Free form weekend
May. 16th, 2015 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdGot stuff done:
Installed new hooks for two hanging planters. One was blown down by the wind, it yanked the hook clear out of the wood. I was able to re-use that hole with a bigger hook. The other was too much in the sun, so it was moved to the other side of the landing.
Watered all the indoor and hanging plants
Saw a movie. Ex Machina. I was hoping for a sex with an android scene, but didn't get one. However there was a lot of gratuitous full frontal female nudity which made up for that.
The cinematography is first rate. The costume & makeup for the robot is excellent, and part of the excellence is they worked out a way for those to be the bare minimum. There was also some beautiful CGI of robot innards seen through body parts. Legs, mostly. None of the characters clicked for me. The super-genius inventor recluse is played by someone who looks and acts more like a weightlifter's personal trainer. The robot is also played too much like a robot to be a convincing Turing test.
The script is almost completely humorless, and every 5 minutes they telegraph a little more of the ending. By the time we get to the ending, which they stretch out way longer than needed, we already know what's going to happen.
And the ending doesn't wash, at least for me. No spoilers, but suffice to say it's not sequel-able, because the real ending would only take one more short scene, in which it all ends badly for the one you are rooting for.
Home, sat on the porch and finished the latest Kindle book, Marking Time by April White. I gave it 2 stars for inventiveness. The writing style is just barely readable, the plot is often confused, and the unrequited lust is poorly handled. And the Jack The Ripper story line is totally the author trying to brag about how much research she has done on something which really has nothing to do with her story.
Started and deleted two others:
Fatal Boarding by ER Mason is so incredibly stereotyping and poorly written to boot. And the typos!
The Star Agency, by R. E. Weber turns out to be a children's sci-fi book
Up next:
Enter the Uncreated Night by Christopher Rankin
When it got cold and windy, I moved to the kitchen table, which I have not used enough.
Saw a link on FB to best pizza places, and they chose A Slice of New York Pizza as #1, so on a whim I went there. Took one look at the huge slices on offer, and walked out. Went next door to Togo's and had a meatball sub instead. I grew up in NY, and we used to go out for pizza on rare occasions, but when we did, it was to a place where the dough was tossed by a guy standing in a section by the front window. The crust was always thick enough to sink your teeth into, though maybe half as thick as deep pan pizza. The crust I saw at A Slice of NY was so thin it was barely there. And the toppings were colorless. And the pizzas they do slices from are extra-huge, and cut wide so just getting it from the plate to the mouth would be an adventure I was not interested in having.
Home, dessert time, a piece of chocolate cake. Watched an episode of Shark Tank.
And it was time to tackle assembling the futon frame. It came in two boxes, one for the arm rests and one for the frame and everything else. I unboxed the frame first. A glance at the instructions showed that setup started with the arm rests, using hardware from the frame box. It took me about 15 minutes of staring at the instructions to figure out which way was up on the armrests, but from there it was easy. I have all day tomorrow to work on this, so I sweated over it for about an hour and then called it a night. I chose a reasonable stopping point, with several assembled pieces, but before putting things together which will take up most of the space in the guest bedroom.
Got email from my guests, they expect to be here mid-October. From their initial dates, I don't think they will really have time to stay here. More likely I will meet them in SF or they will do a say trip from there, and if the Niles Canyon steam train is still running I will take them there.
Too far in the future...
Plans for tomorrow:
Eggs
Futon
take out the garbage
read
maybe go to a park
Installed new hooks for two hanging planters. One was blown down by the wind, it yanked the hook clear out of the wood. I was able to re-use that hole with a bigger hook. The other was too much in the sun, so it was moved to the other side of the landing.
Watered all the indoor and hanging plants
Saw a movie. Ex Machina. I was hoping for a sex with an android scene, but didn't get one. However there was a lot of gratuitous full frontal female nudity which made up for that.
The cinematography is first rate. The costume & makeup for the robot is excellent, and part of the excellence is they worked out a way for those to be the bare minimum. There was also some beautiful CGI of robot innards seen through body parts. Legs, mostly. None of the characters clicked for me. The super-genius inventor recluse is played by someone who looks and acts more like a weightlifter's personal trainer. The robot is also played too much like a robot to be a convincing Turing test.
The script is almost completely humorless, and every 5 minutes they telegraph a little more of the ending. By the time we get to the ending, which they stretch out way longer than needed, we already know what's going to happen.
And the ending doesn't wash, at least for me. No spoilers, but suffice to say it's not sequel-able, because the real ending would only take one more short scene, in which it all ends badly for the one you are rooting for.
Home, sat on the porch and finished the latest Kindle book, Marking Time by April White. I gave it 2 stars for inventiveness. The writing style is just barely readable, the plot is often confused, and the unrequited lust is poorly handled. And the Jack The Ripper story line is totally the author trying to brag about how much research she has done on something which really has nothing to do with her story.
Started and deleted two others:
Fatal Boarding by ER Mason is so incredibly stereotyping and poorly written to boot. And the typos!
The Star Agency, by R. E. Weber turns out to be a children's sci-fi book
Up next:
Enter the Uncreated Night by Christopher Rankin
When it got cold and windy, I moved to the kitchen table, which I have not used enough.
Saw a link on FB to best pizza places, and they chose A Slice of New York Pizza as #1, so on a whim I went there. Took one look at the huge slices on offer, and walked out. Went next door to Togo's and had a meatball sub instead. I grew up in NY, and we used to go out for pizza on rare occasions, but when we did, it was to a place where the dough was tossed by a guy standing in a section by the front window. The crust was always thick enough to sink your teeth into, though maybe half as thick as deep pan pizza. The crust I saw at A Slice of NY was so thin it was barely there. And the toppings were colorless. And the pizzas they do slices from are extra-huge, and cut wide so just getting it from the plate to the mouth would be an adventure I was not interested in having.
Home, dessert time, a piece of chocolate cake. Watched an episode of Shark Tank.
And it was time to tackle assembling the futon frame. It came in two boxes, one for the arm rests and one for the frame and everything else. I unboxed the frame first. A glance at the instructions showed that setup started with the arm rests, using hardware from the frame box. It took me about 15 minutes of staring at the instructions to figure out which way was up on the armrests, but from there it was easy. I have all day tomorrow to work on this, so I sweated over it for about an hour and then called it a night. I chose a reasonable stopping point, with several assembled pieces, but before putting things together which will take up most of the space in the guest bedroom.
Got email from my guests, they expect to be here mid-October. From their initial dates, I don't think they will really have time to stay here. More likely I will meet them in SF or they will do a say trip from there, and if the Niles Canyon steam train is still running I will take them there.
Too far in the future...
Plans for tomorrow:
Eggs
Futon
take out the garbage
read
maybe go to a park
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