| Grr |
[Jul. 15th, 2009|05:19 pm] |
Things I am learning:
Attempting to organise a short-term let in London with any criteria more specific than "must have a roof" is almost impossible unless you throw money at it in epic quantities. |
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| Oh, yes, whilst we're on the subject... |
[Jul. 13th, 2009|02:35 pm] |
As alluded to in the last post, I've got a girlfriend! Probably the only person I've ever initially found interesting because of her ability to make entertaining conversation whilst beating up fish-people with a sword shaped like a cricket bat. (Yep, we met in WoW).
She does work for the Red Cross, she's an Eng Lit graduate, she lives an inconveniently long way away in Kent, and she's lovely. Yay! |
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| Oh, for fuck's sake. |
[Jul. 13th, 2009|02:26 pm] |
And now I DON'T have an apartment for my London trip.
(Morgan Randall appear to be a bunch of useless bastards)
So, looks like I'll be in London with Becca this weekend. Anyone got any leads on possible short-term lettable flats that you didn't have last time I asked? |
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| Cheap Flights |
[Jul. 13th, 2009|01:50 pm] |
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What's the best cheap flight finding site these days? |
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| COuntdown to the Amican Banquet |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|01:09 pm] |
- BBQ sauce made, ribs in, crocodile (substituting for alligator) bought.
- Oh, god, cheesecake. This is the recipe I'm far from confident about... |
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| Test readers? |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|11:59 am] |
I'm going to be churning out scripts at a fair rate over the next wee while, and I'm considering setting up an ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) autopope - like commenting filter on here.
So, if you'd be interested in reading and commenting on scripts, please comment below. They'll be in a variety of genres, but probably mostly speculative fiction of one or another type. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 20th, 2009|11:28 am] |
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Anyone Borough Market - bound? I'll be there at 12:15 - 12:30 ish |
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| Crash space in London? |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|05:41 pm] |
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I'm looking at heading down to London next weekend (20th) to look at flats for August- would anyone be able to offer crash space? |
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| Badminton |
[Jun. 10th, 2009|06:35 pm] |
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No badminton this week, I take it? |
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| Short term lets in London |
[Jun. 10th, 2009|02:49 pm] |
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Anyone have any experience/tips/suggestions for finding a flat for short term let in London? I do mean a flat - I'm not inflicting myself as a flatmate on anyone, even for a month - but I've got a reasonable although not astronomical budget. I've already found a bunch of resources, just wondering if anyone had any other suggestions and/or experiences? |
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| Owwwwwww |
[Jun. 4th, 2009|04:33 pm] |
I can't imagine that anyone thinks Pilates is for wimps, but I had no idea it could get quite as painful as it has today, when I have discovered literally the most painful exercise I have ever been assigned. Yes, this is worse than anything I've found in martial arts (although admittedly I'm not a black belt or anything), rugby, serious athletics, the works.
And it's deceptively simple. Get a hard foam roll. Lie across it on your front, with the roll supporting your thighs just below the hips, supporting yourself on your elbows, legs straight, feet in the air. Now, move forward so that you roll over the roll until it supports you just above your knees, rolling your thigh across the roll. Try not to scream too loudly.
Essentially, it performs a deep tissue massage tissue stripping exercise on your quadriceps. I literally cannot do this exercise without making noises of pain.
Apparently there's a much "stronger" version for the side of the legs...
( I should note - I'm on a very specific Pilates regime for fairly dramatic changes in my flexibility, hence I'm on a moderately tough, rather ballet-like series of exercises. I know I've recommended my teacher to a few people - you should know that it's pretty unlikely you'll be screaming in agony at any point! This is very much a special case.) |
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| Sony Motion kicks ass |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|11:56 am] |
OK, everyone's been getting very exciting by Project Natal. Well, yes, full-body mocap is a really lovely dream, but it's mostly vapourware just now. I mean, they had Peter Molyneux demonstrating it - what bigger sign do you want that it's likely to have significant shortfalls when it finally actually arrives? (Although, likewise, damn but Peter Molyneux comes up with some very cool ideas).
The PS3 Motion controller, by contrast, appears to ACTUALLY WORK:
The Augmented Reality stuff at the beginning is incredibly impressive - this thing tracks motion so closely they can overlay a tennis racket onto someone's hand in live video in real-time. Two controllers, fine enough control that you can write with it (excited yet, artists?), a nice-looking swordplay demo, and a truly awesome archery demo - I really want this. Now. |
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| Kamikaze Cookery Live - tonight and tomorrow! |
[Jun. 2nd, 2009|04:32 pm] |
Remember, your exciting food-related action of the week starts tonight in two and a half hours (7pm BST) over at Kamikaze Cookery - Live!
We've got a full post detailing all of how we'll be liveblogging, feeding, picing, podcasting and so on over here - looking forward to seeing you!
And of course, the essence of live is audience feedback, so do blog/twitter/LJ/pic/comment/whatever back! |
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| You have GOT to be kidding me. |
[May. 29th, 2009|11:26 am] |
Blind people having access to print materials. We're all in favour of that, right?
(I should note there's a non-zero chance of anyone reading this going blind at some point in their lives).
Apparently the USA, Canada, the EU, and the Vatican aren't, so much. They're currently attempting, according to the Huffington Post, to block a ground-breaking treaty that would expand the availability of written works to blind people.
Why? Because the treaty would represent "a "paradigm shift," where treaties would protect consumer interests, rather than expand rights for copyright owners."
Screw. That.
Apparently you can help by spreading the word. If you're on Twitter, the tweet tag is #sccr18 . |
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| Short Film Reviews - May |
[May. 28th, 2009|03:10 pm] |
Fighting Feels like a Joel Silver movie written and directed by David Mamet. It's a story of a failed wrestler who comes to the big city and ends up embroiled in underground bare-knuckle fights, but the scene-setting in NYC, the superb dialogue, and the great direction and acting all pull it up to being really rather good - the fights, although good, are almost incidental. A very sweet romance plot and a couple of very likeable leads (Terence Howard's complex hustler and the rather stonking Channing Tatum as likeable fighter Shawn McArthur) complete the package - recommended.
Coraline Henry "Nightmare Before Christmas" Selick directs Neil Gaiman story - what more do you need to know? Fantastic visuals, brilliant CGI/hand animation cross, a compelling story, some great performances, and truly fantastic dogs. Yes, dogs. A couple of the plot points feel a bit odd and there's an egregious Magical Black Woman at the end, but the sense of tension and creepiness is fantastic, the heroine is very likable, the satire is extremely pointed, and it's a bloody fun ride.
Star Trek You already know this is fantastic, right? The plot makes as much sense as a self-help guru in a spindryer, but the performances are all awesome, the script's brilliant, and the direction is outstanding. I don't always like JJ Abrams, but the boy done really, really good. Unreservedly recommended to just about anyone who likes, you know, fun. Special Merit Badges go to Checkov's accent and Simon Pegg's Scotty, just in general.
Gone Fishing A short not a feature, this one, and I saw it on the computer not at a cinema, but still, thoroughly worth seeing. A 10-minute film about fishing and bereavement, but lots more fun than it sounds, and touching too. If you get a chance, see it. |
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| Quick reviews |
[May. 2nd, 2009|11:52 am] |
Let The Right One In Swedish child-vampire movie. Reminded me a little of The Vanishing (the original) in style, with a slow, creepy buildup. Not the warmest movie in the world, and is a little slow in places. However, the characters are compelling, the vampires are impressively drawn, and the conclusion is satisfying. Not as blown away as many critics, but it's damn good and I'd strongly recommend it.
In The Loop: Armando Iannuchi political comedy. Very foul-mouthed, very funny, very well-drawn. The characters are occasionally irritatingly useless, and emotionally I'd have prefered a different ending (avoiding spoilers there), but I can see why he felt it had to go that way. Peter "The Angel from Neverwhere" Capaldi is stunningly good, as is James "Tony Soprano" Gandolfini. You've not seen all the funny bits in the trailer - there are plenty more, some of them really laugh-out-loud. FAR more cynical and dark than it appears from the trailers.
Wolverine: Origin: Fun piece of Hollywood, but not on a par with X-Men 2. Suffers from excessive mutant syndrome (how many mutants can we pack into this movie?) and a bit of a female-with-no-actual-role-aside-from-love-interest problem. Also, I felt that Hugh Jackman was occasionally veering toward Darth Vader "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" status. Still, the plot's pretty entertaining, the performances are decent to awesome (Liev Schreiber as Sabertooth in particular, which was a surprise), and the action's thoroughly entertaining.
Portal: First-person puzzley computer game. Just stunning - it hasn't been overhyped. Try to avoid spoilers if you can - I can't imagine how awesome it would have been if I'd played it knowing nothing about it. Subverts a bunch of computer game cliches to great effect, fantastic pacing, great story, wonderfully twisty gameplay, and I didn't get stuck and frustrated once. Also has what may be the best performance from any of the pieces of media I'm mentioning here, from Ellen McLain playing the computer GladOS. I play very few computer games these days, but this one kept me glued from start to end. |
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