Monthly Archives: May 2007

May get another one in before the end

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Two posts in the same month – it’s nearly unheard of. Went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 with a bunch of friends last weekend, I’ll write a full review soon. Here’s a summary – too long, not exciting enough, last 30 minutes was excellent. Spent the last weekend (as well as watching Pirates) with a bunch of friends from our Everquest guild which was fun, even though the weather tried to ruin it for us. In typical British style we ignored the freezing cold and the rain and sat outside eating food and drinking drink. It was good and hopefully we’ll be doing it again later in the year.

I finally caved in a bought a new phone as well, still on pay-as-you-go, but at least it’s a modern phone rather than the house brick I used to carry a few years back and which has been sitting next to my desk as an alarm clock for a while. The new phone is a Nokia, and I’d show you how it looks but you can’t take pictures of your own phone with your own phone, usually. If you know me, I probably already sent you the new number, if you don’t know me, you didn’t get it. If you know me and didn’t get it, drop me a note, I’m not ignoring you I swear.

Oh, and the car is booked in for an MOT next week … wish us luck.

300

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While based on a comic, the comic is based on the historical Battle of Thermopylae of 480BC. The battle holds a special place in my heart because David Gemmell used it as the basis for some of the battles in his books. From the moment I heard about the movie I was looking forward to it – and I wasn’t dissapointed. As a cinema going experience, it was superb. As a deep character movie with an intricate plot, it failed, but I never believe it was intended to aim at that target.

The imagery was excellent, the action, pace and direction suit the material and give the whole movie an otherworldly appearance. The characters are easily accessable (which is necessary because of the short time to get to know them) and the dialog clips along and keeps you interested. A movie about a single battle is never going to have much scope for a complex plot but 300 does well with it’s scope and offers a little bit of politics and intrigue to grease the wheels of action.

And it’s the action that drives this movie, the solid unrelenting nature of the Spartans, their charismatic king and their desire to die the glorious death. The cast is good, we get a range of warriors and characters to enjoy, and we get to see some of the best large scale battle scenes in cinema history, without losing any of the personality of the warriors in them. 300 is an excellent action movie, tense battle scenes, interesting characters, and superb visuals.

And so here we are again

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Considering it’s been 6 or 7 months since I last blogged anything, I can’t believe anyone is still reading this (in fact, I can’t believe anyone was ever reading this) so I wonder why I’m still writing it. I’m still Diabetic, I know it never goes away, but everyone has to have a dream. Had good news earlier in the year, my 3 month average blood sugar test was excellent. The bad news is that every day between 3 month checks just leaves me worrying about it and the further I get from the last check the more I worry.

Perhaps that’s good, if I stop worrying I guess I’ll stop trying to manage it, although I don’t think I’m any good at managing it anyway. I have good days and weeks and bad days and weeks. Working from home is bad, it ruins the routine, working from the office is good, the routine helps and I manage to get out every lunch for a 20 minute walk which can’t be hurting. Some days I think I’ve been good and it’s bad, some days I think I’ve been bad and it’s good, and some days I try not to think about how bad I’ve been.

I just wish I didn’t spend most of every day scared of the consequences of being diabetic, worried about every ‘symptom’ I currently have. But then it’s always been my nature to worry.

One of the reasons I’ve started blogging again is I finally migrated to Google’s new blogging feature and that includes labels, something I’d wanted to have on my review page for a while. I thought I’d bring the review site up-to-date and that led to blogging something here first.

House news, thanks to my amazing wife, we finally got someone to come and look at the ‘damp’ in the dining room. It’s not damp, and much to our embarassment, the guy pointed to a hole in the wall between the door frame and the brickwork. Every time it rained, water had been running in, and rotting the wood, floorboard, etc. So we filled the hole and we’re letting the woodwork dry out, and we’ll full that with woodfiller soon. We’ve finally made a move on the front door as well, double glazing folk have been, we’ve had the phone wire moved, and they’re coming to replace the door next week. Hopefully it’ll look ok, I have no faith in double glazing companies, but fingers crossed it’ll be good enough.

Here’s the bit where I make a vague promise (but I’m not sure who to?) to update this more often.