Not much has really happened in the past while outside of me consuming a lot of media and working on fine-tuning the diet and workout.

Rogers stock has surpassed $41 for the first time in over a year and I’m torn on whether to sell off some of my shares or not. Potato recommends selling some as all eggs in one basket is bad, that said, I don’t have anything else I’m dying to invest in and my gut is telling me that the shares will rise slowly for the foreseeable future especially with LTE roll-out as that opens up an entirely new batch of potential customers. Decisions decisions.

Has anybody else noticed that both Twitter and Reddit are going down due to overload a lot lately?

Diet
I will tell you, consuming 4000+ calories in an 8 hour window is rough; especially when you’re used to somewhere around 2000. As you saw in my previous posts, my diet has completely changed. I’m full all the time during that 8 hour feed, which is an odd feeling after being on such a low calorie diet for the past few years.

On the plus side, my body mass is also increasing dramatically as I haven’t missed a workout or a meal. I’m up over 10lbs since October 11th but I would imagine it will slow down. Lift weight has also been steadily increasing, so that’s nice.

Weights
Speaking of lifting, the big 5 (Squats, Bench Press, Dead-lifts, Overhead Press and Rows) are steadily rising in terms of weight lifted. My worst lift, by far, is the barbell row. I’m failing way early on it and I think my form is shot to hell. I’ve always suffered from weak lats and traps, but I think that I’m over-taxing them in a hope to make them grow faster. Over training is bad, kids. So I’m gonna cut out pull-ups entirely, and drop it down to just barbell rows and lat cable pull-downs on the same day.

Wasn’t that exciting?

On to the plethora of media I consumed this week…

StarCraft 2
Potato was on some super-secret evil-overlord conference in Turkey last week so we didn’t get to play much. The three games we did play, we destroyed Rez and Farlander (OH THAT’S RIGHT! I WENT THERE! BRING IT!), but haven’t played since. With all the new games that have come up (and are coming out) in the next two months, I’m not sure how much time we’ll have to play (plus, I really need to study…). The new patch made some changes… I guess… I don’t really read them. I just build what Tater tells me to and then hide.

Fable 3
Grabbed this yesterday. Loving it so far. Pretty sure it’s a “will buy” when the retail comes out (yes, I’m a pirate, but I support the games I play for more than 6-8 hours). Truth be told, it’s been a few months since I played Fable 2, but on first impression, the graphics are much better, especially the lighting. They’re not up to levels like Assassin’s Creed, but they are beautiful regardless.

The world is immersive and the landscapes are gorgeous. I’m only a little ways in so far, but already the game feels larger than Fable 2. And I do enjoy how it heralds back to Fable 2 (going so far as to reference my previous characters achievements and gender as the information is stored on the same drive).

Also, the humour is substantial and very amusing. Within an hour of playing the game I found myself running around in a chicken costume rounding up stray chickens. When I would find them, they would start clucking some song which I found very funny. Upon completion of this quest, I was also deemed a Hero Among Chickens, which honestly made me feel a lot better than it probably should have.

As for gender, I always play as a female character in games when the option presents itself. It’s not some latent tendencies or a chauvinistic personality, I just prefer to look at a woman when playing a game for hours on end; I think they look leagues better than the male counterparts in most games, especially in RPGs where getting cool outfits is part of the fun. In Fable 2 the female models for both player characters and NPCs were… large… to say the least. They didn’t look like women. That’s not the case in this one, but I will tell you, there’s some serious modeling issues with breast size… my first thought when loading into the world was “wow… those are… um… large.” With all the cardio my character gets (retrieving chickens and the such), I’m amazed that that cup size hasn’t been reduced…

Anyways, so far Fable 3 is excellent and I’m sure it will eat up some time.

Star Wars – The Force Unleashed 2

*sigh*

I really wanted to love this game. It was at the top of my “most anticipated” list for 2010.

Sadly, it was not to be.

The only reason that I don’t like it is the length.

The story is fine. The gameplay is more of the same from Force Unleashed (which I loved). But the damn thing was finished, by ME (a TERRIBLE gamer) in 4 hours. On normal.

That’s just wrong. That would be short even for an add-on to an existing game (hell, I think Half-Life Episodes are like 15-20 hours), but for a full game that they’re asking $60 for? Forget it. That’s inexcusable.
I’m a huge proponent of single-player games. I don’t enjoy playing online (outside of narrative co-op, which there simply are not enough of), so the single player story is all I look forward to.

Very dissapointing.

Actually, as I’m just going through this post to proof-read, I’ve been thinking about this… the more I think about the story structure of this, it REALLY seems like it was just the first chapter of something grander; especially considering the inclusion of everyone’s favorite jet-pack sportin’ bounty-hunter and the up-in-the-air ending. Really odd…

Oh ya… and that giant monster that you saw in the first trailer for this way back in 2009… totally redesigned and much crappier looking in the retail game.

Castlevania – Lords of Shadow
I was never deep into the Castlevania lore from the old platforming games… the sum total of my knowledge was the protagonist was Simon Belmont, he was fighting dracula, and he used a whip instead of a sword.

This new game, Lords of Shadow, is pretty, but to be honest, the story did not grab me enough to make me want to continue playing beyond an hour or so of gameplay (I was waiting for Fable 3 to download). I may return to it if I get really bored down the road, but I doubt it.

So far what I gathered from the story is cliche (that’s not to say bad, just… as expected); evil has entered the world, killed my wife, I’m going out for vengeance and to figure out where the evil is coming from. blah blah blah.

As I said, it’s pretty. The graphics are great, especially the lighting. I do not like the health pool mechanics. As I mentioned up above in my Star Wars rant, I’m not a great gamer; I play stuff on normal for the story. In the past 5-10 years, most games have a form of health regeneration where you get better over time while out of combat. CLOS has gone back to the old “find a health pot in the world” in order to heal yourself. I hate it. Mostly cuz I suck, but still, I hate that mechanic.

The quicktime events also bug the hell out of me as I just hate them in general and my reaction times aren’t that great… well that’s not true, my reaction times are great, but I always hit the wrong damn button. 😛

I put the game down when I encountered a giant ice… giant… on a frozen lake. I couldn’t figure out at first what I was supposed to do, then when I did figure it out, the mechanics were so unforgiving, that I was thrown from the arm (you hang on to bigs of the giant and destroy runes on his body) 5 times. “To hell with this” and I put in Fable 3.

So in short, pretty game, cliche story, stupid quicktime events and an asinine and unforgiving health pool.

Oh, ya… and where the hell is Dracula?!

Rock Band 3

Love it.

The song list is amazing. But I’m gonna wait to write more about it until I can get the midi controller and the Fender guitar when they release it in the new year.

The Social Network

I watched a few movies last week, the best of which was The Social Network, which I caught with Mike on Thursday evening. I loved it, as I knew I would.

Written by Aaron Sorkin (my favorite screenwriter, yes, that includes Joss Whedon) and directed by David Fincher, it tells the story of how Facebook got started.

The dialogue is tight (as expected from the writer of The West Wing), and the direction is excellent (it’s David Fincher…).

I really wish I’d been there for Facebook… dude was a billionaire before 30. Would be nice.

Wall Street – Money Never Sleeps

I really enjoyed the first Wall Street and the Gordon Gekko charater. This sequel did not let me down either. It was not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it was a good film with strong narrative and nods to the original that I greatly enjoyed. The integration of the 2009 meltdown was a strong plot point and I found the whole film fascinating.

Gremlins
It was just released on Bluray and as soon as I heard that, the theme song stuck in my head until I watched it.

Great movie.

They just don’t make them like that any more.

The Other Guys

Stupid movie, but it made me laugh quite a bit, and that’s all I was asking of it. Basic plot, Mark Whalberg and Will Farrel are the background cops you see in the buddy cop movies. When the two big-shot super-hero cops (played superbly by Dwayne Johnson and Sam Jackson) die (in the most hilarious death scene this year) there is a void that needs to be filled. These two step up and get into all manor of hijinks.

My favorite parts were weith Sam Jackson and Dwayne Johnson, but there’s some great material here… and the police captains (Michael Keaton) second job is hilarious.

A decent buddy-cop movie FAR superior to Cop Out.

That’s it for now, hope everyone is well.