A Bug's Life

Books read (14-15)
Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel (2014)
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, Sydney Padua (2015) (graphic novel)

Films watched (180-191) (9 at the cinema, 2 DVD, 1 LoveFilm, 1 tv)
The Martian
Macbeth
Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)
The Martian (rewatch)
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (rewatch)
Sicario
The Lobster
Crimson Peak
Sicario (rewatch)
Spectre
Escape from New York
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (18-19)
Stealing Sheep (gig, Portland Arms)
Teslathon (Cambridge)

Lots of rewatches - having the local cinema Infinity card makes it easy to go again for social rewatches.
Cinema good: Sicario, very exciting, looked amazing, came home and looked up the cinematographer and found he had 12 Oscar nominations. The Lobster was not what I expected, and not the celebration of the supremacy of couplehood that I feared. Very odd, lots to think about, very cruel but in a casually weird and Pythonesque way. Same director as Dogtooth but the absurd dystopia feel that was restricted to a single house in that film imbues this whole world. I want to know how it got there.
Wanted to like The Martian - but when I read the book I felt a mixture of unputdownable excitement and boredom, and got the same vibe from the movie, not helped by knowing the plot already. The second watching was with SF book/film club. If it had looked as good as Mad Max, or Sicario, or Moon, I could have enjoyed the rewatch, but I didn't
Lots of people liked Macbeth. I've not read it or seen the play before, but I couldn't figure out what was going on, I couldn't untangle the lines, and I couldn't get from context what some of the words were likely to be until the end of the sentence by which time it was a bit late. "My nighs/mine eyes" etc. Obv they were a bit upset about stuff and killing people made it worse and they went a bit peculiar and everyone was mostly polite because king. Banquo's ghost was great, looked like he had been pulled from a shallow grave. I'm sure I missed a lot. It almost made more sense if I pretended it was a foreign movie without subtitles.

Gigs: Stealing Sheep were marvellous and I'm off to see them support Django Django in December. Great to see them play a full set in Cambridge in such a small venue.

I have nearly six years of monthly meter readings here. Monthly reading help me keep an eye on gas and move from "but it's so cosy" to "time to turn it off". The red and orange lines are the most recent years, there's been a new energy efficient tv and a small second freezer, and a new housemate who is rarely here. It's all over the place though, not a nice smooth 10 per cent reduction a year like the energy efficiency things seem to imply we should be striving for. The gas use seems more affected by temperature than number of occupants or any special measures. No idea where the electricity was going in the winter of 2010/11. The spike in Jun 2013 was the leak in the kitchen and running a dehumidifier for a month. Three-bed mid-terrace modern house with good insulation. Graph below...

( behing the cut )

Thanks for all your comments here
http://bugshaw.livejournal.com/845281.html
There are six solid fixes in place and I have good approaches for a few more.

I think my priorities are down to
Chairs (which I'll try today)
Treadmill (I'll call next week)
Washing machine (could try today to find/clean filter)
Smoke alarms (whole units need replacing, not just batteries, and could find someone to resite them lower on the wall and make good the ceiling).

Is nice to not be surrounded by dodgy plumbing.

High voltage tesla coils etc for your delectation at the Cambridge Museum of Technology Oct 24-25

http://www.extremeelectronics.co.uk/cambridge-teslathon/

Books read (12-13)
Moon Over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch (2011)
Foundation, Isaac Asimov (1951) (reread for SF Book Club)

Films watched (145-179) (10 at the cinema, 25 DVD, 1 LoveFilm) (yes that's 35 films in a month - Film Festival and week on hol with dodgy back meant serious getting through the To Watch shelf) (let's cut-tag them)
( Thirty five films )

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (17)
Bill Bailey (comedy, Junction)

Cinema good: The Spiderwebhouse (based on true story of children who secretly look after themselves for year while Mum in hospital, neat dark fairytale threads), The Hallow (creepy horror), Bill (if you like Horrible Histories check out this Shakespeare)

DVD good: Melancholia passed the test of "can you discuss this film for longer than its run time" and it's a long film! On the surface it's a planet approaching Earth - amazing spectacle or will it hit? But is full of depression allegories. Very arty.
Also good: Of Horses and Men, A Tale of Two Sisters, Ong-Bak. Good to catch up on a load of classics I've not seen before like The Hills Have Eyes, Manchurian Candidate, Night of the Living Dead. I feel proper film-educated now.

60 Hour Film Challenge! A dozen people from my filmmaking group and elsewhere put this together. We were given a title, line of dialogue, and prop or action at 8pm Friday and had to upload a 2-5 min film by 8am Monday. And we did! No creative work allowed beforehand, just assembling cast, crew, locations, props; for three of the cast/crew this was their first time on a film shoot, and everyone brought good skills and ideas and enthusiasm. It was jolly hard work, and frustrating at times, but people seem keen to do it again.

Like Father Like Son from James Uren on Vimeo.

I learnt loads, and of course we're all applying hindsight with a thick trowel, and I'm having thinky thoughts about consensus-building creativity vs strong directorial vision.
Best kudos so far: my mum saying "Hey this is really good" instead of her usual "I didn't understand what it was about" but maybe that's because someone good did the editing :-)

The hairdresser keeps not wanting to cut me a fringe because it wouldn't look good. From the dry, still air of the salon, I usually defer to her judgement. But next time I'm bringing these pictures because I am getting tennis elbow from swooping my hair off my face, and walking around with a hand on your head is not a good look.

Books read (11)
The Word for World is Forest, Ursula K. Le Guin (1972) (reread for SF Book Club)

Films watched (121-144) (6 at the cinema, 17 DVD, 1 tv, 3 LoveFilm)
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
Dredd (rewatch) (Karl Urban)
Behind the Candelabra
Y Tu Mama Tambien
King of New York
La Haine
Lost River
Hiroshima Mon Amour
DodgeBall
Only Yesterday
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
The Science of Sleep
American Mary
Breathless/Au Bout de Souffle
Atlantis (Disney)
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Biutiful
Blazing Saddles
Kino #77 (six shorts)
Diary of a Teenage Girl
The Wolfpack
Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)
The Bed Sitting Room
The Hudsucker Proxy

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (16)
Nothing new in August

Cinema good: Diary of a Teenage Girl; The Wolfpack.

Behind the Candelabra is the film about Liberace, I thought it would be light entertainment but it went to some quite dark places about relationships, patterns and power, and how to have a honest partnership when a) you have to lie about your sexuality and b) your life has been a performance and it's not clear what the real you is.

Housemate brought along Inca the Cat earlier this year (her mum couldn't keep her when she moved house) (cat not housemate) (well both actually) and I have been remiss about uploading photographs. Many under the cut, suitable for those who want cute cat photos in their stream.

She's nearly 2 now, very sweet, likes to play feathers on a stick, loves being in the great outdoors (the tiger barn/rabbit hutch is seeing plenty of action), sits on people vanishingly rarely, likes to be brushed and knocks things off table with head while this is occurring. Well done, 5 points! Does not wake one in the early am with spiking and wailing! Enjoys watching hamster, hamster is fine with this. Came off the worse in a couple of boundary disputes earlier in the year but seems to have established territory now. Comes in when called (if calling is accompanied by Dreamies rattling).

Photos under the cut... (big though, lost my Photoshop Creative Suite 1 when upgraded to Win 7 and haven't learnt/bought a replacement yet)

( cat photos )

Hello from Jersey! I've been here since Saturday afternoon, today is the first day of sunshine.

Bad things: Bridget can't fly. The 1-hour flight from Cambridge was smooth, uneventful, and painless, but within 20 minutes of landing my back started seizing up in full "What have you done to me you bastard" mode. Frustratingly I cannot pinpoint what exactly is going on biomechanically, but it seems that my joints (while perfectly happy to walk 20 miles or sit on a train for 90 minutes) get (probably) aggravated by being subjected to those odd and sometimes prolonged accelerations in unusual directions. Or something. Whatever. Empirically flying is bad for Bridgets (even Bridgets in peak physical condition). This is a shame and I am trying not to think too hard about all my super ideas for hiking all over the island and scrambling over rocks and getting buses to northern beaches etc etc. I can walk a bit but it starts to hurt quite quickly and become Not Fun, less Exciting Exploration and more Distracted Trudging. Today I'm trying pretty much a whole day on the sofa to give the joints a proper rest.

Good Things: Am on holiday! There are tides, cripes there are tides. I'm in an apartment near the sea front (not sandy beach); at high tides the waves lap the beach wall, at low tide they retreat a good 100 metres or more out, and reveal a rocky seafloorscape that is hidden at high tide. Seen lots of oystercatchers. They have swimming pools on the beach - semicircular walls which are covered at high tide, and as the water recedes they stay full for swimming. On Monday we went to Elizabeth Castle, which is connected to the island by a causeway walkable at low tide - and amphibious vehicle ferries which sail you over or drive along the sea floor depending on water level.

Plenty of good food, and places which cater for gluten free. Am looking forward to visiting GF bakery.