(no subject)

Not to rub it in or anything, but this is turning out to be paradoxically the easiest semester ever. I have two classes in total, giving me Thursdays off, and because of the lecturers being on strike we've only been handed out one practical task so far. Granted, this practical involves writing a security policy and is more appalling than several other practicals put together, but it's still easy compared to last year when my life was spent in the lab. There's also the slight issue of the 20,000-word report that I've got to put together along with the rest of the project, but on the positive side, my supervisor and I got through an entire meeting last Tuesday without him saying how rubbish my program was. It's a step forward.

So alongside using all this new-found free time in some constructive manner, I've been playing loads of Command and Conquer: Red Alert. Years ago I used to be into it even though I was famously useless at realtime strategy games, and this has turned out to be because I had not yet worked out that the winner of each mission is essentially decided by how many Medium Tanks you've built.

The real attraction of the game, though, lies in the inter-mission cutscenes. It was one of the first games to use real actors (none of which had really been getting enough work recently) rather than their pixel-drawn counterparts, and while impressive back in the day, I hadn't realised how hilarious their acting was. The plot of the game involves Hitler being removed from the timeline and an alternative Second World War taking place without him, so the main nationalities are German and Russian. The provided accents are far removed from those countries, though - in particular, one of Stalin's right-hand men ends up sounding like he's from Inverness.

I've completely lost my train of thought now, so I'll have to stop.