Millennium

3am this morning the credits rolled on Hornets Nest, marking the end of my book, film, film, book, film, book, film marathon of previous weeks.

I feel kind of empty inside now, no longer having my friends Lisbeth, Mikael, et al. I’ll soon find new friends, once I become engrossed in another book, but this series was an emotional roller coaster. No doubt I’ll also be revisiting the films too: far too good to stay away from, plus they’re a great source for learning Swedish. Fitta!

One thing I have to say is about the actors in the Swedish and American versions. Overall, both are well written and the acting is fantastic. However, I prefer Michael/Noomi to Daniel/Rooney., but if Blomkvist got as much action on screen as he did in the books, James Bond would be a tad more believable, though Mr Nyqvist does have a certain rugged charm, and fits the general description of Blomkvist in the books, IMO. I just feel Daniel Craig’s looks would get the ladies into bed just as fast as they jump in the books. But both Sweden and America decided not to complicate things by including his other partners, and concentrated on Lisbeth, which is an essential occurrence in light of their future relationship (Kalle-fucking-Blomkvist) and how they ultimately ended up at her door, even though the film and book differ on that; hello? where were the bagels?

OK. My hand is hurting now – I’m one finger typing MS sucks.

TTFN

Windows 7 themes: festivity, silliness… and serenity

Bit late with this one, but here's Jennifer Shepherd's latest themes update on The Windows Blog. I'm giving Ghost Town a try as soon as I hit publish

 

Windows 7 themes: festivity, silliness… and serenity:

Here comes Fat Tuesday! It’s time to set a party mood with the new Masquerade theme, which features elegant and mysterious masks for celebrating Mardi Gras and Carnival.

In other current events, the wacky new Xbox Live game for Windows Phone, Chickens Can’t Fly, was just released. This new Windows 7 theme features colorful artwork from the game, along with fun chicken-clucking sound-effects.

Switching gears to a more serene and serious frame of mind, the rest of our new themes celebrate the beauty of widely varied landscapes.

Late last summer, my colleague Christian Kirchesch in Munich organized a German photography contest, which received 2249 submissions. A local jury of photography experts selected the best pictures, and in mid-October ten winners were announced. The winners received prizes ranging from a Sony Vaio SB Notebook to a TV tuner card and speakers. Christian invited the top 100 photographers, including winners and runners up, to participate in a Windows 7 theme project. More than twenty photographers agreed to take part, and you can see the beautiful results in four themes we published this month.

The first one, German Landscapes, features the works of many photographers, including contest winners Marco Stolle, Jens Zschekel, Andreas Bobanac, Heiko Gerlicher, and Karl Herrling, and runners-up Axel Hahn, Deryk Baumgärtner, Ive Völker, Jörg Franzen, Lutz Jänichen, Marco Müller, Markus Janse and Uschi Wolters.

The other three themes each focus on individual photographers who participated in the German photography contest.

Germany: Mountains to Sea is a journey from a rustic lakeside cabin in Berchtesgadener to the shoreline of Nordfriesland, as captured in the lens of Mathias Rehberg.

Impressions from Schleswig-Holstein showcases the varied beauty of Germany’s northernmost state – and the talents of photographer Mathias Kentrup.

Magic Landscapes features the stunning photographs of Michael Breitung, many captured during the “magic hour” at dawn or sunset when the color of the light is uniquely rich.

We also have two new themes from an American photographer, Tracy Hymas. The gorgeous sepia tone and black and white photographs in Ghost Town bring the weather-beaten textures and austere lighting of this lonely place into sharp focus.

In Tracy’s other new theme, Dark Skies, you can almost feel the distant rumble of thunder and taste the damp heaviness in the air under turbulent storm clouds.

That wraps up all the new themes we’ve published in the last two weeks. As always, more desktop-personalization goodness is on the way, so keep visiting the Windows Personalization Gallery for new Windows 7 themes and wallpapers.

VÅRA SKITUNGAR!: Vad i hela friden är det här?

Use Google Translate - you won't regret it!

VÅRA SKITUNGAR!: Vad i hela friden är det här?: Det här är en blogg som är menad att ge en glimt av hur det är att leva och arbeta i Uganda med tretton före detta gatubarn – våra skitunga...

 

Thanks to Scandinavian Kitchen for pointing me to this blog, and thanks to Emma & Therese for the work they do with these “brats” in Uganda – you are stars!

Alcatraz

I finally took a break from playing The Pioneer Trail on Facebook and thinking up reasons why I can’t go back to work getting excited at the prospect of a possible return to gainful employment, and watched some telly that wasn’t random documentaries like the 74 Stone Accused (fascinating as it was, it left me rather nauseous). First up was the first two episodes in a new series on Fox called Alcatraz.

I hadn’t read anything about this show, but the first 15 minutes were enough to tell me that JJ Abrams was involved somewhere,and it wasn’t the presence of Jorge Garcia , it was the overall look and feel of the show that gave it away. I saw the show’s title in the listings for this week – don’t know how I missed it last week, probably drugged up, as per usual (don’t go calling the old bill, it’s my prescription stuff ). and my interest was immediately piqued, as I do have a “thing” for that place. From the mystery surrounding the escape of Frank Lee Morris and Clarence & John Anglin, did they survive or not, etc. to the alleged paranormal activity on The Rock, I have watched numerous shows regarding the place – this is the first time I’ve seen a TV series set there – I was curious to see what it was all about.

Surprise number one was the initial voiceover – Sam “Jurassic Park” Neill doing his bestest American accent telling us that the prison was closed due to spiralling costs and the place becoming decrepit, all prisoners to be transferred to other prisons…. except that’s not what happened! They all disappeared! OK, I was kinda hooked there and then. Throw in the necessary mix of cast to go with great story: Hot chick, played by Sarah Jones, (best screenshot I could take, honest!)

Old fella, Sam “Jurassic Park” Neill, Nerdy guy, who happens to be a doctor, who wrote books about Alcatraz and owns a comic book store, Jorge Garcia. Another Hot chick, but with a history, Parminder Nagra. Recipe complete. Add a bad guy to hunt each week, meanwhile keep trying to find out why and how they disappeared, why they’re back, who’s behind it, etc.. I’m pretty sure Sam “Jurassic Park” Neill’s character, Hauser, knows more than he’s letting on. For instance, at the end of the second episode we find out something about Parminder Nagra’s character, Lucy, and I’m fairly certain Hauser already knew that little titbit of goss.

Overall, it’s a very enjoyable 40 minutes of telly and I’m definitely looking forward to next Monday for the next episode.

OK, off to watch Two Broke Girls now. One day I’ll give up smoking and I’ll win the heart of Kat Dennings. Yes, I’ve seen the pictures.

TTFN

Now Playing: Romeo's Daughter - Delectable - Have Mercy

Windows 7 themes: In with the new

I do look forward to these posts by Jennifer Shepherd; more clutter for my HDD, of course, but think of the beauty on my desktop. And the RSS themes are a brilliant idea; my laptop has one I found about 2 years ago which caches the Bing! daily images and displays them on your desktop, plus if you've got the Win7 RSS gadget installed it's easy to find a description of what you're looking at, for the more obscure imagery. Bing might be a shit search engine, which Google has proved steals it's search results, but you can't deny it's prettier.

 

Anyhoo, as Jennifer’s title say’s it’s time for a new theme. So I’m off to fill my tiny SSD with themes, you go read this :

 

Windows 7 themes: In with the new:

I'll be brief

I'm on my iPod so the title alone took twenty minutes to type. Just wanted to share a link to blog I subscribe to. She's usually quite bonkers but tonight she made a lot of sense, so I decided to share despite her claiming all men were bastards and not including an apology to me.

http://youcouldntmakethisshitup.tumblr.com/post/15689567845/boundaries

I'm used to windows live writer, can't do ctrl+k to paste a hyperlink - hope that works.

TTFN

PC. Had to tidy up on the PC - iPod app sucks if you put apostrophes in your title or want to have URLs. My feet were cold anyway, and I was far too comfy in bed.

Catching Up

Friday was spent catching up on some documentaries and other factual shows I had recorded over the past millennium but never got around to watching.. Started with a few National Geographic shows; in particular Diving the Labyrinth about exploring the blue holes in the Bahamas, and Manta Mystery about manta rays. The one about the blue holes was fascinating, as I’d heard of them but didn’t know much about them. At one point they were diving past the skeleton of a  1970’s diver who was not very lucky on his dive – just in case you hadn’t heard all the comments on how dangerous and extreme blue hole diving was! I’d like to add, the narrator needs to learn how to pronounce Bahamas. He repeatedly referred to them as the BO-hamas – incredibly vexing.

After the NatGeo session I had a couple of Panoama’s to watch. Panorama is a BBC current affairs show, which has been running for over 50 years. It is very often interesting, thought provoking, upsetting and very informative. The subjects do tend to vary wildly, but are related to recent news stories. I watched ones on PFIs, an alleged Russian spy, supermarket price wars and an adoption crisis. The PFI show was very annoying – to hear of so much money being taken away from the NHS by big business investors leaves one fuming, and then they claim the figures used to convince Liverpool to opt for a new PFI hospital had been fiddled to make them more appealing – I was appalled. The alleged Russian spy farce was so well ridiculed in the press and on TV by the time I watched the show it was nothing new to be honest, though I must admit I hadn’t quite realised how young she was was, and how old the Liberal MP was. Lucky bugger. Supermarket price wars may be in the news, but it’s hardly a new thing, and the main thing to come out of watching that show is that the big four national supermarkets are constantly breaking the Advertising Standards Authority consumer laws and getting away with it. Don’t go shopping if you’re just throwing things into your trolley – check the prices on the shelf and at the till – or the status quo in my case – I don’t trust them. The most heart-breaking show was the one regarding an impending adoption crisis in the UK. Since the Baby P case there has been a 40% increase in children being removed from their parents, with no subsequent increase in social services staff. I’ve seen a few shows regarding adoption recently, in particular plans to drastically reduce the amount of time it takes for prospective parents to become successful. Whilst this is a good move, and will help many children find a permanent loving family, it does little to help those removed with their siblings, whose only hope of adoption is to be split up. Finding a stable, loving and permanent home must be the ultimate goal, and splitting up siblings seems to be a last resort, but it does seem to me to be a rather harsh solution after all these kids have been through, but what else can be done? The liberal in me says give the back to their parents and support the parents more, rather than just taking them away, but I’ve no idea of the specifics of any of the cases and I’m no way qualified to get involved.

I’ll also be updating Wednesday's post with the concluding instalment of Public Enemies.

OK. Enough for now. Nice to see telly recovering from the Christmas break. CSI:NY and Supernatural were on last night, the second season of Portlandia started (more on that soon, I only just discovered it, and I love it!) and Law and Order UK started it’s sixth series, not bad for a show that premiered three years ago. More on those once I’ve watched ‘em. TTFN.

Lilyhammer

I really hope this isn’t an elaborate hoax or something similar – it looks fantastic.

Lilyhammer Trailer

 

As you can see from the trailer, not only is it very funny, it also features possibly the most typecast actor in the business: Steven Van Zandt, the guy off Sopranos who’s not Tony or Pussy (snicker) and does a really good (NOT) Godfather impression as his party piece. He’s in a band too, and done a bunch of other shit, but he’s still the other dude off of Sopranos

If it’s not a hoax it’ll be streaming on Netflix on February 6th 2012. If you are in USA, Canada or Latin America you can get it on Netflix, if not, use your Google skills – there’ll be other sources, believe me.

Post-Catstration Revenge

Do you like what I did there – post CATstration? Geddit? Never mind.

I’m either suffering from intense paranoia, or I’m reading far too much into the actions of an otherwise loveable, and loving tabby cat. Possibly both. I had every intention of sitting on the sofa and watching the second instalment of Public Enemies tonight. Bob had different ideas. The sofa is his, you see. It was an exercise in futility. He bounced between wanting to play fetch (he can be rather vocal when he thinks he’s being ignored) and wanting to investigate the television – closely. After 20 minutes of watching a cat’s arsehole and listening to a cat object to his ball not being thrown, I gave up. It hadn’t even started yet. Now I’m sat at my PC Bob has taken up his regular position on my desk (there’s a cushion there for him, I’m a softy) and he’s fast asleep next to a speaker that has Nightwish blasting out of it. He’s just waiting for me to try watching something, then he’ll be rested enough for the next round.

I’m uploading the second instalment of Public Enemies – I’ll update yesterday’s post with the link when it’s done.

I was intending to post about Mrs Brown’s Boys at some point. I heard about this show only recently, even though it’s been around about 10 years or so in Ireland. Last year BBC Scotland with RTÉ put out a 6 episode first series, and a second series started this Christmas. It is rather rude and sweary – possibly why I fecking love it. The whole thing is created by Brendan O’Carroll who also plays as Mrs Brown. I could go on and describe it all but either watch it, or read the Wikipedia page which does a better job than I could. Interestingly, according to RTÉ the Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special was the most watched TV in Ireland over Christmas with a 48.6% share (the Irish have better taste than us – they get Eastenders, too but it didn’t get a look in)! Not bad considering some of the criticism levied against the show by the Irish press.. Whilst looking at the viewing figures, the critics reviews make one think they’re out of sync with the rest of their country, especially the “vaguely embarrassed to be Irish.” in the Irish Independent, LOL. Apparently it’s a 50/50 split. 6.6 Million in the UK watched the Christmas special – nowhere near the Eastenders Christmas episode, but it was best in it’s 10pm spot. If you don’t mind a bit of sweary fun, look out for Mrs Brown’s Boys, Monday 9:30 BBCOne or iPlayer or those naughty places, but not torrents cos they’re shite and Virgin cuts me off for seeding stuff.

I’ll update the link on yesterdays post and go watch it now – ttfn..

Now Playing: Nightwish - End Of An Era - Creek Mary's Blood

Private Enemy

Right now my private enemy appears to be insomnia. I actually fell asleep around 9.30pm then woke 2 hours later with Bob snoring in my ear (he likes my orthopaedic pillow) and the wind making strange noises outside (the roof’s already leaking, I’m sure it’s gonna fall off, and I’ve been woken by that once before!).

So I decided to check out my latest recordings. There’s a pretty decent 3-part drama just started on BBC1 called Public Enemies. The series centres around Paula (Anna Friel) a probation officer just returning from suspension after an offender she gave a second chance to committed another murder, and Eddie, a murderer released on licence after serving 10 years.

I’ll be honest. If I wasn’t awake and in need of something to keep me occupied, and the eye candy that is Anna Friel was not on offer, I might have passed this by and watched a DVD. I’m glad I didn’t. Whilst it’s hard to feel sympathy for a murderer, the actor Daniel Mays does a splendid job in the portrayal of his vulnerabilities as an offender on probation, and you do start to feel that prickle of empathy.

All in all, I’m definitely looking forward to the remaining two instalments of this show. It’s currently available on the old iPlayer but if you can’t get it try below, I’ll edit the post as the concluding parts become available (tonight and tomorrow night, no long waits, thankfully).

Part 1 – 550mb

Part 2 – 550mb

Part 3 – 550mb

Blogger Labels: Public Enemies,TV

Classic: Not a Playa

Why my son NEVER leaves his FB logged in around me (and why I lock my PC when unattended around him).

Classic: Not a Playa:

New Year, New Program

Happy 2012 dear reader.

MS has finally started to bugger up my right arm, leaving me unable to play Warcraft for the past few months. I’ve filled the gap with some of those dire Facebook timewasters, but they tend to annoy me after a while, so I’m just going to moan about stuff and watch television programs.

First thing to be watched this new year is Endeavour. This program is a prequel to Inspector Morse, set in 1965 Oxford. As a huge fan of both Inspector Morse and Lewis, I was intrigued by the idea of this show. After just 10 minutes I was glued to the screen. The music of Barrington Pheloung is featured in Endeavour, as it was in both Inspector Morse and it’s sequel, Lewis, so a common and familiar mood is set from the get go. There is a cameo appearance by one of John Thaw’s daughters, Abigail, who plays a newspaper editor. She asks the young Morse “Have we met?” after Morse replies “I don’t think so.” she smiles and says “Another life, then.”

So far it’s a one-off show (a-boo), but with 6.8 million viewers (28% share) ITV bigwigs should have no problems deciding whether or not to commission a series.

I’ve also watched the second new episode of AbFab from New Years Day. I think the Christmas Day episode was comedy gold. This one was OK, but had a lot to live up to. There’s one more to come, as I read there are to be three episodes celebrating AbFab’s 20th birthday. No idea when the next will be broadcast, but it will apparently have something to do with the 2012 London Olympics. I hope there’s more than a week between the last show and the next, but less than, say, ten years, as that seems a tad too long to wait. I didn’t dislike the New Years Day show, it just wasn’t as funny, nor anticipated, as the Christmas Day one. Plus, there was no Sarah Lund on New Years Day .

In case you can’t get iPlayer, or they have already removed it you can grab AbFab here until they remove it.

Christmas Day 231mb

New Years Day Day 232mb

OK, that’s enough for now. Off to find more exciting things to do and watch, or maybe just go to bed. TTFN dear reader.