Private Update

Almost a week since my last Privat post.

Yeah, weeks pass fast...

That I didn't do much intelligent is the fault of Medieval 2. I've been trying hard to win this game. I started a large campaign with the British, the Spanish, yesterday with Venice and today with France.

Why do I keep starting again and again? I succeed the early parts of the game and am able to expand my empire quite well. Better than all the other surrounding countries. But then suddenly, ever country surrounding me is attacking me, I am left with no friends and as I might have overexpanded my borders, I start to loose provinces and towns. To stop loosing to many towns, I cheat, which does help in the beginning, but does not make me feel any better.

So I stop playing the campaign and select an other country. I am getting better though, I survive longer and cheat less than I used to and I am confindent, I will be able to win the game with no cheats.

Probably I'll retry the English as their strong archers, cavalery and Hobilars suit my style of playing best.

But I do hate the Pope... Because somewhere in the game, you'll run out of Pagan enemies and have to fight your Christian 'brothers' (those pahtetic French for example) which often leeds to excommunication and thus giving all other countries the right to invade you...

I have also started to play Bioshock again and had my first fight with a Big Brother. Man, do they deal out pain. Soon the Orange Box with Half Life Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2 hits the shelves so I will spend more time fighting virtual enemies.

The next weekend I'll be in Prag with Weekend2Dance. Three nights, three parties. Hope it will be fun. I am just a bit too old for the trip by bus. I would have taken a flight, but easyjet was sold out when I got the OK for the trip. I'll survive.

This Tuesday, I'll be back in desArts for the Afterwork Party. Got a bit mixed feelings.

Private

I have written less these last few days.

September belongs to Scuba Diving. Besides work, I have four evenings of Scuba Diving theory and four dives in local swimming pools. And I am tired a lot.

After theory and work as well as scuba diving and work, I am too tired to write my blog.

I also had two tilllate events I did. Not too much for it already being the 18th of a month but on one hand, they were longer than usual and they were farther away so I had to drive for about two hours each way. As the pictures had to be online till 8:00 am, I had to take off the next day. At least I got paid for them. But as I am running low on days I can take off this year, I won’t be able to do many more.

The first one was nothing special. But the second one was a fashion show with the active runner up for Miss Switzerland 2007 Xenia Tchoumitcheva who many (as myself) think that she should have won.

Christa Rigozzi, the Miss Switzerland 2007 is not ugly, but she has a bit a large nose. But she seems to be bright.

My all-time favourite, Bianca Sissing was also there and I managed to talk a bit to her and even have a picture taken with her. She was Miss Switzerland 2003.

Sonja Grandjean ruled in 1998, Tanja Gutmann in 1997 (she still has amazing eyes!), Jennifer Ann Gerber in 2001 (without her friend Doris who I wanted to meet, but she had to travel to London), Anita Buri was Miss Switzerland 1999 and they were joined by Miss Zürich Sabrina Knechtli and Miss Bern Yvonne Würms. I didn’t like those two very much. They didn’t seem to have potential for Miss Switzerland.

But I liked the Miss Africa Schweiz Coumba Faye whom I took a lot of pictures of. She has a very dark skin and looks really nice. Usually I don’t like dark women, but her I do.

They were joined by Tim Wielandt Mister Schweiz 2007 who is almost as old as I but looks much better than me and Raphael Kägi (Mister Coke light, shouldn’t that be Mister Coke Zero now???). The show was moderated by Sven Epiney and Plüsch also played some songs.

I also bought a new game for the PC, in fact just an Add-On. Medieval 2, Kingdoms. But even though I only have original games on that PC, I could not start the game. It has some copy protection from SecuROM which somehow blocks the game from starting. SecuROM belongs to the Sony Empire, making me like Sony even less than before. I tried to get in contact with them, but did not receive any good advice.

At least I am not alone with my problems. But I am still angry. There is a lot of anger in the forums and they seem to put the blame on other companies. The cracked version of Kingdoms is already available for download, but as a buyer, I should not have to download a crack just to play a game. I wasted four hours of my precious free time to no avail. I managed to install it, but could not start the game.

Meantime I have found a way around the problem, I just had to start the launcher of the original game, then without closing the launcher, swap discs to the Add-On and then start the launcher of the Add-On. But WTF. They can be lucky, that they don’t live around here, I would really like to pay them a visit myself.

An other friend has bought War Craft and could not install it, I have never been able to run any of the Splinter Cell Games on my PC due to copyright protection programs. Even though I don’t have any illegal software on that PC.

We honest buyers are getting butt-fucked by the industry. Even in Bioshock there seems to be a copy protection which disables the game any further installations after installing it two times. They now seem to have raised the number to five, but that still is not enough.

I also have ordered personal designed ear protective plugs to wear at loud concerts or discos. Discos are not too loud in Switzerland, but very bad in Ibiza.

Last week I have started to loose weight. I want to loose about 15 kg, from 85 to about 70. My boss says, that is too much, because I am about 1.81 m, but he has gained a lot of weight even though he does a lot of Sport. We will see, if I can loose as much as I want to.

Ups have to go. I’ll write more soon.

Private: Bioshock

I didn’t write for some time, but I want to tell you about my last days. I will take scuba diving lessons in September.

On Thursday, I bought Bioshock, a computer game I was looking forward to play for some months. The intro was a bit disappointing but as soon as the plane crashed down, the experience changed for a better.

The graphics is in most part not as spectacular as I had anticipated but at least it ran smoothly on my 23 inch display.

I was pleased with the immersing game experience. The story is well told even though the gameplay is extremely linear.

After the crash, you emerge in the ocean, surrounded by burning oil and sinking debris. The only feature in the night not directly connected do the plane crash is a lighthouse and after a short swim you find a open door.

As soon as you enter, the door closes and the before dark room is lit by some lights. A large sculptured face looks down on you and gives an eerie feeling. As the door outside is closed, the only way leads some steps down to a small submarine, which, after entering brings you to Rapture, the City of the free.

As you arrive in the terminal, the guy trying to get in contact with you gets whacked and the assailant flees the scene. You then leave the sub and find indications of turmoil and demonstrations.

Soon afterwards you get attacked by the former assailant who herself gets killed by a mechanical sentry system.

The theme is that Rapture was built for humans to be free of „the man in Washington, from the man in the Vatican and the man in Moscow. But some experiments of the free scientists seem have gone wrong and even though I have seen the first Little Sisters and Big Daddys, I still have a lot of questions.

What I like is the atmosphere, the architecture, like in the movie Metropolis, Art Deco, etc. And even though one could rush through the game quickly, there is a lot to explore and I will continue to explore Rapture and tell you of its secrets.