Countdown to 2011

So, 2011 is the year I revive my blog. I've been very lax over the past couple of years but I've missed the writing a bit and have also been prompted by comments from some of my friends. So... Watch this space. There's gonna be some truly awesome stuff here. Truly awesome!

Honest.

cats

Elevenses

For a slightly belated elevenses, I treated myself to a happy face biscuit, two squares of chocolate and a cup of tea made by the lovely Rachael.
The happy face biscuit was very tasty as one would expect.
The chocolate was an interesting mix. One square was cadbury's dairy milk and the other was galaxy. This was an experiment based on a comment by Sarah Millican in which she claimed that the two chocolates combined would induce sex noises. Although it was very tasty, no moaning ensued. Please note that this part of my elevenses was specifically in the interest of science and not for own pleasure.
The tea was excellent. 8/10, the two points dropped because it could have been stronger!

Toast

So having become a little peckish I wandered up to the work canteen in search of something to eat. What I found was toast. Well, actually, bread. Which I then had to toast myself in one of those weird conveyor belt toasters. As you can see from the picture, they were not evenly toasted. This is because one of the slices of bread got stuck in the toaster on the way round. For those that need to know, I used a generic spread on my toast rather than butter.
Ultimately I was unfulfilled by this snack and wish I'd gone for a bacon bun.

Asda Cranberry Wheats

Today's breakfast was a bowl of cranberry wheats from Asda. I'll be honest with you, it wasn't the most exciting breakfast I've ever had. They're pretty much mini shredded wheat stuffed with some dodgy cranberry stuff. To moisten it all up, I served it up with some tasty skimmed milk and an even tastier cup of tea. Tea is often the best bit of my meals.
Stay tuned for more exciting reviews of stuff I've eaten!

Weirdness in the Gents

The weirdness in the gents has resurfaced of late.

Just today I popped in to take care of business to find a man standing in front of the mirror watching himself stroke his own bottom. Not in a brushing off fluff sort of way but in a slow, sensual caressing sort of way. He was unashamed and continued to do it for a good thirty seconds until I locked myself in one of the cubicles. I was only doing a number one, but I was a bit scared and the inch of solid wood between us made me feel safer.

When I left the safety of the cubicle, he was gone. However when I emerged into the corridor, I saw the same man in the kitchenette across the corridor drinking water from a plastic cup. Was he doing it in a conventional way, I hear you ask. Nooooooo. He was pouring the water into his mouth from a great height.

Location:Watermill Close,,United Kingdom

Posting from my iPad

I've recently laid my hands on an iPad. Yay me.

After months of being sceptical of this 'revolutionary' new bit of kit from Apple, I finally got to play with one in the Apple store at Cribbs Causeway. (In actual fact I played with about twenty of them, because by the time I left the store, every single ipad of them was displaying either the www.rmwfilms.com or our YouTube page. I shouldn't think we actually got many extra page views out of it, but it's the thought that counts.)

Anyway... I was quite impressed with the thing. It's well sexy. I know all the arguments about it basically being a nerfed tablet laptop with no USB ports and that it's just an oversized iPod touch and all of that, because I was making those very same arguments. But it's sexy, okay? It has a lovely responsive touch screen and... well... It's sexy (not in a boner inducing way... that would be weird). It doesn't reinvent the wheel or give me any functionality that I don't have in the form of a laptop or a smartphone, but it does have an immediacy about it that I like. It's always there. Always connected. None of this waiting two minutes for my lappie to start up or trying to read the interweb on the relatively tiny screen of my HTC HD2. It's there its on and, did I mention that it was sexy?

Some of my friends are envious. Several of my work colleagues have had a play and pronounced it the greatest thing on the planet based on a few minutes with Google Earth. I don't like to point out that Google Earth on the iPad is no different to Google Earth on the PC. I think the addition of fingers is what makes it all so awesome for them. I shall have to work that into a chat up line somehow.

Other friends think it's the most enormous waste of money on the planet. I would point out to these friends that it's not really any different to buying a bigger, more powerful car than is entirely necessary (Jon) or a bigger TV with ambient lights (Scotty) and 5.1 surround sound (Neil) or a holiday chalet in Devon (Dad).

So anyway... I've been playing with it for a couple of weeks and I still love it. I'm now about to start delving into how useful it will be in my other hobby, filmmaking. I've already spotted an auto-cue app and a storyboarding app that I want to try out. So far I haven't been able to link it to Google Docs to enable collaborative script witting and planning and I'd love to be able use it as a real time video monitor on set.

I shall share my thoughts on the subject as and when I have them. I have, after all discovered a blogging app. In the meantime, I shall continue to love my iPad. Mmmm... iPad...

Location:Bristol

Lost

A little anecdote for you:

On Tuesday night, when I was visiting my old mum in hospital, I managed to get a little lost. Well... not lost exactly. Look - it all happened like this:

Southmead Hospital is one of those big sprawling campuses of about 50 separate buildings, some of which are interconnected by covered walkways. It's all very confusing and it's not helped by the current wave of building work and 'improvements' that are currently under way, which means that following signs for the Urology department can leave you standing in front of a fenced off road wondering where the hell to go next!

Anyway - having made the requisite visit and been kicked out by the nurses at the end of visiting hours (and starving, by the way - I'd gone straight from work), I retraced my steps back to my car. Or that's what I thought until I found myself standing by a 3 storey white building that I didn't remember from my walk in or, indeed any of my previous visits.

Convinced that I'd taken a wrong turn, I looked around, unsuccessfully, for one of those handy maps with the big 'you are here' arrows on them. Finally, in desperation I stopped a passing workman and asked him where I was. He told me.

"That's where I thought I was," I said, "but I didn't pass this building on the way in."

"That," he told me, "is because we only put it up this evening."

Holy crap! They erected an entire building in an hour and a half. Okay, it was only a prefab building, but it was 3 storeys! That's a lot of effort to go to for the express purpose of confusing me. I'm hardly the sharpest knife in the block; they could have just put up a hand written cardboard sign saying 'You are not here' to achieve the same affect - but no! They built an entire temporary, 3 storey radiology building. That demonstrates a very special sort of vindictiveness!

And that is the story of how I nearly got lost in the hospital. I hope you enjoyed it.

(On a side note, mum is now out of hospital and is convalescing in bed at home!)

Avatar

So this weekend, we donned our 3D glasses (which, as you can see from the photo, made me look like a bearded Roy Orbison) and headed out to the cinema to see Dances with Wol... no... Last of the Samu... no, that's not right either. Avatar. That's it, Avatar! You can tell the difference because the Native Americ… er… Samuar… um… alien dudes are BLUE!

Man, was that a pretty movie! The 3D started off as a bit of a distraction but I soon got used to it, although I did duck once near the end when some shrapnel flew out at me, but covered it up by pretending I was shifting in my seat.

So yeah. It was a good movie. Nothing very original in it - the plot, as I may have intimated above, has been done any number of times before. The floating mountains can be found all over anime and in fantasy literature; and the crazy crazy alien animals and bizzare fauna can be seen in all sorts of fantasy art; and the spaceships were mostly nicked from Aliens.

But it was very nicely made, decently scripted and performed and the CGI was good enough that after a while I forgot it was CGI. And the inevitable great big battle scene at the end was very, very well orchestrated - it's not often you see a great big battle scene that doesn't waste any shots on frivolous killings. It goes on for just as long as it needs to and then it finishes. Hoorah.

So if you haven't already, go and see it!

If you have a problem and no-one else can help...

...maybe you can hire THE A TEAM!



This looks like it's gonna be pretty crazy stuff - check out the parachuting tank bit! Murdoch seems spot on from is one tiny line of dialogue.

Snow Day

I had an unexpected day off work today.

One of the guys in the office had been getting all worried about the snowy Doomsday that was supposed to occur today. Naturally, I scoffed at him and insisted that it would be fine.

I got snowed in.

I did get some nice photos, though.

2010

Hmm. It looks like I didn't post anything at all in 2009. I should probably try harder.