Infrequent loquacity.
People should be able to spell.
I can forgive the occasional accidental mis-spelling, but some things are simply beyond help.
On a road sign: “Look 2WICE – You only live once.”
2WICE? 2WICE?! You haven’t even saved any letters! That is not an abbreviation!
My name is Inigo Mantoya. You killed my language. Prepare to die.
Family is super-important.
If you have a family that you get along with, you should work hard to ensure those relationships are protected and maintained.
Why can it be so difficult to have a heavy conversation without things being said which can hurt people’s feelings?
As soon as a conversation becomes emotional, people become fantastically adept at misconstruing comments. It is so easy to assume the worst about a comment that was made, especially if it hits on a sore spot. I’m a recent culprit, I was fairly sure that the comment that really upset me wasn’t meant in the way that I took it, but I couldn’t get it out of my head.
I realise that these are disconnected thoughts/sentences, but it is something which really frustrates me. I can’t put enough thought into the grammar and sentence structure without becoming angry about the topic.
This is more of a thought dump in order to get some of this off of my chest.
I guess my point is that it happens so often that a simple conversation can snowball into a massive family-rending feud. Why do we let it happen? Its depressing to think that a conversation about a simple idea could have potentially ended in a huge years-long rift.
I don’t know many people who have an extended family that get along famously. There is almost always an ongoing feud between two parties. Aunty Judy said something about Nanna Ethel to Uncle Jack which was communicated through a third party to Aunty Sally who is a huge gossip. Sally told her friend Sarah who, unbeknownst to Sally happens to be good friends with Ethel. Ethel hears the information as it arrives from the Chinese Whispers News Line. Ethel confronts Judy who, in an attempt to clarify her position, dredges up a problem from years ago. Ethel storms off. Years pass.
Judy moves to Darwin in order to be away from the horrid family politics. They never speak again.
A neutral party would hear this list of events and say things like “Why don’t any of you get those two in a room and attempt to work this stuff out? It was only a misunderstanding!”
Unfortunately, it usually isn’t that easy. The rift has become so huge that neither of the parties are interested in sorting it out. Its too hard.
ARGH. Sometimes I hate stupid human nature.
What does Australia Day mean to you?
For me, the Australia Day long weekend is one of the most anticipated long weekends of the year.
It has become tradition for Amy’s family to head down to a shack at Clifton Beach for a long weekend of BBQs, loud music, tennis, swimming, noise complaints, card games and beach cricket.
Let me paint you a picture:
The “shack” is incredible, it was recently built by a member of the extended family and affords all of the modern conveniences of a home, whilst somehow keeping that shack-like feel. Directly outside of the front sliding doors there is a patio-ish area with a table, chairs and two BBQs. Yes – TWO BBQs. The meat:mouth ratio leans very much in our favour. A few feet further forward stands a fenced tennis court which is for the exclusive use of the shacks that sourround it, and the beach is but one sandy minute’s walk over the dune.
We bring a PA down with us into which we plug a radio. On Australia day, we bring it outside for yet another BBQ and listen to JJJ’s Hottest 100 with the volume on 11. This has netted us some very un-Australian complaints in the past, but the music cannot be stopped.
Standing around a hot piece of metal which is covered in spitting, oily meat, beer in hand (the last case of James Squire Sundown Lager in Hobart, I’ll have you know) with friends, family, the sun, flies and sport – all while taking part in an Australia-wide celebration of music are just some of the privileges of being a resident of the best country in the world.
I recently got my hands on a netbook. An Eee PC 901 (Linux) to be exact. Not only is it my first foray into the world of portable computing, it is also the first time I’ve used a Linux distribution in a serious fashion.
As you can see, this is a small device. I thought this would have caused more problems than it has, but luckily it was surprisingly easy to get used to. The keyboard feels solid and isn’t as ‘floaty’ as other laptop keyboards I’ve used. I’m struggling to get used to the trackpad, but that most likely has more to do with my lack of experience with them, rather than any particular shortcoming with the device itself.
If you’re not a tech-head, skip this paragraph.
The specs of the machine are as follows: 1.6Ghz Intel Atom Processor, 2gb of RAM (after market upgrade from 1gb), 8.9 inch widescreen @ 1024×600, 20gb SSD, 6 cell battery, Wifi b/g/n, Bluetooth, 1.3M Pixel webcam, 3x USB, VGA output, RJ45 Ethernet, Mic in, audio out, SD Card reader.
This all weighs in at a very portable 1.2kg.
Those of you with good eyes will have noticed that I’m not running the standard Asus-stamped Xandros distribution of Linux which ships with this product. I have installed an Ubuntu variant known as eeebuntu. I stumbled across a link to it in an article from Gizmodo, a blog which I highly recommend that you have a look at if you like tech.
The disadvantage to using eeebuntu is that you suffer a reasonable performance hit, most notably during boot. The boot time goes from around five seconds, to twentyish. The advantages easily outweigh this small problem as eeebuntu is vastly more functional than Xandros due to its extensibility and stability afforded to it by the Array kernel.
The beauty of the 901 over the 900 series is the fact that Asus have addressed the controversial battery issues. I thought I’d test this using my super-scientific method: I played a looped DVD quality video in fullscreen at normal brightness with the battery charged to 100%. The machine was able to sustain this for about 4:45 before the battery went completely dead. Please note that I did not take into account the fact that I had left the wifi and bluetooth adaptors on during this test. It would be reasonable to assume that this performance would be enhanced by using the original Xandros operating system.
I think the thing that excites me most about this technological acquisition isn’t the acquisition itself, but the ‘connectedness’ it affords. I spend the vast majority of my time within range of wireless networks. Internet connectivity is something to which I have become accustomed and do not enjoy being without. Having a machine which has a full keyboard, internet access, work applications and excellent portability, all without having to rely on our horrendous 3G network makes me a happy geek indeed.
In conclusion I highly recommend this system if you are after a low-power/low-cost laptop. They are portable, usable, quiet, cheap and reliable.
Expect more posts of a ‘liveblogging’ nature in the future.
Or, Why you should be playing Left 4 Dead.
Warning – this is my longest post to date – more of an article I guess?
Co-operative play is Something that we have desired for a very long time. PC gamers have long been jealous of the ease of access to co-operative experiences which console owners enjoy.
There have not been many games that have been released for PC which have co-operative play as their primary aim. Typically, PC gamers are required to wrestle co-operative experiences from games like a farmhand attempting to milk a surly cow. We have been required to utilise third party mods, laborious multi-player AI or to endure lazy first-party implementations which subject the players to a disjointed mish-mash of play due to the developer’s inability to work out how to get certain levels and cutscenes to work with two simultaneous viewers.
I’m going to put aside Real Time Strategy (RTS) games and team-based multiplayer titles for the moment. I am focusing specifically on games which are carefully crafted by the developers to give a group of players a co-operative experience against the game environment.
My first positive Co-op memories are of playing X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter over Parallel Serial/LPT cables at Nozz’s place. We had so much fun playing a game co-operatively for once that we just had to find more games which offered the feature.
We found other titles like Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Quake II, MOO 2, Diablo II etc. Unfortunately, we soon found ourselves running out of options. There were other titles available to us yes, but these required us to use unreliable (at the time) third-party patches like Sven Co-op for Half Life or strange contortions in order to fluke a level or two of co-operative fun.
The driving force in co-op games these days seem to be the consoles. Due to their nature, co-op is almost a requirement. “There are four controllers on there, so we’d better make games that utilise them”. Unfortunately, this means that PC gamers have to rely on dodgy ports in order to get a taste of sweet sweet co-op play.
Gears of War is a good example of this. Ported to the PC in July 2007, Gears landed on PC hard drives with a small amount of fanfare. The port was usable, but riddled with phrases like “Press A to continue” – not to mention the awful implementation of Windows (read:Xbox-Lite) Live. All this, after a full eight-month development cycle following the the Xbox 360 release!
Things were not looking good.
Then came Left 4 Dead.
Valve Corporation are a force to be reckoned with. The producers of arguably the best first person shooter (FPS) of all time, Half-Life, Valve have come to the market with great game after great game. I own the entire Valve back-catalog and I have not been disappointed with any of the games on the list. Most notably, Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead.
Left 4 Dead is a four-player co-operative FPS set during the Zombie Apocalypse. Do I even need to finish this post? How does that not sound awesome?!
The basic premise of the game is four human players join together as the Survivors. Their goal is simple: Get from one Safe Room to the next without being killed by HORDES OF THE LIVING DEAD. Sounds easy right? I mean, you get guns and zombies are just slow, shambling things aren’t they? Not true. The zombies in L4D are subscribers to 28 Days Later School of Incredibly Fast Locomotion.
If that wasn’t bad enough, add to this the inclusion of the Special Infected. This band of gory malcontents include:
The beauty of this game is the fact that it requires you to work together. A group of Survivors who are greedy with health packs/painkillers, separate, or do nothing to protect each other are not long for this world. The inclusion of inherent voice communication means that players can communicate almost instantaneously, giving them all of the tools they need to work together. Incidentally, I highly recommend playing this in the same room as the other players, or changing your voice settings to always-on. This adds a lot to the atmosphere of the game as you hear every shriek and freak-out from the other Survivors.
I could go on. I could mention the fact that you can drop in and out at will using the (ever-improving) matchmaking system, take breaks without ruining the experience for the others by going to Idle and allowing the AI to take over for you, or the included eight-player Versus mode in which four other players take on the roll of the Special Infected(!) – but I won’t. This post just hit 1033 words so I’ll leave it there.
Long story short: Go and buy Left 4 Dead.
I had a cheery bus driver this morning.
I know. Its unbelievable, but you have to listen!
She smiled when I got on the bus. She was conversational, but not overly so. It was enough to restore my faith in bus drivers everywhere.
If any of (the 86 of) you happen to be bus drivers, please take a leaf out of the book of my driver this morning:
You can make the difference between someone starting the day right, or wrong.
Sometimes, all it can take to improve your outlook on your day is for someone to be polite and chipper in a situation that does not already require it of them. Most bus drivers range from 5-10 on the Surly-o-meter, why is this?
It doesn’t matter what you do for a living, the interactions with the people who cross your path from day to day; whether they’re clients, customers, passengers, passers-by, buskers, farmers, shop-attendants, evangelists, telemarketers, employees, employers, subordinates or simply fellow countrymen, should always be polite and courteous.
There really is no excuse for being rude. It’s selfish and inconsiderate.
Stop it.
Blogging is interesting.
So far I’ve received both positive and negative (yet, constructive) criticism of my blog. Most of the positive comments have been along the lines of “Its good to see that you’ve started a blog!” and “I’m glad that the blog is a source of creative output for you”. The negative comments have been varied, too much simple linking that can be found on any number of sites like Digg, Google Reader, Kotaku etc. ‘Oh, I thought it was going to be a blog about you and Amy’, etc.
I’d just like to take a moment to give you a better look at my initial idea for this blog;
The plan is to post about things that I find interesting, exciting, fun or annoying. The fact that I do tend to read quite a few tech/gaming blogs will mean that I will be posting about material that is readily available from many sources. In the spirit of working with constructive criticism, I will be endeavouring to add my own spin to these sort of articles in the future in order to avoid simply linking other sites. I would like to do some product/game/book/movie reviews at some stage.
I also plan to post about my life with Amy and what we’re up to, but I’ve yet to decide how to tackle this. I’m not sure how comfortable I/we are with the idea of posting about our personal life and events. I will make a decision about this in the coming months.
I should also note that I read a lot of webcomics. Subsequently, I will most likely be linking to ones that I find particularly funny. As has been evidenced, Penny Arcade is by far my favourite. Expect to see more as we move on.
The long and the short of it is that this blog is quite simply a list of thoughts that crossed my mind. If I see something cool, I’ll post about it. If something fun or interesting happens in my day-to-day life, I’ll post about it. If I do something that other people might benefit from, I’ll post about it.
If I have an idea about how something should be done, I’ll post about it. Actually, I probably won’t post about it. I don’t know that I have the cojones required to authoritatively post an opinion on something and be able to back up my thoughts in the comments. We’ll see.
Also, please keep the (constructive) comments coming. It is quite common for your peers, friends and family to know you better than you know yourself. If there is something that you’d like to see me post about, please let me know.