Raithe

I've been idling my way through Rise of the Tomb Raider (pc) and generally enjoying it. It has much more of an archaeological / exploration bent, even if it does get a little murder festy in some ways. The mechanics are tweaked a bit better than Tomb Raider, and the graphics certainly keep things looking nice. There are more in the way of tombs and interesting caves and background to dabble in and all seem to have one specific form of platform style puzzle. The figure out ways to get from A to B, along with right shift of gears, or getting water levels to drop/rise, etc. Storywise, there were a few obvious beats, or I'm fairly good at going "that's going to be the twist" in advance. And actually I'm getting a similar vibe to the Tomb Raider reboot in sequence of events and specific notes on the delivery. Although one thing that's a bit off-putting is that it drops you in at the start with a big bad organisation and references to earlier things, that get no real explanation. I'm wondering if there's other media bits that tie in to what's happening.

Now that's a new one to me. I guess you can lump me with the rest of the non-Americans who caught the original incident and subsequent fallout, and just use it for pop-culture snerk humour ever since.

<whistles innocently>

MSN - Japan introduces negative interest rate to boost economy

Being amused by Lara's amazing living ponytail in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Seriously, they've put plenty of physics into how her hair blows and twists around when running, jumping, supposed to be in wind etc... But the thing magically animates even in the middle of caves with no wind. it bobs and twists, and curls around like some tentacle. I can't quite decide whether it amuses more than it distracts. And to be fair, I picked up the game because I had like a 25% voucher off and just thought what the heck.

So that begs the question, since I posted it, should I automatically "like" the same picture that Woldan posted?

RockPaperShotgun - Rise of the Tomb Raider PC Review

For the completely random... And idle moments of creativity: Draw your own Nebula

Hey. We're English. We use tea as metaphors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZwvrxVavnQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLBWu3LteIQ

Eh, you have Mulder's "wait, its not a conspiracy working with Aliens, it's a conspiracy of Humans using Alien tech". But I guess what I mean is, they haven't really modernised any of it yet. Not in a sense of making what is being done or how it's being done. You'd expect more about the use of internet/social media and post 9/11 surveillance. Beyond that single change, its' still the same old conspiracy that was there in the 90's. The Men in Black rolling up in the last five minutes to hoover up evidence.

The X Files seems sadly lacking. It's watchable and competent. But... I mean, it's nice and all to see Anderson and Duchovny together again and slipping into their roles, but it's coming across as a very 90's show rather than post 2010. Where is the update of the conspiracy? Why is it the same tired old stuff that it was when it should be fresh and new and with post 9/11 twists? Why isn't Mulder bemoaning the smart phone and gps tracking? They throw a mention of Uber but nada about personal data and security breaches? There doesn't seem to be any depth to any of the throw away references and by now everybody is used to the 9/11 Truthers, so why isn't Mulder better than this?

It's hitting that point where you have the hype.. but that portion of your head is going "It looks interesting, but I'm not willing to spend that much money on it. I'll wait till it's on sale 5 months down the line". The constant hype of games and then not quite deserving it for one reason or another is definitely reaching a saturation point. I'm not sure if this is because the older you get the more critical you are of things you spend your budget on, or if it is that hype is just getting even sillier.

Its interesting how they've changed the actor playing the ex-husband from the original pre-air pilot. Seeing that slight editing done for each scene he was in. The guy playing Lucifer seems to nail the role quite well, and I get the feeling it might become one to watch more for his dialogue and interaction than anything going on with actual plot lines.

B5 won props from Nasa for the design of the Star Fury, both for the practical engineering in the thought of its design as well as how they portrayed the fighters working in space.

Seriously B5 is worth the long watch. The one thing that you should be aware of, is that it seriously is a multi season arc to the story. The unfortunate side is that when they got told that they wouldn't get the 5th year to wrap things up, the creators and writers struggled to compress two years of story into one season... and then after shooting it they got told they were actually getting a 5th year. So they had to stretch out a few things and do some "post story" consequences and what happens now. The final year had a lot of interesting concepts and a nice approach, but still didn't quite match up to the earlier stuff. The character evolution on so many of the characters are brilliantly done. (key note: G'kar and Londo. Plus, the ambassadorial aides Vir and Lenier). Ivanova and Garibaldi also get a lot of really well delivered lines, with that amusingly sarcastic bite. They do poke fun at themselves a few times, but try to do that serious issues with a foot in the slightly campy-sci-fi area. While the sfx and cgi can be a bit ropey by todays standards, they actually helped establish a lot of the techniques of how to achieve quality sci-fi sfx on a minimal budget that actually got translated later to how films achieved thing. - Random Film/TV production trivia.

The very important questions.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4o6ueieI_o