Monthly Archive for September, 2009

Bullet, For My Bloody Valentine

Contructed on 09/21/2009 in Movies/Films and Reviews. 0 Comments

Oh dear! Just oh dear. This film can’t be explained any other way. What they tried to do is create a half-way decent horror film and they almost succeeded. The problem is this; the person in charge has clearly seen a horror film before and is aware of the concepts but took those ideas and then decided to ignore a good few of them. Here is a small breakdown list.

1. Music – Suspenseful music score is key to a good horror film and decent tracks as background music can make a good horror film, however this one jumps around from eerie violin screechy tracks to a mysterious ‘plodding track’ as an example, about 25 mins into the film there is a music score that you expect to find in Harry Potter, this was a bad choice. It was building up to a satisfying bludgeoning from the crazy spelunking-equipped, gas-mask-wearing, pickaxe weilding maniac wielding music, however, sounds like it comes straight out of a PG rated film and is no good.

2. Atmosphere – Yes it is creepy, and creepy throughout. For the first time it’s quite a thrill to be trying to work out who is the killer. Yet again though it seems to drop the horror route and go down a slightly comedic road. It also seems to be going through a checklist of classic horror themes like sudden noises, shreiking, creepy looking ‘bad guy’, lots of running around and a part where some characters manage to trap themselves. It does a lot but only very mediocrely.

3. Story – It seems to be going so well for the first quarter but then it seems to drag on for ages, dancing around a silly plot that works better as a love story than a horror, later on it feels like it’s trying to finish itself off insanely quickly. I don’t want to give anything away in case you want to watch the film but what I will say is that it finishes with a ridiculous abruptness, which is fine if you plan to make a follow-on but in my opinion it doesn’t have enough value to carry it on.

It’s an hour and 40 odd minutes of Americans getting killed in rather nasty ways by a man wearing mining gear and a gas mask. It’s worth a watch but only for the entertainment value of gore. If you want a serious scare, you could do far better. It will startle but that’s all you’ll get. You could do worse though. Rent it, don’t buy it because it’s simply not worth it. Maybe the 3D version makes it better but, I highly doubt it.

Remembering children that reviews are subjective to personal opinion and shouldn’t let it bother you at all. If it does you can freely go and run straight into a flow of traffic on the M5!

Martin

By Martin

The Perfect Storm (A Story in Parts)

Contructed on 09/21/2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Part 1

No this is not a review on the film, this is a more in-depth account into my own fishing experiences as mentioned in PMRadio. It started on Sunday the sixth after coming home from a training weekend with the ATC andcame back home to hear my uncle (Budgie) ask what I was up to the following morning. Now me, being the lazy sod that you all know and love, said that I wasn’t actually doing anything. “You are now!” came the reply and thus began my epic journey into fishing. “I’ll get you up at 5:30, we’re off fishing.” Stunned, all I could do was look at him with amazement and say “Okay, that sounds great.”

Monday 05:30

“C’mon let’s go fishing!” A head peered around my bedroom door just as my alarm started to go off next to my head. I blinked at the light pouring into my room and realised what an unnatural time this was to wake up. I nodded and he walked off leaving the door open so I couldn’t go back to sleep. I trudged out of bed and stumbled into my work jeans and a scraggly t-shirt. I walked down stairs and was presented with a jumper and a strange looking top with waterproof arms; “You’ll need these, it’s gonna be cold outside” he said it with a smile promising frozen limbs and getting soaked. I put them on and then got my boots on as uncle made the tea for the flask. Tea is vital to fishing, it’s very important that you get enough tea in you. All kitted out we pucked up two buffs (orange marker bouys) and walked down to the harbour. My journey has begun.

06:00 – 7:00

On the boat now and he was right, it was cold; my nipples agreed. I’d warm up in a bit though. We ran through all the checks; electrics – check, radio – check, oil – check, diesel – needs filling. So we fill her up and then I run up and my uncle gives me a brief on using the crane as we needed to but two bins of nets on the boat. So he positions the boat and I lower the bins down with the crane, not too taxing for a first task. then I climb onto the boat and set off out of the harbour. Nice and calm, flat sea for a first trip. However visibility is poor due to fog; does that matter? Not at all, we have GPS and he has 22 years experience, I’m in safe hands. Tea is priority as we get to the outer harbour so I get told to steer the boat in a straight line as he makes the tea. This is a new thing for me and takes a few moments to work out how the tiller works and in relation to the gauges, compass and readouts on various screens around the ‘cockpit’. I thought that I would be doing stuff like being the tea boy and all the crappy little jobs but here I am skippering the boat. It turns out that skippering a boat with no experience in the fog is about as easy as trying to pilot a Harrier without eyes. It turns out that if you want to turn left you pull/push (depending where you sit) the tiller to the right and vice versa.

08:00 – 10:00(ish)

After a bit of chugging along we decide where to shoot the nets and visibility is still poor. He gets set up and ties on the end-weights as I possition the boat and keep it on a bearing cos I can’t see bugger all. He comes back aft and shows me how the GPS system works and how to read it. “You’ll need those numbers in a bit. When I shout ‘Numbers’, you remember what’s on the GPS screen.” I can do that; remember 4 numbers, that can’t be hard. Turns out it’s not hard at all. Keeping it on the heading and then we shoot the nets. Over the side they go! “Numbers” he shouts as he throws the last end-weights in the drink and I look at the GPS and memorise the numbers. “What were they?” Budgie comes back and I recite them back to him and he writes them in his black book which contains tallys and GPS readouts. This just lets us know where the nets are to come pick them back up. We then chug off and shoot the other load of nets. It’s amazing to watch as Budgie sorts it all out, I just wander when I will get the chance to do more, but I’m happy steering for the moment. We point back to the harbour and I take it in as far as the entrance to the harbour and Budgie does the rest. Tricky business getting into the harbour and I have much to learn yet.

10:30 to 12:00

Moored up now and we have a few odd jobs to do before we can go home. Tidying up the boat being one of them and then sorting out a punt that was recently re-fibreglassed. Not really much I could do so I was able to go home! Roll on tomorrow, I get to learn more tomorrow I hope.

That was the first day of fishing, I liked it, it was new and interesting. I need to write quite a bit for the next few days while it’s still fresh in my mind.

Write more soon.
Martin

By Martin

NO NO NO NO NO!

Contructed on 09/20/2009 in Rants. 0 Comments

Just no! This is September! There is no friggin’ need for there to be Christmas adverts on the television already! What the hell is going on? It’s in supermarkets too they have the little chocolates you hang on the trees and Father Christmas shaped lights and tinsel and allsorts Why does it start so early? Its just under 4 months to Christmas!

You know why this is annoying? It means I have to start complaining about it earlier too when I could be spending my valuable time writing some other rubbish! However there is one thing that is good about it I suppose and it’s the fact that the worst thing about Christmas is the pressure to spend money on presents, cards, decorations, chocolate, beer (good thing) blah blah blah; but, at least with this being in the shops early it gives people chance to spread the cost over a longer time. This is of course countered by the fact that Guy Fawkes night hasn’t even bloody come yet, there is another expense, but a good one as it is an amazing opportunity to get sozzled and eat a lot of barbecued foods.

Christmas, just to get back on topic, has, over the years become completely destroyed by commercialism and the whole idea of Christmas has been lost under waves of adverts and sparkly lights and expense. Why can’t it just go back to the good old days where, certainly in my family, we’d get absolutely everyone from the family and close friends over, pack the house with good food, a few presents and spend the next few days catching up and joking and having a truly wonderful time without having this overbearing feeling that this holiday was hyped up by the media and manufacturers of various material objects. Sure, that side of things is great for kids, but what happened to tradition? No one goes carol singing any more, I never see  proper nativity plays being held in every church and school in our area or anything and it’s quite sad. You know what? I’m going to get a group of mates and go carol singing this year and raise money for charity!  I don’t care if I sound like a dying moose in a submarine I’m singing!

Until next time,

Martin

By Martin

Fixed! We are fixed!

Contructed on 09/17/2009 in Site Related. 0 Comments

Haha! So with some fiddling and determination, I have finally sorted out the blog! Hooray for me! Well, maybe not so much praise as all I have really done is changed the theme and fixed the banner, but there we go… Either way it’s all working now so the enjoyment can continue.

Pretty much what I tried to do before is make the old theme work properly for me but I ended up failing… Badly! By this I mean that I screwed it up so much it looked like a page out of notepad. Never fear though, I was on the case in seconds trying to make it better, but actually deleted more and messed the whole thing up worse than it already was so I had to change the theme really…

Stuff to come is bringing back the favicon and making the whole thing look nicer. Going to try and fix my links and stuff now so hopefully that will work…

*moments later*

With that now fixed I can continue laminating things and get back to work. Epic post still being written and I’m thinking I may have to cut it down a bit, it’s getting a bit huge now. Ahh, sod it I’ll just make more parts to it. All good fun here.

Speak again soonish!

Me

By Martin

My hamster deleted my blog post…

Contructed on 09/16/2009 in General Stuffage and Site Related. 0 Comments

Okay, so that’s a little bit of a lie; mainly because I don’t actually own a hamster but there we go. Pretty much we have been having a few technical difficulties here at pillowmint. The first one being no internet and so therefore no posts. This is being rectified as I am writing them at home and bringing them in and copy-pasting it into the blog! Woo! Problem solved! Now come to think of it, that is the only difficulty. The other ones were fixed today so no issue there.

You may have noticed that by typing www.pillowmint.co.uk it redirects straight to here. I promised it would and now it does. Forums are gone, front page is gone, now I’m spending time pimping this place out. Not muuch more to say at the moment but I am working on an epic post which shall be in parts. Haha!

Right, time to bugger off home and eat!

Speak t’y'all soon,

 

Martin

By Martin