nickchanger's blog - Category: "Family"

It has been quite a week. I were supposed to just go home to my parents for a family party, but ended up staying for a whole week and doing a lot more.
I were also supposed to do a lot of writing on our school project but I only used a few hours on that.
Instead I did the following:

Friday:
Went to school.
Drove home to my parents with my uncle.
Went to Ste and AC's engagement party. Ste announced that I would probably become his best man. The wedding is set around summer next year!
Got a little drunk and got "hit on" (if you can call it that) by some crazy chick.
Came home around 4-5 at night.

Saturday:
Visited the grave of my grandparents around 12 with my family.
Went home and attended the family party with 25 of my uncles and cousins, their wives and children, etc. ... and lots of food!
Done around 11 at night.

Sunday:
Ate left-overs from the party (to much).
Went to Ste and played Risk (the board game!). I won a couple of times, even though it were my first time ever! :P
Went home around 3 at night.

Monday:
Went to my brothers and played League of Legends most of the evening.
Went home around 2 at night.

Tuesday:
Visited my sister at her friends parents house.
Played a board game, ate cake and watched Up. Nice film.
Got home around 10 at night.

Wednesday:
Picked up my bro and A.
Crashed my parents car.
Went to a gaming/drinking party at Ste.
Got "hit" even more on, including getting licked several times in the face, by the same crazy chick.
Got home around 6 in the morning.

Thursday:
Woke up already at around 10 (after only around 3 hours of sleep :/ ).
Did nothing the whole day.

Friday:
Played games with my parents and brother.
Went to Ste and played poker and Munchkin.
Got home around 4 at night.

Saturday:
Went to a drinking party at Jar.
Moved on to the bowling alley for two hours of night bowling.
Got home around 2 at night.

Sunday:
Drove home to Aalborg with my uncle during the morning.
Wrote this.

I know exactly what day you find the most interesting and want to know more about! It's Tuesday, right, where I did nothing at all? Yeah, I really did not do anything. Saw a couple of old Danish films, watched some Olympic stuff, fell a sleep, ate dinner, watched a third old Danish film and fell a sleep again. Now do not come and say I do not share everything with the web :P .

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Holy crap its been a long time since my last entry :o . I had planned a couple of entries but I have been too busy to actually write them :( . So this is just an update basically to tell the world, like it cares, that I am still here :P .

So what have happened since my last "update". Not much actually. School have taken up a lot of my time since we are only two in my group this semester and we are still writing almost as much as we did on any other semester, where we were six people. We plan to finish next Friday so we can relax in the Christmas holidays. This year, I will be going home to my parents, what a shock, and stay there for Christmas and new years. As far as I know we will spend Christmas eve in my brothers apartment, we did the same four years ago in mine. Last year we abolished gift giving, but instead added the game known in Danish as "pakkespillet", translated to "the gift game" I guess. We play it with cards which means that in turns we pick a card that tells us what to do basically. Usually the game is played with a dice that when you get a 6, you can pick whatever gift you want. This game of course means that I have to bring several small gifts, as it was not hard enough already :/ .

The same day I wrote the last blog entry I also started played League of Legends. The DotA clone game that does it much better than both DotA and HoN. It is well structured, clean graphics, and kind of fun. Together with some guildmates from my World of Warcraft guild I have been playing several premades over the last few weeks. We were supposed to participate in a tournament last Wednesday but it was pushed because of patching and problems that followed. So now it will start on Monday instead.
I expect we have a chance to win the first match but will most likely loose the second. The reason is that we still have not really figured out a good strategy (champions, lanes, jungling, items, etc) that fits us well yet. I doubt any of our opponents are reading this but I still wont be telling more until after the tournament :P .

As my time was not limited enough already I have also started to re-watch Gilmore Girls. Stupid, stupid, stupid :/ . But I pretty much had to since I have already re-watched Family Guy, American Dad, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Coupling, Firefly and Futurama this fall. I have also started to regularly watch The Daily Show, great fun and a bit of news.

So... incoming cheesy effect: Merry Christmas ... and all that stuff.

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It has been a while since my last blog and several things have happened, so this one will be long. The main reason for the long wait comes at the end of this blog (so you have to read on!).

Harzen

First big thing is a holiday trip with my family. This summer I went to Harzen in Germany with my parents and little brother. We stayed at a large hotel that didn't fit in to the area at all, it was kind of boring, and obviously made to serve guests at winter where there is snow in the area. The hotel are used to serve Danish people as many of the posters telling us about their summer parties and stuff were written in both German and Danish, but not English! No employee we met however knew Danish, and we only heard one say some english words. She were our waiter for our first meal, and she left before she took our order - so we got stock with another that only spoke German. During the whole trip we only met one other who spoke English words to us.

We drove in my parents car all the way down there. The trip down and back and all the driving while being down there were done by me and my brother, so my parents could drink beer and whine ;) . For those who don't know, Harzen is full of mountains so a lot of driving up and down - which is quite annoying in a 1.6 litre car. It is way inland so no ocean and they have placed dams at all the rivers they have.

We ate out at every meal, except breakfast. One weird thing we noticed is that apparently Germans like to have their salads before the "real" food comes to the table, wtf! It doesn't make any sense to eat salad alone, there simply has to be a huge juicy steak next to it!

Throughout the trip we visited several smaller towns, but not as many churches as usual. We also visited a small coal mine not in use any more. Here it was possible to drive a small train down into the mine and then take a walk while a guide talked about it. He spoke German of course and we only understood around a quarter of it. He constantly asked "sie verstehen?", and we just said "yeah". The train was small, I could only just fit in it, width-wise. The tunnel was only slightly wider than the train so a wrong move and my arm would be ripped off - cause he drove fast!

On the drive home we met a lot of rain. Apparently there were a major pileup involving 259 cars only about half an hour after we drove on the same piece of road. The rain was so extreme most cars where blinded. We only ran into a tailback near the Elbe tunnel at Hamburg, but saw at least two major once in the other direction - one where caused by an accident. It is kind of weird that the Elbe Tunnel is basically the only way for people from all over Europe to get to Scandinavia. They have just opened a fourth tube so there are now 8 tracks handling the 110.000 cars a day. Other routes go through Hamburg, through minor roads or by ferry.

The Visit

The day after we got home from Harzen I got a visit. I rarely do that but it were even more special this time. The visitors were J0k3 and his girlfriend Antonia. After living together a year in Germany they wanted to move to Sweden and on their way there they wanted to visit two of J0k3's old friends from Sands of War, me and Zacker. They arrived late in the afternoon and the first thing said where by Antonia, "Oh, red hair" ... After they settled in we had dinner and as the very unsocial people we all are we talked, a lot (compared to my normal standard). Well mostly Antonia, so I really don't see from where she get the idea that she cannot talk. After dinner we went on a small car drive through Svendborg, over the bridge to Tåsinge where we saw Troense, Valdemar Castle, Landet church and many houses with thatching roofs which to my surprise where new and weird to both of them. The trip ended at the nearby ice cream store where both me and J0k3 wanted liquorice ice cream. Apparently something very unusual in Germany, but what do they know down there where "Danish ice cream" is vanilla with chocolate sauce?!

The next day nothing big happened. Antonia got attacked by a spider (I made lift off from my chair from the scream) and we watched Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different. Yet another surprise for me was that neither seemed to know much about Monty Python. During the whole visit I forgot to use my camera! So right before they left I made a quick shot of J0k3 and me, but haven't get any good of Antonia (so don't know if there is any real proof of her visit!).

Both of them ordered me to start watching Weeds, so I have.

Gaming

When I first heard about a new version of the classic Secret of Monkey Island game I knew I would most likely buy it. And so I did. Shortly after the visit from J0k3 I visited the Steam shop. There I found three games of interest:

• Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
• LOOM
• The Dig

All classic LucasArts adventure games.

LOOM was way to short, it took me around 2 hours at most to complete it. It is however quite unique in its puzzles and the way to solve them, using codes of four sounds to de a magic with an object. The bad thing about this however is that you have to write them down on paper as soon as you learn them, as they are randomly generated at game start, but with several of the spells you only use it right after, making it a bit redundant.

The Dig had a much larger story and many more puzzles. It's a classic adventure type with a bit more seriousness compared to the other LucasArts adventure games, but still many funny elements. The concept for the story where originally made by Steven Speilberg to be used in an episode of a TV series, but he found it to expensive at the time. He then gave it to LucasArts to make it into a game. I think the story it self is great and could be used for a movie, but radical changes have to be made as for most of the time you walk around alone discovering an alien world. That would be pretty boring to see in a movie.

Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is a remake of the first Monkey Island game. It is made in such a way that you can switch between the remake and the original by pressing a button, pretty cool. The remake have improved the graphics extensively, but not some of the animations as they have to follow the original I guess. The remake also includes voice acting which where not present in the original. It also have a new interface which sometimes is better than the original but sometimes it kind of fails. The arrows to move the inventory up and down do not have a correct "hitbox" which is a bit annoying. The original game however shines through and most puzzles are great and the humour is at its best. In the first bar there is a pirate with a sticker saying "Ask me about LOOM", this joke where completely lost with me the first time I tried Monkey Island several years ago but now I get it and the several other references to LOOM.

The last game I want to talk about this time is Sid Meier's Pirates! It is part of the 2K Huge Game Pack I got a month ago. Just like Colonization it is a remake of an original Sid Meier game from the 80s. There are several elements in Pirates! which are the same as the even older Danish game Kaptajn Kaper i Kategat. That game is legendary in my book, and I've made several attempts to recreate it, and I'll probably make more attempts in the future. A little danger with Sid Meier's Pirates! is however the repetitive tasks. You basically do the same thing over and over. This is very visible with the fact that you chase down the same bad guy over and over again to get more information about your lost family you try to save. They could at least have given the same bad guy more names. Another task you do a bit to much is dancing with the governors daughters. It is very different from the rest of the game. Every dance consist of a collection of dance moves combinations. After a while you learn all these combinations and can do it in your sleep after watching the first step. When you get the special dancing shoes you don't even have to try hard to score on the dance floor as most of your mistakes are made good by the shoes. The last annoying thing is that the wind always comes from the east. It might be because of difficulty settings though. This makes it very boring to sail east thereby you tend to avoid any "quests" on the east most islands.

Sick

During my trip to Harzen I were still a bit affected by my allergies, meaning something up my nose (what the hell is the proper word for this place) were not completely recovered. This meant that there were very little airflow to my ears, which apparently is important :P . Harzen is full of mountains so driving around there means a lot of changes in air pressure. This combination resulted in my ears going crazy shortly after the trip. All of the ear doctors in the area have chosen to go on vacation at the same time and when I'm in need of them - typically! So I went to a "normal" doctor. She told me that there was low pressure inside my ears and that meant that my eardrum where pulled in and where sticking to everything in there like vita wrap. The only thing she could recommend where to use nose sprays and try to even the pressure by holding my mouth and nose closed and blowing out. This have not been effective and several days this thing have been really painful, making it almost impossible to sleep. God damn allergies.

It is basically gone now when I have arrived home at my apartment again - now I only have that damn heat problem :P .


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This will be an update-on-me blog - so now you're warned :P .

The last three weeks have been a bit unusual from my regular daily life. The biggest difference were the fact that my internet were closed on 1st of April (not a joke!). It had been closed before because of "overuse", so I feared it were the same again (even though I had reduced my internet usage extremly). I had to wait a whole week before I could contact the people in charge of it and they told me it was due to lack of payment - oups... They temporarily opened the connection so I could access my netbank and transfer the money. Then easter came and I went home. After easter my internet were closed again. I had to wait until late thursday evening before they finally realised that I had payed and opened it again.

During this period I learned that there is quite a lot of stuff where I'm using the internet, and it was a bit anoying to find other stuff to do. I did learn that I am not addicted to the internet (wheee) as I have a nice collection of singleplayer games. For instance I finally completed the main quest line in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion :) .

Easter

As mentioned above I went home during the holidays. My parents had gone on a holiday trip to northern italy so I stayed at my brothers new apartment. It's about the same size as mine but with a smaller kitchen - which does not fit with the fact that I hate cooking and he likes it.

Of course I also visited my old friends and we played a lot Guitar Hero World Tour (including singing and drums). A managed to play acceptable on a medium bass - I know, I suck at that game.

WOFIE

Last week (week after easter) we did not have normal school. Instead we were at a conference/workshop/course/something, called WOFIE, where we were split up and joined in groups with several other study areas. We were then suposed to create a product (or idea of) and present it with the posibility to win prizes. The topic were "climate" ... so guess how useless I was.

The group consisted of five people but one guy from my group never showed up. To pass we only had to be there three out of the four days, which one in my group took advantage of (I was really close to doing the same). So on the last day we were three people in my group - and suddenly we won and qualified for the final as one of the 7 out of a total of 78 groups. Pretty sweet. Even more sweet: five out of the six people in my software group where represented in the finals (thats five out of seven groups having a software guy in it!).

The top three groups from the final would win money (15k, 10k and 5k dkk). The top two of these groups had a software guy in it - none of those, however, were me :P .

In case you were wondering my groups idea were to put transparent solar cells in car windows to increase the range of electric cars. Prototypes of this might have already been made, but with only four days (constantly interrupted by stupid "energizers") and with the study combinations in the group it were pretty much impossible to find something clever and new.


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To days ago we finished our report for this semester project ... and went to bed (it was around 1 o'clock).

Yesterday we in the group went out shopping for food, picked up our report from the printers and went home to make a christmas dinner. Imaging this: six computer geeks making a complete christmas dinner with herring, liver paste, meat balls, pork loin, duck, white and brown potatoes, gravy and ris á l'amande! (hmm it all sounds better in danish? :/ )
It was a great dinner and I came home around six a clock this morning. Slept for four hours and went out to deliver our report. Finally done!

There were of course left-overs from the christmas dinner so today we met again for a left-over dinner - still nice food :) .

Now I'm just very tired...

I'll be going home to my parents sometime in the next few days - no idea when yet as I havn't had the time to think of anything other than the project report. I havn't had much time to finalize any coding yet either and it might even be moved to the end of january next year as I have three exams coming up. One of which is the devil and I really do not want to fail another exam! :P
... and I will probably use my christmas holiday with gaming...


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