schizoslayer.co.uk

Bainrow!

Dude!

Skate 2 Trailer. I’m not one for hyperbole but this is going to be awesome.

Put that on the back of the box EA.

Yoghurt

I was once told that men don’t form the necessary connections in their brain that encourage them to behave sensibly (well sensible for a man) until our mid-twenties. It apparently goes hand-in-hand with the thing that means adolescent males are more likely to stay up later and sleep in longer due to some ancient requirement for the healthy, strong men of the pack to be on guard for predators at night.

I don’t know how true this all actually is but I do know that I’ve started buying yoghurt. I’m 26 years old and I have now decided that instead of buying chocolate or ice cream or other sweet type foods I shall instead buy Yoghurts.

Buggered if I know why. There is after all nothing wrong with yoghurt. It’s just I’d rather have well… something else.

Other evidence: For the first time since I left home I have had an eye-test. There’s nothing particularly wrong with my eyes (well nothing anybody can fix) but it suddenly seemed like I should get them checked “Just to be sure” (I’m a little long-sighted in one eye apparently but I don’t need glasses. Yay I guess).

I’ve made the effort to register with a doctor. My approach in the past has always been to just go to the walk-in centre if something goes wrong. Now I actually have a GP.

It’s all just so unlike me.

Today I cleaned the carpet in my flat.

Anyway what else have I done?

I bought some Beatsteaks CDs from the Hut. Smack Smash and Kanonen Auf Spatzen. The Beatsteaks left a huge impression on me when I say them live at the Leeds festival in ‘99 however it’s been hard to follow them as while they appear to be big in Germany it’s incredibly difficult to find their albums here in blighty. They are probably one of the only punk bands I still listen to regularly (also they are my most listened to band on Last FM however I think that’s because it’s summer. When Winter rolls around the post-rock will start to prevail).

Started a second blog for my Second Life stuff. You’ll see things pop-up on here every now and again but I felt I should keep the majority of that stuff separate since people visiting here probably don’t care about that stuff and vice-versa.

Other than that things have been quiet. Here’s hoping for more thunderstorms though!

Bloody hell it’s hot…

Why is it nearly all blog posts start with the phrase “I’ve not posted in a while…” or something similar?

Do we all secretly loathe blogging? Is it a chore on the same scale as say washing up or hoovering that we continuously put off hoping it will somehow take care of itself?

Or is it that the Human race is secretly crap and useless at remembering to do things?

Well for me it’s the second one!

I’m trying to get myself organized more. This has involved putting lots of things into the Task list on my phone. It’s a scary experience seeing all the things you have to do laid out like that. And to be fair I’ve managed to slowly knock things off it.

This would be a lot easier if things in life were in the form of Quests that rewarded loot and experience points. After all MMORPGs have been encouraging rewarding the mundane and trivial for a while now. Shame society itself doesn’t work that way or I’d get more done…

Anyway yesterday I ventured into town to buy some new Towels. Thrilling yes? They’re Egyptian Cotton apparently. Anyway while I was out I thought I’d have a look around see if anybody had any Wii Fit in stock (They don’t) and I stumbled into the Air Conditioned Nirvana of a Currys Digital store.

Now a few weeks ago I pre-ordered myself an Acer Aspire One (The 1GB XP version in White). And while it’s yet to turn up I spotted one on the shelves of Currys.

For £250.

This was the Linux 512mb version with an 8GB solid State Drive. The One that is supposed to retail for about £205.

It’s dinky and nice and I’m glad I’m getting one. I’m even more glad I’m not getting one from Currys.

Anyway while out I bought a Wii. Since there is world shortage of Wii Fits I figured I might as well at least buy myself the console and get me some Wii Boxing action.

I have to say that Wii Boxing is probably the best game I’ve played in a while. Although the Fitness test appears to be based less around fitness and more around proficiency at the games. For example if I get anything Tennis or Baseball related my Fitness age is around 60-70. Throw some boxing at me though and it drops down to the mid twenties.

I do like me some Wii boxing though.

I also bought a Go!Team CD and a Russian Circles CD which anybody who frequents my Last FM page (I shall delude myself into believing people actually look at things like that) will have noticed that I’m listening to both bands quite alot at the moment.

Also it’s bloody hot.

BeachHouse

BeachHouse, originally uploaded by robhale.

So Spore is quite good.

Visit Spore.com

Reaffiriming my credentials as a Supergeek

I have bought one of these.

Downtime

I’m in the process of changing my web hosting provider. Things may be broken for a few days while I move all the furniture in.

An Weekend Roundup

spent a much needed weekend away from Newcastle (and most importantly work) and stopped over at my parents to celebrate my Sisters birthday.

The weeks of overtime decided to take this time to clobber me on the back of the head and I spent most of it either asleep, napping or in some muggy state between the two.

However during my brief periods of conciousness I have done things:

Bought flOw from the Playstation store for my PSP. You remember flOw right? The funny little flash game from a couple of years ago… It’s interesting how I pretty much wrote off the PSP when the DS came out but I’ve spent far more time playing PSP games than anything on my DS. Also interesting how few of those games are actually in 3D. The only 3D game I own for PSP is Vice City Stories and I’ve barely touched it compared to Patapon and Loco Roco.

It’s very good and incredibly relaxing. You can’t really go wrong for a fiver.

Played yet more Age of Conan. I find I can’t settle on a class in this so I’ve got alot of characters around level 8/9 now and little inclination to go back to any of them.

Signed up to Twitter. It’s an interesting thing and all interesting things deserve support.

Got introduced to a band from Tokyo called BlindPlace.

Ate some of the best Chinese food I’ve ever tasted at Wing Wah in Harrogate.

The coming week holds yet more ominous tones of crunch and overtime. Yippee.

It may be dead but it’s all I can afford…

So I hear that Blu-Ray has won the format wars.

It’s probably a very silly thing then to go around buying an HD-DVD drive for your Xbox.

Well not if they only cost £20 it isn’t!

Quite a few people in my office have all just bought HD-DVD drives from Gamestation as part of a deal (£30 for the drive and 3 Films). Which if you consider that the Universal Remote that is packaged with it costs £20 from the same store you’re basically getting an HD-DVD drive and 3 films for a tenner.

I don’t own a PS3. I have no intention to get one anytime soon and I can’t afford a dedicated Blu-Ray player (Cheapest one I could find on Amazon) and the discs themselves cost far more than HD-DVDs.

Sure no new titles may be released but when it comes to films I don’t already own then the HD versions are in some cases cheaper than the equivilent DVD Version.

So I’ve made the most of this and stocked up on some films I always meant to get on DVD but never did. In terms of filling the gap between now and when Blu-Ray actually becomes cheap enough to merit investing in a player I’m very content with my decision.

In fact if I ever meet somebody who has bought the blu-ray versions of films that aren’t exclusive to the format I will be inclined to laugh.  It just seems like a massive waste of money.

Dead formats. I prefer them much more than living ones…