Life Without Toast - Sibling Rivalry

It's officially 8 minutes into my 24th birthday.

So far I have recieved a beautiful Betsey Johnson bag from Matt & Nikki and also a Little Miss Chatterbox mug (very appropriate!!), a Newbridge silverwear compact mirror and perfume bottle from Becca and Sean, a book called Green Is The New Black from my beautiful niece Isobel, L'Occitane Green Tea smellies from my good friend Trishbags and a baby Toblerone from my friend Marian (it's payday tomorrow so apparently I am getting my birthday prize then!!!).

Tomorrow is also my last day in my job, eeeeek, and payday (even better!) so it's a triple celebration for me.

I remember when I was about 16 or 17 I thought that 24 was really old, and thinking that I would be married with kids! Ha! How mental is that? I don't feel any older, or wiser, maybe when I wake up in the morning I will! I am very sad this year because my Mini Mammy and Becca won't be here to celebrate because they are off on holidays and normally we do a family dinner thing where we get together and eat too much food, but this year it won't be happening, hopefully we can do it soon though, even though it won't really be my birthday then...sob sniffle!! I am VERY happy though that it's my last day in work and that my very own new year will hopefully be a good one, with an interesting new job to look forward to and loads of fancy stuff to enjoy!

I bought myself a Betsey Johnson dress on ebay for my birthday, I love it and it was only 87 squid altogether, I am dead chuffed with myself...I am allowed to buy myself a birthday present right??

Posted by Babs at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

_{[Photoblogging in Movable Type appears to be fubar, so I'm posting this "manually", normal photoblogging will resume asap-ish...]}

Posted by Matt at 8:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

"Warning: This game contains strong language and scenes of extreme violence and gore"

And that ain't even the half of it. I played the original Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube, and it was very, very good, but this new, Wii-centric version surpasses it in almost every way there is.

Having played most of the way through the GC version, the majority of the shocks and scares were no longer shocking or scary, but as the entire game has been rebuilt from the ground up, in 480p 16:9 widescreen and with a generous amount of Wiimote waggling for good measure, pretty much everything in the game feels "new".

From the opening scenes in the village, through the rescue of the Presidents' daughter (kidnapped by a Spanish cult called the Los Illuminados), through all the various puzzles, the Wii-Remote controls are really without fault. Indeed, if I had not played the game on a system that requires you to use buttons and joysticks (how old-school!), I would have sworn that the game had been designed for the Wii from the beginning. The point-to-aim system is pretty much flawless, enabling a raft of head-shots to be accomplished with ease, with crazy villagers heads exploding everywhere as a result.

If you're coming to this as a fan of the older Resident Evil Games, you're in for a shock. In the older games, the pacing was slow, the camera fixed, and the tension unbearable. The tension is still present, but the pacing is generally set at a rapid-fire full sprint, machine gun in hand, and the camera is an over-the-shoulder affair that brings you right into the action, almost like a first-person shooter, only not.

The story, is of course, being a videogame story, completely bunk, but it's definitely better than either of the Resi movies that have been released. The scope of the locations is vast, from the sprawling village at the beginning to the labyrinthine castle in the middle, to the sci-fi-like confines of the island laboratories towards the end, and this helps the story a lot. I won't spoil it for you any more than that, as there's quite a few surprises to be had.

The graphics, while excellent, are definitely "last-gen", albeit the very best of last-gen. The enhanced definition and widescreen aspect definitely help. The sound is awesome. The music is perfectly weighted and matched to the mood of every scene and level in the game, and the incidental sound effects are totally spot-on, be they a candle blowing in the wind or a grotesgue monster being frozen by liquid nitrogen and exploding in a shower of fragments. Brilliant.

Speaking of monsters... Oh. My. God. Whoever designed the beasties clearly needs professional help. They are FUCKED UP. Again, I'm not going to go into too much detail, but lets just say the main character, Leon Kennedy, had his head ripped from his neck on more than one occasion by a nefarious hench-thing covered in spikes, claws and drool. If you don't jump from your seat and/or grimace in disgust at least once, then you are clearly already dead. Brilliant stuff. And the 18+ rating of the game is definitely deserved, and should definitely be adhered to.

All in all, totally brilliant. I'll give it 9.5 slices of toast out of 10.

Official website / Wikipedia page

Posted by Matt at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

[Of course, the .gif attached to the message was an ad for cheap "Viagra", but the subject line is still brilliant]

Posted by Matt at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...Today is Johnny Vegas's birthday!

Happy Birthday Johnny!

Oh, and it's Moby's birthday too. And John Martyn's. And Franz Beckenbauer's. And Ludacris's.

I'm sure there's something else I'm forgetting too, but I'm not sure what.

Posted by Matt at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

They've just re=printed this t-shirt over at Threadless, and I think anyone who spends any time cycling should definitely plonk down the 15 dolla and buy it, it's totally cooltacular. Me, I drive everywhere, so I think buying it would be a crime against cycling, and also cyclists.

Posted by Matt at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Seriously, buy it. Buy it NOW! All the profits from the auction go straight to charity like.

This Vzaar thing is going to be seriously brilliantly huge, I tells you.

_{[This entry sponsored by s e v i t z d o t c o m]}

Posted by Matt at 9:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh oh I have an interview at 8am tomorrow morning, I am cacking it, its a big brillo job with great "prospects" and the money is deadly (yahoo) unfortunately I have been SUPER DUPER busy over the weekend, socialising and nixering and what not and so haven't had any time to study, this will be done before bed time, oops!

I did manage to buy not one but two suits for it in Next in Dundrum (I know I say I hate Dundrum but the fact that its open till 9pm on a Monday is brilliant and a lifesaver for me-I did go into town on Saturday to get a suit but got too hot, was starving and there were far too many people so I abandoned ship and fecked off home with a 3 bean wrap from M & S - yum!).

Anyway dudes, wish me luck that I get the deadly job, oh and that I can find the place!!

Posted by Babs at 9:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

For those of you who aren't rabid followers of my Flickr Photostream, I have now uploaded some of the best photos of mine and Nikki's Alaskan holiday, back in July. There's a few hum-dingers in there, even if I may say so myself. I still have a few from my other (compact) camera left to upload, and a couple of videos which I'm in the midst of editing into something half-decent.

It's almost like being there, only like, y'know, not.

Posted by Matt at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)