Notes for future reference:
- The Sims 2 does not have Alyson Hannigan’s nose.
- It it is near-impossible to replicate real-life figures.
- Do not spend over an hour tweaking facial features. And in games.

It actually looks fairly decent up-close, but I’d love to see someone attempt a better version than this. Go on - you don’t even need the game ;)

I’m currently just a little way past this point in Half Life 2 - all hell just broke loose. It might be a spoiler if you haven’t completed the game, so don’t click it unless you want to! So far it’s probably the most beautiful FPS ever (although graphics range from lush vistas, cityscapes and environments to poorly textured and repetitive corridors), but it’s been pretty easy (on Hard..) and the combat still feels a little rough-around-the-edges. About on par with the first, though we’ll see how I feel at the end.

The image demonstrates the way that Valve have allowed all the characters to emote through facial expressions, gestictulations and general behaviour. Incredible stuff, and it’ll improve videogames a thousand-fold once everyone starts employing the same ideas (apparently Vampire: The Masquerade pushes the Source engine even further).

So it’s 1:00am in the morning, and you’re four hours in to a projected eight hour file transference marathon from your old PC to your brand new one. It’s taking a long time, but you’re on schedule - despite the fact that you’ve had to resort to using the (admittadly speedy) 250mb USB flash memory pen drive instead of either the wired home LAN or the wireless varient - both of which have decided to stop working. All that considered, you’re loving it.

So I’m anal, then (whoa nelly). I love laborious tasks like file copying and whathaveyou - it makes using the new PC (and Half Life 2, still not played it since Sunday afternoon) all the more exciting. It’s the anticipation before the event; the build-up. It’s like tantric sex, and it takes time*.

So consider the following happenstance: it’s 1:00am, you’re four hours into a file transference marathon, and you’re currently copying across [some - bashful ed.]gb of pron which you’ve amounted, but neglected to rip the majority of because you’re a sinning sinner who doesn’t back up quick enough. Enter Dad rear doorway. FUCK.
Alt-Tab. Close. Close.

“Hi.”
“Hi. I’m about to go to bed - how’s it going?”
“Great. Well, I’m about halfway really..”
“Working alright?” *sits down*
Ah, great. “Yeah, great.”

The files on the USB card are thankfully innocent looking - archived Usenet folders with names like “Series”. Phewf. Silence.. I load the flash card into the new PC and copy the archives there, dumping them unceremoniously in my root folder, but with enough panache that a tired father doesn’t notice the rertardness.

Flash pen into old PC, navigate AWAY FROM THE PRON. Good. Pick a folder, stop dithering. Ah, videos. Not porn. Click. Okay, copy the files.

After around 20 minutes of very sparse chit-chat, and several trips backwards and forth from PC to PC, the situation was getting to be a bit tense. I’d only a few more files in the Videos folder before I’d have to move onto my music, and my Dad had silently sat next to me whilst I worked with no real signs of leaving. Cute, thanks, but all I was thinking was: “If I don’t get that damn porn done tonight I’m fucked.” Then, the genius idea to end all genius ideas: I found the file I’d been looking for. This would push him over the edge. He kept saying he was going to bed, but this time he would go to bed:

Alyson Hannigan and Luke Perry - discussing theatre tour on Richard and Judy - VHQ, 12 minutes.wmv
File size: 250mb.

HAHA! No way was he going to sit and watch for 10 minutes whilst one single file slid languidly down the USB 1.0 (shit) cable to the flash card. I added, for extra effect: “Ah, I’ll have to watch this one too to test it out…”

Dad: “Right, I’m off to bed..”

Result. I farking love file-transfering. Cheers Hannigan.

* stolen from David Lynch saying something about Twin Peaks.

Erm, I had a massive blog post written out* and then blogger fucked up. Don’t shoot the messenger… [EDIT: fark, it did post it after all]

Coming soon: a post about Half-Life 2. I managed to delete (read: edit by accident) the post I made on Sunday when I first played it. DAMN YOUR EYES [Blogger].

LINK: http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Did you take the Steam survey? Over 1.1 million have so far, thus it proves a rather neat survey of the gaming community, too (however big it is 1m is a rather large chunk). The survey gathered information about your hardware setup, and it’s interesting to see how many of your peers share similar stats. With as little hubris as possible:

RAM - 1gb->1.5gb: 12,961 people, 1.10%
CPU - Above 3.7ghz: 582 people, 0.05%
Video Card Driver - nv4disp.dll: 580,677 people, 49.43%
Video Card - NVidia GeForce 6800GT: 17,308 people, 1.47%*
Processor - Authentic AMD: 554,018 people, 47.14%**
Free HD - Above 250gb: 1,942 people, 0.17%***
Total HD - Above 250gb: 72,533 people, 6.17%

* the leader being the Radeon 9800 series with 139,000
** Intel: 621,000. But we all know which is the best…
*** okay, so it’s a new PC and thus has uber-space, but still! Most people are untidy wassernames!

Oh yes indeedy.

And like that..it’s gone.

Cue new blog design. Big change from the old, which had become tiresome to use due to lack of CSS and kludgey code, and lacked a working comments system because the template had become utterly posessed by Blogger gremlins (all fixed now, so you can more effectively shun me). Shiny. Not quite sure just how I format the comments, though. Tips please.

The archive will return shortly, as will my links page (well, it’ll be created) - so two broken links up the top for the time being.

In other news I’m pretty damn gagging for a bit of Half-Life 2, not that the other sequel isn’t satisfying me. I guess I’m just a digital whore. Or a pimp. Anyway: comment on the new design; be nice - I can never quite realise the object of my desires due to lack of PHP knowledge (hence an IFRAME), but in terms of providing a perfectly servicable weblog…happiness. Without the hyenas (they scare me).

PS: this is amazing. Click link, watch video, make it.

CHO!

A quick post to remind readers that whilst the blog has lain (that doesn’t look right) fallow for the past two weeks, I have good excuses:

1) Halo 2. Nuff said*.
2) I’m redesigning it. The current version (offline) looks quite sexy, but I keep rethinking the layout every time I look at it - which is not very often because I’ve been on an eat/drink/sleep/Halo binge for the past week (it arrived early on Wednesday, so I got to feel special for about 14 hours before the rest of the world - excepting the US - got it. Rock.) So prepare for a small wait while I get that shizzle sorted out.

Half Life 2 arrives this week, how crazy is that? Hell, it might even arrive tomorrow for all I know ;) I’m super anxious to play it - though not at all hyped (edit: hah) since I never expected to be able to play it on my own computer (definition of outdated), but now imminent arrival of new beast PC this Friday has caused sudden influx of uber-hype. Hope it lives up to precedent set by Jim Rossignol’s 96% score in PCG: as ridiculous as the whole percentage shindig is, it’s notable for equalling the score gifted to the previous incarnation. Top stuff.

* or I could just as easily wax lyrical about just how freaking awesome it all is. Bar maps that allow laming in certain multiplayer modes, it’s been perfect. One of the best games ever.

“At issue here is whether the traditional way of reviewing games — i.e., listing features, documenting bugs, recounting a few experiences, and handing out a score — is a fundamentally poor way to review a game. Arguably, the gaming experience in totam (including adrenaline rushes, fits of anger and laughter, feelings of awe and revelation, and any number of other emotions; in short, the real reasons we play games) cannot easily be encapsulated by such a review. In light of the preceding, we may ask a few questions:

In certain circles, this new method of writing about games, dubbed The New Games Journalism, is gaining strength.”
[from Lobo @ EvilAvatar.com]

This article, linked to by Herr Gillen at his blog (of which you should be reading anyway), and now linked to by myself, is an articulate - if short - summary of the whole (new) New Games Journalism ‘movement’ pretty much kick-started by Gillen himself several months ago. Those who read this blog or know me will be aware that I was thoroughly vibed about the whole (faux) manifesto of NGJ at the time, and still am. Because, as Tyranny puts it in the first reply to Lobo’s post: “Journalism tells stories; takes us to different parts of the world and attempts to give us the experience of being there.” I can’t say it much better than that.

This summary of Lobo’s has sparked an intelligent debate off @ EvilAvatar in the comments, and it makes interesting reading for those tuned into this current journalism (psuedo) movement. Awesome stuff.

In other news…my new re-install of Windows 98 (you’re okay to bristle, but hey: it’s better than 3.x, and much better than the godawful anti-user ‘95. Got the t-shirt for those, thanks. New PC soon anyhoo..) seems to have forgotten what the font Georgia looks like. Which is what this page is formatted in. It now appears as plain old Times. And I’m buggered as to why it’s doing that because Georgia is bloody damnit present and correct in /Fonts. So I’ll be redesigning this blog over the next week or so, because it’s now one ugly mutha. And that just ain’t right.

Hello folks. Over the past few days my PC gradually fell apart after new video drivers were installed (long story), and it got to the stage where it would either BSOD continually or fail to reach Windows (even longer story).

But it’s all fixed now! After several re-installs… *whimper*

Anyway, so I’ve just got down to doing *something* on the computer, and I start to get all the settings changed back to the way I like it: resolution - check, appearance - check, display colours - ch…well. Erm. You know Windows asks you if you want to restart or simply refresh when you change to 16bit to 32bit, or whathaveyou? Probably it doesn’t ask you that. This is because the first EVER time you try to change colours, it also has a tickbox saying “do not ask me again” for whatever you choose. So I ticked that, naturally. Only when I clicked OK it had reset back to “you must restart every time you want to change colors (not annoying at all)” mode. Ohhhhhhhhhhshit. I clicked Apply: “you must restart if you wa-…” Fuck. Fuckit.

20 minutes later: after trawling through THE REGISTRY in the hope that somewhere there was a yes/no (0/1) value for the “do not ask again” tickbox, I found this key: DynaColorChange. I set the value to 1, and hey-presto-I’m-a-freaking-genius: I can merely refresh the display to change colour settings. Brilliant.

Today’s lesson: think before you tick that box. Applies elsewhere, too.

also: blog entries for the past week featuring election guff (I stayed up all night. Fucking Ohio.) and other topics are saved, somewhere. I’ll re-instate them here soon.