I never seem to talk much about games on here so I thought I would take a moment to run down what I’ve been playing. It’s been the season of the PS2 for the most part. The system is at its absolute peak, with a ton of A+ games being released and enough of a lifespan on the shelves that many quality games are now in the bargain bins for $20 and sometimes even less. I’ve gone a little nuts as a result, buying all kinds of games to play with.
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Several Auction up on ebay
I have a number of auctions up on ebay. If you’re looking for a spare video card for that linux box in the closet, or a cheap PS2 game to while away the winter with, I’m your man, get bidding!
😉
The Piper is dead.
Long live King Rat. Err, or the proletariat, yeah, that’s the ticket 😉
What the heck am I on about? I just finished reading China Mieville’s King Rat, a post-modern fantasy set in London in the modern age. The story concerns Saul, who through a tragedy discovers that he’s the son of the deposed King of the Rats, a quasi-lycanthrope whose life is at risk at the hands of the Pied Piper. The King of the Rats need Saul because he’s a half-breed, part man and part rat, that’s immune to the allure of the Pied Piper’s tune. What follows is an entertaining and very twisted fantasy/horror story as Saul comes to terms with his heritage and struggles to overcome the Pied Piper’s schemes.
This is the second Mieville book I’ve picked up. I absolutely loved Perdido Street Station. King Rat was a bit of a letdown in comparison, but that’s not to say it’s a bad book, it’s quite good. It’s also Mieville’s first. Now I have The Scar to read, which is his third and a sequel to Perdido Street Station. I’m really looking forward to it.
Testing upgrade
Hey, just testing that my upgrade of moveable type, the software I use to publish this site, went ok.
My new favorite toy
I’m terrible this year. Every time I went shopping for xmas gifts for someone I ended up buying at least one gift for myself. My favorite by far is this little jobbie:
I had been steering clear of wireless mice, figuring they would introduce too much lag to the gaming action, but I detect none with this model and the lack of cord is really great. The only downside is their drivers absolutely suck, but I ditched them and went with the default windows drivers and everything seems to work fine. It’s a Logitech MX700 in case you’re interested, I got it for about $45 after rebate.
Weight loss visuals
Something quick I threw together today after I went to get my picture taken for a passport.
note that I’m not nearly as pale looking as I come across in this photo, it’s a side effect of the crappy photo they took at the passport place. Holy crap though have i ever lost a lot of weight. And while I do like my slim new physique, I have to say I think I look better in the shot on the left.
Professional tragedy
So we had a meeting this week about the gaming stuff I mentioned earlier in the week, and the faculty member we pitched it to was sufficiently interested that we are going to proceed. This means that someone will need to play the Sims Online on a regular basis and build a ‘character’ with sufficient wealth to buy a house and all the accouterments. For the first time in my professional career I could have been in a position to be paid to play games on a regular basis….and it isn’t going to happen, mainly because I find the Sims to be such a boring game. One of my coworkers is going to handle building up the character instead of me. Now to see if I can find an angle to interest the boss in first person shooters, he he he.
Let’s shake things up in Instant Messenging land
Uh oh….. AOL has just been granted a broad patent covering the concept of instant messenging networks. In theory they could now use this to sue Microsoft and Yahoo and the other instant messenging networks for infringement. I’m very curious to see how they handle this one. I’m also happy to point out that it was ICQ, the original commercial pioneer of IM, that filed the original patent claim. Take note all you hosers who split over to AIM.
😉
Health situation showing improvement
My health is definitely improving dramatically. Last week I went in for my first round of bloodwork after about 3 months of rigorous exercise and a month and a half of medications. I got the report back last night and things are looking really good. The original report, basically every category, about 30 of them, I was out of whack – bad cholestoral too high (like way too high) good cholestoral basically non-existent, etc etc. Now everything is at normal or better than average, with the exception of the good cholestoral which is still too low – but not terribly so, as compared to before. I need to eat more fish and nuts and I am doubling my dose of fish oil pills (which are unfortunately disgusting) and hopefully that will take care of it.
The best stat out of the reports – in the first report, I was 4.8 times as likely as an average male of my age to suffer a heart attack. As of the new report I am down to .7 times as likely, ie I am healthier than your average human. Yee ha!
😉
Now I just have to deal with 30+ years of rigorous daily exercise. doh!
Paid to play games.
For the first time in my professional career I’ve spent a few days playing games while on the clock. On the one hand I totally love this. On the other hand it’s a great tragedy as the game is the sims online, and while I appreciate its design goals and think it’s fairly well implemented, I can’t stand it, it’s like playing dollhouse or something.
We’re investigating using online gaming as a tool to aid teaching foreign languages, the theory (in part) being that full immersion in a locality where everyone speaks only the foreign language will force the students to learn quickly in order to be able to succeed in the game world. If all goes well we’ll be using one of the Spanish language courses next fall as a test case for this approach.
