Recent content in Blog on Knitty Gritty
The Concept I’ve been sitting on this one for a little while, but I recently completed a project that I had been working on for roughly a year: A Modular LEGO Dungeons and Dragons display case/frame. I’ve seen plenty of things a bit like this, but I wanted to make one even better, with the following extra criteria: I must be able to change the background, if I get bored of the current…
I read this book on holiday in 2025, and felt compelled to write about it, even though my thoughts will most likely not be original. The book in brief House of Leaves is a lengthy horror story written by Mark Z. Danielewski in the year 2000. It has multiple different narrators and somewhat parallel stories going at the same time: the kind of framing device of Johnny Truant “The Navidson…
Introduction Last year I took up the challenge to Knit for 30 minutes every day in November, to raise money for the Bone Cancer Research Trust. In total I managed to raise £413 because my job matches my fundraising up to £200 a year. I used the time to crochet the Raziel amigurumi . Don’t get pedantic that crochet and knitting aren’t the same. This year I am taking on the challenge to…
What, two posts in quick succession?! Don’t get used to it. In order to try to keep my posts a bit more focused, I’m splitting things up in a sensible way, or at least trying to. First of all, my wrist is currently damaged (cartalige damage) so I’m not able to hold a game controller, let alone a crochet hook or knitting needle. This has given me a bit of extra time to work on…
A few days ago was the digital release of “The Dead Shall Rise” - the Legacy of Kain graphic novel that was on Kickstarter a while ago. It took me a few days to read and my thoughts have been taken in lots of different directions. Here, I’m going to focus on my thoughts about the book itself. Though I write reviews here sometimes, I’m not a professional critic of anything.…
I’ve managed to implement a CI/CD workflow into this site - it took a while, because I was overcomplicating matters. I also needed a lot of help from my brother, who is much more familiar with Unix than I am. First Attempt I started off with the Hugo GitHub actions template to give me something to work from. My idea for the workflow was the following: Set the site to “update…
The Blog Post Since my previous post I’ve been working on a few things. First of all, I enabled code scanning on simple-as-pie , the demo page and the repo for the interactive LOK timeline . In doing so, I was alerted to some security issues on the timeline and demo page repos. After trying to fix those, it became apparent that they were issues inherent to the create-react-app command.…
Introduction Welcome to my new blog. As I wrote in my previous entries, I was making changes to try to achieve an AAA WCAG accessibilty rating, but was severely limited by the awfulness of blogger. My brother suggested looking into Static Site Generation, and so I settled upon Hugo , with the Stack theme in particular. The transition itself hasn’t been completely smooth, but I’m…
If you have been paying attention, you may have noticed a lot of styling changes being made here. You see, I’ve dedicated some time to enhancing the accessibility of the site, fixing the issues that Siteimprove was reporting on. The most surprising thing to me was how many errors are thrown up due to the template I use for my blog. The blog, which is hosted by Blogger, which is in turn owned…
A small one, but one I want to draw attention to nonetheless. I’ve now updated the Interactive Legacy of Kain Timeline to include a few quality of life improvements: I updated some of the data, specifically the connections, to be more accurate - as an example, previously some of the connections for the Soul Reaver blade bypassed some nodes. Whilst this was technically correct because they…
Good news everyone ! Over the weekend I managed to finish migrating The Interactive Legacy of Kain Timeline to use React.js rather than Vue.js A few years ago, I had a pretty catastrophic computer failure, and as a result I lost the source code. I had to re-do this one from scratch, but I did it to imitate the Vue.js one closely, whilst adding in better features. I’ve taken precautions, so…
I started this one on November 1st, as my first project whilst undertaking the challenge of crocheting every day in November for Bone Cancer Research Trust. In total I’ve managed to raise £463.13 (including Gift Aid and my employer’s match funding) and did 45 hours across the 30 days (I slowed down at the end to not burn myself out) If people want to contribute, the donation page is…
This one was particularly difficult: The Soul Reaver itself! Probably the hardest part was constructing the skull, which had a fair few false starts. I found a pattern for a skull on club crochet which was the basis for that, but I had to narrow the eyes, alter the nose, and narrow the teeth. It ended up looking more cute that intimidating, but that sort of fits in with the rest of the toys…
After the Mario film came out I asked my son which character he would like a toy of, and he chose Bowser. This is pretty much the reason I started learning yarn craft in the first place, so I made him one. The pattern I followed was from this particular blog post from 2011 https://epic-yarns.com/2011/10/04/bowser/ I submitted a comment asking for some clarification, but didn’t get a…
For the past couple of years I’ve been dabbling about in Unity, but due to their recent PR disaster, I’ve shifted over into dabbling with Godot instead. The project I’m trying to create is a turn-based strategy game, which would include terrain. As such, units might be hidden behind terrain, so the user should be able to rotate the camera. To this end I’ve been following…
This is one I started working on pretty much immediately after finishing my previous doll - the namesake of the Legacy of Kain series: Kain (in his Elder Vampire form) It’s been quite hard to work up the motivation for typing this up, in part because I sort of live-tooted it over on Mastodon Nevertheless it’s been a bit of a long journey - we have a puppy who would probably try to eat…
I’ve been keeping this one under my hat, a wee bit. It’s fair to say that I’m a fan of James Stephanie Sterling’s work - I remember when they started publishing videos on the Escapist, and at first they weren’t for me, though eventually I went back and got hooked. Seeing their transformation, and hearing their explanation about it, has definitely helped me overcome a…
This one has been in the works for a very long time, but last weekend I finally finished the amigurumi of Janos Audron that I’ve been working on for (no exaggeration here) - around 2 1/2 years! Let’s get into the details. Details First of all, it cannot be understated how big this thing is: 1 foot tall and with a 2 foot wingspan tip to tip! This was, like the Sunny doll, based on the…
A lot has happened in the past couple of years. I got married, had a child, switched jobs, and the apocalypse started. So many changes. Similarly, I’ve changed the site a bit. I’ve updated the Legacy of Kain Timeline to use Vue rather than the mix of Bootstrap, Jquery and Knockout. The end result is that there is less data to load, so the page should run faster. Doing a calculation on…
Somewhat inspired by a video titled Stop trying to make us like the Predator , I’ve come up with a rough idea for how the next Predator film should go. In the near-ish future, the Earth is in peril. The environment has been badly damaged, and to try and compensate for this we reduced our farming of animals for food, but that hasn’t helped enough. We have expanded to have outposts on…
“Character development? Good writing? Dramatic tension? Pfft, who needs those?” - The screenwriters. In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom/Jurassic World 2/Jurassic Park 5, the island (Islar Nubar) which the Jurassic World theme park was on turns out to have a now active volcano, which is going to result in killing all of the dinosaurs on the island. Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is…
June was a busy month for me, and as I result I didn’t get to go to the cinema - hence there being no film reviews. They were rather sparse in the run up to June, too, but there is a reason for that. In June each year there is Sunnycon - it’s gone through a few name changes over the years (Sunderland Anime Convention, the Sunnycon Anime Convention, and now the Sunnycon Anime Expo) but…
The Fast & The Furious 8 is (shockingly) the 8th film in the Fast & The Furious franchise, and was marketed as F8 (Fête) of the Furious in America. Despite the marketing, and the fact that it features a fair number of British actors (and actresses), it does not unfortunately feature Vin Diesel winning a coconut shy, or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson correctly guessing the weight of a…
Do you remember M Night Shyamalan? He made a big splash with The Sixth Sense, the twist at the end shocking a lot of people. Not only that, but on subsequent watches, the twist continued to make sense - yes, there are some scenes where it’s a bit of a stretch, but it mostly worked. He then did another film with Bruce Willis - Unbreakable. It was not based on a comic book, but was very much…
I only recently watched the original Pete’s Dragon, a technicolor musical about an orphan sold into slavery and his pet dragon. Upon escaping from his captors Pete and the titular creature go to a sea-side town, getting into mischief and befriending the lighthouse keeper. However, Pete’s owners are looking for him, and there is a greedy snake-oil salesman who sees a money making…
The Lego Batman Movie is, I suspect, a pseudo-sequel to “The Lego Movie”, which was awesome. Will Arnett (Job from Arrested Development) reprises his role as Lego Batman, the arrogant loner who graced us with the greatest song ever written The story is multi-faceted, but largely boils down to Batman needing to learn the importance of teamwork, family, and hatred. Hatred? Why, yes. One…
Haxx0r Ridge is the latest film by Mel Gibson and tells the story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), the first conscientious objector in history to get the Medal of Honor (sic) for bravery while under fire. Desmond is a devout Seventh Day Adventist from Virginia, brought up by a loving mother (Rachel Griffiths) and an abusive alcoholic father (Hugo Weaving) who is an understandable mentally…
Moana is the latest film by Pixar, with a story based on Polynesian mythology and a cast made up largely of actors from the region. The story is that in the beginning there was only ocean, but then the goddess Te Fiti created islands and life, before going to sleep as an island herself. Later, the shape-shifting demi-god Maui (Dwane “The Rock” Johnson) steals Te Fiti’s heart, but…
Passengers is a film about the starship, the Avalon, which is on a 120 year trip to the colony of Homestead 2, carrying around 280 members of staff and 5000 passengers, all of whom are in suspended animation. However, 30 years into the journey something goes wrong, and Jim (Chris Pratt) is woken up. Being the only human awake on a ship, unable to go into suspended hibernation, and being very…
Assassin’s Creed is a film based upon the video game franchise of the same name, starring Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremey Irons and Michael Kenneth Williams. I have only played some of the first game, so I went into this with only a slight familiarity. If you have absolutely no knowledge of the franchise, don’t worry! The film is here to treat you like an idiot, and tell…
//Need a way to distinguish between this post and the link in the sidebar A few months ago (back in July, actually) I added an interactive variation of the Legacy of Kain timeline, which might be more readable than the tabulated version. So, why am I posting about this now? Well, I’ve added an FAQ to it, which will hopefully compensate for some of the questions that people have asked me, as…
**I'm sorry but this page doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue.**
Review Rogue One is the first Star Wars spin-off film in out post-episode-seven world. It bridges the gap between episode 3 (Revenge of the Sith) and episode 4 (A New Hope), telling the story of how the rebellion gets its hands on the plans for the Death Star. The first thing to note is that the opening and music are both noticeably different and similar to the core films, helping cement the fact…
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them is a Harry Potter spin-off where Eddie Redmayne plays Newt Scamander (who I really want to call Scaramanga) visiting New York in 1926 with a suitcase full of magical creatures. Due to a mix up with a wannabe baker (Kowalski, played by Dan Fogler), some of the beasts escape, and Newt needs to get them back. Also in New York at that point in time is a…
The Accountant has an excellent cast, led by Ben Affleck as an autistic savant. Using his skills he’s become an accountant, often using an alias and being hired by criminal organisations. As JK Simmons (as an agent for the US Treasury) puts it: Imagine that you launder huge sums of money. You keep a record of transactions, but most of it is hidden behind codes and euphemisms. Then suddenly…
While I do swear more than I should in real life, I try to avoid it here. I mention this because I want you to appreciate how sincere I am when I say: This film is fucking awful. It’s really, unbelievably bad. During the events of Man of Steel, Bruce Wayne (played by Ben Affleck) was rescuing his employees from collapsing buildings in Metropolis, which has planted a seed of fear and hate for…
This latest Marvel entry stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular Dr Steven Strange, a brilliant but arrogant surgeon, who gets maimed in a car accident, ending his career. Desperate for a solution, he eventually comes to a temple in Nepal, where Tilda Swinton portrays “The Ancient One”. There he learns to open his mind to the concept of magic, and trains to master it. The temple was…
You may remember the previous two Dan Brown films - “The DaVinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” In The DaVinci Code, Tom Hanks solved some puzzle left by Leonardo DaVinci that lead to a great secret that had absolutely no effect on reality or society at all. In Angels and Demons, Ewan McGregor distracted Tom Hanks so that he could use a visible amount of anti-matter to blow…
“Ja, Kreacher!” is a German Harry Potter spin-off, about house-elves managing a the household of one of the higher-ups in the Ministry of Magic. On the other hand, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is a film starring Tom Cruise and Colby Smulders. Jack Reacher used to be a major in the army (which he is constantly reminded of) and Smulders is his successor. However, two of her subordinates…
The Magnificent Seven (2016) is a remake of The Magnificent Seven (1960), which is a remake of Seven Samurai by Akira Kurisawa, which is in turn heavily inspired by the Wild West genre. As such, it is perfectly understandable if the viewer feels that The Magnificent Seven (2016) feels that the story beats are familiar, or even generic. The premise of the film is that there is a particular town…
The Infiltrator stars Bryan Cranston, John Leguizamo and Amy Ryan as undercover CIA agents trying to take down Pablo Escabar’s drug operation in the 1980s. The film is gripping from start to finish, a fascinating “true” story with completely believable characters. Bryan Cranston channels a little but of ‘Walter “the best acting I’ve ever seen, signed Sir Anthony…
War Dogs is based upon an interview in Rolling Stone magazine and stars Jonah Hill and Miles Teller (Mr Fantastic from Fanborestic) as Ephraim and David respectively. David works in Malibu as a masseuse around the time of the second gulf war, but meets up with his old friend from high school (Ephraim) and joins him in his small weapons contracting business called AEY. In the past most of the…
Sausage Party is an animated film written by Seth Rogan and Jonah Hill, and is about talking food. The premise and sense of humour is set up very efficiently, opening with a song about how they want to be taken by the Gods (human beings) to the Great Beyond (outside of the shop) where “We cannot possibly overstate how certain we are that nothing bad happens to us in the Great Beyond!”…
The BFG is a story written by Roald Dahl, which was adapted into an animated film in 1989, which I loved as a child. I think that my dad must have been a fan of the book, as it most definitely informed his patois as I was growing up. The story is about a young orphan named Sophie, who one night discovers a giant, who kidnaps her and takes her to the “Giant Country”. While other giants…
I haven’t yet seen Batman vs Superman, but I have heard that the dour atmosphere didn’t resonate with viewers, prompting a massive re-write of Suicide Squad. It shows. The first part of the film is spent setting up the characters, and it takes quite a while. The next part of the film is spent setting up the same characters. Again . It, too, takes a while. Generally, the first act of…
This is going to be difficult to pick apart, as it’s a really solid and entertaining film. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Star Trek Beyond is the best live action Macross film I’ve ever seen. Seriously, they are incredibly similar: The protagonists are drawn into a fight with creatures that are somehow connected to humanity. Said creatures are focused entirely on conflict.…
Before release When the new Ghostbusters film was announced, I saw the announcement surrounded with rhetoric that the all-female cast was to counter the “imbalance” or the first films. In my opinion, pushing equally hard in the opposite direction is not a way to be progressive. “Two wrongs don’t make a right” as the adage says. Eventually the trailers came out, and…
The original Independence Day is a fun 3-hour film by Roland Emmerich released in 1996, wherein aliens attack Earth, but are defeated by Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith using a computer virus. This is a big plot-hole in the theatrical release, but was apparently covered in deleted scenes. It was a little bit flawed, but well put together and really enjoyable. Now, 20 years later, we have a sequel.…
This year at E3 Nintendo demonstrated their newest Zelda game, Breath of the Wild. As soon as I saw the trailer I started theorising on when it takes place on the timeline, and it appears many other people have done the same, even making videos about it. Never one to not leap on a passing bandwagon, I’m tempted to make a video, but doing so takes a lot of time and effort. I’m…