Ending the week on a high
Jul. 19th, 2008 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bookzombieThere is no doubt this week has been a tough one. We are only a week now away from implementation of my latest project and several fairly major issues came out of the woodwork. Luckily one of them was for someone else to deal with and the other wasn't my doing but I managed to solve (yes, I can do a robust design for a new approach in 20 minutes thank you very much!)
This is pretty much business as usual. What has made it tough is that I've got deadlines coming up for my design for the next phase of the project which I've been getting stressed with the process of finding the time to write it. I got where I wanted to in the end but it was hard work. By the end of play yesterday I was feeling pretty much like I'd had several rounds in the ring with someone much bigger than me...
Having finished Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica, last night we watched The Golden Compass (on BluRay no less!). It zipped along nicely, in the main looked great (the polar bears were fine in close up but weren't always composited onto backgrounds very well). Dakota Blue Richards may an effective (if not tom-boyish enough) Lyra, Sam Elliott was smashing as Lee Scorsby and, unlike others, I liked Daniel Craig as Asriel. The weakest piece of casting was Nicole Kidman who was frankly just not charismatic enough for Mrs Coulter (aspennski put it at one point - apart from because it's Nicole Kidman, why is everyone doing what she says?) The chopped off ending was hugely obvious - leaving the story without an effective climax. But the main problem was that it was so compressed that it felt like a 'greatest hits' of the book. This served the character relationships particularly badly, but worse removed much of Lyra's agency - people kept on telling her what she needed to do next instead of her working it out. Any watcher who hadn't read the book was going to be fairly confused. So an interesting failure, I guess, but certainly had some moments that had me grinning like a loon.
Today I went out on a run with pennski (after her triumphant 35m time in the Race for Life last week) and I ran for 19 minutes without stopping, then after a little walking ran for another 11 minutes and shortly afterwards another 8 minutes. That's 38 minutes out of around 55 - probably more than I have run since I last had to do a cross-country at school. And most of the time I managed to find a comfortable rhythm so it didn't feel too difficult. My chest was fairly sore by the end but I didn't cough at all. So I am feeling very pleased with myself. Not that I'm going to be running any marathons any time soon...!
Anyway, off to a party in a little while!
This is pretty much business as usual. What has made it tough is that I've got deadlines coming up for my design for the next phase of the project which I've been getting stressed with the process of finding the time to write it. I got where I wanted to in the end but it was hard work. By the end of play yesterday I was feeling pretty much like I'd had several rounds in the ring with someone much bigger than me...
Having finished Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica, last night we watched The Golden Compass (on BluRay no less!). It zipped along nicely, in the main looked great (the polar bears were fine in close up but weren't always composited onto backgrounds very well). Dakota Blue Richards may an effective (if not tom-boyish enough) Lyra, Sam Elliott was smashing as Lee Scorsby and, unlike others, I liked Daniel Craig as Asriel. The weakest piece of casting was Nicole Kidman who was frankly just not charismatic enough for Mrs Coulter (as
pennski put it at one point - apart from because it's Nicole Kidman, why is everyone doing what she says?) The chopped off ending was hugely obvious - leaving the story without an effective climax. But the main problem was that it was so compressed that it felt like a 'greatest hits' of the book. This served the character relationships particularly badly, but worse removed much of Lyra's agency - people kept on telling her what she needed to do next instead of her working it out. Any watcher who hadn't read the book was going to be fairly confused. So an interesting failure, I guess, but certainly had some moments that had me grinning like a loon.Today I went out on a run with pennski (after her triumphant 35m time in the Race for Life last week) and I ran for 19 minutes without stopping, then after a little walking ran for another 11 minutes and shortly afterwards another 8 minutes. That's 38 minutes out of around 55 - probably more than I have run since I last had to do a cross-country at school. And most of the time I managed to find a comfortable rhythm so it didn't feel too difficult. My chest was fairly sore by the end but I didn't cough at all. So I am feeling very pleased with myself. Not that I'm going to be running any marathons any time soon...!
Anyway, off to a party in a little while!
