the brownhaze: the dsutbin of the internet

blog

since 18/9/2003

Monday, February 26, 2007

The Ship

Game Review

Baiscs: This is a “first person” death match type game for the PC based on the Source engine (the build engine that runs the excellent Half-Life 2) created by a team of modders called Outerlight.

The Premise: You are aboard a 1920’s passenger ship such as an ocean liner or steamboat river cruiser. There is one person on the boat that you have to kill, you are told the name of this person and are given a rough idea of their location on the boat. Your job is to find them and dispatch them with on of a vast array of weapons that can be found aboard ship such as a fire axe, various pistols rifles or flair guns, swords, knifes, arms shop window dummies or my personal fave, golf clubs.

If you attempt to do this in the view of the guards, or by the security cameras you are fined and sent straight to the brig for an amount of time depending to the seriousness of your crime. Of course, the twist to this situation, is that you are also the quarry of one of the other passengers. This means that everybody must be eyed suspiciously and kept at arms length. There are only two people on the boat your are allowed to kill, your quarry and the person hunting you.

Occasionally, you may see a passenger acting so suspiciously that you pre-emptively kill them and it turns out that you got the wrong man, this is just part of the game. If you kill the wrong people too often you will be barred from the server, this keeps most people honest.

When you pass passengers closely enough you get to see their names and their faces are remembered. If you then get this person assigned as your quarry, you will get a little picture of them, making the hit much easier. Unfortunately , if you die, you become a whole new person and lose these memories, starting again from scratch. If you are worried that your hunger may have spotted you, you can change your clothes, hats, and glasses, all very silly.

On top of your primary task of cold blooded murder, you have needs that must be attended to. For instance, you have to sleep, eat, pee, poo, wash etc. These can all be taken care of in the usual sort of locations (pee and poo in the toilet, sleep in beds or chairs) normally when you are attending to your needs you are vulnerable to attacks.

In Practise: While there are quite a few Ship servers, only one or two of them are busy at any given time. But that’s OK, you only need the one server for a good game.

The Ship costs $20 via Steam. It’s a refreshing twist on the well worn format of first person death match games and in my opinion, well worth a look.

Labels: my life, real world, Review

Children of Men

Move review

I watched Children of Men the other night. The premise of the movie is that, 18 years ago, for some unknown reason women stopped being able to produce babies. This has lead to pretty much the downfall of society because people cant see the point of doing much when the human race will stop existing within the centaury. I wont say any more about the plot, you can find out for yourself what goes on.

Suffice to say that it’s a surprisingly action packed and had me on the edge of my seat all the way through. They have managed to create characters and situations that you care about which keeps the whole thing pretty gripping.

Clive Owen is excellently cast as the stony faced, down trodden protagonist of the piece and the standard rules of Hollywood movies do not apply here.

Give it a watch, even if you think it looks a bit dry.

Here is a link to its page on rottentomatoes.com (not a lot of films get 91% )

Labels: my life, real world, Review

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Air Toons

I last posted this at around this time in 2003, but I have just been having another look and it still makes my laugh.

Air Toons

Labels: funny, links

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Ricky Gervais media

Relating to my post below. This is a link to a page on the Pilkipidea from where you can download all of the X-Fm shows as well as loads of other audio and video.

Labels: links

Friday, February 16, 2007

The world of Ricky Gervais

I am a big Ricky Gervais fan. In part because he is from Reading and I have seen him in the Monks Retreat, in part because he produces some fantastic and original comedy but largely because of the peculiar world which he in habits.

In no better place is this world documented then the Pilkipedia, a wiki site names after one of his unusual friends Karl Pilkington. I am in the process of listing to all of the Ricky Gervais shows that he did on X-fm with Steve Merchant where the details of these strange peoples lives are gone in to in quite fine detail and puts the information in the Pilkipedia in to context, I hope that reading it without this context it makes some sort of sense to you.

Labels: links

what sort of a bastard

Would do this to somones bike

I mean, its not just the fact that they have knackered this bike it’s the length that they have gone to. Jumping on a wheel is easy, bending it totally in half, that takes some doing. Not pictured is the back wheel, which is also pretty well knackered.

Labels: picture, real world

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Ubuntu CE

Ubuntu is a PC operating system that you can freely download and install to use as an alterative to Windows. It’s actually very good and, if you just want to read the web, do e-mail, listen to music or watch a DVD, is surprisingly easy to use (its actually loads easer then Windows to install). It’s based on Linux, but don’t let that put you off. I am using it on one of my boxes at home, it’s not a total Windows replacement for me because its not great for gaming and there are still compatibly issues that mean it cant do 100% of what I want. But you never have to worry about spyware or virus’s, so that’s nice. If you ever want to try it, you can download a CD image, burn it to a CD and the boot your computer off of it and run it without having to make any changes to your computer, very clever stuff.

Anyway, enough of the boring geeky stuff.

While looking for some specific software for my Ubuntu box, I came across this link for “Ubuntu CE”. Windows CE is what they used to call the version of windows that runs on personal organisers like the HP iPAQ, so I thought this could be a similar thing.

Wrong

Ubuntu CE is “Ubuntu, Christian Edition”. Quote form their site “Ubuntu Christian Edition is a free, open source operating system geared towards Christians”. Now, I am not sure why Christians require a special edition of operating system software. Is there something about non-Christian editions of software that puts Christians off of using computers, like the way that software “evolves” over the years. Perhaps Ubuntu CE blocks access any websites that encourage freedom of thought, like in China.

For some reason I cant find “Ubuntu, Atheist Edition”

Labels: *sigh*, real world, soap box

Call centers in India…

…are shit. They don’t understand what you say and they wind you up, 100% FACT.

Right?

Well, the talking point attached to this story has an interesting comment

This is another prime example of English racism. Most foreigners speak a better standard of English than we do!
Josephine Boyd, Bermondsey, London, UK

Its an example of *what*!!! I don’t know if this is some sort of after effect of the celeb big brother, Shilpa meeting with Tony Blair nonsense, but it really does beggar belief.

I think I will deconstruct this comment:

“This is another prime example of English racism”. Does this mean that having a problem with anything to do with another country is automatically racist? If I think its too humid in Queensland, dose that make me a member of the National Front? Come on, the problem is not that they are from a particular foreign country, its because you cant understand what they are saying to you and vice versa. If this moron thinks that being unhappy about receiving a poor quality of service makes you’re a racist, then I would suggest that they have never seen any actual racism. The over used term “political correctness gone mad“ doesn’t even start to cover it.

“Most foreigners speak a better standard of English than we do!”. Where? Where is this place where “most” non-native-English-speaking people speak English better then me, France, Germany, The Netherlands (well, perhaps), I’ll tell you where it definitely isn’t. Fucking India, that’s where it isn’t. I used to have to support (technically, not chanting from the terraces) a call centre in Mumbai over the phone every day, it made me want to tare my hair out. They didn’t understand me, I didn’t understand them when then did understand me they didn’t seem to get what I was going on about. Due to cultural differences, they thought that saying no was rude so when I asked “have your tried rebooting” they would say “yes” when the hadn’t, you get the idea. At no point did I think to myself “you know what, these fine people speak such good English, I can’t believe they are actually in India.

But then I guess I would say that, cos I’m a big ol’ racist. Jesus-fucking-Christ.

Oh, and as a side note, “English racism” what about Scottland, Wales and Northern Ireland, are they not racist there? I would put it to you that *that* is a racist observation in itself. Ha, we can all imagine racism everywhere if we want to, its easy.

Now, where did I leave my copy of the daily mail….

Labels: *sigh*, real world, soap box

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Scaremongering

Paedophiles are abusing your children through there Nintendo DS’s, right now.

Or so this Fox news report would have you believe.

Facts: -
The DS comes with a wireless networking capability, part of this is the built in “Picochat” facility which allows you to create a “room” that other DS users can join and send messages. This is done over a local network i.e. not the internet. So the other parties have to be pretty close. As well as this, you have to have your DS in picochat mode waiting for someone to contact you before you can start chatting.

Fox’s spin:-
Your child, sat in his\her bedroom will be contacted by a paedophile (or child molester, as they call them in this video), groomed and then abducted or whatever. To prove this point the reporter, sat on the stairs in the same house as two little girls, with their mother standing over him watching what he typed, joined in on a conversation they where having on their DS’s (in the same room, so I don’t know why then didn’t just talk). The mother was suitably shocked and horrified when he was able to join in on their conversation. Personally, I think if you have a paedophile sitting on the stairs playing on his Nintendo DS, you have slightly more pressing problems that then fact he may ask your kids what their favourite colour is.

I have two issues with this report.
1) Paedophiles on the internet are a real problem, the internet brings anonymity and an ability to communicate instantly from all over the world which is ideal for the type of grooming activities that hey wish to carry out, children should be educated about the problems and relevant steps should be taken to ensure that your children remain safe. For a paedophile to contact your child via their DS, not only will they have to be sitting, waiting for someone to talk to them, the nonce will have to be pretty close to your child anyway, basically stranger danger which your kids should be up to speed on. I have a DS and I never seen an active Picochat room.
2) These sort of panic inducing reports benefit no one. They lead parents to believe that paedophiles are hading behind every bush and there is little they can do about it short of dropping to the technical level of an Amish and locking their kids in their rooms until they are 30.

Anyway, watch the report for yourself, get upset, or don’t, whatever.

And to put a little perspective on it, here is part of the brilliant BrassEye pedo special. PANIC, EVERYBODY PANIC, THERE’S PEDOS ABOUT!!!

Labels: real world, soap box, video