Hallowe'en 2012!

Happy Hallowe'en everyone! Hopefully you're enjoying it! I've not posted on here in absolutely ages so let me brush some e-cobwebs off the site and do a little blog post once again! I've been quite busy at university, now into my 3rd year of the Optometry degree I'm doing, so its getting more intense now. Getting close to the stage of having real patients in for eye tests...I've also been doing one day a week at work back with Boots Opticians back home. I've been playing the odd game, but not really focussing on any one thing... I've got Durarara that I need to get back into finishing, I got about 5 or 6 episodes in and got a tad sidetracked by other things like podcasts, reading the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson (its taken me ages to get through, but its a good series) and the odd bit of gaming.

Ill just quickly run through some of the games I have been playing, and some impressions before I get onto the main idea for the post. Last year I tried to play a couple games with creepy atmospheres or themes (it turns out I don't really have a good selection of horror games)

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy (3DS) - I picked this up cheaply and was really impressed with it. I put a fairly large amount of money into the DLC as well...I think I got about 15 or so songs, out of the 50 odd they have available...there is way too much there, at a £1 each. Anyway, the game is really fun, especially when you get to the Dark Notes and can do some multiplayer with friends (they are quite fun single player too actually) I was definitely happy with this game though, a fanboy's dream, even if you aren't the kind of fanatic SE fan who buys all the OSTs. I thought it would have more content, similar to the Dissidia games (forget about 100%ing them, seriously..)

Dark Souls (PS3) - turns out trying to get back into this after ages of not playing is pretty difficult...I wanted the DLC but want to get to the stage where I can actually try it out before I buy it. So I had the option to either continue on with my NG+ playthrough (I'm just finished Blighttown, but even getting out of there is difficult...) or carry on with my save files at the start of the game. One is right at the start just at the first  bonfire in Firelink Shrine and the other is at the Undead Parish. Its bloody difficult to progress without putting in a lot more time than I did though, so I didn't really get far...the DLC can wait unfortunately...I'd wanted to try it immediately =(

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (PSP) - Me and a couple friends in uni got back into playing this for the first few weeks of the semester, and picked up from where we left off at the end of High Rank. We worked some of our friends who were further back in the game up towards High Rank, and did quite a few Alatreon quests one of the days (we don't have the quest unlocked, but one of us not at uni does, so when he came up, we could do that quest) and got some of the endgame equipment. Really fun game, but I still think I prefer the content and brutal difficulty of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. I mean, my first time fighting Alatreon went really really smoothly. That kinda shit doesn't happen against Fatalis XD

This year we've decided to have a kind of October Hallowe'en horror movie marathon. Not exactly like a non-stop sort of marathon, but just a selection of good horror/thriller films over the course of today (30th) and tomorrow (31st) as I write this.

Tuesday 30th
Severance
Saw

We watched these ones, me and my girlfriend had seen both of them before but ages ago, and we thought these would be some pretty good starting points. Starting off with Severance, that one is a really weird movie, its got a kind of dark British humour to it, and its got its brutal parts in there. There are some pretty nasty scenes, like the bear trap bit XD you'll know what I mean if you've seen it. Its filmed quite well in places.. we picked up on stuff this time that I hadn't noticed at all first time round. Like the relevance of one of the characters eating cheese just before he went to sleep. Anyway, its a pretty good film if you liked stuff like Dog Soldiers and Shaun of the Dead (kinda british 'zom-com'/horror-comedy type films)
I really liked Saw the first time I saw it (urgh, how to reword that...) It has its good share of twists you just really don't see coming...It started a whole wave of similar uber violent films from what I remember, with stuff like Hostel and Untraceable taking a lot of ideas from the Saw films. I don't really want to get into the whole sequel thing with Saw but...I watched the first few and then fell behind a bit because it seemed like they could only do so much, they all start to blur together when I try to remember them. The first one really has some surprises though, check it out!

Wednesday 31st ~ Hallowe'en
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
Saw II-VI
Shaun of the Dead
Dog Soldiers
Se7en
Paranormal Activity
Beetlejuice

I would normally finish early on Wednesdays, but this week I'm in till 5 I think, so it'll be a small selection of those films above, thats what we're picking from. I've seen a good few of them, so we know some on there are good films =p

A couple more that we don't have immediately but might be able to get before tomorrow evening;
The Alien series
The Thing (although we watched this recently)

If theres time, I might pick up some of these games for a bit;
Limbo (Steam)
Binding of Isaac (Steam)
Plants vs Zombies (IOS)
Persona 3 FES (PS2)
Shadow Hearts (PS2)
Dark Souls (PS3)
They have some pretty interesting dark themes and game worlds, and should be good games to play on Halloween =D I'll post a bit more tomorrow when we've watched some movies and played some games. Totally boring, I know! =p Next year I will make an effort to make a costume and go out for Halloween!
However you're spending it, have fun!

Update-ahoy!

Its been a very hectic and busy couple weeks for me. I had recently sent off a lot of letters and made some enquiries about jobs, and got offered an optical assistant position at Boots Opticians in Edinburgh (where I stay) over the summer and was offered a start date of a day or two after the first call came through to me. So it was quite the jump from doing my own thing, relaxing and enjoying the summer from going straight into a full time job with 5 days a week. I started on Wednesday the 20th of June, and have been doing 3 days a week in one of the Flagship stores (Princes St, Edinburgh) and 2 days per week in a quieter store in an out of town retail park-type place called Fort Kinnaird in Edinburgh (or the Fort as its to referred to here...having stayed in Glasgow for too long, I was not aware of this fact...which in fact led to a lot of confusion on my part. I thought they had meant the Fort outside Glasgow when they first informed me about the job...)

So I'm still getting used to the routine now, after a busy week or two. At first, the pre-screening techniques seemed really intimidating and hard to control. The things we have to do are Tonometry (non-contact) for finding the pressures inside the eyes, rough Autorefractor measurements of the prescription, visual field screening on Henson 3000 or 6000 machines and Fundus photos when applicable. So things have been slightly different to what I've been used to at uni, but after doing a lot of shadowing and supervised training, I finally got the hang of things and got signed off by one of the optoms which means I can do pre-screening of patients on my own (unsupervised) now. They have to make sure the optical assistants know what they are doing, otherwise its their job on the line at the end of the day and they dont want inaccurate results or anything showing up.

On the admin side of things in the job, I've quickly had to get used to the filing systems, and the paperwork which needs done for each day's appointments. After a week and half or two weeks into the job, I was getting used to the computer system's programmes for booking appointments, putting orders through for patient's glasses or contact lenses etc, and the new upgrade went through, changing the look of the till's computer and the programs on the computers. So I had roughly a day to pick that up, and it was going quite well..,I was told that day (by the Fort branch manager) that the Princes St branch was closed due to flooding. Over the past week or so, the UK has had a ridiculous amount of rainfall, and a lot of it got into the basement and first floor of Boots in Princes St. That meant the branch was closed as the electric was knocked out, and something happened to the server connected to the Optician's computers. So after one day closed on Thursday 5th, we reopened on Friday to find there were no computers up and running. Apparantely its been quite a serious thing, and theyve had to get parts flown up from England, but everything wont be back to normal until sometime this week coming. D:
Very problematic when we are so dependent on the computers for so many aspects of the practice operation...There is a growing pile of stuff to be done when the computers come back on.

The rain has made a lot of other chaos as well. Bus routes have been diverted today, Bus tracker things looked like they had been damaged by the rain in places. And a lot of trains, houses and other businesses have been affected as well. I woke up this morning to a drip coming through the ceiling in my room, flooding in the garden and street, and a wall mounted light having somehow ripped its way out the wall. Perhaps this is down to the fact that my house is so damn old, I dunno.

Hopefully the rain goes away and things return to normal sometime soon...

/Long post of rambling-ness

3 Exams down, 1 more to go!

I'm writing this as one last bit of procrastination as I need to spend most of the day cramming as much Binocular Vision information into my head as I can. Its my final exam of 2nd year tomorrow morning...and I feel least prepared for this one... Then again, I was dreading the other ones and they seemed to go ok.

Recettear is difficult...I actually failed to pay the money back at the end of my first week...Valkyrie Profile Lenneth is kinda difficult as well, but I don't know what else I can do to prevent myself getting owned in battle. Anyway, I've not been playing much of them, just a little bit during the evenings. Perhaps a few hours more in, I'll get into the swing of them..

Hopefully it goes well. I'll get back to posting a bit more regularly after tomorrow as I'll be free for summer!

Work...and other stuff

My net has been much slower than usual for the past few days, so I havent been able to get on any sites or post here. It was taking ages to load up websites, but the connection was fine, according to the diagnosis I did and the unhelpful(read useless, timewasting) helpline.

It seems its back to normal now, which is good, but strange, as I didnt do anything to it to cause this, or fix it....

Anyway, i finished watching Gundam Wing and the OVA Endless Waltz finally. Seriously awesome stuff.

I've also been inspired by watching the series (and reading Sgt Frog lol) to start collecting gunpla (gundam model kits) and mecha action figures again. Got Revoltech 26: Eva 05 Wings Ver. Which I think is one of the best Revoltech figures if not the best.



Also got a few SD Gundam kits which are really good value for the price (less than £10 each on mech-a.com where I got em)







Work at uni is starting to pile up, I now have my essay for Palaeoclimates and 2 posters for my portfolio as well as the main thing this semester, my lab project. If I can get the minor stuff out the way asap I can concentrate on the lab project...stupid diatoms

(Diatom :o)