So, would it expand to an entire musical? ;-)

( Demons are a Girl's Best Friend )

Mysteriously, our book seems to have turned up on Amazon.com.

Which is nice, if surprising.

Although, given that it's targeted at UK English speakers, it might have made more sense for it to be on Amazon's UK site...

Excellent weekend.

Sai and Caroline hitched without a hitch... if you see what I mean. And completely undampened by the damp, except physically. :-)

(I'm sure blokes are supposed to be unaffected by wedding ceremonies. *sniff* No, no - hayfever, honest.)

I still have bits of Andi and Juliet's song bouncing round my head. (Not, not that song, scrofula!)

And all plans and schemes seemed to work out fine. :-)

Really good to see everyone...

Extensive piccies from greatbigshowoff when the dust has settled...

Read the last 5 xkcd comic strips, if you haven't already...

Back from Pisa and Florence.

We saw lots of Renaissance art - hence the title.

Which prompts me to ask - why is it that up until the Renaissance no-one could really draw? I mean, in lots of cultures, all over the world, all separately, no-one could get people right.

Why?

You'd have thought someone would have looked at the rock they were drawing on, looked at the person in front of them and gone "You know - he looks nothing like this at all. Why don't I just capture the light and shade with this piece of chalk and this piece of charcoal?"

Was it all about the heresy? Were ancient cultures forbidden from capturing images in case spirits were captured? All cultures?

I'm not meaning that there wasn't good art, in some cases exceptionally intricate art. And I'm not meaning they couldn't draw images of people. But the real three-D capturing of light and shadow doesn't seem to happen until Michaelangelo, Giotto, Leonardo and co. Even amongst Eastern cultures. I may be totally wrong about that, in which case I blame my art teacher...

I would have thought it could evolve just by someone, somewhere, looking at what was in front of them. Surely some kid, somewhere, who didn't have an art teacher going "that's right, just draw it as if he was a cardboard cut out - it works for South Park, so it'll work for this triptych, okay?"

I don't get it.

Looks like Brütal Legend is really shaping up:

Preview (and trailer) here.

If you haven't played the Xbox game Psychonauts, then get it - it's on Xbox Live as a downloadable game.

It's by Tim Schafer, the guy behind Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle and a lot of the first two Monkey Island games.

It's sort of a platform game. Ish. The main character, Rasputin, is at psychic summer camp; he must enter the minds of other people to foil a sinister plot. And that's the least outlandish bit of the whole thing...

Well worth the money. :-)

Oh, and all sympathies to Mickey Rourke (who I thought was amazing) but I'll just briefly wave an 'I told you so' flag.

Home at last, and far more mobile and alive than I expected.

The scar is almost disappointing - nice and long, but just doesn't look like I could pass it off as a result of a desperate knife-fight against Thuggee cultists in the alleys of Grand Fenwick. And although it does boast an impressive set of metal staples, unfortunately no cyborg powers have so far developed.

Thank you for the huge selection of cards and messages. I feel a bit undeserving - it was, after all, only appendicitis (although I can assure you that at the time the word only doesn't figure highly on your list).

And thank you for the stream of visitors - apologies if I was too morphined-up, dazed, or just plain exhausted to say anything coherent. :-)

What is this 'snow' of which you speak?

(As reported here...)

Nice. :-)

I've always had a soft spot for The Company of Wolves.

Mostly for thewhitespider and carnaaki...

Lego Steampunk on Flickr.

Anyone know where I can buy a half-silvered mirror? (You know, one-way glass)

Doesn't need to be too high-quality. Either glass or perspex would be fine.

Probably.... *thinks about it* ...2-3ft x 2-3ft.

For anyone who still owns this brilliant game:

Planescape Torment Gets A Facelift

I have just watched a whole of pile of movies that have been entered to win movie awards. This is the third or fourth year I've had to do this.

Yet again I am forced to conclude that at least three-quarters of these movies are made to win awards, rather than to entertain people.

There are only a few which tick all the 'award-worthy' boxes and are still entertaining.

Or perhaps I'm just not intellectual enough. I mean, I find Mark Lawson irritating rather than insightful...

From the awards screeners I've been going through I recommend Milk, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Dean Spanley, Defiance, The Escapist, The Wrestler, Burn After Reading, Frost/Nixon, Persepolis and In Bruges, since you ask... oh, and obviously The Dark Knight.

Zavvi (ex-Virgin) are going under.

I think it would have happened whether or not there was a recession - just it's happened sooner. Same was true of Woolies, sadly. Same will probably happen to HMV. They're just not very sustainable as business models.

When was the last time you paid for a full-price DVD or CD from HMV/Zavvi rather than online from Play or Amazon or similar for much cheaper..?

..and fans of Neil Gaiman.

The Coraline trailer is out.

And in other news...

Barack Obama collects Spiderman and Conan comics.

Now how do those two stereotypes play? Geeky misfit puts on lycra and becomes POTUS... or barbarian conquers the world and becomes king...