Dragon Age Anonymous

They're going to have to create it just for us RPG addicts to go to.

In Through The Gate

Well for the last couple of weeks I've been hooked on one particular TV series and universe. The Stargate Universe. For me, the biggest Sci-Fi geek amongst my friends, it is truly cool and immensely satisfying to watch. The characters are cool and deep, the plots and devices absolutely ludicrous, and the technological gadgetry is absolutely out of this world!

OK, enough fanboyism; bottom line is I'm hooked.

New cast. RDA is not on there.

Monthly Updates

Well, it's been almost a month since I last posted; given that no one actually reads this blog I'll just keep on ranting my usual tirade of bland and mundane topics. Here be no dragons, no opinionated bigotry articles, here be a simple citizen of the world using his little patch of cyberspace to grow a sweet little garden of personal delights.

So far this month has been nothing but mundane. The only cool things have been my best friend's permanence in the country, my rugby club ascending to the top flight of Argentine rugby, and my girlfriend getting top score on her master's thesis.

On my gaming side, I'm itching to try out two games: "The Force Unleashed" and "Dragon Age: Origins".

Another rediscovered delight was finding and replugging my old Nintendo 64, now part of my complex desk/work/entertainment station. I'll be rediscovering my preteen gaming love over the next couple of weeks before I fly off to Europe and cold winter.

Thankfully the N64 game case I bought a couple of years ago (actually 10 years ago!!!) is now a godsend! Now I plan on rediscovering Link's two massive adventures, relive the excitement of being 007 or just frolic around with any of the Mario titles.

Cinematic Gaming

Yep, now with Dead Space as my new gaming acquisition I will immerse myself in the odd and strange world of sci-fi horror. Event Horizon, Aliens and other films give us the overall hierarchic idea behind this.

On an interesting note, the main character is a systems engineer. I find this very amusing because lately there has been a shift from action-star heroes to book-smart everyday joes. I like that.

All It's Cracked Up to Be

Most definitely, the new Batman game is beyond awesome. You get to be the Dark Knight and kick some serious villain ass!

On a side note, I've been watching "From the Earth to the Moon" and I have to say I'm once again hooked and simply enamored with my childhood dream of being an astronaut. Now I know of course that in real life there is no chance for me to obtain this goal, since I know pretty much that in my lifetime astronaut seats will only be saved for those with an engineering degree and a head just filled with numbers and formulae, and unless I'm a bajillionaire, the chances of me hitching a ride either on a Soyuz or Shuttle vehicle are intensely small. I've bookmarked all the important websites, dug into their RSS feed and even subscribed to their official YouTube channel! If I can't be in space I might as well live vicariously through them! Check out the test trials for the new Moon Rovers!! It is truly a sight to behold!!

The Emmys were on tonight so that was a nice fun distraction; which also reminded me that all my favorite shows will be coming back up (I have to wait till January for Lost and 24 to begin their new seasons!), so I've already caught myself up with Supernatural's new episodes. :D

Now with my exams coming up I have to tone down my stuff a little bit more, but all in good faith for now. Now I have to remember to get Buffalo Springfield's Something's Happening Here. That's a good song.

Toning Up

So several things at once:

1. Back to the gym; hopefully in 3 months my body will be back to optimal standards.
2. I have to buy a new printer; the old one is from 2001 and still runs on a parallel port!
3. I'm flexing my gamer muscles till I can get my hands on the new Batman game. Apparently it is the best to come out from the dreaded superhero genre.

Things to do...

Yep long list of stuff to do today, so I'd better head out and do it. This is more of a reminder to myself than an actual blog post. So it's more a stream of consciousness rather than anything remotely to do with creative writing.

Laters...

Hunting For the Smaller But Tastier Game...

So far I've gone a year and almost a month with dear dear Dell laptop. I've managed to tailor it to my wants and needs and serves as my home away from home. It's not an old model, but it isn't a cutting edge top-of-the-line portable wonder; it serves as my portable movie screen, photo album, and research center for both my academic endeavors and my online hobbies. Specifically, my laptop is a 15.4 inch Inspiron 1526 Notebook.

There she is, nice and simple. Blue and with functional things like an integrated webcam, voice speech recognition, four USB slots (something that I appreciate immensely) and all-around practical design.

Nevertheless I've been carrying this laptop of mine to class back and forth in my backpack and I have to admit it's very heavy and the battery leaves something to be desired (3 hour functionality on Power Saving mode). Thusly most of the time I need it to be grounded somewhere with a current.

Hence these little setbacks that have halted my dear laptop from achieving true notebook grandeur, have forced me to seek out new means of portable mobility in the technological department. Thusly I've been attracted to the premise of a netbook.

I've been doing my research and chatting with friends of mine whom have a wider knowledge and dominance of the electronic world what my choices were for a good sturdy netbook that would suit my needs for both academic studies and hobby applications. Gaming is straight out of the question, since for that I have my custom-built desktop rig (nothing fancy, it gets the job done). So after a couple of days of sifting through different review sites and comparing models and prices, I've narrowed it down to one model I really REALLY want:

The Asus Eee PC 1005HA Netbook

I've been reading the system specs on this little wonder and they are astonishing for the price it's going for. The one thing that is lacking, but can be quickly fixed, is the RAM. It only comes with 1GB, but thankfully this model has a removable RAM access plate and therefore allows for manual user upgrade. Hence the possibility of buying extra RAM on the side to boost the already solid specs.

The hard drive is the exact same size as my laptop, which makes me wonder whether this has a Solid State Drive (SSD) or a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). This little detail could make all the difference in the world.

Now it's all down to user trails. From what I've read online, it's good and functional and the screen is big enough to work on it without any major problems. Hopefully in a couple of weeks, this will be the new addition to my ever-growing electronic family

A Fresh Start...Well Sort Of

So I'm back in Buenos Aires (for three weeks now!) and have started another semester in college once again. My trip through beautiful Poland was awesome and above all great!!

Now I'm writing this in a break in the middle of my maths class...will call in again later!

In Case of a Zombie Apocalypse Break Glass

So in my quarantined state I've been pondering how I would prepare my apartment in the event that humanity is ravaged with any of the proposed zombie-type infections (this of course means I'm not affected and am currently surviving through it).

First off I'd need to get guns and supplies and barricade the main entrance; if people in adjacent buildings have managed to survive we'd create a supply line system for bartering supplies and whatnot.

Any travelling activity will have to be conducted through the rooftops of Buenos Aires (shotgun is a must).

I'm still working out the finer details but I'll be building my surivival kit slowly and surely.

Stuck in Limbo

So if you're not up to speed with the recent news from down South; we've been struck with a bad case of flu epidemic. Because of this the government has issued a nationwide sanitation alert which means that normal collective activities are severely discouraged to help stop spread the disease too much.

Now how exactly do I fit into all of this? Well in my particular case I was in the middle of my term finals when I get an email on Friday saying that all exams have been suspended till August 3rd or till further notice. The news is seemingly bitterwsweet since this means I wont be getting the exam monkey off my back for another month. So my midyear relaxation will be relaxing, but also somewhat stressing since I will have this little itch at the back of my mind constantly now.

And so now my present situation is that of a home prisoner stuck atop a the 3rd story of an 8 story building. I feel I should start writing more and get the creative juices flowing again, should be more fun than simply playing games all day and night long.

Alright it's late already, I'm off to bed. Toodles!

Gotta Finish It....

The homestretch is near and everything is piling up. I don't know if I'll make it or not, but I have to for the prize that waits at the end of the run.

En Castellano (Por Primera Vez)

Bueno llegó la hora de revelar el secreto. Soy bilingue. Así que de vez en cuando voy a escribir mis porquerías en castellano.

Ricardo-roll para los que entienden: Diviertansen.

Listen to the Radio

Metro 95.1 FM Lots of fun.

Finding your Lost Way

I know it's old, but being a new voyager of the web I found this to be particularly useful.

(Click on the image to expand it).

The Need of Alternating History

If there is one thing I enjoy from the forum games I take part in, it's the willingness to change history and turn things either for the better or for the worse. I for one feel a sort of pride in playing these games and thusly always end up choosing Argentina. Probably due to time constraints and other factors, playing my homeland (in this case in the 1920's) allows me to invest enough time to make it manageable, but not turn it into an obsessive hobby where I have to keep track and mass produce posts 24/7.

Also it appeals to my "Khanite" necessity to expand and conquer; something any gamer of my age will do after being brought up playing Command & Conquer and Age of Empires. Expansion, expansion, expansion. That is the only true method.

A New Direction

In the past weeks I've received some academic news that has necessitated me to change my headings and replot my course for the next couple of months. Nothing drastic, but the calls of academia have a higher priority right now than either sports (rugby), or games (anything installed on my PC). Therefore my life for the next couple of weeks will be dominated by thick textbooks, court cases, artistic analysis and other educational endeavors that will see to my safe passage to a bigger and brighter future.

On a small note I've reduced my gaming time to three major games:

1. Fallout 3 (with all 3 DLCs installed...and 2 more coming in the next few weeks...)

2. Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts (for my RTS fix, nothing beats a WWII extravaganza)

3. Mirror's Edge (fast-paced, colorful and a pleasant surprise from this innovative FPS).

That's all she wrote for now folks! Hopefully my activity will increase in the upcoming weeks.

On a final note, I've gone over some of my old RPG storylines from an old Star Wars game I used to play. Apparently over the sporadic year I played that game I managed to write an astounding 95.000 word novella. I still however need to write a couple of more transcripts so it should be interesting to see where this leads. I hardly doubt this will end up in a publishing house since it's run of the mill stuff. The positive side is that it gets my creative juices flowing, so it helps with the writing process at least.

On a truly final note I finished reading "Oracle Night" by Paul Auster. Very interesting short novel which got me on the writing wagon again. So that's one of my leisure list books crossed off my list, here's the rest:

1. The Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven (Part 3 of the epic Ringworld Saga)

2. The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski (First book with Geralt of Rivia the Witcher)

3. Witches Abroad by Terry Prattchett (A must for my Discworld fix)

4. Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler (Second crime novel with PI Marlowe)

5. The Lost Road and Other Writings (Fifth or Sixth book in the History of Middle Earth Compendium. A Tolkienite must)

6. Dune by Frank Herbert (I heard it was a classic and therefore I have to read it)

7. The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (First of the extensive Wheel of Time Saga)

8. Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling (A bit of jingoistic imperialism never hurt anyone)

The Mothership Has Landed

Nope not an alien invasion or something of the sort. This has finally arrived at my doorstep:

This new internal SATA hard drive with its overwhelmingly 1 Terabyte capacity signals a new era for me both in space and gaming. I installed this baby and right off the bat started installing every game I had on hand. So far I've installed a good eighty gigabytes worth of games, and that doesn't even brush the 10% capacity!! I'm in gamer heaven! And I can kiss my social life goodbye.

The Beauty of Pipe Smoking

In today's crazed fast food, disposable society many small things have been lost; one of them includes what some consider to be a nasty habit that humanity picked up in the last five hundred years or so: smoking. For centuries the staple and most normal way of enjoying tobacco was through the use of some sort of pipe; it wasn't until the mid 19th Century that cigarettes became the dominant force behind the tobacco industry; and nowadays cigarettes dominate the scenes. It is only a select few that have taken the time to actually look into what many call "The Gentle Art of Smoking" and revere the briar pipe as the means to achieve this Art. I was lucky enough to be introduced to pipe tobacco in my late teens, and acquired my first pipe around the age of 19 (I still have this pipe and I cherish it with all my heart), thus I did not find the idea of pipe smoking to be archaic or outdated; it is simply a misunderstood artform, something that has been slowly lost through the blatant advance of our mass media civilization and culture.

Cigarettes are today asociated with stress and bad habits, a quick five minute comforter for a stressful life; pipe tobacco and pipe smoking on the other hand bring with them a plethora of small rituals and a culture of their own. The process of pipe smoking is not as simple as just flicking a cigarette onto your lip and lighting it; there is much more to it. There are several steps to take: preparing the pipe, packing the tobacco, lighting, relighting and enjoying the different brands, cuts and mixtures that the different types of pipe tobacco can offer. There's sweet Virginia tobacco, spicy Latakia, surprising Perique, and a myriad more of different blends.

For those of you who smoke and feel that its time to give up cigarettes, but feel that going cold turkey is going to drive you insane, I suggest that you turn your attention to pipe smoking since it offers another alternative. You'll feel more relaxed, you'll actually enjoy the different tastes, and with time can turn your smoking into a deeply personal and reflecting experience.

A Month of Change and Sore Muscles

Well, I haven't written anything here in quite some time now. Almost a month and a week (five weeks to round it up). What has happened is nothing much in terms of life-changing events, basically I have comfortably settled myself into the routine of a healthy, non-smoking, sport-inclined university law student.

I started my classes with no hitches and also rejoined my old rugby team in order to feel the burn and the fitness. Nothing like getting back to the gym and running my heart out in order to feel better. The only downside, is that my hamstrings haven't stopped hurting for the past three weeks. At least the pain's subsided meaning that it's slowly healing up.

On the way too…

So I've found it to always be fun to write somewhere unexpected. In this case, I've popped out my laptop in the middle of my connecting flight and am now cruising at a very nice altitude. Obviously I cannot connect to the net so I'll probably be able to post this in a couple of hours or even some time later. The great thing is that I can let my ideas run free here whilst not worrying about having to post this right away. Hopefully this will become more integrated in the future, and I have to make a point of taking my laptop to class more often. I think that my new backpack will allow for such an eventuality and will help me get in touch right away with everything I need.

I'm already integrated into the Google lifestyle (hopefully I'll be able to purchase a G1 and become truly integrated) and see no real problem with it.

So my next step is to try and set up a wireless connection for my printer, which is already reaching its eighth year of use (a record really for such an overused printer), though in actual fact I should be considering getting myself a new one, they aren't that expensive and come completely with a USB connection. Or maybe I should give my modded rig a new 1.5 TB hard drive (again not very expensive).

Well I'm about to land…we'll see how that goes.

Sins (the debauchery continues)

Again this is not a confession, but simply a follow-up on my previous post about Sins of a Solar Empire. And I can see why they called it one of the best games of 2008. It's epic, it's full-scaled, it really has it all. The one thing it does lack is a single player campaign that encompasses all three factions. But in any case nothing can compare to getting your first capital ship, renaming it and then going out to kick some very serious butt. For the time being I'm sticking the TEC since its the more simple and rounded faction to play with. Later on I will examine the Advent and the alien Venteri (I think I may have misspelled that).

Hunting for a new Phone

Every couple of years a special moment is presented to me: the purchasing of a new cellular telephone. Now any normal customer and shopper will of course jump at the opportunity of getting the first phone they deem to be cool and hip and totally adequate to their needs. I on the other hand are a more picky shopper. I first conduct a recon run to my provider's main shop, to see what phones they have on sale, and then conduct a thorough sweep of what I deem to be appropriate phones for my needs and wants (right now my focus is mainly on media with simple Wi-Fi and internet access). After having done this I go back home and begin poring over the countless reviews and comparisons for the phones I'm interested in and thus conduct a thorough research of my next phone.

For the time being it's slim pickings and I'm hoping that I can get an iPhone for less than the retail price. That would be a major score.

Sins

It's not what you think. I'm not going to start confessing my sins with intimate detail, it's simply that I got my hands on a copy of "Sins of a Solar Empire" and now I want to play it and see why it was deemed to be one of the best games of 2008.

How to Play Prussia

So I joined up in a new game on my old geopol watering hole; it's the fourth reincarnation of The Boundless World (known as TBW amongst us). This time around the setting is in Europe in the 1980's and the alternative history primer is quite a good one. I've come to realize that the strength and endurance of these games is not solely on the player's input, it also has a lot to do with how far the moderator is going to take it. I mean, we had an incredible run with TBW 2 which lasted approximately a good fifty two game years! That is to say around two years real time. I'm proud to say that I joined that game around midway through and found myself sucked in by the scheming and planning, as well as the outlandish stories you could write about your nation.

In the meantime whilst most people in the forum wait for the coming of the next great game, I've found myself joining a couple of offshoots: Age of Imperialism (9th version) which lasted a bit and was a good run, Pale Blue Dot, Legacy of the World and even a spin-off TBW game entitled Infinite Futures (which again didn't last very long). The games I find myself playing now are this new incarnation (as Prussia) and the slowly-developing Boundless Imperialism in which I've been playing Argentina for the past twenty game years and am cradling it into the next South American superpower. Hopefully the game won't stall and I'll be able to conduct all of my schemes into their full capacity.

Bookmarked Beyond Belief

In my continued explorations on how to run my browser better, and become increasingly Googled in the process, I've been fiddling around with my bookmarks bar and have streamlined the process of opening several web pages at once with just one effortless click. Should shave off valuable seconds on my web browsing time I must admit.

Googled Out

I've been perusing most of Google's free swag and I must say that it's worth it. Having everything centralized could really help me. Though I have to admit that there is nothing more painstakingly annoying than having to manually sort through my infernally long list of contacts. But then again, if I get through it then it's much easier to get through everything. Listing, filtering, labeling, archiving...it's all quite clear cut and easy to do. Life soon enough will be indexed via Google. I must gather more followers to convert to this great system.