Fleshed Out

Quick update: I decided to give Unreal Tournament 3 another go, and a bit of vehicle CTF was actually pretty fun. However, I could not help but compare it to Battlefield 2, for instance, which is largely similar (except for the objective) and much more satisfying. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what I miss in UT 3, but I think it has to do with the fact that it is so damn similar to its previous incarnations.

I did manage to get my hands on a GeForce 8800 GT card, though. It was mostly by accident, really. They had one left in a local shop, so I thought I would get it and see whether it is as revolutionary (in the price/performance department) as previously claimed. Indeed it was! I could run UT 2003 and Gears of War in 2560x1600 resolution with most settings cranked up to max and still get a smooth frame rate. This card is the bee's knees, so to speak, at least for bees on a budget constraint.

This year, my Christmas (or midwinter, for those so inclined) gifts will be pretty much limited to giving a wad of money to Medecins sans frontieres and telling people that the expected socks are instead vaccine in Darfur. So should yours.

During the last week or so, I have been watching the tv-series Dexter, which has previously been recommended to me on numerous occasions, but I am a busy one, so it took some time before I caught up.

Actually, Dexter is awesome. It is probably one of the best longer tv-series (as in more than fifteen episodes or so) I have ever seen. Sure, there are some fantastic shorter ones, but those are usually more like "a movie which we chopped up into several episodes because nobody would want to see it all in one sitting". Dexter, however, works beautifully as a series and it actually gets better over time, with the second season improving quite a lot over the weaker last half of the first one.

Sure, a tv-series about a serial killer is more or less bound to have a number of implausible events due to the fact that people will expect someone to die in every episode. And indeed they do, they drop like flies. However, all that is entirely secondary to the character development. Dexter's personal life is the main focus of the series, and his emotions feel much more plausible than the cardboard characters usually portrayed on tv. This is one of the weak points though - Dexter's development stands in stark contrast with the other characters in the series who, in comparison, get neither the time or the script to become deeper and more interesting. Dexter is not only the main character, but also the narrator of the series, so it makes perfect sense. I just wish they would have either fleshed out (ahaha, that is my funny bone talking) at least a few other characters a bit more or concentrated even more on Dexter (as in not writing as many scenes or side-stories where he is not present).

Speaking of funny bones, I just realized it has been a while since I read Bone. I should do it again, and so should you.