I bought a Xbox. I bought a Xbox and Halo. I bought a Xbox, Halo, and the Xbox dvd controller. Oh yeah I got the Xbox that includes the two sega games. Two games that will never enter my Xbox.Two games I sure as shit wouldn’t have wasted my hard earned money on. JSRF Jet Set Radio Future and SEGA GT 2002 are the kind of games I really don’t like. I don’t like racing games. JSRF is the kind of console style game that makes my head hurt.

Halo is quite good. I was worried about it. I was worried about the whole using a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse. Me and FPS on consoles usually don’t get along. I’m not having that problem with Halo. Halo’s controls just work. Sure I need some practice with the sniper rifle, other than that it just works.

With the Xbox I have upgraded dvd playback. My poor old PS2 was just not doing it. All the dvd’s that had problems with the PS2 work fine on the Xbox. And I have zoom now. The Xbox will also rip audio cd’s onto it’s hard drive. How cool is that?

If this site is lacking in updates it can be blamed on Halo, Dark Age of Camelot, and the AOD guild site. Man I need more time.

Hegemonia is a game I picked up before x-mas. I bought solely because the guys at Penny Arcade said it was good. It’s a rts game in space. But it’s more. It’s a realtime version of games like Master Of Orion. Here 3 shot of it:

So you can see it has some decent graphics as well. It is a little deep for a rts, I’ve only played the first two levels. It may be a keeper.

Woot (as they say)! A guild-mate named Dirkgranite Signed the GuestBook. I just had the chance to die with the man and it’s a honor. Anyway here is his head swelling (mine) comments:

Dude – Your site rocks. Is it considered sarcasm when it’s true? Keep it up.

Sarcasm is always true. I don’t care what anyone says to the otherwise. Keep it up? Dirk I’ll never quit. Well as long as I work at the hotel, that is. The hotel is my muse.

So I’m playing with this same group now for a little while and I wonder if it’s a good thing to have them see this site. They will walk away from this place thinking I’m a fucking lunatic. Places of interest for my AOD brothers would be my thoughts on the game we all play and maybe the FAQ would help as well. It will help to remember that this is a strange place. You have to watch out for the weirdo’s that it attracts.

Yeah I’m letting my baby go to hell. Hotelblues.com hasn’t been updated since the 13th of this month. The AOD on the other hand, has been updated the last six days in a row. I haven’t forgotten about my main domain. I’m just trying to get the guild site in tip top shape. Take for example the whole browser compatibility thing. This drives me crazy. Before I go into my spiel. Upgrade your browser! If your using anything other than the current version, upgrade! The links down below take you to places to download the current version. Here are the AOD site in Internet Explorer (6.0), Netscape (7.0), and Opera (6.0) at 800×600:

IE and NS more or less show the same thing. NS will occasionally on first load have the left and right gif borders out of sync. Opera on the other hand doesn’t even show the side gif borders. I can’t figure it out. I have expended all of my know how just getting this far. I’m not giving up. I’m just making a strategic withdrawal on the idea. I have to go now and play Dark Age of Camelot.

Well I have taken the plunge and offered to do the website for the Dark Age of Camelot guild I’m in. The Acolytes Of Destruction is the name of the guild. The site can be found here. It’s a work in progress and my second actual try at this whole web design stuff. So that’s why I have been very quiet as of late.

The hardest part is getting the html to work with all the different browsers. I don’t really know html as good as I should, so I use FrontPage to make my pages. I have managed to get the guild site to play nice with Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Mozilla. Opera doesn’t like it and I can’t figure out why. I’m not going to lose sleep over it.

Well you should have known that I was going to throw up some shots of the Dark Age of Camelot expansion pack Shrouded Isles. There would have been four more but the servers were coming down. But don’t worry I will snap off some more later.

So far it’s not bad. I was a little worried when I saw the printed requirements on the box. The box recommends Pentium III 1.4 GHz processor and the preferred video card is a GeForce 4 Ti. I’m happy to report that it runs fine, even at my usual resolution of 1152×864.

The graphics upgrade is nice. But I feel that this should have been offered also as a free download. But hey what can you do? I have only briefly explored some of the new continent that Albion gets. I do dig the new interface. They also give you some options for adjusting sound and video settings without quiting to the menu. I will have more screen shots later. It’s time for bed, for me.

Well I got my disks for the Star Wars Galaxies beta. But I have yet been able to play. It appears they have the servers up only at certain times. So I’m waiting to see what it will be like.

I stopped playing Earth and Beyond. It was lots of fun at first. But after week it was boring. That’s ok. Because Dark Age of Camelot has it’s first expansion pack coming out today. Shrouded Isles is the name of the expansion pack. It will add more content and upgrade the graphics engine. It also is supposed to have a improved interface. But I hadn’t seen any released screens of it. So I did a search on Google and found one. It looks pretty slick.

I was going to wait to pick up the expansion, but I may have to go get it today.