Its coming to that time was I have started to apply for university. I’m hoping to get in for a Multimedia degree or creative computer games design course. But I’ve come to realise that I have nothing to show for my years spent at the PC so I have decided to take up Flash media and design full flash website ready for my interview with my chosen university.

I am finding it quite enjoyable learning flash, the action script was a bit daunting at first but I’m slowly getting the hang of it. It’s getting hard now to finish off my school work, get some work done in flash and have time to blog so I might not be able to produce that many blog post over the coming months. I will update my progress on the website and show pictures of how it’s coming along and then eventually the finished site, fingers crossed it will get that far!

So, is anyone else applying for university? What courses are you applying for? And if anyone has some great recourse sites for Macromedia flash ill take them.

Any Mac owners want to fill me in on why it is so expensive to buy RAM for a MacBook? $1000 seems a bit steep just for the memory, I wouldn’t expect to pay that much for the processor. I know it can be expensive for a PC but that’s only when you buy DDR3 1066MHz + RAM and considering that this is only 667 MHz it just seems way overpriced for anyone to buy it.

You can find it at the Apple Store here.

I was browsing through my clan’s forums today and I came across a rather interesting thread about MMOs with his question being:

Any MMORPGs worth playing and putting time into? Know any? Just drop the name and site here. :]

I then replied saying:

If you really want to get into a MMO then choose Eve. 1. Because the game is HUGE; you literally get a universe to play with. 2. Full of mature dedicated gamers who actually enjoy helping people out even if they don’t gain anything. And finally it is the most ruthless MMO out there, because you can be killed ANYWHERE in the game. You really have to be on your toes, especially when you drop below 0.6 space.

Only downside to the game is that it has a very steep learning curve and my advice would be to not try and learn everything straight away. If you can get a few friends to join with you, then it’s all the more better and try to get into a big well structured corp early on so you can always find help when you need it and they might just be kind enough to give you a nice welcome gift.

From my vast experience of MMO I have found that WoW is really just a waste of time, you spend most of the time grinding just to grind some more which seems pointless in the long run. But it does have a wide variety of loot which is always nice.

Guild wars would be another good alternative but only if you enjoy the PvP side of MMOs, and it also doesn’t escape the grind factor because you will need to grind for most of the titles in the game and a lot of money to get the rest. But it is still a great PvP game with a chance will win real prizes every month and with a lot of weekly events it keeps the game fresh.

City of Heroes and Villains is also very good but I would tend to go for Heroes over Villains because a lot more people play Heroes and there is a general meeting place where everyone goes which is nice when you need help. The downside is that you are just grinding for XP and for nothing else; they have recently introduced a crafting system but I haven had much time to dabble with that but it seems good enough. The PvP is great with huge areas to fight against different people e.g. Heroes V Villains also if you get a level 50 character you can unlock 2 new races which is nice to brag about because they both get flight from the off and get some nice Auroras.

Sooo, in conclusion most MMOs will take up a lot of your time but if you want one that will last in the long run then I would go with Eve Online. If you can get past the learning curve, then you will get the most out of it. With the added bonus that you can officially buy time cards with in-game money, it’s all the more reason to get stuck in. In a future update they will also be upgrading the entire game for DX10 and hopefully have the ability to get outside of your ship.

So, I was wondering if anyone else plays MMOs and generally what your opinion of them is. I have tried a lot of MMOs and tried to give each one a fair go to get the best out of each one with only a few being an ok game to play, with only Eve Online making me want to keep on playing. But when it comes down to it, most MMOs are more like a second job with the emphasis on grinding.

Sony has cut the price of its development kit to $10,250 with further price cuts expected when more game companies adopt the technology.

As well as cutting the price of the kit, Sony has also included extra tools developed by SN Systems, which include ProDG, SN Distributed Build System, SN Linker and SN Compiler.

Perhaps now we will start to see a lot more companies producing a wider variety of games for the PS3 and start to take more risks which will hopefully lead to games which are visually outstanding and have a good story which is engaging from the off.

More can be found here.

The food company Podravka have released their annual report in a rather special way. The company Bruketa & Zini? have designed a book that has to be baked before it can be read!

It is called “Well Done” and after it has been baked at 100oC for 25min the text inside becomes readable. If you are not precise with your timing then the book will over-cook and burn.

“The annual report is printed on paper Conqueror Laid Brilliant White 120 g/m2, Munken Polar 130 g/m2 and Soporset 90 g/m2 and written with typography Thema by Nikola Djurek and Lexicon by Bram De Does.The creative team of the project consists of Creative Directors Davor Bruketa & Nikola Zini?; Art directors Davor Bruketa, Nikola Zini?, Imelda Ramovi, Mirel Hadžijusufovi?; Copywriters Davor Bruketa, Nikola Zini?, Lana Cavar, Teo Tarabari?, Project manager Mirna Grzelj; Prepress: Danko ?urašin and editor Drenislav Zeki?.”

If you would like to know more about this amazing book you can follow this link.

A boy aged 17 has been arrested for stealing virtual furniture costing around £2,840 from the online flash based isometric pixel game, Habbo Hotel. 5 Other teenagers have also been questioned about the stolen items

They created fake websites which would lure people into giving their login details once they have acquired these they would then simply clear out the account leaving the player with nothing.

This is the first time that someone has been arrested for this type of crime, they deemed it necessary to take legal action because of the rising number of websites which have been set up to do just this and because people pay real money for the furniture.

Sony is making the most of the current Wii shortage by cutting the price of the PS3. In one week it has managed to sell over 100,000 units.

Mr Stringer said the increase in sales of the console was “the breakthrough we have been anticipating.” He added: “Obviously, we’ve taken so much heat over the year on PS3. Finally, the turning point has been passed.”

More can be found here.

Jing is a project set up by the TechSmith Corporation that allows you to record high quality footage from your desktop

I’ve had a little go with this and it seems very nice, the quality is excellent and you have the ability to commentate in real-time as you are recording which is a nice feature. When you are finished you can either save it as a .SWF or share it, which will upload it to screencast.com, you will need a screencast account but it will give you the option to sign up for one when you install the software.

When you do install the software it will automatically download .NET 3.0 framework if you haven’t got it.

Overall it is a nice piece of software which is very easy to use gives a high quality finish and is user-friendly.

You can find the Jing project here.

British retailers are worried that there might not be enough Wiis for everyone this Christmas. In the past few months there has been such a high demand for the console that retailers are struggling to keep up with the orders. A website has been set up so you can check and see if shops have them in stock. You can find the website here. This has lead to Nintendo increasing their yearly shipments from 14Milion to 17Million a year.

“The demand for Wii hardware globally has been unprecedented and higher than Nintendo could ever have anticipated,” said a spokeswoman. “Nintendo is now in a position in which seasonality demand trends are being broken, therefore the demand for Wii hardware is constant throughout the whole year globally. Due to this phenomenon it is possible that the demand for Wii hardware may outstrip supply,” she said.

It’s nice to see the Wii selling better than expected and continually selling at such high volumes throughout the year. It seems that Nintendo’s gamble for producing a truly next gen console has paid off.

You can read more about this story here.

There is a new helmet for British pilot which is currently in testing which allows the pilot to see through their plane.  It works by a series of camera which are positions around the outside of the plane and that information is re-laid back to the helmet which from the pilots view will look like there is no plane at all!

The helmet will also have inferred sensors which will enable the pilot to look down and identify potential targets.

More can be found out about this amazing helmet here.

Tags: millitary, x-ray, helmet, pilots, british