Living In The Orange Box

Bubbly

One week into the holidays. Im still stuck in an orange box. I know I should go out and get some sun, but the desire to stay in the orange box is too great.

The holidays have been a blast so far. Got to catch up on the movies I missed in the past 3 months. Just watched two hours of pron this afternoon. Iron man is pretty much two straight hours of gadget pr0n. Damn I wished I could fly.

Finally got the Malaysian gang hooked on poker. Hashrul is now contemplating a chip set. In return they introduced me to LASER TAG. As a life long FPS (first person shooter) gamer, the experience was exhilarating. Im now contemplating a set of taggers.

The orange box is a collection of five games. Cost me AUD90, but it's worth every cent. Of the five games, Team Fortress 2 is the most interesting. It is a multiplayer online game where two teams battle to complete objectives. Fabulously designed game dynamics. There are different classes such as pyros, snipers and engineers. Love playing the spy. It's the most difficult class to play, but once behind enemy lines and disguised as one of them (yup, the enemy actually sees me as one of them), stalking my prey and backstabbing them is really fun. The game also features very advanced statistics as it is solely an online multiplayer game. So far played about 20 hours as a spy with a record of 18 straight kills in one life >:-}

Outpinged Lives Again!

Sleek...

I finally got down to building my own computer. Last year, my workstation was very cluttered (click) and unergonomic. This new desktop let's me save space and have a much more ergonomic workstation (click). Last year, I had used my notebook connected to a display as my workstation. Little would i know that it would affect my posture quite badly (i actually had the initial signs of scoliosis but that's another story). It affected my ability to play sports and even walking became annoying.


The Tale of Outpinged

Once upon a time, there was a warrior, a trained sniper who totally owned at the legendary battlefields of 2fort5 in Teamfortress for Quake II. He was a veteren of combat who had experienced many other battles in Duke Nukem, Quake and Doom. Yet, he was unable to fulfill his maximum potential. He was limited by speed. Using an ancient 28.8kbps modem, he struggled during intense moments on the battlefield, trying to pre-empt where his enemies would be a split second later. The delays (pings) were sometimes outrageous, lasting about half a second. Some people are outrun on the battlefield. Some people are outsmarted. He was, "Outpinged*".

He had his fair share of leadership commanding armies in Warcraft (I,II,III), C&C and Starcraft, but the battlefield was where his heart was. He clocked more than 300 hours on counter-strike on dated equipment.

As time slowly crept upon Outpinged. He found himself increasingly disadvantaged by the limitations of his gear. That limitation has now been removed.

The last gaming rig:

1. 0.6Ghz Pentium III. 10 million transistors
2. Riva TNT2, 12 million transistors, 16mb RAM
3. 64MB RAM
4. Rolled iron and Plastic case
5. 350W power supply.
6. 17" CRT monitor
7. RM5500

Gaming rig, 2008:

1. 1.8Ghz Pentium Dual Core. 230 million transistors
2. Geforce 8800GT, 666 million transistors, 512mb RAM
3. 2048MB RAM
4. Brushed aluminium case.
5. 650W Coolermaster Real Power (19A x 3 @ 12V)
6. 22" Widescreen LCD Panel.
7. RM4600

*Ping is the delay it takes for a computer to communicate with the server.