I went into this movie expecting the best Bond movie of all time from what the critics were saying. It turns out this wasn’t the best bond movie of all time but it still was pretty respectable. I do however feel it was a step back from the awesomeness that was Casino Royale.

I know it’s going to sound weird when I say that the movie felt pretty soulless. Because firstly it’s a Bond movie and secondly its a action movie, but nevertheless it still felt cold. This may of been intentional because this is how bond himself feels after the death of Vesper in Casino Royale, so if it was intentional they did a great job of making us feel it via the settings and character interactions.

I found Quantum to be a bit “Bournish” for my liking. I prefer my Bond to be chased by bad guys and not his own people because their unhappy with the way he is operating. Bond is a character who is supoused to be in control in every situation and having his own organisation go against him doesn’t really work for me.

I’m being pretty negative about the movie but ultimately I liked it and I’m looking foward to the 3rd part of the current trilogy story line.

Yes only 3 of the 5 classes have been announced and I’ve chosen my class already. I think I’m starting to drift away from the notion of always picking a rogue/thief class first in a RPG. I still love rogues/thieves to death but I’ve generally been there and done that. I’ve back stabbed, lock picked, hid in shadows and used my agility/dexterity to avoid countless attacks.

Lately I’ve been going the more direct route in RPGS by building tank like characters who can soak up vast amounts of damage whilst laughing. Now I feel like destroying whole species of monsters with magic is the way to go.

The Wizard from Diablo III has so much style and speed in the trailer. I just hope he/she (you can pick the sex of your character this time around) will be as much fun to play as he/she is to watch. I think my favorite spell I’ve seen so far is the “Slow Time” spell (seen above) . You conjure up a large bubble that slows down enemy projectiles/spells and then you can use the “Wave of Force” spell to send the projectiles/spells back at your enemies.

There’s also a bunch of classic spell types like Magic Missle (seen above) and Electrocute (Chain Lighting). The only thing that would make me change my mind at this point would be a uber elite rogue/thief class that would be drastically different to anything I’ve played before.  So now I’ve picked my class I just have to wait like 11-12 months for the game to come out…

Vast - Nude: If I was ranking the records this would be number one. I’ve listened to this album countless times and still enjoy it as much as the first time I heard it. For the most part this album is fairly mellow with some harder alt rock tracks. Jon Crosby is totally the man in my books.

Radiohead - Ok Computer This album is pretty much a classic in my books (I seem to have a lot of books?) with tracks like “Karma Police” and “Paranoid Android”. I wouldn’t recommend listening to this album is you’re feeling down because its not going to do much to make you feel happier.

Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero Is supposedly a concept album told from different view points. This albums theme is pretty much anti-government and anti-war, but the variety of styles is great. This is NIN’s best album since “The Downward Spiral” if not better. I love the fact that Trent Reznor wrote the songs to be timeless and not just about current events.

The Tea Party - TRIPtych This was the Tea Party’s white album which is a contrast from their previous album “Transmission” which was anything but white and happy. The highlights of this album for me are “Underground” and “Heaven coming down”.

Darling Violetta - Parlour The number one reason for me loving this album is Cami Elen’s vocals, I’m totally hooked on her voice. The band has really come into their own in this 3rd album. It’s sad that having perfected their unique sound they haven’t released another album in a number of years.

This smarmy looking tool (pictured above) is Kevin Rose the guy who created digg. I’m going to have a whine today about the website he “created” (paid web developers to make based on copied ideas). But firstly why do I have a problem with Kevin? Well you can read about it here.

So onto why digg bugs me. I generally look at digg during my lunch breaks basicaly because I like to read interesting news articles while nom’ing away and I do enjoy it too some extent. But lately digg has been annoying me lately because of the following. Reasons gained from overuse but which has also given me a deeper insight into the inner workings of the beast.

• Agenda Groups: It seems like a lot of the articles have certain agenda’s behind them such as PS3 fan boys constantly digging up articles about xbox hardware failures.
• One billion friends required to make it too the front page: It seems a small percentage of the site members have control over what makes the front page and what doesn’t. If you’re a new member that posts a genuinely good article etc, don’t expect it to ever make the front page or even get past 10 diggs.
• Same sites linked over and over: Site’s such as cracked.com, college humour etc are dugg up over and over with most of the submission being pretty similar to each other.
• Numerical Lists: Top 10 ways to do this, 15 inspiring images of whatever. I’m sick to death of these lists taking up space on the front page. They’re from the same old sites such as cracked.com and poorly written lists on unimportant subjects e.g. The 15 most over hyped horror movies. They’re also on separate pages, so you have to look at multiple pages to help the owners of the site generate some ad-sense money.
• Anonymous Buries: You can bury any article on digg anonymously and you don’t have to provide any details of why you are burying it. This just leaves things too open to abuse in my books.
• Old Internet Meme’s: You might of seen this image years ago and had a laugh at it, but guess what? It’s back on the digg home page this month and maybe next month. This meme will never die because at least 30 people on digg haven’t seen it and digg it up rapidly.

/end rant mode

Time to go and enjoy my weekend now that I’ve gotten the bile out of my system!

I had a feeling Bioware was going to make a Star wars MMO months ago when I saw they were hiring people for a unnamed MMO project and I was proven to be right this morning when I got a newsletter from Bioware.

Theres not a huge amount of info at the site currently. Other than a basic FAQ and some interesting lore.

Let me summarise the important parts of what I’ve learnt:

• Setting: The game is set 3,500 years before the rise of Darth Vader and 300 years after the events in knights of the Old Republic.
• Race: At the moment looks like human is the only confirmed race.
• Classes: There will be Sith and Jedi of course and a number of other “classic” star wars roles. I hope there some sort of bounty hunter/thief class.
• Environment: The site says you will be able to travel between different planets.
• Pay Per Month: The price is unknow at this stage but will most likely be the same as WoW and Warhammer online.

I’m not too sure about the art style at the moment. In some screen shots it looks great and in others the characters look a bit cartoony. It is still early days though so this could change in the future and I’m not that worried by it.

I’ve signed up for the newsletter at the site so when I hear some more details I will post them here. I’m such a huge star wars nerd I can’t wait for this game to come out!

P.S. I promise the next post won’t be star wars related.

Starkiller from The Force Unleashed. I was going to buy this game until it got pretty average reviews, so I decided to hold off on buying it till it drops in price. I think the games story and characters are awesome but it seems the game play was a bit of a let down.

Starkiller himself is a great character, he’s Vader secret apprentice and somewhat of an experiment in ways of using amplified force powers. I love dark characters that redeem themselves. I also really dig the way he uses and holds his lightsaber.

I based my choice on if I could possibly make the costume, so anything too over the top was out of the question. I also wanted to make a costume based on a dark or roguish character. I was tempted to make my own design for a Baldur’s Gate 2 Thief/Swashbuckler, which I will probley do in a drawing in the near furture.

So that would be my choice for a Halloween costume, now I’m kinda bummed that I won’t get to make it.

Having absorbed the first season of veronica mars over the last two weekends. I thought I’d share my thoughts on the series with the rest of you.

For those not in know, Veronica Mars is an American TV series about the title character Veronica Mars. Who is a high school student with a P.I. father and who also moonlights as a private investigator herself. The series is kinda of like Buffy mixed with a old school detective novel, which equates to awesome in my books.

The first season deals with the aftermath of Lilly Kane’s death. Who was Veronica’s best friend and also her ex-boyfriend’s sister. Veronica’s life has fallen apart, her father has lost his job as town Sheriff mostly due to him blaming Lilly’s father for the murder, her mother has left town for unknown reasons and she has been outcast from her circle of friends for siding with her father. The new sheriff (the former deputy) continues the case. A local man Abel Koontz is arrested, tried and sent to jail for the crime, but neither Veronica or her father believe he is the real killer.

Normally first seasons of shows are mostly promising but a bit weak in season long story arc’s. Veronica Mars went against the trend and had a really great story long arch as Veronica tries to solve the murder of her best friend, with many plot twists that keep you guessing until the last episode of the season.

Things I love about the series are:

• Veronica’s amusing interactions with her father such as when he tells her not to investigate a case then tells her to be careful when she does.
• Interesting mysteries that aren’t obvious.
• The way that Veronica gets everyone to do favours for her and she gets back at people who have done wrong by her or others.

I’m giving the season 4/5 because of the awesome story arcs and general solid mysteries. It would of been 5/5 if there had been more character development.

I’ve pretty much reached my final straw with getting the train to work. Over the 8 years that I have been getting the train I’ve had to deal with:

• Canceled services - Once I was 1 hour late to a interview when I should of been an hour early.
• An aging fleet - It was awesome to have been on an older model train with sealed windows and no working air-conditioning on a 40 degree day!
• Filthy Carriages - Graffiti up the wahzoo and rubbish everywhere.
• Raising ticket prices - I thought public transport was supposedly cheaper than driving?
• Rush hour crush - To fix the problem with late running services they just simply cut the number of trains running which lead to this current problem.
• Other Commuters - This was the final straw.

The final straw happend this morning on my way to work. I was half asleep listening to my ipod when another commuter sat down next to me. This was no problem at all until I needed get past the other gentleman jerk next to me. I grabbed my bag from the floor and stood up. Now most people will usally get up and stand in the aisle to let you out or crunch their legs up to give you some room to move out. This guy did nothing at all, he just sat there reading his book. So I said a number of times “excause me” as I needed him to at least move his legs for me to get out without stumbling over him. Still no response, so I crumsly climbed over/past him.

Then the next fun part came, as I tried to exit the train the lovely people inconsiderate people of Auburn nearly bowled me over getting on the train before I had a chance to get off.

So I’m going to make a booking to do my L test next weekend at my local RTA and will be free of cityrail and it’s awful commuters in about…..12 months time….ugh.