psyche

I saw 300 yesterday; it was quite good although prone to excessive violence and random partial nudity but hey, that’s what Frank Miller comics are for, right? Elliot displayed some horror at notions of pine trees and the random tactical breakdown at the end of the film. However it was okay.

More importantly, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars arrived today, albeit gift-wrapped and with a small label saying “Happy Birthday Farhan! From Mum”. Well. My birthday is the fifteenth of June. This is going to be retarded. I am at once frightened of change and willing to embrace it! This is the game I have waited for for so many years. Probably more than eight I think - I’ve been vaguely aware of the ill-fated pseudosequel “Tiberian Twilight” since my grandfather decided to buy me a pirate copy of Tiberian Sun from a market in Pakistan. *reminisces*

Our connection to the internet briefly failed and my family is missing. Well. Good.

Pax

Our class did the German mock reading yesterday and writing (the 150-word one) today. Both were somewhat disastrous, but useful as exercises - I will definitely know what I don’t know. The Public Schools thing is on Thursday. We have to meet Mathieu at Hammersmith Station at 07:10. At least we miss school*.

I am now actually on the verge of insanity. I need a new computer, I need a new Command & Conquer game and I need to find some work experience in IT. The fleeting happiness of making up humorous and usually apocryphal anecdotes to entertain people or beating the crap out of Core 1 specimen and past papers is now gone.

Speed me to my death!

* Said in vox imitating that of the Flak Trooper in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 when he says “At least I have job.” That great man! As I send him to his death, he consoles himself.

“At least I have job.”

Truly one of the greatest men on Earth.

Pax

I am in a strange state, having played various Command & Conquer games for almost two days with breaks only to eat, sleep and go to the bathroom. I am hopeful that I’ll learn a lot in computing next year and it’s a shame I have to play off chemistry against computing for A2. If I could do both, I would. Does anyone know if we can do five? Does Further Maths count as a half at A2?
Anyway, this is a society in which we are born into and given a choice: accept the system or be rejected and imprisoned/killed. The system is such that either one works and gains money required to live (because life has been monopolised by “civilisation”) or one fails at life, simply put. Previously, we sort of hunted for food, or something. Now the system provides us with energy and sustenance in exchange for co-operation (not in a political way - simply fuelling the massive machine that is civilisation by working and perpetuating it). We are disconnected from the real world, living out our lives fascinated by things which mean nothing, oblivious as nature is harvested, sinking into consumerism and decadence as the reality of nature becomes more horrific and less likely to ever be understood.

What is The Matrix? Guess. The really saddening thing about having been brought up in a mass-media culture is that the logic I know, the criticial reasoning I believe to be sound, may be such a narrow viewpoint that I will never understand the bigger picture, but hey, I’ll try!

We are the pwned generation, it seems.

Pax

My PowerBook died some time between 11pm last night and 11am today. It displays the flashing folder/question mark/Mac face thing. I think this means it lost my Mac OS X. Oh yeah, it also makes a horrific metal shearing/plastic cracking noise whenever it’s on. I’m not too worried, paradoxically. Actually I am, but not. I have backups, so, y’know. Whatever. I need a new one. I like new computers. Also, everybody dies - I’ve been waiting!

Pax

So, the obligatory post-25th post. I hesitate to call it Christmas, as that was dubious from the start, what with its fusion into Pagan festivals and all. Anyway, I came out relatively unscathed, with a Logitech MX Revolution mouse, a 250GB HP external Hard Drive, a new Nokia 6131 and Command & Conquer: The First Decade - and yes, I preordered Tiberium Wars.

I updated Psyche - for the first time in a while - with some Tiberian Sun stuff and made some aesthetic changes to Science and some more significant (but still aesthetic) changes to About, so that’s all good. I’d like to pick up an Intel iMac and boot Vista in order to run Tiberium Wars, but I’ll see what rolls over at Macworld and check out Leopard before I finalise my choices. I need to get good at Yuri’s Revenge so I can challenge Elliot, damn it!

Anyway, you know the deal. Tiberian Sun is a beautiful game.

Logitech MX RevolutionFor the record, I’m on an old-ish 17″ PowerBook G4 running Mac OS X 10.4.8. The installation was … well, non-existent - in a good way. I put the mouse into its power cradle and left it charging for a couple of hours after unpacking it. I downloaded the Logitech Control Center (there was no Mac software in the box) and wandered off somewhere… and then sauntered back and checked it out. I plugged the RF dongle into my USB port, slid the slider on the underside of the mouse to the “on” position, and voilà, the mouse was working! I hastened to System Preferences, wherein I increased the sensitivity, configured some options etc. although I might add that my global settings are almost the same as the default ones as they were well thought out. Basically, the mouse is perfect apart from the absence of a left-handed version, which means nothing to me but everything to, say, my brother and my dad. Anyway, the only oddity I encountered was in Jedi Academy (don’t laugh) when I found that switching weapons with the primary scroll wheel always caused me to suddenly look upward. So far I have no explanation - it’s probably something to do with the way I’ve configured the controls in JKA - but until I can eliminate this I’ll use the left/right tilt function of the wheel. Phew. Once you configure the speed you’d like the SmartShift wheel function (the scroll wheel basically goes into a frictionless spin when you spin it at a certain speed) it pretty much becomes a better and more convenient (and fun) version of page up/page down. The mouse is great - works well, was easy to set up, is easy to configure. Unfortunately there’s no left-handed version… hmm… that’s economics for you.
Nokia 6131
Once again, no Mac software or USB cable out of the box - shame on you, Nokia! However the phone is good. It’s not Series 60 and therefore all my crap from my old 6260 is, well, non-transferable. It also takes a microSD card (which I haven’t got yet) - and I thought miniSD cards (which the 6260 took) were small! The font for the clock thing on the outside is really bad. Anyway, this is progress towards a really good Nokia clamshell, but until then, looks like Motorola have that market under control. How’s that KRZR thing doing?

Pax