Chindie

I used to play all the time. I was a pretty active member of Pokersoc at uni (biggest poker society in the country don'tcherknow), never that successful, got a few final tables from a steady field of about 50-70 each week but rarely good enough to win anything. Won in the first week of my final year though, picked the absolute perfect night to have a game where nothing went wrong since it was the biggest pot they'd ever done in the society with a £250 first prize. Also made a fresher cry that night >_>... I was never that good of player, I was too tight and when I started to try to play more aggressively I noticed that my game fell badly, I went from a competent but uninspiring player to a pretty ropey one fast and never had enough invested in the game to really alter that - in the end I just played as a pastime, something to do with a few friends on a Monday. Since I left, I've played... twice. I can't be bothered with it any more.

20th for the UK and most of the rest of the world.

One. My parents have never moved as a couple. In fact the house used to be grandparents house, and my nan lived with us till she died (technically it was her house till then too). I've had other places I've lived in, during uni I lived in halls one year and then a cross between halls and a house for 2 years on the trot, but they were never home, just places I happened to be staying in for a while. Assuming I can wrangle myself a decent job moving out will be fairly high on my agenda, I've started to feel the itch.

I adore Children of Men, will watch it most times it's on somewhere like it was last night. It's just a fantastic film from concept to finished article. My only issues with it are pretty minor - the film is lauded for it's long single take shots, most notably the one at the end as Theo makes his way through Bexhill towards the apartment building. However that shot in particular isn't quite the one take it appears, theres an edit and some computer jiggery pokery that goes on IIRC. And secondly, the fact that all the vehicles in the film are just current models with really obviously added plastic trim bolted to them (obviously an attempt to keep the budget down, but also gives the film a nice... hand-me-down ramshackle feel which fits the theme of the world going to the dogs really well and gives the atmosphere/veracity of it all another nice layer) means I spend a considerably amount of the film going 'Thats a Fiat Multipla. Thats a Renault Aventine. That's a Vauxhall Vivaro/Renault Trafic. Oh and the fact that Michael Caine cannot deliver some of the lines convincingly. Everytime he says 'Amigo' I just have to sigh in my head and think 'Ah, bless Michael, you'd never convince as a hippy, which is lucky since you're Tory to the core'. But all very minor things, it's a superb film. I'd wager it's better than the novel.

Hadn't checked Office or Slaters, will have a mooch, cheers. Affordable is good - no income currently of course.

Needs to be a proper pair of shoes that can go with shirt and tie/suit occassions, unfortunately. The last pair of shoes like that I bought look fine (although 4 years of irregular use has left them looking a bit... cheap) but are the least comfortable things in the world to walk any distance in, so time for replacement I figured. Seems like maybe not...

My inability to find a pair of shoes that I like. All I want is simple black shoes, something you can wear to work. They all look shit. I'm not quite sure when it became fashionable to have pointy shoes that are 3 foot long but it seems everyone wants them based on the choice offered in most places.

:? Hadn't heard that. Was just a good guess on my part back when the prologue came out I guess. They also filmed around Nottingham (some stately home, Wayne Manor subsitute no doubt) and Croydon (Gotham hospital), but Nolan neglects to mention those when he rattles off the locations they've used, can't think why .

Finally finished the original Crysis on the 360. It was alright. Gets annoying in the final acts.

'Why didn't you just kill me?' 'Your punishment must be more severe...' ^ Making of featurette/behind the scenes/clips compilation - gives a bit of confirmation of the plot/backstory to the film, nothing we don't really already know but a really good watch. Some of the scale of things they've been doing is kind of crazy. It just looks better and better. The scale is great. (also I think when the prologue launched I said the big stunt they did looked like it was filmed in Scotland. It was! Little things )

A good effort by Murray, who does seem to slowly be getting better, unfortunately theres still a yawning chasm between him and Federer, Nadal and Djokovic. I listened to most of the match on the radio but saw a fair bit of the first set on the TV, where I was struck by just how often Murray hit the net on serve. Every other serve was hitting the net and it seemed to be taking it out of him. Anywho - I've never really taken to Murray, I support him as he's a Brit representative but he never struck me as a particularly likeable chap. His choked up speech after the match has warmed me to him finally.

I'm surprised Mike is aware of CDs, I'd have thought he'd be still with the wax cylinder phonographs, the pinnacle of 19th century audio tech. Or hell, mobile phones even. I've always assumed he must be using one of these

You'll love me as well, I have Jambi as my ringtone.

Right - this got it's first press screenings tonight. 2 things - it got a standing ovation and all reactions so far are basically saying 'Blown Away' (the little known sequel to Gone with the Wind...). Secondly - Spoilers are flying like really bad people everywhere - forums/twitter/youtube especially is/are going to be rife, so if you want to stay in the dark, do not go anywhere near anything TDKR related on those sorta sites. There are some spoiler free impressions, and they can be summed up with this

Anything that pushes Hutton closer to the door is fine. I know nothing about this chap, I'm slightly concerned he's being pegged as 'one for the future' when he should be nearing finished article at 23, and it's hardly an inspiring signing (but how many fullbacks are, really?) but you can't feel too bad about it. Welcome, Lowton, and heres hoping you make that spot yours.

You are Simon Pegg/Kevin Eldon and I claim my £5

My experience of training was pretty much the definition of 'haphazard on the job learning'. My first introduction to the tills was done by a guy who effectively was the same rank as me just had been there longer, and even admitted he was useless teaching anyone anything. All I learnt from his time was the the tills are shit, and if in doubt hit F11 a lot and see if one of the options vaguely relates to what you want. The rest of my 'formal' training was better, done by the assistant manager, who got me to a level of being able to use the thing by running through various potential purchases one quiet Sunday and hitting me over the head with the 'Oracle of Knowledge' or 'Necrotelicomnicon' (aka the books with console codes and other info in) whenever I got it wrong. Till the day I left I still was only able to use the till to the level where I could get through 99% of transactions. Even then we'd get new stuff sent down and nobody would ever tell you about it, so you had to learn on the fly and hope the manager was nearby when something new was sprung on you. For example that 20% off offer I mentioned - the only way I knew about that was becasue someone had scrawled 'GAMESTATIONGEAR CODE - 12345!' on the side of the till and I happened to notice. That kinda crap happened all the time. You're lucky you didn't go to the Gears of War 3 launch night. Head office has genius idea - we can give away MS points to people printed off the tills! That way, we can advertise this new service, people always love a freebie, so they'll come to us! Genius!. Except they hadn't realised that springing this on the stores would be a nightmare - you had a whole new procedure, that we were using for 1 weekend, to basically allow us to sell something for free. We rocked up to the store at 11.25pm for the midnight launch, and theres still pile of paper explaining how to do it and under what circumstances it would work, along with all these other offers that had special things you needed to do to make discounts and offers work. Genius. And then they hadn't cottoned on to the fact that this was the biggest release of the year at that point, and every store in the group was going to have a queue, and the print out MS Points require central authorisation and so on... Guess what happened? Have a stab in the dark what happened when every store in the country immediately starts requesting 800 MS Points at exactly the same time, again and again and again? Yep, the tills across the country crashed. With stores filled with customers who kinda want to go home because it's midnight and they've been stood outside in the cold for an hour. And some of them are intending to spend a lot of money, have cars waiting... It got tense. And there was nothing we could do about it. Even one of the gusy I was on with who was never fazed by anything, never get annoyed by even the worst customers, lost it a little when the till just died halfway through a huuuuuuuge transaction with numerous trades and offers and add ons. The company could certainly improve, put it like that.

Nope.

Dynamo's close up tricks are all straight off the shelf stuff IIRC, he only appeals beyond anyone else on the level that he dresses them up a little with streetwise style. And he doesn't have any charisma at all I agree. He actually appears to not really have a personality, a bit vapid. The bigger stuff he does is largely stooges and editing, I agree. On the TV front, second part of Hollow Crown is on tomorrow, Henry IV Part One, with Jeremy Irons in the title role and Tom Hiddlestone beginning his run in these plays of playing Henry V. Should be better than last weeks, as nobody likes Richard II and quite a few like Henry IV Part One.

I half expected to see some familiar names on that feed. As for it being hilarious... it's terrifying. Ironichashtagtoodumbtolive

Having had experience of Game/station till work, I'll say this... The package you wanted will have thrown together by head office and usually require you to do something that doesn't make any sense or will require some other special treatment. For example, the usual way to do bundles was to scan the items, whack in one or both of 2 seperate 'When Bought With' codes which tell the till to reduce prices in line with offers, and pray when you hit the total it worked. However sometimes they'd **** it up and you'd have some items that when bought together auto-discounted, and if you put in either of the WBWs it wouldn't work at all. Sometimes offers would come down with a new 'WBW' code that would only work with certain circumstances - for instance during my time we got sent down an offer that let you buy anything in the store to get 20% off any Gamestation brand accessory. That threw up problems when working with other special offers and especially with console bundles. The really popular one, and I bet this is what happened to you, Risso, is a bundle deal clashing with other items to purchase. You would buy a bundle and some other stuff and because the till only knows to do a discount when the WBW codes and certain items are in the same transaction, you'd often find the extra games are part of some other offer and the till preferred doing that offer to the bundle. And the only way you could find out if that was going to happen was to do it. What I bet then happened is the bloke on the till was starting to get concerned that he'd **** up the transaction so much he forgot about your £10 discount voucher... and then it's really, really hard to fix that after the fact - refunding discounted/bundled stuff is a pain in the arse, especially if it comes with a voucher. The manager will have been pissed off that he's had to sort the sales assistant out and so the sales assistant has then been really, really aware that he needs to be doing the preorder/'the customer is a walking wallet' bullshit because the manager is definitely paying attention to him now he's **** up so he best jump through all the hoops. The voucher itself will throw up a problem too. There were at least 3 different ways I can think of that discounts from a receipt (i.e. a voucher or a preorder deposit) would work. Sometimes you just scanned them and they would autodiscount. Some had to scanned with the till in a particular mode. And others had to be scanned with the till set up in another mode after you've hit what amounts to the 'Checkout' button. For what it's worth, if I'd served you, I'd have completely disregarded the extra games and said to you 'We'll do those as a seperate transaction afterwards so you can use your voucher straight away' (secretly also knowing that it's better for me to do that because chances are your extra games will **** something up, and you'll go away happy either way despite having to stand around for another couple of minutes and get out your credit card again, and it makes my figures look better at the end of the days takings). I'd have put your bundle through the till, checked that it worked before I even asked you to get your loyalty cards or whatever, if it hadn't worked you hit the keys to get you back to 'Tilling' void off the WBW, try the other one, if that doesn't work try no WBWs, and if that doesn't work call the manager. Chances are you won't need to call the manager in that case. Whilst I'm doing all that I'll chat to you about the games, let you know anything I know about them you might be interested in (DLC, what people are saying about it, whatever). Then get the sale done, say to you 'and theres your voucher, lets get these put through', and pray I know what method the voucher needs to be used in, which is unlikely because the manager wouldn't have told me and chances are it's the first of these vouchers I've had to use. Hopefully it's one of the autodiscount on scan ones. After that, with a Vita purchase I might mention if theres a big release for the Vita coming up for preorder if I know the manager is listening or I'm in his bad books for whatever reason, more likely I'd just mention trade in's for when the kids finish the games and are bored with them and say have a good day. Basically, it's not so much the sales assistants fault, it's the tills and the company. The tills are shit and the company occasionally cobbles together new offers that just add another layer of complexity to doing what should be really simple things. Bundles should always auto discount. Vouchers should always just be scan to redeem. But instead they make it more complex and then throw in the bullshit sales schtick (everyone is monitored on them hitting certain things at the tills - you're supposed to mention loyalty cards, add to the sale, preorders, trade-ins and preowned purchases to every customer and you get in trouble if you don't) which means everyone gets muddled or pissed off when things go wrong.

I'd be careful farting around the Olympic Stadium. Someone will smell something funny and the next thing you know Special Branch will have a MP5 digging into the back of your head.

The Mass-ter Particle?

There isn't a great threat. It's massively overplayed. In the US, every year apart from 2001 (upto about 2006 IIRC the textbook I got this little factoid from was published around then), you were more likely to die drowning in a public toilet than you were of a terrorist attack. There is clearly a threat and our security services have to be (and indeed, are) aware and mindful of it - but there are threats all the time we (the public) aren't particularly scared of. Russia and China are constantly attacking our computer systems, if they got through they could potentially pose an absolutely enormous risk to the entirety of the UK. War is always just round the corner, even in the relatively stable environment we have now, but we aren't worried about that massively either. Compared to your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack, doing more or less anything looks positively dangeorus - cooking dinner tonight is more likely to kill you than a terrorist is in your entire lifetime. Terrorism however possesses a unique nature that makes it grab headlines. It's in it's nature for a start - the point of terrorism is make people look and see your message and enforce it in them, and it's bloody effective at that. And the idea that it can theoretically occur anywhere, any time... It's the boogieman that keeps giving. I would be amazed if there weren't a little cadre of nutters somewhere who want to blow away people for whatever reason during the Olympics. I'd almost be disappointed if they weren't - if you're into terrorism, the Olympics is like... perfect for an attack. The entire world is watching, it's a massive celebration of Britain at some level and at another its draped in the kind of pro-Western way of life that are going to get, for instance, your standard 'down with the infidel' nutter's blood boiling. They'd be thick to not have ideas of trying it on (and equally they'd be thick to not realise chances are they'll fail - because you can guarentee that we also know all the above and we don't want our party spoiled, so to speak... but a lot of these people aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer, a lot of them are as dumb/dumber than Joe Bloggs, hence their ability to be convinced that blowing themselves up is a bloody good idea). It's not something to worry about, don't buy into the fear the media likes to stir up and the government are happy to play up too.

I had a go at the Walking Dead trial on Live the other day actually... I like some things, but it doesn't entirely grab me. The lack of a season pass (i.e. insta-discount) on Live also puts me off. I finished Gears of War 3 yesterday. Perfectly alright, but I'm at a loss as to how that series became as big as it is. I'm now more or less out of my back catalogue of titles. Dragon Age Origins I dip into and out of, I'll never finish Just Cause 2, and Dark Souls died entirely for me in Blighttown. I might have a clear out.