Thwock! Thwock! Budda! Budda! Budda! Kaboom!

The new Bond film "Casino Royale" is ace!

Daniel Craig portrays a ROCK HARD Bond as the sort of Brutal, Vicious Nasty Thug that a paid assassin should be.

Action scenes are superbly done. There was probably some cgi in there, but very difficult to spot.
None of that martial arts crap either. Lots from the school of dirty tricks instead.

A lot of the "old genre" cliches were completely knocked on the head, or if alluded to the Mick was taken in a "this guys not like that any more" sort of way.

Dave Arnold did the music and as always did a job worthy of John Barry. Mainly incidental rather than a big musical score, but fitted the action well.

On the downside Novelist Supermum thought that the opening credits were cheesy. I thought they were OK - no women, but they could have tried something different from silhouettes.

There was also a long drawn out romantic bit, that could have been a lot shorter. At this point you were basically waiting for a character who'm you'd sussed was soon to be "Deadmeat" to come to whatever sticky end might be waiting.

Loved the end. Simple but very, very effective.

Found myself whistling the theme tune this morning, zooming into work, and booting the door of the office in :-)

My name is Dwarf, Dark Dwarf

Looking forward to seeing Casino Royale at "the flicks" tonight.

I think that I saw my first James Bond Film when I was 8 or 9 years old (Live and Let Die). The chap who took us to see it was a bit of a Sean Connory fan, and was disappointed at Roger Moore's "reliance on gadgets" as he put it.

So he treated my Brother and I to a double-bill showing of Dr No and Goldfinger the following week. I can still remember our chuckles and "what did you say about gadgets" comments as the Aston Martin was taken through it's paces, with revolving number plates, bullet proof shield, oil slicks, machine guns, rotating knives in the wheels and ejector seat.

Having said that Goldfinger is probably still my favourite Bond film.

Incidentally, more evidence that the future is here, satellite navigation used to be issued only to 00 agents by Q department. Now you can buy them in Halfords. Perhaps they'll be selling Giro-copters next week?

Full House

Early start at work 07:00am to check the system before the start of business all this week. Usually a lonely job, but plenty of company this morning as a number of colleagues had done an "all nighter" to resolve a system problem.

Chim chiminee chim chiminee chim chim cheroo

I added "Chimney Sweep" to my skillset on Sunday.

We've got an open fire, which we put into service for the first time around this time last year, but it was smelling a little smokey.

I was going to call a Professional Chimney Sweep to do the job, but didn't get around to it since the fire isn't our main source of heating (but nice to have at Xmas time, since you can't roast chestnuts on an open radiator).

I bought a set of drain cleaning rods last year, with which came a Chimney Brush giving the rods a dual purpose.

So I decided to save a little money and do the job myself. With me those are usually famous last words before having to call in a professional to sort out the mess I've made.

This time however I made a "clean sweep" of it. I didn't get the brush stuck in the chimney (as expected - although it did get a bit loose on the end) and there was only a light coating of soot to remove from the mantelpiece and ornaments on it - which I hadn't bothered to shift.

I cleaned out about half a bin bag of soot.
The soot was mainly on me, and not on the carpet so job done.

Told the kids that I was "cleaning the chimney for Father Christmas". I think they believed me - guess I'll have to do this job every year at this time for a while.

Profiterolemania

The same chaps who were having a Cucumber Eating Contest a few weeks ago are today having a profiterole eating contest.

They've bought a catering box of profiteroles each (60 profiteroles in each box) from the Cash 'n Carry, defrosted them, added 8 sachets of chocolate sauce and have started to eat.

Comments so far are:
"Know we know why they only give you six on your plate".
"25 left and I'm hitting the wall!".
"How are we going to explain the chocolate stains?"
"Groooarrrgh!"

Our new manager (who is unaware of the competition) has just walked in with complimentary cream cakes for our efforts this week! ROTFLMAO!!!

Firefoxed at Work

I've managed to find a way of getting Firefox onto my Internet PC at work. Hooray! Makes life a little easier than it was yesterday.

New Moby

I've been given a company mobile again.

"Free" calls again, hooray! - Actually not quite free, the payment is that they expect to be able to get hold of me any time of the day or night.

Comes with a set of cheesy polyphonic ringtones. Tried to download something that suits me a little more but discovered that they've blocked most of the popular download places.

Most of the so-called "Rock" tones sound like Jan Hammer covering Heavy Metal hits on a Bontempi organ, anyway.

I did come across a rather amusing instrumental version of Motorhead's "Ace of Spades", which sounds like it's being covered by a keyboard based Bluegrass band.

I'll make that one my main tone, if I can get hold of it.

Character Assassination

My previous team leader finally wrote up my first quarterly appraisal - which has been outstanding since early August.

I've long suspected that the run up to Xmas is the time of year that the bean counters REALLY decide what rise you're going to get next year (and that the end of year review in April is just lip service), since the review comments always appear to be a little harsher than usual at this time of year.

This one was a classic. Apparently it's a problem that my "behaviour is strongly influenced by financial goals"!!!
(They must want me to work for free?).

My current team leader isn't doing appraisals yet. Hopefully this gives me a chance to write my own towards the end of the year.

The Goose is Getting Fat...

This weekend we have been mostly... Xmas shopping.

By some organisational quirk we've managed to get the bulk of our Xmas shopping done.

It probably helped that we started early for a change - trying to spread out the cost a little, rather than having a big hit on the wallet in December.

Usually I only just start to think about it in the second week of December, then it's all a last minute panic.

Now I can be one of those annoying people who's all prepared by the end of November.

(Not quite actually. Still got 3 or 4 to get for the rest of the family - plus Novelist Supermum's pressies).

Have you been called by a Bum?

I managed to text a number of people today by sitting on my phone - which I'd left in my pocket.

One of my pal's can't imagine how I managed this - he thinks it would make a great circus act.

Motorhead Sponsorship

I wonder which Motorhead track this kids football team come running out to? Hope it's not "Iron Horse/Born to Lose" :-)

Urban Fox

Saw a young fox last night. It was standing on the grass verge on the corner of the street. I stopped the car and watched it trot up the verge, hugging the trees, before crossing the road and disappearing into a garden.

Return of the King

We finally found a spare 4.5 hours or so to watch the final DVD in the Lord of the Rings trilogy last night.

They've done a spectacular job again. Still a bit peeved that they dispensed with "The Raising of the Shire", which I've always thought was a great twist at the end of the book. When you've watched something for 4.5 hours, what's an extra half hour? They could have cut some of the long slow boring elf scenes.

At least they did do the pipeweed scene at Isengard (although because of the dropped section of the book nobody mentioned where the pipeweed had come from, which should be the second hint that Saruman is up to something in the Shire).

Watch it again? we certainly will, but probably not as much as "The Fellowship of the Ring".

On Safari

cha0tic has just bought a Mac Mini, so I've asked him to check how Novelist Supermum's wesbite looks in Safari.

Looks like all is OK -

cha0tic on November 8, 2006 at 3:09 PM
Looks fine in Safari to me. Nothing looks out of place or obviously wrong. Links work etc.

Dr Who Trip and Bonfire Night

Old friends, and their kids arrived as expected on Saturday, so after a bite to eat we all set off via bus and ferry the Dr Who Up Close Exhibition at the Spaceport.

Glad we didn't go when the Dr Who exhibition wasn't on as although the Spaceport was OK I think it was trying to educate, rather than to entertain, so on the whole I found it a little dull. Having said that, the planetarium show was good - they went through the planets and Frodo was transfixed by this - especially the asteroid belt (he loves asteroids). Samwise was tired by this point, so got a bit tearful half way through, but luckily calmed down quickly, so I got to see all of the show.

There's also a simulator which lets you experience the thrills of a simulated pod race (similar to Star Wars Episode I). Frodo really enjoyed this one and is still talking about "riding in the spaceship that crashed into the water".

The Dr Who bit wasn't disappointing. They had an Auton, an Ood, a Slitheen, a Clockwork Robot, and of course a Dalek and a Cyberman, plus a few others. You had to go right up to the Dalek and press a large black button to activate it. Samwise didn't mind at all, but Frodo was much more wary of being ExTeRmInAtEd!

We missed the ferry back by 5 minutes, and had to wait an hour for the next one. To justify the charge the ferry cruises up the river to Woodside and Rockferry before turning round and heading back down to the Pier Head. Still it was a good evening for a night-time ferry trip, with fireworks going off on both sides of the river.

Walked past the Liver Buildings and across town back to the bus stop, carrying exhausted kids on our shoulders.

Back home for a cup of tea, and waved our pals goodbye, with a promise to visit them at their place in the New Year.

Tonight's the night that the British public show their disdain for terrorists i.e. we hang, draw and quarter them and 400 years later we're still burning their effigy.

Samwise is a little too young for fireworks, so as he was being put to bed tonight, I sneaked out with Frodo and took a taxi to the display at Sefton park. We took Frodo to a children's display when he was still in a pushchair, and he bawled all the way through it. This time he was really excited about going to see them.

The music accompanying the display started out with "Ballroom Blitz" by Sweet, which I thought worked rather well. A full half hour of spectacular pyrotechnics. Frodo was absolutely gobsmacked. He was a little tearful at the end, but only because it had finished - he said he wants to go again next year.

The only thing that spoilt things a little was the number of idiots setting off fireworks amongst the departing crowd after the event. I'm sure that there's a correlation between the number of idiots and the location of this years event, which had moved across the park from last year.

The traffic was solid leaving the park, so it wasn't worth getting a taxi back. We walked back to the main road, but as the buses were all full I carried on all the way home with Frodo on my shoulders (had some practice at this the day before).

I bought Frodo a battery operated, fibre optic novelty toy to wave about in the dark. I also remembered to buy one for Samwise too. We had fun waving them at people sitting down in the restaurants and wine bars that we passed on the way back.
We scored at least 6 returned waves, including two double wave bonuses from the barman in Crichton's, and a waitress in the Eastern Diner.

Ship Spotting Geekiness

Ever wondered what that passing ship is called?
Where is it going?
How fast is it going?
What is it carrying?

Then this website is for you.

There's a page to tell you what it's about and how it works.

I can spot ships out of the window and then followed their progress on the map.

It only shows ships of a certain size i.e. the one's required to provide Automatic Identification Data.

If you click around the site you can find several views. The best summary view that I've found appears to use Google Maps (click the flags option, rather than popups).

Pretty cool I think, in a geeky ship spotting way.

Sorry cha0tic, but, for some reason it doesn't work in the Wolverhampton area ;-)

Reasons to be Cheerful

Old Friends have confirmed that their visiting us on Saturday. We're going to take a Ferry 'cross the Mersey with her kids and ours for a trip to the Dr Who Up Close Exhibition at the Spaceport at Seacombe on the Wirral, so looking forward to that.

We've also booked two family holiday breaks next year, at the "Holiday House" that we went to earlier this year.

We're also thinking of booking a short break in Rome, just for Mummy and Daddy, with the Hobbits staying at Grandma's - although we'll have to get our finger out and sort this soon.

And finally - I've got to be in work at 07:20 to learn how to do the morning system checks. Why am I cheerful about this? Because I get to leave at 14:30 of course (although I have to pick up Frodo who's leaving school early - we have to go back to the school for parent's evening later).