It’s very hard to start an entry when you haven’t written anything for ages (but have thought of lots of things to write in the meantime – none of which you can remember now, of course).. A bit like writing a letter or making a phone call to a friend you haven’t seen for ages.
Anyway, here I am, back on the web (although I didn’t do very well at staying off it – next year’s Lent will have to be more concrete, I think). Got a shiny new update to my “to see” list – off goes I, Robot, Farenheit 9/11, Shrek 2 – my seen list has extra additions of 50 First Dates, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Mean Girls, and probably some others that I can’t remember just now.
Mean Girls was actually a much better film than I was expecting – I’d heard all about Lindsay Lohen in the press, but she absolutely nailed her part in that film. Her descent from innocent self-giving all-round lovely person to ‘mean girl’ was played to perfection. A lot of this is of course down to script, make-up, costume, and direction, but she wonderfully underplays the changes in mannerism with the increasingly rare flashes of self-awareness of what she was becoming. I guess she is very sympathetic as an actress – you can tell what she is feeling and going through, and are drawn into caring about her.
I found that film managed to be ironic without any of the characters actually being so, and at times it was quite poignant. Strangely perhaps it’s a fairly dark film, but liberal doses of saccharine and comedy keep it light without making it unbearably sweet. Linday’s dad is particularly good as a counterpoint to some of the heavier themes – after grounding her, she goes out to something or other, and when challenge by his wife says “Does grounded mean they’re not allowed to go out?”. Maybe you had to be there. Thankfully the producers also managed to resist the temptation of having teenage girlies jumping on their beds in knickers and bras (or worse gratutious changing room scenes) which seems to be almost obligatory these days. The same producers unfortunately couldn’t resist playing (almost all) the adults as wooden caricatures (see dad), but I guess it is Disney…
That said, the cast were, as a whole, pretty good – but there’s no doubt in my mind it was Lindsay Lohan who carried the film and made it work for me. So much so that I would seriously now consider watching Freaky Friday and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.
Anyway, quite enough for one day – will scavange the above as the basis of a review in the appropriate section of this ‘ere website.
Right, this’ll be my last entry for a while! As you know, Lent starts on Wednesday, and this year I’ve decided to give up the World Wide Web, which I reckon extends to me writing Letters from Leeds. I’ve tried out various things over the years – chocolate, tea and coffee; you know the score – and I always think it good to have a bit of variety. So no popping onto Amazon or eBay, or reading BBC News, or my daily Dilbert fix. No discussion forums, or competition sites. No online games…
Actually one necessary proviso is that of course sometimes I have to use the web for work – programming reference, conference information.. and indeed part of my job involves web services. Not to mention my course website that I have to maintain. However, it’s the emphasis that’s important – no web for entertainment or personal interest.
There are also two schools of thought over Lent. The observant will notice that Lent is inspired by Jesus’s 40 days of fasting in the wilderness. However, the time between Ash Wednesday and Good Friday is 6 and a bit weeks, i.e. 42 days plus. The answer is that technically Sunday’s aren’t a part of Lent, so you can eat your chocolate or whatever on Sunday, but not during the week (Sunday is a day of celebration, you see – not appropriate to fast). My brother-in-law holds to this school of thought, and will have sugar in his coffee until 6pm on a Sunday (he also follows the Old Testament thinking about when any given day starts/ends). The catch is that in this model, every Friday for the rest of the year is a day of fasting! I can’t help thinking this is cheating though, and giving something up for Lent means the whole hog!
A chance discussion with a work colleague has made me realise that it’s nearly a month since my last waffle! January was not such a good month; spent quite a lot of time off sick, and then of course had to try and catch up on the work front. Teaching has also kicked in now, which is fun but does take a lot of time and energy.
Nothing that exciting has happened either, or at least not that comes to mind. I’ve started playing on the ‘ol Playstation again – first time in many moons – and I’d forgotten how much fun it is. I’m splitting my time between playing Jak 3 and Socom II online, although I also have Hardware: Online Arena which I haven’t tried online yet. Ratchett and Clank 2 should be en route, care of eBay, and I’ve got my eye on R&C 3, which has online play. Need to save up some pennies first tho!
Should probably add that I upgraded my K700i firmware again; this time to R2AE033, and took advantage of the opportunity to flash it with an EU firmware (instead of Taiwan, which it came with). Naturally, you can’t do this via SonyEriccson’s online update service, but Davinci team‘s client did the trick nicely; did have to fork out just over 6 quid, but that’s ok.
Best of all, it’s got rid of the horrid **crrunch** noise that’s supposed to be a shutter. Just turn the ring volume down to 0, and the shutter noise goes away. It turns out that this is a function of ‘finalising’ the firmware upgrade, and not to do with the firmware version (this means you can also just do this without a firmware upgrade if you so desire).
The only downside is that it the process completely zaps the phone’s memory – all your settings, messages, music, pictures, phonebook, etc. get cleared. This was a shame as I hadn’t backed up some piccies I’d taken. Ah well – should’ve known better.
The new firmware feels a bit more responsive, and apparantly the battery life and bluetooth performance have improved, although I can’t say I’ve particularly noticed much change. Oh yes, and the camera software is meant to save less noisy images…
Had a realisation as I shaved this morning – on the 16th July I’m going to be in Cornwall. If the 16th July has no significance for you then you may as well skip reading the rest of this entry. 🙂
This date etched so firmly in my mind (and nearly my face) is of course the release date of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Price (aka. Harry Potter 6). I’ve pre-ordered on Amazon already, of course, but it’s going to be delivered up here, which is a fat lot of good if I’m in Cornwall. As I see it, this leaves me with 3 options; decide that I can live without the book for a week (yeah right), try and find a retailer down there, or get it delivered down there. This third one has the most appeal, limited only by the fact I’m not yet sure where I’ll be on that Saturday. Going to be generally staying with in-laws, but the exact logistics are not yet known.
Option 1 has half an appeal, but I can absolutely guarantee I’ll be spending at least some of that fortnight reading anyway, so it may as well be Harry Potter. As for option 2 – far too lazy!
As I was making my morning coffee, I was looking at the instant jars, and just thinking about the colours. Caf is usually red (or perhaps black), whereas decaf is usually green. Presumably this is a reflection on society’s attitude to caffeine – red for danger, green is safe! However if you think in terms of “stop” and “go”, it’s quite another story.
Anyway, it’s goodbye to 2004, and as usual it only seems like yesterday i was having to remember not to write 2003 on cheques. What an extraordinary year it was; the death of my Dad, birth of my son, got my PhD, ditched my filofax & film SLR for digital counterparts – obviously these vary in magnitude, but (for example) I’d run my life using a filofax for 11 years – nearly all my adulthood! Incidently, the Canon 300D is awesome.
If I’m honest I face 2005 with some trepidation. 2004 was jolly hard work, and the thought of another hard year… Still we can only look forward with hope, the days are getting longer again, Ben continues to grow and delight, and the house is so close to being done…
Incidently, the reason for the long gap between the last two entries is not laziness/busyness/apathy (for a change), but rather because we’re having our new kitchen fitted, which of course entails turning off the electrics, so I’ve been powering down my Linux server just in case the electrician chose that day to visit.
‘Course I needn’t have bothered, as workmen never worry too much about turning up when they claim they will, so in something like 2 weeks of keeping the server powered down, the sparky came once. Needless to say it’s an annoyance to have to power it down – it doesn’t perform any critical function on my network at home, but I do use it to handle DNS queries (as NTL’s are so ropey, plus I can then put fake names on all the machines on my local network), and I also tend to back-up my data onto it as well as onto DVD.
… but it is also how I manage my website – I have a local database which stores all my Letters from Leeds and reviews, etc, and I mirror my ISPs webserver, so I can test stuff works before I upload it. Of course, all my scripts are on this machine, so when it’s down I can’t fiddle with the website. I keep meaning to put a web front-end on it, but my setup works for me, and I’ve got other things to do with my time!
He’s been oh-so-close for a few weeks now, but he definitely managed several succesive leg and arm movements to get across the floor. I know that in real terms this is a pain the bottom, but it’s still exciting.
So that’s the weekend fitting stairgates, fireguards, plug covers, …
What a great film this is! I’m a big Pixar film fan in any case, and once again I felt like this film just nailed it. As always the animation is superb, cartoony enough so you’re never distracted into wondering if it’s “real” (although I do have to add that the volcanic island is breath-taking, and at times I did a double-take as to if it was really computer generated..) The characters are also very good, although I didn’t end up caring for Mr. Incredible and co. in quite the same way as I did for, say Nemo or Woody. But this is clearly a franchise scenario – expect Incredibles 2 any time soon – so I guess there’s a bit more space for character development yet. The story and script are just fab, absolutely spot on. That said, I wouldn’t come away quoting any one-liners; in many cases the comedy was visual (Elastigirl in particular is pure genius here – whoever thought of that super-trait needs promotion! I can’t say too much without spoiling, sadly) The only thing that surprised me about the film was how… well I’m torn between wanting to say “dark” and wanting to say “true”. People actually die in this film – usually quite violently – although not at all graphically. One sequence goes through a serious of super-heroes demising through mechanisms such as being sucked into a jet turbine (which, to be fair it is actually quite funny! I won’t say why it’s funny, find out for yourself). In another sequence, there’s the list of supers who have been killed by the baddies. Speaking of baddies, no end of these get killed, mainly through being blown up in their aircraft. In any other cartoon you’d expect them to miraculously escape harm (beyond being dazed), but this particular film established very early on that people actually get hurt – after all a significant premise is that people start sueing the supers because of injuries they sustained while being rescued. Don’t get me wrong, by no means is it blood and guts – for instance when the super is sucked into the turbine, the turbine is panned off-screen, just behind the super, who also suddenly disappears off screen, followed by a slightly off-screen explosion and an emergency alarm sound from the cockpit. The implication is inescapable, but not actually shown. I found surprisingly few ‘in-jokes’ too, perhaps I’m getting too old, but references to other films where obvious by their absence. The best example (non-example?) is at one point where the speedy little boy (“dash”) is being chased around a forest-type setting. A nod at Return of the Jedi is screaming to be made, but none particularly is. I guess the whole sequence/concept is one big nod – a low level rush through tree trunks – but I felt the irony was lacking, somehow. Speaking of Star Wars, they also had the trailer for Episode III, which I already watched on da ol’ PC, but is so much better on the big screen. In summary, another hit from Pixar. Kids will love it (although it might lead to conversations about death – “Mummy, what happened to that person when they got sucked into a jet turbine?”), and adults should enjoy it too. Can’t wait for the next one. Seen at Ster Century, Leeds
