marramgrass

As an addition to this post, a couple of images from a stop-off on the way down from St. Andrews a couple of weeks ago.

(Shame about the hotel, really. The little hill behind it is a nice spot to look at the bridge, but the building itself gets in the way.)

I’m often amazed by how beautiful a man-made structure can look. The Road Bridge, for example, is a simple, clean span of concrete - concrete! - yet I can just sit and look at it. Every month or so there’s someone on the radio around here moaning about how wind-turbines are a horrendous offence to the beauty of the countryside, but I’m fascinated by them; again, I can just sit and stare at their gracefulness.

As for these two bridges, some day I really must make a conscious and deliberate effort to get some really great images, rather than a quick stop off the motorway on the way home…

…with a confession. That last night I went to see the new Bridget Jones. I was with the better half and a number of her (female) workmates.

The film wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected, although still rather keck. Possibly better than the first one in that it was a more sensible adaptation of the book - a couple of key episodes preserved, and intelligent changes made - rather than episode after episode after episode. There were enough actually funny moments to keep me entertained. Although, it must be said, there wasn’t a whole lot of testosterone in the cinema. Not surprising, really.

I’ve had a whole pile of stuff to post up here lately, but none of it’s happened. Read lots of books, seen lots of movies.

For example, Alien Vs. Predator: very, very not good. Or How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days: not quite as not good, but not far off it. The Big Bounce: (presumably) DTV that actually was quite fun, if only on account of Owen Wilson and Morgan Freeman. Going Postal, the new Discworld from Terry Pratchett, took about 130 pages to get going, but when it did it was a cracker. Still no Night Watch, though. Ian Rankin’s new Rebus, Fleshmarket Close, was very entertaining, whereas Aphrodite by Russell Andrews (nom de plume of an editor-type) is too obviously written to sell and make money.

There’s more. There’s always more. But that’ll do for now.

IMDb: Bridget Jones, AvP, How To Lose A Guy, The Big Bounce.

The horrendous amount of comment spam I’ve been getting lately has inspired an upgrade to MT3 so that I can enable comment moderation.

This means that if you post a comment, it won’t appear straight away. Rather, I’ll have to approve all comments before they’re posted to the site.

This will be a pain in the backside for me, and a pain in the backside for everyone else, but we’ll try it out and see how we go.

We left the house on Friday evening for a wedding in Southport and returned almost exactly 48 hours later, having driven almost exactly 480 miles. Which means that we had an average speed over the weekend of 10 miles an hour. Even when we were asleep :-)

Notable moments include a visit to the Royston Vasey Photographic Store (I kid you not, it was a truly surreal experience), and watching fireworks from the roof of the hotel (if I had any chance of finding the member of staff who risked his job for our entertainment, I’d buy him a drink - it was stunning).

Couple of quick things I’ve recently come across to do with iTunes:

When you have TotalRecorder installed, you need to tell it only to use its drivers when TR is running, as they appear to conflict with iT giving rise to lovely crackles.

My primary complaint about iTunes for Windows is the space it takes up in the taskbar. This takes care of that quite effectively, even if the buttons are too small (12px by 12px? My display runs at 1280×1024. Think about that for a minute) - you don’t really need them.

Enjoy.

[Another quick one.]

Last week my wife was asking me what LA Confidential (IMDb) was like.

The best I could come up with was Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (IMDb), only without the cartoons. And the comedy.

I was tired. It was the best I could come up with. Tell me you can’t see it?

…

I’ll get my coat…

So, a quick glance at my logs plus a brief google demonstrates that if you search on the phrase “emptying a bean bag”, this site is the first hit.

I like that.

(Has to do with this post.)

2037 - Let puppy out of ‘indoor kennel’.
2038 - Disengage from over-enthusiastic puppy-affection.
2041 - Turn on shower, check temperature, put down rubber bath-mat.
2043 - Lift heavier-than-she-used-to-be puppy into bath.
2044 - Wet down fidgety puppy with shower.
2047 - Apply ‘Cat and Puppy Shampoo’.
2053 - Yell as puppy shakes.
2054 - Rinse off puppy with shower.
2056 - Yell louder as puppy leaps out of bath.
2058 - Fail to get towel wrapped around puppy. Slip on soaking-wet bathroom floor.
2059 - Yell again as soaking-wet puppy escapes bathroom and runs round the house.
2104 - Cry.
2108 - Clean up (substantial) excited-puppy pee from the middle of living-room floor.
2117 - Mop up half-inch of water from bathroom floor.
2128 - Meet friends in pub for drinks at quarter past nine.

Qui-Gon Jinn stood up to the puppy.

Unfortunately, she was stronger in the force.

Hellboy: It’s nothing world-shakingly wonderful, but it is rather a lot of fun.

The Village: Forget the backlash - no-one cranks tension at the cinema quite like Shymalan.

Starship Troopers 2:Hero of The Federation: Please don’t.

American History X: Good, but urgh (you know what I’m talking about).

The Girl Next Door: Half-way between She’s All That and American Pie and much better than either.