smikwily.com

Well, as you can tell, I’ve made the jump from b2Evo to WordPress. I had been wanting to make the jump for a little while, but didn’t have any way to get my posts across from one to the other. Thanks to some help from the great Fahim, who was kind enough to make a converter, here I am

I have some cleaning up to do, but hopefully now that I’m where I want to be with blogging software, I’ll hopefully be a little more apt to post. Guess only time will tell…

The typical Internet user ? far from being a geek ? shuns television and actively socialises with friends, a study on surfing habits says.

I wouldn’t say that I shun TV, but I like the fact that someone has figured out that internet users socialize with friends. I think I have more “current” friends that are only then I do in real life. I haven’t met my neighbors in the house we’ve been in for close to 2 years, but I have friends in the UK, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, and all over the US.

Interesting little page over at the LMDC, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Apparently they have 6 concepts of what the WTC area is going to look like once it’s rebuilt. Combining a memorial with actual ‘work’ environments wouldn’t be an easy task, but some of the plans seem to do it rather well.

Yes. The kids have won once again. ABCNEWS.com is reporting that Sara Lee is making a crustless bread, to appeal to kids and adults that usually work around the ‘crusty’ stuff when they eat their sandwiches.

“Kids not wanting crust is nothing new,” said Sara Lee spokesman Steve Mura. But he said the company saw increased demand for time-saving, nutritious products.

“We wanted to offer consumers the same slice size as they’re getting with a bread with crust on it,” Mura said, so the bread starts out slightly larger than normal.

The leftover crusts will be recycled into bread crumbs and animal feed, he said.

Consumers may find the crustless bread convenient, but they’ll have to pay for it. The company plans to sell the new bread for $2.59 to $3.39 a loaf, a premium of about 75 cents a loaf to regular old-fashioned IronKids bread, Mura said.

First pulpless orange juice, now this. Once we figure out how to make animals without no bones, we’ll be set. And the meat should be cheaper since they are easier to catch.

Well, its official. The little guy just became a big guy now that Tactical Ops has hit the shelves across North America. For those of you who don’t know, Tactical Ops is a modification for Unreal Tournament that started sometime in 2000. Gameplay is akin to Counter Strike, but the focus is more on the Hollywood style run & gun firefights than hiding behind boxes and waiting for your enemy. Earlier this year it was announced that Infogrames would be picking up the mod and publishing it as a full blown game. The Tactical Ops team formed Kamehan Studios and proceeded to revamp every single aspect of the mod. Personally, i’m a hardcore fan of the game, but I don’t think im too far off when I say this game ROCKS.
Anyways, the game should be available in most major electronic stores by the end of the week, retailing for around $29.99 US. If you live overseas, or just want to try the game first, and own a copy of Unreal Tournament, you can head over to the Official Site and download the free mod for Unreal Tournament. Its basically the same as the retail, although you miss out on a few things like some new maps. Be warned though, the download is a whopping 200mb, so you’ll want to have a speedy connection, or leave it on overnight.

Either way, I highly reccomend the game for anyone who likes realism based first person shooters.

Good news fellow Indy fans. According to a post on Dark Horizons, Indy 4 is coming, possibly before SW:Ep3!!!

Harrison Ford and George Lucas talked with Leonard Maltin and Entertainment Tonight at the BAFTA/LA ceremony about the current status of the Indy sequel. Ford: “It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. We have what we all believe to be a good idea. There’s a lot of work ahead of us, but we are all looking foward to it”. Lucas: “If I finish up with Episode 2 this week I have to begin work in INDY 4 next week”.

WHOOHOO!

Interesting underground find up on MSNBC.

Apparently a group of scientists have found a supercolony of ants that stretch from Italy to Spain. They theorize that the ants may be genetically close enough to “smell” each other as friendlies, as opposed to enemies.

3,600 miles of ants that are 2 millimeters long.

I don’t know about you, but my skin just started itching…

CountingDown.com has just posted the trailer for the upcoming Jackie Chan/Jennifer Love Hewitt moving coming out this June. Can you make a better movie? I mean, Jackie’s got the moves and Jennifers got the … well… she’s Jennifer!

This one is kinda pathetic. JS Online: Death of a game addict is about a 21 year old guy who ended up shooting himself. The mother blames his death on EverQuest. Pretty sad…

The guy even experienced seizures, but kepy on playing…

Cool. Nothing like a little credit on an email.

JCal over at HomeLan Fed how cool it would be to have an A-Team movie yesterday, so I clued him in that there was one in the works already. I had found out and posted about it not too long ago, so I thought he’d like to know about it.

According to a recent chat with New Line cochairman Bob Shaye over at About.com, it seems that work could possibly begin on the next 2 sequels to the movie, as opposed to just part 3.

“What we would like to do if we could and if we could get economies of scale involved is to actually do a Rush Hour 3 and 4 together and have the third one be a cliffhanger,” Shaye said.

The economies of scale to which Shaye refers is that “there are three important but ambitious talent participants who want a lot of money and it undermines the process of making a really good funny movie and a good action movie at a price that we think we can recoup.”

Chris Tucker has mentioned before that he would like to have part 3 set in New York (as hinted at in RH2), but a large budget might cause interiors to be shot elsewhere, even if the movie is set in NYC.

“Chris is obviously an incredibly important part of the production. Even if you set it in New York, it wouldn’t all be set in New York. The interiors are going to be elsewhere. There is a budget number that we will do it for and there’s a budget number that we won’t, because it is a business after all.”

Looks like MJ might be hanging up the ol’ Nikes at the end of the season. His right knee has been bothering him for most of the season and surgery may down him for all of next season.

The article doesn’t mention if Jordan will return the following season, but the title of it does lean in that direction (MJ: This season likely is my last).

I wish that he would have stayed retired the last time around, but it was good to see him on the court again. He proved he was still MJ, but a different kind of MJ. Some people were expectin the MJ of old, flying through the air like he did back in the day, but instead they were met with a more mental, less physical Jordan.

Thanks for the ride MJ.

Things have kinda settled down on the AYB front, but Gamitopia has posted an interesting interview with Carl-Henrik Sk?rstedt, creator of Toaplan, an homage site of sorts for the company of the same name that created Zero Wing, the game in which the legendary line originates.

An interesting read, even if you are fed up with all the AYB stuff. It’s interesting to see how something from relative obscurity can become a nationwide thing.

Well! As some of you may know, the phase 6 stress test for E&B just started today. They wanted to see how the servers would handle an extra 3500 people…
They didn’t. We succeded in trashing the official forums, as well as lagging the game so bad, most people couldn’t even tell where they were. It was kinda funny actually For the first hour, my ping wasnt too bad.. I actually completed the training mission, as well as taking out two drones. But by the time I got around to hunting some baby larva thingies, my ping had shot up to about 1000ms+ in space (when your docked its a LOT better). But overall the servers have handled the load like a drunken, one-eye’d clown trying to juggle flaming sticks on a unicycle ## amusing for a while, but it definitly needs some work.

In the meantime though, I got a good first look at the game; and I must say im very impressed. It was fun just figuring out how to fly around… and the cool sound you make when you went to warp for the first time… it was great! “VVVVVVVVVWWWOOOSHHHHHH!!” Hehehe.
Oh, and the game looks REALLY GOOD too. Even on my low end P3 500 system (it just scrapes by the minimums for the beta ) the system lag never got really bad unless I started looking at 30 people all flying through an asteriod field or something. Its a lot of fun starting out too. The controls are a bit awkward at first… flying around really could be more intuitive, but once you get the hang of it, its pretty easy. Unless of course your lagging really badly and bouncing all over the place… then it feels like your trying to drive in an invisible pinball machine But the interface is fun and clean. Lots of data at your fingertips, and its pretty easy to figure out what buttons to push after you learn what all the little symbols mean.

Oh, and for those of you wondering, the game is NOT a flight sim. Its actually a slick MMORPG, except you fly around and shoot stuff instead of walking around bashing stuff. Combat isn’t really based on twitch skills, its more of a character level + brainpower thing, and its actually very fun. I spent a good hour running around a training zone with other n00bies. Alone, the drones would stomp your ass down, so pretty much everyone figured out that you need to gang up on them. Then we went on mini-crusades, three or four of us at a time, jumping drones and smashing them to bits. It was great!

Anyways, this post is long enough already (!) so ill just end by saying Earth and Beyond looks fantastic. If your a MMORPG fan – hell, even if your NOT – you will want to check this game out. Barring any major screw-ups from Westwood (which I doubt), E&B could very likely be “the next big thing” in the Massively Multiplayer Online arena.

Stay tuned – ill probably have more to say after Westwood clears up this little ‘excessive lag’ problem. But in the meantime, I think all go polish my ship, calibrate my lasers, and maybe try picking up a cute terran chick in the lounge . See ya round!

Went and saw this blood sucking sequel tonite and was blown out of my chair. If you even remotely liked the first one, go watch this one. If you haven’t seen the first one, this one kinda brings you up to speed. Great special effects and more hand-to-hand action. Very, very cool.

Even more wacky moving new over at Dark Horizons:

Knight Rider: The Movie: Variety reports that Revolution Studios is planning to revive the 80′s NBC series “Knight Rider” into a new feature film. Original series star David Hasselhoff and creator Glen Larson will both executive produce, though whether Hasselhoff will appear onscreen is unsure. Larson is currently working on the script, and the KITT car will be heavily revamped (with gadgets galore) as the producers want to create a “big action” film in “Fast & Furious” vein.

This one has some potential, but then again, they are going to have to avoid the ‘cheesiness’ factor that goes along with Hasselhoff. Not early Hasselhoff, but ‘post-Baywatch, European singer’ Hasselhoff. I’ll prolly be in line for this one as well, for old times sake more than anything.

Well, I was a little worried when I heard Scooby was coming to the big screen. This has me a little anxious now.

The new trailer opens up a bit more of the other characters, even pointing out that Shaggy may not suck as much as I was expecting earlier. If he can pull that voice off for the whole movie, then he could make a good replacement for Mr. Kasem.

The movie is supposed to poke a little fun at the original series, much like the Brady Movie did a few years ago. If they hit on some of the series rumors, as well as touch on the overall “cheesy” factor that comes with it, then it should be entertaining. Hopefully it won’t be another Bullwinkle…

Well, I haven’t been by in a while, but it seems like things are coming to life over at Wolf Tactics.

WT is a class based mod for Castle Wolfenstein. Think Team Fortress for Wolfey. Now, before you groan, the cool thing about WT is the fact that they are keeping it in the Wolfenstein universe. Nothing too sci-fi here. Everything is going to fit into the look and feel of Wolfenstein. No lasers, (maybe a tesla or two), but plenty of action. If you are looking for something interesting to watch for, this could be it.

Looking to burn some time in a painfull looking fashion? Then check out the Ski Stunt Simulator. Available in a Java applet or in a downloadable Windows version.

Found this while over at Voodoo Extreme:

“Rockstar quietly let the world slip a few weeks ago that GTA III was coming to the PC. A key feature will be support for 16-person multiplay, and the PC version will also sport better textures at a much nicer resolution. The mouse/keyboard setup will be instantly familiar to third-person-action fans, too. We’re definitely looking forward to this one.”

16 player multiplayer? GTA3 with 15 buddies? Talk about deathmatch…