Title Goes Here

A sudden pause...but I'm still here. The new computer ran into some teething problems and it's taken a while to find a compromise. See, I got all these new parts and kept my old case, not remembering that new computer parts operate at a far higher temperature than my old computer did. That's why new computer cases often contain two fans in addition to the one in the power supply. So I'm running the new beast with the case off and that seems to keep it happy, if a little noisy. I put an extra 512MB in there too, so it's running a very respectable 1Gb of RAM - very nice for the video editing that I hope to get to soon. There's about 10 years of home videos that need to be saved !

I finally got some painting done on the house - I started at the back, but we really need to get the front done ASAP in case the home owners association starts to complain. "The what ?" you may ask ? For those of you who don't live in South Florida, if you buy a house or apartment in a development, there's likely to be a Homeowner's Association. They tell you what colour you can paint the house, make sure you do the upkeep on your property, and collect dues to pay for area landscaping and the like. Our association are a nice, relaxed bunch, but I've heard of "Condo Commandos" in other developments who are just *obsessed* with finding fault in other people's properties. I think the solution is to vote for people who have jobs to serve on the associations' various committees - that way they won't have time to get ridiculous about things.

We watched Seabiscuit last night. Not a bad movie, but a bit formulaic, and it didn't half remind me of .Phar Lap. The same plot devices...underdog of a horse, fighting spirit blah blah blah. The characters were all a bit cartoonish (rough-n-ready jockey who comes good, slightly weird trainer who Has A Way With Horses, Good Millionare who cares about the little man and whose life is tinged with tragedy, Fat Jowly Billionare who sneers at people). Perhaps I've watched too much Babylon 5 and Lord of the Rings, but I don't think two hours is enough for a movie any more !. In B5 we had around 130 hours (including commercials) of material, LoTR was 10 hours in the extended DVDs...now that is enough time for character development. I think I've been spoiled by shows/movies that don't try and cram too much into their running time, and so have to reduce characters to one-note themes.