Useless fact of the day:

The names of the two stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are Patience and Fortitude. They were named by then-mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

Always nice to know...

I'm told I'm getting more and more high-flying and incomprihensible in my Blabs. Well... GREAT. This has been my eeeevil and sinister plan all along. Muuuhahahaha !

So anyways. Some people have been wondering what I have been doing lately, now that my Blabs have become a rare commodity. I can only tell you that it is a secret Gnug-Goverment mission, and if I told you more, I would have to Gnug you.

Or well, I can tell you that I will be on the mission for about 4 more months. During this time, the Blabs, gaming, and my online presence all together will be somewhat rare.

I have recieved word that Cavedog have let me into their Beta test of BoneYards (together with the 13000 other people who were let in for the second round of the Beta). So I guess I will have to see what all the fuzz is about in there. And yes, I might actually play me a few games. :)

Just so you all know, the cyber café where my human secret undercover alias (me in human costume) works at hasn't really had TA lying around on its computers for a while, due to many things. Among other: The game is old, we had to make space for new ones (not my choice), not too many were playing it (damn kids, TA was way over their heads in complexity). The other owners wanted to annoy me (they never liked TA, and got tired of me playing it so much).

At the café, we have "only" 6GB harddrives (only 4GB on some of the older computers)... one would think that is enough to have some odd 15-20 different games lying on there, most of them even with full installation.

Arh, well, that is where one would think wrong. Let me see:

• Half-Life: some 400MB
• Rainbow Six: Almost 400MB + Eagle Watch, the expansion, add a few hundred Megs :)
• Unreal: What, around 500, right ?
• Carmageddon 2: Oh, say, 300MB
• Quake 2 with all them patches: Around 300MB as well
• Ultima Online: With the expansion, around 600MB
• The new Championship Manager 3 has an installation option (The max one of course) on around 1.6 Gigs
• And the biggest whopper of them all: Baldurs Gate, with its 2 GIGA Bytes in its full install

Now add some 10-15 more games, each with an average on around 200MB.

Now, is it just me or did some great games in the old days fit on 2-3 1.4kb floppy disks ??

Anyways, I assume that you can see that as a café manager, you would leap at any chance to delete any old game that isn't played all too much, to make space for newer ones. And I'm sorry to say, that at our café, more people are playing StarCrap (but hey, it's mostly the kids who play it, so that says something).

Still, when it came to TA, I was able to sustain it for a long while on our computers, but had to give in eventually. However, before we packed up the CD's and sold them off, I grabbed one to the side for a later occasion. That occasion was here recently, and I've been doing some TA again. Wheeeeee. And you might get a glimpse of me in BY.

Needless to say, I will, and have been smacked around a bit, as I'm a extreeeeemely rusty. Have been playing other games a lot lately, such as Sim City 3000, Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri, but most of all, Heroes of Might & Magic 3, which is a great game, huge improvement over it's own great prequel.

Aslan the Assman himself was as kind as to re-inaugurate me into the game in a positive manner (by letting me win). I went on to luckily win another game, a 3 way FFA this time, on Evad River. But after that, I was put into realization of how much I'm behind in TA, after not having played it in almost 6 months. 315 and 825, respectively, played me on PD and GoW, and here the thing that was mostly refreshed, were my lessons in humility. :)

I will most likely not have time to catch up with TA fully before I (and possibly the rest or just some of the Gnugs) will be moving on to other games. But I will still give it a shot, and try to get some games going with all my old and new TA playing friends :)

Had the opportunity to try out the TA Demo Recorder too, which is nothing short of a brilliant invention. I got to see myself, and my opponents boil on that before mentioned Evad River 3 way FFA game. Quite interesting.

This invention also has importance and effect on the TA community. The great players aren't really mysterious strategeans and tacticians anymore, now their style, tricks and strategies can be observed and studied to the smallest of detail. Now, it will more likely rely on rutine, skill, adaptability and experience on who is a great player. The newbies can also track down some games, and learn a lot from more experienced gamers. Should make things more interesting.

Also, it can be proof that people do, or do not, cheat. To some degree at least. All in all, a revolutin for the TA community. And there should be a page filled with demoes of great players playing, for download. Unfortunately, we can not offer this kind of service on the Gnug page, as we have pretty limited space, and the demoes can take up to many Mega Bytes of space.

Otherwise, the #gnug channel has gotten a bit bigger lately. A lot of new regulars which have appeared while I've been on my seeecret mission. At times, #gnug is even more populated than #totalannihilation. That fits in nicely with my plans to take over the woooooorld... Muuuwaaahahahaha.....

Ahem, so anyways, a little different Blab this time, but the next time, I think I will be back on track... If there is such a thing :)

One of our regulars on #gnug has kinda talked me into Blabbing about my own stance towards alcohol consumption. Since I'm quite the anti-alco Gnug, I'm guessing I will be in conflict of opinion with many people. All the more interesting perhaps then :)

But, alas, that will probably take a lot of time, which I don't have, due to my seeeecret mission. But until the next time, stay Gnug !

Gnug215 Blab-Mode: Off