Watched "The Fall" last night. Probably not advisable if you were still mildly delirious as I was at the time. From the director the "The Cell". It was stunning. If you can get past the performance of the lead child actress (who was only maybe 5 or 6 at the time) its a great film. Lee Pace (from Pushing Dasies) gives a great performance. Basically, think Baron Munchausen or Princess Bride in terms of narrative structure...1920s stuntman befriends a child whilst paralysed in hospital and starts telling a fantastical story. Absolutely beautiful with great visuals and great locations. Seriously, their location scout should have been given an Oscar. Beautiful, quite touching and effective.

Due to being persuaded that "Fallen London" is a great game and I really should play it, I folded. Gave in and did something I really hadn't intended to do. Y'see that's the only way you can log in and play the game.

Yup, this is my way of justifying the fact that I am now on twitter. Don't expect much if any twittering, I'm more in the way of passive observation, and have nothing to contribute to this new medium.

But anyway, in case astounding revelations occur to me that can only be communicated in 120 characters or less and you don't want to miss them you can find me:

@carnaaki

Surprise!

I appear to be in need of a victorian gentleman's outfitters, having been invited to a society occasion later this month. Time to get kitted out!

I'm showing all of the physical symptoms of stress at the moment, but I haven't consciously been noticing feeling stress. Admittedly it's been a high pressure period of work, but still...

Annoying that my body has to send me painful messages rather than my brain just expressing it in conscious thought.

I GOT THE JOB!!!!

Yeah, I know I've already got and completed Guitar Hero World Tour on the Wii. However I'm enjoying it all over again with the World Tour Guitar on the Xbox 360. The slide bar is great fun, the graphics are so much nicer (obviously) and of course I get achievements (whoever thought those up at Microsoft should be racking up a huge salary, biggest appeal to a hunter gatherer like me ever...). Great game, and when I get a chance, it now means I can pick up Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero 5 and Beatles Rock Band. If you don't know what the appeal is with these games, well, I guess the childhood version of you is looking at you from the past and shaking their head, sadly disappointed in what you've become.

Running - Is it wrong that I'm actually enjoying it now? I mean, don't get me wrong it's still exhausting and leaves my legs stiff, but I'm enjoying the improvements I'm making in my ability. Need to figure a way around conditions worsening as we head towards colder months and shorter days.

Xbox - completed Assassin's creed. Could go back for achievements but...meh. We'll see. The game was good fun and I'm looking forward to part 2. In the meanwhile I've returned to GTA IV and got past one of the sticking points...seriously, the game could do with far better checkpoints in missions. That last one involving two sets of driving just to get to the actual mission, well, very frustrating to complete. But it's still a really rich game. Would like to get some 4 person Left4Dead going again, that was top fun. For now though, I've got an Xbox Guitar Hero World Tour guitar, and the game should be arriving in the next couple of days so...

Creative stuff - I need to keep the ball rolling on some projects, particularly on a roleplaying front. Like the rules for Savage Worlds so we'll see what happens with Falkenstein. Looking forward to the next session of Jada, be interesting to see what missions are on offer...as always Mark's downtime emails are great fun to plough through for plot hooks :).

Bleeargh. Singularly lazy weekend. Too hot, and too tired after invigilating on Friday. Spent Saturday and Sunday completing Assassin's Creed. Tried to restart GTA IV, from where I'd left it. Unfortunately it's a high likelihood of death mission with two long and tedious stints of driving before you get to it, so if you die it's back to the start again. Badly designed.

Other than that, got some stuff done and out of the way, so wasn't entirely unproductive, it just felt that way. Hopefully more sleep tonight will improve my outlook.

Woohoo! Swashbuckling against ancient evils tonight!

In other news, stumbled across a great podcasted Audio Drama series called Wormwood. Sort of "Cthulhu Now" crossed with "House"! :) Check it out on I-Tunes for free, definitely a strong recommend from me.

So tired at the moment. I think it's my brain switching off due to lack of input. I kinda work like a processor, I mashup ideas and so I need input to generate output. Inspiration.

Anyway, I've got a shed load of stuff to get done on the computer at home. Got a great next scenario lined up for Causa Potentia...not sure where it goes but I think it's got a really good creepy atmosphere, and brings in a new storyline that ties to at least three of the characters so that'll be fun.

Tom has finally hassled me into sorting out a vague date for a new session of Castle Falkenstein (which I haven't run in about 3 years). Except it won't be Castle Falkenstein. The background origins will remain, but the gameworld will be modified (IC), and the system behind it will completely change. I want something fast and free-flowing still, but I need something a bit more crunchy to work with than the Falkenstein rules, and there are just some things about the background that I've always wanted to jetison and bring closer to my natural horror feel.

And then there is the bank holiday weekend. Pip's at the Gathering. I'm at home. Probably bored. I could plough through some DVDs and play some Xbox and maybe get some more material written up. Some day I'm going to actually see through my idea though, and have a weekend for Ex-LRPers to play board and card games, getting a competitive bragging rights weekend games fest going and some DVD marathons on in the background and the like.

Oh, and mysteriously, next year appears to have become the year of offers of international travel for us both. Might be worth making some firm plans. Might be worth actually getting around to getting a passport...