Oh god no! Brink’s dead!

Maybe I should contact someone?

Or maybe just one more game of asteroid lander. I love this game.

OH YEAH! COME ON! You hear that Brink? … Brink?

So, I was at the laundrette today when Franklin Comes Alive popped up on random on my mp3 player. Apart from laughing out loud, this image instantly came to mind. If I had a brother in trouble, I would have called his (very good) lawyer to tell him not to testify.

In my freshers year at University I lived with several final year students, I remember them appearing to be much wiser and more mature than us freshers. I recall asking questions and expecting them to know everything.
It’s now less than three weeks before I’ll be returning to Guildford for my final year and it feels like nothing has changed. The time has passed so quickly.

I’m trying to overcome difficulties with finding a place to live in Guildford. I foolishly missed the on-campus accommodation date, thinking of the false promises of a placement year in industry. There was a significant lack of placements with some relevance to what I am interested in, and when I did apply I was met with competition from many other students. Now I’m stuck without a house, and not long to go. I’m sure it will work out though, even if it means having to travel for 5 hours a day for a couple of weeks before I find somewhere to live.

I’m feeling chipper though because of my recent purchase of an EeePC 1000H. As soon as ebuyer had them in stock I tried to buy one, however they kept closing my order however much I wanted to give them my money. I ended up buying from the-link instead.

I’m so impressed by the build quality and the size of the keyboard on the Eee. The unit’s footprint is a tad smaller than an A4 piece of paper, the screen is very clear and can be incredibly bright even from the most obtuse viewing angles. I am most pleased by the battery life. As an advocate of the fact that laptops, netbooks, notebooks and the like should do what they are designed to do, be mobile. 2 hour battery life from the regular budget laptop is far from useful on the go. I have managed to ween 5.5 hours with regular use, WIFI on and bluetooth off on my eee. This is good enough for a day of lectures.

I realise that it’s specifications aren’t going to win any performance awards, but it’s a netbook. It’s not designed to play the newest directx10 games or edit high-definition video, and that is reflected in its low price.

On another note, it has led me to collate as many old SCUMM games as possible and start playing them again using scummVM.

I’ll end with a query. If you run a surgery and are usually late or slow with your work, is it better to have or not to have a clock in your waiting room?

Merry Christmas all.

And to all, a happy <holiday name here>, courtesy of the Orange Box & Portal.

If you’re already rather inebriated due to Mulled wine and Port and happened not to notice, a Turret from Portal, some HL2 boxes, the HL2: Episode 2 gnome and all the Team Fortress Characters (check the tree) are there with the Companion Cube too. More pictures after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Dubbed Gmail 2.0 by some people, the new version boasts a needed update to the contact list, coloured labels in the inbox, pre-cached mail and a weath of information when you mouse-over contact names , such as recent conversations. The loading time is increased slightly when entering the inbox, but it is worth it for the joy of pre-cached mail.

If you can see an Older Version button in the top right, you are already trying out the new features. If you cannot see said button, try setting your language on the general tab of the settings to English(US). Mine was set on English(UK), after changing it to US all the new features appeared. The strange thing is now some words are spelt funny.

A necessary post about the fantastic game from Valve, Portal. To start off on a bad note, it’s disappointingly short, and pretty easy. The game and the advanced levels were completed a matter of hours after I received the Orange box through the post last week.

Now for the good; the different, interesting but yet simple, game style make the game so incredibly playable.

It’s fun and rewarding to spend a few minutes using the portal gun to try to jump over something and then realising a way of using momentum more effectively and flying to the goal. Momentum being conserved through portals, making them a fantastic ways to propel yourself. I wont say the game is physically realistic, I mean, there is a ‘portal gun’ voiding any realism on first glance, however, there is some loyalty to physics in motion and aspects of weight in the physics engine. Combining this with the abstract Portal device makes a wonderful mix that is very fun to play, making you think differently about the possibilities of moving yourself around and achieving the solution.

The puzzle elements never got to the point of frustration either, and the touches of humour lighten the mood and blanket the fact that there are you are almost alone in the ‘Apature Science’ laboratory.

Read the rest of this entry »