Guitar Hero Metallica

So I clocked GH: Metallica in hard over the weekend - I was a little disappointed by how easy the final track (The thing that should not be) was, but the excellent pain of completing One on hard more than made up for it.

What it really did though, was remind me how much I love Metallica! I've had a real craving to listen to them the last two days as a result, but I don't have any of their albums (I had a bit of a boycott against them after they made Napster cancel my account years ago in the whole Napster v Metallica thingy). I think this is something I might have to rectify at some stage.

The one track that has really been spinning round and round in my head, due to a combination of the weekend's gaming and the frenetic pace of work at the moment is Battery - what an awesome song!

I look like an idiot listening to this stuff at work, because I can't quite stop my head from bouncing a little to it. Speaking of work, it's been getting pretty challenging recently, but I've actually been really enjoying the uptick in pace - makes me feel like I'm squeezing everything out of the day

I would also like to share this excellent video that came to me via Glennboi and the H dog.

More awesome than a double rainbow...

Eat them up, yum yum.

Found this video in a hazy, post luncheon haze today. Stop motion pacman on a large scale.

In other news, it turns out Sri Lankan food is really excellent. I'm so full, I just want to take a nap.

cs_747

Watching Wesley Snipes muddle his way through 'Passenger 57' reminds me so much of playing counter strike, specifically the map cs_747, which was based around a hostage situation on a 747. Good times, I feel like a nervous teenager just watching videos of it on toutube. It reminds me of a golden age of gaming where my reflexes were massively fast, and I could focus ridiculously well on games for hours on end....

I might be pretty rusty these days, but around 5 years ago, I would totally have hit you with a BOOOM, HEADSHOT!

Ah, the memories...

PS: HA, FPS Doug - the epitome of BOOM HEADSHOT!

I have more in common with that dude than I like to admit.

Bleep'n'skweep music

I've been listening to Ratat's LP3 and LP4 today while trying to get my head around a particularly convoluted piece of work, and it has helped me no end. The mixture of weird ambient sounds, bleeps and skweeps has been just the ticket. It helps that there are no lyrics to distract either. Here are two of their latest album, LP4:

Check out cartoon anti-drug video some joker posted with the second track - made me chuckle a little.

The music reminds me of one of my favourite scenes from Spaceballs

They don't make comedy as good as that any more...

With Lasers, wormhole generators, and sonic thrusters

I've read a couple of places on the intertubes recently that at the 2012 Olympics in London, the Modern Pentathlon will be switching to laser pistols for the shooting events. 

It makes me happy that all my teenage years spent plying Virtua Cop 2 in the Arcade was not wasted....

I'm sure that somewhere along the way, someone, somewhere is going to up upset that a laser pistol might require less skill, no compensating for the wind or whatever.

To those people, I say: welcome to the future. Robots will be along shortly with mind bending future drinks to take your mind off it.

Skylight

Popped past the house this afternoon - unfortunately there were people working on site (industrious buggers) so we didn't get to check out the paint job that was going up last time we popped by. Things are coming along nicely around the site though - I think all the buildings are just about water tight, but some of the garages are not quite there yet. Some of the internal roads are going in as well, which makes the place that much more finished.

From the outside, there were two new additions to our unit that were of note - they've installed the skylights! I was quite happy to see this, as the en suite and the laundry were looking quite dark on our last visit. I was also pretty happy that there is one installed in the laundry - I haven't checked in a while, but I didn't think there was one on the plan!

Things are coming along nicely anyway. I still think they're going to be pushing things to get everything finished this month, but I can always hope. The silver lining, as always, is that the longer it takes, the more money we'll have in our pocket when we're ready to go. Barring some horrible intervention, it will certainly be ready by December, when the contract stipulates it must be ready, and we start being in danger of missing out on the first home buyer's boost (touch wood). However, I'd be lying if I said I was happy at the prospect that we might have to wait longer than the end of August to move in.

Anyway, the completed skylights remind me of this track from the Blade Trinity soundtrack:

 I enjoyed it, even if it does sound like futuristic elevator music...

Anyway, I'm going to get back to enjoying a lazy quiet weekend - have been feeling under the weather all week, and I think being a hermit for a weekend is the only way to go.

I leave you with a little video a found care of Google Reader's recommended feeds. It's a video made by a student of the University of Hannover in Germany - check the original Vimeo post for the full details. Anyway, it's a CG projection of Super Mario Bros on to a wall.

Super Mario Bros. from Andreas Heikaus on Vimeo.

Eat them up yum yum

Today's tune to get you through the morning is "Pacman (Power-Pill Remix)" by Power-Pill (aka Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin). There's a couple of different uploads of this tune on youtube, but only the one below features a mish mash of Tron clips.

Ahhhhh yeah. Makes me want to go and watch the original Tron again. To help get you in that same nostalgic mind set, here's a blurry 1982 trailer of the original Tron:

For extra laughs, here's the description on the youtube post:

FrankSchenk6 — February 07, 2008 — Kevin Flynn is a former employee of the software corporation ENCOM, now running a arcade. Flynn has been trying to hack into ENCOM's mainframe computer to find evidence that ENCOM's senior executive Ed Dillinger stole four video games he created. But Dillinger's supercomputer "Master Control Program" foils Flynn's efforts and dictates and controls most of the computer systems. One night, Flynn's former girlfriend Lora and her boyfriend, ace computer programmer Alan Bradley helps Flynn break into ENCOM to shut down the MCP with Alan's security program "TRON". But MCP uses Lora's matter transmission program and converts Flynn into data and sends him into the computer. Flynn finds himself in a electronic world ruled by the MCP and his evil chief henchman Sark, where computer programs are the alter-egos of their creators and are forced to compete in gladiatorial games. With help from Tron, a heroic and fearless security program and his lover, Yori, Flynn sets out destroy the MCP and help Tron liberate the system from the MCP's control, by destroying the MCP is Flynn's only way of returning to the real world.

Gold! I have to admit though, I didn't realise this movie was quite as old as all that. If it came out in 1982, it's older than I am, which makes my nostalgia for it a little misplaced. Whatever, it's still awesome.

So awesome that Disney are remaking it in 3D. 3D!!1!1!11one!!1eleven

Stereo sound, straight to your earholes!

The trailer actually looks pretty good, despite the reliance on the 3D gimmick. Unfortunately embedding is disabled on the clip, so you'll just have to follow this link here to watch it. I recommend it. I really hope it ends up being good.

Edit: I'm totally going to make that pacman track my ringtone!

Art imitating life

I saw a snippet of this video during my lunch time browsing in a short doco posted on Gizmodo about pixel art. The doco itself wasn't hugely interesting, but some of the pixel artwork that it shows off looked quite interesting, especially the animations.

This one took my attention, because I've always loved side scrolling platform games. The story follows the life of the hero, in brief, after he beats the boss and rescues the princess.

The other art that caught my attention in it was the rather excellent Pixels by Patrick Jean, which did the rounds a little while back. Pixels is well worth the watch, if you haven't seen it already.

Now, get back to work, you slackers!

Ken Flow Chart

Found this while flicking Google Ready Play in some downtime at work.

Source: http://rhizome.org/editorial/3492

Quick house update (but mostly game nerding)

A very quick update to say that the house now has some bricks on it! Had a quick look on the way home last night and we have bricks to the roof line on the north side, and about halfway up on the southside. Will try and get up there to post some pictures soon. I was planning on cycling up there after work today, but the weather is a bit on the foul side, so I might not make it.

In other news, as anyone who I've talked to in the last week or so can attest, I've bought a copy of Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, and have been spending all my spare time playing it. I've been looking forward to playing this for a couple of years now, pretty much ever since it came out in 2008. It was one of the first purchases I was planning on getting for the ps3, but I didn't end up picking it up until last weekend.

It's been really interesting playing it, the change of format to first person shooter has made the gameplay much more tense and scary, which is a mixed bag for me. It makes it slightly more exciting, but I'm not that great with scary things, so I find myself saving way too often and having to take breaks when it gets too much. I'm still not totally sold on first person shooters on a console either - I miss my mouse and kb! I think the game would be much easier on the PC as well, I would certainly never bother with the faux turn based V.A.T.S system the game utilises as a nod to it's turn based combat roots.

That all seems quite a negative paragraph, so I should reiterated that I love the game and am finding it tremendously addictive. I especially enjoy that grenades and mines are much more useful than they were in the first two games, and that it's much easier to be sneaky. The storyline is engaging and the freedom that the fallout series gives the player to customise and take their own path through the wasteland remains intact, which is something I always loved.

Anyway, I don't want to start reviewing a game that has been out for years and already extensively reviewed elsewehere. Suffice to say, I'm enjoying it.

Sydney

Just a quick follow up on a previous post - the TCV gig last week was great (John Paul Jones is a legend), and it was excellent to catch up with people in Sydney. A big highlight for me was John Paul Jones's piano interlude, which was excellent. Check it out in the Youtube clip below!

That Youtube user has fairly good quality vids of the whole gig set up as a play list with all the track names. That's actually a little bit shocking - I was expecting just crap phone rips, but the whole gig is pretty much up there and you can see and hear everything. It's amazing what technology can do, but I can see how that would piss bands off - sure its a poor substitute for going to the gig, but its also free, which makes spending $100+ for the gig a little harder to stomach.

Although maybe its not that much of a thing - I'll certainly still go to the gig rather than just watch it on Youtube, its just not the same.

Anyway, here's another video of the gig, this time of Mind Eraser, No Chaser, which I dig.

One thing I did realise while I was up there is that I cannot handle the Tekken drinking games like I used to...although I can apparently still whoop all of you at Tekken while passing in and out of consciousness.


For those less in the know, the Tekken drinking game goes along these lines. You play a modified version of champs and challengers in versus mode, where the champ has to drink when they win, in addition to staying on. While it's a litte crude, the idea is that if one person is better at the game, they will soon be too inebriated to keep winning, giving everyone else a fighting chance. Unfortunately for me, it took Rob and Brian a little too long to hit their stride.

Also did a couple of other groovy things in Sydney, like visiting the beach, catching the ferry to Manly, ate some excellent food (including sushi train, dope style laksa and a bitchin burrito), hit some shops and generally lounged around. I bought a couple of new business shirts, including a blue gingham shirt. That's right, I'm bringing gingham back.

Things that I'm looking forward to at the moment (in chronological order):

1. Leaving work today;
2. Pay day tomorrow;
3. Multicultural festival on Saturday (which will see excessive amounts of exotic food and beverages consumed) followed by;
4. Drinks for Dana's birthday;
5. Melbourne in a couple of weeks with my boy dos4gw; and
6. Prodigy in Sydney in early March.