2007

Happy new year! I'd also like to take the opportunity to direct a smug but also slightly relieved "I told you so" at , because as you can tell from the fact that you're reading this, we aren't all dead yet and the world didn't end in 2006 after all. The Bible Code was wrong and so was everyone else who predicted disaster. I have now lived through four apocalypses. (I've been keeping count.)

It's going to be so embarrassing if a comet crashes into us between the time I hit the Send button and midnight in Samoa. I'd never hear the last of it.

Anyway, I'm not going to post any New Year Resolutions this time because I always completely fail to keep them. That'll show them. I would also post a yearly review like I used to at the end of each year at St Andrews, but getting married and moving halfway round the world to a completely new continent overshadows the whole thing a bit.

In two hours it'll be 2007 for me. I'd like it to be a bit less exciting than the last one, please.

Edit: Oh, here's one: I resolve to make my livejournal worth reading again and drag it out of the execrably dull state that it's been stuck in for the last couple of months.

Heavenly - Virus

And the day will come here below
When the light will cross my destiny
Domination to succeed the crown
Just remember the man you used to be
Cause when the virus comes, it's time for victory!
What? But this kind of thing is what passes for normal lyrics from Heavenly. After not buying any new music for about a year myself, I was given their new album "Virus" by two separate people this Christmas - one Japanese version (because strangely that's the import that America gets) and one extended European one. Their previous album, "Dust to Dust", has to be one of the best in my collection, and it's taken them three years to produce a follow-up due to an almost complete change of line-up - now only two of the original members remain, but the sound has stayed consistent. The album is apparently called "Virus" because it "contains highly infectious music" - honest, that's what it says in the booklet. As silly as it sounds, it does have some truth to it.

There are some changes to the general sound - the most significant is the new keyboardist, who introduces an almost Amstrad-like high chord/string instrument into the background of many songs. Like every band that produces this sort of music these days, they've also tried to include some more classical elements, but it's only obvious in a couple of tracks - they haven't become Dream Theater (which would have been pretentious) or Stratovarius (which would have been disastrous). If anything, it seems that they're now closer to what Sonata Arctica originally sounded like in their music, particularly the over-the-top immensely powerful choruses. Really, Ben Sotto is now almost equal to Piet Sielck in this department.

Interestingly, a couple of themes from the previous album are reused here, both in lines from the lyrics and the actual music. The musical ones are fine as they're always in a different key or rhythm from before even when they're obvious, but the lyrical repetition does stop seeming clever about the third time it happens.

Ben Sotto's English has also improved - even though the lyrics make little sense most of the time, a few lines are actually understandable now. The pronounciation is a little shaky, but nowhere near as bad as on Dust to Dust. The only really notable bit is the triumphant shout of "GLAH-REE-ICE!" during the chorus of "Bravery in the Field". And he can now sing "Happiness" without it sounding remotely like "A penis", which is most welcome. Nevertheless, the booklet with the lyrics proves invaluable - there are also further song comments, but unfortunately they're all in Japanese and I can't read them.

Interestingly, it also contains a Jermaine Jackson cover, "When the Rain Begins to Fall", and they've made it sound somehow like The Final Countdown. In fact, as I was writing all this, I realized that the whole album really does represent everything that people hate about power metal. And as far as I'm concerned, that makes it absolutely phenomenal.

iPod

Christmas was very different this year. It was the first time that I'd spent it away from my own family, as I was with my new in-laws in California. The weather outside was closer to midsummer temperatures in Scotland rather than the sort of dismal sleet that I'm used to.

The day also came with an unprecedented amount of irony, as thanks to Whitney's parents, I am now the proud owner of an iPod. It's one of the video-playing ones, as they were going to get one of the Nano models but couldn't find it in black. (The necessity for me having a black iPod isn't something I would have thought of, but every time I try to deny my imagined affinity to the colour I seem to be dressed like the Milk Tray man.)

So now my MP3 player is feeling rejected as it's been replaced with something that has 240 times its capacity, and considerably more playlist control (the old one's capability in this department being limited to two buttons labelled "Stop" and "Start"). I'm absolutely amazed by it, actually. I now know why Whitney told me I might want to put my music collection on my laptop, but I ignored that hint so I'll have to wait until I'm back in Boston to put a significant amount of music on it.

And the best bit is what's etched on the back of it. "D.X.N." They know me too well.

Edit: I just realized that I typed "not" instead of "now" up in the second paragraph. One letter that changes the tone of the entire post.

I Want Out

I'm back in California now for Christmas. However, seeing as my journal has recently turned totally worthless once more and has filled up with endless nonsense, self-advertising and video posts, I'm not going to fight it by posting a remotely informative entry just yet.

For a long time, I thought that the music videos by Modern Talking (brought to all our attentions by in my first year of university) were pretty much unbeatable on the daftness front, but after looking at some of the stuff they produced in the 80s, I think that Helloween have them matched. My particular favourite is the one for I Want Out. Watch out for:

• The very start, which does a good job of setting the tone for the rest of the video.


• Michael Kiske's hair-monster mullet.


• Kai Hansen's ever-present daft sunglasses.


• The inexplicable flying pumpkin.


• The second time said pumpkin appears, where you can see someone's hand coming into the frame to catch it.


• Kai managing to appear in two places during the pan in the C-section.


• The man running around with the vacuum cleaner in the solo.


• (Mumble, mumble) Just how much of the song Kai has "borrowed" in his future releases.

It doesn't stop there - the video for Where the Rain Grows (what?) is similarly inspired, with Andreas Deris seemingly going for a bit of a Rik Mayall look, and the one for Just a Little Sign is so dangerously close to the "Limozeen in Space" cartoon that it verges on self-parody.

The Ultimate Question

There's an impossible question that has been lurking at the back of my mind for several years. Being unable to provide an answer myself, I have to rely on the general Internet to decide for me. It is this.

Does Iron Maiden's "Back in the Village" or Gamma Ray's "The Winged Horse" have the better guitar intro?

The first reviews

I'd really like to know what this site is saying. It's just unfortunate that Click and retro games are most popular in a country whose language I cannot even vaguely understand.

Also, where's everything moved to on the Update Journal page? It's rather weird writing this out in a non-monotype font.

Miscellaneous Great Things

I know that this is a detestable Youtube-em-up post, but I promise to you that every one of these videos is well worth watching. I've found the service invaluable for reliving old TV programmes that I thought had gone forever (or at least until I got back home and opened the chest of old videos behind the television).

Richard O'Brien in D&D - This was easily the best part of the otherwise absymal Dungeons and Dragons film. Introduce a thief character, make him run a guild Maze (in which lies a Crystal... I'm sure you can tell where this is going) and cast Richard O'Brien to play him. As you can tell from the rest of the scene, unfortunately it's also the only remotely good decision that the filmmakers made, but it was truly an inspired idea.

Punt and Dennis - Crystal Maze - Continuing the same theme, this is a pair of British comedians' take on The Crystal Maze and the sometimes distressing stupidity of its participants (and I hadn't previously realized that those two ever had a TV programme).

Within These Walls - It'll Be Alright on the Night is an out-take clip show. However, it is a clip show with the unique distinction of actually being funny. Perhaps this is due to the contrast between the videos themselves and the presenter, Denis Norden, who is quite possibly the most unfunny man who ever lived (equal to Richard Whiteley without the charm). This is a recording of one of my favourite sections from it ever, where an announcer is interrupted by the wrong clip entirely.

Vic and Bob - Masterchef - Bob Mortimer and Vic Reeves (or Jim Moir or whatever his name is) have a fairly unique form of parody. There's exaggeration, there's exaggeration to the point of absurdity, there's exaggeration to the point of unrecognisability, and then, at the other end of the scale, there is this pair. I find that only the start is really worth watching, but it has to be the most terrifying version of Loyd Grossman ever.

Vic and Bob - Carry On Camping - As posted by a week or so ago. You won't get this unless you've experienced (I think 'enjoyed' is stretching the term a little) the Carry On films, but it manages to sum the whole series up in about a minute. Of particular note is the signature "WAK WAK WAK", which I remember being subtitled simply as "Laughs like Sid James".

A game that looks awfully familiar - This came as a bit of a surprise, as this early in its release I was just expecting to find the normal amount of reviews in Czechoslovakian that I can't read. If I have to critique it a bit, I'd like to mention that the maker of this video obviously isn't using the two-button firing mode, which allows you much better and faster control, but people insist on turning it off.

Yes, quite, but I don't have a project to keep me busy at the moment.

Dreams

That is the image that I saw in a dream a couple of nights ago. I remember being quite disturbed and upset when I woke up, but I can't remember anything else that happened or what it might mean. Still, if something significant happens involving planes and the name "Harry" in the next couple of weeks, you can check back here, see that I prophesied it and recognize me as the new Messiah, etc, etc. Any interpretations?

I also had another dream the same night involving my brother Richard discovering a series of catacombs that were built by the Knights Templar under the greenhouse in my back garden, but I've dismissed this one as being clearly insane.

Special Agent

It's out. Download it from the website!

Work

I've realized that I've never really told people about my job since starting it (and the frequency of my journal entries has gone down a lot as well), so as it's lunchtime I thought I'd explain a bit more about what's happening just now.

I'm working with a company that writes content management systems for other companies (online document stores and that kind of thing). Their list of past clients has been pretty impressive, and at the moment, they're putting together a version of their software for Marathon, an oil pipeline company.

What I've been doing is writing a plugin for XMLSpy, an piece of software for writing XML files, so that the program can connect to the company's online service and retrieve, save and check documents. To do this, I've been working on almost completely undocumented code on Visual Studio (an IDE that I'd never used before) in C# (a language that I'd never seen before), but ignoring the obvious difficulties I've been enjoying it so far.

My daily routine mostly consists of going into JIRA, a bug-tracking system that the company uses, and looking through a list of current issues, suggestions for new features, and so on, then selecting one that I like the look of and starting work on it. Once an issue's been dealt with, it's marked as fixed and I move on. Periodically, a test is done of the plugin and the fixed issues are either marked as confirmed fixed or still not working, and the whole cycle goes on.

In fact, I've been so impressed by this system (and because I'm undeniably broken in the head) that I've developed a strange compulsion to write my own basic copycat version of it for my next project - it would have come in handy for the testing of Special Agent last week (it'll be released this weekend, by the way). I think other people in the Click community will find it pretty useful as well, as otherwise releasing a game is a process of putting it out and continually updating it when people suddenly find all the catastrophic bugs that you've missed.

Two things

The first thing - I have released a test version of Special Agent. This is mostly so I can get the community to report on any outstanding bugs in it before I release it to the general Internet in a week (though you can download it without an account). I didn't think I'd get fed up of the project quite this quickly, but it's only the site to do now before it's genuinely complete.

The second thing - My brother sent me a link to Blind Guardian's latest video, "Another Stranger Me" (here's the low quality one on Youtube) and I think that Hansi Kürsch is beginning to look worryingly like Jack Black.