Well, for those not monitoring my cryptic Facebook status or aware of the recent events in the games industry: I still have a job, but life has been somewhat stressful for the last month.
Vivendi (the French company which owned Radical and many other game studios) and Activision have been discussing a merger for a while. When the merger went through in July, Activision exercised their powers, as new owners of the Vivendi studios, to review the games under development and align the studios to Activision's market strategy.
This is business-speak. What actually happened in more readable terms was that Activision cancelled two of the four games Radical was working on, and Radical was told the number of people that it was allowed to still employ to work on the games we've got.
This was not unexpected. New owners like to sack a quarter of the staff just to show they're there. And there's a well-known adage: "If it's not your money, it's not your company." This is typical if you're a worker at a company, bad if your company is owned or relies upon another company, and worse if you are now a subsidiary of a publicly-traded company, because, while Radical's money was really usually Vivendi's money, the situation now is that it isn't Radical's money and it isn't even Activision's money, it's the stock market's. And the stock market is very definite about what it likes. It likes more money, now. The motive for the merger, in my view, was that Activision wanted to get its hands on Blizzard, the Vivendi-owned company which makes the Warcraft and World Of Warcraft games. (For those who don't know games: Blizzard is essentially a 24-hour printing press which prints free money for whoever owns it.) Activision merged with Vivendi to get Blizzard, and everything else which came with the deal was either gravy - or disposable.
So, Radical sent many people home (on pay) for a few weeks while they sorted out plans, and last Thursday they called us all in and let us know who was staying and who was going. The gannets were out in force almost immediately the takeover had completed; for example, in an act of utter cheekiness - and I use such a mild word only because my mother reads these blogs, otherwise I'd use another words beginning with 'c' - Rockstar Games spray-painted their logo on the sidewalk in front of our building the week before the jobs were cut. Radical has actually processed the cuts very well, organizing all sorts of outplacement options, and Vancouver still needs plenty of games people, so fewer people are unhappy than you'd think.
Personally I was petrified, for one reason only. The day that it became clear cuts would happen, I had nightmares of being laid off one day and of Immigration officials arriving at our apartment the next, ordering us onto a plane at our expense. Fortunately it transpired that even if I lost my job at Radical, my work visa is actually good for living here until it expires (next February), and in that time I could apply for another job and get a replacement work permit. And in any case, I didn't lose my job - Panda liiiiiives.
But it was nerve-wracking.
So after 18 months of working on a game, it's been cancelled from under me - the first time that's happened to me in games, although not in programming. And now I'm on something else. It's all very exciting, and super-secret-squirrel. But it looks like I still have a career at Radical if I want one. And I do.
Phew.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Being A Good Panda
Sometimes virtue is its own reward. And sometimes there's potential you'll get a gig out of it. 'nuff said.
We were virtuous today in that we booked our medical exams (next week) and had photos taken for them. This is the next stage in our application for permanent residence in Canada. Important points here: Radical is sponsoring my application, it takes ages to go through, and it comprises numerous bits and pieces... one of which is a police check, one of which is a thorough medical.
The police check has given us some irritation. We both need a report from the UK police force, and Sarah also one from Ireland, to assert that we are basically Good People. The Irish one is free and requires just a form to be filled out. The English one costs $70 and requires, amongst other things, a photograph signed on the back by a professional who has known us for two years. Well, that's just great isn't it? Because that really facilitates an application for residence in Canada which has to be made before my two-year visa expires. And even though we can use people back in the UK, what is this, the 1800s? Oh, just get your family doctor to sign it, or your family solicitor - Miss Austen. God, when will this class-ridden claptrap go away? Anyway, onwards to the medical. At least Radical is paying for most of the (quite substantial) cost.
I keep being Facebooked by blasts from the past. A whole bunch of people from Sussex have tracked me down. It's all very friendly and, you know, I remember them and I chuckle at the references, but it's freaky. I never feel like I really lived through the past that I remember. Was I really there? Was that really me? Did I really do those things? I have a window of about twelve months within which I broadly believe I actually did stuff, but my emotional memory is poor, and that probably enables such a big disconnect. I'm uncertain whether I wish this was not the case. But it is almost certainly why I'm so bad at keeping in touch with people once I'm not within sight of them...
We were virtuous today in that we booked our medical exams (next week) and had photos taken for them. This is the next stage in our application for permanent residence in Canada. Important points here: Radical is sponsoring my application, it takes ages to go through, and it comprises numerous bits and pieces... one of which is a police check, one of which is a thorough medical.
The police check has given us some irritation. We both need a report from the UK police force, and Sarah also one from Ireland, to assert that we are basically Good People. The Irish one is free and requires just a form to be filled out. The English one costs $70 and requires, amongst other things, a photograph signed on the back by a professional who has known us for two years. Well, that's just great isn't it? Because that really facilitates an application for residence in Canada which has to be made before my two-year visa expires. And even though we can use people back in the UK, what is this, the 1800s? Oh, just get your family doctor to sign it, or your family solicitor - Miss Austen. God, when will this class-ridden claptrap go away? Anyway, onwards to the medical. At least Radical is paying for most of the (quite substantial) cost.
I keep being Facebooked by blasts from the past. A whole bunch of people from Sussex have tracked me down. It's all very friendly and, you know, I remember them and I chuckle at the references, but it's freaky. I never feel like I really lived through the past that I remember. Was I really there? Was that really me? Did I really do those things? I have a window of about twelve months within which I broadly believe I actually did stuff, but my emotional memory is poor, and that probably enables such a big disconnect. I'm uncertain whether I wish this was not the case. But it is almost certainly why I'm so bad at keeping in touch with people once I'm not within sight of them...
Monday, August 11, 2008
You, Sir, Are No Terry Pratchett
So, sure, not everyone is Terry Pratchett. And 'comedic fantasy' is a tricksy thing. And Pratchett didn't invent it (see Fletcher Pratt, Gordon R. Dickson, and Poul Anderson for what, I presume, are just three predecessors). But there's this guy Robert Rankin whose books have jokey titles and Pratchett-esque summaries on the back. Sure, let's try to blame the marketeers for this: "Ooo! Pratchett-esque summaries sell Pratchett books! Let's try them out on this other guy who might not be at all similar!" And for all I know, Rankin's been writing for longer, but I have no particular journalistic cred to preserve so I amn't even going to check that.
But, dear god, I struggled through his "The Witches Of Chiswick" this last week, and I'm so glad it's over. I heartily anti-recommend it to fans of well-written and amusing fantasy. With a plot that looks like "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and any steampunk book you've ever heard of were involved in a horrible high-speed car crash, and characters who literally leap back into the page at the slightest effort to understand them, this is awful, awful, awful.
And it reads like a lager lout wrote it. Whenever Rankin can't be bothered to think of something, he basically says so in as many words. Jokes about sloppy authors, footnotes highlighting poor jokes, characters alluding to the running gags being perpetrated in neighbouring paragraphs, attempts to appear unpretentious (or rather, attempts, to undercut any accusations of pretension and education)... Rankin reads like he's afraid his mates down the pub will accuse him of being gay if his books don't hold their attention and trigger their trivial senses of humour if opened to a random page in the split-seconds between mouthfuls of beer. This is probably why there's so many postmodernism-is-fun-for-drunk-people references to "Time Cop".
Actually, rereading that last bit makes it sound like I might be sympathising with Rankin for having to write down to his audience. So I should correct that view; without changing my opinion of his target audience, I think he's writing up to it. This is one of the worst books I've read, and I don't have to compare it to Terry Pratchett to say so. JMS once observed that it was difficult to create the future for "Babylon 5" when fans would retort with "But it's been proven that we'll have transporter beams and handheld communicators, haven't you seen Star Trek?" Sure, the subtext of this post may be to accuse myself of being unable to let go of Pratchett's view of comic fantasy. Except, I also like Jasper Fforde, and Bill Willingham's "Fables". So apparently there is room in my head for other ways to be funny and fantastic. Just not for Rankin's, because he is rubbish. Take that! Panda wins.
I'll probably find Jan loves them and thinks they're harmless unpretentious junk now ;-)
This was probably all because the book I read before this disaster was a Joe Haldeman short story collection, which is going to have prepped me for quality. Less grumpy service will be resumed shortly...
(Olympic Frogwatch: Frog didn't get to see any Olympics today because we were busy or out pretty much all afternoon and evening. Tump. He has silently zotted us both as a warning that this will not be an acceptable excuse twice.)
But, dear god, I struggled through his "The Witches Of Chiswick" this last week, and I'm so glad it's over. I heartily anti-recommend it to fans of well-written and amusing fantasy. With a plot that looks like "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and any steampunk book you've ever heard of were involved in a horrible high-speed car crash, and characters who literally leap back into the page at the slightest effort to understand them, this is awful, awful, awful.
And it reads like a lager lout wrote it. Whenever Rankin can't be bothered to think of something, he basically says so in as many words. Jokes about sloppy authors, footnotes highlighting poor jokes, characters alluding to the running gags being perpetrated in neighbouring paragraphs, attempts to appear unpretentious (or rather, attempts, to undercut any accusations of pretension and education)... Rankin reads like he's afraid his mates down the pub will accuse him of being gay if his books don't hold their attention and trigger their trivial senses of humour if opened to a random page in the split-seconds between mouthfuls of beer. This is probably why there's so many postmodernism-is-fun-for-drunk-people references to "Time Cop".
Actually, rereading that last bit makes it sound like I might be sympathising with Rankin for having to write down to his audience. So I should correct that view; without changing my opinion of his target audience, I think he's writing up to it. This is one of the worst books I've read, and I don't have to compare it to Terry Pratchett to say so. JMS once observed that it was difficult to create the future for "Babylon 5" when fans would retort with "But it's been proven that we'll have transporter beams and handheld communicators, haven't you seen Star Trek?" Sure, the subtext of this post may be to accuse myself of being unable to let go of Pratchett's view of comic fantasy. Except, I also like Jasper Fforde, and Bill Willingham's "Fables". So apparently there is room in my head for other ways to be funny and fantastic. Just not for Rankin's, because he is rubbish. Take that! Panda wins.
I'll probably find Jan loves them and thinks they're harmless unpretentious junk now ;-)
This was probably all because the book I read before this disaster was a Joe Haldeman short story collection, which is going to have prepped me for quality. Less grumpy service will be resumed shortly...
(Olympic Frogwatch: Frog didn't get to see any Olympics today because we were busy or out pretty much all afternoon and evening. Tump. He has silently zotted us both as a warning that this will not be an acceptable excuse twice.)
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Sleeeeepy Paaaanda
Chilli & Sage news: we wrote a new song today - or rather I wrote the lyrics for music Sarah wrote last week. But I can't say what it is yet because it's for extremely secret-squirrel purposes. In other C&S news, you'll see I added buttons at the side for you to click and become super fans of the best songwriting duo in... history? The multiverse? Who can say, although I can certainly bombast some more about it if you like. Anyway, click and listen, particularly if you're a Facebook user as it's all integrated, y'know.
Today: We went to Tara's for dinner. I played a little with their kids - Sophia (5) and Rowan (3) - and since we'd brought Pill the Panda with us, there was a certain amount of stuffed monochromatic fun. After dinner I sang "I Want To Be A Panda" for them. But I was very sleepy and we left at about nine. A little hot-tubbing slightly woke me up, although the 20 minutes of treadmill I did before that might have had something to do with it too. Exercising before getting into the pool and tub is disturbingly fun.
Frogwatch 2008: Frog fell off the chair just as we turned on the television; he explained that soon lots of athletes would be similarly falling off things, referring to it as "unsympathetic magic". He then managed to make one gymnast fall off the bars twice in one routine. When you consider that he's watching footage of athletes filmed fifteen hours ago (the time difference between Vancouver and Beijhing), you have to admit: he's good.
Today: We went to Tara's for dinner. I played a little with their kids - Sophia (5) and Rowan (3) - and since we'd brought Pill the Panda with us, there was a certain amount of stuffed monochromatic fun. After dinner I sang "I Want To Be A Panda" for them. But I was very sleepy and we left at about nine. A little hot-tubbing slightly woke me up, although the 20 minutes of treadmill I did before that might have had something to do with it too. Exercising before getting into the pool and tub is disturbingly fun.
Frogwatch 2008: Frog fell off the chair just as we turned on the television; he explained that soon lots of athletes would be similarly falling off things, referring to it as "unsympathetic magic". He then managed to make one gymnast fall off the bars twice in one routine. When you consider that he's watching footage of athletes filmed fifteen hours ago (the time difference between Vancouver and Beijhing), you have to admit: he's good.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Why Frog Likes The Olympics (Friday August 8th)
First and most important: Chilli & Sage news. We've been very virtuous for the last few weeks, writing new songs, adding exciting new instruments to existing songs, and this week, entering lots of competitions and performing at an open mic - the Cottage Bistro on Main and 29th. This was okay, but as usual people kinda glazed over at the songs with lots of words, and only perked up for "I Want To Be A Panda". But our crusade to convert people to songs with more words will continue... and YOU can help! Tell people to listen to our songs at Chilli and Sage at iLike.com - a site which seems to (a) work and (b) not have limits on songs.
And now for the usual assortment of oddities. Starting with Frog. You may not have met Frog. Frog is about six inches square and an inch high when splayed out in stealth mode, and exists in two shades of green for additional camouflage. We found Frog in the Bristol County Show not long after Sarah moved in with me. And the only other thing you need to know about Frog is that he's... a little violent...
Frog has reached his current level of anarchy by degrees. Some years ago he sent Sarah an email from his Hotmail account (godfrog@hotmail.com, naturally) while she was upstairs, reading "Come downstairs and hug me or I will zot you". A while later she only just stopped him from sending an email to Sky News telling them that they were boring peons and he was going to zot them.
A few years ago Frog discovered that he had my father's talent for predicting the mishaps of Formula One drivers and jockeys, and since then he's mostly externalised his violent streak by zotting innocent athletes from his comfortable position on the arm of Sarah's big leather recliner. So you can imagine how happy he is that the Olympics have started. He's already done a considerable amount of damage to the gymnasts, and when the track and field events start he'll come into his own. If you see any epic fails going on in the pole vault or relay, that was Frog... sorry.
I should mention at this point that we got cable connected last week, after only eighteen months in Canada. This was largely so Sarah could watch the Olympics. It's on right now. Cycling, gymnastics, and ads every ten minutes, most of which are distressingly patriotic ("Pontiac - official car of the Canadian Olympic team"... "Chrysler... official car of the Canadian Olympic team"... er, hold on...), some of them laughably so ("The Canadian Olympic team... working together for victory... just like Brake & Tyre of 4th Avenue"). Of course now we face the prospect of hearing the Canadian team being hyped up as the ultimate contender... which is, at least, more plausible than the equivalent BBC commentary. ("And the British contestant comes in a valiant last, only twenty-nine seconds behind the winner in this 100m sprint, that's a full two seconds faster than at the 1992 Olympics isn't it Brendan?") We (or rather "we") might even win medals. Coo. Go Canada, etc.
I've tried watching some television and oh god, I can't do it anymore, it all looks so rubbish. My attention span may have something to do with it. As someone generally so disinterested in the past that I have trouble remembering to hang my swimming trunks up on the showerhead to dry properly five seconds after getting out of the bathtub, it's increasingly difficult to care enough about books or television for the hour or two that they take to deliver their fun. Give me mono mono gluto gluto, as Chiun used to say... I want it all now, compressed and cut and chopped up for super-fast digestion.
We went to see the fireworks on Saturday. The HSBC Festival Of Light is this annual suite of various national firework displays fired off from a barge in English Bay over the course of several nights, followed by a closing ceremony with excerpts from each show. This year, it being the 150th anniversary of British Columbia (proper old, that is), we also got an eight-minute firework display illustrating the history of the province. Yes, illustrating. I can tell you the next time I do a presentation at work I'll be intercutting it with interpretative pyrotechnics. It added so much to what was essentially a mission statement for the west coast of Canada to see random spontaneous explosions of colour in the sky... ah well. At least the displays were good... er, well, the Canadian one was excellent, with a theme of "sea monster invasion" and some excellent synchronization of spectacular fireworks with some great modern-classical music from various sources including the Godzilla movies. The American one... eh, not so good... bombastic, pompous (my, fireworks can express so many emotions), and set to various well-known American singers and bands, such as Josh Groban and U2. And the Chinese display was okay, but perhaps suffered from the apparent refusal of China to send more than one expert to supervise it - as if Chinese fireworks experts had anything better to be doing right now.
So the fireworks were nice, but the one dark side of Vancouver is that, just as civilization may only be three meals away from chaos, this town is generally only one big event from drunken debauchery. James and I nearly got gaybashed on the bus on the Friday night before the Pride festival weekend, apparently because we prefer to sit with our legs crossed and are therefore clearly gay... and the fireworks brought out the noisiest, scummiest behaviour in a whole load of people. At least when I get drunk I just come home and bore Sarah by repeating everything twice before sleeping on the couch. I don't go out on the street, throw stuff everywhere, call out rudely to other people and act all defensive (and probably also, immediately thereafter, aggressive) if it isn't to their taste. It's annoying as hell because this is spoiling the dreamlike vision of Vancouver which Sarah and I have enjoyed since (before) moving here. Okay, so nowhere on Earth is likely to be truly idyllic. But Vancouver gets it right in so many ways that it's even more shocking and frustrating when it all goes south. Grrrrr.
But I'll finish on an upbeat note, which is that for various reasons I've had most of last week and this week off work. Hopefully more exact news on this will follow soon, but nothing to worry about, anyway.
Kisses and salutations to you all for now :-)
And now for the usual assortment of oddities. Starting with Frog. You may not have met Frog. Frog is about six inches square and an inch high when splayed out in stealth mode, and exists in two shades of green for additional camouflage. We found Frog in the Bristol County Show not long after Sarah moved in with me. And the only other thing you need to know about Frog is that he's... a little violent...
Frog has reached his current level of anarchy by degrees. Some years ago he sent Sarah an email from his Hotmail account (godfrog@hotmail.com, naturally) while she was upstairs, reading "Come downstairs and hug me or I will zot you". A while later she only just stopped him from sending an email to Sky News telling them that they were boring peons and he was going to zot them.
A few years ago Frog discovered that he had my father's talent for predicting the mishaps of Formula One drivers and jockeys, and since then he's mostly externalised his violent streak by zotting innocent athletes from his comfortable position on the arm of Sarah's big leather recliner. So you can imagine how happy he is that the Olympics have started. He's already done a considerable amount of damage to the gymnasts, and when the track and field events start he'll come into his own. If you see any epic fails going on in the pole vault or relay, that was Frog... sorry.
I should mention at this point that we got cable connected last week, after only eighteen months in Canada. This was largely so Sarah could watch the Olympics. It's on right now. Cycling, gymnastics, and ads every ten minutes, most of which are distressingly patriotic ("Pontiac - official car of the Canadian Olympic team"... "Chrysler... official car of the Canadian Olympic team"... er, hold on...), some of them laughably so ("The Canadian Olympic team... working together for victory... just like Brake & Tyre of 4th Avenue"). Of course now we face the prospect of hearing the Canadian team being hyped up as the ultimate contender... which is, at least, more plausible than the equivalent BBC commentary. ("And the British contestant comes in a valiant last, only twenty-nine seconds behind the winner in this 100m sprint, that's a full two seconds faster than at the 1992 Olympics isn't it Brendan?") We (or rather "we") might even win medals. Coo. Go Canada, etc.
I've tried watching some television and oh god, I can't do it anymore, it all looks so rubbish. My attention span may have something to do with it. As someone generally so disinterested in the past that I have trouble remembering to hang my swimming trunks up on the showerhead to dry properly five seconds after getting out of the bathtub, it's increasingly difficult to care enough about books or television for the hour or two that they take to deliver their fun. Give me mono mono gluto gluto, as Chiun used to say... I want it all now, compressed and cut and chopped up for super-fast digestion.
We went to see the fireworks on Saturday. The HSBC Festival Of Light is this annual suite of various national firework displays fired off from a barge in English Bay over the course of several nights, followed by a closing ceremony with excerpts from each show. This year, it being the 150th anniversary of British Columbia (proper old, that is), we also got an eight-minute firework display illustrating the history of the province. Yes, illustrating. I can tell you the next time I do a presentation at work I'll be intercutting it with interpretative pyrotechnics. It added so much to what was essentially a mission statement for the west coast of Canada to see random spontaneous explosions of colour in the sky... ah well. At least the displays were good... er, well, the Canadian one was excellent, with a theme of "sea monster invasion" and some excellent synchronization of spectacular fireworks with some great modern-classical music from various sources including the Godzilla movies. The American one... eh, not so good... bombastic, pompous (my, fireworks can express so many emotions), and set to various well-known American singers and bands, such as Josh Groban and U2. And the Chinese display was okay, but perhaps suffered from the apparent refusal of China to send more than one expert to supervise it - as if Chinese fireworks experts had anything better to be doing right now.
So the fireworks were nice, but the one dark side of Vancouver is that, just as civilization may only be three meals away from chaos, this town is generally only one big event from drunken debauchery. James and I nearly got gaybashed on the bus on the Friday night before the Pride festival weekend, apparently because we prefer to sit with our legs crossed and are therefore clearly gay... and the fireworks brought out the noisiest, scummiest behaviour in a whole load of people. At least when I get drunk I just come home and bore Sarah by repeating everything twice before sleeping on the couch. I don't go out on the street, throw stuff everywhere, call out rudely to other people and act all defensive (and probably also, immediately thereafter, aggressive) if it isn't to their taste. It's annoying as hell because this is spoiling the dreamlike vision of Vancouver which Sarah and I have enjoyed since (before) moving here. Okay, so nowhere on Earth is likely to be truly idyllic. But Vancouver gets it right in so many ways that it's even more shocking and frustrating when it all goes south. Grrrrr.
But I'll finish on an upbeat note, which is that for various reasons I've had most of last week and this week off work. Hopefully more exact news on this will follow soon, but nothing to worry about, anyway.
Kisses and salutations to you all for now :-)
Friday, July 25, 2008
FUN With Your New HEAD (25 July, 2008)
(I wrote this at work earlier in the week but forgot to post it. Thus its TARDIS-like disregard for the fact that I just posted something else. I could edit it, but... bah. You won't notice.)
... don’t you think time is speeding up? It’s only yesterday evening you were reading the entry for May 1st, and now look at the calendar. You’re getting old, you know, when you don’t notice time scuttling past like a plague of chronologically-fascinated scorpions.
I thought today I would start talking about our attempts to have “fun”. There’s a famous Thomas M. Disch story called “FUN with your new HEAD” which you can find online in various places, e.g. here (http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/head.html). Similarly, although in an unrelated way, we have recently attempted to do slightly less and enjoy life a little more, after several hectic months of no fun. So what can we report?
Well, our Nintendo Wii is a hoot. And has potential for being great FUN at parties – although we only have two controllers for it at present, and only one plausible party game. The principle of the Wii, you see, is that while the X-Box
More fun. We’re watching the Tom Baker Doctor Who stories, all of them in order. Or at least we’re going to. So far we’ve managed to watch the first one: “Robot”. If you ever wanted a demonstration of J. Michael Straczynski’s comment that UK TV sci-fi had cardboard sets and three-dimensional performances while American TV had the reverse, this is it. Amidst wobbly sets, confronted by a comical robot that looks like Bertie Bassett the lollipop man gone metal, and watching, at one point, a 3” plastic tank being disintegrated in a chromakeyed sequence which looks like it cost all of tuppence-ha’penny to film… nevertheless, the actors are pretty much all delivering committed performances, taking their characters seriously, and carving out strongly-defined roles in the plot. The extras are a bit gormless – all on day release from Rent-A-UNIT-Soldier Ltd – but there’s the Doctor, Sarah Jane, Harry, the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton, Miss Winters, Professor Kettlewell, Jellicoe, and the guy inside the robot. That’s nine lead roles. And there’s time to *breathe*. Four episodes at twenty-two minutes apiece gives you enough space for some essential downtime, and because this considerably predates the New Who with its well-done-but-sometimes-slightly-portentous atmosphere of supreme power and supreme loneliness, the Doctor is, while confused after his regeneration, still intrinsically having fun at all times. Sure, he isn’t up against a universe-challenging foe, just a little matter of a stolen disintegrator gun (Earth tech varies up and down considerably in this show) and then against a neo-Nazi cabal of science-fanatics who have obtained the launch codes for the world’s nuclear weapons from a cabinet minister’s safe because, after all, what country except Britain could be trusted to possess such important info? Slightly ropey plotting, sure, but fun. And of course there’s Tom Baker. Born to play the Doctor, never matched except in occasional flashes from David Tennant. It’s interesting that at the time they cast him, they weren’t sure how he would play the role and whether he’d be into performing stunts, so they wrote in Harry Sullivan to be the clean-cut square-jawed action hero. Within a series they’d clocked that Tom Baker was quite action-packed enough to carry it himself, so Harry got written out (“Think I’ll stick to British Rail from now on, Doctor”). You have to admire the power of reincarnation, though. To carry a show through cast changes as a way of life… wow. So anyway, roll on the rest of Tom Baker’s first series – the impeccably-connected sequence continues on from “Robot” with “The Ark In Space”, “The Sontaran Experiment”, “Genesis Of The Daleks”, and “Revenge Of The Cybermen” – is it any wonder that this is the first series that stands out in my childhood memory as being The One Thing That Made Me Afraid Of Being Sent To Jail, Because They Would Have No Televisions And I Would Miss Doctor Who? Our FUN HEAD factor: 9.5 fun heads out of 10.
Posse Guests! (25 July 2008)
We had an absolute Posse in town in July! The Twines came over for two weeks and then the Burges (TM) - OK, Neil and his girlfriend Ginny, who are therefore not technically "Burges" - joined them for a couple of days and stuck around for over a week afterwards. Jaysmith Apartment Absolutely Infected With Visitors From The Old World!
Of course Jax and Twiney have been here before, but Phil saw the place for the first time, and collectively they love it. They arrived on June 30 (I think) and performed Much Sightseeing... Sarah fulfilled most of the tour guide duties as I was at work most days. But I did book a long weekend and we went to Whistler, stayed in a holiday home, went up a 6,000-foot mountain, saw a brown bear (cute! but endangered so go away now), ate lots of very nice food, went on a downhill luge (which was a bit terrifying), watched Twiney go on a zipline (which looked like fun, in the end), and took lots of photos, some of which may be included somewhere along the line. Phil went fishing for two days and impressed his guide with his knowledge. The drive up the Sea-To-Sky highway was gorgeous. And even Jax's 3am medical emergency didn't affect the good time had by all (except Jax while she was ill ;-).
Neil and Ginny arrived on July 8 and the Twines left on the 11th. Burge spent a lot of time playing Super Paper Mario on my Wii, and we also had two games of Lord Of The Rings - scarily, two years to the day since we last played it, in England. We and Burge know this game well, so first Ginny was introduced to it, and then a few nights later, James joined us at Kalypso for dinner and came back to be the fifth hobbit in a session where we tried out the expansion pack that Neil and Ginny bought for us as a thank-you present. It was quite epic and I think James' head visibly exploded several times...
You also should have seen the games of Jenga we had. Ginny nearly fainted from the suspense. Neil and I invented some groovy new moves, which you'd think wouldn't really be possible in a game like Jenga. Also, I was right: there are YouTube movies demonstrating 'mad Jenga skillz', e.g. this one.
But now everyone has gone home and we are all alone again... and, although we love the Posse... we were exhausted! There's been a lot of singing... we've started the summer singing alternative, which appears to have acquired the name "The Strongbow Chorus"... four sessions, every other Monday... we had eighteen people here for the first one, and out of it we got very acceptable-sounding versions of "The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd" and Rutter's "Sing A Song Of Sixpence"... we had Kim and Forsey over for singing... we had two Raves At The Jaysmiths', which were mildly epic affairs, and included me and Neil singing some tenor duets, one of which blew out everyone's ears because we weren't subtle with our dynamics! It was also lovely to reconstitute a chunk of The Incredible Posse Singers - only Justine was missing from our majority lineup. We sang Orpheus and Sounds Of Silence. Very uplifting, and only a couple of moments where our unrehearsed-in-eighteen-months sound wasn't bang on the money. The Posse Rules! Anyway, where was I... oh, more singing... Neil and Ginny learned the ultra-high A New World and we sang that for a couple of people, nearly ripping out our throats in the process (Burge has to sing As, I have to sing off the top of the scale)... and we just generally nebbished around the piano at the slightest opportunity. Result: we've done a lot of singing.
But: all this has been putting a huge dent in our Chilli & Sage time, so over the summer the rule is now: Our Stuff Comes First. We don't have High Spirits or Broadway Chorus until September, so we'll be spending evenings and weekends for the next two months (a) working on our music, (b) relaxing with the thought that we don't have to do anything else, (c) doing other things.
You'll be pleased to hear on our behalf that we are now logged in the US Copyright Office. Look!
It's us! Do not steal our music, we have Copyright on our side! Tee hee.
It's hard to focus on what else might have been going on lately, but we've been watching Doctor Who (epic!) and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (a bit epic! and Sarah's aunt Jane is in T4, exciting huh?), and playing the customary range of Games Which Will Work On Laptops.
We finally went to a dentist - with the promising name of Dr Chris Hacker! The Canadian attitude to dentistry appears to be "hygiene, hygiene, hygiene", leading to an expensive but covered-by-insurance bout of cleaning which has left our teeth both spotless and unusually white. On a less enticing health front, I confessed a while back to Sarah that the soles of my feet hurt a lot, particularly in the mornings. I had assumed this was just me getting old (at 38). She researched and then sent me to the GP who referred me to a specialist. Turns out to be fallen arches, or Plantar Fasciisti or something like that... a recurrence, expected at this age, of what I had when I was 15 and had to go to a torture specialist in Teignmouth for various electrical treatments and arch supports in my shoes. So here I am, with new, expensive, custom-made arch supports ("orthotics" is apparently the word for this), and my feet still hurt, but less than they did. Still: tump, I'm getting old and creaky!
More oldness and creakiness next time, including photos if I find out from Sarah where they are. Mwah.
Of course Jax and Twiney have been here before, but Phil saw the place for the first time, and collectively they love it. They arrived on June 30 (I think) and performed Much Sightseeing... Sarah fulfilled most of the tour guide duties as I was at work most days. But I did book a long weekend and we went to Whistler, stayed in a holiday home, went up a 6,000-foot mountain, saw a brown bear (cute! but endangered so go away now), ate lots of very nice food, went on a downhill luge (which was a bit terrifying), watched Twiney go on a zipline (which looked like fun, in the end), and took lots of photos, some of which may be included somewhere along the line. Phil went fishing for two days and impressed his guide with his knowledge. The drive up the Sea-To-Sky highway was gorgeous. And even Jax's 3am medical emergency didn't affect the good time had by all (except Jax while she was ill ;-).
Neil and Ginny arrived on July 8 and the Twines left on the 11th. Burge spent a lot of time playing Super Paper Mario on my Wii, and we also had two games of Lord Of The Rings - scarily, two years to the day since we last played it, in England. We and Burge know this game well, so first Ginny was introduced to it, and then a few nights later, James joined us at Kalypso for dinner and came back to be the fifth hobbit in a session where we tried out the expansion pack that Neil and Ginny bought for us as a thank-you present. It was quite epic and I think James' head visibly exploded several times...
You also should have seen the games of Jenga we had. Ginny nearly fainted from the suspense. Neil and I invented some groovy new moves, which you'd think wouldn't really be possible in a game like Jenga. Also, I was right: there are YouTube movies demonstrating 'mad Jenga skillz', e.g. this one.
But now everyone has gone home and we are all alone again... and, although we love the Posse... we were exhausted! There's been a lot of singing... we've started the summer singing alternative, which appears to have acquired the name "The Strongbow Chorus"... four sessions, every other Monday... we had eighteen people here for the first one, and out of it we got very acceptable-sounding versions of "The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd" and Rutter's "Sing A Song Of Sixpence"... we had Kim and Forsey over for singing... we had two Raves At The Jaysmiths', which were mildly epic affairs, and included me and Neil singing some tenor duets, one of which blew out everyone's ears because we weren't subtle with our dynamics! It was also lovely to reconstitute a chunk of The Incredible Posse Singers - only Justine was missing from our majority lineup. We sang Orpheus and Sounds Of Silence. Very uplifting, and only a couple of moments where our unrehearsed-in-eighteen-months sound wasn't bang on the money. The Posse Rules! Anyway, where was I... oh, more singing... Neil and Ginny learned the ultra-high A New World and we sang that for a couple of people, nearly ripping out our throats in the process (Burge has to sing As, I have to sing off the top of the scale)... and we just generally nebbished around the piano at the slightest opportunity. Result: we've done a lot of singing.
But: all this has been putting a huge dent in our Chilli & Sage time, so over the summer the rule is now: Our Stuff Comes First. We don't have High Spirits or Broadway Chorus until September, so we'll be spending evenings and weekends for the next two months (a) working on our music, (b) relaxing with the thought that we don't have to do anything else, (c) doing other things.
You'll be pleased to hear on our behalf that we are now logged in the US Copyright Office. Look!
CHILLI & SAGE VOLUME ONE.
| Type of Work: | Sound Recording and Music |
|---|---|
| Registration Number / Date: | SRu000865667 / 2007-08-16 |
| Application Title: | CHILLI & SAGE VOLUME ONE. |
| Title: | CHILLI & SAGE VOLUME ONE. |
| Description: | Compact disc. |
| Copyright Claimant: | GIL JAYSMITH, 1970- . Address: 1060 ALBERNI STREET, #2003, VANCOUVER BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA V6E 4K2 |
| SARAH ELIZABETH JAYSMITH. Address: 1060 ALBERNI STREET, #2003, VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA V6E 4K2, | |
| Date of Creation: | 2007 |
| Authorship on Application: | GIL JAYSMITH, 1970- ; Domicile: Canada. Authorship: MUSIC, WORDS, AND SOUND RECORDING. |
| SARAH ELIZABETH JAYSMITH, 1974- ; Domicile: Canada. Authorship: MUSIC, WORDS, AND SOUND RECORDING. | |
| Contents: | 1. I WANT TO BE A PANDA 2. TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE, TOO BAD 3. I GOTTA GET ME ONE OF THOSE GIRLS 4. VELVET 5. THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII 6 FIREFLIES 7. IF LOVE IS 8. THE NIGHT TRAIN 9. THE JOURNEY 10. ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY 11. WHEN YOU SMILE 12. LOVE, DANCE & SING 13. I’LL RESCUE YOU 14. 24 DAYS 15. AIR CONDITIONING. |
| Names: | JAYSMITH, GIL, 1970- |
| JAYSMITH, SARAH ELIZABETH, 1974- |
It's us! Do not steal our music, we have Copyright on our side! Tee hee.
It's hard to focus on what else might have been going on lately, but we've been watching Doctor Who (epic!) and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (a bit epic! and Sarah's aunt Jane is in T4, exciting huh?), and playing the customary range of Games Which Will Work On Laptops.
We finally went to a dentist - with the promising name of Dr Chris Hacker! The Canadian attitude to dentistry appears to be "hygiene, hygiene, hygiene", leading to an expensive but covered-by-insurance bout of cleaning which has left our teeth both spotless and unusually white. On a less enticing health front, I confessed a while back to Sarah that the soles of my feet hurt a lot, particularly in the mornings. I had assumed this was just me getting old (at 38). She researched and then sent me to the GP who referred me to a specialist. Turns out to be fallen arches, or Plantar Fasciisti or something like that... a recurrence, expected at this age, of what I had when I was 15 and had to go to a torture specialist in Teignmouth for various electrical treatments and arch supports in my shoes. So here I am, with new, expensive, custom-made arch supports ("orthotics" is apparently the word for this), and my feet still hurt, but less than they did. Still: tump, I'm getting old and creaky!
More oldness and creakiness next time, including photos if I find out from Sarah where they are. Mwah.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Safe Area
Welcome back, take your seats, here are your complimentary peanuts, can I get you a drink?
I'm not making any promises, but I do feel guilty about what turns out to be a four-month lapse of service, so once more unto the blog-breach, dear friends (assuming you haven't died of impatience), and once again shall the Jaysmiths Hit Canada.
So, 2008 edition. Well, I sense a Blog TARDIS or two - or four, or eight - will be required to cover major events up till April, so we'll move forward with current affairs.
ITEM! Gil's work proceeds apace. The game I'm working on will hopefully be announced soon and then I won't have to pretend no-one can guess what it might be. Work itself has varied from mildly to extremely stressful, but a great stonking wodge of the stress was relieved last month, when I received a great stonking wodge of money in the form of a pay rise plus a superstar-sized bonus, which I suppose I must have been advised would occur every year based on performance, but frankly I'd forgotten all about it, and my understanding of most game-related bonuses is that they are literally game-related; Radical apparently just pays out bonuses regardless. The advantages of being owned by an evil multinational corporation, I don't doubt.
Anyway, this was just what our bank account needed; we cleared the credit card, cleared the bills for sorting out our house in Littlehampton, bought some treats, and had a few meals out. We had both been worrying our asses off about money, it turns out, and moments before our heads spontaneously exploded in unwitting synchronization, the problem solved itself. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, or in this case the chequebook.
ITEM! Sarah has been keeping herself busy with various things, including a play, plenty of music, some voiceover work and the role of Musical Director at Broadway Chorus.
ITEM! We bought a Wii! Definitely a Blog TARDIS entry to cover this.
ITEM! Gil turned 38 in March. I've decided to deal with this by focusing on the important part of that age, namely '3'. So I regard myself as being 3.8 of the new 'large' years, and I can stay like that for another couple of years, and even then I'll only be '4'.
ITEM! We're attending a songwriting course on Thursday evenings... i.e. that's where we've been tonight. This was the second week. It's somewhat scary. Actually, it's very scary. There were ten of us last week including the two instructors... tonight, eight... next week, in theory, ten again thanks to some replacements. So far it's been useful in terms of supplying tools for creativity. The results when it comes to writing lyrics have so far been (at best) poetry, but on the other hand I've been analyzing how poetry is used as a choral text in some of the songs we sing at High Spirits Choir, and I can see how poetic lyrical ideas (which probably don't rhyme) can be a source for a condensed, considerably treated, and hopefully rhyming lyric. As for the music, well, I still lack heavy music theory, it's all aural with me, but as Sarah has observed, I've listened to a whole lot more pop and rock music than her, and I have a better grasp of what works outside of the classical domain, even if she can write better chords than me (let alone the ability to write any chords at all). Anyway, the exercises are kinda interesting, and I might go into details about them sometime.
ITEM! The building's swimming pool and hot tub, out of action for over six months, have finally been repaired, repainted, and refilled with water... and then drained again, apparently. We may have found this apartment in an excellent location for a bargain rent, and we may not have particular grounds for complaint, but: we've missed our swimming pool and hot tub! And so the thought that they're so close to becoming available once more is driving us nuts. Grrrrr! Sarah scrabbles the responsible people with her bunny-claws. Perhaps next week, we hear on the sour-grapevine.
ITEM! We've been watching the absolutely dreadful remake of The Bionic Woman. Dear God. This is one of the worst TV shows imaginable. I could spend all night listing its flaws. Suffice to say, when you wish the villainess would show up and are deeply unhappy about any episode when she doesn't, you know you've got a miscast heroine. The script is often atrocious - we've adopted "just merely" as a catchphrase thanks to a line from an early episode. The continuity is often completely missing - a town's inhabitants all died three days ago, but the wheels on a fallen bicycle are still spinning and a girl is in a basement cleaning her teeth and wondering where her granny is? An important character seen in jail in the first episode is reported in the second episode as having escaped - off-camera? Oh god. Make it stop. It's so much fun to mock it, though. Plus, it was filmed in Vancouver, so we've been spotting locations. Jan will be pleased to hear that it features the Morgans (of Space: Above And Beyond) as executive producers and consultants. I can't help but think that these people are a danger to TV SF...
ITEM! Vancouver is still an adorable place to live. The view as we cross the bridges into town, the greenery, the breeze on Alberni Street on a Sunday, the shining water, the protective mountains... "the sparkling streams, the bracing air, the therapeutic salt"... it feels very much like home. On which note, we've started the process, through Radical, of applying for permanent residence here. They pay for all of my fees and half of Sarah's, and it takes months to accomplish, but thereafter I will be free to stay in Canada even if I leave Radical... although (a) there's still nearly a year to go before I could leave without having to repay Radical our relocation expenses, and (b) I should emphasise this in case anyone at Radical is reading: I don't actually want to leave (yet ;-).
ITEM! The Twines are coming to visit in July, and so are Burge and his girlfriend Ginny. And their visits overlap by three days! It's a Posse rave! Absolute Vancouverage for the Posse! This will be so much fun.
ITEM! I think that's enough for tonight. See? We do still love you. 'night all.
I'm not making any promises, but I do feel guilty about what turns out to be a four-month lapse of service, so once more unto the blog-breach, dear friends (assuming you haven't died of impatience), and once again shall the Jaysmiths Hit Canada.
So, 2008 edition. Well, I sense a Blog TARDIS or two - or four, or eight - will be required to cover major events up till April, so we'll move forward with current affairs.
ITEM! Gil's work proceeds apace. The game I'm working on will hopefully be announced soon and then I won't have to pretend no-one can guess what it might be. Work itself has varied from mildly to extremely stressful, but a great stonking wodge of the stress was relieved last month, when I received a great stonking wodge of money in the form of a pay rise plus a superstar-sized bonus, which I suppose I must have been advised would occur every year based on performance, but frankly I'd forgotten all about it, and my understanding of most game-related bonuses is that they are literally game-related; Radical apparently just pays out bonuses regardless. The advantages of being owned by an evil multinational corporation, I don't doubt.
Anyway, this was just what our bank account needed; we cleared the credit card, cleared the bills for sorting out our house in Littlehampton, bought some treats, and had a few meals out. We had both been worrying our asses off about money, it turns out, and moments before our heads spontaneously exploded in unwitting synchronization, the problem solved itself. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, or in this case the chequebook.
ITEM! Sarah has been keeping herself busy with various things, including a play, plenty of music, some voiceover work and the role of Musical Director at Broadway Chorus.
ITEM! We bought a Wii! Definitely a Blog TARDIS entry to cover this.
ITEM! Gil turned 38 in March. I've decided to deal with this by focusing on the important part of that age, namely '3'. So I regard myself as being 3.8 of the new 'large' years, and I can stay like that for another couple of years, and even then I'll only be '4'.
ITEM! We're attending a songwriting course on Thursday evenings... i.e. that's where we've been tonight. This was the second week. It's somewhat scary. Actually, it's very scary. There were ten of us last week including the two instructors... tonight, eight... next week, in theory, ten again thanks to some replacements. So far it's been useful in terms of supplying tools for creativity. The results when it comes to writing lyrics have so far been (at best) poetry, but on the other hand I've been analyzing how poetry is used as a choral text in some of the songs we sing at High Spirits Choir, and I can see how poetic lyrical ideas (which probably don't rhyme) can be a source for a condensed, considerably treated, and hopefully rhyming lyric. As for the music, well, I still lack heavy music theory, it's all aural with me, but as Sarah has observed, I've listened to a whole lot more pop and rock music than her, and I have a better grasp of what works outside of the classical domain, even if she can write better chords than me (let alone the ability to write any chords at all). Anyway, the exercises are kinda interesting, and I might go into details about them sometime.
ITEM! The building's swimming pool and hot tub, out of action for over six months, have finally been repaired, repainted, and refilled with water... and then drained again, apparently. We may have found this apartment in an excellent location for a bargain rent, and we may not have particular grounds for complaint, but: we've missed our swimming pool and hot tub! And so the thought that they're so close to becoming available once more is driving us nuts. Grrrrr! Sarah scrabbles the responsible people with her bunny-claws. Perhaps next week, we hear on the sour-grapevine.
ITEM! We've been watching the absolutely dreadful remake of The Bionic Woman. Dear God. This is one of the worst TV shows imaginable. I could spend all night listing its flaws. Suffice to say, when you wish the villainess would show up and are deeply unhappy about any episode when she doesn't, you know you've got a miscast heroine. The script is often atrocious - we've adopted "just merely" as a catchphrase thanks to a line from an early episode. The continuity is often completely missing - a town's inhabitants all died three days ago, but the wheels on a fallen bicycle are still spinning and a girl is in a basement cleaning her teeth and wondering where her granny is? An important character seen in jail in the first episode is reported in the second episode as having escaped - off-camera? Oh god. Make it stop. It's so much fun to mock it, though. Plus, it was filmed in Vancouver, so we've been spotting locations. Jan will be pleased to hear that it features the Morgans (of Space: Above And Beyond) as executive producers and consultants. I can't help but think that these people are a danger to TV SF...
ITEM! Vancouver is still an adorable place to live. The view as we cross the bridges into town, the greenery, the breeze on Alberni Street on a Sunday, the shining water, the protective mountains... "the sparkling streams, the bracing air, the therapeutic salt"... it feels very much like home. On which note, we've started the process, through Radical, of applying for permanent residence here. They pay for all of my fees and half of Sarah's, and it takes months to accomplish, but thereafter I will be free to stay in Canada even if I leave Radical... although (a) there's still nearly a year to go before I could leave without having to repay Radical our relocation expenses, and (b) I should emphasise this in case anyone at Radical is reading: I don't actually want to leave (yet ;-).
ITEM! The Twines are coming to visit in July, and so are Burge and his girlfriend Ginny. And their visits overlap by three days! It's a Posse rave! Absolute Vancouverage for the Posse! This will be so much fun.
ITEM! I think that's enough for tonight. See? We do still love you. 'night all.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Bang-Up-To-The-Minute Film Reviews Of 2008, #1: The Bourne Identity
Yes, friends, it's time we told you what the best films of 2002 are going to be. And I can confidently predict that The Bourne Identity won't be one of them. From its thickset and in fact generally thick hero (who, sad to say, doesn't say "Matt Damon! MATT DAMON!" even once), to its ineffectual and drugged-up "oh, did someone just try to kill us? oh well, hee hee, in German" heroine / love interest, to its plodding pace, its lack of scale, its meaningless plot, the most amateurish secret agency ever, and its complete misuse of Julia Stiles, this is just woeful. The end song - with a chorus approximating "Oh man, then everything just fell apart" - was more welcome than usual in cases like this. Seriously, this has to tank like a big big tank of tanking things...
... what? It was successful and kicked off a three-movie franchise? God, the world has no standards. Tune in again sometime soon when we watch the second instalment and see how 2004's audiences will be amazed and awestruck by its effervescent genius.
(I'm sorry to report that I saw the third one first. It was formulaic crap with even less from Julia Stiles than the first one.)
... what? It was successful and kicked off a three-movie franchise? God, the world has no standards. Tune in again sometime soon when we watch the second instalment and see how 2004's audiences will be amazed and awestruck by its effervescent genius.
(I'm sorry to report that I saw the third one first. It was formulaic crap with even less from Julia Stiles than the first one.)
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
"Resolve THIS..."
We did our obligatory new year planning today. And already have forty things to do in January. About fifteen of them are "attend High Spirits or Broadway Chorus rehearsal / concert", which won't tax us too greatly.
Tonight we watched Hoodwinked, a very strange CGI movie which combines the retelling-a-story approach of Rashomon with, er, Little Red Riding Hood. It's very funny. One imagines it doesn't sell itself to children though. Rebecca took Jake to see it when it came out a couple of years ago and reported it wasn't what she'd expected. Very funny though. Amongst other things it spoofs xXx. (Of which I once remarked: "You know, I could be ****ing a dead chicken rather than watching this film". Sarah pointed out that a dead chicken wasn't the best option.)
There's also a bunny. Sarah was unimpressed with the plot developments concerning the bunny, but its ears ruled.
I didn't think it would be Sarah's thing so I watched Shoot Em Up on my own. This is a daft violent movie in which Clive Owen goes around munching on carrots and shooting dead approximately three hundred bad guys while sliding under cars on his stomach, running up fallen objects, jumping over things, screwing his prostitute girlfriend, carrying a baby, abseiling, skydiving, driving... it's utterly ridiculous, and thus fantastic. It's the first Western equivalent to something like Hard Boiled (which is odd considering John Woo's been in Hollywood for years and this isn't by him). I loved it and could quite happily watch it again. Recommended, particularly for guys.
You'll remember last year I was playing a lot of hidden-object games, specifically the Mystery Case Files series. Well, this is now up to its fourth entry, Madame Fate, and while the end-of-level minigames and puzzles are still impressive-but-irrelevant-and-a-little-annoying, the object-hiding is still mostly unsurpassed. Coming up on the rails, though, is the Agatha Christie series (I know! licensed casual game in any-good shock). I accidentally played the second one, Peril At End House, first, and so for my miscreancy I'm now lumbered with playing the first, Murder On The Nile, and suffering through the lack of polish here and there which will affect you if yo play games out of order. But the pictures are gorgeous, and the object-hiding is reasonably fair - although why does bloody everyone insist on hiding butterflies, and pretzels in these games?
Sarah has been churning through casual games herself, with the most recent being Farm Frenzy (I think). I don't know what happens in the game itself, but sound effects suggest cows being tormented by something, and if you try to quit the game, it asks you to confirm your decision, and the "YES" button moves away from the mouse pointer for a while, while a cow face sobs in distress at your attempts to abandon it.
Oh! The new Sam And Max season started in November and I immediately bought the first episode and didn't play it until last week. It was, as usual, hysterical. Buying these games should be required by law.
Think it's bedtime now. Sarah is playing some bizarre platformer with an entire family being chased around in caverns, through the air, in a supermarket, etc (whatever the hell "etc" means with a list like that). I think she may be channelling her tumpiness about what happened with the bunny in Hoodwinked...
Oh! again... I added up the numbers for Take December Off, and we wound up with a grand total of 1,074 views for the video across all the sites (YouTube, Veoh, MySpace, DailyMotion, GoogleVideo, Guba). Not bad, not bad, not bad. This year will be the year of I Want To Be A Panda. One of my Christmas presents was the electric panda I've been demanding for about eight years... surely this is fate at work!
Tonight we watched Hoodwinked, a very strange CGI movie which combines the retelling-a-story approach of Rashomon with, er, Little Red Riding Hood. It's very funny. One imagines it doesn't sell itself to children though. Rebecca took Jake to see it when it came out a couple of years ago and reported it wasn't what she'd expected. Very funny though. Amongst other things it spoofs xXx. (Of which I once remarked: "You know, I could be ****ing a dead chicken rather than watching this film". Sarah pointed out that a dead chicken wasn't the best option.)
There's also a bunny. Sarah was unimpressed with the plot developments concerning the bunny, but its ears ruled.
I didn't think it would be Sarah's thing so I watched Shoot Em Up on my own. This is a daft violent movie in which Clive Owen goes around munching on carrots and shooting dead approximately three hundred bad guys while sliding under cars on his stomach, running up fallen objects, jumping over things, screwing his prostitute girlfriend, carrying a baby, abseiling, skydiving, driving... it's utterly ridiculous, and thus fantastic. It's the first Western equivalent to something like Hard Boiled (which is odd considering John Woo's been in Hollywood for years and this isn't by him). I loved it and could quite happily watch it again. Recommended, particularly for guys.
You'll remember last year I was playing a lot of hidden-object games, specifically the Mystery Case Files series. Well, this is now up to its fourth entry, Madame Fate, and while the end-of-level minigames and puzzles are still impressive-but-irrelevant-and-a-little-annoying, the object-hiding is still mostly unsurpassed. Coming up on the rails, though, is the Agatha Christie series (I know! licensed casual game in any-good shock). I accidentally played the second one, Peril At End House, first, and so for my miscreancy I'm now lumbered with playing the first, Murder On The Nile, and suffering through the lack of polish here and there which will affect you if yo play games out of order. But the pictures are gorgeous, and the object-hiding is reasonably fair - although why does bloody everyone insist on hiding butterflies, and pretzels in these games?
Sarah has been churning through casual games herself, with the most recent being Farm Frenzy (I think). I don't know what happens in the game itself, but sound effects suggest cows being tormented by something, and if you try to quit the game, it asks you to confirm your decision, and the "YES" button moves away from the mouse pointer for a while, while a cow face sobs in distress at your attempts to abandon it.
Oh! The new Sam And Max season started in November and I immediately bought the first episode and didn't play it until last week. It was, as usual, hysterical. Buying these games should be required by law.
Think it's bedtime now. Sarah is playing some bizarre platformer with an entire family being chased around in caverns, through the air, in a supermarket, etc (whatever the hell "etc" means with a list like that). I think she may be channelling her tumpiness about what happened with the bunny in Hoodwinked...
Oh! again... I added up the numbers for Take December Off, and we wound up with a grand total of 1,074 views for the video across all the sites (YouTube, Veoh, MySpace, DailyMotion, GoogleVideo, Guba). Not bad, not bad, not bad. This year will be the year of I Want To Be A Panda. One of my Christmas presents was the electric panda I've been demanding for about eight years... surely this is fate at work!
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Pictures! (Blog TARDIS, July 2007)
I just found a folder of pictures from, er, July. Oops. So this is some of what we were up to then...
Fireworks over English Bay as part of a big music-with-lightshow thing.
Apparently, a Chinese food stall. But I have no idea why Sarah took this picture!
The phone company, using the best possible promotion - "use our phones and cute bunnies will, somehow, be involved in the process".
Buy PANDA shoes now, or face the consequences.
Because you would buy that.
Never too fat to give a thumbs-up to the camera. Note approved Radical tee-shirt.
English Bay in late Fall: sunny and, by Vancouver standards, crowded.
I eat pitta bread stuffed with chilli because they're funny.
Sarah, on the other hand, still refuses to eat carrots, despite messages like this scattered around Vancouver supermarkets.
Dotey polar-bear table! I'm sensing we're into the pictures we took when we were furniture-shopping with Susan. And yes, look...
It's La Braverman herself, demonstrating where the Army is at with its revolutionary and fashionable chameleon-technology-enabled summer dresses.
I expect this was funny because of something written on those pieces of paper. As it is, it just looks like a grumpy couch watching television on its own.
This, while admittedly not the greatest ever lake and park, is nevertheless a random fixture in the middle of the Nainamo suburbs. Quite nice. This picture dates from when we went to a "harmonic overtones" class. In what later became the rainstorm of the year, caused when Bear, asked to conceal the sun which was shining in Sarah's eyes, decided to move it out of position and cause Flash Gordon-scale flooding and disaster across the entire world. If you didn't notice it, that's just because Bear moves very quickly to repair his mistakes. Sometimes.
Who could fail to love Grumpy Bunny: All Year Long?
This bunny kills fascists.
After you walk beyond Coal Harbour, on the way to English Bay, there's a lake, featuring wild geese and ducks, none of which have the faintest idea about pavement protocol.
Along the Stanley Park sea wall there's a set of rock sculptures - piles of stones apparently balanced amidst the waves. Unsettling when you first see them. A moment after we took this picture, a jogger came along (posing by running along the elevated section of the wall) and double-taked almost hard enough to fall into the water as he noticed what he was running past.
This reminds me of the painting which hung in our lounge for years in Teignmouth.
Fireworks over English Bay as part of a big music-with-lightshow thing.(I can be even less specific if you like.)
Apparently, a Chinese food stall. But I have no idea why Sarah took this picture!
The phone company, using the best possible promotion - "use our phones and cute bunnies will, somehow, be involved in the process".
Buy PANDA shoes now, or face the consequences.
Because you would buy that.
Never too fat to give a thumbs-up to the camera. Note approved Radical tee-shirt.
English Bay in late Fall: sunny and, by Vancouver standards, crowded.
I eat pitta bread stuffed with chilli because they're funny.
Sarah, on the other hand, still refuses to eat carrots, despite messages like this scattered around Vancouver supermarkets.
Dotey polar-bear table! I'm sensing we're into the pictures we took when we were furniture-shopping with Susan. And yes, look...
It's La Braverman herself, demonstrating where the Army is at with its revolutionary and fashionable chameleon-technology-enabled summer dresses.
I expect this was funny because of something written on those pieces of paper. As it is, it just looks like a grumpy couch watching television on its own.
This, while admittedly not the greatest ever lake and park, is nevertheless a random fixture in the middle of the Nainamo suburbs. Quite nice. This picture dates from when we went to a "harmonic overtones" class. In what later became the rainstorm of the year, caused when Bear, asked to conceal the sun which was shining in Sarah's eyes, decided to move it out of position and cause Flash Gordon-scale flooding and disaster across the entire world. If you didn't notice it, that's just because Bear moves very quickly to repair his mistakes. Sometimes.
Who could fail to love Grumpy Bunny: All Year Long?
This bunny kills fascists.
After you walk beyond Coal Harbour, on the way to English Bay, there's a lake, featuring wild geese and ducks, none of which have the faintest idea about pavement protocol.
Along the Stanley Park sea wall there's a set of rock sculptures - piles of stones apparently balanced amidst the waves. Unsettling when you first see them. A moment after we took this picture, a jogger came along (posing by running along the elevated section of the wall) and double-taked almost hard enough to fall into the water as he noticed what he was running past.
This reminds me of the painting which hung in our lounge for years in Teignmouth.2007 In Retrospect Part Two: We Live In Vancouver!
We've been here eleven months. Blimey. It feels like a year. It feels like forever. It feels like we were having our goodbye party a week ago.
What do we miss about England? The people. Or more accurately, our friends who we left in Littlehampton and the collateral damage zone surrounding it, and our families (which in Sarah's case doesn't even mean 'in England'). When we went back in September it was mostly unpleasant but for them. Grimy, dark, bad air, no smiles, and to quote an Alan Moore CD, the moral atmosphere of the week before last. Yuk. Everyone we like should come out here as soon as possible. It's like being sluiced.
Other things I miss: alcohol on sale pretty much everywhere; the singing and the parties, although we're trying to train them up... so many people here are responsible adults, which SUCKS... it may be the apartment-living that does this... it can be difficult to have a rave at 2am when there are neighbours in five directions; long skirts... fashion here is a little on the woeful side; young people... there don't seem to be any downtown, or in the choirs, or in the community theatre... they have separate Young People's Choirs and Theatre groups, perhaps to avoid any hint of impropriety or dubiety; everything being within walking distance (although most things are, and pretty much everything else is in range of mass transit); our rabbits.
That might not be a complete list, as I thought of it while I was typing. But on the other hand, it might be a complete list, in which case, my god, are we better off here.
What do I like about Vancouver? Almost everything. It's wonderful to live in a city. The variety of the architecture... the surprising spaces between, above, and under the buildings... the randomness of two-storey old-style houses jammed between skyscrapers... the immensity of the Shangri-La apartment complex they're putting up across from us... the convenience of having two dozen of anything to choose from within ten minutes' walk... the unparalleled transit system which for $80 a month lets me travel pretty much anywhere at any time on bus, SkyTrain, and even the ferry... the quality of the shows and music... the freshness of the air... the view from the bridges as we head back into downtown in the evening... the way life here is vertical and not horizontal... and peeking between the buildings in almost every direction, mountains like we're on an Orbital. Vancouver is just awesome. And although the overuse of the word awesome is a big strike against Canadians, it's appropriate here. You look at this city and you think, god, it's big and it's beautiful and it's amazing. Hurrah for Vancouver!
It's been a hell of a year for our music. We've written about thirty songs since April and performed in a bunch of random pubs and cafes - Sarah's stage nerves appear to have gone, even if they actually haven't - we've joined two choirs and a theatre group and done shows for them all, we've done some Christmas quartet singing, and we've even collaborated... erk... loss of control... does not compute...
Next year - this year - our resolutions are: make more time for ourselves, figure out our long-term plan for Canada and our lives, and make the ultimate step in music - getting other people to do our stuff, as often as possible.
(And, er, post to this blog more often...)
What are your plans? And HAPPY NEW YEAR!
What do we miss about England? The people. Or more accurately, our friends who we left in Littlehampton and the collateral damage zone surrounding it, and our families (which in Sarah's case doesn't even mean 'in England'). When we went back in September it was mostly unpleasant but for them. Grimy, dark, bad air, no smiles, and to quote an Alan Moore CD, the moral atmosphere of the week before last. Yuk. Everyone we like should come out here as soon as possible. It's like being sluiced.
Other things I miss: alcohol on sale pretty much everywhere; the singing and the parties, although we're trying to train them up... so many people here are responsible adults, which SUCKS... it may be the apartment-living that does this... it can be difficult to have a rave at 2am when there are neighbours in five directions; long skirts... fashion here is a little on the woeful side; young people... there don't seem to be any downtown, or in the choirs, or in the community theatre... they have separate Young People's Choirs and Theatre groups, perhaps to avoid any hint of impropriety or dubiety; everything being within walking distance (although most things are, and pretty much everything else is in range of mass transit); our rabbits.
That might not be a complete list, as I thought of it while I was typing. But on the other hand, it might be a complete list, in which case, my god, are we better off here.
What do I like about Vancouver? Almost everything. It's wonderful to live in a city. The variety of the architecture... the surprising spaces between, above, and under the buildings... the randomness of two-storey old-style houses jammed between skyscrapers... the immensity of the Shangri-La apartment complex they're putting up across from us... the convenience of having two dozen of anything to choose from within ten minutes' walk... the unparalleled transit system which for $80 a month lets me travel pretty much anywhere at any time on bus, SkyTrain, and even the ferry... the quality of the shows and music... the freshness of the air... the view from the bridges as we head back into downtown in the evening... the way life here is vertical and not horizontal... and peeking between the buildings in almost every direction, mountains like we're on an Orbital. Vancouver is just awesome. And although the overuse of the word awesome is a big strike against Canadians, it's appropriate here. You look at this city and you think, god, it's big and it's beautiful and it's amazing. Hurrah for Vancouver!
It's been a hell of a year for our music. We've written about thirty songs since April and performed in a bunch of random pubs and cafes - Sarah's stage nerves appear to have gone, even if they actually haven't - we've joined two choirs and a theatre group and done shows for them all, we've done some Christmas quartet singing, and we've even collaborated... erk... loss of control... does not compute...
Next year - this year - our resolutions are: make more time for ourselves, figure out our long-term plan for Canada and our lives, and make the ultimate step in music - getting other people to do our stuff, as often as possible.
(And, er, post to this blog more often...)
What are your plans? And HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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