Zorac's LiveJournal

So, it's been a busy week on the Star Wars front, starting with the release of the long-awaited "Limited Edition" DVDs of the original trilogy, featuring the unaltered theatrical Han-shoots-first-dammit versions of the movies which George Lucas swore would never be released on DVD except if he could make a really big pile of money. Actually, they really are a bit of a con - each movie has a two-disk set, the first of which appears to be identical to the disks from the Special Edition trilogy box set, and the second of which contains the theatrical versions. No special features other than commentaries on the special editions (not even the stuff from the fourth disk of the box set). Meh.

It's no coincidence that this week also saw the release of LEGO® Star Wars™ II: The Original Trilogy - another entirely too much fun video game. It follows much the same format as the original, albeit with a few new bells and whistles. Once again there's a vast array of playable characters (and if you have a save from the first game, you can play as any of the Episode I-II characters too), and great gobbets of silliness. Excellent.

What was more fortuitous is that this week saw the One Man Star Wars show passing through Oxford, which I went to see on Thursday night. It was utter genius from start to finish - hilariously funny and constantly entertaining. Admittedly, if you don't know the movies then you'd be completely lost - but that's really not who this is aimed at. Writer/performer Charles Ross has incredible energy as he plays all the characters - including seamlessly portraying both sides of the battles. And, yes, he does the music and the spaceship battles too. Go see it if you can!

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So, what with chemical warfare proving utterly ineffective in the battle of the pipes, today I went out shopping for new and improved weaponry, tomorrow I shall be engaging in biological warfare, as well us unleashing the drain-cleaning equivalent of a sharp pointy stick. Whether this will lead to victory remains to be seen.

What else have I been doing? Playing a lot of games, actually. The most recent acquisition being Lego Star Wars - it's as silly as it sounds, and entirely too much fun. The downside is that it covers the prequel trilogy (although the newly released follow-up covers the original trilogy and promises even more silliness). The idea is that you play through six or so sequences from each film, playing a variety of different characters (you can switch between members of your party on the fly). In free-play mode, you can choose to be pretty much any character of note from the three films (often in several versions), which does have the upside that you can be General Grievous laying the four-lightsaber smackdown on Jar-Jar Binks, or have Darth Vader lop the head off young Anakin Skywalker. And all in the form of LEGO. Genius!

On the PC, I've been getting all first-person-shootery with Half-Life² and its spin-offs (if you have said game, I highly recommend the single player mod MINERVA - it's an incredibly polished piece of work, and I'm eagerly awaiting the final instalment.) Today I've been online with Day of Defeat: Source which was good fun, despite my utter ineptitude. I am, however, getting increasingly frustrated with the online pay for Age of Empires III - this is no reflection on the developers, it's just too difficult to find a fun game. Even if you do manage to find players of a reasonably similar skill level, there's no guarantee that your opponents won't blatantly ignore the agreed rules of engagement - or simply drop out of the game (actually, the latter usually happens with my allies, but today, after investing the agreed "no-combat" time in building up a strong economy and a formidable army, the entire opposition team quit, leaving an utterly hollow victory).

As mentioned previously, I had frayer and lizziwig to visit this weekend. We got off to a good start on Friday night with large quantities of Manhattan Iced tea and Singstar karaoke. Saturday involved the dime tour of Oxford, featuring useful places to know about rather than just the tourist highlights. We did, however, visit the Ashmolean (any rumours that I may have been making fun of the statuary and taking pictures of it for use in making silly icons are entirely scurrilous).

Yesterday featured more museums, and then (thanks to an unexpected change in the weather) special extra bonus punting. There was also more useful exploration before we decamped to the Duke for cocktails. Today I saw the ladies off to their train before doing a spot of shopping and then going to see the appropriately cracked out A Scanner Darkly.

I really need to go to Lush at the weekend. The main reason for this being that I finally got the hot water fixed on Wednesday, meaning that I can have hot baths rather than (usually luke-warm) showers for the first time in weeks - and my stash of ballistics and bubble bars is consequently running low.

Yesterday evening got off to a fun start when the electricity decided to cut out just before, I was due to leave, meaning that I ended up having to hang around for another couple of hours until the power was properly restored (rather than doing an impression of a yo-yo). On the plus side, I grabbed a copy of Uplink from Steam and spent a fun evening playing the part of a 1337 hax0r. Until I got caught. Bugger.

Today I have a shiny new video card to install when I get home, although I probably won't have much time to admire the shiny. frayer will be here with the weekend, along with her friend lizziwig, who is starting at Oxford University in the autumn. The idea is that Liz can have a look around town before she comes up to study, but I imagine that lost of cocktails will be involved, too...

Despite copious drinks of water, frayer and I were still somewhat the worse for wear¹ when we emerged from the hotel on Saturday. We spent the morning exploring Cambridge, sussing out the lie of the land. Eventually, we ended up investigating some museums to kill time - those of earth sciences (yay, dinosaurs!) and of archaeology and anthropology. After that, we decamped to a coffee shop and began amassing t00bs, before moving on and getting some lunch in preparation for the main event.

That, of course, was the wedding of wednesdayschild and uqx, held in the chapel of Trinity College. It was a lovely service - the bride looked radiant, and I even knew most of the hymns. The weather was perhaps not as nice as might have been hoped for, but at least the rain held off (just) for the photographs.

After the service, some of us who weren't going to the formal dinner decamped to another coffee shop until chucking-out time before heading over to the reception (via the hotel for a quick change in my case). After sipping drinks in the bar whilst the speechifying went on, I raided the buffet and then proceeded to strut my funky stuff on the dance floor whenever the DJ² played something which I deemed worthy. Somewhere along the line, I completely failed to investigate the chocolate fountain. Woe!

1) For some definition of "somewhat"...
2) I blame his slight resemblence to Errol Brown for the double bill of You Sexy Thing.

So, this weekend, I left the noble university town of Oxford to brave the home of the Fenland Poly¹. It didn't really get off to an inspiring start on Friday afternoon when the 3½ coach journey was further extended by a passenger swearing at the driver, then getting of and standing in front of the coach until he was dragged away kicking and screaming by the police². That, plus the fact that the toilet on the coach was out of order, meant that I made a rapid exit in search of a public convenience the moment we got to Cambridge.

Rather cleverly, this left me right next to the cinema, so rather than going in search of frayer, I hung around and waited for her. The movie was, of course, the newly-released Snakes on a Plane - a film which has no pretensions of doing anything more than living up to its title and being an absolutely first-class B-movie. What with considerable quantities of spirits added to the cinema-supplied cola, the "drink whenever you see a snake. Or a plane. Or..." game lead to rapid intoxication, so a walk back to the hotel seemed a wise plan. As did Burger King.

Our room at Sleeperz was impressively tiny - bunk beds on one side, the world's smallest en-suite on the other, and a space the width of a door in-between. I claimed the top bunk by virtue of being taller and somehow managed not to full out (although I didn't manage to get much sleep, so I suspect the the bed claims a moral victory).

1) OK, I should probably stop before I mortally offend every Cambridge person on my flist.
2) Actually, the moment the police turned up, he went over and started haranguing them, so there was no dragging.

This came from a discussion the other day about which are the best and ... er ... least best Pixar movies. To help answer that question, here's a poll! Simply rank them in order from 7 for the best down to 1 for the worst (if you haven't seen one or more, simply skip it/them and leave some gaps).

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So, apparently we aren't allowed to take any hand luggage onto 'planes on account of some bomb plot. Of course, this is just a cover-up. It's not really bombs they're worried about:

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So, I've been in the south of France for a few days now. Naturally, I've chosen the first week in ages where the weather is sub-par. Thankfully it's not been too bad - we haven't had much rain (at least during the day); we just haven't had a huge amount of sun either. Still, I've managed to splash around in the pool a couple of times, and there's plenty of good food and wine to be had...

Digital cameras are fun. Alas catching a picture of a really good bit of lightning is pretty much impossible. Any sort of lightning at all requires mucho patience (or possibly better camera settings...)

Still, hopefully a nice storm will clear the air and make it a bit less hot and humid.