As a-lot of people are aware the ‘Meet-the-Spy’ video was leaked the other day, a few days before Valve had planned to release it. The reasoning for this had been announced in a spin-off achievement, after the spy’s had been shown. A screen cap of valves humor, and the full meet the spy video can be found after the jump.
At some point I will wright a larger update!
Exams are over, Assignments are finished and I am currently sat in my bedroom at home!
Our second year of University is now completely finished, no more exams for a good 18 months 
. In 2 months we move off to Germany to begin our work placement and get the ball rolling with FYP ideas. I know the next year will be hectic. Trying to find time to both travel, relax, and work on University stuff will be a real hassle and one that will hopefully be overcome. But even so, I cannot wait!
This last weekend has been non-stop work. Saturday was spent packing everything and cleaning my room, with Sunday being spent unpacking, sorting and re-boxing. Then I shoved a-lot of my stuff into the loft, helped Dad sort out a few boxes up there, and went straight to wiring up my PC.
It was then I encountered a terrifying error! One involving my PC, Windows Vista and the inability to get a simple wireless network adapter functioning. Now I’m hardly a tech-guru, but I know what I am doing and for 3 blasted hours I kept getting random Windows errors and faults in connecting to our network. Had to fix it in the end using a router as a bridge to let me wire up through Ethernet, which is more of a pain as I was supposed to be lending this fancy modded router to Andy back in Stafford, which wont be happening now…
Oh well, its all working now! Time to relax…
Edit: On another note, Andy is no-longer living below me which means I can finally make use of my Subwoofer again! Hurrah!!
As I write this I am getting ready to start the second-to-last revision session for our exams. We have a Math’s exam tomorrow, which shouldn’t be to bad and after that finishes the AI revision begins for its exam on the 7th!
On the bright side it does mean that there is only a small amount of time between now, and a 2 month vacation before the move to Germany.
Currently everything is going swimmingly; I remembered I already have European Heath Insurance (after reminding my mom we got it when we went to Tenerife, not Florida ) and to top things off, the Student Loan arrived the other week which was very nice to wake up to!
I am looking forward to moving home, and spending some actual time with family, over Easter I was working on assignments for most of it. I will however miss Stafford, more because of the people than the place. I have done quite a bit this year, while at the same time, not done much.
I have, however, moved forward so much in not only my knowledge of programming and computing. but also in my understand of life, and the world in general. Living with the friends I live with and in the environment we create has taught me a-lot and for this I owe so much to Dave, Emma and of-course Andy. We have our ups and our downs, but we all look out for each other and as housemates, I don’t think we have done half bad 
.
On another note, the Album section at the top is fully functional, only its full of stock photos currently!
This last month has been quite a roller-coaster. I have had two exams, two assignments, three placement interviews, FIVE GOOOLD RINGS and a placement offered and accepted in Munich (Ok, I am still working on sorting out the rings, but its in the works).
I have, about two weeks ago, been accepted onto a 12-month placement with Eurocopter in Germany which I really cannot wait for. Adding the cherry on the cake, Andy has also been accepted to Eurocopter! Come July I will be jet-setting away to work for a year. I am really, really looking forward to this!!
Because of this new placement, when I am over there this website is going to under-go some changes. It will become much less about games and more about myself and my time in Munich. This will be mainly to keep friends and family updated, as it will be quite the adventure and I want somewhere to share it!
So now, I am sat on my couch at home typing this, having just last week finished my last lecture for the next 16 months and between myself and a 1 month holiday sits one assignment and three exams.
This last year has been an interesting one; friendships have been made, changed and tightened and I feel that as a programmer I have shot forward by a ton. I understand most, if not all, of the OpenGL concepts we have been taught and have learnt 2 new languages and at least one more framework. Sample of this years work can be found at the ‘My Applications’ link at the top.
This is the first post in another effort to keep this website more up-to-date and it will be successful this time!!
Well, its Saturday now and I’m getting sorted for a fun night of playing Halo.
This week has been quite eventful, it started with a trip up to my parents last Saturday to say hello and pick up my suit, and in between now and then I have gotten two games I have been waiting for, a new flashy G15 keyboard and a placement interview!
On Monday I was in a bit of a spending mood, and started noticing that my keyboard was on its last legs, after doing a bit of online comparison I decided to get the Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard, which I am enjoying thoroughly so far. It has a small LCD screen which can be used for displaying PC statistics, download meters or game statistics (among many other things). The keys are alot nicer to use then my old keyboard, and the whole thing has a much nicer feel to it. It also has ‘G’ keys, which are basically very powerful macro keys.
This brings me quite nicely onto my next topic, Darkfall. This week Aventurine have been opening up a certain number of orders per-day and myself and quite a few Sturmgrenadiers were lucky enough to get in. So far I have been contributing to the building efforts and playing a role in our defence efforts. Its really living up to my expectations and I highly recommend giving it a go, so very enjoyable.
Using my new G15 and Darkfall together has been quite interesting. The Profile Manager which comes with the keyboard allows you to setup an infinite amount of key-presses, mouse clicks and delays in order to chain together interesting macros. For Example; very quickly you can put together a macro that will swap actionbars, equip a staff, cast a heal spell, then go back to the other weapon. Having this power really opens up a lot more opportunities.
This week has also seen the release of ‘Empire: Total War’ the next game in the long line of Creative Assembly’s Total War series. The main game is set in the 1700’s with an additional scripted campaign set as America battles for its Independence. If you have not seen this or other Total War games before then there is a demo out on Steam, you should also check out the video review below:
So far I am working my way through the Road to Independence campaign and am loving it so far. Its very strategic, detailed and in-depth. Despite some initial problems we had, myself and a few friends have had quite a few online games against each other and some AI. Unfortunately so far we can only have 1v1 sieges, however new maps may unlock later. Definitely pick up the demo for this!
Hello Everyone. In keeping with my recent endeavour to keep this site more updated I have quite a nice announcement to make.
Darkfall Online’s Admin staff have decided to remove the Non Disclosure Agreement, which means I am now free to announce that I am currently IN the beta and an active member within Sturmgrenadier (SG), whom I joined not to long ago. I got into the beta less than one month ago and have been trying to get in as much Darkfall time as possible.
This post will not be an in-depth review of the game as I feal I have not played it enough to give a proper opinion, on what is a game still in beta testing stages. Read more…