Raithe

Hm, and another couple of studios close up shop.. Bizarre Creations announce their imminent closure.. and Disney decide to shut down Propaganda Games.

Well.. you can get them quite big....

Tried to take an evening to have a total chilldown and not really think. Had picked up on dvd a copy of the old series Oddysey 5, so watched some episodes from that. Some entertaining insights from the commentaries by the main writer and peter weller.

Well I had noticed a tendency lately for arguments to seem a little more personal .. mostly it was just a random article of interest. Wasn't expecting it to kick off any huge discussion. How many key points of netiquette are there? Does everyone share the same view of netiquette? How many people here do push their viewpoints and use attitudes they never would if we were sitting across from a table from each other?

An interesting little article I stumbled across.. that seems perfectly valid for the amount of personal tide in arguments on the forum of late. Is the WWW poised to be a WMD?

You know you're rather seriously mentally/emotionally screwed when 10 years on you realise that there have been more nights where you've still thought about The Ex before falling asleep then nights she didn't wander across the mind. Kind of had one of those mornings full of all those petty little chores that needed doing rather then anything significant.. things that need doing but never feel as if you've actually achieved anything. Ah well. That and the annoying fact that I must have bitten my tongue in my sleep so there's that really annoying sensation in my mouth. Still, ever onwards with the day...

Apparently the Red Faction film is on the move.. Set between the events of Red Faction Guerilla and the upcoming new one.. With a list of actors put out headed up by Robert Patrick playing the role of Alec Mason.. Other Cast

The King's Speech. A damned good film. A lot of nice performances that work. Even a few quirkily funny moments thrown in. I nearly didn't recognise a couple of people in it, although Jennifer Ehle (of Pride & Prejudice fame to a lot of people) as Myrtle Logue was one that took me by surprise. Makes me wonder who put in the line "I don't believe you've met before?" when Logue is introduce to Colin Firth's King George. Guy Pearce's Edward VIII was also suitably keyed in.

I have to admit, I'm half tempted by Brotherhood for the pc just to see what on earth happens with the story and to see what Rome is like... But then it gets weighed up against the other games released around the same time and the annoying Ubisoft "constant internet connection requirement". So I think it'll probably fall into the category of "wait until its under a tenner many months from now."

Melt in the hand, not in the mouth?

I stumbled on some slightly interesting science-related trivia.. Leonardo da Vinci, whilst a total genius, made absolutely no great advancements to science. While he did make many scientific breakthru's much ahead of other people, he encrypted all of his notes and never shared them. By the time his notebooks were actually decoded, all of the discoveries he'd made in his lifetime had been discovered and credited to other people who had actually shared them with the world...

For the slightly random movie related news thats running a bit late.. Pete Postelthwaite died a couple of weeks ago.. And Speilberg once called him "the best actor in the world" after working with him in Amistad.

Not sure if it's just the extreme monday effect or other matters, but I've just been in one hellaciously depressive mood today. Been trying to just suck it up and get on with things, but every little thing has just been a major effort. Keep trying to kick the mojo into action properly.

Woke up to a grey sunday. Technically it's my birthday... although upon waking I found that no-one else had emptied the dishwasher so I had to do a bunch of general household chores before getting a cup of tea.. Think I'll try taking the lazy sunday approach and generally switch off the mind mayhaps..

I did see some interesting talk about the upcoming "Bulletstorm". Developers who felt that the FPS genre over the last decade has tended to encourage the careful, stealthy approach, the scrooge effect on your ammunition and bouncing from cover point to cover point... and they wanted to develop something that was pure kick-ass crazy. So shoot your enemy? that'll net you 10 skill points. Boot kick him over a crate and then shoot him? that's 25. Use a whip to grab him, throw him up to impale on broken rebar, before shooting the explosive barrel under him to torch him as he wriggles.. possibly several hundred.. A game designed around you using your weapons, powers, and the environment to kill the enemy in as amusing a combination as possible to net the most rewards.. I'm curious on how much else it will bring to the table beyond some genral pulp silly fun.

Lair of the Shadowbroker is very good. Plus it has some quite amusing dialogue thrown in. Yes Omnigel, I'm talking about security.

Another Deus Ex Preview Which again seems pretty much of a love-fest...

Got dragged out to a birthday pub meal by some friends. Which was pleasantly entertaining. Balanced out with me bringing up a topic about this company that runs classic steam engines with oriental express carriages. Set up to do the whole, 4 or 5 hour round trips with luxury 5 course meals, wine/champagne, serious service and most passengers dressing up in formal old style... Which led to all of the couples deciding it would be a good idea to do that at some point in the near future. And which left me as the sole single person there not included because they tend to sell table seats and such in those groups of 2/4/6 rather then in singles..

Dabbled a little bit with Borderlands. Haven't really jumped into the story yet.. just got used to the general play...

Trying to push through the evening, but for some reason I keep totally fading out and feeling fairly shattered. I foresee an earlyish night coming up...

The Facebook guy has a net worth of almost $7 billion. When someone becomes hugely successful nearly overnight, there is usually a story there. I haven't seen the movie, but apparently they told that story in a very entertaining way. According to the Facebook guy they also put in a lot of false stuff, but you should never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Also, depending on how much you follow the various stories about it.. the facebook guy actually stole a whole chunk of ideas from various friends and such... Or (depending on the specific point of view) was very good at getting people to put in work developing things, then getting rid of them, getting a new guy in to finish off the development and then basically claiming it. So supposedly a fair few shennanigans went on.. but it always gets hard to sort myth, fiction, outrage and bad feelings out when one guy makes a fortune like that...

That potentially he's the annoying guy who owns the company and doesn't have to bother with the company dress code?

I miss you, Kings. Ian Mcshane, Eamonn Walker, and a complex, realistic storyline. Great show, unfortunately too expensive and cerebral for mainstream. Plus the advertisements basically avoided the biblical connection that would have drawn in viewers. I remember that, 3 episodes then it was done. Shame though, seemed interesting. Well, actually was about 13. They did the full first season... but it ended on one of the key cliffhangers of the story. Built up nicely, and Brian Cox as the imprisoned "evil" king Vesper Abaddon was very well done.

It's one of the key rights of being a geek. You can complain about upcoming games, based on what you think of the ideas that they've announced will be in it. You can complain about glimpses shown in dev diaries and trailers. You can talk about how it has the potential to be a big steaming pile of doggy doodoo. But then it also comes down to the balance, that if you never actually play the game yourself, you can't really justify saying "this game is crap." It puts you in the same group of people who never played Mass Effect and labelled it "pornography simulator for children" or the faithful christians who never watched the Life of Brian and claimed it was "utter blasphemy". Until we get to that point of deciding whether it appeals to us enough to at least give it a play, you can just say that it looks like it's going to be a pile of excellence / doodo (depending on your point of view) without stating it definitively. That, and occasionally wander off into discussions of breast sizes in computer games and in general.... (which again, is a pretty standard right of the geek.) And on the personal level, a handful is nice, a plump "pillow" to rest the head against can work..but overlarge can be a bit silly.