Happy 10th Birthday Three NInjas

Happy 10th Birthday to the “Three Ninjas” community.

Happy Birthday to us!

The Cake is not always a lie!

 

Sit tight dear reader while I give you the brief history of how we came about, and why were are celebrating today!

19th May 2005:

A couple of us in the office created LiveJournal accounts so we could keep up with what our friends were doing, and so we could post random gibbering’s online during the slower parts of the day to try and keep us sane. My account was under the name penddraig, and the first ever post I made can be found here entitled “First Entry

Our posts covered mostly the insanity of work, random thoughts & meme’s, and what we had been up too. Including a few funny themed posts like the “ICE phone scam“. Our little community grew with some constant interactions and comments from the same group of people.

8th January 2009:

With the sell off of LiveJournal to a Russian businessman, and the reported rumours it was closing down  reported here in “Livejournal” (Plus the niggling voice telling me as an IT person I should have my own hosted blog) I decided to start my own self-hosted Blog using WordPress as the core system. I therefore set up wordpress, imported all my old LiveJournal posts into the new Blog and was up running.

12th January 2009:

Before I’d even finished setting up my blog, a friend from the old LiveJournal days expressed an interest in moving away as well. After a beer fuelled discussion, we decided to have a group or community blog. So After much discussion we settled on a domain name, and the Three Ninjas blog became a reality.

So without that original set of LJ posts, this blog would never have been here. So please take a minute to wish us (and GothNinja in particular) a Happy Blog Birthday.

XBox Time Machine

There was a time, many moons ago (That’s 2010/2011 for those of you who are on decimal digital time) when PlanetPete, CampyPhil, MIAdave and myself along with the occasional extra would often play as a group on various XBox multiplayer games. Over time the group dwindled in size, the times we played grew less and less, due to new Kids, Job changes, work commitments, getting addicted to triathlons, etc. basically life itself got in the way.

 

Time went by, The four worlds formed again and yet again, As endless aeons wheeled and passed. Time and the pure essences of Heaven, The moistures of the Earth, And the powers of the Sun and the Moon. All worked upon a certain rock – old as Creation, And it magically became fertile. That first egg was named Thought, Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha, Said, ‘With our thoughts we make the world.’... But that’s a different story.

Time did pass.

We now arrive at yesterday, (Let’s sit and rest for a while. It has been a long journey of years to get from the start of this post to this point).

Yesterday during a Skype IM chat with PlanetPete about the TV shows, Dominion & Constantine he asked that immortal question “Games night?” Which you have to admit is a good suggestion for winding down after a Monday in the office.

9:30PM We were both online, in a XBox party chat and ready to re-live old times.

Game 1: Batman Arkham Origins

Well, this did not go so well. We both started the game, created a private match, joined and spent a fair while trying to work out how to start the match. We tried a couple of game modes, still no luck! It was about this time the small print of “Multiplayer 3-8 players” was spotted. We were 1 person short.

Game 2: Tombraider

This had a slight bumpy start.

*XBox Chat*

GGN: “There are two discs”

PP: “Which one is it?”

GGN: “I’m putting in disc 1” *DISCONNECT*

*SMS*

GGN: “updates!!!!

PP: “It’s disc 2”

GGN: “typical”

Once we (and by we I mean me) got online and running off the correct disc, things got better. We were soon running about lost on maps we had never seen, trying to remember how to play tombraider and do those useful things like climb, jump, not fall to your death. Eventually we got the hang of it, and started killing each other in a myriad of ways. After a lot of fun it was decided PlanetPete won after he managed to kill the whole level by pressing something inside a sub and the whole place starting to fall down around us.

Game 3: COD Modern Warfare 2

We ended the night on the game that used to get played the most back in the day, since it was the one game we all owned. Due to the countless times we’ve played this there were no issues in starting a match, or needing to remember how to play. Within seconds of the game starting we were madly running about stabbing each other, just using grenade launchers instead of guns, and general madness.

Half an hour into the game and we were back in 2011, we had lost the years in-between, nothing had changed PlanetPete still had his love of BIG BOOMS and explosions, and I was up high with scoped weapon.

I thought it was just nostalgia that made me travel back in time while running around trying to stab PlanetPete (At least it was only a virtual knife not a training knife). But this morning I received the IM.

PlanetPete: Last night i went back in time!!””!”!!!

 

Remember, Games with old friends can travel you back through time! But oddly you can not use that time travel to get the winning roll-over lottery ticket! Paradox’s People! PARADOX’S!

Until Next time, in the Voice & words of Wil “Play more Games!”

Happy 9th Birthday Three NInjas

Happy 9th Birthday to the “Three Ninjas” community.

Happy Birthday to us!

The Cake is not always a lie!

 

Sit tight dear reader while I give you the brief history of how we came about, and why were are celebrating today!

19th May 2005:

A couple of us in the office created LiveJournal accounts so we could keep up with what our friends were doing, and so we could post random gibbering’s online during the slower parts of the day to try and keep us sane. My account was under the name penddraig, and the first ever post I made can be found here entitled “First Entry

Our posts covered mostly the insanity of work, random thoughts & meme’s, and what we had been up too. Including a few funny themed posts like the “ICE phone scam“. Our little community grew with some constant interactions and comments from the same group of people.

8th January 2009:

With the sell off of LiveJournal to a Russian businessman, and the reported rumours it was closing down  reported here in “Livejournal” (Plus the niggling voice telling me as an IT person I should have my own hosted blog) I decided to start my own self-hosted Blog using WordPress as the core system. I therefore set up wordpress, imported all my old LiveJournal posts into the new Blog and was up running.

12th January 2009:

Before I’d even finished setting up my blog, a friend from the old LiveJournal days expressed an interest in moving away as well. After a beer fuelled discussion, we decided to have a group or community blog. So After much discussion we settled on a domain name, and the Three Ninjas blog became a reality.

So without that original set of LJ posts, this blog would never have been here. So please take a minute to wish us (and GothNinja in particular) a Happy Blog Birthday.

The Gay Test

There has been a lot of online discussion about the possible Laws/Bills in America allowing those who object to refuse to serve same-sex couples, and how it is a major step backwards in the evolution of America. I am not going to discuss it here because it has been well covered in other places.

Last night on Facebook someone asked the question :-

I want to know.. If 2 people of the same gender go to a hotel in one of these states that are talking about allowing banning gay people, would they have to somehow prove that they are straight to stay there?

This led to a long comment conversation on possible ways, and the flaws with them. These ways included such test as :-

The Monty Python Test.

What organisation uses a rainbow as its symbol? The LGBT Movement. What is colourful like a rainbow? A peacock.  So, if we weight a person and they way the same as a Peacock, then we know they are gay.

The Weird Pervert Test.

Hotel funded inspection prostitutes. Trained to sleep with customers and evaluate how much they enjoyed it.

 The first test got the response of “WTF???” I am assuming there were none python people in the conversion.  and the second got responses of “ewwwww!!!!!”

Which led to a more sensible conversation, and testing amongst the people involved. I should point out there were Engineers & Scientists involved in this discussion, and after many formulas, maths, & good old-fashioned trial and error we actually came up with a test that was accurate 100% of the time.

I am going to describe the process here, but we are patent-pending the test with the view to selling them and making a small fortune. After all we have the only fool-proof test in existence.

The Science Test.

This test is based on the fact that saliva undergoes a chemical change when the person is sexual aroused. Which suggests a link between sexual preference and the cells of the tongue.

  1. Take a piece of Litmus paper (The colour changing properties of it come in handy).
  2. SECRET STEP. I am leaving this step out so no one else steals our idea. But it is a basic household ingredient applied to the Litmus paper.
  3. Get the Test subject to drink an acidic drink, (any soda will do). This helps looses the cells on the tongue and remove any blocking material.
  4. Get the Test subject to lick the Litmus paper (You get better results if they can keep some liquid in their mouth when making contact with the paper)
  5. Check Paper. If it is wet/damp then the Test subject is normal, if the paper remains dry then they are Abnormal and you are safe to refuse to serve them.

Never bet against a Geek

I have been sorting out the To-Sort folders on my machines, it’s a job you can tell is long overdue by the recursive To-Sort folders that have moved from long dead machines to the To-Sort folders of newer machines. In one of these long distant folders I found a photograph, which reminded me of a story. A story I am going to share with you dear Constant Reader because it teaches an important message. “Never bet against Geeks” because they are resourceful and think outside the box.

It was December 2002, University’s had broken up for the Christmas  break and there was a group of us out celebrating seeing each other again after the long semester.

An Important fact to remember is that in 2002 mobile phones were not as common as they are now. Very few people had them, and even less carried them about due to their large size. Oh, and a phone with a camera, that was pure science fiction.

So there we were, several pubs along our way through a pub crawl when someone mentioned that it would be great if we had a photo to remember the night. But who takes a camera out with them on a pub crawl?

We had no chance right?

Well that’s what the majority of the group decided, and I say majority because there was two of us who decided there must be a way, nothing is impossible right?

So, we were out in the middle of the local town, slightly drunk, with no camera and the need to get a photograph. We had no chance, right? The rest of our group were so positive they even made a small wager. A wager of several drinks was involved. This was their big mistake.

You do not give a geek a puzzle. If you do, you do not tell the geeks its impossible. And if you really do that, you really do not add a wager of beer!!

We had no chance right?

Correct, we did not have “No Chance” we had “Every Chance” for we were geeks. I recalled there was a webcam setup in the window of the local council offices, so if we stood in the area it pointed at we would be in a picture. We just needed someone to go to the webpage and grab a screen shot of the image. This is where my fellow Geek, popped into a phone box, phoned his Uni digs, where he knew one of his room mates would be about to do the necessary.

So we organised a signal, and went to go stand in front of the webcam, While 100 miles away someone sat at their computer and waited for the signal, then did a screen capture, and emailed us the image.

Challenge completed, a photo of the evening was procured. and many free drinks were had.

So, dear Constant Reader never bet against a geek, for as the bible says “The Geek will inherent the earth

Wayne - Rael - Wrexham Web Cam (14  DEC 2002)

Assassins Creed Brotherhood – Attack of the Glitch

As mentioned in This Post We finally got Assassins Creed Brotherhood (Or ACB as it will be known for the rest of this post) working fine for us to play together, and we have had a few good games. Now there has always been the odd glitch, people doing the lag jump, or cries of “How did you get me, you were no where near?” And other slight but manageable glitches.

Only recently these glitches have got worse. Especially as we have noticed with PlanetPete. We think it affects him more because he has the Da Vinci DLC so has more characters, so when he plays his machine is kicking out more character types?

These glitches were expectationally bad the last time we played. And I really hope they get these issues fixed for the final release in the Assassins Creed series. Let me give you a few examples.

You would see PlanetPete running and lock on with your hidden gun, you would get a clear shot locked directly onto his back, fire, and nothing.

You would be unable to lock on to press X (Kill) or B (stun)

If you did lock on, you would still be unable most the time to attack. At two points there was two of us trying to kill him while he was blinded by firecrackers and not moving, and neither of us could touch him.

The list of things like that is endless, to the point we wondered if he had some cheat on. Thats when we realised what he was seeing on his screen was different to us. So where we were all seeing his character, was no longer where he was standing, hence we could not kill him.

I love the AC games, but they really need to sort out their multiplayer for the next one. And not having to wait fifteen minutes to find/start a game would also be nice.