Blog/Personal
Links
Me
Categories
Archives +-
Other
Weekly Top Artists
| # | Artist |
| 1. | Explosions in the Sky |
| 2. | Jónsi |
| 3. | Llan de Cubel |
| 4. | Marina and the Diamonds |
| 5. | Pendulum |
| 6. | Alcest |
| 7. | Weird Al Yankovic |
| 8. | For a Minor Reflection |
| 9. | Jónsi & Alex |
| 10. | Sigur Rós |
| 11. | BT |
| 12. | Lady Gaga |
| 13. | "Weird Al" Yankovic |
| 14. | Katy Perry |
| 15. | Florence and The Machine |
Powered by Last.fm
Blog: The Life Of A Supreme Ruler
Portal
Filed under: — orudge @ 20/02/2008 8:34 pm
Oh dear, I appear to have been sucked in.
Let me explain.
Some time ago, my good friend Chris Jones bought some game collection known as “The Orange Box”. You may have heard of it. As part of this, he could donate the games he already owned to a friend – in this case, Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One. He chose to donate them to me. This meant I had to go and get Steam, which I duly did. However, the ATI Radeon graphics card I was borrowing from a friend at the time seemed to have problems with the game – it would randomly crash, freeze, stutter and more. So play the games I did not. Fast forward a few months, and my brother has given me his old graphics card, a GeForce 7800 GT (hurrah, back with NVIDIA again). This card happens to work perfectly with HL2. While signed into Steam, I notice a good number of my friends playing something called Audiosurf. So I checked out the demo, found it very addictive, and bought the game. Yes, I’ve bought a game from Steam, something I didn’t think I would ever do! I also discovered an NVIDIA promotion, which gives me a free copy of Peggle Extreme, HL2: Deathmatch, HL2: Lost Coast, and a demo of Portal, entitled “First Slice”. Today I played through said demo, and have now somehow ended up $19.95 less well-off (actually, $23.44, when you include VAT), and with a copy of Portal on my hard disk. Whoops.
The only problem I have now is finding the time to play it – and indeed, these other games that are now sitting in my Steam account. This week is Rag Week, and it’s been a pretty busy week for me already. I have the comedy to run tomorrow, and then I should be going to the Pirates vs Ninjas bop on Friday. I also have some coding to do and lots of comp sci stuff to get on with, amongst other things. But no doubt, I shall be able to squeeze in some Portal. And some Audiosurf.
And yes, I know that the cake is a lie.
To Aegir, re: “Re: Owen”
Filed under: — orudge @ 17/02/2008 5:36 pm
The £1100 is third party, fire and theft insurance, I believe – i.e., if you dent somebody else’s car, they’ll pay for the repairs to their (but not your) car. Fully comprehensive insurance is quite a bit more. Insurance premiums are ridiculously expensive for young drivers over here, it’s rather annoying for those of us who are actually competent drivers and who don’t go about driving like chavs.
To Aegir, re: “Raor. New Car.”
Filed under: — orudge @ 2:41 am
I was going to comment on your latest blog, with the text:
Hmm, $271 for 3rd party insurance for, what, a year, and you’ve only been driving a year or two, haven’t you? That’s, hmm, £124/year… in my first year driving, insurance was around £1100/year – you crazy Australian bogan drivers. ;P
However, your silly Vox site insists I sign up before I post a comment, which is not something I am going to do. Don’t suppose you can disable that in any way? Don’t expect many comments on your blog if you can’t, anyway, I daresay most people can’t be bothered to sign up for some random site in order to post. And this concludes my message.
Photos from Brazil up
Filed under: — orudge @ 12/02/2008 12:46 am
As a little followup to my last post, my photos from Brazil are now up.
Back in town
Filed under: — orudge @ 10/02/2008 8:02 pm
Well, the past few days have involved lots of travelling. Thursday was the day of our flight back to Britain, with the flight leaving Natal at about 6.30pm. However, I was awoken on Thursday morning with a couple of messages that did not seem to bode well: there was a problem with the car (which was thankfully fixed fairly quickly), and there was a demonstration of sorts on the main BR-101 road up to Natal, which meant that no traffic could get through. As a result, our taxi was going to be delayed. The estimate was for the demonstration to finish by 1pm, which meant our taxi would be an hour or so late, at 2pm. (The intention was to get the taxi at 1pm, arrive at the airport by about 3.30pm, in plenty of time for the 6.30pm flight.) Fortunately, the taxi did indeed arrive at 2pm, and we got to the airport by around 4.30pm, only to be confronted by what’s probably the longest queue I’ve ever seen (well, actually, the queue for the Blackpool concert in August was probably longer). I’m not quite sure why, but it was taking an awful long time to check everybody in for the flight (seemingly, the flight was the only one leaving the airport at that time, as all the other check-in desks were closed). After about an hour, we got to the front of the queue and checked in, as well as having to stump up money for the departure tax (which seemed to be included in the flight price the last time I flew from Brazil, but apparently not this time). Once we finally got into the departure lounge, it turns out the plane was late due to it being late setting off from London earlier in the day. Anyway, eventually, we got on the plane, and the plane took off, and we flew back over to Britain. As usual, I didn’t manage to get any sleep on the flight, which made the 250 mile drive back up to North Wales fun. Particularly fun when the M40 ground to a halt due to an earlier accident. Thankfully, we were only delayed for perhaps half an hour there, and the rest of the drive was fine enough. Yesterday, after 14 hours sleep, I then drove up to St Andrews, which was really rather pleasant – the weather was lovely and there weren’t many cars on the road (and even less lorries). So that’s me back in St Andrews, with semester 2 starting tomorrow.
I’ve now flown a total of just under 56,000 miles in my life, it seems. The map is below (click for more details):
Still got to cover Africa, Asia and Australasia!
The most dangerous roads in the world
Filed under: — orudge @ 05/02/2008 7:21 pm
Came across this link earlier today… some rather scary-looking roads there! In the winter (wet season), the track down to my Dad’s house in Brazil can be a bit wet – indeed, very wet – but it’s nothing compared to that Siberian road!
Speaking of Brazil, I shall be heading back to the UK on Thursday, arriving on Friday. It’s been a nice couple of weeks out here, and the weather has been lovely (although I did get fairly badly sunburnt the other day at the beach). Photos will follow on when I get home. Exam results should be out tonight, and semester 2 starts next Monday. All very exciting!
Until next time…