Symphony of Legends

So tonight the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra together with the Concordis Chamber Choir performed music from many contemporary video game favourites.  Plenty of stuff from Blizzard with various selections from Warcraft and Starcraft, along with Uncharted 3, the Bioshock games, Skyrim and plenty more.  Above and behind the orchestra were large screens showing off gameplay and cinematics from the games being played. 
Oh, seeing the Protoss on the big screen! 
Oh, seeing Diablo on the big screen!
Speaking of which, we heard Diablo 3 music!  We saw Diablo 3 footage!  It was all pretty glorious.  Of course, a number of people were pulling out phones at that point for a snap or two.

The general lighting effects during the pieces were quite well done.  There were all manner of colours and arrangements dancing along the ceiling, along the walls and out of the side spotlights.

The night was hosted by Wil Wheaton, Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub.  From the description of the event it sounded like Wil would "make an appearance" (I took this to mean pop in and say hi halfway through then promptly leave) but Wil actually was there the entire night. 
I wasn't expecting the guys to pop in between each different game, but they did a great job with highlighting not just the particular game and what it brought to the experience, but also a brief background on who composed the music and any interesting anecdotes from its creation.

Soul Caliber capped off the end of the night.  Oh my, you forget how exaggerated those female characters are until they're on the big screen in all their beyond-comic-book-art glory.  Footage from Soul Caliber, and most of the games in general, tended to be from more recent releases since it doesn't take too many years before the sort of thing you're displaying starts to look rather prehistoric.

One of the best moments of the night was actually the Soul Calibur conclusion, where two of the top aussie players dueled it out, with the in-match music being played live by the orchestra.  V1p3r played off against Woody and man, Woody was on fire.  Must have cleared the first two fights near perfect.  Lost the next, but won after that.  The crowd was very enthusiastic between rounds.  It has me thinking about seeing the upcoming gaming exhibition.

Disappointments?
No Tristram theme.  I've actually listened to this a number of times whilst working - and of course I've hit it up on youtube right now - so I was kinda thinking this would get played. Everyone loves the Tristram theme.  Hell, they even talked about the Tristram theme when discussing the secrecy regarding the recording of the Diablo 3 music.  Oh my god, I'm having serious flashbacks to standing around for ages with red and blue potions thinking how screwed I was and how I was running out of portal scrolls and I couldn't afford anything at those ripoff shops.
Oh, and no Guile theme.  But I suppose, realistically, deep down inside, I knew this was never going to get played.

All in all, a fantastic night.  Topped with ice-cream and apple crumble and black russians.  But no Wil Wheaton photo (damn you, battery) and no Wil Wheaton signed poster (damn you, hindsight).

Antonym fun

There are many words in english that you can negate by adding a prefix such as un-, il-, non-, etc.  However, several of these words are much more common in their negation than their root form.  It's always fun inserting a few of these uncommon root forms into speech:

- Complain about maculate code.
- Refer to the person who screws things up as peccable.
- Rail against nocent government policies.
- Compliment people by telling them that they look kempt.

There was a short story that I recall reading quite some years ago that was based around the use of such root words.  Alas I cannot recall the title or the author or I'd link it from here.

The page below relates a few other interesting words in the same vein:
- The opposite of indefatigable is just fatigable (both in- and de- are dropped).
- The antonym of incline is disincline, not decline ("I was inclined to follow his suggestion", "I was disinclined to follow his suggestion")

Oh, the English language: travesty or endless supply of riches?

http://www.rinkworks.com/words/negatives.shtml