23:21:12 UTC - Thursday, December 31, 2009 in
Film,
Games,
Misc,
Music,
Social Games
Best Multiplayer: Call of Duty 4/Battlefield 1943
Best Story: Fable 2
Best game song: Daft Punk Vs Gary Numan – Technologic Vs Cars (DJ Hero)
Best demo: Battlefield 1943
Best Innovation: Tie – Proper DLC (Gay Tony)/Retail-quality original XBLA (1943, Shadow Complex)
Best game you probably never played: Shadow Complex
Average game I never completed: Mass Effect (we’ll be seeing you again…)
Film
Best film: District 9
Worst film: Observe & Report
Best film you haven’t seen: Trouble the Water
Best film you might have seen as I mentioned it: Death Race
Worst film I paid money to sit through: – (not much free time this year, with the masters)
Most hyped film, that turned out to be pretty decent: District 9
Music
Best album: Tie - The Who – Who’s Next/Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon/Seán Ó Riada – Ó Riada Sa Gaiety
Best new song: David Guetta – If We Ever/DJ Shadow – Organ Donor (Extended Overhaul)
Best old song: Tie - Pink Floyd – Any Colour You Like/Seán Ó Riada – Iníon An Phailitínigh/The Rolling Stones – Gimme Shelter
TV
Best new series: Tie - Modern Family/The Good Wife
Best old series: Lie to Me
Worst new series: Tie - Trauma/V
Best series continuation: Dexter s04
Worst series continuation: Heroes s04 (I’ve stopped watching it)
Best final: Dexter s04
Misc:
Best moment: Jan 20 (whole day really)/Mar 20 (hellz yeah)/Oct 16 (phew!)
Best night out: Jan 16/Jan 20
Best book I never finished: Robert Fisk – The Great War for Civilisation (two years, I’m now halfway through it)
Best mindset change: Keep going, it’s only three months (June-September)
Worst occurrence: Pretty much all of May
Biggest disappoint of 2009: D (holy shit, r u srs?)
December 31st, 2009 in
Film,
Games,
Misc,
Music,
Social
00:01:39 UTC - Friday, October 23, 2009 in
Misc,
Social It’d been in our minds to go to Perfecto (which is technically the Palm’s nightclub Rain, but Perfecto is to Rain as Mór Disco is to Icon) since the idea of Las Vegas was first floated. As suggested by the name, Paul Oakenfold is the resident DJ, so it was top of our nightclubs to visit.
After the eventful night on Friday, Saturday was shaping up to be much better – Dagna had set us up on the guest list, and we were to get in for free. We showed up nice and early (just before 11), so we should’ve been sorted.
Course, the problems started almost immediately – I wasn’t on the VIP guest list. And I wasn’t on the normal guest list. Turned out the bouncer had decided “Fin” (which was on the guest list) and “Finlay” (which I had told him when he asked my name) were different (despite the surname being the same, obviously). Then, once past that, it turned out we had to pay in ($30, so about €20, not much more than you’d pay into a club in town at the weekend), then finally we were in the club.
The first thing we noticed (obviously) was the music. It was fucking awesome. Like, easily the best music I’ve ever heard in a club. Proper dance music, remixed on the fly by the DJ (Jack Lefleur I think – he opened, but was the best), it was savage. Nobody seemed to be going MENTAL on the dancefloor though, but me and Ayo soon changed that.
The first guy finished, the second DJ came out.
Then it started getting weird.
Eh? Wtf’s a triangle thing doing in the middle of the dance floor?
Eh? Why’re ye getting on it?
Oh of course, because you always get acrobats in a nightclub.
But that’s not all:
Mr Rope Ninja
This lot were bungee jumping off the frame (it was suspended from the ceiling)
Oh yeah, then IT WENT ON FIRE.
So we got music unreal, mad acrobatic show (not one of them had any safety harness or equipment), and FIRE for €20. Better than €15 Saturday night in my local club?
Hell. Yes.
October 23rd, 2009 in
Misc,
Social
00:17:25 UTC - Monday, October 19, 2009 in
Social It took a while for me to get over jetlag after landing in Las Vegas (Tuesday evening), I was too tired to go out until Friday, though the lads managed it on Thursday.
Anyway, what an eventful night was had on the Friday.
We headed out at normalish time to be reaching a club at home (midnight or so), totally sober, but looking pretty savage (my fancy shoes go with jeans, and look awesome), wandering down the Strip. Avoiding the mexicans trying to sell us hookers, randomers trying to give us club “passes” and people trying to sell us drugs (I got offered coke and weed at one stage, though I was on my own), we headed to Tao at the Venitian, at Dagna’s insistence (though she was too sick to come out).
It’s important to note here that Las Vegas (maybe it’s all of the US? I only went to pubs in New York and DC during The Epic Pub Crawl of January 2009 – I’ve been informed it most likely only occurs in big cities) nightclubs revolve around the concept of general admission and tables. General admission is your standard entry, the way all clubs in Ireland work. If you want to sit down in the club (as far as I’m aware, there are no normal seats), you pay for a table ($100+ for the table itself, entry to the club included), which you have for the whole night – you get a free (big, €40+) bottle of spirits and your own waitress. The table’s aren’t like the stupid “VIP” tables you get in Irish clubs though, and are more like standard tables you’d find at the walls, but you have to pay for them. It’s not a terrible idea, $150 between four, with free drink, isn’t a bad deal. There also seems to be a concept of a “guest list” on top of GA, which you can just sign up for on the club’s website, and gets you to the top of the queue. Weird, but not terrible.
The fun started when we were figuring out how to get into Tao.
“You guys on the guest list?”
“Urr…no”
“K, head this way” (roped off queue areas, one for GA, one for guest list)
Kinda stood there for a few minutes, watched six girls get in just ahead of us in the queue. Ayo did most of the talking.
“Good evening gentlemen, how many’s in your party?”
“Four of us”
“Four gentlemen?”
“Yup”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have general admission for four gentlemen tonight”
Warning bells started going off in my head at this point, but seeing as most bouncers in Las Vegas seemed to be total dicks not as easy going as those you get in Ireland, I let it slide.
“No problem, how much is a table?”
“One second sir and I’ll find out”
So we were thinking about $160 between four would be fine, any higher would be pushing it.
“I can get you a table for $400 in the main area, or $700 in the lounge”
This seemed rather steep to me (and by “rather steep”, I mean “the most fucking mental thing I’d ever heard in my life”), but Ayo’s got a habit of not being as careful as he should be with money, so I wasn’t sure what he was thinking. He turned round.
“Hey Fin, will we go find an ATM?”
“Go find an ATM?!? How ’bout you go fuc-”
“Hey Fin, let’s look like we’re going to find an ATM?”
“EXCELLENT”
He wasn’t going to pay the $400 either, but wanted to save face.
The number was absolutely ridiculous, but it was worth not being let into the club to get the story, and for the humour it provided throughout the night.
And so it was on to Christian Audigiers at Treasure Island.
“Blah blah blah blah, $30 general admission, $200 table”
Hmm, $200 table? After some conferring, we got Ayo to get the bouncer to knock it down to $150, and we had a deal. We wandered in, got a nice table outside (temperature was fine no matter the time of day), two waitresses, lads spent an age choosing a drink, which eventually turned out to be a fuck-off bottle of gin. Just as the waitress was opening it (she had broken the seal), she said
“That’ll be $225 altogether”
Woah woah woah. We were quoted $150 at the door, that’s a 50% markup. Manager time!
In fairness, the manager was really nice about it, explained about tax and “gratuities” (as a side note, either put a service charge on the bill or leave it to me to tip, don’t give me a fucking service charge, then expect a tip), said it seemed a bit excessive, but then looked at the bill, kinda laughed, and said
“Yeah, $224″
He let us leave without paying anything though (despite them unsealing the bottle of gin), so it wasn’t so bad.
Despite trying to encourage the lads to go to XS at Encore, we decided we’d had enough of being turned away, and just headed back to the hotel.
But Saturday night, we went to Perfecto.
October 19th, 2009 in
Social
00:56:20 UTC - Tuesday, March 3, 2009 in
Misc,
Social Looking through various logs today, I noticed an anomaly: BT Broadband.
Normally I wouldn’t think anything of it, but 10.4.11 (with your black MacBook?)? Cat 4/7/10/15? On the second [Mar 2 07-09] anniversary?
Is that You? Surely not a coincidence?
Gimme a shout if it is, please!
(Title is an ultra-geeky reference to the Ico soundtrack)
March 3rd, 2009 in
Misc,
Social
21:35:13 UTC - Wednesday, December 31, 2008 in
Film,
Games,
Misc,
Music,
Social,
Technology Games
Best Multiplayer: Call of Duty 4
Best Story: GTA IV
Best story-maker: GTA IV
Best Graphics: Tie – Grid/GTA IV
Best game song: Hello – New York Groove (GTA ending song)
Best demo: Mirror’s Edge
Best Innovation: Tie – Awesome XBLA games/Capcom remaking retro games
Best game I 100%’d: Tie – GTA IV/Call of Duty 4/N+
Best game you probably never played: Braid
Biggest surprise: MS E3 08 Briefing (FFXIII on 360)
Average game I never completed: Mass Effect
Worst game I never completed: Alone in the Dark
Film
Best film: Tie – The Dark Knight/Wall-E
Worst film everyone said was brilliant: Juno
Worst film: Tie – Disaster Movie/Over Her Dead Body
Best film you haven’t seen: American Teen
Best film you might have heard of it cos I mentioned it: Kisses
Worst film I paid money to sit through: Mamma Mia (oh jesus)
Most hyped film, that out to be UNREAL: The Dark Knight
Buying Power
Best purchase: MacBook Pro
Best impulse buy: Test Drive Unlimited & Alone in the Dark (~€50 combined), Fable II (€40), Fallout 3 (€37), Gears 2 (€45), Burnout Paradise (€40)
Worst impulse buy: Lumines Live!
Tech (not necessarily released in 08)
Biggest improvement: Windows 7
Best new technology: Tie – Multitouch trackpads/LED Backlighting (seriously, it’s like a whole new world)
Best technology I started using: Tie – HD downloads/Device syncing
Best app: Tie – Ecto/Multiclutch/Plainclip
Books
Best book I managed to finish: Cormac McCarthy – The Road (there weren’t many others)
Best book I didn’t manage to finish: Robert Fisk – The Great War for Civilisation (that’ll be here each year)
Music (not necessarily released in 08)
Best album: Tie – Daft Punk – Alive 2007/Duffy – Rockferry/Sigur Rós – Hvarf/Heim
Best new song: Tie – basically anything from Alive 2007, especially Around The World/Harder Better Faster Stronger / Sigur Rós – Starálfur
Best old song: The Who – Baba O’ Riley (from Who’s Next)
Best song to go mental to in the Lodge: Pakito – Living on Video
TV
Best new series: The Mentalist
Best old series: Tie – The Wire/Damages
Worst new series: Tie – Do Not Disturb/Fringe
Best series continuation: Dexter s03
Most improved series continuation: Private Practice s02
Worst series continuation: Prison Break s04
Best finale: Tie – Dexter s03/Lost s04
Social
Best moment: Jun 23 (First)/Jul 4 (MSc)
Worst moment: Moving out of college/Jan 26-27/2am Jan 1 (v queezy)
Best nights out: Saturdays in Mollys
Best time for events: Night/Night/Day/Day
Best timespan: 00:00 – 06:00 Nov 5
Best revelation: Tie – Jan 18/Dec 13
Best friends: Them people know who they are 
Best mindset change: Tie – Not always others/Work first, play second
Perfect night out: May 19
Best new idea: The world is definitely flat (simultaneous game releases, near simultaneous TV airings, getting news from around the world about an hour after it happens, watching trailers for films no matter where you live, downloading TV no matter where you live)
Worst occurrence: Losing friends (through their fault, not mine)
Inanimate objects I repeatedly proclaimed my love for at some point: Grid, The Wire s01
Biggest disappoint of 2008: D (omgz, srsly?)
