Raithe

hm, picked up Space Marine for just over

Well I picked up Crusader Kings 2 and Lost Horizon.. Put a couple of things on wishlist so I'll see if they go into daily deals at any point soon..

Got an invitation to a friends engagement party / bbq in a few weeks. So currently perusing online cigar shops to see what I can pick up. My friend is engaged to a nice lady from mexico, and whenever he travelled there he came back with some fine cigars he always shared out. Since his fiancee has been in the UK studying for the last year, he hasn't travelled and picked up any new ones.. So I'm thinking of turning up with some cigars and port along with the usual suspects.. But good gawd, I understand why he always said he loved cigar shopping in Mexico, the prices in the UK are high. I'm recognising names and brands we've smoked, that he always chuckled over picking up for $10 or $20 and they're costing silly money here.

Okay, its changed in the last few years. What it used to be was that you got a "Student Grant" from the government that covered basic tuition if your family earned under x amount. As the amount of money your family made went up, the amount the Student Grant covered went down. What the government has also set up, is a system of "Student Loans" which you can take out that cover the cost of tuition as well each year, have a ridiculously small interest rate, and you only have to pay back when you earn over x amount per year. If you hit 45 without ever getting an income over that amount, the debt is wiped. A few years back, they scrapped the student grants and basically shifted everything to the Student Loans side of the market. I knew folks who would take out the loans, stick them in high interest accounts and plan to not touch them for the years they were at uni, pay them back and keep the interest. Of course, by the end of 3 or 4 years, the number that actually didn't touch that money was quite a bit smaller then those who planned not to touch it .. Of course, if you switch degree courses, or have to retake a year, that's not actually covered in the money you get access to, so that's purely from your own pocket from the get go..

If you get through all the qualifying examinations and wotnot. That and the assortment of testing and usual "sell yourself to the univeristy" thing you have to do... Edit: But that's just tuition fees note. That's not covering living expenses, books/study materials, the cost of booze and wild parties.. and all that jazz..

The Max Payne movie wasn't complete ****, either. Or it could be that both movies have Olga Kurylenko You're remembering the scene with the red dress aren't you when you say that?

And thus, philanthropy is alive and well in the modern day... BBC News - Oxford University record donation cuts fees for poorest

Being slowly driven crazy by this project thing. I've been working on the "its an unpaid project that we want to develop, so we're pushing it along and shining it up and when we get it spick and span and really neat, then when we're totally confident on everything we can send it in to the powers above, and then hopefully turn it into a paying project where we can get serious" assumption. Then as a sideline to a phone call about it this morning, I find out its actually got a deadline and its currently being potentially late for it.. For various reasons, one of the key folk involved in the beginning of it, now works somewhere else. And whilst he can spotcheck stuff to a degree, he can't actually directly comment or provide information because that could make things very messy legally. So we get basically "um, yeah, somethings wrong about this.". We've got some folk at a university (professors and such) who have been running the numbers because they're interested in the problem, and they're all "here are the modelling stuff, its reasonable-ish". And frankly "reasonable-ish" just fills me with confidence. Especially if we're hanging our professional reputation on the line with it and the analysis based on said modelling and numbers generated.. I can't actually get some people on the phone to talk about this and look at the problems, the clocks ticking along, and up until very recently, I've only been working on the outskirts of the issue, so I don't have a total and full grasp on everything. There's one group that might have some information, but I don't actually know anyone there, or at least I have a name of someone there but no real connection. As said, the main guy they'd know no longer works here, the other guy they might know is off-the-grid and I haven't been able to get hold of... So ringing them up myself and saying "hey, I'm so and so that you've never heard of, I'm working with x company that you might remember, and the guy you did know isn't working here anymore.. However, you did x and y for him back then, and we've used some of it in this, can you help us with this thing here, and yeah, I'm fuzzy on some of the details of what I'm talking about.." would not I feel make the best impression.... Oh yes, and its raining. And the thunder keeps scaring the dogs. But at least I was able to sort out mom's medications and drugs for the next 7 days.. So I can say some small fragment has actually been achieved today. Joy.

The Hitman film wasn't too bad. I'd rate it up there as one of the better game-to-film adaptions.

On more general movie news.. For the upcoming Assasin's Creed adaption to the big screen..

Hm, on the movie related news.. Ernest Borgnine has passed away today.

Apparently, they were designed as part of an outdoor advertisement which won the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Lions 2004 Award for Outdoor and Print.

As long as they remembered to pillage and then burn... Or as the Pirate King is fond of saying the "the ships go down and the women yield.. or is that the other way around?"

A Nice little ode to Nikola Tesla... For the remainder (which is a big chunk) Why Nikola Tesla was the Greatest Geek who ever lived! So many people forget about the bad side of Edison...

Turn it into a strategy game? Mass Alert 4: Command and Reaperise?

King has a lot of interesting ideas, but his books can vary incredibly wildly in the quality of the writing.

For one of those things that's been lurking around..

But it's usually entertaining poo

Heh. Exactly how many studios has Activision closed this generation? A short look at Activision's history of studio closure...

Well, the old Koenigsegg CCX on Top Gear.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svxRpqeqFRY Edit: And of course, after that, Koenigsegg actually went and put a spoiler on it.. And let them have it again. (Now the spoiler is standard)

I really should try getting back into my playthrough of New Vegas with all of the DLC... Hm, damn, thinking I was just starting Dead Money when I got interupted by life, and then hm, Deus Ex, then TOR... That's a fair few months ago now. I haven't picked up anything new in awhile, so pretty much going with regular doses of TOR as my only gameplay the last couple of months.

The Higgs Boson walks into a catholic church. Priest says "What are you doing here?" Higgs Boson says "You can't have mass without me"

I have to admit, if its something you can see yourself playing for 200 hours minimum, looking at it as a "Euro an Hour" isn't that bad an investment.

With it of course.. Actually, haven't Koenigsegg put the top gear wing on all models since then?