We went to see the Olympic torch in Whitby…

So, I’ve finally got some free time to update this dear blog of mine, so I’m just going through my photographs to see what I’ve actually been doing, this is the top of the list…

So, we set off at 8:50 from Botton to go to Sandsend to see the torch as it went through at 9:30… Sadly it takes more than that to get there, and dispite my bestefforts to fly faster than the speed of sound in a people carrier, we got stuck behind huge amounts of traffic:

The torch is somewhere in front of us!

Anyways, thanks to some sneaky driving, and a bit of knowlege of the roads in Whitby I managed to get around in front of the torch as it went down one side of Pannet park, and I went down the other. I got stuck in traffic at the bottom of the hill by Bagdale, but all my passengers jumped out and ran off to see the torch. After they’d seen it my mum came back and relieved me of driving, my clutch foot was getting tired, so I grabbed my 300mm lens and ran off to see if I could find a decent vantage point.

The torch was supposed to be getting on the train, so I got behind the station into the Coop carpark, and stood on a bin, and was able to get some shots of the torch with the big zoom lens:

The guy in the suit must’ve got a better picture, but he was with the press, so that’s cheating….

A lot of crowds turned out to see the torch too:

And I got one final shot of the torch bearing train:

There was another guy from the press I’m guessing, not sure, he had a very expensive camera… He decided he was going to get a shot from the rails, but a policeman saw him and he got a good bollocking.

The only downside was that I jumped over a bin and then a railing straight after, landed badly and bust my knee…

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition Review

So, when Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition came out (Woa, that really is a mouthful… Lets just call it the Halo 1 Remake) I preordered and got it a day or so after the release date (It’s cos I live in the middle of nowhere…)
I played the first level on Pillar Of Autumn straight off, and thought it was class just to have a Halo 1 that looked like Halo Reach (Almost…). Time limits due to my work on the farm meant that I couldn’t finish playing any more than the first level and it sat dormant on my desk for a few months. I was hoping to play some at Christmas, but Skyrim was big on my play list, and somehow Halo got pushed to the back. Anyways, I’ve recently found myself with a bit more spare time in the mornings before breakfast and started to play again. This was helped by the fact that I’ve been ill in bed for 2 days and have managed to get some more time into Halo due to that.
So, I’ve finally completed it, i wussed out and did it on Normal, not Legendary… One day maybe…. If I end up in prison serving life mayby…. Unlikely.
So, the game… Well, I played the original Halo quite a few times, first on the PC waaay back.. (2004 maybe?) and again on the Xbox 360 with some friends and I’ve loved it, classic Halo, great game. Storyline is epic, coop play is good fun;  All round good game. The remake is pretty much the same, same storyline, coop is still good, but added to that are epic graphics from the Halo Reach engine. Very much nice and lovely.
There are some downsides though, First is that they reduced the number of players for Coop from 4 down to 2… Which means I can’t play it with 2 of my friends… It’s a shame, but not a massive problem. The graphics aren’t quite up to Halo Reach standards, but they’re close, the guns don’t look quite as nice and polished as in Reach, and it would’ve been nice if they’d added the DMR…But that’s not really in keeping with the Halo 1 remake. The one big problem I had was with the sound, many many times I had one audio track over the top of another one, was really annoying in the final cutscene when there was supposed to be sad, epic end music, it was overlayed with the action music from the previous scene…
If you’re a real Halo fan, then I would recommend getting this game, if you’ve played Halo 1 and the rest but aren’t really a great fan, not really worth getting, it’s just a better looking Halo 1 with better graphics…And achievements… And skulls….
All in all though, class game. It’s Halo 1… Can’t really go wrong there… Just want a redux Halo 2 now….
I’d give it a 7/10, it was as good as I was expecting, a remake of Halo 1, there is nothing new or groundbreaking that warrent a higher score though. Maybe if you completed it you could get all the nice stuff from Halo Reach in.. Customizable gear and awesome weapons, then it would get a 9/10 maybe..
Halo ODST is still my favourite...

Teasing Star a little bit…

So, I’m currently working on some fencing in one of the fields near the back of the dale, and afterwards we usually bring the cows in around 3:30PM for milking. One afternoon I decided that I’d put my work gloves on the cows horns, just to see if I could….

So we now have  a cow that looks a little bit like a Moose or Reindeer. She doesn’t seem hugely impressed….

I tried last summer with my hat in Botton Farm, on one of their cows (Cherry) but she didn’t really do anything exciting, and the hat didn’t fit on her head…

Cows go out

So, the cows have been going out in the day time for a week and a bit now, but now finally all the young stock are out too, for the summer. Hopefully they won't be coming in until November time or so, we shall see. Should save a bit of time on routines.

Review: Before The Dawn; Rise of the Phoenix

So, I’ve got a new album from one of my favorite artists, Before The Dawn. I reviewed their album “Deathstar Rising” in the summer (Hey! Listen!) and it has become one of my albums for Summer 2011, and is still regularly played when I’m driving the tractor.

(This is pretty clever, new little widget from Spotify)

My overall feelings about this album are mixed, I love Before The Dawn, they’re up there at #2 favourite band, but this album was a bit of a let down. I love harsh vocals as much as the next man, but the reason I like Melodic Death Metal is the blend of harsh and clean vocals, that’s one of the reasons I loved Deathstar Rising so much, it had that blend of clean and harsh vocals that just made it epic and listenable. This album has some decent tracks, but overall the lack of any clean singing really just means this is gonna be on my shelf for listening to only when there is nothing else.
So, I’m only going to review those tracks I really liked,
first up is Exordium:



This is just an intro track, but I still rather like it. Some rather nice little riffs in there from the lead guitar.

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The second track, Pitch Black Universe continues with the same musical riffs, but with a distorted guitar, and some harsh vocals:

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The 3rd track, Phoenix Rising, was one of the pre released tracks, and I did listen to it quite a bit. It got me very excited for the album, and while the rest of the album has a similar epic music style, there is no clean vocals….Something I didn’t really notice in this track though:

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Skipping on to track 5, (Track 4, Cross To Bear is an okay, track but it’s not really one that sticks out) Throne of Ice, another one they pre-released, so I’ve got a fair listen of this one, and again, it is an epic track, but no clean vocals!

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Track 8, Eclipse, another pretty nice track, but again, not one that sticks out.

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Track 9, Closure, I quite liked this track, it’s pretty mellow and relaxed at the beginning, then gets a decent slow heavy and epic part later on, too much harsh vocals though…

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Bonus Track 10, Unbreakable. This is a remake of one of the tracks off one of their old albums, My Darkness from 2003. Loved that album, and this is a nice remake, definitely one of my favourites off the new album

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Last bonus track, (On my copy anyways), Track 11, Deliverance. Another pretty nice mellow track, no harsh guitar, it’s just a nice melodic track, nice!

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So, to conclude, I’ve got mixed feelings about this album, it is a nice album, and there are some decent songs on it, but it’s not really what i was hoping for. I was hoping for another one like Deathstar Rising, but this is a much harsher album. I like harsh sometimes too, but I was really in the mood for another Deathstar Rising. So, I do like the tracks and the album, its much more like the old Before The Dawn material, which I love too by the way…
So I do quite like the album, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes the old BTD material, to anyone who isn’t quite into the fully harsh MDM, maybe go buy Deathstar Rising instead…. but I do like it… I’m gonna go listen to Deathstar Rising now though…


On another note, I'm liking this new thing from Spotify! It's pretty nifty, just right click on the track or playlist and go "Copy Embed Code" then paste, for the little ones change the dimension to 80 instead of 380. Shweet!

Fixing a few machines

So, I’ve been fixing some machines recently,

first of all was the potato harvester:

This is before;

This is the extra part, the funnels, potato's are dropped down the chute into the ground.

So, finished with the chutes attatched:

Nice quick fix.

 

Next one was converting a cultivator thingy into a bed maker:

So, the central blade was removed, and 3 pieces of threaded M10 bar to mark the beds out. The side blades are in line with the wheel base to create a path between the beds, and the threaded bar marks out lines in the beds.

The link arm pins were completely rusted up and you had to bash it onto the tractor to make it fit.. Not a smart design, so I cut them out, and reversed the new ones, so you could hook the tractor on the inside instead.

Worked like a dream!

Review: Phillips inear Virtual Surround Headphones

So, in my everlasting quest to find the perfect sound I've got some new headphones. It was also to try and see if the ipod issue I've been having, with the ipod pausing randomly, was due to the ipod its self, or if it was the headphones.
So, I got the Phillips Virtual Surround headphones from HMV (£19.99). Apparently they've got some sort of outside resonance speaker... No idea.
Anyways, this little speaker thing on the edge looks a bit naff, looks like you've got the headphones the wrong way in your ear....
To be honest the review is overall quite negative... The headphones were bought to be a replacement for my Sennheisers, as I thought that's where the problem lies, but the sound quality is terrible, no where near the Sennheisers. The ipod pausing issue still remains as well, so overall not a good pair of headphones! Don't buy them, get the cheaper and better sound quality Sennheisers.
Piece of junk.