I'm gonna go drafting Magic: The Gathering again this friday. I think it's the most enjoyable type of Magic: The Gathering game.
Last time I drafted in Lorwyn I neded up last. Mostly due to the fact it was the first time I saw most of the cards. And that's bad when drafting.
I'll try to do better this time ...
If you want to join, Oupost Gent, draft starts at 20h00.
I joined another social site. Facebook this time.
Still checking out what it's all about, first remarks include the low visibility of non-friends profiles, most stuff is hidden... My profile is right here ...
There was a meeting earlier this month with all canoepolo clubs to decide on next years dates and competition.
They decided to keep the really messed up competition format (check the Canoepolo mess in Belgium post earlier this year). It was expected ... it seems that all the responsibles are big fan of the system, just not some of the players in first division. Oh well.
But there was, again, some messing up done with the organisation. Usually, they demand a list of dates from the clubs on which they want to organise a competition day. Then they pick 4 (or how many they need) dates/clubs and let them organise the competition day. That's a great system, and has worked well.
Not this year ...
They just picked 4 dates (not looking at the submitted dates) and then checked who was on their list to organise something on that date ... That's ridiculous.
Clubs like KNRS who submitted "entire September" as date obviously had a bigger chance to be picked.
If they are going to do it like that, we as a club shouldn't submit any dates, they should just pick the 4 dates and ask what clubs are interested on those dates ...
Gekko has no date for next year as a consequence, we were never taken into consideration because we didn't submit an application for the selected date.
After seeing the movie BenX, I started playing Archlord. It's been a while now and I'm getting the hang of the game.
If you would like to join us (my girlfriend is also playing), download the game for free and make a character on the Gaiahon server, that's where we play.
I currently have a level 19 archer and level 14 elementalist. I like the archer the most.
Seems I'm not going to Canada next year.
Price for canoepolo players going there was around 1800 euros for just a week, adding 2 extra weeks to that would make it a big amount. So we decided not to go there and just go snowboarding instead.
End of January we'll go to France to board the hills ...
I created the squidoo traffic ranker a week ago.
It's an effort to show a list of the top 100 lenses @ Squidoo with the traffic stats for each of them. Enjoy.
Squidoo is a site enabling you to make small pages (or lenses as they call them) about a certain topic.
I have tried them out, and I must say it's quite fun.
The program of the "Filmfestival van Gent", the movie festival in Belgium, is filled with movies from all around the world, but the first one we went to so was David Cronenberg's new picture, A History of Violence.
I'm not a movie reviewer, so if you want a synopsis, feel free to check imdb.com, but I can tell you this: The movie was amazing!
At a slow pace with some explosions of action shots, the story continued to suprise and entertain ...
There are some nice movies coming up in the near future ... I thought i would share them with you ...
"Dark water" looks spooky ... [update] Kinda dissappointing
"The exorcism of Emily Rose" looks promising ... [update] 7th of December in Belgium
"The skeleton key" looks scary ... [update] 14th of September in Belgium - Bad reviews, tempted to not go see it
"Flightplan" looks different ... [update] 26th of October in Belgium
"The fog" looks creepy ...
"Serenity" looks like fun action ... [update] 19th of October in Belgium
"Night Watch" looks epic ... [update] Go watch it now !
"Saw II" looks bloody ...
I hope they all make it to the european market at some point ...
Sherpa.be is selling The White Stripes in Forest National in Brussels on October the 30th. Only about 140 seats are still available, so if you want to see them, you should be fast to order.
Holidays are coming up, and people are making plans to go on vacation. I'm no different.
I'm leaving for France in 2 weeks, the first stop being an artificial white water area south of Lyon (St-Pierre de Boeuf).
The second stop are the French Pyrenees, with hopefully enough water to paddle some nice rivers.
With all the hype, I hope my expectations are not too high, or I'll be greatly dissappointed again (The first wasn't that good in my opinion).
The third movie of the sage, the final one G. Lucas will make, will conclude (well, precede) the storyline build up by the first two movies, and the three after it.
[Update]
Well, it's a good movie!
All the things you see in the 4th movie (and so on) are started in this one, they managed to not forget things like the wiped memory of 3PO or how the legs from Darth Vader got chopped off.
To those of you who are in computer games, Mass Multiplayer Online Role playing games to be exact, I would like to present you my Night Elf Hunter in the game of World of Warcraft.
Read the history and the adventures of Tíradrin, a soldier in the war against the horde: http://tiradrin.hawkfield.be
Since the new PC, World of Warcraft had the tendency to crash frequently and at really annoying times (like in the middle of a fight, resulting in my death).
Since it crashed with an access violation error on the memory, i decided to run some memory tests. And indeed, one of the 2 RAM units was severely damaged, and thus I had to return it to the store.
I got a brand new one, and already installed the game, this time without any installation errors. I yet have to play it for a longer duration, but I'm confident the memory was the root of all my crashing problems.
Time flies when you are having a great time.
We went snowboarding last week. This year, the location was Puy Saint Vincent, somewhere in the French Alpes between Briançon and Gap.
It had not snowed there for a while and the lack of snow showed on the slopes, ranging from icy hills or mud covered runs.
An advantage though, we saw the sun for the entire week.
All in all we had a great time, and great snowboarding experience (I really have to learn to bend my front leg).
I finally have my new PC, and it was about time. My previous one is now 4 years old, and it just doesn't cut it anymore.
The new one is an AMD64 3200+ on a 939 socket, combined with 1GB of RAM and a 6600 GT Geforce graphics card it should give nice results when playing World of Warcraft.
The final beta of WoW is now off the ground in Europe, but the game is well over a month old in the USA, and after this time, I have some reflections of the game.
On the USA servers I have made 3 character, a dwarf paladin, a gnome warlock and a night elf warrior.
Let me tell you some of my considerations about the 3 characters in World of Warcraft.
The paladin for starters has a great potential. Whether you are playing solo, in group or PvP, the pally is an allround character that can be used in any situation. Playing solo is easy on creatures 1 or 2 levels above yours, just hit them and your healing spell will save you from sudden death. Doing the same against 2 creatures at once becomes harder, but in comparision to other classes, paladins really have it easy to stay alive. In a group, a paladin contributes in the first place by all the buffs he has, being in a group with one automatically gives you an aura (for example +160 armor) + a blessing (+5 mana every 5 seconds for example). Secondly, the pally is both a tanker and a healer if need be. As tanker, if he happens to loose aggro on a creature (because some mage does uber damage to it) he can still save the mage by using the healing spell. PvP wise, the healing spell is your friend too. Mellee classes have it hard against ranged classe to come close, but a pally, if he happens to fail, can still heal himself and survive. Once the spellcaster which you are fighting is out of mana, he is as good as dead. Against other melee classes, the pally has enough hitpoints and armor to last enough, then again using the heal spell will get a pally a great advantage. The only downside a pally has in my opinion, is it takes a while to kill stuff ... The pally has a constant DPS, unlike a mage for example, who can burst alot of damage in a short time (but has to wait for a next wave then).
The warlock then, he is great to solo. His sumoned pet is a great tanker you can keep alive through various spells, and usually the attacked creature dies well before your pet does. Grouping is nice if you join with other spellcasters, but melee fighter don't have much use for you as they are a better tanker than your pet and you can't really assist them in say healing or something. PvP is not a strong point of the warlock either, the pet is virtually useless, it does too little damage and/or can be freezed/feared or whatever quite fast. Once the pet is out of combat, the warlock has a considerably low DPS compaired to other classes.
The warrior then, he has been trimmed in the latest patch. Alot of usefull skills have been reduced or now cost more rage, making the warrior virtually useless compaired to the paladin. If you have a nice supply of potions, one can survive a long time against creatures the same level or 1 level higher. In a group, if there is someone who can heal you (like druid or paladin) you will make a great tanker, be sure to always start the fight yourself though, or it might be hard to keep aggro. PvP then is not for a warrior, at least not against any ranged classes. If you get in the charge (by suprising your opponent) you will have a small advantage, but if that fails you are as good as dead. Fear/poly/freeze spells really give you no option of striking your enemy, and you are usually dead before reaching them, again, potions can save the day a little here.
There are obviously alot more classes, and i'm a big fan of the hunter class which I played in the open USA beta of World of Warcraft. However I never got it over level 20, and that is where other classes get a set of nice skills.
World of Warcraft European beta started this weekend, which is nice, i'll still continue to play on the USA servers though, at least until the official reease in Europe.
Well, it's official now. We don't and will never have a pre-order campaign for World of Warcraft in Belgium. To be more exact, not even in the Benelux.
I got a replt from Blizzard on this subject:
--- Mail paste ---
Greetings,
If you'd like to pre-order a copy of World of Warcraft and there is no official pre-order campaign in your country, then you can order through any of the retailers listed on our website: http://en.wow-europe.com/pre%2Dorder .
We apologise for not having a retail partner in your country for the pre-order campaign but the game will be available to purchase through retail outlets at launch.
Regards,
Marie
Senior Billing Support
--- Mail paste ---
This kinda sucks btw, as there aren't any stores that either allow online ordering, or stores close to our border with the english version of the game. France sells french versions and Germany keeps to their language. I'm not about to drive to Danmark or Italy ...
At least we have a release date for the game ... January the 14th, 2005, the game is supposed to be in the European stores. If that includes Belgium this time is unsure, you never know with those American companies.
World of Warcraft is about to be released, and Blizzard started an open beta to test the servers and software.
As one of the 500 000 who entered, I started to explore the world as a Night Elf Hunter, the scene is magnificent and gameplay is great.
Being cautious, I started with a character on a normal server (instead of the PvP server) and trained untill I was level 10, and could tame a pet.
Being a beta, one should test things, so I also started a Dwarf Rogue on the same server and a Human Warrior on a PvP server. I have had the opportunity to see all three capitals of the races, and Darnassus (Nighte Elf capital) was certainly the smallest...
Haven't had any PvP action yet, aside from the one person who challenged my Dwarf to a duel (which I won).
I was kinda dissappointed with the fact you cannot loot your enemy if you kill him. Besides the honer, there is really nothing you gain from slaying an enemy.
Overall, this game really is great ... They need some tweaking on the server lag, but aside from that, Blizzard is ready for the release.
It's that time of the year where people leave for exotic destinations to relax and rest. Well, I'm one of them.
Next weekend I'll be gone to "Trnovo ob Soci" in Slovenia. Of course, the main purpose of the trip is to go kayaking in white water rivers, mainly the Soca, sicne that's the river next to the camp site.
I've already bought an enourmous amount of food to take with me, now I only need to pack the stuff I'll be needing there.
The Americans have had the pleasure for a while now, but we Europeans, we had to wait till today for Blizzard to open the sign-ups to the Closed Beta of World of Warcraft.
The entry form can be found here, I already signed up. Let's hope the game will be released soon, so everyone can come to participate.
Another batch of movie errors and goofs for your pleasure.
Troy
Some revealing erros show the "wooden" sword of Achilles when he introduces his cousin, Patroclus, to Odysseus to be plastic in fact and when Achilles says "You gave me peace in a lifetime of war" and the camera focuses on Briseis's hair the netting from her wig is visible. Also Hector's "metal" helmet bends a little when he takes it off when going to fight Achilles.
Then there are some errors of items dissappearing between shots. One is a burning arrow Achilles has stuck in his shield when going into formation on the Trojan Beach, when the camera turns to Achilles perspective, the arrow is nowhere to be seen, yet when they move out, it is back again. Another happens when Achilles kills Hectorw with a spear. When Achilles is dragging Hector back to camp, we can still see the spear sticking out of him. In the next shot, when Achilles is within the camp, the spear in Hector is gone. When Achilles leaves to challenge Hector, his chariot is pulled by two black horses. When he ties Hector's body to the chariot, at least one of the horses is brown. When he arrives back at the Greek's camp, both horses are black.
Van Helsing
The "brides" change position between different shots at the burning windmill.
When van Helsing, Carl and Frankenstein's Monster travel under a bridge and one of the brides mentions that they are in Budapest the National Theater in Prague is visible.
The stake that gets stabbed into Dracula by Van Helsing wiggles when Dracula jerks it out of his chest. The blood one of the Brides drinks leaves a pulp on the glass, real blood would not do this. The horses never react in any way when Van Helsing jumps and crashes into them, this points out that Van Helsing was computer generated and the horses real.
When Carl and Van Helsing cremate the body of an ally, the plot goes against history because the Catholic church forbade cremations until 1963.
Kill Bill 2
Many "errors" in Kil lBill (1 and 2 alike) are deliberatly inserted by the director to appear like a 70's B rated movie.
Some of the time, crew or equipment is visible to the eye of the carefull watcher. For example the extreme close-ups of the bride's face when looking down on Budd's trailer show reflections of the cameraman in her eyes.
I stopped playing Planetia for now, I might start a new account some day, but for now, Planetia has been put aside.
One of the reasons is I find it rather boring. The price of gaining roids through exploration and scanning is about the same as gaining them by attacking. This results in a stagnating game early in the round. With only a small playerbase in Planetia, this effect is created even faster.
In favor of other games like Dawn of Myth and Utopia (which had been put aside for a long time too), Planetia has lost me as a player.
I watched the movie "De zaak Alzheimer" yesterday. Albeit not a bad movie.
I have some more movie errors, or goofs, from this one though:
When Ledda & Seynaeve meet for the first time (in the bar), they both carry a newspaper to recognize each other. The nespaper is dated from the year 2002, when the story actually takes place in 1995. On the same note are the mobile phones. They are clearly recent models, unexisting in 1995.
A third note are the coke cans throughout the movie. Also a year 2000 design, 5 years in the future.
There are many more of these errors, like the escalators in the train station in Antwerp. There weren't any in 1995.
Apparently the BMW get-away car Ledda requested has instantly inflatable tires. After the police shoots the tires to immobilize the car, a few shots later, the tires are back intact.
There is also something wrong when Bieke's father gets shot (beginning of the movie). He gets shot on the left of his chest, when going down it flips to the right, then back to the left.
I still think The Alzheimer Case is a good movie by Erik Van Looy.
It was a short round, some 800 hours of gameplay, but since this was the first one since a long time, I'm glad we had it.
The GROSS communities didn't do very good and hoovered around place 70 all round. One thing to note though, is that we only started with 10 persons in each community instead of the 15. Let's hope the next round brings some more people, luck and score...
It's coming closer and closer, but during the weekend of March 13th, we are going on a ski trip with the company.
Our lodging is in La Grave, France. But most of the skiing will take place in Alpe d'Huez or Les Deux Alpes, since most of the La Grave area is for advanced skiers.
It promises to be a great weekend, with 15 persons participating.
The new server has arrived and the new round is really coming close. In the time we are waiting, Dawn of Myth is going to run a speed round with 1 minute ticks.
That should still our hunger.
This is a small post to show what games I'm currently playing.
Feel free to join up and start a war with me (or an mutual peace agreement ofcourse).
Dawn of Myth, returned from the dead will start next year, so we just have to be patient for a little while longer. Planetia sign-ups started yesterday, i'm in my galaxy and ready to kick some ass. Tafke asked me to join Utopia next round, which I will. The current round is supposed to last for another week or something. Dominion, and utopia clone, also opened sign-ups for the coming round.
Recently, Dawn of Myth announced it's return, but also another game, Planetia, has recovered for the cracking attack which made the round stop halfway.
Planetia signups for the new round have been delayed a whil, but they are coming. New this round is a system where private galaxies contain 10 choosen members and 3 random members in addition.
That new signup system is not so very good in my opinion, but I guess we'll be OK.
Dawn of Myth, the browser based multiplayer game has found a new sponsor contract.
This is great news for the fans of the game, as we will be able to continue playing it within some weeks time. The promised a better server with increased bandwith, but I just hope it will be back soon. Dawn of Myth was, without doubt, one of the coolest games in the genre.
I wnet to see the matrix revolutions this weekend. The third and final movie from The MAtrix trilogy.
I was a little disappointedbut somehow already expected the third one to not be as good as the first or even the second.
My opinion is the first one is the best because of the very original story andthe questions it rises. Also the camera effects are rather innovative.
The second one isn't too bad because of the action in it. Here the camera effects are taken up an extra level, combined with amazing action scenes the movie turns out to be quite a thrill.
The third one has nothing of all that. Ok, granted, the camera effects are still there, but they aren't new anymore. The action is alot less and the story is not all that.
But still, one should go and see it. If not for the story and the action, just for the hype maybe.
The next movie on the menu ... Lord of the Rings, the Return of the King. And that promises to be one hell of a movie, even if it's the third one in the saga.
The new roudn of Planetia, a browser based game, is about to start. We did quite well in the last round, finishing in the sub-top and we are going to try to do even better this time.
If you wish to play with us, consider joining the #pillager channel on the irc.fryingdutch.net network.
Rainy ...
Huge domain ...
Big lakes ...
Rather small subtropical pool ...
Guess what. We went to centerparcs this weekend.
It was really fun, the wether could be better, but there was enough indoor entertainment. I even got to know a new game ("Colonisten van Catan") and new rules to an existing game ("Risk").
During the weekend, 12 persons were gathered into 2 cottages, we had our private cooks and there was a dishwasher in the bungalow. What more can you wish ?
Maybe a better pool at centerparcs ? Ok, granted, but the centerparcs at Vossemeren has a great domain to compensate.
Anyone plays rise of nations against computer players ?
I figured out some interesting 'feature' yesterday. When playing against computer players only, try staying in the Medieval Age (or some other age). The computer players will never pass you in age reaserch. Even better, they seem to only do a certain amount of other library researches per age. So you can research all of your library researches, but only advance 1 age, and they'll be stuck at that 1 age + 1 library research per category.
It's weird. And it doesn't work in world domination campaigns. But solo, it can give you a huge advantage ... Which in fact isn't cool once you know it.
iRobot released 2 new models for there vacuum cleaner.
I hear you say "So what ? Who cares ...". But the iRobot cleaners are no regular cleaners, they do the job without human intervention.
I looked at the information on there site, and the reviews on Amazon or the chatter on Slashdot, and they look pretty cool. If only they sold it in Belgium.
Dawn of Myth, the game we played during some time, has trouble finding a sponsor and as a resul is down for an unspecified amount of time.
Well, we couldn't wait that long and decided to try out a new game. Planetia is the current choice.
On September 1st, the game will start.
It's final at last.
REWS will be moving around the 1st of September 2003. As a result, we are selling our current club ship.
The ship is around 40 meters in length and is currently stationed at the Snepkaai in Ghent. The motor has been taken out.
If you wish to make an appointment to see it, mail to info@rews.be. We prefer times outside business hours, but we are flexible ... *grin*.
Last sunday was the first day of the Belgian championship.
We were fairly suprised to hear that DP A and DP B switched names, DP B being the strongest team now.
We lost our matches against WKV 1 and TNT 1. We won against DP A and AKKC.
This resulted in a temporary second place, right next to WKV 2, but unfortunatly, TNT 1 and WKV 1 have played only 3 matches, whereas we played 4.
But still, we are well ahead of DP A, and somewhat in front of AKKC.
I found a COM component to send SMS'es with the PC via my 3310.
However it's sharaware and adds 19 characters to the beginning of the message, which is, to say the least, annoying.
Im still trying to find a practical use for all of this, so any ideas are welcome in a comment to this post.
My datacable for the Nokia 3310 arrived today.
It's an interesting technology to start experimenting with, however, its documentation is not very good.
Two birthday parties this past weekend.
On friday we ate at 'The Chess Cafe', which is a WOK restaurant. Really good, and 'a volenté'. After that we made the bowling lanes unsafe (seriously, somehow our lane always got broken :p). The one getting older was Jorn 'Darthy' Audooren, he is getting some gray hairs now (just kidding).
The second birthday party was at the kayakclub, we (me & my parents) were on duty to keep the bar up and running. A band came to play there, really good !
Dawn of Myth, the new round, will start soon.
We have big plans for it. For the first time in GROSS history, we are going to the battlefield with 11 filled communities. That's about 165 people.
If we all turn out to do as well as this round, we might just be one of the biggest alliances in the game.
Herain dan menig. Natha daged dhaer!
"Hundreds against thousands. They are all going to die!" - Sindarin Elvish
The kayakpolo training on sunday was interesting. It was the first one outside since a while and located in Lokeren.
The heaven weren't very happy with it apparently, rain all day and not very warm.
But that wasn't the worst part. Somehow the 'Durme' (the river we play on in Lokeren) was very polluted. Black stuff was floating by and smelling like hell. Yuk. Allthough it was good to be back outside after the winter.
My current employer took us to the French Vosges for 4 days of ski fun.
The weather was great, and there was enough snow.
No legs were broken, so that's good too...
Training kayakpolo this morning, was quite a while ago.
Many people, to many if you ask me. The ladies national team was there, and some other clubs. Anyways, we wiped the floor with them...
The new round of Dawn of Myth is about to start. We are going without any alliance and are about to kick some ass !
If you want to join us, come to #gross irc channel on the netgamers network. Say hi, and wave your hands ...
We are going to see Lord of the Rings - The two Towers for the second time this evening. This movie was just awesome, and thus we have to look at it again.
I can't wait for the third Chapter, The return of the King, which will be released Decemper 18th, 2003. In the mean time, we can go visit The MAtrix Reloaded, which should be good to looking at the trailer.
I found a bug in DOM.
Kinda tested it out and as a result I got deleted (due to bug exploit). I guess it might have been because I was 1st in the highscores for an amazing 2 hours, well above number 2. Oh well, that was fun ... Got about 27 mails with comments like "Huh ?", "WTF !" or "How?".
One of my online games is at the end for me. Starsphere, I liked playing it, but they keep the round going for to long. I got crushed to 1/12th my size yesterday, and not gonna log in anymore utill the new round starts.
The other game, DOM, is not going good either. Constant attacks prevent me from growing. But at least, we can defend against most of them.
I have to wait another 5 minutes before I can go sleep ...
What a man doesn't do for his online game. Anyways, we'll be attacking 15:16 tonight, and if everything goes well, we should crush them. They attacked us earlier this round (they were bigger than us) so you can count this as a retal action.
