Been watching a couple of movies the last few nights to pass the time whilst my other half is busy at work.
Yesterday I watched “Salt“. My wife is not a fan of Angelina Jolie but I personally don’t mind her (would any man really?)… I wasn’t expecting too much from this movie but I must say I was pleasantly surprised. Lots of action and a couple of good twists in the story. Definitely recommended if you want some mindless entertainment – I’ll give it a 7 out of 10.
Second up, today I started watching “Prince of Persia : The sands of time“. Note the word ‘started’, unfortunately I stopped halfway because I just found it all rather boring. Too much special effects and very little substance. Not sure if I can be bothered wasting another 50 minutes or so of my life to watch the second half so can’t give it a score.
Today was the last Saturday morning hockey session of this season for my son Quinn. Unfortunately I didn’t due to a flu I didn’t get to go and see him play his last game but my wife tells me he really did great and put everything into his last game.
Of course Quinn got the obligatory end of season trophy for his collection…
I have been neglecting this blog during 2010 but finally, in a frenzy of behind the scenes tinkering, I have updated the Word Press software that drives this page up to the latest version.
The header of the blog is still annoying me and several old posts now look a bit messy so I still need to spend a bit of time redesigning things but at least the overall design is now more 2010 and integrated into the world of twitter, facebook and other social media sites.
Just a quick blog post to link to my daughter’s 6th birthday youtube video…
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I’ve been looking around for a Nintendo DS Lite for my youngest son Leon’s upcoming birthday and have been toying between the idea of buying him a new DS versus buying a second hand one.
His two older siblings both had new DS’s so my initial preference was to buy him a new one too but, on the other hand, Leon is getting his DS earlier than his siblings so there is a concern that, at only age 3, he will not necessarily treat his DS with the care and respect that I might prefer.
Anyway, after seeing the price of a few second hand DS’s I was still keen on buying him a new one so started to shop around the Canberra stores to see what was available.
Most of the major department and video game stores had prices around A$199 for a DSLite with no games. JB-Hifi, my usual shop of choice for electronic items had a price for a DSLite on its own of A$179 – I would have asked if they could improve on that price but in typical fashion it was hard to find a free salesperson to talk to.
I therefore went to JB’s sister store, Clive Anthonys, who also had DS Lites on their own for A$179 (no surprise that they were in line with JB Hifi) but with a sign on it saying “Less for cash” (something this store always promotes itself on). I therefore asked what was the less for cash price they’d do it for… after some checking the salesperson advised that they actually could not improve on the A$179 as they didn’t have sufficient margins to offer it any cheaper. After therefore expressing my disgust to the salesperson that they shouldn’t put a less for cash sign next to the consoles if they had no ability to reduce the prices I decided, at my wife’s suggestion, to visit Harvey Norman.
Now I must admit I usually avoid Harvey Norman like the plague. Normally it is the most overpriced rip-off store in Canberra. However, I may have to re-assess that opinion now as they sold me a DSLite with Guitar Hero on Tour package for A$150. I don’t particularly want the Guitar Hero game but can probably sell that on Ebay for about A$25 bringing the cost of a new DS Lite down to A$125, over 35% cheaper than many stores in Canberra!
So there we go, a hardly normal purchase from Harvey Norman! How bizarre… maybe I need to keep them in mind next time I want something electrical after all!
Just when I was beginning to think every film I watched was going to be mediocre or a total dud I’m blindsided by a gem of a movie like District 9!Based in South Africa and filmed for a significant portion in a documentary style this is a whole new take on the “Alien Nation” style story.
I personally didn’t recognise any member of the cast but I think that also helped work in the film’s favour and made it much easier to believe the story could be real. As with all my commentary on movies I will not go into the detail of the plot as I especially do not like to spoil a film that I recommend you go and see. A must for sci-fi fans and I suspect it is also a film that even movie watchers who normally shy away from sci-fi films may appreciate.
I’ve given it 9 out of 10 on the IMDB.
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch are two of my all time favourite movies. Both directed, admittedly in similar style, by Mr Guy Ritchie when he was still cool. Unfortunately I’ve not been impressed with much else in Guy Ritchie’s later career.
Anyway, the point of that introductory paragraph to this post is the fact that I have just finished watching Sherlock Holmes and the first thing I noticed in the credits was “Directed by Guy Ritchie”. Oh yeah I realised to myself… I forgot this film was directed by him although really, given the style of direction I should have realised!
So, although I watched the whole of Sherlock Holmes not realising it was a Guy Ritchie film, it makes no difference to my conclusion (so why did I share that info then – well, why not!). And my conclusion Dr Watson is that it was, on the whole, rather a disappointment.
I thought after watching some recent crap films such as Armored and 2012 that this film may be a breath of fresh air. I was wrong. Or maybe I’m just getting too picky.
So what was wrong with it? Well I’m not going to give spoilers away in case you haven’t watched it but my prime problem was that I just didn’t feel that excited or drawn into the story. It was all rather dull. The acting was reasonable, the costumes and the excellent effects of bringing old London to life were great, but the excitement of the story was not.
It is clear the ending, although nicely concluded, left the opening for the next chapter of a Sherlock Holmes adventure and I guess it will be interesting to see how that one pans out and if it is any better. If you look on IMDB it is already listed as being in development stages.
My rating that I have just given it on IMDB is 5 out of 10. Possibly harsh but I just wasn’t that impressed. Probably my expectations were too high having noted it to have an average rating of 7.7 on IMDB (or at least did at the time of this post).
No great story to tell… was just taking a couple of photos of Leon “watching” TV using my Nokia 5800 and decided to stick them up here on the blog just for the hell of it. Hard to believe the little chimp will be 3 years old in only a few weeks time.
So my Facebook, Twitter and Youtube accounts are now all linked together. The missing link is my blog… and I figure if this blog is to be resurrected it really needs to also automatically make itself known in my facebook and twitter feeds. So, let’s see if this works or not…
Update: Oh yeah baby! We are linked! All systems operational… blog, facebook, twitter and youtube are all up and running! The “Wuggle in your face” campaign for 2010 can now begin lol!
Occasionally I look up silly songs on youtube for the kids and today it was a silly video for the “Cows with Guns”song however, one link led to another, and I came across this…
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Apparently per wikipedia it appears this guy is pretty big on youtube so it may be old news to most readers but who knows, you may also live in a cave and have not have seen this before?
Just purchased a new computer and thought, whilst setting it up, I’d have a look at this “Windows Live Writer” application. Seems to link up to my old blog rather nicely so who knows, maybe I’ll start to post some stuff here again!
Whilst writing I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years… boo hoo I’m back to work on Monday after having a three and a half week break!
And finally to complete the post I’ll test the photo posting capability of this application…
I may have been lost in World of Warcraft but that doesn’t mean I haven’t still been following the best show on TV, namely Lost.
I’ve really been enjoying season 5 and just wanted to take the time to post my thoughts about the main cast at the moment.
Firstly let me start with my favourite character… that award goes to ‘Juliet’. I guess that is probably a surprise choice given the fact that she has not been in Lost since the beginning. I can’t really explain what it is about her but, ever since she started appearing in Lost a few seasons ago I have really come to enjoy her more and more as time goes on. I also see from surfing around the net though that I am not alone in cheering for Juliet. I think that really is a great achievement for the actress Elizabeth Mitchell to come in to an established show and play a character that has become so popular. Lots of respect.
Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell)
Well after my favourite character, the next tier of characters I enjoy watching include, John Locke, Sawyer, Sayid, Ben, Desmond and Miles.
In my indifferent list we then have Sun, Jin, Hurley and Daniel.
And in my, bloody hell they’re really starting to annoy me… Jack and Kate… which is scary given the fact they are considered near the top of the main characters. Jack is really getting on my nerves and ranks as the character I’d most love to see get killed off even though that is very unlikely to happen… I truly wish he hadn’t come back to the Island. And although I’ve not minded Kate in the past it’s probably the fact that, as Juliet and Sawyer were very happy together, I don’t particularly want to see Kate stuffing things up for them.
Anyway… just felt like telling the world how much I still liked Lost…. and particularly Juliet 
There you go… 3 simple words that should hopefully explain why this blog has been so neglected the last couple of months. As I mentioned “The Guild” in my last post it shouldn’t really be too surprising that I had to go check Warcraft out should it???
Anyway, I’ve been busy playing my main character of a human warrior… if you’re curious to see how I’ve been progressing (level 48 at the time of this post) please go check out my stats on the armory by using this link.
Last night I was idly surfing around the Xbox 360 dashboard and decided to download a video entitled “The Guild.” I found it to be a quite amusing little series of webcasts about a bunch of addicted computer geeks playing a World of Warcraft clone…
Anyway, after watching a few episodes I looked up the show on Wikipedia and was very impressed to see that the lead actress of the show was pretty much responsible for it’s whole existence. This actress, Felicia Day, impressed me and I decided to surf over to her webpage to learn more… geez, a self confessed internet/gaming junkie and yet very attractive! Truly a rarity and not surprisingly a true pin-up girl for the male gaming population! She truly does sound like a gamer’s perfect girlfriend!
Anyway… I read on her page that she recommended, if interested in seeing more of what she had done, to begin by checking out “Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog“. Ok… why not, I have nothing better to do so I downloaded a copy last night and stuck it on my Ipod today to watch at lunchtime.
OMG!!!! What an awesome production!!! I LOVED IT!!! I need to buy it on DVD asap!
I don’t want to spoil it too much by saying a lot about it other than, if you’re looking for something to watch and, like me, had missed this when first released last year, you need to go find it now!!!
Yesterday we took a day trip to Sydney primarily due to the fact we still had a Sydney Tower / Aquarium / Wildlife pass from Quinn’s photo competition haul from earlier this year.
Anyway… there are a few photos up on Facebook of the Sydney Tower but thought I’d also share this photo here on the Blog of Leon sleeping on the way home. Our little boy may be growing up quickly but it is photos like this that make us think he is the cutest baby-o in the world…
Admitedly this sleep turned out to be a 10 minute micronap and then he stayed awake for the rest of the journey outlasting the staying power of our other 2 cherubs!
Wow… didn’t realise it had been so long since my last post and it isn’t as if I’ve been doing nothing! We’ve had lots happening offline lately but, I guess the most likely reason for my lack of posts can probably be more attributable to the fact that my free time has usually been taken up playing games on the XBox 360 I recently acquired.
Already built up quite a library of good games for it and have actually completed a couple, namely ‘Gears of War’ and ‘Portal‘.
I confess I’m slotting this post into the blog quite a bit of time after the fact but thought Quinn’s 6th birthday was a good reason for a backpost!
I took the day off work and, after getting through the present opening (a new bike being the main thing), we had a day out around Canberra which included a bike ride around the lake and a trip out to Fyshwick to go on the go-karts. Here’s a photo, admittedly a bit dark but the best we have, of Quinn on a go-kart. Yes… at 6 he is allowed to go on by himself and he was actually very good at it! The staff there even commented it was quite impressive to see a 6 year old concentrating so hard on correctly steering the go-kart (usually they head off in a straight line into the tyre barriers apparently).
I guess the time he has spent on Mario Kart Wii wasn’t all to waste!
A few weeks ago I accidentally stumbled across a piece of software called Rosetta Stone which, for those who don’t know it, is a very clever piece of software used to teach you a foreign language. With this software I also obtained all the French CDs and have been quietly working my way through the course to brush up on my French.
Although I’m still only a little way into the course I do feel it is improving my French in leaps and bounds.
As a supplement I thought I probably should also find some audio recordings that I could listen to in the car or on my MP3 player at lunchtime. After some searching around and trying a few out I again accidentally came across something called the “Michel Thomas Method” – at first I was sceptical based on all the glowing praise about how incredible it was. I’ve always been sceptical of those motivational courses and how to become a millionaire course etc so, with all the comments about his method, was a bit dubious this was all just some marketing for some run of the mill french course.
Anyway, I decided to try them out…. OMG!!!! I’m converted…. Michel Thomas is an absolute genius! The way he teaches French is incredible and after listening to only 4 of his CDs so far I’ve learnt more from him than I ever learnt in the classroom when I was back at school learning French. If I had this guy as my French teacher back then I would be speaking French fluently by now I’m sure!
I rarely am prepared to give the tag “Genius” to anybody but this guy truly is one… his knowledge of language is incredible and his ability to explain how language works and his teaching method generally is just something truly special! Given that he died in 2005, aged 90, I’m so happy that he recorded his teachings so that his legacy could continue.
RIP Michel Thomas, you have my greatest respect and I’m only sorry that I never discovered you sooner…. preferably before you died so that I would have been able to thank you!
As an aside though I must say that his accent and mannerisms on the recordings sounds like Serge Gainsbourg (another rare individual I would class as a genius…. also deceased). I therefore do find it a little funny that I feel I am being teached French by Serge Gainsbourg sometimes when I listen to Michel Thomas’ recordings!
Anyway… if you want to learn French I would truly recommend you check out Michel Thomas…. together with the course I’m doing through Rosetta Stone I feel I’m making great progress in finally unlocking the French language that has so fascinated me for so many years.
Although I should not technically be able to do so, I must confess that today I have heard Mylene Farmer’s new album Point De Suture prior to it’s official release and I am pleased to say “Yay!!!! It’s bloody good!!!!”.Anyway, for those who actually share my passion for Mylene Farmer I suspect you will not be disappointed!
With Muppet at work tonight I decided to watch a movie and the choice was “Doomsday“. I must admit I had never heard of this film until I saw a trailer for it the other day quite by accident and thought its tale of Scotland under lockdown from a deadly virus with a definite tribute to Mad Max looked worth a viewing. Luckily I was not disappointed! What a great little film… and the lead actress Rhona Mitra certainly took my fancy. This lady is destined for a great career methinks and I hope to see more of her in an action role like this again.
Anyway, the film will not win any oscars but if you’re looking for a fun sci-fi/horror tale in the vein of Mad Max then look no further…. plus its not American which is always a good thing too of course!And yes the poster image I’ve put on the blog is the French poster for the film but I liked this poster image much more than the UK version.
