Zorac's LiveJournal

As a true geek, I've now seen Episode III twice. A third viewing can wait for the DVD. Some thought follow below, many influenced by what I've already read on other folks' journals. But it's not plagiarism, honest!

( Collapse )

A few random tales of shuffling iTunes:

1. Late one evening, a couple of weeks back, iTunes randomly played Paul McCartney's Another Day. Unfortunately, this triggered the part of my mind which goes "Ooh. I've heard that in a movie recently..." This sort of thing is always fatal as I of course want to know what that movie was, and I ain't gonna get to sleep until I've got the answer or managed to forget about the question. Thankfully, IMDb* came to the rescue - a bit of poking turned up the soundtrack search page which quickly gave me the answer: 50 First Dates.
2. I recently watched Charlie's Angels, and remember thinking that I should look up what one of the songs played over the end credits was. This morning, iTunes popped up All the Small Things by Blink 182, and once again I knew it was from a movie I'd seen recently, so I headed over to IMDb, thinking that I could check the Charlie's Angels soundtrack while I was there. Of course, the two questions proved to be each others' answers...
3. Later on, iTunes brought be part of the soundtrack from the final episode of Babylon 5 and I ended up turning off the shuffle feature to hear the final track as well. Those of you familiar with the show will know that the final episode is more of an epilogue than a finale, and that it appears to be deliberately written to reduce fans to gibbering wrecks - and just the music by itself can do that. Powerful stuff. Randomly, it seems that JMS has some B5 stuff up for auction on eBay - including the dalies and two director's cuts of Sleeping in Light. *WANTS SO MUCH*

* If you're not familiar with IMDb, then why not? It's easily one of the most useful sites on the 'net, with pretty much every bit of information about seemingly every movie ever made (and plenty of TV shows and some video games). Many a time and oft has it saved my sleep or sanity.

Well, I've been busy delivering flyers and the like on and off for the last few weeks, and now that election day is here, I can finally take a rest. Which is nice. UK folks, you still have a couple of hours of voting time left, so don't forget to go to the polling booth if you haven't already. Just remember, don't vote Labour, Conservative, UKIP, BNP, Veritas, Natinal Front, etc. If all else fails, spoil your ballot paper, preferably with an amusing slogan. And then look forward to finding out tomorrow just how much Tony Blair's majority has been reduced by (because, let's face it, any result other than a Labout victory is depressingly unlikely).

In other news, I went to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at the weekend. Good fun, and certainly seemed to bear some passing resemblance to the book (which, admittedly, I haven't read in ages), although far from being the most hilarious film ever made - although particularly loved the opening song.

Some of you (folks in the UK who have been to the cinema in the last year or two, I guess) will be familiar with the Orange Film Commission adverts in which they mock the film pitches of Hollywood worthies and try to turn them into gratuitous product placement for the Orange mobile 'phone network. There are also some others featuring a couple of the guys from the commission which plug their Orange Wednesdays promotion. My question to you is this: am I the only person slashing them?

I mean, seriously. After the 'walk you through the poster' one (ooh! role-play - I like it!) and the latest where they're having dinner together and talk French at each other, how much more canonical can it get?

Just me?

OK, I'll go and pretend to be normal, then...

OK, it was suggested that I give the scene list from the insert, but apparently I'm far too lazy to type out all 78 of them, so here are some highlights of the new scenes and some of the extended stuff I spotted.

( Collapse )

Now I'm off to start watching the commentaries...

Have LotR:RotK EE sitting on my desk :D

Don't get to leave work for 8 hours :(

Edit: It is teh good. Oh, yes. Alas, am far too tired to post more now...

So, part one of yesterday's exploits was a trip to the cinema to see Farenheit 9/11. There wasn't quite the record audience the film has been getting in the States, but still a respectable number of viewers - and a standing ovation at the end (OK, the standing part was probably just people getting up to leave, but the applause alone is something I haven't seen after a movie for a long time). I was already anti-Bush and anti-war, so there really wasn't much persuasion needed there, but even ignoring the inevitable bias, the Facts as presented are more than a little damning. Go. See. Now.

Icon from today's User Friendly.

1. I've just reached a fair approximation of feature completeness for the all-new code for RS, Now comes the fun part - testing and debugging - and the really fun part - importing and verifying all the old data. Still, at least it's concrete progress and gives me hope that I'll be finished in the not-too-distant future.
2. Along the way I ended up re-reading my (largely unfinished) Big Giant Fic O'Doom and rather enjoying it. I really must get around to writing the other 80% at some point...
3. I was going to go and see Much Ado About Nothing yesterday, but as it's an outdoor performance, I decided to put off seeing my favourite Shakespeare play until the weather conditions were a little more favourable.
4. Instead, I went to see Shrek 2 again, in its slightly tweaked British incarnation (Jonathon Ross' voce in place of Larry King's, and someone other than Joan Rivers playing Joan Rivers). Still very, very funny.
5. In 13 days time, I'll be listening to my 'Current Music' in person. W00t!
6. Managed to drop one of my shopping bags coming up the stairs in my flat. There was an unpleasant breaking glass sound, and an iceberg lettuce made an impressive break for freedom. Thankfully, the broken bottle was a small one of juice, and not a litre of Bombay Sapphire.
7. In related news, my stairwell now has a fresh lime scent.
8. I've recently been re-reading James P Hogan's Giants novels (from whence my LJ name came). Am much with the loff for zorac (and also visar, but mostly zorac).
9. I'm also in the process of re-watching Babylon 5. Only the first season at the moment, but even so I remember why I love this show so much...
10. There is no item 10.

Random thoughts:

1. On the subject of my political aspirations (or, more correctly, somebody else's political aspirations for me), I decided after due consideration not to have any. Thanks to everyone who commented - if you're interested in the whys and wherefores, you might find them in the update and comments on the original post.
2. I've been busily sorting and clearing out the junk in my attic (most of which has been there since before I moved in). Alas, no lost Rembrandts or the like - mostly old paint tins and curtains. One missed opportunity was a T-shirt draped over one of the joists - I am now resolved that when I move on, I shall leave in the attic a garment emblazoned with the slogan "I cleared out the junk in my new attic and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt", and I encourage all of you to do likewise. One day, the new occupant will find this Item and think "Wow, whoever used to live here thought he was a real funny guy!".
3. The incentive for the above is so I can get more plumbing work done to resolve my ongoing issues with hot water pressure (or lack thereof). This may be of interest to some of you as it means that there should be shower facilities available to future visitors to the t00blerone. Oh, and I really ought to get that window fixed...
4. Van Helsing - somebody really needs to tell Stephen Sommers that while you can do just about anything with special effects these days, just because you can doesn't mean that you should. Plus, if he was trying to get in a pissing contest with Peter Jackson, he lost badly. It's not just that they were horribly overdone (ooh! entirely CG environment! I can do really insane camera moves!), but in some places (mostly when doing a CG stunt double) looked downright fake. Way more over-the-top than The Mummy Returns, but without the redeeming features that allowed that to still somehow be a great movie. On the plus side, new PoA trailer.
5. WTF happened to the weather? It was a real scorcher today. Apparently this is the same bizarre weather that hermorrine has been reporting in Chicago.

I'm sure I had more to say, but it can wait until ... er ... I remember what it is...

This weekend saw me jetting off once more to the windy city to spend time with the lovely hermorrine. I managed to flee the office in a timely manner this time, and the trip was uneventful, although lunch was a disappointment - I needed to grab a bite after checking in and having a bit more time, I decided to hike over to the Wendy's in arrivals. Alas, this was a big mistake - apparently they were closing down in a week or so and were not running on their usual supplies (the burgers weren't even square!). I was extremely unimpressed (although not as much so as the gentleman who came up and demanded a refund while I was waiting for my burger to arrive).

We were staying at the same hotel we were in the very first time we met, but alas the room we had wasn't quite as nice as that time (no couch, alas). On the plus side, it does have all mod cons and there's free breakfast. The Breakfast Buffet Circus O'Doom, that is. On Saturday morning we had to cope with people who couldn't make waffles properly (leaving them all stuck to the iron - grrr), milk that wouldn't flow and strange staring children. So much fun. We ate our fill and retreated back to our room.

We spent much of the day watching movies, starting with Disney's Aladdin, which we've been trying (and failing) to watch for the last few trips - I'm sure that our sudden success has absolutely nothing to do with the recently announced DVD release. Next up, HBO brought us Ice Age, which we watched a few months back - not quite up to that standards of Pixar or PDI Dreamworks, but still good fun. After that was How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, which was actually more entertaining than expected, although rather hide-behind-the-sofa cringeworthy in places. Oh, and we somehow managed to catch most of a JKR biography which was interesting.

Dinner was supposed to be at Cheeseburger in Paradise, but we got there to discover it was a 90 minute wait for a table - rather longer than our stomachs were going to allow. It was the same story at a place across the road (we're not quite sure what sort of food they did, but it certainly smelled good). After driving up and down the road, we eventually ended up at a place we went to a couple of trips back, where they do some very nice burgers. After that, we watched the brain-melting Identity and most of SNL before heading to bed.

Breakfast on Sunday morning was slightly less of an ordeal - it seemed that people had figured out how to use the waffle irons properly - as Weird Lady (who was the worst culprit on Saturday, and who insisted on helping the staff fix the milk machine) felt the need to tell us. After that, it was off to the S00per Sekrit again for the afternoon, and then on to our Sunday-night hotel right by the airport.

For dinner, we went to Carlucci's - also the choice of the victorious Apprentice, as every news outlet later let us know. Thankfully, he was at the location we went to for Valentine's, so we didn't have to fight our way past the news crews. Alas, all too soon, morning came around and it was time for me to catch my flight home, but it should be only a few weeks until I'm off again...