Category Archives: Games

Warhammered

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Black Industries, the makers of Warhammer, is to close.

Kevin Rountree General Manager of BL Publishing said ‘As a result of the continued and impressive success of our core novels business, which we have built around 40K and Warhammer, we have decided to focus all of our efforts on growing this part of our business. Black Industries has seen fantastic success, most recently with Talisman and Dark Heresy. This change does not take away from that achievement rather it allows BL Publishing to focus on producing the best novels we can. This is a purely commercial decision and will enable us to carry on the huge growth that we have recently been experiencing with our novels’.

Don’t get me wrong, novels based in such universes are excellent. It’s just sad when a pen and paper RPG falls by the wayside. Speaking of pen-and-paper-based adventure, does anybody else miss the Fighting Fantasy books?

Links of the day

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Online censorship hurts us all. “Protecting” artists makes things worse, argues Cory Doctrow. (Guardian/Boing Boing)

Monster steals email addresses and spams it@cork membership. (Tom Raftery)

Walking for a good cause without ever leaving home. Virtual walks allow raise money for charity. (Reuters)

Ebay admits overpaying for the internet phone company Skype. It paid $2.6bn in 2005 and is taking a $1.43bn charge relating to the deal. That’s gotta hurt! (International Herald Tribune)

Woman gives birth to her own grandchildren. Egads… (AP)

News on the al-Dura front: Israeli finding that it was staged. Mohammed al-Dura was reportedly shot by the Israeli army while his fathered tried to shield him. It seems this did not happen. (James Fallows)

Musharraf: Spy chief to lead army. Looks like Pervy might actually step down this time. (CNN)

And simply because I’m feeling nostalgic, here’s the theme to The Secret of Monkey Island played on electric guitar:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM8_uyvL4sk[/youtube]

I smell a look back at some classic games coming here soon. 🙂

Links and stuff

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Given the day that it is, I don’t really feel much like posting something proper. Just links. Nothing overly serious and, for once, no mention of the utter-fucked-upness that is the Middle East.

Study pits liberal brains against conservative brains… who’s more flexible? Liberals, of course. (USAToday)

The Spybot Search and Destroy game. One of my favourite anti-spyware programmes has a secret minesweeper game for you to play while scans are in progress. (How-to Geek blogs)

State of play: the game of love. Increasing numbers of people find MMORPGS a great way to size up a potential mate, the logic being their online behaviour reflects their real-life behaviour. (BBC)

Quench your thirst without selling your soul. Enjoy bottled water without the conscience bothering that comes with knowing how much oil is used to make the plastic bottles. (Earth2Tech)

Why our next prime minister got drunk in a strip club. If only the current crop of Irish politicians had tales like this, as opposed to answering awkward questions about their finances. (Mr Angry)

Links of the day

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Things that caught my eye when I should have been doing something more productive:

The mother of all battles: It’s a dance off! Princess Stomper produces this amazing video of characters from Morrowind, Oblivion and Guild Wars shaking their collective booties in a bid to resolve once and for all which is the greatest RPG of all time. Or at least have a lot of fun. (Bethblog.com)

Cool dude: A lone dreamer in the Aboriginal art boom. A lovely profile piece of Michael Nelson Tjakamarra, one of Australia’s best-known painters but a man who cares not for the trappings of fame and fortune. (International Herald Tribune)

Paranoid, much? Ethiopia accuses Norway of ‘destabilising’ region. That modern imperial power, Norway, is under fire for “repeated and widespread interference in destabilising the Horn of Africa”. All goofing aside, there are serious issues regarding the conflict with Eritrea. (AFP)

May the force be with them: NASA shuttle to launch Luke’s lightsaber. The original prop is going along with shuttle Discovery on its trip to the ISS in December. (CollectSpace.com)

I have got to get me one of these: Practical fuel cells for electronics. Hydrogen fuel cells could run laptops for 50 hours at a go. (Technology Review)

These people can’t catch a break: Poor roads cost Cameroon cocoa farmers dear. A rubbish infrastructure means farmers get their beans to traders three weeks late — after the price had dropped. (Reuters)

The cows are screwed: The end of the world’s grasslands as we know them?  Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may prompt the large-scale conversion of grasslands to a landscape of woody shrubs, one study claims. (Treehugger.com)

Cheap plug: Policeman suspended for hugging bailed star. The story of the day as far as I was concerned while working the desk yesterday! Nine coppers are in trouble for welcoming Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt on his release from prison. (Irish Examiner)

All-round solutions: Blackwater flies… Blackwater Security, which provides “security solutions” to the US military in Iraq, is creating its own airforce. Feckin’ hell. (Scholars and Rogues)

I can empathise: The internet — why it’s better than real life. Glad to see I’m not the only one, though I have yet to embrace the likes of MySpace or Linkedin. (Sunday Business Post)

Big numbers: Iraqi pilgrims sent home amid violence. One million people have been ordered out of Karbala after 26 people die in two days of shootings. (AP/CBS)

Mothers’ boys: Even gangsters need their mamas. Nicaragua tackles gang violence by relying on guerrilla street cred and mothers’ love. Would this work in Limerick I wonder (sorry, cheap shot)? (Time.com)

Links, zwo, drei, vier

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So here we are. Iraq’s government has a bleak future, according to the latest intelligence reports, while Iran is facing attack by the US (see the article below this one) and a community comes to terms with an 11-year-old being shot by a teenager on a BMX. Our tiny planet would appear to be a globe filled with despair and misery. But not so.

Another point of view: Bill Dornan takes a deliciously wry look at preserving the Earth with Hunting, nuking and swishing: a guide to saving the planet. (A Foolish Interruption)

Changing their minds: French banking giant BNP Paribas is to unblock three of its investment funds, whose suspension this month sparked turmoil on global stock markets. At last! Solid good news in the markets! If only the head of Countrywide hadn’t talked about the US economy heading for recession… (AFP, MSNBC)

A novel defence: A counterterrorism detective has been fired despite claiming he only failed a drugs test because his wife made him marijuana-spiked meatballs.  Give the man top marks for creativity! (Taunton Gazette)

Why didn’t I think of this? Your guide to building a laser spy microphone on a tight budget. (Lifehacker.com)

Idiots: Agents of the Transport Security Administration confiscate a man’s pudding but overlook the 4-inch blade Swiss army knife in his backpack. (Consumerist.com)

Because it must be done: Infiltrate the kingdom of Los Disneys on a mission to destroy the cryogenically frozen head of Walt Disney. Although he wasn’t actually frozen after his death. (LosDisneys.com)

Life, but not as we know it: The soil on Mars may contain microbial life, according to a new interpretation of data first collected more than 30 years ago. (CNN/Reuters)

All hail our photosynthetic saviours: Making fuel out of algae is one of those ideas that everyone loves but it’s fairly difficult. (CNet)

A return to more conventional blogging at the weekend.

Online gaming

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According to ComScore (via Techcrunch), 217m people play online games. That’s 28% of all people online, doesn’t including gambling sites and marks a 16.% increase on May 2006.

According to ComScore Europe managing director Bob Ivins:

With one in four Internet users visiting a gaming site, playing games online is extremely popular. The fact that these websites are pulling in over a quarter of the total worldwide Internet population shows what a global phenomenon gaming has become. The potential of the online gaming arena should be especially appealing for advertisers, as the average online gamer visits a gaming site 9 times a month.

The site gives a regional breakdown which shows certain gaming sites are favoured in certain regions. For example, Zylom attracted 10.3m Europeans but only 484,000 Asia-Pacific users (these two geographical regions had the most online gamers overall).

I haven’t done much in recent years, in fact I’m pretty sure the last time I played over the net it was either going head to head with a friend in Command and Conquer: Red Alert or getting my backside whipped by somebody at Quake II.

I feel so old…