Tiberath's site

Chaos; Head, and a new chapter.

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:21:36 +0000

Having been an avid blogger around these parts for the last few years, and even though this post will end up in a "General Discussion" forum of some kind (making me look completely insane to the outside world). I figure it'd be wrong of me not to say G'bye to the old girl. Have a drink in her honour, if you will.

-- Anime

Chaos; Head ^{Just to piss you off, "new chapter" refers to IRL stuff, not the anime. Sorry.}
What. The. Hell.

The caption says pretty much everything. From the first episode I was enthralled as to what the hell was happening. The entire episode pretty much focuses on a guy slowly diving deeper into a mental breakdown.

Shortly thereafter, enter harem. Or so I thought. Bastards! That many women around this extremely confused and easy to manipulate guy, you were just waiting for some god awful plot twist resulting in lots of women chasing one guy. It was actually quite clever the way they did it.

The harem element is there, certainly. If a second series comes out, I can see it focusing entirely on that. However, it wasn't by any means a focus of the story. And if it was, it was extremely cleverly introduced, becoming part of some attack ^{probably should have explained this, next paragraph.}.

Actually, it's kinda hard to explain without giving away what I would consider spoilers. The story progresses reasonably slowly in the beginning, giving a real sense of just how badly this guys mind is breaking/broken. I found the first three episodes to be pretty full-on actually. Reminded me of Requiem for the Phantom. It starts to ease up however, this is probably a good thing, I was getting pretty enthralled. I dig psychology stuff sometimes.

Wikipedia will spill the gritty of what's actually going on in the series. Think of it this way: Guys trying to mind-control the world; people trying to stop them. Cool stuff happens. I went in to the series without having even so much seen a trailer. Complete ignorance. Best way to start a new series I say.

-- IRL Stuff

Getting real over my job now. So are the people I'm working with. Expectations are too high and we're too tired. None of us have had any extensive break since 2010 (2009 for me, come to think of it). We're sore, we're tired, we're over it and we keep getting rejected for time off.

The guy I pretty much work side by side with near every day is willing to resign in order to get March off. Annoyingly enough, so am I. We figure they'll either give us both the time off or we'll both resign, their move. I'm considering starting on my resignation letter, he already has one from the last time he resigned (after a ten year run, mind you).

The move is risky though. 'Cause the job market is just as dry as it was in 2008 - 2009. And those were dark times for me. Actually, scratch that, some of those times were fantastic. But a lot of them sucked. Ah balance, it's so difficult to find. On the one side, I hate my job and I'm getting nowhere at an alarming pace, on the other, I have to risk losing nothing at a chance to gain something, or end up with less than nothing (for those unable to get subtlety: debt. Bills still need payment in this day and age, can you believe it?).

Then again, we do have a much better internet connection here than we did last time, so it might not be as bad.

--

Oh well blog, it was only a small post. But it will do you good. You were fun, may you rest in peace. (I'll be on Tiberath.com) again from next week, once I get off my ass and write the other half of it so it's usable via more than direct database injection. (I am a lazy many sometimes.)

As for BYOND itself, I'll be lurking. Keeping an odd eye on things, possibly returning to active development if this move drives in some more interesting users, which I bet it will.

My thoughts on this update +minirant

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 07:21:58 +0000

Unless it beats me to the punch and happens in the midst of me writing this post, or no one cares about my opinions any more, either one sucks.

So as I'm sure everyone is aware, there's going to be a new website update coming in the very to near future. The notes given in the linked post were quite informative, and although I haven't read the comments, I do assume that the same old people are arguing with the same other old people about how this move will "doom BYOND forever" and "make everyone leave" or something to that effect. Undoubtedly with the normal retorts blah blah - let's skip all that.

// BEGIN MINI-RANT Skip.

There's one consistent feeling I do get when I read the naysayers points of view on this update though. For some reason, I can't shake the feeling that they seem to think the hub is an entitlement of some kind. And this perplexes me: How can anyone possibly think they are entitled to the hub, or entitled to use it?

When I joined BYOND, I read that the software was 100% free. Almost nine years later, I find that the software is still 100% free. And I'm thankful for this.

I'm also thankful for the many years I was allowed to abuse the hub via making and deleting as many as I saw fit for whatever random or pointless task I was doing. And now, I'll happily pay for that privilege to continue to do so. And probably, if I'm in an extremely good mood, or someone cracks a good joke, I might be nice enough to pay for others for the privilege to do so as well.

If my subtle point was lost. If you think the hub is an entitlement, you are wrong. It is a privilege. That's all there is to it. Nothing more, nothing less. You can argue until you're blue in the face, it doesn't change this fact. You are not entitled to it. If you were, we wouldn't have the ability to make them go away. You think you're entitled to a hub but not for the site search? It's the same website. They restricted searches for a reason, they're restricting hubs for a reason. They are a privilege, one non-members just lost at that. Live with it.

[Edit] One more thing! The thing I found most funny was that on Tom's announcement, the Yay/Nay thing (which non-members can't vote on IIRC) has 24+ 1-. Seems this "BYOND's doomsday" is pretty popular amongst the subscribers. ;)

// END MINIRANT

I like the forum driven system. When Tom mentioned it way back when, I imagined something much, much different (possibly). But I'm also quite excited about this. I will admit, not to crash hot on losing the age old forum style. Sticky's and the like would have worked fine above an <hr> above the rest of the forum posts. But hey, I've always loved the BYOND forums. And this drives me even more to keep working on my own shoddy PHP knock-off.

But like everyone else, I'll get over it. I can forgive it for the site-pager message update. Let's face it, not all that crash hot right now. But that looks pretty damn snazzy. I'll pay for that.

Game forums for hubs with a bug-tracker and feature-tracker. Hell yes. I'll pay for that.

The best response thing would have been useful six years ago. When I was young and eager to help, yet smart enough to just manage to not screw up enough to warrant community assault. What can I say, as you get older, you stop caring about your status and reputation amongst complete strangers. But let the me's of the next generation take a crack at it. Go get 'em tigers.

Contests and Events is interesting, and I suspect will probably need to have several moderators keeping an eye on it. I can foresee people abusing this feature with stupid and childish pranks. (Yo! Party at Cindy's house! Drunk white women for everybody!)

The flash client was the big one I was looking out for. Sadly it didn't quite meet my giddy child-like expectations. At most, I find this to be a short-term shame. I'll get over it relatively quickly. And probably adapt to it's limitations and flexibility at much the same pace. I'm an evolving programmer?

I think that about sums it up. The only bummer is the forum layout. But even then, if you want to change a community, visually changing the place they all go to complain about the community (or getting rid of it and changing the old place which is also subsequently the next best place) is a pretty good start. (It's a psychology thing.)

Happy Christmas to my friends at BYOND.

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 23:04:03 +0000

As promised in my last post, I have returned on Christmas day with my new keyboard, and the first thing that comes to mind is this: Lummox, mate, I'm sorry, you shouldn't have gone for multimedia keys. This keyboard, minus those, is pretty much everything you wanted. The Cherry Red mechanical switches make a small click, but nothing compared to the IBM Model M (which IS from the 80s). The click is of the keys is noticeable, but within acceptable volume (I think so, anyway).

Righto, enough replying to a year old post, lets get to the keyboard itself: Beautiful. Fantastic. I highly recommend anyone who enjoys programming as a hobby or wants to do so professionally. This is the single most comfortable keyboard I've ever used, and it comes with the added bonus of not needing to learn anything, 'cause it's a stock standard keyboard layout.

... It's a keyboard, I can't really say much more than that. There's no multimedia keys, no glitter, no fancy, it's just a fantastic, affordable keyboard. And yes, the tools you use for your trade matter, this goes for programmers and keyboards as well.

--

On top of the keyboard, I was also awarded a new Combatstick 568 from CH Products. I'll say this much, it's certainly bulky.

That's not to say it's uncomfortable mind you. It's already taken massive strides over my Logitech Attack 3. I haven't had a chance to use it in game yet, but that's only a matter of time.

--

Aside from various little bits and pieces, there isn't really much to say. Highschool of the Dead complete Blu-Ray edition and Trigun: Badlands Rumble Blu-Ray were the two anime titles that I acquired. So all in all, not a bad day.

--

And with that, provided I've got my info correct, this should equate to my last blog post ever, as I've no intentions to post another before the New Year, and I imagine the website updates which either wipe out blogs completely or make them much less user findable will have kicked in by that stage. Either way, it was a good run BYOND. I've seemingly managed to catalogue the last six or so years of my life through my blog here. It's been fun.

I suppose now that I have a good keyboard and a three day weekend, I can turn that big box to the top left of this page from a lie into some truth.

Bye!

The retail workers most hated time of year. +Keyboards.

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:57:59 +0000

Nah, not really. In fact, work, retail and Christmas in general aren't really the subject of this post at all. With the exception to Christmas, which will only be mentioned in this and the next paragraph, the others aren't mentioned at all past this point.

Moving along, with Christmas now upon us and my brothers and I all being in our early to late twenties and, no longer taking it as anything more than an excuse to buy each other something once a year, I got to find out what I was getting for Christmas in advance: A new keyboard.

Because I've taken such a fascination to Battlefield 3, and because the only thing that was never replaced with my computer besides my desk was my keyboard, my eldest brother thought it necessary to acquire me one he said would be perfect for both gaming and programming (so much for the laptop). And he even let me have a little go on it before he wrapped it, just so I could tell if I approved or not.

This post is about keyboards. My mouse is the Razer Naga Epic MMOG Wireless Gaming Mouse, if I have already blogged about it, go read up, if I haven't, request me to tell you what I think. <-- You'll probably need to know this at some stage or another.

The keyboard of subject is this one. The Leopold FC500R Mechanical Keyboard (Cherry Red). I only got a brief moment to play with it, but now I must say: I'm an enlightened man. I've rewritten where I'm trying to take this paragraph three times trying to get the description just right, and I can't do it. It's a good keyboard at an affordable price, c'mon.

Have I said it's comfortable? Yes. But it looks like that was in a deleted paragraph. Brilliant! Yes, the keyboard is extremely comfortable. One sentence is generally all it takes for me to decide if a keyboard is worth the time of day. And comparing it to my current Gigabyte GK-K6150 is now just offensive to it. Don't get me wrong, I love Gigabyte. I buy them whenever I don't know any better (IE: Everything 'cept RAM and Mice). 'Cause to date, none of their stuff has ever given me a serious headache or just randomly stopped working. Including this keyboard, which considering it's age, price and where it was bought from, should have died a horrible death many years ago. But I digress.

Comfortable it is. Apparently, 'cause the switches are cherry red, I only need to press the key half way down for it to register the press. Comparing it to what I have now (and the G19 and IBM Model M), that sounds like a dream come true. So we can check off comfort. I can already tell you that programming at a reasonably fast typing speed would be more than possible on this keyboard. I'm willing to bet my WPM will increase just because of it.

My guess is it'll be just as good for gaming. For two reasons, the first of which is explained in the next paragraph, the other being that I really only play First Person Shooters, and even then, only Battlefield 3. ... Okay, so I only play Battlefield 3. And it's not that complicated you know. The Naga has more than enough buttons at my thumbs disposal to accompany any Online FPS that I'd be interested in.

I think what I like most is the simplicity though. I mean, I don't use rapid access crap. Ever. I have absolutely no need for it. I have a powerful computer and Object Desktop, which pretty much allows me to have a separate start-bar wherever I desire. I'm willing to bet 100% of the time, one of my hands will be on the mouse when I want to open Firefox, Thunderbird or Winamp. So yeah, they're completely unnecessary for me (and I honestly don't care if you reader have found a use for them and demand my opinion be altered to suit your needs (<-- See this line here? This is what I've come to refer to as the "Money Line", a play on the term "Money Shot". This line will be the dominating subject in the comments section (provided there is any). Or if not this line, an argument about whether Gigabyte is worth it or not will break out. This always happens to me. The keyboard will be ignored, and people will talk about a random one liner I intend as a joke. You monsters! Ignore the damn joke and talk about the keyboard! (<-- New money line (<-- New money line [Infinite Loop Detected]

That about sums it up for me. I was initially going to end the post at the end of the last paragraph. But I figured I'd at least say G'bye. I'll probably write my next post Christmas day on my new keyboard, so stay tuned for that if you're interested. And here is the end of this paragraph.

Frivolous spending and stuff.

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 05:40:02 +0000

Seeing as the HC Rush servers for Battlefield 3 wont pick up for another hour, I figured I'd pull myself away from that and my television to drop on in for a second or two.

First extremely long story cut short, I bought a laptop. This one to be extremely accurate. I didn't do any research about it nor do I know if it's really worth the price I paid. But that's beyond the point, I simply wanted something I could do my programming on, 'cause to be honest, it's just too hard to concentrate on my desktop. It's so pretty and capable of online gaming with extreme comfort.

--

I watched Darker than Black season two. It was... odd. I'm glad I took my brothers advice and watched the OVAs before the series. That would have been epically confusing if I had done it the other way around. Whoo man, epically confusing.

It wasn't bad, lacks some of the finesse the first season brought to my screen. But I can't really complain, it fulfilled my desire for kickass fighting and the occasional knife fight.

--

Another to check off is Fruits Basket. Not sure how I'd briefly describe this one. I liked it. That's all there is to it really. I'd probably be more inclined to recommend it to a female instead of a male, love story and all.

--

BAKA and Test being the one I just recently finished. I have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on but hey, it was amusing. Normally repetitive jokes get repetitive and annoying, but I quite liked "Iron Man" with his "Demon Remedial Class", especially the circumstances that lead to some. Still, have no idea how these avatar things can possibly fit into the mix. My understanding is it's a fighting game where your stats are determined by your test scores based on the teacher who casts the field. I can sort of see how it'd be fun, but with that whole teacher approval and stuff, I couldn't see it motivating my teenage self to ignore women in favour of a learning game. It isn't Age of Empires 2, after all.

--

Sekirei was another one I polished off between the last post and now. It was pretty awesome until every charter I'd seen thus far was killed off within minutes... It was an interesting way to start a series anyway. Spoiler alert: The majority of the guys in the trailer (the one I watched, anyway) are killed off pretty quickly. Episode one quickly...

I don't hate the show, I was quite entertained, absurd amounts of character deaths reasonably quickly makes for interesting character development (seriously). Give it a look at if you enjoy blood and the occasional sword fight.

--

Yeah, I think that covers me. Work still blows and no other employment exists. But at least I now have a nice desktop and what I can only assume based on the fact it will turn on when I get it (hopefully), a better laptop than the one I had. By... a lot... Win win.

See you on the Battlefield (3).

So I turned 23 today.

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 06:59:38 +0000

In the normal spirit of my birthday. I figure take a break from MW3 and BF3 to state it's my birthday today. There's nothing really more to say than that, so onto the games.

I've decided this time, since the majority of my posts manage a tl;dr from today's BYOND users, that I'll sum it up directly under the title. Just to make you happy. Just remember, if you didn't make it to this paragraph to get this information: You're the worst kind of person in existence.

Note: My judgements for these games is based off the games I've played online enough to make such a comparison: Jedi Outcast, COD 2, Medal of Honour: Allied Assault, COD: Black Ops and Codename Eagle. My opinions from these two games is based off comparison memories of these games. So if I sound like an idiot, it's because I haven't been an online gamer to any extent in some six years, so I don't know what's
cool or not. Deal with it.

A bit of both:
A paragraph that didn't fit anywhere else.

Okay, I'll be fair. I never played the single player campaign of MW3. I've been playing single player games for the past six years and I'm kind of over them. So with that in mind, I've been ignoring everything in B3 and MW3 except my favourite game type next to CTF: Domination (which is kind of like Headquarters and CTF mixed, with the added enjoyment of Tickets in B3).

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3:
Complete waste of money.

People can cry and have a sook at me all they want for what I've just typed. But ultimately it is the truth. It isn't worth the $60.00 the americans who buy it off Steam are complaining about, and it wasn't worth the $100.00 I bought it off Steam for (yes, that makes sense to me as well. Gotta love that different 'priceage' for digital media. Especially considering my dollar is worth more. I briefly checked around and I couldn't find any evidence of a pre-order bonus or special edition I might be buying by mistake with this much price difference).

Honestly. I found online play to be identical to Black Ops. Which was mostly spawn, get spawn killed by a guy in a helicopter, wait 10 - 15 seconds to spawn, get killed by a spawn camper, wait 10 - 15 seconds to spawn, get killed by a guy in another helicopter, etc. Seriously, those perks, I thought they'd make the game really fun, they seemed to spice up small 4 player LAN games quite well, but no. Oh dear Windu no. They are awful. And seriously, whomever came up with that flood timer thing, seriously need a good kick in the rear. As do the people who continue to implement it.

It's not so bad in dedicated servers. MW3 has one thing over Black Ops in this regard: I don't need to level up to play how I want to. I can have any weapon I want straight off the bat. I'm extremely contented with this.

However, because all MW3 dedicated servers are "Unranked", none of the "hardcore" COD players seem to want to play them, as there's no real benefit from it. This is good, 'cause the remnants seem to mostly be people like myself, the "squeeze in a game here and there" kind of gamer. This is bad however, 'cause it leaves the serves often feeling a bit empty until school lets out. And that's kind of depressing.

That is of course negating the fact that in order to SEE the dedicated servers, you have to enable the menu item in your Options menu. What the hell man? (See console vs PC debate in the Summary for more.)

Honestly, if I thought there was any hope of there still being a few popular COD 2 servers active in Australia, I would instantly dedicate all of my MW3 time to it. But that could also be because I just prefer WW2 when possible.

Intermission (Origin vs Steam):
Inessential rambling of the unimportant variety.

I will say first, I was extremely sceptical about installing essentially another Steam. I mean, I hate Steam. I really hate Steam. I think it is the single worst thing Valve could have released upon us all. And Origin, well, it's just EA's knock-off of Steam. Or so I thought. Let it be known that Origin runs far better, and produces maximum download speeds far superior to that of Steam (with Steam giving me a maximum 920kb/s compared to Origin's 2.2mb/s), and runs far smoother and easier than Steam ever has (my computer actually seems to struggle with Steam, way more than a machine with this much power should). So at the very least, this was BF3's fist extremely bright glowing star in the sky. I had it within a small few hours.

The big shade which covers that star is what seems to be either some extremely terrible second half of Origin or just some extremely bizarre DRM for B3 called Battlelog. Which launches in Firefox and essentially uses it as a catalyst to launch various parts of the game. I know Firefox is taking steps to tone down it's memory consumption, and as I've said, a machine like this should be more than enough to handle running them both. But, well, I'm extremely anal about running applications I don't need to be running while playing games. And past history has taught me that Firefox is generally not an application you want running while playing games...

I'm certainly not going to change my browser to appease these people. So this whole browser-make-launch-game-thing is just not on with me. What the hell guys? You've effectively killed single-player for people who might just not have an internet connection for a bit and feel like playing it. Not cool man... (Actually, that's if it even HAS single player. I just realised I honestly don't know if it has... Disregard the single player part of this paragraph if it doesn't. The browser thing still remains valid!)

For the record, no amount of argument will change my mind on this. It doesn't mean I'll stop using Steam, I'll have to if I ever want Half Life 2: Episode 3 (how many years have I been waiting now? Five?) or any other brilliant games Valve release (hey, I love their games, I just hate their delivery system).

Battlefield 3:
Best online gaming experience I've had yet.

I must say, BF3 loses to MW3 in two ways once you actually get into multi-player (see Intermission). First is similar to Black Ops, I need to level my character up in order to unlock the more powerful guns (while playing against people with more powerful guns 'cause they've already done so... I understand the logic, I really do). This isn't my idea of fun. I don't care about K/D Ratios or how much time of my life I've invested in games. I just want to get in, kill people for a bit and leave. Why am I being hated on? =(

The second way isn't really so much a loss as I just suck. I'm not afraid to admit it, I'm horrible. My stats for B3 state I'm a laughing-stock of gamers. In fact, I should write to EA and demand that generate that kind of status message for stats like mine and people below me. But yeah, I'm finding it extremely hard to level up. Like extremely hard. It might have something to do with the fact I can barely see the enemy until they've already shot and killed me. Either I have a giant red box around me on their screens or setting the best possible graphics on an HD 27 inch monitor just isn't gamer enough for this game. Okay... That was unfair. But it's not far from the truth for a couple of them, I'll wager you that. I've seen some pretty suspect looking K/D ratios in that game.

Ignoring the above however. The game is spectacularly fun. And intense. Extremely intense. As soon as the game starts you're met with 31 other people sprinting towards their vehicles of choice, each one starting up or taking off, you'd swear you're actually on a battlefield (I see what they did there). I normally either run to the closest flag on foot or hitch a ride in the nearest multi-person vehicle (and get the hell out before they get there, just to stay alive).

The maps are huge, destructible and reasonably detailed. There's more detail than I would normally put in a map, but I am extremely lazy. I was upstairs of a building with a machine gun, next to a sniper, a tank caught sight of the sniper and started laying into the building. He fired until it had penetrated the wall and killed the sniper (who was taking cover on the other side, I went unnoticed). That in itself I feel, was brilliant.

The game-play itself is also extremely fun. As I mentioned earlier, I suck out loud, but that still doesn't mean I don't enjoy every second I'm aimlessly wandering around the map between deaths. Although I have to level up my character, it still does a reasonable job at catering to people like myself. I can at least stumble upon the better weapons of those who died in the area before me.

Summary:
As much fuel for debate in this line as the rest!

One thing I do like about Battlefield 3 is how much it reminds me of Medal of Honour: Allied Assault (surprisingly not of Battlefield 1942... odd, I know). I managed a headshot on someone and all I got was instant nostalgia from MOH:AA. It was a brilliant feeling.

Perhaps I'm just not fast enough for MW3. But MW3 takes something I've been hating about the games I've started playing since I started playing Black Ops back when it was released (single player). And that it's mostly the games feel like they were designed for the console audience then roughly thrown back together for PC. Borderlands, Dead Island, Black Ops and even to some extent CoD: WaW (drastically less extent than the others, but extent nonetheless) all are guilty of being a bits and pieces which seem more suited for your console player than your PC player.

That "Press Enter to Start" is so console. Most games I remember did all their stuff then booted directly into the main menu, like they should. That kind of thing was reserved for Consoles.

I think that about sums up these two games. I may have actually left out entire pieces of factual information, 'cause I left to play Battlefield 3 in the middle of writing it on accident, forgot what I wrote and only roughly read it before continuing. Ultimately, MW3 is for kids with no attention span. That says enough.

Now to other stuff.

I have arrived.

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 22:43:22 +0000

It's been seven years since I last changed my internet connection from dial-up to 256k DSL. Back in 2004, 256k DSL Completely unlimited was a pretty good deal for Australia.

Now I stand before you with DSL-2, and speeds that have been, until now, completely unprecedented for me. So now I have the internet connection, the computer and a day off...

Bye kids, I'm going to catch up on SIX YEARS of online gaming. All in an afternoon.

If any BYOND groups are doing any game circuits like they used to, throw me a line sometime. ;)

Bits and pieces.

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:28:00 +0000

Hey there kids, thought I'd drop in with some news about this, stories about that and possibly even a bit of fan-service.

First and foremost, since I know the Flash client is around the corner, I started writing up a few little ideas here and there. One thing I came up with required me to move a fair bit of data from a database to a server. Since I'm not doing that whole remote access on my database, I figured the quickest and easiest way to move great deals of data was the same way I get data from the BYOND hub. A text format.

So I spent a little while writing that. With a test database I have stored for little projects like these, I whipped up something which should parse all the data I tell it to into a savefile like readable text file. Like this if you will. Whether or not I'll end up using it is debatable, and whether or not there's any demand to release the script is another question (I'm so far out of the programming game it's not funny, but I'll give it to old college try).

If you want to test it, you can get a clean version here. It should work, I think it does anyway. It did before I last tinkered with it.

--

I recently finished watching both Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny.

Seed took a few episodes to warm up and there was a few moments when stuff was getting a bit tedious. But when the story started to warm up a little and the characters settled in to their respective roles I started to like it. Predictable as hell though. I had every plot figured out rather quickly. Still fun to watch unfold though.

Destiny however seemed to stop and start all the time. I guess it's because they're trying to do a sequel with a new protagonist and an old protagonist, with the former in the position the latter was in previously. Honestly, I thought they were trying to tell too many stories at once. And it was entirely predictable, not partially, not mostly, entirely.

Not to mention the Impulse is the single worst designed mobile suit I've ever seen. Hey Earth Alliances Forces! I have an idea! Shoot the damn thing down during it's unnecessary long transformation sequence! Seriously, it was like watching Voltron all over again...

--

My friend and I started Co-Oping through Dead Island a few days ago. Gonna have to say it, not all that crash hot. For starters, I immediately feel like I'm playing Borderlands. Don't get me wrong, I liked Borderlands, but it did get tediously repetitive pretty quickly...

Another major disappointment is how quickly we're progressing through the game. We've put two LAN sessions into this. Two! And they weren't very long. We're already some 70% in the game. I mean, come on. A lot of our last session was just wandering around killing things mercilessly.

The last thing that bugs me is the "required level [x]" thing on weapons. I've always hated that. I mean, I personally, if I was a video game character, have only shot an air-rifle a few times in my life, so it's safe to say I'm not level ten in shooting. But I still know how to aim a gun and squeeze a trigger. I might not be able to get all of the weapons potential, but I can still at least use it's most basic function (HINT! HINT!).

--

To works I've actually done using the BYOND software... I got nothing. I've come up with plenty of ideas, though I haven't really started any of them. I've got one small project (which I wrote the aforementioned savefile thing for) slowly starting to develop. But that's not really worth mentioning until it's finished. So we'll let that one drop.

--

Home life is about the same. The chances for a better internet connection have increased. The thought of having a speed capable of supporting online gaming again brings me nothing but endless joy. I don't have any of the details about it, all I know is it's ADSL 2. That's good enough for me.

And with that I'm going to bed, I have to be up at 5.

So, Windows 8.

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 02:47:57 +0000

According to Techspot, Windows 8 will be publicly available to test ~~tonight~~ now.

I don't like some of the things I've read about it so far however. That Ribbons GUI thing they have for Microsoft Office currently is said to be the standard GUI for Windows 8 (with the option to toggle back to normal I think).

Honestly, I haven't really been keeping up to date on the latest Windows Development (I never really have honestly), but there was no front page posts regarding Windows 8 (that I could see in my brief five second look) being available to trial tonight, so I figured I'd come along and mention it.

If it's available for me, I might just have to check it out though. Save my opinions for then.

Rest in Peace: Cedric.

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 07:00:31 +0000

2003 - 2011.

Hit by a car last Wednesday. A lovely girl found him on the side of the road and took him straight to the veterinary clinic.

His physical injuries were minor, but he has suffered extensive brain damage. We'll be putting him down tonight.

I'll love and miss my four-legged friend forever.