Tag: tv

Work and BSG

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Today was one of those days at work where you find out that something is URGENTLY needed TODAY. The thing that was needed was completed over a year ago, but it has never been tested in real usage, UNTIL TODAY. And today it is urgent. Despite being completely ignored for the past year. I do get frustrated with this. A few weeks ago there was a similar scenario where a fix for something was urgently required for a demo at 2PM. Well maybe if you have a demo at 2PM, don’t deploy an untested new release at 11AM?

Battlestar Galactica spoilers ahead!

So I’ve now finished S3 of BSG. To be honest it’s dragging. Season 1 and the first half of 2 (up to the end of the Pegasus/Cain storyline) was gripping, but since then it’s meandered a lot towards interesting ideas via some extremely boring ones.

I liked the trial subplot and I liked the lawyer. I liked Lee sticking to his innate sense of right and wrong. He and Helo are quite consistent in that, while some of the other characters oscillate all over the place and become unbelievable and dislikeable (Adama, Roslyn).

But where are we now? Starbuck died, and I didn’t care at all. Because firstly I don’t find her to be a nice person at all, and secondly I didn’t think she was really dead. Now she’s back again, wow didn’t see that one coming.

I’ve been very intrigued by who the final five will turn out to be, but after four of them have just been revealed I feel a bit “well, okay?”. What bearing does it have on the story? It just seemed a bit pointless. And tying it all to a Bob Dylan song was really strange and took me out of the BSG universe while I was watching it. Maybe Bob Dylan is the final cylon. Maybe it works better if you’re not familiar with the song, but the line “said the joker to the thief” is so distinctive that you’re immediately taken out of the program and into whatever relationship you have with the song.

I don’t know, to me it feels like we’re entering Lost territory where the writers have lost sight of the original intrigue and are making things up as they go along and stop focusing on keeping a tight storyline.

Thick of it

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I watched The Thick Of It, which if you’re not familiar with, is a political comedy from 2005. I mention the year because it’s sort of dated to that time period, both in terms of the politics and the, er, I don’t know, office behaviour.

It’s kind of strange, because the first three seasons are quite light hearted political satire. There is a lot of swearing and a lot of shouting, but, to you as a viewer, it doesn’t seem that serious. Then in S4 the tone shifts a lot and suddenly it is serious.

It only took me a few days to get through the whole thing, but now I feel a void in my life knowing that I’ll never find out what happened next to all the characters. I think I’ll miss Robyn the most. And maybe John Duggan.

Galactic

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Firstly I have to note that this WordPress block editor is terrible. Half the time my cursor just disappears or isn’t where it should be. It’s a bad experience for editing text. I am using Firefox – maybe they only tested it on Chrome.

Sometimes lately I don’t sleep well and the problem is that I’ve been watching Battlestar Galactica (the remake). How is anyone supposed to watch some of those BSG episodes at 9PM and then go to sleep before midnight? I didn’t see it when it was on TV originally, though, I have actually seen the original series! I don’t remember much about it except Starbuck was a man (shocking) and there was an episode where he was stranded on a planet with a cylon and they learnt to work together. I used to watch it after swimming lessons (on a Tuesday I think).

Anyway, the remake is on iPlayer so I’ve been watching it. I knew it was supposed to be good but I didn’t know it was this good.

Events

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I have written before about the Mandalorian, but I’m going to write again (no spoilers). I enjoyed Season 1. It was good, solid TV. It wasn’t gripping because it was episodic, but it was very good for an episodic program. It feels very quality over quantity. Now I’m up to date (S2E3) and I’m really excited about the rest of Season 2! I’m totally hyped.

I’ve admitted defeat with my hip and have a physio appointment next Friday. It’s been very odd. For example Saturday it was fine for about 7-8k then over the next few km the front/side of my hip started feeling very dull and heavy. Yesterday it felt 100% fine for about 4k then very suddenly the side stiffened up, and I could kind of feel it down at the outside of my knee too. I think those are two different things. I think the front/side is muscular fatigue and the side down to my knee is the IT band, though it’s probably more that my pelvis isn’t stable for whatever reason I haven’t been able to figure out myself.

If I don’t get anywhere with this physio there’s another one that’s not quite so easy to get to which looks more promising, as they have a specialist running clinic that has treated Olympians.

In other news, I talked to a recruiter who’s put me forward for something that on paper looks like a good fit. We’ll see what comes of that. I have a lot of recruitment stuff in my inbox but I don’t really want to be dealing with it every day, so I don’t really know how to manage the time I will need to spend on it. If I respond to all of it I’m going to be snowed under with recruiters wanting to speak to me and then at some point some of those will turn into interviews. I don’t want to end up with more than about one interview a week, so it’s a bit hard to know how much to respond to.

This is a good start anyway.

Disney

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The past two weekends I’ve been watching the Star Wars prequels. This weekend was Attack of the Clones. I never really liked the prequels much when they came out, but after seeing the most recent trilogy I appreciate them better. OK the acting’s a bit rubbish, but if you overlook that they’re not so bad. But also you see things through a different perspective as you get older. When you are younger you just see Anakin not behaving as a jedi should. When you are older you notice that the Jedi aren’t exactly setting him up for success. Maybe Kreia was right.

I thought I should watch them again because I’ve also been watching Clone Wars on Disney+. It was recommended to me a few years ago by someone I worked with. And actually it’s pretty good! The first few episodes are aimed at children but at some point they seem to change it to more young-adult and then slightly less young adult and it picks up quite a bit.

In related news, Disney is trying to get me to watch the new Mulan film for only £20! Well actually it’s £20 on top of the Disney+ subscription, which is £5.99/month. Who’s going to pay £20 to watch Mulan on TV? I hope I’m not out of touch on this. This seems like a ridiculous price to me and I hope this isn’t the future of film.

Disney

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I have recently got a Disney+ subscription and I’ve been watching…

The Simpsons! I started at the beginning and I’m enjoying it. I think this could keep me entertained for a while…

The Mandalorian. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this, but I’m enjoying it. It’s kind of like The Witcher (minus the nudity) meets Clint Eastwood westerns. In the Star Wars universe. I’m sure there’s a conscious spaghetti Western influence. It’s surprisingly minimal in terms of plot and characters, but it works. One of the things I really did like is that when they introduced a female action hero type character, she was believable. Turns out the actress is a 38 year old MMA fighter, which might be why.

And I watched Solo, the Star Wars film yesterday…

I don’t think anyone really wanted a Han Solo film (myself included, hence why it’s taken me this long to see it), but it’s pretty good! The characters are very good, ironically with the exception of the two main characters. I don’t really know how you can replace Harrison Ford’s charisma as Han, and this film doesn’t. I mean, he’s not bad, but he’s just not Harrison Ford. But then that’s kind of the problem with the idea in the first place. Han from the first film works so well because he’s old enough to be cynical and arrogant. That’s his charm. Take away the life experience and I’m not sure there’s much left for an actor to work with. A cynical and arrogant 20 year old is just annoying, but what’s Han Solo without the cynisim? He’s just someone waiting to mature into an interesting character.

His girlfriend is also questionable, but the writing around her character isn’t very strong. It’s “tell” rather than “show” and she’s not really believable as a result.

But all the supporting characters are great. Donald Glover as Lando is especially good, as is Woody Harrelson, and so is Phoebe Waller Bridge (fleabag).

Overall it’s far better than the newest trilogy, but not quite as good as Rogue One.

12th May 2020

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This is just going to be a big summary post.

1. I’ve decided to try coming off Citalopram. I feel happy. I’ve felt happy for months. I feel stable and settled. I’ve been on it since August and I think it’s time to say that I don’t really need it anymore. I’m currently on 20mg per day so I’m going to bring it down to 10mg for a couple of weeks and see how that is. I’ll do it slowly. I’m going to keep a log of the dosage along with heart rate and stress data from my watch, which should be interesting.

2. I watched Belgravia. I didn’t like it to start with, but it’s only six episodes long and by the end I quite enjoyed it. To begin with it just seems like a bunch of dislikable people scheming against each other, though.

3. I ran another half marathon distance on Sunday. It went much better than the last time and I finished five minutes faster. I was pleased with that.

4. I seemed to be doing better with the iron tablets, but I took one this evening and now I have stomach aches. Hmmmm.

The nice and accurate prophecies of Agnes Nutter, witch.

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Sooo… the weekend. My sister started an Amazon prime trial a few days ago, so we have been watching a few things.

Firstly: Good Omens. I read the book years ago. I don’t remember much about it other than I really enjoyed it. Having watched the first two episodes, little of the story has come back to me, but it’s very well done. I was a bit hesitant because I didn’t feel the Discworld TV adaptations ever really captured the magic of Terry Pratchett, but Good Omens has the advantage of being a standalone book without a vast amount of lore that needs to be somehow translated to the screen.

Secondly: The Expanse season 4 episode 1: Ooh ooh ooh. I really, really loved the first three seasons of Expanse. I watched them around this time last year, when my world was an extremely dark place, and a few of those memories have resurfaced, unsurprisingly, but OK… It completely gripped me and I felt it was extremely well done. It reminded me a lot of Babylon 5 in the quality of the writing. There’s a lot going on and the characters are complex and interesting.

The first episode of S4 is a bit bewildering, but so was S1 and I’m sure it’s laying a lot of groundwork that will be rewarded later. I am a bit concerned some of the characters will lose depth though – Amos and Avasarala specifically – in the same way that Tilly in Star Trek Discovery S2 became a bit of a parody of Tilly from S1. We shall see.

In related news, I was stoked a few days ago when they released the full version of the Belter version of Highway Star (which played during the slingshot scene in S2, or was it S3?). The fact they re-did the lyrics in Belter pidgin is fascinating, though it’s a contrast against the very faithful instrumentation. That’s even a single coil pick up on the guitar, isn’t it?

Thirdly: The Death of Stalin. This is a black comedy. With the emphasis on the black part. This is one of those films I watch and I think “why am I watching this?”. Then I get to the end and think “why did I watch that?”. I didn’t enjoy it. It’s hard to articulate why, but I think it comes down to it being two things in one. Firstly it’s an absurd comedy presented as being serious. Airplane with murderous communists, if you like. Secondly, it’s quite an intense political drama. It doesn’t work for me, because the intensity of the politics is so high that it makes the absurdity seem in poor taste, and the political drama is hard to take seriously when it’s offset against such absurdity. A lot of people liked it though. It seems to be a cult thing. But I think it’s one of the worst films I’ve watched start to finish.

Running: Sadly, my abs are still causing me trouble. I don’t get it. It seems very volatile. I was doing OK this past week, but I’m feeling it today after a very gentle run. I sneezed during the run a few times and oh my god I felt that. I got home and did some bicycles; the first set was quite uncomfortable, but the second set was fine. Explain that.

I think I’ll just have to take some time off, but how effective that will be I’m not sure – it got worse when I started my new job and didn’t run for a week (the muscles tightened up, probably), so it’s hard to know what I should be doing. Maybe I’ll dust off the free weights and start doing some squats and stuff again. I think I must have some kind of muscle imbalance and the compound exercises should sort that out, hopefully.

I am at the doctor on Christmas eve so if it’s still causing me trouble I will mention it.