Raithe

Well from my understanding, the author of the book actually based half the characters on people he knew. And especially around a girl he'd been in love with but couldn't do anything about because of the difference in social levels and money.

Played a little Remember Me, just got in an hour or so of it so far. Nice art direction, but you don't really get to do much wandering around. It's much more linear with a few small nooks you might notice just in time to grab some "collectible" but nothing really letting you "explore" the word. The combat's nice enough, but doesn't flow quite as smoothly as certain other games (i'm looking at you Sleeping Dogs & Batman). Lots of little interesting bits to it that kind of suck you in, right before something jars you out a bit, and the camera can be a little weird. But I think the good outweighs the bad, I'll have to wait until I've pushed further into it but it feels like it's going to be one of those "flawed but interesting" games rather then a breakout or a crapout one..

Hm don't think this has been thrown up here yet.. http://www.nixxes.com/nixxes/newsdetail/20-uk/news/158-we-re-working-on-thief

It wouldn't be a Saints Row game if they had any shame about anything in it..

Heh, I just had a copy of Remember Me turn up in the post. So I thought I'd set it up to install before I headed off to the bank.. But even with a physical disk in my hands (well, in the dvd tray) I get the "cannot install this game, because it's not released yet" message...

Well to swing back with another impressive background shot that I quite like..

Meow.

To be balanced by.. "Late night cat napping"

And to follow on , I shall present a cat in sunlight, lurking....

Just to allow everyone a cheap laugh.. Going through various things and discovered a bunch of old photos. I present fancy dress costume during my first cruise holiday.. When I was about 7 o r8 and on the Canberra somewhere on the seas by West Africa.. Edit: And actually, hm I think the guy in white was actually Lee Evan's father. He was the guy in charge of cruise activities on board back then.

Heh. Remember I mentioned that girl in Mexico that I had to feel aggravated over because I did the principled thing? I just found out she had her 17th birthday last week. I'm trying to decide whether I should still get the happy ego boost over the incident, aggravated that principles got in the way of a rather cute mexican girl and insisting I actually escorted her back safely, or guilty for how good she felt when she did plaster herself against me.

so they laid the groundwork for this story awhile back in the novel, and only just got around to doing the game to tidy up those threads.. ipad and iphone..

Had an aunt turn up , which sucked away a chunk of the afternoon that was planned. Now trying to stir up some enthusiasm and focus to poke at some banking details, terminology, forms, and accountancy related gubbins..

Heh, seriously, that abbreviation is the title. But it happens to stand for: "National Terrorism Strike Force - San Diego - Sports Utility Vehicle" Each episode is like a 15 minute crampacked pisstake of all the "thriller/procedurals" on tv, kind of mixing 24 with CSI, the Wire and various others. Then just being extremely silly with it.

Warm sunny day. Just got back from helping mow the lawn over my grandmothers. She's definitely beginning to look a little frail.

"I wish I could sleep. But my damn ADD kicks in and basically, one sheep, two sheep, cow, turtle, duck, Ol mcDonald had a farm....heeey Macarena!"

Yup. Book 5 & 6 can take a turn for the slow because it's starts getting into that stage of laying more background plots/arcs and characters on the world stage rather then purely focused on the core group. Jordan died after completing book 11, Sanderson finished off the final 3 books, although Jordan had sketched out everything, including a serious mass of notes, sketches, assorted databases of all characters, goals, plots n plans. And Jordan's wife was the editor and recorded him talking through the final of the story. Oh, and Jordan also wrote the epilogue to the final book so Sanderson knew where he had to get to and how to get there.

Heh. "After last weeks episode of Game of Thrones, maybe they should change its acronym from GoT to OMG!..." I managed to snag a couple of episodes of NTSF-SD-SUV. It's a little weird with some amusing bits. Although seeing Kate Mulgrew wearing an eye-patch and coming out with such lines as "I'm going out, getting drunk and getting my freak on!" or "the war will never be over as long as there are japanese people on american soil!" with Captain Janeway style hair flicks does make me chuckle.

It's a Die Hard movie without a clear and engaging villian to have fun dialogue with. If Willis and the Villain can't be snarky at each other, or steal scenes with one liners.. It just won't work properly.

A Feast of Crows was where I gave up on the series. I just found myself supremely uninterested in the survival of any of the characters.

Now surprisingly, I didn't take this picture.. but dang I like it:

On your point about translation. Is there maybe some non-lexical flow imparted by the shape of the Chinese script which you could only get from a skilled translator? Just a thought. It's one of the things I've wondered about. The structure of written chinese is one thing. But also to consider, a lot of those texts were originally produced before the written language was "codified" and "reformatted" as it were by the first Emperor. So how much that caused shifts in the original structure and language, before someone attempted to roll it into English.