2 months!

Wow, didn't realise it'd been two months since I last posted here.

As usual not alots gone on, just job hunting and I've taken up a spot of photography, although I'm only using a compact digital camera at the moment, it's a Pentax Optio A20. Not a bad camera but not the best thing for what I wanna do.

You'll find all of my pics on my Flickr page, here. I've also created a blog for video's I've captured in SKATE 2 from EA, which you can find here.

I've got an interview at the Job Centre tomorrow about Job Seeker's Allowance, it's also a means towards making finding a job a little easier in the crazy economical crisis we're all having, or at least I hope so anyway, 4 years out of the game is a bloody long time, especially for someone who has no qualifications above GCSE level.

Me cook? OK I'll try

So the missus has been doing twelve hours shifts this week. This means she's hardly seeing our daughter and I'm having to cook, something that is usually left to her because, well, because she's good at it, where as I'm not confident.

I decided to try my hand at a stew, I figured it was pretty much prepare everything and chuck it in a pot on the hob and leave till its cooked, obviously stirring every so often. We do have a slow cooker, but it doesn't seem to thicken too well in there.

So anyhow, the stew turned out fairly well in the end (this was Tuesday evening), good enough for Missus to request I make another tonight, well, maybe she didn't want me to try my hand at making a curry just yet...

So here's what I did

440g diced beef (although substituted for diced pork tonight as the supermarket had no beef left)
2 medium carrots
3 large potatoes
1 parsnip
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
500ml of beef stock
400ml of chopped tomatoes
220ml of Guinness Draught
salt, pepper and herbs depending on your taste.

I cut all the carrots, parsnips and potatoes up into small chunks and chucked them straight in the pot.

Make a small mix of plain flour, pepper, herbs and salt then lightly covered the cubes of beef/pork in it.

Shallow fried in olive oil the beef/pork until it was slightly brown, then fried the onion and garlic alongside the meat until the onions were slightly soft, and chucked them in the pot.

Added the tin of chopped tomatoes, Guinness and Beef Stock and left on a low light for 2 and a half to 3 hours, or until I was satisfied with its thickness.

I then served it inside a large Yorkshire Pudding each (I cheated her and used Aunt Bessy frozen ones) with a chunk of French Baguette for dipping.

Admittedly on Tuesday, I burnt it a bit so some of the taste was lost,I was trying to find a heat on the stove that would cook it in time for Missus getting home, but ended up partially rushing it a little too much, luckily it was still edible, but as I stated earlier in this post, it must of been nice enough for her to ask for it again (either that or she was trying not to hurt my feelings), I enjoyed cooking and eating it anyway, which is a rarity as usually cooking seems to put me off my food. I even managed to cut and cook the onions without being blinded (I cannot cope at all with the stingy eyes onions give me).

"I'm a horsey"

Children's imagination's make me laugh. After waking Sprog up this morning, she insisted on bringing some of her My Little Pony's down for breakfast before I took her to school, this was fine, its normal for her to do this, although I wasn't expecing a whole rucksack full of ponies.

So anyhow, after saying goodbye to them, and goodbye to her mother who had only just returned from work, we headed off to school, which is about 10-15 minutes walk away. Immediately she shouted out "I'm a horsey" and proceeded to half skip, thus creating a sort of trotting motion, down the drive and this continued all the way to the school, even when I was holding her hand she'd be doing this. If she saw another child from her class, or the class next door (who are in the same "year" as her) she would shout "Neigh" at them.

When we arrived at school, she also decided to declare to her teacher that she was a horse before trotting and neighing through the door to take off her coat...

After spending so long surrounded by videogames as my main source of entertainment medium, I decided it was about time I branched out again and started enjoying movies more. This has resulted in weekly visits to Blockbuster and keeping an eye on a few movie trailers. I'll get to some short blurb about the films I've seen recently (or at least the ones I remember...) in a post tomorrow as I've had a couple of drinks this evening and just want to get off to bed and play some Persona 3 whilst Missus is on her night shift (9pm till 7am poor woman...).

But for now, I'll just post a bunch of trailers for films I'm liking the look of that are due out this year.

First up is Franklin, which I've linked to the trailer for as the embedded video wouldn't fit onto the blog...

Which looks wonderfully dark, oppressive and just down right fascinating.

Then there's 9, a film that started off life as a animated short that the great Tim Burton has put his name to as Producer in order to bring a longer version to the big screen. Admittedly, I've not seen the short (thats for tomorrow) but I think you'll agree that this looks like the sort of thing Burton would put his name to.



There's also Coraline, by the director of one of my favourite films The Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Sellick (Tim Burton was the producer of it), it has a sort of Psychonauts (a videogame by Tim Schafer's studio Double Fine, its available on PS2 and XBox, aswell as PC, infact you can play it for free on PC via GameTap).


Coraline Trailer - For more amazing video clips, click here

Next up, Valkyrie. Now I'm not really bothered about most films with Tom Cruise in, Top Gun's alright but would of worked just aswell without him, Rain Man was excellent but that was mainly down to Dustin Hoffman rather than Cruise and I quite enjoyed Steven Speilberg's adaptation of The War of the Worlds despite going into it not wanting to do so, but the fact that this is based (probably very loosely knowing Hollywood blockbusters) on the true story of a group of German soldiers who plotted to assassinate Adolf Hitler and those in ranks immediately below him makes it utterly fascinating.


Valkyrie - Trailer - Click here for funny video clips

Lastly, this is the big one for me, I only read Alan Moore's graphic novel towards the end of last year after Warner Bros. sent me a copy when I recieved review code for LEGO Batman on XBox 360, but I thoroughly enjoyed Watchmen and am now really looking forward to seeing what is done with the movie, thats if Fox let Warner Bros release it...


Watchmen Trailer - More amazing videos are a click away

Oh what a night...

Had barely any sleep last night, and there's only one reason for it. Missus was ill, really rather ill. Unsurprising really, she's developed an intolerance to fast food, which is great, kind of.

So anyway, last night she was watching Casualty, we'd been out in town during the day and had paid a visit to Pizza Hut. She had a Salmon Pasta Bake thing and a couple of slices of my pizza, plus a small bowl of salad from the salad bar (she hadn't had any breakfast, so yeah, she was starving). Around the time Casualty started we were both getting hungry again, Sprog had had her tea (after eating a rather large Chicken Wrap meal and salad she just wanted some sandwiches...) and was in bed asleep. There was nothing in the freezer that I had the ability to cook and Missus was resting her feet after doing a group of 12 hour shifts at the hospital during the week. So, I thought "hmm baked potato from the 'Baked Potato Shop'" which was all well and good if their last delivery time was 9pm but they'd taken the phone off the hook at 8:30pm leaving us with the choice of going hungry, me running out in the cold to Sainsbury's to find something to cook, which would of left us eating some time after 10pm or phoning Andreas Takeaway for a a burger and kebab (she had the latter).

Unfortunately, Missus' stomach deciced that, whilst watching the second Death Note movie, that it wasn't too happy with what she'd eaten, and she spent half the night sat on the toilet with her head in a bucket. When that wasn't happening, she was trying to sleep whilst having an emergency bowl at close hand, right in the gap between our heads, so I spent half the night awake in fear that I would be thrown up on. Luvvly Jubbly.

Suppose it serves us right for going down that route and wasting money on crap food...

Looking forward to tonights Bangers N Mash with Guinness Gravy (and yes, thats gravy with guinness draught in)

The new Doctor

So yesterday the BBC announced who will be replacing David Tennant as the Doctor in Doctor Who when his "reign" (so to speak) is over near the end of 2009.

All sorts of names were banded about, as you'd expect, and none of them stood out to me, one in particular left me stating that if they chose him (Hugh Grant), I would refuse to watch the show ever again (as I assume many right thinking people would) as I cannot stand the pompous git. However, the producers of the show have gone for a guy who is set to become the youngest ever Doctor on the show, a guy called Matt Smith, whom I have no opinion on whatsoever as I've not seen anything (to my knowledge) with him in.

However, from the short interview he gave on Doctor Who Confidential last night, he seems to know what is expected of him and the producers and writers seem to be looking forward to working with him, so thats a very positive point. He also seemed incredibly enthusiastic about the role, which is also a good sign.

Heres his Wikipedia page if you're interested in having a look at what he's done.

Unsuprisingly, some have stated their opinion that he's going to ruin the show etc etc, and I can't really comment on that for reasons I've stated above, where as if it had of been Grant (which the bookies were classing as an outside bet) we'd of known that the Doctor would of been a bumbling, yet some how arrogant, twit with an accent that has become the stereotype British accent, even though its far more forced than that of the Royal family.

So good luck to Matt Smith as the new Doctor, good luck to Steven Moffat as the new head writer of the show and I look forward to seeing what will be done in 2010. In the mean time, I can't wait for Tennants final four episodes that are to be dotted throughout the year, he's been an excellent watch during his time as the Doctor!

Biking

I've just been watching the first two episodes on the Long Way Down set I got for Christmas. This is the one where Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman go from John O'Groats in Scotland, to Cape Town in South Africa, and something just struck a chord.

I really enjoyed their first trip, Long Way Round, which I watched on BBC2 and read the book to, and it got me itching to learn to ride a bike. However, this time, they talked more about "just going for a ride with my mates" kind of stuff and it really just made me want to learn to ride all the more, not just because its something I've always wanted to do, but also because my Dad's 60 now and still riding regularly (he owns a Suzuki GS500 2006 registration, I think, and a Norton Dominator 650NS or something that was reconstructed and originally dates back to the '60's).

He frequently goes on trips with his mates, taking the Dommi (as he calls it) if the weathers nice, or the Suzi when its wet, but hes never had a family member to go with as my Auntie has decided my Uncle is far too old to consider riding a bike (I think he's at least 5 years older than my Dad, not sure though). My brother's never really been too bothered about motor vehicles, he drives, but he see's them as more of a means of transport, where as I genuinely love them. I grew up on the circuit really, with many memories of my Dad taking myself and my younger sister to watch Motorcycle races, and I've sat in a fair few "nice" cars (a handful of Ferrari's and a Lamborghini Countach are the highest points) and sat on many racing bikes (including one of the bikes Kevin Schwantz rode during his World Championship winning season in, I think, 1994).

So, I've now got one thing in my list I want to do with my life for definate, and thats to go on a trip with my Dad. Even if its just to Matlock Bath just outside of Nottingham, which I've been to many times as a kid in a car, once on a drunken trip with some mates in a coach and once on the bike of my Dads previous Suzi which I really really enjoyed.

I know I can ride, to a degree, as I rode a 50cc Monkey Bike around a small dirt course when I was about 8, but that was a long long time ago no (I'm now 24) and it wasn't on the roads, plus it was only a Fifty. I'm not looking at anything big, but it'll still be expensive to do, and its weighing that dream against the practicality of learning to drive a car (something both Missus and I want to do), which in reality, should come first. My Dad's always tried to make me believe that he doesn't want any of us to learn to ride because of the dangers, but I still remember the pride on his face when he saw me on that fifty and really enjoying myself and can imagine how much he'd love to just go for a ride with his son, with my family and my Step Mum in a car behind so it can be a family thing too, and I'm just scared that, considering his age, that I won't get to do that with him even though, as far as I'm aware anyhow, he's in good health and not looking 60 years old at all.