Random Hoo Haasthe blog with the guff

Methane cometh from pig shit.

Friday, June 17, 2011 at 10:20 pm Comments (1)

I watched Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome. I guess when I said I wasn’t in a rush to see it, I didn’t mean I wouldn’t say no to it being suggested!

The first two Mad Max flicks were unified in their rather bleak environments – the first one still had an infrastructure, but if you lived in the bad zones, you were easy pickings for the motorcycle gangs, and although the second one had a rather cosy outpost of people living together comfortably, they were hounded day and night by another motorcycle gang intent of stealing their fuel source. The third one, in theory, is even more bleak – the landscape itself now is now trying to kill you (freakin’ quicksand!), and the one real town the film focuses on, Barter Town, is a wretched hive of scum and villainy where most of the people have to shovel pig shit for a living.
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A longer ramble

Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 10:42 pm Comments Off on A longer ramble

So, uh, after ten months of being a totally lazy mofo (or more precisely, six months of putting it off and then four months trying to burn through it as quickly as possible), the Random Hoo Haas revamp is finished.

What updates have we got after such a long absence? Well, there’s a new music page, for starters, where I throw up MP3s of whatever video game music takes my fancy, as well as links to other music hosted on the various Random Hoo Haas sites. Also, a Wario’s Woods shrine! It mostly exists just so I can dump those manual scans and music downloads somewhere. Also, the Games I Own, Like & Hate section got a long needed update. There’s a whole bunch of new games and a small bunch of new reviews!
Also, hey, remember those blog entries from two years ago where I was translating the work of Otimusya, a Japanese video game humour site? Well, I’ve finally uploaded some of them! The page explains why I’ve been sitting on them for so long. The Balloon Fight page has a couple of lines I didn’t/couldn’t translate, but hopefully it shouldn’t be too distracting. Hopefully I can give the Final Fight one a clean-up and get it uploaded soon.
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The Random Hoo Haas revamp is here!

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 11:29 pm Comments Off on The Random Hoo Haas revamp is here!

Site-wide revamp is uploaded and online. Most sections have been given an overhaul, some stuff has been tweaked, and some stuff has just been ported. New content includes Games I Own reviews, some new General Writings and a new shrine, and maybe other stuff. Who knows.

I haven’t had a chance to do any proper bug testing online, so if you let me know of any major glitches and errors, that’d be just dandy. I’m heading to bed now, so you’ll have to live with all the bugs and errors for the next ten hours; sorry! Expect a longer ramble on this in the morning.

The wobbliest sorceress in the woooorld!

Saturday, June 11, 2011 at 8:59 pm Comments (3)

Well, that was an interesting start to the day; being told there’s a pigeon in the garage. We had to cover the closed windows with rugs and other nonsense so it knew which of them was actually open, and didn’t brain itself when trying to fly out. All’s well that ends well.

So, how about that E3, eh?

I haven’t been paying attention to it, to be frank. I only got news about it when friends felt the need to share stuff with me. I find it more interesting that way, as if I actually gave a damn, I’d probably be in agony waiting news on games I’m interested in, but since I don’t, I can just ignore the entire event and then look up very convenient summaries. Life comes up peaches.
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This is paradise! (and it’s very nice!)

Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 10:04 pm Comments (6)

Watched Mad Max 2. Man, am I glad I did.

So, remember the first Mad Max, where there was some degree of civilisation and Max had some kind of goal in life? Well, whoops, civilisation has only thinned out even more and Max is even more of a sullen, wandering soul. After stumbling across a bumbling gyro captain, he’s led to an outpost where a small civilisation of people are trying to live a decent life by harvesting fuel for their appliances, but are eternally hounded by bikers with questionable fashion sense. He helps them out only to further his own means, but after his car gets blown the fuck up, he has nothing left to live for, so, hey, he’ll help them for free.
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DIE! X-CHICKEN

Sunday, June 5, 2011 at 11:54 am Comments (6)

Site progress: Kinda sorta nearly done! It’s mostly just a manner of tying everything together and fixing up the loose ends, though that’s probably going to be a bit gruelling. I’m hoping to have to done and uploaded by mid-June, but we’ll see what happens. I’m a mite concerned that after nearly a year of supposedly working on this revamp, there probably won’t be much in the way of new content besides some prettier layouts. We’ll see what happens.

I went to see X-Men: First Class a couple of days ago. I’ve come to forget a lot of the details, so excuse this horribly mangled rummage of my memory.
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We belong dead.

Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 11:12 pm Comments (5)

Well, things have been slow and awkward this month. Northern Ireland has been swamped with heavy rain and ferocious winds that’s kinda kept me indoors until yesterday, and life as a whole has been very meandering and sluggish. I get by, but it ain’t the most enjoyable of predicaments.
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Frankie & Fritz – crime fighters of the sea!

Saturday, May 14, 2011 at 7:34 pm Comments (1)

I watched Frankenstein a couple of nights ago; the old 1931 version.

Everyone knows this story. Do we even need a summary? Dude wants to create a functioning human being with science, and then the monster gets a bit uppity and eventually they both die. Bada bing.

For a film over eighty years old, it’s held up remarkably well, at least in the visual design. I think it’s hard to top Boris Karlov’s monster, and Colin Clive is a really, really rad Dr. Frankenstein, at least if you like having the ‘stark raving mad’ aspect played up . It’s a pity the guy died like six years after the film was made, as Clive has such a distinctive look that I feel he could’ve gotten a cult following in later years. Or maybe that’s just me.

It’s kind of interesting watching this and comparing it to other ‘early’ horror movies I’ve seen, particularly Nosferatu and Creature From The Black Lagoon. Music is a vital part of those two, particularly for Nosferatu since it hasn’t any spoken dialogue at all, while Creature practically sledge hammers music in your ears when it wants to set the mood (you could probably see the Creature shopping at Asda and that bloody ‘terror’ music would still be playing). Frankenstein has absolutely no mood music whatsoever; outside of the opening and closing credits there are no music cues to try and set the scene. The stark and unfriendly atmosphere carries the film by itself, and the absence of music really boosts it along. I don’t know if I’ve blogged about it before, but I’ve always wondered how different movies would be if you dropped all the music. I mean, Star Wars relies so much on it to imply “look, this is whimsical!” or “watch out for this dude, he’s a bad guy!” that if you removed all the music… well, who knows. Would be interesting to see, though.

The monster himself is a very tragic character, although I imagine the producers back in the day didn’t fully intend for it. Yes, the monster has a “criminal brain”, but he doesn’t wake up and immediately think, “I know, let’s strangle the shit out of everyone in sight!” The only reason he acts out against his masters is because Fritz, the hunchbacked assistant, is a real nasty piece of work who takes pleasure in threatening him with fire, and it seems Frankenstein and the professor are just itching to snuff the poor guy the moment he acts out of line. And when you can’t even rest in the dungeon for some peace and quiet without a hunchback waving a flaming torch in front of your face, you can’t blame him for being grouchy. The reason he kills is because that’s the only way he knows how to solve his problems; it’s not like Franky and Fritz ever tried interacting with him any other way. Let’s face it, the monster is practically like a big baby (with better listening skills) in the body of a 7 foot tall power house; you don’t try and set fire to a newborn the moment it kicks aside its breakfast. Then again, maybe they did in 1930s Germany?

I’ve still got Bride of Frankenstein to watch, so… well, I’ve no expectations, but it sounds like it’ll be an intriguing watch.

By Hemsworth’s nipples!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 at 4:03 pm Comments (1)

I’m getting increasingly concerned about how quickly this year is skimming me by. Are we really nearly halfway through? That’s not fair, mang!

Well, what is there for me to say? From the viewpoint of a productive mindset, I’ve done a lot of work on the perpetually-upcoming site revamp, and although slowly progressing, it’s coming along really nicely. I’m, uh, not sure if there’ll actually be much in the way of new content besides the directory rearranging, CSS design rampaging and so on, but it’ll be nice to get the stupid thing done. From the viewpoint of interesting blog entries… well, yeah, I have not been up to anything exciting.
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“We’re like the world’s gayest ninjas!”

Friday, April 29, 2011 at 10:02 pm Comments Off on “We’re like the world’s gayest ninjas!”

Lost Planet 2 finished its rental yesterday. I was originally going to write my thoughts on it and ultimately I was finding it hard to make notes, but then I went into town and got the first instalment and two other games as part of a three-for-£20 offer in GAME. I’ll largely be talking about the sequel since it’s the one I sunk three days into and the other I’ve barely dipped my toe into it, but heck, why not talk about ’em both and make things confusing?
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