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Bioshock Log #001: Here be Spoilers!

I've just beaten Doctor Steineman. He's the first boss, so I figured now would be a good time to maek post with my thoughts so far. If you haven't played Bioshock yet (and if you haven't, you'd better have a damn good excuse) don't read this, because it contains spoilers (as if you didn't guess from the title)

Graphically it's nothing less than stunning. I can't wait to play it on an HDTV to see how much better it looks. I'll start off with some general thoughts, then outline my favourite moments so far.
The hacking minigame is a lot better than Oblivion's lockpicking. Instead of pushing up, and pressing A at just the right moment like in Oblivion (which really turned into luck as much as anything) Bioshock requires that you assemble a route from one side of the screen to the other in a time limit. It's pretty good fun. Failure leads to a small explosion, which damages your health, which isn't too big a deal since you can carry up to 9 health packs, and you can always find more, or just buy them from vending machines.

Now, onto my favourite bits. The atmosphere overall is amazing, but the scariest bit so far was when I went into the morgue. I mean, let's face it: a morgue is a scary place to start off with, but when you've got genetically modified super-freaks scattered about the place it gets even scarier. The freakiest bit though was when I turned a corner and found a Splicer crying over a coffin. She had her back turned to me, so I just zapped her and unloaded my shotgun into her. I went over to search her body (to see if she had any goodies), and then I realised something: the coffin was child sized. It gave me shivers just thinking about it.

Another terrifying bit was when I was just happily walking along, and found a body. I started checking it for loot, when the lights went out. That's scary enough, but then I heard the voices. I switched to my trusty shotgun. I couldn't see anything, so I couldn't shoot. Then the lights came up.
I was surrounded by 4 or 5 Splicers D: I was able to deal with them without too much hassle, but the initial shock was pretty epic.

Now onto my favourite bit so far: the battle with the good Doctor. I saw him slashing up a (dead) patient, ranting about wanting to make the perfect human. I went into the room, and prepared myself for battle. At first I just tried circle-strafing him. Then I remembered one of the promotional Plasmid videos I saw when I got my telekinesis powers. It claimed that you couldn't use it to stop a speeding bullet.
"Sod that", I thought. If Keanu Reeves can stop a speeding bullet, so can I. I switched to telekinesis, and stopped a handful of machine gun bullets. I then threw them straight back at him. Somehow this set him on fire, and he dived into a nearby pool of water.
"Aha. I have you now, Doc." I fired my electric powers into the water. He began to electrocute.
Job's done; the Doctors dead.
If it stays this good, it will be a strong contender for my GoTY.

We have the technology...

... let us use it to develop the most pointless features ever seen on a mouse.
Microsoft have unveiled their new Sidewinder Gaming Mouse. It's features include the ability to record motion of up to 20g. Impressive stuff. Let's look at what that actually means. 1g is 9.8M/S². 20g means an acceleration of 196 M/S^2. Fighter Pilots usually only pull 9 g. You're telling me that some fat geek (I'm not being insulting, Deus knows I'm fat and geeky) is supposed to be able to pull more g than a trained, fit professional?
At 20g, the mouse will weigh up to 600g. On top of that you've got the mass of your arm, multiplied by 20. It's the same as a bag of sugar, you really think you can aim with that thing?

Other pointless features include an LCD screen. For what purpose? When I'm playing a game, I like to watch the screen, so as to ensure I don't get shot to pieces. How am I supposed to do that when I'm struggling to read data off of some tiny little screen?
This is undoubtedly a fine piece of equipment, but it's over-engineered. Which is shown in the price - £35 for a mouse? No thanks, I'll spend the money on a game if you don't mind.

A child Molester walks into a Doctors surgery...

"I'm having trouble getting an errection", says the paedophile. "It means I can't rape little boys any more"
"Don't worry, mon ami! Take these blue pills and you'll be buggering little children with no hassle" replied the Doctor.

Based on a true story!
WTF France?

More Breaking News!

Increased costs lead to increased debt!

Students get charged more tuition fees. Miraculously debt levels increased! Who'd have thought that making people pay more money would lead to them...
... paying more money.

Why are people doing studies into this? Who pays for them? Dammit I want in! I want to get paid a fortune to state the obvious.

Breaking News!

Radioactive Wasteland is Wasteland!
Scientists claim that the high levels of radiation around Chernobyl are harmful to animals. Well no shit, Sherlock.
I saw a documentary about the scientists that have to maintain the sarcophagus around Chernobyl's reactor. They don't have proper radiation gear, so they just tie plastic bags around themselves. It's better than nothing, they said.
They don't have robots to investigate the interior, so they go in themselves. They are giving their lives because of lack of funds, and yet money is being wasted on finding out that radiation is harmful to animals? The damn things liable to collapse any day now, spewing out even more radioactive debris. You think maybe we should spend this money rebuilding the Sarcophagus? It needs to stand for the next 10,000 years (To put that into context, The Great Pyramid is only 4500 years old), and if it fails, people DIE.


In an unrelated story, a study has recommended that old people not attempt to climb Mount Everest, as they might die.
You think? Old people aren't even supposed to go on roller-coasters because it's dangerous. Noone should be climbing up mountains unless they're in good shape, like my Great Uncle Eddie was when he climbed Everest.

So basically, scientists should stop wasting their time stating the obvious, and start inventing the Flying Car. Or at the very least a cure for cancer.

And finally, Students with good grades (like me) are more likely to get a job than people who get bad grades (like Timmy). Again, is this really news? Clever people in employability shocker!

Don't worry, there are no known side-effects

Although there were significant numbers of deaths in the 1930s and 1940s. You know what Doc, I think I'll take my chances with MRSA.

87 Minutes

How long it took for local law enforcement to respond to reports of a break-in. It does not exactly instil confidence in the system.

Divine Retribution

This morning I 'appropriated' a towel from a hotel. I return home to find the house broken into. So far it doesn't look like anything was taken, except for my glass of change, which contained a few quid, including a selection of those snazzy limited-edition 50p pieces.

GRRRRRRR!

Godspeed, Endeavour

The Space Shuttle Endeavour is due to launch later tonight (weather permitting). Among her 7 man crew is Barbara Morgan, who was Christa McAuliffe's backup for the ill-fated STS-51L mission.
Finally there will be a teacher in space.

Godspeed, Endeavour.

Peace In Our Time

So the Army have pulled out of Northern Ireland. It sure is a good job they're not needed any more.

Make sure to wash your hands after going to the toilet!

"Flood water can be used to flush the toilet although you will need to wash your hands with clean water afterwards as there is a small risk of infection from contaminated water." See, I was brought up to wash my hands after I'd been to the toilet, because the stuff you just put into the toilet was unhealthy and disease-ridden, not because the toilet water was dirty.

But then I was also brought up to believe that one should not build one's city underwater, so go figure. In Shildon we had the right idea. Our city's founding fathers built our city on a hill (actually several, Shildon is like Rome in that respect) so we don't get flooded.

Isn't this sort of stuff supposed to be kept secret?

Hey guys, our countries completely undefended. Feel free to invade us, we don't mind, and even if we did, who's gonna stop you?

I swear down we're going to wake up tomorrow morning speaking Belgian. Or worse, Germany will come and make us use their weird toilets. Back in the day we had an army that could (and did) conquer most of the known world, and now you're telling me the Motherland has only 500 troops defending it?

At least we'll be able to hold off Antigua & Barbuda, and the Seychelles (but not at the same time). And God forbid Barbados decides to have a go at us as well, because then we're really screwed.

What should we do, re: Russia

SO. We've PNG'd some Russian diplomats (spies). What should we do next, Sir Humphrey?

Sir Humphrey: Well, Minister, in practical terms we have the usual six options: One, do nothing. Two, issue a statement deploring the speech. Three, lodge an official protest. Four, cut off aid. Five, break off diplomatic relations. And six, declare war.

Jim Hacker: Which should be it?

Sir Humphrey: Well, if we do nothing we implicitly agree with the speech. Two, if we issue a statement we'll just look foolish. Three, if we lodge a protest it'll be ignored. Four, we can't cut off aid because we don't give them any. Five, if we break off diplomatic relations we can't negotiate the oil rig contracts. And six, if we declare war it might just look as though we were over-reacting.

We need to close the Toilet Gap

Continuing our Lavatorial theme for the day, we travel to the Land of the Rising Sun. If God used a toilet, he would use one of these - the Super Toilet. Ordinarily, I would consider such a name to be mere hyperbole. In this case, it is not. This truly is a Super Toilet, a toilet one would find atop Mount Olympus, or in the halls of Valhalla.
These toilets sense your presence, and raise the lid accordingly. Not only that, they sense whether you are facing it or not, and raise the seat accordingly. They squirt water at you afterwards to cleanse you. They play music. They have air conditioning!
This once great nation has fallen behind. We who invented the toilet have rested on our laurels, and, as in so many fields of human endeavour, allowed other nations to overtake us.

I commit this nation to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of creating a toilet capable of rivalling those in Japan, that we may regain our crown as the pre-eminent nation in toilet technology!

What on Earth were you thinking, Germany?

It appears the architecture of German toilets differs somewhat from our own. Rather than just dumping your dump into a pool of water, into which it can happily sink into oblivion, ne'er to be seen again, our Teutonic friends prefer to have their ... 'droppings' drop onto a shelf, where it can be kept perfectly dry and cosy while friends, loved ones and neighbours are summoned to gaze with envy at the behemoth summoned from your behind.
Say no to a Single European Toilet Design.

'Simplified' Spelling

There's a campaign to change the way English is written for the benefit of simpletons who don't understand spelling. What about the majority of people who aren't retards? Do we have to learn Timmy Spelling? I learned to spell at school, when the retards were sniffing glue. Now they're still sniffing glue (with their bastard offspring), and I'm expected to learn to spell again?
How about "no". How about we stop catering to the lowest common denominator and try improve our society, instead of regressing. If people have trouble with literacy, by all means they should be helped, but helped to spell properly, not allowed to make their mis-spellings the norm to the detriment of everyone else.

Easiest Module Ever!

I'm going through my old transcripts because I'm applying for a Training Contract. Back in 1st year I had to do two crappy modules that I absolutely hated because they were just retarded. When the requirements to do the course include "Can you switch on a computer?" you know you're in Timmysville.
But I digress. It was a two part module. 0% of the overall grade came from "online participation" (send your tutor an email to say "Hey, I can use Email!"). 100% of it came from an essay (2000 words on how you sent your tutor the aforementioned email). I didn't do the essay, because I'd rather spend my time revising the Law subjects I was doing, and so I got 0%.

Now, the more mathematically inclined amongst you may have noticed that if I got 0% of 100, and 100% of 0, I should have received an overall mark of 0, and had to resit. I actually got 59%.
It's A M A T H S P A R A D O X

I think this demonstrates the retarded nature of the module. Still, why couldn't they have given me one extra mark so I could have gotten a 2:1?

Best Chat Up Line Ever!

I just watched out the window as a 10 yr old boy tried to walk along a (roughly 13 foot hight) wall to impress a group of girls. He fell. He deserved it.

I always said going on the pull was dangerous...

See? Even the professionals do this

Plane misses runway. If I had a pound for every time I'd done this in Flight Simulator, I'd be able to afford a real plane.

Which I would then crash on landing.