Thursday, June 19, 2008

Can't sleep

It's 6:50am, I can't sleep... gogo feeling crap day!

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Welcome to Cardiff... Population = Scum

Ok, so perhaps it's a little bit wrong for me to get so worked up over this as it's been happening to a LOT of people for a long time now, but I can't help being pissed off about it.

Last night, my mum went to the opera with some friends from work. Since money here is pretty tight at the moment, she hasn't been out in over a year, close to two years infact by my count, so this was something pretty special for her.

Before the show started they went for a meal, and while they were eating, some scummy bastard stole £30 and my mum's debit (bank) card from her bag along with, oddly, her bus ticket. So anyway, they went to pay for the meal and my mum noticed that the stuff was missing. It must have completely ruined her night. They still went to the show, but I don't think she had as much enjoyment as she would have had, thanks to some twat taking advantage of her.

Anyway, we cancelled the card before it could be used for anything, but I feel so sorry for my mum -_-.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Last Friends

Since my brother monopolized the computer tonight, I took the opportunity to catch up on the Japanese Drama I start watching a few weeks back, Last Friends. This is easily one of the BEST series' I've had the luck to catch. I love the serious tone which doesn't seem to appear in a lot of the drama's I watch, though that's not to say there aren't any serious shows, just I generally watch comedies etc...



I'm very, very impressed with the acting from the entire cast in dealing with the various subject matter apparent in the series, such as domestic violence, gender issues etc... I'm completely blown away by Ueno Juri's performance as Ruka. She was the main element that drew me to this series as, having seen her in Swing Girls and the the absolutely FANTASTIC Nodame Cantabile I was always gonna be interested in what else she'd star in. I will say however, that I was shocked at first seeing as the two performances listed above were comedy's, and to see her perform so well in such a different role is amazing. I think in the years to come she can surely become one of Japan's top actresses, if she isn't already.

I'm also really happy to see another drama starring Eita. He's a great actor, able to perform just as well in both comedy and dramatic rolls, the one sticking with me the most bing Unfair. It's hard to describe just how good this guy is, and he brings a real element of vulnerability to Takeru, you really feel for the character. Alongside Eita however, I also need to give a mention for Nishikido Ryo, who gives another solid performance yet again. It must be a daunting task for a member of a popular boyband to portray such a sinister, violent character. I will say however that he needs to diversify his acting/roles as, seeing him in 1 Litre of Tears and Attention Please aside from Last Friends, he never seems to play any "happy" characters, but that's only a minor complaint about such a solid actor.

I haven't given details on the plot as there are other places that can give a much better synopsis than I ever could. I'm planning to go and watch episode 7 as soon as I finish this entry, then I have to wait for Kioku to sub the next episode before I can continue (though I know there are soft subs out there, I prefer to keep to hardsubs wherever possible).

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Hello!

Well, I'd originally planned to do this blog on the side with my Final Fantasy XI one, and finally got around to setting it up tonight. The name? Well it was some on the spot thinking as I had planned for the title "Plan B" (With "The Azure" being Plan A) but clearly that's already been taken. So here I am with The Next Gen. I don't actually know HOW the titles came to me exactly, but I kinda like it. I'm planning to post about day to day things (what with me job hunting and all) and my interests, (movies, music, games etc...), so hopefully I shouldn't be TOO short on content to update with. That being said, I'm not sure entirely how often this will be updated, will just have to see how things go.

So anyway, some good and bad news to start things off. The good... I went to see Indiana Jones IV last night. Woo I enjoyed that movie. It had everything a good old fashioned adventure film needs... a quick pace, iconic character, amusing dialogue and some truly excellent action set pieces. I'm still undecided on the whole Indie + Aliens idea, it doesn't fit QUITE as well as I'd hoped, but I'm not going to let that detract from the sheer enjoyment i got from the movie. Great stuff ^^.

Sadly, with the good comes the bad, and what a day I've had. I was awake until 5am in the morning trying to fix a REALLY nasty spyware infection which, no matter what i did to clean it, the problem intensified to a point where I was getting windows popping up every 15-20 seconds and my system grinding to a crawl. So, it was with a depressed sigh that I pushed on with the only remaining option, (other than paying some guy to look at it for me), and reformatted the machine. Problem's gone (obviously) but I lost in the region of 30gb worth of downloads (I managed to back up a small percentage of what I had however). Anywho, I'm getting things back up to scratch now, just a few old app's missing which I need to re-download, I just hope i don't have to deal with this problem again for a loooooong time. Fingers crossed ne?

Until next time, laters ^^.