Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, the Sith Lords

I was a big fan of the first KOTOR, if you know what that is. One of the best games for the XBOX in my opinion. Released in July 2003, I remember many well-spent days and nights during Calculus class with this game. It is epic, good storyline, captivating sound and graphics, interesting characters. It has it all. My favourite is the combat, I hope they continue to make a few more games in the series while improvising the visuals more and more.

In KOTOR2 you are a Jedi Exile. The game drags on without revealing your true identity..

... bla bla bla. I didn't finish this article neither do I have the time. But I want to make ONE point.

Companies like BioWare should not outsource their games and let other companies ruin a sequel. The first KOTOR was AMAZING but I believe KOTOR2 was a rushed mess, it was great, definately not as good as the first one though. There could have been so much more in this sequel, yet the feeling I get from it is a greyish color just signifying a neutral position, this game is worse than its prequel but just average. Try it if you liked the first one.

I hope BioWare does release a decent sequel soon, KOTOR3 should use a new engine with a few more character emotions, I was sick of seeing the same emotion when a character you talk to twists their head to the right after every other line of speech.

Bureaucracy

Ok so I am sitting on this wonderful rainy morning here at home in London while trying to do a few things such as order a new Cellphone, look for a job, ask about driving licence inquiries etc., when I realize that the whole of the United Kingdom is built on this annoying system of politics.

I can't stand it. Write us a letter, call us and wait for a few hours in line ... we won't do a damn thing for you!

It really is true, no matter where you go it is always line ups, filling out forms, marketing scams. What is wrong with this world, I think we should just all be able to fight over what's right and if that means pushing the granny infront of the queue out of the way, then be it. I've had enough of wasting precious time to do just ONE little tiny peice of work.

I am waiting for my Credit Check to go through for my new Samsung D500 on Orange ... i've been told it takes time, but not when a whole day is wasted because of their laziness.

Now I am going to go make some tea and eat cookies and I hope that I receive that magic phone call.

The Necropsy of an Astral

So I was tipped by fade from #3dfx that Channel 4 was showing a programme where a group of scientists and a TV Presenter were dissecting a human body. With my intuition guiding me steady, I didn't hesitate to run to the living room and turn on the TV. I was stunned beyond imagination, almost. I am not a squeamish person, ever since seeing Predator at the age of 2 or something I am never sqeamish towards any sort of 'blood and guts' spectacle.

A quite apparantly german man was cutting open with a bunch of play knives, the lungs of a man, the heart of a man and they were teaching the audience about how the body works. This is, in several years one of the most interesting television programmes that I dared to watch on the TV, since I really rarely go near it. I immediately though how well planned out it all was and thought I'd write it down here. Not like I write down crap here that often anyways, once in a while if you make an extraordinary self-finding discovery you want to make note of it somewhere.

SO, I saw the programme and thought "hey good job people, finally something interesting and worth watching in terms of education!" .. "and I really like how it is all set up, with the pictures of the 17th century operating tables where a group of doctors cut open some no good beggar!". The show is called Anatomy for Beginners or something creative like that.

Oh, I also managed to get the hang of eBay! On the weekend I had a little shopping spree, I bought a palm M500 PDA to keep myself organized for just 30 pounds and some other various junk that should arrive here shortly. Soon I think I'll be able to sell stuff I don't really need anymore :)

Uhh yeah, so back to more Curb Your Enthusiasm. I love this show only for reasons I do not comprehend. I just don't get it, Larry keeps putting himself in the most disastrous and god-forsaken situations and I find myself whining to the LCD screen "YOU FUCKING IDIOT! JUST APOLOGIZE AND MOVE ALONG!! GOD!! " But really, it's what a friend called 'Situation Comedy' and dear god the situations are unpleasant to watch sometimes ... not like I am one of those sensitive people in the audience that has the bag of popcorn flying everywhere as I am shouting at the screen with irrelevant comments and remarks.

I am looking for a job, I've been semi-busy with that and it looks like I am waiting for something but I'm not sure why.... soon I will find the right part-time accounting related job.

They say patience is a virtue, and I repeat the phrase too much only because it is so true. I have the patience for nearly everything in the world, most of all my girlfriend but not that rotten laptop of hers that CONSTANTLY has one problem, another problem then a tenth problem with one thing after another, I just can't be bothered with it, you know what I say, get a new one we wanted to play games together anyways to pass the long-distance time

Back to doing ...work... lazy..work.

I'm back

...never really went anywhere!

Well, with the [good] exploits of the past month well behind me, I have adjourned back to London, UK for an entirely new and rather difficult lifestyle. My trip to Toronto went very well, time was of the essence to me and of course, it flew by me faster than a speeding red-neck in a Jeep.

Arriving in London after an accelerated-by-the-tailwind flight AC862 from Toronto on Saturday morning left me in a state of almost permanent jet-lag. I am one of those people that like to go to sleep very late and wake up late consecutively, for no apparent reason, even if I know that when I could go to sleep at an earlier time, waking up earlier it would give me the same amount of time in the day only, I would not get as tired sitting at the computer!

I have engaged a part-time job hunt, proving to be almost completely illustrious. It's difficult to find a job you want here in London, you just have to ... know people :)

I have also bought a new USB headset for use with the greatest program ever, called Skype ( www.skype.com ). Plantronics DSP100, I'll post my opinions later. And with that purchase I bought the THX-certified Logitech Z2300 speakers, something I've been dreaming of for many years now, I'll post pics as soon as I can unpack it ... my camera seemed to have run out of battery life while I wasn't using it. Curious.

Resting

I finally am in Toronto. I've been really lazy to update this place. Really lazy! I slept for 8 hours in 72 over the last weekend, played World of Warcraft at day and studied at night! An awful mix :) Right before my last exam i crammed until 5 am and got some sleep, wrote the management exam and was finished with it. Then I went to the airport and came to Toronto, and here I am not, relaxing and trying to catch up on things I've missed.

Information Systems

After doing tossing and turning in bed, waking up at 3 am, 3:30 am, 4, 4:30 am and so on until 8AM I proceeded to the Wembley Exhibition Centre Hall 1.

Three hours passed and I was out, finished, with my first exam on Paper 2.1, Information Systems.

There were a total of six questions, in part A there was a CASE study and three manditory questions regarding some aspect of IS/IT. In part B you had to choose two out of three questions. I completed most of part A before moving on to part B. In question 4 I had come to a little dead end in the first part where it asked me about the disadvantages of decentralisation, so I left it out until the end and came up with something later in the end of the exam.

Now, I started doing question 6, a "Decision Table" had to be constructed for 12 marks, wow I thought, so damn easy! But I've encountered these innocent easy questions before, you get the 12 marks and the other 8 marks were a red herring, you literally had no clue what to say. I started doing it and doubted myself, and scrapped it. Turns out I did it correctly in the first place, but they won't mark it

I did question 5, which had one 10 mark question regarding Data Flow Diagrams, an aspect I knew quite well, so I drew my illustrations, examples, more examples and explanations. The other 10 marks of the question were regarding some sort of interview and questionnaire junk, I mostly had to use common sense and logic in that one.

The first three parts, are too scary to describe but I would just like to say that I managed it.

Thirteen pages of writing in three hours, not too shabby! Roll on Law...

Hi

Hi, my name is Dima (pronounced slightly differently that you may think), I'm 19 years old and I'm from Canada. I decided to get this blog thing, since I've been too lazy to set up my own Nucleus on my personal website I wanted something that would already be set up for me. And this ain't bad at all. Only problem is, I would probably want my blog to be more customizable, I want more themes!

I am here in London studying for the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) www.accaglobal.com exams, which actually start tomorrow. So I am going to stop wasting my time and go revise one last time before my skills are put to the test.

The ACCA is the worlds largest and most professional accounting organization. After I completed high school in Toronto, Canada I didn't have any clue what to do and decided to go on a little tour, so I visited London. And I found out about the ACCA and a little College that would tutor me their stuff called Barnet College in North London. I however didn't do extremely well on my first year of exams so I have to retake some this second time around.

The ACCA has a set of fourteen (14) total exam papers that are pretty much spread over three parts, or three years, if one managed to pass every single one then they're in luck. Part one only has three papers, part two has six and part three..well, I don't want to think about it yet because it freaks me out. ACCA hosts two exam sessions per year, one in June and one in December, you can take four papers only per session. So here I am, taking four.

First, on Monday I have the Information Systems (paper 2.1) exam, 10 am and three hours.

On Tuesday I have the Corporate and Business Law (paper 2.2) exam.

On Friday I have the Financial Information for Management (paper 1.2) exam.

And on Monday the 13th I have Managing People (paper 1.3) exam.

I am ready for all except for the Law exam, that is a tricky one. The syllabus (contents of the paper) deal with British Legal System, Contract law, Partnerships and Company Law. The latter being the most highly examinable topic. I won't go into detail, but company law deals with the Companies Act 1985, it is the very corporate essence of the paper and includes some interesting information about Public Limited Companies, Unlimited Companies, Private Companies, formation of a corporation, Directors and Secretaries Duties and last but most definately not least, the Cessation of a company.

Now I am going to go eat breakfast and do a few things around the house, today I want to figure out how to customize this Web Log page a little bit more and possibly add some links to weblogs of other people who I have come to known (most particularly from Internet Relay Chat, channel #3dfx on EFNET where I have been sporadically visiting since 2000).