Thursday, February 28, 2013

Zoning out

Watched Argo the other night. It was pretty good. I have vague memories of the hostage crisis. We lived in PA at the time and one of the hostages was local so my third grade class wrote them letters. A couple of the kids and I got to deliver them one night. So it was pretty interesting to learn about this other aspect of the situation.

Braved a blizzard to watch McK at her archery tournament. It was fun. Except for the blizzard part.

Finished reading Gun Machine by Warren Ellis. I liked it quite a bit. Nice quirky police procedural. Some of the characters were pretty fun.

Haven't managed a game of All Creatures Big and Small since we got the expansion. Mostly because life has been far too hectic in the evenings. And when we do have time I'd rather sleep. So very tired...

I have far too many movies to watch at the moment. And about half of them are of the horror variety. Heh.

How is it basically March already?

Oh and apparently March 30th is Tabletop Day. At least according to Wil Wheaton.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Frogblast the vent core

This will be very short.

Stuff: I have watched it.

Other stuff: I have read it.

Still more stuff: I have played it.

I will mention one thing specifically. If you have an ipod/phone/pad and some friends with access to those devices as well you really need to be playing Space Team. Because it is brilliant. Instant good time. Far too much of it was played over the weekend.

Also, thoughts go out to all the folks affected by the 1up layoffs. I found the site as I followed Jeremy Parish's musings on video games. The podcast was a staple of my morning commute. (And I still listen to Weekend Confirmed which is hosted by 1up alum Garnett Lee) I hope everyone affected lands on their feet.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

This is the spooky holiday right?

It's not? Hmm. Well that's too bad because I'm going to briefly comment on Paranormal Activity 4. At this point you either like the series or you don't. This particular iteration was not as creepy as 3, but not as slow as 2. It offered a decent amount of lore for the series, so that was nice. And there were indeed some nice creepy moments. So it gets a "yeah, it's good" from me. Lovely wife merely commented that it wasn't too scary. Guess I'll have to try harder. In spite of her recent comments that we've seen an awful lot of scary movies lately. I blame release schedules.

I also finished Revenge, 11 Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa. It was an interesting series of interlocking short stories that dealt with various and sundry slightly off kilter characters and plots. I liked it even if it made my head hurt.

McK has joined the ranks of the glasses wearing set. Like myself. And pretty much my entire family. Some would say she was doomed. But she doesn't seem to mind. In fact she was a little perturbed that she didn't get more comments on them the first day she wore them. Good on her.

Sounds like littlest sis has managed to complete both seasons of Haven that are currently out on DVD. Now she gets to wait with the rest of us to see what happens next. She too was less than thrilled with that season cliffhanger. Show needs to be on Netflix.

We have acquired Space Cadets as a somewhat belated Christmas gift from sis-in-law. It's a co-operative game where each person is responsible for a station on a starship and has to play a mini-game to achieve goals for that station. It has a timed element that adds to the tension and sounds pretty fun. Will certainly take a bit to play with a new group as you try to explain the roles, but I think once it gets going it should be pretty good.

Thursday, February 07, 2013

I drank what?

I finished reading Hemlock Grove last night. I picked it up partially because I heard Netflix was turning it into a show and I thought the premise sounded interesting. It's a literary-ish horror novel with some rather unique takes on archetypal horror icons (vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein's monster, etc.). Honestly the story tends to fall on the confusing side of things, but there are some pretty fascinating bits to it. I think I'll check the show out when it becomes available.

Jack Reacher was pretty good. I think I'll have to read some of those books now. I've been meaning to for a while, but this may give me the push I finally needed.

The Total Recall remake was ... interesting. The plot manages to be kind of different while still hitting all the notes of the original. Weird.