Grand Theft Time

As Easter fast approaches the job list gets longer and the jobs more 'urgent' (and by that I mean I have to rescue people from a lack of planning... "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine" or words to that effect... but I do try to keep everyone happy).

Unfortunately, as the stress levels rise at work my energy and the desire to do anything meaningful once I get home tends to drop... affectionately referred to as "End-of-term-itess". On top of that, poor K is rushed off her feet at work as well due to the impending inspection of her office... if the cats didn't insist on keeping us going so that they have someone to open packets of food for them I suspect we'd probably just get through the door and go straight to sleep... lol.

That said, it is almost over. K has now passed the deadline by which all of the documentation for the inspection needed to be sent off (which was one of her biggest jobs) and the Easter holidays are now just a few days away. And while I might not get the three weeks off over Easter that my teaching colleagues do, I am hoping to take a week off somewhere in the middle.

Gaming, while taking a back seat to maintaining my sanity, has drifted very much back into the 'GTA Zone'. With the release of GTA4 (on Xbox 360 at least) fast approaching and some excellent articles in almost every magazine getting the hype engine up to speed, I found myself with the desire to fire up GTA San Andreas again. So much so that I didn't even bother looking for my old saved game... I just started again.

It's all pretty amazing... despite the fact the graphics aren't much to look at and it has a nasty habit of waiting until I've just completed a tough mission (or I've been playing for a while and forgotten to save) before crashing. It's the silly little things I find the most fun... the incidental missions that you can stumble across like the delivery mission for a local shop, only found by jumping on the bicycle parked outside or the pimp missions that become available if you jump in a particular car. And the jumps... oh how I love the jumps... whizzing along on a motorbike and just noticing a piece of fencing that seems to have been conveniently left resting against a wall that, when used, trigger a cool slo-mo shot of you flying through the air to success/doom (delete as applicable)... something Burnout Paradise also does well I might add.

I do have another drain on my time at the moment... but until the NDA is lifted, I'm afraid I'll be keeping quiet ;)

1.51 billion reasons to say...

...no thanks!

British Gas, the thieving swines that they are, decided to send us an update to our direct-debit today raising the monthly bill by 300%!!!

This (allegedly) was worked out from our usage last year, plus an extra 15% to cover their rise in prices.

Did I mention that we'd already agreed a 30% increase in our bill with them (that they apparently weren't supposed to do)? Even with this already in place... another 15% on top doesn't equal 300%, even I can see that there is a problem in that equation. I think, however, I've found the missing variable:

Current bill + 30% + 15% rise in fuel cost + GREEDY SHAREHOLDERS = 300%

All this after having announced profits of £1.51 BILLION!!!

Ah well... sod them... I'm off to a different supplier. I can only hope that everyone else does the same (unlikely I know... but it'd be nice).

Pirates of the Boring Sea

Maybe I'm being a little to harsh with my title... but the sad fact is that it's true!

Having asked my little bro what he would like for his birthday, he asked (in the absence of a sports car and dancing girls) for a copy of PoBS... something that he would rather not play by himself.

Fair enough I thought and off to my friendly online retailer to buy two copies.

Don't get me wrong... it's a nice enough game... I just don't think it really has much to offer when compared to what has gone before and what is soon to be release.

While I can't comment on the newer MMOs (at least until the NDA is lifted :P), the graphics aren't as good as the likes of EQ2, the game play is slow at best and the animation is... well... embarrassing. All the character models are the same height and build, and the customisation limited. Add to that the fact that the ports all look so similar and the looping npc conversations/animations do little except irritate. The ship to ship combat can be vaguely interesting for a short while but mostly just dull zig-zagging attempting to move with the wind.

The PvP aspect of capturing ports sometimes works (when the system is not being exploited) but I think Tabular Rasa does a better job of contested territory.

It is a real shame. The idea was brilliant and the sea combat should have been one of the things that set it apart from the other MMOs. Maybe in six months or so it'll be in a better state. Unfortunately (in my opinion at least) at the moment, it is anything but...

RIP Rob - a true Boogie Knight

Sad news fell upon my EQ2 guild at the beginning of last week. One of our officers and a good friend, Rob (AKA Akoji/Morry), passed away leaving a wife and three small children.

As a constant source of cheerful and selfless banter, Rob was one of the main influences on me in the guild and we would often exchange quite long and amusing chat messages about things going on in the guild and life in general.

Cursed with a dodgy Internet connection (and tanking abilities better than he would like to admit), any instance or raid was guaranteed to be interesting if Rob was on board... even if it was just because he could go link-dead at any moment, more often than not running off into the largest group of monsters he could find sending them our way.

He will be sorely missed and our thoughts go out to his friends and family.

Rest in peace Rob