Getting somewhere?

The changes in my mood sometimes surprise me.

Around New Year, I was pretty despondent about my flat - particularly the painting of the kitchen - and spent far too long lamenting my lack of progress toward moving in. In the last few days, I've managed to buy the paint I need to do all the walls and, with the rollers, etc already at the flat, I feel ready to tackle... even to finish the painting this weekend.

It may not help that I have a friend visiting on Saturday, delivering a belated Christmas gift. It may serve as a distraction (particularly if I feel the need to bring out the Saturn by way of entertainment) or it may serve to ensure I complete the job on Saturday. That remains to be seen.

But overall, apart from some rather angry outbursts at work over the last few days, I've been feeling much better about everything.

There was one situation where I was trying to work on the flatplan for my brainblending 3-edition magazine (split over two sets of entries in the database, so it's never clear where any bookings are meant to go) and our Junior Designer trotted over to ask me about an ad she'd picked up to set. Now, when I'm flatplanning, it's never a good time to ask me anything... but this question was pretty dumb.

OK, she's a Junior, and can't be expected to know everything yet, but she hadn't even thought her question through before posing it.

The client supplied a complete ad last month, but this month needed us to set it. This ad wasn't per their normal template, so Junior Designer wondered what to do. I suggested (possibly a little bit too sternly) she ask the Copy Controller if there was a new template available to follow... My mistake there was that the Copy Controller is (relatively) new as well, and so didn't offer the most sensible answer.

The job ended up getting set in Illustrator (which they all know they're not supposed to do and, in any case, this ad flagged up missing fonts which went unattended by the Junior because she couldn't see anything wrong) using last month's PDF as the basis.

Needless to say, I reset that sucker in Quark and fixed the fonts, so now we have a template we can use in future, if necessary.

Then, yesterday (one of my press days), I had a terse email exchange with one of the Salespeople regarding amendments to a supplied ad that I didn't want to do - because we shouldn't be amending supplied ads, it wasn't necessarily going to work if we did, and because it was almost bloody 6pm when the client noticed they'd made the mistake. By rights, no-one should have been there to take the call/read the email.

I eventually agreed the change with the Commercial Manager (who understands at least some of the potential problems), but the Salesperson who 'requested' the change could have handled it better. When told we couldn't do it, she simply emailed back asking "Why?", copying in the CM. Always guaranteed to rile me.

Still... Today went quite well, but Monday's magazine is in a bit of a state...

Oh, and I still want to look for a new job. That hasn't miraculously changed.

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Demonic

And so ITV decided to try its luck with a mini-series modelled on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

It's called Demons and, to be honest, it's not terrible. Sure, it's got an eyecandy (male) lead, a besotted hanger-on, and an older man watching over them. Sure, the first episode had a guest star as the villain of the piece. It's not a complete rip-off, though.

Demons is very proud to be set in London... It namedrops several location, and offers some nice tourist shots, but it paints a far more contemporary picture of the city than most fiction designed for the export market (and I have no doubt that they want to sell it in the States).

Strangely, though, one of the main characters in an American played by an English actor... a neat counterpoint to Tony Head's Giles from Buffy, or a gratuitous 'way in' for potential American viewers. Not too sure yet.

It plays about the the Dracula myth in that some of its characters are referred to as being of the family Van Helsing, and even goes so far as to feature another character from an "illustrious family", Mina Harker. Considering her age, I don't think she's Johnathan Harker's wife.

Bizarrely, she's introduced as a blind pianist but, as followers of the genre will know, 'Blind' just means her eyes don't work... she sees by other means, and sees far clearer than the rest of us (pointing out that the besotted-hanger on wants to be more than just a friend, when I had erroneously assumed she was the girlfriend already).

The villain of the piece (with a typically ridiculous Brit-monster name) was played by Mackenzie Crook, styling himself so closely after a character played by one of his Pirates of the Caribbean co-stars, that I half expected him to introduce himself as Captain Jack Sparrow.

Some of the dialogue was pretty good, but a lot of the time I got the impression the writers were trying to go somewhere but not quite managing. Mina's frosty reception for the 'not-girlfriend', followed by her assertion that she didn't dislike her, she just didn't know her being a prime example. It was also quite jarring that, when the main character asked about vampires and werewolves, his mentor claimed "we don't name them, we just rate them and smite them". If everything is going to be referred to as an "entity from the half life" it's going to get a bit repetitive.

Overall, though, there was little technically wrong with it (apart from apparently killing off the first episode's guest star and main player), it simply lacked the polish and style of its model. Better than other efforts (particularly anything attempted by the BBC), but still lacking something in the writing and direction. The special effects were more than competent, except that where Buffy always gave the impression that its dissolving vampires had mass, the monsters in Demons seem to burn up as if they were made from paper.

In other news, I stayed over at the flat on Friday night, cooked myself some dinner (well, heated a pie in the oven and microwaved some veg), had a good night's sleep, and managed to finish painting the base coat in the kitchen on Saturday. With a smaller roller, the remaining work took me about an hour and a half at most, so perhaps I should have started with that in the first place, rather than trying to cover more ground at once with the larger roller.

After that, I spent the rest of the afternoon larking about on my Sega Saturn - neglected for far too long because the TV is almost constantly occupied at my parents' house, or because I'm more usually surfing the net while I'm there. Since I now have the old family TV, I took full advantage of its Cathode Ray Tube to play some lightgun games (House of the Dead - it seems impossible that its 1998 setting was the future when it came out), Virtua Cop 1 and 2) before settling down to play Shining the Holy Ark, and discovering that I'd missed most of an entire map when I last played it years ago. I've made quite a bit of progress, it seems.

There's a fair bit of other writing I'd like to get done - tiny additions or changes to stuff I have in progress for the most part - but not much inclination to do it... So, while I'm on a slightly more even keel that I was on Friday, I'm still not as focussed as I'd like.

We shall see. Maybe I'll surprise myself.

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Epic Fail

I've been sitting here at the computer for about five hours now. I got out of bed deliberately late because, while I need to get over to the flat and at least try to finish painting the undercoat, I'm really not looking forward to it.

All I have to do is finish off the door-side wall, paint around the window and boiler, then paint behind the fridge. That's all that's left for the base coat. The actual painting will have to wait for some other time because I don't have the paint yet.

And, you know what? I'm dreading it.

Considering the time and effort I've already put in to a job that should have taken me only a couple of hours, I'm terrified that I'm going to cock it up somehow.

...But then, put it in perspective: I'm taking way too long over painting the kitchen...

Versus: I completed the purchase of the flat in July 2008. It's now January 2009 and I'm still not living there.

I'm terrified of moving there because I'll be on my own, having spent almost 35 years in the comfort of a family home. I'll have to cook for myself, do my own laundry, keep track of my spending.

I'm also more than a little concerned about the outlook at work. Sure, we're making more money than two years ago, but not as much as forecast last year because of this looming threat of recession... And I have a nasty feeling that some more magazines are going to fold... When this happens, it's likely that more staff will be shed. The top dogs will say "You don't need that many people in Production if you're doing fewer magazines", and they've already tried to do away with one of the Production Managers.

If they try it again, and the move can't be blocked, the choice will be between me (with a mortgage to pay, and about 15 years experience), and my counterpart (with a mortgage and a family, but less experience and a shaky track record in both Managing and back-ending magazines).

That's not a choice I'd like to make, in this economic climate...

So, my New Year's Resolution #1 will be to look for a new job. REALLY look. And 'new job' meaning 'different job'.

I may have decided on something similar last year...

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