Better things to spend your time on than Politics

With things a bit rough at work, escapism is the name of the game right now... So, what have I been up to since the last update (ages ago)?

Golf
There are few (if any) sports as frustrating as Golf, as I found out again at the start of May. Ok, so I haven't been out to play since Sept 05, and had to dust off the clubs which were still wrapped up warmly from last year's house move. But still, finishing at 77 strokes was very, very grating.

77 sounds like a pro-score, until you know that I only played 9 holes with my father in law. Which makes this roughly 42 over par... That's actually is an all time low, worse than my first ever round as well.

What's the remedy - play more. Golf that is. Just need to find someone closer than 400 miles (640km roughly) away to play with.

In the meantime, another game is taking a lot of my attention. Having been cured of a bit of an MMPORPG heavy evening schedule through Word of Warcraft, I find myself in another online world - Middleearth online, or Lord of the Rings online as it is now called.

I have to say - it is the best structured game of this sort yet. Many people go on about the great looks, and they are good, but what is really better in this game than in any other I have played is how the quests hang together, how gently the player is guided from one area to the next, sometimes requiring a group for significant events in the story line, but allowing perfectly entertaining solo-play for large parts as well. The (old) Everquest grind gets you pretty much nowhere either (which can only be a good thing) with advancement largely based on quests.

Elsewhere in Gaming, the Halo 3 Beta is out. After a somewhat arduous download of the beta which allows anyone with a copy of another Microsoft game called Crackdown to get a preview of this new blockbuster, one thing is for sure. I am still as inept at this game as I am at golf. It sure looks pretty, but compared to these seasoned veterans of Halo 2 (which I played online about... erm... twice in 4 years), I am only cannonfodder. I am much more interested in what the campaign is going to look like! 4 Player online coop has been promised, and getting through the story with a few real battlecompanions is where it is at for me!

The predecessor Halo2 of course is currently being released for PC for the first time. To my amazement, it looks like its release was delayed due to "partial nudity" being found in the code.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=76897
Can't imagine where that would fit in the game?

From memory, the main characters are all fully clad in big hunking battle armour and the only female of interest is a blue shiny hologram called Cortana, which was so indistinct that I couldn't tell if she was naked. Anyway, once burnt by hot coffee, publishers are extra careful, so it is probably someones ankle you could see on a poster in the game somewhere...

Looking over my ramblings, none of the above is too revealing about anything "Inselaffe"... Maybe if I can find that video reviewing Blair's record on the BBC again.. that was fun. An impersonator doing all sort of commentary. That would be illuminating, right? Well, but that would be straying into politics, which is why work is being rough, and I am not in the mood for that right now.

Oh - grad noch was rausgefunden... Groenemeyer wohnt in London http://www.heute.de/ZDFheute/inhalt/19/0,3672,5541075,00.html

Alles Gute,

Nash