The Student's Opinion

One Long Year

2006-12-08T15:41:00.000+11:00

Well, it's been a long year. Ever since my first post I've loved blogging. I had my doubts before, but they've all been erased.
Today marks the one year anniversary of The Student's Opinion. It' s been a long road, and those who have been following from the start (and kind enough to comment), you've witnessed my wit and humour, my life evolving as I got a job, had family troubles, sparked chatroom and forum-wide conflicts, and made profound statements that should be chronicled in some sort of large bound book called "The Annals of Wisdom".
With this news, I am also sad to announce that this will be the last post (despite what I said before) for The Student's Opinion. It's been a long year, it's been a good year. Now that I feel more confident about blogging, I've decided to move full time to my other blog on Vox, 127.0.0.1, which I was previously planning to only post technical stories on.
I'm glad that you (the reader) could enjoy my writing, and as I said, I love blogging, so I'll continue to update as regular as I have been on Vox, so I hope you'll continue to enjoy it.

Over the past week, I've collected a few memorable quotes from some of my favourite singers. These represent views that I share.

MC Lars - Generic Crunk Rap
This popular subgenre is brought to you by materialism.
We'd like to thank Bentley, Aliz© champagne, and Sean
Jean clothing. We'd like to thank the record industry for
Marketing hip-hop stereotypes to 12 year olds and a pop
Culture that unquestioningly consumes vapid,
Superficial entertainment.

MC Lars - Hot Topic is not Punk Rock
Hot Topic is a contrived identification with youth subcultures to manufacture an anti-authoritarian identity and make millions.

Less than Jake - Rest of my life
If you won't forgive me
The rest of my life
Let me apologize while I'm still alive
I know it's hard to face all of my past mistakes
It's gonna kill me for the rest of my life...

Less Than Jake - Overrated (Everything is)
Everybody's so afraid to be different
Please excuse me now if I don't get it

I think sex is overrated
So is always getting wasted
Designer drugs and dead end jobs
And classic rock is so outdated
I'm so sick of therapy
And all the things it's done to me
How can I be satisfied?
When everything is overrated

NOFX - The Irrationality of rationality
The guilty don't feel guilty, they learn not to.

Alden Nowland
“The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise”

Pennywise - Fuck Authority
Fuck Authority

Dropkick Murphys - Barroom Hero
Face down in the gutter won't admit defeat though his clothes are soiled and black

Dropkick Murphys - Warrior's Code
You're the fighter you've got the fire
The spirit of a warrior, the champion's heart
You fight for your life because the fighter never quits
You make the most of the hand you're dealt
Because the quitter never wins

Dropkick Murphys - Your Spirit's Alive
We are the ones who will never be broken
We are the ones who survive
This is the sound that brings us together
You are the one by our side

And through it all, and through it all, the spirit's alive
And through it all, your spirit's alive

Dropkick Murphys - Last Letter Home
If I lead will you follow?
Will you follow if I lead?

Depending on people sucks, but we need friends and people to depend on. Being wholly independent for the reason of being not dependent on someone else is as stupid as not loving someone for fear of getting hurt.

The ability to forgive a wise man makes.

Everything we say is a puzzle

Have a good holidays, Merry Christmas.
For the very, very last time on Blogger;
Adios.

~ride the rails of unreality

//POST

2006-11-25T17:27:00.000+11:00

Because Blogger has become sluggish and annoying to use in comparison to Vox, I'm moving full time to that.
To signify this move, I've posted the promised large post to this address: http://jayc.vox.com

For the last time ever, signing out
- Jacque

~adios blogger

Oooh, new blogger.

2006-11-20T17:50:00.000+11:00

I know I haven't been updating regularly, and I apologise, but I PROMISE a new post at the end of the week. I'm gonna make it as big as I can, so I'm walking around with a notepad these days storing all my ideas to put in. Begin the salivation...

New blogger? Glad I didn't have to pay for this new update.

The MySpace quest

2006-10-23T16:15:00.000+10:00

After reading about the Wired article, where one of their crafty crew wrote a Perl-based script to parse criteria and weed out potential pedophiles on MySpace (leading to the arrest of one man), I thought I'd try and find out just how easy it is to get friends on MySpace while pretending to be somebody I'm not.

So here it goes.
The mission: Pose as a 15 year old girl on MySpace.
Aim: To get 100 friends within 7 days
Hypothesis: MySpace users are horny as hell, so I won't have a problem pulling this off

Details
Name: Jamie Franklin
MySpace profile: http://www.myspace.com/jamie_franklin
Email address: jamie_franksta1@hotmail.com

Let's see how it goes folks. I'll be posting updates on the numbers here.
The game begins now: 16:32 Monday 23/10/2006

Shark

2006-10-08T19:27:00.000+10:00

Holy law-system batman.
Shark is a great series. Only been 3 episodes, but it's got me hooked.

http://www.tv.com/shark/show/58080/summary.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_(TV_series)

If you don't live in America, or you otherwise don't have a network channel that doesn't show Shark, it's available using torrents. What better time to learn about BitTorrent than now?

Quick thought

2006-10-05T19:25:00.000+10:00

I don't hate Microsoft, I'm just frequently disappointed by them to the point of contempt.

The mythical 40-hour gamer

2006-10-01T18:08:00.000+10:00

http://wired.com/news/columns/0,71836-0.html?tw=wn_index_26

An interesting article which poses the question "Can developers ever develop a game worthy of all ranges of the gamer".
The simple answer is no.

In the article, Clive Thompson talks about how some gamers (non-surprisingly aged 6-17) can breeze through a game in one session, while other gamers take up to a month to finish it. Why? A number of reasons.
Time availability is one. Most kids in school have more free time and less responsibilities than an adult with a career and a family.
Another is experience (ie: skill) with games. The aforementioned adult gamers may not be as skilled at games like Halo as a 15 year old (most teens seem to have inherent gaming skills programmed into them now, making them more naturally capable than a 30 year old).
Also, reflexes. Tell a 56 year old to throw a ball, and then run and catch it, and tell a 17 year old to do the same. Based on a stereotypical 56 and 17 year old, the younger person will have better reflexes, and have a better reaction time to the ball. Reflexes play a large part in games these days, with micro-management being vital for victory.

So these factors combine to create a demographic. Which demographic do game developers aim their games at? Well, gamers.
However the problem is - now more than ever - is that the variety between gamers is increasingly large. You could have a 30 year old with reflexes of a trained sniper, and a 17 year old with the reflexes of a man with Alzheimers and Arthritis. Or you could have a stereotypically tactful and alert 17 year old and a distracted 30 year old with a family and a mountain of deadlines on his desk.

How does the industry overcome these problems? Really they can't, however there is somewhat of a solution (although I think it's a horrid idea).
Offer two or more game difficulty modes. The easiest one would be a percentage of time shorter than the hardest one (If the hardest game was 40 hours, the easiest could be 15% less or so). Also, in the easiest mode, the NPC difficulty would be significantly less. If it's an RPG, quests would take one (or more) fewer steps to complete.
Blizzard has somewhat put in a system like this (although it's ricockulously done, and very inefficient) with World of Warcraft. They claim that there is plenty of content for more casual gamers (which I must be missing, because I can't think of any), but a better reflection of the above method is their variety of realm-types. If a user has less time available to play WoW, they can roll on a Role-playing server, where they can play the game without the worry of being set back by getting ganked by the opposite faction.

So unfortunate as it is, if you don't have the seemingly unlimited time of younger generations, prepare to take significantly longer to complete games.
Take solace in the fact that at least you can get more out of the multiplayer modes. Grab and Xbox, a copy of Halo, and some friends, and take a night out to link boxes and match up against each other. Trust me, from experience, it's hell fun.

WARNING: If you roll on an RP server on WoW, prepare to be mocked by any friends you have that play the game. Rightly so, carebear.

If everyone were equals...

2006-09-15T22:04:00.000+10:00

Another naive thought in retrospect:
"If everyone was equal, the world would be a better place".

Correction:
"If everyone was equal, we'd all be communists".

Just look how fucked up Russia is... who'd want to live like that?

Part of growing up 101: Being a hypocritic asshat

2006-09-07T22:59:00.000+10:00

This following thought streamed out of my head and onto paper via the medium of a pink connector pen as I listened to my parents blatantly lie over the phone to me and each other to discredit me.
Note: As to the reason a parent would want to discredit, and otherwise show their child in a malicious light, eludes me.

"You reach a stage in your life where you realise that adults aren't as great as you once thought. You being to realise that they don't know everything, and aren't as respectable.
What's worse?
When you realise it while talking to your parents"

The conclusion (and explanation) to this thrilling post to come as soon as I can. It at least won't be with the permission of my mother, because it seems history DOES repeat itself. Internet banned again!

What a weekend

2006-09-03T09:41:00.000+10:00

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200608/s1727181.htm

Don Chipp passed away earlier this week. I was fortunate enough to have spoken to him several times, and even sung his praises in a speech at a Christmas function. He was my mother's uncle.

I don't know what relation that makes him to me. A great uncle? I'm not really sure.
Anyway, He was a lovely, great man. Very inspiring, very powerful. So I was incredibly honoured to attend his funeral (held at St. Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne).
It was a state funeral, so the likes of the Premier of Victoria, Steve Bracks, and Treasurer of Australia, Peter Costello, among other prominent politicians, were there.

It was a touching ceremony. Each member of his immediate family gave a speech, as well as Natasha Stott Despoja (member of the democrats) and Andrew Denton (talk show host on ABC, who I was fortunate enough to sit next to).
After the ceremony was finished, and the procession crept towards the Cemetery, we jumped in the car and also headed there. A 15 minute session followed where the family payed their last respects. After that, one of Don's son's invited everybody back to his house.
It was good there. A lot of people talking about their experiences with Don, but also a lot of people talking of other matters, signifying that they had received closure, which is really what the follow-up event is for.

While we were conversing with one of my Mum's cousins, Graham, we came to the conclusion that the reason everybody had such an easy time comprehending the loss of Don is because at the funeral, his life was celebrated, rather than the uniform funeral approach, which is to mourn death. There is a subtle difference, but the outcome is not so. Don left behind very specific instructions pertaining to his funeral, so he made it easier on his family.

RIP Don Chipp, you'll be sorely missed.

That is some profound shit

2006-08-30T20:35:00.000+10:00

Neon Genesis Evangelion.

It's possibly the most famous and popular anime ever. "But no, isn't Pokemon, or equivalently spastic kids' shows more popular?"
No.

NGE has been watched by children and adults alike. However, the way this show was developed, seems to be aimed at the older demographic, as this show is so profound in the way it deals with real life issues that most children won't understand.

There are too many too quote here, and even then quoting them doesn't give the justice to the concepts that are planted within the show. You'll just have to see it for yourself.

If you're clueless as to what NGE is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_Genesis_Evangelion_%28Anime%29

There's a lot of talking, but also a lot of action. Check it out.

Social

2006-08-11T21:54:00.000+10:00

Everybody is shallow but me.

Sounds arrogant doesn't it? But its applicable, albeit on a less extreme scale.

So, had my "Social" (semi-formal party held by the school) tonight. Let me tell you something of my experience with "Socials".

Aside from being the bane of my existence, school dances suck in general. It's a place for hatred to fester, malicious thought to occur, and extreme judgment to be dealt based on shallow, emphatic beliefs about appearance. It's also a place of dreams. And by dreams, I mean delusions.

Remember "Screamer"? Well, he's taken on a new position as what I like to call a Photo Pimp.
You could also call him a Photo Broker (for reason I will explain) but I think Pimp sounds more derogatory, so we'll go with that.
Basically what he'd do is brag about how he could get anybody photos alongside anybody, male, female, dressed or otherwise. He'd "pimp" out people to others for the cost of humiliation of being seen in a photo with that person. You could say he brokers deals for photos, which is where Photo Broker comes into it, but for reasons stated above, its pimp.
Another reason why I use the term pimp is because he had some Photo Hoes to offer, in the way of another of my friends. Amazing how desperate people can be. Whatever, like I said, everybody's shallow but me.

If you go to one of these dances, you're guaranteed to get your ass handed to you in what I affectionately refer to as "the mosh pit" (actually a 3x3 varnished pine dance floor on one side of the room). It's a place you go to dance, bathe in sweat, become sexually violated, and then drown in the odors of your fellow primates. Sounds exciting? Not in the slightest. It's a bit like having sex with Chewbacca really. Sweaty, hairy and violent. I guess some people just like it that way.

I spent my time tying balloons to every part of my body that I could (in between shirt buttons, ears, fingers, wrists, feet etc) and became known as "The Balloon Man" for the first hour. Then I just gnawed them all off and released some into the sky (much to the dismay of a nearby biology student, who cried "Don't do that, it might kill a dolphin somewhere!" to which I replied "It probably deserves it").

I then spent the rest of my time either pretending to enjoy the mosh pit (and being raped by Chewbacca), texting a girl I know, WiFi sniffing with my PSP, and talking to my IT teacher (the barkeep) about how half the year has me to thank for broken toes (not my fault, I swear). Also pretending to laugh at the bunch of dolts that were inhaling helium. Guess they don't realise that gases foreign to the body can kill them. Oh well, it'll probably make the world a better place (it was funny for the first fifteen times, then it just got old).

Nobody wore bras, every girl got fake-tanned (thus brown and orange was the main theme of the party), and it was all very slutty.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, this is just a gem of the evening. So I was chatting about how this is a waste of time and I'd rather be "socialising" (which is the purpose of a Social, is it not?) on #novus, than being with a bunch of awkward people I cared little about, and Screamer tells me that I'm not grown up enough to enjoy this kind of thing. If you met this guy (actual gender a question to everyone) you'd know that partying like this isn't like him, but he'd make it seem like he's the life of the party every weekend. People that try to be something they aren't isn't something I condone, in fact its something I spit on. So I'm not grown up enough to enjoy a party.
1. WRONG, BITCH.
What Screamer fails to understand is that going to parties isn't a part of growing up (his lack of understanding, no surprise. Thick as a cinderblock). Parties are an experience, one that people may or may not choose to partake in. If I choose to be doing something that he isn't, does that make me not grown up? Am I a fucking child for making my own decisions instead of being a glory-whore and going to parties because my peers do? I think not. If your mentality is similar to his (if you're not doing what I'm doing, then you should be doing what I'm doing) then you need to FORM YOUR OWN FUCKING OPINION. If you don't, you're really just ruining the world, so GTFO.

Anyway, "Mafiosa" and a couple others were alright at the party. At least they weren't being total shitcocks about the fact I didn't want to be there.

I was on live radio with Tony Martin and Scod from Tripod on Wednesday. They were talking about nerds, and wanted people to ring in and nominate someone, so I thought "Why not?".
Rang in and nominated myself, for being able to quote most of The Matrix and Lord of the Rings without assistance. It was a fun experience. Thinking of doing it more often.

That's a nice summary of my night, I think I'll leave it there. Have a good weekend.

PS: Phog, contact me on MSN.

~ don't try to resist the paradigm shift

Whybangher?

2006-08-07T21:14:00.000+10:00

Mmm...

It's not often that I have a good Monday. In fact, I don't think there are many people at all that say they had a good Monday. Why? Monday is the beginning of the working week, a fresh start to the job they hate. Although there are those lucky ones that have the fortune of possessing a job they enjoy. However today I had a good Monday.
So anyway, let's run through my particularly unusual Monday.
First, we started with English. Sure, English is pretty normal. You've got your letters, essays, text response etc etc. However today, English was filled with the excited yet anguished mutters of my scared classmates. "OH NO, HE WAS THE SUBJECT OF A TERRORIST ATTACK!"
I hear you say. No, its okay. We weren't subject to acts of terrorism. Were were in fact getting our immunisation shots. The ones you get every few years to prevent Typhoid, Tetanus and such.
I don't have a problem with needles. On the holidays, I got several needles in preparation for my trip to Thailand. I'm over the fear of it, however my colleagues are not (something which greatly surprised me). A fact which I was able to exploit for my endless delight.

So at 10:15, we got our shots. Before the shots, everybody was crying about how it would hurt, and how painful they are. After the shots, everybody was shouting about how brave they were before. I bled profusely after my needle for some reason, but that's fine because I'm still alive with (most of) my motor functions.

However, I bet you're thinking how this makes Monday good. Well, you'd be right. If it were only this factor that made my Monday, then it wouldn't be so special. Being jabbed with metal isn't a hobby of mine. The good part of this was that I was visibly ahead of the rest of my year in terms of maturity during this activity. Fun fun fun. But wait! There's more...

I started work at 4:40 this afternoon (I was late because of a bunch of mentally disabled people that took too long to get on the bus, thus delaying arrival) with the expectation of the next three hours being as boring as dying of old age. But when I grabbed a cage and headed down to Electrical... well here's an excerpt taken from the archives of my Transcripts of Life Events.

[WALKS INTO ELECTRICAL]
"Hey Brenton"

"Hey, wanna get started?"

"HEY RANDOM GUY THAT I HAVEN'T MET YET..."

You may or may not know this, but every girl I've met at my place of work has shouted something just as vague at me when I've met them. So, another girl.

She's a Jehovah's Witness. She likes snowboarding. She's stylish, down to earth, intellectual and has a great personality.
She's also 17, and has a boyfriend. All pluses but for the last two. Ah well...

Anyway, she's a great girl, really fun to be with. Working with her actually made the expectantly dreadful three hours of labour seem too short a time. We had a lot to talk about, because oddly we have a lot in common (or she's a stalker, but that's just getting into wishful thinking). As I said, she was intellectual.
People that know me (which isn't a lot of people, but I'm betting if you read this blog, then ya do) would know that I love intellectual people. So much so that if I could spend all my time with MENSA, I would, because I think it would just be so interesting. Anyway, I was able to indulge in a long, winding discussion about religion. I consider myself to be a religion buff. I've tried most things that most people haven't. I've been from Paganism (most branches), to Buddhism, so Witchcraft, Wicca, Druidism, Neo-Paganism, and at one stage, very deeply Christian. Therefore, the chance to indulge in a conversation such as this with one other than myself is a rare opportunity that I took full advantage of. It was quite interesting.

Anyway, that is why I enjoyed my unusual Monday.

Unusual because:
- Immunisations
- Talked to a girl for more than 5 minutes without awkward silences

Enjoyable because:
- Every is a big baby bitch
- Talked to a girl for more than 5 minutes without awkward silences, which helped me get through the day.

Days like today make me wonder... perhaps there is hope for humanity after all. Probably not though.

Oh, and I bet you're wondering about the title. It's a reference to her last name (inside joke).

UPDATE: This just in, I win you, forum bitches. I win you and you die rolling.

Alefox, The Alex Albrecht based internet browser (corrected link)

2006-07-28T23:01:00.000+10:00

Alefox! The amazing browser made from Firefox along the guidelines jokingly given in Diggnation #55.
Mac only

read more | digg story

Interests

2006-07-25T20:17:00.000+10:00

On the Web these days, as I mentioned previously, there is always buzz going on about Web 2.0 in the background, making it the biggest thing. However, with the HOPE conference that was on last week, a lot of focus on the web has shifted to hacking.

A lot of stories about Social Engineering have been floating around lately.
Firstly, I love these kinds of stories. Social Engineering greatly interests me, because while I think it takes skill to break a network, it takes more skill to make legitimate users inadvertently break the network.

So for those who don't know what Social Engineering is;
Social engineering is the practice of obtaining confidential information by manipulation of legitimate users.

The best social engineering story that I've ever read however, was this one:
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=95556&WT.svl=column1_1

It's about a man who is approached by a firm to test the security of the company by employing social engineering tactics to gain access to their network.
As the author says in the article, usually they would sweet talk a receptionist, or just walk into an empty room and "jack in" to their network. However he took it one step further, by using compromised USB flash drives, and human nature.
Read it, interesting stuff. I think its amazing how these people can manipulate the beliefs of people that everybody is innocent.

So like I said, a lot of focus is about hacking now because of HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth conference) just passing. In fact one story I heard from HOPE contained the FBI, and a speaker who claimed he could show the audience how to find over 500 pages of personal information of people, from the internet.

This guy claimed he could show these people how to find lots of personal information using basic tools available for free on the internet in 30 minutes, however about five minutes before he began his talk, some FBI officials turned up and lead him away in handcuffs. Nobody knows why.
If you're thinking "Well its obvious, its because he was showing people how to hack". You could say that, however what you don't realise is that HOPE is held every two years to make people aware of various ways to compromise security virtually, so that people can go away from the conference and come up with ways to stop these before the techniques displayed become mainstream. This conference is held with knowledge of the US Government, and as such isn't illegal (it's been running for 10 years now and hasn't been shut down).

With the combination made by this flow of news and the factor of career-choice being forced upon us at school, I've sussed out a possible career, and that is Network Analyst.
When I went on Work Experience a while ago, I got a little bit of experience with network analysis, and I found it pretty interesting. If not Network Analyst, I'd like to be involved with networking because of the sheer interest.

http://www.twit.tv/
http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm

Bigfoot Networks develops the KillerNIC, the first gaming network adapter

2006-07-17T10:48:00.000+10:00

Named the \"Killer\", the network interface card (NIC) is loaded with gamer-friendly technologies. Features such as GameFirst and UltimatePing maximize the priority of game-related network packets and use the Killer\'s onboard 32-bit 400MHz processor to speed up the sending of data from the network card to games.

Talk about your post here.!

Functionality vs Design

2006-07-12T19:25:00.000+10:00

In today's modern and evolving Internetional (Internet-wide) community, the larger focus has shifted from one side to the other.
Functionality and design are the two principles that govern webpages (and many other things in the real world, too). At the moment, focus lies on the side of functionality over design.

One would've thought that as we move into a future where higher connection speeds are becoming more common place, it would open the doors for more extravagant design, one day making people on the "ol' 56k" forced to upgrade due to increasing bandwidth-requirements for certain websites.
However, it seems that we've taken a step back in that regard, as more focus is placed on functionality and how a website works rather than how pretty it is.

Take for example websites such as Flickr, Reddit, and Digg.

If you visit these websites, you can see a lot of whitespace, and very little in the way of super-bright and illuminating banners, no Flash at all, and a very simple design. That is because the creators of these websites have chosen to run with functionality over design as the governing principle. Those in the 'know' call this Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is the buzzword used to describe the "next-gen" of websites.
The core principle of Web 2.0 is user-driven content. That is why websites like the above are really the first to embrace the Web 2.0 ideals, because they are user-driven. Digg and Reddit both rely on news-content submitted by users to fuel their websites, while Flickr is centered on photographic user-submitted content.

These websites, while perhaps looking meek (in a stylish way) propose huge user functionality. You can do a million different things on these websites, and that is what makes them superior. While the company employees that are behind these works of art focus on maintaining the website for the users, the users in turn do the work and bring popularity to the site for the companies. Nintendo may have received a bucketload of free press when it came out with the outrageous decision about changing the Revolution to the Wii, but did the Nintendo fans build the console for them? No, but Digg, Reddit and Flickr's users built their website, while at the same time providing a continuous stream of free publicity to their sites. Digg.com has almost no advertisements (I haven't seen any at all) yet it's a hugely popular site (rated 110 according to Alexa at the time of this post.)

To a lesser (I say that loosely considering its huge success) extent, MySpace.com has also followed in the footsteps of these websites. Although it also has an eyecandy aspect to it, MySpace users love the ability to have complete control over their personal webpage in an easy-to-maintain environment. It could almost be dubbed a WIDE (Web-based Integrated Development Environment, I claim all rights to the acronym).

Sorry to all of you that thought you were a hotshot at Photoshop and are willing to pursue a career in web design. Good luck with your ambitions, but you may consider moving to a purely functionality-specialised career instead. It seems that's where the future is headed.

~a friend in need is a friend indeed, but a friend that has a free server combined with LAMP is better

Stupid, stupid, stupid

2006-07-10T20:53:00.000+10:00

The grass is always greener on the other side? I bet the person that thought of that thought they were a fucking profound genius. But no, you dolt.
I bet the people on the other side don't think our shitty grass isn't greener. Stupid ass.

2006-07-10T00:35:00.000+10:00

It's too easy to blame other people in life for things that we're responsible for. You could blame the marketing producers for making the food look so good that you're overweight. You could blame the US for the bombings in other countries. You could blame your doctor for not telling you that you had cancer earlier on (even though you hadn't been to see him for five years).

I have a massive maths assignment due on Tuesday. I haven't done it yet. I can't complete it because I don't have my maths book at home with me.
I could say that "I didn't know until a few days into the holidays", but that would be abstaining from responsibility. I should've checked.
I've been trying to get the maths book of other people in my class. I could say that I don't have a maths book for me because other people are being slack in getting it to me, but that would also be abstaining from responsibility. I should've tried harder to get a maths book.

I'm royally fucked because I'm a lazy prick. Don't let the same happen to you. If you need to do something, do it now so you can enjoy the rest of your day.

edit: Its not what you know, its who you know. Especially if who you know happens to be able to help you with your maths. Got it all done :)

Reeding and watching

2006-07-08T17:47:00.000+10:00

I know I'm not the first one (because if I am, the world is more narrow-minded than I first thought) to say that Scrubs is one of the greatest shows to air on TV, closely rivalled (but neither dominant nor inferior) by the likes of Cheers and Seinfeld.
It's not only because of the razor-sharp wit cleverly hidden like a hair amongst spaghetti within the humour, or the excellent characters. It's also because (and this is one that most people miss) the show has a moral to it. Every episode, the moral is revealed in JD's ramblings at the end.

"It's always nice to let your friends know you appreciate them, but sometimes you can't quite find words to show that appreciation. At the end of the day, the best thing to do is be honest"
"Nothing in this world that's worth having comes easy"

The morals represented in the show are inspiring. If one understands what they're trying to tell the viewers, I suppose their hope is that the person will be inspired to go and practice those morals.
If you haven't seen Scrubs before, I suggest you do. My favourite show.

And now it's time for...
WORD ANALYSIS OF THE WEEK

Actually, it won't be done every week. But out of a matter of interest, I was once again thinking of some words in the English language and about how they became a reality.

So for this week:
Reed = River-weed

Genius, I know.

In case you were wondering, the "One Red Paperclip" guy, Kyle MacDonald finally achieved his goal of trading a red paperclip and progressively working his way up to a house.
http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/

~mmmm... Illegal Danisssh

The problems with World of Warcraft.

2006-07-05T21:14:00.000+10:00

I've been playing WoW for two weeks now. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game and I love it, but there are some things that really shit me about it. The worst part is that they aren't part of the game mechanics, which means they won't be getting updated or patched later on. It's problems with the people that play it.

I've noticed that there's not a lot of help available for newer players. Something I find really odd is that more people on the older servers (where most people have one or two level 60's) are willing to help out newbies than their are on the new servers.

Instances
The problem with the community and instances is that if somebody is even one level higher than an instance, they won't go back to it and help you out. I know a group of people that are levels high enough to give me a hand at an instance where I'd really like a robe drop (Robes of Arugal, best robes I can get at my level) yet they're unwilling to help. The people in question did help me once, but two of them ended up going AFK half way through the run and one left. The other, the priest, stayed to help me. But we didn't get very far.

World PvP
I've heard of some guilds rushing to help out a newbie guild member after being ganked several times while trying to quest. I've heard tales of 40 man raids being held on an area where there was maybe two Pkers that were repeatedly killing one of their members. That's great generousity.
However, on this server, none of this generousity is to be found. A 32 mage and a 29 paladin ganked me five times before leaving the area while I was on my warlock. I asked for some help. The response: Anybody for RFK? and then silence for 20 minutes.

Bokra had a cry today. We were discussing raids in Vent (we're still sorting out a lot of things for the new guild). He doesn't talk to Bigmac a lot, but anybody that has, knows that he has a different way of talking to people, and just the way he talks makes him sound like a total asshole. He really isn't, but you just can't take him literally. Where somebody might say "talk a bit nicer" he might say "just shutup next time". He's a nice guy though.
So Bokra got sulky because he thought Bigmac was being insulting to him. Anybody who had even half a brain cell could tell that Mac was really enthusiastic, and grateful for Bokra's knowledge of end-game (he's pretty experienced). Anyway, then he got pissed, Mac asked him what was wrong, and he said "I don't like your attitude".
I just thought "Shit, what does this 17 year old little bitch think? That everybody should conform to his ideas just because he's done MC before?".
Whatever. Mac explained to him that it's just the way he talks. I think he's over it now.

/endbitch

Kids are fucking stupid

2006-07-03T17:29:00.000+10:00

This isn't ambiguous as the last rant I had about how retarded most teenagers are.

There's a bunch of kids that I know, which me and some guildies (talking WoW here) have labelled 'Keyboard Warriors' because they just throw insults and talk shit about people over the internet from the safety of their homes, despite the fact they'd obviously get their heads caved in if they met their victims in real life. I'll paint a picture about how absorbed in virtual reality they are.

- They say things like "LOL" and "ROFL" and "Noob" in real life.
I know this because they're always on Ventrilo talking about how "LEET" they are after pking somebody. Like, shit, okay I understand that you may be a good player, but keep your MSN speak to MSN, or at the very least, in chat. Don't say it in real life, you just sound like a dick.
eg: "Lol I pawned that noob with my plus strength plus stam windfury axe crit". I don't mind if you say it in chat, but not in real life.

- If you meet them, you will be judged based on your level.
I was on Vent one morning. One of these Keyboard Warriors was also on. We started chatting, I didn't mind talking civily with him. Then he started his shit. "So what level are you?"
Admittedly, I have only played for two weeks, and I've played various characters. If I'd stuck to one, I'd probably be about level 40 something by now, but I didn't. At the time, I was playing a level 11 warlock.
"Level 11 now"
"Lol noob, serious? You suck learn2play"
Now, what the fuck is that? Yes, I had a level 11 warlock. Yes it's a low level? How does that equate to me sucking? I could've had level 60's on all servers for all he knew, and was just rolling a new one. What a shitcock.

So these idiots don't want to have anything to do with you if you're not level 60 and have full Tier 3 Raid gear.

In our guild, a lot of shit goes on, and a lot of it centres around me. Readers of this blog will know that where I go, usually contraversy surrounds me. It's just who I am. For example, I was about to go on an SFK run with a group, but they took too long to get organised and I estimated that I wouldn't have time to finish the run (because I would have to go to work). So to be fair, I decided to leave the group and allow them to get another member before starting.
One of the group members (who was also a guild member) messaged me in game telling me that if I knew how to summon properly, there would've been time. I then replied with "And maybe if you knew that you need three people to summon you wouldn't be such a complete dumbass".
I was happy to solve his problems in private chat, however this idiot wanted to take it into Guild Chat.
"Oh, real nice munchkin you fucking idiot. You can't summon, how pathetic". (My warlock's name is Munchkin)
Okay, that's not right. One of the primary principles we follow in the guild is that private matters stay private.
"This doesn't need to be in Guild Chat, Bandit" I said. He responded with a lot of swearing and shit-talk. A lot of people told him to shutup and keep it private, but he didn't want to. He finished with this:
"Well, its either me or munchead".
After an overwhelming flood of "lol, munchkin then" in guild chat (I'm not exaggerating, I'm well liked okay? Don't hate me because I'm awesome) he left the guild. This thing happened about 5 times. As far as I could see, I was just weeding the dicks out of our guild.

So one such time, one of our Keyboard Warriors decided to disagree with me. I said on guild chat "I'm so bored that I'm using my Eye of Kilrogg to draw mobs to questing players in this town, heh".
Bokra, the Keyboard Warrior, said (word for word) "Lol serious? You noob you can't draw aggro onto players with the eye".
Now, I don't know if it was bugged or something, but I know for a fact that I was. I said that. He disagreed again, and then another of my friends piped in saying "Well, if he's there and doing it...". He got pissed off (another major factor of these attention whores is that they are always right, and if you tell them otherwise, you should die painfully). He then left the guild.

Later that day, Big Mac, the Guild Leader, came into Vent and told us all he was tired of all the dickheads and fighting and childish bullshit going on in the guild, that he was making a new one, and inviting a select few of the good people (including me). He also said that Bokra, Apog, and Dayla were coming. Now, Dayla I don't mind, he's pretty funny and he doesn't really talk shit. Apog is exactly the same as Bokra though. If you tell him he's wrong, he gets pissed off. Remember the person I told you about who judges based on level? Apog is the greatest perpetrator of this observation.
So, okay, I decided that if Bokra, Apog and I were to be in the new guild together, to make it as good as Mac wanted, I would try and make up with them. I didn't want any conflict, I just wanted a good guild that could help me through the game and everything else people join guilds for.
So me and Apog make up somewhat. And so do me and Bokra. Everything is sweet until tonight.

We're all on Vent together (about 13 of us, all planning on joining the new guild) laughing and getting along and whatever. Bokra all of a sudden says "OMG" (yes, Oh em gee) "I just saw a Worg, looks so much like Munchkin". I don't know where the fuck that came from, but okay I can take it. After all, I thought, he might just be having a joke.
It was followed by a round of "LOL's" from his asskissing Keyboard Warrior friends. Whatever, I'll keep playing.
Then he continues with "I never knew a dog could look dumb". That was it. Fuck, I can take it if somebody insults my physical image (don't you think if I cared about that, I wouldn't spend so much time at my PC), but insulting my intelligence is another thing. Obviously he doesn't know me very well. Another thing that pisses me off about the comment is about how stupid it is. You've never seen a dog look dumb? Well how about a dog that looks smart, or maybe a dog that looks like rainbows? Fucking idiot.
I was seriously willing to let it go, and continue not caring at all about who Bokra is or what he's doing. But as it stands, I may just leave the guild if it happens again. It's just unprovoked childish bullshit, and I don't have to take it, because it's ruining my game experience. I don't pay $20 a month to listen to an insecure dolt talk shit about people.

On a slightly more positive note, I've made a total of coming up on $1000, which for a poor bastard like myself is quite impressive (although I know some rich kids that make this in a week by sitting around doing nothing).

The new guild is called Vicarious, and if you roll on the Barthilas server, come and join.

- Munchkin

Orc Warlock (Level 23)

Out.

~french people were discoverd smuggling moon cheese

First week of holidays

2006-06-24T20:33:00.000+10:00

w00t! Holidays.

It all started off on Friday, when I finally got World of Warcraft. After a long, long wait, yes, I now possess it. I've joined the bandwagon of fools and brigands that choose to waste their money and their lives on a game of no real-world value. But it's hella fun.
I chose to start myself off as a Troll Priest. Got him to level 10, and abandoned it. Wasn't the class I was looking to get into.
Then I started a Warlock. Warlocks are great fun, and levelling them is easy because you have the help of an equal-level pet (Imp) to overcome enemies.
I then started a Druid, which I've had the most fun with. Tauren are a great race, so I chose them to go as a Druid. My Druid is currently at level 16, speccing feral until 40 or so.
I love the druid because it's such a versatile class. It can be an off-tank with Bear form, a healer with it's Restoration talent tree, or a caster.
I also started a Rogue along with a friend, which we've been levelling together. It's also at level 16, and I'm having wicked fun tearing up WSG with it.
If you play, hit me up on Barthilas, the new Oceanic PvP server, as Ghettosteve, or Krognar.

Tonight I did my first stocktake shift at Target. Holy hell, never have I done something so boring in my life. It's just scanning things, one by one, with an RF gun. At least we were in the sound department, which isn't as bad as the others (loud music going all the time).
I have another shift at 8am tomorrow morning, so I'm going to bed after this post. Gotta be up at 7 to get ready.
At least I'm getting 150% paid for it. Being a Sunday.
As I was walking up to clock on for my shift, a man walked past me. Yes, men often walk past most of you in the street, no doubt. But do they all punch you in the arm? I think not. And if they do, you may want to think about becoming a better person.
Some guy punched me in the arm as I walked past him in the shopping centre. I said to him "What the <<>>?" to which he responded; "Oh sorry, thought you were a friend of mine".
What kind of dumbass walks up to friends in the shopping centre and punches them?

Anyway, I'm gonna grab a chocolate crackle that my sister made and head off to sleep. Hope your Sunday is going to be better than mine.
Later days.

Immaculate cream - EL MEXICANA

2006-06-11T21:30:00.000+10:00

Tonight, my sister and I were treated to a few dishes of mexican at the Taco Bill (no, not Taco Bell, but Bill). I don't have the pleasure of eating a lot of mexican food, because it's just not something my whole family enjoys. However my Dad took my sister and I out and we had a thing called the "Cancun". It was several dishes, that were brought out over the period of an hour or so. All of it was delicious.

The last course was some chocolate mousse. As soon as it arrived, I took a moment to appreciate the work that was put into designing this mousse. After all, if the craftsmanship isn't appreciated by somebody, they'll just stop doing it!
While I savoured the moment, and anticipated the chocolatey flavour that would endow my mouth momentarily, I noticed that the cream could only be described as immaculate. Whoever had put together this dish obviously took pride in what they did. Basically, it was whipped cream, arranged in the nicest way over the top of the glass. All swirly, correctly proportional, and I dare say almost symmetrical. So props to whoever made that mousse, because the time put into making it made it all the more sweeter.

My Dad dropped off the CD's of some new music I asked him to obtain. Including an album of the Dropkick Murphys, all of Incubus, and No Use For A Name. It was about time, because I've listened to all of my previous music about 100x per song (no joke, looking at my iTunes play count).
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/3725/100xplayed9lc.jpg Here's a sample of one of my playlists.

Actually, thanks be to Tim for introducing me to Incubus, and thanks to 'Kev' from Target for putting me onto the others.

Just chillin' out, enjoying the long weekend. See, there are advantages to having a technically monarchal government system. We get Monday off.

Hoping to get my WoW gamecard tomorrow! That is... if my mum decides she needs to go down to the shops for some reason.

Out.

Let the games begin!

2006-06-10T10:49:00.000+10:00

I stumbled across an intriguing page on Gamespot today. That page contained... I'm not exactly sure how many (there are lots) new titles that were slanted for release in 2007 for the PC. Some of these games I'd already heard about (AION by NCSoft, for example), but most I hadn't. So I'm going to put some of those titles here and why I think they look promising. This is also a list for personal use (so I can remember to save.)

Witcher: You play as a character called a 'Witcher', a warrior who has been trained to fight since childhood, who earns his living by killing monsters. You are a member of a brotherhood founded long ago to protect people from werewolves, the undead, and "a host of other beasts". This game is aimed at an older audience. It looks promising, and the screenshots look brilliant. However, we always have to remember the law of bullshot.

Warhammer Online: An MMORPG based on the table-top strategy RPG by Games Workshop, Warhammer Online lets you choose a race and forge a character from that race to begin your adventures in the Old World.

Stargate Worlds: An MMORPG based on Stargate: SG1 and Stargate Atlantis. That says enough in itself.

Crysis: The graphics look insanely realistic, but if the story is anything like Farcry's, I'll give this game a miss.

Also PC gamers, make sure to grab Unreal Tournament 2007, the next installment in the Unreal Tournament series.

Out.

Haha, Runescape players, haha!

2006-06-08T21:15:00.000+10:00

Inevitably, this happens. In all MMORPG's, even in the days of Ultima Online, there were always major bugs.

The fact that these bugs occurred on MMORPG's however meant that the effects were widespread, and exploited to a large degree.
Take for example the disaster last year in World of Warcraft. A large new update featuring a new instanced dungeon had a boss that used a spell that diseased players. Once diseased, they would die very shortly (due to the massive health degeneration as one of the properties of the spell).
However, some players escaped from the dungeon (don't ask me how, I'm not WoW expert... yet) and into a town (probably through a summoning spell I guess). I forgot to mention... the disease was contagious. Not only did players in the towns the originally-infected escaped to get affected, but so did the NPC characters. The NPC's were able to hold off the plague, as they could self-heal fast enough not to die. The side-effect was that this meant they permanently carried the disease, never being allowed to die and be rid of it. Not only were the hapless players diseased and killed by it, but they were diseased by it again. Once they died, they felt relieved to be rid of the disaster and thought it only short lived, but the plague had spread to many towns throughout Azeroth and Kalimdor, and thus there was widespread disaster. Thousands of players became infected.
Blizzard attempted to quarantine the infected in certain areas, however some managed to wiggle free and keep playing in the wide world, continuing to infect people.
This caused much chaos, but eventually Blizzard released a patch, and much laughter was shared afterwards.

Then there was Guild Wars' big screw up. Albeit less impressive when compared to the above, for some reason there was a trader-glitch, and usually expensive and rare runes became extremely cheap. Players were buying them by the bucket load. Arenanet rolled back the servers though, so nobody kept their profit.

And now Runescape has been affected by a huge glitch. With the introduction of Player Owned Houses in their game, a bug had been found by a couple of players, and they began to exploit it. Through this glitch, they could PK people outside the designated player-killable area ("The Wilderness"). They boxed a few hundred players into areas by keeping doors shut, and slaughtered them. They were unable to fight back (because they hadn't experienced the same glitch).
Many players lost many expensive items and sets of armour. The player responsible for exploiting it has been banned from the game, and Jagex has released an official statement of their apology (also stating they couldn't rollback the servers due to the game's structure).

So haha Runescape players. I did tell you that Player Owned Houses sucked, I just never anticipated they'd bring on such a thing.

Out.

Overview of the past week's events.

2006-06-08T15:17:00.000+10:00

I'll start from Friday.
Last Friday, I got to work a whole 7 hour shift from 5pm to 12am. At first I thought it would be really challenging, however I was soon disproved.
The people I was working with (who I'd never met before) were really nice. Target was getting a major overhaul in the way of shelving and departments and such, so we were moving and unstacking shelves to be moved and re-arranged. Nobody had a problem with helping me out on how to go about doing this.
At 9pm, we had a 45 minute break. Damien, Brendan (two of the guys I was working with) walked up to the food court and grabbed some Big Macs and went back to the staff lounge to eat them.
We soon returned to work. At 11:20, we'd finished all we needed to do for the night, and so we had an extra 40 minutes. We used the time to play some dodgeball around the store, and then watch Madagascar (worst movie ever, but I didn't mind sitting through it again).

Saturday. Saturday was quiet, just spent a lot of time on the net and playing games and such. Saturday evening though, I decided to leave the forum that I loved, called Sal's Realm of Runescape. A lot of the staff there didn't particularly like how I was so opinionated (their anger had built up over the past 14 months or so) and I knew it, so I decided to leave with what dignity I could muster before they banned me. Turned out they banned me anyways, which I consider unneccessary (I'd already left...) but I can live with it.

For the rest of the week I was pretty ill. I managed to drag myself to school yesterday and to work that evening (more re-arranging), but fell sick again this morning (with new ailments, I might add). So I'm just chilling at home.

Oh yeah, that story down there, that's basically a recounting of my life at Sal's, and during the time I played Runescape. A lot has been left out of it. Mostly because I couldn't be bothered writing it in.

WoW is coming soon.
Out.

The saddest tale I've ever told.

2006-06-08T10:58:00.000+10:00

The Drokarus Chronicles.

The Drokarus Chronicles, or The Chronicles of Drokarus, or however you wish to say it. It's the story. The story of how it all started. How Drokarus began, and what happened since the beginning. In this tome, I have archived significant events that have occurred that bear some connection to Drokarus. So lets start from the start, shall we?

I believe it was September, of 2004. I remember it was bright outside, but cold. I was really bored, so I thought I'd try out a little game my friend used to play. It was called Runescape. So I went to Runescape.com, and began.

I am a fantasy buff. I devour and write as much fantasy literature as I can. So naturally, I've got creative flair in the names I choose for games. So when it came time to choose a username, I signed myself in as “Drokarus”. Why? I'm not sure. The name just came to me. It has no special relevance to anything at all (and if it does, it's purely coincidental).

So I began. I started in Tutorial Island, and moved through that quickly, to emerge in a place called Lumbridge. After spending a few hours amassing a fortune of 300gp from Goblins, I realised this repetitive motion was boring, so I stopped.

I stopped for a month.

One month later, I found another of my friends, Vick3rz, was playing. To help me, he gave me jobs mining and smelting bronze bars. I had to get 100 bronze bars for 7k.

Now that I look back on that, I think 7k isn't very much, but at the time, it was heaps. It was more than I could hope to achieve, yet there it was, staring me in the eyes.

Soon, I saved to 20k. It was then that I started working on other things. Mining was always my favourite though, as it was where I started from. I began mining essence.

I remember thinking that doing the Rune Mysteries quest was droll and boring. Now that I look back, Rune Mysteries is one of the shortest quests I've ever done.

So, I got into the essence trade, spending hours a day mining essence and selling them for 20gp each. I soon got other friends involved in the game, teaching them of the essence trade.

Eventually, I moved on. I started woodcutting. When I got to 15, I bought myself a steel axe. By this time, I could wield up to mithril. I know this because I remember walking around mostly with a mithril scimitar and mith plate, with steel legs, shield and helm.

Now I must explain a crucial part of the Drokarus story. The induction into Sals Runescape Forum (affectionately known as Slams).

It was because of a friend. He wanted me to find him a deal for Dragon Legs, so I searched google, and came upon two forums. One of them was Sals forum. It looked friendlier than the other one, which had a dark theme, and a messy layout, which I think discouraged me in the first place.

This was way back around Christmas time. I remember the board icons were Candy Canes.

So I registered for Sals forum. I don't think I ever posted a welcome post, however mine would come in another form. I was to become known by a post I made after the Sals Christmas Party.

We were in the Wilderness, level 42. 1800151100 was shouting for quiet. I knew 1800 was an admin of Sals forum, so I paid attention and respect to him. However, the person standing on me started talking. 1800 began fire blasting me. I ran, naturally. What else could I do? I had to run. My own comrades had turned on me. It was on my exit from Wilderness that I met up with the likes of Fraff5 and Templarrush, along with some other rag-tags that had broken off from 1800's group. We organised a plan to get back at 1800.

I often look back at times like these, and marvel at my brilliance. While it wasn't a very nice thing to do, it was an event worthy of mention. It is because of this that most all active Sals members now know the name Drokarus.

I posted on Sals that 1800 had Fire Blasted me for no reason. Within a half hour, 17 pages had sprung up arguing about the topic. Finally, the thread was closed after much heated debate and arguing about how 1800 and Titan2k4 were evil people, and deserved to be punished. Thread locked, problem solved, right? Wrong.

Similar thread were then inspired, and sprung up all over the forum. A lot of them, actually. So much so that Sal himself had to close the board in order for the moderators to clean everything up, and to calm everybody down. It was a tactful move, and worked. It was over. It was Sals first of the great Flame Wars (of which there were 3).

So, life continued as normal on Sals. I went on playing Runescape. Due to this event, I had become very good friends with Templarrush (later known as Lempytush and iTush). Me and Templarrush always hung out together. It was really fun.

It was around this time I met Celticd208. Celtic was one of my best friends on Runescape also. Me and Celtic met in the essence mines one day. We were friends within seconds (weird, huh?).

We spent many a time chatting about what was going on, in real life and in Runescape. It was because of this I later chose him to be first General of the “Noble Rabbits” (later).

So around April, I joined up with a clan called the Hatebreeds. This was in fact one of the Forum Clans, led by none other than Master Hexias himself (became on of my best buds later).

Hexias led us to many glorious battles, and it was underneath his banner that we united. As he constantly reminded us in his pk trip screenies, “We pwn the wildy!”.

Yes, the Hatebreeds truly did own. However, I did a grievous thing, which I regret to this day. I betrayed the Hatebreeds.

You see, during the time I was with the Hatebreeds, I had also grown friendly, and used to train with some of the MMAPKERS (Money Making Anti Pkers, later known as SC).

So I began to talk to one of the leaders of the mmapkers, Aratreak, and then Snowzak, about joining the mmapkers.

It was then that the battle began to rage inside me. I was torn between HB and Mmapkers. This is about to get deep. I have never told the following to anybody.

Aratreak told me of a pk trip he was going on. I asked if I could come. I believe he was reluctant, as I was a member of the HB, and a sworn enemy (clan-wise). But he let me come. Due to his kindness, I wasn't killed on my first step into wilderness with them, because most of the Mmapkers recognised my name, and wished to slay me were it not for Ara's intervention.

So we set off. I alerted Hexias, and told him to bring as many Hatebreeds as possible, which was about 7 compared to the Mmapkers 20 or so. So above the Bandit camp, the Hatebreeds ambushed the Mmapkers. It was a bloody battle, but the Hatebreeds managed to overcome those that hadn't run. In the confusion, I escape being pursued by Eil and several of the other Mmapkers. When they had arrived at the bank, most of the Mmapkers shouted that I was the traitor. This is where I must credit Ara's kindness, and regret my deceit. Because when asked by Ara and Snowzak if I had betrayed them, I said no. They believed me. It is partly because of this that they are counted among my most valued friends today.

A Mmapker vs Hatebreeds vs Guthix (another forum clan) war was approaching. Once again, I started passing information to both sides. The Hatebreeds gained information on what the Mmapkers would do, and the Mmapkers gained Maps and battle plans from the Hatebreeds. This war would determine who I would choose.

The Mmapkers won. It was a crushing defeat for the Hatebreeds, who were devastated by their loss. It was inevitable. Hexias has real-life obligations to tend to in the form of a gorgeous sorceress by the name of Haggard (aka Rachel). So the Hatebreeds were led by Imperial04, the master of disaster, and lack of organisation got the better of the Hatebreeds.

I regret to inform you, the reader, that I wasn't at this war. So if some of the details about the event seems not quite right to you, forgive my ignorance.

After the war, both sides signed a “No-Spies” treaty, bound by honour that neither leader would permit their members to spy on the enemy.

This is really where the Forum Clan story ends. The Forum Clans fell apart after this, and nobody continued them. Although there is rumour that the Hatebreeds are biding their time, growing in strength. And in the coming storm, I know who I shall support.

Until the beginning of the Noble Rabbits.

With the demise of the Mmapkers and Forums Clans, I yearned for the team feeling one could achieve from being in a Clan. So I remembered a little thing me and some friends did a while ago.

This is about to get nitty gritty. Balls to bones, The Noble Rabbits were anything but. We basically exploited noobs. We quickly discovered things like paying noobs 10gp each to get people to steal silk for us, then we would sell to the merchant for twice as much. We also frequently entered the f2p worlds to buy essence for low low prices. This is how the Noble Rabbits began, with me, Sir Lins, and Inspyr.

In reflection, I am greatly remorseful about how that turned out. I can't believe I exploited people that I was once. I feel awful, and if I could apologise to each and every newb that I liberated money from, I would.

However, I chose to put up a front. A friendlier appearance for The Noble Rabbits, to attract more to our cause. It was through this, I met Squirreld00d.

At the time, Squirreld00d was only level 47. It was a 50+ clan to start with, but I let him join because I felt generous at the time. Squirreld00d was a great friend of mine, and still is. I regret his decision to join WoW though...

We spent many hours discussing different things, as with Celticd208, who had also become Squirreld00d's friend (He was recruited earlier this year into the US forces. May fate guide his way home).

Thanks to Squirreld00ds frequent loss of armour, he was forced to woodcut to make money. This is how he achieved his 85+ woodcutting goal. He is now on his 5^th set of Dharok's armour. As a result, squirrel never had much time for non-combat. So while he became much stronger than me, his overall didn't come anywhere near mine, as I was mainly non-combat.

So we went out with the other clan members (20 regulars. I like to keep my clans on all games smallish) on pk trips, and had parties, and all sorts of things. It was exciting.

Unfortunately, a malicious person, who I still don't know (although I do suspect strongly it was Vick3rz, who at this time was using Technology for the wrong reasons. He was also frequently autoing), hacked our forums, and closed it. This meant we lost our base of communication, as a lot of the NR members were on at different times.

We started a new forum, but still couldn't bring back all that we had before. The brilliance of this clan was lost.

Another friend I made in NR was Anti-Paladin. At the time, he was level 76. I still wonder why he wanted to join a 50+ clan, but his help was appreciated. AP quickly became somebody I could trust, and eventually came to Sals. Amazing how all of the Noble Rabbits eventually found their way home.

Once again, Slams life continued as normal.

I went on. I decided that I would stand up for what I believed in, and was not afraid to speak out against things that I deemed unfair, or not right. This gained me the respect of many, and the hatred of many more. It was in these times that I think I tested my friends to the limit. I had announced my allegiances publicly, for all to see, rather than remaining politically ambiguous. It was around this time Sal came up with the Distinguished Member idea. Happily, I accepted the title as one of the first DM's, paving the way for those to come. I wore my badge with honour, and never failed to use my influence where it was needed. Because I believe that is what being a Distinguished Members is about. You get that little blue badge to show that you're opinion counts, else you wouldn't be wearing it.

Being a DM was alright. We got to open and close our own topics, as well as have our own secret forum where we mostly spammed (a tradition I hear continues to this day).

It was not long after this that Sean, through Beeboy, suggested the IRC chat room. It would be hosted on irc.swiftirc.net and the channel: #knightsean.

Sal decided that to monitor these channels, a new group needed to be created. So the group named Chat Moderators was born. It was decided that me, Sean, Twin4819 (upon my recommendation to Sal) and some others would lead this team.

The chat caused many problems. People continuously pestered the moderators and admins about who should be warned for what which happened on chat. I remember Titan suspended me for 999 days on Sals because I called him a noob while he was under a different alias (Tee). Ah, now I look back on it, I laugh. It was just stupid, a pointless argument that was exaggerated into something larger.

That's where it got out of hand. This is where I went a bit mad. Very mad, to be honest.

I started flaming, and insulting people at every opportunity I could get. Sure, I justified in the DM forum one day, my parents had just split up and it was a tough time. But no, I knew in the back of my mind I was taking the cowards way out and blaming it on somebody else. Once again, my deceit played a great part, as I believe it caused deflected blows against my flaming. If I hadn't been such a convincing storyteller, I don't think I would've lasted for as long as I did.

And so I continued rampantly flaming, until I was suspended. I was removed of my powers.

After a while, I was un-suspended, only to continue my bad streak again, and get suspended again. I was twice more suspended and twice more unsuspended.

It was here that I began the final showdown.

One night, I was bored, and in a particularly foul (insane) mood. So I looked up the rules, and copy/pasted them into Word. I decided I would break every rule, except those that go against my morals (which was two rules: Posting pornography and racism).

So I logged onto Sals. One by one I ticked off the rules as I broke them until I was left with two more?

I asked myself at this point; Do I dare break my morals?

No. That is what makes us human. The ability to consciously decide against doing something. The ability to have principles is a trait only enabled to Human beings. I would not break something I believed in.

So I broke every rule, and then began my large, winding goodbye post. It was quite good, actually. Marvelous. Shame it was deleted. Hexias, one of my greatest friend's and allies, even honored me by saying I could one day become the next Hexias. If you knew Hex as well as I did, you'd know that this was high praise. It was with that comment that Hexias closed the thread, to stop the flaming that ensued against me.

It was before that point, however, that I had asked Cameron, later to be one of my trusty, loyal, and fair friends. In fact, I could say that Cam could almost become the next Drokarus one day, if he put a bit more spice into his posts.

And so I ended my life at slams.

The End.

Wrong. I had heard rumours before I was banned through my extensive network that a move was in motion. Sal had planned to move to IPB 2.0.

I supported this, because IPB is superb software, and Sal would be able to move to a semi-dedicated server rather than using invisionfree to host his forum. It meant more possibility than before.

It was one day that my good friend Sean was on MSN, and gave me the URL. He said that the slate was clean, and that Sal had promised that all those who were banned before were now able to start afresh. To protect my identity, and to avoid biased people with long memories, I changed my name so Samster. This name, however, had a meaning.

During my mean streak, I posted a guide. It was a guide to “Forum Raging” from myg0t.com

I find myg0t hilarious, actually. They're just a bunch of internet pranksters, really. Anyway, the name Samster was part of my legacy to myg0t. Only the particularly keen (in other words, nobody on Slams) could've picked up the connection. Samster is one of the higher ranked members of myg0t.

So I began anew as Samster. I still embodied the fiery passion of Drokarus, and I now know that a few noticed that. I immediately alerted my old friends and allies that I had come to the forum, and that the happy times could begin. I also apologised covertly to several people that I had wronged, and felt I could trust with my identity.

So it began. Many people left in the new forum, but it was a long time coming. Beeboy was one of the most significant to leave. Cameron and Sal (although Sal is very good at concealing his feelings) were angry at Beeboy, for he had repeated a previous error (when he became an Admin on the old forum, he made a lot of changed without telling anyone). He gave Sean admin privileges, and complete control of the UCS (United Clans of Sals. Finally Danny's idea had come to fruition).

This angered a lot of the moderating team also, as Cam had (and still has) great sway over the higher ranks. His vote can make or break most decisions of Slams. Cameron is perhaps the wisest and fairest admin on Sals (not counting Salmoneus himself of course). He is also the most feared, due to the fact he has been given the title of “Baninator”, as he gets to ban bad people.

And so, Beeboy got upset because he felt Cam was being unjust, and so he left.

This caused GuardianCRD to leave, but then he came back.

Back to Drokarus.

At this time, I was still browsing the boards, cruising along. I had lost most interest in Runescape, so I mostly just trolled the Tech, Debate, and Scape lounge forums. Through the Debate forum, I was able to channel my destructive force into something more creative. I used my anger to fuel my intelligence, and learned that I had a fanatical ability to swing arguments. I was able to think quick, and insert wit into most comments. I was a new being.

In fact, I was talking to a person today about myself, and the person said “I miss the old drok”. It seemed that the person missed the fiery, destructive old Drokarus.

I had to disagree with her. This little missy seemed to have missed the wisdom that comes with being at peace with others. During this stage, I was able to relieve myself of pointless insults, I was able to control if I posted (I remember certain Zombie Kid posts I mastered myself to stay out of). My self restraint actually had meaning.

In the Tech Forum, I learnt to help people. I associated myself with a guy named Naota, who I found knew a great deal about Technology, so we got along really well. Together, along with Twin (we had become good friends by now) we solved most of the problems that the Sals members had with their computers. We quickly became known as the trusted opinions behind computer maintenance.

Soon after the Tech Support team was formed, consisting of myself, Naota, and JamesT. Later on we recruited Samurai5911 and mbridges.

The Tech Support team continued to blitz the problems in the Tech forums.

A couple of months later, I was interviewed for the first ever SalCast, a podcast for Sal’s forum done by Dissentor, Zed Doomstar, and elvis66. The podcast was a huge success.

Later, I took my leave of Sal’s forum. I felt that I had done what I could, and had left my mark on the forum forever. It was my time. I sadly left a leaving note, and not long after was banned.

And so Drokarus ended.

Jun 3 2006, 10:54 AM

Quoth the raven “nevermore”

- Edgar Allen Poe

Gamers get it, and so does the industry that provides for them.

2006-06-05T19:10:00.000+10:00

First; w00t! Video embeddage went perfectly. Gives me ideas for future entries. Meh, another time.

Now, onto the point. It is about why people in the game industry get it.
The average gamer these days isn't the gamer of yesterday. Isn't the 13 yr old geek on Mountain Dew sitting up to late hours of the night (well, not exclusively anyway) and early hours of the morning playing online games. The gamers of today are older. Instead of 12-21, the spectrum has become much broader. It is now from as young as 8 to as old as mature workers into their thirties (I've met gamers who are in their late fifties as well, but they're in the minority).
The great thing about the workers in the game industry is that they have adapted again and again to suit their demographic. As an aside, this is quite unlike most software development companies (ie: Microsoft (no pun intended)) that have been as rigid as a stick when it comes to their target audience. The thing is, they have no idea who their audience is anymore. It used to be the corporations, but now its the casual housekeeper as well. They just haven't realised it yet.
Anyway, the game industry have realised that the people they were pushing to five, maybe ten years ago are getting into adulthood, and are not only becoming more casual gamers due to full-time jobs and such, but have also changed their tastes. Also, with the adaptation by the public of internet (it has almost become a standard of living in non-third world countries to have an internet connection) then online capability has become a big thing. The game industry workers have seen these changes, and have worked towards achieving a goal to meet these needs magnificently.
Nowadays, online play of some sort is almost a must. People have begun to crave the interaction with other people. In games like Oblivion, these are a shortcomings on Bethesda Soft's part. Online play almost could've got me to buy it... almost...
Also, more games are adding casual areas of gameplay. For example, NCSoft is a developer that tailors almost exclusively to the casual gamer. Hardcore players can get through Guild Wars: Prophecies in a few days, which is the same with Guild Wars: Factions. However for the more casual gamer who stretches their gameplay time widely, these games are perfect over other MMORPG's such as World of Warcraft, where it's good to have a solid four hours to go on raids and play through instances and such.
However as I said before about game companies adapting to the needs of their demographic, Blizzard has incorporated (and is also in the planning stages of adding more) areas designed for the casual gamer, where you can still get some decent loot, and have a fun time with your friends, but the area takes a shorter amount of time to complete.

Take for example, Spore. Will Wright, the god behind the 'God' genre, spawning games like The Sims, and now Spore. His company has been a step ahead of the gamers. Will Wright was created games designed for casual and hardcore gamers alike back when the word Gamer was used as a derogative rather than a label. Spore is no different.
Allowing you to create your own breed of creature, you are born into a fictitious world filled with other made-up characters that are retrieved from the Maxis/Electronic Arts central database for your creature to interact with. You watch your monster grow from an infant into a fully grown creature, along the way experiencing life from the perspective of a range of ages. You can spend as much or as little amount of time on games like these. That is where Will Wright is a genius, and that's why so many people like him.

Most people that inhabit the game-development industry are gamers. This definitely helps the way the games are made, because the employees understand what the gamers want, being apart of that league themselves. This can't be said for other such industries though (are you telling me that Steve Jobs and the creators of iTunes were once recording artists? I don't think so). If you have the bonus disc of Halo 2 that runs through the making of's and such of the game, you'll know what I'm talking about when I say it's comforting to know that these 30-something year old guys are the people behind my games, because you can tell that these people practice what they preach.

So if you're reading this, and you're a gamer, maybe you should consider a career in game development. You never know, you may just have a significant, positive impact on the outlook of game developers being an intense gamer yourself.

On another potentially interesting and probably boring subject, emoticons make life so much easier. I oft wondered by I liked talking to people over MSN more than speaking to them over Skype (sometimes anyway). Perhaps it's my freakishly fast and abnormal typing speed. I can type as fast as I can think. Which means it's a whole lot easier to get out blog entries.
But more than that I think. I believe it has something to do with the fact that despite if I'm feeling sick, stuffed up, tired, hyper-active, or neither of the above, in the language of text I have a universal voice. Not only that, but the genius that came up with emoticons should be blessed seven times over by all the Gods of the land. I don't have to say "I mean this comment in jest by the way". Instead, I can just insert a little smiley face with his tongue poking out, which has become the world recognition for implying jest. Or I can imply that I have a hemorrhoid by putting the red smiley face in (I think it's supposed to represent anger, but honestly, it looks more like a guy who needs to take a dump).

That's it.
Out.

Video embed

2006-06-05T16:43:00.000+10:00

Test:

What better way to test video embedding than with a Family Guy clip?

Why older people are awesome, and why most people my age suck.

2006-06-03T14:08:00.000+10:00

There's a reason why people my age have a bad reputation. My age "group" is difficult. Getting anything from anybody is now a lot harder, because we can now no longer rely on the "cuteness factor" of our pre-teens. Instead, we are known as a destructive generation. Greedy, self-centred and obnoxious. It's stereotype, and sadly, most people believe it.

I can't blame older people for describing my age group so, however. In fact if I was their age, I'd probably do the same thing. The fact is, most people that are in my age bracket SUCK BALLS. They're immature, and as said above, destructive, greedy and self-centred. It's true. If you want to appeal to a demographic of ages between 14-17 guys, tell dick and fart jokes. It's a market researchers gold, because it's cheap and easy. Being the greedy selfish people we are, we absolutely lap this shit up anyway, selling our souls to the conglomerate giants.

This is gonna get a little bit personal, but I can say that I vastly and more greatly enjoy spending time on games with most of the people I've met on the internet because a lot of them are more mature than a lot of the people I know in real life. Whether they're like that in real life or not, it doesn't matter, because the Internet grants them the ability to have a completely different personality. Whether they choose to be a total shitcock or not is up to them.

I had a think about this while working late last night. I had to work for 7 hours for Target. It was less daunting than expected, and I made a nice wad of cash from it too. Anyway, I spent the night working with people that all had drivers licenses, and were all very mature people. They had interesting stories to tell, a fantastic point of view on all things and were generally good to be around. So much so that I would rather spend a weekend hanging out with people that I've met like Jon, Jake, Darren, Tom and Alex than the people that I regularly hang out with sometimes. People that are mature.

As an aside, I know this entry will undoubtedly insult some people (because I know the people I'm talking about read this blog from time to time) and I'm sure there will be future rammifications because of it. But I write this blog because it's somewhere to post what I honestly believe. However I also know that some people that read this blog will feel the same way. Seriously though, wouldn't you rather spend time talking about things that matter instead of "PMg lolz liek dat guy r gai!!!".

Maybe it's just the angsty teen inside me trying to grow up faster than I should. I'm not really sure. Perhaps in a few years I'll look back on this post, and think "What was I looking forward to, being older sucks". I guess I'll just have to sit patiently and eagerly await the outcome.

I'm ready to make a difference in the world.

We're calling the comic Rick & Jazz. We've established a domain and 100mb server space (it's cheap as hell, and will do for now) thanks to a mutal friend of ours. Thanks Matt, we really appreciate it.
The first one is close to completion. I think Tony has done the artwork, all that's left is for me to colour it and put in my godlike writing. I'll link to it when the first few are up (we want to do at least three before we release it).

That's it for today. Later Daiz.

EDIT: To add to my point, I found out today that a great friend of mine was not in fact 18-19 as I had thought based on her maturity and the way she handles matters, but she in in fact 16 going on 17.

~born with a pen and paper in hand, Jake has been writing since he was five years old. His first story was titled "The skeleton and the princess" and was illustrated with glow-in-the-dark markers.

Australian Comedy

2006-05-31T21:04:00.000+10:00

Is amazing. I just realised that Australian comedy is the best out of all that I have seen. Sure, there are some great comedians from the US (Finesse, Jerry Seinfeld) and also some great ones from Ireland and Scotland, but when it comes to comedy I think Australia wins hands down.
Also, a lot of other countries have admitted that Australia is the world capital for comedy. Ever since our foundation (post-convict era. That time... that time wasn't very funny at all) we've been known as the funny guys (like in World War 2).

Good Australian Comedy:
- Bad Eggs (Movie directed by Tony Martin, stars Mick Molloy among other well known Australian comedy actors. http://imdb.com/title/tt0312409/)
- Crackerjack (Also starring Mick Molloy. http://imdb.com/title/tt0291832/ )
- The Castle (Old but classic. Directed by Rob Sitch, stars Eric Bana, Michael Caton, Bud Tingwell and Tony Martin)

Good Aussie Comedians
- Tony Martin: has done TV, a hugely successful radio show on Triple M called the Martin Molloy show (done with Mick Molloy) and movies. Has written a book of memoirs called Lolly Scramble
- Wil Anderson: Standup comedian. Co-host of The Glass House, a show on ABC with other co-hosts Dave Hughes and Corrine Grant and two random guests every week, which discusses current affairs in a humourous manner.
- Dave Hughes: Standup comedian, Co-host of The Glass House and Co-Host of the Hughesy, Kate and Dave show on Nova FM (radio)
- Alan Brough: Has done TV and movies, is a regular on the comedy music trivia show Spicks and Specks. http://imdb.com/name/nm0112643/
- Shaun Micallef: Hosted his own show Micallef Tonight, starred in Full Frontal and Bad Eggs among other things. http://imdb.com/name/nm0584017/
- Tom Gleeson: Starred in Skithouse, an Australian sketch comedy series. Co-host of the Tom and Subby show on Triple M (Triple M, where Australia's comedians hang out) and other comedy standup gigs.

There are many others. I had to rush this list because I've gotta go watch The Glass House!
If you get around to it, find a copy of any Mick Molloy movie. Honestly, he's a funny guy.

Everyone on MySpace is dumb as fried shit.

2006-05-31T18:40:00.000+10:00

Seriously, sometimes I think Microsoft invented MySpace just to get all the scumbag retards off the internet and to concentrate their idiocy in one place, leaving the rest of the Internet for the more intelligent ones. But then I start reading forums, and remind myself that IT'S NOT WORKING.

With the exception of a few of my friends that I know well and are not completely obtuse morons, everybody else on MySpace is. It's like a hooker's ass in that place, except instead of an insane concentration of STD's that will burn through your tongue, it's just a highly concentrated amount of poor spelling, grammar, and a lack of clothes. Horny teens that aspire to be drug addicts sums up MySpace users pretty well I think.

I have come up with a tier rating system for the MySpace morose dipshits. It is as follows:
Tier 1: Uses MySpace, and enjoys it. Enjoys the social atmosphere of it. Can spell correctly and maintains some sort of self-integrity during posts. Not particularly academic, but enough for me to tolerate reading what they have to say.
Tier 2: Uses Myspace (crime in itself) and lavishes the opportunity to logon and see if there are anymore friend requests for him/her. Spells some words wholly, but a lot of it is in "txt speek".
Tier 3: Stupidest fucks of the lot. These morons cut out letters from words like a meatboy at a Deli on choice cuts night. They make a subconscious decision to make themselves appear stupid and moronic (justified as 'cool' in their decaying minds though). For guys, has a pic without a shirt on. For girls, wearing barely anything.
Tier X: These are the only people I respect that use MySpace. Either people that sign up just to stop their friends bitching about it, and post funny and witty things in their profile. If they have a blog, it's a good read. MySpace hackers are also included in this category (seriously, some people just beg to be wrecked on MySpace).

I was viewing a Tier 1 MySpace today. This girl is a friend of a friend. Her profile looks alright, her profile pic is good (wearing clothes) and she has morals and principles, which I can see from her profile. Okay, that's good. But then it's stuff like this that angers me:
(The blog entry was called "What I think about HACKERS")
i hate you.
you are peices of scum.
who obviously have no life.
go to hell.

Sorry Avalon, but you just earned a negative tick in my book. Ever heard of White Hat Hackers? No, of course not. In your closed of sphere of a lifestyle, you never thought of actually researching the things that you post. Never mind that your opinion is completely full of shit, thus being unworthy of reading. Although, the MySpace trolls lapped up this shit. One such dolt (Tier 3) said the following:
I would have to say i agree with ya..and i also think your hott !!!

Yes, she is quite good looking. Nobody really cares about your masturbatory fantasies though, so keep it to yourself.

Conclusion: Everybody with the exception of Tier X and Tier 1 on MySpace are dumb as fried shit, and for the betterment of the human race, should commit immediate suicide.

Just had to vent my anger. If you're a pedophile though, MySpace is a haven. There are a lot of good looking girls on there (shitface idiotic though. My type of woman is like a female James Bond. Suave, good looking, and intelligent).

The webcomic is really coming together. We have decided on "Rick and Jazz". A simple name, but one which has a nice ring to it.

PS: In case you're wondering, I actually don't mind people like Avalon. Too bad these people don't take more time to research what they're posting though. She should've been more specific.

Out.

And the week trundles by

2006-05-30T19:55:00.000+10:00

Sooooo...
Had our mathematics exam today, was easy as eating pie with a fork and knife. Most people finished an hour before the time was up. I spent my hour doing some work on storylines for this webcomic. So I need some input about these storylines.

First strip ever #01

Block 1
Jazz: So I guess we’re two dimensional now.
Rick: Yup

Block 2
Jazz: Do I smell smoke?
Rick: Yo. My house just burnt down, so I’m gonna live here for an undefined amount of time.

Block 3
Jazz: Cool…

Block 4
Rick: Up for some UT?
Jazz: Kay

That's probably going to be the first strip. Just setting up the story for the future.

Another one is this:

Drop bears #04

Block 1

Rick and Jazz are sitting on a park bench, Jazz is drinking a bundy and coke.

Rick: Isn’t that the drink with the ad about drop bears that hide in trees?

Block 2

Jazz: Yeah, why?

Rick: Reckon they really exist?

Jazz: Nah

Block 3

Birdseye view of a polar bear sitting in the tree above Rick and Jazz. Has red eyes and looks frickin scary.

Block 4

Sign with the bear on it saying “Kids, don’t drink BUNDY”

Opinions? Leave 'em in the comments box.

In other news, I had work again tonight. It wasn't so bad, worked by myself tonight. Everybody else was moving around shelving and such, which I'll be doing on Friday (7 hour shift, from 5pm - 12pm... FUN!). During my boredom, I devised a list of things that are almost essential to the newbie merchandiser in any retail store. (Merchandiser is the term for shelf-stacker.) But first, a couple of hints for the public.

1. Just because I'm putting a box in the cutlery section DOESN'T mean I am an expert in that category. I am no cutlery connoisseur, I don't know which side the dinner fork goes on in comparison to the other huge fork.

2. If I'm trying to carry three boxes and an RF gun in two hands, instead of asking me your questions, ask the person next to me, who is free and not doing anything.

If you're new to the whole Merchandising thing, here's a few tips.

a) If it's in the catalogue, it means it has to be stacked. Make sure you stack it. Doesn't really matter where (heck, it doesn't even have to be visible) as long as it's out. You can't send back stuff that is in the catalogue.

b) When using a knife, make sure not to stab yourself in the stomach. It hurts. Also it can lead to intense bleeding, which can get all over the merchandise and get you fired. Also... you may die.

c) If you can't find room for something, either put it back in the cage, or find another of the product and try squeezing it in around it. Always make sure that you check if there's space behind a product, don't just look at face value.

d) Suck up to your line managers! I got a free knife today because I said "Excuse me Simon" instead of just "Oi! Simon". Yay for free knives.

There's definitely more. Just the tricks of the trade (and those are the very least of them, you learn as you go).
Anyway, not too much else is happening. Just chillin' out on IRC while doing some more drawings. Ethics exam tomorrow.

Wonder if an Ethics exam is difficult for people without ethics? Guess I'll find out tomorrow.

~ jesus hates the ps3

Weird government practises.

2006-05-29T21:41:00.000+10:00

The Australian government does some strange things. One of those things is their campaign against smoking.
The government have setup a call center, called Quitline, for smokers. They vehemently protest against the use of cigarettes and smoking through advertising campaigns. They make sure everybody knows that they think smoking is bad. But all they do is show ads about it?
I suppose it's a wise idea. Educating people about the dangers of smoking, and providing a way out. But if the government really wanted to eradicate smoking, they should illegalise it.
Some people believe that this would only increase the demand for it, just because it's illegal. But I think it would be more a deterrent than anything, because the average smoker is just the average Australian person. They don't want to get mixed up in any drug rings or trafficking charges just for a pack of smokes.

I have been getting into some drawing lately. I've always enjoyed drawing, just never been very good at it. This time around, nothing has changed. I'm still pretty crappy. But on the plus side, I'm improving. I even learnt how to colour my stuff today (albeit poorly, but it's a start. Not bad for a first try in my opinion).
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/6828/colour18ot.jpg

I know, I know. It's pretty awful, and I missed a couple of spots on the lines. But when I have more time I'll probably redo it (with some shading).
Me and a friend are getting into the webcomic scene. Thankfully, he's doing the artistic work, and I'll be the writer for it. Should be fun.
Speaking of writing stuff, I could not find anything to write up a comic for today. What is with the downtime of news lately? Maybe somebody will blow stuff up, or at least do something that I can write about.

I got offered 3 seven hour shifts at Target on Friday nights. Means I'll have a bit of extra cash in my pocket which I can use. Hoping to get World of Warcraft soon, so some of that cash can contribute. As long as I don't need a credit card and can do everything via the Game Cards, it should be smooth sailing.

Made a collage in PS today. Was bored and thought I'd show my appreciation for some guys that are close to me (in a completely non-sexual way, get your mind out of the gutter).
http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/7397/collage7nh.jpg

Oh yeah, taking suggestions for a name for a webcomic by the way. If any of you have read CAD, PA or VGCats, our goal is to be something similar to that (mainly gaming genre with some misc. comics in between). We're stumped as to what to call it. Leave your suggestions in the comments.

Out.

Work again

2006-05-23T21:30:00.000+10:00

Monday work was more enjoyable than the last two shifts. Everybody was working very close together, so it wasn't as silent, thus wasn't as boring.
I managed to do 5 cages. That's my record so far. And overall I've made over $100 (you wish I'd tell you the exact sum).

Lately I've gotten back into drawing. A guy I know is a spectacular artist, and is fanatical at hand-drawing things. He did me a short tutorial on how to draw people, and I've gotten some stuff done. Pretty lame by the standards set by some people I've seen, but for me (I and my limited artistic finesse) it's alright. My Dad is transporting the scanner to our residence on the weekend, so I can put up some of my stuff for everybody to see.

Homewrecker. Babysitter. Purveyor-of-Souls. World of Warcraft. All of them, names synonymous for the same game.
And I want to try it. WoW has been the subject of much interest for me ever since it's release. When it was released however, I had not the funds to purchase it. Then Guild Wars came out, and I played that to quench my craving for MMORPG love. However, now that Guild Wars has lost its luster due to it's developers HATING it (for what other reason would Anet keep making these ridiculous, enjoyment-killing updates?) I want to get into another MMORPG, and I think WoW is a good choice. I'll be using a Game Card, so that my money isn't getting eaten up every month. Like a prepaid phone deal over a contract. I control how much I spend. I like to be in control.

So in a week or so, I plan to have World of Warcraft, the fantasy MMORPG of critical acclaim.

Happy Gaming!

~Sometimes you want to go, where everybody knows your name

Weekend

2006-05-21T16:56:00.000+10:00

My weekend was pretty good. Had some friends over to play Xbox. As usual, there was one who was fun to have around, one who was being lazy and one who fit somewhere in between. Meh.

Work tomorrow... eugh. I need the cash, but it is SERIOUSLY boring, and dull. Some guy has been working there for four years... I don't know how he could do it.

Oh well, life sucks then you die. Hopefully not too soon though.

~ What you seek lies in a another of what is right before your eyes

Ron Howard gets it.

2006-05-18T19:44:00.000+10:00

Gets what? Gets book-to-movie adaptations.

Don't get me wrong, Peter Jackson is a living legend. What he did to the Lord of the Rings trilogy was amazing. He took a potentially dangerous career move by chancing on doing that movie, and pulled it off nicely. He's in my top three directors list. Along with George Lucas and now RON HOWARD.

What's so special about Ron? Oh, only that he produced the finest book-to-movie adaptation ever. That's right people, I just saw the Da Vinci Code movie.

First let me say the critics don't know anything about rating this movie. They should all be fired. Where I live, movie critics gave it awful ratings for one reason or another. Why is that? Probably because they're all as biased as the Vatican is on this issue. The Da Vinci Code movie was spectacular. Marvellous. Splendiferous. See? It's so great that I have to resort to making up words to describe it.

The movie stayed amazingly true to the book. Only several minor parts were left out, not nearly deterring from the story as horrendously as the Harry Potter movies. They even added details that enhanced it, such as the explanation as to how Robert and Sophie managed to get inside the limousine from the plane without being seen by Scotland Yard's finest. There was also spectacular flashbacks of the Knight's Templar and an awe-inspiring flashback of the invasion on Jerusalem. Trebuchets and all.

If you read the Da Vinci Code, and you're not an ignorant catholic hypocrite (I don't mean all catholics are ignorant, but if you haven't read the Da Vinci Code, yet write it off as crap because your chuch says so, go and die) then I suggest you see this movie.

Fuck you, I say to the critics. The Da Vinci Code gets a 9.7/10 from me.

Post-Script: 0.3 of a mark was taken off because I didn't like Audrey Tautou's acting in some scenes.

Dan Brown will challenge your beliefs and rock your visions. If you like to think, I suggest you research his works more.
Out.

My first job

2006-05-08T20:51:00.000+10:00

I had my very first shift in a part-time job this evening. It went a little bit like this.

Mum dropped me off outside the shopping complex. It was cold and windy. I felt self-conscious about my uniform, which was semi-formal, but I wore it like a white collar worker would.
I strode up the arcade lane, and into the complex. I walked along as cool as possible to vainly conceal the fact that I was a nervous wreck on the inside. Many things were being taken into consideration inside my head. What were the staff like? I wonder if the managers are nice? Hope I get to use the snack machine?
I strode into Target and casually entered the reception area, and announced I was here for my induction. My voice had taken on an odd Russel Crowe-like mask, thus I sounded like the Aussie film star himself.
I took a seat. One of the 3rd tier management, Donna, came and greeted me and another girl called Erin.
She took us up to an office, and we began the discussions. Intense negotiations about wages, hours, and unions took pl- Wait wait wait, no. Actually we just signed some forms and was persuaded against joining the union. Fine with me, I can do with the extra $3 that I would have to contribue if I joined the union. Fuck that.

Soon, we began our tour of the store. Ducking and diving around dangerous machinery, we entered the "Reserves", the place where many of the lowlife scum of retail outlets hang. But instead I found some nice guys, one by the name of Brenton who would be my supervisor for the night. As we finished crushing boxes and riding on the large trolleys, we went out onto the sales floor as the shop was closing, ready to start our 3 hour shifts.
We began carving open boxes and stacking up the shelves. Soon, I was placed with a guy called Chris. Nice guy, liked his job I guess. Chris pretty much taught me the ropes of the "Fill team".
However all was not well that night. As knives and other kitchen utensils were unpacked from one of the trolleys (known as "cages"), we soon came to the frying pans. Chris and I both reached into the box and pulled one out. As hard as we tried, we couldn't stop the two pans from connecting for a mere second, thus initiating a combat sequence that was truly epic.
It was on. Up and down the aisles, I parried and swiped at Chris as he did the same. I saw a weak spot in his guard, and rose my pan into the air, ready to make the final stroke, when I accidentally slammed a box on top of a shelf. Rocking precariously on it's perch, the whole shelf began to shudder. Chris and I forgot our quarrel and leapt into action, saving the whole stock of that shelf from crashing into it's inevitable doom. The china would live to fight another day.
We returned to stacking the shelves. Along the way I got friendly with the rest of the Fill Team, and even met some of the other after-hours staff (nice guy called Anthony who works in sound, some chicks from softgoods which are goddamn scary, one of them called Sara).
Soon it was time to knock off. As I finished compacting the last bits of cardboard, we all signed out and waited at the front of the store to be let out the side, and back to our respective holes.
As I walked out of the shopping complex and towards where I was rendevouzing with my Mum, I saw three stoners getting high on one of the streets. Carefully keeping my distance and straying into the shadows away from them, I ensured my safety. As I neared the final stretch to my car (which I could see in the distance) an UNHOLY WIND picked up. Hundreds of knots it must've been and it rustled me something awful. The legal papers I was holding in my hand nearly flew away along with myself. The demon lord of Frankston strikes again, but there's a new kid on the block.
And he just conquered his first shift.

Windows Live Mail! Arrived

2006-05-07T21:38:00.000+10:00

Just thought I'd shoot off a quick message about how I just received Windows Live Mail. It's an AJAX based email service from Microsoft, which is set to replace hotmail. It's pretty hot.
It reminds me of Microsoft Outlook in my webbrowser, but it's very sleek, lots of whitespace. I'll post some pics later.

Off to keep exploring this thing.
Out.

Interviewed

2006-05-06T20:47:00.000+10:00

I was actually interviewed for a podcast earlier this week.
As I've mentioned before, I'm a member of a close forum community called Slams, and I was asked to do a short interview for the podcast.
Man, I sound like a whiny bitch on it, and I always have over microphone. Maybe I'm schizophrenic or something and I'm just imagining my sexy masculine voice. You just never know...

Anyway, if you want to check it out: http://runescape.salmoneus.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=42727&st=120&#entry424490

WARNING: You must be able to tolerate the voices of young people to listen to this. The hosts of the podcast are young, and so if you can't tolerate voices as such, then I advise you against listening. But then again, the temporary suffering is worth hearing me, right?

Got Dogma recently. It is a great movie.
Of course, when I say "Got Dogma" I don't mean that I have subscribed to a faith, nor putting a reference to a belief system into a cute catch-phrase. What I mean is that I OBTAINED THROUGH STRICLY LEGAL MEANS the movie, Dogma.
Directed and written by Kevin Smith (genius) who also stars in it, it's another movie in the Jay and Silent Bob saga. It's set before Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and after Chasing Amy, although it doesn't star any of the regular characters (the exception being Jay and Silent Bob). That doesn't mean the familiar faces aren't there. Still got Jason Lee playing double-crossing ex-muse-now-demon Azrael, Chris Rock playing a pissed off 13th Apostle, and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon starring as two Angles who have been cast out of Heaven, but have finally found a way back in (good for them, unfortunately they don't know that if they enter Heaven, they prove God's word infallible thus negating existance).
So rent it and check it out. Good movie.

Out.

Two new mods... thoughts?

2006-05-04T12:56:00.000+10:00

There's a forum that I regularly visit, which I will refer to as Slams.
Slams is quite popular, thousands and members, over a hundred thousand posts and a very tight community.
I've earned myself quite a reputation there as a trouble maker actually. It's a long tale, which I won't go through here.Regardless, I still have a lot of friends there, and it's fun to hang around.
Anyway, today I saw in the Announcements forum the announcement of two new moderators.
The new mods that were chosen are friends of mine. Honestly, only one of them is my friend really. The other one's a crybaby and a prick.
I know that taunt sounds lame (crybaby), but it applies, and I'm all for using appropriate language.
I am pleased that my friend moderator was promoted. His posts are thoughtful, meaningful and wise. Moderator material.
The other isn't. The other one posts meaningless posts, and honestly I don't agree with his election as a moderator. I suppose we'll see how he pans out, maybe he'll exceed expectations... won't make me like him anymore.

Ah well. The site administrators claim the forum is run like a democracy, so I suppose if the moderator fails in his duties I could always just rally everyone into getting him demoted (lots of moderator contraversy going on at the forums recently, if a mod is going to be demoted, now the time is).

At the moment I'm sitting at school, in English. Up until this year, I've enjoyed English. I'm enthusiastic about English, and I tend to be quite pedantic about grammar and spelling. However this year it's changed. While I'm still pedantic about such, English lessons have become a bore. We are no longer learning English, but instead doing Film and Book Analysis. Our teacher isn't helping either. Not only is her voice monotonous and tedious to listen to, but she's a real bitch. But I suppose in life we don't get to choose who our mentors and colleagues are to be, it's either like it or lump it. That seems to be the way the world runs now. Little choice, but much acceptance is required.

What a world we live in.

Might post something else tonight if I get something meaningful to say. Right now this post is really just me venting some frustration and killing time until my period is over.
Ugh, business management next... Well, I hope you're enjoying your day more than I am.

Out.

Factions fuck-ups, revisited

2006-05-03T10:38:00.000+10:00

I didn't think Arenanet could possibly piss me off more than they did last time.
However, it seems they have achieved that impossible goal. In the form of?

That's right, delayed. Arenanet and NCSoft have actually apologised on their website, acknowledging "We don't really care much about Australia, so we didn't do enough market research to determine that we need to package more Collector's editions".
On the Guild Wars website they proclaimed that they didn't anticipate the popularity of the Collector's edition, so they didn't make enough.

Pure bullshit. Everybody knows it, but only a few dare to say it. There is no place in the gaming industry for Australia. The Australian gaming industry is so small that most studios consider it insignificant. In fact recently, a US game developing firm decided that they'd quash Australian competition. Ratbag games of Adelaide was bought by Midway earlier this year, ending our most successful game-development studio.

Part of the problem is that all the programmers and 3d animators etc are going over to work for the American firms, instead of helping promote home-grown games.

Ah, anyway.
E3 next week. I wish I could go, I'm sure it'd be real fun. Bungie are going to show a two minute movie of Halo 3. And of course the Nintendo Wii (Which Wii love to hate) will be on display, as well as a short presentation on the PS3 (however, it won't be playable). As Alex Albrecht so succinctly put it "We'll get to see it, and they'll be like 'That's kinda sorta what it's gonna look like' and we'll be like 'Yay'". That's the unfortunate truth.

Remember to checkout digg at www.digg.com
You won't regret it.

I'm planning on writing up an article about Open Source alternatives to popular market products, so I'll inform you of when I'm done.

Nickelback - worth a dime?

2006-04-29T01:34:00.000+10:00

The answer, ladies and gents, is "Fuck Yeah" as vocalised by me and my comrades as we shouted ourselves hoarse at tonight's Nickelback concert.
This was my first real concert actually. I know what you're thinking. "First rock concert? I thought he was fucking metal!".
Well, no not really. Not to that level of status anyway.
Positive experience, I really enjoyed it. Let me give you a short run down.
First there was an opening act in the form of some band nobody had ever heard of that sung for 40 minutes, then there was a 20 minute intermission, and then Nickelback came on and played for about 2 hours.
The opening band was pretty much shouting and metal. It was pretty lame. After about twenty minutes I zoned out, pondering about what I would put in this blog entry, whether it would bode well for Nickelback or not. When Nickelback came on, the screaming started.
In fact, probably the only downside to the night was my friend sitting next to me was screaming like a fucking woman every time they played a song. While the two ladies, that were apart of our troupe, screamed like they were dying, it was tolerable. But my friend's screaming had a certain eerie quality that curdled blood and burst ear drums. It was like dying painfully at the end of each show.
Note to all you fellas out there: Screaming at rock concerts is FOR WOMEN.

Anyway, so they started the rock and we were all singing along. Eventually I plucked up enough courage to make an ass of myself throwing up the horns, which several people behind us followed, decreasing the feeling of isolation. From there proceeded a string of affirmative profanities (such as the aforementioned Fuck Yeah, frequently).
All in all it was a fantastic night that I'll be eager to repeat in the future.

All my tests went alright, got my assignments etc handed in on time so it's all sweet. No stress now for another week or so. Except for the pile of 5 tests that take 2 hours each to do that I have to complete for my "Induction" training so I can start working and get my paycheck.

'Til another night.
Out

Maths

2006-04-27T16:53:00.000+10:00

Let me tell you, at this very moment I am freaking out.
Tomorrow, we have two exams and a maths assignment due. That's okay, I thought to myself blissfully yesterday. I only have two questions left on the maths assignment to do, I'll do it on Thursday night.
However now I find out the questions I have left are infinitely hard! because I can't find the correct formulae needed to reach an accurate conclusion.

Anyway, I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow. I'm supposed to be racking my brains out, not blogging.
Later

Test

2006-04-26T20:47:00.000+10:00

Hello readers.
This is a test. I just downloaded a new extension for firefox called Performancing, which lets me blog directly from Firefox. It's pretty cool, got lots of features and stuff.
You can find it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/addon.php?id=1730
For Firefox bloggers everywhere.

My Sunday

2006-04-24T08:52:00.000+10:00

Sunday night.
My friend and I, along with some other friends, were going out to see comedy act, Lano and Woodley, on their Goodbye Tour. After 20 years they were retiring.
Now, don't get me wrong. I've seen the Lano and Woodley TV shows. I've heard their humorous songs. However, if you're going to do a Goodbye Tour, in my opinion you should come up with some fresh material.
Almost every part of the show was old. Some of the humour was from the TV shows, some from previous appearances that I'd seen and heard. But all of their comedy was old.
After 20 years, perhaps to treat their loyal fans they might've wanted to come up with some new stuff to go with. Instead of recycling jokes, they should've made new ones. I spent $40 on going to this thing, when I could've spent half of that seeing Dave Hughes, and gotten more laughs.
Speaking of which, Hughesy (Dave Hughes), is a hilarious guy. Normally I listen to Triple M, because of Spoonman (think I mentioned him in my first post) and some of the other hosts. But whenever I need a laugh in the morning, I just switch on over to Nova 100.3, because Hughesy is a class comedian. He's also on a show on the ABC called The Glass House. It's a panel of three comedians, and each week they have two guests. The regulars are Wil Anderson, Corrine Grant and Dave Hughes. They talk about stuff that has been in the news lately, but they somehow manage to turn boring political crap like the AWB fiasco into comedy. Aussies: Wednesday night, 9:30.

Another thing I want to talk about is something I call electronic seclusion.
What I mean by that is this; Is electronic equipment killing off physical social interaction?
On the drive up to the show, as soon as we got in the car everybody whipped out their phones and iPods and started listening to music etc. Luckily I hadn't brought any electronic distractions, which meant I was able to think for a while.
Is the advancement of technology really such a great thing when it will eventually turn us all into barely social people? One day, we'll be able to talk into a headphone and look into a screen, and 10 minutes later food with appear in our fridges. No human interaction required.
Is that really what we want for the future? Already a lot of things are turning to the Web, because that's the marketing strat at the moment. If you don't have a Web presence, you're going to fall behind. I'll talk more about that later. Anyway, now Universities are offering online courses, so you never have to go to Uni, you can do it from your home. I don't doubt that near in the future, somebody will create a credit card machine compatible with a PC, so with a swipe of the card, you can login to your net bank, and deposit/withdraw money at your own will, like your own personal ATM. Almost said ATM machine, but that' just stupid. Think about it.
Perhaps the advancement of technology should be restrained? Sure it might make us more socially interactive with other humans (physically), but isn't that also restraining our ultimate goal?
Which brings me to yet another point. What is the ultimate goal of the human race? It would seem that our ultimate goal, to me at least, is to advance as far as we can before Greenhouse gases asphyxiate us, and melting ice caps flood our countries. I guess the ultimate goal of humans, essentially, is to survive and evolve. Will that lead to cybernetic enhancements such as those we see on Sci Fi TV? Call me traditionalist, but I'm fine with my flesh thanks. If you've got a different view, feel free to share it in the comments.

Web marketing strategies. It's the theme of the decade. Microsoft put it nicely when they said "If you don't have a Web presence, you have nothing".
Microsoft has finally woken up and realised that they are royally fucked if they don't start directly competing with Google. While they've held the lead in the software market (and still do) for the last decade (or two?), Google is now coming out with things that are web-based, but compete with Microsoft's products, namely Microsoft Outlook.
This has prompted Microsoft into action. Their "Live!" project was sort of something they were working on while they finish of Vista. But now they've realised that Google is going to shite all over them if they don't pick up the slack, they've put Live! into full gear. Now there are many Live! products all available for BETA testing. Just recently I signed up to checkout new Windows Live Mail, which is like an upgraded Hotmail. It looks like a web-based version of Outlook. I'll let you know how that goes when I get my account.
So good luck to Microsoft in their endeavours. Google has been buying up lots of stuff lately, and I think they could crush Microsoft eventually, which is unfortunate. I'm a bit supporter of Microsoft, I think their software is amazing, and is unrivaled, and it would be disappointing if they had to go out of business. Google's products compared to those of Microsoft are sub-par in my opinion (apart from Gmail and Gcal. Gcal is excellent).

That's enough for today. My diggnation podcast just finished downloading.
Out.

White people black?

2006-04-23T09:06:00.000+10:00

What is up with all of these white kids wanting to be black?
I don't have anything against black people. In fact, I have quite a few black friends, and they're cool. Just like any other of my friends.
However, I think it's so lame when these skinn white guys walk around trying to rap like 50 cent, and talking all "gangsta". What happened to the age of being yourself?
I hear people all the time saying stuff like "You be tripping, homey". No, I'm not tripping. I'm just making an outlandish suggestion. But I guess that doesn't enter into your "wigga" cerebral database.
Seriously, this has got to stop.
It's actually really hard to write this without seeming racist, but I'm going to write it anyway.
Black people are black people. They have a culture. White people are the same.
I actually think very little of these "You be trippin'" types. Wiggas and black rappers alike. If you were born with the ability to speak English but choose to mutilate the beautiful language into something that makes you sound like a fuckstick, then go right ahead, but don't expect me to listen to you, nor take you seriously.

It's spilling over onto women too. I hear girls talking "gangsta" now, at school. It's degrading society. It's very tempting to drug them, put a white hood over their head and dump them in some ghetto in the US.
I understand that African-Americans may speak differently to me, and that's fine. I don't have to be friends with you. But when it's being forced upon me by the people I am constantly around, I have no choice but to listen to their shit.
True, I do say the occasional "True dat", but that's as far as I take it.
Think of it like this. You can speak English, you're Caucasian, you live in Australia and you choose to speak German to the people around you. Now, why do you do it? Even though the people around you can't understand a word of what you're saying, I'm sure one of your dumbass skate/fashion magazines have told you "It's not officially cool to speak German". Yay for destroying society, you anorexic whores.

Which brings me to another issue. Kids these day put too much faith in what is said by super-models. Okay, we all have somebody we look up to. However, I choose to be inspired by intelligent people, like Jerry Holkins or Kevin Rose. These "Wiggas" look up to pampered pricks to get their inspiration. Like I said, everyone needs inspiration and I don't have a problem with that. But when your source of inspiration is dumb as fried shit, you need to think about maybe choosing another before you end up OD'ing on heroine after being raped. I'm not kidding, this stuff happens.

So clean up your act and start acting like the person you are instead of imitating your MTV shitfaced popstars. You'll end up better off.

Out-

Quick sticks

2006-04-22T21:36:00.000+10:00

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

2006-04-21T22:09:00.000+10:00

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.

2006-04-20T18:10:00.000+10:00

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!

2006-04-16T20:45:00.000+10:00

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.

2006-04-16T20:40:00.000+10:00

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.

Scuse me religion pwnt pl0x

2006-04-12T19:12:00.000+10:00

Yes, again some fools decide it is wise to do something derogatory to inflame arabic religious people.

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) -- A suicide attacker detonated a bomb at a prayer service in southern Pakistan Tuesday, police said, killing at least 41 people including the top leadership of an influential Sunni Muslim religious group.

Really cool, attacking priests. Haven't they been put under enough pressure after the child-molestation charges, but now you have to light them on fire?
I think we've all had the temptation to torch our local minister and end his preachings, but we never really did anything about it (and if you did, stay away from my house).
The prophet Mohammed is a major thing in Muslim religion. He is the most powerful and praised prophet of them all. So much so, that he is not allowed to be depicted using imagery, so he can't be drawn at all (hence the controversy/outrage/embassy bombings about the cartoons posted in The Jutlands Post in Denmark a while ago).
41 people died, not including the bomber(s). The incident is being blamed on extremist shiite muslims.
Personally, I think they're just angry they got a crappy name for their religion, so they're taking it out on other Muslim groups. How would you like being called a Shiite Muslim?

On a happier note, two good friends of mine combined their talent to make a signature that I think deserves mention.

They're both very talented with digital art, and I wish the best to them in the future.
<3 Kess and Seymyster.

Hokay, so. Naruto.
Pretty popular anime series. I've decided to begin watching it (after completing the Fullmetal Alchemist series, which I also recommend to everybody I meet... on the street... in the heat...)
Hard to explain, it's basically about a boy who has a Nine-tailed fox demon sealed inside his body, and because of that, his village shuns him, which leads him to a goal of becoming "Hokage" (or the number one ninja in the village) so that his village people will acknowledge him.
Pretty interesting. It's all english subbed, but it's good.

I thought I'd take a moment to share with you a small fraction of the wisdom that the boys at Penny-Arcade employ in their comic-strip writing.
They call it GIFT, or Gabe's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

As you can see, it details how people on the Internet, but more accurately on Internet multiplayer games, suck.
A person who is normally a run of the mill alright guy in real life turns into a hideous creature that contains vulgarity and arrogance in biblical proportions.
I'd also like to say that Harlan Ellison is a cranky old bastard, and I hope he rots in the ground for his stereotypes and gibes at and of teenagers and Jerry Holkins. Fucker.

That's all there is for today. Thanks for reading.

~years of work and nothing to show

2006-04-05T20:49:00.000+10:00

Class, today we'll be discussing Full Metal Alchemist.

Lately, I've been watching episodes of an anime called Full Metal Alchemist. It's japanese, but kindly been dubbed into English.
I've been watching it off YouTube.com which is a damn handy site. Lots of cool content.

So, Full Metal Alchemist follows the lives of Edward and Alphonse Elrich, brothers who deal in Alchemy. Alchemy involves the act of "transmutation" by harnessing the energy of existance, and controlling it via circles and arrays of symbols, to change something into something else. However, there's a catch in the form of the law called Equivalent Exchange. It means in order for something to be obtained, something of equal value must be lost. Also, the object you're transmuting must contain similar elements (phosphate, iron etc elements, not the primitive Earth, Air, Fire and Water) to the object you want to transmute it into.

There's quite a bit of science involved in the show, but lots of action and plot so as to keep it rolling. There are few series' that captivate it's audience from episode one to the end, and Full Metal Alchemist is one of them.

Other than that, just school's going on. I'm actually really struggling with Maths. It worries me, frankly. Although with the help of my friends I'm making it through. Josh is being really helpful, helping me out with the formulas and stuff, not just telling me the answers. So I'm actually learning. I want to do well at Maths, I just don't seem to have an aptitude for it like I do problem solving. I can usually see the big picture, but sometimes my problem is finding the little one.
My report wasn't as good as usual. Two below averages, this time they weren't in PE (as usual) but in academic subjects, like Commerce and English. I only got a below average in English because I handed in an assignment late. I'm pretty good at English (being modest) as you may have noticed from my articulation, but just meeting deadlines... isn't something I'm great at. I tend to play by my time.
Commerce I'm not too worried about. I got a below average in that because our group got an E on an assignment, 'cos the teacher didn't like my idea about a theme park based on WW2.
Normally, one assignment wouldn't have much impact, but because we only had a six week term, there were less projects that accounted for a higher percentage of the overall.

Got a debate coming up tomorrow. I'm pretty proficient at arguing (having two little sisters enhances the skills) so I think I'll do alright. I'm 3rd speaker, so I just have to note what the opposition is saying, and make it sounds like they're talking shit.

Out.

~Here's to you, Mrs Robinson.

Digg

2006-03-29T20:44:00.000+11:00

Lately I've gotten into the whole Digg buzz.
Find it at www.digg.com

I've been there a few times, but I haven't really gotten into it. Now that I realised that they have a podcast I've decided to delve deeper into Digg.
By the way, checkout the podcast, diggnation. It's frickin' sweet.

That's all for today. Not much going on.

Of graphic nature I belong, in messages I follow, the motion of my words attracts you, the final answer lies in the properties of post-script code.

IMG. Happy hunting.

Factions fuck ups. New campaign is very disappointing.

2006-03-24T20:49:00.000+11:00

So, according to the new cinematic trailer, ritualists are destined to be killed, and assassins are supposed to be fully awesome super-warrior ninjas.

However, today was the beginning of the Factions Preview Event. And holy shit let me tell you, it's not all it's cracked up to be.
Not even close.

Coming up to the event, I was looking forward to the opportunity of trying out an assassin more fully than the PvP event earlier.
So naturally, as soon as the new build of GW was available, I reloaded and started a new character.
An assassin by the name of Marshall Tasca.
As soon as I got in, I grabbed a group of henchies, loaded up on quests, and left the city. I noticed quite a bit of lag, but I expected that to be honest. Also, the graphics are less than perfect.
So I leave town, all dandy fine and quite impressed with the new Tengu henchman. A bit eerie though, I'm used to attacking every time I hear their squawk, so I had to adjust to not twisting around and striking.

The area's nice, very green, new (incredibly high levelled) monsters etc. I even saw a Giant Turtle, which was cool.
However, after playing the game for over an hour, I realised that the Assassin is a horribly underpowered character. I was only hitting 8's and 9's with my basic attacks, and 20's with my combos.
After getting fed up with the Assassin's lack of health/energy/damage output, I decided to try a Ritualist, by the name of "I R Ritualist".
I found the difference amazing.
While the trailer (and popular discussion on many GW forums) clearly displayed the Ritualists as being weak, and inefficent in combat, in game the contrary is truth.
I was hitting 18's with my basic attacks, and with my Spirits, I could have several buffs on the whole party at once.
Also, the Ritualist emotes I found to be a lot more fun than the Assassins.
The Ritualist eccentricites really roped me in, and so I think when I get my Guild Wars: Factions on April 28th, I'll be proudly beginning my first steps down the path of Communing.

Enough of my woes though. On a happier note, I've discovered another awesome show, tragically cancelled by the satanic producers at FOX, just like Firefly.
Wonderfalls is on here at about 11:30 Tuesday nights. I don't know why I like this show, because in general, I don't appreciate shows like this one. However, it has Jewel Staite, and from there I grew to like the other characters.

Quick notes of the week:
- Downloading V for Vendetta, will report on how it is.
- New Australian Gamer podcast
- Penny-Arcade have started their own podcast. A recording of how they get the ideas for their comics.

Guild Wars Bonanza!

2006-03-17T17:17:00.001+11:00

Hello Everyone!

It's been a while since I've posted (roughly two weeks I think). Mostly because I was at my Dad's house for a long time.
Anyway, I did work experience last week. It was awesome.

As I said, I got to stay at my Dad's place, which is awesome, because he has fast internet, and the study is part of the lounge room. Which means I can watch LOST at the same time as playing Guild Wars.
Work experience week was probably the best week in my entire life so far. And I say that with no amount of light-heartedness. I'm serious, it was the most enjoyable whole week I've ever had.

I went to work at a place called ASG, which is an IT service provider for the company my Dad works at, called Alinta. ASG basically makes sure Alinta has the computers and software, and also maintains them (ie: fixes them when someone says they're broken). It was a great learning experience for me, because I got to learn about all different kinds of things associated with the job of IT service. For example, I got to learn about Citrix.
Citrix is a Metaframe Database. Basically, somebody puts work software (ie: Office 2003 and other things required for work) on a huge server. Then, a user logs into Citrix, and as long as they have a decent internet connection, they can run whatever program they like, even if the system specs of that program are much higher than the computer they're running off, because Citrix sets it up in a way that the software runs on the server, and takes up it's resources, while all the computer does is act like a client, sending mouse clicks and keystrokes across the connection, to the server, which is running the program.
All a bit hard to explain and visualise without being there looking at it, but it's very useful. Noel, my supervisor, thinks it's the way of the future, because it's cheap and effective. I tend to agree.

I also got to learn a bit about networking, and Desktop support, which was fun. Everyday we would go out for lunch (Me, this girl called Rima, and some of the other guys) and that was great. We'd all go to a restaurant of some kind, instead of some fast-food joint.
Overall, it was a great week.

Now that it's the school holidays though, I'm back into Guild Wars full-on. I've left my guild, EoU, and joined a guild that a friend I met in Tyria is in. It's called CoO (Children of Orion).
CoO is very PvE focused, meaning a lot of us don't have a lot of PvP experience, preferring to help out people with missions and questing and such, instead of fighting for faction points.
As such, CoO have helped me a lot this past week since I've joined. In the past week, I have captured more elite skills, and done more quests faster than I had ever done them when I was with EoU. This is largely because the friendly, enthusiastic members of CoO have helped me in almost every quest I've done since I joined them. I give great praise to CoO, because in my eyes, you're the greatest.
CoO has a lot of adult players. It's fantastic, because it means the level of maturity is much higher than that of most guilds I've encountered. It's real cool to be able to talk with all these people on Skype and on Guild Chat about interesting things instead of "How great I am because I can solo FoW". Not that I have anything against Adrian (my FoW-Soloing friend), I think it's great he knows how to do it. I just think there are more important things to GW than farming for loot, for example, helping out your guild-mates in quests (which by the way, I barely ever received mission/quest assistance from EoU members, because a lot of the time half of them were PvPing).
So kudos to you, Josh, for creating such a strong, friendly guild. CoO is tight-knit, and I hope it stays that way. May it flourish to be renowned throughout the world.
Vote #1 Henry for Officer!

~ecstatic embellishing enticement

Woes of an Addict

2006-03-03T19:00:00.000+11:00

So my mum thinks I'm an Internet Addict! w00t... not.

Starting from the start sounds good.
Basically, two days ago my mum just started with all this weird stuff, about how the school warned all parents that they should be wary of something called "Internet addiction". Then she starts getting really angry 'cos I told her I'd put the trash out in 5 minutes after she asked, which I fully planned to do (and did), however she thought the internet was prohibiting me from doing my chores.
Anyway, then she just comes out with how I'm a liar, and how I call her names (apparently I called her stupid. All I said was she forgot I told her that I was staying at my Dad's house on the weekend), and about how I never talk about my friend Josh anymore.
How irrelevant is that? It was quite bewildering.

So she called my Dad, who then called my school to find out if I was being bullied or struggling with school or whatever, so I had to go through 4 interviews (1 interview per period) today about if I'm feeling alright and that my Dad called the school.
Found this: http://www.netaddiction.com/articles/symptoms.htm
Just to check over the list. It says if I answered yes to 5 or more, I'm addicted. I only answered to three, which could've been caused by any amount of external things. Yeah...
Despite that, my Internet time will be cut back considerably according to my mum, which means I was forced to close all but two ports for all IP addresses but my own on the LAN via Router config, and then disable Web as well. Heh, so l33t.

On the plus side, Work Experience next week. I'm looking forward to it. Apparently I'll be dealing with systems (gotta get some rubber soles) which sounds cool.
Got the paper work all sorted out, so I'm set.

At the moment I'm installing VB 6.0. It doesn't work on my Desktop (something to do with Windows Home I suspect) however it has worked before on my laptop, so I'm trying on that.

I finally got my MSN working again. It's good, don't have to use crappy 4.7 anymore.
Admittedly, I love Microsoft. I think Microsoft is a major contributing factor to the success of technology world-wide. Bill Gates has achieved his goal (a PC in every American home), or nearly has at least. He's just gotta buy out Steve Jobs, and he's set.

Games season has started up again! So that means you'll be seeing a lot more gaming news this year in my blog. Thinking of starting up a podcast too. We'll see how it goes.
Burnout Legends for PSP. Great game, although there is one flaw. When you get to 74%, it is SATANICALLY impossible to beat any more of the game. For me anyway.
By that, I mean that Satan himself must've impaired my playing abilities, so I can't do anymore. Also, even though I've unlocked all 10 headlines, I still don't have a damn Firetruck. They lied!

It seems to me that the gaming industry this year has been primarily focused on Japan and anime/manga style games. ie: Naruto games.
Personally, I can't see everyone's fascination in Naruto beside the fact that everyone in the show happens to have magic powers. Well so what!? So does every other Anime!
Other than that, just a few no-name games coming out for PSP in the news.

Just bummin' around, Visual Studio is still installing.
So, check y'all later.

Adios

~quod bonum tenete

Cover of the week's events

2006-03-01T10:48:00.000+11:00

Friday: Got a haircut
Saturday: Played Tennis
Sunday: Went to the Otway Ranges
Monday: Day off school.

I've often wondered whether the hairdressers at the place I go to can read minds. I try to test them by thinking ridiculous things like "I smear peanut butter and banana juice in my hair of an evening" and see if they respond some way (verbally, or physically).
Anyway, the cut I got was one of the only haircuts I've liked in my life. Yes, it's not bad.
Short, I like it.

Tennis on the weekend was good. At first I was quite apprehensive (as I usually am whilst travelling to a venue where I'll be playing sport).
However, it turned out quite well. I won doubles and singles.
My singles was the more interesting. I was matched against a person with a hearing impairment.
I felt sorry for him, but realised that a Tennis player is a tennis player, despite their nationality, gender, or even impairment. He was an excellent player, with fast serves, and good accuracy.
We played a great match, I was the victor. We both played excellently.
After that, me and Ross (the guy I played) had a chat. It made me feel good to learn that Ross didn't feel self-pity, and he had learned to live with his hearing impairment. It was quite a unique feeling.
I can't imagine having a hearing impairment, and can't imagine the hardships it would bring upon oneself. It was moving stuff...
If I ever become wealthy, I think I'll donate lots of money to the technologies that will help to somehow repair hearing.

Sunday I went on the "Otway Fly" with my Dad and Uncle.
It was really interesting, I'd never done anything quite like it before. Basically, the Otway Fly is a walk through the canopies of a forest.
It was great to spend time with my Dad and Uncle on such an experience, because I don't see my Dad very often, and my Uncle even less frequently.
My Dad posted some pics on flickr. I'll get the link later.

I think I ate too much junk, however, because on Monday I felt ill.
Thus, I spent my day at home from school. It was good to have a break again, 'cos I got to finish some homework, as well as play Guild Wars, and do some reading.
Guild Wars is less thrilling than it used to be, although I think interest may be on the rise soon. I need two more skills and a couple of armour runes to finish my INVINCIMONK!
The Invincimonk is basically a monk, that is invincible (because the healing on it is higher than the damage being done do it). People use InvinciMonks for farming items and cash. Fun!
I can't wait until I've finished getting what I need. It'll be fun to trial the invincimonk.
I've come to love playing as a Monk. Healing people is fun. I'm not sure why... but I enjoy it.
A lot of monks bitch about how they get abused. Well, that's never happened to me. I think it might be the quality of a monk. If I may be a bit arrogant here, I think I've never been verbally abused because I'm a quality monk.

www.applegeeks.com
Started reading that comic. Very interesting.

Also, I've been watching The IT Crowd. It's English comedy about a bunch of Techies that work in a basement office, and their wacky hijinks. I don't usually "do" English comedy, but I've really enjoyed this one. Google it.

That's about it. Work experience next week. I can't wait.

~The hero of Canton, the man they call Jayne.

Supporting Evidence

2006-02-22T19:25:00.000+11:00

Aha! Roy and I were right.

Taken from: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2049863,00.html

THE sullen teenager who lurks in his room surfing the internet for hours on end is not being antisocial and withdrawn. He is actually building his social skills and civic awareness, according to research.

So, seems interesting they're actually studying this stuff now. Awesome.

I've decided that perhaps I'll wait to get BFME2. I'm thinking of finding a version of HL2 at some store somewhere, however it's whereabouts are currently unknown.
Then, with the rest of my cache of cash, I'll pre-order Guild Wars: Factions on Feb 28th instead.

Speaking of, GW: Factions looks awesome. I was watching a preview video released by NCSoft recently, and it looks action packed. New maps, new monsters, many many new skills and two new professions.
It has been the topic of much discussion amongst my peer group. We've all established we're going to start an Assassin, and maybe a Ritualist later in the game.
I think it's probably because none of us bothered to test the Ritualist on PvP Preview Weekend earlier this year, but we know certain strengths/limitations of the Assassin.

Aww man... I gotta get up early on Saturday morning to play Tennis. I find that there is something socially immoral about getting up early on a Saturday morning to play Tennis for your school.
Like 5 days out of the 7 aren't enough, they have to rope you in for half of your weekend also. Damnit.

Winter Olympics finished recently, and I must say that I rather enjoyed these ones.
A lot of people don't know this, but I love Snowboarding. Yes, bold formatting is my new forte, to get the emphasis across. Emphasis on love, because Snowboarding is possibly my greatest passion, even greater than fish n chips, or programming.
So naturally, I sat glued to the screen when the Half Pipe and Boarder cross was on. I was lucky enough to represent my school in Snowboarding two years ago and come third in the state, which was cool.
Wow was Torah Bright awesome. Doing it for the Aussies, I was proud to see she got the highest air. Disappointing she missed out on a medal though, because she stuffed up her first run trying big spins. <3 Torah.
Actually as we speak I'm browsing IGN, and they have a bit about a new Snowboarding docvd (my adaptation on Documentary DVD). Definitely gonna get that.
http://dvd.ign.com/articles/690/690335p1.html

Browsing IGN and OH MY GOD! Top Gun game coming out for the Nintendo DS. Could it be as bad as Tom Cruise's acting, and as short-lived as he is short? By the looks of it, yes.
Doesn't look like it does any better than most run-of-the-mill Flight Sims. This might've done better if the movie had come out last year instead of what... ten years ago?

Also on IGN today, Quake Wars screens:

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/748/748377/imgs_1.html

It looks brilliant. That's one I'll have to look into obtaining.

That just about wraps up current affairs, time to read that review on the Snowboarding Doc.

~The Truth is out there

Guild Wars again...

2006-02-21T21:13:00.000+11:00

Got some Guild Wars achievements to share with you guys.

Today, I finished getting the full set of 15k armour for my R/Mo, Felina Markshot. Took some screenies with my elite weapons.

http://img78.imageshack.us/img78/8467/18id2.jpg

http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/508/22kx.jpg

http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/5181/39su.jpg

<3 Felina.

I've been on the team of GuildWarsHelp for a while now, although quite inactive. That's going to change. I'm now gonna start getting in some content to make up for my share.

Looks like we can get an awesome site going. We've already got some content on the site. Check it out at: http://www.guildwarshelp.com

Not much else happening at the moment. Just playing Guild Wars, and getting on with school.

The guys at AustralianGamer.com, Matt and Yug, brought up an interesting point in their post last/this week. About how games have so many acronyms. It's so true.
I was looking at a list of GW acronyms the other day. There were around 100. I'm sure there are more, but that's as many on the list.

Now, I can only imagine if a game like GW, which is about 50x smaller than the World of Warcraft, has 100+ acronyms, how many does WoW have? In the thousands?

Possibly...

Short post today.
/END Transmission

Of Guild Wars and Comics (etc)

2006-02-15T20:00:00.000+11:00

First on the agenda: Guild Wars.

Yes, I have returned to the lush, beautifully-rendered lands of Tyria to continue my raiding and plundering of dungeons of many an innocent xenophobic dwarf.
It's because one of my friends has also returned, and with him, another person to play with. Guild Wars isn't fun without other people. Hence, more people = more fun.
He has an elementalist, so in order to help him, I played my Elementalist also. Now we're roughly at the same point on our elementalists.
I've also returned to my Ranger a bit for trapping in the Underworld for a bit of cash, and also to my Monk, Kaylee. Kaylee is one of my favourite characters to play, even though she isn't very far in the game. Only up to D'Alessio Seaboard, which is a little further than 1/4.
I just love being a monk. Just... some sort of un-natural (possibly... divine) enjoyment is attained from monking.
However, today I started a Warrior/Monk, purely for the reason of profit. I need a character that can make money, so I plan to use my W/Mo to farm later in the game. Need cash pl0x.
My friend (Mark) has volunteered to help me raise it. So far it's at level 4. She'll get there eventually.

Second on the agenda: Comics.

Just a short note on comics. I love them.
Ever since I was little (not so long ago) I have read comics. Although for the past two years, I've been reading webcomics, which I mention now and again. My favourites, which are also the first webcomics I ever read, are Penny-Arcade and Ctrl+Alt+Del Online.
I've also started reading VGCats with some regularity, as well as Australian Gamer's comic, which I read because, well, they're Aussies. Also, they have a cool podcast I like to listen to.
However, recently I've noticed I always check Penny-Arcade's page before I check any others.
I have come up with a reason for this. It is simply because I value PA's comics more than the others. I love (as I've stated many times before) the writings of Jerry Holkins, and adore the illustration of Mike Krahulik. If I could meet any two people in the entire world, it would be them. That's why I'm going to the States as soon as I can to attend one of the conventions were they make their appearances. I might even stop in at their office. Hell, maybe I'll even climb into their bedrooms while they're asleep and watch them in silent awe... probably not though.

But, I'm still faithful to CAD, and to every other comic I read. Except TheNoobComic. I used to read that, but now it's really really boring. The last 30 something comics have been about some psychotic cyber-sexually inclined elf. It's old now.

For all you Guild Wars players, if you ever need help or just a chat, feel free to add me on any of my characters.
- Inarra Flaemtyr
- Kaylee Flaemtyr
- Errica Flaemtyr
- Felina Markshot

Mark's characters:
- Shadowy Depravation
- Chaotic Shade
- Mantle Of Truth

Josh's characters:
- Enter The Fold
- Montium Healer
- Kindled Fury
- Death Omen

We're all friendly, just if you add mark or josh, make sure to tell them where you found their name. Although watch out for Mark (he likes to... scam people sometimes). If you're looking for a guild, just talk to me and I can hook you up with our Guild Leader. She can get you in. It's an awesome guild (80+ helpful members).

Adios.

~ in faith we pass knowledge

I can't believe it took me this long...

2006-02-08T19:18:00.000+11:00

Well, in order to cure my disease (Lackofelderscrollsitis), I had to find a game.
Now, this cure has manifested itself in the form of Battle for Middle-Earth II.

As a long time fan of the books, and somewhat of the movies (although they slaughtered the books. Not quite as badly as HP did with Goblet of Fire), I am eager to get into this.
What's more, it couldn't come at a better time. Instead of buying Half Life 2, I'm going to buy BFMEII with my b'day cash. Then, after I get employment later this year, I can buy Half Life, and by then, it's expansion.

So, I can't believe it took me this long to jump on the BFME bandwagon. It surprises me. I actually admit (although somewhat miserably) that I haven't had the fortune of playing the first one. Majorly, because I don't have an Xbox, and up to a point a few weeks back, a decent PC either.
So, now I can afford BFME, and also have great specs for it.

Battle for Middle Earth II sees the introduction of the Create A Hero sequence. Basically, it means you can build a custom hero, with any armour, any weapons of any of the major races in the Middle Earth tales, and also you can set your attributes (speed, strength and the like).
I plan to be a Wizard.
I've been watching a few gameplay videos, and it all looks exciting. The visuals on BFME are spectacular. The best of an RTS I've ever seen. And the unit-structure looks sound. So much variety to choose from, yet just enough to keep track of in the heat of battle.

It seems that it follows a somewhat Rome: Total War formula. In other words, you can select a large (and we're talking larger than the 12 units of WC3 and Starcraft) amount of your soldiers to forge onwards into battle against beings such as Trolls, Uruk-Hai, and goblins. Also, goblins can scale walls along with spiderlings, which have influenced me a little to the dark side. But Wizards! Can't get them on Sauron's side (as far as I know. If you can, I'm so there).
Unless you're playing as Sauron's forces (who I refer to as the Horde, as they remind me ever so much of Blizzard's Horde), in which campaign you march against the likes of dwarves and elves. Turns out the final mission is actually a siege on Rivendell (for the evil side).
Yay for evilness!

Recommended Specs:
System Requirements:
Microsoft Windows XP
PC with 1.6 Ghz equivalent or higher processor
256 MB of system RAM
512 MB of system RAM for online play with 3 or more players
6.0 GB available hard disk space
16x speed or faster CD-ROM drive
64 MB GeForce3-class video card
We will only officially support cards with ATI and Nvidia chipsets, and the Intel GMA 900 and GMA 950 products. We are not supporting the GeForce 4 MX.
Sound card with speakers or headphones
Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device
56.6 Kbps or better modem for 1v1 online play
Broadband connection for online play with 3 or more players
DirectX 9.0c or above

So, not too high end, but enough so that most computers these days can run it. My old lappy could probably run it with the visuals set to low with some small amount of success.

It is being released as a Standard Edition, but there is also a Collector's edition being released (for a measly $10 more). I am definitely getting the Collector's Edition.
It includes a "making of" of BFME2, I'm told it's likened to the Halo 2 bonus disk, where they show you what goes on at Bungie Studios with the animators and all the cool geeks etc.
It also has a lot of other bonus content, like tracks of the in-game music. I can admit with geeky pride that I actually listen to the LOTR tracks on occasion. My favourite is Concerning Hobbits actually.

Another large factor that my influence your purchase of Battle for Middle-Earth II is that... wait for it... Tom Bombadil makes an appearance. Everybody's favourite merry super-magic-benevolent-singing-overlord is making an appearance as something like a Super-Hero. He can pretty much destroy anything in his path, all the while singing and dancing. Now that's style.

How now brown cow, that's all it for today. Check back regularly.

~Hey! Come derry-dol, merry dol...

Oblivion is right, 'cos that's where my money's going.

2006-02-07T21:17:00.001+11:00

Taken from www.ctrlaltdel-online.com

So we still don't have a concrete date on Oblivion yet, but they have released the system specs, if you haven't seen them already:

Recommended:

3 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
1 GB System RAM
ATI X800 series, Nvidia GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card

Minimum System Requirements:

Windows XP
512MB System RAM
2 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
128MB Direct3D compatible video card and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver;
8x DVD-ROM drive
4.6 GB free hard disk space
DirectX 9.0c (included)
DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
Keyboard, Mouse

Pretty hefty, so you may want to start gearing up now for the hopeful March release. That is, if you're planning to get the game on the PC like I am.

The way I see it, when you look at Morrowind and the staggering accumulation of player-made content for the PC version, and then realize that Xbox players got none of that, the option is clear. Now of course I realize not everyone has a choice between platforms.

But if you do have that choice, I think in the long run you'll be happier with the open-ended PC platform that can extend your gameplay infinitely. Consoles are catching up in terms of downloadable content, but are still restricted to developer offerings. And I find the fanbases are by far more fervent and diligent when it comes to creating new game content.

So, my PC is so close to the recommended specs, but not quite there. Thus, I won't be purchasing Oblivion. I enjoyed Morrowind enough to have fond memories of it, but not enough to spend thousands on upgrading my PC just for Oblivion.
Maybe when Half Life 3 comes out I will.

Speaking of HL, I've decided to purchase Half Life 2 for my birthday. Now they've got all the "Platinum" packages and crap, so I get like 500 bonus things for half the original price. Dude... excellent...
Mostly I'm looking forward to CS: Source. I've always been a fan of the CS games. The physics engine 'Source' that runs Half Life 2 and the latest addition to the Counter Strik titles is near flawless. I just love the way that Half Life and CS lets you take control of the maximum potential of the engine, and play with it.
I'm also looking forward to the SDK that comes with the kit. SDK stands for Software development kit. I've played around with this on a friend's PC, and man, is it cool.

So suffice it to say I'm pretty psyched.

I've been put onto a new podcast, called Engadget. http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/20/engadget-podcast-064-01-20-06/
You can find the one I'm listening to right now there. Just use your common sense to find the other ones.
Anyway, it's not bad. I still prefer Australian Gamer... probably because it's Australian. I can relate to how they're so pissed about the destruction of Aus gaming companies like Ratbag, because it's a massive dent to Australia's gaming industry. We're a small part of the industry.
Anyway, Matt and Yug are cool (Australian Gamer) however the Engadget guys have some interesting things to say about gadgets, hardware, and what's going on in the IT world in general. It's all good.

Yeah, I still endorse podcasts. Love the cast. Although I don't like iPods. Ironic?

Other than that, not much else happening. Found out I'm working at an IT Service Provider and I'm going to be doing PC maintenance for Work Experience, which is alright. I just hope they're cool guys, I can't take negative people.

EDIT: Oh yeah! RDC Studios coming up soon. More on that later.

Peace

Social or Anti Social?

2006-02-05T14:15:00.000+11:00

I was reading an article the other day... or was I talking to someone? I don't know.
Anyway, the point is, the other day I heard that this person's parents think that he spends too much time on the computer.
Oh! Now I remember. I was reading my friend's blog. Moving on.
Now, he brought up an interesting post. Roy (my friend) said that his parents think that the Internet makes him antisocial, and that the belief that people are fat because they sit on the computer all day is true.
So I'm going to address these two issues.

Firstly, being social mandates the act of socializing. Now, I'd say communication with another person counts as socializing. Where else but the Internet can you socialize with thousands of people?
Okay, perhaps if you were the president, but for the Regular Joe's like you and me, yeah, the Internet is virtually (no pun intended) the only place to do it.
So I ask you, wouldn't that make the Internet possibly the most social place on the planet?

Secondly, it's not that people that sit on computers are fat, it's that people that sit on computers generally don't watch what they eat.
Personally, I eat very little during a day of Internet/Gaming. My focus is all on the goals I am trying to achieve whilst connected to the net, not on food.
These stereotypical "Fat Geeks" just don't watch what they eat. All they have to do is eat healthily, combined with some sort of daily exercise (perhaps walking to and from the computer to the fridge to get a salad roll?)

So it's not the computer's fault, it's the user. The computer isn't forcing a person to eat loads and do very little exercise.

There you go, my rant.
If you want to read more about Roy, you can read the quoted passage here: http://roy.outerweb.org/index.php?p=news&pid=6

And the rest of his blog here: http://roy.outerweb.org/index.php?p=news

Enjoy your weekends!

New Virus

2006-02-03T18:50:00.000+11:00

I try to post here as much as possible.

Anyway, we have a new virus on the loose. Here's a copy of the email our school techs sent us: (Note, these guys are moronic)

I would like to bring to your attention a new e-mail worm commonly known as KAMA SUTRA that spreads under the guise of pornographic content and has jumped to the top of the worldwide virus charts.

When run on a Windows PC, the worm copies itself to shared network locations and sends itself to e-mail addresses found on the target computer. The pest includes a timed attack that attempts to disable antivirus and firewall software and delete certain files, including Office documents, on the third day of the month.

The worm, dubbed W32/Nyxem-E or KAMA SUTRA, arrives attached to an e-mail message. It uses a variety of subject lines, including "School girl fantasies gone bad." The body text also varies, but it can include references to the Kama Sutra, the ancient Sanskrit book with pictures and explanations about different sexual positions. The worm executes when the user opens the attachment.

This worm feeds on people's willingness to receive salacious content on their desktop computer so please don't be fooled by this email. Remember the golden rule:- IF IN DOUBT, DELETE !!!!!!!

So there, for all those uninformed.
Now I get to send emails to all my friends following careful details that are outlined in this email to scare the piss out of them.

So the last week wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, nothing really important has happened in the news for me to speak about (eg Cronulla beach). However, in one of our classes, we were debating whether it was morally right to employ 12-year-old Peruvian children in order to increase profit over employing Australians and making a smaller profit.
Generally, the ideal of an organisation is to make the highest annual profit/turnover possible. So that means doing anything you can.
However, as human beings, when should our conscience kick in and say "Hey! You may be making mega bucks, but this is wrong!"
Well, perhaps it isn't.

If Australian business owners are employing 12 year old Peruvians, they're giving them opportunities. A lot of peruvian families are impoverished, so paying them is helping to support their families, right? Right. However, I think $4 a month is a bit lean.
So to meet a happy medium, I think we should be paying them the Australian minimum wage (at least, which is about as much as part-time teens make in AUS anyway) per hour.
While this could create problems for the Peruvian economy etc etc, we're not going into that now.
So, send me your input.

If you've been away from Penny-Arcade, get back to it. It gets better daily.
In relevant news, Ctrl Alt Delete Online have released their first animated episode. For "premium subscriber".
So we can rule CAD out of the webcomic equation. They're commercialising. Tim, I admired your work for many years, but now you're just being a fool by selling your stuff. Clearly, you will become more dedicated to the Animated series, as it makes you money. Good luck with the future.

Penny Arcade almost did the same (or so I thought at first). When I read Gabe's section of the newspost, I thought they were also selling-out. However, later in the passage I realised he was joking, and my respect for him rose higher (if possible).
Love Jerry and Mike.

Not much else happening. Got promoted to Tech Support on a forum, so now I'm basically a mod, but with less privileges. I'm waiting to see when two of our number bring down our group from the inside in their power-bids. Grab some popcorn.

Peace

School year

2006-01-30T21:20:00.000+11:00

PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill...

Yes, I'd say ill indeed. School starts tomorrow. I leave behind freedom, joy, and many good memories.
However, there is one upside to school. This year, we begin VCE. I've elected to study IT Units 1 & 2, so we get to learn a whole new range of stuff (although I probably already know most of it, as has been the case for IT the previous three years).

If anyone has read Xanadu by Kublai Kahn, they'd know just how good it is. Xandadu would have to be my favourite piece of poetry at the moment.
That's right, the gamer geek likes poetry. I also like Art, Tennis, and writing.

So yeah, another school year begins. Wish me luck.

Underworld: Evolution

2006-01-23T17:07:00.000+11:00

Okay, it got bad reviews.
But I didn't think it was that bad. Underworld: Evolution had a lot of killing.
The only part of the movie I disliked is the fact Michael (played by Scott Speedman) the Hybrid Lycan/Vampire, is able to rip of the jaws of his enemies with almost ridiculous ease.
This one had some cool history. Some back-story to the Lycan-Vampire war, which I thought was good, sort of completed the story. Also, Kate Beckinsale playing a sexy, leather-clad vampire just improves the movie.

SPOILER WARNING
So now Selene is a hybrid, it doesn't leave much for the next sequel (because there will be one). All I see is Selene and her boyfriend Michael running (possibly... flying?) around the world, ripping off jaws and pumping lead into people. I have to say, I adored the scene were Michael and Selene take off their clothes. I very much liked that part (What? Kate Beckinsale is scorching!)
/END

It was good. I can see what the reviewers were talking about though, there was a certain lack of storyline to this.

Oh, did I mention Kate Beckinsale is hot?

Back

2006-01-22T01:44:00.000+11:00

Just lettin' everyone know that I'm back.
It wasn't too bad, a lot of overcast days which led to us being home one day early. I'm not complaining though, I got a new PC, which means a lot more Guild Wars from now on.
Underworld: Evolution came out last week. I think I'll see it tomorrow.
As opposed to the first, I know relatively little about the sequel, so we'll see what happens.
I finally got around to listening to a John Lennon song. While I acknowledge that The Beatles were good (I like their music), John Lennon's songs were pathetic wastes of time.

So yeah, woo, Guild Wars. It's 2am, talk later.

2006-01-05T23:53:00.000+11:00

Pambula. Beaches, Caravan Park, friends. Not such a bad place to go. Seriously, if my family wasn't there, it'd be paradise.
Nah, it's really just my sisters that dampen the experience.
Pambula is a little ways away from Merimbula. The place we're staying is called the Holiday Hub, and it's popular. But it's good. We managed to get a spot right next to the beach, which is cool, because the only thing to do is bodyboard.
At night I plan to spend my time playing PSP. By the way, I got 1500 Takedowns today. I'm very proud.
Nothing much else is really going on. Me and my friends have realised that we don't like this guy who hangs with us anymore. He's just a depresser, leeching off the hapiness of those he associates with.
Okay, I just remembered. The other day, my Dad found the Firefly DVD at the video store. So he called me up and asked if I'd like him to drop it off when he's in the neighbourhood. I said yes, because I'd already seen Serenity, and it fucking owns. Without any previous knowledge, I proudly say that Serenity owns.

Alright, so the DVD contained 8 episodes. I watched them all over about a 6 hour period. Wow...
Firefly is one of those shows you just pickup one day, and watch, and after you just sit there and think "Does writing of that quality really exist, or am I merely dreaming again?".
Joss Whedon has done an extraordinary job with Firefly. He brought us the likes of Angel and Buffy, but personally I think Firefly outshines both. Just the whole character scene alone beats Angel, and the action is unmatched. Each story has parts that show more and more of the characters, and what they are in essence. I think this is Firefly's strongest aspect, it's characters.
Firefly follows the story of Malcolm Reynolds, an ex-sargeant in a war fought on futuristic planets. He was on the losing side, called the Independants. The whole story is so deep I can't explain all of it, so I'll just summarise:
1) Earth became crowded, so we all migrated to new solar systems to find more space.
2) Through a process called "Terraforming", we morphed planets so that they became liveable.
3) A group of people got together and decided the planets should be united. They called themselves The Alliance (appropriately).
4) The Alliance went to the other planets telling them to submit to their government or die.
5) A group opposed The Alliance. They were called The Independants, who thought the planets should be able to govern themselves.
6) Bloody wars ensued, ending in a place called Serenity Valley. The Independants, let by Malcolm Reynolds (Mal) fought The Alliance, and 2 months later, they lost.
So Mal (in Firefly) grabbed himself a ship, put together a crew (consisting of his second-in-command during the war, Zoe) and took to the pirate's life.
Mal and his crew are different than the normal pirates though. They're very moral, and instead of always seeing the payout, they generally do what's best for the majority (as long as the majority isn't The Alliance).
I suggest everybody goes out and at least rents/obtains a copy of a Firefly episode. It's marvelous.

That's about it. Just watching an episode of LOST. Thinking of going over one of the Firefly scripts later, as I haven't seen some episodes. It's a shame FOX cancelled Firefly before it's time. The fanbase alone should prove it was worth keeping. Maybe in the future...

'night.

Happy New Year

2006-01-01T00:10:00.000+11:00

Happy New Year to my readers.
It is now officially Winter-EEN-mas. So go to www.wintereenmas.com to find out how to celebrate for the whole month of WEMas.
I promise 2006 will be a new year of SO entertainment. We will delve into the geeky where no geek has gone before.
As ever, I shall still report on real-world goings-on, and my opinion about them. But hey, it's the New Year. We won't be hearing stories like those for at least another day or two.

So yeah, Happy New Year, and Happy Wintereemas.
Good Gaming

Trip to the folks

2005-12-31T11:38:00.000+11:00

So, the last two days weren't so bad.
Me and my Dad went up to Ballarat (country town) for my Grandpa's 80th birthday.
80th... it's a ripe old age.
Anyway, it wasn't so bad. We drove 2 hours to Ballarat, where we had lunch at a restaurant. It was strange seeing all of these relatives that I hadn't seen for years. Meh, they were all still cool.
After lunch, we returned to my Grandpa's house, where we spent a few hours figuring out the new digi-cam. It was alright, because my cousins were pretty techie as well, which meant we were able to get it all set up.
Then I spent about another hour playing Burnout.
Can you say "1000+ Takedowns"? That's right. I now have over 1000 takedowns.
Moving on, we stayed the night at a hotel.

In the morning, we got dressed and headed back to Grandpa's place, where we said our goodbyes and left.
So yeah, not a bad 2 days in my opinion.

I've almost finished reading Eldest, the sequel to Eragon.
It's a really good book. I think I've got about 100 pages left. I suggest everybody to find out about it.

So recently I've gotten into Podcasts. At the moment, I'm listening to GeekCast and Australian Gamer. Pro.
They're seriously really good. Although I suppose you would have to be a geek (such as moi) to really get it/be interested in them. Has some good stuff though.

So, I'm a member of Sals Runescape Forum (although I've stopped playing Runescape, I like to debate) and I suggested that the Admin create a User Group called Tech Support for me and a few others. He's agreed, but he needs a majority vote from the mods. At the last I heard it's 9-7 in my favour. Hopefully it sticks.
Not that I want power, more that I feel that the sign of recognition would help people understand that our opinions on Tech matter.

Not much else happening around here, just a quiet day. Happy New Year, and lookout for Guild Wars Help (www.guildwarshelp.com) to be realsed New Year's Day.

The Chronicles of Narnia

2005-12-27T22:36:00.000+11:00

Chronically bored, chronicles of Narnia.
The Chronicles of Narnia weren't as bad as I thought they would be.

Sure, the ending was short. I'm not going to describe the movie in case you don't want it to get spoiled, but let me say this.
George Lucas's special effects co. did the CGI for this movie, and it was great. Just for that you should see it.

Anyway, I was at my Dad's house. It's fun there. Lots of pepsi and food. Also, Scrubs. Man, Scrubs is the best show ever. I can relate to Perry Cox on so many levels (mostly because I hate annoying people and view myself as better than almost everyone I work with... only because it's true)
My Dad has almost all of Season 4, so when he finishes getting it from STRICTLY LEGITIMATE SOURCES he's going to lend it to me .

The great thing is that Heather Graham does Scrubs in her off time. She plays the bubbly psychologist Molly Clock. And she is hoooooot... If you don't know who she is, get to know her here:
http://home.catv.ne.jp/pp/ginoue/gnu/images/bik2.jpg
But she leaves to Milwaukee for about 13 episodes in the season, which sucks, because the only other person you have to look at is Elliot. She's not exactly great, although without Heather standing next to her... eh.

Yeah, it was fun.
As promised, about the Boxing Day sales.

Well, I didn't get out there myself (relief), but from eye-witness reports, there was barely anything affordable that was discounted. How usual.
So yeah, Boxing Day Sales = Disappointment once again.

At the moment, I am so incredibly bored. There is nothing happening. On the 29th, I have to head to my Grandpa's 80th. Full of old people and despised relatives. Where else would I want to be? (Except in the middle of a house-fire perhaps).

I said we could chat about some upcoming games. So lets do that.
*********************************************************

Sorry, there are no upcoming games, because game manufacturing season is over! This is the time all the Devs step up the pace to get a jump on the competition. Nobody is selling any games, so they don't have to worry about any immediate problems, therefore everyone works harder, to make awesome demos for E3. I can't wait. Hopefully Gearbox will come out with another stunning game. Looking forward to seeing some new Ubisoft titles as well. Speaking of, if anybody has heard news of a Farcry 3, email jakerius@gmail.com

For Christmas, I mentioned I got a 51cm TV without an aerial. Well, we got an aerial, and got the TV working. Pretty good reception, actually.

Well, that's all for now. I might just go off and dream about what making a Scrubs episode would be like. Man, those guys are cool.
Oh, just a quickie. 5th Season Scrubs is being worked on right now! I found out in Zach Braff's blog. Pretty cool what you can find with Google. Hopefully the new season will come out in Australia next year. Apparently the US gets it in Jan '06. I hate you US. Still... our country is better.

'Til next time, True Believers.

Sony PSP

2005-12-25T20:14:00.000+11:00

Gamers and others alike, welcome to another post.
It's been a long week, rushing off to this place and that for this thing and that.
On Monday, I headed over to my friends house where I found out he had just received a PSP for free, because his Dad was pally with the owner of Download.com
So I got to play with that for a while. Let me say, that was my first experience with the new handheld, and I came away with a fantastic first impression. It left me deep in thought that night, as I went to sleep, as to how such power and insanely beautiful graphics could fit into the little thing.
The next day, Josh (my friend) and I headed over to another of my friends' party. Mark.
Great guy. We went to DarkZone (laser challenge). I got my ass kicked because everyone was wearing black, but I had to be trendy and wear white. Naturally, I glowed like a torch.
After that, we retired to his house for some Guild Wars, and also World of Warcraft, which I must say enticed me to subscribe. World of Warcraft is vast. Very vast. I learnt you can create a maximum of 240 characters over the 24 servers... amazing. The land is very detailed, and the character emoticons, and overall character development was to be marvelled at. However, a quick dose of PvP in Guild Wars cured the WoW fever, and now I'm good to go.
Sadly however, Guild Wars still pisses all over my laptop, which means until the end of January, I won't be on much. End of Jan = New PC --> Lots of GW.

So Christmas went pretty sweet. That's right, in Australia, we had Christmas hours before most in the world. I'd like to take this moment to say "Suck it up Americans! You may have a higher dollar value, but we get Christmas early, so there!"
I was frivolously unwrapping gifts at 7am this morning, when I picked up a golden wrapped box. I pondered what could be inside for a moment, and then ripped the wrapping off as carefully as all the rest (meaning not carefully at all, for you slow ones).
Lo and Behold, I had received the object of Monday night's dreams.
"Holy Shit!" I exclaimed in surprise and excitement. My very own PSP. And with it; Burnout: Legends, which is a beauty of a game, by the way. So lets talk about the PSP.

For starters, the basic interface is marvellous. You can play with it for several minutes before you need to put a UMD on, because you can just play around with the shiny lights and themes, as well as different settings. I quickly found that I needed a special USB Cable to transfer between PC and PSP (what the fuck is the IR port for, then? Why not use that, Sony? What's that? You want to make money by ripping people off, making them buy a commercially available USB cable? That's what I thought). Despite that rambling, the PSP is really really good.
So after figuring it out, I loaded up Burnout: Legends.
Firstly, let me say the depth of the graphics blew me away. Jesus, Burnout is one of the sweetest games I have ever played. And it's so simple.
Drive Fast --> Smash Cars. Perfect formula.
Not only are the graphics and gameplay great, but the music soundtrack is funky. Many tunes including Rock and Alt. Rock for you to listen to as you burn up the streets, littering car debris all over the US, Europe, and "Far East".
According to the "Driver Details" menu I have open before me, I have currently completed 18% of the game, completed 37/175 events, won 1/4 trophies, received 27 out of the 89 available cars, and made 6/20 signature takedowns (area and context sensitive takedowns that award you a little photo of a special crash in your scrapbook).
Burnout gets quite hard as you progress. Already I'm finding the World Tour mode getting difficult, but then again, it's been a long time since I've gamed on a handheld, and even on a console other than PC.
Also, Burnout has received many awards on several renowned websites, and in several Australian gaming magazines. Great prezzie.

One problem with the PSP is that after playing it for a while, not only do you end up with blisters on your fingers, but you discover your typing on a keyboard goes to shits, which is why it takes me so long to write this.

Apart from the PSP, I got a 51cm TV (Which doesn't have an aerial included... fucking swiss), chocolates, and some new clothes for my wardrobe. Pretty sweet haul, eh?

So, Wintereenmas approaches in a few days. My birthday is in February, so I'm gonna ask as an early b'day present for some of the CAD merchandise. You can find Tim Buckley's sweet merch here: http://www.zestuff.com/product.php?productid=98&cat=18&page=1
Seriously, what better way to celebreate Winter-een-mas than sporting some CAD merch?

If you don't know what Winter-een-mass is, you'd best start from the start: http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20030127
Read the comics there until the end of January. Then go to the 2004 in the comic archive, and read all the January comic strips. Then to go to the 2005 in the comic archive and read all the Jan strips, and that should bring you up to speed.
You'd think that a comic couldn't make such a change to the world, mais non, many I have talked to on the internet are celebrating Winter-een-mas. And if you're reading this, I expect you to celebrate it somehow also... or I'll find you... and I'll bring my fork.
Just found a good link to learn more about WEMas. http://www.wintereenmas.com/
Yes, it says 25-31st. But the season lasts all of January.

That's pretty much it for this week. Going out tomorrow with my Dad and Mark to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Should be exciting. I'm hoping to use the $100 Coles Myer card my Dad gave me to pickup some PSP accessories tomorrow as well.
Tune in next week, true believers, as we delve into the business of the Boxing Day sales, the event we call New Year's Eve/Day, and also, the beginning of WEMas season, and what you should do to celebrate. Hell, we might even discuss some upcoming games, too.

Enjoy your Christmas, I enjoyed mine :D

Overview of the past week's events.

2005-12-16T23:07:00.000+11:00

Evening, True Believers,
No doubt that whatever country you live in, you've heard about the riots at Cronulla, Sydney. Okay, I've pretty much heard enough about it, so let me give you the run down.
Basically, some lebs had been harrassing the community of Cronulla for the past few years, so last weekend a mob of drunks took to the streets against the lebs. After this, the lebs responded by getting 500 of them to run down streets in Cronulla and smashing everything in their path. Following that, 100 police were put on the streets, which was increased a day later to 450 police, which was increased last night to 1500 police. They mean business.
Fuck these lebanese australians. Look, I'm not a racist person, however this isn't about race. This is about what the bloody ignorant lebs are being taught during their upbringing, that leads to them disrespecting this country and it's inhabitants. Lebanese children are being brought up to believe that Australia is some sort of "Go-Between", and that they will all return to Lebanon one day when the warring is over. So this leads to leb mentality being "Who cares what we do to this country, we're all going back to Lebanon soon, so whatever". Guess what asshole? Unless you do something about it personally, you're never going back to Lebanon. The fighting isn't gonna stop because in your fantasy fairy land it has. Deal with it, and in the mean time, learn some respect. Bitch.

Itching for my new pc so I can get down to some gaming. At the moment, all I have on my laptop is Guild Wars, Season 4 of Futurama, and Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire (movies).
So... my tether is wearing thin. Lately I've developed a bizarre intolerance for people that talke "txt tlk" (buy a vowel?). I can't stand people that talk to me on MSN/IRC/Forums that talk this modified English that makes them look retarded. "hai2u (Note: No caps, Abbreviation, misspelling. You're going to jail). wuu2 (retard language for "What are you up to?")i wontd 2 no if u wr doin nethin 2nite.(Misspelling, no caps, substitution of letters for numbers, abbreviation. What the hell is wrong with you people?).
Seriously, this new "Gen X" language just pisses me right off. If you want to send me an email with the intention of thoroughly annoying me, send it in "txt tlk".

Usually my response to these is something along the lines of "If I ever meet you in real life, remind me to with a and watch as you .
Or just something along the lines of "Congratulations, you're an inspiration to botched lobotomy patients everywhere" followed by a long winding explanation of why the person is completely dislexic and how my mind is boggled at the continuation of their body to function.
As you can see, I'm angry. No school == No outlet of anger. I could write this in a If statement.
if{school == true} then
{findFault == angerOutlet} else,
{callpeoplenamesacrossthenet == true};

Red vs Blue just keeps getting more dull. A while ago, it was interesting. The storylines were elaborate enough to seem dynamic. However, now it's just "Stand around, talk about stuff that could've been scripted by a five year old". Eugh...

I think I've got a link to replace Google News. www.bash.org has provided me with some amount of hilarity that could only be possibly felt at ages 14-25 (30 if you were dropped on your head as a child).

If you haven't been keeping up with Penny-Arcade lately, I suggest you go and bury your head in a sandbox, cover your body with kerosene, and get a loved one to light you on fire.
Penny-Arcade is perhaps the greatest thing I have ever read. Have I mentioned Jerry Holkins to be my idol? Seriously... there's God... but then there's Jerry Holkins. And I don't even believe in God, so I guess that leaves on logical conclusion.

Anyway, there ya go. Nice juicy post for you. Although from the amount of Comments I get, I doubt anybody cares. Believe me when I say the feeling is mutual.

Night,

IRC Trivia!

2005-12-12T10:14:00.000+11:00

Spent about two hours trivia-ing with some friends on IRC last night. That was some crazy fun. The crazy fun you can only have by being 14, and after 3 bottles of Pepsi. Ahhh... being a kid owns.
I've started playing a game called Runescape again, and I feel really bad because the game is awful. The graphics are poor, and everyone hates each other. But when I can get my old account back, I'll probably sign up for paid membership again, and go to worlds where there is only peace.

I never really appreciated how hard it was for Webcomic Artists like Tim Buckley and Jerry Holkins to write long news posts on their site until I started this blog.

Anyway, I'll update if anything special happens.

Van Nguyen: Why the Controversy?

2005-12-09T09:26:00.000+11:00

Alright, I decided to add onto this Van Nguyen thing.
You may or may not know who he his. If you're an Australian, you would have to know, because it's been all over the news.
He's a drug-smuggler. He was caught (unfortunately) by the Singaporean police. Now, I say unfortunately not because I bought heroin from him, but because the Singaporean police are very harsh. Van Nguyen was an Australian citizen, so he would've been treated to a fair trial if he had been caught here.
So this Van Nguyen guy gets caught by one of the cruelest nations when it comes to criminals, and drug trafficking is a serious offense in Singapore. The trial he gets goes like this.

Speaker: Mr. Van Nguyen has been caught smuggling drugs.
Judge: Die.

So the other day Van Nguyen was hung at the Changi prison. Many mourners from his Vietnamese family attended a funeral service the day after.
However,
During his time in prison, waiting to be hung, Australia was in uproar. The government tried a prisoner-exchange with the Singaporeans, but it was declined. All over the radio, and the television, and in the newspapers, there were people spewing that Van Nguyen was to be hung.
Hello? Are we talking about the same person? He was caught committing a serious crime, which is one of the major contributing factors to our country's decline. If he was willing to do the crime, he must be willing to do the time. All the people at his funeral are just bullshitting when they say he was a good person. He imported/exported drugs, for Christ's sake! You're not a good person if you commit to that business.
Honestly, I can't see why everyone has a problem with him dying. It's his fault, he should've sorted it out himself.

First Post

2005-12-08T23:45:00.000+11:00

Some idiots may post stupid things like "Hai, welcome to my blog lolz11!". I don't believe in that. Forget warm welcomes. Let's face it. You're here because you were intrigued, or you were mis-directed. Nobody really cares about how welcome you are to this blog, it's the Internet. Privacy is taboo.

So John Lennon's been dead for 25 years. As a member of today's youth, I have no idea who he was. So as is typical of my generation, I'm going to go and download one of his songs, and see if I like it.

Nope, not really. That makes today just like any other day. Except we lost our dog. Found him at 11pm at some ladies house. I think she wanted to keep him.
Listening to Triple M right now, an Australian radio station. If you're ever in Australia, tune into 105.1
I heard Fiji get it too, not sure what the frequency is there though. This guy called 'Spoonman' is on right now. Very opinionated. I like how he speaks. His mannerism earns him my respect, so I've placed him right up there with Maddox.

X3: Reunion is coming out. To be honest, I didn't like X2: The Threat much. It didn't captivate me as games such as Starcraft or Quake 3 and other classics do. It may have been because I didn't have a joystick, and found the keyboard controls hard to manage on such a versatile game, but with my new desktop arriving at the end of Jan. I think I'll buy one, along with a new copy of X3.

Saw the trailer of X-Men 3 today. They've ruined Beast forever. I was looking forward to seeing Kelsey Grammer, as I'm a long time fan of Frasier, but it's not his fault. The makeup homo's ruined him. I think my feelings are partially represented here: www.penny-arcade.com/comic.php
I encourage everyone to read PA by the way. Penny Arcade is one of the best webcomics I've ever read, I've been reading it since the beginning.
Another bit of web-media I've been enthralled in is Red vs Blue. I'm thoroughly considering a sponsorship so I can get all the episodes early. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Google Red vs Blue, you worthless piece of - sorry, got a bit carried away. Seriously though, if you don't know what Red vs Blue is, you've been living in an Internet cardboard box.

That's all I can think of for now. Remember kids, drugs only ruin your life.