Archives: August 2009

Dead Space – Atmospheric Madness

Aug28
Published on: August 28, 2009
Categories: xbox 360
Tags: ,
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I know its a slightly old game, and I’m a bit late playing it for the first time. In my defense I did have a slight addiction to re5, l4d, and cod5waw for a while so I am a tad behind on games. So seeing “Dead Space” on sale online for under £10 delivered, how could I refuse. Two days later and the game was in my hand ready to play.

Now, when the game first came out one of my colleagues got it and was telling me how creepy, atmospheric and brilliant the game was. So I knew that to get full enjoyment I needed to set it up correctly.xbox-dead-space

Step 1) Place game in xbox and boot it up.

Step 2) Turn up sound to a high level

Step 3) Close all curtains in the room

Step 4) Turn off the lights

Step 5) Let the fun commence.

The game (so far) takes part of a damages space ship. The corridors and rooms are all damaged and smashed up, there bodies here and there, graffiti on the walls, and no power to some sections so its completely dark, only illuminated by the torch on your gun. Oh and to make it trickier some parts are open to space so theres no air (How long can you hold your breath).

So I start the game, and within minutes I’m running for a lift being chased by something, luckily i get in the lift in time for the creature to get cut up by closing doors and I’m off. I get a gun a bit latter which is handy as these creatures are everywhere. Only their bodies are basically bullet proof, you have to shoot their limbs off to do any damage. Now consider it, your in a pitch black corridor, a creature jumps out and you have to shoot its limbs off before it runs at you. Add to that the fact they move through the air vents (anyone say aliens?) and can pop out behind you, in front of you, anywhere. You can even see some crawling in the walkways above you. and their shadows move at the end of the corridors you are walking along, so you know you are going to get jumped at some point.

Put all that while sitting in a dark room, with the creepy sounds at a loud volume, and you can imagine how slow i was walking the corridors, “Run? bugger that for a game of soldiers!” I walked with my gun in aim mode, checking every corner and vent I approached. It may take me a while to complete the game, but I’ll do it in one piece.  This is the best game I’ve played since re5 (well shotgun + zombies always scores high).

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Laptop Solutions

Aug25
Published on: August 25, 2009
Categories: Geek, Technology
Tags:
Comments: 2 Comments

You may remember a short while back I experienced a lot of problems putting a *nix flavour onto my personal laptop, and in the end to my great shame resorted to replacing windows xp on there. Well thankfully my plans to commit seppuku have been placed on hold, and the dreaded Microshite OS removed from the laptop.

The name of my saviour is Sabayon Linux. A lovely flavour of linux, based on gentoo. Only with a more user friendly, not have to compile everything from scratch front end. It even came with the correct drivers for my wireless card.

So I now am back on track, I have linux on my machine, and just need time now to fully set it up with all the apps i use.

CN

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Fable-2 – Bigamy, Blackmail, & Necrophilia

Aug24
Published on: August 24, 2009
Categories: xbox 360
Tags: ,
Comments: No Comments

I spent part of the weekend finishing off the game “Fable 2″ on the xbox. Well not completely finishing it off, as theres still a couple of side quests I could do, The main one has been finished, the world saved from tyranny, and all the poor peasants killed by the spire resurrected (I was playing a saintly character, Next time I’m having more fun being evil).  Anyway, as I was playing I realised that its a very strange game, and you can get into some weird situations for a game without even trying. Let me give you some examples from a short session of gameplay.

1) Bigamy

fable-2

Yes, This game allows you to marry as many times as you wish. You can have families all over the place (Just remember their upkeep costs you money.)  You can also have same sex marriages (So its pretty open minded for a game) and some ever weirder ones that I’ll come to in a bit. I discovered this by accident. I had a wife and child in one

village, living happily and content when I accidentally married a gypsy girl.

2) Blackmail

So there I am, with two wives, one child (and an absent husband to both) When i decide to go visit my first wife to see how my child was growing up.  And I could do with resting somewhere to recover my health.  Your family home gives you better bonuses for sleeping there. So I arrive home, to be greeted by my daughter who is runnin

g about all excited at seeing me for he first time. My loving wife gives me a gift of a health potion and a letter some stranger had dropped off for me. “odd!” think I. So I read the letter to discover its a blackmail demand. Someone is demanding 2000 Gold Pieces to keep quiet about my bigamist ways.  Yes dear reader I was being blackmailed in a computer game! What has the world come to.

3) Necrophilia.

Yes, You read that correct necrophilia. I was doing a weird quest that involved me retrieving some countesses body parts for a rather creepy gravedigger. Once he had all the parts he brought her back to life as a zombie (He was very lonely and in love) He had cast a love spell on her so she would fall in love with him and follow him anywhere.  There was a slight problem with this, I’d wandered away from the console to get a coffee. Apparently she fell in love with the first person she saw, and for her to get together with the gravedigger I had to leave.  Since I was AFC (Away From Console) she fell in love with me, and took to following me everywhere. It did not seem nice to kill her, as she had only just come back from the dead, so I did the only other thing I could to stop her following me. Yes, I married her and moved her into a house I bought just for her. It would have been fine if ended there, only being me i wondered “What would happen if you had unprotected sex with a zombie?” Result: another child.  I never got to find out if the child would grow up to be a zombie child (which would have been semi cool) Since the evil soldiers killed all my families in an attempt to wipe out my hero bloodline. They even shot my dog!

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Weekend Wanderings

Aug18
Published on: August 18, 2009
Categories: Friends, LiveJournal
Comments: No Comments

This weekend was a throwback to the early days of this blog.  In fact before this blog even existed, back when the halls of livejournal echoed with the insane ramblings of the staff at the Insane Asylum, When “The Mentalist” was a code word for “I need Help” and not the name of a rather good TV show, When most solutions could be found after the call of “Quick! to the Venn Diagram”, way back when…..

I had an appointment to meet up with planetpete that was several months in the organising. Well The original meet up date had been several months ago, but due to one thing and another, and general crapness of blokes to organise things it had taken months to come to happen, but happen it did. The plan was simple. “Meet at a pub half way between his & mine at 8:30″.  The simple plans are often the best.

So I spend the afternoon being very productive, teaching my 11yr old niece to play Fable II for me and work as blacksmith/woodcutter to make me lots of money.  And at about 4ish get a text from MrAx saying he was up in the area for a one night flyover and was anything going on. “Hey, kill two birds with one stone!” So I dragged him along with me to the meeting (It helped he offered to drive so I could drink).

The night started interestingly. 1st We got lost. Well not really lost just diverted by a closed roundabout, then drove round in circles on the longest trip to cover the shortest distance as my directions were ignored. 2nd When we got to the pub, MrAx decided to drive into a low stone wall, breaking the top stone off. 3rd The original drinks we ordered were canceled as they barrel ran out (after barmaid had filled two pint glasses with foam).

Luckily things picked up from there. The replacement drinks were a very nice ale suggested by the nice barmaid. Planetpete and nellsworld turned up, and much random junk was talked, interrupted occasional by nellsworlds titters and exclamations of “Those cows are getting it On!“  More drinks followed, then it was time to say goodbye and head back into Wrexham for more drinks, and live music.

The Music was BAD, very very BAD. So the plans changed into a wander around the pubs of Wrexham trying to find one playing rock music. This was an impossible task, which did lead to one interesting moment as I bumped into my eldest nephew who was wandering about in bright red shorts, and a very yellow t-shirt on.  Who then spent ages trying to explain he was not dressed like that because he wanted to, but was out on his girlfriends 18th birthday night out and they were all dressed as lifeguards. I think he had been drinking lots, as he had already told me this plan earlier in the day when i saw him.

The quest for a pub playing decent music, or no music at all failed, the plans changed to drinking at mine while watching “Lesbian Vampire Killers“..

Much reminiscing, old sk00l quotes and jokes, and mentions of old friends….

Final Words

So dear readers, consider the good old days of your life, and try to keep in touch with old friends.  Its easier to let friendships slip away in these busy days, but the effort in keeping them pays back a million times more.

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Laptop Problems

Aug13
Published on: August 13, 2009
Categories: Technology
Tags:
Comments: 10 Comments

I recently decided to remove windows off my home laptop, and like the techie I am, I decided to do this without checking for driver compatibility.  I just jumped right in with the install (OK I will admit since my laptop has a hidden partition with a drive image on I did have a fall back to get it factory reset!)

Install 1. (opensolaris)

I’ve never really used this OS before, and it looks good so I fancied giving it a try. I also had recently been given a 8Gig USB pen that’s both a Live Version & Install Disk. So the installation was done, and it worked pretty good with just a few bits of hardware not compatible. Unfortunately one of the bit was the wireless (which is an important part of a laptop.) Now it did very helpfully inform me i could get the windows drivers and do some magic with them to make a wrapper driver which may work.  It seemed a bit much work for an OS i am not really familiar with. So the project was put on a back burner with a future plan of dual booting with opensolaris.

Install 2. (Ubuntu)

OK. thinks I… The Laptop version of Old Faithful. So I grab a spare disk thats lying around and install ubuntu, after all it does seem to handle all drivers fine. Ok, make that all drivers bar acer weird propriety wireless devices.  The best it could offer me was an unstable beta that may or may not work. At this point I gave up. I may be a geek & Linux Lover, but i’ll keep windowz on the laptop and make sure when I upgrade it, I get a *nix friendly one.

Install 3. (windows XP)

Reboot the laptop, wait for the acer logo to popup and hit ALT F10…. Nothing… Ok I missed, reboot ALT F10…. Nothing… WTF?  “Arggghhhhh!!” of course, the new OS’s I’d installed had overwritten the acer MBR removing the ALT F10 recovery flag.  “That’s no problem!” I had sensibly burnt off the recovery disks when I first got my Laptop.  So Reboot with recovery disks in, and watch as it ghosts a copy of my main partition back onto the hard drive. “YES!“… Done.

Now. I like the ALT F10 ability. Its quite handy, and saves you having to hunt out where you stored your recovery media. So I wanted it back. Its bloody handy. Luckily you have everything you need (bar one bit of software) to reclaim your acer MBR.This is what you do.

  1. Download PartEdit32 (free software) and use this to change the hidden flag of your hidden partition. In my case it was changing the type flag from 12 (hidden) to 07 (normal)
  2. Reboot so the machine comes up with the partition visible
  3. Go to the recovery partition and find the directory with the following files in it (mine was the root folder) files: mbrwdos.exe trmbr.bin
  4. From command/DOS prompt type “mbrwrdos.exe install rtmbr.bin
  5. Reboot. Your ALT F10 will now work again, and you do not have to reset the hidden flag on the partition as the MBR will do that for you.

And you should be all back and running again.

Now for days of microsoft updates!!!!

CN

10 Comments

Attack of the Deadly Dancers

Aug10
Published on: August 10, 2009
Categories: Goth, Weapons
Comments: 2 Comments

This weekend I had a meeting with a representative of a local troupe of Belly Dancers (OI! get your mind out the gutter, I was not booking them for a private showing!) I was there in the guise of a possible “consultant“.belly-dancer

Now I can imagine lots of good consultant roles in relationship to belly dancing, for example :- Checking things shimmy as they are supposed to, Making sure the costumes do not cover too much up, and a load of other sexist stuff I could come up with but will resist, (Which considering the consultant request is a wise choice).

The consultant role they wanted from me was that of “Escrima Instructor.” Yes teaching them Filipino Martial Art Stick Fighting. This was not due to my first thought of keeping the viewers back, or dealing with any amorous fans.  NO! they are considering incorporating it into their dance routine.  Apparently there is a school of belly dance that uses sticks as part of the show, and these girls decided if they were going to do that then they should do it somewhat special.

So as a conscientious kind of instructor, If I agree to teach these girls escrima then i really need to know roughly what kind of styles they need to learn. So I believe some research is needed. For this reason I may be slow replying to people for the next week or so as I force myself to watch hours of videos of scantily clad women shimmy and dance. Its a hard life but someone has to do it!

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Hackers Are People Too

Aug09
Published on: August 9, 2009
Categories: Hacks
Tags:
Comments: 2 Comments

Hug a Hacker

I’ve just finished watching the Documentary “Hackers are people Too” A documentary made by Hackers, about Hackers to try and correct the “misrepresentation” the Hacker community gets from the Press & Hollywood.

All in all it was not a bad small documentary at about forty minutes long. I think it could have shown a bit more, and answered a few more questions, and laid some things to rest, but overall it was not too bad.

They mentioned that as a community we are more tolerant of race, age, religion, looks, Since most meet up online for years before ever meeting in real life, so friendships are made purely by personality and intelligence. The statement reminded me of the old “Hackers Manifesto” by The Mentor, and I thought I’d post it on here as a reminder of the old days.

CN

(more…)

2 Comments

Care In The Community – AKA Death of the Asylum

Aug04
Published on: August 4, 2009
Categories: Work
Tags:
Comments: 6 Comments

Will the last inmate released please turn off the lights & electric shock chair!

The inmates at the Insane Asylum have just returned to their cells from a meeting with the Governor.  At this meeting it was mentioned that due to the current world recession, state of the UK’s economy, and the lack of incoming money, the Insane Asylum may have to drop to a 4 day week. With the inmates being let out on the 5Th day.

There are a couple of obvious problems with this plan, like the fact we are a service provider whose customers get upset when they cant get support at the weekend (let alone a three day wait).

The main problem I foresee is a catch 24 spiral to death problem. Let me explain.

To cope with the 1/5th cut in salary most the inmates will have to take a second job, (Or work on their own!). “Whats the problem with that?” I hear you ask. Well given the fact the Inmates are IT bods, then any second job, or cash in hand job will be in the IT industry. SO jobs we hear of that would normally be sent to the Asylum to be done may end up being done by ourselves. Then you have the fact that the area we work in, any second job would end up being for competitors or customers direct.

So the more work we do to make up the lost wage will cut down on jobs sent to the asylum, so it makes less money, meaning a 3 day week? so we have to do more work to cover loss wage, meaning even less for company, 2 day week, spiral… spiral…….

For example. take our development department. Which of our customers will pay say £60/hour for dev work when they can have same guy, using same machine do it on his second job rate of £20/hour?

so, as stated at the start of this post…. Will the last inmate released please turn off the lights

CN

6 Comments

Monthly Gentoo Updates

Aug03
Published on: August 3, 2009
Categories: Technology, VPS
Tags: , ,
Comments: 2 Comments

gentoo

So its the first working day of the month, and I’ve decided to start a new trend of actually doing updates to my Gentoo machines, so I do not hit problems of 100′s of updates, and blocks caused by updating only once a year.

So that’s my Work Desktop, Home Server, And VPS box. And for once, maybe I will be uptodate on some of my stuff….. “Doesn’t happen very often!

All in all its been a reasonably painless update. With just a few packages needing adding to packages.keywords, and just one small incident with the accidental removal of mit-krb from my Home Server. (For those who dont know this removes your ability to download new packages, scp files across and makes putting it back on very very hard!)

CN

2 Comments
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