Holy crap. I’d forgotten how intensely awesome this album (and band) was. Thanks to the OS bogans thread for rekindling the spark.

Cult of Luna – Somewhere Along the Highway

It’s not the size of the pencil, it’s how big you write your name.

 
– Ronnie James Dio

I was lucky enough to catch Dio-Sabbath when they played here in ‘07 as Heaven & Hell, and that gig ranks as one of the best ever shows I’ve been to. Dio’s stage presence was second to none (sorry, Mike Patton, not even you).

The Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn’t work once.

 
– in relation to the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, which Russian sources say could be stemmed by detonating controlled underground nuclear blasts at the source. (Komsomoloskaya Pravda via Slashdot)

operative word: Controlled.

A quick bump to 50MB soon solved that, but sometimes I wish FTP error messages weren’t so damned archaic – an ironic quip, perhaps, coming from someone whose daily grind consists of decyphering archaic/nonsensical error messages…

But anyway. You can read this, so that means I can start posting useless crap to my little corner of the world once again.

Rally NZ pics now on flickr. Doing everything shoestring this year, which means attending only the free events. Hey don’t complain, you get to choose between arty dusk shots or blurry ISO800 voyeurism!

the last three months in summary

camera collection: embiggened by the acquisition of a bulk lot of vintage rangefinders – see here. However I’m now overwhelmed by the number of test rolls I need to shoot.

car collection: 4WD TX3 finally signed off and finished. Banana almost road legal (after emptying my wallet like a ravenous beast). Squid back in Auckland. Coupe continues to be a pain in the backside as far as keeping it on the road is concerned – stuff tends to break down after 27 years if it’s never actually been replaced.

other: werk is steady, training a new backup to keep the cogs grinding in the instance that I end up having that next meltdown. Relocating all of my accumulated shit back from Hamilton to Auckland went smoother than I thought. My facebook account got hacked, deactivated, reactivated, hacked, deactivated, and finally reactivated again, but I’m pretty much over it now; twitter seems to do the job just fine for daily ruminations.

to all the would-be shippers, no I still haven’t said anything to her yet. “Coward!” i hear you mutter, but the gist of the situation is that I never get a chance to sit down with her and actually lay the cards on the table, in private.

But then again if you look up “avoidant personality”, there’s a picture of me.

Right, now that I feel like I’ve accomplished something today, time to go find something else to break!

I’d personally be hard pressed to name mine as there are so many, but if there was one album I seem to find myself listening to over and over again, it would be Damnation by Opeth. This merry little record has kept me company on many late-night missions back to Auckland from places like Hamilton and further afield.

And it’s not even particularly ‘pulse-pumping’ music. Instead it’s ultra chilled out, melancholy prog-rock dripping with gothic influences. Take this track for instance, which happens to be my favourite off the album:

heck, it’s not even a particularly cheerful song if you pay attention to the lyrics, but the music and overall ambience seems just perfect for when you’re travelling lonely stretches of state highway in the dead of night.

A couple of weekends ago I got to drive a JZX100 Chaser to Wellington. must say I was quite impressed with the car overall, and I’m currently in the middle of writing a little “review” of its merits, but in the meantime here’s the complete album of photos I took of the car on Sunday: flickr album

I’m quite pleased with the results from the venerable old OM-Zuiko 100mm, given that I was shooting in gale-force winds, manually focused of course, and the lighting/weather was a bit questionable. I guess that’s Welly for ya…

As for the car, I don’t think it’s quite convinced me to go modern, but as the story goes I’m a bitter, nostalgic bastard who can ignore certain shall we say quirks of older technology if it means the bigger picture is still acceptable.

Selective bias, if you will.

I hope it doesn’t rain.

17th Feb 2010 – Clutch, Kings Arms Tavern, Auckland

18th Feb 2010 – Faith No More, Vector Arena, Auckland

can’t wait!

You see, I was a huge fan of the original Need For Speed, Gran Turismo, and especially Gran Turismo 3.  But some time after GT3, I started attending track days at Taupo Motorsport Park.  It turns out that actually driving a car on a track is more realistic.

After that I couldn’t take serious racing games… er… seriously.

Then one day, I sat down to have a look at the demo of Forza Motorsport 3.  Brilliant graphics.  Amazing, even.  A decent cockpit view, let down only by the lazy animation of the driver’s hands, but at least useable (most of the time).

Fanging the limited selection of cars around the Camino Viejo circuit I was struck by a bit of a realisation.  It felt real.  The way the cars respond to the controls is as close to emulating actual circuit driving as I’ve ever experienced.  Close enough that it didn’t bore me to tears like every other racing game since about 2005 (even GT Legends, which really deserved more effort on my part).

So naturally I wanted the full version.  Would I get a copy from Buttonmasher to review?  As Brian pointed out, I already had two games to review, so it wasn’t likely.  As luck would have it, Microsoft were splashing out on a proper launch event, and not a wanky mainstream press affair like Nintendo did for Wii Music, but a proper geekfest involving massive screens, simulators, and fizzy drink.

The FM3 launch was held at Hoyts Sylvia Park, a week before the game’s release, at the inconvenient time of 11am.  Having to take the day off work and drive to Auckland was obviously well worth it, so no more need be said.

It was Nik who gave me a jam on the FM3 demo originally, so I tipped him off about the launch in the hopes that he’d be able to wangle an invite from the power that be at Gameplanet (for whom he writes).  The wangling was successful.

Microsoft had hired out three movie theatres for the launch, which was a massive overkill in terms of seating, but certainly not in terms of screen space; only one person (okay, two, but not much splitscreen went on) can play at a time.  Two of these were very small theatres with 32 plush leather seats, one of which also had four simulator setups complete with wheel and pedals available.  The remaining theatre was Hoyts’ Extreme Screen.  At over 30 metres across, it’s the world’s biggest permanent 35mm projection screen.

Tolan, Microsoft’s ever-gregarious PR guy, ushered us up to the top of the theatre, past the cheap seats to some rather pimp reclining leather couches in private alcoves, fired up a 360 connected to the Extreme Screen projector and launched Forza 3.

Well, gosh.  I’ll admit to being more than a little blown away.  I knew Forza 3 had badass graphics.  I knew the Extreme Screen was big.  I damn well knew that plush leather couches are nice to sit on.  But I was nonetheless rather close to completely fucking overwhelmed.

After Tolan had said his words and done a demonstration lap, he passed the controller around.  I was about third in line.  As soon as the wireless controller was firmly in hand, I trotted down to almost the very front of the cinema, to the point where the screen stretched out on either side to almost the limits of my peripheral vision.  For the race I selected Greg Murphy’s #51 Sprint Gas Racing Commodore.  Then I had to restart and turn most of the assists off and select manual shifting.

And holy crap.  Standing up, with practically my entire vision filled with this huge high definition image, and the massive cinema surround sound setup, it was a hell of a ride.  I was privately concerned that I might become unbalanced and arse over, a fear that luckily was not justified.  There was a bloke from TV3 filming me playing, getting all manner of perspective shots.  I forgot to watch the news and Nightline, so I have no idea if I ended up on TV or not.  I like to think I did.

As the various writers trickled out of the cinemas, we were each handed a goody bag.  These are pretty standard at these events, and usually contain a bit of advertising material and some branded merchandise.  On this day though, all my wildest dreams were to come true.  Or at least, one thing I hoped would happen but seemed unlikely would in fact come to pass.

In addition to the little goody bag, we were each given a retail copy of the game.  A week before release.  I did a little dance, and may even have giggled, such was my excitement.

So easily does a cynic become a fanboy.