Raithe

For that orchestral creepy vibe as night falls.. Been listening to some Midnight Syndicate.. [

The back and forth of dealing with a rambunctious puppy and trying to massage some fresh research into a readable report. Or at least the start of one. For some reason I'm battling the urge to spend money of late. I keep seeing books and music albums and the like... The evenings turned, the night sky is arriving and there's a batch of wood cut down from lowhanging branches off birch tree in the garden that was endagering the fence.. The other temptation is to use it to build a nice fire, and settle down with a bottle of port and a cigar to watch the stars emerge.

The $1 million car crash - 5 cars, 1 blonde in Monte Carlo

I have to admit its a bit annoying, the last month or so Steam won't let me go to offline mode. Just flashes an error message, and tells me I have to restart in online mode. But then I haven't been in a gaming mood the last month, so it hasn't bothered me enough to dig into whats causing it..

Some of my planned afternoon work was disrupted by another batch of anti-flea powder, mass hoovering and assorted activities. Even checked the chimney to make sure no dead pigeon had fallen down it. On the complete counter to that I've found myself being tempted by a variety of Arty style coffeetable books of late, from Syd Mead's Sentury to The DC Art of Jim Lee to various Futurist Architecture/Vehicle designs to The Art of Top Cow type of thing. But I'm generally restraining myself from such temptations... Being responsible can be such a pain...

And from Stephane D'astous

And now.. Deus Ex has gone Gold. So now just a few more weeks to waill till we get our grubby little hands on it.

Did a quick spout of research this morning. Chased the puppy around the garden. Contemplating the lunch snackage. Have to collate some news articles this afternoon.. identify the key points and massage it into some single report. Hm... just watched through one of the TOR Q&A sessions from ComicCon.. dang it. On the one hand I'm going that the CE is bloody silly money, but there's that Star Wars geek inside going "ooo shiny! I have a job now! I can splurge some silly money!"

Yeah, he was doing software engineering. Made himself indispensible as the key programmer for some software they developed.. then "left" the company to become a consultant.. whereupon they basically brought him right back doing exactly the same job but about double the pay scale because no-one else they had really understood or could troubleshoot it like him. I both admire the chutzpah for setting it up, but also kind of worry about the principles and ethics of the maneuver.

Eh, one of my friends had a dream of getting a Lotus. But he wasn't going to save for a Lotus until he could get a garage to put it in. So he got out of university and he drove the same crappy car he learnt to drive in, tended to get his shoes resoled rather then buy new ones.. I mean, he made a lot of money..but hardly spent any of it, really saving the pennies.... Then after about 8 years.. he went out ..and paid cash for a house (no mortgage) and then two months later visited the Lotus factory and ordered up his Lotus Elise (again, paying cash)...

Well not a movie.. Just the sneak peak of the upcoming season of MythBusters.. But wow.. 9 years of filming.. I hadn't realised it had been going so long. The numbers are kind of..interesting: 189 episodes. 769 myths (425 busted). 2,391 experiments. 6,255 hours of filming. 128 vehicles destroyed. 12 tons of explosive.

So EA is saying that Star Wars TOR is the fastest selling pre-ordered title in the companies history.. Looks like they're sitting happy for that end of 2011 launch. And they're apparently planning on making it last..

Getting back into Research Mode.. pulling assorted newspaper articles and deciding just how to organise them and examine which bias is what.. That and we've ended up pulling the carpets up in one room to figure out where the hell those bloody fleas have settled. Every other room in the house is clear, the pets are clear, but the fleas keep turning up in that one room even after multiple fleabombs..

Of course.. the question has to arise.. Have they hacked Amy Winehouses phone yet?

Well to put it in perspective.. Isn't there only about $500 of real, printed money per person in the USA? I seem to remember that cropped up somewhere in a documentary. And that's pretty standard throughout the world.. So when you're talking just the 1's and 0's representing all the "money" floating around in banks, it's pretty much all imaginary and always has been. Even the gold and silver currency of ye olden days tended to be based on perception of value and the faith you had in it (considering how many governments debased the coinage of the time) rather then the real value of the cash in hand.

Captain America.. It's a good movie, but as has been said not great. There's not the same feel of superheroics that you get in other "costume" movies, more of a partially pulp adventure style. That's probably due to the combination of the world war 2 setting, and the fact that Captain America doesn't really have any wacky powers, just.. slightly suped up physical capabilities. Stark works quite well as a background character, and The Red Skull hams it up enjoyably in that "i'm so evil i've split from the nazis" way. Throw in a few chuckleworthy lines of dialogue and the expected Stan Lee cameo, and its all an entertaining mix.

They've already shown the teaser clip from the intro where a young Bob Page is talking about mysterious plans.. and yup, they got the same guy doing the voicework... Edit: And from Mary's "um.. no comment" to the question of whether Jensen is related in anyway to the Dentons... I'm guessing there's going to be some form of connection, especially if Jensen does turn out to be that Patient X ...

It was a great game, it had its flaws, but overall the joys certainly overcame them. I didn't have any bugs mess up my playthroughs... although the hacking could be a little irritating at times.. Hell, AP was what brought me into the Obs forums here back before it got released..

A Southern small-town prosecutor called his first witness, a grandmotherly, elderly woman to the stand. He approached her and asked, "Mrs. Jones, do you know me?" She responded, "Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams. I've known you since you were a young boy, and frankly, you've been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you're a big shot when you haven't the brains to realize you never will amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you." The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, "Mrs. Jones, do you know the defense attorney?" She again replied, "Why, yes, I do. I've known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. He's lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. He can't build a normal relationship with anyone and his law practice is one of the worst in the entire state. Not to mention he cheated on his wife with three different women. One of them was your wife. Yes, I know him." The defense attorney almost died. The judge asked both counselors to approach the bench, and in a very quiet voice, said, "If either of you bastards asks her if she knows me, I'll throw your sorry asses in jail for contempt."

That kind of reminds me of the Darwin Awards.. the Guy who decided to rob a gun store in Texas.. and walked around a parked police car to enter the store.

The other problem is that you can't tell if they've just got short hair.. or hair that's pulled back into braids/ponytail etc to keep it out of the way..

For those with an interest... DEHR ComicCon Panel Edit: They basically have their key "science advisor" there talking a lot about current augmentations and where the science is going and how they worked that into the game.

They pretty much used the same arguments decades ago on comic books. Which brough us the "Comics Code Authority" back in the 50's. So they cut down on violence, removed supernatural elements, forbid "lurid or gruesome illustrations", condemnded "sexy, wanton elements", and successfully killed a large section of the comic industry at the time....

If you count the guy with the microphone wandering around the audience to find those with questions a moderator.. But I mean.. you have them being asked questions like: "do you get a choice between the Empire or the Republic?" "will players who have Empire characters play on the same servers as those who are Republic?" "I'm a big fan of character development... so will i be able to give my character purple hair in the game?"

On a semi-random note.. I've just been watching some of the BioWarePulse videos from ComicCon.. and I'm kinda shocked that the dedicated fans who line up to get in on those panels then ask vague questions about stuff that BioWare have already answered in clear cut news about the games months earlier. Although mostly more noticable on the SW:TOR panels more then the others... I mean, if you're dedicated geek enough to not only get to SDCC, then find out when the panels are, line up and get in to see them.. how can you have ignored multitude of preview reports, the bioware forums, the specific game news, and assorted media releases they've made out?? Right, minor rant done with..