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Mini Harry Potter films review
November 15, 2009 – 7:43 am
Started talking about this on MSN and seeing that Harry Potter films seem to come up in conversation far too often, I might as well copy it to here and link to it in the future. Saves the lazy me having to type it again.
- First one is good for being a happy/cheery kids movie. Magical really, especially with the introduction of the awesome John Williams score.
- Second one was ok, it’s always been my least favourite book, but the character of Myrtle was captured well enough for me to not dislike the film completely.
- Third one was too arty. Far too obvious it’s a different director and set and some of the parts, like Lupins changing into the werewolf after they leave the Shrieking Shack and Sirius attacking him felt cheap. Could have been the lighting. I did like how they did the time travel and the evolution of Hermione’s character though.
- The fourth one concentrated far too much on the bloody Triwizard tournament and wasn’t faithful enough to the books. That dragon egg sequence seemed to last forever and it wasn’t clear on how the world’s opinion of Harry changed. Plus Dobby is even more annoying than the books!
- Fifth one, Umbridge, was good and my fave one. Showed change and how no one believed Harry and it replicated the overal powerlessness I felt when reading the book. And it introduced Luna which is such a brilliant actress.
- Last one changed far too much to the book and shows how some actor may have been miscast. Like Ginny Weasely who has zero chemistry with Harry or Ron/Hermione who also don’t really have much going for each other. Plus I disliked how they changed the end with Snape killing Dumbledore which was entirely different in the book.
Links I’ve been meaning to blog about for too long
November 14, 2009 – 11:52 pm
The title says it all and some of these have been open in Firefox tabs for months!
Can you predict review scores? - I can’t believe anyone thought this was worthy of a company! Maybe I should start a company like that and make money!
Stop Telling Me What To Do – Lengthy [and I mean very long] yet wellwritten column about games and that they should stop displaying tutorials. I’ve been getting annoyed with Fable II continuously reminding me to press A to perform an action. I’ve been playing it for over 30 hours!
EatLiver – Avoiding all the wrong pictures, the site has about 50% funny content. Spent a good hour one day going through the archives.
Star Wars Name Generator – Does what it says on the tin, great place when in need for a random fictional name or two. Like NaNoWriMo which I shall not mention further!
Liberty City Map – Perfect for hunting those pesky rats!
You Can’t Go Home Again? – 1.01 and 1.02 “The Pilot” - Brilliant Lost post with many, many images on the foreshadowing of the pilot Lost episode to mythology and twists later on. Includes so many details I’ve missed even on repeat viewings, like placing of scars which could be significant or the frequent occurence of black and white.
Connecting the Dots – 1.16, 1.17, 1.18 and 1.19 “Outlaws”, “…In Translation”, “Numbers”, “Deus Ex Machina” – Another great Lost post on the connections between events that weren’t obvious during the first viewing, such as Locke’s fall from the building during a Hurley centric episode. Highlights many of the ‘coincidences’.
Halo Legends – The Babysitter Today Only – Starting to get annoyed by things only being available for limited time..
Star Wars KotOR Quiz – User generated KotOR quiz that I scored FAR too high in! 39/40! Although technically it would have been full marks, but one of the questions is wrong. And yes, I know what the ‘Unknown Planet’ is called; what planet the main playable character originates from; and what the sharks on Manaan are called!
FSR Halo 2 Song Rap – A not quite SFW and quite bizarre song written about Halo 2 including video. Catchy though and I remember first listening to it back when I started playing it in 2005!
Orthographic diacritics and multilingual computing – A great article on how the Latin alphabet isn’t enough, how it’s been extended in some languages with letters like the German umlaut and what can be done in the future.
I’m Belle de Jour – I watched the TV show because of Billie Piper and read the book because of the show. It’s interesting how she’s decided to finally reveal her true identity after all these years, although I do wonder if she’s not just a decoy.
‘You’ve been very, very naughty’ – Lately I’ve gotten quite into watching Supernanny and this article linked via the program’s Wikipedia page definitely leaves a bitter taste.
Dear Every Site That Paginates Articles – Something particularly bad on gaming articles.
Xbox gamer ‘gutted’ after cut off – Tough cookie.. Muppet.
Hairfinder.com – Want that hairstyle!
[FWIW, this post would have been posted several hours ago would it not be annoying to assign categories on wordpress.com..]
#NaNoWriMo – Day 2 to 4
November 5, 2009 – 4:35 am
Unsurprisingly NaNoWriMo isn’t going as well as I’d hoped, although at the same time I’ve already accomplished more than my past two attempts. I’m currently on 3644 words and should be on 6667 by now [yes, today is the fifth day, but seeing that it's 3am in the morning, I'm not counting it!].
I started off slow with 300 words, but then wrote in the night to the second day until reaching 3061 words and I was fairly pleased with not only the progress, but also the way the story was unfolding. I even shared the story with some people which makes it the first bit of creative writing I’ve shared since school! Feedback was generally positive, although I’m sure some people were just being nice, but instead of taking that on board and carrying on I felt that I’d written myself into a dead-end and didn’t carry on until earlier today, day 4.
Sometime this afternoon I realised that it was due to my inability to write dialogue that sounds natural and is flowing. My written dialogue tends to sound very wooden and nowhere near actual spoken dialogue. Trying to force myself to carry on with dialogue hasn’t helped and I’ve now changed my story to not describe events as much at the time they’re happening, but rather look back at them at the end of the day. Not sure if that is really working out all that well as I’ve only written 600 words since then!
Also thinking about making my character mute or deaf to avoid most conversations!
Back to it..
#NaNoWriMo 2009 – Day 1
November 1, 2009 – 3:48 am
Another year of NaNoWriMo and I’m determined to complete my novel this year!
So far I’ve written 300 words in the past twenty minutes and am now stopping for tonight to gather my thoughts. I’m not sure where I want this novel to go or even it’s most basic plot outline, but I’ve started with a general description of some places. The following is an excerpt of one of the central planets featured. At least I think it will be a central planet!
Asteria was both a shining example and a dark mark on the galactic parliament. It was never an important planet with merely fifty million inhabitants on the small sphere, most of whom were honest and kind. Its gravitational pull was stronger than the galactic average and reliant on the seasons of which it had twenty-two, all with their own celebrations. Landing ships was only possible during eight of them and it even affected ships passing the planet on their routes in neighbouring systems. The citizens of Asteria were used to the conditions, they treasured the ritual change of seasons and enjoyed not having visitors all year round despite being located near the centre of the galaxy.
Obviously first draft and incomplete.
London suggestions
October 30, 2009 – 4:21 pm
I have to go to London next Wednesday, Nov 4th and seeing I don’t go to London often and have to be there early in the morning for a passport appointment that shouldn’t last longer than a couple of hours at most, I’m looking at spending the whole day there.
I am thinking about seeing Mousetrap which I’ve been wanting to see for over ten years and never got round to, but apart from that I haven’t got any plans.
I posed the question on Twitter earlier and had many suggestions already which is yet another reason why Twitter works for me [insert all those social media guru buzzwords here].
So far I’ve got:
- wysiwygjt: London Walks! I <3 London! I’ve done 2, Jack the Ripper and Unseen London, both were great. 4 Knitting
- ChiverstheCat: See the Montezuma exhibish at the British Museum & treat yourself to lunch in the restaurant there!
- NevilleFenn: Have lunch at the S & M Cafe – best food ever! As Agent Cooper would say, ‘good food, reasonably priced’ – 50’s cafe style too. :-)
Any other suggestions are more than welcome!
Breast Cancer Awareness Month – #2 – The dressing gown edition
October 2, 2009 – 11:54 pm
I went shopping today and can’t remember the last time my feet have hurt this much.
Breast Cancer Awareness Month – #1 – The candle edition
October 2, 2009 – 12:01 am
Truth be told I nearly forgot it’s this time of year again. I will be attempting to post a picture containing anything pink each day.
#1 – The candle edition:
Some spam mail
September 26, 2009 – 2:10 am
In the past months I’ve noticed Gmail’s spam folder containing several real emails so I’ve made it a habit to check it every other day. At the moment I get about ~200 spam mails a day across twelve different accounts and some are just hilarious. Curiously there is quite a lot of them that don’t contain any links or phone numbers and only have maybe one or two sentences in them.
Here’s a list of some of the better ones, unedited:
- Dld you know all lt takes ls a phone and the wllllngness to share some lnformatlon wlth others to see around 1500 to 3500 weekly sometlmes even dally. Call the lnfo llne for more detalls.
- You have frequent convulsions? Time to stop it!
- We are glad to have seen again.
- Purify, Clense, Look Better, Feel Better.
- Feel power and strength of your ancestors when you drilling your woman.
- We teach you the art of becoming.
- Best oil for pork motor.
- Aging steals male strength! V. booster returns it!
- If something’s out of tune in the Music of your Love, our Male Pilules will return harmony!
- Lets’ make it again, darling?
- Even the most shy girls will moan and groan under your meat press!
- “My husband and I tried the program and our energy level increased immediately! After 3 weeks now I have noticed even more changes. My bowel movements have improved and I feel so hydrated and healthy.” Cindy – Nashville, TN
I sure am glad for Cindy from Nashville!
I’ve also received some longer ones which are posted over on my tumblr and are well worth a read:
- Yey, I’m getting an inheritance from someone who has died in the tsunami!
- I’m advised to stop dealing with non officials in my bank and get an ATM card to withdraw lots of money from!
- A corrupt bank employee from Ghana wants to give me money!
- And Ms Angela telling me got rich by travelling to Nigeria!
They all seem so legit!
Not to forget about Vishenka, Veronika and Princess from Russia!
And then there was this winning entry:
Princess makes us a tempting offer!
September 21, 2009 – 12:05 am
Vishenka and Veronika were already interested and now Princess comes along, too!
Dear friend,
It can be so that you do not know me but i will introduce myself.
I am … I think … i will keep my name in secret. Let it be Princess.
I am a small Princess. I am from Russia. I am so upset. I am
beautiful and cute girl but so upset at the same time.I want to find handsome guy with whom we will have a long life.
I do not know what to do. I want to change everything in my life.
I suppose you are smart boy and can be my prince.
Please, reply me back when you get this letter cause it can make me
feel better. I will not be alone. And who knows we can be nice
friends.Reply Longhair7838@rambler.ru to this e-mail.
Best wishes
Princess.
So she’s got long hair then?
