~8-Ball-Murphy

So, my embargo on Macintosh products has been loosened somewhat, since I have come into ownership of an iPod Touch. After what could be called a ‘courting period’ that started when I was at the movies with one of my friends, and he showed me his Touch seconds before the movie started. I can say that during the course of the movie (whose name and plotline I can’t actually remember) all I could think of was this amazing little contraption, and how much I needed one. Being a self confessed technocrat (I would have used the term technophile, except for the strange connotations it would imply) I began relentlessly coveting the Touch, researching it, reading reviews and visiting the local Mac store, a place which previously I would have only entered for the most urgent purposes and even then I would wear my scowl the entire time, spitting acidic retorts at friends and store workers singing the praises of Mac products.

I’m not sure exactly how it happened but Crash of the Titans came and went without much attention being paid to it on my behalf, which is strange given my love for platform games featuring anthropomorphic marsupials taking control of bizarre, hulking cross- phylum amalgams via voodoo mask based magic. I think I may have been playing Spider-man: Friend or Foe on the PSP at the time, a game I initially didn’t hold much hope for, but couldn’t stop playing once I started. However, after picking up a copy of Crash of the Titans on the PSP (I really can’t bring myself to play it on anything but the platform that birthed the bandicoot, and its progeny, it’s a sort of indefinable form of loyalty for Sony’s consoles, but the more than $40.00 difference between the PSP and Xbox 360 versions may also have had something to do with the choice.) I was suitably impressed with the revamp of everyone’s favourite bandicoot, the game play formula isn’t too far removed from the old school versions, but with a few additions that make the game part platformer, part beat ‘em up and there’s even a tiny bit of RPG in the fact that you can “level up” Crash’s stats and abilities, this is a very limited aspect that you really don’t get any control over, maybe it will be beefed up in the sequel (?).

The game also looks wonderful even on the PSP screen (which I have heard being referred to as inadequate by some people) full of vibrant colour and beautifully animated characters. Crash’s animations look wonderful, especially his swiping attacks which at times look like a flurry of energetic slaps, they are wonderfully over exaggerated, hyper kinetic and suit Crash Bandicoot perfectly.

Speaking of video games, after seeing the film it was based on no less than five times, I purchased and have been playing Iron Man on the 360, and I have to say it is bordering on a religious experience for me, oft are the times I find myself sitting on the couch rotating the camera around the iron man model standing completely still, just to see how brilliantly it was assembled. Almost as many times I will purposely take damage to see the changes it makes to the look of the model, that’s right as you take damage, it shows on the in game model.( I refer you to my previous comment about being a technophile… er, I mean technocrat.)

From the relative safety of my obsidian bunker, like a spider with it’s feet across the tensile lines of it’s web sensing for information, I have come across a few pieces of news that have made me incandescently overjoyed; The Hobbit is being made into two movies which are sledged to be made by 2010 and the best news is that Guillermo Del Toro is up for the part of Director! Jeff Smith’s Bone (link) is being made into a movie. Perhaps hundreds of artists have attributed their eagerness to complete or begin their own opuses to the works of Mr. Smith and I have to say after picking up a few chapters of Bone back when I was in school was what made me think it might be worth giving this whole artist caper a real go. So I for one am very excited to see how this deal shapes up, and can’t wait to see the finished product.


Thanks for not interrupting,
- 8 Ball.

Well, it’s two weeks into my new course and I’ve met some really cool new friends par exemple but something else has happened, something I have seen in movies and TV shows but never thought was something I myself could be susceptible to: there’s a café on campus where we go on our breaks to escape to strains of class and the guy who works there remembered what a group of us order all the time. I actually have a ‘usual’ now .It’s amazing how a small thing like someone remembering what you’ve previously ordered every time you’ve gone to a place can produce a strange high. I’ve oft read about customer service and its merits, and granted it’s not hard to impress someone who finds something they weren’t expecting, but still, I don’t think I have been quite this happy with the service at a place I go to get a drink, ever.

Assassin’s Creed still holds me, by my jugular, and forces me to save every citizen, find every flag, eradicate every bastard Templar on the streets and rooftops of the 12th century Holy Land.
I’ve been asked “have you finished it yet?’ and always my stern answer is a clear, resounding “no”.
Not until I have every Jerusalem Cross and Teutonic Flag, not until Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad and Al Mualim themselves, indeed, all of the inhabitants of The Kingdom, (including those wenches begging for money whining at me about how poor and sick and hungry they are, and the drunk leper fuckers who see fit to push me into the nearest patrolling guard whenever the city is on alert) bow down to me shall I consider this game complete. No game has ever held sway over my free time as has this one; even my obsession over Loco Roco didn’t reach the extent of my current fever pitched love affair with ‘Creed’.

Being a self confessed comic book geek (perhaps ‘junkie’ could be more appropriate) and given my longest running MMO career has taken place in City of Heroes I was saddened to hear that the upcoming Marvel Universe Online, which was being made by Cryptic Studios who are responsible for C.o.H, was cancelled. I was so eager to find out exactly what formula it would use, if players would take control of one of the existing heroes of the Marvel U. or if we were to get the chance to add our own characters to the Marvel roster.

However my sadness was eased a little after reading this [link] especially the following; “Champions Online is all about total customization – it will offer a near infinite amount of character customization so that all players will have a unique game experience. Gamers will be able to create their hero's name, back story, costume, powers and abilities as well as design their own personal arch-enemy and his or her back story”.
You create your hero’s back story, you don’t just type it into an information box, you create it. You hew their story, shaping it to become legend to your online peers, your character will actually have an origin story.
This I cannot stress my excitement about enough.


Thanks for not interupting,

- 8 Ball.

New year’s resolutions are a tricky affair, all those promises of eating healthy, quitting smoking and generally giving up things that make us contented, even those made with real hand on your heart commitment usually lasts at most until the end of the first week of January... well, at least mine do… so i stopped making them years ago (as part of a New Year’s resolution).
Still, New Years being what they are you can’t help but build up some form of plan for dealing with the relentless grind of the coming span.
i’ve realized that over the course of 2007 i did in all about fifteen finished drawings. FIFTEEN! And of those fifteen only about six were scanned and coloured, SIX now i'm no maths prodigy but i'm pretty sure that’s even less than fifteen. So, in an attempt to rectify this horrid situation i went ahead and made a New Year’s Resolution to do something i’ve been doing since i was about four…

...DRAW.

That seems easy enough not to break.

On an unrelated topic i’ve come across a disturbing trend developing over the last few years; the addition of guarana to absolutely everything even alcohol, there’s a billboard down the road from my apartment pushing a bourbon laced with energy drink. A few nights back i was out with my friends and it was my turn to buy drinks, i was disgusted when one requested a Vodka and Red Bull. Don’t even get me started on the travesty against mankind most people call Jaegerbombs. i just don’t understand the mentality there, are drunk people sitting around going “well sure I’m drunk but i’ve got a lot of vomiting to do before I pass out, I’m going to need more energy.” ??

So, there you have it.

i guess i'm back online.





Thanks for not interupting,

- 8 Ball.

i've been a bit busy of late, with my course comming to an end for the year and other things combining and conspiring to steal my time away from me.

Also i have a new job!! W0ot! i'll be working at the Angus & Robertson bookstore in the main shopping mall of my hometown of Queanbeyan!! Selling books and other book related paraphenalia... which boils down to bookmarks, mainly...
in other news; i've been playing a lot of City of Heroes recentley and am looking for another online game to play with a few of my friends (a game that is NOT battlefield nor WWII related) mainly because i've found that i really like chatting with my friends via a headset whilst voilentley maiming some random street thug. i'm sure a therapist could delve deep into that sentence and find a multitude of deeply rooted and potentially problematic psychoses, but lucky for all parties hypothetically concerned, i'm not in therapy, so there's no problem.


Later,

8 Ball.

It’s 10:30 I’m hungry, there’s nothing on TV, i have nothing to do and I’m kinda tired …now seems as good a time as any to write a journal…

This may be the boredom talking, but it occurred to me the other day that I have known a few of you for the duration of my online life, yet I am uncertain as to where some of you stand on a very pressing and important matter. A matter that could define whether or not we actually remain friends, I don’t speak of anything as trivial as pro war or anti war, or ask you your thoughts on euthanasia the matter of which I speak is far more pertinent.
PIRATE or NINJA ??
I stand immovable on the side of the swashbuckled rum soaked scallywags. And you?

In other news…
I introduced a few of my classmates to the life changing experience that is Loco Roco and needless to say it was taken to with much fervor. though my teacher was less than impressed as he glimpsed over from time to time between rounds of the Quake Wars Demo, he even asked us to turn the music down commenting that it was terrible... that heathen.

There’s a weird thing that happens to me at least once every year, I go through a long period of not being able to draw things the way I usually can. I didn’t realize it happening this year because for the first year in memory I haven’t been focusing on my drawing. But now I come to do some work on a project I’ve put off for far too long and I can’t even get the page layout I’m looking for. I know this lull happens at some point every year and I hope to be paying more attention to my drawing from this point on so it may pass very soon, but it unnerves me in a way that is usually reserved for spiders or mimes…

I just came from a Trivia night at my college where I was on a team with a few of my classmates and and we got thoroughly shellacked… but I won a raffle, a good time was had by all and we helped raise funds for one of the second year classes movie projects. So in the end aren’t we all, really winners?? No we are not.
Not by a long shot.


Thanks for not interrupting,
- 8 Ball.