Rantings of a deranged gamer

Boring update ..

2009-01-25T22:19:00.002+11:00

Well I guess there's not a lot to add at the moment. I've played a demo of Stardock's "Sins of a Solar Empire" which is a very indepth RTS game. As a most simple description, I would say it's a bit of Command & Conquer with a lot of Civilisation. I found it a little slow to be honest, but it was the demo, so for all I know it could be simplified though I doubt it.

In addition to this, I have been playing Far Cry 2. It's a very neat first person shooter / adventure. It's probably best described as role playing without the stats. There's no 'leveling', instead the only real advances you get are weaponry related. I must admit in some extents it's a little samey - drive here, kill someone, drive there, kill someone - but that doesn't do it justice. The story itself evolves differently for each player from what I've been able to gather. Insofar as the combat goes, that's well done, and so is the enemy AI though they do have brain farts and just stand there occasionally - then again some people probably would too..

However the award for the moment goes to Fallout 3. I've read in a few comments, that Bethesda are supposed to have fucked it up - if that's the case, Fallout 1 and 2 were fucking great games - number 3 is a great post-nuclear holocaust romp. There's a good deal of depth in Fallout 3 though - almost everything you do affects something else later on. The atmosphere is great, with a strong feel of desolation to the entire world including all the characters. Speech and character interaction are good though as with all RPGs there's a sameyness in that person A always says the same things but it'd get pretty hard otherwise!

The last however long it was..

2008-09-26T21:40:00.004+10:00

Since I last posted, I've played Crysis, Oblivion, Mass Effect, and of course, Spore.

I've probably played other things, but hey. Let's give a summary..

Mass Effect - space RPG. Fantastic story, beautiful graphics and immersion, but sadly as much replayability as a blank CD. The first play through is brilliant, don't get me wrong, but fuck all changes next time through. Shame really. I enjoyed it but still feel ripped off considering replayability was "a strong point".

Crysis - Now that is one cool game. Played it through on all the difficulties, played it online, got reasonable at it. Graphically the game is superb, it has some issues sure, but it kept me busy a hell of a long time and all of it was fun. Can't ask more.

Oblivion's simply A Great Game. It's moddable, it's immersive, it all works wonderfully and to be quite honest it has lots of replayability, even without modding it.

Spore - what can I say, one of the most original, entertaining and novel game I've played. Well worth the outlay. It and Mass Effect have the same DRM unfortunately. However if you're creative there's an abolute wealth of things to make, and variations beyond imagining. If you like exploring, the space stage is the most fun of all. I can't fault the game, just the publisher.
In order, the pictures are :
A small part of my galaxy.
This is all of my galaxy, with some colonised planets marked in white.
"What on Earth is that" - a creature with 4 eyes and 2 legs with 7 knees each.
Spildorf, one of my favourite creatures.
And lastly one of my favourites the "Fyvarst Munki"

What you upto now ?

2007-02-08T22:02:00.000+11:00

Well I guess you can tell I'm busy 'coz it's ages since I've posted.
To be honest I've not played X3 even though it's still my main game - I just model and test stuff rather than play a game of it. The longest it usually runs for is 5 minutes but I may start it 30 or more times in an hour too..

In addition to that I have another kiddie who's as cute as her other 3 siblings gotta be happy with that !

I'm doing a different job - same place different boss and work I guess is the easiest way to describe it.

As for other games I have found need for speed to be good as always, and am quite impressed with star wars - empire at war - tho with the above stuff and X3 there's little time for them.
Anyway have fun.
Wombat.

More eventually.

I should write some more

2006-08-17T22:22:00.000+10:00

Anyway .. a heap's been happening in space land. The universe has become much more vast and contains much more life. It's a joy to be around I tell ya. That's not what I am writing about tho, so let's get to it.

I had the most bizarre thought the other day. Know how there's all those galaxies out there that we can see and all those alternate universes people reckon exist, one for every decision or difference made. What if they're the same thing ?

Imagine that we can only see the galaxies that are reasonably similar to ours, say for example where life evolved on Earth to the point where humans exist. All the other galaxies are the famed 'dark matter'. The reason it's in halos around the galaxies is pretty simple - it's similar but there's not much life there so the matter's not visible to us but we can 'feel' it.

So in other words it's all there, but because it's not something we could see (if it existed we would not) .

Maybe I'd had too much to smoke .. dunno. Makes a weird kind of sense though.

Public !

2006-07-30T18:39:00.000+10:00

XFP has finally gone public..

www.xperiment.co.uk

S'bin frickenages.. 'choobindoon .. man ?

2006-06-13T21:25:00.000+10:00

Yeah, all right .. I'm sure my massive audience has been going home every day and kicking their dog 'coz I ain't posted in a while. Well, maybe not. So what the hell have I been doing ?

Funnily enough, lots. Firstly in a most exciting sequence of events I've wound up doing some pretty big work jobs over weekends involving replacing all the PCs on a site where I work (2 days 10ish people 2 floors and 300 computers .. fun ..) so that's taken 3 out of the last 5 weekends. As a side effect of this of course there's well money for working my arse off (what little of it there is). eww fuck hang on a sec some real tripe's just come on the headset .. OK now that's more like it, an extended mix of Bomfunk MC's 'Freestyler'.. then maybe some black eyed peas (My humps .. my humps .. yes tell me more about them, please!).

So anyway my poor PC's been invaded and had some of its guts ripped out, new guts added, more flashy stuff (I finally got a motor that should run a disco ball .. whoohoo !) so the upshot is I've now got 2Gb of quick DDR RAM. The aging NVidia 6600GT/128 has been ditched for a (eww) ATI x1600Pro/256. I just prefer NVidia. Nicer logo, smoother gear not that I know any more than anyone else does these days. In real terms I've doubled my RAM (video and system) and beefed the video power up by about 1/3. Not bad for under 300AU.

In addition to this I was so friggin' sick last monday it wasn't funny. Fine on Sun and gradually improving from Tues, but if I wasn't spewing I was sleeping. Except for the 15 minutes it took me to hang 3 towels on the line (requiring a half hour nap on the path) that was all I did. Best flex I've had in AGES.. it had everything .. vomit, poo splatters. sleep. Marvellous virus.

So what else have I been doing ? ? Well I've hooked up with a bunch of X3 freaks, all of whom have a bunch of different skills, and I've been doing some design but a lot of testing and learning ..

Suffice to say that after adding 70+ ships, many stations, and extra depth and flexibility to the game where we think it's needed (and incorporating very many popular additions (mods)) we're getting a little closer to releasing it each day. So anyway I found at starting my testing session, I was a version out so I'm now downloading just under 50 meg so I can test it .. which is why I'm actually -at- the computer -and- have time to post.

More when I get chance, Firefox tells me it's finished. Go the 'fox !

Things have been slow

2006-04-22T09:20:00.000+10:00

I've been doing all sorts of odd things lately, like playing Star Wars : Empire At War, V8 Supercars 3 ( I miss that one, it's way cool but I only borrowed it) as well as the old favourite Guild Wars. Guild Wars has an add on coming out in a week and I can hardly wait. X3's a lot of fun don't get me wrong but as I am sure anyone can understand, a bit of variety isn't a bad thing at all.

Anyway suffice to say the X3 empire's still growing, Paranid are still becoming dead, and all in all the universe is a hell of an interesting place to be. I'm not really 'doing' anything just flying around and taking on whatever I see .. but combat practice is never a bad thing ! :)

Here's a pic of the UFO in case I've never posted one before..

To fill you in ..

2006-04-11T21:20:00.000+10:00

Well firstly I should recount one of those 'ofark' moments. Those who know me will have heard this one already so apologies in advance.

Anyway as I am pretty sure I've mentioned, there's a variety of missiles you can find that show as 'unknown' and sell for a significant sum (like 80K). Anyway at some stage recently, I've collected one.
Also recently, I ran into a bunch of Xenon, including a P, which is one of their funkier M6 craft. Armed with my trusty 'stick I decided to take 'em on.
Hurriedly (as you do) I saved first when I realised it may be a good idea - no point in seeing what the P was capable of the hard way. The closest Xenon was about 2K away at that time. They were heading for me so I was not travelling that fast .. no point in rushing the inevitable .. and there was less chance of getting swarmed if I stayed away.
Anyway as I grabbed the stick I hit the missile fire button. Since I didn't have it on loud I didn't hear the announcement, or if it did, it didn't register.
A couple of moments later I was close enough to start firing on the Xenon with a PSG. That's the weapon in the last post, the cyan glow. It's essentially an expanding ring of hurt. Good for lots of small fast bastards.
By the time my first shot was expanding, it was around 1km away. Oddly, that's the same range as the aforementioned missile. The hapless Xenon were now 1.5Km away.
In essence what happened next really took under a second. However in the 'ofark' of the game time continuum some things happen painfully in slomo.
There was an almighty bang.
Each and every Xenon ship turned to a ball of flame [at this point I realised I had fired the missile]
"The End" came up.

Had I realised that thing was in motion I'd have just run. There is a reason that they sell for the price they do .. anything within 5km of the point of the blast is obliterated. The split second of Xenon on fire was just the time it took for the blast to reach me .. maybe 3 frames total. If I'd known, I'd have run and tried to hit it with another faster missile from a larger distance.

So anyway here I was, head in my hands, headset on, laughing at myself with 'the end' on the screen. And I wonder why my partner thinks I am mad.

So anyway I reloaded that save, took the Xenon on and got my arse handed back to me, and to add insult to injury I didn't score a kill.

On another note game wise I've basically given the Paranid hell. They despise me. It's fun taking their ships and cargo. I've done part 1 of the 3 parts of the next mission, which involved entering Xenon Sector 101 (sounds like a TAFE course doesn't it ?) and finding a small bit of cargo near an M0 wreck.There was about 50 bits of crap floating around, and luckily I only collected 10 before I found the one I needed. Even in a Discoverer which is the second fastest ship, I had a lot of trouble collecting cargo and keeping clear of the hordes that were around. Since then the Disco has been renamed 'Xenon Hero'. Much as I'd have liked to take that missile in with me then .. the Disco can't fire it. On the way back to Argon Prime I found a PBE factory (Pulsed Beam Emitter - next weapon "up" from a HEPT) which pretty much rapid-fires extremely fast and painful blasts. The Xenon L can carry it, but not the Nova, which I have appropriately renamed "Le Poobox".

I sure hope that a freighter counts for the same as a fighter .. otherwise I ain't doing myself any favours combat rank wise. Some of the ships are M class rather than T, but not many. Those that are M class can usually outpace the Nova, so I *finally* repaired the Xenon. It's a bit quicker but not much. Besides that, it looks way cooler.

The Xenon, loaded with 2 APBEs and 2 each of B and A PACs has been granted the honourable title of "Feral Wombat" in appreciation of prior service, including barely surviving several near fatal wounds, helping me find half the universe, and likely a third of my kills. The original Buster probably got 1/5. the Nova 1/3 as well.

It's alive !

2006-03-30T23:08:00.000+11:00

Any concerns I had about the complex have been allayed .. I stopped it whacking anything over 100K back into my account, and in a very short timeframe had just under 230K in there, so I am sure it makes a few bucks ! In addition to this I've been getting used to my new joystick and it rocks. It's a Logitech 3D Force Pro. 12 buttons, 3 axes, throttle and POV hat. Since you can put commands on 'press' and 'hold' a button, this allows 24 commands on the stick. Then consider that some commands are allowed to overlap (eg you can't select a target at the same time as you're docked and selling stuff) I can use the same buttons for different functions in different spots and you can see how it took some getting used to.

Anyway last night I tried an assassination mission. This was me in 'Le Poobox' (the Nova) since the 'Feral Wombat' (the L) was out of commission until I did some serious fund raising (560K to repair! :( ) .. so I've taken to violence for fund raising (surprise surprise!) .. this one put me up against a TL (station transporter .. huge) and 4 Perseus (Paranid M3) ships. From just over a K away it looked bloody huge. I looked at the beloved mouse and keyboard but saved and grabbed the stick.

Suddenly in the zone .. blessed with the powers of an ancient, caffeine fuelled gamer late at night, the stick and I became a ninja-powered force of death. Feeling my uber gamer prowess in full swing (or maybe I was just tired and stupid :) ) I decided to hug the large ship and draw fire into my target as well as hitting the bugger with a few of my own weapons. This meant a dogfight star wars style around a rather large ship.

This may give you a good indication of scale .. I'm a few hundred metres away still here. However you can see a missile hit (ball of fire lower right) which is the same missiles you've seen earlier leaving an M3 coated in flame.

This last shot is of a few blasts from a PSG .. note the lovely spirals of death it inflicts on anything in its wake. It's not that powerful but it's excellent defence against inbound missiles.

And lastly .. the dude telling me that he's happy I killed the mofo and here's some credits.

Since then I've left the L docked and used the money to outfit another freighter I managed to capture from a Paranid (hehe !) which I now have doing the old distillery run. Beyond that I've taken out any Paranid I have seen, and done a few 'fly me around' missions where speed is the most important factor and made a little dough that way. I've also had my Fleet Tender travelling around sectors collecting any ore it can find .. it's raked in a few hundred units which should be a good earner when I find a desperate buyer .. and I am happy to have the ship keep that cargo until I do .. especially with all the other stuff going on. I've not had time to think about the next mission even.
I think I can manage to live without the L for a while .. if only I can get a Crystal Fab on my complex instead .. then it'll rake in the dough. I hope. :) Meanwhile I am happy to have fun doing what I'm doing. The freedom in this game's the best part !

X3 : Fugly Complex !

2006-03-28T09:13:00.000+11:00

No .. it's not a condition, though it IS something I have but wished I didn't .. :) Suffice to say I can't seem to work out how they get laid out 'attractively'.. Anyway in that tangled mess is (all Medium sized) Solar Power Plant, Wheat Farm, Cattle Ranch and Cahoona Bakery.. I added the SPP last night as I found it was chewing more power than anything.
The production cycles are quite simple really :
Wheat Farm + Energy = Wheat
Cattle Ranch + Energy = Argnu Beef.
Cahoona Bakery + Energy + Argnu Beef + Wheat = Meatsteak Cahoonas [basic Argon food]
Solar Power Plant + Crystals = Energy.

The Meatsteaks will be handy in the later phase, I first need to get this complex self sufficient .. So the 2 ships I had on Energy supply suddenly found themselves shipping Crystals. This worries me a bit, as Energy's cheap at 12-20cr/unit depending on supply. Crystals, however cost 1,684cr/unit. I hope that you get a fair few energy cells from a crystal .. otherwise I'm gonna lose cash faster than I was ! :(

Since I already have both a Silicon and an Ore mine, these are what is required to make Crystals (from memory) - of course combined with a rather costly Crystal Fab (4 mill) and some energy .. so in a nutshell once I raise the necessary cash my mines will cease trading with the public as well. Realistically it should leave me with a nice self supporting complex which I can use to feed any workers in factories. Mines are robotic so there's no need to feed workers.

Once I get the food happening, I can then start making weaponry. Mmmm .. profitsss.

This image is a 'Plasma Shockwave Generator'.. best way to describe it is you fire a little ball .. which explodes and expands. Anything in the nice cyan smear gets belted. From a distance it looks like a funnel if you have a ship firing it constantly, it's a very pretty weapon, good against large numbers of weak foes really, though I must admit that I've had my arse handed back to me a few times as a result of messing with people carrying them.

Not once I get a Particle Beam Emitter on my Xenon L.

Oh, speaking of my L.. he got his arse handed to him bigtime. I'd never really taken much interest in missiles. I've never really had much luck remembering what one is guided and which isn't - I just use them to make things more visible and to get their attention when out of the range of my other weapons. Well I got hit 3 times mid battle with some missiles. You don't know what they are .. it could be a pathetic mosquito missile (guided, fast and 168cr).. to a hammerhead (shows as 'unknown' but unguided, slow, and 80,0000). Basically it hits and anything within 5km is pretty much vapourised, but since I get 80 K to sell them .. I've been doing that. My trusty L with its 75Mj of shields suddenly went from "quite healthy" to "exceedingly unwell". No shields, hull at 14% top speed of 42 (as opposed to 123) and half its systems and weapons destroyed. Now that's going to be bloody expensive to fix. Problem was I'd done some good stuff in between saves and did not want to lose it (my Universe Trader and Fleet Tender were under attack by a horde of pirates .. in 10 attempts that was the best outcome).

And just to make it much more fun I got a Logitech Force 3d Pro joystick for my birthday (26/3) .. once I get the config set 'just right for me' I'm gonna really toast some Paranid ass. After seeing some of their ships, I think I want some. Shame they hate me so much now I can't even visit any of their sectors without getting fired upon.. let alone dock and buy energy cells.. Piracy does have its drawbacks ! Intolerant three eyed pious bastards, those Paranid. I can always find some and convince them to bail. I'll have to see what a new Perseus looks like, the X2 ones were awesome.. quite Cylon-ish, whereas now their general appearance seems to be like the Bitmap Brothers' artwork on some of their games.. metallic, rounded and kinda old style.

X3 : Pretties

2006-03-21T21:33:00.000+11:00

If there's one thing X3 does well, it's eye candy .. all it needs is the vapour trails from X2 ;)

A Xenon L (Mine) copping a missile hit ..

This one just looks wicked. Especially animated. It's from a cut-scene tho.
A Paranid (piloted but Argon built) Freighter getting caned.
A blast of Beta PACs (Particle Accelerator Cannons) from 3 dodgy evil Space Pirates Of Doom (for 2 of whom, the last thing they heard was my cry of 'EAT HEPT PIE ALIEN SCUM!")

An Argon Buster
A Crystal Fab
This one is a Nova on fire. Pretty.

Besides that I've just been trying to make money. No big hauls as yet though.

Advancing the Empire

2006-03-20T22:11:00.000+11:00

Well kinda. I've basically been sticking to safe areas for a while, occasionally jumping into pirate sectors to kick some butt. I am still vastly impressed with the 1.4 patch so all's well on that front, the game runs a treat even with PSGs firing away. Those and Ion Disruptors are nice for crowd control, though you need to be careful that all of the crowd's unfriendly at the start .. they're certainly not friendly if you hit 'em !

In addition to that I've also added a second Xenon invasion mission to my list of accomplishments. All I am going to say is that it was a hell of a lot harder than the first. I had to keep jumping back to the gate to get away from the onslaught. It's not as if 3 or 4 Xenon ships (like I faced the first time) are much trouble, but 20 or so are, regardless of how well armed and shielded you think you are!

Beyond those few things I've done little .. well I've gotten myself 2 more ships which are now helping keep my complex happy. I am not sure whether I should wait until I can afford a Solar Power Plant, or add another factory .. which will increase energy requirements .. and maybe another ship (3 buy already!) .. with keeping updating my ships I have about 2 mill but that should improve quite fast now.. I hope, otherwise I'll be tempted to add something else before a plant!

X3 .. the progression

2006-03-19T10:50:00.000+11:00

Well .. since I've been away I've not had a lot of time to play. Between UrQuan Masters and FEAR, my gametime's somewhat stretched. That said I found the 1.4 patch for X3 (I love you guys!) and it seems all the issues I've ever had with the game which really are as minor as slowdown in some sectors with lots of asteroids, occasional crashes on loading saves after the game's been running a while and a slowdown when a particular class of weapon is fired. Each of these has gone, and now the game runs sweeter than it did before, autopilot is better and the game doesn't feel bloated anymore. Not that any of that stopped me !

So with the proceeds of my raiding Paranid ships and having a few ships working for me I managed to raise a couple of million credits and bought myself a Wheat Farm, Cattle Ranch and MeatSteak factory, then joined them up in a complex. Essentially this joins all the factories together with "tubing" and adds a docking bay to them. The advantages are many, including the fact that you only need to transport items outside the factory. So if all 3 were separate I'd have to have 2 ships for each .. one taking Beef from the Ranch to the Meatsteak factory for instance. Now the items are automatically transferred and I actually only need 3 ships, 2 buying energy (until I can add a Solar Power Plant to the complex) and one selling Wheat .. I leave the beef to be collected by ships other than mine .. I don't need it :)

Even though I've spent about 3 million credits on my complex I have not taken a photo yet. You'll have to make do with the one above.. which is me kicking a Paranid's arse.

Since the patch it seems pilots are much happier to bail from their ship and indeed I've managed to capture about 10 ships, most of them M3 and M4 class which means there's a nice little earner in there. I've already made my money back from the complex pretty much including the ships. The main concern I have is that a medium sized power plant costs about 4.5million credits then I found a large one for sale at 29million.. so I felt a little better. The thing with a power plant is that's the main bottle neck in the economy, energy cells can't get around fast enough, so supplying your own power is a big bonus. You do need crystals to make power but they seem to be easy enough to obtain.. and if not it's easy enough to manage. A Crystal Fab needs Energy, MeatSteaks and Silicon. I have a Silicon and Ore Mine, a Wheat Farm and the complex ('Wombat Alpha' : Wheat, Cattle, Meatsteaks). I have started maxing my transport ship's holds now too. Since it costs 516K to fill out a ship properly, that's where a lot of my credits are going.

Me ? I'm kicking back and letting all that run itself at the moment. And playing Pirates and Paranid. Fun game :)

A week away ..

2006-03-19T10:46:00.000+11:00

I went to Sydney to get trained in SAS. Not the army type stuff (which if you've read any of my blog you would not think that :) ) .. but SAS the database / mainframe software. Ah fun.

X3 update ..

2006-03-06T21:38:00.000+11:00

X3's had a lot going on and I've been so keen to play I've not had any time to blog ! Shit happens :)

At the end of the last post, If I Recall Correctly (IIRC) at last post I have 3 factories, and one Sector Trader (ST). I had sold the majority of my ships, and was happily scouring Argon space.. watching money roll in! Ah, the life !

While that was going on, I went and did the next mission which involved me taking a small spydrone on a rather perilous journey through the inside of an asteroid, dodging scanners moving in various ways (red lines). Without giving too much away there's a cut scene at the end of a rather perilous flight that tells you something rather important in the plot. Afterwards there's an invasion and one of the races decide to blame all of the others, and bar them from their 'Core' sectors. Anyway since they won't let me fly in their space, I won't let them fly in any I occupy and shoot them on sight. There was quite a few of them in my current sector after the mission so I decided to take them out.

Most of the time they drop garbage cargo and are no more profitable than basic food units, and I have less luck persuading freighters to bail so I pepper them with a few / lot of shots and then hassle them to drop freight. Anyway as you can imagine, a "small" drop of freight is enough to quickly fill my little fighter, so I call my sector trader in to hoover up the goodies and I sent it back to sell what of it I could. I suddenly found myself a nice weapons trader. Once I started comming him for goods he started dropping some wonderful things, like 1 and 5 MJ shields, worth 5 and 20K each. The station would only take 30 at a time but there was over 600K of clear profit. Even though I hate the Nova it's the only thing that will carry an Ion Disruptor which I will explain later . . .

Suffice to say I wound up buying myself some more ships and equipment, so I have replaced my Raider with a proper freighter. All 3 factories are making tons of money. The Silicon mine is a bit all over the shop but I recently pulled 160K from it, and that's the first time I've looked since I saw it go as low as 15K.

My most recently purchased ship has been completely kitted out and is now following me as a fleet tender, which means basically I put all my garbage in it that I collect. It means I have to protect it all the time, but conversely I can be out longer and carry potentially thousands of weapons / hundreds of missiles as well as my spoils. I now have a veritable pile of money, and I am planning on buying a power plant when I have around 5 million credits.

As the Teladi would say : PROFITSSSS!

Now that's a first !

2006-03-03T09:47:00.000+11:00

Never seen that before .. Firefox GPFed just as I went to add a pic.

Grr.. post lost :)

Basically I've been selling all my ships and now have only 3, my trusty L, one Nova and one Octopus.
I have bought 2 factories and deployed them in good places so both are making money.
I've also gotten myself 3 freighters so that I can manage the factories. Annoyingly you can have one selling or buying, not both :(

So now I have an Ore Mine, Silicon Mine and Wheat Farm. This means I am making food and some basic resources essentially. These can then be used to make other stuff as an example since I am producing Wheat and can get energy easily, I could place a a Cloth Rimes factory, which needs both items. Obviously the closer it is to each of them the better.

As a finale I went and did another asssassination mission. Basically I've found I was always repairing ships or having one sat waiting for me to be able to repair it. The money in those things was pretty good (I got 1.5million for one of the Novas). I have a bit of it left over, but I am holding onto it until I can afford a power plant. At a measly 4.5 million it'll only be 5 minutes before I can afford one .. not ! :)

Governments and packaging

2006-03-02T14:42:00.000+11:00

Where I live they've decided that we need pictures of cancerous organs and stuff on our cigarette packets. So shortly I will be able to buy a packet of smokes with an extremely graphic picture of someone with mouth cancer (and extremely festy teeth) amongst other impressive biological abominations.

Why are smokers singled out ? We're a captive audience. After all we're going to buy them anyway. Most of what we pay goes in taxes to the government and finally .. I bloody well KNOW the cause cancer and other illnesses, I know they're ugly, do I really need to see a picture of decaying lungs on the packs ?

First up a link to the story itself - be warned the picture is foul.

Now to be fair there's some merit in the idea of making them extremely unappealing to younger people, but I really feel that there should be some levelling in all this and make sure that nobody wants to do other dangerous things.

Here's some ideas :
Alcohol : On anything containing alcohol let's have a nice advanced case of cirrhosis of the liver.
Aspririn : Someone bleeding to death
Extra (and any other "laxative effect" items) : A steaming pile of mushy shit.
Anything sharp : Someone with an amteurishly removed digit
Power Tools : Somone with an amateurishly removed limb
Anything anyone might be allergic to : Any pcis of the worst allergic reaction possible
Anything electrical : A pic of someone being fried
Stoves, lighters, matches, electric pans, toasters, someone with third degree burns
On a seedling tree in a pot at a nursery : a house crushed by a fallen tree
On some insecticide : Vomit (in case you want to eat it)
Packets of carrots : Vomit (if you eat a few they make you hurl, trust me)
All cholesterol high food : nice fatty blocked arteries
New cars should have a big picture of a shocking accident on them.
Trucks .. picture of a couple of dead families just in case the driver falls asleep
Politicians should have money changing hands on the suits they wear
Cosmetic surgeons should get a pic of the worst of most overdone surgery anyone can manage.

That's a start. Anyone else want to suggest some more to little johnny ?
He should come with a pic of sperm since he's such a wanker.

OK rant over.

graphical Glitch

2006-03-02T14:09:00.000+11:00

Just adding this pic to show a glitch I've never seen mentioned in the forums .. wonder if it's on my PC or all .. :)

Now you see it .. (just about the centre of the ship, a cyany square)

Now you don't.

My Lotus 123 X3 toy :)

2006-03-01T12:29:00.000+11:00

My X3 Map and tool

Thanks to Dad for popping it on his page. My ISP don't give me web space (losers!).

This link is direct to a Lotus 123 workbook. Obviously that other program still using code it used in 85 can't deal with 123. I mean it can't even open 2 files with the same name. How you supposed to trust that ?

Chapter 13 .. Unlucky ? Nah !

2006-02-28T12:47:00.000+11:00

The last few days as I have mentioned have all been about building my reputation in the starting areas, so that I can buy some more powerful ships. As it stands the Argon won't let me buy an M3 from them but these things happen, and anyway it's what the game's about - as it says : Fight Trade Build Think :)

While exploring as I may've mentioned I came across 2 more of those 'dumped' ships, a Boron Mako (M5 I think) and a Pericles Vanguard (M4). The first picture is the Mako itself, the second is one of both ships from my spacesuit whilst claiming the Pericles.
Once I had these I put the Xenon L onto autopilot and jumped it into a safe area and piloted the 2 craft back with one protecting the other and called into the first equipment dock on the way to kit them both out properly which cost a nice sum of 250K once I'd kitted them out with everything.

Over the course of my return journey I met about 5 lots of pirates which the 2 ships got rid of pretty well considering they're only little buggers. I managed to capture 2 Novas as well thankfully (both for the 'new' ship and that it shortened the fight).
Both had some shields onboard, one had a couple of missiles, the other an AHEPT (pictured) which is a potent but energy draining bright green weapon.. too powerful for either of my current ships to use, but even so since I was in relatively safe space I decided to escort them back.

During the course of those battles my 2 newly found craft got a bit more than scuffed. Teach me to go brawling without my trusty Xenon L I guess. That I got my arse pretty well kicked and had vessels to repair had nothing to do with it. Serious :) The Pericles was down to 34% hull. One more hit from an AHEPT and pop.. even with full shields. Put it that way.

You reckon that's scary you should see the bill! Just under 500K to repair both.. so I left them at the dock and jumped into the Harrier for some bulletin board scanning to find some rank raising missions. No real luck there, however the trader is doing well, and so is the mine. I've not lost any ships, only sold them, but I must admit to using a lot of salvage insurance :)

I have spent several hours in the Argon sectors continually looking for missions and found very few that I've been allowed to attempt, and amusingly although I have managed to take out an M2 craft with my wingmen (excluding the ones with damage :) ) in an assassination mission, I've never remembered to save afterwards .. and then died by some stupid means like crashing into an asteroid.. or in the case of the one pictured, not doing it in time :)

On a more interesting note, satellites are so cool. You buy them and they give you live sector information wherever you put them. It's hard to show how nice they look when animated but consider these 2 pics from either side of one .. now you see it, now you don't. The transition is kinda instant too :)

Chapter 12 : Stabilising ..

2006-02-26T10:02:00.000+11:00

Over the last few days of play, I've gradually moved everything back into what I consider to be 'safe' areas which is pretty much all of the Argon sectors where you start. On the way from where my ship was, there were a few Khaak vessels which, with the aid of salvage insurance (save at any time)I took them out on the way in and finally got promoted to 'Fighter Chief' rank.
This means I get some decent missions to take on, such as assassinations but I'll get to those later. There's also a shot of some Khaak action. Note that they have 'proper' lasers - a nice funky beam that hurts you. When a cluster splits and starts laying into you from all angles you know it's gonna get nasty !

For now, suffice to say my Ore mine is making money, I've taken the starting capital back and it has 130K in its coffers. Still need another 500K before it 'officiailly' pays for itself but I ain't so fussy.
However I have bought something more expensive for my freighter.
In case I didn't mention it, I bought a smaller freighter to transport ore from my mine, and left the original one also selling for a bit, so it had 2 ships supplying and 2 unloading it. I have now reduced this to one each way, by putting one ship permanently on the distillery cash cow, and the other .. well I spent 500K on some software for it - yes the most expensive thing I've bought yet excluding the freighter itself, but now it can trade automatically in a given sector, just fire and forget. It need to make a million before it's paid for itself so let's hope !

Now it looks to be mainly cruising, managing my factory and other ships, while travelling around and capturing ships. I'll write a bit more detail later but there's the basics. Here's a shot of my entourage so far on a sector map. There's not much there really, besides a few ships. It'll be more exciting once I manage to get my hands on a big big big ship but that's ages away!

Chapter 11 : Guess who's coming to dinner !

2006-02-23T11:33:00.000+11:00

Those bloody Khaak, I tell you. They're nasty intolerant bastards who should be shot. Oh, they are ? Great.
I know I've mentioned clusters before but while I've been hooning around I've seen some beauties. Check these:

Normally one Khaak is one little triangular segment, maybe 2 'blocks' of one of these clusters. The first two are huge, and suffice to say I did not get as close as the screenshots make it appear. Even with my 6 ships following me, I did not feel safe taking them on.
Little buggers like the one here are no hassle at all, there's at most 10 ships (one M3 and several M5s). That might give you an idea of why I don't like messing with them.
About the only GOOD thing is that when a cluster splits you get maybe 5 seconds where they're 'stunned' for lack of a better word, and you can usually time a missile hit so that the splatter effect gets many of the small ones.
That said it's still something not for the faint hearted if it goes wrong.
Historically game-wise nobody knows where the Khaak come from, they arrive, they kill, they leave. Nobody has communicated with them so they're very much an enigma.
The Xenon however are actually caused by people - apparently some terraforming droids were sent out into the galaxy at some stage .. and they became the Xenon, who are apparently self aware if not sentient. They don't communnicate either. Be nice if either one spoke gibberish at you, 'coz otherwise they seem very wooden. Scary but still wooden.

Chapter 10 : Repeating myself

2006-02-23T11:09:00.000+11:00

What the hell ? Where's chapter 10 ? I know I wrote it 'coz people other than me READ it. Fnarch.

Oh well I guess I'd better put my rememberinationing cap on.

Basically since I posted (the time before last) I've been exploring, making sure I have as much of the map covered as I can safely reach, and generally finding what I can. Part of this involved going to the far south of the map, and opening a few sectors up down that way.

The first half of the journey was relatively uneventful, a couple of pirates, some stations to dodge and generally flying past asteroids. That is, until I reached a Split sector. Now they're definitely not keen on me, but they've not been overly hostile. Well that was until I entered some of their more central sectors. It seems on the borders they don't care who you are but if you're entering their home areas, rather than sectors they own, they're a little fussier. Anyway I arrived and got a "Bugger off or we'll kill you, you've one minute'" message.. So I left! The sector I had just come from was also Split, but it was Border. So, I spent some time in there looking for some stations to trade at, or more helpfully some missions to do. After visiting a few stations there were no missions and no moneymaking opportunities, so I undocked from the station and found a pirate ship nearby, so I went to snot it and gain some reputation that way. Once I got him there was another ship just in range, and a third one near it. Once I took all three out, I was advised I'd gained rank, so I decided to try the Split sector again.
This time, no message, and no reds. Err .. except for a lasertower in the centre of the map. I managed to get past it without getting hit but my 3 wingmen were not so lucky, they got attacked and then went it, as you would, but they failed. Losers! So I kicked its arse myself just to show it I was no pushover - I then reloaded my save and went through the sector the long way, staying out of range of the tower. In comparison my best weaponry reaches about 2.5km, so it's not something you want to mess with.

Much of the exploring I wanted to do involved getting to "lost" items I've learnt of, including more ships (apparently there are 12) and cargo. Using my trusty map based on all the other shite ones online, I made Lotus 123 draw the map up based on a database. This way I can add something and just click draw. No more screwing around with formatting. Yay ! As a result though, I've explored 24 sectors, found 2 ships (an M4 Mako Raider and M4 Paranid Pericles) and also captured 2 Falcons and 2 Busters. I sold the captured ships to make some money to spend on outfitting the 2 ships I found. In addition to the 2 ships I got some nice cargo, some big freighter shields (180K each) and some missiles which I am holding onto rather than selling.
This picture is of a bit of biffo with a pirate. You can see the shots I've fired in the centre screen (and a warp gate) and also on the monitor at topleft, said shots arriving where they're most likely not wanted.

The weekend away

2006-02-22T00:23:00.000+11:00

Well it was good .. should at least write something ! :)

Firstly, I must admit I was not keen on getting the train from Wauchope to Wollongong but figured it was something I could deal with .. well not really, even tho it was 1st class on the XPT it was extremely uncomfortable. The seats were not something you could really sleep in put it that way. It was pretty much bang on time at each end, so there's some consolation, but I didn't sleep more than half an hour I reckon. As my luck'd have it the old bastard sat next to me snored and smelt bad but pff.

I dropped in at the station and got collected by Dad, went and had a well earned cuppa and a chinwag. Gotta love that :) My sister and nieces came over and we had a nice BBQ tea.

The next day was spent with Dad in the morning then collected my children from Mum and went to my sister's. Brandon being Brandon wanted the XBox on, and Phoebe wanted to go to the pool which is very conveniently across the road.

We settled in and had some fun around the house first, and waited for Head (my sister) to get back. That afternoon one of my sister's friends held another barbie so we went to that. The kids, as they do ran rampant.. here's a game of 'slap your sibling on the arse with a thong'. Brandon's winning as you can see :)

Later on they're all kicking the balls around and stuffing the dry bits of recently mown grass down each other's shirts .. then complaining they're itchy .. as you do ! Ah the joys.

Later that evening we went 'home' and had baths, and played some more fun stuff 'til it was Kiddie Bed Time®. Then Head and I got the XBox and Crash Tag Team Racing out and proceeded to have a ball. That's one excellent game and -almost- makes me want an XBox. In addition to the craziness and stupidity the series is well known for, now when racing you can team up with another player by joining cars, and them shoot everyone who comes near you 'til you run outta ammo. Brilliant ! Even better pressing buttons while it's loading makes fart and burp noises .. brilliant-er!

The next day Brandon and I went to a computer fair with Dad and Nigel, which is where all the bling came from, and had some fun looking at swish new stuff. Dad got himself a mobo thinking it'd solve a problem he was having but no :( it turned out to be RAM after all that. Once we got back from that we had lunch and then went to the pool for a splash. The rest of the day proceeded like the one before .. showers, bedtime for kiddies (and hometime for mine :( ) and some Crash.

The next day was spent making sure I'd organised everything not missed anything and had room in my bags .. which I didn't .. so I borrowed one and was still short ! Also a good deal of Crash action happened ..

Baxter the adorably cute, gentle and dopey Collie features below. He's such a dork though.

PC : Lights are better in the dark !

2006-02-21T23:40:00.000+11:00

The title pretty much says it all :)

The first image is just the main lights, no blue cold cathode or sound light. Just fans, the 'powereyes', the power supply itself. EL string and the UV ring. The exposure time's 1/10 second. You can also see the big blue power light at the front (reflecting on a cable) and USB light shining on the desk (it's extremely handy for scanning maps in the dark :) ) It's slightly blurred but you get the idea.

-=-

The next one's 4 seconds which makes it all look way cool. You can see the upper fan shining out of the top of the case, there's been some drive activity (the 2 red lights above/below power). The cable you could just see is fairly visible now, and there's a nice smear of colour reflecting off the LCD.

-=-

And the last one is the lot on, for 2 seconds :) You can see the cathodes shining very brightly, and even shining through the front grill. I reckon this shows the wiring more clearly .. which the more observant of you may notice .. I tidied up ! Unplugged the lot and rewired the beasty from the ground up.

To be honest it seemed to get a lot hotter so I figured I'd better rewire it and make sure the airflow was improved.. let's hope otherwise I might need (god forbid) another fan ! There's room for 2x4" behind the front grill .. wonder how much those fans with multicolour LEDs on the blades are .. hmm.. :)

PC : Lights + Power + Blu-Tac = Bling Bling

2006-02-21T10:05:00.000+11:00

On the weekend I went to see my family in Wollongong and went to a computer fair. Previously my Dad's generously given me an Akasa 21 function panel. (http://www.akasa.com.tw).
For some reason anyone I've tried to show it to doesn't manage to find it so I'll try again..
In the list of products on the home page search (browser search the page) for "21 function" or click the item in the topright of the product list. Yes, one of them. Cool huh ? I can tell you all my fans are doing 3180 RPM and it's 43.4c in the case near the CPU and 35.6c where the inverters are next to the power supply.
But when I went there to look at that, me being me I decided to check out the bling bling too. :)

Anyway in the grey/blue bar along the top (home, products, new products) click products then 'case lights' section. I got for myself a pair of blue 'cold cathode' lights, one internal EL string and 5 of the 'powereyes' which show under 'other illuminators' on that very page. mmmm ... sweet.

So as you can imagine there's a bit of stuff in my PC .. 3HDs, 2 DVDs, an Audigy 2 and an ASUS / NVidia 6600Gt with 128Mb. The processor's a P4@3.0 with hyperthreading and it tools along with a gig of quick ram. So it's only fair to display its awesome power by lighting up the room it's in (and making the rest of the suburb dim for a sec when it powers on :) ) Previously installed bling bling includes a sound sensitive light, 2 tricolour case fans (top and side) and a spunk ACBel power supply with a big fan with lights that change colour.. so maybe a bit over the top but well I don't mind at all.

The image here shows the PC on, with the side case off. You can see (on) the EL string just strung across the inside of the case, a shitload of cables (hehe .. fun getting them in there!) the five powereyes, and (off) the sound sensitive tube along the bottom of the case, and the lower edge of one of the blue tubes vertically along the back side of the case (next to where the screws go to hold the side on). The second cathode is at the front, same spot if you follow. Hey look ! X3's running on the PC too.

This image shows it all turned off, however I've relocated the EL string to being attached to the side of the case with 'uhu tac' which I think is just yellow blutac but hey. I think it looks nicer like that than strewn across the case.. :)

This last picture shows it all on, and the BIOS screen on the LCD :) Needless to say that by this time I'm getting pretty keen on the idea of switching it on :)

And lastly, the whole thing closed up and on from close up.
Realistically I don't think I can fit anything else in there if it needs wires.. at least not without completely rewiring the PC .. and I figure you'll agree that sorting that spaghetti out is much less important than whether the Split and Teladi like me or not .. which neither of them really do.

I might do another couple of 'my PC in the dark' pics now .. I seem to have misplaced the ones I took a while back. Anyway, some aliens gotta die (or sell me stuff and then die) so I'm goin' to get 'em.

Chapter 9 .. Things get even more funner !

2006-02-15T23:03:00.000+11:00

Well .. sorta. I got fed up of running around destroying the one or two Xenon that came in the sector so as you would, I buggered off somewhere else.

Right on entering the next sector there was a bunch of pirates so I decided that they had to die.. you know how it is being evil pirate scum (except for the FSM worshipping ones of course). Maybe this particular universe felt sorry for me not getting so much out of the invasion who knows, but 3 of the 4 pilots bailed with good damage (hate but love the Nova) so I sent their sorry asses off to get sold. There's 2 caps and the resulting fleet (docked, from the Xenon).

There's some stupid bug with anti aliasing and screenshots not saving. Since I play in 1280x1024 I don't give a shit about AA and have it off now I know. :) For this reason tho I try to grab a pic of everything I think is interesting, since I've had that setting on and off for a while seeing if itaffects performance too much, I've missed a few potential pics .. if you care, that is ;) Hence there only being 2 ships here not 3 for instance.

The upshot of all that was once I sold those ships and the missiles, I had 4 fighters and 3 transporters and more impressively .. a million credits. Talk about pitching a tent ! :) What to do what to do ..

Well I still haven't fixed the Xenon but only have about 300K left (the Xenon is kitted out and I'm flying it) but what happened ? Why do I sound calm ? :) I bought myself an Ore mine, as you would. That simple tho ? No. First.. as you can imagine any station is pretty bloody big, let alone one with a dirty great asteroid hanging off it.. so to get it from the shipyard to the end location you need to buy a 'large transporter' or as I prefer .. 'mass hog'. Now big is an understatement. Like a freighter they're long and thin. Here's me flying over it's rear end. The 2 yellow things at the bottom are engine exhausts .. I'm the pissy thing in the centre. You hire it, send it to the shipyard then wherever you need it to dump the stuff. There's a fee, of course, on top of the 400K I paid for the mine :)
KItting the Xenon out with some goodies took another 150K, and of course you need to give the station operating capital. It's also keeping the freight transporter buyst selling the ore it makes, and the 2 passenger vessels occupied getting energy .. so there's 3 ships out of the way ! Ah, fun. :)

So what's a broke person going to do .. I then set about being a very naughty boy and annoying people into dropping their cargo or making their ship explode .. but just for fun I went and harassed some laser towers (station defences, very nasty) for the hell of it. I saved first but there's some very sweet pics here of the Nova (hate the Nova) copping some lasery death. Testament to it, it coped and I took all 5 towers out with no damage ..

Even so, I reloaded then as the pirates were shitty and I couldn't be bothered rebuilding my rep with them in that sector :)

There's still more to come before I catch up completely but really I have all 3 freighters working, and the 4 fighters (2M3, M4, M5) all in a bunch. Still, only having just over 150K makes me realise how quick cash can go. By the way one of those freighters is either 48, 66 or 86 million .. I do intend to have one .. but after I get a carrier ! :)

Chapter 8 .. It's just a jump to the left ..

2006-02-12T11:11:00.000+11:00

[screechy singing] Let's do the time - warp again !

Meh, that's showing my age. Anyway .. In light of the fact that I pretty much wound up making stuff all from that venture once I had repaired everything, and also that by the time I could get a freighter into the sector, most of the flotsam had been collected. So I went back .. way back .. well just a week. I spent a day of so moving all my ships around so they're all together near where I found the Xenon last time. Me and all my mates managed to dock at the Ore Mine the sector relatively safely, though I did have to escort one ship through the pirate sectors in between, as I could not afford a jump drive for it. :( Since I went back a little further than I had hoped, I only have 6 ships, an M3, an M4, M5, one TS (freight transport) and 2 TP (passenger transport - they hold a good chunk of cargo but nothing like a freighter).

I left one of the TP ships at Herron's Nebula where the space fuel distillery is, and during the few short gaps in the battles, I managed to keep it stocked with energy, and have a route going PowerPlant -> Distillery -> Trading Station, selling Fuel at the DIstillery when it will take it and otherwise getting energy which is a small-profit reasonably sure journey. The most you'll make it 7cr per unit tho, buy for 12 sell for 19. At one stage I got some Fuel for 685cr .. I filled the ship (985 units, 675K) which made me broke. However selling 166 to the Trading Station for 1252 netted me a nice sum. At that price I can sell it all for a total of 1,233,220cr .. almost doubling the amount I outlaid. Problem is that it will take some time to sell it all. So while it's doing that ..

I docked all my ships and shuffled all of my already collected stuff into the TP and stripped it bare of shields and weapons to make some room and to make sure I had some spare stuff in case stuff gets busted (as it does). Annoyingly, there was nowhere near as many Xenon this time around but that just meant it was able to be sorted quicker. Besides I can always go back there later :) I kitted out the Nova with 3x25Mj shields which is the most it will carry, threw some heavy weaponry on it, set the M4 and M5 to follow me, and the TS off to a safe corner behind an asteroid and set to work.
This pic is a Xenon M4 getting hit from several directions at once. Dead aliens .. don'cha love it ?

Anyway as always the battle's not so one sided. I found myself saving frequently - not 'coz I got killed but because my wingmen are idiots. In the end I sat the freighter on 'collect wares in sector' and the M4/M5 protecting it. I trailed around behind them and blew the shit out of anything that looked at us sideways. Of course i got close to as good as I gave (I nearly died a few times :) )

In the shot here it's me, on fire. Lower left shows shields (10%?) and hull of 100 just under my rego number. Nice fire though.
In the end after 2 days of heavy biffo I managed to mostly empty the sector of bad guys, and collect all their stuff. Way to go .. there was 5 'unknown objects' which turned out to be $80K missiles. I was happy to sell those, as you can imagine. In addition I got some weaponry and nice cargo, probably made a million out of goods I 'found'.

The last ship in the sector was an M3. He was the only Xenon to bail, so I decided I'd have his ship too. It'll cost me 310K to repair or I'll get around that to sell it. It carries the same shields as the Nova but has no rear turret and only has 6 front weapons instead of 8 (plus turret). It is 33% faster (97vs125) and a good 40% more agile, so I am tempted to keep it and kit it out .. then see if it's a real death machine or not :)
I know there's a Xenon cap in recent posts but due to the Time Warp Factor (©) that never happened :)

Chapter 7 .. Shit ! More bad guys

2006-02-03T23:22:00.000+11:00

Well off we went into the next sector, owned by pirates just as the last one was. In this sector however there were around 100 Xenon ships at any one time. The Xenon are Not Nice as opposed to the Khaak who're just Plain Nasty. Anyway 100 of them was a bit of a shock to the system. You can see a few of them on the small map in the lower right of the screenshot .. yes each little red triangle's a bad guy. The lines above/below them show their vertical position if that makes sense .. if not tough :) Since it's a pirate sector there are also pirates which is why I have a Falcon in the targeting monitor topleft.

After having a bit of a peek around I realised they were streaming from a sector they own which was to the south into a sector to the west, but destroying anything stupid enough to get in its way. I got in the way a few times myself :) Once I'd seen 'The End' a few times I managed to keep away from the main bunches and just lure away small groups of 4 or so which are not so hard to handle. You have to be quick as otherwise the remaining ships notice and come swarm you.. and well you get the idea I am sure :)

They're funky looking buggers though .. this is an M3 here .. left to right Plain, Incoming, Ouch.

After many losses though, I noticed an absolute shitload of goodies being dropped by all the destroyed ships - and after a while the bad guys usually moved away to chase something else. Sadly though most of it was in quantities my pissy little fighters can't handle.. the 2 ships I found I've realised are both passenger class vessels and don't have as much cargo space as the monster I bought.. but the monster's slow and a long way away. I set it off to the Goner Temple to grab a jumpdrive, so it can pretty much teleport right to where I am, but it's still going to take it a day of game time.

Things are getting tight, most of my ships have some damage to repair, the nearest shipyard's a trip you'd at least take a change of undies for, and I'm scared to leave the sector in case some other thieving bastard takes my cargo.. so I keep filling my ships with stuff and sending one off to unload what it can but sadly I'm running out of space .. and unless profits start coming in soon, repairs will send me broke yet again.. but luckily I managed to capture myself a relatively intact Xenon M4 so selling that might be worth it.

Ah the temptation, quick risky dangerous profits .. mm .. profits.

OK so I'm a capitalist pig.. meh.

Chapter 6 .. Fun in space

2006-02-01T22:28:00.000+11:00

I took a squiz at the map I have and remembering the one from X2, I knew I'd missed an area that could prove interesting .. so purely to have the sectors on the map I plotted a course through the area. Once they're on your map and known to you you can jump to them from anywhere providing your ship has the right drive and enough energy. On the way through the territory which belongs to the 'Split' race who're apparently serpent-like, I came across a rather disturbing sight, a Khaak M2 (battleship) .. so I took a happysnap for my album and pissed off quicksmart. I was not game to get myself in close enough to show both ships .. I ain't that stupid : that thing's huge. The asteroid almost touching the base of it is a bit further away, but close enough. It' alones easily 5x the size of my biggest non-freighter ship. The story behind the Khaak is essentially that they're nasty bastards who don't want to negotiate just kill. Shame 'coz that purple trim's very cool .. I want one of their ships :)

The most horrible Khaak 'ship' from my perspective is the cluster. One looks like this and basically it's a whole slew of smaller ships, generally one M3 at the centre and the remainder of the ships being M4/5 classes - but from my experience you can find upto a dozen ships in one. This is definitely a small cluster, I have seen ones with two discs easily twice the size of this one's rear. Once attacked the cluster splits into its elements and swarms the poor bastard that pisses it off.

Needless to say I'm not game to take one on yet.. not with plain lasers. I know a weapon with an area of effect exists and once I get one of these, I might take the Khaak cluster on next time I see one. Not yet tho, that is for sure. I first have to find who sells them and convince them that I should be allowed to have some. That generally involves being nice to them, trading with them, that sort of thing. Knowing my luck it'll be a race I've annoyed by pirating their ships .. he he !

On the trading front, I managed to get some dirt cheap space fuel from the distillery I'd been stocking, enough to half fill my smaller freighter at 680 per unit; I managed to sell 166 for 1252 each so there's a tidy profit.. with more to come - the best kind! Aside from the trading and exploring I found nothing of great note, and did one set of 'take me here then here then here' missions which was cool fun but well I was filling in the map but it was pretty late. The next sector ahead was a pirate one so I docked at a friendly station and saved up.

As always click a pic to see it bigger :)

The Empire begins ..

2006-01-31T22:51:00.000+11:00

So here I have it .. a whopping great freighter with a massive hold (the largest ship I had has about 160t for cargo, fully upgraded .. the freighter has 5,700t before I upgrade it .. then it gets to 7,500..
So I start off trying to fill it with energy cells .. which at 12 a unit I figured I could manage a decent load .. but no the ship proved to be a bottomless pit - and all my credits half filled it with energy. So the situation being rather dire, I set out looking for somewhere really needing energy to send it there, sell and return. After a few loads of selling at 18-19 and buying for12-15 I was at least able to fill it each time I sent it.

Luckily there's 2 power plants in the sector so one usually has a decent stockpile when it gets back. so I can reload it and send it off again. Since I can't afford the software to automate the process (it ain't cheap at 501K that's for sure) while I was doing this I wasn't that occupied, so at first I had some fun escorting my new freighter and once I realised how boring that was I spent time exploring and avoiding combat with anyone.

Well ! This worked out to be quite a bonus because in a sector I was peeking around in, I found the most bizarre thing - an unowned Buster, kitted out but sat there empty. So being the true space pirate that I am I decided I'd borrow it and "left a note for the owner" but hey.

Inspired by this (and having a whole day ahead of me to do it .. gotta love flexes) I kept going.. Over the course of the day I found another freighter, a passenger ship, 75000 credits and about 100K worth of space weed. So I got 2 freighters going on the energy run. It's not that lucrative but it's easy work, every station wants energy regardless of what it makes, whereas if I was to pick something like cloth, not everywhere uses it making the job much harder.

Obviously I'm doing my best to keep the distillery full and I'm taking as much from it as cheaply as I can. So far I've made a couple of nice runs so my bank balance is 'tidy' even after kitting out all my ships. I now have 5 fighters 2 freighters and 1 passenger vessel. Things are looking up :) Gotta feel like a big man when there's 4 escorts no matter where you go .. that's what I reckon !

More fun to come .. believe me !

X3 .. Chapter 4 .. More biffo

2006-01-29T00:59:00.000+11:00

For some reason I decide to head out and kick some butt. This time after taking out about 15 pirates in groups of 3-4, I managed to capture 2 healthy M3s and an M4. These I just sent to the space station without any dramas.

*Dramatisation : Me capturing a falcon
I then decided to do a story mission at the Goner temple. All well and good I talk to the guy he tells me where he wants to go .. but not what sector it's in. Lovely.. got some exploring to do.

I strip all the useful stuff off the 3 recently captured ships and sell them. Suddenly I have over a million credits. Now I definitely feel like a capitalist pirate pig. (re the post below I don't think that'll help global warming). I purchase myself a nice big TS class freighter with a healthy 5800T capacity, upgradable to 7500. I even have enough money to fill it and while I'm exploring the Paranid sectors way to the south, it's in the upper part of the Argon areas trading away happily under my direction with the M5 flying as a rather pathetic escort .. but if you only carry energy cells you're less likely to get robbed .. they're cheap !

Odd stuff ..

2006-01-28T18:17:00.000+11:00

I recall a while back hearing about creationism being taught in Septic schools with some bizarre reasoning of opening people's minds to alternate theories or some shit, which to me is stupid. . teach the currently accepted facts or don't waste the poor student's time. They have enough true stuff to get their head around instead of including rubbish.. but hey this site tells/lampoons the idea of it so much better than I ever could.

I really enjoyed the hate mail section as well as the flash presentation.

Take a peek.. you know you want to !

Venganza.org

X3 .. Chapter 3 .. 'Biffo at the OK Space Station'

2006-01-28T17:53:00.000+11:00

Anyway as I was saying I went to bed with the shits but woke up pretty cheerful. That's got nothing to do with it though, so on with the story :)

Previous experience as I may or may not have mentioned showed me that I had to take a Nova out very fast otherwise I was in the shit. So my first move in most cases was to lay into that with as much as I had available before taking on the others. So after several attempts at leading them away I decided to leave the pussyfooting around and try to stick it to them.

* The Nova and exploding pilot
It seemed a little easier than I had expected and I cleaned them all up on the first attempt at it, I was quite impressed, so I put the other ship back on follow planning to escort it once it caught up with me. Whilst it was coming into the sector I checked the map for any nice cargo that had been dropped and something caught my eye in the ships .. there was an unowned Nova with hulls at 40%. So while I was waiting for the M4 I went and shot the pilot who had bailed then drifted up close to the disowned Nova and hopped into my trusty space suit, claimed it and jumped back into the Buster. Suddenly all that crap and hassle seemed worthwhile !

Anyway I set the Nova off to land at the spaceyard too. Much to my disgust the cheap bastard flying it had spent nothing on upgrading it .. so with the damage I had inflicted its max speed was 22 as compared to my 175 :)

During its journey I managed to capture another M5, so I had one of each class again heading to the shipyard.

* Some whinger in a Falcon. If he doesn't want to get shot he shouldn't be in front of me. I mean .. really..
2 gaming sessions later the Nova got there. It, like the other ships I'd captured were too damaged to be salvaged by someone with a paltry bank balance like mine. After paying for all of it, including selling the ships I'd caught, I had just over 40K .. a far cry from what I'd had when I set out.

Needless to say when all seems lost .. try the same thing over again :)

Using my 3 ships, and having a good deal of fun confusing the shit out of myself with the menus, I had all 3 ships trotting off to get supplies for the distillery, so it could get some goodies made and have some stock, which took it a while.

Waiting for it, I decided to do a little work on the side and started doing a few missions on the bulletin boards of the stations I land at - these are pretty random and include news and items of interest, as well as jobs. The higher your standing with whatever race owns the station and a few other factors also influence what goes in there. I chose a simple 'fly someone here' mission twice then a delivery mission and by this time there was some space fuel to sell so this distracted me for a while.

So you know what comes next don't you .. since I'm repeating myself and all :)

X3 .. Chapter 2

2006-01-26T22:48:00.000+11:00

Anyway so here we are with a captured pirate M4 sat outside a sector gate. It's following me so I head out of the sector, into some pirates so I send it away from me and engage the pirates .. and die ..
So I leave it behind and head through the gate solo to take on the pirates .. and die ..
I try to head to another base in the sector .. and the ship gets destroyed before it gets to land.
And so on.
So I decide to sit back and wait for a while .. credit to the AI here the pirates did not always follow the same pattern even though I was starting from very close to them each reload. After 5 minutes there's no activity so I check the map for the sector to find that I don't have a satellite in that sector so I can't see much unless a ship's in there .. so I go in. expecting the worst.
The pirates are just out of range but spot me and start coming .. so I run the other way and lure them out away from the gate so I can bring my other ship in when they're out of range. This brilliant plan of mine works and I now have the ship close to a gate and safety so I take on the pirates .. mere seconds before I start firing I realise I ain't saved it yet so I do.
Soon as it loads up there's an M3, 2 M4s and an M5 in your face. And I managed to overwrite the wrong save so I couldn't go back one. bleh.

As you can imagine the pirates gave me multiple deathgasms and I got the shits and went to bed.
I'm going to bed now too, but that's 'coz I'm tired.

More / some excitement to follow. Honest.

X3 .. Starting out

2006-01-25T23:55:00.000+11:00

I suppose I should start the story at the beginning.
Suffice to say you start with naff all money, a small poorly equipped ship. Your aim really is to do whatever the hell you like, or to go with the storyline missions. The gap between each story mission is as long as you make it .. 'coz you -do- need to prepare for whatever's coming.

So anyway here's me the pauper in the crapheap tooling around sectors looking for an easy profit. Needless to say it took me some time to find anything. There's a distillery in Herron's Nebula which when full sells its stock at around 650/700 but the trading station in the same sector will buy them for 1252 flat rate - the price increases at the distillery / factory though as stock dwindles .. so you need to time it. Well I did time it just right - I spent my measly 5K on whatever I could buy at 737 and then headed off to sell them. On the third run I had enough cash to actually fill the hold on my shoebox and my trade rank improved.. Ah what a moment .. So after an hour or so of peering around I found a nice place to make some cash and the next place I headed to was the trading dock for a nice spree.

Just a short note on ship classes so you don't think WTF ?? There are several - in increasing size - the first 3 are all 'single seaters' if you like .. M5 (scout), M4 (fighter), M3 (heavy fighter), TS (Transport Ship), TP (Transport passengers) M6 (corvette, can carry one scout in its hangar), M2 (destroyer .. huge) and M1 (carrier .. frigging enormous). You start with an M4.

Even with my nice shiny bank balance I had bugger all chance of getting another ship.. not even an M5.. but my ship is now pretty well equipped.. so I headed off to get me a couple of extra ships.
The easiest way is to have the cash, and go to a shipyard.
The most entertaining way is to go scare the crap out of someone so they bail .. then get in theirs.
So off I head to a nice pirate sector to kick some ass. I managed to get 2 M5s and a bit later, an M3.

* an sorry .. MY M3 Falcon letting fly with its 8 front mounted weapons.!
So I sent them off to the shipyard to wait for me to see what their status is - you can either repair the damage you caused in combat or sell the ship. Suffice to say repair ain't cheap. After quite a bit of hassling pirates I got another M5 and was satisfied with my efforts. I went back to see what I could salvage at the shipyard. I wound up with just the additional M3 by the time I'd repaired and equipped it but no hassle I now have 2 ships and a tidy 250K !

I sent it off to buy some energy to replenish the distillery and after about 6 trips it was happily chugging away and I managed to haul another 150K from it. I decide this piracy jig's quite the fun pasttime so off I go to pirate land again to kick some ass.

Welll .. let's see. The only ass I kicked was my own. Most of the pirates were travelling in groups of 3 or so now, sometimes 5 so great care was needed to get in there and survive. Tactically I've found it good to get in close and run for a bit to lead the scouts (if any) away from the main group then try to take one of them out with a full energy bank before the bigger buggers catch up. That worked fine. What really screwed me though was that another type of M3 has a rear mounted cannon with a hemispherical firing angle. Needless to say you often wind up with that thing in your face and usually it was the last thing I saw. Little bastard in question is an M3 Nova.

With a bit of practice and some luck I found running straight at them firing as soon as they're in range I could often take one out before it did too much damage but it took a while to clean up the scout ships.. but they couldn't break my shields without me screwing up so I was pretty safe, once the Nova went down.

In light of that I ventured a little further into pirate territory and was lucky enough to find a lone M4 and capture it reasonably undamaged. Another Buster like you start with. So I set it to follow me and lead it back to the sector gate. The first time I did it I wandered off from the PC and came back to see some pirates enter the gate and clean us up. I'd saved early enough that I could avoid them so that was cool.

Call me a typical nerd but here's another pretty picture of lasers being fired. mmmm ... lasers .. glarrgh. The grid is an 'ecliptic projector' which is very handy when you forget which bloody way is up.

How about we cover getting the buster back to a shipyard tomorrow ? :)

X3

2006-01-24T00:19:00.000+11:00

Well basically GW is still lots of fun but I'm pretty captvated by X2 which I just finished, and X3 which I just started. If you're old enough to remember Elite or Frontier it's in essence those 2 games with much added to the point where you can build factories and power plants, food farms in addition to having carrier class ships with multiple weapon turrets at your disposal (ooh the power .. do ya feel that baby ?).
The picture is my little beastie copping a missile hit.

One of the more fun but difficult pasttimes is capturing enemy ships which are generally pirates funnily enough. In general terms you shoot the crap out of the ship in such a way as you scare the pilot into bailing before it's destroyed.. and you shoot them then hop into your spacesuit and board and [automagically] take over their ship.

Anyway normally there's some ships you just can't take out without some dramas .. eg those that have a rear (or any) turret for instance .. they kinda suck, and are usually the death of me. Luckily today in a recently captured ship (with lotsa guns on the front) I took on a ship like that and made the pirate bail.

Even tho it was only a single energy bank, and he had decent shield it's still pretty damaged and crawling back to the shipyard to see whether it's worth fixing or selling :)

I'm impressed

2005-12-28T08:47:00.000+11:00

Well .. then .. might be back a little more often.

I just downloaded performancing's blog extension for Firefox and making a test post .. looks pretty convenient actually so far, but we'll see.

I just had Christmas which consisted of 6 hours in the car and 550k's 3 days with the family then another 6 hours in the car on the way back but it was way cool so that's all we need :)

This week

2005-10-25T00:00:00.000+10:00

Not really a very exciting week. I have tomorrow off so I'm gonna be Mr Dag Around The House Boy. Things could be much worse.

We had a lovely storm this evening - went for ages, lots of rain, lightning and thunder. Very cool.

An impressive fart today in the gents. Sadly I was not seated as such so there was no opportunity for the echo effect. It would have been quite pronounced had I been - this was short sharp and loud, but hey. It was still a good one, even without .. shite music on a great stereo still sounds shite but good music sounds good even on a transistor radio.

Besides that ? Nothing really to report.

Otherwise I'd have reported it .. funny that.

Oh, I got myself a Logitech 350 USB Headset. All I can say is after having it a good few weeks, it's still excellent.

Not quite so sore

2005-10-18T17:25:00.000+10:00

Well today my agony seems to have been downgraded to a class 2 and become manageable (2 e's or one ?) enough to be able to gather itself up under my left shoulderblade. Ah the joys. Still, I can stand and sit without an odd sounding grunt or groan so I am at least on the improve ;)

Otherwise today's been pretty good. Crap start to the day but it improved as the morning went on until it was nice and clear (but windy) at lunch.. and now I'm sat here waiting for my SO to get home so I can whack the barbie on. Life's good, eh ? :) Early enough in the year that there's no mossies and late enough to be warm still. mmmm .. warm.

Otherwise today I definitely did my quota of flatulence. Sadly nothing spectacular - actually i take that back. As you do with an almost 2yo you show them toilets and what they're for. It feels kinda odd but it's either that or a lifetime of nappies .. Hmm. :) Anyway I'm demonstrating the second option to little miss 21 months, when this quiet but long squeaker started squeezing itself out. Me, being as immature as I am, had a chuckle. Anyway .. little missy found this most amusing and almost fell over laughing. At least I know she's not scared of the toilet I guess.. she's not supposed to know better .. not sure what MY excuse is. Then again I don't need an excuse, I'm the Daddy. :)

Today just sucks

2005-10-17T17:30:00.000+10:00

I've hurt my back. No idea how, but it's damned sore. All under my left shoulderblade, along my spine to my neck, and in some weird spot where I just know it don't feel right but I can't describe it, and even if I could reach the bugger I could not show you 'coz you can't see me. Oh well. Anyway that bit's just here .. ouch ... here. See ?

So of course I have had the fun of going to the McPhysio. I shouldn't Mc him, he's a top bloke to be honest, and is always very helpful with lots of advice, you know the kind of Doctor / professional you're happy to go back to. IMPRESSIVELY .. his fees are still the same as they were when I first went there 5 years ago .. got to be happy with that. To top matters off it's his birthday today so he had people dropping in giving him cards cake and well wishes. Gotta love that!

I won't say I feel 100% right (improved, but still quite uncomfy) but I am definitely better than I was last night .. could not even lie flat on my back without a big ouch every time I relaxed .. even with a couple of Nurofen Plus under my belt. Nor my right side, on my stomach or my left .. so needless to say I had a shit night's sleep, and I bet my poor partner did too.

Anyway by the time I managed to ouch my way out of bed this morning the alarm clock had given up on me, I am sure of it. I could still hear it muttering at me under its breath when I got out of the shower. Then I realised I'd switched it to ON not AUTO when I switched the alarm off in the morning haze, so the radio was on at 1% volume or something stupid.

I then went to work and sat in my chair and went ouch a lot. Did work of course but was extremely sore :( Then at 3pm I went to the physio and got fixed up a tad.

If anyone else has shite posture, get a thing called a 'nada chair' or similar. It is basically an adjustable cloth figure eight that has its crossover at the small of your back, and each loop goes over a knee. This essentially forces you to curve your back less injuriously, and also seems to provide a good deal of support. As a matter of fact they're so cool they're getting the ultimate reference from me .. "If there was such a thing as a female one I'd sleep with it." And no, the fact that I took mine home from work today is NOT an indication I found that one was female.

Later tonight it's GW time .. mmmmm ... Guild Wars .. glaaarrrgh .. as Homer would say.

First up, sorry

2005-10-06T18:05:00.000+10:00

I've turned on verification for comments. This means you need to fill in one of those 6 random letter things like when you make an email addy. That way I hope there are less dickheads commenting.

Anyway ! Today was a pertty non event day on the flatulence front. Don't get me wrong there was a good deal of action and the fart cushion (my chair at work) was suitably topped up before I left for the day. There was one moment when I picked something biggish up and I had a small escapee but thankfully nobody noticed. I guess it's not as if I am unknown for it so hmm ..

Now here's a rant.
What shits me :
All these bastards who go online with bots and post comments with farking links in to stupid sites. Dickheads the lot of you. People like you are akin to those people who write frigging viruses and spyware. PISS OFF, will you ? What've I done to deserve your shit ? Post your home phone number next time and I'll pass it on to some telemarketers. Yeebok hath spake. Thou shouldst get fookedeth.

I suppose I gotta test it one day - can you properly swear ? :)

Next time maybe.

Actually no.
Something else that fucking shits me. APOSTROPHES.

What's so fucking hard !?
Mot important - it does NOT go on plurals.
You use it to assign ownership.
You can refer to the bed your cat sleeps in as "the cat's bed" "the book's cover".
Debate exists as to whether you add an S on words that end with it. Personally it looks stupid and it's not the way I was taught but do I give a shit ? Oh, yeah I do, that's why I'm writing. Just say my name was Fritz Gross. You could say "That's Fritz Gross' house" (if I had one :) ) or "Fritz Gross's house" - I reckon the former.
And the only fucking way DVD CD or PC have an apostrophe is if they own something. More than one does not need one. You don't have "2 car's" so why the fuck would you have "six DVD's" ? It's bloody DvDs, get it thru your head !!!!

The ONLY OTHER TIME : Contractions (adding 2 words together and taking some letters out)

CAN NOT - can't
WILL NOT - won't

So get it right or I'll fucking fart on you.

Well .. I've seen the light !

2005-10-04T23:20:00.000+10:00

I'm back after an absence. PS thanks to the dick who for some reason thought this particular blog indicated I wanted an online dating service. Dork.

Today .. a change in direction for the blog. No longer will it be rantings of an Achaean. Well actually it will 'coz Yeebok will always be Achaean but that's not what I mean so ner. S'gunna be 'bout anyfink man. And today well .. let's tell the story I guess.

First up not that you need to know but it's kinda relevant .. I sleep starkers. Yes birthday suit, nude whatever. Now that you're over that (hopefully brief) visual basically I got up this morning to make a cuppa - I wandered out filled the kettle and whacked it on. I then realised that the curtains were open. In the 'I just woke up fuggof' haze I have before I get some coffee I figured I'd just sit on the floor.

Anyway (now this is also relevant but you don't need to know but I'm telling you anyway so shut up already right) the floor in the kitchen is linoleum (or lino for you luddites). After a moment I felt the familiar "hey the systems up let's open the exhausts' rumbling so I relaxed a bit as you do. Apart from being reasonably cold this and I guess any other morning lino, among its other useful but relatively benign hidden functions when pressed close to some butt cheeks, someone's date and a few short sharp blasts of wind, has some amazing accoustic qualities. BRAP! BRRRAPP! At this moment in time I had an epiphany if you could call it that (and no you luddites that does not mean I pissed myself) and decided that this blog and quite possibly many other equally shite blogs should be dedicated to the wonderful worlds of highly fermented cabbage, beans and eggs, various similar noises and quite imaginatively odours.

But at 6:30am when you've just dropped your guts in the kitchen which sounded like a shotgun at close range and you are actually in danger of pissing yourself because you're laughing so hard, I found yet another use for lino - it brings out the little inquisitive boy that I believe exists in all of us. So you guessed it, I let rip with the remainder of the less intrusive side of my stomach's night of work, testing various seating positions and pressures. Obviously there's more variety of inputs (and resulting outputs) than I can possibly hope to cover on my own. That's where you, my faithful blog buddies, come in.

What's your best fart or gross in a similarly childish fashion story ?

Sigh

2005-08-01T23:53:00.000+10:00

Well .. another weekend gone by. Was lovely though, lots of sunshine, some clouds lots of blue sky. Gotta love it.

Can't think of much more to add .. the rest's pretty boring at the moment .. unless you want to talk about guild wars anyway :)

I am not obsessed .. I am not obsessed .. I am not obsessed .. pfft. who'm I kidding ?

The week in review ..

2005-07-24T23:01:00.000+10:00

Yeah I know it's a week since I last posted so if anyone's mad enough to be reading this drivel, you're probably wondering where the next instament is .. well you're reading it (duh :) ).

This week .. Guild Wars. Guild Wars. Guild Wars. I finally got my elementalist / ranger through the Villainy of Galrath. That's one tough mission .. undead, poisonous swamps, roaming patrols .. you name it. Managed to get thru it with not one death in the party which was pretty impressive. The picture attached is my Necromancer and a mesmer kicking the posteriors of some earth elementals. I've trimmed it so there's not so much guff around it. The rain of fire is ours, and the sparkly circles on the ground are from the elementals. It makes you blind if you attack whilst in it, which gives you a 50% miss rate on attacks (not spells).

My Necromancer/Mesmer has gotten to some new areas as well and collected some new skills. Nothing as cool as making corpses explode or raising the dead but handy ones nonetheless .. things like poisoning, and one I really dig called 'mark of subversion' - you cast it on someone and whenever they cast a spell to heal an ally, it fails, hurts them and heals you. Wicked! He did all his armour in silver, so he looks the part now, he's all dark and drab.

I must admit the lag problem has been really bad in some areas (eg the undead ones) and not even noticable in other areas (ones I've already done but run through with guildmates to help them out).

Do I love my Guild Wars ? Err .. yes - can't you tell ? :)

Thank goodness !

2005-07-17T22:29:00.000+10:00

It was so good to have the kids up for a week it was not funny. It was hard work, I am certainly not used to keeping 3 people amused plus myself but I think we managed pretty good to be honest. My only gripe could be that they would not settle early on a night but then again they have their own rooms at home so sharing a bed was always likely to cause some conflict.

So what'd we do ? Well played all sorts of crazy things with Phoebe and drew things and watched countless cute DVDs .. but such is the life of a 9 year old girl :) Brandon was happy-as .. there was 2 computers and a playstation whch he got to take home (I have no idea when I last used it..) plus the PCs had all sorts of car games .. mainly NFSU2, V8 Supercars2 and Revolt .. he's bad as me, happiest with a screen in front of him :)

Besides that I've done the usual and played Guild Wars. It's getting really hard, even with a party of 8 my elementalist get outside and we get utterly creamed by the first bunch of undead you meet. My necro is a few missions behind and starting to find it hard now without the outright damage aspect. That said once a few foes fall he comes into his own, since there's some corpses around. Played a little PvP as a monk/elementalist .. that's quite cool tho to be honest the 2nd skill could be anything, all the skills on the bar are monk ones.

Be well, world :)

Another week !

2005-07-13T09:29:00.000+10:00

So what has happened this week ? Not a lot .. went and got my other 2 kids on Sunday from the EFB at Raymond Terrace and they're up here for the week now, or at least until Saturday.
So far we've been and seen Madagascar which was pretty cool (loved the penguins and the lemurs :) ), I've given up my PS1 to Brandon (11) as his died, and fixed his 'puter. The other one's being a Phoebe (9) which basically involves being mildly crazy, and obsessed with horses. Even so, all's cool there.

Ashleigh's gotten used to the idea of having them both here but sadly I think she'll miss them when they go back - she's already asking to play with them in the room or wherever :)

Anyway more later I am sure.

Besides that, been doing the usual - GW GW and GW.

What the hell happened?

2005-07-06T17:14:00.000+10:00

Went to EBGames about 23/6. Installed some software and went online.

Getting on for 2 weeks later I realise you can use a PC and broadband connection for something OTHER than Guild Wars, that I ain't updated my blog or anything.

Christ it's a cool game. Take all the good bits from things like NeverWinter Nights (a personal fave) Diablo 1,2 and the various expansion packs (another fave). Chuck in something from a game like Sacrifice (this had the potential to be good .. shame someone fnutched it), wrap it all in a huge imaginary world. Give players co-op missions, solo missions and team combat as well as guilds tons of spells and even more weapons and upgrades. Then improve on it about threefold. That could be close. To paraphrase a movie .. If you build it they will come. I think I want to move in there to be honest.

I play 2 characters, Yeebok Shuin who is a necromancer/mesmer combo, and also Cerulean Phoenix who is an elementalist/ranger with a pet wolf she named Fluffy. Not that far through 'coz it's only been 2 weeks. That said, I hope I never finish it.

It's probably very similar to world of warcraft. But there's no online or ongoing fees, and it can apparently be played on a dialup modem. Besides which, after not being so keen on warcraft / starcraft it doesn't grab me. For some reason I've always preferred Command & Conquer. If a similarly souped up version of C&C came out I'd be likely to buy that one, too :)

Do you play Guild Wars ? If not, why not ? There really is no excuse. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

Thursday .. fun in the cold !

2005-06-23T20:14:00.000+10:00

Over the last week it's gotten relatively cold here .. like 5 or so c overnight. I've slept in clothes for the first time I can recall since I moved outta home 15 years ago ! Scary. Not game to get the telescope out though, because it's way too not warm.

Poppet's being cute walking around telling me about doot (her dummy) while I'm typing this. She's 18 months now, and extremely inquisitive, has to know about everything. She's always being cute .. mainly because she just is cute. Hard to be not cute when you are .. just like being an idiot I suppose but a good effect instead :)

Besides that have not played anything much the last day or so .. had another bash at guild wars but died about 5 times no matter how I tried it .. so I'll wait and take some mates with me and do the Charr in that way instead ! Definitely easier with a headset than having to type things in.. you can at least keep up with the action.

Finally got Sims2 yesterday .. came with a pizza deal .. 2 pizzas drink dippers and game for 35 .. can't pass that up since it's still 90 in the shop. Game at 1/3 price and a feed .. gotta love it.

Between that and the other things I get into I hate to think how much HD space is chewed up by games on this thing .. :)

Weekend of fun !

2005-06-19T23:00:00.000+10:00

Let's see .. Mum's away. bub was at Nanna's the PC was all fired up ready to go .. and amazingly I get a visitor. 3 or so hours later .. prime time's finished and I'm ready for bed .. but hey.

Watched 'team america' over the weekend .. not sure I liked it but boy did I laugh .. the puppet sex scene was a bit much tho !

Beyond that ? Guild Wars Guild Wars Guild Wars. Mix Neverwinter, Diablo and Sacrifice in with a bunch of other stuff and you have Guild Wars. Basically it's an RPG on steroids .. probably very like WoW but no ongoing fees which is always a bonus. Good ? Yes. Still getting to grips with it but it looks great. Having been a Diablo / Neverwinter fan for some time, this is the bee's knees. Add the team aspect and aVentrilo server and the fun's just begun really. I can see my downloads going out the window with this one though.

Just completed the newbie area and ventured into the 'real world' - quite a difference 'coz anything you see attacks on sight not quite like it does in newbie land where it'll walk into you and not give you a second glance. Anyway I like it.

Don't think it'll replace Achaea though.

The weekend

2005-06-18T23:33:00.000+10:00

What've I done this weekend so far ? Not a lot really .. played Guild Wars for a lor of the time - otherwise I was chatting with Choldar or Frogg via trillian.

Away from the PC, mummy is off for the weekend and poppet is at her auntie's tonight. Sadly I'm way too tired to party like I should :)

Today tho Poppett and I went shopping and we got a dozen donuts (which she and I ate 4 of) and 4 Bananas, all to take tonight, so she'll be having a cool time I am sure.

Got a program called Desktop Sidebar off a cover disk. It has all sorts of things on it but one panel in particular is very cool.. I've got it linked to the ABC and ABC Science lists + CNN .. very cool having news at your fingertips .. just took me a while to find the right options to change having not used RSS before :)

More fun with 'puters

2005-06-16T23:22:00.000+10:00

So here's today .. basically I sorted the report dilemma from yesterday .. but I'm not happy with it. Had a decent day all up though.

Missed the moon and Jupiter occultation or whatever you want to call it it had reappeared a short while before I got home from work. Oh well these things happen.

Played 'put a blanket over your head and pretend to be startled when I pull it off' with poppet. That was cool fun.

Spent an hour or so being Achaean today .. helped a couole of Shallamese with some things then went and fished. Caught 4 and made some fold so I was happy.

Better go put the bins out and go to bed !

It's wednesday

2005-06-15T23:47:00.000+10:00

So today ?

I wrote a script to convert a database with from/to dates into a calendar view in a spreadsheet. Think I did a good job .. lists things in 4 categories, shows the dates, highlights public holidays and formats it all .. even with selectable start / end dates from existing data. Ah .. them I tried to get a list of staff to use with name number and id .. but no such animal .. BAH !

Other than that visited Achaea, helped a novice out for an hour (day) chatted with some friends and that was it so not really that long a visit. Also got a nice new shield. Jeez.. :)

Bub's sick but Mummy's taking admirable care of her as always. Dunno what else to ramble on about really.

Tuesday

2005-06-14T22:30:00.000+10:00

Well today just sucked really .. that's about the only way I can describe it. Weather was dreadful, slept in, and it more or less went downhill from there. Tomorrow looks to be more of the same but hey it's normally nice here so I can deal with it.

Little Poppet's got a sick sore throat and is quite the grumper today but you get that too. We know she doesn't hate us or anything and besides which, she's too cute to hassle her too much

Beyond that did the obvious .. logged on killed some toads and hellhounds and a few other nice 'beat the hell outta you' things with Choldar but life as an Achaean's pretty tough .. after that I had a wash in the lake, and had a nice snooze in the library.

Now though, it's bed time.

Day two !

2005-06-13T10:00:00.000+10:00

Well let's see .. I got up this morning .. was horribly misty and cold looking but not freezing. Certainly looked colder than it was. Shite happens.

Besides that the new phone's happily charged, one of the Uniden WDECT 2355 things. Quite cool by the look of it, but as always proof's in the pudding I guess but since nobody's rung .. well .. :)

Last night was some fun on Achaea .. raided the undead with Choldar & Velvan 'til I ran outta devotion and had to sleep.. then played some more games then went to bed (that as around 1am .. got up at 7.30, fun!)

Will add more as I go I guess.

Let's get started

2005-06-12T19:52:00.000+10:00

Dunno what to say besides I am here, and I have started. Beyond that I dunno.

Today was my partner's 32nd birthday (I'm 34). Other than that little of excitement besides that Ashleigh (18 months) slept and it was a good 3 hours.

My favourite pasttime lately is logging on to Achaea as Yeebok and being priestly. It's what I do. :)

Avoiding Big Brother 2005 :)