Foods I Discovered I Liked in 2007
Sushi
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Piri-Piri Seasoning
Meat Loaf
Goat Cheese
Pesto
Butter Beans
Broad Beans
Chick Peas
Carrot Cake
Update: Foods I discovered I like in 2008
Olives
Mushrooms
Jalapenos
Halo 3 Multiplayer Maps
Having been a fan of Halo since it the original first came out, I was eagerly anticipating the release of Halo 3.
Having been playing it for a few weeks now, I can tell you it’s by no means perfect, but it’s among the best XBox 360 games out there.
Many people seem to be complaining about the short single player campaign, but for me this is a positive thing, not a negative. Too many games these days want to be as epic as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. No bad thing?
Perhaps. But I can tell you, I watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy once, thought it was fantastic, and have never watched it again.
God of War is a bit like that too. I finished it, loved it, but have no urge to play it again.
So far, I’ve completed Halo 3 on normal difficulty, and I thought it was far more enjoyable than Halo 2. I’m now attempting to run through it again on both Heroic difficulty (solo) and Legendary difficulty (co-operatively). It has massive replay value for me, and when you add into the mix the online modes which can be customised in a staggering numbers of ways, the game represents fantastic value.
The main problem I have with Halo 3 is that the multiplayer maps are not as good as those in Halo 2.
Bungie, please remake “Blood Gulch” (remade as “Coagulation” in Halo 2), “Headlong”, “Ascension” & “Waterworks” (and any other Halo 2 maps you wish to convert).
Xbox Live Port Forwarding
I ran a network test in the Xbox Live dashboard today and it showed my NAT status as “Moderate”. I researched it quickly and it turns out there’s a good reason why I would want this working correctly.
Microsoft insists that I need to buy an “Xbox Live Certified Router”.
I love my little Netgear DG834. I’m sure that’s just Microsoft speak for “we don’t want to tell you the technical way, we’d rather just sell certification logos to hardware companies”.
2 minutes of Google research confirmed that you simply have to forward a couple of ports to the Xbox internal IP: 3074 (UDP+TCP) & 88 (UDP).
Hey presto! The connection test is now showing as open, and I’ve saved myself from having to buy a new router.
Digital vs. Film
Apart from the odd film-based camera which I had when I was younger, I’ve always been a big advocate of digital cameras. For me, the “convenience vs. quality” tradeoff has always been heavily weighted towards convenience. Until now.
Since I bought my EOS 400D a few months ago, I’ve become far more creative with my shots and more conscious of the end result. I find myself wanting to shoot with different cameras, including film based ones to get better results. By “better”, I don’t necessarily mean sharper, or higher resolution. In fact it’s hard to describe what I mean by “better”. I suppose what I really want are more creative options.
Convenience is no longer a deciding factor. Not only am I prepared to put in the time to get the results, it’s actually becoming an enjoyable process to go through.
It’s funny though. When you have cheaper, more basic equipment, it’s easy to be fooled into thinking more expensive equipment always equals better results. While that’s often true, it’s not a hard and fast rule, particularly if your intentions are more creative than technical.
To emphasise the point, my Canon 400D cost me nearly £500 and my new Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim (the poor man’s Lomo) cost a mere £5. It may be very limited (f11, 1/125 shutter, 22mm lens, no flash - it’s about as basic as it gets), but limiting your options can sometimes increase the determination to get more creative results. It’s a phenomenon I’ve witnessed first-hand when forcing myself to leave my zoom lenses at home, and go out armed only with my 50mm prime.
I can honestly say, I don’t think I would have ever taken up photography seriously, if it weren’t for digital cameras. Digital affords me the freedom to learn as I go, without wasting valuable time and film on poor shots.
In some ways, though, my methodology itself is flawed. The vary nature of the complete digital process means there is less risk involved. I’m starting to agree with my friend Carl; with less risk comes more predictability, which can sometimes be seen in your end results. It’s very easy to become complacent & just shoot lots, hoping for the best, rather than taking the time to think about what you are doing. Well, for me, anyway.
I’m glad that I eventually managed to find my own little route into photography, but now that I’m here, I feel like I skipped my first year of school. I want to go back and learn some of the things that you only learn by using film.
The Vivitar is just a fun little way for me to explore film without any serious investment, but I can already feel the lure of far more professional film cameras that I’d like to play with.
Time to start saving.
Media Hypocrisy
Madeleine McCann has been missing for over 5 months. The media obsession with this case has resulted in headlines and stories worldwide, and apparently they have raised over a million pounds in donations.
You know, I’m sorry that this happened, and it’s great that somehow this story touched the hearts of the general public enough to raise all that money and attention.
But if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s hypocrisy.
In West Africa, for example, 200,000 children are sold into slavery every year. This is just one example of many.
“An estimated 800,000 underage prostitutes in Thailand, 400,000 in India, 250,000 in Brazil and 60,000 in the Philippines. The newest international sites for child prostitution: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, China and the Dominican Republic.”
Source: Time Magazine
When you think about these statistics for just a moment, the amount of media attention devoted to the Madeleine McCann case seems unjust, offensive and insulting to the hundreds of thousands of children & families in similar situations who aren’t lucky enough to have a media frenzy surrounding them. It smacks of sensationalism just to sell newspapers.
Just my $0.02.