I'm just letting off some steam. Being stuck in the house all day with a couple of hardcore anti-vaxxers is doing my head in. Apart from the bonus, these are all things I've heard them parrot. Is there a vaccine against stupidity?
(Updated now I actually know how bingo works lol)
Ohhh, you remember my paper maché monstrosity, don't you? Well, this is not a repeat of that. I'm sticking with the smaller scale. I started by mocking this up in The Sims 2. Fun fact: the in-game screenshot function no longer works, so I now have to use printscreen and tab out. Oh, EA, how I love you! I went for a tiny-home. In real life, I'm really starting to feel inclined towards living in a tiny home. Not that it will ever happen, because prisoner, gilded cage, etc. But I have to dream to keep myself sane.
Here is my mock-up:
Continue reading There was this guy on the radio a few weeks ago talking about a study he did into metabolism. So we're always told that to lose weight, we should eat less and exercise more, but according to his study, humans will burn the same amount of calories regardless of how much activity we do; you can run for an hour every day, or sit on your butt all day and you'll still burn the same amount. This is so disheartening. On the other hand, it made me look at the amount of calories I'm consuming. I have a massive weakness for crisps. I could easily eat a six pack in one sitting. At one stage in my life, I actually used to do so on a regular basis. Then I realised how ridiculous that was, and restricted myself to no more than two a day, which I mostly stuck to. And, oh boy, did the weight fall off. I was worried I would just waste away, but after a while it did stabilise.
After learning this fun new fact about metabolism, I started looking at the fat content of crisps, and it's a whopping Continue reading
For years, Amazon has been my go-to for books, electronics and media. I did switch to play.com while they were a thing, but they closed down many years ago (and I never even got round to redeeming my loyalty points!), so I switched back to Amazon as my default, although I have always done a fair bit of shopping on eBay. Now you might have noticed I’ve been referring to Amazon as Scamazon for a number of years, but this is unrelated to my recent motivations to avoid them. The thing is, Amazon is convenient. You get a wide range of products, all delivered to your home, and returns are easy, and free if the product is faulty. Plus with lockdown, online shopping is the only way to get some items, and you get the convenience of buying everything you need from one website.
However, these days, I’m trying to avoid Amazon wherever possible. We know that Amazon treats its workers poorly, avoids paying tax and is taking away sales from independent bookshops, but it was only recently that I found out how badly they treat their own customers too — and by customers, I mean third-party sellers who use Amazon as a selling-platform.
Continue readingHere are my new entries for Recreate This Book!
So to start, I finally decorated the left-hand side of Create a pocket:
I tried using my Signo pen to do the highlights, but for some reason, it didn't want to work, so I used a trick I learnt from SuperRaeDizzle, and used my Tip-ex pen instead. It worked really well!
The next page I worked on was one I had an idea for straight away. It's Create a page of stripes, and I knew I would do t-shirts. While making it, I decided to add other stripey clothes. And I'm sorry to say, I did trace the outlines, because I suck so much at drawing, but the designs are my own imagination:
Continue readingI've watched the first three episodes finally (yes, I did buy these many years ago). My first impressions are kinda so-so. I wasn't impressed by the casting. Pedro and Sancho are spot-on, Zia is pretty decent, Mendoza is passable, but were they even trying with Esteban and Tao? Their actors sound nothing like the originals. Also, it sounds like they've used adults doing kids' voices. Esteban's actor lacks any charm or warmth at all. I'm really disappointed. Unfortunately they didn't put the French dub on the UK release, so I'm stuck with the English.
Also, I still think Esteban looks too much like Ben 10.
The opening episode was quite meh, but it did pick up. However, even though it was written by Chalopin, it just lacks that je ne sais quoi. Somehow, it doesn't feel much like the MCoG I know and love. The soundtrack is underwhelming and I don't know, somehow it doesn't inspire the interest and excitement the originals did. In fact, it makes me want to watch the originals instead.
Kokapetl's voice, while different, is super cute though, and his documentary features at the end are great. He's so sweet! He does seem to be way more sapient in this series though.
Well, so far, I'm not impressed. I mean, it's not terrible, but it's not special either. But I'll watch the full series, and then see how I feel about it.
Unfortunately, the DVD doesn't play well on my portable DVD player. The backgrounds are fine, but the lines on the characters are not anti-aliased at all, so they appear all choppy and low res. I don't have this problem with Series 1 though, and Series 2 does render fine on VLC Player.
I'm a big fan of Moriah Elizabeth's channel, and I really admire how creative she is. Like, how the heck does she come up with all those ideas? I have a lot of imagination, but very little creativity. I just find it such a struggle to come up with anything original and interesting. Anyway, watching her Create This Book series, I was tempted to buy a copy of one of them, but now that I've lost my job (thanks, Mophead McLiarface), I can't really justify spending £12 on something that I lack the creativity to even do a good job with. So, I went kinda cheeky and copied out some of the prompts I liked in an old notebook I bought years ago and never knew what to do with. I'm planning on using some free prompts from the interwebz as well.
Continue readingMother Theresa was not a hero, nor a humanitarian. She was a selfish leech, who exploited the ill and dying for personal gain.
A more in-depth look:
Something super weird happened today. I had a headband on, and I definitely had it on when I was in the bathroom washing my face, as I remember pulling it down round my neck so it wouldn't get wet. When I went up to my room, I put a shirt on over my top. But then the headband was gone, so I and the kids looked for it all over the room, back down the stairs and in the bathroom, but couldn't find it. I thought it might have got stuck in my shirt when I put it on. So I shook it out, felt around the sleeves and back, it wasn't there. It was like it had vanished into thin air.
So we just gave up and went downstairs. I started making my dinner. Then while the vegetables were boiling, I went back to the living room to the kids, and started saying "I wonder where that headband could have got to?" and just as I was saying it, I had this urge to touch my lower back, and the headband was suddenly in my hand! It was so strange!
I mean, yeah most likely it was stuck under my shirt all along, but I definitely shook it vigorously earlier and there was no sign of it. But the creepiest thing was how I had the urge to touch my back just as I was asking where it could be and it was suddenly just there in my hand! Bizarro! So creeped out!
Old, low quality video, but high quality content. This is the first one I've seen that's easy to follow.
D7 D7 A7D6 D7 D7
D7 D6 A9A9
A7 A9A9
A9 A7 A5A5
A5A6 A7 A7
A7D6 D7 D7
A7D6 D7 D7
A7D6 D7 D7
A A EG# AA
AG# F#F#
E F#F#
F#E DD
DD# E E
EG# A A
EG# A A
My old review was a bit of an incoherent mess, so I've fixed it up, and also FIXED THE PREQUELS. You're welcome! Okay, so there are things about the prequels I hate that others seemed to like, and vice versa, so all I can say is I've fixed the prequels to my taste. Okay, here we go!
We'll start with the things I liked.
Okay, so I did mention in my other post that I enjoyed Episode I. It was good. I especially loved Qui-Gon, he's just such a wholesome character, probably my favourite Jedi. I really like the idea of a chaotic good Jedi.
I really only watched it for the memes.
I loved how much more fleshed out the Star Wars universe became. Even if others didn't like the politics, I really loved that side of it. A big complaint I had about the OT was that we didn't get to see what life was like for those living under the Empire (remember, Tatooine was ruled by the Hutts, the Empire hadn't bothered with it just yet). So for me, the world-building of the prequels really brought the whole galaxy to life. It's still stupid that every planet only has one biome (Tatooine = all desert, Hoth = all tundra, Naboo = all beautiful temperate forest, Dagobah = all swamp, etc etc), and though it does bug me that they all have Earth-gravity, I do get the limitations of filming, so I'll give them a pass on the gravity issue.
Now onto the things I didn't like. Plus, I'm fixing them to make them more appealing to me. For the record, this is not the same as my alternate universe headcanon, which uses Episode IV's original plot as a starting point. This is just my fix for the official canon prequels. Now really, buckle up, it's a long ride! Continue reading
I wonder what it would take for people in this country to say "enough is enough" and replace this corruption with something fair and honest. They only do it because we allow them.
Click the image to sign the petition. Not that it will make any difference. Things will only get worse come January. I hope the rest of you have started to (responsibly!) build up stockpiles. Unless of course you're planning on living on "sovrenty" and "freedom from the shackles of the EU" for the foreseeable future.
Update September 2021: So go on, Brexiteers, how do you like them apples?
Eeeeeeeee! I found them in an organiser pocket, buried right at the bottom of my wardrobe! I'm so glad I found them! I didn't even remember having a Vader card, just the Luke one. And yep, that was the picture. I was wrong about it being portrait, though. Eeeeee! I was so happy when I saw it!
So the cards themselves are from a series of 10. Vader is Continue reading
I've been looking at these for a while. Since I don't really have anything else to spend all my savings on, I decided I may as well treat myself and indulge my fangirlism. I bought the Luke Dagobah figure (it seems there is... another version of this also that has Yoda and the backpack, but it was unavailable when I was shopping). Its face sculpt seemed the best out of the ESB Lukes, otherwise I would have got the Bespin Luke. Impressed by the quality, I decided to buy the other two Skywalkers. Leia is TINY next to Vader.
Anyway. I have lots of photos. Lots and lots of photos. Enjoy!
Continue reading Project 4K77 is a restoration project of the original cinematic cut of Star Wars (now Episode IV). I was really curious about it, so I found a copy, which took me a full 4 days to download and the resulting 24GB file was too big for my old netbook to handle, so I spent another 3 days trying to burn it to DVD, which failed, but I did get a working 4.2GB VOB file, so eventually I got to watch it! I've since put it through HandBrake to get a 720p at 3.98GB. And yes, it took literally days.
My computer is so slow!
The image quality was really good. One thing that stood out the most was Luke's hair colour was consistent. It bothered me on the DVD release that his hair would range from honey blond to dark brown from scene to scene. In this one, his hair colour stays within the honey blond range. Comparing the DVD to 4K77 side by side, you can really see the difference.
Continue reading