nickchanger's blog - Category: "Friends"

A lot is going on in these days. To much for my taste actually.

Since I am done at the university I pretty much have to get a job somewhere. That has meant making my CV and different job applications. It also meant joining what is known as an A-kasse. Not sure what it is called in English but it is something that will pay me as long as I do not have a job, pretty sweet deal. Of course they demand that I am actually searching for a job, but who would want to sit at home everyday doing nothing anyway.... wait a minute.

I am currently also in the process of moving out of my apartment in Aalborg (in just a couple of weeks). But since I do not know where in the world I will get a job yet I have no apartment to move into. So to begin with I will be moving back home to my parents. Hopefully I will have a job soon so I can move out again :P .

I have been in the process of creating a framework for websites, and have for months now been working on using that framework for this site. At the moment I only need some administration stuff and I should be ready to release it. I did, however, feel like it needed a new design as well so that might come too. Of course it has already taken longer than I expected but I just have not had the time :( .

Riot Games (the creators of League of Legends) released the "Season 1" ladder stuff, which meant the log file changed. The log file we parse to get all the data for LoLBase.net. Since my partner were visiting his family in Vietnam and rarely had any time, and the fact that it was me who originally created the parser, I was forced to fix it so we could continue the parsing of the thousands of log files we receive every day. Of course season 1 was released right in the middle of a holiday trip I was on, where me and 8 other young people (I was actually the oldest :P ) went to a summer house on the west coast (of Denmark) to get drunk for seven days straight. Yes I was drunk most of the time there and it was actually quite fun. Well, except for the fact that one of the two girls who were there got a concussion the 2nd night at could not participate in most of what we were doing the rest of the week. Pictures on Facebook :P . Anyway, I finished the parser a few days ago and the parser is currently crunching through the more than 120000 log files that was in the queue (would take around 85 hours), and it is still going :P .

Riot have, however, done something really awesome. With the release of season 1 they also released a new website both in North America and in Europe. At the bottom of the front page is a small box with the title "Community Spotlight". On both sites there is only one thing inside this box: the banner for LoLBase.net! Fork yeah! I have made something that is used and known intonationally by thousands of people! Not sure, but I do not think Sands of War reached the same amount of users?

I have also finally started to actually play some LoL again. Sucks and owns randomly atm :P . I have also bought Arcanum on gog.com. My brother bought that game years ago but I never finished it - now I will! Then there are several tv-series that are about to start or have started and finally some anime. I told you, lots of stuff to do :P .

Shit this was long... I end it with Lilim...


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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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Today, the 14th of February, has its name from an almost completely unknown person who is believed to have lived during the third century. During the 18th century some fake stories came up using Saint Valentine as the patron for lovers and Valentine's Day where born. Today it is mostly "celebrated" in America but flower shops, greeting card companies and restaurants are doing all they can to introduce this tradition in Europe too ... for obvious reasons (no not love dumb ass :P ).

Now for the news. I got three, two of which coincidently involves love. Let's start with the third...

As expected Steam had a sale on Trine (75% off), so I bought it and completed it this morning. It is not very long but it is damn cool, with only a few extremely annoying puzzles ;) . J0k3 have asked if people could beat his finishing score, and I tried too. But of course I could not do it, but I was not that far behind IMO :P .

Now for the first "love" subject. Two days ago my good childhood friend Ste finally proposed to his girlfriend through the last 2½ years, AC, and she said yes! Congratulations to both of you!

Second "love" subject. Today Angels and Airwaves (AVA) released their third album called... LOVE. (far fetched but still :P ). Tom DeLonge (Blink-182, Box Car Racer and AVA) have expressed that this album is the best thing he have ever done. That is aiming quite high as almost all of Blink and the two first AVA albums are just awesome. LOVE where released as a download for free and through wikipedia I found a way to download it yesterday (through something called fuel.tv). Maybe I had expected more because of Tom's statement or I have just been to excited about it cause I were just a bit disappointed when I heard it. However, I do believe that the songs just have to grow on me and eventually I will probably love them as much as the previous AVA songs. The album is still quite good and I can only recommend it to basically everyone. Now I am just waiting for the release of their movie, also called LOVE, that is "coming soon".

*UPDATE*
As expected the songs just had to grow on me. Check out a screenshot from my WinAmp media library showing my ratings and a possibly scary play count? (done within around 48 hours)

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There are two major events I would like to write about this time. Next time the only event might be a major, yet invisible, update to the site.

Birthday Party

Last Saturday two of my friends, A and Jar, held a combined birthday party. They both turned 25 this year. To help them finance the party, and to make sure it really will be a party, they made an offer: pay 50 dkr, and drink all you want. That is damn cheap (at the discotheques one drink usually costs 50 dkr)! So of course we paid and of course we drank! Think this party is the most alcohol I've consumed during one event.

I went home, to my brothers apartment, at around 6 o'clock in the morning. As always I did not get a hangover - just damn tired after only around two hours of sleep.

We usually make some really nasty drinks when we play drinking games at parties and this time they even contained burger sauce, mustard and fried onions (is that the real English name? :o ). That was disgusting. To make the loser loose even more he/she had to take a bite from a raw onion - I took three bites and tasted onions for two days :/ .

You can probably see pictures from the event on Facebook - great fun! Happy cinnamon day guys.

Fall Line-up

All of the major networks have started their fall line-up. This means way to much for me to see! Several new seasons of old shows and one all new show.

• Monday
  • House M.D.
    Were very exited about this one. It started with a 90 minutes double episode - sweet! And it ruled!
  • How I Met Your Mother
    There is a good chance we will finally meet the mother!
  • The Big Bang Theory
    It ended with a cliffhanger :o - kind of burned in the premier though.
• Tuesday
• Wednesday
  • South Park [coming soon]
    Give them 13 seasons more!
• Thursday
  • 30 Rock [coming soon]
    Kind of surprised it wins all kinds of awards - it's good, but not that good.
  • The Mentalist
    More humorous crime and mystery.
• Friday
  • Dollhouse
    First season ended with a kind of weird 13th episode where the action took place many years in the future. Felicia Day from "The Guild" guest stared. The new season however continues in the "present". The new season should have a guest start appearance by Summer Glau.
• Saturday
• Sunday
  • American Dad
    The show have become better and better for each season.
  • Californication
    More SHOwtime!
  • Family Guy
    Not much to say ... hehehehe
  • The Cleveland Show
    The all new Seth MacFarlane show. It is a spin off from Family Guy and features Peter's black neighbour Cleveland Brown. With one episode it is ok, but not something thrilling. Hopefully that is just the introduction part.

At the same time I have started watching an old show called "Adventures of Brisco County Jr." It features Bruce Campbell, Sam from "Burn Notice", as Brisco County Jr. Apparently this is the role he likes the most.

During the summer I have finished watching "Burn Notice", "Weeds", "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" (that is Hugh Laurie) and "Robot Chicken"!

Looking forward to 2010 where hopefully "Burn Notice", "Weeds", "Robot Chicken", "The IT Crowd" and the rest will continue.

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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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