At Last!!!

After a long labour our beautiful daughter, Aeryn, was born by Caesarean at 11:00am this morning weighing 10lbs and 2oz

Mother and baby are well and happy, despite Abby's needing an hour of surgery after the birth.

More pics will be on Flickr soon, but here's one to be going on with.

Incomiiing!

Abby was admitted to the Southern General today at 4pm to be induced.

When I left the hospital at 8 she felt like she was beginning to get period-like pains, so all seems to be progressing according to plan.

Leaving her in the place on her own,scared & beginning to be sore, was not fun and is not really a good way to be handling these things IMHO, but them's the rules.

By the time I next post we should be parents.

Make a fireball shooter - Boing Boing

Make a fireball shooter - Boing Boing


This looks like fun. Has to be a practical application for stage I can find for this.

How to hack RFID-enabled credit cards for $8 - Boing Boing TV

How to hack RFID-enabled credit cards for $8 - Boing Boing TV

And they said Chip & Pin were more secure.

We didn't believe them, but they said it.

Still waiting

No sign of the baby yet.

Fortunately the senior midwfe came into our 'consultant' appointment today & stopped the Student from giving Abby a Membrane Sweep. Essentially, they swirl a finger around the neck of the womb in the hope that it mixes up some hormones and stimulates labour. Except that you're only supposed to do it if the baby's head's engaged. Doing it now could have encouraged a breach birth.



Also, there's no sign of a start-date for the library, either. I'm getting rather pissed off now, especially having been summoned to fill in forms for an 'accelerated start'. Seems they can't do anything until they receive a copy of my new Disclosure form. I've had mine for a fortnight, so I don't know what's happened to theirs!

UK Law

Two lovely examples of why UK law manages to bugger up everyday life for the ordinary folk.

A couple of days ago we heard the quite scary story of how a North Sea oil platform was being evacuated due to a security scare. If Al Qaida could manage to organise an attack on such a facility I'd be much more worried about them than I am now. Then it turns out it was all a panic caused by a 23 year-old woman who worked on the thing having said she'd had a dream about there being a bomb on board. From what I've read this lead to a series of Chinese Whispers which created a panic. Almost funny until you then hear that the woman has been arrested, is being charged with breach of the peace and has been sent to a secure mental unit for 'evaluation'.

All because she had a bad dream and the folk who overheard her discuss it paniced and are now embarrassed by their over-reaction and waste of, reputedly, £1,000,000 in costs for the evacuation.

Case two sees a man who was attacked whilst sitting in his car by thug wielding a knife and a baton get three years for driving over him. Anyone stupid enough to attack someone who is sitting in a car takes the risk of getting run over whilst said person tries to escape. As long as he didn't back up for another go there should be no case to answer here.

I despair.

Review: Jumper

Hayden Christiansen playing a teenager with superpowers, now where have I seen that before?

Well, anyway, the point of this is to tell you if it's any good or not. Put succinctly, it is. True, it's not great, but it is fun, has well-executed effects, good action sequences, pretty protagonists and a good villain in Samuel L. Jackson. It's kind of like an Essex Girl, this movie. ie Easy to get into, pretty forgettable and none the worse or less entertaining for it.

Hayden does little different here than he does in his two Star Wars films, but it works well enough and the supporting cast do an admirable job. Annasophia (didn't that used to be two names not so long ago?) Robb outshines them all in a cameo as the younger version of the love interest, as she is beginning to do in all her appearances. Definitely a major talent developing there.

None of the characters die and there's a minor plot-twist/revelation that looks like it might make a meatier sequel and I hope it gets one. For some reason they felt the need to give Diane Lane pretty obvious blue-tinted contacts over her brown eyes. I guess they thought she needed to have the same eye colour as her son. Shame it didn't cross their mind to do the same for AnnaSophia, as her eyes are blue and Rachel Bilson's are very dark brown. Guess that didn't matter so much to the film makers...

Darkside Ravings - New Job 2

Darkside Ravings - New Job 2

Link to LJ page.

Review: Cloverfield

The Blair Witch Project has a lot to answer for. None of it good.

J.J. Abrams latest production has taken chunks of Godzilla and mixed them with Blair Witch's hand-held, reality tv style and web-buzz advertising and come up with a film equally annoying and devoid of interest.

There's a good premise here which seems to be looking at the action in Godzilla from the viewpoint of ordinary citizens not involved in the main action. As a result the main monster is almost kept to the status of featured extra. The fact that the creature looks so much like the CGI from Godzilla helps this impression along nicely as does our heroes being chased through the subway by small versions of the parent. The cast are pretty and the performances more than adequate, but Abby & I were both ready to leave by 20 minutes in and afterward we heard not one good comment from the assembled reviewers. Several did leave.

What's the problem? It's that hand-held style. Leave aside that we're supposed to believe that a slacker who didn't want to use a camcorder he's never handled suddenly becomes an obsessive photo-journalist who continues to film even as being attacked or running from explosions. Forget that we're supposed to believe a domestic cam-coder can film constantly for about 8 hours on one battery and an SD Card (I want an SD card that can hold that much footage!). Ignore that the military don't take it from them as they run around filming their operations or that it's apparently indestructible. Forget all the stupid rubbish you're just meant to ignore and all the rip-offs from other films and being unable to care about most of the characters & their yuppie lives & concerns. The BIG problem is that hand-held style.

There are times you can't even look at the screen it's so awful. In a thriller/horror movie the only thing that should make the audience look away is fear not motion-sickness induced by aimlessly waving the camera around. Long sequences pointed at the floor as people run, more lying at an awkward angle as the action flits incomprehensibly through the static frame or others pointed away from the action leaving only sound for a clue as to what's happening.

The style is meant to make one feel part of the action. It's meant to give a sense of immediacy and truth and use the power of imagination to heighten the tension. What it does is get very irritating very quickly and soon becomes an insurmountable barrier to connecting with the story. Did no-one watching the rushes spot this? Or were they all too busy feeling self-satisfied & clever? Hell, they couldn't even be bothered comin gup with a real title; they named it after the street the production offices were in. SHows the level of thought they actually put into this mess.

Total turkey. Avoid at all costs.

Happy New Year

What with a new job, re-doing the office and Abby having "baby-brain", we forgot to send the Xmas cards this year. Sorry.

Love & best wishes to you all!