I want to give a shout out to my friend JackBurton. He gifted me S.T.A.L.K.E.R Call of Pripyat the other day over Steam. I am super excited about playing it. I’ll probably get to it as soon as I finish Mass Effect 2 followed by Vampire Bloodlines.
I wanted this game for a long time, but money has been hard to come by. Thanks again Jack, much appreciated.
I stumbled across some amazing photographs on Panoramio. I decided to post some of my favorites here. All pictures are copyright of their respective owners
1. Tarangira National Park, Tanzania.
5. Petersbaumgarten, 2840 Grimmenstein, Austria
6. Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74075, USA
If I have to pick a favorite among these, I would have to say the picture of the house in Pforzheim, Germany (#4). There is something about the colors which really captivates me. Not to mention the fact that it looks like a house in a fairy tale! I’ll post more as I come across them.
With the release of a new generations of browsers a few months away, I thought I should take a look at some of the older browsers we used back in the day. I managed to get hold of some old versions and tested them on a Windows 7 machine. Over the next few months I plan to write at least one more browser related blog. So bear with me.
Firefox v0.8
I tested the oldest version Firefox I could fine – version 0.8. I am surprised that the browser is not all that bad! Its definitely functional and I would definitely recommend this for people who are still using Pentium III or IV machines.
I clicked on Help bookmark and that doesn’t seem to work anymore. Also conspicuously absent is the news feed. I am however impressed that this browser has tabs. I remember using tabs for the first time in a browser called Crazy Browser. It ran on IE 6 engine. I used it for a while before I discovered Firefox. I was a little late to the party though. I remained a Netscape user for a long time.
SeaMonkey v1.0
I did not use this a lot back in the day. Nevertheless, the first available version seems to in a good working shape, albeit, its very rudimentary compared to today’s browsing standards.
Again, I might recommend this browser to someone who is still using a Pentium III or IV machine for giggles.
Netscape Navigator v4.79
This is was a big name in the browser market back in the day. That was before Microsoft released IE bundled with Windows, and very soon it destroyed almost all competition until Firefox came along. Netscape was a very good browser by all means, I used it until I switched to Windows XP in 2003. Once IE 6 came out, I had to need for Netscape. Not that I am accusing IE 6 of being a good browser. I was just ignorant back then.
Seeing how different things were back then, I am surprised at how much has changed. I remember the time when 7Kbps was considering good download speed, and one had to pay for download managers, and torrents and video streaming were unheard of.
Times sure have changed a lot.
Microsoft announced today that they are going to release a new version of their browser, Internet Explorer 9. This announcement comes in the wake of Mozilla releasing their new beta version of Firefox 4 beta. Google Chrome is being updated every few weeks, and I have lost track of the version.
I use Firefox on all my PCs. However, for me, it is far from perfect in terms of interface. IE 8 for me has the perfect interface; thankfully, Firefox lets me get that IE look by using Vista Aero theme. I can’t quite praise this theme enough.
Also, I was looking at personas and the world started making a lot of sense when I saw this:
58,187 active users. That’s nice to see.
Anyway, I am very interested in seeing how new generation of browsers perform. I am hoping IE 9 comes a lot closer to Firefox in terms of functionality, and hopefully have a spell checker this time.
Although I don’t see myself giving up the functionality of Firefox, especially AdBlock Plus. It makes surfing so much easier for me. Yes, Firefox is a little more resource hungry, but in the age of dual core CPUs, that hardly matters.
OK, here is when I will switch to IE 9 if it has -
So let’s see how IE 9 will fare compared to the other browsers.
So back in August, exactly a month ago, PC Gamer interviewed Valve Software at length. They talked about many things, but conspicuously absent was any mention of Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Yet again, I was disappointed.
However, Gabe Newell did say this during the interview:
Gabe Newell: Yeah. The average surprise is negative, not positive, and so if we’re going to surprise people we need to be conscious of that fact. Because we’re going to continue to surprise. We have three pretty big surprises in the next twelve months, at least.
PC Gamer: Are these related to specific games?
Gabe Newell: We have three surprises. I’m talking about surprises, not the surprises themselves. But we’re going to do three things that have the potential to… that will be novel. And if we don’t make sure that people understand what we’re doing, they could easily respond in a Left 4 Dead 2 kind of way. Like, “What the hell?” right? And we just need to be good about that.
We also have to be conscious of the fact that there are a lot of different people that we talk to. Like, there’s people who are really close to us and trust us, and there are other people who play our games and that are more sceptical. And you need to make sure you’re talking to both of those groups in clear enough fashion, to make sure that just because one group is happy and on board, it doesn’t mean the other groups are going to be.
There is nothing known about those surprises to this day, but I would like to speculate what those are, if for no other reason then to revisit this blog in 12 months and be amused at how completely wrong I was.
Well, here is what I think the surprises will be:
I do not care about Counter-Strike, I do not care about multiplayer gaming in general, but the new IP and Half-Life 3 speculations are something I hope will be true.
I was disappointed that there was no update on Doom 4 at 2010 Quake Con and Rage was pushed to September 2011! That was a double dose of disappointment for me. I was hoping I would be able to play Rage this year along with Crysis 2.
Well, as things would turn out, Crysis 2 is pushed all the way to March 2011. I am not sure what I have to look forward to this year. There is the new Medal of Honor and Call of Duty: Black Ops. I am interested in seeing how they are going to perform, but I had absolutely no intention of playing them until they are available for under $10.
Now, I am just wanted to list all the games I looking forward to in the new year or two:
Yes, there is Duke Nukem Forever on the list there. Turns out Gearbox (makers of Brother’s in Arms) are working on the game and will release it in 2011. I just realized this game was first announced before Google was formed.
I will look to revise my list as new games are announced.
As I said in my previous blog, I’ve had the most dreadful time leading up to the finals. I took four courses this semester, and the week before finals, I had submissions due in all of them. Organizing time this particular semester had been difficult. Its always difficult, but this semester was more so.
Now that I am done with the finals, and I made an A in one of the courses (Yes!), I decided to celebrate. I ordered pizza and breadsticks from Papa John’s, and that set me back by $33! It was an expensive proposition. I still have the barbecue chicken and bacon pizza in the fridge. I have a small appetite and it takes a long time for me to run through that large pizza. I intend to finish it by tomorrow night and then get back to eating regular healthy food.
I also intend to start my evening jogging from Monday on. Weather in summer is fantastic and I should make the most of it. I bet my stamina is at its all time low, and I wonder if I will be able to run a quarter mile without being completely exhausted. I will take it easy in the first week though.
(I put a slice of pizza in the oven. I am just that hungry)
Friday night (5/7/10) was crazy. I had a final submission due at 11:59PM, but I turned in my assignment at around 9PM. Then I ordered pizza, and I helped my roommate fix his laptop, and I started playing Fallout 3 at around 11PM and I pretty much went on playing till 7AM. I had an 8 hour marathon of Fallout 3.
I am loving the game. It had some performance issues at ultra initially and I grudgingly turned down the settings a little bit, and its working really well.
(Eating pizza and watching Zero Punctuation review of Splinter Cell: Conviction. OK, so Splinter Cell: Convection is all nonsense apparently. Good thing I didn’t pay $59.99 for it. *faceplam*)
So coming back to Fallout 3, I am so glad I got it for my birthday. The most amazing gameplay moment is when you step out of the Vault and see the world around you. Although I knew exactly how the story was going to unfold, the moment I got out of the claustrophobic vault and saw the world, I was in awe. Just as I was beginning to get bored of goofing around in the vault killing roaches, the game puts me smack in the middle of the wasteland with a horizon as far as the eye could see. Its one of those moments that gives you goosebumps.
I got a short video of that as well, so be sure to watch it in HD.
I hear that Fallout 3: New Vegas is coming out, I am quite interested in it.
Not much else has happened apart from that. I am going to continue playing Fallout 3 for the rest of the weekend and then get back to work on Monday.
After my enthusiastic first post on my new blog which I started with the intention to update every week, I haven’t had the time to get back to it ever since.
The last week of April (26th to 30th) has been particularly bad. I had five submissions over five days, and I barely had time to finish them. I don’t understand how everything accumulates to the very last minute. No matter how hard I try I only manage to finish them the night before the deadline. I’ve got to learn to better manage my time.
I played Company of Heroes in the meanwhile. Must say I like this game. RTS games are something I have not played a lot. Apart from occasional Age of Empires 2 LAN matches back in 2004, and Lord of the Rings Battle For Middle Earth which I played recently, I am fairly new to the genre.
I am really impressed with the graphics and physics in this game. Not surprisingly, I discovered that this game uses Havoc physics engine. I’ve made a few gameplay videos, which I will upload soon. Just haven’t had the time to do that.
I am one of those people who is not tired of World War II games. I am in fact fresh off the heels of Brother’s in Arms: Hell’s Highway and I intend to play Commandos 3 right after Company of Heroes. Obviously I have not had enough.
I’ve also purchased a few games on Steam for dirt cheap. I bought Grand Theft Auto 4 and the better half gifted me Max Payne. Apparently she bought it for 19kr, which she tells me is nothing, and I agree. The last time I was in Norway, a hot dog cost 35kr.
Also, after two months of procrastinating, I finished my review of BioShock. I am not sure why but I get really tired whenever I begin to start a review. I type no more than three sentences before I close the window and don’t look at it for another week.
Speaking of closing the window, I better close this window and get back to work. Finals week starts tomorrow and if I stop myself from getting totally impatient for just one more week, I can at least look forward to getting decent grades.
After blogging on GameSpot for over 4 years, I decided to move on and start my own blog.
I have a feeling I will be writing for myself for the most part, and to the occasional reader who happens to drop by – Hey!
So it’s 2:37AM and I am listening to Saviour by Norther. I just got done composing what I hope will be my last blog on GameSpot (I will feel really stupid if I end up going back there again). I sort of made a fuss and left.
Commandos on Sale
I am referring to the Steam sale. All the Commandos strategy games are available on Steam for $4.99. Although I played all of them except Commandos 3, I still picked it up. Definitely worth having in the collection. I believe the sale ended, so I am glad I did not waste time in buying them.
I wonder if Commandos 4 will ever come out. Let’s wait and see.
The title of this post is somewhat misleading. I don’t have a much more to write about. It’s 2:52AM, so I am going to listen to some more music and go to bed. I have a busy day tomorrow. I have to mail my tax forms (I am a day late as it is) and there is a project to work on.
Better get some sleep.
