This is what happens when you’re bored in dorms…

It took a few hours but it was TOTALLY WORTH IT.

 

There are pictures too!

 

I love dorm life.

Some musings on University Life (and other random things) [UPDATED]

I’ve been here for about 2/3 weeks now and I’m enjoying it.  There’s a lot of freedom and you don’t have people constantly nagging at you.  The course moves much more quickly too, they literally throw you into the deep end.  Well anyway, here’s some thoughts on my life here:

Yea, this picture is totally irrelevant but it was one of the first things to come up after searching “university life” on Google images.

• My dorm shower is weird.  It has two turney knob things, the one above controls the pressure of the water and the one below controls temperature.  Simple, right?  Well, no.  The pressure is highly adjustable, which is good, gives some great showers.  The temperature knob has a sticker on that goes from red to blue, obviously red means hot and blue means cold in this context.  That’s a given.  So the first time I get in, I put it to about half-way which sounds logical; then I’d adjust the temperature from there.  The shower’s built so you have to close the shower door or water goes everywhere, so there’s no escaping the shower water either.  At first, the water was cold (which is predictable because most showers start of cold then get warmer), I let it get warmer then start showering.  But then something strange happens… it continues to get hotter.  To the point where it’s scaldingly hot, no kidding.  I immediately dial it down a notch, but it’s still hot.  This repeats a few times until I reach the very blue end where it’s meant to be cold.  It’s not.  It’s actually still hot.  So basically, the shower goes from HOT –> SCALDING –>THE TEMPERATURE WATER BOILS AT (100 degrees) –> SKIN-MELTINGLY HOT –> MIDDLE OF THE SUN HOT.  They should replace the sticker on it with a one that goes from red to black, the current one is much to deceptive.  To add insult to injury, after I come out my dorm-mate tells me: “Oh yea, the shower is really hot BTW.”  *cue ¬¬ face*
• The university campus is big.  And I mean REALLY BIG.  So big, that I had to emphasise this with bold capital SHOUTY letters.  I was there the other day and was walking around with a friend and we walked while talking, then after some time we looked up and both said:  “Where the f*ck are we?”  We had never seen this before, which was a bit unnerving although it was quite cool looking.  And yes, we did get out alive.
• Apparently the dorm blocks Xbox Live, which sucks.  Even though I didn’t bring my Xbox with me; I’ve been meaning to but never got around to doing it and would also need a TV/Monitor.
• I’ve started learning two new programming languages: Python and Haskell (with OpenGL).  I had heard of Python before, mainly through Google’s efforts on their Google Apps and Google App Engine.  But I was WTF with Haskell at first, having never heard of it.  I thought there was some relation to PASCAL but turns out there’s no connection whatsoever.
• PsychoDuck is back.
• The computers they have at the computer labs in the Computer Science block are SWEEEEETTT.  Too bad they run Linux which means a lot of games don’t run on them (I’ve already tried my RTW flash pen drive).
• I’ve joined a few societies including BBCSoc (British Born Chinese Society) and HKSoc (Hong Kong Society).  I’m thinking of joining CompSoc (Computer Society) as they hold LAN nights (followed by curry apparently) and y’know, who wouldn’t wanna be cool and join the computer society?
• Speaking of societies, I now play for the HKSoc football team.  It’s currently just 5-a-side but there’s gonna be 11-a-side matches soon.  But having tried out playing in the league last week, it seems to be a step down from the league I was playing back at my home town.  Well, it’s a lot less ferocious anyway.  Oh and the game I played last week was for SPARTA FC.  No kidding.  Turns out HKSoc weren’t playing –and the guy forgot to text me *shakes fist angrily*- and SPARTA FC were down a player so I joined them temporarily.  Against BBCSoc.  Oh, the irony.  We (as in, mostly the members of SPARTA FC) utterly trounced BBCSoc.  It’s quite befitting to call them SPARTA FC I think.  Apparently the name came out when they spent a wild night in Prague together… Yea, I pictured it turning out somewhat like The Hangover but X-rated.

Again, no relation to what I’m actually saying.  I bet it got your attention though.

• Surprisingly, I haven’t been living off pure noodles.  I’ve hardly touched the box of 30 noodles underneath my bed, sort of depressing really.
• It’s warmer here than my home town, I sleep with the window open.
• My university has a clock tower and I’ve always wanted to see what was at the top of it.  Unfortunately, I don’t see any clear instructions to get up there.  Damn.  They also project movies (or video, at least) on it at night.  Somehow I managed to miss this totally until about 2 hours ago.
• Living 5/10 minutes away from university rules.
• I like programming.
• Somehow I found this on Brad’s website (bornegames.com).  Don’t ask me how, or I’ll have to kill you.  No seriously, I would.
• A lot of American shows have started up again.  Currently watching: How I Met Your Mother (LEGEN- wait for it –DARY), Heroes (it’s got off to a good start for this season), Big Bang Theory (you just gotta love those nerds).
• OMFG BRAIN TREE IS BACK.
• Morrisons has been having a really big sale lately, I managed to get a 35p loaf of bread.  35p!  It was so cheap that I’m now comparing that to everything, annoying a friend of mine to no end.  Seriously though, I’ve made the comparison like twice today.  There’s also 60p packs of Hula Hoops!
• It’s about a 15/20 minute walk to town, which isn’t very far.  But I find myself procrastinating and putting off shopping anyway.
• The University Student Union is AMAZING.  I love it.  Watched a show called Hypnodog and laughed my ass off.  Not to mention there are quite a few bars and a pub there.
• Got part of my student loan.  Still somewhat worried that I won’t have enough money to make it through the year with rent and the need for food.  Oh wait, silly me, who needs food?  At least electricity and water is free, I’ve been abusing it to no end.
• Speaking of abusing free electricity, a friend of mine borrowed a rice cooker (from my sister, weirdly) and cooked 15 cups of rice –which was over the limit it provided- then left it on “WARM” for a whole weekend.  His room now smells like a paddy field and he wants to move rooms.
• A kettle and some tea does wonders for thirst.
• OH LOOK IT’S TURBO THE (SHORT) MOVIE:

I WISH MY VIDEO GAMES WERE LIKE THIS.

 

• I miss playing on my Xbox.  Good thing I get to play it when I get home.  Seriously considering getting a TV and bringing it over.  Anyone wish to donate some money to me?
• LittleKuriboh is beyond awesome.  He's super-special awesome.
• At a forum I go to they’re getting a bit frustrated at my continued teasing of something I tested that they didn’t get to test.  They’re still trying to probe me for information, little do they know that I’ve posted about it here somewhere.
• RANDOM COMIC TIME:
  

  My sentiments exactly.

• Spotify is awesome, I love it.  The ads can get a bit annoying (especially when a few come at once), but hey: it’s free!  What do you expect?
• It feels weird learning a (two, in fact) programming languages from scratch.  There’s a lot of stuff I could bring from my VB experience but it’s hard to apply to it.  Not to mention I’m still extremely hazy on Haskell.
• I’m also told to do some HTML and CSS stuff for Computer Science.  It feels weird to do this again after so long.  We’re not allowed authoring tools like Dreamweaver either (thank god, it cranks out some weird broken code).
• Derren Brown does a mean accent:

 

 

I think that about sums up my random thoughts.  I may post some more later.  I understand it would probably be easier if I just used Twitter to do random musings like this… But I refuse.

 

[UPDATE]  Another good one:

• The most depressing scene I’ve seen is just as I get through the ticket gate, I watch the train I need to catch pull away from the station.  ;(

 

Oh and I found this while digging around my laptop:

This was the original essay.

Link to this essay

 

 

This is the revised version for media after my teacher said it was to “Computer Science-y”.

Link to this essay

 

They’re quite long, aren’t they?  I have a (much) trimmed down version of this somewhere.  But I can’t be bothered to look for it.  And man this post has past 1500 words.  Man.

Well, this is my dorm…

It’s a bit bare bones, but I can deal.

Man, it didn’t feel that long ago since I left Secondary School…

Guess whose going to Uni! [UPDATED]

Yes, it’s been confirmed.

 

University, here I come.

 

[UPDATE]  I figured I owe you guys some more content and I was meant to have a longer post, but time constraints and excitement meant I had to cut short (seriously) the original post.

But anyway, today was results day for A-level students.  The day that can make or break the next few years for a student.  The day where people cry, laugh or breathe a sigh of relief.  Fortunately, for me I got the required results I needed (and more!) which means in just over a month I’d be blogging from my sweet-ass dorm.

However, for many others, who have not gotten the results they so dearly needed – I give you my condolences.  I know how difficult A-levels are and the weight of expectation can be overwhelming sometimes.  Luckily for me, I thrive under pressure so I’m not bothered by circumstances like this but many are.  And sometimes, it just drains your heart and soul.  You’ll feel emotionally and mentally wrecked by the end and it may seem difficult to be optimistic about circumstances like this.

So I only have these words for these people:  Try again.

That may sound harsh when read out loud, especially since tone of voice is hard to convey through the internet, but I mean this in the kindest of ways.  Don’t give up, keep trying until you achieve what you wanted to achieve.  The precursor to success is failure; it just means you’ll have to work harder next time.  When life keeps knocking you down, just keep getting up and plowing straight ahead.

 

Anyway, enough crazy off-topic ranting.  I just went on a complete tangent there as I pretty much type what I think of – obviously I cut out irrelevant content, otherwise you’d be seeing a lot more references to food.

I was going to describe my original feelings of today but now I realise I didn’t feel much about today.  Making it rather anti-climatic.  I was only reminded at the start of the week and even when my friends are worried and can’t get to sleep, I don’t feel that.  I’m the kinda guy that takes what life deals at me and then throws the crap right back at it.  I recognise that worrying about something out of my current control is absolutely stupid, it’ll only serve as a detriment to my mental health.

Not to say I didn’t have my doubts; while I was fairly certain I had gotten the grades I needed.  One can never be completely sure, there’s always that small inkling at the back of the consciousness (or sub-consciousness) that always thinks pessimistically about what could happen.  But as long as you the pessimism doesn’t take over and consume your mind, you’ll be fine.

And wow, this is beginning to feel like some zany story.

So, without further embarrassment to myself, I’ll end this post here.  I’m going to be busy up until I’m settled in at my new dorm, so don’t expect much activity here.

Turning 18

So yea, I’m now officially –by law- classed as an adult.  And let me tell you about how that is.

It’s the same.

I’m seeing little to no difference at all.  Every kid looks forward to this day so you can now do anything you want (within legal boundaries, that is).  But nothing magical happens.  A fairy doesn’t appear at midnight to spray some fairy dust on you and take you to magical adult-land.  Although, admittedly, that would be kinda cool.

Great, now I’m thinking about how adult-land would be like (and btw, I have no reason why I’m typing adult-land in italics).  I’m imagining a world where the internet isn’t full of douche-bags and Xbox Live aren’t full of 12-year olds playing 18+ games.  Wow, that tells a lot about me if the first thing I think about are the internet and XBL.

Anyway, I digress.  Hitting the magical 18 feels no different than any other day.  Ok, sure I don’t have to go “Erm… er… yea… about that…” whenever someone asks me for ID when buying a 18 game or trying to get into an 18 movie – which is cool, but I guess I just expected more.  Like my brain just explodes with the sheer awesomeness of being an adult and everything that I didn’t really understand before just becomes shockingly clear.  That might be a bit naive but all I’ve gotten is the fact that I sort of missed being young and in school.  Things seemed were simpler back then, someone could point me towards a patch of grass and I would play in it for hours.

Oh great, I’ve just become an adult and now I’m starting to feel too old.  People have always said my mind is more mature than my actual age, but I didn’t think I’d be thinking I’m growing too old now.  I thought it’d be about the time I hit the 30 mark – which everyone seems to fear… for some reason or another.

Turning 18 has brought some perspective into what I want to do in the future.  In the immediate future, I suppose I want to get into University this September – which promises to be an awesome experience if it’s anything like I think it’s going to be like; which it probably won’t be.  But what about the future future?  Like where I’d like to see myself 5, 10 or maybe 20 years into the future.  It may sound crazy, but I haven’t really thought much about it before.  I’m more of a “in the moment” guy, I find it hard to think past tomorrow.

Strangely though, I see myself playing video games for a long time.  I just find the interactive medium really tantalising, it’s at the forefront of technology and it’s always changing.  Always improving itself (supposedly).  I’m not just talking about the mainstream video game scene either, sure they churn out some of the biggest hits and the biggest sellers.  But, for true innovation, you’ve got to turn towards the indie scene and the flash game scene.  That’s where you find true variety and not just endless sequels due to the fact that flash games don’t use hype and they only become popular if they are fun.  That’s why I’m liking this trend where flash games are converted into XBL/WiiWare/PSN games.  It’s great to see this happen and arguably, Behemoth paved the way for the industry with Alien Hominoid and they haven’t looked back.  Castle Crasher’s is amazing fun and I’m loving the idea of co-op platformers.

Wow, I guess I really went onto a tangent there.  But you understand where I’m coming from.

What a sad state of affairs

I was just poking around my website when I saw my archives:

Looking at that, I’m asking myself:  What the f*ck happened?

No, seriously.  In 2007 –when I started up this blog- I managed 279 posts.  Then 2008 rolled around and that became 38 posts (that’s about 13.6% of the posts from the year before).  And now it’s almost August and I’ve managed 4 posts (5, if you include this one) so far this year.  I used to be so enthusiastic about posting here, but my desire to post has just diminished like a slowly dying fire at the crack of dawn.

Now, I know it’s not about quantity but quality(and hopefully, you’ll also agree that my writing style has improved for the better); a good example of which would be GaijinSmash or The Sneeze.  But what I’m saying is that: why is it so hard to keep up a regular posting schedule.  Something that my friend, Duck may tell you too.

It may be that initially, it’s something new and exciting.  But as time wears on, it becomes like a chore.  Monotonous and the same every-time.  Not to mention that most of blogs like mine get little to no traffic, so there’s almost no incentive to continue writing.  That’s why comments are so important, it shows people actually read a blog and wouldn’t mind helping to improve the blog by giving constructive criticism or just give a pat on the back for the writer.  Ever since late 2007, I hardly ever received a comment and I just couldn’t tell if anyone was actually reading what I would post up onto the great information super-highway or all my traffic was just someone being directed here by Google Images to steal one of my images.

There’s just not enough support given for most of us small blogs to continue writing, which I understand is a lot to ask since there are tons of small blogs out there that have little to no traffic.  But that’s not really what I’m asking.  There are some genuine diamond in the rough blogs out there that should really get more coverage than they currently have.  All I’m asking is to support some of them.  Leave a comment, tell them what a good job they’re doing. It’s not something mind-blowingly hard.

I’ll let you think about this proposal and ultimately agree with me.

 

 

 

 

 

And while you’re in this mindset, why not start with my blog?

Although doing so may not even bring me back to posting regularly, I just don’t feel motivated to anymore.  So now I just lurk around the internet like some crazed stalker, watching YT videos and browsing forums; in particular Duck's forum and the Bornegames forum.  Maybe I’ll see some of you guys there.

 

EDIT#1:  I’m visiting some relative near Manchester and we’ve rented out a pretty awesome hotel.  Just thought I’d show you guys quickly.

The room is pretty sweet!

Today I present to you…

This…

Yea…

I win a T-Shirt

Apparently I’m a lucky winner of a Windows 7 competition. And subsequently received a t-shirt and Windows 7 RC disk for my troubles.

Yay!

The letter reads:

Dear John,

Congratulations you were one of the lucky winners of the Road to windows 7 competition! Please find enclosed your Windows 7 T-shirt and your Windows 7 RC disc.

And some other stuff you don’t need to worry about.

I quite like the t-shirt, it feels pretty good. And what better way to make people think I’m a nerd by wearing a windows 7 shirt! Hooray! I’m not so sure about the RC disc. If I wanted to I could get the RC from the internet, and it’s going to start shutting down soon anyway so it’s a bit pointless. It would’ve been better if they gave me the RC and a subsequent product-key for Windows 7 so I wouldn’t have to buy it. That would’ve been a good prize, but alas they didn’t (at least, I don’t think so).

I’m still chuffed I won, I’m not really sure how many people entered (my guess is not a lot, if I won). And it’s weird to have another t-shirt sent to me not long after I received the Little Big Planet t-shirt… which I don’t think I’ve shown you guys. It doesn’t really fit me –it’s too small, for once- so I gave it to my sister. It wasn’t really my style either, too superfluous. I’m not sure where it is now, but I haven’t seen my sister wear it once.

Exams are finished!

Yep, my college life has –hopefully- come to a close after today’s Maths (Statistics 2) exam.  If I get the grades I require, I’ll be going to university this September which should be awesome.

I feel like I’ve been lugging a giant boulder around me for the last 2 years, and today I finally threw it off my back.

Picture is unrelated.

In other news, some friends and I went paintballing last Sunday which was a blast.  I won’t bore you with the awesome details (like how many headshots I got) but I ended up with no paintball marks at all.  While everyone else had at least several.  It was a great day and I’d love to do paintball again.  It’s not exactly cheap though, ended up costing me £53 all-together.

Still playing L4D at the moment as I promised myself that I’d only get Prototype after my exams have finished but I didn’t get to go to town today; probably won’t be able to go tomorrow either.  So it’s Friday at the latest.  :(

But no matter, L4D is still an amazing game to play with friends.

Origins of my gaming hobby

I’m not going to make excuses about my long absence from posting here, it’s been… what?  5 months?  Even VGCats is updating more than me (HAR HAR).  It’s probably inexcusable to the majority of you but many things have been going on in my life, as well as the coming of exams.  But the main thing is probably the dying of my passion to post.  More likely than not, you saw that in the last few posts that I did.  It was new and exciting at first, but eventually it become a chore.

Anyway, I digress.  The blog is probably going to become a place to output my creativity whenever I want to so posting will not be frequent.

 

I spent a night over at my uncle’s the other day.  And some of you may or may not know this, but my uncle was probably the reason I’m such a gamer now.  I recall nights when we would be huddled round a screen together playing some new fantastical game that he had bought.  We would stay up until very late (and I mean very late, especially considering how old I was).

But now, he’s in his mid-30s (I think), married and has 3 kids.  He doesn’t really have time to game anymore and it’s sort of depressing to see, he’s reduced to playing only in the wee hours of the morning.  And even then, it’s only every other day at most.  Not to mention the mid-range rig he sports is in his children’s room, so he has to play quietly.  Quite unlike the days of yore, when we would scream and shout at our epic wins.

He’s also been reduced to buy only from bargain bins, for obvious reasons, so the majority of the games he plays aren’t particularly great and I don’t really have the heart to tell him.  It’s upsetting to see someone who use to be at the forefront of gaming to lag behind so much.  The latest game he bought was “The Spiderwick Chronicles” for the PC.  And no, I’m not joking.  Luckily for him (and me), it didn’t work on his computer and neither on my laptop.  But he looked genuinely sad that the latest game he bought didn’t work, and it felt like someone tore out my heart and replaced it with a cold hard stone.

Don’t think that it’s all bad though.  His gaming collection is still massive, he has tons of games from yesteryear, and quite a few are real gems.  I decided to browse through his gargantuan collection and here are a few of the games I found:

>Colonization

>Sim Ant

>Sim City

>Theme Hospital

>Theme Park

>Rome Total War

>Shogun Total War (two of them in fact)

>Civilisation 1,2, 3 & 4

>Morrowind

>Balder’s Gate

>Neverwinter Nights

>Quake 1 & 2

>Halo 1

>Starcraft

>Dune 1,2 & 3

>Star Wars: KOTOR

>Quite a few old-skool Lucas Arts click & point adventures

>Games from the Thief series

>Typing of the Dead – no, I’m not kidding

>Wolfenstein

>Age of Empires 1 & 2

>Games from the Alone in the Dark series

>Clive Barker’s Undying

 

And the list goes on.  I could probably sit here until the end of time just listing his games but I have better things to do (like revising for the 2 exams I have on Monday), there’s still some duds in his collection but that just makes it all the better.  Currently I think he’s playing a game called: “Imperial Glory” as well as some other games.

Anyway, this post was mainly to show you one reason that I’m such a big gamer now (although it’s one of the primary reasons, it’s not the only one).  Seeing as how my uncle is now, it seems like somewhere along the lines I deviated from him as I only really play console games now – I occasionally play PC games.  A far cry from way back when, where I would only play exclusively on the PC.  I guess part of the reason is the cost necessary to keep up with the latest specs to play the newest games but also console exclusivity – like Nintendo games etc.

I’m just wondering what I’d be like at his age.  Would I still be gaming?  Would I only get to game after in the early hours of the morning?  Would I only be playing on the PC?

There’s so many questions that I could ask.  But I won’t know the answers to until I actually get there.  At least I should have a good time getting there.  If all goes well, I’ll be gaming through university and after that.  I don’t see me dropping my gaming obsession hobby anytime soon.  Simply because of the intriguing new ideas the game industry keeps bringing in and the escapism factor, as well as entertainment factor.

Maybe when I’m my uncle’s age I could be gaming with my children, who knows what tomorrow will bring?  That’s what makes life so exciting.

 

Currently playing: Left 4 Dead

Looking forward to: Prototype

As I said, I have no idea when my next post will come.  It may come tomorrow, next week or another 5 months later.  It’ll come when I feel the urge to write again.  Until then: ciao.

[EDIT] As a note, I don’t mind if any of you guys add me on XBL.  Maybe we could play some L4D/GTA IV/Halo 3 together.  Just make sure you state that you know me through the blog.

Shortest Post Ever

[EDIT]  Happy belated new year!

 

Oh and check this out:  BEST FORUM EVER

Total Topics: 1093   -   Total Posts: 2270

Total Members: 1

Yes, you read that right.  ONE MEMBER.  *MIND-PLOSION*

Meniscus Film - Anticipation

It’s been about a month since my last post (btw: STFU and stop emailing me about it) and I have a perfectly legitimate reason for that. Originally I was waiting for Meniscus to upload our film up onto Youtube. Yes, it’s taken about a month for it to get onto Youtube. But they didn’t upload it, I did.

I had to copy our exported movie from the college computers (it was over 1 GB!) and take it home. I then had to import it into Movie Maker and render it into a smaller file size (got it down to 46 MB) since it would’ve been impossible to get a 1GB video up onto YT. Even if it was possible, it’d take way too long.

Ahem, I digress. Here’s the film:

MR A. IS MAGIC!

Oh if you’ve noticed any of the (numerous) continuity errors, don’t sweat it. We probably know about it. We just didn’t have time (or could be asked) to storyboard or anything so it we pretty much filmed most of these without thinking. XD

And if you’re confused about what the hell is happening… don’t worry. You’re not alone. It’s not really meant to make any sense, it’s just slapstick (or slap-pan, HAR HAR) humour really.

Normally, a normal person would go on about the pre-production and post-production process etc. and the hardships faced. But I’m no normal person, so I’m just gonna say: It was fun. Yes, I did the camera-work, editing and part of the scripting but it was undeniably fun. I would definitely love to make another film, preferably after my exams though. XD

Meniscus Film Festival TOMORROW

Yes yes, I know.  Ages since the last post YADA YADA BLARGH BLAH BLAH!

The biggest news this week is the upcoming film festival which is tomorrow (if you haven’t noticed already by the title).  So I hope you guys wish us luck and that we can bring home the cash prize so I, er… I mean: we can share it.  Hopefully it’ll be a awesome night overall even if we don’t win (but seriously, we have a baguette in our film, how can we lose?).

On other news, Brad (creator of Fancy Pants, his blog is here) recently showed off his latest game.  As an avid fan of his works I jumped upon the chance of playing it.  And I’m proud to say he’s lifted Flash games to new heights!  Turns out the super secret project he was working on was a collaboration with EA (Yes, that EA) in creating a Flash version of Mirrors Edge.  Much like the Flash Portal game that came out a while ago, it’s ditches the original game’s first person perspective and is in a 2D plane.  It runs of the same engine that powered the infamous fancy pants games – so you’ll most doubt notice some similarities.  Anyone I’ve rambled on a bit.  Here is Brad’s post about it.

Or, if you want here’s the link to the BETA demo.

NOTE: THE FULL GAME ISN’T OUT YET.  IT’S JUST A DEMO.

Oh, and here’s my speed-run of the demo level.  :D

BEAT THAT!

There’s not much more to add except…

 

LEFT 4 DEAD IS AWESOME.

It’s a left hand of the dead with FOUR fingers!  Get it?

 

[EDIT]Turns out I got accepted to try out the NXE.  I’ll be able to download it 2PM PST – which turns out to be 10PM GMT…  From the videos and pictures I’ve seen it looks good, but being able to try it out first-hand would be awesome.

The NXE is coming out in about 5 days anyway (19th November) though, so everyone (who has a 360 connected to the internet) could try it then.

Mentoring and Choices! ~UPDATE

As I’ve been rambling on about it quite a few times, I’m sure you’re aware I want to do some mentoring of some kind at my college.  Well, looks like I’m officially in.  Times and such haven’t been set but I’m sure we’ll work that out.  It’s all formal-looking as I received an email stating the code of conducts and rules and regulations etc.  Should be good stuff.  The ‘interviewing’ process that happened today was something I had never experienced before.  It was a group interview type thing (which I only found out about the day before) and it was pretty unusual.  For one thing, we started playing 20 Questions halfway through.  I can’t remember exactly what led to those circumstances though.  Anyway, the point is that 6 of us applied and we all got the job.  Except, we’re still being tested as up until the half-term we’re in, what I like to call, the “trial period.”  Where we have to keep an active log of who we deal with, where and when.  Sort of a pain in the ass if you ask me, but I’m being paid.  And if I’ve learned anything over the past 17 years of my life it’s that as long as your being paid the right amount, anything’s worth it.  And wow, that was a double entendre if I ever did see one.

Anywayz, moving swiftly on, I also had my first Career’s interview today.  It went pretty good actually, the woman there did a good job in helping decide what I wanted to do for the next few years.  She also showed me how much I’ve narrowed it down already without me consciously knowing so.  I’ve got a few courses in mind already, and also some universities that I think would be suitable.  The hardest part is deciding which one I like best.  Wish me luck, eh?

In other random news, the film for the Meniscus Film Festival – titled: “ANTICIPATION” – has been submitted… at least I think so.  I’m still unsure on whether it has or not, last week Jamie and I walked all the way there to that guy’s house to hand him the DVD.  We had to because it was the last day for submissions.  We slid it nonchalantly through his letterbox before we noticed that we only made one copy of the damn film and freaked out.  We spent the next few minutes double checking the house number and street sign to make sure we had the right place.  And it was… we think.  I told Jamie to check up on it, but he still hasn’t so I’m doubtful whether he has received it or not.  Meh, I guess it’s just me being paranoid since we worked quite hard on it.  And I’ve got to say, I’m quite proud of the little beast (little beast being a very bad metaphor for the film) and there are some genuine aspects where I think it looks damn professional.  And the other parts… well, let’s not talk about those shall we?  When, or if, they put the damn thing on YT I’ll be sure to link to it right away.  But until then, you’ll have to wait.  Sorry.

There’s also news about the 5-a-side league that we were thinking of joining, but so far have been unable to do so.  Ash got a call that we can replace a team that has dropped out mid-season.  Which means we’re joining half way through the season so the points (if we get any) are worth shit but oh well.  I’ll be playing for fun anyway.  It just means less pressure for us.

Oh and I’ve also been trying the new Messenger BETA and it’s quite good.  Everything looks, well, bigger.  As well as cleaner and more minimalistic which is always a pro in my book.  And frankly, the tiled mood thing is awesome.  I suggest you check it out as well.

…

If you think I’m gonna provide the link than you’d be wrong.  I seriously CBA at the mo, so you’re going to have to google-it-you-moron.  I mean, how hard can it be?

Oh, and DRAGON BALL.

Wow, that looks beyond suckage.

 

[UPDATE] I just completed my analysis section for my Computing project.  And it was actually quicker than I thought.  It was still a pain in the proverbial ass, but at least it’s done now.  Just the other sections to go… Well, when we get to it.  The Analysis was in for tomorrow and I had hardly done anything!  Thank god I’m quick at typing since it clocked in just under 2000 words and 8 pages.  All that in about 2/3 hours.  Insane.

Anywayz, I still need to decide on my 5 choices and I’ve broadened my search so that it incorporates London as well and some other cities and towns.  ‘Cos originally I wanted to go to a Uni near a large~ish city but not London because of the insane costs.  But now, thinking about it… London wouldn’t be all that bad I reckon.  It’ll certainly be more lively than where I’m living now; hell Humdrum’s more lively than this place.*  So far I’ve marked a few prospective Uni’s that look promising.  Leeds U, Manchester U and possibly even Aston.  Problem is, I have to decide which is my first choice now.  And since it will affect my next 3/4 years, and possibly the rest of my life, I’m going to pick wisely.  Which is a first for me.  :P

*Not true

Mario Kart and Brawl and Movies! Oh my! – UPDATE

Well, the thing is after hardly touching Mario Kart Wii for months after I got so frustrated by 150cc it’s having a resurgence.  It happened when Gavin and Daisy decided to add me into a little game of Mario Kart they were having.  Then it just spiraled out of control.  I think we’ve played it everyday online (well, except yesterday) since.  It’s just immensely fun with friends.  Especially when using Skype to trash-talk.  Doesn’t get much better than that.  Oh and just for the record, I win most the vast majority of the races.

Today though, me and Gav tried our hand at SSBB online.  We didn’t play it before because Daisy didn’t have it (FAIL).  But after a few prelim games, Gavin (who was hosting) decided to set a 60 MINUTE GAME.  Not only that but he set it up so that it was really easy to die.  Which obviously meant one thing.  Yep.  Lots and lots of dying.  It was practically one-hit kill for everyone.  I was Fox; Gav was Pit; Bowser and someone else was CPU.  The game was suitably EPIC.  I’m not going to talk about the awesomeness of the game since it was a you-had-to-be-there thing but the scores ended up with me kicking ass with +175 and Gav with –33.  The 2 CPU got even worse (one got –155).  That was enough Brawl for us that day.

But as I type, we’re starting up Mario Kart again.  :D

This is what it’s like to be an addict…

===

Oh and about the Meniscus Film movie thing.  We’re pretty much done editing, except there’s some issues with the allocated time (under 5 mins).  Basically, our film is too long.  DAMN.  So we’re going to have to cut some scenes out.  :(

I’ll update you later on.

[UPDATE] So, today we pretty much wrapped up editing for our film.  It was funny too as we had to get the film under 5 minutes (including credits and such) so we spent most of today just speeding clips up and trimming clips to ensure we were under 5 minutes.  In the end we got it to 4 minutes and 59 seconds!  There’s only a few minor things we need to add on Monday (Tuesday’s the deadline!)  and we also need to export it into an .avi file.  The film production is nearing it’s end and I’m actually kinda sad; yea it was more work but it was most definitely fun.  Too bad I won’t be doing something like that for a while.  Oh well, at least I have the actual festival to look forward to.  And since the audience votes on who wins, we may just have a shot at this…

I just need a megaphone so we shout the loudest.

SPORE Review

Sorry for the 3 week absence; life has been busy-  ah screw it.  You know that I don't give a damn and I know that you don't give a damn; the reason why you're reading this is because your either at work and bored out of your bloody mind or you've got some serious mental issues.

Now that we've got that over and done with, it's a game review!  Yay!  When was the last time I've had one of these?*

*Answer:  Last one was the Mario Kart Wii Review in April.

For those who have lived under a frickin' boulder for the last 5/6 years, SPORE is Will Wright's next game after the cash-cow that the Sims have become.  First shown a while ago (a long while ago) at GDC it quickly become one of my own (and plenty others) most look-forward to game.  The whole concept seems mind-blowing, it could've been five different games but no.  Its all packaged in one single game.  A damn good one at that.

It didn't really provide the seamless evolutionary advancing that Will Wright was boasting but it does a damn good job.  Splitting it into stages makes it more casual-friendly and is much easier to have a favourite stage that you can jump into easily.  The 5 stages are: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilisation and Space.  Here's a little summary of each and what I thought of them:

 

Cell:  What I thought was going to be the most boring stage but it turned out quite well.  Things just worked as you ate more and more things.  And payback was literally a bitch in this one as it was amazingly gratifying when you devour a creature that was larger than you previously.  I found numerous times where I was playing through this stage and was shouting:  "HOW'D YOU LIKE THAT, HUH?"  and "SUCK IT, BITCH!" or something along those lines.  All in the name of good fun...

Cell is quite fun.  Nothing to complicated, which is good to start the game with.

Creature:  This is arguably one of my favourite stages.  It's a step up from cell definitely.  You have more things to consider and you finally get a 3D space to roam around in.  Changing your creature is seamless; all you have to find is a mate.  Which is much easier in SPORE than in real life, mind.  It consists of just clicking a "Mating Call" button and heading towards your nest.  Simple.  At first, the other creatures that are close to your nest are pretty weak (probably that way deliberating to ease players into this stage).  But about halfway through the stage, it requires you to move nests.  I'm still not sure why, since the one we were using next to the sea was fine I reckon.  Maybe we had defiled that nest so much with the "making babies eggs" and other things.  Oh and if you explore around, this should be the first stage where you'll get to meet an epic creature.  Named appropriately as it's basically a giant version of a creature.  And it can be any creature on that current planet, which means there can be some crazy results.  Another thing I liked about this stage -and that Will Wright boasted about several several several times- was the community features.  It uses other creatures made by some other players (or your own sometimes) to populate your world.  Which means the game has an endless amount of creatures to use so you'll hardly ever meet the same one twice.

Yes, upside-down creatures are possible.  As well as penis creatures it seems...

Tribe:  This is when things started getting a bit... iffy.  It basically plays like something like Age of Empires but stripped down to it's basic elements.  You can gather food, fight, hunt, fish(if you have the tools) etc.  The purpose of this stage is to either conquer the other villages or ally them.  And I've found that allying them is much easier whereas conquering takes a heavy toll on your numbers (which starts at 6 and eventually maxes out at 12).  Although it seems to drive you towards conquering as it seems much to easy to make them angry at you.  Then it requires an offering of food to allow you to even begin allying them, oh and you do that by equipping the members of your tribe with instruments and playing a note-hitting mini-game for their pleasure.  But that's not what bugs me most, it's just that they always come at the most awkward times to raid your village (when I'm trying to ally another village, or attacking one - basically when most of my tribe is out).  Now, I'm unsure if this is clever AI seeing as they can tell when your village is unoccupied or if it's just a way to rack up the difficulty artificially.  But it doesn't become such a big problem as the game gives a notice when the raiding party sets off from the enemy village.  The only potential problem I can see is if you have the slowest creature in the world and it'll take you forever to get back.  Overall, this stage has it's ups and downs and certainly plays well.  Although it seems dumbed down a bit so most people (people who don't normally play games, or people who tried to play this after playing the Sims) can get through it.

A music mini-game.  Yes, that's how you get people to like you.

Civilisation:  This is the stage that I'm more meh on.  It does the job well, but I feel it's pretty similar to Tribe phase just with some new mechanics.  Your village becomes your city, your tribe members become your vehicles etc.  Now though, food is no-longer the currency.  It's Spice.  Yes, the thing you sometimes place on your food is coveted by Sporians from all over the galaxy.  And you obtain this from Spice geysers that are on your planet by using your vehicles to click on them.  At first your limited to land vehicles, then sea vehicles and then finally air.  Obviously, you'd need to be next to the sea to make sea vehicles.  At first, this stage is a real pain in the ass.  Then after you obtain 4 cities, you get air vehicles.  It's just a matter of building a fuckton of them now and rushing every city one at a time.  Yes, my eventual strategy was just forcefully obtaining cities by building the most air units I can and blitzing each city one at a time.  It's a shame really, as this stage had quite a lot of promise.

This could be your city!  Or you could have a city of penis buildings... the possibilities are endless!

Space:  The final frontier phase.  The stage where most people would be spending their time, it brings an absolutely boundless longevity to the game.  This is where the game comes into it's own.  You can literally do anything after the tutorial (which you can skip), provided you had the tools that is.  I haven't unlocked every tool yet, but what I have does look promising.  You can sculpt planets, carve out canyons, raise mountains, create oceans.  Additionally, you can change the colour of the land, sea or sky.  And finally you can change the temperature and density of the atmosphere of the planet.  This is the most important factor, as it's the one that decides whether creatures and plants can reside on that particularly planet.  There are different tools to do all these things, and seeing as you'll be unlocking them only occasionally, so you're not overwhelmed by them.  You'll obviously encounter alien races (notably one race that seems to act as the galaxy super-power and occupy the centre of the galaxy), and you can choose to be friends or enemies.  If you become friends, you can open trade routes or form alliances (doing so will grant you one of their ships to join you as a side-kick of sorts - meaning you'll eventually have a whole spaceship posse to wreck havoc on planets on).  And if you become enemies... well, you blow the crap out of each other.  Simple, really.  BUT WAIT.  This stage also boasts the most annoying thing ever to grace this game.  Remember the thing in tribe where they would attack you while your out, well the space stage takes it to a whole new level.  It seems every five minutes, there's a call of help from a colony or ally where their are pirates, that superior race I mentioned earlier or an enemy species are attacking.  And it becomes a real pain.  I've found sometimes that I was attacking the final planet of one species and I get a notice that the same species was attacking one of mine.  Now, wouldn't it be much more intelligent to pull all your ships back and have a last stand on your final planet?  Apparently no, as I take out the few ships on the planet and destroy their civilisation.  If anyone wants a comparison, just think of it as the blue shell from Mario Kart Wii.

Expand your empire!

Overall, the game is good.  No, scratch that.  It's great.  And out of the 5 stages, you're bound to love one of them.  Personally I love the Space stage since it gives you boundless freedom.  But I've found some people that prefer the creature stage since it's not as complicated.  Each stage gives you something different to think about.

The creators though are brilliant.  They work amazingly and I would probably pay for a game just with the creators in.  They're easy to use and really efficient.  I'd highly recommend it to anyone with some good creativity, they're remarkably easy to get a hang of.  Even if you have 5 minutes with the game, try out the creators.  It's a pro tip.

Anything that I liked is the scope of the game.  The opening cinematic is nicely done and sets you in the mood for the cell stage.  And after each stage, the camera pulls out a little.  From the tide-pool, you pull out to see a small part of the continent.  Then you pull out a bit more to see the whole continent in the tribe phase.  The camera then pulls out to the entire planet.  And finally you reach space.  There you can choose to scroll and focus on a tiny part of any planet or alternatively, you can scroll all the way out to view the whole frickin galaxy.  And you'll be wowed when you first do this.

The game also seems complete to me and not rushed.  I haven't encountered any slow down at all or frame rate problems and I'm running it on my laptop!  I've only had it crash on me twice, the first time it was my fault and the second time it was one of my friend's fault.  The first case was I wasn't running it as administrator (I'm using Vista) and after the cell phase, the first time I get into creature is freaks out on me.  For some reason I can play the cell phase without being an administrator.  The second time was an online friend (that I won't name) who decided to make many large conversations while I was playing.  I didn't know at the time since I was playing fullscreen, but when the game finally crashed the first thing I see is my taskbar filled to the brim with 50-odd conversations.  That probably overloaded my laptop and it ran out of CPU resources when loading things.

To be honest, I haven't properly finished the game.  The object of the Space phase is to reach the centre of the galaxy.  And judging by the looks of it, it'd take forever unless I decided to blitz there and ignore everything else.  Oh and apparently our solar system is in the game as well, although I have yet to find it myself.

The game also applies an achievement system, much like the achievements in 360 games.  There are the run-of-the-mill achievements for completing the phases and also some crazy ones like finding Earth or losing 5 planets.  All in all, I won't give this game a score.  As to different people, it'd have different scores.  For creative people, you'll have endless opportunities to unleash your creativity in the creators.  Whereas some less-creative people can just take some content from the creative people, if that floats your boat.  In the end, it's one of those: "You've got to try it!" games.

 

[EDIT]  I forgot to give you an update on what’s been going on in my life.  And I’m too lazy to make another post, so here’s an update.  Let’s get this done with quickly shall we?

• The film we’re doing for the Meniscus Film Festival is in the editing stages.  We just got it onto the computer today in fact and was going to start editing when we were distracted by a game sale at Morrisons (my friend picked up Brawl for £15 and Guitar Hero: On Tour for £12!).
• For anyone wondering, FUCKTARD hasn’t had an update.  It stopped at Gavin but he went on holiday and now I’m not even sure what’s going on.
• I’m thinking of dropping Computing because I can’t be asked anymore and I’ve got enough to deal with already.  Although I may still continue for a bit just to see where it goes.  I haven’t done the project either… *sigh*  I’ll have to make something up tonight…
• Wow, I just noticed that Twitter gadget on my blog’s sidebar.  It’s been 110 days since I’ve updated it…  Looks like it’s going to stay that way too.  :P

That about runs down my life right now.  Hectic, to say the least.  So much to do, so little time…

A Level Results Day 2008

I had been meaning to post for a while now.  But I've been putting it off repeatedly because... well... I'm lazy.

"Hard work pays off over-time.  But procrastination pays off NOW."  - A wise man

Ok, enough talk.  Let me cut to the chase (in this case: the results).

Subject	Unit	UMS	Subject Award	UMS	Unit Grade
COMPUTING		221	B
	Computer Sys, Prog & Netwk Concepts (105)			70	C
	Princ of Hardware, Software & Applic (105)			74	B
	Practical Systems Development			77	A
GENERAL STUDIES		241	A
	Conflict (100)			100	A
	Power (100)			58	D
	Space (100)			83	A
MEDIA STUDIES		223	B
	Reading the Media (90)*			62	C
	Textual Topics in Contemporary Media (90)			47	D
	Practical Production (120)			114	A

 

*If you recall this post.  They lost the results for Reading the Media, so it's an average of my other grades.  Damn, I think I would've got quite a lot in Reading the Media too.

 

Well, there are the results.  It looks about right, although the D in Textual Topics in Contemporary Media totally blind-sided me.  I was expecting much better.  I'll most likely resit that one.

BUT WAIT.

Maths?  Where is the maths?

Well that came on a different piece of paper:

TITLE	GRADE	UNIFORM MARK
Advanced Sub. GCE
Mathematics	A	273/300
Advanced GCE Unit
Core Mathematics 1	A	96/100
Core Mathematics 3	B	79/100
Core Mathematics 4	C	67/100
Decision Mathematics 1	A	87/100

 

Well, there are all my results.  Overall most of it was expected and some were not.  I think the only resits I'm going to do are for C4 (Maths module) and the Textual Topics in Media one.  Good thing I did good in D1, that was the one thing I didn't want to resit.

---

In other news, I partook in a badminton tournament the other day (Tuesday, I believe).  And if you remember this post from about a year ago, I placed 5th last time.  This time, I skipped the singles and just played doubles.  And came... wait for it... wait for it... SECOND.  Yes, runner-up in Mens Doubles.  Sweet.  Frankly we pretty much had no chance at winning the final since we up against the two best guys there.  The trophy is now stored at the now-infamous trophy cabinet.  Not much to report after that, except the final was phenomenal and you should have been there.  Despite being the definite under-dogs we got perilously close to winning it.

---

Here's just a quick update on two projects I'm working on.  First the media project for the Meniscus Film Festival that I may or may not have mentioned before.  We're pretty far into the project, the script is 80/90% done and all that's left is really the filming and preparation for filming.  I'm not going to spoil it since it's actually rather good, despite the whole plot line being conceived on a drowsy Thursday afternoon at Starbucks with Jamie.

 

Another little project I have going is an appropriately-named: FUCKTARD.  Which is the current codename it seems.  This idea was conceived in a more crazy way, which consists of me, Gavin and Ashley just randomly coming up with storyline's one day and this one came up.  And Ashley decided to start a script.  So now we're passing it along and adding things to it.  Here's the latest iteration(that I have) of it (I thought might as well seeing as the chance of it being made into film is severely slim).

FUCKTARD SCRIPT.

NOTE:  It's work in progress.

I have a good reason for my absence of late... (and bonus E3 Big 3 round-up!)

It's called:  CBA-sickness.

It's a very rare form of cancer that affects the cerebral lobes of my inner-most brain that controls my proactive activity of posting on my blog; according to the doctor I'm seeing (who, I assure you, isn't a drunken hobo that likes to dance the Irish Jig for money) I am currently the only diagnosed patient of CBA-sickness on the planet.  Wow.  Amazing isn't it.*

Anyway, let's continue to more pressing matters.  Since my last post from about a month ago (Toothpaste fixes all) a lot of wild s%*& has happened.  And I'm not  just talking about the new Hulk film (which is several levels of awesomeness btw).  I've had my fair share of action lately; even though college finished almost a week ago I'm still finding myself waking up rather early for the last few days.  Hopefully tomorrow will change all that.

And there's also E3.  I managed to catch all of the Big 3's conferences despite my busy schedule.  And it was slightly... disappointing; to say the least.  Out of the three, I seemed to enjoy Microsoft's conference the most for some reason; it certainly started off well with the demos (Fable 2 and Fallout 3 piqued my interest especially), then proceeded to drop off a little - but at least a new PORTAL game was announced!.  The Square-Enix trailers helped lift moods a little, then it went out with a bang when FFXIII was announced for the 360.  Wow.  Who saw that coming?  I certainly didn't...  well, not until that guy returned to the stage and said: "I have one more big announcement."  This is a big blow for Sony in turns of exclusives (somehow I just think that FFXIII would just have moved quite a few units of the PS3 if it stayed exclusive, or maybe that's just me).  And despite all that, the new Bungie game wasn't announced!  It was allegedly pulled at the last minute!  Shame on you Microsoft!

Nintendo's conference fell into second place for me.  It started off -in one word- crap.  I don't want to hear the "Cammienator" (if that is her real name - you won't get that joke unless you know Nintendo pretty well) talk about her sucky snowboarding skills.  I'm watching this for only one reason: -take a guess- games.  Finally, it started picking up when Animal Crossing: City Folk was announced.  Yes, City Folk.  Now, I'm sure I'll get use to that (hell, I got use to Wild World and Wii didn't I?) but the name is a bit... well... funny-sounding now that I think about it.  Yes yes, we're talking about Nintendo here and their crazy naming techniques (well DS makes sense at least...).  *ahem* I'm babbling, I digress.  Anyway, AC Wii looks like it's more of the same from Nintendo.  Which isn't a bad thing in these terms, if it still has the surprisingly addictive gameplay of the previous two games then you know that I'll be glued to my couch for days (or weeks).  When I go to the toilet, all you'll see is a sweat-stained WJUK-sized patch in the middle of the sofa...  Nah, not really.  I don't sweat horrendously while playing games (as far as you know anyway); the worse it's ever gotten was during the Wii Sports marathon - oh boy, was that a night to remember.  Ok, I'm babbling again so I'll cut it to you straight.  GTA DS was announced although nothing else was provided (not even a screenshot or a pre-rendered trailer) which means that the game is pretty early on in development me thinks.  Wii Motion Plus demoed, will be bundled with Wii Sports: Resort (yes, RESORT -  the funny naming trend continues) and it looks pretty damn good.  But this being Nintendo it'll cost a small fortune (especially in PAL regions) which may end up making it not worth it.  Wii Music also shown, and playing the Mario Bros song is possible with it.  Somewhat.

Wow, talk about more ways of feeling like you can play instruments when you really can't

 

And finally, the Sony conference.  For some reason I found this the least enjoyable.  Maybe because I was doing something else at the time, but it doesn't mean it was bad.  Resistance 2 showed off a big-ass boss.  Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty (can I get a:  BOO-TAA!) announced for PSN.  But arguably the best part of the whole presentation was when Sack Boy helped out with the sales figures.

Oh Sack Boy. Oh how do I wish to play you... wait... no I mean play with... no, as you... ok I give up.

As you can obviously see, Little Big Planet is shaping up to be quite a game.  Oh and Infamous looks good too.

 

Anyway, I think I should be wrapping this post up soon.  I don't want to continue typing this into the wee hours of the morning.  Although I will leave you this:

*If you believe any of that:  You're an idiot.

Toothpaste fixes all!

Ok, so I haven't exactly been active lately here.  But hell, there's probably 3 people reading this, so whatever.

Anyway, I picked up Brawl yesterday (Friday) and I was like: "Sweet!  FIN-FRICKIN-LY"*  After about 5 months, we finally get one of the Wii's greatest games and I'm loving every minute of it.  I've already unlocked Sonic, Captain Falcon, Luigi and some other dudes; but I've hardly played Subspace Emissary because there have been 4 people playing all the time.  Oh well, I'm looking forward to getting R.O.B. too.

So, all was well.  Until my sister knocked the Wii over accidentally.  It wasn't her fault really, it was just a particularly heated battle and the Game Cube controller wires were particularly short.  Damn controller wires.  But, long story short, the disc was scratched.  Some things didn't work and it just said "Disc cannot be read."  Anyone who hasn't been living under a secluded rock under the lost City of Atlantis should understand my pain and frustration here.  The scratch was minimal!  And yet it's managed to make me unable to play like 4 stages and so many characters.  Understandably, I raged.  And I mean full-fledged psychotic LCD-inducing rage.  Yea... it was pretty bad.

After a while of general sulking and tantrums; I remembered something from my young days.  Toothpaste.

No no no, I wasn't trying to remember whether or not I had brush my teeth this morning (which I had, mind you).  I was going to put toothpaste on the disc to clear out the scratch marks.  Ludicrous, some of you might say (particularly the portion of people who haven't tried this before).  But I tempted fate and kicked it's ass!

After about 10 minutes of general rubbing and scrubbing; it was practically as good as new.  After a quick rinse under the tap (yes, I used water on the CD).  It worked beautifully.  Immaculately even.

WJUK: 1.  Er... Scratched disc: 0.

Well, my sisters are still playing Brawl upstairs while I'm grabbing a bite to eat.  It seems they've become quite addicted to the game, and rightly so.  Kicking someone's ass while trash-talking to them is totally what SSBB is about.  It's the core essence of it, and I think I do both parts really well.  And there's always the annoyance factor, I was getting my ass handed to me while playing Yoshi (random selection FTL) in a 5-stock match.  When the smash ball came, I just kept shouting: "YOSHI'S TURN!"  In as weird a voice as possible, and the tactic seems to have worked.  I turned the match on it's head as I KO'ed everyone twice without taking a single hit (the smash ball helped too).  And I actually managed to win... with YOSHI (and frankly, I suck ass as Yoshi).

*ahem*  Anyway, I think I've babbled on for quite some time now.  And I live you with this:

WHY DON'T YOU HAVE BRAWL YET?**

 

*More swearing may have been involved.

**Doesn't apply to anyone who has Brawl.

Cast your eyes on the awesomeness:

Rock Band? Not today. ~ UPDATE

So, wassup?

Let's just get this over with:  My life has been hectic yada yada yada etc.

Anyway, I'm currently about half way in of the week off I get from College.  Whoop!  But I have 2 exams the first day I go back.  Damn.  It sucks that I still have 3 exams left; I can't believe I have two in a row the second College starts again.  And to top it all off, it's a Maths Module first; followed by a Media exam directly afterwards.  Which I'm still not fully prepared for.  Sometimes, I hate college...

 

Moving onto some slightly better news.  I got Rock Band on Saturday... well, the disc anyway.  Since the game is split into the Solus edition and Instruments in a Box version.  The Solus (game disc) has come and we've mainly been messing about using the headset but we're still waiting for the instruments because of stupid Parcel Force.  It came Friday... at 7:50 in the morning.  Then it was meant to be redelivered on Tuesday (today) and I woke up at 7:30 to wait for it.  It came at 7:05 apparently.  F*CK.

So, we made them redeliver it tomorrow.  Hopefully we can actually receive it this time.  Damn Parcel Force, maybe they could have given us an estimate time of arrival or maybe, you know, ring us to open the door.  Since we're in anyway but just upstairs.

 

Oh and I've been playing on GTA IV online via XBL and I've gotta say.  I'm lovin' it.

The online service is just so well made and voice chat seems to be a great addition that helps a lot during actual gameplay.  I've only really played GTA IV online (haven't really tried any other games online yet) and it's really really really fun.  It's just the way the game is made, the whole sandbox theme that enables for such unpredictability when playing alone.  But when playing online against other people, the unpredictability factor is multiplied ten-fold as the human opponents employ strategies the in-game AI wouldn't use even if I drew it out on the floor for them.

I usually play "Cops 'N Crooks".  Which is basically two teams take it in turns to be crooks or cops.  Makes sense, right?  The crooks have to get to their getaway vehicle (which is either a boat or helicopter) and the cops have to stop them (by killing them).  There are two modes:  "All for One" and "One for All".  I usually enjoy playing One for All since everyone gets only one respawn which means most people are a lot more cautious.  But All for One seems to put Teamwork as more of a focus as the crooks have to protect a boss, these games seem to go much faster though as the cops spawn in police cars while crooks spawn out in the open.  Meaning it's really hard to get a vehicle.

I've seen all sort of tactics employed during this mode.  Everyone just rushing to the waypoint in two cars, everyone splitting up into different cars, everyone staying back and arming themselves to take out cops.  There's just so many ways the whole thing could pan out.

Like, for example, when playing I was riding shotgun with my friend who was driving a car while we were chasing the crooks who were in a helicopter.  I manage to hit the petrol tank or something with my sub-machine gun when I was leaning out the window and BOOM!  The helicopter explodes into pieces.  They all die.  My friend and I promptly exchange virtual high-fives and "woots!" are heard on the headset.  Until I find that we were still travelling pretty fast into the direction of the giant burning ball of flame that is now the helicopter.

"OH SH*T!  U-TURN!  NOW!"  I shout down the head set.  But to no avail.  It's too late.  The helicopter lands right on top of us.  Oh my god.  It was a bit depressing when we died, but it didn't stop it being any bit the least awesome.

Another time was when their were two crooks left and about 5 cops.  One crook had managed to get into the helicopter while the other crook was on the roof of this museum place.  I was on the ground with a rocket launcher.  The helicopter tried to pick up the crook on the roof before and I shot a few rockets at it and now it was in a bad condition.  It wouldn't be able to take many more hits.  It flew atop this high sky-scraper where I couldn't touch it and everyone was playing the waiting game.  The others panned out in search of rocket launchers and helicopters to try and take it down.  So I was left, alone.  Against a helicopter and a guy sporting a assault rifle atop a building with only ONE rocket launcher ammo left.  I get into a fast car and make it look like I'm off searching for more RPG ammo and the helicopter takes the bait.  It starts flying down to pick up the final crook, I execute a perfect 180 and head back the other way.  They didn't see me coming and BOOM!  I take out the helicopter is taken out by my rocket launcher.  I also managed to take out the other crook.  Now that is how you play GTA IV.  It was truly one of the most intense and great games I have played online.

 

It's about time I got back to working on revising (I'm meant to be revising now actually...) so I'm cutting this post short.  Until next time.

 

UPDATE #1:  Godammit!  The kick-pedal's broken!  It came off in a particularly heated play of "Run for the Hills".  :(

Made me only get 4 stars (I continued with a broken kick-pedal!).