Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Went to see the new Harry potter film over the weekend. Enjoyed it despite the normal loss of story from book to film. It was quite long and the cinema was packed with little kids, however they were all very quiet so it kept their attention.

It was a little jumpy at times and so probably deserves the 12a rating. Anyway all in all a good film, enjoyable and gripping. Good way o showing the stresses and strains that friendships go through as young people age - hey the same issues adults face ;-)

Thumbs up to cineworld aswell for a lovely tray of nachos and chillies.

Moby journal

I often visit the Moby journal, I really like the guys music and attitude. Anyhow this was posted the other day and thought it was quite interesting. So thought I'd share.

Moby

me thinks he makes a little sense

That's probably the last serious post here ;-) Still awaiting a response from 1 and 1 internet hosting (let's see if that hots up the search engines)

George Best 1946-2005

Goodbye George

Respect!

Little Britain play mastercard

After a dissappointing first episode, Little Britain tried to regain their comedy crown last night. It wasn't the funny Lou and Andy sketch, it wasn't the incontinent lady as she handed the pee soaked pension book back and it wasn't a really fun fat fighters sketch.

Their salvation came in the reference to comedy gods the Chuckle Brothers, but will this trump card save the series from being another over-hyped series that has gone on for too long?

1 and 1 internet 2

Ok, the battle with 1 and 1 begins today. I will be paying my bill and they said they would refund me. I'll see if they keep their word. If not my wrath will be likened to when Cineworld in Milton Keynes ran out of chillies for their Nachos - never has such vindictiveness ran through my veins as when they got their order wrong.

Still apart from that it has been a quiet week, with the family being ill, me looking after them and trying to do as much work as possible - I need an extra few days to appear from nowhere.

Tennant, Sci-fi and channel 4

Ok, boring weekend, wasn't up to much apart from trying to learn a bit more about wordpress and other web related things.

Enjoyed the mini Dr Who episode on Children In Need and am now looking forward to the Christmas special and the new series, thought that David Tennant would be good, but always nice to have those thoughts confirmed.

Got very upset with Channel 4 over the weekend. Sat down to watch Enterprise (see my calendar) and found that they had replaced it with the Smash Hits Poll Winners party. So upset that I turned off the TV and vowed not to watch Channel 4 until they had something decent on - or next Sunday when Enterprise should be back.

This week will see the start of a manic time at work - so be prepared for gazillions of blog posts as I procrastinate instead of getting things done (small gtd).

The Times held no good reviews over the weekend so I can't moan at them, and I also quite like the frosty weather so I can't even moan about the weather. I may have to rethink what this blog is about ;-)

I don't like it

I think Little Britiain may have run its course. Watched the first episode of the new series last night and although I laughed, I have to admit that I found it a little boring. I think it suffered the same fate as Catherine Tate eg it is just a bunch of cliched characters with catchphrases, that once you have heard them there is little room for manoeuvre. Messers Walliams and Lucas have a bit more creative talent than Miss Tate and so are able to create some interesting situations for their characters. Ann performing in Stars in their Eyes was intersting (and strangely scary at the same time) but even they may be now pushing it for ideas in this third series.

No doubt I will watch the rest of the series and no doubt I will contniue to laugh at it. However, I have to admit that at the moment the comedy crown has to go to The Mighty Boosh for both originality and actual humour. Great comedy needs more than just an old woman swearing and an 'out' gay guy who hasn't had any gay experience.

I may even go so far as to say that it is time for the BBC to eat humble pie and ask Chris Morris to return.

Latino Heat

Sorry this is a shock and I have nothing to say except to look sheepishly at the camera asking what could I possibly have done wrong.

Eddie

Getting fresh

No, not like that - It must be the state of your minds that makes you think in that way. No it is the start of a new week, and the weather has now taken a sharp turn toward the chilly factor. This monring the street was filled with the noise of car engines runing whilst flustered occupants scraped the windscreens with various tools. The joy of being able to walk to work.

Anyhow, I'm posting this to say that like the weather I feel a bit fresher this morning. The world seems a better place to live (partly due to the fact that I didn't watch the news over the weekend), I feel ready to try and get through the backlog of work I have (partly due to not doing much work over the weekend) and I generally had a nice weekend which means I can face the stress of work with renewed energy. (Should last about five minutes)

Just a quick plug, if anything in the adverts catches your eye, do take a little click through and see what is on offer. Support your poor typed out blogger ;-)

She sells grapevines

I think I've posted about my recent interest in mash-ups before, but I need to tell you about a couple I recently heard. For the uninitiated a mash-up is the mixing of two or more tracks to create what can only be described as a hybrid track. It has been used by good effect by the pop industry to get a little money for itself eg by the the sugababes with their Tubeway (Gary Numan) Army track. However the best examples are to be found underground and on the net.

Anyway, the ones I just wanted to mention were a couple of tracks which have used Marvin Gaye's Heard it through the grapevine. Now I'm not a soul fella and so have never been big on Marvin, even though I think he has a great voice. But some clever chappies have mixed his vocal over the top of two of my favourite tracks to create something very interesting, if not fantastic.

The first is called My grapevine life, which mixes Marvin with Talk Talk's It's my life, and it works. The second mixes the soul legend's vocals with the Cult's She sells sanctuary and is called She sells grapevines. I think they are both great and if you're interested simply put those titles into google or yahoo and follow the links. Alternatively take a trip to Live 105's SixxMixx guru PartyBen and or MashupTownRadio and learn all about mashing.

One and One internet hosting

For no particular reason other than these are the current things that I am not happy with and am in the process of moaning about - directly.

1. www.1and1.co.uk
2. Mince tarts
3. www.oneandone.co.uk
4. Any cake with almond flavouring
5. internet service provider 1 and 1

Can you believe that my former internet hosts demand that I pay them for a service I haven't used? Fistly they sent an invoice to me which I was unable to pay due to not wanting to pay via credit card. I then cancel the account, but because the invoice was sent before I cancelled I have to pay - the full amount of three months hosting. They say they will refund once I have paid, but the reason I cancelled in the first place was that they wouldn't accept payment via paypal. Aaargh.

So without any warning and no further invoice, or demands for money, they get their collection service to write to me asking for the money, which has now cost me a further £15. Telephoning both companies is about as helpful as using sandpaper as a cure for piles. So the upshot is I have to pay out and then they refund me for the service I haven't used.

I have a funny feeling this will not be the last post on this matter!

Flock

I thought about the idea of a pun on the name but to be honest couldn't really be bothered, so in the end I just thought 'Flock it' - ha ha ha. Seriously this is an interesting piece of software. Take a trip to the website and see what you think.

It's really a glorified web browser, that integrates photos and blogging and rss feeds. Actually it could be pretty much what I've been looking for to integrate all the junk I have. Anyway I downloaded the pre beta release over the weekend and managed to play with it for about 5 minutes before I had to go and do something else, so I can't report any great revelations at the moment. Suffice to say that for a pre beta release it seemed extrememly stable, and had tons of functionality. If I manage to play a little more I'll keep you informed.

As an aside I am quite interested in the design of their site. I have noticed a trend recently in providing large type and very clear design. Is this the shape of things to come?

Nostalgia again

Well this made me laugh. It is from JonnyB's private secret diary which is a very funny account of life in Norfolk. Anyway here is the quote, if you laugh you've got the joke and are probably remembering what you got up to in the eighties. Jonny is telling the readers he is off to live in a friends house for a while and is suggesting there could be slight change to the blog:

Normal service will continue here, perhaps with a few new characters in a
different location. It will be like Joey (the hilarious spin-off from Friends
not the man on Blue Peter).

I can't stop laughing...

Web overload

If I had the time to make some tea I would but it would then go cold as I surfed my through the ever expanding world on online apps.

I seem to have overloaded myself again and need to get some sort of central repository to my 'online' life (should that still be distinct from the rest of it or has it become so intertwined that it can no longer be separated). I sometimes think that if it wasn't for cookies (which go well with tea - ha ha) I wouldn't even be able keep track of what was what in my favourites menu.

From multiple email accounts, to newsreaders, to tagging apps, to wikis, to blogs, to my own webspace with all its potentials, the online overload is everywhere. With the majority of new material going rss it should, in theory, be easier to link everything up, but at the moment there are so many vying apps that I feel the need to be involved in them all *evil grin*.

And yesterday we got the information about windowslive which seems a little vague at the moment, in beta, but potentially another repository to (un)organise my life. I do love the variety of ideas and concepts the web embraces but I really need to organise these a little better. I'll keep you informed if I find the killer app - or better still you can always point me in the right direction by leaving a comment.

HTML heaven

Who said HTML code is evil bad and always out to get me. All I needed was a nice cup of tea, a brain that was half-awake and Dreamweaver. Yes, I do feel like I have failed and let all hardcore coders around the world down by reverting to the WYSIWYG aproach. But please let me explain. Although I did use Dreamweaver I was in the code window for working out what I needed to do, please believe me when I say that I am not letting notepad champions down - I will return ;-)

Actually one of my favourite web design packages at the moment is Namo's Webeditor. I got a free copy from PC PLus and have been really impressed. It has a simple interface and does what you ask it to. The version I have is a couple of steps down the evolutionary scale so the newer versions should be even better.