Game over, man! Game over!

So we look at a game trailer, Mah Girl and I, and she says:
"Sure, you can play that game. If we keep all the lights on. And get a flame thrower."



I don't care if this game sucks slimy Alien eggs. I'll buy it anyway. Probably three copies. One for the altar, and one extra in case the one I play breaks.

And I know the clip is too wide for the blog. It deserves that much space, OK?

A mercenary, a psychopath & a bundle of cash...what could go wrong?

Again, a question of plot.

I recently finished the game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, on my Xbox 360. It received mixed reviews, and some people I know with insight into the gaming business sort of sneered when I said I had bought it.

Lynch was a bit pissed at Kane's snoring and bought him a Breathe-Right

In the campaign mode, you play Kane, a former merc who is rescued from a prison transport and then paired up with an unstable psycho called Lynch to retrieve a large sum of money that Kane supposedly stole from his former mercenary partners, The7. The game involves shootouts, sneaking around, family members murdered, betrayals, yada yada yada.

Kane & Lynch is definitely not the best game I've played, nor is it the worst. And while there are some problems with the actual mechanics of the game (is that the right term, oh game geeks? Mechanics?), the main problem is the story. The plot.

It begins promising, but clichéd, then builds through a number of cityscape scenes obviously inspired by, among others, Michael Mann's Heat (Best. Shootout. Ever.). Unfortunately, the end doesn't deliver, at all, and throughout the game, it feels as if there are cut scenes missing between levels, and no real explanation of why you move from one setting to the next.

With more time, more work on the story and a more powerful ending, this could have been a great game. Dark and intense, and above all different. Now it feels like any low-rate action thriller that didn't get the proper budget or script treatment. Too bad.

Oh. Of course there's a movie in the making. Lo and behold, it's stunt coordinator/second unit director Simon Crane who'll make his directorial debut, and rumors point to Bruce Willis starring as Kane and possible Mickey Rourke or Billy Bob Thornton as Lynch. In the hands of an experienced director and above all an experienced screenwriter (Kyle Ward has written one movie that no one has heard of), Kane & Lynch could be really great. Again: dark, intense, different. Is it too much to ask for the Coen Brothers or David Fincher to do a video game adaptation? Script by Jonathan Nolan? No?

Where shall I find a new adversary so close to my own level?

I rarely remember my dreams. And if I do they're often nightmares. Whoever wired my brain messed it up something good. Thanks, evolution.

Last night I had a dream the doorbell rang. I walked from the bedroom and opened the door. Outside stood Indiana Jones. And not the Harrison Ford nor the Sean Patrick Flanery incarnation, no no no. That wouldn't be weird enough. Outside stood Lego Indiana Jones.

For some reason he reached to about my waist. Without a word he pushed by me, ran into the living room and started destroying furniture to get Lego studs. Which, of course, is what you do when you're Lego Indiana Jones.

There he is, fedora and all

As he was working his way through the dinner table and chairs, Mah Girl came running from the bedroom, screaming “Noooo! Not the couch!”. Then I woke up.

I wonder what Freud would make of that... My guess is he would say “Stop playing video games!”.

Not eating meat is a decision, eating meat is an instinct

“Super Bowl Sunday. My place. On the projector. Chili will be served. Chocolate cake will be made. A possibility to kill terrorists before the game. Welcome.”

Now that there is how a text message is supposed to read.

The problem with troubleshooting is that real trouble shoots back

I can't think of a more manly way to spend the night than how I've spent this one (that doesn't involve actually building something with your bare hands, that is, which just ain't gonna happen).

In the Xbox, Gears of War. By men, for men, with men. And huge frackin' guns. An orgy in aliens, blood, spent shell casings and testosterone.

That'd be me on the left. Taking cover like a real man.
Soon I'll upgrade my puny gun to a Penis Enhancer.

On Spotify, to go with the macho warfare, some Testosterone Tunes. This is music I can't listen to in the car, cause I'll drive too fast.

A home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections

Back to work today after a week away from the office, a combination of being sick and having a day with our department to discuss strategies and the future.

This morning I got up at six, like I do most days. Sat for a while on the couch, like I do most days. Wrote a note for Mah Girl, like I do most days. It started out as any other morning. Took a shower, packed breakfast, plodded down to the train station, read the paper and started on the latest issue of Wired. Did you know you can get 155 bushels of soy beans from one acre of land?

Walking across the parking lot outside the office just before eight, a sense of unease wrapped itself around me like a wet, cold blanket. I texted Drunk Carl (if anyone reading this works at the same company as me, you know why. The rest of you will have to live in ignorance) and asked if there maybe was a chance I was supposed to be somewhere else. He mocked me.

So I got half an hour of staring at my over-flowing inbox (also a combination of being sick and having a day with our department to discuss strategies and the future), before I took a taxi to our second office. There I enjoyed seven hours of solution presentations for one of my personal Holy Grail projects (that begun back in November), before aiming for home again.

Waited for Mah Girl at the train station, as she was only three trains behind me. Read more Wired. Levees in the Netherlands will be built to specs making the risk of breach 1:100000 in any given year. The levees in New Orleans are being rebuilt at 1:100. Spheres have a lower surface-to-volume ration than cubes, so ice spheres melt more slowly, cooling a drink longer with less dilution.

Walked home, hand in hand, through the snowfall. Made fast food, and then nestled in the couch, Xbox controls and laptops at arm's reach. Arks were raided. Temples were doomed. Crusades were...last? Discovered Frou Frou and Imogen Heap. A good night.

It was the greatest magic trick I've ever seen

I ended up going to bed at 3 in the morning between Friday and Saturday. My intention was to be asleep before midnight. Instead I spent the night watching two football games, shooting 136 terrorists, talking to various friends and foes online, and waiting for my Mah Girl to come home.

I'm not really the worrying kind, but there's something about sitting up, waiting, that appeals to me. Not really sure what though...

So yesterday was a very mellow day. We kicked back and watched three movies.

Dawn of the Dead
(note: the remake, not the original) Yawn. The first time I saw this it was pretty cool. Turns out it's a POS. It has the most unmotivated naked boobs scene ever, and while I accept that characters in horror movies generally suffer from a lack of logical thinking, these dumbasses are exceptional. I won't need to see this ever again. Dawn of the Dead gets a shaved chin. Not a single hair.

The Prestige
Christopher Nolan in top form, as always. If you haven't seen it, do it. Do it now. It's about two 19th century stage magicians trying to outtrick each other. It has a murder mystery, twists and turns, David Bowie and pseudo-historically correct science signed Nikola Tesla. Outstanding stuff. Five beards out of five.

Tesla's field of lights in Colorado

1408
Swedish director Mikael Håfström's adaptation of Stephen King's short story is pretty good. The best Stephen King adaptations have always come from his short stories (Apt Pupil, Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption), and often short stories without any supernatural content. 1408 however stands firmly in horror territory, though with a streak of dark humor that had us chuckling a few times. Granted, our sense of humour might be more twisted than most...
Anywho, 1408 has a few scares, a few laughs, and John Cusack. What more do you need? Three beards and a moustache, out of five beards.

What I have learned from this weeked, and some basic Googling, (other than that I should never ever watch Dawn of the Dead again) is that I need to learn more about Nikola Tesla. Fascinating man. Someone to write something about.

This is the best meeting that we have ever had

I go to a lot of meetings. A L-O-T. My problem with that is if I have meetings from 8 am to 5 pm, I won't get squat done and my to do list will just keep growing.

"8 to 5?" you say. "What madness."

What can I say? I'm a popular guy.

I sat in on a two hour project meeting today. A very good meeting, though the Friday mood permeated the whole thing, and we went off on quite a few tangential discussions. None of which will be sampled below.

The best quotes/expressions from the meeting:

1. "Optical orgasm."
As in "This presentation is so good, it's like an optical orgasm". Note that he was hung-over. A brain marinated in alcohol works on different levels. PowerPoint never ever induces an orgasm, in any shape or form.

2. "Shorter gigabytes."
I can't even remember where that quote fit in. But of course, one gigabyte can be shorter than another. Right.

3. "Add that requirement to a separate list, cause we're cutting it later anyway."
See, part of a project's first phase is listing all the requirements that we have on that particular project. The quote above shows a very realistic view on requirement gathering.

Tonight, Mah Girl is off to a birthday party. I will spend the night watching football (as in "not soccer"), eating sushi and shooting terrorists. And sleep. Remains to be seen if I will be able to go to sleep early. Doubtful (he wrote and yawned).

I say listen to all voices, but mine's the final decision

I borrowed an Asus EEE from work yesterday. I've been considering buying some sort of mini laptop or web book for quite some time, and wanted to try one out for a while before making any kind of decision.

My current laptop is an LG LW25, which has a 12-inch screen and weighs in at 1.8 kilos. I've used it for about a year and a half, and I'm very happy with it apart from the start-up time, and the current battery time which is crap, but I didn't expect anything else after 18 months of frequent usage. The size and weight are just right for my purposes, which is writing, emailing and loitering about on the Web. Nothing major.

(of course, I was less than happy with the crash, but I'm not a Mac person and have to settle with Windows, so I'll just have to deal)

So. The Asus. So far a nice little machine. I wrote parts of this on it on the train this morning. Initially I had problems with the small keyboard (I have sausage fingers), but I've managed to up my typing speed considerably in only ten minutes. It still needs some getting used to, though.

Not sure if I have reached any kind of conclusion yet, other than the fact that I will need a new laptop of some kind within the next six months or so. I'm seriously considering using two, an Asus EEE-type machine for carrying around for writing purposes, and a bigger machine at home to use for editing purposes and storage. Of course, an external hard drive solves the second part, so I need to do some serious thinking whether I need a bigger screen than 10 inches or not. The other option is to go for a new 12-inch. Decisions, decisions.

Now children, this is what we call a luxury problem.

Another problem, is which video game console to choose. I'm still undecided between an Xbox 360and a PS3, but leaning towards the Xbox, if only because a lot of people I know have it, plus it's a boatload of cash cheaper.

Oh. And Wintersleep's "Search Party" almost makes me cry each time I hear it. Awesome stuff. Thanks, Spotify.