irishblogs – Page 35 – Something Odd!

If crawling was an Olympic sport…

The players of DayZ would have a fair chance of winning first place in the Olympics if crawling on all fours was included in the games.

I’ve managed to survive for 2 days now but running through the forests and crawling through open spaces is tiresome. The zombies can still see and hear you while crawling but it’s harder and it feels like cheating when I crawl for too long. I was still spotted twice and killed my first zombie with a hatchet this evening! Nice, silent weapon too. Another zombie down the road didn’t hear a thing.

Pity about the lunatic survivors around here though. Twice I spotted them being chased and the second time they brought zombies into the supermarket where I was hiding up. Luckily the zombies didn’t see me and went out back in the general direction of my fast running ‘friend’.

I’m of two minds about DayZ. The game is slow to reveal everything which is incentive to continue playing but crawling around on my belly isn’t the most entertaining way to spend an evening. Because so little happens and it requires you to be careful, slow and methodical it’s quite easy to while away a few hours!

In a thousand years time what will they say?

A letter that appeared in the July 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine made me think, “thousands of years in the future what will people think of us?”

Dodging Zombies in DayZ

Panic struck as a zombie hops by in DayZ

Like many others I bought ARMA II yesterday while it was on sale on Steam. The Six Updater makes it super easy to install the DayZ mod and after a couple of attempts I had joined a server.

I landed on the shore of course and while I was trying to be quiet I only had a few minutes to spare so it wasn’t long before I led 2 zombies in a merry dance along the shoreline before I managed to lose them behind a nearby building. Unfortunately the blood loss I suffered in the attack turned out to be fatal.

My second go was more successful, in that I lasted longer but again I attracted the attention of the local zombies. I outran them and then crawled around a petrol station where all I found was some wire fencing and a couple of empty tin cans. I scampered out of there as fast as my prone body could take me passing within a metre or two of one of those crouched zombies. I got away but I have the shakes from blood loss, no food, no weapons. I don’t expect to last much longer ..

The last few minutes of my third life in DayZ. I was unsuccessful in sneaking around and attracted 3-4 zombies who ran after me to the next town. I figured if I could cut line of sight I’d get away so I dodged around a house and hid behind a shed. It worked! Unfortunately blood loss was too great and I expired a minute later.

No sound as DXTory was recording from the wrong audio device. My character was breathing hard and freaking out. Great atmosphere. Next time I’m just going to run for the woods.

I broke S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC. Ooops

I watched 5 minutes of a speed run through S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl. The player got to an area it took me a few hours to get to. Then I decided that I didn’t want to ruin the game and switched it off.

Not quick enough. Around 4:04 into the video the player jumps over a fence that shouldn’t really be scaled. It was soon after that I stopped watched but out of curiosity I tried it too and ended up on a flat plain until I got to the edge of the world ..

Panoramic Mod? It might be part of the Complete mod I’m using in the game. I had to double back and watched as buildings popped in and out of existence. Obviously I was on the wrong side of them! I somehow walked through a wall and got back to where I was supposed to go. Phew.

Batdance

I love the original Batman the Movie soundtrack. This video (which I saw for the first time today) though makes me cringe. (via Twitter but I found a YT copy)

Bonus: Batmania by Pretzel Logic on the C64. I remember watching this around the time the movie came out.

Update Android apps from your browser

From a recent Lifehacker video I discovered that I can update the apps on my Android phone from the Google Play Store! I can even update my wife’s phone too which led to her asking me why her phone was updating stuff yesterday. Oops!

The Evolution of Batman

A fairly inclusive infographic recording 70 years of Batman evolution by Reddit user gonzoblair (blairerickson) and posted here.

One for Irish Football Fans

Two podcasts that Irish football fans will enjoy:

We wuz robbed!

The fable of the Irish 1965 World Cup campaign games against Spain. A story of brilliance, luck and dodgy decisions as told by Dermot Corrigan.
Ireland played three games against Spain in the run-up to the 1966 World Cup.
We’ve got a game to win

In 1988 the Republic of Ireland football squad qualified for their first major international championship.

400 Player Just Cause 2 MP beta

Here’s some footage from the recent Just Cause 2 multiplayer beta via Gamestunts. The original game is single player only but there’s a multiplayer mod in development. Their last beta managed 400 players on one server. Looked like a lot of fun!

I have to ask unfortunately, where are the zombies?

The tech that caught the Higgs Boson

Peter Higgs, who first theorized the existence of the Higgs Effect in 1964.

My understanding is that the higgs field is like a net, the “heavier” something is the more it interacts with the net. And the higgs boson is an excitation of this net, like if someone flapped the net and caused one of the knots to jerk arround. Physicists have equations and they have predictions to what the propertires of this excitiation, or of this “knot” (higgs boson) should be, and the properties of this new particle are very similair to the predicted properties of the higgs boson. So the net itself has no weight but when it’s excited it does, the rest of the net pulls on it. (reddit comment)

So, CERN announced that they found evidence of the Higgs Boson yesterday. I imagine the theory of this particle and the Higgs Field will be taught in schools in years to come and it’ll be just-another-thing-to-learn for hard pressed students preparing for exams. Today, it’s exciting in that “Oh, this is great news! The LHC found something! I wish I understood what!” sort of way. It’s not going to mean much to most people but it’s still a remarkable discovery.

The technology that detected the short lived Higgs Boson is amazing too. We’ve all seen photos the LHC, the long tunnels and gigantic machinery but the BBC Discovery Podcast interviewed Tejinder Virdee a few weeks ago about the project. He’s responsible for the CMS detector in the LHC, and likens it to a 100MP 3D digital camera that can take 40 million photos a second. Well worth a listen.