Just a small update to let you readers know that I am indeed on Twitter and can be followed on:

http://www.twitter.com/NokkonWud

I’m fairly active on it as it’s open all the time, so feel free to follow me, send me a message and I’ll almost certainly follow you back. It’s just an easier way to stay in touch with what I’m up to etc…

If you’re looking to get into Twitter yourself, it really couldn’t be easier. Register at Twitter.com and download a client to use, my two favourites would be TweetDeck and Twhirl, both of which require Adobe Air to install, so go install it and follow the latest trend.

Thanks,

Karl.

I’ve recently just read a book by Steig Larsson, the first of what has been called the ‘Millenium Trilogy’, below is a synopsis of the story.

A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue.

It’s about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.

It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age—and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it—who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism—and an unexpected connection between themselves.

It’s a contagiously exciting, stunningly intelligent novel about society at its most hidden, and about the intimate lives of a brilliantly realized cast of characters, all of them forced to face the darker aspects of their world and of their own lives.

It’s really an excellent book which starts off a little deep but soon becomes, for lack of a better word, unputdownable, and features some of the best realisation of characters I’ve read in a long, long time. The story is rich, deep (incredibly so) and multi-tiered, and the book just keeps on going through a 500 page web of intrigue, the end result of which was to purchase the second book of the trilogy the second the book was closed. Highly recommended.

Sorry for the short review, I’ll try to expand on it later, it was put up quickly for someone.

Can’t believe it’s been 3 whole months since I last posted on my blog, it doesn’t seem that way, but sadly it is. I figured it was time to give a little update and try to get back in the swing of things here.

Firstly, I’ve been quite busy, I’ve begun working on a Left 4 Dead modification back in February which is still very early in it’s days called Dead Safe, which is a take on 28 Days Later in that it’s based around London, or Capital City as it will be called, but will feature obvious landmarks from the city to make it recognizeable. The modifications website can be seen at http://www.deadsafemod.com/ and it’s currently taking on staff if you’re interested. It’s quite an ambitious project which is being led by a group of industry professionals from the UK.

I’ve also joined work on another modification, this time on the Unreal Engine as part of the ‘Make Something Unreal‘ competition that is run annually on a modification called Prometheus, which fortunately just won the phase 2 heat and is now in need of new, clean models with nice textures, which is where I come in. I’m about to begin quite an intense bout of modelling to try and push some stuff out for this in the coming weeks where I will be taking my PC to a friends house and working alongside him to get more work done and try to maintain a level of consistency between models. There is currently a playable beta available.

Other than that I’ve been trying to enjoy myself as best as possible, getting some games done such as Resident Evil 5, which is a hoot, a review by my friend Jennifer over at HalyCopter can be read which pretty much shares my views on the game in it’s entirety as we played the game through co-operatively. The review can be read here.

UFC Undisputed has also been in my console a lot lately and it’s a fantastic game, though does suffer from some fundemental online gameplay mechanics where people can quit after being beaten and not suffer the defeat which also stops the winner getting the victory, resulting in people quitting to dashboard as soon as they get knocked/tapped out. As a game, it’s very accomplished, the stand up element to it is competitive with Fight Night Round 3 in terms of standard, but also features the best ground wrestling game yet seen on consoles, resulting in a two-for-one standard of game. On top of this the character models are possibly the best yet seen and all feature very nice animation. As a game it’s quite hard to fault, it has a lot of modes, a solid online mode, great graphics and a solid achievement list, barring the online quitting, the only aspect that could do with work would be the career mode which could have more involvement with the player when it comes to training, something to the standard of FNR3 for example where you take part in the training regime as opposed to simply choosing to train Strength/Speed/Stamina and having it done for you.

I’ve recently purchased Star Ocean: The Last Hope and Sacred 2, both of which were less than £18, which is bargain tastic, and I hope to give them a good going over in the near future. I’ve only had a chance to try Star Ocean so far and the impressions are good. The graphics themselves aren’t fantastic and the characters follow every JRPG cliche you can think of, the story isn’t anything near the standard Square Enix are capable of and it probably isn’t as immediately impressive as Lost Odyssey, but the fighting gameplay mechanics in battles is certainly a fresh approach to a stale arena and a welcome change.

Fuel, the new massive open space racing game from Codemasters is the other game I’ve dabbled with and it really is quite awe inspiring. It has a widely publicised gameplay arena of 5,000 square miles, although I’m not sure how that’s been worked out… It’s a pretty game with a daylight system which has a beautiful array of colours where you get Oranges, pinks, reds, purples and blues amongst your standard day and night which is a truly nice touch. It has plenty of race modes and even a freeroam mode which is playable both online and off where you can drive and find ‘hidden’ things on the landscape such as vehicle liveries, vista spots or further races to compete in. There is also a rather impressive ‘create-a-race’ mode, not so much in what you can create, by that it’s simply a point to point checkpoint race where you drop markers on the map and go, it’s actually a bit too simple and the ability to add some crazier stuff would have been nice, but it’s impressive in its scale, you can create a race with a maximum distance of 93 miles(!) to race online with if you wished, and considering it’s quite hard to stay above 70mph, you’re looking at quite a length of race.

Other than games I’ve been doing the usual, playing sports with friends where I play 5-a-side every Wednesday and Sunday which is nice as both games are with completely different groups of people. Playing Snooker where I’ve totally sucked ass lately which has put a bit of a downer on things and simply hanging around with friends, which is always fun.

It’s also Big Brother season which means you can either embrace it and try to enjoy it, or try to ignore seeing it advertised on TV, live streams on TV, news on the Web and on the cover of every paper for the next 12 or so weeks. I’ve decided that this year I’m gonna embrace it. It should be made more interesting by the constant open conversations of it through Twitter which I’m using more and more now, I can still be found here for anyone wishing to follow me.

Ahhh, it genuinely feels nice to have added an update to this blog, especially one that’s just surpassed 1,000 words, it brings back memories. I’ll try to get a constant supply of posts up much, much closer together.

Thanks,
Karl.

I’m sure you’ve noticed a lack of activity over on my blog, I’m not being ignorant, this is because after being a little confused over the usage of Twitter, which I signed up to back in 2008, I’ve now come to understand what it’s all about and love it.

At first I was unsure how 140 character nuggets would benefit me at all, or how it different from the status posts of Facebook, but have come to realise it’s all about speed and accessibility, what would be almost pointless rambling on here become conversation on Twitter, what would take me 10 minutes on here takes seconds on Twitter etc… The blog is far from dead however, perhaps the addition of Twitter will lead me to think more carefully about what I type on my blog, give my posts more meaning and perhaps, just some thought provoking shit (as opposed to just the standard version).

I’ve heard two very good quotes regarding Twitter in a matter of days, firstly “Facebook is for all the people you used to know, Twitter is for the people you’ll come to know” by fellow forum poster, Garp, and secondly “loves Twitter .. it’s the best part of Facebook without a load of tits from Uni and Redcar as my ‘friends’” from my good friend, counter-strike legend and DJ Oscars nemesis, Tom ‘Kronikal’ Laverick.

So if you’re wondering where I’ve been, it’s there, Twitter, or http://www.twitter.com/NokkonWud if you’re looking for a direct link. Feel free to follow.

As many of you will know, I play football every Wednesday night and have done so for over a year now. I’m not the most skillful of players, nor one of the fastest (some of the players are scary fast), but make up for it in effort, tackling and passing, but this past week when making a block from a shot I my ankle cracked and an intense pain and heat formed in my foot. The result is this:

As you can see, it’s all bruised and swollen considerably (and on the night it was about 2-3 times worse, Ice worked wonders.

As Harry Redknapp is famous for muttering, it’s now Manchester Uniteds time to be down to the bare-bones with no less than almost a full Premiership challenging XI out injured, the latest being 4 injuries at the midweek Derby Carling Cup game. Having recently gaining the top spot in the Premier League after failing to set the world alight this season we have now been reduced to a squad of players playing out of position, the latest victims being my favourite player, Anderson, out for 3 weeks with an ankle injury (it was originally suspected to be broken and despite this, Anderson played on the last 5 minutes), Jonny Evans, like Anderson with an ankle injury, again for 3 weeks, Nani is out with a groin strain for 1 week (though knowing him, it’ll probably be a month) and Rafael has a hamstring tweak, so that’s 3 weeks minimum.

Those players now join Wes Brown, Owen Hargreaves, Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, Patrice Evra and Ji-Sung Park as sidelined players, a total of 10 players, if we had a goalkeeper out injured you would literally have a team who could even compete for the Premier League injured. Now more than ever we need Berbatov to start shining, along with Tevez and Ronaldo and as long as Vidic remains fit we will have someone who will fight for everything at the back.

January into February could be a gruelling few weeks, though we may get to see more of young James Chester and Rafael’s twin brother, Fabio. Sadly, at the one time this season Anderson was almost guaranteed a solid run of games he gets injured, so we have to keep putting up with Darren Fletcher in the middle of the park. The only real highlight is that we do have some truly key players still fit in Tevez, Ronaldo, Carrick, Vidic and Van Der Sar, the latter two of which are crucial as we’ve seen in the past when we’ve lost them to injuries.

Every year I try to, but often forget, to list my favourite things about the previous year from my areas of interest, sadly I lack any form of conistency, but after originally posting this on Jan 1st then removing it to add more detail, I don’t have the time, nor inclination to write up my reasons, although that may change in the future. Sorry about the awful layout too :(.

Below are a selection of personal opinions on the best of 2008 in the area’s I’m interested in with honourable mentions. Hope you enjoy.

(Click to read more…)

Well, little bit of spring cleaning, my overly ridiculous catagories list has been shrunk down to a more manageable size and posts have been edited to have the correct and more often, less tags than they originally had.

That is all.

Last night I watched the newest movie in the challenge list, the new Darren Aronofsky movie, The Wrestler featuring Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei. It revolves around legendary wrestler Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson, once one of the biggest stars in Wrestling, as he works the Independent wrestling circuit as a near-retired wrestler who still holds his own against the up-and-comers of the industry but whose heart is struggling to take the strain of competitive matches.

Seperated from his wife, no friends and a daughter he never saw grow up, played by Evan Rachel Wood, his performance is both fragile and powerful in equal measure but without the sentimentality and fakeness that is usually the mainstay of American movie making. Aronofsky’s The Wrestler takes direction as an almost documentary approach through Rourke’s life as Randy The Ram, leading the viewer believing they are living his life with him and are often left hanging on to every word. The direction is certainly a highlight of this movie, never has professional wrestling looked so real with scenes so gritty and real looking it’s sure to draw a grimace or two whilst keeping the integrity and no doubt, appreciation from professional wrestlers and fans alike.

Mickey Rourke’s performance is sure to land him an Oscar nomination for a powerful, heartbreakingly real performance he deserves all the accolades that have been thrown at him for his portral of ‘The Ram’ in this movie.

If I enjoy every movie on the list as much as I enjoyed The Wrestler than I am due for a real enjoyable time throughout this challenge. I recommend you see this movie.

After seeing all the talk of people having 365 challenges regarding photography over at a forum I frequent I have decided to go through with something I’ve been toying with for a while.

I’ve always enjoyed watching movies from long before I have memories, probably out of the womb. I used to watch Disney movies religiously as a child and quickly moved onto movies of all kinds not long after, not because it was cool to watch 15 or 18 rated movies long before I was old enough according to the government to view them, but because I wanted to. I’m now 24, 25  next week and still watch movies, although not the numbers that I used to, regular readers of this blog will know that the majority of my viewing time is steered towards watching TV shows, my major vice, and too many times my friends have stood aghast when I state that “I haven’t seen it” to whatever movie they are discussing, probably surprised knowing that I used to watch so many.

So on we get to the point of this challenge, my goal is to watch the top 250 movies according to the movie mecca IMDb.com. My chance to finally see those movies I’ve never seen but always wanted to like Raging Bull, Psycho and The Apartment, but also gives me a push to see those that I would happily ignore like Casablanca and Singin’ In The Rain.

Over on the right menu is a link to the 2009 Challenge where you can keep constant updates on my progress with all movies seen being highlighted and the number seen stated above the list. I also hope to do weekly, or most likely, monthly updates on what I’ve seen and what I thought regarding them (time allowing). I’ve already heard some state they don’t think it’s possible but the challenge also allows for 115 days off if I were to watch 1 a night.