Nonetheless, I recorded it and sat down to watch what turned out not to be Battle: Los Angeles as released in the cinema this year, but Battle of Los Angeles as released on Syfy with apparently no other purpose than to cash in on a random sci-fi film on the market.

Now, sometimes you might get a film like this that isn’t actually too bad, but not often. However, it really comes to something when you find a truly bad film. I’ll admit that, like the atrocity to film making that is Vampires vs Zombies, I did not watch more than 15 minutes of it, but in film making this is the golden time during which most film watchers will decide whether or not to keep watching. In 15 minutes I expect to know who the key characters are, why shit is happening and give me a reason to keep watching. Every time I flicked over to the abysmal Megashark vs Giant Octopus there seemed to be a cast of completely new characters with a scene setting up their demise by one of the titular beasties. Within the first 15 minutes of Battle of Los Angeles, I’d already seen at least three scenes like this. An aerial combat which served no real purpose than to introduce the aliens in a blatantly ripped off from Independence Day scene containing the worst special effects I’ve seen in a science fiction film since the turn of the century. This was followed by a forgettable scene between two soldiers who completely failed to leave any impression on me, so much so that I only barely remembered the scene while writing this review. Finally, followed by another apparently pointless and needlessly prolonged scene introducing even less charismatic characters with the obligatory sexy Asian bad-ass-talking fighter pilot and the frightened white-kid with an atrociously badly acted drill-sergeant-esque general trying to get him in the air by threatening to shoot him. This went on forever until the aliens and some more bad special effects put the scene out of its misery. By the commercial break I had already deleted the recording from my V+ box.

The allegedly worst film ever made, Plan 9 From Outer Space, ranks higher on IMDB.

For the past few years, I have been integrating my blog with my website by means of a paid Livejournal account. However, Livejournal has been frustrating me recently. I’ve been repeatedly hit by spam commenters. To deal with this I’ve had to repeatedly lock down the accessibility of my LJ blog to a point that I found it unsatisfactory for me to be paying for my account, even though it really only added up to a few quid a month, I really felt that it wasn’t worth it.

With an aim to enhance my own web designer knowledge-base with WordPress, I decided to install a WordPress blog into my site. The first task I set myself was to create a WordPress Theme that identically matched my existing site so the initial transition would be seamless. This was successful in my initial tests and to my delight I found that WordPress has a plugin that imports all posts from Livejournal. It’s not perfect. Locked posts are simply passworded (so may as well be deleted) and not all embedded material remains intact (namely embedded YouTube). So at some point, when I’m bored, I might go through five years of blog categorising posts and re-embedding videos. Then again, I might have better things to do.

For now, however, I’m happy with this move. It means that my site and blog has far better integration the way I would prefer it to be. Since finally joining Facebook, integrating my blog with Facebook also gives me the cross-site integration that makes my inner web designer happy. I might not be up to some pro standards, but I enjoy doing websites and I count myself as at least pretty damned competent for the most part.

For now I’ve very much crippled a lot of what a WordPress site is capable of achieving. This is mostly because my current website design did not take into consideration the integration of WordPress widgets. As such, I probably need to revisit my design at some point and create some new image elements to allow for inclusion of such features as a calendar archive, etc. Basically, all the stuff associated with blogs in general, let alone WordPress blogs. The process of making the theme wasn’t so bad, but a little tricksy in places. However, I intend (when I next have a bit of time when I should probably be doing something else) to keep tinkering and adding to my site. WordPress is very powerful and my site does not properly exploit its potential by virtue of the fact that I’m overlaying my blog onto an existing bespoke site.

Having not really blogged much, or at all since the end of last year, I intend to become more active again. To what end, I really have no idea… I find it more fun to improvise!

This is one of the best versions out there. Without a doubt. Unfortunately, embedding of this version is disabled, but I strongly recommend you go take a listen at the awesome Transiberian Orchestra.

Meanwhile, for lovers of H. P. Lovecraft, here’s an alternate re-wording of that spring song.

Happy Saturnalia!

A bad joke for bad weather. Last night, at the conclusion of our gaming session, we talked briefly about the weather. Guy had been late getting back from work (gone 8pm) because the car he was getting a lift in got snowed in. When Kim asked whether he’d be going in to work or would phone in due to the snow we looked at the weather report. Snow. In Cardiff. Both me and Owen, without hesitation both made the same claims: "Meh, it’s Cardiff. We don’t really get snow in Cardiff all that much." There was no real hint that it would be particularly bad, aside from the cold evening.

This morning, my mother woke me with a call asking if she could leave the car on my street. The road over the mountain was closed and there was an accident on the other main road, so she was going to leave the car with me and catch the train. I was a little confused with the wording: "Can I get the car to your road?" Well, why wouldn’t you?

Opening the curtains, I had not expected to see it so white. Everything was white with several inches. Inches! Cardiff doesn’t normally do inches. It usually operates on metric and does a few millimetres to a centimetre at best, but this was the kind of depth you really have to switch to inches to do it justice.

The sun was actually shining and the sky was blue, so the snow was all so dazzling white. Now, of course, it’s snowing heavily again and the snow is just white white. Even as I write this, I just got a phone call from my mother telling me that she got back home. When she left my home, there was a train due in about 15 minutes. She walked cautiously and missed the train. However, when the train was announced there was a cheer from the platform. Apparently, every train before that had been cancelled.

This is pretty serious snow for Cardiff. The bus services have stopped running, even the trains are affected, though I saw a Royal Mail van still delivering parcels! That’s impressive.
We all have such an idyllic Xmas card idea of the romantic White Christmas, but the reality is that snow messes things up. It may look pretty but it screws around with public transport, and this close to Christmas is risks people not getting to be with their families, etc. It’s a less than ideal situation.

Yes, the snow is pretty. Yes, walking in the snow is kind of nice. Do I like it? Hell, no.

So, for your enjoyment, here are the lyrics to We’re Screwed, sung to the tune of Hey Jude:

We’re screwed, it’s really bad.
We took a good plan and did another.
Remember you should have aimed for the heart
Now we’re apart and it’s all over.

Iä iä iä iä iä, iä iä iä, we’re screwed…etc.

I got a lot of files to render and another downside with the software is that I can’t set up a render queue and just let it build all of the files I need at once, not without having to hack them down into smaller chunks again which would be equally tedious and annoying.

I needed to keep building through the night otherwise I knew I’d never stand a chance of having the videos the way I wanted them on time. So…

Having resigned myself to losing a lot of sleep anyway, once I started building I went into Olympic-grade powernap mode. I would set the build to start, set my timer to roughly the estimated length (they usually render in just under the estimated time) and then go to bed and shut my eyes. When the alarm went, I’d get up and set the next one to render. It was a mixture of joy and disdain to see a chunk estimate 30+ minutes. On the one hand, I’d get a larger block of napping, on the other hand it meant the project would take even longer to finish.

I cannot believe it, but I actually found myself browsing Intel core Apple Macbook Pros last night, also. I need a Windows laptop, but so long as I keep doing work for St David’s Hall, a Macbook might well have it’s advantages. The Intel core OSX 10.6+ Macbooks can be set up to dual boot with Windows, which gives me the best of both with the only downside being the annoying single button so probably needing an external mouse for any serious Windows work. The only downside is that the cheapest one I can find is £800+, though that said, if I want to get a suitably powerful laptop I’m looking to pay at least that anyway.

It’ll be a long while before I can afford that, I think.

It’s nearly 3am and I’ve only just finished spending the day building four video elements for a show I’m working on with Arts Active at St. David’s Hall. My history with them tends to have a certain pattern to them, that pattern being a tendency to pull all nighters in order to get the work done on time. This is in no part due to laziness on my part, simply due to the nature of the products and the tight deadlines. It’s crazy, it’s hard work, but it’s fun to do, so I’m not really complaining too much.

Unfortunately, this latest project is happening on the Monday/Tuesday immediately following IndieCon, which means the usual working through the weekend is out and, frankly, any hope of being ready for the tech/dress rehearsal is probably out. This is not so unusual. The past two shows on which I’ve done video editing for them has usually ended up with the final A/V only coming together for the show itself. This time, I fear, I may be less prepared, however. On the plus side, this is a repeat of a show I did last year. On the down side, I only really get to use, um, two video elements from last year. The nature of the project means that it may as well be a new show from my point of view with me recycling some footage.

I’m getting up in about five hours for a 9am meeting at St. David’s Hall to go over the project, then at 11am we’re filming the core footage for the show, which then needs to sequenced and edited where needed. That’ll probably take me until very late at night. Depending on how I feel, I might do a little more work on Thursday morning, before hopping on a train to IndieCon.

After a weekend of the usual lack of sleep I get at conventions because I’m too busy having fun, it’s an earlier than usual return on the Sunday to probably get home and carry on working, possibly even late into the night in time for the, presumably, 9am call on Monday. One long day later, I’ll probably need to pull an all-nighter to get everything ready for the show, which I’ll then have to operate half-asleep. As usual.

I can sleep when I’m dead! Which at this rate might not be long coming.

It’s going to be a great turnout. In bookings alone (so, not including walk-ins) we’ve already surpassed our total for last year. Let’s hope we have enough GMs!

Just in case, I’ve been digging through my old games and I’m taking the following:

• One of Our Agents Is Missing – Probably the first convention scenario I ever wrote. This two-part Mage: Technocracy game is still a lot of fun to run.
• Oh Daddy Dear – A spin-off to the Technocracy game, this Hunter: The Reckoning scenario I consider one of my best convention games.
• The Stanford Redemption – The crazy-ambitious two-part sequel to the above Hunter game, this is also great fun to run.
• Table 14 – A two-part 1920s Call of Cthulhu game set aboard a four-stack steamer’s maiden voyage (what could possibly go wrong?) that’s especially fun to run during the opening scene where I’m playing four NPCs simultaneously!
• We’re H.A.P.P.Y. – A straightforward Zap-style Paranoia game, filled with some Classic-style fun.
• Tournament of Scarlet & White – The first Qin: The Warring States scenario I ever wrote has evolved over the years.
• The Song of Bamboo Tears – A sequel of sorts to the above Qin game, but with a different flavour.

That’s probably more than I’ll get a chance to run. For some reason, my pre-printed copy of my Star Wars (WEG) scenario has gone walkabout, so I probably won’t be bringing that, alas.

It’s also my birthday on Friday (for which I have to get up crazy early to travel), which makes this the second time that I’ve spent my birthday at a con. The first was the disastrous (for me, at least) GenCon down in Minehead where I got food poisoning and was laid out for most of the following day. Let’s hope history does not repeat itself (not sure whether to claim that as pun intended or not).

Considering I don’t often have dreams with celebrities, let alone ones that I have no real interest in.

A bunch of geeks or geeky criminals had, in the boot of their car, much to their horror and surprised, Chuck Norris, who they had apparently kidnapped by accident. Don’t ask me how, they had no idea either. "What the fuck!? How the hell did you manage to kidnap Chuck Norris by mistake?" asked the leader. "We don’t know!" cried the hapless mooks. "What do we do?" Over and over, they would open the boot and look at the unconscious body despairing at what to do. However, the last time they open it the boot does that clever film thing of not closing fully and it bounces open slightly, just long enough to see Chuck’s eyes wide open, but nobody spots this. Then as the boot rests slightly to a close, shrouding Chuck in darkness, all the ‘camera’ is left with are his glowing (yes, glowing) blue eyes.

I then promptly woke with an unholy thirst bordering on a dehydration likely to provoke a spiritual awakening. Scrambling to the kitchen to down a couple of glasses of water in quick succession, I then returned to bed, having now denied the world my enlightenment to the nature of the universe.

I very briefly had another dream. This time, two people were desperately trying to rid themselves of a huge tablet the size of a house (yet able to be comfortably carried by two people) upon which were emblazoned Chuck Norris Facts (the only thing I really know about Chuck Norris, considering I have never actually watched one of his films as far as I know). Coming to a part of the road above some houses, a grassy slope leading into the back-gardens of a row of houses, they ditched the tablet, careful not to hit the garden with some people in it. This garden had an estate agent in it, showing around a couple, except this estate agent had a dark secret: he was being stalked by Chuck Norris.

Seriously! What the Chuck!? I don’t even rate him beyond the humorous fun ‘facts’.

Sometimes I really wonder what the hell goes on in my head when I’m not paying attention.