Despite the glorious sunshine outside, I have a load of cruddy admin-type things, so will be online quite a bit. Looking at my bulging personal and work inboxes, I’m realising quite how many people I owe emails.
Whilst it seems I’m emotionally capable of sustaining a lot of friends, I think I’m only logistically capable of managing about 5. So apologies – will hopefully get back to you all soon!
Apologies to those of you who’ve had issues with my RSS feed for the last few days. I broke it with the upgraded theme and only just noticed (something to do with feedburner redirects, tedious, technical and otherwise uninteresting)… but all fixed now – subscribe away here.
Have had to bring home some work this weekend (argh!), due in part to looming deadlines and the fact that I go on holiday next week and have quite a bit to mop up. So, what happens? The weather turns nice, after a week of rain, cold and misery – and I lose all ability to knuckle down, and spent half the morning watching cooking programmes on television.
MAN. I need to reclaim my Saturday and soak up some sunshine… as you can see from my new masthead photo, my tan is fading somewhat ;)
Ok, so am quite tired and aware the blog posts are getting less structured, but wanted to get this thought down before it faded into meaninglessness in my notebook. Ricky (or is it Mickey) from the new Dr Who is the equivalent of Rimmer/Ace Rimmer from Red Dwarf, don’t you think? At least if you’ve seen the Cybermen episodes… A moment of redemption for a lifetime of mediocrity. That’s the stuff.
More thought through post on the greatness of the new Dr Who series to come (with the possible exception of the Cybermen episodes, although the jury’s out on that one); when I’m feeling less knackered.
Crikey, some geeky posts tonight. Gaming and Dr Who. Tomorrow I will post about women and sport and, erm, BEER, to prove my manliness. Oh yeah…
Having decided against the next gen consoles for a little while (at least until the Nintendo WII comes out, which might be the console to wean me of my Sony/MS dependence), and really, really being bored of wasting my life on Civ4, was looking for a new way to, erm, waste my life. And on browsing Amazon’s bargain basement, decided to pick up a couple of games that I knew were just going to be a useless waste of money at full price… but might prove entertaining with a twofer 15 quid deal.
Both are obviously based on film / comic franchises that I love. Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series (of which I’ve seen 1 and 3: Army of Darkness) is fully entertaining, and there’s something about Bruce Campbell’s ridiculous machismo that is hugely entertaining – and proves to be in the ludicrous cutscenes of the game. It’s like Duke Nukem meets… well, Evil Dead. Very, very funny – simple, addictive, button mashing game play, decent graphics and a plotline worth sawing your arm off for. So far, anyway – I’m only about 20 minutes in. Have a feeling its going to get repetitive quick, but for now…
And Marvel’s newest beat-em-up, after a long line of really, really awful games, is actually relatively entertaining. It, like MK: Shaolin Monks, turns the game into something more of a platform game and gives a nice bit of variety between characters. Of course, there’s no two-player cooperative mode (d’oh! – although haven’t tried on Xbox Live yet), and the combos seem limited, it is very true to Marvel so far and quite fun as a consequence.
In short, great diversions for a small investment. This pleases me.
If Sam Raimi Directed this film, and cast Bruce Campbell, could we have…
Evil Dead Snakes on a Plane?
Awesome.
Sorry, this post may or may not be an indirect consequence of a conversation with Tom and Chris, but who can say. Either way, EDSOAP could be a great sequel.
Sorry. Just booked a holiday. *So* relieved it is hard to express. Amazing how much stress that sort of thing generates; its meant to be enjoyable. What I really need is unlimited funds and a concierge service…
Damo’s still ill, but he’s now actually made it on to the World Service, which is pretty cool. I caught one of his reports – the man coughs in characteristic style whilst tasting coca-liquer in La Paz. You can’t script that kind of genius.
Hopefully he’ll get over his bug and be recording some more podcasts and BBC pieces soon… Watch out here for updates.
Thanks for the link, Drew. I should probably stress that this really is my personal blog and I tend to go on about slightly… well, inane things, but if it looks fun to you, please do grab a pew!
I tend to talk about my experiences with technology quite a lot (because I’m a complete geek technophile), so if that’s of interest, my RSS feed sits somewhere down on the right…
Now; there are some things for which the advice of a seasoned professional is invaluable; hifi experts for audiophiles, PC experts for gamers, perhaps even CD-reviewers for music… but there are some things where the opinion of the average, ordinary, everyday human being is exactly what you need to help inform your purchasing decision.
This is one of the many things I’ve noticed when searching for a holiday (current objective: find a place in Key West, FL for the dates I’m planning on being there next month). ‘Objective’ reviews on websites have (a) been hard to find and (b) been unreliable and inconsistent from one to the next. Tripadvisor, however has given me a wealth of information from its hundreds of users.
Whereas a single good or bad review is singularly uninformative, as with the aggregation Rottentomatoes does, there is a certain confidence in numbers… or lack of confidence, as the case may be. The fact that the reviews build constantly over time (and presumably time out at some stage) hopefully points to the possibility that a hotel can redeem its reputation over time. That said, a lot of the hotels in Key West will have their work cut out for them, from the look of things…