The Grax Domain

31 Jul 2004 I'm outta this stinkin' country!

I'm heading on holiday this Monday with me old Uni friends. Gonna spend two weeks in one of their other homes in the South of France. I don't know exactly where in France, all I know is that it'll be about a 10 hour drive from the top of France. And I'm one of the drivers! Talk about a Road Trip. Fortunately I'm fully prepared and nothing will go wrong *touch wood*. If they got a phone line in their house (not to mention a working computer) I might be able to keep posting stuff. But don't hold your breath on that one.

I've also gotten rid of the bad cat smells in my room. Yay!
ASP stuff now works on the server my stuff's on. Yay!
MY ASP stuff still doesn't work yet. Boo! (I think I know where the problem is, its just finding the time and constant connection to sort it out.)

26 Jul 2004 Fahrenheit 911 Review

To help beat the boredom (see Day 4 below) I went to see Michael Moore's recent offering to the movie world, Fahrenheit 911. It's essentially a documentary about the events of 9/11 and all other bits of related stuff, including president George W. Bush's election and the war on Iraq.

This movie sets out to expose the details that the American government and Bush probably don't want you to see. It makes Bush look like the most selfish, incompetent president ever. It also shows things that will shock and/or anger you, like how the tragic 9/11 event could have been prevented but wasn't or why America really went to war with Iraq (you didn't actually believe it was for weapons of mass destruction like Bush said, did you?). Essentially this movie's message is not something that is not already know; that Bush's actions were all about greed, money, power, corruption and oil. But the amount of detail that this movie goes into is an eye opener.

This movie has everything a movie could ever need, comedy, action, real life explosions, tragedy, anger, tears, the lot. Very well done.

Is it worth paying £7 to go see a documentary at the cinema? Hell yeah. If anything, it'll make a nice change from all the mundane summer movies that normally come out this time of the year. If not at the cinema, then it's a definite renter.

GRAX RATING: 4/5

26 Jul 2004 Day 4 of the New House

It has been four days since I moved out of my old home into the new accommodations I am now in. The flat is tiny. My bedroom is only about 7'x12', in which most of that space is taken up by my vast junk including my computer. The room also seems to have a permanent smell of cat litter. Turns out this is where the two cats that live here use to go to the toilet. And since I moved in they still think it's their room. I'm sure I'll get rid of the smell eventually...

Another thing to note is not only is there no Internet connection of any kind (I'm using my local library to write this), but there are no TV channels, not even the standard channels 1-4! This is because the people I live with don't have a TV, nor do they want one (after all, what's the point of paying about £100 a year just to watch crappy TV?) Unfortunately this means I don't have the option of rotting my brain at home with TV. Looks like I have to find something else to do, like practice the baffling arts of XML and Flash, or even go outside. Yes, it's nearly gotten that bad :).

It was hard to settle in to begin with; mainly because of the many boxes that I had to unpack into my tiny room. But I've gotten use to it all. It'll certainly do until I can find a job and move there. Worse comes to worse, at least living here might give me something to write about. My feelings about the situation range from "This ain't so bad" to "Where is that f****** smell coming from??!!?"

In other news you might have noticed that the Magic 8-Ball and the Marvel Database are not working properly. I am aware of the problem and I am trying to fix the problem as quickly as I can, which is kinda hard with no home Internet connection. Please just bear with me.

19 Jul 2004 Grax Domain is on the move

I'm gonna be kicked out of my house at the end of this week, and I'll be moving in with my brother for a short while. He doesn't even have a telephone line, let alone a broadband connection yet, which is gonna suck big time. Why does this matter to you lot? Well all my web sites run off a crappy little computer in my room that uses a broadband connection, including THE ART OF GRAX and THE MARVEL DATABASE. Simply put no broadband connection, no web site. So I'm gonna move my stuff to a different server temporarily.

Luckily I have a friend who has their own server that I can use their web space (thanks mate), until I can get another dedicated broadband connection. It's not as good as having a server in your bedroom to tinker with, but it's the next best thing. I might not be able to post updates often either because of the lack of internet connection at my temporary home (but then, how often do I actually update anyway. :D )

I can bet this won't be a smooth transaction so if you notice anything weird going on with any of my pages or nothing seems to work properly, now you know why (sorry about any previous screw ups you've experienced already).

All normal services will resume shortly (I hope). ^_^

15 Jul 2004 I had a Graduation Ceremony and all I got was a lousy hat.

That's it, it's officially all over, I got the piece of paper today saying I got a good mark at my degree, I even wore the graduation gown and got to keep the hat, I'm done! Now onto the next phase in my life; getting a proper job with proper people. I'm gonna miss Uni life... except for the exams and the work we did and stuff. ^_^

12 Jul 2004 At last; my latest, greatest work is completed

I have finally finished my latest art pieces. It's taken about 6 weeks of on-off work to complete, and it's still not brilliant. Oh well, judge for yourself at THE ART OF GRAX.

The drawing were gifts to my Uni friends/house mates before we all split up one last time and go our seperate ways.... My God, my Graduation Ceremony is this Thursday. I'm gonna be officially finished with University by the end of the week! eeep.

5 Jul 2004 Shrek 2 Review

After watching Shrek 2 at the cinema yesterday, I felt compelled to write my review on it. I was quite surprised at what I saw.

The storyline is pretty standard issue, especially for a sequal. After Shrek and Fiona's honeymoon they go to meet Fiona's parents, the King and Queen of Far Far Away. But not everyone is happy with Shrek's and Fiona's marriage. That's all I can really say without giving away most of the plot. Sorry. But the story is not why you're here, you wanna see good animation and have a laugh.

The computer animation is quite stunning, which I suppose is the norm nowadays. Looking at the characters, you sometimes forget its all computer generated it's that good. It does slip up once or twice during the movie but it's hardly noticeable and doesn't ruin the movie experience.

Shrek 2 overall is pretty funny with some truely brilliant bits torwards the end. Everyone was in stitches from these moments. The best bits to mind were the three blind mice and the Cops parody (whoops, I gave some of it away. Sorry. It's not a major thing, really. Guess you'll have to watch it now.)

Should you bother with it? It's definately worthy of going to the cinema. If you want to save some pennies and have patiences, definately rent it on DVD. It'll be worth watching... Unless you didn't like the first movie.

GRAX RATING: 3/5

4 Jul 2004 WTF?

"A tricky business. A very tricky situation. At the time it seemed like a good idea, not that there was much thinking involved. But now, what is the right step? This whole performance is most confusing, and it doesn't do the body much good either. A slight advancement one way and it is turned away by guiding hands saying "Hey, steady now." But still it carrys on because, despite its bad nature, it feels good. It's felt needed by the people involved. A bold step must be made." Ha! If my friends can write random rants without any form of clear understanding about its meaning like THIS and THAT, then so can I (Warning: contents of links contains bad language and sexual stuff.) In other news I haven't done anything like SimpleImg for a couple of weeks now. My only excuse is that I'm taking a breather on that, give myself a little time to relax. Besides, it was my birthday the other day, cut me some slack. :-P There will be more pictures in the very near future, I promise. I noticed the other week that one of the requirements of SimpleImg is that the image has to be done in paint with 24bit colours. My drawings are not 24bit colourings... D'you think I should change the name of the meme to something else?