The kind of piracy I am not posting about mashed up with the kind I am. (Image courtesy of Rocko)
Hello there Dear Reader.
It has been a bit quiet around here lately but I did manage to have myself a spectacularly nice festive season and now I am back with a vengeance!
Actually my plans for 2010 don’t really include that much in the way of vengeance. Maybe a little vicious retribution here and there, but nothing too excessive.
Oh, by the way… did you notice something different?
*waits while you look around*
That’s right! I changed the layout of my blog, well done for getting it straight away.
What this old thing? Well thanks for saying so but its not that fancy – I just found it laying around a Best of Wordpress Themes site. Actually I didn’t even find it myself, Lizbt picked it out for me so she gets the credit/blame. Thanks to her l33t skillz I even managed to retain the toaster-headed puppy as a mascot.
So there you go. New look for a new year and all that.
Hey, come to think of it you know which group of historical/literary stereotypes were big on revenge? Pirates – that’s who!
So, a few nights ago my friend OceanUnicorn came around to our house and helped Lizbt and I play with the present she had got me for aforementioned awesome Christmas. It was a box with four ‘Stunningly Designed’ (that’s what it says on the back) piracy themed StickyMosaics® . Esentially you just press little coloured adhesive squares to the squares marked on the cardboard with the corresponding number. And as between the three off us we had basic numeracy and motor-skills covered, it only took about half an hour to get one of them done.
Needless to say we cursed, listened to sea-shanties and talked about keelhauling a lot while we worked. I also set up my video camera to document proceedings, and here, me hearties, be the result.
Hi there. Been a while I know. Missed me? You did? Oh that is so sweet. I missed you too. No, you’re the sweetest. No you are. Really. No you.
So thanks to the goings on over at Project Life, my day to day existence is subject to the whims of a stuffed-toy.
Today Monkey decided I needed to organise some kind of soft-drink (soda for my US readers) challenge. No getting around a direct telepathic command, so here is…
Now in case you are not versed in Antipodean Beverage Lore, over here we have two major brands of Passion-fruit flavoured soft-drink. “Passiona” made by Cadbury’s and “Pasito” under the KIRKS label. (Though Kirk’s is really just the Coca-Cola company..)
It is, as far as I can tell, widely accepted that ‘Passiona’ is the ‘Original’ Passion-fruit drink and ‘Pasito’ is the knock off. (I actually haven’t been able to confirm this through research, but I did find a 1952 advertisment for “Passiona” so if nothing else at least I know the Cadbury’s version has quite a vintage.)
The first thing we did was to have the fabulous Lizbt see if she could determine which can was which – using only her sense of touch coupled with any other kind of instinctual extra-sensory perception she might possess….
(King James bible to add the right amount of gravity to the proceedings…)
She guessed wrong.
Then I got her to (while still blindfolded) taste both varieties of Passion-flavored liquid joy.
She totally guessed right.
What a feeling.
Then I underwent the same grueling procedure.
I not only aced the flavour test, but immediately preceeding that I guessed which was which JUST FROM THE CANS. I know. Your excited reading this – I’m excited typing it!
I’m so excited in this shot that I think my IQ dipped right down to that of a Capuchin monkey..
Here is a little insight into our scientific method and the results produced….
And here is the ultimate conclusion that Lizbt came to based on a detailed analsis of the raw data..
I find it hard to argue. It’s science people!
(I don’t want to hear anything at all about us having a 50% chance of being right, so don’t even start on that.)
So there you have it.
Oh, and personally I think ‘Passiona’ is by far the superior flavour. This is probably because it contains Preservative 211 and 202. ‘Pasito’ only has Preservative 211, pale imitation if you ask me…
After an absence of almost two months I really thought I should wait until I had something pretty special to make a triumphant return with. But what can you do when you have to OBEY THE MONKEY.
N.B Hopefully update on gaming related things to follow…
I love “The Graveyard Book”, I’ve posted about it here before, when I spent a few immensely enjoyable days reading it in various graveyards in my vicinity. So when, over at his blog, the esteemed author Mister Neil Gaiman answered a question a reader had about the precise steps for the Danse Macabre, and mentioned that he would try to link to any video footage of readers dancing the Macabray that found its way to the interweb – well, I knew what had to be done.
A few weeks later and here is the video, thanks to the wonderful efforts of Ben, Erin, Lili, Lizbt, M1K3Y, Melodie, Michael, Omega, Rachel, Sam and Warren – who all took time out on Sunday to come down to my local botanic garden and prance around for a spell. Thank you peoples.
Things didn’t go entirely as I’d hoped, as some thoughtless couple decided to choose the exact same time to get married in precisely the bit of the gardens that I had plotted out the shoot in the day before – but the ‘best laid plans of the living and the dead’ as they say…
Above is a cast photo for the Plants vs. Zombies video I shot with some good friends recently. Stay tuned to this blog to see the fan-created homage go up in all its videographic splendour.
Shooting it was lots of fun. And it ties nicely in with what I threatened to talk about in more detail a few weeks ago, the brilliant Typing of the Dead. Now I was going to crack my writing knuckles and really get stuck into some praising the bizzare Mavis-Beacon-meets-Resident-Evil game, but I happened across this article a in the meantime over at Offworld. The article stopped me in my tracks beacuse I think Margaret Robinson has really said all I wanted to say about the game, and probably more succinctly than I would have managed.
Bottom line, it is fun AND extremely educational. So track it down. Play it. Master touch typing and revel in the horrors of the polygonical living dead all at the same time. (The system requirements are extremely meagre so maybe you could run it the old laptop that won’t manage anything else, get some use out if it!)
I’ve also been playing another of my game loot titles, “Titan Quest,” so I may talk about that a bit more about that click-fest in a subsequent post. For the moment I have to get to editing and uploading some video!
Not sure how vocabulary building is going to help me increase my earnings, but hey…
On my recent visit to the family homestead I plucked from the shelf an old book of mine, pictured above.
“Word Power Made Easy” by Norman Lewis. (You can see the scan of the back of the book over at Project Life, where I am guest posting this week!)
The book has been in my possesion for years and years (not sure how it came to me) but I’d never really given it more than a cursory flick through until now.
I must say I’ve been enjoying it immensely. As well as being very, American the author proves himself opinionated, fond of digression, and not at all shy in using the book to make sweepingly hilarious statements about any number of subjects in the guise of improving the reader’s lexicon.
To provide you with a taste here is an excerpt from Chapter 6 – “How to Talk About Science and Scientists.” -
“The root astron, star, is also found, combined with our old friend ology, study of, in astrology, the pseudo-science which claims it can foretell the future by the study of the stars. The practitioner of this theory is called an astrologer, a man generally pictured with a pointed dunce cap adorned with stars, planets, and various portions of the moon; a flowing robe that looks like an old fashioned flannel nightgown; and unkept gray; and a wise expression, as if he knows everything there is to know. All he knows is that he’s going to separate you from some of your money if you’re gullible enough to believe his baseless predictions.”
Hey, don’t hold back, Norm, tell us what you really think.
Here’s another gem from a little earlier in the book when he is discussing the latin root gamos -
“…and polygamy is the delightful if somewhat chaotic custom, practiced at one time by the Mormons of Utah and before them by King Solomon, of having as many wives as a man can afford financially and put up with emotionally.”
I love this book. I am going to keep working my way through it – learning a word here and there no doubt - but more importantly soaking up the wisdom of Mister Lewis, and enjoying the absolute conviction and bloody minded certainty with which he sounds forth on any and all subjects he comes across.
I salute you sir! May you never be at a loss for words or opinions at that great dinner party conversation in the sky. (The author, so the internet tells me, died on September the 8th 2006, aged 93.)
P.S. In a related note, my recent gaming hours have been divided between World of Warcraft and the supremely awesome TYPING OF THE DEAD. More needs to be said on this game, and it will, so stay tuned dear reader….
Most bad-ass zombie killers ever. And doing it all with TYPING my friends!
“Okay, just keep flying and hope no-one notices we broke the citadel.”
Gaming update.
Well I finally got a World of Warcraft character to level 60. Which was the orginal level-cap for those who are interested in such things. (It goes up to 80 right now, and as Blizzard have announced a THIRD expansion “Cataclysm” is on its way then there will be level 90’s running around soon enough.) Anyway, just because I am 5 or so years behind the curve, doesn’t lesson my personal sense of achievement. (See one of my favourite comic artists deal with this very topic at http://www.xkcd.com/606/)
Must say I didn’t spend a great deal of time with Rollercoaster Tycoon. For one thing the graphics were… not good. Did things really look that bad in 1999? I guess they did. I started off with the easiest scenario, running a themepark in Sherwood Forest during the Dark Ages, which is a nice idea and had me raising an eybrow at least. But unfortunately the gameplay was just not my cup of tea. I’ve never really been a simulation gamer. My father could (and has) happily spent hours building up infrastructure and micro-managing all manner of stuff in games like these - I just can’t get in to them. I played the original Civilisation a bit, and SimCity too, but my heart was never really in it. (In SimCity’s case I would usually have only played for an hour or so before I got bored, eventually a message would pop up telling me that there was traffic congestion some-where-another and I would call down a couple of hurricanes and earthquakes as vengeance for my city’s population whining about traffic.)
I was just as bored with Rollercoaster Tycoon. I’m not saying the game doesn’t have an amazing amount of detail and depth, but frankly for me its detail I could do without. I don’t want to click on a punter and examine his hunger, nausea or need-to-go-the-toilet stats. I don’t want to make decisions about the lift-hill chain speed or the lateral g’s of one of my rides. Essentially playing Rollercoaster Tycoon well means balancing the books – earning enough money from a smoothly running theme-park – and I find that about as enjoyable as an excel spreadsheet.
End verdict – All the fun of a theme park with way more responsibility and no actual fun!
So on to another game from my game-loot for me then. I’ve started playing “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare”, I’ll report back when done. Or bored. Or horrified with 1st person shooting actual people in realistic real-world looking situations…
Oh I almost forgot, here’s what guest contributor Lizbt had to say on her Horsez experience -
“Picking up a horse simulation game that pluralises with a ‘z’, I expected silliness, coat-brushing and a fair bit of canter. What I did not expect was for it to be hard. This game was hard. Well, not hard. Difficult by design, in that I had no idea how to complete many of the set tasks. The very first mission, your introduction to the game, involved you (as the horse) saving a young girl clinging to a cliff face. Realistic, I hear you say. Also, nearly impossible. The poor girl plunged to her death 3 times before I googled the damn thing. Ah, yes, press spacebar when you pass her incredibly camouflaged hand reaching up the side of the path. Of course. My hoofy rescue complete, I settled in for some good brushing. That was the ticket. I even got to use that hook thing to clean the pebbles out of the horse’s shoes. This increased my horse’s moral, which had presumedly taken a dip after the glow of the daring cliffside rescue had worn off. Then followed some sort of dressage / DDR combo, where I pressed the arrow keys in time to complete awesome galloping moves. I could dig it, I’d played my fair share of Shrek Super Party. But then, once again, it was fail-city time, as my horse just would not jump it’s little jumping gate, not matter how many times I clicked the button as it turned green. This all culminated in a cross-country race in which I had to collect a statue from inside a country church with an hours time or a pawn-shop owner would not sell me a pack of cards. I really needed those cards. I’d thrown the last deck in the fire in a fit of teenage hormanal rage over not winning an undisclosed card game (plot!). But the “map”, it no show me where I was. Or where I was going. Or how long I had left to complete the mission. So, I did the only possible thing I could. I rage-quit out of that mother, and played some Fairway Solitaire. Birdie!”
I have, Dear Reader, been somewhat lacking in the updates. Don’t think for a moment that it is because I am Not Doing Anything. No I am doing plenty, but mostly things that don’t really seem all that exciting to report on. Catching up with friends and family at the moment in my place of birth. That is to say I am away from my beloved computer so no updates on the gaming side of things anyway. I will get to Horsez and Railway Tycoon eventually though, fear not.
In the meantime though, and in the spirit of the slightly family-centric turn this blog has taken lately, I thought I might share with you my recent Re- initiation into the wondrous alchemical mysteries of my mother’s lasagna recipe. It was, I can only assume, the product of some ancient arcane rite. Souls were perhaps put on the line, bargains were struck – the details are not clear but the end product is several layers of tasty. I present to you the copy presently in my mothers keeping that will presumably one day be passed on to me.
Needless to say this is not a complete version, just an excerpt. Any persons attempting to use information from this particular portion of the grimoire to summon their own cheesy, meaty, slab of heaven-type dish will invariably fail to capture its true essence.
Today’s theme over at A Step Ahead of the Competition is ‘Old’, for which I posted a photograph of my 91 year old grandfather, holding a photograph of his younger self in front of his face. I really had trouble deciding between that photograph and another from the same set, the one above featuring both my grandparents holding their wedding picture. So in a completely personal and un-gaming/pop-culture/urban adventure related move – I thought I’d put it up here.
Hi Nanna and Pa! You are famous on the internet now.
The kind of piracy I am not posting about mashed up with the kind I am. (Image courtesy of Rocko)
(King James bible to add the right amount of gravity to the proceedings…)
What a feeling.
I’m so excited in this shot that I think my IQ dipped right down to that of a Capuchin monkey..
A merry crew on a fine spring day.
Another shot of the cast, looking much more glamorous now that they are famous on the internet…
Not sure how vocabulary building is going to help me increase my earnings, but hey…
Most bad-ass zombie killers ever. And doing it all with TYPING my friends!
“Okay, just keep flying and hope no-one notices we broke the citadel.”
“Aww…”
Today’s theme over at 