29 July 2008. 1 hour is spent in the basement of a Moroccan restaurant in London, just off Regent Street, watching a band I'd never heard of before and couldn't name now without Googling. Time passes unmeasured, as I stand in silence with a friend, watching the blonde at the microphone. She puts up a parasol, indoors, at night. This too is fine. And it matters not whether the band sound like Bic Runga or Lene Marlin, or even Travis on one track; or that the beer costs a fiver a bottle, or that the place is full of incense. My mind is far from my CD collection, my bank account, and my wonderings the next morning as to whether the smoking ban even covers incense. Nothing really matters here, just 4 minutes of music at a time, applause, and more music. I could be anyone, anywhere, no-one, nowhere, unknown to almost everyone in the room. My mobile doesn't even get a signal. I am out of reach - far away. I've not been to a gig in many years, and am out of touch with this environment. It's good to come back to it. If nothing else, it's wonderful to just take an hour out of my life and just be lost in the semi-acoustic anaesthesia created by these 3 people; far from my studies, my work, my worries. The band finishes, and we part company. I return to my hotel room, alone, though not before I call in at a newsagents to buy a packet of chocolate covered Hobnobs, for some as yet undetermined reason. Before too long it's 5:08am and I'm waking up in my clothes with my laptop still on at my desk. I doze for 2 more hours, before getting up. The alcohol leaves my system, and my worries and paranoia creep back, and I'm fretting about discussions with my friend over our dinner and drinks prior to the gig, as if I will be judged for voicing my opinions on ebook readers, the changing music industry, whether films can ever be adequately adapted from books (with specific reference to Love in the Time of Cholera, High Fidelity and Bridget Jones), whether the message of American Psycho is lost in it's grotesquery, whether Rage Against The Machine's half-caste heritage makes their covers of violent black hip-pop more palatable to me as a white man, the relative merits of Christina Aguilera and Alphabeat, and my assertion that All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey could be the greatest pop song ever were it not for a single atrocious harmony in the middle eight. Well, maybe I should be judged for that last one, but nevertheless - I seem to spend so much of my life worrying about things I've said and done in the past, as though people are keeping score, tallying up all the stupid things I've said or done in the past, the rants, the swearing, the dirty jokes, waiting till I tip the balance before disowning me. I'm sure I'm not the only one to worry like this, but it doesn't really make it any easier, and I do find it concerning that it only seems to be alcohol that can adequately mask those fears. In other news, Tuesday wasn't my only night of culture in London this week. I spent Monday night at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. I went with three friends to see a couple of pieces by Beethoven (including his 5th symphony) and a concerto by a chap called Carter which none of us really rated, though we were impressed with the variety of primary school type percussion instruments it made use of. And if that sounds like damning with faint praise, that's because it is. The 5th symphony was brilliant, especially as I - being rather less cultured than my veneer might suggest - had not previously heard it in full, and was only familiar with the well known first movement. It was interesting to spend such long times listening to just music, with no lyrics, as I have obviously become accustomed to through listening to modern pop music and the like. It was quite surprising to find how quickly the 32 minutes of the 5th symphony could pass. A good time was had by all, and I enjoyed doing something different, taking advantage of being in London for these trips to do something I'd not normally have the chance to. I've also had another night of culture tonight, albeit much more mainstream and popular. I went to the cinema (alone, which I don't think is as weird as some of my friends do) to see The Dark Knight. I'll not write about it at length, as there's enough credible reviews out there, but I will say I thought it was spectacular. Heath Ledger's Joker was terrifyingly psychotic and I found the film genuinely unnerving and edgy. It was gripping, exciting and intense. Definitely one to see.
I only recently found out that the carbon monoxide in that lyric refers to suicide by way of vehicle fumes. It fits with the rest of the song, but it's still somewhat jarring to learn that, not least when it seems so obvious in retrospect. I've been busy as all hell lately, with work and studying and family and trying to enjoy life at some point along the way. Work has been pretty dire lately, and I honestly don't know how much longer I'll be able to stick it out for before moving along. Likewise studying has been very hard work, though now that my exam is out of the way I feel I've got a bit more room to breathe. Family life is more enjoyable by orders of magnitude, but nevertheless hard work. And even "fun" seems a tremendous effort at the moment. It's much easier to just pass time without regard to whether I'm actually enjoying anything I'm doing. I came across the video for No Surprises a couple of months back, having not seen it for a long time. The imagery seemed distressingly relevant at the time, and I watched the video several times in tears. It was rather reminiscent of my miserable teenage years, at which time The Bends was a mainstay in my music collection; a time when I felt sure I knew just what the man in the Just video had said, and knowing why he'd wanted to lie down in the pavement and stop... I wish I could stop. Lie down. Rest. Anyway... Alison and I watched Control the other night - the documentary film about the life and death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis. I can't claim to know much of Joy Division's music, beyond the marvellous Love Will Tear Us Apart and even that only due to it's presence on the Donnie Darko soundtrack. I did know what Joy Division meant prior to seeing the film, though that's more to do with my obsession with trivia than any interest in the band. Still, even without my having any real interest in the band, the film was engaging and interesting, and quite moving. The story was somewhat reminiscent of the much more well known Kurt Cobain, what with him being unable to deal with his fame and the pressures of performing. It was quite interesting because it was very difficult to sympathise with the lead character. It was much easier to pity him for his mental problems (depression, epilepsy) than to sympathise with him, as some of his actions - particularly with regard to his love life - were basically selfish and foolish. The suicide itself was well done, and very moving. Quite challenging to think of his situation and how he felt, and whether a person could ever be justified in killing themselves and leaving a wife and daughter behind like that.
Sticking with films, but on a decidedly lighter note, Alison and I are going to see the new Indiana Jones film on Saturday. It's getting some mixed reviews, but I'm sure it'll be good at what it does. I'm sure it won't be a searing critique of the work of archaeologists under the pressures of the cold war, as some critics apparently think it should be, but I'm certain that it will contain the following at a bare minimum: - A hat
- A whip
- A tomb/cave/other dark place
- A car chase
- A fight
which should be about enough to carry it really. I've no doubt that it won't be as good as Raiders, or even as good as Crusade, but with the dross that Hollywood gets by on these days, I'd even settle for anything as good as Temple. It'll be 2 hours of thud and blunder led by Harrison Ford, which will definitely do the job. Alison and I are picking up the new Lego Indiana Jones game for the Wii too. It looks like good fun, and if it's anything like Lego Star Wars which we both had a great time playing, then it should be £30 very well spent. The Wii has been one of our best purchases of late, and I've been amazed at how much I've been able to get Alison playing it. Gaming has normally been my domain, and occasionally a mystery to her, so it's been quite good to find some games we can play together. Mario Kart and Mario Galaxy have been two recent surprises - I'd never have expected to have got her playing those two. Right. More another time... I'll write about some films next time.
So... I've not written anything in ages... I've not really been using the web much of late, at least not in any way that requires any creative input. Blog and facebook have gone out of the window really. Let's try writing something and see if anyone comments, besides the usual clamouring crowd of spambots. No, sorry, no one wants your realty porn, whatever that may be. Anyway...
Work is pretty busy and interesting, which is good. I appear to have settled in rather well to being an accountant, which is something I swore I'd never do. It's not boring, honest. Training is going well, and the trips to London are looking like they'll get to be more fun come the summer. Frisbee in the park = good thing. That being said, sauna on the tube = bad thing... I think walking will be abundantly more tempting.
Beth is doing well. She seems to be permanently teething which makes for much wailing and gnashing of the relevant teeth. Apart from that she's getting the hang of lots of other stuff. Here's a quick list of newfound skills:
- Saying "Dada" and "Mama" to us.
- Standing up and cruising along stuff.
- Pointing at stuff she wants.
- Dropping stuff off her high chair. This is funnier for her than for us.
- Putting things in our hands and laughing when we say thank you to her.
- Starting to get the hang of her shape sorter.
- Recognising the house when we come home from somewhere.
- Crawling everywhere.
So, that's all good.
Things might be clearing up a bit God-wise, but I'm not sure. I'm sure the comparison between rich men (or more pertinently, those who put their faith in money) getting into heaven and camels getting through eyes of needles could just as well be applied to those with scientific knowledge... Not that science is a bad thing, or it can't co-exist with religion (which I'm sure it can) but it does make things a bit challenging when people use science to try to dismiss God. Still, I'll struggle on, through stubbornness if nothing else.
Music... I bought Elephant by The White Stripes the other day. A bit older, but pretty good so far. Quite an impressive variety of sound from what is mainly just two people. It achieves a raw, rough sound without resorting to mountains of producing it to make it sound that way. I'll have to give it a few more listens, but I think I'll be getting some more of their stuff.
Films... I want to see Spiderman 3. We're going to visit my parents in a few weeks, so we'll probably take advantage of being able to leave Beth one evening and go out to see it. I also want to see Pirates Of The Caribbean 3, but I might end up going to see that when I'm down in London without Alison. After the huge disappointment of the second one, I'm not exactly hoping for much, but I'd still like to see what happens. Maybe they will salvage things. I hope so. I'm also looking forward to Die Hard 4, though I'm sure it'll be little more than Bruce Willis blowing stuff up and coming up with one liners. Nothing wrong with that once in a while.
Right. I'll try to post something more constructive here sometime soon.
It was my birthday on Sunday. Alison and I had celebrated a bit on Saturday night by having a nice meal (toad in the hole - get in) and watching The Departed on DVD. The film was pretty good. I'm not sure it was Oscar good, but the Academy have passed Scorsese by so many times that I guess they had to give him best director sooner or later.
My actual birthday was less eventful, barring a trip to feed the ducks, marred only by a swan biting Alison and scaring little Beth. The only present I actually received was a nice new watch, all the rest was gifts of money which I'm now deciding how to spend... books, DVDs, CDs, games... so much to choose from! But I digress... Sunday night was spent travelling to London for another week of training, so I actually ended up spending the evening of my birthday in a hotel room on my own. Rubbish.
The week away has gone OK so far. The training has been pretty interesting, and it's good to see people. I went out last night and caught up with some friends from uni, which was fun. They nagged me to get signed up on Facebook, so I'll have to see about that at some point. I'm going out again tomorrow night for a little farewell do for some people who've quit the training course. It is quite fun, but it still pretty much sucks being stuck in a hotel on my own every evening. Boo.
I've just watched some of a TV programme about the infamous size zero, with the lovely Louise Redknapp crash dieting to slim down to that size. Pretty weird having been the typical teenager finding her very attractive, and having in fact seen her in person, every bit as beautiful as in any photograph; then seeing her trying desperately to lose weight and wind up looking utterly terrible for it. The program wasn't as hard hitting as I'd have liked - I find the whole thin women/anorexia/bulimia/dieting quite scary - but it was still pretty interesting. I don't see things changing any time soon though - I expect women will keep trying to be thin and winding up worse looking for it. Rubbish. It's not attractive, and for goodness sake, I think I speak for most men when I say we like having something to get hold of. Anyway.
I got the tube the other day, as you do in London, and there was a busker at Tottenham Court Road who was pretty damn good. Most buskers are fairly forgettable, but this woman was playing the guitar admirably and had a nice voice... she kinda reminded me of some kind of cross betwen Jewel and Lene Marlin or something. She was good enough to stop and listen to and indeed miss my train and have to wait for another one. I bought her CD, though I don't actually have a CD player here so I'll have to wait till I get home for that. She was called Dana Immanuel and she has a Myspace page over here, which I warn you will play the charmingly titled "Motherf*cking whore", so perhaps not one for work, eh? Anyway. That was interesting, and unusually impulsive for me, given that I normally don't buy anything without extensive research to insure I'm getting my money's worth.
So... that's about it for now. It's eleven at night, so I'm going to go to sleep I think. Good night.
Tangent: All I Want For Christmas by Mariah Carey is the best Christmas pop song, and pretty high on the list of bestest general pop songs ever.
Now, back to my life and what's happening in it...
I've been busy lately... I've also been ill. I've had a cold and sore throat and such like since I got back from London, which is pretty rubbish, but I'm managing. More rubbish is the fact that baby Beth is now ill, and is waking up in the night and hacking and coughing and generally not being very happy. Pretty naff really.
So... what's been happening? Well, we went to Leicester over the weekend. It was pretty tiring, given the non-sleeping nature of Beth, but it was good to see all our old friends and go to church there and such like. So while the trip felt kinda hard to justify when we were getting lost en route or being woken up at 4 in the morning (in someone else's house - even worse) it was worthwhile in the end. Pretty good on balance.
It's nearly Christmas. This is good for various reasons, not least because I really, really need a holiday. I'm tired in the extreme and need a break from work. I do like my job, but I am about ready for some time off. It's the training that's hardest to be honest - it's not easy doing a full day at work and then coming home and having to do homework on top of it. It's worse than school, I swear. It's certainly worse than university, hands down.
I've bought some CDs just lately. Here's my thoughts:
Sam's Town by The Killers
This is a pretty disappointing album really. The single, When You Were Young is about the only genuinely good thing on there. The new single, Bones, is a horrendous invitation to treat (if I may abuse the terminology of contract law for what might better be described as a blag for a shag) with an absurd horns section that makes the whole thing sound like it was produced by Andrew WK. There's a couple of good tracks, like Reasons Unknown and Read My Mind, but the rest of it is just bland and forgettable. It would appear that The Killers have a limited amount of quality per album, so while their debut had extreme highs in the singles that make up the first half of the album and extreme lows in the latter half, this follow up is just consistently middling. As an esteemed colleague of mine said, there is nothing remotely anthemic here - there's certainly no All These Things That I've Done, and the aforementioned When You Were Young is just barely as good as Somebody Told Me, which isn't the highest praise. I really cannot recommend this album in any way.
12 Stops And Home by The Feeling
This, I can wholeheartedly recommend. It's unabashedly poppy and bright, but is that a bad thing? Wikipedia cites the mighty ELO as one of their influences, which explains the full and exciting sound, and also goes some way to explaining why I like them. The album is quite varied, but it flows well from one thing to the next. Love It When You Call is probably the high point for me - joyous 80s hair rock that The Darkness never quite managed to deliver. Probably the best CD I've bought this year.
Black Holes And Revelations by Muse
Ah, Muse... I'm going to do a bad thing and compare them to Radiohead, simply because their musical path is somewhat reminiscent of Radiohead's route from The Bends and OK Computer (cf. Muse' Origin of Symmetry and Absolution) into the realms of weird experimentation on Kid A and Amnesiac. Black Holes seems transitional in the same way that Kid A and Amnesiac were. In and of themselves, these albums aren't all that much to listen to, but they led to the mighty Hail To The Thief (which, tangentially, some lady on the train was listening to this morning - pretty heavy for 8 in the morning. She also had it on random play, which I consider a crime) which is one of Radiohead's finest works. Will Muse follow up Black Holes with a similar masterpiece? I don't know, but I do know that I hope that this record is not the end of the journey. It's not that it's not musically accomplished or uninteresting... it's just... unsatisfying. There's too much stuff on there that feels out of place or out of character, as though it's a test of different styles. In the words of Roy Walker, it's good, but it's not right.
So, that's music for you. I also picked up High Fidelity on DVD, which we watched last night. It's a great film, and it's a rarity for a film to be different from the book that spawned it, while still being as good. I love both the book and the film - they paint such a good picture of a certain type of man, a man that is pretty much me. The lead character is a person I could have been, given various twists in history, and it all feels very close to home. I love it.
Talking of books I could have been in, or written, I've just finished reading a book called A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius. It's a sort of memoir about a guy's life after his parents died and how he looked after his little brother and so on. It's only loosely based on real life, and it certainly plays with the semi-fiction idea, being very self referential in an Adaptation sort of way. It's good, and funny, and quite clever, but... It just doesn't seem to deliver. I'll try to explain why. The premise of the book appears to be that the writer is writing with a view to experiencing some sort of catharsis from the death of his parents, as though by thrashing all his experiences out on paper he will somehow be liberated from them. Alas, by the end of the book it seems to become apparent that this is not occurring, and that for all his attempts to get over things this way, he just can't, and he will always carry them with him. The trouble with this is that to me, the reader, it then appears that the book is a failure - as though I have read something pointless. The writer sought closure by means of my reading about his tortuous experiences, but he doesn't get it - have I then wasted my time? The thing that bothers me further is that this failure is acknowledged by the writer, as though he knows the book can never help him to get over the deaths in this way. So does that make it OK that he failed? If he knows he failed, and he writes that into the book, does that make it OK? It's a bit confusing to be honest. There's a paragraph in the book which might serve to illustrate this a bit better. The writer is in the process of throwing his mother's ashes into a lake, but things aren't going quite right. I'll transcribe the section below...
I am doing something both beautiful but gruesome because I am destroying its beauty by knowing that it might be beautiful, know that if I know I am doing something beautiful, that it's no longer beautiful. I fear that even if it is beautiful in the abstract, that my doing it knowing that it's beautiful and worse, knowing that I will very soon be documenting it, that in my pocket is a tape recorder brought for just that purpose - that all this makes this act of potential beauty somehow gruesome.
And that, in some sort of way, is where the book suffers. It's good, but it's pointless, but if he knows it's pointless, is it good regardless? It's hard to say really, especially when you're finishing off this post after coming home from the work Christmas party. Anyway. I guess you get the idea.
My one other criticism of the book is that it appears to be somewhat over edited, to give it the impression of being very cavalier and off the cuff, in a comparable way to certain bands who apparently go out of their way to make their music sound as though it was recorded in someone's bathroom on a Fisher-Price tape recorder from a jumble sale... but I digress. I'm not sure quite where the middle ground on this is, as the style suits the book, but I'm slightly suspicious of it, as it's clearly been carefully edited to make it look like it was never edited, if you follow me. Ho hum.
So... that's about that. I have indeed recently returned from the office Christmas party, which was good fun. The meal was good, the drink was free, and it was good to talk to everyone about something other than accounting! So, a good night all in all.
More sometime soon... Happy Christmas, if I don't blog before then...
Right then. It's about time I blogged properly, so here goes. I'm going to waffle about what I'm up to at the moment, and then post pics of Beth at the end, so if you're just here for the baby pictures, skip ahead.
So... life then. Work is going well. It's really quite busy. I've got lots of work to be getting on with, which is pretty cool. It's at a pretty good pace which means I'm always under enough pressure to be motivated, without it feeling too overwhelming. This is a good thing. I've been hearing some horror stories of some of my fellow trainees in other offices not having anything to do. One guy told me he'd spent the afternoon practising how fast he could say " Peter Piper". He got it down to 5.2 seconds, apparently. Impressive, but not exactly what he's there for. I might be off to visit a client sometime this coming week, which would be my first, and I might have a business trip to London a week or so later to learn something complicated. Exciting stuff. I am, as tragic as it may seem, really enjoying this job. For all my concerns about spending my life as an accountant, it's actually pretty good so far. Good stuff.
I spent some of my hard earned cash on a Nintendo DS Lite. It's easily one of the best things I've ever bought. I picked it up on ebay and it came with Nintendogs and that Brain Training game that you've probably seen people playing on the train/bus/plane/helicopter to work. Those two are pretty cool, especially Nintendogs. The whole stylus and touch screen thing is cool, even if it is just a contrived way of getting a mouse onto a handheld console. It's pretty neat to be able to talk to the dog with the mic and teach it tricks, and stroke it to say well done. Nifty. I've since picked up a few more games, including Phoenix Wright, a mad little visual novel type game about a lawyer, which Marilyn Manson, of all people, loves. So there you go. I like it so much I sold a bunch of stuff and bought one for Alison as well. Admittedly there is the ulterior motive that I need someone to play Mario Kart against, but she's been getting into it for herself, especially this mad little game called Cooking Mama which is, as the name suggests, all about cooking. Cooking Japanese meals. As you do. So, that's pretty cool. Heartily recommended. Buy a DS Lite. Or buy me loads of games for mine. I'm not too fussed which.
I picked up the new Muse album too. It's taking a bit of a time to get into, as it's a bit more obscure than Absolution. It's good, just a bit crazy. I think it'll grow on me. It's certainly very musically accomplished, to say the least.
We watched Good Night And Good Luck last night, George Clooney's film about the news reporting on McCarthyism in the 50s. It was very good, well written and well acted. It was quite concise, which bothered me slightly, as I could have watched a lot more of it. The subject matter was certainly very interesting, and I like the sentiment that TV and journalism should be honest and challenging. I found the closing line of the film very strong:
"This instrument [television] can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire, but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box."
I don't know if I mentioned it at the time, but I remember thinking that sort of thing when I watched Gunther von Hagens autopsy programmes on Channel 4. It was astounding to me that TV could be so educational, when primarily it's just utterly forgettable crap, if I can be frank. As sci fi author Sturgeon noted, 90% of everything is crud. Now, autopsies are certainly different to political awareness, but I think the point stands. It would be nice if TV could actually challenge us once in a while. Anyway. It was a good film.
Things with Ali and Beth are good. Beth has been a bit ill, which has been hard work for Ali. She had some kind of bug or something that was making her sick, which was pretty gross and fairly distressing for her. She's come through that now, and is back to being cheerful, which is good. Ali and Beth are having fun, so that's cool. Beth is getting pretty good at sitting up, as well as picking things up and holding them, and putting everything in her mouth! She's trying to feed herself when Ali gives her pureed fruit and veg, which is entertaining if extremely messy. So... here's some photos!
This is back when Ali first started giving Beth some solid food, nearly two months ago. She's just had some passion fruit and was very pleased with it!
Here's Ali holding Beth, who's wearing a little snowsuit that my sister bought for her. It's really cute. It has a giraffe on it, which you can't see in the photo, and it's really snuggly and warm.
Here's me with Beth who's in a little dress that Ali got for her for like £2 or something, thanks to a handy voucher. Nice.
Here's Beth in her door bouncer. It's a proper life saver - she loves bouncing up and down, and it can keep her entertained for quite a while, so you can get on with something in the meantime. It also helps with getting the burps out of her!
Here's Beth on a swing. She has to be kinda wedged in (hence the blanket) but she really likes it. She starts giggling and grinning. Very cute.
Ali has found that Beth can be quite easily entertained by giving her random items to play with and look at. So, here's Beth having a look at the whisk. Tasty...
Lastly, here's me and Beth out on a walk just this afternoon. We went out to a place called Pennington Flash, which is a nature reserve type place with a big lake, and saw all the ducks and geese and suchlike. I carried Beth round in a little harness on my front and she had a great time looking at everything.
So... there you go. That's about enough for now! See you again soon.
I met up with an old friend on Wednesday night, while in London. She lives and works there, so it made sense to meet up on the rare occasion that I was down there. I don't think I've seen her since my wedding, which was two years ago, which is quite a while. Sure, I keep up with her blog, but that's not quite the same. We sat in 'Spoons while it poured down outside on Marble Arch, and had a good catch up for about 3 hours. It was really good to see her and find out what's going on and see how she's doing.
There's some people, friends, who I've known well enough and for long enough, that meeting up with them and catching up is easy. We've got enough common history and we know each other well enough that its simple to just sit down and get on with talking and having a good time. I don't fully understand how it can be that easy, when you haven't seen someone for a long time, but nevertheless, it's certainly a good thing. I find it quite reassuring to meet people who know me that well, and who I know well, and there is just some kind of understanding there.
I think I like the idea of having some kind of fixed points in life. That's not to say that people don't move about and change and do different things, but that the relationship is quite a fixed thing. It's easy to pick up where you left off with someone like that, because you just know each other that well. Perhaps I find it particularly helpful at the moment when things are moving so fast and my life is changing around me.
I imagine that to those of you who know me even a bit, it should be plainly obvious that - outside of my family - the friends I have who I feel are that close are pretty much all women.
Anyway. I'd best cut this short, as I'm on the train (through the magic of wireless intermaweb access) and not only is my time about to run out, but I'm also about to get to my destination and my battery is dying.
PS I'm off to Cambridge for some more training. Alison and I had a good - if brief - weeked. We saw The Black Dahlia. It was pretty good. I quite like noir stuff. It was quite gruesome though, and while I didn't fully understand the criticism of Scarlett Johannsen as being overly sexualised, I did think Josh Hartnett and Hilary Swank were very good. Lastly, Beth giggled for me yesterday, which was a first, and was extremely cute. Bye for now!
Not written for a while. Been very busy with house hunting and work and generally being stressed. Am on pills from doctor for minor stomach problems. Yay. Anyway. Here's a list of things I'm loving at the moment:
- Being married. Alison is away at the moment and it always makes me think of how much I like having her around and having the company. I go nuts on my own, and stop doing much anything useful.
- My friend, Laura. Things are mental at the moment, so it's nice to have a friend I've known for ages. Provides a much needed bit of stability.
- My parents. I'm figuring if I ever turn out to be any good at being a parent it'll be because I had good examples. I'm also very grateful to have my dad to help with stuff, especially with looking for a house at the moment. He seems to know an awful lot about an awful lot, which is handy.
- 24. I borrowed the DVD set of series 2 and have watched it all this week. I'd never seen it before. I remember Colin watching it fanatically at uni, but I never got into it. It's amazing! Really well made and well shot. They pack in so much for something that happens over the course of one day. It's like reading a novel, but in film form, except it actually takes as long to watch as it would to read because of the sheer amount of detail. It's great stuff.
- Radio 1. I have a lot of time for the BBC, and I have absolutely no complaints about the licence fee. Radio 1 is probably worth it on it's own, never mind all the other radio stations, the TV stations, the news, the web presence... Anyway. They've got as good a mix of music as you can hope for when trying to cater to everyone, no adverts, and some very good DJs (with the exception of Sara Cox, and some of Moyles' more egocentric moments). Jo Whiley is a legend. Tangent - is the new Muse single any good? I don't know. I heard it once and thought it was awful, then heard it again and quite liked it. Maybe it's a grower. Oh, and the Pink single is great.
- Cheap computer parts. In between buying and selling on ebay and picking stuff up second hand from people, it's nice to get the high spec parts of yesteryear at minimal cost. I'm looking forward to setting up my TV recording box with some of the kit.
- Talking of which... free software. Never mind your warezed copy of XP Pro, I'm talking properly free stuff. No cost, and I can do anything I like with it. I'm looking forward to getting gentoo and Mythtv set up so I can record TV and do all that Tivo business. Quite a fun project for someone like me who's into all that stuff.
- X Men 3. Amazing film - highly recommended. The plot rolls along nicely and it looks stunning. Dark Phoenix makes a great enemy - genuinely terrifyingly dangerous, much like Doc Ock in Spiderman 2 - which really helps in adding to the urgency of the conflict. The special effects are awesome and the face offs between the mutants and their various powers are very cool. They did well with the trailer to barely reveal any of the final conflict, so it was all fresh and new when you saw it.
- Talking of trailers, we saw new ones for James Bond, Superman and Pirates Of The Caribbean 2, all of which look good. It'll be fun and games getting babysitters so we can go see them, but we'll manage!
- In other film news, I must admit I've been slightly pleased to hear that the Da Vinci Code is getting awful reviews. I thought the book was pretty bland, and the ending diabolical, so I was glad to hear that the deus ex machina was laughed at in Cannes. There we go.
Right. Bit of life news... House hunting is going OK. It's very hard work trying to balance price against what the house is like against where it is against what the schools are like etc etc. It's tough stuff. The web makes it a lot easier to dig up info about what the areas and schools and so on are like, so that's good, but it's still tough stuff. We've got 6 viewings arranged for this saturday, so it'll be a busy day. Let's hope Ali copes OK with all that, as she'll only be two weeks of her expected due date by then! That's also quite scary. I'm going to be a father in, at most, a month. It doesn't feel real yet. I'll bet it'll feel all too real when it happens!
Anyway. That's about it for now. I'll try to write again soon, though it may wind up being about computer games, so I apologise to the uninterested among you! Alternatively I might write about books. Who knows. See you soon.
If you don't care about computer games you'll want to skip down till I start talking about Sigur Ros... If you do, then feel free to read on.
I finished playing through the Prince Of Persia series over the weekend. As I've mentioned in the past I love the first game in the series, so it made sense to pick up the following two when I had the money. Once again, I'm late getting round to playing them, but that's the way it goes when you have to buy all this stuff second hand on ebay...
So, Warrior Within was OK. I got a bit hacked off with all the emphasis on the combat - sure, it looks fairly nifty to leap over a sand monsters head, steal his axe and then cut his head off with it in slow motion, but that's not really what I'm here for, you know? That's not really my thing. The combat actually put me off the game for a while, as I first tried playing it about 6 months ago, but laid off it until I got hold of a gamepad which actually made it feasible to play. So... the combat annoyed me somewhat. The gothic, dark, angsty setting was a bit too emo for my liking, and the improbably clad, large breasted women did rather make me wonder whether the focus group behind the game had an average age of above 13. On the plus side, behind all the drek the platforming, puzzle solving side of the game is still there. The time travel aspect works well and the level design is good. So on the whole the game probably scores about 7/10 for me, which surprised me somewhat given how negative some people are about it.
Then I moved on to play The Two Thrones. It's better than Warrior Within, but still not as good as Sands Of Time, sad to say. The setting is brighter, and the Prince is less of an angry bastard, so that's nice. The levels are still good, and the plot is far more engaging than WW, which brings things back into line with the quality of the original game. The challenging combat system is still there, but the addition of speed killing (a technique that allows you to stealthily kill enemies before they get a chance to react) means you can avoid much of the frustrating, button mashing combat that Warrior Within often descended into. The game wraps up the trilogy nicely, and ties everything together. I'd give it 8/10.
So, neither game is as good as the original (which I'd give a 10/10 rating to without hesitation) but they're certainly not bad. Perhaps it's just a pity that the series peaked so early - with such a fine start it was almost inevitable that any sequel would have to be truly masterful to live up to it.
Right... let's talk about something else...
I got the Sigur Ros album off ebay for the rather low price of... about £6 if I recall. I'd heard people go on about them, but it wasn't until I found out that the brilliant music on the BBC's excellent Planet Earth series was by them that I decided to splash out. It's a bit of a weird one to be honest... If I'm quite brutal with it, it's actually kind of like listening to a baby's mobile that's playing the original, full version of Radiohead's Treefingers. It's nice and relaxing, and it certainly makes a nice change, but I'm still not sure what I make of it overall.
The baby is due in 40 days. That's pretty soon, which is kinda scary. We have our first ante-natal class tonight, so I get to learn all about birth and such like. I'll try to post again tomorrow to let you know how it goes.
Another bank holiday weekend... and another one just around the corner at the end of this month. Good stuff.
Alison and I went to the cinema on Monday to see Inside Man. It was pretty good really. The plot was pretty clever, and it's quite entertaining to see a crime/heist type film in which they get away with the job, rather than getting caught, especially when it's well done and no one gets seriously hurt. See Ocean's Eleven for further examples. The cast was good - Clive Owen and Denzel Washington are both invariably great and this was no exception. Some of the dialogue felt slightly stilted, especially a couple of bits about race, but that's what you get when Spike Lee directs, so there you go. The most jarring bit of dialogue was the Mayor calling Jodie Foster's character a "magnificent c**t" which seemed wholly unnecessary, out of character and utterly out of place. Maybe it's just me, and I'm getting more sensitive to bad language these days (I am, I've watched the Die Hard trilogy lately and felt somewhat bombarded by the F word) but I didn't think there was any need for it. I'm not saying such words should never be used in films - it's put to good use in American Beauty to highlight the insecurity of Mena Suvari's character - but it did feel very out of place, and it surprised me that it made it's way into a 15. Anyway, there we go.
And now, on a lighter but more painful note, here's a video of Boris Johnson careering headfirst into a German chaps crotch during a charity football match, in some sort of peculiar rugby tackle attempt.
See you soon.
PS - No, I haven't used a Boyzone lyric for the post title. It's a Bee Gees lyric. Not much more credibility, but a bit at least.
I'm so tired, it's not even funny. I'm really, seriously very ready for a holiday. With that in mind, it's a good job that Alison has arranged a few days in Wales for us. Not sure how sunny it'll be, but so long as I get a bit of rest, it's all good.
I've had a fairly busy time since I last wrote. Here's some stuff that's happened:
- I went to the hospital so they could have a look at the aforementioned cyst in my mouth and decide what to do next. Apparently it's not doing much, but they reckon it's best to get it out before it does start doing something. So in a few months I get to have a lovely operation. Still, at least it's done under general anaesthetic.
- Alison and I went to see my brother on Sunday night. He fed us pasta and salad and stuff, and then we watched Spirited Away which was pretty cool. It's an animated (it would seem cheap to call it a cartoon) Japanese film, sort of similar to Alice In Wonderland or The Wizard Of Oz. It was pretty good really. Very nice to look at, and the story was intriguing and quite engaging. The film won Best Animated Film at the Oscars a few years back, and I'd say it deserved it. My brother fell asleep watching it, but there you go. It was good to see him and catch up. It's been a while.
- I went to my assessment day at BDO in Manchester. It was good, but pretty hard work. It was quite a high pressure thing, but I rather enjoyed it. There were 5 of us there - three for Tax positions in Manchester, two for Audit in Leeds. We had to do some group discussion work, then prepare and give one to one presentations based on the discussion; as well as doing some logic puzzle type tests and having further interviews with partners. It went well, on the whole. The downside was staying in a hotel the night before with probably the worst bed I've slept on since my wedding night (ironic, huh?), and trying to sleep next to a big main road.
- I had a telephone interview for a sales job with RM yesterday. The woman was rather baffled that I was applying for sales, rather than network support, which I'd clearly be better at, and to be honest it's a fair cop. I'd only gone for sales because it's in Manchester, and network support is in Oxfordshire, which doesn't really fit with the moving-north-when-the-baby-is-born plan. However, that may not matter any more as...
- BDO have just called me back to say they would like to offer me the tax position. They'll be sending me some more information so I can make a more informed decision, but I think there's a good chance I'll take it. Woohoo!
So, there we go. What else has been happening? Well... Not a huge amount. I'm very glad to be off on holiday, which will begin in about 20 minutes actually. I've got a fairly busy day tomorrow, but then on Sunday we're off to my parents, then to Wales, then to see Ali's mum. It'll be nice to have a rest. We'll be having a bit of a reunion at my parents house, as my siblings should be there too, as should my aunt and uncle. As usual I have to do some computer fixing, but that's par for the course for these trips really! I'm also hoping to see some Wirral folk while I'm back, so that'll be a good thing as I've not seen them in ages.
See you sometime over the weekend, probably, if I blog from my dad's PC, which I probably will. See you then.
Man... I'm busy. I'm tired too. I've been sleeping terribly just lately, so I'm knackered.
There's been a fair bit of stuff going on. I've got my BDO interview coming up on Tuesday, so I've been researching stuff for that, and I've got a hotel booked and so on. Should be an interesting experience. Hopefully that'll all go well. I'll be able to tell you by this time next week if I've got anywhere with it.
I saw The Constant Gardener last week. It was really good. Very well written and well acted. Ralph Fiennes was brilliant. The plot was good in a very yarny, rambling sort of way, but it all followed along very nicely and it was comprehensible, which was good. It was pretty challenging stuff too. On the whole, very good. Alison and I just want to see Walk The Line and Goodnight And Good Luck, and we'll have caught up on our Oscar film watching.
In other film news, I must have been quite bored last weekend as I watched The Scorpion King on the TV. It was pretty silly, and seemed a pretty blatant ripoff of Robin Hood to me. Still, it kept me amused for an hour and a half till CSI:NY came on, so it's all good.
In yet further film news, I honestly can't believe that a film like Snakes On A Plane can get made. For those of you in the dark, here's a plot summary: Samuel L. Jackson plays an FBI agent escorting a former mobster to a trial where he will testify, but someone doesn't want him to testify so they hire an assassin to kill the mobster, only for some reason the assassin attempts the kill by unleashing a whole load of poisonous snakes on the plane, and Samuel L. Jackson has to fend them off. Now, honestly, do they not have "What the hell are you talking about?" meetings in Hollywood? I mean, I despair of the films that Hollywood produces at the best of times, but this is just insane. What kind of a plot is that? The mind boggles, to be honest. All that being said, the odds are scarily good that I'll go and see it just out of some sort of crazed curiosity that someone would make such a film. More info at Wikipedia, of course.
Well, I didn't mean to end up writing about films, but there you go. I'm due to go home now, so I think I will. I've been chilling out playing some old skool Amiga games just lately - Dizzy in particular. Who knew solving puzzles as a cartoon egg could be so much fun? See you all next week.
It was my birthday on Saturday. Alison and I went out for lunch at Pizza Hut and I ate all that I could, which amounted to 9 slices of pizza and some garlic bread. Not bad. After that we went to the cinema to see Syriana. It was confusing as anything. It was obvious from watching it that it was well made and well acted, but I couldn't understand what was going on half the time. Large chunks of it were like watching the business segments on News 24, being as they were utterly incomprehensible to someone with no knowledge of economic jargon. Still, I guess you win some and you lose some. Well done, by the by, to George Clooney for his Oscar win.
As an aside, I was extremely pleased that Crash got Best Picture and Best Screenplay. As I blogged a while back, I thought it was excellent, so it's great to see it honoured like this. I must admit I was also slightly pleased that it beat Brokeback Mountain, as I was concerned it might win a shedload purely on the basis of it covering such a push-button issue, never mind whether it was any good or not.
In the evening, we had a few friends round for drinks and cake and played the CSI board game which was a good laugh.
So, a pretty good birthday all round.
Gifts-wise I was mainly given cash, which is cool as I'm saving up for a digital camera at the moment. Good stuff. I also got a book, some chocolates and - bizarrely - some cheese. I think that was about it.
I'm still working on my big long free speech rant... it's taking forever. By the time I've finished writing it I probably won't be allowed to publish it.
Random lyric... random post...
1) The Brits were on last week. Quite pleased that the Kaiser Chiefs won a few things - pretty good band. More pleased that Green Day won a couple, though I find it a bit odd that they got best internation album when that record was out a fair while before last years awards. Obviously a bit of catching up to do. Not sure why Blunt beat Williams in the best man category, and even more baffled that he beat Madonna for best pop act. Still, there we go.
2) The Baftas were on just the other day, Sunday if I recall. Not at all surprised that Brokeback Mountain won quite a few. Colour me cynical, but surely any reasonably arty film about gay cowboys is going to win shedloads of awards. I was very pleased that Crash won a few - best screenplay is pretty cool. Hope it does well at the Oscars whenever we get round to that. Watching the awards gave us a few ideas for films we ought to see, so I might burble about Good Night And Good Luck, Syriana, The Constant Gardener and a couple of others some time soon.
3) We're buying a new car. Very exciting, very grown up. We're part ex'ing our slightly tired Corsa and getting a shiny black Ford Fiesta Flight. It's a few years old but in excellent condition with very low mileage. It's right nippy too. So, that's all good. We're picking that up on Friday.
4) Alison has gone away for the week to visit her sister. I am home alone with only the cat to keep me company. Still, I managed to cook a cauliflower cheese for myself yesterday without burning the house down or poisoning myself, so there's hope yet. The cat liked the cheese sauce too. Weirdo.
5) I'm a bit freaked out by all the free speech controversies going on at the moment. Between religious hatred, cartoons about Muhammad, holocaust denial and that stupid Jerry Springer opera; I'm gearing up for a good rant about double standards, hypocrisy, blasphemy and all the rest of it. I'll try to get round to that in a few days time.
So, I'm visiting my parents. I'm back on the Wirral for the weekend, mostly to fix computers at my dad's church and possibly to help my parents unpack, as they have just moved house.
So, last night I drove up from Leicester to Pensby. While driving, I listened to the original radio shows of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy on tape. A thought occurred to me... A thought that is tremendously geeky. Disturbingly, a quick search at Google suggests that while I may not be the first person to ever conceive of such a thing, I am very possibly the first person to write about them on the web. I think this probably makes it doubly geeky.
So, here goes...
Some, all or none of you will know that part of the plot of Hitch-Hikers... centres around a quest to find the ultimate question to the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. It is necessary to discover the question after a fancy computer spends 7 1/2 million years figuring out the answer, only to come up with 42, which is unsatisfactory to say the least.
Hold up, let's go back a bit. The fancy computer spent 7 1/2 million years coming up with this answer? The thought that occurred to me was this:
What has happened to Moore's Law?
Broadly speaking, Moore's Law states that every 18 months the number of transistors in a computer chip doubles. This is a gross simplification, but it will serve for the purpose of this discussion. If we assume (inaccurately) that doubling the number of transistors in a computer doubles it's power and thereby halves the time needed to solve any given problem, then it should be obvious that to wait 7.5 million years for Deep Thought to arrive at the answer is foolish. It would be simpler to wait 18 months, from which point one would only have to wait 3.75 million years for the answer. Better still, wait for 3 years, and then you only have to wait for just under 2 million years for the answer. Better still, wait for... ah, you get the idea.
So, what is the optimum time to wait until building the computer, such that the time till the answer arrives is minimal? Well, if we let t be the time till the answer is produced and x be the number of iterations of Moore's Law, then we get this equation:
t = 1.5x + (7.5*10^6)/(2^x)
Yes, it would look better if I did it as an image or something, but I can't be bothered.
Differentiating with respect to x will allow us to find the lowest amount of time needed. This a bit hard to differentiate. I did it after midnight last night while very tired and slightly drunk after having a can of cider. As luck would have it my uni maths notes were in my room. Brilliant.
You get something like:
0 = 1.5 + (7.5*10^6)*ln(2^x)*ln2*e^(xln2)
^
EDIT: This is wrong. See Izz' comment below for correct answer.
Now, if anyone can figure out how to solve that without resorting to numerical methods then they're a better mathematician than I.
Anyway. A bit of scribbling on the back of an envelope suggests that the optimal number of iterations is somewhere around 22. In that case, you wait 33 years before building the computer, in which timeframe computing power has increased by a factor of 2^22 (=4194304) so the time taken to solve the problem is only 1.78 years. The total time to get the answer is then 34.78 years, rather than 7.5 million years.
So, they'd have been better off if they'd known about Moore's Law.
How's that for geeky 
I commend anyone who has read this far. You are probably as much of a geek as me!
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