The Daily Tiger

Prison Break Soundtrack

2008-05-24T17:10:00.003+02:00

The hit TV show Prison Break has some very awsome background music in the various episodes. Until recently I haven't been able to find these tunes but thanks to a blog I recently found I managed to find most of the songs. The Prison Break music is composed by Ramin Djawadi and can be found on CD on Amazon.com and iTunes.

Talent Shows

2008-05-23T01:01:00.002+02:00

Just a small rant about the countless talent shows we have on TV these days. Idols for example or (Fill in your country here)'s got talent.

The basis of these talent shows is to find new and fresh talent for the music and entertainment industry. To filter out all the idiots and other wastes of flesh there is a jury who decides who goes on to the next round. This jury consists of carefully picked people who have experience in music and entertainment and can make a valid judgment of these people most of the time. They know what a good artist needs and if someone has potential.

So what's the problem I'm having? We all enjoy the pre-rounds of course. The rounds where every idiot in the world can come up and do his thing just to be laughed at by everyone watching TV and sometimes even the jury. But to be quite fair, most of us can roughly separate the morons from the talented potential, we wouldn't really need a jury for it but it obviously makes the show a lot easier. No, the role you'd expect the jury to fill is to give the artists feedback in the more serious part of the show, to pick who goes on to the final round and, in the end, determine who wins the show. These people are qualified to do this, they know what they are talking about and have the experience. But instead what happens? The viewers are asked to make a judgment over who is the better artist. Us, the general public who generally don't know shit about the entertainment industry!! There's a fucking jury full of experienced artists sitting right there and you're asking the morons in the audience to pick our next pop idol!! Am I the only one who sees the stupidity here or what?!

There, just had to vent that. It's been bothering me for a while now :).

Tiger

Review: BioShock

2007-09-05T13:59:00.000+02:00

BioShock was without a doubt one of this year's titles everyone was looking forward to. Previews all looked very promising and by all accounts this would be a very special game. In the past week I had the chance to play BioShock and while I will absolutely play the game again a few times I believe I have seen enough to write a decent review. So let's continue shall we?

First Impression
Bioshock comes in three different editions. The normal edition in a plastic cover, a normal edition in a 'metalish' cover and a limited edition that comes with all kinds of goodies. I got myself the metalish edition which makes a nice addition to my game shelf. This edition doesn't have anything else worth noting, it's just the case that's different.

Now, on to the actual game. When you start to play the game and enter Rapture for the very first time you can't supress a small 'wow' as the enormous underwater city dooms up from behind the coral. The overall atmosphere of the city is unlike anything I have ever experienced in a game before. The city of Rapture can not realy be classed as a typical 40's city because it has a many other influences. Take the bricks and concrete from the 40's, add in the steel constructions from historic train stations, put some traditional restaurant tiles on the floor and some 60's neon signs on the wall, mix it all together on the bottom of the ocean and there you have Rapture.
No matter where you go in the city you will never feel like you're in the same place you were a second ago. Rapture was actualy designed as a city, rather then a level per level basis. A restaurant for example looks completely different from the medical pavalion and even within a large level like the medical pavalion the different departments of the pavalion all have their own distinctive look and feel. Examination rooms are done in dirty white tiles and the waiting room just outside is done in friendly wooden accents. Everything in the city feel natural as far as a layout is concerned and in your imagination you can actualy see it function would it not have been for a civil war to shred it all to pieces.

The graphical aspect of the game is not bad at all. The game is build using Unreal technology combined with the Havok physics engine which is never a bad combination. Especialy the water in the game looks extremely good and is said to look even better when the DirectX 10 features are turned when playing the game under Windows Vista. Lighting, shadows, dust effects and damage indicators are all very well done. There also some points that could have been done better though. All persons, friend or foe, you come across in Rapture have the same unfinished look to their face. They have one or two facial expressions which hardly ever change and especialy with the little sisters this is quite noticable. Even if the little sisters are cheering or acting happy they still look to be horrified and scared. Next to that there is not any form of sync with the talking. The mouth is just making a preprogramed loop rather then actualy resembling what is being said. Not only with characters is speech a problem though, if you have subtitles turned on then any kind of dialog wil run out of sync with the subtitles at some point which is extremely frustrating. Some small points which in my opinion deserved more attention.

The start of the story leaves you somewhat blank about exactly what's going on. You crash into the sea and from their your pretty much on your own for a while. A question that instantly came to my mind when seeing Rapture for the first time was 'how can anyone build this place in the 1940's right after World War II on the bottom of the ocean, without anyone knowing about it?'. I know this is just my own personal nitpicking however and since it's still a game things like that should not be payed much attention too.

Gameplay
The gameplay in BioShock is pretty much the basic layout for any shooter. You walk, you explore, you do your objectives and kill as much bad people on the way. Some nice additions to the basic shooter formula are, first and most of all, plasmids. As the story will tell you, Rapture was build to get away from any kind of morals so science could do it's thing and make humanity great. And that's what it did. By being able to alter a human's DNA one was able to give himself super powers by injecting a certain plasmid into their veins. These plasmids give you powers like shooting bolts of electricity, balls of fire and much more.
The plasmid side of the gameplay revolves around two things: ADAM and EVE. ADAM is the genetic good that makes all your superpowers possible, EVE is the substance your body needs to actualy use these powers without wearing itself out and can be compared to Mana in RPG's.
Very early in the game you'll come to realize that you will need plasmids to progress in the game. You won't need them so much to open new areas or unlock certain doors, but you will simply need them to survive. Ammo for your weapons is often far apart, leaving you with only your plasmids and EVE to defend yourself from the whackjobs there were once Raptures population.
EVE can be found every now and then laying around in a save or on a dead body, ADAM however is a different story. ADAM is a good that is caried within the body and can only be extracted and rewon by 1 person: A little sister. These little girls are genetically modified to absorb ADAM from dead bodies and convert it back into a useable form. These little girls are defenceless on their own but don't think getting the ADAM from them is going to be easy. To protect them, every little sister has a huge armored and geneticaly enhanced brute with them called a big daddy. Take out the big daddy and you'll have to face the decision wether to kill or rescue the little sister. The decision you make will influance the story later on thus giving the game and already guarenteed replay value of two.
Another aspect of the game is hacking into various equipment. Throughout Rapture you will find cameras, security turrets, security bots and safes which you can hack to have them work for you instead of against you. You will find this to be a very valuable thing and you'll have to think twice before destorying a security camera as it might come in handy later on. The actual hacking process can get quite anoying though. To hack an item you get a classic game of pipes. You get a playfield of pipe pieces which you need to connect together to help get the waterflow from one side to the other. If you let the machine short circuit you will recieve damage and if the water flow passes an alarm trigger the alarm will go off. The hacking is fun for the first two levels but then gets boring very quickly, especialy if there are 4 security turrets and a camera to hack you're tempted to just blow them up instead of wasting time on hacking them.
Last but not least there is the matter of upgrading your weapons. Throughout the game you will find several Power to the People machines. These machines let you pick out a free upgrade for any of your weapons and will shut down permanently after that. These upgrades are quite important as the slow fire rate of the shotgun or the immense kickback from the machine gun will become a huge hazzard later on in the game when the enemies are harder to kill. They also alter the look of your weapon, leaving you with some very funky looking weapons at the end of the game.

The Story

Attention! This part of the review contains major spoilers for the story. If you havn't played the game then do not read on. The following part is merely for a recap of the story for those interested.

The story in Bioshock is a good one. It's the story of one man's vision crushed under the presure of it's own perfection. Enter Rapture, an underwater city build in the mid-Atlantic just after World War II, in 1946 by Andrew Ryan. It was his vision to create a place in the world where religion and morality did not have an influance on the advancement of the human species. Where the labors of your work were not taken from you by god, the government or the people.
When Rapture opened it's doors, Ryan assembled the world's leading scientists to be put to work in Rapture's labs. One of these scientists, Bridgette Tenenbaum, was the one that discovered ADAM. She discovered a seaslug that produced unstable forms of stemcells that, when inserted in a human body, acted like a benign form of cancer. It would kill of native cells and replace them with the unstable versions allowing scientists to experiment with them on a larger scale. Eventualy ADAM was used to create various plasmids people could use to give themselfs super powers. However in order to overcome the nasty side effects ADAM had on a subject, one had to keep using more and more of it in order to stay sane. To produce enough ADAM to supply everyone, Tenenbaum and another scientist Dr. Suchong started working on a way to harvest ADAM from the dead and make it useable again. They found out that only small female children were useable for this purpose though it is never fully explained why. With the help of Frank Fontaine, a Rapture mobster, Tenenbaum en Suchong had plenty of little girls to experiment on out of Fontaine's orphenage.
To protect the little sisters and their ADAM, Suchong started working on gathering volunteers to become a Big Daddy. They would be given a special treatment, making them stronger and faster then anyone else in Rapture. Then they were given a large body armor that resembles a diving suit. While Suchong was fine tuning some of the aspects of the bond between a Big Daddy and a Little Sister he was killed by his test subject when he smacked one of the little sisters disturbing his research.

A few years later, on new years eve of 1959, a man only known as Atlas started a rebelion against Andrew Ryan, igniting a devistating civil war inside the walls of Rapture. It would eventualy render Rapture half dead, with the only way to survive being ADAM. Whoever survived the onslaught of the civil war was destined for a life as a splicer, doing whatever was needed to survive and gather as much ADAM as possible from corpses and little sisters.

A year later in 1960, a plane crash lands into the ocean directly above Rapture with only one surviver: Jack. Jack swims to the nearby lighthouse and finds it to be the access point for Rapture, stepping into the bathysphere to enter the city. When he enters the city he is contacted by a man called Atlas, one of the few sane people down in Rapture who is, like Jack, looking for a way out of the city for him and his family. Atlas helps Jack to survive throughout the city by giving him clues and hints about what to kindly do next. After some close encounters with splicers, Jack meets up with Tenenbaum who offers him an alternative to killing a little sister for the ADAM. Tenenbaum promises to make it worth him while if he were to resque the little ones.
Jack proceeds deeper into the city, having visions and flashbacks every now and then of the pictures he has in his wallet.

By the time Jack meets up with Andrew Ryan, he has set the city to self destruct. Atlas urges you to kindly find Ryan and kill him so he could use his key to stop the self destruct. On his way to Ryan's office however, Jack comes across a wall full of pictures, including some taken by the security system of Rapture. Also on the board are pictures of Tenenbaum, Fontaine, Suchong and a dead hooker Jack found earlier while doing 'favors' for Sander Cohen. Spraypainted in thick red letters over the pictures are the words: Would you kindly...
Left in a daze Jack chases Ryan into his office where Ryan confronts him with the horrific truth. Ryan tells him that Jack is his son, born out of the relation Ryan had with a prostitute many years ago. With the help of Tenenbaum en Suchong Jack was geneticaly altered to trigger certain commands when a certain phrase was said. The phrase 'would you kindly' triggered a submissive response, doing whatever it was the person asked for without question. Ryan demonstrates this very clearly by telling Jack: Would you kindly kill me? Jack followes the order and kills Andrew Ryan by beating him over the head with Ryans golf club three times. After this Atlas insists to Jack to kindly pick up Ryans key and kindly put it into the self destruct in order to stop it. It's only after the self destruct has been halted that Atlas reveals himself to actualy be Frank Fontaine, alive and kicking. He reveals to Jack that he was a weapon against Andrew Ryan, sent to the surface at the age of two just to be called back after a long time. When Fontaine is done explaining he writes Jack off as useless and unleashes the security system on him. Luckily he saved by a bunch of little sisters who guide him to Tenenbaums lab where she removed a part of the genetic code that lets Fontaine controll Jack.
Jack continues his way through Rapture to find Fontaine. Tenenbaum later claims that the only way to Fontaine is through a series of doors that can only be unlocked by Little Sisters. Unfortunately, the Little Sisters do not trust anyone except for Big Daddies; in addition, there are still many splicers loyal to Fontaine between Jack's current position and his destination, so, to kill two birds with one stone, Tenebaum proposes that Jack find all the equipment needed to suit up as a Big Daddy. Following a tedious search through more laboratories, Jack finds and dresses up in the necessary components of a Big Daddy suit in order to escort a Little Sister through the passages only they can unlock.
At the end of the voyage with the Little Sisters, Jack comes upon the elevator to Fontaine. Fontaine announces over the radio that he's never actually tried any genetic enhancements. Now, however, he decides to use all his hoarded Adam to his advantage, and he tries every splicing technique he knows of. When Jack emerges from the elevator, he finds a Fontaine that is not recognizably human strapped to a metal device with several large tubes of Adam pulsing straight into his body. He is roughly twice the height of a normal human being and possesses fiery, iced, and electric skin, as well as many deadly plasmid attacks. Jack eventually defeats Fontaine with the help of the Little Sisters. When Fontaine is about to kill Jack, the Little Sisters pounce on him with the hypodermic devices they use to suck Adam out of corpses, and they subdue Fontaine.

Warning, both ending spoilers below.

Depending on player actions before this point, one of two things will happen. If during the game the player rescued every Little Sister, Jack passes out when Fontaine is dead. A cut scene takes place in which Jack takes the Little Sisters to the surface and raises them, allowing them a normal life.

On the other hand, if during the game the player killed any Little Sisters, Jack is overcome with his lust for Adam and snatches the nearest Little Sister when Fontaine is dead. The first person view ends and Tenenbaum begins a monologue in which she discusses how disgusted she is with Jack for his cruelty and lack of control, implying that he killed the Little Sisters. At the same time, a silent cut scene takes place in which a naval submarine surveying the downed plane's crash site is surrounded with bathysphere pods from below. The sailors on the submarine's deck gawk as the dozens of bathyspheres pop open and splicers jump out. The splicers slaughter the submarine crew, and the camera shows what appears to be a nuclear warhead on board before the game ends.

Final Scores:
Graphics: 8
Gameplay: 9
Story: 9

Conclusion: This game is a must have for any self respecting gamer and should be bought rather then downloaded. The people working behind this game put all their effort into this and genuinly deserve to be paid for it in every way. This is not EA we're talking about afterall, so do the right thing ;).

Review: Asus R1E Tablet PC

2008-05-04T00:46:00.010+02:00

In my previous entry I talked about the Asus R1E. After having spend some time with it I'm now ready to pass my final judgment on this fine piece of hardware.

When it comes to computers I'm set on brands for some reason. Some brands I like for quality, like Nvidia and Enermax, others because I've been using that brand for an eternity and never had a problem. Asus falls in that last category, I have been using the Asus brand for years now in most of the desktop computers I have built over the years. Motherboard and video card both tend to be of the Asus brand simply because they are often the first with new gadgets and functionality and, like I said, have never ever failed on me.

When I started looking for a tablet PC specifically I quickly found that although a fairly wide variety of brands and models is available, most of them seem to be an ordinary laptop with a touchscreen slapped onto it. Obviously when you're looking for a laptop for an advanced piece of hardware on it you can expect the laptop to be modified for it here and there. And while not all manufacturers live up to this expectation, some do stand out. Among which is the R1E.

Going tablet, yes or no?
Before we dive into anything else about this laptop I want to cover a small issue I have with tablet PC's in general and if you're the right person to buy one.

Tablet PC's were originally (and 95% of them still are) aimed for the traveling business man. They are supposedly a great replacement for a notepad, you can bring it with you where ever you go without having a bulky looking laptop on your lap. The argument for a tablet PC in the office is that taking notes (during a meeting for example) becomes so much easier. However you need to consider if writing on a screen is really that much of an improvement over writing in a notebook and typing it in Word later. Especially since you won't be using the tablet function of the laptop for anything else, is it worth the extra cash? I'm not a business man, but I'd be inclined to say no.

I have no statistics to back up the following claim, but I think that tablet PC's are more popular in the art community than anywhere else. Being able to draw on the screen is much more significant then being able to write on the screen and it might be worth the extra cash for an artist as opposed to a business man who can just as easily grab a notepad. For artists, it's a very big leap forward if they are able to sketch in their favorite graphics software.

Before I bought the R1E I read the blog of a business man (which unfortunately I lost the link of) who tried out working on a tablet PC during meetings and such. He came to the conclusion that the process of learning the laptop your handwriting and having a bulky machine with you all the time did not come in as handy as you would at first believe. Of course it had it's benefits, like being able to check your e-mail on the spot and quick access to notes, but he found that when he was in a meeting he rarely referred to his e-mail and hardly ever had to look at previous notes. Eventually he got rid of the thing and went back to a good old notepad. Moral of the story: think very hard about why you want to get a tablet PC and how you will be using it. The touch screen alone makes any tablet PC about 50% more expensive then their normal counterparts so be sure you will be using it when you decide to get it.

The basics
Let's get some of the basic stuff out of the way first, such as the R1E's specifications.

OS: Windows Vista Business Edition
Harddisk: 160GB
Internal RAM: 2GB
CPU: Intel dual core 2200MHZ
Screen size: 13,3" (widescreen)
Wireless: Built in wireless network connector and bluetooth connector.

Other than those specs it has what you would expect on a laptop. Audio plugs, a DVD rewriter, VGA output and a nifty fingerprint scanner which I will talk about shortly.
Another cool part about this laptop is the swappable drive bay which originaly houses your DVD rewriter but can be swapped for a second battery (included) or a second hard disk (not included). The drive is apparently hot swappable (though I have not yet tested this) so you can just switch things around while you are working.
Just one other thing that is worth noting is the e-SATA port you can use to hook up all your external SATA devices.

User experience.
One thing that immediately came to mind when looking at the specs for this laptop was that 2GB of memory seemed rather low, especially since it was running Vista Business. On top of that you also get a trail version of Norton Internet Security 2008 which isn't exactly memory friendly. So after installing most of the programs I used I was kind of expecting a significant drop in performance, especially when working on Photoshop but I was pleasantly surprised when the laptop seemed to hold it's own against the large memory strain. I experience little to no lag when the laptop is booted up completely although I must say that the actual boot process can take quite long. If you need your laptop in quick bursts every now and again I would avoid shutting it down completely and just let it hibernate when you don't use it.

Safe for the long boot time the rest of the laptop seems to work pretty smooth. As with any laptop these days you get a shitload of free programs and trails pre-installed on your system which you can then decide to keep or not. Internet surfing is not a hassle at all and the built in wireless connector does it's job just fine at finding and connecting to the right networks. This laptop also has the ability to manually turn the wireless options on and off with the switch of a button. The response time of this switch is excellent and turns your internet connection on or off pretty much directly (depending on circumstances of course).

One slight issue that caught my attention was that the power LED on the laptop blinks softly when the laptop is in sleep mode. Normally there wouldn't be a problem with this but the various blue LED's on the laptop are rather bright. You won't notice this at all during the day but for those of you who keep their laptop in sleep mode during the night will suddenly see a blue glow in their room fading in and out. This can be quickly fixed by just putting something on the LED's, like a book, but it's an annoying little detail non the less.

Tablet Style!
On to the important part! The Asus R1E has the awesome ability to flip the screen 180 degrees and then close the screen backwards, this leaves you with something that resembles an oversized PDA. When the laptop is in this mode you will lose your keyboard and touch pad but gain the ability to use your pen to select, click and write. When you flip the screen around the image on the screen automatically turns 90 degrees, forcing you to hold the tablet in a 'standing' position. Luckily, for those not so keen on this little feature, you can flip the image back to normal with the push of a button and start working.

Because you lose your keyboard and touch pad when you're in tablet mode, everything you need to do is done by using the included pen (which is nicely hidden in one of the corners of the laptop). Clicking is done by tapping and writing is done by writing on a little magical post-it note that will make an attempt at reading your poor handwriting. Especially at first it will have trouble but the more you use it the faster it will learn that those hieroglyphs are actually letters and numbers.

Using the pen to draw is remarkably accurate. The R1E is a Penabled tablet PC, meaning it implements the famous Wacom tablet technology and makes it one of the few tablet PC's out there that supports pressure sensitivity (although you do need to download the drivers from Wacom.com first to enable the pressure sensitivity). Artists will be very glad to hear this I'm sure.
As far as actual drawing goes, to be honest I first expected a tablet PC to be a little off, sorta speak. Especially the small space between the pen and the actual 'paper' had me worried that I'd have to learn to use it properly. It surprised me that when I did some test drawings, the results were about as accurate as when I would do it on real paper. Another plus for the artist tablet user!

Last but not least a small detail our dear Asus friends didn't forget (this is why I like them). As most tablet users know, the tip of a tablet pen will wear off in time and will need replacing. Asus is nice enough to supply you with 5 replacement tips and a nice tool to get the old one out. That should keep you drawing for years to come.

Fingerprint scanner
Biometric security measures are slowly being integrated in everyday life and are no longer a thing for top secret government buildings and James Bond movies. Today you can even get your front door to open with your fingerprint if you really wanted to.
In computers this development has been mostly reserved for government agencies but in the past few years we have seen fingerprint scanners popping up on USB sticks and phones for example.

Asus is one of the few companies to bring this technology to a laptop, together with HP who is exploring the same path, and it's a good idea.
The fingerprint scanner on the R1E works exactly like it should without any major flaws. A pre-installed program lets you program your fingerprints into the system and from that moment on you can use your fingerprint to log into Windows, applications and websites. The only thing you have to look out for is how you swipe your finger when you're teaching the program. If you swipe your finger with a curve of some sort you'll have to duplicate that exact curve again to get a match in the future. It's best to take some time when programming the scanner so you get the easiest positions to scan. For most people this will be the left thumb and the right index finger but take some time and figure out what you like best.

Battery life
An issue with the R1F (the R1E's big brother) was it's crappy battery life. User complained about the battery running low way to fast and that it's durability only decreased after every charge. Unfortunately this problem was not fixed with the R1E as a closer inspection of the battery reveals that it's the exact same model (R1F model).
My experience is that a fully charged battery will last you about two hours on average and a mere 1 hour and 45 minutes after the first few recharges. Compared to any other laptop this is pathetic and it also makes it the single largest downside of this laptop. Some people I know draw on their laptop for hours on end and having it plugged in to a power socket all the time isn't nice for mobility. Luckily the previously mentioned hot swappable drive bay offers a solution as it can be used to store a second battery which offers an additional 1,5 hours of battery life bringing the total to 3,5 hours of battery life. That wouldn't be a problem except that you have to sacrifice your DVD rewriter for it.

So far I have not encountered a battery that can replace the crappy thing Asus put in there but I hope to find it somewhere at some point soon because the current rate of decay will leave the battery useless in a year or so.
Users in the United States apparently can contact Asus about the battery and have it replaced if they really want to.

Conclusion
The Asus R1E is a very decent tablet PC that has all the extras you would expect from a tablet PC. It can handle pretty much all the basic stuff you throw at it like Photoshop and Word without a glitch but mind you that it's not equiped for gaming.
The tablet part of the laptop works magnificent as does the nifty fingerprint scanner.

The only real downside to this laptop is the battery life and wear. You'd expect to be able to work for a few hours on a laptop without an electrical socket nearby but apparently 2 hours is all you're getting at most from the original battery which is kind of disappointing but not a huge disaster for most users I'm sure.

Non the less, the R1E is something I can personaly recommend for artists looking for something more then a normal tablet and happen to be looking for a new laptop at the same time. Also for those doubting between a Wacom Cintiq or a tablet PC, go with the tablet PC. Not only is it cheaper (in case of the more advanced Cintiq models), you also get a lot more worth for your money (tablet on screen: $2500,- / tablet on screen + laptop: $2000,-. I rest my case).

I hope this review was of use to you, if you have any questions feel free to contact me (though I can not promise you an instant reply) and I will try to answer your question.

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars - Full Review

2007-04-08T19:37:00.000+02:00

After putting in a good 50 hours into Tiberium Wars I managed to complete the game and am now thus able to write a full, all covering review about the game. I will be dividing it into 3 parts:

1. First Impression
2. Gameplay
3. Story

Note that the story part will be one huge spoiler for the game, so if you haven't completed it yet I would recommend not reading that part.

First Impression
I got the demo of Tiberium Wars pretty much the second it came out and started playing it instantly after it was done installing. At first glance everything seemed to check out like a classic C&C game. Just starting up the game and being presented with a menu that has a Tiberium infested earth in the background is already enough to get you back in the mood. It kind of takes you back to the days of Tiberian Sun, where you were confronted with those kind of images almost every mission.
The first time you enter a game in Tiberium Wars you will have to adjust yourself a little if you were expecting classic C&C controls; it's been 8 years since the last C&C and some things have changed, such as the Sage engine EA has been working on so hard the last few years and that single thing you will have to get used to is right clicking to give orders. Those of us who played Generals would already have been kind of used to it, but when you see the sidebar and feel like your back in the classic C&C game again, the urge to left click it quite large at the start. But like every other thing in life you'll get used to it fast enough.

First item on the agenda, the structures and units of C&C 3. I have heard a lot of people tell me their awsome, I have a lot of people telling me they are just more of the same, copied directly from Tiberian Sun or even Tiberian Dawn. While this may be true for some units and structures, it's also what makes C&C be a C&C. You can look at a GDI MCV and instantly go: GDI MCV! You can look at the Hand of Nod and instantly go; Hand of Nod! And so forth. Also some old units from Tiberian Sun have returned, such as the Juggernaut which also had a small fashion upgrade. I think that, in the entire game, the Mammoth Tank and the Juggernaut have to be the most cool looking units in the game.
In short it's a lot of the same mixed with some new ideas and new designs. And it's not at all a bad thing, because it makes you remember you are playing a C&C game. Besides, if they would have gone with something totally different, everyone would have been anal about everything being different and it not feeling like a true C&C blabla.

The graphics of the Sage engine look absolutely fantastic. Lighting, shadows and explosions are all so well done you'd wish you could blow stuff up all day long just for the effects. Blow up a tank and parts will fly everywhere, you'll see the barrel flying off in some random direction while other random parts fly everywhere. Shoot down an air unit and it will explode in the air, making a desperate attempt to land before crashing and burning into the ground and causing a second explosion. Buildings no longer have 3 kinds of graphical status (Full health, half health and destroyed) like in the previous C&C games, but now break down bit by bit with every shot they take until they finally explode into tiny pieces when completely destroyed. Blowing up bases and units becomes so much more fun with the graphic advances the Sage engine has provided.
Next to all that, the enviorment now also directly influences the lighting off the map. Playing in a blue zone where everything is peaceful will result in a clear battlefield and you'd imagine a blue sky over it. Play in a yellow or red zone however and you'll instantly notice how the Tiberium there affects the weather. Gas fumes are everywhere, it's dark and whatever light there is mostly green, shimmering off the huge Tiberium crystals that are growing in the ground. When you look around a red zone a bit you'll even see the reflections of the Tiberium shine into the camera as you pan over them. It's that kind of detail that makes it all a very nifty experience.

The music however is as bad as the graphics are good. While EA did promise to do everything they can to make the music 'C&C worthy', they never even came close to the quality Frank Klepacki once made C&C standard. All in all, there are maybe 1 or 2 tracks that pass by every now and then that make you go 'hm, yea that does kind of have a C&C beat to it', but the rest is not really something you would download a soundtrack for. I understand that Frank was employed with another company and that it would have initially restricted him from doing tracks for EA, but you'd say that a big company like EA would find a way around that. I mean they also got an actor from Lost so why not Frank. Buy him out for a few months or something, would have made a hell of a difference, but aw well. What's done is done. Music could have been better, but hey, who buys this game for the music?

Gameplay
The gameplay of C&C 3 is smooth and the tons of improvements they did to the Sage engine since Generals are clearly noticeable. Units no longer hump each other trying to get somewhere and appear to actually have half a brain to work with. Even the harvesters seem to have a decent comprehension of what is going on around them now, even though the idea of going back to base when being attacked is still something they have never heard of. That and taking turns with unloading Tiberium... the bay is designed for only one of you guys!!!
Another big change is the principle of Fog of War. In the old C&C games you could scout the map and what you scouted would then be available to you for the duration of the match. In C&C 3 they took a different approach and already gave you the entire map, but added a fog of war over it which you have to scout. It's a welcome change, for me anyway, because I used to hate the total blackness around me and knowing how the map looks without having to scout is much more useful.
Production cues is another new concept which also adds a whole new strategic side. You have to option to build a crane, which is basically a second construction yard and gains you access to one extra building tab. You can build two power plants at the same time for example and that concept is extremely handy for defenses and it also speeds up the entire match because bases are built more quickly. In turn, the way you build units are also changed. Where the speed of building used to be increased with each production structure you had, you now build units sepperatly at each structure. Say you have 5 war factories, you can build 5 tanks at the same time, speeding up the production process just the same or maybe even more as with the old method. Again, it speeds up the battles and how fast you can have an army ready. All you really need is money.

The Story

Attention! This part of the review contains HUGE spoilers to the story as a whole. If you have not completed the game entirely and don't want to know the story, don't read on from this point!!

Command & Conquer always had an epic story and it was the question of the community if EA would be able to continue the story without screwing it up. So lets have a little flashback first.

Great World War II had just ended when the Global Defense Initiative was set up in the wake of the now eliminated Soviet threat. While their initial goal was to be a global military organization under the command of the UN, their objective suddenly changed when an ancient cult came back from the ashes and made a huge push for power. The Brotherhood of Nod and it's leader who is only known as Kane rose up and started propaganda against GDI long before Tiberium manafested itself on earth. However it was not until a mysterious meteor impacted earth near the Tiber River in Italy that Nod became a more serious threat. The Brotherhood seemed to have a very high interest in the alien substance the meteor carried with it and quickly saw it's potential while scientists of GDI discovered the substance was in fact mutating the earth slowly. In the first Tiberium War GDI focused primarily on halting Nod as a group as the recommendations of scientists to make Tiberium the top priority were dismissed with a small thanks. Tiberium would continue to be very valuable substance, having the unique ability to leech minerals out of the ground, it was no wonder no-one wanted to get rid of it.
At the end of the First Tiberium War a GDI Ion Cannon was detonated over Kane's temple in Sarajevo and Kane was presumed MIA and most likely dead under the rubble of the temple. Video footage recovered from the temple later confirmed Kane was killed in the blast and there was no possible way he could have survived.
In the decades that followed GDI started to focus more on Tiberium, with the Brotherhood without a leader it was no longer a serious threat. Tiberium however was slowly taking over the planet at a faster rate then anyone could have predicted. GDI was using most of their resources at countering the effects and stopping Tiberium in it's tracks. It wasn't until early 2030 that Kane resurfaced, just as young as in the first war, and the Second Tiberium War had begun. Tiberium had by now manifested itself in the biggest part of the planet, mutating wild life and plant life everywhere. Next to that new strains of Tiberium were discovered, such as blue tiberium and Tiberium veins. Kane was determined to speed up the growth of Tiberium while GDI was doing everything in it's power to eradicate it. In the middle of the battle however, an alien space ship was discovered by Nod which was claimed by GDI after a fierce battle. Inside they found something which would be known as the Tacitus, a collection of background information on Tiberium specifically. After a long and fierce battle Kane was killed once again, this time for sure, the GDI commander responsible for his death assured. Shortly after Kane's death, his AI computer CABAL came in uprising, wanting to claim the two halfs of the tacitus for himself to unveil the secrets of Tiberium. Eventually GDI and rough Nod forces managed to destroy CABAL's core and recover the tacitus which their AI EVA was able to translate. That was the end of the second Tiberium war.

It was quiet for almost two decades before trouble once again arose.
Kane is back, alive and kicking almost 60 years after Tiberium first arived on earth. Before GDI got their hands on the Tacitus back in the Second Tiberium War, CABAL managed to translate portions of it, revealing information about the aliens who sent Tiberium to earth. It revealed that, when enough of the planet was covered in matured Tiberium, a chain reaction would cause an explosion that would alert the aliens and make them come to earth. Kane's faith in the aliens and in Tiberium drives him to lure the aliens to Earth in an attempt to steal their technologies and knowledge about Tiberium. In order to do this, he needs GDI to fire an Ion Cannon strike at Temple Prime in Sarajevo where a Liquid Tiberium Storage is being held in a bunker. A strike from the Ion Cannon would detonate the Liquid T, causing a massive chain reaction that would alert the alien visitors. And what better way to piss GDI off then by killing all the world's leaders in a single blow?
After a successful attack on GDI's ASAT facility, a nuke is launched against the Philadelphia, an orbital space station where all world leaders reside, far away from the Tiberium threat. With the destruction of the Philadelphia, GDI is fast to retaliate; taking back Washington before pushing into Sarajevo to crush Temple Prime and end the war quickly. The battle was short, while Nod managed to hold off GDI for some time, the Ion Cannon was eventually engaged and Temple Prime (and the Liquid T stored underneath) destroyed. The chain reaction that followed engulfed the entire planet, killing thousands of people in the process but completing Kane's plan to attract the aliens to Earth.
The aliens manage to penetrate orbital defenses and set up camp in England and Germany as a diversion for their bigger plans but are quickly taken by surprise as they come to realize that the Tiberium explosion was way to early. Tiberium, known to the aliens as Ichor, was for the most part immature. The planet was supposed to be dead and overrun with Tiberium by the time a liquid tiberium explosion took place. Instead, the world was still heavily populated. While the alien military adviser suggests aborting the mission and to wait until the Tiberium has done it's job, the foreman responsible for the Earth Harvesting Operation demands to continue harvesting operations.
While GDI is busy fighting the aliens in England and Germany, the aliens are building massive towers all over the planet which Kane believes to be intergalactic portals to other worlds when completed. Wanting to get this technology in his own hands, Kane manages to acquire the key codes to activating a completed tower. GDI however is pushing to destroy all towers, seeing them as a serious threat. They manage to wipe out all but one, which Nod is heavily defending alongside with the aliens. As the last parts of the tower are being completed, GDI manages to destroy the last remaining relay node of the aliens, sitting right on top of ground zero in the Tiber River. It stops all aliens on earth dead in their tracks, but not before the alien foreman escaped the planet trough the by now completed portal.
The alien invasion was stopped dead in it's tracks, be it with a final casualty rate of over 25 million people thanks to GDI's Liquid Tiberium Bomb which they used on the last relay node. Kane secured the tower, activating it soon to explore their faith. All meanwhile the Supreme Commander in the home galaxy of the aliens has intercepted footage of Kane, how he knew about the Tacitus, the aliens. This man knew to much, further investigation is required. As the last words are spoken by the alien Supreme Commander, we have to sit tight and wait for the expansion pack.
"Prepare a full invasion force. We WILL take earth..."

Spoilers end here!!

Well, that was my review of Command & Conquer 3. I hope you enjoyed it. Have fun playing the game if you have yet to play it!

Tiger

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

2007-03-26T16:15:00.001+02:00

Yes yes yes, the demo has been released and damn was I looking forward to it . This game has been on the top of my gonna get list from late August and now it's here! Well, the demo anyway. Previews all looked very promising. But can the real experience of a C&C game really survive 8 years of technological updating and not be 'to modern' for it's kind?

I had a chance to play it and I have to say that it's pretty cool once again. Like every new game it has that certain element of 'Damn I need to get used to this' to it, but that will pass with time. The graphics are pretty cool, sounds are cool (a lot of them also taken from the original C&C, dunno if thats cool or cheap to be quite honest) but the music could have been better IMO. Don't really have the feeling it's part of a C&C game.

WARNING! GAMEPLAY SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

The game starts out with the latest trailer that has been released to the public and is meant as general advertisement to the public. The demo contains 1 tutorial mission, 1 campaign mission and 1 skirmish map.
The tutorial is pretty straightforward, move the camera, move units, build base, yadayada. Nothing wrong with it would it not be for the huge gaps of time you lose while the game tries to figure out whether or not you did your objective and then takes 5 minutes to provide you with the next one.
After the tutorial you start the single player campaign. Thumbs up for EA on this one because it looks to me like they made not only a mission for the demo, but also an entire cut scene. We'll see about that in the final version of the game though. You are briefed by a 3 star general about what Nod is up to after which you are sent into the field. This mission is still mainly tutorial on a larger scale. This also introduces the new principle of a log in which you can find information on units, structures and faction backgrounds. This feature was already kind off available in C&C Renegade and apparently they decided to keep it.
The remainder of the mission is rather easy. You get some Orca's and after bombing the crap out a few buildings with the biggest ease ever, your commander is afraid you won't be able to handle it (seriously, you'll laugh when you hear her) and give you control over the Ion Cannon, the GDI weapon we have all come to love. Before I used it I thought it would be a nice addition to my Orca's to whipe out all the base structures one by one, just like in all previous C&C games, including Generals. However, to my extreme surprise they either overpowered the Ion Cannon completely or just did so for the purpose of that mission but when I used it it caused such destruction and hell that it wiped out the entire Nod base from the face of the map in a single strike. And this was no small base, this thing took in at least 1/4 of the map and had at least 16 structures in it. I hope the Ion Cannon in the real game is not this powerfull because that would just be... lame... .

After the refreshing experience of kicking some Nod butt, we see what is likely the true intro of the game. Nod has overrun Norrad and ASAT, rendering America's anti missile deployments completely useless. Leaving the GDI space station The Philidelphia vulnarable to missle attack from Nod. The station is destroyed, killing most of the world's leaders in one big blow and starting the third tiberium war.

SPOILERS END HERE

From time to time two real life reporters (one from CNN and one from a Las Vegas news station) take care of the news reports involving the war. While the cutscenes I have seen could have been better in certain areas, music and acting wise, it sets a great mood for the game.

So far Command & Conquer 3 is nearly everything I had hoped it to be. EA managed to stay true to the original C&C concept while also putting in a lot of new features and ideas. It could very well be the first game EA bought over but didn't f*ck up. However, time will tell, since it is only a demo after all.

Downloads:
The demo can - for now - only be downloaded from EA Link, the download program for EA Games. However in the course of this week it will become available in more and more places, including Gamespy and Filefront.

Tiger

Writing a story: How to start

2007-04-11T20:06:00.001+02:00

This will be the first of probably many entries that will directly deal with how to write a story. I'll explain certain ways of writing, certain ways of gaining ideas and creativity and I'll explain why I write the way I do and how. Right now I'm working on a story myself and as soon as the first chapter is done and posted I will make a sort of 'behind the scenes' editorial, for those who would like to know why I chose to write certain scenes the way I did. Until then, I'll start with a few basic things.

1. What to write about.
2. Working out the details.
3. Writing with or without a timeline.

So, let's start with the most important one of all for any writer. You can't write a story if you don't have a story to write about.

What to write about?
Before we do anything we need a subject to write about. You can't just sit down, start writing and see where it goes. Imagine reading a book that was written that way. You'd be subjected to the impulses of the writer, meaning that one second little jimmy is eating a sandwich and the next he's saving the world from invading aliens and... stuff. And that could work out, if you want to reach out to a public that likes aliens that can only be defeated by a sandwich, but that public isn't all that big, trust me.
You need a steady subject, a red wire which the entire story evolves around. Since it's going to be the foundation for your story you will have to put some serious thought into what you would like to write and read about and when you think you found something think about who will be reading it and if they will like it too. You're always primarily writing for your own pleasure (unless of course you have a contract with a publisher in which case you probably wasting your time reading this) but if you intend to share it with an audience you might want to find something that your audience can also relate with if you want them to enjoy it just as much as you are. Of course you could also just be picky about the audience and post your story about animals on a website dedicated to animals, you can't really go wrong that way but it cuts up your audience quite a bit.

So what should a good subject have if you're going to write a story about it? One would be tempted to say that it should be interesting, but any topic is as interesting as you can make it out to be. With enough imagination and creativity you can even make a football an interesting topic so thats not what you should be bothered with. What you do need to ask yourself is if the subject you chose has enough 'juice' in it to write a decent amount of chapters with. You could choose to write a novel about a sandwich, but the juice in that subject would run dry after about 3 short chapters, unless you're writing a cook book. If you write a story about a war however you could write for hours on end and still have enough juice left over to start your car.
You might ask yourself; "What exactly makes a subject 'juicy'?".
Well, good question. What makes a subject juicy depends largely on how much plot twists it allows you to make. War for example offers an unlimited amount of plot twists you can think off before you even start writing and more will offer them selfs as you write. A sandwich... well there might be a dilemma over whats on the sandwich, but that's pretty much the only plot twist you'll find in a sandwich. Also, can you relate to the subject? Can other people relate to the subject? You could be writing for hours on end about how you once made a sandwich in the middle of a war while bombs were going off everywhere but I doubt anyone can relate to that on a serious level besides yourself.
Of course no one story needs to be confined to just one subject, but be careful you don't use to many subjects. You could of course write a story about the sandwich AND the war, but writing a story about a sandwich in a war on a burning ship where a presidential election is being held while the ship is being attacked by a giant wale which was shot by Moby Dick who is enjoying a cup of coffee on his own little boat... while eating a sandwich... might be overdoing it. Limit your story to one or two main subjects and then use secondary chapter by chapter subjects to keep the story interesting.
Last but not least, don't be afraid to ask for feedback on ideas. Post your idea about the sandwich in a war on a message board like Writing Forums or ask friends what they think about the idea or what could be better about the idea. They might come up with good ideas you overlooked, like adding ketchup to the sandwich for the war effect of the sandwich being shot or something.

Working out the details
So you have your subject, now you need to form it into something people will like to read about because this is not going to work:

"There once was this sandwich and he was in a war and he was shot and he got ketchup all over him."

Obviously that's also a very horrifying way of writing, but what I wanted to point out is that we don't know what kind of sandwich we are dealing with, why there is a war and why the sandwich got shot. Details are the most important thing in a story next to a subject because without them a story will be extremely boring. For the next example I'm going to leave Sandwich for a bit, don't worry, he'll be back.
Let's say the man who made the sandwich is called... Bob. You could write:

"This is Bob, Bob was making a sandwich when the sandwich was shot because of the war."

While this leaves room for the readers imagination (which is also something a story needs) this particular piece of text leaves a gap bigger then the Grand Canyon. So lets try adding a few details:

"This is Bob, a chef on board of a warship. He was making a sandwich in the middle of a horrific war which lasted for centuries because of the peoplez fighting the poople. Suddenly a peoplez stepped in the kitchen thing and shot the sandwich, laughing like a maniac."

This already leaves a lot less room for imagination. We now know what Bob is doing in the war and somewhat why there is a war in the first place. It also explains why sandwich got shot and that the people is obviously some kind of idiot, judging by the laughter. What we could do to make it even more detailed is describe what Bob is wearing while making the sandwich, what kind of sandwich he's making and a small description of what the kitchen looks like. After that we could describe how the peoplez entered the kitchen and what he is wearing. Then you could continue to describe what he uses to shoot the sandwich. A gun? A rifle? A bazooka? Maybe a crossbow?
Read over your text on a regular basis as you write. Since you know what the story is about it's easy for you to picture everything like it should be in your head, but someone else reading your story probably isn't a psychic so make sure that all crucial elements in your story are actually there for the reader to pick up. The description of the kitchen is not needed perce, it's something the reader could fill in for himself, the weapon used to shoot the sandwich however is something that absolutely needs to be there. Not because it might be a huge plot element, but mostly because the reader will stop reading and go: "Well WTF did he get shot with?!!" if he can't find the cause in the first few lines following the shooting. This will in turn ruin the experience and the mood of the story so be sure not to skip any important things in your story.
Details are good, but to many details are bad. For instance we do not need to know Bob isn't wearing underwear while making the sandwich if it isn't a major plot element. And if it is I urge you to go back to the part where I told you how to pick a subject because you obviously didn't read it right.
Leaving room open for the readers imagination is something I personally like to do because it allows the reader to give certain parts of the story their own little label, making the story something they can relate with. For instance you can choose to describe the room in every single detail, including the carpet and the wallpaper. But you could also vaguely describe some items in the room, tell the reader what certain things look like and where they are and stop there. This allows the reader to fill in how the rest of the room looks and will in turn involve the reader without the reader being aware of it.
Also don't put details in the middle of an important scene. This for instance, won't work:

"Carl shouted at Bob for letting sandwich be shot.
'He got shot?! How bad is he?! Did he survive?! Is he still eatable?! Tell me now!!'
Bob looked at Carl and saw he was wearing a red shirt. The shirt had thin white stripes on it which made the entire thing look like a red chess board. Also he was wearing blue pants, which was just SO last year. Behind Carl was a desk, with a computer on it which was playing a nifty screensaver of a ball bouncing of the edges. The ball kept changing color, from blue to red, from red to yellow and from yellow back to blue. It facinated Bob too see this untill he was distracted by the bird in the cage behind the desk.... ...when he was done looking at the brown book case and reading every single title of every single book he looked at Carl.
'No, he's fine.'"

Here I put a F'ing long description in the middle of an important moment. And while it does kind of make Bob look like a total retard, it's not something you should ever do in an important scene. Either do it before or after the moment, but never in the middle.

Using a timeline or not?
By timeline I mean if you will describe the story being set in a specific year, like 1944. While this adds a certain level of detail to the story, it might come back and screw you over later, especially if your story is based on a non-fictional universe. AKA, if you are using the real world as a setting for your story. Unless you decide up front which events in history did and did not happen, you have a risk of it coming back and getting you when you have an idea. For example if you wanted to have a scene where Bob is relaxing on a beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944, then you'd have a problem because he'd be in the middle of a firefight.
While by itself this would not be a very big problem (since you can after all change the date a little), if you made earlier unchangeable references to D-day AND to the date and place Bob would be on the beach then you'd be in for a serious problem. Obviously you'd plan things a bit more careful in a real story and the above scenario is very unlikely to happen, but the basic principle of overlooking certain stuff and getting in trouble for it can. You reduce this risk by eliminating specific dates. Instead of naming the date, you could just use the time the story is set in as a point of reference to go back in time. Example:

Present time is the moment where Bob's ship is being attacked and the sandwich shot. While he's making the sandwich he's thinking about the time where he was relaxing on that beach in Normandy two years ago.

This implies that it happened quite a while ago and that a lot obviously happened in the meantime, but doesn't pinpoint the exact date and thus does not tie it to a specific event. This can help you avoid a lot of trouble in dealing with time paradoxes and stuff like that.

Well, so much for this part of my tips and tricks section. I'll follow it up with another article in the future, probably after I finish the first part of my story. I'm hoping it to be quite a long chapter so it might take some time. But those who are patient will be rewarded. In the mean time, I'd really appreciate it if someone could write a story about Bob and Sandwich. I've come to like them.

Tiger

Zoo trip & Apologies

2007-04-15T00:51:00.001+02:00

It's been the first time in a long time that I have visited the zoo again. Of course the weather is getting nicer so the choice to go is made much easier. I grabbed my camera and drove to the Amersfoort Zoo, a place I have been going since I was about 3 and where I have been coming a lot the last 4 years to take pictures and follow the lives of some of the feline inhabitants of the zoo.
There was a large gap between the last time I went there and now and in that time gap something nasty happened. Tientsie, the male Siberian Tiger in the zoo everyone following my pictures and adventures in the zoo has come to know and love, died of a kidney infection a few weeks ago. He reached the age of 13 and since I have seen him for quite a few times it's a rather big personal loss for me. I liked Tientsie most together with Brooklyn, so it's a shame to see him go.
As for the pictures I took on my last zoo trip they can be found on my DeviantArt account.

Apologies
I read quite a refreshing and interesting post in 2 the Ranting Gryphon's journal just now. It's about whether or not people should apologize for things in life they had nothing to do with. It's quite an interesting read. Go check it out.

The Daily Tube: Bush and Rice

2008-05-13T14:10:00.001+02:00

A funny conversation between George Bush and Condoleezza Rice.

Enjoy!

Tiger

New laptop for the future!

2008-04-24T12:02:00.003+02:00

Lately I've been getting back into the art scene a little. The past few weeks have been spent with a lot of sketching, looking at other peoples art to get together a style and asking for peoples help. It's amazing what you can do to your own skills with just a few weeks of practice. What took me ages to get right a few weeks ago is now something I do in an instant without any trouble.
So now that I got sketching somewhat handled, I wanted to take it up a notch and start perfecting my skills in the Photoshopping department. I already have a Wacom tablet which I have used with a lot of my digital drawings, but I felt that wasn't enough. You're still very focused on two things; the screen in front of you and the pen in your hand. It requires some patience to make the two work together and even then it just feels unnatural.

For the past six years I've also occasionally worked on a laptop which, at that time, was awsome because it was an Acer lappy with half a gig of RAM (OMG! :D) and a 60GB harddisk (OMG AGAIN! :D) and only cost a thousand euros which, at that time, was a bargain. But I also have a desktop computer which has seen some large upgrades over the years and I even rebuild it a year ago to fit my needs completely. My desktop has a good 3GB of memory and the disk space recently exceeded 1000GB (1TB ^_^). And believe it or not, I'm using a good 60% of it right now.

So needless to say, whenever I got behind my lappy I went from ZOMGSUPERFAST to OHDEARGODFUCKINGSLOW... and since my desktop desk is always cluttered with stuff and not very usefull for having a tablet laying around I decided to do all my art in my bedroom, since I have a desk there too. I would just put old lappy there, throw XP on it, throw Photoshop on there, install the tablet and by the time I'm 30 Photoshop will have finished loading and I can start doing my picture. Obviously old lappy would die under the strain of present day Photoshop versions, it already struggled with Photoshop 6 and later 7. I did not dare install 8 on there, let alone CS2.
Simple solution: Buy a new lappy. Of course I could just have gotten a decent lappy of any make, but as I wanted a new one I thought I might as well get a lappy that would fulfill my artistic needs as well. And that meant getting a Tablet PC. A tablet PC is basically a laptop in every aspect, except that it has a rotatable, pressure sensitive screen which you can then click back as if you closed it, only with the screen facing up. The result you then get is something that resembles a very oversized PDA. It is however ideal for artists as it lets you draw directly on the screen as you would on paper. It eliminates scanning sketches, faded out lines, erasing wrong things and all that crap. I can now sketch on my lappy, color on my lappy and save it on my lappy. It's that awsome.

About a week ago I ordered the Asus R1E, because I <3 Asus and it was one of the few Tablet PC's that had a pressure sensitive screen that implemented Wacom technology instead of 'just a touchscreen'. For it's class it was also fairly prices in my opinion so that was nice as well.
Yesterday I finally got the package in the mail and at first sight I thought it was something else because the box was freaking huge. I really did order just a 13" screen laptop, it's not THAT big. The box was big enough to fit my 19" monitor O_o. But after unpacking it became clear why the box was so big. Next to getting a shitload of manuals, driver CD's, modules (oh yea, this laptop has a modular bay for the CD drive or a second battery), wires and a carrying bag that looked like it came straight from the 70's. On top of that, the laptop itself was packed in 5(!!!) layers of material: The outside box, the inside box, another box, another carrying bag (O_o) and a thin layer of protective coating. Eventually I got it out though and was very pleased with the results.

Next to the regular crap like ten thousand useless programs that are installed on a new lappy and the first startup which took ages, there's another fancy thing about this lappy. It has a fingerprint scanner which allows you to log in to Windows, applications and websites by a simple swipe of your finger. After your print has been accepted the program fills in your username and password and hits enter for you too.
While at first I thought the fingerprint scanner was just another one of those fancy gadgets, I overlooked a very obvious reason for it being there. When you're in tablet mode you have no keyboard. The only way of input is your pen which you can write stuff with on the screen and hope the computer translates your crappy handwriting to the right letters. But filling in a user name and password doing this is quite tedious after you've done it for 5 times and any more just gets annoying. Asus made a very wise choice to put that scanner there because it makes logging in so much easier once it's set up. Even if I do have my laptop in normal mode, a quick swipe of the finger is often faster or more convenient then typing the password manually. If you're really a security freak you can even set it up to ONLY accept fingerprint scans but that's just overkill for a simple home user like me.

In the end it's a very awesome laptop and I look forward to using it more and producing my art on there when I start getting used to the on screen drawing. It might feel more natural then a tablet but it's still a bit different.

The Flying Dutchman
Those remotely interested in sea, sailing and navy history will no doubt know the myth of the Flying Dutchman. Those not so keen on naval history will no doubt know it from Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3.
The tale is about a Dutch captain in the time of the VOC (The East Indian Trading Company, on of Holland's most glorious times) who sailes the fastest trading ship in the fleet. His success and fortune eventually go to his head and during his trading trips he starts pirating other vessels, only to keep the loot from those ships for him and his crew.
One day, when he and his crew want to set out for another pirating trip, they are prohibited to leave the harbor. No ships are to leave the harbor on easter and on top of that a violent storm was raging over the sea. The captain ignored these rules however and set sail for open sea.

"Storm or not, easter or not, prohibited or not, I will set sail, even to eternity!"

That same night, according to the myth, something terrible happened on board of the ship. Some stories say a plague broke out and the ship was not allowed to dock anywhere. Other stories say they were dragged to the bottom of the ocean by the devil himself, where he doomed the ship to sail until the end of time.
Several sightings of the old 17th century ship have been reported, some dating back as close as 1880. When the unknown ship is hailed, it tries to send messages to persons or ships long since dead and a sighting of The Flying Dutchman is generally believed to be a sign of bad luck, even to this day (although no-one ever saw the ship again after 1880).

I've always been a big 'fan' of the Flying Dutchman myth and was excited to see the myth in Pirates of the Caribbean. But I was even more excited when I learned that the biggest theme park here in Holland was building a ride based on the myth. I recently got to ride in it and I have to say it's very awesome. They fleshed out the story perfectly. They gave it their own little twist to fill in some of the missing details, but overall they did an awesome job bringing this myth to life. Check out some pictures and the onride video.

Thanks to everyone involved in building De Vliegende Hollander at De Efteling! You did an awsome job!

The Daily Tube: A day in the life of a Portal Turret

2008-04-15T14:06:00.001+02:00

Okay so I havn't been keeping this updated... sue me! Anyway, enjoy this Portal movie!

Enjoy!

Tiger

The Daily Tube: Halo 3's Funniest Death

2007-11-14T19:32:00.000+01:00

An award winning death in Halo 3. The guy dieing actually got rewarded a special ingame armor.

Enjoy!

Tiger

EA: We are taking a new direction!

2007-11-12T21:49:00.000+01:00

So, a spokesman for EA recently stated that the company would be abandoning their trusted marketing strategy of pumping out sequel after sequel and actually listen to the community for once. "We are taking a new direction!" was one of the statements.
Well mister EA dip shit I didn't know you people were moving in any direction to begin with. In fact to go in any directions at all, you probably had to ask for them. We've been shouting for the last 5 years that your company sucks and it took 5 years and to many craptastic games later to reach you? Is EA headquarters located in a time distortion where everything goes slower or something? That would certainly explain the speed at which you bring out all these crappy games...
Anyway, the statement is that they will be focusing on quality instead of quantity. And what do ya know, that IS a new direction. Heck it's more then that. For EA, it's an entirely new phenomenon. Quality? What is this thing you call quality?
Seeing is believing, until then I still call out to everyone to download EA games from anywhere you can.

HiFi Set
I ordered the speakers and the A/V Reciever today. They should be getting here somewhere in the next two weeks. I shall keep you all (whoever reads this shit) informed.

Tiger

The Daily Tube: Benny Lava... and co...

2007-11-12T21:35:00.000+01:00

Retarded version of a Bollywood music clip. Hilarious must watch.

Enjoy!

Tiger

Building a HiFi set

2007-11-11T23:01:00.000+01:00

Christmas is drawing closer and to me that's the perfect time to give myself a little treat for all the hard efforts I make on a daily basis (yea right :P). So to be able to survive this years Christmas horrors I decided to give the half arsed home cinema set standing in my living room a little upgrade. Going from an all in one Bose Lifestyle speaker set, to a hand picked A/V reciever, speaker set and Home Theater PC.

Have a glimpse of what I will be getting myself.

The Home Theater PC, or HTPC for short. The nerve center for anything I want to do with music, movies or watching television. It's all done from this little box which I will be putting together myself.

Pioneer VSX-LX 50 - The A/V reciever to make sure everything looks and sounds like it's supposed to.

JBL Northridge E80 - The two front speakers. Picked out after a close listening session at my local HiFi store. I'll tell you these things sound so good you'll orgasm in your pants.

JBL Northridge E10 - Matching rear speakers of about the same quality as above.

Needless to say, a center speaker and sub woofer will be added to the set as well. Future blogs will have pictures of the installation and stuff like that :).

Tiger

The Daily Tube: Half-Life 2 - So Cold...

2007-11-10T14:23:00.000+01:00

Awsome music video using Half-life 2 machinima and Breaking Benjamin - So Cold

Enjoy!

Tiger

Freedom

2006-05-18T14:19:00.000+02:00

Things surely took a strange twist lately. Before I go into that, let me just write down the last ten years of my life in a nutshell: My mom was an alcoholic. My dad was an alcoholic, though not to the same extend. They fought regularly. I was bullied at school often. When I was 13 my father died, leaving me with my alcoholic mother. Things went downhill, and I ended up in a sort of foster care thing. Eventualy I came back home, mom still alcoholic and I pretty much missed out on my entire teenage years because of her. I had to constantly take care of myself, live the life of an adult at the age of 16.

Now, at the age of 18, in the year 2006, when I'm right at the point where I'm starting to crumble under the weight and presure of ten years of fucked up, the weight is lifted, and I'm finaly given back my freedom and my life.
A few days ago, my mother died. Leaving me alone. And to be honest, it feels good. It feels good to finaly know that the pain and suffering of not only myself, but also of my mother, is finaly over. It feels good to know that I can finaly move on with my life, without having the presure of my mother holding me back. Freedom... it feels so damn nice.

Ofcourse, losing a parent is never fun. No matter how much she fucked up your childhood and most part of your life. It's still instinct to care about your parents, as do I. And freedom does come at a price in this case. As I was still the one who had to found her laying dead, spread over her bed with her face in the covers as if she choked to death. I generaly know myself as someone who can take a punch. But the picture of how I found her there that morning still hounts my thoughts. The image still appears infront of my eyes each time I set foot in the living room. The feeling of a room where someone died is just there. You can feel it every time you're in there. And it's fucked up to say the least.
Luckily me and a friend have spend most part of this evening to come up with a nice fresh new design for the living room. As - obviously - I don't want to keep living in this house as it currently is. I'm hoping we can start re-doing it as soon as possible. To get that bad feeling out of here.

I'm going to take some pictures of the room, as a small reminder for later. And I'm going to take pictures of the room as it's being re-done. Just for myself to see how things went. I'l post some of those here I guess. So I can share, which I find very nice to do in times like this.

Anyway, untill a later time.

Tiger

The Daily Tube: Weird Al Yankovic - Polkarama!

2007-05-16T01:26:00.000+02:00

Hilarious polka video by Yankovic.

Enjoy!

Tiger

Tigers & Queensday

2007-04-30T22:52:00.000+02:00

Well I had a jolly weekend. The big cat sanctuary I worked at roughly two years ago had a special open day for it's supporters and obviously I went over there. The thing is almost a 1.5 hour drive from my house though so I had to leave early to get there in time and although I expected the drive to be pure hell I have to admit it wasn't halfway bad. It was a nice sunny day, the road wasn't to busy and I had a nice time enjoying the surroundings of open fields and big lakes. I was there before I knew it and had a bite to eat at a nearby cafe before I drove back to the sanctuary and went inside.
Since it was over two years ago and I only worked their briefly the owners didn't really recognize me anymore but that wasn't such a bad thing since I don't think I left on the best terms back then. The day I left I kinda threw down work in the middle of the day which, looking back at it, might not have been the best course of action and I'm not particularly proud of it especially since I regretted doing it the second I walked out the gate. But since I can't change the past, I can only hope for the things to happen right in the future, which it did since they didn't remember me :).
It was really nice to be back there again, lot of memories came back and I genuinely missed working there the instant I went inside. To bad I don't have the time at the moment because of school but should time offer itself in the future I'm definatly going to work there again. I'm guessing somewhere in June or July. Anyway I got a tour around the place, got some updates on the animals which were still there and on some that died in the two years that had passed. I was glad to see my two big buddies were still there, Rasputin and Alexander, who are two HUGE Siberian Tigers which are extremely cute and cuddly and quite often in a playful mood. Today however they were being lazy in the sun and only made for a couple of funny pictures. After a short time watching the animals and having a chat with the owners of the sanctuary I chose to take my leave and said they would hear from me in the future. With that I started my way home and this was only part one of Saturday. Total bugs killed on windshield: At least 2 dozen.

After getting home and taking a relaxing shower I prepared to go out with my friend Neo. We have a national holiday here called Queensday which is celebrated with a lot of music and drinking, in the case of our little city also in combination with the yearly fair. The evening before Queensday went pretty much like it should have except for the fact that I don't drink for a few reasons such as: I don't like it and both my parents were alcoholics. I did have a sip of beer but I came to the conclusion it was still as disgusting as when I tasted it 10 years ago. All and all I never came further then enough cokes to chemically dissolve my teeth.
The street, as usual with events like this, was littered with teenage idiots bouncing to a beat which was merely a modern version of cavemen banging on a rock wall. Non the less I'm not one to complain so despite the overwhelming presence of The Ikú* I had a very good time. We even made fun of them of multiple occasions.
The next day the real partying started during daytime and we went past a few partying spots to see if it was even worth it to go anywhere. In the end we concluded that it was just to crowded and to hot remotely enjoy being there and after visiting one place which was totally engulfed with the Ikú (including behavior that would make a caveman look behaved and dance moves that would make Darwin turn around in his grave) we decided to leave. The fact that my intestines were being bounced up and down by the extremely high bass didn't help either.

All the Money in the World
Neo and me made our way back to my house and spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the backyard, reading some books and enjoying the sun. After a while however, relaxing became hilarious laughter after we started fantasizing about what we could do with all the money in the world at our disposal. Now we had discussions like this before and the outcome usually was that we'd buy an airstrip, a few fighter jets, get pilot training and have simulated fights above the city. What separated this from all the others however was the idea I had about buying myself in with the Catholic church as the pope. Can you imagine me as the pope? Exactly, so could we! The outcome was hilarious so let me share with you guys what would happen if TigNeor** would become ruler of the planet:

1. There would be only 1 supermarket on the entire planet and it would be located in Friesland (most idiotic province in our country). It would be as high as the WTC and the rest of the province would be turned into a huge parking lot.

2. Prices in that supermarket would obviously be huge.

3. On the top floor of the building we would sit around and have huge comfy chairs from which we control the entire planet.

4. All around this supermarket are machine guns mounted on the ceiling which are used for our own entertainment.

5. For example, shooting the first person to come in the door wearing a striped T-shirt.

6. We'd recruit all Catholics in the world as our own huge army.

7. I'd make a bet with Neo as to whether or not he would be able to invade America, just for fun.

8. And after he would succeed I'd owe him a million.

9. After America I'd make a bet about Russia...

10. Against Russia we'd use a new weapon system, which would exist of catapults and new born babies.

11. Just for a laugh we'd rig a few catapults to release it's payload into the ground instead of in the air...

12. We'd also stuff some C4 into crying infants and launch them at weeping mothers just to make em go boom when they catch em.

13. To make it complete, every hospital will have a missile silo which will be used to launch new born babies into orbit.

14. All the world's leaders would be our servants, including Bush who would be cleaning toilets around our huge ass house.

15. For relaxation we would get said airstrip and said plane and fly around without getting any pilot classes.

16. When we need to exit the plane and don't know how to land we'd just eject and buy a new one...

17. With the plane going right into a church...

18. Fun!

19. In time we'd control earth from orbit around the planet.

20. For fun we'd launch random objects like piano's and marble plates into earth and see how many people we can crush at a time.

21. Events like Queensday are extremely suitable for this.

22. The marble plate would be an often reoccurring event which people will always be fearing.

23. With reason because you don't want to know how heavy those things are...

24. By the time our life is over we would launch the entire nuclear arsenal at once...

25. Which would put a whole new meaning to the phrase; going out with a bang.

So yea, it would be seriously bad if we were in charge of the planet, so lets hope that never happens :).

I will have some pictures of my trip to the sanctuary up tommorow I hope. So sit tight my friends!!

Tiger

*The Ikú: A name made up by me and Neo for the biggest part of the teenage population which are often found at parties, hanging around bars and fast food joints and listening to rap music and generally attempting to be cool.

**TigNeor: The collectable name of the infamous duo TigerXtrm and Neo.

The Daily Tube: The Daniel/Jack Relationship

2007-04-30T22:45:00.000+02:00

Oops, havn't had a daily tube in a few days now. Party weekend and everything. We're back now though!

Micheal Shanks (actor who plays Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1) talking about the special Daniel/Jack relationship that's sometimes seen in the show. Quite funny.

Enjoy!

Tiger

The Daily Tube: Amish Paradise

2007-04-26T23:01:00.000+02:00

Hilarious Amish spoof by Weird Al' Yankovic.

Enjoy!

Tiger

The Daily Tube: Free Running

2007-04-24T12:53:00.001+02:00

The things you can do with your body. Imagine having to chase these guys as a cop...

Enjoy!

Tiger

The Daily Tube: Taco Bell Lions

2007-04-20T15:42:00.000+02:00

A Taco Bell commercial featuring some funny lions. Additional bloopers can be found here.

Enjoy!

Tiger

The Daily Tube: Slipknot Joke Video

2007-04-17T17:33:00.000+02:00

A funny take on the song 'Before I Forget' by Slipknot. Pay special attention to the guy in the back playing the guitar.

Enjoy!

Tiger

The Daily Tube: House MD Best Moments

2007-04-16T19:19:00.000+02:00

The best moments in the Fox series House MD, which is a very awesome series btw.

Enjoy!

Tiger