Thanks for the efforts boblob, but this is a different kind of box. The smashy ones are easy, and I'm familiar with them and their maguc powers. I need to know how to move forward at this particular stage, I keep hitting dead ends in th emarble zone, really quiclky after I get in there. I have been reduced to just tryinng to get through the green zone with higher and higher points

:-( at this rate I'll end up re-signing with virgin so i can get Americas next top model again... apparently thereis no 'former super model' in this season... it's all changing and I'm out of the picture, lease help with sonic, it's my last hope of procrastination brain zonking activity!

======= Date Modified 09 Mar 2010 20:43:25 =======
Hey, great idea Mathkitty! The gyno thread is making me feel pretty nauseous, so a welcome relief...

Today I completed my meticulous consumption of half a tub of Ben and Jerry's 'fairly nuts' ice-cream. I also gained a whopping load of gold stars from my head of department at one of my teaching universities: I have a first year student who is producing PhD level work, and her degree is not even in an academic subject, she is a fashion UG! At fist she was a lippy demanding attitudinal nightmare, but, as my big boss says, I tamed her as if she were a wild horse, and now she eats out of my hand and wins the national (no horrific fences, mind). 

Hello all, having sucked all of the juice out of come dine with me, and being without Virgin TV and, hence, America's Next Top Model, my latest procrastinantion and relaxation gambit is playing sonic the hedgehog on my mobile phone. I have reached the stage where I really needs some tips about the second zone, which I have just started accessing, through my dedication, skill and extra special thumb action.

So! I get to this second zone - the one after the green zone (it seems to have something to do with romans and volcanoes) and I keep hitting two dead ends, can't get past this big, tall brick wall or a dungeon area with a moveable square thing, which also has a dead end.

Any ideas on ways forward at this stage of the sonic game? It's getting quite frustrating, and I keep having to end the game because I'm stuck, although I am really pleased that I can now overpower the flying alien with the nasty ball and chain action.


Thanks in advance!

p.s. I hope my conscience can live with this kind of collusion and I hope it doesn't taint my sense of achievement, however, I have become desperate.

I thought, as people are discussing mascara, I can ask about sonic...

======= Date Modified 06 Mar 2010 14:02:49 =======
This is a really funny thread for me, because it's making me realise just how un-makeuppy I have become in the last ten years or so. I have three or four eye shadows, a clinique duo and a couple of Barry M glitter pots; I use two tubes of foundation, one darker, one lighter and blend them to suit my colour that day - or more often night; one blusher; two lipsticks that I can never find; and a mascara. The only thing I have replaced in the last three years is the mascara because I read that litlle mites jump from your eyelashes onto the brush so you have to replace them pretty often. Most of my makeup was bought over three years ago, so sneak's comment about things lasting for months made me giggle, I expect mine to last for decades! Oh, also, I have an Yves Saint Laurent touche eclait that I acquired about two years ago and still consider it a novel addition that I'm sure how to handle. I used to buy a lot of make up, but now I just don't think about it. Oh, and my trusty black eyeliner pencils... that I never sharpen, and can never find the sharpner for!

I know this will probably sound conceited, but I love the colour - and shape - of my lips, and have never found a lipstick to beat it, so unless I'm going somewhere dark, I don't bother.
 

Film and art history, but I'm writing for a film audience.

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Hi Satchi, not sure about he body lotion question, I never use it. However, it sounds as if your skin could be de-hydrated generally and drinking more water and making sure you get the right oils into your system could very well help with your chest area and your lips. I take a omega 3, 6 and 9 supplement which is quite reasonably priced at Superdrug. Otherwse eat lots of oily fish or find another good all round omaga oil source, such as sesame seeds.

Always apply mascara after eyeshadow, this will avoid the shadow landing on the coated lashes, and colouring them, when you apply it. Top tip: Coat the top side of your eyelashes with mascara first, then use the usual upward sweeping motion to curl the lashes upwards. This way your lashes will be entirely covered, and any shadow that has landed on them will be swept away or covered. Mascara smudging is more of a mystery to me, perhaps you need a waterproof one?

Oh and I meant to say: I'm sure you are very beautiful without mascara, so you could try letting the world see your natural fabulousness without the shadow and mascara - it's also a lot less hassle. I stopped wearing make up during the day (and sometimes for evenings out) in the last year or two and life is so much easier - I'm just so busy with other things.

Hi Rick, my thoughts are that, yes I agree, I think that what most of us are doing is putting forward viable possibilities, rather than absolutes. I think that's what I'm doing anyway. I do, personally believe in what I am saying, but I also respect that other poeple may not see it that way - I guess that's what most of us have to do.


Oh and for my work, I think detailed analysis and observation are essential, there is so much detail in a frame, and so much that contributes to an image that a cursory reading would produce superficial evidence. Also, I don't agree that close readings of films allows for a greater number of interpretations - close readings are neverdiscussed in isolation from the rest of the text, so I don't see how that could happen. But that's a very interesting thought, and I'm sure I will consider it in future when I'm working.

======= Date Modified 05 Mar 2010 13:46:39 =======
Hi Wally, I'm afraid all these options are far too intellectually demanding for my tatses. I liked Blind Date, and hence have a penchant, but not addiction, for Take Me Out.

Deal Or No Deal always seems so complicated.

Oh I get it, you want us to say which ones we'd like to be on. Well, in that case, it's a whole other set of choices: I'd like the opportunity to be on Shooting Stars, that's my top choice, although I am not a celebrity, so am not sure if that would be possible, even if it were still running. Being on Cracker Jack was always the epitome of childhood achievement when I was a young lass, and I'd lke to banter with Terry Wogan on Blankety Blank, and get my cheque book and pen.

I will swim tomorrow and I think this could be the re-start of my swimming routine. I like to go once or twice a week, that way it stays fun and I look forward to it; otherwise it gets repetitive for me.
It's good for the personal hygiene, grooming challenges us PhDs face too - we are forced to get wet and, thus, clean.

Hey Wal, I hope the swim went well. Tomorrow, I too will swim. There, I've said it now, so I have to do it. I will take my goggles and do a bit of crawl too.

======= Date Modified 04 Mar 2010 12:02:57 =======
Maybe we should start a personal grooming and hygiene accountaility thread. I'm only glad I have teaching to go to two/three days per week, or lord know what state I'd be in!

Just make sure there aren't any killer whales around...

Doesn't your uni have a pool, they're usually quite cheap for their own students. I've got an old uni staff card for a uni pool near where I live and it's only £1.00.

Great thread, thanks for this Wal, I have been reduced to watching a quasi dosumentary film about the effect of the web on our lives - I have sucked all the juice out of the come dine with me re-runs and can't figure out how to get America's next top model on the internet. And I missed survivors tonight! Went to see the lovely bones. Oh dear, this docu is saying that there's some bloke wearing an anorak, sitting in a white van with headphones on monitoring and recording everything I write on the web, paranoid or what.

OK, so! My research, unlimited. I would like some research done into the spirit and the soul, how we are all connected and the power we have through that. A completely vague aim, and I'm not at all equipped to do it.

Fr personal satisfaction, I'd go full time with what I am doing now. I'd love to make a film, but don't think I'm ready for that yet; I actually like struggling for things in some weird, perverse way. I think that only when my struggle is won will I be truely ready for the thing I want, like a butterfly struggling to get out of its cocoon - and my film will be worthwhile. But that could just be because I have to think that way!

Yeah, so, I'd give myself a £60,000 a year stipend and buy a really beautiful flat with a garden, and I'd shop in Jaeger, at least twice a year.

maybe you have that 'I'm making it all up' feeling, too...

could be a confidence thing? One born every minute's on! Was thinking about watching it, but all looks quite stressful, am torn, no pun intended.

======= Date Modified 02 Mar 2010 22:02:53 =======
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Hi Slizor, for me (movies) it's mostly a matter of fine readings, in my experience, but there are other approaches, which means that we write detailed, precise, accounts and analyses of what is going on in the frame, and how different aspects of the composition and sound work to build the film. I have ssen one of my films 25 times, and one particular sequence much more than that, I lost count ages ago. I heard an anthropologist who works with film once say that this approach was not necessary, that sequences can be sussed out and accurately written/spoken about with a sngle viewing, he had the attitude that he'd come from a 'real' discipline so new more than the people who've been looking at film for thirty/forty years... I gave him a very withering look and he shrunk back - my experience in the industry tells me that films are deliberately composed, and even if the film maker did not intend a particular effect, the fact that their film is seen that way matters, to film makers and audiences: there would be no Tarrantino without film academics and detailed frame by frame analysis. During my undergraduate degree we used to analyse sequences frame by frame on a steinbeck machine, then write a 3000 word essay on a coule of minutes of film, and I have found this an invaluable skill for the PhD, I never have problems in that area.

We do use method, there are many ways to study films: audience reception could be priveledged, a method which calls for the kind of research people in the social sciences do, so could production conditions (this means finances) - so a bit of economics, and these all demand a specifically designed method. I think, in literature studies, this kind of approach is called cultural studies, and we use that term too- we say 'a cultural studies approach', but don't treat it as a separate dscipline, it's still film/screen studies.

I spent about 6 months looking through film archives and feature films before I had a real idea of what was out there and what my argument could be (theoretical framework) and which approach (method) I would need to use (textual analysis, or readings, as we say, with some focus on production conditions - which will lay some groundwork for further reserach into funding structures - together with some interviews with film makers about the relationship between content and funding structures).

I work in a similar way to art historians.