weekend

So I got up early on saturday to get my car tested for it's mot at a garage near to where my parents live, so that I could also visit them and pick up some off cuts of carpet they have that might fit in my bathroom. I was a good 15 min into my journey and I had a feeling that I had forgotten something, and much concentration revealed that I'd failed to bring my MOT certificate with me, so had to turn round and get it. Which meant I arrived at the garage a bit later than anticipated and there was already a queue of cars booked in for their test. Unfortunately my car failed miserably, which is annoying as it means forking out extra expenses that I hadn't bargained for this month. Going through the results the girl at the desk asked if I'd noticed that the exhaust had gone, seeing as it was quite noisey, I tend to just turn my music up if it's noisey, I replied honestly. Then I enquired what the rear trailing arm was, as that had failed. She asked if I'd heard a kind of knocking, banging sound when driving, which I had, but I thought it was just the can of WD40 rolling around in the back of the car!

Went to see the new King Kong at the cinema, and I must admit it's an enjoyable film, but certainly overlong. I thought I was developing deep vein thrombosis near the end as my thighs started to ache. The effects are really stunning, but you get the impression that designing these effects they just wanted to show off with what they can do. Some of the fight scenes are overlong and border on the ridiculous. The CGI is off course limited, particularly when overlaying with real footage, and so a lot of such scenes are filmed in a kind of hand held manner so that nothing is properly in focus and therefore detracts from the CGI limitations. Saying this though, I expect if I were to watch Jurassaic Park again I'd think that the dinosaurs were rubbish in comparison to those on display here. There are a few daft things (if such things can occur in a film about a giant ape!). A scene where the men are being chased by huge dinosaurs whose stride must be about ten of a humans, and so could probably run around 30 mile an hour, despite this the men seem to be able to keep up with no trouble at all. Then there are giant insects, which is just impossible, even if this island had been so isolated that dinosaurs could remain, the oxygen content of the atmosphere can not be different to elsewere in the world, and therefore it is impossible for invertabrates to reach such size. Lastly, how cold is it in New York, there's snow around and a lake is frozen so solid it can support the weight of Kong, yet Anne seems to wander around in a small dress with no obvious indication that she is freezing - and where is the snow on top of the empire states building?

Before going to the cinema I was watching Luton vs Liverpool and really enjoying the match. Luton were 3-1 up when I left so I was surprised to discover the final result was 3-5 to liverpool when looking it up on my mobile. What a conclusion to the match