Ok and this story I already posted on Facebook, but it’s so surreal, I have to post it here as well.

Last night, I dreamt that I met Zachary Quinto in a comic/book shop. He came to me and wanted to talk casually, but he made sure to stay close to an audio visual display which was playing some music or audio loop pretty loud. He asked something trivial (in English!) and I answered, but I could hardly hear him, as it was so loud next to the display. He asked something else, and I gestured him to move away from the display so I could hear him better. But he almost shyly gestured No and turned to leave, when a group of young people recognized him and started asking for autographs, which he gave them reluctantly but with a smile.
And there it ends. I have no idea why Mr Quinto turned up in my dream (I’m pretty sure I hadn’t heard of or thought about him the days before), but when Spock – any Spock – comes visit you in your dreams, you damn better Facebook it, I suppose.

I’m still trying to find the meaning of this.

Now, on German (pop) radio, you mostly hear songs in English. While German-singing groups have seen a revival, there is still no cure for Lady Gaga. English simply is cool. Germans learn English at school, I have 9 years of English classes under my belt. That does not mean that every one speaks perfect English, that would be far from true, even for politicians whose job it is to go and visit English speaking countries (in my experience, the Scandinavians are far better English speakers). Germans like German things best, and they twist things to make them fit. Movies and TV are always dubbed into German (more than often poorly), and the borrowed words have their meaning changed, as long as it fits with a more direct German translation or similar sounding German words.

So, here’s the biggest twists my non-German friend could come up with and short explanations for each.

A “Handy” is a mobile phone (or cell phone if you’re American). I can only speculate why this atrocity of a word stuck; I suppose it has to do with how you hold it in your hand. Handy was/is also used for the speaker part of a radio, that’s where this originated supposedly.

A “Body Bag” is not a bag you put (dead) bodies in, oh no. It’s a non-specific form of a rucksack, or backpack, which is usually smaller than your average travel bag. While “bag” is pretty easy to get, “body” never implicates a dead person in German, so clueless advertisers simply use “Body Bag” to describe a bag you wear on your body.

When you go to a “Public Viewing“, you won’t find any dead bodies there either. Clever Germans use a rather direct translation here: Public means anyone can come and it’s usually an outdoor event, and Viewing means the particpants “view” something, because “Watching” or “Showing” sounds strange even to German ears. So it simply means a lot of people come to together to watch e.g. a football game on a big screen.

A “Beamer” is actually a projector, which “beams” light, or projects light “beams” onto a screen. It most certainly is not a BMW, which is usually refered to as, well, BMW, or by using the model number, e.g. “3er” means a BMW model 3xx.

And the last ones for today: “Wellness hotel” means a spa, and the Gymnasium is a high school – although that last one is always pronounced in the German way, so the risk of misunderstanding it is low.

Does anybody know a good way to combine the ease of use of tumblr with a self-hosted WordPress blog? Wasn’t a there Blog This bookmark thingy somewhere here … but then there’s the question of ownership, linking to stuff just like that or posting images can get you in trouble in Germany, you’re pretty safe from that if you use tumblr.

Played, finished and sold Crysis 2. Yeah it’s nice but also forgettable, especially the crude story. And I really couldn’t stand the self-importance the series carries. Crytek guys, it’s a game. One amongst many. Yes it’s good. But it’s not the greatest thing since the invention of chocolate chip ice cream, and that’s the vibe I get from your game. A little more humor, originality and interaction, less pathos and cinemetic ambition would freshen up the whole thing. FarCry still is your best game.

Portal 2 is brilliant. Loved the story, loved the world, loved the characters and voice acting. It could have used a couple more complex puzzles. It was definitely easier than Portal 1 and while some of the handholding is welcome (it never gets frustating), a little more exploring, i.e. trial-and-fail would have been nice. Can’t wait for the (free) DLC coming up in summer.

So far Portal 2 is top of my list for best game, but more’s to come,and it’s gonna be a great year for PC gaming. Witcher 2 and Brink are next, and the Duke is lurking on the horizon. But after so many years, I’m not in a hurry.

I went to see Thor. Still don’t like 3D, it mostly blurs up everything instead of adding to the greater experience. The movie was fun, surprisingly solid given it’s eclectic settings. The humor carried the weaker parts.

Had a Star Wars night. Can you imagine, a friend of mine has never seen any of the “classic” movies I grew up with, including Wars, Trek, Indiana Jones, Back To The Future et al. So we started by force feeding her A New Hope first, of course. She seemed to like it. Then as if to take revenge, she forced us to watch the Eurovision Song Contest. Which wasn’t easy, due to my sat line currently being down, I had to hook up my laptop to the TV and watch the livestream. But as always, it was a disappointment. Moldava should have won. I mean, holy Spock, for the hats alone.

What else? I’ve started getting to know the region by visting a different place every week. With the black forest nearby, there’s ample opportunity to get out in this very summer-like weather..

If every screenshot looks like a postcard? If every line sounds like it came directly out of an action comedy? If you can tether a statue’s head to a helicopter and topple it? If you use your grapple as a way of moving? If there is a flying nightclub shaped like a boat hanging on two giant zeppelines? If the huge world actually feels “real”, because towns, mountains and forests are realistically proportioned? If there are reefs, waterplants and rock formations underwater that you can actually see from a boat or a plane? If there is a cable car in a snowy mountain base that totally works but serves no other purpose than to impress you? If you can reach every single point in the world that you can see? If one of the bad guys totally out of the blue sends you his NINJAS?

Yeah, Just Cause 2 is pretty awesome.

This week’s horror movie was Orphan, and as far as “scary kids” movies go, this nails it. It starts almost M Night Shyamalan-y but it does not have any ghosts, aliens or paranormal activities – so it’s actually good. It’s genuinly creepy, has believeable characters and an unexpected revelation and besides some minor flaws it does everything right. My recommendation.

Traitor isn’t bad but for some reason I found it somewhat boring. Maybe I’ve finally seen one too may terrorist movies, nice twist or not.

Scott Pilgrim is special, but Kick-Ass ultimately was last year’s better movie. Michael Cera delivers his role perfectly, he just feels a little “off” to me. Maybe it’s better if you’ve read the comics. The music is great.

The idea behind The Joneses is compelling and makes you think “Could this be real?”, but David Duchovny should be given more aggressive roles so he can fully shine. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is good. The conclusion could be stronger and the pacing better, but it’s not a wasted evening at all.

A horror movie with six girls that doesn’t feel “cliche naive copy-paste template” and is genuinely creepy yet fun? Orc-Gollums design aside, this is it: The Descent.

Oscars are up tomorrow. I wonder if Portman will get hers … or Nolan for that matter. Probably not.

I’ve watched Toy Story 3 (really great, better than part 2) and The Expendables. Oh my, the Expendables. I don’t think it’s as bad as everybody keep saying, but there’s some crappy scenes for sure. Especially when Arnold, Bruce and Sly meet in the church? The dialog, the horror. The rest is so ridiculous it’s fun again, or for most parts. Some parts just don’t work, and for every great action scene (shotgun) there are two “Meh” ones. Eventually seeing guys get stomped on their necks gets pretty old. The documentary on the disc is well done, and you can tell how many things Sly thought up on the spot while filming, some of them became the best parts of the movie (gunship). Too bad they couldn’t find more to do for Mickey Rourke than wise cracking and knife throwing contests… I’m surprised how well mumbling Sly is still doing. Hell, Arnold is right though, he IS too old for that kinda film by now.

John Woo’s Red Cliff, which I am kind of indifferent to (didn’t click for me). Milk, which surely was worth seeing for learning about the topic matter, but which almost sent me to sleep (granted, it was a long day). And Repo Men, which – I kid you not – made be squeal like a girl in a scene. I’ve never been a big fan of splatter, but I usually don’t have much problems with it. I can totally live with the wet knife fights. But the “cutting up his torso, stick a scanner in” thing was gross. As was the knee thing. Or the other.

Be the story as unbelievable as it may, the idea alone (artificial organs, repo men come to take them back if you can’t pay) gives me the creeps and for once I did not see the twist coming up, not like that. The movie’s got its problems, especially the very sudden u-turn of the main character’s morale system and his utter lack of emotions in some parts, the misinterpreted Schrödinger quote and some plot holes. But for what it was, it kept me on the edge of my seat. Not as good as Splice (go see that one!) but I still enjoyed it. Gruesome, gory – dangit, I’m becoming a wuss. Back to score some kills in Battlefield. A-hem.

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Been to Bucharest last week by the way (business trip). Weird city, a patchwork of old and new, big and very big, rich and less so, grey and colors. Met very friendly people there. They like it warm, it seems, I was sweating inside in my t-shirts while outside it was below zero. Language reminds me of Italian a little bit, the people in the office had near perfect English though. Small airport for such a big European city. Next time, I’ll try to see more.

Saw Tron Legacy this week – in 3D – and it’s bland. The dialog hasn’t come very far since the original movie, however it looks mighty prettier nowadays. The young Jeff Bridges looks kinda eery, as these computer-youngified characters often do (best effort yet: Patrick Steward in X-Men 3). But the 3D stuff doesn’t rock my world either. Sure it’s a nice enough effect, but that’s what it is to me, an effect. The theatre I went to used shutter glasses, clunky and heavy,  and I can barely put those over my regular glasses. I spend correcting them all the time and they just felt “in the way”. Plus sometimes I got the feeling it wasn’t even working right, strange distortions and flat images (and I don’t mean the scenes which were deliberately left in 2D). I think I could have enjoyed the movie better, without the distractions, in 2D only – and cheaper, for that matter.

I got the Bad Company 2 Vietnam add-on two weeks ago by the way and have not yet even started it. Instead I tried to find a part for my bike which broke during the move. The fourth (!) bike shop had it, and I had to cycle all through town. Man, non-standard parts suck, why do they do that? Now I am less inclined to buy a bike of the same brand again…

I’ve been fighting with my internet provider since I signed up for their service. I am not a difficult customer, in fact, I’m usually very civil and forgiving. But last week I finally wrote an angry letter, after 2 months of back and forth and many, many stupid things they did. The last straw was that they asked me to chase after a modem they lost, which they said they couldn’t send me anyway and which I don’t even need as it turned out. It’s a nightmare, and that does not even take into account that in the evenings I get 10 MBit/s max, having a 32 MBit/s contract. Just sent them screenshots of their speed test and all, I wonder if they will be able to at least fix that. And if they will pay me back some money for all the trouble I’ve had with them.

Aaaahh…well. I’ll just continue enjoying this lovely quiet weekend now.

I still have two items on the 2010 Backlog, I guess I’ll have to move them over:

• Resident Evil 5
• Red Dead Redemption

Time to fill up the 2011 Backlog. These are the nominees:

• Deus Ex 3
• Shogun 2
• Bulletstorm
• Homefront
• Little Big Planet 2
• Rage
• Portal 2
• The Witcher 2
• Uncharted 3
• Elder Scrolls 5
• Mass Effect 3
• Arkham City
• Dungeons

Runners up:

• Brink
• Two Worlds 2
• Max Payne 3
• Crysis 2

2010 Disappointments:

• Dragon Age (way too predictable)
• Star Trek Online (only half finished)

2010 Pleasant Surprises:

• Red Faction Guerilla (Boom!)
• Borderlands
• Arkham Asylum

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Movies Radar

• True Grit
• Social Network
• Scott Pilgrim
• Black Swan
• Tron 2.0
• Machete

Built a snowman and felt like 12 while doing so. Had a very nice Christmas but have a loooong wish list yet. Surprise: no games or movies, all stuff for the home. Sold my old dusty back up PC (finally). Now looking forward to next year’s insanity. Booya.

Splice is a pretty little disturbing movie … I highly recommend it for any sci-fi fan out there.

The new place sure is nice. It has a kitchen (DISH WASHER!!!) I can turn around in without bumping into five things, and right now it’s really quiet because the neighbors are all out of town. In fact, there’s no one in the flat above me yet, and below there’s eight (?) rooms which are for students when they come to do their exams or something, but only a couple months per year. Landlord said, next batch is coming mid January. All girls.

I’ve been busy organizing things like electricity, my old internet provider, register in the city, address change notifications, and renovating my old flat (sucks most). But tomorrow night, yes tomorrow night is gonna be Fallout NV night, you betcha. Well… unless the weather is real nice, time to find out more bout the city. For example, where to find a nice pool.

I still have two spare Steam keys for Portal (free of course). Anybody need one?

Come January 2011, content on the web in Germany – any kind – will need to be classified using the same categories the movie rating system uses. As they can’t hire a million monkeys to check everything on the web, every publisher has to self-classify his or her stuff: 0, 6, 12, 16 or 18+ years. If it will be enough to put a sticker or tag on posts, if you need an “age gate” american style (“Enter your birth date – and shame on you if you cheat!” – parody at best) or if you will need to integrate with “real ID” identification services that already exist (but are mostly horribly complicated and annoying to use) it will be a nuisance. And of course, if you should classify your stuff incorrectly, you can get sued. Which means the only way to be absolutely “safe” is to classify everything 18+.

Then there’s this great idea, you can show 18+ content between 11pm and 6am (or something) – but not earlier without an age gate. On the internet. I’m not shitting you, that’s already in place on some game sites.

The impact this could have on blogs – even small silly ones like this – could potentially be huge. Some already have closed down in anticipation (or protest) of the law. Practically, I won’t have to do anything – I don’t show violence or sex, and this blog is non-commercial. But hell if if know if something I write should be rated 12 or 16 or whatever. The least this law will do is again trigger a wave of uncertainty amongst the web community. The (technology-supported) classification is supposed to allow content filters to be set up by parents – a good thing – but won’t the youth always find a way around those anyway? And of course, this will work with German sites only.

Some FAQ can be found here (German): http://www.fsm.de/de/jmstv-2011

Though critically acclaimed, I had my doubts about this game from the start, given its main control mechanism is based on quick time events. QTE suck. They sucked in God of War, they sucked in Force Unleashed, and they suck in Heavy Rain, which is why the game ultimately fails its promises. “Game” is kinda not the right term anyway, it’s more like an interactive movie, or a novel even. The film-noire-ish story is what drives this game, what is the game, and in that regard it works perfectly. The twist at the end is pleasantly surprising, the pacing is nicely done, the characters come as close to “real” actors as video games can go nowadays. The music is a high-end production, the graphics are pretty. So what’s wrong with the game?

The quick time events work – most of the time. I’m no fan, and I played on “easy”, but some sequences really play out well. You generally get the feeling that your actions (or lack thereof) matter and have consequences, even when not all of them really do. You get invested in the story and the characters – almost. But the more I played, the more I felt limited by the control scheme. You cannot pick up that item, because you are meant to use that one over there. For example, in a climatic moment I was presented multiple ways to resolve the situation, but it was unclear what sequence of actions does what, and I ended up with a result I didn’t want. There are scenes which let you push a button once and walk 2 meters before the game goes back to a cutscene. I never felt like I was in control of the game; in two instances the game chose an action for me when I was still reading the blurry texts on the quick time action buttons. I’m like, “What the fuck?” – and you can’t go back. There is no saving. Yes, you can restart a chapter, but when that happened I wanted to stop playing. That’s not what I wanted. It felt like the game played me, instead of the other way round.

So as an experiment it surely is impressive, but it fails on a high level. I want control, I want to make my own decision, and button pushing just doesn’t cut it. Push Right to start the car. Push Down to shift to drive. Press R2 to accelerate – cutscene. Dudes, c’mon.

*Update* One thing I forgot to mention: There’s bits of the story – distractors, you might call them – that never get explained in the end of the game. It has a nice, closed ending and all (remember me ranting about shitty endings a couple months back?), but some important bits remain unanswered. I only realized after thinking about it for a while, but for a story that dense it’s a pity not being able to tie up all loose ends. *End update*

RED is a really fun movie with awesome John Malkovich.

Iron Man 2 is just fun to watch. No suffering hero, no tragic death, no treacherous side kick. Just plain fun. Can’t wait for The Avengers.

I almost missed The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock (!) deserves her Academy Award, though.

“My pound of flesh” – Shakespeare

“Spa vs Spa” versus Spy vs Spy (from Claptrap DLC)

“Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? ‘No!’ says the man in Washington, ‘It belongs to the poor.’ (…) ” (also Claptrap DLC) – Bioshock

“My Brother is an Italian Plumber” achievement – Mario

“I’m going to need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21-… Oh hey! Welcome to my secret lab.” – Back to the Future

“Bruce McClane” is John McClane is Bruce Willis

“A hive of scum and villainy” – Star Wars

“Nikola is a friend of mine” challenge – Tesla

… and those are only the one I’ve noticed and can remember right now.

It might also be a good idea to sign the contract once I get it (I have a written, legally binding “reservation” saying I’ll get the flat as long as I check out fine in the debts department).

At work, things continue to go downhill. I obviously cannot give away much, but let’s say, I have an Advent calender I will put to good use in November.

Hmm. I finally gave in a bought Plants versus Zombies on Steam’s Halloween sale. I enjoy kicking some Borderlands co-op and I’ve finally beaten The Force Unleashed. Tomorrow’s a bank holiday in this part of Germany, and I’ll go back doing all the business I talked about then. But today, no plans, no tasks, only some good ol’ shooty games and pizza. Haven’t had that in a while.