It was okay....
The premise this time is that a bunch of hard nuts are in some jungle somewhere. Something nasty and mean is lurking. Uh oh, what could be about to happen...
In case you didn't guess from the title, lots of the Predator aliens show up. Lots of things die in horrible ways. People say fuck a lot. A well known famous big star Hollywood actor is in it. He wheezes a bit, presumably unable to believe the size of his paycheck for so little work.
Though much like the Borg from Star Trek, the more we see of them, the wimpier the Predator aliens become. In Predator 6 I expect to see a group of rowdy teen Predators terrorising the residents of the Sunnydale Retirement Home. Cue lots of young punk Predators getting their asses handed to them by Granny Mabel and Grandpa George wielding a walking stick, with much comedy whacks on the back of the cool Predator dreadlocks with a big cushion.
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Friday, 21 January 2011
New year, new start
Except it's January 21st, so the year's already slightly rusty. And it's not a new start because I'm working on the novel I started in August 2008. Plus the chapter I wrote today, it's a bit shit.
But, on the other hand, at least I wrote it.
So that makes me happy.
But, on the other hand, at least I wrote it.
So that makes me happy.
Friday, 24 December 2010
Meet is murder
It was not the worst of dates, but perhaps, not the best of dates either.
She was quirky, into animals, and well cute. After the first awkward hour in the pub we ambled the town to look for a curry house, passing an endless parade of fast food joints along the way: McMurder, Kentucky Fried Cruelty, Murder King.
"So, you're a veggie?" I said.
Too bloody right she was. Meat wasn't just murder, it was torture. It was cruel and it was unusual. Why do people even have to eat meat nowadays? I can understand back in the past, but now we have science, and soya!
I advanced the theory that go back far enough and man was pretty much veggie, living off fruits, nuts and seeds scavanged from the land. It was only after tool use that we turned to meat, and the calorie surplus that produced allowed time away from farming to devote to nobler pursuits. To art, to learning, to culture, and that's what drove our brains to grow and one day allowed us to develop the technology to print "Stop the Cruelty" bumper stickers.
That, apparently, was bollocks.
In the curry house she ordered something with chickpeas. I had chicken.
Later, as I drove her back to her car, she hummed the theme to The Great Escape.
I tried not to read too much into this, nor the twin tracks of rubber she left on the tarmac as she left.
Next day and it was bacon for breakfast.
Fucking sweet.
This post was written months ago. Being the hippocrite that I am was waiting to see if there was a chance of a second date before posting...
She was quirky, into animals, and well cute. After the first awkward hour in the pub we ambled the town to look for a curry house, passing an endless parade of fast food joints along the way: McMurder, Kentucky Fried Cruelty, Murder King.
"So, you're a veggie?" I said.
Too bloody right she was. Meat wasn't just murder, it was torture. It was cruel and it was unusual. Why do people even have to eat meat nowadays? I can understand back in the past, but now we have science, and soya!
I advanced the theory that go back far enough and man was pretty much veggie, living off fruits, nuts and seeds scavanged from the land. It was only after tool use that we turned to meat, and the calorie surplus that produced allowed time away from farming to devote to nobler pursuits. To art, to learning, to culture, and that's what drove our brains to grow and one day allowed us to develop the technology to print "Stop the Cruelty" bumper stickers.
That, apparently, was bollocks.
In the curry house she ordered something with chickpeas. I had chicken.
Later, as I drove her back to her car, she hummed the theme to The Great Escape.
I tried not to read too much into this, nor the twin tracks of rubber she left on the tarmac as she left.
Next day and it was bacon for breakfast.
Fucking sweet.
This post was written months ago. Being the hippocrite that I am was waiting to see if there was a chance of a second date before posting...
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
I've only gone and bloody done it!
Read a Dan Brown novel that is. I was finding it a touch hypocritical being so scathing about them having only read the first five chapters of Angels and Demons. So I decided to knuckle down and whack one off. I even re-read the first five chapters.
By chapter 6 my eyes were aching from rolling them so much.
I didn't know you could serpentine through a crowd. Presumably the guy is lying down and wriggling.
An aging ghost, he thought, cruelly reminded that his youthful spirit was living in a mortal shell - I wanted to use that line for someone who's growing old.
When I'm on my way to my weekly meeting of deadly killers I only hope my eyes don't gleam with forboding.
So far people have felt as though they've been stabbed, shot, hit by a truck, electrocuted, punched in the gut (twice) and hit by a cyclone. Never having experienced any of these things I'm at a loss to how the characters were feeling. Can only imagine that Dan Brown had a tougher upbringing than me.
People have quipped, barked, cajoled and hissed.
There was a long discussion about religion and God. It might have been some sparkling reparte but I got a little bored and skipped ahead till the plane landed. Several chapters later he was into all the details of the Vatican City one way system so I don't think I missed much.
The heroine's legs have meandered between chestnut and tawny. Her eyes have not yet become windows into her soul, but it's early days yet. But silly scientist lady. She goes and invents a portable anti-matter containment system based on magnets and then fails to fit an adaptor. I mean, even my two prong electric toothbrush comes with an adaptor for UK sockets.
There's a bad guy. I know he must be bad because he just spent an hour lying on a bed thinking about how much he hates women and how they're second class citizens, good only for demeaning.
A man has looked at someone with bayonets in his eyes.
Every so often a character will stop and run through a list in their mind of all the burning questions that are troubling them.
Did I enjoy it? Not really. I tend not to like reading crap books.
Note - this post was written last year sometime, but I'm so lame I only just got around to hitting publish.
By chapter 6 my eyes were aching from rolling them so much.
I didn't know you could serpentine through a crowd. Presumably the guy is lying down and wriggling.
An aging ghost, he thought, cruelly reminded that his youthful spirit was living in a mortal shell - I wanted to use that line for someone who's growing old.
When I'm on my way to my weekly meeting of deadly killers I only hope my eyes don't gleam with forboding.
So far people have felt as though they've been stabbed, shot, hit by a truck, electrocuted, punched in the gut (twice) and hit by a cyclone. Never having experienced any of these things I'm at a loss to how the characters were feeling. Can only imagine that Dan Brown had a tougher upbringing than me.
People have quipped, barked, cajoled and hissed.
There was a long discussion about religion and God. It might have been some sparkling reparte but I got a little bored and skipped ahead till the plane landed. Several chapters later he was into all the details of the Vatican City one way system so I don't think I missed much.
The heroine's legs have meandered between chestnut and tawny. Her eyes have not yet become windows into her soul, but it's early days yet. But silly scientist lady. She goes and invents a portable anti-matter containment system based on magnets and then fails to fit an adaptor. I mean, even my two prong electric toothbrush comes with an adaptor for UK sockets.
There's a bad guy. I know he must be bad because he just spent an hour lying on a bed thinking about how much he hates women and how they're second class citizens, good only for demeaning.
A man has looked at someone with bayonets in his eyes.
Every so often a character will stop and run through a list in their mind of all the burning questions that are troubling them.
Did I enjoy it? Not really. I tend not to like reading crap books.
Note - this post was written last year sometime, but I'm so lame I only just got around to hitting publish.
Adventures in writing
Cooped up in the house for yet another session of Monday morning I'm so crap blues I thought I'd try a new tack. It started with a Cornetto for lunch (mint and choc chip) and ended with the realisation that armed with a laptop and pocketfuls of my change jar any chic coffee shop could be my office.
Fortunately this being Newport it's not hard to find a coffee house that bustles with the industry of a dozen artistic types tapping away on their laptops. I hit the mother lode in fact - not just a coffee shop, but a coffee AND card shop. Nothing else screams out intellectual thinkers than hand made greetings cards priced at three pounds and above with droll quotations from Oscar Wilde and Woody Allen.
In fact it wasn't just a card and coffee shop, it was a card, coffee AND women's hairdressers. Had I realised then I might just have kept on walking to my local and entered the daily arm wrestling contest (one prize: honour). But I was comitted and I wasn't going to be fazed by the ranks of Bella and Chat magazines beneath those big perm machines. I marched right on past them and up the stairs to the coffee section, the wittily name "The Loft".
That's where I met Henry, my Barrista for the day. Poor Henry. Poor, poor Henry.
With his love of bicep curls and very tight T-shirts, with a glass stud in each ear he treated me to a broad smile and fluttered what I hoped were genetically predetirmined long lashes.
"And what would you like?" he said.
He poured me my coffee, and then added, "With room for some...milk?"
I guess his face was shot so full of Botox that's why his pencil thin eyebrows weren't oscillating suggestively.
"Care to try one of my muffins?"
I thanked him kindly, and said no, going over to a seat by the window and took out my laptop.
He flounced around, clattering cups with wild abandon, counting the change in the tip jar. From time to time he'd join in with songs on the radio. At one point a song by the Scissor Sisters came on and he falsettoed his way over to the radio and spent an inordinate amount of time bending over to tune it in.
I sighed to myself. He must have sensed that I was a writer. Was it the uncombed hair? The baggy, faded and crumpled polo shirt?
Or the tortured look of a soul trying to create?
Somebody (I forget who) once wrote that "with great power comes great responsibilty."
I would do well to remember that, especially around male hair dressers. Poor Henry. His only crime was to be smitten.
That's when the old lady came in. Wearing a raincoat and pitched over almost double, with thick glasses like safety glass on her face.
"And what would you like?" Henry asked her. "Room for some...milk? See anything that catches your eye?"
If anything he was speaking with super italics.
I took my laptop and I slunk away.
Trod in some dog shit on my way home.
Fortunately this being Newport it's not hard to find a coffee house that bustles with the industry of a dozen artistic types tapping away on their laptops. I hit the mother lode in fact - not just a coffee shop, but a coffee AND card shop. Nothing else screams out intellectual thinkers than hand made greetings cards priced at three pounds and above with droll quotations from Oscar Wilde and Woody Allen.
In fact it wasn't just a card and coffee shop, it was a card, coffee AND women's hairdressers. Had I realised then I might just have kept on walking to my local and entered the daily arm wrestling contest (one prize: honour). But I was comitted and I wasn't going to be fazed by the ranks of Bella and Chat magazines beneath those big perm machines. I marched right on past them and up the stairs to the coffee section, the wittily name "The Loft".
That's where I met Henry, my Barrista for the day. Poor Henry. Poor, poor Henry.
With his love of bicep curls and very tight T-shirts, with a glass stud in each ear he treated me to a broad smile and fluttered what I hoped were genetically predetirmined long lashes.
"And what would you like?" he said.
He poured me my coffee, and then added, "With room for some...milk?"
I guess his face was shot so full of Botox that's why his pencil thin eyebrows weren't oscillating suggestively.
"Care to try one of my muffins?"
I thanked him kindly, and said no, going over to a seat by the window and took out my laptop.
He flounced around, clattering cups with wild abandon, counting the change in the tip jar. From time to time he'd join in with songs on the radio. At one point a song by the Scissor Sisters came on and he falsettoed his way over to the radio and spent an inordinate amount of time bending over to tune it in.
I sighed to myself. He must have sensed that I was a writer. Was it the uncombed hair? The baggy, faded and crumpled polo shirt?
Or the tortured look of a soul trying to create?
Somebody (I forget who) once wrote that "with great power comes great responsibilty."
I would do well to remember that, especially around male hair dressers. Poor Henry. His only crime was to be smitten.
That's when the old lady came in. Wearing a raincoat and pitched over almost double, with thick glasses like safety glass on her face.
"And what would you like?" Henry asked her. "Room for some...milk? See anything that catches your eye?"
If anything he was speaking with super italics.
I took my laptop and I slunk away.
Trod in some dog shit on my way home.
Mac Mini Review
Why I hate my Mac Mini.
This is the second in a series of occasional technology reviews that are based, not in any subjective way, but around how things are making me hate them.
Today: My Mac Mini.
First off I guess I should preface this with how pretty she is. How whisper quiet. How she boots up so fast.
I use it primarily as a front end to my Personal Video Recorder Server that is running MythTV. To sum up - the server records freeview programs to a hard drive. The Mac Mini connects to the server and shows them on my TV.
So I use very little of the Mac OS itself.
My main gripe? The auto update system.
I think every piece of software comes with a feature the developers shoved in there just to see how much rage they could generate. For me, with OS X, that feature is the auto update system.
It first manifests itself as a chirpy little blue icon that sits at the bottom of the screen and bounces in a happy go lucky, look at me, I'm a happy blue icon kind of way. If I could physically punch an icon displayed by a computer on a TV screen I would happily punch this happy chirpy blue icon in the face till it was dead. And then go after it's mother.
It pops up just after I've started my Mac and gives me three options.
Let's take the "Install and restart" option.
Install and restart. Hmm. How can I put this? I just turned my fucking computer on. I wish to use it. I do not wish to wait for an update to install and then have it restart on me.
The other options are "Not now" and "Ask me later". Both of these appear to mean "Ask me next time I turn my computer on".
Which starts the whole cycle of start my mac, have the urge to go on a chirpy blue icon search and destroy mission, get pissed at being asked to restart the computer that I just turned because I WISHED TO USE IT and then click on "not now".
I did try a second way. I left the dialog alone until I'd finished using my computer. And because I'd finished using it I decided to shut it down. Only to get this message:
"The Update application has cancelled the system shutdown"
Cue the urge to get punchy. My television was expensive. I took it out on my Keysonic keyboard with built in track pad. It's surprisingly still working.
Through gritted teeth back to the update dialog. Still those three options.
"Install and restart".
How can I put this in words a computer that doesn't respond to my voice would understand?
Sadly it didn't understand the phrase "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrfuceatshitanddieyoudirtymother". Slight oversight on Apple's part there I feel.
Translated that roughly means "I've just spent a pleasant two hours watching the very fine Guillmero Del Toro film, Pan's Labyrinth, and now it's gone midnight and I wish to go to bed."
Not stay up to watch a computer that I wish to have shut down instead update itself, shut down, and then start the fuck back up again.
If only there was another option. Like "Install updates and shut down". Man, that would be fine. So fine.
But until then it's a battle of wills. And my Mac hasn't been updated in months.
This is the second in a series of occasional technology reviews that are based, not in any subjective way, but around how things are making me hate them.
Today: My Mac Mini.
First off I guess I should preface this with how pretty she is. How whisper quiet. How she boots up so fast.
I use it primarily as a front end to my Personal Video Recorder Server that is running MythTV. To sum up - the server records freeview programs to a hard drive. The Mac Mini connects to the server and shows them on my TV.
So I use very little of the Mac OS itself.
My main gripe? The auto update system.
I think every piece of software comes with a feature the developers shoved in there just to see how much rage they could generate. For me, with OS X, that feature is the auto update system.
It first manifests itself as a chirpy little blue icon that sits at the bottom of the screen and bounces in a happy go lucky, look at me, I'm a happy blue icon kind of way. If I could physically punch an icon displayed by a computer on a TV screen I would happily punch this happy chirpy blue icon in the face till it was dead. And then go after it's mother.
It pops up just after I've started my Mac and gives me three options.
Let's take the "Install and restart" option.
Install and restart. Hmm. How can I put this? I just turned my fucking computer on. I wish to use it. I do not wish to wait for an update to install and then have it restart on me.
The other options are "Not now" and "Ask me later". Both of these appear to mean "Ask me next time I turn my computer on".
Which starts the whole cycle of start my mac, have the urge to go on a chirpy blue icon search and destroy mission, get pissed at being asked to restart the computer that I just turned because I WISHED TO USE IT and then click on "not now".
I did try a second way. I left the dialog alone until I'd finished using my computer. And because I'd finished using it I decided to shut it down. Only to get this message:
"The Update application has cancelled the system shutdown"
Cue the urge to get punchy. My television was expensive. I took it out on my Keysonic keyboard with built in track pad. It's surprisingly still working.
Through gritted teeth back to the update dialog. Still those three options.
"Install and restart".
How can I put this in words a computer that doesn't respond to my voice would understand?
Sadly it didn't understand the phrase "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrfuceatshitanddieyoudirtymother". Slight oversight on Apple's part there I feel.
Translated that roughly means "I've just spent a pleasant two hours watching the very fine Guillmero Del Toro film, Pan's Labyrinth, and now it's gone midnight and I wish to go to bed."
Not stay up to watch a computer that I wish to have shut down instead update itself, shut down, and then start the fuck back up again.
If only there was another option. Like "Install updates and shut down". Man, that would be fine. So fine.
But until then it's a battle of wills. And my Mac hasn't been updated in months.
It snow joke
Today is a snow day for me. I get to go build a snowman in Cardiff. So if I get hit by a mobility scooter that's not been fitted with its winter tyres and the morgue attendant wonders, that's why I have a carrot in my pocket.
Given the slow speed at which snowmen move perhaps I'll be able to capture a decent picture with my HTC Hero phone camera. But I doubt it.
Given the slow speed at which snowmen move perhaps I'll be able to capture a decent picture with my HTC Hero phone camera. But I doubt it.
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