STG's

I loved Fallout 3. Sure, the story was a little silly at points, and the interface wasn't perfect - specially for inventory - but it was a great game and I spent a lot of hours playing it. So, when Fallout 3: New Vegas was about to be released, I bought it right away. It's pretty much the same as Fallout 3. I've heard criticism on some reviews that the graphics could be better, and I have to agree, but that isn't very important - the graphics are very reasonable. What is important is HOW BUGGY IT IS! Argh! Not only have I lost plenty of time till I realized that Auto and Quick saves didn't always work - and for some people, even the manuals saves have problems - but the map geometry is often messed up. This seems to be particularly bad for scorpions - I've already seen 4 or 5 get stuck on the ground. Something that annoyed me terribly is that now drops aren't completely fixed. So a couple of times, I got awesome items at a vendor or random location, ...

I've just finished reading One Good Soldier - by Travis S. Taylor. I've previously reviewed book 2 in the series - The Tau Ceti Agenda  . This is one mostly more of the same. It's military sci-fi, they are still fighting the separatists, and mostly the tech is still the same. So not that much worth noting. Overall, it is quite entertaining, although there is what seems an overuse of  "quantum"  this and that on the tech, clearly to make up stuff without having to come with much of a theory behind it. As usual, it's also available on Webscriptions .

I just bought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 this weekend - there was a 33% off sale on Steam. I finished the single player campaign yesterday. Just like the other titles on Call of Duty, it was good and had some pretty intense moments. The difficulty on Regular seemed a little easier than on Call of Duty: World at War. The SP campaign took about 8 hours, counting some minor Spec Ops play - a bit short for the price. Of course, the series has multiplayer firmly in its design. I really liked MP on Call of Duty 4 (actually a bit rare, as usually I don't like MP). I guess I'll see how I feel about this one later. The Spec Ops missions are an interesting addition. I've played through several of them, and some were pretty good. My favorite so far is from Call of Duty 4 - the sniper mission. I guess it's a nice way to take content you already have and sell it again :-)

Tron Mouse - that might be a little silly, but it's pretty cool looking!

I've just finished the latest book in the Jon and Lobo series - Overthrowing Heaven, by Mark L. Van Name. Less than a week ago I read the first book in the series, One Jump Ahead, and read the second book last month, so they are both fresh in my mind, and the latest is my favorite. I particularly liked the explanations about the nature of Lobo - which is Jon's sentient PCAV (predator class assault vehicle) - which always was smarter than other AIs, but for no apparent reason, till this book (to be fair, the existence of a difference in its nature was well hinted on the other books) One thing I noted on this book is that Van Name isn't afraid to have an unhappy ending - which is uncommon on oh so many books, no matter how forced the story gets as a result - and on a personal level for Jon Moore, he seems to insist on it. The base story is, as usual, a mission that only Jon can take, and this time it's personal - for Lobo. Overall, quite entertaining.

An interesting answer to question I've thought about before - How to make Windows load the Desktop before you log-in? If you have a lot of programs that start up automatically, that can save you a lot of time.

This is a pretty cool looking attempt to make cookies that can't easily be erased, by spreading the data across multiple storage options. Particularly unexpected is the PNG based cookie...