Went to the antique store today

Yamato says 'A Negroni would be excellent Jeeves'

Midgar in summer

Kalina dreaming

Sam and James

Computers in my Life - Nerd from Birth - Part 6

So it wasn't until I started my first postdoc that I really started getting kitted out with some new tech. Through my PhD I had my Dell Inspiron laptop, which did the job I needed it to do - write papers, remote logins to work mainframes, a few games, and of course writing for rpgs. It basically relegated my desktop pc to the rubbish tip.

But it was when I moved to Leamington for my first postdoc that I was able to afford getting something new. It was around about a year before the move that everyone was getting iPhones. I was of course jealous. Being able to access the net like that was very cool. As was the ability to tether laptops using them.

Now my first mobile phone at uni was a horrible Motorola. Yuck. it did the job, but really it was shit. The V2288. Back when displays were monochrome. My next phone was the a Sony Ericsson T610, a classic really. Hell it had a colour screen and a colour camera (not that the resolution was any good). Now after that I stuck with Sony Ericsson. The W810i was even better. A better camera and also a slot in memory card and a of course it was a Walkman phone. It replaced my crappy little mp3 player (a little stick thing that needed ultra compression to fit music on). That was then followed by the C902, which was basically an even better Cybershot camera phone.

But these were all still dumb phones.

My first smartphone was the Sony Ericsson X10. It was the first Android phone the SE put out, and it was pretty great. I wanted something non Apple so I was more free to do what I wanted. It looked good, but there were a few glitches. It did eventually get upgrades all the way from 1.6 to 2.3 version of Android, plus it acted as a great way to read ebooks and pdfs.

Now roll on another 2 or so years and I now have a nice new Sony Xperia S. Which of course is a major step up, both in terms of power and what I can use it for. Kindle books and comics are a staple of my use of the phone.

Now of course it isn't the only Android I have.

One device I wanted more than any was a tablet for reading pdfs for work and for rpgs. But of course I didn't want an iPad. But Asus came to the rescue. For months and months I followed the news on the Transformer. I saved up for it and preordered it and well, damn that morning it arrived - it was a piece of beauty. The metallic frame was ice cold from where it had been stored, and the chocolate bronze looked like it was made by Gou'ld. I also got it with the dock. So yeah the full deal. My god, it has been a game changer. I have only had it for about a year, and in that time Asus has brought out 3 other models and has the Padfone coming out soon. But still, just having this device to write blogs, take notes, read pdfs, read comics, watch tv, remote into my computers from anywhere in the world. It is awesome. Worth every penny.

Now onto the Xbox 360. This console I got on one basis. Assassin's Creed 2. did I say I am totally obssessed with Venice and Italy? So of course I love the Xbox 360. The media centre is OK and then it also has a number of games I love: Devil May Cry 4, Batman Arkham Asylum and City, Bioshock and a few others. Of course Assassin's Creed 3 is on my list. Now the other cool features of the Xbox are the channels and if I was in the UK I could use it to get certain TV channels.

On a final note I have my current laptop, one I got through work as it is a graphics machine when I need it to be. It also is a pretty good gaming laptop. Add in a decent graphics card that allows it to out put to HDMI and you have a raelly useful bit of kit.

So finally on the really geeky stuff by the point I am now a well versed programmer in a few languages, a UNIX user and I super computer user.

 

Computers really have influenced and changed my life, and are a constant factor in it. Can I really cut my self off. To a degree yes. But I like being connected and having my devices network to my benefit.[[posterous-content:pid___0]]nerd

The Secret World - Review

So this weekend was the first beta weekend of the Secret World (of Alex Mack - no not really).

I was lucky enough to win a free beta key from wodnews.net which will allow me to play as one of the factions, the Dragons. Now my mate James (who has been co-hosting some Darklings with me) has already bought the life time subscription and is also playing Dragons, and also has beta access. But for the beta weekends we have to play as specific factions, and this weekend was the turn of the Templars.

So in brief in the Secret World you essentially play as monster hunters and paranormal investigators, allied to one of three factions (Illuminati, Templars, Dragons). These factions fight against each other while also investigating the world for the devices, magics and secrets to win the shadow war.

So this basically means that it is a combat heavy MMO that draws on the same themes as Supernatural, the World of Darkness, the X-Files, Millennium etc etc.

For the beta weekend the main locations were London, home of the Templars, and Kingsmouth - a location that takes heavy inspiration from the work of H.P Lovecraft. So we have the best of British and the best of New England. We have the streets of Shoreditch and the woods of Salem.

Now graphically it works well. Not too amazing right now, but the locations are filled with atmosphere (the streets of London and the red phone boxes, and the streets of a coastal town of America). Put it this way it runs fine on my laptop (Toshiba Satellite Pro L670-189 with 6 Gig RAM, and a ATi Radeon Mobility HD 5650 graphics card). So it's a year old but it works fine.

So the gameplay. First up. I hate most if not all MMOs on the basis of them all requiring you to grind. Now as a table top rper that just does nothing for me. Fuck that shit!

Now the basic combat mechanics is nothing special, no different to any other MMO. Select skills. Press to attack. Await cool down. Attack again.There are guns, close combat weapons and magic. There are items to equip like talismans and charms.

Now that all sound not very unique. Monsters of course act in the same manner and drop shit when killed.

What is different is the need to grind. So of course you get xp for killing monsters - but that is not the main way. Of course you get xp, and a lot, for completing missions. Now not all missions are the same. Some are go here, collect this, bring it back. Or go here, kill this thing, kill more, survive. But then they also have missions that require proper thought. They are quests that involve using your brains and solving riddles and finding the correct locations and items. This means that there are missions that don't rely on how powerful you are. It also means that team work is more useful to have more brains working on it. The exact same reason why I love Assassin's Creed 2.

Other cool things are that clues are give as in game artefacts. So things are written on pages of the phone book. Rather than just bland text. Also the game is not level based. Instead you just buy ranks in skills as you see fit and kit out with two weapons and so you swap between ranges.

So over all my experience with the game was great. Myself and my mate James essentially rped as Dean and Sam Winchester. So we had Google chat open on voice chat and were chatting through the clues as we battled our way to the next clue.

So roll on the next beta weekend.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Kalina and Yamato

It's not often that they sleep together like this

Sam looking great today.

Computers in my Life - Nerd from Birth - Part 5

 

 

About time I did the next one in this series.

 

University of course for me would be filled with computers and consoles. I remember that a room mate who was in the room next door on my floor of halls had bought with his first part of his student loan the PS2. I remember playing a lot of GTA3 on it and a few other games. I know the summer after my first year of uni was spent playing FFX as a friend back home also had the PS2.

 

In my second year of uni I of course got my own PC, which of course meant that I was now able to write stuff for roleplay on a more regular basis, plus be online a lot and take part gaming discussions.

But it was during my second year of uni that I got hold of a Xbox. Now this meant such games as Halo, and most importantly Silent Hill 2. Silent Hill 2 was an amazing game, that really put me on edge with it's horror and atmosphere. I did eventually complete the game to get the ultimate ending and to this day that game still freaks me out.

Another great game on the Xbox was Jet Set Radio Future. It was a stylish skater game, which blended elements of more serious skater type games with a more anime, cartoon, cell shaded look. Visually it was stunning. Gameplay wise it was so difficult. I did complete all of it but one challenge - echoing the issue I had with Treasure Island Dizzy on the Amiga (I completed the game all except for 1 gold coin).

 

 

The Xbox was a great bit of kit in the long run. I know many people who chipped it and turned it into a media centre. It was pretty cool to have it running and streaming movies off a pc. But I never did that with mine.

 

Of course the most important thing for me during university involving computers was my learning how to program. As part of my final thesis for my degree I was learning how to program in Fortran in order to modify computational chemistry programs. While I only had to spend 9 hours working on my thesis project I spent a lot more time on it learning to hack code, and learn other bits of programming languages. I was also generating data on large clusters and so really getting into the whole world of high performance computing. This is pretty much the start of my major geekdom into computers.

 

Next up Xbox 360, Android and Smart Phones.

 

 

Yamato Playing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53RvDqaZyCM&feature=youtube_gdata_player