But the good thing i guess is thats an excuse for a good party and boy-o-boy does the world need that excuse. With the constant doom and gloom about the world economies, Stealth Taxes arriving in the new year and a country in disaster really with cut backs in public spending the misery never ends. Im turning into a grumpy old man really. ]]> http://irishbloke.net/dablog/2009/01/04/new-year-it-cant-be-as-bad-as-the-last-one/feed/ http://irishbloke.net/dablog/2008/12/24/song-of-the-year-the-killers-human/ http://irishbloke.net/dablog/2008/12/24/song-of-the-year-the-killers-human/#comments Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:48:59 +0000 admin0 http://irishbloke.net/dablog/2008/12/24/song-of-the-year-the-killers-human/ I hate to single out one song in a whole year but since i heard this song a week a go in my sisters place in dublin along with that new “Girls Aloud” song theyve been in my head ever since.  But the Killers song is just awesome and its like they made another “Mr Brightside” all over again. The song from there new album “Day & Night” is just awesome, “Human”.

My Guild was kind enough to give me a chance to raid in 25 man Naxx a few weeks a go and it despite my rogue being a sorta of Alt/Main with Epic Level 70 T4 gear and PVP S2 Weapons i was bottom on DPS. I didnt expect to be top but the humilation of being bottom was enough for to make me quit raiding once again. I didnt have the level of gear the rest of the raid had like Tier 5-6 and Sunwell Plateau gear but i got the idea of the Boss fight quickly but that doesnt matter if your “DPS” isnt in-line with everyone elses which really is why i hate WoW raiding.

I wanted to be a Healer in WOTLK and i respecced to Holy with my priest from the start and i did at least 9-10 runs of “The Nexus” and “U.K”. I healed quite well with no wipes being my fault until i tried to Heal “Azol-Nerub” in “Dragonlight” where i just couldnt heal the group at the 2nd/3rd boss, and dam did we try. But in the end it felt like it was my fault, if i remember right we had at least 3 melee including tank which made things very hard to heal. So i respecced to shadow and leveled solo till 80 where i just dont know what to do yet again. The leveling of tailoring seems very difficult which is my only hope and the only hope that a “casual player” can get the gear they need to be useful in raids without the crazy timesink.

Im writing this post after thinking about it for a few weeks and because i got rejected from a “PUG Heroic” for being “UnderGeared” which has made me so angry i cant explain it.

Irish rail Rip Off:
Last week in went to dublin to visit my sister and was kinda shocked at the prices. A 5-day return ticket from dundalk to dublin costed €25 while thats expensive its nothing compared to how much a one way ticket from dublin to dundalk costed a whopping €19.50!

Pizza Hut Rip Off:
A visit to Pizza hut in dundrum in dublin should have had great food at reasonable prices. Two single pizzas costed €10 each plus €2.25 for a Pepsi and €5 euro each for two starters plus another €5 for a Bulmers.  Anyway the whole meal came to a totaly disgraceful amount of €40. I wouldnt mind if the meal was good but it wasnt it was very average compared with the price of a Dominos pizza and meal for around €25

Ive no idea what a 30 year old is suppose to do i guess i know what i should be doing but life hasnt worked out “perfect” for me really.

I feel like im 20 but i aint, its kinda weird my best friends all seem to have the things you would expect at that age; girlfriend,car,good job,house.

I was hpoing that it would be an “ordindary day” but my mom decided to get me a present which turned out to be aftershave which was great. My 2 sisters gave me money and my cat well he apparently wrote a card
all by himself.

So i guess all in all its nice to know that people care, i think one of the things about birthdays is you kinda want to forget your age and its a shame that everyone else doesnt want to help with that.

A few months ago i watched the irish film called “Once” with the leader singer of “The Frames” Glen hansard in the starring role as a struggling muscian trying to record some songs. Now the strange thing is i never knew about this film until i was looking at youtube for videos on the irish bad “The Frames”. The title song has already won an Oscar and rightly so, its such an inredable song full of emotion and makes you feel alive when you listen to it.

I think it must be one of the best love songs ever written for the simply fact that that its about falling in love with somebody you dont quite know fully.

I urge anyone to watch the movie and even if your a “cold hearted miserable b’ard” like me you will love it. Sure its not a movie for everyone but it sure made me watch it from start to finish. ]]> http://irishbloke.net/dablog/2008/11/23/best-love-song-ever/feed/ http://irishbloke.net/dablog/2008/10/25/wowtheres-some-special-about-it/ http://irishbloke.net/dablog/2008/10/25/wowtheres-some-special-about-it/#comments Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:40:24 +0000 admin0 http://irishbloke.net/dablog/?p=206 When i came back to Wow about a week and half ago for the new big pre-WOTLK patch i was disapointed in the little content there was. Sure a few Hair-cuts and the new talents and of course the achievements make things interesting while the vast majority of Azeroth is bored stupid.

Anyway i had my level 34 Female Dwarf Paladin who i gave up on ever leveling after level 34 due to how bloody slow it was to kill anything after the patch this all changed it was super fast and easy to level and i started to level due to the fact that there was nothing else to do in Wow and ive almost given up on Warhammer Online.

So yesterday i got to level 60 which i never intended or thought i would get to so i set myself the task of getting the Paladin Epic mount which has to be one of the coolest looking mounts in WoW. This of course meant a long quest to do and some gold and luckily i had the gold and eventually got to the last part in the quest where you need to go to Scholomance. I was luckily able to get some kind guildies to help with the Dire Maul and Stratholme parts (Boya,Pikel,Kristina and kayza).

It was difficult to get any help for the Scholomance part which to be honest is a horrable place anyway. So after a few shouts in the guild chat i gave up and relogged with another toon for a while. Then this is where Wow really shines, i flew to the Western Plaguelands to be near Scholomance and i relogged back in. I noticed a level 60 Paladin near by looking bored and i asked just on the off-chance that they were having the same problem getting the last part done as me, if they were doing the Paladin Mount Quest and would you know it by complete luck or faith they were! I was amazed so we teamed up and this player had a few people in the group already so we were all set to go.

Of course luck wasnt too kind and our Druid healer had some Diconnection problems. Anyway we had another problem as we all got outside Scholo, we had no key! So luckily my old reliable Gnome Warlock ‘Chuckie’ was there to save the day, so i relogged with my warlock and rejoined my Guild and we all entered Scholo and started to clear the way to cellar. It was a bit chaotic as id never even re-specced my warlock after the patch and hadnt a clue what spec to pick. Anyway we cleared to the room with all the whelps and we wiped. Two people left the group and we got a level 70 paladin to help who seemed to not know where Scholo was or what the Paladin mount quest consisted off. Anyway we managed to summon the boss you need to kill for the mount and we killed it.

The funny thing is that the other Paladin in the group looted the item you needed and left. My heart sank and thought for a few seconds that the item you loot was only for one paladin and not two. Then i realised that i needed to use the item i looted on the dead horse and hey presto there was my Achievement and my Epic Paladin mount.

I cant name any other game that has that kind of amazing events and people who come to help you like that. Wow really is an amazing game.

The “US” version of “The Office” is very good it keeps the idea of the original and adds some great ideas and characters to it and it works. Another show ive seen thats made the transition is a show called “Life on Mars”. Ive never watched it and know nothing about it but it another example of how americans need things dumbed-down or translated for them. I cant quite understand why the americans need there own special versions of these TV shows? There are a number of reasons which i can guess at;

• Accents and “British/European Sence of Humour”
• Regional problems like city names etc
• or the plain old stupid fact that americans wouldnt understand it

STALKER the movie and short story:
The game is based on a Russian Short story called “Roadside Picnic” which was made into a movie called “STALKER” back in 1977. The Movie which the game is based on has 3 people going into the “Zone” anymore would be spoiling it. The making of the movie is very interesting as it basically resulted in the deaths of the actors and director due to the places they had to visit while filming it.

From Wikipedia;

In an interview on the MK2
DVD, the production designer, Rashit Safiullin, recalls that Tarkovsky
spent a year shooting a version of the outdoor scenes of Stalker. However, when the crew got back to Moscow,
they found that all of the film had been improperly developed and their
footage was unusable. The film had been shot on experimental Kodak stock with which Soviet laboratories were unfamiliar.

Even before the film stock problem was discovered, relations between Tarkovsky and the first cinematographer, Georgy Rerberg,
had been in serious deterioration. After seeing the poorly-developed
material, Rerberg left the first screening session and never came back.
By the time the film stock defect was found out, Tarkovsky had shot all
the outdoor scenes, and had to burn them. Safiullin contends that
Tarkovsky was so despondent that he wanted to abandon further
production of the film.

After the loss of the film stock, the Soviet film boards wanted to
shut the film down, officially writing it off. But Tarkovsky came up
with a solution: he asked to make a two-part film, which meant
additional deadlines and more funds. Tarkovsky ended up re-shooting
almost all of the film with a new cinematographer, Aleksandr Knyazhinsky. According to Safiullin, the finished version of Stalker is completely different to the one Tarkovsky originally shot.

The central part of the film, in which the characters move around the Zone, was shot in a few days at a deserted hydro power plant on the Jägala river near Tallinn, Estonia. The shot before they enter the Zone is an old Flora chemical factory in the center of Tallinn,
next to the old Rotermann salt store and the electric plant—now a
culture factory where a memorial plate of the film has been set up in
2008. Some shots from the Zone were filmed in Maardu, next to the Iru powerplant and the shot with the gates to the Zone was filmed in Lasnamäe, next to Punane Street behind the Idakeskus.

Many people involved in the film production had untimely deaths.
Many attribute this to the long and arduous shooting schedule of the
film as well as toxins present at the shooting locations.

A Flawed Master-piece:
However it must rank as one of the hardest games ive played.  You can die so easily that you must basically Run->quicksave->shot->Quickload (if you die). Not to mention the fact that the NPC enemies can kill you so easily they seem to have incredible aim and accuracy something that makes you wonder what the hell kind of guns your character has, as it takes a lot og shooting to kill most of the enemies in the game. It feels at time

However the game is great i still connsider it an “Almost “perfect” game but it sure has its flaws.  Its way too hard.  I can quite figure out if its because ive never played the game properly , the R.P.G gameplay part to it kinda frustrates me.

Heres a video of the game that i made just to showcase the “Atmosphere” in the game. Note the sounds are very eerie and atmospheric.

STALKER:S.O.C - Atmosphere 1 (HQ Video and Audio)

However as usual the “custom firmware” by the PSP “Homebrew Scene” allows much more features in fact sony seem to be adding features to the PSP that the “Scene” had working as “Homebrew” programs months ago. The “internet radio” feature for example is one.

It seems theres no-limits to the tricks you can do with a PSP and some of the “Homebrew” applications available. If you have a PSP and have no idea what im talking about be sure to visit the usual PSP sites for info.

Way back in 2005 when i got my PSP after seeing the amazing things that you could do with the 1.50 firmware. Its a fantastic piece of kit really.

PSP homebrew links;

http://www.psp-hacks.com

http://psp.qj.net

Upgrade Your PSP From OE firmware to 3.52 M33