Roger Ward

I love eBay. Sure it’s a place where one can ripped off and it’s a place where you can buy pretty much anything like someone’s soul or even an old Russian submarine! My needs are a little less grandiose or odd. I’m a fan of old games. You remember those don’t you? The games where you got a massive 200 page manual, reference card, map posters and numerous floppy discs all in a 5 kilo box. But the most important thing included was an actual good game!

Sadly those days are far behind us. Now our lucky if you get a manual in a crappy DVD case and the game is usually some derivative piece of shit that is a rehash of some other derivative piece of shit where you shoot people in the head many times over because that’s what the average ritalin fuelled gamer wants these days.

So I suppose eBay is somewhat of a saviour of mine in that it allows me to still get my hands on some classics that I might have missed the first time around. So what’s my point? Nothing really, I just got Taskforce 1942 today and now I’m happy.

Not literally of course, although that would be good, but no.  After thirteen years of full time working I’m going back to University, something I should have done in the first place instead of turning a gap year into eleven year gap. So with a mix of excitement and nervousness that I do this again. But I’m looking forward to it.

It’s been an interesting a fun few weeks for me. I recently had my 32nd birthday and amongst other things, I received a shiny new D-SLR camera which I’ve been utilizing quite a lot over the summer with quite good results.  I’ve been posting a lot of the results on my flickr for all and sundry to see if that sort of stuff interests you.

As you all know, I’m not a yank (thank heavens!). But I’ll just say, I enjoyed the superbowl for what is was. As someone who is more used to the constant non-stop play of AFL Football, it was a little boring stop startish for me, but that last exciting play certainly made the long sit worthwhile. It certainly was an entertainment specticle though with a ripper ending, but still reeked of style over substance. I also find it a bit arrogant to call a team the World Champions when your about the only bloody country that plays the sport professionally, but I digress.

As for those superbowl spots didn’t last long did they? No matter, here are some direct QT links in 1080p HD, they look stunning on a HD display, so long as your PC has the grunt.

• Transformers 2 Superbowl Spot
• Star Trek

Well, Windows7 seems to be running quite well so far. Installation was super easy, and relatively quick too. I never had brought Vista myself, use it myself at work so the Windows7 layout seemed like a logical extension of Vista.

The new pinned taskbar is a nice feature where you can pin your most commonly used programs. It’s much better than the quick launch within the start menu of XP. Auto windows update is also a much smoother, easier experience too. Speed of the OS is surprising from these eyes. Compared to XP or Vista for that matter, Windows7 flies!

Compatibility with my exisiting software is all good so far. That said, I haven’t chucked a lot of my old legacy games on yet, that may be another story. Knock on wood.

Kevin Stalin????

Here in Australia we’ve had a new government for just over 12 months.  Typically for a labor government they’ve done a rubbish job. They’ve taken a 20 billion plus budget surplus and put it into the red. Rudd has also fallen for what I call the “chicken little” trick. It’s the alarmist condition that the hippies of the World use to trick us into believing that the World is coming to an end. So now they are going to propose a carbon trading scheme. (Even though as a country we don’t pollute half as much as countries like China or America). And now the do-gooder state is going to place taxes on what they would class as “unhealthy foods”. These do-gooders won’t be happy until we’re all living in plastic bubbles locked away from the world.  What a fun bunch…

Really they’ve got to be kidding. Some of these “unhealthy foods” include Vegemite, Blue Cheese and Jams because of there high salt & sugar levels. Talk about a nanny state. They want to control what we eat due to high salt and sugar contents, but things like McDonalds, KFC and Hungry Jacks are exempt. There’s something a bit wrong there isn’t it. Sounds like yet another dumb idea just like the proposed Internet filter.

Obviously Kevin Rudd loves the works of George Orwell. I remember what it was like living in a free an democratic country. Now the hippy communists and there politically correct agendas are filtering through into mainstream politics which means that for us, our lives are becoming controlled more and more. Gone are the days when Australia was a free country, where adults were allowed to make their own decisions about their lives.  First there was the Internet filter, now they’re telling us what we can and can’t eat?  Next you’ll find that Rudd will be monitoring all of  our activities, institute a blanket curfew and execute dissidents. Looks like I’m in trouble. And you thought communism was dead!

Considering it’s been six months since I started this thing, I figured that a bit of a change would be as good as a holiday. So I’ve changed the layout, hopefully you find it an improvement. I like it personally. It’s very minimalist and clean while still looking classy.

I’ve also added in my twitters to the blog as well, just in case you like punishing yourself more than once a day!

Also, I’ve found a nice online diversion. World Golf Tour. Best way I can describe it is a browser version of the classic Links series of golf games. It’s really fun for what it is. I’ve added it to the links section.

I hadn’t realised when I posted yesterday that it’s already been six months since I started this blog, time really does fly! I’ve been spending the last day or so playing around with several things on this interweb. One of them is twitter.

Twitter isn’t new to me, but I just haven’t used it since I signed up mid last year but that’s changed of late. I’ll be incorporating my twitters into the blog very soon. I’ve also been doing a little video editing of something I’ve filmed. It’s a hobby, but it’s something I really enjoy doing too. I’m considering putting up onto youtube for the whole world to see when I’m done.

Today was finally the first hot day we’ve had here this summer (only took a month and a half!) in Melbourne. Hopefully we have a few more “summer days” before it’s all up. So much for global warming!

Another evening of drunken reveling Worldwide has come and gone. Hopefully ought nine will be a lot happier for many and the problems of the past twelve months don’t effect us that much. Personally I’m confident about what the new year will bring in many ways.

So far it’s been a pretty eventful one for me. Family functions, seeing friends and spending the rest of the time enjoying my short break. It’s been a good time to catch up on quite a few discs that I’d purchased and several games I hadn’t had the chance to finish. So all in all a fun start to the year.

Well that’s all the wrote for 2008. It was a hard year for many. It was a year for change for many, myself included. There’s a sense of hope again with the election of a new President after eight years of going backwards or so it seemed. It’s funny, in my travels I found a couple of  T-Shirt’s which pretty much summed up they year quite perfectly. I’ll put them after the jump as they might be a little rude for some.

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Another Christmas has come and gone and with it almost another year. So how did you score on your Christmas haul? Yes, Yes. I know it’s supposed to be about family and togetherness and all that. But it’s also one of the most commercialized holidays ever sadly. Christmas just doesn’t seem as fun as it was when I was a young fellow. It’s still good to know that my rellies know what I like and I cleaned up well on the Blu-Ray movies side of things at least. Now I just need to find time to watch my new prezzies.