The Muffinarium

It's Official – Adobe Premiere Elements is a Load of Shite

2010-02-09T04:43:00.002Z

That is the Officially Official verdict from me. Why is it that EVERY other player and editor can handle all my videos just fine, but when it comes to Premiere Elements (which shall now be referred to as that “Piece Of Shite” or “POS”) will never play the sound no matter what I do?

You're probably thinking of a long list of possible solutions right now … don't bother posting them since I've tried them all already. They didn't work. There's nothing worse than wasting an ENTIRE DAY trying to fix this problem with Adobes POS, failing to do so, and then suddenly realising that the reason you're failing is that you're trying to fix shit! Shit can't be fixed! You can't improve the condition of shit like Adobes POS into something better and more functional than shit. It's just shit.

Obviously … avoid.

A Hero

2009-11-08T15:18:00.002Z

Story here.

A prediction - Flash/thumb drives will replace disc drives

2009-11-02T22:46:00.002Z

I picked up a 16GB Bytestor flash drive the other day and, after using it for a bit, it struck me that these things are vastly superior to disc drives in every way. I mean, you just plug them in and drag and drop without any of the fuss involved with burning a disc. They're smaller than a DVD, the thing that they go into (the usb slot) is smaller than the space a DVD player/rewriter takes up, there's no moving parts, they have rapidly overtaken DVD's in the shear storage available AND you can run programs (mobile applications) straight from the things.

Meaning that you can have your entire computer life on one of these things (documents, music, films, games, email client, browser, media players, programs, etc), just stick it into whatever computer is in front of you at the time and have all your docs, progs, settings and bookmarks right there just as you like them.

These things will kill computer CD/DVD drives like CD/DVD drives killed the floppy. I'm sure manufacturers will keep including disc drives in their machines for a while like they did with floppies, eventually just including them for legacy reasons, but eventually they'll be dropped because no-one will be using them. Downloading games is becoming the norm, like downloading music already is, and downloading movies will become.

Flash drives are even edging into hard-drive turf.

Thinking about it, the size of our desktop PC's, their width particularly, is dictated by the size of their disc drives. Get rid of the CD/DVD drives and we can get smaller PC packages.

Also on a side note … 16 GIGABYTES!!1! Jesus. That's 16,000 megabytes! Back in my day talk in the classroom was like - “WOW! Your computer has 128 kilobytes?!?! That's twice what mine has!”

The first memory upgrade I purchased many years ago was a 1 megabyte upgrade for my Amiga that cost £50 and was the size of a pack of cards in all three dimensions. Now-a-days a postage stamp sized SD card will hold many thousands of megabytes. All that change in just 14 years.

It's like those touch screens that are getting into every device under the sun these days. Mark my words, eventually your keyboard will just be a sheet of glass/plastic that can be any keyboard layout in any language and manufacturers won't have to make lots of localised versions any more.

Should be fun.

Corporate scumbag types that shaft their customers only hurt themselves in the end

2009-10-27T12:51:00.002Z

*Warning – rant incoming*

They try to earn a few more pennies from us lowly peons, or try to cajole people into changing their services, or screw you over or whatever, no doubt thinking that they will benefit from that, but in the end they just lose customers.

Take for instance Virgin Media who offer cable tv, telephone, internet and mobile services here in the UK. I used to have cable tv (the analogue service), phone and internet services from them. Initially when I signed up I had access to some 50+ channels. Music, news, documentaries. Everything except movies and sport (which I just don't watch). However, once digital tv came along they started replacing the good channels (like Discovery and Mtv) with crappier channels that were on freeview anyway (like UKTV Documentary and The Box). Then they started removing channels altogether, all the while sending me invitations to upgrade to digital so that I could watch the channels that I used to have access to on the analogue service!

In the end I had less channels than freeview! Something like 16 or so. And I was paying full price for that!

Fucking bait and switch con artists!

I upgraded to digital all right … Sky (satellite tv here in the UK). Had I been brain-dead enough to upgrade to Virgin Media's digital service there would have been a risk of them using that bait and switch tactic again when the next 'big thing' comes along.

I found out later via a Google search that Virgin were going to upgrade all their analogue customers to digital for free when they shut down the analogue service. Obviously taking away all their channels in order to cajole their customers into paying for the upgrade before the analogue switch-off must have been Virgin's plan on saving money.

So … FUCK YOU Virgin Media. I'm never going back to those scumbags. “Lets rip off our own customers so they leave and never come back to us! Ever! Yay! Epic fail!”

Sky 1 – Virgin 0.

I dumped their “never fucking working” phone 'service' too. I switched to BT (I needed a BT line for Sky anyway) … but that was a mistake I think.

Back in the old days just paying your bill was enough for corporations. Ah … how young and naïve
we were! It was a golden age where they only charged you for line rental and calls! How things have changed.

Get this. BT bill me five quid … FOR PAYING MY FUCKING BILL!

I kid you not. BT charge me a “payment handling fee” for paying my bill.

Fuckers.

So I'm switching my landline to Sky's telephone service instead. There has got to be a non-rip off company out there for telephone services.

What companies – or should that be scumpanies? - like BT and Virgin Media should know is that you can't treat your customers shabbily. Look at Amazon.com. They are HUGE, and part of that is because their customer care is so very good. People will give repeat custom to good companies. And I know from personal experience that they really do bend over backwards for their customers.

Sometimes it's really silly things that prevent repeat (or even initial) sales for a company. Take ASDA (the second biggest supermarket chain here in the UK). Try to buy your groceries online with them and you'll soon discover that they won't let you buy any more than six of any one particular item.

“How do we increase product availability?”

“How about if we limit how much our customers can buy?”

“That'll work! High fives all round!”

Ahem... how about ordering more stock?

Morons.

A lot of people like myself do occasional big shops, rather than lots of little shops. I've always bought my groceries (online) every five or six weeks or so.

“I'm sorry sir, but you will just have to make those six tins of beans last a month-and-a-half.”

“What's that sir? You want to buy six weeks worth of tuna for your cat? HAHAHA! Very funny sir! Very funny!”

This is why I shop at Tesco.

Stop Blair From Becoming President!

2009-10-13T18:21:00.003Z

Sign the petition and stop this filthy betrayer from enriching himself further.

He deserves a prison cell, not a plush office.

Why we shouldn't worry about Global Warming too much

2009-10-11T17:36:00.002Z

No, this is not me arguing that there is no Greenhouse Effect, or that current environmental changes are just naturally occurring variations unconnected with industrial CO2 emissions. I'm just taking a longer term view.

They say that global oil production has probably peaked, yet rapidly developing countries like India and China are dramatically increasing their consumption. What's left in the ground isn't going to last as long as we think since daily consumption is much, much higher than in previous eras. The price of oil is going to sky-rocket and nations are going to turn to extracting their fuel from more difficult substances, like oil shale (a rock!), oil sands or very heavy low quality oil.

Nations will be forced to economise for real-world economic reasons rather than to save the planet.

Something that you have to remember about fossil fuels is that it IS free energy. We dig or pump it out of the ground, refine some of it and hey presto! We have energy to power our vehicles and electricity grids.

All other alternatives are either expensive, or require more energy to create than you get back out. Wind and solar are never going to take over from fossil fuels. It's not always windy or sunny, especially here in the UK in winter where we barely get eight hours of sunlight and the days are usually still and crisp.

Nuclear power is expensive and produces waste ... and you probably don't want to live in a world where every nation depends on nuclear power and had the option to build nuclear weapons.

Ethanol costs energy to make, and requires organic matter like food crops to make. It's hardly ideal, since it impacts upon food prices, and it's expensive.

Hydrogen is even worse. Without the ability to extract hydrogen from natural gas (a fossil fuel) it costs more energy to make hydrogen than you get out of the process.

Whatever we switch to, the world is going to look very different once the 'free energy' is exhausted. Like Nazi Germany in WW2, we will be forced to make liquid fuel from crops or coal to power our vehicles. It will be very expensive. Think about how much fuel a jet passenger plane burns, or a 80,000 tonne container ship travelling from Shanghai to Rotterdam.

Global warming is caused by us burning fossil fuels, which we are going to exhaust, thus curtailing CO2 emissions, so I'm not too worried about global warming. However, we've built our civilisation (food production, trade, travel) upon a paradigm of cheap and plentiful energy. As that changes civilisation is going to have a hard landing, and that scares me.

Imagine a world where a litre of fuel costs not £1 or thereabouts, but £5 or £8 a litre. You're not going to be driving that 4x4 any more.

Give me a break ... Obama's barely warmed his seat yet!

2009-10-11T17:12:00.002Z

Barely eleven months into his presidency and Obama is awarded the Nobel prize for peace? Come on now ... the chap hasn't even had time enough to do much of anything yet, let alone anything worthy of the peace prize. He was nominated less than two weeks into the job!

You know why he won it? He's not Bush. The whole world was so fed up with Bush, Cheney and the ideological neo-conservative mindset that they shower the chap that displaces all that (by winning the US presidential election) with praise and prizes.

Though it's great that the neo-cons are toast, I just don't think that winning an election in a democracy is worthy, by itself, of the Nobel peace prize. The US electorate should perhaps have gotten the prize instead, for electing Obama, America's first black president.

Kali

2009-08-25T10:48:00.002Z

Click to expand.

Hindus have such kick-arse gods.

DOODLES!

2009-08-12T18:11:00.006+01:00

Meh. I should be working on Dimfall, but instead I'm doodling like crazy. I've half-filled a sketch pad I only bought a couple of weeks ago, and that's just that one sketch pad.

Something I did today on the cintiq ...

Click to expand

Most of the time I have nothing planned when I start a drawing, and just let the drawing evolve by itself. With the above doodle all I had in mind when I started was a figure in a slightly actiony pose. I had to extend the canvas a couple of times as the doodle grew.

The below pic was just me timing my usual drawing method (I've been experimenting with different methods of doing my little webcomic, and investigating my present method). I think it's the case that I'm so slow in drawing Dimfall because I care too much and try to hard, so every stage in every frame takes much longer than it should. When I don't care so much I'm much faster, and speed is the goal with my experiments.

Click to expand.

YouTube Suspended My Account ...

2009-04-20T21:21:00.003Z

… and deleted all my videos! Including that “Darkfall is Coming” video!

Damn.

I don't know why. There was no copyrighted material in my videos. The music I got from Newgrounds (free to use), and I strongly doubt that in-game footage from EQ2 or Oblivion counts as copyright infringement.

I didn't even get a warning. I just clicked YouTube on my bookmarks and *POOF* … all gone.

:'(

EDIT - My account is back up for some reason. Did someone falsely flag one of my videos I wonder? Hopefully it will stay up now.

Hopefully.

Dawn of War 2 can go fuck itself

2009-03-18T16:30:00.004Z

What the hell is it with games publishers insisting that you have to download and sign up to loads of different services just to play their worthless games!?!

You can tell I'm pissed. That's because I've just spent a whole hour trying to install and play Dawn of War 2.

The CD should be enough. Slap it in, install the damn thing, then play, but NOOOOOOOOO. It can't be that simple. You've got to download Steam and set up an account., giving them all your details and stuff too. Once you've done that it still won't let you play the fucking game until you set up an Windows Live account too.

Personally I don't like giving my email address to these corporate scum bag types because they'll just spam your inbox with 'offers' and crap, but hey, no choice. Then there was the 'Gamer Tag'. What the fuck is a gamer tag? Whatever I put in it didn't like so I gave up and spammed in “sitgdsajlhfsljhfgweusghfsljdhb” or something.

Fuck off Microsoft … I just want to try the fucking game.

Signed up. Restarted the game though Steam (which was spamming my desktop with ads). Tried to play. A Windows Live window popped up over the game asking for my account and password. I entered them in. It accepted them, but by that stage I was too pissed off with all that shit, and with wasting a whole fucking hour, to play the fucking game so I just exited it, ejected the disc, put it back in it's case … and threw the fucking thing right across the room.

Fuck you Dawn of War 2 and fuck you Microsoft. Please go die in a fire.

Games are supposed to be about fun, not about being forced to sign up to dozens of crappy services that you do not want.

Yay for new fangled technology!

2009-03-17T20:24:00.004Z

In this case, external sound cards.

Anyway, I got my PC back from the repair shop and found that I had a problem with the sound. The front two speakers were barely producing useful sound. Simple sounds you barely noticed the difference, but music had a certain 1930's wireless quality to it when played.

It was in for repair because the power supply unit failed and took out the motherboard. That was repaired, but what killed the motherboard must have damaged the sound card too. Attempts to get the on-board sound from the new motherboard failed. Vista wouldn't even detect that capability, no matter what discs and drivers I put in the 'offering tray'.

I'd already spent a load of money on getting the thing fixed the first time so I didn't fancy doing that again, for a while a least. I searched Amazon for sound cards, checking out prices, and found that they make … external sound cards now.

External

o_O

I ordered one. It arrived the next morning. I plugged it in. Vista detected it and installed the drivers. It worked.

From plugging the USB in, to the external card working, was a matter of seconds.

Best thirty quid spent ever, especially since it saved me time and money (ie - labour costs) in getting the PC properly functional again.

Yay!

External sound cards. External hard drives. External disc drives. All we need now are external graphics cards since, you know, they are the most likely part of your PC to be upgraded. A PC could just be a motherboard, power unit and USB hub which everything else just plugs into.

That would make repairs and upgrades so much more convenient and easy.

Spore is Doomed

2008-09-30T21:38:00.004Z

Yes. Doomed.

You would think that a game that was as hyped as Spore, which came from the same people as The Sims, which had a HUGE budget and many years of development would be as likely to fail as water is to spontaneously combust. Well, you would think that would be the case but it seems that between shallow gameplay and a poorly disguised contempt for their customers, EA have managed exactly that.

Contempt for customers?

Included with your legally purchased copy of Spore is SecuROM which is installed on your computer alongside Spore. Apart from the very serious problems that SecuROM can bring to a PC system, it also limits the number of 'activations' of the game to just three for the legal purchaser.

Three.

For the game you paid for.

Basically EA expects you to pay full purchase price for a game that you will be renting for just three installs.

How many times have you installed one of your favourite games that you've been playing for years and years after the original purchase? Four times? Six times? More? With people upgrading their PC's, buying new ones, recovering from hard-drive failures, re-installing the operating system after particularly bad computer fuck-ups etc the average gamer will run out of 'activations' very rapidly. I myself have gone though three new PC's and five hard-drives (Dell sucks) in just four years.

Thinking about it now, I've had 5 separate computers in 7 years.

So how long will three installs last for you?

Obviously Spore fans are livid about this. They've been retaliating against EA by giving thousands of one-star reviews on Amazon.com (US link and UK link). To date out of 3,059 customer reviews at Amazon.com, 2,603 rated the game 1 star out of 5.

Of course some initial post-release customer dissatisfaction shouldn't really hurt the success of the game, so long as the game is as amazing as it was hyped up to be.

Unfortunately it's not.

Yahtzee, of Zero Punctuation fame, gave a good video review of Spore that covers everything quite nicely. Some of his criticisms (shallow gamepley for example) are repeated in many other reviews.

Spore has barely been out for a month yet if you check out the Xfire figures for Spore you will see that they are collapsing faster than Age of Conan ever did.

Shallow gameplay? That's a big 'yes' I think.

Of course EA has since turned around and decreed that their customers will get five 'activations' instead of the original three.

[sarcasm] Oh, how their customers must feel loved! [/sarcasm]

EA just don't get it. People don't like getting fucked-over. And they don't have to buy any particular game at all. Had Spore been as amazing as The Sims then many people would have just bought Spore anyway and just swallowed the customer abuse that came with it. However, very few people are going to volunteer to that kind of customer-shafting just for an average game.

How many copies of Spore does EA need to sell to pay for their development costs? Some speculate 8 million, which is a huge figure, but knowing just how successful 'The Sims' was, Spore could easily have justified such a big development budget purely on the assumption that Spore would have been equally successful. That will not be the case though.

In summary, Spore is doomed.

Interestingly, Spore is rapidly becoming the most pirated game in history as Spore fans, not wanting to be ripped off by the rent-a-game policy of EA, have opted to download the cracked version, which doesn't come with limited 'activations'. This has to be one of the only instances where anti-piracy measures actually fuel piracy instead.

My Two Pennies

2008-09-12T08:26:00.008Z

A two weeks ago or so, Aventurine released a HUGE 17-minute Darkfall in-game trailer. Though any game trailer of that length more than deserves the title 'huge', knowing that it is from Aventurine (a small indie developer who have previously only released short videos amounting to only one or two minutes each) makes the video doubly significant.

The video was released alongside the commencing of beta sign-ups, and since this is Darkfall that we are talking about, it obviously created quite a stir. A game that was once dismissed as 'vaporware' by the majority of the gaming community is now attracting a lot of attention.

Since the video's release and the beta announcement Forumfall has been deluged by new members signing up. Forumfall's membership doubled in a week, while over on mmorpg.com the Darkfall forum surged to the second most popular section after Warhammer Online, mirroring Darkfall's "hype meter" on that site.

This, barely a week after beta sign-ups began. Just wait until beta starts in October.

Of course the reason behind the levels of interest is the feature set that Darkfall promises. Since the release of the original Everquest and World of Warcraft, the mmorpg genre and industry have been stuck producing endless copies of a game format that is known to generate revenue. In that environment a large development house would be reckless in investing millions on developing a game that did not follow the direction of previously released games.

So basically the mmorpg genre has been stuck in a format that was well suited to the days when mmorpg's were in their infancy, and dominated by nerds, but doesn't suit todays gamer particularly well.

Let me break this down to the individual issues that the current crop of mmorpg's have.

1 – Levels/grind

To progress you character you must gain levels. To gain levels you must obtain experience points. To obtain experience points you must complete quests and kill an awful lot of critters. The thing is people don't want to complete 40 quests or slay 600 generic beasties just to gain a level. You're not playing the game at that point - you're just jumping through hoops.

It's also grind ... and it's boring.

Compare that system with Oblivion's system which doesn't have experience points. In Oblivion you level by gaining ten skill points across your core skills. You gain these skill points by using your skills. The result of that is the elimination of grind. You don't need to kill X number of critter type Y or complete Z number of quests to level. You just play and have fun and your character gains skill points in the process.

Aventurine have gone one step further and have abandoned the level system altogether. Darkfall is 100% skill based. You raise your skills by using them, ie – by playing and having fun. Higher skill levels lead to more potent abilities.

So if you're a player who enjoys being a tank type, or a mage, or a healer, or whatever, the mere act of playing the way you enjoy most improves your character AS a tank, mage, healer or whatever.

So people are hoping that Darkfall will be a mmorpg that isn't (*gasps*) filled with boring grind.

2 – Combat (subtitled 'combat' – notice the inverted commas)

In a mmorpg combat involves parking next to a critter, putting your hand-brake on and toggling the auto-attack. For the next couple of minutes your eyes are glued to the reuse timers on your hotbar. Every 4-6 seconds or so you get to click one of your abilities. Combat is basically "click ... wait ... click ... wait ...click ... wait", and though your avatar is having a great time going through all his combat animations, for you the player it is mind numbingly boring.

It is for this reason that the rest of the gaming industry does not touch the auto-attack and hotbar system. Why would they want to make their games boring? The only reason the auto-attack system remains in mmorpg's is because, like I have previously said, big developers have become too conservative and averse to 'risky' change, fearing a poor return on their investment.

FPS style combat, whether in shooters or Oblivion type games, is undeniably fun. The player is completely immersed in the actual mechanics of combat, rather than just once every six seconds like in mmorpg's. A few small developers have actually taken the risk in introducing FPS combat in their mmorpg games – WW2Online and Planetside come to mind – but the majority of the market is in the fantasy side of the genre which is dominated by the click-and-wait system.

Darkfall uses full FPS style combat, whether it is swords, spells, arrows or cannons that are being used. That's "fun box number 2" ticked off for Darkfall.

3 – PvP, mounted combat and vehicles/ships (in PvP)

PvP is a complete joke in most mmorpg's. Because of the level system, you are not competitive in PvP unless you're maxed out. In some games high levels prey on lower level characters that don't stand a chance (broken PvP). In other games where they have restrictions you can't attack someone that is X number of levels above or below you, or in certain areas (carebear PvP). In most mmorpg's the PvP is pointless and only amounts to glorified duels or ganking. In games where the PvP has been poorly thought out you can be ganked while you're helplessly stuck in a cut-scene dialogue with an NPC.

And those are just the problems that a level system brings to PvP. The auto-attack system brings more problems and restrictions.

Want to fight on a mount? Sure thing! Want to fight REAL mounted combat that isn't just a glorified speed bonus? Not in a mmorpg with auto-attack. In a system where you have to select a target and toggle auto-attack on, genuine mounted combat is impossible. You can't run down characters on foot, swiping them as you pass. You can't engage in mounted verses mounted combat where both sides are desperately trying to out-manoeuvre their opponent so they can attack, avoid attack and defend themselves effectively against their opponent (ever played Mount & Blade?).

Want to man a cannon on a friend's ship and REALLY blast other ships? Want to conduct ship-to-shore bombardment against other players? Not in a game that uses auto-attack ... and the latter would actually be considered 'griefing' in games using auto-attack. Auto-attack adds unnecessary restrictions to the mechanics of PvP combat.

Without PvP tripping over levels or auto-attack, Darkfall promises fun PvP.

I want to go through the recent video and give my two pennies on it so if you haven't already, download the 17-minute Darkfall video from below so that you know what I'm talking about.

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=64217

The first thing of significance you notice very early on is that when someone is 'killed' they merely become incapacitated and are left helplessly writhing on the ground. At that point they can be either resuscitated by a friend of finished off by an enemy. I play a few shooters that use a similar concept of 'healing' the fallen so I know that is a good gameplay element. Firstly, casualties won't have an irritatingly long run ahead of them after respawning in order to get back into the action (assuming their buddies keep control of the battleground). Secondly, healer character types are going to be incredibly important in any successful attack or defence.

Healers are going to have so many friends in Darkfall.

The mounts are amazing and are beautifully animated. Have a look at around 14:00 in the video and you'll see that unlike other mmorpg's, where mounts remain upright when they run up or down a hill, in Darkfall they actually run up and down slopes realistically. That scene at 14:00 blew me away. I also notice that at 6:12 the mounts also have a backwards walking animation (so no more Moonwalking™) and seem to lean into sharp turns (17:03). They also have forward and backwards attacks (14:48). The mounted combat looks amazing.

I didn't see any Shulgan Drakes (the Alfar racial mount). I'm guessing the inclusion of them in an already awesome video would have breached the maximum safe limits of awesomeness and cause people's heads to explode. Though all the mounts were excellent, the animation of the Garmir Rams (14:22) was especially so.

There's a large number of different ships types 10 minutes into the video. There's everything from tiny 3-gun boats to mind-bogglingly huge ships with two or three full gun decks. I don't think I can stress that enough. I've never heard of player ships being that stupendously big in other mmorpg's or FPS games. Never. Those ships are probably the largest player vehicles in any online game, and when I say that I mean vehicles that you can run about in and not EVE Online type vehicles where player = vehicle.

I noticed that in the two gun-deck (11:04) and three gun-deck (11:51) ships that not all the gun ports had cannons. Some were just left empty and some were covered by some kind of sliding door (11:48). I'm going to speculate that the cannons are a separate endeavour to the ships themselves. Meaning you first build the ship, then build the cannons with which to outfit the ship.

I counted 25 cannons on one side of that 3-decker, meaning 50 cannons total, but there are 72 gun ports in all, empty and occupied. A ship like that would easily be the pride and joy of well organised clan.

You could probably squeeze a couple of thousand players on that ship.

O.O

If you look at 7:10 and 14:21 you have shore bombardment going on. In game, I doubt that point-blank bombardment like that would happen unless the risk to the ship was minimal. A ship is a big, easy, expensive target. In a game like Joint Operations you would do it from beyond visual range. It's a lot less accurate but it's a useful way to harass the enemy and can be devastating if you have spotters telling you where your rounds are going.

Likewise, ship-to-ship combat would probably be done at the maximum visible range feasible, to make your ship as difficult a target to hit as possible, with the long-range shooting skills of the gunners being the decisive factor in any engagement, but this is just speculation.

The magic is going to be one of the most interesting aspects of the game, and not just because you have to aim your attacks. If you check out 4:18 you'll see a very short clip of people using magic to jump from one ship to another. The same technique is used at 6:30 to jump over a rock. At 3:38 an Alfar archer uses magic to levitate himself up a tree. I'm assuming that the same type of spell can get people up onto roofs too. Then there are multiple times in the video where spells send enemies flying (1:34, 1:44, 2:44, 15:19). You can imagine situations where a narrow path or bridge can be effectively held by a small number of magic users against a much larger force.

If you look at 15:45 you will see three types of warhulks, the existence of which has stirred up much debate on the forums. Personally I like them.

In the video there are three types. The blue ones appear to be giant floating guns that have what looks like a short range electrical gun covering the access ladder at the rear. I'm guessing they're used in attacking fortifications. The large white one looks like it works like an apc that can transport lots of people safely though dangerous spots. It's pretty much an empty box with two separate stairs at the rear and a small gun on top. The black ones are interesting because apart from the large front and rear facing guns, they also have a pair of flame throwers on the sides that were used to destroy the wooden defences which begs the question "are wooden defences vulnerable to fire attacks?" Can wooden defences be upgraded to stone I wonder?

Looking at the style of all three I'm speculating that these are the Ork/Mahirim racial versions of warhulks.

Some people are claiming that these "hover tanks" are game breaking. I don't think that's true and I'll explain why. Have a look at 17:06. You'll see a human in one of the warhulks attacking the crew. These warhulks appear to be slow moving so if you can get up the access ladders you can kill the crew and take the warhulk for your clan. In areas that have lots of places to hide (inside cities, rocky areas, wooded areas etc) warhulks are going to be vulnerable to infantry. In open areas these slow moving warhulks are going to be vulnerable to cavalry that can move and manoeuvre faster than they can. You'll also notice that the defenders of that city seemed to be throwing battle spikes (anti-vehicle/building grenades) at them. You may even be able to snipe at the crew with arrows/spells since the crew positions are exposed.

For every fighting style there will be a counter, I'm sure.

The PvE (8:47 – 9:37) looks like a lot of fun since the critters are running about just like players in a FPS game, and are not static as is the norm in mmorpg's. They also have brains enough to change weapons mid-fight (9:18).

The PvE section of the video was the only part where you saw player gravestones, despite all the combat in the video. For the uninitiated, a gravestone is what appears after someone has 'finished off' an incapacitated player – or if the player decides to respawn instead of waiting for resuscitation. Once your corpse becomes a gravestone all your gear can be looted from it. It reminded me of a developer update, where it was said that the critters could loot fallen players and then use their equipment. Is that why we only saw gravestones there? Because the AI critters automatically finish off and loot players? That would be my guess.

So if you've got a Flaming Sword of Pwnage and some critter lops off your head, guess who will be wielding your sword when you run back to your gravestone?

That would be so awesome.

With all the in-game things I have mentioned above - the abandonment of the level and auto-attack systems, removal of boring grind, the ship combat, the mounts, the cities etc – Darkfall is going to be an amazing game. Knowing that there is a large population of players that are sick to the back teeth with WoW-clone cookie-cutter mmorpg's I'd say that Darkfall could become massive too. Not just 'massive' EVE Online style with around 200,000 subscribers, but massive WOW style with millions of subscribers. Darkfall is offering a unique feature set within the fantasy mmorpg genre, with many of the individual features being completely unique within the genre. For that reason Darkfall will attract a lot of attention. Players who shuttle from one mmorpg to another mmorpg in a vain search for something different and fun will find that Darkfall has both.

tl:dr version – w00t! Darkfall is AWESOME!!!

The Russian leadership has less brain cells than a bag of potatoes.

2008-09-09T02:51:00.002Z

Well, yeah. What do they think they are achieving in Georgia? Sure, they fret over the onward expansion of Nato, and mourn the loss of their regional power and influence enjoyed during the Soviet era, but invading a small boarding country just so they can annex two tiny territories within Georgia - with populations of just a few tens of thousands – isn't going to extend Russian power. In fact it will only hurt Russia.

Remember earlier in this decade when the Russians repeatedly cut gas supplies to neighbouring states in an effort to bully nations like Ukraine and Georgia? What was the long-term reaction? Europe, Russia's biggest energy customer, started to source energy from more reliable suppliers elsewhere (like North Africa and Central Asia) and pipelines taking Caspian energy to the world markets were routed around, and not through, Russia. Georgia, once completely dependent on Russia for energy, now imports it from elsewhere.

The result of those earlier energy blockades has left Russia in a weaker position as an energy supplier, something that will only become more profound as Russian production, already past its peak, dwindles.

What do they think the reaction will be after this Georgian action? Do they expect Eastern European nations to turn their back on Nato and throw themselves at Russia's feet? In reality this is only going to push Eastern Europe closer to the West.

What does Nato offer? It offers collective defence and security. Membership is wholly voluntary.

What does the EU offer? It offers economic integration and development. Membership is wholly voluntary.

What does Russia offer? Threats of military force, unreliable energy supplies, threats of nuclear attack (in the case of Poland) and weak rule of law in business where the state just takes what it wants in regards to oil companies.

They've played the oil card, and that got taken away. They have now played the military card. What do they think is going to happen if they try that again with Ukraine or Moldova? The world is now distrustful and suspicious of Russian intensions. Any attempt to invade and annex big chunks of Ukraine or Moldova is going to see the West smack Russia down, hard.

You see, at the end of the Day Russia is weak. Their economic revival is dependent upon energy exports, which are vulnerable to sanctions, and are declining anyway. Their military are dependent upon ancient Soviet era hardware that has seen precious little technological advancement since the Soviet Union collapsed almost 20 years ago. Their bullying tactics over the last decade has left Russia without any significant allies.

What's going to happen now? I can hazard a few guesses. There will be on-going and increasing international pressure on Russia to remove its troops from Georgia proper. It's a hostile occupation that will become increasingly more obvious the longer Russian troops are within Georgia. The West are going to quietly help the Georgians strengthen their defences. There may even be US bases in the country to 'protect' the oil pipelines that carry energy from the Caspian region. Ukraine will probably get into Nato faster.

This is the 21st century and the Russian leadership needs to stop seeing Nato as a rival and/or a threat and join the institution in providing continental security instead.

The people at FilePlanet are SO cruel!

2008-08-02T02:45:00.002+01:00

According to FilePlanets blog the next "stupendously huge" beta coming to that site will be ... well ... they're not saying.

What's wrong with that you might ask? Well, instead of just telling us, or not telling us, they're dropping hints instead, which is giving rise to huge amounts of speculation since the hints could relate so several massively anticipated games approaching open beta and/or release.

Their first blog post on the subject had a hidden message in the text. Certain letters were in a just-about-perceivable bold typeface, which together spelled out "darkness is soon".

Of course us Darkfall fans can interpret that to mean Darkfall since the term "Soon™" is often used by the community to describe the ETA on any and all developer updates, beta dates, release dates, or whatever ... because of Darkfall's lengthy development time. Added to that the blog's title of "Yes, it's coming ...", a possible reference to the most viewed Darkfall video currently out there ("Darkfall is Coming"), and people are salivating with speculation.

BUT.

Those things could also refer to a couple of other games. Warhammer Online comes to mind since "War is Coming" is a Warhammer thing. "Darkness is soon" could also refer to "The Secret World" which is subtitled "Dark Days are Coming".

Then of course the second blog post on the subject comes along which is titled "Patience is Virtue". Could that be a reference to how patient Darkfall fans have had to be over the years? Possibly, but for the first time ever in that blog the first letter of each post is a big capitalised letter ... so far spelling W ... A ...

If the next post begins with a R we can assume it's the WARhammer beta ... but I'll bet they do something else to confuse us all futher.

Fuckers.

AoC bombed

2008-08-01T19:13:00.002+01:00

Relatively speaking.

It released only two months ago yet players are abandoning it like rats from a listing ship. According to Blizzard, 40% of players who left WoW to try AoC have already returned.

"Age of Conan released with some initial success a couple of months ago, and we did see some of our players leave to try the game. However, we've seen about 40 percent of those players return to World of Warcraft."

http://www.massively.com/2008/08/01/blizzard-yes-some-players-left-for-aoc/

Meanwhile on X-fire, Age of Conan plunged from the number 4 most played game (for X-fire users) shortly after release all the way down to the number 20 spot in two months. They went from 75,000 in-game hours a day, down to 13,000 hours today.

http://www.xfire.com/games/

Though people say that the game was over hyped, I think the problem lies more in the game being booted out the door in an unfinished state. Had the game been finished then it would have deserved the hype. As it was Funcom made the same mistake as Sigil did with Vanguard (though their too-early release was forced) and SoE (EQ2, though 'successful', was released unfinished which probably led to it not achieving its expected success (it was still fun though)).

Because of the time investment required to play a mmorpg, the game-player relationship is rather like a marriage.

The father (the developer) dresses his daughter (the game) in an expensive bridal gown on the magic day ... but he rushes her out the door too fast and she slips and does a face plant on the concrete footpath. She turns up at the altar spitting teeth and trying to stem the blood from a broken nose, while the father attempts to assure the groom (the player) that his daughter will heal and get better.

To which the groom replies - "Riiiight ... I'll just go and shack back up with my old girlfriend while I wait for that to happen then" and walks off.

Age of Conan was competing against a market saturated with (now) complete and polished mmorpgs, especially the giant - WoW. Any company that releases their product substantially short of complete in today's market is going to be punished by the players.

AoC X-fire figures have not stabilised yet. They're still falling and they're not too far above EVE Online in the X-fire rankings. EVE Online is of course a (admittedly large) niche game with a strong and dedicated player-base. What does that say about Age of Conan, the game that was supposed to give World of Warcraft a run for its money?

It's just a niche game.

Here's a fun review -> http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/138-Age-of-Conan

The next game to "give World of Warcraft a run for its money" is Warhammer Online. I suspect they could do it too, and not just because WAR is the next big upcoming mmorpg title that we are all hearing about.

For one thing the Warhammer universe has an even bigger following than Age of Conan or World of Warcraft (at least at WoW's launch ;p ) so all the Warhammer fans will pile into the game whether they are a mmorpg players or not. Not only that, but the developers appear to have drawn lessons from WoW's success. Instead of AoC style, ultra-realistic, high-poly, GPU crippling graphics, Warhammer Online looks more like an updated version of WoW (low poly models and textures that don't have to be of a ultra-high resolution to look convincing) so it'll run on average computers quite happily.

Of course if WAR is booted out the door too early and does a Vanguard/AoC style face-plant then Blizzard will have yet another head for their trophy room.

My fridge is now the most awesome thing in my kitchen

2008-08-01T01:02:00.001+01:00

Yay for Ctrl-Alt-Del fridge magnets!

Damn Forums.

2008-07-17T19:46:00.005+01:00

For the last three weeks now I've been trying to get on with another issue of Dimfall only to find that my forum addiction keeps dragging me away from doing anything productive. There's nothing more wasteful in time and effort than talking to retards on the interwebs ... except lurking and watching retards talk on the interwebs perhaps.

I follow too many forums to be honest.

Warcry is ok but not very active. Debating with the vaportrolls over there is fun since the vaportrolls have neither numbers nor brain cells to defend their arguments effectively. Warcry is like an online shooter where you can just play for an hour or so for fun.

Coles is a little more active, political and right-wing, but it's a fun forum since the people and rules are fairly relaxed there. If you're liberal-minded and want an instant engaging debate with 'the other side' then I'd recommend Coles. You only have to start a 'liberal' thread to guarantee a fairly good quality debate with the 'righties'.

MMORPG.com? It's a festering cess pit that has been taken over by the vaportrolls and more resembles a maggot infested corpse than a gaming forum. At least in the Darkfall section. Multiple accounts, blatant trolling and weak anti-troll moderation are the norm there. It's fun to lurk though since the trolls come out with some of the most outrageously comical stuff, in a tin-foil hat kind of way. I'm genuinely convinced that some of them are either obsessive types or mentally ill outright.

There has always been rampant trolling/smearing/negative spinning over there, but strangely this activity has EXPLODED ever since a publishing deal leaked out concerning Darkfall. Are some of the trolls linked to other mmorpg developers perhaps? Or are they just seriously obsessed PvP haters?

It's also a good central place to keep an eye on several games at once. Fallen Earth, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online etc – dozens and dozens of mmorpg's each have their own sections and forums there. Reading about player experiences and opinions is what kept me (and is still keeping me) from buying Age of Conan for instance, which seems to have done a 'Vanguard' if the xfire figures are worth anything. Usually games experience a bell curve in player hours online after release. The game initially grows over several months to a year (or so), plateaus, and then slowly drops away as the game ages. Age of Conan's xfire figures have dropped by two thirds in the first month alone – which is very Vanguard-like.

Personally I think Funcom screwed up their strategy completely. Everyone hates grinding so Funcom says "let's make levelling easy!" The result is that people have levelled up multiple characters to level 80 and experienced most of the content (that was finished at release) in the first month.

They should have seen that people hate grinding TO level and that the problem was rather the levelling system.

I could probably write a whole blog post on that alone, but I won't.

Anyway.

Whistelstopper I've given up on, though I still lurk sometimes. It's another political forum, like Coles, but more active and more middle-ground politically. I used to post a great deal there, and used to donate, for many years but there have been a few 'odd' things happening over there that just left a bad taste in my mouth. You're debating with someone who happens to be a moderator and you make some excellent points or arguments, only to see your posts conveniently 'disappear'. Or some arse-hat of a moderator hits you with infractions because they were in a bad mood at the time. It's worth looking at but it's pretty much run by older-generation types who frown if you spill your tea, metaphorically speaking.

Then there is Forumfall, or to give it its' proper pronunciation – FORUMFALL! With "This is" often used as a prefix. The best forum for lurkers IMO, simply because it's so damn entertaining. Very active. Lots of on-topic and off-topic discussion. Intelligent and witty posters. And minimal trolling thanks to the staff there. The rules there may seem relaxed compared to other forums (mmorpg.turd excluded) but that's just because being polite isn't on the Terms of Service, which is enforced ... with big sticks.

In fact, I haven't checked Forumfall for at least an hour now and I've already got cravings. Damn it Forumfall, stop being so much fun.

There are other forums I could talk about ... but I need my fix.

Getting album art and working videos onto your Sony NWZ-A815 / A816 / A818 Walkman.

2008-06-04T05:05:00.010+01:00

I recently bought a Sony A818 walkman but was kinda disappointed that it didn't come with simple tools for adding album art to the imported music or for converting videos to the format that the player will play. Not being a techno-geek it took me a while to work out how to do it.

Well, it's actually really easy to do, so to save other non-geek types like myself from spending countless hours fruitlessly searching Google for a solution I'd thought I'd write a simple non-geek "How-To" guide about it. Once you've understood it you'll be using your walkman like a portable TV (like me) and all your albums will have album art attached.

Firstly - Album Art

You've probably already tried to "sync" your walkman to your PC already, thinking that it would be an easy way to get your music on your player, only to realise in horror that Windows, in order to be "helpful", then turns your USB connector cable into a sphincter through which it then curls off a great big turd that contains ALL your pictures, videos, music and sound effects from ALL your folders (even the naughty pictures you thought you cleverly hid in a folder titled "advanced thermodynamics in quantum liquids") and dumps them into your poor hapless walkman while you're screaming helplessly "STOP! STOP!! OMFG STOP!!!"

This leaves dragging and dropping, which is dead easy but doesn't give you the album art. What you need to do is 'tag' your music tracks with the album art before you drag them into your walkman.

This is what you do ...

1 – Download Mp3tag (get it here) and install it.

2 – Search Google Image Search for your album art. It's dead easy since thumbnail images are used widely by online music stores, but keep in mind that anything over 300x300 in size sometimes won't show up on your player (because it's too big). Right click your chosen image and "save as".

3 – Use Windows Media Player to rip your album to your computer. It will stick the ripped album into your "Music" folder (in Vista at least – other versions of Windows probably do something similar). Obviously you don't need to do this if your music is already on your PC.

4 – Start up Mp3tag. Click the icon that looks like a folder with a green tick on it (marked "1" in the pic) and navigate to your album FOLDER. It's the folder that you want to select and not any of the tracks that are in it.

(click to enlarge)

5 – Once you've opened the folder all your tracks should be displayed. Select a track by clicking it then hit Ctrl-A to select all the tracks at once (you have to tag all the tracks you see).

6 – Right click the box on the lower left (marked "2" in the pic), select "add cover" and navigate to your previously saved album cover art.

7 – Click the save icon (marked "3" in the pic) to save the cover art "tags" to your tracks. You can check that it has worked by selecting one of your tracks (in normal windows explorer and not in mp3tag). In Vista you will get a thumbnail of the album art in the lower left of the window along with file/track details.

8 – Connect your walkman to your PC and drag and drop your newly tagged albums into your player, then bask in the warm fuzzy glow that you get when your album menu looks like below! (I used a flash so it's kinda hard to see the screen, but you get the idea)

Secondly - Video

Sony are funny people. They create a walkman media player that can play video – and has battery life enough for 8 whole hours of playback – but do NOT give you software or tools to convert your videos to the ONE format/codec that the walkman CAN play, or even give you pointers as to WHICH software can do it or WHERE to get it!

That's not a problem if you're a geek but the majority of us punters are (at least) a little fuzzy as to what a codec actually is.

Never fear, with a few simple tools you virtually can turn your walkman in to a TV, allowing you to grab videos from YouTube for walkman viewing.

It's simple to do too.

1 – Getting the video.

If you have no intention of grabbing videos from YouTube or other similar sites and only want to stick your videos on your walkman then you can skip this section.

I'm assuming that you have Firefox as your web browser. People who still use Windows Internet Explorer are like people who still use vinyl LP's because they haven't "discovered" CD's yet.

Go to KeepVid and drag the indicated button to your firefox links toolbar.

Go to YouTube (or a similar site) and find a video that you'd like to watch on your walkman. There are millions of videos on YouTube so you'll have little problem finding music videos, tv shows, film clips, lolcat vids etc (use their search).

Click the Keep It! Button that you dragged onto your links toolbar. This will take you back to KeepVid but this time there will be download links for you. Click the ">>Download<< (.flv – Low Quality)" link and chose to "Save to Disk" option.

Now this is important – DON'T save the video with the default name (which will be "get_video"). Rename the video and stick ".flv" on the end so that it looks like "funny_cats.flv" or whatever. Click save.

The video you just downloaded is in Flash format which you can view with a flash player but needs to be converted before it will work on your walkman.

2 – Converting the video

Fortunately Sony's PSP also plays MPEG4 videos and there is a handy video conversion tool already out there that will also work for your walkman.

Download and install PSP Video 9.

Once you've done that start the program and click the "Convert" button followed by the "Current Conversion" tab (marked "1" in the pic), click "Convert Video" (marked "2" in the pic) and navigate to your downloaded video. Once you've selected your video you need to set the output format "profile" (marked "3" in the pic) to one of the MPEG4 320x240 versions.

If you're having problems converting a video (ie – if it's really slow or just failing to do it) try using a different firmware version (I usually use the Fw2.80 MPEG4 320x240 version) but the program is a little buggy so you may have to restart PSP Video 9 if that doesn't work.

Click the start button.

The converted video will be placed in your documents/converted videos/PSP/MPEG4 folder and will have an associated thumbnail picture with it. You can now drag and drop both the video and thumbnail into your walkman for your viewing pleasure. I have 40 video clips on my walkman myself.

I hope this helps people :)

I don't 'get' the vapourware trolls

2008-04-02T14:16:00.005Z

Specifically over on the MMORPG.com forums. MMORPG.com have forums for every MMO game released and in development that you can think off. In the Darkfall forums there, 40-50% of the people who post are Darkfall fans. The other 50-60% of them are Age of Conan fans alleging that Darkfall is vapourware, or that it just doesn't exist at all.

That's the first thing that I don't 'get'. Out of all the MMO games out there that are in development, why have AoC fans latched onto Darkfall? You don't see fans from other MMO games 'vapourware trolling' in the Darkfall forums, and you don't see Darkfall fans trolling the AoC forums either.

The second thing that I don't get is what you might call their 'denial complex'. They allege that there is barely anything out there in the way of screen shots or videos to prove that the game actually exists, yet you point out the videos and screen shots and they come back with allegations that they are all either faked in various 3d applications, or created with photoshop.

I even read one troll claiming that a recent screen shot showing a spell effect was just done with a custom brush in photoshop.

What the fuck?

For the record there are something like seven videos and hundreds of screen shots that have been released by the developers.

Yet some of the trolls still claim that the developers only release two or three screen shots a year (they actually release around three screen shots with every bi-weekly developer journal, plus many more on the official Darkfall site), they claim that there is no evidence of the combat system working (despite numerous videos), that there is no evidence of the UI (despite many screen shots and videos), and that the existing video footage and in-game screen shots just show a heavily modded version of Oblivion.

One troll claimed that the Mirdain racial mount video was completely faked.

I think these guys need to loosen the tin-foil hats so that blood can reach their brains again.

But why are a lot of AoC fans like this?

I have a few ideas on this, and it pretty much boils down to tribalism. You see, most MMO games these days are hyped to the hilt during development. They always put out a CGI trailer very early in the development cycle, when there is no game to speak of, for instance. The developers heap hype on top of hype as the game is created, all of which is designed to pull people in, get a following and maximise publicity and initial sales.

The people that get pulled in and become fans invest substantial amounts of time in 'their' chosen game – whether it is by watching the various videos, examining the screen shots, posting on the forums, reading background info or following the developer updates.

With so much personal time invested in a game even before it is released, and with the risk of a game being a flop or failing to meet the hyped expectations, fans get tribalistic and can get either defensive about 'their' game (like long-time Vanguard fans in the first couple of months after Vanguard's disastrous release) or offensive against other games that are perceived as a threat to 'their' game.

If you examine Darkfall and Age of Conan, superficially they look very similar on their feature list. Delve deeper and Age of Conan starts to look like "Darkfall Lite™".

Of course both games are completely different and it's probably unfair to compare one to the other. Funcom, AoC's developer, doesn't even call their baby a MMORPG, preferring instead "online action RPG" (notice the lack of "Massive" and "Multiplayer" being mentioned in there). Initially, before the fans criticised it, AoC was supposed to be played as a single player game for the first twenty levels.

Having said that people do compare the two games. Both have city sieges and clans fighting over control for territory for instance. However, while that is a fundamental core feature in Darkfall, it is more like instanced end-game content in AoC.

Superficially similar, fundamentally different.

This is probably why many committed AoC fans are so hostile to Darkfall. If Darkfall releases with 80-90% of what was promised then it could really impact AoC's subscriber base and the success of the game. People who want real combat, clan cities, sieges and huge battles over territory are going to opt for the superior versions of those features that Darkfall offers rather than the 'tacked on' or 'virtual' versions in AoC.

Even Age of Conan developers seem to have this worry in the back of their minds.

Enter Athelan, an Age of Conan developer. He mocked Darkfall's feature list (as well as Aventurine) on the AoC forums, but had to defend himself after a poster pointed out that Athelan's boss had made some pretty wild claims about AoC himself.

This was his reply –

"Well there is a big difference between making some promises and not being able to deliver everything, and literally promising everything :P

It's like saying I promise to buy you a new car by the end of the year. At the end of the year I didn't buy you a brand new BMW I ended up buying a Honda.

But if I promised to buy you a Ferrari, and said no not just a Ferrari but a Ferrari Enzo, with custom solid gold rims, and full leather interior custom made out of lambskin. Then delivered you a used 1983 Mazda, or a toy car looking like a Ferrari ;p."

So there you have it from the very lips of a FunCom developer - Age of Conan is the Honda of the MMORPG world, while Darkfall is the "Ferrari Enzo, with custom solid gold rims, and full leather interior custom made out of lambskin" of the MMORPG world.

This is why so many AoC fans troll the MMORPG.com Darkfall forums. They fear that Darkfall will offer vastly superior game-play to AoC and thus harm the success of 'their' low-fantasy theme park game.

If Darkfall delivers on its feature list that is to say, and no-one can say whether or not it will deliver until release. Not even the trolls.

Dimfall 009 is now out!

2008-02-11T17:02:00.000Z

And I've posted it over on the official Dimfall blog.

Click the thumb to see.

Dimfall 008 is now out!

2008-02-05T10:27:00.000Z

You can see it over on the new official Dimfall blog. Go on ... off you go :)

Dimfall has a new home!

2008-02-02T11:32:00.000Z

With issue 008 of Dimfall being almost complete I'd thought I'd warn people that it, and all future issues, will not be posted here. I've set up a separate blog for all things Dimfall here

Update your bookmarks and expect Dimfall 008 during next week some time.

While you're waiting for Dimfall 008 ...

2007-10-31T21:28:00.000Z

Check out this funny EQ2 film (the punchline is right at the end)

:)

Dimfall - Issue 007 "MMORPG Economics 101"

2007-10-23T08:55:00.000Z

Click to expand

Dimfall - Issue 006 "It's not one of us!"

2007-10-18T22:15:00.000Z

Click to expand.

When a PK'er meets a hardcore carebear you just know that one of them will react like the final scene in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"

"IT'S NOT ONE OF US! KILL IT! KILL IT!! KILL IT!!!!"

lol

Incoming Comic!

2007-10-18T12:08:00.000Z

I've got just one frame left to do for Dimfall 006 (plus the text) and I'll have finished another strip (yay!)

Going to bed now (I sleep days and work nights) but when I get back up I'll crank out the last frame and hopefully get it posted by Friday morning ... maybe.

I must say that doing this comic is the best idea I've had for ages. It's a lot of effing fun.

If I keep doing this I'll set up a separate blog or something dedicated to Dimfall. THIS blog usually gets 20 visits a week, not the 600 a day that I've been getting because of Dimfall. I'm pretty sure no-one wants to plough though my random ramblings just to find the posts that contain Dimfall issues.

:)

Dimfall - Issue 005

2007-10-14T13:16:00.000Z

Click to expand :)

Dimfall - Issue 004 "Girlyquest 2"

2007-10-13T17:23:00.000Z

Click to expand.

I'm sure that fellow refugees from EQ2 will understand this one :)

Dimfall - Issue 003 "Gankage"

2007-10-11T14:30:00.000Z

Dimfall - Issue 002 is here

2007-10-04T13:57:00.000Z

This is fun. I'll probably do some more.

Click to expand.

Issue 001 of Dimfall is here!

2007-10-03T01:41:00.000Z

It took a while but then it was a learning process. Future issues (IF I do any) shouldn't take so long and hopefully my drawing skills will improve (yes ... my drawing sucks, STFU already!)

lol

The entire thing was done in Paint Shop Pro XI and with a Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet.

Click to expand

New Web Comic, perhaps?

2007-09-24T08:54:00.000Z

I need a new hobby. I used to have one that kept me really busy for years but that fell by the wayside a couple of years ago and I've been flailing around for something else ever since.

I've recently been thinking about doing one of those online comics. Not for money or whatever but just as a means to improve what little skill I have in that department. I doodle sometimes and I have a Wacom graphics tablet (that I don't use enough of) but to improve I have to keep at it, churning out pic after pic. Which is something that I never do.

The thing with an online comic is that you don't have to spend ages on drawing one (so they can be churned out quickly), you'll be drawing things like people and animals repeatedly (so you improve) and the comic will have a storyline (which will keep you interested).

Or at least that is the idea.

I have four characters fleshed out so far, three of which you can see below.

From left to right they are –

1 - "Gankis Khan" (a hardcore PvP player who plays a Mirdain [elf] assassin/scout type character) who's favourite weapon is his bow. He's arrogant and a cold blooded ganker. He's also good at what he does and basically guides the other characters early in their adventures in the world of "Dimfall" (sound familiar?)

2 – A Mirdain cleric type character (haven't decided on a name yet) who fights with a morning star and buckler. She is a role-player and irritates the hell out of the others with her overly verbose in-character speak.

3 – Another as yet unnamed character. Human, mage and carebear. What you see in the pic is the character late in the storyline and late in her development as a character (yes, I already have much of the storyline figured out). There's a story behind the armour too.

4 – Sir Percival (not pictured – though I'm considering "Sir Loot-a-lot" or something similar). Basically he is some very enthusiastic, but not too bright, teenager who came directly from "World of Warcraft" and doesn't have a clue about how Dimfall or PvP works. He rolls a human paladin type character so that he both tank and heal himself.

With a Paladin (tank), Cleric (healer), Assassin (DPS) and Mage (er ... mage) I figure they'll make a good group ... or not.

The character pics are just quick doodles that I used to decide what look to give each character (thinking with the pen) and are little more than sketch + colour. If I do this then the web comic will be of the quality that you see below. Not brilliant but not some rough sketch either.

Click to enlarge.

FPS combat in MMORPG's

2007-09-19T04:47:00.000Z

I put together a little film to further explain what I was talking about in my previous post about how FPS combat is better than that usually found in MMORPG's.

DEATH TO AUTO-ATTACK!

I almost got excited about Warhammer Online

2007-09-18T11:00:00.000Z

Almost.

I've been browsing their really cool site and the Warhammer Online videos on YouTube today and I must say their development and promotion costs must be quite large. The models, animations and artwork are beautiful, as are a lot of the effects (like burning trees). The artwork depicting the character classes on the main site had me drooling, especially the Empire and Dark Elf sections.

I was getting so excited about Warhammer Online that I was searching YouTube for actual in-game footage. When I found some my enthusiasm kinda clutched its' chest, curled up into a ball and died.

Why?

Target rings. Floating icons. Auto-attack and hot bar interface. Levels. Basically it's infected with the same disease as WoW, EQ2, Vanguard etc – ie boring combat wedded to a boring level grind.

How effing long has Oblivion been out now for f*cks sake? Oblivion showed us that first person shooter style combat in a fantasy RPG is much more fun to play than the traditional auto-attack and hotbar style combat of current MMORPG's.

In the traditional combat system you target your enemy, turn on auto-attack and sit back. Occasionally you press hotbar buttons to activate your abilities. Combat is basically right-click, 3, 5, 7, 6, 3, 5, 7, 6, 3, 8, win. Sometimes the monotony is punctuated by the player bursting into tears.

Ooooh, how fun.

In Oblivion there's no auto-attack and you actually manually aim all your attacks, whether they are with a sword, bow or spell. Each and every combat encounter is both fun and challenging. If you're using a bow or ranged spells then you've got the challenge of aiming your attack, which can be quite tricky if your enemy is running about or if they are at great range. If someone is attacking you with a bow himself you can manually raise your shield to protect yourself and then dash forward after the arrow hits you. In close combat you have to manually attack with your weapon and block with your shield while watching out for other enemies from flanking you and attacking from behind.

I'm SICK of the traditional auto-attack and hotbar crap! Although it's what players know and are used to, because it's historical to mmorpg's, it is a major contributor to the player's greatest complaint – GRIND, GRIND, GRIND!!!

About three weeks ago I got similarly excited about Age of Conan, until I saw in-game footage of a siege and combat. Again, target rings, levels, floating icons etc. Why do people bother to put huge effort into creating amazing graphics for their games only to ruin the effect with arcade-like floating icons and target rings?

I didn't like the graphics either.

I guess this is why I'm anticipating Darkfall so strongly.

Greenspan to blame for the current credit crunch?

2007-09-18T07:23:00.000Z

Personally, I've been of the opinion that the former Fed chairman was far too easily spooked by bad economic news and always too fearful to hike rates when bubbles were forming. While the dot com bubble was inflating he failed to raise US interest rates to curb the unsustainable exuberance, so it sucked in huge amounts of cash. When that bubble burst and investors lost their shirts Greenspan panicked (as it seems to me) and US interest rates plunged to just 1%. The US went through three quarters of recession, as you would expect when a major bubble bursts, but bounced back nicely to healthy levels of growth.

Having interest rates at an extraordinary low 1% for the considerable time that they were at can't be justified in my view. The US was not battling Japanese style deflation or economic disaster. For the majority of the time that US rates were very low the US economy was actually growing very nicely. Of course the growth may not have been as exciting as that experienced during the bubble era but then much of that "exciting growth" was due to the bubble economy.

Greenspan may have been attempting to get the US economy back to those growth rates (foolishly), instead he fuelled a second bubble in the housing and debt markets as people and companies took out a mountain of cheap loans.

US interest rates have risen, bursting the housing bubble and sending banks scrambling to shore up their assets and protect themselves from losses from bankrupt home owners. The result of that is a credit crunch as banks become more reluctant to offer loans to other banks, institutions or individuals. This alone will make corporate takeovers and expansion more difficult as funding becomes more difficult to acquire.

As it stands people are expecting the Fed to cut rates by a quarter to half a percentage point because of this crisis. The funny thing is that rising interest rates sparked off this crisis in the first place so cutting rates now when interest rates were already too high smacks of incompetence. It's not as if people were oblivious to the bubble in the US housing market or the risks of another bubble bursting.

The US dollar sank to an all time low against the euro because of this, hitting $1.39 to €1.

Anyone remember way back when the euro would barely buy 85 US cents? I do, but the dollar went through a sustained period of weakness against the euro after the bursting of the dot com bubble, largely on the back of the interest rate differentials between the Fed and ECB. With the ECB expected to raise rates in the future and people predicting a cut in US interest rates of up to one percent over the next year more dollar weakness is to be expected. What's worrying is that the dollar is making all time lows against the euro at the beginning of this era of divergent interest rates.

Some people are blaming Greenspan for the current crisis. Others are worried about how far a weakened dollar may fall, or if it will collapse altogether. In my view there is no way that the dollar can collapse. Not when it is the default trading currency for raw minerals and oil and not when it is in the interest of the Chinese to support the US dollar. At worst we are going to see a steady decline in the dollar from current levels.

Of course the underlying reason for the dollars' weakness, the gargantuan US trade deficit, is still being maintained by the Chinese. They print yuan to buy up dollars, thus keeping their own currency artificially weak against the dollar and their own exports dirt cheap when compared to anyone else's. China, a country with a GDP of $2.6 trillion, has built up enormous reserves of $1.3 trillion in doing this. What other country has cash reserves equal to 50% of their total GDP?

As a measure of how artificially weak the Chinese yuan is against the dollar just look at the wildly divergent GDP figures for China in both PPP and nominal formats. Their nominal GDP is $2.6 trillion as I previously said, but their purchasing power parity figure is a whopping $10 trillion, four times more than the nominal figure. China is no "sleeping dragon" ... it's a "hiding dragon". Should they ever decide to allow their currency to float freely at its' fair value we could see some very dramatic changes in the comparative value/size of the Chinese economy compared to everyone else. People will wake up one morning to discover that a chicken that was in the hen house has overnight turned into an eight tonne dragon with lots of sharp teeth.

Of course China is still developing so that eventuality might not happen for fifteen years.

Is Islamophobia now acceptable in the US?

2007-08-18T08:35:00.000Z

Islamophobia – the hatred and suspicion of Muslims in general – used to be the preserve of extremist right-wingers. You know the kind. Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, racists etc. However, it seems to be gaining greater influence in the US outside its traditional roots, and appears to be becoming an 'acceptable' way of thinking.

Say a legitimate multi-billion dollar company from a Muslim country buys up a company in the West. It shouldn't cause any controversy at all, like the recent $4billion purchase of OMX (the company that runs the Swedish stock exchange) by the Dubai stock exchange. Why would there be any controversy?

However, repeat the same kind of deal in the US, like the Dubai Ports purchase of six US ports, and alarmists start screaming that a Muslim company owning the ports would compromise security somehow. What's wrong with that? Well, the unspoken assumption there is that all Muslims are terrorists, which is both wrong and grotesquely racist.

Then there are the 'Eurabianologists' in the US who scream that Muslims are going to take over Europe in the near future, either by out-breeding us Europeans or by vast immigration. In Europe people who claim this are on the political extreme right like the racist British National Party, neo-nazi groups, neo-fascists or other very hard rightwing groups. In the US this Islamophobic message/theory is gaining mainstream support. Barely a week goes by without a new book getting published on the subject in the US.

And the thing is it's all so very reminiscent to the racist anti-Semitic scare mongering conducted by the Nazis and the Soviets before the second world war (someone explain to me how the 16 million Muslims in the EU are going to 'take over' when the EU's population numbers 500 million).

For some reason this kind of BS is acceptable in the US.

Another thing that seems to be acceptable is an advertisement for a rabidly racist blog on the American based political forum 'Whistlestopper'. The blog in question openly calls for ethnic cleansing of Israel and the occupied territories of ALL Arabs ... including Arab-Israelis. It has also called for the blowing up of Palestinian homes with the Palestinians still in them (just because the homes may have been illegally built) and contains the standard vilification of ethnic/religious groups that all racist bigots like to wallow in.

In Europe if an ad for a racist blog like that was discovered running on a website you would hear no end of apologies and contrition, and the racist ad would be immediately removed by the embarrassed administrators. Over at Whistlestopper the ad is just continuously renewed instead. Why? If the advertisement was for a racist blog that targeted blacks instead of Arabs there would be no question that the ad would be pulled.

It's another example of how Islamophobia is becoming more acceptable in the US thesedays.

2005 to 2050 – What to Expect

2007-07-22T21:30:00.000Z

I stumbled upon a great little article here about an economic projection that Goldman Sachs carried out in 2003 to find out which countries had the potential to become the world's biggest economies over the coming 50 years. It's a very interesting read and poses some fascinating questions, not least for us Europeans.

Firstly, a super-super condensed version of the article (i.e. just the dates and key events).

****

Seven biggest economies in 2005 (G7)

US - $11.7 trillion
Japan - $4.4 trillion
Germany - $2.0 trillion
China - $1.7 trillion
Britain -$1.7 trillion
France - $1.5 trillion
Italy - $1.2 trillion

2016 China overtakes Japan

2016 India overtakes Italy

2019 India overtakes France

2023 India overtakes Britain

G7 in 2020

US - $16.4 trillion
China - $7.1 trillion
Japan - $5.2 trillion
Germany - $2.5 trillion
Britain - $2.3 trillion
India - $2.1 trillion
France - $1.9 trillion

2024 Russia overtakes France

2027 Russia overtakes Britain

2029 Russia overtakes Germany

2036 Britain overtakes Germany

2036 Brazil joins G7

2041 China overtakes the US

G7 in 2050

China - $44.5 trillion
US - $35.2 trillion
India – $27 trillion
Japan - $6.7 trillion
Brazil - $6.1 trillion
Russia – $5.9 trillion
Britain - $3.8 trillion

In 2050 Americans will remain the richest people on the planet - $83,710 per capita GDP

In 2050 Indians will be as rich as Italians were at the start of the 21^st century - $17,366 per capita GDP

****

The first thing that you notice is China's meteoric rise to second place by just 2020. The second thing that you notice is that India, Russia and Brazil will boot Germany, France and Italy out of the G7 while Britain will be languishing at the bottom of the list by 2050. The third thing that you notice is that by 2050 the "big three" (China, the US and India) are going to be much further ahead of the rest of the G7 than the US was in 2005.

What does all this tell us though?

For a start China, the US and India are going to be the three great powers competing for the world's finite resources by 2050. With prices of base metals and materials (copper, nickel, tin, oil etc) getting squeezed upwards in price over recent years thanks to China's incredible double digit growth (to date) then imagine the world in 2050 where both China and India are consuming much more of these commodities than today. With finite resources but hugely increased demand the "big three" will inevitably build themselves "spheres of influence" with their diplomatic, economic and military muscle to guarantee the flow of resources that their economies depend upon.

So expect the world to get divvied up three ways by 2050.

Another thing to expect is that the European Union is going to be increasingly important for Europe. With other regions and countries eclipsing European countries then the choice will be between pooling ever more powers into the EU, or sinking into global irrelevance. No-one will chose the latter so expect the EU of 2050 to look more like a federal state. Where the EU "superstate" will be in the G7 in 2050 is anybody's guess.

If you look at the 2005 figures above it's possible to guess the EU's 2050 G7 placement by looking at Japan. The EU's GDP was virtually identical to the US in 2005 and Japan has the same problems of slow/no population growth and an aging population that much of Europe is expected to have in the future, only worse. The EU's 2005 GDP was a little under 3xJapan's GDP so we could guess the EU's 2050 GDP at 3xJapan (taking into account Japans worse population trends) or around $20 trillion. However that doesn't take into account further growth in the EU's membership over the coming decades or the faster growth of the new EU members in Eastern Europe compared with Western Europe.

My guess is that 2050 the EU will be fighting India for third place in the G7.

America will be interesting since its' growth over Europe is dependent to large degree upon immigration, especially from latin America, boosting its' working population and economy. America's choice is going to be between increased influence of latin American culture and language in their country as their population swells due to immigration, or slamming up the borders and accepting lower population and economic growth (and getting eclipsed by China earlier).

Looking at America's recent history (they've gone from 270 million to 300 million in just a few decades) I doubt that they will slow immigration so expect the US of 2050 to have a greater Hispanic flavour.

With three (and maybe four) great industrial powers competing for limited resources on this crowded world we could be facing a future more reminiscent of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, where major powers fought to control these resources and built up empires. Imagine a world where there wasn't enough copper, tin, aluminium, rubber or oil to supply everyone. Are the great powers going to take the inevitable hit to their economies ... or are they going to guarantee supply?

The future should be interesting

New Darkfall Video of the Mirdain Mount!

2007-07-22T18:12:00.000Z

It's not often that the Darkfall developers release video of their game, but when they do it's always mind blowing. The below is a video of the Mirdain racial mount, the Aerdin cat. What got my attention was how smoothly the game was running (unlike recent turkey's like Vanguard), the liquidity of the animation and the shear speed that the cat was running at. Imagine being in a group of your clan mates on Aerdin cats running through a formation of Orks on foot and tearing them to pieces! At those speeds the Orks wouldn't have much time to strike back.

Darkfall is going to be the greatest game ever.

Uploaded by supid11

Dollar weakness

2007-07-16T20:58:00.000Z

Both the euro and the pound have hit record highs against the US dollar. The pound hit $2.04 while the euro hit $1.38. It's probably partly due to the interest rate differentials between Europe and the US which will probably continue to widen for a while. It's a little unnerving since you have to go back a generation to see the pound at a higher level against the dollar (26 years).

In addition Iran has asked Japan to pay for its' oil in yen rather than dollars. Though one country refusing dollars probably won't affect the value of the dollar that much, if other major petro-dollar recyclers refuse dollars too (like Russia for instance who is thinking about it) then we could see some substantial revaluations between the major trading currencies. Nothing sudden though (not unless the likes of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq etc do the same, which is pretty unlikely) just a gradual and sustained change over a period of time.

Give it ten years and we may see fair value between the dollar, euro, yen and yuan. The dollar is grossly over-valued thanks to its' current status as a reserve currency and petro-dollar recycling giving the US major headaches like their gargantuan trade deficit. The yen and yuan are both artificially weak through governmental intervention and must be permitted to float freely. Japan can't go on taking up unlimited debt in order to buy dollars and China can't go on forever acquiring vast amounts of US dollars and bonds. The yuan itself could probably double in value and still China would remain "the world's manufacturer" due to its' cheap labour.

The world could be using those four currencies equally as reserve currencies in fifteen or twenty years time, changing the face of the global economy. The biggest difference will be with China. With growth at or above 10% a year their economy is doubling in size every 7 years (compound interest remember) so in fifteen years they would have doubled and doubled again ... and then doubled again if their currency reaches fair value verses other currencies.

Their current nominal (non-PPP) GDP according to Wikipedia is $2,630,113 million ($2.6 trillion) putting them above the UK but below Germany. Doubling their economy twice over would put it at $10,520,452 million ($10.5 trillion) putting it within reach of the US and the EU.

And in just 15 years.

How not to run a country

2007-07-16T19:56:00.000Z

Since my last post on the grotesque economic mismanagement of Zimbabwe by Mugabe things are getting comically bad there.

Zimbabwe's ruling party and their police force have been enforcing the price controls with religious fervour. You can now buy a widescreen TV for £20, a car worth £15,000 for just £30 and petrol for just 23p a litre. Predictably, crowds of Zimbabweans have been mobbing the stores with handfuls of worthless Zimbabwean dollars and clearing them out. Great if you can get a bargain, but it won't last. Once the stores and petrol pumps are empty they will stay empty because no-one will be able to restock their stores etc. How do you restock your store when you just sold all your stock for a fraction of what you paid for it? You don't. You go bankrupt.

Mugabe dismissed that as "bookish economics".

From an opposition MP quoted in the Guardian newspaper - "The benefits will only last a few weeks at most and then we're going to have to live with the consequences. They believe they can dictate price cuts and print money with gay abandon but ultimately it will rebound. Not ultimately, very soon."

Mugabe is doomed.

I hate stupidity

2007-07-12T06:49:00.000Z

Let's say that you rule a country where commercial agriculture accounted for the lion's share of your economy. Let's say that your commercial farms are not only producing plenty for your own people's needs, but are also exporting their produce to the local region and making a very nice profit from it. Let's say that outsiders call your country "the breadbasket" of your region because your country is so successful at commercial farming.

If you want that to continue, what don't you do? Well, you don't break up the commercial farms into lots of subsistence level plots of land because your crop yields will crash, which is incredibly stupid thing to do.

Enter President Mugabe of Zimbabwe and his land reforms. He wanted to transfer the ownership of the farmlands from whites, who owned the vast majority of Zimbabwe's agricultural lands, to the native Zimbabweans. Of course it doesn't matter economically who owns the farms, black or white. What does matter is that the farms remain as highly productive commercial farms. That's the key thing. Broken up into many thousands of subsistence level plots, the once productive farmlands that used to produce enough food for Zimbabwe and the region, now only produce enough food for those who farm it.

After the badly thought out land reforms the predictable then happened. The Zimbabwean economy started to collapse. They now can't produce enough food to feed the population. Exports have collapsed leading to a steep fall in the value of the Zimbabwean Dollar and a shortage of foreign currency. Their inflation rate is the highest in the world at over 3,700%. Unemployment is at 80-90% and taxation revenue has probably collapsed. I'm guessing that when their economy started to tank and the tax revenue shrank that the Zimbabwean government started to print money just to pay government employees like the police, army and civil service, exacerbating the inflation problem.

And to make things worse the Zimbabwean government is trying to enforce drastic price controls. If you own a supermarket and have to import food at great expense because you can't get hold of scarce locally produced food what do you do when the government orders you to sell your stock at below cost? You eventually close down. You could close down immediately to protect yourself from bankruptcy or you could wait until your store runs out of stock and then goes bankrupt because you didn't earn enough money to replenish your stock. Either way you close down.

The Mugabe regime is a bunch of economically illiterate morons. Their stupidity has caused a middle income country to crash to national destitution, and it was completely avoidable.

That's what irritates me the most. The needlessness of this economic collapse.

Well, they're probably screwed now. If the food distribution system can't work (retail stores, warehouses etc) then how do city dwellers subsist? As stock is depleted from stores and supplies run out in homes over the coming days and weeks, then the question is what happens next? People have to eat.

I'm guessing that we will see many more people crossing over illegally into neighbouring countries rather than any kind of "rising up" against the Mugabe regime. I'm also guessing that the major cities will undergo some level of population collapse (perhaps as high as a 20% drop in population) as people head out in search of food.

Is this the future?

2007-07-04T13:00:00.000Z

Watch this video. It looks very plausible.

Prometeus - The Media Revolution

Rant Rant Rant Rant!

2007-07-04T05:01:00.000Z

Damn that pile of sh*t Word 2007 ... and damn those Microsoft f*cktards for that matter too. Why can't the changing of very basic things be simple in Word and Vista? I've damn well spent over two f*cking hours trying to set the f*cking default language for f*cking Word 2007 from US f*cking English to UK f*cking English. Can I f*cking do it? Like f*ck I can! Changing the default language or dictionary in Words' spellchecker doesn't do it. You can change it but it'll just change back again. Changing it in the Microsoft Office language settings thingy doesn't do it and also f*cking changes back again. Surely those f*cktards at Micro"screw you backwards"Soft realise that their product sells outside of the US and that people outside the US need an easy and obvious method for changing the default language? I'm guessing that there's some weird and undocumented method for changing the default language, like simultaneously pressing Alt-Ctrl-J-9-F6-L-F11-Del while in safe mode, the mouse disconnected and your monitor rotated on its' side.

The damn "help" files are absolutely no f*cking help at all.

Looks like I'll have to buy a new word processor that isn't the big pile of steaming crap that Word 2007 is.

(F*ck knows why my keyboard and mouse still work after that little drama - I'm a keyboard basher and mouse thrower if things don't work as they should)

New Dronjak Darkfall Video

2007-07-02T02:10:00.000Z

Nothing new but very well edited and put together. Dronjak makes the best Darkfall videos around IMO dispite the very limited quantities of Darkfall media that is available, so when Darkfall Online eventually gets released Dronjak will be the one to watch for excellent early-game videos.

The Challenge by Dronjak666

Lucky me!

2007-07-02T02:04:00.000Z

I am now the proud owner of a “water feature” inside my house. How many houses can boast the exclusivity of having curtians of water pouring artfully down over the wallpaper? Not many, but thanks to all the recent rain, and my flat roof, my bathroom now sports a flushing toilet and flushing walls!

I’m soooooo lucky!

Another New Darkfall Video

2007-06-19T02:29:00.001Z

Another video i know but the chap who created it, shibbidyshwa, got really good quality on his upload.

* drool*

It also features lots of combat and action.

New PC - YAY!

2007-06-19T01:20:00.000Z

I’m one happy muffin.

I received my new computer last Friday from CyberPower and it’s absolutely awesome. It has two NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX 768MB graphics cards so games like Oblivion and Joint Operations look amazing. I’ve been working this weekend so today (Monday night) is the first time I’ve been able to really get to grips with this new PC and Vista. It’s been quite a learning experience.

One thing to remember if you want dual SLI graphics cards and want to run multiple monitors is that you can either have both cards run a single monitor (SLI enabled) for maximum games graphics OR you can run multiple monitors (SLI disabled) and have ‘normal’ game graphics.

Enabling and disabling SLI is very easy though (it’s just a option in your graphics card control panel) but took me a while and a few internet searches to find out why I couldn’t get the second monitor to work with the new computer. I spent an hour connecting and re-connecting leads and thinking that I'd received a duff monitor or lead. *sigh* My two monitors, a 22 inch widescreen and a 17 inch monitor, sit side-by-side giving me huge amounts of desktop space to play with.

There are people out there, flight sim fans, who use three monitors to give them a cockpit view of their favourite game so I don't think I'm over doing it :)

Anyway, I’d definitely recommend a widescreen monitor if you’re thinking of buying a new PC or upgrading an old one.

In addition to the two graphics cards, the new PC has all the things that any descent gaming rig has. Dual core chip, 4 gigs of ram, liquid cooling system (which is really quiet when compared to a heatsink + fan, even when the CPU is working hard), temperature readout and fan control panel, neon internal lights, gaming keyboard, headset and mouse etc.

The keyboard is really cool. It has a little backlit LCD screen that I’ve set up to display CPU/RAM usage, which helps identifying the resource hogs. I never realised that Fraps was so hungry for CPU power before :/

That leads me to another lesson – Vista doesn’t like Fraps. Or rather, Vista will interfere with Fraps’ ability to record sound with your in-game footage if you don’t set your recording device to “What u Hear” in the control panel (you have to right click the panel and select the “show disabled stuff” option to see it). So I have Fraps working properly now.

I like Vista. I’ve already downloaded a few ‘gadgets’ for Vista’s sidebar and the thumbnails you get when you hover the mouse over minimised windows are really useful.

I have a lot to do so I’ll post this now and get back to figuring out this PC and sticking all my old programs/games/music on it.

Someone slap me!

2007-06-13T12:10:00.000Z

I made a HUGE mistake last week. I was feeling nostalgic for the Everquest 2 world and re-subscribed to the game. I regretted doing so after just a couple of hours. That game can be so boring at times. I popped back into the world with my level 51 Dark Elf Paladin (see above) and felt like a total noobie running about shouting “OMG” because so much had changed since I last played. New mounts, cloaks, funny hats etc.

Botting seems to have become very blatant too. I bumped into a human controlled character called “Tankbot” who had two macro controlled characters aiding him called “Healbot” and “DPSbot”. You don’t get more blatant than that.

Bleh. I went back to Joint Operations after seeing that.

I’m currently waiting for my new CyberPower PC to be delivered. It has two NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX 768MB graphics cards and while I’m waiting for it I’m taking in-game footage from a few games so that I can compare my old computer to the new one. I spent quite a bundle on it but in theory I shouldn’t have to upgrade to a better computer for another four or five years or so. I’ll probably post a film on YouTube about it since it’s one damn sweet machine :D

I hate waiting.

Darkfall Videos

2007-06-01T15:00:00.000Z

Darkfall Public Beta This Summer!

Or at least that is what Tasos Flambouras (the Darkfall Ass. Producer) said was their internal target for beta [LINK]

Assuming that they succeed in this, and beta test for three months or so, they might be able to release the retail version of the game by Christmas. How awesome would that be?

Other signs of progress are the updated world lore and monster pages, plus updates for the Alfar, Marihim and Mirdain race pages. Screenshots of the last two, previously unseen, racial mounts (Alfar drakes and Mirdain Aerdin) also have appeared, not to mention the Alfar and Mirdains themselves. Previously there had only been screenshots of Orks, Humans, Dwarfs and their mounts.

In my personal opinion the Mirdain and Alfar look nothing as great as the Humans and Marihim, but that might just be because the Alfar and Mirdain are not finished yet, which would make sense.

Anyway, in celebration of the Darkfall developers admitting what their target is for public beta I’m going to post links to every Darkfall movie I can find.

Official movies

This one is some 4 months old and probably doesn’t represent where the game is now.

This one is a lot older and shows how much work the developers have put in to get Darkfall looking so great in their last official video.

Here the developers are showing of their awesome animation skills. It has an Ork riding his racial mount, a Death Pig, through grass that is blowing through the wind. The clouds are great too.

Unofficial fan-created movies/trailers.

Because this is my blog and I can ( :p ) I’ll post my two videos first.

I created this video only three weeks after discovering Darkfall’s existence and wanted to point out why the game has me so stoked.

Darkfall is coming

The same with this one, only I wanted to highlight some of the lesser talked about features.

Darkfall Online Features

Darkfall – Key features by Dronjak666

A video using screenshots, images and video footage to show off some of Darkfalls features.

Darkfall Clip Show – by Dronjak666

I like this one. It shows the various races and has an intro that seems to scream “Conan the Barbarian” to me for some reason.

Darkfall – Bits and Pieces by Dronkak666

Really cool editing. Very intense.

Darkfall – Voices of the Game

People really are salivating for Darkfall.

World of Darkfall by Dronkak666

More Darkfall goodness.

Darkfall Gameplay Remix by supid11

A remix of the older official Darkfall video with screenshots. It’s the only video that I know of that shows the Dwarf walk animation. If that wasn’t awesome enough the video also goes through some of Darkfalls’ features.

Darkfall by wowsa0

Video and screenies

Salivating yet?

I’ll keep this post updated with any further Darkfall videos when and if they appear and stick a permanent link somewhere on my blog so it’s easy to find.

NEW VIDEO!

By shibbidyshwa

New Dronjak666 Video!

Darkfall - The Challenge

New Official Video - Mirdain Racial Mount, Aerdin Cat

Cyprus and Malta to join the Euro

2007-05-17T00:07:00.001Z

On the 1^st January 2008 there will be two more members of the Euro area, which is amazing considering that both countries only joined the EU in 2004. I just wish that Britain would join too, since it would make things SO much easier while travelling. As it stands if you want to visit Europe you have to buy Euros at the tourist rate (which is nothing like as good as the true exchange rate) and pay a commission too boot. With Britain in the Eurozone that rip-off will end and you can spend the very same money you use at home anywhere inside the Eurozone.

I doubt that will happen until some time after most of Europe joins the Eurozone and the economic benefits become too blinding to ignore.

Vanguard is dead.

2007-05-16T23:54:00.000Z

Apparently, the entire staff of Sigil, the developers of Vanguard, were told to assemble in a nearby car park where they were summarily dismissed. They were then informed that some of them may be rehired by SOE (the people behind Everquest 2) which had just taken Vanguard off the hands of Sigil and its’ founder, Brad McQuaid, in a deal that seems to have surprised everyone.

It seems likely that the reason for the deal were the troubles that Vanguard had. Released too early (some claim up to a year too early) essentially in beta when the money was due to run out, it had too many bugs, not enough content and too much that needed doing to fix the game. On top of this the system requirements were far too high – a very common complaint and one that Brad McQuaid admits.

There’s more on this here, and an interview with one of those sacked employees here.

According to the interview they only sold 200k copies of the game and only kept 90k subscribers after the first free month of game play, though the interviewee was not sure. At least with a major operation like SOE at the helm things can only improve.

Could Blair replace Wolfowitz at the World Bank?

2007-05-16T23:53:00.000Z

Just speculation on my part, but with Blair due to go in a month and Wolfowitz under siege from all corners there is a possibility that both men will be out of office at the same time, and with Blair needing a ‘legacy’ and Bush needing someone he can trust at the World Bank, Blair could conceivably end up as head of the World Bank.

I remember reading that Blairites tried to tempt Brown with the top job at the IMF a few years ago to protect their own man at 10 Downing Street, which may or may not be true.

Everyone seems to be ganging up on the Liberal Democrats lately.

2007-05-10T20:43:00.000Z

After the recent local election I was reading in the Sun (don’t look at me like that, I didn’t buy it, there was a copy just loafing around at work and there was nothing else to read during lunch, honest! Do I look like someone that usually reads the Sun? Like I want that stigma) and they were claiming that the Lib Dems had their lowest ever share of the vote at 26%.

From the Sun -

Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell was hanging on to his job by a thread after a disastrous night. His party notched up its worst election result in its history winning just 26 per cent of the vote.

Source

That sounded like typical Sun bullshite to me since I remembered that the Liberal Democrats were usually at the 17% level during the last Tory government in the 1990’s, so I checked the numbers at Wikipedia … and it turns out that this 26% vote share is actually a record high for the Liberal Democrats.

Election Name Share of votes Seats

1983 SDP-Liberal Alliance 25.4% 23

1987 SDP-Liberal Alliance 22.6% 22

1992 Liberal Democrats 17.8% 20

1997 Liberal Democrats 16.8% 46

2001 Liberal Democrats 18.3% 52

2005 Liberal Democrats 22.0% 62

Source

Trust the Sun not to let facts get in the way of a story. Actually, that reminds me of a story they ran a couple of weeks ago about Cherie Blair. They claimed that she got into an altercation with airport staff when she was told that she could only take one piece of hand luggage aboard. They then alleged that Cherie Blair began shouting “Don’t you know who I am?” like a prima donna.

Two days later there was a tiny retraction buried deep in the Sun admitting that Cherie said no such thing, and right at the end of the retraction (where few would bother to read to), they stated that the entire incident didn’t actually happen at all.

They just made it all up.

The Sun article has been pulled (tabloid scumbags are usually good at covering their tracks) but other sites linking to the story are still around (like here and here (under the March 24^th entry) and the whole article was copied here).

This is why when you quote the Sun on anything, people will laugh at you.

Back to the subject, the Guardian ran a comment piece calling for the Lib Dems to disband altogether.

To understand what is happening here you have to remember that the Sun supports the Tories and the Guardian supports Labour, and in a three party system it is the third party gobbling up votes that can cause the two big parties to either win or lose an election, especially when the Lib Dems are getting increasingly strong.

So … attack, attack, attack!

Now THIS is a funny advert

2007-05-09T00:56:00.000Z

Mr T takes on a footballer that took a dive in a typical "Mr T" fashion.

The World Has Gone Nuts

2007-05-09T00:40:00.000Z

Yes it has. In the period between my last post and this post the entire world went ahead and turned itself upside down. I didn’t even ask it to, pesky world.

Where to start?

Firstly, France elected a new pro-American President (Nicolas Sarkozy) who won on a platform of abolishing the statuary 35-hour working week and reforming the state. What is the world coming to when the people of France vote for economic reform and less socialist bureaucracy? Sarkozy’s detractors are calling him ‘scary’, ‘divisive’ and ‘authoritarian’ … but they would wouldn’t they. In a country where the unions can get the government to give up on reforms with little more than a few protests, and where they seemly resort to riots when they don’t get their way, Sarkozy will need to be an iron-fisted and uncompromising president if France is ever to get the reforms that it so desperately needs. French unemployment is far too high and growth is too low. Business is saddled with the 35-hour working week and laws guaranteeing jobs-for-life, while everyone receives both very high benefits and very high taxes.

Reforming those last four things will have the effect of boosting growth and lowering unemployment. Afraid to hire people because they can’t fire them, and saddled with a 35-hour week, French companies have had to squeeze every ounce of productive work from their existing workforce instead. Potentially, when the reforms are put through, French growth could really surprise everyone since their productivity is ridiculously high.

Secondly, Europe is growing faster than the US and looks set to do so for the foreseeable future. After years of seeing growth in mainland Europe barely reaching 1% a year while the US was growing by over 3%, we seem to have seen the two switch roles. Germany is expected to grow by 2.3% this year while the US, hit by the bursting of their housing bubble, is growing by just 1.3%.

This, added to the existing concerns over the US’s huge trade deficit, has caused the US dollar to reach record lows against both the €uro and the pound. The last time the pound was worth $2 and the €uro was worth $1.36 the dollar clawed its’ way back, supported by a succession of US interest rate hikes. This time around no-one knows what will happen next since future changes in US interest rates could be both up or down. US growth is weak (demanding an interest rate cut) yet inflation is strong (requiring an interest rate hike). Altering the interest rate to fight one of those problems is going to make the other problem worse.

If the US dollar shows further weakness then it will threaten the global trading imbalances that give the nations of the Far East the substantial trade surpluses that they have while at the same time burdening the US with its’ huge trade deficit. Countries like China and Japan want their own currencies weak against the US so that they can continue to sell artificially cheap goods to Americans, and they’ve bought up huge quantities of dollars in order to do that. If the dollar tanks then their export dependent economies will suffer a shock like that of the 1997 Asian currency crisis.

Fearing that, the major Asian nations have pooled their financial reserves in order to protect their currencies from ‘speculative attack’.

From Reuters –

"Should the financial markets lose confidence in the U.S. dollar, huge capital outflows from the U.S. could lead to a rapid depreciation of the U.S. dollar, and thus dramatic appreciation of other currencies," Thai Finance Minister Chalongphob Sussangkarn told the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Kyoto, western Japan.

Some Asian finance ministers voiced concerns over global imbalances -- a euphemism for the huge U.S. trade deficit and the large surpluses in Asia and oil-rich countries -- in their speeches to the ADB's annual meeting.

South Korean Finance Minister Kwon O-kyu said global imbalances were their central concern.

"Any abrupt and disorderly unwinding of these imbalances may send a tremendous shock through the global financial markets," Kwon said.

If the dollar falls further on speculation that the U.S. trade deficit can only be rectified by a cheaper dollar, that would give a headache to some Asian countries already nervous about the strength of their currencies. Source

Thirdly, the two extremes of the Northern Ireland divide – the DUP and Sinn Fein – are now part of a power sharing government. I don’t think that anyone expected to see Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness to actually become first minister and deputy first minister, along side each other … ever.

When the moderates of both sides (UUP and SDLP) were swept aside in favour of the hardliners (DUP and Sinn Fein) no-one expected to see them actually work together in a devolved Northern Ireland government. Ian Paisley’s DUP were accused of being intransigent for demanding things that Sinn Fein/IRA would find difficult to swallow (like declaring that the ‘war’ was over and supporting the police force). He was intransigent, that’s true, but he was also right to be intransigent since it forced Sinn Fein/IRA to do those things publicly and openly.

Without those two things you couldn’t be sure if the so-called ‘war’ was really over or whether the IRA would return to killing people again. The voters (on the ‘unionist’ side) would never support power sharing with people who might be keeping a gun under the table, and punished the UUP for moving too far without receiving reciprocating moves from Sinn Fein/IRA for a normalised political landscape (ie – one without guns and bombs).

Now that Britain has ‘won’ its ‘war on terror’ (lots of ‘inverted commas’ today) perhaps those in power in the US might reflect on what has been achieved today and take a lesson from it. The ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland was solved, in essence, by people asking “why?”

Why are people angry and turning to violence?

Without knowing the ‘why’ you’ll never understand the underlying causes of a problem, and without knowing the cause you can never come up with a solution.

Vanguard ... and other mmorpg's

2007-03-26T16:08:00.001Z

Well, I finally gave up on Vanguard. The game never impressed me at all over the month of free play that I had. My impressions of the game, I’m afraid, rank from mediocre/acceptable to downright poor.

The game was forced to be released early, essentially in beta, when the developers ran out of money, something that really showed when I played my first character. I created a human paladin and started out in an area that looked more like Everquest 1.5 than a 2007 game. The first building I came to, a courtyard building with lots of quest giving npc’s, was appalling. It looked like it had been modelled in 15 minutes and had any old texture slapped on it. Of course the game wasn’t finished but you would at least expect buildings that looked better than 2004’s Everquest 2.

While playing my human paladin I was never impressed by the games graphics. Not the creatures, not the animations or spell effects, not the landscapes or the buildings. It was all to clichéd and ugly. The bizarre thing is that the game demands a hell-of-a-lot more power to run than Everquest 2 or Oblivion, and without any really noticeable graphical improvements over those two games. I would go as far to say that EQ2 has much better character and equipment graphics.

My second character was more fun to play – a wolf warrior in a more ‘finished’ looking part of Vanguard’s world. 11 levels later I really appreciated the waypoints built into the quests – it saved lots of needless running around. However, the bugs and lag were really annoying. The former I could live with (even if I was fighting unanimated ‘statues’ most of the time) but the latter usually resulted in yet another corpse run.

After getting fed up with the bugs I gave up on my wolf and started a new character on a new continent. This time a goblin psionicist. This was much more fun, and eye opening. Playing as a fighter, combat with a critter took a minute or two as my character slogged it out in close combat. As a psionicist it took seconds. Target critter … zap critter … loot critter.

Another ten levels and I eventually got sick of the standard “kill ten of these critters” and the “kill ten of those critters” quests. Does anyone actually like those kinds of quests? It wouldn’t have been so bad if combat was like Oblivion where you’re really involved, actively blocking, dodging swinging your sword and manoeuvring while fighting. Instead you have the dull-as-dishwater, bog-standard auto-attack and hotbar system which dates back to the Stone Age. Select target … turn on auto-attack … sit back and watch … suppress a yawn … hit a hotbar button … flick though a magazine … hit another hotbar button … pay your bills … stare at the ceiling …

You get the idea.

I don’t know why they bother with combat animations at all with such a system … all your attention is focused on the re-use timers on the hot bar. The critter you’re fighting at the time might as well be a wooden sign with a picture of a critter on it for all you care. What idiot thought up auto-attack anyway? How many first person shooters use auto-attack? None. Why? Because it’s so boring that only a complete ass-hat would suggest introducing it.

After a month of free play, I realised that I was playing a mmorpg (ie a Massively Multiplayer Online role playing game) as a single player game. After a little thinking about this for a time I came to some conclusions about why I was doing this and why I wasn’t having much fun, conclusions that are as relevant to Everquest, Warcraft and every other mmorpg clone out there.

1 – Grouping with other players is a pain. Unlike mmofps games (or just general online fps games) there are many thousands of objectives/quests that an individual player could be working on, meaning that finding other players that are also doing the same quest is difficult.

Grouping also requires a huge commitment of time. Just getting a balanced group of fighters, healers and casters is a job in itself, and once you start playing as a group you’ll rapidly find that you can’t synchronise everyone’s bladders or phone calls, so you’re always stopping when a player goes “afk”.

Grouping is too … formalised and restrictive in traditional mmorpg’s, and there’s not much in the way of ‘generalised’ quests/objectives that all players would be aiming for. In online fps games like Joint Operations you don’t need formal groups since people will automatically co-operate to achieve the same general goals – like taking the next bunker. Someone will grab a chopper to provide transport, others will become medics to heal the injured, some will become specialists like snipers to keep the enemy pinned down or become spotters for mortars.

Since I was playing a mmorpg as a single player rpg, I asked myself why the hell would I want to pay a monthly subscription in order to do that? Oblivion, a single player rpg, is much more fun anyway.

2 – You’ll hear this a lot from mmorpg players - traditional mmorpg’s are grind, grind, grind. Getting anywhere in such games requires a huge investment of time and effort. Getting your character all the way to level 70 isn’t easy when achieving a single level might take several days.

Of course, thanks to the economic model of today’s mmorpg’s (people pay a monthly subscription to play) IF the game developers made it possible to ‘complete’ their level based game in just 30 or 60 hours then they would be committing economic suicide since most players would finish the game in just a month or two. The people behind today’s mmorpg need players to keep paying monthly subscriptions, and in order to do that they make it so that levels and high-end equipment require prodigious investments of time and effort to acquire.

So … grind, grind, grind … which players really hate.

They could get rid of all this needless grind if they did away with the level system. Massively multiplayer online fps games like World War 2 Online don’t have levels to grind through, yet they still attract lots of subscribing players. The bonus of WW2Online’s system (or any non-level based system) is that the players are not divided up by levels and tiers, so anyone can play with/against anyone else.

Ah well … live and learn.

There are three up coming mmorpg’s that I’m watching. Warhammer Online that is based on RvR (realm verses realm) combat, is based on Warhammer (yay!) but still uses the level and tier systems (boo!). Age of Conan which promises an interesting combat system and gore, but has you playing the first 20 levels as a single player game (who the hell wants to pay a monthly subscription to play a mmorpg as a single player game?!?!?!). Darkfall, which seems to be promising everything that a mmorpg player has wet dreams about, yet is taking so long to develop that even dedicated fans dare not guess the release date. Having said that, Darkfall is in beta (putting it ahead of Warhammer and AoC) though the slow development will most likely mean a release after Warhammer and AoC, which are getting released later this year (emphasis on later).

They’re also starting development on a mmo version of Warhammer 40,000! Who doesn’t want to play a Space Marine in the Emperor’s Imperium blasting Orks with their bolter? :D

If they use auto-attack for a game like Warhammer 40k … there will be bloodshed.

Seriously.

Darkfall Videos

2007-03-07T22:08:00.000Z

I made a video about Darkfall from bits and bobs already out there. It looks interesting (the game that is) so I’m keeping my eyes on that project. Having Oblivion-style combat online against other human players sounds like a lot of fun :D

Here are a couple of existing developer released videos showing some of the gameplay. The second one is over a year old so probably doesn't reflect the game that well.

Vanguard Sucks

2007-03-07T22:03:00.000Z

I’ve been trying to get into the game Vanguard : Saga of Heroes for over a week without much joy. The game is a bugfest, much more so when EQ2 was released. Broken quests, broken critter animations, a broken hotbar that stops reflecting reality after a while, falling through the world, spawning in the sky over the ocean, etc, etc. The hotbar bug always gets me killed and usually sees me quit the game in contempt, meaning that I’ve never managed to play the game for more than 45 minutes at a time. Some of the buildings look as if they were modelled in 10 minutes flat and had any old generic texture slapped on them. Some of the textures on buildings and the ground are appallingly done and just repeat themselves endlessly into the distance, giving large buildings and the ground that ‘badly textured’ look to it. It’s also wasteful of PC resources since the textures are kinda small in-game (2-3 in-game feet across) and repeated endlessly. It would have been better to at least allow the textures to have been scaled – the same texture stretched out to cover more ground and so use less computer power to render.

Neither the character models or the spell effects are anything like as pretty as EQ2 either.

The game has some good points though. Unlike EQ2 the game is a single world instead of being lots of connecting areas. You can build ships and harvesting is much better than in EQ2 (in Vanguard you can cut down trees). There’s also a load more interesting races to play than the standard EQ2 line-up.

I’m going to keep at the game for a while. You get a free month of play before you have to pay a monthly subscription to play so the game has one more week left to impress me before I give up on it and go back to Everquest 2.

Gawd, I hope my EQ2 characters didn’t get deleted when I cancelled my EQ2 subscription. That would suck.

The Markets

2007-03-07T22:01:00.000Z

The last weeks or so has been interesting. A few voices were warning that the markets had become too complacent after many months of continuous upward movement without correction or profit taking and that a sizeable correction was in the offing. It was eventually triggered by fears over new regulations in China designed to slow the breakneck speed of market speculation. Just about every market around the globe suffered significant losses as investors were suddenly reminded that there are risks that need to be managed after all.

CNBC (the financial channel) has been fun to watch recently. One chap called the complacent investors “fat, stupid and happy” in relation to the time before the market falls. The “fat, stupid and happy” types were forced to sell stock and raise their cash reserves to protect themselves from risk. Another prediction that someone made on CNBC was that after a while there would be enough liquidity (money) available from the sale of stocks for significant buying to occur and so halting the falls. That seems to have happened (it was a no-brainer really) but the same chap predicated a second leg of falls after the halt. It will be interesting to see what will happen.

CNN’s reporting of the falls have been a bit ‘odd’ at times. Watching CNBC and they report that investors were selling just about everything – shares, metals, bonds etc – to raise liquidity. However on CNN they were reporting that people were indeed selling everything … and buying US bonds “because they are such a good store in value since they are backed by the US government” or words to that effect. I’ve been very wary of CNN International’s reporting of just about anything ever since before the Iraqi invasion (there’s too much blatant propaganda or dubious stories) and I have my doubts about this particular story.

Speaking of ‘odd’ reporting at CNN, there was a story on there today about the ‘Iranian influenced’ Iraqi government setting up an Iraqi controlled ‘Iranian influenced’ intelligence service and closing down the CIA run Iraqi intelligence service, which the Iraqi government doesn’t control. Every time they described the Iraqi government ‘Iranian influenced’ you had the impression that they were screaming “EVIL! EVIL!! EVIIIIIIL!!!” somewhere in the background.

Hmmm …

Beware CNN!

2007-02-16T13:23:00.000Z

I’ve just seen the kind of ‘reporting’ on CNN over Iran’s alleged involvement in Iraq, that we also saw in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq – i.e. grotesquely obvious propaganda (at least by British standards). They were saying that Iran’s Quds force ARE in Iraq, that they ARE arming and training insurgents and that they ARE fighting a proxy war against the US … and all said without citing any evidence or sources to back up these new and very radical claims. They just came out and said it.

If there was genuine evidence for Quds arming and training the Iraqi insurgents, so that they could fight a proxy war against the US, then other more reputable news organisations than the international broadcasts of CNN would have picked up the story and would be running it as a major news headline.

But they’re not. It’s just the international broadcasts of CNN that are claiming these things and it’s the exactly the same kind of thing they did in the run-up to the Iraq invasion (spewing propaganda).

My fear is that Bush is lining up Iran to be attacked in ‘self defence’ so that he doesn’t need permission from the US congress to go to war, and CNN is making itself a fountain of helpful propaganda in the aim of softening up world opinion in the run-up to such an attack … which is exactly what they did last time

So does this mean that Bush is serious about attacking Iran? I hope not. In any case, be wary over CNN’s reporting regarding Iran for a while.

2007-02-16T07:05:00.000Z

If I could ever buy myself a kingdom it would be this little thing :D

From Dark Roasted Blend

A warning for TouTube users …

2007-02-15T17:50:00.000Z

A well known member of the Everquest 2 fan community, Zilreed, has recently been forced to take down most of her fan movies because they had sound tracks in them whose copyright was owned by some big, evil music company that didn’t like them being used.

It’s a bit of an eye opener for me since I’d always taken the YouTube upload warning of “don’t upload music videos!” literally. I’ve seen people who upload lots of music videos getting their videos removed and their accounts suspended all the time, but I had assumed that you could slap a background track on your stag night movie, or whatever film you make, and not get asked to remove them or your have account suspended.

This means that lots of us could be vulnerable to this. If you don’t own the copyright of any music tracks on your videos, or don’t have written permission to use them, then you risk having your videos taken down or your account suspended altogether.

This poses a very serious problem. What do you use for a sound track on your fan-created movie, holiday film, animation, funny film or video-blog? Listening to silence isn’t appealing.

I’m thinking that either the evil black-hearted greedy money-grabbing music companies should relent somewhat – allowing up to 50% of a track to be used on a video, for instance, or allowing it if there are lots of sounds from the video footage obscuring the ‘clean’ playing of the track – OR YouTube users will have to find a source of free-to-use or copyright free music from somewhere. I fear that the latter will be the case.

I’ve been using tracks from the audio section of Newgrounds in some of my videos, though the tracks were initially meant to be freely used by flash animators and not YouTubers, they (and similar sites) could get deluged by YouTubers if the new Google ownership cracks down on any and all copyright infringement on YouTube.

Did you feel that? That’s the ground moving under your feet …

Doomsday Bank

2007-02-15T16:45:00.000Z

The Norwegians don’t have much faith in humanity’s ability to take care of the planet. They’re building a doomsday seed bank in a bunker, 120 metres inside a mountain, on a remote island in the Artic. The aim of the project seems to be to protect the biodiversity of the crops that we humans rely on in case of disastrous global warming, nuclear war or asteroid impact.

It seems a little over-the-top to me, but knowing us humans we'll probably need it before they've even finished building it.

Will Bush attack Iran … or is it all a bluff?

2007-02-15T16:23:00.000Z

There’s an awful lot of talk and reporting regarding whether or not Bush is actually planning on attacking Iran over its nuclear programme or if it’s just sabre rattling. There’s a second US aircraft carrier heading for the Gulf, and reports that Patriot missile systems have been sent to protect US allies in the region from potential Iranian retaliation … and of course the neo-conservatives (read ultra-nationalists) of the AEI are pushing for such an attack.

The Bushies have alleged that Iran is supplying insurgents in Iraq with munitions and bombs that are killing US personnel, but the ‘evidence’ is really poor (serial numbers on captured munitions that the US can’t check and manufacture dates that are just that – manufacture dates) leading people to compare these allegations with the ‘evidence’ used by the Bush regime to justify invading Iraq.

Others question whether shia Iran would be arming the sunni muslims and militias that are responsible for the vast majority of insurgent attacks on US troops, when boosting the power of shia groups in Iraq would make more sense for Iran. A peaceful and democratic Iraq is a shia Iraq, and would want (I would assume) a close friendship/relationship with Iran.

Maybe Bush isn’t bluffing. Iraq was always going to be America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the region for the neo-cons, even before Bush came to power, allowing them to impose their will throughout the region at will. While the “neo-con plan” now looks like a tattered and discredited document for most of us, the die-hard adherents to neo-conservative principles and ideas are still following “the plan”. The Iraq invasion has given them their much desired “permanent presence” in the region and an ability to bomb the region from bases inside Iraq.

Maybe Bush is bluffing. The consequences of a sustained bombing campaign against Iran could potentially range from painful to catastrophic. Iran isn’t the military weakling that Iraq was after the first Gulf War and 10 years of sanctions. How could the Iranians retaliate? The most obvious form of retaliation would be to arm the shia militias in Iraq and push for them to attack US forces, but they could also shower ballistic missiles upon US bases in Iraq, the region and Israel. More worryingly, they could also shut the Persian Gulf to oil tankers with mines and missile attacks, causing oil prices to skyrocket. They could also launch air strikes of their own, commando raids or even a full scale ground offensive into Iraq.

Whether or not Iran could actually do those things depends on how strong Iran’s military is verses US forces in the region, something that we won’t know unless Bush orders an attack.

And what happens if air strikes fail to halt Iran’s nuclear programme? What if Iran’s underground, bunkerised nuclear facilities are sufficiently robust enough to survive conventional bombing? What then? If the neo-cons use the weapon that they specifically called for in their “neo-con plan” before coming to power – bunker busting ‘mini-nukes’ (which were probably envisioned with Iran in mind) – then all bets are off. If the neo-cons are fools enough to launch a nuclear war against Iran, albeit a ‘limited’ nuclear war, then retaliation could even include the use of chemical weapons and a full scale regional war that sucks in other countries.

Think about what multiple nuclear strikes on Iranian facilities would cause in the wider world. Everyone would condemn such an attack, and some may even join the war on Iran’s side. How would the nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Pakistan react to mushroom clouds over Iran? Would Indonesia ban US forces from its waters and territory? Would Egypt close the Suez Canal to US shipping? And how would shia Iraq react? (probably along the lines of “get the **** out!”)

Personally, I don’t know if Bush is bluffing or not. The potential dangers that would result from an attack on Iran makes me think that Bush would avoid such an attack … on the other hand Bush is a neo-con and what the rest of us may think of as too risky may not even register for a neo-con.

This song rocks!

2007-01-25T18:29:00.000Z

Hitomi Takahashi singing “Aozora no Namida” ^_^

Bye bye Whistlestopper!

2007-01-25T18:25:00.003Z

I’m currently looking for a different political forum to post in. That doesn’t mean that I’ve been banned from Whistlestopper (though that could be arranged) … I’m just sick of the place. With the exception of the US section of WS, the forum is virtually dead. The European section is positively in rigor mortis and seems to be graced (or spammed) by as many hard-right Americans screaming “Europe’s Doomed! The Moozlims are coming!!” as Europeans. On top of that there is currently an ad to a racist blog right on the front page that I’m sick of looking at. The ad and blog even boasts about being banned by Amazon and Google’s Adsense. They obviously got around that by using Blogads (interestingly, it only costs $200 to put an ad on WS for three months via Blogads – other, higher traffic sites, cost much, much more (WS is in the top quarter of Blogads huge blog list if you want to find it)) I complained about it ages ago but nothing happened – I dare say that once you approve a new blogad ad to run on your site, and take the money, the ad runs … and you’re stuck if you didn’t check the advertised site properly for racist or pornographic material.

Ooopsie.

To be fair Whistlestopper is a pretty good forum … it’s just that the sections that I most often visit (Europe, International, Asia, Science, Whistle Stop Station) are not that active. WS is an American forum where, unsurprisingly, the most active section is the US section (428,000 posts compared to the paltry 20,000 in the European section). The ideal forum for me would be an international/European, political/current-events forum with a wide political spectrum in the membership there. Unfortunately that appears to be quite rare (grrr). I’ve looked at a couple of British forums and found them to be too ‘narrow’ of scope for my liking. You can’t have a debate about how “Blair sucks”, for instance, when everyone agrees with you. I might persevere with a couple of more mainstream forums for a while and see how things go (though both forums have subjects divided and subdivided down to insane levels of detail, which is driving me nuts).

Dec 2009 EDIT - I'm told that Whistlestopper is down for good, and I'm not surprised the way the mods ran things. The place used to be busy and popular but that gradually changed as the moderation became comically extreme, and blatantly biased. People were banned for having the 'wrong' view. People had "unhealthy amounts of mod attention" for stringently arguing a different view from that held by certain mods. They even changed the rules for people they didn't like (ie - people on the right of the political spectrum) so it was easier to ban them.

Obviously this killed the site. Before I was eventually banned (for saying a mod couldn't cook popcorn in a thread started by a mod on the subject of burned popcorn!) the site was almost dead anyway because the mods had driven so many people away. No traffic = no advertising money = can't pay for bandwidth.

The mods killed WS. I think I shall always remember WS as an example of how moderation should not be done, and of how the egos of long time mods can grow and cause damage to a site if the site owner loses interest and stops managing his site on a day-to-day basis, leaving the mods to do as they please.

The world is changing ...

2007-01-25T16:34:00.000Z

The world is changing in some very interesting ways. China is rising for a start. Their economy grew by 10.7% last year and has been growing by around 10% a year for the last 20 years or so. Compound interest means that a 10% a year growth rate translates into a doubling of their economy every 7 years. In the next few years there will be more Chinese people online than Americans. Though having said that they have a large footprint online already and are bringing their own talents and interests to the existing mix that is on the net. There’s la_dav who creates new units for the game Civilisation 3, there’s a team of Operation Flashpoint fans in China who have created a whole Chinese mod for that game, and in Everquest 2 (and most online games for that matter) they have a sizable presence, something that will only grow with time.

Then there is China’s growing military potency. There’s speculation that they’re building an aircraft carrier (or completing the unfinished Varyag) and they’re buying 50 Su-33 naval fighters from Russia, which have all the things you’d expect a carrier aircraft to have like folding wings, toughened undercarriage etc. Their latest tanks are armed with an “active laser self-defence weapon” that can detect and destroy enemy targeting/guiding optics – something that we don’t have even in the west yet. And of course they’ve recently proved that they can destroy enemy satellites.

I must say it’s very interesting to watch China rapidly become ‘another America’ (ie – very big and affluent) and gain the kind of international influence that comes with that. Powering up their economy has sucked in raw materials like copper, tin, nickel, and caused their prices to skyrocket – something that wasn’t foreseen but should have been expected – and has seen Chinese influence penetrate into South America, Africa, Australia and the Middle East as they seek the raw materials to fuel their economic transition to a 1^st world nation.

Imagine the world 20 or 30 years hence when China has the biggest economy of any single nation state, when Chinese carriers patrol the world’s oceans, when the Yuan is a reserve currency the equal of the Dollar or €uro and you have as much technological development happening in China as you do in the US or Japan today. It will be a very different world than the one we’re living in today and it should be welcomed, not feared.

I Found Some Really Cool Music!

2007-01-16T11:41:00.000Z

I love YouTube. You can be looking for one thing and stumble upon some brilliant stuff that isn't even available, or known about, in your home country. Half the time I jump to Amazon or HMV to buy the CD's of the tracks that I've discovered on YouTube and guess what ... they're not available in the UK (grrrrrr).

Fortunately for me (or unfortunately from the perspective of my credit card) I can get the below music in Blighty! The first video below is 'Passion' by Utada Hikaru and is incredible. The second video is 'Bokutachi no Yukue' by Hitomi Takahashi. Both are Japanese and both have had me searching YouTube for hours for more of the same

20,000 More Troops Won't Save Bush

2007-01-11T03:53:00.000Z

Bush is sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq in a last ditch effort to snatch some sort of victory from the abject disaster that the invasion and war in Iraq has been. The thinking seems to be that these extra troops will enable the US to clear whole urban areas of insurgents and then prevent them from returning by remaining on the ground. At least the lesson of Fallujah has been learned. However that one good point will get overshadowed by the bad things that will inevitably happen. Fallujah was initially cleared of insurgents (before the US withdrew and the insurgents returned) but not without significant US and civilian casualties and much of the city reduced to rubble.

If Bush’s plan is to engage and purge Iraq’s cities of insurgents and armed militias then, if the militias choose to fight, we could see a very significant upsurge in fighting and a dozen little Fallujahs all over Iraq. And what if in a year’s time these 20,000 extra troops have not been enough to stop the insurgency and sectarian killings? What then? Send more troops? Bush must surely know that the next US president is much more likely to be a Democrat than a Republican now and thus very likely to remove US forces from Iraq. Regardless of whether this new strategy succeeds or fails US troops will be going home in the next US presidency, and the cherished neo-con goal of having permanent military bases in Iraq in order to control/police the entire region will be cast forever into the bin of history.

In a way this new US troop deployment could actually aid the next Democratic presidential candidate. More fighting will lead to more US deaths which will further disillusion US voters with Iraq and those who want the US to remain there. The only victory that Bush could claim would be to bring Iraq under some sort of control and order before he leaves office. A hollow victory that will aid any Democratic president’s plans to withdraw troops.

The ‘neo-con plan’ has failed and is taking Bush down with it.

The Socialist Republic of America

2007-01-11T02:44:00.000Z

I just heard that the US state of Michigan is going to give Ford a $300 million subsidy just to keep six of its factories in the state and that Michigan was going to borrow half of that money.

In a capitalist system that kind of thing should not happen. Governments should not be in the business of subsidising non-strategic industries. I can understand the subsidies paid to US defence companies and to Airbus by governments in order to develop strategic products, but they should not be giving cash to a company just to keep factories producing mere consumer goods open. The capitalistic system forces economic efficiency upon businesses and creates a lean and productive overall economy. If people start handing over subsidies to these companies then their need to be economically efficient diminishes and their problems will just get worse.

Ford is closing 16 factories in the US and shedding 45,000 workers. Obviously Ford needs to do this to cut costs and to become competitive again, but if uneconomical plants are kept open with subsidies then these factories will remain a drain to the company and will probably require further subsidies in the future to keep them open

It's ME!

2007-01-02T03:20:00.000Z

He he he. I was bored so I drew myself 'elfised'. Gawd this graphics tablet is a lot of fun.

Been doodling away

2007-01-01T21:15:00.000Z

I've been playing around with my graphics tablet today. I bought it some weeks ago and it's great fun. Anyway, I'm not that good but did a few quick doodles.

The European Union Grows

2006-12-31T17:51:00.000Z

The European Union will grow tonight when Romania and Bulgaria join at midnight. I fully support EU expansion as it effectively exports high standards of governance, democracy, law and order, human rights and economic freedom to other countries. With the carrot of strong economic growth and development on the other side of a high hurdle for EU membership, most countries will attempt to jump that hurdle for the carrot. Give it 20-30 years and we will see an affluent, wealthy Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Black Sea.

Some say that EU expansion should be slowed or halted altogether, citing the dangers of growing too fast and putting the whole EU system under stress. That might be a danger, but I don’t think that the EU can grow in the future at the same rate it has done so in recent years for the simple reason that the EU is running out of countries to gobble up. There are a number of former Yugoslavian nations and Turkey currently waiting to join. Though Turkish membership of the EU is a big bite for the EU to take, considering Turkey’s shear size, and will also cause stresses in the whole system, I think that the EU can do it and do it very well. Turks are not going to be sitting idle after gaining EU membership. EU membership isn’t a gift … it’s an open door … and this open door, this opportunity, will be exploited to the full by Turks.

Imagine a Turkey in 30 years time that is as wealthy as the UK, France or Germany is. Such a change will shift the political and economic landscape of the whole region.

Slovenia will also convert to the €uro at midnight too.

Should Saddam have been hanged?

2006-12-31T17:48:00.000Z

I’m currently of two minds on Saddam’s recent hanging right now. On the one hand he was a brutal dictator who killed more of his people than Bush has managed to, and yet as a European I’m appalled about the grotty and barbaric practice of a states’ judicial machinery signing an order to kill someone, and then carrying out that order.

The hanging itself was very poorly done and sends out all the wrong messages. Ideally, everyone in the execution chamber should have been wearing a police/prison guard uniform so that the explicit message conveyed was that this hanging was the legitimate action of a states’ judicial arm. Instead we saw people milling about in leather jackets and balaclavas in a grotty, low ceiling chamber while they threw taunts at Saddam and cheered his death. Nothing says “crappy 3rd world country with a crappy judicial system” like that scene. People are going to conclude that what they saw was Shia justice. It also looks bad that there was so much US involvement. Saddam was held by the Americans throughout his trial and was not handed over to the Iraqi authorities until his execution was imminent. Not only that but Saddam was executed in a US base called ‘Camp Justice’.

It all leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I've got a new video on YouTube!

2006-12-30T00:37:00.000Z

I made a video in homage to the wonder that is Elfwood, the largest amateur fantasy and Sci-Fi gallery on the planet with 26,000 artists and 451,000 pieces of art. You can spend a whole week there and barely scratch the surface. Check it out!

Stumbled Upon Some Amazing Music!

2006-12-29T17:38:00.000Z

I’m going through a DJ Encore phase right now. Amazing stuff! It hits all the right buttons for me. I didn’t even mean to buy their album initially (I hadn’t even heard of them). I was buying a couple of albums by 4Strings on Amazon (which I discovered on YouTube) and it came up with things that other people had bought too, with DJ Encore at the top of the list. I took a risk, went with the herd and bought it blind … and my god their stuff is amazing.

I’ll show you what I mean. With the below YouTube videos I advise that you close your eyes or minimise your browser window and just concentrate on the music itself.

Working Nights Sucks

2006-12-29T17:36:00.000Z

I hate working nights. The last batch of 12-hour night shifts I pulled left me so exhausted that I came home at 7:30, I sat down, flicked on the TV … and fell asleep. I woke up at noon with a numb arm and a cold house from leaving the front door wide open. Luckily nothing was taken but in my condition someone probably could have taken the clothes from my back without waking me. I finally went to bed at 3pm and slept till about 7:00 am the following morning – 16 hours. So much for that night off.

France24 – My first impressions? Not good.

2006-12-12T16:11:00.000Z

The French have launched a rival to CNN and BBC News 24 both on the television airwaves and the internet. Their goal is to provide news from the French viewpoint, as Al Jazeera is doing for the Arab viewpoint, but with much less impressive results, in my humble opinion.

To be clear, I only have access to their website and not the channel itself, though you can watch bulletins and a live feed from their site. That is probably the best part of the site – the easy-to-find and quick-to-load bulletins and live feeds. However that one good point is overshadowed by the bad points. The site crashes my Firefox browser for a start. The news stories on the site are much thinner on the ground than CNN, Sky News, BBC News 24 or Al Jazeera and makes the place ‘feel’ empty. The news presenters on the live feed bulletins don’t appear to be using autocue (in this day and age?) and they seem to be adlibbing much of the time. Of course I’ve only watched the English versions so far, so the French version may be better (it is after all a French TV channel and its viewers are going to be mostly French).

The worst thing I’ve found is the quality of the reporting. For instance, on the Business feed the presenter declared a victory for Airbus in its war for ‘global domination’ with Boeing with an order for 1100 planes from India. An order that eye-popping needed confirmation so I hunted the story down on the other news sites and guess what? The genuine story was that Airbus predicted that India would need 1100 aircraft in the coming decades … not that India had bought or were going to buy 1100 Airbus aircraft.

Mentally, I’ve filed France24 into the same drawer as Fox News – i.e. unreliable and containing spin and/or outright propaganda. The channel may improve in the future – a new news channel run by inexperienced people can only improve – so I’ll keep my eye on France24 for a while. On the other hand when you understand some of the underlying motivations within each news channel or news site then propaganda/spin is much easier to spot. The above Airbus story is just a ham-fisted attempt at spin by inexperienced staff.

None of the other news channels (or ANY news outlet whether online, broadcast or in printed form) are free from underlying motivations. The BBC for instance is very pro-institution. Any institution. It’s an institution itself where if you manage to get a job there you have perhaps a 95% chance of staying in that job for life. And as a provider of jobs for life the institution is very friendly to other institutions like the police, government, major companies, NHS or whatever. Sky News likes to sensationalise somewhat, but it is a commercial news channel unlike the BBC. Those who go to the bother of getting a satellite dish and ‘Sky Plus’ can probably be thought off as ‘Daily Mail readers’ – meaning rightwing. To the credit of Sky News this underlying motive to please its subscribers doesn’t seem to taint its news coverage or analysis, and only finds its way into things like viewer polls (where the questions often sound like they were drafted by a rightwinger) or the short-lived current affairs show called ‘Richard Littlejohn’, featuring the rightwing print columnist of the same name. But then Sky News is in direct competition with BBC News 24, which is probably the standard in good quality news on the small screen.

UK to abandon the F-35?

2006-12-08T09:19:00.000Z

I just heard that the UK might abandon the F-35 project over the unwillingness of the US to give its closest ally access to the source code that runs the aircraft’s systems. Without the ability to maintain, modify or upgrade the software independently by ourselves then we’re not going to be able to equip the aircraft with the weapons and systems that we want to. We would be stuck using off-the-shelf US equipment, while any and all software upgrades would be subject to the vulgarities of US export controls on ‘sensitive’ technology. Which is ridiculous! What’s more dangerous, the fighter itself or its software? You can imagine a future situation where the MoD spends billions to develop a new stand-off missile or an anti-ship missile, but is unable to get their F-35’s to equip it because they can’t upgrade the fighter’s software.

Obviously this is stupid.

The US and UK are due to sign a ‘memorandum of understanding’ at the end of this year (just 3 weeks away) that covers commitments to production, further development and the like. In essence it would commit the UK to buy the F-35. We’ve heard warnings, both recently and back in March, that if the UK doesn’t get access to the source code then we will abandon the F-35 project and instead go for “Plan B”, which is thought to be either a navalised Eurofighter Typhoon or the French Rafale.

It’s amazing that even after all this time and the billions spent in supporting the F-35 project that we need to have a “Plan B” in the event of US distrustfulness killing the deal.

Personally I think that will indeed happen. If this running sore has not been solved in all the months that the problem has been running for, then it’s not going to get solved in the last few weeks of this year either. I’d rather see the UK buy the F-35, but there would be little point in doing so if we had to rely on US charity to keep the things updated and upgraded. Luckily the design for our two new aircraft carriers includes the provision of installing aircraft launching catapults at some point during the carrier’s service life. Dropping the STOVL F-35 and selecting the Typhoon or Rafale will not mean a wholesale redesign of the carriers. They can install the catapults during construction rather than in 20 years time.

It’s probably the case that the option to install the catapults was written into the MoD’s design and development contract for this very reason.

Social/economic implications of the internet thingy

2006-12-06T16:10:00.000Z

I don’t know about anyone else, but I buy just about everything now-a-days online. Groceries? Online. Music CD’s? Online. Clothes? Online. Electrical gizmos like mp3 players, cameras and headphones? Online. Software and games? Online. Tools and garden stuff? Online. Appliances? Online. Even the very computer that I’m typing this on, I purchased online.

The thing is I’m not in any way some kind of techno-geek that just has to be on the leading edge of ‘the next big thing’. I must have been the last person in the UK to convert to CD’s, and my video recorder (yes, I still have one of those) still blinks 0:00 at me ‘cos I haven’t got a clue about how to program the darn thing.

And if I’m an average chap that is buying everything online then it stands to reason that there must be an awful lot of people like me that prefer the convenience of shopping online. And if so, what does that spell for our high streets and shopping centres? It stands to reason that they will wither while online retailers grow.

Now imagine the social/economic impact of that. High streets emptier and populated with shoppers with a lower average income (ie – people who can’t afford computers or internet access). Less face-to-face human contact. Fleets of delivery vans and warehouses taking the place of retail outlets. Less road journeys undertaken for shopping. Give it 20 years and supermarkets and high streets will be dead, killed off by the shear convenience of the internet.

This year I did all my Christmas shopping online in one single hour. That’s both for food/drink and presents for the family … and while I was comfortably seated and sipping tea too. The alternative was to spend dozens of hours battling the Christmas hordes in the cold and wet weather. What would you choose to do? Engaging in mortal combat with other shoppers over some cheap crimbo tat that you think would be great for some cousin you haven’t seen for ten years … or sitting in a nice comfy armchair while noshing mince pies?

The high street is SO doomed.

The neo-cons are toast

2006-12-06T09:53:00.000Z

What a change a few weeks make. Before the recent elections over in the US, the White House blurb was all about ‘winning’ the War On Terror™ in Iraqinam, and uttering dismissive statements about criticism levelled at the handling of the Iraq debacle. Yet after the drubbing that US voters delivered to the Bushies, everything changed. Democrats gained control of both houses. Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, neo-con, PNAC member and leading advocate of the Iraq invasion, was sacked. Other hardcore neo-cons like Richard Pearle started to question the bungled way the invasion and occupation was handled, despite supporting the invasion in the first place. John Bolton was forced to quit, since the democrats were never going to accept an ideological neo-con as ‘their man’ at the UN, especially as he is famous for disparaging that very same organisation. There’s a bipartisan commission that is soon to release its’ report on digging America out of the Iraqi hole – something that would not have happened had the Bush administration not suffered such a humiliating defeat at the hands of US voters. And lastly, Rumsfeld’s replacement, Robert Gates, is being remarkably candid about Iraq.

A member of the Bush administration declaring that the US was not winning the war in Iraq, and that an attack on Iran could backfire with devastating consequences, is shockingly refreshing. In many ways it demonstrates just how weak President Bush is right now.

Who would have thought that the very thing proposed by the neo-cons and their ultranationalist ilk (i.e. – the invasion of Iraq), with all their bluster about being a hyperpower and the US becoming a ‘new Rome’, would have utterly destroyed their credibility? It’s like watching an athlete attempt the 100m hurdles … only to fall flat on his face at the first one. Don’t forget, the neo-con plan didn’t start and end with Iraq. They had an entire strategy committed to paper even before they gained power, and that strategy document now lies in tatters.

So what now for the neo-cons and their plans? Iraq was supposed to give them free reign to do as they pleased in the Middle East. It was supposed to be their secure and unsinkable aircraft carrier, the shining example of democratic freedom in the Middle East. Iraq was supposed to make the US stronger, and in part, guarantee future US oil supplies.

Instead Iraq is the fire in which the neo-cons are having their chestnuts roasted. US forces are already pinned down in Iraq, at great expense, thanks to the anarchy there. If the US attacks Iran over their nuclear programme then the Iranians are in an excellent position to retaliate, either directly or indirectly, against US troops that are just over the border.

Thanks to the neo-conservatives, the US is weaker now than it was before Bush came to power. They grotesquely overestimated the power of the US, ridiculed ‘old Europe’ and went into Iraq on a flimsy pretext, without a UN mandate and few allies. That left them without friends to turn to when Iraq went bad. They even briefly tried to get ‘old Europe’ onboard during the early stages of the Iraqi insurgency, but soon learnt that there is no re-crossing of a river if you’ve already burnt the bridges.

So they’re stuck in Iraq with far more troops than Rumsfeld or the neo-cons had planned for, hundreds of billions has been spent, thousands of US troops have died, Iraq is in anarchy and is sliding towards full scale civil war with the US ‘hyperpower’ powerless to halt it, and the US public is no longer fearful of the ‘war on terror’ scaremongering that emanates from the White House.

So what do they do? The status quo in Iraq is politically unacceptable. They can’t go on as they have been doing. Sending significantly more troops is also politically unacceptable, as is withdrawing to leave Iraq to collapse. That is the hole that the neo-cons have dug themselves with all their arrogance, bluster and bombast … and once the Democrats figure out how to fill that hole in, the neo-cons trapped at the bottom are going to be another casualty of the Iraq war. The neo-conservatives are facing the end of their (rather few) glory days.

Think I'll give Blogger a try

2006-12-06T05:16:00.000Z

I used to post copiously and verbosely on my old online diary on Yahoo until a couple of years ago ... until another hobby found me and my free time dried up. Well, that hobby has been firmly placed back in its box and I'm feeling nostalgic about my old diary again, but not nostalgic enough to wrangle with 'Yahoo pagebuilder' just to post my thoughts and musings.

So here I am at Bloggie McBlogger with the hope that posting here will not become the archival nightmare (I really was copious in my postings ) that Yahoo was. So onwards, onwards! For glory and muffins!

The Muffinarium

It's Official – Adobe Premiere Elements is a Load of Shite

A Hero

A prediction - Flash/thumb drives will replace disc drives

Corporate scumbag types that shaft their customers only hurt themselves in the end

Stop Blair From Becoming President!

Why we shouldn't worry about Global Warming too much

Give me a break ... Obama's barely warmed his seat yet!

Kali

DOODLES!

YouTube Suspended My Account ...

Dawn of War 2 can go fuck itself

Yay for new fangled technology!

Spore is Doomed

My Two Pennies

The Russian leadership has less brain cells than a bag of potatoes.

The people at FilePlanet are SO cruel!

AoC bombed

My fridge is now the most awesome thing in my kitchen

Damn Forums.

Getting album art and working videos onto your Sony NWZ-A815 / A816 / A818 Walkman.

I don't 'get' the vapourware trolls

Dimfall 009 is now out!

Dimfall 008 is now out!

Dimfall has a new home!

While you're waiting for Dimfall 008 ...

Dimfall - Issue 007 "MMORPG Economics 101"

Dimfall - Issue 006 "It's not one of us!"

Incoming Comic!

Dimfall - Issue 005

Dimfall - Issue 004 "Girlyquest 2"

Dimfall - Issue 003 "Gankage"

Dimfall - Issue 002 is here

Issue 001 of Dimfall is here!

New Web Comic, perhaps?

FPS combat in MMORPG's

I *almost* got excited about Warhammer Online

Greenspan to blame for the current credit crunch?

Is Islamophobia now acceptable in the US?

2005 to 2050 – What to Expect

New Darkfall Video of the Mirdain Mount!

Dollar weakness

How not to run a country

I hate stupidity

Is this the future?

Rant Rant Rant Rant!

New Dronjak Darkfall Video

Lucky me!

Another New Darkfall Video

New PC - YAY!

Someone slap me!

Darkfall Videos

Cyprus and Malta to join the Euro

Vanguard is dead.

Could Blair replace Wolfowitz at the World Bank?

Everyone seems to be ganging up on the Liberal Democrats lately.

Now THIS is a funny advert

The World Has Gone Nuts

Vanguard ... and other mmorpg's

Darkfall Videos

Vanguard Sucks

The Markets

Beware CNN!

A warning for TouTube users …

Doomsday Bank

Will Bush attack Iran … or is it all a bluff?

This song rocks!

Bye bye Whistlestopper!

The world is changing ...

I Found Some Really Cool Music!

20,000 More Troops Won't Save Bush

The Socialist Republic of America

It's ME!

Been doodling away

The European Union Grows

Should Saddam have been hanged?

I've got a new video on YouTube!

Stumbled Upon Some Amazing Music!

Working Nights Sucks

France24 – My first impressions? Not good.

I almost got excited about Warhammer Online