Btw, I have more stuff to say about Mass Effect 2, but I'll let it wait until I'm done with my second replay, which I've failed to start so far.

More btw, I'm on the last month of my internship. So only 4 more weeks of real work assignments, good lunch, good coworkers, and so on. After that it's time to write my batchelor project. On the upside, this means I could be a full-fledged engineer around my 31st birthday. Better late than never, eh?

• The Good:
• Mood: It still feels like a Mass Effect game. It's a bit darker and edgier, but you're still playing Shephard, and the universe feels the same.
• Meeting old friends (and foes): So far I've run into several familiar faces, in order of appearance: Tali, Joker, Dr. Chakwass, Fist, Helena Blake and Garrus. Meeting Tali was cool, and meeting Garrus was actaully a bit heartwarming. I didn't feel we got to know him too well in the first game, but it defenitely feels like we're doing that this time around. And people like Fist and Helena Blake are of NPCs from missions in the first game, one was annoyed at seeing me, after I broke up his criminal organization, and the other was happy to be working as a social worker after I convinced her to give up her villainous life in the first game. Of course, it's possible to kill both of them in the first game as well.
• Dialogue is good: The dialogue wheels are back, and are combined with occasional split second decisions, like stabbing a technician in the back (literally) or destroying some kids gun to keep him out of trouble. It works, even if it means you have to be a bit more attentive during conversations.
• Customization: While it doesn't seem we get more armors other than the DLC stuff which all have non-removable helmets, the S7-armor that Shephard starts with is highly customizable. It has several locations that you can play around with, like chest plate, shoulder guards, helmet, greaves and bracers, and you can choose what color and texture it has more or less. You can also choose between four uniforms to wear when out of your armor, though I'd like a few more options there. Also, the captains cabin has a wall for ship models, and a picture of your love interest from Mass Effect. So I have a picture of Liara on my table. Aww.
• Galaxy Map: The galaxy map has a lot of improvements it seems, though you'll have to buy fuel to get from system to system, and scanning planets is a bit tedious. Less so than having to do so in the Mako from the first game though.
• Minigames: The Simon Says minigame from Mass Effect for decrypting and unlocking stuff is gone, replaced with two new and better systems. When opening locks you match nodes and connect them, when hacking, you look for code snippets, while avoiding the firewall. Both are on a timer which can be expanded with an upgrade, and it doesn't seem like there's a limit to how many times you can try to hack or unlock something. I like.
• Mission summary: The first game actually did have missions as well, but now you get a summary after each one. The summary is nice enough, and it seems like it's not actually given to Shephard, so much as it's relayed to The Illusive Man. This works surprisingly well for me.
The Bad:
• Dumbing down of RPG elements:
Levelling has been majorly simplified, with each ability only having four ranks, that get progressively more expensive to buy. You still control your allies' levelling though, and can still somewhat choose their weapons loadout, so it's not as bad as I'd heard.
• Limited ammo and reloading Ejecting heat sinks in combat:
  In a move to cater to the shooter-crowd, the game now uses disposable heat sinks that are replaced in combat to avoid overloading. The old heat managing system is gone, and once you run out of heat sinks, you can't fire the weapon in question. And you can't just let the weapon cool down either. I think I'd have preferred a retcon and limited magazines rather than the poor explanation they've used for going from effectively unlimited ammo to this system though.
• New cover system:
  This is something most people are probably happy with, but one of the mayor problems I have with the game. Mass Effect borrowed a lot of elements from IOI games like Freedom Fighters and Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Like taking cover by moving towards it and giving orders to your allies with a fairly simple system. Mass Effect 2 instead chose a much more popular system, that found in the game Gears Of War. The cover system in that game was one of the main reasons I gave up on it, as using the run button to go into cover feels counter-intuitive for me, and having to press it a few times to vault over cover is just annoying.
• Lack of weapon stats: There isn't a simple way to see how good each weapon is, other than trial and error. I currently have three assault rifles to choose from for example, one has a huge magazine, another has a small magazine but is very precise and heavy-hitting, and I've got a Collector rifle I haven't tried out yet. I'd like to be able to see simple things like an ammo count and accuracy/damage numbers at a glance rather than trial and error though.

I'm sure there are other obeservations I can make about the game, but they'll have to wait. Can't wait to get to play some more though :)

On another note, I'll be starting to (possibly) take classes again from tomorrow, where I'm going to attend my first class on Artificial Intelligence and Multi-user Systems. I'm still doing my internship though, so I may need to work extra the rest of the week so I can take half a day off every Tuesday to go to classes. Also, I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to going to classes again or dreading it. One of the people responsible for the course is one of my favorite teachers at DTU though, so here's hoping I'll enjoy learning again. And hoping a Mass Effect 2 CE will be going my way before someone spoils the plot to me :)

• Microsoft Indexing Service (and Indexing Service Query Language)
• IIS (with classic ASP/VB script/xhtml)
• XML DOM (Xpath/XSL)
• XML databases (currently dropped, but used XQuery and XPath)
• Dynamic content (JavaScript)

On top of this, I'm working in a realistic environment (since it's an actual workplace with other developers), on a product that someone will actually use, and I have to use internal tools for stuff like documentation, test cases, issues, etc. as well. Well, I could do without the documentation, but I may as well get used to that part :P

It's not unlikely I'll use some of the new technology I've learned (namely XPath/XSL and JavaScript) on this site in the future of course.

• The Men Who Stare At Goats I watched this weirdly funny movie in New York in November. It's got quirky humor, jedi warriors, psych warfare (psychic and psychological), and is named for a person staring at a goat and stopping its heart.
• James Cameron's Avatar Three things: First, don't watch it for its plot. Second, do watch it in 3d. And last but not least, James Cameron is back. After not making any good movies for several years, he's back with the most intense action I've seen for years.
• Sherlock Holmes Don't let the trailers fool you: while the world's greatest detective is a bit more action oriented (and stubbled), it's not a braindead action fest. Holmes' methods are still based off his brillaint intellect and he behaves like a magnificent bastard, and Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are perfect in the roles. There'll most likely be a second movie to follow this, and I'm most defenitely going to watch it.

I was with some nice people this year, I didn't get too drunk, I have all of my appendages and eyes, and so on, so all in all a good celebration, with my only problem a possibly bent rib from a few weeks ago, and I couldn't feel that after getting a little to drink (or I forgot about it).

All in all, a good start of the year, for me at least. Here's hoping the rest of 2010 will treat us all nicely.

Also, watched Avatar in arguably the biggest/best cinema in the country in 3d. I'd expected the 3d to be gimmicky much like the 3d movies of yore. It wasn't. I think the film may have sold me on 3d movies in the future, it was that good. Sure, it had a formulaic plot, the acting wasn't outstanding, but the effects rocked the world and the action even more so, so it was defenitely worth the price of admission.
Despite having made Titanic, James Cameron still knows how to direct solid action. The not-so-actiony parts were quite good too though, and I disagree with Cracked.com that it was 90 minutes of boredom followed by 40 minutes of awesome. Well, the last 40 minutes certainly were awesome, but so was the first part of the movie, if in a different way. So there...

• Christmas dinner last Friday. Can't remember anything after the fish due to a massive blackout, which is apparantly due to massive amounts of schnapps (or snaps as it's spelled here). This was at work, so I may be taking some abuse from it. Good thing my body has a purge function though. It's disgusting at work, but it keeps me from getting alcohol poisoning, though again, opens up for abuse.
• Found a new MMO to play while waiting for SW:TOR. It's called Fallen Earth, it's set in a post-apocalyptic world, has massive crafting (in fact, if you want gear, that's the best way to get it), no fast travel (normally not a selling point for me, but works in this case), real-time first/third person shooter/melee battles (again, normally I prefer a turn-based approach but it works). There's a website if people really want to know about it.
• Still haven't completed Dragon Age: Origins. Busy with work, christmas preperations, Fallen Earth, sleeping, and so on. Also, like so many other good games, I've made several characters, the current one being a female city elf rogue. There's a social site too btw.
• Watching Avatar later today with people from work. From what I hear, the first 90 minutes are boring as fuck (or at least as Titanic, which I still haven't seen), but the last 40 minutes should make up for it and show that James Cameron is still one of the best action directors. We'll see in about 8-9 hours.
• Christmas is on Thursday (we give gifts on Christmas Eve not the day after) and I still haven't bought a single present. And my own wish list is apparantly lacking too, but what can you do. Anyways, this means I'll be enjoying the crowds of late shoppers again this year. *Doesn't like crowds*

Pics or it didn't happen I've got no pictures whatsoever, since I couldn't find the charger for my digital camera, but I discovered that you enjoy travelling a lot more when you're looking around you, using your peripheral vision and not looking at the tiny display on a camera. This goes double in NYC since you're at all times surrounded by majestic buildings on all sides, and even more so when going by ferry to Liberty Island as you get to bask in the view that is the Manhattan skyline, as well as standing in the shadow of the statue of Liberty, or in Central Park while still seeing the buildings just on the edge of the massive park.
And so on...

Anyway, the trip was amazing despite some familiar problems along the way, though I'm horribly jetlagged and haven't played Dragon Age: Origins for a week. So I need to get to it :)

To say I'm tired would be a slight understatement :)

In other words, happy Talk Like A Pirate Day ta' ya all.

And ye better be remberin' ta get some free swag from Telltale Games, while ye still be able to, arrh!

Anyway, happy birthday to me, and to good ol' HP Lovecraft as well.

That's not necessarily an exhaustive list btw, and I haven't counted any free-to-play MMOs. There are a few of these games I keep coming back to, namely World of Warcraft and City of Heroes/Villains.
There are also quite a few of these that I played only for a short time and then abandoned due to how crap they were (WAR and AoC), sometimes saving my money by finding out how bad or incompatible with my play style a given game is in beta or trial (Vanguard, EVE Online).
Interestingly, the really bad ones are the ones that tend to send you fresh invites with free temporary account activation and such, and in the span of a day or two I've gotten my account reactivated for both WAR and AoC, and have revisited both games.
WAR has greatly improved, simply due to the adding of the missing classes. It's still focused on PvP which I don't care for though. AoC, well, I remember why I dropped it like a red headed stepchild. It's still a resource hog, still has crappy twitch-based game play, still has useless, horrible crafting, still has naked breasts, bloodshed and dismemberment, but dialog and quests written so the game can cater to the 14-year olds it seems to really be aimed at. Neither game seem to be worth the re-download in other words.
So what makes me come back to WoW and CoH? Well, it's partly the people (The social element is hugely important in MMOs), partly the graphics/design (WoW is beautiful, has characters and races with, well, character, CoH lets you design your own characters, nearly no matter what concept you may have in mind), and both games have fairly low requirements, which means they run incredibly well on my gaming rig, which was state of the art about two years back. Both games also don't force PvP down my throat, allow for both rich solo and group play, don't have really annoying interfaces, and have achievement-like systems.
I actually think either City of Heroes or Star Wars Galaxies was the first MMO (maybe first game) to have badges/achievements that you could unlock, and while WoW and CoH do achievements/badges somewhat differently, they both have both casual and not at all casual achievements, and both have that nicely addictive quality that any good MMO should have for people to stick with it.
Interestingly, I only got to max level in WoW last year, and am not quite there (but nearly) in CoH, despite playing both games on and off since their respective betas (WoW closed EU and CoH US preorder beta access), but I guess I suffer from Altitis.

On another note, I watched Antichrist last Thursday, but I just don't know what to say about it.

Anyway, back to "enjoying" my clogged sinuses.

Actually, I just came home from watching a sneak-premiere (we Europeans get everything later than the Americans, despite living in the future). and I must say I'm positively surprised.
I'm a big fan of the original comic. I read parts of it back when I was a kid, and was really intrigued by the whole thing, even if I didn't understand a lot of what was going on. A few years back I bought a deluxe edition of the Watchmen and I've read it back to back several times.

The movie did change a few things. I won't go into spoilers right now, but I'll say a lot of the changes helped the movie better along, and some even made better sense than the comic. Of course, some things I was a bit annoyed by, but the biggest negative I can really mention is the excessive use of slow motion. At the same time, I understand why it was used, since it gives the appearance of a comic frame and lets the viewer see the details more clearly than a fast, rough and tumble battle (for example) would allow. Certain cast I disagreed upon, but most of the cast was excellent, including Rorschach, Dan Dreiberg, Hollis Mason, Edward Blake, Dr. Manhattan and even Sally Jupiter and her daughter played excellent.

As has been mentioned everywhere, the movie had a lot of blue penis, staying true to the comic in that respect, but I'd say the people taking offense at that sound homophobic at best. In my opinion, it made Dr. Manhattan resemble a Greek statue, which I think is the point.

Also a note should go out about the music. The music fit the theme of the movie, the time it takes place (1985), and even fit the scenes various songs were used. Like All Along The Watchtower, 99 Luftballons, The Sound Of Silence, and two Leonard Cohen songs, one of them First We Take Manhattan, which played as the credits rolled.

Anyway, I'm not going to put numerical scores to the movie (maybe later), but I'll give my verdict: Totally didn't suck. Go watch it now. I'd advice reading the comic first (because it's an excellent read), but it's not required to enjoy and understand the movie.

if Snew(i,j) > 0.01 & Snew(i,j) < 1

instead of

if S(i,j) > 0.01 & S(i,j) < 1

Another was running a for loop 0:K instead of 0:K-1, and the final one, which I spent a good while looking for, was a copy pasta error, where I'd forgotten to rename two variables used from vy to vx. Made a huge difference in the end result, but not enough that it was easy to find.
In the end, one of my friends looked over my code and helped find these errors which I had looked for (and at) for so long that they had become invisible to me. Funny thing. The looking at other peoples code to find errors they've spent hours looking for is usually my role.
Ohwell, maybe I'm just getting old :P

Anyway, it's now time for a well deserved coffee break, and I think I may just mix it with a rare rum-break.

Cheers!

The Hunter is quick and agile, able to make huge leaps, and are pretty damn hard to hit. Also aggressive bastards actively looking for you it seems.
The Boomer is a fat zombie that shambles towards you and explodes when it's close enough. This has two distinct and nasty effects that mean that you don't want the Boomer to get close, ever: First, you get sprayed with bile, which means you can't see anything for long enough to be killed several times. Second, the smell of the bile draws a Horde of zombies towards your location. The combination of these make the Boomer bad news all around.
The Witch looks like a young girl, crying in a dark corner. I made the mistake of attacking one, expecting it to be no more lethal than a regular zombie, but it's tough and fast and it seems she calls another Horde. I may be wrong as I only met one of them.
The Tank is a regular behemoth. He deals a ton of damage, and can take even more. I fired about 20-30 rounds from a Benelli M4 Super 90 into it before it died on Normal (the second easiest) difficulty and it nearly made mincemeat of me in the process.
The Smoker drags a survivor close to it with a long tendril which may be a tongue or its intestines. I didn't have time to check. This can be incredibly bad when you've gotten to high ground with your group, and one of the bastards pull one of you down into the waiting horde. It also explodes into a noxious smoke which is both a little damaging and blocks sight when it dies. The Horde as mentioned above is a huge amount of Infected that charge at you, sometimes from various directions. They can spawn by themselves or be summoned by other types of undead.

As far as I've understood, the spots and times that the different types of zombies spawn is somewhat random in single-player/coop campaigns, and can be placed by the Director in Versus mode. This makes the game unpredictable and more than a little bit scary, especially as you sometimes don't have any more than the tight beam flashlight from your guns to see by.
The campaigns are split into different parts by safe rooms that allow the level to load, and contains much needed ammo and first aid kits, as well as guns so you can swap your main weapon if you want.
At the start of the campaign you can choose between twp main weapons: Shotgun - probably some Remington variant or an Uzi SMG. As well as this you start with a first aid kit, pain pills (which gives temporary health but work much faster than the kit) and a grenade (either a pipe-bomb that beeps and attracts zombies or a molotov cocktail). You also start with what I think is a a Colt pistol, though I'm not sure of the brand, which has unlimited ammo.
All the weapons have flashlights with unlimited batteries, and you can only carry one of each item (kit, pills, bomb), and of course only one main gun.
You can improve your weapons with a secondary pistol (which gives you 30 shots before reloading instead of 15), and better main weapons, like an M-16A2 assault rifle, a Benelli M4 S90 semi-auto shotgun, or a scoped hunting rifle.
There are also mounted gattling guns in some places, but they take time to start up, and they visibly overheat after a couple of seconds of sustained fire.
In the first campaign you occasionally had to activate various objectives, like a lift, elevator, or door switch. These tend to be noisy and attract zombies of course. At the end you fight your way to a rooftop on a 30-story building and activate a radio so a helicopter will come and pick you up. When I got to this point, I was told to hang in there and wait for the chopper, which went sort of well, but then the chopper showed up and we had to leg it. In the proceeding chaos as the roof flooded with zombies, I managed to lose three of my four team-mates, with one of the casualties being myself, but the last survivor made it to the chopper at least.

Anyway, the as I said, the game so far seems like the ultimate zombie-game, and I'm looking very much forward to trying it co-op with some friends to scream bloody murder at. Also, I'll have to try Versus mode at some point, if just to try playing the zombies.
Come to think of it, that's one of the few things I can say (so far) is missing from the game actually: The ability to play zombies against a group of AI-controlled humans.

Also, while activating the game on Steam (which still irks me, even if it's nowhere near as bad as when I first installed Half-Life 2) I got an ad for buying the entire X-Com series on Steam for €4.99, which I of course couldn't resist.

Anyway, the point of this thing is obviously to with everyone/anyone who may be reading this a good celebration of whatever they choose to celebrate around the 24th of December.

I'll just have to deal with the hangovers later.

Anyway, I'd better bite the bullet, grab a cup of coffee and continue preparing. And hope for the best obviously...

Unfortunately not very surprising, I didn't pass. Couldn't remember a single formula to describe the public/private keys for either RSA or ElGaman, nor the exact procedure with encrypting/decrypting with them or signing a message.
Damn, I hate oral exams.

8-Bit Jesus: New Christmas Chip-tune Album

Since then, however, several new games are out. I've played through Fable II, which at first seems like a great game, but turns out to be just as completely linear as the first in the series amongst other things. Then there's Fallout 3, which has good and bad sides enough for a totally seperate post, which I'll make at some later point. Suffice to say, it's better than Oblivion, but it's unfortunately still a BethSoft game, so dialog is crap.

On other fronts, the semester is nearly at an end. I've got an assignment to turn in at noon tomorrow, I've got exams coming up in two weeks which I don't feel ready for, and I've yet to find an internship.

Also, my sleep cycle is completely fucked up again, with me sleeping my day away and staying awake all night. I guess I need to take up my coffee habit again so I can fix it....

Also, I really need to get a preview function made for when I write these posts. Or maybe a new site? We'll see when I have time for stuff like that. Not likely to be anytime soon.

On another note, WAR seems like a great game so far, with the only real gripe I have with it being that I actually prefer the Order races and classes (not least because I'm a huge fan of WHFRP) but my guild is playing Destruction. Ah well, what can you do? :)

So, the WAR Open Beta started yesterday. Or rather, it did if you were already in the closed beta or if you live outside of Europe. If however you were stupid enough to preorder a game with the GOA logo on it, there's no such luck, as the account creation center wasn't even put online until a few hours before OB was supposed to start.
Long story short, this means that the first two days of OB in Europe has already been lost, that the entire OB will probably go the same way.
Now some people may say that it's inconsequential, as it's beta anyway, but the fact is that the vast majority of the people in OB that weren't in closed beta payed for the privilege through preordering of either the Collector's Edition of the game, or an overpriced version of the Standard Edition.
Another problem is that since the start of the real game is little over a week away (it's on the 18th) and the same people who've payed to get into OB have also payed to get access to a head-start on the servers on Sunday, it's not looking good at all.
It's really too bad, as I had high expectations of WAR, but it seems more and more likely that no matter how good the game is, GOA, the company running the EU version, have given the game a horrible reputation already, which will at best make sure that the game will not become a big success in Europe, and quite likely it will ruin the game for the people who have already decided to try it out.
I'd love to be proved wrong, and to see WAR become a great game, a huge success in Europe, and for it to be worthy of the time and money I'm going to invest in it, but so far I've invested about €110 and two full days (because the messages from GOA have constantly been of the "It's just around the corner"-type), and I haven't seen Jack shit.

I also finally got my grade in Computer Science Modelling, but the bad news is that I failed the course. It's not that I'm surprised, but it's still annoying, as that means that my studies will be delayed half a year, and that I'll finish while I'm 30 but not before I turn 30 as planned. It also means that I likely won't be starting my internship until the beginning of next year, but this isn't all bad, as it means I'll have more time to actually find an internship, and it also means that I have time to take my remaining electives before I have to do my final project instead of the same time as, and I have access to all the courses that can only be taken during fall, such as Introduction To Cryptography and such.

Btw, in case it sounds like I'm macho, or trying to sound that way, it's in no way the case. I'm just deadly afraid of needles, and I like to gross people out with medical stories like these :)

And as a late edit, I did get the bloody thing handed in around two hours before the deadline, because there comes a time when you realize that you're just not going to make any more of an assignment, and printing takes time.
In any case, my body is now wrecked by lack of sleep combined with being groggy from just waking from a way too short power-nap, and my stomach is the usual black churning, demon-infested hole it always becomes when I mix no food, lack of sleep, stress, and lots of strong coffee of course.
I prefer my coffee black as night and strong enough that you have to chew when drinking it :P
Anyway, with just one (not so important) assignment left - one that does not directly affect my grades, and has a deadline that coincides with a very hard exam, I think I know where my focus is going to be at.

Aaaanyway, there are several reasons I should never write these posts when I'm tired, one being that I may write something I'll regret (and the internet never forgets), and the other being that I get very long-winded :P

Verdict (as inspired by Sunday at 10): Totally did not suck. Go watch it!

Natfilm Festival films
Film name	Rating	Date watched	Notes
Chrysalis	3.1	March 31st	A somewhat average sci-fi flick, it has some interesting ideas and plots involving erasing and reprogramming minds, but it fails miserably in tying them together, and ends up throwing in a government coverup which just doesn't mix with the rest. It has some great action scenes that are violent and seem very realistic and unpleasant, but in the end, the movie doesn't know what it wants to be or do, and it just ends up being a bit of a mess. Not a bad movie, just not a great one either.
Reclaim Your Brain	4.8	March 31st	Also called "Your television is lying". Rainer starts out as a producer of crap reality shows, but after a car accident caused by a girl who's life he's responsible for ruining, he decides to try and educate people by using the biased ratings system to his advantage. Probably the best movie of the bunch.
WAZ	4	April 1st	"How much will it take to get you to kill the one you love?" is a question that is asked in this movie. It has good actors, horrible torture scenes, and a very unpleasant premise, and I think it was a great movie.
[REC]	4.5	April 1st	Soon to be a major Hollywood production even though the original Spanish movie hasn't premiered that many places yet. It's a zombie movie, and one of the better ones I've seen in a long time. The entire movie is watched through the camera lens of a local news team, but it doesn't seem contrived, and it is not a rip-off of Cloverfield or Blair Witch. This movie rocked, and actually managed to be scary, despite being a zombie movie.
Timecrimes	3.2	April 4th	A Spanish movie with an interesting premise involving time travel, though it doesn't deliver.
Sukiyaki Western Django	4.5	April 5th	A spaghetti western by Takasha Miike, based on Django, but set in Japan. All the actors speak English, albeit with heavy accents. The violence and action is over the top as one would expect, but it seems much more light-hearted film than some of his other works. Which I don't mind one bit.
Appleseed: Ex Machina	4	April 7th	A beautiful, animated film that still manages to look like the Shirow manga that it's based on. Direction by John Woo, so it's Awesome at times, but not constantly.

The ratings are from 1-5, with 1 being utter crap and 5 being a bloody masterpiece, and are of course purely subjective. The notes are simply my thoughts on the films and not complete synopsises. All titles are the ones they were presented as here, and include a link to each movie's profile on IMDB.com.

More positive news is that I'm going out to see two movies tonight, as I also did yesterday. Yesterday it was Chrysalis and Reclaim Your Brain, and today it's WAZ and [REC].

Edit: Came home around 3 AM, having had a few beers (but I've no lectures today, so don't worry), and it's now morning, and I'm obviously feeling a little bit like crap. Also, imdb-links added for the movies in question. And in order of how good they were, they are Reclaim Your Brain, [REC], WAZ, Chrysalis, though WAZ and [REC] were close.

In happier new, easter officially started today, and since I'm basically a Bright (even if I'm a bit too non-confrontational to go out and actually try to convince people that religion is bad), that means that I don't have any lectures until next Tuesday. Maybe I can find the time to get this site updated, and buy back my old domain (brotherpain.com), which I lost to a crappy domain registration system.

Together with David Arneson he started the hobby that has been a big part of my life for the past 18 years, and which has evolved into many different directions, from angsty White Wolf rpgs, LARP, and even MMORPGs.

Goodbye Gary, thanks for what you've created, how it's affected us all, and you will certainly be missed.

Anyway, this means I've been doing this engineering thing for two whole years already, and I only have one and a half year left if I continue to pass my courses.
Means, that the next semester will be a sort of internship also, so it's time to start doing research and writing applications.
(Actually, it's been that time for the last half year, but the eternal procrastinator inside me couldn't be bothered then)

Fun? Not really...

I had to export the picture as a BMP and edit it in Paint Shop Pro to get the transparancy (optimized for a specific forum) and size right...

This of course means that I've now got one of those ever-popular gamer cards, that you see all the cool Xbox 360 owners sporting, though mine clearly shows a lack of time to play the hell out of these games like I want to.
Also, unlike the really cool kids, I don't have the option of making my own gamer pics, so I'll have to make do with the Pipboy from Bethesda's gamerpic pack. Yeah, I know, I'm supporting the people who are going to mutilate my beloved Fallout with my damn micro-payments, but what can you do? I bought both Morrowind and Oblivion (how I rue that), and I'll likely buy Fallout 3 as well, but I reserve the right to be disgusted with what they've done with the franchise.
Anyway, I've also recently been part of a large web project to make a WIKI from scratch. It didn't go as well as hoped, not least because we had to spend too much time on other courses, and that due to illness my PHP coding frenzy was postponed by several days, so that I didn't stop coding 'till around 6 hours to the deadline (which included documentation and tests), and the system didn't even have the features I wanted it to have, like RSS feeds, mail authentication, and so on. Still, we got the son of a bitch done, sort of, and I'm now studying for my exams. Had one Wednesday that went fairly well, and have another one on Saturday (!) and the last one (which is related to the project I just did) on Tuesday.
Yeah, fun times indeed.

Oh, and lest I forget, here's my gamercard, which can also be found in the "About" section:

(* in order of reading: The Fifth Elephant, Feet Of Clay, Men At Arms, Jingo, Carpe Jugulum, Nightwatch, and Thud!)

I want to hope, but the news just hit my like a brick wall, and I just don't know how to feel...

It's a fun little thing, and pretty easy to make. I really need to make a little game so that I can make use of little sprites like this. I know it's not that hard to do after all...

• Was it worth the money?
  Well, it cost me 1350 DKR just for the ticket (that's about US $ 232 US or UK £ 125) plus what I spent on food and so on, so it wasn't cheap. The guys I was there with decided to work for their ticket, which means that they didn't get to see most of the concerts, and that they weren't really having fun the last two days. Plus they had to work for 24 hours to which sums up to a pay that compared to Danish wages is pretty crappy. I on the other hand was having fun (apart from my foot and blister problems) and heard a lot of great bands. So yes, it was worth the money, though the price is getting quite steep.
• Would I go again?
  I most certainly would. Depending on who are playing next year, what the price increases to, and what my financial situation is like, I may not want to pay the price or may not be able to, and since I've tried working for my ticket once, I know that it sucks and I'm not doing that again. But if finances allow, and the program has at least two bands that I want to hear, and a few more that may be interesting, I'll propably be going.

OGame.dk: Yeah I know, not the greatest name for a game all about building up a planet, raiding other planets for resources and researching new technology. Sort of like Civilization I guess, but luckily for me, not really. It's addictive as hell, as reminds more of the browser-based game Utopia than anything else, so I'll propably have to stop playing at some point. Btw, this version is only for Danes (yes, they do check) but there are several versions for most natianalities, so everybody should be able to find one to play.
Next up is Urban Dead - A Massively Multi-Player Web-Based Zombie Apocalypse. Yeah, it's quite fun, running around town, desperately looking for supplies, ammo, and such, while avoiding (or in my case chopping down) zombies. The fun thing is that everybody in the game is a player, and I have a zombie to terrify the bumbling humans as well. Good fun, but due to the game having run for quite a while, and people being propably too organised, it's getting to look like a levelling threadmill more and more.
World Of Dungeons is a game of building a hero and going down dungeons with some friends, killing monsters, collecting loot and all that good stuff. The thing is, you build up your character, you choose a dungeon with your group, set up what tactics to use, and then you wait. Because it's not a real-time game at all. You get a report from the dungeon you've been in. It's detailed (if you look at the detailed report) and you can see exactly who did what, but you don't have any influence, beyond setting up what equipment and skills to use how and when, when to run away, when to heal your fellow party members, where to stand in combats, and such. It's ok, especially since you can do it a few bites at a time without having to rush to the computer to be on at certain times.

Now for the MMOGs:
First up is Dungeons & Dragons Online, or DDO for short. The American version's gone gold, but the European version is still in (open) beta. The game has some good parts and some bad. Let's start with the bad, shall we? It's system requirements are heavy. Recommended is a 3GHz Pentium 4 or equivilant, with about 2 gigs of RAM, and a better graphics card than my fairly new ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Basically, I've got it at the lowest possible settings and it's still chopping. I've had to turn of speech (which is too bad) because it sounds horribly unpleasant due to my system not being up to specs. As for game features they are really lacking some things, such as a decent trade system, trade skills (there aren't even Item Creation feats I think) and the loot is horribly random. One person will get a +1 short sword from a lvl 1 quest (that's a pretty good reward) while another will get a small steel shield. Wtf? And if you ever mess up in a dungeon, you can forget about getting decent xp for it, as every time you re-enter the same dungeon 20% of the xp for the dungeon is taken from the completion xp reward.
Anyways, now for the good parts: The game is fun, sort of follows the D&D rules, though obviously converted to actual real-time. The dungeons are interesting (and instanced, so the only one there are who go in together), obviously hand-crafted, with interesting puzzles (not too many) and traps (too many unless you bring along a skilled rogue, but that's how it should be, though it means that this game is almost impossible to solo) and a Dungeon Master telling you tidbits of information. The last bit may sound corny but works very well, and would work even better if I didn't have to turn off the voice due to sound lag. The game seems fun to play and I have preordered it. But is it ready to launch? Not by a long shot. They have too many bugs to squash, and a lot of things arent' properly implemented yet, still, given time, and a system upgrade on my end, and who knows.

I also spend time on Guild Wars (which is wonderfully free, good-looking, but starts to lack in gameplay and fun factor as you get further along imho) and the free Everquest 2 trial. I'm not going to give a full review of any of these here though.

And I mentioned singleplayer games. Well, I just found Beyond Good & Evil in a bargain bin. When I first heard about this game, what I heard really didn't suit my taste, but after trying it I have to say that DAMN this is a good game. Good action, good atmosphere, good story, interesting characters, diverse gameplay without forcing you into annoying mini-games, and right now in the game, I am using stealth to make my way through a factory, and I do love my stealth games. Anyway, there are plenty of reviews to be found, so go look for the game on google, but I just had to mention it, because damn, this game is good. I just have to take a break for the next few days with it because I'm lagging behind on my homework. Ah well, good thing it's a singleplayer game so I can pick it up and put it down anytime unlike an MMOG or the like...