Sci Fi

JVC, QVC, Ironman and Food

I just had a major stint on telly after spending the afternoon at JVC looking at new gadgets and tech.  There’s an incredibly superslim telly (their new flagship telly range) and I’ll try and get pics of other stuff for posting.

Looking forward to chinese for dinner and will be attempting a few words of mandarin, since I’ve now had 4 lessons.  Hopefully I won’t insult anyone – I’ll report back accordingly. 

Iron Man ROCKED, by the way – I and many other blogger types took over the Digital Cinema at Leicester Square and thoroughly relished this inventive, amusing and thank goodness, actually good comic book interpretation.  I haven’t been to a Friday night / First night show at the cinema for ages, it was great – everyone clapped at the good bits and laughed at the funny bits -you get my drift.

By the way, stay till the end – worth the wait!  My friend at JVC (a comic connoisseur) didn’t wait, and he is still annoyed.  Mind you, he gets to play playstation on JVC’s crazy 120″ set up with a £10K projector/lens combo and speakers that are only available in Japan, so don’t feel too bad for him.

Oooh, and here’s a little mini-review of Butlers Wharf Chop-House , which I visited over the weekend.  I’m quite into all this food lark – after submitting the menus for Food 2.0 (will mention more on that soon) I’ve discovered quite a liking for restaurant commentary.  I’m ljrich on Qype if you want to say hello.

Must publish now, craving noodles quite badly.  I shall return anon.

Snow Day in April

Sometimes the unexpected happens – take this morning, for example – on opening the window, the view that greeted me was like a picture postcard from somewhere much more expensive than East London.
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There is something so cleansing about urban snow, I’m not sure what – perhaps it’s the acoustic effect of laying a blanket of absorbent material across normally loud and jarring city noises, or the mental concept of the world looking soft and fresh and ready to reboot – all I know is that the feeling I got from this scene was unfamiliar to me. I felt… tranquil.
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I did my stint on TV yesterday, just before the snow started. In between shows, I had a nice big plate of Chinese food with one of the camera operators, then a lovely cup of tea with Keeley from Elemis in the QVC cafe. We talked about the new social media aspect of the Internet and managing your online reputation.
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Tonight I watched the last episode of Torchwood season 2. Don’t worry, no spoilers. Blimey though, what a finale, can’t wait for the next season… makes what I get up to on TV rather tame…
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And so, to this week – with great unexpected joy, it seems that my diary is gloriously, wonderfully, deliciously empty apart from a mad dash round London town on Wednesday. I can’t wait – it’s the perfect week to get some admin sorted while chugging through Season 3 of DS9 (for my sins – Star Trek keeps me in one place while I enter stuff into MS Money, and as I didn’t see them all first time round, it’s all I have). I’ll also try and get some gadgety video stuff filmed for internet release as well (watch this space), but – most unexpectedly of all – I might just attempt this thing called “tranquility” before the frenzied madness kicks back in. Wish me luck.
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“Pimp My Mac” Update: Proper obsessives modding their Mac computers: witness a golden mac, a demon mac, and some serious paint jobs, I’m excited now, counting the days in an almost disproportionate manner.
also see http://www.ljrich.com for more info

Qype Party Last night

This is a picture of me first thing in the morning, after only 1/2 cup of coffee and a croissant, here at the Social Media Cafe…
Last night was the Qype Party – I met up with Annie Mole, Rob (who was hosting the party), Mr Blue Sky, Lloyd and Darika, among others – all clutching our raffle tickets with undisguised excitement, as prizes ranging from the biggest Chupa Chup in the western hemisphere to posh chocolates were up for grabs.
 
 
 
I was incredibly chuffed to have my restaurant review selected as “London Review of the Day” on Qype’s site yesterday, and I’ve just been Qik’ed around the croissant table (as it were), involving video phones and a chance to talk about this very blog, so hello, if you’ve come from Qik!
Around the croissants, I’m sitting with Judith, Robert and Gondul chatting about whether Stargate Atlantis is better than Stargate SG-1, or vice versa. This conversation stemmed from an email I received a week ago from a viewer – and it appears to be more complex than first thought – the general consensus is that post-O’Neill, Atlantis is better, but the discussion rages on…

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Mac Pro update: My lovely new Mac is going to be suitably “pimped” after the chassis arrives at the depot on Monday – it’s also been suggested that along with the indecent amount of ram and hard disk space, I actually add some serious bling in the form of big gold chains and Swarovski crystals around the optical drive, but that might be going a bit too far, what do you think?

See you on telly tomorrow evening! lots of love, LJ x

also see http://www.ljrich.com for more info

I wish I was Hiro from "Heroes"…

… because if I just concentrated really hard, I’d suddenly have a whole glut of time – then there’d be half a chance of completing the gargantuan schedule of errands, documents, and general odds and ends well before this weekend – you see, on Sunday I’ll be on the telly for around 24 hours and therefore unable to do anything apart from drinking copious amounts of coffee and wrestling with AV cables, which is why the sudden rush.

 

So, I’ve decided (in the time-honoured “Let’s play Minesweeper” tradition) to post a little bloggette (is that how you spell it?) on the art of procrastination instead. In honour of this, I will now decide exactly what font to use for this article.
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Right, After a few minutes of deliberation, I have decided to use the same font anyway.
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I am, as you possibly know, a fully paid up geek -I actually had a conversation on the phone this morning with a business colleague about the fact that the number “42” was mentioned in Stargate Atlantis the other night – they agreed it was a humorous reference – we both snorted appreciatively.
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Apart from the encyclopaedic knowledge of sci-fi and pointless but amazing trivia, my geekiness is displayed with superhuman skills when it comes to organisation and recall… although this streak comes in useful when I’m reviewing technology (I actually do read the manual – and enjoy it), I also get far too much enjoyment from colouring in the cells in Excel, so it’s a constant left-brain/right-brain battle for me.
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This week I amazed some people at work because I have absolutely NO desktop icons OF ANY KIND on my laptop’s Desktop display, as I like things to look neat and tidy.
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On the other hand, at the moment (this is where the title of today’s blog comes in) my Real World Desktop is currently invisible under 25 items inventoried below for your “pleasure”:
  1. many DVDs of varying importance
  2. promo bags from CES (Alienware, UA, Panasonic)
  3. contact lenses (unused)
  4. Sharpie Markers (wide, black)
  5. keyboards (Creative Prodikeys music keyboard)
  6. microphones (one for Skyping, one for Singing Vocals)
  7. business cards (copious quantities from CES, mostly entered into my system)
  8. handbag (why??)
  9. dri-wipe marker (there’s a bit of velcro on its side -probably from before it emigrated…)
  10. Belkin USB hub (rotating 4-port)
  11. some post-it notes (these appear to be from an infinite source, I can’t remember buying this many)
  12. a 15cm ruler (blue, transparent)
  13. Wacom Graphics Tablet (pen resting on groove)
  14. Galileo thermometer (showing 25 degrees Celsius)
  15. Musician’s Union Newsletter (unread)
  16. Ergostation and Laptop (this bit looks quite organised)
  17. Receipts (Marks and Spencer, Muji, Borders)
  18. Nokia phone for review (with box)
  19. indeterminate USB cables (who knows what the other end fits into?)
  20. JVC Everio Camcorder (on telly with this over the weekend)
  21. PDA cover (I was looking for this)
  22. phone bill (laughable)
  23. notepad (inedible, medical-style scrawl)
  24. towering pile of paperwork (terrifying)
    and of course,
  25. nice cup of tea that I’m drinking (now lukewarm and therefore undrinkable)
Let’s keep the RW desktop a secret, boys and girls. It’ll all be back to normal next week, once I’ve completed the editing for two videos – one for Virgin Media about the future of gaming (I’ll post a link here when it’s done) and one for this weekend (which I’ll upload to Youtube in advance of the airing for anyone who wants a sneak preview). Meanwhile, if you need any post-it notes, just let me know 🙂
also see http://www.ljrich.com for more info

PC Building, Overclocking and CES Mania

It’s Day 2 of CES, and I am still shellshocked by the whole thing… not only did I attend Tiger Direct’s annual PC building race last night – I left there with a PC building apron and a great bit of footage! That’s already on Virgin’s site. This was like a modern-day gladiatorial event, with some of the audience shouting so loudly, I could feel the sound vibration going right through my camcorder!

I then went on to Corsair’s Pirate Party, which was even more surreal that I expected – there I got to chat with Fugger and Kingpin, two of the world’s premier overclocking afficionados.

They talked me through exactly what overclocking involves, and then showed me a computer that looked like it might have been built by the Borg. I’m FTP-ing the footage across right now, while I’m in the “Blog Pit” in the Sands Convention Center, Vegas, before recording some audio voiceover material in the booth to go with the piece.

To have a look at the video footage, which will probably be available tomorrow, UK time, just head on over to http://www.virginmedia.com/digital

also see http://www.ljrich.com for more info