After Friday night’s movie, I pretty much expected the rest of the weekend to be restful and relaxing. Life, however, decided to surprise me in the form of my new housemates taking me out to Gold Reef City for the day on Saturday.

Now bear in mind, I haven’t seen Gold Reef City in probably 21 years… I was still in primary school when I went there with my Mom and her family. And my recollection of the place is dim, except for some events… like me trying to walk out of the mint with a gold bar.

It certainly appears to have changed a lot since then.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Andrew, Gwen and I went on some of the rides (Gwen’s face after the Tower of Terror was both amusing and concerning… the poor girl was quite shaken by the experience) and wandered around the park, experienced the 4D theatre, saw the Gumboot Dancers, tried our hands at winning some prizes at some of the stalls, etc.

We got home around 5pm or so and I had to get ready to go out to Catz Pyjamas in Melville for the joint birthday bash organised by Rozz for herself, Nick and I.

Craig was kind enough to pick me up as my little old VW Beetle was not up to the task, suffering a little with battery issues at present so driving at night becomes quite hair-raising unless you keep your foot on the gas to keep the lights on.

By the time we got there, most of the folks were already there, except for Rozz, Nick, JJ and Vanessa who were stuck in traffic due to some accidents on the way from Pretoria.

From there, the evening just kept on getting better and better. Good food, good company, good times!

And I got spoilt rotten… to the point that I was almost in tears, very much overwhelmed by the generosity and thoughtfulness of my friends.

Gift #1 – From Matthew, Marti and many many others who I still need to thank.

They surprised me with a TomTom ONE XL GPS… Now you have to understand a few things here… I am notoriously bad when it comes to directions. I get lost in my own backyard… And I’m forever getting lost whenever I go to a new place. Sure, I have software on my laptop to try and work out routes, etc but as my friend John recently discovered, the software does not necessarily choose the best or safest route.

However, with this gift comes a new joke… TimTim (thank you, Pieter… you’ve scarred me for life!) has a TomTom…

Gift #2 – From JJ and Vanessa

I’ve always loved swords. From the day my father showed me his grandfather’s cavalry saber (which we sacrilegiously used in the garden to chop up small branches and other such vegetation) to the day when Maarten offered me the chance to learn kenjutsu in exchange for some website work to promote his academy. There is just something awe-inspiring about holding a sword in your hands, feeling it cut through the air. And this applies even moreso to the Japanese katana.

When JJ and Vanessa gave me this long, wrapped box, I wasn’t too sure what was in it, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to open it up to find a beautifully crafted sword. Especially not a recreation of the sword from “Last Samurai”.

It is a truly stunning looking piece.

Back to the party… dinner was great but all in all, I think the best part of the evening was the company. And if the time we left Catz is anything to go by, I’d say everyone got on pretty well. We eventually stumbled out around 12:30am after which Craig and I sat talking at my place until around 4:30am, catching up a little on what has been happening in his life.

Sunday, after trying to catch up on some sleep, was spent relaxing at home, watching the Code Geass anime series I’d gotten from John, reading and listening to music or playing a little Warcraft III now and again to take a break from what I was doing.

It was a good weekend. No, it was a great weekend. But now it’s time to get back to work.

I’m on training tomorrow and Wednesday so I best get some work done today so that I don’t sit with a small mountain of it on Thursday.

Ciao for now.

Considering that my last post was in February sometime, and we’re almost done with April, I feel I’ve neglected this site for some time. Time, specifically spare time, has become somewhat of a rare commodity for me lately…

Ok, some updates (for those that care and even for those that don’t):

I’m moving… where to, I’m not too sure yet, but I’m hoping it will be a little closer to work to cut down on traffic, etc. I should be seeing a place tomorrow night that sounds perfect…

Work has been going well, just busy. At present I’m on-site at BCX (Business Connexion) in Midrand, standing in for a work colleague who has decided to get married… poor sod… another one bites the dust. I’m studying as well, brushing up on my Checkpoint Security Administration knowledge so I can write my CCSA (Checkpoint Certified Security Administrator) and CCSE (Checkpoint Certified Security Engineer) exams when I get back to the Randburg office.

What else? Oh, I’ve been raiding a little again in World of Warcraft with my US Stormrage guild, Awakened Guardians. My rogue is somewhat under-geared and underpowered in comparison to some of the uber-backstabbers out there, but some recent gear upgrades has made her a far more formidable than she was.

Sadly, with this move, I’ll be offline again for some time unless Telkom miraculously pulls it’s collective finger out of deep, dark, unmentionable body cavities and does something quicky for a change…

Not that I’m a pessimist… not at all… I’m just a strong believer in Finagle’s Law, which states:

“Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment.”

OR

O’Toole’s Corollary of Finagle’s Law, “The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.”

In other words… Murphy was an optimist.

I haven’t had much time lately to discuss or even explore the various metaverse cultures out there or my more recent research into trans-humanism, but catching up this morning on one of the more interesting blogs out there on these topics, I found that Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks want to make a 3D CGI movie of one of my favourite anime films of all time… Ghost in the Shell. As a self-confessed fan-boy of the Ghost in the Shell franchise and Masamune Shirow’s work, I sincerely hope and pray that they don’t screw it up…

Reading further (my GoogleReader has too many feeds for me to catch up on all of them in one day!), I see that there is talk of a live-action version of Akira. While I was never that fond of the Akira story, it was and is still a well-known landmark within the anime/manga culture and I hope they do it justice.

Other than that, not much else to report. Eskom is keeping us on our toes with load-shedding (thank Heavens for laptops with batteries and podcasts/movies to watch while waiting for the lights to come back on), traffic is a pain in the butt (especially on Allandale and Malibongwe)… and I think I need a refill on this coffee… or maybe some hot chocolate.

Ah, yes, the storm and subsequent demise of my ADSL modem and laptop. And MPH.

I’ll start with MPH… I’ve never been to a car show before and certainly never anything like MPH, so thank you Rozz, for a very different and entertaining Christmas present.

Didn’t get to see all that much of the car expo itself, but the ‘theatre’ part of the show was brilliantly executed by the hosts and their accompanying stunt drivers. The banter between Hammond and Clarkson was a welcome familiarity for those that have watched any Top Gear at all, and I think poor Sasha Martinengo didn’t stand much of a chance of stealing any limelight from those two.

There were some stunning driving/stunt sequences, some amusement in the form of the soccer match with cars, the hosts driving their own inventions and the half-a-car race, a rather different take on bull fighting with a very flexible female matador and a bakkie as the bull, mixed in with some of the best looking cars available today. A petrolhead’s dream come true, I think.

The whole thing was marred a bit though, by the travesty they called seating. I think no matter what shape or size you are, those seats are just uncomfortable, especially if you’re a little taller than most and your knees end up crushed against the seat in front of you.

Anyway… it was still a good time though. Good times with good company… it’s all that counts really.

We left MPH, only to be greeted by a magnificent storm and downpour.

The next day wasn’t much better. Though for the most part, it wasn’t stormy. Or so I thought.

There I was, happily sitting on my bed, playing World of Warcraft on my laptop, headset on, chatting to friends, when ZAP! … Everything went dark. Ok, not surprising, considering the mains tripped on the distribution board… flicked the switch and we had power again. Except that somethings didn’t come back up. Things like my brand new Netgear ADSL modem and my laptop. And there was the smell of ozone and electrolytes in the air to confirm my suspicions.

Ah well… It’s meant that I caught up on some of my reading this week, though I have ended up working late to get some research, etc done that I normally would have done from home.

In the meantime though, I’ve put my old Telkom ADSL modem back online and built up a small PC from spare parts. Nothing great, but it’s enough to run XP and Office, browse the ‘Net and listen to MP3′s. I got a new Netgear as a replacement but not in a rush to install it just yet as without the laptop, I don’t really need the wireless just yet. And frankly, my housemates can wait a bit before I put them back online again… maybe this will encourage them to pay me for their usage.

Hopefully I get the laptop back this week coming. Apparently they’ve replaced the motherboard, and I’m hoping I didn’t lose any data of the hard drive.

The basic idea is that you start of with a single branch, or idea and while discussing or investigating it, you find similar related subjects and begin exploring and discussing them. These in turn have their own related subjects and so you can potentially veer off the path of your original discussion or investigation, following the branches where your interest takes you.

To give you an idea, something I sat back and looked back at recently while discussing books about folklore with Rozz:

1992 or 1993 (I can’t remember anymore) – A school play, working with Craig and Stuart doing backstage lighting and music, if I recall. Craig was playing a cassette with Enya‘s Shepherd Moons on. I fell in love with the music (having only ever seen the video for Orinoco Flow on Good Morning South Africa as I was getting ready for school in the mornings) and started collecting all of Enya’s music that had been released til then, getting it as birthday presents, etc.

Somewhere along the line I remember getting into an argument with my next door neighbour, Michael, one night when he was visiting (I think my folks and his were at a parents-teachers evening at our respective schools), as I was playing my Enya CD’s on my hi-fi and he asked me to turn it off, as being of a particularly intolerant religion that is rather peculiar in their beliefs, he could not listen to music sung in a tongue he could not understand, in case the lyrics were meant to subvert him and steer him off the path he was on. Oddly enough, the song at the time was ‘Angeles‘ and I explained to him that she was singing about angels, to which he responded that she may be singing about fallen angels or rather devils.

I then took it upon myself to go and translate the lyrics of all the CD’s to prove a point to Michael that there was nothing sinister about her music and in between sitting over 200-year old gaelic- and welsh-to-english dictionaries, I started exploring a) the irish- and scottish-gaelic language and b) the folklore of the gaelic people, especially after the re-release of Enya’s album “The Celts”.

This led me to read about the Celts, celtic history and mythology, to search for books such as the Mabinogion and discover some of my most loved characters in myth and legend. These led me to explore some more fiction author’s works (I was a school librarian then) and found many variations of the Arthurian legends, which, up until then, I had only really read briefly here and there.

That lead me to read “The Mists of Avalon“, by Marion Zimmer Bradley. “The Mists of Avalon” in turn reminded me about Morgana le Fay, or Morgaine as she is known in the book.

That book and the others before it, led me to look into druidic lore and teachings, which taught me about the various deities, one of them being Cernunnos, the Horned God, otherwise known as Herne the Hunter. That in turn, helped catch my attention while wandering through a bookstore one day where I saw the cover for “Greenmantle“, by Charles de Lint.

de Lint’s books grabbed me and I read everything I could get my hands on by him, enjoying titles such as “Someplace To Be Flying”, “Yarrow”, “Forests of the Heart”, etc. “Forests of the Heart” got me reading up about the Greenman.

The Greenman is linked to Cernunnos again, as well as unlikely figures such as Peter Pan, the earliest renditions of Father Christmas, Robin Hood, Robin Goodfellow, Puck and the Green Knight. The Green Knight leads back to the Arthurian legends and books like “The Once and Future King”.

“Yarrow” introduced the concept of energy-vampires, leading me to research more about vampires than is classically portrayed in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This led me to buy books on vampirism that showed a variety of vampire-like stories from pretty much every cultural group today.

Interestingly enough, every culture shares at least two stories… one is The Great Flood and the other is vampires.

Browsing through a second-hand bookstore one day, I saw CJ Cherryh’s Chronicles of Morgaine. I bought it and read it right through, finding it to be a very enjoyable book, describing Morgaine, in essense, as a figure striding across many worlds, appearing here and there in different stories and myths as she goes about her tasks.

Reading through CJ Cherryh’s list of books, I came across “Rusalka“. The word ‘rusalka‘ reminded me of playing Sierra’s Hero’s Quest IV where you as the intrepid bungling hero are stuck in a medieval town where a good many things go bump in the night… in one scene you walk out to a lake and a young woman is in the water, calling to you. If you go into the water, you die by her hands, so talking is about all you really can do with her. We won’t mention the run-ins with the vampiric bunnies though…

So I went out and found a copy and loved the book and it’s concept of wish magic, and discovered yet another entity to research… the “Vodyanoy“, which reminded me of another character in a book, where the author combined a Grendel-like character and something akin to a vodyanoi into a grotesque being called the Fisher King.

I later found the vodyanoi again in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag novels, where the Vodyanoi are an aquatic people skilled in water magics. In Miéville’s “Perdido Street Station“, striking Vodyanoi dockworkers use their water magic to blockade a shipping route.

More recently, the movie, Night Watch, caught my eye and I began researching it a bit more, only recently finding an english version of the books by Sergey Lukyanenko, which means I have some more reading to do.

Another recent study of mine, is about the kabbalistic lore around golems and the lore used to bring them to life and return them to stasis, inspired by two unrelated events… One, playing “Vampire: The Redeption” PC Game and the other, watching “Ghost in the Shell II : Innocence“.

The golem in turn leads back, or rather, on to, such stories as Frankenstein and other avenues of research about creating life such as the experiment by the alchemist Paracelsus with homunculi…

Ok, so after that long-winded story, what is the core of my post?

The main branch shown here is a love of mythology. The branches off that branch that I’ve chosen to follow are a love of celtic and later slavic folklore and mythology. Subbranches of that are vampirism and lycanthropy, fueled by my own roleplaying research. Gaming, music, reading fiction, etc have all had their impact as well, steering my interests at the time down certain paths.

And it all started with some music… (Thanks Craig, it’s all your fault!)

Amazing how something so small can open up a world of opportunities to discover…

Today, the Internet is a vast playground for this sort of exploration of knowledge. And tools like Wikipedia (and Google) make it that much easier, with linked topics, reference sites and all sorts of other avenues of investigation.

I can lose myself out in the ‘Net very easily. Just give me the bandwidth to explore, an unlimited data cap and a topic and let me be…

Sometimes I wish I could just plug in directly and travel the ‘Net behind closed eyes as my body rests and explore.

There is so much out there and so little time to discover it.

For anyone that works in the IT industry, the old saying, “no rest for the wicked” could not be truer… You work your allotted time at work and perhaps a little more than necessary (I know I do, as does Rob and Rozz) and then go home and generally do one of two things… either sit down in front of a PC again to play games or surf the ‘net or try and switch off in front of the TV or some other distraction.

Usually I watch some anime or whatever is playing on the TV for a bit, research a little and maybe update this blog a bit, browse deviantART for new wallpapers or inspiration, then try get an early (or earlier than usual) night, knowing the next morning I need to be up before most people, a) to avoid traffic and b) to get a head start on the day’s tasks.

Lately though, I’ve been doing upgrades on my forums, from phpBB version 2.0.22 to 3.01, fighting with South African latency while uploading a million and one small files to my internationally hosted server, creating backups (just in case, you know!) and trying to puzzle through the documentation to see where I am going wrong…

Or building an old server up into a general workstation for the girls at home to use, as Tarryn is starting her new job soon and will lose her old laptop, and frankly, I’m a little wary of letting anyone other than a work colleague, that I trust, use mine. Last night I managed to get a majority of the work done on the server, but it was painstakingly slow-going as it’s an old Pentium III, with 512MB RAM and two SCSi 20GB drives… Windows XP runs on it… or should I say, it ‘jogs’.

I’ve loaded all the chat programs they could want on there… MSN, GoogleTalk, Yahoo… and most importantly, antivirus. AVG is perhaps not the best, but hell, it works… And I made each of them their own limited privilege profile so they don’t have to stress about anyone else reading their mail from the dating sites they’re so fond of frequenting.

Need to sit down with Tarryn as well, sometime, and teach her Adobe Photoshop. Think the poor girl has jumped into her new job without really knowing what is expected of her… if she’s going to be doing design work, I think she may be in over her head…

Other than that, now that my one set of forums are upgraded, I need to tackle the other one. And then figure out how to integrate all the other php packages  such as phpRaid, etc back into the new boards…

When I will get a chance to play again, I don’t know… we’ll see what happens end of the month. By then things should have settled a bit more. Right now, all I seem to be able to manage is getting home, feeding myself, showering then collapsing onto my bed, watching a few episodes of anime (recently finished “Eureka Seven” and “Fate / Stay Night” and about half way through “Ergo Proxy“) then drifting off into an uneasy sleep, only to wake up a few hours later, feeling like a truck has hit me…

I’ve been stationed at ABSA for the last few days, standing in for one of my colleagues while he is off on paternity (and annual) leave. I’ve also flown down briefly to Cape Town to attend and photograph Sheelagh and Andrew’s wedding.

Flying to Cape Town was a bit weird for me. For the last 9 or so years, I’d been used to travelling up from Cape Town to Johannesburg or Durban on vacation or to visit friends and family or for work. Now, I’ve reversed the destinations… and I must admit, Cape Town no longer feels like home to me. I felt very much like a tourist in a place I used to call home… me, the person who swore he’d never live anywhere but at the coast.

I landed Friday morning, was picked up by Louise who took me to go get my supplies I needed for the wedding (18 rolls of 36 exposure 35mm film and spare batteries for my Canon EOS 500n), then spent some time with her and her family until meeting up with Rob for lunch after which I spent the rest of the afternoon with him and some of our mutual friends, Andrew and Mervin, that work with him at Tellumat. That evening, after picking up Lou again, we met up with some guild mates from Awakened Guardians at Century City for some drinks, etc and finally wandered over to Cattle Baron to meet up with some of Lou’s friends.

Saturday morning, bright and early, I was in Cavendish Square, photographing Sheelagh and her Mum- and Sister-in-Law-to-be during the various stages of their hair-styling. Then we bundled into Lisa’s (Sheelagh’s best friend) car, went to go fetch dresses and bags and headed off to Monkey Valley in Noordhoek to get  started with their makeup. After a while I decided it was prudent to make myself scarce so the girls could change and get dressed and went to go check my surroundings for the shoot, judging light levels and backdrop inclusion from various angles.

The ceremony was very nice, the bride looked stunning, the groom looked nervous (though that may also have been due to some stiff breezes swaying his kilt) and everyone was very happy for the newly-wed couple. We took some group photos on the lawn and then the bride, groom, best man and bridesmaids wandered down to the beach with me for some shots their.

In retrospect, the path we took was not the best one (coming down was ok, climbing back up was not as easy) as the loose beach sand made climbing some of those dunes rather… well… interesting at times.

We finished up at 11pm that night after the traditional cake-cutting and first-dance photos and I left for home, wishing the newly-weds all the best, promising to visit in Australia sometime in the future.

The next day, aside from sore muscles, I spent relaxing, chatting to Rob, listening to music (I introduced Rob to the group ‘E Nomine’) and catching up a little, talking about his planned move to Australia to be nearer to his daughter, my goddaughter, Timeah.

Before long, though, it was time to pack up and head to the airport. We stopped briefly along the way to get something to eat and unfortunately, cut it a little too fine as with some unaccounted for traffic, I ended up getting to the check-in counter 2 minutes too late to check in… I begged, pleaded… everything short of threatening, but they were stubborn and would not let me check-in.

So I got put on standby for the morning flight. Fortunately Rob had not yet driven too far so he was able to pick me up again and I spent the night there.

I called several people to tell them what had happened, including Matt, my technical manager, as I was supposed to be back at ABSA in the morning.

Bright and early, I was back at the airport and then my ordeal really began. For unbeknownst to me, all the Johannesburg and Pretoria people that had been on vacation were there trying to get back home as well… Suffice to say, I did not get onto the 6:30am flight. Or the 9:15 one. Or 10:20 one. Matt arranged for Reshan, one of my other colleagues, to stand-in for me at ABSA, so at least that was taken care of.

Eventually, they squeezed me onto the 1:00pm flight and I arrived home, very agitated, annoyed and heartily sick of airports just before 3pm. Matt, was kind enough to pick me up and drop me off at home where I promptly collapsed and swore not to get onto a plane for another few months, at the very least.

Yesterday was back to ABSA… back to a semblance of normality. Here until the 18th, after which it’s back to the office and my new favourite pastime… log analysis.

She’s always talking about her 18 month old daughter, Taneka, and I noticed that the only photos she has of her are taken either with her cellphone camera or with a small digital camera.

So, I offered to take some photos of them together, down at a local park in Fourways, around the corner from where we both stay, well, close being a relative term in Johannesburg

I went through 3 spools of film… going to hand them in on Monday and get them scanned to CD.

I must admit that the afternoon reminded me of times with my friend Rob, his daughter, Timeah, who is also my goddaughter. Bouncing around a park or playground, taking photos, laughing with the kids, being a kid at heart myself again.

In some ways, I think I’m living out my Mother’s wishes for a grandchild through these sessions. With my godchildren (I have 3) and the children of those I call friends, I get to capture photos of them the way I would one day hope to do with my own child.

Anyway… on to less somber thoughts…

That afternoon also set the mood for the weekend… I’m house-sitting for another colleague, Matthew, who is away at Kruger Park for his birthday weekend away with family.

It’s been a relaxing time. No noisy housemates. No fights at home. Not having to lock my groceries away because certain people cannot keep their hands to themselves.

So I’ve spent the time watching the Animax channel on DSTv, enjoying some of Matt’s wife’s homemade coffee icecream (to die for, I might add), playing a bit online and trying to understand the though processes of their cats, Storm and Jewel, with no real luck…

Hope everyone had a good weekend as well. Back to work tomorrow.

Gaia Online (Main Site)

Gaia Online Wikipedia Entry

How to best describe Gaia Online?

I think I can sum it up as an anime-themed forum turned web-based MMO.

Why an MMO?

• You have a fairly customizable avatar (even from starting) and can continually kit this paper doll out as you play. You can initially customize the following:
  • Hair style and color
  • Eye style and color
  • Mouth style and size
  • Skin tone
  • Gender
• You accept quests and receive rewards for completing them.
• It has a virtual economy and marketplace.
• It has events “in-game” and it’s own timeline.

Over and above that, it has, what has been called the web’s largest forum, with over a million posts made daily, over a billion posts in total and 2.5 million unique users per month (stats from Wikipedia).

It’s annoyingly cute at times but fun for those times when you just cannot be bothered to log into World of Warcraft or browse your usual websites (whatever those may be…)

After some casual banter, we got to work and were doing pretty well until I screwed up and closed the file I was working on… meaning we started again. From scratch.

In the end, it was probably worth it though, as it provided a few laughs and a chance for Craig to tease me about saving as often as possible. We also discussed Microsoft’s Silverlight and a few of the other goodies that Craig has been playing with lately.

We finished up around 12:30am… this is the finished result. Front and back.

Well, transferred to a new server and playing with some new guild mates in the guild, Thunderwalkers, but you get the idea…

For many months, I haven’t played this old fella… he’s been getting a little mouldy and probably was growing roots, sitting in Honor Hold in Hellfire Peninsula, Outland’s first region you enter into.

The catalyst behind this resurrection is one of my work colleagues, Gary (known in game as Trygor) and his lady, Kati (who plays Vulpine), who run a guild on Dath’remar, Oceanic server. They wanted me to level a new character there and help them, as I have more experience in the game than most of the guild members, but I don’t have the heart to re-level a toon from scratch anymore. With one level 70 already on my hands, and this toon not far behind, it was simply easier to do a paid character transfer over to the Oceanic server from Stormrage, than struggle from the beginning again.

Funny… when I was on Stormrage, I had little or no interest in levelling Nyctan. Now, I enjoy the challenge of trying to match the accomplishments of my rogue, as a feral druid.

If you’re looking to play with some casual players, who like to just play, without the pressures of raiding, or expectations that one has to be the best his or her class can be, then come visit us on Dath’remar server and send a whisper to myself, Trygor or Vulpine if you want to join in the fun.

Beware of Trygor when he begins serving drinks though. His “Mark of the Wild” branded Mojo is pretty potent.

Which brings me to an observation I’ve made about gamers, both young and old, over the last few years:

1. You get the gamers that play for the fun of it. For escapism. Casual and leisure-time players. The types that like their MMORPG’s, console games, etc.
2. Then you get the competitive players. Generally, those that will play in LAN’s when they can and play online against other live players. PvP junkies. They can be a little annoying but they’re mostly harmless as long as you don’t take their caffiene and sugar away from them.
3. And then you get the hardcore fanatic. The player that rubs their victory in your face. Who needs to collect every accolade and award there is. Obtain the top rank. Have the most kills, etc. They’re also the worst kind of sore loser.

Walking around rAge, I think I saw a few of every type. There were the ones that bounced from stand to stand, ooh’ing and ah’ing over all the new games and consoles. There were those that dabbled in the LAN and co-op games. And I’m pretty sure I saw more than a few of the hardcore fanatics.

Of the 1500 LAN players there, I would hope that a majority of them were decent people that took their losses well and celebrated their victories without being rude about it. However, I know that their must have been those that didn’t… And I ask myself, why?

Why get so upset about a game? Are we turning gaming into a competitive sport? Are we going to have the age old split between the jocks and the geeks re-occur within our electronic world as well?

Is the elitist jerk with the R25000 gaming rig going to lord it over the casual gamer with his R6000 desktop? Does the quality of your hardware dictate your standing in the gaming metaverse? Is it the measure of the size of your e-peen?

And does your frustration at not being top of the log justify turning around to the people facilitating the ‘sport’ and treating them like dirt?

There is an old adage. A worker does not find fault in his tools (or in this case, the tools made available to him). Rather, he should look inwards, at himself, and seeks the source of his frustration there.

If you’re not winning the games the way you think you should be winning them, don’t blame the machines. Don’t blame the organisers. Don’t blame anyone except yourself.

Look at it as a reason to push yourself harder, if winning is so important to you. To keep reaching for the next milestone. If we all strive to be the best, we will improve ourselves, even if the ‘rank’, relative to others, remains unchanged.

Sure, it’s not E3 or any of the other overseas gaming conventions… but my word… it’s impressive nonetheless.

The plan for the day was to head through to rAge with Rozz and Nick (Kellia and Ulat from my old Affliction guild) but Rozz ended up going through alone earlier and I followed by about a half-hour… the drive through to Northgate (just up the road from me) was uneventful, until I tried to find parking. 3/4′s of an hour later I eventually gave up on the idea of trying to find parking near the Coca-Cola Dome and parked underground… on the other side of Northgate. My legs and feet are still complaining…

Anyway, I eventually got to the Dome, stood in the queue to get my ticket and started wandering around. I found it rather amusing that the first thing I saw that caught my eye was the female Night Elf Druid statue at the BT Games stand. Clearly I’m more addicted than I thought… though that purple hair does stand out a mile.

Anyway, getting back to my tale… Lo and behold, the first familiar face I run into is my good buddy, Craig, videotaping a presentation about Assassin’s Creed (I want that game so badly, it’s not even funny). Chatted to him for a bit before he headed back to his Xbox 360 stand then resumed my meanderings. Shortly after that I ran into Rozz who then proceeded to act as tour guide for me. We went to go see Louise (a.k.a Chronic) at the Intel stand where she was Tournament Director for the weekend. Poor girl was looking somewhat flustered by the time we got there.

On with the tour… I got to see the new Playstation 3… nothing spectacular in my mind, but still a pretty piece of hardware. The Wii… now that looks cute… some fun looking games. But by far, I think the star of the show was the Xbox 360. Sure it’s been around a bit longer than the other 2 platforms but damn, I have to admit that Microsoft have done a good job on this one. Halo 3, the other big attraction (they even had a Master Chief actor marching around), looked pretty damn good, even though I’m not the biggest fan of FPS games. Transformers caught my eye though…

Let’s see, what else… ah yes, the obligatory expo bag to collect brochures and cards in. Well, mine has a bit more than that in now. I subscribed to Popular Mechanics while at the show, getting the latest issue free and a cap. I got a copy of the new look SA Computer Magazine (SACM now)… and somewhere in there are my entries into several competitions. So if Lady Luck feels like being nice to me, I could walk away with… let’s see… a HP Laptop, the Xbox 360 Elite, a copy of Halo 3, a portable movie player… but who am I kidding… not with my luck.

Ran into some guild mates from Affliction (Sythenia and his lady) and Awakened Guardians (Jakalas, Papillon, Kiteena, Malystra, Serpentza, etc) there as well. We ran around for a bit, looking at all the things we could not afford (Oh to be a rich man!) before they went off and I looked up Rozz again and kept her company for the rest of the afternoon.

Had a look at the AnimeWorX stand as well as they seemed to be hosting a mini-comic con as well. Saw a lot of anime that I would love to get my paws on… but it will have to wait for a bit. However, I think I need to get AWX to book Ghost in the Shell : SAC2 and Solid State Society for me. Was quite amused to see some cosplay going on as well.

Oh, the one negative thing I have to say about the show… the pricing of their drinks and food. R8 a tin seems a bit steep for me, and R8 for bottled water is even worse. Or R30 for a hotdog that is more bread than anything else… the only real value may have been in the pizza’s from the mobile pizza van, but they were so damn slow it was painful. That and the fact that they seemed to screw up more orders than get them right and often the end product was burnt.

All in all, though, it was a good day, which I enjoyed with good friends. I will definitely make a plan to go again next year.

For an insider’s viewpoint on rAge, head on over to Craig’s blog entry.

My head is filling up with terminology and jargon, from both the Checkpoint Firewall-1 side of things and our own internally developed monitoring systems that we deploy at client sites.

This morning, I woke up, with the word “CACT’s” on my mind… Complex ACTions. Packets being dropped by the firewall. My staple diet of support tickets, these days. And something that is often difficult to interpret. I sometimes spend an hour or two to retrieve the logs, format them in Excel and Access, then do SQL queries to filter out the “trash” data to determine the culprits. And even then, I cannot always be sure of my analysis until I verify some facts with the network diagram or ask a colleague to double check my findings.

Thus far, I’ve found some DDOS attacks, some portscans, a virus infection, peer to peer software abuse and some really dodgy DNS systems.

Anyway… this weekend is rAge. First one that I will be attending. Looking forward to see what we here in South Africa call a gaming expo, seeing as we always see coverage of the overseas expo’s but never our own.

Hope you all have a good weekend. See you on the other side.

Granted, I haven’t started any of the real hard work yet, rather, I’ve been studying their products, getting to know the staff, building my PC and subsequently my virtual PC’s to run and test the products.

I’ve been made to feel very welcome by all involved and have met some very interesting people. Amogst them, I’ve found some kindred spirits that share my passion for certain things in life: photography, esoteric studies, music, even gaming. It was very amusing to find that at least two of my colleagues are playing or have played World of Warcraft.

Next week the pace will increase somewhat… but I’m ready and looking forward to it. For all the obstacles that I felt were in front of me on leaving the old company, I feel the path ahead is now the right one.

I first heard the term WoW-verse used in a podcast called WOWCast, where the hostess, Alachia uses the term to describe the metaverse that is the World of Warcraft. For those that don’t recognise the term metaverse, refer to the novel “Snowcrash” by Neal Stevenson.

The reason for this blog section, is a need to validate, somehow, the time I spend in my choice of metaverse.

Why I come home, cook my dinner, chat briefly to my housemates about issues of the day or hearing their work warstories, then log into WoW and live my virtual life, in an attempt to escape my real life.

Alachia’s latest podcast discusses this issue in depth, and she brings up many really valid points for the virtual life. And she also discusses what to do to balance that virtual life with the real life. VL vs. RL…

I play World of Warcraft on the US server Stormrage, having started playing in February 2006, thanks to my best friend, Rozz, who bought the game for me as a belated Christmas present, so that I could play with her, a dream we’d had since the days when her and her then boyfriend ran the local South African Blizzard RTS servers for Warcraft III, Starcraft and Diablo II. She even bought me the Diablo II game and expansion and I did play, but never online as I could never afford to have broadband until January 2006.

I remember the days preceding the arrival of the game in the mail… She’d call me or PM me online, and ask me what class I was going to play, what professions I was going to take, etc.

Having come from a roleplaying background, something I’d done since college days, and having read fantasy and science fiction since my early teens, I was keen to try my hand at a druid, one of my favoured roleplaying classes from Dungeons and Dragons. Admittedly, my choice was also biased toward the druid due to the fact that Rozz’s main ‘toon’ was also a druid, hence she could help me and guide me as I played.

I was also really keen to play as a skinner and leatherworker, the idea of a druid, a man of the wild, living off the land and crafting from the land, quite prominent in my mind. At the time, I was still very much under the impression that druids were more like their Diablo II:LoD counterparts. Rozz, however, soon taught me otherwise and suggested I change to herbalism and alchemy, again something she could advise me on and as I would probably end up being the healer in any group, I’d need potions as well.

At the time, Rozz was already a high level druid, starting to get involved in guild raids and busy farming herbs for potions and trying to earn enough gold to get all the things she needed to be a ‘successful’ player. So I rolled Nyctan, my male night elf druid, and started levelling, and she helped me where she could, either coming to my rescue on difficult quests or financially with gold donations. Slowly but surely, I made my way to 10, then 20… and hit a wall.

So I took a break from my druid and rolled my rogue, Ksenia, a female night elf rogue.

Why a female, you may ask?

Sure, I heard it all before…

G.I.R.L – Guy in real life…

M.M.O.R.P.G – Many men online roleplaying girls…

I never roleplay my female toons. I’m not THAT into roleplaying. But, in using an old excuse, one used by many of my real life male friends that do play online with me, ‘if I’m going to stare at something for hours on end, I’d prefer it to be something I enjoy looking at’.

I do love my little rogue. She’s a very pleasant break from the norm. And I put a lot of time and thought into her creation.

I modelled the character off the main character from Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell : Standalone Complex series, Major Motoko Kusanagi. While the female night elf is not the most anime looking of toons, I took the blue/purple hair from Motoko, her hand to hand combat style, mobility, agility, etc and chose a rogue as the final character that fit that mold. As with many things in WoW, unless you were there first, most of the big names from fiction or mainstream media are already taken. So ‘Motoko’ was out. As was ‘Kusanagi’…

So I turned to another source for names. My friend, Rozz, is of slavic origin, and I’ve always been fascinated with slavic folklore, from the rusalka to the vodyanoi, their naming conventions and I also happen to find many slavic women to be exquisitely beautiful. So I chose a name from that background. Ksenia.

Later, I would use more names from that background. And even one from Hindu folklore, Dushana, one of the demon rakshasa, for my warlock.

So I played my rogue. And my friends that had bought at the same time as I recieved mine, shot ahead on their toons, Rob on his mage, Andrew on his paladin, Sean on his warlock. Then Sean and Andrew both rolled hunters and replaced their mains with these ‘alts’, playing until all hours of the morning.

And I took my time, doing my own thing. Skinning anything in sight. Doing leatherworking… My ‘old’ dream I’d had for Nyctan, now transferred to my rogue, a self-sufficient, hard-hitting, tough survivalist.

It eventually got to the point where Rozz asked me which ‘toon’ I was planning to make my ‘main’… the druid or the rogue. I think I bowed to the pressure of wanting to be more like her, so I continued my druid, leaving the rogue behind for the moment.

So, Nyctan made his way painfully from 20 to 30, 30 to 40… and finally I got my mount, specc’ed Balance tree for moonkin, and suddenly I was rocking again. At the time, Rozz’s guild was fracturing and she was going through a tough time. Now, I’ve known this woman for many years now, so when it comes to her, I’d drop everything to help her. Eventually her guild split and those that split off, formed a new guild, Affliction, and she asked me if I was willing to join and be power-levelled to 60 to help fill sorely needed healer spots in raids.

And so I left Awakened Guardians, at a time when they were ready to make me a guild officer for things that I’d done for their forums, etc. Admittedly, I could have left in a better way, but I guess at the time I wasn’t as close to them as I have since become. I joined Affliction and Rozz and one of the guild masters, her friend and now boyfriend, Nick, helped power-level me to 60. And I started raiding.

Raiding… new places. New bosses. New loot… new gear. Great.

Raiding… pressure to perform, repair bills, lots of screaming and shouting and negative remarks… Not so great.

It’s had it’s highs and lows. Right now I’m happy not to be raiding. Specifically raid healing. Hell, even feral tanking was a nice break from the monotony of healing.

When I wasn’t on the druid, I resumed levelling the rogue. I also got bitten by the PvP bug and was trying to gain ranks and honour in order to get gear, seeing as I was not likely to get raid gear on my rogue anytime soon. And, in the time that I did PvP, with our South African latency, I managed to work my way up to Master Sergeant. I would have liked to go higher, but I was not about to take time off work to PvP AND raid AND sleep…

Eventually, I got tired of my druid. So tired, that I petitioned my guild to allow me to change over to the rogue instead. But I think the idea of them losing a raid-specc’ed, epic’ed out restoration druid that could off-tank when needed, to a rogue in blues and greens that would need Molten Core runs for fire resist gear, Zul’Gurub runs for other gear and rep, before being ready to go back into Black Wing Lair, Ahn’Qiraj 40 and Naxxramas… well, let’s just say it was too much effort.

So I distanced myself from my druid, slowly but surely. And then I moved to Johannesburg from Cape Town and was without broadband for a while. And then The Burning Crusade came out and I made a decision. I was well behind everyone else at this stage, so I made a post on the Affliction forums, stating that I was retiring from raiding for the foreseeable future to resume playing the game on my own terms, on my rogue. I removed my rogue from Affliction, moved it back to Awakened Guardians, my original guild, where I had been helping their pre-60′s group, called the Omegas, led by another friend of mine, Louise, playing her hunter, Shadane.

And I’ve played, sometimes solo, sometimes in duo teams with my friend, Rika, on her retribution paladin, Bracye, where I generally end up rogue tanking and hauling her out of trouble and bandaging her paladin… a standing joke between us as she sometimes forgets she can heal, let alone ‘bubble’.

And as of tonight, I’ve made my way to 68… in fact I’m about halfway to 69 now, I’ve explored most of the Outland maps, power-levelled my druid’s alchemy and cooking with all the mats I’ve sent to him from my rogue… I’ve helped kill a fel-reaver… I’ve gotten my first dungeon set 3 piece, my Assassin Shoulders…

And we’ll continue the story from here… Right now, my bed calls. I have to be up in 5 hours time.

G’night.

Well, work has been, well, interesting at times. The joys of corporates : politics, backstabbing, favouritism, brain-trusts, ducking and diving…

I’ve met an old IRC acquaintance at work though, so all is not lost. Makes things a bit easier when you have someone to chat to during the day.

Other than that, life at the Big Brother house, as we’ve come to call our little commune, has hopefully settled down finally. We’ve had an interesting past few weeks, having to ask one of the girls to leave due to her abusive nature towards the other housemates, her alcohol problem and her cat. On top of that, one of the other girls’ ex-boyfriends has made an appearance and threatened us all with violence, phoning us on the house phone, stalking her, forcing his way onto the property, etc.

Let’s see, what else. Ah, yes, I’m back online playing World of Warcraft, now in The Burning Crusade, with my little slicer and dicer rogue. Been listening to a lot of game related podcasts from the folks over at WC Radio. Ah yes, that was other thing. The iPod. I love my little iPod. It’s my precious!

Hmm. Ok. Think that’s about it. Ah yes…

It’s Easter Weekend this weekend so hooray for public holidays and long weekends. Time to relax, play some games with friends, watch a movie (I think 300 is on the menu), drink some Amaretto, lime and lemonade, turn up the volume and unwind.

Catch you on the flip side!

Done your shopping yet? I haven’t. But then again I haven’t had much of a chance to do much other than work lately. It’s good to be busy again. Busy enough to get home at night and feel exhausted. Busy enough not to feel bored. Busy enough to keep my mind occupied so that it doesn’t dwell on other things.

Anyway… we had our company function this last Friday so things are quiet at work as many people have gone on leave. I’m busy doing website tenders for my company and listening to music (E Nomine) recently acquired from a gaming buddy of mine.

Some sites of interest:

Adobe’s Colour Scheme Planning Online – http://kuler.adobe.com/

Promisance – online, turn based empire management – http://www.wgamezone.com/

Adobe’s JamJar, online collaboration tool – http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/jamjar/

While you’re there, if you’re a shutterbug, take a look at Adobe’s Lightroom - http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

More to come later…

Ciao ciao

Other than work, which has been at once challenging and interesting, I’ve finally settled into my little hole in the wall in a commune, set up my PC and hi-fi and unpacked my books.

I’ve had a braai / WoW:TCG evening with my Warcraft Guild. Met some old friends and made some new ones.

I’ve met my new housemates, Jason, Kerry and Lindsay.

I’ve also been robbed… I fell for the old ATM scam and had my bank account cleaned out.

Right now, work is keeping me occupied most of the time. Will update more later.