Disturbing, but the text is true!

I am: 27% Republican.

"You're probably one of those people who still thinks that getting a blowjob is not an impeachable offense."

Are You A Republican?
Mood: accomplished
Music: Birds singing outside

Combat Upgrade!

I know nobody ever commentson , or probably even reads my Star Wars: Galaxies posts, but here's one anyway. The Combat Upgrade went live properly, and I like it a lot! I'm only level 58 (I have all of Bounty Hunter except the master box now, and a chunk of Pistoleer), and as long as I stick to the 50-60 level range for targets, it's a blast. Group play is a lot more meaningful now that crowd control is effective; rooting, mezzing, it's all there. I've found that a root and then some ranged attacks makes me a force to be reckoned with - but root is just slow enough to reapply that I'm not invulnerable. Buffs aren't mandatory, although 10% XP buffs from Entertainers are really handy. Lots of people not wearing armour, ranged weapons beat melee (other than lightsabers), and the new graphics/sounds for combat are a lot more Star Warsy. I don't like some of the new particle effects - they remind me too much of spellcasting in other games. On the other hand, they do make it easy to see what's going on. Even with the early, buggly launch: 8/10 so far. :-)

I hope I feel better soon.

Mood: tired
Music: None

Election is 15 days away!

I've been playing with swingometers (nothing pretty enough to display - it's a spreadsheet!), and average poll trends. If trends continued roughly in line with a 7-day rolling average, the next Parliament would look something like this:
Labour: 403 seats (-11 seats)
Conservative: 173 seats (+5 seats)
Liberal Democrat: 55 seats (+3 seats)
Other: 28 seats (no change)

(Interestingly, despite a net gain of seats, in this scenario there are 4 shadow cabinet members out of jobs! Michael Howard is safe, however - by about 8%) I don't think these numbers are quite right, I actually think that the Liberal Democrats will do better than that, at the expense of Conservatives more than Labour. That's my hunch, based on the "vote Blair to avoid Howard" sentiment seen in a lot of recent polls, and the fact that even the strongest Labour voters I know in the South-East are planning to vote tactically against the Tories this time. There is also some polling indication that Brown is bringing some loyal Labour voters back to the Labour column in Lab-Lib marginals. If you take my hunch and throw it into the mix, you get:

Labour: 404 seats (-10 seats)

Conservative: 170 seats (+2 seats)

Liberal Democrats: 57 seats (+5 seats)

Other: 28 seats (no change)

Note that all my numbers are messed up a little by the changes in Scotland.

Mood: accomplished
Music: Rain hitting the roof

New site template

You've probably already noticed if you are reading this, but I put a new site template in. It's all XHTML+CSS (with the exception that many of my blog posts aren't xhtml... oops), there's an RSS feed on the blog, and I quite like it. It could use more work, but time is sometimes at a bit of a premium!
Mood: accomplished
Music: None

Revenge of the felines!

I was reading this piece of legislative monstrosity, and it occurred to me that someone has to think of the kittens. Sure, they eat birds - that's what carnivores do! In fact, they'll even eat people if they don't move! That's one reason they are so loveable. :-)

I consulted with Bitbucket, Bilbo, Pippin and Henry, and we decided to do something about it. Here's there proposed solution:


Mood: happy
Music: My treo making odd noises

Someone sack Charles Clark!

Charles Clark is Home Secretary in the UK, right now. A Guardian article recently attributed this to him 'One of my concerns about the Liberal Democrats' approach is that they obviously think that one person being wrongly convicted even of a small crime is more serious than a thousand people being acquitted of crimes that are terrorising local communities,' he added.

This is bad. Really bad. A cursory examination of both the Dworkin and Hart side of most jurisprudence (and even Rumpole of the Bailey!) reveals a single, golden thread running throughout Western Jurisprudence - the idea that it is better to let a thousand guilty men walk free than to convict a single innocent. Abandon that, and you might as well throw out equality before the law, presumption of innocence, and limits on police powers. :-(

I fear for the future of my former country.
Mood: tired
Music: None

Beta, day one

The new combat upgrade system (officially "beta", which is surprising considering that Alpha never actually started - and it has to launch by May 5th!) downloaded smoothly, albeit a huge patch. Logging in was a challenge, it took around 10 attempts before I was able to create Elizabeth, my psychotic weapons testing chick on the new, shiny TC5.

I started out by getting my keymap back, and a quick look around. All the skills had nice, full-colour icons - mostly very slick in design (a few people complain about "cartoony" icons; given that we have speech bubbles over our heads when we talk, this doesn't strike me as valid! It's like being in a Dark Horse SW comic, and I like those!). For some reason, even though I select Marksman as my profession, I had all of the novice professions - which is fine, it saved me from picking up the ones I wanted. I also had 75k cash, a flash speeder, CDEF rifle, carbine and pistol, a knife, a melon (that I couldn't eat! Eating is bugged!), and some Artisan stuff. Examining items showed a nice touch: all weapons now include an approximate damage-per-second stat. My stats were all 1,000 - the new starting default. An icon indicated that I was level 1. SWG has always had levels, it has just never told you what level you are before.

I take the plunge, and fly to Mos Eisley. There were HUNDREDS of people there! I've never seen anything like it, and amazingly enough I was getting 10fps with a few hundred people onscreen at once. Quite a feat. Also, VERY little lag. So far, so good. I equip my CDEF pistol, and set out to gain Pistols 1 on the Marksman tree. Its been ages since I did that! I immediately noticed an icon under my name, the tooltip explained that my movement speed was reduced because I had a ranged weapon in my hand. Interesting - melee types will be hard to kite now! I rush out, start targeting critters, and notice that there is a new Con (/consider) colour: purple. Purple means "you will die before you finish selecting your attack", as far as I can tell. It was wierd, Nunas, Worrts, and Gorg were all purple to me. They all showed their level, too - they were level 4+. I found a Kreetle (level 1, white con) and attacked. Once. Oops, no auto attack! So I spammed the attack key, and it died. I gained 40xp. Hmm, 224 more Kreetles to Pistols 1! That seemed like a lot, so I target a yellow-con rockmite. Blat, blat - it's health went down a bit. Crunch, it hit me for 500. Crunch, I was incapacitated. Owie. 4 seconds later, I'm back on my feet, and discover that novice medics can heal damage without stimpacks now. Handy, but could hurt the economy. The horde is now surging out of Mos Eisley, attacking everything that moves - so I mount my flash speeder and drive to Anchorhead, where I'm almost alone with the monsters. Lots of zapping later, and I discover that I can take any white con with ease, a yellow con with caution, and a dark orange con if I use tactics. Line-of-sight works now, so you can creep up on melee types, stand on a hill (which will take them ages to climb), and snipe at them. 1 hour later, I gain Pistols 1. I switch to my trusty CDEF Carbine, and start murdering Bothan Rebels and Mynocks. A little under an hour later, I've mastered Carbines 1. This is going well; the line-of-sight system makes combat very tactical (although it's kinda hard to gauge LOS perfectly in 3rd person view). I return to Mos Eisley, train, and come back out - determined to hit Pistols 2, Ranged Support 1 and Exploration 1 (starting on my Bounty Hunter prerequesites) before bed.

One really nice thing struck me. I was now level 2, I had 50 more hitpoints, and 50 more pool-points for specials. I had pistol-whip, and could knock-down/stun/dizzy anything foolish enough to try and come at me in melee. It was nice that there was an immediate feeling of improvement from gaining one box. SWG always lacked that, and if they can keep it a smooth advancement up the trees, I'm all in favour of it. It took between 2 and 3 hours of shooting things to gain Pistols 2. The game was smooth for a beta, and I really enjoyed myself. I trained Pistols 2, and was now 3rd level. 25 more hitpoints, and a D-18 Pistol certification. I picked up a D-18, and went to try it out. Aha! This rockmite looks like the one who ate me earlier, and he's only orange now. Blat, blat blat - he's dead! Woot. Another jump in effectiveness.

Overall

I really think the Combat Upgrade has potential. There are a lot of people whining, and I do think that they should ban leet doods from betas; they bitch, whine, and make the public chat channel painful.
Mood: accomplished
Music: None