Recently the amount of time I spend browsing the web has reached a level where its actively pissing me off. I’d put up with it if I was actually enjoying the time spent. But I dont think I am, it seems lately most of the time is spent in “vigorous” discussion about everything from water rates to (insert whatever stupid inane shit you correctly think of here). So I generally end up irritated because the two standard modes of internet discussion seem to be to simply scream your opinion at one another endlessley or engage in a giant circle-jerk (or echo chamber if you want a classier phrase) where even the mildest criticism is verboten. Both of them redolent with the implicit underlying sensation that no-one is treating anyone else in the discussion as a person as opposed to simply an anonymous source of distraction. Continue reading…
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).
(Very) Brief thoughts on the upcoming Spring 2015 anime season
I dont really watch a lot of anime anymore. Well that isnt actually true, I still watch a fair bit I just dont watch it regularly. I tend to wait for a sesaon to complete and then binge for a month or so as I refuse to watch shows week to week. Still, I’d totally forgot about the upcoming season, clearly slipping. Continue reading…
Best of 2014 – Videogames
2014 felt like a very long year in terms of gaming, yet I didn’t really get through a whole pile of games. Perhaps my memory is going. What a sweet release. Or perhaps it was just that my pattern of play as it were changed quite a bit this year. I covered my thoughts on last year’s spending on games over here. I suppose one final note on that point was that I hit the deal hunter thing hard. Making solid use of sites like http://isthereanydeal.com/, http://www.cheapshark.com/, http://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/, etc. as well as (the now sadly neutered) Steam trading sites like http://dispenser.tf/ and http://www.tf2outpost.com/ and importing I got as much gaming bang for my buck as I possibly could. Continue reading…
Dr Gamelove or How I learned to stop worrying and love my backlog
Last year I decided that I needed to cut down on games (being newly unemployed was an unwelcome aid in that endeavour). I decided that I would buy at most one game a month, or a maximum of thirteen games over the year (the latter condition is not a result of the first; I am aware how many months are in a year). Also I would complete said game before buying another. I failed. Well I largely failed. I failed on the first part, “Buying at most one game a month”. I also failed on the second part, “I would complete it before I buy another”. However I actually succeeded on the implicit monetary issue, I ended up spending ~€65 a month, or the price of thirteen new games over the course of the year. But that’s a different story. Why did I try and institute this policy in the first place? While there certainly was an economic issue the real impetus was my backlog. Ah the backlog, the yoke chained to every gamers neck. The Sisyphean ordeal that is arguably intrinsic to the hobby in its modern form. But before I talk about my new relationship with the beast, and how I plan to vanquish it (snicker, snack), we need to describe the beast. Or in other words, what the fuck is a backlog? Continue reading…
Dragon Age: Inquisiton – Interim musings
Well interim is somewhat disingenuous. I’m forty-five hours into the single player and I’ve also put about twenty hours into the multiplayer. If I’d one thing to say it would be, buy this game. It’s a great, though not flawless game, in its own right and it really redeems Bioware after the lacklustre Dragon Age 2 and the debacle that was Mass Effect 3. So why am I writing this then, why not wait till I finish and do a proper review? Well, it’s because I’ve run into a problem, largely of my own making.
Unemployment, life plans and Ave Imperator
It’s been a while since I mentioned Ave Imperator, or wrote a blog post for that matter. So to keep my readers (consisting primarily of my alternate personalities) happy (and because I’d a weird and clearly portentous dream about it) I’ve decided to post an update on this. Also I complain about stuff (so a usual blog post then) Continue reading…
Super shallow summary of my time with the Marvel Heroes 2015 roster
I downloaded the test version of Marvel Heroes 2015 so that I could try out some members of the roster that I was consdiering coughing up my hard earned (hah) money for. I ended up trying out every single member of the roster. Most of them were low level (the game clones your main account where I only have a handful) so admittedly you dont get a great feel for how they play, but this was more about seeing how they look, sound, animate, etc. So here are my super shallow impressions: Continue reading…
Man Vs Belly – My first month with WeightWatchers
I don’t want to shock you gentle reader, but I’m overweight. Not as overweight as I was in the past but nowhere near my “proper” weight either. Over the years I’ve tried various diets and eating plans, with the results ranging from excellent to disastrous. So about five weeks ago, after my most recent home-brewed healthy eating plan failed to get off the ground, I decided to try a more structured commercial plan. A few years ago I’d enjoyed some amount of success with WeightWatchers ZeroCount plan. Which they dont do any more it transpires. But after investigating a little further they now have a very similar option in their “Filling & Healthy” plan. As there is a less than zero chance of me ever going to a “live” meeting, and as it was on special offer, I signed up for three months of WeightWatchers Online. Continue reading…
30 Days of (space black) Night – Week 04 – Knocking on Tannhausers Gate
Wherein the reader is illuminated and amused by details of my fourth (and possibly last *gasp*) week back with EVE Online, or told how I played too much Diablo 3 and ignored EVE. Continue reading…
Man Vs Belly – Return to the temple of diet bar doom
So back over here I outlined my initial forays into the world of jam and diet bar manufacture. The former turned out splendidly, the latter, not so much. But undeterred I ventured once more into the fray. I wish I could tell you that I fought the good fight, and the second batch turned out better. I wish I could tell you that – but homemade diet-bars is no fairy-tale world. Continue reading…