Tech Rush

My Internet is reconnected, allowing me to make this update from the comfort of my own home.
There is no denying that my excessive videogaming habit has had a negative impact on my schoolwork. A flurry of C and D grade essays attest to this. Regardless, I keep on playing and playing. My parents are fairly angry with me; Not only was I out of the house for literally the entire weekend (leaving Friday afternoon, Returning Sunday Evening), but this evening, I am yet to complete the History work that my tutor (who teaches me for a few hours a week outside of school) has given me. Actually, I'm supposed to be doing that now. Oh well.

Anyhow, I've been playing Starcraft 2 with a few mates from school who go under the screen names of Marhalla and Valcry. We generally recieve a good thrashing (later to find out that our placement matches pitted us against players from much higher leagues than us), but our last match of the night was a victory. Here's a battle report.

We were against a Terran player and two Zerg players. Their early zergling rushes were large enough to cause concern, but they broke against our wall-in like water against a cliff. At face value, their attacks were in vain, but this gave them the chance to dominate the map. Although they gained a stranglehold on most of the available resources, we fought off most attacks against us as, with just one well co-ordinated strike out of the dozen they hurled at us smashing its way into my base area briefly. Despite this,  prospects of winning looked grim; the other team was able to out produce us with ease and although we were fighting a conservative battle, repairs and replacements bit into our limited resource pools. I began to amass a sizable airforce with my last mineral and Vespene reserves. I have two ravens, half a dozen banshees and the same number of vikings, topped off with seven battlecruisers, outfitted with the Yamato Cannon and moderate tech upgrades. Valcry has a large ground army of upgraded hellions, a smattering of marines and a solid core of siege tanks. Marhalla has a formidable looking blob of Marines and marauders, under the vigil of at least ten medivacs. He also has a few vikings, which he puts into assault walker mode.

Using the sight towers at the edge of our base area, we can see a large and varied army camped outside with the standard faire of zerglings and roaches, but the terran player among the enemy has eight or so thors towering over two-dozen marauders. A few banshees hover among them. There are two siege tanks just ahead of the army and a third behind, in siege mode, they are capable of decimating Marhalla's Infantry.  knowing full well that simply rushing all we had could be costly, Valcry formulated a plan.
"Francon" he said over his microphone "Hit the siege tanks with a Yamato blast and then pull back to us"
I comply and they duly explode into smithereens, stirring their owner into action. He charges his army at us. My unarmed ravens flee to the rear of the army. One is plucked out of the sky by a cluster of Javelin Missiles from a Thor. My banshees are obliterated but my vikings lose none of their number; our opponent is smart and targets only the units capable of harming his own. He types in chat "Attack you fucking idiots."
They lumber into the melee with zerg units a few moments later.
"Honestly," he types again "Two retards on my team".
My battle cruisers, largely and puzzlingly ignored at that stage of the battle begin to suffer damage from zerg hydralisks. With nothing left that they are able to attack, my vikings fly to the back of my army, just in time to combat a Broodlord flanking manuvre. Before the slow moving leviathans are able to close with Marhalla's dwindling infantry force, I see them off with missile fire. none of them escape my fast, long ranged vikings; they flap helplessly as I gun them down as their broodling attack cannot hit air units. Marhalla has precious few infantrymen left and Valcry's army is looking noticably smaller. I too have taken alarming casualties. Regardless, the time to push comesI send my squad of vikings over with Valcry and Marhalla's armies. My battlecruisers remain at my base for reinforcement and repair.

The complaints that they throw against this action are soon silenced by the advent of two nyddus worms errupting through the ground inside our compound. My battlecruisers quickly fry the zerg units that spew from its maw and then destroy the worms themselves, cutting off access to our base. My cruisers join the fight.

Meanwhile, My lone raven drops gun turrets to harrass enemy mineral collection. Soon I am awarded with the "auto-kill" achievement for my efforts. Elsewhere,  Valcry rushes his now redundant workers at an undefended enemy expansion, their drills slowly bring it down. His hellion army runs riot in the enemy base area and Marhalla is down to his last viking. It lands the killing shot on the final Zerg building and is promptly swarmed by the broodlings that burst from the heaps of dead biomass that streak the floor.
"Noooooo!" he cries into his mic. "My last unit!"
We win.

Cataclysmic Fail

Yesterday, I missed the first 25 man raid of my World of Warcraft guild because my damn internet connection is still down. To add insult to injury, one of the raiders, who is also a friend in real life (who goes under the screen name "Valcry"), told me that I would probably be cut out of the core raiding setup in the guild. I feel helpless and I am completely at the mercy of British Telecoms, who were unable to repair the problem sooner due to a seperate issue involving a gas pipe nearby.

Meanwhile, I have been playing Rome: Total War. I found a way, a long time ago, to unlock all the factions (Including Rebels, who are unplayable due to a doomed "economy"). To do this, go into the game directory and execute a search for a file called descr_strat . Open the file, which is a notepad document, and cut all the factions from unplayable and paste them in the playable section. The Rebels are difficult to play because they randomly spawn armies all over the map, which cripples economy, and the SPQR can be played, although the game will crash if you try to open the senate tab and so far, I have not seen a way to set missions for the other roman factions.

Life without an internet connection at my house is beggining to get really difficult to bear, not just for me, but for my father. While I'm getting cranky due to my inability to play online with my friends, my dad's website is suffering (I can only assume) because he can't get online to submit links or keep tabs on its performance. It just goes to show how important the internet is for modern life and how much we (well, my household at least) rely on it.

Severance

Ok, this is my first post, so I'll get started.
Been without an internet connection at home for the past week now so I am forced to do this during my study period today.
Without the internet, my ability to game has been severely curtailed; I am a social person (many of the games I play on the internet, I play them mainly because I have friends who play too) so 70% of my library of games has been neutralised for now. I settle for UFO:TTS (UFO: The Two Sides), a remake of the first game in the X-Com Series (arguably the best ever game ever made ever). It rocks, I'll just say that for now and come back to it later. If anyone at all happens to read this, you can download it here for free: http://ufotts.ninex.info/ , though some of the sprites are missing so you might want to get hold of the original game files and use the extractor that comes with it on them (or you will get big black or pink squares in the place of some of the sprites).

I have also been indulging in The Movies, which I don't think I have touched since around 2007. I really don't know why; it's an amazing game that gives you creative freedom (within reason, of course) to make just about any movie you want using a variety of scenes and a huge ammount of sets (again, within reason). The only downside is that the website that used to host just about every user made movie ever uploaded shut down a couple of years ago. Still, you can make your own movies for your own enjoyment, and there's always youtube :).

Hopefully next week, I will be able to say something a little more interesting, as I will hopefully have an internet connection back and be able to play my steam games (without the knowledge that any achievements that i qualify for count for nothing), World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2.