went to rats and the youth of the day were hyper-rebellious, so the government passed this Battle Royale act where the class that's picked is a really bad one, full of trouble makers. It could make sense, except it's full of holes.
If you have something like that and it's meant to be acting as a deterrent, then you have to tell people about it. The point of having a death penalty, it's exponents argue, is that if people know they will be killed for committing a crime, they won't do it.
Trouble is, the kids in the film haven't a clue about it - it has to be explained to them and they've never heard of it.
Also, this isn't surprising, as it doesn't appear to be televised or anything. But then none of their parents or teachers have ever apparently told them about it either. Indeed, when their teacher objects, something nasty happens to him... er, why?
And they have a real hard time showing these kids are a truly bad lot - the bits of them acting like real delinquents are pretty widely spaced and for the most part they seem okay. Although I guess some of that is cultural, my guess is it's because the original kids in the book were just ordinary kids and those bits have been ported across, without adjusting them to make them all arseholes.
Apart from the fundamental set-up flaws, the film itself holds up well, as I say. Something of the acting is a bit OTT, but that's fairly common in Japanese cinema, but the story of the kids on the island works, just I wish they'd stayed with the original version f how and why they got there.
When I do these reviews I often like to take a look at see what the critical reaction was. I don't do that in order to parrot back a similar view, it's more to see if people also enjoyed/disliked it or if my views are different.
But I also like to look up some of the history/background, partly so I sound more knowledgeable, but also so I don't make any boo-boos.
In the case of Battle Royale I already knew it was based on a book, but didn't really know how close an adaptation it was or anything like that. It turns out that it's pretty faithful, especially in terms of the killing and the end, but a couple of the things that have change actually represent things that I always had problems with.
I've seen Battle Royale before and I'm not entirely sure why it was on my rental list, but there you go. One thing I wasn't expecting was how poor a DVD it was. It actually had what are known as hard subs (it's Japanese, if you didn't know) - the subtitles are actually printed on the negative, like they would have been at the cinema or on a VHS tape.
In actual fact, I'm pretty sure it's simply a direct port from a VHS copy to DVD - it certainly doesn't look like a very high quality transfer. Although, interestingly, the film itself doesn't really appear to have aged that much - it still looks fairly contemporary. The effects are also pretty good still - I know it was an early user of digital blood splatter, and it still looks pretty good.
Anyway, the real point is that I discovered that one of the things about the film I always had a problem with - the set-up - was actually something that was changed from the book.
The book is set in a dystopian authoritarian "Greater Asian Empire" and the idea is that the Battle Royale itself, where a class of kids is forced to fight each other to the death, is used to keep the population cowed and fearful. It's done under the excuse of a military testing thing, but that's its real purpose - instilling fear of the authorities in the population.
This makes sense.
In the film we get an set up that civilisation went to rats and the youth of the day were hyper-rebellious, so the government passed this Battle Royale act where the class that's picked is a really bad one, full of trouble makers. It could make sense, except it's full of holes.
If you have something like that and it's meant to be acting as a deterrent, then you have to tell people about it. The point of having a death penalty, it's exponents argue, is that if people know they will be killed for committing a crime, they won't do it.
Trouble is, the kids in the film haven't a clue about it - it has to be explained to them and they've never heard of it.
Also, this isn't surprising, as it doesn't appear to be televised or anything. But then none of their parents or teachers have ever apparently told them about it either. Indeed, when their teacher objects, something nasty happens to him... er, why?
And they have a real hard time showing these kids are a truly bad lot - the bits of them acting like real delinquents are pretty widely spaced and for the most part they seem okay. Although I guess some of that is cultural, my guess is it's because the original kids in the book were just ordinary kids and those bits have been ported across, without adjusting them to make them all arseholes.
Apart from the fundamental set-up flaws, the film itself holds up well, as I say. Something of the acting is a bit OTT, but that's fairly common in Japanese cinema, but the story of the kids on the island works, just I wish they'd stayed with the original version f how and why they got there.
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
burke and hare
You know, I have to say I found Burke and Hare more than a little disappointing.
It's difficult to really pin it down to one single thing, but if I was forced to do so it would be that it just wasn't funny enough. Comedy, of course, is a very subjective thing, but generally I like black comedy's, which this is - it could hardly be anything else, given its subject matter of two people murdering to feed the need for cadavers for medical training purposes.
There are of course many changes and omissions to the actual story. For example, some of the more unpalatable murdering of children is totally excised.
Additions include threads being added involving something akin to organised crime and the production of a play. I have to say, many of these, to me, seemed a little un-necessary and rather like the writer scrabbling around to add in more traditional narrative elements or to give elements of redemption to the characters, who were actually thoroughly unpleasant.
They also weren't particularly well developed, with the organised crime bit being rather slap-dash and not making a lot of sense. And I didn't get the whole photographing of corpses idea - why was that useful? And why, wanting to avoid spoilers, did the bit at the end happen, when they do what they do to the photos?
I also have to say that the Bill Bailey role of opening and closing narration felt a little ham-fisted to me. There were a few nice gags in his bits, but they felt very artificial and the into especially was something of an info dump, which is never a good way to start a film.
But as I say, the real failure was the humour. I dunno, it seemed to not want to tread too far was the problem. So it's a black comedy and you expect to be laughing at things that aren't really pleasant, yet it seemed to shy away from really going for it. So there seemed to be a lot of bits where they cut away or skipped ahead when really showing more of it and/or making the murders much more farcical would have given greater laughs.
With this being a John Landis film I was expecting it to be a little more gory too, and for laughs to come from that, but, while there were some gory bits, they weren't really played for laughs much and there weren't as many as I was expecting.
It also didn't really seem to capitalise on some of the key bits. So "Burking" is a name that's been given to how they murdered people - suffocating and smothering them, yet most of the people we see being killed aren't really killed like that. We also don't really see them kill that many people.
It all just felt like a bit of a damp squib, which was a shame.
The DVD also lacked any extras at all - there were only trailers for other films.
It's difficult to really pin it down to one single thing, but if I was forced to do so it would be that it just wasn't funny enough. Comedy, of course, is a very subjective thing, but generally I like black comedy's, which this is - it could hardly be anything else, given its subject matter of two people murdering to feed the need for cadavers for medical training purposes.
There are of course many changes and omissions to the actual story. For example, some of the more unpalatable murdering of children is totally excised.
Additions include threads being added involving something akin to organised crime and the production of a play. I have to say, many of these, to me, seemed a little un-necessary and rather like the writer scrabbling around to add in more traditional narrative elements or to give elements of redemption to the characters, who were actually thoroughly unpleasant.
They also weren't particularly well developed, with the organised crime bit being rather slap-dash and not making a lot of sense. And I didn't get the whole photographing of corpses idea - why was that useful? And why, wanting to avoid spoilers, did the bit at the end happen, when they do what they do to the photos?
I also have to say that the Bill Bailey role of opening and closing narration felt a little ham-fisted to me. There were a few nice gags in his bits, but they felt very artificial and the into especially was something of an info dump, which is never a good way to start a film.
But as I say, the real failure was the humour. I dunno, it seemed to not want to tread too far was the problem. So it's a black comedy and you expect to be laughing at things that aren't really pleasant, yet it seemed to shy away from really going for it. So there seemed to be a lot of bits where they cut away or skipped ahead when really showing more of it and/or making the murders much more farcical would have given greater laughs.
With this being a John Landis film I was expecting it to be a little more gory too, and for laughs to come from that, but, while there were some gory bits, they weren't really played for laughs much and there weren't as many as I was expecting.
It also didn't really seem to capitalise on some of the key bits. So "Burking" is a name that's been given to how they murdered people - suffocating and smothering them, yet most of the people we see being killed aren't really killed like that. We also don't really see them kill that many people.
It all just felt like a bit of a damp squib, which was a shame.
The DVD also lacked any extras at all - there were only trailers for other films.
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
yesterday
all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it seems as though they're here to stay.
I didn't post yesterday mainly through forgetting, but it was forgetting that was almost entirely due to the fact I've been really busy with work.
I actually came in on Saturday and was here for the best part of 4 hours. It was pretty much unavoidable, but not very much fun.
To be frank, I'm also not really going to have the time to post much this week at all. What I'll probably do is post some of the small reviews I've written but have been 'saving up' for just such an occasion as this.
I didn't post yesterday mainly through forgetting, but it was forgetting that was almost entirely due to the fact I've been really busy with work.
I actually came in on Saturday and was here for the best part of 4 hours. It was pretty much unavoidable, but not very much fun.
To be frank, I'm also not really going to have the time to post much this week at all. What I'll probably do is post some of the small reviews I've written but have been 'saving up' for just such an occasion as this.
Friday, 12 August 2011
flat line
No change in my weight last week.
This was a little disappointing, but then I'd forgotten I was expecting to go out for a meal, so that was a load of calories I wasn't otherwise compensating for, but also I... well, I was going to say cocked up, but that's not the right phrase. I did actually make the error I made deliberately, it's just I didn't think it was an error at the time.
Basically, I decided to try to mix my eating schedule and plans up a little bit. In particular, I wanted to try doing things on different days, as I've grown bored of my eating patterns. Unfortunately I made some poor choices and, in particular, ended up buying/making more bread than I needed.
As such, I basically had to eat some higher calorie meals more often than I should have done, so what I'm saying is the disappointment in a lack of weight change really stems from poor planning.
This week, I'll probably blame it on the fact that several people at work brought in cakes, but the real reason is I seem to have lost any real impetus. I'm still walking and so I'm continuing with the exercise, it's just that the good diet days seem to keep being balanced by days where I go off the rails a bit.
This became very apparent the other week when I started looking at the plans for the next chunk of the diet, which will take me up to the end of the year. Basically across this whole last period of about 4 months I've basically only lost about a stone. Now that's not a thing to be sniffed at, it's just that if you look at the graph of my weight, it went down at the beginning, but then has bimbled around the same sort of value for a while.
I think a big part of the problem has been my trips to Sainsbury's mid-week. When it came summer I decided to try varying my diet by eating things like strawberries and melon instead, but the problem has been I've then also almost always bought something really bad too. My particular Achilles heal being things from the bakery section. What I've effectively been doing is turning the mid-week thing into something like I used to do before I went on the diet.
The 'saving grace' is that otherwise my diet has been relatively good, so I'm not back to the old days where I gain weight, but these naughty things I buy have basically cancelled the good days out.
What makes it slightly more annoying (and slightly perverse) is that I've gone right off salad. Salad was a godsend previously as I could use it at the weekend to bulk out meals a bit without hugely increasing the calories. Also, I could snack on carrots and things like that.
But I think I've grown really bored of it, so there's even more impetus for me to find something different to eat, and there's not much you can replace it with. As I say, that's particularly weird because of course summer is when you traditionally eat salad, and I've grown bored of it because I've eaten it all through winter!
Which feeds into what I was saying above - my trying to mix up the eating schedule a bit, which resulted in me buying a bunch of baked potatoes (they were on special). My theory was to have 1 potato and half a tin of beans/chilli. Calories this was okay and would work quite well. Trouble was, because they were on special I ended up with what turned out to be loads and so had to have them during the week, and the only way I could do that and not end up throwing them away was double up (2 spuds and a full tin) which was therefore a whole load of calories.
As the 7 Ps would have it - Proper Prior Planning and Preparation Prevent Piss Poor Performance.
This was a little disappointing, but then I'd forgotten I was expecting to go out for a meal, so that was a load of calories I wasn't otherwise compensating for, but also I... well, I was going to say cocked up, but that's not the right phrase. I did actually make the error I made deliberately, it's just I didn't think it was an error at the time.
Basically, I decided to try to mix my eating schedule and plans up a little bit. In particular, I wanted to try doing things on different days, as I've grown bored of my eating patterns. Unfortunately I made some poor choices and, in particular, ended up buying/making more bread than I needed.
As such, I basically had to eat some higher calorie meals more often than I should have done, so what I'm saying is the disappointment in a lack of weight change really stems from poor planning.
This week, I'll probably blame it on the fact that several people at work brought in cakes, but the real reason is I seem to have lost any real impetus. I'm still walking and so I'm continuing with the exercise, it's just that the good diet days seem to keep being balanced by days where I go off the rails a bit.
This became very apparent the other week when I started looking at the plans for the next chunk of the diet, which will take me up to the end of the year. Basically across this whole last period of about 4 months I've basically only lost about a stone. Now that's not a thing to be sniffed at, it's just that if you look at the graph of my weight, it went down at the beginning, but then has bimbled around the same sort of value for a while.
I think a big part of the problem has been my trips to Sainsbury's mid-week. When it came summer I decided to try varying my diet by eating things like strawberries and melon instead, but the problem has been I've then also almost always bought something really bad too. My particular Achilles heal being things from the bakery section. What I've effectively been doing is turning the mid-week thing into something like I used to do before I went on the diet.
The 'saving grace' is that otherwise my diet has been relatively good, so I'm not back to the old days where I gain weight, but these naughty things I buy have basically cancelled the good days out.
What makes it slightly more annoying (and slightly perverse) is that I've gone right off salad. Salad was a godsend previously as I could use it at the weekend to bulk out meals a bit without hugely increasing the calories. Also, I could snack on carrots and things like that.
But I think I've grown really bored of it, so there's even more impetus for me to find something different to eat, and there's not much you can replace it with. As I say, that's particularly weird because of course summer is when you traditionally eat salad, and I've grown bored of it because I've eaten it all through winter!
Which feeds into what I was saying above - my trying to mix up the eating schedule a bit, which resulted in me buying a bunch of baked potatoes (they were on special). My theory was to have 1 potato and half a tin of beans/chilli. Calories this was okay and would work quite well. Trouble was, because they were on special I ended up with what turned out to be loads and so had to have them during the week, and the only way I could do that and not end up throwing them away was double up (2 spuds and a full tin) which was therefore a whole load of calories.
As the 7 Ps would have it - Proper Prior Planning and Preparation Prevent Piss Poor Performance.
Thursday, 11 August 2011
broke my scanner
The other week I mentioned about how F1 is on its summer break.
A particular hope I had is/was that I would be able to use this increase in spare time to get a bit of scanning done. As an added 'bonus' I actually dropped a couple of TV shows that hadn't really turned out to be as interesting as I'd hoped.
These were "The Hour" which I'd thought was going to be about the founding of a TV show back in the 50s at the BBC, but seemed to be intent on becoming a conspiracy thriller. This might have been okay, but didn't really appeal, to be frank.
The other was The Killing, which was also okay, but didn't really grab me. It was a murder mystery thing, but was taking the approach of having the one murder that was heavily investigated across the whole length of the show. This would probably be okay, but I have so say it did seem to be trying overly hard to throw lots of red herrings at you. Also, the surrounding elements felt a bit tired to me - political campaign and cop obsessed with their job over their life... yawn.
Anyway, I dutifully sat down to do a bit of scanning last week... and promptly broke my scanner :/.
Id' actually broken it a while back - basically, I'd put a crack in the hinge that you use to lift up the lid for the scanner. The lid had been listing badly as a result for ages, and I guess it chose that day to finally make its way all the way through and break off.
The bit that had broken off was itself not too bad a problem, but, and this is a bit difficult to explain, with it missing it made the whole process of scanning really difficult.
Basically, I was having to slot the lid back into place every time I put the lid down, which was difficult to get right. Also, it made the pages prone to slipping around once I'd put it on, meaning I was missing bits of the pages and having to re-adjust.
You may think why not scan without it, well I tried that too. The real problem is you need some way of evenly applying pressure to the page so it all sits totally flat on the bed of the scanner. If it doesn't you get bits out of focus and distortion effects. The scanner lid generally has a nice, flat, padded surface designed for the job.
Eventually I tried to break the other bit of the hinge off so I could use it and this worked better, but I also ordered a new scanner as it's still not very efficient.
This was particularly annoying, given the point I made the other day about how efficient I was at the weekend - I could have gotten loads down, but it was only possible to do a little bit.
A particular hope I had is/was that I would be able to use this increase in spare time to get a bit of scanning done. As an added 'bonus' I actually dropped a couple of TV shows that hadn't really turned out to be as interesting as I'd hoped.
These were "The Hour" which I'd thought was going to be about the founding of a TV show back in the 50s at the BBC, but seemed to be intent on becoming a conspiracy thriller. This might have been okay, but didn't really appeal, to be frank.
The other was The Killing, which was also okay, but didn't really grab me. It was a murder mystery thing, but was taking the approach of having the one murder that was heavily investigated across the whole length of the show. This would probably be okay, but I have so say it did seem to be trying overly hard to throw lots of red herrings at you. Also, the surrounding elements felt a bit tired to me - political campaign and cop obsessed with their job over their life... yawn.
Anyway, I dutifully sat down to do a bit of scanning last week... and promptly broke my scanner :/.
Id' actually broken it a while back - basically, I'd put a crack in the hinge that you use to lift up the lid for the scanner. The lid had been listing badly as a result for ages, and I guess it chose that day to finally make its way all the way through and break off.
The bit that had broken off was itself not too bad a problem, but, and this is a bit difficult to explain, with it missing it made the whole process of scanning really difficult.
Basically, I was having to slot the lid back into place every time I put the lid down, which was difficult to get right. Also, it made the pages prone to slipping around once I'd put it on, meaning I was missing bits of the pages and having to re-adjust.
You may think why not scan without it, well I tried that too. The real problem is you need some way of evenly applying pressure to the page so it all sits totally flat on the bed of the scanner. If it doesn't you get bits out of focus and distortion effects. The scanner lid generally has a nice, flat, padded surface designed for the job.
Eventually I tried to break the other bit of the hinge off so I could use it and this worked better, but I also ordered a new scanner as it's still not very efficient.
This was particularly annoying, given the point I made the other day about how efficient I was at the weekend - I could have gotten loads down, but it was only possible to do a little bit.
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
the green hornet
I have to confess I know next to nothing about the Green Hornet.
I've seen Dragon - the Bruce Lee story, so I know there was a TV series and that Lee played Kato, the martial artist that kicked bad guy ass, but apart from that, nothing. Oh, and it was obviously set in the 60s.
I'm also vaguely aware of Seth Rogan as a comedy actor. He was in the somewhat underrated Zac and Miri Make a Porno, but I can't say I've followed his career with any particular interest.
However, despite knowing nothing and seeing some non-to-positive reviews, I quite enjoyed the film. I think, however, that it could have been a lot smoother.
Mainly, I think the problem was that the original wasn't as obviously comedic as they'd intended it to be. I think they managed to hit the right level of action and they managed to get the more subtle/thematic gags down well, but what they didn't get was the more instantaneous humour.
Basically, as a bit of a film nerd I'm reasonably good at spotting ADR. ADR stands for Automated Dialogue Replacement, and is basically intended for overdubbing replacement lines onto a film, usually because the sound was rubbish due to equipment failures or because, say, there's a wind machine drowning everything out.
However, you can also use it to add lines (which is why it's also known as Additional Dialogue Recording) and the film is absolutely crammed with it. Now to be fair, it wasn't until watching the commentary that it was confirmed that the ADR was deliberate and was used to insert more gags, where they basically describe it as a god send. But the point is that has to be a worrying sign, if you're sticking gags over the top of loads things in order to boost the laughs.
As I say, the problem, I think, was they made an action movie with some humorous ideas and themes, but then realised that people don't tend to laugh out loud at humorous themes - they laugh at jokes.
And the jokes they've added are generally good; the action movie with humorous themes they made was quite good, it's just the way the first has been layered onto the second makes things clumsy and in a quite jarring way, though as I say, that may be because I'm a bit of a cinefile.
It also didn't help that some of the thematic humour they're going for undermines the film. For example, they try to flip on the head the idea of having a charismatic and memorable villain (your hero is only as good as your villain) - here he's a bit non-descript and while they do make mileage of that, it still fundamentally undermines the film. They also make a good fist of flipping the idea that the women is just eye-candy / a love interest for the hero, yet she still appears wrapped in a towel after a bath and dressed in her skimpys.
I dunno - it all just felt like it was a collection of some good ideas and some good action scenes (There's an odd tendency to really focus on the deaths of the villains, given the rating. Not in a gory way, the camera just seems to try to make sure to get the deaths full screen with a little pause. I think it's trying to make a point, but it just across as odd - especially when some of the deaths are a bit random/forced.) but the rest of the script could have done with going through a few more drafts.
I've seen Dragon - the Bruce Lee story, so I know there was a TV series and that Lee played Kato, the martial artist that kicked bad guy ass, but apart from that, nothing. Oh, and it was obviously set in the 60s.
I'm also vaguely aware of Seth Rogan as a comedy actor. He was in the somewhat underrated Zac and Miri Make a Porno, but I can't say I've followed his career with any particular interest.
However, despite knowing nothing and seeing some non-to-positive reviews, I quite enjoyed the film. I think, however, that it could have been a lot smoother.
Mainly, I think the problem was that the original wasn't as obviously comedic as they'd intended it to be. I think they managed to hit the right level of action and they managed to get the more subtle/thematic gags down well, but what they didn't get was the more instantaneous humour.
Basically, as a bit of a film nerd I'm reasonably good at spotting ADR. ADR stands for Automated Dialogue Replacement, and is basically intended for overdubbing replacement lines onto a film, usually because the sound was rubbish due to equipment failures or because, say, there's a wind machine drowning everything out.
However, you can also use it to add lines (which is why it's also known as Additional Dialogue Recording) and the film is absolutely crammed with it. Now to be fair, it wasn't until watching the commentary that it was confirmed that the ADR was deliberate and was used to insert more gags, where they basically describe it as a god send. But the point is that has to be a worrying sign, if you're sticking gags over the top of loads things in order to boost the laughs.
As I say, the problem, I think, was they made an action movie with some humorous ideas and themes, but then realised that people don't tend to laugh out loud at humorous themes - they laugh at jokes.
And the jokes they've added are generally good; the action movie with humorous themes they made was quite good, it's just the way the first has been layered onto the second makes things clumsy and in a quite jarring way, though as I say, that may be because I'm a bit of a cinefile.
It also didn't help that some of the thematic humour they're going for undermines the film. For example, they try to flip on the head the idea of having a charismatic and memorable villain (your hero is only as good as your villain) - here he's a bit non-descript and while they do make mileage of that, it still fundamentally undermines the film. They also make a good fist of flipping the idea that the women is just eye-candy / a love interest for the hero, yet she still appears wrapped in a towel after a bath and dressed in her skimpys.
I dunno - it all just felt like it was a collection of some good ideas and some good action scenes (There's an odd tendency to really focus on the deaths of the villains, given the rating. Not in a gory way, the camera just seems to try to make sure to get the deaths full screen with a little pause. I think it's trying to make a point, but it just across as odd - especially when some of the deaths are a bit random/forced.) but the rest of the script could have done with going through a few more drafts.
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
way too efficient
I thought about including this in the smaller posts, but I think I need to explain in more depths.
Basically, last week I made a decision to start washing my own clothes. One of the big problems of my flat is, due to the size, I don't have a washing machine. Even if I did have a washing machine, I don't have any space to hang wet clothes up and a tumble dryer would be even less practical than a washing machine.
You can actually get washing machines that do dry as well, but that's beside the point - there's not the room to put it in and it's a rented places so it's not really my decision.
Now there is actually a laundrette at the end of the road, but the problem I had when I first moved in was find the combination of time and quietness of the laundrette to be able to use it. As with most laundrettes, the problem is available drying space.
A cycle in the medium sized washing machine takes about twenty minutes, but drying those clothes takes at least half an hour. This means clothes are finished quicker, but there are also lots more washing machines than there are dryers - by my reckoning 12 washing machines of varying capacity and 6 tumble dryers.
That obviously creates a bottle neck, which, as I say makes finding the ideal slot difficult - you can turn up and while it doesn't appear there are that many people, all the tumble dryers are in use and there's clearly a queue of people waiting to use them. A queue which is exacerbated by the fact people will have left the tumble dryers going while they go and do stuff, so their clothes may have dried, but you're hardly in a position to take some else's clothes out of the dryer.
I therefore started using the laundrette in the town where I work and getting them to do a service wash for me.
This would only cost me a couple of extra quid on top of the machine cost and had the obvious advantage that I wouldn't have to spend the time doing it myself or worrying about finding a slot, etc.
However, just recently I've noticed that the charges seemed to be creeping ever upwards.
When I first started using it I seem to recall it was only about £6 for a load, but recently I've been charged nearly £10 for a load. Clearly a part of this reflects thing like inflation - the charges for the use of the washing machine and dryer have gone up. Also, the service charge has obviously gone up - it started out as being £2 but is now more like £3.50.
Fundamentally I wouldn't have minded these, my real problem is they seem to operate the process in a way that maximises the cost.
As I mentioned above, most laundrettes have differently sized washing machines. The ones that are broadly equivalent to your machine at home are the smallest and cheapest, then the next largest, which tend to hold the equivalent of those upright machines you used to get are a little more expensive, then there's the huge ones that are quite expensive, but do take a huge load.
Basically I always give them my washing in a black bin bag and they clearly use the medium machine irrespective of how much I put in there. They also do exactly the same amount of drying, irrespective of load size.
I can tell this because if I give them two bags then the price only goes up by a relatively small amount and it's always the same amount - an amount that corresponds to switching to the big machine instead of the medium sized one.
Now while I wouldn't say they're ripping me off, clearly using a medium sized machine for a small load represents an un-necessary cost. Also, as I say, with all the prices going up, it's now regularly costing me about £10 and with the occasional double load I must spend the best part f £50 on washing a month!
Which is way too much, so I've decided to start to try to use the laundrette at the end of the road. My plan is to use it on alternate weeks (well, fitting in with the Grand Prix's), which means I'll probably always be using the big washing machines and spending a lot on drying as I'll always be doing big loads, but there is a hidden advantage.
Using the service wash it effectively means my clothes have a two week cycle, since they sit at the laundrette for a week. Well, now I'll get them instantly, so I may be able to cope with a smaller wardrobe, which is useful as I loose weight.
Also, because I now get up at stupid times in the morning, which I didn't used to do back then, I can go when the laundrette has only just opened, meaning I should be pretty much guaranteed access to the dryers.
You know I've just realised that this whole huge post has nothing to do with the title. What I was going to say was that I did the whole washing and drying thing and was therefore trying out my new schedule (it was also a flat cleaning weekend) and it got to mid afternoon and I realised I'd done everything on my to do list and was at a bit of a loss for something to do - I'd been way too efficient, where I'd been allowing plenty of time to get things done.
It's like with the washing from leaving my flat to getting back it was only 1h15mins where I'd been worried it might take the best part of two hours.
Basically, last week I made a decision to start washing my own clothes. One of the big problems of my flat is, due to the size, I don't have a washing machine. Even if I did have a washing machine, I don't have any space to hang wet clothes up and a tumble dryer would be even less practical than a washing machine.
You can actually get washing machines that do dry as well, but that's beside the point - there's not the room to put it in and it's a rented places so it's not really my decision.
Now there is actually a laundrette at the end of the road, but the problem I had when I first moved in was find the combination of time and quietness of the laundrette to be able to use it. As with most laundrettes, the problem is available drying space.
A cycle in the medium sized washing machine takes about twenty minutes, but drying those clothes takes at least half an hour. This means clothes are finished quicker, but there are also lots more washing machines than there are dryers - by my reckoning 12 washing machines of varying capacity and 6 tumble dryers.
That obviously creates a bottle neck, which, as I say makes finding the ideal slot difficult - you can turn up and while it doesn't appear there are that many people, all the tumble dryers are in use and there's clearly a queue of people waiting to use them. A queue which is exacerbated by the fact people will have left the tumble dryers going while they go and do stuff, so their clothes may have dried, but you're hardly in a position to take some else's clothes out of the dryer.
I therefore started using the laundrette in the town where I work and getting them to do a service wash for me.
This would only cost me a couple of extra quid on top of the machine cost and had the obvious advantage that I wouldn't have to spend the time doing it myself or worrying about finding a slot, etc.
However, just recently I've noticed that the charges seemed to be creeping ever upwards.
When I first started using it I seem to recall it was only about £6 for a load, but recently I've been charged nearly £10 for a load. Clearly a part of this reflects thing like inflation - the charges for the use of the washing machine and dryer have gone up. Also, the service charge has obviously gone up - it started out as being £2 but is now more like £3.50.
Fundamentally I wouldn't have minded these, my real problem is they seem to operate the process in a way that maximises the cost.
As I mentioned above, most laundrettes have differently sized washing machines. The ones that are broadly equivalent to your machine at home are the smallest and cheapest, then the next largest, which tend to hold the equivalent of those upright machines you used to get are a little more expensive, then there's the huge ones that are quite expensive, but do take a huge load.
Basically I always give them my washing in a black bin bag and they clearly use the medium machine irrespective of how much I put in there. They also do exactly the same amount of drying, irrespective of load size.
I can tell this because if I give them two bags then the price only goes up by a relatively small amount and it's always the same amount - an amount that corresponds to switching to the big machine instead of the medium sized one.
Now while I wouldn't say they're ripping me off, clearly using a medium sized machine for a small load represents an un-necessary cost. Also, as I say, with all the prices going up, it's now regularly costing me about £10 and with the occasional double load I must spend the best part f £50 on washing a month!
Which is way too much, so I've decided to start to try to use the laundrette at the end of the road. My plan is to use it on alternate weeks (well, fitting in with the Grand Prix's), which means I'll probably always be using the big washing machines and spending a lot on drying as I'll always be doing big loads, but there is a hidden advantage.
Using the service wash it effectively means my clothes have a two week cycle, since they sit at the laundrette for a week. Well, now I'll get them instantly, so I may be able to cope with a smaller wardrobe, which is useful as I loose weight.
Also, because I now get up at stupid times in the morning, which I didn't used to do back then, I can go when the laundrette has only just opened, meaning I should be pretty much guaranteed access to the dryers.
You know I've just realised that this whole huge post has nothing to do with the title. What I was going to say was that I did the whole washing and drying thing and was therefore trying out my new schedule (it was also a flat cleaning weekend) and it got to mid afternoon and I realised I'd done everything on my to do list and was at a bit of a loss for something to do - I'd been way too efficient, where I'd been allowing plenty of time to get things done.
It's like with the washing from leaving my flat to getting back it was only 1h15mins where I'd been worried it might take the best part of two hours.
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