Mkava's Ramblings

Had a bunch of folks over yesterday for all day gaming. Well, sorta. First people starting getting in around 4 or so, when the event on my Google Calendar that I shared with everyone was noon to midnight+. =P Either way, people started showing up and we started playing Halo 3 while I made some awesome home-made pizza (started the dough at like 2 so it’d be ready to go in the oven at 5). Making pizza took longer than I thought but when you have two pizzas coming that are literal mounds of toppings and goodness, you can’t rush it. Either way, after pizza we really set into playing.

Tons of Halo 3 was played. Some off-and-on gaming was done by folks who weren’t playing Halo at the time. Eventually around 11:30pm we got 6 computer rigs together for Rise of Nations. 3 v 3 gets a bit hectic, especially for the folks whoever never played a RTS like RoN before. Either way, it was a lot of fun. Especially when Cody didn’t have a missile shield and everyone kept dropping nukes on his head.. even people on his team. It’s amazing what a little nuking can do the the Armageddon counter… going quickly to zero. Game 2 ended the same way but with only 4 people playing in a Free-For-All game. 30 minutes of people and most people were ready to start development of the last tech and start attacking each other. Using the turn-and-burn tactic with nukes isn’t as effective as it could be, especially when its Nuclear ICBMs and not just the normal missiles. Things seem to die in a much larger area with those ICBMs. Hrm. With everyone calling it good at 4:30am, it was a fun 12 hours plus of gaming, and totally worth it. Looking forward to the next one in probably a half month, this time hopefully on campus though. =)

I may put some photos up soon, if I can get them off my only camera (my phone…). Not too many but enough to warrant a little effort.

People who came: Zach, Cody, D, S, Drew, Sam (and his girlfriend Amanda), Joe (even though he just hung out and didn’t game much), and obviously myself. Hope everyone had fun eating my awesome pizza and playing games with friends. Even Amanda who really looked like she didn’t want to be hanging out with a bunch of geeky gamers. =D

Until next time.

Found this how-to about using the scrollback in GNU screen. Incredibly useful feature, a bit danty to play with at first, but with a little work, it’s easy and solid to use. Hit the link below for the awesome article. =)

As seen on Slashdot, Chile First To Approve Net Neutrality Law

Neat. <3

Had to post this after seeing it on Slashdot on this article: Open Source Music Fingerprinter Gets Patent Nastygram.

Read more…

It amuses that every time I start playing SMRPG again, I grind through to the same spots before I stop. The closest I have come to beating the game is always the Nimbus Kingdom, or the area right around there. I’ve never had the begrudging pleasure of taking on Smithy himself, other than some tough words with him at the beginning of the game. Seems so amusing that now I’ve started playing it again via the Wii Virtual Console (bought it back in May I think..), I may actually finish the game after first seeing it way back in 3rd grade (nearly 12-13 years ago).

That’s the biggest thing I have noticed of my gaming habits over the last few years and the last few months especially. If I have a copy of a game sitting somewhere in plain sight, I’ll finish it. I just recently purchased Halo1 for the original Xbox for 3$, after having had a copy of it for the PC since it originally came out. I never beat Halo 1, or even Halo 2 for that matter, primarily because I never had a copy on a console. On the PC, I would play for a bit and eventually get sick of it or go back to playing Pharaoh or Age of Empires II, two games I’ve put far too many hours in to even want to consider. Now that I have the original Xbox version, it seems I might actually get the whole story for Halo finally. Hell, I’m already halfway to my farthest point in the game from the PC version and I’ve only put two hours in. And yes, I’m a slow gamer who is far too patient. Plus giving yourself various requirements to beat a level (like play the game on Legendary or at least Heroic) don’t exactly speed things up. But of course, if I wanted to burn though a game.. I’d purchase a new-ish title that tops out at 10-15 hours. Amusing how the length of games have changed from the 30-50+ into the 10-15 hour mark for most newer titles.

Either way, I got my SMRPG and Halo 1 to play alongside of Mass Effect 2 (currently a rental). And then maybe after these two ancient games, I can finally go through and beat Halo 2 and the DS games I never completed. =) Finally getting my monies worth after all these years would be appreciated.