I’m back from the grading now and I think it went well (same for Chris too). I didn’t make any mistakes so the belt should be assured, the quality of the pass is down to how good my stances were etc.

The seminar before the grading was very interesting. Right from the start it was obvious that the 7th Dan taking the class could easily make a grown man cry. Me and Chris had the dubious honour of being used for the majority of the demonstrations. We would be shown how to execute the moves (usually evading a grab or punch) correctly and then everyone got to practice them in pairs.

All the moves were like the self-defense ones we sometimes practice in class. The only difference here was that there were usually extra moves tacked on the end for generally hurting your opponent. One talk about “not needing power, just skill and timing” involved the instructor hitting Chris in the groin whilst everyone around the room laughed – it was funny because it wasn’t them. I was also the happy recipient of a demonstration groin blow (this time from a kick) but I didn’t have long to think about it before I was elbowed in the nose.

There was no permanent damage to any of us and we all learnt some new moves. Why me and Chris were the lucky demonstrators most of the time I don’t know… either he thought we were useless or he thought we looked tough enough to take it – I am choosing to go with the latter 😉 Yeah right!

The desk-toy war that began a few weeks ago has now gained momentum.

Tonight is my blue-stripe Taekwondo grading. I am nervous about that and hope it doesn’t spoil my enjoyment of the self-defense class which is directly before it.

More news this evening/tomorrow.

Mostly random stuff today.

I have created a flickr page as I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. All my personal photos will still be stored at fuzzyfelt.net but I will probably put my weirder ones on flickr. At first I couldn’t understand why people were raving about del.icio.us but now I’m a convert… I am hoping the same will be true of flickr.

As I am still getting rid of the last remnants of man-flu… I was thinking what a good word phlegm is – it sounds exactly like it feels 🙂

Also, I run a site talking about the Alien films but am considering winding it down now. I was sent this link by Dan. If you have seen the special edition version of Aliens you will recognise this old bit of kit as the remote terminal for the sentry guns. I found it interesting anyway… particularly the bit about the military use:

“It was told to me that some of these were made for military use and included a built-in hard drive. A big thick X was pressed into the case over the hard drive. The purpose of this was to show the user where to shoot in case the computer was in danger of falling into enemy hands.”

Finally, have a look at opentopia you could spend hours here! Webcams seem to have got a lot better since I last had a look – they now seem to update every second.

Our cake won first prize! There were two categories – “Best name” and “Best Decoration”. Our cake won the top prize for decoration and a prize for best name went to “Socks and Sandals”. The fashion crime that is socks with sandals is committed by a handful of people at my place of work every Summer 🙁

Me and Jessica are just playing with the style sheet for the website but after that I will upload photos of our cake.

All new! – my blog is now translated for the street.

Got hold of Onimusha – Dawn of Dreams last night but only had a chance to play an hour of it. It is just as compelling as the other games in the series (3 was a bit wierd though). Not sure why hacking up demons (by continually bashing the square button) is so much fun – oh well! Recommend it to anyone who has played the older versions or if you just like slicing things. Otherwise, wait for Tomb Raider legend, I have played the demo and it plays really well – pity the full game is a bit short…. complete it and trade it.

The reason I only got a quick go on the game was that I had to ice a cake for a competition at work. The job structures are changing and we had to make a cake on a past or future theme related to this. Pictures of the cake will be up soon and I’ll report how we got on (Me and Matt made the cake) when prizes are announced!

Just a quick note about man-flu. It seems a lot of people are unsure as to what this actually means. On the way in to work Chris said he thought it meant a hangover. My understanding was more along the lines of this – a cold bad enough to cause you to stay in bed. No doubt the linked definition was written by a woman. I was very ill – honest!

I’ve been ill (with “man-flu”) the last few days but today I finally stayed awake long enough to watch a film. I have had the special edition of Alien³ and I have just got round to watching it. It was difficult to decide whether the re-cut was better as I am quite used to the first version now and watching a new one is a bit disorienting. One annoying thing was the lower quality of the audio on the extra scenes – there were also occasional “pops” when switching from extra scenes to the original scenes.

I think the film makes more sense with the extra scenes as there are more links back to the other films and a little more explanation for the actions of the characters. If you haven’t seen this film yet I would recommend you watch the special edition.

A few of us went to see Phantom of the Opera at her Majesty’s theatre last night. We had fantastic seats on the front row of the grand circle, right in the centre. Some of the stage effects were really impressive, with the highlight being the descent into the Phantom’s lair for the first time. I think you need to be higher than the stalls to get the full effect of the boat ride through the ‘swamp’.

The only bit I didn’t like was the bits of song where there were three people singing at once and I couldn’t follow what was being said. Extra credit for the girl in the monkey costume during the masquerade scene – a lot of impressive ballet type moves.

The only other show I have seen is Chicago… whilst I enjoyed both productions I would recommend Phantom as this was more of a spectacle. I enjoy the songs from Phantom as I remember playing them at high school when I was in the concert band. So which show will I be going to see next? Not sure to be honest, the concert band used to play tunes from Les Miserable so perhaps I will enjoy that one.

Another PS3 news digest…

The PS3 will be launched globally in early November 2006. However, rumoured screw-ups with the compiler mean the launch titles may fall well short of the console’s potential. There is still no confirmation on whether it will ship with a hard-drive or if this will be an extra. The controller for the PS3 will be shown at E3 in May but until then there will be no information on this front.

The PS3 will be region free in terms of games and so it is possible to release one version of a game for the whole world (with all the necessary data on the high-capacity Blu-Ray disk). Whilst this initially looks positive I think it unlikely that they will take the time to translate all the games released in Japan into English. So you can play the latest games from Japan but you cannot understand them 🙁

The Playstation Hub will launch with the PS3 and it remains to be seen how good this will be. All the usual buzz-words such as “episodic” and “bonus content” are flying around but time will tell if it can rival XBox Live. It is a tall order to get such a complicated service right the first time….

For a much more in-depth view of the latest PS3 news, go to GameSpot – my source for all this info.

This is a leaflet showing some toys that are supposed to be Pooh dressed in an animal costume. My sister has obtained three of them and the picture cannot do them justice – they look like an animal has swallowed the fictional bear… especially the guinea pig!

You can get them from vending machines and they come in little plastic pods. Apparently they are great for attaching to your mobile and you should collect them all. So what are you waiting for? If you are in Huddersfield there is a vending machine at the UCI cinema.

On closer inspection I found a web address. There are even more of them – who (apart from my sister) buys this stuff at a quid a pop?

Click on the pic to see a larger version.