Practise your craft…
January 31st, 2008
Number of words: 1500
Preparation: None.
Time left: 10 hours (at posting)
Panic level: 99 out of 10 (10 being pretty damn panicked)
You can follow this magical tour of the absolutely miserable experience live by visiting my Twitter feed.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Categories: Stuff about me | Tags: essay, misery, twitter | 12 Comments
January 29th, 2008
There is a bit of a story about Shoot em Up’s journey. Tracey likes a bit of Clive Owen, apparently she considers his ‘acting’ talent to be top notch, I also do not mind a good Clive Owen film but for vastly different reasons I suspect.
Anyway one day I saw the trailer for Shoot em Up and excitedly showed Tracey who generally hates trailers but agreed that this was a film to watch out for. We check cinema times, packed lunches and orange juice poppers and prepared to see a shallow action flick.
The day before arrived and Tracey went to confirm the times… no movie listing. The movie just disappeared and plenty of people were pissed off, not in the least Tracey.
So finally we managed to get around to watching it (not at the cinema thank you very much Australian cinemas) and I really enjoyed it. Will this movie change your life? I doubt it, although you will probably look at carrots a different way. Is this movie a good watch? Yes, YES, yes it is a pretty cool film.
Clive Owen seems to play these characters really well, plus this has given me a chance to do my first cross over with my other blog Urban Cultivation as ‘Mr Smith’ is quite partial to carrots and has a pretty cool set-up growing them. In fact we first encounter Smith, he is sitting on a bench stirring his coffee with a carrot.
The film looks fantastic and very energetic, it is constantly moving forward and feels essentially like one long action sequence full of awesome stunts and the occasional carrot death.
Song over the credits Kick Start my Heart.
Ok, it’s mainly made up of gun violence and hookers (yes this is the ‘bad’ section) and there is a kid involved. To be fair though the man with the guns and the hooker is trying to protect the child and he is in love with the hooker and the hooker is Monica Bellucci. I don’t condone gun violence, in real life it is weak, in the movies though it can be entertaining (entertainment, not real life… clear?). Some will argue the plot is too thin for a film, I’ll argue that it is just thin enough.
The credits are really cool, we have a Motley Crue song (one of the only ones I can stand) and a Bond like credits effect.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Categories: Movies | Tags: Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci, Motley Crue, Shoot em Up | 14 Comments
January 28th, 2008
This long weekend was to be my independence from caffeine weekend.
It didn’t turn out that way.
Last year I kicked coffee to the curb but then when I started contracting on a big project that had ten to twelve hour days and six to seven day weeks I started drinking it again and dropping Nodoze. I carried this on into the next contract and have been drinking a ‘grande’ each morning and a couple of colas throughout the day.
So I wanted to drop the habit again but if you remember (if you are a regular) what it was like last time it was fairly awful and I was out of commission for three days. Then I was sickly for the couple of days following. I figured with the long weekend it would be cool to get rid of it and be back at work Tuesday.
Six hours in and my head started vibrating in a familiar fashion to a jack-hammer. The yawns began and the vision went blurry. I dropped the defences and sought out the nearest coffee house and sucked that soothing drug down.
So this is not the right time of the year to detox - surely I have holidays coming???
Popularity: 8% [?]
Categories: Stuff about me | Tags: caffeine, coffee, habit, withdrawals | 16 Comments
January 26th, 2008
I’m not militant about celebrating Australia Day. I mean I’m Australian and I love that but I’m not about to walk around dragging our national flag along the ground because I want to stick one end of the flag down the back of my pants. The flag for me is something a little more sacred than that, but of course that’s just my feelings, in a country that is often saturated by Americanisms it is nice to see some national pride. Do we have to be so coarse about it though?
I did have an understated pleasant day which for us lately is a very welcome oddity. It was bloody hot though and I did have to hide in the air conditioning of the shopping centre for a couple of hours where I cleaned up with new jocks and playstation games.
When we got home I had to baby sit our bubby dog because he won’t eat his bone unless I sit there with him because he’s too worried that the other dog has something better.
It wouldn’t worry me if he were an actual puppy but he’s a big boy now and should know better.
We listened to a fair chunk of the Triple J hottest 100 for 2007 and Tracey missed the women’s tennis final.
Because it is Australia Day I’ve got to send out some link love to the Aussie Bloggers Forum and Aussie Bloggers blog! Where today they have interviewed Darren Rowse of Problogger.
I think that’s what my secret goal would be for here, to be established enough that people would like to interview me LOL.
Tonight we’ll probably watch some Torchwood or whatever else we’ve got waiting.
Happy Australia Day all.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Categories: Stuff about me | Tags: Aussie Bloggers, Australia Day, Baxter, blogging, dogs, Hottest 100, Triple J | 11 Comments
January 24th, 2008
Much to my surprise it was a tie between Jack Bauer and Jason Bourne. I thought Jack would burn Bourne but then again I really love the Bourne films so I’m pretty happy with the results.
Now, there’s been a little controversy over the top ten spaceships list and the omission of the Star Wars ships. I don’t know what it is about the Star Wars ships, I recognize how cool they are but they don’t really move me.
So I’m opening it up to you guys, giving you a chance to face off my number one ship and what I suggest is the number one Star Wars ship:
Iron your jeans?
Total Voters: 33
Loading ...They’re both damn cool, both smuggling cargo ships and have awesome captains. So it’s up to you guys - which is the cooler ship?
Popularity: 13% [?]
Categories: Science Fiction | Tags: Firefly, Millennium Falcon, Serenity, Star Wars | 13 Comments
January 24th, 2008
There are small things that add up to be extraordinary annoying, a rattle in the air conditioner, the high pitch sound an older computer monitor makes that will only go away by slapping the side of it (which probably makes it all the more worse) and the loud clicking and occasional scraping of a keyboard in a quiet room.
All these things have caused me concern at one time or the other and for some there isn’t really anything you can do about it - you can’t go round slapping things willy nilly just to see if they’ll stop that high pitched humming. So whilst it gets on my nerves I have learnt to accept or overcome.
Well the keyboard was the latest indignation that I was forced to deal with. I don’t think that I necessarily type loudly or bash the keys but with age and use my standard Dell keyboard was no longer dampening any of the keys and were in some instances making a scraping plastic squeak (look you notice these things after a while - don’t look at me like that - I know there are kids starving!!).
Ok I’m going to overcome this because it’s a keyboard for grud’s sake and frankly they can’t be that expensive. Ahhh but price is not the only concern here. I want as silent a keyboard as I can get. Off to the local computer supplies store to test the display stock.
CLACK CLACK CLACK
There is nothing.
Off to the internet for further research, I find nothing that suits.
Finally I just happened to be in Myer and saw a keyboard that isn’t too expensive is simple and has a USB connection (something I discovered I needed when I dug up my old wireless keyboard). It’s a Microsoft curved keyboard and the keys barely make a sound (may have something to do with the spill resistant lining or something).
There is only one thing though:
click click click CLACK
Bloody spacebar!
It is the only key that makes a huge clacking noise.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Categories: Stuff about me | Tags: annoyances, keyboard, spacebar | 5 Comments
January 23rd, 2008
I can’t honestly say that I’ve read that many Star Trek Next Gen novels, a couple of the hardcovers and that’s really it. You see there is a quality difference in the Star Trek books - the hardcovers are a few a year and are generally landmark or event books that may deal with big Trek continuity ideas such as featuring Scotty and Spock in TNG time period etc.
The paperbacks are a different story, they are not really supposed to write about established characters from different eras, family members and life altering events. They are all supposed to be stand alone stories that don’t have an impact on the continuing story.
There is good aspects to this and there are bad, often I feel that it weighs heavier on the bad side but the sheer number of Trek novels means that it could easily become highly convoluted. The other thing and this applies to all Star Trek novels is that they are not canon, that is they are not officially recognised in any timeline. This gives the movies and the shows the freedom not to be across what’s going on in the books.
So I just finished is the Star Trek The Next Generation novel Chains of command not to be confused with the episode Chain of Command or the episode Relics (of course if you were to confuse the episode Relics with Chains of command then you would be an idiot and honestly there is no hope for you).
It’s been a while since I’ve watched a lot of the next gen but I was always annoyed by the writers and how they dealt or rather ignored certain characters. Deanna Troi being one of the main ones. She could have been a very complex character with a lot more depth. Sure there were episodes that I was genuinely interested in her, particularly the episode that she was left in command after the ship was badly damaged and then later when she started bridge command training.
So I was really happy to read about her empathic abilities and being overwhelmed by the rather lurid thoughts of a crowd of men who had not seen a woman for at least five years. The whole internal struggle and reaction was just written really well.
Riker is poorly handled in this book, he is doubting himself after losing a red shirt and he is acutely aware of it throughout the mission. I also found that Dr Crusher’s feelings of missing Wesley (he’s gone off to the academy by the time this book is set) were really forced and just awkward to read. She’s a character I don’t particularly like at the best of times. It’s possibly the stories she’s been given.
The alien species in this story are an avian race that resembles giant chickens and are in fact nicknamed chickens by the slave race of humans that they found. I actually pictured them in my mind when reading it giant canaries. There was mentions of an avian race in Enterprise during the Xindi episodes but I think they were more majestic.
This is an alright read. Not life changing but a pleasant diversion and a nice enough episode of the Next Generation.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Categories: Books, Science Fiction, Star Trek | Tags: chains of command, novels, Star Trek, the next generation, TNG | 2 Comments
January 23rd, 2008
The high definition trailer has been released on the official Star Trek film site and it looks amazing, the detail in that CGI is just awesome.
Now the thing though is that J.J. Abrams likes a little viral marketing and so has set up the site ncc-1701.com which shows monitors watching the progress of the Enterprise being built. Someone suggested that this is the time travelling Romulans spying on the event I am inclined to agree.
The thing which is cool on this site is that if you wait long enough the forth screen that was flickering comes good and shows us our very first internal shot of the Enterprise:
Popularity: 8% [?]
Categories: Science Fiction, Star Trek | Tags: Star Trek film, trailer | No Comments
January 22nd, 2008
I saw the ads for Burn Notice and thought two things:
Funny enough tonight I found myself watching it. Who should show up playing a drunken old navy seal??
Yup Bruce Campbell and apparently he’s a regular so now I have to keep watching.
If you are into flash games and Bruce Campbell then visit his Sam’s Stash game and prepare to laugh, look out for his hair gel, man’kini and bowling ball. Don’t use the cigar or eat the cyanide pill (you would think that would make sense).
Just in case you are not convinced that Bruce Campbell is a god amongst men enjoy and try to deny wanting to buy Old Spice after these ads:
Popularity: 7% [?]
Categories: Television | Tags: Bruce Campbell, Burn Notice, old spice | 11 Comments
January 21st, 2008
OK move along, blogger’s block tonight, nothing to be read here.
I’m going to go read some more of the Golden Compass and come back tomorrow.
Ummm yup.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Categories: Uncategorized | 14 Comments
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