An Out Of This World Experience
Posted by: Sonya on: October 10, 2009
If you happened to catch the local North East news on Tuesday evening you may have seen a feature on the opening of the new Planetarium in Newcastle’s Centre for Life, the largest of its kind in the North. Well, Charlotte and I were there.
Actually, it’s not so much a new planetarium, I know, because we’ve been too it before! But it has been enlarged and the projection system upgraded. Before the grand opening we were treated to an excellent lecture on the origins and nature of the universe by one of the country’s leading cosmologists, Professor Carlos Frenk. I know it was good because I enjoyed it and learned a few things, and because it made my head hurt. Hard science always has the tendency to make my head hurt.
After the lecture we got to spend some time in the centre’s exhibition space playing with the dinosaurs while enjoying some specially commissioned ‘space’ cocktails – they made my head feel light and fluffy – before the opening of the planetarium itself and a thirty minute compilation of some of the centre’s best planetarium shows, one of which was in 3D. That made my eyes hurt, but it was very impressive none the less. There’s nothing quite like the experience, it’s so much more than what you can ever get at a cinema or anywhere else because it’s a total immersion experience. The new planetarium is a dome 10 meters in diameter which provides a full 180 degree immersion experience. The 3D animation sequences made me feel like a goddess in my chair, floating through my creation to admire it and the visual experience is complimented by an equally impressive sound system powerful enough to make your chair shake and vibrate at all the right places.
The planetarium show didn’t make my head hurt, or go light and fluffy, but it did make my legs wobbly.
PRS-600 Update
Posted by: Sonya on: September 18, 2009
- In: ebook| nerdy
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Just to let anyone who is interested know that I was able to return the PRS-600 to the Sony Store without any problems, although the sales girl did try and get me to part exchange for the new PRS-300! 
I declined, politely. If my 505 goes down the crapper for whatever reason it will be the 300 that replaces it, but I’ll not worry about that unless it comes to it.
Question of the Day…
Posted by: Sonya on: September 13, 2009
- In: mad| movies
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Is Gizmo a war criminal?
I have Gremlins 2 in mind specifically. Yes, the Gremlins bully him. You could go so far as to say they torture him, but the worst they do is put him in a photocopier and pull velcro off him, not really bad torture like pulling out finger nails or cutting off limbs… But Gizmo’s reaction is to kill Mohawk! And he doesn’t make it quick and clean either – he sets him on fire and watches him burn to death. Isn’t that a little disproportionate?
Sony Reader Touch (PRS-600) Review
Posted by: Sonya on: September 13, 2009
Back in February I bought a Sony eBook reader, the PRS-505, and I wrote an epic review extolling it’s virtues. Well, the new one is out now, the PRS-600 or Touch Edition, and me being me I bought one almost as soon as they came out. (Oh, how I bemoan my lack of impulse control sometimes…)
The new design of the device itself and the user interface is much more polished than the old one, much cleaner, nicer, and the new features are all fabulous. It has a touch screen display which allows you to make annotations and notes on the books you are reading which, as a student, should have been a killer feature for me, and a dictionary that allows you to tap on a word and the definition will pop up along the bottom – a not essential, but very handy feature.
There is only one, tiny little problem… Actually reading books on the device sucks.
To add the touch screen features a layer of plastic has been imposed on top of the eInk display underneath, and this layer makes the screen murky and highly reflective.
Of course I’m not daft, I read reviews of the device from other bloggers before buying and there was a consensus that the screen wasn’t as good as the PRS-505, but the verdict was around 50-50 on whether or not it was good enough. I went to a Sony store, where of course the lighting was perfect, played with their display model for five minutes and thought the screen was just fine and dandy, but once I got back home with my newly purchased one and took it out in my living room I was really disappointed. In even slightly imperfect lighting conditions I found the reflections too distracting and the screen too dull and murky to be able to read. When I got my PRS-505 out and put them side-by-side it was depressing. It’s sad when an old model so completely outshines the new, shiny one.
I want to like this device, the new design and features are impressive, but the whole point of eBook readers is the brilliant eInk display which is like reading print on paper. The PRS-600 has one of these brilliant eInk displays, but Sony have gone and ruined it by putting on the horrible plastic touch screen in front of it.
I’ll be returning mine tomorrow, and sticking with my fantabulous PRS-505 for another year.
Holland Holiday
Posted by: Sonya on: September 12, 2009
- In: cool| culture| pretty| wildlife
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Hey, it’s September now, Autumn 
, and it’s been more than a month since my fabulous holiday in the Netherlands! A week camping in beautiful Dutch forests with all my favourite friends, daily excursions to the locals towns and cities like Leersum, Tiel, Utrecht and of course an obligatory day in Amsterdam doing nothing naughty whatsoever!
Here are some pretty photos:
Hairy Japanese Bastards!
Posted by: Sonya on: August 10, 2009
- In: cool| cute| wildlife
- 2 Comments
I don’t know what’s been special about this year, it’s been a nicer summer than we’ve had in recent years, but still not especially warm, but bunnies seem to be absolutely everywhere in Newcastle at the moment. Almost every day now I see bunnies in the green areas on my way to and from work, and one day a few weeks ago I counted nine throughout the day. I feel like I’ve become a professional bunny spotter!
The Escapist
Posted by: Sonya on: July 15, 2009
- In: charlotte| cool| culture
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We’ve just finished watching The Escapist and I can’t stop thinking about it – don’t you just love it when a movie does that to you!? 
I wouldn’t have thought this would be my kind of film, and I wouldn’t have watched it if it had been my pick tonight, but Charlotte fancied the look of it and it was on special offer through FilmFlex. It’s a prison escape drama thing-a-my-bob, sort of like a UK version of The Shawshank Redemption but, if you ask me, much more intelligent and thought provoking and I wouldn’t characterise The Escapist as a ‘feel-good’ movie. Charlotte, in the end, wasn’t too impressed with it, and I did have my doubts throughout the first act of the film, but it’s kind of told in reverse and the more it went on the more it came together in to something surprisingly wonderful with an ending that was both happy and sad, and extremely rewarding.
Check out the trailer on YouTube below, or rent it now on FilmFlex if you have Virgin – it’s cheap for the next three days.
Parrots
Posted by: Sonya on: July 7, 2009
- In: blog| wildlife
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You may recall that a few weeks ago, while travelling back from Blackpool, that I twitted (?) from Kirby Stephen to say that I had just seen a couple of parrots flying about in the wild. I got the impression that certain people, who shall remain nameless, didn’t quite believe me! Well, I mentioned the parrots at work yesterday and Mark found this via a quick Google – http://archive.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/2002/04/09/139498.html . So there! 
Victory Is Mine!
Posted by: Sonya on: July 5, 2009
- In: games| nerdy
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Hueng! My nemesis! I have defeated you at last! Bwah-Haa-Haa-Haa-Haa-Haa-Haa!!!
…In With The New
Posted by: Sonya on: June 22, 2009
The day has finally come. I’ve been putting it off for at least a month now, but I have, finally, just switched off my old blog and set the domain – attackhamster.co.uk – to redirect here. I’ve been putting off for so long because I’m actually quite sad about it, the old site was the entire result of my own hard graft and I was very proud of my work. For posterity’s sake, and for anyone reading this who didn’t see the old site, I have attached a screen grab to this post.
Unfortunately it was the ever increasing complexity of the old site that spurred the change. I was writing it completely by hand in raw XHTML and CSS and updating was a chore, especially once I decided to do more complex things with the photos, and that was putting me off posting as much as I would like. I had been thinking about switching to a CMS for some time and then I found out about WordPress through work and as I began to play around with it I started to really like it and how it works. So, about six weeks ago, I started to quietly set up my new home here and export the content from attackhamster – and now it’s ready.
Why the change of name? Well, it was spurred by the fact that some rotten, miserable little sod has already registered attackhamster on WordPress. I was able to get ‘theattackhamster’ but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with that so I started to think about alternatives and new names. I have been using attackhamster for a very long time after all, it’s time for a change.
Err… that said of course, I have no intention whatsoever of giving up my domain. Aside from the fact that I have an associated email package – and there are more people with @attackhamster email address than you would think – I fully reserve the right to completely change my mind in X number of months / years, as my fancy takes me.
Mini Profile
Myself and Charlotte, my love.
I'm 28, Scottish, but live in Newcastle, and I work in public sector ICT.
Click here if you want to learn more about me.
