Update

Okay. Apologies for the lack of action on this blog over the last week. I've had a bit of an odd week. I am now jobless after being 'let go' from my hideously boring role at 'Driven Systems'. I'm currently looking for work but, as anyone from Brighton will tell you, it's not easy in this town. Brighton seems to be made up of shop workers, bar staff and people selling insurance to each other over the phone.

I love living in Brighton but it does sometimes feel that you give up the right to have a decent job once you reach the end of the A23.

Oh well, only another three months and I'll be jetting off around the world :-D

Movies of Last Week

This is what I have been watching over the past week...

Juno
Cloverfield
Wrong Turn 2

Godzilla Vs Mothra Vs King Ghidorah

Resident Evil Extinction

Desperado

Juno is an amazing film.  I cannot recommend it highly enough and I'm glad it picked up an oscar.

This week I am hoping to get in Charlie Wilson's War and No Country For Old Men.

Absurdity in the Bible

Another gem found with the wonders of Stumbleupon. Here is a site about the absurdities of the bible. This is my favourite one about the after effects of the great flood...

'God is rightly filled with remorse for having killed his creatures. He makes a deal with the animals, promising never to drown them all again. He even puts the rainbow in the sky so that whenever he sees it, it will remind him of his promise so that he won't be tempted to do it again. (Every time God sees the rainbow he says to himself: "Oh, yeah.... That's right. I promised not to drown the animals again. I guess I'll have to find something else to do."). 9:9-13'

Stumbleupon

I have recently discovered the genius of this little toolbar. Stumbleupon looks at your interests (defined by you when you sign up, not by scary surveillance) and finds random websites for your entertainment. My interests included the obvious technology (Mac OSX, open source), linguistics, atheism, and of course humour (bizzare preferably). I've had some good finds so far with an interesting essay by Richard Dawkins, a nerdy conversation between people through IM and the beautiful picture above.

I just thought I'd put that one in for the family guy fans...

I recommend it wholeheartedly, especially if your job is anywhere near as boring as mine. I just wish they made one for Safari.

Movies of last week

Okay, so I meant to do this yesterday (it would have been a lot more logical) but better late than never. I've decided to make a list of films I watch each week, just to keep track if anything.

This week I have mostly been watching...

Atonement
Casablanca
Young Frankenstein
Dangerous Minds
Don Jaun Demarco

I feel bad that this is the first time I had watched Casablanca, especially after doing a film degree! I am glad to say that I wasn't disappointed - Bogey is always a pleasure to watch.
Atonement, however, was fairly awful. The excellent James Mcavoy just couldn't make up for the talentless Ikea Knightly (nod to Mark Kermode) and it really felt a wee bit pretentious in it's playing to the Oscar crowd.

I'm hoping on Friday to make it to the late night screening of Bladerunner (Final Cut) at the Duke of York. Other than that, I have a few films I would like to watch or re-watch this week including M and a few more James Cagney's from Jordan's new box set.

Birthday photos

Photos from from mine and Jordan's birthday are now on Flickr. 

Death of HD-DVD

I haven't posted for a while but I promise I have been thinking about it. I'm sure there'll be a few posts in a short space of time.

I saw this today. Apparently Toshiba have stopped production of their high definition disk format. I have always been a big supporter of Blu Ray (this may be due to my rather fan boy-ish relationship with Sony), so this news couldn't have come fast enough. I have been keeping an eye on this format war since day one and I always thought the situation was a real problem. No one had any idea which format was going to win and all that has happened is we have a few million people with a rather expensive upscaling DVD player... oh well, hopefully this will lead to the low cost brands such as Goodmans and Alba making a series of cheap (but a bit crap) players like we have seen with LCD TVs and the format can really start to displace DVD.

Now I just need to see the PS3 dropping below £200 and I'll be happy to pick up a Blu Ray player...

Illness

I'm ill for the second day today. I was good though and went to see the doctor. He thinks it's just a virus that has been going round, which is a relief as I thought my sore throat might have been the start of yet another bout of tonsillitis. I usually get tonsillitis about two of three times a year and it completely debilitates me for a week.

Other than that, on Sunday I picked up a digital camera - mainly for use on our holiday this summer. It's a Sony Cybershot DSC-W55. I haven't had a chance to really test it out as I haven't left the house much because of illness and rain. The pictures I've taken in the flat look quite nice - a lot better than the slightly under performing camera on my Sony Erikson K800i (3.2 Megapixel).

I also picked up a 4GB Memory Stick from Amazon. It was £20 new from a Marketplace seller - not a bad deal I think considering I paid £60 for a 1GB stick just over two years ago.

Cleaning...

I've spent almost my entire day cleaning my flat.  We have an inspection by the letting agent on Wednesday so we thought it might be time that we clean the carpet.  It wasn't easy.  I had to give halfway up as the lack of sun light after 5pm made identifying stains quite difficult.

I was supposed to be DJing tonight at the night I run with a couple of friends tonight, however I felt a bit rough from all the cleaning and I've put myself under a strict budget for the next few months (saving up for the holiday). Oh well, I don't mind being home alone.  I get to do nerdy things like work out how to set up syncable mailboxes on my IMAP e-mail.  I can now see my sent/junk/trash and drafts mailboxes on Mail.app on my Mac and on webmail... score!

I'm also taking this time to get reacquainted with a few bands I haven't listened to in a while - currently listening to Deftones - White Pony.