Merry Christmas!

(Picture shamelessly stolen from diary.shamini.no)

48 seconds of christmas

http://atvs.vg.no/player/?id=20372

Your house, fubar in less than a minute. Be careful about what you put next to your tree, kk?

Offspring - Hammerhead

Offspring is one of the bands I keep coming back to, like Coldplay and Kent. Sure, their sound is a very stereotypical rock sound, but that's some of the strength in it. Their sound is just a rocking beat, not some demanding array of new experimental sounds. Music with experimenting is cool too of course, but a bit of both is even better. Their mix of politically active music with songs that just take the piss (Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)) is genious.
Some people like to listen to mellow music if they feel sad or some such, I need the opposite, I need musix which inflates my ears and floats me to the top (now how's that for a metaphor?)

World of Sinkcraft

My favourite parts about the multiplayer game World of Warcraft are the singleplayer parts.

Like exploring new content, levelling up an alt all by myself, or grinding a reputation thingy.

However, exploring new content is limited in availability by itself, and levelling up alts gets tedious after a while.

And while vanilla wow allowed for reputations to be farmed while doing the same quest over and over again, this is pretty much gone. These quests are now limited to once per day.

Yes, you may grind, but only at Blizzard's specified speed. Or you may not at all, it's only doable through multiplaying in instances (fair enough, it's an mmo, but the good bits was still the singleplayer stuff.

I read a review of wow today, one that was about 6 months old. The author called WoW a well-made time-sink. And I think that's rather fitting.

I also dislike how padded it's all starting to feel. It's like there are no sharp edges you can get yourself cut on, everything is rather easy and uncomplicated. It used to be hard doing instances. Or at least demanding. I remember learning all the lvl 60 instances with the Hamsters. I was rather new to all of it, and whenever I could pull off a clever move and at least temporarily save the group for a wipe, I felt really good about it. Success! 

I had to focus, and everyone had to know their roles. If someone did a false move, it all went really bad really quickly. Now you can just watch TV and play wow in the background. We hopped through most of Naxxramas 10-man in a few nights, some of the bosses went down on the first go. Out of the 13 we've done, 4 of them gave us real trouble.

Which is why Conan's failure was so depressing, I was really looking forward to a new game, learning it all from scratch again. Maybe Warhammer wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Although, singleplayer. While online games have their benefits of social fun, there's something magical about delving deep into another world, all by yourself, imagining yourself as a warrior in an old temple, or the most powerful emperor in the world, or just the random pirate trying to save his girlfriend. There's no one there to shatter your dream, it's all yours to behold.

Point is, World of Warcraft is a well-made time-sink. Well-made indeed, and I know so many people there, but maybe I'm just better off without it.

That means I'll have to find something else to do. Hmmm.

Weeeeell, I was looking for a picture of some video

game hero looking at the horizon, and then I kinda

stumbled over this and uhm, uh, erhm.

Genious!

Cheers for linking me this Alex, you funny fucker you.

Ugh

I live such a weird life. Some would call it lonely, I'd say it's lonely at times. It's possible to be alone without being lonely, some people don't get that.

Anyway, weird life. First off, I spend too much time playing video games. Like when I halfway realise that I can't "play again" in real life. You get one go and that's it. I don't mind dying at the end of it, I don't mind aging either.

But I'd like to try again. Try out other choices, other lives. What is it like to be a soldier in Somalia? Probably bad, but still. How does chinese gold farmers feel about their lives? What is it like to be a girl? What is it like to be dumb? I've always been fairly good at understanding things, what is it like not to? To pretty much never understand what the teacher is talking about, and just feel dumb? Not that I understand everything, but in general.

And that leaves me with thinking how dreadful it is to choose an education. I get the chance to educate myself, and the government pays for it. Assmazing. But no matter what I think about becoming, I can't help thinking about the doors I close. Becoming a game designer will be cool, but engineering gets really tempting whenever I do technical stuff, and picking up a newspaper makes me want to study politics. 

I think I possess all the geek qualities.

• I'm not fit, I'm skinny (geeks are allowed to be fat too).
  
• Most of my friends are online. I know the real name of some of them, others I only know as Darkshrimp, Kharr or Moonies.
  
• I know computer stuff, and I can write in computer languages.
• I wear glasses.
• I get really shy around girls (It's offensive to ask girls out, fyi)
• I live by myself (not a requirement, but it helps)
• I look down when I walk. (makes it easier being lost in thought and still avoid things on the ground)
  
• But most importantly: The dream about saving the world, or anything special. A town, a maiden, a particularly well made cupboard.

Ah well, maybe I missed out on a few, let me know if you can come up with anything:)

However, I don't really feel bad about my life. I enjoy playing games, and being by myself lets me think about things. Like writing this post.

Some bloke outside the shopping mall handed me a flyer the other day. There's a picture of Jesus on a cross on the front, and the text says "This brochure should be read by everyone above age 12. It concerns everyone, regardless of belief".

I read a bit in it, and EVERYTHING is about Jesus. I get so provocated by that.

I wish I could do magic.

Iraqi reporter, throwing his shoes at Bush. Genious. Now they want to kill the reporter.

Webpage, I has eet

http://home.lamegunner.com

I'm making a webpage! Woooo.

At the moment I'm just doing it in xhtml and CSS. At the moment my style sheet is really simple. The plan is to add a few more pages (since the idea of having a separate style sheet is defining multiple pages) and some more definitions, make it all nice and kinky.

When that's done I'll move over to xml and make something even nicer there.

Note to Foss: I found the error. I didn't realise the index page should be inside a 'www' folder. Did that and now it works nicely.

Here's Revenge of the Nerds:

Sorry

Can't think of anything to write about atm.

But I can tell you that I'm currently trying to learn a bit of xhtml, CSS and after that: xml.

Then I'll have a look at some C, C++, Lua and if I can get anywhere with some wow addon coding I might look at javascript too, just for giggles (not for addons). Combined with exams and gaming addiction I should have plenty to not do for a while.

Yes, I'm getting married. Yes, those are condoms.