Friday, July 31, 2009
Unemployment and ehh, now what?
OK that's me now officially unemployed, my contract with Clydebank College has now ended so I'm now as they say "back on the job market". I have to say the College could not have picked a worse time to make me redundant given the credit crunch and current climate, but hopefully I will be able to find something pretty soon. I actually don't mind being employed for a bit as its good to have your own sense of freedom and not have to answer phones or do typing etc, but after a bit it becomes a bit impractical and you need to think of money. So I'll see what turns up....
On the bright side in regards to the Patter rehearsals for Abigail's Party they are coming along very nicely and its also been good to keep busy with the acting as I've become unemployed. So we've pretty much got Act 1 and 2 worked out for blocking and lines are pretty much all learnt, it just remains to polish things up and get use to working with props, get our costumes sorted out etc, and soon hopefully we will all be set.
OK if you are not a fan of tech stuff skip this bit, even better just don't read it if you are a technophobe:
On a different note I recently splurged some money (well from my last wages, and thankfully Pixmania did refund me at last!!) on a new LCD TV, I've been agonising over this for the last couple of months as I hastily purchased a Panasonic 32" LCD TV back at the end of May, and while it was a very good I was quite disappointed in its peformance with black levels, meaning the TV couldn't handle darkly lit scenes in movies or TV shows very well. LCDs cos they are backlit with such bright panels can have a tendency to bleed some colour out so in darker scenes you can be left with a tinge of greyness round the edges, and with the Panny it had wall to wall greyness in the dark scenes, when someone walked across the screen in a dark scene the picture would go from black to misty grey! OK this all makes me sound like a nerdy technophile and to extent that's true (I own up!!) most people wouldn't really care about such matters and neither should I, but all the same, I decided to hunt for something better. So after much hunting and scouring the net and shops, I opted for an LG (again), my previous TV was an LG so I figured why not go for them again, so I got a very nice 32" LG 32LH7000 set, which I'm happy to say has been great, the colours, detail and yes those dreaded blacks are all excellent, and its a very good all rounder for SD and HD sources. So I can sit and revel in Blu-ray and DVD heaven once again. (OK nerd mode off).
Anyway I'm off just now once again, time to watch some Hellboy II on Blu-ray.... :-)
On the bright side in regards to the Patter rehearsals for Abigail's Party they are coming along very nicely and its also been good to keep busy with the acting as I've become unemployed. So we've pretty much got Act 1 and 2 worked out for blocking and lines are pretty much all learnt, it just remains to polish things up and get use to working with props, get our costumes sorted out etc, and soon hopefully we will all be set.
OK if you are not a fan of tech stuff skip this bit, even better just don't read it if you are a technophobe:
On a different note I recently splurged some money (well from my last wages, and thankfully Pixmania did refund me at last!!) on a new LCD TV, I've been agonising over this for the last couple of months as I hastily purchased a Panasonic 32" LCD TV back at the end of May, and while it was a very good I was quite disappointed in its peformance with black levels, meaning the TV couldn't handle darkly lit scenes in movies or TV shows very well. LCDs cos they are backlit with such bright panels can have a tendency to bleed some colour out so in darker scenes you can be left with a tinge of greyness round the edges, and with the Panny it had wall to wall greyness in the dark scenes, when someone walked across the screen in a dark scene the picture would go from black to misty grey! OK this all makes me sound like a nerdy technophile and to extent that's true (I own up!!) most people wouldn't really care about such matters and neither should I, but all the same, I decided to hunt for something better. So after much hunting and scouring the net and shops, I opted for an LG (again), my previous TV was an LG so I figured why not go for them again, so I got a very nice 32" LG 32LH7000 set, which I'm happy to say has been great, the colours, detail and yes those dreaded blacks are all excellent, and its a very good all rounder for SD and HD sources. So I can sit and revel in Blu-ray and DVD heaven once again. (OK nerd mode off).
Anyway I'm off just now once again, time to watch some Hellboy II on Blu-ray.... :-)
Thursday, July 23, 2009
In Pixmania we trust???????
Well, I've learnt a rather hard lesson over the past couple of weeks as I had ordered a new LCD TV from the online conglomerate that is Pixmania. To be honest when I received the TV I wasn't as happy with it picture quality wise as I'd hope to be so I decided to return the TV to the seller (Giant Buyer who sell on Pixmania's site) and try and get a refund. This has been almost 2 weeks ago, since then I have not been refunded, I have since phoned the seller Giant Buyer who claimed they have processed the refund and requested this to Pixmania last Friday there. However when I contacted Pixmania one of their costumer care (or care-less!) reps said that as Giant Buyer were the sellers that Pixmania could not take any responsibility for the refund or the order!! So I am naturally rather pissed about all this, I feel Pixmania who had taken the money from my account themselves, have totally swindled me here!! I have never come across an organisation such as this who can get away with daylight robbery, their behaviour in this matter has been utterly reprehensible. I am utterly disgusted and sickened by their conduct in regards to this problem.
So I am now down over £500 on the deal, and have sent Pixmania a rather strong email requesting a refund or I will take the matter further. I probably won't get my money back though as I've seen from this forum page and others that Pixmania have got a history of robbing people of their money. Here is a link to one of them which shows many thoroughly cheesed off and abused buyers who didn't get their money back:
http://forum.pricerunner.co.uk/index.php?s=4f9b66e8787858b1480d04c831b7369c&showtopic=4844&st=0&p=16567&#entry16567
So if anyone reads this blog entry, please consider this a careful warning: DO NOT I repeat DO NOT use Pixmania, they are a bunch of money grubbing, backstabbing, untrustworthy bastards! Nuff said.
So I am now down over £500 on the deal, and have sent Pixmania a rather strong email requesting a refund or I will take the matter further. I probably won't get my money back though as I've seen from this forum page and others that Pixmania have got a history of robbing people of their money. Here is a link to one of them which shows many thoroughly cheesed off and abused buyers who didn't get their money back:
http://forum.pricerunner.co.uk/index.php?s=4f9b66e8787858b1480d04c831b7369c&showtopic=4844&st=0&p=16567&#entry16567
So if anyone reads this blog entry, please consider this a careful warning: DO NOT I repeat DO NOT use Pixmania, they are a bunch of money grubbing, backstabbing, untrustworthy bastards! Nuff said.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
All sorts of things!!
Its been a while since I posted up anything as quite alot has been going on so thought I'd post about it just now. Well we are a few weeks into rehearsals for Abigail's Party the Patter Merchants next venture and so far its going pretty well, the cast (which includes Susan (who plays Sue funnily enough) and Gill (who plays Beverly) from our last PM show and a couple of newcomers Tessa (as Angela) and Martin (as Tony) have all been excellent so far and we've been doing the usual bonding, warm ups, getting to know one another. We've also been lucky to get a very good director, Richard, who has a good understanding of the play and has already worked out some of the blocking. As I'm playing the character of Laurence, I've got a fair bit of dialogue to learn so its been a challenge but I'm getting there slowly. So there will be alotta work ahead over the forthcoming weeks before Abigail is ready for public consumption, which hopefully will be in September at the venue Stereo soon!
Anywayss onto other things my redudancy at Clydebank College is looming ever closer, to be honest I'll be glad to get out the place at the end of the month, as I need a change, although given the current climate, I don't think they chosen the best time to let me go!! So its difficult job hunting and trying find something when theres a hundred odd people applying for the same post, but that's the way it goes. It is a pain trying to find something though! It will be good to get a break but I'll need to find something fairly soon.
On a film review note I went and saw Public Enemies at the weekend there, to be honest I did enjoy it but I felt it was a bit overlong and lacking in places. Johnny Depp played the part of John Dillinger really well, and Michael Mann provides some excellent action scenes, but overall the film fell a bit flat at times. Hollywood licence no doubt would be taken with certain scenes (I can't imagine John Dillinger walking into the FBI headquarters in disguise while they were all looking for him!). Nevertheless it is an entertaining film and worth a watch.
On another review note I recently bought a Doctor Who DVD The War Games, which was Patrick Troughton's final story. This story is worth mention as for one it is an epic 10 part show, which does drag occassionally but overall holds the attention, but more importantly it is the first story that introduced the Doctor's own people, the Time Lords. The Doctor with his companions Jame and Zoe at the start end up in what appears to be the trenches during World War I but as it goes on they end up in different in wars from different time zones, such as the Roman times, the American Civil War, and others, pretty soon they discover they are part of a grand scheme controlled by aliens called War Lords, and one of the Doctor's own people, The War Chief. Despite its remarkable length (over 4 hours!) The War Games is a great send off for Patrick Troughton and he is great throughout the story. The introduction of the Time Lords is also really well done and the final episode has got to rank as one of the best, not to mention one of the most dark and downbeat endings for a Doctor (with the Doctor's trail resulting in his exile to Earth and being forced to regenerate, which leaves the Doctor spinning throughout space, helpless). The supporting cast are also really good too, with Fraser Hines and Wendy Padbury as fine as ever, and Edward Brayshaw providing some good panto villainary, and Philip Madoc providing some chilling underplayed Welsh villainary. Anyway its a good DVD so if you are a fan of the show, buy it!
And on that note that's enough for now.
Anywayss onto other things my redudancy at Clydebank College is looming ever closer, to be honest I'll be glad to get out the place at the end of the month, as I need a change, although given the current climate, I don't think they chosen the best time to let me go!! So its difficult job hunting and trying find something when theres a hundred odd people applying for the same post, but that's the way it goes. It is a pain trying to find something though! It will be good to get a break but I'll need to find something fairly soon.
On a film review note I went and saw Public Enemies at the weekend there, to be honest I did enjoy it but I felt it was a bit overlong and lacking in places. Johnny Depp played the part of John Dillinger really well, and Michael Mann provides some excellent action scenes, but overall the film fell a bit flat at times. Hollywood licence no doubt would be taken with certain scenes (I can't imagine John Dillinger walking into the FBI headquarters in disguise while they were all looking for him!). Nevertheless it is an entertaining film and worth a watch.
On another review note I recently bought a Doctor Who DVD The War Games, which was Patrick Troughton's final story. This story is worth mention as for one it is an epic 10 part show, which does drag occassionally but overall holds the attention, but more importantly it is the first story that introduced the Doctor's own people, the Time Lords. The Doctor with his companions Jame and Zoe at the start end up in what appears to be the trenches during World War I but as it goes on they end up in different in wars from different time zones, such as the Roman times, the American Civil War, and others, pretty soon they discover they are part of a grand scheme controlled by aliens called War Lords, and one of the Doctor's own people, The War Chief. Despite its remarkable length (over 4 hours!) The War Games is a great send off for Patrick Troughton and he is great throughout the story. The introduction of the Time Lords is also really well done and the final episode has got to rank as one of the best, not to mention one of the most dark and downbeat endings for a Doctor (with the Doctor's trail resulting in his exile to Earth and being forced to regenerate, which leaves the Doctor spinning throughout space, helpless). The supporting cast are also really good too, with Fraser Hines and Wendy Padbury as fine as ever, and Edward Brayshaw providing some good panto villainary, and Philip Madoc providing some chilling underplayed Welsh villainary. Anyway its a good DVD so if you are a fan of the show, buy it!
And on that note that's enough for now.
