Maëlys McArdle

Blog

  • Planes, Trains & Automobiles

    Ahhh, finally a few hours to myself! Oh yes, these are the weeks from hell for me. I’ve had less than 10 hours of sleep in the last 3 days. Mass of Assignments. A school kicking me in the pants wherever it can. Stress. It’s been brutal.

    Meanwhile, my sister is getting married this Saturday (w00t!), and my other sister from England whom I haven’t seen in 1.5 years is here as well for the event. She’s staying at her house for a week with her children, before heading back home. I spent a bit of time with her today, and her children. Tonight, the three kids held a concert for us, consisting of such fine tunes as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”. 🙂

    Made my week. 🙂

  • Serious Sam 2 Review

    Well, I’ll let you know my bias right off the bat – I’m a big fan of the Serious Sam series. There was alot to like about the original Serious Sam – the game, even new, was dirt cheap: $19CDN. That’s less than a third of what other games cost. It was developped by these talented developpers in their figurative garage over in Croatia. And the game? Great fun.

    That said, the title didn’t come with its flaws. It was no more than a brainless shooter, in one large and monotonous classical Egyptian-style environment. Serious Sam: Second Encounter, another $19 release, fixed alot of that. The environments now varied, and our hero, Serious Sam fought the monsters accross a variety of locales. Again: lots more fun. The game, however, still remained a brainless shooter.

    Now comes Serious Sam 2. The game is more expensive this time round; retailing at $34CDN. But coming with it is indeed a better game. Make no mistake: Serious Sam is no more than a shooter in which you kill thousands of monsters at once with a vast arsenal at your disposal. And that’s what makes it so much fun. It’s a game that suits me – I can play for 5 minutes, leave it, come back. That said, expect nothing like Rainbow 6, FEAR, Doom 3, Half-Life 2. This game is not that kind of involved shooter. To be honest, I wouldn’t be able to recommend Serious Sam if the game cost as much as the previously mentionned titles.

    So what’s new/better? Well, there’s a story this time round, and you accomplish objectives. It’s still the run-of-the-mill kill everything that moves, but now you have a purpose for doing so. Go to village. Save village. Meet this guy. Enviornments are as varied as the last game. The graphics are improved, and work silky smooth even at high settings on my Athlon 2600 machine (GeForce 6800 Card, 1GB RAM). Graphics tend to be low-polygon, but the game more than make up for it in both scope and scale. Best of all: The game is infused with much humour. A main female character is voiced by a man pretending to be a chick. Your computer-aid can now talk, and attributes that to “a better game budget”. Fun.

    Multiplayer is also present in this game, in the form of coop (haven’t seen deathmatch servers). Makes for great fun with friends.

    All in all, this is a great game if you enjoy that type of shooter. If you have limited funds, maybe invest in another more elaborate title such as Half-Life 2, FEAR or whatnot.

    Rating: 8.0/10

  • Poor, poor Americans.

    Poor Americans. Everyone makes fun of them. If you’re Canadian, you may know the segment of the TV Show “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” entitled “Talking to Americans”, in which the show’s hosts attempt to convince some hapless American that Canada has a National Igloo, that our Prime Minister is some famous and deceased hockey player, that we have no electricity, etc.

    Of course, I’m pretty sure the producers get the dumbest people they can. Ignorance is not an American-only thing, and I’m sure that one could easily find just as many stupid Canadians or what not. But nonetheless, the American populace are subject to yet another brush here, in a segment called “On the Streets of America” from CNNN. CNNN is a kind of parodic news network owned by ABC.

    Download clip: On the Streets of America.

  • Creepy: Humans Patented.

    A new study shows that 20 percent of human genes have been patented in the United States, primarily by private firms and universities.

    The study, which is reported this week in the journal Science, is the first time that a detailed map has been created to match patents to specific physical locations on the human genome.

    Researchers can patent genes because they are potentially valuable research tools, useful in diagnostic tests or to discover and produce new drugs.

    “It might come as a surprise to many people that in the U.S. patent system human DNA is treated like other natural chemical products,” said Fiona Murray, a business and science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and a co-author of the study.

    “An isolated DNA sequence can be patented in the same manner that a new medicine, purified from a plant, could be patented if an inventor identifies a [new] application.”

    Creepy huh? Full Source.

    Replies on Slashdot:

    Anonymous Coward: So this means that every time I spank the monkey, I’m committing hundreds of millions of acts of patent violation?

  • Bad Day.

    This blog is my journal. I use it to rant, and I apologise if that’s all I seem to do. But its mine – so take that :p

    Anywho, today was what constitutes “a bad day”. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working hard taking these “learning at a distance” classes on behalf of one of my school courses. It’s in addition to whatever we learn in class. Anywho, I’ve spent 15-20 hours working on that thus far, and it was supposed to amount to a test we’d have in class today.

    Well today, I fucked up my schedule. I thought the class was at 5:30, not 4:00PM. Needless to say, I found out (albeit late), and showed up for class at 4:25. By that time, the test had apparently finished. And I lost 10% of my final mark.

    Fuck that blows. Please don’t reply to this post.