Ok, so a minor extension to the "Online behaviour rules" blab I had some Blabs back. Whilst following those rules, they shouldn't dictate your online personality. The rules are just something normal, reasonable, sensible people abide and live by (most of the time) when online. Your personality, however, shines through in other ways. And here I would like to tell you a little about some personality traits I have taken upon myself when roaming the net and chat rooms. This is not an attempt to glorify myself, anything I do or say, and the way I am. This is just some sound advice on a way to be like Gnug215. Joking, hehe. It's an explanation on how I have handled the online life, a life which in my opinion has been handled well, and I'd like to tell you all about it. If you dont wanna hear it, TOO BAD. Muahahaha. *cough* Sorry. Anyways, I had a chance to see the online life a bit from afar before I decided to jump into it myself. The stance I decided to take was an observant, neutral and passive one. And that's something I can recommend to especially new users. This stance need not dictate your personality at all, this is mostly a probe for you to observe the others in the room (I'm referring this entire column to the scenario of a normal game service chatroom, as TEN, Kali, mIRC, MPlayer and so on). The people who are already in the room, and maybe veterans/regulars in that room, (or gaming area) and they should be the one's you would want to get off on a good start with. How to do that best is never to know, but to say it like this: It's far better to say nothing than it is to insult them. So silence and observatory status as an initial stance would sound logical. Nobody likes a show-off, and nobody likes a lamer. When coming into chat rooms for the first time, I sit for a while and observe the people there. It really doesn't take long to draw a sketchy profile of people and their way. So you figure out whom to talk to and whom to just not try and contact at all. If (which I am assuming here) there is a ladder belonging to this particular game and area, be sure to check that ladder out and see who the high-rankers are, how everyone behaves and acts. The key is Info. So lay back for a while when entering a new place, a place where you might end up hanging for QUITE a while, and we all know that first impressions are important to make, so make it a good one.

Another thing I have to mention and recommend is the ever so famous (In Ultima Online Circles) is the 'Toon' that is "Imanewbie does Brittania". Gnug315 mentioned it before, but since it has changed links, (which it has a bad habit of doing often) I thought i'd mention it again and share my passion for it on here. Well... It's great, go there, whatcha waiting for ? :)

Ah, I see Gnug315 has been ranting away on board games again. Well, i'm gonna do the same thing. Tho my favourite board game is in another corner. Don't know about foreign versions, but in Danish (the kind you Eat and become a cannibal), it's titled "Trivial Pursuit", and I do believe it's the British title as well :). In case you aren't familiar with the game, it's simply a game of trivia where the object us to collect pieces of "Cheese" or "Cake" whichever way you will have it. You run around on the bord with your "Dot" which has capacity for 6 Cheeses/cakes. You need the 6 different colors, corresponding to the 6 different trivia categories represented in the game. In our version, which is the normal, deep blue version, the categories are as follows: Geography (Color: Blue) - Entertainment (Pink) - History (Yellow) - Arts & Culture (Brown) - Science & Technology (Green) - Sports & Leisure (Orange). The "Cheeses" are obtainable at certain places on the board, 6 to be exact, 1 for each color. You land on one of those, get a question responding to the color, and the Cheese is home, now on to the 5 other cheeses. Once you posess all 6 Cheeses, go back home to the centre and answer a question in the category chose by your opponents. (Arg, they always choose Brown for me, bleh.). On the normal spots on the board, and the cheese spots, you get another roll with the dice when answering a correct answer. And there is enough of those. Answers I mean. In this, the very first version of the game, there are 6000 different questions, 1000 for each category. It's a great game to vent off a lot of the useless knowlegde you have accumulated through the years, or well, it aint useless, it's GREAT for this game :). I, together with some real-life friends (Yes, I do have those), have been freqeuently duking it out on the Battle fields of Trivia, fighting for Cakes/Cheeses with nothing but our minds, and the Dice to roll. Some question, however, are too hard, while some are too easy. Sometimes you even wind up over-estimating the damn thing, hehe.

Ah, well, that's all for me and my 11th blab... One step closer to conquering the world.