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Thursday, September 17th, 2009
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4:36 pm
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I'd been looking forward to it for a while, but last night we finally went to see GI JOE: Rise of Cobra. It was so good! Obviously, it was also extremely cheesy, cliches upon cliches, and with some less than inspired acting. But, it clearly set out to be entertainment, and it was definitely successful. I was laughing and :D -ing all the way through the film. Explosions! CGI animals! Car chasing! Crazy underground bases! Amazing Team Americaesque patriotism! Hilarious fantasy science!
Also, there were so many recognisable/"known" actors in there: the dad from Pirates of the Caribbean, Imhotep from The Mummy, Dennis Quaid, Doctor Who/Christopher Ecclestone, The Bad from The Good, The Bad, The Weird (Byung-hun Lee), Ray Park aka Darth Maul, Sienna Miller...
So, it was great fun, entirely untaxing on the brain - pure entertainment. I look forward to buying the DVD, getting other people to watch it and having them complain about how cartoonish and ridiculous it is. Some people have no taste... ;P
current mood:  excited
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| Thursday, July 16th, 2009
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3:13 pm
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I saw Nine Inch Nails last night, they were pretty good but not as good as last time - there was a lot of old stuff and a couple of very new tracks, but not so much in between. But Gary Numan came on and did a couple of songs as well! Jane's Addiction were terrible, worse than I expected (partly because Perry Farrell managed to be even more of an idiot than I had expected).
Last weekend we moved flat, and now we live in Ealing rather than Archway. The flat is about twice the size (and luckily not twice the price), but getting back from Greenwich last night was pretty miserable. I haven't had time to look round Ealing much yet, our new area is very residential and posh, but I don't know about the town centre. I am put off by the ugly name but I'm sure it's fine really ;). My commute is now 25min door to door!
Moving really is super stressful though isn't it? Ugh, don't want to do that again for a while.
How is everyone?
current mood:  accomplished
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| Saturday, May 9th, 2009
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7:17 pm
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Just got back from the Real Food Festival at Earl's Court. So much good stuff! It was also the most middle class thing possibly ever, they were even selling copies of the Guardian inside the door.
We bought:
wild boar and apple pasty, venison pasty
kangaroo fillets
welshcakes
4 amazingly glittery cupcakes with 4 different flavours
apple and honey pork sausages
smoked beef and blue cheese burgers
extra mature smoked cheese
sustainably-fished tuna and sustainably-fished sardines
chocolate and raspberry brownies
tangerine flavoured olive oil
2 chocolate-coated strawberries
!!
current mood:  hungry
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| Saturday, February 21st, 2009
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12:43 am - Why is this rated so highly?? PS spoilers
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Since The Good, The Bad, The Weird is so amazing, and is a tribute of sorts to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, we decided to watch the original.
WHAT A BAD FILM.
I was bored and unimpressed within the first scene; we only stuck it out for the full 3h (three hours ugh) because it's a "classic". All the characters were two dimensional and lacking in character development, particularly the tedious Tuco. The dialogue was poor: literally, a line in one scene was, in terms of delivery and content, exactly what I'd expect from an episode of Pokemon. Now, I like Pokemon, and I like cartoons, but I'm not going to claim that Pokemon cartoons are good. I don't know whether it was because they were making it on the cheap or because it was the olden days, but some of the cinematography was really bad as well.
There's no plot development either; every single scene is too long, nothing happens, and if it does it's painfully contrived or obvious. And, most likely, makes no sense at all.
Apparently some people seem to think there is a lot of humour in the film. I counted two "funny" scenes: one was a Chuckle brothers-esque effort in an entirely pointless war interlude (carrying a box labelled Explosives on a stretcher down to the river, followed by Tuco falling asleep with his bum in the air); the other was at the end, when the Bad got shot and killed, and rolled over into an empty grave.
There were also missed opportunities for some actual good film-making, eg the scene where Good and Ugly are wearing grey uniforms and think they see more grey-uniforms coming towards them, who are actually blue-uniforms covered in dust. This could have been entertaining. It's a simple concept. Sadly it was done so poorly it was just rushed and confusing.
The Man With No Name (makes him sound cooler than he was) wasn't actually a good character at all, only marginally more sympathetic than the other two protagonists.
Also the acting was terrible.
Don't watch this film.
current mood:  aargh
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| Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
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10:02 pm - Food
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I got home late today again, but it's ok because I just made myself a tasty salad. Celery, apple, two colours of pepper, iceberg lettuce, pine nuts, feta cheese, olive oil... and bacon.
On Saturday we accidentally went out for a meal, and I ate so much I gave myself a headache.
current mood:  pleased
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| Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
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9:13 pm
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I am slowly improving at cooking. But today I realised that the three "fanciest" meals I can cook are: pork and apple stew; chicken and orange stew; and lamb and apricots stew. HMM.
current mood:  cheerful
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| Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
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2:14 pm
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Just remembered that I haven't posted about Hellfest yet. I'll write something about that later. In the meantime, here's a post about computer games. We got a couple of new Wii games recently: Boom Blox and Lego Indiana Jones.
Boom Blox has had some amazing reviews, and people all over the internet seem really disappointed that it hasn't sold well. This may have something to do with the fact that it actually isn't very good.
( Complaining about Boom Blox )
Oh, the guy on the desk next to me just said he's played a few levels of Boom Blox multiplayer and thought it was fun *shrugs*. I'm still suspicious.
Lego Indiana Jones is of course much better than Boom Blox, but not as good as Lego Star Wars. ( Aww no lightsabers )
Fewer levels means fewer cheat items to buy, which is a bit sad - in fact, I should stop trying to compare this game to Lego Star Wars. They are very different games, based on very different films (even though Harrison Ford was in both! :O ). And I just remembered that you can hide in some of the plants and wander around as a plant, which is great. And Indy gets to swing across places and pick up items with his whip. So Lego Indiana Jones is definitely a fun game. You should play it.
(Incidentally, we recently got round to getting our own copy of WarioWare since my brother had taken his back. I'd forgotten how fun/good for multiplayer it is! Well, the actual multiplayer section still isn't very good, but the elephant single player levels are great.)
current mood:  blah
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| Friday, June 13th, 2008
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3:07 pm - P-P-P-Pick up a P2
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Aargh, having to use a P20 to pipette 1ul volumes is (probably literally) ridiculously stressful!
There are some P10s around, but no tips that I have found. Also each bench has lots of pipettes on it, but I have used two just today that clearly don't work/aren't calibrated right. This lab doesn't seem to believe in accurate volumes!
Here's a picture of a big pile of pipettes: woo Gilsons.
current mood:  distressed
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| Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
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5:09 pm - He's a demon on wheels
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Things I've done in the recent past:
- Seen Speed Racer again, both at normal cinema and IMAX. Still great! In fact I just watched the theme music video (spoiler-free) on YouTube so I'm grinning and singing "go Speed Racer" to myself. Shame about the cheesy rap parts, the rest of the music they play over the credits is more fun (it includes samples from the original cartoon, with lines such as "...and the future of world peace will rest on your shoulders", perhaps overstating Speed's skill just a little). Yeah, I really liked this film. One of the other characters, Racer X, is referred to as the "Harbinger of Boom". I'm not sure I can articulate just how great I think that is.
- Spent a weekend at home, in which we visited St Fagans - smaller than I remember, is this just because I'm not little anymore? - which had cute piglets and ducks, hideous turkeys, and cool buildings, then spent Sunday on Skomer Island in Pembrokeshire, looking at puffins and seals and bluebells (and dead birds?!). Puffins are pretty cute. Their little wings go so fast when they're flying!
- Took advantage of the sunny weather (ha, ages ago now!) and finally got round to visiting Hampstead Heath. It's nice! Fields, trees, hills, ponds.
- Discovered a mouse living in our kitchen. I know we should get round to getting a trap of some kind, but it is cute. Even though we caught it drinking out of the old can we keep on the worksurface for pouring fat off food into. I left out an entire chocolate finger for it one night: should have put a webcam on it, I'd have loved to have seen how it moved it! Really will do something before it becomes several mice, though. As if they bud off or split in two like yeast or something.
- Sorted out next year (well, next three years). I'll be working at Imperial's Hammersmith Campus (not actually in Hammersmith), investigating FOXO function in breast cancer. Woo!
- Saw Ministry last night at The Forum. Always reliable, aren't they? Al Jourgensen spent the start of the gig wearing an oversized top hat and huge round mirrored sunglasses, as well as spending the entirety of the gig generally being a loon, as expected. They finished with What a Wonderful World, as well as playing NWO and Thieves and uh, some other ones I've already forgotten.
Seriously though, Speed Racer. Speed Racer.
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| Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
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12:37 am - Wheeeeeeeee
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Just got back from seeing Speed Racer at the IMAX cinema on Southbank. What film were the critics watching?! It was fantastic! Utterly, utterly ridiculous, over the top, cheesy, clichéd... I literally didn't stop grinning or giggling until after we got home. Have to see it again soon while it's still on the (very) big screen.
The main character is actually called Speed! Speed Racer! :D
PS: "Speed Racer is driving straight up a cliff face?!?"
current mood:  hee heeeee
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| Thursday, May 1st, 2008
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5:01 pm - Live cell confocal fluorescence microscopy
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My work for now until sometime before the end of August, is recording image sequences that look like this, and using a program to track the movement of those granules (dark roundish things in the red channel), and look at potential correlations between green-ness (the fluorescently tagged protein of interest, showing in the green channel) and granule speed, or size, or placement in the cell, or...
It's not as exciting as it sounds. Also, I don't know what the dark wiggly things in the background are. The moving bit in the top right corner is the cell putting out flat sections of membrane to explore its surroundings!
current mood: so much work!
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| Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
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11:02 pm
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I'm playing Pokemon Snap on the N64. It's fun! Quite hard though; I've had to check the internet several times already ;P. But I'm impatient about being stuck. I don't know how it came to be 11pm. Phil is at a conference in Jerusalem, so he doesn't get to play any eight year old console games.
Still can't believe I deleted my Pokemon Red game with a level 100 mewtwo in it though.
current mood: a pet pikachu would be so good
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| Friday, March 14th, 2008
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11:08 pm
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Phil is making a poster for a conference. He is making it in LaTeX because I think mathematicians try to use that for everything (even though he claims he isn't a mathematician). LaTeX is not a sensible program to make posters with.
(Going to Barcelona tomorrow though, yay!)
current mood:  sleepy
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| Sunday, March 2nd, 2008
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7:53 pm
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There's something very relaxing about being in work out-of-hours. It's so quiet! There's a different dynamic between people too, a sort of "I see you are also in work at 8pm on a Sunday evening" mutual acknowledgment thing. When you see someone you know, it's a pleasant surprise.
It's fun to be the only one in the lab: taking up the whole bench, using all the pipettes, listening to whatever music you want, just working away. And for some reason it's fun for most of the lights to be off, apart from small sections dotted about the building.
Plus, you get to feel really virtuous.
current mood:  relaxed
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| Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
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11:13 pm
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| Thursday, February 7th, 2008
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3:50 pm - Discovery
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If you eat some chocolate, and then immediately eat a pretzel, it tastes like a chocolate-coated pretzel! Without having to go to the effort of making real ones, or going to America to eat some.
Maybe I am missing out by not combining food items more often...
current mood: pleased
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
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9:04 am
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| Thursday, January 24th, 2008
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4:28 pm - First times
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I went to the gym for the first time today! (Also, insofar as a gym is a public place, I wore trousers in public for the first time in... 2 years?)
Yesterday I had my first fishfinger sandwich. It was alright.
current mood: accomplished
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| Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
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5:05 pm
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I just found half a mini kabanos in my desk drawer!
current mood: jubilant
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| Wednesday, December 19th, 2007
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3:14 pm
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The lab smells of cakes today! (Yesterday's smell: blue cheese)
current mood: mmm cake
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