I finally got my rolls of Fuji Film 200 & Kodak Gold 200 developed, here are some of the photos from them. These have come out better than my first roll, unsurprisingly. I was intentionally shooting a notch lower than what the light meter said was ideal and it paid off. Some dodgy focus on some, possibly due to taking photos on sunny days when I have my sunglasses on. I tend to take them off to take the photo for the sake of getting the exposure right but the view finder is set to compensate for my glasses... But if I'm basing exposure by the light meter I'm probably better off leaving them on. Another lesson learned. All of the photos were shot with my 50mm prime lens.
I've also reactivated my Flickr to make it easier to share photos away from Instagram, you can go there for higher quality versions. I implore that you do for shots you like the look of, the embeds are very compressed.
Inchicore
These are all on Fuji Film 200. On a nice Saturday morning I had to leave a book back to the library so took the time to take photos while I was in the area. I love the bicycle shot, so satisfying for it to come out as I hoped it would when I took the photo weeks ago! I'll probably print that and frame it.
Misc Fuji Film 200 Favourites
I really like the Swan photo, nice contrast and depth of focus. There's a nice lightness to this film that looks great on a rainy day.
Kodak 200 Favourites
Love how the horse carriage shot could be from the 70s. The Acer against the blue sky is another that came out exactly how I wanted it to. So so satisfying when all I've learned about photography these past 20 years pays off.
At the start of May I was up with my family for my niece's confirmation, that was a fun day always nice to get to see may family and catch up. Also organised a nice day of pizzas in my garden with the weather being good, you have to make the most of it here. Hopefully that's not the last of the good weather.
I started running again in late March and after a few weeks of training got back to running 5K and beat my personal best time as well. I have a goal to get much more fit this year, after reading The Body by Bill Bryson it made me want to look after my body better. I'm also keeping up on weight training and it really does make you feel much better than sitting at a desk all day does. I forget that many years ago when I used to work in Woodies I was on my feet all day, lifting things and generally being active. These days I sit at a desk far too much so I really need to make the effort to be active.
I've been working more on a game, it's at that stage where lots of things are starting to take shape and come together after months trying things that went nowhere. I'll hopefully have something more interesting to share soon. It's a stealth game inspired by the early Thief games mainly. To help with this I am taking notes of ideas I have but also when playing games taking notes of what I like in those games that might work in mine as well. As you can see I even stuck with a game I wasn't really enjoying much just to see if there were at least ideas that would be interesting.
I've been shooting more photos on films, I have a couple of rolls that I need to drop off for development. I'm still enjoying shooting on film!
Formula 1 is finally back after being off during April. Miami was ok but Montreal was a really good race. Can't wait to see more of Russell & Antonelli battling it out later in the season and having Hamilton on form against Verstappen is always fun to watch. Hoping there are more races this good even if a Mercedes driver winning seems like a forgone conclusion already.
Dennis got in a fight(again!) and had a nasty infected bite on his cheek. He was kept home for 2 weeks and needed a cone for most of those 2 weeks. He got very grumpy by the end of the month but is back in good form now.
I got my garden in order, weeded it and topped up the bark. Then I had my friends over for a garden pizza aprty while we had some nice weather. There's still more to do on the garden, I have a goal to get it done by the end of summer.
I bought a Kodak Charmera and it's been kinda fun. I was just taking a lot of photos and videos as I went then wanted to created a montage of them. So I got some video editing software for that right? No! I looked up Python libraries for editing video clips and have started on a small script I can point to a folder, view and select clips/photos and then put them all together. It only took about an hour to have a simple version working, there are a few things I'd like to improve with it in the coming days.
Maybe photos from events are meant to be sort of shit? Gives them more character.
Finally I have been thinking about Hivemind again. I have lots of ides in my head for Version 3 both for new games and a big change on the technical side that I think will help it run more smoothly and give the audience a better experience. I'm excited to explore some of those ides in June.
THat was a busier month than I thought! Roll on June.
One about queues ruining NYC. As someone who scoffs at the idea of queueing for Bambino(just go to the always empty one on Baggot St!) this resonated with me. Stop the Madness
Films
Obsession
The best time I’ve had at the cinema in a while. Excellent characters and a fun premise that they get so much out of. I was laughing and then seconds later filled with dread never knowing what way things were going to go. Inde Navarrette is absolutely fantastic in this.
Titanic
Absolutely stunning. I don't think I've watched this since my mother brought me to see it in the cinema when it was released and it's definitely something I can appreciate more today than when I was 10. I had a strong emotional reaction to the second half. The desperation to survive, the panic to escape, the guilt from the Captain and designer of the ship for failing these people, the remorse of the crew enforcing rules that no longer matter and are only killing people. The other members of the quartet returning to play was the moment that broke me. "Gentlemen, it's been a privilege playing with you tonight" 😭
TV
Hacks
The final season, I'm sad to see this go but glad they're wrapping things up before any sort of decline. A good final season.
Paradise
I got through both seasons of this in a couple of weeks, really compelling stuff. It does mystery very well with reveals feeling satisfying. It reminds me of how I felt watching LOST when it came out.
Games
No One Lives Forever
You can read all about this here.
Thief: The Dark Parade
A fan made set of 10 new missions for Thief with a full story and voice acting and everything. This is really good, great quality art and levels although they can be a bit labyrinthian. I'm on the 7th mission but as it's such a dark game the days are too long for it to be easy to play. I just can't get my office dark enough during the day.
Told you it was dark.
Diablo IV
Reading Play Nice gave me a hankering for a Blizzard game and Diablo is a series that I find it very easy to jump into and kill time. Diablo 3 was my zone out game when I was in a funk, I think I racked up 150 hours in it.
007 First Light
I think I'm nearing the end of this, it's fun if a little inconsistent. None of the specific systems are great but they're not bad either. They all do the job. The story has been enjoyable if a tad generic but the characters are all well realised and enjoyable to spend time with. It's a good Bond game though, it's hitting all the notes and there's been some great moments where everything comes together. I hope we get more Bond form IO Interactive.
Mina The Hollower
I'm only at the start of this, it's good! I am playing with some of the modifiers which I think help sand of the edges for me. Things like not losing XP/Money on death which I always just find irritating and pointless in games that allow you to just go farm these things endlessly. I'm loving the art style and the amount of exploration there is.
Music
Maya Hawke - MAITREYA CORSO
This has been on a lot for the past month. As easy to listen to as Chaos Angel but with more depth to most of the songs and just more going on. Terms of Estrangement is probably my favourite song on the album and the way Maitreya and the Way Back changes half way in is my favourite moment on the album.
CMAT in St. Ann's Park
What a show. My fourth time seeing CMAT and everytime it's a bigger show than the last time. She and her band are incredible performers who you can tell are having a great time on stage. It's infectious and these are the most fun gigs there are.
Books
Venomous Lumpsucker - Ned Beauman
I really enjoyed this, a sci-fi adventure set in a near future following two people trying to save a species of fish for different reasons. An easy read with a light and funny tone.
Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment - Jason Schreier
An interesting history of the founding and life of Blizzard Entertainment. Goes into a lot of detail on the important people throughout the life of the company and the big events that steered it to where it is now. For anyone interested in learning more about the games industry. Other books I'd recommend are: Master of Doom, Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto & Blood, Sweat, and Pixels.
Theatre
The Bureau De Change Song Contest
This is always a fun night, a bunch of Irish comedians getting together to put on a spoof Eurovsion song contest. Don't miss it next year!
When the weather gets warm like it has been lately I always find it difficult to know what to eat so I've been trying out some new lighter meals and these tacos were very tasty so here's the recipe.
Delicious tacos!
Mushroom filling
2 portobello mushrooms
1/2 yellow pepper
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp onion salt
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
Olive oil
Slice the mushrooms and pepper fairly thinly then mix with the seasonings & olive oil in a bowl. Bake for about 15 minutes at 200c.
Pineapple Salsa
1 pineapple slice
half a green chilli
1 scallion
Slice them all thinly them mix together. Add or remove the chilli based on your preference. You could probably add some red onion too but I forgot to at the time.
Assembly
Get 2 tacos(flour or corn whatever you like) and add half of the filling to each, top with some of the salsa and add a bit of mango habanero hot sauce to it. Optionally crush some tortilla chips on top for a bit of crunch. 2 tacos is a nice light lunch for one person.
No One Lives Forever or NOLF is a stealth shooter hybrid from 2000 made by Monolith. It's a retro 60s spy setup that's clearly taking leads from Austin Powers. I remember playing the demo of this at the time and it not running well and me not liking it much either. A poor review in PCZone which was gospel for me back then meant I never bothered playing it although I did play and love the sequel along with many other of Monolith's games. With that in mind I thought why not give it a second chance to see if I missed out on a classic as seems to be the opinion of many people these days. Spoiler alert, I still do not like this game.
Mirrors! Always amazing at the time.
First impressions weren't good, the game is heavy on story but it's not a good or well told story with boring dialogue and voice acting that ranges form passable to awful. This was somewhat common at the time but in comparison to Max Payne which would be released about 6 months later this game is so far off in terms of storytelling. Once you get to the gameplay the opening mission has you wandering aimlessly until you get to where you need to be and are given your first combat encounter which is nothing but a shooting gallery followed by back tracking through where you've just come from.
The meeting briefings are dull and long.
Once you complete the first mission you'll be back at HQ for another boring briefing, a trip to the lab to get a new gadget and then off to the next mission. This is the pattern the game falls into and it gets irritating quickly. The briefings can go on for so long, I timed once and it clocked in at 6 minutes. 6 minutes of the camera swapping between the faces of characters standing in place delivering their lines with no music or action to spice things up. Incredibly tedious. The missions themselves have some great variety and set pieces but are often big mazes for you to wander around until you find the objectives, they reminded me a lot of Perfect Dark which I replayed a few years ago. You get a objection of "Disable the power" and that's it. Just wander around until you find the place where you can disable the power with there often being little to guide you towards that objective.
You get a lot of gadgets that are barely used.
The game has a bunch of interesting gadgets that you barely get the chance to use. You'll get a few for getting past padlocks with different lock types needing a different gadget but these are always on the critical path and amount to holding a button to get past them so they don't feel very special. There was one gadget I got a tutorial on that I literally used once and gadgets like the spray for removing dead bodies are rarely useful due to the way the gameplay unfolds. There was one gadget I had to complete a tutorial for that I then used once and while you can replay missions with gadgets you wouldn't have had first time through the rewards just aren't really worth it. Gadgets like the one for disabling the camera are introduced quite late in the game too and again feel mandatory for certain missions and not something that would make you want to replay earlier missions. I thought the gadget for auto-cracking keypads was the most interesting and it's the most used. You put one on a keypad then have to wait for it to crack the code but there's never any tension to this you end up just stood beside it waiting. I imagined a patrolling guard where you have to find a gap to put it on and then hide until it's complete but nope, just more time wasting. It is again an essential gadget to the extent that later levels are littered with spares in case you've forgotten to retrieve it.
Being stealthy is incredibly frustrating.
The stealth aspect of this game is completely pointless and the few missions where it's mandatory are insufferable. The big problem is that enemies will just randomly detect you for seemingly no reason or a camera will see you through a wall leading to an instant fail. You could argue this is a case of when it was released but games like Thief and Deus Ex were already out and doing stealth much better. In the missions where stealth is optional it can be fun to paly along with the charade until it inevitable falls apart and you resort to a shoot out, the combat isn't much more fun than the stealth but it's definitely less annoying. Enemies are prone to run along th exact same path for you to easily pick them off one by one and you'll probably die more to the odd bad platforming section.
The vehicles were ahead on their time for the worse.
I've been quite negative but there are things to like about this game. The art style is quite nice most of the time and as I said the levels have some great set pieces. Escaping a sinking ship, jumping out of an airplane and sky diving to safety are 2 stand outs. There are loads of great ideas too that games would later go on to do well and I can imagine it being a real inspiration at the time. Even now it was for me and there are a few things the game tries that I would like to implement in a game I'm working on. There are vehicle sections too! In an FPS from 2000! Good ideas though can't make up for a game that was just rarely fun to play. Perhaps if I was a fan of it at the time the rose tinted glasses would help but I wasn't and it's not something I'd recommend playing today.
A few weeks ago I got a whim to try out film photography. I didn't want to waste mooney on some old camera for the sake of it so after a bit of research I settled on an EOS-1 which can be found for about €100 and would work with a lot of the lenses I have already. It was a great camera for its time, taking inflation into account it would cost about €2500 so a total bargain. Even though I've been shooting photos for about 20 years the way people speak about film photography had me worried I'd fuck it up and I was just hoping some of the photos would come out well. I got a few rolls of Kodak Gold 200 as that seemed to be a good beginner film and it went really well!
Some of the photos are a bit overexposed but I think the light meter might be a bit off given how old the camera is, something that I can easily compensate for. This did lead me down a rabbit hole of looking into scanning negatives at home which was an enlightening experience. I was surprised how much variance there was from the way you "scan" them to what you use to process them on a computer. To scan negatives in the most basic way all you need is a bright light source and a camera, they'll come out pretty poor but technically you'll have them. I used my SAD lamp and a macro lens and shot them freehand, not even close to an ideal way but still fun to see how they come out. Below is the same photo scanned & processed three different ways. The first is from the photolab and the next two were done at home without any proper equipment.
So film photography ended up not being that tricky. Once you remember the basics of Aperture & Shutter Speed and keep your light meter in check it's just like taking photos digitally. I really like how well the camera presents information to the user as well, it's really simple and intuitive. What I enjoyed most though was how it makes you slow down when taking photos, you have 36 shots and you have no idea how it looks after you shoot so it makes you take your time to compose the shot and check that your settings are what you want. I have another roll of Kodak Gold 200 ready to be developed and I'm shooting a roll of Fuji Film 200. I'll share more photos when they're processed. Here's a few more from the first roll.
