Could that have been any easier?

Nikki's been talking for a few weeks about what a good idea it would be to take some of our films with us when we go away, just in case (unlikely I know *cough*) the in-flight movies suck. I've been procrastinating, because all our media - both DVDs and BluRays - are ripped to MKV format and this won't play natively on the iPad, but with the trip imminent the time for procrastination ran out yesterday and I started doing some research. It didn't take me more than a minute or so to find GoodPlayer.

With a "best video player for iPhone" recommendation from Lifehacker, many positive forum postings and a price tag of only £1.99 it wasn't a hard purchasing decision. Little did I realise that the traditional simplicity of getting my hands on an app from the App Store was only the start of this easy ride.

I launched GoodPlayer and it instantly found two media sources. Well actually it's the same source but GoodPlayer supports a variety of access formats, so it gave me the option to connect to our film collection via SAMBA/CIFS or UPnP/DLNA (apologies to those of you who don't speak geek).

Clicking on the first took me to the file share list and I navigated quickly down through the folders - multimedia / video / movies - to our list of 400+ movies. Choosing one at random, GoodPlayer asks if I want to stream it, or download it. I chose stream (for now), and the movie started playing.

Just like that.

The whole process from finding the app to watching the movie took less than five minutes. Sometimes, computers and related technology get in your way. Sometimes they can even make you tear your hair out. Other times they *just work* and this was one of those times. Brilliant. Vibrant colours, crisp almost-high-def stream (from a standard definition movie file) and no buffering or streaming problems at all now that our downstairs network has been boosted by the TPLink Powerline adaptors.

It took Nikki less than five seconds to declare she wanted a copy too, and half an hour later we both had a download queue of 4 of 5 films which our NAS was happily serving up to the iPads at 3MB/sec (download time for an average film about half an hour) as well as delivering a film to the TV. Should help the flights pass more enjoyably :o)

Kitchen fit: Day 14

A day of surprises. A day that, I thought, would be wall-to-wall painting, but which turned out to be hardly any painting at all and other much more exciting things like downdraught extractors, induction hobs and putting the fridge and freezer back into place.

Neff induction hob, with de Dietrich extractor (in "deployed" mode). Ooooh. Finally, after all the waiting we can... er... boil a pan of water. But! Never was boiling a pan of water *quite* so similar to being on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. Touch sensitive surfaces and a whizzy little dial thing that is held in place with a magnet and taps and spins to control the hotplates.

The extractor raises itself out of the depths with the touch of a finger and sinks back down again when it's finished sucking.

All this more than satisfies my life-long fascination with knobs and buttons.

Nice to have the fridge and freezer back in the kitchen too, even if it does mean that for the next three or four days we'll be performing a reversed version of the dance we first started back in July. Now the usable cooking facilities are in the dining room and all the food is in the kitchen. Back then it was t'other way round. Not for long though.

Well, I SAY not for long, but as we discovered today it'll be slightly longer than expected. Here's a photo that gives you a bit of a clue, even though the main reason for including it is to give you another perspective on the lovely new hob (purr, purr)...

See the problem? Yes, that's right. No knobs. No, I mean on the cupboards and drawers. The hob is supposed to be knobless. The drawers aren't. Slight delay in delivery. Slight as in "the week after next."

Well, we can't wait THAT long to get into our new kitchen, so the fitter's going to come up with some Heath Robinsonesque solution involving screws and masking tape apparently. Lovely.

Kitchen fit: Day 12 - at last a tap

When you've been filling your kettle, via a large plastic jug, from a wash basin under the stairs no bigger than a loaf of bread, for a month (almost to the day - the last time we had a kitchen sink was way back here), and also using that basin to slop out the coffee maker, and empty the fish tests, and pretty much everything else vaguely sinkish apart from washing up, then this picture is like a vision of heaven.

Yes. We have a tap. Awesome isn't it?

The rest of the day's progress was limited to more painting and, as I may have already mentioned, putting a second coat of cream onto cream-painted units makes little visible impression, there are no "progress" photos to share today. Apart from the awesome tap, of course.

Stunning Lines

I've written almost two dozen original songs, so I know from personal experience that some lines stand out as being especially memorable, poignant, apposite, meaningful, moving, or beautifully crafted. And unless you're a particularly gifted songwriter, those really good, stand-out lines are few. I reckon probably three in my case, so far, and I'm probably being generous to myself. I bet everyone can think of at least a couple from their favourite songs that really grab their heart and give it a squeeze.

Never mind, I'll find someone like you.

Adele has been all over the UK and world media for the last four years or so, but nothing quite prepares you for the quality of the songs - all the songs - on her second album: 21. For me though (and apparently, since 21 has only been out a little over a month and sales are already in the hundreds of thousands, for many others too), even among the many gems on this album that single line from the chorus of Someone Like You is one of the most breathtakingly, heart-achingly powerful I've ever heard.

So few words to crystallise the loss of hope, the final realisation that love has gone, but even while it's leaving you don't wish any hurt for the other even though you're hurting. You loved them that much. Never mind. Don't worry about me. All I need to do is find another you. Simple.

The power of the words is, of course, multiplied by Adele's amazing performance. If you haven't seen it I suggest you get yourself over to YouTube sharpish. You'll be glad you did. But it is the words that do it for me every time. The album insert credits Adele Adkins and Dan Wilson as co-writers. Top job guys. It really is a line I wish I'd written.

Sand(ing) in my eyes

It's done!

In the end, power tools were the answer. Or, a power tool, to be precise. A detail sander:

A recent purchase intended to speed up the task of smoothing off large areas of unfinished purlin (at which it excelled), I was always going to use it on the front door panels. They stretch the entire width of the hall and would have taken an age to do by hand. Once I got started with this little wonder and a pack of 25 sanding sheets, I thought I may as well carry on. It made short work of the dado, skirting, and door frames, allowing me to finish in a single afternoon an area almost double that which has already taken two weekends to do manually.

Power tools. Always the answer. Yes, I did wear a mask.

Scrape sensitive

A month on, and I continue to be impressed and pleased with our new wheels. I skim-read the handbook, but after a couple of surprises I decided it was worth a closer read.

First surprise was the automatic hill start. The new Astra is equipped with an electronic handbrake - something I've not encountered before. I found it reasonably intuitive, but the salesman had been extra diligent and made sure I was familiar with both ways of using it. It has a operational interlock with the foot brake for safety purposes (you have to depress the foot brake before releasing the handbrake - avoids accidental releasing by (e.g.) kids messing about in the car) but it will also release automatically if you try to pull away when it's engaged.  Releasing the clutch slowly will allow the car to move off after a brief pause.

I don't expect I'll use that feature much, as it increases wear on both clutch and rear brake pads, but it'll probably come in handy from time to time.

What I hadn't immediately realised, but revealed itself the first time I pulled up at Nikki's workplace to drop her off, is that the car has an incline detector. If it's in danger of rolling, the car applies the handbrake automatically for a few seconds, effectively giving you a hands-free hill start. Maybe I'm easily impressed, but I thought that was pretty cool.

I like the rain-sensitive wipers too. The wipers don't have an "intermittent" setting in the traditional sense - where they flick on and off after a set number of seconds. Instead, the intermittent position on the wiper stick activates a sensor behind the windscreen which detects when a certain number of raindrops have landed, and triggers a wipe. It's possible to increase or decrease the sensitivity, but once set the wipers automatically react to changes in the rate of rainfall, all the way from full-time wiping to almost no wiping at all, as required.

I guess this is all very mundane to anyone who's had a new car in the last few years, but stuff like this wasn't even an option in 2003 (our last purchase) on the kind of model we were looking at.

The wipers caught me out one frosty morning last week though. I'd left them in the "auto" setting, turned the motor on to get the various demists going, and set about scraping the frost off the windscreen. The sensor interpreted my scraping motion as rain and set the wipers off. Didn't half make me jump I can tell you. I leave them switched off now!

Continuous Improvement

While we're on the subject of shelving from the Underworld IKEA, I thought I'd share with you my appreciation of a couple of little innovations I discovered while I was assembling it. Here they are:

I suppose I should have added something to the photo to give an idea of scale, but as one of them is an Allen key that should help.

Tightening Allen bolts to their right tightness (which, as any Yorkshireman will be able to tell you, is called being "right tight") was always a bit tricky, and I'm guessing that for many of IKEA's customers, the tool itself was a little uncomfortable for their soft, pampered, 21st-century hands. So they've included a holder! This unassuming length of strong black polypropylene takes a standard IKEA Allen key, and provides (a) a comfy grip and (b) exactly the right length for delivering the correct torque to the business end, ensuring a perfect assemblage of your bits.

It gets better.

The plastic is stamped with a bold "5" on one end and a "4" on the other, suggesting that it is in fact an Allen torque wrench with two settings. The instructions accompanying the Hemnes called for the key to be inserted in the 5 end, which is where it remains (although I've pulled it out a bit to make it more obvious. When fully inserted it doesn't look all that much like an Allen key). How cool is that?

So what - I *know* you're wondering - is the other little guy?

If you've ever struggled to hold those fiddly little panel pins that are supplied with many of IKEA's shelving units to hold the back panels in place, you'll be more than impressed with this. It's a nifty little panel pin holder. The sharp end is ribbed to provide extra grip, the round end has a little hole in the middle to take a panel pin, and the whole thing is split down the middle, so once you've knocked your panel pin into the wood a few millimetres you just give it a tug and it comes away, leaving the pin standing proud, ready to be knocked in the rest of the way. Flippin' brilliant.

This is what I like about IKEA. Already market leaders in affordable flat-pack furniture for the masses, they could easily sit around and bask in their greatness. But no. They continue to add cool innovations like this to make their customers' lives that bit easier. Thanks IKEA! 

There's just one thing though. Being just lowly items in the bag of bits that come with - for example - Hemnes, these little guys don't actually have IKEAse names of their own. I think we should invent some. Here's a starter for ten: the pin holder chap could be PLONKIT, and the Allen-key-holder TORK (see what I did there?). What do you think?

Our new baby

If we'd waited a day, we could have picked her up on 11/1/11, which would have been even more memorable. As it is, we couldn't wait! The lifelong addiction to that new car smell proved too much, and we collected her from the dealer yesterday.

Truth be told we hadn't exactly planned to replace the old one, even though it was beginning to look a bit beaten up and had long since passed the 130,000 mile mark. That mileage, and seven-and-a-half years, still isn't exactly old for a modern car, but a combination of circumstances - the cancellation of the GM Card scheme and consequent time limit on "spending" the points; some good VAT-increase-beating deals; the sudden availability of some spare cash - all came together at once and nudged us over the edge. Only 50-odd miles in, and I'm already loving the ride, the handling and some of the whizzy new features, which I'm sure I'll be blogging about sooner or... well... sooner.

Family milestones

A little while ago I wrote a proud Dad post about my elder daughter, and today it's the turn of my younger daughter. For today is GCSE Results Day and all over the UK year 11s are opening envelopes, or reading notice boards, and either slumping or jumping.

In Blythe's case, there was much jumping involved I suspect. There certainly was here when she revealed her results - all passes with a highly creditable smattering of As and A*s in all the important subjects.

That's her passport to college, and her future mapped out for the next two years, which in these uncertain times is a welcome wedge of certainty. One other certainty is that there'll be a celebratory meal happening next time we see her.

This guy doesn't need my help, but...

...even so, I'm going to point you at him.

About a week ago Nikki found Stuff No-One Told Me (But I Learned Anyway) - a new blog by Spanish artist Alex Noriega.

I don't read many blogs, and I can't remember ever having recommended one before, but Alex has lit a small fire on the Internet with his witty, perceptive and well-drawn cartoons about life and I wanted to share. In the 7 days since I've been reading it, his followers have jumped from about 150 to 1573 and in the way of Internet phenomena I'm certain that number will continue to explode as word gets around.

Today's cartoon is one of his best yet:

but my personal favourite is still number 15. Number 09 is pretty cool too. I'm sure you'll have your own.

Google and Pac-Man

Google's "doodles" - the changes to their logo they make every so often to celebrate some national or international event, holiday, or hot news topic - have quickly become legendary. In fact one of the only complaints I have with the iGoogle home page is that we never see any indication that there's a new doodle to enjoy.

Last weekend, two legends collided. It was the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, widely regarded as "the game that started it all" (even though, being first released in 1980, it trailed Space Invaders by two years), and in celebration Google installed its first fully interactive doodle - a working copy of Pac-Man with the maze spelling out "Google" and whose gameplay faithfully reproduced the original, including ghost behaviours, fruits, and even the original bug that corrupts the screen on the 256th level.

Media coverage suggests that the game didn't start playing unless you pressed the Insert Coin button (which temporarily replaced the usual "I'm Feeling Lucky"), but this certainly wasn't true for me. Maybe it's different on Chrome, but the game started right up after a short delay and I reached instinctively for the arrow keys (I was a huge Pac-Man fan) and began playing immediately. I reached the fifth level, which I was pretty pleased about given that I haven't played for, like, 20 years. Some things never leave you.

But celebrating Pac-Man's 30th birthday, and Google's inventiveness and sense of fun, is only part of the reason for this post. And it's the "sense of fun" angle that I'd like to concentrate on first, because to me that's what it was all about. It was a weekend, Google's doodles are a fine tradition that always raise a smile in our house, and this particular doodle gave Google's users the chance - briefly - to relive a much-loved time in their youth when it was OK to while away a few hours chasing an animated cartoon mouth around a maze.

So it was with a dawning sense of OMG that I read some of the 571 comments posted on the news article I found on the subject. Many of them mirrored my own reaction ("wow" "cool" "brings back memories" etc) but fully half of them were complaints about the noise, about the intrusion into their browser space, about the waste of time and money, and any other possible thing you could think of to complain about and even some that would never occur to most people I know. Incredible.

These comments drew stinging reactions from the supporters of Google's efforts, as you'd expect, with people pointing out variously that Google (and all its services) is free, that doodles are only ever up for a day (or two at most), that all computers are equipped with a "mute" function, and that in the end if they weren't happy, why didn't these people just close their browsers or navigate to another page? But all of that common sense couldn't hide the fact that there are vast numbers of people out there who have utterly lost their sense of humour, of fun, and of celebration. And what's worse, they're not even prepared to sit quietly while those of us who haven't lost those things get on with it.

It gets worse.

Someone who must recently have had a humourectomy has now calculated the world-wide LOSS OF PRODUCTIVITY that the Pac-Man doodle caused. Yep. Five million man hours, apparently, giving a total monetary value - based on a low-to-average U.S. salary - of $120 million. A figure arrived at using some broadly-drawn assumptions on the amount of time usually spent on the Google home page versus the amount of time spent there when the Pac-Man doodle was active.

Oh dear. Oh woe is me. For a few extra seconds, all over the world, people weren't making money. Strike us all down with a bolt of lightning. Good grief. One of the saddest aspects of "this modern world" which has crept up on us during those thirty years since Pac-Man arrived, is that too many people have forgotten there is more to life than making money. Lift your heads up from those desks, people. Take your noses from the grindstone for a few precious minutes and have some fun ffs.

Book Review: Fatal Revenant

Way back in October 2008 I reported finding the first two books of Stephen Donaldson's Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I read book 1 on our Lakes week last October and since then I've been waiting for a chance to pick up book 2. This week has provided that chance and I've been devouring Fatal Revenant's 856 pages since Sunday morning.

I don't want to give too much away, but I will say I found this every bit as riveting as the first book. It's true that you have to be prepared to do battle with Donaldson's style when he's writing about the Land. The constant repetition of his heroes' fear, anguish, trepidation, suffering, loss and uncertainty which was such a signature feature of the first two trilogies is here once again, in spades, and it can get very wearing.

But overwhelmingly, this is a monumental success. Not only does Donaldson pick up the threads of every story, race and being that has gone before, and weave them into a narrative that fits as comfortably as an old cardigan, but he then skilfully embroiders that cardigan with a host of new characters, races and situations that are so cleverly explained and so thoroughly well thought-out that you can't tell the embroidery was never part of the original cardigan.

Moreover Donaldson's skill as a story teller, already epic at the time he wrote the first Chronicles, has achieved a hitherto undreamt of level of mastery. The complexity of this tale, as Linden Avery confronts a host of opponents some of whom endure bitter rivalries of their own and hence can occasionally appear to be her allies, others who are virtually their own hero and foe simultaneously, and continues to journey with a rare admixture of characters each of whom has a mystery to solve or at least one hidden aspect, is breathtaking. One of the most satisfying and rewarding reads I can remember for many years.

Chocolate heaven since... er... 1657

One of the unique, clever and impeccably thoughtful gifts I received from Nikki last Christmas (her gifts always fall into at least two of those categories and more often than not all three. I don't know how she does it) was a voucher for a two-person "taste experience." A choice of any one of about two dozen venues dotted around the UK where we could turn up together and be treated to something foodie.

Options included cheese tasting, wine tasting and gourmet dining, but the only one with the combined benefits of most attractive nosh and proximity was the Famous 1657 Chocolate House at Kendal.

Normally of course this wouldn't tick the proximity box but as we set off this morning for a week in the Lakes Kendal was only a tiny diversion on the way to Wasdale. We arrived with plenty of time to spare. After a short riverside walk to kill that time we climbed the worn stone steps (which presumably have been trodden every day since 1657) and, not really knowing what to expect, crossed the threshold.

The current proprietor greeted us, ushered us to our reserved table in the window and introduced our own personal serving wench. She then ran through the details of exactly what our taste experience would entail.

We began with a mug of hot chocolate from a bewildering choice of flavours (we both selected the spicy "Aztec" option) accompanied by a slice of chocolate cake from an even larger list. Most of these are made in-house from traditional recipes developed by the original owner, although a small number (three on our menu for today, as far as I remember) are bought-in from local cake shops to swell the variety on offer.

Both were delicious.

After a short pause and a glass of water to refresh the palate, the wench returned bearing a plate of cut fruit and four small pots of pure melted chocolate - one each of dark and milk - in which to dip the fruit.

Heaven on a plate, and surprisingly filling. Once the fruit had been consumed we climbed the tiny spiral staircase to a comfy lounge to watch a short film on the growing, harvesting and production of the cocoa bean, after which we were invited into the emporium's basement shop to select 100g each from their handmade chocolate selection.

All told we were there just over an hour, and left well sated with our 100g bags (it worked out at 7-8 choccies each) tucked away for later. What a brilliant Christmas treat. Thanks babe!

Weird & Wonderful artwork

As the excitement mounts in the run-up to the release of our second album, one of the MOST exciting parts is the arrival of the cover art, which Natalie volunteered to do. My only involvement was to add the lettering to the final version - and in the very early stages to help develop the idea - and then to (try and) sit back and not nag too much, what with this being her finals year an' all, to get it finished.

And here it is. I love it. It's exactly what I wanted. No, it's *better* than I wanted, because Nat has added her own artistic flair, invention and imagination to the remit and come up with something that exactly captures the essence of "Weird and Wonderful".

Our first album was produced in something like a cottage industry, with me burning CDs and printing off the covers and the infill. It had a definite homespun feel to it, and we posted off physical copies to all our family and mates. Now, only a handful of the original copies remain, and being burnt onto CD-R has meant that some of those copies no longer play. We decided we needed a better, more professional approach this time round.

One big difference that's occurred over the last five years is that iTunes, the iTunes Store, and digital music in general has entered the public consciousness in a way that had really only just got started back in 2005. So for Weird and Wonderful we're going for a digital release, with streaming media on our websites for a casual listen, and paid downloads for those who want a personal copy. Anyone needing to get their hands on a physical disk will still be able to order one, through a collaboration with a site called CDBaby - more details on that once the album is released. At the moment, we still have two songs to record and one or two other small tasks before we can put the album to bed. Little things like deciding on the order of tracks.

Movie Review: Avatar

I've tried to stay away from the hype surrounding this movie. In years gone by I would have been so excited by the concept I'd have barely been able to sit still through the adverts and trailer reels. With age, and with many experiences of excitement and expectation being dashed on the rocks of reality, I stilled myself. Hoping for the best and fearing for the worst. Having treated ourselves to the PS3 Avatar game and watched Nat playing it for a few minutes, the worst I expected was nearly three hours of video-game footage a la Transformers.

I needn't have worried.

Before the detail, here are the headlines. Avatar is outstanding. A team of creative giants at the peak of their craft, led by a man with a monumental vision, have created a world of beauty and wonder. What else is film-making about? If you haven't seen it, I would urge you to. If you're thinking of waiting for the BD/DVD release, I would politely suggest you go to a theatre to see it in its breathtaking 3D glory. Avatar will not only take you to another world for 162 minutes, it'll make you wish you could stay there.

"Pandora is a moon of the gas giant Polyphemus, which orbits Alpha Centauri A" says the Avatar wiki page, and you've grabbed me right there, from the off. Since the very first time I saw an "artist's impression" of the surface of a world with more than one moon in the sky I've been hooked on those images. Having a gas giant on the horizon just makes it that much more impressive. But this is just one of the jaw-dropping visuals with which you're assaulted in the opening minutes, and there's even better to come later on. Here is a world similar to those previously locked in the imaginations of the likes of Roger Dean and Rodney Matthews. Only it's real.

Undoubtedly using every cycle of processing power on the world's fastest graphics-rendering computers, and every nuance of programming subtlety developed over years to faithfully reproduce real-world physics and biology, Pandora looks real.

I've been impressed with CGI before - from Lord of the Rings to various Terminators - but there's always been something, some little thing, that jarred me out of my suspension of disbelief. That mental hiccup where you think oh yeah, it's just a drawing. Not here. In Avatar, CGI finally comes of age.

And at that point, the only limit is your imagination. From the gently floating seeds of Eywa through the bioluminescent forest pathways to the mighty Leonopteryx (Toruk), Pandora is the world you've only been able to read about up 'til now. Whether it's Hothouse or Hyperion, Halvmork or Helliconia, they've been more real in your head. Now they can be real in front of your eyes.

As good as any visuals are, they can always be lifted with the addition of a good sound track and here again Avatar does not disappoint. From the simplest forest sounds through the Na'vi native music to the soaring and uplifting strains that accompany the Ikran flights, Avatar is as much a joy to listen to as it is to watch. This must surely be the best work of James Horner's career.

Although Avatar pushes the envelope in so many technical ways, and achieves such heights of success with all of them, still it would be a hollow shell without a story to fill it and here, you may read, some critics have fallen short of rapture in their reviews, calling the plot predictable at best. Actually it had the opposite effect on me. The presence of the stereotypical characters - the grizzled military leader out for blood; the impatient businessman with his eyes so fixed on the money he doesn't see the real prize; the suspicious warrior leader; the beautiful native girl who steals the hero's heart; and on; and on - for me merely added a comfort factor. Knowing where the story was headed almost allowed me to relax and enjoy it MORE. There were still enough surprises to keep it interesting, even if the visual delights as each new part of the planet was revealed hadn't.

Scriptwise, some of the early exposition wanders close to the border with the Realms of Woodenness, but all things considered the backstory of how Pandora was found, why humans need masks to survive, why the Na'vi are revolting and what the military forces are really after, is all sorted out in pretty short order, arming the viewer with the necessary information and leaving him or her free to lap up the alien landscape as it unfolds.

Avatar as a whole, and the world of Pandora and the Na'vi in particular, have stayed with me in a way I cannot remember a film ever having done since I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey at the age of 12. I saw it yesterday and I'd be delighted to go back and watch it again today. I don't think that has ever happened. Simply outstanding in every way. I read one critic's claim that it is the best film of the last thirty years. I couldn't disagree.

Ayo Gurkhali

Things move fast in the apparently sleepy sleeper town of Wilmslow. The curry house we visited for Simon's "not" stag do back in July - Garlic Spice - had closed down when we gathered again for the monthly curry last month. Clearly their Summer Special was TOO good a deal!

But lo! Now it has re-opened under another name, and with a fetching purple neon frontage. It's "Ayo Gurkhali" now. Which, when I Googled it to see if anyone else had written a review, I discovered is the Gurkha's war cry of "The Gurkhas are coming!" (or "the Gurkhas are here!" depending on which source you trust).

Well they're certainly here alright. Here being Wilmslow, and Nepalese cuisine being what they're all about. Dressed very smartly in what I took to be Gurkha outfits and attentive without being servile or pushy, the waiters introduced the various Nepalese dishes and made helpful suggestions when called for, but otherwise left us alone to "enjoy" the strange music while we pondered our menu choices.

After a short while drooling over the delights of the chef's specials (they do a range of more traditional curries - madras, jalfrezi, etc - but fully half the menu is devoted to "proper" Nepalese dishes, which we all chose in the end. Well... there's not much point going to a Nepalese restaurant and having a chicken vindaloo, is there?) we discovered that the new restaurant also had a meal deal on. Slightly more expensive at £11.95 than the Garlic Spice's Summer Special - which hopefully will mean they make enough profit to stay in business - the deal included poppadums, starter, main, rice or naan, coffee or tea. Another bargain! Although once I'd waded my way through all that, I found myself wishing I'd paid only a few pence less and missed out the starter. Once again I was full to the point of pain. Will I ever learn?

It was worth it though. The food - uniformly excellent - arrived in REAL PORCELAIN serving dishes! Which came as a very pleasant surprise to someone who's used to having his curry served in the rather more traditional battered tin bowl sat atop a tea-light-fired heater. No heaters here - the porcelain kept the meals hot enough - and each meal had a different, intriguingly-shaped dish! Nice heavy modern cutlery too - not something that looks like it was stolen from Boots' canteen. All these little touches add up to a much classier and more refined experience than "yer usual curry house" and guaranteed we would be back to explore the extensive menu in greater depth next time.

I chose Gurkhali Cham Cham for my main course and I can't begin to tell you how good it was, except that it contains most of my favourite herbs and spices and came with some of the fluffiest boiled rice I've ever tasted. Brilliant. I'm already thinking about what I'll have on my next visit.

Watchmen

So much has been written about this - both the book and the film already, even though it's only been out a week - that I almost hesitate to go into print with my own view. Is there anything new I can say? Does that even matter?

I read the book over Christmas, at Blythe's suggestion, and wasn't overly impressed. Even though I devoured comic books as a teen, the graphic novel has never interested me. The story was good, and the art work uniformly excellent but nothing more than I'd come to expect from that kind of work. I didn't see much to rave over.

I'd read so many reviews of the film, with such widely varying reactions, that the only conclusion worth coming to was that I should approach the film with no expectations at all. Good or bad. And it was in that frame of mind that I took my seat along with both daughters in the middle of the first row of "premier seating" for today's first showing of Watchmen at the Manchester IMAX.

It's no exaggeration to say that, from the very first frame, I was blown away. I have never seen a film with such incredible... texture. I don't know how else to describe it. The cinematography was an order of magnitude better than anything I have ever seen. The images leapt out of the screen, fabulous close-ups with a wealth of detail, wonderful composition and imagery (the raindrops on the polished coffin lid is an image that keeps coming back to me, but there were dozens of others - gnarled faces with each hoary whisker almost deliberately positioned; rain-drenched streets; faultless costumes) and stunning iconography.

If you've seen 300 or Sin City or any of the other graphic novels that have been brought to the screen before this, you'll be familiar with the usual kind of "comic" images that a director plays with. What made Watchmen so incredible, so compelling, was that these images were uniformly made of real people. No silhouettes, no extreme contrast, no apparent visual trickery of any kind. It was the comic, made flesh. Made real. Incredible. And the sound stage? Awesome. A great sound track, crisp foley work, none of the muddy dialogue that plagues so many modern movies. Sharp from beginning to end, and - unlike some reviewers - for me none of the music grated.

So much for the technical aspects. What of the story? As I've said, I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool fanboy of the novel, and I think this helped. Much of what irritated me about the book had been pared away. This was the central story of Watchmen. That is complex and detailed enough, without any of the frippery. Nor did I come to the theatre expecting a run-of-the-mill, all-action "superhero" flick. Many commenters have said Watchmen is "boring" or "slow." Come on - they have 30 years of backstory to get through, as well as a whole bag of complex interpersonal emotions to pack in to what never felt like two-and-a-half hours. All I can say is, it held my interest from start to finish. I never felt any itchiness at the pace (like I *definitely* did halfway through The Dark Knight, where I actually fell asleep at one point it was soooo sloooow). There was always something to hold my interest, be it action, dialogue, imagery, music, whatever.

The set pieces - fight scenes; Mars; Ozymandias' palace; the bombs - were note-perfect, and several of the scenes gave an understated but poignant reminder that this was an alternate reality, and set in 1985. So the irony of having a huge hole blown in the middle of New York, while in the background you can still see the Twin Towers, was very powerful. Being a graphic novel, some of the violence is *very* graphic. I know both my daughters had to turn away at some point, but that comes back to what I said about it being a comic made real. Snyder didn't flinch from representing faithfully what was on the page, even though when it's being enacted by real people the impact is increased a thousandfold. It makes for a totally visceral cinema experience and puts Watchmen very firmly in my top ten movies of all time.

Just don't ask me what has to drop out to make room for it.

A Fantastic Find

I keep remembering things that happened while I was taking a break from blogging. Towards the end of the outlaws' visit, we made a brief sojourn to the local craft shop so that Shirley could stock up on all those patterns that aren't available over there. While that was going on, I sneaked off to Borders to check out the books and DVDs.

First stop: the bargain 3-for-2 table (I'm such a cheapskate) where I made the find of the decade. Book 2 of the THIRD (and, according to the cover notes and strapline, last) Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Book 2? I hadn't even known Book 1 was out. I'm clearly not spending enough time in book shops.

Twenty years ago, the first and second Covenant trilogies were among my all-time favourites. I devoured them avidly, reading and re-reading the entire series as each new edition was published. I know there were many naysayers around who thought Donaldson's world a cheap imitation of Middle Earth, but I was never one of them. In my view, there's only so many fantasy creatures to go around, so it was entirely sensible that The Land had a people who lived with horses, and giants, and magicians, and a single, powerful, evil overlord - in Donaldson's case, Lord Foul. His narrative style was sufficiently different, his hero even more tentative than Frodo, to make me dismiss suggestions of plagiarism as mere jealousy. I loved the Chronicles, then and now.

Finding that after a gap of twenty years, Donaldson has picked up the story of Linden Avery and returned to the Land centuries after her last visit, gave me a thrill of expectation I haven't experienced for a long, long time. Picking up a copy of book 2 - Fatal Revenant - I almost ran to the fantasy section and soon found a pristine copy of the first book - The Runes of the Earth. On my return home Wikipedia revealed that the Last Chronicles are planned as a tetralogy, with book three expected in 2010 and book four in 2013. That's a long wait, but I know it'll be worth it, and meanwhile I have over a thousand pages to pore over with geeky delight. The only question now is: should I dive right in, or bow to tradition and reread the other six books first?

The Musical Box 2008 - the Trick of the Tail tour - Manchester

The tickets for last night's gig at the Manchester Apollo have been sitting here on my desk under the monitor since early March, heightening the anticipation of the evening. Phil & Vicky came over from Chesterfield, and we'd secured tickets for my daughters too, so we were an excited party of seven in total as we took our seats on row J at around 7.30pm.

I'd been disappointed initially, when I saw the set list, that the band were not playing the whole album, but then I remembered Musical Box's trademark adherence to the absolute letter of the original tour experience, from staging, through slides and effects, music, instruments and, of course, content. This being Genesis' first album of the post-Gabriel era, the tour necessarily relied on a lot of their Gabriel back-catalogue, and so only five of the tracks from Trick of the Tail made an appearance.

The set was cleverly bracketed with the opening and closing tracks from the album - Dance on a Volcano for starters and Los Endos (which was to become Genesis' traditional closing number) to finish, and in between we were treated to a selection of the most mouth-watering goodies from the early 70s.

Following Dance on a Volcano, the band performed a medley from Lamb comprising the title track, Fly on a Windshield and (my personal favourite) Carpet Crawlers. And then, with Denis Gagne doing a passable impersonation of Phil Collins' stage antics, it was time for the Cinema Show.

I'm not sure if it was a problem with where we were sitting, or the staging, or the mix, but this time round (the third time we've seen Musical Box) I found the sound very thin, and many of the vocals overtaken by the instruments. Maybe thirty years of listening to the studio versions has coloured my judgement, but I don't remember this being an issue with earlier gigs.

Wasn't a problem for the next number though - back to Trick for Robbery, Assault and Battery, accompanied by the original film footage on the backdrop, and Denis dressed in the traditional flat cap and overcoat. I switched off after that while they did White Mountain from Trespass. Of all the Gabriel-era albums, Trespass is my least favourite and the least-played by a very long way (I've probably only listened to it 2 or 3 times in total), but it wasn't long before we were treated to a note-perfect rendition of Firth of Fifth, followed in quick succession by two more Trick of the Tail gems: Entangled, and Squonk.

By now we were all well warmed up and ready for the highlight of the evening: the whole of Supper's Ready. Before we came out tonight, I'd passed comment that this would probably be the last time we'd fork out to see Musical Box. We were about six bars into Supper's Ready when I decided that no, if and when they come to Manchester again, we'll be here again. It's such a rare treat to hear Supper's Ready live from beginning to end that I don't want to pass up any chance.

There was just time for the "first ever Genesis single" (as it is often badged in the press) I Know What I Like (in Your Wardrobe) before they hit the roof with the closing number: the aforementioned Los Endos.

We had been expecting both It and Watcher of the Skies as an encore, but they must have been running late, or made a late change to the running order, because Watcher was dropped.

I had been extremely impressed with Denis's drumming during the evening, until Annie revealed that the forum-chatter had given the game away. It's only Phil Collins who can sing and drum, and when Denis walked around the flats in the direction of the drum kit, he never reappeared. A "real" drummer came back on, dressed in identical clothing and with an identical wig and beard a la Collins, and changed back into Denis on the return journey. It was very cleverly done and I didn't have a clue!

All in all a great gig, hugely enjoyed by us all. The chances of a full Genesis line-up touring again any time may be fading into the distance, but while we have Musical Box it (almost) doesn't matter.

Heroes - Volume 2

Oh Boy. Spent most of today watching the second series of Heroes. This show just gets better and better. I know Tim Kring is on record admitting that it got off to a slow start, but when you watch seven episodes back-to-back it just ROCKS.

You know you should stop, and make the dinner. Or even stop for a drink or a toilet break. But then you think "nah - one more episode."

I hope they resolve the WGA writers' strike soon. I'll start getting withdrawal symptoms again before long.