War...Interrupted

Today was a typical Tuesday, spent the day learning more about Unix and tape backups, all good fun. It's interesting and at least a nice escape from the daily grind of user problems.

I was playing Gears of War again cooperatively with Will when we got disconnected. Well, I got disconnected - I got booted off Xbox Live. We realised that my one-month free trial you get with a new 360 must have expired. It was a bit annoying as we had just died three times trying to get past a hard bit in a house. We just got through that bit and then it cut me off. Oh well. A years' subscription to Live is £34.99 through Play, not bad, but I'm holding off getting it until I've paid for the Discovery repairs. There was an absolutely hilarious moment where I sneaked up on one of the rocket launcher goons and basically shot him millions of times in the arse, and from Will's perspective, he wasn't moving, just jerking rapidly around with a huge smile on his face. Also there was a rather strange out of control moment where for some reason things kept coming into a room and we were charging around with the chainsaw bayonets, so there was lots of roaring and blood and screaming. It's hard to explain why this was so funny, but we were both crying with laughter while all this was going on.

Cliff Burton, the original Metallica bassist, was certainly rather different. I've never seen anyone else play bass like he did. It's more like guitar playing really, but it's still quite impressive. After seeing this video I was inspired enough to grab my bass and whack up the distortion. It's quite bizarre. Also found that the mandolin sounds rather interesting distorted.

Started the 6th Harry Potter book again, in preparation for the 7th book. Having reread them all several times, I still think they are pretty good, though I can see why people would dislike them.