日常生活

By train and by sea

nospam@example.com (Mangek) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:55:48 -0700

I'm currently trying to find books and/or movies with stories that revolves around travels either by train or by sea. I own a few books about seafaring (such as the Liveship Traders Trilogy) but I'm wanting more. In my search I stumbled upon a list of 101 Crackerjack Sea Books which will more than likely satisfy the thirst for seafaring stories. Woop. :)

Stories about trains seems to be sparse, however. I'm sure there's an equal list of 101 stories about trains but I haven't found it. People have suggested Agatha Christies 'Murder on the Orient Express' and my brother mentioned The Lady Vanishes by Alfred Hitchcock which I'll look into. Apart from those I haven't really found anything. Well, so far..

The Flower Carrier

nospam@example.com (Mangek) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 14:07:01 -0700

I bought a t-shirt with the above design a few weeks back from shirt.woot when it was their "today's woot". I think it's pretty neat. Love the colours. :-]

The Ruins

nospam@example.com (Mangek) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 00:46:17 -0700

The movie this time and author Scott Smith also wrote the screenplay. It's not half as "scary" as the novel, but it had its moments. The actors are doing an alright job except for the "hysterical" scenes which go a little overboard.

There's a couple of rewrites from the novel. My biggest issue is how character storylines have been swapped around. Pablo is called Dimitri, and he's only in the movie up until they reach the ruins, where in the novel he's around for a lot longer. Mathias is then shifted to take his role, Amy takes Erics role, etc etc.. Feels all weird.

The movie is ok. The novel is king. ;-]

Wearing socks with sandals is OK!

nospam@example.com (Mangek) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 23:25:42 -0700

source: /b/

Reading Scott Smiths 'Ruinerna'

nospam@example.com (Mangek) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 02:24:00 -0700

If you want to be picky the original title is Ruins.

I bought this book the other week. I picked it up mostly because the cover looked interresting -- seriously, it's fricken awesome -- and when I read how it made Stephen King "scream in horror" I figured it couldn't be a bad buy.

I've read a little over 90 pages so far and what I've read has been pretty good. The characters are pretty interesting and the setting in Mexico believably hot.

I can't say I'm ready to start screaming anytime soon, though. I'm not very easily frightened, especially not by books, but I'll be sure to note if I so much as whimper... ;-]

Magic: The Gathering

nospam@example.com (Mangek) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:46:00 -0700

My brothers and I started playing Magic: The Gathering some 8-9 years ago and it was great fun. The problem we had was we didn't fully understand all the rules which made the game a little tough to play at times.

On top of that we made up some house-rules which led to ridiculous armies being produced and we completely disregarded that there are no official rules on playing more than two teams; playing with 3 or 4 people, all against each other, makes for some silly combat indeed. We played for a good while, but eventually strayed away from Magic. I think the biggest reason was not knowing the rules well enough.

Now, we've recently started playing again. Both with our old cards and a bunch of
new ones; I bought a Magic 2011 Fat Pack that came with some rather nicely dangerous cards and my brother have been raiding auctions for vast amounts of cheap cards. We've built a bunch of different decks in various colours and strengths that we randomly pick and play one another. Every now and then a friend joins in to play and we team up for "epic" 2 vs 2 battles.

I also bought the game Duels of the Planes- walkers for the Xbox360 which has helped immensely with sorting out the rules for us as well as explaining a lot of the cards abillities. Not to mention that it's fun and super-easy to play it while sitting relaxed in a couch in front of the tv. :-]

TeeFury t-shirts and the discoveries

nospam@example.com (Mangek) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 02:26:00 -0700

I bought three shirts in a "Grab Bag" from TeeFury a while back. Grab Bag means that they're randomly picked and I have no idea what print I get until the shirts are delivered to me.

I wasn't expecting awesome tees; my brother has ordered at least two three-shirt Grab Bags in the past and the shirts have all more or less sucked. But they're pretty cheap, only $5 each, so who's complaining, right?

When I unwrapped the parcel I discovered these three shirts. I'm like, wow, they look like bollox. (Seriously, the first thought running through my mind was "what the fuck, man").. But then I took a closer look at the first shirt, and I noticed some numbers written on it; "4, 8, 15, 16... heeeyyyyy!" I noticed more and more of the detail as I realised the motif was that of Lost. A Lost shirt?? Fucking awesome! :D (I'm currently a few episodes into season 5 as I'm typing this).

The next shirt was of a DeLorean and two scruffy looking dudes. It's not awful, really. I mean, the DeLorean is an awesome Back to the Future reference in itself, which made it badass. But then (actually just earlier today, when I found out that TeeFury had updated their gallery and I went to take a look for links to the shirts) I read the description, and it's not only a reference to Back to the Future. The scruffy looking dudes are Desmond and Faraday from Lost!! *Japanese nosebleeding*

And so, the third shirt. It's not as awesome as the other two. In fact, it's not awesome in any way. It's an Avatar-shirt, which is pretty cool - Avatar was awesome - but it's a ripoff of an American football team's logo, which is pretty lame. It won't stop me from wearing the shirt, however. Cheap stuff is good wearin' and I am a bit of a tshirtoholic. ;)

The Grab Bags seems to happen every two months or so and I'll be sure to order three new shirts when the next one comes around. I'm also keeping an eye on the daily shirts they offer, some of the motives are pure awesome. For serious. :-)

To finish what one started

nospam@example.com (Mangek) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:23:13 -0700

I suck at finishing games. I really do. For instance, I bought Super Paper Mario just shortly after it was released back in -07 and I loved it, but for some reason I stopped playing after only a few hours into the game. Now whenever I try to pick up from where I left off I have no clue what to do, or how, and usually end up turning it off again.

Another example is LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias, the sequel to LostWinds (which I wrote a little about here). The game is awesome in almost every aspect but I simply can't sit down and just relax and play the game.

Sadly, this holds true for a lot of games I own.. :-|