Or Predator: Forget Everything

There are few franchises I have loved as much as Aliens versus Predators. I have almost all the original books, all the films (yes even the abhorrent AvP) and all the PC games (I am not touching the tacky console ones). So after taking a blow with AvP I decided I needed to rekindle my interest and with the recent release of Predator: Forever Midnight, I thought I had the chance to bring back some of the old memories. Continue reading »

WordPress, Movable Type, Textpattern. No matter which blog system I used I would always end up getting spam after spam pumped into my blog. From harmless loans to some disgusting sexual links it really pissed me off. It was pointless, annoying and embarrassing when showing anyone my blog. Continue reading »

I was a major fan of Far Cry, following its development, buying it on release day and even dedicating my GCSE final design piece to it. The simply jaw dropping visuals, humongous levels and terrifying AI making it one of my favourite games. I can honestly say nothing has come close to matching it in terms of both looks and playability (this still is the hardest game ever with the biggest levels). Continue reading »

Pong. The first ever video game. Monochrome, simple in nature and infinitely fun. But it can get a bit boring, batting a ball back and forth and back and forth!

Meet Plasma Pong, one of my new favourite games. At its most basic it mixes fluid dynamics with the recognisable form of the old classic. The first version (which I also played) was brilliant, if a little rusty in terms of menu/help/features. But version 1.2 improves on this in spades, with a fully done up start screen, options, sandbox and multiplayer (which I have yet to properly try).

The level up system is well integrated, the sound ramping up in pitch and frequency as you progress. The music feels both classic in nature yet remixed with a modern techno beat. The basic controls of Plasma Pong are uber simplistic, move the mouse to move your paddle, left click to shoot plasma and right click to suck it in for a mega blast.

So what are you waiting for? Get playing now! You can visit the author’s website here or download the game direct from filecloud here (7.4Mb, my favourite download site).

I’ve had this player for just under two years yet it feels like a lifetime. With a puny 128Mb of memory I’m amazed I haven’t wanted to upgrade sooner, but eventually everything dies and, well as you can probably see, the little player is almost dead. The glass screen cracked in my pocket months ago and the cost of buying SD cards to increase the memory far outweighed the outlay of getting a new, more spacious player.

Looking past the space limits this was a brilliant music player. It’s petite dimensions (especially compared to others when I bought it) meant it fit comfortably in my pocket, the buttons perfectly positioned, with one purely to turn the backlight on, a feature I haven’t seen on any other system. The screen was simple and uncluttered, voice recording crisp and songs played back clearly. The dual headphones output was a bit of a wasted feature, cutting the volume in half to the point of uselessness and as I’ve already stated SD cards were completely impractical. The coolest gimmick was the swing out USB stick (the finger grip just visible by the top right corner) meaning I didn’t have to carry around any USB cables.

This is actually the second player of this type I’ve had after managing to destroy the first one in about a year through a succession of knocks, bangs and smashes. Sending the remains back to Medion I received a brand new one in the post a fortnight later; not bad for support.

Unfortunately Medion no longer make this model, with each successive update getting further and further away from what I liked. Looking for a new MP3 player I eventually decided upon the Archos Gmini XS202S, expect a review some time in the next few weeks after I’ve had a chance to use it properly.

Well just over two months ago I signed up for the May 1st CSS Reboot and decided that I wanted to totally redo my site from scratch. Not just a redesign (although it has turned into more of a realign) but a complete overhaul of all the code this site runs off. It used to be I had a fairly simple Movable Type installation powering everything from posts to portfolio, but problems with moving it between servers, comment spam and just the sheer complexity of trying to add a single post lent me to develop my own system.

And so that’s what I did. Continue reading »

Fear moulded into a geometric mesh.

My desktop as of March 2006. Click for a bigger version or click here to see a version on Flickr with notes.

Well it’s finally live (except for the about page). I give you SHA//RE, my brand spanking new hosting service. After deliberating over what to do with the twenty plus gigabytes of webspace left on my server I decided to put it to good use and let others have their own piece of the web. After all, the Internet belongs to everyone, so you can consider this a sort of wiki-web.

This is the very first blog post using my new custom built CMS. It is mainly a placeholder, so that I always remember the first time this site went live. I hope it can be followed by many more blog posts about pretty much anything and everything.