I’ve had as my co-workers call it a “staycation” where I take time off but stay in town. Hanne and I do everything we can to NOT travel between Thanksgiving and New Year’s and I think we managed it this year. But I did have time-off that I needed to burn up this year or lose, and I took another day or two extra to round out the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
I already blogged about my Egrets Moose (Boynton’s animal-based rhyme with Christmas – my family uses it a lot), but I want to say I have watched my way multiple times through the movies (and with commentaries and special extra bonus materials during which I learned much new – to me – Star Trek trivia). I have also played all 3 games Hanne got me and spent some of my Mom’s gift on useful things (both for personal and professional development).
I especially want to say that Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is quite good (even though it’s an oldie now) and it makes me think I’d like the new Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Also Mini Ninjas is good and of a very similar (though more cartoonish) genre (they’re both third person shooter/platformers – like Tomb Raider) to Uncharted. I should note that Mini Ninjas is essentially non-violent – you do get into combat but everything you defeat turns into fuzzy/feathery/froggy forest creatures that run or hop or fly away after you free them from their evil spell. Whereas Uncharted has you popping bad guys right and left with a variety of realistic weapons, so if this is something you’re considering for kids, consider yourself duly informed and go make whatever is the appropriate purchasing decision.
Gran Turismo 5: Prologue is exactly what I expected except apparently you have to run through it completely before you can unlock the tuning features, which is a departure from earlier Gran Turismo games where you had to buy (with in-game currency earned by winning races) the optional parts to be able to tune your car with them. If I understand correctly, Prologue is planned to be a prologue to the real game which is still in development. So I guess that makes sense. It is quite close to photorealistic, though, which makes watching race replays a pleasure if you’re in the mood for it. All in all, 3 very good games. Thank you again to Hanne for making it happen.
One of the things I did while running through all that video stuff was install Windows 7, which aside from that little undeletable files thing has really been a pleasure, reviving my laptop to good operating condition, fixing a lot of flaws with the old XP SP3 installation, and providing better drivers than I’ve ever had for all of my built-in devices (except maybe the Bluetooth – still not inclined to do anything about that but maybe I will eventually tinker it into life). I note now about a (working) week into the install that not only do I find the International Input keyboard somehow more usable than I found it in XP, but the built-in driver support for my wireless card is better than it was in XP. In XP, the vendor-supplied driver actually crapped out and reset the connection if I dumped too many bytes through it at once (like copying files in my house network). It doesn’t do that anymore, and I am overjoyed.
And also I am putting my back into learning French. This is partly for long term plans to emigrate (probably to Canada), and partly for career development. But my goal is not to be completely overwhelmed in July when we are going to arrange an informal but no less scary at-home immersion course. Also I’d like to speak French at home regularly if possible. Like for entire days or weeks. Wish me luck. 