Requiem for a dream

October 18, 2004 //

Well I watched this film on DVD at the weekend, very good but also rather twisted!
Using excellent cinematography it shows the bad side of drugs and how they can really F88K UP people’s lives. Some of the bad trip scenes really put over how confusing and terrifying these kind of things can get, in a much better way than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas did (thats also a damn good film though).
Put me off drugs for life, although admittedly I’ve kept them at a safe distance anyway, but hey 🙂

A good film, I was hoping for a much more insightful opinion but my brain is not cooperating at this moment.
Has Jennifer Connelly as one of the stars, not really all that important appart from the fact that I thought I recognised her from somewhere. Turns out she was in ‘A Beautiful Mind’, ‘Labyrinth’ and The Hulk (probably where I recognised her from) and she has no relation to Billy Connelly, the well known stand up.

Categories Opinion, Random

Practice what I preach?

October 13, 2004 //

Well, looking back over some of my posts, I noticed that not only am I terrible with spelling mistakes, typos and grammar mistakes in general, but also, I have completely failed to follow my own advice.
In this post I stated that I would blog more about my thoughts than my actions… Well I’ve blatantly failed to do that, I also recal tempting fate by suggesting I’d share my comic genius with the world (couldn’t find that post, and also ‘Yeah right!’).
So where does that leave me?
Well I have had ideas for random and hopefully humerous diversions, but I’ve not had the time or been in the right frame of mind when I do have the time… you’ll see what I’m on about if it ever happens.
As for blogging my thoughts: Seems I haven’t had many of those recently. Hopefully soon though!

On a completely separate note, I’m off on a pub crawl with ‘the students’ tonight (yay!) and its pissing down with rain (boo!).

Categories Website

Things that happen

October 12, 2004 //

I have a new housemate now, which means I am now living with three beautiful women, which is always nice. More importantly though they are really nice and easy to get on with.
Dan has yet to return my DVDs, but fortunately if he doesn’t then I can get the money from his depost. At the moment I’m missing seven DVD’s and one box set, and charging £20 per DVD and £50 for the box set means I’ll be getting £190 if he doesn’t bring them back.
Which of course leaves me almost hoping that he doesn’t.
Then again it would be a fair amount of hastle to buy them all again, not to mention a complete waste of my time…

Well what can you do about these things?
Anyway, the atmosphere in the house is really good right now and I’m meeting loads of nice people through breakdancing and capoeira, and they’re keeping me busy and active.
So life’s look pretty good for me at the moment ! 🙂

Categories Life, Random

Punctuation; or lack of

October 8, 2004 //

I have recently finished reading a book about punctuation. Now you may be thinking that this is quite possibly the dullest subject imaginable, but Eats, Shoots & Leaves (book of the year 2004) is a good read being humerous, light, and informative.
When I was at school, all those years ago, I didn’t get any lessons in grammar or punctuation, not that I remember anyway. This book has highlighted how little I actually know about the subtleties of english grammar. I have, thankfully, been able to pick up most of the basics from copious amounts of reading, but this has still left me quite wise in the art of proper punctuation and grammar.
“Wise?” I hear you ask, well if you accept the idea that wisdom is knowing that you know nothing, then yes, I am very wise.
While considering this fact on the train a thought struck me; if being wise means knowing you know nothing, surely wise people are also pretty negative?
Perhaps there should be proactive wisdom where you might say: ‘I know I know nothing and I’m going to do something about’, a scholarly wisdom if you like.
There would also be, I suppose, lethargic wisdom, where your thoughts would stray more along these lines: ‘I know I know nothing and I’m going to watch TV’, where you can feel safe in the knowledge that you are unlikely to learn anything from television and if anything remotely educational comes on then you can quickly change the channel.
I like to thing that I am proactively wise, although I must admit this activity is restricted to subjects that grab my attention.
What kind of wisdom do you have?
Are you wise at all for that matter?

Notice how I’m trying to insight a lively debate of sorts.

Feel free to correct my grammar and punctuation, it’s the only way I’ll learn. 🙂

Categories Opinion, Website

House dynamics

October 5, 2004 //

Well Dan has deffinately moved out of the house now, and it seems that there is a lot of interest in the room which is good. I’m certainly hoping that we get another quality person in, it sounds like the people that have been interested are good people, even though I’ve not met any of them. Its all been a bit strange, it was all sorted for some guy to move in in November, but then I get back from the weekend madness and there’s someone gonna look round (missed him) and calls left right and center with people interested… bit crazy.

Trouble is it seems that Dan has gone off with a whole load of my DVD’s, which is rather rude, ‘specially seeing as my brand new Babylon 5 series one boxed set that I got for my birthday now also seems to have disappeared. This is damn annoying and means I’ll have to call him and that may well lead to confrontation which I really am not a fan of!
But then no-one comes between me and my DVD’s !!!

Categories Life

Back again!

October 5, 2004 //

Well that was a very enjoyable and very knackering five days, here’s what I’ve been upto:
(Yes I’m afraid it is going to be another list of day-by-day stuff but hopefully things should be back to normal (normal?) soon)

  • Friday: Got the train upto Loughborough and arrived in the early afternoon, after a bit of curfuffle we set off in the hire car to Chester. Unfortuanately traffic caused us to arrive pretty late so the light had gone for photo’s, but we still walked all the way round the wall and managed to find somewhere to eat. Then we went to stay at Den’s parents house.
  • Saturday: Got up fairly early to set off to Liverpool, this was pretty good, and I can now happily say that I’ve walked down Penny Lane (woo). Alana and ‘Cole went around the beatles museum experience thing and Den and I went to photograph ‘stuff’. This was good. Then we went a little way up the coast to Formby to have a look at the red squirrels. Didn’t take any pictures myself as they don’t look much different with black and white film. From there we carried on up to Southport where we had fish and chips (well I had pie and chips but its all still very British). We returned to Den’s parents house.
  • Sunday: We went back to Loughborough via the Peak district, which was good, went and saw a castle and went do a cave (with Blue John in it). Also we went to Bakewell and had a tart, which gave a great deal of satisfaction. Although they do call them puddings there. Bit more tourist type stuff and then back to Loughborough.
  • Monday: On this day we went to London, we visited Hyde park, Tower bridge, Harrods, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and tried to get into a show but they were booked up. Not all in that order by the way.
  • Tuesday: Den and ‘Cole had stayed the night at mine and Alana had gone to stay with her friend Rachel (Racheal, Rachal?) and so we met up again at Camden Market, I have yet to buy anything from there. I think I deffinately need to be in the right mood, but sometime soon! Anyway, then we went to St Pauls, which unfortunately is covered in scafolding at the moment as its being cleaned. Then we split with Rachel and Alana going off for some more tourist type stuff and I showed Den and ‘Cole Canary Warf, which was good.
    I was going to be meeting up with Alana nad Rachel when Den and ‘Cole went home but I was completely knackered, and so came home.

So why all the tourist type stuff you may ask?
Well Alana is visiting from Australia, and so maximum effort was extended to explore some of the best bits… Was damn good fun, but geez, it certainly takes it out of ya!
Personally I don’t know how she’s still going but hey 🙂

Categories Life, Random

Live more, blog less

September 30, 2004 //

Well things have been pretty busy for me recently so I haven’t really had time or in fact inclination to blog. Strangely this lack of blogging on my part has left me feeling slightly guilty. So here is an update on what I’ve been doing for the past six days:

  • Weekend: Went home to see my parents and have a guitar lesson (both were good, although I caught some kind of one-day-cold).
  • Monday: Work (damn), then a quick tea. Went to try out a street dance lesson which wasn’t quite a beginner as I’d been hoping (hopelessly lost). One of the guys who was also hopelessly lost advised myself and another guy (don’t know either of their names) and myself that he was going to check out the breakdancing class. Well I thought ‘why not’ and am now signed up as it was great fun :). If you are confused by this random class changing then I must explain that these are courses run on the university campus and thus the first week of lessons is free to try.
  • Tuesday:Left work early to try out a different Tai Ch’i class as my class of choice was cancelled due to low numbers. Was a bit strange, I don’t think I’ll be going back. After that there was a mad rushed walk across Guildford to get to the breakdance society meeting to sign up. We meet every week in some hall somewhere (need more detail really) to practice moves and generally hang out and socialise. Sounds pretty damn good to me! Also there’s going to be a pub crawl next thurday, which is always the best way to get to know people.
  • Yesterday:Although I didn’t have anything to actually do on this day, somehow it got filled rather quickly, but I did manage to change my bed, something thats been put off for far too long.

Well thats that, and now I go back to work 🙂
ps Also planned long weekend trip to see Denyer and the loughborough crew, which will be good.

Categories Diary-esq

Job fun

September 24, 2004 //

According to this job predictor website, my idea job is a Chef, I’m sure some of you are going to have much more amusing ideal jobs.
Try it out and leave a comment 🙂

Categories Humour

Seeing the light of Furl

September 24, 2004 //

Well for quite a while now Amy over at contentious has been banging on about how great Furl is.
First time I looked at it and what it did I was sceptical and so didn’t bother with it, same the second time. But now I’ve actually managed to find out a bit more about it, by actually reading a bit more of the site, I’m well impressed.
The basic idea seems to be that you can save a bookmark in an online archive, rather than in your bookmarks. Well why on earth would you want to do that I hear you cry, well for me its really rather cool.
Imagine it you will that its nearing the end of my tea break, I don’t have enough time to blog but I’ve just come across an interesting article or link or something that has triggered an idea for a blog.
What do I do?
Well I used to have to bookmark it or email the link and hope that the spark of creativity would remain until I next had time to blog (can be quite a while as you may have noticed). But no, with Furl, I just click a button in my toolbar, the link is added to my online archive under a category, and along with any notes I may wish to add, ready for access.
Another thing that makes it rather useful is that you can see what other people are adding to their archives, which seems like it could be a good source of inspiration 🙂

A list of good freeware alternatives to commonly pirated software is a good example 🙂

Verdict so far:
Could be good !

Categories Random, Website

Seaching

September 24, 2004 //

I just entered my name into google in the hope that it would bring up this site.
Unfortunately the first hit on the list was Brickfest 2004… whatever that is.
I wasn’t even on the second page of results!
The problem is the number of ‘Roberts’ in the American town of ‘Malvern’, which is in Arkansas state. And of course there is the Malvern Hills in the UK.
Obviously with them being named after my family we must own them !!!

It makes sense!

Categories Random
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