Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

Goopple Press Release: 1 April 2018 Our recent takeover of FaceWitter combined with the strategic assets acquired from the liquidation of MSoft means that Goopple Group can now truthfully say that "We control the internet. All of it." Goopple group is determined to leverage its strength in this space to deliver world beating, exciting new products and services to our many users worldwide. Today we are delighted to reveal our brand new Open Search Heuristic Information Template (OSHIT). OSHIT is a direct embodiment of Goopple's firm commitment to openness and transparency on the Internet. From now on all of our users will have instant searchable access to Goopple's vast archive of stored data on everybody. Electronic interactions, posts, messages, web searches, webcam captures, browsing history, emails, voice calls, texts, financial transactions public and private records all go through our servers and for some time now we have been recording all of them. This massive...

A side consequence of getting a new computer for my wife is it has given me my first opportunity to look at Windows 8. Of course I have read and heard lots of things about Microsoft's latest operating system.  I have been using MS operating systems since the original IBM PC Dos back in the early 80's so I have seen bad ones and I have seen good ones but Windows 8's attempt to marry desktop and mobile interfaces has spawned more controversy than most so it was good to finally get a chance to make my own mind up. Having played with it for a week or so I think I can sum up my opinion with a car analogy: Brilliant Engine, Schizophrenic Dashboard.  Brilliant Engine: This is definitely the slickest, fastest, most stable version of Windows I have ever used and after the brilliance of Windows 7 that is saying a lot. Everything pretty much just works and works well. It also seems to be highly compatible with legacy programmes and I haven't discovered one which doesn't work...

When Lotro was first released (Shadows of Angmar) the six man Urugarth and it's sister instance Carn Dum were the "End Game". Level 50 Players used to  run them repeatedly to collect the class items which dropped only from the instance bosses. Nowadays those items can be more easily obtained from soloing skirmishes so Carn Dum and Uru' are neglected even by players levelling alts. Howeevr when I decided to try and get those class items for my level 47 Loremaster I had a mad notion to try it the old fashioned way (albeit using my level 65 Champion Throg to solo the instances) and it turned out to be a lot of fun. The elite and elite master mobs hit surprisingly hard despite Throg's 15 level advantage. It took multiple attempts and several hours to clear the place out. The Champions AOE abilities proved very useful at burning down mobs as did the ability to switch to tanking mode when more survivability was required. I will admit to cheating on the "nemesi...

About a year ago I added Buzzfeed to my reading list in order to try and keep my middle aged self even marginally connected to the Zeitgeist of popular culture.  To be fair it has more or less served that purpose and I no longer feel completely clueless when everyone on the internet suddenly starts talking about "Gangam Style" or  "Sharknado" or "Twerking". Unfortunately in order to glean these precious nugget of knowledge you must endure an awful lot of truly dreadful content on Buzzfeed itself. Stuff like this for example: http://www.buzzfeed.com/alannaokun/products-that-will-vastly-improve-your-relationship . The sad part is I am not sure that article was even supposed to be tongue in cheek. Anyway the good news is that I have been lurking on Reddit for a while and I have come to the conclusion that Reddit, despite its somewhat murky past appears to have become respectable and extremely topical. Prime Ministers even use it and the murkier bits are ...

Having previsouly enjoyed Dead Space   and Dead Space 2 I am delighted to report that Dead Space 3, which I have just finished, is also a great game. Like its predecessors delivers a good old sci-fi shooter with a long (27 hours for me) campaign and plenty of nasty monsters to shoot.  It adds to the formula with a really great weapon crafting system that is massively customisable. In fact the weapons in this game are downright great. Each frame holds not one but two separate weapons. Want to build a flame thrower with assault rifle attached? You can? Want to build a shotgun with a rocket launcher? You can do that too. I finished the game with a kick ass assault rifle / shotgun combination in one hand and a surprisingly powerful electric bolas thingy in the other but I am sure many other combinations work too.  There are a few niggles that it is probably worth mentioning. The checkpoint save system is pretty dire. In a previous post I have already talked about some ...

Watching "The Hobbit" with the family and the kids were explaining to my beloved spouse all about dwarves and hobbits and humans. At that moment Gandalf appears. Towering over everyone else on screen he has to stoop low to get through Bilbo Baggins' doorway. "So is Gandalf a dwarf?" She asks.

Dead Space 3 has a rather strange save system where inventory is saved when you quit the game even though progress through the story is lost. The game has both "hard" and "soft" checkpoints. The soft checkpoints are far more frequent but are not permanently saved. If you die while playing you respawn at the last soft checkpoint but if you quit the game  you will return to the previous hard checkpoint. Since hard checkpoints are relatively infrequent you can lose quite a bit of progress unless you are disciplined enough to always wait till the next hard checkpoint (indicated by a symbol in the corner of the screen) before quitting. This sucks of course and is the type of thing which convinces me that save anywhere is much better than rigid checkpoints. The developers of Dead Space 3 decided to soften the blow of losing progress by allowing you to keep your entire inventory and health when you quit even though you lose your progress in the story. Collecting loot ...