Would You Lighten Up Your Tone?
Driving home from work on Monday, I couldn’t help but grin. You see, it was dark. And I liked it. Does this make me wrong somehow? Broken, perhaps? I’ve already spoken about how autumn makes me feel (not that we’ve actually had an autumn this year, it appears to have skipped straight to winter), but there’s something about driving home in the dark that I can’t put my finger on that just makes me happy. Of course, the only downside is that I can no longer stare at attractive female drivers in my rear view mirror.
What, I can’t be the only person who does that…
I Say We Take Off, Nuke The Site From Orbit
Today at work I decided I would follow several of my peer’s leads and upgrade my install of SQL Server 2003 to the latest edition, 2008. Simple enough, you’d think?
Hah. No, not quite. First I had to remove all traces of 2003 from my system, and then install Visual Studio 2008 SP1. That former went smoothly, but the latter… not so much. It seems I have some crazy edition of VS on my machine (Visual Studio Team 2008 Team Suite), which didn’t play nice with the patcher, and seemingly no-one in the office knew of such a version of VS. Given that my Visual Studio install was now tanked, I figured I’d just uninstall the it and install a proper version instead. Makes sense, right? Right?
RRODd – A Follow Up
As a follow up to my last post; I’ve booked my console in for repairs, it’s going to get picked up on Monday. In the meantime, Rob has kindly lent me his 360 (whilst away for the weekend), so I am busy storming through Dead Space in an attempt to finish it before he gets back.
Which is a shame, really, as I wanted to savour this experience somewhat. But if I don’t finish this weekend, I’ll be waiting another 2-3 weeks to find out what happened aboard the USG Ishimura. And that just wont do. Plus, I have a review to write (yes, that’s right, a review! What was the last one I wrote… oh yes, Homestar Ruiner. Yeesh, two months ago. Clearly, I need to play more games).
2 Years and 8 Months
That was the approximate lifespan of my 360. Not bad, all things considered. I have often marvelled at how sturdy mine was, in the face of such overwhelming failure rates. However, tonight, it finally died.
Which wouldn’t be so bad, if not for the fact that Dead Space arrived today. I got as far as the splash screen before the console died on me. Now, as readers of this blog and, in fact, anyone who has spoken to me recently about games will know, I have been rather anticipating this title. In fact, the last game I was this excited about was BioShock, well over a year ago. In some respects, I needed this. It’s been a long time since I last had a game that I totally lost myself in.
EDIT: It has un-RRODd for now. Fuck me, Dead Space is scary.
EDIT: I made the mistake of switching it off whilst watching Never Mind The Buzzcocks. It’d RRODd again. It started working last time after I left it for a while, maybe it’ll do the same again? In the meantime, I’ve booked it in for repair all the same. Will take 2-3 weeks, joys. I think I need to find someone to borrow a 360 off.
Old (Gaming) Habits Die Hard
As some of you may know, last week saw the release of Echoes of Doom, Patch 3.01 for World of Warcraft. Much like the pre-Burning Crusade patch, Before The Storm, this introduces many of the new features in the upcoming expansion including new talents, the new profession and achievements.
Yes, that’s right. World of Warcrack Craft just got that little bit more addictive, thanks to the introduction of this much maligned system of e-peen flexing (oh, and let’s not forget the Bejeweled addon. It’s like they don’t want me to alt-tab ever). For the most part, these merely award ‘Achievement Points’ (much like GamerPoints on the 360), however some have more material rewards, such as new titles, mounts, tabards and pets. I elected to work on the Loremaster achievement, purely so I could become known as ‘Loremaster Seniath’. Quite fitting, I feel, being the lorelol nerd that I am.
As a result, however, I have probably spent more playing WoW in the last week than I have in the last year. In fact, I was up till 3am on Sunday morning playing. This is indeed a worrying turn of events. I’m sure it’ll pass quick enough. In fact, I know it will; I’ll be too busy playing another game till 3am this Sunday.
Patterns in Traffic
Some days, I wonder what my life would’ve been like had I stuck with my Maths degree. These thoughts don’t often get very far, as I soon remember just why I changed course. One thing I do regret though is that I missed out on Fluid Dynamics, and its use modelling traffic flow in particular.
My route to work is nice and simple, a mere 9 miles along the outer-ring road. There is the odd slow patch, natch, but they’re bearable. No, the problem is that these patches aren’t consistent. Some days I’ll rush right on through an area, others I’ll be stuck in traffic for half a mile. And I don’t know why.
Today, I hit such a patch that I hadn’t encountered before; a good mile or so of traffic, with no discernable reason. Normally at this point I’d maybe be slow for maybe 200 yards right before the roundabout, but not this time. So I decided to take a short cut through the back streets, in an attempt to get to work for a reasonable time (I don’t say ‘on time’ because such a concept doesn’t really exist at EMIS). However, in between the other drivers that had decided to take a shortcut, roadworks (always with the bloody roadworks) and getting a little bit lost, I probably ended up taking just as long as I would’ve had I waited!
I Regret Everything
Yesterday, it came to light that the next Team Fortress 2 update (rumoured to be either the Demoman or Spy pack) will not be coming until some time in 2009;
“Well, it won’t be this year,” said Lombardi when asked about the next update.
Sad news indeed. Well, sad news if your most played class is something other than a Pyro, Medic or Heavy (so I’m in the clear, natch). However, as if to make up for this, a very interesting post appeared on the official TF2 blog this morning, providing an… enlightening look at the design process behind their latest “Meet The…” video.
“Our script is pretty much exactly like Predator,” Jay agreed.
“We took the script for Predator and put our names on it,” Erik added, in case this hadn’t been clear.
Well worth a read, if only for the included MP3s from the cutting room floor.
Only The Dead Survive
Somehow I missed the launch trailer going up on Gametrailers (click through for a high-def version) yesterday. This thing is fucking epic.
And on that note, I swear this will be the last time I post about Dead Space until the eventual review. Honest. Really. Yes.
Don’t Come Looking For Me, You Might Not Like What You Find
Dead Space was released today in the US, and the reviews are starting to come in thick and fast. It certainly looks like EA haven’t fumbled it at the last moment, as I feared they might; at time of writing, the metacritic average for both PS3 and 360 versions is a very respectable 89.
To coincide with the release, the final issue of the animated comic appeared in the wild last week. If you’re interested in the game but haven’t watched these, I suggest you do so. Now. They can all be found on gametrailers.
I really need to impose some kind of Dead Space blackout upon myself, else these next ten days are going drag!
We Don’t Go To Roundhay (Park)
Earlier last week, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and noticed that the lack of exercise was starting to take its toll. I’ve never exactly been skinny, just kind of average. My metabolism was kind enough to let me eat crap and not suffer too much, and the daily walk up hill to uni was enough exercise to let me get by. Now, however, the only exercise I get is the weekly walk around Tesco. Clearly, this is a Bad Thing, and Something must be done (note to self: stop abusing mid-sentence capitals).
