Just had my first game session in a month, due to my being laid low with illness and sleep issues. I’ve had this scheduled in the diary for a good while, and I was hoping I would be ok for it. Thankfully the cold has mostly gone, apart from a tickle on the chest, and the last two nights I achieved some really decent sleep.
Month: February 2012
Just watched Real Steel on DVD and was very pleasantly surprised. Unusually for this kind of flick, it had an actual story (albeit a predicatable one about a father bonding with the son he never knew), and the acting was pretty good too. Good special effects – although they used CGI for the robots for most of the action/moving shots, they actually did built giant robot electronic puppets for specific scenes where they interact with actors – 19 of them, in fact. I think this made all the difference, especially with the scenes with the son.
Well worth seeing, not least to spot the boxing references, both real-life and fictional.
[Note: thankfully this issue has now been resolved]
After it got dark, I was able to do the final test, and the answer is a minor *sigh*.
I really don’t know what it is about equipment manufacturers and backlit keys and displays, especially for machines meant for the bedroom. Am I the only one who thinks the bedroom should be relatively dark?
I realise that I have been posting a lot about my CPAP lately – obviously, it has been on my mind at lot. If all goes well, this will be my last such post for a while.
On BBC Question Time tonight, Ed Vaizey was asserting that RBS shares were up. David Dimbleby disagreed – “They are 40% down on last year.”
This is where Ed Vaizey, grasping at straws, actually said “Well they are up on their lowest point”.
The nonsense with Papworth Hospital unfortunately continues, emphasising to me that you can think an organisation is really great (I’ve had no complaints in 10 years), but it only takes one major foulup and a total lack of will to fix it to completely change your mind.
I have now been stuck with a CPAP that doesn’t work well for me for 4 weeks. During that time, I have been fobbed off by the technical people for a few days, had my notes placed with “my” consultant’s office for two weeks, ignoring the fact he is on annual leave, and for the past week the issue has been with another consultant, who I haven’t managed to speak with once, only repeated phone calls to his secretary. This is despite my stressing several times that I am not getting quality sleep, that it has affected my social life (a week’s holiday wasted, haven’t had the energy to go out once in the last 3 weeks) and work (tired all the time, to the point that I have taken time off). All they can see is that I have been giving a “new” (it’s not), “improved” (it’s not) machine.
Not sure if I mentioned it, but I bought one of these as a birthday present to myself.
A Denon M38DAB, it is a micro CD player, DAB/FM/AM radio and amp combined. I’ve had it running for the past few weeks, balanced on a pile of books on a chair, and plugged into my monitor speakers. However, over the weekend, I moved some bookcases around, and now it is in its home, and connected up to a pair of old – but excellent – speakers that were my dad’s.
Is anyone else watching this? Excellent BBC 4-part drama about a heist at a money-counting secure vault. More twists and turns than a curly-wurly, and some excellent acting, especially from Steven Mackintosh.
We’ve recently had episode 3 of 4, but all the episodes to date are on BBC Iplayer – http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01bpkk9/
I just looked at my last post, and corrected a load of typos, which were probably indicative of my state of mind. Spent most of the weekend on the sofa, with my nose alternately in a book or a hankerchief.
Friday and Saturday nights, I ended up bringing my duvet downstairs and slept in my recliner chair, with the footrest out, but only slightly reclined. This was because every time I lay down in bed, I was wracked with coughing fits.
Have just finished this book, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I picked up the book as a result of reading about the film made of the same name by Cameron Crowe, starring Matt Damon. This was on my list of films to watch, but I suspect I will find it annoying, having read the book. It wasn’t until I started reading the book, that I realised I had come across the same story before – when Benjamin Mee took over the running of Dartmoor Zoological Park, the BBC made a 4 part fly-on-the-wall series of it, called Ben’s Zoo.
The film claims to be “Based on a true story”. Like many films with this claim, the story is frequently changed and twisted to suit the studio’s/director’s/star’s view of what the story should be. One wonders why they go to the trouble of buying the rights of a true story, if they are going to change it out of all recognition.
Spoilers follow.
I have a Casio AP60R electric piano. It isn’t the best electric piano in the world (although it ain’t bad), and it is getting on a bit, but I like it.
A couple of weeks ago, I was moving a heavy object, and it slipped out of my hand, down onto the keyboard. Thankfully, only one key was broken, but it was pretty thoroughly smashed.
An update on how things are going. The last week, I haven’t been getting on with the machine at all, to the point that for two nights I unplugged the thing and slept without CPAP at all.
In the meantime while I have been waiting for a response from Papworth to my calls, I have been googling, and have discovered a UK company who can supply machines, masks and other accessories.