The Challenge – Movie Monday

Id like to try something new on my blog. I enjoy watching films but dont really get the time to watch them. I may only watch a film because there is something i really want to watch in the cinema or maybe a few friends are coming around so i will throw on a film. But other than that i dont watch too many films. Usually i would spend my time on the internet or watch some tv show.

Over the past few months i have bought a fair few films which i have yet to watch, some which still have there wrapping on! What i was thinking to get me motivated to watch a few more films is to turn it into a sort of ‘challenge’, similar to why my photo challenge was set up, to simply increase my use out of my camera.

If i set up a challenge for myself to watch films and then review them or talk about them in some way then i can finally get through those films i have been neglecting to watch and i also benefit by getting to add something extra to my blog on a more regular basis. I am thinking that i will start off small, with just one film a week. I will watch a film at some stage throughout the week and talk about it the following Monday.

I have a few films in mind that i want to begin with, they include; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, American Gangster, Public Enemies & Sherlock Holmes. I have always wanted to watch these films but whenever i thought of watching them i just couldn’t bother with it!

So i already know the first few films that i am going to start with but i know there are plenty of films that i have not watched that i really should have. If you have any particular favourites, let me know either by commenting here or on my twitter! Maybe i will put up a checklist and mark them off as i go along!

Gnomeo & Juliet

To kick things off i will talk about the film i watched last night, i didn’t plan on talking about this film at all when i sat down to watch it last night, but since i thought of this challenge earlier on today, i will take this opportunity to start this challenge off on the right foot!

So the film i watched is called Gnomeo & Juliet, and i am sure that you can tell from the title that it is a spin of of the popular Shakespeare play Romeo & Juliet. I always hated this play, most likely because when i was in school we had to study line for line the play and completely understand each metaphor and theme, school pretty much sucked the life out of whatever interest may have been in it. I would probably never have chosen to read the play but i would likely of watched the modern version of the film as it would give me an insight into what the play was, but again school ruined that by making us watch the old version of the play over and over again and then finally allowing us to watch the new version!

Anyway, Gnomeo & Juliet is an animated film by Starz Animation. It is a great entertaining version of the original story of Romeo & Juliet. The plot of the film simply put is, there is a war between two families who live in neighboring gardens, the two families are Montague and Capulet, Red vs Blue. They film is hilarious from start to finish, from lawnmower races to a brilliant soundtrack including plenty of songs by Elton John. And did i mention they are Gnomes!

I dont want to give away too much as i am sure plenty of people havn’t seen this film yet as it was only out earlier this year. The film has plenty of famous actors including James McAvoy who plays the role of Xavier in the latest X-men film, other actors include Matt Lucas, Michael Caine, Ozzy Osbourne and Hulk Hogan. It is a great film and i would definitely recommend you have a watch of it. Below is the trailer of the film, if you have seen it, let me know what you think in the comments below!

Over the last few weeks Google have been updating everything! All their websites from Google, to Maps to their new social network Google+ & the new look Gmail, everything has changed and i was wondering if they would touch YouTube. Today i saw that Google have been working on a huge overhaul for YouTube and from what i have seen so far, its a great update.

The new update is code-named ’CosmicPanda’, i have had a quick look at the main new features which come with this next update to YouTube. There are 3 main parts that i would use with the new update and they have introduced huge GUI changes. The sections which have changed the most are user profiles, the video page where you actually watch the videos and then they have also updated playlists slightly.

Each user as you know have their own channel, if you are a partner with YouTube you are allowed to change the default thumbnail of each video to any image you like, with the new update to the channels it takes advantage of these pictures, the channel page shows the latest videos uploaded just by displaying the thumbnails of the videos. There are a few different options you can have for your page now, one is to simply show all the video thumbnails, another is to show a list of  you playlists. Below is how the old YouTube channels look with the new version below it (click them to see a bigger version!)

A huge difference as you can see, but looking through other YouTube channels will give you a better feel of the other options that are now available to YouTube users! If you haven’t already noticed, Google have also updated the navigation bar, its much more simple looking.

The page itself where you watch all your videos has been given a big update. The video player bar is now black along with a large black strip going the full width of the screen behind the video, the black strip works on the same principle of the ‘turn the light off’ feature a lot of sites use, it makes you focus more on the content they want you to, such as the video. The related videos to the right of the page have also been changed to a list of related thumbnails. Images old and new below! (click them to see a bigger version!)

The third big change that has been made to the site is a feature of the video play page too, it is the playlist feature. Instead of having an annoying video strip along the bottom of your screen as a pop up, it has now been change to a video strip below the video. Images below old and new (click them to see a bigger version!)

I really like the changes that have been made. Another great thing that you can now do is when you are watching a video, you can click into your account page or go onto the channel of the video you are watching or onto another persons page who has a left a comment on the video you are watching, if you do thing the video you are currently watching will continue to play at the top left of the page! After you are done browsing you can click the video again and it will bring you back to the video page! One of the greatest features of this update i think, but it would be great if it worked the same way if you try to search, at the moment it does not allow it.

A great change for YouTube, you can read about these features on Googles support fourms. You can also opt in yourself if you want to have a good look at this new update, all you have to do is go to http://youtube.com/cosmicpanda and click Try it Out!

I have been working on my new look for this blog for some time now, a few weeks back i put a rougher version of this theme live, just to see how it looked with all my pages and widgets in the sidebar. It wasn’t working the way i liked and i had a few issues with some plugins that wouldn’t work with the new theme.

Since i was having so many issues from the new theme i put back up my old one just while i made some tweaks to the new theme. I have another website set up where i test my new themes i am working on, so that was the environment i used to make the changes that were needed.

The new design for my blog is not one i made myself, instead i decided to buy one from ThemeForest, i wanted to have a  pre-made template which i could modify to the way i needed it to be. The theme i bought was $35 and is called Presenter WP. It is a really nice theme and is mainly aimed towards business site. I bought it for its simple look and also for some of the features which it has that enhances how posts look such as bullet points etc.

A nice feature which it has built in is a portfolio section. I have yet to include a portfolio on this blog, i do already have a portfolio with some of my work in it, but it is an entirely different site than my blog, i had thrown a link into my nav bar above to that site, but i have since removed it because it was external. I feel that all my links in my navigation bar should be internal only! I have wanted to get my portfolio better integrated into my blog for a while now and i will be working on this over the coming weeks.

A huge change, at least in my opinion, that i have made to my blog is the change in colour and logo. My blog originally had a dark look to it when i first started, it was a grim looking black with my green logo, i then changed it to a very naked looking blog with a lot of white, a simple blue bar and a blue version of the original blue logo.

With this new blog design i have changed things up a lot, and i feel it looks better. There is still the easy on the eyes look to the te, the main content area is white and the text font looks good. The main change to the design side is the light blue background i have added into the site, its not too dark or bright that it distracts you from what i want people to look at, the content!

The other big change which i have made to the design is my logo. For a few years i have always used my original logo which i had made for me a few years ago, it was used in all my blog designs since i started  blogging! The orignal logo can be seen below.

I always liked this logo, but after going through so many changes here on my blog i feel it has become a little outdated and  i wanted to make a fresh new logo that would compliment my new blog design. Since this first logo i have come from not knowing how to use photoshop at all to now where i can understand everything i need and i have the ability to find out how to do what i want if need be. That was the main reason i originally bought the logo above, simply because i didnt know how to use photoshop!

Now though i refuse to pay for a logo, the logo is something that really ties a site together, and is sometimes the only image on a site, so it is important it looks how you want it. I spent hours in photoshop trying to come up with a new logo, i made dozens of new logos, but none that i felt would fit this blog. Finally i ended up with the new logo which i have live now!

I also changed how my photos are displayed form flickr on this site, they used to show all my albums, but now they show a continuous stream of all my images, straight from flickr just like they would appear on flickr if you were looking at my photostream, they also have a nice lightbox effect.  I still have a few more changes to make to my blog. I still need to get my search box back into the sidebar and i want to get the links for seeing more blog posts on the front page working again.