Author: Sleepypete

Watched Max Payne tonight – it’s another movie made out of a game …

The evening started in Preview Bar & Grill, a restaurant close to the cinema. They’re always worth going to but tonight, even at about 5.30, it was empty ! There was us Crazies plus about 1 or 2 other groups. Bar man was so bored he was polishing glasses.

It was the same thing in the cinema too, which is surprising seeing as there’s a few high profile films out there at the moment. No-one there ! Max Payne had about 10 people in a cavern of a cinema. Ok, it’s not Wednesday where there’s a 2 for 1 deal going and it’s not a Friday night or a weekend but empty cinema ? Felt weird. Maybe it was a little early to get the people in.

Anyway, how was Max Payne ? I think I’d describe it as “better than Wanted”, “Punisher with the charm removed” or “wannabe Sin City without the credibility”. A shame, cos the game was supposed to be really good (it’s a first person shooter and one I missed out on). There’s a few game tie ins done, some are much better than others. I enjoy watching the Tomb Raider films for more than Angelina Jolie, because they’re good fun to watch. Resident Evil is another “good” film tie in, it’s scary as well as a gripping action film. Will be having another Resident Evil night sometime I think.

Hitman’s another good film-game tie in, because it retains a sense of style along with its very dark humour. Again, that’s a game I’ve never played too. The film-game tie ins sometimes work well but often you’ll get a Max Payne or real stinkers like the Dungeons and Dragons movies.

Ah well – some films are good, some films are poor. Some films are so bad they’re actually highly amusing. But I wouldn’t count Max Payne as one of those. Right – I’m almost all out of snacks, so it’s time to pick up some munchies so I can stare at them while watching the Ice Road Truckers in 30 minutes 🙂

Time to close with weird thing of the day. Normal History channel is giving the Blue Screen Of No Signal. History +1 hour channel is giving a crystal clear picture. They’re only 1 separate on the box ! My mind is boggling …

Been having one of those weeks where I feel like I’ve been doing loads but when I look back, I wonder what’s actually been done …

Friday was fun, the cakes and donuts were very well received. And a few people from the team that’s been combined with ours said hello too. It’s a little strange with the other team, they’ve been attached to our group without really that much integration going on between us. Even though we sit next to each other now, there’s still a bit of distance there.

Good weekend too, we didn’t manage to burn out my dad’s router but we probably came close 🙂 Heh – not really, we got him a Linksys router just over a year ago and it’s proven bombproof ever since. I’ll buy one when I finally get sick of the Philips router I use here. I regularly need to reset my router because it has a habit of blocking me from accessing the net. In comparison, the Linksys has only had problems once in over a year, when it managed to go back to factory default. Apart from that, it’s faultless.

I bought myself a few goodies for my birthday too, 2 games and 1 series of Blakes Seven. I’ve had a look at the 2 games (Fallout 3 and the new WoW expansion) but not really felt that interested in getting in too deep with them. It’s not that I’m taking a dislike to them, more that I’m struggling to get the energy or interest to play games at the moment. That’ll pass when I get a good rest in 🙂

So why the “Feral Thinking” ? And what is that ? You know when you have a problem and whatever you try to fix it only leads to more confusion ? Been getting that over the past day or so. When I get that, I tend to get locked up in trying to bend the problem back to how it should be. Got one of those at the moment and most of today has been spent figuring out firstly what the problem is and how to fix it. It’s not a huge problem, just some numbers that have been mixed up.

I’ll sort it, even if I have to start from the beginning. And the problem is only in the worksheet I use like a scratchpad anyway, so no big deal if I have to rip it up and start again. I would like to figure out exactly why the numbers are different, although I get the feeling it’s a combination of Excel and our work’s network playing games on me. That happens too at our place, data integrity is not what you would call “perfect”, although we can usually catch issues before it becomes critical.

Currently chilling out to a bit of retro(ish!) TV with Star Trek TNG and will probably give one of the games a bit of attention afterwards. And listen to some more of the 220 odd more tracks I collected for iTunes at the weekend 🙂 10 more to hit 2000 in the library.

Very interesting.

Every few years, around this time of year, a group of intrepid souls set off on one of the two Around The World yacht races. There’s two of these, one of which is a group event with the other being single handed.

That’s right – single handed sailing around the world, non-stop in yachts designed for a full crew. This is the event that made Ellen MacArthur famous and its name is the Vendée Globe and I’ll be keeping a sharp eye on it over the next few months. It’s gotten off to a fairly bruising start too, with heavy storms in the Bay Of Biscay causing a fair bit of carnage amongst the fleet. There’s been 4 retirements so far, possibly more to come.

I’m following 3 of the skippers in particular this time around. They’re Mike Golding skippering Ecover, Sam Davies of Roxy and Dee Caffari of Aviva. One characteristic of the Vendee Globe is how closely you can keep in touch with the skippers of the boats. The website linked above has a newswire service, which publishes regular notes from the skippers, along with the more regular news stories. It’s far more intimate than the connection you get with most sports and it really makes a difference. And the yachtsmen and women are great people too, without the bad attitude that taints many sports with footballers being the worst. It’s an attitude that extends into skippers being only too willing to help out in emergencies, where their help literally means the difference between life and death. And they’ll give that help without a second thought.

This story about the rescue of Alex Thomson is why I’d like Mike Golding to do well in this race. These people aren’t sportsmen, they’re heroes.

I started following Sam Davies and Dee Caffari because they’re Brits and I like to support the home team. However, after reading some of the logs from the girls (Sam and Dee), I’ve been caught by the tone. They’re out there in the oggin doing something they love, they’re having fun amongst all the work and that shines out in the Girls Wanna Have Fun logs that come over the newswires.

I’m hoping the fun continues so we can keep seeing those entries in the newswires. They’re a great read.

I know I’ll be keeping an eye on this race over the next few months, hopefully it will be as captivating as Ellen MacArthur’s race 🙂

I did something that was possibly a little daft last night, which was to watch all 3 Resident Evil films back to back. So I was jumping at the shadows last night.

Watching a Deep Space 9 repeat at the moment that’s got a bit of an Ahhh moment in it. One of the characters in DS9 is Odo the shapeshifter. He’s a fairly solitary fella is Odo, played masterfully by Rene Auberjonois. Probably more accurate to say alone than solitary though …

I’m kinda feeling the same way at the moment. I’d like to have the chance to share a dinner with someone. All those dvds I watch, I’d like to watch them with someone else (even if that means relinquishing the popcorn bucket occasionally!) And I guess I’m missing gaming with people I know too. I’ve not really been connecting with the Eve people (well, new/old corp) and I’ve been on a bit of a break from Warcraft for a while.

Part of it is the new location at work, I guess I’ve been missing having the pretty girls from the team next door walk past and give me a wave. There’s something about a smile and a hello that really brightens the day. The move has put my team on the end of one of the building spurs instead of the middle, so we don’t have people from another team walking past. It’s not quite as bad as that though, there is still the IT Girl, The Boss and Wild Thing* who I can usually rely on to respond to my strange humour. Even if it’s just with a pat on the head.

So the loneliness has set in a bit and its demon has been pacified tonight by a bit of Amazon Treatment. Oh and a tie from the Mall tonight to replace some that are rather badly worn out. Which might tell how old they are ! I may also be suffering from a bug that’s going around work at the moment, with it sneaking in under the cover of the severe dust inhalation I got last week while cleaning.

Anyway – it’s my birthday tomorrow and one of the project traditions is to procure donuts (and other cakes) for the team. I’ll be hoping to lure over some non-project people too 🙂

*(I must get around to doing that Cast List of some of the people at work sometime … IT Girl, The Boss and Wild Thing are just 3 of the people I work with but they are 3 of the best)

I kinda get that but it’s because my Skybox isn’t working too well at the moment. It has a lot of trouble picking up the signal when the weather gets bad.

Might be worth checking to see if the programme has reached BBC’s iPlayer ?

I’m here again and thank you for the visit. It should have been Mom in progress but you popped in.
It’s been a wet dreary day here in the UK and a programme I was looking forward to has disappeared – no explanation. Drat the BBC!
Michele says Hi again.

Dunno really with the price ticket, that was a tradition that my ex kicked me off on that I may have to break 🙂

Gosh you watch a lot of films. Quentin Crisp says if you leave the dusting for three years it stops accumulating.
Are you going to take the price ticket off one of the puppies or leaving it on in case you return it?
Michele says hi!

It’s the morning after now, so how was the party ?

Let’s start by listing the films :
First up was Mars Attacks, a bit of insanity by Tim Burton where the Martians come to pay Earth a visit. Hilarious film and those Martians are totally evil on the level of a prank loving 5 year old 🙂

Next was Over The Hedge, which is an animated film from 2006 where a rascally raccoon gets himself in trouble with the local bear by trying to steal all the food the bear had laid in for after he came out of hibernation. I missed this one in the cinema first time around and discovered it courtesy of the movie channels. Well worth catching, if the photos on Imdb (link above) are anything to go by, the voice actors had great fun putting this one together and that really comes over on screen.

Third up was Cars, courtesy of a happy CQ 🙂 Another animated classic, with attention to detail that goes all the way down to aircraft leaving contrails in the form of tire tracks and the insects on the windows being miniature VW Beetles. The climax near the end also makes this one of the few films that gets me choked up. Must acquire this one for me some time 🙂

And last, after all the kiddies (except for RCA!) (and I’m due a thumping for that comment!) were safely in the bus heading back to Chez Aginoth, was scary movie Constantine. Not a bad story on this one but let down a bit by weak performances by the two lead actor/actresses. Worth catching this one but it’s guaranteed to upset people who may be sensitive to parts of the content.

After Thursday’s dusting exploits (next time before attacking room with brush, I’ll get a mask!) I wasn’t feeling too great, with lots of breathing problems and a big headache that had been building at work. The headache got the DGI (Damn Good Ignoring) treatment and I didn’t have to be too energetic so the breathing was just an annoyance.

Since the last time I had visitors, the people I was using as my barometer and inspiration for all the effort in cleaning up were the little people … I have a semi photographic memory and one of the images that stuck was that of a little girl who burst into tears at the sight of my loo … That image has been pretty much exorcised now because the bursting into tears happened at home time instead ;-).

Breakout – current iTunes track is “You Only Live Twice”, from the Bond film of the same name and sung by Nancy Sinatra. One of the best Bond themes 🙂 (Nobody Does It Better and For Your Eyes Only are also massive favourites) Kinda fitting seeing as we’ll be seeing Quantum Of Solace soon 🙂

My Puppies were a big hit with the little ones :

Thought I might lose one for a bit but they all survived 🙂 And I now have an excellent idea for what to acquire for the little ones for Xmas. Those three live on the back of my sofa and I think I’ll be introducing people to the rest of the fluffy menagerie some time in the future. By the way that’s Aginoth’s jumper that I’m holding hostage until Monday. I have more hostages ! Let’s see :

CQ’s pen : is now in briefcase waiting for work on Monday
Aginoth’s jumper
Kat’s congratulations card – Kat’s now a qualified Charted Accountant – big grats there 🙂
CK’s bottle opener
Various munchies

Most of it will be held to ransom, although ransoms tend to be limited to a wave 😉 The munchies however are MINE, ALL MINE ! (CK told me I could keep ’em 🙂

What did I get for this part of my birthday ? First one – Iron Man film and an Iron Man figure. Iron Man was one of the best films of this year, with Robert Downey Jr making an excellent Tony Stark. Iron Man 2 (2010) and The Avengers (2011) should both be amazing movies if they carry on the form from Iron Man. Next is HitchHikers Guide To The Galaxy from the BBC, which stayed true to the humour in Douglas Adams’ novels far better than the recent Hollywood production did. I also have Blakes Seven series 3 to watch, to catch up on something I was a little too young for the first time around, plus The Complete Robot collecting stories penned by Isaac Asimov.
(all links above will take you to IMDB pages)

Thanks to the Crazies for a great party and all those presents 🙂 Although my sore head settled down towards the end of the night, I hadn’t been feeling too human before then.

PS We had pizza delivered from the Pizza Hut over the road, they get a stay of execution this time as the pizza was just right. Shame their website keeps triggering virus warnings on this PC though … something to keep an eye on.

Update – Just finished watching Iron Man – definitely as good the second time around !