Fanboy Alert! Fanboy Alert!

I have been doing quite a lot lately, regardless of the fact that on both this and the LJ I have lately given the impression that I am little more than a robot fanboy. Now, since there is more to my life than harping on about transformers, it's only fair that I get all the robot fanboy-ness out of the way ASAP and then get on with the other stuff.

I already mentioned in the LJ that Powerlinx Optimus Prime(TM) arrived last week. I also mentioned that I had bought Energon Ultra Magnus(TM) on eBay. Well, today, he too arrived.

Yes, he's exactly the same as Overload only different colours. But since I already have Powerlinx Optimus Prime and Powerlinx Jetfire I do want some form of colour coordination. Because then when I combine the three of them to form the "Final Battle" (aka "Don't Fuck With Me") version of Super Optimus Prime, it looks good.

Damn good.

And they also combine together in vehicular mode to form the most ridiculous road-train convoy type thing ever, which is hard to capture in a typical 4:3 digital photo, so instead I took a head-on pic.

And so on to other things.

On Friday we went to the Ordnance Survey Outdoor Show at the NEC, with Bro and SiL who had come up on Thursday night. It was quite amazing, if a little disappointing in places. "Tent City", for example, was more of a "Tent Seaside Town". However, Bro and SiL caused much amusement to the bods manning one of the tent stands by continually going back and looking at the same two or three tents.

Alison and I got a personalised OS Map done at the OS stand, since on all three regular OS Maps that Warwick appears on it's either in the corner or on the edge. Not helpful. On our personalised map, however, our house is pretty much dead centre. I say only 'pretty much', because if it was dead centre, it would be on the folds, and it isn't. Not quite. Which is good, actually.

We also watched some of the heats for the Bouldering World Cup. Bouldering is a sport based on the principles of free climbing, where you have to scale large obstacles using only your brains and brawn. I've probably done it no justice in that description and if you don't know what bouldering is already I probably haven't helped matters.

And we went to a talk given by Tanya Streeter. She's the woman who holds a number of free diving depth records, including the record for the depth anyone has been to without equipment. Apparently she is the only woman to hold a sports world record that beats the equivalent men's world record. It was a very interesting talk, if a little scary in places. The video footage of her record-breaking dives was a little disturbing.

Finally, Alison and SiL each bought a tent, to the relief of the people on the stands who had been laughing at them coming back and forth all day. Sadly, they only had one of the tents in stock, so Alison arranged to have hers delivered. We headed home, and personally I felt well worn out by the day, and more than a little dehydrated (which happens far too easily at these sorts of things despite your best efforts). A brief kip once home sorted that out, however.

So then, on to Saturday. [ASIDE: From this point on this entry is being written for the second time, seeing as how I lost it when the PC decided to lock up earlier on. Just glad I saved this much]. Originally, the plan had been that we would go with Bro and SiL to the show on Saturday rather than on Friday. But, since Alison had a Tai Chi thing come up that was on Saturday morning, we decided to take the day off on Friday and go then instead. So, Alison buggered off to Tai Chi, and Bro and SiL buggered off back to the NEC, leaving me to twiddle thumbs. After accomplishing a couple of things with The AV Unit(TM), I think I settled into mostly playing GTA3.

Just as it was getting towards the time I would be expecting Alison home, I got a call from SiL. They'd given up on the show as it was far too crowded (so Friday had been a wise decision) and were coming back to join us for lunch, thus taking any plans we had already made for the afternoon and turning them arse about tit.

I don't know how many people have heard of a Record Store called 'Fopp'. It's a small independent chain, and I believe the one in Leamington was the first one, although I may be wrong on that count. Anyway, it has a habit of being a bit of a treasure trove for old albums available at knockdown prices. Likewise old films, and a variety of old and new books. So, anyway, the four of us headed into Leamington in the afternoon and I instantly devised the 'Fopp Challenge', which involves taking people who've never been to Fopp before in there, getting them to look around, and then see if they buy anything. The challenge itself is not to buy anything. Bro and SiL both failed, succumbing to a number of purchases from the bookshelves, if I remember correctly.

We also mooched around Starbucks (obligatory) and Waterstones (also obligatory), and I successfully didn't spend any money. I saved that until we got to Sainsbury's where I got Matrix Revolutions for just 15 quid (the same as the cheapest price I've seen online). Then on Saturday evening after dinner Bro and SiL left Alison and I watched Pirates of the Caribbean which is always good for a laugh, and needless to say seeing it in all it's 5.1ness was grand. And of course, Keira Knightley is not to be sniffed at. Perhaps I should rephrase that...

Sunday I woke up with blocked sinuses and a touch of all-round feeling-grotty-ness. Still, that had to be put aside as today was something that had been much looked forward to. We were off to Cheltenham to the literary festival - a twice-yearly event with talks and such from all sorts of authors and other literary types.

Eventually we managed to guide my parents by phone through the confusion that is the Cheltenham One-Way System to the car park we'd found that was 'long stay' and therefore cheaper. After a quick lunch in the M&S café we headed to the town hall to get our tickets for the events later on. Then we mooched round the town a bit, visiting the important sights (ie, the bookshops).

In Waterstones my Mum was looking for a French phrase book, and found a book of 'Sexy French'. One of the phrases in it was 'are there any lesbians available for the night'. This caused much amusement, and lead to an amusing and possibly very un-PC text convo with a certain lesbian friend of mine.

In Ottakars I failed to not spend any money. They had a couple of the Transformers UK Comics Omnibuses that I hadn't got, and those blessed things are so hard to find I end up buying them whenever I can get hold of them. Still, I now have Time Wars and Dinobot Hunt to go with the other four that are slowly taking up more of the bookshelf and will no doubt soon be forming their own collective and possibly even declaring UDI.

Then it was time to make our way to our first event. We had chosen only two to attend, and one of them was seeing Dame Judi Dench talk about her experiences performing in Shakespeare's plays. Awkwardly, however, this was being held at 'The Centaur' at Cheltenham Race Course. So we got coached out there (and coached back again afterwards). Turns out Cheltenham's roads aren't particularly suitable for 'against the clock' coach transportation. The journey out to the race course was particularly, erm, bad.

The format of Judi Dench's talk was that of her being interviewed by her biographer. This was a format that worked quite nicely - she had lots of anecdotes about herself and other actors, both funny stuff and quite thought-provoking stuff, but wasn't too good on the details as to when and where everything fitted in. Given the amount she's done, it's not entirely surprising she has trouble keeping it all straight. Her biographer, however, did have a good memory for all the anoraky details and was also quite good at just nudging her into particular stories. One of the bits I found amusing was him cautiously referring to 'The Scottish Play', and then Judi Dench's reply mentioning Macbeth without flinching. Later on this came to seem quite odd, as she admitted to being quite superstitious about other aspects of her work.

After another exciting coach ride back, we were at the town hall to see Jasper Fforde give a talk. He talked about the difficulties of selling a book that's hard to describe (his agent apparently gave it to the editor who eventually bought it and said 'Don't ask, just read it', which seems to be a good mantra when trying to get anyone to read Jasper Fforde), and also about the pitfalls he makes for himself by using some characters that are not currently in the public domain. Most authors' estates were apparently quite obliging, but getting the use of some characters approved was apparently not. The scene he described where he had wanted to use Eeyore was excellent, but sadly was not approved by the character's owners. A little bit of thought will tell you who that was.

And I asked him a question! *fanboy grin* I said something like "I would imagine that most of the people in this room when they first read your books wished they'd come up with the idea themselves, are there any particular books you've read when you've felt that?" and he said that the idea behind Groundhog Day is one he'd wished he'd come up with (since he'd seen it recently on TV) and also mentioned Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy as another example.

My dad also asked as question. He said that he'd noticed that JF's books didn't tend to get labelled as fantasy, and wondered if that was a conscious decision on the author's part to play down the fantasy element. This gave JF an opportunity to point out that there are elements of most genres in his books - apparently Foyles (huge fuck-off bookshop in London) don't know where to put him and so have him in seven different sections. And he finished that answer by saying that if he falls into any category at all he'd like to think that he falls into the grand tradition of British Nonsense. I can go along with that.

Today has been crappy. My sinuses and stuff have gotten a bit worse, I've got gut-ache which I blame on having too many Beechams in the past 2 days, and I'm generally feeling a bit the worse for wear. Haven't been into work today and the way things are going don't think I'll be going in tomorrow either. But I enjoyed yesterday, and that's the important thing.