Raithe

Alias has its ups and downs. It starts out with some nice (if silly ideas), introduces some neat characters, twists things around a few times, then proceeds to get a touch more sillier as it goes along. It does start wandering into that "almost steampunk renaissance superscience genius" plotline in the last few seasons as I recall, which was both interesting and exceptionally silly for a modern day spy genre. It all depends on how much you can take of lies, deception, twist, turns, betrayals, will they/won't they romance, family issues, and evvvvviiiillll conspiracies.

http://youtu.be/pyuGyq22Ris

I think in some ways DA:I's main storyline seems set to that whole : 1: Introduction (Tutorial) Part of the story 2: Drops you in first "open area" to get a feel 3: Loss of Haven / Find Skyhold 4: General Open World Stuff you don't actually have to do for main storyline 5: Orlais Court 6: Oh look, Grey Wardens are being Manipulated / Follow on Assault 7: Fade Sequence 8: Hidden Elven Temple 9: Finale Which if you focus only on those events, doesn't really feel as fully fleshed out. Or at least, with the several open areas to visit to get to suitable levels and such, the pacing gets thrown out. So it feels like you spend 12 hours on main story, and 90 hours on just doing stuff. Sure, a lot of it can be interesting or fun stuff. But it doesn't completely mesh together on a structural level.

Also, for anyone who started losing track of where the armies were and how they were armed and all in the latest Hobbit..

Or we just keep it simple..

Poker Night. A dark little character piece. A young policeman makes detective, and finds out there's a tradition where the fresh detective get invited to a poker night where the other players are the legendary cops. When they win a hand, they tell a story of their past, all in the hopes of passing on wisdom and experience to the new guy. However, when he leaves at the end of the night, he gets kidnapped by a serial killer and has to use the stories he heard to help match wits with his captor while also rescuing the young girl held along with him. It's told in a mix of flashbacks, since it pretty much starts with him leaving the party, and has its own sting in the tail for an ending. Has a nice cast of Ron Perlman, Giancarlo Esposito, Titus Welliver and Ron Eldard as some of the senior cops at the poker night.

It actually puts me in mind of a lot of British panto. Everyone knowing its all incredibly silly and jokey, but playing it seriously, with moments of over-ham to the audience, interspersed with passable amusing songs.

To be fair, it's only an eight episode run. It's not like they're going to force it into a full blown 20-odd episodes.. http://youtu.be/jKtmIyLXgt0

Eh, I have to admit, I got annoyed with the war table and the timing thing. So I tended to alt-tab out, momentarily re-set my pc clock to the next day. Set it back to the correct time, then find all my war table missions had been dealt with. The War Table is really not ideal for people who like to focus and binge-play, compared to those who might play an hour a day or such like.

Not sure why, but I found Neil deGrasse Tyson's list of 8 books all intelligent people should read somewhat amusing..

To be fair, Voyager picked up in the last few years in general storytelling and character growth. But they also had a habit of making eunuchs of any previously scary alien encounter. "Oh look, it's something that was a big bad and immensely scary last season. Now we can kick its ass and it turns out its really quite wussified.." - Notably both the Borg, and Q. Janeway did tend to follow the more Kirk type of behaviour in some ways - Let's follow the Prime Directive in a hand-wavey kind of manner, well, unless it really gets in the way of keeping my crew alive and getting us home, in which case lets just chuck it out the window.

I have to admit, it's been a bit odd lately. I wouldn't call it seasonal depression or anything, but the combination of holidays that weren't actually a holiday, the blending of days, and visits to mom in the hospital, and the grey and windy weather has me in some skewed frame of mind I can't quite place. I'm having to make effort to remember which day is which, and I find I'm idling into listening to music, and half-heartedly reading or randomly doodling rather than doing anything of note.

I still call Tuvok the worst Security Officer. How many episodes do they string together where the ship isn't hijacked or vast numbers of the crew kidnapped in one form or another?

http://youtu.be/W3bp59Eci_0

He sings. He can sing. He sang quite well in the musical Psych episode if I remember....

Not new science, but throwing out the question of "What scientific idea should die?" http://vimeo.com/114683176

http://youtu.be/dOyJqGtP-wU

Heh, watched Robin Hood Prince of Thieves via video chat with the girlfriend and her teenage kids. It's kind of scary to consider I was the age of the youngest when that film came out. But they'd never seen it (well, they'd seen Men in Tights and hadn't realised so many of the jokes were aimed via Prince of Thieves) and got immensely caught up in it. The joy of Alan Rickman hamming it up so evilly, Michael Wincott as that snivelling Guy, and the "OMG Morgan Freeman is young!" reaction from the audience was all entertaining. Plus the soundtrack pretty damn nailed it.

"In the beginning.... there was no plagiarism."

Wrapped up shooting Nazis in Wolfenstein New Order. Fairly enjoyable experience, with a few emotional tugs. Although it took me a bit to place Dwight Schultz as the voice of Deathshead. I think I only missed snagging a handful of collectibles in that playthrough. Pondering on whether it's worthwhile doing a 2nd to check out the other timeline depending on who you save at the start.

That guy was Billy Connolly.. http://youtu.be/uRrDiQiM0cw