I have never known a day of my life without my dearest cat, Casper. For as far back as my memory stretches, Casper was there. As a kitten, he was brash and playful, but powerfully independent. From his first days to his last, he would disdain being picked up and cradled in anyones arms. Like an indignant child he would squirm and writhe until he was released and allowed to stand on his own four paws. This is not to say he did not love company; Casper loved nothing more than to curl up in a warm lap at night, purring himself into a ecstatic torpor. While aloof and seemingly uncaring, Casper consumed affection like a fire consumes air. Gorging himself on your love at any possible encounter, he could redefine gluttony in but an hour of your time.

As an old cat, he lost his left eye and most of the vision in his right. The impairment slowed him down as much as a bullet being fired through damp rice paper. Like the proverbial “grumpy old man”, he would never miss a chance to remind you that he was there, howling and crying louder than anyone could possibly imagine whenever he wanted something.

In his final days, he stopped eating or drinking. He lost his omnipresent voice to a hoarse sigh, and his stiff joints dragged him aimlessly from room to room. Lost, dehydrated and in pain, I simply couldn’t bear to watch him suffer. The Vetenarian claimed he had only hours left to him, and I knew that for him, this would simply be one drawn out agonising ordeal. My family and I made the hard decision to end his suffering; the hardest order I have ever been forced to give to anyone. Holding Casper as he took his last shuddering breath will forever haunt me as the most foul and despicable act I have committed. I felt a dirty great stain on my hands that I will never completely be rid of, and the permanent knot in my stomach reminds me of it every time the hour hand circumscribes the dozen judges that look down on me from the wall.

My hat sits upon my breast and I will always remember him fondly.

I will raise a stone for all to see;

A rune carved to his memory.

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photo credit: Midnight-digital

I have been told many times that my lifestyle is a brooding monolith on the corner of Hedonist Ave and Obsessive-Compulsive Blvd. The sustainability of such a lifestyle has been debated at length; I maintain it justifies the mindless hours lost behind the event horizon of the heartless singularity that is customer service. Sure, spending 4 hours changing soft-returns to hard-carriages a 26 000 word document can be perceived as obsessive-compulsive; having an intricate zombie plan can be percieved as crazy, but we all have one. Personally my Zombie Plan involves a certain well fortified building with supplies, near a mechanical workshop and a readily available supply of chemicals. Of course, I can’t divulge anymore for security reasons, and my meager fortress can only sustain a manageable number of zombie-plague refugees. In case of emergencies, however, there is a quickly accesable bag of clothes and equipment should the Zombies catch me at a moment of weakness in my ever vigilant stand. This, however, is not the point.

Hypothetical Me is confronted with two products or services; one of a high quality with a matching pricetag, and the other its inverse. Hypothetical Me doesn’t hesitate to spend the extra dollar, and feels justified in doing so. I concur wholeheartedly with my hypothetical doppleganger, of whom I now feel needs a name. This is not to say I will squander my earnings on pointless lavishness. Comfort where comfort is due should not be seen as a sin. However it should be pointed out that with a premium product comes premium service. A case example at hand, my leather jacket by Sinikka. A $500 pricetag adorned its sleeve, extravagant for someone on a student income, however the value is in the lifetime service from the store. One button thread came loose four months after purchase, and upon my return to the store, the friendly leatherworker removed the rotten cotton (I hear a song title there) and replaced the button while I waited. I should note that he also did this to the exclusion of other customers entering the store. I thanked him and within 10 minutes I was on my merry way, freshly stiched fasteners and all. Should a customer come to myself or my colleague at my work and purchase a couple of $2000 DSLR Cameras, we are more than happy to go out of our way to track down an obscure lens for them at zero profit for us. Head on over to Headphonic in West Leederville and you will be amazed at the fantastic service you are immediately presented with. A staff member will walk you through your needs and custom select the perfect audio device for you, making sure you trial it first and are happy with the choice. Why? Because it is a premium headphone store. You spend $600 on a set of AKG 701’s, but you come away knowing that you now possess exactly what it was you wanted. Again, I digress.

I love boxsets. There, the words have been given form and now roam free in the ether. I have been recommended to experts in the field, and common concensus is that I have something akin to bibliomania. I maintain, however, that I just really like them. The words Collectors Edition and Limited Print drive my blood into a wild frenzy that threatens to boil out of my very pores. I simply cannot pass up a chance to own something as beautiful as the leather-bound Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide. Their silver etched pages and gilded edges sparkl in the dim light of a dungeon crawl, as if their brilliant display was put on specially just for me. Deluxe Ghosts I-IV sits in a large matte-black box, standing resolute against the feable attempts of photons to reflect off its surface. Thrice I own Nightwish’s Once, each a different special release. Opeth’s discography graces my drawers in its entirety twice over, myriad limited editions and re-releases scattered in their midst. In more recent days, I hunted down the last collectors edition of Warhammer: The Age of Reckoning from a small warehouse in Towoomba! The harrowind ordeal of nearly being unable to attain a copy left me a broken shell of a man, cradled only in the warm glow of hope and determination.

What brings this bout of self-convincing revelry you may ask? I am in the middle of my fourth year exams at Curtin University and sitting next to me are a disgusting pile of collectors editions of games that I can’t touch until next week! The pain of having Fallout 3 so close to my body, yet so far away in time is simply agonising!

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Like a gift from the High Heavens, a blessed angel came unto me with news. “Hark,” sayeth he, “for I bring tidings of joy.”

“Angel,” I cry, “What blessed enlightenment do you bring this humble hermit”

The room filled with light as his hood slipped back. Phantasmal wings wrapped about my being and cradled me close to his breast. Tyrael’s love buffeted my soul like a hot wind, bringing such ecstacy and clarity unto my soul. The beat of a heart and he was gone. I was alone, my only companion; his last words as they echoed through my skull. Echoes of my past.

Like magpies to loose aluminium foil, I bought this as soon as I saw it. A legacy of games that defined my youth, recorded by one of the most prestigious orchestral contingents this country has borne in the last decade. Who can pass this up? Not I, that is for sure. The stack of Collectors Edition boxes of recent releases that is sitting next to me is a testament to the unhealthy obsession I have with these entities. I can’t play a single one of them until my final exam has come to its inevitable soul destroying close, however that is a story for tomorrow. Or probably “today” seeing as how it is 0300 and all.

Please, if you know what is good for you, then read up the Echoes of War Blog while you are at it. Legendary editions are limited to one printing only.

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photo credit: Stuck in Customs

For those not in the know, I am talking about this; which is explained really well by this.

So I took the plunge and installed Google’s Chrome onto my laptop. I plan on using it for a month or two exclusively until a) I can decisively say that it is better or worse than Firefox, or b) I come across a feature that it is lacking that is vital to my everyday use of the intarwebs. In the event of either, I don’t see myself switching to Chrome exclusively for the remainder of my days; one possible outcome is using it to suppliment firefox. You must understand that this has become a competitive market that inspires competition and imitation between platforms; Mozilla and Microsoft are bound to start taking on aspects of Chrome within the next major release of each browser.

This all harkens back to that Web 2.0 bullshit that we got force fed in the last couple of years. While I don’t subscribe to the wankery of deeper connections and words becoming more powerful than their combined meanings, etc and so forth; the web browser literally has become more and more like an OS. With sites like youtube and gmail (and hotmail before it), not to mention the multitude of filesharing sites with “vitual storage”, the humble web browser has become less of a document reader and more of a doorway to a unified cloud computer. Google Documents has allowed me to write and collaberate with colleagues at University with almost 100% zero hastles; making sure your MS Office versions are compatible with another person’s before you can show him your .pps is a thing of antiquity when juxtaposed to this concept.

Before I leap headfirst into a gargantuan discourse on cloud computing, however, I will reign in my blathering and return to the titular topic. After a weeks worth of Chroming (hehehe…get it?) I can say with confidence that we are looking at a very interesting change in web browsing. While I love the extra realestate offered by Chrome’s GUI, I do sometimes find myself sorely missing some identifiers: the script icon bottom right, the page status bottom left, and the ubiquitous bookmark toolbar my cursor so often caresses with clockwork frequency. I do however feel wholly empowered with the threading of tabs; a working marvel in its own right. The mechanics behind the url-bar’s increased versatility could also prove to be a big winner, as soon as I shed my ingrained Mozillian habits…

More to come as I delve deeper into this virtual haptic browsing experience.

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photo credit: zyphichore

What a week; Perth was recently graced with the third coming of Opeth, my new laptop arrived and I finally laid claim to my very own Velociraptor. So, before these words start clambering over one another in a furious rush to the front of the sentence, here is a synopsis for your easy viewing pleasure.

A most fantastic performance by both the old and new members of the band. Their deliverance (no pun! honest!) was impeccable and the raw emotion of the concert was tantalising. Åkerfeldt sported a Conan the Barbarian shirt which brought a smile to my face. In quite a few interviews he has mentioned his love for games, and while im not dissilusioned enough to think he plays Age of Conan, it was still a connecting moment. Their setlist pretty much covered the “biggest” songs from each of their albums; when you have 9 albums with average song lengths of 9:23 it is hard to have good coverage in just two hours. However, it really made my day to hear Serenity Painted Death and Master’s Apprentice live, not to mention my regular favourites: Demon of the Fall, Baying of the Hounds, and Deliverance.

As always, Åkerfeld’s banter between songs was priceless and the audience really felt welcomed (except the lady with the shoe who was carted off from the D at the beginning of the concert). We got a reprise of the “Guess this riff” game that kept us entertained during the power outage in 2006, but the main feeling of the show was that of celebration; a touching testament to fantastic music. The setlist was as follows:

Heir Apparent
Master’s Apprentice
Baying of the Hounds
Serenity Painted Death
To Rid the Disease
The Lotus Eater
Bleak
Night and the Silent Water
Deliverance
Demon of the Fall
Encore: The Drapery Falls

The warmup band, Virgin Black, were another story. Once you got past the female guitarist’s epilleptic headbanging in reubato, and if you ignore the fact that the entire concert was predominantly pre-recorded and dubbed, their resulting sound is a handy segue to my next point. For a similar sound could in fact be procured from 3 velociraptors bathed in mascara and set loose in a steamworks factory. Scratch, hiss, cry; and so was borne Raptor Metal!

Western Digital released their newest 10000rpm drive not long ago, and I finally worked up the courage (read: money) to purchase one. With 16mb of cache, my 300gb drive was immediately loaded with Vista x64 and the result is nothing short of jawbreaking. I recorded the startup time of vista on a standard 300gb 5400rpm drive as comparison (which will soon make its way to youtube) and the difference is simply night and day. While installing updates, I picked up my book after hitting the Restart button. No sooner had I found my place on the page that windows was chiming for my attention. It was done and wanted to know if I was happy with the change in my Dolby output. The drive itself is only 2.5″ mounted inside a 3.5″ heatsink and is currently residing in a modified floppy disk drive bay that looks like it could have been the work of McGuyver. Looks aside, this thing is the harbinger of my doom, because I never want to buy a filthy “Common” drive again. And so it was said, and so it was done.

What does look sexy, however is the new Studio 15 laptop from Dell. I recently lost my laptop to careless hotel staff in Thailand, and needed a cheap replacement fast. I chose the Studio 15 for its size and weight, and its increadible value for money. The system set me back less than $1900 AUD and has a WLED 1400×900 lcd, backlit keyboard, 4gb ram and a 7200rpm drive. I have only just got it up and running with Vista x64, but already it is promising to be a fantastic unit. Expect a full review in the next week, after I have spent some time getting a feel for it. First impressions, though; it feels amazingly solid! Build quality like this has been sorely missing from too much these past couple of years. Each generation of DAP feels more like a Happy Meal toy than the last, and RMA’s are becoming far too frequent. The Studio 15 feels like it will stand resolute by your side through nuclear winter and out the other side.

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photo credit: Mal Cubed

Four years ago I encountered a game. It was unfinished, unpolished and buggier than Hellgate: London was at launch. To this day, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is still my number one favourite game of all time. Big call, I know, but I definitely feel it is justified. I’m not here to talk about Bloodlines, nor to lament the sad loss of the Old World of Darkness. Rather, the game introduced me to an artist by the name of Chiasm.

Emileigh Rohn, the single concussive force behind the project, wrote a song for the game called Isolated. It was to be played in one of the character hubs, and it was so powerful in it’s presence that to me the song became a character itself. After scouring the credits, I immediately hunted down this Chiasm and became a member of her street team. For several years hence, I received stickers and demo cd’s which I spread to as many friends as possible. However, one day the project seemed to fall silent, and I feared that maybe Ms Rohn’s studies in molecular biology were taking their toll on her creativity. No sooner had these thoughts propogated through the median of my mind, I was blindsided by her brand new album, Reform.

Scientist by Day
Musician by Night
Chiasm

Honestly, hit up the website and give her a listen, or ask me and I will happily show you the cd’s I own. This is just one more proof that Science is Sexy. Keep an eye out for September 1, I promise a full review and retrospective impressions of her previous albums.

Check

It

Out

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photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar

My good friend over at Response Function felt the need to justify his personal grooming habits and associated thought processes. Now, so there is no confusion from the outset, I do not share his favourite flavour re: flesh (though if I did it probably would not surprise my girlfriend). As Response Function’s author is my gym partner, one can assume we share certain days working out. In addition, my luscious locks reach the bisector of my shoulder blades, and anyone with long hair can understand that it requires more attention than your average Fridén styling. As far as scheduling dilemmas, I wash and condition my hair every second day, unless I have been swimming, in which case I wash, condition and protein treat it straight away. However, looking at his reasons, I don’t think they justify his choice of sexual appetite at all. So, in response, I present unto thee the small army that resides in my bathroom cupboard.

Pictured Above (left to right): Ear Piercing cleaning fluid atop swisspers, hair product, stress relief skin lotion, Body hair clippers with assorted attachments, Nivea sensitive skin aftershave lotion, Shaving soap applicator and Nomad shaving soap, Mach 3 razor with spare hair lackeys, different piercing balls for variable spikiness, moustache wax, DaVinci deodorant, Christian Dior “Higher Energy” and “Farenheit” colognes, Delva leave-in hair protein treatment, Joico moisturising shampoo and conditioner, Dettol handwash disinfectant, floss, Liquid and Pen eyeliner, hairbrush, Lux Gentle Loofah bodywash, Pirate bandaids, Shower mirror, Listerine (1L bottle), electric and “stealth” toothbrush.

So, there you have it. Proof that a perfectly heterosexual man can have a strict body maintenance regime without compromising his image.

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photo credit: mdezemery

For some reason the Auzentech Prelude X-Fi 7.1 soundcard always makes me think of Sarah Blasko’s Overture and the Underscore. Maybe that’s Freudian, maybe it’s the rogue soviet psychics and their mind control microwaves. The soundcard, however, is one of my favourite purchases this last financial year gone. While only hooked up to a set of Logitech’s Z-5500 5.1 speakers through the optical connection, the quality of the sound output is phenomenal. With the new Beta drivers out from Auzentech, I thought I might write some of my opinions should someone find them interesting and google manages to find me in this ocean that is the blogosphere. However, a caveat before I continue:

Sound quality as a premium niche is somewhat akin to elite wine appreciation. It is populated by complete and utter tosswanks who use more colourful words than Shakespeare himself. In principle they are reviewing sound quality and timbre, etc. You would be forgiven if you thought they were eating a delicious brownie, or smelling an orchid.

The new DTS option isn’t yet stable, and I have experienced a couple (not many) cases of weird distortions in the sound, but the caveat was on the Auzentech website so I had expected them. The question on my lips was, however, will it make a difference to the DDL that I was currently using. The answer is yes. The difference is noticeable, but will likely not knock you out of your chair. If you are using a good amp and a set of floor speakers of reputation then you will probably appreciate this difference more than I, but the fact that I could tell an improvement in sound on these high end computer speakers speaks volumes in my opinion. The main difference in sound is a broadening, or to put it visually, as if each element looked more resolved. My test was the special edition DTS DVD of Opeth’s Ghost Reveries. The strings and keys were more pronounced and Åkerfeldt’s vocals sounded clearer. I don’t want to say that I could hear his individual vocal cords vibrating, but that is the only way I can think of describing. It’s not a case of being louder or more sound, just clearer; crisper.

However, imagine my surprise when I had finished the album and put on a 128 kbps mp3 of Sweeney Todd’s soundtrack, only to find that the sound quality was much better. I guess it’s all a case of diminishing returns, but the lower bitrate being filtered through the Crystaliser (“tha bit wot maeks bad fings not sound so bad” in common person speak) actually sounded better with DTS than through DDL. Go figure. I guess the moral to this story is something along the lines of “You won’t ever know if you don’t experiment”. Which, of course, is just my retroactive excuse for breaking things by fiddling.

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photo credit: SARhounds

Before anyone attempts to correct my spelling regarding a Bravia watching Monochromatic bamboo eater, it’s a pun using homophones. I’m quite proud of this one, bear with me (Get it? Bear? Bah! amateurs). Having seen Hancock last night, and The Dark Knight a couple of days prior, the oxidised cogs in my brain were forced to start ticking over in the crude imitation of thought. Before anyone starts firing up the hate; I thought Dark Knight was one of the most amazing films of our generation. However you cannot tell me that the entire audience was beaten around the head with the whole “Sometimes a Hero has to be evil to be good” bullshit one too many times. This is where the imitation of thought comes in, and it is an imitation because there really is nothing left to think about. As if the title of the movie weren’t enough to convey the notion clearly enough, someone thought that the viewer simply wouldn’t understand the overwhelming complexity of the topic unless every lead character in the movie (and several minors) all say the same thing every seven and a half minutes.

Hancock, however, takes it up a notch. The movie seemed to be a series of catchphrases repeated ad nauseum, strung together on the worlds thinnest plot and threaded through the audiences brains with something resembling a cricket bat more than a needle. After the credits began to roll, I honestly could only sit and wonder what exactly just happened. My head was sore and any hopes I had once had for the movie lay impotent around my feet, like the remnants of a spiderweb after a hailstorm. So much potential. What happened to the concept they originally showed us? A fallen superhero, hated by the world for the lackluster style in which he goes about his trade, decides to disappear for a spell leaving the world to quickly succumb to the darkness that is “evil”, only to show up once again to kick ass. Hell, the posters for the movie looked practically Post Apocalyptic! This is where something inside me died and I realised I couldn’t take it anymore.

What the fuck happened to subtlety?!

Stop pandering to the lowest common denominator and bring back the reason we go to a theatre in the first place. I don’t want to see Colin Fucking Firth in “Sometimes You Need To Hurt Someone To Show Them You Really Love Them IV”. The theatre was never a place for redneck hicks and back-alley whores. We gave those guys the Television to hold sway over their simian minds while we enjoyed a more complex palette. The cinema, as an evolution of the live theatre, was somewhere were we could take a situation and explore its nuances over the course of a couple of hours. The audience was given a seed with which they would nurture and cultivate into something that could be quite beautiful. This is sadly no longer the case. Our cinemas are flooded with the kind of pond scum one finds in Cannington on a Thursday night. I tire of having a narrative punctuated with cat-calls and hyena-howls from an audience with the collective cognitive capacity roughly approximate to that of the afformentioned pond scum. The only answer is to deprive them of their low-brow fart jokes and bludgeoning quips on morality. Bring back intelligent cinema and stop pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Also, I hate Brendan Frasier. There, I said it.

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photo credit: Lawrence OP

For those who missed my earlier explosion of rage, I will quickly sum up the state of play as it stands before moving on. Yesterday it was announced by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) that Fallout 3 would be refused classification in Australia. The lack of an R18+ rating for games in Australia has cost us several titles over the last couple of years. Everyone remembers the outcry when it was found out that GTA IV, a game with an equally rabid fanbase, was refused classification. Now I’m no fan of pointless repetition, and if you want to hear a rant about the inconsistancies in the rating boards idea of what exactly constitutes an R18+ verus an MA15+ game, then Kotaku has a couple of posts with the basic facts laid out for easy consumption. If you want to read badly worded articles on how this will push users to torrenting games, Shamus may be your man. I will however give you the original leaked paper from the OFLC that states exactly why the game was too heinous for human consumption.

What I havn’t seen anyone talk about, however, is just how this effects us as a consumer. I have no doubt that many will simply wait for the revised copy, the censorsed copy, that no longer portrays the gritty feeling the developers set out to convey. Honestly, it is like watching Snatch with a bleep track. The whole ordeal becomes light hearted and fivelous because there is no longer any depth. Yes, I am one of those self professed twats who stands resolute behind the notion of “Games are Art” but I at least like to think I’m one of the more rational breeds. The other half will no doubt torrent the uncensored (International) version, and probably would have regardless for myriad reasons.

However, there are enough of us who actually want to buy this game, be it for moral reasons (not me), or maybe they have an insatiable lust for limited edition boxsets of things (yes, that one is me). Either way, the only avenue here is to import the game from an overseas supplier. The only thing about this, and it is almost always overlooked; Importing an RC rated product of any form is a breach of Federal Law. We are not talking “I download my mp3’s” illegal, either. This is a physical product that must go through a customs check before it reaches you. What is more, breaking this law can result in anything from a $110000 (yes four zeros) fine, to 5 (five) years in Ye Olde Gaol. When you look at it under this light, you suddenly realise the implications of what is happening here. It makes you wonder just how far you are willing to go for a game.

*Edit* I just wrote a letter, and Kotaku is right. The only way this changes is if someone actually says “We are not OK with this”.

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photo credit: edgeplot

I don’t own a console, so I didn’t kick up a fuss when GTA IV was refused classification due to the lack of an R18+ rating in the Australian Classification Board’s worldview. Already, this sounds like Pastor Martin Niemöller’s too often quoted poem. However, now they really have come for me, or more particularly, the single title of this year that I was looking forward to.

This is not the last I have to say on the matter, mark my words. Mark ‘em good… but it is late and I need to cool off.

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photo credit: divemasterking2000

If I were to say that I am sitting in a wooden chair, watching the clouds drizzle down on my oily, sweating skin, and not noticing because its so humid that the rain feels dryer than the air… I could not hope to convey just how relaxing it is to be here in Phuket. Sure you need to shower around six times a day, but seeing as every time you open the shower door there is a freshly folded towel sitting on the marble bench opposite the sliding Japanese doors, that doesn’t seem all too bad. Besides, instead of showering you could go for a swim in one of the lagoon shaped swimming pools among the palm fronds. Or maybe a spa this time, letting the bubble jets pulverise the tension in your back to Oblivion. After all, once you have done that you can go straight back to the continental buffet that is provided as a courtesy. Or back to the bar and order another half-litre of Remy Martin VS with the spare 120 Baht in your pocket. Perhaps a trip back to the marketplace is in order, you know, so you can be treated like the emporer himself as you get measured up for your second suit to be tailored that day.

What the hell, I’m going back and renting that Jet Ski again. Besides what else was I going to do with that five dollars?

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