MMXI Week 12 - RIP Bertha

Okay, here's the ideal plan. Today, you would've been experiencing my first video blog. But thermodynamics got the better of me. You see, if you chose to convert several 1080p video files consecutively, well, you can do some serious image to your 2.5 year old computer.
Let me sing the obituary of Bertha. Bertha was a great computer, built in November of 2008, she wasn't the apex of technology, but she was powerful none the less. She endured Portal, a degree of computer games design and several thousand rendered videos and images.
Now most computers either go out peacefully, like an old relative passing in their sleep, or a blaze of 'glory' like a spectacular car crash. Bertha, on the other hand, passed like an 80 year old who got up at 5am to go jogging, only to have a brain annurism and go face down in their organic porridge.
Its a mixed experience for me, as it leaves me without a.computer. But this is only for a week as I'm off to Hong Kong in a week. Ergo, xbox to the rescue. It's going to cost in the region on £300 to fix, depending if I decide to upgrade to a) windows 7 and b) get a bigger hdd.
I have to say I'm disturbing happy, but I think that's party due to my improved outlook on life. Things are more relative than you realise, and stressing is a waste of time. For example, rather than dropping one because of what of I cant do until my computer is fixed (my files are okay as far as I know, its my mobo that died), I looked at what I can do instead. I'm gonna read some more, do some drawing, add generally find solutions. It's an amazingly great mental attitude, that I owe in no small part to my girlfriends great outlook on life rubbing off on me.
(Quick clarification, this blog is via my phone)
But yes, that's pretty much it. No more blogs for 5 weeks ish, which doesn't void my one blog a week goal, as I intend to post retroactive blogs.

Peace and love.

Night vision photo for no reason.

MMXI Week 11–The Summer of Our Disconnect

Okay, I’m sorry, I know, I know, I’m terribly late with this weeks blog entry. I have a brilliant, very simple reason for not posting. I haven’t had internet since Saturday, thanks to a technical fault with our ISP.

Okay, now the grovelling is over, what was I up to the past week? Well not very much, work mainly and biding my time until my Epic April begins.

It’ll obviously be in my next entry, but I thought I’d mention my d&d campaign I’m starting on Sunday. I’ll probably post more over on the D Twenty.

That’s it for now, sorry it’s so brief!

MMXI Week 10–Grand Promises

Okay, I did originally promise something a little special, but due to lack of time (and energy) this will be postponed. What I am going to post instead is a small progress report on my goals and a brief summary of my week (well, mainly weekend).

First up, goals progress:

1) Blog once a week, minimum – Well, kind of obvious here. Ignoring late posts, I am managing to put up one entry per week. Only time will tell if I can keep it up for the whole 52

2) Get a job in Birmingham or Wolverhampton by April – this one has been pushed back until May/June due to going to Hong Kong, but I’ve also expanded it include a job in Guildford, as being closer to Viv would be nice.

3) Get Money for Hong Kong – Done and done!

4) Reach a Gamerscore of 25,000 – Not doing too badly, almost at 21k thanks to dead space. Got Bulletstorm, Portal 2, Mortal Kombat and Mass Effect 3 at the very least to help me achieve this.

5) Complete an Entire Dungeons and Dragons Campaign – This weekend I will be conducting the opening chapter of a small, but complete, d&d campaign. This won’t quite be of the same scope of my current campaign, but I hope it will be none the less fun for my players (many of which are newcomers)

6) Play more Risk and Magic: The Gathering – I’m doing very well at this, having played several games of both, even having a magic build off with Viv. Her Vampire deck thoroughly booted my Chandra deck.

7) Work on a Video Game Project – This one has sadly gone on the back burner for a while now. I have been working on general art work, which can contribute to my portfolio, so not completely frozen.

8) Learn Cantonese – No, not happening, let us not speak of this failure

9) Improve my Blog Design – Again, nothing much really happening on this front. I’m getting by with the current design, but need to work on something more personal.

10) Buy more Books – I haven’t got anything new since Viv got me the first two Discworld books, but I most certainly intend to order the last two Scott Pilgrims very soon, along with perhaps the third discworld book.

Not doing too badly me thinks, perhaps rated at about 60% progress.

As for last week, work was the usual repetition, but the weekend was amazing. I’ll give you a brief breakdown:

Friday: Got train from Bicester to Guildford, arriving late that night. After a change of plans, me and Viv ordered pizza, opened my two Magic the Gathering deck builders toolkits (more on this over at the D Twenty eventually) and watched some stuff on her new TV that I had bought her.

Saturday: After a nice lie in, we headed off into town to get some cables and food for pancakes at some point. We also had milkshakes from shakeaway. Viv had a Dave with cream and I had a Ben with nuttella. Later that day, we went to the cinema to see Battle: Los Angeles (which was very good) and then had take away (again, chicken and chips this time)

Sunday: Woke up fairly early (before 10am) and decided that we would make the pancakes. We used an amazing recipe from the Metro and served them with nuttella, blueberries, strawberries, powdered sugar and butter. There were AMAZING!
Before I caught the train home, we went for dinner at Nando’s, which was gorgeous as usual.

The only down side was my Reading-Oxford train being 10 mintutes late, so I missed the last train to Bicester. Luckily, my brother came and rescued me from Oxford station.

All in all, an amazing weekend. I’ve got to post a few more entries this week covering some magic stuff, time permitting.

MMXI Week 9–Once more, and this time with Zealotry

This is most likely (in theory) going to be a more brief blog entry, as this past week has been quite uneventful. The main landmark on the chronological topology of my week was completing Dead Space 2. Now I don’t want to spoil the ending for those of you that haven’t played it yet, so I’ll just say that it’s amazing and a very powerful climax. But what I really want to talk about is some of the things that Dead Space 2 got right.

• Quick time events: Most people (rightly) loathe QTE’s. The ‘press A not to die’ mentality can be frustrating and imbalanced. But in DS2, the managed to pull it off. Rather than the usual single press required in a two second window, you are required to furiously mash A in order to survive. This really lends weight to your flurried attempts to prevent a ghostly apparition from shoving a needle in your eye!
• Making the player jump: Don’t get me wrong, DS2 isn’t ‘scary’ in the sense of giving you nightmares. But it does keep you on the edge of your seat. Never before have I been so terrified of an empty corridor, or a cylinder rolling down a hall.
• Mixing it up: DS2 isn’t all shooting. There are some great breaks in the gameplay, the best of all being the zero-g sequences. There are various little puzzles involving solar arrays, derailed lifts and even ocular needles! All in all, they mix up the game play nicely

But what DS2 does best in my opinion is replay value. You see, I’m not one for replaying any story heavy game. Once I know the plot, I’m pretty much done, and even going back for achievements is a chore for me. But DS2 changed all this, the moment I completed the story, I went back and started a new game on Zealot (the hardest difficulty). What inspired this was the New Game+ mode, where you get all your gear from your previous play through. This levelled the playing field a bit more so that even though I’m on the hardest setting, it’s not impossible (but still a challenge).

Oh, and a special mention for the Achievement ‘Clever Girls’. Any Jurassic Park reference is alright in my books.

The other high point of my week was a back to back viewing of Tron and Tron Legacy. It was quite interesting to not only see how special effects have come along in the years between the films, but also the little references to the former in the latter. But the one thing that truly struck me was how Tron feels so much longer than Legacy, even though Legacy is 30 minutes longer and, according to my friend who had never seen it before, a lot more ‘talky’. This is a fair observation, there is a lot more exposition in Legacy, characters often taking moments to ‘develop’ and ‘bond’. But the film is still more steadily paced than the original Tron. Maybe this has something to do with the style of film making in the 80’s, particularly science fiction. I’ve noticed that a lot of classic sci-fi films feel drawn out and tedious by comparison to current films, even when they contain ostensibly more action and activity.

On a side note, a little goal update. Not done much progress towards my level, but have been doing some art work, which will work in my portfolio. Gamerscore is almost at 21,000. Still don’t know any useful Cantonese. Running a short DnD session in a couple of weeks. Planning on picking up a couple of Discworld books soon, along with the last 2 Scott Pilgrim.

Peace