»17th April 2005

B.1.1.2

Things which have been fucking me insane today:

1. Steam



Steam must surely be the single most poorly implemented piece of enforced software ever, perhaps even the single most poorly implemented piece of software period. I have been accessing Steam on an almost daily basis for a month, why in that time could it not have copied the necesssary files to my hard-drive so I wouldn't be faced with this fucking problem!? If Valve are going to put an offline mode into Steam, why won't they implement is properly? Why do Valve suck so bad and so hard all the fucking time?
This means that yet again I will have to unplug everything, strip down the PC case of unecessary weight and cart it all the way back to heckmondwike in the fucking red case which breaks my fucking arm.
I wish Valve all had one big neck, so I could strangle the life out of all of them, all at once.

2. PC Gamer

"You heard it here first, in a surprising turn of events Valve's announced that they are working at a follow-up actually finishing Half Life 2 which, you guessed it, heralds a new era in video games and is the dawn of a new age of radical and inspired new ways to take gaming to the next level of human perception. A Valve spokesperson said 'We want to take games to a new level. We've been in talks but nothing is set in stone at the moment' when asked if they were working with Jesus on the next installment of the popular first person shooter."

I'm not sure how familiar you are with the term 'cock-riders', but the PC Gamer staff are a great example. I could forgive them for not bothering to actually review HL2 properly but I really can't tolerate much more of their annoying style of journalism. They started off the preview of the HL2 expansion by explaining that as games developers actually get good at developing a game then they drop all the work and move onto the next project, programmes made for making levels for one game have to be re-written for the next project and so on. That's a real crying shame, maybe we should just have let Valve get even better at making Half Life 1 levels so they wouldn't have to go to ALL THE EFFORT of making a new game. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking there aren't any transferrable skills in making games, I mean do you have to learn C++ from scratch every time you programme something? I can't believe PC Gamer actually fell for, or even worse, support the flagrant corporate bullshit at work there. It's a fucking update for a game, a level pack. A few new features, one or two new weapons and enemies and Valve are all of a sudden re-writing the rulebook, reinventing the wheel... again. The best bit is, Valve are only releasing this update over steam (see point 1). It REALLY is a move to revolutionise the video game industry by releasing this add-on over Steam only. Not just a way to prop up their stupid shitware or to keep EVIL VIVENDI'S grubby hands of all the cash. After all, we want to see all the money going straight in to Valve's back pockets, so they can make better games and shaft everyone who wants to play them right?
I must be missing something. If Valve want to make lots of money why do they fuck people who don't have an internet connection, even if they are in a minority? I mean come on, doesn't everyone have a T3 connection now? It's not like it takes ages to download all the fucking updates when you first install Half-Life 2 right?

3. Cables



Why don't they make wireless speakers?

4. Uni Diet



Say no more.


Extar, over, out.

TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!