Monthly Archives: May 2005

The backwards diet

Thursday May 5th 2005

I need to lose a few pounds before sister Hazel’s wedding in mid-June, and I just found this report of a really natty diet idea: The Backwards Diet.

You eat your dinner for breakfast, your lunch for lunch, and your breakfast for dinner, which gives your body the whole day of activity to burn off those calories from your main meal. It sounds so logical it’s almost hilarious nobody has thought of it before, written a book and gotten rich selling it to all those folk who seem to lap up diet fads but don’t want to exersize.

Now, the question looms, can I be assed cooking my dinner as well as having a bath every morning?

One in the oven

Wednesday May 4th 2005

We found out in the last week that Fliss is pregnant, and we’re going to be parents come christmas. The realisation of this is the mind job that I always thought it would be, so at least I was semi–equipped to cope.

After Fliss told me of her positive test, I was so taken aback that I kind of pretended it wasn’t really happening. I suggested that “Maybe you’re just really good at tests? I mean, you got 100% in that driving theory one, so maybe it’s the same with pregnancy tests?”

Wishful thinking on my part, I suppose, but the reality is that we’ll have a son or a daughter by the end of the year. Wow. A whole ‘nother person to look after besides ourselves. It seems kind of daunting when the latter is something I’m only just getting the hang of.

The funny thing is that I always hoped we’d have to try for a baby, you know?

I wanted it to be like “Right, we’ve bought all the electronic consumer goods we’ll need for a few years, lets get making babies!” and then we’d be banging away like rabbits on viagra until it happened.

I was looking forward to that bit; it was going to be my reward in advance for all the nappy changing and barf I’d have to deal with. But no, there was no trying – turns out it just happens when you least expect it.

Ah well, no use crying over action you didn’t get. I’m actually really happy for Fliss, as she’s always been the more maternal and wanted kids quite young, so if you balance it against all the stuff I’ve gotten that I wanted then I think the sacrifices are a small price to pay for how being parents is going to enrich our lives in the years to come.

It’s going to be quite an interesting year, though. Who’d have thunk it?

Electronic Arse

Tuesday May 3rd 2005

After spending some time this weekend playing TimeSplitters Future Perfect, I’ve come to the conclusion that; as a developer EA creates some pretty decent efforts, but, as a publisher, they tend to sugarcoat anything that passes their way to the point of ruin.

Cases in point for me are Burnout 3 and TimeSplitters Future Perfect. In both cases EA took over as publisher, and in both cases they’ve served only to tarnish once fine franchises in their quest for the mass-market.

With Burnout they introduced a sickening teen-angst soundtrack and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, they got Criterion to add in some assclown Crash Radio guy (as featured in SSX3), who serves only to annoy, but can thankfully be turned off.

With TimeSplitters FP they’ve added a similar announcer guy, who gushes in dude-americana each time you kill or are killed in arcade mode. Worse still is that you can only turn him off in custom games, meaning that working your way through the arcade leagues is simply excruciating, due to the deluge of banal “Boom-Shakka!” or “Chimp-icide!” comments that punctuate every kill.

It adds nothing to the game, serves only to puke sugar-saturated barf onto the once slick presentational style associated with the TimeSplitters series and, for me, is the very worst of what EA has to offer the games industry.

Having EA own, or indeed p0wn, every single license out there is akin to Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer directing and producing every movie that comes out. One or two in a while is okay, but when you can see they’ve dipped every title in hype-flavoured syrup for reasons only known to themselves, it starts to make me wonder if both industries are heading for the same ends.

And, since I lost interest in going to the movies a long time ago, save for special occasions like LoTR or Spider-Man, I’m wondering how many more years I’ll be a gamer before the franchises I love are shat-on to the point where it just isn’t worth the annoyance?