All these things that I have done

Normally, I like debugging. My programming method tends to consist of a lot of whacking a first draft up and then debugging it a lot. When this procedure was taking 1hr37mins to run before it generated an error, that was annoying but OK because you could do some other task in between times. But now I've got it fixed up so that I can run nearly everything without triggering off the time consuming triggers it takes 25 mins to run. This is not good because it's long enough to be annoyingly boring but not long enough to change gears and think about another task while it runs. So here I am, writing an LJ entry. This procedure started with a running time of 6+hrs btw!

I went along to see Closer last night. I'd heard some interesting things about it and quite fancied it but it didn't really sound like Alex's kind of thing so as he didn't fancy seeing anything I grabbed the opportunity and went to see it on my own. As it happened, if I'd been a bit quicker and turned up while the lights were on I could have sat next to Mark, but instead, I just cursed his shadowy figure for sitting in my favourite chair and settled down on my own.

I actually quite enjoyed the film. It wasn't what I would class as a girly film (as we'd suspected it would be from the tagline in daily info) although I'm not really sure what to class it. Pure drama perhaps. It showed quite a lot of it's origins as a stage play, with fairly sparse scenes and a very minimal cast, all of whom gave really good performances, I thought. As you would in the theatre, you have to pick up the chronology between scenes as you go along which adds a bit of challenge to things. It's an intense and emotional piece, but worth watching, I'd say.

I finally managed to read Fevre Dream, which I borrowed from jinty. It was actually really good. It was a more ... I hesitate to say believable but natural maybe ... vampire story than any other's I've read and I certainly enjoyed it a lot more. I'm struggling to think of any other vampire stories that are not excuses for a bit of soft porn or uber-gothness. Recommended.

I also got my grubby little paws on Abhorsen, the final book in the trilogy by Garth Nix. I think in the end, Lirael is the best of the 3 books but Abhorsen is a good end to the series, with both Sam and Lirael managing to accept who they are and use it instead of fussing about it (probably helped by the fact that they both found out who they were at the end of the last book). I felt that some elements of the plot were rather thrown into place (like Sam being a Wallmaker, for example. I don't remember any explaination for that piece of descent) but over all, it worked pretty well with a good balance between surprises/discoveries and things which had previously been hinted at paying off.

One thing I did find distracting was Nix referring to the 9 spirits from the beginning as the "Nine Bright Shiners" because this is a phrase from a folk song; Green Grow the Rushes Oh. I remember this quite well from school and still sometimes sing it while cycling. Immediately I saw it I found myself looking for other references to the song but they didn't really seem to be there, which left this one just hanging on its own rather. I suppose Nix probably got the reference from elsewhere but I can't be bothered to Google for it to find out where. Does anyone else know that song?