Planet Sillicon

Sleep deprevation increases humour

By blog on Aug. 22, 2009.

That sounds like an odd thing to say, but I’m quite serious, it does. I’m sure you’ve noticed than when you’re awake for a really long time, or have had too little sleep, what was once mildly funny is now riotously funny? Well, I have…

I love that about being tired, it’s about the only upside. Earlier today I was on I Can Has Cheez Burger and noticed they were self-promoting for a new site, Comixed, which is another of their funny caption sites, taking seemingly innocuous pictures, and in this case, stringing them together with funny captions to form an almost comic strip like effect.

These are actually quite good, and the comments aren’t quite as inane as those sadly found on I Can Has Cheez Burger and the dog version, I Has A Hotdog, which are so mind bogglingly stupid that I have to steer clear of them lest I surge into a total Nerd Rage. There are of course the ongoing references to internet memes, as with this comix here, and a few humerous ones of easy target, Sarah Palin.

Now, whilst I was viewing this site, I happened to have had about three and a half hours sleep the night before. This gives anyone a bent to either being angry and laughing, I’ve found, and I can switch between both quite quickly. My SO was busy with something that required I not be overly noisy, she was working, so I was quietly stuffing around on the internet filling in time. Once I happened upon this site, and viewed page after page, I couldn’t help myself. I was laughing out loud, I was guffawing, I was choking back laughter behind poorly concealed snorts.

I was also missreading and miss-seeing things, which is fun. What is a chair turned away from you, seen from the corner of your eye, suddenly becomes a four foot Buttercup from the Powerpuff Girls hovering in mid air, and what is actually a can in the fridge with the words ‘Health Benefits’ written on it becomes ‘Health Brain Fish’ when one reads it too quickly.

So yes, it’s almost fun to go around sleep deprived, so long as I don’t drive or try to do anything that’s actually important.

A Game of Thrones – The Cast

By blog on Aug. 19, 2009.

HBO will soon be shooting the pilot of the TV series of George R R Martin’s epic fantasy novel A Game of Thrones.

Now, I think these books, A Song of Ice and Fire, are the best fantasy series I’ve ever read. I’ve read a lot, and these are the best, in my opinion, so far. That’s a pretty big call, but I’m making it. The people behind this series are the same who created Deadwood and Rome; two good shows, in their own ways. Today I’m going to outline my response to each of the announced cast choices. George R R Martin also said on his Not a Blog recently that six more characters are about to be cast, but we will have to wait some time for the announcements. When they are announced, I will do a follow up post. I’m interested to see how this series works out, because as I said, this is an amazing book they are working with, and Martin has even been involved with the screen plays, I believe he is writing one episode himself. Now, onto the cast and my impressions!

Sean Bean will do quite well as Eddard Stark, in my opinion. He voiced Martin from The Elder Scrolls Oblivion game quite well, and the character has a similar sense of… rigidity or dourness, so I think this was a good choice.

Peter Drinklage as Tyrion Lanister will be awesome, I think. Drinklage has a tenacious and sardonic personality in many of his roles, and I think this will suit The Imp so very well.

Jennifer Ehle as Catelyn Stark will work very well, even as Elizabeth Bennett in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice she had an austere coldness that I think will work wonders – now that she is older – as cold and hateful Catelyn. I dislike Catelyn intensely.

I’ve never seen Kit Harington in anything before, but he looks okay for the part. I would have liked to have seen someone perhaps a little longer in the face, but this serves, and there could be – with hair and make-up – similarities brought out with him and Sean Bean.

Mark Addy as Robert Baratheon is interesting… I’ve no doubt he can play it, I just envision him as being… bigger, swarthier, and at least somewhat intimidating… But I still think this will work out well.

Jack Gleeson as Joffrey Baratheon I’m not sure about because I can’t see a picture of him that is anything like recent on the net, so I don’t know. It’s going to take a good actor to portray that horrid little abomination.

Harry Lloyd as Viserys Targaryen… he seems too old, to me. This one sticks out a bit… but with a lot of alterations, silver hair, lilac eyes, maybe it’ll work.

So far only the pilot is sure to be shot, but if the reception is good enough, more could follow, and I for one, bloody hope so!

Top 25 PC Games According to IGN – Part 2

By blog on Aug. 13, 2009.

Now for 15 through 6 is IGN’s top 25 PC games…

15) Command & Conquer – This is an alright RTS game, in my opinion, but there are others I prefer. Often the themes are less appealing to me than those you would find in Age of Empires, Total War, or Star Craft games.

14) Company of Heroes – Somehow I completely missed this game, but it looks pretty damn good. I may have to retract what I said in the above comments regarding RTS games with real-world settings.

13) The Sims – I really did enjoy The Sims when it first came out, and, thanks largely to my SO’s enjoyment of the game, had nearly all the expansions by the time Maxis moved onto The Sims 2, and oh, wasn’t that annoying? There’s so much to like about this game, yet so much to dislike about those who market it.

12) World of Warcraft – This is my blog so I get to say what I like. I hate this game, it looks like crap, it lacks depth, character, and respect for it’s players, a startlingly large percentage of which seem to be idiots.

11) SimCity – This was a great game, so much fun, so hard to stop playing in spite of a pretty simple premise.

10) Call of Duty – I’ve never really felt any desire to play any of the Call of Duty games, in spite of the raving reviews the series usually receives. I think it’s the setting, I just don’t find myself interested in it.

9) MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat – I didn’t play this game, and only have a vague recollection of it.

8 ) Rome: Total War – These games are always just amazing fun, and usually just as amazing (for their time) graphics wise. These games actually push my graphic cards (I always try to have good ones) and that is another fun side to playing them for me, personally.

7) Sid Meier’s Pirates! – I’ve played later versions of this game, but never the original, and from what I’ve read, the later ones don’t stand up to how good the original was.

6) Half-Life – I didn’t play Half Life, but Half Life 2 was a fantastic game. I enjoyed it so much, I thought the game was just the right combination of on foot and vehicle levels, I liked the accuracy of the weaponry and the story-line was fun too. Unfortunately I had a fatal error in my version and didn’t get past the first few areas of Part 2. I think it was a corrupted texture, but didn’t get around to reinstalling and going further.

The last five will be in the next post, because I think they deserve a post of their own.

Notions of Malazan

By blog on Jul. 24, 2009.

If you haven’t read Toll the Hound, book 8 of the Malazan book of the Fallen series, or don’t intend to read it, then this post won’t really make much sense to you, but it should still be interesting nonetheless.

I am about half way through the book, yes, it has been a long time in the reading, and I don’t know… some things are just still bothering me. For instance, I just found out that The Dying God and The Crippled God are not the same person, and here I was the whole while thinking this Dying God was just The Crippled God playing at a new trick. But no, The Dying God is Bellurdan… as in husband of Nightchill, former Elder Goddess, and whose soul (at least a part of it) went in with Tattersail’s in the formation of Silverfox, the only living Bonecaster… That has got to come to some confrontation at some point, but maybe not, and what’s with Aranantha? Why is this girl strong enough (magically) to overpower Bullurdan as The Dying God? I’m happy that she did, but I am looking forward to some explanation. I have a suspicion, which could be way off, that she is in some way connected to Mother Dark (an incarnation of her in physical form?) and perhaps the reunion of the Tiste Andii and Mother Dark… not sure, just a suspicion.

Something that has really bothered me through this book is the depravity that has gone on as a result of The Dying God… the living scarecrows dancing in the fields, dripping that horrid Selmankelyk, which then everyone is drinking? I think this is just a little too horrifying, even for Malazan.

I have to say, I’m rather pleased that Itkovian will have Seerdomin for company, it was so sad to realise how lonely Itkovian had been.

On another note, here is a list of things I’m looking forward to/hoping for in this book; learning who Traveller is, seeing how Apsalara will get out of Dragnipur, – which I think, by the way, is a house of the Azath, I mean, that’s what is riding in the giant wagon – hopefully seeing more of the Elder God who built the Azath Houses, because he seemed awesome, seeing Nimander’s group reunited with the rest of the Tiste Andii, finding out what the go with Aranantha is, seeing more of Harllo and his awesome Imas friend, seeing what’s left of the Malazan army kick the crap out of that nasty idiot who hired the assassins to have them killed, Cutter getting the hell over himself, and hopefully seeing more of the ghost ascended Malazans.

So, I’m really enjoying certain aspects of the book, but as I said, I really hate what’s going on with The Dying God… I really hope he just dies already.