Archive for the 'Babble' Category

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Quiz Time!

Published on February 6, 2008 in Babble. 5 Comments

<—Spam, yum yum yum

Allo! No I haven’t died. I’ve just been rather busy both at home and at work. So to get myself back into blogging I have decided to reply to one of those utterly dumb spam emails that tend to occupy ones inbox. These normally get deleted on sight…so here goes.

1. Was 2007 a good year for you?
Yes. Got promoted twice at work, and have a great girlfriend with a fantastic ****. Aside from that things were ‘quiet’.

2. What was your best moment of the year?
Possibly going to Australia. It was a business trip but I had always wanted to go there. What little I did see of the place I really loved, and everyone loved my British accent! Aside from that it was my close friends Rene and Raj having a little baby sprog daughter.

3. What was your least favourite moment of the year?
Having to prepare to head off to Australia. I haven’t felt that nervous and uneasy in a long time as I hadn’t been on a plane in a long time. That was just one of my reasons anyway.

4. What are your plans for 2008?
Well on the work front, I’ll be heading into part time education come Sept 2008 to study Hydrodynamics. I’m quite excited, yet nervous because if this course is longer than two years – I am screwed. I hate the thought of returning to education, and I hate pesky teenagers even more. On another note I need to think about family matters….nuff said there.

5. What countries did you visit?
France, Italy, Australia, Venice and…Liverpool?

6. What date in 2007 will remain etched in your memory?
The 4th November – My birthday. At work it was prank after prank. I ended up going home unaware that I had a condom stapled to the bottom of my long coat….

7. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Completing a huge project at work after months of hard research and design. I have never worked long hours like that in my life.

8. What was your biggest failure?
Not fulfilling two of my New Yeas Resolutions – To get my own place, and to buy a car. Oops!

9. Did you suffer any illness or injury?
A killer cold after I returned from France in September. Had me knocked out for a solid week and a half. I never get colds and if I do, they’ll last about a day max.

10. What was the best thing you bought?
My 32" Samsung R87 HDTV. It’s lovely and has run flawlessly for hours upon end. /me scrambles for some wood…

11. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
My girlfriend Deena getting horribly drunk on a friends birthday. She then sang to me as we walked home, whilst other revellers looked on. She should hang her head in shame.

12. Where did most of your money go?
Mostly Clothes and Xbox 360 games, with HD-DVD’s following a close third. I went a bit nuts on spending in 2007.

13. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Christmas Holidays. I had so many plans, but those two weeks went by in a flash and before I knew it, it was time to return to work

14. What songs will always remind you of 2007?
Hmm, I listened to heaps of tracks this year! Killing Joke-The Death & Resurrection Show, a lot of the legend that is Richard Ashcroft – Live from London, and a lot of Lacuna Coil.

15. Compared to this time last year are you:

Fatter or thinner? ‘Tubbier’, because I never went to the gym in 2007 after getting my new position. That’s already changed over the past 3 weeks though!
Happier or sadder? Probably a bit sadder… I miss old friends.
Richer or poorer? Richer!

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Spent more time working out. I got slack in 2007 – never again.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Gaming on the Xbox 360. I played a lot of titles, so I’m quitting in 2008 to make up for lost time.

18. How will you be spending Christmas?
Christmas is always spent with my mother and father.

19. Which MySpace users did you meet for the first time?
None, Social Network sites are for stupid teenagers with no lives.

20. Did you fall in love in 2007?
With my Xbox yes, but in life er no as I was spoken for.

22. What was your favourite TV show?
Top Gear! "How hard can it be?"

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Hmm, nope.

24. What was/were the best books you read?
I surprisingly didn’t read much in 2007. The Gospel according to Chris Moyles was one of them, as was The Relic. I also bought the Mass Effect novel (Xbox 360 RPG), and On the Edge – By Richard Hammond but have yet to even read these two books.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Fray – I remember hearing some of their tracks before 2007 and thought they would be huge. Imagine my surprise when I found one of their videos on Xbox Live’s Marketplace, and then they became really well known after some successful tours.

26. What did you want and get?
A big, nice HDTV!

27. What did you want and not get?
A bigger, nicer HDTV!

28. What kept you sane?
Memories of special people in my life. They’re my strength.

29. Which celebrity did you fancy the most?
Ahhhww, Keeley Hazell

30. How mind numbingly boring was this quiz?
I want 40 minutes of my life back please.

A Moment To Reflect…

Published on January 23, 2008 in Babble and Music/TV/Films. 5 Comments Tags: Films.

Tonight I managed to finish watching the first three episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – A continuation of The Terminator trilogy now serialised by the Fox network. As I watched this a few thoughts came storming in to my head as I saw one of the CGI Terminators in Episode 3. I cast my mind back to 1991 when Terminator 2 came out.

For those who know their computer hardware, did you know that the transformation scenes for the Terminator 2′s evil T-1000 were done by the legends known as ILM – Industrial Light & Magic? Most people will be nodding their heads round about now. However did you know that the machines they used back then consisted of 40MHz Silicon Graphics workstations with 64MB of RAM? Just think about that for a moment and look at the power we have with today’s hardware…scary isn’t it?

World of Warcraft – 10 days of addiction

Published on January 9, 2008 in Babble and Links. Closed

Corp Por dude!

I read a interesting article today over at Halfmad.com, owned by my good old mate Phil aka MMO Addicted Tart. MMO’s also known as Massively Multiplayer Online games as most gamers know can be incredibly addictive. People often lose their lives in a virtual world that is inhabited by thousands upon thousands of players. The great thing about these games is that the world is still living and breathing even when you’re fast asleep. Players can engage in quests, develop their characters and before you know it, whole communities have developed.

Fuelling every MMO title is the game’s economy. You earn money in these games, and players often pay real life money for in game currency and before you know it, there are players with millions upon millions of hard currency even though they haven’t the knowledge about the features of their virtual world. I lost myself in possibly the best title of them all, the grand daddy known as Ultima Online. From 1998 to 2002 I played the game before realising that I was essentially wasting my time. During that time I became one of the wealthiest players on my shard (server) by working hard for my money as a warrior swordsman and as a trader.

However I never looked in to the dark side of this gaming habit. Players could ‘dupe’ (duplicate) gold using various in-game bugs and make millions in the process. This in-game currency could then be sold for real life money. It’s all rather geeky to be honest.

Phil at Halfmad.com is the chap who got me in to all this MMO gaming years ago, and our history in these games spans a huge amount of MMO’s. He recently returned to World of Warcraft – one of the more overrated, yet popular MMO’s in the world. However he never returned with the intentions to play the game. Check out his article, it’s certainly a big eye opener to any MMO addict out there.

State of my reviews

Published on December 8, 2007 in Babble, Rants and Xbox 360. 3 Comments Tags: Reviews.

Right. As a lot of readers already know, I have been slack on producing Xbox 360 game reviews. It mainly attributes to the fact that I just haven’t the time any more as I have mentioned a few times before. Researching and then writing about games is a lot more time consuming than most think.

I have a partially finished Assassin’s Creed review, and was hugely looking forward to writing about Mass Effect, which in my opinion is now the best game on the 360. For weeks now, I’ve been trying to find the time to write but have always been side tracked, so bugger it.. I will however, continue writing various hardware reviews after the new year when I go crazy on spending!

Postal Strikes

Published on October 12, 2007 in Babble and Rants. 3 Comments

They be stealing meh mail!

So the Royal Mail postal workers are on strike once again over pay and job cuts. Who knows how long this will go on for, but there’s one obvious benefit to all of this. No Bills! That’s right, no sodding utility bills that appear just as I am about to go on a mad shopping spree!

However, it never works out that way does it?

After work last night, I had a client to visit who needed her PC looked at. This woman hadn’t somehow noticed that Internet Explorer had mysteriously grown another 10 toolbars and her web speed was equivalent to a 2400 baud modem powered desktop computer from 1989 however that is another story altogether.