Yep, /. is just as UI-fugly as I remember it. :P

-MT.

Although I stopped posting stuff here ages ago, I've had the My Amigos feed in Google Reader, and have occasionally wandered in to have a look.

But now I've decided to cut my ties here permanently. So as soon as I've posted this, I'm unsubscribing My Amigos. I've already updated my User Info with how to contact me.

To those few of you who still post here, thanks for the fun times. It's nothing personal, I just need to cut down the amount of time I spend on social networks generally.

-MT. signing off.

FAIL! :(

In view of the fact that I hardly come here any more, plus the fact that TPTB here seem intent on fscking up the UI even further :| I've decided to call it a day here.

You can follow my antics over at deviantART or Multiply (sorry, Jorg), or add me on Facebook.

Alternatively, you music lovers can check me on Last.fm, whilst most of my linkage is over on StumbleUpon.

It was fun back in the day, when I had more time to spare, but now... *shrug*

Au revoir!

-MT.

I'm going to paramedic school. I'm being serious, too. I really am going to paramedic school. So about 14 months from now, the good people of a particular medium- to large-sized city will have the incredible joy of seeing me pump their veins full of fluids and odd elixers, then taking them to the hospital.

It could be a city near you! Eat hearty portions this holiday! Lots of egg nog and gristle! Have another three or five tom and jerry's drinks. 1000s of lucky winners each day!

This post raises a few curious questions. Since you fuckers are lazy, I presume, I will cut and paste it here to save a few clicks. Jesus you people are slothful bitches.

I wonder, if crack was legalized, would we be having a simular discussion over how best to prepare it? (not saying any of you here would do crack, just that if it was socially acceptable and all that)

Well, my man, I will tell you the answer is yes. In the case of meth, there are a variety of ways its manufactured. The hardcore fiends, I'm talking about the toothless fucking junkies, all have their own particular flavor they like. There's more flavors to this shit than Baskin' Fucking Robbins. The count I heard was 48. It's just like coffee. Generally, just like coffee, there are some flavors that most snobs like. In the case of meth junkies, they like the stuff made from lithium batteries.

I asked one junkie why he was so fond of the lithium battery method. In all honesty, consuming anything that has a principal ingredient of a battery seems like some seriously flawed fucking paradigm, but not to the toothless cunt he was.

"It's smooth, man. Like the other shit [method unknown] just burns your throat like you snorted fire. This shit is a lot smoother and it don't burn as much."

So, there you have it.

Haha, made you jump! :D

I'll post a proper JE this weekend, promise!

-MT.

It's been a while since I posted something here. Guess my /. craving is subsiding now that I've got the My Amigos and /. feeds plugged into my Bloglines. Been posting (and recycling) stuff to my website instead of late, as well as trying to catch up a bit with goings-on over at DeviantArt.

I've also set up a LiveJournal ID, mainly so that I can follow and reply to stuff that my LJ-using Amigos write there (hi to Leo, SW and Interrobang!) You can probably guess my username. :)

Some good news at work, the MD's wallet has opened. We've got a new CD duplicator tower, plus replacement drives for two of our existing towers, so we should have much more throughput now for those big orders. Hopefully, this means that a move on the new server box I was helping to spec before Christmas might actually be happening sometime soon. Hey, they might even give me a payrise, at this rate (I can hope!)

Just put in an order at Hard-To-Find Records for a cheap record deck with pre-amp that I can plug directly into my PC, to rip vinyl and make MP3s from them. I might have a nosey and see if I can rip some of my Dad's old jazz collection while I'm at it...

No snow yet. :(

-MT.

Just spotted a huge build-up of comment spam over at my website, all of it sex-related. I've added a few extra choice phrases to WordPress's blocking list, and instructed WPBlacklist to start harvesting IPs and URLs as it goes. It may risk poisoning the blacklist file again, but that's a chance I'll have to take. Just a heads-up to anyone else who has a weblog, to check in case you've been hit as well. Seems to have started very recently, so you might still be able to stem the tide before it gets out of control.

I fired up Half-Life 2 last night and got stuck in for about three hours. First impression weren't brilliant - it took a while to load up, but I suspect that may have been it detecting my sound and video cards and adjusting settings. The opening screen, with the view across the square, made up for the wait. I was playing at 1024x768 (will have a go at 1280x1024 tonight to see how that fares) and the views are awesome!

Lots of familiar faces show up during the game - the G-Man, Barney, Dr Vance and his daughter Alyx - as well as a lot of the aliens from the original Half-Life, although some have changed a bit in the interim (talking Alien Slave!)

It's a long wait before you get to put on the HEV suit, and you have to run for it at one point, but once you get there it,s like a family reunion (complete with 'pet' headcrab to muck things up!)

The scripted stuff with the citizens and the Combine soldiers is pretty good, and really makes you want to press on and find out what the heck is going on in City 17.

I've managed to get to the point where you get to take the skimmer for a ride down the river - this is quite a departure from the original Half-Life, and takes a lot of getting used to, particularly where steering and braking are concerned.

Only downsides so far have been the long delays between levels, and occasional stuttering sound in some parts of the game. But overall, I'm really enjoying this game.

You'll probably not be surprised to learn that my ID on Steam is 'MonTemplar'... :)

Finally gotten around to doing something about my moribund personal website. Chucked out the MovableType stuff, and put in a WordPress blog in its place. I'm planning on adding links to the artwork that I've put up at DeviantArt, specifically the stuff that I've got for sale as prints, :) as well as write-ups on the websites that I think deserve more coverage. Also, a few offbeat and/or unusual news items as and when I find them.

If you've got a website or blog, drop me a note and I'll make sure to link to you. Cheers!

1. The chainsaw is the best melee weapon in a FPS game evar! Sure, the crowbar in Half-Life was fun, and the monkey-wrench and Bowie knife in HL:Opposing Forces was even better, but they won't have that satisfying roar, and make sparks when you strike it against a hard surface. The only downside is the smoke when you fire it up, which makes it harder to see which side of the zombie you're slicing. :)
2. The sentry bots are so cute, whistling at you to follow them, and tenacious when faced by obstructive monsters. Brings a tear to your eye if the little feller falls in battle. *sniff* Even cuter than the Rustbits in Gunman Chronicles.
3. Boy, those imps are fugly! Just as rough as their grandpappies from the original Doom, right down to tearing into you at close range.
4. The cutscenes are pretty darn nifty, particularly with the way they pan back into your characters head at the end, so you're facing whatever gets revealed...
5. The zombie marines are buggers to take down, because they've still got some grey-matter ticking away. Enough to use radio links to coordinate their attack, and duck for cover when their ammo is low, but thankfully they stand still when firing so a few well-aimed shots will take then out.
6. Some of the audio logs and e-mails you come across are hilarious. :)

I reckon I'm about a third of the way into the game, and I've met one Boss so far. Anyone else got any progress reports?

No work to do today, apart from keep the CD printers running. *yawn*

Ordered Doom3+HalfLife2 from Amazon UK yesterday, something to look forward to in September.

Anyone here recieved XP SP2 via Automatic Update yet? Anyone? Bueller?!

Was doing some rendering work on my PC last night, good thing I've got the laptop handy, I went onto DA with that whilst the beast was busy. Took about 2 hours to render to my satisfaction - at 9000x6000! Yeah, baby! :) Only problem was that the PC crawled afterwards due to the delay in releasing memory back - with 1GB of RAM you'd think this wouldn't be so much of a problem - damn you Bill! *shakes fist* Had to restart in order to get back to a usable state.

I also discovered that DA will not allow you to log in from two different machines at the same time - log in on one, you get logged out on the other.

Speaking of which, here is the result of my labours. Not finished yet, I'm going to try hand-paint some extra details on it later this week...

Gak! Nothing really grabs my attention on the front page these days. Not even the addition of new sections for Linux and IT (in beige! the horror!) tickles my fancy. Still reading journals when I get the chance.

Apologies to RWS - I would have given you some mod points, but all your recent posts have been archived already. Must really suck to be hit with bad karma.

Mostly hanging out at DeviantArt now, along with Leo and a certain lurking shark of this parish. If you're bored of /. shenanigans, come and check out the pretty pictures. :)

I'm up for helping tire-kick any /. alternatives you guys are working on - e-mail address is in my Yahoo! profile, if you need it - ditched the slashdot@redunser.co.uk one as it was just getting junk mail.

Oh yeah, I got a new digital camera and a replacement Wacom tablet last week. More on that in another JE.

Later!