Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The Ten Tenors - Swinging on a Star

As the year is drawing to a close I thought it was time to wrap it up with something fun. The Ten Tenors are my last discovery as far as music goes so here it is my favorite bit so far:

Listening to their albums on repeat right now and driving everyone around crazy, hehe.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Story: Santa Clause Extraordinaire

So... the month of December was a bit of an experiment. Since I wanted to work on a new story, I decided to try something new in order to avoid the usual writing like crazy for two or three days in a row followed by a week or longer breaks. This time I wrote 1000 words per day, every single day. It wasn't hard to keep up with this routine, it was relaxing, except for maybe during the weekend as I don't usually write during the weekends but I prefer to read instead. It worked well until last Saturday when I finally gave in and caught the cold the rest of the family had been fighting for a week or so. After that I couldn't focus anymore and I had to cut back on writing. And my brilliant plan went down the drain... at least I have the consolation that I'm quite advanced in the story and there is still hope to finish the first draft by the end of the month. But this is not what this post is about.

Yesterday evening I was drugged up to my eyeballs with antibiotics, tylenol, cough syrup and two or three other things to chew the doctor gave me, and having an extra radiator by my side because I refuse to move my desk from the window corner where it gets pretty chilly in the winter, probably that's why I got the cold too, or at least it helped some but I'll never admit it, so being in a slightly happier and fuzzy mood I typed something. I revised it today between coughing fits, never try that, it's a waste of time, and then I sent it and now it's up already. While reading it on the site, I was giggling and ROFLing and LMAOing at the sappy and cheesy things I can write when I'm under influence. The thing is, the editor liked it so I'm sitting here scratching my head and wondering whether should I change my field of writing. I won't, but I haven't written any romance in quite a while so maybe it was time.

Santa Clause Extraordinaire

Sunday, December 20, 2009

2009 Animated Movies


9 – By far the best realisation and story. A little sad though…





Planet 51 – Very funny and entertaining. Quite a pleasant experience.





The Princess and the Frog – Nice to see another typical Disney movie. Maybe not as good as the previous ones, but decent enough. It reminded me a little of a Paul McCartney music video. And the soundtrack kicked ass as expected.




A Christmas Carol – Haven’t seen it and I’m not going to. Not a fan of the story and even less of Jim Carey.





Fantastic Mr. Fox – Awkward dialogue but it was nice to see the old school at work again.






Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs – Unfortunately the authors paid too much attention to the visuals and little to the story itself. Besides, I don’t like the animated movies that portrays people, they always look fake.




Astro Boy – Looking forward to see this one too.






Ponyo – Not as good as Howl’s Moving Castle, but still pleasant to watch.





Ice Age 3 – The first one was fun, but now with a sequel to the sequel the story is getting a little old.





Up – Interesting visuals, but maybe because of that the story dragged in places, to the point of becoming almost boring.





Coraline – Well, I’m not into horror movies, even if they are animated, but I guess it wasn’t that bad.





Monsters vs. Aliens – This was pretty bad, really not worth wasting your time with it.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

SF Signal - Official Sci-Fi Geek T-Shirt

Here's a funny thing...

I've entered my share of contests in my life, some I've won and some I haven't, but whenever I did I had to work for it. I've never won a contest finalized with a random draw.

Unlike me, little brother is an ace of random draw contests, he wins them more often than not. He just won an Official Sci-Fi Geek t-shirt from SF Signal. All he had to do was enter his name.

Now this is what I call luck!

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Grand Prix Final 2009-2010

Grand Prix Final 2009-2010
2-6.12.2009
Tokyo, Japan

Results

Junior Men

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Yuzuru HANYU

JPN
206.7731
2Nan SONG

CHN
204.9912
3Ross MINER

USA
196.0924
4Richard DORNBUSH

USA
191.8063
5Grant HOCHSTEIN

USA
187.9245
6Artur GACHINSKI

RUS
178.0356
7Stanislav KOVALEV

RUS
163.2077
8Kento NAKAMURA

JPN
142.7888

Junior Ladies

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Kanako MURAKAMI

JPN
160.5321
2Polina SHELEPEN

RUS
159.2912
3Christina GAO

USA
151.4753
4Ksenia MAKAROVA

RUS
147.2934
5Anna OVCHAROVA

RUS
144.9646
6Angela MAXWELL

USA
137.5585
7Kiri BAGA

USA
122.3577
8Ellie KAWAMURA

USA
120.9368

Junior Pairs

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Wenjing SUI / Cong HAN

CHN
160.4511
2Narumi TAKAHASHI / Mervin TRAN

JPN
145.8022
3Yue ZHANG / Lei WANG

CHN
137.1953
4Tatiana NOVIK / Mikhail KUZNETSOV

RUS
134.3364
5Kaleigh HOLE / Adam JOHNSON

CAN
132.1745
6Britney SIMPSON / Nathan MILLER

USA
128.6276
7Ksenia STOLBOVA / Fedor KLIMOV

RUS
122.1938
8Alexandra VASILIEVA / Yuri SHEVCHUK

RUS
121.3587

Junior Ice Dance

FPl.NameNationPointsODFD
1Ksenia MONKO / Kirill KHALIAVIN

RUS
141.2111
2Elena ILINYKH / Nikita KATSALAPOV

RUS
139.3632
3Maia SHIBUTANI / Alex SHIBUTANI

USA
138.7523
4Kharis RALPH / Asher HILL

CAN
124.7544
5Ekaterina PUSHKASH / Jonathan GUERREIRO

RUS
119.5055
6Isabella CANNUSCIO / Ian LORELLO

USA
118.1166
7Lorenza ALESSANDRINI / Simone VATURI

ITA
106.7887
8Marina ANTIPOVA / Artem KUDASHEV

RUS
106.6978

Men

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Evan LYSACEK

USA
249.4521
2Nobunari ODA

JPN
243.3633
3Johnny WEIR

USA
237.3544
4Jeremy ABBOTT

USA
235.3852
5Daisuke TAKAHASHI

JPN
224.6015
6Tomas VERNER

CZE
192.3266

Ladies

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Yu-Na KIM

KOR
188.8621
2Miki ANDO

JPN
185.9412
3Akiko SUZUKI

JPN
174.0053
4Ashley WAGNER

USA
162.0764
5Joannie ROCHETTE

CAN
156.7145
6Alena LEONOVA

RUS
156.5536

Pairs

FPl.NameNationPointsSPFS
1Xue SHEN / Hongbo ZHAO

CHN
214.2511
2Qing PANG / Jian TONG

CHN
201.8642
3Aliona SAVCHENKO / Robin SZOLKOWY

GER
200.3824
4Maria MUKHORTOVA / Maxim TRANKOV

RUS
198.3533
5Yuko KAVAGUTI / Alexander SMIRNOV

RUS
183.0165
6Dan ZHANG / Hao ZHANG

CHN
180.2556

Ice Dance

FPl.NameNationPointsODFD
1Meryl DAVIS / Charlie WHITE

USA
169.4412
2Tessa VIRTUE / Scott MOIR

CAN
168.2221
3Nathalie PECHALAT / Fabian BOURZAT

FRA
147.6233
4Sinead KERR / John KERR

GBR
145.3344
5Anna CAPPELLINI / Luca LANOTTE

ITA
139.2155
6Vanessa CRONE / Paul POIRIER

CAN
135.9966