Synchronicity

Greatest fight scenes

2008-12-19T12:41:00.003Z

Just a quick mention of a great thread over on Boards.ie

Best fight scenes in a movie

a couple of my faves from the list

They Live:

No Retreat No Surrender 3

SPL ( a movie I was not familiar with.)

Ennio Morricone

2008-10-19T13:49:00.008+01:00

Saw the legend that is Ennio Morricone last night in Belfast. Really incredible experience. We were very lucky and got seats in the very front row. not ten feet from the Maestro himself!

Like many people I primarily knew Ennio's contributions to Sergio Leone's Man With no Name trilogy' The title theme to The good the bad and the Ugly and The ecstasy of the gold from the same movie. I was also aware of his soundtrack to The Mission, but I hadn't seen that movie in years.

When we got the programme for the night I discovered he also did the composition for John Carpenters The Thing and for Brian DePalma's The Untouchables.

All of the above (barring music from The Thing) were played and in fact the Ecstasy of the gold was played twice.
Here's a a video of the song from a different concert. Same orchestra and incredible soprano ( Susanna Rigacci)

The choir was the Belfast Philharmonic Choir, The video cannot convey the experience of sitting there with a full orchestra and 100-120 person choir belting out Spaghetti western tunes when you're there in person.

As well as the Movie themes I recognised there were a couple of pieces that I had not previously known which were also excellent, one in particular which made full use of the choir is called Abolisson. It highlights the amazing talent this man has, the songs vary from beautiful and melancholy pieces through lighthearted xylophone-driven numbers to the raises-the-hair-on-the-back-of- your-neck majesty of On earth as it is in heaven from the mission.

It just leaves one thing to say...Bravo Maestro!

Empires 500 Movies

2008-09-26T10:57:00.004+01:00

A rant if you will indulge me:

So Empire have compiled their readers top 500 films.
suffice to say the usual suspects dominate and everywhere I look I seem to find people bashing it as fanboyish nonsense. Fair enough, when it comes to subjective matters the wisdom of crowds is usually pretty skewed.

But as much as a lot of the empire list annoys me, the righteous 'my taste is so superior' backlash annoys me much further and in fact sends me rallying to wave my flag with the Empire hordes.

lets take a quick look at the alternative. The following is the top ten from the top 100 critics films in Sound and Vision ( a 'proper' movie review/criticism magazine).

1. Citizen Kane / Orson Welles
2. Vertigo / Alfred Hitchcock
3. The Rules of the Game / Jean Renoir
4. The Godfather and The Godfather Part II Francis Ford Coppola
5. Tokyo Story / Yazujiro Ozu
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey / Stanley Kubrick
7. Battleship Potemkin / Sergei Eisenstein
8. Sunrise / F.W. Murnau
9. 8 1/2 / Federico Fellini

I am depressed just looking at the titles, don't get me wrong I love some of these movies
(godfather and Vertigo are particular highlights) and I'm sure those I haven't seen
are very worthy (they are all on my list I believe).

The problem is where you gonna crack a smile, Only 2001 offers any serious escapism (that I know of) here
and for that, is it really better than the Empire Strikes back?
I know which one I'd rather watch.

p.s for what Its worth here was my submission (as far as I can recall, unfortunately
the original list is no longer available on the empire site. ) to the Empire List.

1. Princess Bride
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Casablanca
4. Big Trouble in little china
5. Requiem for a Dream
6. Shawshank Redemption
7. Spider-man 2
8. Pans Labyrinth
9. Dragon: the bruce lee story
10.The Dark Knight

Yep I'm one of the people that bumped Dark knight into the top 15,
I stand by that I think its an great movie. I think I'd review it now
that other movies pop into my head ( no "once upon a time in the west",
"Army of Darkness" or "Hellboy", tough to call what I'd bump out)

Crystal Skull

2008-05-23T13:57:00.005+01:00

First viewing last night and I'm happy with it. It was never going to live up to the hype but it gives it a good old fashioned try. Let me get the failings out of the way first...

(Some spoilers below).

prevalent Supernatural/superscience. In a break with tradition the Supernatural/superscience elements are present almost from the get go. The Arks power was not revealed till the raider denouement, The sankara stones only come to life at the very end, the Grail isn't seen till the last 10 minutes. Spalkos psychic powers are hinted at from the start, and by the halfway point we have seen the skull used and indeed It actively drives the plot along. Oh and there's a UFO.

Underused talent. Karen Allen is woefully underused , as is the excellent John Hurt ( reduced to a mumbling wreck for most of the movie). Ditto Jim Broadbent (although in fairness he gets as much screen time as Denholm Elliot did in Raiders).

Overused CGI. Granted its no phantom menace but there are a couple of places I think they used it where it wasn't need. I'm probably being a bit harsh here but those CGI prarie dogs didn't agree with me at all. If I can tell its CGI it shouldn't be there.

Dialogue. I though some of the dialogue was a little weak towards the end. Particularily in the aftermath of the ship 'taking off'.

Right with that out of the way, On to the Good Stuff.

Karen Allen, if nothing else for her reaction to the 'none of them were you' line, She has an amazing smile. The chemistry between them was great and the dialogue between them was nice and snappy.

Go Shia! Mutt Williams was an entirely acceptable new character to the indy universe. Yes him being Indys son looked terrifying on paper but they played it for laughs. Great to see the little references to the relationship between Indy and his dad in Crusade. The looks exchanged on the motorcycle to 'this is intolerable!'.

Great Set Pieces. The Bike chase (particularily when Indy fights his way through a car..) is really well filmed, the camerawork screams Spielberg. The Jungle chase is excellent too with lots of leaping from vehicle to vehicle and interactions going on.

Great CGI. Along with the bad there was the good, the Nuclear explosion was great, as were the ants and the fairly subtle CGI used during the Jungle chase ( I knew it was there but I couldn't see the seams) .

Indy still kicks ass , the punches still have that satisfying THWAP sound ( IIRC that was created by someone beating a pile of wet leather!) and he can still pull off the stunts convincingly. his two slugfests with the big russian (while not quite as epic as his punch outs with Pat Roach) were pretty satisfying.

Ants!

All in all it checks all the boxes:
Hat Fedora and whip, creepy crawlies, Booby traps, a mystical McGuffin, Bad Guys defeated by their own greed, losing the hat and getting it back , breakneck chase scenes, fist fights, Quotable lines, A snake and a love interest.

Long live Indy!

"besides, You know what a careful guy I am"

2008-05-20T22:32:00.003+01:00

So its not far away now.. Thursday night I'll be seeing Crystal Skull*. Been trying to keep the expectations to a reasonable level to avoid a repeat of the spider-man fiasco. However walking past the Irish premiere in the savoy today and confirming my tickets are booked has kind of set me off a bit. I'm off to think calm thoughts!

*think thats what I've decided on calling it rather than Kingdom. guess time will tell whether I chose wisely or not ;)

161: Forrest Gump

2008-05-09T17:16:00.000+01:00

Well it only took me fourteen years (isn't that absolutely terrifying, it seems like only yesterday) but I finally got around to watching this.

As the inexplicably talented Forrest bumbles his way through an astounding array of historic events and places, he touches the lives of many, inadvertently teaching them life lessons (or in some cases, making them a fortune). Its pretty much exactly what I expected, a very sentimental moral tale. Forrest as a character starts out with the odds against him having an IQ of 75 and a twisted spine, But he makes it through the difficulties he encounters by living according to the aphorisms his mom taught him as a child. Indeed he seems barely seems aware of the trials he is is put through. Tom hanks Oscar win is well deserved, its a great physical performance as well as his subtle conveyance of emotions.

The movie is well paced , and it needs to be due to the sheer number and variety of Forrests experiences that we see. College football hero, Vietnam veteran, ping pong champion and long distance walker as well as several encounters with US presidents ( scenes which unfortunately have dated badly). In the course of these there is some really beautiful cinematography and effects. For me the best 'act' is the one set around the Vietnam war, we are introduced to Gary Sinise's character ('Lieutenant Dan') and some of the best effects,scenery and humour in the movie.

William Goldman raves about Robin Wright Penn in this movie , I thought she was passable and would in fact rate Gary Sinise's performance over hers. And as a character shes a pain in the ass, putting our poor Forrest through hell when in fact he's the best thing that ever happened to her (then again, guess it wouldn't have been much of a movie if they got together from the start).

In summary I'd have to say Gump is Sentimental,Soppy,Predictable and Silly and I really liked it. The humour and hints at independent movie style save it from being the big Hollywood schmaltz it could have been. If only they had gone a little further
it could have been great.

160: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

2008-04-29T20:32:00.004+01:00

Had this sitting on my shelf for ages and just hadn't gotten round to watching it.
Having read William Goldmans Adventures in the screen trade, I knew a couple of things going in , I knew it had comic elements and I knew that Paul Newman and Robert Redford have a great chemistry in it. Oh and I knew how it ended, Impossible to avoid really its of those iconic scenes that is referenced and parodied a lot.

I think maybe if I hadn't known all of those things beforehand I would have enjoyed it better.I'm jumping ahead somewhat. First things first, the opening credits reveal the music was composed by Burt Bacharach, a slight jump from the Sergio Leone soundtracks I'm used to in westerns. It gives it an anachronistic feel which is interesting but I'm not a big fan of that kind of music, so call that a point against..

The first few scenes are typical western style (poker, gunplay,a train robbery ) setting up the characters (Butch is the brains and Sundance is the hotshot gunslinger ) and establish that they are already notorious.
There are a couple of great moments, most of them from the brilliant dialogue. But there are some points where interest starts to wane. That awful 'raindrops keep falling on my head' scene. And too many drawn out shots where nothing actually happens.

However from the second train robbery , the film really finds its feed. The pair are pursued by a seemingly unstoppable and completely anonymous posse. The pursuit is very well shot and The banter between butch and sundance losses its joking nonchalance as they realise they are in trouble -"Who are these guys?"

The plot changes direction again they flee to Bolivia to avoid their pursuers for good, Taking Eta ,Sundances girl,with them. There's an odd and to my mind unnecessarily long photomontage bridging the two halves of the movie showing their
journey south. There are more great comic moments when they realise they don't speak the language, not knowing how to say 'This is a robbery' in their new home. Theres a great scene where Eta and Sundance are gleefully shown into the safe in a bank by the manager which is played with no dialogue, just backing music, that is worthy of mention.
The Actress playing Eta is overshadowed by Newman and Redford but she plays the part adequately.

In the end the pair draw too much attention to themselves and find themselves
hunted down. And we all know how it ends.

The lowly cover version.

2008-04-03T23:34:00.003+01:00

I was shuffling my winamp playlist tonight and came across Doctor? by Orbital. It got me thinking, I remember when I saw that on the track listing for 'The Altogether', I skipped impatiently over the other tracks to hear it. I guess I've always been a sucker for the idea of a cover version. Obviously quality varies significantly but the idea that some one could take a piece of music and make it their own is neat.
So as a tribute to the lowly cover version here's a list of some the most unexpected I've come across (also some of the best)

Tori Amos covers Nirvana- Smells Like Teen spirit.
Everyone paying attention? this is how you cover a song. Amazing.

Massive Attack cover The Doors -Light my fire
Fun cover by massive attack, I remember hearing them in an interview saying they got a lot of flak for covering this. Some people take things way too seriously.

Tricky covers Nirvana -Something in the way
Tricky is somewhat of a serial cover artist (as is Tori now that I think about it) , covering the Cure on a subsequent album and providing a version of Under the mango tree on this album. I actually heard this version of Something in the way before the original (is it wrong that I prefer it?).

The Prodigy cover L7 - Fuel my Fire
This is another cover I heard before the original. It may not be the best track in the world but I like it cause you don't expect the prodigy to do cover versions.

Primal Scream cover Nancy Sinatra
Yep you read that right, Primal Scream meet Nancy Sinatra. And its a really good cover too. Again I heard these in the 'wrong' order, bit of a theme that, didn't realise it till I started writing these down!

Nine Inch Nails cover Soft Cell -Memorabilia

heard this in reverse chronological order too. Another great cover and made it his own too, perhaps this is the least unusual cover of my list both being electronic artists of a sort.

Johnny Cash covers Nine Inch Nails - Hurt Nicely bookending this list a cover version that must rank right along side Tori's Teen Spirit cover. The video is quiet eerie too, like he knew he was about to die. pretty poignant stuff.

That's it for now, There are more covers for your perusal The Covers Project which is slowly but surely building up the definitive archive of covers that have music videos.

Giant Tadpole.

2008-02-05T21:51:00.000Z

Good to be back. Was having blogger login issues.

Wanted to mention a movie,not on the list, it's 'The Host' the Korean Horror movie about a Giant Tadpole. I really really wanted to like this movie, Empire gave it four stars claiming "you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll ask Hollywood for your money back".

Maybe so. If you're only comparing it to Hollywood made giant Monster movies. So umm that's Godzilla then. Fair enough. Of course now we have Cloverfield so maybe thats not true anymore either.

Anyhow. I might not have given it four stars myself but there is definitely worth seeing there. I really like it when an action or horror movie surprises me with something unexpected and I don't mean using Shaky Camera to convince me something dramatic is happening, no I mean when you see something on screen but you're not entirely sure or you don't quite believe what you are seeing. The first appearance of the monster is like this. Its let down by some really strange pacing decisions. It feels like they didn't edit it, the beginning of the movie rattles along at a nice pace, then there is a huge dip and lots of 'comedic' moments, I guess its the Korean sense of humor but for me it stole from what could have been a really great movie. ah well, maybe next time.

Its neat having a blackboard, and I've decided to capture our visitors efforts for posterity

Really cool things.

2007-11-08T22:20:00.000Z

The following things are cool.Canonically cool.

Stranger Than Fiction, I though Will Ferrell was just a zany comedy genius, turns out hes a great actor too.

The Lyrics Plugin for Winamp. Its great for sorting out those pesky Mondegreens.

This man, who I had the opportunity to see live recently here in Dublin, is very funny.

And since I'll be there this weekend, Dominicon a games convention with a real nice relaxed vibe.

159: The Pianist

2007-10-21T14:40:00.000+01:00

This is one I started watching before but bailed out on some time ago. Its not the kind of movie thats gonna cheer you up! Based on the book by Wladyslaw Szpilman about his own survival in German occupied Poland through WWII.

This is a war movie without the war, Its filmed in such a way that we see everything from Szpilmans point of view as he movies from safehouse to safehouse avoiding the S.S and meeting people who are in hiding like himself and members of the polish resistance.

Adrien Brody is fantastic as the reticent and eccentric Szpilman. He conveys his state of fear and sheer incomprehension at the atrocities he sees everyday brilliantly. It's very easy to see why the film won its 3 Oscars. Its extremely well put together . Given the subject matter it probably goes without saying but it is pretty tough going in places, there are a couple of brutal on screen executions . This movie reminds me of Schindlers list , its brilliant but emotionally draining.

Synchronous tunes.

2007-10-06T13:58:00.000+01:00

I've noticed a lot of the traffic coming here is for people searching for 'synchronicity'. Since my movie related ramblings are probably not what people are looking for I thought I'd offer something to cater for those folks.

Well kind of , it's actually something I've been thinking of putting together for a while and was just looking for an excuse to do so.

Basically this is a list of music tracks that have the same title but by different artists and are not cover versions. It could be argued that that is a synchronous event! (Of course given that most of them are one word titles maybe thats pushing it).

One Love by Bob Marley,The Prodigy and Massive Attack.

I have a little bit of trivia on this one. Marleys video features Paul McCartney and Suggs from Madness. I have also read in an biography of the band that the prodigy used to sing U2s 'One' on the way home after a night out. I'm guessing thats where their title came from.

One by U2, Metallica,Lamb

Ok this is cheating really.. There is a plethora of songs entitled 'one' so moving on..

Rise by PIL, Primal Scream and by Gabrielle!

lets be clear here I'm no Gabrielle fan, shes' purely here because the song titles are the same, but I think its pretty safe to say neither stole the title from the other!.

Religion by Front 242, Philip Glass

I like the contrast in these two.

Wandering Star by Portishead, Lee Marvin

Wandering Star is one of my favorite songs ( no not the lee marvin version!)

Collision by Faith No More, Front Line Assembly also Front 242 (but I can't find a audio or video link.)

Fire It Up by Busta Rhymes and Modest Mouse

Busta Rhymes has a lot to answer for .. defiling the Knight Rider theme tut tut tut.
Modest Mouse on the other hand

Weirdly enough, I've been listening to Nouvelle Vague for the last couple of days. I knew all the original versions of the songs except for one 'This is not a love song' , I wasn't looking for it but while looking for links for this article I came across the video for 'This is not a love song' by PIL. Maybe I'm looking too hard but I thought that was synchronous.

Mountains of Madness news

2007-10-04T10:02:00.000+01:00

There has been some wonderful news.
Guillermo Del Toro has bumped Mountains of Madness up his priority
list, looks like he'll be starting after Hellboy wraps up (which I believe
will be in the next couple of months).

for those who have never read it the text can be found here.

The next question I guess is casting, professor Dyer, Danforth and to a lesser extent professor Lake are the central characters to the story.

I'm thinking unknowns would be best but maybe someone like Alfred Molina could handle on of the professors. I think it is likely Doug Jones will be involved somehow.

Any ideas?

Confess 2007

2007-09-11T09:26:00.000+01:00

just a quick linky to boost the official confess page in the google search for
Confess 2007.

See you all there.

158 : Dr. Strangelove or : how I stopped worrying or learned to love the bomb

2007-06-15T19:16:00.000+01:00

I wasn't expecting a lot from Dr. Strangelove , black comedy isn't my cup of tea usually, I probably wouldn't have made it past the credits if the film wasn't on the list. The opening sequence of a bomber being refuelled mid flight while a monotonous voice over tells us about rumours of a secret Russian Doomsday device.

In saying that the minute Peter Sellers appears on screen as Captain Mandrake (an RAF captain transferred to a US air force base) you know this is going to be an interesting movie.
I've only ever seen Sellers in the Pink Panther movies and Fu Manchu, he is absolutely brilliant in this film. He plays three roles, the aforementioned Mandrake who is the stereotypical british officer type who loses his composure as the film goes on, The president who valiantly struggles to keep the whole mess from escalating (but ultimately fails) and of course the eponymous Doctor. Theres not enough of the doctor, thats the only criticism I have of this film.

Dr. Strangelove is a top scientist who advises the war room, he is incredibly creepy and yet ridiculous . All strange ticks , odd smiles and an arm that wants to kill him apparently!

The basic premise is that a General (called Jack D. Ripper , the first in a line of dumb names including Colonel "Bat" Guanu and Mjr. "King" Kong) suspects the commies are poisoning "our precious bodily fluids" and decides to instigate a nuclear mission, reasoning the president will have to commit to an all out attack to avoid soviet retaliation. The president however endeavors to prevent the attack from succeeding by alerting the Russian.

There are three sets . The first is within General Rippers locked-down base (where the beleaguered Captain Mandrake is imprisoned. The second is the war room where the president ,General "Buck" Turgidson and the Russian Ambassador provide the entertainment ( "This is the war room! you can't fight in the war room") . And finally there is the bomber which is destined to drop the bomb.

(I'm assuming thats not a spoiler, The most iconic image from this movie is Slim Pickins riding the bomb to earth)

The war room is the centerpiece with the best gags and most cutting satire, the paranoid ("we cannot allow a mineshaft gap!" and Hardware ( "Buck" is clearly envious of the Russian doomsday device when its existence is revealed) obsessed military.

I was surprised to spot James Earl Jones in a minor role as the Bombadier of the plane crew,
the dvd indicates this was his first movie role.

I can't recommend this movie enough. It is brilliant.

p.s its also in black and white.

New blog.

2007-05-26T18:56:00.000+01:00

Quick post. I've just created a new blog for non-movie related stuff,
Its primarily going to be a place to store all those handy little tricks and tools
that I come across while working, that I inevitable have to figure out all over again several
months later.. well no more, now they have a home, and now hopefully they'll be
useful to some of you too

Spider-man 3

2007-05-08T10:58:00.001+01:00

So its been and gone. And in one word it's disappointing. really disappointing.
In fact I can't stop analysing whats wrong with it.

So in an effort to exorcise that demon, here are 7 things I think were wrong
with spider-man 3 (in no particular order):

Editing - or lack thereof, it feels like they just filmed it and kept everything

Not giving the viewers any credit - did we really need to be retold
all the characters background again? Did every single emotion need to be spelled out in words?

Acting - Maguire is great, don't get me wrong and Dunst is solid, but
they can't cry (at least not in the blubbering way the script seems to have required of them)

Unnecessary characters - I don't know if the screenwriter(Alvin Sargent) is just trying to cram these people in for the fans but Captain Stacy and Gwen stacy do nothing for the story and just eat extremely valuable screen time. And I hate to say it, even Venom is superfluous.

Cheese - for want of a better word the pieces that gave the last few
movies heart have been overblown here and just make you cringe.
No longer is the awful spider man theme from the 60s
cartoon played as a novelty by a busker on the street. Its played
by a brass band, at and apparent "we love spidey" event.

Plot overload - Everyone gets their own subplot and none of them
are resolved to any satisfaction.

characterisation - The characters do and say things that don't really make sense. Why did peter kiss Gwen? Why did sandman help venom? Why didn't the butler say something earlier? Why is aunt may now a fortune cookie?

Here is what I think happened. Sam Raimi had his villains ;Sandman ,
Green Goblin II. The studio and the fans wanted Venom. He caved and
then had 3 villains stories to deal with as well as tying up the threads
from the previous movies. Reading the wikipedia entry for the film it
seems Sargent looked at splitting the movie into two to do it justice but
couldn't find a decent ending for the first movie. So it remained one
bloated movie. Suddenly sam has a lot more to do, a lot more
characters and a lot more shooting and a lot more CGI and what suffers?
he can't give the scenes the attention they deserve. I think its telling that
there's none of the playful references to his own back catalogue that were
seen in the last movie. (crash zooms, the scene with doc ocks arms killing
the doctors). I think he just didn't have time and the movie as a whole
suffered because of it.

Just to be clear, I'm a big fan and I think a lot of things were done right.
The whole look of the movie is fantastic, CGI is flawless( venom is perfect,
Sandman effects amazing ), The action scenes are great. James Franco
is the best actor in the movie. Topher grace makes great use of his limited screen time.
Sam Raimi kept the humour which made the first two so funny. Bruce Campbell. J.K. Simmons eats the screen (again).

Spider-man 1 was the movie that relaunched the comic book movie genre.
Will it die with spider-man 3? Probably not, spidey 3 has already beaten
the box office records. And it looks like some of the best are yet to come,
Dark Knight and Iron man look good and I personally think Hulk could be
excellent too.

So, another spider-man?

I hope so. I don't think Sam Raimi got it so wrong that he 'broke' the
franchise. And there are still a lot of stories to be told for this character.
Whether Sam, Tobey and Kirsten will be back is hard to tell.

As for the story?

I'm biased but my personal favorite spider-man story is
"fearful symmetry :Kravens last hunt" It features the black costume
(not the symbiote) so there's some continuity there.But its also a bit
more adult and has some real darkness, not the Peter Parker in black
eyeliner kind. It'd mean introducing a new Villain but I suspect that'd
have to happen anyways. I think it would make a great movie.

Failing that, maybe go for something from the current spider man
writers? how about revelations/when the stars turn cold ? The Morlun
character is excellent and it gives Aunt May a reason to be in the movie.

Just my 2 cents.

Blade Runner

2007-05-01T09:41:00.000+01:00

Wow, heres a turnup for the books. I came across this on Digg, It seems
that there is a new Bladerunner 'Special Edition' DVD being released and it contains
recently filmed footage
apparently the actress who played the Replicant Zhora has mentioned it on her official website (theres not a lot of info there
just that she has reshot scenes in her original costume which she kept all these years.

Thats 25 years for those who are counting.

The big time.

2007-04-24T17:12:00.000+01:00

So Wayne finally got his EP together and
had his launch night in Sligo. Great night too, it even struggled on despite an unscheduled guest appearance
from yours truly! Yes it looks like he is heading for the big time now. Mind you after reading
this I'm not so sure thats a good idea!,
still I guess he'll save on the album artwork. The CD sounds great and you can even order it
from the last rule (which as it happens is an online
gaming supplies ~~pusher~~ I mean retailer

To keep this blog slightly on topic. I'll talk a little about Evil Dead.
I got this on UMD recently and watched it during the train journey down to Sligo.
I had seen it before (and its superior sequels). Its pretty dated stuff and
the acting is well about as much as can be expected from one of the original
'video nasties'. Theres some great camera work in it though, lots of weird
perspective shots.

And I can't go without mentioning Mr. Bruce Campbell the man whose career was
launched as the hard done by protagonist, Ash. He chews up the scenery
and makes the movie as he deadpans and pratfalls his way through serveral
bizarre and ridiculously gory encounters with the 'deadites' .

*Edit: forgot to mention I spotted what I believe is a poster for the original
'The hills have Eyes' in the first scene in the basement, a little nod to
wes craven, trivia fans.*

I cannot help though to compare it to Army of Darkness (the last film in the trilogy)
and find it wanting, although admittedly any pretense at horror has well disappeared by
the final film. So perhaps thats not a fair comparison.

As a final note I see we're being experimented upon.
I hope we get a clean bill of health.

Google and Heroes.

2007-03-25T11:58:00.000+01:00

A quick plug before I get to the meat and bones of this post. Mr. O Connor has a couple of new videos of him singing on his myspace He also has an single launch the end of next month 21st april in Sligo..

So onto the Google goodness. First off the Blogger site has had a bit of a facelift, customising your page with rss feeds and the layout elements you fancy is a piece of cake now. Also gone is the dreaded "Publishing..." delay. My one complaint is that the preview, while nice and fast isn't giving me a true view of what my layout is going to be.

For example, this line when I view it in the preview all fits onto one line.
As you can hopefully see thats not the case when its published.
Not hard to get around, I'm simply using <P> and </P> to handle
my line formatting now..

The other google tool I've started using (having applied for a free account and recieved it ages ago) is Google Analytics, basically its webstats for your website. And in typically google fashion its everything you want from a webstat service and then some. Its pretty hardcore your basic dashboard offering you a view customised for executive ( pretty colours and nice graphs), webmaster( browsers your visitors are using, javascript/flash/java compatibility) how many visitors 'bounce' arrive at your page and immediately leave and Marketer (keyword analysis, adword clicks and other 'evil' stuff).

Analytics lets me know that that the canadians are my biggest visitors (big shoutout to the canadians, I've always liked 'em) and search keywords that bring people here from google tend to be the names of actors and movies. y'know actors like Harrison Ford, Christian Bale, Kirsten Dunst,Maggie Gyllenhaal and movies like Casablanca, Requiem for a Dream and The Shawshank Redemption. ( Sorry that was mean, apologies if you just if you came here while searching for a movie starring Christian Bale and Maggie Gyllenhaal. There isn't one currently but you can always hang on for this this

The last thing I want to mention is Heroes. If you haven't heard about it here's the quick
rundown, Its a TV series about a group of people who start to manifest 'powers' flight, telepathy
and even manipulating the space-time continuum. I watched the first 7 episodes last night, and
its only brilliant. The use of the powers is kept very low key and the story, each character has their own very down to earth problems, takes center stage. Highly recommended, I put it right up there with battlestar.

157: Once upon a time in the west.

2007-03-23T10:03:00.000Z

Epic spaghetti western and pure Sergio Leone, lots of close ups of
uglypeoples faces and plenty of Gunplay. There are echos of
"The Good the Bad and the Ugly" in that the male leads fill those
roles nicely, Charles Bronson as the enigmatic 'Harmonica' (we
never find out his real name) Fonda as the child murdering (just so
there is no doubt about his depravity) bad guy Frank and
(quick IMDB lookup) Jason Robards as the
really-not-as-bad-as-he-initially-seems bandit Cheyenne.

When I say epic I'm not kidding it clocks in at just under 3 hours.
And a lot of the time you feel every minute of it. From the brilliant
opening scene where 3 of franks gang are waiting at the train station
for Harmonica. It must be 10 minutes of the three of them just standing
around in silence barring the background noise ( a dog barking, a fly
buzzing dripping water etc) , the movie opens with 10 minutes of nothing
happening and I was absolutely riveted. brilliant.

Speaking of silence the movie is pretty sparse on the dialogue but what
little we get is great stuff. My favorite is when Harmonica gets off the
train and is faced with Franks henchmen..
"you bring a horse for me?"
laughs, "looks like we're one shy.'
"no.. you brought two too many"

Once he out-dialogues them, he then out-guns them. classic stuff.

One thing that really stood out for me with this movie is that the
audience are assumed to be able to put two and two together,
expositionary dialog is kept to a bare minimum. So its pretty engaging stuff.

When we were kids my brother and I saw the 'Man with no name' trilogy
a lot as my Dad was a big fan. To my mind this film is much darker than
those movies, but maybe thats just because Its been so long since I've seen
them, I'll have to pick them up and see.

Lovecraftian movies

2007-03-15T15:39:00.000Z

I'm very excited about Guillermo Del Toros planned adaptation
of the Mountains of Madness (now if only he'd stop letting
other projects jump the queue - I'm looking at you Tarzan and
Hellboy 2).

I was thinking how there hasn't been a worthy adaptation of
any of lovecrafts material as yet.

There are a couple of contenders though:
The Re-animator was reasonably successful,
but to my mind it was never one of the definitive lovecraft
stories and I believe liberties were taken with the story and
tone of the piece. I'm not really in a position to judge it
as I've never actually seen it.

HP Lovecrafts Dagon was a DTV release,
and the cover does not instill confidence again I haven't seen
it but I think with bad movies at least you can generally judge
them by their cover. leastways I can't think of any good movies
with bad covers?

Call of Cthulhu by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical
Society is probably the closest direct adaption of Lovecrafts
material cleverly put together as a black and white silent movie.
Still waiting on my copy so I can't confirm this.

The Mouth Of Madness directed by John Carpenter,
starring Sam Neill looks like it should be the winner here
even though not directly adapted from a lovecraft story. And its
pretty good but its kind of heavy handed and knowing in its
Lovecraft referencing and is more Carpenter than Lovecraft,
no bad thing but not the best lovecraftian movie.

Here are a couple of movies I think are more lovecraftian even
though they don't advertise it.

Alien/Aliens - Think about it, unspeakable relentless alien
horror jarring humanity from its view as the center of the
universe.Add in a healthy does of absolute hoplessness and thats
pretty close to what we're looking for. You could even say that
Ripleyis something like the Randolph Carter character, her
encounters resulting in her ending up alien herself, or you might
not.

Pans Labyrinth I think what really grabs me about
this movie is the fact that the 'real world' part is so real.
It's a case of the dragon in the woods, the more real the woods,
the more real the dragon. The time period (1930s) is not so far
from the period of lovecrafts stories either. This movie is
the one that convinces me of Guillermos ability to successfully
make "The Mountains of Madness".

Also an honorable mention for Hellboy with is "Ogdru Jahad" in
their crystal prison.

But back to "Mountains", to my mind the important thing to
get right is the scale of the thing. It has to be Epic (note capital E) .
The most important shot of the film? That tiny little plane slipping
through the gap in the mountains to reveal the dead alien city.

The Elder things will be tricky, Fungi-Plant-animals don't exactly
inspire terror.

But If anyone can do it Mr. del Toro can.

Spam considered useful

2007-03-14T11:16:00.000Z

Believe it or not the only thing that eventually made me post here
again was the volume of comment spam I was getting. There was
enough to give me that righteous 'I'm taking back whats mine,
damn your eyes' motivation.

Now that I'm back I guess I'll continue blogging my journey
through the 1001 you should see before you die. conveniently
enough its just been my birthday and one of the things I picked
up was a bunch of DVDs.

Amongst them:

"Evil Dead" (which I have seen many many times and probably
won't blog about),

"Equilibrium" (which was unlikely to appear in the 1001 movies
but I like much better than the matrix sequels),

"Anchorman" (again not a contender but allegedly quite funny),

"Top Secret" ( long time since I seen this but still a heck of a lot
better then the scary movie/epic movie crap we get these days)

and finally - "Once upon a time in the west", which I believe is in
the 1001 so that should be the next one reviewed. stay tuned..

156: It's a wonderful life

2006-01-05T15:55:00.000Z

Yep, I had never seen "It's a wonderful life', somehow I've always managed to miss the seasonal showings of this classic on telly. It being christmas and all I figured it would appropriate forthe next movie I see on the list to be this one.

I had always heard the plot of this movies described something like a man is convinced by an angel not to commit suicide when he is shown how much worse things would be if he had never been born.While thats certainly the climax of the movie most of the films 2 hours is spent following George Bailey (James Stewart) and getting to know just what a decent fella he is. Thats what really makes the movie. You feel like you know the guy, or at least that you would like to so when thingsgo bad for him , you really,really want it all to work out.
And of course it does.

Things you might not remember about this film, the slightly surreal ballroom/swimming pool transformation mid charleston competition and the rather odd special effects of the constellations (angels) talking.

Things you'll definitely remember, 'a bell rings, an angel gets its wings', James stewarts Homer Simpson impression "Woohooo!".

155: Chinatown

2005-12-06T19:20:00.000Z

This one started off looking pretty damn dissapointing. Its wasa real slow build and I had been expecting a noir film along the linesof the old Bogart movies. They were black and white and had a real sarcastic wit whereas 'Chinatown' was all colour and there was quite a bit of humourin there.

However as I watched the twists started to come and the pace was upped. The tone of the movie changes pretty dramatically when Jack Gittes (Jack Nicholsons character)is threatened by a couple of Goons gaurding a site where some illegal goingson are happening, his witty retorts are rewarded by a nose sliced up with a knife.

You can't help but like Jack, he's a private detective with a good sense of right and wrong in the noir tradition. He's not infallible though and he makes mistakes,makes incorrect accusations but his hearts in the right place. he's street smartthough and makes good use out of a couple of business cards and a busted tail light.

And because you like him its all the worse when the last few twists unfold and it all goes wrong. Its a downer of an ending, brilliant, but a real downer...
The part was written for Jack nicholson , and you can tell. He eats the screen,even Faye Dunaway barely gets a look in as the femme fatale of the piece.Without him I dunno if I could have made it through the first half hour.

DVD bonanza...

2005-11-30T17:57:00.000Z

So not to rest on my laurels from the last one, I'm making another post...This is a kind of preview of the next one I guess. Y'see I'm working every hour of the daythese days so today I figured I'd treat myself.
So I wandered into HMV and picked up 3 dvds.

"Its a wonderful life" - because its the season for it and all. Oh yeah, and I've never seen it (it could possibly be on the list aswell but I don't think so).

"Planes, Trains and Automobiles" - because its one of my all time favorite moviesand is John Candy at his best. It never really seems like christmas until I've watched it. The bit where they drive between the trucks, I split my sides every time..

"Chinatown" - this is how this post is a preview for the next, I'm gonna try and watch this tonight if I can and do a write up tomorrow.

watch this space..

154: 12 angry men

2005-11-04T17:22:00.000Z

We apologise for the loss of service. I no longer have broadband at myfingertips and thats not gonna change for a little bit. Bear with me a little longer.

anyways back to business.

Can you imagine a movie being released today in which all the action takes place inone room with the only props being a table, a fan, a few pieces of paper and a knife.
I think not.

Back in 1957 they did exactly that, no cheating either, no flashbacks ordream sequences. Just 12 actors in a room to hold your attention for over an hour and a half. Genius.

We don't even get to know there names, but by the end of the movie we know exactlywho they are. Henry fonda does a good turn as the decent moral (and smart, at leastcompared to the others) guy who isn't willing to let the murder suspect go to the chair without at least being convinced by the others of his guilt.

As the movie progresses and the arguments of the others crumble or they are revealed to be racist or biased they turn one by one to vote 'not guilty' alongside.

There are no incredible surprises here or very unexpected twists, just good solid acting, well written characters and very effective camera work.

a must see.

February 2nd, 2007

2005-08-04T01:07:00.000+01:00

Has it really been 3 months since my last update?
for shame.

I'll post something soon. In the meantime mark your calendars folks.
the above date is the date Indy IV is pencilled in for!

2005-05-03T23:44:00.000+01:00

Fargo poster

153: Fargo

2005-05-03T23:36:00.000+01:00

Fargo is a pretty quirky movie. It varys from extremely violent and bleak (disposing of bodies in a woodchipper, graphic cold blooded murder,belt whipping) to the banal and downright boring (Egg breakfast + car jump start, chatting about a painting competition, lots of overly drawn out conversations).

I think I see what the Coen brothers were going for contrast for black comedy effect. I'm no big fan of that particular genre by any stretch of the imagination but overall I like it. William H Macy and the ever excellent Steve 'motormouth' Buscemi are what do it though. They're really top notch performances. Buscemi eats up any screen time given to him. Hell, you could have made an entire movie with just him and his partner in crime with a continuous buscemi monologue and it'd be fantastic..

The look of the movie is pretty iconic. You really get the sense fargo is in the middle of nowhere. It times though its a bit arty, prolonged shots with no real action going on. I think that between the overly drawn out 'normality' conversations and the long camera shots you could cut a good 20 minutes off the movie and not really
harm it.

I'm not gonna rush out and see it again but I can see its merit.

2005-04-29T00:59:00.000+01:00

poster: Singing In The Rain

152 : Singing in the rain.

2005-04-29T00:53:00.000+01:00

Saw this for the first time not so long ago.

Its another musical. (I'm resigned to the fact that In all likeliness I will see all of the musicals in the damn book before any other genre...)
And its really quite good. Gene Kelly is an incredibly talented fellow.

I of course had seen the 'singing in the rain' sequence before, Its one of those Iconic movie moments. I thought that seeing it in context would somehow make it less so. Not the case, in fact the most notable thing about this movie is that it was put together in a really haphazard manner and relies on its feelgood factor to hold it together as a movie. The musical numbers are extremely tangental and whole chunks of the movie could have been dropped without making an iota of difference to the plot.

I watched this in the Company of Cap'n Vane and Her Mom. So I had a running commentary on who was who and who fell out with who (It is apparently crystal clear after 100+ viewings that Debbie Reynolds and the boys just didn't get on...) . That kind of background info kept it interesting.

I don't think I'd be rushing back to watch it again. But I'd certainly watch a couple of the musical numbers if they happened to be on telly, and I'd probably have a smile on my face afterwards. Feelgood is the only way to describe it..

On an unrelated note. I've just been to see "The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy" in the cinema. I'm very impressed. It must have been really difficult to translate Douglas' adams humour to the movie medium but Its been done pretty well. One of my favorite bits in the book was the whale and the petunias materialising in the upper atmosphere of a planet. Bill bailey as the whales thoughts was a stroke of genius..

2005-04-05T23:51:00.000+01:00

This is Lenny.

151: Princess Mononoke.

2005-03-22T12:32:00.000Z

In summary. Excellent, strange, beautiful and not as good as 'Spirited Away'.
Much like spirited away it is very 'japanese'. I think I saw a review that
contrasted its eastern mythology to the western mythology of lord of the rings
Its just not as easy to accept unless you grew up with it, it all seems a bit
alien. Which is of course part of the appeal.

The animation is beautiful and extremely creative and the movie cannot be slighted
for that. The problem I found was the pacing. It starts of with this demon boar
charging through a forest but loses its pace pretty quickly after that. I think
perhaps the animation was given priority over pacing and it shows.

The other thing of note is in the DVD version which I got my hands on the
dubbing is pretty high quality and there are a bunch of notable names in there.
Including Billy bob thornton and Gillian anderson. I'm sure the full list can be
found on IMDB.

Worthy of mention: Oceans 12

2005-02-25T21:11:00.000Z

Well its not all that mention worthy, but it is the only film I've had a chance to see in ages, plus
its kind of a link with the last post (reposted today cause It didn't register the first time round
for some reason).

And for a heist movie its pretty good. All star cast and it looks like they had good fun making it.
I was dubious about it when I heard about it first but its a pretty worthy sequel to the first movie.

Weakest link: Catherine Zeta Jones, every single movie I've seen her in she just looks so smug,
I don't think shes a great actor (I can't call them actresses any more are I?).

Coolest scene is by far the Night Fox , Capoeira-ing his way across the randomised laser beam
security grid. While fantastically cool (and David holmes soundtrack really helps) its just not believable , Capoeira does not make you psychic. Probably.

The banter between the '12' (that raises a point , who is the 12th, Julia Roberts? she was in the last one too!) is the best of the movie .. Eliot Gould advising brad pit on the Hotel business "You're micromanaging.. I been doing this my whole life, you gotta find people you can delegate to".

Theres a bunch of laughs too The "lost in translation" scene with Robbie Coltrane,
Or catherine zeta jones phone conversation with Eddie Izard(sp?).

Still I couldn't help but laugh every time Matt Damon opened his mouth, I kept thinking
of this Puppet counterpart in Team America "MATT DAMON!!". Its funny if you've seen it.
trust me.

Worthy of mention: O brother where art thou.

2005-02-25T21:06:00.000Z

I counted it as one I've seen already but I don't think I was concentrating on it
when I did see it. Its a great movie, really funny and feelgood. Really nice production
, from the rustic little towns to the stunning countryside. Its one of these
movies that throws in a little of everything, comedy, romance, slapstick, drama,
the supernatural, musical numbers and some quite surreal and unexplained goings on.

George clooney really makes this movie and goes up a couple of notches in my book
because of it. I always think of him as the supercool never failing smart talkin crook
type as in Oceans 11 and out of sight. But hes a damn fine actor and pretty funny to
boot and you can really see it in this. He isn't afraid to ham it up in this and goes
against type to an extend.I think its his best role.

The music is pretty good too, although a lot of it is the kind of music that would
grate on my nerves after a while. I can see the appeal though and it certainly works
in the context of the movie.

Now I'm gonna make an effort to start seeing a couple of these other movies every week,
other wise I'm never gonna get through em. I'll make mosts like this when I can't
though! at least get some material up here!

150: Amelie

2005-02-08T00:57:00.001Z

"The fabulous destiny of amelie poulain"

Is a great little movie with lots of crazy little subplots linked by amelies desire to improve the world around her. It could have been
a really sentimental mushy movie but It always seems to be just
cheeky and knowing enough to avoid that. The use of special
effects is particularily cool.
Its pretty funny too but the movie is really carried by the performance of Audrey tatou(sp?) who plays the title role. Shes equal parts quirky and likeable...

Its a real feelgood movie, from the bright colours and very minor troubles of the characters involved to the very odd narration in which the activities of a fly landing on a street at a particular time are bestowed with the same importance as the actions of Amelie herself. Mad.

no 149* Calamity Jane.

2005-01-14T01:25:00.000Z

*Lost count and I can't view my blog from here, so thats a guess.

Now I know what you're thinkin, your thinking 'Calamity jane? You said you were gonna see
something with a bit of credibility next!' and you're right, I did. I haven't broken
my word though. Y'see I saw 'Calamity jane' the same day I saw 'Gentlemen prefer blondes'
I just didn't realise it was on the list..

Anyways I don't know If this movie should be in the top 1001, I mean its ok as musicals go
and the actress playing Calamity (damned if I can remember her name) certainly gives it
plenty of gusto.

Perhaps its because this film has special meaning to the lesbian moviegoing audience
(apparently 'a womans touch' is a bit of a lesbian anthem). Apart from that I can't
see the appeal, sure the songs are catchy (I was humming 'Whipcrack away,whipcrack away whip crack away"
to myself for a few days after the movie), but the plot is pretty thin and Its really
more the kind of fare I'd rather to see on stage rather than on the screen..

As an aside I watched "Back to the future II" on the same day, and It had been absolutely
ages since I saw it last. Its a cracker of a movie, and the time twisting plot is really quite
a complicated thing to try and do and still be this comic adventure. But when you are watching
it ,its really quite simple to follow. I don't think I had seen this since I saw the third movie
and so I had never noticed the little references to what was to come in the third installment.
The metal plate scene from 'a fistful of dollars' playing on the t.v and the references to biffs
great grandfather in 1885. Great fun. incidentally the first Back to the future is on the list
but the sequels are not.( very few sequels are. aliens being the only one that springs to mind.

right. back to work.

This message is for the designated recipient only and may contain privileged, proprietary, or otherwise private information. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the original. Any other use of the email by you is prohibited.

148: Gentlemen prefer blondes.

2005-01-10T19:19:00.000Z

Yup, having made a grab at some credibility with L.A confidential I once again sink back down to the realm of the musical.. Thankfully the musical numbers in this are kept to a minimum.

As for the movie itself , I like it. I'm not gonna rush out and buy it on DVD or nothing but its pretty funny in places. That little millionare kid on the boat was pretty surreal. I couldn't help but chuckle.

Definitely gonna avoid musicals if I can for a while. maybe I'll try and catch Fargo or the Fly.
no I'm not kidding, I ain't seen either...

L.A Confidential.

2005-01-07T15:12:00.000Z

Got round to watching this last night. It is such a cool movie. Its like three different movies at once beause of the individual plots of the 3 cops, Guy pearces 'by the book' lieutenant, Russel crowes vigilante-esque Angry detective and Kevin Spaceys corrupt but likeable vice detectve. Throw in danny devito and Kim basinger for good measure and a really nicely tied together story and you have a recipe for classic status..
Dunno how I managed to miss this movie all these years. brilliant. "Off the record, On the Q.T and very hush-hush

In case anyone was wondering that brings me to a 147 of the 1001 'movies to see before you die'

formatting hell.

2005-01-04T19:53:00.000Z

Apologies for the eye-burningly bad formatting of that last post.
The mailed posts are tricky to get right. I'll try harder.

More movies.

2005-01-04T08:58:00.000Z

Hope y'all had a good christmas. I know I did. It wasn't entirely wasted either,
I managed to catch one (perhaps more) of the movies on my list. Cabaret, a movie
based loosely around a cabaret singer and her relationship with an english teacher
in Berlin in 1931. Its another musical-ish movie, which Cap'n vane has kindly
introduced me to.
I've said before I don't like the musical genre, But all the singing and dancing
is kept to the confines of the cabaret bar so it keeps the movie firmly grounded in
reality. The songs are used to mirror the mood of the scenes that occur after (or during
with some very good editing).
Its got a bit of everything, a tragic love story, undertones of menace with the rise of the nazis, really quite clever musical acts and a touch of the surreal about the whole thing. The cabaret lead singer( compere?) is particularily well played, being creepy and compelling at the same time, a kind of narrator for the whole story. I must admit it wasn't bad. Glad I seen it.
I also got the star wars dvd box set for christmas (which I have seen already of course)
but they deserve mention because they are all on the list of 1001 movies too.

I'll list any other movies I seen over the christmas that are on the list in the next post.

This message is for the designated recipient only and may contain privileged, proprietary, or otherwise private information. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the original. Any other use of the email by you is prohibited.

"1001 movies to see before you die"

2004-12-22T12:50:00.000Z

..is the title of a book I picked up there a couple of weeks ago. Since buying it
I have seen two of the listed movies that I hadn't seen before,
by virtue of them happening to be on telly. So I've decided as an ongoing project
that I will see them all.

Previously I was infamous for not having seen those films that everyone else had seen.
Alien, and The Crow being good examples ( both of which I have seen now).

Well I'm gonna those classic movies here as I see 'em, maybe I'll even say a little
something about em as I see fit. I'll also list off the ones I already seen until
I have all 1001 (or as close as I can get, some of the movies are REALLY ancient)

So without further ado the first two movies I have seen of the 1001.
1)West Side Story
2)Gone with the wind.

West Side story I can see how some people might like it. Micheal jackson ripped off
a huge number of shots and moves for his videos and some of the songs aint bad.
But the Musical just ain't a genre that does it for me. I ,somewhat controversially
I might add, cannot stand Moulin rouge, and would gladly take back those two hours of my life.

Gone with the wind is a movie I didn't think I would like at all. It being long and fully
of characters that you just plain can't like.. However I was pleasantly surprised. Its a
well crafted story and filmed very well indeed. And Rhett(?) Butler is 'the Man'!

right more as I see em'

(p.s I'm breaking my rule here and mailing from my work addy.. it seems like the only way
I'll ever update this site, I'll stick to doing it on breaks and after hours though. I'll
be good!)

This message is for the designated recipient only and may contain privileged, proprietary, or otherwise private information. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the original. Any other use of the email by you is prohibited.

They're back.

2004-12-12T19:57:00.000Z

wow october. has it really been that long?
Well I been busy and I can't acess gmail from work. thats all the excuses you getting from me.

To more important matters. I was at the prodigy gig in the olympia last night. they are well and truly back on form. Leeroy was on the Decks before hand keeping the beats coming.

The new material sounds great live, interspersed with the tried and tested old tunes. poison, their law, smbu, mindfields.

They're a fucking brilliant live act. Real theatrical, great energy.
Kieth and Maxim play off each other something wicked. They have these characters they slip into. Maxim is this taskmaster character cool beyond belief driving the crowd harder and harder... Keith is this barely restrained demented creature that at any minute could leap into the crowd in a frenzy.

But the minute liam walked on and turned on a small sign on his equipment rig the read "sex" I knew it was gonna be great!

I'm still deaf.

Gaelcon 2004.

2004-10-27T22:42:00.000+01:00

Having recovered sufficiently from the exesses of the weekend. drink,games,sleep deprivation and fun I give you the Gaelcon weekend blog.

I had a ball at gaelcon. This year more than any other since I started going there it felt a bit like coming home.. Familiar faces all round many of whom did us the honour of coming to our convention way out west. Everyone is so friendly and I think I saw maybe one sad face amongst the 600 odd attendees and that didn't seem to last.
actually 2 if you saw my mate duane but that was after I broke the ear off his 1500 euro Batman statue, so you can see why he might not be singing "all kinds of everything" and blowing bubbles. I have already extended my sincerest apologies but I re-iterate them her. hope the damage is fixable...

Games wise it was the Year of Pirates of the Spanish Main ( or BOAT as it is known by some of us). But the other game to really make an impression was Star Wars: The queens gambit. really neat mechanism for having all 4 segments (gungan diversion, storming the palace, Jedi dual, and space battle) affect each other.

Alas I still have not aqquired a copy of the Call of Cthulhu card game. boo.

However I got to play plenty of Call of Cthulhu.. the fairly typical yet dead solid "The Great Game" and "Temporary insanity" which does exactly what it says on the tin...

What else. Karaoke in which Dave (gamer style third person reference not someone else) tries to sing in the Key of C#, fails by several letters then realises its not even the right song..

Pub quiz, which was fun. Club AGM which was actually fairly neat.
Charity auction in which money becomes something far less valuable than it really is and sticking your hand in the air becomes as addictive as crack cocaine.

dissapointingly my efforts to get everyone (including me) to go see AvP over the weekend failed miserable, And the Dang weather here prevented me from doing it today. I better get to see it before vegas, or I shall be very put out.

If I remember anything else I should mention I'll post it next post.

Dave.

Empire.

2004-10-12T23:04:00.000+01:00

Have to say Empire's a top notch magazine. v. rarely does it fail to nail just how good a movie is. Imagine my dissapointment then, when they give AvP a mere 2 stars. Of course It was always going to be tricky to do either license justice... I'll still go see it. Forewarned is forearmed( and Four-armed is really handy in Mortal Kombat *groan*).

Empire also have a top 100 sexiest movie stars of all time. Which is funny cause this is a discussion I've had several times in the last couple of weeks. Now they got the sexiest men in there and they're pretty much what you'd expect (although orlando Bloom is the top ranking bloke. I would have thought that a bit odd but what do I know.) so I'm just gonna list the top ten ladies ( in reverse order to build the suspense).

10. Grace Kelly - I never watched none of her movies so I dont know if she deserves to be in the top ten or not
She don't look like top ten material from the photo..

9. Rita Hayworth - She was v. sexy, so I won't quibble with her appearance in this list.

8.Natalie Portman - According to empire sexiest role was Amidala in Episode III. Emm. Nope.

7. Uma Thurman - Yeah I guess , to me Uma is a bit too tomboyish to be one of the sexiest. But I'll allow it ;)

6. Scarlet Johannson - I only really noticed her in Lost in Translation so the Jury is still out on her..

5. Jennifer Connolly - Ok wholehearted agreement here. She looked pretty fine in the Rocketeer and she's been
in some other stuff more recently. Hulk I think. Damn.

4. Marilyn Monroe - Nuff said.

3. Halle Berry - Can't stand her. Everyone else is off their rocker for placing her so high..

2. Angelina Jolie - Yeah she is hot, lips to die for but makes some pretty appalling movies plus
a bit of an oddball as far as I can gather..

1. Keira Knightly - I would have said forget about it. But the picture they got of here she's
all done up like some kind of 50's film star and she looks pretty good. But where are (as
a good friend of mine likes to say) the Norks?

Heres a couple from lower down on the list that I think are more deserving of being in the top ten
than some I have mentioned .
Kirsten Dunst, Kate winslet ( having seen her recently in a Beautiful mind) and Selma Hayek.

In other news I have finally got my own copy of "What evil lurks" even if it is a re-issue, and on
vinyl(I don't own a turntable..)

Later.

Do stuff.

2004-10-03T22:45:00.000+01:00

Saw adds for The new pratchett book "going postal" made me want to read it. so I pops into easons to pick it up then realise its not available here yet. Howver I subsequently realise that I haven't read Monstrous Regiment yet and it is conveniently sitting on the shelf right in front of me, in handy paperback format. Ah I says to myself I'll get that then. Then I find out I've got the first discworld meetup coming tomorrow night. perfect says I. that'll give me something to talk about then..

Anyhoo. I went to a play on friday, Brian Friels "Faith Healer", I probably wouldn't have chosen to go see it myself but as it was Cap'n Vane suggested we go to the theatre for something different and it was on. It was surprisingly good for a play consisting of 4 monologues.. both Funny and tragic in parts. I liked it but it made me miss the fun we had doing stage performances while I was in sligo....

however I did see that there was a screenwriting workshop going on in the IFI.. Think it'd be interesting even though I shouldn't really be spending money coming up to Vegas (did I mention I was going to vegas next month? go me) and I should be saving money instead, still I think It'd be good to do. I haven't really done anything just for myself since I came to dublin.. I miss acting and Tai Chi and Capoeira and all the stuff I used to do (however erratically) in sligo. Theres definitely less Time here.

More at some point.

Penance

2004-09-29T23:04:00.000+01:00

(what you do after you confess? no? anyone?)

Well its all over. And I for one bloody enjoyed it. great excercise...
I've already written a diary for the flat earth site so I won't repeat myself here.

Many thanks to those of you who made the effort get all the way to sligo.
And thanks of course to the other flat earthers who made it what it was.

Anyhoo. I'm still knackered so I'm not gonna rant here.

Although I am working on a little project with mr o'connor which I will post about
at some point that I think is gonna be a bit special. more later.

The tragic tale of Varl Bearclaws return.

2004-09-14T23:43:00.000+01:00

At the last moment Varl was pulled from the jaws of death by his
good friend Boris the Cleric.

In a weakened state he chose to take a moment to summon his druidic healing powers.

He was then promptly lightning bolted back into unconciousness.

Varl was having a bad day.

Lightning Bolted to death

2004-09-14T23:24:00.000+01:00

Thats what my D&D barbarian (/druid) has just been. He went out with a bang, or two to be precise.

Which is why I have a few spare minutes to blog, while the rest of the party continue to battle the forces of "almost as evil as they are". Anyway Varl is off to a better place...

Oddly he is slowly dying by bleeding to death but in about a rounds time his rage effect is going to wear off and he'll lose a whopping 16HP which puts him in the "very dead" category. I would have expected the rage to wear off as soon as he fell unconcious but in the end it makes little difference.

"Ode to Varl BearClaw"
Grrr. Rarrrg.
Grrr. Raaarrrg.
Zzap.

Grrrr RRRaaarrg
Zzap.
Thunk.

A bunch of stuff.

2004-09-10T23:17:00.000+01:00

I'm astounded to find that(accroding to the counter) people are still looking at this blog even though I have sorely neglected my updates. I guess folks found something they liked, or are at least curious as to what the hell I'm doing with myself these days.. Either way its good by me.

As for stuff you like well.. Jesse Ventura got some feedback.. I'd guess Uber is the contributor of the interesting facts. correct me if I'm wrong. Well I just finished watching the making of predator and have learned that Jesse Ventura was a Navy Seal and according to the wardrobe department records has bigger muscles than arnie. though Arnie claims it was a deliberate ploy on his part to psyche out Mr. Ventura. Anyhow the guy is certainly larger than live and seems to be his own biggest fan, but I can't help but like him.

I got some feedback from Saucy Monky clearing up the accents issue, much appreciated!
they are on tour in ireland at the mo. check out www.saucymonky.com. for details!
playing whelans soon if I'm not mistaken.

Confess is practically upon us so I'm trying to focus my attention on making sure everything is going to hold together on the day(s). Which ain't easy.
its amazing the difference that having to commute for an extra 40 minutes to and from work and having to change out of work clothes makes to your free time...
But its looking good.

Xaosseed got his masters which is brilliant and is confirmed for Confess (and running his infamous IOU campaign) which is even better! Hooray.

I just finished putting together the Con Directors round for the Confess Table quiz. Which I think would perhaps more fittingly be called the Confess Table Inquisition! The table quiz is looking like fun actually the "Dynamic" format is a bit cool..

So 15 days and counting. yikes.
better go do chairmanlike things...

More Gmail.

2004-09-01T11:25:00.000+01:00

Got more Gmail invites.

if ye want one, shout.

Hours and hours..

2004-08-20T09:12:00.000+01:00

This is very strange. I've nearly worked up an extra day in overtime this week. 6 hours depending on how things go today. I arrive early and leave late. Sometime in the next few weeks I'll probably be working 10-11 hour days.. In all my time at my previous job there was only one occasion when I worked days as long as these.And that was serious crunchtime with a manager (an ex-army major with the attitude to match)looming over my shoulder as I frantically tried to make all the bits dance together in swan lake style ( they ended up doing more of a cossack dance...) and for that effort I ate like a king and lived in the finest accomodations. This isn't like that. This isn't an exceptional situation. This is just how it is here...

Anyways I hear good reports about AvP looking forward to it. Especially after watching the original predator on monday night.. Bloody good movie, eminently quotable.

"Bunch of pansy ass faggots we got here. This stuff will make you a sexual Ty-ranno-saurus, just like me!"
Good man Jesse Ventura. he was a mayor of some town wasn't he? its a strange world we live in.

Anyways back to work now..

This message is for the designated recipient only and may contain privileged, proprietary, or otherwise private information. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the original. Any other use of the email by you is prohibited.

everything is ok.

2004-08-16T16:52:00.000+01:00

For those of you who were worrying. Everything is ok.

I got my prodigy ticket ;)

This message is for the designated recipient only and may contain privileged, proprietary, or otherwise private information. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the original. Any other use of the email by you is prohibited.

Prodigy

2004-08-13T21:41:00.000+01:00

Prodigy playing the Olympia this December. How wicked is that. Been hearing it advertised on the radio (which is weird cause I haven't listened to the radion in absolutely ages) and it brings back memories of how cool it was to hear the new years point gig advertised in 1995. I even recorded it.. in fact I remember a bit of it there was silence and the DJ says " the prodigy are back!" and then "No Good" kicks in. that gave me shivers when I first heard it. Yes I know thats daft.So sue me.

The new single "Girlz" is getting pretty good airplay at the moment. I like it.
you can find the video if ye fancy it on the xl website. Its like the evil twin of some old eighties hiphop tune. The video is growing on me too.

Another thing thats been brewing in the back of my mind every time I go to text someone. I reckon at some point new slang terms based on dumb predictive text is gonna slip into our vocabulary.

I give you some examples.. all of which will no doubt be familiar.

" You heading down the sub for a shot?"

"wow, thats really book!"

and my fave

"Iowaya?"

WooHoo.

2004-08-12T15:38:00.000+01:00

Just finished my first task in my new job. After weeks of blundering about trying to get set up I finally got to DO something.

Quite an impressive setup they have here development-wise. The design documents are detailed right down to the level where they blur with implementation. The tools and infrastructure in place for testing and development is pretty hardcore, I'm gonna have to brush up on my old unix sKillz if i'm gonna keep up.
Still tis good to be here today.

This message is for the designated recipient only and may contain privileged, proprietary, or otherwise private information. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the original. Any other use of the email by you is prohibited.

Plan B.

2004-08-10T15:06:00.000+01:00

Updating my blog is proving difficult these days. What with being in the office under the watchful eye of big brother for most of my day and usually having something to do that supercedes the blogging in priority in the evenings I have decided I'm gonna try emailing my updates for a bit. Its far less conspicuous( and requires less logging in and such) in work so it should work out.

Last night I sat in on a Dark Ages Vampire game and put together my character while observing the goings on. Met some nice folks, Oli,Baz,Meg,Greg,JP and of course Colin who I already new. In fact most of the folks were at least familiar faces from Gaelcons past.

Tonight is AD&D and yet more character generation, But location wise it is next door and not 45 minutes walk away like last nights game.

Gaming during the week is a pretty new experience for me. I understand its kind of a necessity here as people like to have their weekends for whatever else it is they do apart from game, I know I'd be hard pressed to find time to game at the weekend.

The other thing I'm having to get used to is gaming without background music. The last time I would have gamed without and music was back in the days of the Game soc meetings in college. Since then we always had some music, specific mood music or otherwise. On thinking about it I suspect that most gamers don't have music during games. Anytime I've played with other groups certainly seems to indicate as such. I guess I didn't really think about it before.

Rambling a bit now so I figure heres as good a place to stop as any...

This message is for the designated recipient only and may contain privileged, proprietary, or otherwise private information. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the original. Any other use of the email by you is prohibited.

The suit.

2004-08-04T18:53:00.000+01:00

Tis policy in the insurance firm where I'm based to wear a shirt and tie. I don't like it. And am wary of falling into the suit trap. Y'see way i see it is everyone starts out the same. you wear the suit because you got to. After a while you start to forget yourself and become one of those guys who wears a suit even when you don't have to.

I gotta run. will finish this later.

"I aten't dead."

2004-08-03T07:35:00.000+01:00

I've no excuse. I really haven't got a clue why I didn't get round to updating this last week.
I must have been busy. yeah thats probably it. Anyways I'm here now.

Its been an eventful weekend. Friday brought late night poker and the D&D cartoon nostalgia fest much fun at the expense of the Bow of Complete Brokenness +20 .

Met lots of the native gamers and got beaten at cards by em. Actually I did ok-ish only Doc Dev and Ger (card sharp extraordinaire) managed to outlast me..

Saturday morning was Dragonlance, good fun even if I was half zonked from lack of sleep. Our motley crew of adventurers stumbling from one perilous situation to the next and somehow still managing to achieve all objectives and then some...

Saturday night was the Quartermasters birthday. Guy and Wayne turned up for the celebrations. Good to see the folks again. Everyone seemed in good form the food was good and the beer was a flowin'. Middle names were revealed.

Alan *chortle*.

An expedition of the flat earth extended family to Galway was decided upon. More beer and laughs galore no doubt.

Now I must go to work, where hopefully things are getting into gear...

Human Resources eh?

2004-07-27T17:39:00.000+01:00

Today I was meant to find out where I'd be working, go there and get filled in the project details and me my new co-workers.

Today what I actually did was wait. Nothing else. Just wait. Reallly realllly boring.

Y'see I came in and laid claim to my "hot desk" and waited for the person in charge of scheduling to contact me as I had been instructed. After 30 minutes of this I grew tired and took it upon myself to contact this scheduling person, her phone was busy. 15 minutes later I manage to get through.

She is surprised to hear from me. This is not a good start. She says she will try and find out why I wasn't put in touch with the right people yesterday and get me sorted.. half an hour later she calls me back and tells me that I am going to be working for one of their insurance clients. however the manager she ususally deals with there is in a meeting until after lunch but she will arrange a contact for me then.

I abandon my now useless "hot desk" and go hang out in the canteen where a couple of the other newbies are in a similar state of limbo. however by 2 o clock they have all gone their merry way and I was still in limbo. So I call her and get her voice mail. I leave a message asking her to page me if she hears anything. I try to call her an hour later. Her line is busy. I finally get through to her at 3.30 and she answers the phone like she never heard of me in her life.
I ask her if there was any progess and she says no.

She then tells me to contact this guy myself.
I am at this point somewhat dubious that she has even tried contacting him.
anyways she gives me a name. I ask for a number she says get it from reception.
At this point I am almost certain she ain't tried to contact him.
she hangs up.

I have no idea who this guy is. I am assuming it is the manager she was trying to contact.
So I get the number from reception and try calling him.I get his voicemail.
I leave a message with my mobile number on it.

I wait. some more.

One of the girls who had previously been in limbo came down for a tea break with some of her new colleagues . show off ;)
anyways I get chatting to them and explain my situation. Really nice folks. they tell me to go home. I concede that this is a bloody marvellous idea. It is 4 o clock and even if I did get a call back by the time I actually got there and got introduced to people I'd not have time to blink 'fore hometime.

So I dawdle a little longer.I Leave another voicemail telling the guy he can contact me anytime this evening and that I'd really like to have this sorted for tomorrow morning.
then I go to reception and they give me the guys mobile number and inform me that he is indeed a project manager in RSA.

and I go home. still in frickin' limbo. what a waste of a day.

I'm afraid I don't hold much with HR. I haven't had good experiences with em so far.
I'm sure there are talented and helpfult HR folks out there ( I actually know one, but not on a work basis) and maybe I just been unlucky with the places I worked so far. Maybe this Lady was having a bad day. she had been out the day before and she did sound a little hoarse or something and she seemed to be in a lot of meetings.. Still I'm sure she could have delegated so I'm not sure I buy that.

Anyhow thats enough moaning from me. The good news is that the accenture staff I have chatted to have told me that RSA is a good place to be based some real nice folks there. Also I think a couple more newbies are based there too. So I'm sure It'll all be good tomorrow.
touch wood.

As an aside. I don't feel so good these days. I think its the change in routine + stress. hopefully I'll settle down when the work starts.

"This is the first day... of my last days"

2004-07-26T18:31:00.000+01:00

..Well the first day of my new job anyways.

Today was induction day. Me and eleven (only 2 of whom would be working on the same project...) other newbies were sat in a room and had an array of people attack us with powerpoint slides. And The company HR squad dazzled us with their professionalism. we all got funky 'induction' folders. ( aside: I always think induction sounds way too much like Injection for my liking).

We had everything from useful stuff like how to fill out your timesheets to standard stuff like their various policies(holidays, disciplinary procesdures and stuff) to absolutely useless stuff like what the company branding is (their font and layout for presentations and stuff.).

Todays blog entry is brought to you by the word stuff. Apparently.

Anyhow its great we learned all about the great perks and stuff. they got insurance, assurance, shares,pensions, credit cards, cheap travel,masseuse, laundry service and even a service where you order a meal and they give you a home cooked meal to take home with you and pretend you're a great chef to all your friends..

At lunch we were assigned to some folks we would be working with. This was the bit where you found out what you would be doing over the next while. I found out I would most likely be working on a forestry project. but not tomorrow or the day after. in fact the guy I talked to seemed to think I would know when I was starting. So 4 o clock rolled around and I still didn't know who I was working for or where I'd be doing it. ( My situation was further confused by the fact that I had been called last wednesday to inform me I would be working on an insurance project.)

Turns out the person who's job it is to schedule us newbies work is away today so I won't find out till tomorrow. In the mean time I've been told to commandeer a desk and wait and see. Yipes. Still I'm not as bad as the guy who found out today that he is going to manila tomorrow!
he didn't know where exactly he'd be working either.

To top it all off I wasn't feeling the best. Very hard to pretend to be listening to the recommended colours to use in presentations when your stomach is doing cartwheels.

Still thats the worst bit done (maybe) . I'll feel better once I get my hands dirty.

The last man.

2004-07-23T11:08:00.000+01:00

Been reading Y: the last man on Dr. Devidents recommendation. The Quartermaster has kindly given me access to his significant graphic novel collection. Y, Fables, 100 bullets, hellblazer and the like. Y is pretty dang good, I have to say I'm hooked. calling the monkey Ampersand is a stroke of genius..

Just got me a new telly. Unfortunately It don't come with an aerial or a.v cable for hooking up to the cable connection. I think thats a bit odd but then it was v. cheap.

Met Mr.E for pints and a chat last night. Spoke at some length regarding the Dark Ages Vampire game they got going on. Have a mission to put together a character for the next session.. I got games coming outta my ass these days (metaphorically speaking) the Savage one has offered me a place in his D&D and there is an opening in next doors D&D too. I'm not sure how many games I'm actually gonna be able to play and still keep my job and my girlfriend and put together a convention on the other side of the country... should be fun finding out though ;)

We Have Arrived

2004-07-21T16:51:00.000+01:00

..Unpacked and everything. I am delighted with my new apartment. It has bizarre tardis-like properties. While it is only half of the ground floor of a house it still has enough space to store all the stuff I have accumulated from all the places I've lived in Sligo. And there is still loads of room.
I spent today picking up essential things like glasses,frying pans, suacepans,dishcloths and the like.

Took a spin on the LUAS from stephens green to ranelagh village. While it was nice to try it out Its not really practical to use it to get into or out of town for me. Stephens green is too far from work and the ranelagh stop is still a fair walk from my new place. And the bus runs from outside my driveway to o connell st.

I'm pretty much set up here now. My neighbours sorted me out with the wireless broadband ( thats right folks, this post is 'on the air' ) I got my hi fi set up and lo it is still good!

All I need now is my t.v. and I was pricing em today. Reckon I'll give the plasma screens a miss and pick up a standard 20" t.v on the cheap. I hardly ever watch anything but scrubs and d.v.ds any ways.

Strolling down grafton st. today was pretty neat. There's a great life about the place. Street performers and buskers and the massing throngs ( hehe missing thongs, sorry), Life is good!

*touches wood*

Finis

2004-07-19T16:40:00.000+01:00

Well thats the last of the work here in sligo. I'm bloody delighted.. One less thing to worry about! I'm gonna have a few celebratory pints tonight, then tomorrow I make my way back to my new home in the big smoke.

Yup, Am officially moved in now. Most of my stuff is in the new apartment and the rest will be migrating slowly of the next month or so. Everybody who has seen my place so far is quite impressed. I't'll be handy come Gaelcon when the Sligo crew come up .. there'll be plently of floor space between my place and the Quartermasters.

Speaking of games.. September is looming fast and still lots needs doing for the con. Lots of good intentions floating about at the moment ( not least from me) , this week will be 'kick in the ass' week again methinks.

I'm just looking at all the crap here and there ain't no way all the stuff I wanna bring this week is gonna fit in my rucksack.
heres my problem.

Laptop - must come. need. do work. have fun.
C.D.s. -rack of favourites. sickens me to leave em. but v. bulky.
Guitar - I been picking it up pretty much every day and strumming a few chords even slowly picking up radioheads High and Dry. If I leave it I might let it fall into disuse again....
D.V.D. player - probably can survive without for week (have no t.v at the moment anyways..)
still.. its v. shiny.
Random board games(hills rise wild and Talisman) - so far I brought no games to dublin barring my rpgs.. again can probably do without. next door have loads of games
Shoebox of important documents - bugger. I should really bring this. It wouldn't do for it to go astray.

Of course then there are the things that its just not possible to bring...
Computer Desk. 2 printers. and box of truly random things.

Oh well. I'll ponder it all over pints tonight. or not.

Spidey 2 comments.

2004-07-16T15:57:00.000+01:00

I'm pleased to say I saw spider-man 2 last night and enjoyed it immensely.
It's a bloody solid film with great set pieces (the spidey/doc ock fight on the
clocktower/train was fantastic). Plenty of comic references (the Doc strange bit, a couple
of shots ripped striaght out of issues of the comic). Great SFX ( they've really cleaned up the
CGI spider-man). Evil Dead style camera shots and action. Some really funny scenes( the elevator is just surreal, but at the same time it could have come straight from a J M Strazynsci penned spidey issue.) and it leaves the door open for 4 villains for the next few movies. Also Kirsten Dunst is incredibly hot ;)

There were things that stop this from being a truly great movie. Some of the CGI isn't quite
up to scratch( some of the early Doc Ock shots are dubious), the dialogue lets the movie down in places, (Aunt Mays speech is notably long winded, perfect for the comic book but not so good on screen) and finally there is a touch of cheese in places...

Sam Raimi has time to improve though..Roll on the next three movies!

Nostalgia.

2004-07-15T14:36:00.000+01:00

I'm moving my stuff to my new abode this weekend. So I was out in my moms place rummaging through the stuff I had archive out there to see what was worth keeping.

God I had a lot of crap.
-Past its sell by date lichen (formerly used as warhammer terrain).
-Birthday cards from when I was 16 (not yesterday I tell ya).
-A whole bunch of those cd's you get free with p.c magazines with loads of trial versions
of things. fine except they were from 1990...
-A whole bunch of old gig tickets that have seen betterdays. Prodigy point depot new years eves 95 and 96. Oasis in cork (supported by prodigy 96) and some other stuff.

(Odd little synchronistic thing here - or maybe I'm looking to hard- last post I mentioned I had seen liquid wheel back in the day.. turns out they supported the prodigy new years eve 95...)

Then I came across photographs. Forgot I even had these. I'm not the kind of person who keeps photo albums or anything but I had photos from my 21st in (what was) the Journeyman. Everyone looks so young (including me). I got pictures of college buddies I ain't seen in years, pictures of some folks I used to think better of and Xaosseed makes an appearance too! All seems like so long ago now.

Anyways I binned a bag o' junk, much overdue housekeeping. time to move on!

Tonight is likely my last night in the Clarence for ooh god only know how long. I been going there since I started college back in the days of (not planning to, but I always turned out ) ending up in Pulsar on a friday night getting hammered and dancing like a maniac.

But more important than anything else.. tonight I get to go see Spider-man 2 ! Woot (as the saying goes..)

;)

*EDIT*: Man Walks on Fucking Moon
*END EDIT*

Room 101.

2004-07-14T14:44:00.000+01:00

This post is inspired by that (BBC?) show where celebs nominate things to be banished forever into room 101 . So without further ado my current list of things to be put in room 101.

Ignorant people

cup of tea

Bills

Teletubbies/condescending kids t.v shows.

MTV.

Big Brother.

that last clue in the irish times crossword

Eric Idle is still alive! This sites pretty funny actually. especially that german song..

*EDIT*
I done gone an' fixed it Ma.

At least kinda. ye can now click the "Add Comment(NoSignIn)" Link to go
straight to the anonymous comment screen.

Or ye can click the "Add Comment(Sign In)" Link to go to the comment logon
bit.

I'm afraid giving ye usernames without a logon is beyond my capabilities at the moment.

*END EDIT*

...And Exhale.

2004-07-13T14:30:00.000+01:00

I must point out that bugger all sleep has been had over the weekend. and it ain't for the want of trying. Its because there are some people who are just too inconsiderate for words and morons, lots of morons. Anyways on with the recounting.

Sunday Morning
After packing away the tents and such we ventured to the main stage for breakfast and..

The Sawdoctors: Ridicule them you may, but these guys are great fun live and they have a bloody huge catalogue of stuff that you will know and sing along too. They certainly got the crowd going.

Daze: caught the end of the set. uninspiring.

Saucy Monky: feisty pop rock babes. Bloody talented pair of girls. I'd never heard of em before and wasn't convinced they were gonna be so good. The difference between them and Daze was massive.. I understand they're Irish though so I'm not sure what the story with the american accents was..

Turn: veterans of the Witnness festivals. Even with a brand spanking new bass player in tow and plagued by technical problems they guy were great. Cap'n Vane told me the lead singers voice was a bit flat on the day, but I couldn't tell. Even if he was it was still great.

Alphastates: formerly babelfish, wasn't too impressed last time I seen 'em. but they seem to have tightened up their act and were pretty entertaining.

Erin McKeown: Another discovery for me. Well talented. no band to back her up just her and her electric guitar. I'm probably gonna pick up her album. She's got kind of a PJ Harvey thing going on..

Pink: again I only caught one song , a cover of four non blondes "Whats up" pretty good it was too. Pink is one of the few MTV regulars that Actually has some talent.

Faithless: Caught Insomnia from the top of the Big wheel which was a bit mad. Another act that seemed to capture the attention of the crowd. I'm not a big fan but I really like "weapons of Mass destruction" which I was pleased to catch live too.

Bic Runga: Everyone I was there with loved bic runga. personally I'd buy Erin McKeowns album before hers, but I can see the appeal she is very good.

At this point I had to crash for a while a lack of sleep and miserable weather catching up on me so I missed Ash and Wu Tang Clan. The Wu sounded pretty good from the carpark though. When I finally managed to rally i went to see the end of

Muse: Caught the end of the set where they played the big singles. The seemed like a good show but Myself and Cap'n Vane got the impression we got the best of em. Again I'm
not a huge fan and I think there a bit of a one-trick band. Still what I did see impressed.

Basement Jaxx: Bloody great, Big big sound that you just have to dance to. They're really fun too. They played a mad mix of the White stripes "seven nation Army" and Nellys "In the club" . The hyperactive djs and the energy they get going is great.
Some twat climbed on top of the sound box and made an ass of himself mid way though the set somehow managing to take the attention of the crowd away from the main show for a few minutes. left oxegen to the sound of "Wheres your head at" fading into the background.

Darkness: Ok technically I didn't see em but we heard 'em on the radio in the car as were driving back. First off I think they are crap, rehashed big dumb rock sound that wasn't any good in the first place. However. I think that on the festival stage that sound comes into its own. Justin whatshisface seems to be a great showman to , lots of crowd interaction and joking around..

So that was the experience that was Oxegen. Really enjoyed it Overpriced beer and food, sleepless nights and and overwhelming number fo complete twats notwithstanding!

Now as far as my previous post regards comments goes. It seems that I was mistaken in my assumption that it is possible to post without a login. It ain't. That sucks.
however i'm happy to keep blogging away and if ye really must say summat ye can email me.
dave.mcgowan@NOSPAMgmail.com or the more persistant type can get a free account and use it to post.

i wouldn't bother if it was me though ;)

Breathe Deep..

2004-07-13T14:04:00.000+01:00

So the weekend that was Oxegen/witnness. Bloody great. So heres what bands I seen and what I thought..

Saturday morning due to rain I found myself starting in the Green Room.

Stone Ocean: Not a great start, nothing mad new going on there but you had to
give the guys credit for their enthusiasm. A cover of outKasts "Hey Yeah" was
funny if not particularily good. complete with dancing "Babes".

God Is an Astronaut: Really good musicians. All instrumental stuff ( the guys didn't even introduce themselves or the songs.. letting the video wall do it all for em..) The melodys reminded me a little of nine inch nails. However these guys never give you a minute to catch your breath its heavy and loud. Each song is like a dirge built up to a crescendo then ending abruptly. Coupled with the harrowing imagery of holocaust victims and nuclear bombs it was pretty heavy for so early in the morning..

Automata: Discovered these guys last year at witnness. Bloody great. Some of the new songs they seemed to be less quirky than the old material, But thats a small complaint.
Again nice video show going on too.

liquid wheel: only saw a little of these guys while sheltering from the rain again in the Spirit dance arena. I heard these guys way way back in the day. they seem to have evolved a lot. Really nice funky dance music with real instruments and all.

Bell XI: Bloody great. Surreal Adam and eve apple head people walked on stage. Bloody great. If you haven't heard music in mouth, get it now.

The Things: again sheltering from the rain caught the tail end of the performance from these guys. The whole punk thing don't really do it for me. But as punk goes they seemed to be pretty good.

Buck 65: Still sheltering in the new band stage the american guy with a pair of decks comes on and does this crazy rapping thing. Really funny and talented. Does a weird song, rapping over an instrumental version of QOTS "no one knows". First new band find which is a tradition of witnness.

Snow Patrol: Started listening to these guys along the same time as bell XI and both albums have since got equal airplay. Their live show doesn't dissapoint, the guys really seemed to appreciate the crowd and played their hearts out.. however I had to leave early to catch the last half of ..

PJ Harvey: on the main stage, looking pretty damn good and sounding even better. Caught a couple of tracks from the last two albums. not sure if she played any of the older material but what she did play was great. oddly it was easy to get right up into the pit for her show.. bizarre. Reckon i'll go see her properly when she plays the olympia in september.

Orbital: One of the bands I HAD to see this year. they don't dissapoint. Great buzz going on in the packed green room tent. Fantastic version of The box (now with extra beats) and the brilliant "You Lot" from the new album. I went nuts to this. I stupidly left before the encore though in order to catch the

Chemical Brothers: the other band I had to see.. I ended up waiting in the bloody huge queue and even when I got in they hadn't come on stage. They didn't dissapoint when they made it on stage though. Opening up with "hey boy, hey girl" and following up with "Get yourself high" and either some kind of live fill or new material I couldn't tell. unfortunately the atmosphere in there was just thick with sweat and the smell of dope. I couldn't make it up to the front either and had to settle on a bit of dancing space halfways to the stage. And having danced myself into exhaustion I squeezed my way out of there.

Massive Attack: Caught a little of this as I left from the dance stage. hymn of the big wheel was on and it stuck in my head for the rest of the weekend..

The Cure: Caught a little of these too. Friday I'm In Love was great but they didn't seem to be too Lively..

I'll give you a little breathing room here and then post day two...

"These are a hard working,Simple Folk. Y'know... Morons"

2004-07-07T19:37:00.000+01:00

Two posts in one day.. bet you weren't expecting that.

Just been reading Dixies post over at the 'coven.
Its a tale of morons at the top. I can relate to this (admittedly my story is not as
exciting.. can't see the CIA kicking in my door anytime soon (and not just because I live in the west of Ireland)). Y'see I been involved in these rather large EU funded IT projects , a couple of 'em now. You'd imagine that with the kind of bigshots that attracts these people would be either technical gurus or frighteningly efficient managers.

Its true that there are a lot of technically skilled folks at these things. However the Project managers and project leads and whatever they call themselves.. There are a frightening number of people just not fit for the job they are doing..

I'll cite an example:
Firstly the cast of characters

The overall project manager ,lets call him MR.T (I pity the fool), is the guy who proposed the project and got it approved. This is his baby and ultimate responsibility falls to him.

A representative of one of the companies involved in d consortium .. responsible for a relatively small but important part of the project. we shall call him Bert.

Berts end of the project is encountering some difficulty and grumpy is complaining that he does not know what to do.

Mr.T is trying to find out what exactly grumpy can do. But is having a hard time getting Bert to be a little more forthcoming with possible solutions.

Mr.T (already slightly exasperated): Tell me what you can do for us. Help me to help you.

Bert(frowning and making funny noises): I told you already what it is that is my state, I ask you now what should I do?

Aside: I should explain. Being an europe wide project these guys are from various countries and all with varying grasps of the english language ( most seem to be some kind of headlock..)

Mr.T (More exasperated): You are not helping. I am asking you a question so I can know who to help you fix this problem.

Bert: I am already explaining what is the problem.

ASIDE: ETC ETC. ok I'm gonna skip on here. eventually MR.T changes tact.

Mr.T (really turning some quite interesting colours): I cannot help you then. We cannot help you. You must look to these problems yourself.

Bert(angry): Oh I see you would have blame me for how far behind is the project.

Mr.T: I never said this.

Bert(more angry and frustrated): Yes, You are you are trying to blame me for all this problems.

ASIDE: Right this is where it gets surreal.

Mr.T: I would ask everyone to say if I am blaming Bert for these problems.

Mr.T ( to me): What do you think, David?
ASIDE: you read that right. to me. The guy is asking me to exonerate him from saying the other guy is a troublemaker. At this point I felt like I was in playschool again.

Me(way outta my depth and trying to be diplomatic): Umm I think that Bert obviously has some technical issues which we should try and resolve or find a work around between us..

Mr.T( not letting this go): And do you think I am blaming him for this problems?

Me ( Not liking having the attention focused on me at all): No.. I think we are wasting time though..

..and then their attentions turned elsewhere thank god. I get the impression that this kind of shit happens a lot though. All it takes is one person to behave irrationally.

Also I figured I'd mention don't be afraid to leave comments people. While I do enjoy hearing myself Clickety-clack, feedback would be good. Honestly If I didn't know ye were there (got a site tracker, remember?) I'd give up due to lack of interest ;)

"It ain't the years honey, it's the mileage."

2004-07-07T10:09:00.000+01:00

In case you don't know the above is a quote from Raiders of the lost ark
which was apparently ad-libbed by Harrison Ford.

Reason it springs to mind is cause tomorrow is my brothers 21st Birthday. Something
weird is going on 'cause last birthday I remember, he was only 18. Similarily I sure as
hell ain't meant to be 25. That just don't suit me. 21 suited me just fine. So whoever is
messing round with time, put it back the way ye found it;)

Just finished reading the Wee Free Men ( theres a little video of terry pratchett talking about the book on the linked page.)
Terry (or T.P as I like to call him. now) thinks its the best book he's ever written. I'm afraid I must disagree. Don't get me wrong its good, quite entertaining in fact, but Its no where near the heights of Gaurds,Guards, Hogfather,Reaper man or Wyrd Systers. Thankfully though its a lot better than Carpe Jugulum or the fifth elephant. If I had to rank It I'd put it somewhere between Thief of Time and umm.. lemmee see... oh yeah Pyramids (which I like and no-one else seems to.) In saying that I'm a little behind ( not having read monstrous regiment or hat full of sky (and still not having read maskerade or some of the older ones)) so I don't know how a few of the books fit into my scale.

Someone else has already created a best to worst list actually. oddly enough while Carpe Jugulum which I hate is near the bottom. Hogfather (which I think is one of the best) is the bottom.

Anyhow in keeping with the time creeping up on me theme I'm gonna steal a piece of trivia from Cap'n Vane. Michelangelo was 25 when he sculpted La Pieta. What have you done?

Scoping out the big smoke.

2004-07-05T15:12:00.000+01:00

Am in Dublin today, sorting out a few small details like rent and such. Had hoped to chat to the landlord(s) but turns out they are on holidays until friday. I'll be in Dublin on friday alright but only because of Oxegen, so I won't be meeting em then. Still I left my rent with the Quartermaster so that should be fine. I t would have been nice to get the key so I won't feel a bit cheeky turning up with all my stuff and asking em to let me in next time ;)

Its good not to be working today. Pottering around the big smoke, I notice the new luas lines will be running pretty damn close to my new apartment, which will be most convenient..

I'm hoping my new employers contact me before I have to start and let me know who I'm meant to report to on my first day.. that'll be pretty damn nervewracking if I just have to turn up cold. not that it won't be nervewracking as it is.

Its looking like the 21st will be my official moving up date.. gives me time to finish the last of my work, go out on the raz and say goodbye to the folks here and still have time to recover and set up my new place properly, shopping for essentials and stuff. And then go out on the raz with the folks here ;)

Anyhow. I'll cut myself short here. this is costing me after all.

Spider-man, Spider-man, does whatever a spider can.

2004-07-01T14:07:00.000+01:00

I feel there ain't enough spider-man in my blog. So to make up for my careless neglect I give you the spidey blog!

I've just arrived back from lunch and a quick visit to sub culture here in Sligo (a comic store run by a mate of mine, where I get my spider-man fix.) A small pile waiting for me today.
The Amazing Spider-man, The Astonishing Spider-man, Venom and The Authority:more kev ( spot the odd one out). Having a local comic store has brought with it some problems. y'see in addition to the three spidey related titles above I also get the Spectacular spider-man, peter parker:spider-man and Marvel knights spider-man PLUS whatever one-offs get run and graphic novels sub culture gets in. oh and t-shirts. I am afraid to try and calculate my comic expenditures.

You may note the Ultimate Spider-man ain't in there. Tried it, didn't like it. What ya gonna do.

The new movie looks great, I believe its only 2 or three weeks away. Early reviews say things like best superhero movie ever. I liked the first movie. All right I'll admit I'm biased but the first time I saw it I was dissapointed. The Goblin outfit was lousy (looked like a power rangers reject) and William Dafoes acting was wasted behind that dumbass mask.
But on a second viewing I realised that the best parts of the movie were the ones without the superheroics, just like the comics . It's peter parker that is the compelling part, not spider-man. I gather they have kept that and expanded on it for this movie, pete struggling to maintain a meagre existance while moonlighting as spider-man. And with Alfred Molina on board as Doc Ock (and I gather he does a v. good job) and the spider man animation and such improved I think this could be the superhero movie against which all others shall be measured.

Just to compound the comic book nerd image I got going on here. It's not 'spiderman'
it's 'spider-man'.

Generic Blog Entry

2004-06-30T10:47:00.000+01:00

First a link:

The Penny Arcade Linksville library forum is a great place to find all thouse dumb flash movies and funny videos you may have missed.. Whole bunch of online flash games there too for those of you who just can't figure out how to fill those hours at work. P.A is great too, but you already knew that.

Then a mini review:

I picked up Orbitals new (and last album) "The Blue album".
First of all yes it is blue. Its a bit of an in joke, orbitals
first and second releases were untitled pieces with green and brown covers respectively and were known amongst the fans as the "Green Album" and "Brown Album"..see what they did there?

Anyhow its kind of appropriate 'cause this is Orbital going back to basics,
harking back to those early days. Theres nothing here as interesting as the tracks found on 'Sniv' or 'insides' (my personal favorite orbital album). Its kind of dissapointing in a way. I had hoped for them to go out with a bang in saying that this isn't a whimper, by any means and I quite like some of the tracks on there.. "You lot" with is huge monologue sample and "Acid Pants" is really upbeat and fun.

And finally some clichéd blog sign offs.
Now Listening: Bomb the Bass - Dark Heart.

EDIT: We interrupt this blog entry to bring you this news.
Aging rocker in remake of prodigy classic

The unbearableness of being lit.

2004-06-29T12:48:00.000+01:00

Finally things are firming up a little. Looks like I'm almost done with my work here in sligo. My boss is away until the 19th so I'm free to do some handover work next week with the other engineer here. Apart from that there is bugger all for me to do while he is away so I'm gonna spend some time getting my stuff up to dublin.

As I get closer to starting this new job I begin to feel a little anxious. I really am not sure what to expect. luckily there is still enough going on so that that particular though isn't getting much time to germinate..

"So I've decided to take my work back underground. To stop it falling into the wrong hands".

Looking forward to being in Dublin. Meeting up with the folks I get to see all too rarely
on a more regular basis. At the same time I'm gonna miss all the folks here in sligonia, tis the people that make the place.

Hell, there's already a few of the sligo crew in Dublin, maybe when I go the rest will realise that its the place to be and follow suit. Perhaps not.

Whatever>

2004-06-28T17:00:00.000+01:00

Well my keyboard is doing that funny thing where fullstops are replaced with >>
This is annoying but I have decided to ignore it> so bear with me>

Oh and my apostrophe is now a @ < its like the shift key is stuck.
oh wait. It was. doh.

Anyhow something pretty shitty happened today which I'm not quite prepared to emblazon all over this site. I'ts not really important what it is anyways. The point is I've decided it ain't worth getting stressed over and that it would have been a hell of a lot worse if everything else wasn't going so well.

It seems that every silver lining has a cloud.

I apologise for being cryptic.

On a lighter note
and so it begins.

Confess

2004-06-25T12:45:00.000+01:00

For those that don't know Thursday night is Clubbing Night for me. Aside: I always associate "clubbing" with the kind of crappy nightclubs that you went to when you were 14 with the THUMP THUMP THUMP all night long night with that in mind let me assure you my haunt (the clarence hotel in sligo) does in fact play actual music.

Back to my story though.. So I'm in the clarence and myself, Wayne and Guy grabbed the cosy seats in the
alcove in the front lobby and talked about Confess*. This is becoming a regular occurence. The front lobby beside the 'Zen' fishtank (it's empty) in the clarence is like an official meeting room.

I got a good feeling about the whole thing. Even just talking about it you start buzzing. We almost got the Games all sorted, the Xbox tourney is firming up, pub quiz is coming together , theres still a horde of details we have yet to sort out. Cheap accommodation for punters, prizes for events, timetable details, charity thingy and The construction of the Confession Box.

All that aside. Wayne hit the nail on the head when he said the most important thing is that people leave afterwards saying "that was good fun". I hope it all works out.

*for those that don't know, Confess is the games convention we are running this year in the tower hotel in sligo. 25th 26th september. Be there or we'll send the spanish inquisition after you¹.

¹ and no-one expects the spanish inquisition.

Crypto Fascism ;)

2004-06-24T11:45:00.000+01:00

The title's a bit of an in-joke I'm afraid. I'm not going to waffle on about disguised fascism , or the U.Ss draconian cryptography policies. sorry to disappoint.

Technology seems determined to undermine my efforts these days..
I picked up Trillian to overcome the fact that I now have contacts on all three IM services (yahoo,MSN and AIM). only to find reports that Yahoo! are now blocking trillian from talking to their users. This is clearly because of me ;)
oh well back to using multiple IM clients for me..

this is funny RPG cliches. Not sure I agree with all of em, but there are some gems. an example is called for...

Ninja Rule. If more than three ninja are attacking, they are invariably cannon fodder and will have their asses handed to them by the players. The inverse is also true: a single ninja will be death on legs.

Especially true of games like feng shui where the p.cs will decimate hordes of Ninja mooks but when the Named character ninja turns up they'll have to pull out the stops to defeat him.

Picked up Kosheens album Resist last week. having had a few days to listen to it. I'm willing to stick my neck out and say its actually very good. Although it obviously won't be a patch on the
new prodigy album, which this site has some decent info on Dutch Prodigy Fansite.. Don't like the album artwork. Thankfully thats not what I'll be getting the album for.

Sony are evil*.

2004-06-23T17:43:00.000+01:00

I mentioned a while back that I was gonna record the last few games sessions I have here in sligo. Well I did on my shiny Sony NetMD. I had a brief listen to it on the MD afterwards and it sounded good. Next Day I hooked up My MD to the p.c via the USB cable browsed to my new audio tracks and click the "check in" button. A message appeared "the selected tracks cannot be checked in" .

Huh? try again. same message.

try everything and anything.. nothing doing. Figuring I'm just not doing something right maybe the tracks were too big or something. I decided to go to the 'net to find out.
the first thing I found was this.NetMD for Minidisc to Computer*
Audio Uploading: A Proposal

I started to have a bad feeling about this.

Then I found The petition reply. and my fears were confirmed. I can't transfer my recorded audio digitally to my p.c. That sucks big style. There does not seem to be a discernable good reason why not either. In fact as far as I can tell all it would take to implement is a tiny patch to the Sony PC-side software. Sony seem to have taken a policy decision on this possibly for copyright protection reasons.

Anhoo what all this means is I gotta record the audio realtime to my p.c via the analog in so 4 hours of gaming audio will take 4 hours to transfer..Yawn.
Not a huge deal I suppose but its inconvenient.

Today I found out sony are bringing out new Hi-MD format, discs and Players. I get the
impression they will be less draconian regarding digital transfer of material recorded on the MD.

*This does not of course include the wonderful folks you gave me Ripley, my Sony Viao ;)

What a bunch of Total Bankers

2004-06-22T16:47:00.000+01:00

WARNING: INCOMING RANT

Banks. Who'd have 'em. Ive had a bank account for 18 years. In the last year I've had more trouble with my bank than I've had in that entire time thanks to a breif fling with unemployment.

When things are good the bank loves ya. When they ain't so good you are lower than dirt. Others have said this to me before, especially about my bank, but never having experienced it first hand I've generally regarded such talk as hyperbole. It ain't.

I'm changing bank as soon as possible and even then I'm only gonna keep a current a/c everything else goes to my credit union.

Thanks to a few edits this piece is a lot tamer than it was, I am
pretty pissed off though. Anyone who knows me will know that don't happen too often..

Ray Parkerothep

2004-06-22T13:37:00.000+01:00

Hehe.
While snooping for some cool pics of Cthulhu Mythos Entities (if you don't know what that is, shame on you. google it.)

I did a google image search for Nyarlathotep .Look at the bottom row of images. Nestled between the sanity blasting horror of a Cthulhu plush and a model Nyarlathotep...

..Is Ray Parker Junior.

Thats right, the man who brought us the Ghostbusters theme is in fact an aspect of the messenger of the Outer gods.
That explains a lot.

Google knows all ;)

Le Weekend.

2004-06-21T13:04:00.000+01:00

Gmail offer still stands. No takers as yet.

As promised the news from the weekend.
Friday eve was a brief visit to Games night which is going from strength
to strength. All kinds of great stuff going on. The Flat earth Magic league in full swing, Space crusade, D&D and Axis&Allies: europe.

I got to play a little of the aforementioned A&A. Great little game. Also its probably the first time I've played it in more than six months (This will become revelant later). I only got to play the first round as Germany but Enjoyed it none the less.

Met Cap'n Jenny Vane from the train.(hey I'm a poet and I didn't realise)
pizza & beer ensued. nice.

Saturday was an expedition to Galway courtesy of my mate Joe we were joined by our resident talented git, Wayne. Anyhoo we explored games stores and generally pottered about. In Gamers realm (those nice gentlemen who will be selling their wares at Confess! end shameless plug) all manner of goodies tempted us. But most tempting for me was the new Axis and Allies A&A:D-Day (kind of a co-incidence I played A&A just the night before no?) . Wayne picked up the "Once Upon a Time" card game which we used to pass the time on the way home. Madness. Joe picked up the Complete Divine sourcebook for D&D which was later used for sunday nights D&D.

Soundtrack for saturday was Joes classic Oldies but goodies.. Beatles, rolling stones with a touch of pearl jam and bizarrely KISS.

Sunday I had to bit farewell to Cap'n Vane,Who is going to visit her sister in London next weekend so I ain't gonna see her for two whole weeks. Nuts.

Sunday night was D&D which I brought along my MiniDisc to record the session for posterity after having experienced RPGMP3. unfortunately my batteries ("Batteraziz!" Name the film!) ran out. But what I did get is pretty funny listening..

"You ask is this still what I want, on a tin can line, oceans apart.
My love you fear I'm drowning slow, but its too hard to prove what humming birds know"
-Hummingbirds, Luminous/Orbital

First come, first served.

2004-06-21T09:33:00.000+01:00

Right folks.. I finally got my Gmail invites. I have dispersed some already but I have one remaining. So first come, first served. Send me an email

dave.mcgowanNOSPAM@gmail.com (take out the NOSPAM)

The first request I get will get their gmail invite.

Will post with weekends worth of news n' stuff later

Boing.

2004-06-18T15:09:00.000+01:00

boing I know its stupid.
Moronic even. But It's strangely compelling. Thanks go to my bro for cursing me with that one.

Gmail going well. Still no sign of my invites yet. I feel slighted. everyone else is getting them but me. I'm sure I'll get some soon..

Been exploring over on trinity gamers theres a great line in fanfic going for the Empire of the one game ( or league2 as it is commonly known). Prolific is not the word for some of these guys (maybe ultra-prolific is??). It's even inspired me to try my hand at it.

Meanwhile today is the day we were meant to have everything sorted for Confess. Oops. Still not to worry. Kicks in the pants all round this weekend, then we'll get things sorted.

Gmail

2004-06-17T14:52:00.000+01:00

I got me a G-Mail account courtesy of my mate Stu. As expected it is v. cool, also its not "evil".

Your emails get grouped into 'conversations' so If you reply to an email and get a response back they all appear in the same page no having to go to the outbox folder to see what you sent last. It seems nice and fast too. I have had conversations with almost IM reaction times..

The targetted ads work well. chatting about the spiderman movie brings up spidey merchandise.

Talking about email brings up news articles about the new email services springing up all over the place..

but the absolute best thing is this:
"You are currently using 11 MB (1%) of your 1000 MB"

nice.

I've had this on my machine for a while but I have only recently started playing around with it.. Its a lot better
featured than a most of the other cd burning software out there. It might not look as pretty but gets the job done a lot better. One of the nice features it has is to let you create a mix cd by tweaking the audio directly before you burn it.

There is a registration option which gets rid of the 'Nag' screens but the trial is fully functional without registration.

AudioRPG

2004-06-16T11:47:00.000+01:00

RPGMP3.COM
A nice idea creating audio recordings of rpgs and making em availabe for all to hear..

some quotes:
from the Cthulhu "The Haunting" runthrough
"I've guy 80% proficiency with both shotguns. regular and sawn off..."

And from the D&D temple of elemental evil.
"I don't have spellcraft but I think he just cast invisibility.. cause I can't see him. anymore."

Quality ain't brilliant and a lot of the banter is lost especially from those players who ain't near the mike.

Hay fever.

2004-06-15T21:09:00.000+01:00

I am just after getting over a pretty bad case of hayfever.
Not fun spending most of your day just struggling to keep your eyes open. I won't go on about it, those of you who have it know what its like and those who don't can count their blessings.

I set up some stat tracking for the site, so I can see exactly what kinda traffic I'm getting. I set it up with these guys. Even though I had an idea what kind of Info you could get It was still a bit of a surprise when I found myself looking at the logs and having a pretty decent idea who the various hits were..

I have received my new employment contract today. Nice.

Anybody ever heard of a little book called "The Art of Worldy Wisdom"?
I came across it by accident the other day. Its a good read, it contains
1000 or so little maxims to live by.
stuff like "the only reason to have great power is so that you can do great good".
I recommend having a peek at it if you come across it in a bookstore..
in fact here are some more excerpts.

Since It's gonna be my new home for the next while I have a request for those of you who know Dublin well. Where are the hidden gems? Those places where you can eat like a king for practically nothing, The pubs and clubs with the best music and people, The bookstores that can get anything thats ever been in print and suchlike. Share the knowledge people. I know you have it ;)

Horsies

2004-06-14T10:01:00.000+01:00

I have returned from a most excellent weekend indeed. Done plenty of fun stuff which is always good. Friday evening I travelled up on the train with a bunch of folks who were heading to the Chilis/Pixies gig. I wouldn't have minded going but I'm not a huge peppers fan and I hear they're a weak live band. The pixies would have been great but I ain't forking out 60 euro or whatever just to see one band.

Saturday I popped into town to meet my prospective new landlord. The Quartermaster is living in the other apartment and did the introductions. Peter (the landlord) seems a real nice guy , had a sense of humour which is a good start. Anyways long and short of that meeting was that they were happy to have me on board. Wuhoo. Everything is falling into placve. Excellent.

Next on the agenda was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with Cap'n vane,
After Mega portions of Nachos and Hotdogs. I have to say I really enjoyed it. Sure Its still a kids movie but the new director has stripped it down and makes a lot better use of the whole premise in my opinion. I gather the book is a bit more grown up too so perhaps thats a little unfair on the previous director. Anyways some lovely touches, fx are great.Dementors cool. Last half an hour is excellent ( I'm glad I hadn't read the book. That would have taken some of the cool factor out of those scenes).

After Potter the next port of call was the Swords riding school. Where I made the acquaintance of "Jack" a bloody great big gray horse. I've never really been around horses before. I never realised just how fucking big they are. Anyhoo we walked and "steered" (I dunno what word do you use for a horse?) and we got into a trot. Great fun, tough going though my thighs are feeling it today. We'll be back for more though.
Finally the night was rounded off with a real nice meal out and a few beers in Sopranos in Rush.

Sunday was spent recovering from saturday.

Sunday night back in sligo was my turn to GM. I'm nearing the last few scenarios of "Day of the Beast". Last session was in the sahara where a pair of crocodile mummies demolished the investigators numbers ( actually it was more the explosives the guys were throwing about willy nilly in the ancient tomb that did it but I'm not one to nit-pick )

So I decided to start with a new party for last nights scenario. A Miskatonic sponsored seismology expedition to deepest darkest Peru. Fun was had getting to the mining camp the guys were to stay at. Within hours of arriving they were already breaking and entering. and getting caught..

For my part much fun was had watching the new characters receive vital clues and scratching there heads because the had no previous encounters with the mythos or the elements of this campaign and genuinely thought they were on a simple seismological expedition.. While their players who knew what was going on were pulling their hair out...

Sneh.

2004-06-11T16:46:00.000+01:00

For explanation see E.T
I'm off to Dublin to see my wonderful girlfriend for the weekend, also meeting my prospective landlord. News when I get back.

Linkfest.

2004-06-10T11:39:00.000+01:00

My brother pointed me at this.
Guess the dictator or sit-com character
Very tricky to beat, because a whole bunch of people have been trying to be
tricky in an effort to beat it and its getting "smarter" because of it. I certainly passed a few minutes with it...

A.O.N.O for all those who doubted me, in the immortal words of Nelson Muntz Ha ha!

David Hayter seems to be "The Man" these days. from humble beginnings as a voice over artist for the likes of the 90's Amazing Spider man cartoon, the voice of Solid Snake from Metal Gear.

He's scripted Xmen and X-Men 2 and now is moving on to do seemingly every comic book movie out there. O.k I exaggerate a little. But he has signed up to do Iron Man, The Watchmen, The Black widow and seems likely X3..

In fact his profile on IMDB indicates he is directing Watchmen and blackwidow.

please ignore the fact he wrote the scorpion king..

and finally ROTK EE
thats a shame I had hoped to see this DVD arrive by september at latest..

The League 2.

2004-06-09T14:22:00.000+01:00

After much prompting I finally got off my ass and did some stuff about the
Ketsurians and where they fit in the "Empire of the one".
Its still as time consuming as I remember. *sigh* maybe I'll spend more of my downtime thinking bout it so that when It actually comes time to write something I already have it in my head..
..of course that assumes I have any downtime. I'm sure this'll all be made public on the forum at some stage but for what its worth the Ketsurians have gone through a bit of a metamorphosis. No longer the spear wielding savages that have been given plasma blasters, they actually know how to make those plasma blasters now! I'm picturing a bunch of industrious walking crocodiles with serious industrial capabilities and an expansionist ideal.

Which reminds me.. I still ain't finished, there was an email I had to reply to wasn't there, *sigh* again.

Well before I get round to that some other news.
I'm going horse riding this weekend. Yeehaw ride 'em cowboy and all that. It'll be no time till I'm running rings around german tanks on a white stallion! I'll settle for not falling off first though.

Also I seen somewhere that Kevin smith is gonna make a green hornet movie. featuring Jake Gyllenthal as the green hornet and Kato is uncast as yet. I think thats good news cause it means they're taking the casting of Kato seriously. I mean thats a pretty big eye mask to fill..

Grindstone.

2004-06-08T10:18:00.000+01:00

So. Back at the grindstone. I had hoped to jump straight back into things and basically continue working in the same productive vein as where I left off last week. That does not seem to be an option today. I have precisely zero interest in working today. Nada. None. Zilch.

I feel tired (even though I had plenty of sleep) and I can't seem to get my thoughts to focus on things like JOptionPanes and XML parsing. Instead the internet beckons.
Son of Quote Quiz at the ever excellent empire magazine size.

My head hurts

2004-06-04T16:41:00.000+01:00

"Oh Tequila, she makes me happy"..

No she doesn't mate. Lies and damned lies. Tequila leaves you with a sore head and feeling generally crappy.

So today I'm working from home. Ok. working is stretching the truth a little. At least compared to the work I been doing all week. being as how I only got up at lunchtime. and didn't start till 'round 2 o clock. and now I'm doing this. I think its fair to say my brain is not firing on all cylinders..

My condition has not been enhanced by my rather poor decision to eat in abrekebabra at 3.30 in the morning. In fact now that I think about it it was a little odd that they gave me that free chicken baguette..

So anywho, I'm gonna get back to it. This'll be my last post till next tuesday probably.. I 'm off to Dungloe for the weekend to chill out relax and drink beer. Later.

The big reveal.

2004-06-03T09:01:00.000+01:00

Right today is the day I tell my current employers I'm moving on to greener pastures.
I believe it will go fine and they will wish me well, maybe they'll even help me out with my scheduling problems..

However that paranoid little voice in the back of my head is saying things like "don't tell em nothing you don't have to.." ,"Watch 'em like a hawk, they're gonna try and feck things up for ye!" and "Where's your tinfoil hat? I told you to wear your tinfoil hat today?". We won't be listening to that, if at all possible.

In other news 'tis good to see the scourge of the seven seas, Cap'n Vane, paying a visit to my humble blog. She is a good sport and won't take offence to my previous posting regarding our disagreement over pirate lingo and all this talk of execution is just in fun. So there need be no more talk of that. Fine . Also she's great ;)

"Arr!"
-Black Davy Rackham.

p.s I'm won't be doing this a lot (largely cause I think there are few places that deser ve it.) But I recommend marx for your techie needs.

Also don't order a delivery from peats if you ain't prepared to wait . my 2 day delivery time became 3 weeks for Ripley.

"Cute"

2004-06-01T22:38:00.000+01:00

My Girlfriend has just descibed my Blog as "cute".

This is not what I was aiming for. Do you see Pikachu here? Or kittens for that matter.
admittedly I don't really know what I am aiming for barring an easy way for folks to keep in touch with me. Perhaps I could got more technical like Mr Kablooie has in his design blog. I don't think I'd have the interest in it to be honest though. Easier to let him do the hard work ;)

I could do the 'review' type blog.. talk about movies or music or something.
or post fiction, or talk about games stuff all the time..

Speaking of reviews. Got me the new PJ harvey album. I like it.

Goodbye Sligo.

2004-06-01T15:22:00.000+01:00

I been tellin' people that I'm heading to Dublin next month. Somehow that makes it more real. It's kinda like I could make all the plans in the world but until I actually tell someone I'm doing it , it ain't (yes I do use ain't a lot. Not in real life though.)really happening.

So like I say I been telling people, my work colleagues, mates and acquaintances.
This gets me thinking. I probably ain't gonna see a lot of these folks again. Leastaways not in the same way. Which is a shame. I like most of 'em.

It also gets me thinking about how long I've been here. Twenty Five years. Thats right folks I'm a Sligo native and (mostly) proud of it ;) All my schoolin' years I've been here. I've met a lot of people and done a lot of things here. And its been great, wouldn't swap it for all the tea in china. However it has been 25 years in one town. and its a big ass world out there and I've been itching for a change of scene for a while and I'm finally gonna get it.

It seems right to do this now. Events are conspiring that way anyways ( in a good way thankfully). Touch wood they will continue to do so.

Anyways enough sentimentality.

don't call me I'll call you fair dues to him. Retiring at the ripe old age of 86.

Swish! Nothin' but net.

2004-05-30T23:29:00.000+01:00

I could have written this post directly after my interview. If I had it would have looked something like this.
"WOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, IGOTTHEJOB IGOTTHEJOB I GOTTHEJOB. I KICK ASS!."

I've had a weekend to get over this and get back to reality so you don't have to suffer my gloating at the world.

So yes, I had my second interview and they offered me the job. On the spot too. I was expecting to be dangled from a thread for a while before they put me out of my misery but that wasn't the case. The people I've met so far have been great, the overall 'group' manager who I had the interview with on thursday was a good guy, real down to earth. I like that, nothing worse then Highfalootin'.

hmm. brain no work now. tired. me stop. update later.

except for this which has just come to me.
Faith no more - woodpecker from mars.
what an odd song. reminds me of prince of persia.
I really like it. not mad about the rest of the album.

Expedition Mark II

2004-05-27T11:34:00.000+01:00

Well I'm in a cybercafe in dublin whiling away the time before my next interview. Yep, you heard right, they called me back. I'm frickin' ecstatic. This time round I'm being interviewed by someone a few rungs up on the ladder. But I feel good. Feel confident. Show me the money!

Seriously though. Everyone and their hamster are wishing me good luck. With so much goodwill behid me I could go into the interview with no pants and
still get the job. Just to be on the safe side, I'm gonna keep the pants on..

In other news "Ripley" is earning her keep. I have been up and down on the train more times than I care to think about. But I was hardly once bored 'cause I could always fire up the old IDE and get some work done...

just say Arrr!

2004-05-25T14:27:00.000+01:00

Pirates say Arrr!.
Arrrgh! just doesn't make any sense.
Arrrgh! is the noise 3rd rate actors make when they get stabbed in movies
and comic book villains make when their plots are foiled by the hero.

just thought I'd clarify that.

Expedition Report

2004-05-25T09:50:00.000+01:00

So I had my interview yesterday. And blimey if I wasn't thrown a curveball. I was expecting a java exam, as in heres a bunch of questions answer 'em as best you can you have fifteen minutes.
instead I got "here is a problem. Here is the slowest piece of crap laptop we could find, it has jdk1.2, here is notepad. you have 45 mins. go."

I didn't complete it. It's not that the problem was technically difficult but between nerves, second guessing my implementation and a laptop with a function button where CTRL should be ( causes real problems when you decide to move a block of code to a different method..) I only completed a third of the solution. V. disappointed.

On the bright side I managed to compose myself and I'm pretty sure I breezed through the technical interview. It was just a normal conversation between two people who spoke the same language.

The subsequent HR interview was trickier. She spoke HR-ese, "Where do you see yourself in 3 years time","Have you ever dealt with conflict in the workplace","what would your strengths and weaknesses be?" these questions may seem straightforward questions but there are right and wrong answers.. saying "I can't tell what I'm doing tomorrow never mind 3 years time." isn't what they're looking for ;)

I should get a call in a day or so to let me know If I have to do another interview or go back to the drawing board.. watch this space.