After 10 Hours Of The Sims 3

I like the body modification thing: You get fat by eating too much and you get thin by excercising:



The sceneries are amazing. Mostly the game looks like The Sims 2.



A sim can tutor someone when they are skillfull enough.



Most of the textures, clothes, hairs and accessories are fugly, but with a little work, you can get pretty decent furniture and clothes:



What is cool:

Music by Steve Jablonsky (though it sounds too simmy, not Jablonsky-ish)
Enabling/disabling aging from the options
Semi-dynamic lighting
Scenery on both neighborhoods
Waves
45 degree angles
Half-grid (the old grid is cut in four parts, so you'll have more options when decorating)
Sim lifespan from 30 days to epic 960 sim days, choosable from the options
Amount of free will (but they still are idiots)
The graveyard
The gnomes
The opportunities
Characteristics

What is not cool:

Jobs
Playing another family in the same "game" is too difficult for beginners
Transportation is not as cracked up as they let us believe
Recycled models
Too little everything unless you want to buy them from the EA shop (for way more than they are worth)
Vegetation is half-life type sprite stuff. Fugly and the sprite thing is very noticeable
Too much of your day goes to hygiene and eating (unless you buy traits)
Relationships are too hard

Cheat codes:

kaching - 1k
motherlode - 50k
familyfunds - any k
hideheadlines on/off - hides everything from above their heads
jokePlease - prints a lame joke on the console
testingcheatsenabled true/false - use shift + mouse on the mail box, there are some good options, like "make all happy" that will fulfill their needs
hideobjects on/off - objects won't fade when you're zooming closer
help - (on build/buy mode) shows most cheats


What's best: You can get The Sims 3 for only 29.99 from Play.com (but you must pay £, if you pay with €, it's more expensive.

Endless Ocean

I just spend three days playing Endless Ocean on Wii.

I actually almost cried when I took the first dive.

I simply love it! I've had an aquarium of my own and have thought getting myself a salt water aquarium. Okay, the surroundings get a bit boring, since everything keeps the same, just a bit variation with layout. The bottom texture starts to annoy after ten-thirteen hours.

The fish are great! There's a lot of variation of species and they've also included some amazing fish (& some mammals, amphibians etc) and even a sea cucumber (my favorite!)..

I've found some of the species, like, a gazillion times and some species won't show up even if I dive the locations day and night and night and day, so, after going through the whole game I still have 40+ species unfound.

And I really don't get the Polar bear. Baby animals that come on the deck of the boat are a major plus! I just love the penguins!

Only thing that really bothers me is the partner thing. First, you can't have all the dolphins as partners (choosing is difficult) and having a wild thing as a partner (pet) to train is NOT OKAY in real life. It keeps amazing me how the dolphins seem to really like humans in real life.

Well, come to think of it, petting fish that live out on the reef is not okay in real life either, but I suppose Endless Ocean is better to learn of the marine life than going out there really. Besides, petting Red stingrays isn't probably smart in real life.

The soundtrack is great for diving. It's soft, flowing and Haley Westenra (Lucy, anyone?) has a very, very beautiful voice. I don't like that kind of music, but surprisingly that didn't annoy me.

I Hate Being Erica

So, there's this new show, called Being Erica.

I hate it.I fucking hate it.

I hate all these things about people who get more and more shit every day from their family and more: from their friends. Episode five of Being Erica made me want to kill every woman on this planet.

A good reminder why I don't like women and have only one female friend. I've been deceived, bullied and overlooked by girls and women all my life and seeing one woman - even fictinally - tortured by other women makes me want to puke!

I hate women. The only women I stand are my sisters (partly because I have to and they have more in their heads than the current lipstick fashion and pooping children) and my friend L, who doesn't like the woman stuff either.

However, the crappy show has made me think. What if I'm 32 in just four years, I probably won't be married, employed nor with children. Then I'll be glad I don't have bitches as friends.

Left 4 Dead

I finally got myself Left4Dead after realizing it's much cheaper in GBP, so, since Steam doesn't allow Euro countries to pay in Pounds, we asked a friend of our to buy them as a gift. So the price isn't even annoying anymore.

After playing 42 hours Left 4 Dead, I have come to find a few annoyances: Recycled textures and models (from HL2, CSS) - so they didn't even bother making new models (for that price!!). Some of the sounds are recycled, too. And the four campaigns each taking an hour or so, is way too little to play. So, basically they sold a mod priced like a standalone game. I'm so glad I didn't preorder.

The good side of the game is the co-op fun. It's so much fun having to trust other players to watch ones' back. I had a few scares. And I still panic when the Tanks growls somewhere near us. Sneaking by the witch is always creepy, especially if one of the team happens to like to startle the witch rather than just sneak. The Achievements are fun but annoying to reach. Trying to headshot a jumping Hunter is pretty hard. I haven't even tried Versus mode, since I'm co-op in every game!

So, in conclusion: I like the game, but I'm still disappointed.

Down With The Sickness & Time Warp

You should try this game:



Zombies!!!

Also:

The Time Warp guys should see how the bee flies. Really.

Some Good, Some Bad

I actually enjoyed watching Ghost Town on DVD. Even though it was pretty close to that Eva Longoria ghost-thingy -movie, included dentist humor and Tea Leoni with some ghost whispering, I liked it enough to have a big surprise at the almost-end (actually me and J went WTF at that point, damn those movie bus drivers!!). This one I could actually buy on DVD rather than rent.

Another good surprise was Mirrors, starring Mr 24.. At some point it was so creepy I had to pause for awhile. The weirdest thing was, there were some creepy images I can't shed out of my mind for a couple of days. The creepiest part in the film was after I watched it, because I got freaked out by a reflection in the window that had a human in it. Of course, it was the TV and Ghost Town on it, but it was enough to make me go goose-bump all over.

Now the bad.. The Duchess. I don't mind period dramas but this definitely was Keira Knightley on one too many of that genre. She needs to do something else than wear a corset and either silly bonnets or stupid hairdos. I didn't like the movie most of its part. Even the guy (Dominic Cooper of Sense and Sensibility on BBC - I think) Georgina falls in love with has been in one too many period dramas. The only thing I ended up watching was the fabric of the dresses and the sets and sceneries of the film. The rest was wayyyyy too much Keira. Keira please, DO SOMETHING ELSE, like a good shoot-out with a hard-boiled toughguy. No more corset dramas, please. For some reason, I like Aidan McArdle, who plays Sheridan, I haven't seen him much, but I liked the BBC mini Jane Eyre, in which he played John Eshton the twin researcher. This guy could do a couple more corset dramas, I think.

Missed The Geminides & A Few Words About Mansion/Garden

So, I've been waiting another year for the Geminides meteor shower to arrive. And the weather HAD to suck, of course, so I missed the maximum. I'm not angry, just furious.

The Sims 2 Mansion & Garden Stuff: RIP-OFF! Do NOT waste your money on it. You'll get a few decent plants, but: They won't match seasons -> will not wilt in winter. The rest of it is bull. No trees (WTF?), just a few indoor plants and useless, ugly items, such as a weird horse-type statue. I found only a few usable items, the windows and doors were mostly ugly (recolors needed!) and the Apartment Life "bugfix" f*cked up my game because I use a lot of annoyance-removing hacks and these hacks were broken because eAxis decided to break everything - again.

I've had a day of disappointments today. Well, yesterday.

The Day The Earth Stood Still

I just love one-face-Keanu. Though in DESS it was justified, he is an alien and everything, I believe he's overbotoxed himself.

I had to whisper: "Wake up, Neo" at a certain point in the movie...

The movie: I thought I liked the movie until we got to the part where the Disney shit started, you know the *sob* I miss dad *sob* me too *sob shit*. Only US flag waving could have made the film worse. I hated the kid (Will Smith: Your kid is terrible, do him a favor and quit pushing him towards film career, he'll be in rehab in less than ten years anyway) from the get-go and when he called the authorties on Kleetus whereabouts, I was past anger. Made me realize why I hate kids and their way of thinking.. The graveyard (over-sappy shit) scene made me frustrated and I wanted to leave the theater, but thought I might was well let J finish it, though he wasn't pleased either. I'm sorry but this movie was sort of, like Disney meets Neo. The Disney part was the I-thought-you-thought-broken-relationship between the step mom and the annoying brat. I kept hoping the woman would give a good bitch slap to the boy and ditch him. How cruel of me.

One good thing: I almost cried when the spheres started gathering animals, saving the ones who weren't to blame. Another good thing: I almost cried when the woman understands Kleetu is here to save life on earth but not humans. We would deserve it. A disease that would wipe most of the population. Interstellar intervention. Anything that would give us a lesson...

The thing is.. I don't think we'd learn.

I'd give two stars to DESS, but only because I happen to like Keanu and I liked the two emotion spikes. That's it.

Twilight, What? Mental(ist)

Holy poo that movie sucks. I don't have ANYTHING positive to say about that movie. It was like 90210 + True Blood messed with a all-time-worst dialogue, stupid "romantic" jumping up and down trees, some vampire baseball.. Shit, shit, shit. I'm glad I didn't have to pay for it. Don't waste your money on it.

I have also forgotten to mention my third favorite show, Mentalist. I don't know why I like it. It's not really good and that guy should be quite the mentalist to actually be able to pull stunts like that. I like Robin Tunney and there's something in her face that makes me just want to stare. I've seen The Craft for at least, like, twenty times. For some creepy reason, I love her chicken legs in it.

Simon Baker, who is the mentalist, Patric Jane (I always thought it was Jayne) has the most evil grin on his face sometimes. Great, wicked smile. Awesome! After CSI went to all-poo halfway through the eight season, this is my replacement. Simon Baker, who you'd might know from The Guardian and Land of the Dead. Of course I recognice him from Ring Two and The Devil Wears Prada (but I'd never confess to watching them)..

There's this X-Filish sparkles-theme between Jane and Lisbon that always works for me. Basically, any show having that kind of a relationship between the main characters, I'm sold.

My Carbon Footprint

My carbon footprint is 5,08 tonnes (Kg) of CO2 according to the test I made. According to carbonfootprint.com, it is 2.92 tonnes of CO2. I don't know about the units in the second test, so I can't really tell did I just give the wrong answers. The average footprint in my country is 12 tonnes according to that last test.

How big is your footprint?

Change of subject: I have had my new Nokia N95 8Gb for quite some time now. I can't say nothing negative about it, I've liked every bit of it, except the crappy Spiderman 3 movie that came with it. Well, if I really have to complain about everything, it's still a bit slow, killing hung software is difficult, the camera isn't properly covererd and after a while the keys start making noise, but everything else is cool. The price? Way too much, but everything costs nowadays.

Some Good, Some Bad and Some Shiteous

Let's start with the Good.

Indiana Jones:

I hadn't read a single review and tried to keep myself from getting any information on the film. As soon as I saw the scull I knew that H.R. Giger got himself copied. The sculls anyone? Well, of course the movie was behind Lucasarts and Stan Winston, but the scull was SO close to the alien one, I couldn't help myself but enjoy the rest of the movie too.

Iron Man: Good enough. I had low expectations, so it surprised me in the positive way..

The Happening:

Shyamalan rocks. I mean seriously rocks. Yesterday when I walked out of the theater, the strong wind gave me the chills. So far his movies (the ones I've seen) have made me:

See dead people in my dreams
Break my toe
Like Joaquin Phoenix
Cry
Scared
Wait for the plants' revenge.

+learn how to look for the little things in the movies

But hey, what the hell was the microphone thing in The Happening?

Well done, Mr. Shyamalan. Night-san!

Kung Fu Panda

The chopstick fight was the best ever!

And The Not Bad, but not good:

Dark Floors

The second Finnish movie in English (that I've seen) and the only bad thing was the Lordi members. The rest of it: Ten points for Finland. Ten poäng Finland. Seriously, I didn't even know Marcus Selin can DO things like that. You can also see the annoying captain from "Aliens" in this little piece of Finnish movie history.

The Shiteous:

Whisper

Again one of the movies that have made me want to destroy all the children.

And some others just on DVD and blu-ray

My Little Sims Castaway Stories Review

There is only one story to play, but you can choose if you want to play it as a male or a female. I played the female. After you finish the story mode, the freeplay neighborhood will be unlocked. To try the storymode with another character, you'd have to remove the folder from Documents & Settings..

The story mode was a bit too easy and way too short. Someone less familiar with the Sims might find some more challenge there, but for an old addict such as myself, the game was just a way to spend a few hours.

The thing that annoys me most with these Stories - games, is the definite storyline. I had no influence on what was going on and that - to be honest - sucks. For now, Castaway Stories will be the last for the Stories - games, but I would hope they'd make a bit complex story system if another Stories will be available.

The items were - again - mostly ripped from the Sims 2 too. The good thing - however - is the fact that mAxis went through the trouble of bringing Sims Castaway for PS3 to us PC owners too.
Some of the new objects were excellent and the whole concept was much more entertaining than Life Stories. Reward system was good, but I would've excepted something more "useful" such as an unlockable resource tree. Mostly the rewards and gifts were useless.

They should have added a couple more stories to play to keep the "I-got-ripped-of-my-cash-again" - bogeyman out of our minds..

I spent a happy six hours playing the Sims Castaway Stories. As with Life Stories, do not buy it if you already own the Sims 2 and you own a computer that can handle the very "heavy" game. Sims Life Stories is NOT worth the price, so you better save the money from SCS and buy the new upcoming expansion, Free Time (if you - of course - own Sims 2). However, If you own a laptop and you're not as addicted as myself, go and buy SCS. It will be some entertaining. Please take a note that the minimun requirements are a joke, it needs at least 1gig memory and a 2,8 mobility CPU. I played this with a high-end PC and sometimes I lost my nerves because I'd need a RAID system for my hard drives to make the game read stuff more faster...

NOTE: I found out that The Sims 2 compatible objects (non-expansion - that is) can be imported to the game the same way as with the Sims 2 objects are imported except for the utilities such as fridges and stuff. And there's no TV, I suppose. These objects need to be unique meshes with their own unique ID's and their recolors. The cheats are not accessible in the storymode, but some Sims 2 compatible hacked objects and hacks do work, such as Merola's Sims' Hacked painting.

My Little Sims Life Stories Review

There are two stories to play: Riley's and Vincent's. I started with Riley's story beacuse it unlocks Vincent's and I didn't feel like free gameplay. I played Riley's story through in little less than four hours. There were a few nice twists and turns, but for a person who's played the Sims since it was first launched in Europe (and Sims 2 after that), it was too easy and too short. Someone less familiar with the Sims legacy might find some more challenge there. Vincents' story took me about three hours, a bit less - maybe. Not to spoil the surprise, but I really liked the sort of funny ending in Vincent's story!

The thing that annoyed me most was the definite storyline. I had no influence on what was going on and that - to be honest - sucks. You knew what was about the happen.

The items were mostly ripped from the Sims 2 too. The good thing - however - is the fact that they went through the trouble of making new wallpapers and stuff. The objects that are received as gifts were nice and being rewarded all through the story was good.

I also find it weird-ish that Sims Life Stories seems to run on Sims 2 "lite" engine. They only have removed some stuff (like the gardener and decaying flowers) and left most of the bugs there. The idiotisms still excist: the things-to-do queue got flushed away when something happened (needs a hack, someone!), the guests went straight to the refrigerator even though the buffet table was stocked and many, many others .

They should have added a couple more stories to play to keep the "I-got-ripped-again" - boogeyman out of our minds..

...Or was this just another scheme to fool us poor addicts to spend our last dollars to buy yet another buggy EA-money-making game..

The test-settings:
CPU: P4 3,4GHz HT +Zalman CNPS9500 LED
PSU: 400W Be Quiet Straightpower
Memory: PC3200 1,5GB
Motherboard: ASUS P4V800D-X
Hard Drive(s): 1x300GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200rps
Video Card: MSI RX1950PRO, 256MB
Display: 1152x864 100Hz

My PC isn't the worst of them all, but still: the same issues caused terrible lags. All the settings full it took a lot of memory (over 250000kb), but I noticed a slight decrease in the CPU usage compared to Sims 2 (and all the expansions and stuff sets I have). But one must remember this game is MEANT to run on mobility CPU's, so their game experience might be a bit better than mine..

So, Sims Life Stories offers you a good way to spend a few hours but that's about it.
Do not buy it if you already own the Sims 2 and you own a computer that can handle the very "heavy" game. Sims Life Stories is NOT worth the price, so you better save the money from SLS and buy the new upcoming expansion, Seasons.. However, If you own a laptop and you're not as addicted as myself, go and buy SLS. Please take a note that the minimun requirements are a joke, it needs at least 1gig memory, 2,8 mobility CPU and a laptop with no internet connection, firewall and antivirus.

NOTE: I found out that The Sims 2 compatible objects (non-expansion - that is) can be imported to the game the same way as with the Sims 2 objects are imported. These objects need to be unique meshes with their own unique ID's and their recolors. Maxian recolors don't seem to work. I haven't tested the objects in the storymode yet. The cheats are not accessible in the storymode, but the freeplay mode is okay with the old ctrl-shit-c help -all -thingy.

Nokia N70

I have had my N70 for three months now.

I have noticed that every time I try to install a game it crashes at least twice before it does anything. The lowest brightness value is too bright (and battery consuming) for use in the darkness (it's a good flashlight, though).

The camera takes a good picture most of the time. If the target doesn't move and is closer than 10 feet. A moving target is a big no-no and preferrably it should be a sunny day. And yes, I know there's a flash. But anyway.

Loading a program takes forever.

The default themes suck.

The cover wears out very soon (my phone lost its "paint" a month ago), the camera cover will get loose at some point (too soon).

So it is:

Expensive and worth shit. Do yourself a favor and forget that you even thought buying it. Instead, go get a Samsung. Or if you really, really want a Nokia, do yourself another favor and choose N73. At least they fixed a few bugs. Or buy a Japansese phone that is an exact copy of N70, but without the bugs.

I hate my phone.

And I hate the 400$ I spent on it.

Scary Movie 4

.. It sucks, basically.

Movies

Have you even seen a movie that really effects your thoughts and feelings for a moment? In 1993, I saw Schindler's List. It was like, what, three hours long? When I went in, the sun was shining and it was windy. When I came out everything had turned to grey and it was raining. My friend said she felt as if the "angels were crying". I totally won't go see Hotel Rwanda.

Yesterday J didn't remember the Women's day, so I went out with my friend for a coffee and finally ended up playing a touch-monitor game in a smokey restaurant, sipping ice water and laughing our asses out. Of course J wasn't so pleased when I spent hours there (I guess I should have been home in his mind) and a big load of money for bad coffee and the game machine as well.

It's a perfect sunny weather outside. Maybe I'll go for a stroll before going to classes.

Oh, and yesterday I learned what is "College Rock". The tune of the moment is a good example.

Tune of the moment:
3 Doors Down - Let Me Go

Something Stupid..

Today is the international Women's Day. Well, J didn't remember it - he never remembers anything. He didn't even remember we have been together for four years, not three, as he told his cousin who lives in California. At least he knows when it's my birthday.

I've been playing the Sims 2 for the whole last week. I didn't even go out as I had fever almost every day. So I've been more or less sick for three weeks now. Last night I had fever too, but I decided to come to school today anyway. The reason? The cutest teacher I've ever seen. He's not really THAT goodlooking, but he has a speech defect. He cannot say the letters "r" and "s" properly, but I think that's the fact that makes him so cute. And it makes people to listen to what he says. That's not a good reason to attend classes, but hey - at least I'm here. AND forgot to take my assignment with me.

Oh, went to see Constantine. Great movie, lots of fun. All the reviews were about it sucking hard, but I simply loved it! I had to see it twice, though I don't like Rachel Weisz). And Keanu Reeves still looks hot. HOT. HOT!