...and of course just as I finish posting Live decides it wants to work again...anyway, here's the link if you're interested in downloading the replays of my StarCraft match:
http://cid-148d5e6a1cda65f9.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/WCG%202009%20Star%20Craft/WCG%7C_SC.zip
~C
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Back to it...
I know I have been out of the blog sphere for a long while...I guess my practice for the Star Craft tournament took up more time than I thought it would. Well, the tournament is over...it was not good for me. I did save the replays and as soon as Live get it's head out of it's a$$ then I'll upload them to my Sky Drive and post a link here for anyone that's curious on how the games went.
If you do want to check out the brackets, you can see them here http://qualify.us.wcg.com/?page=stem_schedule&stageid=2837 I got beat by Eric Rothmuller who was the number 2 Brood Wars player in the US last year...the replays will show you why!
So that was my first plunge into the world of professional gaming and I did beat my goal of making it past the first round, so I feel pretty good about that. I was talking to a friend of mine after the tournament and his exact quote was: "Sorry to hear about the loss, let's get some more practice in and we'll get you ready for the next one." So, depending on how life plays out, I'll probably give this another shot, just to see if I can make it past round 2 next year.
In other news, life in the IT world has been crazy. Haven't really been messing with Hyper-V as much I would like, but have been playing around a lot with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and then Sun's Virtual Box. The biggest draw back of the M$ product is apparently they have no 64 bit support for guest operating systems...I have NO idea why they would do this, but there you have it. Virtual Box does come with 64 bit guest OS support, but it seems to consume my entire system when trying to run it. I really don't understand the difference, since I've been running Virtual Box on my home system for months now with a Linux distro on it and I can do lots of other things while running Virtual Box. For some reason though, when I'm running virtual box on my 64 bit Vista machine at work and have a Vista guess OS open, it bring my system to it's knees...I mean, it's not like my work system is crappy, it's a core 2 duo with 8 GB of DDR2 RAM with a decent HDD, so I really don't see the reason why it runs SO slow. If any of you have experienced this or know why this is happening...PLEASE let me know!
It does seem though that most of the IT world is beginning to focus more and more on virtual environments and could computing. As I've said before, I do see a lot of promise and a lot of very nice possibilities of life in the cloud, but there is also a very risk if you live your life in the could. There is a very nice article over at Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/5325169/the-hidden-risks-of-cloud-computing that goes into detail about some of the dangers of cloud computing...just a very interesting read. I do have a large amount of data stored on the could (this blog being one, plus my email, plus, plus, plus) and I do think it's very cool to be able to have all of your important data accessible from any system, all you need is a simple browser and you're good to go.
Speaking of browsers, I know a number of have heard about this, but I thought I'd post something here also. Google has officially announced the creation of their own OS: Chrome OS http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html [Google blog], this OS is designed to uproot XP which currently has a strangle hold on the netbook market. Maybe it will succeed where many other Linux flavors have failed...lord knows it has the monetary backing that Linux does not, but who knows...to date there is no official release date for Chrome OS, but you can bet Google is going to try their best to get a high quality good product to market as fast as they can. Hopefully this will not fall victim the Google Beta monster which holds amazing products (such as Gmail) in Beta for the better part of 5 years! Lucky for Gmail though, Google was able to bribe the beta monster and finally pull Gmail out of beta and into a fully grown-up web-app.
Ok, it's getting late and still can't get into my Live account to post the links, so I'll stop here for now and post more hopefully tomorrow.
~C
If you do want to check out the brackets, you can see them here http://qualify.us.wcg.com/?page=stem_schedule&stageid=2837 I got beat by Eric Rothmuller who was the number 2 Brood Wars player in the US last year...the replays will show you why!
So that was my first plunge into the world of professional gaming and I did beat my goal of making it past the first round, so I feel pretty good about that. I was talking to a friend of mine after the tournament and his exact quote was: "Sorry to hear about the loss, let's get some more practice in and we'll get you ready for the next one." So, depending on how life plays out, I'll probably give this another shot, just to see if I can make it past round 2 next year.
In other news, life in the IT world has been crazy. Haven't really been messing with Hyper-V as much I would like, but have been playing around a lot with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and then Sun's Virtual Box. The biggest draw back of the M$ product is apparently they have no 64 bit support for guest operating systems...I have NO idea why they would do this, but there you have it. Virtual Box does come with 64 bit guest OS support, but it seems to consume my entire system when trying to run it. I really don't understand the difference, since I've been running Virtual Box on my home system for months now with a Linux distro on it and I can do lots of other things while running Virtual Box. For some reason though, when I'm running virtual box on my 64 bit Vista machine at work and have a Vista guess OS open, it bring my system to it's knees...I mean, it's not like my work system is crappy, it's a core 2 duo with 8 GB of DDR2 RAM with a decent HDD, so I really don't see the reason why it runs SO slow. If any of you have experienced this or know why this is happening...PLEASE let me know!
It does seem though that most of the IT world is beginning to focus more and more on virtual environments and could computing. As I've said before, I do see a lot of promise and a lot of very nice possibilities of life in the cloud, but there is also a very risk if you live your life in the could. There is a very nice article over at Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/5325169/the-hidden-risks-of-cloud-computing that goes into detail about some of the dangers of cloud computing...just a very interesting read. I do have a large amount of data stored on the could (this blog being one, plus my email, plus, plus, plus) and I do think it's very cool to be able to have all of your important data accessible from any system, all you need is a simple browser and you're good to go.
Speaking of browsers, I know a number of have heard about this, but I thought I'd post something here also. Google has officially announced the creation of their own OS: Chrome OS http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html [Google blog], this OS is designed to uproot XP which currently has a strangle hold on the netbook market. Maybe it will succeed where many other Linux flavors have failed...lord knows it has the monetary backing that Linux does not, but who knows...to date there is no official release date for Chrome OS, but you can bet Google is going to try their best to get a high quality good product to market as fast as they can. Hopefully this will not fall victim the Google Beta monster which holds amazing products (such as Gmail) in Beta for the better part of 5 years! Lucky for Gmail though, Google was able to bribe the beta monster and finally pull Gmail out of beta and into a fully grown-up web-app.
Ok, it's getting late and still can't get into my Live account to post the links, so I'll stop here for now and post more hopefully tomorrow.
~C
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Crazy Week...
The last week has been really crazy. Not really sure why...it's not like the work load was any heavier than normal, but it all just seemed to happen so quickly...I don't know, I was sure glad when Friday came around for sure.
Anyway, it's the weekend so no need to ramble on about work...on to more exiting things. Not sure if I've mentioned this before but there are two charities that are very near and dear to me, they are Child's Play and The Charlottesville Toy Lift. Both charities are geared towards kids. Child's Play was started by Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade as a way to raise money so children in hospitals can have games to take their minds off of their pain and sickness and try and bring some happiness to kids, if only for a short while. This one is important to me for two reasons...first...I'm a gamer. Too often gamers are looked upon as shut-in's or people who only care about themselves and their games...this goes out to prove that gamers do care about trying to help people the best way we know. The second reason is the main reason the charity was started in the first place. A few years ago the media really started pounding on games (such as GTA, Doom, Unreal, etc.) as super violent and the only things these games were leading to was teaching children that it's OK to kill. In response to the this, the Penny Arcade guys started Child's Play. This allowed the media to see what games are really for, an escape. A machine that allows an escape from the world and have some fun.
There is a point this whole rant. There are these 3 guys and they decided the best way they could help Child's Play was to play Mario all weekend long...hince Mario Marathon was born. This is the second year they've been doing it and as of this posting they have about 11,300 bucks already raised. Their goals is around 12,000 bucks and they still have one whole day to play...I think they'll make the goal. Anyway, you should totally check it out, they're streaming live for the entire time they're playing.
The other charity, that I mentioned previously is Toy Lift. I actually volunteered last year with this group and it was a great time and a great cause for kids. If you get a chance you should check it out and if you're in the Charlottesville area, the Toy lift is going to be taking place this year on Friday December 4th...I know it's a crazy long ways away, but since I know I'll be volunteering again this year, I'm sure I'll be writing way more about this later.
As far as gaming goes, not much new. Been playing as much Brood Wars as I can, trying to get ready for the WCG tournament at the end of July and other than that, been playing a lot of TF2 (of course.) It's really strange, usually I can only play a game for a few months before becoming totally board with it, but for some reason TF2 has managed to stay fresh with all of the updates, so it still stays at the top of list of games to play.
Ok, that's gonna be about it from me. Sorry about the ranting on and on about charities in this one, we'll return to a normally scheduled blogging program next time.
~C
Anyway, it's the weekend so no need to ramble on about work...on to more exiting things. Not sure if I've mentioned this before but there are two charities that are very near and dear to me, they are Child's Play and The Charlottesville Toy Lift. Both charities are geared towards kids. Child's Play was started by Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade as a way to raise money so children in hospitals can have games to take their minds off of their pain and sickness and try and bring some happiness to kids, if only for a short while. This one is important to me for two reasons...first...I'm a gamer. Too often gamers are looked upon as shut-in's or people who only care about themselves and their games...this goes out to prove that gamers do care about trying to help people the best way we know. The second reason is the main reason the charity was started in the first place. A few years ago the media really started pounding on games (such as GTA, Doom, Unreal, etc.) as super violent and the only things these games were leading to was teaching children that it's OK to kill. In response to the this, the Penny Arcade guys started Child's Play. This allowed the media to see what games are really for, an escape. A machine that allows an escape from the world and have some fun.
There is a point this whole rant. There are these 3 guys and they decided the best way they could help Child's Play was to play Mario all weekend long...hince Mario Marathon was born. This is the second year they've been doing it and as of this posting they have about 11,300 bucks already raised. Their goals is around 12,000 bucks and they still have one whole day to play...I think they'll make the goal. Anyway, you should totally check it out, they're streaming live for the entire time they're playing.
The other charity, that I mentioned previously is Toy Lift. I actually volunteered last year with this group and it was a great time and a great cause for kids. If you get a chance you should check it out and if you're in the Charlottesville area, the Toy lift is going to be taking place this year on Friday December 4th...I know it's a crazy long ways away, but since I know I'll be volunteering again this year, I'm sure I'll be writing way more about this later.
As far as gaming goes, not much new. Been playing as much Brood Wars as I can, trying to get ready for the WCG tournament at the end of July and other than that, been playing a lot of TF2 (of course.) It's really strange, usually I can only play a game for a few months before becoming totally board with it, but for some reason TF2 has managed to stay fresh with all of the updates, so it still stays at the top of list of games to play.
Ok, that's gonna be about it from me. Sorry about the ranting on and on about charities in this one, we'll return to a normally scheduled blogging program next time.
~C
Friday, July 3, 2009
StarCraft
So I finally took the plunge…after much debating with myself I finally signed up for an online WCG qualifier tournament. I really doubt I’ll get pas the first round (or the first night for that matter) but it’s pretty cool to know I’ll be in a qualifier for something that I could be a pro at.
I’ve been looking around the net to try and get some idea of what competition I was going to be up against so here’s some video of some crazy good StarCraft players:
The one thing I’ve learned over the past week or so is that I think StarCraft is the Korean national past time…crazy.
Other than StarCraft, been playing TF2 as usual, still a freakin’ awesome game and I finally got the backburner for the Pyro..that’s a great weapon I’ve had so much fun with it!
Oh yeah, if you haven’t see this yet…it’s awesome:
Ok, that’s it for now, more later on
~C
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