WELCOME

Welcome intermaweb explorer, and make thine self comfortable with soft plushness in the form of cushions made of fabrics from continents yonder. A new teller of tales has commanded the sacred books of yore and within its pages, weaves mystery and terrible danger as brave fresh faced specimens delve the depths of the Castle White Rock.

Check the links at the top of this tomb, which I pray are self explanatory enough to any intrepid adventurer, and read our exciting, nay extra-ordinary tales! Fear not how they sound, as simply perusing such daring deeds that have been accomplished means that you dear reader are safe, for it is us merry adventurers that have already faced peril most foul! And one day, if such is your intent, then you may learn and pick up upon the hidden secrets that are required to be special and bold heroes just like us.

Otherwise, grab a coffee and read the disjointed method behind my weird and wonderful thought processes.

Random Babblings and Discombobulated Thoughts

22nd February: The last OoTS Kickstarter news (until next time I asssume!) is that he not only hit a million dollars, but ended up just shy of $1.2 million pounds on top of his original $57k request.

My hard drives woes are a distant memory, as it seems that everything can be resolved by sticking it in the freezer for 16hrs, the weird thing is that I actually didnt get a huge amount of stuff off it that I actually needed. Mostly it was organisational stuff (re-arranging and renaming comic scans mostly), which to be honest, wasnt that much and also game mods related to games I am playing like DAII and Skyrim.

My summary for the thread I linked to below was this:

"Anyway, as it seems that sticking things in Freezers for 16hrs makes them work properly again, I am off to dig up the neighbours cat that myseteriously dissapeared, remove my daughters attitude gland and grab my bank account and stick them all in the freezer. "

You may have noticed that I added a little book section to the right, and that once again I am reading Legend by David Gemmell. For the 30th time. I have mentioned previously that one of the reasons I do so much writing is a poor (or very selective) memory - sometimes the minute (pronounced min you tay, I cant find the little umlat hat for the whatever letter its supposed to be on) is lost and a synopsis remembered. This is quite handy for me with regards to books like Legend, which I have steamrolled through three quarters of in about two days.

This July will be six years since his death, and I miss the new books and characters and mourn the loss of him denying that any book written about the Thirty will be published. And yes, I still have unopened copies of the last two Troy Books which I have not yet read, nor have I re-read the first book, and probably wont touch any of them for some time to come - it just would feel final in a way I cant really explain.

20th February: My hard drive died yesterday, taking with it a Tb of data that I had not backed up since August last year. Could have been worse as I might have had nothing at all. More detailed info here, and I have actually had some success with my hard drive, a plastic bag and 16hrs in the Fridge....

In other news.....

......not only that, he hit his initial pledge of $60k PLUS the one million. However, to achieve this, (and not including anything that people have added on as extra's) he needs to send out something like:

  • 13,687 Roy magnets
  • 2,811 8x10 prints
  • 12,650 sticker sheets
  • 4,460 HP pads
  • 3,149 colouring books
  • 20,135 OOTS books
  • 818 boardgames

Then, not including the bonus PDFs (60+? pages or so worth of strips), he is doing:

  • 120+ Full colour drawings
  • 40 Digital Portraits
  • 20 Digital Family Portraits
  • 22 Full colour Party (6+ members of your DnD group) drawings.

Not that much then!

19th February: Another Kickstarter OoTS update, and its now showing 11,655 backers, $953,395 with 53 hours to go. In 12hrs, 33k has been added to the total and more signed books and bits available and quickly gone again. Utter madness.

Anywhoo, I missed a couple of days on the exercise bike in the last week, so made up for it today by cranking it up to 8, and getting multiple 5ks in. Then I punished myself even more by going out on the Boris Bikes and cycling over to Covent Garden and back. I made up for this by grabbing a Y The Last Man Vol 3 though, to help take my mind off my aching thighs.

18th Febuary: OoTS update - 11,348 backers have pledged $920,153 with 65hours to go. Its about half eleven at night, and update 23 from Rich has got him chasing the Million mark. One Million dollars for a comic. Incredible.

Rich then started to add additional awards and has promised one every hour or two until the drive ends, which is likely to be quite taxing, but apparently "Sleep is for other comic readers". Handily, sleep is for other Americans, as he updated, added more pledges and I was lucky enough to straight away grab a signed Snips, Snails and Dragon Tales increasing my bid from a normal version. Then the next hour came along, another update and a signed print only pledge was created, meaning three signed books came up (Start of Darkness, Snips and Origin of the PCS), so I grabbed that instead.

I have now changed my pledge about 5 times.....

February 17th: Had a much needed reverse gaming session on Battlefield 3 last night, as Soldier Theydon 'top middle of the table' Bois was replaced by Captain Theydon 'Awesome' Bois as I was near the top on the first game where we joined mid way through, rocked the top (MVP 1, not top of my team) slot twice on the trot before returning to the top middle (around 12 of 32 in a 64 player game) once more. I am now Major Bois, and with my quite frankly huge amount of points scored, am half way through this already. Expect Major Awesome Bois to be locked in a cupboard and the key thrown away, locked away for a long long time and under a Master lock that not even a certain Cat Warrior called Mr Tiddles could open with his skills.....

See what I did there? With thanks to my excellent segeway (sp?) I have done a little Skyrimming, but not too much in the last couple of days, and again far too much time spending looking at mods than actually playing - I reckon you could take my playtime and add 50% for Skyrim related thread reading and mod scouring and that may still not be enough. Oh, and just to proove that all PC geeks are in fact sexual deviants, the top mods of each month on Nexus for all five months include a nude mod of some description. Just dont click on this months mod while at work, or near anything thats a biped.

Order fo the Stick update: 10,556 Backers and $837,115 pledged with 4 days to go.

This means that mystery prize 7 was unlocked for DnD fans (thats me!) and also, OoTS gets into the Kickstarter top 5 raised $ of all time, and just $13k short of the patch confirmed. Nice one!

Now all I need is a UK based person to give up a $52 or $57 slot so I can get an autographed book! It didnt help that I looked at my books last night, and where I have used a phone box as a divider, the sheer weight of the other books have bent all my stick books around the phone box as such - hard to explain, but they curl backwards at the right hand corner by quite a lot and do not lie fucking flat anymore....no, these are in fact tears of rage thankyou very much......anyway, lots of books piled up on top of each other now to straighten these out hopefully. As a precaution, my pledge increased to get all the little skinny books (-1, 0, and the missing Snips) incase the smaller and less likely to straighten books dont revert back to normal. No update from Rich yesterday, but he has been updating his comics on a daily basis, and it looks like the target for the Elan patch shown below will be hit around 8pm-12pm tonight based on current rate of financing, and then as soon as a price is listed for it, another surge as people that have not already done so increase their bids ($5-$10) accordingly to nab one.

February 15th: Order of the Stick has now passed three quarters of a million dollars, which quite frankly is mental. Currently, the stats stand as follows:

9,798 Backers have pledged $769,118 (of a $57,750 goal) with 6 days to go.

We also have a new goal - $850k gets us the chance to add a sewn badge to our orders, so then I can dream of the days when I was a girl scout. Dib Dib Dib!

February 13th: My favourite webcomic, which naturally is all about Roleplaying games, Order of the Stick has recently added itself to a website called Kickstart, which basically obtains funding through various packages offered. In this case, Rich Burlew needed just under $60k to fund a print run of one of the books that had gone out of print a while back. This was smashed within the first day or so, and since then, with 8 days left of a 30 day run, has raised some $656,115 as of 08:25 this morning.

He has put down various price points in which you can pledge - I will stress this is not giving away money, you do get something out of it. In my case, I went for the $25 pledge, which gets me a slew* of free stuff simply for going over $10, for the 8x10 cast print:

Then I added another $30 for the only book I am missing, Snips, Snails and Dragon Tales which is all the Dragon Magazine reprints plus some other short stories that have not been reprinted or published on the web, and the only book I have not been able to grab from Orcs Nest because it needed to be ordered direct from the US.

New 'options' are added at various points (although I think I have missed them all?) meaning I can change my pledge at any time, but as I have all the books, and dont quite have the $5000 for the top pledge (which has already been grabbed anyway) but I think Tenpast or Grassy Knoll would have looked splendid as a member of the Order of the Stick:

"Your original D&D character, based on your descriptions (within reason), gets a walk-on cameo in The Order of the Stick webcomic sometime this year. Plus, you get an original signed crayon drawing of that character, an autographed copy of War and XPs, and the Roy Greenhilt magnet."

Regardless, Snips will sit nicely on my bookshelf, assuming I can find room for it that is...

*Which currently includes - a fridge magnet, colouring book, stickers, Hit Point pad and 6 PDFs of comics especially created during this drive.

February 12th: Some random babblings. Put up a new blind, and then spent what seems like ages cleaning my daughters Toy Watch with a baby wipe. We also bought an exercise bike, so I have done 5km a day on it so far. Apparently 1km = 40cal burnt according to its display, so my efforts have probably only just balanced out against my alchol consumption (which was not that much) for the weekend. I will stick at this though, until the next entry I make here which tells you, the dear reader, that I have not stuck at this and have been lying, which is very probable, so I may as well come clean now.

February 10th: One of those brilliant double entendre days, and I dont mean the 'nudge nudge wink wink say no more' kind of "..I'll give YOU a cup of coffee.." which in most cases dont make sense and are simply crass suggestive sexual comments rather than the elegance of a proper double entendres. So, today we had delights such as "..I could'nt reach round and stick it in the back" - a USB Apple charger in case you are wondering in the rear USB ports of a PC hidden under a shelf, and "..I had to do him locally" - adding a temporary user as a local Admin inable to install equipment specific software. If anyone had said "I could'n stick it in the front hole" (which has been said before) on this day, I think my head would have exploded. Fnarr, fnarr.

February 9th: Please refer to me know as 'the Arch Mage' as I free Winterhold from maurading beast things and prove that me and the twins (double Demora Lords from the Twin Souls perk) can smash our way through pretty much anything.

It feels like a lot longer but I am close to racking up 60hrs in both BF3 and Skyrim as we approach the three months release day on them both. My missus can't and won't accept that an hour and a half a day every day since November spent on either one of these games is acceptable, while I think that I should be playing them both more often - especially since I must have racked up 24 of the BF3 hours in one long weekend in Cornwall.

I played through the BF3 Co-op missions with McGlory last night, which was very good, and made me want to play the Single player, but its hard to find time, as if anyone else is on, you naturally want to play a massive battle and interact with (mostly) real people. And obviously, to shout and hurl abuse at each other (or subject them to abuse because someone else that cannot hear you shout, however loudly the words - and please excuse my language, "..hes there! he's there! fucking cunt stabbed me!")

Anyway, the main news for today is a chapter release. Yes its taken absolutely bloody ages, but its here at last. May I present, Chapter 21 - "Indiana Stumpy and the Circle of Doom" for your reading pleasure.

February 7th: Added the books I have read this year, which is only 5 weeks old and I have 3 and a half listed, which is not bad at all. I am also quite near the end of the process that will see Chapter 21 published. I will admit that even for me this has taken a huge amount of time - the chapter was played in 2010, and I started editing it mid 2011, so its taken the best part of six months on and off to produce. Which by my own sub standard standards is pretty shocking.....

If it helps, I have been playing a huge amount of Skyrim and Battlefield 3. The blank stares indicate it doesn't. Oh well.

February 6th: Dont go into Burberry (Covent Graden) if you feel in any way insecure. They employ models as doormen/security, dressed in fantastic Burberry Duffle/ Trenchcoats (checking later, I think it was actually this Pea Coat) and because of the way that the shop is laid out - womens stuff that at first glance you cant tell are womens (skinny looking jeans for instance) until you look at them and find the size xx on them - a kind of Schrödinger's Cat thing (no, I didnt know about it until after Big Bang Theory either) I couldnt see where the coats were and so asked the doorman on the way out. And stroked his arm to feel the material. Not touched, stroked.

I was actually looking for a new beanie hat and found that their cable knit beanie was a staggering £125! Yes its Burberry and yes I knew it wouldnt be £20, but if the security men's coat is £595, how can a hat be £125?

Anyway, my stroking arm got me an invite to the Men's section to try on a coat (its downstairs if you find yourself wondering) and I am now wondering if the stroking arm technique is a way to get directions. Walk in, stroke a thigh, "ah, you want Jeans sir, this way..." so I am off to La Senza on the way home to test my theory out.

February 5th: Our BF3 monthly scores on the doors are as follows, and we have all been on recently, with a weird 1AM co-incedental meetup happening at the weekend for all six of us. There is no coralation between BFBC2 and BF3 ranks (50 vs 145) and for reference I have just over 60hrs played, where I had 240+ Hrs in BFBC2.

Hooah!

February 4th: Had one of my night terrors, that thankfully did not involve me assualting my missus in the night, about a mate who is going out with a young lady from Oz had just came back from a three month stay had brought back this glider cloak thing that is the latest craze out there. Just so that you are keeping up with the fiction/reality bit, no he hasnt been to Oz in a while and b) I dont know if the thing I dreamt of even exists, but if it does, its bloody dangerous in the hands of people like me.

Anyway. I leapt off a suitable height - a garage or something and glided along a road, narrowly missed a tree and then got caught in an updraft and shot up 40' feet and landed on a sloping roof, where I spent what felt like ages wondering how the fuck I was going to get down without killing myself.

Thankfully, a unseen hatch opened and I was let in and then wandered through an old peoples home? I dont know it got a bit hazy here and I kind of woke up, so I dont know if it was interconnected, or I just dream of old people's houses generally.

January 14th: I read in CustomPC that they are trying to simplify the recomended game settings for PC games, mostly for those people that are unsure exactly what components they have installed within the funny box under the table. They are suggesting a tiered level system comparing a system spec equal to a PS3 or XBox that is say 'level 7' then if you have this spec, then its 'level 8' etc. Why is it that I can see a flaw straight away in this? If you cant tell that your GPU is a 4850 or similar that is printed on some games now, then how will you know what CPU is inside?

Why not use whats already available, the Windows Index system? No lengthy level corrilatation or matching system specs that you have no idea what they mean versus a list that you have to look up, you simply run the test once (and after component chages obviously) and you have your score. Then the people that buy SimsX will know they need a 3, and thats ok, as their PC scores a 4.5. This is not in XP, and the score did change from Vista (max 5.9) to Windows 7 (max 7.9) but I am sure a 5.9 in Vista is a 5.9 in W7 (hopefully)......common sense sometimes can be overlooked by lots of people who should know better.

January 10th: Just call me Mr Fantastic, Mr Comic Reader-tastic, as another comic reader creator got in touch. They read my review of their reader, took my suggestions on board, and are looking at changing their product accordingly. Thats two this year, and four in total that I have been in direct contact with. Now, if only I could work out how to get paid for it....I think I could manage sitting at home all day reading comics while being paid handsomely, dont you?

January 9th: A few massive sessions of Skyrim have leveled me to 30th, but I did also fit in painting the wall in the kitchen. No, not a task in Skyrim, but in actual real life. Although come to think of it now, perhaps if you earned achievements in real life, then tasks such as painting may indeed become more palatable.

I will also add that conditioning brought on by Skyrim (and all the other Elder Scrolls games) and Gothic 3 has made me want to harvest flowers that I see in real life, and sheer will power alone stops me. That and the fact that I dont have an Alchemy lab to make potions out of them.

January 6th: I must be doing something right as my reviews of various Comic Readers available on the iPad has prompted a developer to get in touch with me. Chuffed obviously!

Sadly, this is mired by the fact that poor old Bob Holness died. All together now, "...I'll have a 'P' please Bob....." *snigger*

January 4th: Today I was at a meeting were around 50 of the 200 people present were basically listening to stuff not appropriate to their type of work. So I wisely spent my time trying to improve my telekenisis powers to attempt to move a polystyrene cup. I gave up after ten minutes though, and turned to my second choice of 'guess the first digit' of my OTP key. Sadly I think that a chimp probably had better odds of flinging feeces at a wall covered in numbers and marking it than my poort attempt. Oh well, practice makes perfect!

January 3rd: Confusingly due to the Bank Holiday falling in the middle of term, I am back at work with only a handful of other people, rather than back on the 4th. So, as you can tell, I am either hard up against it, or simply slacking and filling a void between a long break and an early lunch. You decide.

My Steam games of the Christmas Sale were as follows:

  • The Witcher 2 - £Present
  • Morrowing GOY - £Present
  • Magic the Gathering DLC Pack 2 - £Present
  • UFO Extraterrestials Gold - £Present
  • Arcania (Gothic 4) - £Present
  • Orcs Must Die plus DLCs - £4
  • NWN2 Platinum - £4
  • EYE - £2
  • Humble Bundle 4 (For Super Meatboy, Cave Story+ and Bit Trip Runner) - £5
  • Arcania Gothic 4 Add-on - £4
  • Shogun DLCs - £4
  • Binding of Issac - £1
  • L.A. Noire - £9

Not a bad haul at all for £33! Thanks to all for my presents, I will play them, honest! Assuming you substitute the word 'honest' for the understanding that I am playing Skyrim. Ah, I see the understanding nodding, good. Appreciate it.

Talking of Skyrim, I am now 24th level, and pretty much kicking and ressing arse, as I smash my way across the countyrside leaving a pile of smouldering ash in my wake. Level 20 seemed to be a weird transition from being crap to nothing could touch me, and I dont know why...but I am put back in my place by a Master Necromancer who chain healed herself over and over again even with me, a Frost Elemental and my sidekick Lydia wailing upon her, before she speed casts this icicle machine gun into my face. Got her in the end, only took about 6 goes, and her best effort was to kill Lydia, then res her in front of me so that I get stabbed and killed by my own follower. Brilliant game.