One last insignificant post... Posted by Luc on 2008-08-15 09:27:05 BST
There was something that had struck me today when I was talking to a friend and that was how little people knew about the professional gaming industry. Before I go on to argue my point, I would just like to stress that I fully acknowledge and understand how people don't know of the jobs people have of playing a video game for a living, and that's cool. It's quite a niche market as it stands and i'm about to go onto that right now.
Competitive or professional gaming (as it's more formally known) is something that isn't necessarily new but something that is finally being immersed into the mainstream and modern culture (painfully slowly however), so to an average persons POV it's fairly new. Which is why I can totally understand when I talk to my friends about it and they have no clue that such a thing existed, and that's cool.
However...
If I can whack out the history books, I think the idea of professional or finanically supported gaming started way back in the late 80's perhaps early 90's when the internet era exploded... and without sounding like a total nerd, I think that's how massive LAN events such as the iSeries kick-started because of the internet and the progression of technology at that point.
Which is fantastic, and I think it's only because of modern technology that gaming, or competitive gaming is perhaps finally being accepted into todays modern culture as "cool" or perhaps as a "spectator sport". Take the Wii for example, Nintendo have finally put in the towel to the hardcore nerdy gamers and have said "Look, lets make a family orientated product where everyone can stuck in" and so they have and if i'm not mistaken they even said this at one of their press conferences in E3.
I think links like this are finally opening peoples eyes to the idea of competing for cash through a game. And as much as people argue against it, gaming is a sport but if you were to define "sport" of the more traditional sort (ergo, playing tennis) then I would consider it as an "e-sport" seeing as we're living in a digital era, surely that's acceptable right?
Don't get me wrong, 99% of the time I live by the dictionary; but surely it's time to embrace a new form of competition or idea to the standard of "sport"?
I've also heard ridiculous arguments from people saying that, it's "just a game" & "anyone could play it and win at it" Absolutely wrong. I've been playing as an amatuer gamer within leagues for about a year now and I have to say even I struggle against the more organised and prepared teams.
I've heard people also arguing against how watching gamers compete is enjoyable.. I suppose I can't argue and say how it is enjoyable because I suppose you just have to be into the sport in order to enjoy spectating it.
I guess its the same with me and football.. I could watch small bits of it as I don't mind it but it just doesn't cut it for me.
But spectating it and accepting it as a norm are two completely different things entirely. Spectating it I guess in some ways suggests that you enjoy the sport, you admire how the game is played out and the competitivity between teams. Accepting it as an every day part of life is totally different. That on the other hand suggests that you aprehend people do it as their way of life and that alot of money is invested into it and that it is equally a serious business as the workplace you go to everyday to do your job.
Ultimately, I am not ranting on about how people should accept competitive or professional gaming in the click of a finger but perhaps I am just stating my points as to why it should be embraced (in time) as a sport and not as something "nerdy" or exercised by outsiders of society.
i34, PurePwnage and more awesome stuff Posted by Luc on 2008-08-15 07:41:47 BST
Most of the viewers of my website have probably noticed that I was i34 the previous weekend, ruining my eyes and numbing my fingers and for a good reason too!
If none of you know what the iSeries is then please just google it or hell; CLICK THIS LINK!. In a brief rundown, it's simply a 2,000 man LAN with lots of moniez && free stuffz.. dat I has.
OK, enough of the lolcat chatter and down to business. i34 was great for me for twoTHREE reasons;
I got to compete for cash... and fail miserably
I got to meet my team mates for the first time
I got alot of free junk, some of which I actually use
Suprisingly though, about 75% of the time I wasn't actually playing games (as intended); instead it seemed like I was more of the class clown rather than the productive gamer.
Let me show you what I mean... on sunday night, the night before every had to pack up and leave the morning after it seemed like we were all in good mood. Yes, by all; I mean all 2,000 sadistic one of us. So as you would, I made the most of this!
I present to you... the 1,000 man-nerd-conga-line!
That's right ladies and gentlemen, I STARTED THAT!! And all it took was a group elderly drunks and guy wearing a pimp costume, literally. If you haven't gathered already who I am within the crazy barbaric line of general awesomeness, then look out for a guy wearing a blue polo shirt and a white bandana in the top video jumping up and down like a raving nerd-biased lunatic.
As for lovely images and wonderful eye candy, head on over to my teams gallery at Axiom Gaming Media Gallery
Anyway, it was a brilliant even, I was happy to hear about RA3 and the BETA being released, I was also happy that none of my stuff got nicked.
In other news, PP are about to release their latest episode (Season 2 Episode 5) and i've already watched some of it over stream and it's bloody hilarious. I love the sarcy spiteful pisstake that they've made against the infamous Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation. I'm currently trying to whore the torrent at the moment for the full video in .avi DivX encoding... which should take about a year seeing as i'm connecting to some utterly random place in Toronto, Canada.
The "Mojave" Windows experiment Posted by Luc on 2008-08-05 16:45:14 BST
As you do, I was browsing around the black hole that is the internet, and I came across a really funny find. Probably, most tech heads know that Vista had a really rough launch what with major bug issues, slightly dated hardware not being compatible & it being simply a massive system resources whore; Microsoft seemed to come up with a funny yet fundamentally clever way to counter the views that people had made on this.
The Mojave Experiment - Microsoft a while back produced, I guess this sort of "mindtrick experiment" to see how current Microsoft users of perhaps Windows XP felt about the apparent successor, Vista.
The trick is however, they disguised Vista as some sort of new operating system that they were releasing so people wouldn't suspect that it is Windows Vista. So in this instance, it was called "Mojave" and after a while of using the operating system. People who disliked Vista really, really enjoyed Mojave; which is infact the exact same operating system!
This find is a little old but I just came across it today and thought it deserved a look at.
i34 Camera Stream Posted by Luc on 2008-07-31 07:23:59 BST
I talked to my gaming team (who are going to attend i34) and we thought it'd be a cool idea to perhaps launch an online camera feed for the viewers of the website to check us out when we're there.
So far i've got it working, but the camera feed should be online for a lengthy period of time as of 7th August however, I can't guarantee it on this date as the network systems may not be online within the games festival. At the latest the feed will go online on the 8th August which will be all viewable from either here (I'll make a small box for the stream) or live.axiom-gaming.co.uk
For now, you will notice that the camera stream is offline however this will change at the proposed dates above. Hope you check us out then!
Time to whack out some content... Posted by Luc on 2008-07-30 01:54:38 BST
OHBAM!! it's been a while until I did actually release some solid content onto the website, but it's all good.. although these creations werent done by me they certainly are worth showing up on hereee
First off, Paul Johnston finished his second blog for the gaming/internet culture show project called "Harlequin", check that out below...
He also produced a video introducing himself and what his part is in the production of the show...
Last but not least, a good friend Savannah started vlogging and it seems like she'll be doing a series of these videos, so check out her debut one right here...
Thanks for flicking by And don't forget my second blog post for the Harlequin Project should be up tomorrow, just check back as much as you can... refresh it.. and stuff... bump up the counter.. yeahh that works...
My advice to anyone... Posted by Luc on 2008-07-19 15:47:29 BST
...wise enough to take it is that you should NEVER purchase a £10.00 case from eBuyer. They're incredible amounts of hassle to use.
Take me for example, I recently purchase a Radeon x1650 Pro 512mb and I can't actually fit it into the back of the PC because of the most awkward case design I have seen in my life... Yay...
As I said.. eBuyer, don't get their shitty low-end cases. Mind you, everything else is okay and my god, the Razer Deathadder is so HAWT.
Internet stupidity Posted by Luc on 2008-07-18 19:35:46 BST
Today I was just flicking by a forum I like to post on thats orientated around the online tv show called PurePwnage, when I can across a REALLY idiotic post.
quote:"I have a 52inch hd tv, samsung brand and i was wondering if you could play xbox, wii, ps3..ect on those? im inviting friends over i need 2 know!"
I think the real question is, what is a retard like him doing with a 52inch TV like that?
Project Harlequin: Video Blogs Posted by Luc on 2008-07-16 07:09:08 BST
Recently, a friend and I decided (finally) to go forward with the idea of creating a pretty spoof like online show that'd orientate around a deeper side to gaming and internet culture as it is today. We finally figured out that my video camera worked and that it uploaded pretty good quality footage (good enough to start this show idea).
Before we did start with the project first, we wanted to produce a series of intimate "video blogs" as you will; that allowed our potential viewers to understand what would be going on.
Hopefully this saturday things will be alot clearer as we'll figure out what we'll be doing to start shit off.
Stay tuned.
PS: This has nothing to do with the "headtrash.net" show idea that I had in mind. That is something else which is completely different. Stick around for that iswell.
Plug: 7-days.net Posted by Luc on 2008-07-13 09:51:32 BST
Hey, doing a quick shout out to a newly founded forum community I occasionally use. The girl who runs it is a nice lass, and the forum is normally littered with decent downloads and general banter of all things interesting & cool.
The headtrash.net show Posted by Luc on 2008-07-10 08:03:25 BST
After years of it being considered broken, I finally got my hands on my old video camera and after playing around with it, it apparently works perfectly! So I thought about it, and I came to the conclusion that I would probably make a niche little YouTube show for the website, talking about things that don't necessarily make sense, and generally criticise half of the bullshit that's on YouTube.
Good idea, no? I also just got hold of Sony Vegas 8.0, should be an interesting week.
i34 - Just one month away! Posted by Luc on 2008-07-06 06:49:26 BST
Time flies by so fast when you're doing... nothing? Well one thing for sure though about this summer though is; The iSeries Gaming event.
The UK's largest gaming festival is going to take place in precisely one months time and my god, everytime I think about it I get so giddy, it's going to be fucking terrific!. If you haven't bought tickets yet or you don't know anything about the event, I suggest you pop over to the iSeries 34 website now!
On a side note, you'll notice that only some web-page will work on the website. That means i'm still testing things out. The website should have lots of content by the end of the week iswell as the new IRC channel and "Garbage" section.
MySpace Bulletins Posted by Luc on 2008-05-30 18:10:48 BST
I think I can fairly say that i'm coming to the point in my life where i'm crossing the bridge between teenagerism (yes I quite clearly made that up) & adulthood. The only problem is, the kids on myspace certainly fucking aren't. Yeah, you're probably wondering "But Luc, what a strange topic to jump to from maturity?" well not necessarily, unless its perfectly acceptable to see the "scene kid" teenagers on MySpace as children defected by cerebral paulsy (sp?) which if it is the case then the internet may iswell be the birthday party that got ruined savagely by your parents after they hired a deranged lunatic to act as a clown.
The way I see it.. the internet started off well with small niche online communities imploding with fascination but now globally supported social networks such as MySpace have come along; i've really contemplated what the hell has gone wrong with my particular generation.
Let me show you what I mean... "MySpace whores" - As if its not bad enough to call yourself an undignified sex slave; apparently the term "MySpace whore" has entirely different meaning (suprise, suprise?) which i'm not sure is much better than just a plain old whore.
Take this for example, the theory behind it is; if your friends advertise your profile to everyone they have as a friend on myspace, you'll receive so much friend requests, you may iswell suffocate from popularity. It almost reminds me of the school playground where if you did want to become popular, you'd hang out with the cool kids, ergo, being constantly molestered by friend requests and losing the whole idea of what myspace is really about. "But Luc! Myspace is a place for friends! Surely there's nothing wrong with whoring?" Sure, but then again MySpace may iswell be a place for child hungry paedophiles if you do want to look at it from such a cynical point of view. And what's more annoying is that "whoring" completely voids the idea of using a bulletin board in the first place. I thought the idea of a bulletin board was to send a message to all your friends without having to go through the tedious process of posting a comment on all of their pofiles? No sir, it's just another bloody ploy for spam bots to take over the universe
Have you ever... Posted by Luc on 2008-05-23 04:09:48 BST
Become so tired, that you sort of lose the idea of reality and the reason for your existence? It's like the stage before you pass out from complete exhaustion.
I'm most probably there, and i'm feeling it. Crap. Love/Hate Coffee.
Oh, just fuck yourself Overclockers Posted by Luc on 2008-05-03 18:44:50 BST
The bluntest way I can possibly round up this post is "angry teenage fapping over keyboard due to arrogant, incompetant computer retail store". So if you honestly are fed up with long eye-aching rants I sincerely suggest you save yourself the hassle. Unless of course your just some mindless drone who's became completely bored of the work set infront of his desk.
Overclockers - I've mentioned these pillocks before in a post, and I don't think it's the last time I do either. I'll make a point and then back that point by a long and tedious argument.
They're retards - Example: After a previous RMA, they refunded me £160 for a CPU that I never returned (I originally purchased a bundle), so after I got the RAM and Motherboard replaced, they still thought it was correct to refund me £160... I'm not complaining but if they want it back... TOUGH SHIT
Courier service only for personal purchases - I can see why and how they would only provide this service for personal reasons, but when it's a company purchase and the product is no longer under the posession of a company then surely it should be treated differently? I recently tried getting a graphics card returned to them because I was getting numerous amount of VPU errors with it... It just so happens that they are willing to pay £20 returns charge for Royal Mail post and packaging rather than the cheaper alterantive of just sending out a courier to me. The only reason however; as to why they're rejecting me a courier is because it was originally a company purchase. Idiots.
Choice of products - I'll give them some credit, they have a fantastic line of products, which is the only reason why I go to them. However, they sure as hell support the shittest ones.
For example, the majority of their barebone bundles and motherboard bundles consist of the same fucking motherboard. The Abit IP35... great, the P35 chip really was a success as a desktop chipset but for the love of god, overclocking? Kinda ironic that you sell high performance hardware and your company being named "Overclockers UK" when yet the shit that you promote and support is renown for being crappy. P35 chipset? Nice, Abit motherboard? Fucking jog on, sunshine.
Thats only the start, some of you may know that a while back, I blew £416 on a motherboard bundle from them. It took them half a year for them to give me a stable kit.. and that eventually consisted of refunding the original motherboard. Dickheads.
And the only reason I still go to them is once again.. their selection of hardware, but whats the fucking point if you're really just buying from a bunch of malfunctioning apes with a strangely good taste for hardware.
Birthday cake anyone? Posted by Luc on 2008-04-25 19:35:31 BST
Shit, college is purely epic. If you haven't guessed (which mind you, alot of people haven't; and that's cool!) it's my glorious birthday today and fuck me has it been good so far!
Take lunch time for example, it was the 4 of us and we decided to grab some cake, y'know, as a little bit of celebratory thing and funnily enough we ended up getting a bunch of other things, just to ruin it. Epic?
Check out the picture later, trust me.. it was funny.
Google Ads Posted by Luc on 2008-04-20 07:15:23 BST
Finally, Google accepted my application for Google Adsense, and over the next week you should see ads on this website Hopefully I can make a little bit of money out of what I love doing best... web designing!
Don't get better than this... Posted by Luc on 2008-04-13 11:05:29 BST
Another weekend done in Birmingham and I can't hesitate to say that it was kick-ass. This is mainly for a couple of reasons... A: I found out that Demonoid.com came back online after it being shut down by law firms... B: I went to Birmingham with the college crew and shit, suprisingly I didn't end up with a keyboard imprint on my face... I guess i'm learning to stay up more.
spafe? Gash Bash Ep 2 is gonna come out soon, I just need to round up some more ideas.
Gash Bash Episode 1 Posted by Luc on 2008-04-02 09:15:02 BST
Normally, when times get boring.. I just make animations. Even if they are the most exquisitely shittest piece of animation or media content on the internet.
I infact, once upon a time I made an animation about my Religious Studies teacher which was amusing. Unfortunately I still don't have that :(
Anyway, my latest animation is in the "Animations" page, funnily enough (har har har). Go and enjoy, and then leave me hate mail as to how shit it is
Pointless domain names Posted by Luc on 2008-03-31 11:27:39 BST
I guess this was mostly just the result of another boring lesson on our IT course, but its actually quite amazing what we end up doing.
Take today for example, the four of us were checking out funny domain names that we would buy on the internet. Then ironically enough, we decided to buy some!
Some photos are online Posted by Luc on 2008-03-30 12:53:13 BST
You might notice already that some photos are online under the "Photos" section, almost coincedently. Ermm... probably not going to release my holiday photos so publically this time, so i'll password those ones up.
Updates over the next week Posted by Luc on 2008-03-28 02:21:32 GMT
It's utterly suckage that I have to return my motherboard to OcUGAY for the fourth time but it's no biggy I guess, it just means I got more content to whack on this website of mine.
Expect old videos and new photos, I may even start animating again. EDIT: The About, Videos, Photos pages are online but are still being worked on.
Chris Crocker, what are you doing? Posted by Luc on 2008-03-25 23:30:52 GMT
Before people make a bad judgement over this blog post, I want to stress immediately that I really am not homophobic. But Chris Crocker, as an individual; has pissed me off. I have a few gay friends myself, and although psychologically I don't understand why they like men, I don't necessarily dislike them. Hell, they probably don't understand why I like girls, I guess it's just natural.
When I first saw this guys hysterical crying Britney vid, I thought it was great laughing material.. y'know, just another one of those internet phenomenons (like Badger x3 & All your base, etc) and didn't really take much notice of it. But when I really did check out his YouTube channel, some of the shit he posts on his account is really... really annoying. And I don't think it's just pure annoyance, this guy has actually made a few incorrect and offensive video posts, so much that I honestly want to ram my fist in his face.
For example, in one of his videos he rants on about how gay men have it harder than mothers. I find it amusing, because in the video description, he writes "this is a joke", which makes me wonder; seeing as there was no sign or notification of sarcasm within the entire clip, did he really post the video with that description? or edit it after it got flamed to absolute shit (the comments are actually quite amusing)?
And some of the points he makes are ridiculous, like he has to shave. It's generally preference tbh, but if you feel it's necessary to shave due to your sexual preference then fire away but it's not ESSENTIAL.
The guys a fucking joke, no honestly; there's infact another video where he basically tells the YouTube community to "eat his cornhole" if they dislike him, well hell, how many more people do you want to hate you?
From what I can interpret of the guy, he seems to love this attention on the internet. He really must do, and you know what.. if headtrash.net gained this many hits.. i'd be shitting out content out of my ass everyday, even if it's a little whiney video, but when it's shit like "Gay men have it harder than women" then it's utter bullshit.
Granted, I can't certify how he became gay because well.. it's generally a mixture of things and i'm not going to bother getting seriously personal in terms of Chris, but moaning about shit like that pisses me off. I don't find him manipulative, I don't find him a problem. I just find him severely annoying (for the reasons stated above).
I did like that weekend, sir. Posted by Luc on 2008-03-23 18:29:37 GMT
It'd be entirely wrong to let a 6 day easter weekend go to waste, so I guess the best solution to this was to play the car version of hide & seek. Yeah, that's fucking right. 6 cars, 1 village and a whole planet to pointlessly polute with exhaust fumes.
Okay, maybe we can't score points for complete originality because well... didn't anyone remember that car advert where they did this in the city? I forget which manufacturer it was but oh well...
Anyway, another reason for it being a fun weekend was because of i33 & gaming at Pauls. Heavy weekend, and I fecking loved it.
Now if you don't mind, i'm going to get fat... which supposedly is meant to be in memory of jesus. Jeez, commercialisation these days...
Old rivalry Posted by Luc on 2008-03-21 01:18:42 GMT
This sort of thing never gets old, by this I simply mean rivalry. You just gotta love it, especially when you know you're going to win.
It's just fantastic. Shit, it really is. So here's the lowdown, some old jackoffs from school decided it would be ideal to pick on me in counter-strike: source and about life in general. ... Here's the result: Michael&Jamie owned screenshot Interesting conversation
Towards the end of that conversation, you notice that he begins to get a bit weak. That was when I done him over 60-23 on aim_ag_texture2..
GG Noobs 5v5 us whenever you want. We're waiting.
On a more positive note, I've only just got round to completing a layout for my friends MySpace. It's kinda cool, she seems to like it so here it is.
Welcome to the family Posted by Luc on 2008-03-18 19:56:08 GMT
Recently, one of my friends asked me for hosting and so I guess out of generosity I gave him it.
Consequently, he made a website and can now be found here > Kris' Website
So, basically what i'm trying to say is - If you want good quality UK based hosting then give me a shout. I'm more than happy to offer my services to amatuer webmasters around the world hosting that will be used as much as possible.
Early days Posted by Luc on 2008-03-17 00:15:12 GMT
So yeah, most understandably... the website has just gone through another revamp. Good news though, it should be feature rich soon once I get hold of some new pictures, and seeing as it's a new layout I don't think it's worth putting up old pictures of people i'm not really... friends with.
And don't forget my second blog post for the Harlequin Project should be up tomorrow, just check back as much as you can... refresh it.. and stuff... bump up the counter.. yeahh that works... 
