Another year almost over.

Well it's the 26th here, and we have another christmas over. It was a fun day, another of the gathering relatives, although since my granddad died about 15 years ago. it has never been the same. when he was alive we used to all go round to my grand parents house and have a big family gathering, my family, my uncle and auntie and their children, twas good times, although now that we are all older and granddad has been gone for a while, we are all spread out over the place which makes getting together on the day a rather expensive affair for some.

And the family has also grown somewhat a lot since then as well. as far as i know there are 3 new spouses or soon to be at least, and 4 children added to the family,3 of those children are my niece and nephew, the 3rd is yet to be determined. and 2 soon to be sister's in law.

Now there is just me and 3 of my younger brothers to start families, can't wait till that day happens for me at least, although needing a better job or at least a higher paying one.

Then the clan will be growing a lot, but being that all wonderful insecure guy that i am, also a big pessimist when it comes to that sort of thing. man i need to get my life sorted big time. and think about the future. ah well, it will come in time i guess but im not getting any younger, only 24 though, almost 25, and no prospects of getting hitched at this point.

What is the average age that persons get married and or start a family? tis a worthy question, although not one that needs to be pondered on so much as getting out of a depression of sorts, when it comes to thinking about not having a future with any offspring to think of, therefore i may be lead to believe that i may live a life of solitude and be happy for my brothers, for the children they have brought forth.

Ah well, there is always the new years resolution of taking control of my future, or allowing GOD to tell me what when and where everything will happen. i must just surrender myself to him, and let my future happen, im sure that there will be a family in there somewhere.

the curse of shyness.

It is an annoying thing being too shy to talk to women, I would rather that i could, well women that I like anyway, there is one that I would love to get to know and date, but at this stage it is not going to happen. As I am way too shy, which is not good. Maybe there is no one for me, or we have not met yet, either way it looks like I may be single for a long while yet.

Unless I pluck up the courage to actually talk to said person, although I think that she may not be interested, always doubting myself about what others may or may not think about me, she used to smile now not so much, I keep wondering if it is because I am rather shy and need to speak up, maybe, or maybe not. I do come across quite creepy I think.

Anyway, online is where I can really open up and talk about anything because there is no one to react straight away probably. Very emotionally screwed, which does not help at all. With me thinking that I will always be single and that all females out there hate me just because I am me.

There is nothing I can do about that though, I could change my attitude, which would take time, and possibly a lot of healing on my part. Not that anyone would actually read this. The woman in question, her name is Casey, and I would love to get to know her, but don't know how to go about it. Being that I am somewhat of a geek and all of the women that I may be interested in are not. Sharing interests and having things in common is always a good thing.

I've never really asked anyone out, as one would properly, also I am rather poor, so can't really afford to take anyone out to dinner or something like that. Why I am such a reject I have no idea. When ever I think about talking to her, I get tight chested and can't think straight, maybe i am in love. probably not, you can not choose who you fall in love with, maybe this is the case. Would enjoy getting to know her though, if that ever happens though is another story.

Ah well thats enough from me today. If something ever happens in my life i may update again. Got my bike learners now just need a bike, so many women want a guy to have a car which is fine, but i don't like driving so thats a down side.

GTK themes for Gnome

There be plenty out there, but none seemed to fit my needs well wants really, something that i could live will all day everyday. and have finally managed to find one, well 3 actually, with different icon theme and so on, cant seem to find where it saved the theme to, or if its just loading from the other folders.

anyway here are the 3 that i use and for what, to make what i think is the perfect theme, for me at least.

Controls : SphereCrystal
Window Border: Smoked Glass
Icons: Dropline Nue

plus im using Compiz Fusion for the cool desktop effects.

that is all

intelligence vs non-intelligence

well im trying to talk to someone that does not like, "big" words. as supposedly ppl will make fun if used. which in my opinion is utter bullshit but thats just me. i don't know what to do at the moment. as it is annoying not being able to talk the way that i do. which is using a lot of the english language.

Oh well. i shall have to learn to "dumb" down my speech a lot so that its not humiliating for other ppl. maybe this was not meant to be, i don't know, but its going well so far.

Anyway that said. i shall still exerscize my vocabulary on here. and other places. that people will understand them. the word "pun" is not even big, nor hard to understand. as it just means that a word or sentence has can have a double meaning. or alternative meaning.

I been told its a good thing that i get bought down to others level. dont see how though. but im sure i can make her use the reasonable lingo.

Week One

Well it has been the happiest week of my life this far. And as far as i can tell it is going well. Sad to say that some of my habbits may be a contributor to failure, but this IS going to work. Im just not extremely experianced at many things, and should really take things slow, but not so slow as to be going no where. I think that I am just rushing things a little. although I don't know.

Need to think of something special to do, but as yet can not think of anything. Getting to know one another is the fun part. What each other like and dislikes. Loves and hates, and getting to know one another is the beginning, but when does that move on. I'm wanting a long term relationship currently, which will if all goes well, will turn into marriage, 3 children. Eh what a handful.

got 4 years to work with. possibly even 2 if things go really well. Which, correct me if I'm wrong, is about the average time from first date, which we have not really had yet, to walking down the isle.

I know no one reads this but ya never know. this might interest someone. although probably not. Being that I work mid afternoon to mid-evenings most 5 days, makes it hard to be able to see each other, as we both have things to do in the mornings. although as soon as i am able to get some transport other than my feet, things should be better.

My flaws are nothing to be desired. And almost impossible to be repaired. Almost, ha, yeah I'm sure that they can be worked on.

Well at least my future sister-in-law is all happy too, at the possibility of gaining an auntie for her daughter, and also a Sister-in-law, so that they can do what women do and gossip. About what I do not want to know, if i knew that, they would be exposed. Ha, although they are really good friends so that is all good.

As for me I'm useless when it comes to anything romantic, or even non-romantic. I should speak my mind, and do what feels right and comes naturally, see where that takes me. Also I have to lose my gut, its painful and will probably take a while, but it will be worth it, being in shape for my woman.

Ah well, we shall see and have an update probably in about 3 weeks, should still be together then, and then maybe monthly after that. Going to sort of give up a few things, Online gaming be one, as I would rather spend time with her and the little man, Her son. Well thats all for now. I'm going to have some breakfast and then do me hygiene thing before i start work.

Peace.

The Randomness of random

random post i know but thats what i'm all about really. grr firefox's spell checker sucks. ah well. thats all good though. more random than random itself. can't be possible. just typing what i think atm. blah blah.

it seems blah is in the dictionary but grr aint. and aint aint, Wow, so bored before work today, pretty sure i start at 2pm, so ill leave a 1pm to get there at the right time, better to be early and wrong than be late and wrong. OMG, is not in the dictionary. and yes i know i can add them if i want to, but they are not real words, therefore don't deserve it.

Ah babies are all fun when they are happy, when they aint its a bit grr slap. well not really. should not be hitting da kids. rather than teaching them its wrong. i gots a niece and a nephew. they both cool as. less than a year old each.


my niece is about 8 months old or so and she is climbing on everything. just learning to land on her bum when she falls over. hmm random ending.

Windows 7 Subscription

Well i read over at winsupersite.com that M$ are thinking about and sorting out a Subscription based usage of their new Widows OS named at the moment Windows 7, so this basically means you have a low initial cost to purchase the rights to use the software, and not actually purchasing the software itself, that cost i'm assuming covers the first 12months, then after 12 months they make you pay another fee to be able to continue using it.

Sure this may look like you are paying for the updates and "security patches", but your not, they get that money from corporate business. Maybe they will only have this payment method for business, and not the home user. which would be fine, but if it extends top the home user, i know that i will be sticking with Linux for good after that. and start seeing about game companies making the games for both windows and Linux OS's, I know ID already make them for both. its not that hard if it is done at the same time as making the windows version of the game.

But M$ are trying to muscle in on the action with DX10 and not allowing Video card makers to write OpenGL drivers for Vista. So a lot of game development companies will not bother and just use DX10 for their games.

Anyway back on track here, talking about subscriptions, they are fine for certain things, but definitely not your OS. Where would it end? they will then make you pay for every little service that they offer.

Although you can always use 3rd party software as most people in the know do now anyway. For those who are not in the know they just go with what M$ shovel them and take it in their stride. which is fine, but they don't know what they are missing out on. Well not much really, but they are wasting a lot of money on products that they can get for free, that are a whole lot better and more stable. The main reason i hear that people do not change over to OpenOffice.org is that their friends will not be able to read the documents that they create, compatibility issues and the like, well guess what, Open Office is free, get your business to convert, as it can read MS office files, and you wont have to spend any money upgrading, because the software is free, as in beer as well as speech.

Sure with some applications you get what you pay for, but with open source if it does not do what you want you can add the functions that you need and then add your name to the comments and maybe the official developers will ad the function to the official release.

Anyway ranting and raving here slightly, Why pay for things when you can get a perfect alternative for free. So anyone out there i challenge you into ordering your free Ubuntu DVD's from www.ubuntu.com or www.kubuntu.com or www.edubuntu.com i think are the addresses.

Have a friend install it for you if you don't know what you are doing, and see how you like it, once it is all set up and working start learning how to use it yourself and then compare. you can not always use your windows programs on Linux but you can always try, there is a program called Cross-over Linux, which you do have to pay for, and it lets your windows programs run. It is a commercial version of Wine. which does the same thing but not as well supported possibly.

I can do everything i want to do on my PC with Ubuntu and not have to pay for anything apart from the hardware, I don't see why Microsoft charge so much for something that does not even work properly. here in NZ Windows Vista Ultimate is $998 for the retail version, $300 if i get it as an OEM version. I don't really see why there is a price difference, Retail I'm buying it separately, and OEM it comes with either an Entire PC or just one part for a new PC, makes no sense to me.

Anyway back to subscription based operating system, it would not be so bad if it was for updates, as in your subscription runs out you get no more updates in the future, which is fine, because you are usually better off staying behind the trend, as once they "fix" the security holes in widows, the hacker forget about them and start working on the new ones. so you are once again save.

Also using 3rd party security software helps, rather than using the crap that comes with windows. I have no idea why Microsoft even bother trying to force all these crap programs onto you, the operating system should be just that, small and relatively bug free. its all the programs you need to actually be of any use that they integrate into the system, which you don't need half the time.

what I'm meaning is made into modules like Linux is. although a lot of the programs rely on each other in Linux, there is nothing that is making you use any of them and you can remove what ever you want. although some is integrated, like the Gnome desktop has a bunch of stuff, but then again all the Desktop environments are software packages, which is fine, you can still install and use 3rd party ones if you like. and then Visual customization is another thing they done right in Linux. just hope the think about that when making Windows 7 but i doubt that they will.

Well i be off to work now, so cant rant any more

until next time.

I had an idea

Not a very unique idea at that but one none the same, while is was walking home from work this evening.

It was for a game, a bit like BF2, and a lot not like it. yeah it would have tanks, apc's and other awesome toys, also have small infantry only maps up to massive planes, bombers and other cool stuff for massive raids on places, but it would be done right.

Maybe call it World War: North Vs South or something like that, where is was the Northern hemisphere vs the Southern hemisphere.

so north would be made up of.

North America
Canada
Russia
China
Japan
Europe ( all euro countries)
South east asia
and North Africa.

South would be

Southern Africa
Australia
New Zealand and south America.

Don't know all the countries in the SH, but they are the ones i do remember.

anyway, each main area would have 50-100 maps so North America would have 50 maps, and so would canada, Australia and New Zealand would probably have 25 each. and Southern Africa would have 50 and would Northern Africa. Europe would have around 5-10 per country as there are so many, russia would have 50, china 50ish you get the idea.

This would be a whole massive scale thing,. probably not achievable when you think about the big picture but that is fine, as they are only maps and can be added over a long time period.

What i was thinking was either make a new game engine or use an existing one. Existing is cheaper by far. then work on maybe 5 maps at first during the beta. once all the massive bugs are ironed out, and it is stable, release to public, beta stage or what ever.

so since its beta not everything has to be there. maybe get infantry working awesomely so 5 infantry maps from 5 different countries. once that is sorted, add some medium sized maps, with light amour, jeeps, and other cool toys, maybe small helicopters. vehicles would be beta 3ish, with another 5 maps for amour.

possibly adding for beta 4 or 5, heavy amour and planes, and possibly ships. could have released the game after beta 3. and added the awesome toys in patches.

Since to goal is large scale could have the community making maps so the devs dont have to.making them official and all. adding them to some sort of storyline.

Having different theaters of war would be cool. African Theater would include both north and south.

Although after reading all of that. bah North Vs South, nah just make it some random enemy, say genetically modified clones starwars style. saves on making too many individual characters. of course this would be online only, maybe have an advancement type thing like World war 2 online.

but World War 3 online, possibly. Persistent maps maybe, with a ticker at a spawn point which counts how many lives were lost in the current campaign, one on each side.

i do not have a clue how to do all this. but thats what i am, an idea's person,i come up with all these ideas that would be awesome to create but do not have to means to do so myself. and not just for computing either, real world stuff. like creating a paintball field in the likeness of your favourite game map, E.G. De_dust from Counter Strike. or something awesome from Desert Combat.

Would be awesome. but i dont have the time nor the money to be able to do anything like that. unless someone hires me as a random consultant guy, which will probably never happen. as my passion is fixing borked pc's

ah well another random post done with. more later.

Lazy Customers

Now i work in a Supermarket. and there is nothing more annoying than the customer, I know they are they life blood of any store. but they are just so bloody annoying. I have found that most of the old people, are as arrogant as ever, it is as if they expect instant respect from anyone younger than them. So i usually just ignore them and wait until they are gone and continue working.

But this is not about that this is about the lazy customer, Now I know that we all do it at some point or another, so here is the situation:

You are doing you weekly grocery shopping, and you grab something that you need, then further round the store there is a display with the same product but a different brand on special that week. so instead of returning the item to whence it came you just chuck it on the nearby shelf and grab the product that you do want, only because it is cheaper.

Now the only reason this annoys me so. is because then me being the employee of said store, have to return the item to where it lives so someone else can buy it. It gets worse though. Some people goto buy say some fresh item from the Deli, and later find that they don't want the item, so they just dump it anywhere. most of the time i find these fresh items in the freezer with the packets of veges. This is not cool as if it has frozen it then becomes a loss, because we then have to throw it away.

And the worst part is that a lot of people will do it in front of the employees, but what ever, its not their job to care about any losses the store has because of their lazy attitudes.


Then there are the people who are so lazy that they don't even try to locate the stock that they want to purchase, they instantly ask someone where it is located, which is fine most of the time, as that particular product might be out of stock at that point and this at least lets us put some more on the shelf for other customers, allowing more sales and more money to come flow.

Or customers that do not look for a price and then when they get to the checkout have to ask what something costs. although it is all part of the awesome customer service that we give, and another thing is tourists that don't check the bylaws before visiting somewhere, We are not allowed to sell booze of any kind at any supermarket, main reason is so that the booze stores keep the customers, and so on which is great. apart from having to give directions for the same store over and over again to people who are not in the know about these things.

bah rant over i think. next post is about something completely mental

Installing Pidgin.im on Ubuntu

Installing Pidign.im was to say the least a pain in the ass. but here i am to tell you how to do it in 5 minuets or less. depending on you competency. which is obviously great as you are already using ubuntu :)

Well here we are goto here http://download.ubuntu.pl/_Feisty_Fawn/pidgin/ and browse to the latest version. which at the time of writing is 2.1.1, and download both files in there.

now im assuming you dont know what you are doing so this is very step by step.

1. remove Gaim and Gaim-data packages from you system by going to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager, enter your password when prompted. after it has loaded its database. Click on the "Installed" packages to show only those installed. click on the list in the right pane. and type "gaim" this should seek to where gaim is listed in the list. right click gaim and select "Remove completely" this will come up and tell you that it also wants to remove "nautalis-sendto" and "Ubuntu-desktop", if you do not know what these are that is fine.

Now that you have told it to completely remove Gaim you will also want to right click "gaim-data" and completely remove this. as it does not require anything else it should not select anything else for removal.

Once these are selected click apply and it should bring up a summary. then click Accept or what ever it is. cant remember at this point. when thats done. you should have downloaded the 2 files from the above link by now.

double click on pidgin_2.1.1-1_1386.deb or which ever version you have. after its installed do the same to pidgin-plugin-pack_2.1.1-1_1386.deb and there ya have it. it will probably even show up in the Applications menu with out you having to do anything.

If not right click the menu and manually add it yourself.

May have more useless information like this added everytime i accomplish something that does'nt work the way that it should.

Another update. Hmm 3 in 1 day. i must be bored. which i am and that is fine.

Going to have a discussion about game types, and which you prefeer. I do not really have a preference. As to say it depends on the gameplay rather than the genre. I do like FPS game. they are sometimes fast and futile. like F.E.A.R, loved the multiplayer in that. but then i hated the multiplayer in Quake 3. which was similar. but had a rather different feel.

It is the same with some strategy games. I absolutely love Supreme Commander and its father so to speak. Total Ahnihilation. but gave up on the Command and Conquer series after renegade. Rise of nations was rather well done i thought.

RPG's the love em or hate em genre. Hated by purist FPS players and Loved by the old school table top D&D players. although some despuit the origins of some. like Never Winter Nights. Iove the 1st one. have not yet played the 2nd one, Mainly as i am poor and my PC wont be able to handle it anways. I did rather think the Microsofts Dungeon Seige was done quite well. although being able to do every skill with each toon was a tad on the overkill side. but worked. then there are those whom insist on using a perspective view. where you can only zoom but never rotate the camera. those games are completely useless and suck in my opinion.

then there is the extension of RPG to MMORPG or now commonly known as MMO for short. These are many varied and some are the same. but that is fine as It is the exploration and storyline that i am interested in. if i had the hardware and the money i would probably play Vanguard:SOH which i think is a very very well done game. yes maybe sigil tried to do to much in a time period that was not suited for them. but they still made a very very excelent game. WoW, well everyone has thier opinions about it. i rather enjoy it when there is a decent community there to talk to and have fun with. each to their own really.

Racing sims are awesome. no doubt about that. Online ones are even better. Race agaist other people. no harder challenge than that. Doing it at lans make everything fair. online makes lag an issue.

Flight sims are fun if you know how. really hard to learn. and i cant be arsed. as all the previous genres keep me busy anyway.

Decent 3D RPG's, im talking Just Cause. Oblivion, and Gothic III.
Awesome games if you can run them. not so great if you cant. but when i can i shall be trying out Oblivion and Gothic III. as i have already played Just Cause and completed it. Its great and all but not really a game you can replay.

If you want to play WoW for free, the head on over to http://craft.servegame.com for a awesome community. It is an NZ server. so we try to get as many locals on as possible. And more adverts like this make all the difference.

Ah well that is all at the moment. will add updates later

Testing Blog Publishers

just testing BloGTK 1.1 previous post was made by Blog Entry Poster. another program that allows me to not bother going on the site to post. im sure a lot of you do the same.

anyway just a test,

well it works but so far neither of the programs are able to let me put in a title. have to do that on the website itself :( ah well.

My Long absence

Have been away for a long while, mainly because have been reinstalling Linux a lot, am now up and running, stable and everything is great. Am now using Ubuntu, Instead of Fedora. as it seems to suit my needs better. Although no closer to running a website with Apache, Mysql, php or any of the other things i probably need.

Anyway. updates will now happen once or twice a week. not that there is much to say. anyway here are some updates.

My younger brother has a baby boy, name Kaleb, hes about 4 months old or so now. which is cool. now Tara has a cousin to play with. Tara is the daughter of my older brother and she is about 8 months old and doing quite well. she has started climbing up on everything at the moment. which is annoying but all the same she is learning. and sometimes not as she keeps falling from the same places.

Anyhow. I'm working finally. it is only 25 hours a week at the moment but I'm hoping that it will become 40 hours. As i really need the money to pay for things. like my own bike and the debts that i currently have.

That is all for now. maybe ill have some pics as well for the next update.

and search www.youtube.com for beryl. awesome looking desktop. is what i am using on ubuntu.

Online Communities

there are a lot of them out there, and a lot of people using them. From previous posts i have already mentioned Bebo, and unless you have been living without electricity, and don't have a computer then you probably know about most of them, some have even made the evening news, well face book has and youtube does quite often as well. Which is the best, which is the worst and which ones are just really clunky, well i use Bebo, as you have probably guessed. In which i think is the best at this point, although i have not really taken a good look at the others, although i have signed up for Face book and My Space. And from what i have read and heard about My space or Live spaces, that it is a bit like the MS operating system, not very up on customization, which is one really annoying thing, as that is what people like most.

Just hope they figure that out with the new OS.. back onto Community sites. Are they good or not, and are they Addictive?

Well weather they are good or not is up to yourself to figure out, but the thing about Addictive, i would have to say yes, because i have seen my brother go from mainly using to computer for working on, making engineering designs for work to going on bebo first thing after work, ok yes it is a way to keep in thouch with a lot of friends that he hardly ever sees or the ones that live else where, other cities and what not, thats fine and all.

Ah well weather it is addictive or not is not the issue here, are they making social interaction easier, i suppose they are, but then they are also making everyone's lives more open to everyone else. obviously not just the stuff they want you to know but if one of their friends decides to be spiteful then they can quickly spread crap about them and start a whole bunch of people hating them for something that might not even be true.

ah well. what ever, peace.

Bebo Themes and Badges

Well anyone that usesw bebo knows about the themes they can use, and possibly about the badges you can get to link others to your profile page, so they can see it and stuff. now i know that you can create your own bebo profile themes, which is great and all, they even have a tutorial that takes you through making one in photoshop. which is great. all you really need to know is the dimensions of the images and how large they are allowed to be, in file size.

Now one aspect, as far as i know anyway, is that you can not officially make a custom bebo badge to put up on other sites or in forums as your signature. which is kinda annoying and also most palces only allow a picture of about 400x100 pixels for the signature and the bebo badge is 302x175 pixels. so a bit too high by some people standards, they should atleast allow for a smaller one.

Well i have created my own bebo badge that i may or may not use. I might even make a smaller one than what they use, for certain forums.

anyway here it is. i can tell just by looking at it that i need to refine it somewhat but it is a work in progress.

DA useless onehttp://zagrin.bebo.com/

So there you have it. a custom bebo badge that displays your profile image and has a link to it.

Global Warming

I'm starting to get annoyed with all the crap on the TV about people trying to stop / slow down global warming. I do hope they know that it does not matter if everyone on the planet suddenly stopped doing anything / died, the amount of carbon emissions that get put into the atmosphere wont change very much, if at all.

The main reason being is that there are many many volcanoes around the planet that are continually spewing a hell of a lot more crap into the atmosphere than any one nation can put in there. Even if we do manage to become "carbon neutral" as they call it, the first volcano that isn't active that blows its stack is sure to be able to put more carbon dioxide in the air that the entire 6billion population of the planet could do in 10 years.

So why are we having to try and stop something that we know is futile, is there a reason there are lots of celebrities out there being stupid? or are they getting paid a shit load for all this crap they are spreading.

This is about as bad as the extremely stupid religion known as Scientology, in which those who believe in it think that aliens came to earth many billions of years ago and planted the seeds of life. I don't know much about it but its pretty lame really.

Anyway back on topic, Global warming, can we do anything to "save the planet", well i was not aware that it was in trouble. I'm pretty sure that the planet can survive without us, or anything on its surface, what they are really saying is that if we don't do anything that we will all burn and the human race will suffer.

Well i for one hope that it does warm up some. Even if the north and south poles do completely melt whats the loss? sure the low lying areas of dry land will probably be covered in water, so what move inland before that happens, if ya don't want to then drown.

I'm pretty sure that the main problem people have is their attachment to their possessions, who cares about all your stuff apart from you. yes a lot of it does make our lives easier, but since when did it need to. I'm getting off track here.

Anyway bottom line is we can't do anything so stop the CO2 levels going up, they attribute the carbon levels rising to the increase of cars, and the use of so called fossil fuels.

Don't really want to get into any of the so called evolution crap, but needless to say something has to be a fossil before being a fuel to be able to call it a fossil fuel. anyone my point at this moment is I don't get why people call diesel fuel just that, there is no other liquid that i know of that goes by the name diesel, so why keep adding the fuel after it. its just diesel people. mainly aimed towards Americans.

Whom think that they are special and Gods gift the to planet, which they are not, keep prodding their nose into where it is not wanted, as they have noted with the failure that was Iraq. The only people that they done the favour to was the countries that Saddam was trying to invade and conquer. Not every nation needs to be a Democracy, which brings me to the point of stupid Americans, they are either voting for Democratic party or the Republic party, well I'm sorry to say but a democracy is where the government is voted in, as opposed to Communism / Dictatorship. and a republic is a nation that has no royal family.

Off track by a major margin there, ah well not much more to say on the subject anyway, just that I do hate all those rich fucks trying to tell me that their well payed for scientific report is accurate and that we "have" to save the planet.

in closing eventually when the carbon gets too high the planet will not turn into an oven but the opposite it will get colder and rain and all that crap will fall to earth again, or supposedly, I don't claim that i know all this or that its fact, just my opinions, which everyone is entitled to. although they never said that everyone was entitled to give it to anyone.

This will be really long if i don't stop now, so peace.

Keep bumping the crap into the air in defiance to all the retards out there whom are trying to make us do what they want.

Book Review : Harry Potter and the deathly Hallows

Have just recently finished this book. And there are a few things that at first felt as though they dragged on somewhat, and I found myself looking further down the page to see more. This was annoying me somewhat, but I forced myself to keep to where I was at. Therefore making myself stick to reading everything that was written.

After the first 300 pages which seemed to drag on and on, but which I find that after finishing was all essential to give a bond between the characters that was unseen previously. As I have been gifted with an immensely over active imagination I love reading books that stretch reality to a point that one has to create new images in their minds as to what things look like, but anyway back on subject.

As I said the first 300 pages were long and tedious to the point of looking further down the page to see what happens. Now after those 300 pages of the book, I must admit that it does get very very good. With what happens to everyone and everything around them, while reading and even after finishing I felt that it was very well done. It was also emotionally wrenching, the way that things happen throughout and kept you wondering what would possibly happen next.

All in all if i had to give the book a rating out of 10 it would most likely be 9/10. Main reason for not getting a 10/10 is because there will probably be no more in the series. other than that it was a brilliant piece of literature. even if it is considered a children's book, after the first 3 they became more and more mature and added more and more into the adult type of books. even though it still stays in the younger category.

No matter what anyone says the series is an excellent read no matter what age you are. I have found that those who scoff at these being so hardly ever read at all.

anyway thats what I think. I don't know if this is a very good or very informative review of the last of the harry potter books but its what I have written and is all there is going to be from me.

Enjoy...

Compaq Presario F500 / F551AU

My bro has just bought one of these notebooks, it is quite nice for its price, a recommended buy for anyone looking at getting a notebook.

Now there was only one problem with this, and that is that it comes preloaded with Windows Vista Basic, which is fine if you don't care how well it will run. On the other hand if you want to downgrade to Windows XP. Because we all know how crap Vista is. So that is what my bro decided to do, which is where we ran into a slight problem of not being able to find any drivers for the particular model that we have, fortunately HP have a support crew that you are able to chat with online and it does not cost anything as far as I know, The tech that my bro spoke with was able to find all the needed drivers for us which was great.

So now that we have been through that process, I can now pass on that you all of you.

First of all we had managed to find all the the driver for the sound device / 56k modem. After talking with the tech we found out that you need to install a Microsoft HD audio driver before being able to install any drivers for the sound in windows XP. I am assuming here that Windows Vista already has that driver installed or what ever.

Anyway, here is the list of links for all the drivers for installing Windows XP on a Compaq Presario F500 / F551AU

F500 AMD chipset drivers for windows XP
NV61xx-Chipset_8.26_2kxp_WHQL.zip - this file was not found at the link supplied. a quick search of Google showed it is on driverguide.com, you will have to become a member to be able to download it though. As far as i know it is free, and is worth it for the driver. If I had some decent hosting somewhere I could upload them all for ease of availability. all drivers together take up 175MB

VGA Drivers
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp34001-34500/sp34390.exe
or
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp34001-34500/sp34044.exe

or there is a site that modifies the original drivers from Nvidia.com so that they will install on the GO6100 GPU that is in this notebook. For some reason they leave the GO6100 out of the list of cards that it can do in the inf file. once i have found it will put that link up here also.

Network card drivers:
http://support.toshiba-tro.de/tools/SatellitePro/spl10/win-xp/lan-spl10-xp-561810152004.zip

In order to install the High definition audio driver you need to install the Microsoft HD driver so here it is.

Microsoft Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) Bus Driver for High Definition Audio :
ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp30501-31000/sp30739.exe

after installing the UAA bus driver restart the notebook.

Audio:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp32501-33000/sp32823.exe

Modem drivers:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp33001-33500/sp33050.exe

Synaptics Touchpad:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp32501-33000/sp32647.exe

Broadcom Wireless LAN Driver:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp34001-34500/sp34152.exe

Quick Launch/Easy Access Buttons:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp32001-32500/sp32421.exe

The above drivers are for Windows XP SP1. The only drivers that do not work in Windows XP SP2 are the Audio and Modem drivers. The below links are the drivers to be used with XP SP2. I think the main difference is that there is an update that addresses the UAA HD audio subsystem driver well anyway here are the links.

SP2 Drivers

Microsoft Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) Bus Driver for High Definition Audio:
ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp32501-33000/sp32646.exe

High Definition Audio Driver:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp34001-34500/sp34200.exe

Modem driver:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp33501-34000/sp33742.exe

If you have issues with installing the Audio and modem driver then you will have to go into c:\swsetup\sp34200 and c:\swsetup\sp33742 folders and install them manually. although this will most likely not be needed as it worked for me first time.


Reboot after this and all should be well with the notebook now.

Yay you have now downgraded to a better operating system than Windows Vista. Now your notebook will run a lot faster than it did with Vista on it. and you can reclaim a whole heap of performance that was wasted on Vista trying to look good. An operating System needs to be functional, good looks are something that is only needed when if Operating System works properly, which sad to say Vista does not do well.

Also vista is highly paranoid when it comes to security, but is all good once all the security crap has been turned off.

The one thing that annoys me about Windows is that there is no one from the outside to offer improvements. It would be nice if the GUI in windows was optional and that it was not so tightly integrated so that if one part of the system fail the whole thing gets taken down with it.

Anyway I'm not here to rant about how crap a job Microsoft is doing. rather in telling you where to get XP drivers for a laptop that is supposed to run Vista. but with the specs that the system has it is hardly possible. it comes with 512Mb of ram. this must be upgraded to at least 1GB if not 2GB for it to be able to run Vista nicely.

Anyway. I shall also look for drivers for all the hardware to be run on Linux. mainly drivers for Fedora as that is what I am using.

Thanks for reading :)

Surveillance systems (home CCTV)

My bro has this thing about CCTV at home so if someone decideds to steal any of our stuff they will be caught maybe. The problem is that the cameras are an awesome 640x480 which kinda sucks, it just means if someone does steal anything the picture is so crap that you dont know who it is anyway.

Currently on his second lowrex Security system. Video only type thing. the first one was USB and only done 30fps for the first 10seconds of recording could handle a few cameras, 4 wired ones and some wireless ones. problem is he wants many cameras doing 30fps all the time, recording or not. fair enough surely there is a system that can handle that, so after finding out that the USB version sucked bad, took it back and got it replaced with a slightyly more expensive PCI version, which you would think would have enough bandwidth in the PCI slot to handle 2 cameras at 30fps, but you'd be wrong.

seems that when 2 cameras are in the card. and it is recording or just viewing both without recording, that you would be able to get the 30fps. well ya can't for some reason. it could be the speed of the PCI slot that is slowing it dows and there is not enough piping to handle the stream of data from the cameras. How much data can raw data from a camera that does 640x480 need. I would'nt think much but im obviously wrong. even still, with PCI-e out there could they possibly make a freaking system that didnt slow down

The PC that the CCTV card is residing is : 3.06Ghz P4, 2GB ram, ATI x800GTO and a 160GB HDD. so its not top of the line but it is also not crap either. sure there are faster systems out there. but still, this machine should be able to handle viewing 2 video streams from a video capture card at the oh so low resoloution of 640x480, even if it is raw data and not compressed.although the software that records everything does have the ability to compress everything and even make backups in triplicate.

In this day and age of such awesomeness as one can have home security at albeit a lowish price. the systems in question cost around 800-1000$ which one would think would give you a product that does what it says. on the box they mention that this system can do 30fps and handle 9 cameras. one would assume that because that is the only mention of it that it can have 9 cameras hooked up at the same time and be able to do 30fps per camera. It could be that i am just stupid and that it actually means that it can do 30fps over 9 cameras. which would be utterly pointless. as when the camera does start recording because is seen something on the screen, that it does not actualy record anything because of the apalling frame rate. Which is then useless because you dont know how stole your stuff, so in turn the manufacturer of the CCTV system you are using has just been able to steal your money beause you bought a crappy product.

Fortunatly here, if the product in question does not do what it was designed to do then they are not allowed to sell it. which is cool. they can still sell it else where though.

Most of this dont make sense but meh, if anyone know of any decent and cheap CCTV systems put one in the comments, maybe i can get a decent system that does that is advetised.

Wireless Keyboard, to use or not

I have been using a wireless Keyboard and Mouse set since the start of the year. Thus far I have used 1 set of batteries every 2 weeks on the mouse. which is all good, since I have 6 rechargable AA's for that, the Keyboard on the otherhand takes 2xAAA batteries and have since lasted 6 months, which I am rather suprised with, although never having used a wireless combo before, this could be normal.

Since the mouse has a light which turns off and on all the time, it would use more battery power than the keyboard which has no lights on it, just uses power whenever a key is pressed - I would assume.

This will not be long as don't really have much to say.

So is it worth getting a wireless combo so that there are no wires attached to the devices. As a gamer I would say yes, but always have charged batteries handy as the mouse could die during a gaming session, could be annoying at a lan or something. not so much for the keyboard. just remember how long they last and when they were changed.

Also really useful for all those people whom love to keep a really clean desk space, as no cables means no mess / eye sore trailing to the back. Although made redundant if you have a Keyboard and mouse draw.

Tis all I have for now. Rather bored as mentioned a while back. will hopefully soon be doing something fun and worthwhile, maybe carpentry, cabinet making and so on.

Customization: Windows vs Linux

Now being human and all I tend to like things to be aesthetically pleasing. The ease of which Linux is customizable compared to when i used windows. For my desktop I am using KDE-3.5.6, which is the latest stable release I think, and for awesome looking themes I goto www.kde-look.org. It's great, got almost everything from there, The theme I'm using for KDE, the Icon set - which linked to Deviantart for the download.

hmm looks good.



I started using Linux back when Red Hat 6.2 came out. which was a while ago now, I had not used linux in any form untill just recently when I downloaded and installed Fedora Core 6. Which I find extremely nice to use and with KDE being what it is now, It makes the experiance all that much better.

Now if i wanted to make windows look good, I had to either find the hard to get .theme files that windows supported natively, or download software that was so bloated and full of crap that it was impossible to do anything (exageration) The whole way Windows does the look and feel is all wrong. It is just not robust enough, also its main problem is that it is not open source, the advantage of open source is that you have millions of people making KDE better. Of course the main devs on KDE say what gets put into the official release and what doesn't. It is still better than having no outside input at all.

Also the way the Linux is modulated makes things a lot smoother. well in my opinion it does.
I would put up a pic of a Windows XP desktop but can be bothered. I could probably get XP to look just like i have Fedora Core 6 and KDE looking, but i would then have to grab a windows version of kicker.

What would be nice is the way windows does things with the way linux is built. Don't see why they can't try they just dont have to release the source code. In my opinion Linux works better, and in most cases looks a hell of a lot better. plus its not bloated with code that ya don't need. well one would hope those whom make linux so great don't leave in old code that doesn't work.

Linux and gaming

Since I am somewhat of a gamer I thought that I should explore the world of gaming on other O/S' rather than just windos. I have found out recently that you are able to install World of Warcraft onto linux using a program called wine. Wine is and interface so that programs that are made to work with MS windows can also work with Linux. which is great for those whom want to use linux but still be able to play those games that are made for windows. this works even better if the games you want to play use openGL for graphics instead of DirectX since openGL is an opensource graphics thing, and DirectX is microsofts graphics thing.

This is also the way the Microsoft are trying to control the O/S industry by controling what graphics platform the game industry use. ATI and nVidia both said that they would make openGL drivers for their gfx cards for Windows VISTA and Microsoft said that they were not allowed. I dont quite understand it myself but it somehow makes game developers think about what graphics platform they use for thier games. i just hope that a lot of them choose to use openGL instead of DirectX for future games. that way they can be either ported to linux by 3rd party developers or done by the companies that made the game themselves.

anywho, in some of the searching i have done with reguards to gaming a linux i have found that there are tonns of games out there, a lot of them are free and offer some limited gaming experiance, then there are the comecially available ones. like Neverwinter Nights, Quake II and III + other games that use the Quake II and III engines. as they are opensource. Most of Id's old game engines are now opensource so people are making them better and also making their own games aswell. which is great. as a lot of them will be free, even if they are not they will be worth purchasing so they can make more good games with great engines.

I just wish that other commercial companies would make their game engines opensource or at least feesable. or at least compatible with openGL.

Well i shall be adding more links to the menu on the right, adding links to games for linux, and other opensource stuff.

On another note. there are lots of people that have problems with companies making money by selling products for Linux, I dont see why they should, they have to make money somehow. even if they made the game engines free and charged for the content. a bit like the www.multiverse.com client.

The Brilliance that is Yum

For those of you who do not use Linux in anyform probably don't know what yum is. like most programs made to run on linux, it is an accronym, which stands for YellowDog updater Modified. I can only guess that it was written for the Linux Distro YellowDog, and it has since been modified to work with other linux distro's one being Fedora Core. which I am currently using.

It is the most innovative and brillant tool that i have ever used. As you can probably guess by its name, that it is an updater, and it has been modified. if you do not have a particular piece of software installed and want it to be so, all you have to do in the terminal as root is type 'yum install package' where package is replaced with the program you want installed. if it so happens that the program you want intsalled needs other programs to work properly then it will also download and install them as well. not only that it will also update any software that needs updated. It does all the work so you dont have to.

it is how i updated Firefox. with the command 'yum update firefox' of course it only updated it within its version. from 1.5.0.7-1 to 1.5.0.10-1 if i want firefox 2.0 installed i would have to tell it to install it. as it is essentially a different program. which i might do soon.

Linux is somewhat of a mystery to most people, and they probably think that it is extremely hard to get their head around, which is not true. if you dont know how to use either system they would both be rather easy to get to know, although Linux does have a steeper learning curve. or does it.

anyway, back on the topic of yum. extremely brilliant, I am currently installing GCC which is a 4.9MB download. yum has to install 4 new things and update a further 4 so i can use GCC, the other 7 programs are needed for GCC to work properly, all 8 downloads total 31meg. just so a 5meg program can be used.

awesome thing is all i had to do was type in 'yum install gcc' and it does. downloads everything needed. yay for innovative people.

Linux

My main PC is out of action at the moment due to HDD failure, so I am using a computer that was given to me. Running Fedora Core 6 on it at the moment. which is running nice and slow because it does not have enough ram. Might do something about that soon, as well as getting it a new HDD current one is a really old 20GB maxtor. it will do for the OS.

Going to use this as a linux Storage system, once i figure out how to get the windows network sharing working. wont be too hard. i shall just look it up on google.

Which is what this post is about, Linux. Most people should know what it is by now. If not, it is a free operation system, Free as in freedom, although most Distributions are free of charge as well. if you want professional support you have to pay for it. which is fair enough, it seems to make them enough money to be giving it away for free. The only real difference with Microsoft is that you have to pay for the Operating system up front which pays for the software and some support. apart from the current system that im running it on, its faster than windows. hope it stays that way. would be faster if i had it on a better system.

Ah well. gotta figure out some things.

Dungeon Runners. MMO

Just started playing this game. its in beta supposedly, although if i want to use member items. i have to become a paying member. so maybe its open beta / semi published.

The game overall seems enjoyable. I found that soloing is rather easy as a warrior. there are three classes. Warrior, Magician and Ranger. Don't know why they choose 3, there is no healing class, no crowed control, just pure killing, have not partied with anyone yet, as have not seen the need to.

Here is a basic description of the game compared to others. Diablo 1 style game play / maps, World of Warcraft style graphics and it is made by NCSOFT and uses the Guild wars game engine the control are quite similar to Diablo and Guild Wars. WASD movement, mouse for attacking. 1-7 skill keys. and as far as i know there are only the 1-7 use able. just like Guild Wars. there are no other skill bars although can probably change the skills out when in an instance.

Oh yeah apart from town areas, all dungeons are instanced. It does fix the problem with traditional MMO's but makes the huge problem making it almost a single player game. which it would probably do well at. it is an ok game. although has its major flaws just like Guild Wars has. Unlike Guild Wars. from what i can tell. it is made for casual MMO gamers. which is ok i guess.

One major drawback. Non(paying) members can not stack health or mana potions, also non(paying) members can only use the crap items and have limited bank space. so if you pick up an item that is really good for your toon level, you probably can't use it because its for paying members only, so far have not used the trade system. One thing i noted that is useful is that with items being soul bound there is a 10min grace period before they become so.

which is good because maybe you want to sell that item before then. have not seen and auction house or a shop that resells player goods like Guild wars does. although i do prefer an auction house or the other method which is player run shops. which would be nice to have

I would rate this game 5/10 just on the Instancing alone. other factors would be NCSOFT and their lax ways of building a game, I'm no developer but you can tell when some things are not done right. to me it is really a Diablo 1 clone that is online only. graphic are not too bad. although judging that on my aging computer that really need replaced. sounds are average. and animations are pretty good. apart from the non paying members being limited its ok for a while i guess.

Not the best review i know but meh, what ya gonna do about it.

Idiots are among us

chief among them is Jack Thompson, he should get his Facts straight before doing anything, but he is a laugh. TeamXbox.com have an article that shows Jack Thompson's letter to Bill Gates claiming that Counter Strike is the cause of the Virginia Tech murder suicide that happened there recently. Now that would be totally fine if Microsoft had actually been the ones that created Counter Strike, but the Credit goes to Valve for that.

I don't know if it goes to show the ignorance of some people or just the average stupidity of some, from most of the article that i read, not one of them corrected the letter and pointed out that Microsoft are not the creators of Counter Strike. It just makes Jack Thompson fail at life as he generally does. Almost every decent gamer out there knows that there are very very few violent acts associated to gaming, there is usually an underlying problem already there.

It's about as stupid of allowing a serial killer out of jail and then blaming the serial killer for the next people he kills, where in fact it is the parole boards fault for being so stupid as to release such twisted retards back out into society.

Although there is an upside to a murder suicide, they can't do it again once they are dead. which is most likely what they had intended in the first place, just they decided to take out a few people while they were at it, would be a waste of money otherwise. no point in buying a box of bullets to use one now is there (insensitive i know). It's a bit like the when i used to smoke, after i had bought them people would ask why i don't just throw the packet out. because its a waste of bloody money, I ain't gonna spend loads of cash just to throw them all away.

Anyway, as tragic as it is, there is a greater underlying problem here, and as its mainly only happens in America, I would say it is a problem with either their government, or their lack of religion, or possibly the fact that they think they can be the only super power and every other country has to bend over and take it up the ass because they want to be in charge and make all the money, just hope the rich money grubbers pricks that do control the world realize that after they die they can't use the money, it just makes someone else have lots of money.

All empires end and their time shall come, then it will be up to the rest of us to clean up their mess, if it is possible. you would think that with all those companies out there that make billions of $$ each year they could easily help the so called 3rd world countries.

but they wont. anyway what ever. thats me out.

Boredom at its worst

I'm extremely bored, so much so that it is depressing. Having a job would be nice. but there is an issue of me being too bloody lazy to go out and look for work.well its either that or I am rather depressed and maybe need some help.

I prefer the lazy option. Although could use depression as an excuse. but I wont, just lazy. So I shall be looking for work from tomorrow onwards. According to my unemployment contract I have to actively look for work in order to be entitled to the money that they are giving me, which is fair enough.

Have a couple of problems though. Have to wait till I get my eye test done before I can find out if I am allowed to get a drivers license. If so then I can finally get around to getting my bike learners and get a bike, and maybe get a car if I go for my restricted as well. will probably make getting a job a lot easier - if it requires that I drive of course.

Ideal job would be what I'm good at, which is a PC Tech. Love problem solving and what not. Would love to be able to get a decent qualification though. At the moment I only have a Certificate in Computing. Getting an A+ cert would be nice. Maybe Network+ as well.Don't really care for programming at the moment, as I have already tried going for my B.I.T, failing miserably as well. Passed one paper out of six in my first year. Not good.

After that I found that I rather enjoyed just fixing PC rather than being able to program and design software - Although being able to do so would be great, It's not high on the need list. Repair is where it's at, as the majority of the population wouldn't know anything, mostly because they are too scared to try. Which is absurd, as everything is colour coded and even if it was all the same colour every plug is different, apart from PS2 keyboard and mouse plugs which are the same.

The only real difficulty is attaching the CPU heat sink to the mother board. Which can be a real pain sometimes. although there are a lot of heat sinks that can be screwed down now, which makes things a whole lot easier.

Arrghh, this started out as a, grr I'm bored post, and look what it turned into. Some lengthy crap about PC repair / Assembly. Which is what I would love to do.

Well tomorrow (Monday), I shall be applying at a couple of PC stores, and see if I can get employment, but first I must write up some bullshit Cover letter that makes them think I'm awesome - Which I am.

The only thing is, when I write like I am now, It flows fast, but when I want to write about myself for such a cover letter. I suck and cant think of anything to write. My younger brother wrote one, but it is not true for me, so going to write my own. Just hope that I can write a decent one and it will land me a job that I want.

There are two preferred places of employment that I would like to work at. Hunt Computer Services, last time I looked in there they were a small PC shop. looked like a nice place to start at least. and there is also Jensen Technical Services, another small place that would be nice to work at. I have already applied at both and never received a phone call from either. It would probably be best to try again or to go and see if they have any employment open. First I must go and get myself some freaking work clothes. Make myself look respectable and all. Probably get em from the warehouse.

I seem to have written a lot here, ah well. there will be no one to read it anyways. just passing time till I can watch something on History channel. Thats how bored I am

Also, just because I feel like writing it - I seem to have somehow screwed up my sleeping cycle which is seeming rather hard to set right. If I go to bed at "normal" times. 10pm-12am or whatever is normal / average. It seems that I will almost always wake at 1am-2:30am not sure why. Then I can not get back to sleep until about 6am which is quite annoying. Ah well. anyways, Until I think of something else to talk about this will be it. well or unless I go out riding again then there will be another update.

Link to Photo albums to the right.

Trail riding in NZ

I'm not to familiar with any decent trail riding spots in New Zealand. as have just really started doing so. have been doing some searching, and have noticed that there are a lot of awesome places but they are not in NZ. so i'm probably not looking hard enough.

or they are being kept quiet about. or they just cant be bothered telling anyone. but i shall look. and try and find. there are a couple of places that i know about. mainly 4x4 tracks. like piano flat in Northern Southland / southern Otago. there is also the Nevis - which is probably mainly 4x4 tracks. and also Mace town. which is another 4x4 track. never been to mace town. and will try to do so next summer. as during winter it is bloody cold and the rivers are higher so not a chance of making it through.

i know no one reads this but if anyone does. can ya tell me of any decent trail riding locations in the southland / south Island region of New Zealand.

Very few updates

There will be very few updates to this. As it is coming into winter now and all getting colder, there are less nice days to be able to do anything outside. and getting extremely bored with some of the MMO's that i have been playing.

My WoW account runs out of Game time tomorrow 14th, April. I will not be renewing my subscription at this time. What i really want is a new PC and to be able to play some Off-Line RPG's that have a decent story line.

Well nothing much has happened, apart from taking the bikes out on Monday, which was quite fun. even though 2 of the bikes decided to break. our CT125 broke a throttle cable and the KLX300R now has a cracked crank case. which needs to be welded up, and if it can not be welded needs a new one. so we are hoping that it can be welded. - All this info is also on the Kronic Performance blog. listed to the right. there will also be a video when Diego decides to make another post.

While finding the oil leak int he Kawasaki, I was rather stupid and did not wear any shoes. resulting in the stand falling over and cutting one of my toes rather nicely. nothing serious though. But I will be wearing shoes from now on, Or work boots when i get some.

Apart from the above there is nothing else to say really.

actually just Deleted the Video i had uploaded to video.google.com. as its pretty crap. the original 700meg file was fine. but after compression it turned out really crap. Going to wait till we get some decent footage. then it will be posted over on Kronic Productions for some viewing.

That is all. probably update after something fun / interesting happens.

Blog links

Have made a list on the right with links to other blogs. currently there will only be one. will add more in the future. will probably also add some links to websites and possibly tutorials.

currently if you like you can hop on over to Kronic Productions.

This is my brothers blog, where he lists current video's that he is making, and will probably upload some 3-5min clips of some of our trail riding experiences. for more info head over there.

Tantra-Extreme

Is an online MMORPG that i am currently playing, along with WoW. Although my WoW account runs out of credit on April 5th, and not too sure if i am going to be putting more money onto it. Probably not.

Tantra-Extreme is well fun. apart from the games obvious flaws, which anyone whom has played a decent MMO will know,. is that it has a really really crappy User Interface. which IMO is what makes or breaks a game for many people. for me Tantra is not exactly what i would called fun. its more of playing with friends that attracts me. the same goes for any MMO really. but what ever.

Tried to play the new incarnation of Dcon the other day, seems that i don't have enough memory for the large maps, and i lag a lot. which makes playing dam near impossible. boo to that. as i was quite looking foward to playing it. one thing for sure though is it has Weapon Bunkers. yay. love that map.

short entry over. back when something interesting happens. I might even have a job, who knows. woot PB just finished. gonna watch it.

More beach fun

Had some more fun at the beach, and as always took along the camera, made some short video clips and took 1 still picture, which is of my younger brother giving a cheesy grin after getting the crusty old 3 wheeler stuck in some mud.



apart from that the guy in the photo above also managed to crash his KLX300R again. This time only damaging the handlebars slightly and hurting himself somewhat less than the first time. but all is well. just need to bend the handle bars back into shape and will be all good. don't really want to buy another set of handlebars at $60 each. will probably upload a video to youtube and put a link to it.

Didn't get a video of the crash itself, but there is plenty of footage of other such goodness. may have to edit some as they are too long. also record them in DVD format in DVD quality, even in wide screen. so files average about 150-250meg for 10mins of footage. will try to make em smaller. Was going to show a video that is already on the net, but after looking at it don't think i will. really crap quality. might upload one to google video and see how that goes.

Outdoor Activities.

There are many people who claim that they have outdoor interests. which in many cases is true to a certain degree. When I say that I have outdoor Interests/Activities They are more than taking a walk through the park, or relaxing at the beach on a hot day.

While we try and goto the beach as often as possible it is not because we want to go for a swim. rather for the fact that it is public property, and last I knew trail bike riding was not legal in the inner city reserve.

So the beach is where its at. Is rather fun with nicely carved out dunes for riding on and around - Where we ride is where many of the locals ride. which can be quite busy at times. busy meaning there is about 10 people there so not overly populated which is good. makes for more room. there is a "main" entrance to this beach. which is where the life guards put out their flags and stop people from drowning.

being that the beach is considered a public highway the place we opt to ride at is about 10-15km around the beach from the "main" entrance. so it is rather quiet, which is what we like. In my younger days over the Christmas period, no school and all, we would goto a nearby river. being that we lived away from the city, it was good as there were very few to no "townies" there. but over the years, someone told a few people and it became popular. which was not cool. because after that you could hardly do anything in the river for there were too many people around. turned into a pool rather than an out of the way part of a river.

anyways back on topic. here are some pictures of me and my family / friends at the beach having some fun. - rather 1st picture of my brothers new Trail bike.




This one is of our first Beach buggy, made from scrap metal and a couple old cars. - pictured, it has ran out of gas at this point.

Will probably get away from posting on games. or maybe have half and half games / Outdoor fun. we shall see. Riding on the beach is fun, but proper trail riding is even better. and when I get around to buying myself a new bike, my brother and i will be joining a Trail bike club for that purpose. so shall fun indeed.

More to come as well

Thoughts and stuff

Quick mention on PvP in WoW.

Actually had a decent run in WSG in WoW last night, the battle lasted about 45 minuets , for those who don't know, WSG (Warsong Gulch), and it is a BG (Battle Ground). Now I'm not usually into PvP very much, but thought I would have a go and see what its like.

Turns out that it was highly enjoyable. and while this particular Battle Ground is a Capture the flag match, most of the time our side had 1 or 2 people that were concerned with the flag. whereas I was more concerned with killing the other team members, which I was about average at doing, having died about 58 times myself and killing about the same.

All in all it was a fun night. Now I do play a lot of games and what not and should probably cut down the hours that I play, but after thinking on that issue I have reckoned that I have a few options and they are:

1: Play games with friends online
2: Watch TV
3: Do nothing.

As many are aware, that the older you get the less time you and your friends are able to spend together. There are many reasons, the main one being that they are starting families and have them to be with, as most people do. therefore apart from watching TV or getting absolutely drunk to the point you don't remember anything in the morning, I would rather not. As doing something like that is not only rather stupid but also not very productive.

That Aside, there are less important issues to deal with at the moment. Like gaming, which games should I play and is there any reason to paying to play some online games like so many do.

In my experience there is, having played many many online RPG games, I have come to realize that the best quality ones out there that offer the most are the ones that you have to pay for, although there are those exceptions out there that I would not touch due to what ever reason.

For one, CodeMasters recent game - Arch lord. Which is just a recycled Asian MMO re-branded and slightly touched up for the western market. which would have been o.k if they had actually improved the game. I might have a segment reviewing MMO's sure there are sites out there that do this. but they are so generic and not told in a gamers point of view.

After saying that there are some really good quality free ones out there. ya just gotta look. there are hundreds. many of them are Asian and probably not for the westerner, but try em all and see what you like. also with beta testing and what not, a lot of them have open beta's for about 1-2 months before release to stress test the servers. where in which you can play for free while the fix the last few bugs that are important to running a smooth game.

- Rambling about nothing again, but thats what I do -

um, more later. going to start me downloads and hopefully install an old game thats just become free again after failing at the pay to play scheme. yay for those who don't want to play.

Sorry for the lack of formatting in the text, takes way to long and cant be bothered. although I am trying to get the right punctuation, the correct grammar can kiss my ass. :)

World of Warcraft

Well what can I say about this, I do play the game, and I can opt out of playing if need be, although I must say that I am addicted to it.

Is this a bad thing?
short answer is yes.

Long answer is, yes but.

As it can be a bad thing in the long run if one lets ones-self get carried away and make it completely the most important thing ever in their lives, which as we all know is completely retarded.

World of Warcraft only has as much attention as it does because it opened the door to many millions of people, in which MMO's were no longer for the hardcore old school P&P D&D fans, as was the likes of Everquest 1, and Ultima Online.
These were mainly for the hardcore because for one, you required a Credit Card, and as far as I know, most persons under the age of 21 does not usually have one, and if they do, it's because the parents gave it to them.
Also when these early MMO's came out it was not "cool" to know how to use a computer, and as such was deemed the nerds area of expertise.

But now because of the introduction to blogs, and places like Bebo.com and Myspace it has become rather popular with almost all persons. Although most games are still the domain for the inherent geeks of this world, the home PC is making its way into more and more homes.

- Hmm seems as though i was rambling up there -

Back on topic. - Is it a bad thing? - Long answer continues

If I had not played any online games I would not have meet any of the friends that I have today. granted that I have not met any of them to date. This does not mean that I won't ever meet any of them.
Online gaming is just another social aspect of life. Be that it maybe on the internet, and you do not actually meet the other persons face to face, I ask again, Is this a bad thing?

Many people have both online and offline friends, and I quite enjoy meeting my offline friends as it gives me a chance to get out there and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. which we all need medically, Vitamin E or something.

Well this entry has become interesting. one thing I would like to say at this point, is that I have no intention of quitting WoW, unless of course I manage to grab a Credit Card from some bank, then I would most probably stop playing WoW and move onto Vanguard:Saga of Heroes.

Which is another post all together, as there have been many many reports of people complaining about it. Being that I was fortunate enough to be in the beta I am able to give comments on it Pre-release.

Cho.

The start of something?

Is this the start of something decent? probably not, but we shall not know until there is something here for people to look at.

Here there will be an outline of what there is to be eventually over the many years to come. If I can be bothered actually running this that long. I do hope that I can prevail and keep at something long enough to make a difference somewhere.

Most entries will be about a particular topic, possibly about riding the various bikes that we have here, and the collection is growing - although not to stupid sizes, one can only ride one at a time - and as interest and experience get to point where crazy things may happen. then videos may start flowing, as for some reason when ever we adventure out there is always a home video being made for some reason or another. Be it personal or otherwise noted.

Ah well nothing else to say, as I am probably boring everyone to sleep.

Cho