Raithe

Watched a History documentary about "Weird Weapons". Some quite funky things in there. The Aircraft Carrier designed of ice. Well, ice mixed with sawdust. Which apparently made it resistant to shattering and could even be shot at close range and would ricochet bullets without taking harm. The only reason it didn't get built? They found out that the only way to create it would be to build refrigeration units that would end up using more steel and metal then would be used to build the carrier from metal in the first place... Or the Russians in WW2 who trained dogs as tank-busters. To run under tanks with mines strapped to their backs and automatic triggers.... But they made the mistake of training them with Russian tanks that ran on diesel, while the German Panzers used Gasoline. Lots of cases of friendly fur. Hm, is it weird that I kind of feel that that's a little bit more sick and twisted then actual suicide bombers?

Having one of those kind of peaceful sundays actually. My sister has disapeared for the weekend and taken the dogs with her, so I don't have to worry on that. My mother's taken her daily assortment of prescription pharmacuticals and is half-dozing away with the kindle in hand so I don't have to look after her at the moment. Trying to figure out if I'm in the mood to poke around at some computer games or not. Although I did catch that old song by Bryan Adams "All for Love" which was strangely depressing a short while ago. I might just try re-reading some of the Belisarius books instead....

Hm, I want to play something but I just can't figure out my mood. I finished a rerun of Alpha Protocol the other day so I don't want to jump back on that.. I got about 20 minutes of GTA IV done but meh, I'm not really getting involved in it. Can't seem to focus for Civ V... hm, maybe I should try to break out Alpha Centauri..

Of course then it'll be based off the WoD 2.0 not the classic WoD then I would hazard a guess.. So all the people expecting something similar to the previous Vamp games could be disapointed (beyond the mmo version)...

Sahara A film adaption of a Dirk Pitt novel by Clive Cussler. Actually quite enjoyable in that silly way. Mathew McConaughey and Steve Zahn do pretty damned good to make it almost a buddy movie in the midst of the pulp adventure of it all. Penelope Cruz is more of a throwaway role as the eyecandy romance aspect. William H Macy growls his way as the unconventional Admiral, and Lambert Wilson does his stock role of urbane evil mastermind in a fairly decent manner. Plus it's got a killer soundtrack. And it kind of makes me sad that they scrapped the idea of doing some more..

Finished a run-through of Alpha Protocol. This time I made allies with everyone, turned Marburg and Parker, joined Halbech and betrayed Leland. That was the first time I saw that ending... and that look on his face with the "oh, that's not a pda, that's one of my remote mines.."

Took a brief moment during lunch to put on GTA IV again. Found out that my last save was made in 2009 with a progress of around 55%.. So I poked up a fresh game just to try to get a re-feel for it all and got in about 30 minutes or so of actual playing.

It's not overlong (compared to the others) and the combat mechanics can be a little meh, but overall JE has a nice story, some fun dialogue and a few twists here and there. And you can actually lose and get a very bad ending.. which is actually kind of funky interesting.

A Giant Space Hamster? o O ( Okay, my spelljammer days are showing through there..) Finished off the eArc to Ghost Ship. A nice run of space opera follow-on to other Liaden books. Although they had to jump around various characters in different locations, it nicely fleshed out some of the "epilogue" moments in the earlier books. But it does have a rather cliff-hanger style ending... I don't remember where I read it, but the Liaden Universe was once described as "Star Wars meets Pride & Prejudice" and I do have to agree that that description works on a lot of levels. Not many authors can write that sort of snappy dialogue based around a (not-stictly human) culture's modes of courtesy. It's kind of interesting that the authors (a husband and wife team) used to be death on electronic copies of their books and very anti-book-piracy and suchlike.. but now that they're getting published by Baen they seem to have jumped on the Baen Bandwagon in respect to how electronic books and getting out sample chapters and free books can attract readers that otherwise would never have looked at them.

I'd actually forgotten tomorrow was Good Friday and there was the resulting bank holiday here. The days seem to blend in together. Although not as bad as last week thinking wednesday was tuesday and that thursday was friday...

Hm, and for some reason that brought to mind "Armageddon: The Musical" and "Armageddon 2: The B-Movie." Although in my moments of peace I've been working through the eARC of Ghost Ship, the upcoming latest in the Liaden Universe books.

At least it's not mushroom management. "Keep the employees in the dark, and occasionally throw chits at them."

One of these days, I feel sure we're going to find a bunch of depressed forumites will have banded together to take out a hit on Shryke under the theory that all that good karma/fortune he seems to have needs to be redistributed around the world for other people to enjoy...

Well one of my mothers conditions has been flared up all day so she's been in a lot more pain then normal and generally a little on the short-tempered side (which is understandable). Then to add to the joys the puppy has been an over-excitable **** today, and then I find out my sister was disapearing to some dance thing tonight so I also had to juggle looking after the pup into the night as well as during the day. Then the cat is acting even more twitchy and agitated (beyond producing cat vomit) and I think the pup has managed to nip hip somewhat seriously. Yes, the sound produced when a 3 month old Alsatian stretches out ontop a persian cat is a rather silly squeak. Now my sister helps out at some Dog Obedience class each week so she's full of all sorts of advice for how we're supposed to act towards her dogs. But jeez. "Remember to speak with enthusiasm" "If you let them hear you're angry and frustrated they won't pay attention" etc. She always talks about how she has them obedient or at least generally paying attention to her.. so why the hell is it they then tend to ignore what the rest of the family tells them? As it is, I think I'm going to have to give up a couple of nights to going to those classes with her and seeing if I can pick up some tricks or figure out why they're different for her, otherwise I'll spend all bloody day chasing after the damned things to stop them screwing around. Which ontop of my general carer's assortment I really could do without.

Tis a bright, warm, seriously sunny day here. Which eh, I can kind of see as nice..but my grandad was an albino, my mother has an allergy to UV light..and naturally I'm pretty darn paleskinned because of that. So I tend to lurk in the shadows rather then enjoy the sun. As for the day.. well you know how you plan out to spend chunks of time doing specific things? And then it rolls into a mix of finding out you need to go to the bank (in the middle of market day..) and deal with post, and sort out paperwork to defer student loans, and then find out that cat vomit has happened that needs to be cleaned from the carpet.. All while people are telling you what a gloriously sunny day it is and what a joy to behold summer arriving..

Apparently there are a few links ; The principle one being that the main character you play was abducted in the same event that Tommy was in the original (in fact, from whats been suggested so far, from the passenger jet you saw in the background in the first game). Also, they've mentioned that you'll run into Tommy at various points during the storyline. So it's more that it's in the same universe, and it's still some form of first-person shooter...

I think any night where a sequence of dreams are interspersed with "killer cyborg ewoks" has to go down as not totally restful and a little strange. And considering I made the attempt at an earlyish night..why the heck do I feel even more tired

I actually started a fresh run through of Alpha Protocol... I haven't done that in a fair while. And it's quite amazing how bad you can be after so much time has past.

And they've set it up so the "automatic options" for the Deus Ex difficulty setting is no highlighting, and no objective navigation display...

Well the fans made a fuss about this.. so apparently now they've switched the Augmented Reality to optional aspects...

I'd look forward to a pc version of Red Dead Redemption... But I kind of doubt they'll do that. Edit: And I just can't justify to myself spending the money on getting a console for one or two games a year when I enjoy pc gaming so much.

Well I'd opened up all the islands and was balancing a whole bunch of gf's in the game. So I was probably over the half-way mark. I think it was some mission involving a meeting between chief mobsters at some abandoned warehouse type place that I ran out of steam. I had to quit the game to deal with real life and then just couldn't find the motivation to return and finish it all off. These things happen occasionally.

Hm, Prey had some interesting element, and a damn good soundtrack. Some of the visuals were quite good as well. Of course, that whole "Death Star" type structure can be really funky... I'll have to keep my eye out for what's going on with the sequel then..

I'm pondering making another attempt at GTA IV. I originally played it back when it first came out on the pc..but just ran out of steam with it. Something just didn't seem quite as "fun" as other things.

Having one of those days where I return to a problem, but the more I look at it the more I feel my brains dripping out somewhere and my IQ halving every few minutes. I mean, sure I didn't practice a bunch of my programming skills for about 8 years. But still, where did my basic ability go???