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…
Shooting my word wad
Well I announced a month or so ago I would try for weekly updates. I failed. But its a new year and I intend to do better. I’ve a few pieces waiting in the wings that I’ll finish up, college work load permitting. Hoping to start a new diet this week, as always you can follow my failure in pictorial form; stirring stuff indeed.
Best of 2011 – Games
I summed up video gaming in 2010 in one word, disappointment. For 2011 I’ll bump it up to two words, excellent and disappointing. There were a large number of releases I was looking forward to and thankfully the majority of them delivered, though not always as well as I was hoping. As always this list is a composite of things I’ve played in the year in question, not just what was released in the year, it probably doesn’t matter in the long run. As well as the Top 10 list itself I’ve also included an appendix of sorts where I give a line or two (and the first implementation of my new rating system, ooh the excitement) to all the game’s I’ve completed this year (and perhaps the ones I’ve played enough off to be comfortable making a judgement on). Also returning to education, in tandem with commuting, has eaten up a lot of prime game playing time, as such I’m a bit behind with the games I’ve played. I may get some of the backlog finished by the end of the month (currently December 6th). Continue reading…
[WIP] Solium Infernum – The Greatest Game – Turn 0 – Prelude to Naughtiness
Well as anyone who is lucky enough to read my facebook status updates knows I became rather enamored with the idea of indulging in a multiplayer game of Solium Infernum after reading the excellent series of play diaries on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. With hope in hand I sought out willing partners among my friends, but all my friends are bastards and crushed my fragile dreams. “Oh I’m too busy to even say no Mick I’ll just leave you sitting alone in your dark room sobbing and waiting for some kind of response”, bunch of cunts, almost makes me feel glad that I’ve been slipping infected blood into their food for months. Anyhow, my righteous retribution aside, I finally managed to ensnare two of my siblings and thus the game was, as Holmes would say, afoot! I bet he said stuff like that because he was out of his tits on smack all the time. Continue reading…
Busy doing nothing
I have done nothing for the past month, no college work, no personal projects, no anything really. Just sitting around staring into space waiting for time to pass, ticking away the moments that make up a dull day. Hopefully I’ll manage to pull myself out of this lazily self destructive rut.
(Planned) October Viewing – Anime edition
Even when I had nothing to do apart from some part time hours in Vodafone I never managed to get through the (admittedly unrealistic) thirty potential shows listed in these things. Now that I’m in college every day and in work all weekend I get the feeling I’ll be lucky to get one show watched a week, never mind the one a day thirty would demand. Of course I list thirty more because I find it a good line between “Watch only this” and “Watch whatever you want”, as such I’m going to stick with that number. I suppose I should write a bit about what I’ve watched in between the last one of these and the beginning of October. But I think that can wait for another time, something else that can wait for another time is switching out the AnimeNewsNetwork links used below for AniDB.net links. Continue reading…
Best of 2010 – Anime
Ok, so I totally fucking forgot about this, I’m posting it nearly a year late and even worse, I didnt even finish writing up my thoughts on each of the entrants. In the immortal words of Johnny Blaze, “What it is” Its odd. I feel like I’ve watched a lot more anime this year than I apparently have. I blame the summer months where a combination of depression and socialising savagely consumed time I could have spent keeping abreast of Japan’s animate cultural artifacts. I like to have a large selection to choose from for these kinds of article because it makes the obvious choices stand out more. When you have a smaller selection, the majority of which is fairly uniform in quality, it makes selection a pain in the arse. Read More