Dave's Blog

Ireland is well renowned for it’s amazing weather, especially those sunny summers where it’s so warm you just can’t take the heat.

Ok, this statement is far from true, it’s something we could only dream of in this country! However, generally our weather is bad, but nowhere near as bad as what we seen this weekend.

I was home for a 21st birthday party and was greeted by torrential rain. When I arrived at my friend’s house I found this waiting for me:

In the shallowest part, the water was a couple of inches deep, going well up over my shoes! I thought this was bad, but then when we were heading into Belfast later, we would be diverted down many roads because of flooding, one in particular you couldn’t even see a footpath.

This wasn’t even the worst of it either, only a couple of miles down the road was the West Link, where the recently finished underpass was turned into a 20ft deep river!

Tonight I got the train back to Dublin and along the way came to a part which is supposed to be fields, but what it had become was a lake. The water came pretty much up to the train and the train was moving very slowly through it. Suddenly the train started tilting to one side, it really felt like it was going to go over! We had tilted so much that the stuff I had sitting on the table started to slide down it and I even heard a person saying ‘Should we all get to the other side of the train to try and balance it?’. Thankfully we eventually came out of that part. Here are some pictures of what those fields had become:

I’m back in Dublin which, although wet, is much drier than the North for now. Hopefully that was the end of the torrential rain.

A news video showing the flooded underpass and many other areas can be seen here.

Along with most other people I was very excited about the release of the new movie in the Batman series. I was looking forward to it even more after seeing trailers for it before other movies. I never set my expectations too high for it just in case I was going to be disappointed, but I certainly wasn’t! I enjoyed it so much that I have now been to the cinema to see it twice and intend on seeing it again at some stage.

Read on if you want to hear in more detail what I thought of it, but a word of warning, it does contain spoilers. (more…)

I’m a big kid at heart and still enjoy seeing some kid’s movies from time to time, so when I heard about Wall-E I really wanted to see it. Pixar do animated movies so well and made two of my favourite movies from when I was a kid, Toy Story 1 & 2, so I was looking forward to seeing what they would come up with this time.

If you don’t know what this movie is about, it’s about a robot that has to clean up Earth of rubbish after the planet has become impossible to live in. Another robot, Eve, is placed on Earth to scan and collect information. Whenever a plant is discovered it becomes clear that Earth may be returning to a habitable state and it is up to Wall-E and Eve to ensure that the humans come back. In the process of this, a relationship begins to form between Wall-E and Eve.

The story was interesting enough, I was never bored at any point throughout. Obviously this is a kid’s movie so the story is going to be mainly aimed at the kids, but there was still plenty in there to keep the adults interested as well. There was a good few comedy moments as well that seemed to have the adults laughing along with the kids. Along with the comedy you also had the sad moments. They really captured emotion very well, especially considering the story followed two robots. To be able to express emotion in something that naturally can’t really show much was definitely a success on the creator’s part.

The graphics were also done excellently. All the environments and characters were created very well and looked good on screen.

I was going into this movie expecting a kid’s movie and that’s what I got. It was a solid effort and due to the good graphics, ability to create emotion in the characters and a decent story I would probably give Wall-E a 7.5/10. It’s definitely a good one for the kids, but if you’re that little bit older, it mightn’t be the one for you unless you can enjoy a kid’s movie.