 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there. The fans speak, and Bungie delivers. Word came down today that on April 17, two new Halo 2 multiplayer maps go live for download. Initially, talk was that Microsoft was going to release these new maps as Xbox 360 exclusives, an announcement that fans responded to with a great deal of animosity. Bungie quickly stepped up and said they would go to bat for their fans and urge Microsoft to release the maps to everyone with an Xbox Live Gold account.
Personally, I think Microsoft made a wise and fair decision in releasing these maps to everyone who owns Halo 2. It would have been patently unfair to release them any other way. The two maps - Tombstone, which is a remake of Hang 'em High, and Desolation, which is a remake of Derelict - are maps I never got to experience in Halo: Combat Evolved. I'm pumped about being able to finally play these two popular maps and try them out in Spartan-vs-Spartan combat.
Good choice, Microsoft, and thanks for loving your customers so much, Bungie! We owe you one!
 If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Tags: commentary
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there. I really don't feel like writing much today - it's just one of those kinds of days. So, instead I've been monitoring my progress in Ogame - a resources management game that puts you in command of interplanetary fleets as they fight for dominance in the universe. You start out planet-locked with a starting complement of resources to begin building metal mines, solar plants, and a lot more. The idea is to collect resources, build an organization on your Homeworld, build a fleet, and set out in the galaxy to populate other planets, destroy other fleets, mine debris fields, form alliances, and more.
I swore I'd never play this game, but here I am anyway. And it really doesn't require that much of my attention. I can start putting buildings up and walk away while the processes complete. Some processes - which I haven't gotten to yet - take several hours to accomplish. I've also been fortunate to join up with my Halo clan in an alliance in the Ogame universe, two members of which sent me shipments overnight last night (one took a real-time seven hours to arrive, the other six) to help me get on my feet and get buildings put up. I still haven't built and ships or satellites - those are coming just as soon as I can get enough deuterium collected to fuel everything.
It's a pretty interesting game, and I know that once I get my fleets into the sky I'm going to have to start keeping an eye out for raiders. We'll just see how things go. This is kind of fun at the moment.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Tags: commentary
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there. A gaggle of geese. A pride of lions. A herd of cattle. A pack of wolves. A school of fish. A hive of bees. A flock of birds. A flock of sheep. And one of my favorites, probably because it's so different, so unique, and so terribly appropriate - a murder of crows.
It's fascinating how some of these grouping words can be applied to such different types of animals. A 'flock' being used to refer to creatures of both air and land. But I think a 'murder' being used to group a bunch of crows together, rather than 'flock', may well be one of the most intriguing mechanics to me. There's quite a bit of uncertainty surrounding the origin of the phrase, but it seems that a murder of crows originated around AD 1450 in the form of a mursher of crows that evolved over time into its current form. Chances are good, though, that murder is actually a misinterpretation, since no one seems to know what mursher means and have never seen it appear in any of the old literature to refer to murder.
A small fable surrounding crows also seems to contribute to their grouping name. Supposedly, crows occasionally form tribunals against one of their brethren and upon reaching consensus, kill the wayward crow. Crows have also been known to kill a sick crow that either wanders into the territory of another murder or is ostracized. The first of these explanations is apparently patently false, while the second is a behavior that is not necessarily unique to crows but to many different animal groups.
Doing a bit of research on the etymology of this phrase turned up some more interesting grouping names for birds:
- a parliament of rooks
- an unkindness of ravens
- a murmuration of starlings
There's actually a whole listed on this page for the Baltimore Bird Club. Some of them make a lot of sense when defining the behaviors of specific bird groups. Some you just have to wonder about.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Tags: commentary
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there. It pains me to do it, but I'm putting Halo 2 up on a shelf for a while. My gameplay the last several weeks has been nothing short of frustrating, and I'm afraid that I'm just not having fun with it right now. I don't really know what happened, why my head isn't in the game these days, why I can't seem to do even the most rudimentary things without it resulting in my dying. A lot. But I can't, and I'm not, so Master Chief is going to have to wait on me for at least a couple of weeks while I try to cool off, calm down, and remember why it is I love this game. Maybe a hiatus will do me good.
I don't plan to give up my Friday nights on Live with the guys; I just think we'll have to play something else for a week or two - Splinter Cell or Rainbow Six 3 or something else. There are other games out there - I just tend to ignore them in favor of Halo 2.
I won't completely be on a Halo 2 dry spell - there are a couple of events coming up in which I'll be participating. But I'm hoping that I'll play better and enjoy it more if I don't play Halo on my regular Friday evenings.
We'll see how things go. Halo 2 is still my favorite game for the Xbox, probably always will be. I just need some space for a while. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Tags: commentary
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there. My wife unintentionally reawakened my enjoyment of country music recently. Until a few days ago, radio has been our only option for music in the car. I think we'd both grown bored with the popular rock stations playing the same songs over and over again, so we ended up on a country station, a country station that now resides on one of my radio's presets.
We have a CD player in our car now - a birthday gift from me to my wife - and this morning I found one of my Garth Brooks albums and popped it in the player on the way to work. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy his music. Garth displays a high level of creativity and artistry with the music itself, and his lyrics always contain a delightful brand of poetry.
I don't have a lot of country music in my collection - just a couple of Garth albums and a double of Alabama's greatest hits. I simply don't collect much "popular" music since my tastes tend to run more toward Big Band, classical, swing, jazz, etc. But I do enjoy revisiting country from time to time, though I doubt I'll ever love the genre - I'm too much of a melancholic personality to want to reside there for any length of time. Country music sometimes recalls for me painful memories from the past, and being creatures of the past I see little need to dwell on them, as they have no effect on today. So, by necessity, country music remains a style of music that I tend to steer clear of.
Right now, I've got "Fit for a King" running through my head. It reminds me a bit of a Southern Gospel song you might hear or sing at a tent revival meeting. If all country music was like this all the time, I think I could listen to a lot more of it. Tags: commentary
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there. I'm brain-burned today. Feels like someone aimed an unhealthy dose of microwaves right at my cranium and set it on 'Well Done.' Boom - crispy critterized brain goo.1 So much I wanted to get done today and so little actually accomplished. I supposed I should be more careful in the future to actually try to get more than five hours of sleep in a night.
Here's the upshot - I have several entries planned out for the very near future. One is a book review that may fluff into two book reviews before I'm done - Odd Thomas and Forever Odd. The former is already done and the latter is on the homeward stretch. I also have a movie review planned for M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water.
Additionally, I'm been continuing to pimp out Firefox and WordPress with all kinds of fun little toys and 'gadgets' that'll make you positively drool. I believe in getting the most mileage possible out of my tools, and I'm making theses suckers dance!
I also have a bunch of stories begging for my attention. I keep trying to ignore them, but those baseball bats with the nails drilled through them are starting to look more menacing every day, so I suppose I'll have to bow to their demands soon.
All that's coming down the pike soon, hopefully after a longer night's rest tonight so I don't feel quite so much like whipped egg, fried over low heat, and served up to a horde of voracious junior high kids.
Oh, and do please check out the previous entry - I still need more feet pictures. I've already had one willing victim participant. Anyone else wanna join in on this madness? Tags: commentary
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
writersbloglj's journal
Previous
