Zorac's LiveJournal

You know what I really hate? That feeling you get after you've been ill for a day or so and you're not sure whether it's the sickness about to strike again, or if you're just really hungry because you haven't eaten anything since you began feeling queasy. Yup, that would be me right now, a nice "welcome home" gift.

Still, after 10½ days of fun in Walt Disney World with frayer, I'm not complaining too much - but it is a pretty cruel follow-up to the jetlag. Anyway, more substantial updates will follow once I'm feeling sufficiently recovered to find the time to write them. I'll post some photos once I've got around to paring them down - I don't think that you'll want to see all 480...

This will be a random entry.

Last weekend I was up in Yorkshire, visiting the lovely frayer. Whilst on a brief expedition to the pretty city of York, we discovered the ideal solution for those little snack cravings - ( Collapse )

Yesterday, I ventured in to down to run various errands. On coming round the corner from my flat, I was confronted by this ( Collapse ) Naturally, I plan to live for ever, but should the worst happen and I end up the guest of honour at a funeral!t00bage, I expect you all to chip in to send me off "Swiftly, and With Style". (Points to any one other than Freya who gets that reference.)

Once I got into town, I was rather surprised to see a couple of people carrying Krispy Kreme boxes, not being aware of anywhere in Oxford selling said doughnuts. After seeing several more people (including a policeman with several boxes) I got onto Queen Street where it seemed that every other person had some. Turning the corner, all was revealed in the form of a long queue of people leading to a lorry filled with such boxes. A few minutes later, I was the proud owner of one dozen free original glaze doughnuts. Yum. ( Collapse )

Thus fortified, I ventured forth unto the kitchen showroom, where I did verily order a kitchen. Finally. A slight tweak to the original plan to put a proper corner-cupboard on the wall rather than just leaving a void, plus selecting the worktop, appliances, etc, etc. In a couple of month's time, I should have a kitchen worthy of a king. As opposed to the current one which isn't worthy of a pauper...

After other assorted shopping ad some food, I went to the cinema to see V for Vendetta. Whilst most certainly not subtle in its politics it was more so in its action sequences than the Wachowski brothers' most recent efforts - more plot-heavy than effects-heavy, even compared to the original Matrix. Plus you have to love Stephen Fry being, well, Stephen Fry, and Natalie Portman is so much better when the director actually permits her to act...

Since then, I've been mostly playing 24: The Game. Whilst certainly not having the most original or high quality gameplay in the world, what it does do very well is re-create the feel of the TV show - most obviously the clock, but also the use of split-screen and technobabbleollocks. Having the original voice cast really helps, and they actually did a pretty good job of making the characters look real. So far, pretty good fun.

Happy Birthday to the fabulous frayer!

♥

Also, after our game of Antike yesterday and Risk a few weeks back, I have to report that Freya has a disturbing aptitude for world domination.

When Apple bought NeXT, giving them what became Mac OS X, lots of talented engineers and the return of Steve Jobs, it was joked that NeXT had in fact bought Apple for minus $400 million.

Will today be remembered as the day when Pixar bought Disney for minus $50 billion?

Ages ago, I started coding up a perl-based sudoku solver and managed to get it solving lots of puzzles with only a very basic set of rules for solving them. Recently, alnitak (who is also writing a solver, this time in java) showed me a really nasty puzzle which neither of our solvers could completed (although a human could spot the next step). After some discussions we came up with a new solving rule, which I've implemented in my code and now allows me to solve the puzzle.

Anyway, what I'm looking for is some truly evil sudokus to test my solver with, so if you've got any nasty ones that you can send me, that would be much appreciated.

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So, I did the "Your Letter to SatanSanta" meme. Alas, it was mostly dull, except for the part where "Last Monday I helped iharthdarth hide a body (-173 points)". Hee!

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Yes, that subject is the literal truth. It was one of your higher-class ready meals including whole chicken breasts, which I microwaved as per the instructions. When I stuck a fork in it, however, I was surprised by a loud noise and a spray of sauce. I approached the other with more caution, but there was a similar effect. Exploding breasts - my day is complete.

And now to music - cover versions, to be precise. The most annoying sort, of course, is the re-make of a classic which tries to sound as much like the original as possible - they almost always fail, and what's the point anyway? Then there's the just plain bad - like Madonna's version of American Pie - and Don McLean had already done a bad cover of his classic original.

What spurred this subject was my recent acquisition (recc'd by frayer of Paul Anka's Rock Swings - a fabulous album of rock songs done in the swing style. Genius. This gives me two versions of Wonderwall - neither the Oasis original, the other being 60s-style Mike Flowers Pops version.

I also now have two versions of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Again, the second isn't the Nirvana original, it's from Scala's on the Rocks, which is familiar songs done by a girl's choir. The crowning glory and song which made be buy the album (after one of you recc'd it to me) is a cover of the Divinyls' I Touch Myself. 'Nuff said.

Another double-cover example is Holding Out for a Hero - which I do have the Bonnie Tyler original of. Here, the two covers are both on the Shrek 2 Soundtrack. The Frou Frou version is ... different, but still pretty good. Jennifer Saunders' showtunes-style version from the film's finale, on the other hand, is simply fantastic.

Another fertile ground for cover versions is my collection of Ally McBeal CDs. Music was a very big part of that show, but to keep the style consistent, rather than using original versions of songs, Vonda Shepard would do a cover. Exceptions to that were either when the song was within the show's world (or, more likely, a character's head), or when the singer was doing a guest spot (a quite frequent occurrence).

Which reminds me, I did one of my periodic checks of Vonda's tour page, to discover that she played two nights at the Jazz Café in London last month. [ Long string of expletives deleted ] I went there last October, and it was really one of the highlights of my year. Still, maybe next year...

Once upon a time, everyone's least favourite Star Wars director made a film called THX1138. References to that have been scattered throughout his later work (and have cropped up in other films as well). Over the last couple of months, I seem to have been spotting the time 11:38 Far more frequently than chance should allow.

The question is, am I merely noticing this time more frequently because it has meaning, am I subconsciously checking the clock more frequently around that time, or is George Lucas beaming signals into my brain to try and make me buy his DVD? Or am I simply going quietly mad?

This weekend I've been mostly painting. Those of you have visited may have seen the so-called décor of the spare bedroom. I disclaim much of the responsibility - a lot of it came with the flat and the rest was old/spare, and the paint scheme was from when my sister was staying there with all her stuff. The other prompt was the beds, and their complete lack of comfort. Rather than just replacing the mattresses, I opted to replace the (rather nasty) divan bases as well.

So now, I'm redoing the whole room from top to bottom. As usual, I started (not deliberately) with the duvet covers. That led to the colour scheme, for paint, curtains, carpet and lampshades (a highly edible combination of cream, chocolate, coffee and pecans). The wooden bedsteads then led to the shelving, table and lamp. My god, it'll be beautiful.

Now all I have to do is find time for that third coat of paint on the walls before the carpet and furniture arrive on Friday. And then there's the kitchen to replace before Christmas, various things to do in the master bedroom, and the curtains, carpet and sofa in the lounge. It's going to be a busy few months...

So, I saw Howl's Moving Castle yesterday. Speaking as someone who first read the book many, many years ago and has read it many times since, I would have to say that this was probably the worst mutilation of a book on its way to the screen that I've ever seen. The result was a plotless mess - good looking, to be sure, but nonetheless a plotless mess.

The vast majority of the original story has been thrown away and replaced with what seem to be little more than recycled plot elements from earlier Studo Ghibli productions, and what scenes have been kept have either been distorted or just seem out-of-place within the new order. Virtually the entire cast have gone through complete character assassinations, including a number of 180° flips on what I would loosely term the good/evil axis.

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In short, if you've read the book, don't go and see the film unless you're prepared to accept most of what you like about it being gone. If you haven't read the book, I'm less well positioned to judge what you'll make of the film, but I suggest that you read the book instead...