Christopher Hamilton

I’ve held of talking about the latest Indiana Jones movie because I wanted to let my feelings about it settle, so I commented on Mike’s website about it, but I’d decided not to really talk about it here.

Well, I can’t hold back any more.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is fucking awful.

I left the cinema feeling exactly like I did after watching Phantom Menace. Overpowered with a sense of disappointment and disbelief. I mentioned over at Mike’s that the worst thing about the film was the dialogue, and I hold to that. It was painful to watch at points, and after letting the whole experience sink in I’ve come to this conclusion…

I will never go to the cinema to see a movie George Lucas has anything to do with again.

That man has completely destroyed the two franchises that made him famous. The two franchises that I grew up with are now nothing more than CGI filled, ham fisted scripts that just make me sad. There were lines in that movie that made me cringe, and others that made me want to get up and walk out of the cinema.

It could have been so much more, instead it completely ruined any chance Lucas had of saving his plummeting reputation. The simple fact that it actually made it to our screens is testimony to the fact the Lucas has completely jumped the shark.

Oh… I almost forgot about the gophers and the monkeys.

Lucas, you should be fucking ashamed of yourself.

image from joystiq.com

This is one of the greatest images doing the rounds on the interwebs at the moment. For those that don’t make the connection, the image is Mario as Hunter S. Thompson. What really makes it great, is the piece of text that goes with it, which can be found here.

It’s simply genius.

Tomorrow marks the first day of my three day weekend. I decided a few weeks ago that I was going to need an extra day to myself one weekend to take care of lots of little tasks that I seem to avoid when Saturday rolls around. So I made the decision to use one day from my holiday allowance from work to get everything done while no one else is around.

Usually when the real weekend arrives I’m too burned out from the weeks work that I tend to just spend most of the two days winding down, before having to go back to the office. With the extra day my intention is to get up as if I still had to go to work, but instead take care of all the stupid little things that need to be done, but aren’t really that important. That way I get to enjoy the rest of my weekend without having the thought in the back of my head that there are things that need to be done.

It also has the added bonus that I’m not in work. I can’t really explain how much of a relief that is at the moment. I won’t go into that just now, but the longer I’m out of the office, the happier I am.

One of my intentions for the weekend is to spend one day completely offline. I might grab a book and find a quiet cafe to read it in, or if the weather improves, I might buy a coffee from somewhere and go sit in Princes Street Gardens. If it’s the later I intend to take my camera out with me and take a few photos around Edinburgh. My Flickr account has been really neglected this year, so I need to add lots of new photos to it.

This weekend is going to be relaxing, very low key, and extremely low budget. Which is exactly what I need at the moment.

It’s been a long time since I really put any effort into playing poker online. At some point last year I went through a bad streak that completely and utterly destroyed my online bankroll, and killed any enjoyment I had taken from the game. No matter what I did I was constantly losing to worse hands, or running kings into aces. It was a complete clusterfuck of bad beat stories and bad luck.

So I stepped away from online poker, content to play the odd monthly home game, and venture out to one of our local casinos for their weekly rebuy madhouse.

That was until recently.

About a week ago I started getting the itch to fire up PokerStars and play a couple of single table sit and go’s. The problem was I had no money in my account at all. I decided to do a small deposit of enough to play a couple of low level SNG’s just incase I couldn’t get back into it again. I deposited just over $40 because of the exchange rate, which was enough to play two $16+$1 turbo SNG’s and leave me with a little left over to play any other micro limit SNG.

I won the first SNG I played, giving my bankroll a nice little boost from where it was, and then logged out. I’d battled for every chip in the SNG and had come from quite far behind to win. I had fun, but made the decision that I wasn’t going to play again that day. I needed to ease myself gently back into the world of online poker.

I expected that I would want to play again the next day, but no such feeling appeared. I logged into Stars, and just before I registered in another $16+$1 SNG, I realised that playing when I didn’t really feel like it was partially to blame for my bad streak last year, so I logged out completely and did something else entirely. I think it was probably the best decision I could have made.

The next day I found myself getting excited to play again, so during my lunch break I logged in, registered for another $16+$1 SNG and completely crushed it. When I got to Heads Up play I had over $10K in chips compared to slightly less than my opponents $2K. The HU battle lasted all of three hands before I’d won my second SNG in a row, and moved my bankroll up to just under $150.

It’s all still at a very small scale, but I think that if I stick to my current philosophy of only playing when I really want to, and making sure I don’t play for too long at that point, then I have no doubts I’ll be able to get my bankroll back up to where it was, if not higher, than before my horrific streak last year.

I have a few modest goals to get me back on my way, all of which shouldn’t be difficult, but are necessary steps. They are:

1) Build Stars bankroll back up to $1000
2) Achieve SilverStar VIP Level
3) Cash in the Sunday Million Tournament
4) Qualify for any Season 5 EPT Event

Again, none of these tasks should be too difficult, but I think that if I’m going to get going in the online poker world again, I’m going to have to start small, and build from there.

Technorati Tags: Poker, PokerStars, EPT, SilverStar, Sunday Millions

Sharing a flat with other people has both it’s pros and cons. It takes a certain amount of flexibility, and compromise for everyone to co exist in the same living space. Of course it almost never runs smoothly. There is inevitably periods when just being around someone else gets on your nerves, and can cause arguments if you don’t recognise the signs early enough.

For me, moving back into a flat with other people was a big stretch. It was a necessary one because I was financially drowning living on my own, but still it was a difficult transition to make. The flat I’m currently sharing with three of my best friends is a decent place, but because there are four of us, things tend to get messy very quickly, but not always cleaned up as quickly. Before when I lived on my own I knew the responsibility to do everything fell onto my shoulders. I was the only one living there and that meant the mess was mine and mine alone. Now if there’s a mess it could be caused by anyone.

Another thing I’m slightly struggling with is the fact that I do on occasion prefer to spend time by myself, relaxing, and being separated from everyone and everything. It’s a period where I let myself just switch off and recharge. That’s something I’ve struggled to do here. If I want time to myself I need to go to my room to chill out, but you still know that there are other people in the flat with you capable of bursting your bubble of isolation and relaxation.

I don’t want to suggest it’s all a bad situation. There are plenty of good points sharing with others. For example if you do want to be social and hang out with your friends, it doesn’t involve anything more difficult than walking to your living room. Plus the financial savings aspect of it all is unbeatable.

It is simply like any other situation, it takes time to adjust and find your comfort zone. You have to sit down with each other and figure out some ground rules, and respect the fact that other people live with you. It’s not a difficult thing to do, it just needs people to make the effort.

At the moment the situation is proving… difficult, but I’ve no doubts everything will turn out just fine.

Technorati Tags: Flat Sharing, Household