I’m going to try and start posting daily for a while, even if its just little bits of nothing. So to start myself off I’m going to copy a facebook post “In a way I feel sorry for Bioware, they have just announced that theres going to be an extended ending DLC. But the details they released and the manner in which they announced it clearly indicates that they said they were listening to fan feedback and then promptly ignored that feedback. The fact they couched the new stuff as “expanding on the ending while maintaining their artistic integrity” i.e. explaining the ending to us porles who didnt get their genius doesnt help in the least. Dragon Age 2 was the game that killed “Bioware = pred-order” for me (Jade Empire started it and ME2 edeged it along), but with Mass Effect 3 theyve pretty much guranteed that all future games of theirs are “maybes or try before buy” at best (e.g. I signed up for SWTOR after trialing it for a week)”
Category: life
This covers the general events of my life and my thoughts upon it. Its probably going to be the most generally downbeat category (feel that angst).
I no longer hear the sound of marching, charging feet boy Or How the King of Iron Fist lay down his crown
I was going to start off with a bit about growing old (in general I dont mind it, though I’m also not super pushed on it). But to be honest I dont think thats entirely the cause of it, it is possibly an element. But only a personal one rather than a generally applicable one. After all, it has a lot more to do with a changing schedules and priorities which are generally unattached to aging. It could possibly be argued that the issue is with people I know growing up, but again thats rather inaccurate (and again changing priorities, schedules and locations are to blame). I suppose I could blame my general refusal to engage in the online element – but again I dont think thats the issue, after all I have no real problem with MMO’s and my objection is based on objective facts (lag is simply unavoidable and changes the game drastically) rather than personal preference. I suppose ultimately I would have to cite “Unreconcilable differences” and leave it at that. What am I babbling about you (justifiably) ask? As the title (somewhat obtusely) implies, I am done with fighting games. Continue reading…
Tears of a (fat) clown
Well I managed to stick to my diet (roughly) for only about a week before it all went pear shaped (just like my body *zing*, well actually I’m more sausage shaped). That was about a week and a half ago. I could make the usual excuses (Commuting, work, assignment work load, lack of planning). But to be honest I think the actual reason has a lot more to do with motivation and sub-conscious sabotage, like a lot of things in my life I suppose. Anyway, enough whingeing, I’m going to start again Monday morning so hopefully my next post will be a bit more positive.
Comic(book) reading club – Recommendations for selection – Mighty Michael Version
So below are my recommendations for Ongoing Series and Mini/Trade/Graphic Novel. If you know what this is about you can skip on down past this paragraph and get to the main content. If you dont know and want some context then behold the mighty mail that started it all: Continue reading…
A week of dieting dangerously Or How I learned to stop worrying and love the broccoli
The title is a lie, there is sadly no danger involved so those who were hoping to read about my dieing in some extreme food related accident should move along. Alarmist title aside though I am once more embarking on the perenial penance of fat fuckers everywhere – a diet. So if you’ve always wanted to be with but were worried about not having a J,O,B, then I suggest you take your chance now while I’m emotionally vulnerable. Because obviously thin people have no problems with their lives. Moving on, everyone in the world appears to be doing the Slimming World diet. So obviously thats too commercial for me. Or alternately, I had a look at it but I just cant get on board because their documentation fails to properly explain their underlying methodology e.g. while I understand how the A&B choice works I dont understand (becuase its mentioned nowhere) the reasoning behind it. I also took a look at the Hackers Diet. While it does have some interesting material around accurately measuring body weight (which I shall be using) and is painfully straightforward it doesnt look like it would work for me. So my diet shall be a hybrid of Slimming World and Weight Watchers No Count, I may use the “Syns” (why the alternate spelling?) from Slimming World because their product lists are more locally comprehensive. As with my last diet speed and convenience will be the watchwords behind by meal plan. Continue reading…
Thoughts on Windows and Desktop customisation
Well I finally broke and re-installed Windows (you would think it could handle having all the hardware in the machine bar the hard drives switched but apparently not). As I was making (something) of a fresh start I thought it might be time to update my OS and desktop customisation. For a year or two now I’ve been using a combination of RocketDock (with some plugins), RainMeter and StartKiller for desktop customisation. I’ve also added a few custom registry entries to expand the power of the almighty context menu. The results of all this can be seen in the screen shots below: Continue reading…
Best of 2011 – Manga
It’s currently September 29th, if past years are anything to go by that means that I should get this posted sometime mid-2012, possibly in June as an early birthday present to myself. Then again starting three months early may actually mean that this is one of my rare yearly round-ups that make it out at an appropriate time. Despite the tragic intervention of an MSc into my life of lazy media consumption I have already read what could fairly be described as too much this year. So much in fact that I’m rather apprehensive of adding up exactly how much. Went and added them up, 16543 chapters read since January. Not counting that a large number are monthly releases (i.e. generally twice as long) lets assume a weekly chapter size of 20 pages, that’s 330,860 pages. Around 135 individual titles. Seems a bit excessive if I do say so myself. On the other hand though its been an awesome year, lots of long-running series finally finished scanlation and I got around to reading a large number of the “classics” that I had avoided or missed (including the “Big Three” – Bleach, Naruto and One Piece). This means that paring this list down to ten was an even bigger pain in the arse than it usually is. Continue reading…
[WIP] Solium Infernum – The Greatest Game – Turn 11 – 20 – Purple lady Diplomacy
During the first ten turns or so we had no real idea how to play the game. Entering the double digit turns we began to grasp how the game was played, some more than others (Ha, ha, I read the manual fools!). Though my increased knowledge did little to help me gain prestige or slow Simon’s meteoric rise to the top. However, after ten turns of scraping and scrimping I was finally ready to make use of my praetor and thanks to reading the manual I had a solid idea of how to go about doing so. Continue reading…
Keeping of Houses
Did a little house keeping on the site today. Updated the “How to read this site” page, published a more or less finished piece from last year, (Planned) May Viewing – Anime Edition and finally cleaned up the broken links and added some corrections and edition to Soulcalibur IV – A tale of blades and boobs eternally retold
[WIP] Solium Infernum – The Greatest Game – Turn 01 – 10 – Dipping a toe in damnation
Well my first every multiplayer game of Solium Infernum has just hit Turn 20 and in the parlance of the streets (where I grew up, yo!) – Shit just got real. Everything has kicked off as all the potential demonic rulers turn on one another. So now that decisions have been made, and because I posses as much skill in long term planning as an Anglo Irish Bank manager, I feel it’s safe to reveal the comedy of errors that were my initial ten turns (also Simon’s so far in the lead I cant imagine revealing this will do much damage). Continue reading…