Foiled again...

There is something very wrong with my computer, and it seems to be getting worse. It's been getting these intermittent lags for a while now, but they're getting longer and closer together. It gets to the point where the screen isn't even keeping up with my typing. I can work quite happily for a while, then all of a sudden, the damned thing is next to useless. Video playback is obviously similarly affected (though not so if it's DVD playback).

This evening, for no obvious reason, I was getting obscure error messages when I tried to connect to my website's FTP to update some content... Having shut down and restarted (as opposed to plain old restarting) it seems to be back to normal, and connecting merrily. I really hate PCs sometimes. I may just give in and buy a Mac next time. It's not as if I play games anymore...

News? Not a great deal. My collection of TF movie toys is almost complete:

Leader
Optimus Prime
Megatron
Brawl

Voyager
Blackout
Ratchet
Ironhide
Starscream
Thundercracker
Rescue Ratchet

Deluxe
Jazz
2008 Bumblebee
Scorponok
Wreckage
Barricade
Bonecrusher
Arcee
Longarm
Dropkick

I also nabbed the movie Robot Heroes - the only time I've seen them, and I grabbed almost everything on the shelf - because they're rather sweet. There's something very odd about seeing Frenzy with a mouth molded into a cheeky grin but, somehow, it works.

And the upcoming new stuff (dubbed "Allspark Power", and largely comprised of repaints), for the most part, isn't lighting my candle. This is probably a good thing, as I'm pretty much out of space (again). I've added paintwork to most of the movie figures I've picked up because the Hasbro paintjobs are generally inadequate.

In many ways, this weekend's trip to Memorabilia isn't so much about going to the show and buying loads of stuff (though that's almost inevitable - I don't think there's been a single Memorabilia that I've left empty-handed, even though I have previously managed to spend far less than my budget), as much as it is getting away from home and larking about at the weekend... Which I should do more often, if only by doing touristy crap around town. I'm sure I promised myself I'd to that around this time last year...

I've been off work these last two days - two out of the three holiday days I have yet remaining - and have managed to arrange a visit to the dentist for a routine checkup next week, but very little else. I've woken up both days and said to myself "I will sit down and turn my extensive notes on that story of mine into a proper short story" and "I will sit down and work on my little fairy tale story" and done absolutely bugger all. I've read some more... getting about halfway through the second book of Stephen Donaldson's first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and it's quite a fascinating read. I decided to look it up on Wikipedia, and discovered a whole new angle on it that I hadn't considered, which certainly threw a new light on parts I've read recently, and lead me to go back and skim through the first couple of chapters of the first book.

Recently, I've been to see the computer generated movie based on the legends of Beowulf and I must say the story in the movie is far more interesting and coherent than the stories it is based upon. My only real quibble (apart from the usual not-quite-human movement of the CG faces) was that the animation of the horses in the movie was terrible - roughly videogame standard. While the movement of the human characters was clearly the result of some seriously high-end motion capture, the horses were not... That kind of thing really shows up, too. It's quite a gory film, but true to the legends in that respect. One amusing point is that Beowulf takes the first opportunity to strip naked (to fight Grendel as his equal), and then the movie uses an increasingly unlikely stream of things to obscure certain bodyparts. Some of it almost had me laughing out loud. I also got the impression it was made with IMAX 3D in mind, because so much of it took full advantage of the system to throw things right at the audience. I'm hoping to see it in a 'normal' cinema, just to see how it compares...

Work is currently rather tiresome, with the same old people making the same old mistakes. It's getting all the more depressing that, in spite of all the progress, we're still scuppered by the same incompetence and, in spite of Production moving heaven and earth to accommodate the demands of the Salespeople, they haven't made good on their part of the bargain until they've seen things go horribly wrong because if their tardiness and stupidity.

On my most recent visit to Forbidden Planet, I picked up the soundtrack to (deep breath) Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society - the movie based on the TV series based on the movie based on the manga. It's the usual Yoko Kanno stuff - eclectic, occasionally beautiful, and featuring a goodly amount of vocals by Russian singer Origa. It's bound to make its way onto my MP3 player... Which I must remember to charge before the weekend.

Orbital Manga was also graced with my presence on that same day... Plenty there that I'd like to snap up, but there's always the question of whether I'd get better prices elsewhere. It's a cool shop, and good to know about, even if their stock can be a little inconsistent. I took note of a few prices, have compared them to eBay, and will compare them to the stands at Memorabilia before deciding what to buy, when, and from whom. Strategy, that's the key.