Arming An Army

Added on November 25th, 2006
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Played some more Gothic 3 today. Until today I hadn’t really though much about this, but the inventory system is really funny in Gothic 3. Well maybe funny isn’t the right word, but with the items that I currently have in my inventory I could arm a whole army, I’d just need to find people for it.

You see, Gothic 3 doesn’t have any limit on how much you can carry in your inventory unlike certain other games. Each to his own of course, realists will say that that isn’t realistic and that you should only be able to carry this many items, or this much weight in total based on your character’s strength or whatever. But nah, not me, I find this system of carrying as much as you want great.

Gothic 3 Party Time!

My character right now after a few hours of playing has(and this is after selling almost every single item I didn’t need, to be able to buy the paladin armour), 113 shields, 145 swords, 2,087 arrows, 1,633 crossbow bolts, 289 orc axes, 203 orc swords, 28 axes, 30 pikes, 35 magic rings, 17 magic amulets, 118 magic scrolls, 817 bottles of booze, 103 bottles of wine, 1,341 potion ingredients, 408 food items(fried meat, ham, and other foodstuff), 159,000 gold pieces, 73 gold and silver cups, 478 animal trophies of various sorts. Talk about enough stuff here for arming, feeding and paying for an army.

One funny thought did occur to me while thinking about this and Gothic 3 mods, someone ought to make a mod that takes all your inventory items and sticks them around your character. Much like in Katamari Damacy and instead of walking your character would roll around.

Best Episodes of Season 1 The X Files

Added on November 24th, 2006
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Just finished Season 1 of the X – Files. Love the show, it’s great. But just like with all shows there are some not so good episodes. Yes all shows! And don’t come with BSG, because it has Black Market. Anyway, back to the X – Files and the episodes that I thought were the best.

“Pilot”, the first episode was great. Couldn’t really think of a better way to start of the series. “Ice”, quite a scary episode compared to the rest, but that’s what makes it so good. An excellent high tension thriller episode. The Toombs story arch, two episodes, quite creepy as well, with some excellent moments.

“Fire”, is one of those episodes that I find hilarious and other people wonder what exactly I find funny in there. Well for one, the lady from Scotland Yard with her over top accent, and let’s not forget the guy from Fantastic Four, Human Torch being in it.

The finale, “The Erlenmeyer Flask” is one of those typical season final episodes, that builds up the suspense, and leaves the viewer wonder, “what’s going to happen now?” with the X – Files at FBI being closed, and Mulder and Scully being re-assigned to different jobs?

X-Files Season 2

Added on November 23rd, 2006
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The X - Files Season 2

Picked up The X – Files Season 2 box set today. Wasn’t as cheap as the first one, but at this point I don’t really care, as long as I can watch some more excellent episodes of X – Files. Having said that there have been some episodes which I haven’t enjoyed that much in Season 1. I still have four more episodes of X – Files to go in Season 1, so expect a list of my favourite Season 1 episodes along with some commentary of what I think of the show, very soon.

As a side note I’d like to mention that World 8 in the New Super Mario for DS, is very hard, and to a degree annoying because you can only save the game either after beating a tower or a castle level, or of course buying an entrance to one of those mushroom places. And neither of those are an option to me right now in World 8.

My Top 10 Girl Geeks

Added on November 22nd, 2006
9 comments

As usual I was looking at my various news feeds while at work, and noticed something interesting, CNET’s Top 10 Girl Geeks. So I decide to have a look and see what they’ve got there. The list is as follows:

  1. Ada Byron (World’s First Programmer)
  2. Val Tereshkova (Went To Space)
  3. Grace Hopper (Found Computer “Bug”)
  4. Darly Hannah (Eco-friendly Geek Icon)
  5. Rosalind Franklin (Chemist)
  6. Mary Shelley (Wrote Frankenstein)
  7. Lisa Simpson (Future President)
  8. Marie Curie (Plutonium In Her Pockets)
  9. Aleks Krotoski (Very Chic Geek)
  10. Paris Hilton (Famous Girl Gamer)

So what do I think of the list? While I may agree with some of the choices, I really really don’t agree with others, and some of the reasons and/or descriptions of these is just plan wrong. Take Marie Curie for example, she died 1934 and Plutonium was first isolated and produced in the year 1941. Daryl Hannah, hardly a geek, so no idea why she is on this list. Mary Shelley, debatable, personally I wouldn’t put her in a Top 10 because there are more deserving ladies. Won’t even say anything about Paris Hilton, I really wonder what the person who was making this list was smoking.

So what does my Top 10 look like? Well, it’s quite different. Quite a few new faces too. So without further ado, I present you my Top 10 Girl Geeks:

Val Tereshkova Marie Curie

  1. Valentina Tereshkova.
  2. Marie Curie.

Rosalind Franklin Hedy Lamarr

  1. Rosalind Franklin.
  2. Hedy Lamarr.

Cynthia Breazeal Fiorella Terenzi

  1. Cynthia Breazeal.
  2. Fiorella Terenzi.

Dana Scully Samatha Carter

  1. Dana Scully.
  2. Samantha Carter.

Morgan Webb Eve Astrid Andersson

  1. Morgan Webb.
  2. Eve Astrid Andersson.

Well, that’s my list Top 10 Girl Geeks. If you are going to, or already have posted your list, then be sure to let me now, and I’ll mention your list here as well.

A more technical post this time, specifically for experienced Firefox users.

userContent.css is a file that resides in “C:\Documents and Settings\[Windows Login Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[profile name]\chrome” or for those of you who are more technologically versed it can be found in “%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[profile name]\”. By defaut there will be two example files.

So what does userContent.css do? Well it lets you setup some CSS rules which take precedence over the CSS rules that are defined on the webpages that you go to. You can for example disable the <blink> or the <marquee> tag, the two most annoying and over used tags ever. Especially <marquee>.

Go ahead and create a new text file and name it userContent.css. Open the file in your favourite text editor. Text editor, not Microsoft Word or even Wordpad, or anything like that. If you don’t have anything specifically installed for editing HTML/CSS files, then go for Notepad.

Here’s what my current userContent.css looks like:

/* Stops <blink> from blinking */
blink { text-decoration: none ! important; }

/* Displays <marquee> content as normal text */
marquee {
  -moz-binding: none;
  display: block;
  height: auto !important;
}

/* Warns about PDF links */
a[href$=".pdf"]:before {
  font-size: smaller;
  content: "[pdf] ";
}

/* Warns about new window links */
:link[target="_blank"]:before,
:visited[target="_blank"]:before,
:link[target="_new"]:before,
:visited[target="_new"]:before {
  font-size: smaller;
  content: "[new] ";
}

/* Warns about javascript links */
a[href^="javascript:"]:before {
  font-size: smaller;
  content: "[js] ";
}

You might not like all of those things, so add only the things that interest you. Another thing to note is that you can stop firefox from showing advertisements with this as well. You just need the container name and “display: none ! important;”. But I would suggest that only people who are well versed with CSS attempt to do that on their own.