A Bank Holiday weekend in the UK, so the weather was extremely mixed.
On Friday a bunch of us from work went to the new-ish oriental buffet, Tuli on Tooley Street. It’s underneath the railway arches and has made great use of the space – it’s light and airy and feels modern. The food was decidedly average – exactly what you’d expect from an all-you-can-eat chinese buffet – and didn’t really seem to live up to the image that they were trying to present. Maybe the teppanyaki or sushi options would be more interesting if we ever went back as a smaller group and/or in the evening.
Saturday was the Crystal Palace Overground Festival and Lettice and I braved the drizzle to take a look. Spread out round all three sides of the triangle were stalls selling exactly what you’d expect from the good people of Crystal Palace – cupcakes, handmade greetings cards and antiques. There was also music and kids’ activities going on. With the events spread out both geographically and temporally, coupled with the poor weather, it all seemed a bit difficult to get into the spirit of things. Maybe if it’s sunny next year we’ll make the slightly longer trip up from Croydon.
And then round to miss_newham‘s for the annual Eurovision party. Alcohol, scorecards, yelling at the telly, and some truly dreadful music. I seemed to be the only person who liked the Albanian entry; the winner of our voting was Greece, which matched the winner of the UK phone vote so we must have been in tune with the national psyche. Not sure why the UK bothers entering – everyone hates us and we always enter rubbish songs. Ben Dalby’s Doctor Can would have been a better entry and some sexy nurses would surely have garnered a few votes.
There’s a new art gallery in West Norwood – The Portico Gallery is very close to us and full of a wide variety of pieces in varied styles and media. I’m rubbish at writing about art (“and everything else,” yells the audience) so there’s not much more to say except that that’s where we were on Sunday afternoon.
Had my photo used in a (gay) mockup of a what our Valentine’s Day homepage could look like.
Had lots of fun combining Ajax, JSON, RSS, JSP and jQuery in various combinations.
Moved the breadcrumb trail from just inside the main content area to just before it … in many, many templates.
Wondered whether any of the ARIA landmark roles was suitable for a block that contained a breadcrumb trail, a print button and an RSS feed button. contentinfo or nothing seem to be the options.
Told my boss that I needed to refactor all the JavasScript (that I had written in the first place) on the whole site.
Wasn’t ill enough to go home to bed, maybe tomorrow. (Damn this really quite good immune system!)
Boggled at the photos of Ben Dalby in a straight jacket!
Spent most of Survivors thinking about the benefits of CGI vs something actually decent looking when it came to collapsing buildings.
Yesterday, I tweeted "According to my LibraryThing records I’ve read 141 books this year: 26 novels, 7 non-fiction, 102 graphic novels and 6 ‘other’."
Then I went out and bought another two graphic novels… But it must be said that most of the comics I’ve read this year came from West Norwood library, and now that I’ve exhausted most of their good ones, and some of their bad ones, I think 2010 may be slightly less weighted towards graphic novels.
How many of my 2009 books have you read?
Available as a poll over on Live Journal (you don’t need an LJ account to vote, just an OpenID account which means an account from WordPress.com, Google, Yahoo, Blogger, etc.)
Doctor Who on Christmas Day, that was a bit of splendid nonsense, wasn’t it? And not long now until we find out how it all ends.
I’ve been passing the time between parts one and two by dipping into the festering mire of DW fandom to see what crackpot speculation people have come up.
So there you go, I’ve proved that almost everything that could happen in part two has already been done in the novels, and that I’m as anal and crackpot as any other fan.
I suspect that the reality of part two will be even more sane/crazy, predictable/unpredictable, clichéd/original than the above.
I’ve just finished watching the finale of Battlestar Galactica. Yes, I’m behind the times (oh I am talking about the new series, not the original one, that would be really behind the times). It’s been hard to avoid spoilers for the ending because of the very strong opinions it’s generated, hence I was watching it with one eye on the telly and one eye on my reaction: would I hate the ending as much as some people did?
Um, no. I have no problem with the ending per se. I thought it was rushed, but only to the degree that the last four episodes needed to be six or seven episodes (it struck me that characters like Tyrol and Helo jumped in and out of the storyline over the last few episodes).
It was one of the best pieces of television that we’ve had. Possibly the best ever in the SF genre. For all its faults, in the ending or in any part, I can’t think any less of it. If you haven’t watched it, do so; if you have, I hoped you enjoyed it as much as I did.
November has arrived accompanied by wind and rain and cold (and indeed a cold). How to spend the month?
Well mostly Lettice and I will be spending it buying a house. Or trying to. The other day we took a tame civil engineer to have a look round the place we’re hoping to buy (in a sort of “look for the massive faults before paying a surveyor” kind of way) and he could only see one potential problem. Fingers crossed that it isn’t.
Like last year, I’ll be taking part in NaBloPoMo as a form of half-hearted solidarity with the people who are attempting NoNoWriMo.
And I’ll be growing a moustache. Some banter in the office on Friday has somehow led to me agreeing at the last minute to take part in Movember. Now, despite having a silly name and being an Australian import, this is a very good cause so please make a donation. I promise to only post very occasional photos of the mo’s progress.
Finally I’ll be hiding from the bad weather and watching telly, not least Doctor Who which is back for a special on the 15th.
To describe someone as “the best actor in TNG” obviously falls into the category of damning with faint praise.
What prompted my previous post was going to see Waiting for Godot on Wednesday, this production has a very impressive cast list: Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Ronald Pickup and Simon Callow. And it struck me that Patrick Stewart looked a little uncomfortable and stiff, in particular with the physical comedy aspects of the production.
I would sit down and watch Patrick Stewart in almost anything (but I gave up on Eleventh Hour after one episode ‘cos it was just dull) but there’s a certain type of part he does very, very well and outside of that he’s still good but not the greatest.
The Beeb have released details of Doctor Who 2010 – Karen Gillan’s character is called Amy Pond and we have a first look at Matt Smith’s costume.
The Time Lord’s new look consists of tweed jacket, bow tie, rolled up trousers and black boots.
Maybe it’s just the picture but that doesn’t look very good to me. I think the problem is that the sort of look that would suit Smith best is … the sort of look that Tennant has been doing for the last four years.
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miss_newham‘s for the annual Eurovision party. Alcohol, scorecards, yelling at the telly, and some truly dreadful music. I seemed to be the only person who liked the Albanian entry; the winner of our voting was Greece, which matched the winner of the UK phone vote so we must have been in tune with the national psyche. Not sure why the UK bothers entering – everyone hates us and we always enter rubbish songs. Ben Dalby’s Doctor Can would have been a better entry and some sexy nurses would surely have garnered a few votes. 
cranky
amused
mischievous
I think the problem is that the sort of look that would suit Smith best is … the sort of look that Tennant has been doing for the last four years.