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

Purdue 4 me 0

2 more friends are leaving Purdue (though dunno how much can I call one a friend when I find out via facebook updates, not by talking)
Anyways two more people are quitting PhD, and I'm still here don't know why... just like I got here, not knowing why :P

I think I should be working on a plan B, but seems I"m too lazy to look into it.

The Betamax is now a legend O.O

The undergrads in my lab think they've heard it before, but knew NOTHING about it.

I was apparently supposed to feel old cause I knew about it while they didn't ... but I just felt "special" ^.^

Though I gotta say its still somewhat odd for me, kinda hard to believe, that the Betamax is not known, something someone never heard of.
They still now about vinyl, atari, camera's film, etc ... but no Betamax !!!
And I thought it lasted way longer than the HD-DVD and blu-ray battle.

oh wells.