Category Archives: Uncategorized

Assassin’s Creed

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7°C, rain.

Assassin’s Creed: after a session marking I got it running. It always takes me a while to get used to controls but apart from that it’s very intrigiung. There are some very spectacular sets in the game- especially Damascas, the city is enormous with excellent leves of detail. No doubt it’s all done by setting the LOD switches quite close, but they have judged it well. THere are plenty of "side missions" which worked well enough in STALKER to make that a feature to look out for in games. Right now, my impression is that it is a pity that they had to put the science fiction elements in, I’d prefer paper style maps, maybe a compass but no GPS on screen.
Assassin's Creed2

Absinthe

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9°C, chily & strong E. Winds

Assassin’s Creed is finally out on PC so I picked up my copy today. I’ll run it after posting this, so no thoughts to report yet.
 Assassin's Creed1
Today has been characterised by shopping, probably a diversion activity from the weight of coursework marking that ominously filling my black bag. Anyway. The other  noteworthy thing today was a bottle of Absinthe, it’s the Parisienne from La Fée. It’s much like Pernod, or Ouzo but a softer more subtle flavour. It’s famed bitterness is not that noticable; perhaps I put in too much sugar.
Watch out though, it is very strong.

Control Panel scrambled.

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11°C, windy and grey.

Tracking down faults: so apparently, the control panel can be corrupted by some reg server32 getting unregistered (are you following this), – that is something that can easily be re-registered. At least the machine has net access so I can pose questions of Google and get workable answers.
 
Beyond that, the 3D scenery design will have ot wait for a week or so while I get a two graphics jobs done first.
 
Cinema: or why I like Tarkovsky’s films. They don’t sound great on paper; for example: Stalker: a science fiction film; with no special effects; long scenes heavily dependant on dialog; mostly in b/w, no music and don’t forget: it’s in Russian. Currently I am watching Andrei Rublyev in installments. these are films about the present, none of the Americanish obsession with plot, and what’s going to happen next. These films are full of scenes that concentrate on the now; they look long, hard and without distraction at themes like the weather, dogs, water and tinge it all with anxiety. Read this site to get a more articulate explanation http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/tarkovsky.html
I don’t expect you to wat one though.

It’s been a while

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10°C, Sun, still & cloudless. C=39 miles

…’ been busy though. Unlike most terms, I’ve made time for 3DS Max. This has beena very nice, mild and dry half-term, short too.
Still, I persist with trying to get 3D objects into that flight simulator (FSX), sometimes it gets tantalisingly close. The second picture shows an aerial view with only a shadow where the model of a generic Church should be. Good grief.

Firefox crashes: Re-install and update, with a root file clean-out in-between. Over here we are nervously hoping that thos crashes triggered by web browsing will desist.
That derelict part of Tatenhill airfield was interesting this afternoon. It would be good to get in there with my new camera for some quality shots.
Found a fab site today- with the rather predictable name of "Urban Assault". There is some great stuff in there though, have a look.

thankfully, I didn’t win.

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4°C, sunny with hailstorms.

Beaten at the last moment- what a relief. So I don’t have two cameras coming in the post.
Today has hat a little tension as well for another reason- it’s been very cold but sunny and mostly clear. I’d driven to school in the car because of the prediction of bad show showers & hail in the weather forcast. That didn’t happen until the 2nd third of the journey home when the surfaces did become unsafe. After a day of regretting it, it did turn out to be a good decision.

eBay anxiety

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4°C, Windy, heavy rain this morning but dry for now. Snow coming?

I’ve won a camera bid on ebay. A camera that I have been after for a couple of years. Over the last few months, I have lost a lot of bids, some went for very high values, but at last it is in the bag. Problem is, the next hour is an anxious time because of another bid that I’d forgotten about is about to expire with me the winner (at the time of writing).
It’s a problem because I don’t want two of them.

Tatenhill and surrounds

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8°C, light grey, dry and minimal wind.

Cycling: [retrospective post] had a long steady ride on Sunday, Foremark resevoir, Staunton Harold and Bosworth Battlefield. Total 74 miles, I had about 10-15 miles left in my legs but decided against it because of overhang tiredness at work the next day.

FSX; the title comes from another project I am working on, making scenery for the Flight Sim- FSX. Local Staffordshire is looking much better, as is another two places undergoing a facelift. I can post when more screenies are ready.

FSX_KML

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6°C, clear(mostly) but windy.

I rode home in 32 minutes today!
FSX scenery design: Currently I am having some success learning the KML program that works with Google-Earth to generate scenery for the flight sim FSX. It’s going to take quite a while to finish these. This picture uses a generic nuclear power station, but the 3D file discussed in the previous post needs to be planted in its place. apparently the KML programme can place them, but wait until the model is ready. It only lacks some of the textures and some LOD models.

Pending requests

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6°C, dull, but mostly dry. No cycling.

Every few days I find links to various womens’ Live_spaces in the pending requests. They have spaces with barely any info and of course I have never heard of them. They always look like some fading porn star, certainly no-one I recognise. This practice looks like some pointless spamming internet scam. No harm in blocking them then!
STALKER, 3rd run-through. (PC game), After a slightly lacklustre start to Bioshock, I’ve restarted a new game in STALKER. There is something particularly rewarding about this game, it must be the mixture of the  setting, atmosphere FPS genre with the RPG elements thrown in. It makes great screenshots, which isn’t that easy to do in Bioshock.