November 3, 2009
So did everyone enjoy Halloween? I know I didn't . Really wanted to go trick or treating but since I'm just the kind of guy who doesn't plan ahead. Couldn't attend the cemetery last November 1 due to the typhoons. Currently, there's another typhoon hitting the country, which is like the fifth one to affect the country greatly in about a month. Not that much damage though. You know I have a feeling that there is a strong correlation with the strength of the typhoon to the rainfall and windspeed. Strong winds usually mean lower rainfall for some reason.

Anyway, has anyone thought of buying Windows 7. If you are about to, hold that thought. You might want to look at this link first [link] and see if your university is listed there. Chances are that colleges under the MSDN Academic Alliance might get their chance to get a copy of Home Premium/ Professional for... let's say free. Right now, our university has an academic launching of Windows 7 tomorrow. Now it doesn't say much but if my hunch is right, they might be giving away free copies of Windows 7. I don't have to buy a retail one. Thank God I saw that poster! Details are somewhat sketchy though, so right now, I have to tell you, ask your school administrators/whoever's in-charge if they have a similar program or anything. As students, it is your right to know... or sumthing like that. Think about this real carefully. You will be saving a huge fortune (about 3 Game for Windows DVDs to 3/4 of a Rock Band set).

November 14, 2009
1. Choose a few of your own characters. Five at the most.
2. Make them answer the following questions.
3. Then tag three people. (I really can't promise that)
4. Feel free to go ahead and add some questions yourself!!

If you think I got no OCs, I actually have 3 OCs, but I'll only mention 2.
1. the side-fish
2. poppin bury

Are you a boy or a girl?
1. fish: blup blup
2. poppin: he... he said he's male. As for me, I'm bread. since when did bread have gender anyway?
fish: blup blup?
poppin: Oh yes, I speak fish too.

How old are you?

1. fish: blup blup
2. poppin: only five to six years? I'm getting old.

YOU WANT A HUG?? xD side-fish, if your answer is yes say one blup, two blups if no.

1. fish: blup
2. poppin: swell.

You got any bad habits?

1. fish: burp.
2. poppin: noodles. oodles of noodles.

Who's your mate/spouse?
1. fish: blup blup
2. poppin: not applicable to bread. oh and he said he doesn't have one.

You a virgin?
1. fish: N/A
2. poppin: N/A

Killed anyone? Someone turn on the translator for the fish

1. fish: blup blup! (this fish has nuked cities many times)
2. poppin: I noodified the furious five

Hate anyone?

1. fish: blup (fishermen)
2. poppin: bakers

When's your birthday?

1. fish: blup... blup blup. (I forgot... but I changed my birthday to another date, which I also forgot )
2. poppin: how old am i again?

November 16, 2009
mildirk's simplified partial review of MW2

First impression

So yesterday, I was able to purchase Modern Warfare 2 and I was really excited. The first thing I did was obviously put the disc in to install. I thought I was the happiest man on earth... well maybe in the house.

Installation

This deserves its own part for reasons you will find out here. I was excited to already play the game, but MW2 was no typical game unfortunately. What's surprising is that you had to register to Valve's Steam. Aside from L4D2 demo, this was the first legitimate game that I installed that required me to use a Steam account. And with my experience with Steam in L4D2 demo, I found it rather difficult to use. For one, Steam uses features you might not like. I was surprised that the game was a whopping 11 GB or about 2 hours of installation time. Here is when Steam becomes annoying. You thought that after you installed the game that maybe you can instantly play it. Unfortunately, Steam will not let you play the game unless you update it. It will force you to update the game. Unfortunately, an update happened about 3 days ago. With a 1.5 mbps plan, I was surprised it took me about 6 hours to update. This could be a serious problem for those people who have a lower broadband/dsl plan (May I suggest you use your school networks if it is very fast). After updating, you still could not play the game as you have to wait for Steam to verify your registration. Finally, after about 8 hours and 30 minutes, I was finally able to launch the game.

Single Player Campaign
The long long long wait aside, I found the campaign to be very engaging. Every mission there's always something that excites or wants you to push forward. Every mission, there's always something new. There's a lot of twists. I guess it's that something in me that wants to know what really happened. The trailer seems to be accurate in showing its features compared to the game. I was in space, I was underwater, snowmobiling. It was fun. Every part was an adventure. In fact, it glued me to my seat until I finished the game around 2:45 in the morning. So with that, it's 6 hours and 15 minutes of campaign time versus the 8 hours and 30 mins waiting time. Don't get me wrong though. Infinity Ward did say the campaign wasn't going to be very long and I did have it on Hardened level and not Veteran Level. By the way, after finishing the campaign, you will know why there will be a Modern Warfare 3.

Music

COD4 was notable for me for its music soundtrack. I wasn't surprised that MW2's soundtrack was just as impressive. Though between the two, I kinda liked COD4's soundtrack more since the music was more fast paced and catchy... well for my subjective opinion.

Hopefully, I'll be trying the coop (probably alone on this one) and multiplayer within the week maybe. After all, this is where I did put my money on.

Until then...

November 24, 2009
This is the second part of mildirk's review of MW2.

So today, I seem to have forgotten to review the graphics of the game. Other than that, we'll be discussing the Special Ops portion of the game. Unfortunately, time has not allowed me to go on the multiplayer . With that, I'll reserve the final review of MW2 for the multiplayer next time.

Graphics
I watched this youtube video from machinima describing MW2 to have the 'most' beautiful graphics for an FPS game. I'd have to agree with that. It's simply has the most beautiful graphics for an FPS. Comparing this to L4D2 (demo), MW2 beats L4D2's graphics. I feel bad though that Operation Flashpoint 2's graphics fell short of expectations compared to MW2 though, but the physics and realistic simulation of bullet trajectory is very accurate though. Anyway, that's another story. Using a PALIT 1GB GeForce 9600GT 256-bit gddr3, I was able to get an average of 60-65 FPS on 1280x1024 resolution with details maxed out. This generally means that, like its predecessor, MW2 will give you all the eyecandy detail without taxing so much your GPU and that means lower end GPUs will have no problem handling MW2 maxed out. However, don't try to push it though .

Special Ops
This part of MW2 is really fun. I'm really glad Infinity Ward put this here. This definitely has a lot of replay value. Though, I hope they add more Special Ops missions. Though I have to admit, I haven't even finished all of them yet, but these things can be finished out fast. When I say that you get replay value, you literally get replay value. Most of the missions you will encounter here relive some of the action of the campaign, though some have different twists. There are a few others that are new and unique though. You want to relive the famous All Ghillied Up mission of COD4, you can do it here. Seriously, talk about replay value.

Well that's it for now, got to go. 'Til then, mildirk is Oscar Mike.