House

I think, from my experience, there are three different things that happen with Netflix. The first is just aimlessly scrolling through, maybe when you have some unexpected free time or company and you aren't sure what to do until you decide on something you've already seen to avoid disappointment. Secondly, much similarly to the first, is deciding there is a film you want to watch and looking it up on Netflix - inevitably leading to leading to joy when it is or disappointment when it isn't - but it is on another on demand service which you don't have. Or the third, which I think most people experience - binge watching a box set. I think the culture today is not so much to watch TV when it is actually on but to record it, on demand it or buy it when it is on DVD. It's lovely to just keep watching and know there is more, but you do end up a gap to fill when it is finished.

At the moment I am watching House which was on TV pretty much when I was at secondary school between 2004 and 2012. The reason I actually started watching House more recently was because of work experience. In Year 10 I worked at A-Z Maps for two weeks. There I got to make my own map of my local area, and explore the building to see how all the maps were put together. The main office was in the village where I live which was lucky, because I was interested in geography systems and I could walk. Win win really. A lot of the work was ICT based, which at the time I was not used to, and unfortunately I started getting bad migraines in the afternoon which lead to the doctors, which lead to only working half days in the second week.. This is also how I found out that I am terrible at taking tablets - they just make me gag. So when I was working half days, I would come home in the afternoon and close the curtains and sit in the dark with the TV on for background noise. I always remembered House from this, and when I saw it on Netflix thought - hey I remember that. I'm hooked, close to the end of the sixth season with two left. I started watching this on my own, but I started sneaking in the odd episode onto the TV and no we're both watching it.

I was trying to find the map that I made as they printed it out for me but I couldn't find it but I do ironically have another scroll of paper, which was a gift from a colleague. Where I work, I have had a couple of different nicknames but the one that seems to have stuck is penguin. So here is me as a penguin - it's pretty awesome.

I think the penguin idea came from wearing a three piece suit.. Which I still do to this day, not everyday but.. Pocket watch n'all.

Creativity

Something I have always admired about small games companies, or individuals is how creative they are. Big games like Final Fantasy literally have hundreds of people working on them over their life time and they tend to just focus on one thing. There's a team to develop the story, one for character creation, one for the environment. Smaller companies and individuals, do most if not all of it. Of course, on a comparison of scale, the games are vastly different but not less enjoyable than one another. One of my favourite games is The Binding of Isaac which encompasses you traversing randomly generated floors collecting different things making the game pretty much unique every time you play it. Whereas a game like Dead Space for example, you play it once and you know the story, you can play it different ways but you are prepared for whats ahead - still doesn't make it less scary though.

Why do I admire that? I've always wanted to see something out there in the world with my name on it, whether that be a book or game, something I can be proud to say - "I did that." I think my problem is a mix between creative block, and being too ambitious. I have on occasion created an idea in my head and pieced it together and wrote ideas down.. But when it comes to doing it, I find it hard to flesh out. To make this idea for a story have believable character relationships and logical development, to make the characters I have designed move on a screen. Honestly, it's my fault. I have a habit of thinking too big and when I can't see a logical path to get to the end result, it puts me off. I find my break through moments are when I can shrug off this aura of following logic and things making sense, and I just do something. Add something random. Change something you think doesn't need changing. I'll come back to it with my logical hat and see connections I didn't before.

Source: http://www.cfau-pd.net/wallpapers/creative-pictures.html

I've always liked how creativity is expressed with a light bulb. The concept of an idea, coming to light. I think people will often look at this as the idea suddenly appearing in your mind. I like to think of it as.. A switch, illuminating a thought that was already there.

Hello Keyboard

This, surprisingly, comes to you live from my bed after 128 days. I think about my blog from time to time, browsing through posts and looking at old pictures. I've always said that this blog was for looking back at things I've done, things I've experienced. I would love it to go further of course, have my own little corner of the internet where people come to read my things - in this day and age, success on the internet is not uncommon. At the same time you only ever really see and hear about the successful few that get catapulted into the spotlight. I'm hopefully going to come back to my blog though, I say hopefully because I said the same thing to myself 128 days ago.

Its literally been months since I last posted, it makes this post easy and hard to write. I have months of experience to pull on but only one post to say what I want to. Today at least.

So the nerd in me is of course shouting 'Pokemon Go came out since you last posted' which is completely true. It did. And I have been enjoying it, it encourages me to go out and has made for some good times like wondering around lakes in the middle of the night. Sounds safer when I don't write that down. When it first came out, it was interesting to walk around towns and see people with their phones at arms length, crowding around stops and gyms and playing.. What I have noticed now, is that it has gone back to the phone being held at the waist but people are still playing - and talking. On multiple occasions, people have approached me and the people I am with to tell me there is a Pikachu over there or a Slowpoke done the road. It's an interesting development in society that a video game was the thing that got people outside talking. And inflating the sales of portable batteries by something like 200%.. Everyone's a winner?

Guess what's back on the telebox. Bake Off! I am watching todays episode on iPlayer right now, so I am very distracted. They're marking Viennese Whirls which I love, and I imagine would taste better than I am used to if they were made at home rather than bought from a shop - but I can't bake. I like Selasi, he has a very laid back approach and is using some interesting flavours. I mean he put a scotch bonnet in biscuits - I wouldn't to feed that to Paul Hollywood.

So, take a moment to look at this.. It's something that Amy showed me and is absolutely ridiculous..
http://news.sky.com/story/syria-tourist-board-reveals-promo-clip-with-slogan-always-beautiful-10559682
Syria, for whatever reason, decided that now would be a good time to release a video to try and attract tourists to go and visit. Don't get me wrong, the images which they used in the video do make the country look attractive - until you remember that it is very much an active war zone. I get it, I do. Everything in the media at the moment is negative, when it comes to Syria, they might be trying to repair their image. I understand but there is probably a better time to do this.. Maybe I am just being a negative Nelly.

I talk about films a lot. Funnily enough I have been to the cinema three days in a row from Sunday to yesterday.. Sunday I saw Bad Moms, Monday was Sausage Party and yesterday War Dogs. Go Cineworld cards. My thoughts.. Here you go.

Bad Moms was an interesting film, and on the surface does come across as a comedy - which it is. I think it was quite clever how they worked in a commentary on motherhood of recent years and how they are expected to be these crazy machines that do everything. It does stereotype men as being useless and not really contributing to family life but I may be reading into it a bit much, in the sense it was just emphasising on the journey of the characters becoming strong and more independent. It had its laugh out loud moments, it had its heart warming moments.. Its a film we agreed that we enjoyed but probably wouldn't buy.

Sausage Party.. Well. What do I say? We know who made it, we know who's in it.. The trailer let us know there would be copious amounts of swearing and ridiculous ideas.. But it literally gave nothing away that happens in the film. At the moment, I am describing it as an experience like Human Centipede - not for the content, but as a film to say.. Yeah I've seen that.. And then you back away slowly.. I'll warn you now, it goes to a very dark and weird place in the last half an hour..

War Dogs was really good, the film itself was about two hours long and felt longer. I remember checking my Fitbit (I have a fitbit now by the way..) at about 9:30 thinking.. There's still an hour of this left and I am glad there is. It explores the true story of a firm that sells weapons to the government and how it goes.. Slightly wrong it is safe to say. The casting was really good, and the story itself whilst dramatised was believable. Dedication from Jonah Hill for putting weight on after loosing a lot to play the part - with an interesting laugh which I am interested to know where it came from.. I would definitely recommend this film out of the three - if you were presented with this choice.. Yeah.

I'll leave it there for now. As you can tell this is a bit of a mish mash of thoughts tumbling out of my fingers onto the page and it has been a while.. I guess I am out of practice structuring something that makes a bit more sense and follows a trend. Blog you later - haven't typed that in a while for sure..

Friend Request

So we went to the cinema yesterday, we being me, Amy and Tom to see a horror film called Friend Request. Tom enjoys a horror, as do I whereas Amy is quite happy to cover her eyes and ears and pretend that it isn't happening. Both approaches work pretty well. Here's a link to the IMDB page if you'd like to read up and look at the actors/actresses in the film.

Friend Request - IMDB

I always find with horrors you get a niche pool who tend not to appear in any other genres. For example, the main character (Alycia Debnam-Carey) in this, the only other thing I recognise her from is Fear The Walking Dead - and by that I mean I watched one episode and forgot to carry on because it's awesome. Whilst I have no problem with this, it does throw me off a little bit. For example, whenever I see Patrick Wilson in a trailer now I think they're making another Insidious film, I honestly thought they were but it turned out to be the trailer for The Conjuring 2. The only other thing I know him from is Watchman but I like to think the owl get up separates him in that from confusion.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

So what did I think of Friend Request? For me, I think I'd give it a seven out of ten. Let me explain why - so naturally there may be some spoilers from here on in.

Is He Meant To Be There?

First things first, managed to get the video uploaded to YouTube, it only took 88 minutes opposed to the crazy 11,800 it previously stated.. I would recommended using the little YouTube icon to watch it in a better size should you so choose.

So, today was remembrance day, and I assumed that it would be a pretty much widespread thing that everyone would observe the two minutes silence. I was quite shocked with the statistic on the news came on to say that 40% of people wouldn't according to a poll. I found that quite surprising but I guess we live in such a busy time that some people won't stop, not out of disrespect but because they can't or are told not to.

The parades on Sunday were wonderful, a great show of respect. It was interesting to see all the different regiments and parts of the army that you don't always hear about. Yet what did the media focus on, the fact that a political leader didn't put down the wreath correctly. And then that he stuck around at the end to watch the rest of the service. Who cares that he did, there were literally thousands of other people there - and the day was about remembering all those that were lost to get us to where we are today. Why wasn't the news focusing on the turn out, on the veterans? It just really leads you to believe that the media is corrupt because this would clearly look like publicity for for the dude. I know his name, but I don't want to associate it to my blog. Ha.

I feel like this picture of Gracey could quite easily become a meme. Like.. I found your browser history..

Pumpkin Juice

I'll just get this out of the way now - I didn't watch any Harry Potter but wanted to carry on with the theme hence the title.. I was very much preoccupied by a little something called Fallout 4.. I'll get to that later.

So I feel pretty comfortable saying that myself and Amy really quite enjoy Halloween, all the decorations what not. We didn't do pumpkins, in terms of carving, until a couple of years ago but now I can definitely see it being something we do for the foreseeable future, sitting around the table pulling out the innards of an innocent squash. Doesn't seem to normal when you put it that way eh? Usually we just got to the shops and pick out too normal looking pumpkins and go from there. This year, we did something a bit different with one of my work colleagues, the apparent phenomena that is PYOP.

Pick Your Own Pumpkins. Turns out there is a pumpkin farm in Sandling which I had no idea about, which is in Kent. I saw it was a phenomena because we got there and there were literally floods of people; a much larger crowd than you would expect for picking out a pumpkin, I would quite easily say at least 300 people with a constant stream of traffic coming in and out. We were not fortunate enough to get a wheelbarrow, and thought we wouldn't need one which lead to this ultimately..

Chocolate Frogs

Just writing some blog whilst watching the second Harry Potter film, as you do, as you do.

Today I wanted to go back to Amy's birthday, where we had a little trip to London. Amy had said to me that she wanted to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so I thought - lets go then. I really enjoy musicals, and West end productions, this was no exception. The only thing I don't like, which I can only assume that a number of other people wouldn't either, is the pricing. I know you can see from all the seats other than the ones with the pillars, the prices are pretty steep. The stalls are over £100 each! We were sitting on the balcony, which is the top level. When we saw Wicked, we were on the Grand Circle which is one floor down.

Now, the balcony was pretty crazy. It had it's own entrances on the side of the theatre, and you go up six flights of stairs which really knackers your legs. The thing that threw us off was how steep the balcony was, to me it seemed like if you took a stumble, you would fly off of the edge. It made Amy a little uneasy at first but as soon as the play was on, no problems. They used the whole stage and a lot of the performance was actually off of the stage, above it so you can always see what was going on. The only bits we couldn't see where when they were right at the front of the stage, close to the seats where you are 90% likely to get spat on.

lovetheatre.com

World Of Questions

We're going to the Warner Brother studios this month, back to the Harry Potter tour, which is going to be amazing as from the 13th, it is a Christmas theme. The Hogwarts Express will be there and the model of Hogwarts will be all snowy increasing it's already high level of awesomeness. To celebrate this, we have started a 'marathon' of the films, and I say it with inverted commas as we have a good couple of weeks and I don't know if that will necessarily qualify as a marathon. It's going to be awesome, just wish everything in the gift shop wasn't so expensive.

I think the thing that makes the films and books so wonderful, is that it never leaves you with enough, which sounds like a bad thing at first. It isn't, not even in the slightest unless you hate being left with questions. The universe is so massive, that just watching this first film now, I can think of question after question to explain exactly what is going on.

Every magical item in the series would consequently have a back story and a history - in that universe. I wouldn't be surprised if that side of things was never thought about when creating the series, because why would you? It being successful leaves this sort of thing to thought for the fans to make stuff up, explanations. Whilst it would be enjoyable to create these ideas to theorise as to their existence, a part of me will always hate not knowing. I am just as surprised that Harry Potter is still going as strong as ever, especially with the most recent surge on merchandise and plans for films and stage plays.

Something which I am really interested in is the new illustrated books, which is the exact same story just with illustrations - pretty self explanatory to be fair. I tried to hunt this down a number of times in Waterstones but could never find it, I finally got my hands on one in Asda not too long ago. It is amazing, much larger than I thought it would be.

Waterstone.com

Inspiration

Inspiration in itself, I find quite hard to come by. The concept of it seems simple enough to just sit down and think of something to share - how hard can it be? I think you might be able to see by the hiatus I have inadvertently had from posting on her that I struggle. Real life blogs aren't something that is uncommon to the internet, but interesting ones aren't made up of people who necessarily work a 'regular office job' which limits your sharing capability. I am sure you would love to learn about me playing my Xbox, relaxing and playing with the cats - but for how long? I know I probably wouldn't be enticed to trawl through my old blog posts to read more about it.

To me that leaves, writing about my interests which makes sense, but sharing it in a way I want to isn't always easy. Whilst Blogger is a great free blogging tool, it is limited in its features to a single feed. The natural solution would to be to move to a paid service, and as with everything starting out new, is a risk. Investing money into something that may never make capital is a scary thought, imagine paying for the train every day knowing you might not be getting paid for the work you do.

So what lead me to where we are now, this moment, typing this post and reading it back in my head? I am honestly surprised to say music, which is something I don't usually bother with. I hate the hassle of untangling headphones and the detriments to your battery life and the constant worry that your music is just that little bit too loud so everyone can hear and be annoyed with you. I'm listening to the rock radio station on Spotify, after listening to Macklemore's album, The Heist. Personally, rock and metal do it for me, if I choose music, I like your mainstream chart music as well, but I find it doesn't tend to have real connection, a meaning that you can empathise with. Macklemore surprised me, taking my attention like a hook to the mouth. I generally don't like rap, but his music is honest and brings real life matters into the spotlight such as sexual equality and a world under the thumb of global corporations. A good beat is nice to listen to, but when the lyrics make you think about the world around you, I think that says a lot more about a song that millions of hits on YouTube ever could.

Amazon.com

Another thing I find worrying - the amount of people who haven't actually listened to Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns 'N' Roses - it is more than just that one sentence.

I want to start writing again, I have been dipping in and out of the story I want to write making some head way. I find it so hard to write for any long period of time, I constantly read back thinking it sounds strange or stupid. Is that just me being over critical, if it was written by someone else would it seem so alien - who knows? I guess that is what peer reviewing is for.

So where is the blog going? I don't really know, but I want to move it forward. I want to express my interests and talk, talk to like minded people and engage with an audience. I am probably the worst example of this, but I guess people don't necessarily like posting to random pages on the internet. I don't post to any, no YouTube comments, no Reddit threads. This is my expression, I just hope some like minded people find it and engage. I have never had a comment on my blog form someone who I don't personally know - not that I didn't appreciate their input. I feel like, if I want to progress this further, I need to catch some sort of media bug, actually utilise the different applications I have linked in the top right. Get emailing, I made an email for my blog as well - MattTalksLife@gmail.com - it can be anything, something you want me to right about. I like finding out stuff.

Right now, another game of The Binding Of Isaac which I have recently found my love for again. There is a new expansion but I can't bring myself to buy it -  still got so much to do and unlock with my current version! Blog you later.

Rustle And The Cat Will Come

Our old cat Speedy who left us last year hated plastic. Genuinely. Just the noise of it was enough to make him run the other way, and I thought this was a general rule of thumb for cats. I guess it makes sense because to them it is just a horrible noise with no real reason. Plus a plastic bag blowing in the wind might look like some sort of evil winged creature..

With the two cats we have now, it is very much the same with one. Gracey is not interested and would rather waddle off upstairs to lay on our bed as she usually does - as I am typing this she is laying on the end of the bed. She really does waddle, if only you could see it then you would understand.

Bella on the other hand seems to love it. We put plastic bags on the chairs in the kitchen so that they would not cover them in cat fluff - what has ended up happening is Bella sleeps on the plastic bags. She also stalks around under the tables on the chairs watching people, all atop the plastic bags. If we move them off onto the floor to use the table, she lays on the plastic bags once again and just watches us. I got on board with it, just a quirky cat thing - until today. My parents have been clearing some stuff out of cupboards which were all stored in plastic bags, and she was batting them as they were piled on the floor. And then this happened.

At the time, we were eating our tea and all of a sudden my Mum started calling us into the living room and there she was, quite happily sitting in a bag. We tried calling her out of it, offered fusses and she just wasn't interested even a little bit. I took a little recording of her, then this picture - and then picked her up in the bag. She didn't like that too much but she had a wiggle around and then hopped out when I put her down, but that is something I can say I have done that not a lot of other people will have. I assume. Who knows, maybe cats love that.

On the D&D front, I ordered some dice as I mentioned before and they came! I do like the pattern, the numbering is nice and my friend who I play with had made a dice bag which I now use. Everything is so purple, I am also happy to say that it appears non borrowed dice did seem to let me get some decent roles, passing some different checks and actually killing some stuff!

This week, our little team were tasked with finding the source of a camp causing problems in the north, possibly populated by bandits or goblins like we had already encountered the week before. We came across a little horde of goblins scouting the area who we had far too much trouble destroying.. Mainly due to me breaking in the dice still, poor roles were still a thing. After that we encountered or first dragon! It was a Green Dragon Wyrmling so it was only a baby which, due to good rolls, was beheaded in a single turn. Cheeky magic bolt, cheeky angry barbarian chopping. It is so much fun, and playing is just inspiring me more to make my own story to share. The only problem is, I want to do it all proper, so researching it and making random events tables, and making sure there is a range of difficulties and all that jazz. It might be a while.. But it will give me another heading to include along the top!

We have also just booked in to see the film We Are Your Friends on Thursday which is the release day, it was directed by Max, the silver dude from Catfish if you have seen that MTV show. Looks awesome. I shall let you know at some point our verdict - mine will likely be it was awesome because I like most films.. Yeah.

Thank you once again for reading, I am thankful for each and every view I receive as always. Blog you later!

A Little Taste Of America

This time last year, me and Amy were in America. I know a year is quite a long time but I can remember everything quite vividly as it was an amazing two week experience. Today, I have felt a lot closer to the memories, with all the different little things happening. For a start, the weather has been lovely, pretty hot but humid - which I know is no where near what we had in Florida but it was an admirable attempt by England.

I know it seems like a strange thing to bring you close to a memory, but what really did it for me was a visit to Costco. Yes, Costco. Myself and Amy aren't members but two good friends are and you can take in a guest with each card. The Costco itself was the one at Lakeside so we actually started off with a little wonder around IKEA so that part of the day was pretty Swedish.. But after that, over to Costco.

A Step In Which Direction?

It's been a while hasn't it? To be exact, 65 days which doesn't include today because I am technically writing on here now. No, I did not work that out, I Googled it because of the internet and it's many wonderful mysteries. Usually, I'll refer to it as 'before' when I was blogging more often, I would apologise for such a delay. Whilst I had no intention to take such a prolonged break from posting, it just sort of happened and felt right. I didn't feel like I was enjoying it nearly as much as I used to, and I personally attribute it to the daily pictures - which I think was a good idea, but labelling them and feeling compelled to find something to post each day, took the fun away. I was actively looking for something, anything to post even if it wasn't that interesting to look at. It was a picture which I could label and say I posted the picture for that day. You may have noticed running up to the break, there were more and more pictures being sourced online because I didn't feel like I had anything around to share. I'm writing this on here to everyone to read, but at the same time, I feel like I am trying to justify this to myself. Regular readers might understand, new people I have probably just freaked out - hi by the way. So what now? I am going to try and post again, find my rhythm because I want my online diary back.

The ironic thing is, I have basically had two months away in which I have done plenty of different things, and nothing erupts to my finger tips to talk about first. Oh the irony.

Let us start with a couple of adventures to London, as you may recall, me and Amy both have Merlin Annual passes so we can get into a number of places in London with fast track and stuff like that meaning we can do quite a lot of stuff in a single day. Which I quite like because a travel card is about £20 each so the more you cram in, the more you get for your money. We got an email closer to the start of the year from Merlin letting us know about their new attraction in London, which is now actually being advertised on the TV for Shrek Adventure. It is best described as the London Dungeons but for kids.

You've Got Time

The title is with reference to the intro music for Orange is the New Black because.. I feel like it is talking to me, because I do have time. To watch season three, which is what I will be accompanied by during this blog post. I currently have mixed reviews, that the season peaks towards the end and the build up is a bit.. Slow. I guess it is just setting the scene but it has already been confirmed for season four so it must be good.

I really need to finish Daredevil as well, I keep forgetting to watch it and I have no excuse because I can just watch it on my phone. It is literally at my finger tips. Then again, I know if I am prolonging it then the second season won't seem so far away.. I think this is the only problem with Netflix series, it being available causes serious cases of binge watching, and it is contagious. I know many people who have been affected by this epidemic.

So it has been five days since I last spoke to you all here, so let us get on shall we. I have plenty to talk about. I shall start with Friday, when I went to a Thing - it is literally a thing. It is called a thing, and it is basically a work do where we go play pool. The simple things in life are nice. We went to a sports bar called Riley's and it turns out there are loads of them everywhere which I did not know but they have pretty good deals so look them up if you want to play pool. For example, £10 for 2 hours, membership and a drink or £20 gets you four drinks. I have a pool/snooker cue somewhere but I couldn't find it so I used the 'stock' ones, they served us all well enough.

Day 709
The weekend was all good all around, Saturday we did the menial tasks of shopping for food and all that jazz, luckily it wasn't too busy for a weekend but.. People seem to switch off when they are driving cars and trollies and they just block aisles and swing around everywhere.. It is not so nice.

We had a little wonder around some shops as well in Maidstone and Week Street is still closed because of the fire.. Which I am still finding it hard to get my head around because it just seems like such a strange thing to happen to somewhere you were literally in not a week or so ago. It is on the news and people are constantly complaining about the shops being shut and what not but - at the same time they would be livid if it was opened too early and the building collapsed on them. Just saying. Maybe they just pick selfish people on the news to panda to their own agendas. Make it safe - then let people back. Simple! Sorry if you were one of those people - my opinion is what it is.

I also was lucky enough to play this little game here.

Rainbow Roses

Don't worry, you'll find out.

First - I feel a little bit of an outrage coming over me. The Simpsons, maybe one of the staples of TV, it has been around for ages, and now they decide to do this!
http://news.sky.com/story/1499626/anger-as-homer-and-marge-to-legally-separate
Even without clicking on the link to the page, you can see it in the title. Apparently they are planning to or have already split up Marge and Homer in The Simpsons! I personally don't like this because it is called The Simpsons, it is about them being a family unit, especially after 25 seasons! They are splitting up because of strain on the marriage because Homer has narcolepsy which is quite obvious in terms of what has happened in the previous episodes but to introduce it now as a reason to stop it.. Pfft, I just don't understand it. To me, I see it as a publicity stunt to attract attention to the show but the majority of responses I have seen have said - why not just end the show? It has had a good run, making a change like this now is more suited to like a soap opera.. I expect something like that from Eastenders. At the same time, I am not too bothered because I don't watch it because it is all on Sky now. Sort of makes my opinion obsolete but hey - it's the internet.

Day 706
So I mentioned that we went and saw Spy on Friday. We left really early for the showing because I was on a late shift so, we knew we were going to hit traffic - and my oh my we did, we were sitting on the same road for about 30 minutes just crawling up it.. Two cars had also broken down which didn't really help in the grand scheme of things. Due to this, we ate and then had a little wonder down by the river which is next to the river and of course, a selfie was incurred by Amy. And it goes like this - filter and all.

A Weekends Wonderings

Good evening internet, well it is at least when I am writing this. Good morning and afternoon depending on when you are reading it. Right now, I have just finished watching some Mystery Diners which follows a company called Mystery Diners who go all around America saving business's from problem employees - some of the stuff they do is actually crazy, and makes you really appreciate your own work ethic even if you have a down day. I am not making a start on a film, Evil Dead but the 2013 remake. Amy got me the triple boxset of the original trilogy which I still need to watch, I have seen the first and parts of the second and I really enjoyed it, shall have to fit them in sometime. I really appreciate the older horror films where special effects weren't as present in the film making process because whilst modern day films are awesome to watch - I feel like you can appreciate the process more when they had to make props and stuff.

I'm already seeing differences between this and the original film so.. Maybe they went a different way with it and that is why they didn't remake the trilogy, it'll stand on it's own as a single film with the same name as a classic.. Something I always find strange about my taste in films, I find the old films stories so cheesy but they work - whereas with the modern remakes, they piece it together much better but it just annoys me because the characters always seem to have a background knowledge and stuff.. I guess it is just where I am used to the original story.

Oh why did you read the book? It told you not to.. And the book is covered in blood. WHY!?

Day 704
We have discovered a new delight at the cinema, a lovely lemon slush drink made my Tango, they call it an ice blast and we love it.

They do a couple of different flavours which are clearly defined by the colours, there is blue, pink and yellow - which we have and is lemon flavour. It made me think of our holiday last year as one of the amusement parks in America had something which I refer to as yellow slush. It was so good, and this tastes just like it. I don't want to say one was better than the other because.. I have this feeling it was the American one and I don't know if and when I will get to try that again. You can even combo these with Cineworld's popcorn deals so it is pretty good value, especially with a premium card giving you a 25% discount which makes them more like normal prices - how exciting.

The only thing that is quite disconcerting.. Is that this is vividly yellow, and when we had it the first time I didn't think anything of it. On the way back, I asked Amy to look up how to make some as we have a blender which you can obviously use to slush-ify (scientific term) the ice. She found this recipe, you blend ice, sugar and lemon juice together and hey presto - lemon slush! The difference is, this does not come out yellow, like, not even a hint. It comes out as this clear tastiness - I highly recommend. I love anything lemon.

So that was part of Friday night so I know it technically doesn't count as the weekend but.. At the same time I know it does for a lot of people.. Let's just go with it.

We decided to get up early Saturday morning to go shopping and get it out the way with, plus it wouldn't be as busy - nice and easy. The alarms went off and we appear to have made the unanimous decision without communicating to just go back to sleep.. For a couple of hours.. Oops. It was so worth it though - lay ins are definitely one of little pleasures in life. So instead, we decided for a little jaunt into town for a Weatherspoons lunch where I had a mixed grill.

Now - I have not eaten much steak in my life, honestly the first one I had was last year. Other than a gammon steak, I have eaten that on many occasions. This had a rump steak and also a lamb steak. The rump was done medium rare - great. I can't really tell how the lamb was done because honestly some bits of still looked raw but there was no blood or anything.. It was actually so good, I really enjoyed it. That was my something new for the day.

We also indulged ourselves in two separate walks, we like to go along the rivers and what not to enjoy the scenery and wildlife we find - and by that I mean taking it in turns to run at pigeons. They don't trust us anyway.

Day 705
Today, we decided to head off to a boot fair, and I have mentioned before that my parents have always found some pretty interesting ties at boot fairs. Thanks to previous travels and the one today at the Hop Farm - I am not the proud owner of these lovelies!

How awesome are these? I know that one of them is clearly seasonal but I am sure I will have the opportunity to wear it later on in the year. We also have a Guiness tie which is covered in glasses of Guiness - I don't drink it myself. I have never tried it so I might like it but.. I hate trying new drinks, because if I buy it and don't like it - wasted money, I also have a couple of coloured patterns, Bugs Bunny, Mr Men, Wallace and Gromit and also Tom and Jerry. A great haul all in all. I always find the contrast of prices strange, the cheapest here only cost me 25p where as another cost £1. Some people ask for more - I guess it depends if it is a stall who does this as a business or someone who is just having a clear out. We also got two other little things which.. I am going to save, to share with you in my next post.

This film basically went down a gory route. It is pretty disturbing some of the imagery I am seeing.. It is quite interesting - to me at least - to see the stark contrast between what is 'acceptable' to show in a film. The original of course had some very disturbing images for the time it was made, but the special effects which which I can recognise today at the time would be like what I am watching now. The special effects make this seem much more real.. How the times have changed. You can also tell I am not used to the luxury of recording TV because I have been sitting here watching the adverts..

This is something I would quite like to explore, how video games have changed. I mentioned last time how I am really excited at the announcement of Fallout 4 and how it is going to amazing. I personally joined in the series on Fallout 3 on the 360, but there have been two other games which I never played and may not ever be able to. They are available on Steam but only for Windows, whilst I do have the Mac dual booted, I didn't partition it for heavy usage in terms of installing games.. Whilst I could probably increase this, I don't want to impact the performance of the device.. Anyway.

I am thinking I am going to search for some lets plays on YouTube of the first couple of Fallout's, I also want to watch someone play through Final Fantasy VIII as me and my brother played this one but never really got too far into it, we weren't too great at that type of game at the time. I would be interested to see the game develop and what not. Sounds like I have decided to give myself a lot of video to watch.

The book writing is also continuing, I am enjoying the process at the moment, like researching things and making decisions to put in place things which will make sense or assist the story. Choosing a name for the main character was hard enough. I guess I will try and give you updates where I can without giving anything away - the superstitious side of me will win this one. Well, thanks for reading and of course, a good night or day to you. Blog you later!

I'm Going to Write a Book

Pretty self explanatory. The title. I know I have mentioned it more than once on here before, that I want to see something with my name on in a book shop or Amazon - everything is from Amazon these days. I am sort of hoping I have the aptitude to persevere and finish something, because when I was younger I always started writing things and never saw them through, they ended up dotted around the house in random pads of paper. Then again, I am a lot more mature, actually have an idea which I am interested in and write ideas for - so I guess I shall just have to see what happens. I am most likely not going to share anything on here - I swear I have seen a film where someone shared their idea and then it got stolen and what not.. You get the idea. I know in this day and age I could probably easily prove it was my idea but the cynic in me says otherwise.

So what I thought I would do today, is share some series of books which I have really enjoyed reading over the years, which may or may not provide inspiration for me. I guess it completely depends on where I decide to go with it because at the moment, I have an idea which is just a seed I am planting - what it'll grow into is as much a mystery to as it is to you. In the interest of making this flow a bit better, the first three images are going to be in relation to this and will be pictures 699, 700 and 701, there'll be a fourth also but you'll see that down the bottom of course in the 'me' section. Where I talk about me. I don't think I needed to explain that..

So the first book series is by Anthony Horowitz and is the Alex Rider series.

Stumbling Along

Good evening, peoples and animals of the internet - because no one knows you are an animal on the internet..

So it has been a while, again. I am trying to spend my time looking into things that I find interesting and share them with you, so it is like a little snap shot of my brain projected onto the internet because why not? Of course, I will share the bits and bobs of my life, because I like to share that and have it to look back on. At the same time, we are fast forwarding through the majority of the Britain's Got Talent Final because we know who won but.. Want to watch some of the acts in the final.

So what I have today, is a collection of eight random websites all with a little bit of interest to me which I quite literally - Stumbled Upon. This website, once you have signed up, asks you to pick a load of different interests, and then you press Stumble. What you then get, is a randomly picked internet page for you to have a look at. I must say, so far 90% of the pages have been enjoyable for me to look at, and it gives a thumbs up and thumbs down option so it can further filter down the content it provides you, so it forever more becomes personalised to you. So - let me show what I found.

Day 694
So the first one, is a BBC page called your life on Earth:
www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141016-your-life-on-earth?ocid
Much to my surprise it appears this webpage has actually been around for a while and I just seemed to miss it for some reason.. Because when I mentioned it to Amy in all of my excited-ness - she had already seen it. You put in some information, and it then gives you a history of Earth which fits inside your lifetime.

A Mindful Post

I assume that a lot of people will not have heard of this concept, of being mindful or partaking in mindfulness. I must say I was unaware of it until very recently until it was suggested to me, as a tool to keep your mind calm or to help calm it down. In retrospect, looking at it from the outside, the concept and practice of it can seem pretty strange. It is defined as "a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique."

What I have mainly partaken in myself so far, is the meditation side of things. You ideally locate yourself in a quiet place, and then depending on what is comfortable for you, sit or lay with your eyes open or closed - once again whichever is more comfortable - and listen to a recording. Sometimes. These recordings act as a guide through the session to assist with clearing your mind and then recognising the sensations you are currently feeling at that point in time. This helps you to just calm down and forget what else you have going on. You can do this without a recording as well, just quietly identify these things yourself. I have also tried an active one, where you follow through some stretches and feel the different pulls and tweaks - this was much more comfortable to do as a group with your eyes closed.. It is very strange though.

Day 689
Here's a little picture which I think is nice..

I think this picture sums it up, because it is identifying the importance of living in the moment and highlights what the idea of mindfulness is about.

The first time I ever did this, I remember leaving the session feeling quite spaced out and I got outside and everything seemed brighter, louder and smelled ever so vibrant. Where you are sort of training yourself to switch off, when you walk outside I guess it is sort of like a sensory overload. Sort of like confining yourself

Cats and Weird Stuff..

Cats! They are here - re-homed and moved in. It is so awesome, and nice to have cats around again so as you will see, I am being a crazy cat man in this post. Part of me cares, because in terms of rich content - you could quite easily argue it's not and I wouldn't dispute it but at the same time - its cats. And this is the internet, a match made in heaven! At the end though, I have accumulated some news articles which are pretty awesome, Amy shared them with me so I thought it would be nice to share them with you as well.

So, just so it doesn't break up the stream of cat talk and cat images, the cat pictures will cover days 682 through to 686. Just so you know. I just don't fancy bolding it up.. There will be a couple more pictures down the bottom though. I don't know why I am telling you, you'll find them.

So first, I think some introductions are due. The two cats were put into care because the owners had two dogs who didn't get on with the cats and thought it would be better for them. My Mum picked out one cat, then upon visiting discovered the second cat who has now come home with them!

This cat is called Gracey and is about 11 and a half years old. She is all black, with what I like to think is a white bow tie and her eyes - are always that large. She is a spitting image of my old cat

Speedy who had to be put down last year. The difference is, when he made these eyes it usually meant you

The Story Behind: Dante's Inferno - Part 2

Welcome to part two of this journey into the realms of hell, we have nine circles still to discover! I am enjoying researching this all far too much. I guess that is the benefit of being able to pick your own subject matter.. On a random tangent, I always hated Art GCSE at school because they told you what to create; not what I thought it was all about to be fair.

If you are new to this little series, the first part can be found here:

http://matttalkslife.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-story-behind-dantes-inferno.html

But otherwise.. Let's get back to it!

So here is the next portion of the story, thanks to lovely wikipedia (again):

At the Gates, he encounters Virgil, who knows of Dante's past sins, yet agrees to guide him through the Nine Circles of Hell in exchange for Beatrice putting in a word for him in Heaven. Dante begins his descent at the shores of Hell where the newly damned souls are forced aboard the great ferry of Charon. Dante forces Charon to sail him across. After this, Charon is destroyed when Dante tears his head off using a beast-mount. After arriving at Limbo, Dante confronts the serpentine Judge of the Damned, King Minos. After Minos denies Dante passage deeper into Hell, Dante fights the Judge and kills him. Dante then enters the second circle, Lust, where he enters the Carnal Tower to find Beatrice, whose soul is slowly being corrupted into a succubus by Lucifer, who also reveals to her