Raithe

Hm, so for that slightly random.. my mother turned around and did the whole "between your sister's firm stand on not having kids, and you not bringing any girls home to meet the family in awhile, I've come to the sad realisation this branch of the family is going to end and I'm not going to have any grandkids".... Which actually kind of spun my thoughts back to the single girl I've seriously loved and would consider raising a family with. Now that's kind of depressing. Why are there certain emotion scars that just won't freaking heal up. You can get to the point you ignore them mostly in day-to-day life, but then things crop up that just.. rub them raw again and make you oh-too-aware of them again. Although I can understand my sister's position and kind of thank the deity of your choice that she will never be a parent. She's 35 but has the unfortunate habit of acting like a spoiled 17 year old, and she has this position that the majority of tact is lying to people which she doesn't believe in. So if she doesn't like someone or something, rather then be polite to them she will let them know exactly what she thinks and feels. Which is one thing in your personal life... but she applies it in her working one as well. She holds it as a badge of honor that she won't lie to people on how she feels about them and won't recognise that it comes across as rude and/or bitchy.

Sorry to hear that Enoch.. I'm sure you'll have plenty of positive vibes heading your way in the hope for the best. Hm, on this side of things.. I've just spoken with a guy I'm doing work with.. and been told that my official objective for the next couple of days is to "chill out" which is kind of interesting. I guess that's a good thing for a friday. Now to see if I can actually stop thinking on the work....

Urf. It's always fun when the planned afternoon gets turned into a series of errand runs. Although its a nice and sunny day.. running back and forth around the village tends to turn a little meh. Especially when part of it is picking up kitty litter and carrying the bags back home. Now I get to coax feeling to return to my fingers and enjoy some cool fruit smoothie...

Hm , sounds like good practice for dating a lot of the women I've known. The trick with women is to not start qualifying yourself but make them do it, instead. Can't do that with job applications. Not so much the qualifying yourself.. but on reading their minds because they wouldn't actually share things. Or the say yes when they mean no. or Say no when they wanted you to take it as a yes..and get incredibly pissy if you didn't choose the correct response.

Hm , sounds like good practice for dating a lot of the women I've known.

Had one miserable headache flare up as the afternoon wore on and evening started yesterday. I ended up giving up and taking some pain pills and crawling into bed and darkness before it got too late once the family were sorted. Of course, then I seemed to spend the majority of the night still conscious rather then managing to get to sleep. Still, tis a fresh day and at least I don't have any stabby pains at present circling my skull. Enjoying that nice cup of tea and considering where I need to focus on for the day..

Are you talking about the stretching cat, the cabinet he's sprawled on, or some other object?

He's not quite so "small" even if he is only around 7 months old...

Having some general irritation to the start of the day. Got my hand lightly scalded - pouring out some recently boiled water from the kettle, the overenthusiastic puppy bounces around my legs then makes a pounce for the nearby cat thus causing me to jerk and water to splash out across the back of my hand. Nothing serious, but it leaves that annoying tingling sensation across my hand now for a little bit.

I somehow managed to cut my ear. And I will say the bugger bleeds like you wouldn't believe. For some reason I never counted ears in the same category as head wounds for bleeding effects.

On certain levels Homefront was okay. But it was disapointing in that it was a very short "shooter on rails" approach. The backstory was interesting, they had some very nice things in the background to push emotional buttons. But the gameplay for the single-player campaign was bog standard follow the line and shoot things as they pop up. That and it basically ends on a cliffhanger after about 5 hours of play.

Trying to focus on some work, elucidating my genius into a report. Of course, somewhat hampered by the development of one of those really annoying stabbing headaches just over my left eye. Every few pulses of stabby pain making my eye twitch a little. Still, a cup of tea, a digestive, and some aspirin type and I shall carry onwards....

For the cheap laugh I actually watched the DOA - Dead or Alive film. It was surprisingly good at the same time it was quite bad. I'm not quite sure how to put it. The story was silly, the dialogue could be quite worse. The actors actually put decent effort into delivering their lines and doing their jobs. The visuals were quite stunning for the most part. Some very nice background scenery, and some of the edited shots of the female fighters (especially during fight sequences) did kind of make me want to laugh while still appreciating the toned and flexible forms. In fact, according to one of the female leads, over 40 bikinis were ruined in the shooting of this film.. The fact that they managed to throw in a Volleyball sequence that adds to the cheesey amusement. Plus, Eric Roberts hamming it up as a villain is pretty much always worth it.

Already happened (pic). I would have expected you to use Jeff Bridges in the recent Tron film...

It's a digitally created semi-nude of Jessica Alba, not the real thing? She was actually wearing a sports bra type top and exercise shorts.. They just cgi'd it out and gave the "artist's impression". But it is a fun film.

Lucas has said about himself that he's a director that focuses on the edit and the shot rather then the acting. He's willing to joke that when he's directing actors, all he does is pretty much "faster. more intensity. there is no try." It's one of the things that drove Harrison Ford up the wall back in the original. At the time, they did say to Lucas that "you can write this dialogue, you just can't speak it." When it was released A New Hope appealed to way more then just the young. You have to put it into perspective, at the time it came out there was a lot of depressing things going on. Star Wars pretty much came out with a total escapist, sense of magic to it. That wasn't about the special effects. It was about the feeling it gave people. It was a clear cut good/evil story with magic in it. It kick started a whole slew of things with its inspiration. Take for example James Cameron, he was in his 20's driving a truck for a job. Seeing Star Wars prompted him to quit that and concentrate on getting into films. We can also lay the blame on the film merchandising thing on Star Wars.

Hey, don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed playing through DEHR, and I'm planning on playing it a few more times just to see what shakes loose with repeats. The atmosphere is groovy, the gameplay pretty much works excellently. But there are those little flaws that keep it from being an "epic game" and just in the "damn good game" territory. It follows deeply in the footsteps of DE in keeping you fairly strictly along that point a to point b, but gives you a lot of options in how to travel there. It just doesn't let you get to point c instead of point b. DE gave you the illusion of choice in the story, while you didn't really have any. DEHR follows the same route, but doesn't quite give the same amount of illusion. Maybe that's because it's the change in games over the last decade or our perception of them, maybe it's because elements of the conspiracy in DEHR don't feel as deep. I do kind of feel the stunning "three consoles with a button" was a little bit.. Eh. Although a certain sense of amusement over it exists.

Urf, now I don't know if it wasn't being able to get to sleep till nearly 4am, but it was seriously hard going to push myself out of bed this morning. Although having the alsatian turn up, paw at the bed , whine and attempt to lick your face is not the best form of alarm clock. Slowly facing the morning as it slides along, with plans to get some work done as the afternoon rolls in.

Trying to be somewhat fair.. a lot of the ideas about the prequel trilogy (and the expanded universe explaining it all) actually are quite interesting. It's just ..well, the execution seems to have sucked a lot of the soul out of it all. There are still elements to enjoy in the films, and the music is still quite stonking. I mean, take the Phantom Plot - not a great idea for a film, but if you accompany it with the EU novel that's set just before the film, it actually lays out the heavy framework on the political manipulations and why the events happen and just what the fallout will be. Good if you're interested in just how Palpatine is masterminding such events - but not so good if you're looking for a flashy space opera fun film. But I really lay the blame for the failure at the creation of Jar-Jar Binks and all dialogue resulting from, and the casting of the kid otherwise known as "Manaquin Skywalker" for that wooden and obnoxious performance. The other element that's always jumped out at me, if you read the novelisation of Revenge of the Sith, it really paints out what people were thinking/feeling and makes a whole lot more sense. The film just..pushed the emo looks and didn't carry it through that well. If they'd been able to convey half the things in the book in the film it would have worked so much more. Seriously. There are two classic quotes from the book that I can't remember the exact wording, but roughly: one being how Yoda realises he totally screwed the pooch, by spending the last x centuries training Jedi to fight the last war with the Sith rather then how things turned out. (Wise Jedi my ass) , and the other from the Emperor on how the whole set up of the Clone Wars was pretty much just one massive "Jedi Trap", highlighting the major points of it and just how it served to distract the Jedi from what was about to happen and screw their reputation as it got there.

Highlander. There should have been only one. Well.. unless you count the tv series, which turned out pretty darn good once they figured out what they were doing...

To be fair, the original Deus Ex was like that. It gave the illusion of choice in the storyline without actually changing to any great degree. The helicopter pilot just takes the place of JC's brother for that "do what they say, which has them die, or ignore them and save their life" choice. The kill switch gets reversed from affecting the "bosses" to affecting Adam depending on a single decision you make. Deus Ex has always been more about the atmosphere and the multile paths within the game levels rather then multiple paths in the story.

Age of Conan : Hyborean Adventures soundtrack.. The Dreaming It's just been that sort of day

Said in a non-creepy and stalker-tastic manner.. One of those incredibly rare days when I have no-one around today that I have to deal with. The dogs are with my sister, dad's taken mom out.. I thought I'd be able to focus with no distractions and get some serious work done. Instead, I've just found myself totally scatterbrained all day.

Tis always odd when time suddenly catches up on you. Like when you bump into an ex and they have a kid that

David Arkenstone's Atlantis - A Symphonic Journey