Jaz Design

Just a quick reminder that this week is TV Turnoff week.

I don’t have a TV here anymore (I never thought I’d miss it but I do, go figure), but I do have a lot of shows stored on the PC. I also know I won’t be able to resist watching the new 24… We’ll see. I think this is something that’s easier to do if you’re by yourself. I used to go weeks without watching anything.

Anyway, good luck to you if you’re one of the brave ones switching off! Kudos. I need to get gone, busy day today!

I love my little stat tracker thing. It’s always amusing to see what search terms people use to get here, for example:

Mega Cheddar
Muse Wembley Preview (I’m second on googleuk for that, oddness)
Ghosts worst food (the best one!)
youtube simpsons “is it batman” scientist (haha, I blatantly need to watch this now)
foxy roxy by rob zombie on youtube
Bladerunner and the unicorn

Whoever you people are, I love you. You make me smile.

In the four years I’ve been dying my hair, I’ve had it a huge variety of colours and styles. Because I was curious to see the change, I put together an album on facebook of most of the colours that I’ve had it. Check it out if you’re curious!

The latest colour is pink. Half of it’s pink and half of it’s black…

Yesterday the other half an I went to see 300. He likes Miller and knows about these things, whereas I have no clue about things like graphic novels and was mostly going because I liked the trailer, and I’ve dragged him to every shitty horror flick that’s come out since October. I was surprised, I thought the film was amazing.

It was certainly visually stunning, although I’m not so sure I’d have been so accepting of the obviousness of CG had I not known it was based on a graphic novel. Either way, they really went to town on it. I especially loved this technique that I’ve only just started noticing appearing in movies, where, for example, someone shoots an arrow, the camera pans in on the arrow, time slows down and it moves around the arrow before it speeds up again, drawing you in and making you feel a part of something otherwise quite flat. It’s almost 3D without being 3D.

Gerard Butler was impressive, I’ve only seen him as the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera, it was very entertaining to see him do something so different, and do it so well.

The story wasn’t that strong, it was mostly about the fighting which is fair enough, but they did manage to put enough of a storyline in to have me crying by the end of it (I felt like I’d been hit with an emotional bus, but I think that may have just been me). There were some very touching moments, some downright scary moments, but mostly, a lot of bloody moments. But even then, they were well engineered bloody moments.

The soundtrack, the soundtrack, the soundtrack, I adored it. Rocky vs classical, always a winner with me. I thought it fit the movie very well. I’d recommend the movie, assuming you can deal with slow motion decapitation… or just generally a lot of slow motion. I read somewhere they filmed most of it at 50-150 frames per second – shows just how much slow motion they did or planned to use!

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I realise now on DA you get a free prints account, so I just messed around with the options to see what would happen, as a result, this photo of the sunset over Southsea is available as a print.

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All else is going alright. Got a lot of work on at uni, but it’s all good things. Thinking of things to write about for a dissertation, working up a design for a competition, running a business focussed on environmentalism (proper website and details available next week), it’s all good.

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Thursday 21st March

Nothing!

Wednesday 20th March

Chocolate chips 0.49
Pizza 1.15
Broccoli 0.46
Butter 0.46
Chips 0.88
Enterprise Investment 30
Car Insurance 476.04 (not including this in percentages as it tips it too much, just included for records)

Totals so far…
£235.35
Necessary £179.96 76.46%
Unnecessary £55.39 23.54%

1. He’s my uncle.
2. He has a beard.
3. He bought me almond M&Ms when he was in New York
4. He lets me have his Pentax K1000 on extended loan
5. He drove 5,500 miles across the Sahara in a Citroen 2cv. Yes you heard.

Things are good.

I’m on the mend now. Fingers crossed it stays that way. I made it into town the other day, and I’ve even been to Portsmouth and to uni. I was mortified about missing the start of that really. And also, I have so much work to do now, last semester’s, and this semester’s… but that’s ok. Because it’ll get done. So long as I can stay well. I still get fairly tired easily, but that’ll go. Thankfully the feeling depressed about it has passed, I think that went with the actually being able to do things again-ness.

South Park, good or bad?

I actually did something artistic the other day, it felt good.

I’m also reading Design Anarchy – finally managed to put my hands on it in the uni library (yeah, because I can afford £50 for a book). It’s good. It scares me sometimes, as do the Adbusters magazines, but it’s good. I like it a lot.

I finished The Modern Pagan: How to Live a Natural Lifestyle in the 21st Century. It came across to me as a little preachy at times, a lot of things are common sense, but it was alright. Not the best book in that vein that I’ve read, but still good to read all the same. I know I marked off some pages to go back to, maybe when I do I’ll think some more about how useful I thought it really was.

I started a Library Thing thing actually, though I’ve not had much time to play with it. I like the site and what it does, but not the interface so much. I don’t know. Anyone know of any similar sites? I guess it’s like last.fm in a way.

So it’s halfway through February. Anyone keep their new years resolutions this time? I didn’t make any. I stopped eating chocolate for a bit, but that went to hell when I got sick. I can’t count how many Mars eggs I’ve eaten – they have to be the best invention since…. cream eggs. Still, that needs to stop. Really.

Actually, that’s a lie, I did have a resolution in mind. Haha. Guess that went to hell too. I’ll dig that out and maybe start doing it. It involves cameras.

Happy belated Val Day world. Love is amazing. Find some.

I got an essay back that I wrote “analysing an image found within contemporary visual culture”. I got 70% which is really good, and some really nice comments. Considering I was in quite an upset/stressed out state the day I wrote that, that’s pretty amazing. I did put in some library time for that though, and it paid off, judging by one of the comments. I guess I might just live in the library this semester. It’s not like I don’t have too much to do.

Quite probably one of my favouritest photos ever. <3 Although it should be the other way around, as per the way it was developed ;P

I’m getting rid of my tellybox. That’s not to say I won’t watch telly elsewhere, I think that’s inevitable. And you know, the stuff I watch on the PC, but but but, I’M GIVING UP HOLLYOAKS. Properly this time. Yes. You heard. Giving it up.

24 is scary. It’s all going wrong. Fix it.

I should do the stuff I came home to do.

I’m going to Brighton for Yule (21st) – Mum’s treating me for Xmas. We’re going to the Burning of the Clocks, which looks amazing. I think I missed Yule last year, shame on me. I think I was generally lazy the last holiday season.

I’m going to take a camera, I just have to pick which one…

I’m excited. Why? Because I love cheesy horror. The Final Destination films are on my list of favourites, because they are mostly rubbish. And that’s what makes them so good.

Black Christmas – made by the people who made the FD movies, a *remake*, the cast list is mostly a remash of people from the FD films, and the annoying one from Buffy. And and and, it revolves around Christmas. Magic. I expect laughs. The clip I watched earlier floored me. It seems the producers haven’t got any less inventive with their deaths.

Friday. I’m excited. And yes I am a tad morbid.

Update: Now available on DA, although still not happy with the photo.

Some of you know I was painting, and painting I did. The piece is finished, however, the photo I have of it, it was still wet, and the painting is now down at my boyfriend’s in Portsmouth. So, until I’m next round there to take a decent photo to put on DeviantArt, you’ll just have to cope with the sneak preview in my photobucket here. The lighting of the photo is also rubbish, so basically, it looks an awful lot better than that.

Click to fullview

DeviantArt Description – This is Matt Bellamy (aka Tiny Man) of Muse, at the opening of some concert in Las Vegas. Or at least that’s the reference I used for it. There are differences however, just not many. Reference is here

I went to see Muse a few weeks ago with someone quite lufly. The concert was amazing, and I missed art, and felt like doing something creative with the experience. They opened the concert with Take a Bow, and in this amazing moment when the singing stopped and the music took off, Matt stepped up, kissed his fist and thrust it in the air. Everyone went wild, it was amazing. And that was the entire basis for this painting. You can see a not great quality vid of the opening here

Acryllic on card – roughly A2 size. Maybe, 20 hours? On the painting, the sketch took about 2/3 I should imagine.

I gave it away the same day I finished it, now hung proudly on the lufly person’s wall.

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As an aside, we have tickets to see Muse at Wembley Stadium – woooooooooooooo.

Giant Mars bar
Originally uploaded by snowtru.

Not the best photo in the world, my phone camera is rubbish.

Anyway, Sunday night Ed and I got eight Mars bars, melted the ends, and made one giant Mars bar. Just because. We’re awesome. ;P