• 6Jul 09

  Peripherals, you gotta love em

  That feeling you had when you first held an aircraft control column, felt like you controlled the world in your hand. Recently I've been through a spate of purchasing gaming collectable peripherals, starting with the Steel Battalion set up and now with Ace Combat 6's Ace Edge. This has seriously hurt the wallet and means savings will be hurt, especially with the Royal International Air Tattoo just round the corner; guess I'll have to smooch some extra dough off my dad. After that its time for some major sacrifices so please let there be no more big game releases, there were far too many for me in May & June (didn't help either that my 360 is on the friz, well I guess we are all destined to get the RROD at least once).

  • Posted Jul 6, 2009 2:34 pm PT
  • 0 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
• 13May 07

  Not Because They Are Easy But Because They Are Hard

  Kennedy's famous words during his declaration of the "Space Race" continue to flow through the hearts and minds of all who envision man's journey into the heavens. I have practically lived my whole life by these words as I have taken the many challenges during my education and work.

  Although I have only watched the first four episodes of the HBO mini-series, "From the Earth to the Moon", I have already been captivated by the risks, challenges and sacrfices that NASA had to face in order to accomplish one of mankind's greatest achievements.

  Whilst the crew of Apollo XI, not surprisingly, continue to remain the most well known, a lot of my recent interest has laid with Apollo VIII, the first humans ever to leave the confines of Earth orbit and travel into the darkness of Space. What must have been going through their hearts and minds when they witnessed the first "Earth-rise" by a human being? This was something special, many great explorers had witnessed great wonders over the centuries on Earth and this was no different.

  One part of the mission that I always recall was the crew's Christmas message during their lunar orbit, where they read the opening extracts from the Book of Genesis, a fitting description of what one of the crew members described as "a green oasis in the desolate vastness of Space". Their transmission remains to this day the most watched transmission in history with approximately a quarter of the human population having watched it. Pope Paul VI, who met Mission Commander Frank Borman afterwards, told him with regards to their reading of Genesis: "I have spent my entire life trying to say to the world what you did on Christmas Eve".

  With eight more episodes to go, I look forward to delving deeper into the lives of these brave pioneers, and with the Orion Programme on the horizon, I can only hope that we as a people will return to what our predecessors once began.

  For the Dream is alive in all of us, we just have to be willing to make it reality.
  

   

  • Posted May 13, 2007 1:08 pm PT
  • 0 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
• 21Apr 07

  One Too Many Hobbies?

  We all have hobbies, but there are always those that perhaps have too many and in the end we lack one of two things (or both):

  1. Time

  2. Money

   

  Lets admit it, gaming is no cheap hobby. With the newest consoles now on the market and games a plenty in stores or on there way, we are constantly struggling to make available the time necessary to finish them (even tougher when you have to go to work and other committments) and the dinero to make them yours.

  I will not deny, with 6 consoles and a PC it definetely hurst the wallet, especially since I'm a flightsim afficionado so hardware costs a bundle (but damn its worth it). But with plenty of other expensive hobbies (reading, model building and aviation photography), its a case of jumbling around what to do each time you have some time off.  I've already noticed a significant backlog of games building up, and with my mech models remaining incomplete in 3 different countries, I have plenty to do but not enough time (even worse when you gotta do the housework). At least its weekends like this that help me do some catching up, though last thing I wanna do is stay indoors (though what else do you expect to do in Luton when you lack a drivers license?).

  Well, enough ranting, I should use this time I got now to work on my "to do" list.

  Until next time, FX102 signing off.

   p.s. Ace Combat & Nintendo rule!!

  • Posted Apr 21, 2007 12:37 pm PT
  • 0 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg

See Previous Blog Posts »