Hellgate: London – Patch!

One of my biggest complaints of HG:L was the nightmare difficulty. It was just too hard. It seemed like nothing you could do would get you over the immense hurdle of trying to tackle these mobs without getting completely owned.

Well, thankfully, the latest patch solves that. Among numerous other improvements, the difficulty of nightmare skill has been rebalanced. I gave it a try yesterday, and I have to say I’m impressed.

So, if you tossed HG:L to the side of the road recently, pick it back up for a few minutes. Its definitely playable now.

Hellgate: London – Actually coming along nicely now

Sure, I made a post before about the launch being a total ripoff (and I stand by that), but after a few patches, the instability and performance issues seem to be cleared up. Overall, I have to say its a good game.

Christian or Not

In Susan Pace Hamill’s article, “Alabama’s not truly pro-life”, she makes the argument that being pro-life is more than just passing a law to ban abortion, but extends to legislation to support the child throughout his/her childhood as well, ensuring a genuinely positive quality of life. I feel that the morality of this cause is not in question, but instead that perhaps the method of implementation itself is flawed, and without authentic religious foundation.

What I Know of Blenders

It has been suggested that it is a child’s method of learning to ‘explore first, and understand later’. This is to infer that children go about the things that interest them without much knowledge of what they are doing, and observe the results through trial and error. Eventually, by invoking cause, and observing the effect, the child can make deductions about those observations, which are then stored away as experience. I might not be so inclined to believe this theory if I weren’t able to recall this kind of behavior from my own childhood.

Mac OS X 10.4.8 – WTF Mouse problems

My room mate has recently lost his mind, and decided he’d like to try out Mac OS X. Since the newer Mac installations work on x86 based systems, the idea is that it shouldn’t be hard to get a few things running just to check it out. Who wants to actually pay for a Mac anyhow?

There have been hits and misses, but it has successfully installed on a system. That is to say, it has installed, but is not functioning properly.

For some strange, Mac-reason, the mouse remains stuck in the upper left hand corner. You can move it away, but after a moment, it will snap right back into its original position. The mouse is known to work properly on multiple other systems, and is supported by Mac OS X 10.4.8. It even worked properly. Once.

We are terribly confused. We’ve tried connecting the mouse via PS2 ports, alternate USB ports. No good. We have removed all non-essential peripherals from the machine. No good. 3 other mice exhibit the same problem, but only when booting to OS X.

On the one hand, it serves us right. I mean, we aren’t really supposed to get this to work on non-Mac hardware. But, I can’t help but wonder why this, such a simple and fundamental aspect of computing is failing while other more complicated functions are working fine.

Please, feel free to give some input, anyone.