This weekend
Inferno
Was quite fun on Friday. Saw a lot of familiar faces in the Dev and the Ballroom and had a good dance for the first half of the night. The music kind of took a nosedive later; having a bleepy set is fine with me most of the time, but this was fairly obscure and not very danceable stuff, plus we weren't 100% over the Christmas cold yet, so we decided to call it a night quite early on. fireblade__ crashed over in Wood Green with us too and we all bodged together some sort of breakfast the following morning with what was left lying around the kitchen. Twas all quite fun, really.
I Am Legend
I went to see this film yesterday; I thoroughly enjoyed the book a few years ago and was curious to see how this adaptation* compares to it. In some respects it was quite well done - I'd been aprehensive when I heard Will Smith was going to star, but I think he did the lead role pretty well. And the setting of an abandoned New York City looked stunningly convincing... but they distorted the plot of the book (in which the infected turn into vampires and Robert Neville really does turn out to be the last human) so much it seemed a bit wrong that the movie should retain the same title. Hollywood obviously didn't want to risk marketing anything with such a downbeat ending, so they instead tacked on a new one which doesn't even make much sense (why in the shitting crikey wasn't that 'survivor's colony' broadcasting on the radio like Neville was??) It seemed a bit unnecessary to have all the infected rendered as CG too, rather than using actors who could have probably done it a lot more convincingly and at a fraction of the cost. Oh well, I suppose this just underscores the relevance of books in this tacky, multimedia age.
eBay
After getting ripped off quite badly back in 2006, and especially after my recent ID fraud shenanigans, you might be wondering why I'd still be using eBay, especially for purchasing big things. Well, I have been asking myself the same question these last few days. I tried to buy the lastest version of Photoshop (which I need for my illustration work) from a seller in the States, and despite the careful background checks I did on this fella before bidding, it's looking like he's run off with my money and now I'll need to walk that well-trodden path down to Paypal's dispute resolution centre. A king-sized pain in the arse to start off my new year then, but unfortunately, when something costs £499 new in the shops on the high street, I take these foolish risks sometimes out of desperation.
The novel
I placed my order for the preview copy of my book on the 16th November. Yesterday I finally discovered why it hasn't been delivered yet; the electronic copy of my book they have on file had somehow become corrupted. Their customer support person was apologetic about this and said maybe the explanatory email they sent me about this wasn't clear enough. I responded maybe it would have helped if their explanatory email had actually existed in the first place, but never mind, I'm resubmitting the files to them right now, so hopefully my publication plans are finally getting back on track.
* It's previously been filmed over the years as The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man. Oh, okay, you knew that.
Was quite fun on Friday. Saw a lot of familiar faces in the Dev and the Ballroom and had a good dance for the first half of the night. The music kind of took a nosedive later; having a bleepy set is fine with me most of the time, but this was fairly obscure and not very danceable stuff, plus we weren't 100% over the Christmas cold yet, so we decided to call it a night quite early on. fireblade__ crashed over in Wood Green with us too and we all bodged together some sort of breakfast the following morning with what was left lying around the kitchen. Twas all quite fun, really.
I Am Legend
I went to see this film yesterday; I thoroughly enjoyed the book a few years ago and was curious to see how this adaptation* compares to it. In some respects it was quite well done - I'd been aprehensive when I heard Will Smith was going to star, but I think he did the lead role pretty well. And the setting of an abandoned New York City looked stunningly convincing... but they distorted the plot of the book (in which the infected turn into vampires and Robert Neville really does turn out to be the last human) so much it seemed a bit wrong that the movie should retain the same title. Hollywood obviously didn't want to risk marketing anything with such a downbeat ending, so they instead tacked on a new one which doesn't even make much sense (why in the shitting crikey wasn't that 'survivor's colony' broadcasting on the radio like Neville was??) It seemed a bit unnecessary to have all the infected rendered as CG too, rather than using actors who could have probably done it a lot more convincingly and at a fraction of the cost. Oh well, I suppose this just underscores the relevance of books in this tacky, multimedia age.
eBay
After getting ripped off quite badly back in 2006, and especially after my recent ID fraud shenanigans, you might be wondering why I'd still be using eBay, especially for purchasing big things. Well, I have been asking myself the same question these last few days. I tried to buy the lastest version of Photoshop (which I need for my illustration work) from a seller in the States, and despite the careful background checks I did on this fella before bidding, it's looking like he's run off with my money and now I'll need to walk that well-trodden path down to Paypal's dispute resolution centre. A king-sized pain in the arse to start off my new year then, but unfortunately, when something costs £499 new in the shops on the high street, I take these foolish risks sometimes out of desperation.
The novel
I placed my order for the preview copy of my book on the 16th November. Yesterday I finally discovered why it hasn't been delivered yet; the electronic copy of my book they have on file had somehow become corrupted. Their customer support person was apologetic about this and said maybe the explanatory email they sent me about this wasn't clear enough. I responded maybe it would have helped if their explanatory email had actually existed in the first place, but never mind, I'm resubmitting the files to them right now, so hopefully my publication plans are finally getting back on track.
* It's previously been filmed over the years as The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man. Oh, okay, you knew that.