Film, Gaming, Media & Marketing, Personal, Technology

Adieu

I’m off to Malaysia for the next week, visiting family for Easter; blogging frequency will almost certainly be reduced. So in good housekeeping style, there’s a few things I ought to set out clearly here, having failed to blog them in any sensible way.

Things seen:

(a) Continuing, brilliant ER, mediocre, but sometimes amusing Tripping the Rift, Simpsons, Smallville and Frasier continuing through their current seasons.
(b) Bubba Ho-Tep is a great film about a black JFK, an impotent Elvis, and a Mummy wearing a cowboy hat. Not just cult, but very clever too. Stars the epic Bruce Campbell.
(c) Zatoichi and 21 Grams are both films worth watching; the former a performance piece/far east cowboy feature, the latter a sometimes over-clever but generally moving film from the creator of Amores Perros.
(d) The remake of Starsky & Hutch is a less good film, but completely enjoyable
(e) The new Orange Film Foundation (or whatever) ads. That guy is DAMN funny. Anyone else think he’s a bit Kevin-Spacey-esque? Any links to info about these ads would be appreciated.

Things done:

(a) I’ve also been introduced to Xbox Live and intend to get it myself (if I can get it all to work, with my Xbox Live, a patch cable, a Mac and a wireless network – told you I knew about the tech) so that I can beat Americans at Magic: The Gathering.
(b) As well as the rebranding/self-hosting of this site, I’ve found an AMAZING blogging tool which posts using the Blogger API, so you know what I’m currently listening to (as seen below).
(c) Finished Jennifer Government (brilliant), and am proceeding nicely with the Rogue Nation of Badass Devils and the Republic of the Sunne on Nation States.
(d) Started Hey Nostradamus, as recommended by Chris, and Absolution Gap, as recommended by me. Alistair Reynolds’ previous Revelation-Space-Universe books are pretty good too.
(e) I’ve added Brazil, Heat and Donnie Darko to my films-I-should-have-watched-by-now list (having finally crossed off The Usual Suspects a few months ago). Any takers for some video nights?

Things revealed

(a) Damian is the one with the continental fruit beer fixation, as noted on the napkin of a thousand blogs.
(b) Tom & I are working on a secret project. It’s very exciting.
(c) I’m trying to stay up all night to prepare myself for the jetlag to Malaysia. The jetlag caused by the introduction of British Summer Time is contributing to a sense of increasing dazedness. Might post again later, especially if I decide to rewatch bits of Hi Fidelity again…

See y’all…

[Listening to: My Friends – Red Hot Chili Peppers – One Hot Minute (04:03)]
Miscellany, Personal

Sporting Goodness

I’m not a massive sports fan. Point of fact: the first time I ever spent an entire day in a pub was about a month ago, for the Wales-Scotland encounter in the Six Nations. It was a lot of fun; I sat with Daf and some of his mates at the Isaac Newton in Cambridge and cheered the Welsh onto their victory.

This weekend saw a reprise; the England-France game on Saturday (supporting England, despite a constant stream of insults from Rachel, an England fan, who’d decided that my support of Wales at any point in my life was unfounded and absurd), and the Boat Race on Sunday evening.

Unsurprisingly, the England game left me largely nonplussed (I think anyone who wears those skin tight tops deserves to lose, but both teams couldn’t, so…), but Cambridge’s victory in the boat race had me very happy. Standing on the bank near Hammersmith bridge, whooping and cheering and very definitely feeling the underdogs – Oxford seemed to have about 80 times as many supporters on the banks as we did – I finally began to understand why people support teams and follow sport.

I don’t intend to start doing it in any way – quite apart from the sport I play, I have enough hobbies… but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.

[Listening to: Zak and Sara – Ben Folds – Rockin’ The Suburbs (03:14)]
Personal, Technology

Facelift

Thanks to the help of Chris and Tom, this blog has had a substantial facelift, is now blowered by pogger, has had comments naturally disabled then artificially re-enabled by haloscan, and is now hosted on new servers. It also has a new counter, but just mentally add ‘1170’ to that, because that’s how many clickthroughs the blog had when it was hosted on motime.

I think its pretty rocking, and I can stop wasting time making it look good and get back to my arbitrary (yet pleasurable) writing of nearly completely meme-free blogs.

Although I will try to get some links up in the blog template so you can click between Chris’, Tom’s and my blogs (in our blog-ring of three), should you desire.

Miscellany

The thrill to grill

grill... mmmm. It is easily thought that kebab-store grilled meat suffers from limiting gradations of quality – all well below good. I, however, had the fortune to wander into this place – Kebabish, subittled ‘we thrill to grill’ – just up from the Bakerloo line stop of Edgeware Road tube – where they, you guessed it, grill excellent meat to put into freshly baked bread. It’s a good pitstop: I had there what is perhaps the most accurately and delightfully named ‘kebab roll’ in the Universe. £2 well spent.

It’s fantastic. Kebabalicious, one might even say, should one be inclined.

Miscellany

There’s no limit

no no, no no no no, no no there's no limit…one would imagine, to the setences one can generate when trying to be truly imaginative with the English language; it’s for this reason that people like Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie impress me; they have literary flair. What I find amusing, and what my Mum, who’s an Academic Socio-Linguist (is there any other kind?) finds interesting, are the kinds of quasi-sentences that just pop out when you least expect them.

For example, the other day (ok, ok, it was yesterday at the pub and this is all part of the great napkin-blogging enterprise), a friend (ok, it was Tom) enunciated the following words: “Google Weebl badgers find.” Although this made limited sense to me, “Google” as a verb does; so, following the recommendation of Mr Phillips, I ended up visiting a site where I did, indeed, find badgers. In fact, it’s an interesting song about badgers and mushrooms that to me was vaguely reminiscent of 2 Unlimited’s ‘No Limit’.

The makers of the English language may decry our efforts to be inventive with the language, but I largely applaud it. Not anything that leads to the badger site, though. That gave me a headache. Little buggers.

Books, Current affairs, Media & Marketing

Points of reference

I’ve just started reading Jennifer Government, a novel by Max Barry; thus far its a very amusing vision of a dystopic ‘capitalizm’-centric universe. Here, the ultimate in marketing strategies involves not selling your product and then, when you finally do, shooting the people who buy it. It has a corresponding website, Nation States, which allows people to play a kind of political role-playing-game – you  get to choose the location and politics of your country.

Which brings me to my subject: points of reference. I have two; the Sun, and the Devil. Nothing is better than the Sun, and everything is better than the Devil. I don’t think there’s need for anything further.

To that end, I’ve started up two countries on Nation States – “The Rogue Nation of Badass Devils” and the “Republic of the Sunne“. In one, I will vote exactly opposite to my inclinations, in the other I will try to be faithful to them (I’ll let you, dear reader, decide which is which) – and we’ll see who ultimately prevails.

The ultimate battle between good and evil. Right here. Right now. Bring it.

Miscellany, Technology

Upcoming posts

blog minutesAt the pub last night (it was an entertaining evening, many things happened in addition to my realisation about the flying v (? – see below), conversation with Tom, Damo & Richard led to many blog-inspring ideas. Worrying, really, that I manage to occasionally see conversation and real life as inter-blog time filling. Last night was a minefield of bloggable material, which will materialise on the site over the course of today.

This napkin provides the minutes of our meeting, insofar as subjects I wish to blog upon. No doubt Tom will blog on others.
Oh, and in a moment of Catatonia and Tiger-beer-inspired genius, Tom came out with this lyric: “I put horses heads, in people’s beds, because I… have a blog.” Outstanding.

Armand David's personal weblog: dadhood, technology, running, media, food, stuff and nonsense.