Redesign

Now this is tragic:

I spend over four hours redesigning my blog, and the main host is down, so almost no one will see it. Great. Well, a lucky few will. So you enjoy it.

So if you're wondering why I updated the design... I was just replying to an email from Erin earlier, and I mentioned something that was "awesome", and realised that I was using some very clichéd words. So I thought I'd mention that my feelings towards this particular event were superlative. To the max. I thought about that for about 8 seconds before I decided it was my new site design. I mean, redesigned my site about this time last year, just before I went to Japan, so I thought I'd treat you special people to a brand new and beautiful design.

In case you were wondering, I did a lot of it in Paint, and put it together in Photoshop. And speaking of Photoshop, I finished that project with optimal results. The project was to design an Elfen Lied tshirt for Kiana, seeing as it's one of her favourite Animes, and I just cannot afford one of those shirts from the Octopus store in the Trocadero. I got it printed at Uni, A3 on a tiny shirt which would fit her, and it looks great, only on the second attempt. Seeing as I totally misjudged the sizing of the first shirt I made, I now have one of my own as well, only reversed. I'm including the image below. And when I get some photos of Kiana or myself wearing it, I'll be sure to show you.



We finished watching the Elfen Lied anime today. We watched something like 8 episodes, which isn't that much when they're only 25 minutes long. But I also managed to get my XBox SNES emulator working, so I played Super Bomberman 3 in between a few episodes.

I did the whole redesign myself. I put the CSS on a separate style sheet, I rewrote several CSS sections and changed all the colours, I spent ages on the main graphic, and then I made all the other graphics (like the dividers and the footer) from scratch. I'm pretty happy with how it looks, it might stay this way a while. It looks a bit more silly, which is kind of what I was looking for.

Kaori moves out of here later today. Kiana goes into her room, takes her stuff out of my room, and everything is right in the world until she leaves two days later. It's been good fun having her here. We made curry earlier today, and went to Tescos, and did all sorts of fun things that make this house a house.

Natasha came around yesterday and we watched the rest of Series 1 of XMen, and then we watched Cars. Now, I have to say, I'm a Pixar fan, I really think the world of them as a company, but knowing the terms of the distribution of Cars, it felt kinda hard to escape them. As most of you probably know, Disney screwed around with Pixar's distribution contract, in essence extending it from six to seven films. Cars was the seventh, and was made begrudgingly at first. I thought it wouldn't have as much effort put into it as the other wonderful films that studio has put out. And I felt that through the film as well. I loved all the references they put in, like 2319 and the Birds on the telephone wire. But a quick look on rottentomatoes.com will show you that it was quite favourably received. But let me share two wonderful little excepts from the site with you.

"Cars is the first Pixar flick I'd describe as 'cynical,' and that, frankly, breaks my heart just a little bit." -Scott Weinberg, EFILMCRITIC.COM

I find that rings quite true. I'd put it on par with A Bug's Life, but I didn't enjoy that move extremely, but I didn't find it cynical. The next review I find also very amusing, and I feel it highlights the shortcomings of the story, which was the least interesting of all the Pixar productions.

"Disney ... is going to lecture me on the commodification of America?" -Pete Vonder Haar, FILM THREAT

It was an enjoyable film, but the best thing they have done is still The Incredibles, which I just want to see again.

I managed to write and compile a program in C# that ran on my mobile phone. I am very happy with myself. It's just a Hello World program, but I think it's definitely an excellent first step. I might make phone programming my development project next year, unless I can think of a more interesting one.

I've just loaded Super R-Type onto the XBox, I'm going to go and try it out before I go to bed. I hope the new layout serves this post well. I'll speak to you wonderful people soon.