Zell

I worked mostly in my company's office on Richmond Hill. For lunch I would walk down the hill to the shops and have lunch in the gardens. I wish I worked there all the time :P

Dementia and Alzheimer's sucks hard and I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy. It's something I genuinely fear having in later life and I usually focus my charity towards that kind of research.

Bournemouth is great. Been on holiday there a few times in my youth. I also had the pleasure of working there last summer (late June/early July when there was some sunshine) and had the privilege of staying in the Marriott Highcliff overlooking the beach.

I was born in Oxford, but for most of my life I have lived in a small town called Buckingham. Most people would have heard of Buckingham Palace, whose name comes from its original owner, the Duke of Buckingham, but it is in no way related to the town. It's pretty unremarkable really. Our saint is St Rumbold, who only lived for 3 days but was able to talk and profess his Christian faith. Yep. Not very far away is Silverstone Circuit, so we usually get a lot of strange visitors every time the British Grand Prix is on. We are also about 10 miles from the nearest railway station. Oh and we have a house with a twisted chimney.

Shakespeare on your birthday is somewhat fitting. Anyway, happy birthday!

My recent purchases:

I can hardly believe that it is over ten years since I played the original Luigi's Mansion on the Cube, I still have vivid memories of it right down to how it controlled. So when I played this one today, the controls felt slightly weird, as if I was accustomed to a different control scheme. My only gripe so far is that I kinda wish that the camera was at a slightly higher angle. Apart from that, the game is great.

I would most definitely be up for another weekend of drunken (or sober) shenanigans. 15th of June is a no-no for me as I will be music festival-ing, but apart from that I'm flexible.

Massive win for Submarine today. And if I beat the Sixty Fourthers next week, I could potentially be 9 points clear of the drop. These next few seasons are all about cementing our position in the Elite League and hopefully breaking into that "top tier" of clubs, a la Battlestar, Eights, Madpool and Inter.

Went to HMV in Birmingham today, they only had one left and it was faulty. Nooooooooo.

Are you actually serious? Please tell me, who in this thread is being the most prejudice here: the people reasonably putting forward counter arguments to the video in question or the person who is saying that an entire sex's opinion on a certain topic is invalid? I'd like to introduce you to a concept called Ad_hominem because you seem to be using it a lot.

Thanks for the responses guys. Unfortunately I haven't had time to go exploring yet since work has been busy as fuck. 10-11 hours days are not fun. So far, I've had an early morning wander around the local park and went to see Lansdowne Road from the outside. Need to somehow find time to go to the Guinness and Jameson Distilleries and perhaps take a visit to Phoenix Park. Went out for Chinese one night and it wasn't as expensive as I thought it would be, perhaps I'm just used to London prices. Also, all my Irish colleagues are warm, friendly and have lovely accents.

On Friday I got a surprise call saying that I've been put on a project with a client based in Dublin! They've asked me to fly out tomorrow evening. I'll be in Dublin Monday to Thursday for the next 3 weeks. Never been to Ireland before so naturally I'm very excited! At the same time, this is my first international project so I'm very nervous as well! I honestly don't know very much about Dublin. What is there to do in Dublin? What are the main tourist sites to go visit? Also do a lot of places accept sterling?

I used to think my greatest gaming achievement was beating Omega Weapon in FF8 as a kid, but it's not exactly that difficult looking back on it. Let's see... I'm proud to have completed every chapter in Story Mode on Very Hard in F-Zero GX. I was pretty good at Guitar Hero as well and completed GH3 on Expert (never could do 'Through the fire and flames' unfortunately). I managed to catch all 150 pokemon in Blue. Thought I was going to get Mew but got the crappy certificate instead. Never bothered to "catch 'em all" after that! This isn't really an achievement, but I'm quite proud to have achieved a certain level of skill at SSBM. I don't think I'll ever get that good at a video game again.

Fantastic win today. Loving life in the top flight!

Away to Real Peeps tomorrow. A six-pointer in the relegation dogfight. A win would put me 6 points clear of Peeps and hopefully 9 points clear of the dropzone. Afterwards I have to play Madpool and Inter twice so I don't expect to get many points for a couple of weeks.

Pardon my ignorance, but I didn't realise saying "no homo" was homophobic. I mean, where is the homophobic malice in that? If a gay person was to say "no hetero", is that heterophobic? I agree with Debug Mode in that we need to look at the underlying causes of why people are homophobic and not just call people out for using certain words. Personally I'm puzzled by the idea of swear words or the fact that any word is offensive in and of itself. To be offensive there needs to be some kind of context.

But it's not irrational to believe in aliens. As I said earlier in this thread, it is statistically very likely that alien life exist given the number of star systems in the universe.

Happy birthday man.

Two reasons: 1. The price is too high for what it's worth, considering the current price of the PS3 and 360. I am also pretty certain that there will be a price drop at some point this year because it's not exactly selling like hot cakes at the moment and the PS4 and 720 aren't far off. 2. A console is only as good as its games. Where are they Nintendo? I do believe that they will come eventually, at which point I will most likely buy one, but I won't buy one on potential alone.

League Cup Final on now! I'm quite excited for it, knowing it would fantastic for either team to win it. For some silly reason I put a tenner on Bradford, but I think this one is Swansea's to lose. We'll see how it goes anyhow.

Funnily enough, I have been playing through Red again. I've just done the Rocket Hideout, my squad consists of Charmander (haven't evolved him yet), Mew, Raichu and Vaporeon. Observations so far: -The music in this game is fucking sweet. -You make progress in the game very quickly. There seems to be a lot less padding than the later games (Gold and Silver are the biggest culprits in this regard). -Doing the Mew glitch was easier than I thought it would be. -Wrap is incredibly annoying. Bellsprouts are the worst. There strategy is to use stun spore followed by wrap continuously. I nearly died in Rock Tunnel because of a Bellsprout. -The difficulty curve fluctuates a lot for no apparent reason. There were a lot of high level trainers in Rock Tunnel, but then the rockets in the game corner were pathetic. It's the same with the gym leaders. Misty is pretty damn difficult with a level 21 Starmie, but Lt Surge's Raichu is only 3 levels higher. Erika for some reason has a pathetic level 24 Tangela that only uses constrict (only 10 base power I think). In my mind, Red and Blue were the best Pokemon games. It's easy to look back now and pick apart their flaws (and believe me the games are pretty darn broken in places), but these games were the template for all the Pokemon games that followed. The original Pokemon games were truly fresh and original and the subsequent games are arguably Red with a new lick of paint and slightly updated battle mechanics.

When driving a warthog, you either have hang back and play defensively, picking off people as they come into range, or keep moving and never stop. Stopping in the middle of group of guys usually spells death. I tend not to use the normal hog because they nerfed it so much since Halo 3, but the gauss hog is still bloody awesome. I've been playing infrequently recently, my brother has actually been using my account a lot so it's usually him you're seeing online. But I hope to get back into it now they've added some new playlists. Still waiting for that next map pack though!

Next time I need to use a Ladies' loo in St Pancras, I'll bear this piece of advice in mind.