nastybun

I just watched The Woodsman. Kevin Bacon plays Walter, a guy who is out on parole after serving twelve years for sodomising young girls. Drama ensues. It’s written from Walter’s point of view, and shows his attempts to reintegrate into society. A repeating line from him when talking to his therapist is “When will I be normal?” It’s very well done and rather thought provoking, in that Walter is shown as an ultimately good guy who wants to put all this behind him, but has to battle with himself, his urges and his peers to make things work. I imagine if you have kids this could be a hard film to watch, as it ultimately wants you to feel that Walter deserves his second chance at life. Recommended.

Now that the pasting is done.. Last night I watched Takeshi Kitano’s Zatoichi. It’s rather excellent.. equal parts comedy, action, drama and just plain surreal. It’s a story about Zatoichi, the blind swordsman. Who is supremely awesome with a blade. Pretty much everything ensues. It’s too hard to explain without just talking through the film, so track it down and watch it. If only for the brilliant ending.

I think I dislike christmas more and more each year.. It’s not that I don’t like giving people things or seeing the family and having a huge lunch, that stuff is great. I just hate that we all have to do it at the same time.. shopping for presents is a huge pain in the arse, and when everyone is doing it it sucks even more. I think we should abolish christmas and just have a big family lunch every once in a while. Then when you see something that someone you know would like, just buy it for em. It’d make things so much easier, and I wouldn’t be so tired at the moment.

I have so many good ideas.. I should run for queen or something.

The saga of the pastry brush continues. The local woolies had some in last time I looked, but they were huge bloody things.. they looked like they’d soak up half an egg before I got any on the pastry. I went looking when out at the shops today, but all I could find were silly looking silicone ones.. and I’m not paying $14 for a brush. They had some other ones tucked away in the corner of another place I looked at that were small and had normal bristles.. but they were round. I want a little flat one.. the ones that used to be everywhere. Maybe I should just go to Bunnings and get a little paint brush.. I saw some in a craft store that were almost perfect actually…

The south-western tip of the Isle of Man is called The Calf of Man.

Not sure if that’s his small cow or part of his leg… but I reckon it’s his cow.

This film contains zombie nazis. This makes it an instant classic.

We just ate dinner at Teriyaki Boy. It sounds like a dodgy lol-japanese place run by halfwits, but it’s actually stupendously good. I had some of the best sashimi I’ve ever had there - kingfish, salmon.. and tuna that just melted in my mouth. It wasn’t cheap but the servings were a good size so given the quality I’d still say it was pretty good value. Definately somewhere that requires repeat visits.

That is all.

I finished Fallout 3 last night. Well, the main quests. There was still about half the map that I never visited at all. I’m not sure if you get up there more if playing as a bastard or if you just have to go for a wander, but I was rarely directed into the northern half of the map at all. Still, it was a fun ride while it lasted. I’ll play through it again sometime (as a bastard..) but for now, it rests. Turns out there’s a level cap at 20, so you can’t just keep playing and become the god of the wasteland. This seems something of a shame really. It’d be nice to just be able to tool about in the place and not have to worry so much about being ambushed and slaughtered. The ending was also a little anticlimatic.. I had stockpiled the more powerful weapons in the game in anticipation of some sort of showdown at the end, but it was just more dudes, then talk to a guy and convince him that it was all hopeless and he should just go away. I could have removed his head.. but I was being mister nice mans. Next time…

One more nice thing about Fallout 3.. it’s an RPG where enemies drop the things you expect them to when they die. If you kill a super mutant that’s attempting to blow you up with a rocket launcher, you get his rocket launcher. You kill a raider, you get crappy raider armour and a hunting rifle. It’s a nice touch.

Once I had completed the finale of the storyline I had a hankering to play Half Life 2 again. This is mainly due to Half Life being the subject of the latest Retronauts podcast (they pick an old game/series each week and wax lyrical about it.. or complain bitterly) but also because I’ve only played through it once before (I only started with the Orange Box..) and it was on my laptop. Visual fidelity and responsive controls.. such luxury. I’d have the original Half Life by now (especially as it was available on Steam for 98 americents last weekend) if it wasn’t for the Black Mesa project. Basically, some doodmans decided that Valve’s port of Half Life to the Source engine (newer engine = purdier game) wasn’t good enough.. but instead of just whining about it on the internet like most of us would do, they decided that they’d do their own remake into the Source engine. So I figure I’ll get that when it eventuates and play through Half Life then.

One thing I get from HL2 now is how old fashioned it suddenly feels to have your perspective essentially locked to a point five feet off the ground with the end of a gun floating about in front of you… especially after playing the demo for Mirror’s Edge. I get the feeling that Valve did it as part of the joke.. they definately have his mute protagonist thing being commented on by the rest of the cast. It may even be that it’s part of the plot.. something like he’s only mute when the player is controlling him, but there’s times inbetween where he’s just lounging about having a chitchat with with the gang. If so.. you heard it here first.. But yea, the opening section could have been done in a very Mirror’s Edge fashion if they had the resources and time to make it happen, and a lot of the rest of it feels odd after having played Fallout 3.. people that you’d chat to just say something then look at you funnily, stuff like that. This does feel like Valve were poking fun at the FPS trope though, something along the lines of ‘what would happen if we put the stoic, slilent, camera-with-a-gun kinda FPS doodman into something approaching a normal situation? Hilarity ensues! Or.. a slightly uncomfortable ‘I’m playing an old game here’ feeling ensues. I’m not sure it really worked.. but it’s still a lot of fun.

Oh, tech thing.. if you can’t get Half Life 2 to run in 64 bit Vista, right click on it (in steam), select Properties, select Set Launch Options and put -32bit into the box. The game has a 64-bit mode.. that doesn’t work. I don’t think the episodes or Portal has this though, so it’s only the original that does it.

If all this game talk is boring you.. well.. that’s all I’ve been doing lately. Someday, something else will happen.. someday..

Kangaroos are excellent swimmers.

The swim good and they taste good! Wow!

Yoinked from insert credit…

Chumon Shiyouze! Oretachi no Sekai (Let’s Make a Choice! Our World) is a very mediocre-looking SRPG from Global A. Normally I wouldn’t give it a second look, but check out the system page. Search for the funny. It’s in there. Realize they were trying to spell “battle,” perhaps one of the most common English words used in Japanese games aside from “fight” or “start,” and it becomes even more humorous. Lest they change it, I’ve taken a screencap for you. If only I still had an image of SNKP’s Metal Slug Art “Garrely.”

As a bonus, here are some fun things to say with the new word.
“That was a tough buttole.”
“I thought that buttole would be my last!”
“This buttole is for freedom!”
“He died in the heat of the buttole.” And on and on into forever.

For added bonus content, this is a little creepy.

Well, I’ll admit it.. it’s been one of those highly rare occasions when I’ve been wrong. I know, I know, it’s a shock. I’ve been struggling to come to terms with it myself, but I think getting this out there will help me cope. Just.. give me a moment to take a breather..

Ok.. I think..

Ok. I’m ok. Just a little relapse there.

HDMI does do sound.

Oh don’t give me that, you thought it was only video for a while too.. Yes, my xbox had extraneous cabling for a while. It’s gone now.

Lets never speak of this again. This is just between you and me, internet. If you keep this quiet, I won’t go blabbing about the time that Pakistani ISP broke youtube for the rest of the world.

I just want to draw your attention to something. It’s the Porsche Panamera, a new Porsche superfast 4-seater luxomobil. That’s all well and good.. but it’s really ugly. I looks like a Cayenne that someone has sat on. Horrid. Apologies for ruining your dinner…

Typing one handed while holding a tissue against your leg is actually easier if you use your left hand to type. Makes using the mouse much harder though.

I got new thongs! Now begins the arduous process of wearing them in.. and wearing out the sharp edge that cuts into the side of my foot. Still you know shoes look good if they hurt your feet, right? Isn’t that how it works?

I was coaxed out of my bed yesterday morning by the unmistakable sound of my PC restarting itself. This is usually a bad sign.. and this was no exception. Turns one of the drives in the stripe had disappeared.. if that makes no sense dear reader, it means that one of the two drives that were tag-teaming the job of beng the system drive stopped existing. This is bad, as it usually means all data is lost. Handily, switching it off at the back, jiggling cables and restarting it a couple of times woke it up.. at which point the important things were thoroughly backed up. It’s been fine thus far, so no change yet.. but if it happens again it’ll be re-install o’clock. Which will be a little irritating. Although I now notice that when one has a separate partition for the OS, Vista’s backup util is actually useful as it can be told to only back up the C drive. Again, if this makes no sense.. Vista’s backup util is too basic and not very useful in most situations. Also, my PC somehow has a non-existant floppy drive. Oh well.. I’ll just delete that and see what breaks..

Fallout 3 update.. it’s still fun, a little frustrating at times.. the random utter lockups when it autosaves are getting a little irritating, though they’re not too common. It seems the time, budget and game engine may not have been up to the task of making the game they really wanted to.. or they needed bigger ambitions. The character creation is basically pointless, as you’re pretty much guaranteed to be playing the game in first person. This is because the animation or your little doodman running about is pretty dang poor really. Also, in third person view, the mouse is both the angle of the camera and the direction you’re facing.. this seems logical, until you’ve run about in a game that has these actions disconnected and found how nice it is to be able to look around while running about and to see more than just the back of your character. The only time you see the face and can enjoy those tortoise shell glasses you found is in the glimpses you get when using the VATS targetting system. Still.. it’s not really possible to make a character that doesn’t look rather ugly anyway, so it’s not a huge loss. There are other issues like this as well.. not bugs or errors, but rather archaic design decisions that are a little jarring in a game in which you can easily spend upwards of 50 hours. There’s a lot of game to see in there, if you’re prepared to put in the effort to find it. It’s very much a free and open world game, in that you’re plonked in the middle(ish) of a huge open space with no walls to guide you and just a compass bearing pointing you somewhere. Just as long as you can be bothered walking there, anyway…

Alaska’s flag was designed by a 13-year-old boy.

I wonder if he could see Russia from there too..