[{"content":"I read this book on holiday in 2025, and felt compelled to write about it, even though my thoughts will most likely not be original.\nThe book in brief House of Leaves is a lengthy horror story written by Mark Z. Danielewski in the year 2000.\nIt has multiple different narrators and somewhat parallel stories going at the same time:\nthe kind of framing device of Johnny Truant \u0026ldquo;The Navidson Record\u0026rdquo; - a fictional documentary film about people living in a perculiar house, as described by a pseudo-academic paper analysing it. This is the source of the majority of the horror in the book letters from Johnny\u0026rsquo;s mother, Pelafina Also included are some strange pieces of visual art and poems, some of which are relevant for my interpretation of events.\nDue to the intertwining writing of the book, it\u0026rsquo;s difficult to lay my thoughts out in a strictly linear fashion, but I will try my best.\nThis post will contain spoilers for the nearly 30 year old book.\nJohnny Johnny is effectively our first entry into the book.\nHis story is that his father is dead, and his mother is in an asylum. He lives in Los Angeles, perhaps Hollywood, and is a drug addict. One of his friends helps look after an apartment complex, and in that complex lives an old eccentric gentleman, who it turns out is blind. The gentleman dies, and Johnny helps to investigate the apartment (before the police). In the apartment, he finds that the windows are covered with paper glued on, and that underneath the man\u0026rsquo;s corpse there are some claw marks as if they had been carved into the floor by a monster. He also finds dotted all over the apartment, scrawled on varying types of paper (some typewritten, some handwritten, some on normal paper, some on napkins, some stored in the fridge, some in a chest etc) the titular book.\nThe remainder of the rest of the book is meant to have been pieced together from these random, disparate bits of paper.\nAt some points throughout the book, Johnny will interject through a footnote. A lot of these are excessively long (some are up to 13 pages, if I recall correctly). They are also pretty unpleasant. There is a degree of horror, but a lot of it just comes across as pathetic incel fantasy.\nFor example, there will be a phrase in German. Rather than translating it, there will be a multiple page story about how Johnny tracked down an engaged woman who spoke German, got her to translate it, and then had sex with her.\nThis happens repeatedly, and it makes Johnny (and the people he gets to have affairs with him) as utterly reprehensible, and perhaps even he\u0026rsquo;s an unreliable narrator.\nHell, at a point much later on, one of those women who consensually slept with him gets her fiance to attack him. Johnny is, at this point, malnourished and frail, yet manages to severely beat the much larger and less frail man.\nThis is ludircous.\nGoing back a bit, eventually Johnny\u0026rsquo;s sanity slips - he starts getting nightmares, and seems to be attacked by monsters in reality. At one point as he\u0026rsquo;s coming out of the breakdown, he meets a band that were singing a song about events in the book. When talking to them, it turns out that they\u0026rsquo;ve read the completed book (including Johnny\u0026rsquo;s footnotes, which Johnny hasn\u0026rsquo;t finished compiling) on the internet.\nThis is, of course, completely impossible. (1)\nIt\u0026rsquo;s also in that section that it explicitly points out that the book contains hidden messages throughout (think, read the first letter of each sentence type of thing).\nThe Navidson Record This is the main prose of the book, but we experience it indirectly. Our experience of this is through the pseudo-academic paper written by Zampanò\nI say \u0026ldquo;pseudo-academic\u0026rdquo; because whilst it takes the style of an academic paper (not dissimilar to my Philosophy dissertation) but by the nature of the story, it was never submitted to any sort of academic authority.\nIt should also be noted that it is explicitly stated in the Johnny prose that this film that is being analysed never existed. It is, within Johnny\u0026rsquo;s universe, fictional. (2)\nThe documentary is about a pulitzer-prize winning photographer, Navidson. He is somewhat estranged from his family, so he buys a house that they all move into. He sets up a series of cameras throughout the house to document his attempts at reconcilliation.\nAfter the family return from a friend\u0026rsquo;s wedding, they find that there is an additional door in their bedroom. The cameras verify that no-one entered the house to install it, it just appeared. The door opens to a short corridor, the walls made up of a charcoal-esque substance (later this gets tested to confirm that it is older than the solar system), the other side opening into the children\u0026rsquo;s bedroom.\nNavidson\u0026rsquo;s brother, who is an architect, gets involved to double check Navidson\u0026rsquo;s measurements. It turns out that the outside of the house is smaller than the inside of the house by the size of the corridor (so, if the corridor is 3 feet wide, the inside of the house is 3 feet wider than the outside). After a lot of double checking, the problem is resolved, but now in the other horizontal axis, the house is a foot wider than it was a few minutes before (as measured by a tight fitting bookcase).\nEventually, a door appears in the lounge, against an external wall. The door should open directly into the garden, but instead opens into another corridor that is about 10 feet long.\nAt one point there is an extremely lengthy section delving into the science of echoes, eventually culminating in the assurance that for a room to have an echo it must be over 60 feet long (maybe not exactly 60, I\u0026rsquo;m going by memory). This is swiftly followed by Navidson hearing the echoes of his children\u0026rsquo;s voices coming from the corridor.\nThere are a few expeditions into the corridor, accompanied by professional explorers (who go insane and try to kill the others), and strange events, such as:\nRooms that change size on the fly Noises that accompany those changes A staircase that changes in height (at one point they measure it by how long a coin takes to drop, concluding that it is deeper than the diameter of the Earth) Claw marks as if there is a monster (3) Noises that might be a monster but might also be the rooms moving After one of the last expeditions, Navidson and his family escape from the house, but his brother is swallowed by a sudden hole opening up in the kitchen, presumably killing him. (4)\nNavidson eventually returns to the house to do a solo expedition, and at that point the book itself becomes strange. For example, there is a hole in a wall. That is represented in the book by a square in the page (and many subsequent ones) with text \u0026ldquo;through\u0026rdquo; it, like looking into another room through a hole in the wall. Gravity changes, so the text is upside-down or on it\u0026rsquo;s side. Corridors get narrow, so there is less text on the page. (5)\nNavidson eventually escapes, but loses limbs and an eye in the process. It\u0026rsquo;s sort of a happy ending, with some sacrifices, as if it was some sort of Biblical trial.\nPelafina Johnny\u0026rsquo;s mum\u0026rsquo;s story is told through letters she wrote (and apparently in another book, that I may eventually read).\nShe is in an asylum. Apparently when Johnny was young, she tried to scald him with a pan, which led to Johnny\u0026rsquo;s father having her committed.\nThese letters are even more difficult to comprehend than the rest of the story, but I particularly remember one which was presented as if it were random ravings without whitespace. Whilst reading that it looked as if there was meant to be a hidden message saying \u0026ldquo;He Knew\u0026rdquo;.\nHer ending is not so pleasant - this section ends with a note that she died, and Johnny picked up what little personal effects she had.\nHowever, through Johnny\u0026rsquo;s prose he concludes that she didn\u0026rsquo;t actually try to harm him, and instead was trying to protect him from the pan.\nConclusion It was an entertaining book, but really really really dragged at times (probably intentionally). I certainly didn\u0026rsquo;t enjoy it enough to try to pour over it to find hidden codes (plus, I already have too many other obesessions to spend my time on).\nI hated Johnny, which is probably what paints my theory as to what the truth is.\nIn terms of scariness, it was genuinly distrubing\u0026hellip; at first. Like many horror films, as it goes on it becomes less scary as you go on, which is a damned shame.\nIt tries to make up for it, by having the book itself get strange at the end when it\u0026rsquo;s less scary, but it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to me. (5)\nI can appreciate the depiction of mental health, and the fear of mental illness being genetic. That is something very close to my heart, especially over the last few years.\nOther people\u0026rsquo;s theories There are a lot of fans out there with various theories. Whilst reading I did do some searching and there were some instances of people going wild with ideas that just seemed to be borne of ignorance of specific subjects.\nI can\u0026rsquo;t remember which in particular I\u0026rsquo;m thinking of, but there was at least one.\nThere is a lot of reading to be done on the official forums, but the links on the post go to the wrong top-level-domain. This would be easy to fix so that I could read those threads if I wanted to, which I don\u0026rsquo;t.\nOne common one is that the book is itself the house. Leaves of paper. Pages of a book. The strange labyrinthian layout.\nMy theory This is my theory, and this theory is mine:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s all fictional.\nWell, obviously. It\u0026rsquo;s a fiction book. But it\u0026rsquo;s also fictional within the universe of the book itself.\nPart of the book goes into detail about the Minotaur, particularly a theory that the Minotaur was actually the illegitimate son of the king of Minos. When the Minotaur was slayed, the king wept, but according to that theory they weren\u0026rsquo;t tears of joy. In that section Zampanò mentions that he wish he could have had a son, and that if he had he would be flawed. (3) He would face challenges, but would have a happy ending, and it is also somehat implied that he would have a lot of sex.\nJohnny has a lot of sex in the book, and his narrative is both improbable and impossible(1)\nThe film doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist (2). In fact, in the collages at the end of the book, there is an exerpt showing an alternate ending to the expedition where Navidson\u0026rsquo;s children die, rather than his brother. (4)\nZampanò didn\u0026rsquo;t tap into an alternate reality to see the film, it was purely an invention of his own mind.\nThe film was invented by Zampanò, because he wanted a son. Johnny is his wish-fullfilment, fictional child that he never could have.\nWhat about his mother, then? Whilst there is another book which goes into detail about her life, I am at the moment convinced that she is also fictional, purely because I am convinced Johnny is.\n","date":"2026-01-21T13:31:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2026-01-21-house-of-leaves/","title":"House of Leaves"},{"content":"Introduction Last year I took up the challenge to Knit for 30 minutes every day in November, to raise money for the Bone Cancer Research Trust. In total I managed to raise £413 because my job matches my fundraising up to £200 a year. I used the time to crochet the Raziel amigurumi. Don\u0026rsquo;t get pedantic that crochet and knitting aren\u0026rsquo;t the same.\nThis year I am taking on the challenge to knit a Christmas jumper over the course of December to raise money for Cancer Research UK.\nSpecifically I am taking the \u0026ldquo;Order of the Jedi Pullover\u0026rdquo; from \u0026ldquo;Star Wars: Knitting the Galaxy\u0026rdquo; by Tanis Gray (though the jumper itself is designed by Meghan Regan). I have made this jumper before, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t go well (it was way too small), so I am making two changes:\nI won\u0026rsquo;t blindly trust the pattern - I will repeatedly check the size and try to adjust the pattern to ensure that it is comfortable for me to wear I\u0026rsquo;m changing the motifs - this won\u0026rsquo;t be a Star Wars jumper, it will instead be a Legacy of Kain jumper (of course) There is a facebook group for this challenge, and despite it being explicitly about knitting over December, there are already a multitude of posts from people who have already finished. Weeks before December starts.\nAs such, I don\u0026rsquo;t feel particularly guilty in saying that I have started early. My first jumper attempt took me about 8 months, so I need to use my time wisely.\nI finished designing the motifs (generally) on Saturday, so I\u0026rsquo;m a couple of days in.\nI will try to post regularly to the fundraising page, and will strive to do more sparse summaries on this post.\nIf you would like to donate, then please do so. Cancer sucks.\n5th December - first 3 motifs This is technically day 5, but in reality day 12 due to the head start.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve completed 3 of the motifs so far:\nA gold filigree The skull/cross guard from the physical Reaver The Elder God\u0026rsquo;s ever present eyes The next section is the last on the yoke, before moving on to the body: The Nine Pillars of Nosgoth\nThe complication here is that each Pillar has a different colour.\nSince each motif gets repeated 18 times, that means I can do each pillar twice.\nHowever, it is ludicrous to carry a single colour across half of the jumper (and since I would be doing that for 9 of them, that\u0026rsquo;s a lot of strands), so instead I need to do intarsia (having a separate ball per colour).\nI\u0026rsquo;ve measured out strands for the different colours - each one will certainly not take 50g, so I tried to make an educated guess (measured out the full width of the block, multiplied that by 22). If it\u0026rsquo;s not enough, then I can always join a new strand in.\nBUT, I also can\u0026rsquo;t do the pattern in the round like I previously have, otherwise I need to strand the yarn across 14 stitches without a way to secure it. As such I need to switch to stockinette stitch (knit row, followed by a purl row).\nThe biggest risk with this is it laddering at the back, so I need to also be careful with that.\nI hope that this will take me no longer than a week.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll update this with pictures later.\nMe wearing the jumper with the first 3 motifs\nThe wrong side of the yoke with the first 3 motifs completed\n12th December - Pillar Symbols Day 12/19\nThankfully doing the Pillar symbols took 6 days, so I\u0026rsquo;m pretty good at estimating the time, which is unlike me.\nThe motif itself took around 40 different strands of yarn (main background colour, bronze border, (pillar main colour + white for the symbol) x 9 x 2, plus an additional couple of whites because the initial ones were too small).\nSince I was doing stockinette, that actually kept it to a minimum - otherwise each line would have been a different strand to prevent carrying it too far back and forth (so it would have been about 14 times as many!)\nThe unfortunate consequence of that was that the Balance symbol at the back had a gaping hole in it (since there was no connection between each side) so I had to stitch that up at the end.\nIt was impossible to make sure they all kept separated - even if I managed to do it, they bunched together when I would put the project back in the bag.\nThe yoke with the Pillar symbols in progress, and the yarn spaghetti next to it\nAs a result, though I am now technically onto the body, I\u0026rsquo;m instead focussing my time on trying to weave in all of the strands so they don\u0026rsquo;t get in the way when doing the rest.\nHappy with my progress, and I\u0026rsquo;m still hopeful I\u0026rsquo;ll get it done by the end of the month (preferably earlier!)\nThe yoke with the Pillars completed\nThe yoke with the Pillars completed, modelled by me\n22nd December - Body Motifs Day 22/29\nI had thought that it was a week since my previous update, turns out it was 11 days. Whoops!\nIn that time I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to mostly complete the body motifs - Raziel\u0026rsquo;s wraith symbol on the back, Kain\u0026rsquo;s on the front, and Reaver smybols surrounding them (8 in total)\nIt was a lot of work - each round is 240 stitches, and the motifs were 43 rounds (so 10,320 stitches)\nBut there\u0026rsquo;s actually more - I after splitting the body and sleeves, I did an extra round to make sure that I had 240 stitches.\nSomehow, I had 246. So I did another round, doing 6 increases evenly spaced.\nI put stitch markers every 20 stitches as that is the width of the motif (Kain and Raziel take up two blocks) - this revealed that the marker that was exactly half way around and directly under the left armpit was actually off by 3 stitches - evidently the extra 6 weren\u0026rsquo;t evenly around.\nOk, I did another round, doing 3 increases around the front and 3 decreases around the back to pull the marker to the correct place.\nThis was actually wrong, as that pulled the marker further out of position. Rather than pulling the marker I needed to push the stitches.\nSo, another round, this time with the decreases in the front and increases in the back.\nFinally, it was 240 around.\nDid the motifs. Was going really well (though stitchfiddle had cut off a bit of the Reaver symbols, so I had to edit the pattern). Then I noticed that I had missed a chunk of the Raziel motif - about 2 rows. I was about 1000 stitches further along by the time I realised, and there\u0026rsquo;s now way I was going to try and frog that. So instead I\u0026rsquo;ve decided to embroider it when weaving in the ends (which I\u0026rsquo;ve almost finished).\nThe front of the body\nThe back of the body\nI was tempted to add more, like a \u0026ldquo;Vae Victus\u0026rdquo; a bit lower down, but I\u0026rsquo;m a bit exhausted, so the rest will just be the background colour.\nIn terms of the fundraising, work has agreed to my match funding request, so I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to raise £458.75 at the time of writing (the match funding isn\u0026rsquo;t included on the page, and I\u0026rsquo;m not sure if I should include it as external fundraising, in case I then get stuck with having to pay more).\nSo far it\u0026rsquo;s just been friends/family/colleagues donating, so if you\u0026rsquo;re reading this and I don\u0026rsquo;t know you, please consider giving a donation.\nThe body almost completed, modelled by me\n20th January - Body finished Day 51/60\nBloody hell that was a long gap! I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to post another update until I had finished the body, which I just did, but it took absolutely ages!\nThe only really interesting thing about this was that, when casting off the hem, I decided to do a variation of the \u0026ldquo;Icelandic Bind Off\u0026rdquo;.\nThe reason it was a variation is that the guides you will find for it all say to start with a knit, but because the hem rows were starting with purl-wise slip stitches (\u0026ldquo;Slip stitch with yarn in front\u0026rdquo;/\u0026ldquo;slst wyif\u0026rdquo;) - so this was \u0026ldquo;slst wyif, *place st on left and right needles at the same time, insert right needle knit-wise into the next stitch on the left needle, knit into that stitch, remove both from the left needle, repeat from *\u0026rdquo;\nThe body completed, displaying the front\nThe body completed, displaying the back\nObviously the next step (apart from weaving in any ends) is to do the sleeves. Initially I was planning to just do these in the main colour, but since the \u0026ldquo;deadline\u0026rdquo; has passed there\u0026rsquo;s no real pressure to rush this. As such, this seems a fantastic opportunity to integrate the symbols of Reziel\u0026rsquo;s brethren (and perhaps Raziel\u0026rsquo;s unfallen symbol, if there\u0026rsquo;s enough room)\nAt the very least this should make doing them much less mind-numbingly dull than the previous stage.\nGoing by the pattern, the sleeves start off being 78 stitches around, then will decrease a little bit over the course of 32 rounds (which is roughly 16cm, since it seems each round is about 1/2 a centimetre), then be 44 stitches until the end.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not certain of what height the sleeves will be (I have neither my notes nor a tape measure to hand at the time of writing) so not sure what height will be available. However, I think it\u0026rsquo;s safe to think of having roughly 22 columns available, as I don\u0026rsquo;t want the symbols to wrap, and if I consider a consistent width, the decreases don\u0026rsquo;t complicate matters much more.\nFrankly, I\u0026rsquo;m quite happy I\u0026rsquo;m nearing the end - I have other projects I want to do, games to play, and blog posts to write (I currently have two drafts I\u0026rsquo;ve neglected, one is about a book I read back in July!)\n2nd March - Sleeve update Day 92/101\nProgress has definitely stagnated of late.\nI wanted to make the sleeves more elaborate, integrating the symbols from the different clans (on both sides so that you can hold your arms together to mirror them - Zephon\u0026rsquo;s is half a spider for a reason)\nDesigning them was a challenge. I calculated how long a sleeve would need to be (about 42cm not including the hem), and found each stitch to be roughly half a centimetere square.\nThe sleeve, with all symbols present\nAs a result, that means each sleeve would be around 84 rounds. Since there are 6 symbols (including Raziel\u0026rsquo;s non-corrupted one) that means there is a 14 round space. There has to be a gap between each symbol, so it\u0026rsquo;s actually less than 14. Playing around in multiple pattern creation programs I settled on 12-pixel square as a good size to maintain enough detail.\nAfter doing the third symbol (Dumah) I realised that I should weave in the ends after each one rather than when I finish, because it would drive me absolutely insane.\nGoing down that route, after finishing Zephon\u0026rsquo;s symbol I started weaving in the ends. One of them wrapped around a bar in the wrong place, so I snipped it. Only I didn\u0026rsquo;t snip the end, I snipped the bar instead.\nZephon\u0026rsquo;s symbol, with my finger poking through the hole\nFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-\nWhile I have continued and finished the final symbol (Melchiah) I am now somewhat stuck. I took to Facebook for advice but haven\u0026rsquo;t managed to put it into place, yet. I\u0026rsquo;ve tried using plastic glue on some scrap yarn, but rather than melting the threads together it encased it in a transparent\u0026hellip; erm\u0026hellip; case.\nSome scrap yarn, with fresh plastic model-kit-glue applied\nThe same scrap yarn, with the glue now hardened\nI\u0026rsquo;m going to borrow some fabric glue and a soldering iron (I don\u0026rsquo;t want to bring an actual flame close to the work) to try those routes.\nI guess if none of that works the only solutions would be to try to unpick and patch it, or to frog back to that symbol and try again (which I really hope isn\u0026rsquo;t the case)\n17th March - Another sleeve update Day 107/116\nI tried the fabric glue approach, but it was exactly like the plastic glue. I tried the soldering iron, but rather than melting the threads together, it just kind of evaporated (presumably into a poisonous gas)\nAs a result, I did the sensible thing and frogged the sleeve back to the start of Zephon\u0026rsquo;s symbol, and re-started from there.\nI happy with the result, I\u0026rsquo;m just not happy that I spent so long twiddling my thumbs when I could have been making progress.\nThe sleeve is almost done. There will be pictures when it is.\n30th March - Right sleeve finished Day 120/129\nI\u0026rsquo;ve finally finished the right sleeve.\nFrom my calculations, for the sleeve to be the correct length it would have taken about 74 rounds. It actually took 120 (not including the hem) - not only do I have long arms in comparison to my body, but each time I tried it on it was a case of \u0026ldquo;Maybe I should make it just a little bit longer\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nThe right sleeve, modelled by me\nThis means that the the symbols could have been larger than 12x12, probably 18x18, but I\u0026rsquo;m not sure that would have been the correct choice - if they were too large they would wrap around the arm too much and be much harder to see. I think the only regret is that they aren\u0026rsquo;t spaced out a bit more.\nThe right sleeve, lying flat on the floor\nThere is a loose stitch on the hem, which I may correct later.\nThe next stage is, of course, the left sleeve - exactly the same as the right, but with the symbols mirrored. I\u0026rsquo;m not confident enough to use the same motifs but worked in the opposite direction, so I\u0026rsquo;ll spend some time drawing new ones instead.\n21st April - Left sleeve finished Day 142/151\nI\u0026rsquo;ve now finished the left sleeve, which took much less time than the other\u0026hellip; but still a lot of time (I was also playing Spiderman 2 before my PS+ subscription runs out)\nBoth sleeves together, lying flat on the floor\nThey\u0026rsquo;re not identical, but they are close enough.\nDoes this mean I\u0026rsquo;m finally finished? No.\nI still have to weave in ends, fix holes/dropped stitches, and then block the thing. Only then I will be finished.\n","date":"2025-11-25T19:56:53Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2025-11-25-charity-jumper/","title":"Charity Christmas Jumper"},{"content":"What, two posts in quick succession?! Don\u0026rsquo;t get used to it.\nIn order to try to keep my posts a bit more focused, I\u0026rsquo;m splitting things up in a sensible way, or at least trying to.\nFirst of all, my wrist is currently damaged (cartalige damage) so I\u0026rsquo;m not able to hold a game controller, let alone a crochet hook or knitting needle.\nThis has given me a bit of extra time to work on other things, though.\nThe Timeline As I mentioned in my latest post, \u0026ldquo;The Dead Shall Rise\u0026rdquo; has been released digitally. This includes a couple of noteworthy events that definitely should be listed, and at least one additional character. Arguably I should also be including Turel\u0026rsquo;s journey, though we have very little to go on for that (at least for now)\nOn the timeline there is currenty a toggle called \u0026ldquo;gameplay only\u0026rdquo; - this was poorly named in the first place, but now that the official media I\u0026rsquo;m taking into account includes things that aren\u0026rsquo;t games, it\u0026rsquo;s an even worse name now.\nI am therefore trying to alter the code to instead list the different sources for an event, but even that might not be sufficient.\nWe can definitely try to categorise events in the following way:\nAn event directly witnessed by us, the player/reader. An event inferred by the characters. For example, backstory told through murals that they find in the games. An event inferred by us. Events that are required for the story to make sense. For example, the sequence of events that are the case before a change in the flow of time (e.g. Raziel getting sucked into the Reaver at the end of Soul Reaver 2). So it seems that for each source there are \u0026ldquo;explicit\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;implicit\u0026rdquo; events, at the very least.\nAccessible Colour Picker I\u0026rsquo;m passionate about trying to make this site as accessible as possible, and part of that includes picking the correct colours. They need to both be pleasurable for me to look at, but also contrast with each other enough to be distinguishable for those with visual impairments.\nThere are a lot of tools for this already, but they generally seem to only compare two colours at once. Due to the timeline, how this site can assign colours to categories, and how there are multiple differnet background colours (due to dark mode) my needs are much more complex.\nI am working on a tool to help me with this, which will obviously be publically available afterwards.\nAmigurumi Moebius I don\u0026rsquo;t like to mention craft projects I\u0026rsquo;m working on until they are complete, but I\u0026rsquo;m making some exceptions here.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been working on an amigurumi Mobeius doll. I was doing a size comparison with the 4 different Allison Hoffman patterns I have - adult and child from the book, teen and adult from \u0026ldquo;Last Travelers of Us Joel and Ellie Patterns\u0026rdquo;. Effectively it\u0026rsquo;s 8 patterns, as I normally use 4mm hooks but the pattern calls for 3.5.\nI was doing this because in my imagination Mobeius was shorter than Raziel, and I wanted to find a good size for that where the proportions would be accurate.\nOne of the items that came with The Dead Shall Rise was a 3D model file of Moebius. I decided to use this to get a good idea of the size difference. To do this I used Soul Spiral to extract the models from the remastered games from last year (interestingly, Soul Spiral would accurately detect the Soul Reaver remaster, but not Soul Reaver 2, hence my fork with fixes for that) then import them into Blender.\nThe Dead Shal Rise\u0026rsquo;s model was much bigger, as in, it was if a Kaiju version of Moebius was attacking a city populated by the Soul Reaver 2 cast. So instead I just used the remaster models. I placed each one at the same co-ordinates, then shifted them along the x axis so they were next to each other, and I could get an accurate height comparison.\nDamnit. It turns out that Janos \u0026amp; Kain are taller than the humans, who are about the same height, but that Wraith Raziel is a short-arse.\nWell, I can correct that when I get around to the second iterations of the dolls.\nAmigurumi Elder God This is anther one I\u0026rsquo;ve been working on, and I\u0026rsquo;ve occasionally posted pictures on Facebook when asking for advice.\nIn the summer I bought a resin kit. My main use for it was to create a keepsake for my wife, which I did. A seondary use for it is to create my own safety eyes - it\u0026rsquo;s difficult, but I\u0026rsquo;m creating glow in the dark safety eyes for the Elder God. My proof of concepts worked, but there are two issues:\nFor the resin to cure, it needs to be warm, which is difficult coming into winter. The fumes are highly poisonous. I would be alright doing it outside to keep everyone safe, but it\u0026rsquo;s even colder outside than inside. This one will take a long while, but is also being delayed because of everything else.\nRemaking Amigurumi Whenever I\u0026rsquo;ve seen amigurumi posted on social media, especially through ads, I\u0026rsquo;ve been deeply suspicious. They often have square looking stitches, and they look super neat. That\u0026rsquo;s just not possible\u0026hellip; or is it?\nIt turns out that depsite doing yarn craft for almost 15 years now, I\u0026rsquo;m still essentially a beginner. I\u0026rsquo;ve been doing some reading up on techniques that will make the dolls look so much better. So of course I\u0026rsquo;m going to do it.\nPlus, if I redo the accessories and integrate magnets, that\u0026rsquo;ll be cool.\nBlogging Mobile App I\u0026rsquo;m still occasionally dipping my toes into learning React Native, with the ultimate aim being to create an app so I can write and submit blog posts from within it.\n","date":"2025-11-03T10:42:04Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2025-11-03-upcoming-projects/","title":"Upcoming Projects"},{"content":"A few days ago was the digital release of \u0026ldquo;The Dead Shall Rise\u0026rdquo; - the Legacy of Kain graphic novel that was on Kickstarter a while ago.\nIt took me a few days to read and my thoughts have been taken in lots of different directions. Here, I\u0026rsquo;m going to focus on my thoughts about the book itself.\nThough I write reviews here sometimes, I\u0026rsquo;m not a professional critic of anything.\nI also think of anyone who uses terms like \u0026ldquo;bad writing\u0026rdquo; without elaboration as suspicious - there are far too many bad actors who use vague spurious criticism to mask their bigotry.\nIf you like something, or if you dislike something, it\u0026rsquo;s perfectly valid for that to be the extent of your opinion, even if you can\u0026rsquo;t exactly put a rationalisation for your opinion into words. Not everything will please everyone. That is fine.\nWhilst reading the book, I was feeling quite anxious. Dead Sun was also official, after all, but from the reports it was so full of contradictions to the story I love that I was happy it was never released. Then, years later, more information came out to indicate that some of those contradictions were red herrings, which raised more questions.\nThis was giving me the same feeling. I\u0026rsquo;m not going into spoilers, but there were two main aspects that made me feel uncomfortable. The first would require time travel to resolve, and would be a bit convoluted. Not impossible, and matching the story, but I still felt suspicious.\nThe other would either require convenient amnesia, or would be a \u0026ldquo;Han shot first\u0026rdquo; moment. By that I mean that the change, when you focus on the events and story beats, doesn\u0026rsquo;t really change things, but it does change the character\u0026rsquo;s personal emotional journey.\nThankfully, by the end of the book, both of those issues were resolved. This gave me an immense sense of relief - the people in charge are keeping in mind the mechanics of the story, and not undermining the emotional journeys the characters go on. It is, generally, in good hands. Now it just needs to actually continue, rather than be left on a cliffhanger for 20 years again.\nThis story does introduce a handful of new characters, one of whom is the protagonist of the story. Her story ends on a \u0026ldquo;to be continued\u0026rdquo;, so we shall see how it continues - both in terms of story, and in terms of what media (if at all).\nIt also introduced another character, tied into the Hylden side of things, with some extra detail on how their magic works (\u0026ldquo;concequences\u0026rdquo; - it seems maybe a bit like \u0026ldquo;equivalent exchange\u0026rdquo; in Full Metal Aclhemist). I\u0026rsquo;m curious to see where that goes, and I\u0026rsquo;ll need to re-read it to see if something that I thought was implied actually was.\nSo, all in all, pretty good. No direct contraditions as far as I can tell at this point, with definite passion behind it, but I\u0026rsquo;m also a bit fed up with cliffhangers in the franchise.\n","date":"2025-11-02T11:26:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2025-11-02-dead-shall-rise/","title":"The Dead Shall Rise"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to implement a CI/CD workflow into this site - it took a while, because I was overcomplicating matters. I also needed a lot of help from my brother, who is much more familiar with Unix than I am.\nFirst Attempt I started off with the Hugo GitHub actions template to give me something to work from.\nMy idea for the workflow was the following:\nSet the site to \u0026ldquo;update mode\u0026rdquo; - replace pages that won\u0026rsquo;t work during the update with informative versions Delete the assests that will be regenerated by the build - Vite will recompile the css/js and change the filenames. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to get a bloat of unused files, and deleting them leads to the issue above Copy the site across to the server I thought it would be best to do this in a single connection - whilst I may not be subject to rate limiting, it just feels wrong and inefficient.\nTo help with this, I found something in the GitHub Actions Marketplace - ssh-scp-ssh-pipelines - the description says that it can run ssh commands on a server before (and after) scp using a single connection. Perfect!\nExcept, not. Running it would throw up exceptions and fail. This is because it tries to spin up a Docker image running Debian 10 to run it all with Python, and Debian 10 reached it\u0026rsquo;s end of life 3 years ago.\nThinking further about this, the question is: Why?! Python could be installed on Ubuntu, Windows or probably any other OS that GitHub will spin up. It just seems horrifically wasteful (and emphasises to me that I shouldn\u0026rsquo;t just blindly trust anything in the marketplace)\nSecond Attempt I had a further look around the marketplace and found something that used Node.js (rather than spinning up another machine to run code) but I had already been stung. I should try to do this myself.\nThus, I wrote a bash script to do steps 1 \u0026amp; 2 above, and added it to my solution (as I intend to add more functionality, there would be more unsuable pages whilst updating, so the script would need to expand)\nThis time I wrote the ssh and scp commands myself, resulting in the following steps:\nUse scp to copy the update script to the server Use ssh to run chmod to make the script executable, then execute the script Use scp to copy the new website to the server This was 3 connections, but the best my ignorance could conjure. All working\u0026hellip; right?\nNope. Something that was obvious in hindsight was that the \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m updating\u0026rdquo; page would be unstyled, because the css is being deleted in the second step. There would be at most a split second where it would work correctly.\nAnother issue that I didn\u0026rsquo;t encounter, but did discover in my further reading, was that scp wasn\u0026rsquo;t a good idea for transfer. Apparently, when it is provided with an asterisk (e.g. scp ./public/* =\u0026gt; dest) it gets expanded before doing the transfer. If that list of files is too large, then it starts to mess up. I don\u0026rsquo;t know what the limit is, but why tempt fate?\nFinal Attempt There were two main facts that influenced my final code:\nThe impracticality of the \u0026ldquo;updating\u0026rdquo; page as mentioned above The file transfer took a couple of seconds If file transfer took minutes, it would make sense to strive on, but since it was such a tiny length of time, there was no real point.\nAs such, the solution was to trim it all down to a single line of code:\nrsync -va public/ username@servername:destinationfolder --delete\nThis copies over the website and deletes all of the unused files. It minimises interruptions, and works fine. Sometimes the simplest solution really is the best.\n","date":"2025-09-02T11:26:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2025-09-02-ci-cd/","title":"CI/CD"},{"content":"The Blog Post Since my previous post I\u0026rsquo;ve been working on a few things.\nFirst of all, I enabled code scanning on simple-as-pie, the demo page and the repo for the interactive LOK timeline.\nIn doing so, I was alerted to some security issues on the timeline and demo page repos. After trying to fix those, it became apparent that they were issues inherent to the create-react-app command. Whilst researching that, I found out that create-react-app has been deprecated.\nEvidently the React world moves quite quickly. Or at least faster than I\u0026rsquo;m used to (with the exception of arbitrary and sudden changes to permissions when developing mobile apps. That was ridiculous.)\nSince I am not doing SPAs (single page apps) the smart move seemed to be to re-create my apps from scratch and of the frameworks mentioned by the React docs explicitly, Vite seemed to be a good fit for my uses.\nThankfully, it was very easy to migrate the simple-as-pie demo to it, and it resolved the security issues.\nI was then faced with a choice. I could either migrate the timeline code to use Vite, and then manually integrate the compiled code into this site. Or, I could use this as an opporunity to integrate React (via Vite) into my site directly, making my life easier in the long run.\nSo I went for the latter.\nPerhaps I could have used something other than Vite, but I was already slightly experienced with it. Plus, when learning about it, I think I came across a link about integrating it into Hugo. Whether it was that directly, or something else, there was nonetheless a bit of a niggle at the back of my mind which convinced me to stick with it.\nIntegration Teething troubles When googling about how to actually get this done, the page that kept coming up was a medium article by Dawid Prośba.\nIt was difficult to follow - in some cases there were code snippets that you could inspect, but in most cases it would say \u0026ldquo;make this file look like below\u0026rdquo; and then be followed with a broken iFrame. I tried pulling the GitHub repo that it links to, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t work immediately (at least not for me).\nRather than putting in the work to make the repo work, I decided to follow the guide as best as I could, cross referencing with the repo, to ensure that I understood (at least roughly) how it worked.\nIn the end I succeeded, and created my own starter repo that people can pull/fork/do whatever they want with.\nHow The more detailed instructions are on the start repo, so here are the summarised steps of how I did it:\nCreate a new branch for my website repo Delete everything (with the exception of git required files) Create a new Hugo site in that directory Add my adpated stack theme as a submodule Use Yarn to add all of the required modules (including the Hugo plugin from the author of the medium article) Edit the configuration files (package.json, tsconfig.base.json, vite.config.ts) to set everything up Create an assets/js folder Add a tsconfig.json file there, and fill it out Add the timeline source code into the js folder Re-add all of the content and configs from the existing Hugo site Edit the files that refer to the timeline to use the files in the assets folder Edit the theme to fix any issues when building Clean it all up Even that list makes things look a lot simpler than it was in reality:\nWhilst I was learning Vite, and used it for the simple-as-pie demo, the latest version was 6.3.5 and was compatible with my installation of Node. This was still the case while I was integrating it into my site (on a Monday). Then, on Tuesday, they released version 7, and for some reason Yarn stopped checking compatibility, demanding that I upgrade Node to install version 7. I could have instead forced it to use 6.3.5, but instead upgraded Node. When running the dev command, it kept failing. To investigate it, I had to install a local clone of the Hugo-Vite plugin so that I could add console logs to diagnose it. It turned out that my hugo.toml configuration file, despite being valid toml according to most online validation tools, was malformed according to the Node toml module. I was able to find an online tool that used it explicitly, so I could fix it. I think this may be a case of me realising I prefer yaml to toml. That\u0026rsquo;s all for now. I think the next step for me will be to implement GitHub actions to automatically update the server, but I want to be careful with that, and it\u0026rsquo;s not for tonight.\n","date":"2025-07-05T19:37:54+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2025-07-05-vite-integration/","title":"Vite Integration"},{"content":"Introduction Welcome to my new blog.\nAs I wrote in my previous entries, I was making changes to try to achieve an AAA WCAG accessibilty rating, but was severely limited by the awfulness of blogger.\nMy brother suggested looking into Static Site Generation, and so I settled upon Hugo, with the Stack theme in particular.\nThe transition itself hasn\u0026rsquo;t been completely smooth, but I\u0026rsquo;m managing to make it work.\nFirst of all, installing Hugo itself was simple enough, as well as installing the Stack theme. Configuring the site to use the theme, on the other hand, was the first hurdle - the in the configuration, rather than setting the theme as \u0026ldquo;Stack\u0026rdquo;, it had to be set to \u0026ldquo;Theme-Stack-Hugo\u0026rdquo;. This was because the instructions for the theme said so, but really the theme could be given any alias (and I prefer \u0026ldquo;Stack\u0026rdquo;)\nThe next issue was with getting the posts to appear in the list - creating a new post in content/posts like the Hugo tutorial states didn\u0026rsquo;t work, even if the post wasn\u0026rsquo;t set to draft. Delving into the theme, I saw that the list would get everything that is implied by the mainSections part of the config (i.e. whatever is in content/whatever-is-stated-in-the-config). Thus, I added \u0026ldquo;posts\u0026rdquo; to the mainSections of the config. No dice. Turns out they need to be in content/post, which does make sense in a way - posts will be of type \u0026ldquo;post\u0026rdquo;, after all. This was also because such configurations need to be put somewhere other than the root - I don\u0026rsquo;t completely understand why things are split in this way, but it is what it is.\nMigrating Posts The next step was to migrate my blogger blog to here - looking at the different migration tools \u0026ldquo;blogger-to-hugo\u0026rdquo; seemed the best option, as it would also download the embedded images to include in the posts. This, too, proved a bit of a challenge. When migrating the posts, it had to be into a directory that didn\u0026rsquo;t exist yet - as if it would use mkdir but not handle an exception properly.\nFine, I can put them into a new directory then copy them all into the correct one.\nThe next problem was that it would fail if I had any empty, draft posts. Which I did.\nFollowing that, it had inserted a lot of random crlf characters - pretty much after every 13th word. But it didn\u0026rsquo;t just insert one, it would insert 2. This completely broke the HTML in each post. All 115 of them.\nI created an automated script to replace the crlf symbols, but there was some kind of encoding issue, which prevented any of the posts rendering, so I had to resort to doing it all manually. In a way, it\u0026rsquo;s a blessing - even if the script had worked, there would have been some manual work to be done, and there are some posts that I think should be purged. Still, wasted time is frustrating.\nMarkdown Another issue is that the markdown it would generate for embedded images would also be broken. For example, in the Raziel Amigurumi post there were lots of images in tables, but there was one where it was by itself, and it generated the following markdown\n[![](../images/thumbnails/2024-12-06-raziel-amigurumi-wings.webp)](../images/2024-12-06-raziel-amigurumi-wings.webp) Whilst the link works perfectly fine, the thumbnail doesn\u0026rsquo;t, because the \u0026ldquo;..\u0026rdquo; in the path get stripped out when Hugo compiles. Trying to escape it resulted in \u0026ldquo;%56%56\u0026rdquo; in the path, which is also wrong. As such, I needed to replace all the image tags. Thankfully, I found the figure shortcode to be quite good for this.\nPerhaps I could fork the repo for the migrator, to fix these issues, but that was problematic too, because:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s written in Python, and I have no experience in it. This can be overcome, but would take a while. The page for the migrator points to a repo that no longer exists. So I can\u0026rsquo;t fork it. Maybe it exists elsewhere, but at this point it seems too much effort. React A big draw to my site, it\u0026rsquo;s current raison d\u0026rsquo;etre, is The Interactive Legacy of Kain Timeline\nThis currently uses React and MUI, but it has gone through a few interations. First it was Knockout and Bootstrap. Then I refactored it using Vue.js, and then I redid it again like it is now.\nIn doing those iterations, I gathered up a bit of debt (e.g. using Bootstrap definitions for the layout), so I had to use this opportunity to strip that out.\nUsing the MUI components, I found that the background colours were hard coded, and as such it looked weird in Dark Mode.\nThus I\u0026rsquo;ve had to spend a while refactoring the app so that it would instead use the CSS variables that the main site does. I hope this makes it visually pleasing in both modes.\nThere are still some irritations I want to resolve, but that will be for another day:\nAt the moment I have to program the app in a different repo, then copy the build files across The Hugo page won\u0026rsquo;t allow me to use a shortcode to automatically detect the JavaScript and CSS files, so I have to manually change there injection declarations Hopefully I can eventually integrate React into this workflow sucessfully, allowing for smoother development, and without forcing users to download files that won\u0026rsquo;t be used on their visits.\nAltering the Theme Though the theme allows for injecting custom CSS into it, I still thought it necessary to fork it to create my own repo\nThere were two main things I could achieve with this:\nI could adjust the breakpoints - the default theme sets the max width of the page at various screen widths, but it only did this up to the third-largest breakpoints. This meant that when viewing the site on a wide screen, the page would take up very little actual space, which I did not like. Though this could be solved with custom CSS, I thought it better to itegrate it into the theme directly. I\u0026rsquo;ve previously mentioned the Interactive Timeline, and there is a link to it in the sidebar. When I first created it, I also made a blog post with the same name. The sidebar code in the theme would set a link as active if the name of the page you are viewing matches the name of the page the link connects to. This meant that, when viewing that blog post, the link was set as active, even though it didn\u0026rsquo;t link to the post. This is, in my opinion, a pretty significant oversight, which I needed to correct. Thankfully, it turned out to be very easy to do so. I\u0026rsquo;ve even created a PR to try to fix it in the main branch. Having the theme under my full control may also enable me to integrate React more easily, but I\u0026rsquo;m not sure at this moment in time.\nPHP \u0026amp; Redirection The old version of the site used PHP, not for anything spectacular, merely for the partial views. These are now handled by Hugo, making PHP redundant. However, these links have existed for years (in some cases decades), so in order to not break them I\u0026rsquo;ve had to create PHP pages that would be on the old paths, but that redirect to the new paths.\nThe main exception to this is the main index page, which linked to the blog. Now I have to effectively do the reverse - no longer redirect from here to the blog subdomain, but instead to have the blog subdomain redirect to the main index.\nI think that should be easy to do with my domain name provider, but I will wait a few days afterwards, to ensure that the DNS tables have updated, before deleting the old blog.\nAccessibility As I\u0026rsquo;ve been banging on about for weeks if not months, part of my main motivation for this was to enhance the accessiblity of the site overall.\nI think I\u0026rsquo;ve achieved that. I\u0026rsquo;ll keep scanning through pages to see what I can find, but at the time of writing, the only issues I can find relate to link sizes being too small to meet AAA standards (which is very difficult) and some best standards involving the \u0026ldquo;Related content\u0026rdquo; section at the bottom of the page.\nTo Do Over all, though there is still work to do, I\u0026rsquo;m very pleased with the end result. Maybe now I can take a break and complete Y\u0026rsquo;s 7.\nCategory colours - each category is assigned a colour, which is visible on the header for blog posts. On the sidebar, they are all uniform. I edited the theme to show the colours, but they looked gaudy. So not only do I want to enable the colours in the sidebar, but I want to pick better colours (and do so before I show them all together) Category images - Each category can have an image associated with it. I think that could make things look nicer. Blog Post Images - Each blog post can have an image associated with it. I tried this using the images contained within posts (where applicable) but it looked horrendous. I\u0026rsquo;d like to try again, but with different pictures. Related posts - A section at the bottom of the page that throws up a \u0026ldquo;Best Practice\u0026rdquo; warning, because it uses the same HTML as part of the blog post headers. I\u0026rsquo;d simply change this to a different partial to resolve the issue. Integrate React - see above. Plus, if I create any further apps (which I intend to do) then it would really steamline the workflow. GitHub actions - further streamlining would be to make it so that, when pushing to the GitHub repo for this website, that it would then update the files on the server. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to shift to GitHub pages for it (yet), so I\u0026rsquo;m setting a bit of a harder challenge for myself. Some kind of mobile app - Part of the reason updates are so rare, are because it\u0026rsquo;s a lot of effort to create a blog post. Though there is a Blogger app, it\u0026rsquo;s not nice to use IMHO. I would rather that I could do my own, that would commit to GitHub directly. Admittedly, Blogger did have functionality for updating via email, which I barely made use of, so maybe I\u0026rsquo;m making excuses. ","date":"2025-05-10T22:03:54+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2025-05-10-blog-migration/","title":"Blog Migration"},{"content":"If you have been paying attention, you may have noticed a lot of styling changes being made here. You see, I\u0026rsquo;ve dedicated some time to enhancing the accessibility of the site, fixing the issues that Siteimprove was reporting on.\nThe most surprising thing to me was how many errors are thrown up due to the template I use for my blog. The blog, which is hosted by Blogger, which is in turn owned by Google - being what was at least initially a web-focused company, you\u0026rsquo;d expect them to adhere to global standards in their products. Or perhaps expecting that is a bit naïve.\nSuch issues are:\nEvery single link is too small The default colours don\u0026rsquo;t have a large enough contrast with the background Missing aria role declarations everywhere The especially frustrating thing about this is that I can\u0026rsquo;t actually fix those errors - at least not without injecting some JavaScript into the template, which isn\u0026rsquo;t going to help anyone who has that disabled. I\u0026rsquo;ll give that a try at some point soon - I can inject HTML via gadgets, so perhaps it won\u0026rsquo;t strip script tags.\nAnother issue is that, having implemented as many fixes as I can think of, I think a lot of it looks worse, to be honest - but font sizes needed to increase, otherwise you\u0026rsquo;d have a massive clickable area around some text that looks like it\u0026rsquo;s just floating in the middle of white-space. This is probably why I\u0026rsquo;m more of a developer than a designer.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve tried to align the rest of the site with this template. There are some obvious differences - this block has a background image over the header, but that is lacking on the other pages. Perhaps I\u0026rsquo;ll add it at a later point, but I do like the boxes.\n","date":"2025-04-21T20:08:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2025-04-21-accessibility-updates/","title":"Accessibility updates"},{"content":"A small one, but one I want to draw attention to nonetheless.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve now updated the Interactive Legacy of Kain Timeline to include a few quality of life improvements:\nI updated some of the data, specifically the connections, to be more accurate - as an example, previously some of the connections for the Soul Reaver blade bypassed some nodes. Whilst this was technically correct because they were straight lines, this also meant that the arrows on those connections were drawn under nodes, and it didn\u0026rsquo;t look great. Some arrows are still drawn under nodes, but there are fewer instances of this, and it\u0026rsquo;s a difficult problem to avoid. I\u0026rsquo;ve updated it to use the most recent version of simple-as-pie - this doesn\u0026rsquo;t really add much, but at least I\u0026rsquo;m keeping my own stuff up to date with my own libraries (I still need to update the demo page, which may be a job for tomorrow) I\u0026rsquo;ve made the timeline more responsive - previously it was fixed to a width of 750px, but now it is 100% of the available width (with 750px being the minimum) Whilst this may seem simple, it proved to be far from it. Sure, lines and text and circles etc can all do calculations to determine their position consistently. However, path elements, which make up the connections and arrows (arguably the most important part), need absolute values - this meant that I needed to get the width of the svg container itself, and to vastly alter all of the calculations that things were previously using. It was tempting to use redux hooks like I do for literally everything else, but instead I opted for basic React state and effect hooks, and then passed the value directly to the child elements as a property, as they only needed to go one level deep. I may change my approach later, but it is working correctly, so there may not be any need to complicate matters further. ","date":"2025-04-10T23:25:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2025-04-10-timeline-updates/","title":"Timeline Updates"},{"content":"Good news everyone!\nOver the weekend I managed to finish migrating The Interactive Legacy of Kain Timeline to use React.js rather than Vue.js\nA few years ago, I had a pretty catastrophic computer failure, and as a result I lost the source code. I had to re-do this one from scratch, but I did it to imitate the Vue.js one closely, whilst adding in better features.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve taken precautions, so will be able to make changes to this one very swiftly - which is especially good considering the upcoming Dead Shall Rise comic, and the Encyclopaedia.\nAs part of this, I also ended up creating a re-usable component for creating SVG Pie Charts. I called it Simple-As-Pie\nBoth of these still have some improvements that I can make: making the timeline default to the full width of the available space; making it look better on mobile; allowing you to edit the minutiae of the controls; ensuring a parent of the Pie Chart is an SVG element; making sure the dependencies are spot on;\nHowever, both are in a usable state, hence my publicly releasing them.\nEnjoy!\n","date":"2025-01-21T12:48:00.002Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2025-01-21-the-interactive-timeline/","title":"The Interactive Timeline"},{"content":"I started this one on November 1st, as my first project whilst undertaking the challenge of crocheting every day in November for Bone Cancer Research Trust. In total I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to raise £463.13 (including Gift Aid and my employer\u0026rsquo;s match funding) and did 45 hours across the 30 days (I slowed down at the end to not burn myself out)\nIf people want to contribute, the donation page is here - alternatively, people can just donate to the cause directly.\nLeft: The doll, glowing in the dark. Right: The doll, in bright light\nStats The doll is 12 inches tall and just over 9 inches in wing-span. The Wraith Blade is 9 inches long and about 2 inches wide.\nIn total it took 39 hours across 19 days (so just over 2 hours a day), using 11 different yarns.\nPosability To ensure that the doll was posable, I used the wiring instructions detailed in Hoffman\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Wanderer\u0026rsquo;s\u0026rdquo; pattern. Well, roughly - she recommends a particular gauge of wire, but I just used what I had to hand. I don\u0026rsquo;t know what gauge that is - it should probably be thicker (so it doesn\u0026rsquo;t poke through the stitches as much) but it is also so thick that it was difficult to push through the stuffing. I should probably take this as a lesson to use less stuffing, but I won\u0026rsquo;t.\nHead The head was a combination of the skull pattern I used for the Soul Reaver merged with the long \u0026amp; narrow head pattern I usually use.\nI planned out the pattern - I would follow the usual pattern until round 13, then I would integrate the eyes. I would use black to go down the cheeks, do the nodes at round 15, then finish the face aspect at round 16.\nFor my first try I used some glow in the dark yarn I got from Temu for the eyes, but it ended up looking \u0026ldquo;goofy\u0026rdquo;, for lack of a better word.\nThe goofy version of the head\nFor the second try, rather than using the yarn directly when the skull pattern would say, I instead just used black. Afterwards, I used some yarn to pull the eye sockets through, to make some definition. Then I used some Lion Brand \u0026ldquo;Chenille\u0026rdquo;* Glow in the Dark yarn for the eyes. It ended up looking much better.\n*Not actually Chenille, despite what they call it\nUnderneath, I used some glow in the dark blue yarn to give the hollow an ethereal glow. I used some \u0026ldquo;bone white\u0026rdquo; yarn for the teeth.\nMuch like with Janos and Kain, I used the adapted the standard ears by doing some hdc in the end to make them pointy.\nLeft: Head in progress. Right: Close up of the ear\nI followed Allison Hoffman\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Wanderer\u0026rsquo;s\u0026rdquo; pattern to do the nose and bridge, but it is very difficult to see, even with the naked eye.\nFinally, I added on the black wig cap and hair. I considered using a wire brush, but thought that it would look too fluffy afterwards.\nBody The body was perhaps the most complicated part. Like the head, I planned this out ahead of time:\nI followed the normal body pattern until round 4, then did an \u0026ldquo;ultra decrease\u0026rdquo; while still trying to allow room for the spine: BLO HDC2TOG 7 times, ch1, turn, then repeat that until only 2 stitches remain (on that line)\nRounds 5 - 16: sc into each st\nThen reverse the end of round 4 until it\u0026rsquo;s 24 stitches wide: FLO, 2sc into next 2 sts, ch1, turn, repeat until 24 sts\nThen follow the rest of the pattern, but make sure to extend the neck to make up for the now missing rounds from the head pattern.\nThe body in progress\nFor detailing, like how I used spare yarn to sink the eye sockets, I used some to go from underneath the rib-cage to create the chest cavity.\nI also did the same on the pelvis, but that came after attaching the legs, and isn\u0026rsquo;t as easy to see.\nLeft: The chest cavity. Right: The pelvic cavity\nI used some silvery-blue yarn going up each side of the spine to imitate the design of the action figure, as well as to detail a breast-bone.\nI used some of the normal blue yarn on each side of the neck to try to add in that detail, but it is once again very difficult to see.\nAction figure (left) and doll (right) to compare the details\nCowl The cowl was made effectively just a brown rectangle, ensuring that it would cover the nose and down to the breast bone. I made it wider than it appears, and attached a button so that it can be used - it can stay on the doll or be removed.\nI embroidered Raziel\u0026rsquo;s symbol on the front - it\u0026rsquo;s always difficult to do this with such an effectively \u0026ldquo;low resolution\u0026rdquo;\nI also stitched a lot the same yarn I used for the eyes into the inside of it, because the blue on the underside of the head didn\u0026rsquo;t glow very well, so this was my solution to get the desired effect.\nWings For the wings I used the silvery-blue yarn, stitched directly into the back of the body. It was effectively random - I was trying to follow the wings on the action figure - the holes needed to be random and the wings needed to be as long as the arms. It\u0026rsquo;s another limitation of the \u0026ldquo;low resolution\u0026rdquo; of yarn that they look how they do.\nLegs For these I followed the same pattern I did for Janos and Kain. I didn\u0026rsquo;t realise until after I was done that Raziel\u0026rsquo;s greaves should have been a colour change - for some reason in my head they were a single plate strapped on, rather than something that wraps all the way around the legs.\nFor the greaves I used a bronze yarn, a rectangle that wrapped around the legs, then with some triangles and a strap along the bottom. Getting the rectangle the right size was nigh-impossible, but I hid the rougher parts on the back-inner-leg.\nAction figure (left) and doll (right) to compare greaves\nI tried to add some extra definition on the leg seam and pelvis, but pulling through oddments didn\u0026rsquo;t look very good, and adding stitches with the silver-blue would have looked off. The action figure has flecks of that colour in the pelvis, but not to the degree that stitching some in would create.\nCrotch comparison\nArms I used Hoffman\u0026rsquo;s arms-with-fingers pattern, changing from blue to brown 1/3 of the way down, and joining two fingers together to make each claw (in bone-white). Both arms are on the same wire, meaning that they move together.\nI should definitely use a different piece of wire for each, in future.\nWraith Blade This was an adaptation of the previous Soul Reaver pattern - I tried to start with the previously mentioned \u0026ldquo;Chenille\u0026rdquo;* (though in green this time) but it snapped after starting a magic ring. So instead I did the skull in white, and then threaded the green glow in the dark yarn through every. Single. Stitch.\n*Still not actually Chenille\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t add features (eyes, teeth or nose) to the skull, because I thought they would definitely not be visible.\nThe blade was the same pattern, but using the green and white glow in the dark yarns.\nThe handle was more glow in the dark yarn wrapped around the wire that runs all the way through, with a bend at the top so it can hook onto the arm.\nI tried to add some crests to the side of the skull, but the yarn was too difficult to deal with, so I left them out. As such it looks more like the blade from Soul Reaver 1 rather than Defiance.\nI did, however, leave the those pieces of yarn in the head, so they could then wrap up Raziel\u0026rsquo;s arm, like the energy of the blade from the games.\n","date":"2024-12-06T20:26:00Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2024-12-06-raziel-amigurumi/","title":"Raziel amigurumi"},{"content":"This one was particularly difficult: The Soul Reaver itself!\nProbably the hardest part was constructing the skull, which had a fair few false starts.\nI found a pattern for a skull on club crochet which was the basis for that, but I had to narrow the eyes, alter the nose, and narrow the teeth.\nIt ended up looking more cute that intimidating, but that sort of fits in with the rest of the toys\nPattern alterations The colours I chose were an off white for the bone, and black for the holes.\nFollow the skull pattern until Round 4\nRnd 4 sc 10, tr 3, sc 1, tr 3, sc 1\nRnd 5 sc 10, tr 1, split 2, tr2, split 2, tr 1\nRnd 6 sc 9, tr 1 blo, black sc2, white tr1,sc1,tr1, black sc2, white tr1\nRnd 7 sc10, tr4, sc1, tr 4\nRnd 8 sc 1, inv dec1 x 3, sc9\nRnd 9 dec 3, sc1, dec 1, split - sc4/ dec 3\nThe blade This also had a fair few false starts, but eventually I found a pattern for a zig zag or lightning bolt, which I followed.\nAnnoyingly, I don\u0026rsquo;t seem to have bookmarked the link.\n[Edit] Found it: https://www.popsdemilk.com/blog/how-to-crochet-zigzag-stitch[/Edit]\nI did 2 rows in yellow (once again, somewhat limited by the colours I had to hand) - I did two of these (one for front and one for black), and put a pipe cleaner in between them to keep their shape. Then I stitched them together on each side with black.\nThe pipe cleaner had a bit of extra length on the top so it could stick through the point where the skull was finished off, and then it was stitched in place with some more yellow.\nThe crests These were done with some off cuts of pipe cleaner for shaping, but were largely done by sight rather than with a pattern.\nThe hilt The final piece of the puzzle was the hilt. I had run out of pipe cleaners, and wanted to use some wire to allow it to be held by Kain (or Janos or anyone else I make)\nSo I clipped a length of wire and bent it in the middle, so some would be used for shaping the hilt and the rest could be used as a clip.\nI then inserted that into the skull so the curve was wrapped around a stitch. I should have also twisted the wire around itself to secure it more. Every day is a school day.\nI then used yellow to stitch around one half of the wire. When I got near the top I then started to stuff the inside of it. Doing that so late was also a mistake.\nI then used some grey for the pommel at the very top.\nThe finished product As I said, it seems more cute than intimidating, and it is maybe a bit too big, but I think it works well enough. Below are pictures of Kain holding it, balancing on a National Trust easter egg.\n","date":"2024-05-31T09:37:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2024-05-31-soul-reaver-accessory/","title":"Soul Reaver accessory"},{"content":"After the Mario film came out I asked my son which character he would like a toy of, and he chose Bowser.\nThis is pretty much the reason I started learning yarn craft in the first place, so I made him one.\nThe pattern I followed was from this particular blog post from 2011 https://epic-yarns.com/2011/10/04/bowser/\nI submitted a comment asking for some clarification, but didn\u0026rsquo;t get a response. I think the blog is somewhat abandoned.\nHowever, you could consider this post as a supplement, as I have some suggestions on how to improve things.\nFirst of all, the instructions for putting everything together are not the best. Even the follow up edit with photos doesn\u0026rsquo;t make things much easier. As such, I will put some diagrams here (as they are clearer than photos)\nThe mouth is made of 10 pieces - 4 big balls, 1 small ball, 2 small tubes, and 3 big tubes. These all get stitched together using their tails. I\u0026rsquo;m not the best at stitching, and I would worry that things could come apart (I\u0026rsquo;m definitely not good with cutting the loose ends)\nAn improvement would be to combine the pieces together. For example, rather than 4 balls where there are 2 pairs of 2 connected with big tubes, instead, do the following:\nFollow the ball pattern and stuff it. Then sc 3, inc, sc 3. SC8 for 7 rounds. Stuff the tube. SC3, decrease, sc3. Follow the ball pattern from round 2 onwards. Stuff the ball. Dec 3. Finish off.\nIf you do that twice, you now will have two bar-bell shapes, and have drastically reduced the amount of stitching required. Perhaps you could even put some sort of nubs (just keep stitching into the same stitch to create a lump) on one of the final rows of one of the balls to indicate where to attach the bottom jaw.\nRegardless of if you do that, here are some diagrams showing how the parts of the head fit together\nPersonally, I wanted to avoid using felt, so they eyes and inside of the mouth were made entirely with yarn. To make the inside of the mouth I did the \u0026ldquo;lower jaw flap\u0026rdquo; two more times in pink (though I think they were a round smaller). One was attached directly to the open part of the head, the other was stitched onto the inside of the lower jaw flap.\nThe shell is the wrong size. The instructions state to make the green piece, and then to make the white tube to equal the circumference of it, but doing that makes it too big for the body, and I had to stitch it really tightly to cover those gaps. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how to fix this apart from making things smaller, or the instructions clearer. Following on from that, the instructions mention putting the legs on before the shell and tail. I\u0026rsquo;m glad that I put the shell on first, because once I did so it vastly reduced the available space for the legs and tail. It was difficult to get everything balanced and in the right place. This could definitely be cleared up, though fixing the shell size issue may make it a non-issue. The instructions are not clear as to what needs to be stuffed and what does not. The hair, for example (which many other people have asked about, but not had their questions answered) - when I was putting it on, I felt that it was better to not stuff those pieces, otherwise they would struggle to fit on. The eyebrows. Honestly, this was easy to figure out, but not from the description or the pictures - funnily enough, it\u0026rsquo;s hard to tell the difference between one layer of orange and another layer of the exact same orange in a photo. Diagrams (or photos with pieces in different colours) would help massively. Here are some more. Finally, my other additions were a tongue for the inside of the mouth, and eyes. These were mainly done freehand, so I do not have patterns for them.\nNext, I\u0026rsquo;m moving onto something self indulgent and hopefully easier, because this one was a nightmare!\n","date":"2024-03-01T19:30:00Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2024-03-01-bowser-amigurumi/","title":"Bowser Amigurumi"},{"content":"For the past couple of years I\u0026rsquo;ve been dabbling about in Unity, but due to their recent PR disaster, I\u0026rsquo;ve shifted over into dabbling with Godot instead.\nThe project I\u0026rsquo;m trying to create is a turn-based strategy game, which would include terrain. As such, units might be hidden behind terrain, so the user should be able to rotate the camera.\nTo this end I\u0026rsquo;ve been following the Godot tutorials, creating a 3d plane, and putting a box in one corner so that I can see how the whole thing would rotate (if it were a plain plane, I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be able to tell it rotated). I didn\u0026rsquo;t bother putting in a player character yet (as the concept is quite different to the example in the tutorial), but I did follow the steps for implementing a camera.\nI wanted the camera to rotate by increments of 90 degrees (so there would effectively be 4 positions). Unfortunately, most of the maths in the documentation is about radians, which doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem useful to me for this case, as it makes the maths more complicated (and less precise due to pi having [as far as we know] infinite numbers after the decimal)\nEventually I found that I could use \u0026ldquo;rotation_degrees\u0026rdquo;, giving me the exact precision I wanted and without requiring more complex calculations. I didn\u0026rsquo;t want the transition to be instantaneous, so I used \u0026ldquo;lerp\u0026rdquo; to make the camera rotate over a series of frames (apparently this is an abbreviation for \u0026ldquo;linear interpolation\u0026rdquo;, which makes sense) - I got this from one of the Godot samples (but it didn\u0026rsquo;t have much annotation)\nI also wanted to make it so that inputs are ignored during rotation, that the user can only do one rotation at a time. To this end, I wrote the code so that when it starts rotating it sets a flag, then when finished it resets it. If it receives another instruction to start, while that flag is set, that instruction is ignored.\nBelow is the code I had for that point, before things get particularly interesting.\nextends Marker3D const ROT_SPEED = 10 var rotating = false var targetRotation = 0 func _ready(): targetRotation = rotation_degrees.y func rotate_left(): targetRotation = targetRotation - 90 if(targetRotation \u0026lt; -360): targetRotation = targetRotation + 360 rotating = true print(targetRotation) func rotate_right(): targetRotation = targetRotation + 90 if(targetRotation \u0026gt; 360): targetRotation = targetRotation - 360 rotating = true print(targetRotation) func _process(delta): if(!rotating): if(Input.is_action_pressed(\u0026#34;camera_rotate_left\u0026#34;)): rotate_left() if(Input.is_action_pressed(\u0026#34;camera_rotate_right\u0026#34;)): rotate_right() else: rotation_degrees = Vector3(rotation_degrees.x,lerp(rotation_degrees.y,targetRotation,ROT_SPEED*delta),rotation_degrees.z) if (rotation_degrees.y == targetRotation): #Re-enable when finished rotating = false However, this didn\u0026rsquo;t work as expected - the rotation would stop, but not finish, before reaching a 90 degree change. Since the starting rotation was 45 degrees, if the target was then 135 (45 + 90), the rotation would stop at 134.999969482422 degrees (which changed to 135.000015258789 when I moved the window)\nThis meant that I had to round the current rotation value to compare to the target, and rather than an equals comparison use a \u0026ldquo;greater than or equal to\u0026rdquo;, in case it rotated slightly too far.\nAs you can see, the \u0026ldquo;rotation_degrees\u0026rdquo; property is a Vector3, which is a structure that uses 3 floats as the values. But all number types (int, double, float etc) all have a maximum value (which differs for each type) - once that is reached, if you add 1 to that number, the result is then the minimum possible value (this is called \u0026ldquo;overflow\u0026rdquo;). What would happen when this number is reached for the Vector3? I have no idea, but with the code as above it is possible to just keep rotating until you reach that point. Since I don\u0026rsquo;t know what would happen, and the numbers could be absurdly huge, it makes sense to restrict it to smaller numbers to avoid this and make debugging in future far easier.\nThe next step was to adjust the values so that if it goes below -360 degrees or above 360 is then adds or subtracts 360 to keep it within a reasonable boundry.\nWhen testing this out, though, it looked like it was acting like a coiled spring - when the target value got above 360 (which would be 405, so it would then be set to 45) it would suddenly \u0026ldquo;spring\u0026rdquo; back rather than smoothly animating. Putting in debugging, it seemed to be rotating twice at once.\nThis is apparently from using the \u0026ldquo;Input.is_action_pressed\u0026rdquo; function, as it seems to keep executing the action repeatedly. Perhaps, despite the flag trying to prevent this, it was picking up the instructions across two frames? Maybe there is a race condition, and the function was executing asynchronously? Regardless, switching it to \u0026ldquo;Input.is_action_just_pressed\u0026rdquo; seems to restrict it to only one press at a time.\nHowever, still the change is rather sudden, the final change not having any animation to it.\nThe ultimate solution was to allow it to overflow for the purposes of animation, and then to adjust the value after the rotation has finished. At least for rotating right, where the numbers are increasing. When decreasing, because of the check (greater than or equal to) it meant that the rotation was finishing early. So the comparison needed to change depending on a switch with 3 states - an enum rather than a boolean flag.\nThe final code for this is below.\nextends Marker3D enum RotationType {NONE, LEFT, RIGHT} const ROT_SPEED = 10 var rotating = RotationType.NONE var targetRotation = 0 func _ready(): targetRotation = rotation_degrees.y print(\u0026#34;Starting, current rotation is \u0026#34; + String.num(targetRotation)) func rotate_left(): targetRotation = targetRotation - 90 rotating = RotationType.LEFT print(\u0026#34;Setting target rotation to \u0026#34; + String.num(targetRotation)) func rotate_right(): targetRotation = targetRotation + 90 rotating = RotationType.RIGHT print(\u0026#34;Setting target rotation to \u0026#34; + String.num(targetRotation)) func _process(delta): if(rotating == RotationType.NONE): if(Input.is_action_just_pressed(\u0026#34;camera_rotate_left\u0026#34;)): rotate_left() if(Input.is_action_just_pressed(\u0026#34;camera_rotate_right\u0026#34;)): rotate_right() else: rotation_degrees = Vector3(rotation_degrees.x,lerp(rotation_degrees.y,targetRotation,ROT_SPEED*delta),rotation_degrees.z) var normalised_y = rotation_degrees.round().y if ((normalised_y \u0026gt;= targetRotation \u0026amp;\u0026amp; rotating == RotationType.RIGHT) || (normalised_y \u0026lt;= targetRotation \u0026amp;\u0026amp; rotating == RotationType.LEFT)): #Re-enable when finished if (normalised_y \u0026gt; 360): normalised_y = normalised_y - 360 if(normalised_y \u0026lt; -360): normalised_y = normalised_y + 360 rotation_degrees.y = normalised_y targetRotation = normalised_y print(\u0026#34;Finished rotating, target rotation = \u0026#34; + String.num(targetRotation)) rotating = RotationType.NONE ","date":"2023-11-15T21:50:00.003Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2023-11-15-godot-rotating-a-camera-in-3d-space/","title":"Godot - Rotating a Camera in 3d space"},{"content":"This is one I started working on pretty much immediately after finishing my previous doll - the namesake of the Legacy of Kain series: Kain (in his Elder Vampire form)\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been quite hard to work up the motivation for typing this up, in part because I sort of live-tooted it over on Mastodon\nNevertheless it\u0026rsquo;s been a bit of a long journey - we have a puppy who would probably try to eat whatever I make, so I was only working on it during my lunch breaks when I\u0026rsquo;m in the office (so at most a couple of hours each week)\nThrough into that my getting an abscess on my back and getting it surgically removed, there\u0026rsquo;s been a lot to get in the way (up-side though is that I now have a hole in my back that I could hang crochet hooks off of if I were a complete lunatic)\nThis one used the same base as the others (AmiguruME by Allison Hoffman), but of course, with some adaptations. The flesh was done in a dark green (I couldn\u0026rsquo;t find anything to accurately be the sickly-vomit-green-and-yellow of his flesh in the games, so this was a good abstraction in my opinion) and the legs in plain black.\nLegs/Feet I used the same technique for the feet as I did with the Janos doll, but used a sort of off-white acrylic yarn to give it a sort of ivory colour. This was also to try to make a clear distinction between the claws and the hair.\nThe grieves were done right at the end - using the \u0026ldquo;traverse root\u0026rdquo; method (just doing a bunch of slip stitches into existing stitches as a basis for more) I made them using some yellow acrylic to make them sort of golden. I wanted to do this to make the legs more interesting.\nDespite measuring them against one another, I didn\u0026rsquo;t remember the number of rounds/rows, so they ended up slightly different heights. I\u0026rsquo;m quite annoyed by this whenever I look at it. You could call me a-grieve-d! (I\u0026rsquo;ll get my coat)\nArms/Hands As mentioned, the flesh was in a dark green acrylic yarn, changing to a brown alpaca wool for the sort of leather wraps, then finally to black for his gloves.\nFollowing the Commander Sterling doll, I discovered that Allison Hoffman had created a pattern for hands with fingers, which is sold on her shop.\nOf course I bought it, so that the fingers would be in better proportion. It took me ages to get around to downloading it. In fact, I had waited too long, so the link was invalid. However, Hoffman re-enabled the link for me once I emailed her about it - top tier customer service.\nTo make the claws I joined the fingers together into pairs and then used decreasing to make them pointy. I made the thumb twice as wide on the hand and did the same thing to decrease to a point.\nBody Accessories In terms of the body, there were a few accessories to make.\nFirst of all was the cape. I absolutely obsessed over this. I wanted to see if I could get the symbol onto it by doing colour changes, and minimise carrying across stitches (because that looks messy)\nI created a tool in ReactJS in order to visualise this\u0026hellip; and found that if I were to do it in the size I want, I would have to embroider it instead. Oh well. (Note, I\u0026rsquo;ll make the tool available eventually)\nI also made the cape a bit short - in my head, it went to the centre of the chest (under the medallion), and the rest is leather straps, so I worked to that.\nThen I decided to use the toy as a reference, and found that the cape should wrap right around the body, and instead the leather strap just sort of floats there, not connected to anything other than the cape.\nWeird.\nSo I did the rest of the cape, and the leather strap.\nThe final part was the \u0026ldquo;Plunging Codpiece (TM)\u0026rdquo; - I realised that if I were to place the bottom of this at the top of the leg/waist section, it would be too high. Thankfully, I could use the gold/yellow internal section to sort of hide this, make it look like the waist was lower than it was.\nI drew the pattern on paper, and went by that rather than a pattern in terms of stitches and rows. I\u0026rsquo;m pretty pleased with the result.\nHead/Face The face was relatively normal, following the pattern and using white acrylic for the hair. Looking at the toy I was using for reference, I tried to draw the crests. They looked to be in three parts, but had to be distorted because the doll\u0026rsquo;s head is stretched in comparison to the more realistically proportioned toy. I think it ended up looking a bit strange, and not so much of a scowl, but it did hide issues with the hairline. The earring was a very simple thread with a knot at the end, stitched into the left ear.\nIn terms of the hair, I made it extremely long in order to get it to the right length, and then cut it down. However, when I ended up cutting it, I definitely cut it a bit too short, because some of the strands would have been loose (they were too short). I just have to keep reminding myself that this is an abstraction.\nTo quote a famous dog that lives in a burning house, \u0026ldquo;This is fine!\u0026rdquo;\nConclusion There are a few changes I would try to make were I to do this again, but overall I\u0026rsquo;m happy with the result, despite some niggling little issues that annoy me.\nI may eventually have the patience to try to make him a Soul Reaver to hold, but I don\u0026rsquo;t know how to make skulls, and I also don\u0026rsquo;t know how to make the kriss blade without making it too floppy.\n","date":"2023-05-19T09:27:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2023-05-19-kain-amigurumi/","title":"Kain Amigurumi"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been keeping this one under my hat, a wee bit.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s fair to say that I\u0026rsquo;m a fan of James Stephanie Sterling\u0026rsquo;s work - I remember when they started publishing videos on the Escapist, and at first they weren\u0026rsquo;t for me, though eventually I went back and got hooked.\nSeeing their transformation, and hearing their explanation about it, has definitely helped me overcome a great degree of ignorance when it comes to LBGTQIA+ issues.\nSince they started wrestling not just in England, but local to me, I wanted to make a doll of them to give as a present, which I managed to at the debut of Avant Garde wrestling:\nOn a separate note, it was my first live show - I may do a bit of a write up, though I\u0026rsquo;m not familiar enough with the art to go much further than \u0026ldquo;I enjoyed it!\u0026rdquo;\nThe doll itself is, like the other dolls I\u0026rsquo;ve made and intend to make, based upon the patterns in AmiguruME by Allison Hoffman.\nThe main differences to mention are:\nThe Mask The Cape The Arms The Body Time taken The Mask For the mask I followed the main wig cap pattern, but when I got to round 15 (around where the nose is) I would start with a ch1, reverse, inv dec, sc until the last two stitches, inv dec. I then kept decreasing until I ran out of space. The downside to this is that it neglects the chin strap, though that was difficult to see in the material I used as references.\nAfter then squeezing that on top, I made a star out of some yellow yarn (the closest I had to gold) to stich in place. Attaching the safety eyes after this was nothing short of a nightmare, but I got there in the end.\nThe Cape For this I effectively made two capes - one using a colourful rainbow-esque yarn I had (it would be lovely if there were some \u0026ldquo;space\u0026rdquo; yarn, but I thought it was nice and suitable) followed by the same in a metallic grey (to simulate silver). I then stitched the two layers together, for the final effect.\nI think I used the blazer pattern as a base, but just kept expanding outwards until it was wide enough, but I can\u0026rsquo;t fully remember. I keep thinking that maybe I should have made the cape a bit longer, but I am happy enough with it.\nThe Arms This was a major deviation - the arms in AmiguruME are rounded, without any fingers, and I wanted to branch out a bit. To do this, I followed the patterns from Edward\u0026rsquo;s Crochet Doll Emporium by Kerry Lord. The issue was that the arms in that book are longer than those in AmiguruME, even before you factor in the fingers.\nThis taught me quite a lot about the nature of crochet - I tried using a smaller hook, for example, but I crochet so tightly that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t make much of a difference. The overall size of the work is a combination of the size of the tools, the tension, the size of the yarn, and the number of rounds.\nThe arms ended up slightly too long, so in future I will try to cut out a few rounds. Either that, or use the (very misleadingly named) \u0026ldquo;traverse route\u0026rdquo; technique into future works where I want fingers. I suppose I could try to integrate them in more naturally, but the patterns in the books start from different ends of the arms, making that even more challenging.\nWhen it came to the gloves I switched to a non-metallic white (a bit more on that later) and worked backwards a little bit in order to create the layered effect.\nThe Body I followed the \u0026ldquo;curvy body\u0026rdquo; pattern, but largely ignored the pattern when it told me to decrease - this meant the breasts lost a bit of definition, so were I to try again I think I would try to increase everything proportionally.\nThe majority of the body legs and arms are done in a metallic white, with other parts (gloves, boots) done in plain white, in order to represent their wrestling costume.\nI did not realise when I started that the jumpsuit is actually grey, but so shiny it looks white in all of the videos and pictures that I had seen. Were I to try this again, I would change the body suit colour.\nI put stars over the body, but the yellow I had used for the face-star was too thick to make stars that small. As such, I used some thin threads which were much paler, hence they are completely different colours. Once again, were I doing this again I would invest in matching colours for this.\nTime taken It\u0026rsquo;s difficult to calculate the exact amount of time it took - I specifically remember being in the very early stages at the start of March, in the days surrounding my Granny\u0026rsquo;s funeral. I can\u0026rsquo;t remember exactly when I finished it - I showed it to people, but only on camera, so I cannot trace the exact date. I had definitely finished it by early to mid-June. So that was 13 weeks, round down to 10 for going to a conference etc, working for on average 8 hours a week (in the evenings and during lunch breaks at work), so in total at a guess it was 80 hours of work. No where near my current record of 2.5 years for Janos, but still a lot of work.\nBefore publishing this blog Steph tweeted about it, and the comments in the thread were heart-warming to read.\n","date":"2022-08-22T09:13:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2022-08-22-commander-sterling/","title":"Commander Sterling"},{"content":"This one has been in the works for a very long time, but last weekend I finally finished the amigurumi of Janos Audron that I\u0026rsquo;ve been working on for (no exaggeration here) - around 2 1/2 years!\nLet\u0026rsquo;s get into the details.\nDetails First of all, it cannot be understated how big this thing is: 1 foot tall and with a 2 foot wingspan tip to tip!\nThis was, like the Sunny doll, based on the patterns in AmiguruME by Allison Hoffman, though there were a few adaptations.\nWings The most obvious one is the wings. When I started these off I was using a Magpie pattern from Hanneke\u0026rsquo;s Designs. However, the free CAL (Crochet A-Long) period ran out while I was working on it, and I didn\u0026rsquo;t have a backup. Rather than buying it, I reflected and felt that the pattern just wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite right.\nEventually I managed to find this Pegasus by Crafty Designs, which I felt would result in something large enough with enough detail to satisfy me.\nI really am too much of a perfectionist, but not so much that when I found the wings were slightly different sizes (due to my differing tensions) that I was willing to start again - this part alone took up the bulk of 2 years!\nFeet Another change is the feet. From the reference photos, you can see that Janos doesn\u0026rsquo;t have shoes - he has exposed feet with two large claws, then wrapped in a sort of foot-wrap that goes around the balls of the feet. Another book I have, AmiguruME Pets (by Hoffman again) features a pattern for a dinosaur, where the ankle is the same width as for the human patterns! Perfect, except the dinosaur features 3 toes. As such I had to do some maths to resolve it (I\u0026rsquo;m hesitant to post the exact instructions, though, as since it\u0026rsquo;s based on someone else\u0026rsquo;s designs I\u0026rsquo;m not sure if that crosses a line)\nThe end result works very well, though!\nClothes The next big issue was the tunic. Following Hoffman\u0026rsquo;s pattern for a blazer, it didn\u0026rsquo;t quite fit due to how I had attached the wings. As such I did each of the three sections according to the pattern, but effectively doubled the arm-hole piece (HDC across a row, then do the increase or decrease) - I also made one of the sections one row longer than the others (and didn\u0026rsquo;t finish it off).\nOnce each of the three sections was done, starting with the part that I intentionally made longer, I effectively continued the stitching into the bottom of the back piece and then into the other side - as a result, they were naturally joined together rather than needing to stitch them with a thread and then continuing onwards. I added many more rows to make the tunic as long as needed.\nThen came the collar piece. Despite looking up patters for capes and pauldrons, I could not find anything appropriate, so I had to sort of free-hand it. I made a \u0026ldquo;model\u0026rdquo; out of a piece of paper, and then just stitched using it as a template. That also worked rather well!\nAdditional flourishes The final flourishes were a bit basic - a golden belt, a sash over the shoulders, and the face (including tiny stitches to be the fangs)\nOver all, I\u0026rsquo;m happy with the result. I hope to never do wings ever again, but still want to do more Legacy of Kain characters (eventually)\nTo finish, here\u0026rsquo;s a close up of the face, and the final resting place: My display cabinet, with a Raziel toy for scale.\n","date":"2022-02-15T19:56:00.001Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2022-02-15-janos-audron-amigurumi/","title":"Janos Audron Amigurumi"},{"content":"A lot has happened in the past couple of years. I got married, had a child, switched jobs, and the apocalypse started. So many changes.\nSimilarly, I\u0026rsquo;ve changed the site a bit.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve updated the Legacy of Kain Timeline to use Vue rather than the mix of Bootstrap, Jquery and Knockout. The end result is that there is less data to load, so the page should run faster.\nDoing a calculation on the folders involved, the new page is almost a full Megabyte smaller than the previous. In modern times this payload difference probably doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean too much, but it helps a bit, and it means that the libraries for making the page function are also smaller.\nFewer calls, fewer complications results in it being outright quicker to run and respond to changes, even on my terrible laptop.\nFor example, changing the colour or toggling entries on the old one would take a few seconds for everything to be recalculated. In the new version, the changes are nigh instantaneous, because it is just changing the elements that have changed, not the entire page.\nPart of the complication was changing libraries - I switched from using bootstrap to using vuetify. Both of these use similar layout methods (e.g. a 12 grid layout) but vuetify uses flex. Changing this meant that I had to adapt the whole page layout. Though this took a while, it was worth it - it\u0026rsquo;s quite obvious that I had no idea what I was doing with the old layout (I put in column declarations, then overwrote them all, so what was the point of the declarations?)\nI then filtered those changes through to the entire site, including this blog. I also removed redundant files, so my site should take up less room on the server for now.\nAll in all, it was a long arduous process, but hopefully worth it both for myself and for whomever navigates the site.\nThere is more content coming, but life is full-on.\n","date":"2020-09-07T12:06:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2020-09-07-re-design-the-interactive-timeline/","title":"Re-design \u0026 the interactive timeline"},{"content":"Somewhat inspired by a video titled Stop trying to make us like the Predator, I\u0026rsquo;ve come up with a rough idea for how the next Predator film should go.\nIn the near-ish future, the Earth is in peril. The environment has been badly damaged, and to try and compensate for this we reduced our farming of animals for food, but that hasn\u0026rsquo;t helped enough.\nWe have expanded to have outposts on other planets, starting to abandon Earth. Nearby to one of these colonies, Weyland-Yutani have found a planet that is resource rich, and populated by extremely docile animals. A situation somewhat like when we discovered Dodos, there are no apex carnivores, so the planet is brimming with herbivores.\nOf course, the company wants to take advantage of this situation, mining for resources and shipping these animals back to the colony for food.\nThere is concern from some that they may be over-zealous, ruining the planet like we did Earth, others claiming that it\u0026rsquo;s a gift from God and should be fully exploited.\nUnbeknownst to the company, the planet was essentially a Predator/Yautja farm.\nSeeing us as a menace, some of the Predators follow the company ships back to the colony, and the hunt begins.\nThis group of Yautja ride some kind of live mount, and they control Xenomorphs using some kind of sonic technology.\nThey don\u0026rsquo;t hunt us themselves, but instead watch the Xenomorphs do it to us.\nYes, this is a fox-hunting metaphor. In the interests of being balanced, well-meaning protesters will also get slaughtered.\nJust to be clear:\nHumans = foxes Predators = humans Mount = horses Xenomorphs = hounds Eden planet = hen house ","date":"2018-09-27T13:40:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2018-09-27-potential-predator-screenplay/","title":"Potential Predator screenplay"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Character development? Good writing? Dramatic tension? Pfft, who needs those?\u0026rdquo; - The screenwriters.\nIn Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom/Jurassic World 2/Jurassic Park 5, the island (Islar Nubar) which the Jurassic World theme park was on turns out to have a now active volcano, which is going to result in killing all of the dinosaurs on the island.\nClaire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is now the head of some \u0026ldquo;Save the dinosaurs\u0026rdquo; group, including the only two members with speaking parts:\nCowardly screaming nerd, and angry vet. Neither of them are at all likeable, and both are extremely annoying.\nThe US government is unwilling to try and save the dinosaurs (maybe after having this go wrong so many times in the past, their hesitance is justified? Nah, that won\u0026rsquo;t get explored at all.)\nInstead Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) has bought his own island, and wants to have the dinosaurs shipped there for the sake of conservation. So he enlists the help of Dearing, who in turn gets Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) so they can get the velociraptor \u0026ldquo;Blue\u0026rdquo; from the previous film.\nOf course, things are not what they seem, and things go wrong.\nOverall, the film is atrociously bad, even worse that Jurassic World 1 (which was terrible) but to help explain why I\u0026rsquo;m going to need to go into spoiler territory.\nIf you don\u0026rsquo;t want that: This is a badly written film, which tries to be meaningful and emotional, but fails in every aspect. The special effects are nice, but that is literally the only compliment I can give it. The writers have no idea how pack animals work, nor how to write a good screenplay.\nThe opening scene sets it up like a horror film, but the action is utterly bloodless, and the story utterly toothless.\nSPOILERS First of all, Lockwood didn\u0026rsquo;t need his own private island, as the company that owns Jurassic World (which Dearing was an employee of) also owns Ilsa Sorna, which is volcano free. But this was required to keep the idiotic plot moving forward.\nIn Jurassic World 1 the park had engineered the \u0026ldquo;iRex\u0026rdquo; (coming to an Apple store near you) - a hodge-podge of different dinosaurs and animals, with some velociraptor thrown in to make it even more intelligent and dangerous.\nIn this one they take the \u0026ldquo;iRex\u0026rdquo; DNA to make the \u0026ldquo;iRex 2\u0026rdquo; - it\u0026rsquo;s the same, but has more velociraptor in it, in order to make it yet more intelligent and dangerous.\nThe conclusions are obvious:\nThe more velociraptor DNA a dinosaur has, the smarter and more dangerous it is. Therefore, in a few films time, they\u0026rsquo;ll make the most dangerous one possible: 100% velociraptor! (Oh, wait, they already have that, it\u0026rsquo;s called a VELOCIRAPTOR!) The writers love raptors so much that these films are obviously a way to make money so that they can eventually make a 100% film-realistic raptor sex doll that they can share. This \u0026ldquo;iRex 2\u0026rdquo; eventually gets loose (of course), but only after literally mugging and winking at the camera. This isn\u0026rsquo;t a scary film, this is a poorly written cartoon.\nThroughout the film the characters are constantly trying to stop the dinosaurs going extinct again, ignoring the fact that PERFECT CLONING TECHNOLOGY EXISTS, so THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GOING EXTINCT ANYMORE.\nThis because insufferably annoying at the end where, rather than letting these completely disposable, replaceable, and dangerous animals die, they decide to let them loose in populated urban areas. This makes literally no sense to do, and is a terrible idea.\nA sequence when trying to capture Blue results in her savaging one of the soldiers who, despite being told not to, shoots her with a gun. Owen then gets angry and ATTACKS THE MAN WHO SAID NOT TO SHOOT as if it\u0026rsquo;s his fault. The man defends himself (completely understandably), which then angers the angry vet. She raises her gun, but is surrounded by other people with guns, and tries to get them to lower them (as if they are the aggressors, which, again, they are absolutely not). She eventually lowers her gun, which mysteriously disappears from her hand in the next shot.\nA little bit later Dearing complains about being double-crossed, with literally 0 evidence that she has been.\nThe whole sequence of being on the island makes absolutely no sense, is atrociously poorly written, and has some pretty awful direction.\nAlso, Lockwood\u0026rsquo;s grand-daughter is actually a clone of his daughter.\nThis information is not really important, but the film treats it as if it is, including a lingering shot on her eyes at the very end of the film.\n","date":"2018-06-21T09:35:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2018-06-21-jurassic-world-fallen-kingdom/","title":"Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"},{"content":"June was a busy month for me, and as I result I didn\u0026rsquo;t get to go to the cinema - hence there being no film reviews.\nThey were rather sparse in the run up to June, too, but there is a reason for that.\nIn June each year there is Sunnycon - it\u0026rsquo;s gone through a few name changes over the years (Sunderland Anime Convention, the Sunnycon Anime Convention, and now the Sunnycon Anime Expo) but there are a few consistencies. Namely that the mascot is a red-haired cat-girl cosplayer called \u0026ldquo;Sunny\u0026rdquo;, and that the last day features a charity auction.\nOne of my hobbies is knitting and crochet. Often at work you can see me on my lunch break, either writing a blog post film review, or working with some yarn.\nLate last year I was struck with inspiration. I wanted to make a doll of Sunny, and have it sold at the charity auction. I got to work, doing a bit here and there, occasionally getting bored at taking a break. But, as time wore on and the deadline approached, I had to dedicate more time to finishing it.\nThat is why the reviews largely stopped.\nIt was worth it, though. The doll sold for £40, and to someone who does seem to appreciate it (he created a Facebook page, featuring the doll touring various locations in the North East)\nThe pattern was mostly adapted from \u0026ldquo;AmiguruME\u0026rdquo; by Allison Hoffman, so it would feel wrong to make it wholly public (buy her book!)\nNonetheless I would like to describe what I can.\nBasic body The head, body and dress were all patterns in the book, except I added some red edging to the dress.\nI also made a collar with a bell, using red embroidery thread, and a tiny bell.\nLegs This was the pattern from the book, using white for the pants and flesh for the legs. At round 19 I switched to my own made-up pattern for the socks: It was the same pattern as before, but two rounds of white, two of black, repeated until the end.\nShoes I followed the pattern from the book, but I felt that the shoes weren\u0026rsquo;t long enough, so I extended them by another 5 or so rounds. I used red yarn for the laces.\nTail Similar to the basic arm pattern, but smaller (6 stitches rather than 8) and no decreasing to make sure it\u0026rsquo;s just a tube.\nStitched onto the backside of the doll around where the coccyx would be.\nSkirt Following the pattern as in the book (except maybe increasing a bit more), except stopping half way and changing direction. After attaching to the waist, making sure the split is at the tail, sealed up the skirt above and below the tail.\nEars I spent weeks trying to get these right, but finally I figured it out - each ear consists of two triangles (one in pink and one in black) which are then stitched together using black yarn. Finally they are affixed to the head roughly along the line of where an alice band would be.\nArms These were the basic pattern, but ignoring the thumb.\nThe gloves were the same pattern, maybe with an extra stitch or two to make it a tiny bit larger (to fit over the existing arm)\nThe fingers of the glove were the fingers from the Simon\u0026rsquo;s Cat pattern but roughly half the size.\nI did try crocheting the pads, but found the finger ones were too small and fiddly, and the large one ended up adding too much depth. It\u0026rsquo;s also for this reason that I didn\u0026rsquo;t do colour changes to make the pads (i.e. on the fingers it was a single stitch, which looked out of place)\nAs such, the pads were pink felt stitched on with normal thread.\nBow This was the belt pattern, but extended both in width and length. After attaching it to the body, I formed it into a bow at the front, and stitched it in place.\n","date":"2017-07-15T07:41:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2017-07-15-sunny-amigurumi/","title":"Sunny amigurumi"},{"content":"The Fast \u0026amp; The Furious 8 is (shockingly) the 8th film in the Fast \u0026amp; The Furious franchise, and was marketed as F8 (Fête) of the Furious in America.\nDespite the marketing, and the fact that it features a fair number of British actors (and actresses), it does not unfortunately feature Vin Diesel winning a coconut shy, or Dwayne \u0026ldquo;The Rock\u0026rdquo; Johnson correctly guessing the weight of a fruit-cake.\nInstead you will get:\nHilariously impossible car-based stunts; Car chases; Vin Diesel mumbling about the importance of family; James Bond-esque escapades (esquepades?); Wonderfully self-aware jokes; Intentional comedy; Maybe unintentional comedy; A Paul Walker tribute of some kind; I\u0026rsquo;m not even joking about the James Bondness - at one point the film even pulls the same plot twist from Spectre, except in this film it is convincing and makes sense.\nThis is a better James Bond film than the most recent James Bond film!\nThe expansion of the cast is not as problematic as you might imagine - by having as many different action stars from different genres as the film does, it allows the film to appeal to many different tastes. You want martial arts? We\u0026rsquo;ve got that. You want wrestling-style action?\nThat\u0026rsquo;s in there, too! Guns? Yeah, we\u0026rsquo;ve go loads of gun action!\nAs always with this franchise, this film is not the most intelligent, or even most believable, but it is exceedingly good fun, and entertaining as hell.\n","date":"2017-06-07T13:18:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2017-06-07-the-fast-the-furious-8/","title":"The Fast \u0026 The Furious 8"},{"content":"Do you remember M Night Shyamalan? He made a big splash with The Sixth Sense, the twist at the end shocking a lot of people. Not only that, but on subsequent watches, the twist continued to make sense - yes, there are some scenes where it\u0026rsquo;s a bit of a stretch, but it mostly worked.\nHe then did another film with Bruce Willis - Unbreakable. It was not based on a comic book, but was very much of that genre. It was a great pseudo-comic book film at a time when comic book films were mostly awful. It, too, featured a twist. While the twist wasn\u0026rsquo;t great, the film beforehand was, so it was overall a really good package.\nThen he continued to make films, relying on the concept of having a surprising twist at the end. The stories became a method for delivering the twist, rather than being good stories. He even made a navel-gazing film, which was infinitely less meaningful than he thought it was or intended it to be.\nHe went from amazing, to awful. From intelligent to stupid. It was hugely disappointing.\nThis is now how I feel about Ridley Scott.\nAlien Covenant is the latest film in the Alien/Prometheus \u0026ldquo;totally not an Aliens prequel\u0026hellip; ok, it is\u0026rdquo; franchise.\nIt is terrible, but to describe why I\u0026rsquo;m going to have to go into spoilers.\nBefore I get to those, I will say that there are a lot of phenomenally good practical effects. Some of the visual effects are absolutely amazing.\nHowever, there are a lot which are also unbelievably bad. Especially when it comes to the titular Alien(s). The issue is that, even if the good effects outweigh the bad, the bad are far more noticeable and memorable.\nIs it scary? Not even slightly.\nIs it tense? A little bit.\nIs the acting good? Yes.\nIs the script good? Hell no.\nIs it worth it? Absolutely not.\nThe first half hour or so is fantastic, and then the film takes an absolute nose-dive. The strength of Alien was that it was a horror effecting the characters despite them (mostly) being sensible. This film involves horror effecting the characters because they have all been lobotomised, presumably. I definitely do not recommend this film.\nSPOILERS:\nThe film starts off with a scene of David (played by Michael, the Bender of Fass) first being activated and interacting with Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce), with heavy-handed metaphors a plenty.\nWe are then introduced to David\u0026rsquo;s next iteration, Walter, working on the colony ship Covenant (with a crew of 15)\nThe ship is hit by a disaster, and after repairs they receive a signal from another planet. Their mission is to head to one 8 years away (which has never been visited, but was found via scans) and this new one is a week away (missed by the scans). Considering their predicament, they decide to head to the new planet.\nThey land on the planet and go exploring without any form of hazmat suits!\nI honestly cannot describe how utterly, ridiculously, unbelievably moronic and unrealistic this is. Unfortunately, the film just gets worse from here.\nBefore I pointed out the crew number of the ship. I would say this is important, but apparently the film doesn\u0026rsquo;t think so. Once the characters start dying off, the main actress mentions how many deaths there have been so far (which would put the crew count at 14)\nNot only that, but later on there is a picture of the whole crew, and there are only 14 people in the picture! Maybe I miscounted, maybe the 15th is the camera man, or maybe one of the crew got killed so hard that they were retroactively wiped from history. I guess we\u0026rsquo;ll never know.\nAfter getting infected by tiny organisms that eventually hatch into Aliens (yes, really) - which is something that would have possibly been avoided had the crew taken even the tiniest of precautions - the surviving crew meet David/Blatant Satan metaphor who takes them to a massive space jockey temple. The temple is littered with corpses, would have been easily spotted from the air (but wasn\u0026rsquo;t), and no one asks any questions about it!\nDavid arrived ages ago, killed all of the jockeys using the virus-vase things and then settled down in the temple. He murdered Shaw from Prometheus in order to experiment with the virus. He even goes so far as to \u0026ldquo;cross-breed\u0026rdquo; the pathogen\u0026hellip; with itself, which doesn\u0026rsquo;t make much sense at all.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s finally managed to develop them to the point where we have the eggs like in Alien, despite not having a queen to lay the eggs.\nDespite admitting all of this to one character, said character still trusts him when he says the eggs are safe to put his face directly into.\nLater, it\u0026rsquo;s left mysterious as to who survived a particular fight - David or Walter. Except it\u0026rsquo;s not mysterious, it\u0026rsquo;s incredibly predictable and cliched.\nThe final annoyance is related to that \u0026ldquo;reveal\u0026rdquo; - David now has to somehow get tons of the eggs onto a space jockey ship, have it piloted by a space jockey, have it crash on LV-246 and have it stay long enough for the jockey to mummify, for the other films to make sense. Unless this is a reboot. A really bad reboot.\nSeriously, it\u0026rsquo;s difficult to describe exactly how unbelievably awful this film is.\n","date":"2017-05-25T13:37:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2017-05-25-alien-covenant/","title":"Alien Covenant"},{"content":"I only recently watched the original Pete\u0026rsquo;s Dragon, a technicolor musical about an orphan sold into slavery and his pet dragon. Upon escaping from his captors Pete and the titular creature go to a sea-side town, getting into mischief and befriending the lighthouse keeper.\nHowever, Pete\u0026rsquo;s owners are looking for him, and there is a greedy snake-oil salesman who sees a money making opportunity in capturing the dragon.\nThe songs were good, the acting was not subtle, and the villains were moustache-twirling (in one case, very literally) - but it was a thoroughly enjoyable film, very much of it\u0026rsquo;s time.\nDisney\u0026rsquo;s odd fascination with remaking it\u0026rsquo;s classic films to be \u0026ldquo;grittier\u0026rdquo; continued with a 2016 version.\nThe film is immediately more on-the-nose, as we meet Pete as a very young boy, orphaned by a car crash, and then lost in the woods for years. Cut to a few years later, when the forest is being cut down by a logging company, and Pete is discovered.\nThe characters all react fairly naturally - Pete\u0026rsquo;s taken in with the caveat that he\u0026rsquo;ll be handed over to social services; Dr Judge Bones (Karl Urban) is initially curious as to what could be knocking down the trees (that haven\u0026rsquo;t been cut) and eventually evolves it into a money making scheme, without being over the top.\nIn essence, the characters are written believably, and the acting is definitely not hammy (much as I enjoy ham).\nThe special effects are a weak-point, but I was absorbed enough in the film that it eventually stopped bothering me, looking more like moss than polygons.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s very different to the original, such that by seeing one you don\u0026rsquo;t feel like you\u0026rsquo;ve seen the other. If you get the time watch both, but maybe not in a small timeframe.\n","date":"2017-03-30T13:52:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2017-03-30-petes-dragon-2016/","title":"Pete's Dragon (2016)"},{"content":"The Lego Batman Movie is, I suspect, a pseudo-sequel to \u0026ldquo;The Lego Movie\u0026rdquo;, which was awesome.\nWill Arnett (Job from Arrested Development) reprises his role as Lego Batman, the arrogant loner who graced us with the greatest song ever written\nThe story is multi-faceted, but largely boils down to Batman needing to learn the importance of teamwork, family, and hatred.\nHatred? Why, yes. One of the driving forces behind the story is that the Joker\u0026rsquo;s relationship with Batman is metaphorically almost sexual in nature, and it is utterly hilarious!\nPart of the joy of the writing of this film is how it is aware of the inherent silliness of Batman, while also crafting an interesting and emotionally engrossing story.\nThe silliness is also enhanced by factors that make me think of it as a pseudo-sequel to the Lego Movie. Those facts are that Gotham is described as being built upon a delicate platform above a void (i.e. a table) and that when characters shoot guns the voice actors make \u0026ldquo;pew pew\u0026rdquo; noises - almost as if it\u0026rsquo;s people playing with toys, but it\u0026rsquo;s not explicit.\nThere is also an odd fascination with Michael Jackson, having both in your face and subtle references. For example, see the choir of children singing \u0026ldquo;Yeah, Charmone!\u0026rdquo;\nThe only real negative point that I can think of is that some of the jokes don\u0026rsquo;t mix well together. A specific example is a point where Batman excitedly asks if he will work with the Suicide Squad, and then around 20 seconds later says that the concept of bad guys being used to fight bad guys (e.g. Suicide Squad) is a moronic idea.\nThis is a wonderful, exciting and hilarious film. The jokes are relentless, and are mostly brilliant. It\u0026rsquo;s not as good as The Lego Movie, but is still amazing fun.\n","date":"2017-03-14T13:41:00Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2017-03-14-the-lego-batman-movie/","title":"The Lego Batman Movie"},{"content":"Haxx0r Ridge is the latest film by Mel Gibson and tells the story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), the first conscientious objector in history to get the Medal of Honor (sic) for bravery while under fire.\nDesmond is a devout Seventh Day Adventist from Virginia, brought up by a loving mother (Rachel Griffiths) and an abusive alcoholic father (Hugo Weaving) who is an understandable mentally scarred World War 1 veteran.\nDue to a series of violent incidences in his life, Desmond has become a pacifist. This causes confusion when he signs up to take part in World War 2, especially amongst his regiment, who regard him as a coward.\nThe sergeant of his regiment (Sgt Howell) is played by Vince Vaughn, who is obviously trying to channel R Lee Ermey from the Kubrick masterpiece \u0026ldquo;Full Metal Jacket\u0026rdquo;. Despite this, he manages to be hilarious, and makes the role his own.\nThere are quite a few actors, many of whom are recognisable, and all of whom are excellent. However, listing them all will take ages, so I won\u0026rsquo;t do it.\nThe film can be considered in three acts: The first is before he signs up, when he starts his relationship with Doroth Schutte (Teresa Palmer)\nThe second is while he is being trained, struggling with how he is treated by the people he wants to help, and how that affects his relationship.\nThe third is once he is finally goes to the front lines as a medic, without any kind of weapon.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure how much to describe, as the basis of the film is historical fact which you can look up, but it might spoil some of the gravitas of Desmond\u0026rsquo;s deeds. I imagine that there was some poetic license taken, but regardless of that the bravery of the main character is frankly unfathomable.\nWracking my brains for any negative aspects of the film, all I can think of is that the war scenes feature a lot of quite obvious CG, which does detract from how brutal and visceral the battles are.\nOverall I think this film is incredible - the acting is fantastic, and the story is one which I think deserves to be known by everybody on the planet. If this doesn\u0026rsquo;t win an Oscar I\u0026rsquo;ll be shocked.\n","date":"2017-01-30T13:29:00Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2017-01-30-hacksaw-ridge/","title":"Hacksaw Ridge"},{"content":"Moana is the latest film by Pixar, with a story based on Polynesian mythology and a cast made up largely of actors from the region.\nThe story is that in the beginning there was only ocean, but then the goddess Te Fiti created islands and life, before going to sleep as an island herself.\nLater, the shape-shifting demi-god Maui (Dwane \u0026ldquo;The Rock\u0026rdquo; Johnson) steals Te Fiti\u0026rsquo;s heart, but gets defeated by a demon while trying to escape, losing the heart.\nDue to the theft, a black miasma is spreading throughout the world, and will eventually envelop it all.\nMoana (Auli\u0026rsquo;i Cravalho) is the daughter of the chief (Temuera Morrison) of a self-sufficient island with a policy of isolationism, surrounded by a reef that means the sea around the island is peaceful. Encouraged by her grandmother (Rachel House), and magically chosen by the ocean itself, Moana goes against her father\u0026rsquo;s wishes to leave the island, find Maui and return the heart.\nThe songs throughout the film are fairly good, though the one that is nominated for an Oscar is not to my tastes. I greatly enjoyed Maui\u0026rsquo;s introduction \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re welcome!\u0026rdquo;, and felt a little bit disappointed by Jermain Clement\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Shiny\u0026rdquo; - in that case I found the music drowned out the lyrics, but that might have just been an issue with the cinema.\nI cannot find any fault with the actors in the film, but I will say that Dwane Johnson brings his usual incredible charisma to the role.\nThe script is full of brilliant jokes, including a wonderfully self-aware reference to the fact that Moana will inevitably become a Disney Princess, despite not being a princess. The story is touching, and since I didn\u0026rsquo;t know anything of the mythology involved, the story was fascinating to me (though I imagine there was some artistic liberty at play.)\nThe actual rendering and character designs are fantastic - they are obviously stylised, yet the skin textures (including the tattoos) are extremely convincing.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure what else I can say - it\u0026rsquo;s absolutely a top-tier film, well worth watching.\n","date":"2017-01-25T13:43:00.001Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2017-01-25-moana/","title":"Moana"},{"content":"Passengers is a film about the starship, the Avalon, which is on a 120 year trip to the colony of Homestead 2, carrying around 280 members of staff and 5000 passengers, all of whom are in suspended animation.\nHowever, 30 years into the journey something goes wrong, and Jim (Chris Pratt) is woken up.\nBeing the only human awake on a ship, unable to go into suspended hibernation, and being very restricted in terms of luxuries (such as non-bland food), where your only social interaction is an android barman (Michael Sheen) is an utterly frustrating, hopeless and terrifying concept, which I think the film carries across very well.\nIt would be enough to drive someone completely insane, which is why is understandable why he eventually elects to wake up Aurora (Jennifer Laurence) - an ethical dilemma that is dwelled upon at first, but somewhat dismissed at hand later on.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s difficult to discuss too much of the film without spoiling what happens, so I\u0026rsquo;ll leave the story description there.\nThe film is part psychological horror film, part romance, and mainly sci-fi. The unhelpful artificial intelligences on board, unable to reflect on the cognitive dissonance of the two narratives (pods cannot malfunction, someone is awake too early) were a refreshingly accurate representation of both how difficult it would be to create an AI and how arrogant some people are when it comes to their creations (i.e. completely ignoring the fact of \u0026ldquo;mean time to failure\u0026rdquo;); While relativity had no place in the story, it was also nice that communication with Earth was represented realistically.\nBasically, what I\u0026rsquo;m saying is that the film was not only accurate (or at least convincing) when it came to the majority of the science involved, but it was also very accurate to the human aspects of that technology.\nThere were some excellent scenes to do with the consequences of space travel, especially when the artificial gravity fails.\nThe characters were (mostly) believable, and very well acted.\nThe story was gripping and moving.\nThe CGI wasn\u0026rsquo;t distracting (with the exception of a very brief attempt at fabric, which we still suck at), possibly because the rest of the film was good enough to maintain my suspension of disbelief.\nI loved it.\n","date":"2017-01-23T18:00:00.004Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2017-01-23-passengers/","title":"Passengers"},{"content":"Assassin\u0026rsquo;s Creed is a film based upon the video game franchise of the same name, starring Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremey Irons and Michael Kenneth Williams.\nI have only played some of the first game, so I went into this with only a slight familiarity.\nIf you have absolutely no knowledge of the franchise, don\u0026rsquo;t worry! The film is here to treat you like an idiot, and tell you the entire plot to the film via a text crawl at the start!\nThe plot is that the Templar Knights are searching for \u0026ldquo;The Apple of Eden\u0026rdquo;, which will allow them to eradicate free will in humanity. The only people who know of this and are trying to stop them are a guild of assassins, imaginatively called \u0026ldquo;The Assassins\u0026rdquo;\nIn modern day, Michael Fassbender is killed by lethal injection, but it turns out that it was faked and that he has been \u0026ldquo;not imprisoned\u0026rdquo; by the *mumble* company. I\u0026rsquo;m sure that the company has a genuine name, but no one in the film can say it clearly.\nThis company has a device called \u0026ldquo;The Animus\u0026rdquo; which allows Fassbender to relive the memories of his ancestor, an assassin who guarded the McGuffin. The Mumble company hopes that through this process, Fassbender will lead them to the free will McGuffin, so that they an eradicate violence from the world.\nI think that the general plot of the film is actually very good, with lots of interesting and not-completely-unbelievable ideas to explore.\nHowever, my main problem with the film is the opening text crawl. Had that not been there, the story would have evolved fairly naturally.\nCotillard talks about eradicating violence from the world, but there is obviously something sinister and underhanded about the company she works for. This builds, until we see scenes where Irons explains about the McGuffin controlling free will.\nThis could have been a fairly satisfying reveal - the sense of something sinister building into a climax of moustache-twirling villainy\u0026hellip; had it not been for the text crawl explaining it at the start of the film.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s not to say that\u0026rsquo;s the films only problem:\nTowards the beginning there is some strange editing choices, especially one scene where it flips between four or five different shots. About half are in a yellow colour, the other half in teal. Of those, one of the teal and one of the yellow shots are extremely bright (including lens-flare), the others are darker. The shots each last for a bit over a second, but it is very disorientating to switch between drastically different colours and brightness levels, repeatedly.\nNormally disorientating the viewer is done in order to distract them from something (hence shaky-cam being used in lots of action films), but this seemed pointless. Even more so because some of the shots were also unnecessary. It\u0026rsquo;s a bit like Battlefield Earth, which uses dutch-angles all the time without understanding what purpose they serve in film-making.\nAlso during the first act, some of the stunts characters perform are CGI, but it\u0026rsquo;s almost unnoticeable. In a way that\u0026rsquo;s not a good thing, as it creates a little sense that something is wrong, but it was better than normal.\nWhat is fair less forgivable is quite a few shots in the same action scene which are meant to be quick (e.g. riding a horse full-pelt to catch up with a speeding wagon) are quite obviously much slower, and then sped up to give the illusion of speed. Which they fail at. Completely.\nMy final major complaint is that, in order to service sequel-baiting, a character does a complete 180 degree turn at the very end. The change in attitude is not built up to or earned in the slightest.\nI did enjoy myself, and I think there is a very decent sci-fi film in there, but unfortunately it\u0026rsquo;s book-ended by sections with complete and utter contempt for the audience, ridiculous ineptitude at film-editing, and a distinct lack of ability at convincing writing.\nForced to give a score, about 6/10\n","date":"2017-01-17T13:41:00.002Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2017-01-17-assassins-creed/","title":"Assassin's Creed"},{"content":"//Need a way to distinguish between this post and the link in the sidebar A few months ago (back in July, actually) I added an interactive variation of the Legacy of Kain timeline, which might be more readable than the tabulated version.\nSo, why am I posting about this now? Well, I\u0026rsquo;ve added an FAQ to it, which will hopefully compensate for some of the questions that people have asked me, as well as covering more general questions about the lore.\nYou can find it either in the side menu, or here.\n","date":"2017-01-02T18:11:00.002Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2017-01-02-the-interactive-legacy-of-kain-timeline/","title":"The Interactive Legacy of Kain Timeline"},{"content":"Review Rogue One is the first Star Wars spin-off film in out post-episode-seven world. It bridges the gap between episode 3 (Revenge of the Sith) and episode 4 (A New Hope), telling the story of how the rebellion gets its hands on the plans for the Death Star.\nThe first thing to note is that the opening and music are both noticeably different and similar to the core films, helping cement the fact that this is a spin-off.\nThe film has 3 distinct acts, each of which is focused on a different planet, though there are more than 3, the others bridging or being repeated through the acts.\nThe first criticism of the film is that I spent a lot of the first act trying to decide which was less convincing - the lead actress, or a particular CG homunculus.1\nThe overall Nazi imagery has subtly increased again - \u0026ldquo;They have a child, find it!\u0026rdquo; cries the villain.\nI greatly appreciate the addition to the Star Wars lore that the film provides - e.g. the Empire are mining Kyber crystals (which power Lightsabers) in order to power the Death Star (so is it essentially a moon-sized Lightsaber?)\nThere is a huge attention to detail evident - from the fantastic sound design of rain pinging off of weapons and armour, to the changing ranks on the uniforms of soldiers over time. There was a lot of perfectionism involved in the production.\nThe actors are all good (even if some of them take a while to warm up) - the villain is particularly excellent, and it\u0026rsquo;s fantastically refreshing to see Mads Mikkleson cast as a good guy.\nThe script is a brilliant mix of drama, tragedy, and hilarity. Though everyone gets a fair share, the comedy show is undoubtedly stolen by the droid H2-SO. I don\u0026rsquo;t think anyone could watch this film without laughing.\nYou may notice that I\u0026rsquo;m mostly referring to the actors rather than the characters - it is in part because, despite seeing it twice, I can barely remember the character names. I in fact noted that Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang\u0026rsquo;s names are only mentioned a handful of times, and are difficult to hear at those times. Which is a shame, as they were great characters who deserve to be better known.\nOn the note of Donnie Yen, his fight scenes are particularly impressive and visceral. Unlike some ignorant professional writers, I appreciated that some of those staff blows could shatter bone, even through armour (which was also visibly breaking apart under the barrage of attacks.)\nThere is some aerial combat, but the vast majority of it is from the perspective of people on the ground. You may recognise this style of direction from the 2015 Godzilla film, which I also liked and was directed by Gareth Edwards as well.\nDespite the stellar script and direction, there are some definitely predictable cliches that occur, and on my second viewing I noticed some blatant continuity errors in relation to Forest Whitaker\u0026rsquo;s costume.\nOverall this is an excellent film, despite some flaws, with an utterly brilliant ending.\nA very strong 8 out of 10.\nSPOILERS 1The aforementioned CG homunculus is Peter Cushing, evidently being dead is not the disability it once was. It\u0026rsquo;s just a shame that the textures are so completely unconvincing.\nAnother issue that I feel I have to state is that C3-PO and R2-D2 have a cameo towards the end, on Yavin-4. This means that Princess Leia would have to travel there to specifically pick them up, and then rendezvous with the fleet at Skariff. I\u0026rsquo;m not convinced that the timing for that actually works. To me, it\u0026rsquo;s a humongous plot hole that could have been avoided by not having the cameo in the first place.\nMy final major criticism is that there is absolutely no Kyle Katarn cameo, despite the fact that the beginning features a shot that was very reminiscent of the Dark Forces box cover:\n0 out of 10.\n","date":"2016-12-28T08:44:00.001Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-12-28-rogue-one-a-star-wars-story/","title":"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"},{"content":"Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them is a Harry Potter spin-off where Eddie Redmayne plays Newt Scamander (who I really want to call Scaramanga) visiting New York in 1926 with a suitcase full of magical creatures.\nDue to a mix up with a wannabe baker (Kowalski, played by Dan Fogler), some of the beasts escape, and Newt needs to get them back.\nAlso in New York at that point in time is a religious cult, some almost-Amish people, referred to as \u0026ldquo;The Second Salemers\u0026rdquo; - as you can probably tell from the name, they claim that witches and wizards exist, and they hunt them.\nAt the same time, the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA) have rules to prevent normal people (NoMaj-es) from finding out about the magical community. this division is under threat due to the dark wizard Grimwald and his followers, who are causing havoc that is difficult to cover up.\nAs such, it\u0026rsquo;s rather critical that Newt finds the beasts, both to prevent muggles finding out about magic, and to prevent the creatures getting hurt by people who don\u0026rsquo;t understand them.\nThe film has a lot of interconnecting plot-threads, all of which get a decent amount of pacing and development. It\u0026rsquo;s quite full, yet never feels particularly rushed. Rowling did extremely well, thanks largely in part that this was written directly as a film rather than adapted from a book.\nThe acting is excellent, with both a lot of drama and some extremely funny lighter moments. The special effects are fairly good - as is often the case with CG, it\u0026rsquo;s not convincing itself, but the rest of the film is so enjoyable that my suspension of disbelief was not broken.\nThe only real weak point, in my opinion, was the ending. It had hardly any foreshadowing, and was blatantly done to set up for the next film.\nOverall, it was a very good film. The ending feels like a let-down, but largely because we don\u0026rsquo;t have the other films yet. As a standalone film, the ending is poor, but everything else was hugely enjoyable.\n","date":"2016-12-21T13:15:00.002Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-12-21-fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them/","title":"Fantastic Beasts and Where to find them"},{"content":"The Accountant has an excellent cast, led by Ben Affleck as an autistic savant. Using his skills he\u0026rsquo;s become an accountant, often using an alias and being hired by criminal organisations.\nAs JK Simmons (as an agent for the US Treasury) puts it: Imagine that you launder huge sums of money. You keep a record of transactions, but most of it is hidden behind codes and euphemisms. Then suddenly you find that some of the money has gone missing somewhere. Ben Affleck is the man you hire to come in and look at your accounts to see where the money has gone.\nHe gets hired by a robotics company (owned by John Lithgow), after Anna Kendrick has noticed something strange about the accounts.\nAmongst this JK Simmons has put another agent (played by Cynthia Addai-Robbinson) in charge of the investigation into exactly who the accountant is, and That-guy-who-was-in-the-walking-dead-and-is-now-the-punisher (Jon Bernthal, I had to look that up) is a mercenary involved with businesses of some description (his first appearance is about him trying to restore the pension funds of the company who hired him).\nThe mysteries of exactly what is going on are fascinating, the villain\u0026rsquo;s plot is coherent and extremely interesting. The acting is unbelievably good, the action is absolutely incredible. There is a lot of dark comedy, most of it derived from Ben Affleck being unable to understand emotions (so either not understanding someone\u0026rsquo;s reaction, or not reacting in the way you would expect).\nThis is an intelligent, witty, funny and extremely exciting action film.\nGo see it.\n","date":"2016-11-14T13:49:00Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-11-14-the-accountant/","title":"The Accountant"},{"content":"While I do swear more than I should in real life, I try to avoid it here. I mention this because I want you to appreciate how sincere I am when I say: This film is fucking awful.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s really, unbelievably bad.\nDuring the events of Man of Steel, Bruce Wayne (played by Ben Affleck) was rescuing his employees from collapsing buildings in Metropolis, which has planted a seed of fear and hate for Superman in his mind.\nLex Luthor has found some Kryptonite off the coast of some tropical location, and is shipping it to himself in Metropolis.\nBruce Wayne, somehow knows this (but, hey, Batman is meant to be the worlds greatest detective, who avoids killing his opponents as much as possible) so goes to a party at Luthor\u0026rsquo;s mansion, and hacks into his computer to find out when the shipment is (keep in mind, he\u0026rsquo;s hacking into the computer of a private citizen who has, as far as he knows, committed no crimes)\nWhat follows is an exceedingly long sequence of Batman trying to get the Kryptonite, only to find it was a trap, and Superman kills him.\nTurns it was all a dream, and he wakes up to the Flash talking to him through a portal, saying \u0026ldquo;You were right, don\u0026rsquo;t trust him!\u0026rdquo;\nNot only is this a missed opportunity to inject some humour, by making the Flash pretend to be a ghost, but that is also a dream.\nBatman later tells Alfred (Jeremy Irons) about how he fears and hates Superman. This renders the preceding two dream sequences completely and utterly pointless.\nNot only that, but if the Flash\u0026rsquo;s warning was meant to be real, then who does it refer to? Certainly not actually Superman, as he is a hero throughout the film.\nAnyway, Batman then tracks the Kryptonite shipment to the docks and plants a tracker on the truck. Rather than tracking it, he chases it in the Batmobile, and outright murders several people (who, as I said before, as far as he knows have committed no crimes) including actual innocent civilians. Not only that, but he doesn\u0026rsquo;t get the Kryptonite from the chase, instead using the tracker to get it. Off screen.\nSo eventually Batman fights Superman, they bond over their mothers having the same name, and unite to fight against Doomsday. Doomsday was created by Lex Luthor using some machine in a Kryptonian space ship to resurrect Zod\u0026rsquo;s corpse. You know, at least Marvel actually try to keep the origins of their characters true to the comics.\nThey fight him with the help of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot - I hear the shooting took so long because she was often late. They kept waiting for Gadot) in the most boring climactic fight sequence of a comic book film ever.\nThere is some foreshadowing for the Justice League, in the form of Aquaman and Cyborg (as well as the characters I\u0026rsquo;ve already mentioned)\nOverall this film is incredibly long, with a lot of the run time being completely wasted on scenes that go nowhere or serve absolutely no purpose. Meanwhile, things which should have been developed are rushed or ignored. The characters have the bare minimum resemblance to their comic equivalents, and I would challenge anyone to find a likeable one in the bunch (apart from Alfred).\nThe writing is so poor that it can only be described as amateurish, and the action is ridiculously boring.\nIf I hadn\u0026rsquo;t seen Suicide Squad first, I think this would have made me swear off DC films altogether.\n","date":"2016-11-09T13:47:00.001Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-11-09-batman-vs-superman-ultimate-edition/","title":"Batman vs Superman: Ultimate Edition"},{"content":"This latest Marvel entry stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular Dr Steven Strange, a brilliant but arrogant surgeon, who gets maimed in a car accident, ending his career.\nDesperate for a solution, he eventually comes to a temple in Nepal, where Tilda Swinton portrays \u0026ldquo;The Ancient One\u0026rdquo;. There he learns to open his mind to the concept of magic, and trains to master it.\nThe temple was recently victim to a theft by Mads Mikklesen, who hopes to unleash eldritch horrors upon the world.\nEssentially, it fits the same mould of some other origin stories where an arrogant person needs to learn humility in the face of something spiritual, except rather than anything religious it\u0026rsquo;s black magic and utterly mind-bending special effects.\nSeriously, it\u0026rsquo;s as if Inception was mixed with LSD, somehow. For the most part they are brilliant, but there are a small handful of effects which look poor, and could break your immersion.\nThe acting is excellent, with a script that is witty and laugh out loud funny. It was actually very nice to see Mads Mikklesen, who I\u0026rsquo;ve only ever seen in serious roles, have a few funny lines and evidently enjoy himself.\nRachel McAdams is also notable as being very funny, in how she reacts to the weirdness going on.\nThe action is brilliant, though a bit difficult to follow at times, due to a fair amount of it not really taking place within Euclidean geometric space.\nWhile the framework for the story is generic, as it tends to be with these origin stories, the content was more than enough for me to thoroughly enjoy the film.\n","date":"2016-11-08T14:01:00.002Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-11-08-dr-strange/","title":"Dr Strange"},{"content":"You may remember the previous two Dan Brown films - \u0026ldquo;The DaVinci Code\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Angels and Demons\u0026rdquo;\nIn The DaVinci Code, Tom Hanks solved some puzzle left by Leonardo DaVinci that lead to a great secret that had absolutely no effect on reality or society at all.\nIn Angels and Demons, Ewan McGregor distracted Tom Hanks so that he could use a visible amount of anti-matter to blow up the Vatican (as well as, presumably, the entire Eurasian continent)\nNow after a 7 year gap, Tom Hanks reprises his role as Professor Robert \u0026ldquo;Layton\u0026rdquo; Langdon in Inferno.\nThe story is that a billionaire who gave a non-copyright-or-trademark-infringing Ted talk stating that humanity is facing a huge problem due to overpopulation has died after jumping from a tower which he was chased up.\nThe professor has woken up with amnesia, and is unable to remember the past few days, but what is evident is that there is a solution to the overpopulation problem put in place. Is the professor going to be able to stop it, or is he perhaps there to ensure it does get released?\nSo it\u0026rsquo;s all a bit silly, and doesn\u0026rsquo;t really consider anything to do with the morality involved (the bad guys are the bad guys, it\u0026rsquo;s all black and white), and the use of religious art both as a metaphor and as the puzzle seems a bit of a stretch, but Dan Brown has a degree in classical art and he\u0026rsquo;ll be damned if he doesn\u0026rsquo;t get to use it!\nThere are a few odd choices for dramatic effect (we need to film this scene during the day, and this needs to happen at night, so we need to say it takes hours to travel the 5 meters between locations), but the film is fun overall.\nHowever, that is in large part due to Tom Hanks. He simply carries the film, elevating it from average to entertaining. It\u0026rsquo;s not a must-see, but is entertaining.\n","date":"2016-11-06T07:48:00.001Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-11-06-inferno/","title":"Inferno"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Ja, Kreacher!\u0026rdquo; is a German Harry Potter spin-off, about house-elves managing a the household of one of the higher-ups in the Ministry of Magic.\nOn the other hand, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is a film starring Tom Cruise and Colby Smulders. Jack Reacher used to be a major in the army (which he is constantly reminded of) and Smulders is his successor.\nHowever, two of her subordinates have been murdered, and she has been arrested for the crime. Now it\u0026rsquo;s up to Jack to figure out what\u0026rsquo;s going on, and sort it out.\nWhile the story is itself a bit generic, a usual failing of similar films is that they don\u0026rsquo;t flow. This film flows very well - all of the events make sense and lead into one another, without any leaps of logic, or characters mysteriously teleporting or knowing things they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t.\nTom Cruise is charismatic as always, while also playing a character who is a bit of an arsehole (presumably due to spending a lifetime in the military) - Smulders\u0026rsquo; character is similar, so it was enjoyable to see them butting heads, even though it did mean that there was a bit of a lack of chemistry (but that could in part be blamed on the characters being stoic and disciplined)\nThe film was well-written, exciting and witty. I would strongly recommend it (and since it is a sequel, I really must watch the first one!)\n","date":"2016-11-02T14:17:00Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-11-02-jack-reacher-never-go-back/","title":"Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"},{"content":"The Magnificent Seven (2016) is a remake of The Magnificent Seven (1960), which is a remake of Seven Samurai by Akira Kurisawa, which is in turn heavily inspired by the Wild West genre.\nAs such, it is perfectly understandable if the viewer feels that The Magnificent Seven (2016) feels that the story beats are familiar, or even generic.\nThe premise of the film is that there is a particular town which is almost under siege by the owner of a mining company. His cronies are sheriff deputies, they are apparently poisoning the water supply, gunning down people in the street, and intimidating the residents into selling their land for far less than appropriate market value.\nAs such, one of the residents seeks help and a group of seven characters, starting with Denzel Washington, get recruited into trying to save the town.\nThe acting can only be described as top-tier, the action scenes are fantastically entertaining, and the special effects are so convincing you\u0026rsquo;d swear they\u0026rsquo;re injuring real horses.\nUnfortunately there are some reveals that seem to come out of nowhere.\nFor example, Ethan Hawke plays an obviously troubled ex-gunslinger.\nTowards the end of the film, he mentions to his friend about an ominous owl. It\u0026rsquo;s a bit of a throwaway line, almost inaudible, but the owl is obviously meant to be some paranoid hallucination that has been haunting him for a long time.\nSuch things really needed a bit more foreshadowing.\nSome of the deaths were very \u0026ldquo;Hollywood\u0026rdquo; - i.e. characters taking far too many bullets, and being far too mobile afterwards. This only serves to inflate the actor\u0026rsquo;s ego and break my suspension of disbelief.\nAlso the ending seems bizarre in terms of tone.\nDespite some flaws, I thought that it was an extremely entertaining and very well made film. Definitely worth a watch.\n","date":"2016-10-11T13:50:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-10-11-the-magnificent-seven-2016/","title":"The Magnificent Seven (2016)"},{"content":"The Infiltrator stars Bryan Cranston, John Leguizamo and Amy Ryan as undercover CIA agents trying to take down Pablo Escabar\u0026rsquo;s drug operation in the 1980s.\nThe film is gripping from start to finish, a fascinating \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; story with completely believable characters. Bryan Cranston channels a little but of \u0026lsquo;Walter \u0026ldquo;the best acting I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen, signed Sir Anthony Hopkins\u0026rdquo; White\u0026rsquo;, but most definitely more on the side of \u0026ldquo;good\u0026rdquo; (whilst also being a flawed human being trying to balance his work with his personal life)\nHonestly, all of the acting in the film was top notch. The soundtrack was incredible, and the sound design particularly stood out in how masterful it was.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s difficult to describe without spoiling what happens in the film, but it is really an example of brilliant film-making. Every single element is near flawless.\nDo yourself a favour and watch it.\n","date":"2016-09-27T13:50:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-09-27-the-infiltrator/","title":"The Infiltrator"},{"content":"War Dogs is based upon an interview in Rolling Stone magazine and stars Jonah Hill and Miles Teller (Mr Fantastic from Fanborestic) as Ephraim and David respectively.\nDavid works in Malibu as a masseuse around the time of the second gulf war, but meets up with his old friend from high school (Ephraim) and joins him in his small weapons contracting business called AEY.\nIn the past most of the military contracts were given to companies associated with Dick Cheney, but since the corruption became public knowledge all of the contracts were put up for auction. While there is still insider trading with the biggest contracts, a lot of the smaller stuff gets ignored, which is where AEY comes in. Such small companies are considered to be feeding off the scraps of the war industry, they are called \u0026ldquo;War Dogs\u0026rdquo;, hence the name of the film.\nThe film is extremely funny, fascinating, and incredibly convincing as a true story. The actors all put in fantastic performances, and special mention has to go to Jonah Hill for having the second most annoying laugh in the Universe.\nI highly recommend this film.\n","date":"2016-09-15T13:58:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-09-15-war-dogs/","title":"War Dogs"},{"content":"Sausage Party is an animated film written by Seth Rogan and Jonah Hill, and is about talking food. The premise and sense of humour is set up very efficiently, opening with a song about how they want to be taken by the Gods (human beings) to the Great Beyond (outside of the shop) where \u0026ldquo;We cannot possibly overstate how certain we are that nothing bad happens to us in the Great Beyond!\u0026rdquo;\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a difficult film to review, as I don\u0026rsquo;t want to spoil any more jokes than I have - part of the hilarity coming from the punchlines being unexpected.\nIt can be said to be a film about atheism, blaming pretty much all of the ills of the world on it. While I disagree (i.e. without religion, we\u0026rsquo;d still find whatever differences there are between people and use it as an excuse to fight) I do think it has a good message about blind faith versus evidence.\nIn short, it\u0026rsquo;s a thoughtful, foul-mouthed, raunchy-as-hell, hilarious comedy, and I enjoyed every single minute. If that sounds up your street, go and watch it.\n","date":"2016-09-14T12:59:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-09-14-sausage-party/","title":"Sausage Party"},{"content":"The BFG is a story written by Roald Dahl, which was adapted into an animated film in 1989, which I loved as a child. I think that my dad must have been a fan of the book, as it most definitely informed his patois as I was growing up.\nThe story is about a young orphan named Sophie, who one night discovers a giant, who kidnaps her and takes her to the \u0026ldquo;Giant Country\u0026rdquo;. While other giants want to eat humans, this giant is a perpetually disappointed vegetarian who gives people dreams.\nIf you are unfamiliar with the story I don\u0026rsquo;t want to spoil too much for you, but it\u0026rsquo;s one that can be enjoyed by adults and kids of all ages.\nThe new film, directed by Steven Spielberg seems to be a very faithful adaptation, much like the 1989 cartoon. The main differences being that it\u0026rsquo;s live action, blatantly directed by Spielberg (though I can\u0026rsquo;t put my finger on why), and does not feature a musical interlude about farting.\nIf that sounds good to you, then I suggest you watch it. If you really want the farting song, perhaps you should stick to the 1989 version.\n","date":"2016-09-11T08:59:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-09-11-the-bfg/","title":"The BFG"},{"content":"I haven\u0026rsquo;t yet seen Batman vs Superman, but I have heard that the dour atmosphere didn\u0026rsquo;t resonate with viewers, prompting a massive re-write of Suicide Squad.\nIt shows.\nThe first part of the film is spent setting up the characters, and it takes quite a while.\nThe next part of the film is spent setting up the same characters. Again. It, too, takes a while.\nGenerally, the first act of the film is terrible. It has awful editing, largely noticeable by the very jarring changes in the soundtrack. It was also very evident that a large chunk of the soundtrack is made up of old songs, forcing them to the forefront. It is almost as if the film is simply an excuse to renew the licences on the songs.\nThe main chunk of the film is actually quite solid and very enjoyable.\nDeadshot (Will Smith) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) are the main heart of the film, putting in genuinely good performances. Harley\u0026rsquo;s relationship with the Joker (Jared Leto) is quite like what I remember from the Batman cartoon and the games. It\u0026rsquo;s somewhat sweet, but it also feels like Harley is paradoxically disposable to the Joker (which is the closest the film comes to touching on the abusiveness of the relationship)\nThat\u0026rsquo;s not to say that the main chunk is without it\u0026rsquo;s flaws - it also has plot-holes, with characters suddenly being idiotic, and things happening for the sake of plot convenience.\nOverall, it\u0026rsquo;s a fairly good film, but you\u0026rsquo;ll have to sit through 20 minutes of utter dross before it gets any good.\n","date":"2016-09-02T09:36:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-09-02-suicide-squad/","title":"Suicide Squad"},{"content":"This is going to be difficult to pick apart, as it\u0026rsquo;s a really solid and entertaining film. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Star Trek Beyond is the best live action Macross film I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen.\nSeriously, they are incredibly similar:\nThe protagonists are drawn into a fight with creatures that are somehow connected to humanity. Said creatures are focused entirely on conflict. Thus the film focuses about the question of whether peace or violence is better for the progress of the species. Of course, it is optimistic, saying that while violence is inevitable, peace is better and should be striven towards. Music is used as a weapon. People die, and it is genuinely touching. It is quite obvious that Simon Pegg wrote it, with a greater than usual emphasis on Scotty, and a joke which seems very reminiscent of Dr Who (when The Beatles were referred to as classical musicians)\nThe film is not perfect, but I find it very difficult to think of any particular criticisms. It\u0026rsquo;s funny, thoughtful and entertaining, with very good special effects.\nI\u0026rsquo;d recommend watching it.\n","date":"2016-08-09T13:44:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-08-09-star-trek-beyond/","title":"Star Trek Beyond"},{"content":"Before release When the new Ghostbusters film was announced, I saw the announcement surrounded with rhetoric that the all-female cast was to counter the \u0026ldquo;imbalance\u0026rdquo; or the first films. In my opinion, pushing equally hard in the opposite direction is not a way to be progressive. \u0026ldquo;Two wrongs don\u0026rsquo;t make a right\u0026rdquo; as the adage says.\nEventually the trailers came out, and they made the film look atrocious.\nThey mention that \u0026ldquo;30 years ago New York was saved by 4 friends\u0026rdquo;, pitching this film as a sequel. They featured a few jokes, most of which seemed incredibly unfunny.\n\u0026ldquo;How hilarious! She\u0026rsquo;s implying that the ectoplasm went into her vagina! And she\u0026rsquo;s a woman! A woman being crude is funny, right?!\u0026rdquo; I find gross out humour that isn\u0026rsquo;t funny in the first place, let alone when relying on the gender of the person for shock value (which would of course only actually shock people who haven\u0026rsquo;t ever talked to a woman in their entire life)\nOh, she licked her gun, and the test of the main gun didn\u0026rsquo;t have enough power, curving downwards. Both are going to be interpreted as phallic, aren\u0026rsquo;t they?\nOh, the black actress is basically being a completely racist stereotype.\nRemember how Ernie Hudson\u0026rsquo;s skin colour informed his entire character in the original? You don\u0026rsquo;t? Good, because it was completely irrelevant.\nOh, the film is going to feature the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man at some point\u0026hellip; who crushes the actresses\u0026hellip; Yet they don\u0026rsquo;t die\u0026hellip;\nOverall, the trailers and marketing made the film look like an unfunny, racist, slightly sexist cartoon, claiming to be a sequel to the original. Something strongly attempting to convince me it\u0026rsquo;s progressive, whilst actually being unfathomably regressive.\nThe marketing made the film look atrocious, is what I\u0026rsquo;m trying to say.\nThis was extra frustrating because if one were to dare expressing such an opinion, it would seem that legions of internet denizens would descend to accuse you of being a misogynist. Ad honinem is far easier than debate, or appreciating that people have different opinions, and this easy route is unfortunately extremely popular.\nAfter release Wow! That was surprisingly good!\nWhilst most of the stuff from the trailers is in the film, the trailers were incredibly misleading. There is some crude humour, but that is a very small proportion of the film.\nThey largely stay away from sex jokes - the aforementioned bit where they test the main gun was just left with a \u0026ldquo;that was disappointing\u0026rdquo;, so kudos.\nPatty, as played by Leslie Jones, does not actually portray a racist stereotype. She plays a very likeable character, and does it very well.\nHoltzman, the engineer, is a genuine delight as well. I\u0026rsquo;m particularly fond of a section where she\u0026rsquo;s dancing around in the lab to something in the vein of WHAM! or Lionel Ritchie, and when it\u0026rsquo;s switched off she makes a comment about thinking it was Devo.\nThere is a lot of new technology in the film, which is really cool.\nThere is a very large variety of ghost designs, perhaps inspired by the cartoon. Once again, very cool.\nAll of that being said, there are some definite negatives.\nSome of the jokes fall completely flat. For example, the characters are in a meeting and about to be kicked out of the University. While the person in charge is getting ready to say \u0026ldquo;two words\u0026rdquo;, the main characters are predicting what he\u0026rsquo;s going to say\u0026hellip; while sitting about a metre away from him. Not only would he be able to hear exactly what they\u0026rsquo;re saying (and should react accordingly) but it\u0026rsquo;s simply not very funny.\nDespite absolutely not being a sequel in any way, shape or form, the film does make many references to the first film, but then doesn\u0026rsquo;t go as \u0026ldquo;big\u0026rdquo;. When looking for a base of operations the team are offered the fire house, but because they can\u0026rsquo;t afford it they settle for a room above a Chinese takeaway.\nThe climax of the film takes place in a hotel with a dark history, sort of like the first film (which was apartments)\u0026hellip; but they don\u0026rsquo;t leave the ground-floor.\nIt keeps comparing itself to the first film, and then intentionally not doing things as well.\nWhich makes the villain even more of a conundrum. He\u0026rsquo;s a white nerd who has been bullied, and is a fan of a book that the main characters published. Some have interpreted this as a metaphor for fans of the original films, with the film directly attacking them. Whilst I didn\u0026rsquo;t interpret it that way, it is completely understandable.\nTo me, the villain was a caricature of the people who posted the more toxic comments on the trailers on youtube. Whilst this may make it sound like I enjoy wearing headwear to block RFID signals, because the film references youtube and comments as well, it made me think that the blow-back was artificially inflated in order to make the people who watch the film dislike the villain (hey, it\u0026rsquo;s easier than actual characterisation).\nThe cast from the original film have cameos, but Bill Murray\u0026rsquo;s is utterly terrible. Allegedly he only appeared because Sony were going to get litgious if he didn\u0026rsquo;t - and it shows!\nConclusion Overall I thought that this film was surprisingly funny, though that might be because my expectations were extremely low. Your mileage may vary, depending on your interpretation. Mine was that this is funnier but not as scary as Ghostbusters 2, but inferior to Ghostbusters 1 in pretty much every way, including the special effects.\nThe marketing was beyond misleading, and was in fact outright lies. Sony should fire whomever made the trailers.\n","date":"2016-08-08T13:41:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-08-08-ghostbusters-2016/","title":"Ghostbusters (2016)"},{"content":"The original Independence Day is a fun 3-hour film by Roland Emmerich released in 1996, wherein aliens attack Earth, but are defeated by Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith using a computer virus. This is a big plot-hole in the theatrical release, but was apparently covered in deleted scenes.\nIt was a little bit flawed, but well put together and really enjoyable.\nNow, 20 years later, we have a sequel.\nThe story is that Earth has implemented alien technology into our own, essentially becoming something like X-Com. We have achieved world peace, have fusion drives, and an outpost on the moon.\nSince the first film, all of the aliens on Earth have been catatonic due to not having their leader controlling them (except for some in Africa, which hunted humans, because this film doesn\u0026rsquo;t want to be consistent).\nAll of the characters who were psychically assaulted by the aliens in the first film have been having visions and headaches, and think the aliens are coming back.\nThey do, and things explode.\nThose things include Canary Wharf. I know that it would need to be recognisable, otherwise the viewer won\u0026rsquo;t care, but why Canary Wharf? Surely with alien technology at our disposal we would build something better than the Shard?\nThe film makes no attempt to build up characters, possibly on the assumption that most of it was done in the first film, but also makes no effort to build up suspense.\nFor example, there is a familiar character from the first film, who gets established as being somewhere unspecified in a couple of seconds. Then, when things are starting to get exciting, this character is in peril.\nHowever, it was not established that they would be in peril, they just are, and then there is a resolution in a matter of seconds.\nThis feeling of being rushed and lazy pervades the majority of the film.\nChina is a pretty huge market, which films now specifically cater to.\nThat isn\u0026rsquo;t a problem in itself, but this film does not handle it well.\nThere is a Chinese female pilot in the main elite squadron, but there is nothing particularly memorable about her. She presumably had a name, her uncle works on the moon, and she is the love interest for another character.\nAt the end they get together, but in doing so they didn\u0026rsquo;t share any development or growth, unless it was off-screen. It just is.\nThe film has a couple of homages to films in other genres, a bit like the first one did, but all it does is remind the viewer that they could be watching something better.\nBrent Spiner reprises his role as Dr Okun, who has been in a coma for 20 years. If you remember the original, he was the main researcher in area 51, who admitted that alien technology was way beyond ours.\nSo why is he surprised when an alien calls humans primitive? That\u0026rsquo;s just inconsistent and terrible writing.\nThe morning before seeing it, I watched Chris Stuckman\u0026rsquo;s review of the 1990s Captain America film\nAt the climax of that Captain America film, there are two fights going on, and the camera cuts between them and different angles so quickly (less than a second per shot) that it comes across as a completely inept attempt to try and be exciting, instead making the audience physically ill.\nIndependence Day 2 also makes this mistake, especially at the end.\nThe quality of everything: writing, special effects, acting, directing all greatly deteriorate as the film goes on. By the end it felt like it was simply box-ticking. Like they had a checklist of things that films of this genre do, and were hurrying to do each one.\nWhich is made even stranger by the fact it was also directed by Emmerich.\nIt feels like there is a huge amount of footage missing, and I wonder if perhaps the budget ran out part way through. That would go some way to explaining why there was a decent (though slightly lazy) first act, while the rest of the film felt rushed and looked abysmal.\nMy rating? Don\u0026rsquo;t bother.\n","date":"2016-07-18T13:48:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-07-18-independence-day-resurgence/","title":"Independence Day: Resurgence"},{"content":"This year at E3 Nintendo demonstrated their newest Zelda game, Breath of the Wild.\nAs soon as I saw the trailer I started theorising on when it takes place on the timeline, and it appears many other people have done the same, even making videos about it.\nNever one to not leap on a passing bandwagon, I\u0026rsquo;m tempted to make a video, but doing so takes a lot of time and effort. I\u0026rsquo;m definitely lacking in the former at the moment, so instead I\u0026rsquo;m writing this post.\nThe Zelda timeline as written in the House Historia splits into three due to Ocarina of Time:\nOne where Link is defeated by Ganon/Ganondorf. One where Link defeats Ganon in the future, then disappears when he travels to the past. One where Link, now a child again, gets Ganondorf arrested and executed before he manages to actually commit a crime. As a side note, I find this a bit problematic. Twilight Princess takes place in that last timeline, and Ganondorf gets exiled to the Twilight dimension. However, since he was arrested and executed before Link drew the Master Sword from the pedestal in the Temple of Time, unlocking the seal on the Sacred Realm and allowing Ganondorf to touch the Triforce, the Triforce should be safely locked away. But it isn\u0026rsquo;t. Unfortunately some mental gymnastics are required, like saying that time operates differently in regards to the Sacred Realm.\nThe truth is, Nintendo don\u0026rsquo;t care about this as much as the fans do.\nIn Ocarina of Time, when Link first draws the Master Sword from its pedestal, Rauru the Sage of Light tells him that he wasn\u0026rsquo;t old enough, so his body hash been kept safe for 7 years.\nWhilst it could simply be interpreted as him being unconscious for that long, the fact you can go backwards and forwards through time says to me that Link\u0026rsquo;s consciousness was transported through time, but his body wasn\u0026rsquo;t.\nThis is very important.\nThe trailer for Breath of the Wild features a Korok. These are plant creatures which the humanoid Kokori from Ocarina of Time eventually changed into by the time of Wind Waker.\nThese characters so far have only appeared in the Wind Waker timeline, which is the \u0026ldquo;adult\u0026rdquo; one where Link defeated Ganon as an adult, then disappeared.\nThe opening of Wind Waker states that Ganon was resurrected, but the Hero of Time (Link from Ocarina of Time) didn\u0026rsquo;t reappear to fight him, so the Goddesses flooded Hyrule.\nThe reason Link didn\u0026rsquo;t reappear is because though his body existed, his consciousness was missing.\nThe trailer features a voice telling Link to wake up, and apparently the beginning of the game involves Link waking up in some kind of cryogenic chamber.\nI believe this is adult Link\u0026rsquo;s body that has been preserved since Ocarina of Time.\nHowever I have no explanation as to why it can move without his consciousness. Maybe it\u0026rsquo;s been so long thar young Link is dead, but having someone resurrect into their own body but it an alternate timeline is a very odd and barely coherent concept.\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t seen the gameplay footage from the demos yet, as I\u0026rsquo;m oddly reticent to sit through five hours of other people playing a game.\nHowever, from screenshots I\u0026rsquo;ve seen, there is an old man who looks like the King from Wind Waker who starts you on your quest, and refers to \u0026ldquo;Calamity Ganon\u0026rdquo;. Does this mean something, or is it just reusing a similar character design?\nSince the environment appears to be the flooded Hyrule, but not flooded at the time, but also very devoid of humanoid life, does this mean that this takes place after Hyrule is no longer flooded? Long after the end of Wind Waker? Or is it before?\nIf the latter, it would imply a doomed quest, so I doubt it.\nMaybe this is another split, on the Wind Waker line? Currently we have no reason to believe so, but Skyward Sword featured time travel, and some sci-fi elements that are similar to what we\u0026rsquo;ve seen so far.\nTo quote Bob from Reboot: \u0026ldquo;No-one knows for sure, but I intend to find out!\u0026rdquo;\n","date":"2016-06-17T11:04:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-06-17-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/","title":"Zelda: Breath of the Wild"},{"content":"Review I have not played any Warcraft game, with the exception of World of Warcraft, which is incredibly boring due to it\u0026rsquo;s nature as an MMO.\nSo when I went into Warcraft: The Beginning, I knew nothing about it, apart from it being based on the games and directed by David Bowie\u0026rsquo;s son.\nThe story is that the Orcs are coming to the (world? country? continent? dimension? planet? The film is very unclear) of Azeroth using \u0026ldquo;fell\u0026rdquo; magic, which requires living sacrifices to work and corrupts the areas in which it is used.\nThe Orcs, being war-like, want to ravage and conquer, taking more prisoners so that they can bring yet more Orcs through.\nThe current denizens of Azeroth, who are primarily human, are not fans of this idea.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s about as much as I can say without going entirely into spoiler territory. This is in part due to the fact that the film covers so much in it\u0026rsquo;s two hour run-time that it seems incredibly rushed.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s an odd paradox, where the film feels overly long, but extending the length so that events could be better paced would have made it feel shorter.\nThe story seems very cliched, but it does make some very courageous moves, which is should be applauded for.\nThe film features of a lot of CGI, but once again it\u0026rsquo;s so pervasive that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t detract from the suspension of disbelief.\nApart from the pacing (which was a severe issue), the only major flaw I can think of is in the sound design is at times poor, with the noise of magic spells being cast being far louder than the things characters are saying.\nThere is a good sense of humour pervading throughout the film, including a joke in regards to a particular WOW spell.\nThere are also other references but these are a bit more flawed. For example, a particular demon appears who I think I\u0026rsquo;ve seen in artwork surrounding the games, and was obviously recognised by the fans of the games, but it was completely lost on me, especially because the film made absolutely no effort in explaining it.\nConclusion Overall, I found that I didn\u0026rsquo;t care for this film. It did too much in too short a time, and would have greatly benefited from further development in almost every area of the story. The film does deserve some praise for being willing to buck the trend and not be formulaic, but in the end was not much more than average.\n","date":"2016-06-16T14:05:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-06-16-warcraft-the-beginning/","title":"Warcraft: The Beginning"},{"content":"Imagine me in 1991, 5 years old, watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. Shredder has managed to get the same ooze that created the titular turtles, and is about to use it to create two mutant underlings.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m going to see Rocksteady and Bebop in a film!\u0026rdquo; I probably thought, excitedly.\nHe uses the ooze, and everyone in the cinema is greeted by Count Duckula, and Man-bear-pig.\nFast forward just under 25 years. I\u0026rsquo;m going to turn 30 very shortly, and I am sitting in the cinema again, seeing Bebop and Rocksteady on the big screen, and having my seat intermittently kicked by some little shit young child who evidently has no manners.\nDreams do come true, but they\u0026rsquo;re never perfect, and often quite late.\nMuch like getting Lego Sonic the Hedgehog.\nI think I should specify some important context:\nI do not care for Michael Bay. At all.\nI remember enjoying The Rock, but I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t say it\u0026rsquo;s memorable.\nI think I\u0026rsquo;ve seen Bad Boys 1 \u0026amp; 2, but I don\u0026rsquo;t remember them.\nI have seen all of the Transformers film, and despised all of them. In fact, when I saw the fourth (which was the second one I saw) I sincerely spent the last hour of the film praying for the sweet release of death.\nHowever, I have greatly enjoyed both of the recent Turtles films. This is probably due to Bay only being a producer, and not actually being in a particularly influential role.\nSpecial Effects Once again, this is an effects heavy film. For the most part it is passable - not great, but because it\u0026rsquo;s constantly there it\u0026rsquo;s not jarring and doesn\u0026rsquo;t take you out of the film. However, there is one particular section in a river, and I swear, the effects were unbelievably good!\nIt\u0026rsquo;s odd, most of the time wet textures are what ruins good effects or graphics, where everything, no matter what the texture is meant to be physically like, looks like it\u0026rsquo;s covered in slime.\nNot so, here. Honestly, it almost looked as if the Turtles were animatronic puppets like in the originals.\nMegan Fox Megan Fox reprises her role as April O\u0026rsquo;Neil, once again looking and acting far more human than in the Transformers films. She isn\u0026rsquo;t just a damsel in distress, but takes an active role in events (but sometimes it doesn\u0026rsquo;t work out so well).\nThere is a short (and early) section shown in the trailers where she dresses in a schoolgirl outfit, and the camera lingers. However, contextually, though obviously still for the male gaze, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem anywhere as exploitative as you\u0026rsquo;d expect from a Bay film (it\u0026rsquo;s in fact a distraction for the purposes of espionage).\nFor the rest of the film no such thing happens, so it at least gets it out of the way early.\nCamera Work The camera work in the film is actually really good - the action scenes don\u0026rsquo;t shake the camera too much, so the action is easy to follow.\nAt the end, when the film is reaching the climax, the dutch angles come out. Dutch angles are when you tilt the camera to indicate that something is horribly wrong, but they only work when contrasted with normal shots (hence why Battlefield Earth is both terrible and amateurish).\nI noticed it, and felt impressed. The director uses his tool-set correctly.\nCasey Jones Casey Jones is played by the guy from Arrow, as the audience was loudly reminded by the shitling young person sitting behind me. I honestly can\u0026rsquo;t remember how Jones was in the cartoon, but I do remember him in the first film. There is a definite contrast here, as the character is less of a charming badass.\nShortly after he is introduced, he points out a plot-hole with the events that are happening, which is somewhat appreciated - if the film didn\u0026rsquo;t point out \u0026ldquo;this is stupid, but necessary for this scene to work\u0026rdquo; it could be used as a criticism against it.\nWill Arnett Will Arnett proves once again to be really good comic foil. He might be type-cast, but he\u0026rsquo;s brilliant at it.\nBebop and Rocksteady Yes, Bebop and Rocksteady are here! Yes, they are annoying, but being incompetent comic sidekicks that\u0026rsquo;s kind of the point. Bebop is played by Gary Anthony Williams (who I recognise but I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what from) and Rocksteady is played by Seamus \u0026ldquo;The Great White Shark\u0026rdquo; from WWE.\nThough Rocksteady having a strong Irish accent is different from the cartoon, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel out of place (except for one scene where he says \u0026ldquo;Whoops, my bad\u0026rdquo; - I\u0026rsquo;m not sure why. Maybe the lips didn\u0026rsquo;t quite match)\nOverall I think they were done well.\nThroughout the film, the liquid that can transform things (like the Turtles into humans or Bebopy and Rocksteady into a warthog and rinocerous) is referred to as \u0026ldquo;Ooze\u0026rdquo; - from this it seems fairly evident that the film makers were very aware of the second original film (and the disappointment that arose from it) and so were trying to, not make up for it, but make sure that they didn\u0026rsquo;t repeat the same mistakes.\nTyler Perry Tyler Perry plays Baxter Stockman, who is probably going to get mutated into a fly in the next film. The only reason I bring this up at all is that I watched someone\u0026rsquo;s review where they mentioned him as a negative.\nI hate him donning a fat-suit and being an unfunny racist stereotype as much as the next man, but let\u0026rsquo;s be fair - Gone Girl proved that he is in fact a really good actor.\nHere he does a perfectly fine job.\nConclusion All in all, though this wasn\u0026rsquo;t a particularly good cinema going experience for me, it was a genuinely entertaining film that basically felt like the cartoon had come to life.\nOne terrapin out of a mongoose.\n","date":"2016-06-16T09:34:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-06-16-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-out-of-the-shadows/","title":"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows"},{"content":"X-men: Apocalypse is an interesting film, partially in how it can be compared to Captain America 3, which was released at roughly the same time.\nWhereas Captain America was, as described by some outlets, a political thriller disguised as an action film, X-men is undoubtedly and unashamedly a popcorn action film.\nThis is not to say it isn\u0026rsquo;t a good film, though. It knows what it wants to do, and does it well. Mostly.\nThe film sees the latest iteration of the X-men cast (Fassbender et al) facing off against the semi-titular villain. Semi-titular because, though he is known as Apocalypse in the comics, cartoon, and games, in this film he is known exclusively as En Sabah Nur.\nHe is a mutant, possibly the first one, who transfers himself between bodies, absorbing the abilities of the mutant he transfers into in the process.\nThis is done using some kind of gigantic machine, which seems to be less of him using a mutant ability to transfer (which one would presume would not require advanced technology to utilise) and more using some kind of alien technology - the idea is not developed at all, but could hint at things to come in future sequels (as aliens are involved with the X-men, sometimes)\nAt the start of the film, his performs this process transferring himself into an immortal mutant, but is buried until modern day (1983) by some Game of Thrones cameos.\nI have seen some people criticising Apocalypse\u0026rsquo;s design, which features some nice Egyptian inspired-features, mixed with alien-looking technology. Imagine Stargate, but with a blue tint. Yes, it looks a bit silly, but a lot less silly than this:\nI don\u0026rsquo;t want to get into describing what happens in the film blow-by-blow in detail, but there are a few points I want to make.\nReligion Apocalypse is buried in ancient Egypt to cries of \u0026ldquo;Death to the false god!\u0026rdquo; indicating that he has convinced his followers that he is a deity, which is pretty much par for the course for ancient Egypt.\nIn the teaser trailer Apocalypse has a speech about the names he has been known by, which includes \u0026ldquo;Yahweh\u0026rdquo;. In case you are unaware, \u0026ldquo;Yahweh\u0026rdquo; translates to \u0026ldquo;I am\u0026rdquo; and is the \u0026ldquo;name\u0026rdquo; of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. The implication clearly being that the fictional Marvel universe (which includes a multitude of other Gods) is not according to the mythology of western religions, or perhaps leaning towards Gnosticism (the concept that a God did create the Universe, but then left, and the interactions humanity has had with \u0026ldquo;God\u0026rdquo; afterwards was actually a malevolent imposter)\nHowever, in the finished film that name (and \u0026ldquo;Ra\u0026rdquo; if memory serves) is removed. Apparently the studio misplaced it\u0026rsquo;s testicles between producing the trailer and releasing the film, which is a huge shame to me. Come on, guys - push the envelope a little.\nJubilee Like many people, my first exposure to the X-men was through the saturday morning cartoon, and which used Jubilee as the audience proxy for the first few episodes.\nInterestingly she does appear in this film, quite a lot. I think that the writer must have known that quite a lot of fans would be curious to how she is portrayed, and to that end turned her into Maggie Simpson in all of the \u0026ldquo;future\u0026rdquo; episodes of the Simpsons. By that I mean that literally every time she was about to talk, she would be prevented from doing so. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how I feel about that, as it was somewhat funny, but it felt a bit like I was meant to be the butt of the joke.\nQuicksilver He\u0026rsquo;s back, and he is utterly hilarious! If it weren\u0026rsquo;t for his dour representation in Avengers: Age of Ultron, I would be wondering why good-guy speedsters seem to be universally light hearted comic relief.\nJean Grey In another example of the influence on Game of Thrones, Jean Grey is played by Sansa Stark. She is a perfectly competent actress, but evidently has a little bit of trouble with the particular American accent she was attempting. This is obvious, and a little bit distracting, because in some scenes her dialogue was ADRd and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t quite match up.\nWolverine Not a spoiler as it\u0026rsquo;s in the (final) trailer, but the eternal Mary-Sue that is Wolverine is in this film. He is done very well, though, particularly because it\u0026rsquo;s an extremely minimal part with barely a line of dialogue.\nSpecial Effects As mentioned before, this is a less cerebral film than Captain America, and much more spectacle. As such, the film makes liberal use of CGI, which is expensive. The vast majority of it looks really good, or at least convincing enough.\nHowever there are a couple of scenes of a shipping yard which, to be frank, would look more convincing is scribbled on a napkin in crayon.\nThey are unbelievably bad.\nThe thing is, since it\u0026rsquo;s only a couple of scenes - literally no more than a minute of footage - I am left wondering why it wasn\u0026rsquo;t edited out of the final cut?\nThe Horsemen Apocalypse has four mutant henchmen, like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. One of whom is Archangel, who has a transformation sequence featuring a heavy metal song, as if to say \u0026ldquo;Hey, look at this guy with his METAL wings. Isn\u0026rsquo;t this so freaking METAL?\u0026rdquo;\nSince the guy looks like a literal child, not really. In fact, it just seems off.\nConclusion I honestly really enjoyed this film, despite a few mis-steps. It\u0026rsquo;s not the most intelligent, but it is a really solid action film, with Fassbender continuing to be a fantastic Magneto.\nAs the film itself says, the third one is always the worst. This is perhaps not as good as First Class and Days of Future Past, but is far better than The Last Stand.\nSince the next one planned is a third Wolverine specific film (the two so far being at most so bad they\u0026rsquo;re good) I\u0026rsquo;m not too hopeful about Wolverine 3.\n","date":"2016-06-04T13:00:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-06-04-x-men-apocalypse/","title":"X-men: Apocalypse"},{"content":"Captain America: Civil War is thankfully not called Captain Am3rica despite being the third one.\nOne of the things I particularly like about (some of) the Disney-Marvel films is how, despite being \u0026ldquo;childish comic book rubbish\u0026rdquo;, they don\u0026rsquo;t shy away from considering complex ethical or political issues.\nThis is one of those films.\nThe film starts off with an action scene, making excessive use of shaky-cam. I would also be struggling (and possibly arrested) were I chasing after Scarlett Johansen as fast as the camera-man was. The team are chasing after a group of terrorists stealing a McGuffin (that literally never gets explained) and there is some collateral damage.\nDue to this, and the Avenger\u0026rsquo;s previous adventures, they are deemed by the world at large to be too dangerous, and thus they are asked to become controlled by the UN or to retire. That\u0026rsquo;s right, it\u0026rsquo;s not the \u0026ldquo;superhuman registration act\u0026rdquo; in this.\nThis is the one of the main plots of the film (there are a few plots going on concurrently) - lines are drawn with some characters wanting to sign up to UN control, and others disagreeing with it on the grounds that politicians have agendas and are temporary (even if they are just now, their successors might not be)\nAs you might expect, Captain America is on the side of freedom, rather than politicians.\nThe second primary plot involves Cap trying to track down the Winter Soldier, with the film taking a surprisingly long time to reach the teaser scene from the end of Ant-Man.\nThere is also a third story running alongside (and occasionally rubgy-tackling the two) about Black Panther, a member of royalty from the fictional African nation of Wakanda, and who is simply fantastic.\nThere are, of course, multiple action scenes over the course of the film, which have the habit of getting steadier (and therefore easier to process) as the film goes on.\nThis is largely because they become more and more CG focused as the film progresses, and you know what? It works!\nThe best demonstration of this is a fight between all of the heroes in an airport, which looks utterly convincing. Of course, people can\u0026rsquo;t fly, or change size, so conceptually you might not be able to suspend your disbelief, but the actual graphics used are utterly fantastic. So much so that many people, including myself, were surprised to learn that it was entirely green-screened!\nIn fact, throughout my viewing, I was completely immersed, until a point very close to the end, but I think that was due to my sitting quite close to the front, making my neck hurt. Were I further back I think my immersion wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have broken throughout the entire film.\nSpiderman does make an appearance, and was actually handled very well in my opinion. He was very talkative, rather than witty, but I felt that improved over time, as if his becoming witty is itself part of his character development. So he was slightly grating at points, but got better.\nOverall, I really enjoyed this film, despite it\u0026rsquo;s faults, and the Captain America films continue to be a high point of the MCU.\n4 skeins of wool out of an alpaca.\n","date":"2016-05-24T14:05:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-05-24-captain-america-civil-war/","title":"Captain America: Civil War"},{"content":"In 2008 J.J. Abrams released a film called \u0026ldquo;Cloverfield\u0026rdquo;, a found footage film about a handful of New York residents surviving a giant monster attack. If you could get past the shaky-camera potentially giving you motion-sickness, and the fact that digital video cameras don\u0026rsquo;t work the way the do in the film, it was very enjoyable. I personally really liked it.\nAt the end of the film two particular things happened:\nThe US military drop a nuclear bomb on the monster, but audio at during the credits indicate that the monster survived the assault. (Though Abrams says it didn\u0026rsquo;t\u0026hellip;) A scene from Cony Island before the monster attack show something falling from the sky into the ocean. From the ARG and the spin-off manga, we know that this was a satellite that woke up the sleeping sea monster in the first place. Now, 8 years later, we get another film - \u0026ldquo;10 Cloverfield Lane\u0026rdquo;. That wasn\u0026rsquo;t always the film\u0026rsquo;s name. The initial script was called \u0026ldquo;The Cellar\u0026rdquo;, and then once Abrams got involved it was called \u0026ldquo;Valencia\u0026rdquo; as an alleged smoke-screen.\nThe thing is, it really shows. By having the word \u0026ldquo;Cloverfield\u0026rdquo; in the title, it makes a heavy implication as to the content - that it would be related to Cloverfield in some way, perhaps as a sequel.\nSpoilers begin.\nThe film stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ramona Flowers) as Michelle, who while driving along the road, running away from her now ex-fiancée, gets run off of the road. Moments earlier the radio talked about power outages on the southern-seaboard (for those who were confused, like me, that probably indicates the south-eastern area of the US) which does not include New York, but I suppose the EMP from a nuclear bomb could potentially cause effects like that. Or a giant monster attacking power stations?\nAnyway, Michelle then wakes up in a survivalist shelter owned by Howard (John Goodman). Goodman is amazingly creepy and psychotic throughout this film. He is nothing short of fantastic.\nThe other resident of the shelter is Emmett (John Gallagher Jr) who is decent enough, and describes seeing a flash of light on the horizon unlike anything he\u0026rsquo;s ever seen before (hmmm\u0026hellip; nuclear bomb exploding on a rampaging monster?)\nThe majority of the film takes place in the shelter, with Goodman claiming that there is some kind of attack going on outside, that the air is contaminated, and he himself having terrifying mood-swings. It\u0026rsquo;s brilliant, though there was room for improvement (his obsession with thinking of Michelle as a surrogate daughter indicates some massive trauma that doesn\u0026rsquo;t get developed, but also a really creepy sexual edge that also doesn\u0026rsquo;t get used. He could have also spied on Emmett and Michelle by listening through the air-ducts, but did not.)\nIn addition to that Michelle has to wear his young daughter\u0026rsquo;s clothes, which (as my friend pointed out) seem really baggy on the 5'8\u0026quot; 31 year old woman. That just doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem right.\nWithout spoiling too much of the film, for the longest time in this creepy kind-of horror film, it seems that the events going on outside could be explained by the existence of Cloverfield, and the film seems like a really good sequel, a solid 8/10\nSpoilers lessen\nThen Michelle gets out of the shelter, and the film tanks.\nThe film becomes awful, and it becomes evident that this film has absolutely nothing to do with Cloverfield at all.\nThe ending is just absolutely terrible.\nSummary\nUnfortunately this film is good for the first three acts, but just goes completely insane in the fourth.\nWhat, four acts? Why yes, because it\u0026rsquo;s like two completely different films mashed together.\nThe majority of the film is a solid 8/10, but unfortunately the unbelievably awful ending drags the entire film into 5/10 territory.\nIf you do decide to watch this film, walk out the moment the main character does, and don\u0026rsquo;t expect it to have anything to do with Cloverfield.\nCalling it \u0026ldquo;10 Cloverfield Lane\u0026rdquo; is nothing but a cheap ploy to get you to see it in the hopes that it\u0026rsquo;s related.\nThe only way this is related is if this is meant to be a franchise of unrelated anthology films.\n","date":"2016-03-19T13:19:00.002Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-03-19-10-cloverfield-lane/","title":"10 Cloverfield Lane"},{"content":"On a similar note to the Souls games, Dragon\u0026rsquo;s Dogma has had a PC re-release. Not only that, but it\u0026rsquo;s a really good port, and I even have the graphics card Eurogamer tested it on.\nIt should run beautifully on my computer.\nApparently Capcom have said that if it does well, they might consider bringing Dragon\u0026rsquo;s Dogma Online to the west.\nWhile I don\u0026rsquo;t particularly care about, and largely dislike MMOs, more of this franchise is a very pleasant thought.\nHell, maybe if it does well, Capcom will finally finish Deep Down? I really like the look of that one.\nI never actually finished Dragon\u0026rsquo;s Dogma when I had it on the 360 - the endgame difficulty, combined with my desire to 100% every game, resulted in me getting frustrated and a bit bored.\nIt is a fantastic game, with some flaws.\nHowever, since I already bought it upon it\u0026rsquo;s initial release, got the expansion pack, and I have both via Playstation Plus, I\u0026rsquo;m hesitant to pay £30 for it on the PC.\nI really want it to succeed, but I also really want it to drop to a more justifiable price.\nIt may seem somewhat petty, since upgrading the graphics to the degree they have is no small feat, but it is still less effort than writing the script and designing the entire game, like they did the first time around. Plus, it\u0026rsquo;s 4 years old. So spending the same amount of money on it as I did 4 years ago isn\u0026rsquo;t justified, in my opinion.\n","date":"2016-01-27T17:55:00Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2016-01-27-dragons-dogma/","title":"Dragon's Dogma"},{"content":"Ok, I\u0026rsquo;ve seen episode 7 and it is awesome. I\u0026rsquo;m probably going to go and watch it again, but this time for \u0026ldquo;free\u0026rdquo; with my Cineworld pass.\nI\u0026rsquo;m currently (as in right at this moment) watching Doug Walker\u0026rsquo;s Disneycember video about the special editions of the original trilogy.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s mentioned a few times about he\u0026rsquo;s ok with the idea of an artist going back and adjusting their work. The thing is, this doesn\u0026rsquo;t sit well with me for one simple reason: George Lucas didn\u0026rsquo;t direct The Empire Strikes back or Return of the Jedi. By making the special editions he is going back and 2/3 of the time changing someone else\u0026rsquo;s work to fit his own \u0026ldquo;vision\u0026rdquo;, and his vision is (in most cases) inferior to the vision of the actual director.\n","date":"2015-12-22T11:15:00.003Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2015-12-22-star-wars/","title":"Star Wars"},{"content":"I did have several topics I wanted to talk about, but it\u0026rsquo;s probably best for me to try and split them apart. At least that way I can pretend this is more active.\nIn this one I think I\u0026rsquo;ll talk about Dark Souls 1 \u0026amp; 2 (I am highly anticipating 3, and at some point intend to get a PS4 to play Bloodborne)\nCurrently I\u0026rsquo;m trying to get all of the achievements on Dark Souls 2, which is taking a while.\nThis wasn\u0026rsquo;t helped by my wiping my hard-drive in order to solve an issue with the drivers for my headset, only to discover that the Steam integration was so poor that my save was not backed up.\nThe game series that is known for trolling you within the game, also trolls you outside of it.\nI am enjoying the game, but I feel that it definitely lacks something Dark Souls 1 has.\nSome have called it majesty, but I think it\u0026rsquo;s general game design.\nIn Dark Souls 1, you are given a very minimal story to start.\nYou wake up in the \u0026ldquo;Undead Asylum\u0026rdquo; and whilst escaping the only speaking character in the area tells you to ring the \u0026ldquo;Bell of Awakening\u0026rdquo; in order to know your destiny.\nUpon escaping you are told that there are two bells. After ringing them (which will probably take ages on your first run through), a giant operates a machine opening up the gateway to Sen\u0026rsquo;s Fortress.\nGoing through the fortress will take you to Anor Londo (which is a glorious sight)\nAfter going through that, and fighting one of the hardest bosses in the game, you get given a particular item, which allows you to teleport to some checkpoints.\nYou use that item to activate a ceremonial bonfire, which unlocks more areas. You fight bosses in those areas, then burn their souls in the bonfire, which then opens a giant door into the final area of the game.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s quite a journey, with a lot of grandeur or majesty.\nIn Dark Souls 2, you are also given a minimal story, and told to collect four particular souls. Once you do so, you are allowed to push a door open.\nIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t open in some grand way, with light bursting through, it\u0026rsquo;s a case of going up to the door, and pushing it.\nIf it weren\u0026rsquo;t for the fact that when you try to open the door without the requisite souls it essentially says \u0026ldquo;Go away and kill the bosses\u0026rdquo;, it would be like any other door in the game.\nMajula is certainly beautiful, though.\n","date":"2015-11-11T18:21:00.001Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2015-11-11-updates/","title":"Updates"},{"content":"I have had another article published by Gamecentral, the link for which is on the left.\nAs a summary - Phil Fish has created and released a beautiful game called \u0026ldquo;Fez\u0026rdquo;. During GDC (or something of that ilk) a Japanese gentleman asked the panel, which Phil Fish was a member of, what they thought of modern Japanese games.\nPhil Fish responded with \u0026ldquo;your games just suck\u0026rdquo;.\nDue to this, some people are deciding to not buy the game, regardless of how good it is.\nI decided to try to analyse this viewpoint, to try and see exactly what rational basis there is for having such an extreme reaction.\nEnjoy.\n","date":"2012-04-23T23:36:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2012-04-23-boycotting-fez-and-the-nature-of-art/","title":"Boycotting Fez and the nature of Art"},{"content":"Admittedly I have not watched the original, but this has piqued my interest enough to get added onto my list.\n","date":"2011-07-29T13:12:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2011-07-29-gaiking/","title":"Gaiking"},{"content":"I have written a mining calculator for EvE Online that the community could find useful - by entering the necessary values it will tell you in order of priority which ores to mine, what to do with said ore, and the amount of money the player can expect to make, assuming they have a full cargo-hold of the stuff.\nHere is the public dropbox link for it: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33554381/EveMiningForProfit.zip\nIf I update it to be more complicated, then I think I can just update the zip file, so it will have the latest version in it.\n","date":"2011-06-26T19:35:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2011-06-26-eve-mining-profit-calculator-v1-0-release/","title":"EvE Mining Profit Calculator v1.0 - Release"},{"content":"Right, first off, I have had another article published, which I\u0026rsquo;ve backed up here.\nSecondly, I think I\u0026rsquo;m going to re-design the sidebar. Currently it\u0026rsquo;s Javascript injecting into the DOM. I did that so that I could have one place to control it all from, and for the \u0026ldquo;expandy-collapsey\u0026rdquo; behaviour you need to use some kind of scripting language. However, people can disable javascript and some browsers may object to the way it is done, which means that some people are getting an inferior user experience.\nSo, I would prefer to use some kind of server-side scripting instead, though with javascript for the expanding - perhaps, due to what I described before, I can start everything off expanded, then collapse it appropriately on page load, so if anyone has JS disabled they will still see all of the links.\nHowever, there is the possibility this will mess up the counter, as it might then count the server\u0026rsquo;s IP rather than the visitor\u0026rsquo;s.\nEven if all of that works, I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how to embed a server-side return into the side bar which is, some of the time, controlled by blogger.\nSo, lots to look into.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll at least categorize the links better.\n","date":"2011-05-16T20:04:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2011-05-16-updates/","title":"Updates"},{"content":"An interesting thought hit me a little while ago. When studying different Philosophers, even ones which are contained within the same label, it is interesting how different they seem to be. Seem being a key word.\nTake for example Edmund Husserl and Jean-Paul Sartre. Both are Existentialists but both say quite different things.\nHusserl came first and tried to tackle the concept of how we understand ourselves. When we describe things in the world we tend to describe them as distinct from us, entirely separate. We describe objects as objects and ourselves as subjects. But we can also perceive ourselves as objects. So which are we? Subjects, objects, or some blend of both? And what about other things, what are they, really?\nIn order for us to find out he proposed a mental exercise, a sort of meditation. Don\u0026rsquo;t deny that the world exists, that you exist, that everything else accepts as you perceive, but don\u0026rsquo;t accept it either. Be agnostic. Detach your mind, somehow, reflect and you will perceive or experience (he was very bad at explaining his concepts) the \u0026ldquo;Transcendental Ego\u0026rdquo;, the method by which we perceive and understand the world.\nNow, as for Sartre, he wrote a lot of plays. One of which was called \u0026ldquo;No Exit\u0026rdquo;, wherein a group of people found themselves in hell, in a room and with no eyelids. The crux of it was the saying \u0026ldquo;Hell is other people\u0026rdquo; - we judge ourselves by how others react to us, how others perceive us.\nThis was a more ethics focussed take on matters, but it seems to me that these ideas are not too dissimilar. In fact, I would perhaps go so far as to say that the transcendental ego is encompassed within how other people react to us.\nTo further develop this idea, perhaps we can expand the concept of us understanding ourselves by how other things react to us so that it also includes physical reactions. We perceive ourselves as objects because we can push the glass off the table.\nIt is at this point that I realise somewhat that Heidegger acts as the required bridge between these concepts - Heidegger said that the way we normally describe the world is as \u0026ldquo;Zuhanden\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;To hand\u0026rdquo;) but the way we tend to perceive the world is as the \u0026ldquo;Vorhanden\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;For hand\u0026rdquo;)\nThough we describe the world as subjects and objects, we perceive it as tools. Rather than seeing the glass as an object completely separate from ourselves, we see it as a container we can pick up and interact with.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve now lost most if not all capability of describing this any further, but what I\u0026rsquo;ve described is hopefully enough to get my random point across.\n","date":"2010-08-04T21:19:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2010-08-04-hell-is-the-epoche/","title":"Hell is the Epoché"},{"content":"Last week I got an email from moneysavingexpert, within which one of the offers it mentioned was a £10 voucher for a film and tv streaming site: blinkbox.com\nSo I used it to give it a go, buying Iron Man (£2.99)\nI could stream it only, but you can also download it - 1.3 gigs. On the downloaded version, when you try to watch it, you need to verify your details over the internet.\nNow that might seem fair enough on the face of it, but there is something very wrong with this.\nThink about exactly why you want to download a film. Convenience, right?\nThe ability to watch it whenever you wanted, without the need for hardware. Instead it is data on your hard drive.\nExcept, this way, if you want to stream it, you need a net connection.\nIf you have downloaded it and want to watch it, you neet a net connection.\nThat doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem that convenient to me.\nIn fact, it would be more convenient (in the long term) to buy the DVD and rip it to your hard drive, or to pirate it.\nOk, so it\u0026rsquo;s not quite as convenient as actually having the DVD is, but does the price reflect that?\nHell no.\nAs a better example, they have Avatar for £8.99\nThe DVD is available for £8 in Asda.\nOr even, they have the entire original series of V for £1.79 an episode, or £17.99 for the series. In HMV it is £15\nNot only that, but the prices on blinkbox are for the video only. No other languages, no subtitles, no directors commentary. No extras whatsoever.\nSo, you are paying more for an inferior product that is far less convenient to use.\nIs it any wonder why some digital distribution methods fail and piracy is rife?!\nStill, at least they have some decent free stuff, but only to stream.\nWhat if I want to download Night of the Living Dead (which is publicdomain)? Guess I have to fileshare.\n","date":"2010-05-17T12:51:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2010-05-17-companies-just-dont-get-it/","title":"Companies just don't get it"},{"content":"Google has migrated my site, which now means that though the links on the side aren\u0026rsquo;t broken, you download the files rather than viewing them.\nI have three choices:\nGive up Adapt so that those pages can still be hosted on google Be hosted somewhere else I believe I\u0026rsquo;ve already expressed how terrible their WYSIWIG editor was. [edit] I\u0026rsquo;ve actually deleted that post. [/edit]\nIt\u0026rsquo;s now even worse. It\u0026rsquo;s unbearable.\nI\u0026rsquo;m therefore going for option 3 asap.\n","date":"2010-03-03T19:31:00.002Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2010-03-03-google/","title":"Google"},{"content":"On Wednesday I saw the fourth film in the dramatised safety manual franchise \u0026ldquo;The Final Destination\u0026rdquo; - and because the option was there I saw it in 3D. I\u0026rsquo;ve got to say, it was much better than I expected.\nLet me first of all say that there was a trailer for James Cameron\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Avatar\u0026rdquo; before the film, showing off what can be done using this new(ish) fangled 3D technology. The trailer was very impressive.\nHowever, it made the flaws with how the technology is implemented in the feature more apparent. In the trailer, you could look at the objects in the foreground comfortably, but in the Final Destination focusing on the foreground objects made me feel queasy, so instead I had to focus on the middle-ground at most. The effect was, however, impressive overall.\nNow, on to the film itself. It follows the same plot as the other three films, where a young person has a vision of a disaster about to occur in which they and many others die. They save some people, but then those people die in the order in which they would have died according to the vision.\nIn the first film the disaster was a plane exploding in mid-air, and the deaths that followed were entertaining. Some were quite funny, and some were incredibly surprising. For the most part the deaths were caused by human stupidity, setting off a reasonably convincing Rube-Goldberg device resulting in the character\u0026rsquo;s death. Occasionally there would be some sort of black haze just before events would occur, which I interpreted as some sort of physical manifestation of death watching the characters.\nThe second film was some sort of accident on a motorway, but I can\u0026rsquo;t remember enough of the rest of the film to discuss it.\nThe third film was a disaster at a theme park, and the film itself was a disaster.\nThe deaths were hilarious purely because they were not convincing in the least - one major flaw was that the writers seemed to do away with the concept of the deaths being matters of human error or stupidity, instead making death an invisible force that, for example, pushes things over to make a forklift truck drift forward. As a hyperbolic time chamber example, it was as if death would resort to making a gust of wind appear in an airtight box. What ever happened to death being patient?\nThat and saving the people at the beginning of the film would have averted the disaster altogether anyway\u0026hellip;\nThis film involved a disaster at the racetrack as the start of events. It seemed that it took some of the criticism that was levelled at the third film, and took it under consideration. There were some stupid deaths akin to what occurred in the third film, but many of them seemed to be close to the standard of the first film - one of the most hilarious moments was when a death from the first film was repeated while one of the characters was talking about deja vu. As such the film came off as incredibly tongue in cheek and self-aware, and I believe it was all the better for it.\nThere is one gripe I have with it, though - after going through the events, averting one of the final deaths, getting to the end of the list, another disaster occurred (with another accompanying vision) - until it became a vision it seemed like death had just gone \u0026ldquo;You know what? I\u0026rsquo;m sick of these kids defying their fate. Screw subtlety, I\u0026rsquo;m just gonna blow stuff up!\u0026rdquo;\nOnce it was revealed to be a vision, it left a lingering plot-hole: If I recall correctly, the ending of the first film made it seem that when they get to the end of the list, it just goes back to the beginning, so the characters would have to be on the look out forever. Yet here it seemed that by getting to the end of the list they did avoid their fate forever, so death created a new disaster.\nThe ending then became even more confusing, when death just skipped all of the people they saved to kill them first in the \u0026ldquo;shocking\u0026rdquo; ending.\nWhat ever happened to consistent writing?\nOverall, though, I found it entertaining - a worthy addition to the franchise inheriting some bad traits, but many of the very good traits.\nThere are only two points left that I want to discuss:\nWhy do these people get these visions? This is something that is never explained, and I want an explanation dagnabbit. When the third film was going to be released, I remember it being hyped as the end to the series, the film that would explain everything. Instead it explained nothing, and was just plain terrible. The name. Why not Final Destination 4? It obviously took place after the other 3 - they have print-outs from teh internet and everything! Maybe they wanted to give it an ambiguous name in case they wanted to set a film between 3 \u0026amp; 4, but what would the point be? It\u0026rsquo;s not like the films link together in some coherent large-scale story. At most it\u0026rsquo;s thematic links and fan-service references. ","date":"2009-09-20T14:43:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2009-09-20-the-final-destination-3d/","title":"The Final Destination 3D"},{"content":"The title for this post is both appropriate and a plug - GameCentral is going to be turned off in the new year, so there is a petition to try and save it: here.\nNow for the appropriate: I\u0026rsquo;ve been a bit miffed recently. I make it no secret that I enjoy the Pokemon games, which are just plain awesome.\nEvery so often Nintendo puts on events, some of which are difficult to get to, where you can download special exclusive Pokemon.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve been in various places: the Metrocentre, Woolworths in the Metrocentre, a Toy\u0026rsquo;R\u0026rsquo;Us in Stockton\u0026hellip; and the Sunderland Air Show on Seaburn Beach.\nThat is not difficult to get to, but the problem is the timing. Nintendo announces these things by having a website which first of all teases us then reveals the details. The Sunderland Air Show was the weekend of the 25th and 26th of July. This was revealed as a location on the 20th of July.\nThink about that. I work on Saturdays and I tend to be at John\u0026rsquo;s on Sundays. If I were to change either of those facts I would need more than 5 days notice. I need at least 7.\nNow imagine I was a child and I did not work\u0026hellip; but to go there I might require my parents, who might be in the same position as the adult me.\nWhen I left the event (I did it on Sunday morning) I stopped by a cafe, where I was informed that it actually costs people £2,500 a day to set up a tent.\nSo Nintendo spent £5,000 on this, but shot themselves in the foot by not actually announcing it quickly enough (and it won\u0026rsquo;t have been a last minute decision.)\nFinally to add insult to all of that injury, today (30th) I got this email.\nOh goody. They only actually advertise the event after it happened (though, obviously not with the Sunderland one on that list.)\nAlso take a further look - only in England and not in any major cities, either.\nSodding Nintendo. How I love to hate you, or hate to love you. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure any more.\n","date":"2009-07-30T23:11:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2009-07-30-nintendo-hates-europe/","title":"Nintendo hates Europe"},{"content":"Though those topics are not linked together. Or at least not in this post.\nSo, in reverse order: In December I had an article published on Gamecentral on Teletext. I have no created a page which has my original version of the article, and links to their mirrored bits. You can use the link on the sidebar, or this one.\nSecondly, I saw Nine Inch Nails in Manchester last night, and they were amazing (as they are 3/4 of the time - sorry, but that Edinburgh gig was not that good.) There were many good points, but two particular highlights for me: They played their version of \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m Afraid of Americans\u0026rdquo;, and 30,000 (or however many people there were) singing along to \u0026ldquo;Hurt\u0026rdquo;.\n","date":"2009-07-15T20:45:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2009-07-15-nin-and-game-design/","title":"NIN and Game Design"},{"content":"Well, I\u0026rsquo;m still working on some tech demo things - they of course won\u0026rsquo;t be linked to until they are done.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s not what this post is about, though.\nFor some reason, today, I wanted to see if whatsinthebox had updated at all, and it has. I then went searching to find out what other people had discovered, and found this site.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s all quite interesting. Initially I though \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s in the box\u0026rdquo; was a Valve produced HL2:E3 promotional viral. It could have been a fan-tribute, but I wasn\u0026rsquo;t entirely convinced.\nAfter looking today, I was further convinced that it in fact must be for Episode 3. After all, so much work has blatantly been put into it, and surely no-one would spend so much time and effort doing something like this if money wasn\u0026rsquo;t involved, right?\nIt made references to Black Mesa, and on some pages even has the Aperture Science logo as well as the Black Mesa logo, so it must be linked\u0026hellip; But right next to them, is the Hanso Foundation logo. From Lost.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure what to think. Is this a cross-property ARG, or a really sophisticated one that is completely unrelated to the properties it repeatedly cites?\nAlso, this is just plain awesome, if a little creepy. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be a joke - it\u0026rsquo;s there on CNN.com\n","date":"2009-04-17T12:29:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2009-04-17-interesting/","title":"Interesting"},{"content":"Wow, MSPaintAdventures\u0026rsquo; Problem Sleuth adventure is finally over. It\u0026rsquo;s been quite a ride.\nWhat is the point in this post? Purely to mention something brilliant in the FAQs.\nEinstein came up with the equations of relativity, which have been demonstrated to work again and again. The equations show that the faster you move (up until the speed of light*) weird stuff starts to happen.\nRelative to an observer moving at a slower speed, time for you passes slower (i.e. you actually age less) you weigh more (increase in mass) and you shorten in length.\nThe last one was always very counter-intuitive to me, but in the MSPA FAQs there is a fantastic explanation that I wish my Physics teachers had used:\n\u0026ldquo;This is because the speed of light is always constant, no matter where you are, or how fast you or anyone else is going. So if it takes a beam of light 1 second to travel from the back of a box to the front of a box, then if that box is moving, then that box has to be a little narrower for that same beam of light to reach the front of the box in one second!\u0026rdquo;\nGENIUS! It makes so much more sense now!\n*nothing can move faster than light apart from the purely theoretical species of particles called \u0026ldquo;Tachyons\u0026rdquo; which cannot go slower than the speed of light. However, the existence of such particles relies on the existence of numbers such as the square root of -2.\nWhen I followed EvE, I mentioned this in a forum, and was responded to with what root-2 was: 1.41421356 i\nThe person who told me this neglected to realise that the \u0026ldquo;i\u0026rdquo; means \u0026ldquo;imaginary\u0026rdquo; - we have a hard enough time trying to convince ourselves Real numbers exist, so trying to claim that imaginary numbers exist just takes the cake.\nAlso, the Schwarzschild radius is fascinating to know. Mine is (using Newtonian physics) 1.48×10-27 m/kg * 75ish\u0026hellip; 1.11*(10^-25)m\u0026hellip; 0.111 yocto metres.\n","date":"2009-03-11T10:46:00.003Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2009-03-11-relativity/","title":"Relativity"},{"content":"\u0026hellip; is not FEAR itself.\nWelcome to my rant.\nFirst of all, brush up on Yahtzee\u0026rsquo;s FEAR 2 review, and this Steam thread.\nNow you know some annoyances to do with FEAR 2. Remove the references to controlling giant mechs, and the cover system. What remains is an accurate review of FEAR.\nFEAR is not scary. At all.\nYes, there are moments that make you jump, but jumping does not equate to being scared. If you walk around a corner, not expecting to see someone, but you do, you jump. You jump out of surprise, you jump to get more distance between you and this sudden obstacle. You jump to get around said obstacle without any collision. Are you scared, though?\nNo.\nFEAR is, like most western horror, guilty of confusing actually being scared with being surprised. It relies on schlock horror - blood and gore, rather than things that are actually scary. When faced with a pile of dead bodies in the game, I am not scared. Rather, I think of a (not very) witty comment about it.\nWhen I suddenly have an illusion of the main enemy appear next to me, I am not scared. I jump, and fire off a few rounds (on the grounds that so far everything I can shoot might kill me) and am then annoyed for wasting bullets. But not scared.\nSome of the scares rely on you looking in a particular direction. Maybe I\u0026rsquo;m a good soldier, or a very bad one, but I tend to check every nook and cranny for things I can use or things that might try to kill me.\nThus, when a scare occurs, I am investigating a potted plant, rather than looking in the room I cannot get a good view of yet, and thus the entire set piece is lost on me.\nBasically, for a game called FEAR, the very name of which implies pant-wetting terror, it was very disappointing in the scare department.\nNow, past the \u0026ldquo;scary\u0026rdquo; section, onto other criticisms. As you may have noticed, FEAR 1 has dynamic shadows (whereas FEAR 2 does not.)\nIt does this by using the Doom 3 engine, which I have to generally criticise on the grounds of being incredibly inefficient. When a lot happens on screen, my (quite high spec) computer lags. Correct me if I\u0026rsquo;m wrong, but doesn\u0026rsquo;t HL2 have dynamic shadows, too? Yet, HL2 runs as smooth as butter. Why? Because it\u0026rsquo;s programmed better.\nYeah, okay, maybe the Source engine was too expensive/unavailable, but still\u0026hellip; it is annoying when my computer has trouble running a 5 year old game, and yet no trouble running a more recent one.\nPretty much everything Yahtzee said is correct - potentially scary parts are interspersed with wild (and non-scary) gun fights, there are too many medkits, body armour sets, and guns to maintain any level of tension. Plus, the gunfights are reduced to using SlowMo, shooting what you can see, hiding, recharging, repeating. I became such a perfectionist that I would re-load if I got hit at all in rooms, and at most it would take me 5 attempts to get passed any given room. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t playing on easy mode.\nFinally, the story. It\u0026rsquo;s clichéd, it\u0026rsquo;s predictable, and it makes no sense. Throughout the game you have been attacked mainly by cloned soldiers led by a man called Paxton Fettel, sometimes by robots, and sometimes by ghosts.\nPaxton is commanded by Alma, who has also tried to kill you multiple times, but has also managed to consistently wipe out any help you have by turning people into mush instantaneously.\nWhy not you?\nAlma is often depicted as a small girl in a red dress, but was put in an induced coma while used for \u0026ldquo;Project Origin\u0026rdquo; and had no chance of a normal life anyway.\nOkay, that\u0026rsquo;s fine.\nYou and Paxton are her sons\u0026hellip; Wait, why does she tell Paxton to kill everyone, and try to kill you?\nFurther to that, (this may be just in the expansions) she seems to protect you sometimes.\nWhat?! She\u0026rsquo;s trying to kill me, but also protecting me?!\nThe lead scientist says there\u0026rsquo;s a scientific explanation for everything, but he thinks she\u0026rsquo;s just annoyed. Oh, and she died 20 years ago\u0026hellip;\nWhat?! A person who died 20 years ago is communicating with people now, and easily murdering people\u0026hellip; and you claim there\u0026rsquo;s a viable scientific explanation?! That\u0026rsquo;s beyond ridiculous. My suspension of disbelief can only go so far.\nSeriously, guys. As the Eurogamer review said: You made \u0026ldquo;No One Lives Forever\u0026rdquo;, you\u0026rsquo;re better than this.\n","date":"2009-03-07T01:46:00.004Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2009-03-07-the-only-thing-we-have-to-fear/","title":"The only thing we have to FEAR..."},{"content":"So, I occasionally like to write what are, for lack of a better word, essays on subjects that I am passionate about. Games as something other than just a childish way to waste time is just such a subject.\nOn the escapist forums there is currently a thread on this very subject, referencing a link that lists 10 such games. The list primarily mentions audio and visual aspects, and thus many posters are arguing that the list is therefore invalid. Admittedly, the list may be flawed, but that does not mean it is invalid. Some claim that art is subjective, and in a way they are correct, but isn\u0026rsquo;t that less that something isn\u0026rsquo;t art and more than you do not like that particular example of it?\nI hate most modern art, but that does not mean it is not art.\nI think, to describe art in the most objective way possible, it must use the medium in a way that is unique to the medium.\nThat does not mean art has to be \u0026ldquo;original\u0026rdquo; or that it has to be the first to use the medium in this way (obviously, more than the first painting can be a work of art)\nAll mediums are limited, some more so than others. Pictures on canvas can never encompass sound, and music itself cannot encompass pictures (though, album art or music videos can combine the two.)\nSo, what do games have that is unique? Interactivity is the most obvious, but something would have to have a truly revolutionary way of having you interact with the game in order to qualify, surely? Can the Katamari games count purely because of how you interact with the game world? Possibly.\nBut now we have hit upon a key term - \u0026ldquo;game world\u0026rdquo; though a visually appealing world by itself is probably not enough. The Lord of the Rings films are not art purely because the castles are so impressive (plus, what is impressive varies with time, and \u0026ldquo;visually appealing\u0026rdquo; is far too subjective a term.)\nSo what else can there be in terms of game worlds? The most obvious thing that springs to mind is level design, but how can that constitute art?\nGames have many aspects to them: Gameplay, Interaction, Controls, Game worlds, Level design, Story, Music\u0026hellip;\nMost of these can be linked together, but the toughest to link fully into the set is story. Story can be partially told through music, but how can you tell the story through the other methods?\nPsychonauts provided perhaps the best example of such an attempt. Many other games will have the story told using objects within the game world, like a phone, or a poster, or a diary.\nPsychonauts could tell it through the design of the level. Not to say that it could describe the plot, per se, but that it greatly contributed to the characterisation (which is an integral part of the story but not the story itself.)\nThroughout the game you had levels taking place in the real world, and levels taking place within the minds of others. These levels were representations of the personality of the characters, and also within these levels you could find safes containing hidden memories. These memories were sets of pictures, never more than 6 of them, which added a lot of characterisation.\nThe levels described how the characters are at that point in time, but the hidden memories described why they are that way.\nThe Milkman Conspiracy is a particular level which is often used to try and demonstrate this, but to choose only a single level to demonstrate the point doesn\u0026rsquo;t quite demonstrate it enough, in my opinion. All of the levels, without exception, have this wonderful feature.\nSo, why does this feature constitute art? Because it is using the medium of computer games in a way that is unique to it - a series of pictures of the level and the memories could not have this effect, nor could mere words do it quite as effectively. Video games are a combination of music, complex visuals, story, dialogue, and interaction. None of these by themselves is effective, but it is the combination of all of them.\nWhy did I include interactivity in that list? Because the location of the memories is important - they are hidden, after all.\n","date":"2009-02-24T00:17:00.003Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2009-02-24-games-as-art/","title":"Games as art"},{"content":"Well, I finally did it.\nI killed the Grox.\nIt took months to do, but I wiped out every single one of their planets.\nI bought the last one. I even tried to make a video, but there were a couple of problems:\nThe video doesn\u0026rsquo;t show the GUI or menus when communicating with a planet It cuts out when a cutscene starts. Thus, no video.\nMaybe a screenshot of my badges, when I can be bothered.\nBut for now, Dungeon Siege 2 (and Phoenix Wright 3)\n","date":"2009-01-05T00:10:00.002Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2009-01-05-finally/","title":"Finally"},{"content":"Okay, been playing Spore since release, and wound down a bit, primarily because I\u0026rsquo;m trying to wipe out the Grox. I thought I\u0026rsquo;d give a few tips for anyone who tries such an endeavour, and to clear up some of the lies surrounding them.\nThe Grox are easy to defeat. This is what is technically known as \u0026ldquo;not true\u0026rdquo; - they are not easy. It will take a long time. By which I mean \u0026ldquo;weeks if not months of playing for hours a day\u0026rdquo;\nThe Grox only have around 600/700/1000 systems. LIES! Well, okay, maybe\u0026hellip; per arm and not including the middle. I\u0026rsquo;d estimate them to have closer to 7000 systems.\nEach system will only have 1 Grox planet I\u0026rsquo;ve encountered more systems with 4 or 5 planets than those with 1 or 2. I\u0026rsquo;ve even encountered one with 6 inhabited planets!\nThe cities can be destroyed with a single mega-bomb. Once again, no. This is only true of the planets which are on the outskirts of their territory - I\u0026rsquo;ve fought cities in the centre of areas they own that took 7-8 or maybe even 10 bombs to destroy. That\u0026rsquo;s because they\u0026rsquo;re fully defended - filled with turrets and buildings.\nThere is only 1 city per planet. Filthy filthy lies. Why do people who have never seen anything close to the extent of the Grox try to give advice on it? 1 city on some planets, 2 cities on most. 3 cities on one, and when that is destroyed then another planet gets 3 cities.\nYou can reach every Grox system. Also lies - no amount of slingshotting yourself will get you to some systems, so you need to use either a mod or a trainer to get rid of your movement restriction when near the centre of the galaxy.\nThe Grox do not conquer other systems. Oh yes they do, and that is why this has taken me so long. I was playing by the original rules at first - I worked my way out from the centre and completely eradicated one of the arms. I then moved off a bit, and came back. They once again inhabit every system at the centre, and most of the arm I had removed them from. They expand, and they do it at a rate so as to make them really annoying.\nAs such, here is my advice:\nGet a mod to remove the range restriction at the centre of the galaxy. Also, get the 42 mod to remove the recharge time and use limit on the Staff of Life. The Mayflower mod is also useful. Be a trader. Get a good trainer - one which can alter the relations with species, and the use of weapons. Now, work your way through one arm, to the Grox. Force them to be loyal, and ally with them. Now they are your friends they won\u0026rsquo;t attack you - won\u0026rsquo;t conquer your systems (they can do that, and they can also reduce a T3 planet to be T0, hence why these mods and devices focus on increasing speed) Buy systems, and use the Staffs to wipe them out in order to place colonies. Essentially fence them in, and then create more of a fence to cut their property apart. Cut it into small mangable chunks so you can easily set yourself targets of how much to destroy, and see if they try to expand at all. This is how I\u0026rsquo;m doing it. It will take a long time, but it\u0026rsquo;s better than taking forever, which it will have done otherwise.\n","date":"2008-11-16T20:12:00.004Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2008-11-16-spore-tips/","title":"Spore tips"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been thinking. You know that Zen Koan, \u0026ldquo;If a tree falls in a forest and no-one is around, does it make a sound?\u0026rdquo;\nPreviously I\u0026rsquo;ve always said yes, since the sound is caused by the energy being transferred through the particles in the air, which is caused by the tree falling.\nBut really, what is the sound? Is the sound the energy, the transferal of said energy, or is it the interpretation of the vibrations of the air particles?\nIf the latter is the case then the question should not just be whether it makes a sound when no-one is around, but whether it ever makes a sound.\n","date":"2008-09-11T17:43:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2008-09-11-zen-koans/","title":"Zen Koans"},{"content":"This is hillarious.\nSpore has already been cracked, making EA\u0026rsquo;s security measures only hurt their legitimate customers. I\u0026rsquo;m still buying the game, because I\u0026rsquo;ve wanted it for the past 5 years, but it is still nice to see EA get punished.\n","date":"2008-09-04T09:19:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2008-09-04-ea-sucks/","title":"EA sucks"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s a shame it\u0026rsquo;s a port with some extra dungeons rather than a full-on remake (a la FF3 and 4) but still, it\u0026rsquo;s awesome. If you own a DS, buy this game. You owe it to yourself. Seriously.\n","date":"2008-07-08T13:47:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2008-07-08-ct-ds/","title":"Chrono Trigger: DS"},{"content":"Been messing around with the css, html and js again. \u0026ldquo;What have you done?\u0026rdquo; I hear you wail.\nGet out of my head right now.\nAnywho, I have now added an external links section to the sidebar, and made each section of the sidebar have a header (h2, to be precise.) Why?\nSo now the \u0026ldquo;Blog archive\u0026rdquo; h2 looks like the others. Hurray for conformity within my code!\nI was also getting a lot of \u0026ldquo;font\u0026rdquo; css errors from firefox: though the pages would always validate, the web developer toolbar didnae like it (what, a firefox extension being stricter than the W3C?! Preposterous!)\nSo, that\u0026rsquo;s all fixed. I am now xhtml strict and css 2.1 uber-valid and have an external linky thing.\nTHIS page, however, still doesn\u0026rsquo;t validate, but none of the errors are mine - they\u0026rsquo;re all blogger\u0026rsquo;s annoying widgets (though, there may not realistically be any way to have a centralised blogging service without them.) The errors are quite interesting. Do you want to see them?\nWell, tough. I was going to post them, but it now appears that I hav fixed the only problem which really was that interesting.\nPS. Okami was beautiful on the PS2. It is beyond beautiful on the Wii. If there was a god of looking awesome, then it\u0026rsquo;d be that game.\n","date":"2008-06-16T18:34:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2008-06-16-the-continuing-adventures-of-a-webmaster/","title":"The continuing adventures of a webmaster"},{"content":"So, yesterday I got into papercraft a bit, I can\u0026rsquo;t remember how, precisely. I think I was looking for homemade Half-Life plushies, and found headcrabs made of paper.\nWhatever happened, it developed from there, and I spend about 4 hours downloading almost 800 megs of patterns. Most of which are awesome.\nFor example, I found one of Okami Ameratasu (which looks mighty difficult)\nI also, however, found the second best thing ever: MACROSS papercraft!\nThe best thing ever is, of course, Macross papercraft of all the VFs (particularly the 19 and 21) in P, D and B modes, rather than just P.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s interesting to note how many referrals I\u0026rsquo;m getting from torrent sites and gothic forums (though, only to the timeline, but it\u0026rsquo;s not like there\u0026rsquo;s much else here)\nI no longer need (did I ever need\u0026hellip;) to plug my site. Hurray?\n","date":"2008-06-10T17:19:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2008-06-10-papercraft/","title":"Papercraft"},{"content":"Just finished the 3rd Resident Evil film. At least it was better than 2.\nI hope that they don\u0026rsquo;t make another one.\nAt least in this one it appears that they\u0026rsquo;ve played some of the games (basically, they\u0026rsquo;ve played a bit of Code Veronica, and seen some of 1.\nAlso add in a teeny bit of 2 - finally a tyrant like in the games\u0026hellip; though he talks\u0026hellip; The entire curey thingy\u0026hellip; Wesker being the CEO is kindof right. Almost.)\nStill, I hate the stupid stuff they come up with (i.e. giving AdaAshley (\u0026ldquo;Alice\u0026rdquo;) psychic powers - WTF?! Yeah, zombies don\u0026rsquo;t make sense if you think about it, but still\u0026hellip;)\nGuitar Hero 3 completed on easy. Normal seems so ridiculously hard.\nTwilight Princess is awesome, but the twilight is a bit too harsh on the eyes in my opinion.\n","date":"2007-12-27T01:18:00.001Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2007-12-27-merry-day-after-boxing-day/","title":"Merry day-after-boxing-day"},{"content":"Best. Week. Ever.\nThat was last month, though.\nBasically, I won a Wii, and a TV to play it on. Awesome.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been mainly playing Gamecube games on it, because:\nThere are many awesome GC games I missed Pre-owned Wii games are still ridiculously expensive, so I should wait until the prices go down. Anyway, just finished Wind Waker, which was quite good. The sailing was irritating, and where it fits in the storyline was also confusing (though, I\u0026rsquo;m now reading up on things, and apparently there are two parallel timelines in which the games take place, thus making things a lot more confusing\u0026hellip; Though, actually, it does make sense. At the end of OoT I wondered \u0026ldquo;Why go back to the start if it\u0026rsquo;s all going to happen again\u0026rdquo;)\nPeople have been claiming that you kill Ganon at the end of it, but I must disagree.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve seen previously that he can survive having a magical sword buried in his head, and he turned to stone.\nI think he was just sealed away again.\n","date":"2007-11-05T14:00:00.001Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2007-11-05-ooooh/","title":"Ooooh"},{"content":"Well, what\u0026rsquo;s new? Not much.\nFinally got my parchment, and thus was able to secure my place at Newcastle.\nI shall pass this course \u0026ldquo;like a Slor Beast passes her young: Jiggly! And full of juice…\u0026rdquo; (Zim)\nBeen playing more Pokemon Diamond (it rocks so hard) even set up some trades with people\u0026hellip; I haven\u0026rsquo;t had any correspondance back since I\u0026rsquo;ve got what\u0026rsquo;s needed on my end, and tried to arrange a time for the trade. Are they lazy or is there some error in sending the messages?\nWork\u0026rsquo;s been a bit busy, especially since we\u0026rsquo;re now cut down on staff (for various reasons) It\u0026rsquo;s amazing how little time you have left even after just 4 hours in the middle of the day are removed.\nBeen watching some Leroy Jenkins things (a la the title) and The Angry Videogame Nerd\nIt\u0026rsquo;s bizzare. He\u0026rsquo;s not really funny, but he is so entertaining.\nAlso, Bioshock demo. Played in on Jon\u0026rsquo;s comp, because it doesn\u0026rsquo;t work well on mine. I need Pixel shader 3, but I only have 2, despite my graphics card being very good. I can run anything else, literally, on the highest settings, with very little slowdown, but I can\u0026rsquo;t play this demo (it\u0026rsquo;s not even really needed - there is a patch which utilises a workaround. It\u0026rsquo;s slow, but it allows you to see most things without the need for this unnecessary technology.)\nI\u0026rsquo;ll upgrade next year, when both cards and game are cheaper. My card is awesome enough for now. Maybe even DX10 would almost be worth it by then, too.\nOn the plus side, though, I finally got my computer to remember that my radeon has a tv in. On the minus side, it still recieves nothing. Either I\u0026rsquo;m using the wrong cable, or this truly is never going to work.\n","date":"2007-08-27T22:43:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2007-08-27-leeeerooooyyy-mmmmmmjennnkiiinnns/","title":"Leeeerooooyyy Mmmmmmjennnkiiinnns"},{"content":"Well, Harry Potter 7 arrived on Saturday\u0026hellip; and I\u0026rsquo;m yet to actually open it. I\u0026rsquo;ve kind of got mixed feelings of excitment, dissappointment that the story will end, lack of excitment because I\u0026rsquo;ve been predicting the ending for over a year now, and general apathy because I still haven\u0026rsquo;t finished .hack//Another Birth 3 yet.\nI know the books are easy, but I actually haven\u0026rsquo;t opened that one for about a month. Other things have been occupying my time: Work, cleaning my room, catching up on TV, and Pokemon. Dear god I love those games.\nAlso got Unbuntu running recently. Was a bit of a kerfuffle - I got a 30GB HDD from my brother, but when installing it I accidentally partially disconnected my DVD drive from the motherboard, resulting in slow start up, wasted hours, and lots of frustration. Nothing particularly exciting on that front.\nOn another note, I recommend the next two sites:\nTom Morton\u0026rsquo;s beloved Website!\nChore Wars :: Earning Experience Points for Housework\nThe first is open source GL Frontier. For those not in the know, Frontier is the best space game ever, bar none.\nThe second is an RPG to encourage people to do the housework. Neat.\nI notice there are a few people comming here from Facebook. Awesome. Nice to know my hard work on the LoK Timeline is appreciated. If anyone thinks that I\u0026rsquo;ve got anything wrong, please tell me, and give a good explanation as to why it\u0026rsquo;s wrong. I put a fair amount of \u0026ldquo;logical\u0026rdquo; thinking into that, so if you can\u0026rsquo;t give a good explanation as to why I\u0026rsquo;m wrong I\u0026rsquo;ll have no good reason to believe you.\nI may put it up on Wikipedia eventually.\nAs to the person who commented on my previous post: Thank you mysterious spammer. The only reason I haven\u0026rsquo;t deleted the comment is because the site it links to is pretty intresting, though probably overpriced.\nFinally, someone may be wondering about the title of this post. Well, when tidying my room I came across a sheet of paper with that word on it. Putting it into google results in a few hundred (552) results. The top result is to this deviantart page: http://etamnanki.deviantart.com/\nHe draws stuff I like (Oh! My Goddess!, Aliens, Predator, Doom)\nAnother is a link to the profile of someone who asked about running Freespace 2 on XP and Vista. I would think this could be me, but he types in a different manner.\nAnother one is a page of statistics for a corp in EVE, mentioning another corp called Etamnanki.\nAll of these are potential explanations as to why I have this word written down, but none are too familiar. I don\u0026rsquo;t recall that DeviantArt guy. I love Freespace but why would I make such a roundabout note when I could bookmark it or send myself an email? Why would I be that intrested in EVE anymore? I don\u0026rsquo;t like paying every month for a game with no clear objectives within which I have to grind. Grinding is boring.\n","date":"2007-07-22T23:35:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2007-07-22-etamnanki/","title":"Etamnanki"},{"content":"Well, it\u0026rsquo;s been a while, and quite a lot has happened.\nFirst of all, I graduated with a 2:2 (57.75% - so close to a 2:1)\nSo know I get to put BA HONS Dunelm on the end of my name when doing academic things, or just wanting to be a bit of a ponce.\nSecondly, I have been accepted to do a MSc at Newcastle, conditional upon my showing them my transcript and parchment, both of which are in the post. As will the photos of the graduation (which will surely go on Facebook)\nI\u0026rsquo;m also currently in the process of cleaning my room, which involves organising it. This now means that my various projects are well organised, and it will be easier for me to work on them.\nMy art style has changed a bit for a certain project, which therefore speeds up the process, whilst keeping everything \u0026ldquo;stylised\u0026rdquo; (it\u0026rsquo;s not badly drawn, I swear!)\n","date":"2007-07-05T13:41:00+01:00","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2007-07-05-huzzrah/","title":"Huzzrah!"},{"content":"Well, this week\u0026rsquo;s been fun. NIN on monday was ridiculously awesome.\nTrent played \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re in this together now\u0026rdquo; which is the second time it has ever been played live.\nI also got some cool stuff from FOPP - I cannot wait until more local branches open.\n","date":"2007-03-01T00:03:00.001Z","permalink":"https://aradiel.co.uk/post/2007-03-01-nin/","title":"NIN"}]