They actually go out and make crazy pictures based on one of your webcomics.
It’s an oldie, but it’s still fun. And thus, good enough to share with you :)
Archive for the ‘fun’ Category
You know people read your stuff when…
Tuesday, January 11th, 2011B5 done… more or less.
Sunday, January 9th, 2011
I just finished watching Babylon 5… more or less.
The cool thing about B5 is that the story was preconceived from the start. There is an overarching story, which spans the entire series. Well, as I found out, more or less. Originally, there was one nice, overarching storyline. Obviously this involved several plots — we are talking about a multiple-season series here. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the 4th season (or so Wikipedia tells us at the above link), it wasn’t clear if there would be a fifth season. In order to wrap up the story before cancellation, the main story thread was wrapped up early on in season 4. (To be precise, season 4 episode 6).
And so, having seen that, I feel kind of robbed. Not that it was bad, far from it. But: eventually they got another season approved, and apparently also some TV-movies. So they wrapped up their main story line, and had a sort of happily-ever-after-errr-what-do-we-do-now-the-future-awaits-us end. And then there’s a next episode.
That sucks. I’m not sure if I’ll continue B5 or not. Right now it is a nice done deal, and even though some story lines have yet to be resolved, 1 season (22 episodes) + 16 episodes seems like a ludicrous amount. Not to mention the movies, which apparently also carry part of the story.
In short: happy about the story so far, not happy that it didn’t end. Then again, not bad for a series that ran from ’93 till ’98 :)
One small step for a man…
Saturday, January 8th, 2011You know, how sometimes something happens to you and you feel like it should be all over the news? I dunno, first kiss, you got your paper accepted when you didn’t think it would, you just made an amazing manoeuver a boat, you just bought your first house, whatever. And somehow, an enormous, exhilarating feeling swells up inside and you just feel good. Damn good, even.
Sometimes, when the feeling is powerful enough, you almost start to wonder: why aren’t other people smiling? Can’t they see how cool the world is now that I tipped it into its place?
Funny thing is, you’re always aware that it isn’t that special: other people kiss for the first time too (although probably slightly different), (different) papers get accepted, people sail, people buy (different) houses, whatever. Yet, somehow, it feels that this one instance is special because it’s you, and this one is unique — all the others are different. Silly huh?
So that’s how I feel right now. Rather high on dopamine, feeling a bit silly about that, on top of which I realise that in the end it’s nothing that doesn’t happen to the rest of the world.
But it feels good!
Too vague: feeling very good for a silly reason — yet still feeling very good :)
Nylon vs Steel
Thursday, January 6th, 2011
As some of you may know, I took one of my guitars (geez that sounds bad, let me restart…)
As some of you may know, I took my cheap-ass guitar with me during the Christmas holidays. Dragged it with me wherever I went, to annoyance of some and enjoyment of some others. Apologies to the former and blush and bow to the latter, by the way.
I played a lot. A lotlot, at that. Especially when I visited Ward and Sanne, and Sanne had a book with songs+chords. Turns out I’m still bad at playing guitar, but I do get triggered. That was the first time anyone ever tried singing to my playing — it was incredibly cool (although also really scary in a way because I was afraid to mess up playing :).
So when I came back, I figured that all this playing ought to have paid off a bit. Guitar Wednesday came, and I picked up the guitar confidently. Now, as I may or may not have mentioned, for various reasons, the guitar lessons were cancelled about 5 times in a row. And I had hardly played till the Christmas holidays. But with all the playing then, I figured I wouldn’t be in too bad a shape.
That was, until I picked up the steel-string guitar. Uh-oh. I tried to play my favourite quick-picking tune (the first few notes of GnR’s “Civil War”, basically fingerpicking Em and G), and while I had seriously improved my skill at doing so profoundly over the holidays on the cheap-ass guitar, now I found to my horror: I sucked.
We played for about an hour. I almost dropped the pick twice, I/my fingertips needed a break (talk about played it till my fingers blared…), and afterwards I still didn’t have the control I knew I should have. It was my due, dammit!
So I’ve been playing a bit more since. I’m trying to play a bit mornings and evenings, play through a couple of chords and some fingerpicking. Nothing fancy, just to get my fingers used once again to the feel of the steel strings. It’s getting better, but still nowhere near as good as the nylon strings.
Of course there is a plus side to this: this means that the converse also holds. Playing a nylon string is EEEEE-ZZZZZZ compared to playing a steel string. So next time I happen to come over carrying a guitar, rest assured: it’ll sound okay.
GTA Mario crossover
Sunday, January 2nd, 2011As the tagline says: “I’d play this game!”
Winter Holidays
Sunday, January 2nd, 2011After receiving a comment recently that I don’t update my blog often enough (I don’t, apologies), I figured to try to write a tidbit about the winter holidays. They were great!
Movie galore
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010We’ve been watching quite a bit of movies lately, and I wanted to give you my/our view in a nutshell.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Extraordinarily disappointing.
- Shoot ‘Em Up: Exactly what it promises. I’ve seen it twice now in a week. This is a movie that defies explanation. Watch it. Watch it and be a different person from hereforth.
- Howl’s Moving Castle: better than I remembered. Good to watch again.
- Blood & Chocolate: not as bad as expected. It’s more about werewolves than chocolate though. But watching it with chocolate is good anyway :)
- Iron Man 2: More of the same — which, in this case, isn’t bad. Lighthearted and lightweight entertainment
- Prince of Persia: a movie that takes itself too seriously, which ruins it.
- Ocean’s Eleven: a movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously, which saves it.
Actually, those final two remarks apply to more of these movies. All of these are very lightweight films. Nothing deep going on here. The League: takes itself too serious. Shoot ‘Em Up is laughing at itself almost as hard as it is laughing at the audience. Howl’s… okay, that isn’t so lightweight entertainment (though it isn’t that deep either, but compared to the rest…). But the difference was painfully obvious between Iron Man 2 and Prince of Persia. Neither has a story worth a damn. Both have the obligatory hot chick, the hunky lead character, and action aplenty. One is good, the other one really isn’t. Why?
Not only because in the one the hero is an arrogant c..t where you can’t help feeling good if the bad guy hits him (but trust me, that helps). It’s also because in the one movie, you feel as if they’re not taking themselves too seriously. Iron Man gives you the impression that they realise they’re making the equivalent of a popcorn meal. No pretense there. Prince of Persia, on the other hand… it’s like they’re trying to make it into a big action-adventure thingy a la the old Indiana Jones movies. Well, fail.
To conclude: see everything on the list (again if already seen recently), except Prince of Persia. Avoid that like the steaming pile of manure it desperately struggles not to be.
Busy few weeks
Sunday, October 24th, 2010It’s been a while since the last update, it seems. And with good reason, lots of things have happened. But, now I am finally at home, relaxed, recovering (fingers crossed) from a slight illness, so time to type up some events :)
Les Miserables
My parents celebrated their 60th birthdays at the beginning of this year. Us kids thought long and hard to come up with a nice gift. It wasn’t easy, but then we hit upon a good idea: we’d take them to a musical of their choice.
Of course, in the Netherlands, a choice means either Scheveningen or Utrecht. Ow, or the Efteling theatre (and I’m probably doing a disservice to some travelling musicals in NL, but the point is clear, methinks). In short, there is no real “choice” in NL. However, we’re not bound to the Netherlands. In fact, the musical capital of the world, London’s West End, is only a short flight from Eindhoven airport. So we offered them a trip to London, and dinner and a show on West End.
As we’d all join, we had to juggle five calendars, which meant this trip was postponed till after the summer (and planned long in advance). My parents opted to go by train, and Anke and Rogier joined them. I’ve done the train journey before, and while it is nice, it takes so long, I prefer to fly (direct connection London-Lux). Since I left roughly at the same time as the others, I was in a London bookstore, shopping and browsing to my heart’s content, when their eurostar train was about to leave. Which gave me another few hours in the store… yummy!
At any rate, we all spent a few days in London, and had a blast. We went to see Les Miserables, which was a fair deal more upbeat than the trodden, steaming pile of desolate despair that I thought it would be after reading the story on Wikipedia. The day before that, Anke, Rogier and I chanced upon the Royal Albert Hall. We browsed the programme, to see if anything interesting would be on. There was — at least if you’re my mum :) So we surprised my mom&dad with tickets to that too, and they greatly enjoyed it :)
Hoopje weekend
Two days after coming back from London, it was time for the (somewhat) annual Hoopje weekend: a weekend for the group of friends from Eindhoven. Ever since we finished studies and got ourselves jobs, we’ve drifted apart a bit. Different calendars, even harder to juggle. So someone had the bright idea to suggest a weekend to ourselves. And so we have, for a few years now. It is a great opportunity to meet everyone again. And things (people) have changed: couples came, got married, got kids. I drink less beer than before — hell, we all do (we took 10 crates, 8 remaining at the end… hmmms.) But it was good to be there and to see everyone, and to catch up some bits and pieces. Which reminds me: I ought to phone them more often. I played a bit of a PS3 tower defence game, and a lot of guitar. All of which was fun, but not as much as seeing everyone there and seeing them go about their business, but happy to be there.
Ronald’s visit
Fast forward one weekend, and we’re at today and Ronald’s visit. Ronald called me at one point, with the goal of picking a date for a visit. We managed, and so I called him on Wednesday eve to arrange final details. During that call, he let it slip he was off from work on Thursday and Friday as well, so I promptly invited him over for those days. I was lucky, in that his plans could be done on Thursday, and so he arrived Thursday evening. He bravely joined for my dance/sports/aerobics class (we were doing the part from 00:16-00:40 — and no it doesn’t look anything like that when I attempt to move my body). That was quite brave of him, since we were in week 5 (not that I informed him beforehand though ;-). Other than that, we had a very good time with a cheese fondue evening (yummy) and we even played a bit of Super Mario Galaxy 2 (long time no play! Fun!). Of course, we also went shopping and almost bought yet another: guitar (me) and a playmobil Christmas nativity set (him). In the end, we constrained ourselves because we both had these toys already. However, we might still succumb to seduction :)
Before he left, Ronald even managed to (1) fix my couch (Rogier: take note, it doesn’t slide anymore — you’ll love it) and (2) fix the rack in my garage that was wonky. So now I have another set of happy memories, good discussions (cheese fondue was fun :) and a better couch and more storage space. Very happy me!
Streetdance4fans
Saturday, September 25th, 2010
First lesson of street dance was yesterday. It was fun again. My body still doesn’t move the way I tell it to, though. It’s especially annoying now that we have two pregnant girls in class, and both of them are better at it than me :)
The song we’re now learning a choreography for is “Carry Out” by Timbaland and Justin Timberlake. It’s quite a bit more hiphoppy than the previous songs we practiced to. We practiced it once at slightly-above-terribly-slow speed, and damn – my body is not listening to what I tell it to do :)
So, on top of the successful guitar lesson, this week is turning out well. Dancing was canceled though (by the prospective dancing partner, through no fault of mine), but there is supposed to be some French lessons. And Lindyhop upgraded to twice a week. So it looks like I will have yet another uber-busy semester — evening-wise at least.
Then again, you’re never too busy to have fun, no?
PS: Thought occurred to me while talking to Matthieu: One might think it’s awesome to be a single guy in an aerobics-class full of pretty women of roughly the right age to date. Think again — I’m sure you can come up with some of the reasons why it isn’t.
Guitar lesson #1
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010I could say a whole lot of positive things about it, and I still wouldn’t do it justice. Suffice to say that my one hour lesson started at roughly 19:20, and the guy left just now (10 to midnight). Says it all, really.