Dragon Age: Alistair

November 29, 2009 – 12:39 am

BioWare’s writing has always been brilliant and Dragon Age is no exception. In addition the voice cast is the most divers and almost best out of all their games. It would have been the best if Raphael Sbarge [Carth Onasi, Kaiden Alenko] had a part, but I digress..

Apart from the well written main quest and the conversations and the general tone, there are conversations between different party members along the way. KotOR did this and Mass Effect tried to make the long elevator rides more bearable.

Alistair early on seemed interesting and quickly became my favourite character, although he’s fairly useless in battle next to my warrior. The best party conversations so far have all involved him, however, and I wouldn’t want to miss out on them, even though I still don’t fully like his actual voice.

Talking to the witch:

Alistair: “Why do you always go on about how stupid I am? I’m not stupid, am I?”
Morrigan: “If you need to ask the question…”
Alistair: “Because it hurts my manly feelings you know. All one of them.”
Morrigan: “Then I’ll be sure to write you an apology once all of this is over.”
Alistair: “I was educated by the Chantry. I studied history. They don’t make stupid templars.”
Morrigan: “Then I must have been mistaken. I’m very impressed.”
Alistair: “No you’re not. You’re not even listening to me.”
Morrigan: “My, you are smarter than you look after all. Your Chantry must have been very proud!”

—

Morrigan: So you met this sibling of yours?
Alistair: Half-sister, but yes.
Morrigan: And she turned out to be an insufferable hag?
Alistair: You’d have liked her. You two have a lot in common.
Morrigan: And you let her berate you? Without punishment?
Alistair: It’s moments like this when I truly appreciate the difference between you and me.
Morrigan: (Scoffs) ‘Tis moments like this when I truly wonder at the difference between you and a toadstool.

—

Morrigan: You… do not truly think I look as my mother does, do you?
Alistair: Have you really been thinking about that all this time?
Morrigan: I am simply curious.
Alistair: And not insecure in the slightest, I’m sure.
Morrigan: I think I look nothing like her.
Alistair: I don’t know. Give it a few hundred years and it’ll be a spot-on match.
Morrigan: I said that I look nothing like her!
Alistair: All right. Got it. Totally different. I see that now.

—

Chatting to the dwarf. Think Gimli, just drunk:

Alistair: What? You’re… you’re drunk, aren’t you?
Oghren: Eh? Was that a question? It didn’t sound like a question.
Alistair: How in the Maker’s name do you manage to be constantly drunk? Are we even carrying that much alcohol with us?
Oghren: Jealous, huh? (Laughs)
Alistair: A little, yes. Why can’t I be drunk all the time? I never get to be drunk.
Oghren: You know, if you drank more wine, you would whine much less.

—

Talking to Zevran, the guy with an Antonio Banderas’ accent:

Zevran: So are you a very religious man, Alistair? I am curious. I believe I heard you say you were raised in an abbey?
Alistair: I was raised in a castle. I was schooled in the abbey. As far as being religious… I don’t know. Not especially. What about you? Not in your line of work, I expect.
Zeveran: Why do you say that? I happen to be quite devoted, in my way, as most Antivans are.
Alistair: Truly? But you kill people. For money.
Zeveran: And I ask forgiveness for my sins from the Maker every chance I get. What manner of monster do you think I am?
Alistair: But… you ask forgiveness and then you go right on with your sinning?
Zeveran: The Maker has never objected. Why should you?
Alistair: I… have no idea.
Zeveran: Well there you go. Perhaps you ought to think about asking for a little forgiveness yourself, hm?

—

And after ‘experiencing the thrill of romance with Alistair’:

Oghren: So. With the boss, aye?
Alistair: Pardon?
Oghren: You and the boss. Rolling your oats.
Alistair: I don’t know–
Oghren: Polishing the footstones.
Alistair: –what you’re–
Oghren: Tapping the midnight still, if you will.
Alistair: what are you going on about?
Oghren: Forging the moaning statue. Bucking the forbidden horse. Donning the velvet hat.
Alistair: Are you just making these up right now?
Oghren: Nope. Been saving ‘em.

—

Zevran: Might I offer you a bit of advice, my good friend Alistair?
Alistair: I like my hair the way it is, thank you.
Zevran: Truly? As you wish… though my advice is regarding something else completely. It has to do with your recent… exertions with your fellow Grey Warden that I overheard.
Alistair: My…? Oh.
Zevran: It did seem as if you just got going when all grew quiet. You are… feeling all right, yes? Perhaps you are tired?
Alistair: We aren’t talking about this, are we? Did I hit my head?
Zevran: I have some roots from home that you may chew if you need energy. As for volume, perhaps you ought to try arching your–
Alistair: Whoa! Whoa! Awkward!
Zevran: You Fereldans are so finicky. How will you ever learn how to pleasure each other unless you talk about it?
Alistair: not listening! La la la la la!

—

And then there’s this..

Alistair: Do you really know what’s going on here? The Blight, the civil war… I really wonder how much of it you understand.
Dog: (He wags tail happily.)
Alistair: We’re all special… big parts to play. Even you. Especially you, in some ways. You are the mabari. You guard one of the most important people–
Dog: (Excited Bark)
Alistair: What?
Dog: (Excited barking!)
Alistair: You… you want to play? But I’m talking. Why doesn’t anyone want to hear me talk?

By Cat | Posted in BioWare, Community and Games, Dragon Age, KotOR, Mass Effect | Comments (5)

To boldly go where no one else is [yet]?

November 28, 2009 – 4:03 am

I’ve been blogging on and off since 2003 when I moved to the UK for good. That blog didn’t survive very long and I’ve deleted its content in 2004 when I realised I wasn’t all that comfortable with it any more. Having had a very bad experience with a colleague who proceeded to almost stalking me I wasn’t comfortable with sharing many personal details on the internet and although that blog wasn’t revealing in a negative way it was obvious some of the posts were written rather naively.

Somewhere in late 2003 I moved away from the previous online pseudonym which now only has 4,500 Google results compared to carocat’s 28,900. carocat isn’t the only handle I use these days, but it is how I define myself on the internet; it is who I am unlike the others which are created for specific purposes intended not to be linked with me altogether.

Moving on to 2006 and I again embraced web 2.0 or what’s now called ’social media’. By God do I hate that term! I started this blog late in 2006 and originally it was also a personal blog, although there are several posts that are now private or that have been hidden from view as I’m again not all that comfortable with them any more and the overall focus has shifted a little bit to a less personal ‘What I’ve done today’ blog. There were other accounts; Flickr, Picasa, del.icio.us and so on.

Twitter and its clones came along in 2007. First there was Pownce, then Jaiku, then identi.ca and Ping and whatever else they were all called. The only one I stuck with was Twitter.

I started a tumblr blog in 2008.

Up until 2008 no one I knew in real life was aware I had any of those. Sure, I met many people through blogging and many people through forums that I ended up meeting at events, but there was always that distance in the sense that if I met them it was only ever for a very short time and a large majority was just internet friendships [for want of a better term]. Of course in some ways those can be more beneficial than others. I’ve mentioned this great post before, but it deserves another link.

Having never used my very unusual full name on the internet – a Google search won’t link me to any of this which is something I’ve been very careful about from the beginning, especially after reading Engtech’s guides to digital anonymity – there was never really a chance of someone stumbling on here accidentally. I didn’t follow all of the recommendations though. carocat is, or at least used to be, pretty much just me on the internet. Recent searches have revealed several other people using it, but they’re not very active and it’s not on Google’s first results page and far outside my interests to be confused with me. Apart from that pesky Korean kid that stole carocat on Xbox Live!

And then it all blurred bit by bit in late 2008. First I’d mention on Twitter where I was going to in detail and tweeting where I was, then I’d start giving details of events or trips. Started taking more pictures and posting them making it possible for someone to stalk me online which thankfully never happened. I sent and received christmas cards from some fellow bloggers, won a contest here and there and mentioned long hours at work or delayed public transport although never actually mentioning the part of town I lived at or where I worked. Fear of work discovering my Twitter account even made me protect it for a few months when all I mentioned was long hours and wanting to find the person that coined the term ‘crunchtime’. I’m still looking for you!

People I knew in real life started mentioning they read my blog after linking them to a post months before and specifically discussed more recent posts. Real life friends or former colleagues started following me on Twitter and some people I met were using Twitter and we mutually added each other. Some even only joined Twitter, because I mentioned it and once I’d moved back to the UK early summer this year I met a large number of local people through Twitter and continue to do so at Tweetup’s and outside of them. Photos are being taken, tagged with my name unless I remove those which I’ve done at some times and there are videos I’m on. My Twitter account has had a picture of me for a long time now.

Nowadays a lot more of my life is public mostly on Twitter which means anyone following me there can click through to my blog and most likely read this post as I’ll be posting a link to it there. And that’s not a bad thing. I’m not any different online than I am in real life.

—

But then there’s the doubt. I have to be more careful about what I allow other people to share of me. Videos, photos or even, once foursquare becomes more common, a more detailed account of where I’m at.

My name will remain off this blog/Twitter, but what if someone tweets it which happened the other day? Though thankfully they removed it within minutes once I asked them to and as far as I’m aware no one else I know follows them.

—

And now coming back to what was meant to be the original point to this post. What happens to me? I have lost all my online outlets where I could write to gather my thoughts without friends being able to read it as it might have been about them with their names obviously omitted or about things in my life I didn’t necessarily want everyone of them to know about. Do I want people I meet infrequently to know that I’ve had a few rough days because of x, y or z? Clearly not.

The first eye opener was a year ago when someone mentioned in an argument what I had written about an incident involving them, although it will never be obvious to anyone else that it was that person. Or with another person reacting negatively to a purely passive-aggressive Tweet which was even hashtagged as such. Or venting about a housemate to find out they’ve been reading it.

Yes, I owned up to those and apologised, I probably shouldn’t have made those in the first place and I can imagine being irritated if someone was to do this to me, but at the same time, what else am I meant to do? I’ve been using the internet to vent and gather my thoughts for years and what would be the alternative? Call someone up? That is gossiping or even worse plain old bitching and much less constructive than a tweet could ever be.

So what’s the solution? There’s always the option of having a new, anonymous place, but that’s not the solution. Or to not share online which leads to this.

Time to ponder..

By Cat | Posted in Blog, Life in general, Personal, Tumblr, Twitter | Comments (8)

Mini Harry Potter films review

November 15, 2009 – 7:43 am

Started talking about this on MSN and seeing that Harry Potter films seem to come up in conversation far too often, I might as well copy it to here and link to it in the future. Saves the lazy me having to type it again.

  • First one is good for being a happy/cheery kids movie. Magical really, especially with the introduction of the awesome John Williams score.
  • Second one was ok, it’s always been my least favourite book, but the character of Myrtle was captured well enough for me to not dislike the film completely.
  • Third one was too arty. Far too obvious it’s a different director and set and some of the parts, like Lupins changing into the werewolf after they leave the Shrieking Shack and Sirius attacking him felt cheap. Could have been the lighting. I did like how they did the time travel and the evolution of Hermione’s character though.
  • The fourth one concentrated far too much on the bloody Triwizard tournament and wasn’t faithful enough to the books. That dragon egg sequence seemed to last forever and it wasn’t clear on how the world’s opinion of Harry changed. Plus Dobby is even more annoying than the books!
  • Fifth one, Umbridge, was good and my fave one. Showed change and how no one believed Harry and it replicated the overal powerlessness I felt when reading the book. And it introduced Luna which is such a brilliant actress.
  • Last one changed far too much to the book and shows how some actor may have been miscast. Like Ginny Weasely who has zero chemistry with Harry or Ron/Hermione who also don’t really have much going for each other. Plus I disliked how they changed the end with Snape killing Dumbledore which was entirely different in the book.
By Cat | Posted in Films and TV, Harry Potter, John Williams | Comments (3)

Links I’ve been meaning to blog about for too long

November 14, 2009 – 11:52 pm

The title says it all and some of these have been open in Firefox tabs for months!

Can you predict review scores? - I can’t believe anyone thought this was worthy of a company! Maybe I should start a company like that and make money!

Stop Telling Me What To Do – Lengthy [and I mean very long] yet wellwritten column about games and that they should stop displaying tutorials. I’ve been getting annoyed with Fable II continuously reminding me to press A to perform an action. I’ve been playing it for over 30 hours!

EatLiver – Avoiding all the wrong pictures, the site has about 50% funny content. Spent a good hour one day going through the archives.

Star Wars Name Generator – Does what it says on the tin, great place when in need for a random fictional name or two. Like NaNoWriMo which I shall not mention further!

Liberty City Map – Perfect for hunting those pesky rats!

You Can’t Go Home Again? – 1.01 and 1.02 “The Pilot” - Brilliant Lost post with many, many images on the foreshadowing of the pilot Lost episode to mythology and twists later on. Includes so many details I’ve missed even on repeat viewings, like placing of scars which could be significant or the frequent occurence of black and white.

Connecting the Dots – 1.16, 1.17, 1.18 and 1.19 “Outlaws”, “…In Translation”, “Numbers”, “Deus Ex Machina” – Another great Lost post on the connections between events that weren’t obvious during the first viewing, such as Locke’s fall from the building during a Hurley centric episode. Highlights many of the ‘coincidences’.

Halo Legends – The Babysitter Today Only – Starting to get annoyed by things only being available for limited time..

Star Wars KotOR Quiz – User generated KotOR quiz that I scored FAR too high in! 39/40! Although technically it would have been full marks, but one of the questions is wrong. And yes, I know what the ‘Unknown Planet’ is called; what planet the main playable character originates from; and what the sharks on Manaan are called!

FSR Halo 2 Song Rap – A not quite SFW and quite bizarre song written about Halo 2 including video. Catchy though and I remember first listening to it back when I started playing it in 2005!

Orthographic diacritics and multilingual computing – A great article on how the Latin alphabet isn’t enough, how it’s been extended in some languages with letters like the German umlaut and what can be done in the future.

I’m Belle de Jour – I watched the TV show because of Billie Piper and read the book because of the show. It’s interesting how she’s decided to finally reveal her true identity after all these years, although I do wonder if she’s not just a decoy.

‘You’ve been very, very naughty’ – Lately I’ve gotten quite into watching Supernanny and this article linked via the program’s Wikipedia page definitely leaves a bitter taste.

Dear Every Site That Paginates Articles – Something particularly bad on gaming articles.

Xbox gamer ‘gutted’ after cut off – Tough cookie.. Muppet.


Hairfinder.com – Want that hairstyle!

[FWIW, this post would have been posted several hours ago would it not be annoying to assign categories on wordpress.com..]

By Cat | Posted in BioWare, Community and Games, Films and TV, GTA, Game Politics, German, Halo games, KotOR, Language, Lost, NaNoWriMo, TV Shows | Comments (1)

#NaNoWriMo – Day 2 to 4

November 5, 2009 – 4:35 am

Unsurprisingly NaNoWriMo isn’t going as well as I’d hoped, although at the same time I’ve already accomplished more than my past two attempts. I’m currently on 3644 words and should be on 6667 by now [yes, today is the fifth day, but seeing that it's 3am in the morning, I'm not counting it!].

I started off slow with 300 words, but then wrote in the night to the second day until reaching 3061 words and I was fairly pleased with not only the progress, but also the way the story was unfolding. I even shared the story with some people which makes it the first bit of creative writing I’ve shared since school! Feedback was generally positive, although I’m sure some people were just being nice, but instead of taking that on board and carrying on I felt that I’d written myself into a dead-end and didn’t carry on until earlier today, day 4.

Sometime this afternoon I realised that it was due to my inability to write dialogue that sounds natural and is flowing. My written dialogue tends to sound very wooden and nowhere near actual spoken dialogue. Trying to force myself to carry on with dialogue hasn’t helped and I’ve now changed my story to not describe events as much at the time they’re happening, but rather look back at them at the end of the day. Not sure if that is really working out all that well as I’ve only written 600 words since then!

Also thinking about making my character mute or deaf to avoid most conversations!

Back to it..

By Cat | Posted in NaNoWriMo | Comments (1)

#NaNoWriMo 2009 – Day 1

November 1, 2009 – 3:48 am

Another year of NaNoWriMo and I’m determined to complete my novel this year!

So far I’ve written 300 words in the past twenty minutes and am now stopping for tonight to gather my thoughts. I’m not sure where I want this novel to go or even it’s most basic plot outline, but I’ve started with a general description of some places. The following is an excerpt of one of the central planets featured. At least I think it will be a central planet!

Asteria was both a shining example and a dark mark on the galactic parliament. It was never an important planet with merely fifty million inhabitants on the small sphere, most of whom were honest and kind. Its gravitational pull was stronger than the galactic average and reliant on the seasons of which it had twenty-two, all with their own celebrations. Landing ships was only possible during eight of them and it even affected ships passing the planet on their routes in neighbouring systems. The citizens of Asteria were used to the conditions, they treasured the ritual change of seasons and enjoyed not having visitors all year round despite being located near the centre of the galaxy.

Obviously first draft and incomplete.

By Cat | Posted in NaNoWriMo | Comments (6)

London suggestions

October 30, 2009 – 4:21 pm

I have to go to London next Wednesday, Nov 4th and seeing I don’t go to London often and have to be there early in the morning for a passport appointment that shouldn’t last longer than a couple of hours at most, I’m looking at spending the whole day there.

I am thinking about seeing Mousetrap which I’ve been wanting to see for over ten years and never got round to, but apart from that I haven’t got any plans.

I posed the question on Twitter earlier and had many suggestions already which is yet another reason why Twitter works for me [insert all those social media guru buzzwords here].

So far I’ve got:

  • wysiwygjt: London Walks!  I <3 London! I’ve done 2, Jack the Ripper and Unseen London, both were great. 4 Knitting
  • ChiverstheCat: See the Montezuma exhibish at the British Museum & treat yourself to lunch in the restaurant there!
  • NevilleFenn: Have lunch at the S & M Cafe – best food ever! As Agent Cooper would say, ‘good food, reasonably priced’ – 50’s cafe style too. :-)

Any other suggestions are more than welcome!

By Cat | Posted in Life in general, Twitter | Leave a Comment

Breast Cancer Awareness Month – #2 – The dressing gown edition

October 2, 2009 – 11:54 pm

I went shopping today and can’t remember the last time my feet have hurt this much.

Read More »

By Cat | Posted in Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Photos, Pink for October | Comments (2)

Breast Cancer Awareness Month – #1 – The candle edition

October 2, 2009 – 12:01 am

Truth be told I nearly forgot it’s this time of year again. I will be attempting to post a picture containing anything pink each day.

#1 – The candle edition:

Read More »

By Cat | Posted in Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Photos, Pink for October | Comments (2)

Some spam mail

September 26, 2009 – 2:10 am

In the past months I’ve noticed Gmail’s spam folder containing several real emails so I’ve made it a habit to check it every other day. At the moment I get about ~200 spam mails a day across twelve different accounts and some are just hilarious. Curiously there is quite a lot of them that don’t contain any links or phone numbers and only have maybe one or two sentences in them.

Here’s a list of some of the better ones, unedited:

  • Dld you know all lt takes ls a phone and the wllllngness to share some lnformatlon wlth others to see around 1500 to 3500 weekly sometlmes even dally. Call the lnfo llne for more detalls.
  • You have frequent convulsions? Time to stop it!
  • We are glad to have seen again.
  • Purify, Clense, Look Better, Feel Better.
  • Feel power and strength of your ancestors when you drilling your woman.
  • We teach you the art of becoming.
  • Best oil for pork motor.
  • Aging steals male strength! V. booster returns it!
  • If something’s out of tune in the Music of your Love, our Male Pilules will return harmony!
  • Lets’ make it again, darling?
  • Even the most shy girls will moan and groan under your meat press!
  • “My husband and I tried the program and our energy level increased immediately! After 3 weeks now I have noticed even more changes. My bowel movements have improved and I feel so hydrated and healthy.” Cindy – Nashville, TN

I sure am glad for Cindy from Nashville!

I’ve also received some longer ones which are posted over on my tumblr and are well worth a read:

They all seem so legit!

Not to forget about Vishenka, Veronika and Princess from Russia!

And then there was this winning entry:

By Cat | Posted in Random Stuff, Spam | Comments (1)