| 'tis the season to be a meerkat |
[22 Dec 2011|12:46pm] |
Seriously, what is up with all the random meerkat appearances in this year's crop of holiday movies? First in Arthur Christmas and now the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie?
Not that I'm complaining. Added meerkats is always a good thing!
Arthur Christmas turned out to be a really good movie, but if you are a person with ears try and show up five minutes late to avoid the godawful Justin Bieber music video they insisted on tacking on before the movie.
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked is (much) better than last year's Chipmunks movie. Still, I wouldn't really recommend it unless you're like me and think that singing chipmunks are worth going to see regardless of how much crappy movie gets stuck on around them.
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[08 Oct 2011|09:20am] |
Dear Amazon UK,
I know correct use of the English language may be a difficult concept for you, so here is a clue: "in stock" means you have the item to hand. If you have to go to your suppliers to get it, it is not "in stock". I notice that even while you are telling me that my order is delayed while you wait on getting it from the supplier, you are still listing it as "in stock" on your website.
Sincerely,
A.Customer
(I'm trying to get a copy of Banded Brothers: The Mongoose Mob. Beginning to wish I'd picked it up when I saw it for sale in Johannesburg airport.)
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| Land of the wild dogs |
[30 Sep 2011|12:08pm] |
So for the past two weeks I have been in Botswana, fulfilling a long-term ambition to visit the Okavango Delta. Top of the list of animals I hoped to see were the wild dogs, and we were lucky enough to be able to spend around half a day with a pack of eight dogs out in the Delta.
More pictures to follow..
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| RIP Giles Rat |
[06 Sep 2011|02:07pm] |
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mood |
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 sad |
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Giles, April 2009 - September 6, 2011
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| Quest: read my journal |
[13 Jul 2011|04:28pm] |
So the staff at Don Edwards NWR have started down the path of making the nature-watching experience more accessible for the World of Warcraft generation.
If they start making the rangers wear hats with exclamation points stuck to their heads, it will have officially Gone Too Far.
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| UI fail |
[29 Jun 2011|08:16am] |
Dear backup software,
You are supposed to be automated. You are connected to the internets for many hours every day. When you start whining to me in annoying popups about how you haven't managed to do a successful backup in the last four days, this does not inspire me to want to figure out what stupid reason you have for not being able to do your backups this time. It inspired me to kick you out of the startup sequence.
Sincerely,
User
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| TOMTOM, Earthsea, GT5 |
[25 Apr 2011|07:55am] |
This weekend I plugged my GPS into my computer and found that TOMTOM had new software and new maps waiting for me. Several hours later I had new maps, and a GPS that was completely useless because it locked up whenever it went to the route planning screen. Foolish fox for assuming that it was safe to let TOMTOM install new stuff on their hardware.
Several more hours later, after a format and complete clean re-install, it still didn't work. But I found a comment on some forum where someone was claiming the TOMTOM favorite locations file was incompatible between different map versions (and the update process just copies the favorites file into the new map folder without any attempt to resolve incompatibilities). You can't do anything involving favorites on a failed TOMTOM, but if you connect it to your PC, and go and delete one of your favorites through the PC interface, it forces the TOMTOM to re-write the file, which fixes the problem.
Thank you TOMTOM for those wasted hours.
In Fry's recently I discovered a DVD release of Studio Ghibli's "Tales from Earthsea". How have I managed not to hear about this before? (Apparently because, although it was made in 2006, Disney gave it only a very limited theatrical release here in 2010. Considering they got Timothy Dalton and Willem Dafoe to do voices, I would have thought they would have made more of it.) Studio Ghibli animation and the Earthsea stories. Two very excellent things combined. This must be good, right?
Actually, not so good. It's an okay film, very much in the style of, but nearly as good as, Nausicaa. But fails entirely to be a good Earthsea film. There's a comment from Ursula Le Guin on the film's Wiki page which about sums it up -- it's like "watching an entirely different story, confusingly enacted by people with the same names as in my story."
I've been playing Gran Turismo 5 recently. The only remotely sane way to earn (large amounts of) credits in GT5 is to use the online "seasonal events", where the prize moneys of 100K+ credits exceed the amount you get for completing the multi-hour endurance events in the main game. And car prices in GT5 top out at 20 million credits, so you need large amounts of credits if you ever want to drive the most interesting cars.
Unfortunately Sony's PlayStation Network is in ongoing fail mode (allegedly there were "hackers" involved), and has been down since the middle of last week. So no online play for any PlayStation games. So I've still been playing GT5, but without any money.
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| Frankenstein, a tale of how film makes theatre obsolete. Or not. |
[19 Apr 2011|10:43pm] |
Tonight I went to see Danny "Slumdog Millionaire" Boyle's production of Frankenstein at the National Theatre in London.
Well, not quite. Actually it was the National Theatre Live broadcast of Frankenstein at the Rialto in Berkeley. Which was clearly not "live", unless London theatres have now started doing their performances at 3am.
It was a very modern production. Probably post-something. I thought it was going to be a bit too modern when the first 10-ish minutes consisted entirely of a semi-naked Benedict Cumberbatch (the Creature) thrashing about on stage doing an interpretive dance version of the rise of man. But when they got around to doing actual story, it was really very good.
Being a film version of a very theatrical production I think it lost something in atmosphere, and certainly some of the lighting effects would have worked better in the live venue, but then it gained something from the cameras being able to move into the performance in ways that the theatre audience never could. I would really like to now be able to go see the actual production to see how the experience compares.
In other news, RIP Elisabeth Sladen (aka Sarah Jane Smith). You will be sadly missed.
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| Equus |
[01 Apr 2011|09:39am] |
Equus (City Lights Theater, San Jose) is a play about horses. Or sex. Or religion. Or passion. Or conformity. Or all of the above. It was freaky and strange and disturbing when I caught the film version on TV a long long time ago. As a theatrical production it is still freaky and strange, but not so disturbing without the in-your-face graphic realism.
The young actor (Sean Gilvary) in the lead role was really good. And does nudity well. There are two scenes where the character is supposedly naked. I thought they were going to bottle on doing real nudity when he just pantomimed taking his clothes off for the first naked-horseback-riding scene, but both he and Beth Boulay went the full monty for the final scene.
And the actors playing the horses managed to pull of some remarkably equine performances. Especially considering that all they had to work with in the way of props were wire-frame horse heads.
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| Didn't I see this movie already? |
[10 Feb 2011|04:07pm] |
The Rite: we follow the tale of a former believer who has lost faith but now finds himself confronting the reality of demonic possession, for in this world everything the Catholic Church tells us is true.
Season of the Witch: we follow the tale of a former believer who has lost faith but now finds himself confronting the reality of demonic possession, for in this world everything the Catholic Church tells us is true. In the Middle Ages.
The Rite has Anthony Hopkins and Rutger Hauer. Season of the Witch has Nicolas Cage and a semi-cool CGI demon. Season of the Witch has an awesome 4% on Rotten Tomatoes, but for me it was much the better of the two movies.
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| <color> of <animal> |
[01 Feb 2011|10:30am] |
Black Swan: this is your brain .. *smashes watermelon with hammer* .. this is your brain on ballet. This was a surprisingly excellent movie. I can see how the crossover market for "disturbing, fucked-up, descent-into-madness psychological dramas" and "movies about ballet" might be kind of limited, but if you think at all that this might be interesting, definitely go see it.
The Green Hornet: there are two guys, and a girl, and a car, and fighting, and explosions. We're not exactly breaking new ground here. It's okay for what it is, but lacked any kind of spark to elevate it above the average.
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| Two weekends |
[24 Jan 2011|08:27am] |
Further Confusion: was all a bit meh, really. I got some nice sketches from artists in the dealer's room, but apart from that -- the art show was disappointing, I'm not interested in the dances, I didn't have people to hang out with, and there's only so much time I can fill wandering around taking photos of fursuits. There were some evening events that I would probably have enjoyed if I had managed to stick around long enough to go to them.
This past weekend was on the whole better. Saturday was Furox's monthly hike, this time in the Sunol Wilderness. I have been neglecting my legs, and they complained a lot on the first uphill bit, but it was all good. And Sunday I went to see TheatreWorks production of The 39 Steps, which is completely brilliant. If anything, this production was even better than when I went to see it in San Francisco.
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| Happy New Year |
[01 Jan 2011|08:08am] |
Last week:
Tuesday: Shrek the Musical at Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. There were two good bits -- the dragon, and the rat-dance -- the rest was mediocre to okay. I was really disappointed with the ugly open-face animal costumes. The cameo appearance by the Lion King Musical was a cute but possibly ill-advised reminder of what a good animated movie-turned-musical is like.
Wednesday: ever since watching Hell's Kitchen I've had a hankering for beef wellington. Wednesday night we had dinner at Papillon restaurant, the local fine dining establishment, where I was able to get my beef wellington fix. Also tried frog's legs for the first time ever (kind of bony, and didn't taste of anything special, but they came in a very nice sauce). And dessert was delicious (peach bread budding with butter pecan ice cream).
Thursday: I took Krahnos to see the Cavalia horse show for his birthday. Think Cirgue de Soleil but with added horses. The horses were very pretty and clever, and the human performers were not at all bad too.
Also went to see True Grit, a surprise late contender for best film of 2010. And it had a better bear costume than anything in Shrek.
Friday: New Year's Evening, stayed at home with rats and went to bed early, because I am boring and have no friends.
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| Dear DMV |
[24 Dec 2010|10:35am] |
Dear DMV,
This is why everybody hates you.
When I got my new car I wanted to transfer my personalized plates, so I sent in an application to re-assign the plates to the new vehicle. This was returned because you hadn't yet finished the new vehicle registration.
So I waited until you got done with the new vehicle registration (four months later), and sent in another application to re-assign the plates. This has now been returned because the plates have been recorded as "junked" along with my old vehicle.
At this point I think I'm just going to save my money and stick with regular plates for the new car.
Sincerely,
A.Taxpayer
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| The mystery of the missing $15K |
[06 Dec 2010|08:16am] |
Hospital bill for my one night stay in emergency while being tested for possible appendicitis: $20,151.08
After my insurance got hold of it this became $4,400 to be paid by insurance + $100 to be paid by me.
The US medical system is FUBARed.
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| Miscellany |
[19 Nov 2010|07:21am] |
Yesterday was Dracula at the Lesher Center. I had somehow got the idea that this was a musical version, but no, it was the original 1920s stage adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. And with (allegedly) an actual descendant of Vlad the Impaler in the title role. It was very good.
And Skyline, which was meh, at best. I felt like there was a much more exciting movie going on somewhere, but all we got was stuck in an apartment with a bunch of losers. Also, note for future potential alien overlords: ( possibly spoilerish )
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| This would be easier if I was an octopus |
[13 Nov 2010|11:44am] |
Hiking on Mission Peak, I am carrying my camera in my right hand (as one does), holding my hat on with my left hand (because it is really really REALLY windy), and holding my camera bag in place with my left hand (because otherwise it slips round my belt and bumps into my legs).
Can you see the problem with this scenario?
Also, I've been completely slacking on hiking recently, and my legs are all like, "What is this? What are you making us do? When this is finished, we will be giving you so much pain and hurtings!"
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| New ratties! |
[28 Aug 2010|02:36pm] |
Here are Bruce and Wayne:
They are about 2 months old. Bruce (on the left) is a black berkshire, Wayne is a black hooded.
And together they are the bat-rats!
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