As recent surveys have shown I haven’t blogged in over two month. That’s quite a long time even for my standards, and I have no one to blame for this lack of communications besides myself (believe me, I really tried to find a scapegoat).
True, my dear old laptop is still broken, but there’s my trustworthy Athlon 650 desktop that currently serves as my main computer. For all of you who wonder what I’ve been up to lately, here’s a short overview of what I spent my time on over the last few weeks.
Games:
Yes, I’m still pretty much addicted to Hattrick and the fact that I finally have good chances to promote to China’s top division makes the game still exciting for me, even after more than 2,5 years.
Unfortunately I’ve never been the kind of guy who’s to be satisfied by only one addiction, so I’ve started to play a really nice Massive Multiplayer Browser RPG called Pardus which is developed by Austrian students. Probably the best aspect about the game is the role-playing going on, which can best be seen at excellent fan sites as The Tiacken Tribune or the Pardus Chronicles (here are two of my stories – Okami’s the name of my character, Red Cell is the alliance I’m a part of – and soon there are more to come!). Go check it out now, Pardus is really cool!
Sports:
It’s summer and I’m doing lots of sports once again! Most importantly I’ve started to play water polo for the Wiener Sport-Club. It’s a really tough sport and during the first few training sessions my body definitely hated me more than once, but we’re making pretty good overall progress as a team and will have 3 weekly training sessions for the next month! :) Our first official friendly game should be played this fall, I will make sure to announce the date in due time.
Besides that I participated in a great Snooker course held by Michael Kreuziger, Austria’s only internationally certified Snooker coach. This surely improved my game a whole lot, although I still didn’t manage to get a break higher than 18 points… :(
I’ve also participated in two football tournaments: The first was held near Linz and was organized by the Linzer Stahlfront, whereas from July 6th to July 10th we played at the Mondiali Antirazzisti in Montecchio, which was a great experience. I plan on writing another entry solely for this event, but at my current update rate this may well take a while.
Reading:
If you haven’t done so, go and read Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, the first part of his “Baroque Cycle”. As the thrilogy amounts to a massive total of around 2700 pages, it might be advisable to check some other books by the same author first though. Over the last two years I’ve read nearly all of them and enjoyed every single page.
Another book that I find highly entertaining is Gerd Koenen’s Das rote Jahrzehnt, which offers an interesting perspective on Germany’s political left in the 1960s.
Next on my list is Tim Park’s A Season with Verona, a book that I’ve wanted to read for quite some time now.
Movies:
I’ve also seen some pretty good movies over the last few weeks and especially want to recommend The Woodsman, which features a great Kevin Bacon. I also really enjoyed The Machinist, where Christian Bale once again delivers an excellent performance. Football Factory was also pretty good and has a cool sound track, so if you’re too lazy to read the book by John King, try to at least see the movie. And as I just have finished watching it once again, I’d also like to recommend Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which I think is a really great movie about fear, love and obsession.
Music:
Not only did Breakcore help me to fill the void Drum and Bass left in the electronic dance music genre (it just got too boring after all those years), I also got hooked by Indian bhangra and desi music. And if that’s not enough, the great Against Me! are coming to Vienna next Wednesday, so I can once again see them in the EKH!
On a sidenote I advise you to check out New Model Army’s formidable album “Thunder and Consolation”, which despite its 16 years of age is still absolutely fantastic!
That was a pretty long and unorderly rant, and still there have been none of the promised lessons learned from Dawson’s Creek. The morale of the story is that there probably are none, besides living your life instead of only talking about it like certain characters in this show seem to do.