Belfast Comic Con

Well if you've read my blog before you probably know that I'm into superheroes and comic books etc. as are some of my friends. A few of us ended up going to comic con which was being held in Belfast for the first time. To be honest, it was a bit of a disappointment. We had gotten priority weekend tickets which were £20 each, given the name it means that we got in much quicker than those who were buying their tickets on the day. Despite being there after the doors were meant to open we ended up having to stand in the queue for quite a while, this on a day with heavy rain. We eventually made it in and we were immediately met with the sight of stalls selling stuff, it turned out that the majority of the space was given over to selling stuff. The problem was that in my opinion most of the stuff would be what I would call impulse purchases and you could see the exact same stuff being sold at different stalls which seemed a bit pointless. The rest of the con wasn't that great either, there were some special guests, none of them really interested me I only knew James Cosmo from GoT and the guy who played Winston Churchill in Doctor Who. That said even if I was interested I don't think I'd have bothered waiting in a long queue to pay £15 for an autograph and a few seconds talking to them. The "next-generation gaming" bit was just a few PS4s, the only games I saw people playing were Lego Hobbit or Fifa not exactly inspiring. There were some talks but we didn't go to any. Despite the name I barely saw any actual comics being sold, I think I saw one stall selling some but it was too awkward to see what was there due to how cramped it was, it was too small a venue for the event and it ended up being quite hot and uncomfortable. The comics village section had a number of comics/graphic novel artists selling completed work and commissions while I probably wouldn't have bought anything anyway it would've been nice if the artists had actually looked up or initiated conversation rather than just sitting there while we looked at their work.

I understand that its the first year and they maybe didn't realise how popular it would be but I wasn't impressed and didn't bother going back on the sunday, I think only one of our group did. It seemed like an exercise in making money, you pay to get in and then are immediately met with stalls of stuff to buy, as well as the cost of food and drink. A lot of the reviews on the official facebook page give it five stars because they had a fun time dressing up and seeing all the other people dressed up as famous characters. As much as that was cool and probably wouldn't have happened without comic con, the event itself was not up to scratch in my opinion. It is apparently returning next year but it would need to be much better in my opinion.

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Suphero madness-Part 2

People are probably fed up with me talking about superheroes but I love them and going by the amount of money the movies are making, so do a lot of people. Firstly I want to talk about Captain America: The Winter Soldier, probably my favorite film out of Marvel's phase 2. As with Thor: The Dark World it improves on the first film by a fair bit and as with all of the Marvel movies (i.e. those in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not including X-men and Spider-man) it is action packed and humorous. Don't get me wrong these films are never going to get any serious awards other than for special effects but they are seriously entertaining and seem to appeal to all ages. One of the things I loved the most about it was seeing Cap's super soldier abilities portrayed a lot better than in the first film. The fight choreography in this movie is really well done especially the hand to hand combat. It is more of a small team movie than a solo movie but Scarlett Johansson is great once again as Black Widow and Anthony Mackie plays a great new character who becomes known as the hero Falcon.

Everyone was kung-fu fighting!

I think Marvel deserve credit for taking risks with their movie, apparently they had to take out a very large loan to finance the  Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk movies which started the movie universe, a risk that has certainly paid off. Iron Man was risky prospect as he wasn't exactly a well-known character before and he wasn't even that popular a character in the comics and now he’s probably a lot of people's favourite (though that is probably due to Robert Downey Junior). With all their success Marvel now have the confidence to release a Guardians of the Galaxy movie,  characters who aren't exactly well known even among comics fans and are pretty out there with a talking racoon and a tree dude as well as planning to release an ant man movie which sounds pretty ridiculous. This is in contrast to DC who have only released Batman and Superman movies (not exactly a risk due to the popularity of the characters) as well as the one Green Lantern movie which was a disaster and of course the awful Catwoman movie. The Man of Steel sequel featuring Batman has been pushed back to 2016 so to put things in perspective we are getting a Guardians of the Galaxy movie before a movie featuring both Superman and Batman, before a Wonder Woman movie, before a Flash movie and before a Justice League movie which is pretty crazy. DC/Warner Brothers seem to be trying to add as many heroes as possible to the Batman and Superman movie, as well as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman they've announced that Cyborg or at least Victor Stone before he becomes Cyborg will be in the movie. They've now officially announced that it is called Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, making it sound like it is definitely going to be a Justice League prequel/set-up. I hope they know what they are doing.

Ben Affleck does look pretty awesome as Batman, I like the new suit   based on the Dark Knight Returns.

Now those who have read my previous posts will know that I wasn't that fussed on The Amazing Spider-man. Thankfully TASM 2 improves on many of the things that were wrong with the first movie. I liked Andrew Garfield more in this one, he is less annoyingly awkward, and when he is Spidey he is actually funny rather than coming off as a douche as he did in the first film (he also has some funny moments as Peter). He is also much more of a hero in this movie who inspires people rather than a vigilante. The web swinging and acrobatics in this movie are much better as well, they tried to make it too grounded in the first film but I had a big grin on my face during the first scene with him as Spider-man swinging through New York. One of the best things about the movie is the Peter and Gwen relationship due to the great chemistry they have (probably helped by Andrew and Emma dating in real life) and its nice that Gwen isn't just a damsel in distress.  Overall the movie was a bit different than I expected from the trailers and in some parts scenes from the trailers weren't even in the movie which was pretty strange. Whilst it doesn't suffer like spider-man 3 from too many villains it does seem a bit rushed at times and I found the scene changes to be a bit choppy. I think I would actually remove some things from the movie to improve it as well as adding some things that were missing namely Peter's juggling act of being Spider-man with his other responsibilities that was done so well in the original Spider-man trilogy. It does seem to be setting up future movies and in some cases things didn't get as much time as they maybe needed to.  I do still wonder how Marvel would have done Spider-man if they had the rights and it makes me sad that in all likelihood we will never see him interact with Tony Stark or the other Avengers.

Evian have made a pretty cool advert to tie in to the movie, better than the American adverts I've seen which have various X-men advertising fast -food:

Most recently I watched X-men Days of Future Past, the seventh film in the X-men franchise, I’ve seen all of them apart from X-men Origins-Wolverine which is meant to be awful and doesn’t seem to be part of continuity any more.  This movie uses time travel to tie together the First Class prequel with the old X-men trilogy.  It’s pretty cool seeing the old and new cast in the same movie. It’s well-acted, it’s visually stunning, we get to see a wide range of mutant powers in great fight scenes and it manages to fix the mistakes made mainly in X-men 3.  Fox should be praised that they have stuck with the franchise rather than go down the reboot route even if the continuity is a bit unclear now.  They  made the bold choice of including Quicksilver a character who is also going to be appearing in Avengers: Age of Ultron , a different version played by a different actor (movie rights belong to both Fox and Marvel since he is both a mutant and a member of the Avengers). Despite his goofy outfit he is one of the highlights of the movie, it’s just a shame he doesn't get more screen time.  Overall it is a great movie despite some small niggles (one character having a new power that is never explained, the fact that another character simply being alive is never explained either and as I have mentioned the sometimes confusing continuity). It is definitely worth checking it out although if you haven’t seen the other films you may be a bit confused.

Apparently showing fictional characters eating food makes it more desirable

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Volume control

I have talked in the past about how I've upgraded from an analog to digital hearing aid and the quality definitely is better. I actually wore my analog one for paintball and noticed how different it was right up until the battery died and I had to spend the last two matches unable to hear my teammates telling me where the other team were! As much as the digital is an improvement it is not perfect. One thing I have struggled with is watching TV, obviously the trend with TVs now days is that they are very slim, the problem with this is that it means that their sound quality isn't as good. We ended up buying a surround sound system in the hope that it would be better. The system is great but unfortunately it doesn't solve the problem that many TV shows have which is that the dialogue isn't particularly clear. There was a lot of controversy  recently around the BBC's Jamaica  Inn program with the dialogue being impossible to understand. There is also the problem that many shows have such big difference in volume between dialogue and action. I love game of thrones and the dialogue is one of the main reasons, the problem is you have to turn the volume way up to hear the dialogue and then you have to turn it way down whenever it switches to a sword fight or people riding horses etc. I understand that action scenes will be louder than dialogue but there shouldn't be such a big difference. Its fine when everyone is in the room watching it and if its a bit loud its not a problem but when you are trying to watch a program by yourself it can be annoying for other people.

It seems like I've seen quite a lot of movies at the cinema already this year (Inside Llewyn Davis, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Dallas Buyers Club and Captain America: The Winter Soldier) without any problems but most recently I went to The Amazing Spider-man 2 and it was LOUD! I don't know if it was because we went to a cinema that I haven't been to in years or if it was just an overly loud movie but I could hear it perfectly with my hearing aid muted. It may have been a one off but the fact is movies do not need to be that loud!

I also mute my hearing aid at concerts and my brother wears ear plugs in order to protect our hearing. I get that live music is meant to be loud but it seems crazy that you have to wear ear plugs or risk tinnitus to see bands/artists live. Obviously at large venues or outdoor concerts it needs to be loud so everyone can hear it properly but I've been to some fairly small venues where I've felt that even with my hearing aid muted that I needed to move back as it was THAT loud. Probably the worst concert experience that I've had sound wise was seeing Modestep support Lostprophets (before everybody knew about their singer being a paedophile). I'm not sure if it was their fault or if the sound guy could have done more but every time the bass note hit it was like being vibrated like a tuning fork. It made for a most unpleasant experience. Live music should be loud but sometimes less is more, I just wonder how many people are going to suffer from hearing problems due to overly loud concerts.

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Success!

Well I found out that I've been awarded the PhD studentship. I'm very relieved that I got it after the hard work I've put in from getting experience in the labs to preparing for the interview and of course the interview itself which as I've said previously was my first proper interview. It's a weight off my shoulders now that I know what I'll be doing for the next three years. The official start isn't until the beginning of October but due to the fact I'm working on trees I will need to collect samples in the summer before the leaves start turning. It's going to be a lot of hard work but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Interview

So last week I had my first ever proper interview, technically it wasn't a job interview it was an interview for a PhD studentship but it was my first experience of that sort of thing. I had taken part in mock interviews before, once in high school at a career day and once at university. The career day was a special day organised by the school where we came in dressed for a job interview (though of course I ended up being the only guy who didn't already have a suit and who didn't rush out to get one just for this one day) and then we were split into groups and assigned to a professional from the local area who interviewed each of us individually. I was in a group with two other girls, one who wanted to be a speech therapist (slightly ironic) and I'm not sure what the other one wanted to be, this was back when i wanted to be a vet. It went really well and I was complimented on how calm I was but that may have been because I knew it was a mock interview so I didn't feel under pressure. My mock interview at university did not go as well in fact it was pretty awful. In my defense my supervisor only let me know about it the day before and given that I had plenty else on my plate I didn't exactly prepare for it.

The interview I had on Tuesday was a bit different again since it was a four person panel. Along with the other references we let them know about my hearing and speech issues and whenever I was invited to interview they suggested bringing someone along. I ended up deciding that my mum would be the best person to bring, in my head I thought that she would be there just in case. I forgot due to people I know being used to me and being able to understand me for the majority of the time that I am hard to understand if you aren't used to me. This meant my confidence was knocked a bit whenever I started to answer the first question only to be stopped and told that they were struggling to understand me and asked could my mum help out. It ended up with my mum essentially "translating" everything I said. This meant that I didn't get as much across as I would have liked in the first section but thankfully I managed to recover and I think the rest of the interview went pretty well. It was a good experience and hopefully I will get the studentship but it makes me nervous about future interviews in terms of communication obviously I can't always or I won't always be allowed to bring my mum or another person in with me.

Quite a strange experience especially since it was my first time

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What a fun week!

Well last week was certainly fun, to start off with me and my brother went down to Dublin to see Fall Out Boy a band who I've wanted to see for a long time but they have never come to Northern Ireland. We drove down on the day but despite getting a bit lost we made it in plenty of time to get a bite to eat and get to the venue in plenty of time.The show was in the Olympia Theatre which was quite surprising as it isn't the biggest venue but it added to the atmosphere.  They sounded great that said I wasn't that fussed on Joe's (the lead guitarist) solo spot, would much rather they had played another song and just have him shred the same for the drummers solo spot. People love to hate them but they are definitely one of my favourite bands and I'm really glad I got to see them live.

This is a picture that the band got taken at the concert, me and my brother were at the back on the ground floor so you can't see us

The second thing I did last week which is now a weekly thing was play five a side football (soccer to my American readers). I've always been a fan of playing and watching football and its really nice playing again. I probably played football the majority of lunchtimes and a fair amount of break times at high school. The leisure centre we go to has eight separate artificial five a side pitches which are fantastic  and you don't have to worry about the ball going out unless you hit it really high. It's a great workout and its fairly cheap.

This is the type of pitch we play on

And finally on Sunday I went paintballing for the second time, my friend decided to organise an outing to the same place we went last time. Unfortunately a lot of people who said they would go changed their minds or dropped out at short notice so it ended up only being six of us. It still ended up being great fun and three vs three is still pretty intense. It is also a great workout but it can be quite painful, the place we go to lets you rent padding for your torso but I ended up getting shot mostly on my arms and legs and the paintballs can leave a mark. The place we go to is called Escarmouche and I highly recommend it if you want to go paintballing in Northern Ireland, I can't link to their site at the moment as it is down but I will whenever it is up again. They are really professional and a pleasure to deal with and the site they have is pretty epic with a number of game zones from simple open areas with tires for cover to larger ones with wooden huts and towers. We are planning to go back in a few weeks with a larger number of people hopefully.

Boom headshot!

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My gear

Hello just thought I would show you guys the various pieces of equipment that I use on a daily basis including my current hearing aid, old hearing aids I used to wear and my mic/radio system among other things.

This is my current hearing aid:

It's a bit sleeker than previous versions, also they have replaced the switch and volume scroller with buttons. The single button changes which mode it is in. It automatically turns on whenever the battery section is closed shut with a battery in it. One press of the button lets me use my mic system as well as all the normal sounds it picks up, A second press of the button mutes the hearing aid so I only get whatever is coming through the receiver hence allowing me to listen to music without all the background noise. A third press of the button mutes the hearing aid completely which is useful for loud places like concerts or bars. A fourth press causes it to go back to its original mode. The other button is for changing the volume, press up to increase the volume and down to decrease it but it only goes up/down so far. I do not know what the green stuff is, I think it is to do with moisture but nobody has said anything or made any comment when its been looked at or older ones have been sent for repair so presumably its not a problem. My mum makes the fabric band herself and it works really well and is a lot more comfortable than the rigid hair band things that they originally came on.

This is my most recent hearing aid before my current one:

It is analog and has different settings rather than different digital programs. It has three settings, off, middle setting (i.e. just the receiver) and normal hearing aid. It does not automatically turn on when the battery section it closed. Unlike the digital aid, the receiver has to be plugged into a "shoe" before it can be connected to the hearing aid.

Here is the shoe and receiver separate:

Here are the batteries I use:

Here is an old analog aid I have:

Here is my current microphone/radio system on the top and the old system that I used to use on the bottom:

As you can see my current one is a lot more complex, with a screen and options an always attached microphone, charged by usb etc. The old system is powered by one AA battery, it has an on off switch and you can change between a microphone cable and an audio cable for connecting with an mp3 etc.


Here is my alarm clock, along with the vibrating pad which goes under my pillow:

Here is the docking station for the system which I currently only use with the smoke alarm along with its own vibrating pad which also goes under my pillow:

Thanks for reading, hope you found it informative and interesting!