January 2010 Archives

I spent the bulk of the weekend preparing my Mass Effect character for import into Mass Effect 2 next weekend. I now have a level 58 Shepard who has finished all the assignments and made all the decisions I want to carry across. Unfortunately I didn't make it to level 60, but I'm not going to run through the entire game to that degree again just to do 2 more levels. After that I started a new game in order to get a few more achievements (including the level 60 achievement). I don't intend to be as rigorous with this play-through though and odds are I wont finish it before ME2 arrives. The level 58 play-through is my canonical Shepard for ME2 anyway.

Rest of photos here.

I went for walk this afternoon with the D90 down to the Douglas Promenade and took some pictures. It was nice to get out of the house after all the bad weather we've had.

The rest of the photos I took can be found in my Douglas set on Flickr.

<Alan sits down to start work for the year>

It's actually been snowing since I took this picture, so it's even worse now.  Might grab another picture later.

I had a good new years. My 'no-drinking' policy was relaxed and a good time was had by all. I may have relaxed the policy a bit too much, as my hangover lasted until yesterday. That certainly made a mess of 3 days worth of my holiday - which was a touch annoying. The alcohol also resulted in a 2am trip to the beach, accompanied by a similarly drunk Paul attempting to embarrass me by going out of his way to say hello to everyone we walked past (a surprisingly large number given the hour). Good times! :)

My primary new years resolution is pretty much the same as last year I think (or at least the corollary to it).  Get things finished. The usual resolutions were drunkenly thrown around, but the less specific ones seem to stick better in my experience (especially ones that can be applied to all aspects of life). There was only one specific idea that I liked well enough that I made sure to remember it for when I was sober.

I decided to contact some old friends I had a falling out with many years ago. I don't expect anything to come of it. In fact, I don't even expect a response - but that wasn't the goal of the exercise. It allowed me to say some things I wasn't ready to say back when I should have. Mainly revolving around the word "Sorry". Regardless of the specific circumstances surrounding each case: In some way I was at fault. At the least, had I been more mature I could have resolved the situations more amicably than I did. But that's life.

The fact of matter is that I owe so much to the people involved (whether personally or due to the situations surrounding the falling out) that not saying anything ever again would have been the real crime. Life lessons were learnt in all scenarios that no amount of training could have prepared me for. There are a multitude of clichés that apply here, but this is getting too long as it is. Suffice it to say I am grateful to these people, even if it wasn't immediately obvious.

I started a lot of things in 2009; Given that I'm usually plagued with Blank Page Syndrome or similar afflictions, that's a good thing. But some things were started and then stopped. Some were restarted too many times. Others dragged for so long they have actually caused things that were finished to become stale and I'm now forced to restart them for them to be any use. The goal for the new year is now to concentrate on finishing things - something I've historically been pretty good at doing.

So. Welcome 2010. Let's do this.