Back to Uni...

So - here I am sat in the library of the university of Dundee - twiddling my thumbs...

I am about to venture forth into the 4th year of my course. My wife has just matriculated and is starting a Psychology & History course here aswell - so I have been in and out of the university over the last couple of days sorting stuff, finding stuff out... This morning I had an Induction that is required if you want to do lab tutoring. I think my skills are very inefficient when it comes to actually trying to help people in labs, but there seems to be a shortage, and I dont mind trying to help others whilst also expanding my own knowledge on the subject in question. Im kind of looking forward to it even, if it means I can help others get through some of the evil labs!

I also had a meeting regarding my honours project and got some more information on what the objective of the project is, and a reading list - altohugh, conveniently the library has not got a single book in that I want to borrow.

My internship ended a few weeks ago and I have been working on the final report (a min 5k word document covering what I done, and a 10 minute presentation.) which is coming along slowly. The kids are both in nursery full time - which should make this semester the easiest with regards to ability to atend and time to sit down and get on with solo or group work... I just hope that my lack of ability to attend last year and the year before has no hampered my grounding knowledge too much.

Anyway, looking forward to getting started - Im sure I will have many an interesting blog post to put up as the course gets underway and I get some new stories.

Bleh, so tired.
-V

Web comic recommendations.

I realise I have quite a list of webcomics that I regularly read, so - here is a list!

http://theoatmeal.com (The Oatmeal)

http://basicinstructions.net/ (Basic Instructions)

http://www.commissionedcomic.com/ (Commisioned Comic)

http://www.cad-comic.com/ (Ctrl Alt delete)

http://www.explosm.net/ (Cyanide & Happiness)

http://www.myextralife.com/ (Extra life comics - Scott Johnson)

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/ (Hyperbole and a half)

http://www.reallifecomics.com/ (Real Life Comics - long running :) )

http://xkcd.com/ (Sure this needs no introduction!)

Enjoy!

I creep in my blues into the seedy underbelly of the city of Lost Angels...

I purchased a 2nd hand copy of LA Noire off a mate as I was curious to give it a go. I finally got round to firing it up last night and popping my Noire-Cherry.

First impressions:

Excellent graphics - up until shadows and sprites appear anyway, then it looks a bit iffy, but that could be cos Im playing on a 37" screen which is a bit sub optimal for 1080P - I may give it a go on the 42" in the living room as thats supposed to be the ideal screen size for 1080P - Or so I read, once upon an ethos.

The facial system is good - very good. I kinda expected something a tiny bit better, but also kinda expected something a lot worse. It makes the game look much more movie-like - its one of the appeals for the game - Im a big fan of the TV series "Lie To Me" and read that some of the crime solving you have to do is to pick out the microexpressions etc on peoples faces for telltale signs of guilt, etc.

The layout of the city reminds me a lot of GTA4 - so I think that is a big plus - it seems there is a very detailed city scape that you can explore. Perhaps there are random crime scenes, etc - Im not sure yet. I have just solved my first case, and just started on the mission that starts with you on the beat.

My biggest concerns so far for the game lie in two areas:

Complexity. There is a lot of notes kept in your notebook. I imagine further in this will become quite a jumbled maze... time will tell

Boring. Strong terminology - but the game has not gripped me or done anything super interesting yet. CSI and the likes have never really been my cup-of tea, although I do enjoy a good mystery from time to time. There has not been much action save a couple of punch-ups and some driving about the city. Hopefully as I get some more gametime in I will get more into it and the plot will grip me. Heres hoping! Im sure Ill post again on this game soon.

-V

LA Noire: 7/10 (At the moment)

Geekgasm! : Planetside 2.

Planetside 1: Vanu Sovreignty

Planetside 2: NC and the Terran Republic.

So... Planetside 2...

I so cannot wait... Planetside is my 2nd longest played online game. (MMORPGFPS? MMOFPS may be more accurate, the roleplay aspect is simply that of having character advancement and a side of a conflict to fight for.) I made many friends in that game, and I have many occasions where I wish I could just log on and play like I did back in the day!

After watching the trailer at the above linky... I am stoked, I WANTS IT NOW!!!

PewPew
-V

Google+ - Some comments and some linkies :)

I have been playing about with the Google+ beta - and I am quite enjoying it. At its most basic function, it is Facebook with some extra features, a bit more intuitive, but with some missing functionality (hey, it is in Beta - so some things are still being developed.) - like wall posts.

If all my friends were on facebook and google+ I would likely be using G+ to put up posts and communicate with them.

Probably the weirdest functionality (perhaps its because it is beta so the community is small, a sampling as it were) is that you can actually chat with anyone on there you want to (as long as they are set up and willing to talk back) - the best examples from my experience being web-celebs Scott Johnson, Patrick Beja, Brian Ibbit, Tom Merrit, Brian Dunnaway, Randy Delux, Veronica Belmont, Felicia Day and more. They post, you can comment, and its essentially a discussion. The circles allows you to easily opt to have posts visible to different groups so you can manage your fuctionality.

I must say though, they are surely going for a monopoly here. competing against Facebook and Twitter - they need to bring something new, or something thats a necessity or else they will only get a handful of subscribers I think.

Anyway, here are some links from other blogs that piqued my interest:

Blog post: Patrick Beja
Web comic: Scott Johnston
Podcast: The Morning Stream

Computer game sales numbers...

I haz a crown. Scroink!

Im listening to episode #199 of The Instance - and their discussion of record game sales had me go googling... and I stumbled across a wikipedia page that got me thinking!!

>linky<

I as impressed by some of the numbers from the more recent consoles, then I seen the Wii... 76M sales of Wii Fit - when other consoles are topping out at like 20M...

Then I got to the mention of Angry Birds... 250M... I guess mobile phones are truly a good platform for gaming now! That is insane!

-V

Recent Accomplishments. Stuff I have been doing!

Its been a bit quiet on the geekery front the last week or two. I have been listening excessively to episodes of The Instance as I go about doing my job, but I thought I would put a summary of some of our activities here :)

1) Web design: My business site is now up: Frozen-Monkey Web-Design. (albheit still under construction.) The site of my first customer is also up - RCS Wind Services. I am enjoying doing the web design work, it can be fiddly - but I have done enough websites between hobbies and uni now that I have some experience and am building up a portfolio.

2) Jam Making: Me and the Mrs took the kids to local(ish) fruit farm and got a metric f-ton of strawberries, and decided to make the into Jam using our Kenwood Bread Maker. I must say, yummier jam I haz a tasted not!

3) Wine Making: Were turnin into a proper Good Life family here... Jam... Bread... now making our own wine. We picked up a starter kit from Tesco to brew 6 bottles in a week, aswell as slapping a batch of strawberrys together to ferment to make some strawberry wine for christmas time. Its quite entertaining. We have a lot of brewing stuff that has been passed to us from family - we are quite keen on putting it to use - there are a load of brewing websites about - although finding an actual brewer shop to get supplies from in person is a different matter...

Oh yeah, I have also been playing lots (too much?) of Transport Tycoon... Ive not been allowed to play WOW because its too time consuming, but we both tend to collapse on the couch in the evenings regardless and do nothing, so I have just been playing this... Pretty easy once you get the hang of things... (assuming you let building whilst paused be allowed...)

-V

Stoo's Reviews. Star Wars: Episode 3 - Revenge of The Sith.

I must admit... I want that outfit!

Well, I watched this one today. I reckon it is my favourite of the new 3 - but it sure does offer a different viewing experience from Episode 1. Where Episode 1 was aimed at Kids - this one I had to send the kid out the room at parts, and at other parts that I thought were not so bad, he run away and hid (E.G Sidius V Windu lightening face melty.)

My sole complaint about this installment has to be Vader at the end... NOooooooooooooooo oooh shiney. Considering I have been in the presence of some manipulative mofos in my life, none were so blatantly obvious than Palpatine with Annakin... its like... WTF dude, open your eyes! Hehe.

Its interesting actually how the Deathly Hallows pt 1 of Harry Potter follows this installment... watch them both back to back and see what comminalities you can find ;)

-V

Edit: Wow, that was a rather random and fragmented stream of comments... Oh well, deal!

Stoo's Reviews. Transport Tycoon Deluxe, nostalgia gaming?

Transport Tycoon came out circa 1995 if I remember correctly. It is not a particularly exciting game, yet for some reason I find it quite... addicting.

Well, I downloaded it courtesy of the linky previously mentioned and fired it up.

The open source version of this game works quite well. There are numerous customisable options so you can play at a reasonable resolution etc. I set it up and went for it... I managed to play for about 2 hours, but I kinda "won" (Has an income stream around 100k a year, and no real objective or competitors.) With no set objective to win without competitors it is quite a boring game... you can challenge yourself to take on certain objectives, but overall - its pointless (moreso than most games that is). I am not that keen on playing with competitors - they tend to be too quick/efficient and if you want any chance of beating them you have to physically block their routes...

Anyway, give it a go if your into these kind of asset management games, because as far as they go - this is a good one.

Nostalgia says 8/10 - actuality is 6/10 in my opinion.

-V

Star Wars: Episode 1 & 2 - comments

So me and the Squish-Monster have been watching Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, and Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones.

What can I say? I put these on because they were more tailored to children... but I must say - Jared fell asleep during Episode 1 and scampered about the house uninterested for the latter half of Episode 2. I enjoyed the films - as long as Annakin "Nooooooo"walker and JarJar Binks were not on screen.

Now, it must be about 10 years since I seen episode 1, and I only seen 2&3 when they were released in the cinema... I have been enjoying the fancier graphics compared to the first, and the plot was fine, and I really enjoy the fight scenes in the new 3 - especially Darth Maul ^.^

I may go as a Jedi at halloween :p It only occured to me today that I have exacty the same facial hair as Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan) and I often have my hair up the same way >.> All I need is a brown robe and Im sorted :p

Thats it for now. Good movies, some real downer points, and some great points, Id give them 7 out of 10 - good entertainment, but nothing provoking in anyway (Unlike Black Hawk down that I watched the other day and it makes me feel sad that I am no longer working in engineering that is tied to equipment used for the forces, but something much more mundane.)

-V