Over the past few months I've managed to conquer all of the new raiding material for World of Warcrft's Wrath of the Lich King.

It took awhile to gear my 4 chars up, and get them through Naxx. Though at last, one of them has completed norm and heroic modes respectively.

On to GTAIV for my downtime I think.

Movies of recent are kind of lame, and new tunes are meh. Metallica's new album is a desperate grasp at old school grooves that doesn't meet the standard.

Games are plentiful but I still don't own a new gen console so.. I'm out in the cold for awhile.

Waiting on the new WoW expansion for next month and thanks to Dan (from GSAU) and those who praised WoW, I'm basically addicted on and off.

Most of the best unions here on Gamespot are kind of dormant so if you have any suggestions I'd appreciate it

I just finished watching this excellent adventure/ true story/ drama called Into the wild. If you haven't seen it you may want to check that bad boy out.

Honorable mention to this really gripping drama The King of Kong which follows Steve Weibe on his quest to beat Billy Mitchell the current reigning Donkey Kong World Champion. You'll laugh and cry, well you'll laugh and Steve will cry

"Woah", because thats what I thought when I played it online for the first time. It's been so long since I played COD3 (which Igot sick of in about 1 month) but now that 4 is here I'm pretty impressed.

Many people have many differing opinions on this game, but I enjoy the shoot em' up first person shooters. Respawns are cool, athough this Call of Duty has a mode that takes respawns away apparently. Not that I've seen anyone using it

So I'm working my way up to lvl 55 so I can go into Prestige mode and lose my weapons and start all over again hehehehe

Hope u all had a safe Xmas and New Year. Welcome to 08

Well my TV recently died so I find myself gaming alot more than usual when I get home. I finished my senior first aid certificate and responsible service of alcohol. I just need to finish off a few modules from the law component to get my licence for security work. That oughta tie me over for awhile until I work up the ranks

Another thing that happened to me was being given an opportunity to rock out with the GameSpot AU team in a schwank bar in Sydney last week. Total awesome fun playing Rock Band pre-release with a bunch of die hard gamers and the interested alike. Plus there was of course the added incentive of meeting the GSAU crew (which I had done previously this year also) and drink all the alcohol that CNET could afford to place on the bar tab

Stay safe, Merry Christmas , and have a Happy New Year.

This month has been cool. Catching up on some game time with the awesome new RTS World in Conflict. It comes as a surprise to me that I should like it so much because I generally don't play many RTS' due to the tedious resource gathering and timely stategic battle planning. Thats where this game shines the most to me. As in it was explained in the review, this game delivers units/vehicles endlessly in a quick manner to you so that your hardly ever disengaged from the game play / battle. Totally worth the 9.5 rating it recieved at GS.

This past month I've also been racing online with SA:MP in my spare time. GTA San Andreas is the ultimate free roam city IMO and what better way to utilize it than by having races online. They've of course been precoded by some small genius who runs several servers. So thank you to the [ESC] Clan
Here's a small video of our that Patriot race


The most recent film I've seen to date was a big disappointment. Luckily it didn't cost much for us to see it or I might have been angry, because this film isn't much more than a glorified slasher. Although I don't want to take credit away where it is due, IMO it sucked hard and shouldn't have been made. Saw - Saw III are at the top of the pack for horror/thrillers, but IV is a joke. ->My Review here

YAY!

Things have gotten out of hand in my circles lately so I've had to take a leave of absence.

Don't know when I'll be back, only that this is important and its already cost me a free trip to the Sony Experience More Showcase which apparently, was excellent.

Missing all the action, DarK.

(Keeping it short but thx to you all we'll game real soon )

We attended Play the symphonic musical gaming scores reproduced by the Sydney Orchestra. Mario Bros was right up there with so many, many more. The Halo theme was my favorite by far, complete with choir it just sounded terrific.

About my PC, I was really wondering if buying a 7 series Nvidia graphics card is worth it. I only have an AGP board though so I'm feeling that its time to upgrade the mobo that I purchased (being a PCI-e n00b) earlier this year. Please help me to make my mind up.

Stay safe through the holidays people and remember, don't game with anyone over 30

I've put a few videos on here of some gameplay and my PC specs.
I finally added most of my games here and recieved a nifty emblem for my troubles.

There are a few more emblems on my profile as you may be aware, and I finally recieved my HOV emblem

I struck a chord in some people with my last blog so I'll lay off the gta sa:mp for awhile.

Oh and, I won a sweet double pass to go see the new performance Play @ The Sydney Opera House which we're excited about.
All thx to the great people at cnet / au.gamespot.com.

I'm happy we'll get to see this performance because I originally thought the ticket price was too high but also;
au.gamespot are giving away tickets that are reduced by $20 *here*

More next month DarK

If you've never heard of this or played it yourself, its the unofficial hack that allows you to play the multi award winning Rockstar game Grand Theft Auto San Andreas online with multitudes of other PC gamers.

While I've been gaming there with the other SA:MP'ers for as long as I've had the game itself on PC, I feel the need to blog something important to me. If your going to game online, don't cheat. Its a huge waste of time, and it degrades the actual experience for everyone else your cheating. Granted that it allows some cool features like teleporting instantly to distant locations across the San Andreas landscape, it also heightens the suspicions of almost every single gamer in a server.

They're all so ultra paranoid these days and quick to ban that its become a less fun experience and a more frustrating one, having to explain that someone is a crap shot and the reason you killed them so easily was because you have a joypad allowing for auto aim (ala the PS2 and Xbox versions) is annoying to say the least. This is one of only many many scenarios that really taint the whole experience that it used to be.

Overall the SA:MP project is still and probably always will be worth looking into and experiencing for yourself, but for the love of God..don't be a cheat its just a pain in the ass to all the decent fun loving gamers out there looking for an honest match-up. There are many servers out there with cool honest people out there and then again you always have the option to get your friends involved with your own server which is relatively easy to setup. Message me if you wnat to know more about setting up your own server.

I finally managed to reach a comfortable medium on my PC between, gaming and other multi-tasking processes.

This time around, I put a new install of Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10 (the other one corrupted) and a fresh install of Windows XP Pro (Which games as well as the other editions of XP)

Obviously since (from my last post) Linux doesn't have free gaming support to play Win encoded games, I have to use the Win partition for gaming. That was basically the whole idea of this excercise.

Safe to say now, I have a competent gaming system with an equally competent everyday multi-tasking OS that has awesome eye candy. Not entirely what I was after, but its 90% the way there.

PS: I spent my bday avoiding my parental responsibilities playing American Armies all day on the Windows partition with a PS2 controller -> USB adapter. Not bad if I do say so myself. If you need to know about getting the axis to work properly msg me and I'll give you my 100% working user.ini file.

Well I wrote that recently I've been experimenting with Linux and their series of Ubuntu distributions.
The overall look of this operating system is awesome and granted that you have a decent 256mb graphics card, you'll get to see all the latest eye candy that the makers of Beryl theme manger bring.

More seriously though, gaming with this operating system seems unlikely and now that I want to get back into PC gaming, it looks like Linux Ubuntu will take a back seat to Windows XP for me. Even though I am trying to use the windows emulator Wine.

I'm just keepin it real.

I decided to post my setups here. I know its not much but I've always kept everything kinda simple.










My TV is only 56CM TCR pos, but it serves its purpose and was really cheap brand new last year. We got 2 DivX players (one out there) that play the lot basically and a 300 watt amp with 2x10" and 2x7" speakers hooked up in only a bridged stereo configuration. Theres always a PS2 in the lounge and a PC there too that has the Internet and is part of a LAN. I have a 320 GiB media share that every PC and xbox can connect to just because I can hehe and I love movies and music.





I loved gaming with my PC, but recently I've been experimenting with Ubuntu Edgy and Beryl with the Emerald manager. If you've never heard of that; its basically a theme manager that gives you a 3d look to your multi-desktop OS Ubuntu. KDE is another that I played with but this is the final look for the moment. Ubuntu Satanic Edition lol. Thats what the maker called it, so I blew it up and added flame backgrounds to every window as well as the default wallpaper and skydome.

Edit: I should mention also that my PC has 512 RAM , GeForce FX5500, 2.8 Intel on a Asus VM mobo, an 80 GiB hdd for the OS and a 250 connected for the media. A 10 GiB hdd for Linux.
The Lounge room PC has an 80GiB hdd with a smaller one for the operating system which are all WinXP Pro. My girlfriends is basically the same. Our computer room is twice as the lounge room btw hahaha. You gotta keep it real. Thats where I live

Most of you are thinking, thats not that good and mine is heaps better than that. Well to you I say congratulations. You're truly a$$es for not inviting me over

Your all Welcome at casa del ÐarK™

edit: Our first child Keiran was born 08/03/07

So many people are going to want this operating system, and yet it seems too premature to be here. Its like an under-cooked chicken or something that the real tech critics are cursing out.



Bill Gates and his team of developers are developing , not the next best operating system as a must have, but a way to legally extort users into purchasing the next gen OS so they can make lots more money before Linux and others come along to fully ruin their party.

Thats kind of bleak and I'm sure we'll all come to love it (when they sort out all its major bugs and driver issues) , but for now I know alot of us will stick with their last Frankenstein XP.