The Nerdary

Ninety Nine Nights (N3) - Review

2006-11-06T07:34:00.000+13:00

The Xbox 360 is an amazing machine for sure but in Asia especially the Xbox and its sequel have never really taken off at the level these consoles have achieved elsewhere. N3 was Microsoft’s attempt to lure the Asian market towards the 360 by hiring the famed game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi.

By all accounts it was successful in capturing the attention this market, so much so that Microsoft decided that us Westerners should have a go too, and all I can say is yippie!!

N3 is one of those games were you are the super-uber warrior leading your forces into battle against mind staggering odds and basically single handily destroying anything that gets in your way. Its simple, its violent and it is a guilty pleasure for sure. This is the type of game you sit down with and turn off your brain and just enjoy. Oh and the graphics? They are excellent! Sure they could do with a little gore, but apart from that they really do start to show off the true power of the 360, especially if you have a decent HD capable TV.

Make sure you do turn-off your brain though or you could find yourself laughing at the ridiculous fantasy placenames and character names that put Tolkien to shame in their silliness. You also risk many groans and headshakes at the corny dialog and silly situations your mostly teenage heroes get themselves into. If you are a fan of Asian media however N3 might be right up your alley with its teenage angst ridden heroes and ridiculous, and in the case of the females, revealing outfits.

It’s not all hack and slash fun however, there are some problems with the game. The first is your ally AI, its stupid. Horribly, horribly stupid. Basically the only thing you can rely on your AI allies’ do is stand around, get in the way and get into trouble. Oh and stand there and cheer ever so often. But hey when you can decimate whole armies by yourself what does that matter? So then there is the second and most serious problem, the save system. Basically you can only save after missions, and there is no check point system during the missions. On the later levels this leads to undue frustration as you are forced to begin levels right from the start just because the boss who took an hour to reach managed to get the upper hand. Thirdly the combat is basically about learning which combo does the most damage and then using it again and again… personally I recommend X X X Y Y for most characters.

All and all however N3 is a great game when you just want to slaughter several thousand enemy in beautify rendered surroundings and not have to worry about mind-bending puzzles or difficult strategic situations.

Overall score 3.5 out of 5

Kong hits Wellington

2005-12-15T07:30:00.000+13:00

Well Fi and I headed down to watch the Kong goings on last night, and here is what I have to say;

First of all the day itself was bloody hot! The sun was baking!

We got there about 5:45pm and most of the good spots were gone already but after a bit of walking around we did manage to find a place were we could just see over the heads of some of the crowd and make out the red carpet.

At the start there were a few of what passes for a celebrity in NZ but then the real stars showed up and by real stars I of course mean Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor and Andy Serkis. Naomi who? Adrian what? Peter Jackson certainly got the biggest cheers and was in the highest demand for autographs from the rather chilled out Wellington crowd. It must be interesting for big name stars to perhaps not be treated as they are used to. Adrian Brody was certainly WAY too cool for school, and basically was chilly and somewhat rude when interviewed by the excellent Jackie Brown.

But yes, people were really there for Peter, and that leads me into a story (I like stories!)

There was a little girl (10 perhaps) hanging out of a tree (rather monkey like) next to us with a big blow-up banana and she was there for only one person. Peter Jackson. So when he came down infront of us she leaned out, only just holding onto the tree, over the heads of the crowd for him to sign her banana. At first it looked like he wasn't going to see, but then he looked up and looked slightly surprised and then looked right into this little girls eyes and gave her a huge smile, his eyes even light up and all that. Well she was ESTATIC! She didn't really know what to say, I think she was trying to tell her mother that "Peter Jackson is signing my banana" but all that really came out was "peter... peter..."

Of course the funny thing was as soon as she got her banana back, signed, see flung it back at her mother ("don't fall out dear") and grabbed the digital camera ("don't break it dear") to take photos of Peter as he slowly moved away.

I myself did not get close enough to the action for any signing (I am sure a Peter Jackson or Richard Taylor signature on my weta King Kong hat would look good) but it was still a good experience. Now I just have to wait to see it on Friday. Jesse went to the Weta crew screening and insists that Kong is the best film he has ever seen, better even than StarWars (and Jesse loves StarWars). He says it is WAY better than any of the Rings films... we shall see.. we shall see.. Its going to be great though!

Oh and yeah I did see Narina. Its a kids film, and I am sure they will like it, but it lacked emotion, it lacked impact and it lacked good special effects. That's all I am going to say really.

To Blog or not to Blog?

2005-12-08T07:28:00.000+13:00

I have a problem...

I have this blog, and I do like posting to it and keeping the 4 or so people that actually read it up to date :) But I have a problem, not actually I have two;

1. I am now a public servant, that means basically I cannot talk about my job or about road safety as anything I say, and I have some strong opinions on road safety, could be taken as either the offical MoT line or as critism of the government in the transport area. This is a big no, no in the public servant area and we have been warned that blogs are considered to be published and advised to basically "not go there". So that is a huge part of my life I can't talk about, but such is the life of the servant of the public ;)

2. I get paid by Macguide to write about Macs... and since a blog is published, and not to mention free material anything I say on here, say about how excellent a game the Stubbs the Zombie is, makes it then hard for Macguide to pay me for statements around the same line (look out for a review of Stubbs in an upcomming Macguide.. be the zombie!).

Now of course that does leave quite a bit more for me to talk about, but it has also taken two large chunks of my interests out.

But anyway, that is my problem.

In other news, I have tickets for both Narina and KONG! So I will be seeing Narina this friday with Fi and my brother and I will be seeing KONG with Fi next Friday. Yay!

I am sort of looking forward to Narina, though it is a "kids" story and is very christian based, which can get in your face... but we will see what we will see.

As for KONG there is no question, I am looking forward to it, and by all accounts the Kong vs T-Rex fight is an epic event that will go down in history..

Last but not least I have an Xbox360 on preorder, its expensive but I figure if I get one I can review games in TONE and it will pay for itself!

Xbox 360 Info

2005-11-23T20:21:00.000+13:00

I swear I posted this last night right after the information arrived in my inbox.. ah well here is the Xbox 360 press release.. March 2nd people, March 2nd..

"Auckland, November 22, 2005 - It’s only 99 sleeps until New Zealanders can get their hands on the world’s most powerful games console, the Xbox 360.

Microsoft today announced that two versions of the console will go on sale from 12:01am on March 2nd, 2006. Consumers will be able to choose from the Xbox 360 at RRP$719.95* and the Xbox 360 Core System at RRP$549.95*.

“Amazingly realistic gaming experiences are now within our reach,” said David McLean, Regional Director, Entertainment and Devices Division, Microsoft Australia and New Zealand.

“Xbox 360 ushers in a whole new generation of gaming. Game characters and environments are just like the real world or as fantastic as the imagination can dream up. The New Zealand lounge room has not seen richer or more detailed games.”

Xbox 360 is the first console that lets gamers enjoy the freedom of wireless gaming, as standard. The Xbox 360 offer will include the console, 20GB hard drive, media remote, wireless controller, component high-definition cable and Ethernet cable. Xbox 360 Core System delivers the same powerful gaming as Xbox 360, but starts with the basics and lets you expand at your own pace. The Xbox Core system includes the console, composite AV cable and wired controller.

Both packages come with a complimentary Silver subscription to the world’s leading online gaming service Xbox Live, which provides gamers new ways to compete and hone their skills.

There are currently more than 200 games being developed for the Xbox 360, with 18 titles now launched in the United States and other markets. A full list of titles available on New Zealand launch will be available in 2006.

A wide range of Xbox 360 accessories will be available on launch. The current list includes:

· Wireless (RRP$89.95*) and wired (RRP$69.95*) controllers
· Play charge cable (RRP$39.95*)
· Rechargeable battery pack and cradle (RRP$59.95*)
· Battery pack (RRP$24.95*)
· 20Gb hard drive (RRP$189.95*)
· 64MB Memory unit (RRP$59.95*)
· Wireless networking adaptor (RRP$189.95*)
· VGA cable (RRP$59.95*)
· Advanced AV pack (RRP$44.95*)
· High Definition AV pack (RRP$59.95*)
· Headset (RRP$59.95*)
· Faceplate (RRP$34.95*)
· Universal Media Remote (RRP$59.95*)

Xbox 360 consoles, games and accessories will be available from leading retail outlets."

Conference and DOOOOMMM

2005-11-16T07:00:00.000+13:00

Well all of this week so far I have been at the Australasian Road Safety conference in Wellington. Its been a great time with lots of interesting speakers and of particular interest to me Professor Frank McKenna has been in attendance and speaking. Frank's work was very important to my thesis so it was great to meet him and he has to be the most interesting speaker at the conference.

The main message that seems to be comming out of the conference is that we have the technology and the know-how right now to solve our road safety problems. There has been a lot of talking about attitude change, in that the ability to speed is seen as a "right" much like smoking whereever you are or drunk driving used to be also seen as "rights". This will have to be changed if people ever expect to get speed limiting engineering solutions into place.

Anyway its been a good couple of days and I am looking forward to going back again today.

Moving away from serious issues like Road Safety, I saw DOOM the other day...

Its a markedly average film, which is actually better than I expected. I thought it would be awful but as it is it seems to almost reach the point where it might have been good but then falls down on several points. I again have to say how amazed I am that the Rock can actually act. I stand by my statement that he is taking the kind of roles that the Governator would have taken if he was young enough today, and pulling them off.

So what could have made it great? Well if they had kept to the DOOM storyline a little more (like actually having demons and experiments with teleportation) it might have been better, and also they needed to get it going into action faster and keep the tension level much higher. There weren't enough deaths in the marine team until too far into the film. Also the reason why people became monsters was horribly flawed in that near the end there were heaps of "monsterfied" people running around.. they all were potential psychopaths? The lab workers and their familys? Really? And the guy with the troubled past nicknamed Reaper who chooses to kill people for a living isn't? What? Huh?

Anyway, it was average but made somewhat worse by fringes of potential that stuck out. The First person scene (they only did it once and for a limited time) was actually pretty good, I get the feeling though that there was going to be more but they cut it down, perhaps they had some motion sickness issues or such.

Star*Drive, Enterprise, Saw 2 & Eating Media Lunch

2005-11-09T07:09:00.000+13:00

I have recently been re-reading some of my Alternity books, specially my Star*Drive RPG books (I have basically everything ever put out for Alternity). And as always I am struck by how alive and well written these books are. I have always thought it was a really pity that I never really got a game of Alternity going, it was a nice system and both the Star*Drive and Dark@Matter campaigns were some of the best I have ever read.

Star*Drive is particuarly in my head at the moment has I have been watching quite a bit of Sci-Fi, and even though it was written in 1998 the simularities between the Star*Drive setting and say, Firefly are quite close. There are even "reavers" in Star*Drive, except they are just people who have installed too much cyberwear. Its great stuff though.

Perhaps once I have a regular roleplaying group I can float the idea or something... Much to think about really.

Moving on, I have also been watching my way through the series of Enterprise (I have finished series 1, 2, and 3 now) with Fiona. It does have its problems, in that the first two seasons were kind of weak "exporing" stuff that had been done before, with some temporal cold-war stuff thrown in, which never did mix. Plus it would appear that womens lib went down over time to when the orgional Star Trek is set, but never mind. Also the ethic mix of the ship could do with a bit more cultures. BUT series 3 (apart from the awful change of start music, which was even worse than the first 2 seasons) was really good. The show had purpose and it was interesting, especially because the crew couldn't afford to stay on the Moral High Horse that can be so annoying in Star Trek (has anyone else ever been bothered that this Utopia is actually run by a Starfleet run dictatorship? I mean did you see that episode of Voyager (I think) where one of them was back on earth and running from the law, but people just keep teleporting in whereever he went? I call that a terrifying view of the future!)

I will hold judgement on Series 4 until I have seen it, but I hope it doesn't stay in the past long. The whole Nazi thing has been done to death.

Hmm what next? OH yeah I saw Saw 2 the other day. Hmmm worked out the twist about 10 minutes in, the less said the better.. I am not even going to link the film title.. that's right! No link for you! Instead have this one! (Oh NSFW)

Lastly Eating Media Lunch is back and its as funny as ever. Sure I enjoyed the unauthorised history of NZ, but EML is really just the bestest thing on NZ TV at the moment. Collecting dontations on the street for El Qaeda? excellent stuff...

Because Pa says

2005-11-07T13:20:00.000+13:00

Hi All, My Dad says that I should post in more blog more often.

Perhaps I shall, but I am pretty lazy :)

Anyway, what's been going on here?

Well I went along to a Xbox event where they were showing off the Xbox 360 but more so they were saying to all the retailers there "pllleeasssee keep selling Xbox until the 360 arrives.. please! PLEASE!". I have to say it was rather funny... The highlight of the night was probably seeing the King Kong game (for Xbox not Xbox 360).

The game looked very cinematic and you couldn't really tell by watching when the guy was or was not in control of the action on the screen. Very seamless transitions, and the Kong vs T-Rex fights looked great!

What else?

Oh yeah for fireworks Fi and I went down to the Habour, it was very cool, we had our backs to the city so everytime a firework went off the "BOOM" bounced off the skyscrapers behind us, as Jesse said it made it sound like the city was under attack.

Finally I am still looking for people to Roleplay with! I am having to luck at all.. my sign up in Graphic has had "contact me" tags ripped off it, and the RPGcentral website thingy in Wellington must be hosted in Iraq or something from how often it is up and down. Though when the forums there are up the answer seems to be "no room in current games and no interest in new games".

Looks like I am screwed really.

Wireless

2005-10-15T22:15:00.000+13:00

Its interesting to live in the inner city because I am actually in range of at least 3 other wireless networks at one time..

G-560
ZyXEL
and an apple brand one that I forget its name..

Its interesting. The ZyXEL one is actually unsecured but I haven't really played with it :)

RPG group search is still going no place. I know I keep saying, but roleplaying was an important part of my life and I miss it.

Talking of Roleplaying there is a 2nd edition of Mutants and Masterminds! oooo pretty! I have to say that M&M is the best super hero RPG I have ever played and I imagine that the 2nd edition will be better. Oh, oh and have you seen Dragonmech? It looks like a bunch of fun, I might have to get my dirty paws on it.

Oh and for those out there that are WoW interested? I am dealing with not having it with only minor pangs of wanting it back.

bye bye WoW

2005-10-12T23:25:00.000+13:00

High level play is just not doing it for me, I can't get enough raiding and PvPing with the time I have so I have just canceled my subscription and deleted WoW from my computer.

I am sorry to go, but the game just isn't giving me my money's worth and hasn't been for a while.

In other news my pen and paper Roleplaying withdrawl is getting to me!

Fran and Peter do Halo

2005-10-05T17:34:00.000+13:00

Peter Jackson and his wife Fran Welsh will be exculitve producing Halo, which will be filmed in good old WELLINGTOWN!

I wonder if I can be a grunt? I run in fear well.. and can make funny sounds and die

blarg!

2005-10-05T07:37:00.000+13:00

Blarg I say..

Well I am getting close to quitting WoW again, the problem is that at high levels it takes ages to do anything that feels worth while. I get on, I farm shards (woo the thrill that is) then I wait for an hour or so as a Raid forms and then I play through a Raid dungeon and often come out with no phat loot at all..

Don't get me wrong, its not all about the loot, its just WoW is quite a "who has the best stuff" wins game and my time to getting good stuff ratio is ass..

Ah well, I still enjoy the actual game its just the outcomes that irk me sometimes.. only sometimes.

Plague

2005-09-26T21:05:00.000+12:00

Ok, I just want to briefly talk about he plague that hit WoW after 1.7 was released. I know its somewhat old news but basically what happened was in 1.7 Blizzard put out a new High End dungeon. At the end of this dungeon is a boss that curses your party with a disease, which bounces from ally to ally.

It was intended to be a pain for lvl 60 characters, but what actually happened is on some servers (not Silverhand) it ended up being transmitted back to the major cities where it started killing low level characters left and right.

Of Course Blizzard moved to stop this with a Hotfix.

Personally I think its an interesting example of what can happen in a social game like this, especially the reaction of many in the community calling it a "great world event" instead of a "huge cockup by blizzard".

Interesting stuff

The Duke boys

2005-09-23T07:42:00.000+12:00

When I was a lil boy I loved the Dukes of Hazard, I even had a General Lee toy and boy was it spiffy. So last night me and my Girl and my brother went and saw the new movie.

All I have to say is Yeeeeeehhhaaaa! Well not thats not all..

For me, all that this movie needed to be good was a freeze frame of the General Lee jumping and a voice over.. and that is delivered in the first few minutes. The rest of the movie is nicely entertaining with lots of laughs.

Now, fans of that great stoner film Super Troopers may be particularly interested in this film as it is directed by the same guy. Well you won't be disapointed because his touch is in there and there is even a couple of Super Trooper tributes.

That said, as far as the "Duke" feel goes, it was a little strange for at moments it switch to the "Stoner" type film, especially the moments that are at the University.

One last thing that I particuarly liked was a couple of times in the movie they have people reacting to a car called "The General Lee" with the confederate flag painted on the top in a way that such imagery would probably be confronted in todays society.

Oh and I should probably join the crowd and say something about the new revolution controler.. but I don't care. Not even enough to link to anything..

Wellington

2005-09-21T07:43:00.000+12:00

Well heeeellloooo to anyone that still reads this blog.

What the hell are you doing here? You must have some determination to be sticking with this blog. You know what? If I am ever trapped someplace, like everest or something, and I need someone who will just never give up and keep me going you are that person.

Well I have been really, really, really slack.. and I have not been posting.

But things have changed in my life. I know live in Windy Wellington where I have a job as a Behavioural Scientist for the the Ministry of Transport thats right I am a public servant!

I have to say that Wellington is a very cool city to live in. Infact its the best city I have ever lived in and I highly recommend it!

That said I miss all my friends back in Hamiltron, and I miss having a good group of guys to roleplay with. Anyone know of any Roleplaying groups in Wellington? Because I sure don't.

What else? Not much really.. I am still playing WoW though I spend less time on it than I used too. To remind those out there I am Laglgortag, lvl 60 Warlock on the Silverhand server. Oh and my old guild has merged into another guild, Darkspear Voodoo.

Oh and how about those Election results aye? Pretty darn close.. I am personally dissapointed that so many suckers voted for Don, that the Greens didn't get more votes (too many suckers voting for labour) and that Act still exists.. Poo Poo I say! Winston getting beaten in the Old T was a highlight of the night though, pitty NZ first didn't drop below 5%!

Oh and one more thing, have you seen Katrina:The Gathering its awesome.. very well thought out and funny.

Apple moving to Intel

2005-06-07T06:41:00.000+12:00

Wow its happened..

I think this calls for a statement about Brave new worlds..

hmm

Revenge of the Sith

2005-05-30T20:21:00.000+12:00

Funny I am sure I posted my review of Revenge of the Sith after I saw it.. I am sure I did.. perhaps it was the whole midnight showing thing and tiredness and sickness..

Anyway I have to say that I enjoyed Revenge of the Sith. It was better than the other prequels and that on a whole the acting and script was better. Of course the romance scenes were still aweful, aweful shit.. damn their eyes and my ears..

Other people have pointed out that you cannot allow your children/whatever to watch the StarWars movies from ep1-6.. because well 4-6 rely on the fact that you don't know the whole "I am your Father/You have a twin" stuff... so yeah good point I say, good point.

To go back to the film at hand, I loved the fight scenes, especially the final fight on the lava. Great, great stuff... and it was good that Lucas didn't chicken out and try and go for a PG rating like the other StarWars films.

So yeah I have seen it twice, and I did like it...

I have to agree with Scott of PvP when he said that it would have been cooler if you started with ep1 with Anakin already a padawan, then have him fall in ep2 and then devote ep3 to the Jedi Purge, you know some real Darth Vader action. That would have been cooler..

Revenge

2005-05-18T06:26:00.000+12:00

I will be there tonight/early tomorrow morning to see the Sith get Revenge.. will you?

I will be wearing my "Han Shot First" T-shirt to boot...

Nerd out..

Helsinki and Finland

2005-05-17T06:20:00.000+12:00

Well it looks like things have changed, and unless I want to put everything off for another year and a half (at the very lucky least) I am not going to go to Finland to do my PhD.

Bummed? Sure am..

World of Wacraft Again

2005-05-16T20:49:00.000+12:00

Ok here is news that should be of no surprise.. I am still playing World of Warcraft and I am still loving it!

Sure I am not 60 yet (51st at the moment), but I have other stuff to do..

Sure I am a Warlock, the class that a) whines the most and b) probably has the most reason to whine.

But it is still fun! Especially when I can get online with my friends and hit an instance, do a quest or go PvP.

I am looking forward to the battlegrounds as a place to prove extactly how powerful a Warlock with infernal can be if he isn't scared to use it.

Nerdary Redesign

2005-05-15T22:02:00.000+12:00

I thought maybe I should go more into this idea..

What I would really like to have is my own hosted website running my own blog. But for this I need:

- Webhosting
- A blog setup.. I don't really need much, just post tracking and such. Oh and comments, I like comments. Comment notification is also good.
- Some graphics that I am happy with.
- Domain name

Not too hard for the Webhosting and Domain name I guess.. but the other stuff is a bit of a pain because to be honest I just don't know much about coding and such that is required to setup even a simple blog that allows commenting and such.

So can anyone give me any suggestions? That would be great.

Posting from the Dash Board

2005-05-15T16:12:00.000+12:00

This post comes directly from the dashboard in Mac OS 10.4 Tiigggeerr thanks to the wonder that is dashblog.

That is right my friends, with a press of F12 I can blog from anywhere, anytime!

Does this mean I will resume blogging? Well maybe..

Why you ask? Because I am deeply dissapointed with appearance The Nerdary. I don't like how it looks, I don't like it at all.. I need to do something about this. But I am balls at design... but I am working on it!

So in other words, where is the the nerdary? Well its still here and I shall try to post more often. But I am also looking at a redesign and relaunch, hopefully in the very near future.

Not gone

2005-03-12T16:11:00.000+13:00

I am not gone.

I will be posting soon.

At Binding

2005-02-16T13:19:00.000+13:00

Ok..

My Thesis is at binding! WOOOOO!

yeah...

To those of you I txted to say "woot!" sorry I couldn't reply but it took all my $$ just to send the "woot!" message..

So answers to txt questions:

Warmachine - Yeah I might have time, though I am moving back to Te Awamutu, and I will be working full time.
What is my thesis about? - Behavioural adaptations in drivers, that is where a driver reacts to something being safe by being unsafe.. yeah..
Can I read it? - sure you can read it, I am working on getting it down from 15mb to a more e-mail sendable size. Then I can e-mail it to you.

Thats all folks!

Lagl

2005-02-10T08:53:00.000+13:00

You are in the middle of the wilderness seemingly alone, when from the shadows of a rock comes a deep Orcish voice "hey, want to see something?". From the Shadows steps a large Orc dressed in blood red robes, from which talioring impliments of various kinds are bulging, his hair is in disarray and his eyes glimmer with more than a touch of madness. Trailing behind him is an Imp, fire dancing around it as it pulls on the Orc's robes, seemingly attempting to get them to ignite.

"You do want to see.. don't you, you do.." the Orc insists, and before you can answer he gives the Imp a vicious kick and then picks it up and throws it against the rock a couple of times. While he does this the Orc shouts loudly "Show the images! Show the images!" each shout being accompanied by a sickening thud as the Imp hits the rock.

Finally, when you think that the imp is about to expire the Orc puts it down, it staggers and then begins to wave its hands and images start appearing in the air above it. The Orc turns to you and gives a statisified smile and then begins to speak.

"Ah yes, in this image, I had Woolen bags at the time, yes, red ones. In this image my companion and I had paid a visit to the training grounds to hand out bags, linen bags, to those who were just arriving.. and to dance with them.."

"At this point, I have silk bags, yes.. many.. and I am a sheep. It was an interesting experience, though I couldn't help but think about shaving myself to make more woolen bags.."

"Still on silk here, been with silk bags for a while in this image.. I was hunting wolves to kill and cook.. and these Kodo, they got in the way."

"I call this my transportation period, all woolen.. all transport. I enjoy the fluttery feeling that being in the lift gives me, especially in high winds. It is also a great place to drop Imps from, especially near the top, you can hear them scream all the way down"

"Another silk bag time period, and an interesting portal. My druid friend Tarique informs me that it might have lead to the emerald dream. Though it did nothing for me. It left me feeling a little let down" the Orc goes to move on to the next image and then remembers something "oh, you will notice here I have gone for a more traditional "Orc" look rather than the robes.. I must say it was very dashing.."

"Back to woolen bags in this image, the woolen bags have this real, real.. homegrown feel don''t you think? Anyway, those humans may die easly under the withering power of my curses, but they can build a visually impressive sheild.."

"Hmm I don't seem to remember this image very well.. it brings a painful feeling right in my back.."

"Still on Silk here, though I could make Mageweave bags at this point.. here I am getting ready to put Horsey through his paces.."

"A much more recent image, mageweave and silk combo here.. The events are a little bit of a blur, the rogue fell, we followed, and a swarm of death appeared. There was screaming and the sound of grinding gears. It still gives me nightmares.."

"After the last images, we instructed the rogue to be more careful.. through the use of some carefully aimed blows of our own. Defeated the bagless fools and here we are heading home."

"Finally this is the most recent image, still a mageweave and silk combo I must report. There was this nice pup in the auction house that I tried to throw sticks for, unfortantly it was having none of that carry on. Belonged to a Tauren named Pattie."

The image shown by the imp then starts to change and just as you catch a glimpse of the next image, in which you get the impression of far to much green flesh the Orc gives the Imp a swift kick to the head and the images stop.

"That is all I have to show you, now.. go.. go slay the bagless ones!"

With that the Orc leaps into the air, a demonic horse appearing with a burst of flames under him. The horse rears up and brings its hooves down onto the prone form of the Imp, crushing what was left of its life out of it and then the Orc rides off. The only thing left behind being the twisted body of the imp, and a small mageweave bag...

The new catch phrase for 2005

2005-02-08T15:31:00.000+13:00

"...Peltzman (1977) responds to this by accusing Robertson of selectively editing his data to produce these results, and dismissing Robertson’s findings as purely statistical fiddling without intuitive theoretical backing. In reply Robettson (1977) suggests that Peltzman is “…throwing rocks from a glass house” and criticises Peltzman for being selective in his own analysis..."

Just a taste of my thesis, who says that academics are boring?

I think "I dissmiss your findings as pure statistical fiddling without intutive theoretical backing" should be the catch phrase for 2005

Someone diss your motha? Dimiss their findings as pure statistical fiddling without intutive theoretical backing! Did they call you fat? just pure statistical fiddling without intutive theoretical backing..

Mock you for your lack of leveling in WoW? well.. no, there just no excuse there! ;)

I dismiss your findings as pure statisical fiddling without intutive theoretical backing, use it in a sentance (or as a sentance itself!) today!

Oh.. I have nearly finished my thesis, going to be handing it in tomorrow or thursday in its penultimate form as my supervisor put it.

Masters Update 2-2-05

2005-02-02T09:08:00.000+13:00

Yesterday I handed in a 133 page, 28394 word masters Thesis to my supervisor for a first look through.

Now its a first look through so I have to wait to get it back and then have a good nervous break down about how much I have to change and how much my writing sucks, and should I be doing a PhD? and all that jazz.. but yeah.. its in for a first look.

My supervisor wants me to take the 3 week extension though, just because everytime I hand it in its going to take a week to get it back.. so he wants it to get the best mark it can, etc. Its a little disapointing, because you know I want to get this done and get onto my PhD and Helsinki as quickly as I can. But its not that bad...

Anyway.. thats all folks..

PA and WoW

2005-01-25T08:40:00.000+13:00

Incase you live under a rock or something and don't read Penny-Arcade there is a good news post here about World of Warcraft. Very good stuff.

Masters Update 24-1-05

2005-01-24T15:16:00.000+13:00

Getting closer now, will I make it? Who knows.. care to make bets? Only if you cut me in on some of your winnings.. hell I will throw the race if you pay me enough.

Anyway..

My Intro has been polished a bit more and in the end my Results section is 50 pages and just under 10,000 words of so. Which is, as I am sure some people would say, hella cool.

I have started my an hour or so ago and at the moment it is 3 pages with about 1,000 words.

Other news:

BDO - was lots of fun, it was my first and it was good. Stereogram were great, I really like the "go" track. I did find that the vocal mix seemed quite off, especially for bands like the Donnas. I couldn't hear a single word they were singing, it was all drowned out by the music. I also had some really nice indian from one of the stalls there, the kind that makes me wish I knew how to make a good vegetable currie. Like the one that the vege-squad at Uni used to offer.. you know the one, it was lovely.

WoW - I haven't been playing this much, so I haven't been as effected by the server outages and junk as others. But I have been effected enough to be more than a little miffed. Thats right.. Miffed...

Halo 2 - Last week during a "brain hurts" break I finally managed to finish the last little bit of Halo 2 that I have been inching my way through since the launch event. I have to say its been a long time since I have clocked a game and thought "man, I would like to play that through again from the start" but Halo 2 is such a game. Once my masters is done, I shall dominate it.. or at least play until I get bored. Perhaps I can play it when WoW is down?

Thesis Update 19-01-05

2005-01-19T15:26:00.000+13:00

By popular demand!

Ok so just over 3 weeks to go in order to get my thesis done by the 11th, date I have set myself to be finished by.

So what do I have?

Abstract - MIA
Intro and Literature review - I did send one of these in around the whole time of the Jesse stuff, and it was crap. I have to admit it and my supervisor made it clear that it was certainly not good enough. I have now rewritten it. It has now gone from 6214 words, with not enough detail and wishy washy hard to read writing (kind of like this blog). To 10,018 words of (one would hope) much better quality writing. My supervisor is on a well deserved holiday at the moment so I haven't been able to get feedback on the new and improved Intro/Lit.. so fingers crossed!
Method - Basically all done and just has highlighted yellow parts that will be fixed up in the great combining ritual.. i.e. is figure 3 actually figure 3 or is it really figure 10?
Results - Well I have those 60 pages of rough, horrible bland messy results. And I have been working on actually adding english and writing those up into a nice APA formatted, pretty results section which says "look at my glory! I have found stuff out!". So far I have 18 pages (3558 words) of such niceness.
Discussion/Conclusion - Well I can't do this without a good intro/lit, and without a results, so it is still TBA. But you just wait for it, it will be at least ok.. in a ok kind of fashion.

As for an update on what work I have done today? That answer is none as Temco rang up and wanted me to work. But I am home now, I left early you see.. and I am going to lock myself in my bedroom and work on my results section until my shoulder muscles cramp up.

In unrelated news I am going to the Big Day Out on Friday, so a big Nerd out to any fellow nerds that may be attending.

Masters Update 6-1-04

2005-01-06T15:46:00.000+13:00

Yes I haven't been updating this everyday.. yes I am slack...

That said I now have a target for finishing, I want to be done by Feb the 11th, in order to get everything done.

Right now I have 60 pages of results, as in graphs and statistics.. so thats much better than last time I posted don't ya think?

Jesse Comming Home

2005-01-04T07:18:00.000+13:00

Jesse is arriving home on a jetplane in a couple of hours, so its off up to Auckland I go with Ma and Pa!

Yay!

Jesse and Marc's Account

2005-01-01T10:52:00.000+13:00

Jesse and Marc were interviewed about their experiences in the Thai Tsunami, and you can read that interview here if you want to.

Companies that care?

2004-12-30T08:34:00.000+13:00

You know I am not much for big mutlinationals, and of course it makes me cynical about such things but:

Apple
Amazon
and
Google

All have changed their front pages to provide donation links for the South Asian Tsunami, the confirmed death toll of which has now hit a staggering 70,000.

The D and Jesse

2004-12-29T09:45:00.000+13:00

Hi there,

Last night I went and saw The D and they were good to take my mind of Jesse and Thailand.. they were really funny and the warm up band, called the Crums was actually good.. unlike the ass warm-up bands I have come to expect at NZ concerts.

The D played all their hits to massive reactions from the crowd in St. James, and there lesser known numbers and new numbers were also received well, though obviously the singling along and cheering that accompanied the hits like Wonderboy, Tribute and Fuck her Gently, were not there.

I got myself a t-shirt (as you must at these things) and it was a good time, I wore my offical King Kong hat along, and rocked out, oh yes...

I also picked up a dodgy parrallel import Nokia Tri-band phone (since my last Alcatel bit the big one) for cheap.. so now I have pxt and junk.. woo..

As far as Jesse goes, here is the situation as far as I know it:

He and his friend Marc were on the beach at the time the Tsunami hit, and were washed away. After that they were evaced and eventually both of them ended up in Korbi hospital, were Jesse was being treated for an infection in his wounded foot, and Marc for mutliple injuries (including a some wood enbedded in his arm that required an operation to remove). This hospital was a feild hospital and as such Jesse and another NZlander managed to get themselves on a milatery transport (which they weren't meant to be on, but they insisted) to Bangkok where they are now under the wing of the NZ embassy and in a hospital there. Jesse will probably be there for a few more days at least as they monitor his infection and give him IV anti-biotics.

We can't wait to get him home and are very happy he is ok.

Final Jesse update

2004-12-27T15:40:00.000+13:00

We just got an e-mail.

He is ok, hurt but ok, as is his friend. He was caught in the wave when it hit, but he is ok.

To copy from my dad, pheewwww..

Jesse update

2004-12-27T15:13:00.000+13:00

Apparently Jesse has been spotted by my parents and others sitting looking stunned on a beach with his foot bandaged on Aussie Fox TV.

Its only a few seconds but they are pretty sure it is him.

Xmas and Thailand

2004-12-27T10:40:00.000+13:00

I hope everyone had a great Xmas, mine was pretty cool.

As far as my booty goes I got:

- Tickets to see The D on Tuesday (tomorrow night) from Fi, who also got me some cool shorts and a t-shirt.
- From Ma and Pa I got a Weird Al DVD, a new Ian M. Banks book and a binder folder thing for papers, but apparently something is comming from online for me (From Split reason I think)
- From my Aunt Hazel I got a cook book which is always useful.
- And from my little brother I got a Dark Knight Returns batman collectors action figure.

Unfortantly I didn't manage to do any Masters work over the last few days.

I have finished my references section and got my lit/intro ready to hand it today, though I feel it is missing something.

Talking of my little brother (the one that works for Weta Workshop) though, he is spending Xmas in Thailand which has been hit by massive waves caused by an large (5th biggest recorded since 1990) earthquake in the indian ocean, this has caused devestation in Sri Lanka, india and indonesia but also in the resort area of Thailand that Jesse and many foreginers and thai's are celebrating christmas and looking forward to new years.

There is a report on the Thai situation here and the death toll keeps rising with many missing and injuried as well, these islands are remote so it has been hard to get any news. We are yet to hear back from Jesse. I looks like they didn't have much warning, if any at all, and there are reports that whole resorts are gone and stories of people drowning in hotel rooms and being swept off beaches were they were sunbathing.

Its an understatement perhaps to say that I hope he is ok, he was with a friend who has an injuried foot so may not have been able to move/swim very well, so I hope that both of them are safe.

Masters Update 23-12-04

2004-12-23T19:21:00.000+13:00

DId some reference and lit/intro work this morning, then went to the Temco xmas party which went on for a while, then did a bit more masters and picked up Fi from her ma's..

So I did some work.. enough? I hope so.

Lets see if I can work up the willpower to work on Xmas Eve!

Masters Update 22-12-04

2004-12-22T18:43:00.000+13:00

Well I said I would do these no matter what, and it won't work if I don't.

Today was a total wash, went food shopping in the morning which turned into christmas shopping and then into a late lunch, then started feeling sick, and haven't done anything.

Feel very guilty.

As it gets closer to Xmas it might be harder to actually work so I perhaps started this whole thing at a bad time, but maybe not! Maybe today will be the exception and not the rule!

Or something.

In the WoW front (which I haven't touched in a couple of days, so there) we had our Monday Nerd Nite hit of it were we play from about 6pm til late.. and got feed up with the guild we were in and left it! We are now planning to start our own guild, a nice small exclusive one without dickheads.. we need ten members.. we have 5.

By the way, the way to leave a guild in world of warcraft is /gquit. YES the way to leave a guild in WoW is /gquit. I will say it again /gquit quits a guild in world of warcraft.

Think the search engines picked that up? Because it was damn hard infomation to find!

Masters Update 21-12-04

2004-12-21T17:12:00.000+13:00

Temco work day, eyes and wrists sore from data entry!

Masters Update 20-12-04

2004-12-20T15:57:00.000+13:00

Intro and Lit review word count is now 6337, with total rewrites of the introduction and polishing of all the sections, it is almost ready to be handed in for a savaging at that hands of my supervisor :)

I also now have 10 pages of reference section, which is getting larger as I fill out the references from more than just Wilde (1988).

I have achieved today, and I am happy *happy achiever stamp on forehead*

Masters Update 20-12-04 Start

2004-12-20T09:03:00.000+13:00

Ok, so there is this suggestion by Behaviourists on how to get people to quit smoking/eating badly/whatever is to have them watched and judged by others.

Now it is crunch time as far as my Masters go so, even though I have moved away from the whole radical behaviourist thing and into Applied Cognitive Psychology, I think I will apply this idea here.

I know some people still read this site (dispite the lack of updates), and I care about what they think of me so everyday (if it goes as planned) I shall post a Masters update on here and hopefully that will be enough extra motivation to really get me doing A++ work.

So as of right now:

Total Number of Words Written: 9780
Total Number of Pages: 46
Sections at Final Draft Stage: 0
Introduction and Literature Chapter: 5907 words, 26 pages
Method Chapter: 3883 words, 20 pages
Results Chapter: All results collected, 152 data files and questionaires entered and coded.
Discussion Chapter: Outline planned.

Slack, anyone got $12000?

2004-12-04T21:41:00.000+13:00

Hi there..

I haven't posted in ages, because I have been busy being slack, busy writing pen and paper Star Wars adventures, busy watching Stargate, busy playing World of Warcraft (Which roxors.. 15 lvl Orc Warlock..), busy doing christmas shopping, busy working at Temco, busy with Macguide stuff, busy with Parkside publishing stuff, busy with Finland stuff, busy laughing my ass off at eating media lunch, busy worrying..

Basically doing everything except a) writing in this blog and b) ACTUALLY DOING MY MASTERS

Only a few more months to go.. like 2.. and what do I have done? the method section, the raw results and a working outline of the intro..

panic..

stress..

going.. to die..

Why am I then doing everything except what I need to be doing, I mean damnit I want to go on a do my PhD next year! That means that I not only have to finish my Masters but I better do it well! Talking of that I am thinking of trying to do my PhD at the University of Helsinki in Finland.. cool huh? Except I need to come up with about $12,000 to live there for a year.. and so far scholarships have been no help at all..

Anyway, I have added NZmac forum posts to the side there, because I can!

WoW First Day

2004-11-25T18:44:00.000+13:00

Ok so yesterday I picked up WoW this is how day one went..

I got it, unpacked it and then begain the long install (4 CD's for a 3.1 gig install), while I waited I talked to Chap about how cheap the carboard and paper CD cases were, cool cheap, but still cheap. I guess I am just a Jewel case boy, as is Chap.

After the long install, there was the wait for the patch to download, that took about 25 minutes...

Then I waited for Chap to go through the whole thing (seemed to take slightly longer on PC).

THEN we got on the server, I made a Orc Warlock (Laglgortag on Pacific RP server Silverhand, feel free to add me to your friends list) and Chap made a Troll Hunter, these would be our Soloing characters though for the first day the plan was to group with them. We entered, and all was well, lots of fun, just like the beta! But then.. then.. my flatmate decided to play with the internet remotely from his work.. so we lost the internet for about and hour and a half..

So after waiting, we went to log back in and blam time to wait in a que, now I was a little annoyed but now I am calmer about it, the que was to spread newbies out through the world, and it sure is annoying to wait for a boss to spawn along with 5 other people, so thats great.

By the time we got in it was time for Chap to go to work...

But still it was fun..

As for today, I have a short hour game this morning (presumably when the USA was sleeping) and all was good but then this afternoon and evening, all is not well.. the servers are not good, can't login, getting kicked, etc.. its happening to everyone and Blizzard is saying they are sorry.

How could this happen though? Seriously? Did Blizzard not think that this game would be huge?? I just don't get it. If this is how they handle the USA, NZ and Aussie launch how in the Burning Legions name are they going to handle the Korea??

Clothing Wish List 2004

2004-11-23T20:29:00.000+13:00

This is more for the benefit of those who actually buy me stuff (i.e. family and my gf) but I feel it will also inform those reading this blog of the cool geeky type clothing out there on the interweb.

So without further ado, here is a Wish List, size XXL is usually the right size to go for (oh and these are in no particular order but I have put * by ones I think are of special note):

Penny-Arcades latest Strip

2004-11-23T14:29:00.000+13:00

Check it out here its WoW related and makes me laugh.. like in a ha ha ha way followed by a falling off my chair kind of event..

As far as World of Warcraft goes I have an interesting story when I went to pre-order my copy of WoW (my first experience in this sort of game) the guy at EB tried to talk me into getting EQ2 instead of WoW and one of the reasons he gave is that it had better graphics than WoW? I was going to point out that I have a Mac so its pointless to try anyway, but I saw that glint in his eye and knew that if I had mentioned the Mac word he would have gone into even higher overdrive mode. I am not sure about the whole better graphics thing.. I though WoW looked pretty cool.. Oh yes its true I have pre-ordered a copy of WoW, but thanks to some trade-in's I paid only $20 for it, which is less than it will cost to pay it for a month once the game is live.. so I am pretty happy with that even if I only play it for a month.

Anyway.. interesting story? maybe not..

WoW Open Beta Ends

2004-11-19T20:03:00.000+13:00

Well the World of Warcraft Open Beta is over, and I am sad...

I made it to 13th level as a Tauren Shaman called Stubhorn and it was a blast, a total blast! I only wish I had played it more.. but you know MASTERS and stuff is more important.

Now I must decide if I can afford this game, not only $$ wise but also time wise (that masters and other stuff stuff). My friends Chap and Quiet are probably getting it the day it comes out (well Chap is because I pre-ordered it with my credit card for him.. after he paid me..) so if I don't want to be left hopelessly behind as far as questing goes. That said Chap doesn't have Uni for a few months, so he may be impossible to keep up with anyway!

Now I haven't talked much about Halo 2, and thats because I must shamefully admit I haven't been playing it (limited time.. and WoW won for that time). I have downloaded all the "I Love Bees" .wav files and changed them all into weekly Mp3's so I don't have to load individual files... they greatly remind me the of the old Radio drama's that my Father had tapes of that I used to listen to as a kid. Cool...

Also.. I have to say.. Finland or perhaps Reading.

Oh and to steal from Russel Brown again, check this out.

Stubhorn the Shaman

2004-11-12T10:16:00.000+13:00

Hiya, can't talk, very busy..

I played WoW for about 30-40 mins this morning, I have a Tauren Shaman called Stubhorn and I am on Pacific Server #34 (its a RPG server)

If you are playing too, and on this server add me to your friend list and leave you name in my comments to be added to mine.. then we can adventure togeather.. mightly so!

WoW Open beta update 2

2004-11-11T17:53:00.000+13:00

Well I have the client now, installing as I type..

WoW Open beta update

2004-11-11T10:22:00.000+13:00

So close... I can almost taste the World.. the client shall be done by tonight.. I can feel it in my blood...

Russell Brown of Hard News is even talking about it..

RSS Feed

2004-11-10T11:44:00.000+13:00

Ok you asked for an RSS Feed and here you go..

Link section

2004-11-10T08:38:00.000+13:00

Oh btw if you haven't noticed I have added a links section over --------> there

If you visit me here, then you should be visiting these other places as well, as they are great sites.

Yeah...

HALO 2 and WoW Open Beta

2004-11-10T07:16:00.000+13:00

Ok.. so I didn't post yesterday on this.. and as much as I would love to say it was because I was playing Halo 2 all day... I wasn't

In fact I have a total of about 1hrs play of Halo 2.. I am impressed so far, but I am busy and that sucks.

The launch party was interesting, lots of media types all standing around and drinking free drink and eating free food and talking. Now thats cool and all except, well they were rather clicky, the groups that knew each other stuck togeather and some of them were just way to cool for school.. the guys from The Edge radio station were an example, they were just far too witty, and cool to be talking to anyone who wasn't a band or themselves.

Talking of Bands, Shapeshifter was playing the room all night, with brief stops for DJ logical, which was cool and there was a couple of other Kiwi bands there waiting to see Halo 2.

It wasn't all exclusive clicky people though, and I talked to guys from gameplanet, central park, a couple of guys that had won entries to be there, a guy from Real Groove magazine and the Father of the guy at Bungie who is a NZlander.

Interestingly, dispite the fact that we were all "important media types" we had to wait until midnight to see that game, for the rest of the time a loop of about 8 or so images (nothing new.. old stuff) played on big plasma screens. The people I talked to in the crowd felt a little funny about this, since the party started at 7:30pm and it was very hot at the venue (which was were they usually film top of the Pops), in fact one guy I talked to said he already had a copy at home and then promptly left to go play it.

When time did roll around, Master Chief came out and we could have a go on some Xboxes hooked up to the plasma screens, but seeing that we could only play single player and the sound was turned off, that was really only good for a few minutes, there is a lot of story in Halo 2 and without audio its a little lacking.

But I did get to meet some nice guys, I got some Halo 2 dogtags and most importantly everyone that stuck it out to the end got a limited collectors edition copy of Halo 2, so if I actually get some time sometime I shall be able to play it and revel in the fun. My flatmate and one of my friends have already played it much further than me and have been told to be quite on details! *mutters*

Moving on to other Gaming news, the World of Warcraft Open beta is out, and its playable in NZ. It took about an hour yesterday of timeouts and errors, but I got my key. It then took around 3 or so hours for me to actually get the blizzard downloader and start downloading, now I have about a third of the client done!

In the interest of being a nice guy, if you are in NZ and can make it to Hamilton, and you want the client (if you have a key) then once I have downloaded it I will be more than happy to give it to you and save you the wait for the download. So just leave me a comment if you are interested in this. On the other hand if you already have the client??? Can I get it off you? The faster we can play this game the better people.

Pre Halo 2

2004-11-08T07:42:00.000+13:00

Well its the HALO 2 launch party tonight.. but because it is up in Auckland and I have no money, I shall be cut off from the life giving interweb as I crash at the cheapest place I could find (i.e. for free with my gf on my gf's sisters floor) so I won't be able to gush about my impressions until tomorrow when I get back from the land of Orc.

As such here is a pre-review, Halo 2 lets you use two weapons at once, thats cool... it has a sword.. that is also cool.. I got to be one of the first people in the world to see it and play it legally.. that is perhaps the coolist :)

More stuff tomorrow.. I would take a camera but I don't have a decent digital one that isn't my gf's clunky 3 megapixel thing..

WoW lauch date for NZ and the Star Wars ep 3 teaser trailer

2004-11-05T08:49:00.000+13:00

"World of Warcraft® will be in stores in North America on November 23, 2004. World of Warcraft will launch simultaneously in Australia and New Zealand, and is planned for release in Korea, Europe, and other countries throughout Asia shortly following"

The full press release can be seen here: http://www.blizzard.com/press/040411-street-date.shtml

This is quite big that NZ is getting it before Korea (economists have written books about how big an impact Blizzard games have on the Korean market), and we are even getting it before Europe! Rumors were suggesting a US and Korean launch with other countries to follow.. I guess they were wrong :)

This game is going to be Mac and PC out of the box and is probably going to be one of the best and best selling games of 2004.

Also there is a teaer trailer out for Star Wars Ep III - Revenge of the Sith its not technically public but I managed to grab it from here.

It shows some evilness... and wookies..

You have to read this

2004-11-04T15:33:00.000+13:00

One of the best written comments on the US elections so far is here

Give it a read.

My fav quote:

" It was perhaps understandable that Don Brash should greet the result as an encouraging centre-right vote on Morning Report today - even though the American people have voted for the kind of lunatic fiscal policy that ought to be anathema to the centre-right. But it wasn't a National Party vote that delivered Bush his second term. It was a Destiny Church vote."

Brillant..

(yes label me a fanboy.. I don't care.. its all part of the Nerd experience man..)

Comment on the US election

2004-11-04T09:13:00.000+13:00

Bugger...

so slow.. so lazy

2004-11-02T07:22:00.000+13:00

interweb feeling, sluggish.. 42 feeling lazy = no meaningful post..

Battle Report : The Butcher vs Stryker about 300ptish

2004-10-28T13:40:00.000+13:00

The Butcher hardly saw the Juggernaut and the Destroyer standing slightly in front of him, all he could see was the body of his beloved Lola, falling over, and over… and over…

He would make them pay, he would make everyone play.

The Butcher snarled and headed forward, the Destoryer and Juggernaut also lumbering towards the Cygnarian forces, guided by the rage of their caster more than any sense of tatics.

The Butcher muttered and stroked Lola “oil and gears for you today my love, twisted metal to feed you...”

The Destoryer, bubbling over with anger took a shot at one of the out of range lancers, the shell landing far clear of the light Jack.

Even through the Butchers rage he noticed the moments of the enemy Jacks, they moved with grace and with tatical purpose, same as Cygnar always moves, two lancers, one Ironclad, somewhere sance deep within the Butcher counted.

Once again Khadorian metal lumbered forward, this time the Destoryer was in range and the bombard shell found its mark blasting small pieces of metal off the lead lancer.

Magic spewed forward from one of the hated archnodes on the Lancers, but it feel short and while the Butcher felt a slight tremor under his feet, the localised earthquake had no effect on him or his Jacks. Then the unthinkable happened, the Cygnarian leader, seeing his plan fail, fell back, his Jacks retreating in the face of the advancing Khador.

This move took The Butcher slightly by surprise, an unexpected move in his mind. Retreat? What? Blood…

The Butcher responded the only way he new, by charging forward his Jacks leading the way, but the retreating Cygnar were too far away.

The Cygnar counter charged into the Khador line, the two lancers scored minor hits, but the Ironclad had to run to get to the massive Juggernaut and couldn’t do anymore.

The Butcher fumed with anger at how long it had taken for the Battle to be joined. Blood Fury poured forth from him, and the Juggernaut laid into the Ironclad with its massive Ice Axe, but miraculously none of the Cygnar’s heavy systems were removed, though it would only be a matter of time. The Destroyer also speed forward smashing into the closest Lancer, removing its spear, but the shield of the lancer nearly fired the raging Destroyers cortex.

The Cygnar warcaster reinforced the armour of all his Jacks and then the Ironclad smashed into the Juggernaut, causing massive damage to the Jack, much to The Butchers disgust the Lancer then deactivated the lumbering Juggernaut by smacking it with its cursed shield, frying its cortex. The Destroyer also lost its cortex to the shield of the other lancer.

With a wave of a hand and a scream of range the Butcher buried the lancer that was engaged with the Destroyer under a massive avalanche, “soon Lola, soon…”. The Destroyer then wandered away from the deactivated Lancer and took a shot at the distant Stryker, falling short.

The Ironclad ran to block line of sight to its commander, and also engaged the Destroyer and the remaining lancer also moved at speed around its fallen comrade towards the remaining Khador Jack.

The Butcher screamed again, Lola was not being feed, instead an avalanche aimed at the lancer deviated wide hitting the Ironclad and the Destroyer instead, the Ironclads cortex fizzled and faded. The Destroyer tried, in vain, to remove the Ironclad from the battlefield.

Ineffectual attacks against the Destroyer by the Cygnar warjacks hardly concerned the Butcher (edit – though since we were playing twisted metal I was feeling a bit nervous at the moment).

Finally Lola would be fed, the Butcher charged forward, his strength augmented by magic and clove the remaining Lancer in half in one massive blow, oil and gears going everywhere. The Destroyer, perhaps inspired by the actions of the man who does appear more Jack than human, then turned to the Ironclad disabling it in a single blow.

The Butcher then turned to the Cgynar warcaster, Khador had won the day but Lola would only be happy with blood. But Stryker would prove to quick and today Lola would have to be happy with oil and gears.

Formatting a iPod using VPC

2004-10-27T14:50:00.000+13:00

Ok so here is the problem a Mac user faces with an iPod..

They come Mac formatted and work super cool, but if you want to really use them as a portable HD then its got to be able to be read by dirty PC's

Now while Macs can read PC format OUT OF THE BOX (including reading NTFS but not writing at the moment) PC's, dispite a long time to have done it, need to get third person software to do this and well you can bet not many people have..

The solution? Format your iPod to PC format, it still works on Mac, but now it also works on PC..

But how? You don't have a PC handy? I didn't..

So I thought lets boot up VPC6 and see if it could do it, but I had problems it said that the iPod was being used by something else (presumably OS X) so it couldn't restore it..

I swore.. I tried to contact friends that had PC's.. I swore some more..

Then I looked in settings for my VPC and there I found under USB the ability with a checkbox to turn on USB devices so VPC is the only thing that owns them..

So in other words if you want to do the same, make sure you have your iPod connected and unmounted in OS X, check this in VPC, launch VPC and by golly! It works! Well presuming you have the iPod software installed on your VPC...

Its here...

2004-10-27T13:18:00.000+13:00

iPod!!!!!!!!!

Still waiting..

2004-10-27T08:17:00.000+13:00

The whole "track your package page" is not very good.. overseas one update with things like "your not going to get it delivered anytime soon jackass because our driver is having lunch" kind of things.. but no.. not in this country..

iPod update

2004-10-26T13:18:00.000+13:00

Still not here.. damn I hate waiting!

On the other hand, have you checked out that Fable cartoon I linked too... it makes me laugh deep inside.. all warm like..

More iPod waiting

2004-10-26T13:15:00.000+13:00

"Your item has been picked up at 12:11 PM on 26 Oct 2004.
The item delivery record has not yet been received. Please try again
later."

Can you tell I am not good at waiting for stuff?

iPod tracking

2004-10-26T08:53:00.000+13:00

It is now shipping from their Ngaruawahia wharehouse via CourierPost.

Nerdary #55 - aka getting media connections..

2004-10-26T08:17:00.000+13:00

So I didn’t post yesterday… it was a holiday ok?

Anyway I have exciting news! I, your man on the street for Nerd matters, have an invite to the NZ HALO 2 launch party! Yes that’s right... not only do I get to get wined and dined on MS money but I get to be one of the first people to (legally, since a French version of Halo 2 has been leaked) see Halo 2, not only in NZ, but in the WORLD!

Yes that’s right, and if you are someone in NZ that has Halo 2 pre-ordered you will actually get to be playing it before most of the world as well, as it has the same release date here as overseas. And by that I don’t mean same release time as in a day after the date quoted, I mean it actually comes out on the day quoted on all the HALO 2 ads, meaning we get it before those dirty Americans do! ;)

Anyway I have maybe said bad things about Halo 2 in the past but even if it is just what Halo would have been if MS hadn’t brought it, you know that is a good thing. Besides I have been reading up on it and watching preview videos and junk, and it does indeed look like oodles of blasty fun… two needlers at once? Now that’s some smack down. Also there seem to be some massive robots that look somewhat like covenant elites.

In other Xbox news I have been playing a lot of Burnout 3 with my girlfriend and I must say, I don’t really like car games, but in this one you can crash and cause others to crash horrible like, so it gets two thumbs up in my book. I have also been playing Fable a little, currently my character looks a little like the Dread Pirate Roberts would if he had read glowing eyes, evil platemail, and facial tattoos…

On the other news front, today I order and hopefully get ( same day shipping I hope) my new fourth generation 20 gig click wheel iPod! Finally I shall have a replacement for my 3rd Gen one that had a tragic fall while writing data… tragic…

I am looking forward to 12 hours of battery life (yes I know there are Mp3 players out there that are “better” but they aren’t iPods, and I already have some iPod accessories so I have investment you see..)

Anyway, I really need to do some work on this site, get a links section, things like that… perhaps sometime.

At the moment my research is sort of stressing me out, I needed about 60 participants with full drivers licences, and I got 48... close… but probably not close enough! Must find more!

Vote and get laid..

2004-10-22T13:09:00.000+13:00

Why don't we have things like this in NZ?

I like the cartoon, the bunny rabbit vibrator is great..

Nerdary #54 - aka more eXpo talk

2004-10-18T10:08:00.000+13:00

Well Uni is over, but I will keep going.. honest..

Anyway, it was only logical that I would write about the first annual eXpo conference for Mac Users that I presented at. I have already linked to some photos of me but it is time to talk more extensively about the eXpo itself.

First of all the organizer, Peter Mellow is just a power-house of eagerness and energy, from the time I got there at 1pm on the Friday, until I left at 8ish on the Saturday he was just go, go, go. I mean I am a unfit, fat, nerd and this guy had me nearly having a heart attack as he power walked me all over the AUT campus were the eXpo was held.

Anyway... I got there on the Friday and Peter showed me round. Then I set up with my games (Thanks Talia!) and went forth on installing them on the dual 2ghz G5 that Peter had won as “Apple Educator of the Year” last year. I then benchmarked my laptop against the G5 in a UT2004 botmatch using this tool set. The G5, with its 64mb graphics card, really just handed my laptop with its 128mb graphics card its bottom, hell the G5 was nearly finished the benchmark before my poor little laptop had really even started.

AAANNNYYYwwwwaaayyy… I then got the games working... what games? Homeworld 2, Knights of the old Republic, Splinter Cell, UT2004 and Battlefield 1942.. and then I played Knights of the old Republic a lot so I could get some good save games.. yeah.. that’s the reason.

Anyway that night we went out and had yummy pizza (mmm Bombay, as in Indian, flavored) and by the time I got back to my room and played some more KoTOR and Homeworld 2, it was about 1am.

The next day I got up and 7am, met some other presenters and headed over to the eXpo. The day itself was very cool, there were heaps of people there and the presentations I attended were informative and in the case of the Microsoft Office 2004 one, amusing (sorry Ken, but it was funny). That said even though I had seen the MS2004 presentation 2 times before, it was still fun to watch. Also the companies on display were great, and very friendly.

At the end of the day over $10,000 dollars worth of stuff was given away to attendees, including a eMac and several digital cameras. The best part of this was the little old lady who won the sound sticks, I have never seen such a happy face. I myself was lucky to win a copy of VolumeWorks 1.2 from SubRosaSoft, with which I created a partition on my HD without having to format it… that’s a big thing for a Mac user.

Anyway, all and all it was great, and if you didn’t go, make sure you do next year!

Bulges?

2004-10-17T14:20:00.000+13:00

Seriously have you seen this and this?

It would appear that Bush has some very werid Bulges going on, and I am not talking about the "are you just happy to see me" kind of bulges. I am talking about the kind of Bulges that suggest cheating in debates with Audio Prompting.

Other conspiracy theories say that it is an armoured vest that Bush has taken to wearing, and the offical line is apparently that it is just a bulge caused by a seam.... doesn't look like a seam to me.. but any how.

Amusing? I think so..

Nerdary #53 - aka drive different...

2004-10-11T21:36:00.000+13:00

I have been doing a lot of traveling lately, 3 weeks ago I went up to Auckland to go to my little brothers “Escape from Auckland” party and then 2 weeks ago in the space of a weekend I traveled down to Wellington and back in order to drop my little brother off so he can start his new job with Weta Workshop. Then last week I drove back up to Auckland so I could present the gaming seminar at the Mac eXpo conference, which I am sure was a lot of fun (since I am writing this a week in advance I actually haven’t done the eXpo thing yet…)

And in my driving I have noticed several things that are of import to us Nerds, but also to the non-nerds out there. First of all, and this might not be the newest of news, Wellington appears to be a much more Nerd friendly place than Auckland. It has cinemas where you pay $25 and you get to sit in deluxe lazy-boyesk seats and eat as much popcorn and drink as much fizz as you can handle. It has this intelligent yet friendly feel about it. A nice place I think, perhaps someday I shall live there?

But the other thing I have noticed, and again this may not be the newest of news is that there are certain drivers on the road that are not exactly the best. Now my field of study is of course driver/road safety so I may be bias here, but the behaviour I see on NZ roads is truly scary.

For example on the drive back from Welly, I was following behind a truck that understandably (it was uphill) going slightly under 100, like perhaps 95. That’s cool, I am very chilled about such things… Math Nerds out there will be quite happy to calculate for you exactly how small amount of time you are actually loosing going 95 rather than 100. Now from behind me comes a vehicle moving at I would say around 110-120kph (again Math nerds will calculate the very small time saving that moving at that speed gets you), so not only is this vehicle speeding (physic nerds will tell you how much worse crashing at 110-120 is vs crashing at 100) but it also decides to pass me and a largish truck on a corner. He of course makes it, this isn’t one of those stupid LTSA ads (horror doesn’t work people…) but riding in the front seat is his little son.

This behaviour is not acceptable people, and I know that Nerds and Non-Nerds alike do it. NZ roads aren’t really even designed for you to be going 100kph on them, they scare the hell out of a lot of foreign drivers and we die on them at a shocking rate. I know what I say here probably won’t affect you if you speed, because you have never had an accident/got that many tickets, its other people that are the problem right?

eXpo photos

2004-10-11T08:00:00.000+13:00

Well I am back from the eXpo and I have to say it was great fun!

Peter Mellow who orgainsed it was just great, he was full of energy and just so decicated to everything that was going on.

There are some photos of the day online, including some photos of me in my gaming on the mac session, of which there were maybe 20 people in the crowd... which is not too bad considering 1) it was on gaming and 2) there were about 220 people there in total.

Anyway the whole event was wonderful and I even won something at the end (over $10,000 of stuff was given away to attendees at the end of the day, including digital cameras and an eMac), and I highly recommened the attendance of the event next year.

I'm off to the eXpo

2004-10-08T08:01:00.000+13:00

Well I am off today to go up to Auckland so I can present at the eXpo tomorrow.

If you are in Auckland and have an interest in Macs, drop by, the trade show is free, and there is over $10,000 in prizes for those that register!

Star Wars NJO - Remnant Training and DT revealed

2004-10-05T16:06:00.000+13:00

Continuing from last time...

The new recruits where given a brief tour of an impressive underground complex, a part of which was set aside for scientific research and off limits. Sgt. Draav then assigned them into three different groups. The PC’s were placed together in Alpha Gold, Zak, and the twins were assigned to Sigma Red and Dart, Norrin and Nal were assigned to Omega Green.

They were then outfitted with Stormtrooper armor, and weaponary that suited them. Including a Lightsabre for Vash, with Sgt. Draav explaining that the imperial Scientists had figured Vash as a capable user of the weapon that had been captured from a jedi that had tried to infiltrate the base only a few weeks earlier.

Basic traning considered of 3 exercises which the teams took part in one at a time. The first was target practice, where the teams were put up against pre-clone war battle droids and instructed to only use their blasters. This rule was no problem for Dax, but both Vash and Valin didn’t know their way around a blaster, let alone how to operate in Stormtrooper armor and had great difficulty.

The next training area was hand to hand combat against a skeletal droid made out of black metal, with one arm being a nasty spike and the other a shield. Vash quickly destroyed this droid with his lightsabre, but Dax and surprisingly Valin (who is a martial arts specialist) had difficulties dealing with it.

The final area was a endurance and obstacle cause designed to get the recruits used to operating in stormtrooper armor. Here Vash showed his obvious physical superiority (combined with a little guidance from the force) and came first, with Dax second, and Valin last (including a rather hilarious moment where he ran blindly through a tunnel and badly hurt himself on a low ceiling (actually caused wound damage).

The recruits were then all congratulated on their hard work and rewarded with another couple of week’s worth of drills and combat practices with the Stormtrooper armour and weaponry.

After this the troopers were moved on to the advanced training area. This time they were to go head to head with two members of another team in a range of different situations, the winner of each being promoted from private to private first class. Valin was placed against Norrin and one of the Twins in a speeder bike race. Unfortunately for Valin he crashed his bike early on and despite his best efforts (and the use of a force point) didn’t manage to steal one of the other competitors one. That wasn’t all though, Norrin who was taking part in the race developed a fault in his bike that caused him to crash at very high speed (he was winning), nearly killing him. Also the protocol droid that had given the initial instructions for the race when crazy and tried to kill Valin and the twin as they tried to get Norrin to medical assistance.

Dax was placed within a maze with Nal and the other twin for company. The idea was to run to the center of the maze, grab the team icon found there and then exit the maze through someone elses exit. Dax did very well, with only a couple of run ins with the automated defenses of the maze he managed to claim the team icon and exit through the twins exit. That said, he did have trouble with the protocol droid who had knocked out the twin and was guarding the escape from the maze.

Vash was placed in a battlefield simulation with Zak and Dart, rather than competing with each other they were to work together, with the most effective trooper being promoted. Things didn’t go well as waves and waves of droids bent on their distruction attacked, Zak was the first to fall, followed soon after by a brave if yet slightly foolish Vash who tried to hold a tower outside, in the face of the combined fire of battle droids. Luckly for Vash, Dart and Zak, by this point Sgt. Draav had worked out something had gone wrong in the other simulations and arrived with a small force of stormtroopers to assist in saving them.

All in all though the Batca tanks of the DT facility were occupied for several days.

It turns out that there was some sort of biological material in the circuitry of the droids that perhaps caused them to act erratically.

Also Valin found out that his second cousin, an attractive young lady named Shar, was also in the base, working as a lab technician on the DT project.

The troopers continued to train with speeders and on the battlefield and in the maze for a couple more weeks and then they were called to the briefing room to find out more about the DT project.

Here it was revealed to the troopers that an old imperial army project known as the Dark Trooper project was being reactivated and that they were to be the Mk4 versions of the Dark Trooper design. It was explained that the earlier droid models of Dark Trooper had failed and that rebel operatives had been especially successful at shutting down the Dark Trooper project before. As such the Dark Trooper project had been resigned, in the light of the reduced resources of the remnant, to be an elite group of well trained soldiers in power armor, with no droid involvement. It was also revealed that hundreds of the earlier Dark Trooper Mk1 and 2 droids had been built and never deployed against the rebellion, and that the remnant had some clues as to where these droids may be, just waiting to be deployed.

The troopers were then introduced to the major financial backer of the DT project, not the imperium itself, but a Hutt named Mardoca, a highly successful arms dealer, who not only traveled in rare Hutt battle armor, but was also accompanied by two impressive bodyguards, both of which struck cords with Dax. The first was a human bounty hunter, Dax’s mentor after his father was killed, and the other was a vicious looking Wookie, the very Wookie that had killed Dax's father. Neither showed any recognition of Dax, and Dax was very restrained and did not make a move against either. The Wookie did make a move though, challenging Vash to a fight to elevate his and his masters boredom. The Wookie fought with a very finely crafted blade, that not only stood up to Vash’s lightsabre, but cut Vash down in a matter of seconds.

The Hutt and his bodyguards were then escorted to the guest area of the DT facility as Vash was rushed to the medical bay, where doctors had to fight to save his life…

Nerdary #52 - aka this is not the movie you were looking for..

2004-10-04T11:51:00.000+13:00

To start I would like to thank the 3 people that completed and actually showed up to be judged for the Nerd hunt, there are now photos on the website!

Now what I want to talk about just had to be done, it is like some Nerdarys just demand to be written and this is one of them… yes that’s right I am going to talk about the new Star Wars DVD’s.

Now if you didn’t know, Lucas has just released the Star Wars films on DVD, but they are of course not the original Star Wars films, they are the remade ones with extra scenes and junk. Now here are then 5 main differences (thanks to CNN).

5. Jedis don't scream

Ok effectively Luke screams at cloud city in Empire Strikes back, apparently because “Jedi don’t scream” that has been removed. But really, was Luke a Jedi at that point? No, did he have reason to be screaming? Yes… so why change it? But his is minor…

4. Boba Fett has a new voice

Ok... now this has got to be a kick in the balls for the guy that did the 4 lines of Boba Fett, that was his claim to fame, that is what he did, and now he has been replaced by that movie whore T. Morrison (due to the events in Ep2).

3. A new and improved Jabba

Ok this is not that bad, you know how Lucas added in a dodgy-ass looking CG Jaba in the special edition? Well its been replaced by a less dodgy looking one. Now I have seen this scene and it still looks dodgy, mainly because it doesn’t look like the puppet used in Jedi, but it is an improvement.

2. The emperor's new clothes

Another minor bit actor looses her claim to fame, in the original Emperor scene in Empire Strikes Back, the emperor is played by a woman in a mask. Now the “real” emperor is back with some extra lines.

1. The big finale

Ok this one is another poor actor loosing his screen time, yes the force ghost of Vader has been replaced by Hayden Christensen (who plays young Anakin in the prequel trilogy), not only that, its not even a old Hayden Christensen (because he was “good” when he was young.. wait a minute? Vader was saved and “good” at the end wasn’t he?)

Well that’s that.. of course the biggest thing is still that Greedo shoots first.. wrong, wrong, wrong..

Nerdary #51 - aka I know Kung Fu

2004-10-01T10:44:00.000+12:00

So this week I am going to do an unusual thing in the Nerdary, I am going to review a game… this is unusual because usually I get paid for reviewing games in Macguide magazine. But I can’t get paid for this one, you know why? Because it is a dirty, drity, filthy Xbox game! But I love it so…

The games name is Kung Fu Chaos and it is a hilariously funny while being super-duper cool to play at the same time (yes the SAME time). The concept is simple, you play the part of an actor in a bad Kung Fu movie (complete with fat Asian director who shouts directions..) and it is your job to make the best movie you can.

Now the actors you can choose from are quite fun, including a Ninja, a Samurai (with his baby son in tow), a cheerleader on roller-skates, and a monkey god amongst others.

The main meat of the game is the Ninja Challenge where you must complete the movie scene by scene. The missions to do this are broken into feature film type levels where you fight hordes of evil Ninja’s and then a boss, and short film mini-games where you will be required to do all sorts of interesting things, my favorites are the mini-games where you use the princess you have just saved as a lethal throwing weapon against the invincible Ninja hordes!

Sounds like fun right? Well that’s not where it ends, you see this game is challenging as well, seeing that it has all sorts of hidden features, and to unlock them you need to get 5 star ratings on every level (yes the scoring system is done like a movie review).. which is not an easy task.. in fact you just wait until you try the seal and the iceberg level and see if you swear and curse at the screen like I did!

Again the fun doesn’t end there, because guess what? You can play this game multiplayer! Yes you can have 4 way (with 4 Xbox controllers) battles through any of the levels you unlock in the Ninja Challenge, and what’s even better is that after you epic battles with your friends, you can sit back and watch a movie complete with music, special effects and close-ups!

Oh, oh and then there are the special moves... they are just great, you have to see them really to appreciate them.. but they truly make the game something special.

So if you like Kung Fu and you like games... Kung Fu Chaos is for you! Get it! Now!

Nerdary #50 aka AvP Movie

2004-09-30T13:42:00.000+12:00

Ok so this perhaps the 50th anniversary of the Nerdary! I say perhaps because I remember writing Nerdarys that I can’t seem to find anywhere… perhaps it was just a dream?

Anyway this week is an exciting one for me here at the Nerdary office, because this Wednesday is the end of the 2nd Annual Nerd Hunt! And well I hear that people are actually taking part this time. All I can say is make sure you show up on time! I have someplace to be at 2pm so time may be short! In fact show up early if you like, I don’t mind.. (edit - Lies! All of it..)

Anyway on with the show, today for the 50th anniversary I am not going to do anything special, blowing my own horn is just not my thing, instead I am going to review the AvP

Now to start with I am HUGE Alien fan, I love the little Xenomorphs to bits, and well Predators are cool too! So of course I have read many of the AvP novels/comics and played the games and have for a long time being chanting “movie, movie”.

Unfortunately my chanting worked but not in the way I intended because as Scott Kurtz of PVP put it, this movie is 30 minutes of cool wrapped up in an hour of crap… and personally I think that 30 minutes of cool is a little too kind!

First of all the Predators get wiped out VERY, VERY quickly by the Aliens... I mean come on guys! Predators hunt 10 aliens before breakfast and don’t work up a sweat, and here we have Predators being easily taken out by, in most cases, a single alien… not even an overwhelming swarm. This is made worse but the long time it takes to even get to see an Alien or a Predator (though the director thinks he is all smart and has vaguely alien and predatorish shaped objects “teasingly” placed around), this is not Alien or Predator, we know what they look like! So he should have just got down to the fun!

And if that wasn’t bad enough there are clear indications in the movie that the director/writer read the AvP books/comics (the whole marking the forehead with the Acid thing) but choose to just ignore them completely! I mean damnit all Predator weaponry and armor is Acid resistant people!

Of course then there is the whole setting it on earth, near future… No colonial marines? What the!?

Label me disgusted

Battle Report : Vlad vs the Iron Lich (500pts)

2004-09-30T09:19:00.000+12:00

Vlad gazed out at the snowy ground surrounding the ruins. In the distance the Cryxian hoard lurched forward, to the left a dark mirky cloud, that Vlad new from experience contained the formidable Bane thralls, to the right a small group of bloated bile thralls waddled, oozing horrid fluids. The center of the Cryxian line is what concerned the Dark Prince the most though, there standing tall over the hoard of bonejacks was the Lich that had been running rampant through the Motherland for too long.

Vlad would put a stop to this today, though he felt in his bones that it would sorely test his out numbered and inexperienced force. To the left of him stoic widowmakers raised their rifles already sighting the undead, with them stood the haughty Elf mercenary wrapped in her forest green cloak, the cold hardly touching her. To his right the Iron Fang unit nicknamed the Ice Fangs, their Standard blowing in the howling wind that whipped around the ruins, and somewhere near them Vlad new a Manhunt skulked. Vlad then turned his attention to the massive Jacks that stood before him, one a Marauder with ice shining on its twin battering rams and the other a mighty Kodiak, steam boiling over from within it and melting the snow beneath its feet.

The armies stood for a moment and then Vlad broke into a run, his army following him, the Jacks clanking noisily over the snowy ground. Vlad and his retinue on the left swung forward to the left side of the ruins, heading for a gap between the buildings and the worst of the ruins through which the hated Lich could be seen. The Iron fangs, inexperienced as they were moved to the right, far out of the influence of Vlad. The stealthy Manhunter crept into the central ruins.

The Cryxian commander was no fool though, the many years of unlife had served him well as the dark cloud containing his Bane Thralls, backed up by a floating Skarlok casting arcane magic, were making a beeline towards Vlads left flank and his windowmakers, who were squinting into the clinging darkness the moved with the powerful Thralls. The bile thralls moved quickly towards the Ice Fangs and the middle of the Cryxian force advanced carefully, showing proper respect towards the lumbering Iron Giants of Khador that approached.

Seeing the threat to his widowmakers Vlad ordered them to cross to the right, and continued his own move forward, the Manhunter sneaking past him whispering something about taking some Thrall heads before the day was out. To his right the Ice Fangs again showed their inexperience by becoming a scattered and mired in the ruins.

The Cryxian general kept to the same tactics and his bile thralls shambled dangerously close to the muddled Ice Fangs. Vlad watched impassively as the Lich tossed a couple of spells at the stealthy Manhunter, both falling short of hitting their mark, a noxious cloud rising between the Manhunter and the moving darkness of the Bane Thralls.

Seeing a bonejack in the open Vlad motioned for the widowmakers to move up and take their best shot, calling on the wisdom of his ancestors to guide them with signs and portents, only two of the expert snipers where in range, one managing to do heavy damaged to the helldog while the other placed a single precise shot through its armour. The Ice Fangs formed up in a Sheild wall in an attempt to get out of the ruins, a foolish move in the face of the on coming bile thralls. Vlad steeled himself for the deaths that would come and advanced his mighty Jacks forward and watched the Manhunter sneak closer to the banethalls.

The banethralls sloshed forward, and many Ice Fangs felll screaming horribly as corrosive goo sprayed all over the shield wall. The brave widowmakers faced horror in the form of putrid and burning gas dropped on their position by arcane magics channelled through the bonejack they had sniper just before, 3 of their number fell leaving only the beautiful, yet deadly Kaptain behind. The Banethralls charged towards the Manhunter, but pulled up just short.

Vlad sized up a hole in the Liches defences and eyed the distance between the Lich and his Marauder carefully. To his left the Manhunter seethed forward chopping two Banethralls in half with his mighty axe and facing his on coming death with bravey fitting a true Khadorian. To his right the Iron fangs screamed in rage and charged the Bile Thralls destroying most of their number, but Vlad new in his heart that the Ice Fangs wouldn’t be returning home with him. The remaining widowmaker took a shot at the bonejack that had channelled the spell that had killed her fellows, but dispite her determination hardly hurt the vile thing. Vlad turned his attention to the Marauder using arcane magic to power it boundlessly forward, and releasing the pent up energy within it to force it to march even faster it bounded across the field and smashed into the Lich, its massive battering Rams working independently and nearly flattening the Iron monster. With the Lich nearly dead this was the moment for the elf to prove her worth, she rushed forward and a phantom bolt flew from her crossbow, striking true in the Lich’s chest, but not feeling the horrid thing, the Kodiak finally charged forward smashing into a bone jack with its massive fists, but doing surprisingly little damage due to the agility of the cryxian creations.

The Lich reeling from a level of pain that he had not felt since his mortal days howled in anger and with a sustained series of horrible attacks ripped the Marauder apart. The bilethralls to the right of Vlad exploded, purging her horrible goo, and spelling the end for the remaning Ice Fangs. Eryiss also met her maker at the fangs of a nearby bonejack, her screams joining those of the lone remaining widowmaker who was also cut down. The brave manhunter was swamped with by banes and feel easily under their huge axes, leaving only Vlad and a damaged Kodiak on the field Khadorian side of the field. The remaining bone jacks concentrated their attacks on the lone Kodiak, damaging its armour and causing it to start to corrode.

Vlad focused on the mighty Kodiak, hoping that its Renown amongst the proud Boarder Legion would be enough for what he had planned. The Jack lumbered out of the combat with the bonejacks in front of it, ignoring their puny strikes at its knees and then with a single blow crushed the Iron Lich into the Icy ground causing the surrounding bonejacks to fall slient and still.

There were still the Bane Thralls and the lone Scarlok to deal with, and in the course of doing so Vlad lost the Kodiak under Bane Thrall axes. But in the end Vlad stood alone, the blood of kings pumping through his veins, it has been a costly battle indeed.

<< ok it was our first battle with troops, and we both made quite a few mistakes, but damn it was close and hella fun! I played Khador>>

Nerds caught on Camera

2004-09-23T17:12:00.000+12:00

Here are most of the photo entries (click to enlarge) from the recent Nerd Hunt 2004.. enjoy and stay tuned for The Lumberjack song and Zombie groans in the near future.

Star Trek uniforms and Cthulhu!

Where are the hot blue alien women at?

Live long..

Linux Sucks

Linux Sucks some more..

They really don't like this.. linux... thing..

A new Nerdary banner?

How about this one?

Pockets must be protected!

Boobie Cthulhu... (private joke..)

She makes me reach Warp.. umm.. something..

A hot nerd

Show us ya huge Jock!

And here is a Nerd Lecturerererer

Well thats most of them.. there are some I have to scan in.. they will be comming!

We have a winner!

2004-09-22T15:55:00.000+12:00

Well the Nerd Hunt for 2004 is over, 3 people showed up (which is 3 more than showed for the 2003 hunt) and in the end a dodgy looking lighsabre was what won the day (a win by one item is still a win I guess).

I will be posting amusing images, sound clips (I'm a lumberjack.. oh yeah..) and scanned wittnessed documents as soon as I get the time, and can find some more image hosting space!

But for now here is the winner of the 2004 Nerd Hunt shouting "I win!" (click to enlarge)

#1 in iChat Cybering

2004-09-21T16:18:00.000+12:00

Thanks to this article the Nerdary was for a moment the number one site if you happened to search for "cybering ichat".

A glorous moment to be sure, but one that passed quickly.. as I type this I am now number two.. damn them.. damn them to hell!

A few annoucements

2004-09-20T11:59:00.000+12:00

Alrighty, first of all I have managed to put back the "thing I had to do" at 2pm on Wednesday to 3pm, so now I will have a full 2 hours for Nerd Hunt goodness!! mmmmm..

Next I would just like to annouce that I will be making an important public appearance in October. Thats right me, in person, talking.. at an Expo! But not just any Expo but a home grown NZ Expo! Yay!

I shall be appearing to give a 90 min presentation on gaming on the Mac platform, where I shall briefly talk about what Macs to buy and what Macs not to buy, and then show off some new Mac games, hopefully two of those games will be Knights of the Old Republic and Homeworld 2.. but we shall see.

Anyway.. those are my annoucements, exciting no?

Well then get this, there is the possiblity that in a kind of "sister city" arrangement presenters at the Expo (including hopefully me) will be taped and then those will be shown at this Expo in the states!

International Nerd action!

Excited yet? No???

Well how about this little nugget of goodness.. the new and exciting game of Pirates went on sale at Mk1 the other day and is already sold out!

Arrrhhhh me mateys!?

Did that get you going? No? Well some people are just hard to please..

2 days till the Nerd Hunt is over for 2004, expect to see the results on Thrusday, or perhaps Friday... I may have to find more image storage!

Print this out for Nerd Hunt 2004

2004-09-17T17:17:00.000+12:00

If you are taking part in the Nerd Hunt then download this form (it had to be a .gif so my image storage place would except it.. sorry), and print it out, fill it out and bring with you on the day.

Also make sure that you bring the items with you and that they are verifable, I will have my Laptop with me, but take note that it is a Powerbook so no floppy disks! For material such as "the facts" or the "thing THEY wouldn't want me to know" I would prefer a printout, but beggers can't be choosers...

Out of interest, if you are taking part leave a comment on this so I can get an idea of how many people will be comming :)

Nerdary #49 aka Site Statistics

2004-09-13T15:11:00.000+12:00

How’s the Nerdary hunt going everybody? Don’t forget to check the Nerdary website, I might be sneaky and add some bonus items up there for dedicated readers.

I have a guilty secret to share, I love site statistics and I always have! There, its out in the open… *AH* that feels a lot better…

I had forgotten the addictive qualities of a good site statistics thang, it’s been a while since I had one but now that http://nerdary.blogspot.com is up and running again I can delve deeply into the depths of statistics again.

I know that it is not particularly amazing or anything, at least I know this in my head, but somehow I am still filled with giddy joy when ever I look at the list of visitors to my site, the link they followed, where they left too... yes I am watching you, and also I am often checking on the places that you came to me from.

But what have I learned during my at least once daily trips to the site statistics?

Well lets see, Lazyunistudent has to get an honorable mention as being the site that people come from the most. As far as search engines go, apparently I am pretty high up there as far as searching for a torrent of No Limits Rollercoaster goes (which I have to say from trying the demo has a very good feel of movement, even when playing on a 15” computer screen). New Zealand still has the most hits, which is no surprise, but the USA is gaining and notable mentions have to go to the Netherlands the Belgium.

The proudest achievement of all the Nerdary visitors has to be that Mozilla actually beats out MSIE by 4% and if you combine that with the Firefox and Safari hits, IE is just a drop in the pond! Go, Go better browsers!

Anyway, moving on most of you view at 1024x768 resolution, which actually for me is the least interesting statistic, just doesn’t grab me. As for OS there is no surprise there; WinXp dominates all other comers.

So interesting huh? No? Ah perhaps its just because its my data.. my site.. but anyway I am hooked!

Additional Nerd Hunt items

2004-09-13T07:41:00.000+12:00

Here are some additional items for the Nerd Hunt!

Note – some items/collections of these items in the Nerd Hunt are probably worth far more than the prize pack itself, so hand them over at your own loss ;)

- A World of Warcraft Beta Account ( yeah right…)
- The fabled and probably mythical Half-life Mac Beta.
- A bottle of the weirdest non-alcoholic energy drink you can find (NB: must be unopened and still drinkable, bonus if I haven’t already tried it)
- A photo of the hottest Nerd on campus (who ever that may be)
- A shiny red stapler ( SimStapler style)
- A recording of you/your group saying your favourite Tick quote in your best Tick voice.
- A 1,000-word essay on why the movie Alien Vs Predator sucks, and how the director/writer should be punished for his crimes.
- A photo of a miniature giant space hamster.
- A piece of Shmuck the Kneerubber fan art.
- The most useless fact that you know
- A picture of you/your group dressed in superhero outfits (and I mean real underwear on the outside stuff, non of this modern superheroes that don’t look like superheroes stuff) in the lobby of Village Cinema during operational hours with signs that say “Superheroes against bad Hollywood Comic book adaptations”
- The developer preview of Tiger/OS 10.4.
- A lightsabre
- A fan film of some sort
- The official OSH definition of a “Neo-vagina”
- A full and complete adventure module, with NPC stats and everything.
- The written statement of a Lecturer or Lecturers at the University of Waikato describing himself/herself as a Nerd and proud reader of The Nerdary. Bonus if you can get a photo of them too.
- The BBC version of Lord of the Rings
- An Intel Bunny
- Something that THEY wouldn’t like me to know (bonus if I don’t already know it).

Nerdary #48 aka Scavenger Hunt, with real prizes

2004-09-06T11:54:00.000+12:00

It’s that time again, time for the annual Nerdary Scavenger hunt!

The rules are simple; you have to get as many of the items listed below and meet me at 1pm on the Wednesday the 22/9/04 on the ground floor of I/J block by the main doors/stairs.

This year there are PRIZES up for grabs! The personage/group with the most number of items (though some items will score higher than others) will get a prize package from Mark One (thanks Chris!) and a Nostromo USB gamepad! In the event of a tie, there will be an elimination hunt!

List:
- A signed and witnessed document from your mother/parental unit stating that she, in fact, does think you are cool.
- A receipt for a purchase at Mark One.
- A signed and witnessed document from a member of the opposite sex stating that they think of you as “just a friend”.
- Some component from the inside of a PC.
- A roleplaying character sheet, complete with character.
- A photo of you or a group member wearing a pocket protector (all photos preferably in digital format, but Old School developed is fine too).
- A fully painted Miniature of some description.
- At least one monkey.
- A photo of you/your group in Star Trek uniforms outside the Uni Library.
- A photo of the biggest oversized Jock you find.
- A picture of Capt. Janeway in her Undies.
- A photo of you/your group and Cthulhu (real or otherwise).
- A letter to the editor of Nexus telling him exactly how cool the Nerdary is (bonus if it gets printed).
- A T-shirt (XXL) that says “\/\/|-|0 i5 1337? I @/\/\ 1337!”.
- The middle name of the youngest employee at Mk1.
- Grab the image that the Nexus uses for the Nerdary and Photoshop yourself/selves into it.
- An alien artifact.
- The Recipe for the best gaming snack you know.
- A recording of you/your group doing your best zombie groan.
- A picture of you/your group wearing a sign that says, “Linux sucks, Windows Rules” in the middle of a full Linux lab in the computing department.
- A recording of you/your group performing The Lumberjack Song by Monty Python.
- A non-six sided dice of some description (the more sides the better).

(NB: items submitted for the hunt will not be returned to their owners and may be published online).

Good hunting!

New G5 iMac

2004-09-01T08:20:00.000+12:00

Ok so it is out and it is basically what I expected.

First of all, it does look cool there is no denying that... well not to me.. but lets get into the Specs, and lets not mess around, here are the specs for the High End Model:

• 1.8 GHz 20" model

1.8ghz G5 processor, sweet, thats cool... nice 64bit processing power

• 20-inch widescreen LCD

20 inches of widescreen action? oh yea baby..

• 512K L2 cache

Umm.. ok I guess... could be better..

• 600MHz frontside bus

as above.

• 256MB DDR400 SDRAM

Not enough RAM, but does anything ever come with enough RAM? Not a problem though, just add more!

• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra with 64MB DDR video memory

Now there is the stinker.. 64mb.. not enough! It should have been 128mb, even if it was just in the high end model. 64mb just does not cut it! Hell I would have been happy if it was available as an optional upgrade.. but nope..

I always say "todays little gamer is tomorrows computer buyer" and todays little gamer is not going to be impressed by this new offering. Sure it will run most things out at the moment on Mac, but that will change fast, and it won't run them at impressive speeds..

• 160GB Serial ATA hard drive

I know I could do with a 160 gig drive..

• Slot-load SuperDrive

DVD writing is always fun!

Really thats all I have to say on the matter... well except that it was dumb not to build in bluetooth so it could have a wireless mouse and keyboard, that would just fit the whole design so well...

SimStaper X Reviewed

2004-08-30T08:31:00.000+12:00

You wanted a review of SimStapler? You got it!

Now I have fond memories of SimStapler back from my System 7.5 days, ah yes the wonder what was the MacAction CD and the joys that came with it.

Now with the OS X version of SimStapler the first thing you notice is the swanky new red icon, ooo look at it, resize it, it’s a nice red stapler!

So then you boot it up and find yourself floating down memory lane, the program itself is how it has always been, with the same grainy image of the finger and red stapler, which while is cool and all, is a little disappointing, I would have loved to see an upgraded image.

The gameplay? Well is the standard SimStapler, click your mouse button and the Stapler staples and you get one point! Every ten points you get audio encouragement! Click it! Get the high score (which the program doesn’t record, so you will have to write down or take a screenshot to show your friends).

Nerdary #47 aka A brave new world of Cybersex

2004-08-30T08:16:00.000+12:00

Ok so I haven’t been posting much on here but I have been busy! So here is another exclusive web based Nerdary just for you 5 or so people I see revisiting the site every few days.

Macguide 17 is out in within its pages I have written about iChat, and the different sites that you can go to that let you sign up and meet others to iChat with (iChat being cool and all, but suffering from the fact that many people don’t know other people with iChat or AIM accounts).

Now there was one site I found that wasn’t exactly suitable for Macguide’s pages it being a family magazine and all (well you know what I mean). That is iChatNaked! Yes that’s right, because of the video and audio featured in iChat and the new versions of AIM cyber/online sex has gone to a new level! Now you can actually see/hear the person you are cybering.

In some ways I guess this was bound to happen, I mean no longer to you have to do everything one handed right? And now you can see and hear junk that you only had to imagine before… hold on a minute, you can now see? Hmmmm now if we go with the stereotype of the people that cyber is that really a good idea? You load up your camera for some serious steamy action and blam oh my god… your lovely Sweedish beauty is actually a 300lb Man from Texas! No pretending that he isn’t…. you can see and hear everything.

But before we all go blind from that mental imagery, I have even more! In the next version of OS X, Tiger (it’s grrreeaattt) there will be ten-way audio chatting and 3 way video chatting! Yeah that’s right swingers, you can now have hot audio with people from 10 different countries at once!

Anyway, it is certainly and interesting brave new frontier of cybersex out there today, a world, in which to paraphrase, on the interweb everyone knows you are a dog because they are being streamed your naked sweaty body!

"The Revolution Is Being Bloggerized"

2004-08-24T15:56:00.000+12:00

That quote comes from this article on recently published by blogger.

Now while it may be stupid to speak out againsts the very site that hosts my blog, this sort of talk can't go unanswered!

Basically the article talks about why you should put Ads on your blog (and thus "earn yourself money"), they call this a revolution? The revolution should be against advertising, not towards it! I emplore all you bloggers on blogger.com to not crowd an already crowded space (the interweb) with more advertising rubbish. Everyone hates spam right? So why are people to willing to tolerate other forms of intrusive advertising, whether is the the banner ad on a blog or a billboard on your street.

But you were using Blogger when ads were forced to appear on every page, you may say. Well yeah but that was when I didn't have a choice in the matter. My guilty secret is that I suck at coding...

But now you do have a choice and excercise that choice by not supporting Adsense, which is marketed as convient advertising because it targets what is being talked about in the blog, you talk about RPG's then you get RPG ads. That is supposed to make me feel good? That you are targetting people based on what I talk about? It makes me feel sick, like watching Minority Report in which were ever he goes the ads know who he is and the types of products to push.

I know that they wave money in front of your face, but you know why one of the terms of the adsense agreement is that you can't talk about how much money you are making from the ads? Not because the average joe makes mega bucks.. no its because they don't want you revealing just how little money you are getting for polluting peoples web browsers.

Another attempt at a mk1 desktop

2004-08-24T15:53:00.000+12:00

By studying at the feet of the master webmonkey of Mk1 perhaps someday I shall also be worthy of putting stuff down my pants..

Nerdary #46 aka the first web only Nerdary aka I don't believe

2004-08-23T08:08:00.000+12:00

Since its study break there is no Nexus this week so here is the first web based only Nerdary just for all you special Nerdary website readererers.

What I would like to talk about is a fact that often causes other Nerds to look at me and shake their heads. That is that I don’t believe in UFO’s. Now I would like to make clear that by UFO’s I mean Aliens coming down and visiting earth, not just Unidentified Flying Objects which indeed happen.

Now I would also like to make clear that while I do think it would be a special kind of funny if Earth was the only planet in the universe capable of creating sentient life, I do acknowledge that there most likely other “intelligent” life out there.

So really what I don’t believe in is that it (intelligent life) is visiting Earth, probing hillbillies and inspiring new age cults. Why not? Well because if you are going to come all that way and use all that energy, and are that superior in advancement that you have that level of technology, then you surely would make your presence known in ways other than abducting people that nobody is ever going to believe.

No I don’t buy the “they are just studying us” argument, and I certainly don’t buy the “they are afraid of what we will do” because come on they have enough technology to cross intergalactic distances and they are afraid of us?? Also I don’t buy the they are so advanced that they are giving us messages, but we don’t understand them… I mean if you were trying to tell an ant something would you give them subtle messages that they will eventually understand once they are “advanced enough” or do you make it bloody well obvious exactly what you want them to do or even just make them do it.

As for the whole Government stuff, its cool and all, and I am a big X-files fan. But the one thing wrong with all those theories is that they give the US and other Governments WAY to much credit. They are not these horribly efficient organized structures that are needed to pull off such schemes, they are bumbling powerful giants, not even who are more likely to just loose important documents than cover them up. I mean sure they are doing stuff that they don't really want people to know about.. but people do know about it! My problem is with the people that claim they are keeping all these big secrets.

Anyway that’s really all I have to say on the topic. Oh and congrats for the NZ cyclist I just saw win gold, man that looked like that hurt.

Khador Army Holiday Snaps..

2004-08-19T14:26:00.000+12:00

Finally I have no more painting to do on my Warmachine minis.. that doesn't mean there won't be more in the future (when my order arrives from Mark One) but for the moment I have nothing to paint.

So I thought I would take some snap shots! Unfortantly the camera I have access to is not that great, and was running low on batteries, so here are some quick shots (click for bigger image) of my mighty Khador force, long live the Motherland!

Oh and one more thing.. I am not very good at painting.. so yeah...

The Whole army

Left side

Right side

Front Middle

Back Middle

Just for fun here is the points breakdown..

2 Kodiak Heavy Jacks: 232pts
2 Marauder Heavy Jacks: 218pts
2 Destroyer Heavy Jacks: 252pts
1 Juggernaut Heavy Jack: 105pts
1 unit of 3 Grey Lords: 43pts
1 full unit of Man-O-War: 107pts
1 full unit of Doom Reavers (Doomies!): 100pts
1 full unit of Widowmakers: 53pts
1 Iron Fang leader and 3 troopers (unfeildable at the moment): 41pts?
1 min unit of Winterguard: 58pts
1 full unit of mechaniks: 23pts
1 Man-O-War Kovnik: 34pts
1 Manhunter: 22pts
1 Eiryss: 29pts
Kommandant Irusk: 78pts
Kommander Sorscha: 71pts
The Butcher of Khardov: 69pts
Vladmir, The Dark Prince of Umbrey: 76pts

For a grand total of: 1611pts! Unless I have stuffed up the adding.. which is entirely possible..

The plan is to get two of every Jack, just as Noah commanded.. so far I haven't got another Juggernaut.

Hopefully next time I take photos they will a) be with a better camera and b) be during a battle...

Enternal Question answered?

2004-08-19T13:21:00.000+12:00

Today I shall attempt to answer one of the Enternal questions... "What would Halo been like if Bungie haddn't been brought by Microsoft?"

The Answer? A lot like Halo 2...

I mean look at the this feature set comparision:

In Halo (pre-MS buyout)
• Master C could use a sword
• The WHog had a rocket launcher on it
• You could play online
• Flying vehicles in multiplayer
• Flame thrower as a weapon
• Native life on Halo
• Dual weilding of weapons? Not that I remember
• Massive outdoor environments

In Halo 2 (post-MS buyout)
• Master C can finally use a sword
• The WHog can have a rocket launcher on it
• You can play online..
• Flying vehicles in mutliplayer
• Flame thrower? I think so...
• Native life? Not that I have seen...
• Dual Weilding of weapons
• MOE? Maybe? Dunno.. the levels certaintly look big from what I have seen

Could the evidence be more compelling? Well yeah maybe.. but anyway!

Here are photos from the E3 2000 trailer for Halo (pre-MS buyout)

MasterC with Sword

Native life on Halo

Rocket Launcher WHog

SimStaper X

2004-08-19T08:12:00.000+12:00

From the freeverse press release:

"Freeverse today announced the immediate availability of SimStapler for OS X. The original office equipment simulator, SimStapler enables the user to "staple" virtually anything he or she can dream up. SimStapler allows you to pretend that you are stapling two, three or even four pieces of paper together!

But fake-stapling paper is just the beginning with SimStapler. You can staple Magic: The Gathering cards to Steve Jobs' turtleneck, or the Emancipation Proclamation to a 1987 headshot of William Conrad in Jake & The Fatman. Your stapling will only be limited by your powers of imagination!

SimStapler is Theftware. Regular users of the program are asked to misappropriate office supplies from work and send them to Freeverse. As pure theftware SimStapler includes no copy protection or crippled features, it relies solely on the honor system."

Yeah! SimStaper for X! Get it here!

Why am I a Mac Gamer

2004-08-18T20:55:00.000+12:00

Alright in one of the comments, Mad Fool asked why I am a Mac gamer and again I will reply here on the main page because it’s a longish story that I have sort of told before, but anyway.

Ok my first home computer was an Amiga 500+, and compaired to the other computers of the day it was a hands-down kickass gaming machine to which very few other systems (especially the IBM Compatibles) could match. But as time went on the Amiga just got old, and my friends who had PC’s started playing cool games like Doom and Doom 2, and doing interesting things on their computers that the Amiga had no chance of doing. So the nagging started “Mum, Dad, we need a new computer”.

The nagging lasted for quite a long time, and I wanted a PC damnit! But as fate would have it my Mother was working with Macs, so at some point she decided that she needed a Mac at home, yes that’s right Marketers the nag factor did not work!

So off we went and got a Performa 580CD but most importantly with the Performa 580CD came Marathon. Now I had wanted a PC to play Doom, and Doom 2. But Marathon… that just left Doom behind. It had a indepth story, it had dual wielding weapons (as far as I know the first game to), it had switching loyalties, units that fought on the same side as you, more, and it was wicked, NOTHING on the PC even came close for years.

So that really converted me to Mac… yes one game and I forgot about ever wanting a PC.

Now, why am I still a Mac Gamer when it would be so much cheaper to be a PC gamer. I could give you lots of reasons like MacOS X is superior to Windows in to many ways to count... but I could own a Mac and a PC for gaming right?

I could go into the idea that on the Mac you only get games that are actually worth playing, because they are the ones that get ported, admittedly they are delayed but 90% of the time that is because the PC developer is difficult about handing over the source code and not because people don’t want to port games (example Valve wants ten times the normal porting fee for half-life). But really I could still own a PC and play games on that…

So I will give you the reason I gave my flatmate and friends when they recently asked the same question when I was looking into buying my new Powerbook because my old eMac wasn’t cutting it games wise (32mb graphics cards suck). I get paid to play games on the Mac, as you know I write game reviews for Macguide. Its as simple as that I get paid to play games on the Mac, so why should I play them on the PC where I don’t get paid?

You might say “but play the game on the PC and then you can still review it when it comes out on the Mac” but no, no, no that would contaminate my reviews, because the game experience on the Mac can be very different than on a PC, whether it is because of a particularly bad port (like Halo or AvP2) or because of a very good port with extra features (like Worms 3D and Doom 2).

So there you go.

Occupational Safety and Sex Workers

2004-08-18T12:39:00.000+12:00

Sex Work was reformed in NZ in 2003, and now (well a little while back) the OSH (Occupational Safety and Health) regulations for the sex industry are out.

They are an educational and informative read.

On an unrelated note, these are scary!

I have to comment on this...

2004-08-18T08:43:00.000+12:00

Here is a quote I took from Inside Mac Games

"Here's a paraphrase of the answer from AMD Zone:
A Mac "gamer" asked about the port to OS X. Apparently there is no current time for the release of a port. The game runs, but there is a lot of optimization, and currently they feel the Mac platform can not yet offer the same experience as the PC. Activision will not publish the Mac version of Doom 3. There is no publisher set currently."

Ok first off all the "" around gamer.. WTF! How bloody partronising! At least thats the way I take it as a Mac gamer, in fact I make somewhat of a living by being a Mac gamer thanks to my reviews in Macguide so that annoys me no end.

Next that is a slanted quote, I have read the transcript of the Quakecon that the question was asked at and it was not so negatively worded. The real quote was along the lines the Doom 3 is playable on Mac but needs Optmization especially for the LOWER END macs.. not just "runs" and "needs a lot of Optimization" (the optimation by the way is being done in partnership with Apple itself).

That said the fact that there is no publisher is annoying.. mainly because it shows that they are actually looking for a publisher, wereas I would prefer if you coud just download the Mac binarys and then use the Doom 3 PC cds.

Anyway thats all I have to say..

Yay Comments

2004-08-16T22:08:00.000+12:00

Ah ha! Finally some comments, how did I know they would be on Doom 3!

Ok first of all I should probably make some things very clear, am not playing Doom 3 until it comes to Mac, I have played it for around an hour on a friends PC, and watched maybe another half-hour as well as read many a review, but as always I refuse to play it until it runs on my computer.

Secondly from the brief encounter I have had with Doom 3, I know I am going to have to get me some 5.1 Surround Sound Headphones to play this game and it looks like it is going to be fun.

BUT what I am saying is I can see where those people who are not that impressed are comming from, mainly because I remember back when they first started on Doom 3 they were talking about "really working hard on the single player, etc, etc" so that had people going "finally ID is going to put all that talent into an awesome single player". So perhaps some peoples expectations where high, as in they wanted more than the same gameplay that was in Doom. Now yes I know it is Doom.. but you know, they hyped it.

Personally I think it will be fun to play and scare the pants of me! Though I did find the switching between the flashlight and the gun annoying even in the short time I played it, and the excuse 'its to maintain the atmosphere" doesn't really cut it, its artifical and doesn't really make sense that in such a dark environment you wouldn't tape your flashlight to your gun/hold it in the other hand/in your mouth, anything. That said maybe after some more play I would get used to it or perhaps it annoys some people but not others.

Now Half-life, thats a sore subject with me being a Mac gamer, as Half-life never made it to the Mac. So I have never played it (I make very few exceptions to my "if it doesn't run on my computer I don't play it" guideline). Plus Valve is asking TEN times the normal fee to release the Half-life 2 code for Mac porting, so that makes me bitter as well.

What I can tell you (since we are talking about old games) is that Marathon 2 a game that was out before half-life and I think before Quake (though it may have been close or I could be wrong.. it has happened on many occasions) had better gameplay than Doom 3 appears to have, hell from what I have seen the first Marathon game had better gameplay (missions that just didn't involve getting enough things (PDA's, Keys, whatever) and opening a door, and Allies, changing sides, things like that) and that was out about the same time as Doom 2, and you didn't need to learn "the whole keyboard" to play it, admittly it the first Marathon was Mac only...

I think basically to sum up, I will be playing Doom 3 (on Mac).. I will be deathmatching Doom 3 (again.. Mac)... I will scary myself silly (Mac too).. I will say "cool graphics" (again on Mac).. but I can see the side of the negative nannas in this one, but that said I am looking forward to playing games based on this engine in the future.

Oh and yes I could have just commented under the comments, but somehow it was more fun to do it this way

Nerdary #45 aka Nerdary Goes Live

2004-08-16T09:23:00.000+12:00

To start I actually have a surprising number of entry’s for Nerd on Nerd, Nerd on Non-Nerd action as I talked about a couple of weeks back, but again in a shocking move I actually have more females than males, so guys I need more! And girls keep them coming! Together we can achieve something special!

Secondly I am proud to announce that the Nerdary has gone live, yes that’s right you can now read the whole backlog of the Nerdary, plus extras at http://nerdary.blogspot.com, really it was just a matter of time until I got myself a blog, so why not combine blogging with Nerdarying? It should be noted that Nerdary’s will appear in the Nexus before they appear on this site, but there is sure to be plenty of other crunchy stuff on the site, that is if I don’t get lazy or something. Also I know its not the most impressive site out there, but hey I am busy or something…

Now on with the topic at hand, World Firsts huh… well I could be horribly boring and list a whole lot of things that were done “first” by Mac computers, but YAWN.

Instead I am going to talk about the world’s first CEO of Apple Computers, Steve Jobs. Now I am a happy clapping Mac fan to be sure but Steve Jobs is a wanker…

Sure he is charismatic as hell, with his dirty reality distortion field and “just one more thing”ness but ultimately he is a real corporate, management-fuck, capitalist pigdog swine. I know he is just recovering from pancreatic cancer or something, and it may be harsh to kick him when he is down, BUT considering that his benefits for working at Apple (he only gets a $1 US salary as a gimmick) increased by 1000% recently, I feel that he can afford to have cancer, in fact that is the most brilliant thing in Stupid White Men; the chapter where Mike Moore curses all rich people to get horrible diseases so they will be cured, great stuff…

Anyway I am running out of space, lets just say you should always be worried when someone says “Think Different” and what they really mean is “Think like me”.

New Baby aka the Foof is here

2004-08-13T14:39:00.000+12:00

My girlfiend has a new baby and its name is Foof. Now before you go "what? thats just wack", Foof is a brand new 12" iBook.

The reason it is called Foof? Well it has a Foof Bag of course.. I mean duh (she has the convergence model).

Anyway she sold her junk HP Pavillion for $200 on TradeMe which is pretty good considering A) it was shit and B) she listed it for $30.

She has already grassed up her dock, "its pretty" she says and she has happly spent hours customising icons and generally making Foof her own, something I NEVER saw her do with her old WinTel machine.

So now my big 15" Powerbook has a cute little 12" white iBook friend and it couldn't be happier.