End of Year Wrap (As seen on Facebook)

I was going to do something a bit different and narrate this end of year review as an audioblog, but it seems my social media presence, Facebook especially, doesn't have an easy way to upload audio files. So here is yet another post year text post.

Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 5 "Shotgun Wedding"

We dive into the murky world of international politics and Assassinations (again). An Italian politician ends up attracting the ire of her enemies while a logo designer gets paranoid over rivals stealing his work...or is he?

Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 4 "Down Among the Dead Men"

For this episode, we do a deep dive (Pun most certainly intended) into murky waters, as the Bugs heroes attempt to stop a major bank from being defrauded. We also learn that despite his previous Naval experience, poor Beckett doesn’t take to the sea very well.

Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 3 "All Under Control"

One of my all time favourite episodes. This was the first actual episode I watched on the original TV broadcast, if only because I was (And still am to a lesser extent) a bit of an aviation geek before I even knew the term existed. The trailer caught my interest because it involved planes and looked exciting. At the time, I had no understanding of the intricacies of technical systems and story writing, so it all looked plausible to me. Looking back on it now, there are a lot of plot holes and silly moments that make little sense when you think about it.

In case this wasn’t apparent by now, there will be spoilers so if you don’t want any plot twists given away, do not read these write-ups until you have watched the episode in question!

Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 2: "Assassins Inc"

Before I begin the next write up, I should elaborate on the purpose of these blog posts. Bugs was a show I greatly enjoyed in my youth, even when the writing was sub-par. However, with hindsight, there was a lot of silliness including but not limited to plot holes, gross misinterpretation and mis-use of technology and downright ridiculous moments. Having said that, I still enjoy rewatching the series and developed a new appreciation for the type of 90s cheesiness the show provides. Some of the predictions, despite the poor execution, turn out to be scarily prescient. And as mentioned in the first episode write up, shows after Bugs take a bit of inspiration from it with the way tech is featured heavily along with the gritty but fanciful storylines.

Nonetheless, there is a lot to ridicule in the series, so my write-ups will be full of snide remarks, amusing observations and dry (and not so dry) sarcasm. If you are looking for a straight write up, this is not the place to look for it. I would direct you to the official Bugs website, but that sadly went offline many years ago. There are some archived pages on Archive.org which is what I'm using to help write these blog posts.

Anyway, on with the show!

Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 1: "Out of the Hive"

Recently, due to a bunch of comments on a friends DnD post on Facebook, I was reminded of an old TV series called "Bugs" that I used to watch as a child. It was as nineties as it got. A sci-fi series about a bunch of crime fighters who used all manner of computer gadgetry to stop various ne'er-do-wells. I found it exciting to watch but never really appreciated the story or noticed the silly nature of some of the plotlines and the many, many IT and hacker clichés it portrayed. Despite it's failings, it was still a fun show to watch and if you look carefully, you can see where other later, argubly superior prime time TV dramas got their inspiration from Bugs.

With this in mind, I bought the complete DVD boxset of the entirety of Bugs and intend on watching the entire run slowly. I am also going to sporadically do write ups of the episodes as I watch them. I will tentatively title these entries "Alpha Retrospectives" and the style will change as I figure out what I want to write about each episode. With that, I bring you Bugs, season 1 episode 1.

"Buy all the film you can get your hands on..."

I got a bit of a confession to make. I was getting bored of taking pictures.

Although I'm an avid amateur photographer, I have found myself getting into a bit of a rut regarding the hobby. This was probably not helped by changes at work and it picking up in what should be a fairly quiet period, as well as a lack of major holidays and conventions for me to go to for this half of the year.

The problem I was getting is that I have been in the photography game for a while. At least 13 years if you only count the years I've been in the hobby seriously and continuously, possibly more than 15 if you count the years I've been taking pictures on and off. After this amount of time, things get stale. Familiarity breeds contempt and it is too easy to get fatigued, not just in photography but any hobby.

I had some money still left over from my trip to Southampton, despite the amount spent to travel and stay there. That in itself is a dangerous thing. Boredom and money are an even more lethal combination. After doing some brief research (Read: Typed words into a search engine and skimmed through the results), I ended up deciding that I needed to go retro.

Really retro.

Cosplay Experience Retrospective

As we come to the end of another year and enter a new one, I feel it would be appropriate to look back on my time in the geeky community and why this year is particularly important to myself, especially from an emotional standpoint.

I had been watching Anime during my early childhood, mostly through video tape cassette recordings sent from relatives in the spiritual Motherland that is Hong Kong, and after a long gap, got back into watching it when I started attending University. I am not sure what encouraged me to return to Anime, but it happened. Until then, however, I felt like I was only just scratching the surfance of the fandom. At some point, I caught wind of certain events where fellow Otaku would congregate, so-called “Anime Conventions”, where geeks would actually be able to see and speak to each other about various geeky topics in the same place. It was only after I attended my first Anime Convention about 12 years ago where I felt I had finally felt like I was a full blown Anime geek. But there was one thing I felt I was missing out on but didn’t have the confidence to try.

That being Cosplay.