Month of September
Diary: Social Stuff
I was down Dungeon on the first Saturday of the month but I'd started going to the gym after that. The machines helpfully tell me how many calories I'm burning but it also makes eating snack food or drinking seem less appealing because I know how much exercise I'd need to do to burn it off again :oP Dungeon has been getting a little dull of late anyway; I'm probably just finding it overly-familiar. A little bit of a break won't hurt in any case :o)
I did go to Industrial Fallout though; I figure that's spread out enough to be an exception and it's almost always a good night out so I didn't want to miss it :o) Ended up with a bunch of other people at _phoenixrising's and slept on the floor. Combination of sleeping on the floor, getting up early and heavy-drinking (including something _phoenixrising served out from what Bert described as a 'squeezy bottle') did not make for a very well me in the morning :oP
I spent Sat 11th around my brother's playing Risk but I'm not sure what I did on the fourt Saturday - quite possibly just stayed in and played MineCraft. At least I'll be saving money this way too, means I can buy in a few more games and a few other things I've been wanting rather than spending all my money on alcohol come the weekend :oP
Played very little in the way of board games at LittleCyberAlex's on the Sundays. I think one time we all ended up playing Call of Duty and on another we organised a little LAN party to play Starcraft :o) Still quite fun anyway mind. I'd quite like the chance to play Call of Duty more really, especially as you level up your characters the more you play anyway.
Me and Lacuna_Raze split up after two years and about five months. I'm not really going to go into detail about why other than we simply weren't seeing as much of each other any more. We're still on very good terms and intend to keep spending time together and being close though, just not as partners. It's the first time I've been single in a very long while thanks to overlapping polyamorous relationships, which is strange.
Diary: Hospital Stuff
I went in on Tuesday 14th for another round of blood tests. I did ask whether I could have these ones taken locally but they said they needed to be taken at the hospital. They were being sent elsewhere so I can't imagine any medical reason for this to be true but I can easily imagine there's some bureaucratic reason for it that is beyond their control. Little bit tedious to head up to Portsmouth, once again, for just blood tests (again) but no way around it.
On Weds 29th I went in for my pre-op tests. So basically everything I did on my first visit (and have done a few times since) :oP Did also include me signing some new consent forms, talking to the surgeon again and being shown around the ward where I'll be staying. Looks like everything is set now for Oct 5th. I'll be coming into the Ward on Mon 4th, having all the tubes put into me and then having the surgery to remove the kidney on Wednesday morning, after which it will be sent off to somewhere up north for implantation :o)
I've got a few books set by for reading over the next few days that I'll be stuck in hospital without my laptop.
After that it'll just be making an effort to get back into an exercise routine. My younger brother, Luke, bought me a month's gym subscription at the beginning of this month and I've been going every weekday since with the one exception of the Wednesday I was in Portsmouth (hadn't got much sleep before hand and was very tired when I got back in, just went to bed). Started off doing about three hours a night on the treadmill and aiming to burn 1,000 calories but now managing that on one of the other cardio machines in two hours. Is surprising how quick my body seems to have adapted to the increased exercise; a couple of days worth of achey legs and now it doesn't affect me any more :oD
If I keep it up, hopefully I'll be able to fit into some of my old clothes after a few months :o)
Films: Sky High
I hadn't heard of 'Sky High' until I saw it on iplayer but I have a curiosity regarding superhero/superpower films and series at the moment so I thought I'd take a look. It's all fairly low-brow, probably aimed at a fairly young audience and is -very- predictably from the onset (there isn't a single 'twist' that is beyond someone to guess accurately) but... taken for what it is, it's entertaining enough to watch. I didn't sit down expecting a deep and artistically significant work and I don't think it was produced to be such. I'd say that if you enjoy the superhero genre then it's probably a good way to waste a couple of hours.
'Girl in the Park' was much more interesting and much less formulaic. I genuinely wasn't sure how they were going to resolve the story; my mind kept changing on where they were going throughout. It's got much better actors (although they also have better material to work with). It's not exactly fast-paced or exciting material though - the most dramatic part of the film is over at the beginning and the rest is purely character-driven plot.
Still, 'Girl in the Park' seems to manage to be more interesting than something like 'Sky High' without seeming to try too hard. Sky High seems to expect people to be surprising and engaged by it's formulaic twists and special effects. 'Girl in the Park' just follows the life of a mother who has gone into guilt-fuelled depression after losing her child and the surprising way that it's all resolved but, because it focuses on something real and believable, manages to be so much more interesting.
Presumably why, to compare more similar genres, series like Misfits (about a group of teenagers on asbos that get special powers) is so much more interesting than Sky High or Heroes... because it brings the drama down to characters that feel like actual people rather than cardboard cut-outs going through boringly familiar plots.
Television: Earth: Final Conflict, True Blood
I downloaded the first five episodes of Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict, although I read that Roddenberry only wrote the pilot (and died before any of it was made) so Earth: Final Conflict is less his than DS9 (which is at least based on something he was involved in making). The acting in the first few episodes is pretty bad, probably because the script is very busy info-dumping in a fairly awkward way. I guess that's the problem when you want to skip the chase and start the show with the aliens already living on Earth without taking the time to show us them arriving (etc). I've watched shows that had bad acting before and enjoyed them though, so the main reason that I've not gotten to downloading any more yet is that the reviews of the latter seasons are not good... maybe one to save for another time.
Besides, it had occurred to me that I'd not watched any of True Blood yet.
I thought the first season of True Blood was very worth watching. It seemed a little slow to start but then I find that the shows that are worth watching for the long-run are; they take a bit more time to set up. Whilst the introduction to the idea of vampires announcing their presence and interacting normally with people seemed a little stilted, it works out naturally enough. The murder mystery plot line was actually quite good too.
The second season of True Blood didn't strike me as being as good and the two separate plot lines don't really ever come together. (spoilers) One of the plot lines uses a supernatural entity that is fairly original but ends up being over-played and has consequences that quickly start to tread on ridiculous ground; I think there's a certain need for subtlety in these sorts of things. The other plot line plays with concepts that feel like they'd be at home in Vampire: The Masquerade and was actually okay.
The third season is comparatively well-grounded to the last and I was more into it through it's course but it left me feeling a little disappointed at the finale. I think part of the problem is that there are certain themes, relationships and concepts they wanted to continue to play with and they resorted to a rather annoying but all too common method to stretch them out; have the characters make stupid and silly decisions way too often. It all starts to make me feel fed up with the characters (It's not at Heroes level yet mind, although Jason Stackhouse is thoroughly flanderised now). It introduces some new elements but the new supernatural characters don't live up to the hype provided by previous references and don't make up for the lack of a strong story arch.
I'll probably still be keen to watch the next season though. :oP
Games: Secret of Monkey Island 2: Special Edition
After having a lot of fun playing through the Special Edition of the first Monkey Island game, I was very keen to take a look at the special edition for the second one :oD
Like the first game, the improved visuals add a lot to the game. Despite massive amounts of nostalgia for the original version (which I've played through multiple times and loved even with the graphics falling further and further out of date) playing it with new visuals really puts the old graphics to shame.
This time around there's also a developer's commentary. It breaks up the flow of the game a little to sit about listening to the commentary (the game lets you know whenever you're in an area or scene that has commentary) but it was still fun to listen to :o)
Once again though... they've changed the cover art in such a way that I find painful, even if I understand their reasoning.
The original cover art for Monkey Island 2 was probably my favourite cover art of -any- game. You can see it here: linky. From what I understand, the developers felt that some of the art was out of place with the highly comedic tone of the game... but I always liked the way that the old games meshed together humour with art that felt more like I was playing through a serious pirate game. The new cartoony cover art (linky) just wouldn't have been able to inspire the same sort of nostalgia I have for the game.
That being said, cover-art and close-ups aside, it can't be doubted that the new special editions are much better to look at through the normal course of the game, which is the important thing :o) Most of the artwork is exactly as I would have hoped for it to be, although the new visuals for the Voodoo lady aren't what I imagined in either of the new editions. I'd always imagined her to look something like the obeah witch from Pirates of the Carribean, to the extent that I was immeditely reminded of her when I saw the film (and I wasn't the only one to have noticed the similarity it seems: linky)
Oh well, can't have everything...
Thoughts: Wikipedia
I've often felt that wikipedia was unfairly judged.
I do agree that you need to remember that it's wikipedia that you're reading. Anyone could edit an article and vandalise it, although such things don't tend to go unnoticed for long. Some people attempt to feel articles with their own speculation and unsourced material, although that doesn't tend to go unnoticed for too long. In any case, as with -anything ever written-, you have to apply a little critical thinking and remember to never take any text on faith but always consider the source (etc).
With wikipedia, people seem to be really passionate about this issue. It's strange because it's a passion that seems to disappear quite quickly in other contexts.
I've been on forums where people will make a range of very strong and serious claims without sourcing them -at all-, yet if you refer to wikipedia in your response that brands you some kind of idiot for trusting wikipedia. The obvious hypocrisy is that they made their post expecting me to take, seemingly on faith, their claims. I cannot understand why someone would expect me to take the claims of a complete stranger on a message board over the wikipedia community.
The wikipedia community may have it's short falls, but it's still an entire of community of people putting together articles with the intention of being accurate and only using sourced material (personal points of view and original research are not allowed). Even allowing for the occasional article being vandalised, that still places it above 'something someone said on a message board'.
And for those less inclined to online debate... it also puts it a long way above 'what someone told you in a pub', 'what all your friends think' and even 'what your somewhat intelligent and fairly reliable friend says'. In short, wikipedia is a better source of information than most other sources people commonly interact with.
That's not to say it should be taken on faith... as with any text, do compare it to personal experience, to what others have expressed or what you've read elsewhere... don't take it in isolation. Also, if something sounds unbelievable or odd then check what the source is (and, obviously, make sure to check whether what you're reading are sourced). If you suspect that an issue may be a matter of debate, check the discussion tab of an article. Simple stuff.
This is partly inspired by a discussion I had on imdb about Wicca, where someone was disagreeing with claims I'd made about the origins of Wicca. Now, I've read about that topic on a number of online sources, with wikipedia being on of the ones I am more trustful of (and my first point of call for double-checking things I already believe to be the case). Eventually, I found the claims being made too out of alignment with what I remember reading and what I'd double-checked with on wikipedia that I just found a copy of Gardner's 'Witchcraft Today' and found basically exactly what I was expecting. The wikipedia articles on that issue seem to be pretty accurate.
It's that sort of situation where I don't think wikipedia is to be sneered at. Faced with believing 'what someone on a forum has said' or 'what wikipedia says', wikipedia is the more tempting option (unless person on forum supplies better and more compelling sources rather than just stating their beliefs and opinions)
I was down Dungeon on the first Saturday of the month but I'd started going to the gym after that. The machines helpfully tell me how many calories I'm burning but it also makes eating snack food or drinking seem less appealing because I know how much exercise I'd need to do to burn it off again :oP Dungeon has been getting a little dull of late anyway; I'm probably just finding it overly-familiar. A little bit of a break won't hurt in any case :o)
I did go to Industrial Fallout though; I figure that's spread out enough to be an exception and it's almost always a good night out so I didn't want to miss it :o) Ended up with a bunch of other people at _phoenixrising's and slept on the floor. Combination of sleeping on the floor, getting up early and heavy-drinking (including something _phoenixrising served out from what Bert described as a 'squeezy bottle') did not make for a very well me in the morning :oP
I spent Sat 11th around my brother's playing Risk but I'm not sure what I did on the fourt Saturday - quite possibly just stayed in and played MineCraft. At least I'll be saving money this way too, means I can buy in a few more games and a few other things I've been wanting rather than spending all my money on alcohol come the weekend :oP
Played very little in the way of board games at LittleCyberAlex's on the Sundays. I think one time we all ended up playing Call of Duty and on another we organised a little LAN party to play Starcraft :o) Still quite fun anyway mind. I'd quite like the chance to play Call of Duty more really, especially as you level up your characters the more you play anyway.
Me and Lacuna_Raze split up after two years and about five months. I'm not really going to go into detail about why other than we simply weren't seeing as much of each other any more. We're still on very good terms and intend to keep spending time together and being close though, just not as partners. It's the first time I've been single in a very long while thanks to overlapping polyamorous relationships, which is strange.
Diary: Hospital Stuff
I went in on Tuesday 14th for another round of blood tests. I did ask whether I could have these ones taken locally but they said they needed to be taken at the hospital. They were being sent elsewhere so I can't imagine any medical reason for this to be true but I can easily imagine there's some bureaucratic reason for it that is beyond their control. Little bit tedious to head up to Portsmouth, once again, for just blood tests (again) but no way around it.
On Weds 29th I went in for my pre-op tests. So basically everything I did on my first visit (and have done a few times since) :oP Did also include me signing some new consent forms, talking to the surgeon again and being shown around the ward where I'll be staying. Looks like everything is set now for Oct 5th. I'll be coming into the Ward on Mon 4th, having all the tubes put into me and then having the surgery to remove the kidney on Wednesday morning, after which it will be sent off to somewhere up north for implantation :o)
I've got a few books set by for reading over the next few days that I'll be stuck in hospital without my laptop.
After that it'll just be making an effort to get back into an exercise routine. My younger brother, Luke, bought me a month's gym subscription at the beginning of this month and I've been going every weekday since with the one exception of the Wednesday I was in Portsmouth (hadn't got much sleep before hand and was very tired when I got back in, just went to bed). Started off doing about three hours a night on the treadmill and aiming to burn 1,000 calories but now managing that on one of the other cardio machines in two hours. Is surprising how quick my body seems to have adapted to the increased exercise; a couple of days worth of achey legs and now it doesn't affect me any more :oD
If I keep it up, hopefully I'll be able to fit into some of my old clothes after a few months :o)
Films: Sky High
I hadn't heard of 'Sky High' until I saw it on iplayer but I have a curiosity regarding superhero/superpower films and series at the moment so I thought I'd take a look. It's all fairly low-brow, probably aimed at a fairly young audience and is -very- predictably from the onset (there isn't a single 'twist' that is beyond someone to guess accurately) but... taken for what it is, it's entertaining enough to watch. I didn't sit down expecting a deep and artistically significant work and I don't think it was produced to be such. I'd say that if you enjoy the superhero genre then it's probably a good way to waste a couple of hours.
'Girl in the Park' was much more interesting and much less formulaic. I genuinely wasn't sure how they were going to resolve the story; my mind kept changing on where they were going throughout. It's got much better actors (although they also have better material to work with). It's not exactly fast-paced or exciting material though - the most dramatic part of the film is over at the beginning and the rest is purely character-driven plot.
Still, 'Girl in the Park' seems to manage to be more interesting than something like 'Sky High' without seeming to try too hard. Sky High seems to expect people to be surprising and engaged by it's formulaic twists and special effects. 'Girl in the Park' just follows the life of a mother who has gone into guilt-fuelled depression after losing her child and the surprising way that it's all resolved but, because it focuses on something real and believable, manages to be so much more interesting.
Presumably why, to compare more similar genres, series like Misfits (about a group of teenagers on asbos that get special powers) is so much more interesting than Sky High or Heroes... because it brings the drama down to characters that feel like actual people rather than cardboard cut-outs going through boringly familiar plots.
Television: Earth: Final Conflict, True Blood
I downloaded the first five episodes of Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict, although I read that Roddenberry only wrote the pilot (and died before any of it was made) so Earth: Final Conflict is less his than DS9 (which is at least based on something he was involved in making). The acting in the first few episodes is pretty bad, probably because the script is very busy info-dumping in a fairly awkward way. I guess that's the problem when you want to skip the chase and start the show with the aliens already living on Earth without taking the time to show us them arriving (etc). I've watched shows that had bad acting before and enjoyed them though, so the main reason that I've not gotten to downloading any more yet is that the reviews of the latter seasons are not good... maybe one to save for another time.
Besides, it had occurred to me that I'd not watched any of True Blood yet.
I thought the first season of True Blood was very worth watching. It seemed a little slow to start but then I find that the shows that are worth watching for the long-run are; they take a bit more time to set up. Whilst the introduction to the idea of vampires announcing their presence and interacting normally with people seemed a little stilted, it works out naturally enough. The murder mystery plot line was actually quite good too.
The second season of True Blood didn't strike me as being as good and the two separate plot lines don't really ever come together. (spoilers) One of the plot lines uses a supernatural entity that is fairly original but ends up being over-played and has consequences that quickly start to tread on ridiculous ground; I think there's a certain need for subtlety in these sorts of things. The other plot line plays with concepts that feel like they'd be at home in Vampire: The Masquerade and was actually okay.
The third season is comparatively well-grounded to the last and I was more into it through it's course but it left me feeling a little disappointed at the finale. I think part of the problem is that there are certain themes, relationships and concepts they wanted to continue to play with and they resorted to a rather annoying but all too common method to stretch them out; have the characters make stupid and silly decisions way too often. It all starts to make me feel fed up with the characters (It's not at Heroes level yet mind, although Jason Stackhouse is thoroughly flanderised now). It introduces some new elements but the new supernatural characters don't live up to the hype provided by previous references and don't make up for the lack of a strong story arch.
I'll probably still be keen to watch the next season though. :oP
Games: Secret of Monkey Island 2: Special Edition
After having a lot of fun playing through the Special Edition of the first Monkey Island game, I was very keen to take a look at the special edition for the second one :oD
Like the first game, the improved visuals add a lot to the game. Despite massive amounts of nostalgia for the original version (which I've played through multiple times and loved even with the graphics falling further and further out of date) playing it with new visuals really puts the old graphics to shame.
This time around there's also a developer's commentary. It breaks up the flow of the game a little to sit about listening to the commentary (the game lets you know whenever you're in an area or scene that has commentary) but it was still fun to listen to :o)
Once again though... they've changed the cover art in such a way that I find painful, even if I understand their reasoning.
The original cover art for Monkey Island 2 was probably my favourite cover art of -any- game. You can see it here: linky. From what I understand, the developers felt that some of the art was out of place with the highly comedic tone of the game... but I always liked the way that the old games meshed together humour with art that felt more like I was playing through a serious pirate game. The new cartoony cover art (linky) just wouldn't have been able to inspire the same sort of nostalgia I have for the game.
That being said, cover-art and close-ups aside, it can't be doubted that the new special editions are much better to look at through the normal course of the game, which is the important thing :o) Most of the artwork is exactly as I would have hoped for it to be, although the new visuals for the Voodoo lady aren't what I imagined in either of the new editions. I'd always imagined her to look something like the obeah witch from Pirates of the Carribean, to the extent that I was immeditely reminded of her when I saw the film (and I wasn't the only one to have noticed the similarity it seems: linky)
Oh well, can't have everything...
Thoughts: Wikipedia
I've often felt that wikipedia was unfairly judged.
I do agree that you need to remember that it's wikipedia that you're reading. Anyone could edit an article and vandalise it, although such things don't tend to go unnoticed for long. Some people attempt to feel articles with their own speculation and unsourced material, although that doesn't tend to go unnoticed for too long. In any case, as with -anything ever written-, you have to apply a little critical thinking and remember to never take any text on faith but always consider the source (etc).
With wikipedia, people seem to be really passionate about this issue. It's strange because it's a passion that seems to disappear quite quickly in other contexts.
I've been on forums where people will make a range of very strong and serious claims without sourcing them -at all-, yet if you refer to wikipedia in your response that brands you some kind of idiot for trusting wikipedia. The obvious hypocrisy is that they made their post expecting me to take, seemingly on faith, their claims. I cannot understand why someone would expect me to take the claims of a complete stranger on a message board over the wikipedia community.
The wikipedia community may have it's short falls, but it's still an entire of community of people putting together articles with the intention of being accurate and only using sourced material (personal points of view and original research are not allowed). Even allowing for the occasional article being vandalised, that still places it above 'something someone said on a message board'.
And for those less inclined to online debate... it also puts it a long way above 'what someone told you in a pub', 'what all your friends think' and even 'what your somewhat intelligent and fairly reliable friend says'. In short, wikipedia is a better source of information than most other sources people commonly interact with.
That's not to say it should be taken on faith... as with any text, do compare it to personal experience, to what others have expressed or what you've read elsewhere... don't take it in isolation. Also, if something sounds unbelievable or odd then check what the source is (and, obviously, make sure to check whether what you're reading are sourced). If you suspect that an issue may be a matter of debate, check the discussion tab of an article. Simple stuff.
This is partly inspired by a discussion I had on imdb about Wicca, where someone was disagreeing with claims I'd made about the origins of Wicca. Now, I've read about that topic on a number of online sources, with wikipedia being on of the ones I am more trustful of (and my first point of call for double-checking things I already believe to be the case). Eventually, I found the claims being made too out of alignment with what I remember reading and what I'd double-checked with on wikipedia that I just found a copy of Gardner's 'Witchcraft Today' and found basically exactly what I was expecting. The wikipedia articles on that issue seem to be pretty accurate.
It's that sort of situation where I don't think wikipedia is to be sneered at. Faced with believing 'what someone on a forum has said' or 'what wikipedia says', wikipedia is the more tempting option (unless person on forum supplies better and more compelling sources rather than just stating their beliefs and opinions)