I have been unable to find anything gaming wise to keep me interested so I've resumed my WoW account. I'm not playing any of my high level toons, I've started a Draenei Hunter and am currently running around Lakeshire. I already have a hunter on Sibi's old account but I'll be damned if I'm going to resurrect that n00b ;)

Last night (8th May 2009) I went to see Star Trek at the movies. It wasn't in the big VMAX cinema but...

IT WAS AWESOME!!!

I'm not going to talk about it as you should really go see it yourself but... IT WAS AWESOME!!!

http://www.startrekmovie.com/

The past few days I have been transferring my kustard dot org DNS stuff from my old provider to where I have my actual hosting. Everything has transferred without any hiccups so far so I'm pretty happy that everything to do with my hosting and domain is with the one place.

If you're after a good hosting or domain provider then check them out:

Pair Hosting
Pair Domain Registration

Last Friday night (1st May 2009 and yes I know this is late :P) I went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine at the movies. It was playing in the big VMAX theatre which has the nice big screen and comfy chairs and pumping sound.

I really enjoyed the movie. Not being a big comic reader but seeing the other X-Men movies and really enjoying them I found the movie to be good. Plenty of action, lots of cool effects and the story made sense.

http://www.x-menorigins.com/

As I've been doing zero gaming there is a gap in my free time. I've decided to fill this gap by playing around with linux as a desktop O/S again. I run CentOS at work on 2 servers which keeps me in the *nix world but it has been at least 4 years since I dabbled with a linux flavour as a desktop O/S.

Previously I was a huge fan of SuSE/openSUSE and am quite fond of the KDE desktop environment. These days the big kids on the block are the *buntu family of distro's. Ubuntu is the Gnome/gtk driven distro whilst Kubuntu is the KDE/qt driven distro. There are also flavours for your EEPC.

I've tried Gnome previously and don't really like it. I prefer KDE. Well in actually I used to use fluxbox for all my desktop needs but the lure of eye candy is too strong ;)

Anyway, I installed Kubuntu 9.04, Ubuntu 9.04 and OpenSuSE 11.1 and found that Kubuntu is really hitting the spot. openSUSE is smooth and KDE powerful but the installation was a bit frustrating when it came to my now 5 O/S boot system.

I like the KDE desktop and the Plasma widgets are pretty cool. My favorite term aterm doesn't work with the transparency properly due to the way KDE uses the root window but I'm starting to feel comfortable with Konsole now. People have been having issues with KDE 4.2 but it seems fine to me, but I guess that is because I'm coming into it fresh as the last time I played with KDE it was only on version 2.x.

My free time is now full of linux tweaking so it'll keep me happy for a while.

Ubuntu
Kubuntu
openSUSE
GNOME
KDE
fluxbox

...well I got sick of LotRO. It got grindy and was too much like the WoW grind. I think it's time to give up MMO's completely for a while and try something else. UT3 is sitting there waiting for me so might invest some time and effort into that for a while.

Today is ANZAC Day.

To all our men and women who have given their all for our freedom, both past and present, kustard dot org give thanks.


ANZAC Day Wikipedia

We had Friday off (24th) as it was the last day of school holidays so we took Hannah to go see a movie. A quick drive to the local cinemas and a bit of pre-movie lunch then into the VMAX 3D session of Monsters vs Aliens.

I really enjoyed it, the 3D was pretty damned awesome and the 3D glasses fit well over my normal glasses. Hannah was loving the 3D and kept her glasses on for about 90% of the movie which was a good amount of time. Sibi liked the 3D but was a bit under-whelmed by the movie, obviously she's not a big enough kid ;)

Monsters vs Aliens website

During a slow period at work on Friday (17th) I read up about the Lord of the Rings Online MMO. I had perused reviews about it before but only minimally as I was still playing World of Warcraft and didn't feel the need for another addiction.

...Anyway, I signed up for the 10 day trial and when I got home I grabbed the client downloader and installed the client. It was a pretty big download effort and I used the last of my download limit (which thankfully reset on Sunday hehe).

Controls
As you may not be aware I have a severe dislike for the usual WASD keyboard controls for games. I prefer either mouse for RPG games and mixed ZXCV/mouse for FPS. The good thing about LOTRO is that it's very much like WoW and so I didn't have to muck about with changing controls. Good.

Graphics
Another little gripe I have is games trying to make your characters look realistic. I actually like my fantasy games to have that cartoony feel about them, much like WoW and most free MMO's. Thankfully, for me anyway, LOTRO has that nice cartoon feel while still having a realistic approach. The environment and spell effects are good and overall I am liking the feel. Good.

Characters
I'm not going into what races and classes are available and what their roles are (you can do that yourself you lazy buggers) but I chose a Human Lore-master which is a crowd control and pet class. I have a pet raven and from what I have read you play a Lore-master as a CC'er and also jump into melee as well. I've had a reasonable success soloing and can take on 3 mobs with little issue (except those few times I mistimed my CC and died, there goes one of my titles). Good.

Gameplay
So far so good. I am liking the quests and the lore behind them. You have several quest sections such as crafting etc and your main quest line. It is WoW like in that you have to run and kill mobs/find items etc and at times I could feel it being a bit grindy but the lore of LotR keeps the game fun much like the lore of WoW did for it. Good.

Overall Good.

Lord of the Rings Online website

A big congrats to Rod and Em on their wedding on Saturday. Both Sibi and I had a great time and the day for you guys went seamlessly. I am supremely jealous of your holiday in Japan :D

Have a great trip and we'll see you in a few weeks when you get back :)

Well I got sick of the Atlantica Online client continually crashing on my computer so off it went Friday afternoon. News to come about what I did next.