New years eve

Well, 2003 is nearly finished, and looking back there have been some down spots, but overall for me it's been a pretty good year, especially the latter half. My place is looking much more nifty with the rug and cushions I got for Xmas :) I also got a scanner which I suspect will complete my Distributed Proofreaders addiction.

I'm still employed, I've got a good place to live, my social life is good, my romantic life is good :). Now if I could only learn to organise and tidy up stuff.

Ok, minor problems with car but it's still drivable.

Here's hoping 2004 will fix my car and be a fun and enjoyable year.!

Twas the night before the night before Xmas

Well, it's been a busy week. Over a week without blogging. Most of that seems to have been spent Xmas shopping, Xmas shopping and yet more Xmas shopping. Then of course the wrapping of the presents. Still I'm done now, and I even took time to watch a couple of movies. Peter Pan, which I enjoyed and I direct you to Grant and Simon's blogs for more detailed reviews. To be honest, I didn't even notice Peter's accent. Too much exposure to US accents via TV I guess, I don't notice them unless they're very strong.

And tonight I went with Anna, Art & the sproglets and a few other friends to see Looney Tunes: Back in Action which Simon had recommended to us. A good successor to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Lots and lots and LOTS of in jokes. I suspect DVD sales of this one will be high if only just so people can watch for all the background jokes.
Laughter from diminutive person sitting next to me suggested that while some of the jokes may only be understood by those who grew up with this stuff, it's still funny enough without that background.

Spent some time in DP withdrawal, the Distributed Proofreader's host site was having some sort of core move and the site was having long periods of downtime. The second of which was apparently due to not all the i's having being dotted on the DNS updates. IPs were provided and hosts files amended for the proofaholics among us while the DNS was being fixed and propagated, but the monthly goal isn't looking particularly attainable, but we shall see.

My second postproofing project was posted to project gutenberg this week so I'm feeling quite chuffed about that. My aim now is to post proof a project with no mistakes whatsoever. :)

(For anyone interested Mrs Beeton's The Book of Household Management is now available in plain txt form from Project Gutenberg.)

And Steve Moffat has indeed confirmed as Kylie said that the Press Gang Season 1 DVD is indeed GO! (He just wishes they'd asked him about it because they had plenty of extras they could have given them. Oh well, maybe next season's DVD)

Weekend was fairly quiet apart from going to Sam's BBQ on Sunday evening. The cool wind on the foreshore makes for low fly and mossie count but the wind chill factor did prevent it being a very late affair.

Well, as may technically be Christmas Eve now, and I'm going in to work in the morning I should finish off and head to bed. Merry Xmas all that celebrate it, and I'll probably see a lot of people at Fe's drop in or the NY party.

Slightly more coherent

Well, the tree is in, up and decorated. Then we went to the carols by candlelight up here, (not any of us religious, it's just a nice community thing and we like to sing)

(My own little tree at my place is also up but it's only a little fibre optic one)

We returned from Carols to find that Denver the dog had spent the time removing the seats from the sofa, then excavating as much foam as possible from under the seats. Put the cushions back and it looks fine. Sittable :)

Waiting to find out if rumoured DVD release of 1st season of Press Gang is for real. Amazon.uk and Blackstar have it available for preorder, but Steve Moffatt has yet to be notified about it or indeed paid so may still be some gum in the works.

I guess tomorrow it will be time to start wandering around shops and hoping for some inspiration to hit me.

Tree day.

Today we went to pick up the Xmas tree, new place this year as the previous place had shut down. Bit more selection at this place and we ended up with a nice tree, not overly large, but not tiny either. Well, it won't be me picking up the needles. Just a bit worried about how the cats will react to it. This being the most recent two's first Christmas.

Played trivial pursuit last night till fairly late. I am so bad at geography.

Agh. It's too late, I'm not really coherent. Time for bed. Tomorrow is tree decoration day.
Channel 10 is being very confusing, they've either repeated the new TMNT series pilot or are showing them seriously out of order.

TMNT - The turtle saga continues.

First there were the comics, about 4 weird guys with shells, who liked pizza, and could do some nifty ninja stuff, written by Eastman and Laird. Then in the late 80's (87ish) Arrived the animated TV show. This was a lot lighter in tone than the comics, being aimed mostly at kids (and even then it got edited for the UK market where it is apparently illegal to use the word 'Ninja' on TV so they got called the Hero Turtles there). And this was fine and fun, and sparked a huge craze. I liked it. It was self-referential and fun. (Ok, My favourite Turtle was Donatello, hey he's a science geek and wears a purple bandana, how could I resist?)

And then there came the Movies. Live action. First one was OK, the animatronic turtles were interesting but a guy in a rubber suit just doesn't look smooth when fighting.
The second, so so, the third I didn't bother with.

Then there came the live action TV series *shudder*. I saw a couple of bits of this and was appalled. Very juvenile baddies, mostly the same ones every week (no I didn't watch it that often...it was on before something else I watched, honestly) and again the anamatronic suits just couldn't pull off the grace of ninjas. And, in an attempt possibly to be PC, they added a 5th turtle. Female. Who could do magic (URGH).

And now this year comes a new animated series. Channel 10 has it on in the morning around 8am so I caught an episode while eating breakfast, watched another today. I think I've missed a couple so it's hard to say for sure, but the new series seems to be following the original comic series much more closely. (Well, not totally, but much much closer than the original animated series.) Scenes from the comic book, if not the exact storyline (the change of mediums most likely to blame there) are in the new series, which is in feel a lot darker than the original animated series.

I wonder if we'll see the Triceratons in this one. (The Cerebus crossover I'm not expecting)

So far I quite like it. Time will tell.

Woohoo

I'm on leave till after Xmas! Yay!

Plenty of time to take care of things.

Including my 2nd postproofing project for Distributed Proofreaders which I have nearly finished.

Very tired now so going to go to bed, and turn off all my alarm clocks :) Except, hmm, spotted a new animated series of TMNT on channel 10 in the mornings, would I get up for that? Dunno :) Ahh nostalgia

No more marking

Well, after a week of mostly marking exams I've had a fairly relaxing weekend.

Friday was quiet apart from a very nice Xmas lunch. Tis the season to get stuffed :)
Yesterday was mostly vegging, bit of proofing and watching Thursday's farscape. Today was gaming day and we played some Settlers of Catan, a bit of Feng Shui and a couple of rounds of Set.

Two more working days before Xmas!
Then I'm on leave and will have time to tidy house, Xmas shop, sort out study etc. And of course try and think of xmas presents.

I'm not quite sure of the reason for the uncommon fennish gender skew at Bookclub (Simon's Blog) Are females more literary, or is it a mere glitch in the statistics to do with this group?

Pamela might be finding it quite hot, but I think I'm enjoying the weather at the moment.