The Good Life

Self sufficiency might be a few years off yet, but the summer has finally arrived and the tomatoes, beans, peas, aubergine and pepper are finally waking up. This is the bulk of it, although there are other bits and pieces around the place. Second and third rounds of tomatoes still to come, and there's some rocket on the windowsill too. Bring on the harvest!

NZ judge orders 'odd' name change
I offer no comment other than to urge you to read the list of allowed and blocked names on the right hand side. Some of these verge on comedy genius.

Karadzic 'worked in Serb clinic'

... and had a seasonal job as Father Christmas...

Renewed Focus

Not the car, me. For some time now I have been growing disillusioned with my hobby, wondering why it was that it no longer excited me. That's a pretty rubbish state of affairs. I won't speculate as to why this is the case.

What has improved my mood was paying a visit to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway on Sunday and discovering a little bagged injection moulded kit of a diesel shunter. Suddenly the joy of building has returned. And the great thing is that I don't care about accuracy or what other people will think, I'm building purely for my own pleasure again. I've even been considering a diorama for it, something I've never bothered with for my aircraft.

Happy days...

Photographasizing in B&W

Black and white photographs look so much cooler than colour ones. Not like TV, where monochrome = monotonous. Why would you ever take a photo in colour when you could take it in greyscale and have it come out so much better?

I eagerly await the black-and-white-only digital SLR from Cannon. Get to it, boys and girls.

NZ dolphin rescues beached whales

As always, click on the title to read the story. I was going to blog about Jeremy Clarkson being caught talking on a mobile phone on the motorway (I never thought he was that safety-conscious anyway), but this story seemed so much more worthy. Douglas Adams was on to something...

Cloverfieldddeddddd = not that good


I don't know, I s'pose I just wasn't blown away. Didn't care much about the characters, got a bit bored by the camera work, just generally thought it was a bit half-arsed. Much like this post.

Juno

I've mulled over blogging about this film for a couple of days, since I saw it the other night. Given the hype, and the trailers, I'd expected a good film, and I wasn't disappointed. It's just that I'm still trying to work the thing out.

OK, so we have the obvious plotline, and its moral message (or strange lack of such). We also have subtexts - the weird Lolita complex of one of the characters, and the outsider=cool approach to the main character.

But there's something else there wrapped up in the highly stylised approach of the direction which I can't quite put my finger on. It has certainly stayed with me in a much stronger fashion than most films manage, and it's something I will almost certainly purchase on DVD, because I feel like I want to watch it a few more times, even if that's simply so I can get it out of my system.

I felt like drawing after having watched it. Hmm...

A Sobering Thought...

Life is like a hurricane here in Duckburg
Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes - it's a duck blur
You might solve a mystery or rewrite history

Duck Tales, Oo-oo
Tales of derring-do, bad and good luck tales, oo-oo

D-d-d-danger, watch behind you - there's a stranger out to find you
What to do? Just grab onto some Duck Tales, oo-oo!
Not pony tails or cotton tails but Duck Tales, oo-oo!

When it seems they're headed for the final curtain
Bold deduction never fails, that's for certain
The worst of messes become successes!

Duck Tales, Oo-oo
Tales of derring-do, bad and good luck tales, oo-oo
Not pony tails or cotton tails but Duck Tales, oo-oo!

Whenever I use the Next Blog>> button, I invariably end up in a loop of blogs of a particular kind. This evening, it has been mostly blogs in the Spanish language. Bizarre.