Information. The Christmas special (or series 4 episode 0) of Doctor Who was on Christmas evening. Information. It didn't look anywhere near as much like an episode of Power Rangers as last time. Information. I was actually rather frightened that the Heavenly Host would be a rework of the Weeping Angels from "Blink", but despite the similar appearance they really weren't anywhere near as good. Information. Getting them to talk like this all the time was all right at first, and was a rather drawn-out setup for what was eventually a funny line, but keeping it going after that was just irritating, as you can see. Information. Russell T Davies seems to be good at doing this to viewers, especially in that frankly stupid Max Headroom Whateverhisnameis death scene. Information. I'd rather like Steven Moffat to write more, because he came up with the Empty Child and Weeping Angels and apparently still hasn't been allowed to use the idea that he really thinks is frightening. Information. He's got three episodes in the coming series, so things might be a bit better. Information. Information. INFORMATION. Who are you? The new number two. Who is number one? You are number six. I am not a number! I am a free man! Bwahahahaha. Bzz, thump.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
On the first day of Christmas KLM gave to me...
...some luggage that had been sitting in the airport since it arrived on Monday but had had all the tags ripped off it, so nobody thought to give it a second look when it was abandoned in the corner of the courier office and we eventually had to send a party to the airport to get it off their hands. They're getting a bundle of receipts from us to make up for our emergency Tesco clothes shopping. The incompetent idiots. Merry Christmas!
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Flight Into Terror
I hate planes. It's something that I've been realizing over the last couple of years after they started becoming a regular feature and problem in my life - before that I had got over my fear of flying at 16 when we travelled by plane to Germany, and I had had no problem with occasionally flying before then. Not even when I spent ten or eleven hours on them flying to California, because at least that was a special event that didn't happen very often. Now, Whitney and I live three thousand miles away from both our families, exactly in the middle between the West coast of America and the Northeast coast of Scotland, and the only way to see either of them is to endure seven or so hours of airborne unpleasantness.
Our journey this Christmas involved going from Boston Logan to Amsterdam Schipol, and then on to Aberdeen Dyce (-With-Death Every Time You Land Here) from there. We were flying with KLM operated by Northwest Airlines, which I was only informed were known as "Northworst" well after we had to phone them up and convince them to seat us together instead of at opposite ends of the plane. Our first flight was at 7pm, and the trip was eventually to end at what would be 5am for us the next day.
To be fair to it, the longest leg over the Atlantic wasn't bad at all as far as flights go. I had loaded up my laptop with Lucasarts games beforehand, and we spent the time playing Curse of Monkey Island, or at least what I could remember of how to complete it because I'm otherwise useless at point and click adventures. And Ratatouille was on, which I hadn't seen before and completely destroys my idea that 3D animation can never have as much charm and character as traditionally drawn artwork.
After seven or so hours of that, we landed in Schipol, and it was there that I began to break down. After a seven-hour flight in a cramped seat breathing air already breathed in by everyone else and in a timeless vortex suspended between night and day (perhaps this is going a bit far), doing it again for any length of time seems like a worse idea than just swimming the English Channel and taking the train up. And it's made worse by Schipol's bizarre security. Instead of one large secure area with the gates behind it, each gate has its own individual security station that comes complete with a massive queue in front of it. After you've trudged to the scanner and had your belongings inspected like some sort of criminal, you turn the corner only to realize that you're trapped in a glass box with no escape route and more people piling in behind you. After a while, a pair of gates at the other end open, and much like a livestock market, the passengers are herded into a tunnel and down to the plane.
And I sat down, closed my eyes for a moment and suddenly realized that we were in the air. I've never slept through a takeoff before, and I thought that it would be a fairly difficult thing to do, but the exhaustion of the day made me achieve something that I never thought possible. But the disadvantage of letting yourself fall asleep is the awful feeling you get when your sleep is cut short, and I felt mildly to critically ill throughout descent (a feeling that wasn't helped by the captain announcing that the runway was a bit shorter than they'd expected so they'd have to slam on the brakes). After landing in wind and rain and going through customs, the journey was finally at an end.
At least, it would have been if KLM hadn't lost both of our bags. We waited at the luggage carousel for a while, with Whitney getting increasingly worried about the lack of bright red holdalls and suitcases coming round. I said not to worry because of the large group of people still waiting, and it was at that moment that the luggage people turned off the lights and went home. It wasn't just our bags that they'd lost - they'd failed to forward the luggage belonging to everyone with a connecting flight.
Now we're sitting at home watching the Top Gear presenters night, and I'm wearing the pair of jogging trousers that I've had on for thirty-six hours along with a dressing gown and "Thing 2" T-shirt scavenged from the bottom of a drawer. Whitney's been out to Tesco already and has returned with some rather decent inexpensive clothing (something that America has in very short supply, by the way). Also among the missing items are a few Christmas presents that we have to wrap, and rather importantly, my levothyroxine pills. The only effect of missing them for a couple of days will be to make me a little more tired and irritable, but at this point I doubt you'd be able to tell.
Our journey this Christmas involved going from Boston Logan to Amsterdam Schipol, and then on to Aberdeen Dyce (-With-Death Every Time You Land Here) from there. We were flying with KLM operated by Northwest Airlines, which I was only informed were known as "Northworst" well after we had to phone them up and convince them to seat us together instead of at opposite ends of the plane. Our first flight was at 7pm, and the trip was eventually to end at what would be 5am for us the next day.
To be fair to it, the longest leg over the Atlantic wasn't bad at all as far as flights go. I had loaded up my laptop with Lucasarts games beforehand, and we spent the time playing Curse of Monkey Island, or at least what I could remember of how to complete it because I'm otherwise useless at point and click adventures. And Ratatouille was on, which I hadn't seen before and completely destroys my idea that 3D animation can never have as much charm and character as traditionally drawn artwork.
After seven or so hours of that, we landed in Schipol, and it was there that I began to break down. After a seven-hour flight in a cramped seat breathing air already breathed in by everyone else and in a timeless vortex suspended between night and day (perhaps this is going a bit far), doing it again for any length of time seems like a worse idea than just swimming the English Channel and taking the train up. And it's made worse by Schipol's bizarre security. Instead of one large secure area with the gates behind it, each gate has its own individual security station that comes complete with a massive queue in front of it. After you've trudged to the scanner and had your belongings inspected like some sort of criminal, you turn the corner only to realize that you're trapped in a glass box with no escape route and more people piling in behind you. After a while, a pair of gates at the other end open, and much like a livestock market, the passengers are herded into a tunnel and down to the plane.
And I sat down, closed my eyes for a moment and suddenly realized that we were in the air. I've never slept through a takeoff before, and I thought that it would be a fairly difficult thing to do, but the exhaustion of the day made me achieve something that I never thought possible. But the disadvantage of letting yourself fall asleep is the awful feeling you get when your sleep is cut short, and I felt mildly to critically ill throughout descent (a feeling that wasn't helped by the captain announcing that the runway was a bit shorter than they'd expected so they'd have to slam on the brakes). After landing in wind and rain and going through customs, the journey was finally at an end.
At least, it would have been if KLM hadn't lost both of our bags. We waited at the luggage carousel for a while, with Whitney getting increasingly worried about the lack of bright red holdalls and suitcases coming round. I said not to worry because of the large group of people still waiting, and it was at that moment that the luggage people turned off the lights and went home. It wasn't just our bags that they'd lost - they'd failed to forward the luggage belonging to everyone with a connecting flight.
Now we're sitting at home watching the Top Gear presenters night, and I'm wearing the pair of jogging trousers that I've had on for thirty-six hours along with a dressing gown and "Thing 2" T-shirt scavenged from the bottom of a drawer. Whitney's been out to Tesco already and has returned with some rather decent inexpensive clothing (something that America has in very short supply, by the way). Also among the missing items are a few Christmas presents that we have to wrap, and rather importantly, my levothyroxine pills. The only effect of missing them for a couple of days will be to make me a little more tired and irritable, but at this point I doubt you'd be able to tell.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Heavy Metal Christmas
I haven't been terribly good at updating this recently, because work has been increasingly mental as we had to get three separate customizations of our software finished for three different legs of the company that we sort-of-now-work for. And this isn't going to be an informative entry either, because soon we're packing up our bags and going to Scotland.
A couple of years ago (but I honestly thought it was just last year), for a Christmas music special I brought you an offensively manic J-pop version of "Let It Snow". To balance that out, here are some unusual versions of Deck The Halls/Joy to the World and Little Drummer Boy by Matt Smith (ace). Unfortunately his band is called Theocracy and he's from Georgia, which most anyone would agree is a combination that indicates worrying madness.
And if you're not in the mood for Christmas music, you could always listen to Skeletor Goes to Mars instead.
A couple of years ago (but I honestly thought it was just last year), for a Christmas music special I brought you an offensively manic J-pop version of "Let It Snow". To balance that out, here are some unusual versions of Deck The Halls/Joy to the World and Little Drummer Boy by Matt Smith (ace). Unfortunately his band is called Theocracy and he's from Georgia, which most anyone would agree is a combination that indicates worrying madness.
And if you're not in the mood for Christmas music, you could always listen to Skeletor Goes to Mars instead.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Forever
I just genuinely had to check whether I'd fallen asleep for half a year and woken up on the first of April. But I haven't, and it looks like something unthinkable has happened. They might just be... close to... well, finishing it.
The thought is genuinely beyond my comprehension. I have an issue of PC Gamer from 1998 with a "near-finished" preview of that. Tune in tomorrow at noon where we'll discover just how far and wide 3DRealms' server has exploded from the entire world hitting it at once.
The thought is genuinely beyond my comprehension. I have an issue of PC Gamer from 1998 with a "near-finished" preview of that. Tune in tomorrow at noon where we'll discover just how far and wide 3DRealms' server has exploded from the entire world hitting it at once.
Monday, December 17, 2007
MMORPGs in disguise
It had to happen eventually. I had avoided them for so long, but as of last week, thanks to so many people on the Clickteam chatroom playing this, I have finally been bitten by the MMORPG ferret. This caught me by surprise because this is an RPG disguised as something else - it's Nexon Kartrider, which is what I'd politely describe as being "inspired" by Mario Kart (but it's still not quite as much of a ripoff as the blatantly plagiarized Crash Team Racing). So as it's just a racing game, everything's OK.
I should warn you in advance that it's impossibly cutesy and manages to be even more bubbly than Windows XP, but if you can get past that without being sick, it's easy to see that it's clearly an RPG underneath. It starts off in the tutorial mode, where you're shown the basic controls (left turns you left, right turns you right, hooray) along with the difficult-to-master "drifting" technique that you'll waste hours of time on before realizing it's mostly faster to just hold Up. Then you're left to run riot, either going straight into the multiplayer mode or trying to complete certain scenarios first.
Sooner or later you're nudged in the direction of multiplayer, either through your own choice or through scenario missions that tell you to practice your driving against other players. This is where things start to get interesting. The disadvantage with the game, as with all MMORPGs, is that you're forced to compete with semi-literate American skateboarder types. The advantage, as with all MMORPGs, is that you can beat them. After a while, anyway - you're only allowed on the lower skill level "channels" at first, and have to get a sense of where to be cautious and where to zoom ahead holding both middle fingers up behind you before you start to get significant amounts of experience from finishing in a respectable place. More experience gives you access to the higher-level channels, more driving tutorials for advanced techniques, more scenario missions which reward you with experience, and the whole unstoppable cycle continues until you realize you've been playing it for eight hours and everyone else has gone to bed.
There are several different game modes. You can opt to play individually or in teams - the team mode gives you slightly fewer points overall, but might be more lucrative if you get into a good team even though you're rubbish. More importantly, you can either play Speed mode or Item mode. Speed is a pure race - there's nothing but you and other drivers, and your position in the race is determined by your ability to pick the right spots to slide round corners and use your limited boosts wisely (or, failing that, your ability to swerve in front of other faster players and get them to crash into your cheating backside). Item Mode, just like Mario Kart, gives you the standard array of banana skins, water bombs and various other items of warfare with which to irritate the other players. Most of them have the effect of slowing them down to a halt several different ways so that you can cruise past them while they wave their fists at you Dick Dastardly-style, but there are a couple of more interesting ones like the Magnet which can be used to give you a great advantage if you fire it just at the nanosecond where you can see the race leader ahead of you on a long straight.
You'd think that the monotony of it would be a problem after a while (there are, at a guess, about fifteen tracks, five of which are decent) but it isn't - it's the promise of the ever-closer Level Up and, after a few of those, the next "Glove Colour" to show off to people that come with them that make it addictive. Not to mention that with just a couple more first places you might have enough money to buy the new kart that you've had your eye on. MMORPGs represent a world in which what our parents taught us to ignore now matters the most - material gain and being measured by no more than a number. I'd recommend that you create an account and download it yourself, but obviously you're above that level. Aren't you?
I should warn you in advance that it's impossibly cutesy and manages to be even more bubbly than Windows XP, but if you can get past that without being sick, it's easy to see that it's clearly an RPG underneath. It starts off in the tutorial mode, where you're shown the basic controls (left turns you left, right turns you right, hooray) along with the difficult-to-master "drifting" technique that you'll waste hours of time on before realizing it's mostly faster to just hold Up. Then you're left to run riot, either going straight into the multiplayer mode or trying to complete certain scenarios first.
 |
Sooner or later you're nudged in the direction of multiplayer, either through your own choice or through scenario missions that tell you to practice your driving against other players. This is where things start to get interesting. The disadvantage with the game, as with all MMORPGs, is that you're forced to compete with semi-literate American skateboarder types. The advantage, as with all MMORPGs, is that you can beat them. After a while, anyway - you're only allowed on the lower skill level "channels" at first, and have to get a sense of where to be cautious and where to zoom ahead holding both middle fingers up behind you before you start to get significant amounts of experience from finishing in a respectable place. More experience gives you access to the higher-level channels, more driving tutorials for advanced techniques, more scenario missions which reward you with experience, and the whole unstoppable cycle continues until you realize you've been playing it for eight hours and everyone else has gone to bed.
There are several different game modes. You can opt to play individually or in teams - the team mode gives you slightly fewer points overall, but might be more lucrative if you get into a good team even though you're rubbish. More importantly, you can either play Speed mode or Item mode. Speed is a pure race - there's nothing but you and other drivers, and your position in the race is determined by your ability to pick the right spots to slide round corners and use your limited boosts wisely (or, failing that, your ability to swerve in front of other faster players and get them to crash into your cheating backside). Item Mode, just like Mario Kart, gives you the standard array of banana skins, water bombs and various other items of warfare with which to irritate the other players. Most of them have the effect of slowing them down to a halt several different ways so that you can cruise past them while they wave their fists at you Dick Dastardly-style, but there are a couple of more interesting ones like the Magnet which can be used to give you a great advantage if you fire it just at the nanosecond where you can see the race leader ahead of you on a long straight.
You'd think that the monotony of it would be a problem after a while (there are, at a guess, about fifteen tracks, five of which are decent) but it isn't - it's the promise of the ever-closer Level Up and, after a few of those, the next "Glove Colour" to show off to people that come with them that make it addictive. Not to mention that with just a couple more first places you might have enough money to buy the new kart that you've had your eye on. MMORPGs represent a world in which what our parents taught us to ignore now matters the most - material gain and being measured by no more than a number. I'd recommend that you create an account and download it yourself, but obviously you're above that level. Aren't you?
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Unbelievabili-T
This morning, two of the trains on the line I take to work managed to excel themselves beyond all expectations and hit each other. So after taking the Green Line as far as the underground section starts, where we were moved to another train that got two stations before giving up as well, and being redirected to a shuttle bus that eventually weaved its way through traffic to Park Street, I decided to give up and go home. Particularly as there's meant to be a bit of snow this afternoon and they've never been very good at dealing with that either.
And Charlie was looking as optimistic about it as ever.
I'll write about something more interesting than trains soon, honest.
And Charlie was looking as optimistic about it as ever.
I'll write about something more interesting than trains soon, honest.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Insani-T
I know that you're going to think I'm a bit sad, but I've been recording the train arrival times at Park Street on my way home from work for the last couple of months, for the benefit of those awful bigheads on the
I apologize for the utter abominability of the table HTML, but Excel spits it out like that and it's rather difficult to go through and correct. Basically, from this lot, several things are apparent...
So in conclusion, we've really nothing to complain about. Apart from those three mysterious gaps you see in the table - those are the times when the red line train failed completely and I never got to Park Street at all. (Once because of a small fire in a bin, the second time because of a "police investigation" at Kendall, and the third time because I just couldn't stand it any more.)
It could be just me, but I don't think that they noticed the tone that I get from that advert - doesn't it seem that the model is actually trying to hold back laughter at looking at the claim that the T's winter schedule is in any way reliable? Additionally, the train is on the right hand line, which means that it's actually leaving rather than arriving (something all too common in the mornings when five trains limp past in the wrong direction for you before the first one you saw comes back). The rather large chasm between this and what actually happens was enough to convince people that the MBTA were in fact living in an alternate reali-T.
| Date | Arrived | Left At | Waiting | ||||||||
| 26 Sept 2007 | B | D | E | C | 19:00 | 19:08 | 00:08 | ||||
| x:fmla="=A2+1">27 Sept 2007 | D | B | D | D | E | C | 18:45 | 18:58 | 00:13 | ||
| x:fmla="=A3+1">28 Sept 2007 | C | 19:11 | 19:12 | 00:01 | |||||||
| 01 October 2007 | B | D | B | C | 18:56 | 19:03 | 00:07 | ||||
| x:fmla="=A5+1">02 October 2007 | D | C | 18:52 | 18:55 | 00:03 | ||||||
| 04 October 2007 | D | B | C | 19:20 | 19:26 | 00:06 | |||||
| x:fmla="=A7+1">05 October 2007 | |||||||||||
| 06 October 2007 | B | D | C | 19:07 | 19:13 | 00:06 | |||||
| 09 October 2007 | C | 18:55 | 18:56 | 00:01 | |||||||
| x:fmla="=A10+1">10 October 2007 | E | B | C | 19:10 | 19:13 | 00:03 | |||||
| 11 October 2007 | B | D | C | 19:22 | 19:26 | 00:04 | |||||
| 12 October 2007 | |||||||||||
| 15 October 2007 | B | E | C | 19:03 | 19:05 | 00:02 | |||||
| 16 October 2007 | C | 18:59 | 19:12 | 00:13 | |||||||
| 17 October 2007 | E | C | 19:15 | 19:18 | 00:03 | ||||||
| 18 October 2007 | B | D | E | C | 19:25 | 19:31 | 00:06 | ||||
| 19 October 2007 | B | D | E | B | C | 19:36 | 19:42 | 00:06 | |||
| 22 October 2007 | C | 19:06 | 19:07 | 00:01 | |||||||
| 23 October 2007 | D | E | D | B | C | 18:53 | 18:58 | 00:05 | |||
| 24 October 2007 | C | 19:08 | 19:11 | 00:03 | |||||||
| 25 October 2007 | D | D | B | C | 19:20 | 19:26 | 00:06 | ||||
| 26 October 2007 | D | B | E | C | 20:04 | 20:12 | 00:08 | ||||
| 29 October 2007 | B | C | 19:20 | 19:24 | 00:04 | ||||||
| 31 October 2007 | D | C | 17:24 | 17:28 | 00:04 | ||||||
| 01 November 2007 | B | E | D | C | 19:26 | 19:32 | 00:06 | ||||
| 02 November 2007 | D | C | 19:22 | 19:27 | 00:05 | ||||||
| 05 November 2007 | C | 21:18 | 21:21 | 00:03 | |||||||
| 06 November 2007 | B | D | B | C | 19:11 | 19:18 | 00:07 | ||||
| 07 November 2007 | C | 19:05 | 19:05 | 00:00 | |||||||
| 08 November 2007 | C | 18:49 | 18:50 | 00:01 | |||||||
| 09 November 2007 | B | C | 19:33 | 19:40 | 00:07 | ||||||
| 10 November 2007 | B | C | 19:36 | 19:38 | 00:02 | ||||||
| 13 November 2007 | |||||||||||
| 14 November 2007 | B | D | B | B | E | D | D | C | 18:49 | 19:00 | 00:11 |
| 15 November 2007 | D | B | C | 18:15 | 18:20 | 00:05 | |||||
| 27 November 2007 | C | 18:37 | 18:39 | 00:02 | |||||||
| 28 November 2007 | D | C | 19:19 | 19:22 | 00:03 | ||||||
| 29 November 2007 | E | B | D | B | C | 19:15 | 19:22 | 00:07 | |||
| 30 November 2007 | C | 19:02 | 19:03 | 00:01 | |||||||
| 03 December 2007 | C | 20:13 | 20:13 | 00:00 | |||||||
| 04 December 2007 | E | B | C | 19:58 | 20:06 | 00:08 | |||||
| 05 December 2007 | B | E | C | 19:01 | 19:04 | 00:03 | |||||
| 06 December 2007 | D | B | E | C | 19:18 | 19:21 | 00:03 | ||||
I apologize for the utter abominability of the table HTML, but Excel spits it out like that and it's rather difficult to go through and correct. Basically, from this lot, several things are apparent...
- The rotation of trains is actually remarkably fair - 32 times out of 40, none of the other trains arrived twice while I was waiting.
- Similarly, C arrived first 11 times out of 40. That seems fair enough to me.
- Everyone thinks the B train arrives more than the others, and this seems to be right (it arrived first 14 times out of 40) - this is logical because that line has a stop every four inches and it takes hours to get to the other end. It's not a huge difference, though - both C and D are close behind with 11 first arrivals each.
- The E-train passengers are the ones who should be annoyed, as their train arrived first only four times so far, and has never arrived twice while I've been waiting.
- The longest I've ever been waiting was 13 minutes, during the times when the train is stuffed with people in red shirts going to watch the baseball, and the average wait for me is just under five minutes.
So in conclusion, we've really nothing to complain about. Apart from those three mysterious gaps you see in the table - those are the times when the red line train failed completely and I never got to Park Street at all. (Once because of a small fire in a bin, the second time because of a "police investigation" at Kendall, and the third time because I just couldn't stand it any more.)
 |
It could be just me, but I don't think that they noticed the tone that I get from that advert - doesn't it seem that the model is actually trying to hold back laughter at looking at the claim that the T's winter schedule is in any way reliable? Additionally, the train is on the right hand line, which means that it's actually leaving rather than arriving (something all too common in the mornings when five trains limp past in the wrong direction for you before the first one you saw comes back). The rather large chasm between this and what actually happens was enough to convince people that the MBTA were in fact living in an alternate reali-T.
Monday, December 3, 2007
If you friend this community I'll stop going on about it
There's a new article on that might interest anyone who was as traumatized by Sierra-style adventure games as I was. And still am.
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About Me
- DavidXNewton
- I'm a British coder who also thinks he can write. I have lived in America since the middle of 2006 and have still utterly failed to understand anything about it. In my spare time I attempt to write games and music, with varying levels of success. My personal blog is a mirror of my Livejournal, but it's not quite as bad as most of the rest of them.