Machvergil 5.0

Don’t really have anything new to add as far as substancial content goes, but here’s some fun things I found on the internet that you can enjoy.

1. Breakfast – Directed by Micheal Bay is a fun parody short from cracked.com
2. For those of you who haven’t played wow since WotLK, there’s a new king in Stormwind (or perhaps I should say the old king has finally returned) and a lot of people (I guess?) think he’s angry, emo, or an idiot, and by and large is leading the Alliance to damnation.  Personally I think they’re wrong – Varian Wrynn just finally has the balls to do what the Alliance should have been doing from day1 of WoW – telling the Horde where to shove it.

   WoW Insider recently ran an article called “Varian Wrynn is Right” that goes over all the Lore over why those who misunderstand Wrynn should learn a thing or two about him.  Or not.  It is just a game after all.  Either way it’s a good read.

3. For those of you who like Mega Man, enjoy clever rhymes set to video game music, and can stomach a chuvenistic joke (which I wish they hadn’t thrown in), there is an incredably tight mega man 2 tribute video/rap up on WeGame.com for you to enjoy 🙂

This time I’m trying WeGame’s client for recording and uploading the videos.  This seems to have resulted in audio desync… but I’ll let you help me judge that.

Who saw this coming?

D&D Home Page – What Class Are You? – Build A Character – D&D Compendium

More RvR action from War posted to WeGame.  This footage is as old as the last WAR video I posted, so that makes it at this point six months old, before the game has (probably) changed a lot.

First time trying to edit with Sony Vegas.  Tell me what you think.

I think I’m really starting to like WeGame.com.  The posted videos provide regular entertainment, and the community is slowly growing on me.  Yeah they favor WoW and Valve FPSes a little heavily, but I like both of those so hey no skin off my teeth.

I just uploaded my second video to wegame, a video of a terrible Uldaman run on my Paladin alt that turned out real good in the end.  I’ll embed that here for your viewing enjoyment when they’re done processing it.

In the mean time, for future reference, he’s a link to my WeGame profile.

EDIT:  Ta-da

UPDATE: Okay I may be a little to harsh on the media outlets for this.  Gametrailers posted video feeds from the Starcraft II Trilogy announcement presentation, and yeah, the presenter fails to use the word “expansion” either, which kinda leaves you up in the air guessing what’s going on.  So, sorry Kotaku for poking at you specifically, you’re not the only ones who made this error, and really, it’s not your fault.

Here are some links to watch the Blizzcon feed (and I recommend you do watch them):

• BlizzCon 08: Starcraft II Trilogy Announcement Part I & Part II

ORIGINAL POST:

There’s a lot of crap going around the internet now about Blizzard’s profieteering at the announcement that there will be three Starcraft 2 titles, one for each race’s campaign.  A lot (and I mean a lot) of news venues have made it sound like this means 3 $50 starcraft games are coming out and you need to spend $150 to get the whole experence.

Blizzard’s own Blizzcon site refutes this with:

The epic story of StarCraft II will span a trilogy of games, with each game’s single-player campaign focusing on a different race. The first game will go into great depth telling the tale of Jim Raynor and the terrans. Two expansion packs will continue the story, delving separately into the saga of Kerrigan and the zerg, and that of the mystic protoss.

–http://www.blizzard.com/blizzcon/recaps/dayone-panels.xml

All they are promising is basically 3 broodwars, each 30 missions long, each focused on a race.  This is not different than when Dawn of War only launched with a Space Marine single player campaign, except it’ll be a better campaign because DoW’s original campaign was good but painfully short.

Which brings up the idoiocy that is Dawn of War II but I won’t go there right now…
Just wanted to set the record straight about that to anyone who might still read this site.

So in order to try and fix the Order/Destruction inbalance on some servers, Mythic entertainment decided to give out an XP/Renown bonus to encourage people to play Order for a week.  I thought this would be a good time to give the High Elf Shadow Warrior a go (since it’s one of the few Ranger-esque class in the game).  I had enough fun with it that I decided to Fraps some of it on the new machine, make a quick PvP vid, and try uploading it WeGame.com.  So, hopefully this works, you’ll watch, and enjoy!

So that you guys know, I got the job.  Yep.  I’m now a full time employee of Michigan State University, with salary and benefits.   I’ll be able to tell you better how great I feel after Thursday’s orientation where I get a better handle on what I’m getting out of the deal.  That said, I look forward to going to the doctor/dentist again.

So since my position as a professional web developer continues, I thought I’d comment on the upcoming browser wars, which I fell really should be called “Browser Wars2” (or BWII). I say “two” because the first Browser wars were really between Microsoft’s IE and Netscape Navigator, that took place in the 90s, a battle Microsoft ultimately won with flying colors.

For the last few years we’ve had a rising rivalry between the newset versions of the king’s browser (like IE7) and Mozilla’s Firefox.  Yeah, there’s also Safari and Opera, but given that combined less than 5% of the internet uses them, I might as well pretend they’re not here (though, I still check to make sure web pages for work function right in these browsers).  Yeah that’s right, even though Safari comes standard on Mac, enough Mac users get Firefox and use it instead that it keeps Safari on the low end of the useage percentage.

The 800lb. gorilla in the room now is Google’s Chrome, a browser I myself have yet to check out, but that is poised to take the internet by storm. Google is so serious about this, they got renowned comic artist Scott McCloud (of I can’t stop Thinking fame or Penny Arcade’s Hatred, take your pick) to do a comic detailing its features.  The underlying big deal here is the push to turn a browser into an application platform instead of just a browser.  To boot it should still do the browser part well since it’s based off Webkit, and as someone who has to develop for Safari (also based on webkit) I can say Webkit does a damn good job of rendering pages (somedays I think better than Firefox).

Don’t think that they’re alone in this.  Microsoft has already prepared to counter attack, with Internet Explorer 8 (currently in Beta2), which will include many of the memory and privacy features that Chrome does.  Microsoft wants to eventually push their Live Mesh idea as a series of “cloud computing” online applications and services, which is why they would want their new browser to support online apps to a similar level.

Meanwhile there has been no news from the Mozilla front to counter these new developments,  undestandble since Firefox 3 only recently came out.  It is interseting to note that last month, Firefox came as close to overtaking IE7&IE6 in use I’ve ever seen.

So in the coming years, expect a new breed of browser bickering to kick in, with the big boys being IE8, Chrome, and Firefox, all the while there being enough people hanging on to Safari and Opera to have to watch them too.  Good thing IE 8 includes web standards and an awesome compatability mode so that development hell can … finally…

*breaks out laughing*

Yeah right!

Already IE8 beta2 is having issues rendering sites in it’s “Standards mode” because it triggers the hacks we’ve been doing for IE for years!  At this rate we’ll end up having to develop for and obscene number of browsers instead of standards ever actually being followed. IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3 (Yes, there’s a difference, beleve it or not), Safari, Opera, and Chrome.  If you really want to do the web developers in the world a big huggy favor, pick your favorite browser and always, always use only the latest version.  Pllleeaaaasseeeeee.

Well it’s been more than a month since I last said or did anything around here.  Yeeesh.  So to not make it look like I’ve completely neglected this site (too late), here’s an update on what’s new with me.

First, today I interview for the full time version of my job at University Relations.  I’m looking forward to keeping that ball rolling finally, though I have to admit, getting up in the morning and going to work knowing you’d be interviewing for the job you’re going to that afternoon, is kind of odd (much like that sentense).

Second, speaking of UR, the update to adamclegg.com I promised showing off the new UR site is live.  Finally.

Third, I have a new computer at home.  I’ve been having issues getting it going (last time I let Digilink computers build my machine for me), but I things have finally stablized so I can start the migration process from the old machine (this would account for a why nothing happened hear during the last half of last month).

Fourth, been playing Bionic Commando Rearmed, and WoW lately, without Wednesday Night Game nights sticking to UT2004 and Starcraft.  Bionic Commando is a game I didn’t really play as a child, but when I found the remake interesting me anyway I decided to give the 8bit original a go.  Man, there’s another solid title from my childhood I missed out on.  Rearmed is lots of fun too, and a very interesting take on remaking a classic 8 bit game.  The music has got to be one of my favorite touches, it mixing new music with the old quite well.

I’ll probably have more to rant about in the near future, and hopefully a comic to upload once I deal with a lingering Dreamweaver problem . . .

It’s been a long time I know.  All I will offer up is an explanation:  My last few weeks have been very different than normal.  It messed with my rhythm, and while I have had this comic drawn for at least a week, the Photoshop time to make it didn’t manifest itself.  The good news I have is that the next two comics should come quickly.

Oh yeah, except I’m in the Red Alert 3 Beta… and also still trying to get one, if not two more level 70s before Wrath of the Litch King comes out.  That might delay me too since I am also, as you know, employed.

Speaking of employed: Latest completed project:  MSU Univesity Relations site Redesign!  Almost a year in the making!  Expect a write up on AdamClegg.com in the near future.