freshbytes

C’mon, we want SNOW already!

Look, I know this post is far overdue, but it must have somehow fallen to the bottom of the freshbytes blog pile…

Anyhow, it’s here now. We got some snow when we didn’t want it (driving to Mount Nelson with lots of snow is fairly good fun, though) and even though it did snow on a couple of nights, it didn’t settle and that’s why this post is here. It should have been here a long time ago, but, to quote Ned Kelly, “Such is life.”

I’m not too sure how my holiday plans are stacking up to what I thought they would be – the first week has been fully hectic, y’all, and the second week is only going to be more so.

I’ve been to one eighteenth (cheers Christo), worked three week days, and lazed around for the rest.

This week, I’m working one day, watching a movie the next. Some sort of a LAN with the NoSpoon fellas is also coming up after the movie. After that, it’s a toss up between Calvin Magazine 08 duties and a Radi8 Winter Camp. Currently undecided which one I’ll go to.

On top of all this, there is a large amount of study to be done. I’ll try and get it done this week, but no promises :p

I’ll try and grab some more pics of the NoSpoon crew at Chris’ – if you haven’t already seen the pics, head on over to the NoSpoon page.

Speaking of which, Apple news includes iTunes 8, iPhone/iPod Touch OS 2.1, new iPod Nanos, new iPod Touch refreshes, etc. I’m sure you can find out the info from a quick Google.

It’s almost surprising I’ve done little gaming these holidays, but I’m sure that’ll change at the NoSpoon LAN. I know some others of us have been trying to clock up those Commander Keen hours

I should be getting my iPhone soon, expect photos somewhere.

Anyways, if there’s anything I’ve missed, shout out in comments. Good news is a little thin on the ground.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: apple, Blog, calvin, holidays, LAN, magazine, NoSpoon, radi8, snow, winter camp

No deep and meaningful today fellas (although there may be later on, depending on how I feel ), just a straight news-only post because Chris did was supposed to do the blog post last week.

Radi8 last week (8/8/08) was awesome as usual – I wasn’t there for the first part because I thought they were cleaning up the dirt jumps, but instead they watched a movie.
After a Maccas dinner, we had some Lifegroups time where the Year 7-8 girls were the only ones to have a seperate group – everyone else was lumped into the one big group! It was different, actualy, to hear everyone else’s opinions… That being said – I didn’t enjoy it as much. Maybe I’m a small-group kinda guy
Our time after that consisted of watching the new Hillsong DVD – which prompted me to buy it the very next day after work. Favourite song at this very moment from that album is Where We Belong – love the vocals, the melody, and the music – but especially the message.

On that note, (pun seriously not intended) I had no idea that Hillsong and Planetshakers were available on the iTunes Music Store! Previously, I had been looking for them under “Gospel and Religious” but not under “Inspirational”! Here’s the iTMS link for the new Hillsong album. If it wasn’t for me looking for a song that Dean plays every single time he hooks up his iPod to the speaker system (without fail), Planetshaker’s “Saved the Day” from their album “Free”. then I would never have discovered that the iTMS is such an awesome place…. Which reminds me, by the time you read this I’ll have bought that album, too!

Sadly, I didn’t go to the KidsMin Drama on Friday night, instead spending the night with the NoSpoon crew – for once, James G and I played Diablo II online. Sure, it was only two of us, but it sure as hell was every bit as fun as TrackMania Nations Forever and Counter Strike: Condition Zero after it was. Killing the Undead monsters with Corpse Explosion, a Vengeance, and a Blessed Hammer is just awesome. Far too awesome to describe in words, in fact.

Now the Kingston Combined Churches event – what a farce. If I say anymore I’ll just rant, so if you do want to know how it went – talk to me. On a brighter note (again, pun not intended) the Radi8 youth band were excellent to the point of Nathan needing a new amp halfway through. I have no idea what happened to his other one, but it just seemed to stop work for no apparent reason! Epic lulz.

Youth Alive is on soon (August 30), so you better get your PayPal on if you want to go to Launceston to have an absolutely smashing time. I’m going – so that means you should be too!

I’m not going to the Radi8 Winter camp, though, because none of my friends are going

I think that just about wraps it up – if there’s anything else I’ve left out, leave it in comments.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: Blog, condition zero, diablo 2, hillsong, itunes, NoSpoon, planetshakers, radi8, trackmania

Hello and welcome to another freshbytes post, where you, dear reader, will be catapulted into a world of total and utter chaos

We’ve had some changes (again) to the website, the most notable being that if you click on an image, you get this cool javascript effect – a little old, but still a cool effect nonetheless! Try it out with any post on here that has a picture and you’ll know what I mean.

You could even try it out on the new -=(NoSpoon)=- page here. This page is constantly updated with all the latest and greatest NoSpoon information, including where to find us on Friday nights, who to contact if you want to be a part of a LAN, and pretty much anything on gaming in CZ. You can check out the page with the photos from DEETS 07 (the LAN before NoSpoon) at Calvin here – why not try out the cool javascript effect there, its as good a place as any to have a go!

One last thing – The Radi8 Report. Since Radi8 (my Youth group, every Friday night [before the weekly NoSpoon LAN]) is a pretty Calvin-related (but not exclusively so), it’ll also by definition get a lot of attention on freshbytes.

So – Wild Animal Safari was a huge heap of fun – for those of you that weren’t there, imagine some people getting dressed in animal suits and running amok in Kingston. Youth in teams of about 5 or 6 then run around, trying to ‘catch’ them and earning a heap of points everytime they do. That’s the Wild Animal Safari in 25 words or less, and man, it was AWESOME!

I was a little disappointed at the teams (you can probably guess why) but pfft – they go broken up anyway. The team I had was still really good – Paul C, Emily L, Daniel P, Nathan dH, Neil O (you guys rock!) and as a result of our excellent intuition and superior animal-tracking skills (it’s called a phone, guys) we managed to take out the 6th Radi8tion Cup, not in a row, but still… I’ve now been on the team that has pretty much won the Radi8tion Cup everytime – even if it’s not with the same people… Lets see…

1. Radi8tion One – “Tribal Wars” – Black Team won.
2. Radi8tion Two – Unknown – No idea what this one was about, but I’m pretty sure we won
3. Radi8tion Three – “Academy Awards” – Yep, we won again.
4. Radi8tion Four – “Beach Olympics” – This one went to either the Blue or Yellow team, unfortunately.
5. Radi8tion Five – “Messive” – No idea who won. It was messy.
6. Radi8tion Six – “Wild Animal Safari” – Blue Team. Ooh yeah!

I’m sure that there have been some others as well – “GamesMania” was where yes, Black Team won, but we played this game that involved basketballs and milk crates, it was one of the Radi8s that started straight after school, before the school holidays. Thank goodness for freshbytes – you can read about GamesMania here. Yeah – Black Team won, I was right!

I think that’s about it for tonight – I’ll catch you all tomorrow. As usual, comments below. Benny, out.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: NoSpoon, radi8, radi8tion, report

Well, as the holidays draw to a close, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on everything that the holidays are…

The most recent event was the inagural -=(NoSpoon)=- LAN, where sleeping was optional, and pwning n00bs on CS:CZ was not. We didn’t get any sleep, but we did manage to clock up an awful lot of CZ hours… At this time, a special mention of the following people are in order:
((NS)) invASIAN: the one who was completely dead at around 10am the following morning. UT:GOTY now works on his machine, though! Stoked!
((NS)) Roarchas: managed to go home and sleep, was straight back into it the following morning.. Good work!
((NS)) Eudorus: had clocked up so many CS:CZ hours beforehand that it didn’t matter how well he went in games, just how log he could be seen “in-game” for…
((NS)) weedman: because you go to LANs to watch TV. Rabbit ears FTW!
((NS)) noobjuice: the newcomer to the -=(NoSpoon)=- LANs, he made a gallant effort in all games. His computer seemed so impressed it BSOD’d on command!
All in all, a good afternoon/night/morning had. Because, at the end of the day, it’s not about how much you won or lost – all that matters is that you played the game! YEAH!
Anyway, here are the totals for hours clocked up (most of us managed to hit a 10 – EAGLES SCREAM! Steam rating on Steam – bear in mind that some CS:S hours were clocked by other members… I blame Nick Jones for the amount of Half-Life 2 hours. Far out, Nick!
We also managed to chew through about 750MB of data, for those interested

Anyway, there are other things to life besides gaming, they are outlined below:

Still waiting on my shipment of games from the US. For those of you that don’t know, PriceUSA is a great place to buy goods in the USA – basically, they buy the goods for you then ship the goods to your Australian address – handy for buying things online that don’t offer shipping to Australia. Really good stuff!

In terms of other social stuff from my social scene, there wasn’t much – I didn’t manage to go to many of my youth groups events, nor did I get much homework done. No, for me, these holidays were mostly about relaxing after the first term of year 12 – truly nerve-racking stuff!

On to the main topic, and it is the OC! In the holidays, one of the things I did manage to do was finish off Season Four of the OC. For those that don’t know, I actually purchase all four seasons of the OC on DVD at the start of this year in Adelaide… It cost me a bit, but boy, was it worth it!

Simply put, The OC is the best teen drama every made. Forget Home and Away, Neighbours, Degrassi, Dawon’s Creek, or any of those teen dramas you’ve seen, because The OC blows them all away. Search “teen drama” in google, and boom – The OC is second in the list. It practically defines teen drama!

Season 4 of The OC is awesome. It’s the culmination of the entire series, the spot where all the storylines are brought together and made so that you get to know what happens at the end. Does Summer marry Seth? Does Ryan go back to his old life? In a sense, the final scene of The OC brings the whole series back to the start – I won’t reveal any of the details here, but I will say that it’s really an apt finish to a great series – as was this post to the holidays.

Ooh – segue. See ya’ll tomorrow, comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: benny, bsod, holidays, LAN, NoSpoon, the oc

First up: I do apologise for the late blog post. In my defence, I blame Chris

We’ll be having two posts this weekend, the other one will come shortly when I have no other things to work on

Weekend roundup: Meh, the usual suspects:

• Radi8 consisted of a little hangout time (enjoyable), a quasi-Radi8tion/GamesMania (Black team takes out the Radi8tion cup, for the third or the fourth time), a small iTunes workshop (both informative and interesting), some interesting pancakes (ham, pineapple – they belong on pizza, NOT pancakes), some small group time (death and sex – and interesting combination) and then praise and worship.
• -=(NoSpoon)=- group gaming session – we’ve made a couple of changes to this. Times are still the same (from 8pm-12am), but we now also run TeamSpeak (email one of the admins for server details, etc), as well as a couple of new games; Urban Terror (a CS knockoff game, entertaining nonetheless) as well as Trackmania Nations Forever. Battlefield 1942 is also expected to get going, at least once Chris finds some disk space so he can actually install the thing… We haven’t given up entirely on CZ, though, but we’re working on getting a VPN going (via Hamachi) so we can share iTunes libraries and play games over a “local” network. Chris and I have been “experimenting” with this over the last couple of days, and we seem to have got it going, with a little less lag than internet servers. Again, talk to the admins if you want to know the details. I’ve also changed my clan tag to ((NS)) verbos3, because having -=(NoSpoon)=- gamertag isn’t the best look in any game… You guys should all follow!
• Work – work as usual. Relatively quiet, though, and that goes for the entire CBD. Maybe it’s just winter, but people just don’t seem to want to come out of the warmth of their beds – and funnily enough, I don’t blame them..

If there’s anything I’ve missed (I’m not perfect, far from it) please tell me and I’ll endeavour to add it as soon as I get around to it

Oh – happy holidays, you private-school students. You deserve them!

Otherwise, it’s comments as usual. By now, surely you know where to put em

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: games, hamachi, NoSpoon, radi8, vpn

Well, we’ve (unofficially) decided to have a weekly gaming session.

No, you don’t have to bring your computers to some obscene location in the middle of nowhere; you don’t have to pay for anything, no, these gaming sessions are from the comfort of your own home!

So, if you have nothing to do from the hours of 8pm-12am on a friday night, then come join us. We’ll probably be on GamingSA CZ #2.

Join us on Weed’s TeamSpeak server, and we can chat on there while we’re gaming!

Get a client here, and join weedman.isa-geek.org as your TeamSpeak server. For more info, contact us.

We own.

-=(NoSpoon)=- FTW!

Happy camping,

The -=(NoSpoon)=- Tassie gaming clan.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: Blog, condition zero, counter strike, NoSpoon