Orderoftheflame

I was going to post this up nearer the start of January when I actually put it together, but it turns out it’s pretty hard to take pictures and video of. I bought a Nixie Kits VU Meter to match the headphone amp I have.

The pictures and video do it no justice whatsoever. It looks amazing in reality.

Video after the jump. Continue reading →

A happy new Year to all!

Despite my posting slowing to such a rate that the last 10 posts span 8 months, I guess I should make sure I write my fifth traditional “Game of the Year” post. It’s been a pretty small games year for me, so I’m just going to round out my top pick for each of the major players this time.

• PC – Portal 2 – Valve did a great job with the Portal 2 in my opinion, it was by far one of my most anticipated games of the year and it really delivered for me. Considering the first game was pretty much a technical demo (an amazing and awesome one at that), Valve have managed to transform a simple idea into winning franchise. At it’s heart one of the best puzzle games there is, tied with the fantastic and witty banter of both Wheatley and GLaDOS made it a superb title.

• PS3 – Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception – The third great title in Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series. Not much in the way of new game play features, but great environments and another amazing story put it right up there.

• Xbox 360 – Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – While it seems to have lost a lot of the scale and depth of the previous games, I loved how revelations built on both Ezio and Altaïr’s stories. I didn’t play more than a handful of games on the 360 this year, but Revelations was easily the best of those that I did.

As usual, all great story games for me. I loved all three of them, however Portal 2 did everything right while bringing a lot of originality to the table, so much like it’s predecessor when I started writing these four years ago, therefore Portal 2 is my Game of the Year this time round.

So Christmas has been and gone again too quickly, and just a few days left until the new year.

I was kindly given the triode headphone amplifier kit I’ve been eyeing for a while as a present. Great fun to put together, despite the valves being fiddly buggers. I’m no audiophile by a long way, but it sounds great to me, especially with the 598s I bought previously.

Very tempted to get the matching VU Meter kit by the same bloke now…

So, I found out that I could get the abbreviation of my domain name cheap, so what better thing to do with it than to turn it into a personalised url shortener?

http://ootf.co.uk/luls

In other news.. Chrimbo’s nearly upon us, so I thought I’d treat myself a bit. I like.

Can you guess what it is yet?

Need a clue? It uses Russian parts that were possibly made in the 70s…

New record for going the longest without posting yet. At least I’ve made a half arsed attempt to keep what I’m reading and watching up to date…

I’ve no excuses really, nothing that should stop me from putting the effort in anyway. I guess there’s just not been much to talk about. It’s just as I sit here actually taking some time to sit and put something down that I realize that it’s been very quiet for me recently.

I’ve watched a couple of films recently, the first being Ghost in the Shell, and the second the Senna film. Both great films, but for very different reasons. I haven’t watched nearly as many Japanese/Manga films as I’d like. I enjoy watching them and I’ve got a considerable stack of them bought and waiting to be watched… They just always seem to get put on the bottom of the pile. Ghost in the Shell seems to be one of the classics so I thought I’d give it a go, and really enjoyed it.
The Senna film came out on Bluray just recently, so I thought I’d give the extended version a view. In addition to the superb and moving footage from the theatrical cut, there’s a whole heap of additional interviews that really push what a great driver and person Senna was.

Books wise over the last few months I’ve been dabbling with a few titles, a few autobiographies, but most of all I’ve been hitting George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and fire series which I’ve really fallen for. I’ve heard good things about it before, but never really enough to pick up a book, it was only when I was in New York earlier in the year seeing the adverts for the TV series of A Game of Thrones (which I’ve still yet to watch..), that I thought I’d pick the first book up.
They’re not thin books, and I find myself well into the second part of the third book despite the meagre amount of time I still find to read. I’ve really been enjoying the setting and characters, the only thing I can describe it as would be a slightly less heavy going version of Lord of the Rings, but with a more toned down fantasy feel to it.

I’ve not bought a whole heap of new music in the last few months, but thanks to a free spotify premium and some time to just sit back and do nothing but listen to music, a bit of indulgence in the “Related Artists” feature has resulted in finding another artist that I’ve been enjoying a lot of recently, Explosions in the Sky.

That’s about it really. I’ll get round to posting again some time in March I guess.

Cheers Shuttle, shame it had to end.

And a Brucie bonus for everyone as well.

Edit: And another.

So… The whole blogging regularly failed miserably, again. In particular I’m well behind discussing the books I’ve finished reading. Four books in total, finished since the last lot, but as usual I seem to be buying them quicker than I can read them.

What to move onto next then…

Completely late to the party, but I finally found the time to finish off the last few seasons of Lost thanks to the long Easter break. Despite what I’d heard I managed OK to keep track of the goings on during the last half of the show.

A pretty awesome TV show in my opinion, well worth seeing all the way through.

So the Wii’s replacement has been confirmed.

Think I’ll hold out on any excitement until I learn more about it’s actual specification / performance (or lack thereof) rather than listening to the existing rumours.

To whom it may concern:

Re:  Wii’s successor system

Nintendo Co., Ltd. has decided to launch in 2012 a system to succeed Wii, which the company has sold 86.01 million units on a consolidated shipment basis between its launch in 2006 and the end of March 2011.

We will show a playable model of the new system and announce more specifications at the E3 Expo, which will be held June 7-9, 2011, in Los Angeles.

Sales of this new system have not been included in the financial forecasts announced today for the fiscal term ending March 2012.