Cute pic of Diesel stretching I found on the iPad!

See you there, or not. I won’t be monitoring who links or who reads, and it’s going to take me a while to get back in the swing of things, especially with a few job things still in flux for me and not really being sure what games I’m playing!!

Thanks all for staying watching this blog though. I still love the header and the name

He’s keeping the blog warm for me.

Mwahaha.

Will be blogging again, but as a guest poster over at Spinks’ blog (unless I suddenly get the bug again). Am off to Comic Con on a trip from the UK that starts today, so if I get any interesting tales, keep an eye out for them over there.

Or – this one might get a bit more personal, about my tech, and books and stuff. Or I might find a more suitable name for one ;p And post more cute pictures of 3-legged cats we all adore.

Sometimes it’s just easier being a guest.

Will do another word of the week sometime, busy week ahead of me so I may be a bit scarce.

Or, can you just drop raiding and not worry about it? I know at least one person who’s happily made the transition that way. I’m vacillating about it.

There’s things I don’t like about the current raiding I do, solely in LotRO, in the Dol Guldur cluster. I’m not overly keen on the radiance gating, I’d rather it was trait-based, or .. hrrm many other proposed systems. I prefer a closed-ish raiding group, but our kin has opted to go for rotations, and a much more broad brush approach.

There’s things I do like about raids in general, and the current one is included in that. I like the social side, the larger group size and chance to group with people I may not group with every night of the week. I like the more interesting fights a raid can bring in (though to be fair, lots of the 3-man instances have some fairly interesting fights in them which probably allow me to display my ‘leet skillz’ more obviously than in the current raid.

But, I have to admit I’m finding myself a little ambivalent about raiding in general. Some of it is being in the doldrums about LotRO, but it’s a far more complex reaction than that and I’m not even sure I would be able to explain all its facets. I’m still signing up, but perhaps being a bit more honest about nights I’d rather sit on the sofa watching crappy TV.

And yet, when I think of myself as a player, I think of me raiding. So I guess I’m not quite done with it yet.

We’re using the Dungeon Finder interface quite a lot, which means many PuGs. In general, they’ve been pretty good, and it’s definitely been a good way to get xp and decent gear and see the instances in the game. We’re now in the Outland ones, ones I’ve not seen before, so that’s fairly challenging/interesting!

Today I decided we need a game associated with being in a PuG, and devised one that can work across games – so feel free to spread the word and play along. The basic concept is ‘Word a Week’, where each week I nominate a word you need to slip into chat in your PuG, and then send in a screenshot for it. This week, I decided on ‘disenfranchised’ in celebration of this week’s UK election! I even used it in a group today, though not a PuG – but next sunday I hope to have a screenie of me saying it in a genuine PuG!

Wonder if anyone else will join in, but if not, this will be my Sunday posts for a while

Now, first I should say it’s not exactly my usual fare, filmwise – I’m not the hugest fan of the slapsticky run of American comedies we’ve had in recent years. But what the hell, it mentions time travel, so it had to have some redeeming features, right? The plot’s fairly basic – three middle-aged friends and one 20-yr old, end up in a hotel hot-tub trying to recapture a moment from the 80s and end up back in time, having to re-live moments of the three men’s lives so as not to destroy the space-time continuum.

Going back to the 80s is always fun. Even if the characters are a bit basic and stereotypical, and like I said before, some of the humour a little obvious for me. But, at its heart it still has a decent tale of friendship, loyalty and regaining the magical fearlessness of youth. And Chevy Chase as the mystical hot tub repair man (of course the time ‘machine’ gets broken and traps them in the past until it can be fixed).

I enjoyed my time in the cinema, but I’m not sure I’d normally have given it the time of day. It’s definitely pulp-y, watch-once and forget type cinema to me.

But I can’t really talk about it without mentioning the kind of British equivalent, another odd little comedy I watched recently (this time on DVD) called FAQ About Time Travel. Starring Chris O’Dowd from The IT Crowd, it’s a very British comedy take on the whole time travel question. You can tell this immediately as our trio of friends are awkward, geeky and understand the complex questions about how time travel might work.

It takes place in a pub, time travelling is not in a glam hot tub, but in a pub toilet. And instead of being whimsical, it actually has the main characters debating how time travel should work, in terms of changing the future. Where Hot Tub Time Machine is brash and in-your-face, FAQ About Time Travel is understated and witty – and although it’s not one I’d watch time and time again, if I had to buy one, it’d be the latter.

Anyone else seen either and have any comments? Or – what’s your favourite time travel film?

I’m not sure what my favourite is, perhaps Memento if that counts, but I’m thinking it probably doesn’t (asked my husband and he says it totally doesn’t!). I’ve heard Primer is good, but haven’t got my hands on it yet. But my favourite probably does have to go to one of Back to the Future, 12 Monkeys or Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure – which kind of proves that time travel and comedy can mix extremely well!