Botchandango.com

Pepsi White

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Originally uploaded by Botchandango.

A Pepsi and Yogurt sparkling drink... I approached this with a little trepidation. However it was pretty good, kind of like a cola flavored cream soda.

Journey to the east

 

Finally. A really busy week over and done with and I can fly out to Japan tonight to catch up with Maki and the boys for the end of their holiday. For the last four years we have flown with Korean Air every time we go to Japan as we can arrive at a more local airport to our final destination than Kansai or Narita. One of these day's I'll have to have an extended stop-over at Seoul to do some sight seeing but typically its just an hour wait for the connecting flight so just enough time to pick up some Kimchi to go with tomorrow's dinner. The flight itself is long but the service with Korean Air is pretty good and the main in-flight meal of Bibimbap fantastic. As a special treat this time I have booked into the Servisair lounge at Terminal 3 for the flight out. Just need to make sure I can drink more than £18 worth of the free booze while I'm there to make it worthwhile. Now that sounds like an easy challenge :)

Should've kept up the lessons...

! Introducing the Gretsch Pro Jet (without bigsby) in black played through a Marshall practice amp (also black) and me in a rather fetching bathrobe (not black) doing an incredible injustice to the opening bars of This Charming Man by The Smiths.

Warhammer pt II

The second month of my subscription to Warhammer Onlines expires tomorrow and I don't plan to renew. It's not that it's such a bad game, in fact it's pretty good and has just the right level of accessibility for a casual player. The biggest reason why I can't bring myself to renew is that this Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game is lacking one crucial ingredient.... players. It wasn't the most over populated game to begin with but the recent WoW expansion kind of killed things from what I could see. Previously it could be a 20 minute wait or so to get into a Scenario. Post WOTLK I haven't been able to get into a single Scenario and that is with joining all queues as soon as I log in and staying in the queue for the duration of the time I play. Something tells me this is not because there are too many people playing the scenarios (as happened with battlegrounds a lot back when I played WoW).

Wandering around the large, and attractive game environments it feels empty even in the main areas of each zone. There are some fun things to do and see and although the quests are a bit 'grindy' I don't mind that at all. For a few weeks it had been possible to hook up with some other players in Public Quests and for it to almost feel like a MMORPG but no longer. Another thing impacted by the low population is the in game economy. Granted, the drop rate of decent equipment is suprisingly high and reward items quite useful but while early on the Auction House seemed to make sense recently, it is almost impossible to sell anything and prices are either ridiculously hopeful (high) or barely worthwile (low, a bit higher than you'd get just selling the item to a vendor). Crafting isn't great in the game from what I have seen but could be easily changed. Increasing the populations of their servers to more viable numbers to make the game work as more than just an average single player game is going to be a whole lot tougher.

I'll keep the disk handy and probably leave the game installed for now but wont go back until I hear better things about it in the forums if at all. I actually fancy giving SPORE another go it was good fun and had just started getting challenging when WAR came along...

Warhammer...

So far... great game! especially the public quest system and the cultivation skill *is* the new fishing as far as I am concerned.

Now.. the pressing question is this. What are the pro's and con's of the following two swords?... I can't decide.

Recruiters Spatha

7.2 DPS, 2.8 Speed, +5 Weapon Skill

Worked Rapier

7.0 DPS, 1.9 Speed, +2 Wounds, +2 Weapon Skill

Friendly neighbourhood Chi-chan

Friendly neighbourhood Chi-chan
Originally uploaded by Botchandango.

Thanks for the costume Rowan!

l33t L3g0 5k1lz

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Originally uploaded by Botchandango.

Thanks to Mum for sending this to me in the post... my old 'Lego Club' membership badge. Now my powers are fully restored!

Lego - Attack Helicopter

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Originally uploaded by Botchandango.

Nose mounted electric gatling gun, side mounted anti-tank missiles and dual cannons.

Lego - Mini Mecha

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Originally uploaded by Botchandango.

Can we play Lego Daddy?.... Oh go on then (you've twisted my arm).

I was rather proud of this bipedal AT-ST inspired walker that I created. The dual cannon arrangement on the top could be devastating at medium to long range. I think an obvious upgrade to this would be some shorter ranged rapid fire guns mounted near the front. Great! he's gone to bed so now I can use *ALL* the peices I want to...

Inflation

Out of interest I was just checking out the line up for Reading '08 then noticed the ticket prices... £155 for a weekend ticket??? The last time I went a weekend ticket was £60!! less than the price of a single day this year... think I'll stay at home, watch on TV, go to the bathroom whenever I feel like it and.. well... shower.