TechnocratTechnocrat’s Random Thoughts

The Daily Show is one of my favorite shows to watch on TV.  I am a huge Jon Steward fan, not because he is funny (which he is), but because he is intelligent and meaningful in what he does.  The show isn’t there to make jokes but to point out situations that you have to make fun of or it will drive you crazy. Sure he hides it in his self deprecating humor some times but in the end you can learn alot by watching it.

I had never seen this clip before but I have to say this is an amazing piece of footage.  By far one of the more touching things on the original 9/11 day.  Bravo, Mr Steward, Bravo!

I have been playing Mercenaries 2 for about 15 hours and according to the game I am 75% done.  So I figured I would drop in a review about it.

First the good, you can blow just about anything up.  It’s fun for awhile to just walk, run, drive, or fly around to different areas and towns and just blow things up.  Dropping ordnance like daisy cutters and artillery on buildings and people is great.

You can also use a number of different vehicles in the game.  Boats, planes, helicopters, cars, APC, etc.  It’s fun for awhile to steal them and try them out.  There are a bunch of guns also.  Though I found really all you need is the AK (or carbine) and the RPG.  You use the AK for far targets and the RPG for buildings and vehicles.  For everything else simply run in a zig zag patter so you don’t get shot as much and then use melee against them.  One hit of that brings them down.  Yeah that’s it.  I rarely shot anyone when not in a vehicle.

The game is entertaining for awhile.  Then it gets repetitive…quickly.

Which brings us to the bad.  First off is the graphics.  Boy are they sub par.  Feels like a game from 2 or 3 years ago.  Though not awful they aren’t great either.  But that’s not the worst part of the game.

That goes to the glitchy bugs and game play.  There are so many bugs and problems with this game it feels like they didn’t have a QA team at all.  Here is a good example, you have to take over a base in the middle of the jungle (get used to it because that’s going to happen a lot but I will come back to it.) by dropping smoke and having the friendly faction fly in a strike team to take over the main building.  All the while you have to kill all the enemies and blow up the other buildings to defend the strike team.  I guess because they are incompetent.

On my first try I took it over but died before I got the contract complete screen.  So I had to do it again.  Yet this time every building was now owned by a the faction I was helping.  But the ground guys were still the enemy faction.  So I just sat back and let them do the hard work until the mission was over.  This is one of MANY example of issues in the game.

I also got stuck, clipped, and glitched out a lot in this game.  More times than I should have.

The AI in this game is mildly retarded.  You can hide or trick them really easily.  It makes the game easy for the most part.  Add to that, that after the first few missions you can beat all the rest by simply bypassing the intended route, the game isn’t that hard at all.

What do I mean?  Well for example there is a mission where you are supposed to take a boat and do a beach landing and then run a gauntlet of enemies, tanks, and enemy structures.  By the way the worst is the structures.  After you play for awhile you will understand what I mean.

So instead of doing that I simply took a helicopter and crashed behind the main building.  The used C4 to blow through the wall and take over the build from behind.  I have done that on almost every mission like that. Or another good trick is when you need to blow a building up simply get close to it and there is usually a wall that blocks you from getting behind it.  Simply toss a smoke grenade for an air stike over the wall and then run.  You usually don’t even have to be close with the smoke.  The bomb will do all the work for you.

That’s why I am so close to being done at only 15 hours.  Add to that I have spent probably 5 or 6 hours messing around.

The game is also very repitive.  There are 4 mission types: take over a structure, blow a building up, kidnap someone, race a vehicles (which is pointless in this game).  Mostly you take over a structure.  At first it’s fun.  Then after a while you start to wonder why they couldn’t think up anything else.

So in the end, rent it if you want a few days of entertainment.  I do mean a few.  But I wouldn’t buy it!

I downloaded Google Chrome a couple of days a go and have been playing with it ever since.  I have to say for being a “beta” it’s VERY nice.

First the good, it’s very fast at rending web pages.  Faster than FireFox and no doubt faster than IE (what isn’t).

It also has a new version of Javascript which is by itself a reason to use it.  Every JS page or widget you use with it is ungodly faster than with any other browser.  I hope to see it in FireFox soon because that is something that should be shared with the masses.

It also gives you more usable space than almost all the other browsers.  So it makes viewing things easier.  The tabs are also more intuitive and can be grouped.  Which is nice.  Supposedly each tab and window is its own instance so it helps improve security.  There is a lot more in there security wise but you can find more on that some where else.  I am just giving you my quick impressions.

Now the bad, some of the ways it displays some things are kind of odd.  Like there is no status bar (this is supposed to change in the future).

There is also the license agreement which has the web world up in arms.  Basically giving Google to much license over you.  This is something that was supposedly a mistake on their part and will be fixed soon.

There have been some complaints about it displaying webpages incorrectly.  So far I haven’t seen that at all.

There are also no addons (yet).  Which is a huge feature in FireFox.

But given time I am sure that this browser has the possibility of being the one to beat and maybe even killing the IE giant.  Only time will tell.

I originally went from Word Press to b2Evolution because I didn’t like the interface and some of the features.  Now 2 and a 1/2 years later the reverse.  In my opinion b2Evolution is just to far behind the times with their themes, addons, support, etc.  It got to the point that I just couldn’t keep working with it anymore.

It’s fantastic if you want to have a site with multiple blogs and bloggers.  It’s very powerful in that regard but not so much for the single blogger.  So to that end I by hand moved over many of the pervious posts.  I did ditch about 1/3 of them as they were no longer needed.