Weekend round-up
I can't honestly remember what I did on Friday evening, other than I know it was an early night after a few glasses of wine and some episodes of American Dad.
The wine and wind-down was needed. It had been a long week of arriving early and staying late at work as, in my car-deprived state, I had to wait to catch lifts with some very busy colleagues who live in my direction. I was also cheesed off at an impromptu decision, reached on Friday afternoon, to reshuffle the studio layout. While the designers got to stay where they were (and have their area repainted), the 3 copywriters were "demoted" downstairs into the area I unaffectionately refer to as The Dungeon. I can understand the decision for space reasons, and can think of no better alternative, but I don't think splitting up the "creatives" is healthy at all. When I started at the company I was in the Dungeon and I hated the sense of isolation it produced. So all I want now is my Christmas break!
Anyway, early on Saturday morning I flattened what remained of my Christmas shopping. Afterwards, we headed up to Ballito (probably the only part of the Natal Coast where it wasn't raining on Saturday!) to celebrate my great-uncle's 80th birthday. Seeing as this portion of the family fled Zimbabwe as the shit started hitting the fan, there were quite a few ex-Zimbos at the party. Many actually seem to have relocated to sleepy coastal towns in Natal. Anyway, someone at the party actually produced this tragically amusing bank note from the land of their birth - I don't think this is even worth R5, or 50 American cents:
It was quite late when we eventually got home, but for some reason culinary inspiration seized us and we decided to make pizza from scratch. I think we ended up eating at 10:30pm, but it was worth it. This was our pineapple, bacon and olive creation. Yum, yum!
After such a busy Saturday, Sunday was a chance to just unwind and enjoy a few personal pleasures. After religiously working towards my epic flying mount in World of WarCraft for the past few weeks, I finally got back to questing on the new continent - and reached Level 72 in the process. The bf meanwhile had acquired 2 new PC games over the past week - Fallout 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV - and decided to try them out.
Fallout 3 looked jaw-droppingly beautiful, and I was very impressed with what I saw, from the nice touch of the "growing up" tutorial sequence, to the design of the post-Apocalyptic world you're finally released into. The bf started with a warrior-type character, but after finding himself the enemy of a whole settlement (despite having saved a child kidnapped by cannibals) he restarted the game with a more agile, stealthy character.
As for GTA IV, at the time of writing this, the bf has yet to play a single second of the game. You see, what with the online registration, 120MB of compulsory patch downloads, and the Settings software refusing to let him play the game at anything more than a 800x600 resolution, well, he lost interest. And he's a hardcore GTA devotee!
GTA IV is a horribly sloppy console-to-PC port. And personally I think this move to over-regulation, control and registration is an attempt by publishers to irritate PC gamers until they migrate to console gaming. I really have no patience for this shit.
Anyway, we rounded off Sunday watching V for Vendetta again. Man, how I love this film. It loses some of its momentum towards the end, but if you're in a rebellious, anti-authority mood, it's fantastic entertainment. It also helps that, along with Children of Men, the distopian future the film presents is disturbingly credible.
Ah, I must really get my paws on the Alan Moore graphic novel on which it is based.
The wine and wind-down was needed. It had been a long week of arriving early and staying late at work as, in my car-deprived state, I had to wait to catch lifts with some very busy colleagues who live in my direction. I was also cheesed off at an impromptu decision, reached on Friday afternoon, to reshuffle the studio layout. While the designers got to stay where they were (and have their area repainted), the 3 copywriters were "demoted" downstairs into the area I unaffectionately refer to as The Dungeon. I can understand the decision for space reasons, and can think of no better alternative, but I don't think splitting up the "creatives" is healthy at all. When I started at the company I was in the Dungeon and I hated the sense of isolation it produced. So all I want now is my Christmas break!
Anyway, early on Saturday morning I flattened what remained of my Christmas shopping. Afterwards, we headed up to Ballito (probably the only part of the Natal Coast where it wasn't raining on Saturday!) to celebrate my great-uncle's 80th birthday. Seeing as this portion of the family fled Zimbabwe as the shit started hitting the fan, there were quite a few ex-Zimbos at the party. Many actually seem to have relocated to sleepy coastal towns in Natal. Anyway, someone at the party actually produced this tragically amusing bank note from the land of their birth - I don't think this is even worth R5, or 50 American cents:
It was quite late when we eventually got home, but for some reason culinary inspiration seized us and we decided to make pizza from scratch. I think we ended up eating at 10:30pm, but it was worth it. This was our pineapple, bacon and olive creation. Yum, yum!
After such a busy Saturday, Sunday was a chance to just unwind and enjoy a few personal pleasures. After religiously working towards my epic flying mount in World of WarCraft for the past few weeks, I finally got back to questing on the new continent - and reached Level 72 in the process. The bf meanwhile had acquired 2 new PC games over the past week - Fallout 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV - and decided to try them out.
Fallout 3 looked jaw-droppingly beautiful, and I was very impressed with what I saw, from the nice touch of the "growing up" tutorial sequence, to the design of the post-Apocalyptic world you're finally released into. The bf started with a warrior-type character, but after finding himself the enemy of a whole settlement (despite having saved a child kidnapped by cannibals) he restarted the game with a more agile, stealthy character.
As for GTA IV, at the time of writing this, the bf has yet to play a single second of the game. You see, what with the online registration, 120MB of compulsory patch downloads, and the Settings software refusing to let him play the game at anything more than a 800x600 resolution, well, he lost interest. And he's a hardcore GTA devotee!
GTA IV is a horribly sloppy console-to-PC port. And personally I think this move to over-regulation, control and registration is an attempt by publishers to irritate PC gamers until they migrate to console gaming. I really have no patience for this shit.
Anyway, we rounded off Sunday watching V for Vendetta again. Man, how I love this film. It loses some of its momentum towards the end, but if you're in a rebellious, anti-authority mood, it's fantastic entertainment. It also helps that, along with Children of Men, the distopian future the film presents is disturbingly credible.
Ah, I must really get my paws on the Alan Moore graphic novel on which it is based.
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