Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

The train simulator Railworks 2 is often criticised for clogging up the pages of Steam with its many pieces of downloadable content. Those who don't understand add up the cost of all the add ons and complain that it would cost hundreds of Euro to own the full "game". I think I get it though. Rail works is not a game. It is a hobby. Collecting all those engines and rolling stock are part of the richness of that hobby. Don't take my word for it. Just check out fan sites to see how engrossed enthusiasts of this hobby can get. I watch this with some envy. I would love to immerse myself in such a hobby and spend  countless hours in blissful contemplation of boiler pressures and signal configurations. I suppose you could say that PC gaming is my hobby. I certainly spend a substantial amount of my time playing, reading about and writing about games. Unfortunately gaming is a mad cap, ill defined ever changing pursuit. There is no tranquillity in gaming. I have long ...

Hi Solbright I get an email notification of your comments even though they aren't appearing on the blog. I wonder if it is something to do with anonymous posting. I did check my settings and I have anonymous posting turned on however. 

Tasos Flambouras front man for the hard core pvp game Darkfall announces an upcoming change where rather than reward you for killing other players you will be required to go to church and repent instead. Massively fell for it and reported it but my money is on practical joke. Quote: "Enough with killing other players"  

As a new recruit to Twitter I still have only a small number of followers and I check out each one personally. Some are just spammy link lists but others are interesting feeds that I am happy to subscribe to in return. Today I was somewhat taken aback to see that one of my latest followers was  a dedicated MineCraft griefer with their own Youtube channel advertising their destructive exploits. The whole concept of Minecraft griefing upsets and annoys me but mostly it just baffles me. Minecraft is a glorious game of creativity and greifing does nothing but hurt people by destroying their creations. Minecraft griefing is the computer equivalent of kicking over a child's sandcastle and I really don't understand how anyone with a modicum of intelligence could enjoy doing it. Anyway how to respond to this persons joining my Twitter feed? Should I: a) Give in to my immediate urge to give them a piece of my mind on both  Twitter and Youtube. b) Try to talk directly to them to ...

I have actually had a Twitter account for several years but up until recently it had all of one tweet on it. I have decided to give it another go however so I started a new account under the tag: liambp (L ife I s A M ind B ending P uzzle, geddit?). My thinking goes like this: I love blogging but blogging can be slow. Even short posts can sometimes take an hour or more to write and re-write. Often I have thoughts I want to record but the effort involved in crafting a full blog post dissuades me. Twitter is going to be my instant blog. A place for unedited ideas dumped straight onto the interwebs. I don't know if this is how other people see or use Twitter but I am keen to experiment with it and see how it goes. There should be a link to my Twitter feed in the side panel. Feel free to join, add, invite or whatever it is twititererers do and I will be delighted to reciprocate. 

Check out this YouTube video made by talented Magicka fan PulpitPower: It is probably funnier if you have actually played the game but even if you haven't (Why Not?) all you need to know is that new magicians in the game are more likely to kill themselves and their team mates than the enemy.

Yesterday I dropped into a bookshop on my way home from work and it was wonderful. The shelves, the covers, the readers, the smell of paper, the tactile pleasure of picking up a book and riffling through the pages, all of these things seduced me once again. I have been in love with bookshops almost as long as I have been in love with reading. In my youthful poverty I spent days trawling the streets of Dublin looking for little known second hand bookshops. Regular book shops seduce with the magic of pristine new writings while second hand books shops lure with the promise of forgotten legends and ancient magics. My recent bookshop visit was wonderful but it was also traitorously bitter sweet. There on the shelf I found the next volume of the trilogy I am currently reading. It was new, it was beautiful, it beckoned. With head hung in shame I placed the tantalising volume back on the shelf and slunk out of the bookshop. I will buy the e-book later for my smartphone. Its not a matter...