Work

I have one week left of my Easter holidays and I should probably start doing some work. I've surprised myself with how little studying I've done during this break. Usually I'll write out a simple schedule at the start and stick to it, though this time I really haven't been able to work very well.

But you're probably saying "It's the Easter BREAK." Well, when you're a Japanese Studies student that word doesn't mean very much.

A few days ago though, I actually got kinda stressed out about work and stuff, which was a bit odd. So I had a bit of a think about things, and it was quite enlightening. I kinda re-prioritised things in my head and realised I should probably tone down the amount of effort or energy I put into work/study. Obviously, studying is a good thing, but it can quickly become too much if you're not careful.

The whole work/leisure balance is a tough one, but I think I'm getting better at it.

A new phone

Quite unexpectedly, I now have a new mobile phone - my dad said I could have my brother's, after he kept using more minutes or texts than he was allowed! It's a Nokia 6300 - a nice upgrade from my 3220, which was starting to look a bit worse for wear. I realised I've had that one for 3 years now, as I got in in a promotion for Star Wars Episode III back in 2005.

But this new one is nice and shiny, has a big, clear display and a fairly good camera function, which means I'll probably hold off buying a digital camera for the moment.

I don't usually care too much about mobile phones, but this one is pretty cool, and it's a Nokia again, which is good. Plus, it's on a contract which my dad is paying for, so I won't have to buy any credit myself - all in all, a good deal! I'm just in that annoying transition phase between phones at the moment.

I sent off my Pokémon Gold cart to get a new battery today. After I'd phoned them up, I had to wait for Nintendo (or CoDEStorm, who deal with their customer service in the UK) to send me a reference sheet thing through the post, which you then attach to the front of your envelope and send back. It just has your case number and stuff on, but grants you free postage, which is nice.

The Transformers: The Movie - my review

Last night I watched The Transformers: The Movie, which is different to Transformers, which I talked about here. The Transformers: The Movie is the animated film released in 1986, and I picked it up a while ago from Tesco really cheaply, but only just got round to watching it. Well, I did try to watch it a few weeks ago, but the first couple of minutes turned me off. Let me explain.

This is probably one of the worst films I have ever seen.

I'll start with the visuals. The first thing you notice is the really low frame rate, which, when combined with the poor animation, makes it quite hard to tell what's actually happening on screen. There are some points in the movie when things look good, but these are few and far between and don't last long - the majority of the film looks terrible.

Next, the storyline is generic and dull, and quite hard to follow. Much like the recent live action movie, it feels like you're simply watching a series of big fights, with no real idea of what's going on. A lot of things happen that don't really make sense, and there's just a general feeling of confusion. Like when the Autobots suddenly make friends with the natives of the planet Junk and everyone starts dancing - it took me a moment there to figure out exactly what was happening. After a while I just stopped taking this movie seriously.

The script here is very poor, basically 85 minutes of bad one-liners. And the dialogue is so hard to make out that I couldn't understand what was being said much of the time. The voices were really quiet and heavily synthesised, which makes them sound kinda cool, but hard to decipher.

Also, I couldn't really tell the difference between the characters visually, or remember their names well. (As a side-note, the villain in this movie, Unicron, bears a huge resemblance to Galactus from the Silver Surfer)

However, I did actually really enjoy the music in this movie. Throughout much of the film there's a cool, synthy, hard rock soundtrack pumping in the background (just about every cartoon from this era seemed to have this musical style - it's so awesome). Sometimes instrumental, and sometimes with lyrics, the music here is great. There's even a song by "Weird Al" Yankovic! In fact, I might get the soundtrack because I enjoyed it so much.

I missed out on Transformers altogether as a kid, which may have affected my experience, but overall this movie is extremely bad. Yes, it was aimed primarily at kids, but can even they enjoy something as poor as this?

I do have to say though that I am now quite intrigued by the Transformers toy line. As a toy they are a really, really great concept, and I might actually look into getting my hands on some. I remember Beast Wars from when I was younger, but they weren't as cool, and were really complicated to transform, so didn't really work.

So, in conclusion, The Transformers: The Movie is not that great of an actual film at all, but it's kinda interesting, so you might wanna check it out anyway. And do excuse me as I go and search for some Dinobots on eBay...

The Beat

It's only been five months since I last went to see Neville Staple of The Specials, but I went to see him again at Corporation last night, this time supporting another two-tone ska band from the Midlands, The Beat.

I didn't actually know any of The Beat's songs up until a few days ago, but I enjoyed their set, especially Mirror In The Bathroom. One thing that comes across about their music is that it's so feel-good. Even when their songs were dealing with some of the social problems of the 80s it was still always upbeat and positive.

I think there are actually two versions of The Beat around now. One is officially called The New English Beat (the band I went to see last night) and has two of the original members, and the other is called The English Beat and is based in the US with one original member.

And what's with all the snow lately? It's been snowing loads, which is kinda weird for this time of year. It's meant to be spring now.

Also, Happy Easter!

The New English Beat MySpace page

Pokémon Gold problems

The other day I finally got round to making a start on Pokémon Gold, which I bought a few weeks ago for my GBA SP. I played for about an hour and then saved my game, but the next day when I turned the game on there was no option to continue from where I'd finished. I tried starting another game and saving, but when I turned on and off the save file was lost again.

I figured that the save battery inside the cart must have died. I remember my friend mentioning he'd lost the ability to save on his copy of Gold recently too, and after doing a bit of research this seems to be a universal problem with all Gold and Silver carts. Released in Europe in April 2001, I'd forgotten just how old these games are, and it seems that the save batteries all died around 2006. I believe this relatively short life span is due to the use of an oscillator which controls the in-game clock, using up battery power. So whilst versions of Pokémon Red and Blue were released before Gold and Silver, the battery has lasted longer because of the absence of an in-game clock (although the batteries in Red and Blue will go eventually - probably sometime soon, if not already).

But I wasn't about to give up on playing Pokémon Gold, and I found a really useful message board thread which details how to replace the battery yourself. The batteries they recommend are fairly expensive though, so I wondered if Nintendo could replace the battery for me instead.

Repairs for GBC games aren't mentioned on the Nintendo UK website, but I phoned up and found out that it would cost £15 to replace the battery, which is kinda expensive, but not too bad. The guy was quite nice about the whole thing, and understood the problem. I think it's good that they do provide this service, but maybe Nintendo should have foreseen the whole problem and done something about it, as 5 or 6 years isn't a very long life-span for a game as awesome as Pokémon Gold. It's also a shame for people who've built up a good collection of Pokémon to lose everything, although there are a couple of ways around this. You could either transfer all your monsters to a game such as Pokémon Colosseum, or it should also be possible to replace a save battery whilst the cart is hooked up to an external power supply, so as not to lose the save data, but that could be quite tricky.

Anyway, I'm gonna post my cart off to Nintendo soon, and I think it'll get sent to Germany to be fixed before being sent back to me within 3 weeks time. But I hope it's sooner than that - I really want to play this game!

Stop the War demo

Yesterday I went to London for the Stop the War demonstration after one of my mates asked me to go. I'd never been to anything like it before and I enjoyed it.

There were loads of short speeches in Trafalgar Square, including one from Tony Benn, before everyone marched around London in support of the removal of foreign troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and the prevention of an attack on Iran. We had to leave London at around 4pm though to get on our coach, and I think I would have liked to stay longer, not just for the demo, but because London is quite an interesting place. I used to live down South when I was younger, and we'd often visit the capital for a day out, and up until yesterday I hadn't been in years, so it was nice to go back.

Also, I got to stand behind C-list celebrity, Nell McAndrew in a queue at a service station we stopped at on the way home.

It's the Easter holidays for me now, so I have three weeks off from uni. Should be good.

Here are a couple of pictures that my mate took at the demo (I really should buy my own camera soon):

Drew Struzan

They just released a new poster for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which is coming out this summer. I'm looking forward to this as I really enjoy Indiana Jones films, and this one stars Shia LaBeouf, who I've liked ever since Even Stevens.

The guy who drew this poster is Drew Struzan, and he's done awesome artwork for some of my all-time favourite movies, including Back To The Future III, Zathura, E.T., Blade Runner and Star Wars (he seems to have a thing for drawing Harrison Ford I guess). In fact, I have all 6 posters he drew for the respective Star Wars films. I'd stick them up in my new bedroom, but there isn't enough wall space.

New Spheres of Chaos release

My band Spheres of Chaos just released our new EP, Stratospheria over at Pterodactyl Squad. We actually started recording this in June of last year, but we had a few problems getting the songs mastered which delayed the release. It's all done now though, and I'm really pleased with how it sounds.

Download Stratospheria here

Sheffield Carling Academy

So it seems that a new Carling Academy is opening in Sheffield, and I think this is great news. Sheffield has an abundance of smaller music venues and a few mid-sized ones like Corporation and The Leadmill, but the city sometimes misses out on some of the bigger bands who play at the Carling Academies elsewhere in the UK. It looks like the first gig is Reverend And The Makers on the 11th April, which I'm not too interested in, but hopefully there'll be some good gigs coming up in the near future.

Also, I think it's a great use of the former Roxy Nightclub building, which has been derelict for as long as I can remember, but is in a great location. I hear that bands such as The Jam and The Police used to play there, so it's cool that the venue is being resurrected in this way.

Carling Academy Sheffield

I break metal

A week since my last post?! Not that much has happened really. I've been enjoying listening to Controller 1 by Shnabubula though. This is some really awesome chiptune action that gets better with each listen; I recommend you check it out whether you know what chiptunes are or not. Also, the new SoC EP is just about ready to be released on Pterodactyl Squad. It's been ages since we actually recorded these 4 songs, but I'm really pleased with the result.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that one of my cymbal stands broke whilst I was playing my kit. Well, my other stand also broke in exactly the same place a couple of days ago! It's craziness. Either they were really bad stands or I'm playing too hard (by the way, you can never play too hard). But these stands are made of METAL! I've ordered two new ones, and until then I can't really play drums.