Computer Games

Being a games programmer you'd think I play a lot of computer games wouldn't you?

But the reality is... no. I used to, but nowadays with Hayden and the wife aboot it's not as much as it 'should' be. However recently there's seen a revival in the XBox gaming scene due to my English chums, Kelk, Nutter and Nogger being online at stupid hours (for them), playing through to some 2 or 3am whilst I play after the family has gone to bed :)

Also Hayden's Lego games being played alot.

But PC gaming... well that's a different story altogether. Aside from my last LAN Party (Xmas Stratlan 2008), there's been a few games of Left For Dead with office chums on a Sunday evening - lasted aboot 2 Sundays :( and some Quake Live at lunchtimes.

My PC is old.. very old and tired.

I spent many hours, nay several days in total last week or so 'cleaning' the PC. I wanted to reinstall Windows XP, but there appears to be some sort of hardware failure upon setup and I cannot install it. Left with no choice but to clean or buy new components. Anyway, a full virus scan, Adware scan, Disk cleanup and defrag of all disks - one of which took over 48 hours to complete!!!

and the PC is actually running rather quickly again.

So... long over due I decided to install some proper software for my monitors. Just before I left HRC, the IT department threw out some old monitors - not the best ever, but hey! So I took one and got my Boss to grab me another.

So I have this three monitor setup, great. :) But thus far has only been used for a large desktop which windows does automatically, not gaming.

I don't want to spend any money on hardware so instead spent a few hours trial and error and lots of tinkering last night until 2am, configuring the system to run the three monitors correctly for games.

This doesn't mean stretching the image across three monitors, it means expanding the field of view to see further around and to the sides.

It's awesome, the main middle monitor still acts and looks like it normally would do playing the game on a single monitor, but the side monitors show the extra peripheral vision normally unavailable.

I played Call Of Duty 4 today for the first time in ages with the new setup, it was really a different experience having all that extra angle to view. Sadly one of the freebie monitors seems to have turned a bit green in colour as you can see above.

This is a screen grab I took, click on it to see the full size screen that I'm looking at... if you're interested...

Next up Left For Dead and I can't wait to try it out on racing games and flight sims :)

Not bad, considering that a setup like this would cost hundreds (the Triplehead2Go device from Matrox is like £300!! let alone the extra monitors), and it was all free...

ahhh good times :)

Space Hulk

Once again...

Once again I left stuff in the UK thinking... nobody will be interested in that.

And then Game Workshop re-releases a new edition of Space Hulk to which the art Director at OOI, Xavier, immediately purchases it and gets shipped over. Now everyone is craving some Genestealer action again - some 20 years after I initially bought it.. and all it's expansions.

Well....

Thankfully he invited me over for a game last night... ahhh the memories. amazing I haven't played since about 1992, but the rules and game flow came flooding back. I used my old tactic on the 1st mission and won, much to Xaviers annoyance as Genestealers nearly always win that mission... my tactic is a pretty sound one though ;)

Love it, might ask for it for Christmas, or find a way to bring my old original stuff over... but I like the new one - it's got nicer models and... stuff :)

House Buying... not...

Gutted really....

We have seen many houses, and I've posted on here at how cheap they are.
Sadly, although I could buy 2 really decent houses for the price of our UK home and my mortgage for both houses would be cheaper... I cannot.

The Canadian banks refuse to acknowledge income abroad, so the UK rent we get is not seen as covering our mortgage outgoings - meaning that they think I have to spend $1800 a month to pay the mortgage and have denied us.
The only thing we can do is get a credit history here, so that they will not see that we have a house in the UK!
It's really annoying because I can afford it. In fact due to a new decent house being more efficient with heat etc. + my mortgage being less than my rent, we'd be spending less than we are now.

We nearly just bought a house, but we were screwed 6 ways from Sunday.!!!
1) being the reason I just mentioned
2) being that the housing market in the UK is so stupid we'd actually owe money if we sold
3) we cannot get out of our mortgage by selling int he UK without paying a huge redemption penalty - this would not have been an issue if we moved to another house in the UK, as we'd have transferred it, but they won't transfer it to a house in Canada and demand settlement
4) as mentioned our credit history would show the mortgage but our rental income would not be considered
5) we'd need 20% about $30,000 for a deposit!!!.

The 6th reason is the most annoying one, and whilst Dave, who is the biggest British patriot of all time, pointed out that Canada has buggered us on the 5 counts above... true... it's the UK that put the final nail in the coffin.
In particular 1 bitch who works for TSB.

We managed to find a deal for newcomers to Canada that would avoid all of the 5 blockers above, a form needed to be stamped by the TSB to basically authenticate that funds existed in an account - vouching for our credit.

Because that stupid cow had never seen the form (duh!... it's from a Canadian bank!!) She confused matters, stating things like "it's a money laundering scam" and "terrorism!!!", and refused to stamp it!. After 3 days of phoning the bank, phoning her and other parties involved, trying to find other ways to provide evidence or miraculously come up with extra funds we lost the house we had an offer on.

I was livid!

This is a rather tame post, because it all happened a couple of weeks ago and it's been a very frustrating and stressful time. I guess I'm calmer now, but something just reminded me and I decided to rant about that stupid excuse for a cow!
We had an offer in on a 4 bedroom house, with a pool for a pathetic £82000!!! And it had been accepted, pending approval for a mortgage. The closing date was the 15th September, so we'd have been moving in next week, giving just enough time to set up a nursery ready for Kath to give birth and bring home the n00bie.

Absolutely gutting that this idiot woman did this just because she didn't understand a form!!

It's really getting me annoyed, my Dad tried to give us some money the other day and the TSB gave him hassle, telling him it's "money laundering"... is it coz he is black?
I tried placing an advert on the UK Auto Trader website, from Canada and it's all denied due to "money laundering" and "terrorist activities".
I had money in my account for the house deposit, and the bank 'needed' to track it's history for at least 30 days to make sure it wasn't "money laundering" or "terrorist activities"!! I'd only had the money in there for 2 days, transferred from the UK, which is why I needed the pathetic measly jobs worth bint to authenticate it's UK origins and prove it was not "money laundering" - she wouldn't, nuff said!

It's all due to 9-11. A friend of mine explained the whole thing to me last night over a pnt of Stella after we went to see Final Destination 3D (which is awesome by the way). You see the Bush administration conspired to blow up the twin towers, thereby instilling panic into the US population fueling the fear of terrorism. They invaded Afganisthan looking for a ghost which just added fuel to the fire. Finally the US citizens were more than happy for Bush to head into Iraq allowing him to take over the worlds oil. The plan worked perfectly. But any war creates resentment, a president can't stay in power when so many people hate him, so they came up with another 5 year plan to run the economy into the ground. This would ruin Bush even in the eyes of the rednecks who worshipped him. They ruined the economy so much, neglected to act on hurricane Katrina and let thier 'boys' rot in Iraq that everybody was looking for a hero. Which is where the greatest jewel thief in the world, Obama, stepped in. In on it from the start, Obama comes to power to set things right and everyone will do whatever he suggests believing him to be the 'saviour'. After stealing the Hope Diamond and distracting everybodys attention with stimulus packages and health care reform, Obama intends to complete what the Bush administration set in motion on 9-11 and fulfil his destiny as the Anti-Christ initiating Armageddon during the 2012 alignment.

So.... due to that... I can't buy a bloody house!!

Oh dear....

Labour Day

No.. relax, Kath's not gone into labour yet. Labour Day is in fact yet another public holiday :)

So we're off work again.. yay!
Haven't done much today at all, but that's pretty good if you ask me. I'm about to format the PC and tidy it all up a bit... nice to have a bit of time to waste on that sort of thing.
It hasn't been done since the summer that Hayden was born - so 3 years!! errrgh

Anyway, we may BBQ later or something, after all why not?

Gotta love these Canadian holidays :)

Lazy Evenings

Most evenings are lazy...
I get in from work (recently a bit later than normal - 6:30pm) and have dinner. By the time that's up it's gone 7pm. So me and the boy play Xbox for half an hour or so before he goes to bed.
Kath falls asleep shortly after that and I end up vegging watching TV or linking up for some GTA IV with Dave - which seems to last for hours! ;)

Hayden is well into Lego Star Wars, and I found Lego Indy for the bargain price of just $14.99 (2nd hand) and a brand new Lego Batman for $19.99. That's like £22 for two awesome Xbox games!
We've been training him and rewarding him with Lightsaber pieces when he does well throughout the day. Each Lightsaber has 10 pieces to make the blade and there are 4 Lightsabers in total for different tasks, waking up and keeping quiet until the alarm, eating all meals satisfactorily, having a dry nappy throughout the night and using good manners.
It's taken him a good few weeks to complete all 4 Lightsabers, and he was promised a big reward at the end. He deserves it..
However he has now become an XBox junkie....


Games are great. I love games, I program games, I play games. I've always played games... but without wanting him to turn into an anemic unsociable lay about (of which the press love to make a point of, of stereotypical gamers) we must ensure that we moderate it and he learns timing and good practice. Otherwise he'll turn into a WoW addict before we know it, and start talking Ye Olde English when ordering drinks at the local 'tavern'.
Hmmm... I like those types of people... but I don't want my son becoming one!!!
Geeks!
We've already had the blank looks, being ignored and the tantrums when it gets turned off, not to mention the Lee Turner style throwing of the controllers when he gets frustrated at a difficult jump!
So, last night we went to the beach for dinner at dusk.
We went to Tea Hill Park, a nice 'venue'.


I love MoMo...
It was a particularly awesome sunset. Now it's later in the year, still warm but the sun seems.... lower :)

This is a cool thing to do. People just seem to have the time on PEI. Imagine it, you finish work, and then just go for a para sail for a couple of hours around the bay...

It was starting to get dark at 8ish before the kite surfing dude decided to head back in.

We headed home shortly afterwards...

... and Hayden played a half hour of Lego Indy before bed :)

Hurricane Bill Part 2

Who is... Bill..? hmmm?


Well it seems that Bill preferred the open water and started heading North East after hitting Halifax, below.
You see, it's people like this that give Hurricanes a bad rep!!

A few thousand homes are out of power in Nova Scotia, but all we seem to have had here is lots of rain and very hot, muggyness.

Tried to go to the cinema to see Quentin Tarantino's new film, but the cinema air con was broken and it was boiling in there. Perhaps I'll just watch Quentin's 5th movie instead... seems apt :)

So unless Bill changes his mind and changes direction, he'll be heading out towards Newfoundland and then up North, where 'tis grim before leaving this earthly realm.

Move along people.... nothing to see here, mmkay?

Hurricane Bill

The remnants of tropical hurricane... Bill, are about to hit us in Atlantic Canada.

Not sure what it'll be like - could be nothing, could be major. We're prepared, I've brought everything in and tied everything outside down - just in case.

Sawler warned me to get in extra water as last time they had a hurricane of this nature here, the water was off for 3 days, power was out and some trees died!
We'll see what comes of it this time.
Apparently this happens to us here, these things kick off down near Jamaica and then head up the coast to complete their path of destruction on us.
I was just checking it out on the web, doesn't sound 'devastating', but Obama has delayed going on holiday until Sunday, when it's passed him. That's when it'll be all over us.

Well, hopefully it won't be too bad, and I'll be able to post about it tomorrow. So if you don't see a post tomorrow - it probably means the power is out here :(