Finally I have uploaded the photos onto Flickr (which is an awesome site, but thats for another blog). The pictures are located in my filespace in the LAN 07 Set.
From those photos I remembered a number of other memorable events during the day.
* At the height of everyone arriving and plugging in, we started up a game of dawn of war, the GPUs/CPUs started going full bore and suddenly....Poof! Out goes the power. We tripped the fuse from the amount of power drain of 14 machines on one circuit. So I had cables running all over the place to make sure we connected machines to as many different circuits as we could.
* We went to bed around 5:00AM Sunday and I made everyone else's bed before I turned in. Of course Doug completely misses the pillows/quilt on the recliner and sleeps on the desk...only after he stays up till 6:30 making trackmania maps.
* Watching 5 guys surrounding a 22" inch screen playing NHL2007 was hilarious. The game itself looked average, but Ryan and the boys went mad playing it and their enthusiasm was infectious. Before long entering the backroom was impossible as there was an entire crowd of girls and guys watching these five mad hatters play Ice Hockey.
* People at LANs bring their own idea of what to play and often these can be a surprise hit. Case in point the ridiculously simple Toblo, which is a free fast-paced CTF style game. Or Bid for Power, the DragonBall Z quake 3 mod. It only takes one Evangelist to make everyone play an ancient game like Starcraft1 again (thanks Dilan).
There were a few other interesting things I learnt from a technical perspective:
Using Bittorrent as a way of sending the files around didn't quite work. The main problem was BT is great if I had all the necessary files first so I could convert them into torrents and could start seeding. But the time required to turn something into a torrent and then host it and get people to download it was greater than someone hitting a share and downloading it.
Fraps slows your machine down to buggery. The only time I found FRAPs would work and not be an hindrance was on my dual-core machine, where I'm assuming one core is Frapsing and the other is going to the game.
Running multiple games also will slow your machine and I think it always will regardless of hardware. I had SupremeCommander and Trackmania running. Now trackmania isn't a GPU heavy game, but once running beside SupCom, it was 5fps all the way. Truely quite poor.
Broadcasting people using VLC and a webcam is extremely easy to setup and can be completely useless to do at a LAN unless we're talking a large enough crowd to act as an audience. If we could have people playing and then you could go, I want to look at Jacks screen and it did a Picture in picture of his game interface, THEN we're talking something interesting. Also significantly more difficult to implement.
And finally, I relearned the skills of putting together a video using captured content and Adobe Premiere & Virtualdub. But thats for another blog on another day.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Birthday LAN '07
So ends another successful world-famous James Birthday LAN. This one was probably the biggest yet, with a turnout of nearly 14 computers and 22-23 people, of which 4 were girls! (breaking previous guy/chick ratios for this LAN). As usual we had gamers and non-gamers and this year for a change we kept all the gamers upstairs and the non-gamers downstairs. This worked out really well as it meant people always had stuff to do. The non-gamers could talk or play the Wii, watch videos, whilst the gamers were kept together so there was steady flow of gaming done. I'm SOOO happy my coach let me have the projector, otherwise that would have caused problems in terms of entertainment for my non-gamer crowd.
The gaming was fantastic and by having a semi-well ordered list of games to play ensured we got a whole pile of different games in. I think in the end we all had big sessions of:
I went to bed around 5am on the Saturday night/Sunday morning so I'm absolutely KNACKERED at the moment. We woke up around 10 and then went straight back into it, and finished at 4pm. After dropping people at the station and then cleaning up the house I think it was about 6 or 7pm. So thats effectively me going hard from 8pm on Friday night till 7pm Sunday for this entire party!
I have many photos and videos and I plan on fixing them up with PSP/VirtualDub and then posting them on Flickr or something most likely tomorrow. I'm FAR too tired to do that now. So I'm going to bed tired, but very happy.
The gaming was fantastic and by having a semi-well ordered list of games to play ensured we got a whole pile of different games in. I think in the end we all had big sessions of:
- C&C Renegade
- Bid for Power (Q3A mod)
- Prey
- Warcraft 3
- Starcraft (LOL..such an oldie)
- NHL Hockey
- Toblo
- Dark Crusade
- Supreme Commander
- But the game of the LAN has to be awarded to Trackmania Nations, which had Doug up till 6:30am, making tracks to play on. The amount people played that game was absolutely insane, but it was quick and enjoyable and thats what really counts at LANs.
I went to bed around 5am on the Saturday night/Sunday morning so I'm absolutely KNACKERED at the moment. We woke up around 10 and then went straight back into it, and finished at 4pm. After dropping people at the station and then cleaning up the house I think it was about 6 or 7pm. So thats effectively me going hard from 8pm on Friday night till 7pm Sunday for this entire party!
I have many photos and videos and I plan on fixing them up with PSP/VirtualDub and then posting them on Flickr or something most likely tomorrow. I'm FAR too tired to do that now. So I'm going to bed tired, but very happy.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Driving under the Influence
Tonight wasn't the first time, and probably won't be the last time I've been driving under the influence of drugs. And before you recoil in shock, its only Dimetapp (popular cold medication). Of course I was down to my last few tablets which of course were the 'night time' tablets. Yes with the antihestimine to help you sleep. The dilemma of course was, which is worse, driving with really runny and itchy nose, or half asleep. So clearly I popped the blue pill.
Needless to say, doing 1.5 hrs of driving both ways whilst on drugs was not great by any means. My passengers were not helping. On the outward journey my navigator was sipping sake, and not entirely with it, for the you know..NAVIGATING. It did make for entertaining driving however. The classic moment for the night is after several missed turns, we're looking for Melbourne St. So I see a road coming up that says 'Melbourne St' and Damo goes, nah thats not it, go straight. So we drive past it and he goes, "you do know I was being sarcastic right?"...
One U-Turn later and we finally get at Stephs
Then we're driving back towards the cumberland highway... and I ask Steph, do you know how to get to the M5 and shes like, is that a freeway or motorway or something. And I go motorway and she goes, sure turn left. Since I clearly had to make a choice, I turned left despite me feeling, this isn't right. So I ask, this feels like we're going to the M4 and she says "That goes towards city right?".
One U-Turn later and we're finally on the M5.
Finally after we turn off the M5 onto princes highway, I need Damo to look up the side street to turn into. Of course Steph chooses this oppurtunity to ask Damo about gothic subcultures relentlessly. Here I'm trying to get Damo to do something important before we crash/overshoot and she doesn't shutup. Sarah (in the backseat) later said, she was just WAITING for me to snap. But being the gentleman (who was half drugged out) that I am, I left it be.
The way home was just as hilarious as we got quite lost. A few dozen side streets and no through roads later we finally find our way back. Its midnight, the drugs still have the drowsiness effect, and more annoyingly my nose is starting to go again. And of course Steph is in the front seat and she doesn't have a clue how to navigate and is incessently talking about Japanese porn and furries and all sorts of fantastic wacky stuff. Stephs a great girl, but after we finally dropped her home, there was a collective "Thank f**king god" as we appreciated the joys and splendor of silence.
One U-Turn later and (30mins of dropping Damo and Sarah off) and I'm finally home.
Needless to say, doing 1.5 hrs of driving both ways whilst on drugs was not great by any means. My passengers were not helping. On the outward journey my navigator was sipping sake, and not entirely with it, for the you know..NAVIGATING. It did make for entertaining driving however. The classic moment for the night is after several missed turns, we're looking for Melbourne St. So I see a road coming up that says 'Melbourne St' and Damo goes, nah thats not it, go straight. So we drive past it and he goes, "you do know I was being sarcastic right?"...
One U-Turn later and we finally get at Stephs
Then we're driving back towards the cumberland highway... and I ask Steph, do you know how to get to the M5 and shes like, is that a freeway or motorway or something. And I go motorway and she goes, sure turn left. Since I clearly had to make a choice, I turned left despite me feeling, this isn't right. So I ask, this feels like we're going to the M4 and she says "That goes towards city right?".
One U-Turn later and we're finally on the M5.
Finally after we turn off the M5 onto princes highway, I need Damo to look up the side street to turn into. Of course Steph chooses this oppurtunity to ask Damo about gothic subcultures relentlessly. Here I'm trying to get Damo to do something important before we crash/overshoot and she doesn't shutup. Sarah (in the backseat) later said, she was just WAITING for me to snap. But being the gentleman (who was half drugged out) that I am, I left it be.
The way home was just as hilarious as we got quite lost. A few dozen side streets and no through roads later we finally find our way back. Its midnight, the drugs still have the drowsiness effect, and more annoyingly my nose is starting to go again. And of course Steph is in the front seat and she doesn't have a clue how to navigate and is incessently talking about Japanese porn and furries and all sorts of fantastic wacky stuff. Stephs a great girl, but after we finally dropped her home, there was a collective "Thank f**king god" as we appreciated the joys and splendor of silence.
One U-Turn later and (30mins of dropping Damo and Sarah off) and I'm finally home.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Spiderman 3: The Soap Opera
*WARNING - spoilers likely *
Still not sure what surprised me more. How truly bad this movie was, or the fact that it got 8.2 last time I looked on IMDB. Granted its only released today and its the fanboys hit IMDB way before the rest of the world does.
Spiderman 3 isn't a terrible movie. Its not in the same class as say "Crossroads", but its not a fitting movie to finish off the Spiderman franchise. It doesn't try to suck and tries a lot of new things. The problem is it just doesn't work.
The spiderman series have definitely involved a human element to the action, which helps a lot. This movie takes this idea far, far too far. There is probably 15mins of action in this 2.5 hr extravaganza. The action is really quite good. The CGI work on sandman is practically good, but Goblin and Venom look also fantastic.
The problem is everything outside of this action is boring, corny/hammy/cheesy or just plain nonsensical. Theres the entire boring "I'm suck, I miss MJ" scenes, theres the truly stupid hordes of crowds staring and pointing at this giant sand monster thing, instead of screaming away in terror as they well should be, or the truly random laws of physics in regards to pretty much anything. Monster hole punched multiple times and large bits ripped of = perfectly alright. Shoot two small rockets at it and wow it goes down in a flash. Crane is out of control destroying buildings, and Spidy just saves ONE chick and proceeds to chat her up whilst all this carnage occurs nearby.
The romance scenes between Peter and Mary-Jane are sometimes touching. Its a shame that the other 99% of this relationship is so full of corny lines and hammy acting. Speaking of cheese, this movie was GROSSLY full of it. From the people cheering spiderman in random locations, to the well over the top shot of Spiderman arriving to save the scene, landing next to a waving American flag, posing and only THEN attacking.
Theres just so many other bad things about this movie, but its late and I want sleep. Please don't go see this movie, as it'll only justify a fourth crappier one. In the cliched words of the random person in the movie "Even one person can make a difference".
Still not sure what surprised me more. How truly bad this movie was, or the fact that it got 8.2 last time I looked on IMDB. Granted its only released today and its the fanboys hit IMDB way before the rest of the world does.
Spiderman 3 isn't a terrible movie. Its not in the same class as say "Crossroads", but its not a fitting movie to finish off the Spiderman franchise. It doesn't try to suck and tries a lot of new things. The problem is it just doesn't work.
The spiderman series have definitely involved a human element to the action, which helps a lot. This movie takes this idea far, far too far. There is probably 15mins of action in this 2.5 hr extravaganza. The action is really quite good. The CGI work on sandman is practically good, but Goblin and Venom look also fantastic.
The problem is everything outside of this action is boring, corny/hammy/cheesy or just plain nonsensical. Theres the entire boring "I'm suck, I miss MJ" scenes, theres the truly stupid hordes of crowds staring and pointing at this giant sand monster thing, instead of screaming away in terror as they well should be, or the truly random laws of physics in regards to pretty much anything. Monster hole punched multiple times and large bits ripped of = perfectly alright. Shoot two small rockets at it and wow it goes down in a flash. Crane is out of control destroying buildings, and Spidy just saves ONE chick and proceeds to chat her up whilst all this carnage occurs nearby.
The romance scenes between Peter and Mary-Jane are sometimes touching. Its a shame that the other 99% of this relationship is so full of corny lines and hammy acting. Speaking of cheese, this movie was GROSSLY full of it. From the people cheering spiderman in random locations, to the well over the top shot of Spiderman arriving to save the scene, landing next to a waving American flag, posing and only THEN attacking.
Theres just so many other bad things about this movie, but its late and I want sleep. Please don't go see this movie, as it'll only justify a fourth crappier one. In the cliched words of the random person in the movie "Even one person can make a difference".
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