Author: Sleepypete

I better start by saying that this is perhaps not the Valentines Day post you were looking for.

HAHA ! 🙂

I mean, you’ll have had Valentines Day stuff for ages now right ? And I try to avoid following the crowd by avoiding trendy topics. (Unless it touches a nerve that is).

On Valentines though, I do hope you had a good one, whether that’s enjoying doing your own thing as a single person (cricket and rugby chill out for me and now listening to game vids while tapping this out) or being in great company. I’ve noticed that online dating has been in the news a lot lately too, I have a post coming sometime on that (positive to the online side) but … not just yet. For now, if you are looking for people, check it out just be wary (like you would if you were meeting people for the first time anywhere else) and see what’s there, not what you want to see.

And I’m also listening to Lucy Spraggan’s excellent first album. She’s one with the crowd when it comes to singers. She does great, intelligently written songs that literally anyone could sing along to. They’re great stuff.

An Old Love ?

What else could it be !!!

Yep. Finished !

Oh wait. That’s actually two old loves. Star Wars and Lego. Today is not about the Star Wars though.

That’s my new Lego X Wing, I finished building it the other night and as you can see (perched precariously on a couple of boxes and my nasty sofa), it’s rather impressive.

It reminded me actually of the old time Lego. Lego and Airfix models were a great way of keeping me occupied way back. It was a staple Christmas present from the parents and they rarely disappointed. I think there were a few Christmas Eve frenzied stressy shops too in the hunt of more Lego for the precocious pre-teen that I was back before discovering the cricket.

Good times.

There it is again in landing configuration with the wings folded up and the landing foot extended. There’s a couple more bits too, a landing ladder, a mechanic’s trolley and 4 figures. You might be able to spot the pilot there and a mini BB-8 giving a sense of scale.

This puppy is big. Maybe 40cm wingspan, 50cm length. (Those are rough by eye measurements, where did I leave my measuring stick ?). I’m super impressed with it as a kit. Things seem to have improved since way back when I was getting Lego for Christmas presents. The instructions book seems better than I remember and the parts are divided up into bags labelled with numbers that show the order in which they are opened and added to the kit. That’s awesome.

And the X Wing makes me want to get more and build more !

Trouble is though, I’ve been looking at the other kits though and after the XWing, I’m not too bothered about the other Star Wars kit. Maybe the Millenium Falcon (it is an iconic ship after all) and the shuttle but not about some of the prequel stuff and the Imperial stuff. Perhaps the miniatures ? You can even turn the Millenium Falcon kit into one of the big Elite ships.

Gosh, that’s an old pic (oops – look at the dust!). It’s from my older Lego fleet where I’d put the mini XWing and Tie Bomber on top of my old amp. The XWing is winning in that pic because it has the Imperial ship in its gunsights.

I used to enjoy the Technic models a lot. The engineer in me would put them together and they’d share a lot of genuine engineering principles. They did a technic car which had rack and pinion steering, McPherson strut suspension like in a normal car, double wishbones and engines that had pistons that moved in the cylinders.

If I get more Lego, it may well be one like that.

One drawback though, the pneumatic Lego worked well for a short time but would then stick and freeze up. (Which I remember back to later and realise that it was because it wasn’t dry air, the wetness causes problems)

The trainset was another classic. Pretty massive though. If I remember right, the gauge of the tracks was maybe 2 inches, or more than twice as big as the old Hornby OO scale. Is that still used ? I think it is. The advantage with Lego trains is that you’d build the trains and carriages. With Hornby, you’d buy the trains and build the scenery. I was more interested in the trains.

The last ones I can remember are the Lego boats.

These had a big floaty shaped hull underneath and you’d build on the superstructure. I don’t think you can get these any more. They floated ! Lego as a bath toy ! How cool is that ?

Yeah. Loved Lego. It was a great discovery finding it again and I can thank my sister for reminding me of it a while ago and a lovely Youtuber/Streamer called HeyChrissa for making me think of getting some now. Here’s HeyChrissa’s Ghostbuster’s car build. I reckon some time she’ll be tempted into building the XWing (cash permitting!).

Hmm – quick peek in the archive … Nah. Can’t find it (will post it if I can !)

I had a little spell over 10 years ago where Ravenwolf got me doing the Lego again but to be honest, I had other things on my mind then instead of Lego. That’s when the old fleet got built. Let’s see – mini XWing, TIE Bomber, AT-AT, AT-ST, 2 pod racers, snowspeeder, mini Falcon, Y-Wing (one can never have too much Lego), mini AWing, mini Slave1. I think I need to find somewhere to pose the Fleet.

I think I’ve rattled on enough for today though.

Lego – Eveything is Awesome ! (It says so in the movie). And it was an excellent relief after a couple of weeks when the stress was getting the better of me.

I have something I’ve wanted to show to more people for a couple of days now.

I’ve been getting more creative …

Please. Don’t be too scared. I am limiting it to making things of peace that could not harm anyone. (Ok, technically they can like all objects if it hard enough but I’m not planning to do that). Nah, taking over the world is for another day.

So what do I want to show people ?

Yep. I made that. Me. It came about from a comment along the lines of “where is the dragon’s cricket bat ?” Red rag. Had to do something for that ! (Especially with she who asked, that’s why I’ve held off posting actually, wanted her to see it before posting it a bit more publicly).

There’s a curious thing about creativity. It brings with it a need for approval. Did I do it right ? Is it embarrassing ? Does it meet expectations ? Does it look like something a 5 year old came out with ? (there are some great drawings by 5 year olds) Will people laugh at it and think it’s terrible.

I don’t have much artist in me (I think!) but I do like to create things. New things. That goes for work, where I’m far more interested in making new stuff than doing things with the old. I’ll raid pictures from Google but … I’d actually prefer to stuff I have already.

And then I go super critical over what I’ve done, thinking I could have done better. One thing I’d like to use the iPad for is sketches, although there my engineer perfect drawing attitude will fight ferociously with what’s appropriate for sketches.

Let’s see – from the picture above, it starts out as the Another Monday dragon and in order of how I did things :

Helmet – I don’t like the helmet to be honest. It looks a bit too much like one of those melon helmets some sports fans will wear. Does the edging on the brim work ? The edging for the grill is way rougher than I’d like it to be.

Why Pink ? It’s remembering back to the Pink Hat season, where I wore a pink cap to remember a colleague lost to breast cancer. I still remember the small smile that The Rose wore, she’s still missed. And I have another friend (only seen once but that’s enough to remember this lady’s character) who is now fighting her own breast cancer. She’s in the early days of chemo and if you think that’s rough, it’s probably going rougher than you imagine. But she’s a trooper, is fighting and I really hope that K.E. comes through the chemo and beats the cancer.

Cos we’ve lost too many good ones already.

Gloves – they look kinda like crayon don’t they ? I went with the theme of white batting gloves, didn’t get ambitious by adding more colour (although it’s there with the green paws poking through) and added on the black from the webbing behind most gloves that keeps them tight.

Pads and the V neck – similar, except that’s keeping the angles right.

“Dragon” insignia – England players have 3 lions on their breast, I couldn’t resist trying something similar. Looks kinda like someone’s sponsor logo isn’t it (the one that looks like a crocodile). Not intentional, just shows my lack of drawing skills – haha 🙂

As an aside – you’re seeing the creative person’s tendency to be supercritical of their own work. I follow a few artistic people on Twitter and they all show that self critical, self loathing, self destructive tendency where they cannot see the worth in their own work. I’d like to mention a couple of people there :

Tabby (@tabrakadabra on Twitter) who does super cute drawings. I thought they were good enough to borrow one of them as an avatar for a bit a while ago but I don’t think she liked that (I dunno, no feedback!). Look her up, give her commissions. Encourage the talented artist !

Zoey Proasheck of the Yogscast. Love what she does but she’s been having confidence issues. She says how she struggles to post videos because she wants them to be perfect. If they don’t match up to her expectations, they don’t get posted. It shows how the artist’s impression of their work differs from the viewer, we love all that she does and the imperfections are part of that. They’re what make her stuff lovable.

Back to the dragon !

That bat – oh my. It started out bright yellow and then I aged it down to the brown-ish colour. I was aiming for something that looked like wood. I think it’s done ok.

My impression of the finished article ?

I think it looks like something a kiddie would come out with. That’s my depressive side talking. I am slightly embarrassed by it but that’s my shy side talking. I’ve shown it to a few people, who say they liked it. And that’s what counts.

What do you think ? The little pads and the holding out of the hands as a “Hey ! No nerves !” even though his face is showing “I don’t wanna be here” have a certain charm. Although part of that charm is from the genius which was Real Musgrave’s talent at making the original pocket dragons.

I think I’ve nattered enough already !

If you know creative people, encourage them (trying not to patronize because that can be counter productive). Ask if you can use their art. Ask if they’d like to make art for you. Sometimes they need an idea to make more art. In the case of the Cricket Dragon, I borrowed an idea from Cupid’s Gift. And it was a good one. That also gave me the all important motivation to create.

I’ve done stuff for a few other people, although I’m being a little more selective there now. I’d do the doodles for the Yogscast people … but they’re not at all good at giving feedback. Ok, sometimes they do but most of the time it’s absolutely nothing. (Partly because they have lots of fans that send them messages, can’t reply to them all)

But if it’s someone who shows appreciation, that’ll keep me buzzing for days.

And making more stuff.

So if anyone wants me to make pictures for them, send the idea along and I’ll see what I can do :-).

Of course it may end up looking like a 5 year old’s crayon drawing but hey ! I haven’t been drawing much lately. Need the practice.

Cya !

PS I was going to post pics of the XWing that’s in build at the moment but … kinda run out of space ! I’m impressed. First Lego I’ve done for years and … it’s kinda therapeutic. And very high quality. Seems like the quality has gone up. Now to find a place where I can photograph it and show it off (when it’s built, 2 more wings to go).

Gosh,

Seems like a wrecking ball has gone through my PC over the last week !

I managed to get out to the Mall again today to acquire a graphics card. Sadly made by Asus but that was the choice available. Asus are a fairly well known make but I’ve come across their shortcomings multiple times already. I would advise you to avoid them if you have a choice. But they are a lot better than some I could mention (like Belkin).

Anyway, after getting home and fitting the thing, I discovered yet another hardware problem. I thought my speakers were ok after testing them in the Macbook but I didn’t realise then that one of the speakers was way down on power … And there was me thinking that the sound card might be damaged on arrival.

I mentioned a distrust for Asus didn’t I ? Well the install wasn’t what you would call “without flaws”. The installer took an ages to decide that the card wasn’t there, despite Windows letting me know it was. It needed a reboot to sort that. Surely that should have been part of the install routine ? It usually is and I was surprised that it wasn’t.

It’s all up and running again now. I’ve switched to another speaker set, the Cambridge Audio bluetooth thingy that I acquired to supplement midnight car rides. (I still wanna do those !). I’m currently listening to someone playing Darkest Dungeon, which Steamgirl got for me for Xmas and which I really need to have a good play of. I held off until it achieved full release in mid Jan and haven’t gone back to it.

What’s broken this week ? And bear in mind that we had another power cut off blip in midweek (Wednesday if I remember right) which may have sparked off everything after the power supply :

Power supply ! A few weeks ago but … unwelcome. At least it didn’t break anything else like what certain no name power supplies have done to my machines in the past. If a power supply fails badly, it’ll send more voltage around the system than the bits can tolerate, which leads to BOOM. Ok, silent boom but boom nonetheless. That bad power supply in the past took out a dvd drive and damaged a hard disc, I think it did more damage too but that’s lost to fuzzy memory.

Graphics card – this has been coming for far too long. I took a piccy of the Bad Dots at Wimbledon last year to illustrate how bad iPlayer is. It has been Slightly Broke for ages and on Wednesday it decided it was going to be Mostly Broke. I didn’t want to be without the potential for gaming (the ancient card is somewhat past it) so a AMD R9 380 built by Sapphire arrived yesterday. And …

The sound broke. I think that’s pure coincidence. I’ve had several graphics cards by Sapphire before and they’ve been fairly strong. My last machine had a Sapphire card until the end, when I switched back to nVidia for the new machine.

Anyway – first symptom – no sound out of the machine after starting up again. Bad news … I thought it was the graphics card interfering but no amount of poking the settings fixed that. It was trying to send sound to the speakers but it wasn’t happening. I have that Asus sound card now – fixed.

Speakers !

When I got the sound going again, the right speaker was badly down on volume and very tinny as well. Bad news. Left speaker sounded pretty sweet still. So I’m on my Cambridge Audio portable speakers now. The old speakers have done really well, I think I bought them when I moved here over a decade ago giving good sound for maybe £12. If they’re still available, I’d consider them again. (Logic3 – recommended).

Picture time !

I did manage to give the graphics a test run yesterday, pulling something out of the hangar :

Yep. Shiny gold ship. I have it rigged for cargo running to medium distances at the moment and it is really well armed to fend off any attackers as well.

I haven’t played Elite since they opened up some of the planets to landings. That’s more complicated than it sounds but I’ll leave that to other people. Too geeky. It is really nice though to be back able to fly into planets and land at the stations. Must peek at more of that.

This is me heading into land. I’ve slowed down to a quarter of the speed of light here, after shortly before being at Warp 5 on the old Star Trek scale (Warp Factor cubed = multiple of light speed travelled at) and I’m heading into the planet to land. And …

The destination !

It does look a bit painted on at that height and we can only land on the airless places so far but … It hails back to an old age where I’d, for kicks, fly into Earth’s atmosphere and land at one of the planetary spaceports. Bliss for a technogeek kiddie wannabe astronaut.

Yep.

Graphics have improved since Frontier Elite 2 was released way back in 1993.

Hopefully nothing more I have breaks in the near future !

I’ve had one of those days …

You know – the ones where if something can go wrong, it probably will.

Let’s see – graphics card arrived ! Hurrah ! And it works !!!

I haven’t checked out how fast it is compared to the old ones yet but … no dots on screen, no dots on video playback and that game where the textures went mental worked too. But … and there always tends to be a but …

Fire up machine after swapping over to the new card – where’s the sound. Uhoh.

The first thought (after checking the Googles) is that the graphics card has nobbled the sound. These things come with sound interfaces as well now to send sound over to tellies and monitors with speakers. I don’t do the sound that way, I have a pair of external speakers that have given me fantastic value over the decade or two that I’ve had them.

But … after much tinkering later I suspect I’ve managed to break something again …

The system is trying to make sound … it just isn’t getting to the speakers. System thinks the speakers are plugged in though and knows that it should be sending the sound that way. I’ve even managed to get sound out of the system through roundabout means …

Utility time ! Apple brought out a protocol called Airplay, which you can use to send sound and pictures across a network. I use it to send music from laptop to hifi and it’s very good indeed at doing that with no audible drop in quality compared to using a wire that I would trip over every time I went past it on the way to the loo.

Oh and I’d trip over it again when returning. THIS IS WHY I USE WIFI STREAMED AUDIO !

Anyway. I come to the point where I decide I need to spend a little more money on an external sound card.

This is something I had been thinking about anyway due to issues finding where to plug things in and a few other annoyances with the basic sound hardware in my desktop.

Off to the Mall !

At just the wrong time. I’d never have believed that places would shut around 6pm on a Saturday when they’re open later in the week. Seems a bit daft. Anyway, no sound card today. Sound card tomorrow hopefully. I think that’s the long term solution. I am also pondering getting a headset*, as this is fairly essential for multiplayer online gaming.

*(some headsets plug into the same place as speakers – but I’d get one of the USB headsets instead)

But I don’t do very much multiplayer online gaming these days (Either not invited in, or not interested in playing with random strangers), so a headset would be a waste of time.

Going back to that Airplay system – most of the time, that’s locked into Apple’s apps and devices. Itunes to Airport Express, things like that. But … you can get software that sends the audio from anything to anything else with the right software. I was watching a video on my desktop with the audio going to iPad or laptop. There are two sad things there though :

I was getting stuttering and freezes because I don’t think it liked me running the science sums at the same time.
It costs £££ to buy a licence fee;
And it puts excessive noise into the stream after 10 minutes if you don’t buy the licence.

I’d rather spend the cash on the perfect solution, instead of an imperfect answer.

It is quite frustrating though. I have a shiny new piece of kit … that I can’t really play with and find out what it’s like without the sound to go with the pictures. Perhaps Elite ? Haven’t been back into that in months and I suspect I could fly it mute. And it just finished updating …

I may return shortly with a screenshot.

PS Frustrating day but … I had messages from lovely people to brighten it up again. Feel better soon lovely little lady ! 🙂
PPS Shiny gold spaceship !

I don’t go into the microtransactions game that is the usual route for these cosmetic skins but … if it’s free and I have the ship for it ? Shiny !

No epic wall of text today.

Hmmm … Whenever I’ve said that before, you know how it tends to end up … (oops!)

Random stuff !

Tomorrow could be busy – I could severely do with sleeping in* but there’s a few things happening …

*(travel on a weekend takes its toll on me, mostly because I use my weekends as lazy time to recover from putting all I have into the week, plus I have bugs apparently still).

(click for bigger)

Wotcha think ? I hope it makes people who celebrate Chinese New Year happy. The picture is made up of a few different elements :
Big Chinese Dwagon – courtesy of Google.
Fireworks – are from way back and by way back ? I mean 2004. Bit ropey in quality but not too shabby. They came from a digital compact on no-flash, so there’s camera motion blur in there as well as long exposure time.
Font is Zenzai Itacha (a freebie via Google again but they ask for a little credit in the personal use free licence so there it is !)
And there’s the message dwagon in there again.

I know one person who I think will be celebrating Chinese New Year tomorrow, hope she has a great day. And then there’s Yogscast Kim, who is the big one for spreading the message that it is Chinese New Year. Our Western media isn’t too interested in this particular festival.

And I just realised something I meant to add in but have forgotten ! Chinese Lantern ! Hmm – where would it go I wonder … I do like this one better than what I came out with last year :

That’s from earlier days of using the image manipulation program I currently use (GIMP). The text is a bit small. You have to make these things readable from an instant glance. I’ve also done a bit more on the template to cut out all of the background and make the dwagon copy/pastable into other images. That mostly works, although you have to match up the texturing of source and destination to make it really work.

But that’s geeky non-fun work type stuff.

Happy Chinese New Year for tomorrow !

It won’t be the Year of the Dwagon (2012, won’t come round again until 2024). Here’s a bit more from wiki about the festival.

I’m not planning to head out for celebrations tomorrow but I know what I will be doing. Can you call this busy ? Definitely occupied but I’m not sure if I can call it busy !

I switched out the graphics card yesterday over my Working At Home lunch (only took 20 minutes, I reminded myself of the how and what to avoid when switching out the power supply a few weeks ago). The old one is doing pretty well, although I’m not intending to try and games on it. The old one is 4 years old now and for actiony games, that’s a bit below par now. Ok, possibly still better than Xbox One and PS4 but not something a PC Master Race person will be happy with.

Status report – the dots are gone ! Hurrah. Actually quite a relief because I’ve had graphical corruption on a machine before and it was something going horribly wrong in Windows that needed a complete wipe to fix. At least this time it’s just a hardware swap.

New one is an AMD R9 380 with 4GB on board. It has 1700ish coprocessors on board aiding 6 main graphics units*. How’s that for progress ? My first PC had 4MB of memory, this has 1000 times that just for the graphics. It’ll run at around 1GHz, which is … 15 times the speed of that first PC’s processor. I think it’s actually faster than that. Oh and it can throw data around much quicker too.

*(parallelism helps a lot with graphics, each unit draws a little bit of the whole picture and by having many units, it can draw many frames of that picture per second)

It should be good for another couple of years I hope. The new one arrives tomorrow so no sleeping in for me. It’s curious though – Saturday delivery is £10, compare that to … actually it’s cheaper than driving to the store and back (£20-£25) and saves me 2 hours each way.

How about that being occupied though ? I’m going to be antsy … Because the machine it’s going into will be busy !

Cricket (time delayed cos it starts at 8.30) on the telly.
Rugby on the pooter.

Should be a good day’s sport watching, although I’ll be itching to get that graphics card put in. I should really get back into gaming to check it out … I haven’t been doing gaming much lately, been too tired and suffering from the bugs. But that energy is steadily returning.

The hype machine is firmly behind a new one called XCom 2 at the moment and I have to admit, it’s caught me too (I am balking at the £35 price, I’m not in a rush to play new games and can wait for sales). What is it ?

UFO Enemy Unknown and it’s modern remake XCom are tactical games where you have a small squad of soldiers to send in to combat the aliens who plan to take over the world. XCom 2 starts up 20 years after you lost … badly. Time to take the Earth back !

Yep. Am hyped. Very tempted actually. But I also have a few other games which I haven’t given enough play time yet.

Urg – I said at the top I wouldn’t go all Wall of Text on you today.

SORRY !

Actually, not sorry. Cos I like doing the writing and I hope you enjoy reading what comes out when I bash the keyboard.

PS In case that Working At Home lunch thing caught an eyebrow – yep. Instead of going off to read the news on that break from … reviewing/reading work things, I did something technical labourish instead ! Probably more effective at break stuff than reading news things, the mind refreshes better when you turn it to different tasks. And I didn’t count the tinkering as work time.

Two things today.

One is “ok, something broke again” and the other is a bit … let’s say … controversial.

Money stuff first. Check out this pic :

That’s a pic taken of something from the last post … Looks a bit off doesn’t it ? It’s actually worse than it looks because I’m getting crazy random flashes of colour and shapes where they shouldn’t be and I don’t think it’s from the coughing fits I’ve been having lately. Yep. Sneezes long enough that it feels like the walnut that is my brain has been thoroughly battered and that it isn’t getting enough air either. Disturbing. But I’m ok apart from that.

Yep. I have been sick (sneezes, runny nose, not quite manflu) but I’ll get better. I think my graphics card is thoroughly ill … This computer is 4 years 3 months old now and the replacement will end up being its third graphics card.

The problem started with just a pattern of dots on the screen in certain videos that went away after not many seconds. (Except for BBC iPlayer which is rubbish and claims HD when it is blatantly not proper 1080p HD). It didn’t impact on games to any significance because the dots were hidden in the backgrounds. (Except for Endless Legend which had really crazy texture issues on the card which made it unplayable).

It’s much worse now though. Definitely a hardware problem because the problem has stayed happening after a change of drivers. The way graphics cards work is they paint a scene in memory, then throw that scene to the screen. Commonly, they’ll build three frames and then throw them at the screen in order. This is called triple buffering and makes things smoother.

There’s more to it than that. But without going into too much nasty techie detail, this card has 2GB of memory, some of which I suspect has gone bang. Which means errors in the SETI processing and dots on the screen. SETI has actually given up, the card has degraded that much.

So – two things to do :
Put an older card back in – this is a stopgap which will clear off those SETI thingys
Buy another card.

I do have another temptation though – that Lego XWing is back in stock and …

Something is triggering the “ME WANT” :-). (It’s a Lego Anaconda from Elite made from the Millenium Falcon kit)

Controversy ?

You’d find it difficult to escape the trouble that’s erupting over the Oscars and the nominations … Hence the Entitlement in the title. It does feel like there is a sense of overdone entitlement with the various boycotts that have been announced in a “We aren’t nominated so we ain’t going.”

There are three sides of that to explore :

Who got missed out of the nominations ?
How come black* actors didn’t get the best parts ?
Are they really asking for a quota system ?

*(I’m trying to avoid mentioning colour but … who brought up the colour pattern of the nominations originally ?)

Who got missed out ? I do think they’ve gotten it wrong. I can’t think of many coloured actors where I enjoyed their performance over last year but that’s mostly my goldfish memory refusing to recall it. Finn from Star Wars played his part well but I wouldn’t call it Oscar Best Supporting Actor material. I’d rather see Rey nominated. Seriously. Well actually no because while I did enjoy SW TFA and thought it was a great film, it isn’t Oscar material.

I think The Martian should get a share of Oscars and definitely one in Best Supporting Actor for Chiwetel Ejiofor who was one of the stronger performers, very true to the book character.

Terminator Genesys and Jurassic World were oddly white come to think of it. Should probably be looking at the casting people as to why people weren’t given the opportunities there. Spectre has Daniel Craig as Bond at the moment. I have to say that I don’t particularly agree with Idris Elba being touted as Bond, I’ve never really been impressed with what he does (although I did like his part in Pacific Rim but I am silly with that film). His part in Beasts of No Nation is being heralded as Oscar worthy but I’m sorry – if it isn’t in the cinema anywhere, it shouldn’t be in the Oscars. Shame on you Netflix.

The Rock was typically Rock like in San Andreas. Again, enjoyable movie, not Oscar material.

As for the protagonists in the controversy – IMDB tells me that Jada Pinkett Smith has been in just Magic Mike XXL and Gotham this year. Does she really think that Magic Mike XXL is Oscar worthy ? (disclaimer – I haven’t seen the Magic Mike films – not interested) Does hubby think that After Earth was a decent film ? Hubby has done some cracking films actually but I always wonder if it is Will Smith Playing Will Smith or Will Smith acting someone. The key to acting is to play a character, not have a character tailored to who you are.

They should not be nominated for their colour, they should be nominated on merit. And this will be controversial for some but … I do think there has been a definite sense of the entitlement coming in that is ever more pervasive in modern society, usually backed up by the teddies being thrown out of the pram if the entitled don’t get what they think they deserve.

I’ll be curious about who wins the various awards that’ll be going but I always bear in mind that those critics and awards people really don’t like the same movies that I do. I bet that Revenant will sweep the board and that Leo will get Best Actor. I didn’t like Revenant but I do think he deserves an Oscar. Not for this one but for Inception … That was a cracking film.

Time to close before I get a howling mob after me ! I do think the Oscars have got it wrong with the nominations, although the only one I can think of now is Chiwetel Ejiofor who was utter menace and top quality in Serenity. The message for the black actors is : GO ! GET THE BEST PARTS ! There are plenty of quality coloured actors and actresses out there, here’s a limited few to mention :

Definitely Denzel. Halle Berry. Idris. Foxx (Jamie, definitely not Megan of the one x). Don Cheadle (not the guy in Iron Man 1, thought that Roadie was a bit off), Forrest Whitaker (does he do films still?), where has Whoopi Goldberg been ? Zoe Kravitz ! (needs more parts)

Not Samuel L Jackson (not on recent performances), Will Smith (always plays self), Jada Pinkett Who. Where are the Asian actors and actresses now ! I was impressed with Rinko Kikuchi in Pacific Rim and I thought she was excellent in 47 Ronin (naff film, great storytelling) too. Not been in anything of note this year though.

Make it count with what you do on screen, not how you behave off it. Stirring up the controversy only tends to have one effect and that’s typically something bad for your cause.

It might be controversial but … it’s my opinion, which usually differs drastically from your typical film critic. I do think the Oscars have missed Chietel Ejiofor who genuinely added to The Martian in my opinion. But the rest of the people just seem to be demonstrating entitlement that would only lead to a quota system that would take away from merit and cheapen the whole idea.

I’ll close by saying that I don’t factor the colour of the actors into whether or not I intend to watch a film. Colour has nothing to do with performance (except when they are validly tackling race like the Compton movie). I choose films based on how I think the actors will pull it off, whether I think I’ll enjoy the movie experience.

And that’s how it should be.

Although I will admit I usually enjoy films way better in company.

Gosh – it’s been over a week since the last post.

My evenings have been pretty busy over the last week, plus a weekend away. Let’s see :

Tuesday and Wednesday were chill out nights, aiming at clearing the box of enough recorded stuff to allow the stuff over the rest of the week to be recorded. That sounds bad doesn’t it … My cable box has enough space to record 80 hours and you’d think … that’s plenty right ? How much could I be watching to fill up all of that ? It’s not that bad. I record most of my stuff in HD, which takes up to 4 times the space of everything else. So recording 10 programmes (Killjoys, Agents of Shield, Agent Carter, Occupied, NCIS, Elementary, War and Peace plus more) can take up half of the box.

So that’s Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday was spent socialising. It was good fun actually. One of our graduates was moving on and we’ll miss her. She’s a good character who is smart enough to ask all of the right questions and translate the answers to things that are in her frame of reference. That’s really important, you rarely have the same knowledge as other people so to understand them, you have to translate what they’re saying to what you have experience of.

Oh yeah, this is also the one who was threatening to do something that might kill me (kidding) – yep. Play badminton again. That said, my outsides are improving to the point where I could do the running around thing again, although I am a bit old and broken to do that to a level where I would be satisfied with my performance.

That brings me to another old age pensioner …

Hello Ben. Ben says hi back (in slurp form) and was rewarded with many bellyrubs.

It wasn’t just Ben though, my dad’s birthday was this weekend just gone, which was a good excuse to head over there again. He’s in his 70s now and I hope he’ll be around for a good while yet. Same as my mum. They’re glad they’re retired but they still get out and about doing stuff.

And they have little Ben to keep them company as well.

The old puppy is getting on a bit too, so he reserves his energy for when it’s needed and then he’ll disappear off somewhere quiet and out of the way for a little snooze. He does like to be around his people though, so here he is waiting for bacon scraps.

As the Facebook caption said : “Good morning, you don’t want those bacon sandwiches in the kitchen, give them to MEEEEE!”

Whatever could be on that plate that has our Muttley’s undivided attention ?

All the Ben pics go on Facebook first, although it can be tough getting decent shots of him because I don’t think he’s too impressed with cameras. It’s rare that you can catch him still enough for a good shot, except for when he’s off snoozing and then you wouldn’t want to disturb the old fella.

But when meatscraps are involved it’s :

Muttley at rest … and Muttley in motion.

And Muttley hoping for a few more meatscraps.

If only there were something for humans that had the Turn Old Dog Into Bouncy Puppy effect on humans. Oh wait !!!! CAKE !

Lush.

And just out of shot on this one ? Our sunday lamb dinner. With …

Cook’s helper encouraging the cook to use bigger portions. Cos leftovers mean munchies for pooches.

Oh and look at that tail, whenever I get that tail in shot, it’s disappearing into motion blur. I like that. A happy dog should have a tail in perpetual motion. It’s not always like that though sadly,

This is Ben seeing us getting ready to head out and you can tell he’s poised to come with. But sadly (supermarketredacted) and (DIYstoreredacted) wouldn’t understand. Pubs are precious about dogs too, even though the dog is likely to be hiding from all the strange noisy people who are otherwise in the pub.

All good things come to an end though and it was time to head back. (I picked up what feels like a quick and messy cold, hence not posting anything last night – if it’s from hugging the Ben, WORTH IT)

Yep. Time to say see you in a while :

With Ben doing his equivalent of Goodnight World. The family’s getting older but they’re still going strong. All 3 of them – mum, dad and the geriatric puppy.

Good night, see you later and I’ll leave you with something taking the mickey out of UK’s biggest telecoms company which is currently undergoing an out(r)age :

Hey I just met you.
And this is crazy.
But here’s my number.
So wait until the temporary BT phone outage is fixed and call me maybe?

Here’s a link to the original. (watch to the end!!!) It’s from Carly Rae Jepsen’s album Kiss, I think I’ll be following her music for a while.

You have got some great posts in your blog. Keep up with the good work.
http://www.pillowfortune.com

It’s been a little too long since the last one of these !

I do like these posts, they’re inspired from a lovely book (I will link it at the end this time). It’s well past time for another and today it’ll be K and L.

What’s first ?

K is for Karma.

Karma is Sanskrit for “deed” or “act”. I’m a firm believer in the “what goes around, comes around” theory. The theory that if you do a kind act, it’ll mean something good for someone, something good will happen to you. It’s why I send happy or kind messages to people who … quite probably ignore them (I’m talking about the internet people there).

The reverse also seems to ring true. I’m hearing from the Twitters that someone on the Eurostar train tonight decided that he needed a sneaky fix of his e-cig while on the train and the resulting stoppage has resulted in at least a 3 hour delay, cancellation of that train, cancellation of subsequent trains. All for a sneaky hit of the e-cig. That guy’s got a lot of karma to work off now. (It may come to get him when the other passengers find him)

Oh ! Perfect pic to illustrate.

Be good to people. It’s a great investment.

K is also for Knowledge – pass it on.

The worst thing in our world is ignorance and everything that flows from it. Like not realising you have hurt someone with your words. Not realising the consequences of your actions. Not helping someone out when you could have made something much easier for them. Seeing mistakes made because you withheld that crucial piece of knowledge.

Passing on knowledge is tricky though. It has to be done in just the right way. You can hit people with knowledge like hitting them on the head with a hammer. They don’t appreciate it and it scares them away. I’ve seen cricketers who had the potential to be extremely good but there were basic flaws in their technique that let them down. Gently guiding them down the path they were going was far more effective at getting the best out of them than “You’re doing it wrong, do this instead”.

It was far more satisfying to see people come back and learn new and better skills than see them walk away from the game because over zealous coaching made it Not Fun.

There’s another case from a year or so ago which is especially poignant today. It’s from Nick Hancock of Longest Stay On Rockall Rock Fame. He had been contacted by an individual who wanted to use his Rockpod in an attempt at breaking his record. I advised him to not allow use of the Rockpod (don’t enable idiots by making things too easy for them to hurt themselves) but to support them with knowledge. Because he’d have felt absolutely rotten if something bad had happened to the individual if he’d withheld information that later led to Bad Things. Besides, that Rockpod had had a hard time up on that rock, I doubt whether it would have been a good idea to use it again anyway.

(It’s poignant due to the death of an explorer who was attempting to cross Antarctica unaided – very sad)

L is for Lisa Miskovsky who has a wonderful voice and I really must get more of her albums. Restless Heart just started purring away in the background.

L is also for Lies.

Lies are horrible. “They toss and they turn inside us, trying to escape, tearing us away from our own deepest truth. If you lie, ask yourself why.” “Lies often cover our deepest fears, of being discovered, found out, unmasked; of being seen for who we really are. To be all you can be, tell the truth. It might hurt at first to admit it, but it will truly set you free.”

Given that, there is such a thing as too much truth. The truth can really hurt people as much as a lie can. But is truth kinder in the long run ?

I try to avoid lies. They wrap you up in Bad Stuff which is guaranteed to catch you out at some point. Be honest with yourself and others, it’s always the best way.

What’s worst though are the lies that we tell ourselves. Like me telling myself that my shoulder was ok and I could still play cricket despite crying out in pain when I tried to pick anything up with that arm. (This is way back when the injury originally happened). That probably led to more recovery time (as it happened, I had recovery time due to not having teams to play for).

I used to memorise the letter chart that opticians use, this led to me getting glasses that weren’t strong enough. I was honest the last time, said which letters were sharp and which were not and … these glasses are over ten years old and I’m just about on the verge of needing new ones.

L is for … you guessed it … Love.

Yep. Been looking for a chance to use that pic. There’s a certain relationship with dogs. They love their people and return all the love you give them. They are very adoring individuals. Cats have their moments too.

True.

Love ? “In life, we lose our youth, our strength, our influence, our memory, even our bladder control. In the end, all we have and all we will be remembered for is the love that we give; not just to one person, but to everyone we meet. Remember this – and you will be remembered.”

“What is there to say about love that has not been said before, except : I LOVE YOU”.

Yep. You. Reading this post. Those lovely people who stay with me, reading what random thoughts have escaped from my head and fingers today.

I love you all. And you return that love by keeping coming back. Every page-hit that Google tells me about makes me smile. It means people care, it means they (to some degree!) love what I write.

The world is a much better place when we show our love for each other.

PS Oops – forgot something. Here’s the book link …

I had a request yesterday – a playlist for a shop …

I think we’d find it difficult to get a cd over to shop (plus I really don’t trust my cd drive !) but it sparked one of those dangerous things … An idea !

So – shop music ? Depends on the shop really. Some shops want to bring you in and show off what they’re selling. Other shops want you to hang around, chill out, empty them of coffee, have a natter. Bars will be similar. Nightclubs want to make your ears bleed. And there’s the tunes which will stick in your mind and drag you back to the shop later to buy the album.

Mood is a definite reason for selecting certain music. Whether that’s wanting to set a certain mood (coffeechill, hyperdance) or catch the general mood. So at the moment, there are two major moods going in music :

Chill out with Take It Easy by The EaglesSet a romantic mood with Absolute Beginners by the genius Bowie;
Go for a bouncy mood with Daft Punk (One More Time ?)

The shops will want to draw you in though and hopefully keep you around. And one way of doing that is by having the good music on. I’ve been caught by that a few times when the shop has been playing some of my favourite music.

It wasn’t Untouched by the Veronicas that got me buying their albums in (that shop ending with a V), it was actually You Ruin Me. But Untouched is the track of their’s that catches in my head. I’ll stick around for that.

The Pretenders do this too, with songs like Brass In Pocket.

More instrumental styles help too, where conversation is important. Enya will always catch the ear with songs like Evening Falls. One for those candlelit restuarants ?

Some artists are a bit mixed. They do gorgeous songs but the mood isn’t right. Duffy’s Mercy was a nightclub favourite (haha – what do I know about nightclubs ? very little!) but while most of her other sings are absolutely stunning, they’re a bit too sad for shops and bars.

With some songs, it’s not about the music. It’s where you heard it first. Things like hearing Bear Necessities made me want to buy The Jungle Book.

Wonder if I have any songs about chocolate …

Haha – the Levellers just started with Far From Home. But their song The Boatman makes me dream of being on that narrowboat. Definitely one to play in the bar/coffeeshops near the boating exhibitions.

Christmas songs are very situational but pretty effective too. Can’t beat a bit of Wishing On A Star (Rose Royce) or Baby It’s Cold Outside.

I wonder how Yello’s The Race would do in a car sales place (depends on the car!) or a betting shop ?

Oh my – Eric Clapton with Wonderful Tonight for that bar. Magic. Most of Seal’s stuff too. Although sometimes songs like Killer might … kill the mood. But if you can start a playlist with something like Alisha’s Attic’s Wonderful You ? (It’s a b-side, probably ultra difficult to find sadly) I’m currently listening to Love from Seal’s album 7 and it’s a good one.

Fleetwood Mac’s You Make Loving Fun – wonder when the last time was that this was played in a nightclub ?

Something I’ve not watched for far too long – T.V. Carpio’s version of I Wanna Hold Your Hand from Across The Universe, which had so many fantastic versions of Beatles songs. Imagine that one coming over the speakers when you have someone with you who you wish was … holding your hand ? And on that note, there’s Lisa Miskovsky (who I really need to acquire more albums from) with Take Me By The Hand.

A happy boppy song just started – it’s Good Time from Carly Rae Jepsen’s album Kiss. Definitely a happy song, it’s got me doing the chair boogie that hopefully no one notices you doing. Three albums escaped with me last night, Carly Rae Jepsen’s Kiss, Seal 7 and Sia was in there too with We Are Born. I’ll be enjoying listening to those bit by bit over the next week or so :-).

Going down my pointers/reminders list I see Glamour Puss (weird video!) by KT Tunstall – one for the clothes and accessories shops ? Also Pretty Woman. Classic.

[cough-splutter] A little further down that list is Lisa Hannigan with Safe Travels (Don’t Die). SERVICE STATION MUSIC ! Safe travels on them motorways :-).

And talking of a song that’ll stick in your head for days, actually there’s a few :
Mindy Gledhill’s I Do AdorePretty much anything Nina Simone sings – Feeling Good ?

I’m so tempted to say Ting Tings The Wrong Club, although I’m not sure that’s just me seeing it in my list of best songs or whether it’s something that might send the wrong message in a shop or a bar. Love the song though and it definitely catches the ear. (Has a swear though!)

I better stop now cos it’s going to take a while to catch up with the Youtube links and listen to all these great songs.

Oh – one last one … This would be a really bad one to have in a Doctor Shop : The Drugs Don’t Work by The Verve. Peter Gabriel’s Don’t Give Up might be better.
Maybe one more. However tempted you are by mischievous feelings, I would advise against playing this song in a shop. Any shop. It’s Gorillaz with M1A1 and I nearly chose it as a phone ring tone …

Last one ! What does a shop want you to do ? Linger ! Here’s one by The Cranberries, a group that a Very Special Lady reminded me about a little more than a year ago. Cheers !