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February 28, 2005

Relaxing Comments

I've decided to loosen the commenting restriction on this site. Now, unregistered commenters will get their comments listed immediately, they will no longer be moderated until I approve them. I want to make it easier for people to comment here, mainly because no-one is :'(

I have set up some anti-spam scripts so if any of those nasty spammers get hold of the site I can deal with most of it automatically.

Ideally you should probably get a free Typekey account but if you don't fancy that then you can now comment without restriction. You will still need to enter an email address, but it will not be displayed on the site.

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Posted to General

February 27, 2005

Going well so far....

So far so good. I've got his forces in a crossfire, from 3 sides. My worry at the moment is that my XT's will run out of ammo and will not be able to get back to the HQ.

I'm getting my AI to repair the wounded XT's, and am trying to surround his troops. I dont want to spread too thinly though as spawn can easily overrun me. I'm hoping to use the narrow corridors to my advantage as that will stop me being attacked by too many beasties at a time.

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Posted to 168764 Vs Brokk

February 25, 2005

Turn 6

At the start of turn 6 its 6-2 to me.

Brokk has moved his queen into attack and I've taken about 2/5s of its health so far. I'm more worried about the other troops atr the moment as this map gives me planty of opportunity to hide form the queen.

I've taken out the other platter, but it damaged quite a few of my hunters.

I'm going to leave them in location at the moment as I think Brokk is going to try to bring out the troops I can see hidden in the back room.

I need to heal up the damage done to my hunters really as they are pretty fragile, but i think thats all of his explosive troops out the way. The trouble is, healing them will take up a lof of the AI's time, and it loks like its about to get involved in the attack.

I hope he doesnt get to any corspes for eggs, but hopefully my remaining hunters can help take the eggs out.

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Posted to 168764 Vs Brokk

1 Queen down

Things are looking pretty good.

I managed to draw his queen into the firing line of my AI1 by moving the two XT's back into a sideroom, forcing Brokk to advance to bite them.

I am now 13-6 up, and the remainder of his forces consist of:-

I've set a hunter onto the goo spitter as I think thats my main worry, followed by the spiker. After that he has to get up close and personal to finish me off, and I dont see that happening with my full health AI.

1 I dont think any of his units had got far enough into the complex to see that my AI was there, so I was able to zap him from two sides.

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Posted to 168764 Vs Brokk

February 24, 2005

Damn you Deestan!!

Just finished a most amusing game against Deestan.

It was on the new map Pacman and was a HQ game. I set up one HQ right in the middle with a few grenaders and was pleasantly surprised to see all of his troops just the other side.

I was also pleasantly surprised to realise that I can bounce grenades round the edge of the forcefield generators.

Test results from that first turn had me totalling all of his XT's and maiming the MT. Actual results were not qwuite that good, but I still dealt a healthy dose of damage. Following that it was a race to the forcefield controls to try to stop him lowering them.

After some amusing self grenading (note to self, watch out for those exploding 'pills' in future games) the scores were tied and I had his only remaining AI pinned down.

The game was mine!!! Wasn't it?

You can get Deestans fullgame from here

I'll upload mine a bit later.....

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Posted to General | LSN

An unpleasant Job....

Urgh.....

I've just been asked to disable the email access for a member of staff here as they are going to be let go. Its not been made official yet, so I have advance knowledge of it. This is most unpleasant as I really like the person.

I've got to deal with them as if I dont know anything, and then act all surprised when the announcement is made.

I hope they dont ask why they cannot get into their email.....

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Posted to General

February 22, 2005

Chavminton

Played squash last night. I won the first game rather convincingly (9-3 if I remember) . Dan then said he had to leave the court to go get some tissues. However I think he snorted some performance enhancing drugs instead as he then took the next 3 games! Grrr! The last one was pretty close though, going 9-8 after about 5 minutes exchanging servers at 8-8. I think I'l try using these 'tissues' next week....

However, as we left the court we spotted a couple of proper Crawley chav kids out on the badminton court. Skinny little oiks, decked out in designer tracksuits (originals no doubt), jewelery and baseball caps.

Thus the sport of Chavminton was born.

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Posted to General

February 21, 2005

I've been slimed!

He managed to get a couple of goo shots off before I took out the spitter. My AI and 1 XT have been gooed in place. Its not too bad though as they are in a pretty central position so can help each other out if I get rushed by the remaining troops.

I need to get rid of the Spiker then I'll be happy that I can win.

It looks like he is trying to move all his remaining units round the outside of the base to attack me from the back. He probably doesnt realise that I can see most of the map due to my Scanner placement1.

I'm bringing the hunters in to mop up a few of the more badly wounded enemies, and then it'll probably be a case of wait for the rush.

1 I dont think any of his units have seen my Scanner either

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Posted to 168764 Vs Brokk

February 20, 2005

Where did he go...?

I saw all his troops run out the righthand exit, expecting him to come round the bottom. However, he's not there. I've moved my scanner about to try to see where he is......

I've modified my plan to try to activate all the Forcefields and lock him out :)

Anything goes in a League game:)

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Posted to 168764 Vs Brokk

February 19, 2005

Field Instructor Roster

I've been busy adapting another blog to use as a list of Field Instructors for Laser Squad Nemesis

Its starting slowly but more and more people are getting involved now.

You can check it out here

I still need to change the layout so that it looks different to this page, and also make it look more like its actually involved with the game. Unit pics, groovy background, that kind of thing.

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Posted to General | LSN

February 17, 2005

CS + Teamspeak

I've just finished with a Counterstrike:Source session with a couple of online chums:- my old friend Ash, and new friend Seb.

They had a teamspeak server setup so you could chat to each other, scream abuse, taunt when beating them and whimper when being beaten.

It was good to put a voice to the picture I have seen of Seb on his MSN buddyicon.

Except that it was Pemby I was online with, not Seb. I realised towards then end when I asked him why he had that MSN pciture with the funny beard and he said "I dont have you on MSN.... and Seb has the beard"

Whoops.

End result is I still have no idea what this wierdo sounds like:-


seb.jpg

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Posted to General

Comment Settings

I've decided to change the comment settings so that people not using TypeKey can still post, but will be moderated. I've also required that commenters leave an email address. Dont worry though, the email address is not visible on the site, its only available to me.

I've done this to hopefully keep any comment spam to a minimum. The people who make Movable Type list this in their Best Practices. I've also got a couple of plugins to install that help with automatically rejecting spammy comments and Trackback pings.

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Posted to General

February 16, 2005

PostSecret

I'm not sure where I came across this link to this site now, but I find it amazing.

At an Arts festial in Washington DC someone handed out these cards. They invite you to write a secret on it and then post it off to a set address. It has to be true, and it has to be something that you have never told anyone else before. Other than that, there are no rules.

PostSecret has now archived them all anonymously. Some are amusing, some fascinating and others moving.

Take a browse around the site.

If you have secret you want to share, then the address is at the bottom of the site.

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Posted to General

Surprise!!

Well, he didnt run them round the bottom, he ran them round the top, and is now moving them down the left hand side. I had to sacrifice a hunter to find this out though. I had set the hunter to try to lock the lefthand forcefield, but it got eaten instead.

So, I think I still need to fortify the middle, and try to position my troops so that they are not blocking each others line of fire.

I've moved one into the little room off the centre, so hopefully he wont be spotted, but can attack from the side once the spawn close in.

I'm moving the Scanner in so that I can try to Redline a few enemies next turn.

I think I just need to sit it out now.....

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Posted to 168764 Vs Brokk

It's all over

Despite a valiant last minute attack by Brokk its ended up in my favour. Buzzers and a drone rushed, badly wounding one XT but they were swatted away.

The Spiker tried to take a chunk out of me but the firepower of 3 units soon swamped it, which left only the final drone which could do little else than charge straight at me.

I think it was all over bar the shouting once the Queen was taken out. It left me with a nice lead, I knew he couldnt have another Queen due to the units I had spotted, I was in a nice central position and my scanner could see a fair way around me. Perhaps a few more Goo Spitters on the other side would have caused me a few problems, but even if my units had been gooed into position the close walls of the corridors wqould have prevented being overrun by too many spawn at one time.

I ended up gaining 12 league points, taking me closer to the top of the Vets than I have been for a long time.

You can get the wholegame file here

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Posted to 168764 Vs Brokk

Breakfast Club

I stayed up far too late to watch The Breakfast Club last night. I knew it was a mistake turning the telly on whilst getting into bed.

Its a great film , although some of the language is cringworthingly eighties, ie lots of words ending with '-zoid'

Whatever happened to the actor who played the toughguy character?

I then made another mistake when the film had finished which was flicking around the other channels instead of turning it off.

3 frames of snooker later I decided to call it a night. Bloody knackered.

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Posted to General

February 15, 2005

Laser Squad Nemesis

Just a quick note about the purpose of the LSN category.

I hope to post a few noted about the state of LSN at the moment, and any interesting developments. Maybe I'll be able to persuade some other peeps to challenge me to a game.....

I'm also going to be posting a few turn-by-turn match reports. I've porbably got as few in progress right now, but you wont be able to see them until I've finished the game and made the entries live.

Sneaky, eh? (Just like those pesky Greys....)

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Posted to LSN

Comment Posting

A couple of things to say about posting comments here.

At the moment absolutely anyone can post a comment on absolutely any entry. You dont have to leave your name, address, phone number, vital statistics, bank balance or inside leg measurement.

I've set the comment system up so that if you leave an email address it will not be displayed on the site. I'll have access to it, but no nasty spammer robots will be able to grab it so you wont get any more offers to buy drugs from 'Reeleey grate 0nloin pharaciis' because you posted here.

I also support TypeKey logins which seem pretty dandy. If you register with them (for nowt) you can click a Sign In button on the comment posting page and it will realise who you are. That way you can keep a common name, and also prove it was you that posted a particular comment. Personally I would still avoid putting your main email address in your TypeKey profile since some TypeKey enabled blogs will display your email address. This one is set up not to, but others might and once a spammer gets your email address they never let go...

So, I'd suggest using this service to generate a disposable emial address for use at such site. Its another great free service. Ive been using them for around 6 months to create disposable emails addresses that only let a set number of mails through before becoming inactive. They are great for putting into sites that require an address but dont tell you exactly what they are going to do with it. So far they have blocked 785 unwanted emails for me!

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Posted to General

Movable Type

Lo there!

Welcome to my blog. I''ve been looking at a few different blogging sites of late as I've decided that I'd like to start one up. god knows why anyone would want to read it, but hey, it passes the time if nothing else.

I had a brief flirtation with LiveJournal but decided that I'd like to be able to customise the interface a little more than seemed possible (at least with a free account) . One thing that LJ had going for it was some of the tools people had created for it, particularly Semagic. It seemed a great tool for remotely publishing blog entries, although I could never get the font preferences to 'stick' properly.

Then I took a look at Movable Type style blogs. MT and LJ are all run by the same company. I like the idea of having Trackback enabled so I can see just how many people are completely ignoring this page. I also like the myriad of plugins available and the fact hat if I can be bothered I can completely change my page layout.

It also seemed that my current webhost included everything I needed to run MT as part of my basic hosting package so I thought "Why not give it a try".

I uploaded all the files as described by the docs, edited a couple of files and knock-me-down-with-a-feather it blimming well worked! Get in there!

So, this is now my new home. I'll be posting odds-and-sods and I'm hoping to get a few run throughs of particularly interesting LSN games, cos that should get the readers in!

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Posted to General

Specialist League

Its just come round to the second month of The Specialist League

I managed to win my two month one games, the first against Kraklath 23-1 and the second agaisnt thegoblin scoring 22-7. It was a pretty good Greys Vs Mechs map though, so I got a little lucky there.....

This month I have to play Fatboys Marines and Dominatus' Spawn. I've not played either of these two before, and I cant say I've ever heard of them so I have no idea how well they play.

Heres hoping I can get another 2 wins!

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Posted to General | LSN | Specialist League