I am Chris, and I approve this message.
I am Chris, and I approve this message.
A pleasant night at a friends house with a few mates rang in the new year for me, playing Xbox and board games while watching the Sydney fireworks on TV (I've been to the harbour to see them live once... once is enough).
2008 is indeed set to be a good year. StarCraft 2 is likely, BattleStar Galactica Season 4 is coming (eventually), and I plan on buying a new gaming PC. Yep, you know you're a geek when those are the things you're most looking forward to for the year.
The fact that the dev team is still creating brand new units, inserting old ones, removing current ones, and changing the way many units and game mechanics work (like the Thor, Mothership, and time bomb abilities) it does make me think that they still have a fair way to go yet. I am expecting a 3rd or 4th quarter release this year, and even that's being optimistic.
They spent a while developing the Protoss, and since the first game demo in June last year, they've still got more new Protoss units to try out, in light of introducing the Terran faction and making more changes. Meanwhile, the Zerg haven't even been released to community input yet, so not only will there be many months of further changes to the Zerg once they are released, but again, more re-balancing of the Protoss and Terrans to take in to account those Zerg changes. They'll make sure all 3 are as carefully balanced as in the original.
On the whole, it fills me with confidence. When they revealed the Tempest unit, I was a little put off. They've since replaced it with a newer version of the Carrier which is what I wanted. I didn't like the look of the Soul Hunter, and it's been removed. I didn't like the look of the Terran Cobra, and it too has since been removed. Since they showed us the Banshees, Karune was nice enough to pick one of my questions and the Blizzard dev team answered it (My question was the first one answered in this batch). Blizzard just hasn't put a foot wrong as far as community feedback goes.
What I am just trying to say is, Blizzard showed an amazing demo back in June and they have just been making it better and better as they've made more changes. Blizzard has never rushed out releases to fill aging gaps in their current game lineups. In fact they've never rushed out a release, and I applaud them for that. I don't want them to do it at all differently for this game.
The only thing that will determine the release date for StarCraft 2, is StarCraft 2 - how it plays, how it looks, and how much the testers like it. I agree it would suck if it ended up not being here within the next 12 months, but as always I'd prefer a delayed, solid release, than one that was rushed out to plug a hole in the marketplace.
2007 has been a huge year for me (graduating from uni, having an awesome first job just land in my lap straight afterwards) so I think 2008 is going to be me finding some routine in this new life of mine. Since I started working, I've been forced to neglect pretty much all the side projects I've started or wanted to start over the years. I was planning on taking 6 months off after uni finished, but when the job offer popped up it was just too good to say no.
So, my goals are:
- Finish my evaluation contract at work, and get the full time position with a company car as part of the deal (all pretty much guaranteed at this point)
- Get into a better daily and weekly routine to better manage the small time I have outside of work
- Get back in to working out every now and then. Even if it's just a few pushups
- Find something productive to do with all my money. If I have a compnay car, I have no other real expenses (I still live at home)
- Better work out what to do with all my online plans which got shot down this year because of work
- Play StarCraft 2. If it gets delayed beyond 2008 I will cry.
Knowing me though, it'll only end up being the first and last of those points which come to fruition.
Dang. I thought Aelon was safe form the carnage but now it's dropped from 5 to 4.
Team Fortress 2! Woohoo!
All the FPS' I would have thought of have been mentioned above. You've got no chance of running newer ones like FEAR though, I can tell you now.
For anther Genre there is the FreeSpace Source Code Project, which has released what is basically a free version of FreeSpace 2 with a pretty heavily upgraded graphics engine with some more modern features.
I found it pretty fun.
Yep so have I.
A massive galactic sci-fi MMORTS with a persistent game world.
I am actually making one now, but it's text based. So it doesn't count. But damn a graphical version would be cool.
Aelon has been pinkified. I planned on something much more subtle than this but I just couldn't help myself and I splashed the pink paint everywhere.
Well my weekend is almost over and I did almost as much Nothing as I was planning on doing.
However, Monday is a public holiday and I've been called in to work for some urgent stuff. There goes my long weekend of Nothingness...
Yeah I use Notepad2. I wouldn't say it's heavy duty, but I use it because I do actually have it as a complete replacement for Notepad on Windows. The convenience factor alone just blows everything else away for me. But it is actually pretty powerful.
Yeah, the Marmite made in Australia/NZ is quite different to the British one. As far as I know the Brit's one is based on meat products whereas the one in AU/NZ is actually made by a company who more or less swears by vegetarianism. Their Marmite is a yeast extract.
And it's the only one I have.
Over the last few months my weekends have been changing.
The first half of 2007 was my last semester at uni, so weekends were just like any other day without classes - spent on uni projects, and socializing only when possible. My Saturdays and Sundays were identical to my Thursdays.
Then after June I finished uni and decided to do nothing for a while, so each day involved waking up at around lunchtime. Very lazy, but damn I needed the break.
Now I only just got my first full time job, and today is actually my first weekend after my first week on the job. It's been strangely busy, because all the things I had no time to do during the week have now piled up and happened at once. It's definitely going to take some getting used to.
eMusic only here. I've been really getting in to classical music lately so it tends to have everything I need.
You didn't hear Oli?
The writers knew that scifi was getting less and less impressed with BSG's ratings tumble (SG1's end really hurt it), so rather than drag the series out after having their funding cut in half, they decided to finish the story - something I applaud. There's nothing I hate more than a TV show which just drives itself into the ground for the last few seasons of it's life.
Season 4 will be the last, and I for one am glad. The second half of season 3 had too much filler already, so it's clear that they're running out of ideas and they just need to finish the main story arc.
I will of course miss it when it does end though. Like I miss Arrested Development and Futurama now.
When my brother got a macbook pro (the first generation) he got a free 512mb iPod shuffle. I bought it off him because I wanted a USB stick and I figured one that could play music too was a nice bonus.
It's actually still the only Apple hardware product I own.
OK after reading their article on how the earth MUST be flat, I am declaring this site to be absolute gold.
When will the war end? Hopefully never. The lack of competition is why all those bad things you just stated happened in the first place.
As far as wars go, this is one of the few which I would like to see go on indefinitely.
That last paragraph of yours made no sense until I urbandictionaried it.
But yeah I don't maklar at all! Maklar away.
I guess they perhaps do it because blog can be a verb and a noun. So "I am going to run" and "I just went for a run" could possibly be used to justify "I am going to blog about this" and "check out my new blog on this".
Of course, they're still completely wrong. I recommend increasing their daily intake of geekery, and within a month, the symptoms should subside.
Are your wisdom teeth finally coming through? =P
I think that it must be hard for any modern American to picture their country taking an isolationalist approach to foreign affairs like it did back then, because it's such a polar opposite to what it is like now. So for starters their entire context for viewing America's involvement is screwed up from the beginning.
In fact, it is for everyone. Because no matter how many history books they've read, anyone who goes on about what exactly happened back in the world wars without actually having been there is talking out of their arse. So let them.
And finally, if this does become a Canada vs. USA thread, all I have to say is that you both lose. Australia rocks. Fear the Kangaroo!
Being a gamer, I needed something short and unique which I could use in online games, forums, blogs and such. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I finally decided to use my real name up front. As you can see it's not the most uncommon name, so having a pseudonym just makes sense to stop confusion. I've never really hidden my name - I've just never used it as my primary handle.
When I was in 8th grade, we had 5 Chris'. And it wasn't a big grade. Annoying, but that's what you get for having such a kickass name. Too many parents agreed.
I thought for a good decade or so that being an Architect was right for me. Then in my final years of school I did work experience at a couple of places... *snores*
Needless to say I didn't want to be an architect after that. So now it looks like I am well and truly going down the path of web development. I just finished my last uni exams though so I've never had a full time job before. We'll see where it goes!
I typically write two kinds of entries. I have ones which I will tell myself well in advance that I wish to post on, and then think about it a fair bit before diving in. I might take over an hour on those.
When I am ticked off at something though, such as my last one, I pretty much just go for it, and the time spent is merely the raw typing time + time spent fixing small bits of grammar and the like.
That said, I don't really write short posts anymore. These days I find myself posting a fair bit less, but each time I do post, it's a fair bit more.
Since launch, Aelon has had 6 completely different designs. It also had 4 before we actually launched, so ten all up. Granted, this all spans a period of 5+ years, and the last 3 designs alone have been over the last 3 years.
Those first 2 years saw a lot of practice... after that I was generally happy enough with my own work to let it sit for a while.
I have two. One for my secret project (*shifty eyes*) and of course Aelon.net - which I didn't actually own directly until a couple of months ago. When i first got the domain it was through a hosting deal so the owner was technically my web host.
I got it transferred over to me more recently, which was a good experience. Now I know how the system works and stuff.
There is plenty of gameplay footage on GameSpy and IGN.
The new protoss units are all really weird looking. I dare say they're trying to make them even more different from the terrans than they were before, which is fair enough, but the colossus looks a bit clumsy.
I have two innocuous Text Link Ads on Aelon, with space for two more. Frankly, considering Aelons (IMO) low traffic levels, I am stoked at how much I make. It's easily enough to cover hosting.
I am not sure how long I will keep them though as I don't know how well I need to perform for the ad owners to keep renewing them. So far none have left though, after a few months...
But generally, I think that any ads which get in my way are annoying, and I won't even think about putting them on my own site. TLA is great because they fit right in to my side bar and don't really compromise the design in any way whatsoever.
Even Google ads I find quite annoying. The only ads which generally don't annoy me are TLAs, and well-placed, non-intrusive images for extremely relevant/interesting things, like Stammy and 9rules tend to have. Anything else offends my eyes, and I either block the ads or avoid the site. IGN/GameSpy's interstitial ads are particularly outrageous, but then they're not blogs, so that's a whole new ball game.
The source peroty linked to is the original. XKCD is an often-brilliant but not-so-artsy web comic.
I dare say that strip (the map was the comic strip for the day) is probably his most popular ever, now.
Even though I love Battlestar Galactica (still the only series I have ever bothered to get on DVD), I am hoping that the next season is the last.
Season 3 suffered from some serious slow parts (in between some of the most awesome scenes I've ever seen on a tv screen) and I think if they aimed for more than one more season, we'd just see more of that.
Season 4 should be it, and it should be great.
Just the other day I was trying to copy a single .doc file from my sister's Vista laptop to my XP machine. Hers locked up, and so did mine while waiting for her computer to respond. While I could easily recover in XP, her Vista machine was so far gone I had to just do a hard reset. She's had plenty of other issue with it resetting and blue screening, and while drivers are probably one of the causes, you'd expect such an integrated solution like a laptop to fare better in that regard.
When I said "issues surrounding" I do indeed mean drivers, and also other applications which still aren't quite Vista ready. I know some of my uni's student software isn't yet Vista compatible. It's hardly Microsoft's fault but by the time Service Pack 1 is out, I would imagine that most things will be well in order by then. That's about how long it took for everyone to settle down with WinXP as well.
I get a free copy of Vista business through uni, and while I now have it with me, I won't be installing it before Service Pack 1 comes out. Right now it just seems like there are too many issues surrounding it, especially for gamers like me.
I don't think anyone should touch Vista unless they really need it, at least for the time being. But that's just me - some people are desperate for all those pretty effects.
I think with StarCraft 2, Blizzard knows they will seriously alienate their fanbase (esp. in Korea) if StarCraft isn't something akin to an RTS.
» Your Civilization Strategies ... Last Reply: 8 months ago by Scrivs.
I like to play Civ4 on smaller maps - Tiny or Duel sized, with lots and lots of players. Cramming them all in means there is only enough room to build one or two cities at most, and culture becomes much more important. Your choices are to attack early to secure more land and resources, or gradually engulf the cultures around you and assimilate their cities.
And having so many civs so close to each other means there is always plenty of action.
Basically, if you start out with some marble or stone nearby, try and utilize them to build related wonders. It'll mean your citizens will have culture pouring out of every orifice, and the additional Great People can really make your cities more productive.
If you find you have no stone or marble though, it's likely the AI will get the wonders before you. In that case, secure some copper or iron and crush them all underneath your sword. Just don't try and attack cities without siege units.