bruceb

I was extremely pleased to find this on YouTube: The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain with a rather special guest, doing something that isn’t humorous.

(My admittedly limited exposure to their work has, with this one exception, all been very funny. They are, for example, quite devastating on “Wuthering Heights”.)

Cheers —
jon

Been out tonight to see the Michael Mann directed Public Enemies and discovered why mobile phones were invented.

It is so that everyone involved with this film could call their performance and involvement in the film in from where ever they were at the time. Probably doing more useful like being sat on the toilet.

Now I do like Michael Mann as a director and I like his films, but with Public Enemies has managed to make something that reasonably good looking and probably well shot, but is other dull, boring, and utterly lacking in characterisation. The point is, we know what happened to the main character, John Dillinger, but in this film we are told nothing about him beyond the fact that he is shallow, but loyal. So the film is not a character study, nor is truly a historical piece because so much of the film is wrong, such as who kills who and when.

So, what I want is for Michael Mann to give my money back, to give me back my time, and apologise. Then I will let him make another movie.

Of course, if it was the director Michael Bay wearing a Michael Mann costume and attempting to make a film without explosions, then I am the one who owes the apology.

In the meantime, neither myself, lulucthulhu, or dinkybruiser enjoyed this film.

It gets 2/10 for cinematography and costumes.

Things I should write up foodwise before my seive of a memory loses 'em:

* Broccoli Soup That Turned Out Well
* Fresh Sardines, OMG They're Back
* My Very First Frittata (Why Did I Wait So Long?)

I'm going to be moving half a step sideways at work to do maternity cover as administrator for the training team, full time for six months from the beginning of August.

This is rather better on the security front, as at the moment my hybrid post is getting extended a month at a time - and sometimes not till the middle of the month, so sooner or later I'd probably find myself at two or zero days a week with not a lot of notice.

Had an interview today, and was particularly pleased that the manager is keen to give me a bit of diversity and challenge as well as bog standard admin. Full time is not my ideal choice, but I feel better about it after the interview. I know a number of the people already so I'm confident they'll be good to work with.

I suppose I should start making plans now for which team will be the fourth I work with.   8]
It's like advice sector Pokemon. "Social Policy, I choose you!"

Peaseblossom and I are currently playing around with a 1:1 superhero game about a Sorceress Supreme active in a larger world of superhero craziness. I wanted to outline some of my current working assumptions as I contemplate making this something more serious.
( Read more... )

We're back in Helsinki for one last night. Tomorrow at the crack of dawn (which cracks very very early here in Finland) we're off again. Parris returns to Ireland, and I head home to the cats, the green chile, and A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. We'll meet again in Montreal. Ah, the jet set life...

Estonia was great, and Turku was fun as well. I hope to write more about all these places once I'm home.

Thanks for all my Finnish friends, new and old, for making this is awonderful trip. Finncon rocks.

BBC Radio is doing a wonderful radio adaptation of all of John Le Carré's Smiley Novels, called the Complete Smiley. Currently they are serializing The Spy who Came in from the Cold which is John Le Carré's potent account of a Cold War spy's existence, which is an amazing adaptation. I love the voice actors. I’m wondering if I’ll be able to purchase these, especially since I missed the earlier novels.

Have scientists no collective memory!

From the file marked “Evidently, many scientists have never seen even one scary sci-fi movie,” the U.S. Defense Department is funding research into battlefield robots that fuel themselves by eating human corpses. What could possibly go wrong?

Since they apparently don’t own TVs or DVD players, researchers at Robotic Technology, Inc. are developing battlefield machines that can fuel themselves with collected organic matter. The experts say such fuel “could” include human corpses, but if you picked up anything on flesh-eating robots over the years you know they’ll ignore that tasty soybean field and make a chow line right to the nearest corpse. And, if the machines can’t find enough dead people to eat, they can always make new ones.

Researchers seem to get a kick out of insuring the demise of the human species, so the project is called the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot or EATR.

Yesterday I didn't do anything exercise-wise, not even walking, and I felt really bummed out about that, though in honesty I wasn't up to it: I had a wisdom tooth re-check, and I need to start cleaning the socket, which makes it hurt, and that triggered flareups for most of the day. I got some cooking done, including making my first-ever frittata, which was ludicrously easy.

Today I remember that I had designated Mondays as my weekly day of rest where I can skip exercise guilt-free because I'm often very tired on Mondays for various reasons. Oops! Okay, so that would have gone better minus the annoyance at myself, which was unwarranted. (Also I need to give myself some slack on the wisdom tooth thing; just because it's healing well doesn't mean it's healed yet, and I know that pain slows me down.)

Today it seemed pretty dicy (I was so loopy and tired for most of the day that I didn't even manage to get properly showered and dressed until the evening) but I went to the gym to try a second yoga class. This one was an evening class and more mellow than the Sunday morning class. I also felt less like the ugly duckling in the room of beautiful, graceful swans; I wasn't the only one there who couldn't do the advanced version of every move. I paced myself better and came out of it feeling good instead of wrung out. I think I can still manage the Sunday class (I like the teacher) but I'm going to have to check my feelings of inadequacy at the door, and measure myself against myself and not against the beautiful swans. As with Sunday, I felt stretched out enough (and then some) to manage a session of weight training after the class. The weight training routine is quite good: hard enough to be interesting, brief enough to not bore me, and not so hard it wears me out or discourages me, though I hate the one isometric exercise I'm supposed to do (and ended up skipping it today; oops; I was going to do it when I got home and didn't.) Sunday I also did a short session of elliptical; today I wanted to try to make it to the market (I just missed it) so just got the mile round trip to the gym as far as walking goes. Even without the cardio I'm very pleased with Tuesday.

Last night I messed up on my bedtime routine, which meant, as usual, that I woke up in the wee hours this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. So I'll probably be kind of fragile today. If I'm not too fragile then I'll try out yet another class (I'm definitely in sample mode) that seems like it'll be a good cardio workout. If I'm too fragile I'll just try to walk. I'm planning on going to the farmer's market and out to tea with amberly later so I want to pace myself for that.

Foodwise I've been mostly very solid, though I didn't manage to eat enough calories yesterday; forgot my bedtime snack and ended up at 1050 for the day. Oops!

(Cross-posted to healthystart.)

Cross posted with peaseblossom

This Friday night, our place, we'll order pizza, you bring some beer (I'm also thinking orange soda or milkshakes), we'll watch some Leverage from the season 1 DVDs. I was thinking 'The Homecoming Job', 'The Bank Shot Job', 'The Snow Job', and maybe one or two more, depending, but that's up for debate.

The usual disclaimers about our tv (it's actually a computer, and it's small), our kids (we have them), and our cat (she bites, and is allergenic) apply.
Tags: plans

For the umpteenth year in a row, my plans to do a leisurely drive north and stop in at various spots along the way has been foiled by time constraints.

Some day, Stonewall Jackson Shrine and Historic Scotchtown, I will see what you are all about. Some day....

http://www.cartoonlabs.com/comics/index.php?date=2009-07-15&show=sinfest

Sinfest
Tatsuya Ishida

I helped a bloke in the city with directions this afternoon.

I think I'm finally starting to feel like I actually live here.

I haven't watched Torchwood since most of the way through the first season. A number of things turned me off about it.

However, the spoilers I've heard about the end of "Children of Earth" actually make me more likely to watch it again, assuming this wasn't the last season. You see... ( Spoiler ahead )

Spoken whilst trying to explain to Houseboy Ian the utter Terminator-like implacability of Mariano Rivera at the end of a ballgame:

"Trying to take a lead away from him is like trying to take cheese away from Melinda"

It got the point across.