Sleepypete's Pillow

As in NEW episodes of Red Dwarf??

I’ve managed to almost get everything in the library listened to 🙂

There’s a full 1.6 days of new stuff in the library, or so iTunes tells me. Maybe I kinda went a little overboard in acquiring all those soundtracks …

It’s not all soundtracks though – here’s some of what came in :

Tori Amos – Abnormally Attracted To Sin. Not bad, kinda more of the same. Tori Amos is a very talented singer songwriter and also extremely prolific. Being prolific isn’t always a good thing, as it can mean that too much of the not so good stuff gets unleashed. Abnormally Attracted to Sin is better than American Doll Posse but isn’t as good as some of her best material. Still worth a look though.

Smash Mouth – All Star Greatest Hits. Lol 🙂 This is fun. Again, nothing classic here although the I’m A Believer cover excels.

Alone In The Dark soundtracks – I grabbed all three of these games in a cutprice ultra bargain deal at Good Old Games.Com. IIRC it was about $3 for all three. We weren’t convinced about AITD 2 but the first game kept us busy at uni for months before we had it cracked. This was in the dim and distant days before Wiki captured all the walkthroughs and before the Internet and Google really took off so it was tougher to find hints and tips. It’s from when Hint Telephone Lines could make money.

I’m listening to the AITD3 soundtrack at the moment and it’s … got character 🙂 Liking it.

Morcheeba’s Charango – Morcheeba are pretty different to what I usually listen to. They’ll be different to what most people listen to. But that’s mainly because they put a lot of variation into their albums. Charango is no different and there’s a good selection of good tracks here. Check them out, there’s a good chance they’ll have something you like.

Fallout soundtrack – another from GoG.com, this time I saw a “sign up and get this game free!” So I did. The Fallout games have always had their own unique character charm to them. They’re set in a Post Apocalyptic alternate reality Earth where those kitsch 70s ads hung around way past their time. It lets them put a certain degree of very dark humour into their games to offset the post apocalyptic thing.

Faster Than Light soundtrack – this one is available on Bandcamp from Ben Prunty music. Game soundtracks have a specific job to do – they set and reinforce the mood and then submerge under the game to become subliminal. The Mass Effect and Deus Ex HR soundtracks are very good at doing that and this one is the same. Will be looking out for more from Ben Prunty in the future.

The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan. Another very different pop group. I first listened to their Elephant album. Different is definitely good when it comes to music, it sets groups apart from mainstream tat and gets them noticed. I’ve definitely noticed The White Stripes and will be looking for more, they’re worth it. This album appeared courtesy of Head doing offers 🙂

Bat For Lashes – The Haunted Man. It’s good. There’s some decent tracks here but not as many stand out tracks as on her previous albums. I’ve yet to listen to it as a pure album though, maybe in the next few days when I get round to it.

Independence War soundtracks. These are another couple of game soundtracks picked up for peanuts from GOG.com. One thing about GoG is that you get lots of freebies with the game. Things like pdf copies of the manuals (when game manuals were worth having), pictures of material like spellbooks and best of all – soundtracks. Oh ! I-War 1 + 2 – two games that unfortunately for them came around at the same time as when the X-Wing games were going strong and which therefore didn’t get the chance they deserved.

Last Night Of The Proms. I’m a Prom fan, I try and watch every year’s Last Night if I can. I like music and this is as uplifting as it comes. Perhaps this recording isn’t as good as most though, I suspect it was the one where the organisers went “We’re recording this, keep it quiet” and therefore missed the whole Audience Participation thing where the off-time audience additions make the whole show.

Lisa Hannigan – Passenger and Sea Sew. Oh. Character. This girl has it. Lisa Hannigan had the misfortune to emerge at the same time as Little Boots, who at the time was on a mission and was blowing away all the competition. Yet here was delicate and very precious Lisa Hannigan coming along with that unique and deliberately fragile voice. Little Boots doesn’t hold my attention as much now but Lisa Hannigan singing I Don’t Know ? You may have heard that one so here’s a different link : What’ll I do ?

Very glad I gave Lisa Hannigan a second look courtesy of some cheap Amazon deals 🙂

Oh dear. I seem to have been distracted into listening to as many Lisa Hannigan videos off Youtube as I can find. Time to close and maybe leave room for a Part 2 of new stuff 🙂

But before I go :

Something old – Red Dwarf’s back. Not quite sure what I think, the concept is extremely tired now and overdone canned audience laughter detracts from the comedy value.

Something new – watched the first couple of episodes of Arrow tonight. Not convinced I’ll stick with this one, it has great TV actors in it but the concept is weak …

Something different – watched the first episode of Elementary. This one has more of a future than Arrow I think, if the networks stick with it. But … concept has been overdone, there’s about 4 different Sherlock Holmes going on at the moment – the BBC one, Elementary, the films and the really bad ones we see on the movie channels occasionally.

PS I think they gave me Strong pills this time. They’ve certainly had a very fast and decisive effect. Need to figure out something to have with the ones I’ll have tomorrow morning … (6 little pills with food that masks a nasty aftertaste)

Yep. After having yes/no’s last night, I paid them a visit today.

Doctor’s worried too … She got me to make a repeat appointment in a fortnight. Gotta say, I was worried too after what the legs were looking like this morning (I’m saying nothing here in case people are reading in lunch break).

Result ?

More pills, even more pills, more cream and … even more cream. And I need to be using the moisturiser more too.

It seems to be having an effect already though 🙂

I’ve had a bunch of the pills, used the cream once, had a shower and … my legs still look very angry with me (they deserve to to be honest) but my arms look improved already. Fingers crossed that I improve over the next few days, at least enough to wear long sleeves ?

Why long sleeves do I hear you ask ?

Normally at the weekend, at the moment at least, I’d be hibernating inside trying to take it easy cos of this skin thing. This weekend ?

BOOM !

It’s birthday season at the moment. Bionicdwarf’s was last week, Craziequeen’s is in a few days and mine’s in a fortnight. Mine means cakes for people at work on the Monday or Wednesday, I can’t bring them in on my actual birthday because that’s when the next doctor appointment is.

We’re celebrating by making lots of things explode over the weekend. I have the presents wrapped but still need to acquire the fun stuff. Setting off the loud bangs involves being outside though, hence hoping to be able to wear those long sleeves so I don’t completely freeze.

Oh it also means Pizza. YEY !

PS I’ve also had to activate word verification for comments, which is a huge shame. Over the past couple of days, someone’s been trying to sell stuff by slamming lots of spam comments in. I won’t tolerate that and neither will Google (they canned the first account before I could report it). But they appear to be able to get around Google’s spam detection (dunno how, the comments have been near identical). If I have to enable comment moderation, this will be why.

It’s definitely got a lot colder over the last half week or so.

I’m really noticing the cold snap come in. My current state of health is a lot to do with that for a few good reasons :

I think fighting bugs keeps me warm. Kinda like there maybe being a good side to being ill. The fever means you have your own little internal personal electric heater. I think the antibiotics have cleared out all the bugs though (definitely judging by my ankles being bony again).

It’s definitely colder – the car is telling me the temperature is down below 10 degrees C often, last week it was 13-18 degrees C. In work, there are little thermo reactive strips in strategic places on the pillars. Those typically read 27 degrees C (ish – they’re not exactly precise!), today they were reading 23.

Most important is that skin condition, it’s meaning I can’t wear long sleeves right now (although I possibly could have for second half of today – improvement !). I’m actively considering wearing a t-shirt under my shirt tomorrow as a kind of vest. I’ve not done that since school !

Getting really cold at the moment from having to leave certain bits of skin exposed to help them heal. I’ve turned the heating up at home (and have the PC doing work for SETI etc) but can’t do much of that at work. Spookily enough, I think the atmospherics at work are actually helping me at the moment. It tends to be quite a dry atmosphere and that drying out seems to be helping the healing.

I know someone who used to be on the same project as me who’d feel cold on a hot day, she must be absolutely freezing at the moment. Hope she’s ok. Not spotted her for ages, which is a shame cos that Sunshine smile she has brightens up the day.

I’m sparing a thought though for people across the Pond.

It’s just cold over here at the moment, we’re not having to contend with snow (yet) or other adverse weather. Yet there’s Superstorm Sandy battering the Eastern parts of the USA. The USA is pretty huge, for a storm to be battering so much of it says a lot about how spectacular a storm it is.

Nature is a truly awesome power.

And I’ll leave it there – hope the storm over the sea doesn’t have too many lasting effects.

Oh – I’m in a quandary at the moment as to whether to go see the Doctor again. I had genuine improvement today after a scary (messy) evening yesterday. Let’s just say the cream probably made things worse. What I need to do is leave things alone long enough for them to get quality healing. As for the Doctor today, let’s just say GB’s healthcare may be a lot cheaper than other countries but it’s definitely not as accessible as it could be.

But it’s a lot more accessible than a few places I could mention right now !

Still working on my list….. [grin]

PS How on earth did I forget to put Battleship into this post ? It was the inspiration for it!

Lol

One thing people won’t tell you about Skyfall is the truly excessive amount of advertising (and trailers) that we were subjected to before the film started. During those … Bionicdwarf, Cyberkitten and I were talking Worst Films Ever. Not quite sure which trailer or advert started us off on that to be honest but we knew a good idea for a blog post when we saw it.

So here goes … Films that were so Bad they should never have been made. But seeing as they were, all copies need to be gathered up and cremated for the good of humanity.

Firstly – Anything. ANYTHING that Uwe Boll had a hand in.

He’s a German film individual that goes from game to game, turning good games into incredibly bad films. They truly have to be seen to believe how bad they are. Although I wouldn’t wish seeing an Uwe Boll film on anyone. That said, Bloodrayne wasn’t too bad although Bloodrayne 2 was a horrible mess without the any of attributes that made the first watchable.

Star Trek Nemesis. Star Trek was still going before this film came out. Voyager was still running and Enterprise was just starting to look promising. However. Nemesis came out, with an awful script that had all humour removed. The humour was there (it was in the book) but all trace of it was surgically removed from the theatrical presentation. Nemesis killed Trek so bady that they had to start up the franchise in an alternate reality.

Anything “mockbuster”. You know what these are … It’s where they take a successful film and remake it with a subtly different name. Battle Of Los Angeles (i.e. not Battle: Los Angeles) is one of these but there’s been others made, including the Terminators, Transmorphers, Transformers and a few others. Watch for them, avoid them. FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR SANITY !!!!!

Lol

What’s next ? Starship Troopers 2. The first and third Starship Troopers films are fairly ok. They’re very watchable, although they take the original Heinlein book into an extremely right wing direction. Must watch the animated series again, shame they didn’t get the chance to finish it. However, I shall definitely not watch Starship Troopers 2 again.

Twilight. Ok, this wasn’t actually too bad but as a vampire movie fan, I should have been wanting to watch the rest. Must be something about Kristen Stewart. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone as good looking be so unwatchable.

Snow White & The Huntsman. Not too bad a film, just not nearly as entertaining as Mirror Mirror and it suffers from the Kristen Stewart effect.

Total Recall (the new one). Another in a long line of films that are very well made but … WHY ? Why remake a B-movie, with the only script inspiration being to take away the Mars aspect ? The original made more sense. There was no real need to redo this one.

Limitless. Again, well made movie, I just really didn’t like the Drugs Make Winners message.

I think that’s enough for now. Last one – Mars Attacks. However, this one while it was bad, was so hilarious with it that I feel I need to watch it again soon 🙂

PS Healthcheck. Think I’m improving. Ear’s not so bad and I think I’m steadily getting my arms back. Skin feels good too 🙂 Fingers crossed – I’ll be able to wear long sleeves again by the end of this week.

Saw the new Bond film today 🙂

Believe the hype. Instead of being mostly joke as some Bond films have been, there’s a seriously good action thriller here. It keeps you guessing as it goes from action sequence to action sequence.

I suspect I’ll see something new in it when I watch it again. I’m a Bond film fan but don’t actually own many of them (just Casino Royale). I reckon I’ll be watching the bluray of this one repeatedly. They’ve done a good job with this one.

“Too much information” starts here …

Think my condition is improving. But ever so slowly. I’m not leaking as much 🙂 I’ve managed to leave my bad ear alone since Wednesday night, so it must be still healing. The rest of me is similar, although my arms feel like they’re on fire at the moment. The skin there is very dry and cracked. But it’s healing too and not leaking.

Just gotta look after it and protect it while I’m awake and while I’m sleeping. That’s probably something people don’t think about … You move about while you sleep. What happens if you roll over on to an ear that’s not happy and damage it ? Will you set the healing back on your limbs because you’ve unconsciously dragged half healed bits over the bedsheets or the quilt ?

Having to think of things like that so I don’t set the healing backwards overnight.

I think I’m doing ok with it. We’ll see how it goes over the weekend. Gotta say, the sleeveless cricket top I bought has been a godsend, as wearing that means the sleeves aren’t putting that healing back.

There is some definite healing going on, the bits of my legs that originally went bad last year are pretty much back to normal now. It’s just other bits of my legs which are having bother.

Think I figured something out today too :

Pizza = good – HURRAH !!!!!
White bread = bad – meh.

I’ve not reacted to the pizza for early dinner but did start to wheeze after munching the results of the Fryday morning Bacon Sarnie run. I’m learning :-).

I suspect I’ll need to see the doctor again soon but – healing is happening. It’s just happening slowly and I’m having to try hard to ignore the temptation to go scratchy-scratchy.

Fingers crossed for an easy weekend 🙂

I’ve been hitting some massive lows lately.

I’m well and truly fed up with the skin condition I’ve got … I want it gone. It is truly just a skin deep problem, although a fair few people at work have let me know they’re worried for me with it. But even though it is just skin deep, it has effects that run a lot deeper.

It’s very distracting. And that goes for my mind making up false symptoms. Some of those make me very itchy, which ends up causing me to make the problem worse.
I get signs that it’s getting better … and then it gets worse again. That’s crushing.
I think I’ve figured out a cause of the problem, I shift how I live … and then the problem comes back again.

I was having trouble at work on Monday, although I tried to hide that as far as possible. Part of that was lack of sleep, although I think I’ve figured that one out now. But most of it was seeing improvement after the Doc visit end in disappointment as my week off went on.

I think the last couple of changes (laying off the OJ and taking antihistamines) have made a difference but it’s awful, awful slow. And my skin is still very sensitive.

Ok, ok, that’s enough about my troubles. How about those blessings ?

What’s let me turn the corner this week from massive depression to more up & at ’em is a few very good friends.

You know who you are ! You’ve been awesome to chat to over the last few days.

That’s where I count myself very lucky. There’s the work colleagues who I’ve been lucky to count as friends for years, the ones in my work-not work circle (CK & CQ!), there’s the canteen people who look out for me and someone who keeps an eye on me through Steamchat.

They’ve been helping me keep going through these medical issues. And it’s hugely appreciated.

PS If I’m still leaking next week, I’ll go see the doc’s again. Honest.

I’ve felt a whinge coming on for a little while now.

I’ve been with the same ISP since I moved into my current house. That’s like almost 11 years now. (Yep. Long time!). It started out as Telewest Blueyonder before they got hit by mergers, joining NTL to become part of the Branson Virgin Media empire.

To be fair, the service isn’t bad. I started with a 512kbit/s connection way back. That’s been steadily upgraded over the years and is now up at a genuine 20Mbits per second of download. And it gives that speed too on downloads. The upload has improved too and is now double that original 512Kbits/s download (original upload 128Kbit/s, it’s now 1Mbit/s).

Techie talk aside – that’s quicker than my first laptop could send information across wires to the computer next door to it. It’s quick enough to download the latest Bat For Lashes album in about a minute (it’s 120MB on iTunes).

But.

It’s evidently not fast enough to play Youtube videos in high definition. That’s deeply MEH, especially as seeing off buffering was one of the themes of recent Virgin Media advertising. What happens is that when you try to play a fairly recent (as in made in the last day or so), you’ll be able to see a few minutes of video and then you get Whirly Wheel silence as you are forced to wait for the next chunk of video to load.

I tried to keep up with watching the Felix Baumgartner highskydive. Just one problem – whirly wheel silence just took over totally and it was a total waste of time and effort.

It’s not the hardware here. I can play BBC iPlayer just fine. The old hardware was happily handling 3 concurrent streams of BBC iPlayer Olympics in HD. I picked up a new freebie modem/router which will hopefully see that 20MBits/s get upgraded to 30MBits/s soon. That’s not sorted the problem.

What apparently is causing the problem is a local proxy server in the Virgin Media network. What happens there is that you’re not playing the video back from a Youtube server, it’s playing from a Virgin Media server which is intercepting the calls to play the video. And it can’t keep up.

Again – deeply, truly – Meh.

It’s great to have a massive pipe to get the data through. The problem comes in because of something in the way (which shouldn’t be there) taking the data supply back to a trickle. I’d much rather have, say, 5Mbits/s and HD playback than rarely used 20Mbit/s and no HD playback.

Don’t get me wrong – this is not a matter of keeping up with something being streamed live, it’s that poxy proxy server being unable to chuck the video data out fast enough. I suspect with the Baumgartner jump (streamed from Youtube), it was a matter of not being able to send the video data to many viewers.

Hopefully it’s something that will get sorted out soon. But I have my doubts because it appears to be bad hardware and bad decisions in the Virginmedia network itself. Proxy servers are Bad News.

Ok – time to end the whinge …

I’ve stuck with Virginmedia this long because the service has given near 100% availability. It’s almost unheard of for the connection to go down. Sure, bandwidth throttling is annoying but even when that kicks in the connection is faster than the typical ADSL line.

And it was nice to get a shiny new wifi modem router (most capable piece of kit in my network right now), all for free. But it would be even nicer if I didn’t have to click the Youtube videos back to 480p (which works ok) within a minute or five of starting to watch every single video.