I'm back for my birthday (today) and the Expo this weekend and I'll be out drinking up a storm tonight and Friday. It'd be great to see people, especially on the Friday as a lot of my mates who are into comics will be there then.

That I am not here.

You can find me here and here.

Have fun and laughters. I will see you guys later in the week.

Sam

I don't post much of anything here to be honest. I really should but I don't keep a blog really. I used to, like 3 entries a day and everything, but just lapsed out of it because I spend more time away from the computer now. I might try and start again...

News then I guess. I finish for Christmas on the 16th of December, but only for three weeks this year. I guess people complained they didn't have the time to teach their courses and such as it used to be five. Which was great.

I started my dissertation. I chose "The History of the Comic Book and it's Social Relevance" as my topic. So it shouldn't be all that hard at all, I could probably do large portions from memory. But then it would be hard to reference things I talked about over pub conversations. I imagine it might go something like this:

Witty Insights about 52 by Neil Barnes (2006), King William Bristol

I could get away with that right? Maybe not.

Back to the news. I gave up the National Novel Writing Month. I didn't even get a single word down, no ideas concreted up in my head enough that I wanted to immortalise them in my first novel attempt. And I have a lot of short stories to do for Uni, two a week, I could do poetry for the assignments if I wanted but I really don't roll that way.

On the social front I'm back working on the Entertainments team at uni, which is great fun. I don't know why I stopped, probably something to do with a girl. Speaking of, still (pretty) single. Met somebody I liked but nothing's really come of it. Still not really over Natalie, I was completely fine with it when we split. It was pretty much my idea. But in the quiet moments, or when I watch something with romantic bits I find myself thinking about her and it brings me down. We almost got back together in October but my visit to see her fell through for money reasons and she gave up on us there I think. I'm going to try again at Christmas, but right now I just guess I have to wait and see. I'm in denial, it's nice.

Not much else going on. Money goes out quicker than it comes in, which is not good at all. Talking to dad the other day about my 21st (next summer, but he brought it up. I'm not a gift whore) and he said he was thinking about buying-to-let a flat which he would rent to me at cost. With the property market in Bristol whatever he buys will probably make him a very large sum of money when he sells it after I move out, so it's great for the both of us. I'm looking forward to finishing now. Being in Bristol full time, having my own place, but I am not looking forward to the whole "having a job" thing. I'd love a comic-related job, but I'm going to assume right away that all the shops are either full or that there'd be somebody more qualified and there aren't any pro publishers anywhere nearby. I guess I might have to make a move away from Bristol eventually if I really want to be proffessional, but that's a blog for another time.

Don't know if I have much else to say... I guess here's as good a place as any to leave things. If you're bored and want to e-mail me about anything, or you actually need or want my opinion on something (lord knows why) then I am on spiderfan2099@googlemail.com

Sam!

Yep, this November is NNWM (as it says in my title) and I'm going to be trying it. The goal is to have 50,000 words down on paper by the end of the month and though I don't think I'll manage it I am going to try.

I've had to start late as well because of other obligations, I may post it here in chapters when I'm done though. If it's any good.

Hello everyone, I'm back at uni and I thought I'd get myself online and put up an LJ entry.

I'm working on a couple of things at the moment, another submission for Dead By Dawn as my first one looks so nice and makes me so proud of my work, and also something a little more... Clean... I guess that's the only way I can describe it. I would like to be able to show my work to my Granny at some point, and I don't think I can do it with this one.

I'm still working on The Seventh Man, a concept that I worked on from the name forward, as I thought it sounded cool and just went from there. I wanted to write it as a graphic novel, but finding artists was just way too hard so I'm making it an anthology book with ten little stories telling one main story. I just hope the different art styles won't put everyone off reading it.

Some of you may not know, but my first love is actually writing prose, I'm much better at that than I am at writing comics. Comics take me a long time to do and I spend waaay too long doing, I have to psyche myself up to do them. With prose I, well I just love writing prose. All the prose assignments I have done for uni have been like 90%+ so I like to think I'm good at it. I'm starting to think I need to properly sit down and start a book. A proper book. Then try to get it published. I will have to set targets and such for myself so I can actually get it done, because I tend to trail off with projects.

I'm also writing a little Wonder Woman story for fun on the side, which you can read here: http://idlewilder.proboards54.com/index.cgi?board=wonderwoman&action=print&thread=1158711806

Please let me know what you think, my next chapter will be up in a couple of weeks for you to read as well. I'll try to remember to announce that here too.

Back to comics though, I just wanted to shout out a book I'm reading called The Escapists. It's easily my first read when I get it every week and is a whole lot of greatness. It's a book I wish I could write, or could have thought of. So go read it, it's hardly very expensive and it's only once a month. And it doesn't tie into anything so ti won't force you to buy anything else.

If you haven't read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and still call yourself a comics fan you should be ashamed of yourself by the way. It may be a book about comics creators but really it's a brilliant and heartfelt story of the human condition, and reading it really opened my eyes to different kinds of story. So go read it, it's brilliant.

I don't think there's much else. I miss Bristol already, especially today when I had a shouting match with my roomate, hence my hiding out at uni on the internet. Although it's a little stupid as I'm on MSN and MySpace here so he could easily reach me.

I'm a dumbass see.

So Natalie and I broke up today. I would say she broke up with me but it was more like she said we were getting too settled and I suggested time apart to which we both agreed to then breaking up. It does still feel like she broke up with ME though, even though it was my idea. I'm going to power through and ignore how weird I feel though, I don't know if I genuinely feel sad and upset as I'm not a very emotional person and I've not got much experience with it. I'm assuming the "off" feeling I have is sadness, but the fact that I don't seem overly bothered does hint towards the fact that I had seen this coming for a month or two.

It's going to be very weird being single again though. I'd been with Natalie for almost a year and a half, which is a significant portion of my life. I don't know if I know how to be single anymore, which is a stupid thing to say as the next pretty girl I see it'll all surely come back to me. I know I'll probably just jump right into another relationship, but I'm going to try and stay single for a while and really enjoy my final year of uni. I think I'll try and enforce a "no girlfriends before Christmas" rule. We did say we'd meet up and talk at Christmas and see if we wanted to get back together, so I think I should at least try and not get involved by then. I am a relationships kind of person though, I find casual relationships don't really happen for me. They evolve much quicker than I'd like.

She was crying when she left, and I feel kinda down now so I think we were both sad we ended. We may get back together, and I think I would really like to in maybe a year or so, when I'll be in the position in life to be ok with having a settled relationship. But right now I'm only 20, I should be having fun.

So I'm going to a party tonight, and I'm going to have fun. I'm not going to get drunk and sit in the corner and mope, I'm going to get in and talk to people and have lively conversations and such. It's going to be good and I'm going to have fun. It's not that far off now actually, only a few hours, I think I should probably go get some food.

I'm a little bored so before I tootle off downstairs to get some lunch I thought I'd do a little review of the film I saw at the Watershed last night, Rennaissance.

Firstly some plot details. It's set in Paris in the mid 21st century, around 2045 I think, and a young doctor is kidnapped and a rebellious maverick cop is assigned her case. It evolves that the doctor is mixed up in something huge that goes all the way up to the top levels of what I can only assume is government. The plot is solid and nicely nuanced, although not overly suprising. It's described as a "Neo-Noir" film in the same way Blade Runner is and I think it definitely lives up to the genre.

I forgot to mention by the way the whole film is compututer animated in a very atmospheric black and white. And I don't mean black and white with greyscales or anything, this quite literally is either black or white. It looks really sharp and has a real tone to every image. The look is probably the most successful part of the film, as although the soundtrack is good you don't really notice it. It often feels TOO white or TOO black, but then I feel this was intended.

Now moving on to the worst part of the film, the dialogue. It was poor most of the time, and really let it down. It was translated from French so I'll let it go a little on that front, but it still really sucked. Which is a shame because they got quite famous voice actors lke Daniel Craig and Ian Holm. There were scenes where it felt like 4 or 5 lines had simply been lost, like when the main character makes an accusation at some government bod in his boss' office and his bos asks for his badge. It really made no sense.

It may just have been because it was computer animated but the film felt a lot like a computer game, there was even a signature Max Payne dive in one scene. The plot was thin and escalated wildly and a lot of the scenes felt like cutscenes for a non-existant game, but I did still enjoy it. Probably because story-driven games are a huge obsession of mine.

All in all I'm giving the film 3/5, if I was being biased I would rate it as a 4/5 simply because I really like the neo-noir genre and it's not often one comes around. Also I did really fall in love with the way the film looked and it's slightly off-colour morality. You'll know what I mean when you see it.

Current Location: Bristol. In bed because I'm lazy.
Current Mood: Bored and Hungry.
Current Music: Have a Nice Day - Stereophonics (iPod on random)

Had a great time in Bradford, but I am now back. It was really good to see everyone and to get some peace and quiet and independence. Cooking for myself was a real joy after 4 months of having to eat what was put in front of me at the times it was put there.

I know that sounds crazy but I'm pretty picky so I prefer to cook for myself because I don't put stuff I don't like in the food. Which makes slightly more sense.

I'm going to my friend Caroline's wedding reception tomorrow, as the wedding itself is family only. Natalie's coming too and in a shock development will be wearing a nice dress and heeled shoes. I will of course make sure photos are taken and uploaded here. I have decided to buck the trend and not wear a tie, although I will take one with me in my pocket in case of tie emergencies.

My phone is back in action, having finally had it's bill paid, for those of you who tried to contact me and I didn't reply it was because I had no way to. Thank you all for being patient with my pennyless state. And for not questioning my decision to still buy comics in that state. Last week was an expensive one too.

Anyway it's getting late and I guess I should start the process of checking e-mails and such. It takes bloody forever. See you all soon.

Many of you may have noticed a Sam-shaped hole in your social calendars. This is because at the moment I have retreated to my Fortress of Solitude in the frozen north of Bradford to do some resits and move into my new uni digs.

I won't be at the comic forum for the forseeable future, unless there's one in the short time between me coming home and coming back up again for uni proper. Don't forget about me, and stroke me a flipper, I'll be back for Christmas.

I use widgets. That's right, widgets.

I have between 5 and 10 little windows hovering on my desktop, each one with a specific function. I've got a Livejournal one, which I thought you all might enjoy. Below is a screenshot of my desktop so you can see what it all looks like:




Basically I've got an RSS reader, Gmail widget which announces new mails, a Livejournal widget which is linked to the Bristol Comics community (it can be linked to others). I've got two LJ widgets, I don't really use the second one. It's a friends page monitor and as much as it looks nicer it doesn't show active topics it just shows when something new is posted. Here are all the neccessary links, one to the widget engine and the two LJ ones:

http://widgets.yahoo.com/win

http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/dl_r.php?widget=26037&platform=win

http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/dl_r.php?widget=40021

Some other cool widgets:

Gmail checker: http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/dl_r.php?widget=36365

Spider-Man 3: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/spiderman3/site/downloads/widget/download.php?file=Spider-Man_3_Official_Countdown.widget

RSS Reader: http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/dl_r.php?widget=39354

Connection Stats: http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/dl_r.php?widget=37765&platform=win

Please let me know what you think about said widgets, I'm really digging them at the moment. The ones I've posted here are mostly useful ones. There are some more fun and nutty ones like a little Garfield who walks around your desktop and eats lasagne and such.