Raithe

Had a dabble on the Age of Decadence demo. Definitely unforgiving, although it can get a tad irritating at times. You need to complete things to get skill points, but you keep failing skill checks to begin with because you don't have skills.. and pretty much all combat will kill you. Because you don't have the skills to dodge/block that well, while all of the enemies do... But still, does look quite interesting in that it encourages non-combat solutions to most things - As long as you have the right skills to do so. Unfortunately, a lot of the "bonus" missions will have you end up in combat in one form or another. Or at least that's the way it seemed.

It's a bit twisty, but it does have that interesting side to it. Having to keep things separate to represent the different bodymods you might end up in. The setting is great, the mechanics just a bit too much....

NSA targets the privacy conscious For those interested, the full article is a lot longer, that's just the header of it all..

Happy revolution day you dang colonials..

For the pop culture take.. George Takei - What if Hobby lobby was run by muslims imposing sharia law on workers?

I've been having a slow, steady roll through LA Noir having picked it up. I'm not being hugely impressed by it, but I'm curious how the story goes. The interrogations are quirkily interesting, but the open world aspect seems kind of pointless since there aren't really any reasons for you to be randomly wandering around since anytime you do get out in a car.. You're meant to be involved in a criminal investigation.

Back from tonights workout. Strength exercises, a bit of core work, followed by a run with sprint intervals... Okay, now I need tea, food and collapse.

BBC News - Authors Cosplaying as their favourite childhood characters...

A friends teenage daughter had an accident and spilt a boiling kettle down her side, so I've been talking to my friend to help her not freak out while she's at the ER and the doctor's are taking care of the daughter. It's ... annoying to not be able to provide any more help then simple moral support at such times.

The Grand Budapest Hotel. It's... a typical Wes Anderson film. That slightly dreamy, ever so surreal quality to everything. Some well known names and faces doing little background roles. All set up within a flashback within a flashback. The old author reminiscing on how he was told the story 30 odd years before.. and then the flashback of the man telling his younger self the story. The story of a legendary Concierge at a grand hotel in an obscure Eastern European country, and his lobby boy protégée. Love, Murder, Sadness, Stolen Art, Silliness... http://youtu.be/2bTbW70umbQ

io9 - Psychologists find that nice people are more likely to hurt you...

Heh. Apparently the network is shooting down John Constantine smoking on the show..

I have felt utterly crushed with exhaustion today for no apparent reason. I keep finding myself starting to nod off only to start awake with a jerk.

Heh. I am so tempted to pick up Organ Trail and gift it to some friends with kids. A retro zombie survival game where you travel westward in a station wagon, scavenging for supplies, fending off the undead hordes and bandits (who might or might not resemble Apaches), while possibly dying of dysentery or 9 other diseases.... All in glorious 16 bit colour with electronic beeps.. That hits nostalgia for the old school BBC computers...

I'm keeping an eye on Alpha Protocol. Just in case it drops below the 50% off before the end of the sale.. either way I'll add it to my digital library. Then I won't have to worry about digging my physical copy out in the future.... I did get tempted by Long Live the Queen when it was just under £2... Just for the fun of how many, many ways you can die.

UN Committee backs Argentina over the Falklands

Alternately trying out both the Floris Expanded mod and the Silverstag mod for Mount and Blade Warband... both add, tweak and tidy up a whole lot of features. Mostly in slightly different ways. I can see how they had some of the same modders working on both.

Just for the historical interest.. io9 - Harappa: A Civilization Without War And it does go quite a bit further on.. but I'll let those interested follow the actual link for the rest of it..

As many times as I've played AP, I've never gone with a martial arts build. I guess I wuss out whenever I think of the boss fights and think about having to take them on with hands and feet. I planned on using AR mainly (then ended up using MA more), so I had a backup for tougher bosses. The ones I used MA on worked pretty well (Marburg, Deng) even without Fury. Brayko and ranged bosses were a no-go though. Juggling the combination of Stealth, Martial Arts and Pistols is pretty much the clincher for dealing with everything..

You're going to get to the end.. and find out just how damn replayable it is when you start to explore all the possible endings depending on your actions..

For who is next on the Iron Throne...

Picked up Mount & Blade Warband on the steam sales and have been slowly poking along on that and getting to grips with the setup. So far avoiding becoming anyones vassal and just exploring the world and chasing bandits and doing the odd quest...

Just got home from training. Circuits. 20 minutes with about 3-4 minutes of break in there. three "circuits" with 30 seconds of each exercise. I'm feeling a little broken and not so much looking forward to the next workout. Still, shower, tea, food and I'm sure it'll start to feel better...

http://youtu.be/eD-HCt4Kaow