Month: August 2021

Excitement

~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

The first big thing is that my sister and I are going to see a lady about a puppy tomorrow. We have been thinking about getting one for a while. This lady (or, more accurately, her dog) has had a litter and there are two still available. They are cockapoos – the little teddy bear like dogs that you see a lot. They’ll be available to leave in about two weeks, which would be perfect because I’m off work that week, but also not perfect because ohmygodthat’ssosoon.

In other news, I did parkrun today, for the first time since March 2020. I ran it in 22:12. With my foot injury I haven’t done many long runs recently, so the half marathon I did a few weeks ago was a bit of a disaster (1:53 – some people would be ecstatic with that, but for me it felt slow and it was a real slog), and I had a weird turn a few hours afterwards where I suddenly felt sick and hot and felt like I was going to faint.

That knocked my confidence a lot for doing anything intense, so I paced it cautiously to begin with and then sped up on the second lap (it’s a two lap course). I haven’t really done any speed workouts for a long time, so overall I was very pleased. When I used to do parkrun regularly before lockdown, I got a lot faster just from treating it as a speed workout every week. It’s a lot easier both psychologically and physiologically to keep a strong tempo going when you’re in a pack of faster runners than it is on your own during the week when you feel like you should still be in bed.

I’m looking forward to next week’s now.

Anaemia?

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been feeling a bit off lately, and at some point it suddenly occurred to me that I am probably getting anaemic again. I used to have problems with anaemia a few years ago. I started feeling very tired and a bit spaced out sometimes. Early anaemia symptoms are a bit vague. But I’ve sometimes been feeling a bit woozy after running, which is what really made me think “hmm”.

So I phoned up my doctor… I had to phone because they’ve disabled online booking “due to COVID”. Which makes no sense. And then I had to phone four times. The first three I was told that the queue was full, and on the fourth I apparently got put into the queue. It took 35 minutes in total to speak to someone. The earliest appointment they could give me was a telephone appointment, in four weeks time. What has gone wrong with my GP surgery?!

So anyway… That’s ridiculous and I’ve started self medicating iron tablets. Fortunately you can buy them over the counter. Iron overdose is a thing but from seeing my iron levels in the past I think I’m more likely to develop diabetes from the sugar coating on the tablet than convince my body to absorb enough iron for it to be a problem.

I watched episode four of The Man In The High Castle this evening. I am really enjoying it so far. I really like the intro and theme too. The style reminds me of The Expanse’s intro sequence. In this case it’s very arty and surreal against the grim reality of the story.

Castles

~ e.v. ~ 5 Comments

I finished Clone Wars and The Expanse. Clone Wars ending was quite sombre but I already knew it would be since it lines up with the third prequel. I enjoyed Clone Wars a lot more than I expected to. I hope that we get to see more of Ahsoka. I think I’d rather see an Ahsoka series than the Boba Fett and Obi Wan series that they are also supposedly making.

The Expanse was… ehhhh. Something actually happened in the finale, so that was an improvement over the previous 5 episodes. But it seemed like it was a set up for S6. I hope it’s better than S5! S5 is by far the weakest season so far.

I’ve started watching Man In The High Castle. I’m only two episodes in so far but it seems very good, if incredibly bleak. It’s set in an alternate history 1960s America where Germany and Japan won WW2 and occupied and divided up America. I think the logistical improbability of this has been hand-waved away by saying that Germany won the race to the atomic bomb. Anyway…. I really like Rufus Sewell as a.. err… gestapo? officer. He plays a very intelligent and very scary man.

I don’t know what else to watch though…

I have heard good things about The Orville but I don’t think it’s on any of the streaming services I have. Star Trek Lower Decks might be good too. I keep thinking about watching S3 of Star Trek Discovery but I’m not sure I can face another 10 hours watching Michael Burnham being serious and dramatic.

Daybreak

~ e.v. ~ 3 Comments

The BSG finale was…. not really overwhelming and not really underwhelming either. It was medium whelming. It gave an OK sort of resolution to the characters as a whole that’s moderately satisfying as long as you don’t think about it at all.

But if you do think about it….

The promise that the cylons “have a plan” was dropped from the title screens at some point, but it was definitely there early on and they really didn’t have a plan, or understandable motivations at all. They are one dimensional villains apparently driven purely by spite. Other things that weren’t really explained were: the opera house, which seems to have been an extremely complicated allegory to help Hera walk a few metres down a corridor, Starbuck’s resurrection and disappearance, and Hera in general.

Hera was supposed to be special. She was so special we had to endure two ridiculous plotlines to ensure she was the only part-cylon child after the writers accidentally introduced two other part or fully cylon children. The first being Tyrol’s son actually turning out to be a product of the least believable affair in the history of TV, and the second being Six’s pregnancy and miscarriage (peak soap opera). And in the end, Hera turned out to be special because… she becomes mitochondrial Eve. Literally any of the women in the fleet or on the planet could have become mitochondrial Eve!

And then at the end they decided to abandon all technology (including medical technology), because… ??? And everyone’s perfectly happy with that, despite having mutinied only a few episodes ago for far less.

Another special moment: When Adama is picking a replacement admiral to stand in for him while he’s gone, he says “We need someone the fleet admires and respects… so we’re picking this guy who occasionally stands in the background! Well done, extra, you’ve earned it”.

I mean, I enjoyed the series as a whole, even though it went downhill after half way through S2, but you do have to switch your brain off for a lot of the later episodes. Which is frustrating as it was intellectually intriguing to begin with.

I think a good example of doing this stuff well is Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. They managed to keep the intrigue right until the end, and then it concluded in probably the only way that really made sense, but was still unpredictable.

TV

~ e.v. ~ 3 Comments

Unfortunately, all the TV programs I’m watching are going to end at pretty much the same time. Not through any planning on my part, I’m currently two episodes away from the end of Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse and Clone Wars!

I suppose after Clone Wars there’s Rebels (low expectations) and Bad Batch (high expectations, but not many episodes). I have quite enjoyed Clone Wars. For something that started off as a children’s show, it hits pretty hard in places. And now we’re so close to the end, they writers and producers really upped their game.

I wish I could say the same for BSG and The Expanse. I loved the first four seasons of The Expanse. The fifth, though, has lacked focus. Now I’m two episodes from the end and it’s still meandering without strong plotlines or plot development in general. I thought the 8th episode was particularly bad. Someone on Reddit mentioned that Naomi’s scenes occupied 40% of the runtime for the episode. I don’t mind Naomi, but her on her own running up and down a spaceship over and over again hardly makes for compelling viewing. It feels like Naomi’s plot is the only one that has been fleshed out this season, which is a shame, because it’s just not that interesting. In fact, Naomi is probably the least interesting character of the main cast. The plot with the Martian espionage that Bobby was following at the beginning of the season was classic Expanse, but it’s taken a back seat to the soap opera of Naomi’s family.

I don’t find Marco Inaros a particularly exciting villain. It seems like there are strong parallels to 9/11, but would Bin Laden have made for an interesting fictional villain? He spent 10 years in hiding because he spent all his power on one big but ultimately tactically stupid move. I get the same feelings from Marco. Okay, you did something big, but it was just one event and now you’re on borrowed time.

Battlestar is the same. I just watched ‘Daybreak Part 1’, which is the first of the last three episodes. I think actually it was originally broadcast as two episodes, but iPlayer has split it into three.

I can’t believe how boring it’s become. The last few episodes have been so slow. I thought with it being so close to the end that it would suddenly pick up, but even now on what was broadcast as the penultimate episode, it just feels like a big “so what?”. Half the episode was taken up by flashbacks to before the start of the series. Why are we being told at this late point that Laura Roslin had two sisters who were killed in a car crash? If you wanted to make this part of her character, you should have done it about 70 episodes ago.. Recent episodes also include “Starbuck learns to play the piano” and “let’s spend an hour watching characters give lectures to each other about the mythology of BSG”. I hope it ends well, but there’s barely been any plot development for a long time.