End of Month Extravaganza 1#

So, today is the last day of August (though I might be slightly behind on my posting and am just pretending it is). I thought that it sort of marks the end of summer but then I realised I still have another 26 days until the new uni term starts for me, so actually it doesn’t really. Anyway, this is my brand new end of the month feature which will look back at the my month and indeed some of the goings-on on this very blog.

Opinions on…The Death Penalty

At the beginning of August there was some controversy in the UK because an online petition to bring back the death penalty was gaining signatures at an astounding rate. I wrote a post about it and several people commented with some interesting opinions:

AbbyNoel: I was in a school debate with this topic, I was pro death penalty. (and my team won! Yippee!) But one thing that I found odd was that two of the anti-death penalty team's point contradicted each other. One was that the death penalty methods were too cruel and painful, and another was that the families of victims want the punishment to be worse and that they think killing the criminal gives them "the easy way out" I didn't understand this at all, I was thinking "okay, do you want it to be bad or not? Make up your mind!

Claire: I think there are a thousand reasons against the death penalty and I can't find any justification for it. I am totally totally against it. It fails to act as a deterrent, it doesn't allow for rehabilitation of offenders, there is always a chance of getting the wrong person and to use a cliché - an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Plus I have a real problem with only bringing it back for certain murders - why would killing a 17 year old warrant death but an 18 year old a life license? And why only if an adult police officer is killed? That implies that ordinary members of the public do not have the same rights to do their job without being murdered as a copper - which is unjust and ridiculous

Most readers will be glad to know that any mention of bringing back capital punishment on the UK petitions site is confined to the “rejected” part of the site. Which I am very glad about.

Comments- Best of the Rest

Here are a couple of my fave comments this month:

Jay: I just watched the first episode of Doctor Who, and I loved it! Also, my boyfriend- Yeah, he's my boyfriend now :), just introduced me to Little Big Planet, and I can play it for hours. It's so much fun!

Seeing people watch Doctor Who for the first time is brilliant. I wonder if you have watched anymore Jay?

ishashime (on my silly Losing the Plot post): I know about almost all of these films! haha. your explanations weren't really spot on unfortunately but they were fun to read nonetheless. also, the real plot of eraserhead is even more mindf----worthy than your plot guess, if you could believe that. xD

Just Another Name (on my Summery Photos): these photos are so pretty and summery :) really like the colours <3

I have to say it was the colours I was going for in those photos!

I also got several comments suggesting names for the penguins pictured below. After a shortlist was drawn up, the winning names were: Timey and Spacey. That’s a Doctor Who reference for those not in the know. Over the next few weeks and months, Timey and Spacey will be going on lots of adventures which of course I will share with you right here!

The One Post You Should Go Back and Read: This is the August Miscellany. Basically it’s just a post where I talked about a whole load of random things but I was in a completely bonkers mood that day and came up with a theory that all babies are actually aliens and compared rabbit-based book Watership Down to zombie TV and comic book series The Walking Dead. Amongst other things.

Minion of the Month: I couldn’t drop this now could I? The well-deserved title of minion of the month goes to ishashime for the comment above and coming up with a load of suggestions for penguin names. One of them, Machiavelli, came in at a close second place!

Blog of the Month: This coveted title goes to Unstoppable Nerd. Alice,the author, has written about all sorts of things that I love and she writes brilliantly too. So that is why she has blog of the month.

And to end this post it’s time for me to decide how the month was. Well despite it being the height of the summer holidays, it was a bit rubbish. Not a lot actually happened which is the main reason for this. I have enjoyed the few trips out with my two best mates, Chris and Mike, and very much enjoyed most of my days at work but that accounts for a tiny percentage of the month. Most of it was spent laying around, attempting to come with ways to entertain myself. So all in all, I can’t really say it was an awful month but it wasn’t brilliant either so it will sit in my memory in the folder marked “months that were OK”. My memory is organised into folders like this. Well, I like to think so anyway.

So there you have it. August is finished. If you have any thoughts about this new feature, let me know and so I can make improvements for next time. Hopefully I shall see you all tomorrow!

I’m in Hufflepuff!

It’s been quite a while since my last proper post. Sorry about that, but once again my life has not exactly been what you could call busy. In fact, I have little to share with you but never the less I shall attempt to come up with a decent post for you.

If you saw the last post about naming my penguins you may have some mild interest in what the result was. I am currently getting people on Tumblr to vote for their favourite out of a shortlist I created and interested parties can check that out here if they so wish!

Obviously the most exciting thing in my sad little life has been the return of Doctor Who in an episode entitled “Let’s Kill Hitler”, which didn’t really feature Hitler that much at all. Observant blog readers may have noticed a slightly edited header if you came by on Saturday. The episode saw us find out a bit more about River Song and a few questions were answered. As well as being both exhilarating and emotional, it was very funny. “Shut up, Hitler”.

And I also got rather excited when I finally got my e-mail to say I could access Pottermore. It’s the closest I will ever get to getting a Hogwarts letter. My username is MauraderFeather36 if anyone wants to add me as a friend. It’s a fun site, if a little limited at the moment (full review on Friday). It was quite fun to be told what your wand is like (mine is rowan wood with a phoenix feather core, ten and three quarter inches and quite flexible) but even more fun to be sorted into a house. I didn’t really have much preference apart from “Not Slytherin”. It turns out I am a Hufflepuff. When I think about the qualities that a Hufflepuff should have, I’m pretty pleased with being in that house. Except we are last in the House Cup at the moment… But still, Hufflepuff and proud!

I found a Facebook app called My Personal Infographic which creates lots of exciting statistics. Here is mine:

Interesting… A huge 71% of my friends are female. I believe the word is “pimp”. But I am doing a uni course that is female dominated and most of the people at work are also girls. I know most people from some sort of work with children and therefore most of them are girls. But according to that stat, half of them are single. Therefore around 35% of my friends are possible available and female…

I shall end this cobbled together post of nonsense with a couple of lovely pictures that I took when I went out for a walk today. But first, here’s me:

 

Summer is drawing to an end and autumn is on it’s way. It amazes me that people continuously seem to notice that the seasons are changing but seem surprised every time. It happens every year, why are you surprised? Anyway, here’s a few photos:

Name the Penguins!

These are my penguin friends. Very soon they are going to go on lots of adventures but there is one little problem at the moment- they don’t have names. So I need you guys to suggest some names for them. What do you call two penguins? Eventually they will officially be given names that one of you lot suggested. So get your thinking caps on and come up with some names! Comment with them below!

August Miscellany

Hello. It’s time for a mish-mash of tiny things that I feel like writing about. The week so far has been actually fairly good and my spirits are quite high. In fact, my general happiness levels are not too far away from the peak they had in June. So life is pretty good at the moment.

On Tuesday I got on a coach and went to Southampton. This was mainly so that I could visit my fave shop Forbidden Planet and stock up on comics. It's really annoying that the closest comic shop is twenty miles away, but at least it’s actually fairly close to where Winchester where I go to uni. Whilst I have always had an interest in comics, it is only fairly recently that I have got properly into them. DC’s “Flashpoint” series, where events have been changed and some super-humans have taken over the world and it’s up to the Flash and his colleges to sort things out, is brilliant. There are lots of mini-series from the DC Universe which show the stories of well known characters in the altered timeline. It largely features Aquaman, as emperor of Atlantis, fighting Wonder Woman and the Amazonions who have taken over Great Britain. The likes of Lois Lane and Hal Jordan are trying to sort things out. All in all, it’s epic.

This all sets up for the entire DC range to start over with all the series beginning again at issue 1#. Most long-running fans seem to hate the whole idea but for a new fan like me it’s perfect. I am going to subscribe to some of the series but the only trouble is deciding which ones. They will probably include Justice League and The Flash amongst others. And I have tried out a few Marvel comics too, some of which I may subscribe to when the time comes. It’s all very exciting.

Onto other things now. On Saturday my latest bizarre crush suddenly appeared when a new nurse started in emergency department drama Casualty. Whilst, the character is ok but clearly flawed, the actress, a newbie called Madeleine Mantock, is gorgeous. I managed to find her on Twitter too so I can stalk her on that. Her hair is amazing. I expect to be glued to the program even more now. It’s kind of a sad program to watch really but at least I have an excuse now.

I have decided that the way we think babies are made is a lie. Some clever man way back in time managed to convince his wife that sex was how babies are made and she told her friends. It then spread throughout the community and eventually became fact, with scientists coming up with ridiculous theories like tiny white tadpoles to explain the process. Babies are actually aliens. Next time you see a very young baby, no more than a few months old, look at it. It is clearly not a tiny human but an alien that gradually morphs into a human, like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Babies eyes are big, like aliens. They look too small to actually be human. Everything we know is a horrible lie.

(Note to self: never Google alien baby images again, it’s terrifying)

I have recently finished reading rabbit-based book Watership Down and there will be a proper review here sometime soon but I want to explain why it reminds me zombie apocalypse TV show The Walking Dead. In Watership Down, the rabbits come across other warrens whose inhabitants are corrupt and mad. In The Walking Dead the survivors come across other survivors who are corrupt and mad. When a species exists in small groups with no rule to live by than those they create themself, this sort of thing could happen. Rabbits might experience it because they have never developed a government and a modern civilisation and humans might experience it because civilisation has collapsed due to a zombie apocalypse. You see what I am saying? It is very odd how my mind works at times…

I have become addicted to another game on the internet. This hasn’t happened for a while and it’s a bit concerning when this happens because I play for hours on end without really realising how much time is passing. It’s on Facebook and it’s The Sims Social. A version of the Sims that you interact with your friends with AND where keeping your Sim alive is much less hassle. Obviously there are limitations to what you can do and the game is based on completing various missions in order to proceed up the levels. Somehow this is very addicting. But it’s not just me, several of my friends are playing and constantly sending me requests so I don’t feel so bad.

 

(That guy on the right with the beard looks like one of my colleges from work…)

And that just about wraps up this bizarre little post! But before I go I wondered if any of my readers are feeling creative? I need the title for my new end of month feature which will replace the Into Geek Awards. Some of the rewards will stay but there will also be round-ups of some issues I’ve discussed over the month and over stuff too. But what should I call it? If anyone has any ideas, no matter what they are, add them as a comment below. And if you like naming things, I have two penguins who need names. More info on them very soon! Until then, adieu!

Guest Post: We’re Gonna Go Back in Time

Apologies for lack of blogging lately, literally nothing happening in my life at the moment. I shall post something tomorrow but today is guest post day and I have a belter for you today…

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We’re Gonna Go Back in Time! The Top 5 Time-travel Movies of… All Time!

Time travel is one of my favourite escapes—or thinking about it anyway. It's not so much that I'm smitten with Victorian England and wish I could travel back to that time and wear a top hat and monocle (though let's admit, who wouldn't want that?). It's more that I am obsessed with the idea of doing things over again: when I was trying to ask that gorgeous girl out and I used a disastrously cheesy pick-up line, instead of just trying to get to know her; when I cheated on that history exam; when I was late to that job interview.

I can roll out entire films of alternate endings for every situation I've been in, and sometimes spend more time doing that than planning my next move. And while the human race may not actually be able to travel through time (or should I say displace themselves along time-like curves?) we can content ourselves to imagine and produce expensive and sometimes thought-provoking movies about time travel.

What follows is a list of my favourite time travel movies. They're not all high art, and most definitely don't make sense, but they feed my addiction to second-chances and re-living the past.

5. The Butterfly Effect

It may not be the most refined on this list, it at least presents an interesting look at the implications of changing seemingly insignificant events in your past. Ashton Kutcher leads this film about a man trying to save the love of his life from dying by going back into the past to change some of the horrific things that happened to her. His actions in the past always have grim consequences in the future, my favorite of which being when he tries to stop a prank with fireworks as a teenager, he wakes up in the present as an amputee. Priceless.

4. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

Again, not classy, but certainly a fun, and frequently hilarious, though admittedly dim-witted, romp through history with two lovable valley dudes as guides. After seeing this movie, I stopped in every phone booth I saw, just in case it happened to be a time machine. Too bad there aren't any phone booths where I live.

3. Terminator 2

I don't care who you are, there is hardly a cooler idea in cinema than a robot mercenary coming back from the future to protect the same target he once tried to kill from assassination by another, more advanced robot mercenary. The time travel aspect of this movie isn't exactly prominent in the dialogue or action of the movie, but it counts.

2. Back to the Future

The classic time-travel movie. Marty McFly travels back in time to save Doc Brown, and inadvertently makes his mother fall in love with him. This movie gave the "grandfather paradox" a new meaning. The rest of the trilogy is good, too, but you can't beat the original. Not to mention that is served as the structural skeleton for Hot Tub Time Machine, which, regrettably, did not make this list.

1. La Jetée

Call it obscure, pretentious, French—but whatever you call it, Chris Marker's short film about time travel shot almost entirely in still frames, still represents one of the most impressive meditations on time travel ever to hit the screen. The enigma of the opening line—"This is the story of a man, marked by an image from his childhood"—and the later revelation of its meaning, still haunts me. Few movies attempt to do what Marker did in this film, and even fewer succeed.

This list covers a broad range of films, and certainly leaves a few out (Primer, for instance), but all of them hold a special place in my memory, and each time I watch them, it's like going back in time.

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This guest post is by Nadia Jones who blogs at online college about education, college, student, teacher, money saving, movie related topics. You can reach her at nadia.jones5@gmail.com.

Have you seen these films, do you agree? Let me know in a comment!

Summery Photos

It was a lovely day today with just the right levels of sunshine and temperature. I decided to go on a little walk and I took my camera along with me. Here are some photos I took, which are of a reasonable standard considering my camera is pretty rubbish. Let me know what you think.

Bournemouth Air Festival 2011

Yesterday I went to the annual Bournemouth Air Festival with my mate Chris. As expected, the buses were absolutely packed and when an old woman was particularly rude to us, as people past retirement age often are to young adults, we ended up right near the back of the cue and it looked like the bus would be full. But we were extremely fortunate that another bus going the same way opened it’s doors so we managed to get on that one, sitting down as well. That was lucky.

We disembarked at Boscombe, about a mile and half away from the main area of the air show. We were just in time to see the Animal Bike Show, where two mountain biker’s showed off by doing lots of awesome tricks. It was very entertaining despite the weird and very vocal Scottish guy stood next to us.

We then continued to walk along the beach, where many stalls are set up, mostly trying to sell you things. But if you are really lucky you can get some free stuff. We managed to get some free packets of Haribo Tangfastics (sour sweets/candy) and a sample of an energy drink called V, which was very nice. As we wandered along we saw the Royal Marines demonstrate how they land troops on a beach in order to defeat an enemy. It was pretty amazing and I have decided I would quite like the landing craft.

Around 2PM we headed up to the clifftop in order to watch the air show. It began with some kind of helicopter (which let’s be honest, I wasn’t that interested in) and was followed by some WWII planes (a Lancaster bomber, a Hurricane and a Spitfire) which were a bit interesting. After some other planes and some people doing wing-walking (which I reckon I could do, they are strapped in for goodness sake) the wonderful Red Arrows arrived. They are a team of nine Hawk planes which do loads of amazing stunts. To watch them is truly breath-taking.

All in all it was a fantastic day. The weather was nice, so much so that we both got a little sunburnt. Every little thing seemed to go right in terms of travel etc and it was brilliant.

This morning I joined Chris, along with my mate Mike, for a cycle ride across the forest. Unfortunately for us, we got hit by a long and reasonably heavy rain shower. We got quite wet and because of that (we’re blaming that anyway) we got a bit lost too. Eventually we managed to make our way to somewhere we knew and made it home, by which point we were quite wet and quite muddy. But as with any time spent out with our little group, I had an awesome time.

Later this afternoon I was shocked to here that after performing for today’s air show, one of the red arrows crashed. Fortunately it was in the an open area but there is no news of the pilot at the time of writing apart from lots of rumours on Twitter, as always. It is always sad to hear about a tragic accident but perhaps more so when the person it involved is extremely talented and puts a smile on so many faces throughout the year.

Friday Review 3#

Hello and welcome to a slightly different Friday review because this time I am reviewing only books. I have had a lot of time to read over the past few weeks! ★ is the number of stars each item got and a ☆ is an empty star, showing how many away the item was from getting top stars. You may notice that these are all rated quite highly but bear in mind I choose to read books I think I will like and am not usually wrong.

 

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott (Series):

Flamel was an actual person and it seems that his gravestone is empty. This series is based on the idea that Flamel has been alive the whole time, preventing the world from being taken over by the species that came before humanity, the Elders. Flamel and his wife find a pair oftwins, Sophie and Josh, who they believe to be the twins of legend. To stop Dr John Dee and his Dark Elder masters from destroying the world we know, the twins must be trained but that’s not easy when an army of legendary creatures is after you. So far consisting of four books, with a fifth on the way, this series is the ultimate fantasy story. Elements of myths and legends from around the world, as well as bits of history, come together to make this a brilliant tale. I have no idea where it’s going to go next either. ★★★★★

The Time Quake Trilogy by Linda Buckley-Archer:

An accident with her father’s machinery sees Kate Dyer and friend Peter Schock back to the 18th century. There they meet Gideon, a cutpurse who has renounced his whole ways as well as the much less friendly criminal the Tar Man and his master Lord Luxon. It is mostly about the children’s quest to return home, the story of two children in a time they don’t belong in. But later on the trilogy takes a darker turn when Lord Luxon changes history by preventing America from becoming independent and time itself begins to splinter. The ending both satisfies and disappoints me at the same time but I guess it works ok. An enchanting tale, though rather complicatedly worded for children’s books. ★★★★☆

Torchwood: The House That Jack Built by Guy Adams

This Torchwood novel is essentially a haunted house story, though the ghosts are actually just different times merging with each other. And Captain Jack uses to live in the house, which gives you an idea about once went on there. It also has a sub-plot involving a temporary medical officer who is a brilliant character. I really enjoyed this novel, perhaps more than some of the others in the series because it didn't flit around so much. Many of the Torchwood novels switch between several characters and settings at the same time and this is sometimes quite a challenge to keep up with. This one does not, it's pretty much all set in the same house. I have two qualms though: the first is that there isn't really much sci-fi in it and the second is that it is frustratingly short, as all the Torchwood novels are. But if nothing else it's worth reading for some hilarious lines that Ianto is given. ★★★★☆

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams

This is the second novel to feature private investigator Dirk Gently, who solves mysteries using the interconnectedness of everything. But actually as a sequel to the first Gently novel, it’s a little disappointing. But take it as a story about the Norse gods like Thor and Odin living in modern times and it’s actually very enjoyable. It’s funny, dark and a bit weird, which is pretty much what we’d expect from Adams. There is something I can’t quite put my finger on which makes it not quite perfect. And the cover makes me feel sick, that cloud colour is horrible.  ★★★★☆

Lazybones by Mark Billingham

This is a detective novel which begins with the murder and rape of a convicted sex offender. As the story progresses more sex offenders suffer the same fate and DI Tom Throne struggles to feel sorry for them and angry at the murderer. But eventually he finds a victim that does make him angry. Obviously very dark and not for the light-hearted, this is a brilliant crime thriller. It’s the little details about what’s happening in the background, what minor characters are feeling and what other officers are thinking that make this so brilliant. It also has a rather brilliant climax which you may or may not see coming. If you like crime books, this one is a must read. It’s fantastic. ★★★★★

 

In tomorrow’s post I shall tell you all about my wonderful day at the Bournemouth Air Festival and an exhausting cycle ride. It’s one to look forward to, I promise!

It Rains

This morning, it rained. Very heavily for a fair while. Fortunately I was sat inside watching the rain pour down from the dry side of my window. Our street wasn’t too bad but it turns out that there was a lot of flooding in Bournemouth, the town I go and visit all the time. There was some quite bad flooding just round the corner of the house to apparently but I wasn’t going out to investigate. The internet informed me what had happened in Bournemouth though and I shall show you via some pictures I found.

Check out the picture above. That is Bournemouth gardens, submerged in water. Below is what it normally looks like, from a slightly different angle.

The difference is astounding. I have never seen anything in my local area quite like it. This next picture shows just how bad the flooding was in some places in the area:

Various Facebook friends have tales to tell of all this water. One of them said that their car turned into a boat and another kayaked through the gardens (which is pretty awesome I have to admit). The weather caused the display for the Bournemouth Air Show to be cancelled but hopefully the weather shall be nice tomorrow and the display will happen because I’m going to be there. I am supposed be getting the bus but where it will stop I’m not entirely sure. This is the bus stop today:

That’s the road cracking due to the volume of water in the drains underneath! It’s incredible.

So this post was pretty much unexpected but I thought I would write it seeing as though I seem to end up reporting about local events and news on the rare occasions there is something interesting. Tomorrow it’s a new Friday Review and it’s a book special- perhaps the least exciting sounding thing ever!

Upton and Away

Most of this post only exists because I couldn’t resist writing that title. This post also marks the triumphant return of my it being on Facebook due to popular demand/more than one person asking me to return them. Welcome back Facebook minions. And a big hello to everyone else reading whilst I am in the greeting mood.

Today I worked at Upton Country Park and though the sessions weren’t particularly successful for reasons I won’t delve into, the actual place is rather nice and I thought you might like to know about it. Plus I got to use that excellent title. It’s a lovely park surrounding an big house as seen in the Google Earth shot below.

The park is basically what used to be the house’s gardens which include such lovely things as a duck pond and a hide with a view out to Poole Harbour. The brief time I spent in this hide was rather nice and the marshy area in front of it looked like a brilliant habitat for wildlife. It was a shame however that some people had decided to throw their litter out of the hide and into the marsh. Young people these days, sigh.

The house itself is rather awesome looking too. From reading a noticeboard I discovered a little bit of interesting history about the house and grounds and investigated a little further online. The owner of the house, Sir Richard Tithborne, went on a massive voyage and never came back. The house was passed through the heirs for a few years until there were no left. However, some fifteen years after Tithborne went on his voyage a man called Castro turned up out of the blue and claimed to be him. The man was taken to court to test his identity. 35,000 questions and 103 days later, it was decided that Castro was not Richard Tithborne and was arrested and taken to Newgate prison. A year later Castro was in court again for the case “Regina v Castro”, where he was essentially on trial for fraud. This trial lasted another 119 days at a cost of £92,000! It seems that the mysterious Castro caused the government a lot of problems back in the early 1870s!

History lesson over. Few people would be quite so sad to find out so much but history is one of my interests so I couldn’t help it. It’s a good story though.

These evening I was rather stunned to discover, via Facebook, that my ex-girlfriend is now engaged. The last person I had any romance with whatsoever is pledged to be married. At first it both freaked me out and upset me and I could probably write lots about the subject but people actually read this so it’s not fair to do so. All I will say is I hope it makes her happy.

And on that bombshell, it’s time to end the post. Goodnight everyone and good luck to anyone getting exam results tomorrow, I hope you get what you deserve.

The Broken Blackberry

I am in an odd mood this evening. I feel fairly elated compared to my general mood of recent times but I’m hardly Mr. Happy either. I guess today has generally been a good day at work. It was lovely to spend time with my friends amongst the staff and several things led be to believe that at the very least I am competent at looking after kids with learning difficulties.

The frustrating element of the day is that my phone broke unexpectedly. It’s a Blackberry Curve and the internal screen has been damaged so that just over half the screen is completely white and the rest is very fuzzy. It is just about useable to make calls from but that’s about it. Using any apps, sending or reading any messages would be impossible. Obviously the situation needs fixing and I hope I can send the phone off to be fixed or replaced or cancel the contract.

Many people would be bothered about the situation but actually it’s only the financial thing that concerns me. My phone is only used for social networking on the go or contacting my parents when I’m at uni. It’s actually very tempting to not replace it and see what it would be like to live without it. People are far too dependent on technology these days. At least it would be tempting if it wasn’t for the fact that I still have to pay for the contract whether I use the phone or not and I don’t like the thought of losing money on nothing. So I will have to sort something out but it’s not the disaster I imagine many people my age would make it.

I spent much of yesterday getting excited about the return of Doctor Who on the 27th August because of a big press conference that happened being the sad Whovian I am. The show seems to have consumed my life lately which is an incredibly sad and nerdy thing to happen. To save me talking about Doctor Who on this blog continuously I have started up a whole new blog that is entirely dedicate to me talking about Doctor Who. If anyone at all happens to be in the slightest bit interested, you can read that new blog by clicking here.

This next paragraph has taken ages to write. I simply having nothing else to say, despite the fact that I haven't written a proper entry since Saturday. Still, if things go to plan (which they rarely do) I shall actually have a fair bit to report on in the latter stage of this week. Hopefully my phone will be fixed by then which would be nice. I hope to have some kind of vaguely interesting post appearing tomorrow but I can make no promises. Bye x

Losing the Plot

Time for some fun! I asked people to tell me a film, preferably an obscure one. I took the ones that I hadn’t heard of and/or didn’t know what happens in them and wrote out a plot for them based on the title! Here’s what I came up with:

Eraserhead. In a horrific accident where an experiment goes wrong, a scientist’s son ends up with a massive eraser for a head. The scientist works desperately to fix the problem, meeting with some dangerous individuals along the way. In the end he decided to leave his son with a massive eraser for a head as it became very handy for rubbing out big mistakes.

Hobo with a shotgun That’s a real film? Well, an FBI agent goes undercover to break up the world’s biggest drug trafficking operation. He pretends to be a hobo and single-handily faces off some of the most dangerous people on New Jersey’s back streets with his faithful shotgun called Ian. 

The Man From Earth.  As the apocalypse comes and a huge asteroid collides with the Earth, one man finds a way to escape. The NASA scientist narrowly escapes in a homemade spacecraft but what will he do now the human race is gone? Where is there to go and how will he survive? Spoiler: He doesn’t.

The Blob: Animated Children’s film in which five year old Susan befriends a talking blob. They spend all their time together but the evil scientist that created the blob has is looking for it. He will still stop at nothing to get his experiment back and if he has to hurt a young girl, so be it. At first it is Susan who is protecting the blob but soon it becomes the other way round.

The Fall An inspiring film which follows a soldier who lost both legs and both arms due to a roadside bomb explosion as he recovers and tries to cope with his new life. He decides he wants to break the world record for highest ever parachute jump but can he survive the fall? (I’m not entirely sure how he would open the parachute though…)

Jacob's Ladder A man called Jacob climbs a ladder. Along the way he encounters various mythical beasts which he has to knock off the ladder in order to proceed. It ends when Jacob very nearly reaches the top of the ladder but is knocked off by the tail of a massive dragon. He falls all the way down and dies tragically.

Alice’s Odyssey: A crossover between Alice in Wonderland and The Odyssey. Suddenly Odysseus finds himself sat at a tea party with a Mad Hatter whilst Alice finds herself having to avoid Circe the witch. Can either survive in a story which isn’t their own? And who could be behind this? The greatest literary characters from across the ages must join forces to turn back the page and set things write. (Note the clever pun at the end. It’s a pun, not a spelling mistake).

Cube: Big screen version of ITV1’s The Cube. Jill from Halifax thinks that going on the gameshow could save her marriage. As Philip Scofield cheers her on, she must throw a ball into a pot, whilst having flashbacks about what led her to go on the show. Sounds easy, but nothing is easy in the cube.

To Kill a Mockingbird: The hideous Mockingbird is terrorising the villagers of a village in Anglo-Saxon times. Many warriors have been sent to find it’s nest and destroy the beast but none have returned to the village to tell the gruesome tale. Nine year old Tim however thinks it needs lighter touch and armed only with a peashooter he leaves the village to kill a mockingbird. But he soon discovers the mockingbird is not the evil beast everyone thought it was. A tale of companionship, bravery and standing up for what you believe in.

Memories of Murder: A man turns up in a Toronto hospital with no idea who he is and no memories whatsoever. Or so he claims. The man can only remember brutally ripping apart seven separate young women. But somewhere in the back of his mind he knows there is more than meets the eye to these memories and it turns out they have been implanted by a real psychotic murderer. Can the man find out who he is and find the murderer before more innocent victims are slaughtered?

Vanilla Sky: Disaster movie akin to the likes of The Day After Tomorrow. When the sky turns to Vanilla and starts to fall on the Earth, billions of people drown in the sweet tasting liquid. As the extinction of humanity draws ever closer, three scientists at the Centre for Bizarre Apocalypse Prevention are the only hope. They must find a way to turn the sky back to normal- but to do that they need to survive.

Big Fish: A feature-length documentary about life under the sea, filming from an underwater camera which was disguised as a big fish. See the wonder of the oceans, from the Great Barrier Reef to the Mariana Trench. See whales, sharks, sea-horses, turtles, crabs, squid and literally thousands of other species in their own environment as they react to our camera disguised as a big fish.

The Room: In the Cabinet War Rooms, Winston Churchill and a group of advisors are trying to win the Second World War. As London is being destroyed time is running out to defeat Hitler and the Nazi forces. Tension is high and we witness numerous frosty exchanges as the decisions that could affect the future of the world take place in this drama set exclusively in one room and filmed from a “fly on the wall” viewpoint.

I very much hope you enjoyed that and if you have seen any of those films, let me know if I was close or not (I probably wasn’t). I might do this again the future so also comment with any films that might be good for this feature! Adios!

A Country Show

Hello dear reader. I am going to start by thanking you for reading this, especially if you are a regular reader. I love you guys.

Today I went to the local country show with my parents, it’s full title being “The Ellingham and Ringwood Agricultural Show 2011”. Basically it’s where some people show off their vegetables, animals or tractors, companies have little stands and try to sell things and lots of people go to see it all. Being there did make me feel very country bumpkin and I guess I am a country boy really. I do live in a town but only on the edge and with the New Forest National Park just minutes away I have spent a lot of time there. The sort of people that go to the show are largely people with children who are riding a horse in it or families of people, complete with dog. Seriously, there were almost as many dogs as people there.

My main hope was to find some nice cheese as these sort of places are usually the perfect place. Whilst I found several stalls which sold cheeses, none of them sold anything particularly potent. I like very strong, creamy blue cheeses such as Danish Blue and Gorgonzola. There is a local cheese called Dorset Blue Vinny which I like and this was the one I thought I might be able to get my hands on today but alas, no such luck. I haven’t had any nice cheese in ages and it’s about time I had some.

In other news, life continues to be fairly rubbish. I attempted to organise a meet up of various friends the other day and only one actually turned up. I was completely rejected by most of a group of people who I thought quite liked me. That’s rather tricky to swallow. Still, you can’t let these things get you down.

Last night I found a new way to entertain myself online: Omegle. If you know it’s an instant message where you can talk to a stranger. It being the internet there are lot of trolls and general idiots on there but sometimes I had some nice chats, especially by discussing questions that people can provide for you. I found someone who shared my love for Tumblr and we followed each other. After writing this post I shall be seeing what entertainment it will provide me with tonight.

I end with a small request to all you people reading. In preparation for perhaps my best idea for a post EVER, I need you to comment with the title of a film, TV show or book. Write in as many as you want, the more obscure the better. I’ve even made it really, really easy for you to comment as there is a box directly below. PLEASE write something in it. Thank You.

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How To Be a Spammer

Today it’s another of my special sarcastic guides which you probably could follow if you wanted but it won’t help you much. In this one I am going to inform you how to write the perfect spam e-mail, based on what such e-mails seem to contain.

1) Pretend you hold a position of importance. You have to make it seem like you have access to large amounts of money. A favourite of spammers is to say to work for the Bank of Africa (BOA) located in Burkino Faso. The other option is say your father holds or rather did hold before his untimely death an important position. This could be a minister in government (though only a fairly minor one) or perhaps someone high up in an energy company. Your victims will obviously believe every word of it so don’t worry about how real it is.

2) Come up with a reason for offering money. People will not believe you have large sums of money unless you explain the situation thoroughly. You need to have a client who died tragically in a plane crash or a father who was killed in some kind of conflict. If you can go to the BBC Website and find a news story about a plane crash from the early 2000s or late nineties it would be even more believable.

3) Make up an amount of money. It’s not real so offer them at least $10 million. It doesn’t matter if it’s believable, if they have believed everything up to now it’s safe to say they are very gullible and will believe anything.

4) Get them to send you money and/or personal details. You might want to leave this bit until the second e-mail or you could just get the victim to fill out a form with all their personal details on.

5) Go back and make some spelling mistakes. It will obviously be more believable that as a professional banker your spelling would be awful. Add extra letters and delete the odd word to make it look like your English isn’t perfect.

6) Make sure they don’t tell anyone. You don’t want the police finding out about this scam do you? Tell the victim you have a wicked uncle who wants to kill you or if you really want just tell them to keep quiet without specifying why.

7) Send the e-mail and wait for the money to flood in. Clearly most people are stupid and will fall for your clever little trick. You will keep their money and because they don’t actually know who you are there is nothing you can do about it. Ha, ha, ha.

I should say that this was for fun and under no circumstances should you actually become a spammer and con-person. It’s illegal. Now that I have finished this post I can go and delete the plethora of spam e-mails that are filling up my “junk” e-mail folder. I shall be back tomorrow with a more normal post!

Riots, Rollercoasters and Ridiculous Gaming

I am going to start today with a serious bit and then move onto to the usual randomness that I blog about. You will probably know that over the last few days there have been a series of riots across London and other cities in the UK. This upsets me greatly. As a teenager living in Britain I feel incredibly let down by my peers. The media presents us as a group really negatively already and this will only make things worse. It can't be called a "protest" anymore, it's just a load of uneducated and greedy people taking advantage of the situation to get some good stuff for free and have some "fun" by attacking police officers and burning things. 

My faith in humanity only remains because I saw that thousands of people went onto the streets yesterday and today and helped to clear up the mess that was made during the riots.The scene below is brilliant and shows that actually most people are sensible and kind human beings who know how they should treat their community. 

And though I could probably write a million words on the subject, that is as much as I shall be talking about it here. I like to keep this as fun a place as possible. Which is why I have given this blog a funky new look.This one is crisper and cleaner than the one before and the title appears to everyone. If you’re not a Doctor Who fan then the old one wouldn’t have meant a lot to you. Please let me know if you like it and if there is anything you think should be tweaked. Oh, and if you’re a person reading this on Facebook you can read it the proper way and see what I am talking about at www.intogeek.net . And watch out for some special titles for upcoming holidays and special events!

Last night I went to my mate Chris’ house for a few hours and we played some online levels of the PS3 version of Little Big Planet. Whilst many are rubbish, some are hugely entertaining. We spent a good half an hour avoiding being eaten by rampaging massive sharks on one level. We then played a level called “Kill Justin Beiber” in which you use a variety of ways to destroy figures with Beiber’s face stuck on them. Despite my dislike for the talentless Canadian popstar, it did become a little sick. Whilst blowing up a figure with a Beiber face was mildly amusing, hanging, stabbing, electrocuting and drowning the same thing was rather horrible. We played countless other levels, mostly involving lots of racing and that too was entertaining. I think Little Big Planet could entertain me for hours.

When I arrived home shortly after midnight, I opened the door to find my cat Sherbet sat in the hallway next to a small bird. Unfortunately for us and the local wildlife, she is a rather good hunter and regularly brings in small “gifts” for us. This is the last thing you want when you are quite tired and want to go to bed. The bird was very small and didn’t appear to be injured, though looked a bit shocked at the whole experience. I had to put the cat into the next room and then get the special tupperware box which has now been designated the “small animal” box. I managed to catch the bird in there after several attempts and put it in some bushes by the field over the road. Hopefully it will have survived.

Today I worked at the little children’s theme park not too far away. In the afternoon session I spent the entire two hours riding the “runaway train” rollercoaster. The kid I was with decided he liked it and that was that. There have been very few hours as dull as the two spent riding this rollercoaster. After the sixth ride, fairly near the start of the session, I no longer really felt the momentum and it was like a nice sit-down. Even this wore off after another fourteen-odd rides but at least it’s over now. If I have to go on that rollercoaster again next time I am working there, I will actually scream. Though I do have to admit that the day was actually rather good apart from that.

I have had some interesting responses to some recent posts and feel I should point them out to you all in case you to would like to pass comment. Share your thoughts on whether or not we should have the death penalty here and tell me when/where you would travel in time if you had the option here. I shall respond to these in a new “end of month” feature at the end of the month (though you could have worked out that last bit).

Blog Bash 2011

This is a special post for Blog Bash 2011. For more information on this fun little event, just click the badge below!

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Hello, I am Dan. Basically, I'm a bit weird and slightly geeky. Obsessions such as Doctor Who, comics and Nintendo demonstrate this. I consider this a good thing though as it makes me who I am. I am currently training to be a primary school teacher in the South of England and live in the city of Winchester most of the time, but spend by holidays in the tiny little town of Ringwood. In Winchester I live with a crazy group of people who I have grown to love and the rest of the time I live with my family consisting of two parents, a younger brother and two cats. All fairly dull and uninteresting stuff.

1.) What's your favourite memory from Summer 2011?

All in all this Summer has been rubbish so far. But my best memory I guess is moving into my new house at uni and having a wonderful weekend there with the hat fair going on and everything. It was rather brilliant.

2.) What's your dream summer vacation?

As it has been for many a year, long before movies came out, it would be to go to Madagascar. Few places on the planet have such a wide variety of wildlife and a large amount of it is exclusive only to the island. I would really, really love to go and see some of it. Seeing lemurs in the wild particularly would be amazing.

3.) What's your favourite thing to do in the summer?

I like going to places and doing things with my mates. Especially now that I’m at uni, some friends are rarely seen and it’s always lovely to catch-up with them.

4.) What's your "blog goal" for 2011?

Well I would like to get some more followers and I would say 200 by the end of the year but that seems a bit unlikely so I am sticking to hoping for 150. And I am working on getting more interaction with my followers too.

5.) Let's hear the story behind your blog title! :)

Actually I figured I wanted “geek” in the name so I put it in a slogan maker and Into Geek is what it came up with. It sort of works so I stuck with it.

Well that was rather fun and I actually wrote it a day before it’s posted. It’s a rare occurrence that I am actually organised enough to schedule blog posts. I’ll be seeing you very soon, possibly with a guest post tomorrow but that depends on whether any of the upcoming ones get sent to me in time.

My Nemesis the Cockerel

I have a slightly odd selection of things to share with you today. It’s pretty much a selection of little things that I thought it would be fun to blog about.

First is a conversation I had at work last week. Out of nowhere the child I was with, a five year old, asked me if I was a grandfather. Now I know that I might look a bit older than my nineteen years but never before have I been suspected as a grandparent. I then asked the child how old he thought I was. He said “13?”. I shall take that as a compliment- if I always look six years younger than I am I shall be rather pleased. Either the child hadn’t quite worked out in his head how to tell how old someone is or modern society has taken a turn for the worse (hint: I don’t think it was the latter…)

My dreams continue to be weird. Spending too much time on Tumblr, where things are largely Doctor Who or Harry Potter related has clearly had an adverse effect on me. In dream one I was travelling aboard the TARDIS with the Eleventh Doctor when the doors opened mid-flight and a whole load of silent’s appeared. Except unlike the silent’s in the show they were only around three feet tall. The Doctor kicked them back outside and closed the doors and everything was fine.

In dream 2 I was in a library and things didn’t look good. Both Snape and Voldemort were after me, shooting avada kedavra spells at me whilst I hid behind bookcases. I then tried to fight back and tried as many different spells as I could think of on the spot: stupefy, expelliarmus, obliviate, sectumsempra and avada kedavra. Frustratingly none were successful and I woke up. I would have loved to see the smug look get wiped of Voldemort’s noseless face when I hit him with one of the spells.

And now I can rant about the thing that has been driving me crazy over the past few weeks. Somebody in my housing estate has a cockerel. Now cockerels are supposed to crow at dawn. This one is a particularly lazy cockerel and doesn’t start crowing until the early afternoon. This is really very annoying when you don’t have a lot to do and are spending much of your time in your bedroom where it is fairly quiet. Every now and then the annoying cock will be off again and I will get extremely irritated.

But what’s even more frustrating is that no-one else in my family has noticed. My Mum is out when it crows and my Dad is usually out or working downstairs with the TV on. My brother is either out or in his room on his Xbox on the opposite side of the house to me. So no-one else has heard this bloody cockerel. It is literally driving me mad. I would actually be tempted to go to the house it belonged to and tell its owner that unless they can train it to shut up they will soon find themselves without a cockerel around the same time as everyone in our family has copious amounts of chicken for dinner. But alas, the cockerel is just further enough away to be impossible to pinpoint whilst being close enough to be quite loud and annoying. One day cockerel we shall meet in one last stand-off and I will defeat you…or die!

And I shall end with a little video! Most of this was originally filmed back over the Easter holidays as part of a video challenge thing we were doing at uni. It never really came to anything but I decided to finish off the video. It shows the area where I live in a fairly pleasant way as well as having the occasional bit of fun in it. Watch out for the cameo from my mate Chris!

Time Travel

Today I am going to talk about time travel. It’s a massive staple in a lot of science-fiction but what about real life? Firstly, is it possible? Well, that largely depends on who you speak to. Some physicists say it is, some say it isn’t and others say only forward. There are various ways you could theoretically travel through time. The first is to travel faster than the speed of light. This would be incredibly difficult to do and some scientists don’t even think it is possible. Another is using a cosmic string, which is quite complicated for someone whose physics is only basic, i.e. me. The third theoretical way is to travel through a wormhole, something which is only hypothetical and there are numerous hypothetical ways of using them to travel through time. It is also sensible to assume that the nearest wormhole is a long, long way away from Earth otherwise we’d know about it.

So it seems unlikely that we will travelling in time any time soon? Well you would have thought that if scientists invent/discover time travel in the future then they would have appeared in the present. So where are they? Maybe they are just very careful who they talk to and where they appear. Or maybe there are lots of people living in the world who are actually time travellers but are keeping it quiet. Then there is the more confusing theory that if you travelled in time from the future you would automatically travel to a parallel past because you being in the past did not actually happen. Here is a diagram on paint to explain this:

And this brings us onto the point of paradoxes. The most famous one is this: if you were to kill your grandfather before he had created your parent, you would cease to exist. If this is true, it would mean that the universe would correct itself. You no longer exist. This means you cannot kill your grandfather. Therefore you exist again. It means that killing your own grandfather would be impossible. Another theory suggests that you could kill your grandfather but if you attempted to travel forward in time you would have end up in a parallel universe where you never existed. Like this:

But then what if you kill someone else? The chances are that you the same would apply as the diagram above and you would travel to a parallel present, one that is slightly different to the one you left. It would depend on the person you killed. Some people would take you to a world which is not noticeably different. But if you killed someone with a massive influence on the world, then the parallel world would be very different. If you killed George Washington, thus causing the US to not gain it’s independence, the world would be incredibly different, though whether good or bad one cannot guess. And then Adolf Hitler, probably the most evil man to ever live. If you killed him you may think you are doing the world a favour. But it was due to Hitler that we learnt a lot of lessons and conflict on such a huge scale has not been seen since. If Hitler was killed then maybe we would have had countless global wars, perhaps even destroying the world with nuclear weapons. One can only speculate what would happen.

It is therefore my recommendation that, should you travel in time, you do not kill anyone. Some speculate that even a seemingly small event like stepping on a butterfly could cause a massive paradox and change history completely. So don’t do that either. If you travelled alone and returned to a parallel universe, only you would notice the difference because the people in that universe would have spent their entire lives living with whatever you did in the past. Your friends and family in the universe you came from would be unreachable.

I find this whole thing really fascinating. I could go on forever discussing various possibilities. Would it be OK to go back and meet your past self? It might cause a parallel universe or it could change your own memories. Or maybe physics wouldn’t allow it and the whole of space and time would splinter and collapse in on itself. Nobody knows really. And that is what is so fascinating about time travel. The consequences could be really rather scary or perfectly fine. And maybe time travel isn’t even possible anyway. If that is the case, humanity will never know: it is impossible to prove something is impossible.

And now I think I should draw this hugely geeky post to an end. But before I go I would like to ask everyone here where or rather when they would travel to if they could time travel? We shall assume that none of the consequences above would happen. Would you do something personal, experience a historical event or perhaps go and see what the future is like? Let me know. Personally, I would go to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and watch Othello being performed with actual Tudor actors and an actual Tudor crowd. And Shakespeare himself would be present somewhere nearby and I might even see him. That would be truly amazing. So yes, let me know where/when you would travel to!