No posts for six weeks, very very slack. I just can’t be bothered – the xbox 360 takes priority over blogging every time, until it RROD’d and I had to drink to cope and then couldn’t type. Recently I’ve been bingeing on Mass Effect and Grand Theft Auto 4.
And taking pictures of the fence spiders!
In part one of a series of one, here’s a cool logo I found on Brands of the World while looking for a completely different ABB logo .
No idea who it’s for, BotW has it tagged as Russia / Security, I’d guess from the sword and the tie it’s some kind of private protection.
Review: not as enjoyable as their Electric Ballroom gig last year, I’m putting it down to knowing less than half the set despite being au fait with the latest two of their three albums. The Reuben forumites disagree with me, but also think crowd surfing is uncool. They aren’t to be trusted.
The Ghost Of A Thousand. All I remember is screaming.
Baddies. Seen them before, still very good.
Gigs are dead to me anyway, staying in with Supernatural is where it’s at.
Upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.5, definitely more streamlined but the picture upload feels clunky compared to the old no-frills edition.
Also upped Firefox to v3 beta 5, it’s much faster at everything than v2. I get problems with it refusing to connect to machines over bonjour, but restarting the browser always fixes it. Someone else on the same network never gets this problem, so it could be my cranky iMac.
I had this planned as a mighty update cataloguing the availability of Lion Bars in Norwich. I was to document the secret passphrases and masonic handshakes required to enter dusty backrooms of hidden stores where deals of cash and souls could be wrought.
However, it turns out that you can buy them for forty to fifty pence in nearly every newsagent in Norwich. Some vendors, such as REDS, go as far as openly selling king size Lion Bars.
Never has the truth been so disappointing, it’s like expecting a really good post after such a long break and then reading this.
Each day, as I carve through the morning streets of Norwich in my iron chariot, I pass this window. They’ve made a sterling effort with their window display, worthy of a phonetograph.
The “It’s back” advertising for Cadbury’s Wispa bars persuaded me buy one. Be warned, like most things from the 80s (except the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon) they’re nothing special.
On chocolate, I can’t find Lion bars anywhere these days. If Wikipedia is to be believed they don’t sell well any more because “consumers are turning away from high-calorie bars”, though they are still in production. If you find Lion Bars for sale in Norwich, please do tell.
#236, now updated quarterly! I was hooked with an brand new iMac at work, so the most important thing was to take advantage of the Intel chipset and install several operating systems.
Mac OS and Windows at the same time! Courtesy of Unity mode in VMware Fusion. I have an Ubuntu build on it too but don’t really know what to do with that.
As for the rest of the iMac, the glossy screen is ok, not as bad as some reviews suggest, but it does makes flat colours look like gradients more than non-glossy LCD displays do.
The mighty mouse is the worst mouse I’ve ever used, it requires magic fingers to click the button you actually want, I have to use it as a one-button mouse. The keyboard however is my favourite keyboard ever.
Overall, I’d happily buy an iMac for myself, and here’s a quick film recommendation:
Eastern Promises
I associate David Cronenberg with his old stuff like Videodrome and Naked Lunch, so Eastern Promises was surprisingly serious. (I’ve not seen A History of Violence but I gather that’s a “proper” film too.)
My verdict: very good, but it’s probably best seen knowing as little as possible about the story. I’ll write no more, just trust me. Or look it up on a review site. 8/10.
The once-a-week update plan has really gone out of the window. I can’t think of any reason why you wouldn’t want to know about films I’ve seen recently, so here goes:
Death Proof
It might look good from the picture, but Death Proof is the most boring film I’ve seen since Timeline. 2/10. If you want a film that’s mostly talking, try…
The Magician
Chance rental by hungover Duncan. It’s about an assassin and is shot as a documentary that is filmed by his neighbour. There’s not much violence but the dialogue is solid and often quite funny, which makes this a black comedy of sorts. Watch it then impress people at parties with your knowledge of independent film. 7/10
Day Watch
If you’ve seen Night Watch, this film is great, see it. If not, the end of Day Watch will be totally meaningless, so watch Night Watch then watch Day Watch. 9/10. If two witches were watching two watches, which witch would watch which watch?
Chilis aren’t actually hot like fire, but the chemicals in them bind to pain receptors in mammals (birds are immune to chilis, that’s their superpower). The body interprets the pain as heat and reacts accordingly. Use this to your advantage by eating chilis when you’re hot, tricking your body into perspiring more. Science is full of useful information.
The Scoville scale is a measure of the “hotness” of a chili pepper.
Chili research is all from Wikipedia, so could be lies.
There’s a cat that lives near me who likes to follow passers-by, I call it the “following cat”. I thought about giving it food so that it would come and live at my house, but I think I prefer my new, low-maintenance, wooden lizard pet. I have imaginatively named him Godzilla.
Bonus picture for sbemail viewers: Piemonade. Warning: that link contains both food and drink, so isn’t suitable for people that don’t care.
