[sisuarmalmicy]

Because I can, and you can't. Well, you can, but lets just say you can't.

What's New in the Craddosphere!

That place where Crad posts a weekly summary of his world. Like a blog, only neither brief nor informative. Exactly like a blog.

August 23rd, 2012
September 5th, 2012 - NEW

[herbalviagra]

Aug 23rd, 2012

Yugioh Forums woes:

If you're expecting a mind dump about YF, then I'm disappointed to tell you that this is all you're going to get (for now).

YF has been a source of stress and frustration in my life since before I was staff. The drama the site generates acts to keep me on the edge of my seat, interested to see what happens next, and rage towards absurdities occurring. At worst, I get upset at myself.

Still, I love it here. I've been more than content to just take part in the community, and subtly administrate (when actually administrating) from a distance, as non-confrontational as I could be. That's not what YF needs though, and I know this. I hope to be able to spend more of my time working on the website in the future, even if it means less opportunity to communicate with many of you on a 1-1 level.


Hearts on fire:

For the past three weeks I've been making a more active effort to get out, and to spend less time sitting in front of the computer monitor without break. Already I'm noticing a difference; I'm less tired on a daily basis, am eating more, but feeling great.

To me, this underlines my previous thoughts about a person's well-being and their level of fitness / exercise. It has helped me focus more on working harder, and gives me less excuse to sulk in my bedroom playing games. I'm hoping to continue this habit through to the new year. I'm definitely feeling happier about myself and my life because of it.


Planning the future is hard:

So, I've kind of taken my first steps into managing and starting my first team project.

I say kind of, because I'm stuck on the pre-design portion of the job right now. Still, I've contacted two of the most motivated friends I know, both of whom are active members of the community, and am going to involve them in the entire process. It's exciting, but I need to remember to spend effort on it.

I have a lot of weird ideas, such as what I want to call the team / company (although it isn't yet) and the project, and I want to see this through. If everything works out, and we keep our heads down, then this will be an amazing adventure to partake on.


Ludus means game in Italian:

For the third time, I'm going to take a stab at Ludum Dare this Friday. My first time, the site got hacked and I was forced to go spelunking through our installed plugins, removing malicious code as I found it. That wasn't a lot of fun. My second time, I got severely motivated after attempting artwork on the second day; disheartened, I quit and sulked playing Minecraft.

Ludum Dare is a game design challenge; to build an entire game from scratch in 48 hours. It's split between the competition, and the jam (which allows teams, and is extended to 72 hours). This time I've spent a bit of time preparing the programs that I'm planning to use. For example:

Language: AS3
IDE: FlashDevelop
Engine: Flixel
Art: Photoshop, Paint.NET
SFX: bfxr, Audacity

Do I know how to use some of these? Kind of; I've honestly never tried doing sound stuff before, so it'll be an adventure of sleepless proportions.


I can haz an alpha key:

Just a brief mention here:

I got a Scrolls (a card game by Mojang) alpha invite the other day. I haven't had a huge amount of time to play the game, but I've been hanging out with the nice folk in the Scrolls Fans IRC, and have had my ass severely handed to me by players and bots alike.

The game is still very early in development, and is extremely rough around the edges, but this could turn into an extremely fun game if it takes off


New Gizmo Get:

As a join present for myself and a birthday present for my brother, I purchased two Asus Nexus 7 tablets this weekend. These things are sexy, only cost $200-250, and comes with a free $25 voucher from Google's Play Store, and a copy of Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon (movie). Terrible movie aside, it's wonderful just being able to read books from. Despite the relatively small screen, this is easily the nicest tablet I've used, and may be the only true iPad competitor out now (although I've heard good things of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1; Samsung's Quad-Core tablet solution).


Kickstarter'ing myself in the butt:

Continuing my trend of investing more money than I can afford into Kickstarter projects, I recently helped fund two very interesting Gaming / Tech related projects: OUYA and Oculus Rift.

OUYA is an interesting little piece of hardware. Despite looking like a minuscule Gamecube (the thing is tiny), and a controller that fondly reminds me of the PS3's batterang controller, it's model is incredibly indie and hacker friendly. You can do whatever you want with the thing! No lockdown on the system: a completely open game console for indies to flock to. Will it succeed? Probably not, but I'm a firm believer that the current publisher model in the games industry is broken and unsustainable.

Oculus Rift is even more interesting. They're marketing themselves as the world's first affordable high-quality VR display. Most of their competitors either provide you with a pathetically small view, or cost thousands of dollars. I purchased an early dev-kit model so that I can muck about with it. At worst, I never actually use the thing, but get a cool piece of technology that I can play Doom 3 on (the demo game for the unit); at best, this could be enormously fun to mess with, and I could potentially build stuff to support it.

Both projects unfortunately won't be in my hands until the Holiday Season, however I should be getting my Pebble E-Paper Watch mid-September. Looking forward to it.


On future expenses:

I've really got to watch what I spend my money on more carefully, however I am due for a new phone come November. I've been looking at the Samsung Galaxy S-III, however am waiting to hear from Google's new Nexus phone (tentatively known only as "Nexus"), that should be announced in the coming weeks.

Aside from that, Borderlands 2 retails soon; however, I don't think I'll be picking it up until I've completely beaten Borderlands.

Christmas and server renewal are coming up soon too, the latter of which I'm in the progress of "shopping around" for a good company for colocation of a private server (or a better VPS company).

[traiffhetl]

Like a blog, only neither brief nor informative.

so EXACTLY like a blog?

[Ygd2qr8k]

so EXACTLY like a blog?

Fixed.

[shemadagaswer]

Asus Nexus 7
Come on man thats an Asus tablet

[GaryBulguihb]

tl;dr
except until i saw Borderlands 2 at the bottom
yup.

[Rqvtwlfk]

Come on man thats an Asus tablet [/COLOR]

Both start with A; the sun was in my eyes; those letters weren't regulation; I need an adult!

[Vigeommighica]

I am an adult

[shiciapsisy]

The new google tablet is showing pretty well too, with a price of $200.

[FYIbiatches]

Sept 5th, 2012

I'm still doing these: Suck it, bitches.

YF - Ep. II, Changes: I've been avoiding the board, as I typically do when things become depressive. Not a lot to report here, despite the curiously titled name to this subject. Severe disappointment here and there.

Of Yugiohs: I decided to enter the tournament, and threw together a hastily (and poorly) made Psychic / D. Hero / DAD Chaos build; this was largely to exploit some of the changes to the game from the September ban list. Have only used it once, but it seems on the up and up.

Ludum Dare Failed: Unfortunately, I didn't complete Ludum Dare two weeks ago. I did, however, get farther than I've ever gotten, and even taught myself quite a bit about audio, and made spritesheets. Was a lot of fun, but in the end, I had no idea what I was making.

Lord of the Scrolls: I am currently ranked #69 on the Scrolls Leaderboard. My goal is to reach the top 10 before Beta in November.

Adventure!: On Monday I received my kick-butt Double-Fine Adventure Kickstarter reward. Basically: an awesome poster, and a very cool t-shirt. I'm loving the t-shirt.

Books: Have been reading the following: A Song of Ice and Fire - A Game of Thrones, Jurassic Park, a shit ton of software development / web development books. Plenty more on my queue.

Conquest of the Borderlands: This weekend I finally completed the Borderlands expansion: "The Secret Armory of General Knoxx", and then started (and finished) "The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned" (it was deceptively short...). Up next is "Claptrap's New Robot Revolution", and "Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot", before the release of Borderlands 2.

The Doctor is back!: This made my weekend complete ~♥

[Juersdodfs]

What do u think of Game of Thrones

[Chito]

What do u think of Game of Thrones

I think it's alright. I'm not very far into it; about 130 pages. To be honest, I've been reading more of Jurassic Park, being an old favorite of mine (and current favorite book).