Something I Wrote Awhile Ago

Here is the first part of a book that I was going to write.  Not planning on finishing it though.

Hello, my name is Luther. I'm not that much of a talker so I'll keep this brief. Your mission is to steal the Schön Jewels from Prince Taltus' mansion, located in Kiel, Germany. I don't know how you will pull this off and I don't really care. All I want are the jewels. Make sure that you do your research. You have until the beginning of September to accomplish this task. Good Luck.

*click*

Crap, this one will be kinda tricky. Ethan thought to himself as the message stopped. It was May 13 right now so he had only a little more than three months to get to Germany and steal the jewels. Wait, doesn't Heinrich live in Kiel? I could check what he is up to. Ethan opened his email and started to type a message to Heinrich. Ethan and Heinrich have been friends for quite some time. Heinrich came to America and stayed with Ethan in Woodbury, Minnesota. That was in 12th grade.

-- CK

Blarg

Sorry the posts are slowing down.  The full force of homework from college is starting to kick in, and when I do have free time, I am usually brain-dead and am unable to think of anything to write about.  Lately I have been trying to write up a full analysis of Diablo II because I am thinking of applying for a job at Blizzard Entertainment.  I'm not exactly sure if I would take the job if I get it because it is quite far away and would involve me moving across the country.  But who knows, maybe I'll get it and then actually have a job that I like.  Well onto more homework....

-- CK

Game Review #2

Age of Empires III

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The first thing that must be done right when you start the game is to choose which civilization you will be playing with.  In just the original game without the expansions there are eight choices, following history of exploring the New World.  But then there are two expansions that have been made to add a lot to the game.  One is the War Chiefs, which adds the Iroquios, Aztecs, and Sioux; and the Asian Dynasties, which adds the Chinese, Japanese, and Indians.  All of the different civilizations have different special abilities that can greatly add to your gaming experience.  Personally I like playing with one of the Asian civilizations because when you level up in ages you get to build wonders that are specialized to that civilization.

After you choose your civilization you then have to name your home city, which sends you your supplies and upgrades, and then you can start to take over the area.  Personally I have not played much with controlling he water masses because personally I am really bad at that.  Right away when you start you have an explorer which, what do you know, is there for the purpose of exploring.  You will also have a number of villagers that you can either set to chopping down trees, gathering food, or mining gold.  After you choose what to do with them you can then send your explorer out. With the explorer you can acquire treasures, ranging anywhere from food to a tame bear.  You will also find a trade route which if you take over you will see that you can trade food, wood, gold, or experience (to upgrade your hometown).

And after you start, I'll let you figure out the rest, I'm not going to give away the whole game.  I give this game four Diamonds out of five.  Personally I don't think that it is better than Age of Empires 2, even though it is easier to play.  I like the whole style of the Medieval Ages Better than colonial America.  It is still a fun game to play, although I haven't played any multiplayer with it yet, still trying to get all of my friends to buy it.  Oh and most likely I will put up a rating for AOE 2 soon.

--CK

Happy Groundhog's Day

It's official. Phil, the groundhog, has seen his shadow, so we have 6 more weeks of winter.  I'm not sure if that information makes me happy or not.

-- CK

New Rating and The Bad News

I have to post that I am changing my rating for Diablo II, which I did a review on.  I am bringing it up to the full 5 Diamonds out of 5.  My reasoning for this is because my main reason for taking some points off was because I was unable to find a way to hotkey spells and skills while playing.  Since then I have researched more into the game and found that there is indeed a way to hotkey them.  So the rating goes up.

Now onto the bad news.  To most of you this will be not be bad news, but for those of you that are gamers and you haven't heard this yet, it might be a blow.  Diablo III, which supposedly was supposed to come out last November, has been delayed in release date even further to Blizzard saying that it won't be released until at least next year.  There is no specific date yet, but I will tell you the second that I find out because I really really want to play the game.

-- CK

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Boggle!

For all of you out there that love a great game of Boggle, but you can't get your friends to play all of the time, there is a solution.  Not a very unknown solution, but it at least is one.  I (through a friend) have found a site where you can play Boggle online, and then you can see your ranking of each round compared to all of the other people that are currently playing (I can usually be found near the bottom...).  The site can be found here, http://www.wordsplay.net/, and all you have to do is quick make an account, they will send you a verification email, and you can play all you want (well given that you don't use up all of your bandwidth and your internet company doesn't cut you off from the outside world, but I am thinking that that doesn't happen all too often).  Oh and there is a thing that while you choose your display name, you can also make/choose a team name.  I have not found a real use for being on a team other than that you are incorporated with the other people on said team.  Tell all of your friends to join your team and have fun playing Boggle.

-- CK

Alt Symbols

In my mind I would think that most people already know of this "trick", but seeing as this was new to most of my friends I will talk about it.  There is a very easy way to make symbols on your computer without having to go through menus in programs and inserting them.  Although unless you have a photographic memory you will probably have to look the symbol code up for awhile before you memorize it.  The first thing that is vital for this to work is to have your Number Lock on.  If that isn't on, nothing will happen.  Next all you have to do it enter any of these numbers, after pushing and holding Alt of course, and then when you let go of the Alt key, the symbol related to that code will show up where you are typing.  You can find the codes by Googling "alt symbols" (I bold that because of all of the hype about Bing, I stand by Google.  I personally don't think Bing is all that good, and I am a supporter of Microsoft, at least over Apple.  There really is not much new with Bing other than the look.  But even that hasn't changed much from its earlier version known as Windows Live Search)  or you can click on this link to my favorite "Alt Symbols Site".  http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/altchrc.html  Have fun souping up your text. ☺

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-- CK

Game Review #1

Ok, I'm going to try to start a regular post plan of putting up game reviews of some of the video games that I like to play.  Hopefully this will help me keep my blog updated and keep you readers happy.  And for a rating system I have decided to go with a 5 Diamond rating (I don't know how to make a star on my keyboard).

Diablo II

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I actually have never played more than five minutes of the first Diablo game, so I can't really say much about what I think about it.  I guess by how much I like the second one, the first has to be fairly good.  Although I do have memories of when I was a lot younger playing Diablo at my house because my uncle brought it when he was visiting.  In those memories I also remember that I liked it, so my statement still stands that it has to be fairly good.  Ok, well onto the game that I am reviewing.

Diablo II is probably the best role-playing game that I have ever played . . . although thinking about it, my list of games is kind of low.   At first I never really got into playing Diablo, I never got through Act I (There are five acts in the game) and I would just keep replaying that part over and over again with the same character.  Because of that I just disowned the game because I bored of that first part.  And then both my brother and I pulled it out and started playing some co-op.  We didn't get much farther, only to the end of Act II, but then I realized that there was more to the game then I was seeing.  First off was the whole character personalization.  In Diablo II, not only are there 7 characters to choose from (5 without the expansion), but then there are a ton of different skills that each character can learn, with levels of each skill to increase the attributes of said skill (sorry if this is really confusing, I am really good at doing that).  Also all of the weapons and gear can be specialized in a couple ways.  The first way is that some come with special abilities when you find or buy them, which is the easiest way to get stuff, but more random and it is sometimes really hard to get what you want.  The second way is with items that are socketed, meaning that there are places in the items to put gems (which have specific abilities).  This can be more expensive, but if done right, more rewarding.

So other than the pretty awesome character personalization, there is a wide variety to monsters to kill as you go through the game (I don't actually even know of all of them).  You can also hire AI players to fight for you, which does help a lot, especially when you don't have a ton of spells to help you out.  So overall I give this game a 4 out of 5 Diamonds (it would actually be a 4.5, but I don't know how to make half of a diamond), and I plan on playing this game for quite a while.  Although Diablo III should be coming out sometime soon, and except for the fact that my computer is no where close to being good enough to play it, I'm looking forward to that.

-- CK

Carry Your Computer in Your Pocket

Oh wouldn't that be sweet if you could fold up your computer and put it in your pocket?  I think it would be, and technically this is possible, all you need is a flash drive.  With a program called PortableApps you can install certain programs that you use a lot and carry them with you to be used whenever you plug the flash drive in.  In my case I have Pidgin, Skype, GIMP, Open Office, and Firefox.  Also PortableApps has built in folders so that you can save your work organized on your flash drive if you are working on a public computer and then just open it up there when using it later (Not that different than just putting the files on the drive by itself, but oh well).  It is a great idea for those people that go to public places a lot, such as libraries, and use the computers there. PortableApps can be found here: http://portableapps.com/.

-- CK

Parkour (updated)

I do not believe that I have brought up the subject of Parkour yet, so I shall do that now.  Parkour, not to be confused with Free Running, is the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle within one's path by adapting one's movements to the environment.  In English, Parkour is the act of getting from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible.  Most often that means being able to vault, jump over, certain things such as: tables, fences, railings, benches, etc...   Once properly trained, Parkour is a very safe activity, but if you don't properly you can be majorly injured.  On the other hand, Free Running is a little different.  There are a lot of the same actions such as vaulting stuff, but you also go out of the way to heighten your commute.  Things such as flips, spins are used to kind of show of as you are making your way over the obstacles.  I don't have any plan to free run, but hopefully I can get down at least the basics of Parkour, because that would just be awesome.

Parkour can be found in a lot of movies such as: 007 Casino Royale (the new one), Live Free or Die Hard (the hamster), and also in a French film where David Belle (the founder of Parkour) is one of the lead roles, District 13.  Parkour is also majorly attributed with the popular video game, Assassin's Creed, where you control the main character as you can run across building tops and travel throughout the whole sandbox world.

-- CK