With my work done and end of year leave commencing I thought I’d take this opportunity to send out the traditional season’s greetings with a Fallout twist. So to all my readers, friends and family, may you all have an awesome and wonderful festive season with those around you. Travel safe and see you all next year!
Monthly Archive for December, 2008
So this past week has been as hectic as could be with our office trying to cram in as much work as possible to make sure we end off the month in time for the Christmas holidays. Thankfully though I’ve managed to emerge unscathed and ready for a nice relaxing weekend and the final week of work before a well deserved 2 week holiday to end off 2008. There were two events coming up this past Friday that made my week even better. The first was a small work function that we held on the balcony outside our office. Just some small snacks and drinks mixed with mingling and chatting to my coworkers. It meant a shorter Friday and the chance to talk about something other than work for a change so it was a very welcome distraction from a hard day’s slaving over at the desk. At 4pm I had to make my exit though as the second of my big friday events was quickly approaching, the Great Take 2 Forum Dinner at Starlite Diner. To celebrate Hermes arrival down here in the Cape we’d organised with several of our friends off the local Take 2 forum to get together here in Bellville at the Starlite Diner and chat over burgers and dessert. So come 7pm we all managed to somehow find each other and settle down to our drinks while those of us who had not met before got to know each other and those of us that had met before caught up on old times. For once my plan to use Starlite to chat backfired as they were really busy for the first time since I’d been there so we ended up having to shout to each other. It was great to finally meet Hermes / Mark as I’d been gaming online with him for upwards of a year now and this was the first time we’d met in person. Of course this meeting of the minds meant we ended up swapping our best bad jokes and Mark kindly enough gave me a book of bad jokes for my birthday. So thanks Mark! You’ve given me new source material for the next year or so. Thanks once again to all those of you that managed to make it through to last night’s meet. It was great meeting all of you and I hope we can do it again some time soon.
Just a quick post to inform you of some updates:
- My latest game review is up at xboxgaming.co.za for Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. Give it a read and leave some comments. Constructive criticism is more than welcome
- Mozilla has just released two new beta versions of Firefox 3.1 and Thunderbird 3.
With a truck load of reviews and work in front of me I can’t afford a much longer post but rest assured that this weekend will see some awesome posts 
You may have noticed that my blog looks slightly different and seems to also have itself a new home at countingbeans.co.za and if you’re a little bit confused let me explain it to you. Thanks to Ryan and Craig’s greatness I’ve been lucky enough to scrounge some hosting space off their server and grab myself a nice co.za domain name while I was going about it (to whoever is camping on countingbeans.com, shame on you!) and I’ve started the laborious process of shifting my old Wordpress.com blog over here and setting my site up to try and include a lot of neat little touches and customisations to make it unique and a reflection of myself as a person.
Using a self-hosted Wordpress installation will also enable me to get my hands a bit dirty with the underlying components of my blog so I can learn a bit more basic coding and HTML while I try and get my blog just right. Its the perfect learning tool Thankfully with Ryan’s help last night we managed to get everything set up and installed quite quickly with hardly any hitches at all. Currently I’m just busy clearing out my old blog to make sure I’m not penalised for any repeat posts with search engines and the like. I’ve also sorted out my Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools code so that I can tailor my site a bit for maximum exposure. All that’s left is for Technorati to join the party and I should be up and running with my newly rehoused blog. I’m still stuck on choosing a new theme so comments on the look of my blog will be most appreciated.
So feel free to explore and poke around Counting Beans new home all you want and let me know what you think of it.
As I’m in a Youtube frame of mind I thought I might post this interview with one of my favourite directors of all time, David Lynch. He’s not the biggest fan of movies on the move it would seem.
After a long sabbatical from writing game reviews I’ve gotten back in the swing of things with my recent move to Xboxgaming.co.za with my latest review for Fallout 3. Its been great to dive into OpenOffice Writer and knock out a few thousand words on my favourite pastime. There really is no more fun pastime than gaming. You have the ability to experience stories from angles you may never have thought possible. You can take part in your favourite films or you can even discover new things you may never have been aware of. This is the power of gaming, its ability to give you hours of fun while interacting with something wonderful.
That’s why I’m overjoyed at the chance to write up game reviews once again. Since my earliest reviews at GameFAQs its always been great fun to try and describe to others the wonders of gaming. Hopefully if you’re reading this you’ll pop on over to some of the sites I contribute to and leave some comments. Maybe it’ll even get you interested in games, who knows. The Double Life ad for the Playstation 2 probably sums it up best as a people from all walks of life describe their extraordinary acts in games.
My final weekend before heading into December got off to a bit of a late start after I had to cram in some extra time in the office on Friday afternoon to do some work for one of the other girls there but eventually I managed to leave the office after 5pm clutching my new glasses in my hand that I’d picked up that afternoon. I’d also planned to get Far cry 2 that day but was talked out of it by Rouan after seeing the ridiculous price they were charging for it, so I rather decided to order it from Take 2 and save a bit. Unfortunately this meant I’d have to wait till the following week to play it but in these tough economic times its more important to save some money than to settle for instant gratification I think. So after popping home I ended up being sucked into another evening of Left 4 Dead and Half Life 2 till the early morning hours whereupon I crawled into bed to prepare for my weekly squash battle with Ryan.
With the sun still only rising on Saturday morning I dragged myself out of bed and got ready for another humiliation at the hands of Ryan as he proceeded to wallop me around the court as per tradition. With that out of the way I quickly drove back home and at the behest of Denouncer I managed to crank out my Fallout review for his site. I’d intended to start working on my assignments but somehow I got sucked into playing Half Life 2. I’ve been neglecting this game for way too long so over the past week or so I’ve finally managed to get some good progress going in it. Both the story and world that Valve has created are engrossing and wonderfully crafted. Its been a joy to revisit this world and see what happens to Gordon Freeman and his fellow rebels. Wash, rinse and repeat and you have the remainder of my evening. (Other than the fact that Newlande managed to keep me up VERY late with only me falling asleep finally managing to get her to let me off the hook.)
Sunday I had to get up early once again to accompany Dean and Zania through to Craig and Chantelle’s place in Gordon’s Bay to plan our upcoming holiday to Witsand and just catch up a bit. Of course this somehow once again managed to degenerate into several hours of Singstar with my impromptu lounge singing acts proving to be the final evidence that a career in singing is definitely not on the cards for me in my future. We also made the Gordon’s Bay pilgrimage to Ooskus fisheries which without a doubt makes the Cape’s best fish and chips. I’d been tasked by my parents to procure them fish parcels as well so that they could finally try it for themselves so I walked out of the store laden down with a bag full of delicious fish and chips. Unfortunately for me this is when I got hit by a bad migraine which made sure that I couldn’t join in as Dean, Zania, Chantelle and Craig tucked into their fish and chips for lunch. With the lunch and dessert (made by Zania and very delicious!) out of the way we finally bade Craig and Chantelle good bye and wound our weary way home so that Mr Lötter could prepare for his first day at his brand new job. With me out for the count with my migraine I crawled into bed as soon as I got home on Sunday and stayed there for the remainder of the day. A bit of a meh ending to my weekend but nonetheless it was jam packed full of awesomeness.
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