March 2010 Archives

Mass Elect

By Alan Hinchcliffe on March 22, 2010 8:12 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
I finished up my achievements run in Mass Effect on Saturday night. It really couldn't have taken any longer as I was starting to get incredibly bored. I'd tried out some different character builds and it was cool to see how the assignments changed slightly based on who you had with you and what your background was. But even then it was still beginning to grate and feel a bit repetitive. I'm certainly happy I did it though. Ultimately I just wish I'd put more thought into my previous play-throughs to minimise the number of times I needed to replay it. Although - having said that I'd prefer I didn't let the achievements dictate my choices in a game. So I suppose I just wanted less achievements to get. I don't know :). Thankfully this means that the next time I play it, it'll be for the story, or to build a character for Mass Effect 2.

I have a ridiculous backlog at the moment. A quick glance at the Xbox 360 games shelves I can see Bayonetta, Bioshock 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Borderlands, Brutal Legend, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Lego Batman, Lego Indiana Jones, Wolfenstein, Wet, Far Cry 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, and at least 4 or 5 others. That doesn't even include the games I've played before that I'd like to replay. Ugh. I've just had such a shortage of time recently. It must almost be time for a break so I can burn through some of that. Some of those games I've actually started already and and others are reasonably close to completion (story completion, not achievement completion). <Hangs head in shame>

I haven't watched any movies recently. I did watch some Family Guy, but other than that, there just hasn't been the time - especially with the new schedule. I find myself getting tired fairly early, so I'll usually just read or browse the net after dinner and then go to bed. I spent the bulk of the weekend working (half of Saturday, and all day Sunday). It was mostly a debugging session for some system tests early this week. Debugging is an aspect of programming I tend to really enjoy, but dealing with multi-threading related crashes can be a bit trying. I managed to track them down though, so it was at least a successful effort.

I finally cancelled my Manx Telecom mobile phone. I've had that number for 6 years but wasn't using at anymore (it had been set to redirect to my new number for the past 2+ years). If you have my number as +44 7624 485 957 then you'll need to get in touch to get my new number. 

Last Weak

By Alan Hinchcliffe on March 15, 2010 7:18 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Ugh. What a week I had. I've been trying to get used to a new schedule, but it's thrown my sleep patterns into disarray. Slowly starting to get used to it though (not that I'm sleeping better, I'm just getting used to not sleeping well) and this week should be better. I hope. I needed to start getting up earlier and increase my activity levels.

I don't really have much to talk about right now. I heard some cool work related news last week. Hopefully I'll be able to mention it soon (after the official announcement). But if not, trust me, it's cool :). Otherwise, work is a bit busier and stressful than usual. I seem to be managing to keep rather zen about it though. We'll have to see if that holds. I'm sure it's helping that those around me have managed to stay (at least outwardly) calm too, for which I'm grateful.

I think I watched one movie last week, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. I'll update this if I recall its name, but that goes to show how tired I've been recently :/. I played some Mass Effect over the weekend. I'm now 2 achievements away from finishing that up, then I get to move onto Mass Effect 2 (or perhaps the backlog of games that's stacked up on the shelf, I haven't quite decided yet). Otherwise I've mainly been working and trying to acclimate to the new schedule (by staying awake).

Update: The movie was Black Sheep starring Chris Farley and David Spade.

I AM Smiling

By Alan Hinchcliffe on March 6, 2010 3:56 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
I watched Black Dynamite again last night. It's still very awesome. I wasn't anywhere near as tired this time so I picked up more references and jokes than the first time I watched it. I also watched most of the behind the scenes material included on the Bluray. A very enjoyable movie indeed.

Earlier in the week I watched Stickmen. It's a New Zealand movie and was released in 2001. I somehow completely missed it until now. It was a pretty cool movie. I did spend a bit of time laughing at the NZ accent. It's been a while since I've really heard it (I don't get many chances to be exposed to it over here and neither Paul or myself have a pronounced accent any more).

I also watched Conan the Barbarian. I honestly can't remember the last time I watched it but it  must be over 15 years ago easily. It's still a fun movie and very quotable. It seems the UK DVD is cut (in one obvious place at least), but it's not as bad as Commando - so I don't feel the need to import a copy from the US.

Oh. *That* Server Move.

By Alan Hinchcliffe on March 1, 2010 10:35 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
So, as I was heading to bed on Saturday night, I had a thought. "Wow, tomorrow is the last day of February... Wasn't there something I was supposed to do before March?". At which point I started freaking out because I had completely forgotten to finish that server move I mentioned back in December. I basically moved this site over and called it a day apparently. 

To add the challenge, I was moving to a much smaller machine (500GB HDD down to 16GB storage) so I couldn't just move everything across and worry about it later (dealing with the subsequent downtime when the machine was switched off) as it simply wouldn't fit. There were a couple of big sites as well as backups and files I was storing temporarily (some from 2007, temporarily indeed) for which I needed to find a solution. 

Ultimately, the solution became taking some sites offline and a judicious use of rm (and occasional sprinkling of rm -rf), but I managed to get it all moved over. I also noticed that Linode had just opened in a London datacenter. So I moved my VPS from Newark to there at the same time. It's much more responsive when working on the server now.

I watched Black Dynamite on Bluray over the weekend. I thought it was an absolutely brilliant movie. I was concerned the trailer represented the best (funniest) parts of the movie, but the whole thing was consistently hilarious. It felt like Shaft meets The Naked Gun. It's ridiculous, but that's the whole point. I also finished up my play through of Mass Effect on Insane difficulty (just a few more achievements to go!).  I went out and played some pool on Friday night. On Saturday night some friends came around and played Rock Band 2. It was generally a pretty full weekend, although I definitely could have done without the server move.
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