The thoughts, opinions, happenings, and just plain ramblings of a seemingly boring person http://lucascosti.com/blog/ Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:10:04 +1000 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://lucascosti.com/blog/ http://lucascosti.com/blog/2012/02/birthday-goals-bf3-e793/
My birthday yesterday went really well for the most part. I stayed up late the night before and kicked off my birthday watching Arsenal pummel Blackburn 7-1 with the cherry on top being a Thierry Henry Premier League goal. It's been a long long time since Arsenal won big like that (at least a season or two ago), so it was a really enjoyable game to watch. It's quite sad that these type of games are really the rare exception for Arsenal nowadays; in my rosy-tinted history glasses it seems like they used to do that at least once a month back in the glory days of the early 2000s.

As my birthday was on a Sunday, it also meant a game of indoor. I actually scored a birthday goal in the game, which unfortunately we ended up losing by a few goals.

Yesterday also saw me play BF3 online for the first time properly. It's a fair bit different to BC2, some of which I understand and can get used to but other parts of which had me seething with rage.

The little things like the weapon/equipment ordering being different which seems illogical to me I can get used to, but other things like the complete inability/bug to be able to 'spot' with a mouse button even though you can bind it to other keys in the settings is really inexcusable.

To be able to spot with a mouse button I've had to resort to running a separate program with the game which is in effect a key-interceptor, so that when I press the appropriate mouse button the program intercepts the command and then virtually presses the default spot button for me instead. It's quite astounding that I have to go to such lengths to do such a basic thing in the game.
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View the original blog post. You can view or add comments on this blog post at LucasCosti.com]]> Football Gaming Life http://lucascosti.com/blog/2012/02/birthday-goals-bf3-e793/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:10:03 +1000 http://lucascosti.com/blog/2012/01/dragon-tattoos-vampires-e792/ Now here's a thought: a movie with dragons and vampires in it. How come nobody's done that yet? When it happens just remember you read it here first. ;)

Continuing on with our cinephilic year last year, we've seen a couple more in this past week.

Last week we went and saw the US version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I haven't read the book nor seen the Swedish film, so I can't comment on how faithful it is to its source material or not, but I did enjoy the movie. It was very intense and confronting at times, but after all the talk and hype about that part of it, it wasn't to the extent that I had anticipated.

Rooney Mara was exceptional in her role (and very deserving of her Oscar nomination), but I didn't buy Daniel Craig's Swedish accent: for me it drifted from him making an effort at it, to him talking in his normal British accent. In the end I was confused as to whether he was supposed to have an accent or not...

Last night we saw Underworld: Awakening in 3D. I'm a huge fan of the first two movies (and also of Rise of the Lycans to an extent), and I was thus very apprehensive of them making another movie with Kate Beckinsale after so long.

Overall it wasn't as bad as I was fearing it to be, but it was only ok-ish without being that great. The plot felt very half-baked and thin, and the movie really missed characters like Bill Nighy's legendary Viktor. They wrote off characters from the previous movies for convenience, using the old sleep/time-travel/cryogenic-freezing technique as an explanation of shifting the whole plot and setting elsewhere from the original movies.

The action was very good and the 3D a bit average, but overall the movie was a lot more action-oriented than the previous movies, largely at the expense of the plot. Kate Beckinsale, whilst still in very good shape, for me was visibly older than in previous movies (unsurprising considering it's been five years since her last Underworld movie), and that sort of ruined the illusion of her character being an immortal un-aging vampire.

It's definitely worth a watch, but overall it's largely forgettable, which is unfortunate when I remember how I felt after watching the first two movies.
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View the original blog post. You can view or add comments on this blog post at LucasCosti.com]]> Movies http://lucascosti.com/blog/2012/01/dragon-tattoos-vampires-e792/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:47:48 +1000 http://lucascosti.com/blog/2012/01/computer-cleaning-rain-delays-e791/
Most people don't bother cleaning their computers, but I like to run a well oiled machine (minus the oil of course). Typically it involves at least pulling out the dust filters and giving them a vacuum, but if I'm really in the mood i'll get an anti-static cloth and wipe down the fan blades (there are four fans in the Antec 902 I own), as well as wipe down all the internal surfaces to get rid of the finer dust that manages to get through the filters.

In my opinion, dust and the associated implications for fan efficiency and consequently heat build-up, is one of the bigger causes that affect hardware longevity.

It's been raining here a lot in the past few days, and it's hampered applying the final finishes to the exterior of the house. Things are coming along though, so hopefully it shouldn't be too much longer...
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View the original blog post. You can view or add comments on this blog post at LucasCosti.com]]> Geekery Life http://lucascosti.com/blog/2012/01/computer-cleaning-rain-delays-e791/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:59:50 +1000 http://lucascosti.com/blog/2012/01/the-return-of-a-legend-henry-e790/
However every now and then something special happens. This morning it was the return of Arsenal legend Thierry Henry on a short-term loan during the American football off-season. He hadn't played for Arsenal since 2007, and the hastily organised loan is meant to fill some of the striking deficiencies temporarily.

In watching the game on my computer this morning at the hour of 6am, the stage was set for him to come on as a substitute and score the winning goal. I'd be lying if I expected it to happen, but I was buzzing when it did!



When Henry scored (in that trademark way of his too), it was like time had been wound back ten years. I was eating breakfast whilst watching the game and almost spat out the cereal I had in my mouth all over my monitor and keyboard.

It's a bit like dreamland for Arsenal fans at the moment; the club's all-time top scorer and legend comes back after four years and increases his goal-tally by one to make it 227 goals and counting. Here's to a few more over the next 6 weeks.


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View the original blog post. You can view or add comments on this blog post at LucasCosti.com]]> Football http://lucascosti.com/blog/2012/01/the-return-of-a-legend-henry-e790/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:42:25 +1000 http://lucascosti.com/blog/2012/01/new-year-coin-collecting-e789/ So we enter another new year! Hopefully it'll be a good one, and if tradition is anything to go by, it should be for me: In my family's belated new year's get-together I scored the coin from the vasilopita. It's been at least 10 years since I last got it, so it was quite a surprise.

The coin itself was a pretty fancy specialist vasiloptia coin that was bought from Church (shown below), which is a first for us since we previously used general currency coin(s).


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View the original blog post. You can view or add comments on this blog post at LucasCosti.com]]> Life http://lucascosti.com/blog/2012/01/new-year-coin-collecting-e789/#comments Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:21:18 +1000 http://lucascosti.com/blog/2011/12/2011-year-in-review-e788/
We had hoped to have moved into a newly built house by now, but we're still in the middle of that process so here's hoping we won't be too far into 2012 for that to happen! That's also one of the main reasons that blogging has been so thin this year, the house building has taken up most of my time both physically and mentally.

Anyway, here's the year's highlights of blog entries:

January

- Nice Try Retailers, Maybe Stop Ripping Us Off?: A good rant, still valid now as the debate rages on.
- Disaster: Brisbane Starts to Flood: Probably the single biggest event of 2011.
- Recovery: The Flood Cleanup Begins: The community comes together after the disaster.
- Weddings & Koumbari: A special highlight

February

- Getting Ready, Anniversary, Indoor: Sad preparations, 5 years married!

March

None really :(

April

- Crysis 2 & Surgery: The surgery for the year.

May

- Moving into the house: Sadly moving out of our unit :(

June

- Am I a Logitech Fanboy? New Mouse & X-Men: Geek highlight and musings
- Go Back To Where You Came From: A good semi-rant on refugees and links to an essay of the past.

July

- Google+ starts to take shape: In hindsight, G+ probably hasn't taken off as well as I've expected it to (at least in my circles of friends (pun intended)).

August

- Illness Update Part 3: The most recent update regarding my health situation.

September

- Rant: Why Wash the Colours Away?: A good rant on the current 'fashions' of interface design.
- 10 Years On: My Experience of September 11 2001: My memories of the date 10 years prior.
- Star Wars on Blu-Ray: Definitely a highlight for me ;), although I still haven't watched them all yet!

October

- Lucas the Builder: Building coming along, and strange injuries.

November

- New Mobile: HTC Desire S: Properly moving into the smart phone world.
- Google's New Look of Doom & On Virgin: More rants on Google's new interface for Reader.

December

- Back In Town, Christmas in Sydney: How we spend Christmas.
- The Best and Worst of 2011: The standard review of the years media.

So that's it for 2011, here's hoping that 2012 will bring a little more progress in a lot of things (and that the Mayans will be wrong about that whole end-of-the-world thing).
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View the original blog post. You can view or add comments on this blog post at LucasCosti.com]]> Default http://lucascosti.com/blog/2011/12/2011-year-in-review-e788/#comments Sat, 31 Dec 2011 12:00:00 +1000 http://lucascosti.com/blog/2011/12/the-best-and-worst-of-2011-e787/ a lot of movies, both theatrically and at home. At my count (which I think is still a little short), we've seen 35 movies released this year.

Anyway, here we go:

Movies

Best Movie: The Adventures of Tintin

This one was a tough one because no movie really jumped out at me as the best this year (maybe because we saw so many). In previous years it was always an easy decision, but this year there were a lot of average movies, a lot of 'good' ones, but none that were really fantastic. Tintin was probably one that I really enjoyed despite its faults, it felt like an animated Indiana Jones-esque adventure, and visually was great. But for me Snowy made the movie ;)
Honourable Mentions: The Help, Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Worst Movie: tie between Bridesmaids and Friends with Benefits

I couldn't decide between these two for the worst movie of the year, but if I really had to choose I'd go with Bridesmaids by a hair. As a male watching that movie it was unfunny and totally unenjoyable. I didn't laugh that many times at all, and would really like those two hours of my life back

Friends with Benefits was almost equally as bad, again being largely unfunny. During the movie they stated they wanted to not follow the film cliches of relationships with sex, yet somehow the whole movie ended up being full of huge cliches, and unfortunately being released after the extremely similar and somewhat better No Strings Attached didn't help.
Honourable mentions for worst movie: New Years Eve


Games

As mentioned previously, I haven't really played that many games this year, but here's what I did play.

Best Games:

PC: My PC games playing this year was definitely very thin, but from the little that I have played of it, i'll go out on a limb and say the best game I have this year is Battlefield 3.

Wii: Pretty much the only game I have played on the Wii this year is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and it is a really great game (although I haven't finished it yet!).

PS3: This was a tight one, as I both thoroughly enjoyed Little Big Planet 2 (especially playing online coop with a few people), as well as Lego Star Wars 3. I'd have to say i'd pick LBP2 by a shade.
Honourable Mention: De Blob 2

Worst Games:

PC: Probably not the worst ever game, but pretty disappointing, was Crysis 2. The plot was very ordinary, and although the graphics were awesome, the jump wasn't as mind-blowing as the original Crysis was. The gameplay was average and repetitive, and the dumbing down of the openness for the consoles really showed.

Wii: NA

PS3: None really
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View the original blog post. You can view or add comments on this blog post at LucasCosti.com]]> Movies Life Geekery Gaming http://lucascosti.com/blog/2011/12/the-best-and-worst-of-2011-e787/#comments Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:31:17 +1000 http://lucascosti.com/blog/2011/12/back-in-town-christmas-in-sydney-e786/
It's our first flights together since going over to Europe in 2008, and the first time we've spent Christmas somewhere other than Brisbane since we've been married. We were only down there for six days, but it didn't feel too long or too short.

We did a few things while we were down there, but on Tuesday we went into the city to try and see the 'Art of the Brick' Lego art exhibition, only to discover that whilst the rest of the city was open for business, it wasn't open on public holidays (Tuesday being the delayed Christmas one). There were many others like us going up to the Town Hall building dismayed to find that it was closed.

It's ironic that many are complaining of tourism dollars drying up when in our case a public exhibition isn't open on a day when most are on holidays and the rest of the city is trading. Added to that, there was nothing on any website that I could see notifying people that it was going to be closed on that day.

I continued my tradition of seeing a Boxing Day movie in Sydney (the last was Return of the King in 2003) by going and seeing The Adventures of Tintin. I very much enjoyed it and would have to be one of the best movies i've seen this year. The animation was great, the plot was decent, and it didn't hurt that I loved Tintin as a kid. I'm still not decided on what the best one was, but i'll make my mind up for my traditional 'Best and Worst' entry.
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View the original blog post. You can view or add comments on this blog post at LucasCosti.com]]> Life http://lucascosti.com/blog/2011/12/back-in-town-christmas-in-sydney-e786/#comments Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:45:26 +1000 http://lucascosti.com/blog/2011/12/the-home-stretch-e785/
I really can't wait for it all to be finished (it's looking like we'll be moving in in January), the early starts and now the increasing temperatures are starting to take their toll. Although, the past week has been awesome in terms of temperatures, apparently we've had one of the coolest starts to summer in recorded history, and I of course was absolutely loving it. It seems today that things are going back to normal summer-ish temperatures though...

After getting my new phone around a month ago, I am really liking it. Typing with the SwiftKey keyboard app is a pure joy and has removed any of my typing-related apprehensions on moving to a touch-based keyboard.
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View the original blog post. You can view or add comments on this blog post at LucasCosti.com]]> Geekery Life Technology http://lucascosti.com/blog/2011/12/the-home-stretch-e785/#comments Sun, 11 Dec 2011 18:21:31 +1000 http://lucascosti.com/blog/2011/11/googles-new-look-of-doom-on-virgin-e784/
But I can live with bland and unlively colour changes; what is bugging me the most is basic usability impediments. Google used to be really good at this type of thing, making highly usable and accessible services. Just to use the new Reader look again as an example:



Other than the lack of colour (the favicons for my subscribed feeds are one of the only source of non-grey colours on the page), the new look has some serious trouble dealing with resized text.

I have a bit of difficulty reading the default text size on webpages on high-resolution screens; it's far too small to read comfortably for me. I thus increase the size of the text to around 145% on the pages, which is larger but not anywhere near ridiculous. What should happen with good web interface design (and what was the case with the previous 'looks' of Reader and most other Google products), is that the text should resize gracefully as much as possible.

In this case it sure hasn't happened for a lot of areas. The 'Subscribe' button background doesn't resize with the text, and most annoyingly, the line-height for various sections such as the subscription list seems to be hard-coded, resulting in cut-off lines (vertically). The line height for other areas seems to either be more flexible or have a greater tolerance before the text begins to get cut off.

This is the case with Reader at the moment, and last time I checked the Gmail new look a few months ago, similar things happened with labels and the email list to an extent. I really expected more from a company like Google who has prided itself on accessibility and openness with most things it's done. I'm really not looking forward being forcibly migrated onto the new Gmail look, hoepfully somebody will iron out these things in the future.

In other news, I have moved my mobile phone network provider from the Vodafone-based Crazy John's (which I have been on for the past two-and-a-half years) to the Optus-based Virgin Mobile. I know that the Optus network has it's own problems, but it isn't worse that Vodafone's, and I really need data coverage when we go up to Bribie Island.
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View the original blog post. You can view or add comments on this blog post at LucasCosti.com]]> Technology Rants Geekery http://lucascosti.com/blog/2011/11/googles-new-look-of-doom-on-virgin-e784/#comments Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:04:16 +1000