Woot! Finally figured out how to parse XML with PHP.   Hopefully the Fort Wars ranking system (power rating/cuetech/whatever) will be up pretty soon! Big thanks to Elpea for helping me out here - and letting me bug him to death and figure this out. :p

        For starters, I’ve set up an easier to read version of Ensemble Studios played games feeds: Game List

        Dynamic too! Just change the number in the URL.

        I’ve read and received various complaints on the recently released Fort Wars map.   Some complaints are valid but many of them really hold no weight at all.   These are some that I have seen or received.

In this version, computer players don’t select their spawn and get units.

        First off, Fort Wars is a multiplayer map.     Fort Wars has never been meant for playing against computer players.   Even if they could spawn units, they would not be upgrading, buying, or using awards.   Play online please.   Is it not much more fun with human players in any case?

The store…[More]

Just created this a few minutes ago.   Not sure just what it’s supposed to be.   I meant to make it for the guestbook background but it doesn’t really fit at the moment.   Still it looks pretty cool.

What you guys think?

Random Avatar-Image

        I just found out today that my host has upgraded the service from a previous 20 GB webspace with 300 GB bandwidth… to 200 GB webspace and 2 TB (2000 GB) bandwidth! :O Best part is I don’t have to upgrade my plan or anything - it’s already done.   I’m definitely not hitting that limit any time soon. :p I’m still only using one GB of webspace.

        Elpea has finished finding all the tech ids.   I’ve also found some pretty interesting new techs as well.   Maps are coming!

        Okay I’ve just gotten the game today, and it looks somewhat promising.   A few noticable problems come up pretty quick though.   Quicksearch at the moment doesn’t work well - every game goes out of sync.   Another problem is somehow most custom maps have gone crazy so that’s going to take some looking into.   I’ll have to try playing again later.

        Got a message/button on my Yahoo Toolbar that now says “Get IE7 now!” So I went and got it.   The install took nearly half an hour to complete on my 3.2 GHz P4 and 2GB RAM PC :-/.   Well it must be worth it if it took that long to install.

        I opened it up, and it went pretty smooth.   The whole layout has changed and my Home page set to Yahoo and News. <_< Next thing I notice is that it still says “Get IE7 now!” Well I got it now go away! >_< Also it looks like the designers went for too high a resolution.   The text appears very faded and stretched on 1024×768 but looks nice and sharp on higher resolutions - BUT THEN IT’S TOO SMALL!

        Another thing is the Zoom.   It’s somewhat pointless in my opinion.   Ctrl+Scroll now changes the zoom instead of text size.   What it does is basically collapse the entire page and force it into a smaller/large box.   This ruins the page’s layout and doesn’t necessarily scale right at all….[More]

        Just came up with the awesome idea today for a map in Age of Empires III.   One less noted feature of the game is the fact that units slow down when being attacked.   It might be interesting therefore to have a racing game between players.   The strat would be to attack the enemy in order to slow them down, but risk stopping in order to attack, supposing you are using a ranged unit.   There would be walls along the path to allow opponents to catch up as you are attempting to bust through it.   Simultaneously, there would be bonus units you can kill (and waste time on) that would grant you XP.   Reaching certain levels of XP shall upgrade your unit.

        My idea is that you would start at a melee unit, go to a ranged unit, then to an area-damage melee unit, and finally an area-damage ranged unit.

        Of course all units would have the same speed.

     …[More]

        I just saw The Grudge 2  today.   It was okay - I didn’t really find it scary.   You could always predict what’s going to happen and the characters all did basically everything people would never do.   Several times they split up (okay they said “Wait here, I’ll check it out!” but same thing ) and many times they wandered far off into the middle of nowhere alone.

        I did get some pretty neat ideas for spoof though .     If time permits, I might create a short skit “The Grudge: Santa Claus”.   The idea would be Santa delivering presents one Christmas Eve and happening upon that Haunted House.   He’d enter the chimney, gain the curse, and return to the North Pole with it.   What would happen then??? :O   I’m not sure what game engine to use, and indeed I am pretty busy.   I hope I do have time to make it though.   For sure, it’d be hilarious :P…[More]

        So… what other screennames do I go by?

pftq

        Just pftq.   If you see pftq anywhere, it is probably me.   Although I hear rumors that there is a pftq on Age of Kings, which I don’t have; but otherwise it’s safe to assume it’s me.

        Pfffffffffff…. I’m pissed.   Everything seemed to be going along nicely until just yesterday.   I had gotten so used to my right hand out of the cast, that somehow, when leaning back and getting up, I completely forgot about it being in recovery, and put my hand out, again, to support myself.   Needless to say, my right hand did not support me at all.   The second I put my weight onto my hand, my entire arm went numb and  hurt like hell.   The sharp, numbing pain I felt when I first broke my wrist shot right through my arm, most of it focused where the break in my wrist was.

        At first it was just my wrist feeling all paralyzed, but it later spread to my elbow as well.   Apparently my right arm had gotten so weak from being in a cast for 2-3 months (and no pressuring work after) that I ended up twisting my elbow and spraining it.

        The doctor says it didn’t look like I broke anything, but I’m in a sling yet again, to avoid moving any of the…[More]

         Lately, there have been a number of people, including me, that have had problems joining a table once in a room at  Yahoo Games.    Basically, you join the room just fine.   It says connected and everything.   But the problem comes when you try to join a table or create one.   It displays a message that the table is “attempting to pop up” but never does.   The table simply won’t pop up.

       Have you disabled your pop up blocker? Please try that  first to see if that is the problem.   If it is, set it to allow from games.yahoo.com and you should be able to re-enable your pop up blocker again.

      However, that is what I did the first time as well - and it didn’t work for me.

     …[More]

        I lend a number of people subdomains on my website.   One of them is owner to a Hoisanese Sanctuary, which claimed to have a dictionary.   It went through quite a while however with nothing but a few broken links.

        At long last he finally updated it earlier today.   The dictionary has but a few entries but is at least functional.   Also notable is that it is using my first fully mySQL-powered script.

        Go on ahead and visit his Hoisanese Sanctuary. (No I am not Hoisanese, nor do I have anything to do with the site in any way.   I only provide the space for it.)

        Back when I was in 6th grade, the lunch was free at my school and it wasn’t bad at all.   There was lasagna, raviolies, chocolate cupcakes, and other good stuff.   And it was free.

        Now,  this high school I’m in actually charges for lunch, and it isn’t half as good.   The best you get is probably a chicken sandwich or enchilada (rarely).   Yet, even that is not bad compared to what it is now.   First they took away plastic straws and replaced it with this strange powdery one, which seems more like left over housing material cut up to form straws.   Then they started replacing the “teriyaki chiken bowl,” which already had no sauce or anything, with left over popcorn chicken instead of real chicken.   Just recently, they stopped using real napkins and instead had these very stiff and thin ones that seemed more like cheap toilet paper material.

        I once joked that they might even replace chicken sandwiches with popcorn chicken or something….[More]

      Ok so it goes that one of my friends thought the assignment due today wasn’t due until like next week.   Neither of us did it the night before.   Later today, one class before it was due, he was told by a friend that it was due.   Well we were both empty handed.

        I decided just to jot a few things down - it’s better than nothing.   My friend thought it wouldn’t be accepted.   One of my other classmates, who stayed up till 2AM  working on it,  had close to two pages done.   I had a mere 5 lines done, jotted down 5 minutes before class started.   Teacher started checking the homework. My friend got a zero for not having anything.   The classmate who had two pages got full credit.   Then came my crappy little paper - that wasn’t even half a page.

        Well guess what? I got full credit! :p rofl my friend and the classmate who spent all night on the 2 pages sure got pissed… lol Guess that goes to show that even a lil bit done helps….[More]

Cyclist Breaks Finger Punching Bus

        According to the article, there’s this guy who got so angry from not winning the cyclist competition called Tour of Spain, he punched his team bus and broke a bone in his right hand…

        Eh… ok… yeah I know people hit things and cause unbelievable amounts of destruction when they’re angry… but break your own fingers? Just what - how can you not - ah I don’t know what to call it.

     …[More]

      Just browsing around today and I found a few sites pointing to a Google Image Labeler.   Basically it helps Google decide what keywords find what kind of images, by having you tell it what each image it throws at you would be called.

      Here’s the fun part: Whoever else is online at the same time becomes your partner and you work as a team to try and call the image the same name! :O Each image the two of you pass, you will earn points.   There’s even a highscore table! lol

        Weird things all over the place these days…