Half Life 2 has been one of the most waited on computer games ever since Half Life came out. The release date had been pushed back so many times that I lost count. Then a couple of months ago I was told there was a rock solid release date so I put my order in.

Sure enough on the 17th of November I was dragged to Eastland by my brother and we picked up the game. We were warned by the guy at the shop that it could only be played after the CD key had been registered online.

When we got home we started the installation. Half an hour and 5 CDs later the game was installed. Then it had to be registered after this it had to download the latest patch, and then it had to “unlock” the installation. All up this took over an hour, but it was worth it.

There are a few warnings needed before playing Half Life 2. If you suffer from chronic impatience you will be resetting your computer every time you play it; Half Life 2 takes that long to load. It also takes a bloody long time to load between scenes. If you do not have a broad band internet connection, don’t even bother unless you’re a pig headed fuck with loads of patience. Needless to say a friend of mine did get it to work with a 56k modem.

After the painful installation and mucking around, it is possible to play the game offline, so if you do have a 56k modem, it won’t cost you the earth to keep playing the game. If you own two computers you can’t have two people playing the game at once. If you are a parent and you, have two kids, two computers and the kids want to play Half Life 2 at the same time, you will have to buy two copies of Half Life 2 or say tough tity.

It is still possible to install the game on two separate computers. The game is controlled by a program called Steam. A Half Life 2 CD key is attached to one steam account. So if you install the game on your home computer and your work computer you can play it at both locations by logging onto the same steam account.

Please don’t let this scare you away from Half Life 2, there are a lot of pluses to this game. It is not buggy at all; it did not crash my computer once. In my experience, this is rare thing. Once the game is installed it is quite easy to log on and get it started again. The graphics is incredible; most objects can be picked up and moved. The characters move in a realistic way and their facial expressions look 99% authentic.

In one part of the game enemy soldiers jump off a ledge to chase you, if you shot the soldiers when they are in the air and they are dead when they land They land in an incredibly authentic dead body way. I mean they land in a way a human body would land if it were dead. I don’t actually know how a dead body would land, I just th….

Screenshot time.

The G-Man makes a return.

Meet Alex my brother reckons she’ll be the next Lara Croft.

These guys are nasty, the combine soldier. They’ll whack you with those shock sticky things every chance they get.

There are two vehicles and many other machines that can be operate in the game. This one is the air boat and I’m about to go over a massive jump.

Damn the bridge is out, looks like I’ll have to jump it Dukes of Hazard style.

Yee Haw!

There’s lots of cute “easter eggs” in the game. This one I noticed on the second time playing it. This demonstrates how to teleport a cactus.

It starts with a glow and then lots of sparks.

Surprise! Where the hell did that cactus come from.

This is a great game, it gets 9.4 out of 10 from me. The hassles of installation and registration and the “infringement of gamer’s rights”, that some players complain about, are a pain. But when everything is taken into account it’s all worth it. Don’t miss out on this game by boycotting it; it is a decision you would live to regret. (If the game was crap by all means boycott it!)

Sorry still no review of Half Life 2. The moral here is I shouldn’t have promised anything but it will be done tomorrow (ha ha). I’ve been busy over the past few days catching up with freinds so that is why I havn’yt been posting

Just doing a quick browse of the Blogosphere

The grey one is Emma and the white one (when washed) is Chloe. Emma is Chloe’s mother. They are both standard poodles.

I know this is not one of the topics covered in my poll. I will do a review of Half Life 2 tomorrow. I class this as the winner because the top two topics are Half Life 2 review and All of the above. So I will start with Half Life 2.

A funny thing happened today. My brother and I had to go to my tafe to drop in some work. As we were leaving my brother got stuck in the automatic doors. Nick was concerned by this so he drove his wheelchair back through the doors and got stuck a second time, this time the doors broke, or appeared to break they stopped opening anyway.

I guess this is kind of funny but if Nick hadn?t been in an electric wheelchair it would have hurt quite a lot being stuck in the doors.

Because I’m a very busy person (slack bastard) I don’t have time to do posts on all the topics I would like to. So, I have put down a number of topics and I’m going to get you, the blogging public, to vote on what topic I should do. So vote away people, just click on this link to vote away.

I was just reading through my site statistics and I noticed I had 14 visitors from a site I hadn’t linked to. The site was Ari on the Web, I’m sorry Ari that I didn’t link back to you. I know it pisses me off when people don’t reciprocate my links.

So if anyone has linked to me and I haven’t linked back just tell me. I don’t care if your left, right, pink or green, as long as your not a bigot or insane (I was insane once (seriously! Mental illness, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it), so yes I can use this word) I will link back to you.

I also wanted to say something about Blogger blogs that don’t use Haloscan comments. It can be very irritating for people that don’t use Blogger, like me, to leave anonymous comments. I have heard that Haloscan is easy to set up, it’s free and it also makes it easier to enter discussion on Blogger blogs.

Over the past few months there has been an issue. When I first heard about it on channel 7′s Sunrise programme, I laughed at the TV. I though it was more Koshist propaganda.
What is this issue?

Childhood institutions cancelling Christmas.

It seems there have been many examples of primary schools, kindergartens and childcare centres that have re-titled their end of year Christmas party or even cancelled it altogether. Father Christmas is not considered politically correct any more.

I still thought this was a joke until Very Special Kids (VSK) altered their Christmas arrangements. Instead of their Christmas Fair they will have a family day earlier in the year. I called VSK and asked them about this and they said it’s because Christmas a very busy time of year. VSK means a lot to me as I used to stay there when I was younger. If they?d cancelled Christmas something had to be done.

There are many reasons why cancelling Christmas is downright evil. Don’t get me wrong, I hate Christmas, I was the kid who would cry when placed on Santa’s knee. But not all people feel the way I do. A good friend of mine, a mother of two kids, feels: it’s bloody disgraceful; it’s an incredible shame that kids will be deprived of the fun, magic and mystery that is Christmas. My half sister told me how much she is looking forward to Christmas. So how could people possibly contemplate cancelling Christmas?

The people who do this are well meaning, they wish to respect the culture of other races and religions. These people need to remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I will tell you why. If a white Anglo expressed their intense dislike of the Chinese New Year they would be branded racist.

If there are people expressing their hatred of Christmas they should be ignored. In a multicultural society people need to be tolerant of other group’s celebrations, it doesn’t matter who that group is or whether they are in the majority or the minority. Everybody has the right to have their celebrations respected.

These well meaning people also need to realise there aren’t that many people who hate Christmas. In Japan they celebrate Christmas, these do gooders would probably struggle to find Japan on a map. Even Muslims, contrary to popular belief, do not have a problem with Christmas.

I feel it is extremely arrogant to assume that other cultures would be offended by Christmas. Cancelling Christmas actually increases racial prejudice, “Look what those Muslim?s made us do.” They are creating conflict where there was none to begin with. In a multicultural society all cultures need to be respected. Us westerners need to learn to respect our own culture too. If someone disrespects our culture it?s just as bad as us disrespecting theirs and we should stick up for ourselves.

People who suffer from panic attacks have become more common now days. I don’t really know the reason behind this rise, I don’t know for sure whether there is a rise. It’s just apparent to me that there are more people with this condition. Interestingly enough, I used to suffer from this, and so did my brother and people I know. I have come up with an insane solution that works for me. Take my advice at your peril.

Panic attacks happen because of all the horrible things that occur to you throughout your life. From being forced to eat that one last pea to being beaten as a child. We all have had traumatic childhood experiences and when we think back we wonder how did we survive? Children are incredibly tough, virtually anything can happen to them and they will be fine, psychologically, afterwards.

When I was 16 I felt I could handle anything, I would not cry at funerals for example, and I went to a lot of funerals. But now, 10 years later, I get choked up when the bad guy dies in Collateral (You know, the new Tom Cruise movie). This is pathetic. If 16-year-old Chris knew that I would one day do this, he would have killed himself to prevent it happening.

I think I know why this happens. Each bad event chisels a little bit away from that iron hard wall that prevents your emotions pouring through. When you were young, the iron wall was strong and tough and tall. But after 26 years of battering it is now nothing more than a rusted tin sheet.

If you’re defensive iron wall is weak your emotions can stream through at the most inopportune time. Imagine you are under pressure at work, you are not feeling great, you are just getting over a cold and your asthma is acting up. Then, your emotions decide to chip in and suddenly you are having a panic attack.

Panic attacks definition: discrete periods of sudden onset of intense apprehension, fearfulness, or terror, often associated with feelings of impending doom.

The first time that someone gets a panic attack they end up in hospital thinking they are dying. When the doctor tells you that it was just a panic attack, you are disbelieving. You/me: “Just a panic attack?” Doctor: “Yeah, just a panic attack. Here’s a prescription.” After this you might think to yourself, “I’m no pill popping junky! Next time I get a panic attack I’ll just ignore it.”

Just ignoring it will only make it worse. If you want to stop getting panic attacks, you need to go one step further. You need to not care, this means not caring about anything. About your death, money, family, reputation, etc. This not caring can actually be quite useful. Do you really care that your family has to pay for your funeral after you die? I know I don’t, they can feed me to the crows for all I care, I?m not going to know. (Actually, being fed to African wild dogs would be pretty cool, and if you?re still a little bit alive, at least it would be a fast death.)

In all seriousness, if you take this to the extreme your life will not be very good. Simply knowing what to care about and how much to care is what it’s all about.

“All it says is that war isn’t always bad.”

War is always bad, if it can be avoided it should be. Some of those examples on that sign aren’t too good. The American Civil War didn’t start to stop slavery; it was more about the politics of slavery. It was only when the war got truly nasty that Lincoln said it was about slavery.

Afghanistan: it may have sent the USSR broke but it was actually peaceful conflict in Poland, Berlin and in Russia itself that struck the fatal blows.

I sound like a pacifist, but I do believe some wars are justified. Some conflicts are worthwhile to destroy somebody who is Insane enough and powerful enough to damage the world like Hitler did.

I know I haven’t posted much recently this is because I am a slack bastard. The blogging community will think even less of me for my next trick, pasting someone else’s comment as a post on my site. I don’t think they will mind, as they are very passionate on the subject of creationism being taught in schools alongside evolution.

Last week the chairman of the Family First Party Peter Harris spoke to the National Press Club in Canberra. He told them that creation stories should be taught alongside evolution. Of course this is one of my pet hates, I’m probably lucky I didn’t see him on the National Press Club as I would have smashed the television.

I wanted to write a post about this but I was beaten to it by nearly everybody. A post on this topic inspired over 70 comments on Robert Corr’s website. One of the comments was particularly good and it needs more attention, so here it is:

In Georgia (of course) apparently science books teaching evolution have to have stickers on them reading This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered. Those stickers are cool if we can also put stickers on bibles reading This book contains material on God. God is a theory, not a fact. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.

Of course, these days it?s dishonest to even claim evolution is “just a theory”. As an evolutionary ecologist myself, I can guarantee that it?s accepted as a paradigm…scientists gave up arguing about whether evolution is real or not a century ago, and have since been quantifying and experimenting with it. It?s old news, the battle?s been won, only the creationists haven?t realised it yet. Evolution is as much a theory as gravity is.

The strangest thing of all, most creationists actually believe in evolution but refuse to admit it. Ask them these questions (1) Do you believe we have genes that code for certain traits? (2) Do you believe those genes are passed down through generations – ie. Do you look like your parents? (3) Do you believe that some traits might be worse for you in some environments than others – people with Sweedish skin wouldn?t last long in the Sahara? If you answered yes to those three questions, congratulations, you believe in evolution!

-gjw

With people like gjw on our side us “evolutionists” have nothing to fear.

Apparently the spaming bastards want to increase their google page rank by posting links in comments. I now have allowed html in my commments, this allows me to select exactly which tags can be used.

It is a simple task to modify the ‘Sanitize Spec’ in the MT weblog config preferences.

I changed it from ‘Use Defaults’ to ‘Use My Settings’ and pasted in the following: b, br, p, strong, em, ul, li, blockquote

For this to work you need to also change the allow html in comments setting. It should be ticked.

This should prevent them uping their page rank because it removes the links from their comments. The bummer is their url will still have a link on it, I will have to think over this one before I can fix it, but this is a start.