mrchom

What I want to say can't be said in a tweet...so I thought I'd use this place.

Most of you will never see Ypres, the Menin Gate, or Arras.  I have.  Stepping off a coach in the middle of fields in North Western Continental Europe and seeing nothing but white crosses in every direction is a very emotional moment.  You can't quite believe the scale until it lies before you in all its horrific detail.  Every single cross has a name....a story....a life behind it....and you can't quite believe the scale.  Walk through the silent fields and (on most of the grave sites) you will see a wall.....10-15 feet high....and from a distance it looks like a boundary wall.  As you get closer to the wall you see panel after panel after panel.......closer still and you find every panel has names.....countless names.  Each name is a soldier who died but had no recogniseable body to bury.  The Menin Gate itself has 55,000 of these names, Tyne Cot cemetary another 33,000.

This is why we remember.

We do not remember for honour, or glory.  We do not remember to torture ourselves and justify wasted life.  We remember the sacrifice of so many, so young, and most of all we remember so that this does not happen again.  Wear a red poppy, wear a white poppy, wear a black armband, wear nothing at all....but please...remember.  Think of countless lives lost...military and civilian in the countless conflicts over the years regardless of whether the wars were justified or not.

In a world that is increasingly selfish, hurried, and insensitive I think we need to take just two minutes out of our lives to remember these things.

Right now there's endless debates on the subject on the radio....what colour poppy you wear, why you observe the day, beliefs regarding the military.  I don't care about those things.  I have my own personal reasons for observing the two minute silence, and they were cemented one warm and breezy day in a field in Belgium, and I know other people may not share them...but I would still appeal to you to take those two minutes to think.

Even now there is armed conflict in the world....and we pore over it in grim detail as we look at the 231 British lives lost in Afghanistan since 2001.  Is it justified?  Is it worth it?  I'm not sure I can give you an answer, but I'm also sure none of those people went to Afghanistan to die, and I'm sure that each and every one left behind someone to mourn them.  Please, stop the debating, stop the ranting, and just for two minutes on November 11th at 11am respect Armistice Day.  If you're still reading then thank you for your time, and I hope this gave you something to think about.

I gote me one of those twitter things too....it's at: http://www.twitter.com/mrchom

Please, for the love of all that is holy STOP whining about downloadable content.  Yes, at the moment I am referring to Capcom's Resident Evil VS mode, and believe me you all need to shut up.

Firstly Capcom gave you a packed game full of extras, it got high reiew scores and ridiculous sales...people loved it.  They felt like they got their money's worth out of it...but then along came Capcom and said "Right, if you want multiplayer that releases a bit after launch and costs £3.40 because we had to spend extra time developing and testing it as a separate team, then we had to pay to have it certified by MS separately...we even had our own budget given to us by Capcom to make the mode"

£3.40 is not a back breaking amount considering gamers have payed up to £17 for maps...it's not even a mildly infuriating amount....it's less than the cost of a chicken chow mein!  But no, people are ANGRY because it's just an unlock code that uses assets on the disc to make something that should have been in the game, it makes them VERY VERY ANGRY....

Here's a piece of news....software companies have been doing this for years....giving you one set of content at one price and a second at another all on the same disc...they will still be doing it long after you stop playing so really stop giving us all this "WE OWN THE WHOLE DISK" rubbish because what you own is the disc itself NOT the right to every asset on there...if that was the case then you could copy it and sell it on without fear of prosecution.

People keep complaining about unlock codes for this and that....guess what...more often than not thos features would NEVER have seen the light of day without the knowledge that DLC would be an option.  It's true, talk to people from the games industry....if they can release a technically finished game and move on that's good...and they do....but now they have the opportunity to expand that game for people willing to front up a bit more cash...which costs them less, has less turnaround time, and is (get this), less risky than sinking 3-4 years into a new game.

If you don't want the content DON'T BUY IT....if you don't buy it sales figures are low and it's not worth providing new DLC.  It's not a hard equation, it's democracy in action, vote with your feet and buy a game that DOESN'T have DLC instead, buy a new car, buy an ice cream for all I care but please don't whine about an extra £3 for a mode not provided in previous games for free either.

Now, as most people will tell you I'm a big fan of James Bond films.  For my birthday I got the 42 disc edition on DVD, and have just started my BRD collection of them (oh yes, I have a Blu Ray player to go with my nice shiny 42" Toshiba TV now).

Over the past few months Chris and myself have been doing Bond movie doubles to try and watch the complete series....originally we were aiming to do it in time for the release of Quantum of Solace but that went for a Burton's about the time I started getting very busy at work and needed weekends for some rest.

Anyway, tonight will be the last night of the Bond Marathon with two films I've actually seen recently (Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace) so I thought I'd post my updated all-time rankings for Bond movies.

1. GoldenEye
2. Casino Royale
3. From Russia With Love
4. Goldfinger
5. You Only Live Twice
6. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
7. The Living Daylights
8. Thunderball
9. The World Is Not Enough
10. Tomorrow Never Dies
11. For Your Eyes Only
12. The Spy Who Loved Me
13. Dr. No
14. Live And Let Die
15. A View To A Kill
16. Licence To Kill
17. The Man With The Golden Gun
18. Quantum of Solace
19. Octopussy
20. Moonraker
21. Die Another Day
22. Diamonds Are Forever

Now you may note the positioning of certain films......I certainly did....I remembered Diamonds are forever as being quite good....unfortunately apart from Plenty O'Toole it most certainly was not.  Die Another Day was just an unmitigated catastrophe as a film, diabolical in every way possible, and featuring only two good scenes that could do nothing to save it from the rampant madness elsewhere.

But what of Quantum of Solace?  Why is it so low?  18th out of 22?  Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad film.  I quite enjoyed its style, and its pace...what I didn't enjoy was the fact that it's not a Bond film.  I mean, seriously, it just has nothing my head can latch on to as being Bond...if you'd called it "Bourne Identity 5: Bourne regenerates and becomes British" it would actually have made more sense to my brain.  It has a villainous villain, yes, but one who does things subtly without the cackling evil of even LeChiffre.  It has chases and action sequences but they never really feel comfortable.  Whole swathes of plot are incomprehensible without Casino Royale to back them up. AND WHERE'S MY  Q SCENE, DAMMIT.  I know this is meant to be a more modern Bond without gadgets to back him up as much but part of the fun of a Bond movie is seeing that Q scene where all the fun bits and bobs come in.  Daniel Craig is fantastic as Bond, I think he's done a lot to regenerate the series, the Bond girls were.....well Gemma Arterton had very little screen time (BOOOOO) and Olga Kurylenko just meandered around trying to look mexican for an hour.  Dame Judi managed to pull off M once more....but for a very long time in this film....becoming almost a primary character at some points...  Oh yes, and what the hell was up with the CIA?  That was just WEIRD.....seriously.  I know it was meant to be political comment but it was all a bit hamfisted for my liking, nowhere near the satire of "Unlike the Americans we prefer not to get our news from CNN" from Goldeneye.

The film doesn't make me as wholesale angry as Die Another Day, like I said, I quite enjoyed it....but it's no Bond film, it's more of a side project some cooked up in their free time.

Well, the first week of the job is over and I am PUMPED.  I love my job.  No, seriously.  It's IT based, and it's stuff I at least SORT of know, at least I know enough to be able to fix basic problems, and know what I need to refer to other people.  It's working in schools, so there's very little comeback for downtime, and a huge feeling of success when you can get something done.  And you know what?  I love it, I really do.

Monday was shadowing Anton (Pretty much my immediate superior) round two schools with wholly disparate problems.  Biggest surprise of the day had to be the moment where they told me I was having a work laptop and phone, that really got me.  But anyway, I did feel a little out of my depth here, I'll be honest.  There was a lot of stuff about SmartBoards, projectors, and cloning that it was very hard to understand without getting my hands into it.  I'm still not fully up on the notion of Sysprep and Pre-Sysprep images but I expect I'll get there over October half term.....if not sooner.

Tuesday was more of the same, except I got to go to East Park Infants (one of "my" schools).  Now, it's a nice school, very simple layout, and some very nice staff, but they look like they've been a bit beleaguered by some bad IT from a previous technician (Active Directory is poorly setup, the server password security is AWFUL, some of the machines simply won't work) but all in all they have a functional little system there.

Wednesday was more of the same school, and the first time I was left on my own with jobs to do.  It was VERY scary (if I'm honest), but probably good for me because too much hand-holding is a bad thing.  Moved a wireless point from one part of the school to another and got it setup, also replaced a projector lamp (which was scary as FUCK because I'd never dealt with projectors before)...simple enough in the end, but looking like you know what you're doing in front of a class of 5 year olds is a strange experience.

Thursday was spent with me going back to base after a mixup with where I was going, and from there on to Elston Hall, and another school I forget....but it's all good experience.  I'm slowly starting to get some idea of what is and isn't expected by school people at this point.

Today, the morning was back at East Park Infants....which is sort of my home at this point.  I helped out with a broken projector again, diagnosed a dead box, scheduled a reboot for the server, and also put on an admin account for me so I have no fear someone will unlock my machine and play silly buggers with the servers.  I also "Fixed" the wireless access point I had installed on Wednesday that there was NO PROBLEM with....it was more a problem with the fact the teacher's laptop was going off to next door's wireless instead of his own.  Lunch was to be had in the Merry Boys pub in Bilston.  It's cheap and cheerful, massive props to Anton for buying me lunch , got to be introduced to Mike, and reintroduced to Mike.  Yes, it's going to be a running joke.  We have Mike Chui, Mike Smith, and Mike Chomyk...we're all on the same team....oh that's fun for the phonebooks and PDAs of the world.

Overall....I've been busy, I've been tired, and I've been poor (the jobcentre has delayed my last payment, and I have ZERO money till work pays me)...but I love my job.  I could have gone for a higher paid job in the MOD.....but that was phone tech support...and you know what...I like people...meeting them, advising them, helping them.  That's why I love it, I'm not stuck in one office all day every day....I'm always BUSY...it's something I need.  I've actually got a reason to get out of bed in the morning and drive on out....I LOVE having a purpose.

If nothing else it's giving me a good knowledge of the Wolverhampton ring road and the m54!

Now, those of you out there in the wonderful land of Oz might be wondering what's happened to me since JULY 29TH and my "I have a job" post.

Well, let's see....I qualified for the World of Warcraft National Championships, and am just a hair off qualifying for the World Championships (which would put me amongst the top 20-30 in Britain) on an automatic place.  It's all cool, but due to various reasons the nationals weekend is going to be a MASSIVE pain in the arse.

Next up, I went to Amecon...and it was awesome.  Got to have a good old "taunt the Goran" session, and ensure his friends from Basingstoke were told the tales of Goran the Adventurer, The Van Headbutt, and many many more, some of them were in tears of laughter and almost begged me to stop when I got to the bit about serious brain injuries.  I also spent WAAAAAY to much money, but got a lot of stuff I wanted, including the whole of Chevalier d'Eon for £40, not bad.  Oh, and the whole of Gundam Seed for £90!  There were also rumours of Slayers getting a UK release, so I say it was one of the more awesome conventions I've been to.  Roll on Ayacon 2009.

Finally, the job.  How have I been doing?  Is it going well?  Dunno, haven't started yet.  Seriously, haven't started.  I wish I had, I mean it's been a month now.  Turns out the guy who hired me has been on holiday....and so unable to deal with me (d'oh), but he emailed me today to say I could start Monday....WOOOOOOOO!!!!  Now for the bit where I curl up over the terror of being in the workplace, and recoil in fear over social interaction....oh wait....working with other nerds.....shouldn't be too bad then.  If I can't find another gaming, anime, or TCG nerd to deal with then you can call me Julia, and kick me up the arse.

Right, that's all for now, stuff to do etc.

Ciao

Now, guys, I don't ask a lot, I don't need a lot, but I have a small request for any of you with any kind of liking of history, computing, cryptography, engineering etc.  Bletchley Park was an area of Britain where during WW2 coded messages of the axis powers were sent to be cracked.  It is here that the first computers of the modern era were born, and it is here that it is alleged the war was won for the allies.

After the war Bletchley was left almost derelict, lost and alone, but renovation took place to save this important British monument.  Sadly the money to save Bletchley has almost run out, and without support it will fail, and go back to the disrepair of its former lost days.  There is a petition to try and save it, it takes seconds to sign, and I'd very grateful if one or two of you could put down your names to save something that should be a monument to the world, and how sometimes "Military Intelligence" is not a contradiction in terms.

I realise it's not helping starving children, or rebuilding the education system, but it is still a token gesture in keeping one of the greatest historical sites of the modern era from becoming just another set of rotten, and decayed buildings in the countryside.

Bletchley has burned and been abandoned once...please, don't let it happen again.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/BletchleyPark/

....boys and girls, children of all ages...I have an announcement.  Not one of those rubbish announcements either like Wii Motionplus, no, no, no.  A proper announcement, one with vim, vigour, and vitality.  Something new and fresh and blah blah blah.  I've got the gift of the gab, what can I say, but that stuff is boring me to tears as well.

I have a job.

There, I said it.  It still sounds awesome.  After a year of bumming around, trying to get help training, looking for things to do I got a job...and one that matched the criteria I set out when I began my search.  I am a newly minted ICT Support Assitant as part of the E-Services Team of Wolverhampton City Council.  That means I get to go round fixing computers, installing them, giving help and advice, rolling out new technologies, everything you can think of that schools need.  As a bonus I get my ego stroked, I'm not working for a company, I'm working for schools, I'm working to help people, and that's what I want to do in life.  Yeah, sure, go on, have a good laugh, but I'm serious.  I think there's a lot of respect for public service that has been lost by people down the years...now I admit that this isn't me becoming a fireman, policeman, soldier etc. but it is me helping the world to be a better place in any way that I can.  I actually feel sliiiiightly ridiculous saying that, but there it is.

Anyway, the interview must have gone well, although one of the questions made it very clear to me that I need to brush up on the data protection act (got caught short there) and find some way of tracking new IT developments for schools as one of the ideas I suggested as coming "in the next few years" was actually a programme they've been rolling out across Wolverhampton for the last 12 months.

Still, I have a job.

And it was no thanks to the jobcentre.

I feel fully vindicated in complaining now because it was me getting off my own ass and putting the hours in that got me this job.  It was me giving up 60 hours of my life to training ON TOP of what the jobcentre wanted me to do (even taking sick days from their programmes to do it) that got me this job.  For six months they denied me access to training for no reason other than they "don't offer training before six months of unemployment".  What kind of screwed up system is that?  Someone is unemployed, wants to retrain, you give them that opportunity, you don't just make them sit on their ass for six months doing naff all.  I was given no information on how to get funding for training, where to train, nothing.  The assumption was simply made that I wanted to stay at home for six months plotting how I'd work the system.

So for six months I tried to find opportunities to train, and got one, I've done 3/4 of my MCSA content, and 1/4 of the exams.  No thanks to the Jobcentre.  Then at six months they sent me for "Retraining".  I was sent to a building in Walsall with other long-term uneployed for two weeks.  We were given access to First Aid and Health and Safety courses.....that weren't ever done.  The rest of our training was more than somewhat pointless....now I need to step in here and say that Lee and Steff who did the teaching were very nice people, and did their best to teach what they were told to, but you can't polish a turd.  Lessons on bullying in the workplace?  Equal Opportunities?  I mean come on.  People were asking about how to get qualifications for building, security guarding, whatever and we were told "oh, sorry, we don't offer things like that".  This is why the new deal is a sham.  Pointless hours of killing people's ambitions until they say they want to work in retail and get shuffled off to bar work.  All so someone can quote statistics saying that there has been a marked improvement in the unemployment figures through retraining.

But hold on, we're not done yet.  After the two week course we had "intensive jobsearch" which means going to a medium sized, oven-like room 2 days a week, for 4 hours each.  What did we do here?  Well, most people sat and watched youtube, read the paper, had a coffee, then went home.  I'd have gone stir-crazy, I applied for every job I could find because it was just wasting my time otherwise.  The TARGET, ladies and gentlemen, for this place was 2 jobs written for a week, and 2 phoned for.  That's 4 jobs a week you had to apply for in 8 HOURS sat at a PC.  I was applying for in excess of 20 per session.  Other people I saw applied for none, ever.  Another case of an outside company being paid to deliver mediocrity by the bucketload.

We're still not done, though, no.  After 8 weeks of this pointless endeavour I was signed up for a move. a 6 month full time course in Office Admin with another outside company.  Again, offering none of the training I needed (MCSA/ITIL...heck....Cisco would have been nice), and instead offering a general programme to get me "back into the office environment".  They would do this by doing things like sending me on unpaid sojourns into local companies for a couple of weeks to work as an "office assistant" and using that experience to build my confidence.

And this is why I laugh when David Cameron suggests we make the unemployed 1. work for their dole money at the six month stage, and 2. Involve outside companies.  The unemployed ARE already forced to work for their dole money, often in very unpleasant circumstances, and the unemployed are already failed by outside companies.  I've seen the unemployed, ladies and gentlemen, yes there are genuine dole dossers who just want to stay on the dole and feed the wife and their 12 million kids in their council house.  I feel justified in saying that because in my 12 weeks with Biscom I saw them, about 1 in 4 people fitted that description.  All of them useless layabouts who rightly SHOULD be cut off by the state because they leech on the hard work of others.  Then there were those who are too old or too young to get a job.  The old have had a career, are in their mid fifties and have seen their industry whipped from under them, and that REALLY scares me...it's not just their job that is gone but their entire way of living.  Too old to retrain and still find a job, but not old enough to retire, stuck in this meaningless futile wasteland of unemployment for anything up to a decade.  Then there's the young...who have no experience, and cannot get it because everywhere NEEDS experience, or training, or both!

The sad fact is that anyone in employment, and under the illusion that something would be done to help them if they lost their job is wrong.  Thousands of people who could do useful work are denied training and assessment every day, and the companies the government trusts to do this are wasting money, PUBLIC money on failing schemes to put them back to work.  Every day hundreds of people sign off the dole for no reason other than they can't take the relentless "retraining" of these companies, and spend 13 weeks of their life below the poverty line before they are allowed to sign on again.  This is the price we pay for using private companies and the "lowest bidder" philosophy.  We are a rich nation and we allow some to go hungry, while others do nothing and are given all the benefits in the book.  Tell me that's fair, or right.

I know this started off as a happy post about me getting a job and ended up as some boring rant about the benefit system, but it's something that people NEED TO HEAR, because frankly before I was sent to these places I thought the new deal with its promises of retraining sounded like something great....and instead it turned out to be full of people whose only hope is that someone somewhere recognises just what a waste it is.

So as everybody, no doubt, knows I'm a huge fan of Batman Media....not necessarilly the comics (I do have some that I like, but I'm not the biggest fan) but all the movies and series that are made.  Batman: The Animated Series remains one of my favourite cartoons of all time, I love the richly stylised 1920s-1950s vibe it has....anyway, getting off topic here.  It was with this that I set out to watch the Dark Knight yesterday, and after hearing so much good I was anticipating a real corker.  After watching it I watched Batman Begins again just to compare how things worked.

Now bear in mind this is PROBABLY going to be a big bundle of spoilers so please don't complain at me later.

So, I'll begin by saying....it's no Batman Begins.  Controversial, yes?  But true.  It simply isn't up to the standard Christopher Nolan created with his first film.  Now the performances in the film are quite good....with the exception of Christian Bale who comes off as flat, and whose batsuit is increasingly making him look chubby round the face.  I don't know what it is, he just came off as 1-dimensional and without nuance, and the voice filtering for his Batman voice was edging on incomprehensible at times.  Aaron Eckhart was absolutely spectacular as Two-Face, just really amazing; he did a great job of turning fanatacism for justice into plain old fanatacism, absolutely the best part of the movie for me, no exceptions.  My no exceptions policy extends to Heath Ledger, yes, he was an interesting Joker, and he played it very well, right down to a broken rag-doll kind of walk when he leaves the hospital.  Do I think it was oscar-worthy?  No.  Do I think he's the best Joker?  No.  He's good, I'll give him that, but he's bringing a lot of acting skill to a part that's not necessarilly as well written as it could be.

Moving on to the writing...it's one of the three downfalls of the film along with cinematography, and editing.  The plot at some points required HUGE leaps of faith, and there's a section that actually remains completely incomprehensible to me.  Here's a spoiler by the way, so you took a brick from a wall, shot some bullets into other bricks, compared them, scanned the brick to get a fingerprint that lead to a police apartment with a timer on a blind intended so you'd get shot instead of Gordon who, presumably, planned to fake his own death at that point.  What kind of FUCKED UP writing is that?  It's barely coherent or believable.  For cinematography, some of the action scenes are damaged by shaky cameras giving almost no clear shot of what's going on and where.  The "Lower Fifth" chase, for example...I have no idea what's going on there, there's no "spatial" sense of where things are for you to get a handle on.  As for editing...the film is too long.  It's 20 minutes longer than Batman Begins, and has multiple climaxes.  Here's the thing.....It either needed to be two movies, or a heavilly cut down one.  Either give Gordon's squad time to grow and get to know them, or dump the traitor angle entirely, either make the scene with the boats a major pinnacle of the film, or slice it, and either have one villain and the introduction of another or just one villain.  It's the same problem Spider-Man 3 had.  There's so much STUFF in there that film feels like a real bum-numbing 3 hours instead of feeling like a zippy 2 hours and 10.  Let's not forget the poor treatment Rachel Dawes gets.  Having just seen Jim Gordon shot, have an emotional wrap-up, and then be unceremoniously resurrected we see Rachel die inside the next 10 minutes and you can't have any kind of emotion for her because you don't know if the film-makers are fucking with you again.

Oh, and yes, what had happened to Gotham?  Begins had it as a fantastic dark version of a huge Chicago, complete with a Hong-Kong style slum-island to top it off.  That vision of the city was just fantastic....but where did it go?  Why all the bright sunlight?  Why is it just a mish-mash of chicago and NY now?  Where did that wonderful, unique look GO?  Why no rebuilt Wayne Manor?  Why no dark, forbidding bat-cave?  Has the transit system been demolished since Begins (Seriously, didn't anyone else notice that aside from the sequence where the Lambo gets trashed it was missing)?  I admit, some of the locations were re-used, yes, but it just felt... un-Gotham-y.

Having said all this, having all these complaints it's STILL an enjoyable film, it is still worth £5 to go and see it, and I STILL want to see it again.  All my concerns do is turn an excellent film into one that's merely "quite good", a 3/5 movie rather than the 4/5 Begins managed to rack up.  Yes, I still want a sequel, and yes, I am happy.......I just know it could have been better.

Just a quickie.  Tonight someone asked me why I was being a bit mentally slow, I responded with the fact I have a pinched nerve in my shoulder and have been lucky to sleep till 5am.  Their response was "Oh....well you didn't TELL me about that".

Well, no, I didn't.  There's nothing I can do about it, nothing you can do about it, I know it's painful (believe me), and, well, there's no point in telling someone.  You don't hear about every time my dodgy right knee plays up, or every time my ring or index fingers dislocates.  I just don't share everything.  Not an insult, I just don't care enough to tell people.

So yeah, I have a pinched nerve.  Sitting is painful, as is standing, sleeping, breathing, moving, standing still, and BEING.  It's not fatal or even harmful....just uncomfortable.

I have just, for the first time in my life, seen Citizen Kane.

You know, for years I just assumed everything said about it was overhype, but I wanted to see it anyway.

There is no level of hyperbole appropriate for this film.

The lighting alone had me in awe, there's a beautiful, subtle genius about it, characters can stand in a well lit room and still move into shadow if a point needs to be made, there's always beautiful pools of light to hint at things, and bars of light that hit only the eyes and brow.  It's a visually gorgeous film that, while in Black and White, loses none of the tone a colour film would have.

The cinematography is fantastic.  One scene in particular (where Susan is leaving) could be played with no sound and explained purely with how camera perspective shows the relative size of the two characters.  Many many times seemingly impossibly focussed shots are made just because having 4 or 5 layers of focus is what Welles wanted.

The story is.....incredible.  A man who rises from nothing up to the top of the world and then loses it all is hardly anything new, but the direction and the achronological ordering makes it work so very well.  The film TELLS you the whole plot in the opening five minutes in a newspaper montage but keeps you gripped from end to end by how it will all play out.

This is a film made 67 years ago.  It contains a charm ad wit that Hollywood cannot or will not bring about today.  It does with a line of dialogue what a thousand directors today would struggle to do in a whole film, and by paring itself back to a mere 2 hours it manages to convey this wonderful life story, and the many facets of it without ever becoming overbearing.

I cannot tell you how good this film is, I can only tell you what I think of it.  For a film with no violence, sex, bad language, action, or suspense it manages to rise above it all and just become a classic film.  It made those cliches, it pioneered that camera work, it created that lighting, and it did it all in a fantastic film to boot.

That said.....watch it, cretin.

Now, as some of you may have seen my interest in anime has slowly declined since uni. I'd still watch it....but the passion was gone...or so I thought....something somehow has re-triggered the part of my brain that needs pretty colours and explosions....

Thus was created this screenshot of my PC:



It is a thing of madness and genius that has overtaken me.

Right, people, I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed by every single person who says William Shakespeare was a great writer. Enjoying his latest Novel? His best shotr story? No. You're not, you're reading a bloody script.

This annoys me so much I'm going to have a good old rant about it. I mean I've gone into a thousand times why Shakespeare is completely unsuitable for schools. It has outmoded language, little modern relevance, and most of all what are we telling people to study as part of a literature GCSE/A-Level? Plays. Most kids never see the damn thing performed and that makes studying the play WORTHLESS. It takes the damn thing so far out of context that half the people turn off. Yes, well done, way to make our already linguistically challenged yobbo youth turn off and become the "uh" generation because you want them to understand 400 year old iambic pentameter instead of something modern they can 1. understand, and 2. contextualise.

Pick some modern works, some modern PROSE works to study, people. Shakespeare is not, after all, this shining beacon of literature. He was a balding, pudgy brummy who wrote works that appealed to the common man, celebrating him is like celebrating Eastenders writers.

And why are you reading it, eh? You're reading it to look pretentious, let's face it, you want to give off a facade of intelligence. You want something proper to read go and grab some James Joyce, he's challenging. Up for some Sci Fi then grab Frank Herbert, but please don't insult my intelligence by reading the script of a play.

At best you're getting 15% of the authorial intent, at worst you're insulting actors, set designers, directors, and stage managers the world over by saying they bring nothing to the production. Shakespeare is meant to be seen, enjoyed, it's meant to make you laugh, cry, FEEL, it's not there as some sort of neo-intellectual exercise to prove your brain is bigger than someone else's because YOU and YOU ALONE can decipher the true meaning of what our balding little friend may have written.

You want to read his sonnets, fine, but if you're going to read his plays then you annoy me. Go out, watch them in the theatre, and have a proper reaction to them, after all they were designed as just grown up pantomime of the day, people booed the baddies, cheered the goodies, and laughed at the jokes rather than sealing them in some sort of intellectual bubble where normal human emotion would be an insult to 400 years of artistic tradition.

I realise this is all very ranty, but I just don't care, people annoy me, they really do, and I'm absolutely sick to death of it.

I'm serious, this is just for Yu.

Only Yuuuuuuuuuu can make this world seem riiiiiight, only Yuuuuuuuuu can make the daaarkness briiiiight....oh enough with the rubbish singing, it'll start raining if I carry on.

Right, anyway, what to update you on.

Well, first off I'm on the "New Deal" now, so still no job and I have to go to a small room in Walsall twice a week and spend 4 hours jobsearching. Or more appropriately 2 hours applying for everything under the sun, and 2 hours doing the Sudoku/Crossword/Reading. It is dull, horrible, and the drinks machine is shite. On the plus side I haven't killed anyone yet, and I have improved my CV!

Secondly I think I'm rediscovering my love of anime. I've finally dusted off Black Lagoon and finished that, and Planetes, and now I've begun watching a whole new series called Code Geass. I'm thinking of downloading Honey and Clover for a bit of that slice of life experience after Planetes' ending left me all warm and fuzzy. Oh, I also bought Appleseed Ex Machina. Great action but somehow it didn't quite feel as coherent as the first...this is the price you pay for hiring John Woo.

I finally won a WoW TCG tournament, it was a draft in Birmingham and it was a great day largely because I was the only person picking Horde and so got all the choice allies. Not only did I go up 3-0 but I didn't drop a single game in any of my matches. Props to Josh Ng, though, he gave me one HELL of a run for my money in the final. Next time, people, draft what looks good, not just whatever blue cards are coming your way.

What else....oh, I bought a new 360 because the old one upped and died....well...the CD drive did....and it was £50 and an "unspecified" wait to get the damn thing back. Not good enough, MS, I paid £300 for the machine when it was new, the least you can do is offer to repair a component you KNEW was dodgy when you shipped it. Still, I'm a sucker for new games and so lapped up GTA4 when it came out, and am now splitting my time between that and Lost Odyssey.

Couple of weeks back I had a NASTY chest infection and I'm still not back on top of things. I don't normally get seriously ill, but this was just horrible. The low point was when I was coughing so hard I actually managed to become light headed and fell to my knees.....six inches further forward and I'd have gone down the stairs.

Hmmm....anything else....

Oh, I've been watching The Apprentice. Michael was a cock, and I'm glad Lee won, he's a real trooper, NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT. I'm not a business guy (Except for a sideline in trading cards that nets me enough each week for petrol, dinner, and a little bit left over) but I can appreciate some of the brilliant and CATASTROPHIC decisions people were making. I mean, honestly, who the fuck is going to spend £400 on a cake when you're hawking cut-price dresses on the same stall. Pick an audience, stick with it. Oh, and Lee with those thongs was amazing, his "Well hello Ladies" is something I can't forget.

Aside from that....no...I'm good.

See you next time!

So I made a panormaic view of my room:
Click Here!!!

Firstly, didn't get the job with Apple, BOO.

Secondly. Started playing WoW after a brief hiatus.

Thirdly, I attended my first WoW TCG tourneys, both in Leicester. I finished 2-2 to qualify for the Realm Championship, but a PATHETIC 1-5 in the Spectral Safari (walked away with a loot card though). For those of you who don't know WoW TCG is a lot like Magic: The Gathering...just with Warcraft stuff. I've probably been talking about this a bit too much recently, but when going to Dudley Darklords to play it is the social highlight of most weeks you do start to get a bit involved. Just on the off chance you want to get involved: Zapped Giants is the place to go. I post there, so do most of the other WoW TCG community in the UK, I suspect I'm just making up the numbers, whatever.

Fourthly I finished my first module of the MCSA, and I'm now onto the bloody technical bits. Spent 45 minutes doing binary mathematics in my head last tuesday....and yes....that's fun for me. Seriously, I like in-depth networking stuff, and getting 2000+ pages of Microsoft text books for free. Oh, and I now have student licences for pretty much everything except MS Office.

Fifthly, I am still unemployed...but only half looking. Full time work would pull me out of my MCSA and I quite like education right now. I've applied for a couple of data entry and basic sysadmin jobs, but people don't seem to like me or I smell or something, whatever.

Sixthly, it's nearly Easter, and that means EASTER EGG CHALLENGE, WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Seriously.

Seventhly, given that my failed, half-assed project of GrumpyGamers failed I'm now helping to write for a PROPER WEBSITE....well....a resurrection of a proper website Skullkids Expect to see me being very grumpy, angry, dismissive, and ranty. We also plan to have a review section, so god knows how many people will want to kill us after that.

Eighthly, I've had an enforced change of diet. Lots of stomach upsets, as well as some horrible joint pain recently have meant cutting back even more on cheese and milk, cutting out the fat and the salt, switching to porridge for breakfast, halving the size of my lunch, etc etc etc. Now I'm getting no stomach upsets (apart from absolute ravenous hunger) except when I try and have, say, a portion of chips from the chippy; the joint paint is also subsiding. Looks like I'm developing the same digestive problems as my mother and grandmother but with the knowledge to work around them. On the plus side I've gone down two notches on my belt since I started this.

This doesn't mean I'm giving up dessert though. It's all mine, and you can't have any.

Ninthly, I have decided that if I am not in stable employment by my 26th birthday (that is October 19th 2009) then I need to do one of two things. 1. Find a country where my MCSA and tech skills are needed and go work there for six months, or 2. Consider going back to uni, and all that entails. (Probably to do Comp Sci, but that's a bridge I hope to never have to cross). Bit radical, but life at the moment is a delicious combo of no money, and desire for immense amounts of stuff.

Tenthly, I don't like lists of ten things.

Elevently, I'm still working out as often as I can, recognising when to stop is the problem though. I don't want to hurt myself and then try to work through it.

Twelfthly, Daniel got kicked out of the house because he's drug dealing scum and I hope he and his dad are very happy together, frankly they deserve each other. Daniel has been banned from driving for 9 months, and it should have been more. I'll never stop loving him, he's family, and if he ever learns to admit the hell he put my parents through I will forgive him before he's finished the sentence. Right now, I just don't LIKE him very much, it's a terrible dichotomy, and one I dislike having to make, but there we go.

Thirteenthly, keeping an open bottle of whisky in your bedroom is not a smart idea...I don't know why I do it.

Fourteenthly, I've learned more about one person I know in two late night drunken chats recently than I think I have in the entire of the last few years. Not a slight, just every true...then again...when you've known someone for that long there doesn't tend to be much left hidden between you.

Fifteenthly, I really should keep in touch with people more. So, Danny, Nick, Andy, Goran, Tammy, expect an email in the next month or two as I try and keep in touch...

Sixteenthly, House is awesome.

Right, that's it for now, I'm done, hope you all enjoyed that, because I'm off for some TV and a tall glass of Southern Comfort.

...you should too.

I'm serious, if you like witty dialogue, independent-ish film and some light, warmhearted comedy then this is the film you need to be seeing.

I mean, I know it's taken $100m+ already, I know, it's BIG, but seriously, this is a GOOD mainstream film.  People have said it's political....it's not.  There's no moralising about abortion, there's no moralising about Juno keeping the baby....it's a love story and that's about it.  It touched me, I almost cried near the end.

Heck, people who know me know I HATE almost anything with Jennifer Garner in....and this movie made me think she was good!  I am willing to publicly re-evaluate what she's done before now I have evidence she can act!  Ellen page, for being almost 21, plays a very convincing 16 year old too, so I approve.  Every single bit of money this film takes it deserves, in spades.

Oh, and if you like Clerks then it is most DEFINITELY for you.  Little bits of camera work homage it, the dialogue is reminiscent etc.  Good stuff.

The Evil Empire

Give me your spywared, give me your fragmented,
Your firewall-less masses yearning for a format,
The wretched refuse of Microsoft land.
Send these useless, half-broken boxes to me:
For I have a very big hammer.

by M.Chomyk

For those who don't get the joke I'd suggest googling for "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus.

I'm doing an MCSA and applying for a job with Apple, I have every right to be bitter at MS...especially seeing as I seem to be getting a lot of Spyware to deal with lately.

Why the hell can't people look at what they're installing, I mean for goodness sake, how hard can it be? Too hard, apparently. Seriously, I wish that people could get more of a clue about technology, it's not like it's hard, if you can use the Internet then you can learn this stuff....for free. If you want to install something put it and the word "spyware" or "adware" into google.....see what you get.

I really wish I was hard hearted enough to refuse my services.

So Fox News ran a biased item on Mass Effect, they lambasted it, lampooned it, and compared it to "Luke Skywalker meets Debbie does Dallas".  There's a huge backlash in the US it seems against the game, people in uproar, they're saying this 17 rated game is amoral, unnatural, and basically just commenting without actually playing the game.  Here's a hint, if Mass Effect was a 2 hour movie and everything was scaled in relation to that the love scene would be 15 seconds long, feature about a second of butt crack, and take place after over an hour and a half of dialogue and battle.  Compare that 15 seconds to the last James Bond movie.....heck....compare the full TWO MINUTES to the last James Bond movie.

There's no outcry here in the UK and it's a 12 here, even the Daily Mail has refrained from putting in the size 12s to the thing.  You know why?  The US for all its free speech and fairness has become the land of the prude.  We Brits may be reserved, but we're allowed boobs in a U rated film, and sex references in a PG.  Admittedly we mark violence more hashly....especially imitatable violence...but surely that's a fair way to do things?  I mean, come on, what's more objectionable here, a love scene between two people who form a bond, who have talked about their pasts, shared their hopes and dreams, or the 5+ hours of pure violence with you gunning down everything in sight to save the universe?

I mean, seriously, a woman's ass on screen for 6 seconds is a hell of a lot more comfortable viewing than watching a platoon of armoured marines gun down a colony full of people to me.  I'm not saying the game's wrong or bad, I love it, but what I'm saying is that people need some perspective.

You're watching a video with little Timmy, he's 7, you see a bedroom scene where the woman is face down on the bed with her arm over a man's chest, she gets out of bed, and for a second you see some crack as she pulls on trousers.  Little Timmy knows, if he's been allowed to watch, that the two people get on well and you can explain to him that this is something adults do when they love each other.  That's SIMPLE.  Little Timmy watches a second film, in this one the same man leaves the same woman to be shot to pieces and blown up while he makes his getaway.  He spends the rest of the film as a damaged man, with everyone around him in tears over what he did.  Explaining that is a LOT harder because Little Timmy knows that the Hero should always be brave and valiant, and end up with the girl.  Mass Effect does both of these and why people pick on the former instead of the latter is just some kind of sick joke.

Have we as a society really gone so far that the mere hint of sexuality or ass crack in something other than a movie is wrong or something, did I genuinely miss the meeting where we decided all this, because gosh darnit, I just don't remember.

Oh, and another thing, people are SURPRISED there has been a gamer backlash.  No shit, you've pretty much branded us all as violent, sex obsessed terrorists with a fetish for using a wiimote to simulate removing a man's testicles with pliers over the last two years.  Every time there's a murder it's video games that get the blame, people stealing cars and driving them fast, it's a video game, anything IT'S A VIDEO GAME.  That makes as much sense as blaming gang violence on cricket because there you learn how to wield a cricket bat, and that also you need to protect your goolies from oncoming objects.  Video games are not blameless by any standard, they should be held to the exact same standards as TV and Mo--OH WAIT THEY ALREADY ARE, perhaps even stricter ones, I defy you to find a movie in the US with a sex scene as "indecent" as Mass Effect where there was an outcry to move it to NC-17 based PURELY on the sex scene.

Get a grip, American Media, please.

Firstly I got Ennik, my main on The Sha'tar EU to 60:


Then I continued levelling up my alt, Maerina, a frost mage:


And you know what?  Now I actually know how to manage my WoW playing time better and am not in any way addicted...I'm having a lot more FUN with the game.

Sadly Verian is on a server I no longer go to...and is Alliance, therefore scum.  Someone I know says that the antagonism between Alliance and Horde is all because they cannot talk to each other, personally I think it's because Alliance are shits.