Sunday, March 30, 2008 at 07:26PM If you are after an engrossing and beautiful RPG for your Xbox 360 you should get Lost Odyssey. It comes on four DVDs (there is only just room in the box) and it looks amazing. The characterisation and dialogue is also excellent. I'm not much good at these things but number one son (who takes this things very seriously) is. And he likes it.
Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 10:31PM Yesterday the washing machine started to make a funny noise. Today it wasn't making any noises at all. And the big drum thing wasn't going round any more. My professional opinion is that it is broken. Bearing in mind it is four years old, I think it is new machine time.
I usually have a go at mending them, and I'm actually pretty good. I've rebuilt motors, replaced pumps and unclogged valves. I've only really got it wrong once, when I didn't quite fit a seal properly and the back of the machine fell off, putting the kitchen under three inches of water. But apart from that slight mishap I'm quite good. But this time I think I'll get a new one.
The one before this failed under very impressive circumstances. Two chaps had just turned up and fitted a new cooker. They turned it on and the washing machine across the kitchen blew up at exactly the same moment. They were most apologetic, before they realised that it was not their fault.
This time I've managed to get a replacement machine organised without even leaving the keyboard. Trawled through some Which reports to find a brand that is broadly OK (Why are all the best buy ones hugely expensive?), found a local supplier, checked stock levels, ordered and paid. It arrives next week. I hope it is on time. I'll probably have to change my socks at some point.....
Life Friday, March 28, 2008 at 08:02PM Whenever I go to see a movie I write a report of it. Not sure why, let's just put it down to my determination to improve the value of this site. Then again...
Tonight it was "There Will Be Blood". Normally I avoid movies with the word "blood" in the title, but it has been well reviewed and number one son fancied seeing it.
Three hours later, as we emerged from the cinema, I reflected that I hadn't really learnt a great deal more about the human condition from the movie. Some people are nice (though not many in this film), some people are nasty, and sometimes there are films about nasty people.
Daniel Day Lewis won an Oscar for his portrayal of Daniel Plainview, an aspiring oil baron with a very dark side. For an actor who wanted to get an Oscar the part must have been a dream come true. You can count the number of scenes which don't contain our flawed hero on the fingers of one leg. In this respect the film reminded me a lot of the The Aviator, in which which Leonardo DiCaprio played Howard Hughes, another big businessman who might not have been as nasty as Daniel, but ended up just as bonkers. Leonardo didn't get the Oscar though, which must have been a bit annoying for him.
Anyhoo, I can't really say that the film did a great deal for me. I'm not sorry that I saw it, it was well made and acted, but I learnt as much about ways of folk from The Emperor's New Groove, and it was a much more uplifting experience.
film reviews Thursday, March 27, 2008 at 06:20PM We put our recycling bin out for collection a day early by mistake today. It was nice to see that all the other people on the street followed our example.
Life Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 07:37PM I'm out visiting the in-laws at the moment. My father in law has a computer which he finds very useful, but a couple of weeks ago it broke. It started displaying strange messages on boot up and after a chat on the phone we decided that it was hardware. So he called in a chap who advertised in the local press as a computer fixer. This "engineer" turned up and took a look at the machine, agreed that it was broken, said it was too old to repair/not worth mending and then asked for 25 quid call out fee. Which he got (having rather presciently not advertised a no fix, no fee policy). We took a look and found that it was the power supply, dropped in a replacement and the machine woke up and ran a treat.
This is a truly nasty little business. It was very obvious to us that the power supply was wrong (if the BIOS reports 4.3 volts on the 5 volt rail the number of suspects is somewhat limited) and so I'm inclined to not give this chap the benefit of the doubt. So if you are calling someone out to mend your hardware you should make sure that they are no fix, no fee operators.
Life 