And now, a public service announcement.

M&Ms Speckled Crispy Eggs are IN NO WAY an acceptable substitute for Cadbury’s Mini Eggs.

“They’re just the same!” insisted one unnamed source on a recent shopping trip to a store whose manager has refused to be interviewed.

Today, the unnamed source tried eating them. No words were needed; her face told the whole story.

BUYER BEWARE.

I hate computers.

Sam’s PC just won’t boot up. I’m guessing at the mobo, will RMA that.

My computer decided to just not load certain drivers. Little things like, oh, you know, the keyboard, the mouse, the display adaptor. I’ve waste the whole day trying to fix it, and ended up reinstalling. I’m still doing that now, at 1:15am.

Yay computers!

We finally accumulated all needed parts for Sam’s computer on Friday, so that night we stayed up and built a PC. I was rather suprised when it powered up first time, to be honest.. I guess I should have more faith in myself - but considering I screwed up a P4 and mobo building my own PC last February, you can’t blame me for being pessimistic.

I’ve not benched it yet, and it’s not a completely fair test because he has less memory, but it’s quite possible that he has the fastest computer in the house now.

And he’s using it to play games from 1996. Hmm.

I just heard a rumor that Wal*Mart may be the new Leeds sponsor next season. Well that’s just great, isn’t it? I’m going to have to walk around with a shirt that proudly advertises cheap, poorly-made clothing.

(Note - yeah, I do actually have clothes from Wal*Mart, I just don’t go advertising the fact..)

So I got a magazine in the mail yesterday, gameSTATE. It’s all glossy and shiny, basically your typical Future Publishing mag. (It *is* published by Future).

There was a free subscription card attached, and the only survey questions on it are:

Do you use middleware?
If yes, what do you use?
Are you looking to evaluate any tools and middleware in the next 6 months?
If so, what?

There’s the first clue that something is amiss.

The first ad is for Renderware. Not that surprising, they advertise in any gaming mag, but still, the second clue.

The main article is about how to make sure your game development studio doesn’t go down the tubes, and one suggestion is to make sure games ship on time and on budget. By using something like, oh, the Renderware Studio middleware.

The second article is a “tech overview” of.. Renderware Studio.

The ad after that is for Havok’s Karma physics. Which plugs into.. Renderware Studio.

Now an article on the top 20 industry players. One of them is David Lau-Kee. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find out which company he’s the president of.

One of the “Ten Commandments of Videogame Design” is Thou Shalt Prototype and Prototype early. Good advice, sure. How do you do it? “Remove your head from the clouds for a moment and consider a middleware solution”.

Now a look at Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, which makes use of Criterion’s popular Renderware.

For an article preparing us for the grand opening of the official gameSTATE forum, the question is pitched “Does middleware mean cloned games or smoother development?”

Then finally, we can look at this actual thread from the forums. I wonder what middleware solution “Konami’s soccer games” and “Vice City” use?

Oh, gameSTATE is also a registered trademark of Criterion Software Ltd.

Leeds 2 - 3 Middlesbrough

Leeds manager Terry Venables remains unconcerned by his team’s current plight despite the club suffering a sixth defeat in their last eight Premiership matches.

Maybe he fucking should be.

Okay, so Algona makes CNN.com now.

Because of The Big Chee-to.

The last time Algona received national attention was when a guy went nuts and killed his family. At least this is a little happier.

[00:28] julia_25_78mj: hello… how are you?

[00:28] SiW1973: I M GRATE I HOPE U R SEXY
[00:29] julia_25_78mj: I’m fine… wanna see me for free? [blahblah].com

[00:29] SiW1973: DO YUO WNAT 2 TOUCH MY PINK THING?!>
[00:30] julia_25_78mj: I’m fine… wanna see me for free? [blahblah].com

[00:30] SiW1973: YUO ARE TEH SUCK GUDBY
[00:31] julia_25_78mj: I’m fine… wanna see me for free? [blahblah].com

Well March is here and Spring is in the air. At least in Animal Crossing, the real world hasn’t caught up yet.

But despite that, I’ve shaved my head of the protective helmet of hair that has warmed me for the coldest part of Winter and I return to my natural state of almost-baldness.