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Socialness.. or the lack thereof
Part of the things I’ve been changing lately is that I’m trying to be more outgoing and social. This is probably something that sounds silly to most people, but for me it’s something that’s been bothering me – a lot. I’ve noticed for a long time that I’m always the one initiating conversations, it’s only roughly 2 or 3 people that will start to talk to me. That’s something that’s been going on for years, but whenever I talk to someone it’ll be a fun conversation (if the person’s up for a talk that is). So because of that I’ve never really known why this was the case, do people simply expect me to initiate the conversation?
As such I’m sometimes just finding myself not talking to anyone as I’m not initiating conversations just to see if that’s changed, then I’ll just end up feeling lonely if I’m not actively doing something or even when I am. Turns out that after all those years, that is one thing that doesn’t seem to be changing, despite me trying to be more open and social towards other people. I know I used to (and can still be) quite closed off at times and will give only short answers. The funny thing is that when others do it, I consider it rude and unpleasant, yet it’s something I’ve done for so long myself.
Quote from Swords & Swordsmen
Mike LoadesAll was lost for the Percy Cause. The cry went up that he was dead and, it is said, no mercy was shown that day. Whinnying horses, their flesh lacerated by tormenting arrow-shafts, fell and staggered, crashing their riders to the ground where they were murdered by marauding dagger-men. Knights fighting on foot strained to hold their lines as blow after blow rained down on them, rendering them concussed and broken within their shells. Unarmoured archers and bill-men, their faces torn open by slashing swords, writhed screaming in the mud, holding the bloody flaps of skin in place. Others tried to staunch the flow from severed limbs, while the less fortunate looked down with glassy eyes at the disemboweled entrails hanging from their slit bellies, as their trembling lips tried to utter one last prayer. The blinded, the dazed and the simply exhausted stumbled and slipped in eddying pools of blood, making their way across the stinking corpses of the dead and dying. What friends had fallen here? The screams of men and beasts and the stench of death filled the ears and nostrils of victor and vanquished alike. Some 5,000 men lay dead. Henry, Prince of Wales had witnessed his first full-scale battle.
While reading through Swords and Swordsmen I stumbled upon this paragraph which is about Henry V‘s first real battle at Shrewsbury, fighting a rebellion at the age of 16. The writing of it though really struck a note with me and I feel like it pretty accurately describes what combat would’ve been like at that time. It’s simply fascinating to read about and think back what it must’ve been like to face such madness. Us “modern” people really couldn’t deal with it I think.
Reinstalling OS checklist
It has been a good 2-3 years since I did a reinstall of my OS to get a quick and fresh system. I used to do this a lot more frequently but since I have been recording games, I’ve found it to be a good reason keep procrastinating. The reason for this is that I’ve experienced changes such as drivers and savegames not wanting to import and the like and that would stop an LP outright considering I tend to do lengthy ones. So I kept putting it off and now I’ve only got Neverwinter Nights 2 as an active let’s play I’m recording, so that would be a good time, especially considering that there’s an extra backup within the server’s savegame.
So next’ll be a list of savegames I’m backing up and software I’ll have to install again. You might be curious to see what I’m using and maybe recommend me some applications or something. It’s always good to learn of cool software.
Software:
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Notepad++
- VLC
- Songbird
- Trillian
- Skype
- TeamSpeak 3
- Steam
- Newsleecher
- Sony Vegas Pro
- FRAPS
- Recordpad Sound Recorder
- Launchy
- Winrar
+ my little startup script which opens a couple of folders and loads some applications.
Savegames:
- Bastion – %Steam%\userdata\[random numbers]\107100\
- The Binding of Isaac
Serial.txt – %Steam%\SteamApps\common\the binding of isaac\
so.sol - %appdata%\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\<some random string>\localhost\ - Costume Quest - %AppData%\Doublefine\CostumeQuest\
- Skyrim – %My Documents%\My Games\Skyrim\Saves\
- Neverwinter Nights 2 - %My Documents%\Neverwinter Nights 2\localvault\
- Saints Row 3 - %Steam%\userdata\[random numbers]\55230\
- To The Moon - %AppData%\To the Moon – Freebird Games\
Bad times are seemingly upon me
After the previous post where I mentioned my not-so-great valentine’s day, she contacted me and had apparently read my blog post (which I didn’t think she would do…). She had thought that I never wanted to talk to her, despite having a bunch of concerts and a festival planned. So I cleared that up with her and promptly after that a friend I had met at her birthday party last week starts talking to me and asking “suspicious” questions. I got a weird feeling from it and well, he then changed his status to say that he has a girlfriend. At that moment I got a really bad feeling, which turned out to be correct.
Turns out that she since then has found a boyfriend and to me that came out of nowhere as she’d only mentioned that she liked a guy who lived in a foreign country. So that hit me like a truck after I was already down from the past valentine’s. So then I kinda felt my (emotional) world crumble and was filled with all kinds of emotions, not sure which ones. I really don’t know how to deal with something like that and I ended up going to the park to sit there and cry out for a while as the park’s deserted at that time of night.
Since then I have been sitting here trying to type out this post while talking to other people about it, to get it out of my system, if only a little bit. Talking about it is helping at least, I ended up talking for several hours to some of you, and I really appreciate you guys for being there. You know who you are. 
To make matters worse I got one of her(and mine) friends to talk to me being all defensive and standing up for her. Saying that if I hurt her in any way he’ll come and hurt me, can’t say that really helped matters. To be honest, it feels like I’ve somehow been attacked by a bunch of people who I thought were friends.
So now I’m left here with a feeling of overwhelming sadness, loss, betrayal and in general rather disheartened. The thing that bothers me most is not that she has a boyfriend now, that sucks for me ofcourse, but the fact that I don’t feel like I can trust her or the other people anymore. I am someone that always believes in the good-natured side of people and will trust people and as such it’s all the more painful when you’re lied to and that trust is betrayed.
I also really don’t know how to proceed as it seems and feels like I might’ve just lost not just a good friend, but maybe even a handful of people. But maybe I’m overstating and over thinking things. The best thing I think I can do is to let it all rest and find distractions for myself for now.
Valentines and some games I’ve been playing
Since the last post some stuff’s happened which has made me want to not post anything. The main thing was that I had been preparing a little treasure hunt for the girl I love for valentine’s day. This caused me to lose some sleep due to worrying and kept me distracted and nervous the time before it. On the day I took a day off from work, bought a bouquet of flowers and traveled for 2-2.5 hours over to her where I laid out the couple of steps and hoped that nobody would go “Hmm, what’s this? It’s got someone’s name on it.. but I’ll just take it.”.
Then I got the flowers delivered with a note to start her off and then I sat down and waited at the spot she was supposed to go to.. and I waited.. and waited.. and waited. It had been over an hour (I think) so I decided I’d walk to the last step before meeting me and found her there and she said she was stuck. Turns out someone took the last step which included a lengthy note for her with my feelings for her. But it didn’t matter apparently as her answer was “That’s really sweet of you, but sorry”.
This kinda put me in a poor mood as you may expect so I traveled back and kinda have tried to keep myself occupied as it turns out, I can’t deal with emotions well. Or rather, I’m not used to it and don’t really know how to. Since this I’ve not spoken to her as she’s not tried to contact me and this is out of the norm, I may have just lost a good friend due to this it feels like. That really would be quite a shame
In other news, I’ve played some Mass Effect 3 demo as you may have seen on my channel. I initially just wanted to test the singleplayer to see if it recorded/played alright, but figured I’d give the multiplayer a shot as well. The multiplayer seemed pretty enjoyable although it certainly does have some real issues, such as lag and matchmaking. But the core of it seems sound and I really like the fact that there’s no kill stealing and the objectives are at least a little bit varied.
If this replaces mining from ME2, this’ll be a major improvement, but we’ll just have to see how it factors into the campaign.
Hearing Jennifer Hale in the couple of minutes of the singleplayer I tested was really great and I’m glad that I can hear her deliver more lines as I’ve picked up The Old Republic. I’ve not played too much but I really like what they’re doing. All the cutscenes and voice acting really make it feel more like a singleplayer RPG story-wise, this is done better than I expected truthfully. I also have to say that the engine feels pretty good and I don’t really have any complaints thus far, it’s proven to be enjoyable.
On yet another topic, since I’ve been spending some more time gaming, I actually spent some time with To The Moon which I was looking forward to. It’s such a unique game, from what I can tell it’s an interactive story being told with SNES-era-like rpg visuals with some puzzle elements. What really drives it is the actual story itself and the writing and how the story is conveyed to you. It’s all very charming, funny and yet it makes you think. It’s really one of those games you need to experience for yourself.
Another reason why I love indie games
So you may have read my tweet where I said that I bought Cart Life and To The Moon, 2 great indie titles that I sadly haven’t gotten much time with. However I’ve played some of the 1 hour demo from To The Moon that’s available after you download the game from the website. However this post isn’t really about To The Moon, but I wanted to let you guys know about it’s existence as it’s really good.
I was introduced to Cart Life after watching Jefmajor’s videos on it and it seemed like a lot of fun. This being an indie game also made me want to support the developer as it’s just a guy. After I bought Cart Life for $5 from the creator’s website, I didn’t immediately get a download link mailed to me. Since it was the weekend, I figured he maybe had to manually go through and check the payment or something. I didn’t care too much as I was busy anyway. However since it’d been nearly 2 days I decided to mail him directly to ask what’s up.
He answered within a couple of minutes in a very personal manner and gave me the appropriate credentials to download the game. IN A MATTER OF MINUTES. He’s never going to read this, but this is why I love dealing with indie developers. It’s personal and direct and he really takes input on his forum for the game and clearly gives good support. Go check out the game, it’s rad. 
Haven’t had such a good monday in ages
Monday suck… or do they? I’ve never been one to hate mondays really as I do enjoy my job and if it’s not monday, it’d be whatever day you start work at again. But this monday especially I enjoyed, partially helped by the fact that I had a lazy weekend where I slept more than usual. As such I had a lot of energy and was very productive. It was a rather calm down on the support side which meant that I could actually get to some of the research tasks I had left to do, which I hadn’t gotten around to for what felt like years.
This meant that I started doing some of the IPv6 implementation for our infrastructure and this meant that I had to read up on some parts of it again so I read roughly 30 pages on important aspects that I needed. This was a lot of fun to learn and implement it immediately. This was the first time that I’ve really had hands-on time with IPv6, which is great as purely reading about it without interacting with it doesn’t work well for me.
After work I ate and then promptly challenged the cold as I went for another bike ride and got 30km under the belt. Despite it being -6 to -8, there was hardly any wind which made it nearly ideal considering the temperature. The cold isn’t as much of an issue as you’d think it to be, since you’re continually working up a sweat and are actually quite warm and at the end drenched in sweat. It always provides time to think about things as well, like about something I’ve been planning for next week.
After a nice warm shower I listened to some music and spent another hour and a half talking on skype to finish the day off.
Update on Dark Messiah
I’ve got a bit of an update on the Dark Messiah project I mentioned earlier as I ran into some issues with it. What would happen is that it will at some random point in time slow down to a crawl from the 250′ish FPS it was running at before. It feels like there’s a memory leak as the game slowly “counts down”, as I can actually see my fps drop from 30..29..28..27… all the way down to 6. This obviously renders it unplayable and it’s rather frustrating as it can seemingly happen randomly, at one point it’ll take 50 minutes where it can also start when I’m only a couple of minutes in.
I’ve been trying to solve this through various means such as adding toggles to the executable, messing with patches and the DVD version, all leading to a non-working game. As such I can’t say what’ll become of Dark Messiah as I’m still wanting to try a couple of things to get it to run properly.
Meanwhile I have started recording another game since I felt like recording some: Rochard. This indie puzzle platformer looked to be really entertaining from the gameplay I had seen of it on Giantbomb, so I was anxious to actually give this a shot. After having recorded 1 set I can say that it’s a lot of fun thus far and I can only hope that it can keep up the pace.
Goffertpark Feb. 3
Just a pic of the park I went through while exercising today.