After christmas

Going to Linköping tomorrow to celebrate the new year with Lisa, its gonna be fun. We haven’t seen each other for a couple of weeks but we’re probably gonna spend the rest of the holidays togheter as far as I know and then travel to Skellefteå togheter next week.

Christmas was nice by the way, it was an pleasent evening with a lot of good food, maybe even too much good food, and nice company. I recieved two christmas presents that day, a mouse to my laptop and a towel. But then I recieved my laptop earlier in December and the days before I got a haircut and went to the dentist.

I might have figured out what I want to do at my upcoming project in school where we get pretty much free hands to do whatever we like, kinda. But I’m not gonna tell anything here at the moment, I’ll wait for a bit longer so I can check that my ideas is doable and okey from the school.

Else then celebrating christmas I havn’t really done that much during my christmas holiday. Went to Eskilstuna centrum today with my mam since she wanted to buy me some cloths. It resulted in 2 sweatshirts, one winterjacket, one green t-shirt, a three pack of underwear and four pair of socks I think.

I have done some school work, have finally came up with how my Far Cry map is supposed to look like. To bad I put it in wrong environment, I want it to take place in a lakeside forest but the game enginee pretty much only supports djungle environments. To bad for me that is but I’m going to talk to Walter when he gets back to Skellefteå to see if there is some pack with coniferus forest models that I can use. Why do I never do only what is what I need? I like what I do and to do different stuff that ain’t what everybody else does I guess.

Thats enough for today, I feel that writing isn’t my strong side today so I’m gonna end this here and now. Bye!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all have a nice day with your familys and that you’ll get to eat a nice christmas dinner with all that comes with it. A small update on last nights blog is that I won’t get to see my two cousins who apperantly won’t come and one of two names were correct and ofcourse I can’t remember the correct ones but I don’t have to since they won’t be here =P

Again merry christmas to you all!

Day before christmas

The day before christmas, it doesn’t feel so chrismasy here in the middle of Sweden. There is no snow, the house isn’t full of christmas things and I already got a couple of my christmas gifts for this year, the laptop and the things I got from Lisa. Tomorrow I’ll receive something from my brother and that might be it pretty much. But christmas is about other stuff then gifts now adays, its about spending time with your family and cousins. Tomorrow I’ll get to see Martin and Martina, atleast I think thats their names, my two cousins on my mothers side. Haven’t seen them for ages so it’s gonna be fun. Then there is grandparents from both mother and father and some other people I guess. But hopefully it will end nice with full bellies and so. Apperantly I’m the one who’s going to make the Janssons Temptation tomorrow but they use to say stuff like that and in the end I’ll end up doing not that much.

I was at the dentist today, I had no problems with my teeths which was nice. They polished a bit and recomended me to use dental floss which I have tried to get used to but never got it as a habbit. I’m going to try that next year and hopefully I’ll make it. The dentist was a friend to the family and he made a good job, first time at his office and seeing him in action.

Yesterday I got a haircut, I didn’t cut it real short since I kinda enjoy a bit lenght on the hair. This time in the chair I didn’t want to shave it all of like last time but this time I got a good haircutter so it might have been because of that. I bought wax or something today for the hair and I’m gonna try it out tomorrow so at the moment I haven’t discovered what things I can do with my hair.

On the games front I installed Half Life today, played it a bit and damn the opening sequence is good, its one like that that I dream of creating but maybe a bit more playable. In HL you stand on a tram for a really long time inside some tunnels and facilities. What if you where riding the tram in San Francisco and could jump of anywhere and after 5 minutes the ground would shake no matter where you where. Either you went on the tram and came closer to your goal and doesn’t have to walk as far after the shake as maybe before if you jumped of early.

I tried another game today called Eternity’s Child, it was downloadable from Steam and the full game only cost like €5 which isn’t that much for a game. Its an adventure game where you controll two characters. One is controlled with the keybord and is the one you navigate with and the other is your weapon and is controlled with the mouse. You point and click at things and she shoots stuff. the graphics is all hand drawn and looks stunning, I hope I can draw like that some day. I think it’s all done in Illustratior but I might be completely wrong. The reviews of the game have been really bad thou, some sites have even giving it a 1 out of 10 which is really bad. But I’m thinking of giving it a chance, I read something about a patch and even if its bad I support someones dream which I hope people will do with my games in the future.

Indie games are quite nice actually. Then someone might wonder what indiegames is? I call indie games games that have been developed either by a single person or a small group of games and that might not have been getting a lot of money from any publisher, they paid for it by themself. Another indie game is Aquaria, I tried it last year but never bought it. It have recently found its way up on Steam and it still looks good so I might atleast try the demo again.

The problem at the moment is that there are a lot of sales on the internet where they sell games cheap and I have found a couple of games I want to buy, Haze to mention one, and I have four games at home that I just recently bought, Shaun White and Prince of Perisa plus Lego Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda so I’m not really in need of any more videogames but its cheap and thats the problem. I saw Haze earlier today for 150SEK which isn’t that much money but I know how it is to have a lot of games in the shelve and not playing them. I have been there before and its a waist of money, just buying games because they’re cheap could work when you have an employment and recieve more money then I do monthly at the moment.

Its now Steam and digital games are nice. I’m like 70 mils from home and the rest of my games but with Steam I can download the games from here as well and play them without cds and stuff. Sure I can’t put them in the shelve at home or sell them but some games aren’t made to be sold. Indie games that is bought for 100SEK isn’t anything you sell since you won’t get any money for them on the second hand market. So games like those, Eternitys Child and Aquaria which is two good examples, could easily be bought online.

By the way, Spotify is really nice. I have listend to some music I usually wouldn’t and I like the program. It’s nice to just search for an artist and get up his/hers/theirs albums and just browse freely and listned to whatever fits you.

I’m starting to think that I probably should shut down the computer for the day and get to bed and read my book, Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett, the third Discworld novel. It’s pretty nice so far and I’ll hope I’ll read it throu during the holidays now so I don’t lose the trail when school starts.

Nighty night and if I don’t blog anything tomorrow, Merry Christmas to you all!

Knowledge of games != computers

I’ve discovered something, if you like computer games, like I do, people think you know all this other stuff about computers that have nothing to do with games. My parents have always thought of me to be a computer expert, if there is something wrong with a computer I am the one who can fix it. Well, news flash, I can’t. Sure I might know a bit more then the average person about computers but I still don’t know everything about them. That means if there is a problem with the wireless network that I installed yesterday, I should be able to fix it. News flash again, I can’t. To install the wireless router and stuff you just followed a simple guide that would be doable if you have knowleadge about reading stuff.

It is often so, companies wants there programs to be used so they make them simple to install and use, you don’t need to be a computer engineer to install a program or to use a specific program, you might just have to read what it says and follow the instructions.

But sure, my generation of people have grown up with computers and I have spent a lot of time infront of them so for me things might seem obvious and simple, it might not be the same for those who havn’t spent most of their their teenage years infront of them. But I just wanted to say that no, I don’t know all about computers even if I like games, its just not the same thing. Thats also one reason to why I prefer to play on consoles, its often a lot less complicated. Put in the CD and start playing, no graphics to change and in previous generations of videogames, no installations.

Nätverk

Har pillat med mina föräldrars nya router idag, en trådlös en, som jag har köpt till dom i julklapp. Brukar ha stora problem med nätverk men för en gångs skull så gick det vägen. Har förvisso ett komplett nätverk hemma som jag fick upp utan problem men det beror på att jag itne behövde göra något för att få det att fungera utöver att skriva in en WAP nykel eller så för dom trådlösa enheterna.

Men får några år sen när mina föräldrar köpte sin bärbara dator så köpte dom till en trådlös men jag lyckades aldrig få igång den, vi hade över lite folk som kollade på den och inte heller dom fick igång den. Men idag så fick jag som sagt igång ett nätverk hos dom, även fast det såg mörkt ut i slutet då jag inte kunde hitta något nätverk men efter en omstart av datorn så löstes det. Skönt!

Ikväll blir det nog bowling med Lindell och Rasmus, det är tanken iallefall än så länge. Ska bli trevligt att träffa dom igen, har inte sett dom sen i sommras. Sitter även o funderar lite på nyår och det lutar just nu åt att det blir i Göteborg så funderar på om jag ska ta vägen förbi Linköping på vägen hem sen och stanna där några dar kanske.I sådana fall så blir det en typ 24 timmars visit i Gbg, o sen ett par dar i Linköping o sen hem till E-tuna igen och efter nån dag där så blir det väll Skellefteå igen. Dock är inget säkert än men det låter som en trevlig avslutning på 08 och en trevlig start på 09. Frågan är bara om det är så kul att åka tåg den fösta januari, man brukar kunna vara lite bakis den dagen och bakis+tågåkande känns som en mindre bra kombination. Men ska kolla lite med Mikael o se vad han säger om nyår i Gbg.

Jag beställde förövrigt Lego Indiana Jones och Kung Fu Panda tidigare i veckan till Xbox 360n, betalar typ 170 inkl frakt för 2 spel vilket känns överkomligt. Lego I.J. har jag kört i somras på PSP och gillade så det vet jag är ett bra spel. Kung Fu Panda har jag bara testat en demo version av men tyckte ändå att det var ett helt okej spel och tror det kan vara några roliga timmar tillsammans med det. Brukar inte vara så förtjust i filmlicens spel då dom brukar vara rätt sunkiga men en del företag börjar rycka upp sig när det kommer till licener vilket är bra.

Satt igår kväll och spelade bra många race i Project Gotham Racing 2 till Xbox mot brorsan. Det var rätt så stor fördel i början för brorsan men i slutet så var det väldigt jämt. Hela dagen igår gick jag med en suktan efter nostalgiska spel, gamla spel som man kanske inte gett en chans eller bara som man vill spela igen. Var inne på good old games(gog.com) och kollade och dom har massa äldre titlar som man inte spelade på den tiden men som vore kul att testa. Bland annat har dom Sacrifice, Messiah, Fallout 1 & 2, 1nsane, massa rymdspels titlar och en del andra titlar. Spelen kostar från ~$6 vilket inte är så farligt. Vet att Sacrifice är ett coolt spel då jag spelat det en del, väldigt annorlunda men häftigt och coolt upplägg. Spelade även en del Beneath a Steel Sky vilket verkar vara ett shysst äventyrsspel. Ser vissa likheter mellan det och Anachronox. Kan ju hända att Ion Storm har hämtat lite inspiration från det spelet, nu har jag iofs inte kommit så långt i BaSS än och det är nog bara att Sly, huvudpersonen i Anachronox, har en robotkompis som påminner om huvudpersonens robot i BaSS. Det kanske inte är mer än så.

Till Lisa:
Jag tror jag förstår hur jag är nu, jag hoppas att jag har fel men är det så så ska jag bättra mig. Love You!

Ice crushing

I’ve been in Eskilstuna for a day and some hours now and I start to miss Skellefteå and my own apartment, its just not the same even if I’m home at my parents. I never lived in this house when I was young since they moved here 2 years ago when I was still living in Göteborg so I have no memories, no room or anything here. But it pretty nice seeing them again, last time was in the end of the summer before I went up north again so it’s a couple of months.

Today I have been crushing ice on our driveway, the snow that came last week or so have been compressed into a layer of ice and dad didn’t want it that way so I was out for over an hour and stabbing it with an spade and then showing it away with a rack. I found a special one in our garage that is made for our driveway thats filled with gravels. I used it to get all the iceflakes away and let the gravel stay. I’m gonna continue tomorrow I guess since I only took half the driveway.

I also packed up our old Xbox and plugged it in to a TV and started it. It have had problems with reading CDs but I put it up agains the wall so its nearly vertical now which is said to work good for the laser. So I plugged in one of those old, huge Xbox controllers and played some Galleon. Pretty nice but damn those controllers were big, I did prefer them before but today I’m not sure, I am used to smaller controllers like the Sixaxis or the 360 controller so the xbox controller just seems very big nowadays. But it feels pretty good in the hands, to bad I only packed down two games from home, Galleon and The Warriors, but I’m going to contact my brother and see if he still have Project Gotham Racing 2 and if he can take it with him.

Now on the evening I have been checking out CryEngine Sandbox, the Far Cry engine that we’ll have to do a level in for school. I found the manual for it and start to get a feeling of how things works in it. Still havn’t created anything productive, I have just been playing around with it to learn it but I’m making progress atleast.

I got a spotify invite a week ago and today I downloaded it and created a user and its a pretty sweet program. It’s nice when your infront of the computer and get access to all different music. The hard part is to come up with music you actually want to hear at the moment. At the moment I’m listening at Michael Jackson and his Invincible album from 2001. I have heard three songs now and I could tell which one is which if I would play them again on random, they pretty much sound the same all of them.

not sure what I’ll do the rest of the evening, maybe I’ll stay infront of the computer and doing stuff on it or else I’ll join dad infront of the tv. The future will tell! Smell ya later all.

Back in Eskilstuna

I arrived today at Stockholm at lunch, got in the car with Lisa and her father and went home, although on the way we were going to find a little shop called Zoo somewhere in Stockholm and it took a while, even with the GPS we had. The shop turned out to be bigger then both petshops in Skellefteå put toghter. Then we went thru Stockholm and came to Kings Curve(Kungens Kurva) maybe and got stuck in a traffic jam where there were some accident. Lucky us there was a McDonalds in the vicinity so we went there and had lunch and after a while the traffic jam was gone and we continued on our way to Eskilstuna. Quite an adventure.

So now I’m in Eskilstuna at my parents house, sitting here and blogging, checking some school stuff and surfing the internet while listening to some sweet music, atm Maia Hirasawa with Gothenburg and up next is 17 år with Veronica Maggio, two good artists from sweden. At the airport we saw Petter sitting at a cafe with a Mac, I just thought I would tell the whole world that so you all can go Aww =P. Not a big fan of Petter really but he’s okey I think, I prefer Mange Schmit.

So, I’m gonna stay in Eskilstuna for the rest of the year probably, New Year is still undecided, but its either gonna be in Eskilstuna, Göteborg or Skellefteå, so depending on that it might not be until new year but hey, atleast I got choices. During the winter holiday now I’m gonna do some schoolstuff, thats the plan atleast. I’m not gonna list them because then, I won’t do them but I know what I have to do and that is enough.

I brought with me some games down here to Eskilstuna too, Far Cry for the PC since I could need it if I wanna do something in Sandbox, I also got Beneth a Steel Sky, an old adventure game that is free today and uses ScummVM so just head over to their site to download it. I also brought two xbox games, The Warriors and Galleon and I hope I can play them, my old xbox here isn’t the best when it comes to reading discs so it isn’t always working.

Bookwise I brought Boxen, the course litterature in Creative Design and then the third Discworld novel that I got from Lisa as a christmas gift. Not sure I have told that we had our own christmas dinner last week, just the most basic stuff like Jansons Temptation(Jansons Frestelse), meatballs, prince sausages, beetroot salad and egghalves. It was tasty and a perfect evening. We then handed out our christmas gifts, I recieved 6 from Lisa, 2 tea cups, the already mentioned book, a schampo bottle, crayons and a drawing book for three year olds. I gave Lisa the second season of Grays Anatomy and a sportbag that she saw at Sport city when we were there last week. A black/pink/white one, really cool and fits here good.

I have received two of my three ordered games by now, I have already bloged about Shaun White Snowboarding which I start to like and Prince of Persia came this monday and I only started it to see how it looked and it looked pretty nice. As a lot of people have complained about its a bit automatic and it all so clear where to go and where to jump which could be a bit bad, then there is only one way to play the game. But sure, I’ve only played the first 15 minutes maybe and in that part you just run straight forward in a canyon so it didn’t happen to much. But I’ll continue when I come back after new year. Today I saw that Webhallen sells a double pack containing Lego Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda for Xbox 360 for 149 kr only. I have played Lego I.J. and it is a quite nice game, atleast it was on the PSP and in multiplayer I think it could be nice on a big screen TV and KFP seems kinda nice too. I have only played the demo on the 360 butI thought it was pretty fun, sure its not a AAA game but could be a game that kills of a couple of hour and earn some gamescores. So to summarize it all, I’m planning to buy it, sure its only 199 ordinarily but 149 is cheaper and not that much money. But we’ll see, I’m not gonna be home for a couple of weeks anyway and I got two games at home already aswell so I might not need a third and forth.

I really wanna go skiing now, the weather the last couple of days have been crispy as when skiing in the swedish mountains, and I wish I could go down to the Alps and go snowboarding for a week or two, it would be amazing. Last time I was there was like two years ago when me, my brother and Thörner went to V’al Thorens, a huge skisystem containing three different skisystems but that have been linked togheter at the tops of the mountains.

It would be nice to rent a house or an apartment over New Year with some friends in Sälen or so, although its not that cheap during the new years weekend so it probably won’t become anything of it.

Today I have a Creative design lession with David from Northern Kingdom, it’s usually quite intresting so it will be fun. I also have to gather togheter some of my school works and sort them out and pick out stuff that I can send away to different companies for my thesis, its got to be the best stuff since they might go very much on what you actually send over but I’ll check somethings thru and see what I can come up with.

Also today I hope I’ll receive Prince of Persia and Isak’s Bioshock, have taken long enough now so I should have them by today. Shaun White as I received yesterday is getting better, its getting better while you playing it and it’s nice just sliding down the slopes. I have played the forth level now and its really nice. Takes place in Alaska and it starts of with a huge area of bare mountains where only the snow lays and then after a long time you get down to the treeline, it really feels like a long way to go and you don’t even see the trees in the beginning.

Yesterday I went down to Traversen f0r a shortie, I met Lisa on the way there so we went there togheter, I took a beer and then we went home but it was pretty nice with a nightly walk.

Yesterday Meteos Wars was released on XBLA and damn its funny and hectic. I would buy it if I wasn’t going home next week but I thinking of getting the DS version instead. I have had the DS version a couple of years ago and I liked it, but after I played it a whole summer I sold it but now I want it again. Atleast over the christmas holiday, then I can sell it again so I hope I can get my hands on the PAL version of the game.

Thats it for this morning, have a good day today.

Shauns Jagged Snowboard

I received Shaun White Snowboarding today and man, am I hungry for some real snowboarding action now. the game hvae received some mediocre grades over the internet and I can see why, its not the new Amped or SSX and I really hoped it should be. The game isn’t bad, its just not as good as it could have been. They are using the same engine as last years Assassins Creed and the game looks pretty good, to bad that the camera isn’t flowing like it should. The camera can really be jagging when going down a slope, not flowing nicely but really jumping as if it is locked to a specific height over the ground and follows it all the way, its not a nice ride.

The games controller feels wierd in the beginning but after a while you get used to jump with R2 but in the beginning I mostly pressed X to jump which resulted in many missed jumps. Another thing that isn’t working as well as it should and which takes some of the fun out of the game is the physic. When going down the slope you start of quite slow, then you accelerate but then, sometimes you deaccelerate and nearly stops in the slopes with no reason. I have myself been riding a snowboard for atleast 10 years and sure, the times when you slows down is when you are offpist and with to much snow on top of your board and when the slope isn’t sloping, then you might loose some speed but if its going down you don’t loose speed, thats simple gravitation and physic. To bad they missed stuff like that, especially when they have expert help from a guy like Shaun White who should now one or two things about how a snowboard acts in the slope.

The good things with the game is that it’s pretty relaxing and it’s nice to just freestyle down the slopes. There are four mountains in the game . I only tried three of them and so far they are pretty nice, might be a bit small compared to a real ski resort, sure they don’t have to be as big as V’al Thorens in France but they could still span around a mountain. They have some things to do better until Shaun White Snowboarding but if they fix the physic and the camera I think it can be a new Amped or SSX serie, I really hope because its needed.

Amped 3 wasn’t what I wanted, it was to onfocused on snowboarding and introduced like a lot of other stuff and it became pretty unserious, to bad when Amped 1 was a serious snowboarding game with a nice flow and a sweet soundtrack. The gameplay was great and it still looks good. SSX is the opposite of Amped, have a really unserios tone with monster tricks and cartoony characters but it was really fun. Amped 3 was in the middle of them but sure, I pretty much only played the demo and it could be really good, I just got that feeling that it isn’t.

I have spent the rest of the day togheter with Lisa, we went down to the city and bought some things for the animals back in Linköping. We started of at Subway thou and had lunch there, I took a Italian something, really good and a new favorite. We also went in to the one and only wildlife shop in Skellefteå I think, a shop for skiing, hiking and stuff like that and it was really nice. I tried out new caps since my current one is a couple of years old, we also watched some skiing helmets and a little of everything in the shop. I liked the shop and I’ll gonna return there when I decide for what cap I’ll gonna get.

Yesterday evening we watched a pretty good documentary program on Kanal9, apperantly it is a new serie and it follows Louis Theroux, a brittish journalist. On the last program he was in San Quentin, the old prison which still is in use, there he was for two weeks, doing interviews with inmates and stuff. Really interesting and quite scary to see how some people can be so cool when in jail. One guy had recieved 512 years in jail plus 12 life time sentences, seriosly that is a long time for someone to be in jail but he was cool about it, he just had to see life in another perspective to keep going.

Smell you later everybody! Gonna watch Friends and eat ice cream now =)

GTA4 installed

Atlast I can give GTA4 a last push into the finish line. I succeded with the installation on my 5th attempt today after 4 dirty disc errors and now I’m gonna try to finish the game before I get my new games which hopefully is tomorrow. But I probably won’t finish it of before Prince of Persia and Shaun White arrives but I won’t uninstall it from my Xbox atleast since I never know if I can get it in there again.

I got stuck on a mission today thou which was the worst thinkable start of my last push but I’ll probably just need to give it another go. I checked out my playtime for the game and I’m up in 34 Hours. Jikes, I didn’t think I had put that much time in it but well, I have played it from April so its a couple of months so it’s not really that weird.

Tonight me and Lisa is going to watch The Dark Knight, hope its as good as everybody says. I also wanna see The Warriors and Deer Hunter but that will probably be another time. There is too much things I wanna see and play at the moment. Games I wanna play are to mention a few; The Darkness, Mirrors Edge, Heavenly Sword and Dead Space. Guess you have to be out of work and not a student to have time for all the games and movies there is.

That’s it for this time, see you again sometime.