Zorac's LiveJournal

Went to see Star Trek Nemesis this afternoon (no repeat viewing of TTT as it was still completely sold out 3.5 weeks after release). Pretty good as Trek movies go - fairly light and humorous at the start, moving on to a darker, action-packed final section. I now understand the comparisons with The Wrath of Khan, but hey - it wouldn't be Star Trek if they weren't doing their bit for the environment by recycling old plots ;-) Plus there's at least one segment which could almost have come straight from a Bond movie. Look out for wilwheaton's (sadly much reduced) cameo - while I was as much of a Wesley Crusher hater as the next reader of certain newsgroups, read Wil's blog and you find a nice guy.

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OK, I popped into the Eagle and Child while I was in Oxford today to ask about booking the back room. The room is available to be booked, *but* as it's at lunchtime at the beginning of term, we need to have at least around 15 people who'll be eating lunch there to get the room. The food is pretty good - your standard pub grub with a reasonable selection and some vegetarian options.

So, if you're coming next weekend and want to have lunch at the Eagle and Child, then please send me an email (to mark@rigby-jones.net) to confirm it. If I get sufficient numbers, then I'll go ahead and book the room. If not, then we'll just have to turn up and intimidate the other patrons with loud discussions of Harry/Draco slash ;-)

One of the good things about working the late shift (9:30-18:00) is that if eMule finishes downloading goodies overnight, I can watch them in the morning. So this morning brought me brand new episodes of 24 and Buffy fresh from the states (both featuring death'n'destuction), hopefully there should be a new Angel available soon as well.

This evening I continued my struggle to tidy up my ADSL & network, but to no avail - more hardware issues mean I have to stay on a NAT setup - mot annoying. On the plus side, managed to resume Sunday's game of Age of Mythology (more death'n'destruction) and play a second one. Thanks to the power of my high tech siege equipment (two blokes carrying a tree-trunk), I emerged victorious from both. That takes the score so far to Me: 4, Da Boss: 0. Mwuahahahah!

Had the parents visiting again tonight - passing through on the way to the airport tomorrow. Got caught up on all the family news, plus I got some final Christmas presents. We even discussed Harry Potter some over dinner - we watched Philosopher's Stone over Christmas and Mum read the books, and even Dad (very much the non-bookworm of the family) is working his way through Chamber of Secrets at the moment. I don't think that they'll be going to hp_orlando, tho'.

Having recently seen Phantom Menace, Mum's DVD selection for the evening was Attack of the Clones - and we started with the heckling almost immediately with the dodgy title and despising of Jar-Jar. Other high(?)-lights included Saruman Count Dooku entreating a certain Jedi to join him - all it needed was Ian McKellan playing Obi-Wan, the total inconsistency of Yoda's speech (sometimes verb last, sometimes normal order, othertimes inbetween) and the sheer direness of the love-story dialog (just kill them already!)

Today's linkage: As a long time Mac-hater, I'm continuing to eat humble pie with the release of the latest oh-so-desirable PowerBook G4 17" (now also running X11 for Mac OS X). Thankfully, the price tag is sufficiently obscene (£2,598.99!) that I'm managing to resist temptation fairly easily. Also Slashdotted is "If LotR Had Been Written By Someone Else!" - I've only looked through 2 1/2 of the 15 pages, but already there's everything from Shakespeare to William Gibson, Gilbert and Sullivan to Dr. Suess. Much laughage.

Went to see TLK IMAX this afternoon. It's easily one of my all-time favourite movies, and seeing it for the first time years on a screen the size of a small planet is something of an experience. I wish I'd seen the IMAX version of Beauty and the Beast - although I at least have it on DVD. For reasons I've never quite figured out, The Lion King has always been a leader in the tear-jerkage stakes for me. Today it had me blinking 'em back in under a minute. Ah, well... (see also huskyteer's review)

Other news: cheapo game rip-offs - Jo had picked a some of these, and we played a couple. First, Guess Who? - much like the original (slightly less faces, I think), but the balance is horribly wrong (ie 2/3 of the faces are male, so if one player gets a boy and the other a girl, the latter always wins. Duh). The second was a Monopoly-style game which suffers from the problem that it's far too difficult to acquire money (you don't even get any for passing Go!) and buy stuff is far too expensive - the game ended before I got twice around the board! Best square is the one where you get $200 for "Watching the statue pis" (sic) featuring a picture of a statue cherub with appropriately-placed fountain nozzle - and this is aimed at young kids? Even at £2 each, they're really taking the pis.

By the power of time travel, welcome the new livejournalist (well, kinda), pepysdiary (currently 0.278 syndication points). Coming from 343 years in the past, you can read Samuel Pepys famous diaries in real time. SPOILERS: in about 5 years or so there's going to be a massive plague followed by a massive fire.

Finally got the Age of Mythology online play working properly, so had a couple of hard-fought battles against the boss. Managed to win both of them (Go Hades!), but it was darned hard work. Excellent fun, though. I would bore you all with the campaign details, but it's late and I need to have a bath and go to bed.

Tomorrow I'm off to London Town for the weekend, visiting Jo. Need to deliver her belated Christmas present (as those of you who know her will have no doubt guessed, it's Lego). Probably various shopping on Saturday, then it's off to see The Lion King IMAX on Sunday.

Squeeee....

Picked up a full copy of Age of Mythology yesterday (collectors edition, with a stack of nifty extras) and also a copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for the PS2 (can't resist those sale prices). The former is even more fun than the demo and remains dangerously addictive, the latter is a reasonable fun, but somewhat spoiled by the too frequent and too long load times.

Afternoon movie was Sabrina (the new version) - a thoroughly enjoyable bit of fluff, even if plausibility is stretched at a few points. Re the line "Paris is always a good idea", I'd be sorely tempted if my French was a bit better.

Seen in a sig on Slashdot, this link unexpectedly took me through to one of the silliest - and funniest - fanfics I've read these many years.
I mocked Voldemort
Ask me how!

New Year's Eve and it's hard to believe
Another Zodiac's gone around
While you drank yourself high on hoping
And watched the ceiling spin from the ground...

By the power of a radio-powered clock, I'm posting this bang on the real New Year (that's GMT, folks), so I'd like to be the first to wish you all the best for 2003! The year just gone has been - in most respects - a pretty darn good one for me (even if lots of the good stuff happened before I started this LJ), and there's certainly some interesting things coming up for the year to come. I've put down a few resolutions below - behind an lj-cut for those who think they would be TMI.

New Year's Resolutions
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Counting down from ten it's time
To make your annual prayer
Secret Santa in the sky
When will I get my share?

Then you tell yourself
What you want to hear
'Cause you have to believe
This will be my year.

Lyrics from This Will Be My Year from Semisonic's album Feeling Strangely Fine.

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Largely electrical: got into work this morning to find no power on the top floor, so we had to call out our good friends at Scottish+Southern Electric for the nth time this year (although it's usually the 1st floor power that goes, taking the machine and comms rooms with it). To give 'em credit, they did get it sorted pretty quickly. To give 'em debit, however, it didn't stay up for very long (the substation must be getting through fuses like there's no tomorrow). Currently we have power again, but that could change at any moment...

Ups: Have tickets for The Lion King IMAX on Sunday. No work tomorrow!

Slight down: Have no plans for tonight, so will probably be playing AoM and posting to LiveJournal...

Ah, the fun of life-devouring computer games, you know - you come home from work, have a bite to eat, then start gaming. Next thing you know, you look at the clock and discover that it's well past midnight... The latest of these I've found is Microsoft's Age of Mythology (sequel/prequel to the Age of Empires games), as fine a real-time strategy game as I've played in a long while. I downloaded the 345 meg demo the other day, and I suspect I'll be popping into town on Wednesday to pick up the full version - I expect many an evening will be lost to this game. Unfortunately, the laundry's only half-way done, so I can't get to bed for another hour or so. Time for another game ;-)