But before that I will answer Flame's question: The emblem is already given out, but the chance to get it is over. You had to participate in Scavenator back in septemeber 2007.

So yep, today I had my first day of formation, which means we didn't test any games yet. Today I basicaly got paid (yep, paid formation) to walk around the place, see where the things were and how it was and to talk and read on internet. I will explain how my day went, but without giving much details since I am in the impossibility to divulg any information concerning any projects, insides, etc. sadly for you, because I'm pretty damn excited about the little of what I saw over there.

Anyway, wednesday, I went to bed at 10:30PM. Quite a change from my usual 2AM sleep you may think, but I honestly didn't sleep at all. Almost. I slept a big 2 hours if even so. I went to bed at 10:30, at 11:30 I smoked a cig because I still couldn't sleep. At 12:30AM I finished my ongoing mission in Metal Gear Ac!d and then at 1AM I went to bed once again, finding no sleep up until around 3AM. I got up at 5:30 by the way. Now, I'm only 5 minutes away from the job by car (if it's even 5 minutes), I start at 8AM, so why did I get up at 5:30? Because I like having the time to relax, gently wake up and have a couple of coffees.

Anyway, 7AM, I start my car since I need to heat up my old ass '89 Toyota Tercel, and winter holds a grude against my car, and my car holds a grudge against me. See that: All ready, got my stuff, 7:25 I go to my car.. the engine had stoped. Of course, it had to be today. But I simply took the key out, retried and it started, had to wait a few minutes before actually leaving.

I'm on my way now, got there around 7:35 (yep, it's that close to where I live) so I get there, find a parking, and chill with the other new guys. Before entering the big two doors leading to the inside, we went in a little room where we signed alot of papers concerning a law about divulgation and leaking of information, what we couldn't bring past the two doors, etc and etc.

Anyway, finally past them doors which are secured, we walked inside. Many testing rooms awaited us, we visited only one of them as we were not allowed to the other rooms, much like we are not allowed anywhere but our assigned testing room and the gaming room/cafeteria on our breaks. I knew this stuff was highly confidential, but much more than I ever thought. I could tell you alot of things that would make you afraid to try to break into a testing center if you didn't work there, but I won't, just in case lol.

Anyway, our formation mainly consisted of having us visit the place, get to know where we could go, what we had to do, how things would get done. What I really liked is that respect is probably the biggest thing around there. Don't even try to make a not-so good joke about something that isn't really funny, cause you'll get kicked out quite rapidly. The ambiance of the people otherwise looked familiar to the movie Grandma's Boy, where everyone is overexcited and overlyfriendly lol. Which is pretty cool.

Anyway, we learned how they work over there and the specifications of our job. and we had to take yet another test which is rather easy if you ask me, but hey, that's cool with me. They even gave me a coffee mug with their logo on it. I loved seeing the coffee machines, I need them.

Overall, testing games is about 10 000 times more complicated than we all ever could think of unless you did it before, but once you know what to do it's probably quite easy. Much like any job, once you learn it, you get the hang of it. Tomorrow we're learning some more stuff and we will learn how they report the bugs and everything, therefore tomorrow is THE day where the real training will start.

Overall that's about it for now, I did see projects I never thought would be here, where I live. That's just amazing. But of course there are of every genre of games. I won't say more than this about it.

I would say so much more about it but I can't, unfortunately. If only you knew how tightly secured and confidential all of this is, you'd understand why I can't say more, even if it's about the industry itself without giving names. All I said probably is around the absolute maximum I can tell. Plus, I wouldn't want to ruin our gaming hobbie! So tell ya this, one day you'll play a game and while you don't know it, in my head I might be like "man..if you knew the number of bugs I had to report in that game" lol. I probably could talk about already released games that got tested here, but I'm still just too unsure about it. I'll get more info as it goes on and hopefully, if I'm lucky, I'll be permanent and have that job for a long time, if everything goes well and I don't suck at testing too much.

Let's start off with the job. As you probably know, I was accepted at Enzyme to become a video game tester and was put on hold until the new project arrives. Well people, it is the time! I just received a phone call and I start my formation this thursday from 8AM to 4PM. Hell yeah! I'm so damn excited! I can't wait to start working there, not only is this a job I've been seeking for a long time, but also because I'm pretty sick of being broke, expecially with God of War: Chains of Olympus coming out, without counting the countless PS3 and PSP games that I want that are already out. I hope everything will go fine and that I will eventually become permanent over there, but if not, hey, at least I will have seen what it's like and made some money out of it.

Second part of the blog goes to my new emblem which made my last row completly filled. I don't know when I will start a new row. I probably would have gotten an emblem for watching GDC, but unfortunately the live event wouldn't load AT ALL for me, on both days; nothing. I was actually really pissed at GameSpot for that and still am, but what can do? Not much. Anyway, my new emblem is the one for Scavenator in september '07, which was a while ago, but the emblem kinda got in late and back then it also was rumored to be canceled, but was clarified in the GameSpot Emblem's Union that it would come..just later than we would expect it. Well..this is much more later than I expected because I had even entirely forgotten about this emblem. Anyway, in my opinion it's probably my best looking emblem to date and I am very proud of it.

What does this button do?
Bearers of this emblem managed to complete the Scavenator session of September '07 with some impressive times. Live long and scavenate!

It is now downloadable at the PlayStation Store for North America! HELL YEAH! I've waited ever since God of War 2 for this day, let me tell you that I didn't waste one second to go download this demo.

It is absolutly, totally, God of War! They did a very good job for the controls and the gameplay, the brutality, the scenes, everything is purely, entirely God of War. It is the most amazing demo I have played ever since..ever since..none!

To anyone who likes God of War, has a PSP and feels like creating an account on the PlayStation store, what are you waiting for!?

I'll probably play that demo hundreds of times over and over for sure. Oh yeah and the demo is a whoopin 163MB, so I hope you bought something bigger than the cheap 32MB memory stick that comes with the PSP. My demo sits right there next to few other demos on my 2GB memory stick, so I'll be fine. It isn't the biggest demo I've seen (which the biggest I've seen was over 400MB), but still is a chunk of space if you're low on free-space.

EDIT: I just replayed it AGAIN and..WOW IT'S AMAZING! Next thing you know I'll ditch all of my currently playing list and start God of War on PS2 again lol.Which reminds me that I really gotta continue playing what's on that list, it's been there for ages because I don't play them! Xept for Metal Gear Ac!d which I recently started from the beginning again because I had lost track of it's story.

Back when Blu-Ray was announced, I always told people that HD-DVD would die. Many did not believe, making references to VHS and BETA or whatever it was back then on tapes, before DVD's came to life. I had alot of reasons to believe so, but I'm not here to discuss my reasons.

I am honestly happy that this war came to an end. Whoever would have won, I wouldn't of cared anyway. It's just nice to see Blu-Ray win because of the PlayStation 3. Hey, if BR would have lost, imagine just what the PS3 would have been then. I do want to see the PS3 live, since out of the now current-gen consoles, it definately is my favorite with the games that suits my tastes the best. But that's entirely on a personal choice. I still have to grab one that being said, but without a job as of now I can't. Hopefully the new project comes in soon so I can start working at my new job and buy it one day..at least in time for Metal Gear Solid 4 and God of War 3.

All of this to point out one thing: Alot of people on GameSpot are being lame right now. Have you checked the news about Toshiba dropping HD-DVD? Everyone (mostly MS fanboys) were all backing HD-DVD and bla bla bla and what not, and now that Blu-Ray as won, suddenly all these same people say that they don't care about high definition movies and that they never cared and that they stick with normal DVDs anyway. What the hell? And now the Sony fanboys are bashing on everyone else for it. Dude what the f**k?

I mean yeah, I prefered Blu-Ray from what I've seen and learned on the format, but if HD-DVD would have won..would I suddenly be like "OMG HI DEF IZNT WORT ANYTIN RGL DVD FTW I NEVR CARED FO HD DEWD"? No. Am I bashing everyone because Blu-Ray won? Neither. I'm just glad that this war came to an end and that the winning HD format will remain the only one of them. We don't need two different HD formats to complicate everything, just one is fine. The transition for humans from regular tv to HD tv will be smoother with only one format, rather than two.

It's just a great feeling knowing you were right all along lol.

Which was auctioned off eBay by a good and long time friend of mine! She knew I always wanted that CD, but it is really hard to find and get a hold of, even on eBay. The CD is Biledegradable by, of course, Bile. One of my favorite bands out there.

For those who do not know them (which wouldn't surprise me), they do some kind of what you could call Industrial/GrindCore/whatever else. I've always had respect for these guys, or mostly Krztoff, the lead singer of Bile because HE IS Bile. He goes in a studio, records every instruments by himself and when it comes down to making live performances, he gets up with his friends (from other bands usually) and they perform the songs live with him. He usually will grab the same people to play live which ended up being officially part of the band Bile. I don't know if he still records the same way as he used ot, but until their newest release (which has yet to be released actually) that's how Bile would be re-born album after album.

This music might not be suited for everyone though, as I know many people probably won't dig the sound of Bile. They also have had appearances in the movie StrangeLand, where they perform the song "In League" live in the movie and also appear on its soundtrack. You can also hear them in the movie Mortal Kombat (forgot if it was the 1st or 2nd movie) and appear on its soundtrack as well.

For any curious people here, here is a link to their MySpace page and you can also vivist Bile's Official WebSite.

I somehow found myself regaining the emblem with 2 butterflies instead of one. Now, ever since my last clean up, I went back down to only 1. So until my next clean-up I'll have two butterflies!

Smashing good company.
Convivial members of the community are friends to many others--no doubt, many others who are every bit as convivial as themselves! Indeed, such fine company these chaps and gentle-women truly are! Their company is often desirable and often available, and, being such convivial sorts, they are always looking to broaden their horizons by meeting more and more friends, colleagues, and associates. Why, you'd certainly invite them over for tea if you liked tea and knew where they lived.

Guess what? I'm becoming a video game tester! Yes! Now, I went for an interview wednesday, which I didn't tell anyone as I wanted to keep the big surprise if I was chosen for the team. And right now I just got a call, I sucessfully passed the tests they gave me and I am now going to be part of their team.

As with usual jobs, I've got a 3 month evaluation period, which thereafter I will know if I am permanent or not. Hopefully, these 3 months will go smoothly and well. So that's my big news!

And for those who haven't read my last blog yet, you can still go see it simply Click here for the review of Castlevania: DXC for the PSP.

... Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles review! Now, usually, I wouldn't post a blog about a new review. But back when Ron was around, he was so looking forward to this one that I was going to blog it for him, and in all respects, this is why I decide to blog this review tonight.

Now for those who don't like reading, good luck on getting through that review. It took a whole 5 pages and a half in OpenOffice (same as Microsoft Word, but for Linux, better and free.) and well that sure is alot. I actually don't expect people to actually read it, but rather scroll down and give a thumbs down for the review being that damn long, but hey, do I care about that? Nah. Those who feel like reading it, feel free to do so. Those who feel like giving a thumbs up, feel free to do so. And those who feel like kicking it back, chill on their couch and forget this post, feel free to do so.

Click here for the review of Castlevania: DXC for the PSP.

So that's my new emblem. Congrats to my own self for actually remembering to tune in for that show :]

Yep! I now officially have a Dual-Boot enabled laptop with both Linux FreeSpire distro and Windows XP.

At first, when I'd look at tutorials on how to Dual-Boot a computer, I thought it looked soooo complicated but it really isn't.

First of all I formatted my computer back to the factory settings, which anyway, my XP was filled with errors (thanks to my experimentations with all sorts of stuff lol) and it got rid of them. I made sure to backup everything I didn't want to lose. XP, by Microsoft and their illegal monopoly, of course wanted to use my entire damn harddrive. So I had to shrink it's partition down to make some space. I made Win XP work on a 20GB partition and kept the other 55GB (1GB in all of that is a partition for QuickPlay) for my Linux distro. It really wasn't all that hard.

• Formatted back to factory settings.
• Deleted my PC Recovery Partition of 10GB, anyway I have PC Recovery Discs which makes the same thing without taking up a chunk of space.
• Defragmented XP just to make sure resizing it's partition (which never hesitated in taking over the 10GB of freed space from the recovery partition without my agreement) wouldn't mess it up.
• Started my freshly burned System Rescue CD with Gparted; a partition manager.
• Shrinked XP 75GB+ down to 20GB.
• Applied settings and rebooted XP so it can run a consistency check on it's drive.
• Started Linux Ubuntu, made a SWAP partition along with a new 55GB+ partition for the distro itself.
• Installed it there, got tired of messing around with Ubuntu (it is very far from being as "user-friendly" as they claim) so installed FreeSpire over it.
• Now running wild on FreeSpire, which I currently am on.

Woo. This is just great. Now whenever I power up my computer I can choose whether to boot into FreeSpire or boot into XP. I kept XP for a few reasons only; MSN, because me and my ex just love to play them MSN games together and the best MSN clone for Linux doesn't support the same games, therefore we couldn't play them anymore and also for Sony Acid Pro, which I use to make my music. Well, Acid Pro until I'm done with all I want for my music, which after that I'll look into a new professional music workstation that will run under Linux and XP will be down to be used for MSN only, unless aMSN ends up supporting the same games as the real MSN. I'll also keep it for anyone wanting to use my laptop since I know nobody around me that actually likes Linux, or so they say even when they never tried it.

So as soon as I get everything configured to my liking and all, I'll start being active again, like I used to, especially for the PC Wallpaper Depot.