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As one of my earlier posts suggested, Blogger announced they are going to discontinue their support of FTP clients in March.  This obviously concerned me, since I’ve had my blog since July of 2005, and I’ve always published it via FTP since I have my own website.  I enjoy hosting my blog on my own website.  It makes it feel like it’s completely mine. 

The first order of business I had to do was find out exactly has this was going to affect me.  I didn’t elminate the possibility that I would cease using Blogger entirely and switch to something else.  I imported all of my Blogger posts into Wordpress, which I can store completely on my own website as well.  So that option is obviously available to me, though I’m not exactly sure I like Wordpress.  I enjoy the simplicity of Blogger.

After some investigation, I’ve come to the conclusion that the elmination of FTP won’t be quite as detrimental as I originally surmised.  For one thing, none of my exsiting posts would be affected.  FTP Publishing is being discontinued, which just means that I will not be able to host any NEW posts on my own website after the deadline. 

Additionally, I believe I will still be able to use my external program to post blog entries.  (Currently, I use a program called BlogJet, which allows me to post blogs without actually going to the Blogger website and typing my posts into the web browser window.)  And finally, I can stil store any pictures and videos that I create on my own website.  The links to them  would remain the same.

So basically, the only thing am I losing is the ability to store the actual posts themselves and my permanent blog address.  The link is no longer http://www.pastatdude.com/blogger.html.  It’s now http://pdchronicles.blogspot.com.  I had pastatdude.com set up to auto-forward to my blog, since I’ve yet to create a main page that I actually like.  Therefore, I simply changed for forwarding to the blogspot address.  I’ll probably do the same thing to the blogger.html address, just in case anyone links directly to it. 

Now playing: Switchfoot - Needle And Haystack Life

WTF Lag...

Such a bad night in Icecrown.  I didn’t catch the REALLY bad one of over 24,000 ms.  But this was bad enough. 

Now playing: Alice in Chains - Heaven Beside You

Blogger is disabling FTP in March?

AASDFKASDGJKALGHDFDJFSDHNFSGHZXFLwsd~!

Neat...

Blizzard revamp their Armory, and you can see what your toon looks like as it appears in-game now. Kinda neat.

A Sample of Mass Effect 2

I got it last night and gave it a test run this evening.  I didn’t get far enough to make any kind of statement about the game, other than it looks pretty.  I also enjoy the “cover” mechanic (shooting from a cover position).  I think it’s actually one of the better designed of these types of mechanics that I have seen in a game.  Here’s a few starter screenshots.  More to follow as I continue the game. 

Now playing: Green Day - Horseshoes And Handgrenades

Panty Soiling Surprises

The Mothership Zeta add-on for Fallout 3 was pretty much a completely different game.  Rightfully so, since you are abducted by aliens and taken aboard their spaceship.  I liked it for what it was, and having your character waking up on a table surrounded by little green men doing experiments on you was certainly entertaining (and funny, from my own point of view). 



Probably the most surprising part of this was how fucking lost I got on the ship.  Seriously, I don’t know who designed it, but they obviously were on crack.  Apart from that, the only other thing to note here is how much the abominations scared the crap out of me the first time I came across one.  That was a pleasant surprise in this otherwise boring add-on pack.  The sounds those things make just creeps me the hell out, and for some reason their model doesn’t make me feel any better about them either. 

Now playing: Thornley - All Comes Out In The Wash - Winamp *** 2963. Thornley - All Comes Out In The Wash

Fallout 3 Bugs

It wouldn’t take you very long to find the threads on Bethesda’s forums regarding just how buggy Fallout 3 is.  They have patched the game 6 times since it’s release 2 years ago, none of which have solved the problem.  I myself have this problem, and it’s quite a frustrating one:  The game simply freezes completely up at random times.  Sometimes it happens when you go into a building, or switch weapons, or target a bad guy.  Basically, it can happen at any time.  Sometimes I would play for hours before it would happen.  Sometimes it would happen within minutes. 

Finally, last week, after scouring every website I could find online regarding the issue, I found a solution that seems to have solved the problem.  I say seems only because I haven’t had a freeze-up since I did it.  The fix required me to manually edit the games .ini file, which is a ridiculous procedure to have to do.  (I still don’t understand why Bethesda themselves can’t fix it.)  In any case, I’m currently freeze-free and hope to stay that way. 

Now playing: Phoenix - Rome

The Pitt

The first expansion for Fallout that I decided to play was The Pitt, and I chose it because it takes place in Pittsburgh.  How cool is that?  It was pretty fun wandering around and seeing landmarks that I recognize all too well.  It was an incredibly short expansion, but still a lot of fun.

Now playing: Audioslave - Number 1 Zero

Fallout 3 Revisited

It was PC Gamer that best summed up Fallout 3 as simply as you could possibly do it:  It doesn’t religiously follow any of the standard conventions you would normally find in a game.  At its core, it simply drops you into the world and leaves you to rot.  It’s up to you to figure out where to go, what to do, and most importantly, figure out how to survive.  I think this is from where a lot of the appeal of the game derives.  You can lose yourself in this world, basically doing whatever you want and exploring wherever you want. 

The world is the game’s greatest feature.  The starkest moment for many who play the game is the view you get when you first step outside of Vault 101 and see what the world has really become after it was destroyed by nuclear war:



And thus ends the games involvement with you.  Now go.  Survive.  You’re on your own.  Human interaction, or rather, interaction with anything that won’t try to kill you, is pretty scarce.   As a result, you will find yourself savoring any that you find.  The first settlement you’ll come across is Megaton.  Depending on the path you choose, you can even end up with a permanent residence here, complete with a robotic butler. 



As I mentioned, it won’t only be humans that you’ll find as friendly (though they will try to kill you, too, of course).  There are the rare instances where a Ghoul or a Mutant will be nice to you, though I will admit these are rare cases.  I wish there were more of them.



The second greatest feature of Fallout 3 has to be the VATS.  Basically, this little jewel lets you pause the action while you organize your attacks on whatever happens to be attacking you at the time.  You are presented with a close up view of your enemies, and you are provided with all the available hitboxes and your current chance to hit each one of them, displayed as a percentage.  So for example, you could have a 95% chance of hitting a mutant in the torso, but only a 60% change of hitting them in the head.  You can then choose just about as many shots as your’d like, hit accept, and sit back and watch the carnage.  You’re then provided with the action from many different and unique angles, sometimes resembling hand-held camera recordings.  The best of these, of course, are when the camera follows the bullet to its destination. 







Seeing the Washington Monument in a decayed state was rather creepy, I will admit.



And the view from the top of it isn’t much better, either.



Some levels are incredibly dark and claustrophobic.



Guess which one I chose?



Klaatu Barada Nikto.



And now for my favorite part of this post:  Movies.  Using VATS never, ever, ever, EVER gets old.  Trust me. 

We’ll start out very simple.  One target, simple carnage. 



Let’s get a bit more complicated shall we?  Two targets!  It sort of annoyed me that the NPCs actually got the killing blow on the first target.  Too bad I was playing a goody-two-shoes this time around, or I would have just killed them first.  Ha!



The VATS really takes a lot of the twitchiness out of the game.  It makes it feel even more RPG-ish than it already did.  Without VATS, I probably wouldn’t have had enough time to react to both of these ghouls at once. 



The only reason this one is here is because I love the angle:



There are three reasons why this last video is here.  One, it gives you a good example of how useful the VATS is with it’s ability to slow down time and allow you to get off all of your prearranged shots.  Two, it shows the cool feature in the game where if you cripple a bad guy, they actually stop and clutch where you hurt them, giving you even more time to kill them before they attack you.  And last, look closely when I blow his head off.  See his eyeball flying through the air?  Awesomely gruesome. 



And thus ends our revisitation of Fallout 3.  I plan on checking out the expansion packs this time around, even if they are inferior games, so I may have some stuff to report back on them soon. 

Now playing: Shiny Toy Guns - Ghost Town

Star Trek Online Screenshots

Now playing: Anberlin - Soft Skeletons

New Year, New Games

PC Gamer came today.  February issue.  This is always one of my favorite issues because it contains all the games that are set to be released in 2010.  Granted, probably only about half of them will actually be released in 2010.  A third of them will become vaporware while another third will be delayed to 2011 and beyond.  But it’s still fun to read the magazine with the eyes of a child at Christmas time, looking at all the new toys Santa might be bringing.  Ho-ho-ho.

Probably the one that has me excited most of all is The Old Republic.  A Star Wars MMO done correctly will just end my involvement in any other games in existence.  Of course, this game still isn’t a guaranteed 2010 release.  How about looking a bit more closer to the present?

Well, there’s Starcraft 2 of course.  Yes, it’s not vaporware yet.  It’s got a nice subtitle:  Wings of Liberty.  And it’s scheduled for a March 2010 release.  Admittedly, I’m not really that excited.  I wasn’t big into the first one. 

Most interestingly is Crysis 2.  I’ve seen some screenshots of this one, and it looks fantastic.  I’ve recently replayed Crysis on my new system, since I had to crank down many of the effects settings on my old system, and the game still impresses the shit out of me.  I can’t even imagine what Crytek will do to push the boundries in their sequel. 

Star Trek Online is going to be the first major release I’ll play, most likely.  I’ve already prepurchased it, and I’m going to be involved in the prepurchase beta that starts on January 12th.  I can’t wait to see how they are applying an MMO structure to the Star Trek universe. 

Then there’s WoW Cataclysm.  Yawn. 

Now, I admit I’ve never played Mass Effect.  I need to rectify that situation very soon, because the screenshots for Mass Effect 2 look amazing.  Is that cell shading?!

There’s a new Fallout game in the works, and it’s being developed by Obsidian rather than Bethdesda.  That right there is enough to spark my interest. 

Bioshock 2 was delayed to this year.  Until I get more definitive proof that it’s actually coming out in 2010, I’m not going to get overly excited about it.

Lastly there’s Aliens Vs. Predator.  Oh the memories I have of AvP2 back in the day…

Now playing: Lily Allen - Fuck You

I never played the expansion packs for Fallout.  I feel that I need to rectify that oversight at some point, and Steam is selling them all in a packaged deal for $49.99.  So I purchased it and it’s currently downloading as we speak.  Which is a silly phrase.  I guess I should say it’s downloading as I type.  That makes much more sense. 

I also prepurchased Star Trek Online, hereafter referred to as STO.  I’m not even sure why I prepurchased it.  I don’t care about all the nifty and special limited edition little things I get for being so proactive about buying the game.  Hell, I don’t even know if I’m to like it.  Let’s take that one step further.  I don’t even know if I’m going to PLAY it.  Seems kind of silly to buy it then, but hey, I’m a silly kind of guy.  In any case, there’s a guy I used to play WoW with that always said he wanted to play it with me.  Maybe that had something to do with my decision to purchase it.  Maybe not.  I don’t even know if he’s still alive.  I hope he is.  He WAS in jail, but the HIV from the prison rape shouldn’t kill him any time soon.  They have done wondrous things with AIDS treatment these days.  People live for decades. 

Probably not something I should joke about.  But he really was in jail. 

Perhaps my other reason for buying it was to show the world (read:  myself) that maybe I’m capable of playing a different MMO. 

I’m also listening to a very odd cover.

I also had no need to use the STO acronym.  So there it is. 

Now playing: Trustcompany - Rock The Casbah

Regardless, it served its purpose.

Over the weekend, I wrote more than 16,000 words of a story.  It’s utterly unpublishable, even to my writing website, not because of the quality (although I am speeding along), but because I’m too damned embarassed to show it to anyone.  Content issues.  But it was a story I wanted to read, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to deprive myself of that…

It’s not finished yet, but I know where it’s going.  That’s more than I can say about most of my other recent attempts.  I was honestly not expecting it to reach this many words.  I was thinking it’d be all over by the 10k mark.  I guess I ramble on a bit more these days.  Guesstimating by how much story I have left to tell, it’ll probably round out at 25k.  Still small by my standards, but huge for something that I don’t plan on anyone ever seeing.

Now playing: Days Of The New - Touch, Peel And Stand

My cat has an interesting habit.  Well, actually he has several interesting habits, but there’s only one that I’m concerning myself with at this particular point in time.  Sometimes, he’ll bother me by walking up to where I’m sitting at the computer, sitting down, and meowing at me.   (That’s not the habit in question, I’m leading up to it.)  Sometimes I’ll pet him.  Sometimes I’ll ignore him completely.  Sometimes I’ll tell him to go away.  Usually, he won’t meow again until I look down to see if he’s still sitting there.  Looking at him prompts the meow.  All of this is, of course, not out of the ordinary.  What is, though, is that sometimes when I try to pet him when he’s obviously trying to get my attention, is that he’ll refuse to be petted and try to bit me.  There are times where I’ll even pick him up and put him on the bed, basically just to get him away from me, and he will proceed to try to attack me as I turn around to leave him behind.  During this time, his tail will be moving much more rapidly than normal, his head will be tilted to the side, and his eyes will be open wide.  In other words, he’s pissed.  This usually results in my slapping him on the side of the head and telling him to knock it off.  Here’s the interesting part, and I’ve tested this out just now:  I took him over to the bed, and I sat beside the bed with my arms on the bed.  He walked up, sniffed one of my arms, and then bit it.  As he bit my arm, he winced and his entire body flinched as if he were going to run away.  He was expecting retribution from this action.  He knows he’s hurting me, and knows that I’m thus going to react to it either by yelling at him or slapping him on the side of the head.  So either the cat is a sadist and wants to hurt himself, or getting my attention is worth more to him than pissing me off.  If I had to take a guess on which on it was, I would vote for the latter because he obviously has an escape route planned out given the flinch of his body.  A sadist doesn’t plan on aborting his mission if the retiribution proves to be too severe. 

Now playing: Silversun Pickups - Substitution