SC2 Casting

I actually finally have someone that is good at casting, casting my games from Starcraft 2. His alias is Nomix. He's my cousin, but I'd like to think his casting is actually really good, and that I'm not biased just because he's my cousin.

The first of many are on his youtube page, and I'll link them here real quick, as well as his page.

Link to his page
http://www.youtube.com/user/nomixsc2c

Trilleon vs Neiko (PvP) Tal'Darim Altar LE

http://youtu.be/tDJbt-xeTSE

Neiko vs SadFrog (PvT) Shakuras Plateau

http://youtu.be/PCiNHJ9UF4A

Space Marine

The game "Space Marine" that came out ~a week ago is pretty fun. The campaign was fun, even though they made it pretty clear you can't be 100% melee. Grabbing a thunder hammer for 99% of the game was more punishment than anything. At least on hard difficulty it felt that way. I'd either plow through a spawn no problem with the Thunder Hammer, or have to restart it 5+ times because it's hard trying to melee everything.

If anything, I would highly recommend you do not go into the final boss fight with a thunder hammer. It was way too hard, and I had to rely on stupid A.I. to beat the game, rather than using the weapon correctly. There is a lot of ranged, or at least of lot of burst. So it's really hard to just melee through it on hard, even with fury.

The game was lots of fun though, and I loved fighting the bosses. The game's difficulty seemed to suffer from spikes. Some parts were fly through easy, others were so hard I had to restart some parts 10 times or more. I think half that is relying on the Thunder Hammer for the game, but they should make it possible to use that most of the game... There are certain parts where you have to shoot people down, and there are no two ways about it. You can't run up some path behind them, or climb the walls in front of them to punch them in the face. Nope, just have to shoot them down. Which can be a pain if all you have is a bolter, pistol, and thunder hammer.

Multiplayer is fun too, Melee feels broken though. It's either really easy, or really hard. Player skills can make playing melee a joke as well. Tactical marine sees you, gets to a better position, (even without this first part they can do the rest), you jump down and are either in his face, or close to. If in face, he has a second to action roll away. Now you are useless. If you're close to him, he can just action roll away if you get close enough to melee. He can just continue to kite you around until he kills you, or his team picks you off. Also, some Devestators/Havoks (big gunners) can kill you in their own face before you can kill them with melee. This is due to being more resistant to melee damage, having the ability to stomp and stun you, and then unleashing tons of bullets in your face that you can't do much about other than not be there. Yeah. Melee feels broken.

Melee rants aside, the game is great, runs pretty nice, looks pretty enough, and is worth it if you're a 40k fan.
(screenshots are of some of my customizations.) I might do a real review later of it, if people actually ask me to I will, otherwise I'm not sure if I would.

My dad changes a light.

A vid of my dad changing the light for Kevin Fowler's tour bus. He drives em around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrqJt5VDrzg&feature=share

SC2, DoW2, and stuff

I've been practicing a lot in SC2 with my Protoss play, as well as my Chaos in DoW2. I can play DoW2 pretty damn well, if I do say so myself, but I'm still getting better in SC2. Supposedly, I'm getting a new computer as a gift in the next few months, mostly so I can stream myself playing games <_<;.. I'll start linking streams and whatnot when they actually look nice and don't lag a lot because my CPU is on fire.

Looking for a new CPU heatsink/fan

Need a new heatsink/fan for my core2quad. Using Intel 775 cpu socket. Any recommendations for a brand/model?

I'll probably find something soon, but looking out for recommendations. Nothing is broke, just looking to keep my CPU cooler, since the stock heatsink is a little lame.

Update

I finished playing Diablo with the Hellfire expansion, and the expansion part wasn't too interesting. The new items were nice, but the new areas were mostly boring. They were easier than Hell area. Mostly because Blood knights were apparently buffed in Hellfire, as well as making them harder in single player (wtf?). Anyways, I was going to do a let's play of Diablo 2 LoD, but I was thinking of doing a summoner necro, and I doubt that would be interesting to watch, so I probably won't.

Lack of posting

I have been a little busy, and haven't had much time to post some entries from DA2, or anything. Work, School, Car, Everything else. Car dying is no fun. Most of my free time has been in SC2 with my cousin, or Diablo (which I am nearing completion, finally got into hell). Although I'm playing a little bit of DoW2 again with the new expo.

Sales at gamestop!

So, haven't been posting much. Been busy, but not.

First thing, Dead Space 2 and Portal 2 were on sale at gamestop. $20 for Dead Space 2, and $30 for Portal 2. Both of which I've been needing to buy. I started up Dead Space 2 first, and I'm playing on Zealot difficulty. Holy crap, it's actually fun because it's a challenge. Up to the third chapter I think, and I hardly ever have a full clip in any of my guns =/.

Spent ~150 dollars on some books for Network+ and Security+ certifications. I wanted to pick up an A+ one as well, but Borders didn't have one at the store =/. Should be some good reading especially when I'm grinding isk in Eve.

Speaking of Eve, I'm in 0.0 right now with my old corp. Lost my first ship and pod in a while the other night. Ran into a bubble in my interceptor by myself D=. I haven't gotten too much into what's going on in our space, haven't really been available when we have our CTAs to assault the enemy. From what I've gathered though, we're winning the war.

I'll probably put up some more chapters from my DA2 game soon, but it probably won't be for a few days, busy all day tomorrow, and Sunday.

Starcraft 2

I have come to conclude... I am a very sore loser in Starcraft 2. Very, very sore loser. v_v

Car Repairs and not much else

The past couple of days have been pretty dull...ish. Just not much really going on.

I replaced my spark plug wires+spark plugs the other day in my 3000gt, here are some pics of the engine with the new additions. (First pic in each set is the old, and the second in each set is the new.)

 Other than that, I've got the start of little job next Saturday with my dad. It'll be interesting. I'll enjoy it more than my current job (When I'm doing it anyways, which isn't more than twice every two weeks currently =/)

I'm also picking up Eve and SC2 again a bit. Mostly Eve, I miss the time sink it gave me, not just because it was a time sink, but because I enjoyed it.


Here is my main character, all about the combats. Tons of skills trained to 5 for Amarr ships, and a lot of Caldari. I love missiles and lasers. Amarr ships are pretty cool, and Caldari ships are cool for me too. So I trained in one, and then now I'm maxing out my Caldari. (Kai Nah is her name)

And her old pic is here. I feel I got really close in the looks, with a bit extra that I wanted to add/change. Her eye color used to be a grayish color, I changed it to a green/hazel color, and was surprised at how close I got the hair color. I also couldn't put a metal plate on her face, so a tattoo will have to do.

Here is the pic of my indy char in the new char creator. (Meniku is her name)

And here is the old pic of her. I tried really hard to get the same facial features and fullness, but it just didn't work out that well. There is also the fact that there are no decals/accessories yet, so I can't have the hair bands and thing behind my head. I really couldn't get it much closer, the two systems were really different, and I couldn't get the cheek fullness like I wanted, and the nose was a little shorter height wise. Oh well, still looks good to me.

G15 started working again

So uh, I decided to try and plug my G15 in the other day to see if it worked, and it didn't. Not really anyways. It plugged in, but pressing 1 pressed F1, certain keys repeated, and the problems went on. So I went back to my eclipse 2. I really didn't like the squishy feel of the eclipse, the feel of the G15 is just so much better for me. It's like, you have to actually press down for the keys to go, so you know when you've pressed it. Where the eclipse was just loosey goosey, and it was hard to tell if I actually pressed it sometimes.

Anyways, I looked around, and no other keyboards at the moment really grab my attention as "I MUST HAVE THIS" (other than the sc2 keyboard, but putting the numpad and arrow keys n stuff together just doesn't work out with me. I use those in combination too much. Mostly the delete key with the numpad.). Pretty much every keyboard I looked into because something was interesting, had reasons for me to not want it. So I decided, why not try again? Expect the worse, but hope for the best is a term I always seem to use. Anyways, it actually worked when I plugged it in!

So, bam. Until a keyboard really strikes me as a must have, I guess I'm just going to stick with my g15. Just wish it lit up more >_<

Need a new keyboard

So I spilled a little (lot) of water on my g15 the other day, and I'm using my old Saitek Eclipse 2 for the moment. Upon taking it out, I remember the lighting I really like from it. Completely unnecessary, but I like it. I also remember why I bought another keyboard. Certain keys require more pressure to use than others to register.

I'm kinda tired of the G15, and I don't need the LCD screen anymore. It also doesn't light up nearly as much as the Eclipse does.

I looked into the Eclipse 3, but I've read of ghosting, and the non programmable macros make me want to look elsewhere. It has the lighting I like though =/

The older cyborg v.7 or some crap like that seemed pretty cool, but it was discontinued, and there are no blue colors. Which is kinda awkward, only having green, yellow and red. That choice is obviously not possible anymore anyways.

Thinking of G110, one cool thing about it is you can make any color within red and blue for the backlight. I really like the unnecessary lighting of the eclipse though, so this is hard to figure out.

I need suggestions for keyboards that I might like. Not many keyboards seem to have the full backlight effect like the Eclipse does, if they do, I don't know of them =/. Shades of purple are also preferred, being my favorite color and all.

Also, enjoy the conflicting backgrounds from the pictures.

Gas Prices and Stupidity

So, when I first bought my car about 2 years ago, I looked up what octane gas I should be using with the phrase, "3000gt octane gas". I came up with the answer of 92 octane. So cool, just put in some premium gas, and I'll be fine.

2 years later (yesterday pretty much), I'm looking for a new car to buy. I found a 94 3000gt with DOHC engine and all extras. On the close up on the dash to show the mileage, I see the phrase, "Premium unleaded gas only". I then remember mine only says, "Unleaded gas only"... Hmm. Awkward.

So I start thinking maybe I don't need premium, but I'm not sure. So I refine my search with "SOHC 3000gt octane gas"... And lo and behold, I find out it since it gives less power, etc. etc., it only requires 87 octane gas...

So I'm all sorts of pissed at myself at that point, so I figure why not figure out how much money I've wasted. I calculated it to about $4500, more or less. If the price difference between the 87 octane gas and the 93 octane stayed about the same the last two years, I threw $4500 at gas companies for no reason.

The amount of face palm I gave myself when I figured this out, cannot be described in words.

Who would of thought 4 letters in a search could affect my life that much in the next two years.

Mortal Kombat

The new Mortal Kombat is so much fun, and I love the new Scorpion look.

I need to play more so I can unlock alt costumes and fatalities @_@

Ghetto Rigging Stuff On My Car

I spent about an hour ghetto rigging my coolant overflow cap to connect to the hoses this morning. The plastic connecting the hoses broke, so I had to find a new cap, buy a complete set (another tank and everything), or ghetto rig it.

I went to oreilly's looking for another cap. I really doubted they had one, but I figured might as well ask. I ended up finding an almost perfect fit replacement for the plastic that connected the hoses. Bought a new clamp for the outer hose and BAM. Fixed for less than 5 bucks.

Took a bit of time and creativity, but hell. Something about fixing a car like that leaves you with a feeling you don't really get anywhere else.

Here is the plastic piece that broke. I had to cut off part of the hose, I was unable to get the old piece that was stuck in it out =/

And here is the new fix I have on it. Replaced the c-clamp with a new better clamp. Freaking hate c-clamps.

Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines

Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines is a great game. Patching it to 1.2 and then using wesps unoffical 7.3 patch fixes most bugs, and makes the game much more fun. I definitely recommend the game to almost anyone. It uses the source engine (but before hl2 came out), and works like dragon age with dialogue. It's great how the game gives you tons of options on how to approach almost any situation. The lore is really cool as well, I actually enjoy sitting there listening to the npcs talk away at me. This game has been doing a good job of keeping my attention off of recent things in my life.

Play it! (I played a Gangrel on my first run through. The quiz decided that was who I should be, and it was mostly correct lol. Lots of fun)

Bleh

Better to have loved and lost, then to have never loved at all...

..l..

Feels bad man.

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident

I just picked up a game on steam for 10 bucks the other day called "Nexus: The Jupiter Incident". The campaign so far is actually pretty damn fun. It has a really steep learning curve though (think eve online o.O), and a lot of things are not explained to you.

They give you the basics, but not everything is explained, and after the first two or so missions they pretty much stop helping you. They didn't even explain or help with ship customization, which is actually really important. Just as important as knowing what different weapons actually do.

After you learn most of it though, man it gets fun, and it's also quite pretty for 04. Some models are a little blocky, and a few backgrounds (I'm looking at you first missions where asteroids look pretty meh, and the asteroids in the background look like utter shit.), but effects look fantastic. Weapons look awesome, shields have a really cool effect, overall, the effects make up for some of the bad graphics.

It's weird though, your first ship looks "ok" at best, although some decently interesting things are happening to it, it's overall blocky, in a bad way. Not in the Caldari blocky way. The second ship you get though, actually looks pretty good!? I don't understand the difference in that, I guess they just half assed that ship since you only use it for a few missions.

Anyways, read an actual review on it if you're interested in mostly slow paced space rts games (it also has a pause feature by hitting space bar, like most of bioware's games), and if you like what you read/see on youtube, pick it up for 10 bucks on steam. Well worth it imo.

Also, I purchased myself a geforce 8400 low power/profile vid card to replace my dead 7900 for my second monitor. It has a large ass heatsink, but that's what you get for taking off the fan to use a little less power.

edit- here is the review that helped me decide if I wanted to buy it.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/nexus/review.html

Super Meat Boy

All I have to say

Shit's hard yo.

Video card (again)

Ugh. My 7900 went out again after doing the oven cooking trick (http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1421792) (It worked for a few months after cooking it when it died the first time, so I can't complain lol)

I'm going to try putting in my old X300 Radeon to see if it'll work this time. I was sort of frustrated and too angry with it before to really try anything, but it wouldn't go to a high resolution, even though it's max resolution is 2048 x 1536.