Raithe

The Swim Reaper New Zealand's new water safety mascot...

Father Brown. The current BBC adaption of the short stories from G K Chesterton about a crime-solving Roman Catholic parish priest. Set during the 50's, the titular character survived the trenches of WW1, and found a vocation in the Church. Although he quite often gets distracted by puzzles, riddles and getting pulled into various crimes that he solves in the name of both justice, and saving souls, just not always the letter of the law. While the standard murder-of-the-week episodes become a bit typical detective fair, the best ones involve the recurring character of Hercule Flambeau, a jewel and art thief who specialises in religious artifacts. The two characters have that fun "frenemy" aspect of enjoying the battle of wits, respecting each others capabilities, while they dance around the issues of Flambeau's lack of conscience vs redemption, and Father Brown's earnest attempts to encourage Flambeau's "good" aspects. It's quirky to see that sort of nemesis relationship done, with the two characters while apparently so different, a worldly high-life living charming art thief to compassionate, English village parish priest, who actually recognise in each other an almost sense of brotherhood at times. Very few people understand the way their mind's work apart from each other, so whenever they do battle wits its both a fun challenge but also a moment to relax and just be who they are. That's an interesting thing to happen in any story.

Since the latest Chronicles of Elantra is out soon, I've been re-reading the earlier books in the series. "How does he treat people he doesn't like?" "He probably eats them." Marcus shrugged. "That would break at least three laws." "Not really. Suicide isn't illegal." "And being disliked by a Dragon is on record as a form of suicide?" - Michelle Sagara, Cast in Shadow.

Decided to re-watch The Middleman...

For those that like a little visual size comparison... Scale of Fiction

My mobile phone is acting up. Since tuesday evening it's been flashing the "0% Battery Alert" at me.. .but here we are, over 50 hours later and it's still flashing that alert, but is still cheerfully making phone calls, sending texts, connecting to the internet, and even acting as a torch with no hassle. Methinks the software is out of synch....

"In Doctor Who, political correctness ran amuck as the Doctor regenerated...into another bleeping Northener again."

Went in and delived my presentation about the IoT model I developed for my Internet of Things unit, got a rough grade of A3, so basically a 2.1 for that. Now just have to wait to see how the technical report gets graded. Think I might take the rest of the day to chill out and not think about heavy stuff. Other assignment hand-ins are next week so some space and time.

Geekscape Podcast - Recruiting a new co-host, Casper van Dien I did find a little amusement in the "Okay, so WIng Commander IV. I took a job just to get Mark Hamill's autograph." aspect.

Now we need a comparison list in the form of "100 games that had the greatest potential but totally fluffed the bar."

Took a break from things and caught the first couple of episodes of Taken on Amazon Prime. It's inpsired by the Liam Neeson films, but basically re-jiggers the timeline around. It's the "How Bryan Mills went from Special Forces to 'CIA'" storyline, and his early days of working with a black ops spook show. Just, set in the modern day rather then the past. Seem's to be a competent show, no more silly than most of the other Espionage / Black Ops type shows on tv these days, with a few good actors turning in nice performances. Jennifer Beals as the ruthless boss, Monique Gabriela Curnen as the tough female agent (once again) and similarly, Michael Irby doing a special forces operator (he does seem to be making a career out of those roles).

It was nice to see Alpha Protocol make it into the top 10.

I haven't played it yet myself. I admit that I've always been dissuaded from playing it because of how big of a red flag the "vampire underworld" setting is for me. I hope - and partly expect - to be wrong about all my preconceptions, and at the very least this poll has definitely made me consider that I should perhaps check it out... But I'm not entirely certain when I'll get around to it. I think you have to be into the universe and possibly be into the underdog tale of Troika to really appreciate the game. The writing is great, the characters are great, and there is a lot of customization and choice. Many different ways to play the game just by choosing your race or species or whatever. Unfortunately the game is very buggy and unfinished in some aspects -- even with unofficial patches -- or at least it was 6 or 7 years ago. Personally I don't care for the setting and was let down by the bugged and unfinished state of the game so I only played the game once. If you do try playing it, it is worth downloading and running the fan mod/patch to it. A whole heap of the minor (and major) bugs get sorted by it.