PS3 Yellow lights of death fix (it worked on mine) - PlayStation.com Forums

Gonna have to try this...
PS3 Yellow lights of death fix (it worked on mine) - PlayStation.com Forums

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Video Games and Moral Choices

Epic fail

I was reading the comments on an article on the expression "epic fail" in the Guardian and it struck me that nobody really knew its origins.

I may be wrong about this, but I suspect it can be traced back to MMORPGS like Everquest and Everquest 2. In these games, monsters are given different labels to reflect the challenge involved in defeating them. Some are "normal" (can be killed by a single player) some are "heroic" (may require up to six players to kill) and some are "epic" (may require up to 24 players to kill).

It's often the case when fighting the epic mobs (creatures or groups of creatures that require multiple groups of 6 players to kill) that a single mistake made by one person can cause everyone in the raid (the collection of groups) to be killed (a wipe). I always assumed that an Epic Fail referred to a seemingly small mistake made by one person in the raid that causes the epic mob to kill everyone in the raid. A small mistake with big consequences...

The meaning of power

is that everyone wants a slice of Professor Pie, regardless of whether said Professor is an epispastemic peripepticist who seems, at any moment, to be about to combust into a neo-phosporescent haze.

Fucking Hell

A very detailed review in the London Evening Standard.

Adrian Searle's description.

A video from the Chapman Brothers' website with an option for HD.

A segment from Newsnight.

A Youtube video (use the youtube volume control to stop the music from drowning out the description):



Finally, Mark Kermode pontificates on the Chapman brothers

Becky Mantin

For me, the most beautiful woman on British television. Something about those bonnie scottish features just really does something for me. It's not something I decided, must just be genetic attraction or something...

just blogging about her because not enough people seem to...

I guess the real way to enjoy the Becky Mantin experience is by watching a forecast:

I dare say I'd be "rattling through" quite quickly too...

The most impressive thing is that she's a Metereological Officer which means she partly controls the weather. She's probably responsible for the Jamaica...

One of the great horror movies

The chainsaw is not what is so frightening about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is the broom. It is not Leatherface. It is the hitch hiker and the Old Man. It is the fact that these are not iconic villains (TM) and that they don't appear to be played by actors. It is as if the film makers recruited these strange people, told them to "just be yourself" and pointed that handheld, heat-warped camera at them.

The reason that they are so scary is that, if we are extremely unlucky, we will meet one of them on our walk home from work tonight. The hitch hiker will smile and sidle over to us, offer to shake our hand. And if our fear of giving offense overcomes our in-built trepidation at his lank-haired, gap-toothed strangeness, if we reach out to shake his hand, we must watch his other hand very very closely. The truth is that we have met the hitch hiker before, he has recently been released from prison and has asked us for a bus fare before. We have shaken his hand, not daring to smell our palms afterwards, just washing them guiltily when we reach the safety of home.

We may have met the Old Man before two. This charming old gent who means well, who is "old school" and casually prejudiced across every conceivable dimension: gender, race, sexuality... we have heard his views expressed by uncles linked to us by uncertain family relationships, bonds, and commitments. We have bought him drinks in dark and dingy hotel bars in Liverpool. He has shown us the gap between his teeth, how he can capture our sister's nipple in there, his tongue flickering like a rattlesnake's tail.

In my opinion, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 1974 is one of a handful of the greatest horror movies ever made. This was just a fraction of my rationale.

Bayonetta

Finally completed Bayonetta on "hard" mode tonight, after several weeks-worth of hard struggle. This was a very difficult game, probably the most difficult one I've played in several years so it feels like quite an achievement to have finished it. It was always a challenge but each kill was very satisfying as a result.

The other great thing is that the end-of-game "reward" sequences are long and have a lot of variety, so there is a feeling of getting your just desserts in the end (I'll say no more so as not to spoil things for anyone). The only bad thing, now that I move on to God of War III is that I'm going to miss that perfect ass ;-). Heaven knows how long the developers spent working on that little number...

Hail His name, the Master of Mankind

This post is just a small nod of appreciation to the milieu created by Rick Priestley in 1988 for the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop battle game. For me, the image below is the one that best evokes this milieu.

This is not a future of bright sophistication and civilised committee meetings. This is brute force and ignorance. If a computer doesn't work, you do not open the case and carefully replace the components whilst wearing a surgical mask. You hit it as hard as you can. If that doesn't work, you call a tech priest who murmurs a litany over it. And for some reason, it works. Technology so advanced that it responds to ritual and percussion.

The weapons. Orbital bombardments, power fists, powered armour, plasma cannons, chainswords, storm bolters, frag grenades, melta-guns, melta-bombs, the manufactories on Mars, the Inquisition, Exterminatus, the bodies of a hundred youthful psykers sacrificed each day to preserve the last spark of life in the dessicated skeletal husk of the Emperor.

Brute force and ignorance. A regime of such brutality serving as humanity's final defence against damnation at the hands of the chaos gods.

Now... playing this game has never held much interest for me so I wouldn't call myself a fan of that. What I am a fan of though, is the incredibly detailed and grim universe that the Games Workshop team invented as background information to the game.

As the years since 1988 passed, a story began to emerge. I'll try to summarise what I recall of the story without looking too much up online. This is what I have in my head.

I think the main dramatic elements begin 30,000 years in the future in M31... or to use the WH40K date system, something like 1 397 452.M31, with the Horus Heresy.

Little Big Planet

The Chronicles of Doctor Who

It's great to hear that Michael Moorcock, author of fantasy books about Elric of Melnibone, Corum, Count Brass, Hawkmoon, and many others has been approached to add a Doctor Who novel to his canon. Here's hoping that at some point in the future, we will see him write an episode for this series.

At times his writing can be quite dark. I always think of two Elric novels: the first, in which Elric watches his torturer, Doctor Jest, at work with a scalpel on one helpless prisoner and another, in which Elric advises one antagonist

"you will look back on agonies presently unimaginable to you with a sense of nostalgia... as a time before the pain really began..."

Aperture

I must admit, one of the nicest experiences I think a man can have is to be caught in his girlfriends narrowed vaginal opening. That firm, implacable grip that seems to warmly tell your erection

"no... you're not going anywhere

"and you wouldn't, even if you could."

Trailer for Doctor Who

Sounds as though the new series starts in Easter.

Could good evolve?

I'm not sure whether you're religious. As Johnny Cash puts it

"I think I understand a little bit how you feel 'bout some things, it's none of my business how you feel 'bout some other things, and I don't give a damn how you  feel about some other things..."

I'm not sure whether I'm religious. But I do find evolutionary theory satisfying about a lot of things. A useful tool of such elegance that a deity might beget it.

What do I mean about goodness? I'm basically talking about altruism that goes beyond reactionary preservation of your blueprint. I think that's all DNA is... a blueprint or a recipe instructing each of your cells about how to behave in unison to create and maintain you. They have been described as selfish because they build you in such a way that you will survive. Your cells contain the blueprints and so the blueprints survive.

The blueprints know that you will die, eventually (they should know, they are the blueprint), and they will be destroyed when that happens. So the other thing that genes want, is for this creature they built to reproduce.

It isn't perfect, but the physics of reproduction means that for each blueprint, half will be copied and will escape from you to form a new creature. That half of a blueprint can live on after your death. In fact, when two halves of a blueprint from different creatures combine together to create a new creature, those two halves actually have many more similarities between them than differences. So, by getting your girl pregnant or being made pregnant by your man, the vast majority of your blueprint is copied.

Survival (through life and reproduction) is the only priority of your blueprint. Selfish as a blueprint.

So the question is, would the blueprint include parts to make you good and altruistic? Would those parts be useful, redundant, or an impediment to the priority?

We need to imagine life before goodness. The battle for survival. Everybody living on the brink of starvation and dehydration. Desperate for food, bodies echoing hollowly with hunger, heads banging with heat and thirst. The way lions feel. Are you there yet? OK... good.

Now you find an old half-rotten apple. Do you selfishly eat it all yourself or do you altruistically share it with your mate (interpret mate any way you like)? It's survival calculus. Do you believe that your mate's gratitude and the possibility of calling in a reciprocal favour at some future date is worth the certain loss of half your rotten apple? What does your blueprint tell you? What if the potential payback is sex and the chance to replicate your selfish genes? The helix from DNA, he say yes.

OK, now what if we're thinking of the other interprestation of mate? A friend that you can't ever reproduce with? Altruism can still improve your chances of reproduction. Now you're building reputation. We're a sociable species. What if word of your altruism spreads? You have saved someone's life. Perhaps they speak of your deeds in awed tones when they are next with the tribe before the next hunt. What do the other types of mate think of that? Perhaps your altruism is an impressive quality. The fact that it is someone whose life you saved, someone who is alive because of you, that is telling of your kindness, strengthens your reputation far more than any selfish boasting could.

Everybody wants to be your friend. Those who can want to reproduce with you and have similarly good and caring offspring.

So yes, in my view, it's quite likely that good can evolve.

Bas Rutten's barfight survival guide

Storytelling in computer games

Another one by Daniel Floyd:

Computer games provoking learning

Another one by Daniel Floyd:

Problems and choice in computer games

Another one by Daniel Floyd:

Sex and computer games

Another by Daniel Floyd:

Controversy in computer games

Another presentation by Daniel Floyd

Uncanny valley

Daniel Floyd and James Portnow presenting...

Ten dimensions explained

Very nice and comprehensible description of ten-dimensional reality. Well worth viewing before reading some of the later chapters in Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.





If there are exotic creatures out there that are able to perceive the ninth and tenth dimensions, then we will be utterly irrelevant to their affairs. We just have to hope that they don't accidentally anhihilate us (and our universe) when carrying out those affairs. I guess this is how Doctor Who and the time lords (creators of the TARDIS) see things

Sunlight in the attic

and the image I have is of a ramshackle timber house on a hot summer's day. The frame is dark to the point of blackness against the blazing sun. In the attic, a lot of the roof has been neatly sawn away, allowing golden light to pour in and burn away the dust. Dust that has built up over fifteen winters. The attic, and all it contains, exposed. Purified and healed by the light.

Of course, the thing you're all wondering is "what is it like to have brain surgery?" It's a hard question to answer. Let me give you a bit of context. We're late in '88 and I've just seen a cute advert for a new toy, something that sounded like Cabbage Patch Kids, but I seem to think were some kind of appealing, yet plastic looking caterpillars... I went to tell my brother that I'd seen them and that our sister might like one for Christmas.

I think I had caught him emerging from the bathroom, about to go onto his top bunk to do some reading. Then I realised I couldn't pronounce the name of the toy (let's say Cabbage Patch Kids, for the sake of argument). It kept coming out as a sequence of syllables that rhymed (approximately) but the consonants were all wrong. tabakap   tabakap and I'd keep giving up, alarmed, unable to pronounce it.

I'd been revising for mock exams all day, and was doing my last minute memorisation routine, so I stopped trying and just concentrated on revising for one of the most important exams of my life up to that point.

It was a humanities subject that I wasn't too keen on, maybe history or geography... I'm thinking... geography. History was a subject I would have done crap on anyway because during a hypoglycaemic reaction on my way home one lunch time, I'd actually thrown my hand written school exercise and class note books away in a fit of frustration and discombobulation. Anyway, the next morning, things seemed OK-ish, at first. I had a few problems pronouncing the occasional word, but no big problem, I was getting by... to a certain extent.

We walked into school, I was still trying to memorise and remember my revision notes as we walked. I got into the exam. And that's when it all came to pieces.

I couldn't write. I was so panicked by this, that I couldn't even begin to answer the exam. There was something wrong with my brain when it came to words. I couldn't pronounce them. I couldn't put the pieces together properly. I would learn years later that these pieces are called morphemes and phonemes. They were a mess in my mind. Well, they weren't. The little pieces were OK, it was my ability to sequence them properly that seemed to have to gone to pot.

I put my hand up to say that I had a problem. What did I say exactly? I can't remember. Why? I don't know. All I know is that my mum came to the school to pick me up. She told me that one of my teachers, an invigilator for the exam, told her that I hadn't been able to write my name correctly on the exam paper. My mum realised something major had gone wrong. We went to the GP and forced a referral to Whiston Hospital (where I was actually born, and as a matter of coincidence, Steven Gerrard was born too).

I spent quite a long time in Whiston... I was in there for a week before the consultant came to visit the children's ward that I was on. The previous day had been immensely frustrating and scary. At one point I had totally failed to converse with one nurse, groping for phonemes, hardly able to pronounce a single sound and she had eventually given up on me, waving her hands in exasperation. Imagine that.

I was lucky to be seen by this particular consultant. She was a woman that my mum and I had met her quite a few times as she had previously been consultant at a different outpatients clinic that I had attended, so she knew my history and also mannerisms to a certain extent (though I was always pretty locked down in those days). Well, this consultant, Dr. Cramp, gave me some neuro-psychological tests: arithmetic, physical coordination, ability to walk in a straight line, etc. I managed most of them and was able to recall words but unable to pronounce them. I struggled with arithmetic...particularly abstract things like carrying the four (for example) when doing additions. Dr. Cramp's comment was "this isn't the Richard we know".

I was then taken by ambulance (and friendly scouse ambulance drivers driving at worrying speed) to the neurological unit at Alder Hay hospital (now closed: thanks Thatcher) for an MRI or PET scan, I can't remember which. Needle in the back of my hand and needing to hold absolutely still for about ten minutes. I did have one false start, but managed to hold still for the duration in the end. Then we went back to Whiston Hospital to await the results of the scan.

I remember the consultant discussing the results with another doctor (a black guy) and my parents. They said there was a bleed in some area of my brain that I didn't catch, and am still ignorant about. Then they sent me away to the play room in the paediatric ward at Whiston hospital, where I could look at old dusty (possibly hallucinogenic) ex-library books and grimy fisher price toys. I can still smell them in my mind's nose.

While I waited, contemplating my bleeding brain and the possibility which had been mentioned already, of exploratory brain surgery, journalists from the local newspaper arrived, wanting to take a photo of some of the children who happened to be present on the ward at that time. I was one of them. I probably couldn't have said cheese, thanks to that tricky affricate at the beginning... and didn't feel like smiling. Still, I tried. When you look at the photo below, try to remember that. One of the kids' brains is bleeding.

There was a CAT scan involved somewhere, but I don't remember which hospital that was. This was quite some time ago. I'm guessing the CAT scan was done first (at Whiston) but it might actually have been later. By the time this whole incident was over, I would have had three: CAT, PET, and MRI.

There was a bleed visible on the scan, it looked about the size of a walnut (the darkness). I was then told I may need brain surgery to investigate it. For that, I'd have to go to the neurological unit at Walton Hospital. I think it was here that they did the CT scan (a cheaper process than the MRI, but anyway). There was a second MRI scan too, I think, just days before the scheduled exploratory surgery. A chance for the doctors to get the latest bulletin from the front line conflict between blood and brain.

I remember the surgeon had very big fingers. He told me about the chances. 10% death, 20% permanent paralysis. If we don't operate, the problem might clear up on its own. It might get worse and kill you.

Basically, as I have heard neurosurgeons say since the operation, it's Russian Roulette with two revolvers. One revolver is surgery and one is doing nothing. Both have risks and the art is to correctly assess which risk is the lesser, and taking it.

On balance, they recommended surgery. My parents would sign for me, but I was there for the conversation... for the decision, and as someone who had been trapped into silence by this problem (this cavernous haemangioma), I did not consider "doing nothing" as an option.

10% and 20% are sizeable risks, but worth taking in my view, then. All I can say is that I had faith. And yes, my views on religion were simpler then.

The surgeon, a consultant, Mr. Cunningham, explained about the operation. They would cut a horseshoe shape in my skull. I asked him, and he said that yes, the cut would be angled to create a bevel that would stop the piece of skull from falling onto my brain before it had healed after the operation.

The opening of the horseshoe would serve as a hinge of skin, scalp, and muscle that could be pulled open for the operation. The position of the bleed was under the surface of my brain, so some small cutting through would be necessary. This was all factored into the risk assessment (I guess).

During my hospital stay, various drips were put into my arm. With maybe 24 hours to go, an attractive young female doctor took one out and exchanged it for a higher gauge needle to deliver controlled quantities of both insulin and glucose into my system. It took her six, count 'em, attempts before the needle was in the right place, the crooks of both my elbows dully bruised.

The new drip had an irritating habit of beeping every time it would administer something, something it did every 15 minutes or so. I remember interfering with my sleep. By this time, I was so institutionalised that I'd become like an insomniac - never really awake, never really asleep.

On the day of the operation, I was wheeled on a hospital trolley by one or two nurses and my parents. They did crash the trolley through the push doors of the hospital... the smell of antiseptic must have been everywhere. I usually notice it when I'm walking through a hospital, but perhaps I was so institutionalised by this point and used to the smell that I didn't notice it.

I believe I was naked except for a hospital gown, but not warm and not cold. My parents wished me luck. I looked at my dad and said "I can't believe this is: my first operation and it's brain surgery." Uncannily, my verbal articulation had improved during my time in Walton, though it did still cause me the occasional problem.

My disability had reached its nadir in Whiston hospital near the start of all this, when the bleed was not even a shadow on a scan, gliding through the water. It's always like that when you see a doctor, I guess, the symtoms that have bothered you for the past week suddenly vanishing.

They left me at the elevator, my mum squeezing my hand and wishing me luck. The nurses were with me. They took the brakes off and we dropped at speed down through the lift shaft. And there is descent: long and fast. A sense of consequence.

I'm glad I never saw the surgical saw they'd use. If I had, my fear would have been far greater. Instead, I went into the operating theatre with a sense of acceptance and passivity. No fight. No real fear. Just a heart-felt prayer. One of the nurses put another needle into my... wrist, I think. They transferred me to the operating table where I passed out. I asked them some questions, but they were questions of no consequence. Did the surgeons arrive while I was conscious? I believe they did... I believe so. They asked me to count back... slowly... was it back... from what number? I don't really remember. I fell into the darkness of that first brain scan.

I awoke from the darkness into the gloom of a night time hospital ward. It was winter, and the only  windows in sight were the doors to the ward that opened onto brightly lit hospital corridors. The nurse's station provided the second source of illumination. I believe, in a daze of anaesthetic, the person I awoke to was the sister of the ward. In no time, it seemed, my parents were there. I raised my right leg and arm. No paralysis. I felt relief. We talked. They asked me whether I was OK. I said I think so.

The Lockerbie disaster had happened. Hundreds dead. The plane had crashed into the village, a small village that would otherwise never have been noticed or brought to the attention of the world. Hundreds dead and I was alive.

I would learn later, that my mother had asked for a prayer to said for me at the local methodist church one Sunday, and the methodists in the village of Farnworth prayed for me. I'm not sure whether they prayed before the operation, or after it, but it made me think. I did feel grateful. My perspective on reality had changed.

I believed in the existence of God. But not as we know him. It was something abstract, like a law of probability. I believed there were an infinite number of parallel universes. In one fifth of them I am paralysed on the right side of my body, in one tenth I am a vegetable, and in another tenth, I died and no aeroplane fell in a fiery slalom through the small terraced houses in the village of Lockerbie. The conscious I am writing this in the best of my possibilities. I cannot speak for you.

Later, I found that I could hardly open my mouth at all. It would only go as wide as the width of my thumb, perhaps a little more. (Several days later, I brought this to the attention of the consultant surgeon. He explainied that in sawing open my skull, it had been necessary to sever a tendon on that side of my scalp. He expected it would heal in time. It did, though it took longer than I had thought before I could get my mouth fully open again to stuff my face with Tuc biscuits).



Later still, I tried to raise my head, but couldn't. It hurt when I tried. I felt a pulling at the back of my head and pain on the left side of my scalp. Something pulling and threatening to tear? I never saw the tube running under my scalp.

They referred to it as a drain. I suppose it was there to allow blood and fluid from the trauma of the surgery to be released from the confines of my skull where it would otherwise cause harmful pressure. There seemed to be perhaps three quarters of a litre of blood in it when the tube was removed the next day, or maybe the day after.

Taking the drain out was uncomfortable... probably the most painful thing I felt during the whole affair. There was spilt blood and yes, there was a sucking gurgle; at the time, I was sure that that sound came from my skull, but surely it was from the bottle(?); when it was freed.

The cavernous haemangioma itself never caused me any physical pain. Like a girlfriend, the pain it caused was all emotional, about possibilities smashed and futures abandoned. I did have a feeling of grogginess after the brain surgery, but I believe that was mainly a result of the anaesthetic. Were there headaches? There were, there was some pain, but nothing that left me sleepless. Having said that, I was prescribed a few days' worth of pain killers for after the operation. I don't remember any description of their potency from the doctors. They either worked well, or weren't really needed.

Was the operation successful? This is a very difficult question to answer. I'm a single man working as a researcher, umm-ing and er-ing over whether to start a PhD. I got an upper second in my first degree, got my master's.

What if this whole affair from the fag-end of the 80s (to para-quote Bruce Robinson) hadn't happened? Were there universes in that infinite set where I have a first-class bachelor's degree and a distinction for my master's? Were there universes where I am married and have children? have fulfilled my ambition to write a work of fiction (it's a best seller and I am a billionaire)? Am not pissing my time up the wall with this widely read blog?

May be there were, but maybe you had such possibilities too, yet here you are, reading this ballocks. Fuck it, OK, I say it was a success.

I was warned that they'd monitor me for six months after the operation because there was a chance that I'd suffer from epileptic fits. I'm now in the second year of the third decade post-op, and I still haven't suffered from one... I sometimes forget to keep my fingers crossed on that and maybe that's a good sign in itself.

I have no regrets about the decision I took to have a horseshoe shaped cut made in my roof and my attic opened up to the light and the breeze. Who knows, maybe it cleared out some of the cobwebs.

Supplies!

You remember the scene in Kingpin where Woody Harrelson has to pay his rent by fucking his landlady? How the next morning he was crouched over the toilet, gripping the edge of the bowl and retching in horror at the memory of the night before? My one and only blind date was like that.

I blame the bloody internet. Jules and I had got chatting via love@lycos and things had progressed quite rapidly to phone calls and enjoyable phone sex sessions that she used to participate in while in the bath (it was true, I could hear the splashes. Incidentally, the best phone sex I ever had was with a scottish girl called Kirsty who told me "I wanna peel your foreskin back and stick my tongue down your Jap's eye", still one of the two sexiest things I have ever heard... anyway, let's get on with the original anecdote...). Jules was a nurse, which had my imagination running. I'd tried to ask her about her body, without being too specific. She told me she had strong legs as she needed to heft patients in and out of beds, and she had good lower body strength. Put that way, it still sounded good. We were getting on like a house on fire, liked similar movies (Fight Club) was one in particular that we both talked about liking. Anyway, one time she invited me down to Reading to meet up. I agreed readily, and made the three hour train journey there. She told me I'd recognise her because she was wearing a monkey-shaped ruck sack...

So, I get off the train and see her. I actually walked past her once, refusing to believe that the girl with the rucksack could really be her. It was when I walked back to see her again, that I suddenly realised "oh... this is a blind date". If it hadn't been, it wouldn't have happened. I was angry at God for playing this little number on me. Remember David Brent's reaction to one of his dates in the final episode of the office? "oh for fu-" I thought that several years earlier, on this sultry evening in Reading. My problem was, it was so late in the evening and I was not ready for another 3 hours or so train journey home, so I committed, and we met up.

Overall, it was nice, though it felt said. In her photos she looked like a woman ten years older than she really was. She didn't smile much in those photos. We talked, we got on great. We ate badly, I can hardly remember what. Night came and she was expecting, demanding sex. Demanding the rent. I fingered the fuck out of her. She was incredibly wet... a sodden square metre of mattress. I still wonder whether she had pissed herself, I'm still not sure... it didn't smell like that, but then where else had it all come from? Did I mention I was a virgin at the time, and remained one for several years AFTER this trip to Reading. She asked me to put my dick in her. I said no. I'm gonna lose it to the right person. I DID lose it to the right person. Several years later. Anyway, Jules sucked my dick. It felt good, especially when she was sucking my glans... I didn't realise that sensation of suction could be so nice. I say I didn't come in her mouth, that she mistook pre-cum for a full ejaculation. She claims I came. Fuck, at least it stopped her.

The next morning, looking back on the night before, I couldn't get the image of the pale fat... turkey... out of my mind, I felt truly nauseaous, I was actually dry heaving. Seeing that scene on Kingpin a couple of years later brought it all back to me. We saw Evolution at Reading's nice cinema complex on saturday night, after a day spent walking along the river... Thames? Is it the thames? It was beautiful really, traditional English riverside, a place where regatta would be held on glorious summer afternoons. Possibly a little way upstream from where the Oxford-Cambridge boat race is held. I just wish I'd been there with the person I love now, but I met her several years later. I spent the rest of the weekend trying to avoid sex with her, trying to avoid paying the rent. I pretty much succeeded by tactical tiredness although there was a little more on the sunday morning. I left by train later on the Sunday, promising to call her again. I never did, to my shame, I dumped her by text on the train.

Blind dates... I don't recommend them.

More games than one person can handle...

Well, I succumbed today and decided to purchase Sega's Bayonetta for PS3. The problem is I already have Assassin's Creed 2 that I'm working through for the second time after a corruption in my original save game (I'd completed it, but hadn't got around to checking out Chapter 12 that I recently downloaded and installed). 

I'm also playing Bioshock 2 on the PC (and loving the immersive atmosphere, though worried that even though I have no skill at the game, I'm still making progress with it). I undertstand that next week an expansion is coming out for my biggest time sink of all, EQ2. And not just any expansion, but an increase in level up to 90 and a graphics upgrade too (so finally, as my brother put it, EQ2 will enter the 20th Century. Yes, we know we're now in the 21st, but progress is progress...)

A pictorial history of my computer games

I didn't write any of these... I may not even have bought some of them... but I certainly "copied" them. "Copying" is a bit like "pirating" but for people who go to Sunday school...

 

Females and games

Just forwarding this video I found posted at Sexy Videogameland:

How octopus suckers work

Just wanted to cite this cool description of tentacular fixing apparatus (19th century marine biologists used to refer to it):

How octopus suckers work

Kane&Lynch

I'm quite looking forward to this.

I was one of the few people who actually quite enjoyed the humour and mania of Kane and Lynch: Dead Men. The game mechanics were very dodgy in places,  but overall there was enough character and charm to keep me hooked until the end. I loved the romance of those madcap characters... the desperate ex-SAS guy with the plaster across  his nose (was it broken, or was he wearing it just to make sure that both nostrils were well aerated?), the unselfconscious psychopath with his pills and unfashionable haircut. Two losers bumbling their way through a world of pain.

Of course the creators of that game made a critical error. Reading that gamespot had given Kane and Lynch: Dead Men no more than an average review, fairly pointed to its technical flaws... the games creators contacted gamespot and demanded a re-write of the review. News of this leaked and

the shit hit the fan. The internati lost all objectivity and started a universal hate campaign against Kane&Lynch. Zero stars or less were awarded to it by a trillion blobs of uncoordinated acne-ridden mouse rolling blubber and the game was finished. A financial disaster and bad investment. It was a shame overall. In terms of character and its adult humour, similar in sensibility to 2009's barnstorming Crank : High Voltage, the game deserved at least 50% as a rating.





The sequel is coming soon and I for one want to see it. I admire their courage for releasing it, and just hope everyone else reflects on the over-reaction last time and tries to look at Kane&Lynch 2 with fresh eyes.

Farewell to a good doctor

The part that moved me most, and set up emotional momentum that carried on through the rest of the End of Time, was the close-up of Bernard Cribbins (from The Dalek Invasion of Earth) staring out at us in a combination of regret and loss while the powerful, slow metronomic grind of the Tardis fades away. While his voices have been inconstant, this is how the Doctor has always really said "goodbye".

I'm thankful to Russell T. Davis for resurrecting this show from the heap of dereliction that Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and others had left of Doctor Who. From the final fascist boot in the face from Michael Grade that was intended to stamp the series out forever.

Michael Grade. Russell T. Davis shat long and hard on your useless head.

There's a nice history of Doctor Who presenting the show as a series of music videos to various tunes and music from the sixties, seventies, and eighties (I love the use of "Vienna" for Logopolis and Tom Baker's regeneration).

Liberty City twinned with my apartment

Grand Theft Auto 4 reminds me of my flat. My empty flat. Moving in... one 32" LCD TV (1080i, not p), no aerial, one radio, one PS3. Flat pack furniture being assembled by day, buying a kettle, carrying a fucking microwave home from Sainsbury's (made in China like everything from that place, including the paring knife whose blade snapped thanks to poor quality workmanship). By night... adventures in Liberty City. The rain. That incredible rain. The realisation that they had finally cracked rain.

This screenshot doesn't really do the game justice... for that you need the movement and the shifting patterns of light. The combination of droplets, lighting, and haze.

The game model seemed amazing, so full of features that great moments could occur as a matter of pure chance. I have read reports of people who, by chance, heard New York Groove on their car radio right as they drove across the Liberty City Bridge thing modelled on the Brooklyn Bridge into "Manhattan". My moment was of realising that I was out of money and was going to have to do my first contract hits to pay better weapons for the bank job mission. I made the decision at night. It started to rain in the darkness. As I walked from my stolen (thieved) car to the phone kiosk, lightning flashed and thunder rolled while the rain exploded from the sky. Unforgettable.

Pop Goes the Weasel always seemed to be in my head. It always seemed to be playing in the Perseus tailors. I had it in my head as I did my own shopping for clothes and household items at Beatties, my local department store. I actually included New York Groove on a compilation CD I recorded for my girlfriend who was living at some distance. The first time I ever put computer game music (I know, I know, it didn't originate in GTA4, but I heard it there first) onto a CD. I didn't receive any negative comments about it either. My girlfriend didn't comment "well... the CD was OK, but what was that computer game shit on it?" Well, OK she's my girlfriend so maybe she wouldn't say that. But then, she lives in a capital city, so maybe she would... Ha, in time, with subsequent CDs I went on to include David Whittaker's Alien Syndrome music... just 2 minutes of it... And still no complaints from her! Love.