Maurice, my cat, used the time I was packing my stuff to sneak behind my back and make his own page on Casters, where cats get their own page and friends. He thinks me uploading pictures of him is not enough, he is envious of my personal pages so now he has his own page all for himself. You can admire him and read his diary here:
http://www.catster.com/cats/563801
This is a past blog entry from MySpace.
Sometimes, certain things surprise you, like finding a gem at strange places. This is what LOTRO is for me. I’ve been checking out scifi MMOs because I like scifi as much as I like fantasy so I’ve been checking out Tabula Rasa in particular. As a Tolkien fan, I obviously noticed the upcoming MMO happening in the same world, I was curious about it so I asked for a beta slot, which I got some time after, but I was not excited about it like the other fans, never followed the game really. Surprisingly, I’ve fallen in love little by little with the online version of Middle Earth. While I admit the characters look weird and the combat is cumbersome, the rest is pretty and the game is actually fun and the world is exciting to explore. I’m particularly happy to know that there will be time cards for this MMO so I’m going to buy it and grow some food in it officially on april 24th. You can already find me in the open beta on Landroval.
This is a past blog entry from MySpace.
The reasons why The Good The Bad and The Ugly is better than Once upon a time in West
I’ve had this disagreements with a few persons and I’d like to point here in details my reasons why I find The Good The Bad and The Ugly superior to Once upon a time in West.
While I agree that technically Once upon a time in West is better, Leone obviously knew his technics better, so the movie is more polished, the images and music better. But as you know, it takes more than pretty images to make a movie and this is where Once upon a time in West falls flat.
As Hitchcock once said, it takes a good scenario to make a good movie. And here lies one of the flaws of Once upon a time in West, the scenario. The entire movie is based on suspense and mystery and once you know it all there is nothing left. Of course, the mysteries are the reasons why the entire family was killed, the origins of the character played by Charles Bronson and what he wants, etc. The problem with a story based on suspense and mystery is that once you know it all there is no reason to watch it a second time, heck some persons just by knowing the end of such stories don’t see the reasons to read/watch entirely the stories. Some manage, like The Usual Suspects, to go beyond their scope and with a good scenario, make them watchable again and again to find all the tricks and see all those details they missed the first time. Since Once upon a time in West’s movie relies entirely on mystery, everything else was left aside, including character development, leaving the movie cold when you rewatch it. Once you rewatch it, you notice the scenario’s weaknesses and the actors’ stiffness.
The Good The Bad and The Ugly in the other hand is a character driven movie. The story is nothing but a background for the characters to live, the gold to find is not that important compared to the characters trying to find it. Since the movie is around the characters, the scenario is important, especially the dialogue, in order to express visually and through the story the characters. Everything is tight-knit and attention was all around for the scenario.
There are a lot of stars in Once upon a time in West while the actors in The Good The Bad and The Ugly are rather unknown. With the weak scenario the actors do their best in Once upon a time in West but you can see that the actors have way juicier stuff in The Good The Bad and The Ugly and that they seem to have more fun. Even more so, since The Good The Bad and The Ugly is character driven, that means that secondary characters get deepened compared to Once upon a time in West and that even those actors seem to enjoy their characters and play them very well, up from Angel Eyes’ accomplice at the camp to the drunk Captain who dreams to blow up a bridge. Both movies have a comic element brought by two different actors and both play similar characters, a bandit. Unfortunately for Jason Robards, whom I like very much, he is not funny at all and the comic elements fall flat again here in Once upon a time in West. In the other hand, Eli Wallach does such a good job with his well written Tuco that he manages to scare us, move us and amuse us as well.
The music is superb in Once upon a time in West but there are many great moments as well in The Bad and The Ugly, like when the soldiers play the violin or at the end when they are in the cemetery.
In my mind, a good movie must have many qualities and one of them is that I have to be able to watch it again and again and still enjoy it. While I was mesmerized the first time I watched Once upon a time in West, the times after showed me the flaws and now I prefer The Good The Bad and The Ugly well over it.
This is a past blog entry from MySpace.
I received a terrible news today, I’m being evicted. My landlord and his wife tried a few years ago to kick me out, but when I told them how much that would cost them, they decided not to after all. Apparently they saved their money ahead this time and are trying it again.
The problem is that finding a decent place with a decent rent has become a godsend these late years. All this has happened because in a north american magazine published a few years ago, talking about the best and hottest most "in" places to live (in North America) right now, in their very short list of four contenders, my city and a particular neighbourhood here was in that list. Since then, everyone has wanted a piece of here including Americans. It’s a small cosmopolitan north american and yet very european city. There are plenty of pretty old european buildings here. The neighbourhood in question was made of poor artists living in pretty buildings but very old and mostly not taken care of by the owners. These artists made this neighbourhood what it is today, what everyone else envies. Painters painted here and there, sculptors and crafters arranged indoors places, etc.
When the owners saw the profits they could make, while before letting everything fall apart, suddenly they renovated everything and kicked out the poor artists out from their neighbourhood since they could not afford the new expensive rents anymore. Now there are a lot of rich wannabes and yuppies in that neighbourhood, lots of Americans too. Other neighbourhoods have been owned as well. All this escalated everywhere in the city: owners started doubling and tripling their rents, even for hellholes that even rats would no want to live there. Finding a place to live here has become a struggle that only the rich can win. There are less and less available apartments now as well.
As you can see in my profile, with my illness and disabilities, I can’t work therefore my income is very limited. The place where I live is decent and has a decent rent too that I can afford. I’m worried now I might end up in the streets or something. This is the city where I was born and where I’ve lived most of my life, I don’t intend to go elsewhere.
This is a past blog entry from MySpace.
I WON A TABULA RASA BETA SLOT!!!
Now that I got it out of my system I think I can write normally. Yup, big surprise for me to learn that I’ve won a beta slot. I’m really excited, especially that Tabula Rasa looks better everyday, doesn’t it? I guess the beta should start in january but no date has been set yet.
Am I the only one watching Heroes? I dropped to the floor the first time I watched it, dropped even further when I watched the pilot (that I missed). WoW! I’m really addicted to this show, it’s so painful to wait a whole week just to watch the next episode. Now I’be been waiting weeks already until the Holidays are over so Heroes can finally restart. Supernatural also finished into a cliff-hanger of some sort with Dean ready to die along with his brother. Obviously he has not recovered from his forced rescue in the first episode in the second season, you can see he had chosen to die in this episode, had gotten used to the idea. And the show ended with Dean about to crack and finally tell Sam what their father told him… but no, we got the credits instead. I have to wait weeks again to finally know what it is. This is so cruel.
Dark Flame Blame my meleemancer in GW died peacefully last week. He was replaced by another meleemancer so I’ve been budy rushing her so that she can get a hat coming from the Xmas event in GW.
This is a past blog entry from MySpace.
I was watching Strange Days yesterday, one of my favorite movies, and I really wonder why this movie did not get more popular. It has the James Cameron touch everywhere even though he did not direct the movie (it was his ex I think), he did write the script, was present everywhere especially on the editing part. Cameron is probably the only director who is capable to mix action, character development, good script and good actors and make near a masterpiece from all these. Also in his movies women are not weak pathetic creatures to be saved and who are just present for the sex scenes, women in Cameron’s movies (and deceased tv show Dark Angel) are strong willed, determined and capable.
I also think this is the movie where Ralph Fiennes is the sexiest. I know many still sigh over him in The English Patient but I find his character too cool and perfect to please me in that movie. I’m weary of perfection in general, I wonder what it hides, and it’s not realistic at all. In Strange Days he is flawed and he screws up and makes mistakes, and I find him more adorable like this. His character has more depth too. Just for the look as well, Ralph is better looking in this movie, bohemian and wild, he looks so hot wearing the leather pants, ouch. At some point Gant asks him how Lenny managed to get in, “my charm” replies Lenny, and watching him, you can only agree, his vulnerability only makes him sexier in that scene, I would have ran in his arms without thinking. If you claim to love Ralph Fiennes and yet has not watched this movie, you have no idea what you’re missing.
I love Angela Bassets, she is a good actress and I’m sure unfortunately due to her being black she has not being able to do more movies. She manages to pull off her character very well, to make her strong and yet sensitive and caring. Who said strong women have to be bitches? I like the duo they form Ralph and her, how she is more active while he is more passive. He lets people beat him up (“I don’t mind being rough up a little” he says at one moment), I guess it must be the masochist in him that allow him to not defend himself, some people who think they deserve the worst don’t do much to get themselves out of troubles, worse, they do everything to put themselves in troubles, and seeing how wrecked Lenny is it’s obvious he just doesn’t care. It’s only at the end when he cares he is capable of fighting, even winning against his opponents while he let them beat him up earlier.
Even Juliette creates a strong woman of some sort, many would think she is among the weak women, as she doesn’t do much herself. But then they forget that Faith was a hooker and this is what she knows best, using her body and sex to obtain what she wants. She’s obviously using Gant to make him produce her disk, she used Max to know why Gant hired a detective to follow her everywhere. Even in the end, she plays Max into making him believe she is on his side, only to kick and fight him when he tries to kill Lenny. Even though she doesn’t love Lenny anymore she still cares about him, also she didn’t know Max was the killer until the end. It was nice as well to show that Faith could be really hot without having DD breasts.
This is such a great movie. Here are a few pictures and link:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19951013/REVIEWS/510130303/1023
This is a past blog entry from MySpace.
You probably wonder who is Gaile. She is the spokerperson of ArenaNet who makes Guild Wars. I had a confrontation with her on a board and let’s just say her reputation to my eyes went down the drain.
The event occurred two weeks ago right before the PvP Nightfall event. I was waiting for the possibility of purchasing character slots, which was so dear to my heart I barely slept these past weeks. So, in our thread “More slots”, we were discussing the slots and also the upcoming event and hoping we’d be able to buy the slots before the event in order to participate. Upon reading what Anet wrote it was clear there would be no key or slot unlike all the other events before. Then Gaile showed up and said there would be no key for the event and she would check with her bosses for additional slots.
I was quite frustrated by this news, which is one more proof (no matter how much Anet loves to deny it) that Anet prefers PvP over PvE (death penalty to pets is another, they changed their mind after tons of people complained). You pay for a game, you use at its fullest (all the slots) and when there are events you are punished because if you were a PvP player you’d have a free slot but because you’re a PvE player, too bad, you can’t participate.
So I started a thread but I did this as calm as possible. There are plenty of things I could have written, like Anet sucks let’s bang on them and/or the old PvP PvE warfest. Nope, I wrote like a robot with no feeling whatsoever. Just posted exactly what Gaile wrote (that there would be no key and possibly no slot as well), then mentioned a thread which was showing 45-47% of the players had no free slot and therefore could not participate to the event and then told people to express themselves on the matter, and this without expressing myself. The thread started well with people talking, and even some with no free slot who didn’t mind not participating to the event… up until Gaile showed up.
Gaile had fun calling me names, that I was starting a rumor, and then building up people against me, telling me I was misquoting her. She said she would check with her bosses about the additional slots for the event, she’d go check about them (she meant for the event). I apologized and told her since in the other thread we were talking about buying slots and hoping to get them before the event that she meant to ask her bosses if the purchasable slots would be buyable before the event. But since she said we were not getting keys I was half right so this was not really a rumor thread. Gaile made no apology whatsoever on her side. The thread got locked soon after, which gave people who could not participate no way of expressing themselves on the matter. Gaile finally showed up in game (never came back on the forum on this matter) and said we were not getting slots for the event. Her scripts are usually saved and put in a thread in a different forum and most don’t even look at that forum so people wondered for a week if they’d be able to participate or not when the answer was there in another forum, but there are times she shows up online and people don’t even catch her in time, if they catch her at all. I always check that forum personally and I was really pissed off. My “rumor” thread ended up being 100% fact, Gaile got away with it and now everyone hates me.
This is a past blog entry from MySpace.
Here are my new characters I made after I bought the extra slots. Yes, we can finally buy extra slots.
My mesmer:
I based my mesmer on Alec in Dark Angel (the tv show I miss dearly, I shall curse Firefly until the end of time). He was so adorable and so perfectly dark, funny and smart. If you wonder who I’m talking about and you have the courage to look without fainting at this drop dead gorgeous guy, look HERE
. I love playing my mesmer so far and I could not resist not tame a melandru stalker as pet, a feline, which goes very well with Alec who was a genetically engineered officer with feline DNA. I knew I was right to say cats are purrfect. My dear mesmer wears the 1.5K Stylish armor, undyed.
My monk:
I could not resist to the beauty of the asian female characters for my female monk, I decided to create her in Factions instead of the first game. She is so pretty. I made a monk so that there is one more monk in the game considering that there is a shortage of monks. I was worried I would not like the class but I love it, it’s different. She wears the 1.5K Canthan armor, dyed red.
This is a past blog entry from MySpace.
I spend so much time with them, I might as well show them. I’ve been through so much with them. I waited for them to have their final set of armor before showing them. I plan to make a mesmer and monk soon once they sell character slots. Here they are.
My ranger:
My ranger is probably the first character I created. He is wearing collector armor right now, undyed. I thought he was pretty lame at the beginning since the damage he was doing with his bow was very low. I tamed a wolf and I really loved that. He is mostly beastmaster but to go to certain places he ends up being a trapper or a barrage/pet ranger. I’ve appreciated him better with time.
My female necromancer:
My female necromancer was probably created second or third. I really love her. I find necromancy a really fun powerful and cool class to play. I’ve enjoyed playing her right from the start. From my ranger, I really liked Troll Onguent as a self-heal so I picked ranger as second class for her to have that skill. Once I was there, I could not resist not tame a wolf as well, I really love having a pet. I tossed away Troll Onguent rather quick but kept the pet. I usually do blood spike and use the pet with her. Sometimes I switch to curses to go to certain places. She is wearing the 15K Cultist armor right now, undyed.
My elementalist:
Here is my poor elementalist. I say poor because I really did not like playing him at first, I was not fond of my ranger either but my ranger had a pet, which was to me quite a redeemable feature. Elementalists are overrated in term of damages, necromancers beat them anytime. I picked monk as second class for self-heal and/or maybe in the future replace a monk if necessary. I was using more smithing skills (monk skills) than elementalist skills with him, just to tell you how poor his damages were. Actually the only reason he did not get deleted is because I finally found a quite redeemable feature to him, he is so damn cute I’d gladly take him off the screen and kiss him. And he even looks better with his 15K Aeromancer armor now, undyed. I enjoy admiring him.
My male necromancer:
Before him I had a warrior/monk. I did not like playing her even though I enjoy melee weapons very much. I guess I find the warrior class very boring, all you do is smash smash smash. As you know, I love the necromancer class and I had heard of the meleemancer builds, a necromancer with melee weapons. I already have my female necromancer but I could not see her hanging around with an axe or a sword, she was happy with her wolf and her life-stealing skills; plus I love melee weapons and I knew I’d want a nice collection (which I started with my W/Mo) and my necromancer’s inventory was already almost full, no place for extra in there. I took a chance and deleted my warrior, created my necromancer, put my warrior’s weapons in the necromancer’s inventory and started to play him. He is actualy more fun to play indeed, playing him requires tactic and inteligence, not just smash smash smash. When I created him, I wanted to make him look like Dhomochevsky in the manga Blame by Tsutomu Nihei, I find Dhomochevsky really cool, but I think my necro looks more like Spike in Buffy. I’ve never liked Buffy but Spike is the only redeemable feature of the tv show and he is really cute. So whether he looks like Spike or Dhomo, I like him. He is wearing the 1.5K Necrotic armor right now, undyed.
My assassin:
I was really excited by the assassin when I heard about this new class in Factions. When the PvP event happened, I really didn’t know how to play this class, it was weird and not fun after all. During the world open event happened (the PvE event), it was the opposite, seems like I was really grasping the class and the combos. My male necromancer can steal HP, put Life Siphon on mobs to keep his HP up and his warrior skills require adrenaline. But not the assassin. I tried using a pet, in the case of my assassin, a pretty tiger, but no avail. She is a bit hard to play but I have fun and I’m usually the last one standing. She is wearing the 1.5K Kurzick armor right now, dyed silver.
My ritualist:
When I heard about the ritualist class in Factions, I did not know what to think of this class. My heart was going to the assassin. When the PvP event happened, I really enjoyed and love the class, while I was confused over the assassin. I mean, the other spellcasters are spellcasters, but the ritualist is a witch, a shaman, and as a Wiccan, I felt like a link between this class and my faith, with what I do. I love how expressive she is with her body when she does spells, which inspires me for my faith. During the world open event happened (the PvE event), I had lost connection with my ritualist but gain some with my assassin. I was worried I would not gain back this link once the game would go live but it happened and I enjoy playing her. She is now among my favorites. I gave her the collector dragon mini-pet I bought. Her armor is a mix and match armor, mixed with many armors. Her head gear is Imperial, her top is Seitung, her braces are Canthan and her skirt and shoes are Exotic, all 1.5K armors, dyed red.
This is a past blog entry from MySpace.
I finally went to see the movie with a friend. As a fan of the Silent Hill games, I couldn’t not go watch the movie, so here is my review, there are a few spoilers here and there so you’re warned:
The Good:
– the atmosphere of the movie was good and with the music and the graininess
– the effects were good as well
– the places that we see ingame were well done as well, really felt Silent Hillish
– the blood and gore were nice, but I do agree Cybil being showed being burned was too much, just showing her dead body would have done the same
– Pyramid head!!! Damn he is impressive. I guess I was too scared and too busy to run away from him to notice how tall and impressive he can be. And that long knife was helping a lot
– the credit and the music from SH 3 were good, we actually stayed to watch and listen, now she told me she (my friend) liked the music very much
– the mobs were well done and freaky, the part where the nurses start slashing each other, I wasn’t expecting that, I jumped
The Bad:
– too many mobs at once and then nothing for a while, kind of killed the scary element
– the parallel story at the other town with the father, trying to explain Silent Hill and as well to show that his wife and him aren’t in the same world
– I have always loved to think that it was snow in SH that was falling but here telling exactly what it is kind of killed the mystery
– it felt a bit rushed, so much time was spent at the beginning to set the story and then the rest was a bit quick for me
The Ugly
– everything is rather fine up until they reach the church, that is so not in the story, and while they were all alone before now they’re surrounded by people which kills the scare
– while the effects were rather good, the actors’ makeup were really bad, the worse being Daliah, it was so bad it was scary in a bad way.
– the explanations at the end, rather silly and unnecessary
– what happened to Lisa? Alessa cared and loved her so much, I doubt she would have done this, and it would have been great showing the scene when Lisa comes back from the dead to drag Dr. Kauffman to Hell
– the story, what is up with this? By the way, they do show a painting with God written on it but representing a woman, isn’t that in the first game? Here is an element that could have been used if they would have made the real story
– they show the town to be abandoned and inhabited when we know in Silent Hill 2, 3 and 4 that the town is still there and there are still people living there. Sure the town went through a lot but it’s not abandoned like in the movie.
Scare factor:
While my friend told me she was really scared and that she liked the movie, she even plans to buy the DVD, I was disappointed in the scare part in the sense that I didn’t get scared as much as I wished during the movie, there were too many elements breaking the rhythm.
Overall, I think the look of the movie was great while the content was lacking.
This is a past blog entry from MySpace.
Strange Realms' Random Thoughts 