Journals

I recently asked you guys for some advice about 1440p displays. After much deliberation, I went for the AOC Q2770PQU sitting at a glorious 27" which takes up my entire desk width - an impressive feat on a desk this big.I've now been living and working with these panels for about six months and I've got to say I haven't had a single problem. The colour reproduction - which is easily my most important priority - is staggeringly good. I had them calibrated to broadcast standards in mere minutes and the faithful, bright and vibrant colours are simply beautiful. I'm also running them on the absolute lowest power settings and they're still totally bright and rich. On the full power setting it's like looking out of a real window.

For work, the extra screen real estate of 1440p is phenomenal. I have almost all the tools I ever need on screen at once in After Effects and it creates a painless and efficient workflow that makes work so much less tiring.For games, I was worried that I would notice the slightly lower-end refresh rate. I don't, at all. Maybe if I was playing a twitch-fps like Counter-strike at an e-sports level I might see a difference, but for gaming for enjoyment, the beautiful picture, immersive screen size and ridiculously crisp resolution more than makes up for anything lost in the refresh rate. I was using a 144Hhz monitor for years and I don't feel any worse off at 60.

There are some nice bonuses like USB3 ports in the sides and I personally quite like the design of the bevel, though it's nothing mind-blowing. The stands are sturdy and easily adjustable and sit on lazy-susans so that rotating your displays won't scratch your desk. Nice touch.

Overall, I couldn't be happier. Would heartily recommend to anyone on here, but especially to those with jobs in design or video - I can't stress enough how stunning the colour is, even at basically a 180 degree viewing angle. What a display.

3000 days.

TL;DR: been here for 8 years. My deep thanks to the community. Youtube link to an unfinished project at the bottom of the journal

Three thousand. This is an interesting, if not cool number that probably make most of the geeks think of the future. How will life be in the year 3000? It's difficult to imagine, but it's fun to speculate. Flying cars, teleportation? Outdated concepts by that time. Are we going to be merely some spheres of energy having fun by shaping matter, that move through the universe in the ultimate quest of solving the last philosophical questions? Are we going to meet with other intelligent beings by that time, or, why not, ascend on a higher spiritual path and maybe discover new realms?

I don't know. But it's not about 3000 years, it's about 3000 days. I've been here for that amount of time and I thought it would be nice to present my respects to the community. It's a community that tolerated me in my internet youth and I'm grateful for that. People have very little patience in real life these days, much less in a virtual space. Although maybe it's not fair to suppose that it's virtual, because electronic communication is one of the greatest inventions: expanding our electrical impulses from the brain, through an interface, to thousands of miles away. It's... mind blowing, if you think of it.

I'm ashamed that, because of my very busy schedule, I couldn't work at a mapping project I had, and neither I could make a "gift" to the community, to say so. I can only present my thanks to you, the regulars, who give this community its unique appeal that had me stay for so long. It is still the first tab in my tens of tabs opened each day, because I'm quite honestly interested of the evolution of some members around here. It's heart warming to know the origins of some members and see them where they've arrived.

It's not fair to present thanks to only the regulars I know from the top of my head, I'd surely leave some out and that wouldn't be nice. But to you, the regulars: I tip my hat to you! Please continue to come to this site and share your stories :).

The project I was talking about was started quite some months ago, in preparation for this event. But college started and... well, those of you who went to college know what this means. I also work now as a programmer, so I have only about 2-3 hours of free time per day.
It was supposed to be an amalgamation of very intense and dynamic moments, as some of you know I hate "static" maps. It was supposed to be... a culmination of my restless mind in summer nights. Yeah this sounds weird :)).
Anyway, enough with the talk, this was the starting area:
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HL2 mapping project
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This can become a long term project where I could co-opt some members and expand it into a short mod. But I don't know for now. Most of my projects start by having an idea pop in my mind when having a shower, and idea that grows and expands into a couple of scenes that I rehearse repeatedly in my mind until I can't stand if I don't start implementing it. So, in conclusion, I don't have a real story. Do not consider this post a team project announcement, I'd be very clear if it was so.

Sorry for the long post ^^.

I find it kind of weird how in video games, sometimes the reload animation let the used ammo clip stay on screen, obviously showing you weren't switching it out.

Here's a gif I made to show what I mean:

Something something something roman numerals.
Something something something clever way of saying it's my birthday.
Something something something I'm 19 now.

Goddamn I'm bad at this. `-`
I'm getting some tea.

Will be test playing my ScoutzKnivez remake later today prolly around 5-6 pm central time.

Come join and check it out, cs 1.6 server.

Ip: 68.232.164.122

I find myself in need of a new graphics card, as it would seem that the one I have is likely the source of my recent computer woes.

Unfortunately, I know absolutely nothing about graphics cards or where to find info on them. Thus, I turn to you fellows.

I'm looking for something at least comparable in power (or better) to what I am replacing, which is an AMD Radeon HD 6800 (or something like that, anyway). Moreover, I'd like it to be relatively affordable, around the $200-$250 mark.

Can thou help me?

We're gonna be recording season 2 of Formula SnC soon. Just wondering if any TWHLers would like to join the roster?

At the moment it's still just Ant, Urby, Scoots and myself. I'd like to get one or two others for some more excitement and variety. Only requirement is that you can be available for a couple of nights (probably friday or saturday), can speak English conversationally on Teamspeak and don't mind putting up with Ant.

Any takers?

It begins.

After tackling with the installation of Arch linux for about 3 hours, I can finally browse TWHL in a retro-as-heck way:Although this stuff is not practical, I have to emphasize that it is lightweight as fuck:Unfortunately 3 more hours later since opening this journal I still haven't succeeded in installing a window manager. I'll probably report tomorrow or another day on this.

[EDIT]

Managed to install the X.org window system. This is very barebones and it's actually a basis for other window managers. Slapped there the lightweight "Netsurf" browser, and voila:About ~70Mb. Keep in mind that Arch linux, afaik, is not developed to be as lightweight as possible. That is a concept followed by other distros, like DSL or Puppy Linux. It's... impressive.
What's even more impressive is that these are programs that are actively developed.
Underground tech is a wonder.

Ant, Urby, Scoots and myself have created a new series on the old intertubes. This first run will be bi-weekly and will have ten episodes. Whatcha think?

Clickityboo!

Ep2!

Welp... It's my birthday. :3

I'm 25 years old now. And since this is a special day for me, I would like to show you some cool things I've done this year with the good ol' Goldsrc:And, lol (not related):

I visited a friend who has a 3D printer. He offered to demonstrate me how it works, and told me to think of something to print.
As 3D printing takes a lot of time(sometimes hours) when you have complex shapes, I figured out fast what to print:It's 4cm in diamater and took 20 minutes.

I've been playing the first Half-Life for about 8 years now, and a large majority of that time was spent fragging friends on various deathmatch servers. Over time, my valve folder was slowing building up an arsenal of downloaded maps.

Recently I did a very long Twitch stream with my friend, and out challenge was to sit down and play a selection of maps that we’d remember from long ago and see if they still held up in any way. Our lot was 55 maps in total and we dedicated at least 5 minutes to each map, increasing it to 10 if we still wanted to check things out.

To our surprise, the maps that held up the most in our eyes were A) really shitty looking, and B) Had something hilariously fun about them that neither of us could describe. I mean, hell, our favourite map from the lot that night turned out to be a map by the name of 1337_Street, and it’s just a street with blocky as sin cars and buildings with rooms you could teleport into. And yet my friend and I had so much fun on this map during out session that it practically stole the night.Another example of a shitty map being a hell of a fun time to play is just a map that was simply called “small.bsp”: a house that’s as badly brushed at it was textured, and yet I had a hell of a time playing it.Now, contrast that with some of the other maps we played that night. Our folder wasn’t just filled with people’s apparent first map creations; we also had some other really nice looking, thought out maps with excellent design choices when it came to making the map look nice, but the odd thing was that a large majority of them (besides the Karnak, pictured below, which is a BEAUTIFUL map that we had to skip because it was just too big for it to be fun for two people) were surprisingly boring, and we ended it just thinking about how much fun it was to tripmine the fuck out of the kitchen in Small.So what’s the point I’m getting to here? That shitty maps are better than well textured and well thought out maps? That sinfully blocky brushwork is far more entertaining than maps with excellent use of brushes? No, not in the slightest. However, our best moments from the session happen on those really shitty maps.

This just reinforces my, perhaps spotty, ideology when it comes to making HLDM maps. I usually don’t really use custom texture wads outside out of the ones that come with half-life, nor do I really try super hard to make my maps look good. If I complete a map and playtest it and my friends and I never want to stop playing it, that is WAY better (in my mind at least) to map that looks exceptional, but does not really get to the top of the list of map suggestions before we start playing. I mean, we still play 2Partment as our first map in our sessions, and that just uses textures that everyone has seen 18 billion times by now.

Maybe I’m just a naïve mapper that needs to grow up from bad practices, but that’s just how I feel.
\_(`-` )_/