Felicia and Morgan

Lab break in San Fran

As most of you know I went last weekend to the ASCB meeting in San Francisco.
My only other time where I went to such a big gathering of nerds was with Otakon, and I have to say I'm a bit disappointed at the ASCB people as I saw NO cosplay whatsoever. Otakon was way better on that front.

Anyways the trip started quite ok with a new and improved Indy airport.


there was a stop at Minnapolis where they had this amusing projector:



When I got to San Fran I was received by Stynky and Sis-in who took me to the Coit tower for a better view of San Fran... once we climbed a couple of stairs >.>




We also walk a lot around and saw ice skating, giant spiders, free bread etc. All in all, a good day. The best part was the great advice from Stynk, as he pointed out how close was the playstation store to the Moscone center :D
I did however had to restrain myself of going there the next day, as I had to be a salesman for ASCB in order to get my money back for registration (which I'm still waiting)
T-shirt selling was ok, I guess, a short visit from Chippy made it better.
Once I was done I went to gather as much free swag as possible, as always free stuff is nice yet it would've been niceR if I had won the Wii from the SABioscience seminar. After months of constantly buying their primers and staying at the moscone center till 8:30pm, I was betrayed by them as they handed the Wii to a random Berkeley student. GRRRRR
He probably already has one and will be selling this one on eBay GRRRRRR
Life is so unfair!.

So, no Wii, guess I'll spend most of the time at the Playstation store,
or the apple store,
or the lush store... erh... that one was only for a min though :P

Anyways gel is about to finish run, so other honorable mentions for the trip goes to Chippy and her taqueria tour in San Fran, Sis-in for the amazing soupand BDBioscience for my new poster tube.
I'll be uploading some pics where appropriately.

ASCB so far

Interesting... I think, I'm not sure though, the second day I'm here and...well.



I'm not at the moscone center, I'm at the apple store trying to make the most out of my stupid previous repair.
Long story short, I failed... obviously it was a loooooooooooong shot, but anyways, the SABioscience exhibition with a chance to win a Wii is at 6:15pm so it seems I can stay here a bit longer :P

P.S. EEWWWWWW the apple store wifi is slow >.> and I did not find the sony store... for now :D

Design of GOO

Posted on their blog.


Design Tour - World of Goo from David Rosen on Vimeo.

Probably you didn't watch the entire thing. But if you did, he forgot to mention the importance of "-the sign painter" .
It was a cute, hilarious mechanic to help you navigate and figure out the individual challenges.
Since I have no idea how to edit such good videos, just buy the game from their site and experience the wonderful GOO.

Post turkey day lag

Sadly I'm no longer blogging from cool Pennsylvania.


The days of good food, awesome people, new sightseeing are over :(
It was a very enjoyable vacation that started with a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong 8 hour ride there. It was probably more since Ohio decided to throw some traffic jams and see how we handle it, and once we overcame the Ohio challenge, Penn decided to snow on us.
However we made it, we passed the individual state tests and we made it in one piece and a car smelling like curly fries (better than starving).
I have a mixed up timing in my head for the specific activities for each day (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) so until the girl clarifies I'll give you a brief summary of the experiences in not the exact time table as they happen.

The Incline. A trip up the mountains that surround the rivers of Pittsburgh.

we later went to see a first glance of Pittsburgh downtown where we found an insane amount of ginger bread houses followed by contemplating ice skating people in hopes of some people falling.

Mad Mex with a meeting the Father who saved the day with his mighty phone GPS that got us back on track after a small detour. I miss my GPS :(
Anyways dinner was good, at least mine :P and I get to hear her sister random spanish sentences and his father tales of amazing camping.

Turkey day was at the mom's house with a twenty something pound turkey which I'm still eating, followed by a desert party at a Italian neighbor friend who made the most magnifiscent deserts and let me play with two cute puppies who work in tandem to be petted, as the smallest one stands on top of the bigger one so I can reach him :)

A visit to the zoo, zoo, zoo, how about you, you you.
Petable Kangaroos decided to not come out until global warming makes winter weather more like Australian summer. Guess I'll have to come another time. However the mesmerizing display of medusas was hypnotizing.


Melting Pot to meet family friends, who interestingly one of them seem a grown up version of still childish silly me.

And finally the trip back home. I think we made a good time as I was told to slow down several times :P

All was good, all is well, I can't wait to go back home and keep on working with the leftover.

overdue post of the WoW expansion launch

Just a picture taken at around 10pm the day of Wrath of the lich king release day.
Even though I was playing this a year ago, I would never go to the midnight event! Its too cold

OH wells.

In a brief update: I'm BLOGGING ON PENNSYLVANIA WOHOOO!
More news later on.

MAC Death Aftermath

So the mac is back, there were a few replacements "upgrades?" done and it is now working well but yeah... I'm not a good person with backups so all my info is gone, I'm also surprised the claim nothing was recoverable.
Sadly the backup of my pics are a lower resolution images on facebook, my pictures I had saved on yahoo where trashed when yahoo setup flickr >.< I only have the Canada trip saved on picassa.
What about work data you say?
I always keep all my work in Purdue's PCs. Even if I work on the mac I eventually transfer the final files to their PCs.

So in the end my life has changed as follow:
-My memories have been downgraded to lower resolution.
-I'll have to revisit libraries... for the audiobooks I lost.
-I have no longer KeyNote or Pages. (Open office here we go)
-On the next laptop I shall have extended warranty.
-I managed to steal them a new Startup Disk (or so they say it will eventually arrive).
and finally:
-I am debating what my next computer shall be. No matter the computer I should be backing up. If it was windows base I might have more resources to fix it myself, and if I can't I have more choices near by to fix it.
If it is Mac I will probably have to resort to mailing it, depending where I'll be, and instead of saying goodbye to my earnings on repairs I should say goodbye earlier on warranties. The Mac service was prompt and good yet it still bugs me that I couldn't fix it on sight... and the PRICE!! ,and my PCs never died so horribly (But this could be more of a desktop vs laptop issue).
Maybe I just have to learn more about Mac troubleshooting, cause it will eventually happen no matter what Stynky and their adds say.

Or should I go Linux? Problem is, there is even LESS games for that plataform :P

MAC IS DEAD

A normal afternoon, just browsing the web before the one to one meeting with my boss.
All is fine, until the rainbow circle of Mac stop-poking-me-let-me-think appeared.
5 minutes later the Mac stop responding at all, the option apple esc doesn't work to force Firefox to close.
10 minutes later I decide to force a shut down. After restart I see for the first time a Mac blue screen of death. Not the same as windows, it can not start, has a question mark in a folder telling me it can't find the hard drive to boot.

It won't boot from a cd.
It can not be recognized by other macs via firewire.

2 days later I have to call in for a repair box ... and I'll have to say good bye to over 300 something bucks.

UPDATE: 11-11-08 The box has come, and my MAC is on the way.
UPDATE 11-13-08 I've received my mac, smells like new but I have lost all my data. (I think I lost some audiobooks for sure, I never back up that >.<)

World of Goo

Recently I've been playing WORLD OF GOO. This little gem came to my attention after the escalation of the DRM issue in gaming. It lacks any DRM, and if you purchase it from their site you get access to windows and mac versions (Linux coming soon) without having to buy a game individually for each platform.

But I fell in love with it because of actual gameplay and atmosphere. If you see the video from their site you will have a feeling about the music, and how it feels as if you are in some Tim Burton type of world. Some how odd yet familiar and a little bit magical.
Gameplay is fairly simple. Link the Goo balls until you reach the exit pipe trying to get as many of them through it; a little reminiscent of lemmings.

I've been having a lot of fun, the music and level design always have me smiling (The sign painter who gives you hints is hilarious), it is a really amazing game and you should give it a try. It was developed by an independent group, has no official publisher, it is only $20 (granted is a really short game, but re playability is quite high) and you will make the world a much much better place if you get it. Trust me.

Sonic Team

Nope, not the developers of the Sonic games, but the main team from the genesis era carved in pumpkins!!!

That is right, I finally got into the tradition of pumpkin carving thanks to the lovely guidance and geeky encouragement from the girl.
She actually found this sonic, tails and knuckles patterns and by her mom's wise advise: An entire MASTER CARVING KIT.

Now we were quite aware that with our lack of experience, it was going to be quite a challenge, so we just bought one pumpkin and decided to get Sonic in it.
After a surprise messy start, we managed to clear a nice top, and tape the pattern into the pumpkin. With the help of the pounce wheel from the kit, we managed to pass a pretty clear image of Sonic, into the pumpkin's skin.

I know its barely visible, but trust me. There is a sonic face in that pumpkin.

After quite some work, and surprisingly ZERO CUTS (hello kitty band aid of mine was a prior misadventure) we managed to make quite an amazing job.
Our supervisor was so proud of our work, that we had to test it immediately. Problem was with such a bright day the only dark place we thought on testing it was...



I was so excited and motivated by this amazing first attempt, that decided on getting two extra pumpkins. One for Tails, one for knuckles. And so I went and bought... THREE pumpkins (It was decided she will now carve Hello Kitty).

This other two required quite a great deal of work, maybe cause of exchaustion, maybe cause of the need to finish before desperate housewives, maybe cause it was just not meant to be, the other two don't look as bright as the first one. However I think it was a very VERY good job, and thus I will displayed them proudly.



While I was carving these two new ones, and begging for her help on the peeling parts, she managed to carve an amazing Hello Kitty without any patterns, follow by cooking of pumpkin seeds, chicken soup, and watch entire episodes of scandalous TV.
Don't ask me how, she just manages to multi-task like no one I know, or will ever know.

I'm feeling lucky.

They saw death, I saw love

And I thought I was the one that had lost faith in human nature.

Anyways, we went to our Wedensday International movie night. This time I was so busy, I didn't had any chance to read anything about the movie before hand. But at the very beginning I knew it was going to be on my top list.

The movie was REPRISE. A movie about two upcoming writers in Norway.
I knew from the very beginning I would love it, as the narrator interrupted the flow of the movie to tell us what would've happen if...
The "what if" was so crazy exaggerated and unpredictable that remind me of Amelie's imagination. I loved it and the "what if" was a recurring theme, which at the end of the movie when people discussed it, it seem a common understanding to everyone that every happy "what if" was never real, and the sad darker ones were.

What bother me the most was a special scene where one of the protagonists comes up with a way to make sure his love interest will finally fall in love with him.
Later on in the movie he uses the same trick (at kind of bad times with not so happy conclusions) yet, it was always a reminder of me that THEY were in love, and that THEY always had this little secret to make sure the other person would fall in love for one and other.
But noooooooo, for everyone it meant death wish and suicide just because things were not working as flawlessly as we wish love was.
WHY? OH why was that the general understanding of it.
I was apparently the only one that exit that movie wishing to use that same trick, and tell my grandchildren how after all this time the trick kept working.

Am I the only one that still believes in Truth, Beauty but above all Love?

Go see the movie please, and tell me.

P.S. yeah, yeah, I took freedom off the Mouling Rouge reference, cause... well... Freedom doesn't come for free ;) (Bonus points for catching that last reference)

WTF?

I still have no idea whats the purpose of the above sticker. I just found it near a bus stop.
Reminiscent of our "Juan Valdez logo" but... what is it mocking? how? why?
Give me answers people.

Chocolo regains sight

I'm a terrible parent.
I grew accustom to Chocolo's condition, and carry one as usual not noticing his gloomy perspective on life:


However an amazing research scientist develop a synthetic eye, fully functional for him, and care for his surgery:














His recovery was a success:


and now with his sight back, he has thank the kind scientist that made it all possible, and started a new life with new friends:



LIFE IS SO MUCH BETTER KNOW.

SC II will be released over 3 years >.>

Starcraft II will be three games released hypothetically one/year. (read on IGN)
Advertise as following the dream of giving players choice, I know they just want to squeeze as much money from me as possible.
Well sorry Blizzard, I guess my RTS needs will be fulfilled by RA 3 until the last Protoss campaing of SC II comes out.

ITS COMING BACK!!!!!!

How come there is no official webstite?!?!
Another game to be added to the list of "If I had a Wii".

If you have an extra 30mins to remember the good old punch out days, here is an amazing youtube video:

The future should be IMPULSE

Penny arcade talks and jokes about SecuROM.
But as much as I like Steam, I prefer IMPULSE for the future digital distribution.

Now go help Stardock!!!

I stop being a ninja for a day to become:

You are The Cap'n!

Some men and women are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any scalawag who stands between them and unlimited power. You never met a man - or woman - you couldn't eviscerate. You are the definitive Man of Action, the CEO of the Seven Seas, Lee Iacocca in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. You're mission-oriented, and if anyone gets in the way, that's his problem, now isn't? Your buckle was swashed long ago and you have never been so sure of anything as your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off his head if he shows any sign of taking you on or backing down. If one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones' locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed - a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.




What's Yer Inner Pirate?
brought to you by The Official Talk Like A Pirate Web Site. Arrrrr!

FSM is on my side ^.^

Heaven should offer more than BEER and Stripper factories. Or am I demanding too much?

What say yee Pastafarians?

Still Alive ... yes it will never get old.

Specially when done in new artistic ways like:


Portal - Still Alive typography from Trickster on Vimeo.

short SPORE update

Just some news on the mainstream media:

Copyright row dogs Spore release
Did 'Spore' copy protections backfire on EA?
Spore And The Great DRM Backlash

The winner was BBC on how fast it published the news.

As far as EA responds?
None really

However Red Alert 3 will have 5 installs and no CD requirements to play.

I'm definitely getting that one. Previews are hilarious.

Of LHC and Doomsday

http://www.stuff.co.nz//blogs/toonedin/2008/09/09/collider-scope/

Recently if you visit digg or reddit, several stories will pop up about the Large Hadron Collider.
Even PhDComics is running an special of it.

Those having the most fun are the half-life fans with their found "coincidences". (Freeman at site. G-man at site. Headcrabs at site)

Several comments seem to be tired about the doomsday jokes, but thank the flying spaghetti monster for them; It is because of this that now I know the biggest particle accelerator now exists near Geneva thanks to the European Organization of Nuclear Research, (CERN, acronym must make sense in one of those languages) and that it has been one day since the first beam was fired and we are all alive and well.
It will be on October 21 when the world will come to an end when the first high-energy collisions is planned. It matches my Prelim defense date, therefore I feel a certain grim dystopian future is coming on such a date.

I will be checking here for regular updates on the status of the world.
And to learn more about it I will play here when time allows.

SPORE: it has begun

Yes, the uprising to the stupid Copy protection/management policy that EA has enforced upon customers of SPORE.

The People Have Spoken: ‘Spore’ Is Ruined By Its Own DRM
EA's Spore hit by DRM backlash
Spore losing the DRM Fight
Customer Reviews (Keeps adding 1 star reviews, but pretty sure to change soon, since there are not REAL reviews)

Now, unfortunately I'm not sure EA will actually listen. A similar thing had happen to BIOSHOCK, which introduce the incredibly stupid 3 installation rule also used in SPORE, and yet given how good Bioshock was, it hurt sales very little. (2K was brave enough to leave on their forums a "If you need to have your game refunded, here's how." topic for this issues)
I'm guessing SPORE might have the same effect. Though plenty of people will go ahead and download a crack version of it, the game will be good enough to make enough sales to keep EA from removing the insane rules. (I hope I'm wrong and EA will change on a later patch, but I'm not holding my breath to it. I am holding my purchase for now though)

Meanwhile good news from my favorite Game developer Stardock who knows how I like my games.

I'm in BETA

Given my extraordinary knowledge of the game mechanics and having leveled up three of the different style of classes in the game. (TANK, HEALER, DPS) It was just naturally that Blizzard ask me to participate in the Beta for Wrath of the Lich King.

Or so I would like to tell myself.

Important thing is that I get to play for free the upcoming expansion pack.

Wohoo!!

You are doing it WRONG... amazon

I have no idea how the recommendation system from amazon works, but I'm sure it could do waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better.




How many fans of the complex Ghost in the Shell series are also fans of Pokemon?
I would thought of them as separate crowds.
(Yes I've seen Pokemon, but I'm far from considering the remote possibility of getting the DVD set)

SPORE on National Geographic

Damn you NGC for not giving me a quick code to embed your video.

The greatly anticipated SPORE game (that I've managed to avoid pre-ordering given its annoying copy-protection rules) will get some air time on National Geographic.

Or you could get the Galactic edition, but I don't think it will be worth it.

WWII as told by game chat.

TOO FUNNY!!

Medals medals medals!!!

Olympics are behind us, my country just went away with a silver and a bronze so we don't get to discuss much how we should be counting medals to make it into the top 10.
US gets to do so, thus leading to some articles, pictures, (That ABC is Australian, mate) but the best one so far, is a complete breakdown by the BBC into 5 different tables for the top 10 countries in the Olympics.

So how do we get our countries in the list?

I know, I know.
Australia is there in several lists >.>

Geek redecoration

Curtains with ASCII art?
or
Your DNA on a frame?

Dan Dennett on evolution of virulent ideas

Ignore the strange intro of the TED site. Once he starts speaking it is quite interesting.

Edit: Oh also don't get distracted at the beginning thinking about Resident Evil 4.
Zombie by parasites

Cool Japan

and their amazing fountains.


Inkjet-Like Smart Waterfall Makes Animated Falling Water Show

w00t. Silver for us at the olymics :D

Colombia got his first Olympic medal thanks to Diego Salazar in weightlifting.
Seems we are the best so far on medals in South America :P

Some news in english which have just one sentence mentioning it

China wins two weightlifting golds
Two more Chinese gold medals in weightlifting
Zhang continues China's goldrush

Trust me... there is a sentence mentioning us -.-

To make you quake in fear

The above picture was submited to Dr Horrible's facebook profile.
Just sharing it here since the usual person in charge of keeping us up-dated on Dr Horribles news, seems kind of lazy these days.

To create your own Threat Down you can go to http://www.threatdowngenerator.com/
and warn the world about the likes of:

Turtles can fly

This must be the "harshest" movie I've ever seen.
After seen the trailer I assume the usual "life can be beautiful even in the face of adversity", a common theme in "third world country" movies. Yet this one has left me in shock.
I recommend it , yet I don't think I have the courage to see any other of the Bahman Ghobadi movies.

From the first review in iMDB "A viewing of this film earlier tonight ... was immediately followed, in my case, by a trip to a bathroom stall where I stared blankly at a wall for fifteen minutes amidst a state of pure, and surprisingly prolonged, emotional helplessness"
I can relate.

The cell-phone that is just...a phone

Remember when the iPhone came out, and people actually looked for something with all the functionality of the iPhone minus the AT&T phone service?

Well finally, the complete opposite is here (hooray, hurray?)

Tears shed for video game charachters

WARNING: BUNCH OF SPOILERS IF YOU FOLLOW THE REDDIT LINKS.

This thread on reddit had me trying to remember which game had me so involved in their world and story that they actually toyed with my emotions.

I loved to see I wasn't the only one that was sadden by Shadow of the Colossus and the horse... it is amazing since I only played for 10mins but still the ambiance in that game made it so perfect that I was immediately attached to those in game.

Another of the comments I relate as well was the ending of Half Life 2 episode 2... which hopefully Stynky will finish one day so I could say more about it.
I'm not sure if it would have the same effect as shadow of the colossus, cause I think you really have to play through the first episodes to really get the most of it... so Stynky stop procrastinating and finish it.

Finally I had to add a comment for Baldur's Gate... for some reason I seem to be the only one genuinely enraged by the death of my dear friend Khalid. The game did great on creating party members who, given their unique personalities, you would actually end up caring for.

Any games that managed to do similar for you?
I wonder if adding Rome Total War after the death of Kanmi The Conqueror is valid.
After all his memory leaves on through my name in this Blog... I really honored such an amazing Leader that manage to take Elephants into the streets of Rome... how Hannibal should have done so.

YAY Deadlines

Now finally I will get to work.
Someone has read my crappy proposal and realized what a bunch of mediocrity it was and now I will be working with progressive deadlines starting with this Monday.

Wohoo, now I'm working... oh wait ... I'm blogging...craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap.

Dinosaur sprinkles

Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles
Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles
Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles
Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles
Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles
Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles
Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles Dinosaur Sprinkles

Turtle Race? Grad School Race?

http://jalansutera.dagdigdug.com/2008/02/04/rabbit-vs-turtle-who-will-win-the-race/

Slow but steady?
Why is it that a small success, a turtle step closer to my goal, puts me a bit at ease at the incoming Prelim in 2 weeks?

Today was a busy day, started with lab meeting at 8am
Followed by tissue immunohistochemistry
Continue with Cell culture plating for our new imaging system collaborator.
very VERY brief lunch
Supervised one of the kids doing RNA extract and cDNA preparation.
Finally prepare the media for MY experiment (yes, none of the previous one relates to my projects)

And when I was done I said to myself. "Thats it, today I write a good amount for my prelim" Never actually set the record straight on what a good amount was, but the thing is, while trying to rewrite my Abstract... I found a commentary that it is going to be my copy paste for the introduction. It has already some nice graphs that I can modify to put it in my proposed model.

I didn't wrote much but for some reason I feel this little finding as an excuse to tell my self "I've moved forward, for today it is ok, now lets go have some dinner"
No sense of guilt is with me while I procrastinate now making this post AND getting ready to go home.
Why is that?

The Sinestro Corps War

The "sneaky" BIG event of DC comics this year, as the REAL BIG event was suppose to be Final Crisis, which so far never got any great reviews.

Anyways, I got the Corpse War in an impulsive act after one of my "no-particular-reason" stop in Borders. After all... what is ~$40 after spending more on a date/night that lead only to friendships ... again... but getting of topic.

I'm here to tell you that I enjoyed this comic book, though was almost pushed away from it at the beginning as this post will cover and a later one will cover the goodies.

Although I would like to think I know a good share of the DC universe, this comic really challenged it. I did expect it, like it happen on Infinite Crisis, however Infinite Crisis in its core books was relatively good at explaining why the incidents that were taking place were happening, however, whoever edited the Hardcover collection for The Sinestro Corps event, really assumed Green Lantern Mythos nerd would pick it up.

During the entire first book we are jumping from a big battle to the next one with almost no direction of what has come to generate this encounters... and "Oh my god" do they really expect me to just swallow that Sinestro has all this power and allies all of a sudden with little explanation whatsoever? This is the Hardcover ... I know they want me to go running buy more tie-in books, but they should do it cause I want to know more of the details or particular situations/battles/character etc of the story, not because I HAVE TO HAVE THEM TO UNDERSTAND THE BASICS OF IT.

Now that thats out, this was the main issues with the first volume of the Hardcover, there is no much intro, you are just thrown into the big battle assuming that you know all the previous drama Hal Jordan has gone with the Corpse and that several of the most powerful evil guys in the DC Universe have mysteriously joined forces.

I'm going to also pick on the artist.
There was a clear intention to show this is war, so it is going to be chaotic and bloody, but I'm not sure if its my Rome Total War influence or what, but just having pages after pages of random people mutilating random people was not really adding much to the sens of war. I'm not sure why, it will probably be just me, but I like it more when you can properly tell how is the battle ensuing, like a well trained legion!

But, this was a necessary evil, because the second volume is totally worth it and I will tell you why... on a later post. :P

See ya then

2 years later.

It is done:
Dimerization of the Papillomavirus E2 Protein Is Required for Efficient Mitotic Chromosome Association and Brd4 Binding

And the only figure that actually has a result I remember recording, is the last one of microscopy...all the gels are from Jon.

At this pace my next paper would be in 7 years >.>

Oh well, such is the price of biology non reproducible, incomprehensible, anti-P.I-hypothesis results

Intro video to Empire Total War

Total war is a respected and well known series of video games that fuse Real Time Strategy with Turn based strategy gameplay.
Although I've heard the series, it wasn't until ROME Total War that I fell in love, or should I say fell into the addiction, of the game.

The Real Time Strategy part of the game, where you could control thousands of units while in full 3D environment able to zoom in and out to quite and extense, made the wars (battles fell short to describe what the experience was like) feel pretty epic.
The leader of the army will give you a speech at the beginning of each battle.

During this battle you can pause but the real Turn based part of the game lies when you have an overview map of all the lands/empire/nations in play, which in the case of Rome was Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. In here you not only move armies, but have to deal with the economics and politics of your mayor cities, while moving spies and diplomats to wherever they are needed.
Battles are very large scales, having different parts of your armies dealing with entirely different situations.






Rome was incredibly addictive and the creators later came on with Medieval Total war II, a game which although looked amazing; given the expansion moving on to the Americas without an army I would like to support (I would like a south american faction), never managed to make me buy it.







The latest installment which you can see the intro video below, has got my interest again. We are introduce to the new Naval battles while still maintaining the epic open battlefields in land, and the political/economical management that might lead to revolts.



The video does a great job at giving you a glimpse of how it will be and what has me intrigued for quite a while... it will be the first of the series where the entire world is in combat...as seen on the end of the movie.

Given the time period I will have some conflict on which faction to play and support, but this video and some news that will be coming from E3 have definitely got me thinking about the series again.

I hope you do so as well now :D , there is a lot LOT more in the total war series than what little details I've mentioned above.
Definitely worth checking out sometime.

Styx

Oh Noes!!! they have more now !!!!

RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN

Context suggested by sis-in-law

NWN Nostalgia

I don't even remember how I got to this page.

I felt like re-installing NWN, download the patch... but mhe... too long.
I think I'll just use the wallpaper for a while.

Don't shoot

From Chengdu Panda Base

That is not photoshop, the iranian missles are ^.^



From digg comments on this story