The Philosopher’s Attic

Seriously… how much IQ does it take to fit a posh DVD box into it’s oh-so-nice-transparent jacket?
(Note: it has to be transparent to be able to see which Season of the Series you’re grabbing from the shelf… Duh!)

Well, no matter how much IQ it takes, it’s obviously more than I have. I’ve tried for 5 Minutes now and the back of the DVD box is starting to look more than jagged, “worn” would be a more accurate description.
I swear, I’ll throw it in the bin in any minute now… gosh, I mean, it has to fit, since they did it for all four seasons and someone must have had a brilliant idea about this… You bet.

This week has been my miniature version of an up-and-down roller-coaster. Several Ups and more downs. I spent the weekend in the Valais, celebrating two birthdays of and with my future family-in-law, visited my possible marriage church. A brilliant and peaceful weekend, just the thing I need after the overstressed weeks that lie behind me.
Somewhere in between Tristan and I were anticipating the release of Splinter Cells next instalment. Stop frowning and pulling up your eyebrows. Splinter Cell - Chaos Theory had best invention in on-line gaming: the cooperation mode. You team up with a buddy and play distinctive missions together that tie in with the story of the Single Player missions. We had a lot of fun with those and it did help us to decompress after some hardcore writing sessions while preparing our articles. Of course we thought UBISoft would expand on that and that the new volumen would be at least as good as “Chaos Theory”… hm-m think again. After several pushes of the release date for the PC version it finally got out last Monday and guess what? I’ll give you a hint or better, let’s play a little game: we’re in Business School and it’s assignment time. Your assignement is this: you have a brilliant merchandise that came from a well written line of books about the CIA, spying, information terrorism and the use of fifth freedom procedure in oder to save the world. After three good games that have good storylines - that could easily have been written by Tom Clancy himself, in fact part of them have been - you have built up a loyal customer and fanbase that is pretty diverse. Not only pro-gamers play it, but also the average father of four, because of the whole “it’s not about your frag meter” principle. Your assignment - if you choose to accept it (that was a Mission Impossible hint, got it? Not yet…? It will come…)- is the following: loose all credibility, loose a maximum number of your fanbase and annihilate everything the merchandise stood for.

Too crazy? Well, seems to have been UBI’s choice and wow, did they rock! This has to go down as the most unfinished game that ever hit the shelves. Not only does it not support 70% of all graphics cards (”We wanted to go for the next generation technology…!” - Standard Email Answer if you contact UBI’s support), but it has at least 9 known major crash inducing bugs and even on the cards that can run it, the performance is terrible. Not enough apparently. For PC - which is THE Clan Platform - the game has less missions as on any console version and ends with a nice “… To be continued …” Screen. An unfinished game on every level. At least Tristan can play it, my PC won’t.

And then today the spiral just dropped another notch. My dearest dog - Zulte - has torn her knee tendon and is up for surgery next week. Three months of rehab in total. What a nightmare…

Anyway. Back to work for me and a boring weekend between proof reading (”Images of Chivalry and Knights in Medieval Novels” ) for a friend, myself (my translations - amp; ) and some work on the Mediaevaliter page. Let’s not forget to cure my major brain wrecking flu…
Oh, the fun…

Just a nice little thing I found: The Dark Movie Quiz.

Have fun!

My time btw: 20minutes…