Month: May 2005

I’ve been alting up a lot. I like Energy blasters and I’ve been having fun with one of them. However I really don’t like Energy as a secondary. It’s all close range stuff which kinda defeats the purpose of a blaster really. I am considering a reroll.

Main choice lately has been my highest alt, a level 25 Emp/Rad Defender. I did the first TV trial a couple of weeks ago just because. I finally did a respec last night to work out some stuff into a new build. I have 1 power in my secondary. Everything else is pure support. I dumped out Manoeuvres deliberately to open up the Stealth pool. I forget to take TP Friend which is such a useful power and so I took Invisibility. Along with SS, it’s a nice nice combination. I’ll get Phase Shift soon but next up is getting Regen Aura. I’m thinking I’ll do a respec in my early 30’s and by that stage I may be able to do without the Fitness pool thanks to buffs and the like. If I can perma haste and slot up my auras with regen I shouldn’t have to worry about running out of end. Then I can get TP back and perhaps revisit the Leadership pool. Dinged 26 last night.

For those that care, these are what I play most.
Triumph
Douro – Katana / Dark Armour Scrapper 36
Skreemer – Illusion / Radiation Controller 20
Electron Blue – Energy / Energy Blaster 10

Justice
Skreemer – Empathy / Radiation Defender 27

Pinnacle
Red Sparks Electric / Electric 22

I play Red Sparks the least. She was a Winter Lord baby and so isn’t perhaps put together too well. Also lots of debt and no money to buy enhancements kinda cripples her…and helps me be lazy not playing here.

Skreemer (controller) is lots of fun but also a Winter Lord baby and so isn’t too high up on enhancements. I have been playing him a bit and so it helps. I do need to arrange an influence transfer with my main at some stage. Then he could be uber. Suffering in PVP testing without enh. A couple of ill cont with pets can cause havok.

Sometimes I do actually wonder how much of it is worth anything.

Sometimes it take effort.

Starting to think that I should have gone to Bristol with the cool kids this coming weekend. But at the end of the day if I want to sit in a pub for 4 days I can do it a whole lot cheaper in London and have just as much fun…well almost as much fun. Shame to miss the assembeled V and in particular V Scot but I shall be up their way next month and there will be hanging out.

So on Saturday a few of us who are not headed down to “Brizzle” will be having our own little drinkup in a nice pub out in North London. Hurrah. It should be fun and I look forward to it. The last time I was in the pub was for one of Neil’s brothers birthday after we had been out with the V in town and it was an excellent evening, lots and lots of fun.

The last episode of The Shield had a piece of music over the end that I liked a lot. So thanks to google and other such worthy sites, I’m listening to Worlds Apart by And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. It’s quite good, I think Doug has been going on about them before. Decent band, solid album. I’ll be keeping an eye out for some more.

Ooh comics. I recently re-read 100 Bullets to the lastet trade. It’s slow to start, really slow to start and I almost gave up after the first thread but once it all starts to come together in particular from issue 20-40, it’s an excellent series. The last trade was a little weak, it’s hitting issue 60 soonish (if not now) and another trade should be coming where I believe it all kicks off. The art ranges from annoying the hell out of me to enjoying it a whole lot.

2 of my 3 meetings today have been cancelled which is a nice start to the day as I’m somewhat hungover but feeling better by the second. Just a team meeting later this afternoon which should be quiet enough and that as they say is that.

I updated my nice shiny G5 to Tiger yesterday. It was painless as expected and it’s pretty. The UI looks to have had a minor overhaul and some lines are far more defined which I like. Spotlight is lovely, just what I want from a search tool and this is what the coming crop of apps should be aiming for.

I’m a very very late comer to The Smiths. It’s only been in the past few months when Alex was going on about them that I actually listend to any. It’s easy enough to see why they are held up so high. Listening a compliation at the moment. Some excellent lyrics going on in there, very simple but at the same time so much more.

Reading and enjoying the hell out of Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s Arabesk trilogy. Coming up to the end of the second book and it’s nicely written cyber-punk noir. I’ve borrowed another couple of his books off Dave and I’m looking forward to getting into them aswell.

Sometimes the world conspires to help rather than hinder. Last night for example when I got home after being out for a catchup with an old friend who I’ve only seen once in the past year, Blogger was down for scheduled maintenance.

So I was unable to post what were very drunken thoughts on the state of the world.

Hurrah!

Oh the other thing which I watched, don’t laugh, was Enterprise. I wanted to see the Mirror Universe two-parter as I’ve always enjoyed them. It was …ok. It’s the first time I watched the show since early in the first season and it didn’t feel like I was missing anything. It was a little annoying for them to have the Defiant as being from so far in the future but then to look so much clunkier than anything else they had. Nice cameo’s for the old phaser but a little obvious. I’d have loved, loved and it would have made it such an excellent episode, to have had a man floating outside in a spacesuit at some stage. Hopefully there will be a good new Trek along sometime. The one thing it did have me missing was DS9. Sometime I’m going to have to get the cash together and pick that up in DVD. I’ve only seen the last few seasons once and I’m sure I could re-watch a whole lot of them quite happily.

A quiet weekend pretty much as planned. Lots of catching up on media stuff. 24 goes from silly to sillier without a break and it’s excellent fun. Lost was ok, a little disapointing after such a long wait, roll on the next couple of episodes. The Shield is fast getting back to being the best thing in TV. *So* good. Doctor Who was allright. I think I’m only still watching it for Christopher Eccleston who I’m enjoy lots as the Doctor but everything else about it is, lets face it, pretty shit.

Went to see Kingdom Of Heaven with my flatmate last night. I wasn’t bad. It was generally fun with some long dragging pieces. Some excellent setpieces for the siege scenes which made it all worth while. Orlando Bloom just stood around with the same look on his face but the rest of the cast were superb. I’ve only just found now on IMDB that the King who despite wearing a full iron mask outacted Bloom was played by Ed Norton. Hardly surprising about out doing him. Alexander Siddig was excellent although that may be nerd bias showing through. Overall, worth seeing but be aware it’s about 2.5 hours long.

Election stuff.

Northern Ireland has been interesting. Best result has to be the SDLP taking South Belfast. The Unionist vote was so split that the SDLP was able to get a nice majority of over 1000. That was a lovely result to get in early and had me sitting at my desk waiting results this afternoon. I was hoping that SF or SDLP would pick up more of the split Unionist vote but it seems to have all gone to the DUP and Paisley. That’s not so good. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens when the dust settles.

Just took a look at my web stats to note that someone was looking at my archives for this week 3 years ago. An old friend from Dublin…so I scrolled through the page just to see what was up there. The writing isn’t as bad as I sometimes think it is when I look back. Strange week that one was.

Oh the thing I was searching for in the last entry, it’s the “Killer App”, that is what is missing.

I’ve been thinking about corporate responsibility for a few weeks now. It’s been a tangent in some debates/arguments I’ve been having with someone I work with. I’m not talking about actual charity work or donations, I’m talking about the responsibility a company has in it’s area to improve itself *and* it’s area.

So the Internet. Mozilla actively make the Internet a better place and they do it for free. Firefox & Thunderbird are the two big ones. Both are ongoing attempts to make a safer, securer easier to use Internet. I like Mozilla, I like their products and I use them. I respect the company, what they are doing and what they are trying to do. Tomorrow,if Mozilla decided to charge for the three main apps I use (Firefox, Tbird and Sunbird), I would happily take out my credit card and give them some money. Note I have already donated.

Google is the other big one. The major difference being they are a for-profit company. It’s not stopped them from releasing a large number of products and services for free. There isn’t anything quite life changing there yet…but it’s a buildup. I don’t know to what. I have my suspicions but I’ve changed the a couple of times so far. I just don’t know. However, I have faith and indeed some loyalty to the brand, I have quite a lot of both. So I’m prepared to give them my money when they come asking for it. I do not block anything from Google using the excellent GreaseMonkey tool for Firefox. I don’t want to, I actually have time and respect for the company.

Skype is getting there. It’s small and smart and way overdue. It’s cruising a wave of nice publicity and it has a whole lot of potential but I don’t think VOIP is anything like it’s been talked up.

Unfortunately, nothing much excites me on the Internet these days. I really wish it did. I think that pretty soon, somehow we are going to see a combination of the Google and Mozilla, even if it’s just a custom Google Firefox. That’s going to be huge.

I do really wish that there was something to do it, but there just isn’t and to be, I’m not sure if it’s the right word but to be, expected to be excited by some of what I see on the Internet is to be honest, a joke. Please do give me something to be excited about. I’m an Internet user, I use it daily for work and for pleasure, give me something to make these easier or less stressful or more fun, give me something useful. Don’t give me what could perhaps be a wonderful concept and then destroy it like so many good things on the net have been killed. Take the concept and quite simply, Do Not Fuck It Up.

It’s not that hard.

And ya know, if you happen to be a for-profit company right now, maybe spending some time building a brand would help leverge some profit it from it a year down the line.

I’m somewhat annoyed.

Gah.

Well the election was pretty much as expected. I watched some of it when I got in last night but I wasn’t in the mood to stay there all night and await the results. Labour are back in with a much smaller majority. I doubt very much Blair will serve out his full term, he can’t for the next elections sake. I was disappointed that while the Lib Dems did well, they didn’t gain as many seats as I would have liked and lost some to the Tories. Very happy to see Veritas and UKIP collapse but also very disappointed that Green didn’t manage to get that one seat they looked close on.

Northern Ireland has just started now with SF and the DUP both up at the expense of SDLP and UUP. Pretty much as expected there. Eager to see how the rest go.

This is going to be a very quiet weekend. I’m very tired and I’m looking forward to some quiet time. It’s badly needed. Play some games, watching some TV, catch a movie perhaps. Quiet, quiet quiet.

Stuff on after work tonight and then probably early home.

I’m listening to the new Ryam Adam’s album; Cold Roses and it’s pretty good. It’s less rocky than the last two, less poppy than Gold but a nice mix of folk/pop/softrock. I’m actually enjoying it a whole lot.

05/05/05