bordagen

After many a delay, the Crackdown demo is finally live on the XBLM!

Somehow, this game managed to slip under my RADAR for months until I read about it on a web comic’s commentary. How did I miss this one?! The game revolves around you in a GTA kind of environment – except you play an ‘Agent’ whose job it is to tackle crime – by any means necessary. This can include throwing bins, cars and even bodies at the hooligans around the city, blowing things up and mindlessly throwing grenades at them. As you progress thoughout the game, you collect powerups which increase your abilities (strength, agility, firearms, explosives to name bu a few) which can grow to insane levels allowing you to – and pardon me the cliche – lead tall buildings in a single bound.

I’ve just been playing the demo and, despite a few bugs in the demo, leaves me wanting to give RenderWare Criterion (creators of the Burnout series – happy now, Dan?) my money in exchange for this marvellous game. But with this coming out, Fuzion Frenzy 2 on the horizon and, you know, rent and the ever-growing list of bills and payments I need to make I don’t know how I’m going to get the cash together to get this game. I’m sure I’ll find something for a rainy day though… I hope.

Unfortunatly, due to the sheer number of junk comments I get, I have made it so that you now HAVE to preview comments before posting them. Annoying, I know. If you wish to be able to post straight in without waiting for me to get off my lazy arse and authorise the comment, might I sugges that you get a TypeKey account. It’s very simple and allows you to authenticate with any MovableType blog that has TypeKey enabled.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it is my bedtime and I’m sleepy…

Yes, a fairly obvious title for the rest of the post. It’s not really mine either – I was looking around digg.com and found the following article. Sadly, the main site where the article was held is ‘Unavailable’, so I found it on Google’s cache for you to read.

Yesterday when I got home from work, I was greeted by a familiar brown package that can only be one thing, my copy of The Burning Crusade, the long awaited expansion pack for World of Warcraft. With this expansion, it introduces 2 new races, Drenai and Blood Elves, along with a whole host of new content, items, instances and a whole new continent to explore.

I installed the game and upgraded my account just before 11 when we in England could play it (the server is GMT+1 – Paris time), glancing over at Liz’s machine I see a sea of players gearing up outside the Dark Portal in Blasted Lands ‘queuing’ up to enjoy the new areas. I finally get in to the game (after a load of patch downgrading and upgrading) and leap through the portal only to get stuck behind it for a couple of moments. Not the biggest endorsement. When I finally get the Outland (not the one from Mortal Kombat) we are greeted by wave upon wave of level ?? elite guards – looks fantastic. Although I got in to the frey and helped take a few down, I didn’t score any phat loot from them.

I then started hitting quests left, right and centre to get on the path to levelling again. I kept dying. Turns out you need a bit more than a holy spec paladin and a restoration spec druid (Liz) to battle the minions in the new area. It wasn’t soon that the servers crashed and I was stuck as a corpse until I next login.

I’ll have a proper play tonight and at the weekend and see how it all plays and what-not. First I might have to get a new soundcard as my sound is still painfully choppy and causes the game to have performance issues.

Well this weekend was very eventful.
Here is a quick list (hail the bullet points) of the busy weekend I’ve had.

Friday

• Had to visit the doctors on the morning for a review appointment concerning my recent wheeziness and general breathing issues. After three weeks of using a peak flow meter to monitor my breathing patterns morning, noon and night, it turns out that I am asthmatic. I have a preventative ‘Turbohaler’ for the morning and night and a reliver for whenever I feel out of breath and my passages need opening up.
• On the evening, went down to York to stay at Liz’s parents to prepare for Saturday’s car-related funtivites.

Saturday

• At 10am, by insurance clicked in to action enabling fun later on in the day. I don’t feel any different.
• Around midday, we went of to Fulford so that I could get myself a car form a nice lady who agreed to sell her ‘baby’ (please note – not a real baby for all you human rights activists out there. That’s what eBay is for). I am now the proud owner of a Citreon Saxo. We were going to come back to ‘Boro on that evening, but after a little run around the block where Liz’s parents live, we agreed that since I would be doing the driving back, more practice would be better as I was a bit rusty after not driving since August when I passed my test. Soon afterwards though my rust wore off as I got used to the strange clutch positioning.
• Update: You can see a picture of ‘her’ over on Liz’s blog

Sunday

• With Liz’s dad, we went over the car with a fine toothed comb making sure that it would indeed get us back to Middlesbrough. After a couple of hours of that and getting ready, we finally set off to find the A19 and the road home. Didn’t take us too long to get back and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. Still getting used to the clutch again as some shifts were a bit jumpy which I apologised for.

All in all, good and productive weekend. Don’t know why I hadn’t done this sooner!

Coming soon – more memes, courtesy of Neil.

A meme as found via Neil’s site. Enjoy!

Did you not only sigh the biggest sigh of relief ever once you saw that Apple had introduced the iPhone, but you also thought it was totally the coolest phone ever?
I think it looks good, but I prefer a phone a bit smaller. Some nice features on the phone though and i’m sure it’ll do well. Too rich for my blood though.

Do you ever miss a front page story on Digg.com?
I can’t actually remember the last time I visited digg.com, so I’ll say yes.

Do you have your own REAL website (not blogger/geocities/etc…)?
Yup – feel free to take a look around.

Do you actually know how to edit the code for it?
Movable Type looks after most of it, but I can usually figure out how to add things to it.

Have you ever installed a different OS on a portable/gaming device that it was not meant for?
I have another dashboard on my Xbox (I didn’t install it), but I might try to stick Linux on it – just for giggles (as long as it will still play my games on it)

Do You have more than 1 monitor hooked up to your main computer?
Sadly no, cash has restrained me there.

Is the only time you use your printer to print out Google Maps?
I don’t have a printed hooked up to my computer, but Liz’s gets used for CV’s, cover letters as well as the occasional map/directions.

If you dont already have a water cooled CPU, do you leave the side cover off to help keep the temps down?
I used to have the side off during last summer because it was so damned hot. Going to need some decent fans before it gets too hot again…

Do you somewhat wish you were living in Taiwan just for the Technology (e.g. free wifi everywhere)?
That would be really nice. Lots of shiny things everwhere I look :) Plus I wouldn’t mind learning the language.

If you cant get rid of a virus or fix a serious problem after a few hours, do you just say f#@% it and format the HD?
Generally I try to fix it until I’ve tried everything until the last thing to try is fragging it and holding one of my world famous ‘Format-Reinstall Parties’!

Do you totally wish you could afford a really nice Mac?
After using one at work everyday – I would say no. I would miss my PC too much. I like the ability to upgrade a computer myself without needing plastering tools to open it up.

Did you tell your Broadband ISP to take their Cable Modem and shove it and go buy your own (a real one!)?
Got ADSL, but yes, I have my own modem – and I hate it because it keeps dropping the line. Don’t buy D-Link!

Every now and then, do you attempt to hack your neighbours’ wifi connection just for fun?
Nah, they moved away from across the road before I could try. I did borrow a load of music from an open connection in Bradford though.

Do you keep spare hard drives around for testing out other OS’s or just for whatever?
Nope. If I do try other OS’s, I use older machines or throw them at VMWare.

Can you install ATI Drivers into linux?
I haven’t honestly tried. Is it hard?

Do you sometimes wish you could just change the channel and start browsing the web on your TV, being able to view it at a decent resolution with good picture quality?
Yep. And now we can with Liz’s Nintendo Wii.

Ok, I’m getting a little annoyed by the increasing amount of spam I am receiving on a daily basis through comments on here. Apparently, the MT-included plugin, SpamLookup is meant to prevent this all but as of yet it seems not too. I keep getting mail from every comment – even those which should be junked automatically – telling me that I have a comment and that I should click this link to approve it.

I want a way so that it automatically junks obvious spam, but lets through real comments. Is this so hard? I’ve tried to implement CAPTCHA (Turin test – one of those ‘type the above string of characters in the box below’ authentication systems) but while I can get the input field and the call to action working, the actual image fails to display. I’ll probably have another look at it later on, but now I’m looking for a quick & easy solution to the spam problem.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Ok, I’m starting to get a little peeved with my sound output of my computer since upgrading to Vista. The sound is crackly and choppy in games – such as World of Warcraft and the new episodic Sam and Max games – which is inherently infringing on the general performance of the games.

I’ve tried drivers that come with Vista, but they too aren’t the greatest. I’ve tried workarounds for both on-board and my Creative Live 5.1 (no longer supported by Creative as it’s too old) but nothing seems to work. I might have to get a new sound card. If that doesn’t work then I’ll have to save up for a new graphics card, as that too is quite old. My processor still has some juice left in it (P4 3.08GHz) and with my 1GB RAM, there shouldn’t be much of an issue with those.

Because of these performance issues, I’ve had to put a stop to my gaming on my PC until I find a way to resolve it. Luckily my Xbox has been feeling less neglected since these issues started, as can be read on it’s very own blog.

And now it is time for the generic ‘Happy New Year’ greetings and well wishes from myself along with probably every blog you’re going to read today.

Am I going to make any resolutions this year? Probably not.

Saw the new year in with Liz whilst watching Prison Break on Five. Quite a low key affair, but it was still good because I was with her (and Prison Break was on too :p).

If you haven’t noticed, I have put a blogroll if you will of friends sites that I read often. One of which is my Xbox 360’s blog that is automatically generated by magic thanks to the great people over at 360Voice.com. Quite fun – although at the moment my Xbox hates me and is very sad that I haven’t been using it as much as I probably should. Never mind, I have bought ‘Marvel: Ultimate Alliance’ to entertain myself with which should crank up my Xbox activities (and my GamerScore which sits at just over 1000 (360 games are so expensive).

Again, happy new year to you all.