Music: Jazz Suite 2, Waltz No. 2

This is a nice, flowing piece of classical music by Shostakovich:

Photography: Dunseverick Castle and Rathlin Island

Another Batch of photos from my Northern Ireland Trip. These are from the tiny, ruined Dunseverick Castle, and Rathlin Island, just off the coast. Some of them are HDR and some aren't.

 

Songs: Gentle on My Mind

A nice, gentle, relaxing old cover of a song:

Mugs

Here are some more of the many mugs we have acquired:

Firstly, Chip. He's from Beauty and the Beast. He's very cute, with his painted-on missong chip, happy face and jaunty angle, but he doesn't get used a whole lot, as he's quite small and not microwave safe. He's still great though.

Next, Dark Souls 3. This is one of the man's favourite games, and also one of his favourite mugs. It's another temperature change one. It's plain black with nothing in it, but hot liquid makes flames appear. It's pretty cool. Again, not microwave safe though.

And finally, Hedwig. She's from Harry Potter. Again, not microwave safe and a little difficult to clean properly, but I love her. Favourite ever mug! I just love her face.

Songs: Potential Break-Up Song

Song!

Bowls: Octopus Fruit Bowl

I first saw this guy in the giftshop of Winchester Cathedral, of all places. I immediately fell in love him, but decided I couldn't afford him. I did find him online though and put him on my Christmas list. And here he is. The best fruit bowl EVER! He's so beautiful! The bowl is a little bit loose in the arms, but I suppose it has to be or you couldn't remove the bowl for washing. The problem is that I'm reluctant to put anything in the bowl, cos that makes the arms less visible. Still very cool though. I love it.

Songs: I Saw Stars

Have some jazz:

Glasses: Jacobite Wine Glasses

Today I used some of last year's birthday money from my grandpa and bought myself a pair of crystal wine glasses. They're replica Jacobite glasses and I think they're really pretty. I got them from the National Museum's giftshop. They got them in to go with their Jacobites exhibition a couple of years ago and I got some of last ones in the giftshop.

Songs: I'll Make a Man out of You

One of my favorite disney songs! It's super catchy and a great film too.

Photography: Carrick-A-Rede

Time for some more photos from my trip to Northern Ireland. After Giant's Causeway, I went to visit Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge. It an old fishermen's rope bridge to reach good fishing sites. I didn't get any good pictures of the bridge itself as there were too many people around, but I got some good pictures of the coastline. Once again I opted for HDR to pretend that the light was interesting.

Songs: True Survivor

Today, True Survivor, by David Hasselhoff. As well as being a great song it's also got quite an interesting story behind it. It's very much an 80s style song, but it only came out a few years ago. It's from a film called Kung Fury. If you haven't seen it, do! It's a short, crowd-funded film making fun of 80s films, and it really is hilarious!

Game Reviews: Still More Android Games

A few more of my favourite Android games. To start off, Disney Magic Kingdoms. This is a game where you build your own version of Disneyland. You get rides and characters based on Disney films. You send your characters on missions to collect tokens and when you have enough you can welcome new characters or upgrade old ones. As you progress through the game you unlock new films with their characters and rides, and also new areas of land to build on. They also have events where certain films' characters and rides are only available for a limited time. I downloaded it because the description made it sound a bit like rollercoaster tycoon, but it's quite different really. It's much more about the collecting tokens than the building. It's quite fun for a Disney nerd like me, and beautifully animated. It is quite time consuming though, it takes ages to start up, and it's also a but clunky and slow to respond.

Seaport. This is a little like Boom Beach, only without the fighting. You have a home port and send your ships on missions to explore new areas and gather resources that you then use to improve your port. To keep it intersting the game continually has a different events running, so that the look of the game and missions are always different. The theme is always to do with famous boats or stories about boats. Themes since I've started playing have included the Titanic, the Mississippi, Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, Odysseus and, for Hallowe'en, Dracula.

Next Word Cookies. You get given letters and blank spaces for words. You need to find all the words you can make out of the letters to fill the blank spaces and progress to the next level. It's a fun game, though I do get annoyed by it sometimes when it omits obvious words and uses obscure ones instead. The ads are quite instrusive too.

Now Machinarium. This is a game that's been around for a while. I first became aware of it as a PC game, but didn't play it until I came across it for Android. It's a really special game. You play an adorable little robot who has to solve puzzles and find objects to get through a city to find your robot girlfriend and rescue her. There's no dialogue at all, so all nationalities can play it. Each one of the puzzles is new and different and some of them are genuinely really hard. Some took me a day or more to work out. The artwork really sets it apart too. It's so quirky and detailed and beautiful. It's not really a game you can play over and over again, but it's certainly worth it.

Finally, Monument Valley 1 and 2. This is another really special game. Again you play a little character who has to make her way through a world by solving puzzles, but a lot of the puzzles are based on optical illusions! It's totally mind blowing to spin the platform you're standing on and find yourself a storey above where you were before. It's so clever and well done, and both the art and music are beautiful. Some of the puzzles are really difficult too. Monument Valley 2 is more of the same except that now you have a daughter and you both have to make your way through a confusing world, sometimes alone and sometimes together. It's not as difficult as the first game though. My criticism for both these games though is that they're both pretty short, and also pretty expensive for a game that, again, you can't really play more than once.

Songs: The Windy City

One from Calamity Jane, which I saw for the first time fairly recently. Reminds me quite a bit of the Kansas city song from Oklahoma.

Game Reviews: Even More Android Games

Here are some more of my favourite Android games. To start, Township. It's a cute game where you build your own town. You build houses, roads and community buildings and expand your town's area to satisfy the needs of your people. You grow crops and make goods in your factories for them. In addition you send goods elsewhere in exchange for building materials so that your town can grow. As you level up you can build additional buildings and make new goods in your factories. The supply chains can get quite complicated. For example you might grow wheat and corn in your fields, combine them in your feed factory to make food for your cows. Once fed the cows can then be milked, the milk can be used to make cheese in your dairy, and it can then be combined with syrup, strawberries and cookies in your pastry factory to make cheesecake. I enjoy playing. It has fun events and mini-games, although it is quite time-consuming.

Next, Klondike. Looking for gold! It's quite similar to Township in that you have a settlement where you grow crops and a dairy and a pottery and things where you make goods. As well as your settlement there are other areas to explore. Your characters use their energy to cut the rocks and trees and things out of their way, and to collect useful materials such as coal and iron ore, and treasure like gold, amethyst and malachite. It's a beautiful game. Really well-drawn and nice music. You do run out of energy really fast though. It often takes three sessions of playing to cut out a single rock.

Diggy's Adventure: Another game that's fairly similar to Klondike. You have a base and also explore ancient Egyptian tombs, looking for clues to what happened to your father. You run out of energy much less frequently than you do in Klondike, which is nice. There's no challenge in this one whatsoever, but, well, it's kind of cool to explore tombs and talk to Anubis and stuff. After all, didn't we all want to be Egyptologists at some point?

Obviously, being a big Harry Potter fan, I've tried the Harry Potter phone game. It's a role-playing game where you play a Hogwarts student a few years older than Harry. You have to solve the mystery of what happened to your brother. You can customise the way you look, and choose a name, pet and Hogwarts house for your character. You meet familar characters, such the Hogwarts professors, as well as people like Tonks and Bill Weasley. To move forward in the story, you need to learn spells and potions, make friends, find objects and win duels. Like Klondike and Diggy, you need energy for this, and like with Klondike, you run out of energy annoyingly fast. The game's storyline is interesting enough, but to be honest, gameplay is repetitive and boring. Fans of Harry Potter will enjoy the familiar aspects of Hogwarts, and the fantasy of seeing yourself having your own adventures at Hogwarts but I don't think this is a game for non-fans.

And finally, Helix Jump. This is a fun and simple game. Think of it as an upside-down Doodle Jump. You control a bouncing ball, and you have to control its fall down to the bottom of the level. There's a pole in the middle with platforms attached to it, and you use your finger to turn the pole around so that the ball falls down the gaps between platforms. There are dark areas of platforms that you need to avoid, as they kill you, and to make it harder there are some very narrow gaps and also some platforms that move. Like Doodle Jump, you need fast reflexes. It's a good game, although the adverts between attempts are annoying.

Songs: Sound of Silence

No, not that one. This one was a Eurovision entry:

Game Reviews: Some More Android Games

Some more of my favorite Android games.

To start off, Boom Beach.  You are a general and you have a base on a tropical island. Your job is to free the natives on other islands from the evil soldiers. As you level up you can build more sophisticated buildings in your base, and use more sophisticated troops and weapons. Thre are different missions to play on different days of the week, and you can organise cooperative missions with the other members of your task force. There are also occasional special missions to keep your interest. It's a fun game, easy to learn, no annoying ads, it doesn't ask you for money constantly, and it's not too time-consuming. It's also a beautiful game. It has nice music and  I like the animals that live on and around my island.

Next 1010! A simple game, but good for passing a few minutes. You have different shapes to fit onto a board. When you fill a whole row or column it vanishes. Think of it as Tetris without gravity. You lose when you can't fit a shape onto your board. It doesn't have the most sophisticated look, and it does have an annoying habit of playing you an ad when you lose, but nevermind.

Next Atomas. This one is a little difficult to explain. Like 1010! you have different atoms to fit onto a board and you lose when you run out of space for any more. You make space on your board by combining atoms together to make heavier atoms. Ok, it's not how nuclear fusion works, but it's a good way to learn elements' names and atomic numbers, so I guess it counts as educational. Maybe. It's a simple game, but if you're paying attention a game can last a surprisingly long time, though you can leave a game and pick up where you left off later.

Pokemon Go! This game was a surprise hit. Nobody expected it to be as big as it was. Like previous Pokemon games, you catch monsters, level them up, and battle them against each other. What makes this game different to the previous versions is that it's played in the real world. You find Pokemon, not by exploring a virtual world, but by walking around in the real world with the app open on your phone. Yes, you're right, it is very battery-draining. The game has gone through several changes since its release and has a few extra features, but the general idea remains the same. They keep you interested by jiggling the algorithms a bit, altering the odds of certain Pokemon turning up, and have special events where you can catch rare Pokemon. It's good fun to see and catch Pokemon out in the real world. After all, didn't we all want to be Pokemon trainers as kids?

And finally, Tap Tap Fish. Build your own virtual acquarium! Collect vitality, plants different plants and coral and acquire new fish and sea creatures! I think there are other games in the Tap Tap series, but this is the only one I've tried. It's a beautiful game. I'm very fond of my little acquarium, and it's really helped me learn the names of the fish. Hurrah! My mine gripe with it is that a lot of the special event fish are very silly. Like ghost fish for Hallowe'en and picnic basket fish for spring and stuff. I don't collect them.

Music: Claire de Lune

I love this:

Photography: Giant's Causeway Part 2

A continuation from this entry:

Songs: Silver Lady

This is good:

Board games: Sushi Go

This is a fun little card game. You start off with a hand of cards showing different types of sushi and have to choose one card to keep each turn and then pass the rest of your hand on to the next person. At the end of the round the cards you kept give you points. The number of points the cards are worth depends on the other cards you have, and the cards the other players have too. You have to make a quick decision on which card you're going to keep by predicting what other cards are going to come up and what cards other people are going to keep, so for a quick and simple game there is actually quite a lot of strategy to it. The game also changes dramatically depending on how many people are playing. If there are only two people playing, there are only two hands of cards in the game, so you can very quickly learn what cards are available. If more people are playing there is a lot more guesswork involved. And the pictures on the cards are so cute!

Songs: Bend It!

I like this one:

Book Reviews: The Magic Finger (spoilers)

As I've mentioned before, I like to reread my old childhood books when I go home, and recently I've been working my way through the Roald Dahls. The latest one I've read is The Magic Finger. It's a very short one, and I got through it in one sitting, but it certainly packs a punch. It's about a little girl with a magic finger that tingles when she gets angry and makes weird and wonderful magical things happen. She uses this magic finger to teach her hunting-mad neighbours not to hunt, by forcing them to swap places with a family of ducks and learn some empathy.

As I said, it's small but mighty. It's very well written, and the anti-hunting message comes through loud and clear. The difference between good and evil is also much less clear-cut than in a lot of other children's books. Even though the family of hunters is clearly the villains, as you follow them on their journey as ducks you can't help sympathising with them and how lost, confused and uncomfortable they feel. Their redemption is very genuine and you're left feeling that they really have changed and are on the right side now. Not bad for something only a few dozen pages long!

Songs: Proud Mary

It's a classic:

Book Reviews: The Ambassador's Mission

This is another book by Trudi Canavan, set in the same universe as her Black Magician trilogy and her The Magician's Apprentice prequel. It's the first book in a trilogy called The Traitor Spy trilogy. It's got many of the same characters as the Black Magician trilogy, but the focus has shifted onto the next generation.

I liked the jump forward in time and how the world I knew was facing new threats and challenges which were very different to previous books. Though I liked the new characters, I actually thought that the older characters were still the more interesting group. The younger generation seemed to lack their own identities and were merely their parents' children. As the start of a trilogy it works well, but considered by itself it's not as good. The ending isn't very satisfying and there are a lot of questions left unanswered. The focus seems to have been on setting up the next books rather than having much action in this one. Still, it has achieved what it meant to though, in that I'm eager to find out what happens in the next book.

Songs: Cover Me

One from The Boss:

Book Reviews: The Magician's Apprentice

The Magician's Apprentice is a prequel, from one of my favorite authors, Trudi Canavan. It's written as ancient histroy to her Black Magician trilogy. The Black Magician trilogy concerns the goings on in the Magician's Guild in the land of Kyralia. The Magician's Apprentice is set long before, and is about how the Guild was set up, and about how one young apprentice discovered the secrets of healing magic, which had eluded magicians for so long. There is also a third important character, Stara, a young woman from Sachaka, Kyralia's enemy. In Sachaka women are very much second class citizens, and so Stara runs away and starts an organisation called the Traitors. She wants to set up a women's sanctuary, but in later books the organisation has also become guerilla fighters and assassins. As a prequel it works well. When it's set there is no Guild for educating young magicians and instead magicians each take on an apprentice and teach them individually. But of course everybody teaches slightly different things. The way the magicians come to the conclusion that setting up a guild to share knowledge would be a good idea is convincing, and the way the young magician, Tessia, slowly discovers the secrets of healing magic is very good too. There's a properly nasty and threatening villain, Takado, who drives the plot forward nicely.

I do feel, though, that it falls into a trap, that plenty of prequels do, of being more concerned with fitting into the larger narrative than with working well on its own. The main story could have been more exciting, and there's a shocking bit in the epilogue where, with NO warning, you find that in subsequent years Tessia's master was assassinated. I know the epilogue was trying to sound like a history book, but I could have done without that bit.

Songs: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

A bit of 90s alternative today:

Show Reviews: Kiss Me Kate

I'd never seen this one before. It's a musical about a group of actors putting on a musical version of Tha Taming of the Shrew, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The Shakespeare characters are somewhat mirrored in the personalitites of the actors. I enjoyed this show. The dancing was brilliant and there were some very funny and catchy songs, including Brush up your Shakespeare and I'm Always True To You in My Fashion. The costumes were also great and the actors were very good too. However, it is an old-fashioned musical and there are some bits that aren't palatable to a modern audience, such as the way the leading male treats his ex-wife, including spanking her on stage to teach her to respect him. The end is also a deus ex machina which I quite like, but I know some people think they're silly. Still, if you can think of the show as a product of its time rather than considering it from a modern point of view it's very enjoyable. 

Here's a clip

Songs: Rain King

I love Counting Crows:

Movie Reviews: Solo

Solo: A Star Wars Story is the newest offering from the new batch of Star Wars films. Despite reviewing well, it's not done very well in the cinemas. It had a lot of problems during filming, including the lead actor, Alden Ehrenreich, needing an acting coach due to bad performance. They also changed director half way through filming due to creative differences and loads of it had to be reshot. I think these stories, coupled with The Last Jedi not being very good, and the last Star Wars film only coming out a few months ago put people off going to see it. Or perhaps it's a wider problem with the cinema industry in general. Our cinema has halfed its prices lately to encourage more people to come in. It's great for us, of course, but also a little concerning. All that being said, I did enjoy the film. The acting coach clearly did his job well, and I enjoyed all the performances, especially Donald Glover as young Lando. The story works well for the most part and there are some cool scenes, like a futuristic train heist and the surprise return of an underused character from the prequels. Speaking of underused characters, this film has one too. An underused crime boss centipede lady who's sensitive to sunlight. She was cool, for her minute of screen time. There was also a funny droid, as usual, this one voiced by a woman and very into rights and freedoms for droids. So that's something new. I do feel like the end had too many twists though. One would have been fine, not the six or seven we were thrown. I also think that this film didn't particularly look like a Star Wars film. I suppose it could be argued that this doesn't particularly matter in a wide galaxy, with lots of different things going on. I also wasn't too keen on what they did with the Kessel Run. It just seemed like what they did with it didn't particularly fit with what we already knew about it, and as if they just wanted to include it for the sake of covereing everything we know about Han Solo, rather than because it really fits into the story. But on the whole I enjoyed it and would recommend it. I think it's a shame a lot of the fans didn't come out to watch it.

Songs: Blown Rose

A very English song today:

Movie Reviews: Deadpool 2

I wasn't all that keen on the idea of a Deadpool sequel. I loved the first film. It was funny, filthy, full of great characters, great soundtrack and above all, ORIGINAL. Despite being a part of the Marvel universe, it was genuinely different to the other samey Marvel superhero films. It was a bit of surprise hit, and I was worried that the sequel just wouldn't be as good. I thought someone would realise that they could make money from it, and ruin it by trying to tone it down to appeal to a wider audience and change the feel of it with a big budget and an experienced director.

But I was wrong! It was still rude, crude and hilarious, with another great soundtrack! I think I still prefer the first one, but for a sequel it was great! It introduced some great new characters while being true to the spirit of the first one. The main problem is that very early in the film throws the auidence a massive curve ball that I didn't like. But they fix it at the very end of the film. So that's alright. Mostly. Anyway, good film.

Songs: Sailing

This is pretty:

Photography: Giant's Causeway Part 1

So a while ago, I started writing about a trip to Northern Ireland. These are some of my HDR photos from Giant's Causeway. Seeing as i took so many, these are mainly of the approach to the causeway. Giant's Causeway is made up of basalt columns and stretches all the way to Scotland. People used to think it couldn't possibly be natural, as it's so regular and weird-looking. They believed it was made by a giant.