Ramblings of a Coder

Team Work… sorta

Monday 12 July 2010 at 01:48 am

So, I’ve been actively doing another course lately. That's basically a remote team based course, and well its not went too well until the last week or so when because of the impending deadline for our first markable team submission people have actually began to communicate and read the communications from others.

Anyway, hopefully this keeps up because it will make the rest of the course a shit load easier and i really don’t want to be slogging through it at the pace we were. And i really want to get a head start on the next course, Which i can’t do with tasks from this one resting on my mind uncompleted. Get a breather for a day though, as I’ve submitted this paper earlier today and the new stuff won’t be available till midnight tomorrow.

I’ve been keeping a project log for this course, which has sorta stopped me blogged as most of the stuff I'd typically blog about have been going into my project log. I shall strive to stop this though, I have lots to say afterall!

In other news, We’ve basically reached our saving goal for moving home again. So the hunt is again active, finger crossed for this attempt for us?  

Beyond that not a lot else been going on, Its the summer holidays and G is loving every moment of it, it seems. He’s spent a few days Kiting, and we’ve just purchased him a new Buzz Lightyear figure which he loves. He got a few new 360 games too, But he’s still on a Transformers fix at the moment with Transformers War for Cybertron. I myself picked up a few new titles, the one that's most surprised me for enjoyment though is Alan Wake, i wasn’t expecting it to be as fun as it actually is. We also picked up Naughty Bear, Strange title but fun at the same time. Not something you can sit and play all day though. I should probably just make a games section on my site as i seem to buy to many and always end up just talking about them in a footnote on an entry like this. Something to ponder once i finally finish redoing this.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Education, Random, Gaming | One comment

Progress

Wednesday 05 May 2010 at 04:41 am

So, I went a bit quiet again. My own fault, I finally got my car back YAY. Only took like 4 weeks or so to replace the clutch. Studying away for my exam in June, That’s going ok. But the final assignment for the course has a deadline of 20th of May, So its kind of annoying me that i have that and its distracting from the final exam, but i have the past 5 or so years test papers and once the assignment is completely and handed in I’m going to sit down and do those and see what bits i really need to brush up on. Overall i feel confident that I’ll pass though, so that’s a bonus.

Next course has already started, thought it is in my opinion a fluff course. Team work in a distributed environment, FLUFF. See how it goes when i finally get to meet and get in contact with my team.

Slipped back into the bad habit of WoW though in the past few weeks… I know, I know… can we just leave that at that? I have absolutely no intentions of letting it take over again (Famous last words?) And have mostly just been PVPing so after 30mins/hour of getting soundly thrashed i usually turn it off anyway. Also ran through Halo 3 : ODST before the Halo Reach beta, and finished it on Legendary mode Co-Op with Twobits. Fun game on co-op, Multiplayer still feels a lot like Unreal to me, and i quickly loose interest. Halo Reach is mostly the same Multiplayer wise, not as twitchy though. And kind of evens the ground between pro/noobs so you don’t constantly feel like your dying with no revenge. Overall for me, fun to pickup and kill a few minutes with then go back to whatever you were doing before hand. Hoping the single player campaign is as good as the previous titles though and that they don’t pull a Call of Duty and just stick on flimsy excuse for a storyline to the multiplayer game.

We picked up G a Nintendo DSi too, which he LOVES for the moment. Got to watch him though because he’ll be off to “Bed” and then you’ll hear the Mario theme or Sonic and Sega’s All Star Racing theme playing from behind his covers or door.

Anyway, that's basically it. Study, Game, Study, Give G some attention, Study, Sleep.

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Education, Gaming | Two comments

Not so long fable

Thursday 15 January 2009 at 09:10 am

So, the downloadable content for Fable 2 was released, YAY cos we were awaiting that release eagerly. So last night there i was, bought my 1000 MS points and paid 800 for the addon. waited forever for the 500+mb thing to download, for some reason it kept stalling was rather annoying. But i finally got it and fired up the game. and off i went to the new Island

Flick forward an hour or two later, and the questline is finished. 

I feel cheated, sure it was a complete new zone. But it just wasnt long enough to warrent buying it, Tried it out on multiplayer with Daniel (Kerouac).. and god the multiplayer is a major disappointment too. A static camera view that really really gets in the way. We lasted about ooo 5mins max, and we both went back to our single player games.

Flick forward another hour or two, and i've not only finished the quest lines but also got all the achievements. Now Fable 2 really is a great game, but this addon was such a BIG let down. I was just absolutely no where near long enough. Containing basically 3 quests. Disappointed.

*additional note* i've changed the address for the blog, basically removed the /blog/ from the url. I never did what i was planning with the rest of the domain. so umm update yer bookmarks to just http://www.specis.me.uk/ *end of note*

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Gaming | One comment

Assessments and Warcrack

Monday 17 November 2008 at 8:00 pm

Turned in my assessment today, phew glad that's past now. Content was mostly ok but ya know how it is with assessments ya start to worry you've missed something or misunderstood a questions or some crap. Not to mention Wrath of the lich king was released just a few days before my cut off date. That could have been nasty.

I wasn't actually going to buy the expansion right off. Was standing off waiting on a version I could just buy online cos ya know I play on the US servers from the UK. But I logged in on the day of release and my good friend Dave greeted with me a welcome of "You need a cd key?" to which I replied "Yup, waiting on blizzard putting the digital version up for sale" and his reply was "I have a spare, let me finish this instance"

So 30mins later there I was with my account upgraded and downloading the 1.9Gb update. Good times to be had in Northrend! Bad side was I waited till today to go over my assessment and noticed I'd only partially answered a question! mad rush to get that finished and turned in which if I'd done what I've done everyday since release. Which is sit down and load warcraft. I would have missed it.

Anyway, Northrend calls. FOR DUN MOROGH, FOR THE ALLIANCE!

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Education, Gaming | One comment

Horde Faction Leaders Fall in One Swoop

Tuesday 16 September 2008 at 03:43 am

Tonight, My guild Conviction on the Suramar US realm decided to do the Horde faction leader in Silvermoon. and this is how the night went

Then we went to Undercity

Then onwards to Thunderbluff

And Finally to Orgrimmer

Cant see that we killed both Faction leaders in Orgrimmer, cos I didn't have time for screenshots as we were on the way to kill the Auctioneers and Bankers.

Rock in Conviction :D

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Gaming | One comment

"Multiboxing"

Saturday 17 May 2008 at 8:51 pm

"Multiboxing" yes i use the term very loosely, because i am not actually using more than one Computer just two seperate instances of Warcraft and a Keysending application to send specific keys to the other instance of Warcraft.

Anyway with that part over i resurrected my other half's account to try this out, and because basically i was bored of playing World of Warcraft and thought it might add a new dimension to it. It did, Its quite fun to play both characters at once. What I did notice though was that playing a Gnome Warrior in Un'goro can get a bit confusing as gnome's easily get lost in the foliage of the game in un'goro

Besides doing this i havnt done much more, Garion passed on some other nasty little infection to me *Typically for kids aint it* which wouldnt be much of a problem sept that it combined with the problems i already have with my throat can make it a challenge to breath at times.

So for the rest of the weekend I plan on either sweating this infection out or I'll be around online playing both characters at once and hoping to remember that the second character can actually do damage

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Gaming | One comment

Raiding in World of Warcraft

Friday 14 March 2008 at 03:18 am

For a long, long long time i've been a raider in World of Warcraft, in a small guild called Conviction. It is a great little guild and mostly it was a fun experiance. Course i played on the US realms so i was raiding at 1am to 5am.
I cant say it was ever a bad thing besides the 16 hours a week time sink. But damn it was fun. But alas! tonight i decided enough was enough and gave up my much coveted raid spot on my 70 Hunter Gindaeg. I loved clearing Mount Hyjal and Black temple was amazing too (All pre Attunement Nerf)

I just want my 16 hours a week raiding time back todo other stuff, like work on my Game that i've been working of for many many years. I want to finally finish it. Plus some other really cool stuff in the not so distant future :D

Charles McCrimmon (Specis) | ¶ | Gaming | Two comments