jemmata.net

let’s make a cake2
admin posted in General on April 17th, 2008

i’ve become completely addicted to a game again.  it has happened a couple of times before, more notably with the sims, and now, it’s happened again with cake mania on DS.  there are times when a game catches my attention enough that i will play it very frequently and spend a fair amount of time on it.  diner dash and bioshock were like that, still are actually.  but then there’s addiction: when you start dreaming about and constantly thinking of one game, and avoiding anything else just so you can play that game.  that’s when video games have the kind of affect that drugs can.  it’s always only temporary, and i’ve finished cake mania now (luckily it is quite short) but at the end of the day i do wonder if it’s almost dangerous.

it’s getting hot in here…3
admin posted in General on March 13th, 2008

so south australia has beat the heatwave record.  eleven days of temperatures over thirty-five degrees… i think today was thirty-nine. apparently the cool change won’t be here until sometime next week.  needless to say everyone’s looking forward to that, i’m looking forward to being able to get some proper sleep and perhaps turning the air conditioner off for the first time in a week.

it’s not like i’ve been outside much to feel the heat anyway over the past few days.  on friday i managed to slice my foot on a mirror and do such a good job of it that i ended up having surgery and spending two nights in hospital.  it is still quite painful and i’m mostly having to rely on hobbling around and using crutches, much to my house mates’ amusement.

for the most part…3
admin posted in General on February 23rd, 2008

so…yeah. i’ve been taking a break for a while.  i suppose that was quite obvious.

last night i went to see i heart hiroshima, dappled cities fly and the presets for free!  it was the opening night of the fringe festival.  it was quite awesome fun.

mass effect is impressive.  i know it was released a while ago but i have only recently had time to sit down and play it properly.  it will be taking up a lot more of my time from now on i think.

everybody knows, it hurts to grow up0
admin posted in General on July 20th, 2007

yesterday at about 12:10am we drove to target for the opening of their gigantic toy sale. honestly i didn’t think anyone else would be crazy enough to be there as soon as they opened but it was actually really busy.

i felt really ridiculous because i am twenty and i don’t think you are supposed to be that excited about toys by the time you are twenty, but we were rushing around the store like little kids to look at everything. the main reason we had decided to go though, was because i have very recently discovered the attraction of transformer toys. last week my mum bought one for the kids at her work to play with and i was testing it out and thought it was pretty cool. i was seriously impressed by the mechanics of it and they must have some pretty clever people behind their making. it just made me really want one.

so. we went to target at midnight to get transformer toys. i really wanted the yellow one from the movie, but they didn’t have them, so i got one of jazz (the silver pontiac in the film) and dylan got the decipticon tank. so crazy, i know, but i don’t regret it, i just regret not having one as a kid… i mean i loved barbie but she just never could turn into a car and back, you know?

i went to see the transformers movie last week actually and it was pretty awesome. i had just been expecting an average action movie with a lot of explosions but it turned out far better. i was gripped watching the the robot effects, which are especially effective in the cinema, but it was also very funny, which was a pleasant surprise too.

i’ve also seen the new harry potter film. i really hope the new book is fantastic and the complete opposite of that movie. normally i love the harry potter stories too much to care that the films don’t do any justice to the books, and i’ll enjoy watching them anyway, but this wasn’t even worth it’s title really. i know they have to make them, and whether they make them badly or not millions of people will still go watch them, but it is silly because you obviously can’t fit pages of detailed story into a couple of film hours, it nearly always doesn’t work.

totally unrelated is the fact that i had a really bizarre conversation on the phone at work they other day…i’m such an idiot on the phone.

i was born, i grew up…10
admin posted in General on February 2nd, 2007

it has been an exceptionally long time. when i think about it, quite a bit has happened since that last post, but i’m not going to attempt to fill in all the blanks.

new year’s eve was great. actually the whole time we spent at nadine and adam’s was fun. i’m really glad we got to do that.

living arrangements have changed quite a bit. for the good i think, though when dylan went away it was pretty quiet in the house so i worked to keep myself busy…then quickly spent the money i earnt anyway. where we live now though, i am right across the road from the school that i will be going to for one day a week once uni starts again as part the practical aspect of my education degree.

recently i have spent most of my time trying to prepare for going back to uni at the end of february. i spent quite a while trying to create a timetable with no clashes. i eventually succeeded but it looks like it’s going to be horrible to follow.

the last thing i will mention is the film i saw last week. dylan and i went to see ‘the fountain’. i really enjoyed it. it was very pretty and it managed to confuse and amaze me as much as the matrix did the first time i saw it. i can’t wait to see it again.

hoping to update a little more regularly once we organise our internet at home…maybe. =p

crystal clear5
admin posted in General on September 16th, 2006

we bought lego star wars 2 and dead rising. dylan has been playing dead rising almost non-stop since we first put it in the machine, which means i’ve only had a quick look at lego star wars but it looks promising, even if only in co-op mode.

dead rising is pretty awesome. killing zombies is usually pretty fun for me though. although, for some reason capcom decided not to test this game on standard televisions, only on HDTVs. This is odd considering the number of people actually in possession of an HDTV is still quite small and the majority of xbox 360 users have their console connected to standard televisions or monitors, but also because of capcom’s reputation for looking after their buyers.

I only bring this up because i am incredibly frustrated that most of the in-game text for dead rising is entirely unreadble due to it being far too small on my standard TV, since it was designed to be viewed on an HDTV. A number of other people have found this equally annoying, but as of yet capcom has yet to do anything sufficient towards resolving the issue.

more important news is that i’m catching a bus back with dylan to see my family on wednesday.  i am looking forward to a bit of a break and a change of scenery next week. but for now, where’s that lawnmower? i feel like mowing down some zombies…

whirlpool fun6
admin posted in General on August 20th, 2006

about uh, a week or so ago i went with jess and dylan to see youth group with darren hanlon and don lennon. it was very good, darren hanlon in particular because i had not heard him live before and he was very entertaining on stage.

youth group were as good as usual, although this gig was marked by the presence of large numbers of, well, girls without any real clue about anything, except perhaps how to do their nails and pick out the skimpiest tops and tightest skirts, but in particular, girls without any clue about good music.

so by them time dylan arrived about an hour after jess and i had been there, i think both of us had been almost reduced to tears just by watching the incoming crowd. we began to recover when we spotted at least a couple of real ‘indie kids’ present and the music started though.

this weekend was pretty huge for me. i don’t go out a lot, other than to music and movies really. but last night dylan and i went to the college ball, which was held at a fancy hotel in the city. we had a good time, but we left sometime after 11pm to meet danielle, who was in the city this weekend for the university open days, at the casino. and it was not long after our first drinks that jess decided to make an appearance as well.  although i didn’t get to bed until 5am it was a really fun night. i must remember to do that more often…

how could i begin to finish what i couldn’t start?9
admin posted in General on August 6th, 2006

i didn’t forget about death cab, i just figured that last post was getting too long and unreadable already, so i decided to make a separate post…

so. music news.
i received my copy of casino twilight dogs (by youth group) a few weeks ago and i am in love with this album. it’s certainly nothing short of skeleton jar and there are definitely some stand-out tracks that i keep putting on repeat.

i was very disappointed when i read the interview/review on death cab for cutie in the age newspaper. i like death cab, and i liked plans… a lot actually, but when i read about that same band being called “the myspace.com generation’s indie idols”. i couldn’t help but think that perhaps i’d accidentally bought tickets to a britney spears concert by mistake (ommiting that britney spears isn’t indie in the slightest sense of the word).
the article also made a big deal of the band’s connections to the oc tv programme, which the author, andrew murfett insisted on dotting throughout the article like some disease… okay, i know i’m getting carried away there, but the point is that apparently being played on some television series is more evidence of talent than actual performance within the music industry.
so anyway, i wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when i went to see death cab for cutie live. kind of like when i was going to see youth group after their release of forever young… i wasn’t sure if maybe a favourite band of mine had morphed into something entirely different while i was looking the other way and maybe i’d hate their live set because of it…

in any case i went along with jess and dylan to the gov’ hindmarsh on monday; the day after we got back to adelaide to see death cab play. and i’m so glad i did. andrew murfett can go stick it. they were brilliant live, and i wouldn’t hesitate to go again, they were the same awesome musicians you hear when you listen to ‘plans’. i really enjoyed it the whole time, although it would’ve been nicer with a smaller crowd, but you could see why everyone wanted to be there, so i can forgive them; they obviously have good taste.

more headstones in the cemetery than houses in the town2
admin posted in General on August 2nd, 2006

yeah i know, i should’ve done this a long while ago, but anyway, the last couple of weeks have already been summed up pretty well by other people so i’m probably just repeating everything unnecessarily (that was an invitation to skip bits).

besides, last week i was very sick and confined to bed pretty much the whole time. the flu set in on friday the week before last. not like a cold, i mean the proper flu, as in muscle and joint aches, delusional fevers, etc, which then caused brochitis and vomiting… sounds delightful doesn’t it? i think dylan suffered more than i did however as i was out of it a lot of the time. i believe it was the exact virus jess had as well, although hers set in a little earlier than mine, i know we are both still suffering the effects (left over cough and sore throat). although i don’t think jess was as lucky as me in getting gastro’ the day after i had gotten out of my room for the first time in more than a week, which promptly sent me back to bed for another twenty-four hours after yet another doctor visit.

so, i have missed my first week of uni after i spent the week beforehand alternately sitting around an apartment with jess and dylan and then going off to work for a few hours everyday. it was fun, and we got to cook food that we actually liked and watch movies and sleep in late. maybe you can’t have a week like that and not have something bad happen the next week…

this is why i should stay more up to date here because none of that was what i wanted to say really anyway. i wanted to rant about some good music i’ve heard recently. but i’ve written too much already, maybe next time, yeah?

reproductive celibacy3
admin posted in General on July 8th, 2006

“yes i play games and i don’t need to have a penis”

i work in a games store. this happens to me all the time as well. even the people i work with have asked me “so, do you actually play games or…?”

uh, no? i just work here because it empowers me to think that possibly the boss just hired me because he believes i can sell games to boys because i can ’show a bit of leg’… or not… i feel used.

sexism involving males’ opinions of females is kind of like racism involving white people’s opinions of black people. they like to claim they’re not racist, but you know they still think that way, and everything they do reflects that superior thinking… in general i can deal with that, i know we allow you guys to think you’re just that little bit better at everything, but it’s like the rules don’t apply to the games store. that’s male territory, and i certainly must be pretending to be female or have stumbled there by accident, mistaking the place for the makeup salon (okay, i don’t even know if those exist or what they would be for, but you get it, yeah?).
i really don’t want to seem ‘feminazi’ or something, but as i said, i work in a games store. i get this stuff thrown in my face all the time. customers are always giving me that deliberately shocked look when i tell them that yes, i do know about that game, and yes i can answer your question. and those guys who come in, typically with chin in the air, and a girlfriend hanging off their shoulder and because the other guy at the register is busy, have to ask me a question, and after i’ve answered it, they wait until the other guy is finished and ask him the same question, he gives them the same answer and then they are satistied to walk away… like i wasn’t good enough, oh, i forgot, i’m not good enough because this is boys’ territory and i’m a girl.

they’re not all like that… obviously. and it’s not even about that, there are a lot more issues that are probably more important in relation to girls and games, like the way gaming has been ’sexualised’ for the male mind, and i hate thinking about the stereotyped ‘lipstick gamer’ and nearly every female game character. but this is what affects me often, so sometimes the boy cult status that gaming still maintains really gets to me.

oh, yeah, being back in victoria now i went out for tea last night with jess, nadine and dani at fasta pasta, and we then went to see pirates of the caribbean: dead man’s chest. as i watched it i knew exactly what david meant when he described it in the review: “watching this film, it’s a bit like having a very indulgent meal; very rich, you know, lots of things that you really shouldn’t eat, and yet you really enjoy it.” yes, i really enjoyed it. i really enjoyed catching up with a few people that i’ve missed quite a bit too.