I love stories of people having an idea and then just getting it done, Oggcamp is the blood, sweat and tears of a group of podcasters who want to share what they love with the world. This year Oggcamp 10 (The geek in me always smiles at that) is taking place in Liverpool from 1st-2nd May in Liverpool. Although we southerners wouldn’t normally dare to brave the streets of Liverpool, I really do suggest that anyone who can attends the event.
OggCamp Banner
Unfortunately my universities exam period is dangerously close at that point and so is the deadline for my third year project report (the next week eek) and I can’t take the time off .
The main reason I am posting today is because they have announced the mascot for the event. I quite like it and think that it would actually make a good alternative to the usual RSS button. So you know, boring old RSS icon for the mp3 feed and then the Ogg for the OggVorbis theme. So take a look here to see the mascot. I’ve got some stuff to say about how the garden is going so I will post up some stuff about that later.
I’m kinda disappointed that “Wind Down” isn’t all one word. I wanted to dub this my weekly blog post that I talk about my week or something that was important to me this week. Well something along those lines, this blog is just me ranting about things that are important to me half the time anyway.
So basically here is what i’ve been up to this week:-
Saw Kick-Ass (check the review)
Working on my Third Year Project (Check the third year project page in the projects part)
Watching my herbs grow (really interesting actually)
So basically the way I planted the herbs was to mix 2 packs of seeds together and put them into a pot together (apart from the dill which is on it’s own). There was some doubling up but basically the idea was to just have some pretty pots, most of the herbs will go out with the plants as companion plants and hopefully I will get a good crop.
I’ve mainly been spending my time writing and re-writing my final report. I’m sure that everyone else on my course is doing the same thing or will be when they get to writing the report. I’m really trying to push myself to write more but I get about 300 words a day done. I still have a fair amount of code to do as well, I need to get back to it really.
More ranting and thoughts later in the week! I want to do reviews on stuff more often, I like that.
Kick-Ass is a film about a high school student who decides to become a super-hero. So the general jist of it is, kid reads comic books. Kid tries to beat up a pair of dudes, kid gets shit kicked out of him. Kid tries again but this time he does it to a bunch of bigger guys and actually wins. Kinda.
The story behind kick-ass is no more complicated than it’s title. This obviously isn’t a film to make you sit around and try to work out what is going on, it is very straight forward. It contains like most films of this type not so subtle inklings about how we all suck because no one cares about each other. That always annoys me, I just wanted to see a 12 year old girl kick some ass. I don’t need a lesson in why I suck as a person at the same time.
The main guy seemed a little weak, most of his dialog seemed to be in the narrative which I suppose follows along the lines of most super hero movies. There was very little action involving him and most of the good stuff was done by Nick and Chloe (Big Daddy and Hit Girl). McLovin made an appearance but was unable to shake his McLovin status with this less than iconic character. There was also the huge “M” stuck to his chest for 3/4 of the film which basically just made me think that he was McLovin out on Halloween. Mark Strong however remained strong in his performance as the “bad guy”, I have been impressed by his performance in both this, Stardust and Sherlock Holmes.
Although the story wasn’t thrilling the action wasn’t half bad, a lot of this cut action fight scene stuff which a friend of mine didn’t really like. I can see why people have described the film as a mixture of Spider-man and Kill Bill. I laughed my ass off during most of the combat scenes but when it comes to stuff like this I’m pretty easily pleased. This film is okay but I could have easily waited to watch it on DVD, it is definitely worth a watch over some of the other crap that is at the cinema at the moment.
Entertainment Score would be a 8/10. That’s all I really care about, let the award shows deal with how good a film is.
Relaxing, what is that to you? To me, it’s doing nothing. A lot of people like to go out and do things to relax, I can totally understand wanting to do that. I find that my day to day life involves solving problems and that involves using my brain. So to relax I want to stop using my brain, this is really hard for me personally. I like what I do, I get pissed off and annoyed at it all the time but that’s because I’m so emotionally invested in doing what I love. In my opinion that’s the way it should be!
Easter has started for us over at the University of Southampton, a lot of people have gone home to relax after working like dogs for the last few months. Unfortunately I need to get back to work tomorrow, I am still taking a break from coding but I am starting to focus on my report as to not get behind on my Third Year Project. I plan on writing it up in LaTeX after doing a few pieces of coursework in it last year, It’s actually a lot easier than I thought it would be however it does require some more imagination to visualise what it looks like between viewings of it’s rendered form.
A final thought to this ranty, unstructured post. Do you have trouble sleeping when you take a break? I find that I’m not all that tired if I don’t give my brain a good exercise. Am I crazy or do you feel the same way?
So I started my veg garden project last week, I got everything planted for the first wave and I’m planning on planting some more tomorrow if the weather permits me. I’m not really expecting to see any seedlings until next week because the temperature hasn’t be as high as I would have liked and it usually takes around 2 weeks anyway however some of the herbs I planted in my pots inside have started to sprout! I planted a mixture of a couple of herbs per pot, these are just for me while cooking rather than companion plants for the veg patch.
So I checked out my comments earlier, well I don’t have any but I got my first spam comment. That reminded me that I saw a really interesting talk on youtube from a former spammer. I thought those of you that haven’t seen it would find it interesting.
My first spam comment =D
Thought I would name and shame, I got hundreds on the old blog. I don’t know why they waste their time.
I’ve decided to move away from the “professional portfolio” style of blog I had in the past. This didn’t really suit me and I could never think of anything that I could post. This one is more about me expressing my opinions. They will probably be more regular and shorter. I am also making use of the actual domain now, not just a sub domain. I might transplant some of my old posts.
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