Kudos

Sometimes I just have to admire the shear brilliance in certain ad campaigns.

You watch some on TV, think, "wow, this is pretty cheesy", and then, two days later, you find yourself thinking "stark? är den typ stark stark?", or singing "in i mikron, där blir maten riktigt bra". The masterminds behind these adverts are geniuses.

For great justice

There really is nothing more satisfying then when idiots get what they deserve. Over the past 2-3 days, I've had two of these encounters in Warcraft.

The first one happened a couple of days ago, when me and a friend had battled our way through a cave full of monsters, to try and kill the three boss mobs. Once we got there, we were surprised to find another group of two players waiting for the bosses to spawn. I asked if they wanted to combine our groups, as the quest was only about killing these guys, and if we teamed up, it would be easier, and less painful for everyone. Under normal circumstances, this is a retorical question, because there really is no point in not joining forces.

But, nooo, these guys didn't want any part of it. They wanted both teams to go through the boring ordeal of waiting for the bosses to show up (we probably waited 5-10 minutes for them to show).

This basically turns the encounter into a stupid race, because the team that hits a mob first gets the kill. My characters is a mage, and has a spell that instantly hits everyone withing a 10 yard radius for a little bit of damage. The damage is small compaired to the mobs health, but more that sufficient to tag the creatures, so we get the kill. And this is exactly what happened. The guys spawn, I blast frost nova, we kill the bad guys, and we're done. The other team is left standing there swearing like sailors. To top it off, while we were leaving, they got jumped by 4-5 other mobs, and I'm guessing that they died. Hilarious.


The second encounter happened earlier tonight, when I was in a party of three, questing up in the mountains of Redridge. All of a sudden, a rogue runs up to me, and starts challenging me to duels. I decline, as I'm obviously busy with my group.

He is really a persistent prick, and keeps spamming me with 6-7 challenges. And I keep declining. He then proceeds to call me a coward, and I reply, "yeah, whatever, now please fuck off". This doesn't really help the situation much (in retrospect, I should probably have explained the situation to the guy. Oh well). I decide that I might as well accept the duel, just sit there, and let him get the win.

The duel starts, I sit down, and he goes into stealth mode. The funny thing is that I can see him sneaking around behind me, so I think "nah, I think I'll give it a try". I basically do what I'm supposed to when battling rogues, keeping him at a distance, and hitting him with my heavy nukes. Everything just clicks here, and after my second hit and run, I notice that he is just about dead. This is also when I notice that I've actually frozen him to the ground in the midst of the monsters that my group was busy fighting. And the monsters don't seem to have anything against finishing off what little health the rogue has left. He dies, I run over to his corpse, point and laugh.

For great justice!

I just love this guy

It doesn't really matter if you don't understand a word of what Furor Planedefiler is saying, anyone that describes the discovery of a new world in a online game like this is worth a god damn medal.

"After a grueling six hour festival of "dildo" jokes, the Fires of Heaven finally entered the Plane of Earth, Part B aka the place that both Siegfried and Roy would not be allowed to enter on grounds of 'not being gay enough.' No, not even if Roy strapped Richard Simmons onto his back and carried him around like Chewbacca did C3P0 in The Empire Strikes Back

When I asked Sylvos what his professional opinion of the zone was, he answered "this is an as of yet undiscovered form of gay." Guildmembers were left awestruck. Not because of the zone itself so much, but that Sylvos had actually discovered a new form of gay. This warrior can't say his butthole didn't pucker up just that much tighter when he heard those comments. Truth be told, I brought out the sewing kit - IRL. It's like shitting through a spaghetti strainer - it's money.

I wasn't about to stand idly by and be sucked in by this homosexual vaccuum. I picked up the damn batphone and rang Commissioner Gordon - I had to get to the bottom of this, and fast. What you are about to see is a top secret transcript of a recording made of a conference between the current Everquest producer and the lead and associate designers, respectively.

Producer: I suppose you are both wondering why I've called you in today?

Lead Designer: We've done your bidding, Master.

Associate Designer: Perhaps you want to tie us up and use our testicles as Ben-Wa balls again, Master?

Producer: We'll get to that later. *Meow* I have a problem that needs to be dealt with immediately.

*The designers perk up* Yes Master, what is it?

Producer: I need gay. There are people getting into the Plane of Earth B.

Lead Designer: Plane of Air gay?

Producer: Gayer...

Associate Designer: Plane of Water gay?

Producer: Gayer x 10...

Lead Designer: Master, the estate of Little Richard sued us when we went Gayer x 10 and made the Plane of Earth A.. and Little Richard isn't even dead yet.

Producer: We have more money than Jesus and we need to retain that status. Lawsuits be damned. I want you to go Liberace Squared.

Designers: It's just not possible.... It... It cannot be done.

Producer: It can and will be done. Go back to your roots. Think fools.... Think...."



Find the masterpiece in its entirety here.

Kinda funny

I've tried out a whole bunch of anti spyware programs in the past, and the one I chose in the end was Giant AntiSpyware. This was all fine and dandy, until one day I logged in on their website to download a new version, and was greeted with a statement proclaiming that they had been purchased by Microsoft.

Now, I'm in now way going to bitch about business practices, and stuff like that, because frankly, I don't give a rat's ass. I'm pretty sure that the guys at Giant are filthy rich, and that this move will most likely end up benifitting the end-users.

Aaaanyway, today I came across a download for the new Microsoft AntiSpyware, and started installing. I couldn't help chuckling a bit, when I noticed that nothing had changed from Giant to M$, apart from what looked like a global search and replace.

Two things pop up in my head. 1) Why is this called Beta 1, when the Giant guys were actually selling the product. 2) I'm curious as to whether Bill G is going to charge money for the program. If not, then I think I have to proclaim him Robin Hood of the day. And if he is, well I'm just going to warez it anyway :P

Bitter realization

I became a computer programmer because I envisioned a day when we would be the next rock stars. We would be worshiped like gods, and provided with all the free chicks and drugs we could handle.

I sadly now realize that this just isn't going to happen.


This just cracked me up (thanks Shades!). Yes, I truely belive that if children are getting into trouble on teh int4rnet, it all has to do with parents not understanding leetspeek.

Oh, and don't forget:
"ph": often replaces "f," as in "phear" for "fear" (as in "ph34r my l33t skillz") .

Radio silence

Wow, I've actually been quiet for five days. Scary!

I really don't have much to report, as most things have just been working as intended; despite my previous rant about Warcraft, it still is the best thing since sliced bread, and I've pretty much played every waking hour since it was released.

I've also started arriving at work on time. Well, close enough, at least.


Quote of the day? Perhaps.
> Congradulations on spelling congradulations wrong while calling someone retarded.

Pissed off

Once upon a time, the only thing I wanted to do was work at Blizzard, because I thought they made the best games in the world.

That time has passed.

During the WoW beta, I noticed several bugs, like getting stuck in looting poses, pet skills disappearing, AH items and money disappearing, but I thought that everything would be fixed by the time the game hit retail.

Then I started reading about the missing and/or bugged end game content, but I figured this would all be fixed by the time I finally dinged 60.

So, today I finally got my game, installed it, and clicked "Create Account". No dice. The fucking account creation page has been taken down due to heavy traffic. And to make matters worse, I checked the forums, and the exact same thing that happened when the US retail launched 3 months ago.

I just can't accept when people don't learn from the mistakes. I really pisses me off. And in this case, they knew the exakt amount of pre-orders, and could have stress tested their servers to see if the damn machines actually could handle the load.


I'm not saying that I'm going to be spending a good portion of my free time playing the game, because I am, and I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever had so much fun with a single game, as I've had with WoW.

The problem is basically living up to the hype and the reputation, and I dare say that this just hasn't worked out.

Being in the gay ministry, I know that things can get seriously fucked up, and sometimes you just have to bite the bullit, and release a buggy first version, and work your ass off for a patch.

The thing that scares me is the thought of all the weird bugs that can crop up in a MMO. Stuff that will never be found by QA, and even if someone does stumble upon it, it will be nearly impossible to reproduce. I mean, we had a single player game (albiet multithreaded), and we still have bugs that we can't reproduce. Even if Blizzard's QA doesn't suck as much ass as our's did, I don't envy the task. I think what I'm trying to say is that I don't know if all the bugs will actualy be fixed. Ever.

For us poker luvahs

I just finished watching the pilot for Tilt, a series about, surprise, surprise, poker players. These guys lost all their cash to a cheating pro (played by Michael Madsen) who goes by the name of The Matador, and are commited to winning it back. Check it out!

Oh, yeah, Numb3rs wasn't half bad either.

A new time sink?

So, I've pretty much grown tired of Blizzard's own Warcraft forums, and was pointed to the Fires of Heaven forums by a good friend. These have to be the funniest forums I've ever read. Most of the people posting are hard core MMO guys, all 60s, and they have so much pride, and are sooo easily provoked and offended that sometimes I just can't help laughing out loud.

Ok, slightly updated, I now realize that the profanity these guys use doesn't really mean that they're pissed off or anything, it's just standard lingo. But it is hilarious.

I mean, this is just from one random thread.

> What bothers me about this is that they can fix bugs and quickly. They are willing to do it asap if it means preventing players from getting an unwanted advantage. Yet they are not willing to hotfix bugs that hinder gameplay.

> Kolle this has to be the most succint and dead on accurate observation made on this forum in recent memory. Well done. Now...get the fuck out of here you're too smart for your own good.



> To bad none of those who scream paladin nerf play one to 50+. See how little DPS we do, how little utility we have, and lack of combat options. And the fact we have horrible taunting.

> While I hate to waste a post, please.. Shut... the... fuck... UP... Penix.

> Ohh noehz, your awesome internet skillz make me cry . You are just as retarded as angry gerbil, welcome to ignore dumbass.


I just found something else pretty funny (yeah, I'm naïve). If you search for warcraft on ebay, you'll find tons of people selling ingame gold. The going rate seems to be able 100 gold for $35.

Food in abundance

When cooking for myself, I love making really large portions, that I can wallow in, eat till I feal I'm going to explode, have a little nap, and then just another bite or two. Today I just made one of my favourite quick lunches, baked potatoes with creme fraiche.

It goes something like this:

2 potatoes for 1 portion

Creme fraiche (for 2 portions)
2 packets of creme fraiche. I usually use tomato/chili, but today I used basil and garlic.
2 red onions, slice and dice
2 red chilis. chop chop chop
2 cloves of garlic. press.
2-3 spoons of dijon mustard. I love dijon, so I might be using too much for some people.
acacio honey (the liquid kind). a good old squirt.
chive (gräslök). fresh is great, but frozen works too.
salt & peppar.

Just stick the potatoes in the micro (make some holes in 'em first). 15-16 minutes. Pour the creme fraiche into a large bowl, and stir it a bit. Now you just chop everything up and stuff it in the bowl. Add the mustard and honey, stir some more and have a little taste. More mustard? More salt? Go wild.

The great thing is that it takes around 10 minutes to prepare the sauce, so you have enough time to clean up before the potatoes are done.

Enjoy!


I just downloaded the first episode of "Numb3rs", a kind of CSI meets A Beautiful Mind. I haven't seen enough to be able to decide if it's cheesy or not, but it's probably worth checking out.

Spikes in your NVPerfHUD profile?

So, I was profiling some stuff today with NVPerfHUD and NVShaderPerf (both tools rock, btw. I really wish ATI would release something like this soon), and I was getting some strange spikes in my profile. These spikes were causing my fps to vary between 3 and 300. Pretty damn annoying.

I wasn't doing anything strange at all, only using 8 meg video memory, and making 12 DP calls per frame. I thought I might be pixel shader limited (I was running 5 passes of a 15-tap Gaussian blur), but changing this to a simple 2 instruction "texture lookup and output" made no difference.



It really did look like some extra work was being done every second. After reading through Nvidias optimizing tricks, and trying to find the culprit, and shut down ICQ by mistake, and lo and behold, the spikes where gone. I started ICQ again, the spikes returned. I suspect some kind of network crap going on every second, but I don't really have any good way of finding out.

And all this before 12 o'clock. Pretty damn freaky.

Isn't it funny..

Isn't is funny when celebrities get married, or otherwise change their name, everyone is supposed to accept the new name like nothing's happened. The same thing happened to the WWF, and I still have a hard time with it. Damn pandas.


My gut feeling tells me that the VCR is quietly disappearing from the essential household items list. A quick glance on the SIBA website seems to confirm my suspicions. Go figure.


A friend of mine studies interaction design, something that I actually think is very important, if done by intelligent and competent people. Anyhow, today she got one of the funniest disses I've heard in a long time: "We don't hire interaction designers, because we don't want to lose revenue on support bills". That's something I just have to start saying :)


Sometimes I love the little things. Sesame seed bread, with some nice cheese (the Danish Sorte Sara is off the hizook), or turkey breast (with mustard) can really make an evening great.

A new threat

Today something unbelievable happened; I got up at 8.30 am, and I'll be on my way to work in 30-45 minutes or so.

I'm actually going to make it before the 10.00 am deadline for the first time in ages. I'm such a brown noser ;)

The plot thickens..

"Du har upprepade gånger kommit för sent till arbetet. Trots tillsägelser från företagets sida har ingen förbättring skett. Vi ser allvarligt på ditt beteende. Om det upprepas kan vi tvingas ompröva din anställning hos oss".

This note was on my desk when I arrived at work today. What can I say? It was pretty much inevitable, and I think I milked the situation for as long as was humanly possible.

The question I have to ponder now is, what's next? I mean, I'm not doing anything productive at work, and I haven't been given a single task the whole year. Between October and December last year, I think I actually worked two or three days. The situation as it stands is just plain absurd, but until Martin either offers me a job, or says that it isn't going to happen, I'm pretty much stuck here.

It really does suck ass.

Oh, yeah, I passed my economics exam. Woh-fucking-hooh.

Kinda sweet

So, this morning, probably around 5-ish, sulphuric acid somehow leaked into the water here in Helsingborg, creating a killer gas cloud, that was generally considered best avoided, if you cherished your health.

I, myself, was up farming gnolls for wool in south-east Wetlands until around 5 am, and was blissfully unaware of any gaseous menace. Well, except my own, of course.

Around 6 am, the phone calls began, with about one per hour from worried relatives. The should probably know that I don't get up before 10, so I'm not likely going to be indulging in any activities in the harbour (hello sailor!) before then, but still, it was kinda sweet.


Fan, att det ska vara så svårt att veta hur man ska blogga om den judiska tvåbarnsmorsan. Jag vill så gärna kommentera dels att det är skoj med min första "riktiga" besökare (sorry alla andra), och dels att hon verkar rätt, tja, knasig, helt enkelt.

Jag gillar hennes sexbloggar, även om jag begick misstaget att läsa postningen om hur hennes bröst förvandlades till det sämre efter hon fött sina ungar, samtidigt som hon faktiskt har rätt härliga stalkertendenser, och verkar nästan bli sur när folk inte kommenterar.

Och så är det hela den judiska/kaballa-grejen, som jag inte riktigt vet om jag ska våga driva med. Jag menar, om både Brittney Spears och Monica Lewinski håller på med det, så måste det ju vara bra. Eller? Jag får rota i skrifterna, helt enkelt.

Hrm, det känns faktiskt som ett intrång när jag börjar fundera på om jag ska skriva det jag tänker bara för att någon annan kanske råkar läsa det. Jag inser nu varför man kan välja att stänga av kommenterar..

Another amazing discovery!

This week must be science week on the Discovery Channel, because I just made other amazing discovery!

You can, in fact, eat lunch almost directly after you've had breakfast, and this results in you being well fed for say 6 to 7 hours!

I think I'm at the apex of my slacking days right now, so I get up around 10-11, idle around my appartment for a bit, shower around noon, have a quick breakfast, then head off to work. I usually end up being hungry around 14-15 or so, and seeing as I plan on heading home around 17, it seems like both a waste of time and money to grab a bite at McDonalds, or some other high class establishment. I've tried skipping lunch, but this just results in me becoming cranky and unfocused, which is pretty stupid.

If I instead eat both breakfast and lunch before work, I can safely mess about till 17, and feel happy and content the whole time! Yay me!

The best show ever?

I'm on such a high right now, so I'll rave about something I totally forgot about yesterday.

Club Goa, on TV3, is probably the best show ever! The brilliant producers have managed to assemble a cast of the most stupid, irritating and just plain obnoxious reality show personalities from TV over the past 2-3 years, and put them together in a single show!

My three favorites must be Meral "owned by TV3" Tasbas (she's apparently married now? wtf?), Villa Medusa Stefan (he was such a blast to watch. I hope he's still dating Sexiga Sandra) and Zübeyde, the hair dresser. And they've managed to get that annoying git Sebastian from Farmen, along with Qristina (the ugly sailor), also from Farmen.

Damn, this is gonna be good.

The panic button [the crisis has been averted]

After giving yesterday's events carefull thought, where things like quiting right away, becoming a poker pro, and the fact that my boss is an evil mastermind popped up, I realize that I might have hit the panic button a bit prematurely.

I think I can avoid being deported, if I, get this, actually start working again. It's funny how I've gotten so used to doing as I please (and getting paid for it), that the blindingly obvious solution was completely invisible to me.

Oh yeah, a big thank you to my supportive friends who started singing "Living in America" on ICQ. Thanks a bunch, guys.


By the way, I've optimized my hair product routine! The hand wash in phase 3 can actually safely be skipped.


Update! I'm not going anywhere!

I just spoke to the boss, and said that I just plain didn't want to go to Houston, and he accepted it. I am sooo relieved. On a related kind of cool side note, he asked what I wanted to do, and I said that I'd like to try some AI coding, seeing that I've been doing graphics for about a gazillion years.

This turned out to be a pretty lucky call, as it seems that Age of Empires for Gizmondo is going to be made in Sweden, and I'll probably end up helping out there. This will mean the end of my slacking days, but hey, it does actually sound like fun.

The wakeup call

I was sitting in my office, minding my own business (actually reading WoW-forums), when the boss comes in. Right away, I could feel that this wasn't going to be good.

He begins in his round about way, saying random this like "yeah, it's a shame that we haven't got any more Gizmondos here" and stuff like that. This is quite funny, actually. We are now owned by Gizmondo, and are supposed to be developing games for the machine. At last count, I think we had two whole units, for 10 programmers and 5-6 artists.

He asks what I'm up to, and a pseudo lie, saying I'm working on some of my own projects, trying to keep my self a jour. After three years here, I know that if I just say something that sounds halfway plausible, I'm usually off the hook. He seems to buy it. Good.

He then says that our sound guy is on his way to Texas, to help out at the Gizmondo studio over there. I do not like the sudden turn the conversation has taken. I try to sound enthusiastic, and say that it sounds cool and things like that, hoping he'll leave soon.

Then the disguised question comes "I hear they need more programmers over there, but they can't hire anyone else". Shit. I start rambling about how the sound guy is probably a better choice, with his low level expertiece, stuff like that, and the boss tells me that he's going anyway.

He asks me if I'd like to see what it's like over in Houston, and that he's going to get some more information on what positions they need filling. I say I'll think about it, and he leaves.

And that's were I'm at right now. I don't know what to do at all.

My plan the whole time has been to wait for a friend (Martin) who's moved to Göteborg to raise enough money to be able to start a small games company (around 5-6 people), and when he's ready, I'll quit my job here, and move. The company's sudden desire to relocate me to a different continent messes up my plans quite a bit.

I just msged Martin and asked if he thought that it would be possible to raise the money he needed in 3 months, and said that I was planning on a premature resignation. I really hate putting pressure on people that way; especially people who border on the philanthropic. But right now, it's all about me trying to save my own ass.

Updates are sure to follow..