Personal, Update

Damo doesn’t live here, any more

1 Comment

The reason for relatively limited blog posts of late is multi-fold

(1) My personal life has been busy, in a good way
(2) I lost the habit of blogging relatively during the 6 week internet drought imposed by my service provider over Christmas
(3) I installed Windows Vista (more to follow)
(4) Damo’s been living with me for the last 6 weeks, and I’ve therefore been disproportionately social

Damo’s now moved back into his flat, which is cool, but kind of sad. I like having friends living with me, and Damo’s one of the best. No doubt it also had an impact on how healthily I eat, too (Damo’s the kind of guy who goes out to buy a snack and comes back with Parma ham and Parmesan and other things beginning Parma).

Still; expect normal service to resume. I’ll try to alternate regular posts with the techie ones you all know and love.

Comics, Film

THIS IS SPARTA

1 Comment

Thanks to Hugh and Simon from Beatwax, I got to be one of about, erm, 300 ‘influential bloggers’ to go and see Frank Miller/Zack Snyder’s “300” yesterday, a film about how 300 Spartans held off the invading Persian army.

That is literally all you need to know about the plot. It is a thing of awesomeness: everything about it is well done. The shots are beautiful, the acting powerful, the comic book like physiques of the near super-heroic Spartans is appropriate, the battles fantastic, the voices great, the drama high, the tension good, the sound ear-blowingly awesome, and the beards… well, they have to be seen to be believed. There’s really not a lot of plot to unveil and not many weak points. James, who came to watch it with me, observed that the ‘political’ subplot was less interesting, and there’s no doubt that some of the dialogue is unnecessary, but it doesn’t diminish from the overall sense of wonder.

I guess the two things I’d say to people going to see it: if you can’t deal with scenes of violence and gore, you might have some trouble. And: deal with your problems with violence and gore and go see this movie. It’s great.

Whilst I’m under no obligation to write about it (as you’ll see if you click through to Hugh’s blog), who wouldn’t want to!? It’s a fantastic film and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if there are another 299 positive blog reviews being written or published as we speak. I had to miss the Q&A with Zack Snyder, who came across as someone remarkably humble, nervous and inarticulate for the man responsible for the wonder of 300, but am sure he perked up during the questions – gather he’s had quite a busy couple of days flying around.

Armand’s now off to wonder whether Leonidus vs. Ninja would be an interesting deathmatch… and also why, despite the fact that they obviously care about bloggers, the makers of 300 didn’t give us access to any easy-post images on the (slow, poorly designed flash) website or via Flickr. Instead, be sated with this YouTube provided trailer:

Food

Steak

4 Comments

Yes, after a bit of a hiatus, I’m back and blogging baby! Been a busy time in real life, but now that I’m back I’d like to get straight to the important issues that have been plaguing the blogosphere. No, not the iPhone, not the DRM conversation, not Anna Nicole-Smith, not the Shilpa Shetty race story, not the BBC dealing with the license fee increase, or their poll for feedback on the iPlayer…

Nope. None of that. I’m here today to talk about… steak (damn, gave it away in the title). So Hindus, vegetarians, and anyone else likely to take offense, now’s the time to look away from your screen.

So I had a steak last night, at Las Iguanas, a restaurant in the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank. On the menu was Argentine steak. Now, if you’re like me (i.e. a REAL MAN) when you see steak on the menu you feel drawn by it. You may not order it quite every time but you will feel temptation. You will be lured in by the call of the succulent, tender, juicy meatiness of it all. And on this occasion, further tempted by the Argentinian pedigree of the meat in question, I succumbed to temptation.

“How would you like it sir? Medium well? Medium?” asked my waitress, clearly impressed with my choice, but woefully underestimating my manliness.
“Rare,” say I.
“Rare?” she checks.
“Rare,” I affirm.

There was no doubt that rare was the cooking level of choosing, and the cooking level of choosing was rare. And yet, much was my disappointment when I was presented with a steak that leaked absolutely no blood onto a plate! Am I alone in thinking that good, fresh steak when rare or even medium will ooze a little bloody goodness onto the plate, which adds to the overall flavourfullness of it all? In the end, it wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t quite what I was hoping for.

I’ll admit that in my squeamish youth I had a few well-done steaks. These days, I no longer take the risk of ordering medium rare steak because it too often comes up too heavy on the medium side of things. Do I need to start asking for blue steak? Quick poll below to see what my loyal blog readers prefer. For reference, my favourite steaks in London have come from the Gaucho grill (fantastic), Bodeans (very very tasty on good days, and their spicy butter is tasty), Chez Gerard (standard, tasty fayre) and a couple of very nice steaks lately from the Captain Kidd pub in Wapping (on separate occasions). The worst steak I ever had was a 24 oz whopper in a Fatty Arbuckles in Oxford, but that’s another story…

Where’d you have your best steak of late? Let me know in the comments.

{democracy:3}
Miscellany, Writing

I be Mr Heinlein

Leave a comment

Whilst I appreciate these quizzes don’t count as content, becoming a science-fiction/fantasy writer of sorts is something of a dream so I thought I’d share this with you.

I am:

Robert A. Heinlein

Beginning with technological action stories and progressing to epics with religious overtones, this take-no-prisoners writer racked up some huge sales numbers.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Which is cool. Stranger in a Strange Land was a deeply weird book when I first read it (I was 12) but it’s a masterful piece of storytelling.

Media & Marketing, Technology, Television

Joost, BBC iPlayer invites wanted

Leave a comment

Please can someone send me these? I’d really like to see what they look like.

For those who don’t know, Joost is an internet TV service that’s undergoing a trial phase. It was created by the founders of Skype. The BBC iPlayer is another internet TV service for BBC programming – an evolution of the BBC iMP, which I tested last year.

I like to be up with these cool tech trends but have been left off the list this time :-( — hoping someone can send them my way soon! Thanks.

Personal

Busy weekend: remember to dance

Leave a comment

I’ve had a busy weekend. Indie, chilling, birthday dinner, movie (Dreamgirls, bad), walk (Hampstead Heath, good), hot choc, supper, online shopping (damnit), and, erm, now to bed. But first, via Ze, I bring you ‘G’.

Share and enjoy. (Erm, you draw a stick figure, name it and it dances. That’s mine.)

Apologies to all the people who read this blog and find it overwhelmingly full of tech/geek posts at the moment. I will write more eclectically (and regularly) in the coming months. Has been a ludicrous January, but now that I am back up to being broadbanded up at home and have a clearer picture of what’s coming up things should be more predictable.

Gaming

Superman Returns PS2 review

Leave a comment

My buddy Jon has gone to work at Electronic Arts, and has arranged for me to get some games to review on here – thanks Jon! The first one that came through was Superman Returns on PS2, and here are a few brief thoughts, alongside an FMV trailer.

I’m not gonna give you the story – it’s not relevant, really – the game has a Spidey 2 / GTA style free-roaming, choose your own mission feel, involving any number of Metallo-bots and other baddies. Sometimes asteroids. And you’re Superman. That’s all you really need to know.

Gameplay-wise, its kind of fun to fly around as a Superhero, but the cool and relatively straightforward control scheme falls down when you start to get bored from having to deal with incredibly repetitive baddies and disaster scenarios. Whilst the end-of-stage bosses present something more of a challenge and novelty, this is a game that will involved a large amount of button mashing.

Sound – is fine. Nothing to complain about or sing about here, really. Not a game that needs a lot of atmosphere.

Graphics – show off the PS2’s decrepitude as a console. There are no textures, and about 7 polygons. Kind of reminds of me of ‘Alone in the Dark’. Anyone remember that? If you don’t… video follows. I hope its better on the other consoles.

Overall: I’d give this game about a 3. It’s not great, has some novelty value, but even superhero wannabes like myself will lose patience with the repetitive action and poor graphics. And if, like me, you’ve recently come into possession of an Xbox 360, you’ll probably want to play Gears of War for a while yet…

EA does have a bunch of very cool games in development: Hellgate London and Army of Two to name two… hopefully I’ll get a preview of these soon and will write about them here.

Huh – who’d have thunk. My blog has actual content on it. Big up!

Film

Premiere of the Peter O’Toole movie, Venus

1 Comment

Just been to the VENUS premiere with Maz. Was a great film, actually. Wasn’t too sure on the basis of the trailer (especially with the cheesey American voiceover in the version below)…

I don’t think this can be said often enough, but Peter O’Toole and Leslie Phillips are LEGENDS. I had a very strong desire to walk up to them both at the end of the film and simply say “Marvellous. Splendid. Wonderful.” — completely sincerely (although I would have fun speaking in posh). Sadly Leslie was occupied and Peter had left early, but still. Splendid. Marvellous. Wonderful. I hope you’re into blogging ;-).

Here’s the trailer for you:

It opens this week and I recommend everybody sees it: all the acting is magnificent, most of the writing is wonderful, you feel uncomfortable where you’re meant to, warm where you’re meant to, and pensive and confused where you’re meant to. Occasionally, admittedly, it is confusing as to why he’s quoting the most obvious Shakespeare out there (I mean, even I recognised the quotations), but it was, I guess, broadly appropriate.

It’s a love story. And a story of a life (mostly) well lived. “You have been loved, Maurice.”

Thanks to Alicia for sorting tix via Buena Vista…

Celebrity spottings: Hanif Kureshi, Peter O’Toole, Leslie Phillips and Jodie Whittaker (beautiful young star of the film) – for those curious, it’s her real accent (or close to it!).

Update: Sheels was at the premiere too, and just sent me a text to let me know she is standing at the bar next to Peter O’Toole! Cool!

Miscellany

I’m back, baby

Leave a comment

Right, my adoring public. The internet problem has been resolved (ish) and I’m now back online. Once I started getting my hackles up the ISP seemed to pull its thumb out and I’m surfing at a reasonable 6MB now. Given that I was able to connect at 17MB before, there’s still clearly an issue, not to mention my landline doesn’t accept incoming calls… but hey, after all they’ve put us through, this is veritable luxury.

A stable wireless connection. W00t!

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