Caerdydd and back!
I apologise for the lack of updates in the last half a year or so, university has been keeping me fairly busy with work and socialising and I haven't been making the time to keep my web work up to date. Uni is going well so far, the projects are interesting and I was just about in the top 10% of my class for the first semester exams. It's been a while since I've written... anything at all, but I'll attempt to remain coherent in my next couple of posts.
It's currently Easter holidays and I'm taking the opportunity to be lazy and enjoy myself for a bit before I begin working on my coursework again. I have spent the last few days in Cardiff with my good friends Laurel and Chris, visiting various castles and sites where Dr Who and Torchwood were filmed.
Chris & Laurel in Cardiff Castle
Uni Ad
As I'm going to be at university once again this time next week, I thought I'd share a musical produced by Yale for some of its prospective students. (No I'm not going to Yale, just enjoyed watching it).
Pencil vs Camera
Just wanted to share a quick link with you from an interesting gallery.
www.benheine.com <- check it out!
Rolle, The Great Dane
Rolle lies down for the camera
Today I was commissioned by my father to take pictures of our neighbour's dog Rolle. I say commissioned but I'm not getting any money as such, just +rep with my parents who are currently housing and feeding me. So that's my motive, my father's is that he has been looking at paintings of dogs on one of his blogs that he frequents and thought it'd be quite fun to give it a go. I wouldn't hold your breath while you wait to see the end result though, it probably will take another year or so at the pace he paints. (He's currently working on a self portrait at the moment so that's why it's likely to take that long.)
Rolle is a Great Dane and has a sort of dalmatian colouring. He's pretty big, about waist height on me and apparently weighs 13 stone although I'm not sure how.. it's possibly an exaggeration but you can definitely feel his weight when he puts his paws on you to "encourage" you to keep petting him. I took about 6 or 7 photos, so here's a couple that I thought were ok. I've also had a quick play-around with the background in photoshop on one of the photos to test out how to cut out furry things without losing too much hair.
My Photoshopped background attempt
The best form of recruitment
I have to say, this is definitely one of the more innovative forms of recruitment!
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Interactive Sites
The ideas and innovations we see on the web are moving along quickly and I thought I'd share a couple of sites that utilise some of the better known technologies to produce their desired effect.
The first is an advertising viral for tipex;
http://www.youtube.com/tippexperience
It takes the guise of a standard youtube page but then reveals itself to be an interactive video that responds to user input. It's quite simple, there's a library of similar words that each link to an appropriate video should you type one in and a 404 video if the word is not accounted for.
The second site I wanted to share is made by some friends of Google and is designed to showcase what can be done in the Chrome Browser. It will run in other browsers but isn't as stable.
http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com
The site uses Google's street and aerial views as well as some pretty funky branch and flock of birds algorithms, well worth having a play around with!
Starcraft II The insane rush
| Preface |
Getting all the achievements vs the computer is a long arduous grind. You need a minimum of 300 games for the solo victories alone (100 as each race). Therefore speed is of the essence and while you may enjoy besting the AI after 40 minutes of painstakingly outwitting it, it certainly will take a lot longer! Even at 5 mins a pop 300 games will take you 25 hours. Therefore I choose the easiest game environment to win quickly.
You should select random as your race for your first 100+ games as this will count both as random and the race you end up with. Once you have 100 games won as a particular race don't choose random any more obviously! You should also begin with fighting the computer on Insane difficulty as this will count for the lower difficulty levels at the same time.
Zerg is the AI race of choice as it's the easiest to beat. On insane they always go for roaches as their first fighting unit which means they need to build a spawning pool and a roach warren before they can think about effectively defending themselves. Zerg is also the only race you can "crawler rush" against.
Most 1v1 maps are fine but I prefer Incineration Zone as it's the smallest, helping to minimise time wasted travelling to the enemies base. You don't want to do anything larger than a 1v1map unless you know you wont have to search which base they spawn at.
The Wire
Many of you will have heard of this TV show that spanned 60 episodes over 5 seasons and is regarded as one of the best TV shows ever made by some. The Wire is an American television drama series set and produced in Baltimore, Maryland. It's a crime based drama that encompasses the whole city, communities as well as individuals. Having no real central character enables the show to depict a greater sense of reality, you see how everyone in the community is affected and you don't have the sense of security you get where you know that a show's main character will pull through no matter what.
My initial thought as I started watching The Wire was that it progressed rather slowly but that's just the way it's meant to be. The creator David Simon chose this structure with an eye towards long story arcs that draw a viewer in and then result in a more satisfying pay-off. You should consider the first few episodes as an investment, through out the show you'll be building interest and by the end the pay-out will be significant. It's important to realise this, especially given the current multitude of episodic based shows circulating. 
Busy Bee, Busy Bee, what have you got in the hive for me?
Time flies by pretty quickly when you've got things to do. It's almost been a whole month since my last article! It's not as if I've not had anything to write about, on the contrary there's been a whole host of things that I've been doing and sometimes it's easier to just get on with them rather than spend time writing about it. I bought Blizzard's new game Starcraft II which I've been avidly playing, I finally got around to watching the TV series The Wire which I'll write about later but most importantly I've been trying to sort out my plans for the upcoming year - university (again).
The whole process has been a bit of a rush, mainly due to my procrastination. My application was handed in on the day of the deadline after I hounded my old tutor by email for a reference which she kindly managed to deliver on time and without being too harsh. I didn't have to wait too long for a reply - my deadline was the absolute deadline before the dreaded clearing and the universities' deadline to respond was only a couple of weeks after. It didn't take long before UCL and Kings College turned me down. Who could blame them though.. if I were in their shoes and read my past record I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. With two days to go 'till automatic rejection there was hope in the form of an acceptance from Queen Mary. My mother's initial response when my father informed her of my offer by email was that she was still "disappointed". I guess I was just happy to know that I wasn't going to end up in clearing.
The following day Southampton also accepted me and my mother cheered up a bit. Hooray! After rereading all the information again to make sure everything was as it seemed I accepted the offer. Last week I got emailed the accommodation information, 3 days before the deadline for applying for that. I've applied for an en-suite room in the halls, I must be getting old but the luxury of being able to go to the loo and shower without having to leave your room seems somewhat appealing nowadays. I'm also considered a "mature" student now, so hopefully I'll get one.
I'm already starting to feel a bit apprehensive as time draws on.. I'll be in a city I don't know having to make new friends once again and this time everyone's going to be 5 years younger than me! I've managed to find a rough outline of the course and I think I'll try download as many of my old lecture notes as I can to give me a head-start!
Anyway enough ranting for now.. he's a fun cow composition from Youtube:
Sniper: Ghost Warrior (PC) – Review
I don my ghillie outfit and head into the jungle. Before me stands two armed guards, chatting away unaware of my presence. A voice in my head warns me not to engage but I ignore it.. Two seconds later the men lie dead before me, but somehow the rest of the world knows my exact location - soldiers are shooting at me from miles away peppering me with holes as I crouch in my bush. Darn. Time to reload and try again.
The first thing that strikes you as you play is the difficulty. You do have to resist the urge to gun down everything in sight but even then you're not guaranteed survival. Most of the difficulty stems from the machine like reactions and accuracy of the AI. Once they've decided that they have spotted you they'll be shooting you from a few hundred meters away even if you try to hide - the only option left to you is to leave no survivors.