Wow, well isn't it quiet around these parts!

Fair enough I reckon. There's been a fair bit happening IRL for most of us I'd say and prolly little to no time to dedicate to gaming (My steam rating dropped to 3 there at one stage *shock*).

For those of you on the ball you may have noticed that I've moved BiMonSciFiCon. I believe that I had already spoken to some of you about it. It's now the weekend of the 12th / 13th Sept due to family commitments. It should be shaping up for a good one as at this stage it'll be dedicated gaming hours. Promise this time ;-)

Others of you would also know that I've recently stepped up to Win 7 as my main OS. I'm currently running the 64bit release candidate to see if it meets the needs of my next PC. Yes, as Zyphire keeps ever so helpfully reminding me, I need to step it up. My machine is a bit of a dinosaur and once I can scrounge the cash together it'll be on like Donkey Kong! For those that want to give it a shot, you can download the RC from here ...
http://www.microsoft.com/australia/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Not recommended as your main OS as even if you plan to upgrade you'll need to perform a new install. Fairly warned I say ye be!

That's it from me for now. Hopefully we can organise some zombie bashing real soon! See you in the trenches.

Things have been a little quiet over the last two weeks around the traps. I haven't seen any exemplary performances from anyone. That's probably because I haven't been playing myself ;-)

That being the case there is no current player of the week :-(

This should just give you more incentive to get amongst it!

Wow! Just wow. What a weekend. Best BiMonSciFiCon ever. Yep I went there, and it was far from perfect.

It wasn't the solid 72hr gaming marathon that was "planned" (Planned is a relative term). We lost a few hours to dinner and I personally lost a few to helping Niall with his application but all in all there were some solid sessions including an excellent L4D vs. run through which ended very close.

More so I was actually surprised at the most popular game. I thought L4D was the shoe in for that prize but the dark horse out of the stable reigned Supreme. Oh yeah baby! Papa's got a brand new toy ;-) Supreme Commander that is! AB-SO-LOOT-LEE EPIC games that ensured that had raging sacred robots, spiderbots and the mofo of a mobile command factory! There were a few victories snatched from within the grasp of the more powerful sides and it reinforced our worshipping of the gaming lord SAKE. I can't tell you how many times I heard the phrase FFS bantered about in the course of those games :-D Suffice to say the fun rating was at least a 10.
Inspired by the table top game of the same name, Blood Bowl proved a solid B side distraction as did Half Life 2. TF2 got a little playtime as did Solitaire (WTF Vader???).

What was done well
* Everyone had working PC's that are capable of running most of the games we like to play together. Loving the monitors boys ;-)
* We had the space to setup and play without having to trip over each other
* Offsiters were welcomed and well involved
* We actually had access to games we could play together so no one felt left out of the mix
* Supplies were plentiful

Things that could be improved
* F*(king OPT ARSE! Internetz being on the fritz proved to be a showstopper there for day time play. Technician came yesterday and has replaced the cable modem to fix. Hopefully @ no charge ;-)
* Less distractions during game play. Sorry guys! My bad. Sadly it couldn't be avoided as Niall had a dead line that he has to meet and there's 3/5ths SFA time to get it done!
* How cold is the house? Damn man! Even with all the PC's blaring and heaters going my place during winter is an ice box. Mental note for next year. Let's have the winter BiMon somewhere warmer.

The next BiMonSciFiCon has been pencilled in for the 6th / 7th / 8th of September. It has been added to the events page. For those that missed it, it will be a THREE day event as was the last. Post your availability in events.
Anywho, I hand it over to you now. Thoughts / comments / bragging / whinging all accepted!

Sergent Spiderbot signing out :-D

It's been an interesting two weeks in the scheme of things. First up I'd like to acknowledge all the people that have thus far helped me test the server for next week. Unfortunately it has been putting a (small) dent in your stats. Another positive thing is that we've all had a game in the past two weeks. Sensational work lads!

Name                      IK/G   SD/G   ITR    TMR/G   RBTM/G   BR    BRW
-=NØ1=- Castro    262     28      9.37   0.45      1.73      3.84    7.57
-=NØ1=- HexBolt    90     36      2.5     0.18      1.64      9.11    15.78
-=NØ1=- MaFly      172     36     4.79   0.66      1.83      2.77    3.59
-=NØ1=- Vader      113     54     2.09   0.35      1.09      3.11    2.98
Nega-Scythe            53      9      5.84   0.38       1.00      2.63    3.27
Zyphire                    67     30      2.23   0.42      0.83      1.98    1.63
jaseinthehouse       159     62     2.57   0.29      1.00      3.45    5.43

Just quickly again the headings are Infected Killed/Game, Survivor Damage/Game, Itchy Trigger Ratio, Team Mates revivied, Revived By Team Mates, Burden Ratio, Burden Ratio with Weighting.

Movers & shakers this period: Hexbolt has managed to lower his BRW by a whopping 40% and Jaseinthehouse similarly HALVED his. Gratz gents that's massive! Zyphire has put a massive effort into picking up his fallen comrades managing 29 revivals which has lopped his BRW from 2.45 to 1.63! Well done mate. Vader stopped being a ♥♥♥♥♥ and managed to lower his BRW by not needing to be protected by his team mates so much. MaFly's BRW went up :-( Mostly because I'm not reviving as many team mates. Partialy due to Zyphire but just as likely due to the BIG RED F&*KING TARGET someone painted on my back!

FOR SHAME! Not a single one of us improved out itchy trigger finger. Only Jaseinthehouse and myself managed to improve our survivor damage and just Zyphire and Nega managed to improve their infected kills. With that in mind I offer these simple tips. Always stand BEHIND Vader. You're better off watching his back than him yours. You're either brave or stupid if you stand next to Mafly as I tend to attract special infected like I've shampooed my hair with choc sauce and sprinkled 100's & 1000's on top. If Zyphire suggests you should do something, like, um, Stand in a corner, then maybe you should stand in the corner. His expertise with the game speaks for itself.

And that's it from me. You won't see me out cleansing the infection next week. That's right, i'm giving it up for lent in order to build anticipation for BiMonSciFiCon next week. It's going to be a massive weekend and I don't want to be over the game before the fun starts ;-) TF2 will also be lucky to get a run next week. Prolly just enough to keep up the skills.
So far I know that Zyphire & Vader are confirmed to be on site for most of the weekend. Castro has registered his interest for the Friday night & up until about lunchtime Saturday IIRC. Depending on off site interest (At least two more) we either play thru the campaigns or do two versus run thrus. Keep in mind that a versus run thru normally takes ~1½ - 2hrs however if we start early enough we may even squeeze in something else ;-)

That's it from me lads, keep that noisy end of the boom stick pointed at the bad guys!

Let's kick some tires and light some fires lads.

In the course of last nights server test i think we found the limit of the connection more than the box. Mind you this is something yet to be tested and prolly can't do that now before the main event.

The main event being less than two weeks away. Anywho I thought it would be interesting to speed test the line to get some metrics on how good / bad the connection is.

Follow the link below to test your own line speed and post a comment with the result.
http://www.ozspeedtest.com/bandwidth-test/

Now before this sinks into a ♥♥♥♥ measuring contest (I'm looking @ you Vader) this should be seen as an opportunity to benchmark and analyse the ... oh WTF am I talking about it's a ♥♥♥♥ measurement thing.