Cyron Ray

When you see this on your flist, quote Firefly...

Kaylee : Wash, tell me I'm pretty
Wash : Were I unwed, I'd take you in a manly way
Kaylee : 'cause I'm pretty?
Wash : 'cause you're pretty

For some reason, google has hit my blog hard in the last couple of days. My blog is hosted on a 2gig of traffic per month plan, and each month, I normally use just over 1 gig of that. If you look at my blog today though, you will notice I've exceeded my bandwidth limit.

That is because google single handedly used up 1.4 gig of bandwidth in the last 48 hours. The googlebot went mad, and instead of the average 4000 hits I get from it each month, I've got 40,000 hit so far, and I'm only half way through the month. So my blog is down for the count until the quota resets, or I fork over some more money to get a better plan. I have real issues forking over hard cash because of google's fuckup though...

*sigh*

cyron_blog is now syndicating my blog (Thanks to Elle). If you've got me on your friends list and are interested in keeping up with my posts still, throw that on to your friends list.

Well, my offsite blog/journal is up and running.

Point your browser to http://cyron.id.au if you want to have a look. Otherwise, Elle, if you could please turn this link http://blog.cyron.id.au/wp-rss2.php in to a syndicated livejournal feed (I'm no longer a paid user, so I can't), people will be able to add the feed to their friends lists.

Ray

Well, this will be my last post on Livejournal. I'm going to get a blog set up on my own domain, and the ball is already rolling on this. As soon as it's finalised, I'll get an RSS feed setup, so people can still use Livejournal to track my posts if they so desire. I'll also be keeping this account open for ability to post replies to peoples entries etc.

But I've found it's essential to separate reading other peoples entries and lives from updating my own entries. Lack of time to do one means I end up doing neither, when it doesn't have to work like that.

In more mundane news, I had my wisdom tooth out today. Damn thing had been hurting on and off for weeks, so I'm glad to see the back of it. If only I had of eaten before going though. I'm hungry now, but shouldn't eat. Woe is me :)

I've worked it out... Keeping up with my LJ has been too much work. I've stopped watching it, I've stopped reading it, and my paid account status is about to expire. I've had several interesting things happen in my life, and it's been too much hassle to get on to Whirlpool and read about them.

So these days, I'm using an RSS reader, a much pruned friends list and common sense to keep it manageable. Lets see if it will let me overcome the LJ lethargy and get back in to things...

Well, I'm back from the opening weekend of Ascension.  I went up on Thursday night, and had to do some last minute fiddling and tweaking to get things up and running for Saturday.  Didn't get much sleep thursday night or Friday night, but it was all good in the end. 

Come Saturday, the store was nice and busy.  Not quite full, but nice and close.  We were fairly problem free Saturday as well, so things were off to a good start.  Saturday night though, was the first lockin night.  From 9pm to 9am.  It was packed.  There was not a spare computer to be had.  Of course, Adam and Luke ended up falling asleep during the night, leaving me looking after things most of the time, and trying to get the last minute bugs ironed out.

We don't yet have internet in the store, so all the half life based games are running on the same CD key as they were all created from the same image.  Getting Smartlaunch to distribute keys to everyone was a pain in the butt.  And Desert Combat didn't want to work for everyone either, so very little game playing was done by me.  But it was worth it to see it all up and running.

Sunday trade was very slow sadly.  Due to the lockin the night before, and movie marathons that night at the cinema, most people were not awake enough during the day to come back to the store.  Monday started off the same before lunch, with people recovering from the night before and not heading in before lunch.  But come mid afternoon, the place was once more rocking.  I had gone home by this stage, but apparently the new Natural Selection 3 beta was "tested" extensively to everyone's great enjoyment.

I can tell you it's certainly awesome to see the store going off, and opening with such a bang. 

I am now posting to Livejournal using a plugin for Firebird.  It's nested nicely in the sidebar of Firebird, and I will simply say that it is most cool :)

Of course, as I try and post this, LJ goes down with internal server errors.  But what can you do?

Well, the amazing has happened. Luke and Adam have finally got their finance through and will be purchasing all the equipment they need to set up an internet gaming lounge in Toowoomba. This city is in sore need of a gaming lounge. It has a huge LAN community, with people coming from Brisbane and all around to join in each month. And it has nothing at all outside of taht to support gaming comps or a gaming community.

A small coffee shop that does internet but no gaming, and a small gaming lounge down a back alley with 8 computers. You can't even get a couple of teams together and face of.

So Adam plans on changing all of that. He's a member of said community, and has built quite a bit of excitment and expectation up over the opening of the store. It will be good to see it all come together finally.

So this weekend, I get to head up there, and help them get it all set up. It will involve hours playing around with configuring games, software and all sorts of shit. A real pain in the arse of a job that I'm going to absolutely love.

At this stage I don't know what their opening date is going to be, but it's going to be soon so they can catch the tail end of the school holidays. Some busy times ahead for Adam and Luke I think :)

I was reading through Penny Arcade the other day, going through some of the entries from the last couple of weeks, when I found a post that grabbed my attention right away. You see they mentioned the keywords "Master of Orion". Master of Orion 2 is of course my favourite game of all time, and after the bitter disappointment of MOO3, I was keen on something to replace it. So they mention the game telling me it's like Master of Orion, and I thus go and have a look.

The game itself is called Star Chamber and is basically a cross between Magic (the CCG) and a generic galactic space conquest/expansion game. Ok, a cross between Magic, a space game, and crack cocaine :) Once I started this game, I couldn't damned well stop. The game itself is free, it relies on people buying cards to earn an income for the developers; it's a great system. You can spent as much or as little as you like, when you like. There is no fixed monthly cost, which turns me off, and there was no huge upfront cost to try out the game from some small time developer I'd never heard of.

The gameplay itself basically involves building citizens and ships, and trying to conquer the galaxy, or rule the galactic council through voting power. The cards themselves alter the basics of this. The straight game itself works without any cards at all, but would be very boring. Throw in the cards, which can twist the rules, change things without warning, and keep both players on their toes, and it's a great way to spend the 20 minutes or so each game takes

At this stage, I still suck badly at the game (well either that, or I keep running in to people that are overly skilled), but I'm having a ball. There's a full review found here. Go try it out if you get a chance.

Edit - I've created a community for the game at starchamber, so if you do get hooked, you know where to go :)