Dear blog, June 2009

We all missed it this time!

Perhaps Dear blog is falling out of fashion - we'll see how it goes.

As for me ...

Dear blog,
Having a few days off from everything ...

Dear Blog,

I'm back.

How are people?

I hadn't even realised it was June lol

Dear blog,
Was upgrading my blog to Wordpress 2.8 earlier this evening. Unforseen server issues mean it's temporarily down until my admin can fiddle with the server and I restore my back-ups.

I am so glad that I have a plugin which e-mails me a daily backup of my mySQL database.

I don't think Dear Blog is falling out of interest, I think it's great. It's just personally I've been busy with exams so anything I seem to do online is really just going through the motions like some internet-powered cymbal-crashing monkey.

What I'm trying to say is I think I need to consider a break from the internet, but I'm so ingrained into the thing that I don't see myself ever becoming fully "disconnected" from it until I'm either senile or dead.

Other than that I'll get down to the norm:

Dear Blog,

well into exam season now, only got four left - it's been more of an uphill struggle if anything, but I think I'll secure at least a BBB finish come next Thursday, which will get me into UCLan to do my MPharm degree (although if I manage to sneak an A from somewhere I can go to Manchester - even though I think UCLan's course is much less old fashioned and thus better)

Every university course is old fashioned, at my uni and I assume all the others as well they have been teaching the same way (man stands at front and talks at you for an hour) since it opened 200 years ago.

Definition: The Lecture Theatre - A place where information goes from the notebook of the lecturer to the notebook of the student, without necessarily passing through the minds of either.

Do people still take notes? All our lecture notes are put online for us to download

Well when I was at university, I was taking notes on my Psion palmtop - that was classed as progressive.

Dear Blog:

The end of my AS exams is getting near- the last one is on Wednesday. Everything seems to have gone well so far, I just hope that that continues. Now I just need to work out just what it is that I would like to do in the future...

Don't worry, I'm still working on that problem too, and I'm years old.

ooh, you jammy one, my last exam is next Thursday. Pretty confident I'll finish with ABB now, or even BBB.

what I was alluding to before was (this could get boring) that the governing body of Pharmacy is changing as of winter this year, but my course will begin before then thus I'll be doing the old syllabus for the old governing body and so everything will be a bit outdated, with less focus on the clinical side of Pharmacy. UCLan have only just been accepted as a school of pharmacy and so their course is more flexible and designed to transition right into the new syllabus so I wouldn't really lose out.

This change in courses/examining bodies/syllabus has happened to me ever since high school, it always changes for the people in the year below me, even if it would suit us better.

Dear blog,

Turned on my 360 earlier and got a red light and error code E68. Hard Drive failure. Took the Hard Drive out, blew dust out of the connectors, plugged it in and it worked fine. Nearly had a panic attack.

On a side note, Xbox Live is down for the day for maintainance.

Glad to hear it was such an easy fix.

Does Xbox Live being down mean you can't game online with your 360, at all ?

Yes. Xbox Live being down means that you can't sign in to your account.

Which baffles me really, most games on Xbox Live are peer-to-peer (A player in the game hosts the game, rather than dedicated servers, which makes me wonder what our £40 a years goes towards).

And how would your xbox know which other consoles were playing the game with out a server to store the infomation?
Wouldn't be very practical to ping ever IP address asking if they were looking to play a game

£40 a year just to play console games? (which I put as such because when I game, it is 99.999% online - i.e. to play with other humans) - I'm really not missing out am I.

jasonquinn351 says:
And how would your xbox know which other consoles were playing the game with out a server to store the infomation?
Wouldn't be very practical to ping ever IP address asking if they were looking to play a game

One of the Xboxes in the game acts as a server.

The only 360 game that I can think of that uses Dedicated Servers is Left 4 Dead. And that's not even a first party game.

Microsoft argue that Live is a premium service, though I don't really seem how it's premium. Games don't use dedicated servers and you still have to pay for DLC. From what i've used and experienced, Xbox Live is basically Steam, but on a console.

It's worth noting that it's pretty rare for Live to go down. Maybe twice a year at most.

But Windows Live is totally free! I still don't see why we have to pay to play games online on the 360.

What they should do is offer most of the new services coming in as premium services (Sky, Movies, Full-Game downloads, Last.FM) and make the gaming side of it free, just like the add-ons are (what I mean here is that Silver accounts are free and allow you to download DLC - you still have to PAY for the content but you don't have to pay to pay for the content, if that makes sense).

Anywhoo, my copy of Lost Odyssey came yesterday, only got it for £10! Nate's also challenged me to spend my every waking moment playing it to make him feel better:

Yeah, Games for Windows Live is completely free. The reason being (if memory recalls) is because there was a huge backlash from the PC Gaming community.

I just wish MS would put some bloody dedicated servers in. I'm tired of playing games like Gears of War 2 and suddenly having a multiplayer/horde game end because the person who was hosting the game quit. Me & Nate both know how irritating this is.

It's not so bad in Halo 3. The screen goes black with the scoreboard for about 30 seconds as the game selects a new host so at least the game can continue from where it left off. But sometimes after the host has been picked, you could be in a completely different place to where you started.

First party games at least, should use dedicated servers, imo.

Definitely, I'm guessing the only reason Xbox Live subscribers don't give windows the backlash is because 80% of the demographic are 12 or retarded. Or both.

I don't know what Gears 2 is like now, but when I last tried going online it took about 20 minutes to create a game. I found this both annoying, and hopelessly pathetic so I haven't tried it since. I've yet to find a game on Xbox Live that I could purely spend my time online on. That's why I only have 3 months of gold membership, after that's up I'll be going to university and taking my PS3 with me, with its totally free online gaming.

On the topic of 12 year olds, i've got 12 year old kids currently screaming at me down my headset. I love the mute button.

But you're right. Most people on Live don't care that they're paying for nothing.

And if you're wondering why i'm pushing for dedicated servers, take a look at this video that I just recorded.

My point was that you need a central server to record who is currently on-line before you can tell the Xbox the IP address of the Xbox which is hosting the game.

Yes, but you get my point. The actual game is not hosted by Microsofts servers, which can result in laggy games. What's more, is that the Host player often has some kind of advantage in the game. I find this is most noticeable with Close-Quarter weapons like Shotguns or Melee's.

also, if the host's connection sucks, then you'll all get hit by the latency. Nicht gut.

most of PSN games are host-based too I think, but at least it's free to play them online.

PSN is free so I guess that we're not in a position to complain there. However, Microsoft charges for XBL and calls it a "premium gaming service". A premium gaming service without dedicated servers. Hmm.

I agree the the games should have dedicated servers but I would much rather pay the £40 for XBL than have to use PSN

XBL is more established and the community is better. But I prefer playing COD and Burnout Paradise on PSN. Little Big Planet is really good too. I play more games online on my PS3 by a country mile.

Couldn't be more different from me