19 November 2005

It's been a while since I've written a journal entry, probably because not much worthy of mentioning has occured recently. Work is just a sack of stress at the moment with a proposed office move, upcoming exams and arsehole customers. It's no surprise that I don't feel like doing much else but hitting the consoles and worrying some samurai when I get home from work. Hopefully once the next batch of exams are over I'll find the enthusiasm to do a bit more Japanese. It's still something I'm very much interested in, but my brain can only take so much studying at a time!

Had a good day yesterday as our old friend Paul was in town so he come round for a few hours. Haven't seen him for months, so was great to catch up with him, watch a couple of quality films and play around with the consoles. Got to see "Doom" on DVD, which I've been interested in seeing for a while. Amusing enough, but 'Resident Evil in Space' kept coming to mind for some reason!

22 August 2005

Bored of American blockbusters and being a few quid up after my birthday I decided to hit Ebay and treat myself to a bunch of "Quality" Japanese DVDs. The pictures below are from "Lady Executioners for General Security", which is very much like a Troma film but with a much cuter looking cast. Although there are no subtitles the plot is straightforward enough to follow and it's a good laugh, just what I needed after seeing so many films that take themnselves far too seriously.

I also picked up the live action Sailor Moon series. I have no excuses, I couldn't help myself, it needed to be done. Not actually seen any of it apart from the making of as yet, I think alcohol may be required in copious amounts before viewing and that's not usually a good idea on a work night.

19 August 2005

Bah, last day of my holiday today. I've decided to take annual leave in week long chunks so that I make better use of my time off and there isn't time enough for an excessive amount of work to accumulate on my desk before I return. Amongst the places we visited this week was Hanningfield Reservoir and nature reserve, which despite only being a few miles from where Wiglet has lived her entire life, neither of us has been to before. It's a great place, with a decent length walk through the forest trail and several hides in which to spy various wildfowl.

We also had the misfortune to see the new "War of the Worlds" film. I'd been looking forward to it as I'd heard the rave reviews and am a fan of the original movie. Unfortunately, whilst a competant film in itself, the futility and terror of the original seems to be toned down. Even the people captured by the tripods, about to be minced up and spewed out as fertilizer don't seem particularly concerned about the fact.

7 July 2005

Scary pictures on the news today as some of my favourite haunts in London have been attacked by terrorists. Can't say it was unexpected but it was still a shock. Fortunately I managed to hitch a ride home from work as the main line railway I used was one of those bombed so trains weren't running. No doubt the government will use this incident to push for the introduction of identity cards, but I think that will be an ineffective way of dealing with the situation. I suggest introducing a new law making it illegal to grow beards more than 1cm long. This will make it much easier for police to identify terrorists, and we won't have to fork out cash for useless ID cards. Mind you, could cause some difficulties around Christmas time.

6 July 2005

It's just been announced that London has won the bid for the 2012 Olympics. This has caused mixed reaction at work. As there will be a lot of construction required in the run up to the games, my company will be very busy and we'll have a lot more work to cope with than usual. On the other hand, we stuffed the French and wiped the smug look off their faces for once. Now we've just got to get all the facilities sorted, otherwise we'll be forced to use minature versions of London landmarks (shown left).

4 July 2005

Our study at home is finally up and running. It's not quite complete yet, thanks to Argos not giving us all the parts we needed to build the cupboard, but at least it's usable. I'm hoping that now it's there it will make my coursework a bit easier to do, as up until now I've been forced to do my work on the bed! Not easy when it comes to drawing graphs. A more studious atmosphere may help us get on with our Japanese course too, something which we have been neglecting.

30 May 2005

Okay, have to admit that I'm a J-pop convert. Not heard an awful lot as yet, but what with the bunch of CDs I picked up at Expo and the collection of anime music CDs I already owned, I'm becoming quite a fan. Not sure where to go to feed my growing obsession, there are a few websites but what with the hassles I've had recently with ordering merchandise over the internet I'm a little loath to try anything new!

On a related note, we've finally finished some of our decorating, the bedroom has a distinctly oriental feel with four wall scrolls displaying mountainous scenes, two beautiful geish watercolours and a large folding fan that's the centrepiece. Just wondering what to finish it off with. Maybe a nice Japanese sword stand...

14 May 2005

We went to the London Expo today. It's basically half way between a traders fair and a convention, with loads of dealers, several celebrities, a few of whom I even recognised, but no large hall for on-stage antics as you would expect from full on con. There was a modest area where there were celeb talks and interviews, but none of the people I was interested in were on by the time we finally got to the centre and waited in the huge queue to get in.

Still, I got to see a couple of people in the flesh, including Leonard Nimoy who had wimped out of the big Trek gig I went to at the Royal Albert Hall many years ago, so it was good to see him, even if I didn't get close enough to get a decent photo. The dealer stalls were pretty good after fighting your way to get to one, I managed to pick up a few bits and pieces like an Inuyasha wall scroll and a bunch of J-pop CDs which I'm hoping to work up the courage to try in the near future.

The only real disappointment was the Robot Wars stand, it was avertised as "come see the robots from the show" and naively enough we assumed they meant the house robots. Not so, the only robots there were a couple of the contestants machines, neither of which were particularly awe-inspiring. On the way out we caught the tail end of a question and answer session with some bloke who does voices for US anime dub. Haven't actually seen any of the stuff he's done (altho Stand Alone Complex is on my wants list), but he was entertaining enough, shame we missed the first part. Lessons for next time we go to one of these things: try to get there earlier than 1.30pm and don't spent the morning shopping in London beforehand!

18 April 2005

I used to go to Sci Fi conventions a lot a few years back. I had the pleasure of meeting a lot of great actors, but for some reason I kept missing most of the cons that featured people from Doctor Who. I saw a couple of the companions but never any of the Doctors themselves. I was therefore interested to read that the 6th Doctor, Colin Baker, was appearing at the local traders fair along with companion Nicola Bryant and Hellraiser actor Doug Bradley.

Being short of cash, and admittedly somewhat star-struck, neither of us was up for queing up to buy a special photo to get signed. We'll have to make do with having Colin Baker pass us on the way to the convention hall, a peculiar experience as I didn't notice him, but as soon as he passed Sarah was pulling my arm and pointing at him. We'll keep an eye out and maybe we'll get something signed next time there's a traders fair there.

6 March 2005

I've finally managed to finsh my project, it came in at a little under 5,000 words! I've posted it off and now all I have to worry about is the three coursework papers and the exam. How did I let myself get talked into doing this course? I vaguely remember someone mentioning free food at the start, but that's about it. Oh well, after a particularly scary phone bill it looks as though we'll be cutting down on our time online, so hopefully that will free up some more time for other things, including doing some coursework, getting back into Japanese and making a start on the mountain of magazines and books that has amassed!

31 January 2005

After playing the free version avidly for the last six months, Sarah and I have finally been persuaded to part with our hard earned cash and become members of Runescape. It's fiendishly addictive, and the great thing is the system specs are so modest that even my "Ark Technology" PC can run it! Only problem is that we're spending so much time exploring Runescape that we've fallen behind working on our website, learning Japanese and sorting our lives out. Should carry an addictiveness warning!

27 January 2005

The presentation went okay! Everyone else was as nervous as I was and we had a dry run first to iron out the worst of our problems so when I got up in front of everyone it wasn't too daunting, I even managed to forget about the camera pointed at me, which helped a lot! You can see one of the slides I used in the presentation here. I tried to jazz up what would have been a dull presentation with plenty of badger in peril and badger love references, which seemed to win the audience over, so I'll have to incorporate those into the written project somehow.

17 January 2005

I've just spent the day working on a presentation for my tutorial group. I hope it's good enough as it's a bit of a rush job, what with us only being told last week that it's due to be given at the end of January rather than the end of March as we were lead to believe. I've just to find some graphics and make some slides now. I was going to use a cuddly toy badger to show the danger to said creatures our work causes, but I couldn't find one anywhere I looked. Why are stuffed badgers so hard to find? I mean they're cute, endangered, and most of all, British. Two people have offered me panda replicas to use instead! Thanks girls, but it's not quite the same is it?