Snapshot

As some of you may have noticed I haven't really been posting anything to my Flickr account in a long time. In fact, it's been a very long time since I was posting regularly on it at all. It not that I haven't been doing anything. Far from it. I have tonnes of photos from June when we had visitors staying, as well as a bunch of other random photos I've taken, all waiting patiently to be uploaded when I see fit to commit to it.

I'd love to share some photos of the city as it shifts from summer to winter, but, unfortunately, I no longer have a camera. My much loved Canon Powershot died long before we made the trip to Canada, simply from massive overuse. The sensor just could not operate any longer, and with a heavy heart, I had to let it go[1]. For a while after we got here I was using Claire's old Samsung, but that too has decided to cease functioning.

I'm still trying to justify buying a Canon G12, but right now we really can't afford to spend that kind of money on what is, after all, a luxury item. I know there are alternatives to the G series, particularly the S series, which is apparently the same internals with a different body and slightly cheaper. But I like the look and feel of the G12, so that's definitely what I'm shooting for.

Admittedly, I'd happily consider a second hand G11 as well, but it would have to be in damn near mint condition, and significantly cheaper than a new G12 for me to think about taking it.

I'm not asking for much, just perfection. Like everything else in my life.

[1]- While looking up an appropriate site to link to about the A95 I discovered that that model was subject to a flaw in the sensor, resulting in distortions in the image... The exact distortions I was seeing. Canon would have repaired my beloved camera for free. Unfortunately, I no longer have it, as I sold it for €5. Shit.

I Have Blistas On My Fingas!

Moving to Vancouver was always going to be tough. We left so much behind; family, friends, comics, books, boxes and boxes of action figures. But one of the things knew I'd miss most long before we set out on this great adventure was hanging out with friends.

Specifically, hanging out with friends playing Rock Band!

Yesterday I had the joy of playing a massive twelve song setlist with two friends from back home thanks to the glory of Xbox Live. Normally I play guitar or base, but as those were both claimed before I joined, I jumped onto drums for the first time in a long, long time. It was either that or vocals, and I didn't think either of the others had done anything to deserve hearing that while we played!

Twelve songs was not only the longest run I've had in Rock Band in some time, but also shattered any drum session length record I had previously set. I stayed on Easy, testing the waters of Normal for about 30 seconds at the start of the fifth track before I beat a hasty retreat back to the safety of Easy.

Playing Rock Band again with friends reminded me of all the great nights and afternoons we had back in Ireland, rocking out on plastic instruments, handing around the microphone to blast out our favourite tunes. I've brought my set to a wedding and several house parties, and every time it's been a huge hit.

I still buy new tracks that I like, but it's not the same playing by myself. Rock Band was never even really about playing the game. It was about relaxing in good company, chatting and enjoying a few snacks while listening to and interacting with some great music. Of course, it was also about jumping about and making somewhat of a fool of yourself in front of friends, acting out all those dreams of wanting to be on stage in front of a crowd of thousands of adoring fans. Playing it on a projector with surround sound certainly added to the experience.

I miss those days. I miss my friends.

I'm going to go and console myself with a few tracks on Rock Band. Guitar this time. That ring finger needs time to recover.

Why Gunpowder Treason

It's that time of the year again! I should just schedule a bunch of these for the next few years so that I don't have to do this.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent 
To blow up King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

Dust off that copy  V For Vendetta and enjoy!

It's Begining To Look A Lot Like November 4th

Halloween is behind us. The little ones are still in a diabetic coma from all the sugar they managed to loot from their neighbours three days ago, and so it's a perfect time to begin looking to Christmas.

Yes, it's that time of the year again, November. This can only mean that shops have removed all their skeletons and cobwebs and replaced them with elves and fairy lights. I still there is money to be made in reversible decorations for these two holiday seasons. Think about it, on one side is a terrifying skull, rotting and empty eyed; then on November 1st you flip it over to reveal the rosy cheeked face of a man whose life goal is to sneak into the bedrooms of children across the world and leave them gifts. The perfect dichotomy.

Admittedly, certain stores need to start the push this early. If your sole purpose for existing it to sell Christmas decorations, or novelty Santa lawn gnomes, then your window of opportunity is pretty tight. You need to have your product out there for people to use as soon as they're ready to decorate their dwellings in the festive cheer.

But if you're a normal, everyday store, then do you really need to have the fir tree adorned with colourful lights and a star in your window before December 1st, or the last week in November at the earliest? Toy stores sell the same stuff at Christmas as they do the rest of the year, they just stock more around now. We don't need to have Let It Snow or some sickly rendition of Jingle Bells blaring into our ears at this stage.

Yesterday morning when I went to get a banana from Starbucks I was shocked to find their Christmas gift displays up already. In hindsight of course I shouldn't have been surprised at all, but it just reminded me that the most wonderful time of the year is fast approaching. Don't get me wrong, I do love Christmas. I can't wait to buy all the lights, a tree, random, brightly coloured decorations and put them everywhere in our apartment. I just want to enjoy Christmas at, you know, Christmas.

And I feel that Christmas starts on December 1st.

Red, Yellow, Brown

Vancouver is beautiful in the autumn and early winter. Everywhere I walk is littered with the natural tones of the season, leaves piling high by drains, at corners, or beneath the trees they fell from.

For the most part, the skies are a crystal clear blue, sunlight falling onto the city, unobstructed by clouds. The air is crisp and clear, and in the early mornings, I can see my breath while waiting for the bus.

The city is dry, but the mountains, a mere half hour from Downtown by public transport, have already seen a light dusting of snowfall. Experts, or at least what passes for experts when it comes to predicting the weather, claim that this coming winter will be a particularly cold one. Thankfully, I still have my extra warm jumper and the only scarf I've ever owned, both of which were good-bye gifts from the children I used to teach back in Ireland.

I anxiously await my first snowfall of the year, not only because I love seeing everything covered in white, looking like the start of a fresh, new world, a world where anything is possible, but also because I have no idea how well the buses will run to get me to and from work. 

That first morning when I open my curtains and look out on a sparkling white landscape is going to be fun.

The Coalitions Finest

Gears of War 3 has taken up residence in my Xbox almost exclusively since it's launch in September. Apart from hacking and slashing my way through the dungeons of Torchlight and rocking out to the Coldplay pack for Rock Band 3, I've been investing an extraordinary amount of time in the third game in Epic Games' console flagship series.

My first experience of Gears of War was via the second installment. Aidan and Rob had bought the steroid abusing sci-fi action shooter and invited me to try out this new game mode called Horde.

From Wave one, I was hooked. Team based co-operative multiplayer with no competitive element! Wave after wave of inhuman enemies in steadily increasing numbers and difficulty, this was pure survival gameplay balancing edge-of-your-seat tension with frantic and cinematic firefights.

My love of Horde was so great in fact that I pointedly ignored what I thought was surely a terrible, machismo, testosterone filled, steroidal, brain dead campaign. By the time I did get around to playing it, I knew how to defeat every enemy it threw at me, apart from the bosses. This somewhat robbed me of experiencing the terror of the bullet absorbing Sires, as I already knew to simply walk around the area with my chainsaw permanently revved up!

Going into Gears 3, I promised myself that I'd get the campaign finished before trying out Horde 2.0 or the new mode, Beast. Once the surprises of the story were out of the way, I was eager to jump into my favourite gameplay mode in it's newest incarnation.

Horde has seen a vast and sweeping overhaul since it's appearance in the second game. Now you earn cash for kills, and can buy fortifications, ammo boxes or weapons across the map space. Way back when this was first announced I was a little apprehensive that they had messed with a good thing. Horde was great because it was so clean. Just you and up to four friends versus 50 waves of Locust creatures looking to decorate their fireplaces with your skulls. Nothing else.

But the new additions not only work, they work spectacularly. Earlier I called Horde Mode "pure survival gameplay balancing edge-of-your-seat tension with frantic and cinematic firefights". Horde 2.0 adds heart pounding building, repairing and upgrading of all too often meager defenses to help you survive the rising flood of enemies. The fortifications further encourage team-work, as people co-ordinate to maximise the work done in the short time they have between Waves. Players can even share cash with each other if they wish to, although while I have seen this used occasionally in private games with friends, I have yet to witness it during a random match-up over Xbox Live.

One of the best additions to Horde 2.0 however has to be the Wave 10 Bosses. Horde is still played as 50 Waves broken into five 10 Wave sets. In the first version, this meant that the number and difficulty of the enemies per Wave steadily increased up to Wave 10, where we were terrified of Bloodmounts, before resetting to the enemies of Wave 1 again for Wave 11, but making them tougher. Horde 2.0 makes that 10th Wave even more fun by giving it a random Boss, from a choice of about seven or eight. The bosses are usually bigger and badder than anything else in the mode, and standard tactics for almost every one of them is to take out all the regular enemies while avoiding the Boss characters until they are the only things left, and then combatting them. Standard tactics usually result in death. Non-standard tactics however, focusing fire on the Boss characters first and then the little guys, just results in additional iterations of the Boss character appearing. If there is anything worse than dealing with a Burmak, it's seeing its twin brother step out from the smoke of the exploding first one.

Horde kept me playing Gears of War 2 much longer than I have played any other shooter to date. Through it I made some great friends over Xbox Live, and enjoyed many frantic and hilarious moments of both victory and defeat. Horde 2.0 has successfully improved on the original design, and I know I'll be playing it for months, if not years, to come.

Fuck You, Google. Fugle.

Dear Google.

In the past I have enjoyed your updates to my number one electronic mail service, Gmail, both on the cosmetic level and the features it supports. The most recent version of your email service is clean and effective, visually appealing and easy to find what I need. Features such as Priority Inbox, labeling, and custom skins are all available if I choose to use them, which, in most cases, I don't. I like the basic plain white template and I don't get enough emails to need to prioritize them. But that's ok. I'm not forced into using any of those features.

My blogging days began with this very site, some five and a half years ago! Since then I have posted almost 350 ramblings of varying interest. I have witnessed at least two major updates to the Blogger system. The first I adapted to quickly, considering it an improvement over the previous version, but the most recent I never really warmed to. The "Reading List" at the bottom of the Dashboard cannot be turned off from what I can see. The only thing I have in there is your own "Blogger Buzz", which I couldn't care less about, but I can't turn it off!! I get repeated errors while writing blogs as well, from my paragraph format screwing up when I add an image, to random double spaces, or errors when I hit Enter twice.

Wave was too confusing for me to understand, along with 95% of potential users it seems.

Buzz held absolutely no interest for me, a view I once again shared with 95% of potential users.

All this brings me to Google Reader.

When I was first shown Reader I was mildly impressed. I could read most of my favourite sites without having to have a million tabs open. It even removed the need to compulsively check if a site had updated yet. As more of my friends got into it, I realised that Reader wasn't just mildly impressive, it was freaking incredible!

Not only could I keep track of everything in one tab, I could read the best of what my friends were following when they shared items! My short list of sites grew swiftly, and soon I had to create multiple folders to keep everything in order. Many of the site I follow were suggested to me by items shared by friends. We could comment on the best, the weirdest, the cutest; sharing not only the article, but also our own thoughts and feelings related to it.

But all that is gone. Google Reader is dead. And you killed it. The latest update has, inexplicably, removed the best feature Reader held. Now it is just my sites, with none of the social interactions.

This, of course, is not just a random, insane move. You want me using Google+, sharing my finds there and commenting through the newest addition to House Google. But therein lies the problem. I couldn't give two fucks about Google+. Since it's release I can count on the fingers of two hands how often I have clicked over to it, in an attempt to see if anything of interest is being posted. Every time I close the tab, reminded why I not only dislike this new feature, but why I disliked it's predecessor, Facebook, as well.

And while I can sort my friends into varying sets, the default, which cannot be altered, shows me everything from everyone. If I could guarantee that people would only use Google+ to share articles in the style of Reader, I could just delete anyone that I didn't follow in Reader, and keep it to that small set of friends whose shared posts I enjoyed reading. But that is not how you want it to be, Google. For one thing, the full post doesn't even show up in the feed, just a preview. I have to click through to read more. You are making it harder for me to share with my friends!

But it's not just the whole push towards Google+ that has gotten me all hot and bothered! No. The new Reader doesn't even fit on my screen. I use a small netbook for my internet needs, and the old Reader worked perfectly fine on it, fitting articles into my screen size 95% of the time. The latest update has extended the width of the main area far beyond the right edge of my screen. To read anything I now have to scroll to the bottom, then use the horizontal scroll bar to move right to read the end of a sentence, the last panel of a webcomic, or see the other 33% of an image. And some images or comics require a second scroll bar within their own feed! Arg, Google! ARG! Text cannot describe how infuriated I am right now!

Gmail has all kinds of features, but it is my choice to use them or not. Blogger can switch back to the older style whenever I want, but for how long? Reader is a permanent, complete change, and I don't get a choice in the matter. It's your way or the highway.

You've crossed the line, Google. You're straying into Facebook, and more recently Netflix, territory, trying to force your users to adopt a new system that benefits you when they are more than happy with the previous one.

Tread carefully Google. You are opening yourself to a new start-up that can provide the same features as the old Reader that the fans loved. And when that happens, I for one will be dropping you like a hot rock and jumping on board.

Denis Ryan