blogger.richii.me

Wombats are cool

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 07:33:00 +0000

via Instagram http://instagr.am/p/LXPWmqgPnR/

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 04:18:00 +0000

via Instagram http://instagr.am/p/LW4w_egPtF/

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 04:18:00 +0000

via Instagram http://instagr.am/p/LW4bPhgPtA/

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 04:18:00 +0000

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noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 01:53:00 +0000

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Tidal River

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 01:36:00 +0000

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Don't move - I'm comfy.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Mon, 28 May 2012 23:05:00 +0000

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noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 07:48:00 +0000

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It's my laptop!

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:03:00 +0000

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First day of winter uniform

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:48:00 +0000

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noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 12:34:00 +0000

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Good phone reception up here!

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:27:00 +0000

Heading home!

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Thanks all for the birthday wishes - remember to support http://mycharitywater.org/richii2012

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 04:42:00 +0000

I'd just like to say a quick "thank you" to everyone who has sent birthday wishes today (wish I was in the same state as my family, but alas, not to be.

As a follow up I also want to remind everyone of the appeal to raise funds for clean water projects. You can donate at http://mycharitywater.org/richii2012 - every dollar helps!

Mini game review: Rise of Nightmares (Xbox360/Kinect)

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 04:36:00 +0000

We recently picked up an Xbox Kinect bundle so Brenda and Campbell could play Dance Central without having to deal with the dodgy full body motion tracking on the Wii. Great for them, but as I prefer my games with a little more blood I borrowed a copy of "Rise of Nightmares" from a friend.

RoM is a mystery/horror/zombie slasher type of game. The story seems okay: your girlfriend has been abducted from a train in fairly horrific circumstances, the train crashes, you have to survive and find her. As the game progresses you run across all sorts of reanimated and surgically enhanced corpses.

The big problem is the control mechanism. The developers decided to jump onto the Kinect bandwagon, but it feels very poorly implemented. To turn, you turn your shoulders. To walk forward, put your leg forward. To run, put your leg further forward. To interact with something, hold your hand over it. Simple, right?

The problem is it's actually very clumsy to actually play like this. Turning and moving would be much sinker with a controller. Having to wait with my hand out over a doorknob, waiting for an action icon, and then swiping to open the door is painful. All the gesture based controls do is pull me out of the game.

I think the best demonstration of how clumsy it feels to use is that the developers added an "auto move" function. Hold your hand up and you walk through to where you need to be. Simple, but it turns a free environment into an on-rails experience.

In conclusion, while the story appears to show some promise, I just can't get into it or recommend it. If you want to take out some zombies (and who doesn't?) hunt down "Dead Space" instead.

For my birthday, I want... clean water! Don't buy a present, donate at http://mycharitywater.org/richii2012

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 02:09:00 +0000

A few weeks back I stumbled over a link to a charity that builds out clean water projects all over the world, especially in developing nations. They had an interesting idea: donate your next birthday to raise funds.

My birthday is coming up. I've pretty much got everything I want. I don't need (or expect!) any gifts. But for anyone that was thinking about it, pop on over to http://mycharitywater.org/richii2012 and throw a few dollars into the clean-water well instead. They need water more than I need more stuff.

"Inbox" is not a verb.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 06:30:00 +0000

On this day five years ago: Flower girl @TheRealCambii steals the show at the wedding of @libarra77 and @TheFurryBuddha

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 12:36:00 +0000

@Logitech tech support doing my head in... I'm sure #Dogbert is charge.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 06:25:00 +0000

@posterous acquired by @twitter... I have a bad feeling about this

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:10:00 +0000

I've been using Posterous for quite some time now, and it's no great secret that I think the service is awesome - the ability to simply send an email, and have content seamlessly posted to a multitude of sites is amazing. I've convinced a bunch of other people that it's a good thing (including my mother, who now posts photos from all over the place via a 3G iPad!)

I read the announcement that they are "joining the team at Twitter" with more than a little trepidation.

It's not simply that Twitter has a terrible track record when it comes to acquiring another company, although that certainly comes into it. Rather, it's that Posterous has always been destination agnostic: For example, while Posterous will host my photos in their own nice little gallery, they will also upload them to my Flickr, Picasa and Facebook accounts in the background, and then announce the new albums on Twitter and Facebook. Will we really see this level of interoperability continue? It's hardly in Twitter's best interest to promote other social networks.

Don't get me wrong, I wish all at Team Posterous every success. I'm sure I would done the same thing in their position. It's just that, as a user of the service, I'm a little concerned that things are going to change, and not for the better. I would rather pay for a premium service from Posterous and have it remain independent.

An online survey on work computers that wants to "install some software to collect information". Right. Can't see any issues there.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Dear @ClucCOMUtils - fix these upload speeds!

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:47:00 +0000

Test result from just now:

I can live with the download speed; I really don't need it to be super fast, just reliable and not prone to congestion. However, nine months ago I used to get this:

Stability hasn't really improved, the service is still prone to congestion in the evenings and over weekends, and it's still really, really expensive.

The proudest new student council rep!

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 03:12:00 +0000

Okay, her parents are pretty damn proud as well!

See the full gallery on Posterous

Meet my newest friend: Cleo Pat-Her

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 10:26:00 +0000

See the full gallery on Posterous

Wonders will never cease: left on time, landed early!

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Stocks) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:55:00 +0000