I got Wii…
I got a Wii for my birthday and am writing this post using it. Thats pretty rad all on its own, don’t you think?
Expect more on it later, as well as a new review I am working on for Pro-g. Right now though, I have some more Wii to play!
Out, Joe.
Aughra Watches All…
This was enough to make me soil myself in fright (not that I’d soil anyone else, but…). The original film, Jim Hensons seminal The Dark Crystal, is an absoloute classic. I even have a sister who was named after one of the main characters. Still, as compelling as the plot is and in spite of the beautiful work done by Brian Froud, I will always have a problem with these films; The Skeksis’.
I’m not going to ruin anything for you at all, but suffice to say that the Skeksis’ are the bad guys of the first film and that they are truly terrifying. The designer, Brian Froud, described them as ‘part reptile, part predatory bird and part dragon’. The way they move their rotting bodies around inside those constrictive, hollow clothes is eerie, and I have only rarely seen vulnerability portrayed as well as when the Chancellor Skeksis is outcast, naked, onto the floor at the start of the first film.
Viewing the second film will give me another two decades of nightmares, no doubt.
Birthday Grump…
It’s my birthday again tomorrow and theres something I want to talk about.
The thing is: I hate birthday cards. I just don’t really see the point of them and having them makes me feel guilty for two reasons, which I’ll get to in a minute.
Now, this grumpiness isn’t caused by greed. I don’t hate birthday cards because I’d rather have presents, not at all. I perfectly grasp the idea that if someone is a periphial friend of mine then they may not want to spend money and time getting me a gift, but they still wish to express that they care I am slightly more wrinkly than I was last year. I understand that. I am touched by that. What I don’t understand is why those people send cards of all things. It’s as if these people don’t know me well enough to know I won’t value a picture of a cat (invariably, a cat in a tree) and the words ‘Happy Birthday From X!’
Now, there are exceptions. If somebody takes the time to write a proper message on the card then it is forgiven in my eyes. Certain people too are completely forgiven, such as the girlfriend/boyfriend of a close friend – people whom I don’t really know or choose to spend time with but who feel pressured by the shared friend to make their feelings known. Other than these two rulebenders however, there are no excuses and you should find a better way to express yourself. I am not a socialable person by nature, but even I would value a letter, a phonecall, an email or the offer of a drink more than a stiff piece of cardboard. Take two minutes to tell me how you are doing and I will do the same for you next year. Send me a birthday card and you’ll only be dismayed when you see that I use it for a coaster.
Another reason I hate birthday cards is the guilt, which for me is twofold. You see, as something of a lazy conservationist when you send me cards the first thing I do is lament the waste implied by their existence. The trees chopped down for paper, the chemical waste for the inks, the petrol used by the Post Office to deliver it, all of these things run through my mind and they make me sad. Then comes the delayed guilt when I don’t send a birthday card back and have to hastily scrabble together a topic of conversation to put in an email.
Please friends, forget this cardboard condition. Ring me, write me or email me if you must, ignore me if thats your wish, but please give me dialogue to respond to or naught but silence. If nothing else, there are too many card shops in Chesterfield anyway.
Rant over, Joe
PS. If I ever get another ’singing’ card then I will actually hunt down the sender and make them eat it.
Well, Gee…
Jesus. What a week. I’ve had an interview, a valentines day, more sniping than I’d ussually care for with an old friend and no sleep.
I think the interview went ok – though they had seen that ridiculous video of me on youtube somehow. Yes, the one where I pretend to break my finger for no reason. The people at the company seemed really relaxed and cool, which wll be a plus if the jobs comes off.
Valentines Day was good too. Hannah and me stayed in a nice hotel and had a nice meal and had a nice time in Manchester. I had sushi for lunch the following day and I continued the trend (though for different reasons) of the days before and after by having hardly any sleep.
Hence half of my bad mood.
The other half of my bad mood comes from the fact that I spent a long time writing an article last week. It was about the fall of episodic gaming. I worked on it alone, very hard and came to some (I thought) interesting conclusions, attacking the genre in a (I thought) intelligent manner that hadn’t been explored before. I send the article off as a sample to a website I REALLY want to work for (Thanks again to Andy Vandervell for letting me know about it too!) and think of it no more.
Then when I come home some guy on Steam Reviews has done almost the same thing somehow and at least 521 people have followed a link to it from the Garrys Mod website only in just one day. Begs the question about how many other people must have read it.
I’m not annoyed that the guy did the article, or that he got recognition for it. He didn’t get any help from me and I don’t even know who he is. I’m just annoyed that I was at least a week ahead on this (actually I had the idea for the article and a draft plan about two weeks ago) and missed a chance to get a massive group of people reading it then because I was saving the article for this sample.
Goes to show: Carpe Diem.
(Fish of the day)
Joe
Epic Stupidity…
Yes, I know, I need to stop posting videos like this and actually have some worthwhile to say. yet, int he words of Kliener, ‘I just can’t be bothered right now’.
Joe.
All your base are belong to cube…
Edit: This video destroyed my faith in computer games again, minutes afterwards.
Apologies and explanations…
Yeah, there hasn’t been a post in a while, sorry. I’ve been kind of busy lately with interviews and some fairly large articles I’m writing about the future of the episodic distribution model (told you I’d get it done!). Hannah also came and stayed for a few days which left me pleasantly distracted. Oh, and I picked up some games I’ve been promising myself for a while now. I traded in Pirates of The Carribean DS and Another Code: Trace Memory in order to get Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney for the DS and Dark Messiah: Might and Magic for my PC. I’ve not tried Phoenix Wright yet because Hannah pinched it and won’t let it go, but Dark Messiah seems to be improve with the more time you commit to it.
Oh, and it snowed. I don’t know how it is for you wherever you are, but here we have 10 – 15 CMs pretty consistently. It started to thaw yesterday, but then it came back and we got a few power cuts. It’s fading out now, but I’ve had a lot of good sledging, so I’m happy.
Joe.
Mohawk Man…
Its been a while since I’ve had properly short hair. Its not been really long for a few years, but its always been fairly shaggy until yesterday…when MOHAWK MAN WAS RELEASED! BOUGHT OUT BY THE POWER OF HAIR WAX AND OPPOSED ONLY BY HIS GIRLFRIENDS HAIR STRAIGHTENERS!
Ah, maybe not. Its way too wannabe punk “I don’t care about your attitude and I communicate that feeling through hairstyles” to bother keeping. And, oh yeah, I have a webcam now. Its a very old Logitech thing, but I pinched it from my Dads PC purely so I could plug something into my G15 Keyboards extra USB slots.
It seems Oblivion is out to get me at the moment after my last post about not wanting to play it. Not only did I have a change of heart and plunge back in with a new Dark Elf, but my sister is also playing it and I got invited to an Oblivion press event on the 13th. The press event looked kind of good and I would have had a chance to go play the new version on a PS3 and interview David Hines. Notice the past tense, because unfortunately I have an interview and a recruiting fair to goto without mentioning Valentines Day.
I’m still thinking over how I think episodic gaming will have to change in the future and will probably right an article about it later. In the mean time, enjoy the following funny video and let me get back to finishing Psychonauts.
Joe, out.
UBER-POST!
This is a bit of a long post, so in brief the following topics are covered: Dell, Sin Episodes, Duke Nukem Forever, Ritual and the new theme. Included is a picture of a very pretty lady on a beach.
Ok, so theres now some obvious changes. Basically I was tired of the lime green theme and the header ripped from the Harvey Danger album, so I’ve gone for a gentle blue with a header adopted from the following picture of Hannah.
I’m also going to take this chance to express some annoyances I’ve got going on with some companies. Firstly, I’m pissed with Dell because they fucked with my PC and I’m still suffering. The short of it is that about a month after the warranty expired the fan on my ATi Radeon X850 XT PE started to get really loud. The whole system would sweat and bitch about the heat, but I chalked it up to the room being to warm. The X850 is a pretty hot card anyway, so I let some time pass until a friend talked me into opening up the bugger.
Which we couldn’t do, because the case had been knocked in transit and the whole stupid clam-opening style of Dell computers was out of shape. Naturally, I never would have found this out because opening the system ussually voids the warranty. After crowbarring at it (almost literally) for an hour or two we got inside the system and found the cause.
Dell had left a modem inside my computer, flushed up against the fan of the graphics card. A modem that wasn’t connected to anything and which I didn’t ask for. The card hadn’t ever been able to breath and the fan had suffered much because of it. As such I have to occassionally open the PC with a crowbar and get all the dust out (handfuls of the stuff) while doing my Gordon Freeman impression. Ugh.
Who else to bitch about? How about Ritual Games, who recently announced a merger with Mumbo Jumbo games, a company which was originally a spin off of Ritual itself. This means the whole Ritual staff (even LevelLord) are now put to work making tetris clones for the ‘casual market’. This means that Sin Episodes 1 is the first and last game in that series. A series I happened to enjoy. It was cheap, cheerful and unabashedly pulpy in its origin, with some great dynamic AI and fantastic headshots. It even won my vote for game of the year over at Pro-G.com. Now it’s down the drain and up the creek.
This really illustrates a growing problem I have with episodic gaming, in that it takes too damn long between episodes that may never arrive. I’ve been waiting for Half Life Ep 2 for too long now and I’m starting to get angry. Why don’t the developers work a game (or part of a game) in hand in order to stay on top of their schedules? Why don’t they sign contracts obliging a set number of games to be released if its on a platform like Steam? Ugh.
I have more to say about this, but I’ll save it for another post when I’m not so angry.
On the plus side: a new, confirmed screenshot from Duke Nukem Forever.
Depressingly, yes, that is the largest version available.
Joe, out.
Tom Green Show…
For some reason I found the following videos from Tom Greens radio show increibly amusing. One might go so far to say that they even amoo-sed me.
I did have more to say, but my keyboard is suffering lag somehow. The rest; later.
Joe, out.
