Archive for May, 2005

Fiesta

// May 30th, 2005 // 2 Comments » // General

I purchased my first car on Saturday – a maroon Ford Fiesta 1.1 litre petrol Azure. It’s eleven years old but it’s only done 39,000 miles. So, i’ve spent the last few days driving places, started off driving locally but since I’ve drove into town, to Sutton-in-Ashfield, through lots of the peak including about half of the way to Leek and I got on part of the A38. It’s gone pretty much perfect, I’ve made a couple of minor errors, but apart from that I feel fine driving….Got more freedom now, kind of.

Web designing

// May 24th, 2005 // 2 Comments » // General

I’ve spent the last couple of days searching a solutions for my dad. He wants a site where he can write about his birds (that’d be the feathered variety!), so I’ve reccomended him BlogJet and and WordPress to fill his remit of “it must be stupid-proof”.

Since deciding on the platform, I’ve set about customising Kubrick into something he likes. Which is quite an ordeal, because he doesn’t know what he likes, just what he doesn’t like. When I finally thought I’d satisfied him, he changed his mind, so I changed what I did and he countered by changing his mind.

While writing this post he’s completely changed his mind again and now wants something totally different and kinda amateurish…I’ve learnt something from this by experience as well as being told it at uni – get specifications, get them signed and penalise alterations.

The last of a series

// May 23rd, 2005 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized

Star Wars: Rise of the Sith

Just got back from watching Star Wars 3: Rise of the Sith, and uhm yay and nay. The film itself was great, the lightsabre fights, Yoda, space battles, the effects etc etc. It pretty much all ties in nicely, wrapping up a few bugs in the story. The plot is essentially spot-on. There seems to be lots of references too, I think I saw the millenium falcon at one point and Chewie makes a cameo. Makes the other episodes all tie in a little more at any rate.

The lightsabre battles are pretty much the best yet, they really manage to show the anger and power of Anakin. There’s plenty of them too, with many different combatants. There’s one thing that Lucas can direct and that’s the lightsabre battles.

The film really is the best of the prequels, it pretty much eclipses them. I feel I can’t really measure it against the original trilogy though, to do that just feels wrong.

However, the same problems plague Sith as they did Menace and Clones. Again the dialogue is kinda weak in places, and a lot of the acting, Hayden Christensen feels ok taking money from this? Still it’s improved from the other prequels.

Oh yeah, Jar Jar is only in for one brief moment and doesn’t speak.

City Hospital

// May 16th, 2005 // No Comments » // General

I’m back at home now and don’t have any speakers on my computer as my last ones were bust and at uni I was using Nicks spare pair, so I have the television on as background noise. There’s some hospital show on, on ITV – people are walking around a hospital watching operations, interviewing patients and staff. Everytime they switch presenters there’s a presenter and a different nurse, who ends up standing around for five minutes as the presenters swap cringe inducing “jokey banter” before they start talking to the nurse – often about something really irrelevant such as, “look at this big tea bag. How many cups does this make then?”

Now the funny thing about this is that somewhere in each conversation they always say “Now, you’re very busy aren’t you?”

I suppose I get what I deserve watching ITV

General Election Result

// May 7th, 2005 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Well Labours majority has been reduced by 40+ seats….They’ve gone to having over 100 more seats than everyone else put together, to just 66.

This hopefully means that BLiar will find it harder to push through new laws as he’ll have to solicit support from the conservatives, lib dems and Gordon Brown. This is a good thing.

He’ll have to make more concessions to Gordon Brown, who is much more agreeable than Blair is and Blair will probably be out in a couple of years now…

On the home constituency front surprise surprise it was a Labour hold the same as the last 60ish years. Chesterfield are still holding on as the only Lib Dem seat in the East Midlands though :)

I’m viewing this election as a minor success I guess, here’s to the next one.

Riverside

// May 7th, 2005 // No Comments » // General

Went for a lovely walk alongside the mersey-trent canal yesterday. All the river folk seemed really friendly, nearly all of them smiling and saying “hi” as we walked past. As we walked Nick told us tales of his river-faring past, which were quite interesting and the total opposite of the idyllic scenes we witnessed. It was quite interesting to watch a lock being used in person – I’ve not done that in years.

We walked a fair way probably about 4 miles before coming to a pub, so we had a couple of drinks in there before walking back. Saw the back of Shugborough Hall on the way back too which was quite interesting.

I’d really like to spend a weekend living on a barge, it’s really expensive though – a 7 person barge is £700 for four nights :(

Everyone Hates Me

// May 3rd, 2005 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

I watched Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (aka HGTTG) on Saturday afternoon at the cinemas with my brother. I’ve already read the first two books and thoroughly enjoyed them (the others are on the way), however my brother was a HGTTG virgin, I took him knowing he shared a similar sense of humour to me, so would probably like it…

Contrary to a lot of the press I’ve read, the film is actually very funny… This goes both for bits taken from the book and bits that are film only. The audience had an age rage from young kids to middle aged couples, and I’m pretty sure they were all laughing. Both Lemon and I was laughing really hard at parts of the film.

In terms of things like character development and plot building the movie was a little..strange. For example for what seems like no reason what so ever there was a large scene featuring Zaphods presidancy rival, that basically, never got finished. Also the Heart of Gold, managed to improbably appear right where the drivers wished to go each time..I thought that Ford (played by Mos Def) was a bit of a weak character – he seemed slightly superfluous to me. The star of the show has to be Alan Rickman who played Marvin, his character was the one which raised most laughs from the audience, Rickmans voice was very well suited for the role too.

Compared to the book the film doesn’t do too well, many of the books most funny moments haven’t been saved for the big screen, and the jokes that the movie version adds aren’t all strong enough, to pull the movie and books level.

Saying that both me and my brother laughed lots at the film, it helps if you have the Adams kind of humour, without it the film will probably be not recieved to well. Big fans of the book may be dissapointed too, luckily for me it was a few months ago since I read it…