barely fatal

Cologne?

Jarod — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:32:33 +0000

Visited the GamesCom in Cologne today. Saw Portal 2 (sweet!), sucked at Medal Of Honor multiplayer, avoided 2-hours+ waiting lines, ate a bratwurst. It was fun, but the silly 18+ only booths, long lines and partly pretty empty-feeling halls made it all a bit emotionless.

Forgot to mention something in yesterday’s post. In the A-Team movie, when they go to the Frankfurt main station, they actually show a sequence of the main station in Cologne. Big laugh in Germany. Also, they show a car with an “FF” license plate, which in fact stands for Frankfurt – but a different Frankfurt (we got two). They also show real “F” plates, too, though. It reminded me of the Germans in the first Die Hard movie, those were brilliant. Well they tried. It’s the A-Team. It’s part of the charme.

I am not content (sic)

Jarod — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:01:23 +0000

Well, recent developments have me looking for a new gig (yeah I still have one, but I am not contented). After a short while during which I thought Boy, this will take a while, I am now stressed out with the possibilities. Having options is great, it helps though if you know exactly what it is you want. Couple friends helped me sorting my messed up brain, and I now have a PLAN. It mostly consists of a) stop worry too much, b) follow my gut feeling, c) there’s no need to rush, like none at all, on a several-months-timescale, even if everyone tries to make you feel otherwise. Good plan, good plan. Execution not so easy, but I have hope for myself.
The one thing I can’t get out of my head is that this means I’ll lose most of my dearest friends again. No, no, it happens, no matter what you do and try … happened to me too often. It’s a fucking tragedy waiting to happen.

On the light side of things, I recently watched The Taking Of Pelham 123, which is pretty damn good because it keeps the pace up just right. I also watched Magnolia, and as expected, I didn’t get it. I mean, I got it, but I did not get to it. It was very long.

My sis invited me to watch the A-Team movie which she had won tickets for (how on Earth does she always win so much shit?). I gotta say, I pity the fool who thinks this is just a cheap summer block buster. Well OF COURSE it’s just a cheap summer block buster, but it’s a lot of fun and not half as bad as I thought it’d be. I liked the cast and what they did with my beloved 80ies characters, well, all except the new BA. Mr T just cannot be matched, cannot be imitated, especially not with a half-baked, weakly executed and horribly predictable character development twist. Well. The movie is silly, loud, slightly underachieving, so very much like the show.

The week before that I saw Inception - I got it, I only wished I had a flowchart or mindmap about half way into the movie. Obviously broken time mechanics but who cares? Clearly a must-see-again, to get all the tiny details (and find more logic holes).

Final advice: GO TO THE TOILET before watching Inception. And take it easy on that extra large coke. Man. So distracting.

Psychonaut

Jarod — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 22:37:02 +0000

If you’re into video games and your interest goes beyond the next frag, head over to The Psychology of Video Games, a great blog about – who would have guessed – the psychology of video games. It’s not just some random psychologist’s gist, that guy knows his stuff.

Vintage

Jarod — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:02:07 +0000

Apparently – allegedly – I look like an Irish terrorist from the 70s in my original vintage leather jacket and my weekend five-o-clock shadow. Hey, I love that jacket more than cheese cake – and that means a lot – in fact I inherited it and it was in fact made and bought in the real 70s. I don’t care it’s falling apart and has a pen trapped inside that I can’t get out anymore. And I don’t look a bit Irish in the first place, do I. More like a way too short nordic. That’s total discrimination anyways, those jackets were fashionable all over Europe. And they will be back, you just wait!

Part III: LV to Yosemite, Tahoe, and back to SF

Jarod — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:54:36 +0000

Last part of the photo journey. These are all from the 775 photos I took myself to slim down the selection at least a bit, in total we took 1291 photos. Digital photography, a bless and a curse.

Part II: LA to Grand & Bryce Canyon, LV

Jarod — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:57:39 +0000

Part I: SF to LA

Jarod — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:07:48 +0000

Jetlag

Jarod — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:09:47 +0000

I came back from San Francisco on Thursday, and I still suffer from the worst jetlag ever. I always react sensibly to sleep cycle changes (yeah call me a douche if you want). My body does not know if it wants to sleep or be awake. I wake up at five in the morning and get awfully tired around four in the afternoon (7am in SF). I wonder how long this will go on, it’s been three days dangit!

Photos: later.

—

Ok. Two for now.

Plants vs Planet

Jarod — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 17:37:07 +0000

I think my plants are planning to take over the world.

Moon

Jarod — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:08:23 +0000

Moon is an indy sci-fi movie with Sam Rockwell playing himself. In three roles. It’s going to be released in Germany and the UK next month, but it’s already available on disc.

2001 meets Solaris. Been winning a ton of awards. Has Kevin Spacey’s voice in it. Guy alone on the moon, until he’s not alone anymore.

Watch it, it’s brilliant.

Anno, again

Jarod — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:50:24 +0000

Saturday I started Anno 1404 (aka Dawn Of Discovery) after six months of not touching it. If you know me, you know I like me a proper destruction simulator. If you know me well, you know that building big things out of small things is something I like spending even more time with. I’ve always wanted to finish that one open-ended game. However I started a new scenario map (of course, duh).

Anno has this nice feature, you get a reminder to take a break after every 2 hours of continuous game play. “Maybe it’s time to grab a coffee.” Not intrusively, just a kind reminder. After eight hours it says “Too bad we can’t hand out a medal for that”, and after ten … your wrist starts to hurt. I just can’t put it down, there is always one more thing to do. And these things get more and more complex as the game progresses. It gets really hard to balance space constraints and resource availability. You ship stuff north and south and back, assemble things here and there and then deliver them to your city and you ever-demanding citizens so they advance to noblemen some day. Then you run out of stones. Or hemp. Or coal. Or all of those.

For a completionist like me, or a borderline OCD person this game is both a curse and a fulfilment of all dreams. Then and again I just like to watch. There are so many details.

Check the next screenshot, nothing spectacular, but do you see the rainbow in the waterfall?

You only see these little things if you zoom in really close – and you hardly ever do that. By the way, these shots are made in “post card” mode, you don’t get the blur in the normal view.

I can watch cows farms all day, or a public, err, ~~execution~~ punishment in the market place … The orient also ain’t bad. Makes for a good desktop background.

20 hours later I’m working on building the very last resource chain. Now I gotta start beautifying my metropolis. No more check board layouts for top efficiency.

Whitsunday

Jarod — Mon, 24 May 2010 14:18:29 +0000

So we spent a day in Essen/Oberhausen/Duisburg.

War-weary?

Jarod — Mon, 17 May 2010 21:07:19 +0000

I have no idea. I’ve played Bad Company 2 for quite a while now, in total more than twice as long as Modern Warfare 2. And I thought I’d get better. Uh-huh. Maybe everyone else is getting better, too, only faster than me? Yeah, right. But only the guys on the other team; the guys on my team were all born cross-eyed and brainless. Sure, keep driving over me while I try to repair your tank. Storm the room I just – and very visibly so – threw a grenade into. Stand in the doorway and slowly move backwards while firing in wild panic. And when I hide in a bush, trying to play sniper to get out of your ways, walk up next to me and start shooting like crazy to draw all the attention. Oh, and hold up high the “kill him” sign when we walk in a group of four, as for some reason it’s always me who dies – first and alone.

I don’t get it, some rounds end 18:3, others 3:18. Ok, no beer when playing, I do understand that. But still. Sheesh.

—

Zombieland is a GREAT movie. Woody Harrelson. Bill fraking Murray as Bill fraking Murray … zombies … awesome. Is it me, or did they steal from Left4Dead? Or was it the other way round?

Coincidence?

Jarod — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:45:07 +0000

And it was just this morning when I said to a colleague how cool it would be if they made a real Machete movie. Scary.

Rapture FTW

Jarod — Sat, 01 May 2010 19:20:20 +0000

I won. I won Bioshock 2 and the promotion/press pack including the soundtrack. It came in a big box which looked like a cage. The post banged it up pretty badly, though. I won it on GamersGlobal.de, they had a big lottery in which you could invest their artificial currency to buy tickets. It’s a pretty clever system, you get experience points and level up for nearly everything you do on the site, like adding comments, or filling in your profile. The higher the rank, the more you can do, too. Like writing and posting news and videos. You get currency when you gain “achievements”, i.e. medals, for example when you enter 50 games to your library and so on. But even if you don’t do much (like me) you get enough to participate in the lottery – and I got lucky (as many others). I usually never win anything, cool.

Pandorum could have been a pretty good sci-fi movie. With a better script and editing. It starts out so good, it’s a shame. It tanked at the box office and will be forgotten very soon. Okay, it’s far from being overly original, but if you like Alien, Solaris and the like, you might like this – or despise it even more for being almost good.

God of Woah

Jarod — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 19:27:20 +0000

Lacking a PS2 I never played any of the God Of Wars – blasphemy, I know. Now I rented God Of War 3, I’m about half way through (I think). After dying three or four times in the very first bigger fight I restarted on Easy (which really is easy). I don’t have time for endless repeats of the same button mashing. And quick time events, man, I guess I’ll never warm up to those. Just not my kind of gameplay. Visually easily the most stunning thing I’ve seen on PS3 so far, including Uncharted 2 and Dirt 2. Most brutal, too. This game lives and dies with the great sets, not the elaborate gameplay. You cannot skip cut scenes, a deadly sin in my book. It’s a joyride of awesome or it could be, if it wasn’t for the fixed camera. I mean, is that GoW standard? It makes me curse a lot. Thanks goodness it’s so darn pretty and loud.

BBQ season has started. Chocolate fountains are great. Way too many calories in one weekend …

RAIDed

Jarod — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 14:33:42 +0000

Right, my PC broke last week. Or more precisely my RAID 1 setup. Yes, RAID 1 – mirrored HDD, and yet it exploded and I couldn’t get the “backup” drive to boot. So, new HDD, re-install everything, oh joy. Well as it seems it’s all back to normal now. Still cost me two nights (no data though). I’ll stick to normal backups.

Going to barelytested.tobiasdohm.de will now forward you to greenicicleblog.com, a URL hard to spell but easy to remember. I decided to join blogs with my dear colleague Christian. Just so you’re not too surprised.

Hangover

Jarod — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:06:32 +0000

So the movie Hangover was not at all what I expected, it’s pretty funny, especially considering I’ll visit Las Vegas in summer myself – though probably with less catastrophic results.

I also watched Up and it’s been my most favorite Pixar movie by far, so far.

I pre-ordered the third season of Mad Men, I cannot stop watching it, admiring the authentic design and characters. I wasn’t as sure about the show after the first season – unlike I was sure about the Sopranos – but it’s been getting better and better.

Oh, someone asked me last week whether I owned all those movies in my list: No, I do not. In fact, I only have a very small collection of DVDs, considering I watch so much stuff. I subscribe to a rental service – I couldn’t afford buying all those! I usually only actually buy shows that I cannot rent in Germany, be it that they have not been released yet – or that they never will be.

I’ve been thinking about merging my testing blog with the blog of a colleague who writes about coding. It’s a logical step, he’s already got a solid reader base (judging from the stats), and why have two blogs going on about software development. I wouldn’t be able to use it anymore as a business card that I originally intended to develop it into, but it’s certainly worth considering.

Lego crazy

Jarod — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:25:17 +0000

Have you seen this Normandy SR2 made out of Lego? Fan-made, brilliant.

There are other great models on that site, like a Nebulon B frigate (or two), or a Galaxy Class.

I’d still love to build the original Ultimate series Star Destroyer with more than 3.1k pieces … but where to put it (and let’s be honest here, it’s not really cheap). Of course the Falcon with 5.2k pieces wouldn’t be too bad either.

Oh and no, you cannot be too old to love this as a respectable geek.

Old school

Jarod — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 23:22:05 +0000

Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Danny Trejo, Steve Austin, Eric Roberts and Arnold Schwarzenegger, all in one movie this fall: The Expendables. Compelling. Brains off, party on.