American logs

Birmingham airport was different to what I am used to. The secure area in Terminal two was small and oval, with a central island of shops selling alcohol, souvineers and perfume. The screens dotted around had a list of all the flights that would be leaving, and when they would be leaving, but no information as to where they would be leaving from..

Doors and gates were listed 25 minutes before departure time, at which time there was mad rush where everyone got up and searched frantically for ‘Door J’ and ‘Gate 2′..

There were a ton of schoolkids all dressed in red hoodies on the flight. They were bound for China and ms of them were pretty well behaved, must’ve been for a geography field trip or something. A boy called Ben sat nearby, so it was a little distracting hearing my name called out by the various kids and teachers.

Descending over Holland was fun, I wish I could’ve taken more pictures, but all electronic stuff has to be switched off (in case we crash and it hits someone, I was told - to be honest if we crashed having my camera hit Ben MkII in the face would be the least of my worries). There were tower blocks in clusters that looked like something out of CoD4 and some that were painted bright colours. Wide canals that just cut through the landscape with enough room to fit 10 narrowboats down.

Schiphol Airport was beautiful as far as airports go, large areas, tall ceilings, glass walls, well placed shops, well signposted. I would definitely go there again. They even had shops selling CLOGS. I found my gate, which was about a 20 minute walk through the terminal from where I got off. Each of the gates were separated by long conveyor-walkways (which I love walking on) which meant I could get from one gate to another in no time. I had a little time to waste so I headed back to one of the café’s and had a cheese and ham croissant and a cereal bar (classy, I know).

The flight itself was nine hours long, and it was a painful first two hours watching the little in-flight animation move the plane over the UK and into the ocean. I was in seat 11A, a window seat near the main boarding door, which seemed to be one of the few seats with zero leg room, with a big black box stuffed beneath the seat in front of me. Nevertheless I got up and moved my legs often enough, used my Zen, and watched The Matrix Revolutions (it still didn’t make a whole lot of sense).

Sitting next to me was a woman called Brenda, who had just flown to Amsterdam from South Africa the previous day, and was now heading back to detroit via Minneapolis. Brenda travels a lot and works for a company called the OCCE which manage water supply projects in Africa. She was cool, and encouraged me to travel lots.

Immigration was easy enough, the guy got my fingerprints and took a happy picture of me with his cheapo webcam, and asked me some stuff, including when I was planning to get married.

Enter aiiiirport, receive baggage, aquire a Jenna with a rose in her hand. Train to the city, bus to the apartment. Slow and relaxing night, messed up sleep patterns, delicious pizza..

I’ll have to blog about what I’ve done so far some other time.

Ammmerriiiccaaaa

Okay, hopefully I’ll remember to blog about my holiday here.  Just about to go and catch my flight, I’ve got everything packed

March 20th - 30th. Minneapolis. Bring it on!

Back to work

Back to work today, and I’m surprised at how easily I’ve slipped back into the routine. That said, it’s currently as quiet as it was before the Christmas break, with only one or two jobs filtering through to the web-team today. So now seems like a good time to write a blog.

New years, 2008 and such. Janus looks back at my successful 2007, and looks forward to 2008. The year in which I should get my hands on Starcraft II and Spore, and the year where I head to Minneapolis in March, and play host to my magnificent lady in June.

I’ve tried to make my 2008 resolutions measurable.

• 30 Minutes of dedicated exercise time per day January - March.
• 60 Minutes of dedicated exercise time per day April - June.
• 10 comics posted on my Vladimir site by the end of the year.

Simple, but those are two things I really want to get done, this year.

Pictured is Janus, who is also, and I quote..

“The potato-shaped moon of Saturn“

..according to the astronomy nuts at NASA. Though, if my potatoes were 190km in diameter, I would be worried dead.

Computer Woes.

My hard drive went sha-bang and lost a load of important files that, well.. Make everything work.  It’s the fourth in a series of random fuck-ups with my computer, each time a different flavour of destruction.  Be it software, motherboards, power supplies or indeed hard drives, I appear to have all of the luck when it comes to broken computer bits.

However, this is where working in an IT environment comes in handy.  Plug Full of Lead, fellow office worker, techie extraordinaire, and new 5punker has offered to beat the offending item with a stick of fixing until it works again.  Does mean that I can’t do much with my website till it gets back on its feet though.  So that’s a pain.

Deviant Tart

So, I’m posting on DeviantArt again, and slowly remembering why I left in the first place. It used to be somewhere where I could relate with similarly skilled ‘artists’ and post up some stuff. People would comment on things, albeit with smiley faces, but it was a pleasant community of creative people..

It now seems that unless you draw like a god, anime, furries or fan-art, there’s not much hope for you. Classic photographers and digital artists are swamped by the deluge of Final Fantasy and Pokémon fan art. There’s no hope for the artist who wants to do his own thing. Considering DA started up as a place to share custom skins for applications it’s come a long way, and arguably in the wrong direction.

I really want to put my stuff ‘out there’, and let people see it, but DA doesn’t seem to be the answer. However, I’m one step closer to fulfilling my 2007 resolution. I’ve signed up with 4uhosting.co.uk. I’ll be installing WordPress there tonight, and installing ComicPress on top of that. Vlad might well be on the way to his very own space on the webbernets, quite shortly.

Carrier has arrived..

The official Starcraft II website has just released footage of the brand new Protoss Carrier, modelled after the prototype Tempest airship that has since been scrapped.  It’s evident by the threads that immediately popped up on the Battle.net forums about the tempest, that people absolutely love the Carrier.  There’s just something about seeing a golden hive of interceptors loom over an enemy base before unloading and engaging.  The first time I saw a group of these Carriers was very much a wow! moment for me.

I anticipate at least one wow! moment in every game I play.  I’ve come to expect it, and I’m left dissapointed afterwards if I can’t recall one.

Prey had the huge expanse and maze of gravity platforms, all floating in mid air, connecting archways, miniature planets and walkways to each other.

Oblivion had quite a few.  That painting quest, where you go into a world of oil paints to fight trolls using turpentine.  The opening landscape you come across when you first emerge from the sewers, and the posotively terrifying end-quest where you have to fight the towering Daedric prince of destruction himself, Mehrunes Dagon.

Painkiller had the massive boss fights. Starcraft had the final push against the overmind. Half Life had the pit beast and its sequel had the hectic Strider battles and push up the combine tower to Breen’s office.  Empire at War had the Imperial AT-AT testing grounds.  Bioshock had.. Well.. Will you kindly?

Can’t wait to get my hands on those new Carriers..

The Website

Note to self.

1. Ditch current hosting company.
2. Sign up with Fasthosts.
3. Point UKReg to Fasthosts
4. Move WordPress blog to Fasthosts.
5. Get Comicpress.
6. Vlad it up.

Proflan III - The Aftermath

Grimmie is officially sleepy to the max, and not feeling too good for it.

Proflan is a fantastic thing. A gathering of 5punkers, their computes, and as much booze as they can carry down to Profhawking’s house. Games were played, airsoft guns were held and envied, movies watched, files shared, cakes decorated and greasy food eaten.

The following games were played at some point.

• Team Fortress 2
• Counterstrike
• Sourceforts
• Titan Quest
• Starcraft
• Tiberium Wars
• Supreme Commander
• Quake III

TheJockGit, Hehulk, TezzRexx and I arrived at lunchtime on Saturday, only to be greeted with fried egg and bacon sandwiches, from the marvellous CheeseAndHam. Machines were set up and filesharing occured. Saturday night contained Pizza and gaming till the very wee hours of the morning, Deathproof was watched, and the girl with the big lips very much appreciated.

Sunday involved more file sharing, more games, a rather fantastic chinese buffet, and my computer promptly committing suicide. CheeseAndHam prooved himself not only to be a top bacon chef, but also very skilled in fixing computers without having to obliterate them in the process. Daemon Tools is not in my ‘good book’.

Traffic on the M6 delayed our journey home by an hour.
JockGit is a star for ferrying us from Brum to Proflan.

Roll on Proflan IV!

Starcraftin’ across the universe

I got Starcraft in 1998. It was practically my first ‘real’ game on the PC. I remember seeing it on a full-page advertisement in some gaming magazine, and the image of that creepy purple Protoss face stuck in my head long enough for me to recognise it and scoop it up at the shops (after thorough play-throughs of the demo, which I adored.)

I played it religiously, trying my best to get past the starter-levels on each of the three campaigns usually to no avail, I didn’t have tactics or any sense of resource management and so I turned to cheats. As I cheated my way through the story I was drawn in further and further into the story but often missed huge chunks of in-game dialogue.

I played my way through properly once I was adept enough not to die in the first five minutes of the game, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I even had a makeshift clan (Oh the Fallen-Angels, wherefore art thou?) that I recruited random people in to (and later people from college). I trained myself up as best as I could, and then I joined 5punk.

And so I got XFire.
Suddenly I could tell how long I spent on any one game from February 2005 onwards. The program would completely disregard all of those hours I had invested in the game before getting the program, and would occasionally go down and stop recording my hours.

I played through Guild Wars (210 Hours) and Eve Online ( 247 Hours), MMOs with a big requirement for you to invest lots of hours into them. As I played each game, they took over from Starcraft, pushing it further and further down my most-played list. Until at last, yesterday at about 11:30pm, Starcraft broke the 248 hour mark, and regained its place at the top of my list. Long may it live at the most prestigious position I have on offer!

Now.. All I have to do it get Starcraft 2 to the 249 hour mark..

Team Fortress 2

Oh my, what a game.

They’ve really done Team Fortress Classic justice. TFC was one of the first games I played seriously, and probably my first real ‘online gaming’ experience. I hadn’t even played Starcraft online, the prospect of fighting against people that could be better than the AI was daunting.

TFC was different though, something you could only play online, so there was nothing to compare myself to. To my surprise, armed with my 56k modem and lighting-quick 14 year old reflexes I could actually kill people in this game. Learning the well practiced maps (2Fort, Well, Rock2) that everyone else knew like the back of their hand was exciting. I’d trail people around as a scout and see what they did, see what shortcuts they took, and what classes were best for each job.

I fell into different roles that I felt I was best at. On CTF maps my role was a defensive engineer and an offensive medic. I eventually became so well versed at these few maps that I was scooped up by a clan (=BD= - Blood Drawers) and went on regular practice sessions and games, I had to keep track of how long I spent playing and hand over money for the dial-up connection to my parents once I’d finished.

I learnt more and more, studied where the best place for sentries were, and what angle to jump off slopes to minimise fall-damage when carrying the flag. I even professed as an offensive engineer, capturing flags and returning to repair my gear.

And now here’s TF2 Beta.. I can experience this all over again, with beautiful new graphics, new abilities, new maps (which for the best part stay true to their origins). I can say I’m truly looking forward to playing this regularly.

(I’m even enjoying the Heavy, ssh.. Don’t tell anyone.)