I finished the single player campaign of…

I finished the single player campaign of Halo Reach and it was very enjoyable. Ending was…. well, good actually. Bit sad though, but it’s unlocked now for coop play. Make sure you watch through the credits. It’s worth it.

In other news, the lag monster attacked and destroyed a few games of Call of Duty WAW that myself, Mike and Conor had this evening. Sasben, hope the lag in MOH was better. Still, Mike and myself had one decent game of domination.

Everyone, leave a comment encouraging Mike to do a commentary. He’s a beast of a player and I for one would love to see him make use of that new PVR he has! 🙂

You buying Medal of Honor?

It all seemed so easy in the last year or so to pick what games to buy.

  1. Modern Warfare? Check.
  2. Modern Warfare 2? Check.
  3. Bad Company 2? Check.
  4. Halo Reach? Check.

Medal of Honor? I don’t know yet. I’m waiting to see what Mike thinks of the game!

Meanwhile, videos have started to appear on ye olde Youtube..


Geoff likes it. +1


NGT likes it. +1


d0n7bl1nk likes it. +1

So, thumbs up from a number of Youtube commentators. Apparently lag has been pretty bad on all versions, particularly the consoles. Hopefully they’ll get that sorted out.

I’m actually enjoying Halo Reach and wishing it was multi platform so I could play in a game with my friends on the Playstation 3, but maybe the next Bungie game will give us that opportunity. I briefly considered buying a PVR as all the cool kids are doing that, but Bungie Pro is cheap enough, and you can render 50 minutes of gameplay for US$5 which won’t break the bank. If I feel motivated enough to try that, add a voice over and upload it, then I’ll splash the cash. It’s not as if I get amazing gameplay all the time but I do have my moments.

Your Preferred Youtube Video Resolution?

If you have a super fast Internet connection you probably watch all your Youtube videos at their maximum resolution. Most gaming videos are uploaded at 720p which looks absolutely stunning but:

  1. My connection is either not fast enough
  2. Youtube might be throttled by my ISP
  3. Flash performance in Linux sucks
  4. Streaming videos over wifi in my house sucks

So I rarely watch videos in 720p. I know, I know. Sorry David and all you other commentators who spend hours rendering videos in high resolution. Even watching a video in 360p can be a challenge sometimes.

Watching videos on the iPad Youtube app is a lesson in patience. By default it picks a high quality setting and can’t be changed. If I view the video in Safari I can unclick the HQ button, but I think it changes the video quality to 240p as the quality is really bad.

So, what video resolution do you watch Youtube videos in? On a related note, what resolution do you watch WordPress.com VideoPress videos in? I find they can sometimes stream a lot better …

My phone is faster than yours

If you’re using a Samsung Galaxy S or one of it’s variants then my phone may well be twice as fast or even faster than your phone! How? It’s all rather simple actually.

First of all, I downloaded Quadrant Standard from the Android market. This is a benchmarking app that you can use to find out how fast your phone is. Run a benchmark and note the performance figure for your phone. Now, go look for “One Click Lag Fix” in the market and install that too.


This little app will root your phone, and install a new ext2 partition on your phone. The default Galaxy S filesystem isn’t that hot at running apps. The new partition will be used to store cache data, and because ext2 is supposedly better at caching your apps will load faster, and you’ll experience less or no lag when opening them. That was my experience with it anyway. This will help your phone’s performance significantly.

In recent updates to OCLF two new options were added, “Alter Minfree”, and “Change Scheduler”. Adjusting these will make a huge difference to your phone. Each one is explained briefly, with a recommended setting. I followed that advice and it’s like my phone is on steroids now! Apps open faster than ever and I’m just waiting for it to dance a jig it’s so fast and responsive.

Please be aware that running OCLF means rooting your phone and invalidating your warranty. You may brick your phone. That means it won’t work any more and can’t be fixed. It more than likely won’t happen and I haven’t read about it happening but you should be aware of the risks involved.

Bonus tip: If you’re running Linux on your desktop computer, the scheduler can be changed on that too. Must give that a go some time.

It was for a few games of Call of Duty W…

It was for a few games of Call of Duty WAW and Bad Company 2 that I switched on my PS3 last night. Mike joined me in a few coop games of the WAW campaign. It was a blast to play on hardened difficulty and all new to Mike as he hadn’t played the single player game at all.

Next up we joined a few games of Bad Company 2. The BC2 community is definitely getting smaller. Most games were not filled. Games were tough, but we had fun despite the fact our team wasn’t the greatest in the world. Tye joined us shortly afterwards, and we were constantly awarded the best squad medal.

Mike left before or during my last game which was a last tough one. We were defending on Arica harbour. Attackers used every trick possible to destroy the crates. They basically steamrolled through us until the end where we holed up. I smoked the area, and knocked the attackers down to about 11 tickets before the destroyed our last crate. We did well even if they did use C4.

Halo Reach: Death in pictures

I previously mentioned watching Paul as he ran away from big hulking monsters in a recent game of Firefight but it was actually his pal, Valkyr1e, who was last man standing in the game I was thinking of. Paul’s time came in a different game!

Halo Reach allows you to play back any of your recent games in it’s Theatre mode. You can render videos from games if you give them money but you can take screenshots for free, so…


This is me. Facing a bloody huge monster who fires green bolts of fire every few seconds. Oh no! I’ve got my assault rifle, threw my last grenade behind this huge guy a few seconds ago. What to do? Back away, back away, back away!

 


Brown Pants Time! Fire! Fire! Fire!

 


Blood spurts everywhere as I go flying backwards after being brutally punched by this huge armoured alien. In the background you can see Valkyr1e, a moment too late to save my ass.

 


Unfortunately with Paul and myself out of the game Valkyr1e was up against some tough competition. We watched over his shoulder as he made a tactical retreat out of danger.

 


It was hopeless. He dived out of cover and made a break for it going for the weaker enemies down slope.

 


No sooner had he dispatched one of his foes when he was struck cowardly from behind and fell under a hail of blows and laser fire. The objective had been lost.

 

Thanks for watching. Don’t forget to rate, comment and subscribe. Oh wait. This isn’t Youtube.

The worst targeted spam ever!

I honestly thought that spammers had gotten smarter about making sure their emails were taken seriously. Even the most geeky and anti-marketing of developers will realise that big red and bold text, center justified, looks like something out of the last century. I hope for the sake of their business that they put more effort into their backup service.

This email, which I received twice in the last week is just a joke. I would have immediately marked it as spam and forgotten about it but it mentioned WordPress and obviously my email address is on their list of WordPress bloggers. I wonder if they read my blog?

At least they didn’t CC everyone like an Irish guy did a few years back.

If you want me to look at your new service, write me a nice friendly email, address me by name, email me from your own email address, talk to me about something you’ve gleaned from my blog or my twitter stream so I at least think you’re a friendly individual and I may even check out your site.

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