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As I embark on pulling down the ceiling of our family room, Tiny Tips is drawing dragons.

They are big things and he was wondering:

When drawing a complicated figure, some of which will be obscured in the final image, do you work from back to front or front to back?

(We are talking pencil and paper here)

Or is it Bryan...

Anyway, I came in about 3/4 of the way through so didn't catch the name of the show that was on last night but I liked it.

I'm a fan of his style anyway and he nicely worked his way through entropy to the inevitable heat death of the universe in a way I could relate to (except the numbers, obviously) and vaguely understand. 

Being as much about personal philosophy and belief as the actual physics of the stars, reminded me of the old Carl Sagan COSMOS thing from back in the 70s/80s. (I wonder how that has aged) and made it a lot less dry.

But yeah, more for this old Sauropod please.

[Books]

So what have you started reading/watching/listening fully intending to enjoy but never actually made it to the end of... (not stuff that you haven't seen or have no intention of seeing)

Books
ON THE ROAD - Jack Kerouack. "Then we went here and did this. Then we went there. Then we went back here." Yawn.
 
BLEAK HOUSE - Charles Dickens. "And then the key witness sponataneoulsy combusted".  Even a coincidence too far for Dickens.

Film
FROM HELL - I've tried three times now. First time, I stopped at the first scene of Aberline doing drugs and second time it was him having visions (or was it the other way round)
ULTRA VIOLET - Started watching last night with the full intention of lots Mila goodness but just couldn't watch...

Television
HEROES - No, lost it in Season 2.
V (the new one) - Didn't grab me after three episodes.

The title says it all.

For reasons slightly too complicated to go into here, I want to compose a list of bad, evil and generally smelly things about EDINBURGH.  So I can do a short quiz where the answer to each question is Edinburgh.

You know, like "From 1842 to 1898, which UK city had the highest rate of syphlis?*" and the answer would always be "Edinburgh".

Or this sort of thing from TIMES ONLINE back in 2008
Edinburgh, for all its festivals and spectacular skyline, was named yesterday as the most miserable place to live in Britain.



So let rip with your horrible facts about Auld Reekie.


(Oh and if you have great, happy and brilliant facts about Glasgow, let me have them as well).

Flicking through Edge the other night, I came across a picture of 80s "Page 3 Stunna" Maria Whittaker* in an article about the game Barbarian. (I believe her being on the cover and the violence were it's main selling points).

Anyway, the chap what wrote the game**, Steve Brown, also appears to have been a Dredd artist; or so it says in the article.  I don't recall the name - anybody else?



* She's quite pretty if you can get beyond that melon-breasted dwarf look that was the fashion in the 80s. (I was a Kathy Lloyd fan myself).

** For you younger readers, back in the seventies and eighties you could design, write, test, publish and distribute a game on your own. The internet was known as C60 cassette tapes.

The title says it all really but Tiny Tips has a bit of homework to do a mini-bio of somebody famous from World War II.

I'm sure his class will come up with a dozen Winston Churchills and more than a few Adolf Hitlers but I was thinking about something slightly off the wall and less obvious than the big leaders.

Ideas I've had so far have been:

Major Dick Winters (from Band of Brothers)
Oskar Schindler
Von Staffenberg (because I took him to see Valkyrie at the cinema and he quite liked it)
Robert Oppenheimer
Douglas Bader
That Parachute Regiment Major who took Pegasus Bridge (obviously not that famous as I can't remember his name but I think it's cool that he was played by Richard Todd who was one of the soldiers that re-inforced them).
Major Easy
D-Day Dawson

(OK, we might not get away with the last two)



Yes, yes. We know that War is Hell and it doesn't make anybody cool.


(Or does it)

Started on this a few months back via the collected trades. I buy myself a couple every pay day. Am up to 8 now.

Good things: the zombies, most of the art (sometimes have trouble telling folk apart but perhaps that is one of the points), the sense of isolation, the gore (especially the mutilation wrought on The Governor - so different in style from a lot of, say, Ennis comedy gore), "It's a girl", the gradual mutilation of our hero.

Bad bits: people don't speak like that, the cast can be too big (and indistinguishable) sometimes, they would have found the Prison before then, sometimes think zombies aren't consistent.

One big problem (possibly mentioned on TV thread) is that having no reason for zombies ("They just are") works fine for a two hour narrative film but after 8 volumes I am starting to look for answers. 

The local newsagent in Stewarton, Ayrshire sells two progs a week (other than mine).

what about yours?

Quite enjoyed this even though it couldn't decide what type of monster movie it wanted to be. Is it zombies? Is it alien hordes orb is it lone alien?

Disappointed.

Spoilers below.


Great start with Carlyle's cowardice but they failed to explore it.

Did not like him becomingv a clever stalking zombie and have no idea how they escaped locked down air space.

Good bits: Caryle at the start, the helicopter sequence, Imogen Poots.

[have]

If you happen to be wandering down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh at lunchtime on Monday 16th August, you might like to nip into the White Horse pub.

There, you will see me and four or five other fine acts performing the art of standup comedy.

It's part of the Free Fringe so it's FREE and the most you can waste is a lunch hour.

All shows at the Fringe have to have a theme to make them seem relevant and mature and a little bit arty. This year, my theme is KNOB GAGS.  I'm a back to basics kind of guy.


Show starts at 1230pm; not sure of the rest of the lineup but so far (well, according to this link) they've all been pretty good.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=773287737#!/group.php?gid=343049593939&ref=ts

or Search for MIRTH OF FORTH on Facebook for more details.

OK, I got most of it but some iffy art (especially around the Professor and his age and whether he had a big hole in his chest or not in some panels) left me confused as to exactly what was going on.  I think I figured out who each of the Batman were (though I'm not that regular a reader).  The quietely vignette was the best, I think.

But anyway, can someone spell it out exactly for me?

Found myself with 3 hours on my own this morning so rewatched Watchmen on dvd for the first time since cinema.

I rightenjoyed it too.  The first hour is best (I think that approximates to the first two issues). And while it sticks closely, I'm glad it's not slavish to the comic.

Interedting to note that it never attempts to be "real" like, say, Batman Begins.

I don't like the way it feels the need tov explain everything in simplistic termd though. For all the big ideas and density it does rather lead the viewer by the hand at times.

But Malin Ackerman has a great bum.

It's an ASDA 2 for 1 thing model URC20-D2f.

The batteries fell out the other night and it's lost the sttings for my ancient panasonic and the dvd player (both of whose remotes are barely working).

Searching the internet, all I can find is a thousand questions asking if anybody has the codes for them or a 1000 sites all wanting to charge me £20 for a pdf of a manual.

So where can I get a manual for free?

Or, on the off chance any of you still have the instructions handy, how do I get it to scan and pick up the codes for my telly and dvd again (I've been trying various combinations that seem logical to me but no joy so far).

Tin Tips rates this very highly.

Not played it myself yet but was watching him yesterday while assembling some staging for the greenhouse* and it did look a whole bundle of fun.  Saw him collect a dozen stars and he didn't seem to do the same thing twice.

For those of us that don't have i-things and the App Store, I was wondering if we might start a thread for those of us with access to the Android application market and any good ones out there.

I'm looking for some simple word processing and spreadsheet stuff. Anybody got any recommendations?

Picked this up for £20 in Gamestation in Kilmarnock recently.

And then Teenage Tips took it over to his girlfriends and I've not had a chance to play it yet.

Will I enjoy it?

Also picked up THE FORCE UNLEASHED for a tenner.  It's very violent and quite nasty but without being gory.

Like the first level as Vader -  giving you a clue as to how powerful you can become and generally enjoying the multiple ways of disposing of people but have a feeling it may become a bit limited; the boss battles I've seen (but not played) do seem pretty samey and repetitive.

OK I'm late to the party but I right enjoyed this (after a shaky start).  Sort of like a Mexican version of the Inbetweeners except they have a bit of success.

Some great imagery (though not much the mexican tourist board would like), a fantastic sense of an entire other world full of rich lives just sitting off to the side (and ignored by the two main boys) and some lovely sub-text with all of the under the surface swimming.

The look on Luisa's face (almost slyly to the camera) [spoiler]after the disappointing fumble [/spoiler] with Julio in the car is priceless.

With the title, I was thinking of Roger as I watched it (especially the bit at the end where [spoiler]the boys gay up[/spoiler]. Maybe one day that will be me and him.

I'm not sure if we've had reviews of musical before but while I was down in that London recently, the Tips clan visited the Victoria Apollo to see WICKED - the story of the witches of Oz before you know who showed up.

It must be said, I pretty much thought it sucked.  I'm partial to the odd showtune and have previously enjoyed other musicals I've been to but this one seemed way off the mark.

Problems included:
-having no decent tunes (the biggie, really) or at least not delivered in a decent way. They really could have made more of the ones that were at least slightly memorable (One Short Day, The Wizard and I) but kept doing that annoying thing where they interrupt a climax of the song, do a bit of dialogue, do a bit more of the climax of the song, a bit more dialogue etc.  Oh and just about all the other songs were dirges.
-not being funny (some attempts at humour falling mostly flat)
-leading man that can't dance (admittedly, he was the stand-in)
- everything we know was a lie! (I don't want to sound like John Byrne but this really did feel like they were saying "Everything you know is a lie" just for the sake of it)
- it reads like the worst kind of fan-wank (characters suddenly morph into characters from the film, many references shoe-horned, bad referencing of lines from original movie etc. etc.)
- leading ladies not remotely sexy (again, surely a must have)
- some of the set design was fun but the costumes were terrible.
- tall munchkins.