Birmingham ComicCon Saturday 21st November 2015

Last weekend I went with my son and some friends to the Birmingham ComicCon at the NEC. It felt a little bit smaller than the London equivalent and there were some good cosplay costumes but not quite the same extent as the London event. The shops were pretty similar, Tokyo Toys were there (my son's favourite) as well as CEX. I spent a bit of time in the Comic Village. I bought a few things but didn't go mad. I didn't take many photographs and I didn't take any photos of the cosplay costumes, which I sort of regret and sort of feel that it might have been uncomfortable to have asked anyway.
Despite not taking many photos, here are the ones I did manage to take from the Steampunk zone.

Terminator Salvation (2009)

I watched this film this week and have to confess to enjoying it more than I thought I would. Don't misunderstand, it is nothing like as good or watchable as the first Terminator. However, it was quite alright as an action film. It was a bit daft and unbelievable but then that's what science fiction can be like and is in many ways part of the charm. So, I'd recommend a watch of this film for Terminator fans. I haven't seen Terminator Genysis so not sure how it compares to that film.

Paris attacks on Friday 13th

Horrible.
Horrible.
Horrible.

What an awful end to the evening. Those cold, calculating bastards who attacked innocent civilians on a night out in Paris deserve to be hunted, captured and put in prison for the rest of their lives. It was a shocking display of cowardice and evil - firing a weapon at unarmed people who can't fight back. What a bunch of cowards. One of the less shocking images below. It's just wrong to see bodies on the pavement outside restaurants and bars.
I was watching TV with my wife in bed when reports started coming in. We stayed up watching the news until after 2am. The death count kept creeping up.

Nikita

I watched this film last night and really enjoyed it. I like Luc Besson films. Leon was another great film of his that I enjoyed. Nikita is a wild woman who is a drug addict that kills a cop but is given a second chance to work for the French government as some sort of assassin. A bit of an unbelievable plot however, the acting is great and direction even better, The story is fast paced and the style has been imitated but not bettered.
I haven't seen any of the TV series but I don't expect it to be as good as the original film.

RIP Philthy Animal Taylor

I was shocked to hear of the death of the ex-Motorhead drummer Phil Taylor. He was only 61. The first album I ever bought was Bomber on which he drummed. A great musician. Sad day.

Godzilla (2014)

I watched this with my son recently, last weekend. It told the story from a new perspective. An American family (with one child, a boy) living in Japan are split apart by an apparent accident at a nuclear plant. The parents both work at the plant but when what seems to be an Earthquake ruptures the reactor, the mother is locked in the exhaust tunnels and doomed to a radioactive death.
Years later the boy is a bomb disposal expert returning from a war zone. He is living in the US but is called to return to Japan to get his father out of jail. The nuclear plant is a restricted no-go area but the father keeps trying to get back in to find out what really happened. He has information about the wave form at the time.
It turns out that the wave form is electrical pulsing and a monster appears. Godzilla is a good guy and fights this new monster in the US. It's a good story and there is more to it than I can do justice here. It is a good film and I'd recommend it to fans of the monster movie genre.
There was a Godzilla film made in 1998. That one was poor compared to this one. The monster in the 2014 movie is a return to the original model of the Godzilla monster. The 1998 version made Godzilla look much too much like a T-Rex.

Charity shop purchases

Visiting the shops yesterday my wife and I picked up a few DVDs to watch. We bought a couple of Father Ted DVDs, a hilarious series. We love watching Father Ted, always something to cheer you up in Father Ted.
I also picked up a copy of the new Godzilla film and Luc Besson's Nikita, a film I don't think I have ever seen but one that spawned a lot of copycat films with a female assassin as the lead character. I liked Leon by Luc Besson and I think Nikita was made before Leon.

WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer

This week a report by WHO's IARC hit the headlines because it appraised the evidence it collected over a number of years and classified processed meat as carcinogenic to humans. It was slightly less cure about red meat in general, with red meat it is only likely to be carcinogenic. Apparently there is no detail in the report about the level of risk for different types of processed meat, although it doesn't include processed poultry meat according to one source I read. Thing is, a lot of processed meat is in people's diets. Knowing that it causes cancer is not enough. We need to know how much does a person have to eat before their risk is significantly increased. We need to know what types of processed meat are worse than others. In relative terms, how does having a hotdog compare to eating a chocolate bar or smoking a cigarette or crossing a busy road? Lots of unanswered questions really. So, most people have heard this all before. Why is it news now? I think it is good to eat less processed meat but it won't stop me enjoying the occasional hotdog or pepperoni pizza or whatever it happens to be.

F1 2015 World Champion: Lewis Hamilton

Last weekend there was the USA Grand Prix and the race winner was Lewis Hamilton, perhaps down to a mistake by previous race leader Nico Rosberg. One race doesn't make a world champion though, so he deserves the title. I don't think I'd like him though, his personality isn't his greatest asset.

Spectre

I went to see this film today. It stars Daniel Craig as James Bond. I thought Skyfall was a very good film. I enjoyed Spectre but not as much as Skyfall. I think it was more of a return to the other Daniel Craig films in the series. It alluded to characters in other films Daniel has been the star. There was a lot of locations and a lot of action. Classic Bond really.

Halloween (almost)

I have been saving this bottle of beer for a couple of weeks but I'm afraid I just couldn't quite wait until Halloween. I feel quite like it's Halloween tonight. So I opened the beer tonight and it was a good beer. I remember a Hobgoblin ale pub opening in Aylesbury a good few years ago. That was before you could buy their beer in the supermarkets.

Solaris

I'm trying to get through the film Solaris that stars George Clooney. I have seen the original Russian version of the film with subtitles and to be honest, it was more interesting. George plays the shrink in a way that I find quite dull. He doesn't come across as the type of person who would be a shrink. Once I finish the film I might be more inclined to like it. I didn't feel it held my attention well enough, so last week I turned it off and fell asleep. Sleep seemed much more attractive. That might say it all, really.

Chip butty

Here it is. The good old chip butty. I do enjoy one now and again. Especially with tomato sauce. In this case I bought some Daddies Sauce. I thought it would be okay because I've had Daddies sauce in my life before and it was half the price of Heinz Ketchup. However, Heinz Ketchup is still the best in my opinion. I might have to try another variety of ketchup, perhaps from Aldi and see how that compares in price and flavour.
The best thing with a chip butty is a good hot cup of tea. I make sure it is Yorkshire Tea.

New PC

This morning I have ordered a new family PC for us. I don't know what prompted to do it this weekend. We have wanted a new PC for a while now. Our old PC, a HP Pavilion Elite HPE-150UK is having a few issues but is still a good PC. It just doesn't cope with watching films and working on other things at the same time anymore. I don't know if it is a RAM issue or a heat issue. It also just shuts itself down unexpectedly. Sometimes the screen doesn't work either. So in the bundle I selected we also buy a new screen, slightly larger at 23" than our current one (19"). It has been 5 years or thereabouts when we bought our last computer. So hopefully this will last another 5. I hope so anyway.

Taxi

I watched the 2004 film Taxi this week. I bought it from a charity shop a few weeks ago and didn't look too closely at it before buying it, which was a big mistake. I had heard good things about a film called Taxi but it was the French version I had heard about. This US remake is not good. It has some good actors in it but they are just not used well. The script is pretty dire. It is about a male policeman who is a terrible driver and a female who knows the city (New York I think) inside and out - due to previously being a postal delivery worker. The stunts are good but it is so obvious that the actors don't perform them. I mean, Queen Latifa is a beautiful woman don't get me wrong, but there is no way she is as athletic as some of the stunts require. No, this is not a film you should waste time watching. If you feel like watching a silly movie and simple pleasures are your thing then maybe it is for you. It would be fine to watch it with children.

The Martian

I went to see the new Matt Damon film called The Martian on Wednesday evening this week. It's the story of a Mars exploration team who set up a habitat base on Mars. Unfortunately a severe storm forces them to leave abruptly but Matt Damon's character gets injured in the storm while they are departing and his crew believe him to be dead because the electronics in his suit tell them he is. The storm reduces visibility so much that they cannot even find his body to take with them. They leave Mars and set off on their journey back to Earth. Matt Damon's character survives the storm however. A lot of the film is him talking to a Go Pro camera (product placement!) explaining the science of how he survives. He rescues an old probe and reboots it to set up communications with Earth. It starts out with hexadecimal code and a camera but eventually they work out together the way to use the communications equipment in the rover vehicle to email each other.
I won't spoil the plot by going further. I enjoyed this film, the director was Ridley Scott and it's the first film of his I've seen since Prometheus I believe. It's a good film. It reminded me a lot of Apollo 13, when the engineers on Earth have to work out a way to make the Oxygen and power last. A combination of that and Gravity where Sandra Bulloch is left alone to survive. All 3 great films.

The Tripods

A few weeks ago I purchased a box set of an old BBC TV series called The Tripods. I didn't watch it when it was originally broadcast in the 1980s. It was adapted for television but was originally a series of books.
The series features robotic tripods and non-humanoid aliens. It seems to be set in a state that is kept artificially primitive. The people are subjugated and when they reach 15 are given a "cap" by the Tripods, which is a triangular "chip" burned into their head. This inhibits their creativity and curiosity and keeps them under control.
It is worth watching as a TV series but it doesn't really compare to todays science fiction series.

Headphones

I have posted before about headphones but this deserves a new post because I have found one of the great buys of the year. I was in B and M Homestores a few months ago and they were selling various different headphones. Now I was only doing this because my wife had been using my Sennheiser PX200s but these had broken somehow. I decided to purchase a pair that looked okay, a pair of JVC HA-S360-Bs as a replacement for the Sennheisers because they folded up well, a criteria for me because I travel a lot and need something I can pack easily into my rucksack. I like my Sennheiser HD201s but they are more for home than taking on the road. Now I paid £9.99 for my JVCs so I wasn't expecting great sound quality. I have a pair of Skull Candy headphones I bought for my wife for her to use at the gym and she doesn't go anymore but they are white and not a pair I would wear out of the house (they don't fold either). So, I was expecting similar sound quality to those. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the JVCs. They were better than my PX200s! I have read a review on Amazon that says they are even better than the Beats £130 pair. I can believe this because I tried on a pair of Bose headphones in Costco (cost about £80) but the JVC were comparable in terms of sound quality. If you are looking for a pair of headphones I would definitely recommend taking a punt and trying these JVCs.

Phone down the loo

My son had an accident with his phone a couple of weeks ago. He dropped it down the loo, not sure how it happened. I bought a rescue bag to try and dry it out. Then I bought a new screen because I thought it was the screen that wasn't working. I tried replacing it this evening but no. It didn't work. So it looks like I will have to replace it with a different phone. When I took it apart I could see a lot of damage on the PCB including rust and what looked like corrosion. If you own a Motorola Moto E, I do not recommend submerging it in water,

Autumn has arrived

It is officially autumn now, yesterday was the autumnal equinox that sees night overtake day. The days will now get progressively shorter and that means dark mornings and dark evenings. I don't like either to be fair. I like the autumn as a season that can still have very warm days with glorious sunshine but with a morning chill that is quite pleasant.