Posts (page 2)
I went to the premiere in Melbourne of Episode 15 Pure Pwnage. It was probably the best day ever. At least in the Top Ten.
Me and my friends Luke and James met at the train station at 12, and almost missed the train due to my inadequacy at getting a ticket. Fortunately we got on in time. Two train stops later we were at Windsor station with a whole bunch of other guys who we suspected were going the same way we were. We grouped with a bunch of them and found the theatre.
The line wasn't too long, but apparently earlier in the day it had thousands of people. We arrived about 20 minutes before the start of the show. Unfortunately I didn't know about the pancake breakfast at 10am, otherwise I would've gone to meet Jarret and Geoff (FUCK). We grabbed some seats, I met up with a guy I knew, and we got ready to watch the show. Jarret and Geoff came out, said the usual (Good to be here, Australia rocks etc), and that's when it got a bit different. Some of the guys that went to the pancake breakfast got up on stage and presented Jarret with a kangaroo (I think it was signed by some of the Gamer Army). Then, we got shown Episode 13 & 14, so we could remember what had happened so far in the season. It was so epic, laughing and cheering with the crowd. Me and all the Aussie forum peeps cheered when Gillz was on screen (In episode 14, playing CnC3 (I think) against Jeremy). In the theatre of 1700, about 40 of us cheered for Gillz. It felt good to be in on the joke.
It was pretty surreal, to have met these people on the internet, and then be joined with them in this brief moment of unity. So cool.
Then it was intermission. I went out the front and met up with my bros from Multimedia (Morbodis and Sixtus). A few of the forum peeps were out the front too, so I got to meet Ch1x0r, Tubby, Pwnstar and Chibi. Theory confirmed: Internet people are real people. And totally cool people, too. I saw Firefly and Danoli3, but didn't get to chat with them. Always next time. I gave Tubby a hug, and got Jarret to sign my shirt (he only signed it because I told him I'd let him have my babies).
Then we went back in and saw Episode 15. I can't spoil it until the episode comes out, but it was really... different. But great. Definitely not what I expected, which made it even better.
Such a fantastic day. Going there, meeting all these awesome people. Good times.
Now I'm sitting here in my 'i pwn n00bs' shirt (I got Jarret to sign my FPS_Doug shirt, so now that is hanging up safe from harm) watching the old eps.
Wallstrip interview with Jakob Lodwick.
The veiled insults at YouTube are classic Jakob. I found it interesting that Zach Klein was totally left out of the history of Connected Ventures. Did he leave on bad terms but refused to mention it? Tabloid bloggers, get on that.
I had an IT exam today. It was based on physical and software-based security.
I hadn't read any of the background material on the subject in our text book (which has outdated information, despite being published this year), but I was glad to find when we were presented with the exam that I could answer the questions with surprising confidence. Why? Because of several reasons.
1) thebroken
2) Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick (which I found via thebroken)
3) Hak5
You can get a Year 12 IT education by watching IPTV shows. What a fucking amazing world we live in.
And just when you think you've figured out someone enough to loathe "what they represent", they do something incredibly insightful.
And this is why I love Nick Douglas so much. We're so similar. But my hair looks better.
A girl was telling me about this movie she loves, called A Walk To Remember. Sounded incredibly corny, thus, I hadn't seen it. So I looked it up on Wikipedia, and read the plot. In my mind, I broke down the plot like this:
A Walk To RememberMandy Whore tricks this dude into falling in love with her even though she knows she is going to die, then totally leads him on. He dedicates time to helping her fill out her wish list, and then finds out she has terminal leukemia? What the fuck?
STOP GREEN-LIGHTING THESE FUCKING MOVIES.
Australia's game development industry sucks. There aren't many jobs in it, and there have been like, two popular games that have come out of Australia.
America has a booming game development industry. Unfortunately, America is a shitty place to live in comparison to Australia (no offense, Americans, I'm just calling it as I see it). It would be really awesome to go and work in America, where the tech and gaming industries are so much better built, but I'm not sure how much I want to compromise in order to get that job.
This is what I posted on Pownce a couple days ago:
http://pownce.com/jakec/notes/796329/
If you're an Aussie, read it. If you aren't, read it anyway. It'll give you some scope on just how abysmal our gaming industry is.
PS: The last three games to come out of Australia:
Pony Friends
Fury
Equestrian Challenge
Alright, so Fury has somewhat of a following with a lot of the hardcore PvP gamers I know, but what is it with the horsie games? I'd go get a job with Auran if it wasn't for the fact that, other than Fury, the only games they've developed are simulators.
This comic pretty much exactly details my week leading up to the Grand Final of AFL every year.
AFL is a really fucking boring sport. Therefore, watching it is even more boring. It's like, meta-boring. So boring it transcends any kind of linguistic explanation. You can't express how terribly mind-numbing it is with words.
At least it'll all be over tomorrow, and I can go back to my friend's place and rock the Halo 3 casbah with him. Damn, I really need an Xbox of my own.
Master Chief dies. Now, on with the review.
A fortnight ago, I said Halo 3 couldn't possibly live up to the behemoth hype machine that was running behind it. And I was completely right.
Halo 3 is a fun game. The story is on par with Vanilla Halo, and much better than Halo 2. This, for me, was because of the little things. For example, instead of a second player being another Chief, he plays the Arbiter, and the subsequent 3rd and 4th players play new Elites. The story progresses well, never lulling. This really represented Bungie's 30-second rule, where you get 30 seconds of action, and move on, then 30 seconds of action, then move on. It was nice and steady. I liked that.
That's not to say it was easy, predictable, or less epic than you could imagine. The battle could turn at any second, as Brutes with jetpacks jumped in from around the level, Brute Choppers came tearing through a barricade unexpectedly, or a pack of Grunts threw plasma grenades (actually, the Grunts in this pose more of a challenge. While they still go down easily, they usually group up, and when they keep hitting you with plasma pistols, they wear down your shield pretty quickly).
The graphics are much improved. One of the biggest issues I had with Halo 2 were the ridiculously dark parts. There are sections of some levels where you just run around blindly, bouncing off the walls, until you find an opening. In Halo 3, it is much brighter. So much so, that some parts are blindingly bright. HDR Lighting was raped in this game, physically and mentally abused, pushed to its limits, and then pushed past those limits. You'll be running out of a building into a large open area and be blinded by a flash of light as the game renders the outside world (yes, it's improved since the terrible rendering in Halo 2, but it is still noticeable, which sucks). But the details are definitely a step up. Still nothing compared to the delicate glory of Gears of War's visuals, though.
Gameplay is as usual. Some of the guns have been recalibrated since Halo 2 (for example, the Needler is a lot stronger, but you can no longer dual-wield with it). They brought back the Assault Rifle, which I am ecstatic about, because it was my favourite weapon of the original Halo. It also seems that Battle Rifles have been toned down slightly, but still pack a significant punch. All in all, it has become much more balanced.
Online play is really fun, which is how it needs to be if Bungie wants money. It is what makes Halo a sustainable franchise. One thing I noticed is that it can sometimes take a while (15 minutes or so) to get a game, which is unfortunate.
All in all, it's Halo, and that's all there is to it. It's not going to revolutionize anything, but it's damn fun to play.
And yes, already beaten it on Legendary.
I noticed today the hilarious irony of those productivity tips that often spring up on blogs, and hit the Digg front page at least once a week. The reason it is so widely written about is because it is easy to write about. Everybody but infants know how to achieve a goal. You identify the steps, and you progress one step at a time.
The hilarious irony is in the fact that these lists are, in fact, not productive at all. Often as a form of procrastination, I've read productivity lists. They take away your time without contributing to really achieving the goal of the moment. Not only that, but these blogs provide a gateway to more procrastination, as you might read a list, and think "This is written pretty well, I wonder what other posts are on here", and you spend the next hour reading about what the author had for lunch.
Every productivity list should append a final tip to itself: "Stop reading lists and start working"
An InfoTech teacher told me it takes 50,000,000 years to crack a 14 character alphanumeric password. I told him I could do it in minutes, but he didn't believe the technology was available. Enter Ophcrack, and its wonderful rainbow tables. So today I downloaded the smaller rainbow table available on the Ophcrack site and tried it on my Windows box. It cracked my usual password in 123.52 seconds. However, in comparison to a 14 character password, it was considerably weaker, so I'm going to use a larger rainbow table on some longer passwords tomorrow. In the past couple of hours, I've been trying to compile Ophcrack on my Mac (because I prefer working on the MacBook), but with no success. I can't compile Ophcrack because it can't find GTK+, I can't compile GTK+ because it can't find pkg-config. How troublesome.
Digg updated. This time, it was the profile section that got an overhaul. This was going to be a post complaining about how ridiculously complicated the profile and friends pages are now, but to be honest, I really like it now that I've had a chance to get used to it.
Thumbs up, Digg Co.
