The Bunny Bacchus

Paul bought 4 blancmange-coloured shirts for £2.50 each from Matalan for our stage gear.







Wo!

Just had this pointed out to me by wyvernfriend:

( spoiler for Dr Horrible )

Go watch it if you haven't already. Only up till American midnight Sunday.

Yay. Friend Bat, who lives somewhere nearby (possibly in the eaves) and shows up every summer is back!
And Friend Bat has a girlfriend this year! (and possibly more, hard to count them when they zip around so fast)
Maybe we shall have batlings.

8.5/10

Looks amazing. Not as many laugh out loud moments as Monsters Inc or Toy Story (1&2). Had me smiling the whole way through though. Incredibly Cute. Lots of heart. A little bit preachy but it's a message I can believe in so I'll forgive it for that.

Probably will deserve the Oscar for best film but won't get it because it's animation.

Saturday Night Open Mic is up, over at my internet church. Say hello.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

"I have to stop quacking at small children or I'll get arrested"

My previous team all got large fluffy spherical animals for reasons I still don't understand but am delighted to believe in. I got mine this week. It's in the overhead compartment right now. You're allowed a bag and a personal item for carry on.. and my personal item happens to be a spherical duck. Wrrnk!

Flight taking off in ten minutes. See you chaps in nyc.

Okay, so this was a kid’s tv show. A Gerry Anderson production, hence the puppets. But I think it underscores the basically creepy nature of children’s fantasy tv in the UK. Not as out-and-out fucking strange as, say, THE CHANGES or SKY. But, really, without any context — or, hell, even with it — the intro to JOE 90 is still kind of nervous-making. I didn’t particularly like this show even as a kid. There was something essentially Wrong about it. Stick a kid with fucked-up eyes in a huge spinning machine with pulsating lights while computers ooze magnetic tape like worms. The machine he’s in, by the way, is called The Big Rat. Which is also kind of Wrong.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

I stand metaphorically before you a man on the edge of personal oblivion.

Some months ago I signed up to run in the BUPA Great Capital Run, a 10 kilometre run around London's Hyde Park. I cannot now adequately explain what led me to such a rash and foolhardy decision. I can only say that I was insulated by the false perspective time gives to then far-future events. But now that far-away date has arrived. Tomorrow I must face the consequences of that decision, and can clearly see it for what it was.

A bloody stupid thing to have done.

I perhaps was dazzled by numbers. If a marathon is 42 kilometres, I thought, and people run that, how hard can a mere 10 kilometres be? (Answer: still a bloody long way!) And so I filled in the on-line form and my fate was cast. I had planned to train, but my training was cruelly interrupted, firstly by an injury to my back, and then by my inability to actually get round to it.I'm not going to disclose how long the longest of my training runs to date have been, but I think I can disclose one crucial fact - it's been no-where near ten bloody kilometres!

The eve of my day of oblivion has arrived. I would avoid it. Duck out. Bottle it. Put my BUPA timing chip back into its self-addressed return envelope and post it off. But my fates are forced, both by my previous declarations of intent, and by the fact that I've already accepted a load of charity money. Like a Japanese samurai faced with an approaching B29 Superfortress, I must wave my impudent sword and accept my destiny.

A few hours ago I ate what I believe is the traditional "eve-of-battle" meal for marathon runners: pasta. I fear that a pile of penne with a dollup of tomato and herb pasta source is, from a nutritional point of view, very much pissing in the wind, but it's a psychological straw I'll gladly grab at, thanks.

Wish me luck.

One of the things I want to provide with Forgotten Futures X is dragon character record sheets as editable Word etc. .DOC files. I've already done this, but it occurs to me that they'll be a mess if anyone else loads them.

The trouble is that the font I've used for the book is Albertus, and I can't give it away with the game because as far as I know it's a commercial font (numerous sites seem to be giving it away, but I suspect that they are not doing so legally). My best move is probably to find a font that is common to Windows, Macs, and if possible Linux distros, use that, and suggest that users pick a font they prefer.

Any suggestions for a font that'll do the trick?


In other news my local computer market has a guy selling 100-page packs of QMS glossy 135g A4 colour laser printer paper. Got one today and gave it a try, the result is VERY impressive, really makes the text stand out - I think it'll be very good for flyers etc. Works out at a fiver a ream, which seems pretty reasonable... unless anyone knows of a cheaper alternative I'll pop back tomorrow and get a few more packs.

I'd like to think I'm a pretty happening, on-message kind of guy; and one of the things I'm keen for this blog to do is offer a cutting-edge view on what's happening in the world, in news, thinking, and culture. So it's with that in mind that I'd like to tell you about a graphic novel series that I've just started reading.

The Sandman, which is written by a guy called Neil Gaiman, tells the story of Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, and his siblings, who are collectively known as the Endless. Starting from the basis of a superhero setting (initial issues have him meeting members of the Justice League of America) the story moves to to weave mythology, philosophy, plot and idea into a multi-layered and brilliant epic.

What I found particularly striking is that Gaiman never fears to go off on what in less ambitious titles might be termed tangents, but which here serve to add clarity and depth to the overall story. Indeed, what is striking is the extent to which Morpheus is often merely a bystander in his own story.

I don't know who Mr Gaiman is, but if The Sandman is anything to go by, he's clearly going to go far. I'd put it on your buy list.

I awfully like this picture, which was taken outside Amber India, a good restaurant in Mountain View. There.. may have been some drink taken.

Something else: it looks like we're going to have the option of taking time off instead of on-call pay. Well, I'm not getting my hopes up yet, but you know what that would mean? That would mean taking a holiday somewhere that's not Ireland. My fifteen days this year have been easily spent on reasons to be at home; if I get some more, I'd love to go somewhere not too far away that has water and a breeze and green things, and maybe I'd walk along the water, and maybe I'd read until my eyes fell out, and maybe I'd find a bike to ride, and in the morning we'd read the papers and in the evening we'd eat fresh fish and drink vermouth and it'd be like one of the nicer Hemingway chapters and I'd love it so much. Ok, maybe I'm getting my hopes up a little.

(I'm not sure I'm capable of doing anything as restful and nice as that, of course, because already I can't help thinking "Or.. Tiarnan will be in Brazil. Wouldn't it be awesome to go to Brazil and travel around a bit and have a million experiences and see things and come back exhausted but happy? You can rest when you're old!" Stupid brain.)

I realised how little that old British sf tv has still penetrated beyond our borders (and probably a couple of generations) when I made Joss Whedon look at the credits sequence for JOE 90 and got a WTF? from him. So, while I’m waiting for my forebrain to spool up this afternoon, I thought I’d YouTube a bit and collect up some stuff that some of you may never have seen (and some of you will get hideous flashbacks off):

THE TOMORROW PEOPLE:

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT:

BLAKE’S SEVEN:

SAPPHIRE AND STEEL:

DOOMWATCH:

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Still in Galway, still working at Nortel.

Just got promotion to superior programmer guy or whatever, which is nice. Also awash in hardware for playing *cough* working on, including dual-20"-monitor goodness and half a rack of exceedingly cromulent servers. Current project is coming to a close (well, entering testing which means less organised development stuff), and in another few weeks should be able to focus on fun new projects.

We're hiring developers into our team again, and there is a hiring bonus. Work is in Galway (duh), on windows server applications for Computer Telephony Integration. Experience with Java, C++ or C# would be good.

Plans are afoot to move into Athenry in the next month or two. This provides usual town amenties, plus the possibility of taking the train to work (I hate driving) and of proper internet. This 3G thingy is ok, and is much improved now that we got an extra-long cable and put the Internet-giving-box up high, but is still reminiscent of ye olde dialup days.

House prices (to buy) are still dropping towards affordability, but are not there yet. Still watching and waiting.

Recently found that rbpixies has infested his house with cats, to which I am allergic. I did learn that I'm not allergic enough to die from it (as I expected) but that it was bad enough to wish I could (which I did not expect).

Matthew is now 3, and is more energetic than ever. This is fun, especially as he moves towards less baby-ish games, but gets pretty tiring. Most excellent gift for a small child: his grandad got him a child's golf club. Not a plastic one. A real one, just shorter. Interestingly dangerous. Current favourite toy: a Finding Nemo jigsaw. This weeks film: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Mary is well, still full-time parenting, and also continuing on the slippery slope towards becoming a dreaded gamer. This is probably a good thing, especially if you want your 3-year-old to know how to recognise a heavy flamer.

That's probably all for now. More some other time.

You only have till tomorrow to see Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog...

(That's the title of a book and film by the way, just in case anyone reading this was thinking I was making a heartfelt declaration of affection).

Some years ago I read PS I Love You, the debut novel of Cecelia Ahern, daughter of the then Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern. That I had read such a novel was something of a controversial revelation to many of my friends, for not only could it be described as chick-lit, but many felt that there was something unpleasantly nepotistic about the daughter of a senior politician being given such an opportunity and assumed the novel therefore to be of an unworthy quality. I, of course, discounted these attitudes - although I confess to being somewhat upset when I found out that she was only 21 when PS I Love You was published.

(Twenty-one year olds have no business being published. They should be wasting the first half of their lives in depressing, unfulfilling jobs that serve no purpose save to pad out the three paragraph biography they hope to include at the front of future novels, like the rest of us poor sods have had to. Yes. This is the bitter rant of a man now nearing forty.)

Anyway, jealousy and accusations aside, I thought it was a very good book. I said then:

Just finished reading "PS, I love you" by Cecelia Ahern, and I'm thinking that maybe I should just stick with science-fiction from now on. Say what you will about Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, but I don't recall being in tears when I finished it.

Well last night we watched the recent Hollywood film adaptation of the book. They had of course, Americanised it. The original novel is set in Ireland and has Irish characters, but not in a self-consciously Irish way. Cecelia Ahern is Irish so she set her novel in her home town. Because of this the story has a universal feel that could be anywhere.

The film, by contrast, is very consciously set in the USA with the main protagonist, Holly, being American - but the filmmakers then felt the need to put in an "Irish" dimension. So she is apparently "Irish" (i.e. Irish American, shamrock bars and all), her husband Gerry is supposedly actual Irish (although until this was mentioned, I thought he was an Italian American with adenoidal problems - because that's what he sounded like to me), and there are a couple of trips to a stereotypical Ireland of green fields and country yokels. (God forbid they should go to Dublin, and show a modern cosmopolitan city).

As an aside, while we're talking about the American need to Americanise and remake foreign stories, do you know what is the only British TV series ever to be shown on primetime network American TV? (i.e. As opposed to a British TV series being remade as an American TV series, or a British TV series being shown on local channels).

That being aside, we still enjoyed the film, and it was as big a tear-jerker as the novel. But I have realised, that when it comes to film, my line about science-fiction and fantasy not leaving you in tears is no longer true.

Because I think we all cried after watching the Star Wars prequels.

LiveJournal Trading Cards Permanent Account Edition jennifer User Number: 520176 Date Created:2002-04-07 Number of Posts: 2129 Jen is doing her second Blogathon for St. Jude Childrens' Research Hospital, and her first as part of Team Venture. She loves blogging, loves kids, and wants to kick childhood cancer's ass. Strengths: fangirling, dressing in frilly outfits, friendliness Weaknesses: chocolate, frilly outfits, need for caffeine Special Skills: Bearer of the Fangirl Sparklies Weapons: Wiimote with Nunchuck, Fangirl Sparklies Why You Should Tune In: Jen is writing 48 drabbles in 24 hours. It will be interesting to see her crack at 3 AM and start writing crack!

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Her tattoos complimented her beauty rather than distracting or adding. And in the midst of the wars she delivered proof that there could be victory in the smallest things. In this case a small, perfect child as lovely in her existence as poetry.

The final act of Dr. Horrible could have been so awesome, but wasn't (No details, as to not spoil people, but if you've seen it, I think you can guess what I'm talking about). OTOH, I love Bad Horse, and I really want to see more of the Evil League of Evil.

ETA: And of course, in the classic style of I reject your reality and substitute my own, here's an alternative ending that I really can get behind even if it means saving Bad Horse's identity for the sequel.

If you can not do at thing in grace and beauty then why do it at all,
esp if your thoughts and actions will mar and take from the grace and beauty of it and the grace and beauty that others bring.