One week gone
Time to get worried
I've been quite ill again (and they say, what? Again? Are you an indigenous South American tribe who has only just come into contact with disease-ridden Westerners?). I think it was something to do with somehow stripping my immune system bare through rigorous revision and work over a very long weekend. Unbelievable. Thus, much of last week was spent hallucinating as the November dark closed in on my London bedroom and I really didn't feel like doing anything of any substance at all, so I just lay here zonked up on Day Nurse or zonked out on Night Nurse, hoping my internal thermostat was going to mend and I didn't feel like my circulatory system was filled with thick, sick lava. Then I lectured at Trent again, got hammered, went to a champagne lunch at Langtry's restaurant then to Camden to see the Super Furries for the 29th time (or thereabouts), before yesterday's President's Cup match (prosaic report brewing and coming) at Count Westwest's titular abode. And that was that week. Rubbish finished off by a little work and activity. And lager (yes, tis that time of the year again when bigger quantities of alcohol is apparently imbibed to keep me warm) For some odd reason, I was mightily annoyed with not finding the time to read any of the weekend papers. Fact absorbing habits, you see, die hard and must therefore be respected.
Anyway, I wrote this little thing quite some time ago, so I thought I might as well post it before its topicality is reduced to that of last year's fish 'n' chip wrapping...
Review of DVD quiz game freebie I got off a £2 magazine
The ULTIMATE Masters of Minds Quiz
It's not often that a periodical I regularly purchase for research/work purposes has a free quiz DVD game attached to it, and one that does not pride itself on dishing out "dahn tha paaaabb" monkey-level trivia teasers, but one promising "Hundreds of super hard questions". Could I take them at their word? Do they know the true meaning of "super hard"? (and please, no sick porno puns. Obviously, I've just made one).
Truth be told, its "interactive" claims are a load of braying donkey twaddle or Michael Jackson duck butter. Only slightly more user-friendly than doing it with a videotape, it simply offers up a page-filled list of 30 rounds of ten questions with four multiple answer questions, i.e. flashes up question after question with no recourse to clicking on A, B, C or D, and asks you to use your own pen and paper (the cheeky swine!) to write your choices down and tot up your own scores when the answers come up. That is that. The Mastermind PC game I practised on for UC was far more interactive. But "interactive" is what you personally make of it". Whatever the hell that means.
Now, having been scourged by a couple of pop quiz DVDs ("Now That's What I Call an Infuriating Waste of Time") that magically appeared in my possession last Yuletide and which proceeded to pound me and my flatmates into groaning indolence and cynicism with their inane, absurd and the "I don't give a [insert excretal adjective here]" attempts at testing our musical knowledge and instilling some flashy fun into the competitive side of things with technicolor graphics and silly presentation tics like your taking on an avatar who if you met in real life you would repeatedly knee in the guts then receive a community award for your powers of scum-control. They both drove me to borderline insanity. They put me off buying every other one cramming the shelves in the HMVs and Virgin Megastores (or as it is now called Zavvi, like "savvy" you see, like how incredibly stupid). Yeah, even the QI one.
So, frankly, I thought it was going to be the same-old, same-old stream of irritating visuals and sluggish loading times. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to find its bare-bones, straight-up (i.e. pretty lazy) style to be quite enjoyable. Why? Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts. All arriving at a pace the participant can dictate. It had a decent amount of testing questions or question material that could be transformed into useful revision or didactic aids (ugh, I used that word REVISION, but then the EQC is coming up) for future battle. And, of course, mere questions and the swift follow-up of relevant answers are enough for such weak quizlings as myself.
There was a number of suspiciously Australian-inflected questions (er, the first Australian mini-series to be shown on Australian TV in 1978? The Stirling Range? The Aussie state that has most land set aside for nature conservation reserves? A question on Wolfmother winning the J-Award in 2005?) mixed in with some puzzling stuff about Fearne Cotton's ex-rocker boyfriends, the amount of cars Ford produced in 2005 - like gagillions - and crapola that was deemed too gossip, statistic or WTF?-ridden to make it a truly bounteous source of new and interesting trivia ammunition, whilst also suggesting that some wholesale thievery from unmentioned sources had taken place. And yet there was certainly enough to keep me noting down the best stuff at a pleasingly rapid rate, even if actually looking back at my notes, the questions may be far more crazy-random in reality than when I was zipping my way through the entire disc's contents (took me 90 minutes, writing in my notepad and all) and that its distractive nature had only really succeeded in warding off the enemy of trivia-empty boredom. Then again, my life was certainly enriched by the knowledge that the Black Pacu is a vegetarian member of the piranha family, and other tidbits concerning irone, flexors, Monteverdi and Krav Maga.
A pity that it was all over too quickly - it had been gutted for all its usefulness before it truly captured my quizzer heart - but it is great value for money considering that it is free (though it says it is worth £9.99 ... hmmmm). It's the cover-mount of Web User magazine last time I looked (and like THAT! It is gone) and yes, it more than fulfils its proposed remit of furnishing users with "super-hard" questions. Though perhaps bewildering, bemusing and very interesting would best describe the actual, wildly varying level.
If you were asked a load of these at a pub quiz, a riot involving much glass breakage and vicious shouting would probably ensue, on account of no-one having a a single bloody clue about any of the answers. Home is the best place for playing it. On your own with your own hardcore expectations being somewhat satisfied (playing with less gifted quiz friends will definitely start an in-house riot or migrations to more interesting rooms in the house).
Random Points Rating Verdict
Completely arbitrary mark out of, oh say, a thousand: 678/1000 (for that is the number that pops into my head. Wait, now I have 633 coming through. The mark, like the future as Nathan Petrelli said, is not set in stone. Come to think of it, hasn't the second season of Heroes been a bit of a damp squib so far? I hope that when Veronica "Is she evil or is she good? ... wait, she has Force Lightning human barbecue abilities ... evil yet undeniably attractive bitch alert" Mars finds Peter some-bloody-where and she electro-fries his insipid, whiny Irish GF, then things will finally gain some much-needed compulsive momentum.
Great. He's Going on about Heroes Now
However, it's good to know that Matt has discovered his mind-reading powers aren't quite so pathetic and can be developed Daddy-style into a weapon of serious psycho-head shitting. The dude has Professor Xavier potential. Oops, I've already been scolded for shouting out spoilers in a Tourette's fashion at fellow Brits who are still wading towards the climax of the first series on BBC2, coming soon: "When I killed Nathan he had already turned against his own kind" "Liar!". Love that bit. Seen it too many times on YouTube. But I can't help the spoilage. Sorry. SULU DIES! In an excessively bloody, brain-bashed manner. But Uhuru has turned up in New Orleans, so hopefully the Star Trek retirement programme will continue and they'll have Spock on as Sylar's super-evil dad in a season or two chowing down on a shared a brain or two. Damn, I did it again. Double sorry. Back to mourning TV-Links' death. Oh the humanity! Having said that, I've not even said if Heroes is any good. It's compulsive tosh admittedly. The spic-and-span special effects help a lot as well. I also believe that strange Hans Zimmer-influenced casbah-electronica whining is planting subliminal orders in my brain, forcing me to log on and watch the next episode despite my not minding 95 per cent of the characters being arbitrarily killed off ASAP. They each annoy me in their own ways. I could list, but you would then certainly desist. Er, with the reading.
Where the Hours Go
Other American TV shows I have been watching on the internet instead of doing stuff like taking pictures of myself with caption-cards with the word CRACK in art galleries: House (Season 4 ... silly but addictive), Bionic Woman (I have no idea why I am still watching this. It's bad-good. And I love Katee. Hate that British bird.) Fox's Kitchen Nightmares (UK version is miles better, but this is still compulsive stuff especially when Ramsay starts busting a well-stocked butcher's window array of chops with the beautiful nail-pitted club of reality), The Office (still love it ... the tone and scripting and acting is so right, it makes me misspell EET ROOLZZZZ), And I'm back watching The Wire, perhaps far more wisely on DVD. I'm so insanely indoctrinated with the whole greatest TV show ever schtick (you go hmmm at first and then watch one episode then one after another and before you know it, it has you gripped tight in its gritty claw and you have spent two days on the sofa accused of being comatose by passing domicile co-occupants) that I feel like being tested on its high complexity, confusing gang aliases and cops 'n' robbers techno-jargon on Mastermind. Seriously. And lest I forget, the last season of Battlestar Galactica is coming. Goodbye daylight, hello flickering pixels in the darkness. You can be my friends.
I've been quite ill again (and they say, what? Again? Are you an indigenous South American tribe who has only just come into contact with disease-ridden Westerners?). I think it was something to do with somehow stripping my immune system bare through rigorous revision and work over a very long weekend. Unbelievable. Thus, much of last week was spent hallucinating as the November dark closed in on my London bedroom and I really didn't feel like doing anything of any substance at all, so I just lay here zonked up on Day Nurse or zonked out on Night Nurse, hoping my internal thermostat was going to mend and I didn't feel like my circulatory system was filled with thick, sick lava. Then I lectured at Trent again, got hammered, went to a champagne lunch at Langtry's restaurant then to Camden to see the Super Furries for the 29th time (or thereabouts), before yesterday's President's Cup match (prosaic report brewing and coming) at Count Westwest's titular abode. And that was that week. Rubbish finished off by a little work and activity. And lager (yes, tis that time of the year again when bigger quantities of alcohol is apparently imbibed to keep me warm) For some odd reason, I was mightily annoyed with not finding the time to read any of the weekend papers. Fact absorbing habits, you see, die hard and must therefore be respected.
Anyway, I wrote this little thing quite some time ago, so I thought I might as well post it before its topicality is reduced to that of last year's fish 'n' chip wrapping...
Review of DVD quiz game freebie I got off a £2 magazine
The ULTIMATE Masters of Minds Quiz
It's not often that a periodical I regularly purchase for research/work purposes has a free quiz DVD game attached to it, and one that does not pride itself on dishing out "dahn tha paaaabb" monkey-level trivia teasers, but one promising "Hundreds of super hard questions". Could I take them at their word? Do they know the true meaning of "super hard"? (and please, no sick porno puns. Obviously, I've just made one).
Truth be told, its "interactive" claims are a load of braying donkey twaddle or Michael Jackson duck butter. Only slightly more user-friendly than doing it with a videotape, it simply offers up a page-filled list of 30 rounds of ten questions with four multiple answer questions, i.e. flashes up question after question with no recourse to clicking on A, B, C or D, and asks you to use your own pen and paper (the cheeky swine!) to write your choices down and tot up your own scores when the answers come up. That is that. The Mastermind PC game I practised on for UC was far more interactive. But "interactive" is what you personally make of it". Whatever the hell that means.
Now, having been scourged by a couple of pop quiz DVDs ("Now That's What I Call an Infuriating Waste of Time") that magically appeared in my possession last Yuletide and which proceeded to pound me and my flatmates into groaning indolence and cynicism with their inane, absurd and the "I don't give a [insert excretal adjective here]" attempts at testing our musical knowledge and instilling some flashy fun into the competitive side of things with technicolor graphics and silly presentation tics like your taking on an avatar who if you met in real life you would repeatedly knee in the guts then receive a community award for your powers of scum-control. They both drove me to borderline insanity. They put me off buying every other one cramming the shelves in the HMVs and Virgin Megastores (or as it is now called Zavvi, like "savvy" you see, like how incredibly stupid). Yeah, even the QI one.
So, frankly, I thought it was going to be the same-old, same-old stream of irritating visuals and sluggish loading times. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to find its bare-bones, straight-up (i.e. pretty lazy) style to be quite enjoyable. Why? Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts. All arriving at a pace the participant can dictate. It had a decent amount of testing questions or question material that could be transformed into useful revision or didactic aids (ugh, I used that word REVISION, but then the EQC is coming up) for future battle. And, of course, mere questions and the swift follow-up of relevant answers are enough for such weak quizlings as myself.
There was a number of suspiciously Australian-inflected questions (er, the first Australian mini-series to be shown on Australian TV in 1978? The Stirling Range? The Aussie state that has most land set aside for nature conservation reserves? A question on Wolfmother winning the J-Award in 2005?) mixed in with some puzzling stuff about Fearne Cotton's ex-rocker boyfriends, the amount of cars Ford produced in 2005 - like gagillions - and crapola that was deemed too gossip, statistic or WTF?-ridden to make it a truly bounteous source of new and interesting trivia ammunition, whilst also suggesting that some wholesale thievery from unmentioned sources had taken place. And yet there was certainly enough to keep me noting down the best stuff at a pleasingly rapid rate, even if actually looking back at my notes, the questions may be far more crazy-random in reality than when I was zipping my way through the entire disc's contents (took me 90 minutes, writing in my notepad and all) and that its distractive nature had only really succeeded in warding off the enemy of trivia-empty boredom. Then again, my life was certainly enriched by the knowledge that the Black Pacu is a vegetarian member of the piranha family, and other tidbits concerning irone, flexors, Monteverdi and Krav Maga.
A pity that it was all over too quickly - it had been gutted for all its usefulness before it truly captured my quizzer heart - but it is great value for money considering that it is free (though it says it is worth £9.99 ... hmmmm). It's the cover-mount of Web User magazine last time I looked (and like THAT! It is gone) and yes, it more than fulfils its proposed remit of furnishing users with "super-hard" questions. Though perhaps bewildering, bemusing and very interesting would best describe the actual, wildly varying level.
If you were asked a load of these at a pub quiz, a riot involving much glass breakage and vicious shouting would probably ensue, on account of no-one having a a single bloody clue about any of the answers. Home is the best place for playing it. On your own with your own hardcore expectations being somewhat satisfied (playing with less gifted quiz friends will definitely start an in-house riot or migrations to more interesting rooms in the house).
Random Points Rating Verdict
Completely arbitrary mark out of, oh say, a thousand: 678/1000 (for that is the number that pops into my head. Wait, now I have 633 coming through. The mark, like the future as Nathan Petrelli said, is not set in stone. Come to think of it, hasn't the second season of Heroes been a bit of a damp squib so far? I hope that when Veronica "Is she evil or is she good? ... wait, she has Force Lightning human barbecue abilities ... evil yet undeniably attractive bitch alert" Mars finds Peter some-bloody-where and she electro-fries his insipid, whiny Irish GF, then things will finally gain some much-needed compulsive momentum.
Great. He's Going on about Heroes Now
However, it's good to know that Matt has discovered his mind-reading powers aren't quite so pathetic and can be developed Daddy-style into a weapon of serious psycho-head shitting. The dude has Professor Xavier potential. Oops, I've already been scolded for shouting out spoilers in a Tourette's fashion at fellow Brits who are still wading towards the climax of the first series on BBC2, coming soon: "When I killed Nathan he had already turned against his own kind" "Liar!". Love that bit. Seen it too many times on YouTube. But I can't help the spoilage. Sorry. SULU DIES! In an excessively bloody, brain-bashed manner. But Uhuru has turned up in New Orleans, so hopefully the Star Trek retirement programme will continue and they'll have Spock on as Sylar's super-evil dad in a season or two chowing down on a shared a brain or two. Damn, I did it again. Double sorry. Back to mourning TV-Links' death. Oh the humanity! Having said that, I've not even said if Heroes is any good. It's compulsive tosh admittedly. The spic-and-span special effects help a lot as well. I also believe that strange Hans Zimmer-influenced casbah-electronica whining is planting subliminal orders in my brain, forcing me to log on and watch the next episode despite my not minding 95 per cent of the characters being arbitrarily killed off ASAP. They each annoy me in their own ways. I could list, but you would then certainly desist. Er, with the reading.
Where the Hours Go
Other American TV shows I have been watching on the internet instead of doing stuff like taking pictures of myself with caption-cards with the word CRACK in art galleries: House (Season 4 ... silly but addictive), Bionic Woman (I have no idea why I am still watching this. It's bad-good. And I love Katee. Hate that British bird.) Fox's Kitchen Nightmares (UK version is miles better, but this is still compulsive stuff especially when Ramsay starts busting a well-stocked butcher's window array of chops with the beautiful nail-pitted club of reality), The Office (still love it ... the tone and scripting and acting is so right, it makes me misspell EET ROOLZZZZ), And I'm back watching The Wire, perhaps far more wisely on DVD. I'm so insanely indoctrinated with the whole greatest TV show ever schtick (you go hmmm at first and then watch one episode then one after another and before you know it, it has you gripped tight in its gritty claw and you have spent two days on the sofa accused of being comatose by passing domicile co-occupants) that I feel like being tested on its high complexity, confusing gang aliases and cops 'n' robbers techno-jargon on Mastermind. Seriously. And lest I forget, the last season of Battlestar Galactica is coming. Goodbye daylight, hello flickering pixels in the darkness. You can be my friends.
posted by That Quiz Guy at 7:43 AM
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