A White Christmas

Unfortunately I didn't get a White Christmas last year, it was more of a Frosty Christmas. And Damien took great delight in calling us from Glasgow during January to tell us that it was snowing outside his window knowing that it wasn't the same in London. That's all changed now, roles have been reversed, worlds are turning upside down! As I walked from the tube station to the office, it snowed. Plain and simple, it has snowed in London since I've been here. I'll admit, it wasn't the snow covered streets you might see in The Night Before Christmas or Oliver movies that get regular screening on TVs at certain parts of the year (I have no idea if that's true, but they're still classic stories. I especially like the Bill Murray Scrooged) but it was snow none the less. It lasted only the time it took me to walk the length of St Petersburgh Place which is less than 5 minutes, but how serendipitous that I was there (outside and not in a building) at that time. It will be a nice prelude to being at a ski resort in less than a week.

Speaking of skiing, on the weekend I went to see if I could find a ski jacket to take with me and that I would like to hold on to for years to come. I don't like the idea of buying a "crappy" £100 jacket to use because I didn't want to spend too much but really needed something and then not really like it. I'd rather spend a little more (no more than £200) to get a better one and keep it much longer. I've also been told that I'll need some snow pants, another £50 that I'll have to waste. I don't see myself getting dressed one morning and saying "I think I'll wear my snow pants today, even though I'm not going skiing". Mind you, after seeing the warning signs of an inevitable blizzard that'll hit London I might actually need them. I only made it to one shop, and their stock was exclusively Quicksilver. I'd have preferred to see and compare a wide range of brands, I'm particularly interested in Columbia gear. So after being dissatisfied with what I saw and having little time to see other places (I offered to help Damien carry luggage. His wife Annmarie had just returned from Australia) I'm now still jacketless. I'm quite sure that some of the ski rental places will let you hire your kit, and that may be the better option just now. I still need to book my board, hopefully I'll get the early booking discount.

The other thing I was hoping to do before going to Meribel was to have some snowboarding lessons. After mulling over it for a couple of weeks I came to the conclusion that it's was too much to pay for this month. I'll get some lessons on the slopes and take it out of next months entertainment budget. I did want to learn with Paul, and since he's not going skiing, the indoor slope sounded like a good idea. It's always nicer to know someone when you go to learn something new. I guess I'll still need skiing lessons so there's still that.

Paul has made another post, from what he told me it was motivated from something I said in my blog. Allegedly I said his computer was crap. I was surprised since I didn't remember using those words, but since it made him actually type something I decided it was tough love, gotta be cruel to be kind. So now that I've reread my own prose, I can refute his accusation. I said his laptop was a lowly Centrino:

Given that the laptop is a lowly (no offence Paul) Centrino with a ATI Radeon Mobility 9700 128, WoW should run on just about any current hardware.

While that could imply I think his computer is crap, the preceding sentence seems to contradict that notion

Paul's laptop handles the starting areas very well, the only time it was jerky was during the opening fly-by, but in game ran very smoothly at decent res and good quality settings.

In fact the first statement was actually about World of Warcraft's ability to play on non-bleeding edge hardware, unlike something like say Ultima 9: Ascension. I doubt that Paul could claim his laptop to be a beast, except out of spite. Now that even laptop's can have hyper threading P4's with PCI Express, Dual SATA 7200 rpm hard drives and PCI-X 16x 256MB video cards; Paul's laptop pails in comparison to the current crop of rendering power. But here we're talking about desktops or desktop replacements. Paul went for the "Thin and Light" style laptops and indeed it is both light and thin, at the same time even. As I mentioned, it even plays World of Warcraft very well to boot. What more could you want? Longer battery life and something to keep the bottom of the laptop from burning said lap that it is on top of. Such products exist on both accounts of course, since it's not an uncommon problem. Now that I've said all that, I'll probably get harassed by Paul again.

Not last weekend but the weekend before I went to see House of Flying Daggers with Paul and Ben. Ben is an old friend of Paul's who went to work in the UK a couple of years ago, so we occasionally meet up with him since it's nice to see some Aussie people, even if he is from Queensland. House of Flying Daggers was definitely not his type of film, but it was mine. Excellent fight choreography, excellent locations and sets, and a plot that was different yet classic (a typical tragedy with a love triangle, it never fails). The use of wire stunts was not overdone. I can only think of the "tree running" that was obviously done with wires, but that's forgivable, and an early fight where a Ling Xiaoyu type running over the head move. All in all, a very nice movie. I still want to see Hero, hopefully Jet Li will be great in it. I'd like it to live up to Fist of Legend, but it probably won't. Can anyone tell me if it's good?