My Life as a Gamer #21

So this past month I have put together my new PC played my round of games I wasn't able to on my laptop and had tons of fun but I still have just gone back to my normal fortress games. Not that this is a bad thing but I don't find newer games as competitive compared to years ago. So this blog will be a Fortress edition.

Fortress Forever

I've been with Fortress Forever since it was in beta pre-release in 2007. Since then the game has evolved into such a great game compared to what it was when first released. Being released a few hours before TF2 was probably one of the worst things to happen to the game. For the past few months I took over the role of head-admin for the us/euro pickup channel #ff.pickup on quakenet and it easily was one of the best experiences for everyone who has played since. Besides that we recently got a 3v3 league going and it is probably the most fun I've had with the game since the last 4v4 league which was over a year ago. This past week alone was a great series of games. My own match tied and we had to go to overtime. Overtime stated in the league is the team with the fastest cap. We started defense and had a great start as the enemy team (col.) tried an offensive engineer to clear the flag stand with his EMP grenade but it majorly backfired which personally I think threw the game for them. They were able to cap in 2 minutes 40 seconds after getting the flag in a horrible position. My team was unsure about how to get the flag faster but it ended up happening after a toss down through the lasers quite early. We beat their time by a minute and it gave us the win. It was so good that I hope more games are close like this. It really makes the atmosphere amazing. Another match that occurred ended up in overtime as well. Both of these games will be linked at the bottom of the page.

I've also made my own personal HUD that I just released. I tried to make it more competitive with more important information towards the middle of the screen but still out of the way of your major vision. Some people seemed to have loved it while others hate it. I guess it is more geared towards quake players as I did have quake live in mind as I created it. I also stayed up all night talking to a developer about a new HUD in game as the default is pretty... bad and outdated. Here is the first rendition made. I loved it when it was being made, the health and armor/shield bars I took the idea from Tribes: Ascend. The next day we did the same thing and continued to edit the HUD into this. I want this one in game right now. I have not seen a similar HUD to it yet.

Enemy Territory Fortress

ETF has been one of my favorite games for a bit being a fortress lover. It came out in 2005 being a port of Quake 3 Fortress onto a free engine (with some minor changes to game play). Come late April or even in early May ETF will be updating for the first time in years to version 1.7 with up to four new maps and plenty of bug fixes. We're trying to get a launch party going before it goes live so if you lounge around IRC I'd appreciate it if you idled #etfgather and #etfgame. Please come check the game out it's amazing and very competitive. Right now there is a 2v2 tournament going on and I subbed for someone and lost the match. I felt bad for my teammate but they didn't seem to care much. I'm not sure if they were planning on winning or not from the enemy team.

Other Stuff

Besides those two games I have been playing a lot of Tribes: Ascend. It is currently my favorite game outside of the Fortress world. I'm in love with the competitive aspect and those who are in it. The game is really getting off it's feet since the recent release and that's what I have been waiting for, a competitive arena based shooter being popular. If you have the game come play with me, my ingame name is Voss.

Here are some related links for anything in this blog.

http://www.own3d.tv/live/283966/GoSu___Voss_Gaming

http://www.fortress-forever.com/

http://sc.reddit.com/r/fortressforever/

http://etfgather.blog.com/
Tribes: https://account.hirezstudios.com/tribesascend/?referral=317845&utm_campaign=email

http://www.youtube.com/user/montynai

https://twitter.com/#!/GoSuVoss

FF: pb. vs col. : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCdJDa-GdYI

FF: bS vs tits rd 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thjv2gMDijk

FF: bS vs tits rd 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpLo7nXT3ZY

My Life as a Gamer #20

I haven't really streamed too much so there won't be too much vods besides two play throughs. Other than that this will be generally just a rant on games I've been playing or thought ect.


So I jumped onto the Skyrim bandwagon as I loved all the older games. I have to say I am very impressed with how the game turned out. I streamed a play through of the main story, the game looked beautiful, and I have very little to gripe about. They transferred over the lock picking system that Fallout had to Skyrim. Now this isn't so bad, but it is not as hard as it used to be. I actually preferred the challenge that the old lock picking style provided. Since I was streaming I had the game in windowed mode, so I had a smaller window to play in and the graphics weren't set up the best. The past few nights I've been playing on full screen and the graphics look absolutely terrible compared. I've bumped everything up to the max and still the jagged edges for the models just look atrocious. Gladly there are mods to fix this and many other issues. The main problem that I and many others have about the game is the UI and menu system. They were created completely for consoles and for the PC it just not perform the best. There is so much wasted space that you could fit a whole painting in there. It's sad because Oblivion's UI and menu wasn't so bad for PC, I don't get how you can overlook this. Well past the bad we'll get onto the best part of the game, the exploration. I'm not a fan of the snow but this game's exploring is much better. Stuff is more spread out and it feels like what random parts of a snow tundra would be like. I've created a second character to do full exploration (and to make it harder since it's a melee character) and there is always the right amount of challenge for each little cave, tower, hideout it's great. The side quests are really nice and guide you to even more areas that have more caves to explore. The main story is lackluster but I can forgive this because they main story was never a great part of the previous games. I'd like to know what you guys think of the game if you have played it (I know you have Ayesee) and here are my vods:


One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight

The next game I streamed a full play through of was Serious Sam 3: BFE(Before First Encounter). I have to say it was everything I expected it to be, the new age of old school mindless fun. They removed some weapons, added some, there new enemies and lots of enemies. I have to say the one thing I didn't like about the game is that there was very minimal puzzles and platforming, compared to the older games. The humor is great, there is tons of other game references and plenty of things you should know. I am extremely happy the way the game out as Croteam kept the simple yet amazing formula they used to succeed unlike other games. Another place this game shines (as did the previous games) was the survival mode. Nothing is better than jumping into an arena where nonstop enemies come at you. One other thing is they finally added split screen coop for when you have comeone over. I have always wanted this for when I have a few friends over. Not only that but 16 player total coop. I can't say how the multiplayer modes are (there's quite a few like deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag) but I assume it's chaotic and extremely fun. Maybe I'll test it out and report back next blog. Here was my solo play through (I will stream some Serious difficulty coop soon!):


One Two Three Four Five

That's all I have for stream footage but I do have quite a bit to talk about.


First thing I want to talk about is mechanical keyboards. I just recently got my Steelseries 6gv2 and I have to say I absolutely love it. It took a bit to get used to, as I was using a media keyboard before and the key styles are completely different. One thing people always praise about is better keyboard/typing accuracy and mine has improved a bit. Also I was scared about the clicking how loud it was going to be. It is quite loud but it is muffled a bit by my headset (Steelseries Siberia v2) and it sounds great... I'd say even a bit soothing. The problem I'm having is just a personal issue, they way I grew up using keyboards I'd keep my thumb on the bottom edge of the spacebar so it kind of just imprints into my thumb, making it hurt. I've made the adjustment now but it was a real pain (and I still sometimes go back to using the edge when I play FPS. Hard to break a habit when you've been doing it for over 11 years.


Next up I want to talk about Dreamhack Winter, and no not about Sc2. To be honest I was not going to watch DHW at all until I forgot Quake Livewas being played (somehow it slipped my mind). Now I have stated some stuff in a previous blog, whereas my favorite players are Stermy, Strenx and Rapha. Rapha showed such strength through the entire tournament it was amazing. It is most likely his last tournament too since he is about to go to school. Now to get to the finals.
Quake Live finals performed before the Sc2 finals. I am utterly disguisted by the majority of people who were in the chatroom. The Dreamhack Winter tv2 stream was for all the finals not just one game. Do people realized that Dramhack isn't JUST Sc2? If not they are fucking stupid. It completely turned me off from wanting to watch the Sc2 finals and yes before you comment, I did turn off my chat while watching. What a disgrace to the game, I can't believe how people think that they are the only people that matter. If you haven't watch Live on 3 from last night (11/30/2011) DjWheat and SirScoots summarize everything that I agree with.


Onto the actual gameplay, Rapha was completely outplayed game 1, there is nothing else to say about it. Cypher is a really strong player, but so is Rapha. Game 2 Rapha had mouse issues and if you know Rapha he has plenty of them. He wasn't using his normal microsoft mouse, but a gaming mouse he has been getting accustomed to (which really showed worthy in his game vs Strenx (can view it here)). It's insane how the way some people set up their equipment it's really like a whole machine in itsself. Though after Game 2 got underway you could definitely tell Rapha was still having mouse issues and he just wanted to get the game underway. He missed several rocket jumps and a couple jumps towards red armor. It's quite sad because Game 3 was very similar as it seemed Rapha was just mad about his mouse the whole time. It was a great time and if you are interested in Quake Live and want to see more things lemme know I'll give you all the info you'll need.


I got Battlefield 3 for Cyber Monday and am completely satisfied with it. It may be the one game that I am sticking with for a long time. It feels so much like BF2 with improvements. If anyone else plays let me know! I'd gladly play coop or multiplayer with you!


Last thing I want to talk about is Tribes: Ascend before I conclude this blog. Tribes just got another patch which I really like. They added a team deathmatch mode for two maps. Sometimes all you want to do is kill people and not worry about silly objectives. They added an option to reduce weapon sizes. Now I personally didn't mind the size of the weapons as they look gorgeous... or maybe I am just used to large modeled weapons from other games. There is now a first win of the day bonus which is great, I always loved this in other games (ex. League of Legends). The one major thing they did was reduce the prices for unlocking different classes. I haven't logged in to see how much they are now, but I'm sure it's very fair. If you want to play with me let me know, I go by Voss in game.


So this was much longer than I thought it was going to be. Not that it's a bad thing. I am scared to stream as of right now since I do not want to mess up my GPU even further than it is at the moment. I cannot play any source based games because of some overheating issue. I am waiting to get a new card (gtx 560 ti) and I'll be back to streaming at once. Thanks for reading everyone!

My Life as a Gamer #19

This is mainly going to be a follow up from #18 talking about Tribes some more and my Dragon Age 2 play through. So lets get to it.


So literally right after I wrote my last blog Hi-Rez Studios, the guys behind Tribes: Ascend released a patch fixing tons of things. The main one that caught my attention (and was a major point to the Tribes part of MLaaG 18) was the fact that there was a skiing speed cap. With this new patch they removed the speed cap, but completely revamped how the physics work. At first I did not see much of a difference until I actually started to get better consecutive skis. It now punishes more for bad skiing which may be a bad thing for newer players as you will see a lot of slower moving players now but in the long run it brings back more of the skill to it. There still seems to be a cap but it seems to be harder to hit. I can't test this completely as I only have the two default classes unlocked I would either have to play 50 games per day to get enough tokens or buy gold coins (would cost about half a normal game for full unlock, seems fair to me). I am not a fan of the heavy classes personally but I'd love to give them a try and see how they feel. Same with the light classes too I guess, I love the feeling of going fast. 


As I load up the client now to see if there was anything else I wanted to talk about, once again they try and pull a fast one and there will be an update later today (Nov 17th). The main thing I see besides even more awesome optimization is that they are allowing you to try out whatever class you want on a private, solo server no matter if you unlocked it or not. I got my wish I guess. They are also adding another map into the free servers. If I recall right this was the snow map that was in the alpha build that I loved. I will try and get some streamed, maybe a little class introduction video. We'll see this coming week. If you want to see some CTF action here is a little vod.

Now onto Dragon Age 2. I'll say that I absolutely LOVED Dragon Age: Origins. It was my favorite fantasy rpg. I was pretty excited when I heard this was coming out but I had some concerns. I heard that the main character was going to be human only. I could deal with this it's just going to be less customization than what I was looking for. I then saw CatsPajamas' demo play through on youtube and I lost even more hope for it. Sure they refined the combat so it's more fun and interactive but everything else just looked terrible. Now onto my actual experience. I played as a rogue as they were severely gimped in Origins, only modding fixed it. Within rogue I went archery as I thought it'd be nice and fun. Turns out I did not have much fun with the game at all. Half the game I decided to do every side quest, the other half I got sick of it so I rushed to the end. There was only one part in the whole story like (which was broken up into three parts, mildly linked together) that I really liked and within ten minutes I hated it again due to story action. It wasn't even more conversation choices that changed it, just how everything ended up. One thing I extremely disliked is how they changed the Hurlock's (most notable enemy from DA:O) looks. They were very demonic, monster looking creatures before, now they look like humans with sharp teeth and a weird padded, stitched skin. I know that this might be just my thoughts but I feel as most of the game should focus on the darkspawn, even though the blight is over. They are still a major threat. You do not face them much, mainly in the prologue. If anyone else played through it, I would really like to know what you thought of the game and if you had played Dragon Age: Origins before as well. Here is my full play through for you guys though.


Part: One Two Three Four Five Six

The last thing I want to talk about is I have been doing quite a bit of Fortress Forever mapping. I've juggling around four to five maps at the moment which is bad, I should really just focus on one to finish then quicker. At the moment I'm trying to finalize my main map Fiddle, work on SpiderCrossings, remaking Conc_Strafe a skills jump map, fix problems in Hollow and work on my prototype Deathmatch rotating objective map. I'll be streaming any one of these a lot hoping to get at least one completely finished. Stream Link

My Life as a Gamer #18

It's been so long and so many different games I've played where do I start!?!? Well I guess I'll start with more recent games and go down my vod list.

First off is Tribes: Ascend, the new Tribes installment that is Free to Play. I got into the pre closed beta, which I guess would be late alpha. I have to say compared to older Tribes games it is pretty modernized. First off you only carry two weapons. Now it's not all bad since they implemented a class system which works just fine. Each class has a specific armor type (light, medium, and heavy) and a few different weapons, grenade (can get more with unlocks) and a special belt powerup. Another thing I didn't like compared to the old games was the issue of acceleration/speed locking while skiing ( a technique used to gain and maintain speed upon going down hills over flat land). The main reason they put this in was to stop Heavy Armor from going as fast as Light Armor with tons more health. If you do not have a weapon that can damage Heavy Armor really well then you'll realize it'd be a big problem. This wasn't a case in the old games since you chose what weapons you carried, had more than 2 weapons and could go whatever speed you wanted (depending how good you were). One thing people complain about it is the majority of the weapons implemented are hitscan weapons.  Now hitscan for those who don't know are what developers use for weapons that use bullets generally. It sends out a scan as you shoot and it determines if it hits by lag. Say you are playing Team Fortress 2 with about 100 ms lag as a Heavy, you are firing on a Scout but your aiming a little behind him (slower mouse sensitivity). If he has a lower ms count (say he has 20) you will not hit him regardless of the bullet spread because of that lag. This can be a problem for that exact reason when you have those "I should have hit him" moments. I have playtested it on 3 different days and never noticed any real big issues with it. Other than all that I have to say the new engine is amazing. It feels really smooth and learning how to ski on it is really nice. I'm not completely sure if they made this engine on their own but if they did I like the game even more. I highly recommend this game to anyone who has a FPS itch that other free shooters do not give. You can apply for beta here. Here are some vods if you are interested.

One Two Three Four 

I did a full play through of RAGE when it first came out. I have to say even with the game's glaring graphical glitches (the texture streaming ) the game was GORGEOUS. The story was pretty lacking being 8 hours but I did not play through all the side activities. I started playing through it again and realized that if I had done the rest it would have added maybe a couple hours. For instance there is racing you can do to upgrade your vehicle. There is also a task board with various quests. Last are random sewers scattered around the wasteland (it's dlc) which after you clear them out become an extra quest at the task board. The guns feel really solid and the enemy AI is unbelievable. I have to say though the COOP missions are a blast, I kind of liked them better than the single player story. I am a true id software fan boy and would suggest this game to anybody as it is a blast. The one thing that bothers me most is the price, $60 is too much for what they give unless you wanted the textures alone. I personally would only pay about $40 tops unless they put in more DLC now. It is a fun game, not much replay ability as of right now though. Hopefully they release some DLC soon so I can play more of it. 

Part : One Two Three Four Five Six

I have started to do play through of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Dragon Age 2 I will post those vods when I am done with them. Other than that I played tons of random stuff where you can view here. I have been on a pretty sporadic schedule with streaming but I will be early this week with some mapping for Fortress Forever. Hope to see you guys join me when I do ^^.

My Life as a Gamer #17

I am not happy, I stalled this for so long and got distracted too many times. I do now how tons and tons of footage to show.I'm just going to get into it and leave talking for later.

I ended up streaming an Enemy Territory Fortress gather but xsplit messed up and it only recorded and streamed the second half. You can even see me check xsplit for it being live because I didn't want it to happen again. This was an extremely close game and I wish more people played it again, it has been so dead. I blame summer!! Anyways here is 15 minutes of Engineer on defense.

One of my game friends preordered Modern Warfare 3 and got Call of Duty 4 with it (deal on steam) and he already had it so he gifted it to me. I decided hey I actually liked this one, why not stream a play through of it on veteran difficulty. I don't know if that was actually the best idea I ever had. I got so raged at times, but then again other times I steamrolled through places I thought I would never get past. I beat it in about 8 hours which is quite surprising. One thing that I should note, on the PC version of CoD4 is that you can LEAN. YES LEAN, that thing that most games don't use! This was a great surprise to me, haha, even though it felt the same as just running out normally. The vods for the full play through are right below here!

Vods : One Two Three Four Five Six

So I have been dying to play Doom 3 for a bit now. I decided to stream it after I beat Call of Duty. That reminds me I still haven't finished Dead Space. Oh well. I'm really enjoying this game again even though it isn't exactly like the older games. The atmosphere makes the game much better. I tried installing duct tape mod since that's generally the normal mod to install (it puts a flash light on your shotgun and machine gun) but it doesn't want to work with my high resolution texture mod. Oh well I'll deal with darkness. Anyway here is the footage so far, I'll be streaming more soon enough. 

Vods : One Onehalf Two Twohalf

I played a little more of TF2 just fooling around. TF2 is fun if you just mess around and not get serious about it. This was a point that came up in a PUBLIC SERVER. Someone was acting like it was the match of the century, fighting for first place. I told him to shut up since if he was annoying me, he had to be annoying others. After I said that, blah blah noob back to me. I ended up just muting him since I didn't want to deal with it. Public servers are there to have fun, not completely coordinated. I mean yes you can have coordinated actions, but it is not required. Oh well here is some footage. 

Last up for stream vods are for the It's Gosu Alpha Divisional #15. There was some difficulties behind the scenes so I decided to just stream and eventually half ass casting. It was more like just hanging out and talking about the game. It was a fun night and some good games. Here are the two vods.

Vods : One Two

So my friend TrophyDoctor and I are doing a small series for the newMinecraft patch that just came out, 1.8. For those who don't know this is the new adventure patch that adds quite a few new options to the game. Anyways we'll be streaming periodically at His and my stream so be on the lookout. It will be full of laughs. 

I also want to get this game casted and Ayesee and I played in Starcraft 2. It was probably the most epic game I played. It was back and forth the whole time, it really couldn't have gotten better.  Once I get a vod for it I'll post it in a blog. It is a really good game to watch. 

I think that's about it, sorry for the delayed blog I've been too busy playing games ;). I'll get another out soon enough.

My Life as a Gamer #16

Oh boy oh boy. Lots and lots of vods. I'm going to keep this part short but last Monday was my birthday. Was nice and quiet, played some PS3. Now onto the real stuff.

First off it's TF2. I have been getting great success with viewers whenever I stream TF2. Generally I start around 10 am EST so there really isn't any other TF2 streams up and they all flock to me which is really nice. I got into some really nice conversations. Someone donated a few stuff for my contest (YOU SHOULD ALL PARTICIPATE. GO HERE) and it's really fun getting to know people who play this game that I don't really like. I play it to kill time and stream and hope they like it. A lot of the time they ask me to play other classes (since I mainly only play soldier). Someone actually taught me over chat how to play an effective spy. It worked very well. I actually did a great job. I'm still pondering what weapon I really want to use with spy though. We'll get onto that another time. I got three vods for you, all of which got tons of hits while I was streaming. If you love TF2watch these and follow me on my stream to come chat and/or play with me!

Vods : One Two Three

I played a quick 10 minute session of Dead Space prior to TF2 one day. I forgot how much I hated unkillable enemies. Yeah. I hate them.

Once again I did some more Starcraft 2 ladder! This time I started off with a 2v2 with one of my viewers. He's completely new to the game which we almost won regardless. Was fun playing with them though. Next up I played two solo ladder games, going 1-1. I lost to a pretty bad terranattack. I know they are going banshee but I don't do anything about it until it's too late. It doesn't make sense. Other than that I play a very strong game versus a zerg. Whenever I face zergs on ladder they seem to go mass roaches. My build completely counters that unless they do some weird rush (not a 7 roach rush). Anyways you can watch the games here.

I played a bit more Quake 2 The Reckoning on stream. I forgot that you can't change the brightness in windowed mode so it was quite dark. I could barely even see. I had to stand up above my monitor to get the negative colors to see where I was going. I really miss all the old school style games. Other than the thirty minute vod I finished the game off stream. I meant to stream it but I just forgot to. I think I'm going to stream Doom 3 in its place soon (or after I finish one of my other horror games). Anyways check it out if you want to see some darkness.

Next up is two pickups of Fortress Forever. Both very fun games as well I'd suggest watching these if you can deal with the graphics. I keep playing more and more and I wish I got more viewers who would tune in to see what it's about. I recently got admin status for the pickup channel so I can start them on my own free will and deal with the nuicenses.

Vods : One Two

Last thing I have streamed which I am getting back into since I finished my previous one is mapping. I am working on two maps at the same time at the moment. I covered SpiderX in my previous blog. I worked on it another hour and a half and the geometry is really coming along. Here is the vodand a screenshot of the current flag room. I also streamed a run around on the current build of SpiderX which you can view here. Next up is an old map I was working on called Hollow. I have a forum post about it with many pics. Also here is the vod which I streamed today and a screenshotof what I worked on. I still need to figure out if I want rock walls or some sort of crazy wall system. I'm just about done with this map too, all I got to do is fix some lights and flip the map for the other team. I will get a walkthrough of it up sometime soon. It takes a while to compile a whole map.

My Life as a Gamer #15

All I can say is really SO MUCH FORTRESS. I have played so much of it the past few days it's ridiculous. Whether it be Fortress Forever or Team Fortress 2. Other than that though I streamed a little Minecraft and reinstalled Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Soulstorm. I really wish I hadDoW 2, it looks pretty nice. 

So first off I was helping my friend kill time during his stream since he was doing a 24 hour marathon. The first game he wanted to do was Minecraftand do some adventure maps (which went terribly wrong). I knew two of the maps but I refrained from doing stuff to quickly move the group through but one of person did. We go through The Redmurk Mystery, Escape Craft and Escape Craft 2. Come watch us fool around trying at first to do the trials correctly.

So next since there isn't as much footage but still longer videos is Team Fortress 2. I finally crafted The Original rocket launcher so I have a very nostalgic weapon with remastered sounds. Well here are two videos of me dominating pubs both at an hour and forty-five minutes each. In the second video I do try out different classes so you don't only have to watchsoldier. I play some demoman and engineer with a great sentry spot. I always play on these one set of servers but if you want to invite me somewhere else to play please do. I'm always looking to play with people. Also during my stream yesterday I was on the front page again!!!! I want more viewers, come make it possible! I have a fun stream to hang out in if you haven't checked it out already. You can view it at Twitch.tv and I have tons of info on there. Anyways here are the two vods:

One Two

Finally I streamed quite a bit of Fortress Forever pickup games. I have to say as much as I love the game I really can't stand the community. The thing is though you can't avoid it since there is about 20 maximum pickup players. You just have to deal with it. Well this doesn't stop me from dominating either way. There's a lot of footage here and I can only recommend the last three vods out of all of them. There are plenty of goodoffensive runs and some really really nice airshots. In the first vod I also do a little skill jumping. It's been a while since I have done it.

Vods : One Two Three Four

I have been practicing Super Street Fighter 4 quite a bit recently. Working on my Akuma combos as best I can trying to get them down. I am so close to be perfecting c.lk c.lp c.mp tatsu into a srk but I am always a little late with my shoryuken so it misses. I have yet to practice against someone though so I don't know exactly how it fairs. Besides Akuma I want to learn someone that isn't shoto so I decided to start doing the challenges for Chun-Li. I didn't understand her charge technique at first but after some help from BestBipson I was able to start doing her kikoken and her ultimate.

Alright I am going to be posting the contest rules later tonight on my forums here and like I said before it'll require Team Fortress 2 (which is now free) and know how to use its replay feature to create a movie or fraps. I am still figuring out a prize but how many prizes really depends on how many people are going to participate. I will probably keep the contest open for a week or two so people can get entries in. We'll see later when I get everything sorted out.

Thanks everyone for reading this. Sorry I haven't been witing as many blogs I have been getting quite busy. I'll try and get another one out before this weekend. My birthday is on Monday so I am most likely going to be away for a bit starting the weekend.