aphexbr

I've been pretty bad at updating Livejournal on a regular basis, so while I've been messing around with a few other domains, I've used some of my hosting space to put up a Wordpress blog. Hopefully the added toys that allows will get me to update more often! It's at www.aphexbr.com, please come over and have a look :)

Well... the problem with living where I am at the minute is the small size of the town of Tarifa. Normally, I think it's a good thing, but sometimes I just seem to wander around and know about 86% of the local population on sight... not a good thing if you want a quiet night! There's at least 2 or 3 times in the last 10 days where I've gone to drop some DVDs over to a friend or pop my head into a bar to ask a question from somebody... and then 5 hours later I leave with a few extra beers under my belt. I like it, but sometimes, it would be nice to see a few new faces or do different things, especially in the current off-season times.

So, 2 realisations were nice to have today that mean I'll be off to new pastures... well Cadiz anyway. First is the annual Carnaval de Cadiz, a monster 10 day event that attracts a lot of people from the province for a general getting dressed up and pissed in the streets kind of deal. I'm going to try and make it for the first weekend, 16th or 17th of February, but it depends on whether or not a friend is still living there... I'm terrible at keeping in contact with people on a regular basis so I'm not even sure!

Either way, today I was much more hyped to learn that one of my favourite acts, Hybrid, will be playing in Cadiz the week after (albeit a DJ gig rather than a full live set). I'm desperate to see them since I seem to keep missing them recently - they were announced at Global Gathering 2005 (which I was happy to attend) but then weren't on the final line-up on the day for some reason. As far as I know, they played a total of 1 date in Spain last year, in Granada, but it would have cost around 2-300 euros for me to go if I counted train fare, hotel room, etc., and I didn't have the cash. This year, I should be able to get a lift there and back from a like-minded friend (she doesn't drink :) ) and it's only just over an hour away by car from here to Cadiz. I'm expecting to get there and not be able to get into the club due to the Carnaval crowds... but I'm damn well going to try!

Wow... talk about an embarassing day....

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=28899&in_page_id=1

Dora The Explorer Aquapet

I don't know... maybe from a different angle this would be OK, but in that picture it just looks.........wrong........


Edit: Amazon have removed the link, but Boing Boing also blogged it.

So, apart from Lost, the show I'm really into now is Dexter. I was hooked mainly on the the premise - Miami forensic investigator doubles as a serial killer - and luckily the execution has held up so far.

Michael C. Hall (best known from Six Feet Under) puts in an excellent performance as the title character. This first season follows the plot of the novel "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" by Jeff Lindsay where the serial killer investigator pits his wits against another killer who dismembers his victims and drains them of blood before laying them out for Dexter. It's shot nicely, with a real feel for the local Miami scenes, and with characters who lapse into Spanish occasionally (not too much, but enough to remind me of the similar habits of Gibraltar locals)

The whole thing is blackly comic - it probably says a lot about my sense of humour when I was giggling throughout the whole of the first episode. It's been successful enough for a new season, based on the book "Dearly Devoted Dexter" to be commissioned - looking forward to it!

Being in an area free of English language transmissions (my TV picks up 8 Spanish channels and 1 Moroccan, French language channel, all heavily dubbed and free of subtitles), I need to download TV to get my regular fix. Lately I've been catching up with a few new shows:

First, season 3 of Lost. In the same vein of the second season, this takes a completely different direction to the previous series. So far, at episode 6, there's been very little action with the main cast as the episodes mainly follow the "others" and their treatment of Jack, Kate and Sawyer. I've read a lot of negative comments about this series, with people getting tired of the lack of answers and the dark feel of this season. I'm still totally with it however. Yes, it does feel a little like they're making it up as they go along, but let's face it - that's the same for all long-running TV. I'm still enjoying it so I think I'll stick with it till the end of whatever number of season there are..

Unlike Torchwood. The second series of Doctor Who was a great experience for me as I enjoyed David Tennant a lot more than I thought I would, especially as I enjoyed Christopher Eccleston's performance. The season brought a lot of strong scripts, especially The Girl In The Fireplace, though a couple of the later episodes were annoyingly naff before the decent finale.

I was hoping that the supposedly more adult-oriented Torchwood would take the interesting premise (secret agency armed with alien technology led by an apparant immortal) and explore some territory outside of the reach of the more family-friendly parent series and remove some of the flippant cheesiness that tended to annoy me. However, that's not the case. If anything, Torchwood comes across as even more juvenile than Doctor Who. I watched the first 4 episodes, and liked the way the first episode started the series (though the cheese factor was clearly high from the opening). But, the following episodes left me cold - a half-assed remake of Species and a slightly intriguing but squandered semi-ghost story were not what the series needed. So,I though I'd given the series one last go with the Cyberman spin-off episode, and my God was it not worth my time...

(Spoilers in this paragraph for anyone who hasn't watched it) So, the episode starts off with the revelation that one of the Torchwood staff has been keeping his half-"upgraded" girlfriend in the basement following the events of the Doctor Who season 2 finale, and is willing to compromise everything at the agency to help her by secretly recruiting a Japanese cybernetics expert. Things go predictably awry when they revive her, leaving the Japanese guy dead, and other Torchwood members fighting for their lives. The episode is free of logic, both of the common variety (erm, how come nobody noticed the deadly machinery in the basement?) and internal logic within the Doctor Who universe (in the last season, Cybermen were presented as totally androgenous, so what's with the huge metal bra?), and it reaches some cheesy, cheesy, "emotional" territory as well as a stupid action scene (yay, crappy CGI pterodactyl!). Pretty much a waste of my time, so no more for me...

I've been enjoying Pandora at work, listening to lots of good music, but was a little annoyed that I was missing the main perk of using LastFM - the scrobbling. A bit petty but I always like the information on that site related to my listening habits...

Luckily, someone has created a Firefox extension that scrobbles the tunes played by Pandora. Nice..

I think I stumbled across Pandora before, but I can't remember when or where. However, I've really gotten into the service and discovering a lot of new music.. Basically it's a Flash-based service that asks you to type in the name of a song or band and then streams recommendations.

Yes, it's a lightweight version of the Last.fm player, but I couldn't install the Last.fm client at work due to admin restrictions, so this does my fine. With this and my eMusic account, I'm really starting to get hold of some sweet new music to listen to... almost legally! (Pandora is technically only available in the US, but doesn't seem to restrict foreigners in any way :) )

By the way, anyone wanting to join eMusic, let me know! I can get both of us free downloads if I email you an invite :) </pimping>

OK, it's official - nothing is scared any more. Not only is there going to be a sequel to one of my favourite '80s movies WarGames, but Clive Barker is going to be remaking Hellraiser!!!!

Now, I can kind of understand why Barker would want to go back to this movie, which is a rough-round-the-edges low budget movie, and full marks to the Weinsteins for hiring him in the first place, but surely this is just another trawl through the back catalogue for easy name-recognition bucks? It's a real shame that this is what Barker's been reduced to, especially given the treatment by Hollywood of both himself (e.g. his never-ending quest to try and get The Thief Of Always made) and the Hellraiser series itself (every sequel since #4 has been a cash-in rehash of a non-Hellraiser script with Pinhead crowbared in to get the Hellraiser name on the box).

Well, I'll reserve judgement until I see who's directing, etc., but after the godawful remakes of The Fog and The Wicker Man, I don't think I care too much about this line of thinking...

Probably old news to UK peeps, but I've really been getting into Knights Of Cydonia by Muse. I LOVE the video, a kind of deranged mix between every '70s exploitation genre including Spaghetti western, blaxploitation, kung fu and even Star Wars, If a band wants me to buy an album, this is the video they need (yes I bought the album after seeing this video!)

First off, today sees the release of IE7 on Microsft's download site. I'm a definite Firefox convert, having been using it since version 0.4 (when it was named 'Phoenix), but I'm glad to see MS finally catching up with features like tabbed browsing, and the anti-phishing should help with protecting some of the noobs out there. I'll try it, but won't switch from Firefox as I'm too concerned about extensions and don't have much love for MS's tactics - I firmly recognise that this is only a gesture to stop more people from abandoning MS products. Interesting to see that there's already an exploit discovered, though time will tell whether IE7's vulnerabilities reach the epedemic proportions of IE6.

Meanwhile, here's a nice dissemination of why Linux-oriented folk like me are suspicious of MS. In short, it's a EULA that you click on installation that gives MS the right to spy on you and disable features and media stored on your PC, with no recourse back to MS if they mess up - no refunds and no support. I know a lot of it's the same as XP, but the added rights to arbitrarily change things on your PC at a time and in a way that suits Microsoft is not something I'd want to sign up to.. but so many people will be blindly doing just that when Vista ships with new PCs.

Well, the good weather can't last forever, even here! Got caught in a massive downpour, so I'm cold, wet and just starting work half and hour late.. :( Never mind, winter is coming and it won't be too bad here!

...because mainstream media's interested in horror for a few weeks again. The US Maxim site has a Top 10 Horror Movie Deaths countdown, complete with good quality gore footage (starts immediately so NSFW).

The choices are a bit strange in places (the Friday 13th Part 3 and Evil Dead entries aren't even the best deaths in that particular film, let alone all time!) and the compiler has an obvious Fulci fetish, but it's good and I do agree with at least half of the list.

Another typical occurance, I haven't bought any music for ages - mainly due to the fact the most of the new albums coming out didn't interest me, and the fact that most of the music I hear around this area is by Shakira :( In fact, the only music I've been buying has been through eMusic

So, I start a new job in Gibraltar last month and most of favourite bands start releasing albums... Evanescence, BT, Hybrid, Audioslave, John Legend, Muse, Lacuna Coil, Concord Dawn and Omar - to name a few (and, wow, does that list show how eclectic I can be at times!), have released albums recently.... I want them all but can't afford any of them....

Of course, I can guarantee that on the day I have money to buy albums, nobody I like will release an album for about 6 months.....

Typical... The second most anticipated movie of the year for me after Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain was Guillermo Del Toro's new movie Pan's Labyrinth (or El Laberinto Del Fauno as it's known here). I was very pleased to notice that it would be released here in Spain before the UK or US, in the original Spanish, making a big change from the normal dubbed-only releases I get here at the cinema. Great, I thought, since although my Spanish is still relatively average, I can enjoy a beer in the cinema with a 4 euro entry charge, and see the movie before anyone else :)

Unfortunately, work intrudes. Since I don't have a car, the nearest cinema is around 16 km away and I spend around 3 hours a day on the bus getting to and from my job in Gibraltar, I haven't got the time or cash till the end of the month :(

Can't wait till I have a car again....

A random browse of some old b-movie forums garnered this quote - fantastic, this should be on the DVD box!

"I'm really looking forward to Bloodrayne; the sheer awfulness of House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark is still a high point in my life. After Bloodrayne, I will no longer fear death, for the dead are not allowed to see Uwe Boll films."

Well, here I am... Since I'm making a full effort towards furthering my career, (hopefully) spending time in Spain and the rest, I'm putting up an LJ so I can keep my random thoughts, updates and anything else here. Anyone who knows me shouldn't be surprised to find horror movie whitterings, random music thoughts and other geek musing here. Enjoy!