williamjm

I watched the first episode of Game of Thrones season 2 this evening. I thought it was good, although it's possibly the least eventful episode of the show so far. I think the ever-expanding cast and number of plotlines may be a bit of a problem for the show's pacing (as it has been in the last couple of books), although maybe once they've got a lot of set-up out of the way the pacing will improve in later episodes. I have slightly mixed feelings about how accurately they should adapt the book, as a fan of the books I really like the way that they've been faithfully adapting most (although not quite all) of the plotlines so far, but at the same time I think there is a risk that fidelity to the source material could lead to them trying to squeeze too many plotlines into a limited amount of time.

I liked the introduction to Stannis and his court, the actor playing Stannis did a good job of capturing his dour nature and obsession with doing things the way he thinks his is right. The scene on the beach with the burning statues was quite striking visually, as well. Most of the other plotlines were done reasonably well, although I thought Littlefinger was a bit lacking in subtlety in his scene with Cersei. Dany's plotline could be a bit dull this season especially in the early episodes, and I think the last couple of Steven Erikson books may have left me with an irrational hatred of scenes where people spend a long time journeying through a barren desert.

Speaking of adaptations, I saw The Hunger Games at the cinema on Sunday. As adaptations go, it's another example of one that faithfully follows the book (although a couple of scenes felt a bit rushed), and I thought it did a pretty good job of turning an entertaining book into an entertaining movie. Adapting the next book in a similar way should also work fine, but I'm struggling to see Mockingjay working as a straight adaptation. It was a well-made film, it was mostly well directed apart from what might be the most excessively shaky camera work I've seen. The acting was pretty good, I thought Jennifer Lawrence was perfect as Katniss and the supporting cast did a fine job. If judged as an action movie it perhaps struggles to ever get into top gear and maybe only two or three action scenes really feel tense, but I guess action isn't really the main point of the story despite the superficially violent premise.

When judged against other "reality TV deathmatch" films, I'd say it was better than "Series 7 : The Contenders", but not quite as great as "Battle Royale" - the Hunger Games lacks Battle Royale's inventive violence, dark humour and Takeshi Kitano's scene stealing performance.

I'm up in Scotland for a dozen days, thanks to Easter being immediately followed by public holidays for the Royal Wedding and May Day, I get to take 12 days off while only using 4 days vacation, which is nice. Yesterday my aunt and uncle, two cousins, cousin's husband and their 18-month old son came through to visit. 18-month old children can be quite exhausting, they seem to quickly learn how to make everyone around do their bidding, he quickly decided that my main role in life was to push toy cars towards him and was particularly amused if they ever crashed together. It was nice to see them all, one of the disadvantages in living in southern England when my entire family (save for one cousin in Amsterdam) live in Scotland is that I don't get to see them very often - I hadn't seen one of the cousins I saw yesterday in about 3 years.

Today we went through to Aberfeldy, the nearest town to the one where I grew up and where I went to school for the last couple of years of secondary school. My old school has been completely demolished and replaced with a new one that opened last year, so I wandered around the outside of it out of curiosity. It does certainly look a lot more modern than the rather tired-looking 1960s-era building I attended (with part of the school in a building that could well have been 50 years older than that). It does look quite an impressive building, although I'm a bit puzzled that it seems to be about twice the size of the old school, given that they presumably have about the same number of pupils I'm not sure what they're using all that space for. After that we wandered around the Birks of Aberfeldy, a gorge with a reasonably impressive waterfall in it. I haven't been round that for about a dozen years, I don't remember there being quite as many steps on the way round it, but it was a nice walk and great weather for it as well.

After spending most of yesterday evening try to fix it, my computer is now back in a state where it actually boots up without immediately restarting, which is nice. The key clue to what was wrong with it came when brucec helpfully asked in a comment to my previous post if I used AVG, which I do. A bit of Googling revealed that AVG's forums were filled with angry posts from the last couple of days from people complaining that their computer wouldn't boot up after the latest AVG update. As one person pointed out, the anti-virus software was actually more damaging than a virus.

They did also offer a solution where deleting a couple of AVG's files on the hard disk would allow Windows to start up again. This was easier said than done when the computer wouldn't start up, but I managed to do it eventually and Windows now seems to be working fine as well.

Other than the computer issues, things are fine at the moment. I would complain about how cold it is outside, but it sounds like Cambridge is actually one of the warmest (least-cold might be a better way of putting it) places in the country at the moment and we only have a minuscule amount of snow, so I suppose I'm probably quite lucky in comparison to a lot of people just now.

I think I said a few weeks ago that I was looking to buy a new TV. After some delays waiting for the one I wanted to come back into stock, I had it delivered yesterday. It's a 32" Toshiba HD LCD, which is significantly larger than the 24" Sanyo CRT TV I'd been using for the last 10 years. The increase in size is very noticeable, oddly it seems more noticeable in a way when it is switched off, since there's now a large black rectangle dominating the corner of the room, exacerbated by the TV frame also being the same shade of black. The picture quality of the new TV seems good - although I can't say how well is displays High Definition pictures, since I don't have anything capable of supplying HD pictures since I'm not able to get either cable or satellite TV. Sometime next year I think they're meant to start broadcasting on Freeview in HD, but until then the only way I'd be able to watch anything in HD is to buy a Blu-Ray player, which I might do sometime but don't have any immediate intention to start shopping for one. The non-high definition can still look pretty good, I watched last year's Star Trek film on DVD last evening and the special effects were displayed very well. It's the first time I've seen the film since I saw it at the cinema, and I was reminded how silly much of the plot is and there is a bit of possibly unintentionally amusing dialogue, but it is still a very entertaining film.

Since I was going to have to wait in for a delivery, I ordered a new printer the same day. It has some useful features compare to my previous printer, in particular if you try printing out black text then it will actually print something out whereas the old printer had started to just produce blank pages if asked to print in black. I must have installed about a dozen printers over the years on various computers, and they never seem to install smoothly. This one was no different, after about 20 minutes of it claiming to be "installing software" and making no apparent progress I got a bit suspicious. Eventually, I discovered there was a dialog box explaining that Flash had failed to install properly, which was helpfully being displayed behind the "installing software" window so that it was completely invisible until I tried alt-tabbing through all the open windows. Once I'd clicked 'OK' on that notification everything else did install successfully and it all seemed to work fine despite the report Flash installation problem.

Went to see "The A-Team" at the cinema today. I really enjoyed the show as a child (although I suspect it wouldn't hold up very well to rewatching) and I thought the film did do a surprisingly good job of capturing the same spirit of slightly ludicrous fun. It was extremely silly at times, particularly the "I think they're trying to fly the tank" scene, but also very entertaining. I thought the post-End Credits cameos by Dirk Benedict and Dwight Schultz was also a nice touch.

A few days ago I went to the opticians to get my eyes tested for the first time in 6 years. As I thought, my eyesight has only changed a little bit in the intervening period so there was only a fairly small change in the prescription. I picked up the new glasses today, distant things now do seem slightly sharper than before, which is nice. As usual, it felt a bit disconcerting walking about with the new glasses at first, since the ground somehow didn't seem to be in exactly the same place as before, and the whole view of the world felt subtly different to the way it looked with my old glasses (I guess maybe I was used to unconsciously compensating for the previous glasses not being perfect after 6 years and had to learn that that compensation wasn't necessary any more). I think my brain has mostly adjusted to the new glasses now, the only difference I really notice now is that because the frames are a slightly different shape (a bit narrower vertically), I can see the frames in a slightly different location to before, so whereas I had got used to ignoring them, I haven't quite got used to the new position enough to entirely ignore them.

It's currently 28 degrees in here, at 2am in the morning. This really isn't ideal, fortunately the forecast is suggesting it will cool down a bit over the next few days which will be a relief.

I went to see Iron Man 2 today at the cinema. I know this is a few weeks after most people that have seen it, although I was quite keen to see it having enjoyed the first film a lot and thinking the trailers looked good, a combination of going to Chester, going up to Scotland for a week and the friend I was going to see it with having to cancel meant I didn't really get a chance until now.

I thought it was a very enjoyable film, Robert Downey Jr is excellent again in the main role and the rest of the cast is good as well. The action scenes are good and the pacing is good enough that the film never really seems to lose much momentum. I think it could possibly be slightly better than the original due to having a better villain (even if Mickey Rourke is a bit underused) and a better final action sequence than the slightly anti-climatic one in the first film. Like the original it is entertaining and no more than that, I think it is sufficient for a superhero film to just be entertaining and not have any depth but I'd still rate it behind the likes of X-Men 2 or the two Batman films because they do have more compelling plots - it may still be obvious in them that in the end the Good Guys will triumph there is at least some potential for there to be some negative consequences to some of the characters whereas in Iron Man I didn't really feel any of the characters were ever in any jeopardy. If it didn't have such a charismatic performance in the lead role then the script might make it quite a weak film, but fortunately it turns out to be very entertaining.

When I bought the ticket for the film, I noticed that they asked if I wanted a normal seat or a 'premium' seat (which was a couple of pounds more expensive). This must be a thing at all Vue cinemas now, since they did the same thing when I went to see Robin Hood when I was up in Edinburgh. I'm sure I don't want to pay more for a premium seat since even a normal cinema ticket is expensive enough nowadays (I fondly remember the days when I was at University and could get £2.50 student tickets at the local Odeon) but I'm a bit puzzled where the premium seats are since they don't assign a seat number and all of the seats in the cinema look identical without anything to say "don't sit here unless you have a premium seat".

Incidentally, has anyone seen "The Losers"? I thought the trailer looked like it could be entertaining, but I haven't seen any reviews or reactions to it so far. I do wonder just how many "band of assorted soldiers/mercenaries/whatever get betrayed and have people try to kill them" films we need at the moment, what with this, The A-Team, The Expendables and Predators all coming out fairly soon.

Somewhat belatedly I went to see Avatar at the cinema yesterday. I'd been meaning to see it for a while, since many people had said they were at least partially impressed by it, but various things (mostly weather-related) meant I hadn't been able to go see it until yesterday. There was an extra unanticipated delay as the tickets for the 5 o'clock showing were sold out (a bit unusual for a film that's been out for 5 weeks, which may be an indication of how popular it is) so we bought tickets for the 7:30 showing and went back to the cinema then.

I thought the film was visually stunning, whilst the CGI bits weren't perfect all the time at their best they were excellent with some spectacular alien scenery. James Cameron obviously hasn't forgotten how to direct a good action scene, there aren't exactly a shortage of CGI-heavy action scenes in recent films but the best scenes in Avatar put most other recent efforts to shame. The 3D effects were impressive as well (although having to wear the polarised glasses over my own glasses was a little bit uncomfortable as it kept feeling as if they were about to fall off), I hadn't seen a film in 3D before but I was impressed with it, although I'm not sure if the format will be quite so beneficial for films without quite as much eye candy as Avatar (and no matter how many dimensions they used the trailer they showed for Piranha 3D would still look abominable). I thought it was good that the 3D wasn't really used in a gimmicky way, there wasn't much in the way of stuff really coming out of the screen, there was nothing like the pre-film chocolate advert with the giant wooden head that zoomed out into (apparently) the middle of the cinema.

The film has had quite a bit of criticism for the cliched and predictable plotting, I certainly wouldn't argue that it wasn't cliched, but I mostly expect that from special effects-heavy Hollywood blockbusters so I didn't really mind that aspect of it. What I did think was a bit disappointing was the execution of some of the plot, just because something is cliched and familiar doesn't mean it can't be done well, for most of the film I thought the script was fairly reasonable but towards the end some of the non-exploding bits of the film seemed a bit rushed as what should have been big dramatic moments in the main character's story arc were dealt with very quickly. The bit where all the Na'vi start dancing to pray to Enya Eywa was extremely cheesy as well.

Overall, it was far from being a perfect film but certainly a very enjoyable one.

On a vaguely related note, I saw a trailer for Clash of the Titans which left me wondering a couple of things, whether Sam Worthington now has to be in every single blockbuster (probably an improvement on the situation a few years ago of Orlando Bloom being in every blockbuster) and whether the scene at the end of the trailer with Liam Neeson as a Greek God roaring "Unleash the Kraken" followed by the appearance of an absolutely massive CGI kraken is possibly even more over-the-top than the end of the recent A-Team trailer with the tank emerging from a blown-up cargo plane and trying to shoot down jetplanes while falling through the air on parachutes?

I got up here on the train on Saturday evening, fortunately the 500-mile journey went smoothly despite most of the country being covered in snow on the way (which did make it very scenic). When I got up here it had only been snowing a couple of hours apparently so there wasn't much but it snowed pretty steadily for the next day with some additional snow showers over the next few days. I reckon there's probably about 8-10 inches here. Although this is in the Scottish Highlands which you might expect to get a lot of snow, we tend not to get that much here due to being in a fairly sheltered valley and it's been a few years since I remember that much snow here. It is also very cold, was -11 yesterday afternoon and is -9.5 at the moment so I've mostly been staying indoors, again this is unusually cold for here - it was saying on the news that this was the worst winter weather in Scotland for about 20 years, I'm not sure if that might be a slight exaggeration but it doesn't seem too far wrong.

I'm glad I got up here before the worst of the weather and therefore avoided the travel chaos, but I'm now reluctant to go out anywhere in this weather so it is slightly dull, I guess I'll get a lot of reading done this holiday...

Say one thing for the snow, it does look very pretty, I particularly like the effect at night with everything coloured by the glow of the streetlights:

I looked at my LJ profile earlier this week and noticed that today would be the 5th anniversary of me setting up this Livejournal. Looking back at my first post I said in it that I wasn't sure how much I would really use it. Looking back after 5 years, I can't say I've posted very prolifically on my own journal (only 97 posts in that time) but I've tended to be more active on other people's journals (according to my profile "366 comments received, 1,446 comments posted"). Overall, it's been a pretty good way of keeping in contact with people so I'm glad I did join here. Thanks to kalorlo who originally suggested that I should journal Livejournal.

Coincidentally, going back five more years I think tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the start of  Freshers Week in my first year of University. It does feel like quite a while ago, but doesn't really feel quite as long as 10 years. I was thinking about it recently because a couple of weeks ago I read an article on the BBC News website about a lot of new students being very nervous about Freshers Week and feeling under a lot of pressure to make new friends immediately. From what I remember I was quite nervous 10 years ago since my friends from school had disperesed to various other Scottish universities so I was quite anxious to make new friends. There were some quotes in the article I read that were dubious about the prospects of making lasting friendships in Freshers Week, from my own experience I'd say it is definitely possible. Looking at my current Facebook friends list I met 8 of them originally in Freshers Week and although I haven't seem some of them in person for a few years I did see 3 of them as recently as a month ago when I was up in Edinburgh. There's also 2 people on my current LJ friends list, snowking who I first met at a Freshers Week quiz and brucec who I seem to remember wandering around the Kings Building campus with trying to find the Student Union and getting a bit lost (at one point ending up at the end of a path which went into a small garden and then stopped). Of couse, there were also quite a few people I met in Freshers Week that I haven't seen for the best part of 10 years (and some I never saw again after the week), and I suspect I'd probably have met all the people I stayed in contact with at some point during First Year even if I'd missed Freshers Week completely, so its importance can be exaggerated.

Back in the present day, I went to the cinema today and saw the film "Surrogates". It had a reasonably interesting SF premise and overall was moderately entertaining but its exploration of the central premise felt a bit simplistic and unconvincing in places and the ending is marred by a huge and obvious plot hole. I did find the sight of Bruce Willis wearing a wig when playing his character's 'surrogate' strangely amusing.