A Miscellany of Other Stuff Wot I Been Up To
-Last Saturday I did a 300-mile round trip to Cambridge for a martial arts workshop. Since my stickfighting instructor went with me petrol came to £20 each, which is actually not too bad - I'd wager you couldn't make it there by train for much less than £50 each. This was my first time driving into Cambridge myself and now have some sympathy for my parents who did it twice a term for a year - the one-way system is pretty horrendous.
We were the only two who turned up, so we got what amounts to a 3 hour private session, making the day an absolute bargain. The workshop was on The Approach, a system distilled from Silat (the fighting arts of my ancestors!) and based on using a downward figure-8 motion of the forearms to smash through any incoming attack and take out the assailant. The body mechanics come from the weaponry side of the art, but instead of a pair of machetes you use your forearms (and elbows at close range). Applied correctly this stuff is brutal. It's simplified and gross-motor, which is exactly how I like my martial arts - when the shit hits the fan and the effects of adrenaline take hold, your fancy joint-locks and precisely-targeted attacks tend to go out the window. The best part of the system for me was how the entries set you up for some very easy but effective takedowns, some of which are pretty much impossible to breakfall safely out of.
-I've been ill lately so I've spent a fair bit of time playing adventure games, that's okay right?
Gemini Rue is an indie sci-fi adventure game set in a dystopian future. For an indie game it has fantastic production values, with the soundtrack being of particular note. You play two characters: an assassin-turned-cop hunting for his brother on a planet where it never stops raining (think Blade Runner), and a man with no memory stuck inside a sterile prison/rehabilitation facility. The plot, which I thought was film-quality, weaves these two story threads together and I must say I never saw the twist coming.
Ben There, Dan That is also an indie game, and as it happens completely free! The cartoony graphics are nowhere near as polished as those of Gemini Rue but I was completely enamoured with the hapless adventures of the pair of London flatmates who get beamed onto an alien spaceship while trying to fix the TV. In order to get the most out of this game you probably need to be British and have played a few adventure games in your time, but the humour - while occasionally a bit juvenile - is wacky and very often right on the money. My personal favourite part is the Americanised "British pub" called "The Limey", found in an alternate dimension where Britain has just become America's 51st state after the head of the Monster Raving Loony Party lost a game of rock-paper-scissors. "The Limey" is staffed by a smiling, square-jawed man in an Abe Lincoln hat ("Wait a moment, this isn't a proper British pub...the barman's smiling, the floor isn't made of velcro, and we haven't been beaten up yet!") but patronised by the sort of characters who should be instantly recognisable to anyone who's ever set foot in a Wetherspoon's on a Saturday afternoon.
Time Gentlemen Please is the sequel to the above game. The interface is slicker, the graphics ever so slightly better and the soundtrack is polished. Despite these things, I didn't enjoy it quite as much as its predecessor, for two main reasons. Firstly many of the puzzles relied on the same game mechanic (a time machine that ages or de-ages objects), and secondly I felt that the humour was a little *too* juvenile in places (I don't think there really needed to be multiple puzzles for which the solution involves Hitler's poop). Having said that there are some truly inspired sequences too and this game is well worth a look if you enjoyed the first one.
-I watched Sherlock. I loved it. Hunter, I know you were horrified at the sound of a modern-day Holmes transplant but please do give it a chance. (The first episode is the best so if you hate that then you don't need to bother with the other two). Admittedly I've only read a few stories and am only a very casual fan but I thought it was wonderfully written and very, very entertaining.
-I also watched Jekyll, which like Sherlock was also written by Dr. Who writer Steven Moffat. This BBC series from a few years ago was a continuation of the mythos rather than a reboot, and was set in the modern day. The Mister Hyde persona of this story is a more subtle physical transformation, being a slightly taller, younger and slimmer version of his alter-ego but with a childlike mind. Over the course of the six episodes Hyde starts to take over more and more. Creepy and well-acted full of suspense and definitely one of the best things I've seen recently.
-I finally finished going through my Spanish grammar book. Now to do it again! It was a bloody hard slog but now I've seen all the grammar at least I know it gets easier from here. Here is what I have learned so far:
*I cannot draw those upside-down question marks for toffee
*fuck the subjunctive
This was taken less than 18 hours after the pictures in the last post and as you can see there's already been a huge change, most likely due to the warmth of my room. There are hardly any "dots" left now, and lots of the tadpoles have already hatched. They will now proceed to eat the jelly from which they hatched, and when that is gone I will need to provide them with pondweed or something similar, both for sustenance and to aerate the water. The tadpoles currently have feathery external gills, which will soon become internal and then disappear altogether as the full metamorphosis completes.
We were the only two who turned up, so we got what amounts to a 3 hour private session, making the day an absolute bargain. The workshop was on The Approach, a system distilled from Silat (the fighting arts of my ancestors!) and based on using a downward figure-8 motion of the forearms to smash through any incoming attack and take out the assailant. The body mechanics come from the weaponry side of the art, but instead of a pair of machetes you use your forearms (and elbows at close range). Applied correctly this stuff is brutal. It's simplified and gross-motor, which is exactly how I like my martial arts - when the shit hits the fan and the effects of adrenaline take hold, your fancy joint-locks and precisely-targeted attacks tend to go out the window. The best part of the system for me was how the entries set you up for some very easy but effective takedowns, some of which are pretty much impossible to breakfall safely out of.
-I've been ill lately so I've spent a fair bit of time playing adventure games, that's okay right?
Gemini Rue is an indie sci-fi adventure game set in a dystopian future. For an indie game it has fantastic production values, with the soundtrack being of particular note. You play two characters: an assassin-turned-cop hunting for his brother on a planet where it never stops raining (think Blade Runner), and a man with no memory stuck inside a sterile prison/rehabilitation facility. The plot, which I thought was film-quality, weaves these two story threads together and I must say I never saw the twist coming.
Ben There, Dan That is also an indie game, and as it happens completely free! The cartoony graphics are nowhere near as polished as those of Gemini Rue but I was completely enamoured with the hapless adventures of the pair of London flatmates who get beamed onto an alien spaceship while trying to fix the TV. In order to get the most out of this game you probably need to be British and have played a few adventure games in your time, but the humour - while occasionally a bit juvenile - is wacky and very often right on the money. My personal favourite part is the Americanised "British pub" called "The Limey", found in an alternate dimension where Britain has just become America's 51st state after the head of the Monster Raving Loony Party lost a game of rock-paper-scissors. "The Limey" is staffed by a smiling, square-jawed man in an Abe Lincoln hat ("Wait a moment, this isn't a proper British pub...the barman's smiling, the floor isn't made of velcro, and we haven't been beaten up yet!") but patronised by the sort of characters who should be instantly recognisable to anyone who's ever set foot in a Wetherspoon's on a Saturday afternoon.
Time Gentlemen Please is the sequel to the above game. The interface is slicker, the graphics ever so slightly better and the soundtrack is polished. Despite these things, I didn't enjoy it quite as much as its predecessor, for two main reasons. Firstly many of the puzzles relied on the same game mechanic (a time machine that ages or de-ages objects), and secondly I felt that the humour was a little *too* juvenile in places (I don't think there really needed to be multiple puzzles for which the solution involves Hitler's poop). Having said that there are some truly inspired sequences too and this game is well worth a look if you enjoyed the first one.
-I watched Sherlock. I loved it. Hunter, I know you were horrified at the sound of a modern-day Holmes transplant but please do give it a chance. (The first episode is the best so if you hate that then you don't need to bother with the other two). Admittedly I've only read a few stories and am only a very casual fan but I thought it was wonderfully written and very, very entertaining.
-I also watched Jekyll, which like Sherlock was also written by Dr. Who writer Steven Moffat. This BBC series from a few years ago was a continuation of the mythos rather than a reboot, and was set in the modern day. The Mister Hyde persona of this story is a more subtle physical transformation, being a slightly taller, younger and slimmer version of his alter-ego but with a childlike mind. Over the course of the six episodes Hyde starts to take over more and more. Creepy and well-acted full of suspense and definitely one of the best things I've seen recently.
-I finally finished going through my Spanish grammar book. Now to do it again! It was a bloody hard slog but now I've seen all the grammar at least I know it gets easier from here. Here is what I have learned so far:
*I cannot draw those upside-down question marks for toffee
*fuck the subjunctive
This was taken less than 18 hours after the pictures in the last post and as you can see there's already been a huge change, most likely due to the warmth of my room. There are hardly any "dots" left now, and lots of the tadpoles have already hatched. They will now proceed to eat the jelly from which they hatched, and when that is gone I will need to provide them with pondweed or something similar, both for sustenance and to aerate the water. The tadpoles currently have feathery external gills, which will soon become internal and then disappear altogether as the full metamorphosis completes.