Woo-hoo! Just finished the game. Played it on Difficult this time around, and man, some parts near the end were rough.
For those of you that have never had the pleasure of seeing the ending, I’ve summarized it for you in the following screenshot.
No, really, that’s pretty much it. Well, you’d have to see it for yourself to understand.
Off to play the expansion packs I go!
With all the excitement in the gaming world surrounding the news of the upcoming Half-Life 2, I decided to install the first Half-Life and play through it again. Just to refamiliarize myself with the game and story, I guess.
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed this game. You turn off the lights, raise the volume just enough, and soon you’re jumping at the slightest noise. This was the first game in which the enemies really felt intelligent. I love how I still get all nervous when I’m low on energy and running for my life from one of those leather-clad female assassins.
Every time I tell my non-gaming friends about nearly falling off my chair when one of my fellow scientists was shot by a sniper as I talked to him, they look at me as if I were insane.
But other gamers understand. The sound of a headcrab leaping out at you from a dark corner is a sound you remember.
I can’t wait for Half-Life 2!
Now, don’t get me wrong about Jennifer Garner. She is indeed a very attractive woman and the makers of Alias would be nuts not to use her amazingly well-toned body every once in a while to grab some of that sought after horny bastard ratings demographic, but it’s getting a little silly.
In tonight’s episode, for example, there was a scene in which Vaughn helps Sydney take off her dress, giving the viewers a perfectly framed shot of the aforementioned rack nestled ever so enticingly in a black bra. What weirded me out about the scene was that it took place immediately after the funeral for the wife of one of the show’s main characters.
Couldn’t they have waited for a slightly less inappropriate point in the episode to show us the goods?
Finally, someone made a worthy features page for the Firebird™ browser (formerly Phoenix). It shows off some of the nice features that you might not immediately catch on a first cursory inspection of the browser. Oh, and it’s got all sorts of nice sexy screenshots for the downloaders that dig that kinda thing.
Wish they’d get the name thing figured out already, though. Right now the links to the Firebird™ pages are still under http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix/. Which means that the above link will cease to function when they finally switch everything over to Firebird™. Oh, like that really matters in the grand scheme of things.
Ew, did I really just use the phrase “in the grand scheme of things?”
By the way, I vow never again to append a ™ after the name of any browser.
I cannot believe how long I have had to write this simple “3 to 4 page paper” and how little work I have gotten done. It is supposed to be a simple analysis of a certain poem. I would rather not name the poem, but I will just say that it is, without a doubt, the most annoying poem in all modern literature.
Now, normally I like to write good papers. Few people set out to write bad papers. I may not be quite academic journal material, but I usually try hard to find out my own twist on the work and back it up with solid, if sometimes unlikely, evidence. Of course, every once in a while, you find yourself in a tight spot. Either you were too busy with other classes to write it, or maybe your pet iguana was sick and you had to nurse it back to health instead of writing, or maybe you just got drunk one too many times over spring break and forgot all about it. Whichever the cause might be, at times we simple aren’t able to finish our research properly and must resort to outright BS’ing our way through page after page. I’ve done it a few times and have always found such a sense of relief for at least having handed in something.
Sadly, this paper that I am currently anguishing over deflects any and all attempts at BS’ing. It is impervious to all such attacks. This poem about some damn bird is slowly, but steadily, turning me into a big pile of gibbering mush.
I am not even sure why I find the poem so hard to analyze. It might be because of the gushing praise my professor gave the poem before the assignment. When reading it, I expected to find myself lifted up into the heavens by radiant beings of light; smiling at me approvingly for having learned some fundamental truth about the universe. Instead, I sat staring at the paper in front of me, wondering if maybe the professor had stapled the wrong poem onto the assignment sheet before sending it off to the copy room.
As I write this, it is 2:51 in the morning and I am preparing myself for another frantic session of sifting through the poem’s numerous stanzas in a vain quest for some transcendent experience. And in the unlikely case that my professor were to ever read this posting, I would like to sincerely thank him for causing me so much stress through his selection of poetry.
I have a feeling he did it just to screw with us since he’s retiring this semester and we’re among the last classes he’ll ever get to “challenge.”
Thanks again, Professor Waugh.
And screw you, Percy Bysshe Shelly!!!
I just couldn’t stop laughing at the Farscape series finale tonight. John and Aeryn get turned into a little mountain of pellets after they decide to get married. It was just so absurd.
Of course, it was actually supposed to have been just the season finale, and next season we’d have witnessed their return to non-pellet form, but still, it was cool. I do wish they had taken the “To be continued…” bit out of the end. That way, in years to come, watchers not familiar with the shows early demise would have been left scratching their heads at the then infamous “pellet ending.”
Cool, the midnight repeat of the ep is coming on soon. Must go watch and laugh.
As my spring break draws gradually to an end, I marvel at just how nice it was to sleep normal hours again. This semester has been amazingly stressfull. I suppose it’s all the papers I’ve had to write, but I guess the wacky schedule also isn’t helping. Morning and night classes on the same day is just not fun (especially when the night class is one you aren’t exactly interested in).
Spent all day working on templates for my friend’s MT weblog while listening to news about the war in the background. Such a weird day.
While I really enjoyed the first Animatrix short “The Second Renaissance Part 1,” the second, “Program” just sucked. It seemed to specifically showcase things I find annoying in anime. You know, people flying around and swiping swords in slow motion. Of course, the flying-around part goes along with the training scenes from the live-action movie, but still…
I can’t wait to see the short done by the people who made “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within”. I think it’s playing in front of that “Dreamcatcher” movie by Stephen King. Hm…is it just me or is that like the weirdest movie to play it with? Guess I’ll have to sneak in to see it, because I cannot see paying 8 bucks just for an animated short. You never know, though, Dreamcatcher may actually be worth watching, but the chances of that are slim.
