All The Small Things

All The Small Things first go (Rock Band)
Originally uploaded by jimiminar

Another short 'n' sweet Rock Band post. After a brief chat with my good buddy Will, purchasing some extra songs for Rock Band seems like a really good idea, so amongst the two songs I bought was "All the Small Things" by Blink 182 of course. (the other song was Buddy Holly - Weezer =hawt!).

Anyways, I took on both songs in a custom setlist in the Band World Tour as the now hall-of-fame famous Bobion the 3rd, i.e. me on guitar and vocals, and they were the results. Pretty chuffed at that, and the guitar is pretty simple so no reason I can't 100% that in the near future.

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So... Rock Band is awesome if you didn't know

100% Vox on Paranoid (Medium)
Originally uploaded by jimiminar

I want to do a whole post on the awesomeness of Rock Band but whilst working through the vocal solo tour on medium, I managed to snap this, pretty proud of that.

EDIT: I've since attempted Paranoid in Bobion the 3rd's (a band made up solely of me, lol) World Tour, so did this song Guitar @ medium + Vocals @ Medium and I got 100% on the vocals there. If memory serves me, I got about 98% on the guitar. Anyways, couldn't get a snap of that as it was half way through a 4 song set.
So if people don't believe me I'll have to give the song another go and produce proof like this baby.
Here's trying to be proudtive this weekend but finding it very hard with the distraction of the multitude of instruments that now lie scattered across my living room :s

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Rock Band EU details released finally!

I was just goin about my normal lunchtime internet browsing when I stumbled on an article that Rock Band is finally been given a European release date.
Good news you're thinking, I had the opportunity, thanks to my good buddy Adam to try the US version many many months ago - probs around 6 months ago. First off, I was very miffed that the wait is so long (release date May 23rd) they ("they" being either EA or MTV, or a combination of them both) decided to shaft us even more in the PAL territories.
Usually when it comes to pricing, they don't actually convert the currency but rather lazily they swap the $ sign for a £ sign. Whilst that's not great, it's something we Europeans have gritted our teeth and beared with, but the Rock Band pricing is ridiculous.
They've decided to, rather than sell the game + guitar, drums, mic all in one package, and instead sell just the game on it's own and then the instruments seperately. Not only that but the instruments alone will cost £130 with the game expected to retail initially at £50. What's worse is remembering that the US got this over 6 months ago AND for the price of approximately £90. This article on Kotaku, particularily the comments reiterate my anger at these decisions.
I always said that I would be getting it when it is finally released, but now it seems simply too much of a ripoff - I really hope that people have some sense and stay away come end of May, and force them to drop the price hard and fast.

EA and MTV, you've just lost my patronage.

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An Apple a day keeps Microsoft away...

Hey hey hey! Just doing a mini-post from work, a habit which I could possibly develop if workload is low, but anyways, here was me saying I would blog more, and oh crap! we're already a month down of 2008. My friend Adam has decided to go on a solo
holiday to Amsterdam, and he's documenting his travel adventures here, so go check that out, it's got lots of lovely pictures (which can be enlargened oh yes!) and it's well written, but I've got a slight bias there.

Anyways, Adam was going through selling a lot of his stuff, and naturally being one of his good friends, I got first dibs on some of the stuff. I got a few games, Halo 3 legendary edition (yes, the one with the helmet! :D) and the ultimate amongst the list is the Mac Mini. Slightly embarassingly I have not properly set it up, but what began with mere curiousity to the Apple approach, is slowing becoming fanboy status of the sliding scale. I'm not there yet, but I would only keep Windows for games and really the only games I stick on my PC have been WoW and the football manager series, and it is possible to get Mac versions for those, and if that's not enough, thanks to the Macs being Intel-based, it's much much easier to get Windows apps or indeed Windows to run natively without any hacky emulators and the like.

I am slowly going to make the transistion. Although not really an Apple product as such, but around the same time, I've been checking out some podcasts. It kinda started out with ExtraLife Radio (please check out this guy he is super talented, so much so a part of me resents him) and having that play whilst I've been working through the tiresome later stages of the career in Forza 2. Oh yes, please check out the rest of the site, the web comic he makes is absolutely pr0, I stumbled on it thanks to the heavy WoW content much earlier on, but basically it's a geeky comic, so win!
This led me to check out iTunes, again with the Mac influence (I've tried it before and found it rather clunky compared to Winamp). Anyways, I will eventually get an iPod classic (I know, too many Apple products), so it's good for me to get familiar, make sure all my music is added etc. Anyways, I have to say that using the iTunes store to find podcasts is awesome, so I've added all my old subscriptions and a couple new ones, like the Jonathan Ross one which I still need to check out.

I also took this opportunity to check out the diggnation podcast which is really really good. I've got the HD one so I can enjoy it in all it's lovelyness through the 360. Anyways, it's basically two guys (which actually work for digg I later discovered) that have a chat on a couch over some popualr digg stories drinking beer. It doesn't sound much as a concept, but it's pretty godamn entertaining, and the two boucne off each other really well. It's so good in fact, I've downloaded some of the back catalogue as I really don't mind the chat about old stories such as the Halo 3 4 player online coop announcement etc etc. Yeah so check it out, I did it and think it's awesome.

All this podcasting stuff got me thinking that maybe I could knock one together, just have it be a light-hearted topical chat/rant show. From my limited past experience it is best to have 2 contributors, just 1 and it's just a monologue, not that great, any more, and there's just words everywhere. So, I'm appealing to the intermawebs to see if someone would like to be a co-presenter of some kind. Scott Johnson of Extralife seems to simply record his skype conversations, so it wouldn't be too hard to get up and running, and plus it would mean that I would be posting to here more often, so it's all good. Comment me up and that would be cool.

Anyways, posting in my lunch hour when I really should be lunching.
Take it easy

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Happy new blog spot 2008!

Yes, it's been a long time coming, but here's a fresh new post on me blog! Crowds rejoice!
It is a little bizarre that the gap has been such a huge 'un as it's not like there hasn't been things to post about.
Probably the biggest change, which I alluded to in some posts ago was the fact that I have a job! horray! I've finally gone and joined the rat race, and have been slowing waking up to the realisation that I should no longer see myself as a student anymore.
Obviously this is more of a "hey Internets! I'm not dead yet!" type message (of course, I hear you all cry), so content is actually a bit on the sparse side. I'm not sure if I can be bothered to catch up on some of the major events of the last 3 months or so, that's not to say there haven't been that many.
Along with the jobness, I've managed to get my own place and all the fun that has been getting that all sorted, and settling in. Also of course, there have been some pretty huge releases which I have purchased in the fields of music and games, possibly the most immediately significant of those being the latest Coheed album and Halo 3, but more of those later.

...And to wrap up the post, it might be worth jotting down some new year blogging resolutions which I will attempt to keep. I think the first one would be of course to blog more, and leading on from that, I've never been much of an online blogger, I usually have to force myself to blog and then upload it later which usually leads to mammoth posts which trail on for too long, kinda like how this one is turning out. So yeah, more online blogging, prefer the better, short but sweet, a quick judgement on some news article I've read, we'll see how it goes...

Till then, take it easy and watch this space, there is a lot more to come...

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Rhythms of the World, come forth! (backdated 23/07/07)

Hey, overdue post here, last weekend I was invited by my good friend Will to the Rhythms of the World festival in his own backyard, Hitchin.  Now due to the way the trains work, if I was to solo the trip, it would mean travelling into the centre of London, going via the Underground to another hub in London, and then back out and northwards to Hitchin.  Will offered to pick me up (and drop me off) at Milton Keynes Central, one of the main stops towards London.  This was very advantageous as it cut the journey effectively in half so I was all in favour.  The festival fell on the weekend of the 14th July, so the (revised) plan was to head down on Saturday morn and return back on the Monday, just before Will went off to work.

Trains were fine, and after a bit of traffic getting out of Milton Keynes, Will getting slightly annoyed at the sheer volume of the number of roundabouts, we were on our way to the festival and the alcoholic oblivion beyond :D.  Will stressed getting the earlier train to allow for more drinking, and well we arrived in Hitchin with about half an hour before the festival officially started LOL.  We went via his sister's flat, currently unoccupied, to fill up cooler bags with beverages and then we were on our way.

First stop was off to see a band on one of the main stages that was promised to be in the same mould as Enter Shakiri.  Unfortunately that was not so, the band that actually turned up produced nothing greater than watered-down 3 minute emo songs.  A promised highlight (thanks Will) was their completely unexperimental cover of the dance hit "Castles in the Sky", which when the rest of the band kicked in created nothing more than shapeless noise - nice one guys, you were so good, I can't even remember the name of your band.

Next stop was the other main stage for the Chris Phillips Band which many held in high regard, the band forming after the split of former local band Ardent Kicks, and Tom, one of Will's mates, was brother to the Chris from which the band drew their name.  By this time a bit of a crowd was forming, and front man Chris milked it for all it was worth, and the set was genuinely enjoyable - their stuff being quite folksy thanks to Chris' acoustic, but also some electronic and synth elements included to deepen the sound.  One for the future here hopes, the guys were extremely good, very tight - Dan the drummer is held in exceptionally high regard for his skills although the set didn't allow the freedom for him to show off, plus speaking with Chris later that night was pretty cool, a stand up guy - I wish you guys the best.  As I mentioned to Chris in the little chat I had with him, the band coped very well the technical difficulties that struck Dan's kit a couple of times throughout the set.  Rather than feigning excuses and mass shrugging, it was inspiring to see Chris take the initiative, and get the crowd involved.  That involved the classic sing-along and clapping with the instruments dropped out.  Another bit of fun was the Mexican wave that was sent back through the crowd which actually made it back to the front a couple of times, which was quite smart.

With the early highlight of the day already over, it seemed appropriate to take a breath (and get more beer) so we headed over to the acoustic stage to chill out (if memory serves me correctly, it gets a bit hazy from here on in, thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol that we were drinking).  The absolute name escapes me but next highlight was an Orchestra that did classical covers of modern songs - it couldn't fail to be entertaining so we all set about being there.  Some food later and we headed back to the first main stage in what was already an impressive crowd but the sound seemed screwed up.  There didn't seem to be any amplification going on, so it was very hard to hear them over the general hubbub of the crowd.  It was a shame as they promised to be very good, so we took our leave -  I can't remember if we went back to the acoustic stage or perhaps even the George for the first time.

Next performance we couldn't miss was the Easy Star All Stars (I think that's what they were called, where is my programme?..), and we didn't miss them.  This goup were responsible for remixing popular albums like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Radiohead's OK Computer in a reggae inspired fashion.  Properly liquored up the crowd were really starting to enjoy it, lots of people dancing, our substantial group as well and even I showed off some of my moves towards the end.

It was after those guys that I met one of the Irish girls (I want to say her name was Fiona oh dear :s), and in my merriness I got her to say lots of things, practically anything that came into my head, starting with all the cliches like "Top of the morning to ya laddie!"  I'm afraid I got quite smitten pretty quickly, and that is quite worrying that I can get like that after such a short space of time. It actually got me thinking about certain voices, or perhaps accents can, just on their own, be very hot.  I actually thought of Koel, particularly one of the times when I went up to Cov to see everyone and she left this incredibly long answer phone message, but it was cool to listen to her voice a couple of times hehe.  Anyways, back to the festival...

Later on in the day, we were back in the George (I'm pretty sure) for the performance of another person that Tom plus others knew (it seemed Tom knew the majority of Hitchin) and his band at the back of the beer garden.  They were fine without being particularly exciting but it was at this point that I discovered that, upon reflection, quite naturally, that they had a Ceilidh (look up spelling) on in the town hall.  I tried to persuade at least one person including this girl I've never met, who it turned out to be the girlfriend of the guy whose band we were watching LOL.  A little disappointed that noone would join me for a ceilidh, I decided to go check it out on my own, and hoped that I would find another odd person over who would be my partner (for those not in the know, Ceilidh's are dances that generally operate in groups of 2 or 4).  Hanging about on the fringes didn't seem to help much, and I didn't feel bold enough to ask a stranger to dance, so after what was a probably short time, I headed back dejected that it didn't work out *mimes sad expression with fingers on face*.

 

The final act we had to see on day 1 was this very large, latin-inspired percussive act which amongst its lineup had one of Will's friends, Dave's dad.  They were also a lot of fun and with that sealing the end of the day, we promptly headed over to the George and the other pubs closeby.  Some more drinks later, and a trip to the loo and I lost people, which was very scary, I was thinking oh crap oh crap oh crap, I actually left this one pub and then joined the queue to get back in just in case I missed some ppl despite me having a big look. Fortunately, Will randomly turned up so it was all good. We went inside the pub and played some fuseball which I lost after taking a promising early lead - shame.

 

We returned back to Will's pretty knackered and pretty much went straight to bed.  The next day was going to be more of the same, but we chilled for a lot of the waking day playing Call of duty 2 and Forza 2 on Will's 360.  We went down at about 8 to have the rest of the group attack us for not being more prompt and not getting into town at 12 like they all did.  The pub had a hardcore chiller set up outside cooling some beer cans which could be ours for just a £1 each -bonus! We got some of those and then got into the live drum 'n' bass that was on at the end of the beer garden.  Enjoying that as much as it's physically possible we thought it was best to leave and headed over to Club 85, the "indie stage" but in fact a club - the clue's in the title.  We were off to the see the last act of the festival, the Eagles I believe was what they were called.  Yeah, they were pretty cool, had essentially a young lineup, with this older guy doing a lot of spoken word which was pretty cool.  They also had a fair few guests come up on stage including a 2nd drummer which Will met at the bar just before, and a woman singer to do a song.  We then met back up with the group to finish off the beer supplies which were a little low on the ground.

 

The next day I only just made the train, the timing being very tight.  It is very strange that I am always tired and/or hungover when making these commutes back to Wem, why is that?  Overall a pretty good weekend, spent a lot of money, and got a bit sunburnt on my neck, but it was a lot of fun.

Here's pencilling in the weekend for next year.

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Racing Game Improvements...

Hey, I was prepared to post about my thoughts concerning forza 2 and how it compares to pgr3, but it all got a bit waffly and unfocused so I've binned that, but some "final" thoughts on how the genre could be improved will be listed here.

 

First off, The idea of racing your "ghost", your previous best attempt/time is a genius one. I'm not too sure who came up with it, but it's a great idea, probably many years old, but I think it's time for a change perhaps.  When I am performing some kind of time trial, my ghost provides a visual representation of if I'm up or not, but when I am very close to my ghost time, i.e. just behind, the thing just becomes too big a distraction a lot of the time, and generally I either completely miss the breaking spot for the lack of being able to see it, or risk breaking later than my ghost and inevitably miss the turn-in.  Perhaps it's just me who suffers from these complaints and I should shut up, but no, here's how we're gonna fix it people...

The Forza series have a rather smart system in-race whereby the racing line and the required braking is displayed on the track in a variety of colours.  Now, my suggestion is to take this idea and transpose your ghost's performance into a visual much like this.  So, instead of racing what the game considers the optimum line and breaking, it would instead show the lines and breaking performed by your ghost.  They could even colour it the ghostly blues and greys if they so wished.  I think this would be a better system, as you could then explicitly see what lines were taken and how late you braked last time round.  You could then see clearly see where you weren't maximising the track when turning out of the corner, or which apexes you are simply not hooking up.  Also this way, if you are especially slow, say you fall off the track, with the ghost line implemented, you won't lose the valuable information which you would normally, cos the ghost car would be on the other side of the track.

One thing I particularly enjoy with Forza is the recording of all the times and also the in-race telemetry.  Despite how much valuable information could be extracted from someone's driving style, a lot of it is useless in that respect.  If I'm honest the friction levels exerted on each tyre does not help me unlock where I went wrong, or where one of the top players are supremely better than me.  A lot of the time if I push on the telemetry I stay in the default screen, and watch the inputs the best in the world make.  It is actually quite shocking at times watching a replay of the best time on a time trial (where the car used is fixed) and have myself thinking, yeah the guy's neat but nothing mind-blowing, and then watching my best replay and getting a bit embarassed on how much my car is sliding about.  That being said I use the friends leaderboard to rate my skills, and for the majority of the time trial times (where it is the most equal, same car, no upgrades, tunes etc) I am the quickest out of the couple of friends who also play the game.

So yeah, my suggestion on how improving the telemetry is really a step towards the kinda telemetry that professional racing series, not unlike F1, are exposed to.  That being, I want the lap times posted on the scoreboards split into each timing section, so I can a better understanding on where the best are making the time/I am losing the time.  Along with that and an extension to the inputs that players put in, instead of what the current inputs are as shown in the telemetry at the moment, they should be recorded over time, plotted in a graph if you will.  And why not stop there? I would also like to have the "best" inputs plotted against mine - I would like to see where they get on the throttle quicker than me, where they brake later.  I would want all the inputs, throttle, brake and steering input available in graph form to be compared against my inputs.

Although most probably won't have the time or patience to explore this, I for one, would especially enjoy the opportunity to analyse and learn from this information, as I can't help feel for all the effort, the current telemetry in forza is a bit lacking, in that respect.

 

 

 

Here's just trying to sow some seeds...

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King Kong? King my ass!

Hey peeps, To skip a long story short, I borrowed the King Kong game for the 360 as it boasts some easy achievements, and while playing it I thought it's probs best if I watch the film as well. Some torrenting later and I was in possession of the film and decided to watch it last night.

First things first, it is beautifully shot, featuring some amazing locations which Jackson has become quite famous for, but I have a few criticisms, some of them genuine, some slightly less serious but no less apparent.

One thing I became very aware of was how the film ultimately decided how the audience should be feeling towards characters in the film. When finally King Kong made his appearance and he ran off with the female lead back to "his den" or whatever it was, we had Ann doing tricks, and actually had Kong play games with her, and what is probably the closest thing to laughing. It was incredibly obvious that the direction was to make the audience relate with the ape and think that he may not be quite the monster that we all first thought. Rather than let the audience make their own conclusions on who the "bad guy" is, the audience were given one option, and that was to be sympathetic towards Kong. I can concede that the film is an obvious blockbuster for the masses, and thus can't really contain any controversial moments or leave things open to interpretation - A Movie for dumb film-goers. Maybe in this instance Jackson is a genius and has shot it perfectly, but I'd still prefer to not have my feelings chosen for me and actually be challenged during a film.

Anyways, back on track, and possibly from an anthropology point of view, I wasn't aware that Gorillas - the silverback Gorilla is the obvious grounding for Kong, he even possessed the silverback on screen - were known to play games in adulthood, and able to understand humour. It is well known that chimpanzees display these traits, but Kong is not a monkey - although I was quick to refer to Kong as "the monkey" during my viewing. Maybe I am being short-sighted, and it's probably obvious that the necessary research into gorilla sense of humours was done, and that I am making empty claims, or that this stretch of the truth was used as an obvious tool to sympathise with the monkey as mentioned earlier.

Along the same lines, when Kong makes it to New York and tracks down Ann (although she finds Kong, which is another thing I'm annoyed at) he goes Ice-skating - WTF!? Fair enough that a gorilla would/could be surprised by their lack of balance on ice, but to spin round on their ass, and do that kind of mon key-laugh-noise is ridiculous - again reminding us that maybe Kong isn't a bad guy.

Moving slightly into the realm of biology and animal behaviour, I have reservations on one of the main storytelling dynamics that they decided to deploy. That being, Ann seemingly "falling in love" or being the only one to understand Kong. During the fight scene between Kong and the Dinos (WTF?!? rant about that later lol), which was drawn out too much imho, Kong was the obvious protector of Ann, and it's fair enough to align yourself with Kong top stay alive on an undiscovered island full of savage natives and oversized creatures - I think every girl can agree with that. My disagreement comes from her getting incredibly emotional when they were attempting to subdue Kong, read: not kill, but simply knock out - despite the monkey being on a rampage to get to her, killing several men in the process. Do/will animal acitivists get incredibly emotional at a hunter giving something like a lion a tranquiliser to stop it eating them, when it's running straight at them - I'm not sure, but I'd like to think not.

Something that happened twice in the film is Ann seeing an amazing sunset/dawn/whatever and going "beautiful", and then almost trying to teach Kong to understand the beauty of the view. It seemed just silly, and looking back, cringeworthy. I was half hoping Kong to fully understand and reply, perhaps in a Bob Hoskins voice, "Boo-ti-full". That would have been the icing on the cake.

Other things that just straight up pissed me off were some storytelling elements that were just used for effort mostly without a lot of thorough thought. The first is the natives, fair enough, they have to be in the film to have the immortal scene of Kong grabbing the tied up woman of virtue true from a pole etc. These natives, obvious athletics fans, were able to effectively pole vault off the island to their marooned vessel to steal Ann, but once their purpose of offering her up as a sacrifice, they politely exited the film, and were never seen again - how convenient.

Next is the inclusion of Dinosaurs WTF?!? I thought this film was supposed to be about a giant monkey /sigh. Primitives and a big fuck-off ape were obviously not enough as backdrops to Skull Island that they decided "fuck it! It's an undiscovered world, that warrants dinosaurs to still be knocking around there" A few weeks back, there was an announcement that Jackson and Spielberg were teaming up to make a Tintin film. I couldn't help feel that perhaps the inclusion of dinosaurs was a tip of his hat, an homage to Spielberg's adaptations of Michael Crichton's Dino-themed books.
Anyways back to the dinosaurs in THIS film, and the sauropod stampede seemed a pointless excitement builder, and the big pile-up at the end was actually comic, rather than thrilling. It's a shame that despite the advancement in special effects, the group running in the herd (how did they not get crushed?!?!) still looked slightly out, the lighting obviously not recreated in either the blue screen stuff or CGI stuff, it just looked a little dodgy, although not a criticism of the film, just the limitation of the technology.
Anyways moving back to the dinosaurs, and the emergence of a T-Rex, called a V-Rex in the game, comes after it grabs the iguana-type lizard that was chasing Ann. Now, like today's predators, it is wise to predict that they would only eat once every 3 days, so it seemed weird, that after eating this lizard, which was about as big as the dino's head, that it would decide to go after size 4 Ann, which is effectively a drop in the ocean for satisfying the T-Rex's hunger, but boy did he try. I know it doesn't make for a thrilling film if it recognises that she is there, but continues eating the lizard (which would take a long time actually), but it just goes against the simplest of animal behaviour.
Continue that contradiction, and we have not one, not two, but three T-Rexs after Ann, who is now in the possession of Kong. Now instead of just trying to kill Kong, which would provide a much more filling meal, all 3 seem bent on chasing the morsel that is Ann - stupid I know. Also, going back to animal behaviour, top predators today like lions are not pack hunters, but in fact solitiary predators - so why are three T-Rexes working together for a reward that doesn't even split well one way, let alone three ways. I know if it was taken out it wouldn't make it a very good film, but maybe just one T-Rex would have been ok, three is just OTT.

I will close by saying simply this: I am pleased that I can say that I've seen the film but am not richer from the experience. If asked if I would recommend the film, I would say that it's got to be seen to be believed, and there are times when it's so bad it's good, but the mentality towards films is overrated and frankly done to death, one of the biggest cliches. I give King Kong the Brown Ribbon (a la consolevania).

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Northampton nor Telford... erm ..ampton

Hey all, been a while since I've checked in but not a lot of things have changed since my last admission to the intermaweb.

Probs one of the biggest things that has happened in recent weeks is the event of a possible move to Northampton with Adam, a move which has fallen through I am sad and a little angry to say.

Let's go back a few weeks to the day of my interview with Telford based company Midland Computers. I was up for the role as web programmer and was given a lift to their premises by my Uncle. The job had it's allure as it was a relatively local job and "could" be commuted from Wem, although if I obtained the job, I would aim to move out of Wem, perhaps to Shrewsbury. Anyways, that aside, combined with a recon trip to suss out where it was, and our efforts to find the place on the day I discovered that the company is nowhere near the centre of Telford, and frankly a bitch to get to.
Nonetheless I went into the interview with a lot of hope that I could get the job. Saying that I am pretty sucky in interviews, getting far too nervous unfortunately. Coming out of the interview, I felt relieved that it was over, felt the interview could have gone better (as always) but thought it was alright enough to warrant a 2nd interview.

I got home a little later, just coming down from the stressball I had ingested prior to the interview, and my old friend Adam came up on the MSN with some important news.

Quite a while ago, Adam had this crazy idea of sorting out houses/flats in a Friends style that we could all live in, those people being me, Adam, Billy and the possibility of Eric and/or Derron etc. Well it all sounded pretty good, but I treated it like one of those pipe dreams, or a large "what-if" question. Anyways enough of the background, Adam came on MSN to say that he's found a house, and proposed that I take up the last and fourth spot.

The timing couldn't have been worse - here I was about to potentially commit to working in Telford for a lengthy amount of time, and I was asked to commit to living in Northampton, a fair distance the other side of Brum for a fair amount of time. This was only made worse by an extremely stupid and choking deadline, my signature was required in at most 4 days.

The simple fact that the Telford job was more than slightly inconvenient to get to, meant that I was considering going for the Northampton house, the thinking being that I can continue my so far unsuccessful search for a job there, being closer to the larger cities etc.

Put on the backfoot, and having this pressure to commit forced upon me there and then, I hastilly agreed to go down to Northampton for the weekend, Adam sorting out a viewing of the prospective house.

I arrive at Northampton station and was met by Adam and then when straight to the house. The house itself was amazing, large spacious rooms, good kitchen, back garden for bbqs, it was a great house. It also had the cherry on top, the icing on the cake, that being the 3rd storey or the attic, was one giant room cut off from the rest of the house with a door and a staircase. Adam was saying that they were going to turn it into an entertainment room, and rightly so, it was an awesome expansive space.

We left the house shortly after, and I was starting to give serious weight to a move to Northampton - Adam was keen for that to happen too, and he was more than willing to sell the house and the surrounding area to me. The formalities of the visit aside, and I was left to enjoy myself as a guest with Adam. That meant promptly acquiring some beverages and then putting on the FA cup which we had missed, but had been fortunate enough for Adam to record.

A few beers later and we then moved on to the new and very shiny Halo 3 beta and spent a considerable (to under-exagerate) time, learning maps, new gametypes and the tactics that go along with it, not to mention pushing up our rank levels in the ranked matches.

The next day I had originally planned on going back, but too long spent in spoons eating and creating "Plate-face Man"(tm) meant I missed my train, but I could afford another day in Northampton, and so it was. That meant more Halo 3, a bit of filming for a documentary that Adam was co-producing for some coursework - not sure exactly what it was although they had me saying "it's a cunting disgrace", so there you go.

Late in the evening, another suprise from Adam, we paid (literally) a visit to the Casino which Adam frequents. So much so that some of the staff know him on a first-name basis. The Casino itself was actually quite a lot of fun - Adam treated me to having a go on two tables of poker, and well I didn't get very far, cos well I was a bit nervous that we were playing money and as my Red Faction friends will testify, I can't bluff for shit, but saying that it was a lot of fun. I was quite proud of winding up this guy commonly known as "Mad Dog" so much so he was physically rubbed his face - yep, I bluffed him good, all I had was a high King lol.

That aside, I had enjoyed my time in Northampton, we went back after the Casino, got some food and watched a french free-running-themed film which was actually not too bad. I had to leave quite early the next morning, but I had all decided that the move to Northampton was the right choice. I had visions of getting my life back on track after what has been a year of stalling it has to be said.

But, as the twist in the story goes, it was not to be. I got a call from Adam a couple of days later in which he told me that him along with Billy and Wu, the other housemates had a vote to who should be the fourth and last housemate. It was made out to me that I was the only option and when I had had my arm twisted rather easily, I assumed that that was that. But as I said they all had a vote, and Billy and Wu had decided to go with someone else, someone they knew from University I assumed. Adam backed me, but unfortunately he (and myself) was 2-to-1 down. He told me that he was sorry, and there was no real way to change it. I had to be forever diplomatic on the phone, but I was pretty much fuming underneath but I'm sure that I covered it well enough and Adam didn't detect.

I was angry at Billy and Wu, but had no right to be, but for the short time I felt I had to dump the blame somewhere. No, it was not their fault, they would have to live with this person for probably a year, perhaps more and it was the blaringly obvious truth that they simply did not know me that well, I was effectively a random in their eyes. With the roles reversed I would make the same choice, and it's not even a difficult choice to make, in all honesty. For a time I was particularily angry with Adam, although I didn't tell him as much. It was his fault that he pushed me into thinking that it was a viable option, and had me thinking that I was the last piece in the puzzle, the only piece that would fit. I don't enjoy rejection especially when it comes after getting so close to the "reward" of what I'm aiming for/trying to achieve.

On a closing note, I also did not get the job in Telford, so I am continuing to search for jobs, this time not letting the locality of the position blur the negative aspects of the job. I borrowed some games from Adam and need to return them, which will happen after he has finished moving into this new place. I'm not even sure I can bring myself to visiting this new place, the house that for a short time I was destined to be living in. I fear that I may just flip out at Adam for getting my hopes up over the place and that I may let out too many passive aggressive remarks out of the side of the mouth towards the new housemate, and those that voted against me. But we'll see that it just over a week away - I may try and make my excuses and put it off, hopefully forever.

Begrudgingly still in Wem

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"It's only stalking if you work at it..." [Dated 03/05/07]

Hey all, back in the library again and recently I have been really blitzing episodes of the Shield. I am about halfway through season 3 and working through till I reach season 6, the new season whose episodes are being broadcasted now. Even though I remember most of the storylines, it is still an amazing show, really rough and tumble, edgy stuff with a swagger, which I guess dares you not to think it's cool. I've mentioned many times before about the strike team and how like when watching 24, you get pumped up and cheer loudly when they beat down the bad guys, whether it be throwing them over a car, pistolwhipping them, or whatever new method they can come up with the objects around them. As I said, the Strike Team, but Detective Dutch Wagenbach is also very cool, and he is the character in the show I am most like, so he is cool for different reasons.

Anyways, moving on from the Shield, and I think my WoW addiction is over, it's strange, but I just don't feel like playing it anymore - I think that's the problem now that I've reached the level cap there is no need to obsess about figues like xp/hour and how to spend talent points etc. As I've moaned before, the low population of the realm also means that groups are hard to put together, so that can be very frustrating. I wouldn't be surprised if my lessening addiction of WoW has been beaten by a new obsession of something, in the whole scheme of life, is pretty much pointless. And that is playing on my 360 and boosting my gamerscore - which doesn't mean anything, but is just a way of showing other Live players what milestones you've hit in the games you've played. This has meant me digging up Amped 3 and finally completing the "story" to bag myself lots of points to go towards my gamerscore. Acutally to anyone who hasn't played the game, I would advise doing so, just for the story itself, and doubling if you have an interest in snowboarding. The best bit of the story is the numerous cut-scenes which detail your progress, and they are ridiculous, often not having anything to do with snowboarding, and pretty much all of them have had me laughing my face off.
So much so was my quest for a better gamerscore, I actually bought the Live Arcade game Uno, and set about maxing out the possible 200 points that are up for grabs. Two weeks later, and I have them all :D

I have to say something about the type of achievements. Many of them involve completing missions through a campaign or story mode the game ha, which is fair enough. Although it's ok ina few cases, games which have allocated a lot of the points into continued Live play are not so popular in the land of Jonny. Another group of acheivements which are lame and frankly cheap are those that could be classed as attrition acheivements, ones awarded for things like 20hours time playing the game etc. I don't mind those that you could achieve quite comfortably if you are a fan of the game, and play it quite regularly. The ones that I can't stand are those which take insane amounts of time and effort on the part of the gamer. I was browsing around the web, looking for lists/articles on the supposed "worst" achievments for 360 games. One I remember was one from this Bomberman game - a game which is univerally accepted as an awful game -and the achievement was for blowing up x amount of bombs or something to that effect. Now, the article in question stated that if you were able to do 1 per second, then it would take over 3 weeks (or similarily ridiculous time, I read this about a week back) non-stop gameplay to complete the achievement - pretty stupid.

Another terrible, not to mention tough, achievement was to rank 1st overall in Live play - now that's a marathon and simply not attainable for those that are incredibly dedicated to reach that summit. Another similarily annoying achievement was to be online in this Tiger Woods game when there are another 1000 people online. The developers over-estimated the popularity of the game and there was simply never enough people on. This was got round, by people arranging specific times for people to go on Live so people could achieve this one.
Speaking of Live Leaderboards , it may have changed since me submitting the score, but doing this one particular event on Amped 3, my score registered as 8th on the leaderboard :D. Again, Amped 3 is another game that doesn't have a supremely massive online userbase, with a lot of my scores, coming in as <1000 on the leaderboards. On the note of competitive leaderboards, PGR3 is one of the top ones I reckon. They stage regular tournaments every week or so, and I would love to get the achievement "Tournament Qualifier" but that means being in the top 64 times, and generally my times are usually at least 1000th and above. As this one guy I met in a lobby ages back, he's waiting till PGR4 comes out, then hopefully all these hardcore amazing gamers will jump onto PGR4 and compete in the tournaments it has in that game - here's hoping :D

And there couldn't be a blog entry without mentioning some failing I have with some girl, lol. The last time I saw hot librarian chick was last Thursday, and it got me thinking, it's no big deal if I just ask her out, but I'd rather not do that in the deafening silence of the library, so I was planning to catch her as she left, which basing on Thursday's sighting, would be about 1. My reasoning being that she was in the library when I arrived at about half past, but not when I left at about quarter past 1.
So I camped outside the library reading my book, hoping to catch her as she left on the next day, Friday. To quote Dutch from the Shield, "It's only stalking if you work at it", so I thought why not actually devote a little time to finding out when she leaves so I can ask her out - that's not obsessive is it?!!? Coincedentally, that quote is my current MSN screenname, lol.

Unfortunately, she never showed on Friday, and not see her, the following Tuesday or Wednesday (I didn't work Monday). So here I am, the following Thursday, thinking that she would work this time every week - I walk in so I can head upstairs to write this very blog, and nothing. That makes me sad, but also curious to her exact working hours, I guess they change around, rather annoyingly. Ideally she should work the desk up here in the music section, where I come up to read/blog, as there are less people likely to listen in, but sadly that wish has not happened.
Anyways, I gotta go off to work in a bit, with any luck, she'll be in tomorrow instead, or knowing my luck, manning the main desk as I leave in a min.

Take it easy.

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Charity begins at the Record Store... [Dated 23/04/07]

Hey, slightly old topic, but last week, the Wright Stuff raised the issue of the usefulness of big Charity Concerts what with one coming up to raise funds and awareness about global warming. This concert follows the historical Live Aid, and the ones that spawned off that, like Live 8 recently.

They came to the conclusion that not much awareness is raised, generally ppl go to see their fave bands etc, and well money is raised, which is one good thing, but it's almost subtle charity as the crowds haven't bought the ticket for the cause but rather the chance to see their bands/groups/musical artists that they like. They raised the point that ppl will only remember the bands they saw, rather that the good work they did raising money for the cause of the day. They also raised the point, that unless the charity event is grossly publicised celebrities don't want to be part of it. Once again further proving that their is no such thing as a selfless act, as the celebrities are only interested if they can make a PR gain.

Now, I'm not attacking those that give a lot to charity, I'm sure your efforts are appreciated, but for a lot of people, charity is buying a charity single for Red Nose Day or Comic Relief etc. I guess the point I'm trying to make is it's not really charity if the donation has to be forced out of you by purchasing a single or a red nose etc. Also, the people that patrol the pedestrian areas of city/town shopping centres are also ppl trying to convince you to part with your money for a good cause. To stand and wait, and then chase you down as you walk past, making everyone feel uncomfortable hardly seems charitable. You can actually see clear paths forming as ppl make wide arcs to avoid being harassed.

As I've probs blogged before, in conversation with my Nan, we got chatting about the ease on which our country, along with many others, gave aid for the tsunami disaster. Now i'm not saying it's not a tragedy, but again agreeing with a point raised on the Wright stuff about these charity concerts, that maybe aid should be given to those suffering in our own country. They went on to say how celebrities are only too happy to do the trendy charity thing, and go help out a village of children in Africa.

Moving onto something lighter, and again conversing with my Nan, and someone she knew who came out of Uni wanted to do Law, to which she approached a number of solicitors. They rejected her applications, saying that she should do some volunteer work to help boost her CV. That is pretty sick, that you she should perform tokens of goodwill volunteering, for the sole purpose of boosting her career oppurtunities. I'm sure if she did some volunteer work, that she would feel good doing her bit, helping out people. Maybe i'm losing focus, but I've argued in the past, that there is no such thing as a selfless act. It's very difficult to prove, and people try to come up with instances where such a thing exists but I am sceptical. I guess with doing the volunteer work that ppl want to receive recognition for the good work that they do, I know I do. Thinking back to my time spent at Uni, and I had the oppurtunity to join Warwck volunteers. Again, I'm sure a lot fo ppl did this to bolster their CV, and also satisfy this feeling of needing to help, and that's fair enough. But that should be enough, but people can, and did advertise the fact that they spared some of their time by wearing clothes with the Warwick Volunteers logo.

On a tangent, I have still not uploaded these blog posts to the intermaweb - last night I got caught up trying to get videos and the like to stream to the 360 with questionable success. the problem lies in that the 360 can only play wmv files thanks to the Microsoft machine. That means either converting my video files to wmv, or as I started to investigate the problem deeper, use thrid party software to transcode the videos "on-the-fly". I will look into that a bit more, but I used this encoder program to turn a video into a mpeg which teh 360 can read, but when playing the video on the 360, it seems incredibly laggy, missing whole chunks of video at times, making it unwatchable. IT's weird cos I have a dedicated line between the 360 and my PC, so their shouldn't be any traffic on it, plus when configuring Media Center, one of the tests concluded that the network speed of the connection was sufficient to stream to the 360.

We'll see, but in more important news, I should find out if I have an interview with Midland Computers in Telford, I'd like to think they would at least consider me and give me an interview so fingers crossed.

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