While this may seem like I’ve only returned to this long abandoned blog to post of the (relatively small) sucess on YouTube, I assure that certainly (is)n’t the case. YouTube recently approved my application to become a YouTube Partner, something which I once thought to be a prestigious honour. That was until I saw some people had been approved before they even had a single subscriber or video. Still, being a Partner means I can monetize videos using Adsense “video units”, and have access to a number or branding options.

In other YouTube news, the latest video (at the bottom of this post) has received the following honours:

#37 - Most Discussed (Today) - Howto & Style
#90 - Most Viewed (Today) - Howto & Style
#15 - Top Favourites (Today) - Howto & Style
#88 - Top Favourites (This Week) - Howto & Style
#15 - Top Rated (Today) - Howto & Style
#65 - Top Rated (This Week) - Howto & Style

And the KnowFlash channel received these two:

#77 - Most Viewed (Today) - Gurus
#86 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Partners

So genereally things are slowly getting there. We also finally breached the 400 subscribers mark. Anyway the latest video, “How To Upload Flash Movies To YouTube”, can be seen beneath:

So Warhammer Online has been on and off for many years, and it’s finally going to be released this summer. I’ve just been looking at some videos of the new title, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, and it looks almost identical to World of Warcraft. Like, worryingly similar.

I should point out that Warhamer Online is in the beta stages, so it will probably look better when it finally comes out, but I still feel I should highlight the similarities.

Firstly, feast your eyes on this World of Warcraft in game screenshot. Analyse it. Look at everything.

Now, take a little look at this screenshot, taken from a video of Warhammer Online.

They are so similar it almost angers me. Look at the map at the top right - identical. The player profile and health bar in the top left - identical. The spell bar along the bottom - identical. The list of people in your party under your profile on the left - identical. Scrolling text chat shown on the bottom left - identical. How can they get away with that? Nobody seems to have batted an eyelid about it, but when I saw it, I thought I was watching a WoW video, not a video of a brand new MMORPG (2008, and those graphics are horrible).

Still not convinced? Check out this video. Even the artistic and technical graphics seem to be the same, and the way they’re animated:

Edit: I’ve just been browsing through the archives of Penny-Arcade, and I stumbled across this comic. So I guess someone did bat an eyelid. I guess I should give PA credit for noticing this 2 years before I did.

Just so you know, this isn’t a post about the crazy speed at which all the GameSpot staff appear to be quitting (which now includes Rich, Jeff, Ryan, Greg and Alex), but rather one or two stupid things I’ve come across during my recent browsing.

Firstly, Firefox decided to sign me out of my session at GameSpot. So when I wanted to post a reply on the forums, I clicked the “Quick Reply” button under the post. The text area expanded and I typed out my post. When it came to submitting it, GameSpot just redirected me to a “Join GameSpot!” page. I hadn’t noticed I had been signed out, but I assumed that when I tried to post, it would just send me to the login area. But no, it lets you type out your entire post, and then says “Oh no, you’re not logged in. Log in now, OR BUY GAMESPOT TOTAL ACCESS!! Oh and by the way, you should probably write out that post again. We deleted it.” It doesn’t remember the post, or even redirect you to the forum once you’re logged in. Terrible.

Secondly, even if you do manage to log in and get back to the forum, you ain’t makin’ no posts. Not when GameSpot’s horrible HTML checker is involved. That’s right, even when your post only contains characters, and no tags, it will greet you with the following message:

My HTML isn’t well formed? That’s because there isn’t any. I can confirm that it also manages to break when you do add valid HTML, or even when you use the “Insert/Edit Link” icon to have it automatically generate it. That’s right, GameSpot’s own code seems to be scrutinized by GameSpot’s own validity checker.

This doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s enough to make you not bother posting when it does occur. I’m surprised it’s not been fixed, there are dozens of posts on the GameSpot help forums about temporary solutions (which don’t work), but GameSpot’s techies seem to have ignored it.

Call Of Duty 4 is an awesome, awesome game. Like seriously, brilliant. So good, in fact, that I’m still playing it online. I’ve been addicted to it since mid January, and have managed to reach around level 50 or 51. I can’t quite remember. Unlike games like WoW, the increments of required XP aren’t as vast as each level progresses, so it’s not too hard to level up.

Level 55 is the top level, where you unlock the golden desert eagle (which I found from a guy who died on a level - it didn’t look so great), but once you’re 55, you’re given the option to go “Prestige” which means you start all over from level one. You lose all your weapons, weapon kills, weapon items and so on. In return you get a prestige icon. Once you get to 55 again, you can do it again and you get the level 2 prestige icon, and so on. Some people have already got the level 10 prestige. How much must they play?

There are some really horrible levels though, like Bloc, which is a Russian compound. It’s set like two main buildings, one on either side, and it plays out so your team is in one building and theirs is in the other. It normally turns out to be just a snipe-fest, which I would normally relish. I love sniping, and I love snipers in real life. It’s the epitome of patience and skill. However on the game, there’s a problem where the crosshair doesn’t align properly, so you might have a marine’s face in the middle of your sight, but when you pull the trigger, nothing happens - you miss completely. According to some posters on GameSpot’s community forums, it’s a bug in the game. But sometimes it does work so I’m not sure. Also, there’s no zooming. You’re stuck with the stock magnification of the rifle, which makes it a lot harder.

It’s not hard to see why Call Of Duty 4 is so popular online, and despite frequent connection problems and minor bugs, it’s fantastic. I just can’t wait for some more maps, but I can’t see that happening for some time.

What a great blog title. Anyway, I recently acquired a shiny new guitar and amp, and they finally got fitted onto the wall (which is apparently made of a mixture of breeze blocks, bricks, and sand, strangely enough). I should stress the amp wasn’t fitted to the wall, before I continue… So I decided to get a new guitar since my old one didn’t really perform too well, and was top heavy. I needed a new amp because…well I had bummed a tiny practise amp from the loft, and really needed my own big one with better distortion capabilities.

So without further ado, I present to you a rather compressed photo of the beasts.

The two on the left are my brothers (left handed) BC Rich Warlock with pretty much every single part black. Then the new Epiphone Les Paul. Then my new beautiful cherry Epiphone SG Special, then the old flying V, which still looks nice as a display piece. It looks to be a strange lumpy shape, but that’s the guitar strap hanging down. I tried in vain to clip the straps higher up so they won’t hang down, but no dice.

A fairly cynical look at the newly announced Macbook Air, and it’s (lack of) features, from Digg.

Following on from the Resistance Online Adventures post, here’s a brand new one related to Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I’ve played around a third of the way through the single player campaign, but started playing online, on the PS3 version.

Initially I wasn’t particularly impressed, because it failed to connect to any games, and only managed to do so when we left it for five minutes on the game lobby. Even then, it just started loading. You don’t get to pick which game you join, the only choice you have is what type of game mode you want to play (e.g. team deathmatch, free for all etc). I found myself being put into one of the two 6-person teams.

The great thing about COD4 is the ability to level up online. It doesn’t make you any stronger, but you do unlock more weapons and items to use. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to employ any match making system. I was thrown in with level 30’s and 40’s, and nobody else under 20. I was 0. But technically the only advantage they had were different weapons, which I could steal once they were dead.

I didn’t get much play, since the connection dropped a few times. I was told it was a server problem, but I reset my router anyway. After a while it started to work as it should, and I really got into the game. I started to see why online play was so addictive, especially in such a deep game like COD4. I was ranking up, and unlocking new content after every game, pretty much. When I got to level 4 I got to create my own class, which meant I could select my starting primary weapon and sidearm, and also some perks like more powerful bullets. I even added a camouflage pattern to my MP5, but I’m yet to unlock a laser sight for it. You need to complete one of the many challenges to unlock it.

Understandably, most of the people who play online are pretty damn good, since they spend a lot of time playing. Each time you’re killed you get an immediate replay from the killer’s perspective, which is a good insight into their movement and shooting abilities, and it’s just fun to see. Initally I was dying left, right and center, since I didn’t know the maps or the best techniques, but I gradually got the hang of it. You get quite an adrenaline rush when you come face to face with an enemy, and take him out with a knife to the face. There’s nothing quite like it.

I started searching for a wireless adaptor for the PS3, so I didn’t need to plug in the ethernet cable every time, and I eventually came across a post saying that the 60gb version has wireless built in, like the Nintendo Wii. The 20gb version doesn’t. I had absolutely no idea, and I’m not sure how I never knew that. So we tried it out, and sure enough it scanned and found the network, asked for the details, and connected - no problem. So I should hopefully be playing a lot more COD4 online.

Now ths may be veering off topic a little bit, but it’s too good not to post. It’s both hilarious and terrifying to see some of the things that these people think. Here are some of my personal favorite highlights:

As stupid as you think it sounds I totally agree. Blacks should not ever be in positions of power. They should be suppressed back in to slavery.

A missionary I knew watched a bullet headed for him do a RIGHT ANGLE before it got to him.

I can sum it all up in three words: Evolution is a lie

I often debate with evolutionists because I believe that they are narrow mindedly and dogmatically accepting evolution without questioning it. I don’t really care how God did what He did. I know He did it.

several million years for a monkey to turn into a man. oh wait thats right. monkeys dont live several million years.

I honestly don’t care about your rights. If it were up to me, all Atheists would be burnt at the stake and or cast into a river with weights tied to their ankles and or placed before the firing squad, etc etc etc.

A woman wants to abort a rape child? She should have thought of that before she walked down that dark alley without a male prescence, not to mention she should have thought before putting on revealing attire.

God revealed to me two things about the timing of the rapture. God specifically told me 2007 was the year

In the real world homosexuals (especially males) are generally predatory perverts who wouldn’t think twice about bedding a 14 yo boy.

It just goes on and on. Check it out.

I used to do Flash tutorials for KnowFlash, which became very popular. When YouTube came along I posted a few on there, and again they were pretty popular (one video has 87,000 views and 146 comments). For some reason after this, I never really made any more, despite the relative success (if 242 subscribers can be counted as a success) that they had.

For some strange reason I had the desire to start making more, and it finally happened. The new video, published on both YouTube and FlashLearner, also received the following YouTube accolade:

Honors for This Video:
#37 - Top Rated (Today) - Film & Animation - United Kingdom

However, having said all that, I can fully anticipate the likely outcome that no more videos will actually be made. Still, good to get everyone’s hopes up.

Recently saw this great video from CES. It’s about Bill Gates retiring, and it’s pretty funny. Check it out: