Weekly Round Up

Murder at Avelon Hill – This is the podcast I have been listening to since I finished my last audiobook. This is a pretty good book found it on Podiobook so you can look it up there or on the author’s website.

It is a sword and magic fantasy with a whodunit twist. It has like 42 chapters and is quite long and intricate I’m maybe a third of the way through but it is definitely holding my attention. Unlike most podcast novels it features a huge array of voices lots of fellow writers have come together to help him and it works perfectly. I recommend it if you’re a dungeons and dragons or an avid reader/watcher of Agatha Christie.

Relentless by Dean Koontz
I’m a massive fan of Dean Koontz I always wondered why he got killed that time on Family Guy. His stories tend to feature strong women and psychopathic killers as well as a fair bit of supernatural phenomena. I won’t reveal the plot because once you know the premise it basically becomes a bit spoilery.

It is a great read or listen depending on how you consume your books and I guess it helps with the wait for the next instalment of the Odd Thomas series which I can’t wait to get my hands on.

Alex Rider – Crocodile Tears
That is the name of the title of course I left out the author name. I have yet to finish it but I think I am maybe on the penultimate chapter. I’m not sure if it is as good as past efforts to be honest but it is still a decent read. I thought the last book was the end of the Alex Rider story but it continues it is just hard to believe how little time has passed in the timeline to leave Alex still so young.

Facebook is really annoying

Why is it that people think that there way of thinking of something is the only way. That their description or definition of a given situation, word or phrase is the only one available on this wide world of ours. This for me is one of the reasons at least while I get into arguments with random people and acquaintances.

I'm guilty of it too I suppose but to a lesser degree as to be fair I am usually the one trying to let people in to the other side of the argument. Facebook is ... well I am beginning to hate it. Just seems to be a place for being nasty to people and getting away with it. Randomly deleting you from their list, kicking off with epic arguments over nothing really.

But enough with the negative let us roll with some good news.

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Legend of the Seeker - Excellent fantasy adventure series got through the 1st season and left me chomping at the bit for more. Think of a more serious Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, there are some laughs but nowhere near as many as the aforementioned show. the character development is awesome and really makes you believe some thought went into each characters motivations and the change in their personality that these events have on them throughtout the show.

Did you check the last Heroes episode and by last I mean as they air in the US it was something else for those who are used to watching the show. Some different and something good I think.

Why only idiots like me play MMORPGs

[This will reference World of Warcraft a lot]

There are many things to consider and I will attempt to raise a few here :

Paying monthly in order to essentially gamble on the ability to perform your role in a situation i.e. running a heroic dungeon once a day over and over in an attempt to have an item “drop” then having to gamble against anyone else who wants that item whether or not it is designed for their class/role.

Having to take your chances in dungeons with people you know nothing about. And before you say just go with your guild or people you know, you have to PUG it to get those precious Emblems of Frost which due to everyone’s obsession with gear score means you won’t be getting access to them any other way.

Playing in a recommended server that suffers from a distinct lack of the opposing faction and a general player base that could be described as below average. By general player base I mean the ones not taken by the top progressive guilds, more the ones available to the aforementioned PUG system.

UPDATE: On the one crappy TV night where I can dedicate some more time to changing the role of one of my characters they decided to have an off schedule shut down and maintenance.

This is why I have gone back to reading as many books as possible.

This time of year

Always gets me down to be honest it is the end of the year and what do I have to show for it. Well in some corner of my desk covered with paperwork there are some rejection letters well a few probably more in e-mail form and the vast majority are just those that never respond.

Now I just have to try and get a hold of myself so I can move on and keep grinding away for a job so wish me luck on that front. Got a few leads to chase up but it tends to get RATHER quiet right after Christmas.

Still got Internet access and a few TV shows to keep me entertained things could be much worse. Electricity here too and that is nothing to be sniffed at.

On a lighter note tasty snacks are now available from Blockbuster I have personally tasted them to verify this.

Here we are again folks

So I would say I’m a writer but not in such a way that I could derive a living from it or something. If you offered me a job writing for a manga/anime or video game magazine I would bite your hand off, unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a niche for a magazine purely about American TV as a culture form not here in the UK at least I feel that there should be. So with time on my hands and a desperate need to keep the mind active lest it stop and I can never get it started again I write some stories and author some blogs like this.

As well as writing stories I also spend time on community style websites in the past you could always catch me on TV.com either writing up reviews for Smallville or endlessly complaining about the state of Heroes after the 1st season. Now I have moved on to the Starkville Forums specifically the Heroes episodic forums. I try to be insightful in my posts there and if I find something I dislike which does happen I try to explain why I don’t like it instead of just saying oh that is rubbish. So that was a little about me and writing check back sometime for more stuff.



[Edit: Random drunk girl started to hit on me while I was walking home. That sort of stuff never happens to me it was very strange, very strange indeed. Still it is nice to be noticed even if the person noticing you can't stand up straight.]

Women and the cold cold night

The nights are indeed getting cold and as they are I find myself thinking about the ladies (not said like ladeeeeeeezzz) just the female species I guess. Lately I have been regularly trying to improve my social situation through some pre-dating attempts. I've been trying to organise some but have failed mightily it seems. Still you can't give up so we have to keep on going.

My fingers are cold too poor for central heating it seems which brings us to job searches. It gets a bit quiet onthe job front in December as if it was not already quiet enough. So job related rant of the post, applied online for Christmas jobs at a popular mobile phone shop went through registering on their site jumped all their hoops and what not, and what do I get no response whatsoever. Things should be more equal and people should not be made to feel like cannon fodder if I have to spend 15-20 mins to apply for a job and those are the short ones then people advertising the post should respond to those people who are qualified for the job even to say no you did not get it. That is what HR is for surely?

Been a long time

As the American holidays roll in like Thanksgiving and then on to Christmas, so then does a lot of what I consider to be quality TV takes a holiday with major US TV shows like Smallville, Heroes, V and the like. Of course you could say you still have top British TV like Merlin and Misfits to watch but it is not enough and let us face it Merlin is dire and Misfits is nothing special. I have been checking out Paradox on the Iplayer and that is ok I guess but I feel it is more thriller than science fiction which at first it seems to claim to be. There is also Spooks, which is pretty strong, this season and one of the few British programs I have seen that can never be described as predictable although it got rid of my favourite character.

As I write this scratching around for ideas I find myself watching tennis Philipoussis is playing if you are interested. The laptop I am writing on my original one is coughing and spluttering under the weight of the mighty Word 2k, which tells me, it is definitely on its last legs. Going to have to find myself a job soon recently my shoes failed which was a bit embarrassing to say the least.

To add to my list of silly mistakes guess who forgot to reup their World of Warcraft Gamecard, as soon as it came up saying you only have 1 minute left of game time I had a facepalm moment. Unfortunately the bills have been stacking up and they have to be paid first don’t need to be getting into serious debt problems again took me over 2 years to get out of the last ones and they caused nothing but pain and stress.