My ‘Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′ rant.

Why is it that this game got almost exclusively 9/10 reviews?
Why is there no criticism anywhere?

I’m not saying it’s not a good game, I’m just saying why isn’t it better?

Is no one else bored of the scripted, linear campaign modes in every Call Of Duty game since the series started just over SIX YEARS AGO?

I don’t think that games should have to be like movies, the same everytime you put the disc in, why can’t you have different paths to the same objective, or different objectives for the same goal?

In fact, I think they missed a golden opportunity in the storyline for MW2.. there is a mission where you are undercover with a terrorist group and have to take part in a massacre of civilians. You have to go along with this (or skip the mission entirely, but that doesn’t affect the story in any way). Why not have a fork here? So you could go along with it and deal with the horrible emotional trauma, or kill the terrorists and prevent the massacre, but risking the overall mission. As it is, it pretty much just provides a bonus mission for the sick, twisted, and sadistic. (If you haven’t played the mission, to see what I mean, watch this video)

Even just a choice of different missions would be an improvement, so if you get stuck on one, you can do another first and come back to it.

Or more features, like being able to select what weapons you want to start a mission with.

Special Ops is a step in the right direction. The thing that struck me though, was why give me a few guns on a tarp at the beginning? Why not just let me pick from ANY of the weapons in some sort of selection screen? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it before in games. I’m pretty sure I can do it in Rainbow Six: Vegas. In fact, you can do it in the multiplayer side of COD.

I actually spent six hours playing through the special ops yesterday on veteran, and it was fun.

Much much more fun than playing the campaign on veteran.

It occured to me, that the campaign on veteran often boils down to doing the same thing repeatedly, in pretty much the same way, and trying to remember where the guy who killed you last time was (He’ll probably be in the same place, doing the same thing. It’s easier to program like that.).

Whereas, in special ops, because we didn’t have to do the same thing each time, and many of the maps are more open, we were using strategy and team work to beat the missions! Which was fun and not frustrating and repetitive.

Bigger maps, with choices of objectives (or at least, a choice of order of objectives) and a team mate who actually helps makes it infinitely more fun.

You don’t need a human team mate even, just look at Conflict Desert Storm, or the Rainbow Six series.
Mix those games with Call Of Duty and you have a winner.

(Oh, and improve the way people act when they’re shot as well. Make it more like you’ve just killed a man, and less like you’ve just flame thrower’ed a patch of nettles. Shouts of pain, better blood effects, icky injuries, all of these should be there. I noticed it somewhat in the level killing civilians, but it should be throughout. I worry that it’s bad for peoples minds to let them forget that they’re playing a simlation of killing other humans.)

Tags: COD, Modern Warfare 2, Rant, video game

The Great Historical Bridge Competition

Construct a model of the famous Iron Bridge (as in the picture below)

The first cast iron bridge. It's a bridge, and it's made of iron. Hence, Iron Bridge. Wonderous.

That, more or less, was my 13 year old sister’s history homework. So in the spirit of making bridges out of the latest and greatest of modern materials, her and her friend cast aside all forms of sense, and any appreciation of physics, and chose chocolate fingers as their building medium.

I took issue with this approach, and decided to see if I couldn’t do better using the traditional approach of cardboard, sticky tape, stainless steel wire, and pretend science. This is how it went.

Like a bull in a china shop, Emma rushes into an early, yet costly, lead

Meanwhile, I'm being so intelligent, I'm thinking in squares.

As well as chocolate, Emma's bridge is made of cardboard, and wishful thinking.

An insight into the mind of a genius. I also sometimes think about goldfish.

Ignorance is bliss.

The finished scale model, fully labelled and minutely detailed. A success for Timmington.

It's not about winning, it's about taking part. And hilarious failure.

I think I won that one.

Don’t read this. It’s boring. It’s a boring boring week. And I’m bored.

I was too tired to go to the pub today.
Which is a shame.

And quite pathetic, because my only reason for being exhausted is that I had my first day of work yesterday. Which being a Sunday, wasn’t even a full day.

I’m beginning to suspect I’m not as fit as I once could claim to be.

In any case, I’m there tomorrow at 8, which is the earliest I’ve ever gone to work. A new record for Tim. Amazing.

In other news, I’d kill for people to talk to on MSN because I’m the most bored I’ve been since…literally the last time I said I was bored in a blog.
Which was probably the last time I wrote a blog.

I don’t actually like the word blog.
It sounds like bog.
I’d rather say “last time I wrote an entry”, but everytime I used the word I would fear I might become prone to accidental innuendo or other word based peril.
Nerd news: Just realised I could plug my external hard drive into my xbox and watch the vast amounts of British comedy programmes on there. With surround sound where available. Not quite a substitute for a rewarding hobby or a loving relationship, but it keeps my eyes busy whilst I’m awake.

Right, I’m going to go and keep reminding myself I’ve got to go to work tomorrow, go to the job centre, then rush back to get my brother to take him for an appointment in town.

I foresee a boring yet stressful Tuesday.

P.S. Just realised, haven’t actually mentioned on here that I got a job before did I? I started Sunday. At Milléts. The high street camping and outdoors shop.

P.P.S. In case you’re wondering about the accented é, it’s because I think they should rebrand themselves as being French and upmarket.

Tags: bored, boring, kill kill kill me now because im bored, milléts, pub

A historical account of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, circa 1520

The Aztecs, or “Mexica” most famous leader could probably be said to be Moctezuma II. Born in 1467 to become the leader of an empire, he died in 1520, a prisoner of Spain.

It may be argued that these events, some 500 years ago, would have little or no bearing on the events of say.. Friday 15th January 2010.

But you’d be wrong.

As on that day, myself and a group of five more friends (Latticey friends that is. By that I mean, friends I have accrued through meeting in the Lattice house. Not friends that have naturally consist of an ornamental design made of strips of wood or metal) went to London! ON A TRAIN!

People familiar with my tangled web of neurotices* may notice three things wrong with that:

1, I practically have a phobia of cities
2, I don’t go anywhere outside of my lattice based comfort zone
3, The 505 bus aside, public transport scares me

I thought about it though, and I thought.. well… we’re only really going to an Aztec exhibition at the British museum.. and I am going with a group that includes a six foot tall fairly scary looking close personal friend.

The view from the train! and Jane's pointing hand. It's a pity, if it'd been taken a second earlier you would have seen a herd of majestic wildebeest chasing a flock of startled tax assessors. Just out of shot.

SO I WENT And nothing bad did happen. Good things happen. Things like pints and Chinese food and casual touristy friendliness**.

In case my memory became hazy, I took the precaution of taking lots of out of focus pictures.

First of all, we went to the Aztec exhibition.
Much was learnt.
Much was seen.
Much was old.

Knowing that most of my loyal readers (or more accurately, people looking for porn who accidentally got linked here from a popular youtube style porn site. No, I’m not making that up. My server logs told me. Weird.) are already experts on 15th century South America I didn’t feel the need to take any pictures. Except for the wonderfully reasonably priced gift shop.

Where you can buy such things as these beautifully crafted thin plastic trays:

Only £28 and £30 respectively!

That's me. Tim. Hi.

Inside the British Museum. I'd like to have my room like that.

Terry (left) and Chris (right). Note the jaunty angle. That's called "jauntery photographery" in the trade.

Pints, in "The Princess Louise"

The bar in the pub. Poorly photographed.

Chris, Terry and Del. Obviously when it comes to using camera phones, I fail.

Jane, with a pint of Kiri. In the best Chinese restaurant I've ever been to. Or else, it was mediocre, and I was very drunk. I hope it was good though. It'd mean I didn't have to be very drunk to go back there.

A classic example of the table surfaces used in the Chinese restaurants. Also, a classic example of me fiddling with my phone and taking accidental pictures.

I don't know what happened to his face, but this is Chris, with pint. Nice.

A *slightly* less blurry Hobbit.

Hobbit shows us his pornstar pose. No, we didn't ask to see it. But there it is. In all it's weird and twisted glory.

Another pub, McGlynns. Courage best was served, and it was good.

Courage Best. For those of you that don't know, it's a pint. A pint of beer. In a pint sized glass.

Jane, Chris, Terry, Del, Hobbit in a row in the pub.

Me and Terry, merry in the pub. After some pints, but before some more pints.

Myself and a guy at the bar. Called Justin. Justin the friendly guy at the bar. That's his full title.

I thought I should take a picture with the friendly bar staff of McGlynns. Richard. THANKS FOR THE FREE CRISPS RICHARD

We went to three pubs in all, had some lovely pints.
In the Chinese restaurant I actually used CHOPSTICKS successfully

Oh! and on the train home I walked between carriages for the first time! Not quite so successfully… you press a button and then both doors open in sequence. Except the second door when I tried, so I kept getting stuck between carriages, and Terry had to come rescue me. Three times.

The last pub we went in was McGlynns at King’s Cross, and I can thoroughly recommend it to all (See, that’s the sort of endorsement a free packet of crisps gets you. Good eh?)

*is that a word? It should be. Sounds amazingly intelligent in my head. Like vertices, or hippopotenuse. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, it means the longest side of a herd of hippopotamus. An animal famous for it’s triangular herd formations. According to me anyway.

**What does that refer to I hear you ask? I don’t know. I just liked the phrase. Happy ring to it.

Tags: aztec, british museum, lattice house, london, moctezuma, photos, pictures, the princess louise, train

Timmington’s 2010

It was an interesting year. Full of highs and lows.

Love affairs, visits to exotic locations, new jobs and promotions… these are just some of the things that did not happen to me last year. Or the year before.

But I’m hopeful for this year.

Right now I should be on my way to a new year party, but I’m too tired, and instead I’m sitting here trying to work out what I want to achieve this year, and how to go about doing it.

I should list my goals here, but that would make it worse when I failed to achieve them.

Tags: 2010, goals, new year

On the day before the eve of Christmas Eve…

Yet again, I have done nothing blog worthy.

I've recently been experimenting with new ways to write legal documents. I now use tables instead of paper, and sign my name only in condiments. This example is the back of my giant wooden credit card. In case you're wondering, yes, it is woodchip and pin.*

This week I managed to:
- order two new suits
- go to the pub
- write and send one christmas card

That is all.

Tomorrow I have to pop into town for an early appointment at the lack of jobs centre, and then attempt to buy christmas presents, but actually fail miserably, ending up spending all my money on suits.

It’ll make for an interesting day, up until the point I eventually realise you can’t buy many suits with six pound coins and a tic-tac box full of five pence pieces.

Still, I can dream.
Mainly about this:

A safari suit, modelled by some guy.

Unfortunately, I don’t actually think I can afford it.. despite it being cheap as chips (well, cheap as 40 cones of chips. Or 40 kilograms of McCain Chunky Homefries**. Or two very large cotton chips, carved into the shape of a two piece safari suit.). It also is probably a couple of inches too big for me in terms of chest size (I am of course, still a tiny tiny man.). I may buy it anyway however, so that if ever I over eat and become larger, I will at least be able to enjoy the handsome lines of style and the  ‘I-just-killed-a-lion-with-only-a-high-velocity-rifle-and-a-zebra-striped-land-rover’ look.

Now, suits aside for a few minutes (Only a few though, I’m in a suity mood.), I actually had other things to say in this blog. I don’t remember any of them. I think it was something to do with christmas or easter. It’s christmas on Friday so I’m going to go with that, and share my christmas based wisdom with you all.

Christmas

Christmas is good.
Snow makes going to the pub more difficult.
Elf is the best christmas movie.
Presents are difficult to buy.
I like the excuse to eat and drink in excess.
Dutch police hate reindeer
The best christmas song is “Fairytale Of New York” by The Pogues & Kirsty McColl.
The second best christmas song might be by Hot Pantz.
I’d like to give you one.
I’d really like to give you one.
I’d like to give you for christmas.

That’s all I have to say about that.
I haven’t evean dreamt about much lately.
Except for one dream in which I bombed a law firm, but I dare not share that in case it wasn’t a dream and I was in fact confessing to the real life murder of three people.

Before I go though, I feel I should report the worrying fascist activity going on at my family’s dinner table lately..

Sister: Joe’s written ‘Nazi’ on my shopping list!
Me: Oh he didn’t did he? You can’t do that to her shopping list! Pass it here and let me have a look! That’s very bad of you.
*looks at shopping list*
Me: Right, but you had in fact already drawn a swastika on your list before he wrote ‘Nazi’ on it?
Sister: Well yeah… but it’s my shopping list….

I think I should probably end on that note.
Goodnight all.

*Probably the worst pun I’ve made all year. I feel like I should apologise, but I can’t. You wouldn’t read this if you couldn’t handle tacky wordplay.
**You may ask why I bothered to make that a link. The answer? Purely because I imagine people like to click things. I click things all the time. Sometimes I open MS Paint just so I can enjoy clicking the little red “X” icon to close it again. Try it. It’s more fun than you’d think. It’s a bit like having a little servant with an easel in the next room, and every so often you ring a bell and proclaim the urge to paint a picture, and as soon as the easel is set up and the paints set out, you say “Actually no, I no longer wish to paint a picture. I shall return to staring at my wallpaper instead.” and he scurries away. Like a guinea pig carrying tiny books.

Tags: christmas give you one for christmas, dream, fascist, large wooden credit card, safari, safari suit, suit, swastika, xenophobia

Too dazed and confused to think of an adequate title.

I haven’t updated this in over a week.
I think I’ve been too busy.

I say I think, because I really don’t remember monday to wednesday. Maybe I went to the pub or something?

Thursday and Friday I had college then pub.
Saturday I watched the snooker and ate After-Eight mints.
(And managed to break my PSP. Just when I was getting into playing Pirates as well. I vowed never to forgive myself. )

Then Sunday I did almost absolutely nothing.
(Except managing to repair my PSP, and forgave myself.)

Now I just can’t work out whether to go to town or not. On the one hand I have lots of presents to buy, and a pub to frequent. On the other hand, I’m lazy and probably low on money anyway.

I also need to do the christmas cards I was definitely going to do yesterday.
+ Tidy my room.
+ Do some washing.
+ Stop being in a dazed state of madness.

Oh, and I should probably note down the dream I had last night.
Not particularly unusual (at least by my standards) but noteworthy all the same.

Dream:

From what I can remember I was in a stairwell of a London tube station. On a camp bed. My head was killing me, and I had family around me generally jabbering and being entirely unhelpful.

After what seemed to be hours of lying there, I heard a commotion which woke me up from my dazed state.

Hundreds of commuters were running towards me.

I thought *sigh* and tried to gather up all my essential items I had littered around my bed.

Then I recognised one of the commuters. It was Bradley.
I said “HEY BRADLEY!” and he told me he was in a rush, but that he was also a closet post man. At this point he handed me a package, and told me it was from Adam and Lauren, and that I must use the items within to prepare for their christmas party, and be ready at once with wine and cigars.
He then left, in quite a runny pointy fashion that I couldn’t describe without making him pose for an embarassing photo. Which I may later.

This was odd. Not least because Adam and Lauren don’t use friends to deliver parcels to people sleeping rough during the Monday morning rush hour.

At least I’ve never recieved one.

Now I was fully awake anyway, I thought I’d open the mysterious package.
Inside I found… a full length coat. A PVC leather effect one. Rather swanky. I of course put it on immediately.
AND!
Two fake eyebrows, made of brightly coloured green plastic.
But that’s not all of course.
There was also an upside down fake moustache (which in hindsight could have been non-upside down, had I not put it on upside down.).

Wearing my new found style, I went for a walk. Around Lynn. Which included much generic shouting at youths.
But then I got to Westgate, to browse.
During my browsing however, a man pulled out a gun on the staff.
And realising he had not noticed me behind him (probably due to my incredible green eyebrowed upside down haired goth disguise) I realised that instead of going home for a nap, I would have to tackle him.

This I did rather unsuccessfully, as the remainder of the dream consisted of me holding on to a large man muttering swear words under my breath and wondering why our grappling appeared never to end.

Weirdly that dream seemed even less coherent than normal.
I shall go now, and attempt to get dressed.
Merry Monday.

Tags: adam, bradley, dream, lauren, pointless

My dull week… in pictures! Honestly this time. I actually remembered to take some.

I haven’t been home to update this recently.
Spent two days dividing my time equally between the College and the Lattice House.

I think I shall let these pictures tell the story:

Electricals in Hughes, quite arousing.

I couldn’t really resist as I walked by. If it doesn’t make sense, don’t worry, it’s related to an earlier post.

Christine and friend in the Lattice.

Mr Cinammon X. The most handsome guinea pig in the world. Also evil, and rather bounciful.

At college on Friday. For my appearance, I can only apologise. I had not been home in 36 hours.

I've got no excuses for his appearance, he HAD been home in 36 hours. (Joking dear Michael, calmingtons)

Michael and myself in L412 at the college, working hardly.

I don't know what was on fire, but it seemed to be in the vicinity of Aroma

I appreciate that isn’t actually much of a story.
I just like pictures.

So, to sum it all up.. I spent thursday in the college pretending to work. Left at 3pm to drink with many many good friends in the Lattice.
Left there to go to Bar Red about 9 o’clock, then went to the Globe until it closed, and slept round a friends house. After having about a bottle of southern comfort.

Friday I woke up amazingly non-hungover, stocked up on Lindt and Lucozade at 8am in Sainsburys. Then spent all afternoon watching the Office (US) in the college. Productive day.

I did however, manage to scrape together a presentation about personal behaviour in a work environment. Which you can see here.
It’s worth a look, you might even learn something.

I did of course pop in to the pub after college, and on the way noticed town was on fire. I didn’t stop though, wanted to get to the Lattice before they ran out of reduced chicken curries.

And at 9 o’clock, I got on a bus home.
Which is rather remarkable, considering I’ve never actually managed to catch it that late before. I normally end up walking home, taking me 2 hours instead of 15 minutes.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ve forgotten all the interesting things that have happened to me, which would have made this post really rather interesting.

Nevermind though. Think of some interesting news you may have seen and imagine I was involved*.

Thanks for reading**, goodnight!

*It doesn’t have to be news, pornography would work too.
**Unless you just glanced at the pictures and skimmed over the dullness, if that’s you, then you can go .

Tags: cinammon, college, fire, lattice house, lynn, personal behaviour, photos, pictures, presentation, southern comfort

A reliable source tells me it’s December.

CHRISTMAS SOON

Which means my aim of being happily employed and in a relationship by christmas looks to be unachievable.

I haven’t done any christmas shopping and have such a dislike of crowded shops I’ve been known to be forced into retreat before actually completing purchases.

Plus I don’t have much money because I’m Tim and addicted to buying shiny things.

I think I’ll just move christmas to January.

I AM AN IDIOT FACE

Last night I went to the Lattice for the quiz.
Answered no questions, and had to sit with an insane drunk scottish woman .
Who insisted we shared pitchers. And by insisted, I mean she started drinking mine and then went off to buy more.
Which I had to drink as quickly as possible to stop her from doing so, as anymore drink would have probably tipped her into a violent rage and ended with my head being forced through a window of a listed building.

(Incidentally, she’s a town councillor, and used the immortal phrase “I’m a town councillor. I can’t sleep in a fucking car!”)

Of course I didn’t actually take into account the fact that drinking three pitchers (with extra vodka. why? idk.) in two hours would make the next day quite so uncomfortable.

I’ve been in bed. Eating a Club biscuit, and watching Extras. As it was the easiest DVD to reach.

I also entirely forgot to go to an appointment in town.
I’m fairly certain I’m supposed to be doing something tomorrow, but what? I do not know.

I entirely hate myself for being THAT stupid.
Who orders a pitcher filled with 4 vodka shots and 2 shots of curacao because they’ve run out of rosé wine? Idiot face does. Which is me.

Tags: christmas, idiot face, lattice house, shiny things

Have a break, have some chocolate covered wafer biscuits in the shape of miniature women

Last night I had probably the weirdest dream I’ve had this year. It starts of relatively normal, but gets more interesting by the end. Trust me.

At first I was in a car park, and there was a girl sitting in a parked Ferrari (convertible 355 in red, as a matter of fact) opposite me. On the bonnet there was a plate of biscuits in the shape of little women. Which was odd. Odder than that though, was that they were quite nice, layers of wafer covered in smooth milk chocolate. I had one, and then left, but felt compelled to return for another. The girl in the car was angry though, and whistled for her boyfriend to come down and get rid of me.

He was fairly big, and I did try to explain I wasn’t interested in his girlfriend, purely her tasty womanly shaped biscuits. He didn’t accept this however. Cornered me against a wall, and swung at me. I was able to block this and topple him over.
It was at this point I realised I really wasn’t going to be able to have another biscuit and I may as well leave.

Next thing I’m at home, but in a sort of alternate reality.
My younger sister and brother were there, smoking and swearing, and I was explaining to my Dad that I wasn’t in college today because I’d had a days suspension for something the day previously.

I then notice that there’s three guinea pigs in the conservatory, but none of them were my favourite guinea pig! Called Cinammon! At that point I broke down entirely, crying on my knees shouting “NOOOO! CINAMMON! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DIE!” and everything went black for a while.

After that, I was in college with my netbook. We were all doing I.T., and our task was to draw a map in Microsoft Word (which of course, is silly.) and I couldn’t be bothered to do it but was very aware that the teacher was a stroppy tart (that was my exact thought.) and that I’d only just got back from a days suspension. So I started to have a go at it after a while.
Unfortunately, it was at this point that the idiot next to me decided to smush his Jam sandwiches into my eyes (anyone that knows me well enough, should know that sandwiches are my kryptonite). Now I’m blinded by a doughy strawberry paste, all I can do is grab him and punch him repeatedly. Maybe not the best response, but darnit people shouldn’t get away with sandwich smushing.

Of course, the teacher comes over at this point. She sees that I’ve not done any work and that I’m now smeared with jam and punching someone, and decides to start shouting and pulling on my clothes. I instinctively push her back and her eyes sparkle with the fires of hell at me (well, not quite, but she looked really angry) and frog marches me to the headmasters office.

Which is actually a large wood panelled room, with chairs all around against the walls, and about 30 pupils smoking and whom are obviously there for similar reasons to me.
At first he’s really polite, and offers me a light lunch (which is covered in beetroot and thus unedible, but I had to pretend to like it).

After a short time however, he tells us all that he’d had enough of us and immediately a fight broke out.
It was chaos.
I always being charged at by people and dodging and throwing people around.
At one point someone that looked a little bit like the orange guy from Dragonball Z was pushing me Matrix style about a mile before I got out of his hold and he launched into a wall.
(Don’t ask me why all this was happening. I do not understand where all this comes from myself.)
Eventually though, it was just me and a friend of mine, and we walked up out of a trapdoor to the outside.

Which was a strange carnival.

Now the last thing to happen in this dream, was that I came acrross an old wooden cart, which had a neverending hole in, and was covered in cobwebs. It’s all a tad hazy, but my brother and I were talking to an evil spirit which had taken over the body of an insect.
He was really rather horrible. He told us he intended to kill us both and inherit our bodies as his new hosts, to complete his complex evil plans.

I do the only thing that I could think of. I throw him into the cobwebs.
Now he’s all upset! Saying “Oh that was really mean. I’ll never get out of here. I’m all tangled and stuck.”
Typically, he’s offered a chance to escape when a 12 inch high tin toy of a mouse dressed as a clown juggling walks by, and the evil spirit is able to possess it and walks towards us, laughing evily and juggling.

We’ve both had enough at this point.
So my brother picked him up, and dropped him into the never ending hole.

THE END.

Tags: college, dream, Dreams, netbook, tin toy of a mouse dressed as a clown juggling