Monthly Archives: January 2011

Free Cake!

Last week I decided my VPS has too many spare cycles so I installed Minecraft on it and invited a few friends on to look around. Duck was first there and created a house for himself before his laptop gave up the ghost on Friday evening. Then TyeWebb logged in and created an impressive home, complete with roaring fire and paintings on the walls! Sulley started on his own house as well.

My son Adam watched as I fooled around on the server yesterday evening and he was delighted when I called Tye on Skype and used the laptop mic and speakers to chat to him. Adam called him the “red man” after the Duke Nukem skin on his character. Minecraft is definitely best played in a social way, especially if you have a three and a half year old looking over your shoulder. When I logged in this morning over breakfast I noticed a new block and sign just outside my house. Tye had baked a cake! Num num.

Here’s my own house, and as you can see I won’t ever have to worry about the cold winters we’re experiencing now. It might be a bit hot in the summer though.

I don’t need to worry about underfloor heating either. As a bonus I’ll save on electricity bills too as no lighting will be required! The sulphuric fumes might be a problem however. Maybe I’ll surround the lava in a glass enclosure? It drains down to a cave below so I might be able to do something with that too!

I'm an ebook convert now

Matt has made it well known that he loves his Kindle and for a while I thought about buying one too. Unfortunately I’ll have to order it from Amazon.com in the US because I live in Ireland. Attempts to buy it from Amazon.co.uk result in an error and asks me to go visit the US site. When you add shipping costs and import fees it drives the price on Amazon.com up to $193.58!

So, if not the Kindle, how do I read ebooks? On my phone of course! I downloaded the Android Kindle app for my Samsung Galaxy S. The 4 inch screen of this phone is plenty big enough for reading, though you won’t be doing it at arm’s length. It’s also backlit so there’s no need for a light to shine on the device to read it. That suits me as the majority of my reading is done when I’m in bed at night. I don’t think I’ll ever read a magazine on the phone as the screen is too small. I tried reading bits and pieces of a Retro Gamer pdf on it but it was a horrible experience. I presume Kindle formatted magazines are better suited to the small screen?

I tried reading books on previous phones but each time it was one of the free “out of copyright” books I picked up rather than a book I had to spend money on. Last September at Seaside all that changed when I bought the Kindle version of Terry Pratchett’s “Unseen Academicals” and put the paperback version of that book back into my bag. It was wonderful!

I don’t think I’ve bought a paperback since. I wandered into Waterstones once (killing time, I didn’t even head over to the sci-fi section), and any time I pop into Eason’s it’s to buy a magazine. I’ve since made several purchases on amazon.com including a few books by authors unknown to me. Check out Containment and Brainbox by Christian Cantrell for example.

I’m not happy about everything Kindle however. Even though Ireland is in the European Union along with the UK, Amazon customers here cannot buy the Kindle or ebooks through amazon.co.uk. Instead we have to use amazon.com. Thankfully there’s no VAT on books so the US price is the price Irish customers pay. Good thing the Euro is stronger than the US Dollar. It does however mean that we have to buy books with American English spelling and that won’t improve the humour of those people who will criticise the service.

Also, some books cannot be bought because I’m not in the United States or United Kingdom. Ender’s Game is one such novel. If I search Amazon.com for that title I won’t be shown the Kindle version at all but I found it by using Google. I can’t even look for it on amazon.co.uk because I’m in Ireland, not the UK. I understand this is probably because publishers have regional contracts but this is digital data and Amazon has a worldwide audience.

I’d still like to try out a Kindle as a reading device as I’ve heard so many good things about it, but the important part of the Kindle are the books, and I can read them just fine on my phone.

Besides the Kindle app there are many other Android ebook readers. I particularly like FBReader myself but check the market for others.

For historical purposes for those reading this in 10 years time when it will probably be hard to buy paperback books, Amazon sold more ebooks during the last 3 months of 2010 than paperbacks.

Amazon has revealed that it has sold more Kindle ebooks than paperbacks in the US during the final three months of 2010.

A similar pattern has continued during January 2011 with 115 ebooks being sold for every 100 paperbacks.

Apparently nobody uses the in-game team …

Apparently nobody uses the in-game team chat in Bad Company 2 on PC so lots of people use Mumble. Unfortunately that can have unforeseen consequences when both teams are on the same Mumble server…

Defender: Watch out guys, we have enemies in the back of our base
Attacker: …….no i’m not……

Next time I fire up the game on PC I’ll join that Mumble server and see for myself. (via)

Battlefield Tweeters

A lot of Battlefield players are also on Twitter, here’s a few of them:

This is by no means an exhaustive list but if you play Bad Company 2 check out these guys and tell them Donncha sent you! Many of these people have Youtube channels too and I’ll add them later but in the meantime check out this list and of course dontrevivemebro.com.

Had some great games with David and Bedo…

Had some great games with David and Bedo Empire (Was that his username? I forget, sorry!) on Bad Company 2 last night.

Like others in the Bad Company 2 community we’re playing using our “secondary accounts” so we’re starting from scratch again. Problems with match making continue and the two of us were dumped into a game defending on Valparaiso against 2 level 50s and a level 42 player. It was 2 vs 3 and the result was never in doubt but hell, we put up a fight! I wish I was recording because we had lots of fun. Despite their high levels, they were rubbish helicopter pilots, just hovering in place. I got a nice rocket straight up into the vehicle without a tracer dart.

After David did a call out for help Empire joined us and on attack we took the first base quickly, and managed to get one crate on the second before the other team were joined by a clan of high level players. It was something like 3 vs 8 then so we went looking for another game.

Unfortunately stats weren’t recorded for our last game. I went 19/8 and we were the best squad despite having us low level players, without magnum ammo on the squad. I made it to level 1, unlocked a vehicle spec and a shotgun and they were all lost. Luckily the ammo box I unlocked in the previous game stayed but it’s disappointing. I couldn’t care less about losing stats on my main account because I’ve unlocked everything (but some of the recon weapons) but for raw recruits it’s hard. *sob*

I’m sorta liking the AEK now, even without magnum ammo.

First “proper” game of Modern Combat a…

First “proper” game of Modern Combat and it’s a game of domination. I spent a few minutes trying to get into team deathmatch games but I kept getting kicked so it was this or nothing.

The game lasted quite a while but I only got 13 kills, 20 deaths. Nobody used their mic which in this game was booorrriiinngggg! After the beautiful atmospherics in Bad Company 2 I miss the rush of the wind, or bird call or whatever. It was pure silent!

Meh, sucky game. Anyone want to see it?

Duke Nukem Forever Trailer

The trailer to the new Duke Nukem game looks good! If you don’t remember the first game from when it was first released don’t play it now. The pixelated low res graphics will disappoint, and they might even make you wonder what the hell was so good about it. Trust us old guys, it was great in it’s day and this trailer teases a great return for Duke on May 6th!

Oh, trailer is 17+, probably for all the pixelated nudity!

Modern Combat: Domination (demo) review

This is a video review of Modern Combat: Domination that appeared on PSN yesterday. It’s a review of only the demo where search & destroy is the only game mode.

While I appreciated that they used an objective game mode for their demo it was a shame they didn’t include any of the other modes in the 45 minutes allowed to play the demo.

The game may simply be too slow for some people. The default sensitivity is like wading through chest high water. You turn ever so slowly but that can I’m sure be fixed by upping the sensitivity.

In the demo I didn’t play against humans at all, it was all bots and they were of a difficulty level to match recruit level (or maybe normal) in Black Ops Combat Training. Even though it was all bots I sometimes got “room full” errors when trying to join games!

In the review I wasn’t too sure if I’d get the game but after sleeping on it I probably will. It’s only $8 but I’ll wait a few days for the metacritic score to fill out first.

Edit: While writing this post this morning I almost forgot one huge glaring bug that I mention in the video. I couldn’t hear any sound. My headset is hooked up via the digital output while my HDPVR is hooked up via component cables and as you can hear from the video was able to record audio.
I thought it might be my setup, but I tried another game and that was fine. I found one person complaining of the same thing on a forum (that was down when I tried it, I checked the cached copy) so try the demo before you buy. That’s one bug that will stop me buying this game.

PS. Two positive reviews of the full game:

Looks like I’m the only one with sound problems!