Super Smash Brothers Brawl

Oh, wow. He's gonna get so flamed for this.

Meet the Scout, Tom Francis is pissed.

So, Meet the Scout came out today. I enjoy it, but in response (Since Pentadact thinks it's not so good), Pentadact decided to put up a story about how he got pwned one day playing as a Scout.

I have nothing to say

Sadly. It seems that whenever I get the ability to say what ever I want with no consequence, I'm still content to keep it in my head. It's a funny thing about me: I refuse to ramble when I can, as in when I have a good opportunity too.

Stupid People and How It's Made

A group of four on Cash Cab was asked "Palmistry is the prediction of the future based on what part of the body?" and they needed about 5 minutes and help from someone one the street to get it right. I'm not making this up. They eventually said "Palm". Wow. So, Palmistry is predicting shit based off my PALM? This is news to me. I always thought it was the head! My, how silly I am.

And How It's Made sucks me in and doesn't let me go. That is all.

50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time

They just don't have Rick James Pt. 2 or the Silly Job Interview from Monty Python.

Good stuff though.

Mathmeticious

Oh dear.

Uwe Boll and his movies

So, Uwe Boll said that if a million gamers signed a petition, he would stop making movies. And guess what? Such a petition appeared. And what was his response?



Hm. Only genius, eh?

Valve and Updates

So you may or not have heard that there is a major patch for TF2, a game by Valve coming out, on April 15th or 16th. Hm. Since this is the second delay, this is about the most trustworthy prediction. You see, Valve has a...history of really bad delays. First was the original Half-Life game, which was scrapped when it was done the first time so as to make it even more awesome. Yeah. They were "unhappy" with what they had made, and re-did the whole thing from the ground up. Yeah, again. Gives you a good idea of what kind of history we're working with here.

Next was Team Fortress 2, although it is technically latest in our timeline, so we'll cover it last.

So actually next is Half-Life 2, originally slated for early 2004, was actually shown at the E3 (A major gaming convention) that year, by Valve, and by Gabe Newell the quote-unquote "CEO" of Valve. Gabe saying it was coming out in 2004 was amazing. But, a...Russian hacker, I believe, managed to hack the source code and leak it to the internets. Shit. This forced Valve to re-do everything again so that people couldn't get spoilers on the story points. Thus, the game was released in 2005. And, yes, we did rejoice.

Half-Life 2: Episode 1 is the next link in the chain of betrayal by Valve to us loyal gamers. Episode 1 is the first in section of episodic sequels to Half-Life 2. In short, they delayed this one again. Despite the fact that it was about 5 hours long it took about the same amount of production time put into Half-Life 2. It made no sense, all they had to do was make new maps, make new animations, and record some more dialogue. Guh.

And the Orange Box is the latest major delay. The Orange Box was meant to come out summer of 07, and actually spring of 07 before that. The Orange box contained the possible cause of the curse on this one's release date (besides having been made by Valve) is that it contained TF2

Team Fortress 2 had been cursed until it was released. Just to help this make sense, we had been waiting for 9 years for Team Fortress 2. 9. Fucking. YEARS! It was all because we originally had TF, a Quake mod, and when Valve bought the people (Their company, not the people as slaves) they announced a sequel and made Team Fortress Classic to tide us over till TF2 was released. Great. The reason it kept being delayed is because they kept coming up with excuses to change design. First it was a regular sequel to TFC, then it got set in the Half-Life Universe, then...It disppeared. Sure, it was mentioned every now and then, but there were no major announcments for a while. Then we saw something in 2006. It was a simple trailer, showcasing very stern, 1950's cartoon style characters. But we later got another, slightly updated glimpse, but the Soldier still looked like some stupid Red Shirt. Sadly, death noises sounded idiotic, and the Scout had the most retarded weapon in existence. The fucking nail gun. Luckily, the earliest glimpse of what we know and love as TF2 today was in the Meet the Heavy video. What was great was that the game had lost some of that sternness of the characters. And later that year, Meet the Engineer came out. Awesome. And of course, Meet the Soldier. Both highlighted the humor the game was going for, and it was perfect. At this point, most of us who pre-ordered the Orange Box off of Steam were playing the Beta for TF2, and it was perfect. And of course, the rest is history. The Orange Box was released, and we got the Companion Cube meme, and one of the best online First Person Shooters in years. Oddly, I never thought I'd play TF2 that much, but it actually stopped me from playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl, it's so fun.

Source Mapping

Does anyone realize just how easy it is? I always thought it would be incredibly hard or complicated, but the real complicated bit is just making stuff like triggers. Besides that, it's mainly making map geometry. That's the fun thing about it, is that an FPS never really needs overly complicated maps, just fun choke points, and some cool goals. Me, I'm actually a total noob when it comes to mapping for source, but with some helpful tutorials, I managed to make this in about a couple months. It was fun too.

...Hammer...

Must...finish...maaaaaaaaap...

Control Point

So, in case you can't tell, this is mainly about video games here, and I enjoy all forms of video gamer-y. So I love people talking about games! And guess what? Control Point is a podcast about one of the best online shooters of all time: TF2! Oh boy!

They basically review maps each week, while mentioning user contributions and cracking wise. They ran out of Valve maps so they're doing custom maps now.

And the current theme (Oober Servers!) was their April Fool's joke.

Flash Drive Fun!

I got a new 4 gig flash-drive from my dad (Yeeeee!) and it contained something named Portable Apps. So I checked it out. Turns out it's a fun little program that allows you to put stuff like VLC media player and Firefox on a flash drive without using up as much space as normal, and it's all viewed with a cool Nero-like menu. I really like cause I can take all the good stuff with me to school, and still put stuff on the card. I got me portable DOS Box and some Doom and Quake.

Oh yeah, the link: http://portableapps.com/

It's like getting widgets for any OS.

You can also run Mac OS 7 on it, but the only reason I can see for that is either
A: Nostalgia
B: Oregon Trail
Choice B looks pretty sweet, lemme tell ya.

GF TF2

Though I may be a random blogger with no fame or anything, I can still steal other people's news. So, some guy recorded his girlfriend playing TF2, edited it together, and posted it on YouTube. Funny stuff.

It's kind of cute to listen to here constantly apologize for killing enemies.

Google Blogs, I guess

So, Google and the Blogger people are making a new version of the Blogger software that would work with Google. Go figure. Here's some features:

• Don’t limit yourself to “reverse chronological” publishing. Our advanced Google algorithms put your best content at the top of your blog. Even if your later work goes downhill your previous posts will still shine.

What? Best content? Work goes downhill? We're fucking bloggers not authors or journalist.

• No more template languages to mess with or sidebars to get right. Our advanced Google algorithms automatically populate your blog’s sidebar with the most relevant possible content.

This seems to take away the most fun part of setting up my blog: putting on all the neat little gadgets! I hope I can turn it off.

• Stop worrying about your PageRank or your search engine optimization. Post directly into Google search results for maximum visibility.

I don't even know what the point of this is. Probably because I don't know what it is.

• Save your readers time and effort. We’ll automatically extract the most relevant sentence from your post for the index page, along with any necessary ellipsis. We'll also put some words in bold!

Oh boy. Bold letters. Doesn't this look awesome? I know it doesn't get annoying at all, ever. And I love ellipses: This blog is . . . awesome.

• Your blog’s header will stay fresh with new images from our team of artists, each and every anniversary of a scientific achievement.

Scientific acheivement? Wait, are they gonna turn this place into the Google logo? Like, will my page be all red white and blue for 4th of July or something stupid like that?

• Unsure of what to post about? Just click “I’m Feeling Lucky” and we’ll “take care” of the rest!

Hah. The cure for writers block: Gettin' someone else to write it for you! Oh wait...

Edit: This is probably an April fool, actually, but meh.