• 5Sep 08

  Its been a long ride

  
  

  

  Here with all his friends and family!

  Its been a long ride

  Feels like I have lost one of my best friends

  To let everybody know how it started I need to begin with the beginning.
  The year is 2003, I got drafted in the army and started to train to become a mountain ranger.
  Above the polar circle there really isn't any sun in the winter, so I had to do something when I was off duty.
  I wasn't really into the whole anime/manga thing, and I still aren't, but a friend of mine introduced me to dragonball and I decided to give it a shot.

  After reading the books I was addicted to the entire lore, the characters and the tension of the fights.
  It wasn't until I bought my laptop that I decided to buy the entire first sagas on DVD. I was still in the mountain rangers back then and we didn't have tv or internet, so I needed something to watch. After watching the anime I was surprised at how good it was. After all, the manga was so great but I had no clue the anime would be that great.

  End of my military career

  When I was done in the army, I found out that there was more of Dragonball and I started to read the continuation of Dragonball, Dragonball Z.
  Now all the characters were growing up, Son Goku the main character was growing up, like I had been the last 2 years. For me Dragonball was my buffer-zone. I used to read DB when I had hard times, savored it until I really needed it. It was my drug to take me to my safe zone.

  So after watching Goku growing up, it felt nice to see him getting a family and live happy and to be able to relax a little, even for a short amount of time. Again I felt like I had something in common with this character. Finally I was able to relax after some really hard years. He met old friends again after being away for a while, just like me. It was great!

  End of the saga

  A couple of months ago I got a new job and at the same time I bought the new branch of the series, Dragonball GT.
  Granted this series isn't as good as the rest of Dragonball, but this series brings a closure to one of what seems like one of my friends. In Dragonball GT Son Goku is transformed into a little boy again, and is again needed to save the galaxy from all the evil forces out there.

  At the end, a hero's legacy ends. Thank you Dragonball for all these great years I have had with you!
  You made a lot of hard times less rough.
  I will miss you Goku! It has been a long ride, it is several years since I first stumbled upon you Goku, now the story ends, and I am grateful for the years I have had with Dragonball. I only hope the DB movie coming next year isn't disappointing.

  

  • Posted Sep 5, 2008 6:34 am PT
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• 24Jan 08

  Linux. Will it ever be mainstream?

  

  Linux, will it ever be a mainsteam OS?
  

  Getting startet with Linux

  I've been trying getting into Linux the last 3 weeks now.
  Needless to say its been like a rollercoaster ride from hell.
  First to get it to install on my PC's isnt exactly easy because all my PC's have a next gen graphics card.
  My laptop have an older x1700 mobile, but it is almost impossible to get linux to run on it because x-server (the graphical interface) just crashes just after installing Linux.
  The motivation to learn Linux when I cant even get to see what im doing is just like wanting to play russian roulette if you know there are 6 loaded bullets in the gun.
  What am I supposed to do in a text based I/O system when I dont know any commands? Not up for a good start then.

  The second time i tried installing linux was with another distro, Linux Mint which is based on the hugely popular Ubuntu.
  Sadly I cant install my graphic card there neither because its an 8800 and the only way for me to install it is to use the one given at nVIDIA.com which is a .run file.
  In linux you dont have executable files like you do in Windows. Some files will launch in a packet manager, but not drivers etc.
  So there I was, trying to find a way to install the graphic card driver. Okay, open up the terminal (like command in Windows) type in the commands I thought was right. Nope didnt work.
  Back to google, searching for how to install nvidia run files. I found this guide, I had to terminate the X-server and use the non graphical user interface.
  Sadly after, I discovered it didnt work because still some systems were running in the background using the x-server. So I had to find a way to reboot into just the text I/O system without starting x.

  After about 4 hours of fiddling about I managed to get it working. What a waste of time, 4 hours to get hardware accelerated video.
  Why not make the driver files click and run? Why would you ever want to do things more complicated that they should be after windows have had easy installations for more than 10 years?
  Mac OSx also have files similiar to executable files. This is the first reason why you woulnt want Linux, its hugely time consuming. It might be "safer" because of less Virus infections etc, but what is the point of wasting money and time on such time consuming work when all this should just be done at the click of the mouse?

  

  Learning the new file systems.

  In windows, browsing files and folders are rather easy because windows have a structure which is based in a structure base like this ; Hard-drive->Partition->folders->files.
  Linux on the other hand doesnt have that structure. They do not separate things and partitions are nonexisting when it comes to browsing the file system. You dont have a C: dive, youhave (root) which is just a folder. Thats what linux do, Linux read everything as folders (except network drives). WHY?

  Possible future for the platform

  Very likely due to it complexity in getting up and running due to drivers, I personally dont think Linux will grow much on a popularity scale.
  The future lies with computers like the EEE pc or the Walmart PC running Linux.
  I personally like the way Linux have and are growing in the way of open and free software. But they should know that people are not willing to waset weeks upon weeks of learning a different Operating System when it is as sophisticated as Linux is. Just look at Apple computers, they were only aniche product, but now its growing hugely popular due to OSX is very easy to learn and use.
  Apple refuses to release their OS for other products than their own manufactured products, the reason for this is fear of driver compitability.
  Government and large corperations could also use linux because they just orders many pcs which doesnt need any good hardware and works almost out of the box with Linux. Its alot cheaper than buying tons of licenses from Microsoft and you can make it alot safer than microsoft. All that is left is to make all those employees take courses so they understand what they are doing. Doesnt come cheap.
  The server market is also pretty good for Linux, but if things doesnt improve, they will never make a dent in the Apple and Microsoft monopoly.
  
  Conclusion

  As long as there are people as me out in the world that isnt satisfied with pre assembled pcs, Microsoft will always be there to make OS's.
  Vista was a flop, so I am still waiting for Windows 7. If I want to become frustrated and furious I will attemt to get Linux to work the way I want. But until then, im going to stick with the simplicity of Windowsbecause I actually need to get work done. And when im done, watch a movie, series or play games with full (real) hardware acceleration.
  Linux can be installed on simple PC's like the EEE where all that is going to be done is office apps/browsing/email and they can work fine that way. But they will never as Windows and OSX if they dont improve their friendlyness towards users.

  • Posted Jan 24, 2008 3:50 am PT
  • Category: Computers
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• 8Nov 07

  Be prepared to be Lord British'fied

  Richard Garriotts Tabula Rasa
  

  1/2 of the max level

  Reaching the 60 hours playtime on Tabula Rasa for me was a milestone.
  Now, I played the Beta ALOT (in my opinion) but now that the game is out, my first impression is both good and bad. Do not get me wrong, I love Tabula Rasa, it is a game where you dont even grind. At least it doesnt feel like grinding,because killing things is so much fun. You have titles which is the same as achievements on the 360 where you can get a title in front of your name, thus get the glory you deserve.

  After doing all the missions in an area you get the title "Master of xxxx" for example Master of Wilderness.
  This is good news because the story in Tabula Rasa interests. The story makes me wanting to actually completing the game, do all the missions and so forth. But bugs and technical difficulties makes my goal so problematic, even completing quests is almost impossible and some cant even be completed because of bugs.
  On one mission I could not complete the quest because the NPC refused to accept my quest items, on other missions its just inhumane to look for the mission objective or you cant do it because the event interval or the spawn time is so insanely painful that you cant do them.

  There are certain missions that arent marked on the map, like "kill the caretaker mordra", now this mission could have been simple if they actually chose to tell me the region where "mordra" was. But this is not the case, all the info you get is "kill caretaker mordra" which is one of four (!) officers that you have to take out in order to actually be able to complete the mission and get Master of Divide (the region in this example).
  Me and my clan-mate ran around for HOURS looking for caretaker mordra, but it werent until we spotted the dead body lying on the ground that we knew where he was. It didnt help us though since he didnt spawn for several hours and we just gave up. We also asked several people and it was definately the right place.

  
  
  Base defense is one of the really cool aspects of the game, If the enemy over-runs the outpost you will need to retake it, which is assault. Really cool features.

  In divide (where mordra was supposed to be), me and a friend waited 4 hours for the Bane (The enemy in Tabula Rasa) to attack two outposts, there werent any attacks at all during those hours. Even though in the first region (Wilderness) there were constantly attacks, if not in the zone we were in you could always just change zones.

  Regions, Zones and European lag.

  The regions are split into zones, each zone has a population meter which tell you how many people are in every zone. Now this is a problem for the European server because there are only one (!?) european server. The server is full all the time and people are experiencing so much lag that in fact you cant play the game. Like in the region Palisades which is where I am now, I had to stop playing because there isnt more than one zone and the lag is insane. It takes about 30 seconds to change weapons compared to 0.2 seconds in the other regions.
  

  They admitted this and said that they will have to upgrade the server. What I do not understand is why Europe only has one server while the US have 3. I have never seen any US server have more population than medium, while the EU server have high or full all the time, this was incredible stupid of NCsoft and should not happen to a serious developer. They will have to fix this quick in order to keep the players (customers), including me.
  
  
  

  Battles are great fun and often very intense.

  
  I talked to technical support at NCsoft and they said that many of these bugs/issues will be fixed in the next update which they are currently testing internally. But it will take some time for this to be complete, my guess is one month. But if they had tested the game properly before launch this wouldn't be a problem.
  As for me, I have stored the game on my shelf until they have fixed the bugs, and fixed more EU servers.
  
  When everything comes down to it, Tabula Rasa is a good game.
  But so many bugs and technical difficulties on launch basically makes the game unplayable at some point.
  If you really want to do every possible thing in this game, you will have to wait until a HUGE fix is released. If you live in Europe you really should wait until they get more servers up.
  But if you just want to run around and shoot monsters, level up and get the best possible gear, this is still fun, but dont expect a lag free experience if you live in Europe.

  The review will be out as soon as I start playing it again when they have fixed the game.

  //Uberjannie out.

  • Posted Nov 8, 2007 3:42 am PT
  • Category: Editorial
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