So today was entertaining, I open my email to see a lovely email from rapidshare saying your account has been banned for downloading illegal materials.  They make it sound like I’m stealing state secrets or child porn but all I got was a couple of tv episodes of things that either don’t show over here or I missed. Two months left too, bastards. I can’t really blame them not with the recent pirate bay debacle. It has alot of people suddenly covering their asses.

Then I get to go to work to find everyone’s computers being scanner for malware but since I use my own laptop they can’t touch it. Unless of course I get a talking to from Mr power trip and the dept. head. One of those conversations where they act understanding. I tell them I’m very security conscious, people treat their own machines better than work ones, well geeks do. Then I suddenly become aware of an undertone to this conversation, a lot of we can’t let you on the network etc. It screams blackmail to me, do this or suddenly doing your job becomes ‘difficult’. So, against my wishes and personal rules, I let them install this stuff to scan on the background, which would have been fine. It, combined with photoshop, slowed everything to a crawl. Photoshop has a little habit to hog all the resources but so did this malware crap so it felt like I was running current software on last decades pc. Fucking brutal I can tell you that. Oh and then lo and behold it found nothing, I swear Mr power trip sounded disappointed. That is the last time they get away with anything like that. Next time I might not restrain my tongue and let a little bit of Alan shore slip out.
I always liked a long closing.

So over the next week I’m going to be setting up a new way to blog. Before I get into the details I’ll explain why.

I recently acquired an iPod touch which o can write notes on, which I can then email to myself to upload onto my wordpress install. Then I got to thinking why can’t I just skip the emailing then then uploading and just go from writing to uploaded.  So I did some research, turns out that I can set up a special email address I can send my written blogs to and it will automatically publish them for me. My only problem now is getting round to actually setting it up.

It’s one of the automations I plan on setting up sometime. Most of the rest are when I get a house that I don’t plan on leaving. Things like lights that can be operated from a computer or some proper voice activated computing. Imagine have voice controls set upon your computer then having mics around the house. The ability to be sitting on the john and feel like changing the music and just telling it to. I also want to have house wide speakers that you can isolate. Imagine playing music through every room in the house while doing chores then throwing a movie on in the living room but still having music playing everywhere else etc. I think it would be amazing.

I’m getting towards the end of the task I’ve been doing at work. This means that they will have to find something else for me to since they expect me to stay. I am not looking forward to this. They are going to assign me something so far away from graphics, I can just feel it. It’s going to be a massive test of my patience and humility, but that’s going to be tempered with the need for money in June.

I think that’s it for today.

There was an odd man on the bus home today. He arrived at the bus stop after me and another man, and when I got on before him (as I was first in the queue) he gave me a dirty look, then he realized that I had gotten the only free double seat he gave me another dirty look. Now the next stop isn’t far away but it is one of those hub stops where lots of people get off including Mr Scowls . Why he needed to wait more time for a bus than it would take him to walk the same distance I don’t know. I wonder if he had gotten on first and gotten the seat if he would have stayed on, maybe he got of in an odd case of frustration. Maybe he was just wrong in the head.

While writing this it occurs to me that this could be an amazing way to write my blog. I can write this on the go and then email it to myself when i get home so I don’t have to rewrite it. I’m writing this on my iPod. I might also see if there is a way I can set up an email service on conjunction with my blog so I can email publish straight to it. Might be worth investigating.

I suppose I should explain why I haven’t updated in a long time although I don’t know who will read this since with my latest hiatus I have lost the few who still read this.
I’m still at that job, doing the same work which sucks and is a good thing. A good thing because I get around 300 quid a week which is handy (and soon to go up due to tax) but it really sucks because I’m stuck doing something that isn’t what I’ve been training for; graphic design. Fuck, I’d be satisfied with any sort of graphic related work.

That means I need to actually build a portfolio which is a drag but I have to get it started soon of I’m going to find myself entrenched in this job unable to get out due to needing the money.

On the upside I’m about to go into a partnership making t-shirts. Which could be the break I need. We shall see.

Ok, i lied, no review this weekend. I think it was a mix of extreme laziness and being stoned off my gourd that did it. But here i am to rectify that mistake.

So I’ve been playing, on and off, far cry 2 recently and i have to say first of all i enjoy it immensely. I’m not saying its an amazing game, but it fills what i need. I don’t have time to game all the time any more, its sad but i have to deal. I generally play FC2 in the mornings, when I’ve just woken up, with a cuppa tea. The mission system lets me do this amazingly.

Right firstly the graphics are very nice, the creeping through underbrush that’s gently waving in the wind is very nice. The setting is a nice idea, i cant remember the last time i played in modern day Africa. The choice in guns is also nice although once i found my ’setup’ the rest of the choices are generally a moot point. The driving works fairly well although when your confronted by enemy cars its not to hard to take them down in fact its easy as hell to jump up onto the turret gun, mow two people down and drive off before the other car pulls to a halt.

That’s the part i have to mention is the enemy AI, now it might be cos i got it on normal mode but the enemies are fucking stupid, the amount of times I’ve run round a corner and come face to face with a bad guy that lets me stop, aim and shoot him in the head without even moving to shoot me back. Its ludicrous. But since I’m only casually playing the game i don’t want to constantly get my arse handed to me.

Every now and again the game surprises me with something, for example, i was just getting out my car to fix it and *BANG* run over by some stealthy motherfucker who was following me. Scared the shit out of me and made me reload my last save; i now look before i jump out my car.

The story isn’t particularly advanced; you can guess exactly whats going to happen next and prepare accordingly; or at least i did. But that’s not saying that the storyline isn’t worth playing or is boring; i got quite wrapped up in the planning and executing of my missions (emphasis on execute!). And the sheer terror when everything suddenly goes tits up is amazing.

I wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone who likes shooting people, doesn’t matter how you like to do it. You can burn then, machine gun them down, take them apart with a machete, silence pistol them in the back bond-like, mortar then, dart gun them, shotgun them, silenced-shotgun them, blow them up with 3 different types of rocket launcher, run them over in 5-6 different vehicles, kill them with ammo depots or simply shoot them through the head from a very long distance away with a sexy red dot scope sniper rifle.

The choice is yours

I give this a 9/10 simply on the entertainment value it has given me.

So here i am, full of raw fish and rice, just installed CS4 on my terminal about to get down to some hard core desiging. Lunch post cut short due to excitement and stuff.

Reviews at the weekend!

Another day another fucking annoyance. Today started off wrong i feel, no music to go to work with = nightmare. And for some reason this morning my brain told me to finish off a half done tab in the tray; i didn’t but the very thought surprised me. I don’t smoke before or during work; only when work is over for the day do i indulge my vice.

I get to work and find out i have to go back and edit all my work because i did something a little to complicated, i feel. All because i don’t actually know anything about what I’m doing. Sure i understand what i have to do but generally the application of your work generally effects how the work is presented.

So here i sit in ’silence’ redoing old work in a program that totally isn’t having it. Acrobat is fighting me every step of the way today and its killing me. On top of that the office is fucking boiling, so hot I’m striving to keep my eyes open. You know that dizzy eye feeling you get when your close to sleeping; i have that constantly today. And i wish some people would realise Alex is going to be pronounced differently from Alec; if i spell it with an X i certainly don’t want it pronounced with a god damn C.

Anyway thats all for now; im off to figure out a way to get what i want to listen to streaming online.

So here i am again, vaguely lunch time and i feel like i want to curl up and die, or quit. I’d deathly tired and bored out of my brains. These people, while nice enough, don’t have anything of my calibre to do. I’m a designer, an artist. And I’ve been reduced to colouring in of technical drawings.

*sigh*

I wish Aberdeen didn’t have such a saturated design market. I wish i had been a more successful designer, maybe gone from school to uni but i don’t suppose that would have changed anything. I just hope i can sort it out soon. This job is fine, not ideal, but it pays. If it turned permanent i wouldn’t complain; i could progress other plans. But I’m hoping something will appear design wise soon or i might go a little insane.

Anyway, other news. Xbox live’s demo system used to be fine. Free silver members could download what they wanted but couldn’t game online while paying gold members could do everything and game online. Meant people could play demos and keep their games patched for free. Now they have changed that. New demos are only for gold members for a while. I haven’t figured out how long but it seems to be over a week. What the fuck are they doing, what little the silvers had is being shit on.

More on XBL at a later date i feel for my lunch time is up.

So heres the next lunch post for me, just a quick one in the last few minutes of the lunch hour.

Firstly i hope everyone reading had a good festive season, i know i did.

Lately ive been mainly playing Civ 4 Beyond the Sword and Far Cry 2. (Expect a far cry review later tonight) I’ve also been faffing about on X-Box live alot, downloading demos etc. One demo i played was for a game called Legendary.

Legendary has an interesting albeit confusing game premise; you open Pandora’s box which gives you some freaky assed powers and all the mythical creatures get released and rape the world. See what i mean, interesting and confusing. Firstly why would you be idly opening Pandora’s box, what makes you so special that you found it and no one else has, secondly why would it give you some mystical tattoo that lets you do weird magic type shit and thirdly why the hell were all the mythical creatures in there? I thought it contained the evils of mankind or some such bullshit. Anyway, without much explanation to what the hells going on your dropped into a live combat situation between you and your soldier buddies and some other soldier dudes who are bad and a few werewolves. Oh yeah they apparently were inside there too. They can only be killed by taking their heads off. The game itself has a few issues; the controls are predictable, the running controls shit and the aiming a little loose. So to reiterate you start off fighting werewolves, that are faster harder and meaner than you, and your aiming sucks and running around is a waste of time. Later in the demo you fight a Minotaur, here i was thinking there was only one Minotaur and isn’t it dead already? I assume that was the end of the demo because the Minotaur fight was probably one of the worst boss fights I’ve ever had the displeasure of fighting. It was one of those just keep shooting it till scripted action one happens and then its the ole’ favourite; let it charge you jump out the way and shoot it in the back. Great just what i was wanting to do with my time, running away from a charging man bull in a game with shit running controls. Thank god i went and died and ended that terrible experience.

Right that’s lunch over so catch you later.

Tomorrows rant is on the Xbox Live system itself and its ass fuckery.

Until i think of an applicable name we’re going to be stuck with Lunch Post ‘X’. Maybe having such a shit sounding name will make me think of something else.

Right then, on with the post.

Firstly i have seen some freelance jobs that have caught my eye; ‘Bored in the Burbs’ are looking for a freelance writer that i could totally be. Since its part time it would be a little bit of cash earned on the side. Also there is BrightHub who are looking for writers about MMo’s and they are paying 10 bucks per article over 350 words. Minimum of 4 articles a month though., but that’s like nearly 30 quid for writing about computer games.

Next i have been playing alot of games in my evenings after work.

I now have a weekly new game of civ 4. Last weeks was going so well till that sneaky pikey bastard Gandhi came up and won with the ‘Space Race Win’ two turns before i was gonna get me a cultural victory, inconsiderate bugger.

My very good friend Kan’ bought me Left 4 Dead for the PC as well, so been taking down the horde online a lot. Ive come to the conclusion that this game was made to weed the CS players out the herd. Simply because they make a tasty sniper rifle for all the AWP fags and then make the situations you find yourself in completely useless for it. I mean say you have 30 zombies running for you would you rather a 5 bullet clip one shot sniper rifle or a 10 shell clip automatic shotgun. I know i’d rather have the boom stick.

I’ve also gotten back into good ole’ Lord of the Rings Online. I thought it might be a plan for a few reasons: one; i have a life time subscription, two; my girlfriend is getting a little bored of wow and wanted to give it a go and three; they just had a new expansion pack out and i wanted to try the new content. It’s been fun; i’d forgotten how very different it is from World of Warcraft. I still cant decide which i prefer playing. I think the only reason i like playing WoW now is that i have high level characters and the addons make playing the game nice and straight forward. The whole concept of addons should totally be in every big MMO, quest helpers and crafting helpers and things are just magical. They take away some of the dull grind out of the game and just streamline it a bit.

My lovely girlfriend has bought me a popcorn machine, lovely little thing from the gadget shop. Make fresh popcorn using hot air and is shaped like a little popcorn stand. I love it. I’ve decided to try different popcorn recipes and I’ve discovered a whole new culinary world. People seem to love popcorn and use it in so many different ways. I mean you’ve got your sweet, salt, butter and toffee as you would expect but then you get popcorn and salsa and chilli’s with cheese on top. Which genius thought up popcorn instead of tortillas in nachos. What a hero!

That of course brings us to the fact that it is the christmas week, only 3 days till all of you will be digging into you presents. That is of course unless you are german or from other parts of the continent. Then you, like me, will be getting it on Christmas eve. I honestly can’t belive its bloody christmas again. It does not feel like a year. That means i lost my job and then about a year later got a new one. Insane timing.

Well thats it for today i feel. Probably will be a shorter one tomorrow.