Whoever thought up the achievements in the XBox Arcade version of Gauntlet needs some vigilante justice.  Do they even know how long it takes to get to level 100 in that game... do they know how hard it is to sleep after 4 hours of solid dungeon crawling...  obviously they do - the sadistic gits...

 

Managed to squeeze in some Full Auto on XBox Live last night.  Apart from missing the unwreck feature the game is pretty much unchanged.  The few times I managed to avoid crashing at full speed into a wall I did really well, winning 1 race by miles and coming 2nd and 3rd most other times. 

 

So as you can tell... now that Anna is away I've reverted to a feral gaming state.  Expect me by the weekend to be an unshaven nervous wreck with crazy bloodshot eyes, and an uncontrollable addiction to rocket fuel coffee.  I'll probably go through intermittent fits of laughing manically, then sobbing pathetically before lapsing into short periods of uneasy sleep, haunted by Gauntlet related nightmares. 

 

By the time Monday finally rolls around I'll be a shell of a man, drained, malnourished, and stinking of stale sweat.  The house may well be trashed, knee deep in water, on fire, or smoked out by some terrible kitchen disaster.

 

But my gamerscore will be over 2000 - so that's okay.

Did I mention I'm getting married... ?  Now Anna, my bride to be, is Greek, we're getting married in Greece, and a huge number of people at the wedding will be (you guessed it) greek... the Greek thing is important.

 

Anyway... in one those moments when I really should have been thinking carefully about the consequenses of what I was saying I declared that not only would I do a speech at the reception in English, but I would also do a speech in Greek - and that they'd both be fantastic.

 

This was back in spring.  That gave me plenty of time to apply myself, learn Greek, and come up with some rousing words.  It's now the end of August, the wedding is on the 9th September... I don't know much Greek and I still haven't written a speech.  How organised am I?

 

I have been thinking about the speeches fairly seriously over the last few days and did actually start putting it down on my phone this morning... and it's sounds pretty good.  It'll be short, funny, and it'll hopefully heap praise on some of the people that have really helped us actually make the wedding day happen.  I still need to do the greek bit, get it translated, and then practice it a lot... but there is still time so fingers crossed.

 

Anna is heading to Greece with her bridesmaid Kaye today.  They're like the pathfinding force of our wedding party.  She'll secure the LZ and kill any hostiles before the main invasion force arrives.  This means I have the run of the house until I leave for Greece next week... expect my gamerscore to improve significantly.

Speaking of which... Full Auto continues to rock hard.  Completed the Hunter series and most of the Time Trials.  I swear racing games make you a better driver in real life... made it to work in 50 minutes this morning.

 

The beer festival rolled drunkingly into town last week.  As a kind of last minute substitute stag do me and some close friends went down and had a few drinks.  Although there were over 200 different types of beers, ciders, perrys, and wines on display I was sensible and managed to stay pretty much sober... although this was mainly due to having to get up at 6.30AM the next morning for work than any restraint on my part.  I did manage to stay away from the now infamous Bonce Bouncer this year...

 

Topped the night off with a few games of DeathRow which Wes brought around for the XBox.  It's an old game and the graphics are dated but if you imagine Speedball/Rollerball but with a frizby then you've pretty much got it. 

 

The game involves getting a member of your team to throw your frizby through a hoop in the opponents half.  As simple as that sounds neither of us had ever played it before, and to be honest scoring goals is for losers... as soon as we found the punch and kick buttons we let the AI teamates get on with the goal scoring while we went about decimating each others teams... it turned out to be quite a fun game.

 

Spent a lot of the weekend playing Full Auto on the 360.  I either love or hate racing games... and Full Auto really does it for me.  The tracks are original, the racing is fast and furious, and the fact that your cars have giant guns mounted on the bonnet just tops it off.  One word of warning though, the game does demand to be played with the volume turned right up which can cause problems with housemates/other halves/neighbours... however if you explain the situation then I'm sure they'd understand.

 

I went shopping on Saturday... I wonder if it's normal to find yourself daydreaming about zombies whenever you're in a shopping centre.

So I've been meaning to do a blog for a long time now.  Mostly because I want to see what the fuss is about, and I guess there is also some attraction to having somewhere on the Interweb to write stuff about ME.

 

So what is this space going to be about - apart from me...  I think we'll just have to see what I find to talk about.  Topics will probably fall under the following categories... Me, computers games, how I plan to rule the world, computer programming, and miscellaneous ranting and raving.

 

However that will all have to wait till later, because I'm currently working...