Nollaig

I wasn't overly keen on Eleanor, but I think those kinds of books just aren't my type, ones in which a kooky or socially inept character is a source of amusement but 'heartwarmingly' so. Those kinds of people are rarely perceived as heartwarming in real life, but are often still the source of amusement for others. I adored Raymond though, fantastic character and the exact kind of person the world needs more of!

We seem to be starting a tradition here of gross wet mornings followed by sunny afternoons. Actually sat out in my front sat for a few minutes yesterday as it was warm enough! Until the sun went behind a cloud.

Yeah I'll try and join in a bit this weekend too, as I'm on a bit of a reading kick at the moment anyway.

Thanks again, all Visited Penny yesterday and she's off the IV fluids, and full of beans. Fed up, but full of beans, so that's good. She's only eating chicken for them, the snobby little bugger! Echo, glad you had a nice Easter and fingers crossed r.e. the job. Is that the same job you mentioned before after you spoke to the recruiter about your previous job situation? I have an interview in just under two weeks. Dreading it, hate interviews. Last time this job came up was when I was going through a serious rough patch and I bailed on the interview. Well it's back, and I really can't bail this time. Fortunately this time there's no presentation element (thank god). I've ordered a suit jacket because Cork city seriously does not do simple black ones in my size. Hoping it fits. No other news really I don't think. Or if there is I've forgotten it!

I got going with Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh again and finished it last night. I think it's a little overrated, but still enjoyed it. Alongside The Liar's Girl, I'm going to start The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle today too. It has a LOT of names at the beginning, and a layout of the mansion, so here's hoping I can keep up with it!

Hailstone! But not overly cold.

I grabbed it cheapish on Kindle

Watched Pacific Rim: Uprising. It was underwhelming. It had all the traditional elements of a big action blockbuster, but they just never came together.

I finished The Good Samaritan by John Marrs yesterday. Really enjoyed it, although it's pretty grim and bleak so I can understand why some people on Goodreads did not enjoy it. Am now reading The Liar's Girl, the second book by Cork-born Catherine Ryan Howard (her first one was partially set here in Cork, so bizzare to me!) So far, it's okay. I already suspect someone of being the baddie, but only time will tell if I'm right! I also bought The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Tattooist of Auschwitz as they sounded interesting/well-reviewed respectively. Also, both a bit different from the crime thrillers I tend to read! I'm also trudging through Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh - it has great reviews and I love the premise, but I'm struggling to get into it. I've already abandoned one book this year, so reluctant to do it again.

Thanks all for the kind comments about Penny (my pupper) in the March thread. Unfortunately she needs skin grafts and the skin that was there had to be removed as it was dead. So about 4 weeks before she can come home, and 8 weeks for a full recovery. Not sleeping much with thinking about her on her own in the vets with no idea whats happening and in constant pain. Hoping for an update today or tomorrow from vet. Had a good break over Easter, off Friday-Monday. Had chocolate eggs, had an (admittedly mediocre) dinner (but delicious dessert) with a voucher, and went to see Pacific Rim: Uprising (also mediocre). But it was good to get out of the house and try get our minds off Penny. Also getting back into cross-stitching and reading, which is good Hope everyone enjoyed their Easter weekend,

I've hardly read at all this month. I gave up on No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Nevill. I'm re-reading Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer after watching the film, and I'm also slowly getting through Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh.

Bright enough at the moment, and dry, but I think there will be showers.

Yikes, that's awful Echo. Sorry to hear that. As you know I too am an introvert (I'm sure many here are!) and if anyone told me I had to stop being one here I'd be royally peed off. Good luck with the possible interview. I haven't been around much again as my dog got hit by a car. Some of you already know from Facebook. She will be okay, but it's gonna be a long painful recovery. Finding out tomorrow if she needs skin grafts on her leg. So stressed out, she's such a sensitive soul and I hate that she's in constant pain and doesn't understand what's happening. It happened last Sunday, and the not knowing led to us thinking about worst case scenarios, so we were worried overnight that she'd die of shock, and when that didn't happen on Monday we were afraid she'd have to have her leg amputated, then when they said that was likely off the table, we were worried about skin grafts but got the impression the vet was hopeful that wet-to-dry bandages (support in regeneration of tissue) would be sufficient, so we relaxed a bit on Tuesday. We also got to see her Tuesday, and of course she was upset and sore, but bright enough, so that helped us relax too. Then then yesterday the vet rang saying she still isn't sure about two areas of skin on the leg which are black, but seem to have a blood supply, and will make a decision on skin grafts on Friday (tomorrow). So I'm stressed again about which direction it will go, and what it will mean in terms of Penny's recovery time and experience. Hoping to go see her tomorrow and chat with the vet.

Hi all, hope everyone is well Haven't been around as much as my reading has slowed right down, been on the one book for over a week now. I blame Bloodborne, which I am addicted to playing. But also work and college have been a bit stressful lately, and I can't really read when stressed. Hoping to start getting back on track!

We had really bad snowfall on Thursday and Friday after a lighter amount last Wednesday. The country basically closed down on Thursday and Friday, including the university I work at. It was really nice actually, went for a few walks in the snow and built a snowman. There's still some snow here, but it is melting and the roads are all grand again since Saturday.

It's pretty good. Very cheesy, and that includes the main actress's exaggerated acting, but there's some good humor in it too. We're all caught up on The Good Place (which is getting seriously involved, it started out really comedic in season 1, and there's still a little humor at times, mostly silly humor in the form of Jason being dumb, but it's actually quite emotionally involved and tense at times now. I absolutely love it! As we're caught up on that, we've started I Zombie too. Good so far!

Finished Gavin and Stacey. Very sad there isn't more, but it ended well. Just started The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt today. Really liked the first two eps.

Wow, I can't believe it's 6 months since I was playing Oceanhorn and Alan Wake. I don't think I'll go back to Alan Wake. I'm at the final boss in Oceanhorn, so really just need to do that to finish it. I'm also near the end of Final Fantasy 3 on the Snes Mini. I'm mainly focusing on Bloodborne at the moment, a really tough action game from the Dark Souls series of games (apparently, never played any others). It is challenging, so much so that my partner (also playing it at the moment) nearly gave up a couple of times, but I'd say we're both about two thirds of the way into the game now. Really fun. My two biggest criticisms would be the targeting isn't the best, and the story is only told through load-screen item descriptions, and actual item descriptions, along with a few cutscenes. The onus is really on the player to figure it out, and as we didn't realise that, we got halfway through the game thinking there was zero story at all. In actuality, there's so much that I spent hours reading through all the lore. I just don't like the director's decision not to make that lore overt in the game.

I've pretty much finished Persona 4 Golden on the PS Vita, so might as well do a bit of a review. Really good little game, has a surprising amount in it for a handheld game. I think I clocked over 50 hours, and there was still tons I didn't get to do within the timeframe of the game. It's partially a traditional JRPG, with turn-based battles in dungeons and a team of four characters to fight with. It also has another element that really only exists in Japanese games - social links (sometimes dating in other games). In this, you can spend time with people to build up your relationship with them, which is partially for fun, and partially to boost your battle powers. And on top of those things, you also get jobs, go to school, do exams, fish, grow vegetables and read books! All these things contribute to raising stats like diligence, understanding, knowledge, courage etc, and that in turn enables you to do other things as the game progresses. I really enjoyed it, though I felt it was a bit monotonous at times - the dungeons were all visually different but very similar structure and layout, and the enemies were often similar, just with different colour schemes etc. The battle system was very good, and the story behind the dungeons (potential murder victims appearing on tv) was engaging and really mysterious. I also loved the characters, and enjoyed being able to live 'day to day life' in the game (which takes course over a period of one year). Acing exams was a fun feeling too! My only real criticism of the game is that there is just so much to do, you'll never get it all done - especially because you're forced into a routine by the game (you can do one activity after school, and then you're forced to go home), and some days there isn't much to do so you're tearing through the monotonous routine. There is a plus game, which means when you finish the game, you can restart it with all of your stats and social links intact, meaning this time you can do all the things you didn't get to do the first time. However, I don't really have another 50 hours spare to put into this game again, so it'll be a while before that happens! Overall, a very unique and memorable game. Rating: 4/5

I am reading The Woman In The Window, which took 33% to become an actual thriller but it is indeed now one. Really enjoying it. Also still working through No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Nevill. I don't know why I do this to myself. I know his books are going to be long and overwritten and badly paced, but there's some really good writing and fun story too.

'Salem is derived from Jerusalem in the book, so the apostrophe at the beginning of 'Salem's Lot indicates the missing first bit of the name.

If Valiant by Holly Black counts as urban fantasy, I really enjoyed that. Didn't like the others in that same series, but that is a good standalone one. Has a bit of a beauty and the beast love story element too.

Thank you! Yup, that's pretty much what I said. If it was me and my book blog, I'd likely have a mental image of what I wanted, and also wouldn't be too enthusiastic about something that wasn't what I wanted. I did show him the initial sketch last year, but I never said I was going finishing it, he might have adjusted it if I'd said I was. He never really gave me a clear idea of whether he wanted something very simple, or cute, or detailed! I'm not too worried Thanks! I like the idea of a game like that too, though its primary focus would be educational, so I'd have to clearly factor that in. Still not sure what idea I'm going to go with, I'll have to think a bit more!

Masters in E-Learning Development and Design, and the module with that project is Narrative and Games For Learning, so yeah it has to be a game-based learning object, it has to be a digital/mobile/computer game and we have to examine the concept of narrative in relation to it. For the history one, two things sprang to mind - one of the world wars, (think The Book Thief as context) and playing through a story narrative that features a lot of historical fact and realism. The other was a point in Irish history, maybe the famine or 1916 Rising. Could just as easily be a point in history rather than an event - the famine could actually be both. It would teach about Irish life and culture in the 1800s prior to the famine, the famine itself, the impact, the outcome etc. Just real immersion in an era, supported by a story the player plays through. The 'easy' but boring option would probably be basing it on my work with the UCC website. Design a simulation conducted in a sandbox scenario in which people design a UCC website to certain standards for a certain purpose (say the School of English website), and the narratives would be the overall UCC narrative and the individual's department narrative, and aligning the two in a high quality website. The completed product from the simulation could form the assessment of mandatory aspects of departmental websites, correct use of content and imagery etc, and simutaneously act as a place for users to test out ideas for their site and for us to build their actual structure from. I'm mostly thinking out loud here!

Thank you! Thank you! I haven't looked at the app idea in a bit, must get back to it. Think the files on are my work machine though I did finish the monkey, though I'm not sure how much OH liked him as he didn't seem overly taken with it He was very appreciative of the effort that went in, but I think maybe it's not the kind of look he originally wanted or something. Anyway here's the monkey: That seems really good to me. I'm finding that having my daily stuff and my gratitude stuff separate is resulting in some duplication, so I might have to just go back to my original plan of a gratitude journal. And I agree with the others, use it for whatever you want, that's the real point of one. I might have to just have a weekly page at most, I'm finding it impossible to keep up with mine. I originally put in some tasks, but since I got sick those tasks went out the window, and trying to migrate them to a different day... sigh. And then the yearly mood chart (colouring a square a day), I feel like one colour doesn't capture a whole day, so that's a pain too. Maybe I'll have to go back to using the Daylio app. That worked quite well for a while. I really hate that I don't stick with things, but I get ideas and then find faults with them when I start. A week tomorrow til we go to London! OH's medieval shirt still hasn't arrived, which is annoying as it's only coming from Germany.... I looked up the Ebay shop the other day and only then noticed it says in the Shipping Info - 'items dispatched within 10 days of cleared payment', so if that's working days, and it took the full 10, then it wouldn't even have shipped til yesterday despite ordering it on the 8th! It better bloody get here! My Masters is going okay too. I'm feeling a bit better about one of the three modules I'm doing, and I think the other two will largely be what I make of them myself. I'm starting to get a bit into research mode, which is good too. For the module I like, we have to develop an idea for a game for learning. I'm not sure what exactly to do - I like the idea of a game to teach history by being like a standard game with a narrative and player action/accountability, to round out the experience of historical events (rather than just reading them on paper). Not sure what event I would pick. Or maybe the idea of a game that accompanies a biology class in high school, not sure what exactly I'd do with that, or else maybe a nature game where the player plays as an animal and its educational about the life cycle of that animal and their habitat or something. There could even be an overarching narrative, where say you can play as a mouse, a fox, an owl etc and all three meet in the story but the perspective depends on which you chose. If you chose mouse you may end up dead. But then you can switch to the owl that killed you and continue the story, etc. Or maybe the same idea applied under the ocean. I really need to think about my target audience, and the balance between game and learning. The more learning focused it is, the more formal it is, but the more tangential the information learned, the more informal it is and the more like a traditional game it could be. If anyone has any suggestions they would be welcome!