jayseven

I've just spent nearly a year in the distinctly suburban domecile which is a bit of a middle-ground to the two types of residential areas you mentioned, moogle. There's a set of shops 15 minute walk away, with the next batch of shops a 2-hour round trip away. You gotta drive if you want to go anywhere, elsewise the public transport here is one an hour into Sydney -- and that bus tends to ignore the advertised time. Of course there are a lot more residents around than there would be in a strictly rural environment - this area is largely retirees but there's still youth about. There is a distinct lack of 20-somethings for me to associate with, though, but there's bushland and parks nearby for plenty of wildlife and quiet (inasmuch as the squarking, screaming wildlife offers). There's a community feel here which I suppose is nice, but I am used to the relative anonymity of the city life. My eyesight means I'm not really likely to identify who is walking past me as quickly as they will spot me, so in the city I can just not bother trying to recognise people whereas here it's more of a stress -- on my life, anyway. Also, my poor night vision means that the lengthy trips to potential socialising avenues becomes much more time consuming and, again, stressful that it is simply easier to avoid. Being unable to drive definitely doesn't help. I don't miss the heavy pedestrian traffic of Brighton/Sheffield, nor the loutish/yobbish behaviour that the aforementioned 'anonymity' can inspire in people, but I do miss the ease in which you can do things in the city = the array of entertainment on offer. Whilst I still have some semblance of youth I would like to take advantage of urbania, and instead figure the rural retreat a place my future self can focus on developing hobbies such as gardening and painting :P EDIT: Dannyboy beat me to the middle-ground suburbia post! Excellent

Messi is insane. Not that I watch many Barca matches, but I've never seen him play and not score. His record is phenomenal.

Totally forgot how awesome s03's end is. Turns out I've not seen Razor either... perhaps why I had such disdain for the Pegasus arc earlier. I'm not 100% convinced that including Razor on s04 but not including the 'mini-series' beginning to the series on s01 is a mistake... yes, I'm still bitter. Razoring as we speak! Extending my bed-time to stupid-o-clock.

38 degrees here last week heeeyooooh! But seriously -- nighttime this hot = no chance of sleep. Just sweaty, sweaty sheets. At least in the winter you can add more layers! Not really looking forward to the cold. I'm still trying to adjust to the heat hike here, so flipping back ot dark-at-4, cold-all-day isn't going to be ANY fun. UNLESS THERE IS SNOW!!

I really, really want to play -- but as I said to DuD I feel that I am better off bowing out rather than just being a numbers maker. While I'm sure many will find it tricky to find free time over teh festive period, I literally will be away from the computer for 6 days in total, before xmas has even begun! I hate this! Ooh I know! Why don't we just CLOSE THE ENTIRE BOARD UNTIL I CAN PLAY MAFIA GAMES AGAIN? This sounds like a really good idea.

Do you have one? I used to get a chocolate advent calendar every year, until my mum started listening to my idiotic teenage grunts and didn't send me one during my first year at Uni, even though she sent my older-by-two-years sister one! Humph! I also tended to just 'forget' about it for a few days, then amass a glorious quantity of chocolate to devour in one sitting. By habit, we just tried to get calendars that counted down to NYE -- y'know, for that extra chocolatey goodness. THIS year is a little different. I'm spending much of the run-up with a couple of teenagers who are still very much invested in all that xmas nonsense. Their dad has, for the last couple of years, borrowed from the more authentic tradition of boxing a 'toy' in each day. The calendar itself is a nicely constructed wooden set of boxes, all arranged in a faux-dispersed way. Each day so far (bear in mind it's 3rd today!) has included not the gift itself but instead a short riddle to find the gift, and each household member has a turn. Essentially, I was very surprised today to be gifted with an awesome penknife -- it has a pen, knife, bottle opener and bright LED light attached to a keyring. Very well suited! Calendars in the shops only started appearing about a week ago, whereas I imagine back home they've been there for months..! Anyone here still get them, or have you recognised that they're a load of nonsense? Does anyone do anything more interesting?

I've been playing Halo: CE Anniversary and I was really enjoying it for the most part until... yup. Flood. Mostly the levels they've appeared on have been mind-numbingly dull and repetetive, and I'm currently on the level Two Betrayals where you basically go through a previous level backwards. But my biggest gripe currently is the flood with a rocket launcher. Thanks to not really thinking about it, I've got one bar of health which isn't enough to prevent a one-hit-kills affair with said floody launcher dickhead guy. To make matters worse, I'm using my shield-draining EMP trick, so after I've cleared a room I do this and lose my shield then the flood live up to their name and pour in. I can take out loads, but before I can even see the rocket guy I'm engulfed in flames. I don't know if there's one or two or what. It's taken me dozens of tries! So frustrating! I've gone off and tried to find health everywhere in the level but to no avail. I'm essentially tasked with either repeating this bit until blind luck gets me through, or restarting the level and spending another hour catching up to this spot -- with no guarentee I'll reach it with more health -- and even if I did I'm fairly sure the rocket flood takes off most/all of that, too. EDIT: ... of course the first attempt after I vent (and after 35 minutes of actually noticing the time pass - who knows how long it actually took... I know it's taken me 2 hours on this one level alone so far!) ... I did it. Got really lucky with a bunch of grenades and it seems the rest of the flood ran around in a loop so I just got the frak outta there. Phew!

N-E bro-hugs for you, Platty. I hope that the last part of the relationship doesn't make you feel like you wasted the previous 6 years of your life. Just think, there's a woman out there whose life has significantly improved because there's now YOU on the market :P Hope your mates are helping you through the hard time, dude.

@Jimbob what's going on?

That was how I figured you'd seen it already

just found out my rental store only has BSG s04 part 1. I'll have to try and finish up to that point just as I'm going back to the UK. Bear McCreary's AMA on reddit, does contain spoilers. I'm fairly sure @Cube has seen it already ... :P

Man... I just finished heroic co-op (cousin's idea -- took no time at all thanks to pro training at Halo: CE recently).. then he wanted to try some spartan ops... and MAN WTF MAN WTF FFS FFSA AAAAAAHHAHAHSDHAS... That was some frustrating BULLSHIT. I basically haven't played any online so I have shitty loadouts... so basically the first spartan ops mission (legendarying was a mistake) was pretty fucking harsh going for the no-distance weaps I had. It took over 30 mins to do and I really didn't enjoy it. Then I played some online -- won my first 5 games! Played out of my skin on pure adrenaline, on maps I didn't know. Never dominated but always skeeted away from the bottom of the list -- finished around level 9 but happy with progress -- my last game I tried out the combine gun that works so well in campaign -- it kills quicker if you're accurate with headshots but on the smaller levels it's useless when you're facing two guys. The regular AR does a great job because most times you can at least equalise your death when you're being double-teamed. I'll keep giving MP a try and see how loadouts change as time passes. I'm torn between the COD melee instakill and how Halo deals with it -- I figure when facing someone level 38 melee is my only chance -- but it doesn't instakill so that's not the tactic to go for. definitely need to wrap my head around halo a bit more (as previously mentioned, going through Halo: CE and probably going to give the other 360 games another chance, too.

ICE CREAM ALL ROUND!!

I've got no say in the matter so I've not investigated, but as far as I'm aware Aus isn't too great. I'll do some investigation.

... New Member OTY 2012?

Don't worry about me You'll do more games in the future that I can play (same with Peeps). No matter what I'll be missing something!

^not read the links (lazy) but I remember learning that sleep cycles are not fixed for everyone. I think my sleep pattern is closer to 5 hours. When I got to Australia I was sleeping 10pm-7am and struggling to get up. I then pushed and pushed, and started going to bed at 1am or 2am and getting up at 7 and feeling pretty much ok -- but now I've continued on the slippery slope and pushed it to 3am and 4am on occasion, and I've been ill twice in two weeks so I've then gone back to bed at 8am 'til 1pm. Sleeping during the day is WARM and dehydrating so it's an awful practice but I've been doing it for a fortnight now.

We're 7 days into our monthly internet usage and we're already at 77% of our monthly cap. Yes, that's right, fucking caps. It's 50GB transfer per month and guess what? It includes upload usage. So if my cousin leaves his utorrent on accidentally for a day then bam - 8GB uploaded. Ridiculous to even have a cap, but I didn't realise uploads would be included.

To echo my earlier post; if the game starts this side of NYE then you best count me out as I got weekends and long periods of time without the internet.

I was hesitant due to my next coupla weeks being a wee bit more afk than usual, but New year stuff... well I simple don't know what I'm doing then, and this sounds fun, so me me me too please

Been feeling utterly ill today, so I've blasted through a fair few eps. Currently about to start s03e05.

@Emma I'm making my first solo flight in a few weeks and I'm fairly certain i'm going to accidentally leave the airport in Hong Kong and end up entrapped in a kidney scheme, or something. IN OTHER NEWS... been bathing in BSG and Halo. I've spent months doing shit and nobody notices so the last couple of weeks I've basically done the minimum required and spent my time doing stupid shit. Sleeping in, playing xbox, watching DVDs, cooking good food. Good while it lasts.

My cousin claims to be a 'hardcore' gamer, yet his gaming catalogue consists of assassin's creed, halo, gears and COD. He's found Fallout, Red Dead Redemption and Darksiders to be lacking... I can quickly agree that this generation has been more about sequels than any other before, and it is easy to surmise that sequel saturation is equal to a lack of diversity. Personally my gaming habits rely more on achievements (oh, how they hook me) and price. I also like to give lower-ranking games more of a chance because i know that a 5/10 is still better than a 0/10. My favourite games of this generation are all games that I wish more people would play - games made by studios like Suda51 -- the 'cult' games that find a niche market but aren't able to capitalise on the market as a whole. I don't really have anything further to say :P I think the Wii U is still something I've not made my mind up about because I want to see what it really offers first -- but the fact that I've not immediately shunned it is in itself a merit. So yeah. Not really a useful comment! Fanks @Bummy!

Your questions do not promote quick, one-word answers so you'll not get as many responses as you may want. What do you take in to consideration when you buy games? The price tag and whether the game is worth it -- i.e. a 6/10 is worth £10 but a 8/10 is not worth £40 (for me) Whose oppinions matter to you? I have yet to find a critic that agrees with me, and I have more patience with 'average' games than the common gamer, so I tend to give it time then listen to the opinion of someone who bought the game, rather than a reviewer, who is pressured into pigeon-holing a game. Assuming the 'oppinions' you refer to are to be about games. Considering the rest of your questions, this is curious. What makes you feel succesful in your life? Who says I feel successful? What are your ambitions? To be comfortable. What's this all about?

This is not something you have shared about yourself previously!