So, I've got a Cineworld Unlimited Pass and I've been hitting a movie a week. I've seen Impossible Mission: Ghost Protocol, Margin Call, Haywire and Underworld: Awakening. Regrettably, it's been a bit of a disappointing run so far. I've spoke about Impossible Mission previously, now the other three.

The Underworld franchise is a bit like my movie kryptonite. Despite the fact I've been burned twice I'm like a moth to a flame. It comes down to the first film, which I think is a much better film than most people give it credit for. I think Kate Beckinsale's performance is a great action film affair, plus the film is structured in a unique way for an action film: all the outcomes are from positive, protagonist choices that Selene actively makes. She drives the story, rather than it just being an exercise in tenuous excuses to get the main protagonist from one set piece to another. Selene, as a character, is one of the best female protagonists in the action film genre. I don't think the writers (as it's hidden behind the intentional B-movie Vampire and Werewolf trappings), or Kate Beckinsale, get enough credit for that.

Sadly, Underworld: Awakening continues the downward spiral of the franchise. Awakening is an assault on the senses, but not in a good way. It's loud. Quick. In 3D. It felt like some sort of visual torture. If they'd pinned my eyelids open and clamped my head the experience would have been complete. It tries to insert as many OMFG3D shots into the shortest space of time possible. All this does is distance the audience from the experience. This is the irony of 3D I find. If it does anything it should draw you into the experience and pull you into the world of the film. It should feel very natural. Only Avatar has done this. Awakening takes the opposite approach and virtually every seen has a disconnecting quality, as if you're watching a videogame with sets feeling unreal and claustrophobic. It's as if everything is filmed on a small sound stage even when it's an outside location.

I could go on about the less than interesting plot and the dire, virtually non-existent script, but there isn't much point, as I'd gone cross-eyed and had too much of a headache to care. Disappointing.

Haywire. Great trailer. It's full of great actors. It's directed by a very well respected director. It got 81% on Rottentomatoes. The only problem being the film is complete and utter bilge. The best way of describing the experience is: perplexing. The few action scenes, well, scenes of physical combat, that are in it are very good. Realistic. Brutal. Few in number. That side of it was onto a good thing. The rest of it was like watching some sort of 70's advert. Long scenes of absolutely nothing happening. The main character walking fast through streets. The main character avoiding SWAT teams by wondering laconically around empty buildings with a slight sense of urgency. An excessively long scene of her driving backwards in a forest with no point and during the most boring chase scene ever filmed. At times, you expect the sequences to end with the main character finding a box of chocolates.

At about halfway through I figured out what it felt like, a straight to VHS film from the eighties in which the budget can't meet the concept and the script was hashed out in an hour. Was it some sort of strange tribute? Even down to the fact they simulate the low budget by only ever showing three SWAT team members at once? Afterwards, I learned the main actress, Gina Carano, is a martial arts champion, exactly the sort of individual who would star in such a straight to VHS film. Possibly that's what they intended, but in truth, it was just rubbish. When you take that sort of approach you have to add something new, take what works and drop what doesn't. Not duplicate it so well it's just as dire as the 'originals'. Ironically, the one salvageable thing from the film is the main actress. We need to see more of her. Hot, good enough actress, great in the action scenes. Just put her in a better film. With the right balance of factors she could lead an action franchise.

The one redeeming experience was Margin Call. It's a film not many people are going to see. Zero publicity. Spread of great actors, if not eminently marketable. A subject matter probably not that endearing to the typical cinema attendee. The plot is simple: an investment bank discovers all its complex financial products it holds are about to be junk. They are the first to reach this conclusion. It's the twelve hours chronicling the making of serious decisions and the opening salvo in a global financial crises. It's not a documentary of the real financial crises of 2008, but it's analogous. I liked it. Good performances. Some interesting observations about the relationship between banks and society. Serious decisions being made and people facing moral choices. Worth seeing. It's one of the things the Cineworld Unlimited Pass is good for, as if I'd had to actually hand over cash I'd probably not have seen it.

That's it so far. I notice next week there is an early preview of Chronicle on Wednesday, that will almost certainly be the movie of the week next week.

So, I'm gaming gain, and yesterday we had session zero of the new campaign: The Prometheus Institute. We're using the Smallville role-playing system which focuses on the relationships being the core of the game, just like a TV show. Basically, as part of cold war activities and experiments, the Prometheans were created for espionage purposes. That was closed down only for the next generation to form the Prometheus Institute for the second generation. The HBO like series is the story of the key characters involved with the institute, their relationships and the issues surrounding the Promethians and wider society, celebrity, politics, etc.

What can I say about the Smallville character creation process? It's brilliant, frustrating and, while not complex, they certainly make it more complicated than it probably needs to be. It's like they've purposefully designed it to make it hard to predict. It's not easy to take a design approach to it with outcomes in mind. You can walk through the process entirely if you have the time, but even this isn't entirely possible as some of the elements you'd assign 'raises' to might only be present due to another player's actions.

This means it's a journey you have to strap yourself in for and accept what comes along.

The best you can do is have a broad destination in mind. It is an exercise in letting go on numerous levels, infinitely more so than a game like FATE, which also has collaborative character generation. The broad concept you wanted will no doubt win out, but lots of other stuff will be things you never predicted or elements you had in mind but they'll have morphed and changed. In my case, both elements of my main protagonist changed (though the broad concept survived) and key characters, such as his childhood sweet heart, totally changed in background, purpose and in game relationship due to the collaborative nature of the process. Invariably the outcome is better, as it was in this case.

The brilliance of the process is undoubtedly the relationship map that is produced. Naturally I'd think this due to being a fan of relationship maps to design the narrative crucible since it was advocated as a central mechanism for the Sorcerer role-playing game. It's worth the time invested. I've only done it twice in Smallville and each time it has produced a relationship map that was suffused with drama, intense relationships (with people and things) and narrative potential. Each time I've wanted to play the game afterwards. At least this time we'll get to do it. You could de-construct the process and use it for other games. For instance, you could use the process to build the map but not assign any values to it as the values are implicit to Smallville. This would give you a relationship map to represent the narrative space just without the integration into the system. It would still make explicit that remain implicit at the table. In fact, building it before you start adding 'stats' to it may well be a better method for Smallville.

The best part, which really adding something new and rich to the game, was the creation of a relationship map for the previous generation of characters (the protagonists' parents). This has created something akin to Heroes, in which the previous actions and future desires of the previous generation influences the lives of the current. We are going to have at least one flashback session to the 80's. It's also brilliant how the attitudes of one generation 'cold war spies' contrasts with that of the current 'public facing institute'. This element, being it's most unique one, could be the part of the game that creates something very powerful.

It's still going to be an interesting journey as the system is so different. We've played similar things before, both Primetime Adventures and Duty & Honour have similar, broad elements in terms of their resolution mechanisms but we only played them for a session or two and neither has the razor focus on relationships. Playing such a system for our typical season length of circa 8 – 12 sessions is going to be something new and interesting. Considering the systems focus on Smallville as a show, it's also going to be interesting to see how it transfers to the HBO-style.

It's also probably wiped one campaign of my 'to run' list as Hollywood scale, neo-Silver Age, contemporary thriller superheroes might be way too similar to this. We shall see.

I’m currently working in Crawley a lot. There is a Cineworld cinema close to the hotel, so I’ve invested in a 15 GBP monthly unlimited card. I figure it’s something to do while away and it plays well with Orange Wednesdays when I return (no cash changes hands other than the unlimited card for two people). The key issue now will be rationing the use a bit as I really need to start aggressively managing my time again like I was on the MBA. Still, a once a week strategy might work.

This weeks film was Impossible Mission: Ghost Protocol. The film left me with the bad taste incurred by the Hollywood wink.

The Hollywood Wink is something simple but insidious. It’s when the film fails to take the premise, set-up or genre conventions of a film seriously, and instead has the script and the protagonists acknowledge with a big, small or even subtle knowing wink, that what they are doing is ridiculous. The issue is, unless you’re purposefully writing a comedy, this should never happen. Don’t get close to it. Never even acknowledge it. The characters live in a world in which the premise, set-up and genre conventions are just the laws of the milieu in which they live so they would accept them and not question them.

This was why the first three Impossible Mission films succeeded. The pace, intensity, ‘magical’ masks, the propensity of the action, superlative character competence and the high-octane melodrama were immutable laws of the cinematic espionage milieu. No one questioned them. The possibilities and dangers presented by a world with such rules were woven into the script because they were the immutable laws of the universe. The ridiculous infiltration sequences, always from above, weren’t incredulously queried or given a ridiculous wink to camera, they were a part of Ethan Hunt’s DNA and a skill to be feared and planned for by his enemies.

Not in Ghost Protocol.

The superlative character competence is gone. The characters often query or question tactics, events and actions. Even Ethan Hunt gets exasperated at times with the danger he put himself in despite the fact it’s all supposed to be within the acceptable risk of his capabilities. At times, it’s almost as if he ‘looks to camera’ because you’re seeing it from the point of view of someone else in the scene. This tended to make the relatively bland action scenes even weaker. A few scenes with a comedy strand are based off staples of the concept or natural outcomes of the milieu. True, they often pull back from full on ridicule and comedy, but it’s present. It’s like the writers couldn’t commit to the film they were writing and just had to add just enough to make sure the audience knew they were rolling their eyes.

A hero is only as good as his nemesis and on this front Ghost Protocol fails miserably. He’s not confronting the CIA or charismatic villains played by actors like Dougray Scott or Philip Seymoure Hoffman. The bad guy is basically a cypher with no charisma, no quality to get under Ethan’s skin and played by a forgettably actor. Hell, they don’t even interact significantly. The concept behind the villain is fine, some sort of organisation that believes in renewal through nuclear Armageddon, but it’s not used in any intensely dramatic way.

Ghost protocol had just enough entertainment value to keep me going, but I was continually waiting for it to get better. It didn’t. Ultimately, if you like others I’d recommend you give this one a miss or catch it on DVD on the cheap. While I’d like to own the others as I’d watch them repeatedly, I can’t see me watching Ghost Protocol again. Ever. Something is obviously wrong when the only thing you take away from the film was the hot, blond female assassin and you wish she’d been in it more.

My personal social media and communications landscape seems to go through periods of stability, punctuated by a change and then repeat. It's just gone through one of it's changes. Truthfully, it changes over time until the 'gap' gets too wide and then I make changes. It's possibly never truly static for long.

One of the major changes is in IM. The first being that my use of IM seems to have dropped off over time. This has probably been a long-term thing, but I've noticed it the most since I've not been gaming. I suspect this isn't the only reason, it was just the final step.The core reason is IM is a two-way thing and everyone's lives just seem to have got more complicated and busy reducing their time to talk on IM. There also seems to be a bit of a content problem, the content that often featured on IM has changed. The gaming has been reduced (even before me stepping out) and the MBA has gone up. The MBA talk never rose to the level of replacing the gaming talk. Not sure how this will pan out in the future.

The medium for IM has changed significantly. As the years have passed the various services people use has consolidated. This consolidation basically means Facebook is the one everyone is on. There is five on other platforms (3 MSN + 2 Google) but the two Google users are on Facebook as well. Basically, based on my current communications profile if I was to go to Facebook Messenger exclusively this wouldn't cause a problem. All the MBA talk is through Facebook. I've taken steps to do this with Facebook Messenger now installed on all my devices. This is aided by the fact my universal client that I used to use on my Android devices has started to use adverts and a payment model based on 'not getting adverts for a period of time', effectively a recurring fee. I would have have paid for it once, but not many times. Ditched. It also 'helps' that my universal client on the PC isn't getting any developer love and the one service it proves problematic with is, you guessed it, Facebook.

Social media is a bit more complicated. The main change is I'm posting content to Facebook more than Twitter and Linkedin. I don't use Google+. I still post more content on Twitter and Linkedin than a lot of people, as people on the current programme I'm on tend to note, but there is a concentration on Facebook. Why is this? A number of reasons. I like the fact I know who the potential audience is as I've chosen to make them all Friends. I like the fact the audience is segmented into lists (something Facebook could do before Google Circles, not sure what the fuss was about). The family network is elusively on Facebook. I also really like Timeline, it makes adding content to Facebook more compelling to me, turning it into more of a micro-blogging diary, which is always what it was, it's just Facebook ripped the pages from your diary after a certain point in time.

The application landscape on Android has also been an influence. This has come in the form of two factors: I like the Facebook application and its integrated functions and the options in terms of universal applications is reducing on Android creating a fragmented space. This will be even more true when they update Tweetdeck to the gimped version, which only does Twitter well. The Facebook application allows me to post status updates, use photos and use geographical positioning, to a degree I'm happy with, all in one application.

Twitter and Linkedin are still used but they're rapidly becoming more professional focused. The general interests Twitter account has tended to get less traffic sent to it. The status updates are weighted to the professional, pretty much exclusively on Linkedin. They are also used to market my blog. This isn't going too badly with it being picked up by recruiters and spread through to others via the articles being included in various other mediums sourced from twitter posts and re-tweets. I like twitter, but the problem I have with it is it just feels like a vast void you're shouting into. This is part of its strength, but also its weakness. The more intimate nature of Facebook and Linkedin, relatively speaking, means you're creating a fabric when you post status updates. A fabric that, over time, says something about you. While the intention is the same in Twitter, and the potential magnitude bigger, I think your message has to be more focused and each message is probably viewed individually on its own merits more than any sense of a narrative. Basically, Facebook is about life as a holistic whole, Twitter and Linkedin are becoming very substantially more focused.

That's about it. A focus on Facebook for IM and a more holistic view, with Twitter and Linkedin becoming very career orientated and profile raising. IM seems to be reducing in importance.

After finishing Uncharted 3 faster than I thought I would, I decided to have a console game clear out. I had numerous console games hanging around in various stages of completion that weren't going to go anywhere. Get rid. Trade them in. What was great about this is I got 20 GBP for trading in Uncharted 3 and it only cost me 24 GBP from ASDA so I played it for almost nothing. Bargain. Certainly worth the ten hours it delivered. I used the assorted funds to get Batman: Arkham City one of the new games on my 'must play list', and three older games that I just never got around to purchasing: Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, Alphas Protocol and Operation Flashpoint.

I've gone through the update and install routine with all the games and played them for about 30 minutes, with Arkham City getting a longer stretch.

I really liked Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City looks to be more of the same but with a more open and expansive setting. I'm not usually a big fan of open world games unless they shove in enough narrative to keep me occupied. I'm not interested in wondering around making my own entertainment when it comes to console games. Thankfully, there always seems to be a narrative strand to follow as well as interesting side missions kicking off through interaction with Batman's many and varied cast. The one side mission I have at the minute was established through an interaction with Bane and is related to the previous game. All the various missions seem to be placed on the digital map to keep me all organised. All good. It exudes quality and I fully expect to be a great experience.

Alpha Protocol often goes down as one of those brilliant but flawed games. The magnitude of the 'flawed' part depending on who you speak to. It's a very interesting premise. A role-playing game but not one set in a fantasy or a science fiction milieu but one of cinematic espionage. Regrettably, the verdict on the game has already been given and sales haven't guaranteed it becoming a franchise. This is a pity as the combination could be brilliant. I've played about twenty minutes of it and it feels really good. There is already a number of things I like. It really feels like an espionage game, especially with the use of continuous 'ear piece' communication in the opening sections. The experience system is good, looking like it allows for very different characters, though it's already causing minor build anxiety. The mini-games on security locks are already a bit annoying. We shall see. It's a bit like a slightly older Bioware game with the branding filed off (as the developer did Knights of the Old Republic II). They have the espionage feel right. Looking forward to seeing how epic the experience gets.

Operation Flashpoint is intriguing, as it was a game I was really looking forward to but then the reviews and player feedback was...mixed. It was one of those games that was destined to have a confused reception. A simulation-based, realistic, tactical shooter was bound to be disliked by the FPS crowd who would end up buying it despite being well warned in advance. Those wanting the realistic and tactical experience would no doubt complain the game was too much of an arcade experience. Throw in the fact the developers and publishers actually lied about the game before it was released (the game is in no way an open ended military campaign on an open world island) and you have a recipe for disaster. The initial 30-minutes? It's certainly not a typical FPS. I'm going to have to resort to reading the....manual. Not only that, it seems to realistic that combat seems to take place at distances that ensure your never fully sure who or what you are shooting at. Just like all those 'from the front' videos you see these days. Interesting, but it's going to take some work. A slow burner.

Rainbow SIx: Vegas 2 is pretty much an old game I always meant to play after really enjoying the first one many, many years ago on the Xbox 360. I just never seemed to get around to purchasing it.

That's pretty much my console game schedule set until March and, to be honest, probably beyond. I can't see me finishing all those games before Mass Effect 3 is released. Especially since I only have Friday - Sunday to play them. I'm really going to have to pick one and stick with it otherwise I'll just spread myself too thin. It'll probably be Batman just from the point of view the other games have negligible return value.

I've finished Uncharted 3. A total of 10.5 hours actual play. It didn't seem that long. It amounted to about 3 or 4 session of play. It felt substantially shorted than the the second game, though I suspect the magnitude of that isn't as big as I think. A quick check shows a drop of four chapters, so the second game could be around 15% bigger. Lot's of variables and human perception factors unaccounted for, of course.

But then that's the main problem faced by Uncharted 3? Competition with its predecessor, which was a gaming Goliath of epic proportions.

I think that's my main problem, compared to Uncharted 2 the game is found wanting a bit. It's something elusive. All the elements are present in Uncharted 3 it's just the ingredients haven't been mixed as well. The set-pieces didn't seem as strong. The story was certainly more subdued. It just felt more...mundane. That's doing it a disservice as Uncharted 3 is still a masterful contribution to gaming envisioned through the lens of ridiculous Hollywood storytelling, but while the lightning in the bottle may have been caught twice, it certainly didn't burn as brightly.

The narrative seemed mixed. The action certainly seemed toned down in its 'set piece awesome' but magnified in terms of the 'enemy hordes'. There was also less inter-play between the characters. I missed the cross and double-cross of the various protagonists that was present in Uncharted 2. Initially, it seemed like they were going for a more intimate narrative but this didn't really deliver either. The flashback at the beginning suggested a focus on the relationship between Nate and Sully, as did some of the scenes alluding to Nate not knowing when to quit. The trouble is, I got more of a feeling of depth between Nate and the various thieves in Uncharted 2 then I did between Nate and his supposed surrogate father figure. It just didn't go anywhere or have any sort of significant conclusion.

The conclusion to the action was also a bit odd. We had a secret organisation. The leader of the ancient conspiracy was a past friend of Sully's, but this didn't seem to amount to much. Ultimately, we never even got to find out if the great gasket under the water in the hidden city actually had anything in it. Despite the fact the enemy in Uncharted 3 was a 'eastern European mercenary and war criminal' he seemed to have more narrative power by the time the final credits rolled. Of course, the final sequence was the hidden city collapsing in on itself as all discovered hidden cities are prone to do.

What the Uncharted series needs is some competition. I'm hoping this is going to come in the form of the re-booted Tomb Raid series. Uncharted may have given the Tomb Raider series the kick up the arse it needed this generation, hopefully it can return the favour.

An observation first. I've started to notice that I become aware of things when I visit the supermarket. I don't haunt the supermarket often, but I don't visit the 'town centre', and I certainly don't haunt retail parks on a regular basis. This means the touch point opportunities for 'encountering stuff in a shop' are minimised and I'm not one to 'browse shop', which leaves the supermarket. So, it was noticing Uncharted 3 for cheap last time and, a while back, it was the first time I encountered the book Micro.

Micro is the latest and, since he died of cancer in 2008, the last book by Michael Crichton. Well, the last book 'completed to some degree' by Michael Crichton, with Richard Preston filling in on completion duties. I didn't know Micro existed or was being published. It was a surprise to find it on the shelf. I didn't know what Micro was about. I read the back and I remember it being about very small robots. This surprised me as Crichton had already done the nanotechnology thing in Prey. I took the opportunity to buy it when it was going cheap on the Amazon Kindle Christmas Sale.

I was very surprised to find it was effectively Honey! I Shrunk the Research Students!

Simple plot. A cutting edge technology company in Hawaii has found a way to shrink people and equipment through electronic fields, cue lots of uses for medical procedures and nature research as well as the obligatory defence uses which forms the heart of the conspiracy which results in the brother of the chief technology officer and his student colleagues being shrunk and left to fend for themselves against nature. It's handy that they are researching nature, since that allows them to know how much danger they are in, inform the reader and also affords them some handy weapons. Needless to say the students get attacked by millipedes, wasps and ants as they die off one by one.

I like Michael Crichton books, the combination of science, action and adventure just works for me. I like how he tends to take an issue and create a story out of it, even when its the idea of sexist behaviour towards men in the workplace as women enter the corridors of power (the subject of Disclosure). The only time this hasn't worked is in State of Fear, which tended to read more like a lesson for or against global warming, memory fades, and politicising science than an actual narrative. This one is the same. The science is interesting. It feels like a 'bit more of a realistic take' on shrinking people. The positioning of insects as the dinosaurs of the natural world when you're shrunk works. The deaths are gruesome. It stretches things a bit with micro-planes and whatever else, but it was fun.

It's safe to say Micro isn't his best book, which is understandable. Certainly written when he was ill, and finished by someone else known for similar novels, but probably without the depth of research. It just feels less grounded and etches up the 'cheese factor' rating. Despite this, I tore though the book and really enjoyed it. A combination of the action and the science elements got me past the 'Crichton by the numbers' story and difficulty in taking a story about miniature people seriously due to numerous other previous efforts kicking in.

It could make a great film, if it keeps enough of its edge.

So, I was wondering around Asda just before Christmas and, a usual, I drifted to the computer and electronics section. The surprise was Uncharted 3 for 24 GBP (as well as Batman: Arkham City for 27 GBP). That is was cheap even by online standards and it's gone back up to nearly 40 GBP since they re-stocked. Uncharted 3 is one of the games on 'the list', a selection of games that is either being released in 2012 and / or needs to be played in 2012.

I now have to complete Uncharted 3 before the very beginning of March as that's when Mass Effect 3 is released. The degree to which I'm looking forward to Mass Effect 3 cannot be underestimated.

The beginning is a bit of a disappointment. Well, in truth, it's not really disappointment, it's just you start the game with the awesome beginning of Uncharted 2 in your mind and compared to that it feels very...underwhelming. No epic train crash, just a visit to a pub and a fist fight followed by a flashback. Still, it's obvious from the beginning that a key narrative theme of the plot will be the relation between Nate and Sully and the fact Nate never knows when to give in. I can't help but feel the logical conclusion to this will be the death of Sully.

The best sequence so far has undoubtedly been the one in the shipyard and the ocean liner from chapter twelve through to fifteen. The awesome, and then ever more awesome, extended action sequences are one of the key selling points of Uncharted. The experience of playing out a gun battle across a series of fast moving boats in a rough sea was amazingly well done, the motion of the sea being particularly impressive. It manages to put across the continual feeling of 'oh shit' with an ever increasing sense of escalation. If it was a traditional, FATE role-playing campaign, Nate would be earning and burning fate points at a fast pace. It all goes a bit Poseidon Adventure at the end of the sequence with action sequences taking place in a sinking ship turned on its side.

The puzzles are worth noting as well, as they actually work. Key to this is the use of Nate's notebook. This is similar to the diary that Indiana Jones has from his father in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, full of scribbled notes about the quest ahead and the possible challenges. When a puzzle section comes up you often have information on it in your notebook, which doesn't tell you how to do it, but gives an indicative direction. It makes the puzzle interesting and integrates it into the narrative. They are a vast improvement on the puzzles in the game's closest ancestor: Tomb Raider. I normally get irritated with the puzzles, but they really work in Uncharted, feeling like they have scale while not being too complicated or anal.

The main concern at the moment is the length of the game. I've not checked my actual play time, but I suspect it's not in double figures yet and I'm at the beginning of chapter sixteen of twenty-two, so I'm well over halfway through and there has only really been one impressive, better than on film, extended action sequence. Will have to see how this pans out. At least it doesn't look like it's going to be an issue finishing it before March even taking into account my sporadic play rates.

Like Uncharted 2 it continues to be an excellent model for a contemporary action role-playing campaign. Primarily in the ways it structures action sequences, links them together and takes moments between the action to allow character-driven moments. Basically, like I've always believed, role-playing and action should almost be one and the same in a role-playing game, not necessarily something that happens completely separately.

On the evening of 13th December 2011, in the Crown Plaza – Gatwick, through a WiFi hotspot provided by my HTC Wildfire phone my MBA dissertation was submitted. 'Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Maturity of Practices in Small, Medium and Large Organisations' represents the final piece of work necessary to complete the MBA.

The MBA is all done. Complete.

It's a strange feeling. It seems the overriding feeling people communicate when this happens is relief. I can't say it's the same. A sense of achievement of having undertaken the herculean task during what has not been the most stable of periods in my life. A sense of validation that it has been worth it purely in regards of how it has changed me in terms of how I think and approach problems. Ultimately though, it's a slight sense of loss. Overall, I enjoyed it that much I'm going to miss it. It's life changing. It was rarely a trial, or an obligation, but something I engaged in with passion and verve. I did this so much it often takes other people to remind me what an achievement it is.

I tend to do things because of the challenge they represent, and the MBA fit that category and then some.

Looking back on the reasons I took the giant step for my brain, wallet and hopefully future career prospects I can see all of them have come to be, with the final one obviously something that needs to be delivered on in the future. One thing I do know, the MBA has already opened doors I would have found firmly shut and it's how it's changed me that will be the clincher in terms of career direction. It's early days on that last one and I still have to make some choices.

The first semester was undoubtedly a challenge. The volume of work wasn't so much a surprise but still something that took a while to find the best approach to. Studying fast. Slowing it down. Ultimately going for the strategy of having encountered all units before the residential. A strategy I subsequently stuck with. As for the first residential, it hit home how much my world had shrunk. Then my first exam in...a while. The revision front line was a new experience in exams that are very challenging, as well as re-learning how to write longhand under pressure. All this is key to the MBA process though. You learn how to manage the work. Your ability, already high, to absorb and learn new things continually is radically enhanced. You come to accept you can't know everything but you can bet you can be pretty clued up quickly. The constant, never ending challenge was buzz of the MBA.

Eventually you find a rhythm to the study process and you start to mine it for all it's worth in the past, present and future. You mine it in the present through the experience. You mine it in the past by putting all you've done through the rigorous MBA process and realising you've done some pretty amazing stuff. Then you cast all that into the future and it changes how you present yourself. It's sort of You+. It tends to create a sense of confidence that is invaluable, it enhances that belief that even if you don't know how to do something now, you soon will through a combination of experience, education, networks and investigation.

Then, as if from nowhere you discover a distinction is possible. To say this was a surprise is an understatement. It was something other people did, and certainly something I never thought would happen on a Global MBA which is primarily distance learning. Once it became a possibility it became an all consuming passion. Nothing else will be good enough. I think it's possible, but obviously not guaranteed. Getting the highest achievement would be great.

Ultimately, to quote a famous British TV character, the experience has been...fantastic.

In a way this is also a sign-off. This is the last blog focused on undertaking the MBA, only the final mark and the graduation remain.

So, it's pretty much exactly a month until the release of The Old Republic and the NDA was dropped a short while ago. The immediate result is a slew of videos that can supply all the spoilers you could ever want if you so desire. I've watched a few, in a very limited fashion. A couple of relatives are also playing the beta, which has afforded me a number of Twitter updates and about 30 minutes of actual play, which got me to level three.

The information has got me thinking a bit. There is a mild story spoiler, so if you don't want to know anything I'd stop now.

First, the actual play. It was a very small amount of actual play, but it was still...interesting. The first thing I noticed was the Smuggler (from playing) and Trooper (from a video) class have the same starting zone. Essentially, a war zone. The chapter-based story is different. Not sure if some of the side quests are similar (I think they might be).

The second thing I noticed is it felt more like a Bioware single-player game than an MMO. This is something I expected, so it wasn't a significant surprise. The story and the acting is present. It's probably not going to be Mass Effect levels of 'story awesome', but even the snippet I had of it was great. Within 30 minutes some dirty, rotten Swamp Rat had stolen my Smuggler's ship?!? A great dramatic moment to kick the story off. On the negative side, the experience felt claustrophobic. The 'world' felt a bit more like a Bioware single-player area than just one small part of an expansive world. I'm not sure how to take this. It could be that I've just not played an MMO for a while, certainly not an MMO with only the starting zones being available. It could also be that Warcraft has the job of realising 'one planet', while The Old Republic has to realise many planets. Like the films themselves, you have to take a high level approach to each one.

The final observation is the lack of an auto-attack. This gave the game a very different feel. You can't just stop clicking buttons and let the game get on with it. You have to be constantly hitting one attack or another or your character doesn't do anything. This gives the game a more immediate feel. It's also very responsive and the sound effects are cool. It's a bit ridiculous you get hit many times by blaster fire and don't die, but I'm not sure how they could have gotten around this. The shoot from cover mechanic of the Smuggler is very Star Wars. The game also wasn't very hard, but this is probably a facet of the starting area.

The videos and associated information have got me thinking about class choices now I know more about roles and and starting zones. Ultimately, I'm going to mine the game for all its worth and play through the stories of all the classes. The issue is in what order.

The above diagram shows how the classes are actually dual sets which share roles and class abilities. While the class abilities of each dual set may be different in terms of animation and the specifics of the power, the classes mirroring each other will have powers serving the same purpose. The Bounty Hunter may fire a missile from his wrist, while the Trooper a grenade from underneath his blaster rifle but the result is an early power that causes more damage (and possibly some minor AOE, I'm not sure). This means, despite the radical story differences between the Bounty Hunter and the Trooper I'm unlikely to play one after the other. The same goes for any in a dual relationship, such as a Smuggler and an Imperial Agent. In a similar way, if the Smuggler and the Trooper have the same starting zone that might influence the actual order I experience the classes in.

The other thing that raised an eyebrow was the tanking classes. I was always confused about how you could have ranked tanking classes. The answer is you can't, apparently. All the tanking classes are melee focused. This even includes the Bounty Hunter (Powertech) and the Trooper (Vanguard). No idea how that works out in practice. Oddly, the Imperial Agent (Operative) is also a stealth orientated melee class, which is a bit of a surprise. Have to say, while the thought of bringing down the melee awesome with a lightsaber is appealing, the idea of playing any other class in a melee fashion just doesn't appeal at all.

Ultimately, I think I'm going to play a Smuggler (Gunslinger) first. I'll then branch out as required. I'm also going to take advantage of the legacy system and have a bunch of characters use the same surname. It' would be interesting to know if your legacy can cross factions.

At the moment, my limited experience with the game and the videos I've seen doesn't really transform my view that the game will be successful, but isn't going to get into the tens of million subscription rates. It's good the game needs nowhere near these numbers to be successful. The reason why? Not because of its quality, but due to the focus on story ensures it has a niche appeal. The implementation of the story in the original game and expansions takes time, which can't be spent elsewhere. I suspect the typical MMO player will get very irritated with the voice acting very quickly and just want to get on to killing stuff with his group. It'll be interesting to see how many fans of Bioware's single-player games transfer over and how many casual players the game takes away from Warcraft.

Since the halcyon days of yore when kids used to collect stickers to put in sticker albums we've all known that making a commercial endeavour collectable is a potential way to rake in the coin. Then we learned that sprinkling in competition, with the ability to compete tied into the collectable aspect, magnified the potential of the financial return even further. What on earth could come next?

Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure gives us the answer.

Skylanders combines a videogame with action figures, albeit the action figures don't have degrees of rarity and are all free to be purchased. The action figures can be placed on the portal of power and this puts the action figure into the game to be used as a character. The character levels up and all this is remembered by the action figure. The figures can even be used across all platforms with Skylanders running on PS3, Xbox and Wii. The action figures of your friends can adventure together or engage in PvP battles. You can buy location packs as well as action figures which come with a new adventure location, an action figure and assorted sundries.

Basically, the ever expanding nature and experience of the game is linked to purchasing action figures. This is genius. First, it gets around the problem of increasing game longevity. The need to keep eyeballs on your game rather than another one has been a problem for games for some time, especially as the costs of production have gone up (and in some cases advertising dollars are in the game). How does one ensure regular revenue post purchase? It also links that longevity model to a market that is relatively high profit margin. There is a reason many games and hobby stores have seriously expanded into merchandise like figures and other paraphernalia, it's because it makes them money. While I'm not privy to the costs, it's almost certain the action figures are a relatively high return item. They also look cool and kids will want to own them.

How well will the game do? No idea. If anecdotal evidence of the attention the whole area was getting in Tesco, with young males picking up the boxes and showing all the tells of wanting to get into it big time, it's going to do well. It must be also be a relatively high venture to get into so someone must have their fingers crossed.

Also, how long before some poor kid gets their level 50 Grognard the Stone Golem stolen?

I know I should have just given it a miss, but due to a strange fascination I just had to give the first Channel 5 run of Big Brother a go. Was it worth it? Yes and no. The chances are this will be my last time with the show. C5 has taken a different approach to the show, probably one closer to their concept of scripted reality than the more traditional Big Brother approach taken by C4. This has manifested in numerous ways.

The house mates seem to be a bit more 'famous' than the usual batch. We have people who already have agents. People who have appeared in films already, albeit low rent stuff like Wrong Turn 3. People who have been gladiators on, well, Gladiators. People who share connections with the producers. People who failed to get on Geordie Shore (with his mates), so tried Katie Price Presents and then Big Brother. Girls who have already appeared in Nuts. Hell, there is people in the Big Brother house who are arguably bigger celebrities than 1 or 2 people who went into the C5 run of Celebrity Big Brother. It just feels like they've gone for a different type of person, with the aim of getting a specific output. The reason for this is covered later.

The editing also feels...wrong. Okay, I'm not stupid, Big Brother is all in the editing. You have 24 hours of footage and only a 45-minute show each evening. This year, more than any other I've watched, it is obvious decisions are being made around the editing. It's hard to describe, it just feels different. In the past you knew things were not being shown whole cloth due to time, but in this series you feel the overbearing hand of the editor way too much and it feels like that hand has specific intent. The personalities in the house are not just being created by what is not shown (which in this series are major events that would never have not been shown in previous years and would have resulted in warnings) but by how it is shown. It's gone from feeling a necessary evil to something that felt uncomfortable way too often.

During the shows time with C4 you also had the live streaming which, while not immune from editing, was much harder to construct a purposeful narrative from. The C5 show has no live streaming. While not everyone watched the live stream (such as I), it allowed for extra context to get out into the wild.

The standards of the show have just plummeted down the toilet. Yes, Big Brother reserves the right to change the rules all the time, but Big Brother UK had a reputation for being the most strict and pure of the formats (despite significant drift). The outside contact rule was always enforced. The no writing rule was always enforced. This year celebrities have come into the house for a premier. They seem to be writing things down all the time, including a love note in someone's blood. Nice. The sacrosanct nature of the house mate nominations and public vote have been pushed to the edge (and no doubt pulled back due to complaints). Not only that, in one instance they tried to control the house mate vote when they voted face-to-face, as it would have been the final a week early, and then when someone rebels (yes, Aaron) they edit it unfairly rather than showing they'd voted several times only to have their tactic (all of them up) cancelled repeatedly.

Don't even get me started on the only slightly moderated mob mentality on display in the show Big Brothers Bit on The Side.

Then we have the final conundrum, the fact the Big Brother inputs, the house mates, are now more explicitly linked with the downstream revenues of the show: z-list celebrities in magazines. You see Richard Desmond not only runs C5 but also owns OK!, New!, The Daily Star and The Daily Express. The first three of those survive on a healthy turnover of Reality TV productions and the z-list celebrities they create. This brings me back to the editing. I just can't believe that the editing of certain individuals within Big Brother hasn't been the result of decisions over who might make a better Richard Desmond product.

So, why yes and no?

That brings me to Aaron. The single saviour of the series this year. While I wouldn't take it this far myself, he's also become the mascot for all those feeling the new producers need a creative kicking. His journey through the house has been epic. Facing up to the Wolf Pack (a grouping of house mates) after they effectively drove one of the most likeable house mates to walk. He picked them off one at a time with wit and intelligence until all of them but one got evicted despite them 'attacking' him relentlessly. His relationship with Faye has been one of the most fascinating on the show. He refuses to be manipulated. He lives by certain principles true inside and out the house that have remained consistent. If he's playing a game it's one of entertainment without sacrificing himself. He's been like the Big Brother version of Reed Richards facing off against a plethora of 'Mystery Men' super-villains who have contrived to take him down. It has been fascinating to watch and is, in many ways, the type of house mate they'd have had pre-series four. He undoubtedly will make a terrible winner from the perspective of the magazine empire.

Will he win? It's hard to say, as I suspect the average Big Brother viewer these days just don't get it (though has survived innumerable evictions). He's well mannered rather than crass. He's not poor, if not rich. He deflects and debates with wit and intelligence rather than being a thug. He's a 30 year old man who likes Disney and Lego. He's genuinely funny. He was really popular once but the consistent, principled choices he's making in the final week are being interpreted oddly by the Chav masses (as him playing a game and being sly..the ultimate irony). It'd be great if he did, the idea appeals to me, one final act that indicates all is not lost. I just doubt it will happen. I suppose I'd be happy if he beat Jay (and his moll Louise) the man who shit in the freezer in the house (not shown), wiped his arse on a bed pillow (not shown), slept with 46 Thai prostitutes and two 'Lady Boys' in 14 days and has tried to get on every reality and scripted reality show on the planet but is obviously just an 'honest, salt of the Earth Newcastle lad'.

Shakes head in shame. But then, I don't vote!

I probably give the impression, from Facebook Status updates, that I don't particularly like 'Moffat era' Doctor Who. This isn't entirely untrue, I didn't find much to like in the his first series, but there was a lot more to like in his second. The issue basically comes down to the differences in the show under Davies and Moffat. The truth is, what would be perfect is a fine interweaving of the strengths of both writers.

There are a lot of strengths to the 'Moffat era'.

The main strength is he's injected Doctor Who with an 'other worldly' quality. Even when the show is set on Earth it's not literally mundane Earth, like it's come straight from a UK TV drama or soap. It's an Earth that might appear in an episode of the Twilight Zone or Sapphire and Steal. Basically, the reality of the show is wrapped around the Doctor, and whichever way you look at his world isn't ours (but is, only sort of). This is often done so well, that when that filter vanishes and we get a contemporary episode like Closing Time, it feels odd and it just doesn't work. This approach isn't true all the time, but it's certainly true that the 'Moffat era' has moved away from Earth appearing very mundane. They should do this more.

The second strength adds to the first in that the series is very much a show about a man who travels in time. Historically, albeit my memory of a lot of classic Doctor Who is vague, the time travel element was largely an excuse to put the Doctor any where and any when. Little actually happened out of order. Little was actually written to push the conflict and story potential of someone who could travel in time almost on a whim. The primary reason being it radically increases the complexity of the show, which has occurred since Moffat took the reigns. Now we have stories that feature characters meeting each other in reverse order and the Doctor ageing 200 years between episodes because that doesn't matter in the scheme of thing (and writers for prestigious newspapers clearly not getting the implications of the Doctor's life). I'm not saying this element is a strength all the time, it's sometimes used over longer arcs without giving it just the bit more attention it deserves, but overall it's better than everything being in 'simple order'.

The third strength is new enemies. I'm a big fan of how the Daleks were done during the 'Davies era', making them the mythological enemies of the the Doctor, complete with names for him like 'the on coming storm' because of his genius unpredictability. It creates one problem though? Enemies of such magnitude can only encounter each other sparingly. Moffat has introduced the only two new enemies that have had any traction: The Weeping Angels and The Silence. These two introductions to the Doctor Who line up have been absolutely brilliant.

The fourth strength is complexity, which is a borderline strength. It's borderline because it can be subject to a bit of smugness which I can't help but feel slips in occasionally resulting in weaker episodes. I just think sometimes the complexity isn't fully equalled by pay-off, other than in that abstract sense some people like because they like to 'fan wank' about figuring it out. There is also an argument around some Doctor Who fans that complexity is empirically better or cleverer, which I don't hold to as being true. Still, it has the potential to be great, such as in the epic that was The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon. It can also be terrible and result in a continually, overly flagged epic episode that turned in an absolute mess of pacing and script that even a lesbian, samurai wielding female duo couldn't rescue. The complexity doesn't often pay off.

What you actually end up with is series that are as hit and miss as the Davies era just in different ways.

The 'Davies era' had different strengths. The main one I miss being the way the stories were often construction on an emotional logic rather than complex constructional logic. The stories hurtle along carried forward by the sweeping emotion of it all. This is often missing from 'Moffat era' Doctor Who, cleverness replaces it which hasn't fully worked unless you enjoy it for its own sake. They try it, but it never feels the same and often falls flat. Indeed, whole arcs of emotional intensity are just left behind in the pursuit of this rapid complexity. The 'Davies era' also managed to do it without having someone seem to 'die' every other week which often feels the case in the 'Moffat era'.

I also don't feel the 'Moffat era' delivers on the big episodes. Just like the 'Davies era' they build to them, but the 'Davies era' always paid off for me at the series conclusion. The 'Moffat era' conclusions always feel like a let down. He can't deliver in the final mile. He's not a man for the 'money shot'. It's always, here it comes...hoh..okay.

The final episodes of season one to four are brilliant (comedy Dalek spinning aside in series four), and just have some sort of elusive spark that always holds me back from confirming the 'Moffat era' as a 100% improvement. It is probably true to say I enjoy the show, but I don't look forward to it with as much zest and enthusiasm. Still, some of the good ones are very good.

I've chosen to ignore the fan ability to see elements of the show that are the same under Moffat and Davies as being a strength under Moffat but a weakness under Davies despite being exactly the same.

One of the greatest source of books on the Kindle is my own personal Amazon trawler. Also known as Louise. Every so often she'll trawl Amazon with the efficiency of a google robot and find bargains on the site and purchase them. I don't read all of these but I do read some of them. After she read The Hunger Games she'd been pushing me into reading them for a few weeks. The trouble was it just sounded like a bad idea. Teenagers forced to fight it out in arena-based combat. The fact the books are written in first-person, an admitted bias of mine. No idea why, but the odds of me not connecting with the book increase in a first person narrative.

I eventually relented and gave the first book a go then quickly read the other two.

The books are set in a future in which things haven't gone well. It's not exactly post-apocalyptic, but it's close and society has fallen from a previous 'high point'. There are 12 districts all of which supply something to the the Capitol. The Capitol owns their asses. Once the districts rebelled, but that resulted in the destruction of the thirteenth district and the creation of The Hunger Games to remind everyone that the Capital, well, owns their asses. The Hunger Games involves two teenagers from each district, pulled from a lottery, being tossed into an arena and fighting until only one survives. The books tell the story of 16-year old Katniss Everdeen (99% of the time shortened), a character who has one of the crappiest names in fiction, who finds herself in The Hunger Games only to become embroiled in a rebellion.

The overall story is pretty good, we start out with the tale of our heroine being 'selected' for the Hunger Games and through events of her own making and manipulation of greater powers she finds herself becoming the symbol of a rebellion. It works well. The first book is the best book though, mainly because the 'teenage love angst', does get a bit laboured across the three books. It also gets a bit frustrating that even in the third book the 'manipulation by higher powers' angle still plays out. I'm the kind of person who likes their heroes to have a bit more personal power, so I'd have preferred a bit less of that and more active leadership. Since the first one is the best one, it makes it easy to give the books a go.

The Hunger Games are 'young adult' fiction. Which is fine. I don't shy away from that. There is a certain type of 'young adult' fiction that is worth reading, as what they actually deliver is a good yarn in the form of simple, streamlined, heroic stories. Nothing wrong with that. This one also happens to be a bit of a science fiction epic, which is always nice.

The books are apparently the next big thing, though I'd never heard of them before. The films are being made and pushed as the next Harry Potter, Twilight, whatever. I can actually see them making very good films. They may be better films than they are books as the medium would naturally speed things up even more and losing the ability for characters to 'internally procrastinate' might make some of the weaker areas of the narrative either more dynamic or not as laboured. There may also be a temptation to give the Hero's Journey element of the book a bit of a kick and have our heroine be a bit more independent and action hero-like by the end of the film.

I must admit that the roadmap and changes made to Facebook are usually oblivious to me, other than the barrage of moaning on status updates. The reason for this is simple: 90% of my use of Facebook is done through Tweetdeck on the PC, tablet or phone. I also use Digsby for my integrated IM and I can see and update statuses for my social networks from there as well. I never actually visit the site, despite often looking like I never leave it (as I'm usually logged into IM).

At the same time, I sometimes pop over to see the changes and wonder what all the fuss is about, at an interface level they never seem that dramatic. In some cases, like the automatic creation of lists they are just a tweak to a function that already existed. I've been posting status updates secured to lists for some considerable time.

The concept of the Facebook Timeline has me intrigued though, because it's finally an update that does something major. I've enabled it, and I think it's brilliant. At the moment I can't seem to add applications in to show what I'm reading and watching, but it's still pretty good.

The problem with Facebook is a lot of content is posted to it, but I never thought it was that easy to see it. As you post status updates and photos and whatever else you are essentially digitally 'scrap booking', building up an image of yourself, your brand, your interests and life in the digital cloud. The trouble is, under the design that has been the mainstay of Facebook for some time, it's like a digital scrap book that has the pages 'erased' after a certain time window. Now with timeline this is no longer the case, as you can see, display and access the digital scrap book that has built up over time via a very good timeline'd interface. I really like it.

I like it to the extent that it is making me want to engage with the site more now I have this holistic view of my 'scrap book'. I want to add to it. I want to make it richer and more exciting. Whether my life is that exciting is another matter, but that's another issue.

Of course, there is going to be a disruption across the internet on a massive scale when it goes live. If people complained about the micro-changes, they're going to explode with this one. Personally, I don't really see why. As far as I'm concerned, this is Facebook delivering what I was actually doing in practice anyway, but the bad design hid it from me!

The availability of all this 'data' about me doesn't overly concern me either. In the first case, I don't post anything on Facebook I wouldn't be prepared to talk about face-to-face. In the second case, if I was that bothered about it I just wouldn't put it online in the first place. In the third case, you can secure everything via lists and I have a default status update profile of 'Friends Only' and not 'Restricted' meaning the timeline is only practically visible to Friends. I often secure other posts to a much smaller group of people, such as only fellow MBA students, the gaming group or trusted acquaintances if it's about holidays (and as such the house is empty).

I suppose the major difference might be one of philosophy. As far as I'm concerned, Timeline finally makes Facebook what it always should have been (and was, it just chose to have a crap interface for displaying it).