Monthly Archives: January 2008

WoW… Back into it!

If you didn’t get the hint in the subject of the post, I dived back into World of Warcraft, the ridiculously popular MMORPG. It’s just recently hit 10 million subscribers worldwide, which is just insane…

I started a new character, a Paladin Blood Elf. I have an Orc Shaman from before at Level 49, poor guy, but I need to get used to the game again. The last time I played it was last Summer, so there’s a lot of getting used to. Within the starting area are some enemies to kill, and below is footage in first person view showing how one of these enemies dies. A little entertaining..

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I’m not studying video game design, but if I were to then I’d be looking into Video Game Design Colleges.

Not much to talk about..

So, as the subject of this post suggests, I don’t really have much to talk about. I’ve barely had the chance to play many games recently, mainly because of uni work, and besides that there isn’t much free time left! Check out some online masters degree programs if you’re interested in studying!

But one of the things that I’m pleased about is the RSS feed that I’ve implemented into the website. This came about with a friend really highly recommending Google Reader to read RSS news, and after finally giving it a try, I’m absolutely loving it!

It essentially brings all RSS feeds you choose together, like any RSS reader but is done via the web so you can access your RSS feeds from anywhere, which is awesome. Very similar to how they incorporated Google Mail.

One feature is to share items, and then these can be viewed by friends and also by anyone once they have the lengthy URL. The link is underneath the RSS Feed called Public while the other (feed of my feeds) is so you can subscribe to my shared items as a feed!

If you’re into tech stuff as well as gaming news, then go check this out since those are the types of things that I share into this feed.

So besides that, not much. But I have to urge you to get into RSS stuff if you’re not already into it, a very convenient way to read news and updates from various sources.

Few tweaks and so forth for the site

Just finally sat down and did some tweaks since I was a little bored, despite having work to do. But hey, that’s not a priority now is it?

Ok, so what have I got in store for you? Here goes:

- Created an RSS feed! Yes that’s right, we have an RSS feed so you can subscribe and get all the blog goodness right into whatever reader you use.
- New promo link, to the article I mentioned previously, “Best 360 Games of 2007″ at the top of the page.
- Cleaned up the menu along the right a bit, and yes, those are the latest games I’m playing…
- For anyone who wants to link to our website, I’ve created a simple button (hey, the website is Simple Gamer after all!) which can be found at http://www.simplegamer.co.uk/layout/button_sg.jpg and looks like:

That’s about it, but keep visiting back for more updates since I have a few new backend features that makes it easier to manage the website!

Wha..! January is upon us!

Wow, time really flies by. The second week of term has just about finished and only having a handful number of hours of sleep due to two deadlines this morning doesn’t help.

But anyway, XBox Live’s trouble filled Xmas was a bit of a disappointment. I picked up Call of Duty 4, and having played the multiplayer beta quite a bit before it was released, I was contemplating subscribing to Gold, but seeing how poor the performance was, and apparently still is for some people, I stopped myself.

So still playing Mass Effect and Call of Duty 4 (and by playing, I mean about two weeks ago playing). But that isn’t what I’ve really been following over the last few days.

Macworld 2008 just happened a few days ago, and what did we see? MacBook Air, a new laptop that is the world’s thinnest laptop. And damn, it’s thin. I downloaded the presentation that Steve Jobs gave and was pretty much amazed by the new laptop. There are some downsides, so let’s jump into it.

No disc drive. I can see how Steve thinks that most people won’t be really using discs much soon, however it still is a BIG form of data in general (DVD movies, data discs, music CDs, software, etc.) While the new remote access for CDs is a very nice utilisation of technology, I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s a replacement.

The 1.6GHz is impressive, and it’s nice having the full 13.3″ screen like the MacBook. However they slapped a £1,200 price tag upon the beauty. Now, if the processor was faster, had a disc drive (preferably SuperDrive internally) then maybe that price is acceptable. Considering the MacBook is £700 and has better specs, it seems unreasonable despite the thinness to have such a high price point.

Besides that, Steve unveiled a few other things but the Time Capsule really stood out for me. It’s a hard drive that wirelessly syncs with your Mac and backs up using Time Machine. This is great, especially for me since I have to get my external hard drive out and plug everything in, and then back up. This is just always there and done wirelessly, just no hassle at all.

On a more gaming note, there was an old game called Crayon back on an old console somewhere. Many with iPhones or iPod Touch that are jailbroken will more commonly know about it under iPhysics. Trust me, if you don’t know what it is just Google search it, since it’s awesome! It just makes those lectures fly away!

And finally, I wrote an article over at Home Made Mech/Anime Boredom about the Best Games for the 360 of 2007. You might find it an interesting read, and there’s also one for the PS3 by John Huxley, owner of the website and a good friend. Be sure to check them out!