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Tonight, I have gained both inspiration and motivation from a party at my brother's house. Or more specifically, the people in it.
Dave and Alex -the track car owning duo- told me about how if I get a job and work my ass off I will be able to afford my Silvia no problem. Whereas I had a long conversation with Sarah about art, writing, and what we could and should be doing with them. While I have been trying to get a job for quite a while, today has given me a bit more motivation to look for something actually halfway decent. But more importantly I haven't written anything for a long time, I think tonight has given me enough inspiration to create something new, and maybe even put a little more effort into my blog to save it from the inane smattering of opinions and events it has endured up to this point.
In the future I would quite like an occupation in journalism or fictional writing, but as I have almost never seriously composed a review or article on anything regarding anime, manga or games I cannot possibly hope to improve, as practice is everything, with the same applying to the sparse completion of any of my short stories. So thus forth I fully intend to provide a significant degree more insight and profundity in my mention of that which occupies my time, and in contrast I shall criticize my own literature with far less severity, because if I keep comparing my own work to those of professional authors I will never finish anything, and therefore never gain any experience, practice or third party criticism. So far perfectionism has been naught but a hindrance, and has completely demotivated me.
Sarah also told me about lulu.com, a very interesting website providing self publication. I might make it my aim to write enough short stories to create my own compilation, if only I could get over this crippling self doubt long enough to ever consider that a remotely achievable goal.

David James

Me, Andrew and Bertie went for our first uni visit today to see Emma over in Middlesex.
After a really short drive we went to the freshers fair to check out all the clubs and the sort, and on the way there we found a box with twenty two orange and passion fruit J2Os, they'd been thrown out because they were a month out of date but you don't say no to that much free drink. In the fair we made sure to grab loads of free pens, bottle openers, bibles, gay fans and 'orange soda' favored condoms, we certainly managed to get quite a good haul of crazy stuff. I put my name down for the Hockey team as David James, the first generic name I could think of, and as I walked away I heard someone shouting from the table 'David... David... David!' It took me a few seconds to realize he was talking to me. When I walked back he told me that his first and middle names were David James and that the guy next to him was called David James too, and even showed me his ID to prove it, looks like it was a little too generic.
The whole time I was in the uni I went by the story that I studied Ancient Japanese Art and Literature, which got a lot of respect from the legitimate students.
Me and Bertie (Bertie and I?) were left in the back of Andrew's car to occupy ourselves for a while after that. First as Andrew and Emma did some shopping in Asda, Bertie hooked up his synth to the car's ridiculous sound system and sat making up songs for a while. And then as we sat outside Emma's place waiting to go we put on some really loud dance tunes, and we just happened to be parked right down the road from a primary school exactly as the kids were coming out, so we had quite a few little dudes and ladies getting down to the beat as they passed, which was cool.
It really makes me look forward to all the other uni visits. Today was only for a day and is about a 20 minute drive away, but the rest of them are going to be pretty long journeys where we'll have to crash out overnight on sofas and the such, which is going to be absolutely awesome.

Actual Arbiter

I went to a job interview at the Ocado warehouse yesterday, it looks like a far more tasking job than the Argos warehouse and the commute is an hour either way, but the pay is far better and it's full time.
It's only a shame that if they do offer me a position training will clash terribly with MCM and the holiday in Cuba, just have to see how they want to play it.
But if they do offer me a job I think I'll probably buy a car, as it will cut the commute time drastically, be more cost efficient, and I'll be able to afford it with the pay I'll be on.

Started playing Halo 3 yesterday, I wasn't even sure if I was going to get it at all as I'm really not a Halo fan. But because I would be playing it almost entirely for the multiplayer aspect I figured it was something I'd have to own from the beginning, as this is when most of the people I know will be playing it the hardest.
Pretty good so far, the single player's nothing special but a nice challenge and the multiplayer's great fun, if only hampered by a needlessly complex navigation system.
It was tragic going to the midnight launch with all the chavs acting like it was the second coming of Christ, I'll be saving that attitude for Episode Two.

I also got some more points so I could buy Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, otaku arcade brilliance, I just need some people to play it against.

And I randomly stumbled across a link to this on my travels, hats off to Pirelli for making the most mentally awesome tyre advert ever.

Back in the game

Shakugan no Shana is not the most amazing anime ever. It's very heavy with the paranormal fantasy and loads you up with plenty of crazy named characters and dramatic fates from the word go, and it looks like it's got plenty of the usual crappy combat that goes with these sort of titles lined up. The art's pretty good and I want to stick with it for the possibility of relationship developments and the such, but trawling through something I don't particularly want to watch is exactly what I said I'd avoid, and I don't know if I can hold with it for 24 episodes.
Although, due to the absolutely epic intro music I'm willing to give it another episode or two to impress me.

Watched the last episode of Ergo Proxy, and what a crazy series it is. It has so much philosophical subtext and references to famous philosophers that even with the added explanations at the end of each episode I couldn't keep up with it.
Individually most of the episodes were really brilliant, but overall the story was a little over my head. I was expecting to find a synopsis on Wikipedia, but it seems I need to leave it a little longer before anyone else understands it enough to write a thorough analysis of the story.

I've found my next title in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
4chan have been parading Yoko around as the next Konata, and I liked her design so I thought I'd give it a look. While doing my research I found the other characters designs to be very lack luster, but in watching the first episode I saw that this is entirely made up for in the very high quality animation. The comedy is absolutely brilliant, much like Samurai Champloo but more surreal. All the characters seem to have very defined personalities, Kamina especially being an absolute legend, and I can instantly see why so many people have been recreating his over-the-top one piece sunglasses.
The series has absolutely grabbed me and I'll be watching it with fervor.

Speaking of Konata, I've checked out Lucky Star for myself and have been converted.
The first episode was a bit slow, but the second had me lol-ing a lot. It's very much like Azumanga Daioh, but far cuter and with plenty of references to popular media throughout.
I'll definitely be sticking with this and Gurren Lagann, and with these two really good titles I think I have all the more reason to drop Shakugan no Shana, but we'll see.

Memories aren't an escape

Today I watched Otomo Katsuhiro's Memories, three short films based on separate manga.
The first called 'Magnetic Rose' is absolutely brilliant. An archetypal science fiction story with brilliant early 90s artwork, all backed by music from the outstanding Yoko Kanno. It really is a great display of how good anime can be, and has seriously made me want to watch Akira again.
The second, named 'Stink Bomb', is a comedic number with a jazz soundtrack, sort of feels like it was a bit ahead of its time.
And the third and last is a highly stylized short called 'Cannon Fodder'. It tells a steampunk story of an entire city covered in artillery, and every day the populace of the city go to work manning these weapons, firing at a distant unseen enemy. They hint towards the possibility that the enemy has been fabricated in order to keep the economy running, much a parody of the modern war efforts of certain nations, and very reminiscent of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Memories reminds me of the brilliance of directors that don't make films with the sole purpose of making money or attracting audiences, they did both of these things as a side effect of simply creating an amazing piece of artwork and storytelling. It's just such a shame how hard you have to look to find these things.

Not quite GMT

I just finished playing the TimeShift demo, and I feel like I should say it's a disappointment because it holds a fair bit of potential, but I never particularly had my hopes up.
It's backed by Sierra, which raised interest a little as they did create Half-Life the best game series this side of Europa, and Homeworld, arguably the greatest science fiction RTS ever conceived. And then I saw it was Developed by Saber, which dipped my expectations back to low orbit, first it lowered my optimism simply because I had never heard of them, but after some research it changed to the fact they made the smashing Will Rock, everyone's childhood hero.
The demo throws you into the game as some sort of time cop, a soldier with a suit that was designed to kick everything Isaac Newton taught us in the balls. Some narration from your suit's sexy sounding AI lets you helpfully know that it's broken and you're going to be left to fend for yourself, enjoy. The first thing you see is two soldiers beating up a couple of unarmed civilians, with no explanation as to anything regarding any story or plot I could only assume that these men had committed the gravest of crimes and completely deserved their punishment, but as I stepped out to add another boot to the face of the pleading man the soldiers began to fire at me. A quick look online revealed no negotiations option, so my only resort was to pick up a very handily discarded rifle and kill the soldiers.
The criminals thanked me and proceeded to open a gate leading to a battle between more of their cohorts and a military force. I dispatched the soldiers which I now had to consider my enemy, only for them to be replaced by a three story high mech which quickly laid waste to pretty much everything around me. I fled into some ruins and tried to cross a walkway to an adjacent building, that being the cue for one of the criminals to shout 'It's firing' and have the whole thing explode and collapse on my head. I load the last checkpoint and try pausing time long enough for me to run across the gantry, that works and I continue onwards.
Now comes my favorite bit. I see a criminal on his knees not far off with a soldier behind him, the criminal sobs 'I don't want to die' before the soldier executes him. I am appalled by this blatant insult to the Geneva Convention and decide to make good use of my time shifting powers, I load the last save and slow down time so I can shoot the soldier before he can execute the man, a cunning plan that I thought would earn me an extra ally for upcoming battles, but the soldier does not die and carries out the execution. Load again, this time I pause time, run up to the soldier and try to use the weapon remove feature I used on previous enemies, but the option does not appear and I end up with John Doe's brains splattered all over my slacks. Load again, and this time I simply pause time, run up the soldier and unload all my shotgun ammo into his face at point blank range, but still the soldier manages to execute the civvie before allowing me to kill him. So it seems the time manipulation ability only really has any affect when the game wants it to, great design.
I move on to fight through some more ruined buildings, enjoying the semi-destructible walls before finding myself at the edge of an electrified pool of water with no visible means to circumvent it. I look around for some sort of puzzle that I'm not doubt supposed to solve to progress, only to have my suit eventually tell me that I have to pause time to cross the water, as I can't be electrocuted without the passage of time. That makes sense, but after crossing the water I'm left feeling completely empty at how it took absolutely no skill whatsoever to solve the puzzle, kind of like when I got an A Level in Critical Thinking.
I move on to more combat, in which I help defend a position from enemy troops for a few moments before realizing that the enemies are being replaced as I kill them, confused I figure that the battle's for show and that I'm meant to merely be passing through the area, but a quick scout of my surroundings reveals no possible path to progress through. So I continue the drudgery of killing more respawning soldiers until a few moments later, when another mech walks past in the distance and stops just long enough to shoot down a fence allowing me to continue. I see the mech has been downgraded a little since our last encounter, as it has gone from decimating entire buildings and laying waste to the battlefield, to knocking down a fence.
I make my way through some more ruins to hear my suit's AI tell me, 'unstable surface detected.' It had been saying things earlier like 'threat detected' and 'heavy ballistics detected', which are fair enough, but unstable surface? I've spent the last 10 minutes running through a war torn city with buildings collapsing and blowing up all around me, but only now during this brief respite from battle does it decide to inform me that there is an unstable surface in close proximity. Of all dangers I am truly glad it has decided to illuminate that one for me.
I find out that this unstable surface is a large concrete pipe which I have to cross to continue, suspended in the air by a crane it becomes a seesaw puzzle, easily solved yet again by the ability to pause time. By this point the breaks in combat had become incredibly unsatisfying, and I almost found myself back on Google to make absolutely sure that there wasn't a diplomacy button I was missing.
I then made my way through a trench system merrily killing soldiers as I go, aided by the fact these unprofessional slobs seem to have zero concept of teamwork, before reaching another rebel base. Here I grab a mounted machine gun and hold ground again against what seem to be infinitely spawning enemies, until another mech plods along and decides to progress the story. At which point my suit tells me that I've achieved whatever the hell I was there to do and that's game over, leaving me to pat myself on that back at a job well done. Whatever the job was.
The whole experience reminded me of reading a typical internet fanfic written by an illiterate twelve year old, it'll have a great set up but only because it's based on an already existing story, and word for word it's going to absolutely suck. The futuristic setting with a rebel uprising trying to overthrow an oppressive regime wanted so desperately to be good, but I just felt as if I was playing a cheap sci-fi channel TV program. And the level layout and scripted events reminded me very vaguely of Half-Life 2, but again it utterly failed at any of the brilliant design that I've come to take for granted from the Half-Life series and the whole affair felt like it had been rushed through.
Collectively Saber Interactive design levels like that 12 year old, and unless you utterly love the concept of it there are better games to spend your money on.

So very dangerous

I watched 28 Weeks Later at Andrew's last night. It was a pretty cool film, nowhere near as G.I. Joe as I thought it would be, but I don't know if it was as good as the original though.
The original was a real survival horror, as all zombie films/games should be, and it was really British, which was awesome. The sequel was diluted with so many Americans that the only British part of it you really felt was the 'I've been there' factor in London, and it swayed more towards the action than the horror, which can work with the running zombies but you don't want to take that route too far in fear of pulling off a Resident Evil.
Also, the flow of the story felt really strange, it's like they couldn't go 10 minutes without killing off a main character. The action and main events were so consistent throughout the whole film that the ending predictably came as a bit of a disappointment, as it had no build up to it at all and was more of a conclusion than a climax.
I was also quite surprised with some of the scenes in it. It wasn't particularly gory in the sense of showing people get eaten and torn apart as they almost always had a zombie standing in the way, but a few other things were pretty cold. Like people running down a street and being engulfed in the flames of an airstrike, and one of the main characters being burned alive by a cleanup squad, very much reminding me of the cremator from Half-Life 2.
In all, I though it was good, and brought something new to the zombie franchise with the old Black Mesa military extermination squad to deal with as well as the mindless zombies.
If you liked 28 Days Later, check this out.

I'm talking to Andrew and Bertie about going on holiday to Cuba soon. Like in a month or so soon.
Bertie said he found a three star hotel with all inclusive for £450 for two weeks, being out of season is not only going to bring great prices but get rid of all the other tourists too, so it should be an absolutely epic holiday. He told me when he went the first thing he saw when he landed at the airport was 'SOCIALISM OR DEATH' in giant letters along a wall, and there are men with Kalashnikovs standing all over the place, I seriously don't know how I'll actually be able to withhold myself.
First thing's first though, I need to get myself a passport.

And also:
HEAD ROLL
was dangerous

Desu?

I finally got round to watching the last four episodes of Makai Senki Disgaea today, and I think I'm going to get back into watching anime. It's been so long since I used to sit and watch a good four episodes a day, I think the last thing I watched seriously was Initial D.
I had quite a long list of stuff I was intending to get and over the months that list's just been getting longer as I discover new titles and new stuff gets released, but I got rid of a few things from there that probably weren't going to be that good. If I'm going to start watching stuff again I don't want to get half way through a crap series and then feel like I've got to finish it off just because I've got that far, making it feel like a chore was one of the things that killed it for me last time really.
It's just a bit hard to trawl through the crap I've ended up sitting all the way through to get to the good stuff, but I should persevere, because when it gets good it really is totally worth it.
I'm going to start off with Shakugan no Shana, from one of the creators of Haruhi Suzumiya, which has made a good name for itself on the internets, so shouldn't be too bad.

Also, what is an absolutely epic thought, when I get a nine hour job a single day of work will be able to buy me ten manga books! A weeks wages will get me fifty!
Of course I'll be saving most of it, but every now and then I'll have to sacrifice a day for the good of the cause.
Money pwns.

I'm really going to have to seriously start bugging my Dad about getting me insured on the Focus, or at this rate I won't even have my licence this side of Christmas.
And then how am I supposed to become the next WRC champion?
Huh? How?!

Tovarishchi!

I got World in Conflict yesterday, a day before launch, nice one Play.
It really is great, the single player missions are constantly moving, have a lot of action and can get really tense. As well as having multiple secondary objectives you get medals depending on your performance in the mission, so the replay value's there, and that atmosphere's carried over into the all-important multiplayer very well.
The only problem is that people can't seem to join the games I host, so I can't have one on one battles with the Inquisitor or Haku when he gets the game, and I can't find any information on the problem online. But it's early days yet, and if it isn't fixed in a patch I'm sure solutions will appear on the forums.
Most importantly I think I just need to get better at it, I've had a couple of games at the top of the leader board, but it seems that more often than not clan Hitokiri are at the bottom of the pile. It really is all about using your units to the best of their ability, if you don't know what their strengths and weaknesses are you won't last a second. I'm sure I'll be looking to Haku for help with that when he joins the cause, he's linked me to tactical theory and unit guides before for the game Supreme Commander, and I'm sure he'll be just as eager to become the best on this new battlefield.

I got a call from Ocado about a possible position earlier today. While the commute would be nowhere near as easy, it would still be a much more preferable job to Argos. Word is I'll get another call on Monday or Teusday about going in for further processing.

And this cost money

I went to a hygienist at the dentists today, mostly to get the stuff they cement the braces onto your teeth off because my old orthodontist did a shit job, among other things. But I got more than I bargained for, as well as removing that stuff she knocked out a filling on one of my front teeth that I didn't even realize I had. Now I've got a massive hole in the side of my tooth. It doesn't hurt or anything now, but I know sure as sure it will later, hurt like all goddamn hell, and I'm just going to have to have another dentists appointment to get that replaced.
So I've got plenty of horrific toothache, injections into my gum and drilling to look forward to, and none of it will have had to happen if she just did her job. I know it was a mistake and all that, but it's a mistake that someone else made but is going to cost me dearly.
Happy fucking days.

Raised on TFC and a packet of crisps

Certainly did wake to TF2 pumped and ready to go, and what a game. It plays almost exactly the same as the original, and you may think that it obviously will because it's a straight up remake, but keep in mind TFC was released in 1999, and I was was playing it when I was just 10 years old. I'm pretty sure that's back when I went by the alias Grey Fox as well, the original Commissar!
The most noticable difference is the lack of grenades and choke points, in the original you'd have about five minutes of solid grenade spamming from both sides into the first choke point, it'd only be broken when a scout finally gets lucky enough to run the gauntlet and distract the defenders long enough to let enough of his comrades through to break the stalemate. Of course that's only on the attack and defend maps, but that is what I played for the vast majority of the time.
Dustbowl makes an executive return as my favorite map. But my second favorite map, the one with the church at the top, is nowhere to be seen! And I call it that because out of all of the TFC map lists I can find online it just isn't in any of them, and I thought it was one of the most popular maps. There's also a lack of Warpath and Rock 2, which made awesome use of the demoman's demo charges, a weapon that has also been removed. But with the cool new Hydro map and game mode it makes up for it enough to keep me occupied until they release them, which they damn well better do.
I'm also very impressed with how problem free it is, thinking back to the debacles that were the Battlefield 2142 and Supreme Commander launches makes me very grateful, and what's more is that this is only the beta! Maybe that's what they were sorting out yesterday, well played either way.
Along with TF2 comes the new Steam community, with recorded stats, avatars, a revamped friends system and personalized profile pages it's looking a lot more like Microsoft's Xbox Live, which is the approach all websites and games are taking now days. With most people filling out this information you could quite easily find out a lot of personal information about any of the thousands of random people you encounter on online games every day.
Truly, god bless the communication age, and godspeed to globalization.

Started reading Ender's Game last night, and I am extremely impressed. It easily kept my attention throughout, the writing was flawless, the characters believable, the genre is right up my street and it moves along at the perfect pace. If it keeps the level of quality it has started with I think it will easily become one of my favorite books, but of course achieving such a feat as consistency is so famously difficult in popular literature. Still, hopes are high.

Two more days...

Dire disappointment

The demo for the new Sega Rally went up on the Xbox marketplace today.
I really don't like arcade racers so haven't really been all that interested in this game, but pretty cars and interesting terrain deformation gave me enough reason to give it a spin. Bland track design and simplistic handling hit me in the face like a wet trout, it's an arcade racer alright.
The terrain deformation cuts tracks through the dirt, mud and snow leaving harder ground and faster lines behind it, or at least that's the idea, but taking the line exactly the same second time round is not easy, and basically impossible on an arcade racer like this. I could see in the video that as the car drove through these lines it bounced around like crazy, and my fears were confirmed when I played it for myself, as you go through the crosshatched mess of lines left by the other cars it not only impairs your handling, but actually lowers your speed. I found the only time this worked was when I drove on the far left of a stretch of road when all the computer controlled cars drove on the far right, then by the third lap I had created my own personal track. But the rest of the time it was a complete inconvenience.
What does look very good however is its selection of cars. The selection of cars on DiRT is not only limited but rather unbalanced. Sega Rally has what will look to be both a large and evenly balanced selection of rally cars, featuring such greats as the Impreza, Xsara, 206, Celica, Evo and most especially, the Ford Focus. If the full game has a 307 and C2 it will be a fierce list of rally cars indeed.
The sexy list of cars and the multiplayer are starting to sound more inviting the more I think about it, especially as the online racing will be both perfectly suited to the arcade style and a welcome change from the diabolical online DiRT. But I don't know if I can get over its downsides, and the fact it's nothing like real rally racing with all the cars starting together, ridiculously wide roads, and countries that aren't even close to anything in the WRC. American canyons and tropical islands? Get out.
I'll have to play the demo a bit more, but we'll see...

I preordered the Orange Box yesterday, after a big mess and whole load of hassle. First Paul went on my account and ordered it for me, but when I logged on none of the games were on my games list and the package was still available to buy, Paul contacted his bank to find that they were waiting for Steam to accept his payment. I tried to order it with my Mum's card but got declined as the servers were busy with so many people preordering it to get to be a part of the Team Fortress 2 beta starting today, which was lucky as I woke up today to find that Paul's payment had gone through overnight and TF2 was available to preload. A complete waste of time getting excited about playing that though, as the beta still hasn't started and there's no word for when it will. I just hope I wake up again tomorrow to find everything good and ready to go, I desperately need it to distract me through the last three days until World in Conflict.

I'm close to getting up to date with this years WRC.
I watched the second day of the Finland stage and can quite confidently say that that's going to be the best day of the year. The Finland courses are long gently winding roads through the most beautiful forests, and these long curves make for very high speed racing, aided by the fact that many of the drivers are from Finland and know the roads well. The second day's runs were especially good because they were one some of the WRC's most famous roads, I was quickly shown that it was fame well earned. Continuing the Finnish trend of long curving high speed roads it added constant rolling crests, so every other corner had the cars in the air. Which was especially exciting for my favorite driver, Hirvonen, who seems as at home with his car in the air as he does with all four wheels on the ground, he literally powerslides through the air as he puts his car sideways through jumps in preparation for the next corner that he can't even see until he's landing on it, I'm too scared to do that on DiRT, let alone real life.
A couple of massive offs didn't fail to disappoint, and the most spectacular jump of the day was performed by our very own Brit', Guy Wilkes, when he threw his Focus so high in the air that it smegged the front corner into the ground on the way back down giving himself hydraulic problems for the rest of the race, but it was totally worth it.

"End of an era"

I started the Call of Duty 4 beta on the 360 yesterday, and it's great. The first real awesome factor is the return of the death cam, which after you die replays about 5 second of footage from the perspective of the person that killed you as they killed you, which is good because you're never left feeling like you've been cheated and if you pull off an epic shot you can rest assured that the person at the receiving end of it's going to see it in all its glory. The customization system is very well done, you start off more than well equipped enough to compete, but as you rank up and complete challenges such as getting a certain amount of kills or headshots with a certain weapon you unlock many more attachments and explosives.
It's also great to have what looks like a really good middle eastern FPS coming up. But as anyone that knows me will know I much prefer an eastern European setting, and much to my delight I got just that as the second map loaded, and then to get me even more pumped it placed me on the Spetsnaz team, freakin' Spetsnaz! I didn't think it could get much better than this, but I was wrong.
After running around for a couple of minutes and dropping a few of people I got to see one of the enemy soldier's bodies up close and saw he was wearing an extremely familiar gas mask, but it couldn't be... The round ends and I get moved to the other team andOHMYGOD SAS! Running around dressed as the worlds best and listening to British voices shouting all around me was absolutely brilliant and such a welcome relief from G.I. Joe on the first map.
I was temporarily tempted to get this game for the 360 with the ranking and unlocks system guaranteeing plenty of fun challenges to get a lot of achievements, but as I play it I find myself in countless situations where I die and think to myself, "I would've blown them away if I was using a mouse and keyboard." Running around with a pad is fun for a while, but it's just going to have to be played properly. And this was completely reinforced when I played the third map, a large outdoors affair that is just ridiculously difficult to play on a console.

After spending the night at Andrew's we watched a bit of the British Touring Car Championship in the morning, which was awesome and I'd definitely be up to going to watch it with Andrew and Paul sometime, and Harry if he gets some time away from uni.
I really wouldn't mind getting into the Touring Car Championship, but it's definitely no WRC, I might have a look at it to tide me over between the '07 and '08 Rally Championships.

Really sucks to come home to find out Colin McRae has tragically died with his son and two other people in a helicopter crash, an absolute loss.
But if there is an afterlife, you know he's tearing it up with some of history's finest down some heavenly dirt roads right now.
A salute to you Mr McRae, you showed us what was possible.

Box man

Last night I went to see Noise Ensemble with my Mum at the local theater.
And that's an actual theater. A stage on which live performances are had, with amateur actors and musicians that are not prerecorded and run from a projector or paid ridiculously large sums of money.
A few months ago I saw a performance of taiko drummers at the same venue, I really thought they were great and would definitely go to see them again. Setting out yesterday I didn't expect the Noise Ensemble to thrill me as much as the taiko drums samurai beat did, but having an intro with techno tuned synths backing their main drums was a pretty well played maneuver to grab my attention, I wouldn't be surprised if I saw that particular piece again on a trailer for another Matrix film.
The second song was more drum dependant. If I were transported back in time and placed at the front of an army, clad in armor with broadsword in hand and asked to charge down a hill at another force of thousands of vicious, savage and ferocious enemy soldiers, I would do in an instant if that second beat was being drummed up behind me. It really was quite an emotional number for me.
The troupe was made up of surprisingly young people, and some quite foxy little ladies. And as such some of the performances were quite humorous, while this is all well and good I think I would have preferred if they were to exchange a couple of the comedy sets for more serious performances. One part of the set consisted of two of the guys playing xylophones together, and I thought it was an absolutely beautiful melody that was played with a lot of talent, I would have enjoyed hearing more of that and seeing less triangle related antics as they proved themselves to be very talented musicians.
In all, it was quite assuredly an enjoyable show which I would happily watch again.

Today I went for a little tour around the Argos warehouse, it was really a complete waste of time and it achieved absolutely nothing other than embedding the mundanity of the job we're applying for into our minds. But I don't mind, the warehouse is massive and really reminds me of Dead Rising, they've got the radio playing nice and loud, I can wear whatever I want, I don't think I'd mind at all being left to get on with my tasks for four hours a day from Monday to Thursday. And as it's from 6 'till 10 it fits perfectly into my diabolically off-kilter sleeping pattern, happy times.

Get-togethers today and tomorrow, officially bidding farewell to the uni students.
Of course it's more of a 'see ya later', as I fully intend on crashing all of their uni's fresher parties and making as many valuable contacts throughout England as possible. Todays uni students are tomorrows ruling class elite, I've got to make sure that they'll remember me when they're at the top.

20 dead, 22 to go

Psychonauts is pretty fun, and quite funny, but something about the atmosphere of the game really doesn't sit well with me, and I don't know if I'll be able to complete the whole thing.

I hooked up my iPod to my 360 yesterday, so now I can listen to the brilliant Initial D Eurobeat soundtrack while I play Forza, which will very much help get me through those long endurance races. I'm looking forwards to finally getting to a stage where I've got enough money in the career mode that I can buy a Ferrari and Lambo or two.

I also ordered Ender's Game by Orson Card from the excellent Book Depository yesterday, I should get that tomorrow, and the sweet, beautiful salvation from Battle Royale could not come any sooner.
Ok, it's not that bad, but I'm just really finding it hard to bring myself to read that thing right now.

I went shopping today in London, got some new threads and some better shoes to drive in, now I just have to wait for my Dad to finally insure me on the Focus so I can get going.

And hopefully I'll be able to make up some of the money I spent today quite soon, as the interview went well on Monday and I'll be going back to have a look around the warehouse on Friday. They've got like just over a hundred people working at the Argos warehouse at the moment so won't split too many hairs over hiring me, but they drop about forty to fifty of them before Christmas, so I won't have the job for long unless I can make myself one of the more memorable employees. But then they take a lot of people back on a while after Christmas, so even if I do get the job then get dropped it'll probably just be a break before I start working again.
But whatever, as long as I can work for a while and make some money back it'll be better than nothing.

Working girl

After stumbling across Twenty Sided -a blog featuring a webcomic based on the idea of what Lord of the Rings would be like if it were played out in a Dungeons and Dragons game- on a forum, I've been inspired to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy again. Which I've been thinking about doing for a while as not only have I not seen it for ages, but I've never seen the extended edition, so I'm looking forward to relaxing to that sometime soon.

I'm also on the way to getting Psychonauts after watching this rather amusing review of it. I thought the creator of those reviews seemed to be rather funny, backed up after I watched the other the reviews for both The Darkness and Fable, but have been extremely put off after he admits to being needlessly harsh in his latest review of Bioshock purely because being a dick sells, which is a problem I've had with a lot of people that everyone else love (hello Jeremy Clarkson) over the last few years.

Got an interview for a job tomorrow at the Argos warehouse.
Warehouse work is definitely what I'd prefer right now, not having to deal with the filthy masses, and it's really close to home so getting there and back'll take no time. Assuming I get the job, which I pray I do because the ability to buy things without feeling immensely guilty is quite an inviting prospect.

It's still just under two horrible weeks 'till World in Conflict, and it's been quite a long time since I've been this excited about a game, I can't wait.

What's happiness to you, David?

I watched Vanilla Sky last night. I was motivated to get it after reading about how it gave some inspiration to the Ghost in the Shell episode 'Make Up'. I really enjoyed it and thought it was definitely one of the best performances of both Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. A very interesting story, brilliantly directed, and has an awesome soundtrack, I'd recommend it to anyone.

I completed Bioshock today, got the bad ending as I was committed to harvesting the little sisters. But I didn't get either of the audio diary or gun upgrade achievements, missing a diary I can understand, but how I missed one of the upgrade machines is beyond me, I made very sure to explore every corner of each area, or at least I thought I did.
I'm going to leave it a while before I play though it again to rescue all of the little sisters, I should play through Dead Rising again and save all of the people in that, and get someone to help me kill Raam on Hardcore so I can start again on Insane.

I'm just about getting tired of DJ Tiësto's latest album Elements of life and am going to have to get the prior release, Parade of the Athletes, which has the epic remix of Barber's Adagio for Strings so it should be brilliant.

And on a last painful note, I've recently been complaining about how the 20 year old British Matthew Wilson is only two years older than me and is driving a Focus in the WRC, I thought that was heartbreak, but today I found out Andreas Mikklesen is competing with a Focus and was born three months after me! And I haven't even begun to learn how to drive...

Vroom vroom

I've decided to start watching this years WRC from the beginning, and what a brilliant decision that was, I now have 27 days of rally to sit through and have just finished the first three stages in Monte Carlo. I now know all of the drivers and the cars they drive, and watching each day is just absolutely brilliant, I didn't think I'd actually love it this much.
The final stage of MC was through the city, just like the famous F1 races, but to spice things up a little all the drivers were fitted with snow tyres, so it was completely drift central with all the drivers enjoying themselves and giving the crowd a real treat. Solberg in his Subaru had enough time ahead of his opponent to stop mid-race and do a couple of donuts for epic lulz. As a fan of the anime driving extravaganza that is Initial D I'm used to seeing fictional cars drift inches from fictional guardrails and roadside characters making sure they state that fact aloud at every possible opportunity, now while this is of course entirely possible I never really thought it could be done that seriously, but forget inches, Gardemeister was making it millimeters in his Lancer, it really reaffirms my faith that these people are the greatest drivers in the world, simply incredible driving.

And yesterday I had my first experience driving, an extremely generous friend by the name of Kiddy was kind enough to let me give it a go in his car in the Tesco car park at about four in the morning. All I did was drive in a little circuit and stop where I started, I did that three times because learning to pull away and stop smoothly is of course the first important thing to learn. And I'm extremely proud of the fact that even with this being my first time behind the wheel I didn't stall once, especially after a certain Catherine told me that I'd be bunny hopping my entire first lesson. Booyah! I'll be taking Wilson's Focus and competing in the WRC before you can say "Famous Takahashi brothers"!

Before that I was at Bertie's and got to try out his new synth, and as I have previously said I love my club music, and with that synth even my complete lack of any musical knowledge couldn't stop it being an instant rave as soon as you press a single key, and that's no exaggeration. If I ever buy any instrument it'll definitely be a synth, and I'd never, ever get tired of it. Not ever.

I'll be seeing Bertie again tonight as we take Zapdos for her final run, as he isn't renewing his insurance it'll sadly be goodbye forever. We'll make sure to honour her properly and play the music loud, honk at all the women, drive too fast, rinse the tyres and roll her into a tree, all the things we know she loved.
But it's not all tears, Paul passed his theory test yesterday and is well on his way to carrying the torch forwards in the next chapter of our lives.
And also congratulations to Harry, recently passing his practical and replacing his green licence with that all important pink one.

Now I just need to get myself a job and start saving for my Silvia.

Victory

The day is ours, comrades!
Pub quiz again, and we busted that joint like Ronald Reagan. The night was busy and the questions were hard, and with previous losses of half a point and one and a half points, to win with a two and a half point lead was quite pleasing. Ended up walking away with £6.25 in loot, that's £50 divided between eight party people.
Nice to finally win, as so many people will be leaving for university soon these events over the next couple of weeks will be the last time I see many of them, possibly forever. So I've gotta make the most of the willing ones while I can.

Taking a step back, I watched Rocky last night and actually quite liked it this time through, I don't know if I liked it enough to keep me going through the reputedly poorer sequels but I definitely enjoyed it. I think the training and final fight could have gone into more depth, but from what I've seen of the other films it looks like they're got that covered.

I also played the demo for World in Conflict and absolutely loved it. In the campaign you take control of a small force playing only one part in a larger battle, which I find much more enjoyable than the usual theme of controlling all the allied forces on the entire battlefield. The multiplayer looks to be really unique with the ability to join a game already in progress and choose to be either an infantry, armor, air or support commander, changing which units are available to you. It also has a very useful friends list and clan system, both of which are all too often overlooked in real-time strategy games.
I'm really looking forward to the full version of this game, and especially getting behind the soviet war machine online.

Reading about World in Conflict lead me to discover the film Red Dawn, which serves as inspiration for the game. Featuring Patrick Swayze (boo), Charlie Sheen (yay!), Lea Thompson and Jennifer Grey (cool), it basically turned out to be a wannabe freedom fighter's day dream with loads of guerrilla warfare and communist oppression, so obviously I'm going to absolutely love it.

Today sees the release of the New Zealand stage of the WRC. The first day was awesome, displaying the brilliant NZ courses to have beautifully smoothly winding dirt roads, absolutely ideal for drifting all the way through, combined with the famously stunning NZ countryside it's really fun to watch. And now that I know the names of Gronholm, Loeb and Hirvonen, it's much more interesting to get into, knowing the different drivers styles, records and personalities really adds that all important depth to any sport.

Getting pumped

I was inspired yesterday to have my weekly workout by the awesome Rocky 1 and 3 training montages. So I pumped iron for a couple of hours and got myself ripped, job done.
I've never actually seen the Rocky films and do feel like I'm missing out, even with how bad some people say some of them are it just feels like one of the classics you have to see. I did see some of the first one many, many years ago and thought it was incredibly boring, but I think I was too young to appreciate it at the time, so I'm definitely going to give the first another spin soon and see how it goes.

I also had a pretty sweet idea last night.
You know those stories that have sections where you have to make choices at the end?
"If you choose the left corridor and head towards the light, go to page 78.
If you choose the right corridor and head towards the radioactive glow, go to page 154."
Well I always really enjoyed them when I read a few back in my late Primary school-early-Secondary school days, so I've decided to write one of my own! It'll take ages, but I think coming from my teenage mind it'll be a laugh in the end.
I just can't decide if I want to make it serious and an actual test of judgment and intellect, or an absolutely mental game of chance and insanity.

As for today, I've spent most of it getting clubbed out.
Anyone that knows me knows I love to dance, I just can't get enough dance, techno, club, trance, electronica and all kinds of synth music. I've actually had 1.fm's dance station playing for quite a large portion of each day for the last few months, internet radio is so underrated, if you find a good provider (1.fm for the win!) it often provides a far better selection of music than anything you could provide with your own stagnant selection of beats.
And today I gave ejay's Dance 7 another spin and made the beginnings of what looks to be quite a sweet tune, I doubt I'll ever turn it into anything presentable though.
All of it's just getting in gear for a night at Liquid, I can't wait.
Frankly Liquid isn't the best club in the world, the layout's very nice and the place has a very good atmosphere, but with early closing times and a tendency to play one too many R&B remixes does drag it down quite a bit, still loads of fun though. Either way it's all I've got until my friends decide to join me for an epic night at the legendary Fabric, you know that'll be something special.