Quick sticks

I thought you reader folk might like a good read, and I found one in the form of another blog.
It's very rarely that I find an interesting and intriguing blog. However, I do often look out for them, because I love reading blogs. Maybe that's just being nosey. Who nose?

You can find this particular blog at http://waiterrant.net
It's about an anonymous waiter who works in the New York area. I've been reading past entries for the last hour and a half and I'm loving every bit of it. Fascinating stuff.


Out.

Dual Screens

After some amount of hassle, I now have a dual-monitor set up.
Let me tell you, it is excellent. At first, I found it a little difficult to handle. I was used to alt tabbing between everything on my desktop. However now, I'm well on the way to time-optimization, my term for "using two screens to chat and play games at the same time".
I'm really enjoying it. I can write articles and guides on one screen, and looking up references to add to my article on the other, which saves time. I can be doing something in Photoshop, and the increased workspace helps because I can be viewing a piece of art on one screen, and maybe imitating parts of it on the other. It's great.

For some reason though, the second screen is a bit blurry, so I need to maybe fine-tune it to clear it up. At the moment it's annoying to look at the screen for too long, because it has quite poor quality.
It puts more strain on the Video card, which isn't too bad because I have a decent one (nVidia 6600GT 256mb) but I do notice the occasional lag in rendering images.

Krugle. It's a great thing. Krugle is basically a search engine, coming out soon, that searches archives of code and such for your query. It's like Google for programmers. Thus, I'm eagerly awaiting it.
I signed up for the BETA some weeks ago, and they say they're sending details to the next batch of testers this week, so I'm hoping I'll be in that lot. Can't wait.
Find out a bit more about it here: http://www.krugle.net
And make sure to check out the video demonstration to get what I'm talking about.


I'm debating with myself whether to get Factions or not. Seriously, Guild Wars was a good game, but it only had a very small amount of quests in the story. It was very straight forward. In Guild Wars, all there is to do is kill monsters, and sell the things those monsters drop. It gets very dull after you've finished the story, tried all the professions and seen all the "Wow! Awesome!" areas and equipment. I'm leaning towards not getting it. That's how strongly the Factions BETA event impacted on me. It just wasn't as good as I thought it was.
I might just drop Factions, and focus 100% on my studies.

Pffft, yeah right. Gamer at heart.
New game, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, looks hot. This basically follows the story of Quake, but is set like Battlefield 2. So there's the Humans and the Strogg. From what I have seen (trailers, pictures etc) it looks sound, and I can't wait for it's release because this is one game that I definitely plan on getting.

I've been considering WoW if I decide in the end to drop Factions. WoW has a lot to do, but I'm hearing a lot of people losing interest in it, and I'd rather not jump on a bandwagon when everybody else is jumping off. Actually, I've heard that another NCSoft MMORPG (as they are so good at making them) is Tabula Rasa. I signed up for the BETA, but haven't heard anything about it since. I have heard, however that it will be Pay to play, so if I'm not spending on WoW, then I want to check out Tabula Rasa.
It looks pretty sweet. Sort of Sci-Fi Guild Wars, but I'm hoping there are a variety of skills instead of just combat to utilise, because I'm not paying $15 a month just to play a futurisitc Guild Wars.
I think if Games Workshop worked together with Blizzard or even NCSoft, they could produce a pretty nice Warhammer 40,000 MMORPG. I say Blizzard because Blizzard has the orcs, and they have the humans and they know how to run them. Blizzard's titles have a lot of similarities with the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop RPG, and I think they could pull it off nicely.

That be all for tonight. Remember to check out www.digg.com for the latest in Tech stories, because Digg is the greatest. They do a show every week where they speak about some of the most popular stories posted on digg during the week. Or you can download the podcast version, which I do.

Peace

Stupid parents, not stupid game manufacturers.

Another one of these newstories about "Kid plays game and re-enacts crime in real life". This time, it's about Grand Theft: Auto. But instead of being about cutting old ladies up with a chainsaw on the sidewalk, or dealing drugs from an Ice Cream Van, this is about an actual Grant Theft Auto, carried out by an eight year old kid.
In a city called Modesto (wherever the hell that is), an eight year old child took the keys of his teacher's van, and drove home.
So, first of all, why the hell is an eight year old playing GTA?


Notice the "M" for Mature down in the left corner? Yeah... clearly, the parents did not.
I'm so damn sick of these stupid people buying their kids games that they clearly aren't suitable for. Did I play M15+ games before I was 15? Hell yeah. However, my parents only allowed me to play them because they knew I was psychologically and emotionally mature enough, and responsible enough, not to buy a goddamn super laser from eBay and go hosing down people on the streets.
Sometimes, I even played Doom 64 (ah, the good old days) with my Dad. That's fine. But if you're going to leave your eight year old child playing a game rated suitable for people twice his age for hours, then you don't deserve children.
As a result, the child was suspended from school. You can find the story here:
http://cbs13.com/topstories/local_story_109100142.html

I recently read an interesting article written by an employee at Microsoft. Some might think it's an interesting piece of PR, but I think it's a good read. Either way, check it out:
Working at Microsoft


3 day week!
Peace

Oh God! The Hotness!

The hotness in this case is referring to Office 2007 BETA.
I *cough* obtained a copy of the software suite, and I'm more than impressed.

So impressed that I wrote a short review:
http://runescape.salmoneus.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=37515

And you can find a more complete review here: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/office12_inside.asp

Check it out. It's awesome.

Something amusing I found.

The Hackers Prayer:
Our Father, who ownz in heaven, j00 roxx0rz.
May all our base someday belong to j00.
May j00 own Earth just like j00 own heaven.
Give us this day our warez, mp3z, and pr0n through a phat pipe,
and cut us some slack when we act like n00b lamerz,
just as we give n00bs a learning when they lame to us.
Please don't let us own some poor dudez box when we're too drunk to think about what's right and wrong,
and if j00 could keep the FBI off our backz, we'd appreciate it.
For j00 own all our boxes forever and ever,
Amen!

Just something I found on the net.

Later.