The script (or lack of it) for my Christmas this year came straight out of a Mike Leigh film except for being considerably more middle class. Most of the time I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Hope you had a good one.

Coming up next: Amber gets her own back by coercing me to tell you five things you didn’t know about me before.

Gods know she doesn’t need it, but Amber Night is a real attention ‘escort’ (her word, not mine, because apparently it’s classier but she’s a goddamn yanqui so what the hell would she know about class). She’s also very funny (if a little full of herself and quite delusional) although I’m not entirely sure that’s what she’s intending.

In some ways, it’s a shame I’m married because it does give me a very convenient excuse to turn down her advances. Were I single, of course, I’d have to come up with some clever and inventive put downs instead, something with a little more bite than “sorry love, I’m washing my hair”. Of course, she’s bound to say that I’m not her type and be all aloof now that she’s hobnobbing with the greats (well, Raph Koster anyway).

One thing that is quite attractive about her is that she’s also a gamer although her superior attitude means she’s got a real bee in her bonnet about WoW players (which is why I try to play as much as I can) perferring the subtle charms of “Hello Kitty Island Adventure”, or some such shite, which is just like an MMO version of movie Battle Royale but without the guns, knives, deaths, schoolkids or Beat Takeshi. Mind you, according to John Goodman who’s one of her guildmates and appears in the video she made, she always plays crap healers and after spending time in a guild with QE, I think I’ve had my share of those.

Now you might be fooled in thinking that this write up is a bit of a plug and a compliment but, as already mentioned, she’s only after the attention and the best thing you can do is start a DoS attack on her site. If anyone knows how to bombard her comments from an anonymous server, can they tell me here because she won’t know it’s coming from me.

Think my flight’s about to leave.

So, travel chaos, freezing fog, no flights in or out of Heathrow. What are my thoughts?

Only that it’s 6pm, I’m in Dublin airport and my flight home is already delayed by an hour. More guinness?

I finally reached the dizzy heights of level 60 in WoW this week. It was my goal to do so before the expansion came out and as far as transitory and meaningless achievements go, I was pretty chuffed. (Geekage continues after a word from our sponsors).

(more…)

Raph Koster has announced a new project thing with a classical name: Areae. The world and his virtual dog are discussing what might be going on his big brain over their late night milk and cookies although Amber’s inciteful insightful and disarming interview with the man himself tells you all you need to know about stuff. And a bit about why you won’t find Shaman’s in Tertio Life.

I’m not going to discuss it because I’m far too hung over (drink Guinness in Dublin? Never a-fucking-gain!) I will say this though: I misread the description of one of the jobs on the Areae site and thought it sounded like a good job for me.

I thought they wanted a volatile 2d and 3d artist.

EDIT: Begrudging thanks to Amber for highlighting the made up word I used which, quite frankly, is much better than the word I intended to use.

Shortly after starting my new contract, my old phone (okay, my wife’s old old old phone) broke. This is the phone I used after my last phone died (and I dithered about whether or not to get a new one). Now I’m a contractor freelance software consultant, a mobile is definitely a necessary evil. It probably also won’t do to be carrying around an ancient brick, no matter how retro it might be.

So I got me a brand new Sony Ericsson K750i. Not exactly top of the range but it makes calls, takes voice mails, has a 2.0Mb camera, plays MP3s (and MP3 ringtones) and has a slot for a memory stick. And, most importantly, it comes in black. Unlike my last phone, this one actually comes bundled with PC software to allow you to manage and transfer files - no need to shell out 30+ quid like those theiving bastards at Motorola charge.

My new ringtone? “Help me I am in hell” by Nine Inch Nails.

Last week was my first full week away from home since starting here in Dublin. While I managed to find a cheap and cheerful hotel, it occurred to me that I shouldn’t really be going out eating, drinking and partying until the small hours (or whatever it is that Dubliners actually get up to of an evening) and that I needed to keep costs down as I’m now working for myself. Apart from a couple of trips to the cinema (more on that later) I could, well, watch TV. Or read a book. Or both at the same time. After the first hour, I got a little bored (although I did discover that I really enjoy “Scrubs” and that “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is vastly overrated and more than a little bit shit.)

So, despite not yet having been paid for my first couple of weeks work, I decided to buy a laptop so that I can a) do some web work b) play games c) watch DVDs and d) provided I can get a ‘net connection, talked to my loved ones at home using Skype.

It’s yet to be delivered but I am soon to be the proud owner of a new Dell Inspiron XPS M1710:
2.16Ghz Dual core processor
100Mb 7200rpm HDD
4Gb RAM
17in screen
512Mb Geforce 7950GTX graphics card
4 year warranty
and other gubbins that you’d expect.

List price from the Dell website? I’ll let you work it out. All I can say is thank the Lords of Kobol for eBay!

Daisy asked what the music was in the video of my hatchling. She’s actually about the third or fourth person to ask me that out of about five who’ve seen it (and the first to comment about it on here so thank you Daisy, it’s nice to know that someone’s paying attention). I’m surprised as I was under the impression that most people would get the reference (provided they’d had any sort of UK based upbringing). Granted it’s not new and if you’re under 20 (maybe 25) you probably won’t know. So the first question of the day is:

What’s the music I used in the video?

I’m going to continue the theme because I wanted to post a link to the best trailer I’ve seen in quite a while, sans doute. *This is the teaser for a film based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel “300″. After the successful cinematic adaptation of Sin City graced the silver screen, it looks like Miller is flavour of the month and people no longer hold the questionable script for Robocop 2 against him. It also looks like it could be a far better film about ancient Greece than Troy could ever dream of being.

So, the question - what’s the music used in the trailer? (And yes, I do know, I just thought it would be fun to guess).

Answers in the usual place.**

UPDATE: So yes, the answers are in. I used the theme from classic TV series “Bod” in my little vid and the music from the 300 trailer is NIN’s “Just Like You Imagined” from “The Fragile”. Nice one.

*If, like me, you sometimes have trouble watching anything on the Quicktime site, try downloading the first trailer on this page instead - but be warned that I haven’t checked for sure it’s the correct trailer so watch all three anyway.

**Um, that’ll be the comments box!

Tonight I learnt why you shouldn’t read other peoples papers over their shoulder. Because if you do so, you’ll read articles about recent stories this.

While the weather outside is lashing rain and strong winds.

And you’re on a plane.

A Ryanair plane.

*gulp*

(Of course, I’m home safe and sound but I don’t like flying at the best of times and that was not the most prudent article to be sneakily reading! I’ve definitely learned something today.)