One of the things that Blizzard has traditionally excelled at are cinematics. Tremendously detailed and high quality, they have always blown me away. From the Diablo games, to the Warcraft and Starcraft games, they have always delivered top-notch work. The Wrath of the Lich King trailer was no exception (especially when you watch the actual version, not the low resolution version on YouTube. I always wondered why Blizzard didn’t opt to have more, perhaps smaller cinematics in World of Warcraft, much like they do in pretty much all other games they’ve produced. The reason is probably that the technical side of the lost play time when someone is looking at a cutscene leaves too much room for others to fuck with you while you’re not paying attention. Makes sense. However, I guess they found a way around it, because a questline in Dragonblight, probably the longest and most interesting questline I’ve seen to date, ended in the following in-game cutscene. (SPOILERS: If you haven’t played the Dragonblight zone yet, and you don’t want things spoiled, don’t watch this.) The only thing that bugged me is that they didn’t shell out for an actual cinematic, and used the in-game engine instead, that would’ve been perfect.
Ladytron
I listen to a lot of minimal/dark dance music. A lot of it is produced by Global Underground, mixed by the likes of Sasha, or the Afterhours crew. Good, good, goooood stuff. Some of the things that they mix takes a little while to really hit me, but when it does it kind of sticks. On Sasha’s Invol2ver there’s a remix of the following song by Ladytron, and it’s not the first time I’ve come across Ladytron as a great remix group. I’m not quite as fond of the originals, but it’s still worth listening to. It’s interesting how I stumble across new stuff to listen to, to be amazed by, and it makes me wonder about the various threads on the various fora I’ve seen over the last few years where people ask for recommendations of stuff to listen to. I always just stumble from one thing to another; I’d like to think it’s my incredible luck.
Democracy
“Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting over what’s for dinner.”
20081111
Over the last week or so, several people have been criticising my lack of journal updates, and I think I owe some of you an apology and perhaps an explanation. You see, it’s not that there isn’t anything noteworthy to report, it’s just that the things that occupy my right now are complicated to explain. Sure, I could tell you about Jim coming over, but who really wants to know about him, anyway? I could tell you about Fallout 3, or the arrival of Wrath of the Lich King, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t enjoy that all that much. Or how True Blood is rocking hard, but either you knew that, or we’ve stopped speaking some time ago. I suppose that the amount of inane bullshit I post depends on what kind of mood I’m in.
My idle clock cycles have been spent pondering the widespread child pornography conspiracy that exists in the Dutch social and political elite and its effects on policy and diplomacy. It’s a perfect topic to write something about, but it’s such a massive and comprehensive subject that, considering the amount of time I have, I couldn’t do it justice. It would just sound like the laughable ravings of a conspiracy theorist, unless I spend pages and pages dissecting all the required information, referencing and cross-referencing everything, which, in the end, would only drive readers away.
So in the end, regarding this topic, I don’t want to undermine the efforts of people like Micha Kat, Hüseyin Baybasin, Adèle van der Plas and even Adam Curry, nor do I want to chase readers off, and so, I don’t talk about it. I have many examples like these; The stable slide towards the construction of a police state. The erosion of privacy rights. The advancement of the global elite due to the implications of the economic downturn. Et cetera. Et cetera.
So when I’m posting to my journal for a while, it just means I have stuff going on that I find hard or cumbersome to talk about.
20081105
.: Sleep
I slept so much (nine hours) I’m completely hyper right now. Perhaps I should do that more often. :)
.: GFX
So, yesterday I turned on my PC and was confronted with a lot of visual garbage (stripes, artifacts, etc.), even during the DOS part of my boot sequence. Logging in to Windows was only possible if I ran it on safe-mode, and even then the visual garbage persisted, but it was at least manageable enough that I could make out what was going on. I figured my graphics card, a Geforce 8800 Ultra (*sob*), was busted. After some phone-calls to others explaining the problems, they concurred.
This morning I rushed to my local, brick and mortar, computer supplier to buy a new graphics card. (The 8800 fell off the back of a lorry, right into my lap, so I didn’t exactly have any warranty on it.) After careful, three minute deliberation, I settled on a Radeon HD 4850, 1 Gb DDR3 (up from 768 DDR2 on my 8800.) My question to any and all of you is…
*suspense builder*
…does anyone have any experience with this card, or has read a positive review? I’m kind of flying blind here.
.: Obama
So at the office we decided to have a pool, regardless of who would win the U.S. presidential election; if McCain would win, we’d bet on how long it would take for him to die. If Obama would win (which he has, for the dangerously uninformed) we’d bet on how long it would take before an attempt was made on his life.
In all seriousness; I’m happy with the outcome of the U.S. election, and I have high hopes regarding the president-elect to bring some positive changes to his country, and in turn, to the world. His victory was a relatively decisive one, which says something either about the willingness of the American people to bank on change, or the Obama campaign’s ability to link McCain to the Bush administration. (Undoubtedly, they manage to exploit some of McCain’s mistakes, like putting Palin on the ticket, which probably created a nice synergy with the Obama campaign’s efforts.)
.: Eva: The Requiem
I was looking forward to Eva and her choir doing a cool rendition of The Requiem on saturday, but sadly her voice is failing her a bit, so there’s a chance she won’t be performing, which would suck, considering all the effort she put into it. Cathelijne will still be singing, though, so I wish her all the luck in the world if she has to do it alone. :)