Grab bag of interesting stuff

Well, I’ve found them interesting. These are sites/places I’ve been looking at but didn’t get around to posting about at the time:

• I got momentarily distracted at LiveLeak.com thanks to this video of a hell landing in the old Hong Kong airport (having just had wild ride into the new airport myself) – and the other eyebrow raising video’s of plane landings
• Big ups to Arthur for keeping me in the know with American politics. Check him out on Amerinz
• I was reminded the other day how much I luv boxes and arrows Check it out if you’re into good design
• So Google have launched their own browser. I dunno – maybe I’m a cynic or maybe I just don’t trust organisations that try to take over the (virtual) world. We’ll see. I like a bit of competition and would prefer to choose from a number of companies that do a few things well than one that does a whole lotta stuff not so well.
• Our “Culture and Heritage Minister says “The internet is now so much an essential part of life and commerce that access to it can be seen as “a human right”. Riiiiiiiggghhht.
• Cynic of the week goes to: The Economist for their story on Cybernationalism
• Thanks again to The Oracle for helping me solve the mystery of the carpet stain – and how to get rid of it. Er – The Oracle being our term for the www.
• I’m now on Facebook but in my typical identity-risk adverse way haven’t added that much to my profile, and still am a bit mystified about the value – I don’t want to link to random people I don’t know. We’ll see – I’ll ask around peep’s I know and see if I can set up a few meaningful links.
• Twitter Twitter Twitter – what’s the point?. I know – EGO
• Spore gets released on Friday. So does Stalker – Shadow of Chernobyl. Whee heee. If you’re not a gamer you won’t care.
• Have a look at newtondotgeek Cool.
• And just because my dinner is ready, a little bit of a Bit On The Side…. I don’t know how I feel about the conclusion – perhaps those that know me can tell me if it’s true:
  Which OS are You?

My husband says “yeah” Yeah wot? It’s accurate ?

Quake Wars….one more thing

Didn’t this come out ages ago? This Wired review of Quake Wars was not particularly complementary.    I’d agree the game is good looking, but is definitely not one I’d recommend to anyone not very used to playing in co-op mode.  I do not place nice with others – I prefer to play alone and this is a multi-player only .  But thought I’d try something new.  Problem is, it’s probably a very good game if you are used to playing similar games, but if you’re a newbie this isn’t the game for you.  There is no ‘ease in’ option and so most the time you cycle through  ’spawn/fight/die’  so quickly that it gets tedious.  You feel like you are constantly being slapped in the face for being new.   Its got quite a complex game play mechanic with an equally complex interface.  A training map would have been handy.

A shame, because it looks beautiful and quite possibly a good game if you could get into it.    Of course getting into it may have ended up being just as frustrating – our pitiful broadband is so flaky that even if you wanted to play online, you’d be battling lag time rather than the bad guys.

Score: 3/10

Audio surf ya heart out

Discovered this little beauty over the weekend when re-loading Steam.

What fun – particularly if, like me, you like listening to music but need to be doing something at the same time. So far Megadeth, Def Leppard, Jean Michelle Jarre, and the Chemical Brothers have all proved to be fun rides.

And for only $9.95 (tho this might be US dollars) downloadable from Steam it might be just the best value for money game in a long time. I can see ways to improve it to make it all the more fun, that I’m sure the developers have already thought of:

• More background effects
• More than three tracks to play with
• More character types
• More sound effects
• Different style of track/background

But I quibble. The only thing I struggled with a bit was I needed a bit more explanation of some of the special block types, but a bit of digging around might solve that one.

Go buy it today.