Star Wars – Republic heroes

I had high hopes for this game, but just like the whole Star Wars franchise now, it is aimed a very young children.

It is a good concept and there is no shortage of wielding a lightsaber, however the player is not punished for their mistakes in the game.

You feel as if you are simply following your nose from on platform level to another. There are a series of rewards, but these are not too difficult to achieve.

It is a shame that the Star Wars franchise has gone down this route. This has turned into a children’s franchise where nobody dies, yet we has Asoka, who is Anakin’s Padawan, who is not in the episode three film, so at some point she is going to die a horrid death.

I would like to see a more adult franchise that follows the loveable rogue Han Solo and his trusted companion Chewbacca, then a bit like the Indian Jones franchise you could follow with ‘Young Han’ Solo, then ‘Son of Solo’.

The game is one for the children and even if you are a Star Wars fan, you will be disappointed.

Chronicles of Riddick – Assault on dark Athena

I am a fan of the Riddick films and also a fan of the first game, Escape from Butcher Bay. So imagine my delight to find out that it has been retouched, converted to HD and included free in the Assault on Dark Athena game.

That is right, two games for the price of one.

Both games start off slowly and build to a crescendo. You start of sneaking around in the dark in a ‘Splinter cell’ manner finding the less aggressive path forward, but by the end chapters you are out in the open an taking on mechs with rocket launchers and grenades.

Fore me this is double the fun. It took me about a week proper gaming to complete the first one, I took a break, then was back for more of the same.

The language and the violence is not for he faint hearted or the young, however as an adult you will enjoy the story arch and there are plenty of challenges to keep you busy.

Stranglehold

This game starts off well, as an interesting concept. Any game that is directed by John Woo is going to be high octane action, and with Woo’s ‘goto’ guy Chow Yun Fat lending his image and voice as the lead character, you really do feel you are in a John Woo game.

There are all the Woo action traits like gun to gun stand offs and bullet time dodging, and by the end of the game you do not realise that all you have been doing for the past couple of days is mashing the fire button and dodging bullets.

The game is full of special moves and this is what keeps your interest as you slaughter your way through the game. Everything is destructible and you get points for the damage you create. With his in mind, you will love the casino.

Feel the Woo dude, feel the Woo.

Afro Samurai

Samuel L Jackson, Ron Pearlman, and Lucy Li are the voices behind the majority of the characters within this game.

The game is based on a five part MTV cartoon of the same name, with the same actors. The tv series was excellent, the story behind the game, which is the same, was great.

However there is nothing sophisticated about this game. In fact, Samuel L Jackson said it himself in the opening titles where he says “You button mashing mothef*cker”. And this is what you do all the way through the game, hit combinations of buttons as hard and as fast as you can.

This game is quite short and I played it twice, not because I enjoyed it, but because the gamer in me needed to collect all the special items that are hidden in the game.

The soundtrack for the game is very good. It is performed and directed by RZA. I would put the game on at a party purely to play the soundtrack.

The next game on my list will be the next installation in the Riddick Chronicles.

Wolverine

I bought this game after I saw the film. I did not want to but it before I was the film because I was concerned that it was spoil the movie. I need not have worried.

I think that the creators of the game only had a rough idea of the storyline when they wrote the game.

The game is riddled with Wolverine trivia, and it is a real homage to the original Wolverine that the fans came to know and love from the comics.

The game is good. It is the sort of game that you can pick up after a hard day at work, mash the buttons in a random fashion, and feel as if you have achieved an important quest in the game.

The graphics in the game are great, and in the ‘uncaged’ version the blood splatter can be most satisfying.

Mass Effect

I have played this game though in its entirely twice now and I could easily play it again.

It is a game that plays on the morals of the gamer. It is a game where the decisions you make change the outcome of the story.

You play as Captain Shepard who, through a series on events, becomes leader of a ship and squad become the only obstacle between ‘The Reapers’ and the total annihilation of the universe.

I did not expect to like this game after playing ‘Unleashed’. Mass Effect is a lot slower and requires you to choices during conversations with what you want to ask people or how you are going to respond in certain situations. This game uses the same engine as the KOTOR games.

However, the fact of the matter is that I did like the game, and I was drawn into every decision that I make as Captain Shepard. I cared for the safety of every member of my squad, perhaps too much, to the point that I even managed to get a little alien loving.

The game was worth every hour played and I look forward to Mass Effect 2 coming out sometime next year.

You would all know about the troubles that Fiji has had with its governments over the past years. You will know that they are coming close to Italy with the number of prime ministers that they have had over a four year period. You will also be aware that the Australian and New Zealand representatives have been ejected from the country for interfering with the recent regime change. All of this happened in Suva on the mainland.

I was recently in Fiji, where I have a relaxing time. We spend a day on Nadi on the mainland before going off to the beautiful island of Tokoriki.

The Fijian people are very welcoming and friendly, and I found the indigenous ones were more so with me because of the brotherhood.

Fijians are aware that tourism brings in 65% of their economy, so they do not talk to outsiders about the political situation for fear of upsetting the balance. I found that they were more prepared to talk to me about the things that tourist do not see or hear and this has given me invaluable insight into the politics of Fiji.

Politically Fiji is divided along racial lines, The indigenous Fijians and the Indian settlers that were originally brought in by the British.

The Indians are the ones with the power, money and influence in Fiji. This would not be so bad except that the Indians have miss-used their power to take land and money from the indigenous Fijians.

The Indian story is quite impressive. It is a rags to riches story of a people that were indentured workers brought to Fiji by the British to work on the sugar plantations. They were originally only supposed to work for five years then return home, however when their five years were up, they did not have enough money to pay for the passage home, so they were forced to work on for another five years.

After these ten years had passed, they then began to return to India, however life in India had moved on and a lot of them returned to Fiji because they no longer fit in.

Once back in Fiji they lobbied the British run government to change the laws so that they could have the right to set up local business and trade. Once this was granted their story became the familiar success story that is familiar all over the world.

Once established, a new wave of Indian immigrants flooded Fiji. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, administrative staff and clerks, tipped the balance in favour of the ever increasing Indian population.

The language of business quickly became Hindu, which quickly excluded all non Indians.

Contracts were awarded to family contacts and nepotism continues to run unchecked.

By contrast the indigenous economy was not based on British values.

The Fijian economy could be equated to that of the Australian indigenous people. They lived off he land and traded goods and services with other villages, therefore having no need for money and Suva politics.

They stayed away from the antics of the colonials as they had little effect on their everyday lives. That is until the corruption of the Fijian Indians spilled into their world as lands were bought from underneath them and the leasing of land forced them into the economy of the settlers.

Now indigenous Fijians are seen and treated as second class citizens, working as servants to the once indentured Indian elite.

The current political uprising is an attempt to rectify this balance of power.

The coup has been led by an indigenous Fijian who, amongst other things, wishes to redress the balance of power to give more influence, and power back to his people.

I can see why it has happened and unfortunately it may be one of the few ways to redress the balance, especially if you follow the mantra that power can only be seized and not given.

Another unfortunate step that may be required to redress the balance, and I do not advocate it lightly, is one of positive discrimination. Like in the USA during the 60s and 70s, it may be required to force an institutionally racist society into accepting the indigenous people until, like the states from the 80s onward, it is no longer required.

There are stories of positive discrimination not working, like in South Africa, where corporations employ black figure heads who are told to dance by their white puppet masters.

The coup is not without selfish motive. The government may not be the most appropriate to act responsibly with absolute power, however change is required, as any government politics based along racial lines is unacceptable.

I believe in freedom of speech, and I would adamantly defend that right both when it works in my favour and even when it does not.

The BBC is a publicly funded broadcasting organisation that is there to allow everyone a voice.

They were politicised in the 80s and 90s when Gerry Adams from the Irish political party Sinn Fein was not allowed to be heard on British television. Those dark days of censorship are hopefully over.

The protest outside the BBC was against the BNP being given a voice on the BBC. This is wrong.

The protests outside the BBC should have been against the BNPs policies, against their ideals, not against their freedom of speech.

I fundamentally disagree with everything that the BNP stand for, and as a result they should be exposed for who they really are.

A programme like Question Time is the ideal forum for the BNP to be exposed for the racists that they are.

This is not a programme hosted, panelled, or watched by the unintelligent, it is a programme where there the panel and the audience are more than capable of dispatching the ignorant rants of a ‘one horse’ party with only one policy and no strategy for the country and its place in the wider world.

I have seen clips of this show on the BBC this morning and I believe that the panel and the public acquitted themselves admirably in dismissing the BNP as the racist joke that they are.

This is not the first time that the BNP has been on the BBC. I heard an interview, no more like an annihilation, on the Today programme, where John Humphreys completely destroyed the BNP leader by blowing holes in his argument and leaving him floundering like a dying fish out of water.

To those that say that we should not watch at all, I would say “know your enemy”. It is important to listen to the opinions of others in order to have an informed argument against their ideas. This does not give then credibility, instead it publicities the flaws in their ill conceived policies.

We must fight evil where we see it, but we must make sure that we are using the right weapons and striking the right target.

I am currently in the process of redirecting my website domain name to this blog.

Here are the generic instructions for those that are also going through the pain.

You can map a domain that you already own to a WordPress.com blog for 9.97 credits ($9.97) per year. Note that you must update the Name Servers for your domain before you will be able to purchase credits (see details below).

1. Update your domain’s Name Servers to the following. Make sure to remove any existing Name Servers that are already there.
   
   NS1.WORDPRESS.COM
   NS2.WORDPRESS.COM
   NS3.WORDPRESS.COM
   
   If you’re not sure how to update name servers, ask your registrar and they should be able to help you. If your registrar is unable to make the changes (common with foreign domains), we most likely need to add a DNS zone for your domain. Please contact support with the appropriate information, and we will take care of this for you. If your registrar needs the IP addresses of the nameservers, you can use the following. However, note that updating the Name Servers is preferred.
   
   72.233.69.14
   76.74.159.137
   64.34.177.159
   
   When a new domain is purchased or when Name Servers are updated, it can take some time for the change to take full effect across the internet (up to 72 hours, but normally much less).

   Warning:
   Changing the Name Servers will make any previously setup custom DNS records such as A, CNAME, or MX records stop working, and we do not have an option for you to create custom DNS records here. If you already have email configured on your domain, you must either switch to Custom Email with Google Apps or you can use a subdomain instead which doesn’t require changing the name servers.

2. After the Name Server change takes effect, go to Settings -> Domains in your blog’s dashboard, enter the domain into the form at the top of the page, and click the Add domain to blog button. If the Name Servers are verified, you will be prompted to purchase the required credits via PayPal and complete the upgrade/mapping process.
   
3. After you have made your purchase, go back to the Settings -> Domains page, select the radio button next to the domain you just mapped to your blog, and click the Update Primary Domain button.
   

In Australia, the police are a joke.

The population in the larger cities such as Melbourne and Sydney is still the equivalent of a medium size city in the UK like Chelmsford.

As a result, the police spend a lot of time enforcing trivial laws such as; riding a bicycle without a helmet; and parking on the wrong side of a residential street.

The police in Australia are use to ‘local’ policing, so when something major happens such as a murder or a robbery, they do not have the resources, or apparently the abilities to deal with it.

As a result, you will often hear in the news that “police are appealing to members of the community to assist in resolving the murder”

There are two things wrong with this statement.

The first thing wrong with this police statement, is that it is shorthand for “Police have absolutely no idea who committed the murder, and the woefully inept policing skills are not up to the task to investigating the crime like a real police force, so they are relying on somebody to ‘grass’ on their mate, and hand them the perpetrator on a platter”

I often find here in Melbourne, that unless the police actually see somebody committing a crime, they never catch the culprit.

Even the cctv coverage does not help, because unless you get into a car where the registration number is clearly visible on the film, you are not going to get caught, unless they put that picture on tv and appeal to “the community” for help.

The second thing wrong with this police statement, is the word community.

Since when did the police stop appealing to the public?

What community is this to whom the police are appealing?

Have the police looked up the dictionary definition of the word community?

I certainly do not know the names of everyone within Melbourne, nor am I acquainted with its populous, in which case they should be appealing to the public, not a fictional community.

In the 70s and early 80s in the UK, I use to take the mickey out of ‘PC Plod’ for being slow in their policing, until the 21^st century when PC Plod went too far by taking away my civil liberties and restricted my freedom of movement, in an attempt to pander to a paranoid and controlling USA. They were not so funny after that.

I am not suggesting that the Australian police force follow the extremes of the British and American example, but an increase in policing method that provided a permanent solution to crime rather than a temporary public relations exercise would certainly begin to instil me with a little more confidence.

Over the past two weeks I have watched as the good intentions of the many have been pushed aside, torn asunder, and punished by the small minded egos of a selected few.

I have sat and watched as petty rivalries and historic bitterness have stood in the way of the greater good, and wellbeing of others.

A brief breakdown of what has happened is; one organisation was split into two separate organisations, but in some misplaced illusion of power, the first and older organisation tried to obstruct the newer organisation at every turn.

At the time of the split, I likened it to an amicable divorce; you know that ultimately you are going to end up being friends, but there is always a struggle over who gets the vase that neither of you like, but suddenly becomes very important; and of course, the battle to win the hearts and minds of those you both call friends.

So the two organisations went their separate ways, the first and older thinking that it is more important that the other, not even recognising the existence of the other, and thinking it was better than the younger.

This scenario I likened to a parent not being prepared to recognise that the child, who had been looking after the household in its absence, is really a fully fledged adult and more than capable of surviving in the world without direct supervision.

Extending these metaphors a little further, as with any family unity is important, as it makes the individuals within that family stronger, but it has to come with mutual respect, and not with one party thinking that it is superior in any way to the others.

And this is where the problem lies with the older of the two organisations.

It has allowed an unmitigated sense of self importance, fostered and perpetuated by an old guard attitude amongst its management, to stand in the way of progress.

It has lost sight of the fact that two united organisations are stronger than two organisations moving in the same direction, potentially with the same goals, but constantly bickering.

In my eyes, the conflict has become a struggle for the older organisation to obtain perceived power, but the irony is that the power that the older organisation seeks is an illusion.

The younger organisation is not without experience as it has been running its part of the older organisation in its absence for some time. Yet the older organisation still wishes to impose dominance over the younger organisation in any way it can.

In the absence of any other logical explanation, the driving force behind the behaviour of the older organisation can only be an ego fuelled, arrogant quest for perceived power.

The reality is that power does not lie with anyone who manages an organisation, but amongst those that make the organisation work, the members.

Without the efforts and commitment of the members, all organisations would collapse.

It is because of the tireless work of the members who volunteer their time and effort to the success of any organisation, that ultimately make it work.

If an organisation puts on a function, and nobody turns up, then that function is a failure as it is clearly not what the members want, and that ultimately adds to the failure of the organisers.

It is the members who hold the power. Those who run organisations would do well to remember that when beating their chests like a baboon, and puffing up their feathers like a peacock.

So when the younger organisation makes every attempt to reconcile any conflict with the older organisation, and it is met with pedantry, this does not help.

When the older organisation refuses to recognise the organisational structure of the younger committee, or drags its feet in an attempt to fain importance, then it only shows itself as an over-bloated buffoon.

The older organisation then sends out communications that can only be considered rude, pedantic, and obstructive, not only to the committee members of the younger organisation, but to the membership that it represents.

The younger organisation, in an attempt to keep the peace, chooses not to respond to this constant poking from the older, until it was specifically asked to respond to a direct request.

The younger organisation’s response is what the older organisation has been waiting for, providing them with new fuel by which they can claim indignation and deformation, all the time forgetting their own poorly veiled vitriol contained in their own correspondence.

More frustrating is, where were the members of the older organisation that wanted peace? Where were their voices of conciliation and mediation?

The people that said that they advocated reconciliation and dialogue were deafening in their silence. And when finally they did speak, it was only to speak of what had not been said, rather than what had hoped to be achieved.

So what would you do?

Would you continue to feed the egos of the older organisation by still driving towards reconciliation, despite their contempt and reluctance?

Or would you retract your hand of friendship and allow them to wallow in their own ego, and focus your attention back onto the younger organisation that continues to achieve success through its independence?

Well, what would you do?

Hello everyone. I know that I have been quiet for a while. It is because I gave been guest writing on another blog.

But the quote that I heard only half an hour ago on the bus that has compelled me back to my own blog is:

“I thought this is supposed to be Australia”

The quote was delivered to a packed bus by a well dressed, seemingly sane, middled aged boarding passenger.

She was complaining that the bus that she was on was predominately populated by passengers of a different demographic than her own.

She was ignored by most of the passengers, who may have been foreign students, as most of them boarded at the English Language school,  and therefore not wanting any trouble.

I, on the other hand, glared at her and made it clear in no uncertain terms that if she wanted a debate I was ready.

She looked at me, then began to hum loudly. I did not know the song, and I do not know whether the song was relevant.

Maybe the song was one of racial defiance.

I wondered whether she had realised that her audience was not so passive and was humming for comfort, or whether she had realised the racist connotation behind what she had said, and was humming to forget.

My anger welded up inside me as a planned my argument in my head, plotted my strategies and constructed my one-liner killer blow.

Then she struck again.

This time she turned around to the person sitting directly behind her and berated him with:

“Do you mind, you are talking very loudly in my ear, and you’re not even speaking English!”

Now I do not like it when someone speaks loudly on their mobile phone. It is like they forget that there is a microphone inside the phone and that they do not have to shout to make themselves heard by the person on the other end. It is like they do not realise that they are not talking to the other person via two tin cans and a piece of string. Maybe they are looking for attention, and want to relay their intimate details to surrounding strangers.

However once again, the racist passenger had removed all doubt behind her prejudice, by completing the sentence with “and you are not even speaking English!!”

Again I glared at her, only this time I refused to look away. My anger was barely contained, certainly not visually, and only just audibly.

I updated my rant with phrases like “so you are you annoyed that he is speaking loudly, or that he is not speaking English, because one of those makes you a racist” and “Are you annoyed that you do not understand his gossip?”

This time the woman actively avoided my gaze. I wanted to engage her, but I needed to be invited.

She continued the rest of her journey in silence, but my mind was anything but, as I formulated and reworded my final salvos.

Probably not understanding the irony of her destination, the racist then got up to get off the bus in a place called Footscray, probably the most multicultural area in Melbourne.

I had now revised argument to a departing one-liner and poised for delivery:

“Welcome to the changing face of Australia…” if she had responded I would have said “…you do not look Aboriginal, so if you do not like it, go back you where your ancestors came from.”

But I did not receive my ocular invitation, and upon her exit from the bus, the moment had passed.

My arguments, however, will live on. They will be stored, for another rainy day, on a bus to Footscray.

Where was the door bitch at the Anzac Day parade? Who let the trackie dak brigade through? Generation X and younger were marching beside the smartly uniformed or besuited bedecked, almost to a person, in trackies or jeans or worse. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is not a matter of beauty or style but propriety.

It probably wasn’t meant to be direspectful. It was undoubtedly thoughtlessness. Or ignorance (”I always wear trackies/trackies are comfy”). I think many of my generation haven’t a clue. I suspect many don’t have casual clothes other than trackies. Nor do their kids.

I attended a citizenship ceremony a couple of years ago and a clear three-quarters of the nominees wore jeans or trackies (one lady – middle-aged – was in her bleach-stained trackies. Straight from toilet bowl to town hall.). There were two or three smartly dressed couples (suit and tie/dress and heels). No prizes: they were from Britain. At our wedding, a guest (a woman in her 30s) wore a baggy windcheater and skirt and Birkenstocks. She was in the formal photographs. It was a church wedding. There was no beach. There was no garden.

Because Gen X don’t seem to know how to dress for the occasion, their children don’t either. On Anzac Day there was a World War Two veteran, medals gleaming, shoes and head polished, being accompanied by a primary-aged great-grandson in trackies and sandshoes. Other, similarly dressed children in the march were respresenting their dead digger forefathers, with medals pinned to their logo-ed hoodies.

And Melbourne can’t be smug. A recent blogger described the ”city of European style” as the Trackie Dak Capital. There were far fewer track pants evident in the Sydney parade telecast. Yes, I started counting them.
I’m not romanticising Anzac Day (had to laugh at the besuited diggers and their reluctant betrackied grandsons lining up outside a ”gentlemen’s club” in the Melbourne CBD as I taxied past at 9pm on Saturday). But I do think certain occasions do require a certain level of dress. We seem to be able to do it for the races.

Your thoughts, please.

Posted by Natasha Hughes
April 27, 2009 8:15 PM

Over 400 fat cat bosses in AIG insurance company are being rewarded with one hundred and fifty million dollar bonuses in the US, despite stern disapproval from the President himself and the Secretary General.

AIG received three separate bail out contributions from the US government totalling one hundred and seventy billion dollars, after reporting the worst financial results of any trading US company ever.

The US government was concerned over the impact that the financial collapse of this company would have on the US economy, and allowed the company to benefit from its financial stimulus package on three separate occasions.

AIG say that they have legal obligations to pay out the bonuses to its staff, despite the fact they were responsible for the worst results ever posted in US history. However the New York State Attorney General is investigating whether these claims are true and if so, whether these payments can be deferred.

The US government now owns eighty percent of AIG all bought with tax payer’s money so these bonuses are being directly funded by the US tax payer.

The New York State Attorney General said that this is an abuse of the bail out money and I agree. How can you with any clear conscience hold out your hand and take a reward for causing the worst financial results ever posted by a US company ever? How can you put into your back pocket the money of the tax payers that you have let down in such a monumental manner?

If I do well at work, I expect to be rewarded. However if by all measures I am responsible for posting historical losses, the only payout I would expect, is a minimum severance payout.

The NSW police are introducing a mobile fingerprinting machine that can scan you fingerprint on location an compare it to the NATIONAL DATABASE held by the federal government.

Anyone committing any infraction, no matter how small, will be subject to the fingerprinting and their record added to the national database.

Police claim that people committing minor offenses will have their fingerprints removed, but the fact that there is a NATIONAL DATABASE in the first place throws questions on that idea.

Civil rights organisations are protesting the use of these mobile fingerprinting machines as an infringement of people’s civil liberties, and that the police can not be trusted to use this technology wisely.