Around Azeroth with a Monkey

I knew as soon as I thought up the title I'd be doomed to level to 80 with my hunter's current pet and I'd have to write about it.

Go see.

Little Norse Prince

This is as good as the animation gets.

This is an anime that I watched a few months ago whilst at home for Christmas. It is, however, laughably awful in every single way.

As you might expect from the title, the story revolves around a little Norse prince who speaks Japanese, wears only a tunic (trousers and pants obviously hadn't been invented) and mostly uses an axe linked to a bit of rope in order to kill things.

One day, whilst out killing wolves (as any healthy norse prince who happens to be little does) the little norse guy happens upon a stone giant, who also speaks Japanese.
The giant has a thorn in his side that has been itching him for a while and he has no idea what it could be, so the norse bloke formally known as prince scales the giant and pulls it out. It turns out to be a legendary sword spoken of only in prophesy! Wow!

I'll stop there, mostly because the story doesn't get any better; the villain is extremely 2D and the shocking twist revolving around the love interest isn't very twisty. Or shocking.

Spoiler: She happens to be evil and under the mind control of the villain.

The animation quality is even worse than the writing, with numerous animation errors, badly drawn backdrops and characters who change appearance from scene to scene. Also, the voice acting is... Odd.

I can't really judge whether the actors are really doing well as I don't speak Japanese, however, in order to get a young childs' voice they've taken the actor who does the lead and sped his voice up. This results in some form of demon child who has the creepiest voice ever seen in a film ever.

Achievements

Matthew and I spent some time stretching our ability to come up with puns in order to design some engineer and spy achievements:


Wrenchence: Get a revenge kill using the wrench

Mowtown Mowdown: Kill an enemy engineer as he taunts

High Noon: Kill an enemy spy with your pistol when he has his revolver equipped

The Good The Bad and the Ugly: Kill a Medic, Spy and Pyro in one life

Rocket Science: With a level 3 sentry kill a rocket jumping soldier with some rockets of your own

A Fistful of Dollars: Get the First Blood buff in Arena

For a Few Dollars More: Kill somebody whilst under the First Blood buff in the arena.

Unlucky Punk: Kill a scout with your wrench

Aid Station: Construct a dispenser that then heals 1500 points of health

I Murdered Your Watch As Well: Kill a cloaked Spy

Pardners in Crime: Get 10 assist kills by repairing an engineers' sentry gun

Texas Hold 'em: Defend a capture point 50 times

Poker: Get a wrench kill on the Pyro

Sticky Situation: Kill a Demoman that has 4 pipe bombs around your building

Knife to Meet You: Get 150 backstabs

Knife to Meet You Two: Get 300 backstabs

Cloaked & Dagger: Stay cloaked for a full minute

The Spy Who Loved Me: Disguised as a Medic, backstab a Heavy

From Russian With Love: Disguised as a Heavy, backstab a Medic

Dr. McNinja'd: Backstab a medic who is ready to deploy his ubercharge

Connery Artist: Be healed by an enemy medic

No, I Expect You to Die: Kill an enemy who has reported you as a spy

Q: Backstab 3 enemies in a row

You Only Live Thrice: Dominate an opponent

Die Another Way: Be shot, burned, bludgeoned and exploded in a single round.

Moonraker: Capture point C on Gravelpit

Golden Gun: Kill an enemy with one revolver bullet

GoldenEye'd: Be killed whilst raising your watch

Felix Lighter: Backstab a Pyro whilst on fire.

A View To a Kill: Provide an enemy with a freeze-cam of you taunting over their body.

Drop

I glanced out the window of the rapidly descending transport, gazing out across the orange wastes that comprised the majority of the Southern continent of the planet Thega 3. Even from this altitude it was obvious that the harsh winds were taking a heavy toll on the invading UEE forces, as I watched another three transports were caught in a savage cross-wind and blown off course.
Pilots vainly attempted to wrestle the ancient, heavy machines back into a drop pattern. More still were simply perforated by the massive amounts of anti-air fire coming from the heavy flak batteries that the rebels had unearthed and wheeled into position.

I smiled grimly as a thought struck me; no matter how much fire that the rebels poured onto the incoming Earth fleet there would always be more of us to take the place of the lost. The legions were the arm of the Emperor and we were countless, ceaseless and without mercy. The rebels would fail; Thega 3 would be ours once again. It was only a matter of time.

Turning back to face the other side of the violently shaking transport I saw the rookie, this was his first drop and he was a mess. Sure he’d been in the sims at boot, we all had, but they never really prepared you for the real thing. The primary training program was based around ideal drop conditions; clear weather, air support and the drop zone having been bombed from high orbit by Fleet.

But Thega 3 wasn’t going according to plan.

The 3rd Fleet’s heavy cruiser, The Emperor’s Might had been destroyed through sabotage a few weeks earlier in the initial stages of the planetary siege, leaving only a few light barrack ships, the command and control ships and their fighter escorts as well as one Imperial Class frigate; The Vengeance. A fitting title considering what was happening now.

I finally managed to catch the quivering recruit’s attention and gave him what was supposed to be a reassuring nod of the head. Unfortunately my helmet obscured the gesture so I tapped the side of my head to tell him to turn his headset on. After fubling with the side of his helmet, the rookie finally managed to turn on his com line;

“Hey, Jenkins, you ok?” I asked, trying to hide my own nervousness,

The recruit gave a shaky nod, and replied; “Aye, sarge, I’m good to go!”. He gave me a shaky thumbs up just as the transport lurched violently, causing him to go yell and shut his eyes tightly.

Grinning to myself I turned my attention towards the other squad members; Fixer, Sawbones, Max… My gaze eventually lingered on Stammer. The old veteran was barely even phased by the landing and was busy checking his weapon over and over again; his OCD seemed to be getting the better of him this time.

I cursed as I realized that I’d have to spend half the mission looking after my own squad leader.

A Practical Matter

So. That was it. My final practical session at Lancaster university and it was spent analysing urine for diabetes and other complications. It reminds me of a similar practical that I did at Shelley High concerning the same subject, so it looks like I have come full circle.

I found it somewhat fitting.

I folded away my lab coat for what could be the last time (though hopefully not) this afternoon, but before packing it away completely I carefully unfolded it, hung it up and gave my faithful friend a final salute goodbye.

Geez. I need a haircut...

It has only just begun to sink in just how close I am to finishing my time here at Lancaster and a I have to admit, it's a saddening prospect as I've had probably the best three years of my life here.
I've studied a subject that I love, decided on my future, made a few awesome friends, caught myself a girlfriend and started to embrace my geeky side rather than spurn it.

Overall, I feel I've grown up a lot since I arrived here wet behind the ears and terrified about how I'd cope with living away from home. It seems silly now.

Hopefully I leave here better than I arrived.

We'll see.

Free Time

After having submitted the dual giant boulders resting on my shoulders that were my dissertation draft and locust work, I find myself for the first time in two to three weeks with enough free time to actually relax.

Today I nipped into Lancaster to visit Waterstones as I've not had chance to read a decent novel in almost two years. Sure, there has been the odd book (Guant's Ghosts and two culture novels) but ever since finishing Peter F. Hamilton's "Commonwealth Saga" I've not really had a series of books I can actually get my teeth into and lose myself in.

Hence this trip to the book shop.

Dave has been raving about a series of books called "The Malazan Book of the Fallen" for a while now and how good a series it is. Taking heed of his rabid zeal for the collection, I purchased (alongside The State of the Art, a collection of Culture short stories) the first in the series; Gardens of the Moon.

I started reading when I got back at about 5-ish and have only just glanced up from the book in order to check the time... 5 hours later.

I think I'm going to like this.