Whittlings

Whoops!

Estel — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:51:30 +0000

Soo, I’m well back and well rested from a great trip to California. I’ve finally gotten around to uploading all of my photos, though tagging the final 40% of them just became a bit to much of a chore, so I didn’t bother. In any case, I’d only feel obliged to geo-tag them all afterwards too; which would take forever.

My previous post was very brief simply because typing on the PSP is very slow. Think texting, and then half the possible speed. However, a decision to buy a rather pretty PSP (with a lovely Final Fantasy logo) on it was entirely justified by its support of Skype. O2 roaming charges to the US are an entirely ridiculous £2 per minute to make a call, and £1.50 to recieve one; but using Skype (which was available in nearly all of the hotels that we stayed at), cut that down to pittance.

Regardless, some photos from my time in California are below, enjoy:

For the summer, I’ve somehow winded up with working night shift back at Sainsburys for two nights a week. Having lost my letter, it was the only possible vacancy that they had left; and there’d have been no way I’d have taken it were it not for the £1.50 premium per hour. The main downside is, obviously, that it screws my already poor sleeping patterns even further. Boo.

I’ve also finally gotten around to playing MGS4, and am working through it slowly; not at all helped by the fact I sleep through nearly every day. Tomorrow is also being reserved for playing Pixeljunk: Eden, which lots of people seem to be raving about. I’m shallow enough to be drawn in by the prospect of Remote Play and Trophies (!!!), so it’s fortunate it’s fun too. I’m not exactly getting very far through the trophies in Super Stardust HD.

In other gaming; i34 is getting underway up in Stoneleigh Park in a couple of weeks time; and it has finally been confirmed as the venue for i35 in November. I’m now making it a priority to make as many people as possible going; namely compsoc, as we’re local anyway, and DiVAS for some silly pissup. Yay for Stoneleigh!

Wordpress updated to 2.6; though I made a booboo when clearing unmoderated spam comments and accidentally deleted every single comment. Oh well.

Holiday blog

Estel — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:54:56 +0000

There are several things I have learnt this past week:
Wireless internet is more essential in a hotel than a colour TV; California suffers from fires; PSP Skype is the absolute win; and July fourth is not a good time to holiday.

How not to code an IRC bot

Estel — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:07:56 +0000

20:46 * pedantic adds white rum, cococunt cream, pineapple juice and ice for Susanita
20:46 -!- mode/#theonering.net [+b *!*@cpe-24-27-57-176.austin.res.rr.com] by Barliman
20:46 * Barliman Is Frowning At pedantic
20:46 -!- pedantic was kicked from #theonering.net by Barliman [banned:pedantic]
20:46 * Barliman Drags pedantic By The Leg To #theonering.net’s Door And Says Wait Here
[...]
20:59 -!- mode/#theonering.net [+o Cavaille-Col] by ChanServ
20:59 -!- mode/#theonering.net [-b *!*@cpe-24-27-57-176.austin.res.rr.com] by Cavaille-Col
20:59 -!- mode/#theonering.net [-o Cavaille-Col] by Cavaille-Col
20:59 -!- pedantic [pedantic@cpe-24-27-57-176.austin.res.rr.com] has joined #theonering.net
20:59 -!- mode/#theonering.net [+b *!*@cpe-24-27-57-176.austin.res.rr.com] by Barliman
20:59 -!- pedantic was kicked from #theonering.net by Barliman [banned:pedantic]

21 Steps from Heaven

Estel — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:17:19 +0000

Since Perplex City was put on “indefinite hold” a couple of years ago, I’ve been following and adoring the work of Adrian Hon, it’s lead creative developer; mainly in the hope of seeing if he’s working on another ARG, but also because of how innately interesting almost all of his works turn out to be. Most recently, they’ve been working with Penguin Books on developing We Tell Stories, a project which seems to be experimenting with form of story telling which uniquely uses the Internet and resources on the Internet as it’s medium. Their first story released yesterday, was written by Charles Cumming and uses Google Maps to tell a short story. Adrian gives an overview of his thoughts on its inception here.
It’s a great idea that’s been well implemented, and is well worth a read.

Tekken 5 Rumble?

Estel — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:37:43 +0000

Namco will soon be re-energizing the PS3 version of Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection with a new update coming March 18. The update is set to bring on a few changes by adding gameplay modes, DualShock 3 rumble support, and doing a little patching up of things all around.

The most notable addition to Tekken 5: DR is the Pickup Match Mode that let’s players continuously fight new opponents without having to switch back to the matching room. This change will probably make the experience feel more arcade-like as there’s a quicker transition from match to match. You can also change your match search settings after the brawl, just in case you want to face another type of opponent. Other tweaks call on the ability to create/display names for rooms, an added flag option for rooms which toggles certain search/fight conditions, an adjustment to the point allotment system, and match results are now unrecorded when Rank Match is set to off.

Strange. Having just gotten back from University, and fully armed with a brand-new via-eBay imported DS3, I decided to buy Tekken 5 (more because it wasn’t worth it with only the one controller). Rumble is quite definitely fully functional.

Source: PS3 Fanboy

Happy Pi Day!

Estel — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:30:15 +0000

Multiwinia

Estel — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:55:49 +0000

Two years ago, Introversion released Darwinia, and it was an amazing game that made a lot of people very happy.
What made me even happier was the announcement and much more recent beta-test of Multiwinia (it was announced some time ago…) of the title as it moves towards release. Darwinia was apparently originally designed as a multiplayer title, so it seems strange that it’s taken quite to long to bring to multiplayer fruition.
Still, the game does look pretty absolutely awesome, and I can’t wait to play it.

Progcomp

Estel — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:59:44 +0000

The University of Warwick Computing Society has just started its second programming competition of the academic year. Prizes look awesome! Shame I can’t code.

My desk

Estel — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:45:31 +0000

The “theft” chain is allegedly now rather silly. It’s not as if this was prompted by another similar post, or anything.

My desk contains, clockwise from left, my PC speakers and monitor, various plugs and adapters, a Star Wars book “Bloodlines”, my phone, an MP3 player, tissues, some questions on integration, a torch, calculator sans-batteries, various pieces of misc. work, my laptop, Bioshock, my mouse, the work I’m on at the moment, a new pen and some Fanta. My shelves have a few books and games on. The vodka… isn’t mine. The vinegar is. Honest.

omgoogle Earthquake

Estel — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:41:42 +0000

I would have blogged earlier, but we’ve just spent half an hour sitting around hammering refresh on BBC news.

That was pretty pretty awesome. I was sitting here, and felt my desk start to vibrate under my knee. I thought I was getting the jitters, but when the whole room shook when I removed my knee; it became clear that it wasn’t.

Looking out in the corridor and seeing everyone coming out with looks of shock and amusement on their faces was also quite neat.

BBC. USGS. On the off chance that you haven’t seen them.

BBC News online was particularly fun. Within ten minutes, the news articles on quakes in the past 6 years came to the top of most read pages on the site. Over the past 40 minutes, traffic to news.bbc.co.uk has increased 43%.