Picture This. It’s one of those things that goes into the “I’ve never heard of it and probably would never watch it but it’s actually awesome” categories. Mark pointed it out to me.

Now, generally, you’d immediately see that it’s a short film (around half and hour long) about snowboarding and think “yawn!”, but don’t. It’s actually one of the best productions I’ve seen in a long time. The photography is simply stunning, and the soundtrack fits in really well, and it’s actually superb if you listen to it seperatly. A lot of it is filmed with a fisheye lens, which, usually, would make it rather rubbish if you overuse it, but they got it just right - not too much, but not too little either.

In fact, I can’t express how much of a good thing it is….you just have to see it. Seriously. Go and see it right now. And listen to the soundtrack. It’s brilliant.

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The amazing soundtrack:
Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra - 26
Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra - The Descent
The Ark - One of Us Is Gonna Die Young
Ratatat - Wildcat
Ming & Ping - Beautiful Things
Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra - Kiss The Sky
Men Without Hats - Pop Goes the World
Junior Boys - In The Morning
Awol One & Daddy Kev - Rhythm
Royksopp - Circuit Breaker
Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra - Prog Punk

I had a good weekend.

First of all, I went on Saturday to see Cirque Du Soleil’s Delirium, at the Birmingham Indoor Arena. Basically, Delirium is a 2-hour-long show that is basically a music show. It’s a series of acts backed to a soundtrack, and, simply put, it’s amazing. The music is actually very good, and the performance is very good. My favourite part in the whole show was during the song “Cold Flame”, and featured one very talanted performer - she managed to keep about 7 hula-hoops spinning for the whole track, on her arm, foot, body, legs…you name it.

If you can get hold of the soundtrack, it’s quite good too, plus you can hear it, albeit without the visuals and wirthout the awesome sound of the NIA.

The stage is quite large too, I managed to get a photo of it before they told us to turn our phones/cameras off:

I would rate the whole show a 9.5 out of 10, it was that good, and well worth the £55 ticket.

We (I went with dad) also went to Pizza Express before the show, however we timed it a bit badly and ended up getting into the NIA just moments before they started. And we missed desert. So when it finished, at 10pm, we went back to Pizza Express and had a coffee, and I had another garlic bread with mozzarella on it. I like them. They’re tasty.

So, that was Saturday. Sunday was quite fun too, I went to Alton Towers again and managed to get five rides on Air, and about seven rides on the Spinball Wizard. It also started to lightly snow at about 16:45, before we left, which was quite annoying, because for “safety reasons” they said only three people could go on the Spinball Wizard at a time (usually you can fit four people into the car thing). Also, a tip - don’t have a whole 600ml soft drink right before you go on. It’s a bad idea.

Also, they have a new part of the park which is basically a pirate ship type thing, and you have water cannons, so you can wet people who are watching you. One small problem, they have cannons too. It doesn’t seem to be that popular at the moment, because it’s cold, but once it gets warmer I think it’ll become more used.

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So, that was my eventful weekend. Fun eh?

I saw it today. Worst movie ever. I want my £5.90 back.

I got a Canon EOS 400D! Well, strictly speaking it’s my dad’s, since he paid for it, but I went and picked it up from Curry’s yesterday. £394, plus Canon have a £40 rebate on at the moment, so it’s pretty good value.

Only one small problem so far…1) the 8GB memory card I ordered off eBay only arrives on Monday, and 2) I’ll have to borrow our existing 256MB card on the weekend, from the old camera. And I can’t do that until tonight, when dad gets back from Italy. So, last night, and today, I can’t use it.

Ah well…you’ll hopefully see some good photos on my Flickr soon.

I went to Crufts today. Saw lots of dogs and stuff, some of them are absolutely cute as anything, and I saw some of the judging of the Staffordshire Terriers. I also managed to see the mini BBC studio that was setup for their nightly broadcast, they’ve basically got two cameras on tripods, one handheld one (still quite big though), and one boom camera. Interestingly, they’re all fully HD compatible but the BBC aren’t broadcasting it in HD. Which is odd.

I’ll upload some photos to Flickr in a few hours.

After Crufts, I went to see Vantage Point, which is quite a good film - it’s similar in style to Deja Vu…basically, the movie is “replayed” a few times from the same period in time, but from the “vantage point” of different characters. Toward the end they slowly start to merge together though, and the story is pulled off quite well. Overall, I’d give it 7.5/10.

So, that’s pretty much it.

Well, at least my Christmas Present has a bit of a use. The Toshiba player I had came with two free HDDVDs in the box (300, and The Bourne Supremacy), but they also had a mail-in offer to get five free discs.

So, I got them in the post today - Children of Men, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Full Metal Jacket, Swordfish, and World Trade Centre. Free!

So I’ve now got around £175 worth of free discs (that is, if each disc was priced at £25 which most of them are at HMV), and the player cost £180, so…I basically got an HD DVD player for £5. Neat.

It’s cold. It’s bloody cold. In fact, I’m absolutely freezing. I turned the heating on but it doesn’t seem to have made a difference. It’s like there’s some hole in our house that is letting in tons of cold air.

Right now I’m kinda missing the nice warm 34c that Adelaide has today………