Saturday, October 29, 2005

The Young Enterpeneur Award

So, 4 kids just turned up on the doorstep trick or treating. Somewhat surprised I had only to hand 4 Muller-probiotic-milkshake-yoghurt-type-drinkie things as opposed to cold hard choccie bars and the usual goodies. Only when I doled out the all-too-healthy snacks to the kids did I realise...

Halloween isn't today!

There's a fairly good racket going on their. I admire their entrepreneurial spirit.

When there's no more room in hell...

...The simulated dead will walk the earth

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Evil Graduate Recruitment

I found this on the defunct Cult website. Pretty cool if they'd added more content.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Mind your manners!

Found this Pythonesque website while trawling today.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Slogging, Stabbed and Sleepy

Work's been a bit traumatic this week for reasons I won't go into, but there's peace at last as I'm home alone this week due to my housemate being on holiday. He told me he was leaving around 7am, but this actually meant he was going to wake me up loudly at 8am watching TV on full-blast and not leave until after lunchtime. Given I'd been up to 2am on Friday most of Saturday was a haze.

I went fencing again today, despite feeling a little groggy and despite this had a pretty good time and the workout did me the power of good. They had equipment that fit me - that is didn't quite fasten up but stayed where it should - this week so I had the thrill of being stabbed back occasionally. And learned to parry - in other words move the foil in a straight line to the right.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

En Garde!

On Sunday I took a drive up to Manor Road, my former claustrophobic residence when I first moved to the City of Cheese and Not Much Else. You see it turns out I lived about five feet from the sports centre where my fencing class was being held.

So how did it go? I was expecting ritual humiliation, but it was ok, aside from the fact that being left-handed makes finding a foil less fun. Being told to look for foils inscribed with "Left Handed" on the pommel rather than "Leicester Uni" or a drunken "LU" that more resembles "LE" is a bit of an ordeal.

It was actually quite good fun. The coach is actually quite amusing, and there's drinking after the classes which makes me rue the notion of driving in to the class. I don't think I missed much last week given the coach didn't turn up and we started working on footwork and so forth, and the lunge which is a very basic move. I did get a bit narked though when it turned out all the jackets and so forth were for skinny people and I was made to stand to one side in a corner while everyone else (including larger people) took it in turns to get stabbedd. The armourer assured me that this would be taken care of next week.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Another Update

In a rare effort to fill in time and become more cultured I watched Puccini's Turandot at the University and it was good, though the crowd seemed a little too stuffy for my tastes. Tomorrow sees me fencing, which may be bad as in the past month I've gotten really out of shape.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Movie Roundup

Been a while since I did a movie roundup- but here's what I've been watching lately.

A History of Violence: Very good, very scary, very realistic movie about violent people. Aragorn is a diner-owner that discovers being the last of the Dunedain means you're pretty handy in a fight when people point guns at you. Or something like that.

Serenity: Good, so good. It deserves a sequel. Speaking of sequels...

Dracula II Ascension: Sequel to Dracula 2001, which I liked despite having the most awful Virgin product placements. This movie and its sequel were a Dimension horror movie shot back to back in Romania. In this one, Dracula, apparently not so dead after the first movie, is taken from the morgue by a bunch of medical students so they can extract his wonderful regenerative powers and use them to better mankind. And make a quick buck. Much like this film. Which is 75 minutes long, far too short for a film.

Dracula III Legacy: Sequel to the sequel, shot at the same time to save cash. Bizarrely only 1 of the medical students in #2 survived and he's back along with a poor man's half-vampire, half-man Blade, who must destroy Dracula without succumbing to evil himself. The ending to this is quite good, though the movie itself is cheap. They have to travel to...er... Romania and defeat the vampire king who has done a Doctor Who and regenerated into Rutger Hauer for 5 minutes. Roy Schnider also co-stars for 1 minute as a Yoda-like Cardinal who tells our poor-man's-Blade not to succumb to the dark side. Evidentally Schinder's cameo is as memorable as it is long as Blade-dude doesn't listen in the end.

Various Peter Cushing Dracula's including 1972 - which is a 'retro' indeed!

Prophecy Uprising: Sequel to the Prophecy Trilogy with Christopher Walken in it. This movie and its sequel were a Dimension horror movie shot back to back in Romania... again.

I like Prophecy. Not amazing - but it was the story of a group of angels (read psycopaths with a license to kill from the big man upstairs) who are miffed that God likes humans more than angels, enough to give them souls in fact.

The angels are so miffed a civil war breaks out in the Ethereal Planes between loyalist and jealous angels. The jealous ones want to destroy humanity. Of course in a budget saving measure we never see this ethereal war, only a bunch of guys in trench coats pulling each other's hearts out. Or not even that in Prophecy Forsaken, which must've cost about 500 rupees to make.

Anyway, this one doesn't have Christopher Walken in it. It's about an American girl in er... Romania... who finds a holy book. And Sean Pertwee plays a British cop... in Romania... who rides around in a car with Satan, who it turns out is just a depressed Gothic fellow.

Prophecy Forsaken: Still in Romania. Turns out that book that the evil angels want tells who the anti-christ is. If they don't kill the anti-christ it will be the end of days and all the worthy souls of humanity will rise to heaven. And the bad angels don't want that. Nice plot, but nothing happens really other than angels trying to kill the heroine, and then she foils them by scattering the pages of the book throughout Romania. Did I mention the anti-christ is from Romania?

Fortress 2: Christopher Lambert, who escaped from a maximum security penitentiary in the first one, is captured by the very people who owned the original Fortress. Rather than kill him they put him in a fortress prison in space. He escapes. See the flaw in the plan? Do you?

Red Eye: Wes Craven directing a thriller, not a horror movie. The old nightmare of sitting next to a psychopath on a plane, only this time he's not hijacking the plane!

Sin City: Finally saw this on DVD. Very good film noir though I laughed all the way through it. It was just trying to be too serious and gritty. Like when Bruce Willis says Jessica Alba's letters were the only thing keeping him alive in prison.

Microsoft Mobile

Visiting Microsoft.com I discovered they're making mobile phones. Naturally I thought I'd share a few photoshoped images I made...



Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Dilbert Lives!

So - what's new? Not much. Work is getting interesting with the students around but a certain co-worker has managed to become even more of a pain in the nethers. We had a tense meeting with our bosses on Friday which ended up with B. looking like a complete arse and making it clear in his five years of service he has picked up no understanding of our role at all. He even shouted down proposals from the boss before we could hear what they were. How he keeps his job is a miracle.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Monday, October 10, 2005

Serenity Then!

Serenity is good. Very good. Very witty. Very dark. People die, crazy things happen and most of the characters get a fair amount of screentim. Didn't like the final dark secret that River uncovered, it ruined one of the best things in the Firefly mythology. They killed off my favourite character. Like a punk. But it still rocked.

So sad though - apparently the comic (which deals with the Blue Hands dudes from the series) was originally meant to be an animated prequel a la Animatrix or Clone Wars. That'd have been 2 new Firefly stories for the price of 1. Denied dude!

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Call of Cthulu

As part of the "Stuart is Ill" special weekend of posts I thought I'd also mention the Call of Cthulu movie is finished and I've just ordered the DVD from the States to sit on my "Movies only Roleplayers will Understand" side of the DVD shelf next to the Gamers DVD. It's good to see a fan project finished unlike some I could mention.

And now to watch Sin City before a late beddy-byes. It's looking unlikely I'll be fencing tomorrow. Next week life begins - with roleplaying, Puccini and even fencing being on the menu!

Serenity Now!

Thanks to the wonders of the internet you can watch the first 9 minutes of Serenity here online for free. I lasted about 1 minute in before deciding to wait for the inevitable cinema trip.

Some Saturday Links

What with the whooping cough and all I've had a lot of time on my hands and here's a few links I've been perusing...

How It Should Have Ended

The most wacked out album comments on Amazon

Star Wreck

Friday, October 07, 2005

Ill... again!

I'm off with the flu again, it started on Wednesday night when I went to see A History of Violence (which is very good BTW). Stubbornly refusing to go off sick Thursday-Friday again this week it got bad all yesterday when I was rather surly to some of our students who came by the desk when I had a massive headache, and last night I think I had a temperature or somesuch and began to hallucinate that the Stu Mobile was being broken into, melding into a different car with an evil black Corsa and plotting to kill me. Mind you I might have been asleep by then...

So I'm off work again this Friday. This is somewhat miffing as I had plans Thursday night and would like to prove to the University I can actually work a full 5 day week without falling ill. Work is actually picking up with the students being back (despite the reenacting of the guard scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail with some of the Chinese students who seem to have trouble understanding my Scot's brogue) so it's irksome to be off when there's so much to do. And I hope to be better by Sunday for fencing fun and so forth, and certainly by Monday when I'm giving my first lecture in Leicester.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Happy Birthday Steve

Happy birthday to Steve, who is now older than me again.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Students, Fousands of 'em...

It's the first week of term, or as I prefer to think of it as Fresher's Days, here in Leicester. It literally took me a half hour to withdraw some cash out of the bank machine and buy a sandwich.

Not that it was a problem, I had plenty of time to read the Bushisms poster on the wall next to the ATM and "Prayers for the single girl" over the shoulder of the girl in front of me in the queue. A lot of prayers about would-be husbands. *shudders*

Officially this is Week 1 of the university calendar. Of an 11 week calendar. They do things differently here than any Scottish Uni I've ever been to. On Day 1 and Day 2 of Uni you have registration, tuition fees payment, Fresher's Fayre, the Sport's Union Fayre, computer registration, introductory lectures and library registration all happening simultaenously. There's a queue downstairs that stretches for 3 floors It's madness!

On the upside I've joined a couple of Leicester socities. I'm going fencing on Sunday it seems if I remember to buy some track suit bottoms. More hilarity later.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

Highlander

But with bunnies.

Since You Last Tuned In

I made the horrendous journey home and spent all of Monday sat in work with nary a person for company. It was quite depressing - since no-one came to see or speak to me I felt I could've just bunked off work, had another day oop north and no-one would've been the wiser. I felt so irked I made sure I went to lunch in the staff-room so everyone would see I'd not decided to remain in Saneland. I got so bored by the end of the day I even started providing blurbs for my Shetland gallery on this blurb. Naturally B. turned up on Tuesday around 11 to ensure I didn't have the same dull day twice.

I've continued to run my WFRP game. This week actually saw some action but I need to learn the WFRP combat rules.

I've finished my first Greyhawk module in about a year.

I've been off work sick for Thursday and Friday with the cold I must've caught off everyone who seemed to have a cold in Scotland. And apparently worried my mother by doing so.

Late on Saturday I was nearly run off the road by Ali G's 4 lookalikes doing 60 miles per hour who decided to change lanes, overtake me while I was changing lanes and go round a corner at the same time. I'm now thoroughly convinced that Leicester is a dangerous city to drive in after dark and if I stay here another 12 months I'll be in some kind of traffic accident with some convertable driving son of a Sultan running me off the road in his quest to show off his bling on every street corner in the city centre.

I had a look in at the DeMontfort fresher's fayre, though compared to Dundee it is a bit of a washout. Being somewhat more multicultural actually works against Uni societies. All your Chinese join the Chinese society, all your Islamic sorts join their religious society and so forth rather than join any of the other societies, so a lot of the DeMontfort societies are woefully undersubscribed. Leicester is due to have one next week, so stay tuned.

Oh and I ran over a lot of prostitutes and pedestrians. No I haven't become a Leicester driver after midnight, I'm playing GTA Vice City.