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So, I finally finished Grand Theft Auto IV, nearly 4 months after buying it. Well, I thought I had.

When the final credits had finished rolling by, I got some achievements for being awesome enough to finish the game … and then I was back in Liberty City. Not at the start again, but where I was when I finished. Then the phone goes: it’s Niko’s cousin, checking he’s OK.

What the hell, the game hasn’t stopped yet. I checked the stats page: apparently after doing all the missions, I’ve only finished 67% of the game. It’s not finished yet.

Augh.

There are things in life that suck. This list is not of things that suck, it’s of things that are awesome.

• My job; pursuant thereof, San Francisco, and regular trips thereto (next one in December); additionally, the stupidly weak US dollar
• Apple Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”
• Beechams Flu Plus caplets
• The Crystal Method
• Ubuntu Linux 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”
• “How I Met Your Mother” (and slapcountdown.com)
• 16Mbps Sky Broadband
• Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Freebird, Freeeebiiiiiiird!)
• 12.x firmware for the Nokia N95
• Tesco vouchers
• Being able to play music fucking loud (cf watching movies similarly); by extension, Maplin’s 3m 3.5mm to Twin Phono jack lead, my Macbook Pro, iTunes and the + button on my Sony HT-DDW880’s remote control
• British Airways
• Starbucks Vanilla Latte
• Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation (aka エースコンバット6 解放への戦火)
• Cheerios in ice cold milk
• Die Hard
• Four episodes of Star Trek: Voyager every weekday
• Barq’s Famous Old Tyme Root Beer
• A comfy chair

Awesome.

It’s time for another Cram Post, Neuro Style.

june » to san francisco for a couple of weeks to acclimatise to linden lab culture and processes, very chilled yet productive fortnight, i can now convert pounds sterling to/from US dollars and PDT to/from BST in my head; july » had great fun trying to procure a macbook pro for work, to wolverhampton for lugradio live 2007, gave a quick talk and demo about second life, got more enjoyment out of picking up an xbox 360 on the cheap, to brighton for the develop conference and a linden recruitment event, beer is not cheap in brighton, got to meet peter molyneux and aleks krotoski which rocked – aleks, the pigeons are still not safe!, saw the simpsons movie – basically a 90 minute episode of the simpsons and that’s not a bad thing, housemates who moved in here in march are moving out to a bigger pad near glasgow *schniff*, the geekha.us shall continue tho!

I like to blog, but I’ve been remiss in posting. So what better time than the end of the year to post what I’ve been up to.

Three tomatoes are walking down the street: a poppa tomato, a momma tomato, and a little baby tomato. Baby tomato starts lagging behind. Poppa tomato gets angry, goes over to the baby tomato, and smooshes him … and says “Catch up”.
    — Mia Wallace, Pulp Fiction

Verk

I’m now working at Concept Systems in Edinburgh, very much a Linux-friendly shop. It’s great to be working full-time with operating systems I love, and this is the third company in a row that has given me the opportunity to do so. The commute is probably the longest I’ve ever had to do on a regular basis — 41 miles from door to door — and the last 9 miles are through Edinburgh city centre traffic, but it’s worth it to be in a friendly professional environment, surrounded by people who have a genuine passion for what they do.

Oh, and Google have updated their Earth imagery for Edinburgh, and it turns out that every morning when driving up Maybury Road, I’m passing a big Poo! in a field.

Interweb Technological Gadgetry

Now that I’m no longer working for an ISP, sadly I’ve lost the perk of free broadband, so I signed up with Web Tapestry. They’re a great little outfit, courteous and knowledgeable, and I’d recommend them in a heartbeat. In fact I’ve been recommending them for months, and everyone who I’ve referred has been very pleased. I even get a nice wee kick back if you mention my name to their support team after signing up with them

Something else I’ve enjoyed this year has been Sipgate’s Voice over IP service to give me 1000 landline minutes a month for under six quid. Real phones plugged into a Linksys PAP2 phone adapter make life so much easier than having to piss about with headsets and PCs just to call people.

Schtuff

I’m watching a programme from Artsworld that I taped last week, Morricone Conducts Morricone. It’s fantastic to listen to (and watch) a great composer conduct his own music with a full orchestra — the Münchner Rundfunkorchester in this case, with guest performers — but something that stands out is the number of other composers work I can hear in the performances. This isn’t to say Ennio Morricone is a plagiarist, but rather that his work has had such a profound influence on so many other composers. I could hear twinges of Don Davis, Michael Kamen and even Jerry Goldsmith. Genius.

On a different tack, something dawned on me the other day. I thought how cool it would be if you could simply wish yourself back in time to an earlier period in your life to perhaps unfuck something bad, or to revisit something good, but then an interesting thought entered my head. Perhaps we can all do this already, but we can’t change anything when we get there, so events unfold exactly the same, and we have the same memories as we would have anyway, meaning we don’t really remember actually going back in time in the first place.

Public Service Announcements

The Nokia N70 is poo. Casino Royale is the best James Bond movie in 25 years. McDonald’s mint chocolate milkshakes are vile. Ubuntu 6.10 “Edgt Eft” is the first Linux distribution that makes me feel comfortable on a computer away from Windows XP. My Sky+’s 40GB hard disk is too small. I sold my Xbox and a pile of Xbox / PS2 / Gamecube games I didn’t want/need and got a PSP for virtually nothing. Did I mention the N70 is poo?

That is all.

Lang May Yer Lum Reek

It’s now 2007, so a Happy New Year to you and yours. Chi-ching!