Yaaaaahr mateys, Guybrush is back! Almost back! Lucasarts did quite a good job keeping it quiet, but somewhere next month they are going to release a remake of The Secret Of Monkey Island! And if that isn’t enough to make you scream like a 15 year old fangirl, they are also going to release a new episode based Monkey Island game named “Tales Of Monkey Island”. The Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island III) was actually the second point and click adventure game i’ve ever played. I used to be a pure First Person Shooter fan, so i only played games like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior until i came across of Broken Sword II. I loved, and still love, that game a lot and when i completed it i wanted something similar. The nice mister at my local gameshop told me he was a huge Monkey Island fan and how awesome it was, etc etc. Too bad it wasn’t available at the time, but one of my shady friends helped me with my problem. I loved it right away! The great theme song, one of the best ever, the funny dialogs, the beautiful art, … made it hard not to love it. I played, finished and started it all over again at the more difficult “mega monkey” setting. But it wasn’t untill somewhere in 2001-2002 at a lan party that i played the first 2 games in the series. The gfx were definitely very very dated, but the humor and story were even better than the the 3rd Game. If i ever become an old man, those games helped. And if i don’t, at least they made me laugh a LOT! But it’s 2009 now and i STILL don’t own any of them! Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis, Sam and Max, Day of The Tentacle, Full Throttle, Monkey Island Series, … i love all of them and i WANT them but Lucasarts doesn’t want people to buy their great games or something like that. Because i have never seen them in a shop and when i tried to order them i always ended up empty handed. 
Lucasarts please look and learn from Revolution Software or Pendulo, cause i do own all the Broken Sword and Runaway games! That aside i can’t wait for the remake. I wantz it, i needz it!
I was browsing the Asus site, finding out about their new 1008HA Eee PC, when i came across this link:
http://www.itsbetterwithwindows.com
I watched the video and noticed that they had dubbed it! What a shame! But fortunately for you guys the lipreader inside of me was nice enough to write it all down!
Here we go:
00:23 Daughter: Did you finally manage to get my cellphone working on my PC mom?
00:24 Mom: Yeah, i rock!
00:29 Daughter: Ughr, it was about time!
00:49 Middle Girl: Careful, you are going to crash it!!
01:50 Dad Thinking: Let’s hope this piece of junk works today
03:00 Left Girl: You see, she told you to be careful bitch!!
03:01 Middle Girl: Well… that happens all the time…
03:02 Right Girl: Yeah i know!
03:17 Son: Daddy daddy, i broke it again!
03:18 Dad: Ok ok, let me see…
03:25 Dad: The stupid thing is full of virusen again!
03:42 *hours passed* Dad: daddy fixed it!
03:43 Son: you are awesome daddy!!
Disclaimer: Sorry i couldn’t resist! *giggle*
CHOICE! I have been running Linux Mint 5 for about a year now on my laptop and it has been doing it’s job brilliantly. It’s fast, super stable and Pretty. But i have been reading a lot of great things about the new Ubuntu version. Especially the very fast boot-time, better PulseAudio integration and the new notification system sound great! Reading and seeing all those things awakened a little voice in my head. “Maybe you should install it”. Well maybe i should, but i’ll wait for Ubuntu’s “Mint Edition” aka Linux Mint which is due for release soon. Or should i install Debian Squeeze? I have been running a rolling release distro on my (and on my girlfriend’s) desktop, namely Arch Linux, for a long time now and i love it. And Squeeze, being Debian’s Testing release, would be a perfect balance between stability, up to date packages and not having to reinstall your Operating System every (half a) year. So what an i going to do? What am I going to do?
I didn’t stay long, mainly because my brain couldn’t unplug from Azerty. I did change my keyboard to Qwerty and i have to say that i like it. And i am still using that today.
-day 1-
Bought myself a Qwerty keyboard and rearranged the keys. That went well except for the j and the f holes, i had to file a tiny piece of plastic away. But after the surgery all the keys on it worked smoothly!
-day 2-
Set up Gnome to use Dvorak. It was easy, i just had to go to the keyboard settings and select “US – Dvorak”. Then i used this guide to set up my pc for when i’m not using an X-Server. (like less than 1% of the time)
Now i was finally ready to start my classes! I installed and started gtypist. “ao ae au aa ss sn st sh … di du de do da dh dt … iu ie io ia ii …”
Typing Speed: Like an average Granny
-day 3-
Setting up my laptop to use Dvorak as well. Ow and some more “tn ts th td te to ta …”
Typing Speed: Like an average 60 year old
-day 4-
“the tha thu … the mad hatter has a hat on his head …”
Typing Speed: Like an average 50 year old
-day 5,6 and 7-
I know most of the keys and my typing speed is going up, but it still is miles away from where i was with Azerty.
Don’t know if i’m going to stick with it. This is a 3 weeks test and if i don’t feel more comfortable by then i’m going to switch to Qwerty.
Today i’ve bought myself a new toy! Namely this little fellow:
A Sansa Fuse! I already had a Creative Zen MicroPhoto mp3 player for quite some time now and it was my trusted companion through thick and thin. We have been through a lot together and this is not a goodbye blogpost my good friend! But although you are brilliant with my precious music files, you have one big flaw in your design. You don’t play Ogg and/or Flac files and your idiotic maker in all his stupidity refuses to teach you that (in the form of a firmware update or something). Don’t take it personally, i still love you, but he can go f*ck himself! That’s why i started to look for an alternative that 1. had Ogg and Flac support and 2. was Linux-friendly. After reading a lot of reviews and visiting many sites of mediaplayer manufacturers, the obvious choices were one of the iRiver or Sansa players. I chose the Sansa Fuse because you can increase its storage capacity with Micro SD Card’s and also because it had a rather nice price tag. 
I bought the 4 gig model that included a free 4 gig Micro SD Card, so that made it 8 gig for the price of 4! Plugged my new buddy in and my PC immediately recognized and mounted it with a nice icon on my desktop. Now that’s what i call Plug and Play! I dragged some songs into it’s music folder, detached the Sansa and was greeted by welcome screen and a rather nice looking interface. And half a minute later i also figured out that round button isn’t for pressing but more like a wheel! I quite like the interface, but when i was exploring my song collection i noticed that not all the songs i copied on to its drive where showing. To make it worse, the songs that weren’t showing were the Ogg and Flac ones! Another minute went by when i found out that you needed to update the Sansa’s firmware in order to get the Ogg and Flac support. And the download section didn’t contain any Linux version of their firmware updater. Again a couple of minutes later i discovered why! You didn’t need that updater! I just had to download a small file, drag it into the Fuse folder on my desktop, detach it from my pc and start the player. A pretty looking dialog with the words “updating firmware” showed up and half a minute later it was finished. This time all my files were showing and playable! The sound quality is comparable with my Zen and that means it’s superb! Another big plus for the Fuse compared to the Zen is battery life. The Zen can do about 8-9 hours max on a full battery, but the Fuse literally can go on 3 times as long! Yes i like my new toy and i hope it’s as robust as the Zen. (that after almost 3 years still works brilliantly) But only time can tell…
This week KDE4.2, codename “The Answer”, was released! I was surprised to already see it in the Arch Linux repos that same day. Great work from the Arch devs! My gf’s uses KDE on “her” desktop, cause she likes all the shiny and pretty plasma stuff, so i upgraded that pc. But that did mean the upgrade had to be problem-free or i would definitely have slept on the floor for a couple of nights. Luckely the upgrade worked without any flaws and the 4.2 edition does looks very very good. I love what they did to the taskbar! And more good news from the KDE front: someone is working on a Remember the Milk plasmoid! (source: http://blog.chatonka.com/2009/01/more-on-rtm-plasmoid/) That meant i was happy, my gf was happy cause everything still worked (and looked extra pretty) AND i didn’t have to sleep on the floor!
On to part 2 of this blog! I always liked watching Aaron Seigo’s “aseigo on KDE” videocast, but he seems to have suddenly stopped doing that. So i was in need of a replacement! People on twitter, identi.ca and plurk were talking about tech (and other) podcasts for quite some time now and that woke up a little voice in my head, telling me to broaden my horizon. (eat that people who think microblogging is useless!) After some googling i found a cool little program called gpodder (http://gpodder.berlios.de/). Seconds later it was installed and a cute little green alien icon popped up. I added 2 podcasts, namely Linux Outlaws and Linux Basement and The Linux Outlaws one really grew on me after hearing a couple of episodes. It’s just 2 guys, one with a cool English accent and the other one with a goofy German one, talking about Linux and other tech stuff. And the best thing about the show is that they don’t take themselves too seriously! If anyone knows other good podcasts, preferably about tech and/or Linux, please tell me!
Now on to the last part of this blog! *loud cheering in the background* In a previous blogpost i wrote about ripping all my cd’s to ogg and flac files and the program i used for that job was RubyRipper. It really is a brilliant application! Where most programs just read the cd and rip the songs, RubyRipper rips each song a couple of times and than checks if both files are the same. The result is an error-free ripping experience! RubyRipper is, like you can tell from it’s name, written in the Ruby programming language. Something i looked into a couple of times before. But me being a C/C++ and Python guy, Ruby never really seemed like my cup of tea. Until a cool Mexican dude gave me a link to a great guide. (http://poignantguide.net/ruby/index.html) “Why’s (poignant) Guide to Ruby” is a fun way of learning the language and just a nice blend of humor and great examples. I’m starting to “get” Ruby thanks to it! And even if i don’t know if i’m going to swap in my beloved Python for that “red gemstone” language, at least now i can (try to) fix bugs if i encounter any. Thanks Israel, you rock!
Few things in live give greater pleasure than music. So the music-addict in me was overjoyed when i got Sennheiser HD 595 headphones for my birthday! I wanted those for years! ^^ Though i have to admit that i was a bit disappointing when opened the box. They didn’t look very robust and the plastic felt a bit cheap. But i use my headphones when i’m sitting in a chair or in bed, not in a war zone or on a jungle expedition. So it’s not that big a deal, which brings me to the important part… the sound quality! I plugged them in for a testdrive, started Bent – As You Fall (Micah’s Swollen Booty Mix) and boy was i in for a shock! Not only is it a brilliant song to test your soundsystem, but the sound was so warm and you could hear so many details. The last time i was this impressed with a soundsystem was in Sven Vath’s Cocoon club in Germany. The “hard” work of ripping all my cd’s to flac and high bitrate ogg’s really pays of with the sennheisers! ^^ I “tested” it with other songs, to see how it handled other music genres, and my precious new headphones passed with flying colors. From Beethoven to Sasha and Digweed, Radiohead or Ricardo Villalobos, it all sounds so beautiful. Highly recommended!
That brings us to the monsters part of this blog. I started designing a microblogging app for Twitter, Identi.ca and Jaiku. At the moment it still only is a terminal app. To my own defense, it is a working terminal app! You can post to twitter and see your timeline, but i’m working “hard” on the graphical interface. Trying and figuring things out like “to webkit or not to webkit, …”. Definitely To Be Continued!
A couple of weeks ago we (my gf and i) found out that there’s a baby on the way. It was totally unexpected. But when i heard it, it actually gave me a warm feeling inside. I feel GREAT! ^^ Although that may be a bit harsh to say when your girlfriend is sick half the time. My poor sweety. Thanks to all this lot’s of things are going to change. Our planned holiday next summer is off, cause the baby is expected at the end of july/beginning of august. I did do some rescheduling though, i really hope that she is going to like her christmas-present! ^^ Another change is that my training room is going to be redecorated into a baby room. I still have no idea what i’m going to do with all my weights. Any suggestions? I don’t really care all that much for most of the other changes. Yes there will be less freedom, less partying, more responsibility, … But it’s not that we go out that much anymore and i can always ask my sister to babysit. At least she’ll spend her time on something useful for once! *grin* Ow yeah, just one last thing to all you journalists out there. Please stop writing articles about how bad most men are as dads, unless you at least give some good advice in them! Because reading stuff like that right now is quite annoying and scary at the same time.
This is a blog i actually wanted to write for Halloween. But like you can see, that didn’t happen. It’s…
My Personal Top 5 of Scariest Game Moments!
It’s NOT a top 5 of the scariest games i’ve ever played! Although the numbers 1 and 2 of this list would also be number 1 and 2 in that list, numbers 3, 4 and 5 would have been a fight between Aliens vs Predator II, Clive Barkers Undying, Doom III, Resident Evil, F.E.A.R. and Quake. But this top 5 is about the scariest moments. Moments that almost gave me a heart attack. We start with number 5…
5. Duke Nukem 3D
This is the first game i’ve ever bought! The whole drive home I had the box on my lap, eager to install it. Got home, rushed to my pc, inserted the disk and waited for the installation to finish itself so i could finally start playing. And so i did… which brings me to the moment i encountered something called a sentry drone. It’s some kind of flying machine that was waiting for me in the shadows of the room i was about to enter. I entered the room, a pulsating noise on the background… i turned to the right and… *tudum tudum* whaaaaaahr! …What a game and a good start for this list!
4. Doom II
While Duke Nukem 3D was the first game i bought, this was the first game i got as a present. Yeay for my sister! The game itself isn’t that super creepy, but i contains demons. The fact that this demon isn’t that big and that it has a pink skin doesn’t make it so terrifying… But the little bastard has a habit of waiting for you behind closed doors, so when you open the door it’s *growl* and your heart skips a beat or 2.
3. Half Life
Another masterpiece. It contains lot’s of scary moments, but the one that earns this number 3 spot is this… After the failed experiment you wander through the black mesa complex, kill some zombies and headcrabs. You solve some puzzles, until you reach an elevator. It goes up and arrives at the next floor… you step out and notice an electricity cable hanging from the ceiling and a headcrab that is slowly crawling towards you. I stood still and waited for it to come close enough for me to kill it with my crowbar. But then suddenly the little monster reaches the cable and *BZZZZzzzzzt* *big flash* it electrocuted it. I thought “glad i waited in front of the elevator or it would have been me, another scare moment avoided!” and i carefully walked around the cable with a smile. Seconds later i noticed a zombie trying to hide from me in a corner, so yet again another scare moment avoided! And that made me overconfident. I entered a room, found a dark airvent i had to enter… crawled through it… until i thought “hmm i can’t see sh*t anymore, let’s try my flashlight!”. I pressed the L button on my keyboard to turn it on and exactly at that moment a headcrab jumped towards me…
2. System Shock II
And now the 2 scariest games i’ve played! System Shock II is no game for the weak hearted and personally i think it should have a warning on the box! And i’m not kidding! We are talking about the year 1999. Games back then didn’t have impressive AI’s. In most games back then the monsters just ran towards you or waited for you behind a corner. That was it! So i started playing System Shock 2. Immediately you can sense the creepy atmosphere, lot’s of strange sounds, never too much light. Things explode, you see glimps of bio-mechanical organisms walking away, scientist getting chased by those things while you look through thick glass windows, but nothing attacks you! The tension builds and builds, you just know something is about to happen! More things explode… It is only a matter of time now… and so it does… a couple of dead creatures later i reached a room where you could see through the floor. The was some kind of strange monkey-like monster in it, jumping and doing strange things. I looked at it and for a moment it was like it was looking back, like it was actually thinking. I ignored it and explored the room i was in. And then it happened, a “Jurassic Park” moment. A “Ksssht”-like sound of an automatic door. It didn’t bother me cause the door i just entered wasn’t automatic and didn’t make a sound like that. It sounded far way. I saw a computer that i could use and started hacking it when i heard a “Iiiirk”-like sound, very close to me. The moment I figured out what had happened it was already too late. The little monkey creature found its way through all the rooms and hallways AND it knew how to open doors! The result was… … euhm… i kinda spilled my drink all over the floor when i had accidentally hit my glass…
1. Aliens vs Predator
Nope, not the mediocre movie. That’s Alien vs Predator, this is about the scariest game ever made! In it you can to play as a Marine, a Predator or an Alien. Playing as an Alien is very very cool. You can climb on walls and walk on ceilings, f*ck gravity! Playing as a marine on the other hand is what this top 5 is all about! Unlike playing as an Alien, what makes you the scariest creature in the game at that moment, or a predator, who has special visual modes to track aliens or humans so you can see them a lot easier, the marine only has some kind of tracking radar device. You see little dots on a rader and hear a bliep when there’s movement. The downside is… When a door opens, it blieps. When a elevator goes up or down, it blieps. Letting you think that there’s an alien or predator running towards you. Let me give you some examples of the problem. You start the game as a marine, in your room, in some kind of military-base. Your superior calls you and asks to come and meet him because something seems to be wrong. You leave your room and hear your first bliep of the game when your own door closes itself. That already made me think something behind me was about to attack… nothing happened… so i continued walking with my real life heartbeat now up to 120+ bpm. I arrived in a large room with some elevators. Large room = lots of place for aliens to hide! I slowly walked forward… my heartbeat rising… my rader began to bliep… heartbeat rising some more… but nothing happened except for an elevator that arrived. I stepped in, got to the next floor and slowly started to explore the next hallway. The elevator behind me automatically descended and made my radar bliep again. I followed the path and to the right you could see some kind of alienship. It looked exactly like the one in the first Alien movie! I continued my slow walking pace. One eye on my little radar the other in front of me, when i arrived at another descending elevator. Bliep… bliep… bliep… bliep… everyone who has seen the second Alien movie (Aliens) can imagine how the next hallway looked like. I was, again very slowly, walking forward and away from the elevator. But the blieping sounds didn’t stop and a new dot appeared on my radar. I could hear my own heart beating with the dot coming closer and closer. Much faster then i had expected, when a few seconds later an alien jumped before me at an incredible speed! Result: Dead ingame, almost dead in real life, my mouse laying on the floor and i almost tripped my chair… *catches breath* When i picked up my mouse from the floor and placed it back on my desk my first reaction was… WOW! I filled my glass with some coke (I still drank coke back then, not anymore), took a deep breath and started playing again.
It now is December 2008, AvP came out in 1999, almost 10 years have passed and no other game made in those 10 years comes even close! Not even the sequal, which is actually a better and more fun game than the first one. But it’s a tiny bit less dark… Aaah those good old days!
