Mikau's site

Steam Sale: Fable 3

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:54:49 +0000

It's been a while since I've pointed out any Steam sales, mostly just because I've been too lazy to do so, however I figured I'd point this one out.

You can find it here, it's 66% off everything(DLC).

Serious Sam 3 is on sale too, but $4 off(10%) is hardly a bargain.

BYOND's Timeline -- BYOND = Star Wars?

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 03:01:47 +0000

1	The Dantom Menace	Viva La BYONDolution!
2	Attack of the Clones	Rut roh, Zeta!
3	Revenge of the [censored]	The tyranny continues!
4	A New Hope	C&D (DMCA notice) >: (
5	The Falacy Strikes Back	It'll happen
6	Return of the Original Games	Yay!

Why I don't hate Justin Bieber.

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:34:33 +0000

I don't know him personally, and don't listen to his music. His life and existence does not effect me in any way, whatsoever.

However, there's this whole attitude on Youtube videos that people feel the need, no matter what they're watching, to make a reference to him be it in the likes/dislike comments, or by comparing the content of the video to him, saying that in some way it is better than him, even if it is completely unrelated. This is spam. This is why Youtube has a button you can click on comments called "mark for spam".

If you are not watching a video about or of Justin Bieber on Youtube, you have no real reason to bring him up, or comment about him unless the video is in some way related by at the very least the same musical genre. Even if you absolutely despise him, by making these comments you are simply drawing more attention to him than you need to, and the comments themselves are spam.

Either way, next time you're watching a Youtube video and you notice these comments about Bieber and the video has nothing to do with him, don't get into a fuss and comment back. Simply click the thumbs down picture beside the comment, click to mark it for spam, and continue watching the video you were there for in the first place. Don't forget to spread the word too. The more people doing this, eventually the comments will all stop and slowly disappear.

Hyped for this epic showdown.

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 23:55:56 +0000

School Paper Type Thing

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:49:03 +0000

I know this is probably riddled with grammar problems and what-not, and it probably makes no sense in a lot of areas. I'm a terrible writer, and don't plan to be a writer in the future. However, I am forced to take this English class for some reason, and they want me to write these stupid things so here it is.

Feel free to rip it to shreds, point out any and all errors, and just generally rip it to shreds. The teacher is pretty hardcore grammar nazi, so no matter how good it is, I'll likely still get a bad mark.

Also, it was written by 2 people, so something might contradict each other, I'm not sure.

Stop The Meter

Over the past few years large internet service providers such as Bell and Rogers have adopted a system called usage based billing. This system limits users' bandwidth to a gigabyte value, sometimes as low as 2 per month ranging all the way up to 200 or more. Once users exceed this bandwidth limit, they are charged extra on a per gigabyte basis.

When this system was first implemented the large providers already gained some major backlash from the user community. Smaller third party Internet Service Providers took this as an advantage and, though they were using the larger companies lines for their internet service, they could provide unlimited bandwidth.

This month the CRTC ( Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) passed a bill to allow all large ISPs to pass the same internet usage fees they were charging on its users down to the independent third party companies. Though they ruled that there had to be a 15% discount on the usage fees, this still forces independent companies to pass along the limited pay-per-byte bandwidth that the larger companies impose. The one advantage these small companies previously had, and the only way for users to get out of the Usage Based Billing system has now been squelched.

From a large Internet provider's point of view, moving to a fully usage-based billing system makes sense. More and More users are jumping on the high-bandwidth bandwagon, and lines are beginning to congest. Without some sort of usage limitation in place, according to the large companies, they would have to throttle your bandwidth down to a lower speed.

Over the years as technology has progressed, it has become faster and cheaper for companies to provide users with internet, however the price has seen a steady incline. Adding a usage fee on top of the price the end user has already paid, merely adds to the already high price.

Most households have at least one internet enabled device in every room, being cell phones, computers, televisions, gaming consoles, and even some refrigerators. All of these devices download software, patches, and updates daily-- sometimes even more often. Most of these devices are not equipped with the capability to monitor their bandwidth usage, forcing the user to attempt to calculate the accumulated usage in his or her head.

Out of all the users affected by this change, small Canadian companies that operate web-based services are receiving the brunt of the impact. The hosting they receive from the ISP's for their services will now cost them much more money to maintain, and they will have no options except to pass the bill onto their clients, or fall out of business.

With the trend heading in this direction, once the fees are imposed on the independent internet services, they will not be able to provide, and users will have no reason to go to them, since they offer nothing different from their parent providers. Eventually forcing the independent providers to go out of business. This will lead internet pricing to skyrocket, allowing only the wealthy to have accessible internet, leaving the average household offline.

New CSS

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 09:43:20 +0000

In light of the new website, I've decided to update my CSS as well. As far as I know everything works and nothing is out of place.

Obviously it's modeled after the new website's layout, although to my knowledge minor tweaks to the website are bound to happen, so this will end up being different than the new website over time.

I might change some stuff here and there, but for the most part I'm happy with how it turned out.

I give it a few days and someone will have "stolen" it, I'm sure. ;)

Stolen is in quotes because you can't steal something that's easily and openly obtainable.

----

[edit]

If you would like to use this CSS(minus the "Mikau" on the header), simply add the following as your CSS instead of designing one.

@import url('http://files.byondhome.com/Mikau/site_css/mik_css.css');

After that, make sure your boxes are on the right side of the page(member_favorites), and include a "donate" box as your first member_favorites(with text), as well as a "custom" box as your second.

They are the top 2 boxes that you see on this screen.

Mazcraft Players

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:36:33 +0000

For those of you that have tried to log in after the latest patch, you'll want to check the website for more details on how to continue playing until the game is updated.

The website is the same as the address you use to connect to the game, and remember we do have an IRC channel on irc.freenode.net called #mazcraft where you can (usually) find me for help and information.

Steam Sale: Give and Receive (L4D2)

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 22:53:23 +0000

It's not likely that someone hasn't noticed the massive sale / wishlist promotion that's been going about on Steam the last couple days. There have been some great deals, I haven't bothered posting about because I just assumed something this major wouldn't slip anyone by. However, for those few that live under a BYOND rock, I'm just throwing it out there that right now you can buy Left 4 Dead 2 for $5 on Steam.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/550/

The sale is only for another 19 hours, then new sales will happen. You can check the front page for all the deals, and make sure you fill out your wish list, despite them saying they give out the top 5 games in peoples wishlists for free daily, they don't mention anywhere majorly that you need at least 10 games in your wishlist for it to be eligible. They want you to use the wishlist, not just say what 5 games you want for free. ;)

Just a heads up, Mazcraft IS still running currently on the new server, however the nameserver is kind of screwy right now so you'll have to use the IP to connect directly. You can find that on the website.

Minecraft SMP

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 02:43:53 +0000

Now that Notch has finally added health, I figure it's about time to post yet again about the Mazcraft server.

I've updated the server with he latest build, and patched it with lhamacraft, and will be including runecraft once that is updated to work with the current build.

You can find the Mazcraft website here.

There's a couple of texture packs I included on the website with screen-shots that you can download and try, if you feel like adding modifications to these to update them, feel free.

The server currently has PVP enabled, as well as all monsters/animals. However, I'll disable PVP if we end up beating the crap out of each-other too often accidentally.

Finally, for those of you that like to mod your minecraft, I highly recommend Zan's Minimap Mod. It really helps give you more sense of direction in the game, you can find the main page here.

General Update

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 10:14:53 +0000

My membership is running out, it only has 1013 days left! What am I going to do!? Someone renew it quickly!

Really though, in light of the recent news about Notch finally getting around to adding health to SMP, Mazcraft is now back online and the server is better than other. The last time Minecraft was actually hosted on this server, the bandwidth was literally 1/10th of what it was now, and that's not a total either(my server has unlimited of that), I'm talking download and upload speed. It's actually 10 times higher than it was before.

Now onto crap about other people... If you haven't played Casual Quest yet, click that link and give it a try, then when you're done enjoying the game, click the discussion tab and read about IainPeregrine wanting to give the game away, and tell him to make it open source. A lovely Google Code Project would be great for it, give a bunch of trusted developers access to update it, anyone that wants to learn from it can freely download the source, everybody wins, right? Right, because then it can be added to DevTalk and we can all ~~force~~ ask Stephen001 to do nice things to it, like add flight control paths.

Oh, and if you haven't yet, give Decadence a try, or maybe not, since I'll probably just kill you.