The weekend in review…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, I’d like to say it was an eventful weekend. Turned out it was and it wasn’t. I got stuff accomplished, mind you, so it wasn’t really a waste. The only problem I had was the fact that I had planned on getting my computer desk area cleaned out and never did. Oh, well…

Friday night was actually pretty uneventful. I spent most of the evening watching Sci-Fi Channel’s Friday lineup, and then after that did a news update for MK Online. Then, right before I went to bed, I set up the Powerbook and had it start the process of encoding the video of Louie’s party and burning it to DVD. The first master disc I had made of it ended up badly encoded, with the audio being out of sync in places. This new disc had no such problems, so I made two more copies for Louie.

Saturday morning was spent getting a donation in to Demmie’s blogathon, and then getting ready for Dave to come around. He did, we had lunch, played videogames, discussed movies, and so on and so forth. Then, around 6 PM, Louie showed up, and we all came up with a plan: Italian for dinner, then billiards, and then maybe bowling. So, we headed off to this nearby Italian restaurant called Lasagna House III which had a pool hall next to it. We ate dinner, and then walked over to the pool hall… to find it packed. A check of another nearby pool hall showed the same thing. So, we found the nearest bowling alley… but before we went there, we stopped in CompUSA (where I picked up the DOOM 3 expansion and Dave picked up Grand Theft Auto III), and then hit Barnes & Noble for a bit. Once done there, we went and bowled for a couple of hours, and then headed home.

Sunday was pretty much uneventful, other than doing some maintenance and checks on my Powerbook. I made sure the camcorder worked well with iMovie HD (seeing as I had never used the two together before), and also cleared off the iMovie project of Louie’s party, thus reclaiming about 15 GB of disk space. I also found the lenscap for my camcorder (which I hadn’t even realized I had in the first place), and gathered the cables for it in one place.

As for the rest of this week, well… I’m taking a couple of days off later this week and will be going out of town, so I need to make preparations for that. I’ll have to dig up my digital camera as well, and make sure all of my rechargable batteries for it are fully charged. The camcorder will be coming as well, but I don’t know if I have any empty MiniDV tapes. So, I’ll have to go to Fry’s and get some, as well as a double-CD jewel case for this new Overclocked Remix site project that’s going to be released tonight. Fun fun…

Well, enough of this… time to go make the rounds and see what the current issues out there are right now…

WTF?

D'Arque Bishop

I was just checking my site’s webserver log report, and noticed something odd. Apparently there’s been a few hits where the referers were online poker websites. I have no idea why they’d be linking to MY site, unless their stupid webcrawlers caught mention of a tournament or two I was in and decided to run with that. Methinks that they need to get their damn AI straightened out.

So, if you’re coming over here while looking for online gambling… this is not the website you’re looking for.

Reposted from Ree’s journal…

D'Arque Bishop

True Story. A religion teacher assigned her class an essay on what makes a good Christian. One student wrote about praying nightly, saying no to abortion, banning gay marriage, and donating money. The other student wrote about talking to God and allowing people to enjoy their lives, and supporting gay marriage. The day the teacher was to hand the papers back, she called up the second student and told him she would pray for him when he went to hell. The student asked why would he be going to hell, and why he got an F on his paper. The teacher told him that Catholisim is against gay marriage. The student looked at her for a minute, then said aloud, “I’m gay.” The teacher kicked him out of class as if he had said fuck or worshipped Satan. A girl in the back of class who had a boyfriend and was obviously straight got up and left, too.

If you would leave the classroom, repost this. It doesn’t matter if you’re straight, bi, or gay. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic or not. Everyone is a human being and deserves happiness.

My personal opinion? As far as I know (and I admit I’m not the greatest authority on Christianity), it’s not our place to condemn such people for their choices. Even if God explicitly says such stuff is bad… that’s a matter between them and God. Let God judge them.

As the saying goes, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone…”

Well… shit.

D'Arque Bishop

When I went to E3, one of the games I went out of my way to go see was Stargate SG-1: The Alliance. Those people who saw my gallery of E3 photos also saw a number of pics from the JoWooD booth, including a life-size Stargate. (Damn, those things are huge!) Well, this is what I happened to see when checking GameSpot News this evening…

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/08/05/news_6130425.html

Austrian publisher JoWood has terminated its contract with Perception, the Australian studio that was, until now, developing Stargate SG-1: The Alliance. As per the contract, all rights to the game, as well as the developed source code, have transferred to JoWood’s possession. Namco was originally slated to release the action game to the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and PC in North America this fall.

In the announcement, JoWood CEO Albert Seidl designated the game’s quality as the primary issue that led to the contract’s termination. Apparently, JoWood did not believe that Perception could produce a game that would both satisfy fans of the series and arrive on time. “In recent months we have invested a lot of time and resources in helping Perception finish the development, but we now simply have lost confidence in their ability to finish this project in time and sufficient quality,” Seidl said.

Executive producer Michael Paeck stated that the future of the Stargate SG-1 is largely up in the air and that the company has to determine if it is economically viable to finish production before trying to find another developer. Interestingly, Paeck also said that one of the options in front of the publisher is to move development of the game to next-gen consoles.

To be honest, I wish I could say I was surprised. While the demo they had of the PC version seemed to run reasonably well, the console versions were of fairly poor quality. I only hope they don’t decide to scrap it altogether, especially seeing as the plotline revolves around my favorite of the Goa’uld…. namely, Anubis.

*sigh* Oh, well…

Thursday mid-day ramblings…

D'Arque Bishop

Bleh… I’m annoyed. I have a USB-to-serial port adapter that I use for programming Cisco devices. However, I need a terminal emulator program in order to use it. Up until recently I had been using minicom, which is a *nix terminal emulator program. However, it appears that the stable version of minicom in Fink (which is a repository of UNIX programs for Mac OS X) hangs if command-line parameters are used. So, right now I’m trying to get my hands on the unstable version of minicom and see if that will work.

I did have a bit of a shock earlier… I did a search on Google for “fink minicom tiger”, and an entry I made on here (here being the darquecathedral.org pages) was on the first page of listings. Weird.

Right now my main project here at the office has been to try and make my desk somewhat neater. As has been said before, I tend to be Chaos Incarnate, so my work space tends to be somewhat on the messy side. I’ve gotten one of the three work areas on my desk cleared off. The one on my right still needs to be organized and cleaned… and then I can do the middle one, which is where I do most of my work. (It’s where my Powerbook and my PC’s monitor sit.) Hopefully once I get it cleaned off I can keep it neat and tidy. However, I know I probably won’t in the long run… heh.

I have no idea what I’m doing this weekend. I’ve emailed Louie to see when he wants me to get those copies of his party video over to him, but he hasn’t called me back yet. At the very worst, I’ll probably spend it sorting out paperwork and straightening up the wiring behind my computer desk (which is a shambles right now). Both the network switch (which I have my PC and my PS2 hooked up to) and one of my USB hubs have fallen behind the desk. Once I can get that straightened out and maybe even get the desk itself organized, I’ll be a happy camper. Of course, after that, it’ll be time to straighten out the bookshelves, and I’m afraid I’m not going to have room for the new books I have…

Anyway, I should get back to straightening up this work area. Fun fun…

An uneventful day’s post…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, it really is an uneventful day today, other than being late for work because I couldn’t find my keys. I searched the house top to bottom looking for those damn things. Then, just as I was close to giving up, I placed my arms at my sides, where my left hand would brush up against my wallet (which I keep in my front pocket)… and felt my keys right next to it. I felt like such a moron… heh.

Last night was actually rather fun. I was feeling a bit bored, so I popped Mortal Kombat: Deception into my PS2 to play a few rounds. Then, I happened to look at my computer monitor, to see a couple of people that have talked about playing MKD online recently on the #mortalkombat channel. So, I challenged them… and I ended up spending an hour, hour and a half playing against them. I thought I did relatively well, considering that even if I wasn’t rusty, I’m hardly the best player around. :-) Still, it was fun… might consider playing a bit more online in future.

… and with that, I really do have nothing else to say. I’d better get back to work… heh.

Some people…

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

The following is an email we received at MK Online’s mail address.

Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 01:12:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: ******** < ******@******.***>
Subject: For Game
To: mail@mortalkombatonline.com

Hi, for all who have disigned this site.

I’m a new member of your site although i don’t know how can i get / download this game (Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance & Mortal Kombat Deception) at free.

If it is possible, please let me know.

Thanks for all…….

*grumblemutter*

Perhaps one didn’t bother noticing through our news stories that Midway helps us with several of our news stories and features? Heck, one only has to look at our front page to see that the producer of the upcoming Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks has a recurring feature on our site. I’m REALLY sure they’d appreciate us helping people pirate their game. :p

Damn, people… just buy the fricking game and support the people making it. I know from first-hand experience that if there’s no money to be made, then there won’t be any future games. This is why Midway doesn’t put out PC versions of the MK games anymore: they didn’t make any money off them. That’s why every piece of software I have is either legally bought and paid for or open-source solutions.

*sigh* Still, it’s kinda discouraging seeing that, you know? I can’t imagine how the designers might feel…

Oh, well. I realize I tend to have a minority view on such things, but all I can do is stick by my guns.

Yet another day….

D'Arque Bishop

Meh. Right now I’m sitting at my desk, taking a quick break from work, and realizing that I can’t wait for a vacation. I’ve got a vacation coming up next week (going out of town for a couple of days), and then at the end of the month I’ll be making my way over to Las Vegas for a few days. I always enjoy Vegas; this time I’ll probably try and spend more time at the table games than I do at the slots. It also helps that we’re staying at Bally’s again, as I really liked Bally’s the time we stayed there last time. Granted, Mandalay Bay was nice as well, but I’m not quite sure I could have afforded it on my own. :-) Oh, well… I guess I’ll talk more about that trip as I get closer to it.

I’ve decided that I REALLY need to lose weight. Yes, I know how many times I’ve said it. This time I’m actually trying to do something about it. I’ve already cut out all soda except for one Diet Coke a day (to forestall the caffeine withdrawal symptoms) and cut out the beer, and am drinking water the rest of the day. I’m also doing my best to eat sensibly during the day. When I get home at night I just have a light supper… usually a bowl of cereal. Next week or the week after I’ll start exercising with the stair-stepper equipment Mom bought a while ago that sits in her office. I don’t have time to go to a gym, and when it came right down to it, DDR wasn’t doing anything for me. Oh, well… we’ll see how well this does for me. I’m tired of looking overweight.

Anyway, enough of this break… time to get some stuff done. Fun fun…