Feeling depressed, run down and useless. Had tonnes of things to get done over the weekend (including writing a reply to an email from Ali), and did none of them. Just want to sleep for three or maybe four weeks.
Bah.
Bah
I’ve got the blues Jen!
Category: Life and Associated Annoyances
Bah!
Camera problems.
Went to the climate rally today, took dozens of photos and when I got home found there were only nine on the camera.
I hope I just hit a wrong button and erased them all halfway through, rather than the camera going nuts and erasing them all itself 🙁
Casting out Ghosts
Yes, it’s one of those “who would play so-and-so” entries…
Woke up this morning intending to have a shower, shave, put a load of washing on and get into some much needed cleaning of the apartment. All of these aims have been frustrated by the revelation that I have no water.
There’s a lot of banging coming from the apartment next door, so I suspect they’re doing bathroom renovations and have managed to switch off my water along with their own. I’m tempted to head out to the… what do you call the place where all the pipes and taps are? A tap cupboard? That’ll have to do. I’m tempted to head out to the tap cupboard and start messing around in the hopes of restoring my water while leaving theirs off, but I’d probably screw up and spray scalding steam all over the renovators – not that that’s a completely unappealing idea in my current waterless mood.
Anyway, of late I’ve been indulging in my Imperial Guard fetish (oh man, that doesn’t sound good does it :)) by reading my way through Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series. They’re bloody good reads (often summarised as Sharpe in space) and I’ve caught up all the way to Blood Pact, which I will commence upon as soon as Amazon gets its act together and actually delivers it.
When reading a sprawling novel series with a cast of dozens I generally find it useful to consider who I’d cast if I had an unlimited budget to produce a movie or TV series of it. This helps me keep everyone straight in my head. I’ve done this with some of the Ghosts, and – since this is my blog, I can do what I like with it and I’ve got nothing better to do while waiting for the water to be reconnected – I thought I’d list them here.
(I should note that this list is rather strongly influenced by one that I stumbled across online, lest anyone accuse me of casting decision plagiarism. I’d link to it if I could find it again)
Colonel-Commisar Ibram Gaunt: Daniel Craig. As far as I’m concerned Daniel Craig is Gaunt, which makes the current crop of James Bond films rather odd viewing 🙂
Major Elim Rawne: Eric Bana. I think he could easily pull off the combination of charisma and menace required for Rawne.
Master Sniper Hlaine ‘Mad’ Larkin: Hugh Laurie. Not an obvious choice but I reckon Laurie would make a really impressive Larkin. Everyone thinks of him as House of course, and as far as personality goes you couldn’t get much further apart than the domineering doctor and the mentally vulnerable sniper, but Laurie is such a gifted actor that I think he could do it, and do it well. You’d just need to give him a different accent (which you’d be doing anyway) and haircut so everyone doesn’t think “House!” any time he appears on screen.
Sergeant Agun Soric: Bob Hoskins. Another casting choice that just seems to work for me. Hoskins is Soric.
Chief Scout Sergeant Oan Mkoll: Robert Carlyle. Another from the casting list that I stumbled over. At first I thought it was a ridiculous idea, as Carlyle looks nothing like the Mkoll in my head, but after watching his performance in this week’s episode of Stargate Universe I’ve reversed my opinion. He’d make a great Mkoll.
Eszrah ap Niht: Jason Momoa. Momoa seems to be the go-to-guy for big menacing dudes in sci-fi/fantasy at the moment. I can’t recall if Eszrah is meant to be particularly big, but he’s certainly menacing, which makes him seem big 🙂
Major Gol Kolea: Tahmoh Penikett. He’s probably a bit young to really be (former) family man Gol Kolea, but I reckon he’d do the job.
Ayatani Zweil: John Hurt. If he wasn’t willing to commit to an ongoing role, Hurt would also make a great Lord Militant General Noches Sturm.
Trooper Brinn Milo: Colin Morgan. Get rid of that ridiculous haircut and he’d make a great Milo.
Sanian/Saint Sabbat: Ellen Page. Now that’s a casting completely out of left field I know, but I suspect that if she could handle the role, she’d be fantastic in it. Put her on the audition list and see how she goes.
So that’s where my casting list stands at the moment. Yes, it leaves out a bunch of important characters, but I simply haven’t decided who should play them yet. I know I did have a great idea for Varl, but can’t remember who it was. So, roll on the pilot episode people! Let’s get this underway! ;D
Exploring the Lost City
Cycling and Urbex
OK, I didn’t watc h Eurovision last night, and I’m not going to watch it tonight either – I cycled 30km today and need a good lie down as soon as possible. We all know who won anyway, those unbearable Azerbaijanis. Honestly Europe, what’s wrong with you?
As for cycling 30kms, I caught up with Ryan today and we went out to explore a site near his place that – for lack of a better name – I’m calling the Lost City. It’s pretty amazing – photos will be up as soon as I have the energy. We then moved on to an abandoned airforce base – which is nowhere near as cool as it sounds, although we did find some interesting bits and pieces.
In any case it’s the longest ride I’ve done in ages and I am now suffering for it, with various parts of my body complaining loudly. As soon as Merlin is over I’m taking some paracetemol and going to bed 🙂
I am a Kraken from the Sea!
I heard that was you…
Saw two movies yesterday. Well, one and maybe a third of another.
After about a month’s break due to Fabes’s commitments regarding the Dockers and his son we got back to work on the infamous 40k boards again. They are now all sealed, and one has had the magnets installed (they’re actually looking really good now). As is usually the case whenever we get together to work on a project however we realised halfway through that we’d shot ourselves in the feet – installing the magnets on the boards has to be done sequentially and it takes about 24 hours for the araldite we’re using to fix them to cure. Result – an entire afternoon with nothing to do but watch glue dry.
So we put on the TV instead and mercilessly mocked whatever we came across as we channel surfed. We eventually stumbled onto 1972’s What’s Up Doc? and ended up seeing some quite large chunks of it.
The bits we saw weren’t bad. I mean, they weren’t fantastically amusing, but they were OK for a slow Saturday afternoon. And it’s downright startling to realise that back in the day Barbara Streisand was pretty damn cute.
Anyway, eventually I got home, watched the new episode of Dr Who (my opinion on it is in a holding pattern until part two airs next week), then settled down to watch Juno – a film that I thought I’d like back when it came out, but never got around to seeing.
As it turns out I was right, it was a lot of fun (for some reason Ellen Page pretending to be a Kraken is one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen). And it didn’t feel at all preachy – any movie about teen pregnancy runs the risk of turning into some kind of after school special but to me Juno managed just to be a bunch of stuff that happens without any kind of big moral or message. Good, fun, quirky entertainment with characters that you can care about. And krakens.
In my own life my kitchen is now startlingly clean and organised. This is good because I’ve been fighting a bit of a war with cockroaches for a while and it looks like I’ve broken the back of their offensive. Either that or the roach bombs I’ve put up on the window-sill in preparation for fumigating the entire apartment have scared them off. Today I’m starting on the bathroom, which will be a whole world of fun, but at least won’t take as long as the kitchen did.
(Note to cold climate dwelling foreigners who may be reeling in disgust at my arthropod related revelations. In a sub-tropical climate cockroaches are always present. In cold and temperate zones having roaches may be a sign of complete hygienic depravity, but in these warmer parts of the world it’s not a matter of having no cockroaches, it’s a matter of knowing they’re around but keeping numbers down so you only see them when the weather goes all pre-Cambrian and they think they’re running the planet again and can go roaming with impunity. So having a roach problem doesn’t mean I’ve turned into a ragged-haired, garbage-hoarding, slum dweller, it just means I haven’t done the washing up as often as I should :))
Well, back to it.
Baby, I’m Getting Better
I could leave my room, my cocoon, find the door and walk out to the sun
Well, after a couple of months of extreme stress at work, egg-induced illness over the weekend, the general hurly-burly of Easter and the circadian disruption of getting up insanely early for the ANZAC dawn service yesterday, I’m actually starting to feel human again. By this time tomorrow I might actually be up to doing useful things, rather than creeping around muttering “things, things, yes, we must do things, so many things to do” like Gollum ;D
In the meantime here are a couple of fantastic mini documentaries I’ve been meaning to promote for ages. They’re both about the urban development of London and – no! Wait! Don’t leave! They’re very entertaining! Honest!
If you doubt my recomendation (and if so, what the hell is your problem? ;)) just watch the second one, which is more polished and contains a good deal more surrealism. But honestly, you should watch them both, ideally in order.
Enjoy!
Revenge of the Eggs
The chickens are restless
Happy Belated Easter to all!
I’ve been having problems with my computer, my phone and my health this weekend (ironically I ate some bad eggs at the Galleria on Saturday – spent much of the last two days semi-comatose) which means I haven’t been able to get emails or SMS’s out to everyone – but rest assured you’ve all been in my thoughts and I should be in touch soon.
In the meantime here’s something to keep you all entertained.
Red Herring
They’re quite good at making chicken.
Over the weekend, in a spirit of scientific enquiry (and because I didn’t feel like cooking and equally didn’t feel like having chicken) I decided to check out Red Rooster’s recently added fish and chips menu.
In order to provide a valid assessment I decided to have the fisherman’s basket, which includes a little bit of everything. My findings were as follows…
Chips: The chips were, as always, excellent. 10/10
Salt and Pepper Squid: The salt and pepper squid was distinctly lacklustre. The coating was stale, floury and tasteless and the squid was oily and soft. 4/10
Prawns: The prawns were passable – there’s not much you can do to harm a prawn – but nothing really special. 5/10
Fish: The fish was pretty bad. Well, actually the fish was OK, it was the batter that was problematic. I’m not sure exactly what it tasted of – if I had to hazard a guess I’d say chipboard – and it was quite hard to chew through, which is not a quality you really want in food. Minus the batter the fish was about the quality you’d get at the average fish and chip place, which is to say passable but a bit oily – not anything you’d go out of your way to recommend. 3/10
So, my considered opinion on Red Rooster’s move into fish and chips? They’re quite good at making chicken.
A Yelp of Protest
Anti-virus programs are really just a conspiracy anyway… ;D
When I bought my new computer about a year ago it came (as is normal) with an anti-virus program installed – specifically BitDefender. Although I wasn’t familiar with this particular AV I decided to go with it, since I’d already paid for it and all and I’m a lazy bastard who couldn’t be bothered changing to something else.
As a BitDefender customer over the last year I have not been overly impressed. I mean, it worked – I haven’t (as far as I know) been infected with anything – but I was not filled with confidence. The program was always really slow to respond (you click to open it and have to wait for twenty seconds) and would crash completely out of the blue on a regular basis. But I stuck with it, for both the reasons above and because I don’t *need* a fantastically effective internet security suite as I run a pretty tight ship – I don’t download random programs, I surf with Javascript and Java switched off, I keep my OS and browser updated, I avoid dodgy sites, I don’t do social networking, I can recognise the difference between http and https and I scan all my email up on the server before downloading. On occasion I even boot into Ubuntu and scan my drives with ClamAV. I mean, I’m not immune to attack by any means, but I am tougher nut to crack than the average pleb.
So this week my BitDefender license expired. After considering switching to another program I decided it was simplest to renew it. I thought the renewal process might even fix some of the issues with speed and stability. So, off to the BitDefender site I went.
I put all my info in, chose PayPal as my payment method and submitted…
The site crashed.
Great. That’s really reassuring guys.
I decided to be charitable and assume there was problem with their PayPal integration (PayPal integration *is* a major pain). I reloaded the site in a fresh window, re-entered my data and chose to pay by credit card. I submitted, and the site crashed with exactly the same cryptic error message.
Two strikes, and out! Frack’em.
I’ve uninstalled BitDefender and am currently downloading a different AV program – one I’ve used in the past and had no problems with. Stick with what you know people!
PS: No Alice on Coast the other night. Boo!
Drug of a Nation
Teaching myself to Cyclops Rock
I watch way too much TV.
I’ve been saying this for years but it finally came home to me the other day how much time I waste staring at the idiot’s lantern. Nothing in particular prompted this – apart from realising that despite the huge number of channels now available (hey, I grew up with only 9, 7, 10 and the ABC) there’s even less actually worth watching – but I’ve nonetheless decided to do something about it.
Observe, if you will, this…
There we have it – an entire week’s worth of potential viewing marked (in red) with the only things I am really not prepared to miss. Four and a half (five if you include QI which is a special case…) hours of watchable TV over the space of five days. Wow. And look at Wednesday! There’s nothing! Incredible!
So, I’m going to do my best to resist turning on the box in between those times. Sure, I’ll probably watch Catalyst on Thursdays because it’s interesting and fills in a gap between two red zones, and I may treat myself to some Hitler oriented documentaries on SBS on Friday nights, but other than that I’ll be cutting my diet way down. Of course, I’ll probably waste the saved time looking at amusing cat videos on YouTube, but that’s gotta be better than repeats of According to Jim, right?
Right?
Next step – charting out the weekends. Off the top of my head the only thing I can think of that’s vital is the new series of The Amazing Race. Other than that I can’t think of a single show…
Later: Oh wait! There’s that History of Scotland show on Sunday night. Hoots mon!
