A few days ago, I got my results. Since I live in Queensland, we work on the OP system, which goes from a high of 1 to a low of 25.

My top 2 preferences for university are:

University of Queensland: Bachelor of Engineering/Business Management

Queensland University of Technology: Bachelor of Engineering/Business

Basically the same thing. The former had an OP 8 cutoff this year and QUT had an 11. I picked up a 9, so there's a chance I'll get UQ and a most definite for QUT. Looks like my schooling worked out fine, despite my chronic procrastination up until the last term :)

Right now I have a lot of time on my hands and still need to find a job. Despite the joblessness, I've played less games than I would normally...

At some point this week, I installed new drivers for my 8800GT, which was all fine until my computer crashed about an hour later playing L4D2. Since then, it would crash 10 minutes into a game, prompting experimentation with drivers and such for quite some time. Today, I decided to check if the video card had died, so I installed my old 8400GS. Turns out everything works fine with it in there.

One problem.

Most of my newer games hardly play properly now. I can manage about 20fps in L4D2 at 800x600 with medium settings, when I used to get 60+fps at 1680x1050 with high settings with AA :P

So yeah, a pretty big difference. I'm looking at replacing it with a HD4850, which would be a bit better at a low-ish cost. Not much else to say on this except I can't play L4D2 or Modern Warfare 2 on decent framerates now :(

In gaming related news, I've been getting through Assassin's Creed II, and it is a really enjoyable game. I've found that when thieves follow you, they sort of fall in the water a lot if you're on rooftops, but aside from stupid AI at times, it's really quite good.

Alright, so a week ago, my monitor started going through spells of being fine to a blue-ish tint. Today it hasn't come back yet, so I should assume it's not going to get better. Either it's a cable problem or the red in the monitor does not display properly. My bet goes to option 2.

Not sure how long I can stand this. Red comes up as black and the display just looks strange overall. Might as well get a monitor with HDMI so I can use the PS3 on it instead of waiting for the TV to be free, which is a stretch since the rest of my family (mostly my dad) puts movies on quite a lot (I suppose we get our money's worth on DVDs? Some get watched over 5 times in 3 months).

Anyway, this kinda sucks because I've been saving for games, not more PC hardware :(

Update: I was wrong; the problem was the cables. I found a DVI cable in a box of cables which replaces my D-Sub + DVI converter and it actually looks a touch better than before. Woot!

I'm on school holidays right now and I needed something to do to eat up some of the free time I now have. So, I decided to try my hand at Java! Right now I don't really get much of it, though I've gone the customary route and done a "Hello World!" applet. At the moment, it cuts off a bit at the top, but I'm not going to spend hours figuring out why. I think it has something to do with awt and how it positions stuff.

In other news, I played a little bit of Resistance 2 today on the "Difficult" difficulty. It gets pretty cheap at times and I came to realise I'll probably never plat the game (how did I not realise this a while ago?) due to the online trophies. I think I'll fool around with Ratchet & Clank and something else until Uncharted 2 comes out.

Anyone who has done a bit of Java, could they lead me to any decent tutorials that you may have used in the past?

Note that this is for systems that I own, which means Xbox 360 and PSP exclusive games will not make it here.

1. Heavy Rain (PS3)

This game looks phenomenal. I'm not in this for the gameplay or the graphics, but for the story. An interactive movie with multiple endings and choices makes for an extremely replayable game. The characters have some depth to them from what I've seen (I can't claim that they are very deep characters until I play the game) and the trailer for Ethan Mars at Gamescom reminded me of how much I'd anticipated this game.

2. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)

I loved the first one. The second one looks better in all respects and I really want to play this game. Supernatural stuff might stay out of it this time around (confirm this?) and it looks like it has some solid multiplayer. I can't see much that will be a dealbreaker, so I'll probably pre-order this later on.

3. Half-Life 2: Episode Three (PC, X360)

After playing through Episode Two six months after the Orange Box was released, I immediately checked to see if Episode Three had a release date. Not knowing Valve's procedure of taking their time, I expected Ep3 to be out by now. I have high expectations for this game after the ending to Episode Two, so I will wait until Valve decide it is good enough to release. I'll be grabbing this on the PC.

4. Rage (PC, PS3, X360)

Not many details on the game, so I checked it out and its looking great so far. If I get it, it'll be on the PC.

5. Gran Turismo 5 (PS3)

I like racing sims. Gran Turismo 5 has a lot of cars and a lot of tracks. After playing Prologue, I knew I would get GT5 when it comes out and it should provide many hours of entertainment.

So there's my top 5. I'll probably be getting games such as Crysis 2, Battlefield 3, Assassin's Creed II, Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time, the next Zelda, Mario Galaxy 2 and God of War III as well.

If you wouldn't mind commenting, please list your top 5. I appreciate it.

Have a nice day.

Okay, this my first blog about my personal life. Anyway about a week ago my mid-year report came back with some okay grades - not great, but not that bad either. I got a B plus, three B minuses and two C pluses

So, in order of highest to lowest:

Accounting: B+

Ancient History: B-

IPT: B- (Should probably be higher)

Maths B: B-

Physics: C+

English: C+

What am I planning to do with these grades? Hopefully get into an engineering course, which has a minimum OP (Queensland) of around 12-14. I'm wishing that what I've done is enough to get into what I want even if I barely scrape in. Maybe I'm being a little paranoid but maybe I'm not.

Anyway, if anyone knows anything about engineering, what course do you think is best and why? I'm thinking about doing electrical engineering at QUT at the moment but I'm also open to other suggestions.

If this blog was interesting at all, it's probably losing its welcome, so I'll just end it here.

Hope you all having a good time at the moment.

I found this year's E3 was pretty good. The press conferences all had good stuff to show and in my opinion, Sony's was the best of the three.

Sony showed a lot of PS3 stuff including Uncharted 2, MAG, God of War III and ModNation Racers. They also announced Agent and showed a bit of Final Fantasy XXIV. I'm sure FF14 will be exciting for a lot of people but I'm not really into it. Also happy that MGS: Rising is on PC, PS3 and 360 instead of just one system. Footage of Assassin's Creed 2 and the new PSEye motion controllers was awesome as well.

Microsoft also had some cool stuff. There's the new Halo's which I won't be following since I'm not a fan, Splinter Cell looks pretty awesome, as does Alan Wake. Both of those are also on the PC if I remember correctly, so I might check them out. Gameplay footage of Modern Warfare 2 looks amazing. Natal looks good, but I'm not sure how much it'll improve since dev kits are already going out. To be honest, I don't really buy it. It looks fun, but limited in that it goes for the hands-free approach, which makes it look like going into Wii-minigame competition rather than competing with what could be a great addon for the PS3. Don't call me a fanboy - I prefer my PC over any console any day.

Nintendo perhaps had some of the best reveals. It's good to see a new SMB and news that a Wii Zelda will come out as well asSMG2 and Metriod: The Other. I might actually start getting some Wii games late this year/next year. I don't have much to say about it since it's the one I didn't watch.

EDIT: Forgot a couple of Nintendo games /facepalm

Picked up inFamous from JB and got my t-shirt and Blades code. The only problem was that they write the pre-orders into a book and then enter those into a database of some sort. Murphy's Law strikes and they didn't ring or when I went down there, my name wasn't in the DB. So I got them to check in their book and after a while they found it. I was kind of annoyed that they would take so long or even mess up the entries. Luckily inFamous is really good!

I like pretty much everything about the game. The platforming is solid - sometimes messes up but you don't die when you hit the ground unless there's water. The karma system is good, it goes on selfless or selfish rather than good or evil. The attacks are cool and the electricity idea in a modern city works extremely well. I haven't played it very long, but I can tell I'll play through it at least twice and hopefully get my Platinum trophy after 2 playthroughs.

I'd give inFamous 9.1/10.

Now that I have a PS3, I can look at a wider variety of games which aren't on the PC. A category that I haven't played much ever is the sandbox type. Now, I heard about Prototype when it was announced and the concept really excited me which hasn't happened much at all.

Prototype was promised to have a co-op mode, which had 2 players on splitscreen (I think) play together, which is what initially made me look forward to this game. Obviously this idea was dropped and I wasn't too happy about it, but it still looked like a great game.

Then I found out about InFamous. I thought about getting one of them and different trailers kept changing my mind, so I decided to get both. Prototype looks like you'll be a complete badass while InFamous looks like you can help you and your friends or the city as a whole. Based on that, evil is for being a bit selfish for a lack of better words, good being helping the people as a whole. Note that's based on what I know and it won't necessarily be right.

So. Sandbox games. Run around and kill some stuff for as long as you want. Most of my gaming time has been spent on RTS's and FPS's, which is kind of typical. Recently I've played some fighting in SFIV, platforming in LBP and some stealth in MGS4 and I'll be playing Assassin's Creed again soon. Now I'll be checking out sandbox in these two games, which look really good.

This blog kind of turned into a comparison of InFamous and Prototype, but its now kind of on sandbox games in general. Anyone reading this: Will you be getting none, one or both of these games? Why? Has anyone else almost exclusively played one genre in general?

FYI: Prototype comes out 10 June this year in Australia and InFamous comes out on the 11th. I'll be picking them up on the 11th. Hopefully I plat them both. I'm in desperate need of trophies :lol:

So I got UT3 from Steam on request of a friend who wanted to play with me. It's a good game, but the hosting is messed up and I can't join his games, meaning it sucks to be us.

Recently some mods have come out for it including a UT2004 mutator pack which gives you the speed and jump height of 2004, which is a ton better than UT3's default stuff. Having your screen bob down after landing a jump gets irritating because of the natural speed of this game.

Guns are nice and haven't changed, something I approve of. If something isn't broken, don't bloody fix it - something I like about the PS3 controllers.

Haven't played UT3 much as of yet, but it sticks to its formula and I still need to check out the new stuff.

Also playing LittleBigPlanet, trying to get some trophies while having some fun on the challenges. I firstly thought the challenges were little kiddy minigames, but some of this stuff is really cool! One challenge I played today involved collecting point bubbles while getting launched in the air by... meerkat things(?). After a few seconds, some fire starts to scroll across on the lower level and you maneuver around them.

Prototype has its first cinematic trailer launched. Looks really awesome: check it out here (youtube). Seriously man, this game is my number one for this year (EDIT: tied with inFAMOUS :P). For something original, this is it for me. It may not get the highest scores, but this definately gets me curious.

One more thing: I got my internet plan switched to a 25GB cable from a 12GB cap. Only negative is that its slower by about half to 8000/128. This doesn't worry me much, because 12GB would make me be careful about my usage. Also, I think our contract runs out in a few months, so that would probably be time to switch to Internode or somewhere else with ADSL2+.

Any comments would be awesome, particularly for ISP recommendations. Also, what's the government's national broadband plan going to run on? Would it be existing cable, which I have or a new type of cable?