I thought I’d update you all (since this blog still seems to get most of it’s visitors because of the post about tendonitis of my thumbs) that since I cut back on my EQ play time, and bought a gel wrist wrest, both my wrists and thumbs have been fine.
I still get twinges if I spend too long running anywhere in Lord of the Rings online, but there’s nothing like as much pain as there used to be. Which is a good thing [tm].
Blurgh, have hundreds and hundreds of photo’s, loads of digital photo’s, loads of regular photo’s that have been scanned in previously, sometimes more than once, sometimes getting half way through a batch and giving up.
We really need to sit down and get them all sorted into some semblance of order and get rid of the duplicates!
So I’m late to the party. We watched Cloverfield on TV this evening (it won out over Juno). It’s engaging, fresh and interesting. It wasn’t too tense for me (I’m a wuss) which was pleasing. The dialog and acting were superb I have to say, it really did feel like it was being shot live and the actors didn’t know what was going on.
But (and it’s a big but) I hate the camera work. For me it detracts 100% from the movie going experience. I understand the whole style and the entire intent of the film is wrapped up in that style, but I was just constantly dragged out of the experience by the camera work.
I really do understand how it adds atmosphere, and that the drama of the scenes were enhanced because of the style, but for me, I hate it. There, I said it.
So, Cloverfield, if you can stand the camera work, it’s really good, if you’re like me, it’ll just bug you.
I guess this is sort of a review. I blogged a short while ago that I was reading a Constantine graphic novel (Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits, an anthology), and I promised to maybe let you know if I enjoyed it. So here I am. Dangerous Habits is the comic from which one of the main threads of the Constantine movie is taken, and there are a couple of other minor references in the movie to this anthology. I wanted to read this anthology as my introduction to the Hellblazer world exactly because it was the movie that got me interested in the character.
That was probably a mistake. Dangerous Habits is not, it would appear, a typical collection of Hellblazer stories. It’s enjoyable, and I wanted to finish the material, but I got the immediate feeling that this was really a transition period in Constantine’s life and not a regular story about his world.
The artwork is okay, I’m really not that enthused about comic / graphic novel artwork, I guess I’m more interested in the story and characterisation, hence my tendency towards regular fiction. I found myself focussing on the words, and really not looking that much at the art. Every few pages I would encourage myself to go back and look at the pictures. Maybe I’m so used to having to use my own imagination 100% to form images around the words I’m reading, I’m just not used to having them presented for me. I love movies, so I obviously have no problem watching someone else’s visualisation, but if I’m reading words on a page, I’m really not expecting someone else to present images showing me how things look.
Anyway, I found the writing ok, the overall storyline is interesting and the side-characters were interesting. However, I found both showdowns between Constantine and the Forces of Darkness to be lacklustre and without logic. Supreme evil isn’t necessarily entirely stupid. Of the two showdowns, the first, smaller one was the most absurd and beyond logic and destroyed any credibility the story had for me. The final one simply iced the cake, and although I can see where it was coming from and what it was trying to do, I just didn’t feel it was given enough context for it to be viable.
Now, this may be entirely because I’ve not read anything else in the Hellblazer universe, maybe the way the enemy behaved is entirely in-character and in-keeping with it’s normal behaviour, but if that is the case then Constantine has an easy life.
Overall, maybe I picked the wrong entry into Hellblazer, but this was a disappointing purchase which provided a few hours of diversion but no real feeling of satisfaction.
I have Hellblazer: Bloodlines, another anthology which I’m intending to read as well, and hopefully I’ll see some of the material which causes so much enthusiasm among the fans.
We spent the weekend visiting Fi and Mars, they’d invited us along to see England’s Medieval Festival at Herstmonceux Castle. The drive down was frustrating, the M25 showed it’s true colours (as usual) and we were stop/start all the way around. The weather on Saturday (as we drove down) was truly gorgeous and we had high hopes for Sunday (yeh, we’re dumb). Saturday night was fun and relaxing and we set off at around 10am on Sunday, in the rain, to get to the castle.
I’ve never been before and the grounds are pretty impressive, the castle itself is quite grand although it’s a reasonably modern castle. The day was really good, half way through the sun came out and we dried out which improved things. Food was hugely over-priced (but what do you expect), but the event itself was fun and the Falconry at the end was pretty impressive despite the wind.
I took a whole bunch of photo’s (except for the major pitched battle in front of the castle, because the rain was coming down too hard during that bit) which you can see over here.
Really enjoyed the weekend, excellent company, and the festival was really enjoyable.
We’re back from Fi’s place after an excellent Saturday and Sunday (although the drive down was pretty frustrating), I just wanted to write a quick post as I’m winding down for bed, because I just found out that the two towers near the M1 in Sheffield have been demolished.
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7578266.stm
Two iconic concrete cooling towers in South Yorkshire have been demolished in a controlled explosion.
Millions of drivers passed the 250ft (76m) towers by the Tinsley viaduct on the M1 at Sheffield over the decades.
At 0300 BST the blast to reduce the “salt and pepper pots” to rubble left part of the north tower still standing but it has since collapsed.
The M1 reopened to traffic shortly before 1800 BST after safety tests were completed on the motorway supports.
Those towers were a part of my life for a good few years while I was living in Sheffield, traveling north and south along the M1, and working in Rotherham. Wish I could have been there.
Stockon on Tees council were good on their word and their £360 cheque arrived this morning – which is good timing because we’d been a bit strapped since the Brighton blowout, and being on holiday and visiting friends this month. We also got a cheque from the insurance covering 2/3rds of the costs for Bubbles’ ‘incident’ which is about what we expected and is also well timed.
morning.
need breakfast.
will talk more later.
serious mood crash today, just been in a flat down mood all day.
yay me.
I’m thinking of selling my roleplaying books. They’re not doing us any good taking up three shelves in the bedroom, much of it is entirely obsolete (D&D, 2nd Edition AD&D, old rules for other games, etc.) If we did ever happen to start tabletop roleplaying again we could pick up any rules we needed at the time, but I can’t imagine ever needing over three quarters of the stuff that’s there. But there’s that little doubt, that maybe it’ll only get more valuable over time and that if I took good care of some of it, it might be worth holding onto.
I wonder if there’s anywhere on the web that values roleplaying stuff, I seem to recall something ages back, maybe I’ll have a look on ebay for a while and see how much some of it might be worth before making a decision.