Thursday 20 December 2012

Vital information

If you get bitten by a wild animal or a dog while abroad you should get to a doctor asap and have a rabies vaccination program started. If you don't start treating rabies before the symptoms set in you're dead.

Saturday 28 July 2012

Top Movies

I realized I never listed my favorite movies of all time (as far as I can remember). I made a list and ended up with 21 movies, which is a nice enough number, so I'm just gonna post them. It is very hard to order them, but the top 6 are clearly set apart from the rest.

Anyway, the bottom 16 are:
Finding Neverland
White Oleander
Casino Royale
Pan’s Labyrinth
Pay it forward
V for Vendetta
Kingdom of Heaven
Ocean’s Eleven
The Fast and the Furious
Lucky number Slevin
The Hangover
Cast Away
The Holiday
Saving Private Ryan
The Green Mile

And the top 6 are:
The Dark Knight
Sherlock – A scandal in Belgravia

(the top two are tied, and both had a mind-blowing effect on me when I first saw them)
The Avengers
The Lion King
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
The Shipping News


I view the BBC Sherlock episodes as TV movies.

Friday 6 April 2012

Oldness

Age (henceforth referred to as Oldness) can be measured in years, but it can be hard to tie concepts like "old" and "young" to a certain number of years. I like to measure age in the ratio between the number of presents you receive on your birthday and the number of years you've lived.

Most people will start out with a ludicrous 15-20:1 ratio, which then drops sharply until it reaches a 1:1 ratio (usually somewhere between 10 and 20). After 20 there is a sharp drop in the number of presents received, leading to a high increase in Oldness. This seems to coincide with the age when the government has decided it is OK for you to enjoy a glass of wine at home, which is generally seen as a sign of Oldness.

At this point the presents will remain static, while the years lived will steadily increase. On your 30th birthday there will be a sharp increase in the number of presents received, accentuated by the sharp drop back to normal levels one year later.

By my calculations you should reach a presents to years ratio of 1:5 between 25 and 30. And that's when you're "old". You won't realize this until you're 31 though :P

Ps. My current ratio is 1:4 - still young, in other words :D Ds.

Tuesday 27 March 2012

Sir Isaac Newton

In the words of the instructor in Mass Effect, Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space!

Thursday 22 March 2012

Our defining moments

I saw a short collage on TV about the day when Nelson Mandela was released from prison and I got to thinking about the defining moments of history that we have experienced. Though technically we were alive both when Mandela was released, but it doesn't really count unless you were old enough to realize what was going on.

For me that timeline started with the millennium shift, followed by 9/11. Then there's the invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq. The tsunami in 2004, the earthquake on Haiti, Fukushima and Breivik. So what I'm wondering is; when does the good stuff happen?

My grandmother is old enough to remember World War II, and how much better everything got after it ended. She told me about the first time she ever saw a banana. Our teachers and parents like to talk about the Berlin wall, and what that day meant to them.

The Arab spring is the first good news that's happened in my lifetime, and it's still very uncertain whether anything good will come of it. But at least there's hope...

Monday 19 March 2012

Legion

I never did this before, but I decided to bring my friend Legion to the Citadel. Legion is a Geth, so I expected some kind of reaction from the security, considering the Citadel was attacked and nearly destroyed by the Geth 2 years ago. You spent most of the first game fighting Geth that were attacking colonies all over the galaxy, and everyone agrees that the Geth are evil incarnate.

But nothing happens. And this is all in the core game, no DLC or anything. Considering you can do your quests in pretty much whatever order you like this is a bit strange. I was expecting a cut scene where C-Sec comes charging through the doors and I have to use all my hard earned reputation to convince them Legion is friendly. Logically the captain would tell me that however that may be, I should leave him on the ship, so as to not cause panic. If I by some miracle managed to talk him into letting Legion in, people should react to his presence wherever I went.

Even if I lied and told people that Legion is just an AI in a very realistic Geth-like chassis, people should be appalled by my poor judgement and tasteless humor...