Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Michael Spiller's LiveJournal:

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Friday, May 29th, 2009
12:38 pm	Pristina After last nights update we let the rain die down & braved the remnants of it to find an eatarie. After a pleasant pasta & a few beers we retired for the evening. This morning we had breakfast, a varied continental style breakfast notable for some portions of rose jam. The weather had turned almost British with rain being the predominant feature of the day. We sought out a couple of museums, first the Ethnographic museum which showed how Kosovans lived over recent centuries with traditional dress on display. It was noticeable how there were several different traditional dresses from different regions of the country. The other was the main Kosovo museum which had a relatively small number of exhibits but tastefully displayed & a big sign campaigning for several thousand artifacts which are currently in Belgrade to be returned to Kosovo. The exhibit with pride of place was a 6000 year old figurine the likeness of which can be seen in many places around the city, including on official Taxi signs. On the floor below there was an exhibition of photographic work by a group of deaf students which was of a very high standard. Next we went for some lunch. We asked for a hot-dog, the result was in my opinion better than a standard hot-dog with several "dogs" sliced up in a chunky sandwich with salad & sauce. Unfortunately Jason has an aversion to mayonnaise (& it's sibling salad cream) & could not face eating his. As it had only been a Euro we went to another eaterie where we specified no mayonnaise. The hot dog came back with what looked like mayonnaise on it. Jason was set to pay & leave with it uneaten but after some persuasion he complained & got a replacement, this time with cheese & tomoato sauce which he wolfed down (as is his wont). It was still damp out & we had run out of attractions to seek out so we went back 2 our hotel & it's wi-fi to kill a couple of hours before heading for the airport.... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
4:40 pm	Pristina After last night's update, the long-forecast rain finally arrived & in style. It was thunder & lightning but we were unconcerned as we were recovering in our room when it reached us. We went to the bar downstairs & enjoyed a Skopsko beer as the worst hit. after a while it eased off & we were hungry so we headed out. Skopje was deserted, we found a few bars & had a good pizza then we wandered around & found we were almost forced to watch the champions league final. After which we were tired & headed back. Getting up in the morning to head out for Pristina in Kosovo. We got a taxi to the bus station which was swift & efficient & we bought a ticket then went to wait for the bus which arrived on time. We started talking to an American woman who had been working around the Balkans since January, I did not enquire as to the nature of her work but she was quite interesting. The bus wound through Skopje picking up various people before heading off. It climbed some spectacular scenery before getting to the border crossing. Then we dropped off in a town that I did not catch the name off. As we were heading out of that town the bus (which had been struggling for gears on several occasions) seemed to run into trouble & started limping very slowly. We pulled in & the driver opened the engine hatch & was not looking happy. After a surprisingly short time we were told to get on another bus which pulled up behind us. I'm pretty sure it was another bus company (at least 3 run the route) so i was pleasantly surprised. The rest of the journey was uneventful. Arriving in Pristina we booked into the grandest of our hotels of the trip: the Hotel Grand. We promptly set off around the city. We saw several mosques, a statue to unity (surrounded by barbed wire). The Marter's cemetary with a good view down onto the city. A large Orthodox church which had been abandoned, part-finished. Another statue to mother Theresa, & another statue to Skanderbeg. 2 meter tall letters spelling out NEWBORN & a large billboard commemorating Bill Clinton on the boulevard named after him (which I could only compare with George W Bush Street in Tirana). We retired to our hotel ahead of what appeared to be an oncoming storm & hence I'm updating the blog :-) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
2:49 pm	Skopje Breakfast was a bit unusaul, it included a cake. Elton & girlfriend turned up so I grabbed a picture of them which I had failed to do the previous day. First we headed for the city museum, 2 guides both said that it was the smaller, less interesting rival to the museum of Macedonia across town but it has a clock which stopped when Skopje was hit by a major quake in '63 & one of the very earliest anthropomorphic figurines. It appeared to have improved a bit from the reports int guidebooks wit at least some of the items double-labelled in English (Macedonian being a language which uses Cyrillic characters. You can guess some words, if you can first trans-literate them into the latin alphabet (fortunately Jason can trans-literate slowly so we are not completley lost). Then we headed into the center of town & found the memorial house/church to Mother Theresa. She was an ethnic Albanian native of Skopje so both Skopje & Tirana feel that she was a local girl done good. This was the most beautiful modern church I can remember seeing. quite small & delightful. Further into town we found some sculptures, & the central stone bridge. The original stone appears to have been covered over in the strengthening works carried out after the '63 quake. This took us into the Turkish Bazaar area & this was still largely original with pedestrianised twisty streets. This was worthy of a city with so much history. We went across from the Bazaar & came across a clock tower we asked if we could climb it & were given a guided tour by the Imam :-) it was quite a climb with a rickety handrail & low beams to clout your head on. When we got to the top we stepped onto the balcony & found a magnificent view. However the railing was no higher than knee height & the balcony was less than a foot wide. It was something of an adrenaline rush. I held on to some struts that protruded over our heads for reassurance. When we got down we needed to calm our nerves. After a brisk walk & a glass of sprite we had relaxed & sought out a 15th century Caravanasari. where we had a very pleasant lunch. Next was the museum of Macedonia the highlights of which included a couple of icons of Archangel Michael, a phallic-spouted jug & some intricately carved figures. The downside was that large sections were not labeled in English. So I think they were describing the ottoman period & how it ended. But I'm really not sure. Then we climbed up to the old fortress Kale. Which was interesting in its own right as well as providing a great view of the city. Next we were going to go round one of the many mosques but it was closed for renovation. We descended back into the city & saw the new post office. A strange round building executed in 70's concrete & brown glass. Then we saw a massive monument to the liberation of Skopje from the facists. This was a proper overblown communist style monument. After all that we went back 2 the hotel for a rest. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
7:44 am	Macedonia Day 1 Woke up @ the ungodly hour of 8:00 (unreasonable 4 a holiday at least!) quickly showered, re-packed & had breakfast knowing that our taxi driver for the day was arriving @ 9:00. We had just about had breakfast, checked the weather & checked out when Elton (4 that is his name) turned up. Elton's car was smaller than I had imagined & he turned up with girlfriend in-tow but his English was flawless & we set off in good spirits. We had a break in Embasan where we had a drink in an old fortress & set off again. We passed through the Macedonian border with little incident & got to Ohrid on the shores of the lake of the same name. Once upon a time desperate Albanians would swim lake Ohrid 2 escape Albania but those days are gone. Indeed several indicators of poverty such as run-down shacks for housing would indicate that Macedonia currently is @ the wrong end of the economic argument. The town of Ohrid is almost picture-box perfect, very much a tourist destination with delightful views & an unspoilt old-town. We only had 2 hours there & pushed ourselves too hard to squeeze a couple more sights in ending up almost bathed in sweat. Then we set off for Skopje. The Skopje leg exposed some minor shortcomings in Elton, we took a scenic route which was not what he had originally planned & it took longer than he had planned & he became unsure of where he was going. We were not particularly concerned with no deadline to check in tonight but he was quite disappointed in himself. It added an hour to the journey arriving @ 20:00 instead of 19:00. We arrived in Skopje & again this was a bit out of Elton's bailiwick. We got into town & got to the bus station. Which was inevitably indicated on our city center maps by an arrow saying 400m this way off the edge. Elton chatted with a local who said he would show us where to go & led us right across the center of town to get us to our hotel. Once we got back to the center, knowing we were coming in from the side saying “station this way” meant that I could figure out where I was, so the time I spent navigating through Scandiwegia was not lost on me but I needn't have bothered as the local guided Elton all the way. We booked in, Elton & girlfriend also booked in & we chatted in the bar b4 leaving Elton & heading off into town to round off the day with trying a few local cafes & bars. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 25th, 2009
10:12 pm	Albania EDITED sober :-) Landed in Albania yesterday & was assaulted by warm mugginess. We changed some money in the airport (no UK option having Abanian Leks available) & collected our bags. We were met even before we passed customs control. We had arranged with our hotel to be picked up from the airport, missing the worst of the taxi scrum. We got to our hotel dropped our luggage off & went off exploring. It was dark by now & we found various cafes & had several beers. We woke this morning, showered had breakfast, which was available until a very leisurely 10:30 & set off to explore the city. The National museum was closed on Mondays which was unfortunate as this seemed from other write-ups to be the most interesting museum. We climbed the clock-tower, explored the city market & found the Tanner's bridge. Next on our itinerary was the pyramid. Built in the 60's & 70's as a mausoleum to Enver Hoxa it is a huge edifice in marble & glass. it's shine however is somewhat muted recently as the current owners are no-longer hosting art shows & concerts (as it has previously been used) but now realising their assets by stripping the marble cladding & selling it. Next we eyeballed Hoxa's former residence then found Mother Theresa'a square. From there wee headed off into the park, at which point I was struck down by a severe attack of hay-fever. Having left my antihistamines at home I struggled on for some while. We headed east until we were stopped by the guards around the president's palace. & then foiled again by a barrier declaring it was the start of a military zone. We then headed in a different direction & found some impressive monuments to national heroes, not far removed from which was commonwealth war graves & a monument to the Germans that fell in Albania during WWII. We had lunch in the park despite my continuing allergic reaction to the pollen. We left the park & attempted to find a pharmacy. We found one but it was having a siesta for the next 2 hours or so. Then we flagged down a taxi & headed off for a couple of attractions off the SE edge of our map. When the taxi got there we found we could not get in either. The taxi took us back into town but was obviously feeling guilty for the non-event & tried to show us some other tourist attractions. After some false starts he sought out a friend who spoke good English. Where we established that we had seen most stuff already. We wandered off & found a bizarre petrol station whose architecture has to be seen to be believed (picture to follow) & another pharmacy which this time was very helpful. We then had a break in our hotel. After which we headed off to see sunset from the tallest skyscraper in Tirana. a few beers later we went to find some food. After some searching as it was getting late we found a chicken panini. Then we headed off for a bar where we met a random Austrian lady who had last visited Albania in 1988 & was having a great time. :-) (Comment on this)
Friday, April 24th, 2009
6:59 pm	Jaunty Jackalope I upgraded my main PC to Jaunty Jackalope (see below) last night after getting in from the pub. Perhaps not the ideal time to do it but earlier in the evening between getting home & going to the pub I had had a couple of semi unexpected visitors pop round. So I had not had time to install earlier. I closed all my other applications, ran the installer & left it to it. After waiting a few minutes I retired for the night & checked again in the morning when there was a confirmation box for deleting the old packages & a reboot. I get the impression that there has been some work on the bootup time. I'm afraid I never timed Intrepid Ibex on the current configuration but it seems a bit quicker on what was already a pretty quick boot time. I timed bootup this afternoon from the end of the BIOS screen & with me typing in my login & password & clicking on 5 applications (Pidgin, Firefox, Thunderbird, Banshee & Akregator) it took almost exactly 2 minutes to get booted up & all 5 applications loaded & running which seems pretty slick to me. For those mystified as to what Jaunty Jackalope could be (& as I have directed those confused by my facebook status here there may be one or two). A breif explanation is in order. My computer does not run Windows as it's operating system, instead it runs a version of Linux called Ubuntu. Ubuntu released a new version of it's software on schedule yesterday & the versions have quite esoteric names, previous names have included: Dapper Drake, Easty Erts, Gutsy Gibbon, Hoary Hedghog & Intrepid Ibex. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 8th, 2009
10:47 pm	I don't think today fits into a Facebook Status micro-blog Sorry LJ I have been very remiss not posting here recently (i.e. 6 months). Yes I must confess that I have largely used FB to chronicle my comings & goings. I thought I had recorded my recent broken bone here but obviously I have not. Anyway, today. Firstly I went to the local computer market & was saddened to see how far it has fallen. Gone are the days of a choice of 5 or more vendors offering all the components to construct your own PC. Today there were a few printing supplies vendors, a few selling blank CDs/DVDs & sleeves etc. One selling a range of what appeared to be bankrupt stock of motherboards, the obligatory seller of random stuff downloaded onto CDs one with a huge range of memory cards, USB sticks & some PC memory & one (1!) selling a range of mostly second hand laptops with some HDDs cables & several of the bits for a PC. Presumably it is a mixture of the credit crunch & people getting components delivered from the Internet. Next was fixing a friend's PC. I had surveyed it last weekend, when I initially spoke to her in the pub I thought it was the graphics card & when I looked at it it was showing classic signs, it refused to deliver a signal to a monitor. The old PC which had been brought out of hibernation to provide Internet access in the main PCs absence was using the monitor & cable so they could be eliminated. So I swapped the graphics card for an AGP card I had lying around & it stubbornly refused to talk to the monitor. I later tried the AGP card in the PC I had intended it for in the first place & it worked. So the main suspect was now the motherboard but I had a nagging suspicion that it could be the memory or the CPU. I then looked on the net for a replacement MB presuming that I would have to source a MB & CPU. I was surprised to find that the board was still readily available so i ordered one. This morning I cycled across to hers & swapped the motherboard. I was very pleasantly surprised when the PC booted straight up once everything was installed :-) I had not told my friend my suspicions about the CPU & Memory. I had discussed it with my colleagues in the IT department @ work & they had mentioned that there are beeps for the various fundamental failures. I have used those beeps some years ago but not for a while & they had slipped my mind when I was surveying the PC (not that I can remember the code). As I was finishing up at my friend's my brother rang me to see if I was close to meeting him at our parents. We both reckoned we were about 20 minutes away so I was off on the next part of the day which was skiing. I met my brother & we went up to Queensbury & went skiing / boarding on the local mountain boarding slope. It wasn't the alps & my ankle was not very happy about it but it was a pretty good little slope with quite a few little challenges & they do evening sessions as well. A couple of other observations to leave you with: I was watching channel 4's Christianity: a history earlier & during it Anne Widdecombe interviewed Ian Paisley. I don't recall the last time I saw him so much on the back foot. Why does my cat largely ignore the toys you can buy in the shop but chase a piece of string for ages? Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Friday, July 18th, 2008
1:56 am	Scandinavian Odessey Short version: We drove to Newcastle, caught the ferry. Got off in Halstammer. Saw a glacier. Saw the remains of the heavy water plant in Telemark. Saw several picturesque lakes. Wandered round Oslo. Saw an incredible sculpture park & a museum to polar exploration. Drove into Sweden. saw more lakes & less mountains. Got to the car show & saw innumerable classic American cars. Were astounded by the Raggare. Eventually gave up & slept the last night at a more distant campsite. Saw Stockholm. Got rained on (until this point the weather had been glorious). Drove south. Saw a Dolmen grave. Saw the Oresund crossing in the far distance. Saw a castle. Crossed Oresund. Wandered around Copenhagen. Saw Christiania & a canal tour. Camped in a fort. Drove west. Crossed another bridge. Camped a a campsite with a permanent bouncy castle (with an 18 month old in tow that was an incredible plus point). Caught a ferry. Home. Took over 2000 photos :-) even after corrupting a bunch :-( I am even slightly browner than usual (not brown as such or even average but from a very white base, slightly browner than usual.) Current Mood: accomplished (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
9:09 pm	We're off... EDIT: un-cut, on both my PCs it's just a link not a picture. We're off to a car show in Sweden in the morning. I suppose I'd better get started on the packing. View route OH yes, apparently there will be some automobiles Current Mood: bouncy Current Music: Radcliffe on 2 (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 16th, 2008
1:13 am	Hayfever Log Thought I'd log my hayfever symptoms, out of curiosity as to how long my hayfever season lasts. I've never previously taken notes... Week 1: June 2-8 Itchy eyes on 2-3 days, didn't bother taking any tablets. Week 2: June 9-15 Itchy eyes, repeated sneezing & rhinitis on Tuesday, (particularly after spending an hour outside commuting between home, work, opticians & work again), took tablet in morning & evening. Sneezing & rhinitis after spending 2 hours or so gardening on Saturday (was at my cousins garden in wales & had failed to bring tablets). Rhinitis after commuting (bike & train) between home & parents on Sunday, nicked a tablet off dad. Itchy eyes after cycling back. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 2nd, 2008
5:20 pm	Jive Addiction Southport May 08 "Jiving you Crazy" Right, been quite lax in posting so I'm going to try to write something substantial. It is fairly large so I suppose I'd better use a cut. I really don't like them as they are a PITA on feed readers (which is what I use), anyway please ( read on ) Current Mood: sore Current Music: Mercy (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
12:30 am	What I did on my week off. Hmm, not a lot. Really very little indeed. I ended up with over a week's worth of holiday entitlement which I didn't manage to take in the last holiday year (i.e. by the end of March under my employer's rules) & they kindly let me carry a week over into April so I booked last week off with nothing planned. In the end I went to a family history fair in Pudsey (it is a place really, not a bear) & got lost while trying to find a cash machine. Went to my usual dance class on Tuesday & a dance freestyle on Friday. The pub on Thursday & finally a reception on Saturday (the wedding having taken place a couple of weeks earlier in Sri Lanka). The rest of my week was largely taken up with Bioshock, Just Cause & Forza Motorsport 2, i.e. my Xbox 360. A very relaxing week, I racked up less gamerscore points that I had hoped & it was certainly not everyone's idea of a good time but still I felt recharged until I had to deal with the pile of stuff not done at work again today. Ah well, once more unto the breach... (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
2:23 am	winter wonderland... ish The weather is a bit odd this evening. There is a medium fog, with visibility a relatively comfortable 50-100 meters & a frost. The grip of both these conditions has not relaxed all day. To me however these don't seem particularly challenging. The attendance at dancing & the pub afterwards this evening was significantly down compared to recent weeks, though the presence of international football on the TV will have had some effect. Anyway, to continue my ramble (yes I think this entry will be a bit rambling, apologies)... I caught a bus back to somewhere vaguely near my house & walked up. I had decided to leave my camera at home which is unusual for me but it routinely got between me & my dancing partners, often slightly uncomfortably so I thought it best. (no I don't usually take photos of the dancing). So I was at a bit of a loss as I walked up to find that the frost & very light dusting of snow was trying hard to be picturesque in the light of the streetlights & I was missing my camera. Of course I have somewhere in excess of 3000 photos which ought to be processed & posted... (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 17th, 2008
6:49 pm	Bike update I went to work Tuesday & suffered a puncture on the way, getting off & walking as I went under the roundabout. I walked the bike all the way to work & in the evening got my puncture repair kit out to repair it & found that part of the pump/CO2 thing was missing. So I wheeled the bike all the way home & went straight out dancing. Around midnight when I got back I fixed the puncture but couldn't find the cause. Wednesday morning I checked the tyre again & it seemed firm so I set off but once again it went flat at around the same point. Rather than wheel the bike all the way to work & back again I took the front wheel off (as the wheels are quick release) & locked both wheels & the frame to the railings outside Subway / Motosave. There was a meal organised at 18:00 in the 3 Singhs so I got a lift straight there & then went to pick it up afterwards. When we got there the bike was not :-( I reported it to the police, who perhaps unsurprisingly were not too optimistic. I was intrigued by their use of an automated theft information report line (used for adding more info to the crime when it comes available). I have wandered round the second hand shops to see if I could see it, no joy. Jon has sold me an old bike with solid forks to be going on with & I'm asking at work if they will enable me to buy a bike using the ride to work scheme where I can buy the bike tax free which makes my money go almost twice as far. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
11:59 pm	Good News : Bad News Today Bad News: pub cancelled tonight :-( Good News: Watched Ashes to Ashes & the catch-up from last week :-) Yesterday Good News: invited at fairly short notice to a work colleague's birthday meal (3 Singhs is now officially my 1st restaurant recommendation for LX) Bad news: My bike was stolen while I was in the restaurant C'est la vie, it seems I am likely to find out how good my Home Insurance is in coming days. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007
3:04 am	Merry Christmas Merry Christmas to one & all, however one may choose to celebrate it. In the true festive spirit I'm currently reading Dawkins' "The God Delusion" which I'm finding riveting :-) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
1:45 am	Get the Girl! Kill the Bad Guy! Save the Entire Planet! This is probably clear from other posts but anyway: I bought Orange Box on Friday on the way home from work, I played Half Life 2 on Friday night. Saturday daytime I did some overtime to meet a deadline then continued with Half Life 2. Sunday I mostly played Half Life 2 with a break to watch the Grand Prix & the news. If Top gear had been on I would have watched that. I finished Half Life 2 with 10 minutes to spare of Sunday. Not bad time-wise for completion of the whole game, though no-where near HL2DQ times. One of my lodgers has been telling me to get a life in no-uncertain terms though. Oh well back to work tomorrow. [Edit] I've retitled this post quoting, or possibly mis-quoting, a PWEI song lyric. Current Mood: accomplished (Comment on this)
12:54 am	[Review] Half Life 2 XBox 360 conversion The Orange Box reviews I have read give the impression that the reviewers went straight for Portal & Episode 2 & ignored the original Half Life 2. I feel this is something of an omission which I will attempt to rectify a little by adding my twopennorth. Graphics: The Xbox 360 graphics are comparable to the graphics on good PC. My PC was pushing itself to run Half Life 2 & didn't do the HDR light flare (when it appeared on Lost Coast) or render all the detail. This version has got HDR, which Valve has used to good effect, accentuating the transitions from interior to exterior & vice-versa. Other effects I have noticed which my PC did not render are that the rendering of water & the shimmery force fields is improved. One major minus on the graphical front however was distance rendering. When models got distant they disappeared in a white haze. This was very noticeable in some of the places where the graphics had taken my breath away a few years back on the PC, such as the bridge on Highway 17 & the entrance to the Citadel in Our Benefactors. Gameplay Some of the parts that I recall being the toughest seemed to be a little easier while some parts that I recall breezing through seem to be harder. The year's gap is perhaps playing tricks with my mind & perhaps some of the bits where I struggled this time were because I was tired. For the record, Easier: Graveyard in Ravenholm, Courtyard in Follow Freeman, Manhacks. Harder: the first encounter with Mobile Artillery in Water Hazard, exiting the Strider courtyard. Controllers Using a gamepad instead of a mouse & keyboard seems to have worked well. The big question for those considering the leap I made a few months ago from PC to console is whether a mouse *really* enables you to turn faster while *still* enabling better precision. There were a couple, & only a couple of instances where I was waiting for the gamepad thinking "a mouse would be quicker on this turn" so speed was not really an issue. As for accuracy, well I didn't seem to miss very often so that seemed OK but when I tried headshots with a pistol that seemed to come off less often with the gamepad that I recall with the mouse. So I think the mouse still has the edge. On the other hand, playing with the gamepad was effortless more often, & overall was perhaps a more natural & easier way to get into a game. Achievements This is an innovation by Microsoft which is part of the Xbox 360 format & it is a stroke of genius. It played a big part in giving me a reason to complete the Half Life 2 again. I could so easily have gone "well I've played that before, why should I bother doing it again?" The answer was that because I knew what I was doing this would mean a set of relatively easy gamerscore points which would also record for posterity that I *had* completed this game. In the end I completed 30 out of 37 achievements in one run-through (which I'm pretty pleased with by the way). I'm a little miffed that I didn't get the achievement for not walking on the sand, I really thought I had not walked on the sand. However that is a relatively high-scoring one so I was not too surprised that it was strict. [Edit] Other differences One other difference I noticed was that the "home page" wallpaper did not change as you moved through the different chapters: on the PC each chapter has it's own moving wallpaper. Then the game surprised me once I finished & displayed a different wallpaper, so perhaps they are all there but they don't trigger as straight-forwardly as on the PC. [end Edit] Overall In summary a good conversion, the only significant loss is distance rendering & there are several gains: HDR, Achievements, shimmery bits. Better than the original but given that the original was 2004 I thought the margin of improvement would be a bit larger & there would not have been any losses. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 21st, 2007
6:42 pm	Hamilton Well, the Ferrari's choreography on the first few corners completely wrong-footed Hamilton. Raikonnen overtook Masser with a few strong laps at the end of his middle tyre section. Raikonnen won the race fair & square you can't take that away from him & I got to grudgingly accept that he is a worthy world champion. But yes I'm still gutted that Hamilton didn't complete the fairytale rookie season & take the championship. Next year I suppose. Current Mood: numb (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 20th, 2007
4:35 am	Squeee! After a long week at work I have treated myself to Orange Box. To be honest I didn't need an excuse. Though I do now need an extra week or two to complete all my games... Having not had a working copy of Half Life 2 for over a year I'm starting at the beginning with Half Life 2 itself. There do seem to be subtle changes to the game, though possibly it is my memory playing tricks on me. The addition of achievements, which are awarded for specific challenges within the game directly affects how I play the game. Despite the fact that I'm not comparing my score with anyone else (as none of my friends are fellow addicts) I can't help but adapt my strategy to complete the challenges along the way. Beyond the addition of Achievement's, some bits seem easier, such as the graveyard in Ravenholm and manhacks (they seem a lot easier to hit) while some bits seem harder such as the first encounter with a mobile artillery in the airboat. Also barrels seem to have a significantly bigger blast radius. (Comment on this)