Iain M. Bank’s second Culture book, The Player Of Games, was much more enjoyable than the first one, to the state that I read the last half in just one day! Unlike the first Culture novel, the protagonist this time is part of the Culture society allowing Banks to expand on the universe in greater detail.

The story is compelling, I could hardly put the book down, and the premise intelligent and unique. I was curious the entire time about the various agendas and motives of all the characters and the plot was gripping. It was very entertaining and I’m looking forwards to reading the 3rd in the series shortly.

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The first game I bought, played and completed on this trip was Diablo 3, though it took a bit of effort to eventually buy it!

I played Diablo 1 and 2 when they were originally released and loved how you could tweak your character and manipulate your attributes to create vastly different skill sets.

Diablo 3 didn’t feel like those games at all, other than visually. It’s a very forgiving game, you can move points between skills and change your mind etc. It very much felt like Diablo Arcade Mode.

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I’d never played any of the Zelda series before, despite having a NES as a kid and my brother having The Ocarina Of Time on his N64 so I decided to dive in and play the first one.

Man, this was one hard game, even using a walkthrough and OpenEmu’s memory save feature. It was kind of fun, but not really as it was so damn hard.

The game is split in to two stories, I only completed the first one and have no intention of replying it to complete the second one as it uses the same level data, things are just moved around.

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There’s an awesome game console emulator for the Mac called OpenEmu which lets you play games across a dozen or so old school consoles so for Christmas my parents bought me a Sony Playstation 3 Dual Shock controller as they work with Macs and one of my mates bought it up when I went to visit Chiang Mai!

I’ve always wanted to play Silent Hill as it’s supposed to be extremely creepy. The OpenEmu lets you emulate Playstation games, and Silent Hill was flawless. I like old school games and consoles (before they were just PCs in a box) so over the last month bought a PSOne, Silent Hill and a bunch of random other stuff off EBay as investments. They were all sourced well under market rate and should only go up in price. They’re also pretty awesome!

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It’s now been 5 months since I left the UK and 2 months since my last update. I’m currently in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, for 10 days.

Weightloss

I went to the hospital for a routine check up last weekend and weighed in at 84kg. I’ve lost 6kg since my last update 2 months ago and 16kg in total since I got here. That’s 35lbs or 2 1/2 stone for people that like the Imperial system. I lost most of that 6kg in the last 4 weeks as my training and diet have been impeccable. 0 days off and 0 cheat days. Looking to the future, after I am back from Vietnam I’m going to keep that up and see if I can lose at least 10kg more whilst I still have the opportunity to train at Tiger.

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Consider Phlebas is the first book in Ian. M. Bank’s Culture series and demonstrates his talent for suspense in a pretty hard core sci-fi novel detailing the exploits of a shape shifting secret agent of the Iridans.

Undertaking a clandestine mission to a forbidden planet in search of a fugitive artificial intelligence, Consider Phlebas is a serious space opera set in the midst of a war between two galactic empires.

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When I first arrived at Tiger Muay Thai back in September, the indoor, air conditioned gym had been turned in to a BJJ hall and all the gym equipment had been moved outside, whilst construction on a new, larger gym was underway. The gym equipment was getting pretty weathered and people were lifting with gloves to protect themselves from rust etc. This caused me to join Titan Fitness’ gym for a while instead whilst I was living near it.

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The hotel in Thailand that I’m currently staying in is for some inexplicable reason blocking SSH, randomly. 6 hours ago it was working fine, but now when I need to do some work it’s decided to block me. At least that’s what I think is happening as all other requests work fine. I think it’s using some deep packet inspection too, as moving to another port also doesn’t work.

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This book is mandatory reading if you’re planning on running a social media campaign any time soon. Covering all the major players, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Tumbler, as well as Google+ and others, Gary analysis the facets of each network, dissects what makes posts successful, go viral and get over exposure, and what can make posts fail.

Using case studies as the book progresses you are shown exactly what can make or break a social media campaign on each respective network, and they are all different, so what works on one will not necessarily work on another.

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To the east of Chiang Mai is another city called Chiang Rai who’s main claim to fame is the beautiful White Temple, Wat Rong Khun. As I’ve no plans to be back in the north of Thailand any time soon, now seemed like a great time for me to visit.

Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai By Bus

After asking around, the only place to buy a bus ticket from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai is the bus station to the east of the old city, apparently there is a shop in the centre but I couldn’t find it. It’s easy to get to buy songthaew or tuk-tuk.

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