Second! SECOND DAMNIT!

Quite alot to write about as I haven’t really written anything in a while. I have a few things to talk about, firstly my cake making of late as for some reason I’ve started making cakes almost every day. I started off on friday by making a Victoria Sponge on friday. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all that great because the flour in my house wasn’t marked so I ended up putting in plain flour instead of self-raising flour. Needless to say, it was flatter than Rob’s vocals (haha, I made a funny at someone elses expense!). Yesterday I decided to come back from that bit of a failure and I made a Currant Cake. I didn’t make the same mistake as the day before and it came out beautifully. Here it is!

Yes it was tasty and no, there isn’t any left!

After the cake, I then went out to a charity quiz thing with a few of our mates. You know how at every pub quiz there’s always that one obnoxious annoying team in the corner that’s loud and no one wants them to win? Well, that was us yesterday. We were the youngest and loudest team there. Everyone else in the quiz was atleast double our age and since they were all firm believers of Christianity, they probably didn’t want to hear some of the crude stuff coming out of our mouths, let alone some of our team name suggestions. After turning down some suggestions by some team mates; such as, “Our team is better than your mum”, or “The Maddie McClan”, we decided to settle on “In Loving Memory of Oli Whybra”, as our 8th member Oli couldn’t make it.

Being the most annoying team in the corner, we were set on winning and bringing back to the Friday Night Club our trophy. But as it turns out, maybe the other player’s prayers were answered and we didn’t win. We came a measly second place so therefore missed the chance to win the trophy. We scored 62/70 and the winning team scored 63/70. It was very close which made the loss even worse. We could almost taste the beer we were going to put in it to drink.

However, there was one thing that did annoy us. The question was “Where was Beethoven born?”. The answer at the quiz was Germany and we put Austria. The reason why this annoyed us is because Germany didn’t actually exist then and it was just a collection of indepent states. He was born in Bonn in the Electorate of Cologne but then moved to Austria. To me this makes him Austrian or Cologian, not German. As Rob put it so well earlier, I’ll just repeat his point. If you’re born in say Queen Mary’s Hospital but then the next year the knock it down and build a garbage dump, you wouldnt say “I was born in the Queen Mary garbage dump”, you’d still say “I was born in Queen Mary Hospital”. A bit annoying as this would have made it a tie or even a win for us :(. We did however get 10/10 for Sport, the only team to manage this but we also got a bit of a booing 🙂

Today wasn’t so great as I had work in the morning and I was pretty damn tired. I also managed to burn my arm whilst getting some rolls out of my oven on the tray which hurt like a bitch. Well, my day can only get better as later on tonight I’ll be heading down the pub for a pub quiz with my rents, Rob and my mate Aaron. Let’s win some money from alcoholics yer!

P.S. We did win the 2nd Place Pineapple Prize. I’ll post the picture of us with it when I get sent it.

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Portal 2 News – Possible spoilers

Well, it definately looks like Portal 2 is in the pipeline. The following was posted in the Portal’s myspace blog and has some very revealing information.

“Kotaku supposedly got their hands on a private-ish casting call for Portal 2 that was put up at the industry-only site, Breakdown Express. The casting call calls for an actor to play “Cave Johnson” in Portal 2.

He is a man in his early 60s, is the founder and CEO of a “successful applied science company, a self-made billionaire who’s learned to trust his gut and doesn’t sweat the details, and is a big picture thinker.” The casting call continues on to describe him.

(Click to enlarge)

“He might not know how science works, but he knows how people work. used to getting what he wants. Extroverted, enthusiastic and opinionated. High energy: life is an adventure he’s happy to be on. A born salesman, a leader, an evangelist. People trust him, even when his plans are clearly dangerous.”

The call continues on saying that the character goes from sidekick to “principle antagonist” (emphasis is mine). As time progresses, Cave starts to “lose his grip on his humanity” and proceeds to “isolate himself from the people around him [and] he loses touch with reality.”

If this is at all true, this is the very first morsel of Portal 2 news that is known publicly. All images and information come courtesy from Kotaku.”

Later on in today, some more news was revealed, along with some dialogue of the aforementioned character Cave Johnson:

“Kotaku once again wrangled up a few more details about Portal 2, Cave Johnson, and well… Read on. Beware, there are spoilers contained below! These are potential, real snippets from the dialog for Portal 2.

You’ve been warned.

“The script samples we saw for the Cave Johnson role indicate that the Aperture CEO and “eccentric dead billionaire” is, well, already dead, living on in simulated computer form. He tells an unnamed rookie test subject via loudspeaker that “As of this mornin’ yer old buddy Cave has been resurrected inside of a computer. And I never felt better!” acting as this entry’s GlaDOS – possibly that prototypical GlaDOS, as theorized earlier – encouraging the player to continue the testing while waxing philosophical about the afterlife.

“I been thinkin,” the script reads, “Heck, suspended as I am in this inky purgatorium, I got nothin’ to do but think. What if them engineers didn’t do me no favors pourin’ me into a computer? What if they denied me my final reward?”

All information was used from CS-Nation: http://www.csnation.net/”

Alot of information to take in I suppose, but it definately makes me excited to know that Portal 2 is actually being made. I know there has been alot of talk about how awesome a Portal 2 would be and that they may be making it, but these latest details show that it really is in the works. What intrigues me however, is the direction in which they will take it. I can see there being puzzles involving moving water as that to me would be a great new direction for the puzzles. From the dialogue it looks as if there will be a continuation of the “testing” that was the whole premise of the first game. Although the testing from the first game actually never got old and is still a fun thing to play through again, I just think that there will have to be more in the next installment. I have good faith in Valve however; what with the plot development of Apeture Science in Half Life 2 Episode 2, and I’m pretty sure that this will even out do Portals. Hard to imagine I know.

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WoW – Wrath of the Lich King – Death Knight starting gear

As a WoW player I am highly excited about the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. The Alpha stage of testing for WoTLK started a month or so ago and has now come to an end. However, many players have downloaded the Alpha client and have been on private servers to leak screenshots and pieces of information from the Alpha client. Over the last week alot of screenshots have been posted up on my realm’s private forum and there has been alot of information gathered from this.

Now it’s great to see what the Death Knights starting gear looks like and what all their various spells etc. are, but I was curious to know the actual stats of the starting gear. A good fellow over at Terenas Tavern took the time to compile the and screenshot the various starting gears’ stats. I might well be the only person interested in this, but I’ll post it up anyway.

(Click to enlarge)

(Cheers Decado)

Looking at the stats, it looks like Blizzard are certainly pushing players to start out as the melee dps spec. Not surprising considering this will probably be the best spec for leveling for Death Knights, but it also makes me wonder about how different will their itemisation really be compared to warriors or retri pallies. At the moment it looks like they may be chasing gear that many Warriors and Pallies will be after too. But I actually think that this is merely gear to start you off. There will undoubtedly be +shadow dmg gear to lure the DKs in and this will most likely also be reflected in the Tier gear at level 80. I hope that there will be a better distinction between DK and Warrior gear in the future, but I guess only time will tell.

Bring on the beta.

(Damn I wish I was in the beta)

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Flight of the Conchords – Backwards!

Hey world.

Well, this post is purely dedicated to the Flight of the Conchords, but in particular, one of their songs. If you haven’t seen or heard these guys, then you’re missing out as they are pretty damn awesome. Their album came out just over 3 weeks ago now (I think) and it has been an enjoyable listen. However, in one of their songs; Prince of Parties, there’s a section that sounded like there could be a backwards message in it. So, I recorded the section and then reversed it, and sure enough, there are a few words.

Now, before you start thinking it’s another Stairway backwards section, it’s more like the Tenacious D “Donkey crap” section. So here you are, a quick video I made with the section being played forwards and then backwards.

ZANY ZEBRA!

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Sorry

I want to say sorry for not posting alot over the last few days. I’ve just not had any time at my PC and have spent my time doing other stuff. Guess Who Round 3 is over now and you can see who the characters were and who won by following this link.

So you may be wondering what I’ve been up to since the last time I actually posted. To be honest though, I’ve not been doing a great deal. I’ve mainly been spending my days playing Badminton or Halo 3 with Rob. The weather outside is lovely which means badminton is an awesome choice. However, after an hour or so, hayfever kicks in and we have to retreat to the safety of the inside of our house. I am pretty happy with my badminton and Halo 3 progress as it stands, as Rob and I got a 114 hit rally going and I am now up to Skill 33 in Team Doubles (although my highest is 36 in Team Slayer). Construct and Blackout are our maps, I dare you to challenge us!

On friday night, we had some mates round for some 8 player Halo funz. To start off, myself, Rob and Tom (all good people) along with Matt W (he’s OK) all played on one team against the not so good people. Rob H, Aaron, Matt B and James got a good ass pounding by our constant 50 – 9 wins and then came crying in the other room asking for a team change or they can’t be assed to play. So, in the spirit of things, I swapped team and took Matt W with me. They then got Rob H and Matt B. It might seem like a good swap as we swapped 1 reasonable player and 1 awesome player (me :D) for 2 not so good players. The only problem however, was that atleast Rob had Tom and they could communicate properly. I had no one who knew the maps well enough to make calls or had anyone good enough to BR down someone I had put to one-shot. This meant we lost quite heavily and really only managed to keep it relatively even when Aaron hid; an activity to replace his other activity of dieing.

We all eventually got bored and found that the other team had rinsed the Pringles that I bought and then moved onto poker. That’s pretty much how my friday went. I went to college to start off to get something signed but ended up getting into a talk about Habermas with my politics teacher but was promptly put down by my media studies teacher saying that infact, Timmy Mallet’s philosophy is greater than Habermas’. He then finished him off by saying “ahh well… your face!”. I then went to tescos to buy the aforementioned Pringles and then pretty much played Halo 3 from 3pm til 11pm. All in all, a good day.

Sunday however was shit as I had work in the morning.

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Guess Who 3 – And a bit of something else

As promised, here is this day’s Guess Who. I know I have already posted a Round 3 on here before but well, I explained it in an earlier post so just read that. This one could be easy, but also could be tricky. One of them is relatively easy (I mean, proper easy) but the other is a bitch. So I wish you the best of luck. I also want to congratulate Daedalis from TerenasTavern for winning the last Guess Who and he wins a Point! These points don’t actually mean anything other than acting as a reliable way to boost your e-peen. But yer, here’s Guess Who Round 3 and I wish you the best of luck. As always, comment or post in this thread on TT who you think they are and from what game(s). Good luck!

I was going to post some more stuff about what I’ve been up to, but there’s Halo to play and time to perfect the Goose Jumping for the small LAN I’m having tonight 🙂 Should be alot of fun and I’ll say more on it tomorow!

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Guess Who Shakeup

I’ve decided to make a few changes to the Guess Who format yet again. These changes aren’t due because the game sucks or lacks anything, but purely to help myself get organised. Seeing that I post the Guess Who game both on here and on TerenasTavern.co.uk, I’ve decided to go to the numbering that I am using on TerenasTavern. This means that although the last one on here was Round 3, the next one will also be Round 3 so as to match the Round numbering on TT. This is purely to keep my files organised but also because the TT lot are more active in this game than anyone reading here 🙂

But yer, the lot at TT have already guessed the characters correctly (see pictures below) and the next 2 characters will be up tomorow. Some people requested more PC characters, which is fair enough, but PC Gaming isn’t my forte but I’ll try my best. So anyway, more from me tomorow on what I’ve been up to today but at the moment, im preoccupied with the TV 😀

Zelda and Tingle!

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Guess Who 3

Well, it’s that time of the Wednesday evening when I get to post this day’s Guess Who. Like I said in my earlier post, there will be more than one character to guess. In fact, there are two! These characters should prove easier to guess than the previous one, so don’t be shy and leave me a comment of who you think they are!

Good luck!

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Revising

As the title says (and the odd picture I drew of some weird creature that’s revising (it was meant to be a dog but looks more like ET’s retarded half-brother)), I am revising. Well, not right now as I’m writing this but my plans for the day revolve only around revising. Now, I know revising helps for tests, but I have always considered it cheating to be honest. Tests are meant to test you on what you know, not what you have looked at 2 days before the exam and have managed to remember on a short term basis. It does help, but I still can’t get past the feeling that it is cheating. Sure, in exams such as Politics, revising isn’t going to help you completely in the test as some of the test is based on your ability to express what you have been revising in a well written and co-ordinated manner. But with exams such as Computing where they are looking for one or two line answers, you can revise it all and sail through the exam from remembering it, not knowing it.

Another thing that annoys me about exams is that they only test you on about 5-10% of the entire syllabus. Now to me, that’s not the best way to test someone. Sure I might not know about vectored interupts, but ask me about the other 90% and I might pass awesomely. At the end of the day, your best bet is to revise (cheating) all of the module and hopefully get lucky on the bits you understand the most. So all tests are about is putting in a little bit of effort and then getting lucky. Meh, just shows my hate for tests.

On to something more fun though. Last night on Halo, I finally managed to get a Perfection. Yer, go me! Sure it was on Social Slayer with 3 friends against total noobs and I whored up in the Ghost for 16 kills, but I still got my first Perfection and Running Riot. I do feel a bit bad though, as the game before, one of my friends was one kill from getting an Extermination. We were both BRing one down and I should have stopped to let him get it but I carried on as I was crazy for kills. So this is my apology Clarky, I owe you for it 😦

Looks like we’ll just have to stay up til 1am again in Social Slayer til you get it again 😀

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So yer

I’m mid Halo session with Rob (he’s paused to have a poo…..) and I’m bored waiting for him. So I’ve decided to take his poo break as an opportunity for me to write a quick blog post. To start with, I’m still kind of disappointed no one managed to guess Ridley. My next Guess Who shall be alot easier than the last character and I expect people to get it relatively quickly. I’m thinking of expanding the idea to have multiple characters on one bit and you’ll have to guess all the characters. This means I can include some easier ones along with some harder ones, gives everyone an opportunity to take part.

So about Rock Band. I’ve decided to ditch the RB Guitar and I am now back to using the Guitar Hero II Explorer. And to be honest, I’m glad I have. Sure the RB Guitar feels and looks more like a real guitar, but it makes it alot harder to play well on. The buttons are wider and need to be pressed harder, making hammer-on and pull-off solos harder than they should be. It’s an added annoyance to these types of solos so I’ve decided to abandon it all together. Anyway, I think I should get back to revision Halo as Rob is getting restless as he has returned now and he might fetch his feces to throw at me.

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