Raithe

To throw in one off-the-cuff thing.. I'll always remember one of my college physics professors turning around and basically saying "ah, you think you understand quantum physics? Then you really haven't learnt anything yet. The more you study it, the less you'll realise you can understand at the moment."

Had a fresh cup of tea and was just randomly trawling through the Novatech sales.. and idling on window surfing off various tech goodies. I've got to admit the 1TB External Harddrive, USB2.0 for only

My new credit card arrived, so had to spend that chunk of time updating various records and places.. ie: Amazon, and my isp provider and such like.. But I'm sure I've forgotten something. Although I suppose it's good that I don't have any mmo's sucking away at it that I have to remember at the moment. So far it pretty much falls into an uneventful weekend.

The reviews did tend to revolve around the idea that AP was a shooter with some rpg elements.. rather then an rpg game that looked like a shooter. Sure, it had some of the usual assortment of Obsidian buggyness, but nothing that killed the gameplay. The mass of bad reviews generated a lot of negative reputation which caused a lot of people to ignore the game. So poor reviews helped limit the sales, which caused Sega to drop it. You can't posit bad sales alone, the reviews helped kill it. And that pretty much sucks, because taken as an rpg style game, it rocked. It had a fun story, interesting pace, and really gave the espionage feel.

Hm, I've got to get around to finishing the Witcher. I was in the middle of chapter 3, something came up..and I just never got back into the flow of it..

Overheard a snatch of a tv advert with some woman singing "Hushabye Mountain" (yes, that song from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) and now it's stuck on a loop in my head. I guess I should be glad it's not **** Van Dyke singing it.

Sorry, anyone who thinks that kawasaki ninjas count as gay, has never seen Jessica Alba straddling one..

pwnge. Or would that be spancge?

Having pretty much explored everything in NV.. I just haven't been able to stir myself enough to get Dead Money. I kind of think I'll end up waiting until all the dlc's are available and redo it in one mass effort with them all in.

I see your Pirate Ninja.... and raise you a Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirl! The world needs S.P.A.N.C.

The theory I have a warm feeling for was the suggestion that the universe at large is some form of intelligence that's slowly been growing up, and that all life within it is actually the universe experimenting to understand ethics and morality. Completely non-scientific, but just a quirky thought. The question shouldn't be 'Is there a perfect being who created the Universe' it should be 'Why would a perfect being need to create the Universe?'

I have a friend who used to work for the local constabulary.. the subject came up some time ago, and apparently there's only a handful of "official" hells angels members in the UK... (as in literally about 4 or 5). But then our roads tend to be built more for the nimble type bikes rather then the cruising hawgs..

Amidst the general assortment, my mother was one of the earliest people in the UK to get a bone-implanted hearing aid. Originally she had an infection that caused the ear canal to close up, then with some surgery that got ballsed up another type of infection kicked in (which none of the nurses or doctors noticed), and when she came home the family noticed she had an abcess about the size of an egg behind her ear. That ended up in a trip back to the hospital, it was so bad they lanced it there.. the Ear specialist blew his stack when he found out that the various people had missed that infection, especially when he realised just how bad it was. They discoved that it had actually killed the hearing nerve on that side. Which is why she's totally deaf on one side. And now she has a metal bolt coming out of her head from the bone-implanted conductor. It was very frankenstein. Edit: And for further elements, grandparents on her side of the family ended up blind/visually impaired. Grandad was an albino (which was part of what led to his blindness). So depending on the questions you want to ask.. I might be able to get a few different answers dug up.

For we are the deadly shadows that stalk in the night and go "Aaaaarrr!" ?

We went to Russia back in the early 90's. The days glasnost was starting to break through. Stopped off in both Odessa and Yalta as part of a cruise. The family had gone to the trouble of getting proper full visas rather then the "only as part of a guided tour" you got as part of the cruise packet. We actually went on one of the official tours in the morning, mentioned to the tour guide that we had those visas and intended to wander around on our own.. and she really tried to be persuasive that we shouldn't be on our own, and that she could take us around and show us the sights that most people didn't realise were there. So my parents thought why not, we met up with her later... and this "tour guide" took us around, would walk us up to private homes, rap on the door , the door would be opened and the tour guide would bark in russian, show some form of identification..and we'd suddenly be welcomed into these houses and shown the architecture and art inside.. After this happened a few times, we reaaaally got the feel that the woman might by chance be more then just a "tour guide". But yes, the locals if they realised you were a westerner.. really loved you. They'd flock around, and the black market would just.. hell, more then just the black market. A police officer on duty sold his uniform hat to crew members for american dollars. You literally had guys in seedy trenchcoats approach you, pull open the coats and pull out a rolled up newspapers festooned with watches.. or the inside of their jacket hanging with tins of caviar.. Off duty soldiers trying to sell pieces of their uniforms to tourists.. It was a little bit crazy in its way. They pulled out all the stops to get you to buy something with american dollars. They never wanted rubles, just clean dollars.

I've actually had to attend a couple of SG-1 related conventions. My mother was a fanatic, so I got called along to push her wheelchair around when she went to them. One of which included having tea and biscuits with both Richard Dean Anderson and Amanda Tapping. I have to say when you get the group of main actors and supporting actors together like that, they still seem to have a very natural give and take between themselves. Although that's got to be partly due to having worked together for x amount of years without killing each other. Of course, I will say it's slightly jarring to come down one morning to make that first cup of tea..and finding the fridge was suddenly plastered with magnetic "I don't need saving, I just need Him!" captioned pictures of RDA..

Well that's the thing.. picking up an xbox 360 seems to float around the

For a thread that seemed to me to start off on more of a philosophical question on how to approach life.. This swiftly went into physics and science...

Heh, the old "if you go into politics you're accounts are checked and frozen, and when you leave office if you caused a fething waste you'll be fined money but if it all ran well and true you'll get a bonus" idea?

Because you have no soul? Or just general game-anticipation burnout and disapointment from other releases....

Hm.. yeah.. for just Red Dead Redemption and LA Noire.. it's still not worthwhile picking up a console.

"Not only does God play dice with the universe, the dice are loaded."

If you're not careful you'll start up the whole Platonic Ideals vs Veil of Maya thing...

My bad. I've got to learn not to quote on the fly...

I know a good one, but I'll have to look it up. My father read the original version - fart jokes and adultery and all - when I was a kid. It's great stuff. I've read several versions, but they're usually turn out to be abridged or have several stories removed totally. Or the only ones you can find are the child-friendly versions. Heh, I was tidying some things away and found all my old Al-Quadim books and boxed sets.. which has me kind of nostalgic.