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This past week i've played a heck of a lot of Burnout Paradise. I've also bought the Big Surf Island and Cops and Robbers DLCs for the game and played a bit of that too. I've pretty much finished all the discoveries, and now i'm in the process of going through a lot of the events. It's been pretty enjoyable and well-worth the money; it's the longest i've spent on one game in a long time. Finding all those smash-through gates was an absolute pain though...

On Friday night we lost our semi-final of the mixed futsal competition. Disappointing, … Read more →

I been a bit off the past few days, it's funny how the flu strikes again when the weather turns hotter, it's kept me mostly at home these past few days.

I still find it hard to believe that we are now well into December. I know it's very cliché, but I really can't believe where this year has gone. We put up the Christmas tree this afternoon, it feels like just a moth or so ago when we took it down after last Christmas.

This past week saw me finally cancel our Telstra Bigpond internet connection, after being mostly … Read more →

Today was quite a sad day as it marked the passing of our family dog, Kleo. She's given us so much joy and happiness over the past 14 years, we've been really blessed to have her as a pet.

Never one to back down from a fight (which as a toy poodle was always against much larger dogs), always mischievous and cheeky, she was always there for us. She's been around for over half my life (since I was 12): she saw me finish primary school, go through and graduate high school, start uni, meet my wife-to-be, graduate uni, she … Read more →

Last week we went and saw The Time Traveler's Wife. I actually quite enjoyed the film, and as recommended by 'Sars' in a previous entry's comment, i do agree that it was a great take on time travel. Basically it goes that even if you could time-travel for whatever reason, you can't change anything because what you're living already happened or was going to happen, and if you're experiencing it then it's happened or will happen and there's nothing you can do to change it.

Speaking of changing things, this past week Left 4 Dead 2 was released. … Read more →

Following tradition, November has heralded the start of the gaming season. This week i've picked up two games: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (MW2), and New Super Mario Bros Wii (NSMBW - hmmm, maybe I won't use that acronym :S).

Anywho, MW2 is this year's massive release. Like most people, I was absolutely awed by the story and execution of MW1 two years ago, so this sequel was always going to have some big shoes to fill.

Ignoring the PC multiplayer debacle mentioned previously and concentrating solely on the single-player experience, I somewhat disagree with the mostly universal-acclaim this … Read more →

Released this coming week, it's no secret that the biggest game of this year was always going to be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Most other publishers have pushed back their big titles to next year partly to give this game room away from theirs.

So there was always going to be high expectations for this game. However what has transpired in the past few weeks has not just disappointed, but horrified hardcore PC gamers.

It has been revealed in recent weeks that many of what most would regard as 'standard' features of PC multiplayer FPS gaming has … Read more →

Well I'm finally typing this blog entry out over a brand spanking new Naked ADSL2+ connection. To fill in since the last entry, the second tech (an Optus contracted one) came out on Thursday and signed off on the Telstra tech's connection. However, I still didn't have a connection: the signal to noise ratio was ridiculously low (higher is better), and the attenuation on the line was far too high for my distance from the exchange (lower is better there).

After ringing up my new ADSL ISP, Netspace, they did some open and closed line tests and got some pretty … Read more →

The big geek news of the past week was the general retail release of Windows 7. I haven't had too much more of a play with it since I used the Release Candidate back in May, but I hope to have a bit more in-depth look at it soon.

That said, i'm not planning on upgrading my current computer to the new operating system. I plan on building Trogdor's successor in February near my birthday, and i'll definitely be getting 7 on that. It's going to be hard resisting doing it sooner, new toys are always fun...

Moving … Read more →

Another game that I've gotten addicted to recently is World of Goo, which is an award-winning puzzle game from last year. Last year I really liked the demo of the game, but just couldn't justify paying the USD$20 they were wanting for it.

Well right now they're celebrating the first birthday of the game, and the awesome independent developers (2D-Boy) are running a special this week in which you can pay whatever you feel like and get the game. Yep, pay anything you like for it; from a single US cent to whatever. Big props to 2D-Boy for this, … Read more →

There's been quite a bit keeping me occupied recently.

Last week I ended up getting the Logitech G330 gaming headset in order to properly play co-op with Left 4 Dead. it's a bit of a strange experience: i've never played online much with earphones, let alone using a microphone to communicate and strategise in-game.

Over the better part of a week, i played through all of the 'campaign' of L4D with Michael, and various other stragglers who wanted to play at the time. It was a quite enjoyable game, if not a little on the short side. The 'versus' … Read more →