Raithe

http://youtu.be/-Ik2ikgOyNU

Since it was a sunny day.. I waited until night had fallen to take out a bunch of old paperwork that needed to be disposed off, some limbs that had to be lopped off the beech tree, and set fire to it all. Whilst sitting back in a lounger, looking at the stars in the sky and having Two Steps From Hell cycling through play and echoing around the garden.

To throw a random assortment..

Tesla Motors release all their patents.. TeslaMotors - All Our Patents Belong To You

To follow on from Father's day.. Although I'm thinking this is more for Hurl http://youtu.be/DOKuSQIJlog

Since it's that sunny Saturday, let's throw a few things around..

Woo. and GoG now does Alpha Centauri with the Alien Crossfire pack. I think I'll pick that up just so I don't have to keep using my old cd's when I want to run the game.

I like blowing them up with a steam vent. I'm not good at gauging distance for those kinds of things. It works for me once in a while during car chases (using the steam vents on vehicles behind me/just slightly ahead of me), but when I'm standing still and a car is moving toward me but is still around 100 meters away, I suck at judging when to activate (I barely seem to get those blue notices to "neutralize" during convoys). I always found parking a car about 200 m in front of them, and stepping into the middle of the road with the automatic grenade launcher worked wonders for the convoys... Also, when you've done, what.. 10? You get rewarded with that anti-vehicular in-game version of a Barret 50 cal. that's quite fun.

Edge of Tomorrow. I actually quite liked it. You spend the first quarter of the film disliking Cruise's character quite a bit. They handle the time loop aspect in a fairly interesting manner, and managed to switch up a few things as it went along without getting too silly.

Not strictly books.. but the comic adaptions of David Weber's Honorverse have started.. http://youtu.be/wqxiKPJZLlE

I seem to be stumbling through the morning in a general zombie state after one of those nights I just kept waking up after having dropped off for 30-60 minutes sleep at a time. Trying to pull my reserves together and enjoy some fresh tea to fortify myself for actual thought...

Just to break into more childhoods.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFtBjc1dz7w&list=PLFWHlH4koGZAeH9x2wWeTB32VCESjRI51&feature=share

Just to help the week along...

Well I wasn't judging it as apolitical or political. I was more interested in it as a way of getting people to wrap their mind around the number of dead rather then seeing it as simply a statistic.

Tim Minchin's UWA Speech.. http://youtu.be/NyBvbot3emM

http://vimeo.com/97488887 September 21st 2013, International Peace Day, on the Normandy beaches at Arromanches. Artists Jamie Wardley and Andy Moss include a team of international volunteers to help complete 9000 fallen figures, raked in the sand to create a massive monotone image. The Fallen are without nationality, without names. They represent a lost life, contextualising the 9000 daily mortalities during the Normandy beach landings in 1944. A longer documentary is in production and this is an early teaser to commemorate 70 years since the Normandy beach landings of 1944.

I think it's the little things that catch up and make people complain. The reflections and water graphics are amazing. It falls down a bit with the shadows, there's no dynamic shadows. But yup, I have to agree, the graphics are pretty damn good and I don't see any real issues to complain about. Just minor niggles that aren't as next-gen as they originally talked about.

Wrong time period, judo was the martial art of the samurais. Really wrong time period, Judo wasn't created until just before the turn of the 20th century. If you were talking samurai, then it was more jujutsu. o O (sorry, my pedant came running out there..)

Went to the workout. Warmup, gymnastic exercises, chest and core.. followed by a short jog with interval sprints... Still feeling drained. Now add thirsty. Going to drink a big mug of tea and ponder doing a ridiculously too-many-egg omelette with bacon and cheddar....

Trying to decide if I can / should make it to the workout in a couple of hours... but I'm just feeling utterly drained today. Not tired, just, really low energy levels for oomph. Just cooked up a couple of slices of bacon and pondering on a fresh cup of tea to help stir me onwards..

Murdered Soul Suspect. I thought it looked interesting so I gave it a go. It's somewhat moody and mostly atmospheric, it's got some interesting ideas, and the whole walking through walls thing makes maps a touch more confusing. It could probably do with some form of in-game map, especially one that shows the various clues/collectibles you've found. Although it's not that big so its easy to learn where you're going to and from and what streets are open and which are blocked off by various ghostly "memories" of old building and such. It's based around one medium-to-small "hub" that counts as the streets of Salem, and various locations around it that only open up once you reach that point in the story. The story is quite linear and will probably take under 10 hours to run through. It's fairly average writing, nothing too spectacular, nothing too bad. It tends to be based on : go to a crime scene / location, have a cut-scene, look around for clues, discover clues, potential cut-scenes of "memories" you pick up, a couple of conversations (some in cut-scene, some where you actually pick questions to ask), then a game mechanic for putting clues together to figure out what happened. cut-scene, then move on to the next part of the investigation and repeat. Occasionally broken up with wandering "demons" that are long lost ghosts that now try and drain all ghosts they see. That's mostly irritating, and I think put in to give some element of "combat" to the game. But it pretty much sucks. The demons all have fixed patrol routes, and you have to defeat them by sneaking up behind, pressing and holding R, and then at some random time you get a mini quick time event (random choice of a directional key + right or left click) and you destroy the demon. If you don't get it right, they turn around and kill you. I'd say it was that mix of somewhat entertaining, but disappointing because it could have been more. The didn't push the pulp noir aspect enough, it was too linear, the hub and areas could have been a touch more expansive, and the side-quests really needed to be fluffed out more - There were about five, and they mostly consisted of a short conversation with a ghost and searching the nearby areas for clues to relate to their death (said search usually being 3-6 clues you needed to find). A good idea, but somehow lacking in execution.

Remember you can use the Focus ability to slow time down even during car chases. That's meant to enable you to use those features. Also, if you get the flashing Q will go blue as you go past if it will neutralise people chasing you. So if you keep an eye out for that, you don't have to try looking behind you for the timing. I never found that much problem with the cop cars, if you whip down a couple of alleys and shortcuts, combined with hackable obstacles, they're fairly easy. The odd thing was that if they're a short distance away I could seem to outrace them, but if they're close to you, it's like they're glued. The pain comes with the helicopters. Even when you get the hack that lets you disable them briefly, it's a major pain to target them when they're directly overhead and you're in a car.

Having an idle return to Crusader Kings 2, fooling around with The Old Gods and the Raj of India...