Category Archives: Personal - Page 2

Human Target

Posted by on January 9, 2011 No comments

Those that know me, know I have a thing for Film & TV scores and I have done since I was a child (in part thanks to the music of Tom & Jerry cartoons, Looney Tunes cartoons and the tapes of Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Ghostbusters that I got from my dad).

Of late most of the scores I have been buying have been expanded re-issues of old scores (like Star Trek 2, 3 & 5, Batman, Batman Returns, The Edge & Home Alone) and premiere releases of classic scores (Back to the Future, Amazing Stories, Black Sunday), very little though has been recent stuff (though I have a couple of things in my Amazon basket from this last year).

One exception was the CD set by LaLaLand Records of Bear McCreary’s score to the first season of Human Target. I bought it based on my enjoyment of his Battlestar Galactica scores, I thought what the heck I’d take a chance.

Turns out it was well worth it, there is some great if not fantastic music. For instance Baptiste, Tango Fight (both CD 2), Theme from Human Target (Long version – CD 1), The New Christopher Chance (CD2). You can check out some of Bear’s favourite music from the show over on his blog.

Check out the samples for the score over at Bear’s blog. Its highly recommended and a steal at $24.95 for 3 CD’s.

Now as an aside, I’ve since started watching the show based on the strength of the music. Season 1 was very enjoyable, the interplay between the 3 leads (Chance, Winston, Guerrero) is fun and the action was generally superb.

Unfortunately the second season brought in a number of changes in an attempt to draw in new viewers and appeal to a wider audience (say, I dunno, women) and save money. Gone are many of the fun fight sequences, replaced with more “drama” and interplay with 2 new characters (both women, a young sassy lass [Ames] and a rich business woman who is now Chance’s partner [Ilsa]) who don’t really add much and indeed both are kinda annoying (Ilsa who week in & week out complains about the method’s Chance and his team employ, after 7 episodes this hasn’t improved much with her going to the State Department after someone is kidnapped and then tries to get her private jet turned around in the air) even if I like the actresses. Also gone is some of the magic between the original 3 leads, with Guerrero seeming to became a shadow of his season 1 self. One other change was the main producer (indeed creator) of the show stepping back and someone new coming in in charge.

The most annoying change of the 2nd season was not asking Bear to come back and score the show. In an effort to save money (as having a new orchestral score each episode is expensive) they decide to go with a new composer (Tim Jones) who has done the music for the last 4 years of Chuck.

Now his music there has been quite serviceable and I’d quite like a CD of it, there are some nice themes but his music for Human Target has been lacklustre at best. At times it can best be described as passable, the rest of the time it is just

His new theme for the show is however dreadful. It starts out as a distance relative to Bear’s season 1 theme and then after about 15 seconds it descends into noise. Gone is the unique identity that Bear gave the show and leaves you with a theme that is both very generic and doesn’t make you want to watch the show.

This is the Season 1 theme:

(direct link: Season 1 theme)

and this is the season 2 intro:

(direct link: Season 2 theme)

Oh yeah, one other thing I didn’t like about Season 2′s new direction, dropping the plot point that was setup at the end of season 1 where Winston had been captured and The Old Man was going to help Chance to rescue him. I don’t particularly have a problem with how Winston was saved (if yes a little quickly at the beginning of the ep) but I do feel a little short changed.

[Edit]

Though of a couple of other things that bug me about the second season, for instance the new high tech computer equipment provide by Ilsa like the funky computer table.

Ep 8 of S2 was written by the creator of the show but still doesn’t help (Ilsa “oh my god your stealing from him”), if Ilsa & Chance end up kissing by the end of the episode I’ll be very disappointed.

Btw the shake up of the show means it has both more a Leaverge and a Chuck feel to the show.

Mareike Update

Posted by on August 28, 2010 No comments

Mareike playing in hospital

Mareike playing in hospital

I’ve had a few questions asking how Mareike is and I promised an update. I figured this blog post would be best to get the general information out :)

Mareike herself is fine though slightly more clingy to mummy than normal, in part because she got to spent a fair chunk of 2 days with just mummy.

The prognosis so far is that she possibly has “Focal Epilepsy” which is a partial form of epilepsy. On the Wednesday Mareike had an EEG done where she was supposed to be being active and puffing lots, in part to try and trigger what might have happened.

When they looked at the results later they noticed some odd signals in her right occipital lobe. This coupled with a number of similar ish incidents over a year ago (some of you may remember my panicked Tweets/Facebook updates when she was between 1.5 & 2.5yo) and a couple of video clips of her being quite vacant and out of character (again from that time period) they are going to investigate further.

On Tuesday they will be doing an MRI scan, for which she will be getting a general anaesthetic, to see if they can see anything in there that might be a cause or trigger. She will then go see a Doctor a few weeks later for another EEG (about an hour) where they will repeat the under strain test and we will can discuss where we will go forward in terms of monitoring / treatment.

For now they are happy for her to carry on as normal, though maybe taking it slightly easier and we should keep an eye out for any unusual behaviour (like vacantness).

I won’t speak for Bob but I’m happy with how things are at the moment, we know there is something to watch for and there are steps being taken to investigate further. The care at Mariahilf in Hamburg) was great, as were the ambulance drivers who took us there as they waited for me to get to the Kindergarten to go with Mareike to the hospital.

Plus side for Mareike out of all of this, other than the extra time with just mummy, was that the ambulance staff gave her a rather cute & cuddly teddybear.

Doctor Who

Posted by on May 1, 2010 No comments

Assuming the good man was the Doctor, did he possibly ask River to kill him?

She doesn’t seem like she would do it out of malice, which suggests she had to do it for need and her sentence suggests it might have been a permanent death for the doc but as the doc says at the end he can unwrite time.

(just recording thoughts for posterity)

Batman arkham Asylum

Posted by on April 27, 2010 No comments

In a rare case I’ve managed to complete a game. I have many for the PC that site barely touched for various reasons.

For the Xbox 360 i got a year ago I’ve resisted really buying any games. Partly for fear of not playing them, partly for not seeing many that i want to sink huge amounts of time into.

To date I’ve bought 3 games, 2 off the Xbox Arcade and 1 store bought

1) Explosion Man
2) Alien Breed Episode 1
3) Batman: Arkham Asylum

I’ve just finished the main game of Batman:AA

Challenges: 2%
riddles: 171:240
Upgrades: 19/20
Character Bios: 29/42
Completed: 76%

It was a lot of fun, easily the best license adaption I’ve played; particularly of Batman.

It’s not perfect with things like mashing the A button to open gratings and using the Batclaw and i hit one bug that meant i lost about 900xp which was a little annoying.

Now the question is will i go back to get the rest of the Riddler Trophies. Seems a but sucky running around an empty asylum. Wouldn’t fit but would be nice to have some life or challenges there.

Will definitely get the sequel when it comes out but first i want to get Star Wars The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sitg Edition for the 360 but it appears to be hard to get (cheaply).

Back luck with Apple’s 24″ LED Cinema Display

Posted by on July 1, 2009 2 comments

[Was a Verbatim copy of post I made to the forums on MacRumors, now with Addendum]

I appear to be having bad luck with the 24″ LED Cinema Displays, I am on my 4th new one and debating getting a 5th or giving up and getting a refund.

This has been ongoing since late May, I ordered an ACD to go with a new 17″ MBP and kept it even though I returned the MBP.

Number 1) Bad Back light bleed

After hooking it upto my Mac Mini in the interm, I was watching Star Trek 6 and noticed it was a bit “light” along the top and bottom borders. Later in the evening, I darkened everything off and ran LcdTest and found that there was quite bad bleed from the backlights. Some [URL="http://gallery.me.com/tarasis#100065"]photos[/URL] here if your interested.

(Technically there was also a settling creaking sound from it when it was initially warming up each time I first started using it. I haven’t noticed this with the other 3 and it didn’t really bother me that much)

So sent it back and got

Number 2) Had 3 dead pixels

So promptly arranged an exchange and got

Number 3) Speck of dust between screen & LCD

Its not bad, but to me quite noticeable, particularly as its about 4 inches in from the left and about 4 / 5 inches down from the top. If you move a light window around its easy to spot. If it had been within an inch of the edges of the screen I might have said keep it (and my wife would have preferred me too). So onto Apple again and we now have

Number 4) 3 black marks (poss 2 black pixels and one dust) and one stuck Green Pixel

So kind of excited to get this one today, had high hopes. Quickly unpacked it, hooked up the 13″ MBP, ran LCDTest and low & behold in the bottom left there was a faint black speck that wouldn’t disappear and then 3 larger (2 black & 1 green) spots towards the top middle right which where particularly noticeable on the red screen of LCDTest and actually also on the default background. As you can imagine, highly disappointed.

So, at the moment I have both number 3 & 4, though 3 is due to be picked up by TNT tomorrow and 4 only arrived today but I’ve already emailed the support person I have been dealing with about the problem.

I am not sure what to do, as I said my wife wants me to just keep number 3, I am inclined to try one last time as I really like the screen & its handiness regarding cables, webcam and so on (speakers are a bit meh to be honest) but I also at a point of just jacking it in and getting a refund.

I could keep the 3rd one but I struggle with the idea of spending that much money to have a speck of dust under the glass thats always visible on light backgrounds. Its a lot of money to not be “perfect”.

To be fair to Apple, the sales / support people I have been dealing with have been wonderful, very helpful, generally courteous if a little slow to respond (there was a week between the last replacements, despite them being emailed with a few hours of receiving the new one). Each time, so far, its been do I want to try another one or just get a refund and they’ve sent the replacement out before getting the old one back.

Its been quite frustrating to have not had a screen to work with all this time as I have boxed them up immediately after finding the problems. With 4 cats & 2 children around I didn’t want to tempt fate and introduce a new problem

PS There was a “minor” hiccup on their part, for the 3rd ACD they booboo’d and initially put the order through as a replacement 17″ MBP. The only reason anyone noticed was that I phoned up wondering with the RMA email & the order email mentioned a MBP & not an ACD. They managed to finally put a hold on it a couple of hours before it was due to be delivered to me.

[Addendum]

I should note as well that up till now I haven’t had a problem with Apple’s other Hardware (Airport Extreme, Airport Express, iPhone 2G, iPhone 3GS, iPod 5G, 2 Apple Alum keyboards one wired & one wireless, Late 2006 MacBook & 13″ MBP) . Its only this 24″ display and it worries me a little as we where considering the possibility of an iMac instead. I don’t want to go through the same shenanigans again.