Waves

These past few weeks have been dominated by smoking. I’ve been thinking about smoking, thinking about not smoking, hating every time I light a cigarette up and being totally schizophrenic about it all. I want to be a non-smoker, or an ex-smoker, but at the same time I don’t feel I can face not being a smoker. I know Allen Carr’s method makes sense, I just can’t get it in my head that it makes sense, you know? I’m re-reading the books, and I’ll give it another crack, this time it’ll gel, for sure.

I got myself one of those mp4 players the other day (oh, the joy of having money to spend on things I want – bless you, Asda). I spent the tail end of last week copying about 30 CDs to the computer so I could listen to them on the move – it’s been a revelation so far. The walk home after work has become a joy rather than an easily refused alternative (as buses tend to turn up 5 minutes after I finish work, I’m usually tempted to stand and wait for them, but with music, the walk is more appealing), and because buying music off the internet is so easy and pretty much instantaneous, I’ve gone a bit mental with it (for example, fleshing out my Prodigy collection with singles that I never got around to buying, some lovely B-sides and crazy remixes that I never knew existed).

The Defiant Map Pack for Halo Reach came out, and it’s not quite as good as the Noble Map Pack. Highlands is pretty good. It’s a large, roughly symmetrical map designed for 16 players, but is more like Headlong than Coagulation because it features buildings around the edges of the arena rather than mountain ranges. Pretty good, if a little cluttered. Condemned is not as good. Not because it’s a smaller map, but because it feels easy to get lost in. I’m sure after a few more plays then I’ll get lost less often, but my initial reactions are that it is confusing. Unearthed, the new Firefight map, feels like a nod to Lost Platoon from Halo 3: ODST. A large, open map with lots of scope for vehicular combat, and a few buildings to fall back into if things go pear-shaped. I’ve still not played it in Matchmaking with other people, so can’t fully judge it, but so far it’s a worthy addition.