Beware. Written at quarter past WTF? last night. No proofreading done, though I have added an extra disclaimer further down. Enjoy.

I can't believe how little I've written for you guys this week. It's unacceptable! =P

Actually, I have an excuse: I was working. On a simplistic website. So why is that an excuse? Oh, I can now officially excuse my bouts of relaxation and laziness too: Blame it on work. Heh.

Actually, the site I'm creating is very simple design-wise, with a moderately complicated backend (That allows modification of certain visual and textual elements on the various pages by an authorized user).

Most of my time this week has been spent implementing every necessary security measure I know of, and others.

This consists mostly of .htaccess protection, some basic $_SESSION use, a checksum, and hiding the management panel.

Oh, and testing it. Trying to break into a site on my own server is fun; it's easy at first, and becomes harder as I implement new measures.

Anyway, enough about that. I haven't been that busy, overall; Procrastination is a horrible thing, and even though this 'work' shouldn't be tiring me out, it is. Dunno why.

So the net result is: I've done nothing on Arbiter. Heck, I've done zero game development at all, this week. I'm going to enjoy getting back into it once this job's done (Murphy's unspoken law states that I shall finish this contract and immediately get flung into another one. Good for the finances, bad for the hobbies).

But I can't say I haven't been doing anything in the way of creating stuff to put on the internet. At the moment I'm working on a completely original chiptune album, 8 tracks, which will find their way onto Bandcamp (Because making these takes time, believe it or not).

Hmm, so far this blog is lacking organization…

*waves hand*

A window into my life [random heading appeared]

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Interesting thought occurred to me. Most of you know me vaguely, but none of you know what I'm like IRL. You never will, unless you meet me. And the likelihood of that happening is nil.

Reason being that I have a severe vertigo and know too bloody much about the internal workings of aeroplanes to want to set foot in one.

But I lead an interesting though unorganized life. Oh, and it's a non-social one, by choice (The only parties I attend are the ones that involve lots of PC's, drunken newbs, Unreal Tournament, a Sniper Rifle, and a network cable).

Not to say that I don't know anybody in town, though I cannot say they're my friends. Friendship is such a washed out idea; who thought it up anyway? More on that later, I have much to rant about.

My days have no beginning, and no end. I sleep when I need to, and only for as long as I need to (Usually four hours). I keep track of mealtimes, because in my family, if you miss a meal, you've missed it. Tough.

Add in about four cups of coffee with the occasional cup of tea, and there's my energy cycle in a nutshell. I don't go for sugary snacks, favoring a savoury one, and even then only occasionally.

As far as my 'work' goes, that pretty much involves much pacing, sitting in front of the PC, typing at a rate that threatens to burn a hole in my keyboard, and listening to lots of fast-paced or upbeat music.

The pacing is usually performed when I have a problem to solve; I'm not one to place problems on paper before I've thought them through in my mind first. I've read in several articles on the net that it is impossible for the mind to 'simulate' situations, especially when it comes to game design or software design; but honestly, I think that different people have different capabilities. I can visualize abstract concepts and their solutions in my mind, but I have poor short term memory retention, and tend to mask out the ambient sounds around me often; but that's not the half of it. For all the things I constantly appear to be producing, I'm an extremely de-focused individual, if that is the correct wording.

I battle to keep my mind fixed on any one task, and it actually becomes a mental struggle to stick with a single project (Such as the site I'm developing. Might be why I feel so weary after working on it).

This is, I believe, something similar to our Esteemed Number Two's habit of going off on a tangent in his blogs, just a lot faster and in my mind (I'm thinking of my game, then I jump to thinking about the art for it, then I'm thinking about something I want to draw, then I'm thinking about the subject involved, next thing I'm thinking about music, all within a very short space of time). But this could be normal for all I know; I haven't studied psychology. :3

Well, let us move on.

SpectreNectar, I believe, will not enjoy the next section, as it will probably contain some Minecraft related activity.

Gaming

I've been playing far fewer games recently; I mentioned that in my last super-blog (Which was over 9000…. words). But in relation to my close family and 'friends', I still play far more than what they deem to be 'acceptable'. Maybe three to four hours a day? That seems ridiculously little compared to some people I know on the net, but I guess it's a lot more than the average single hour that my brothers and sister have to face.

The genres I've been playing at the moment are as diverse as they can be. This week I was playing Call of Duty 2 (Original, not Modern Warfare). To bump up the challenge a bit I stuck it on Veteran (AKA: Fun Mode). It was way more challenging than whatever the easiest mode was called. The last time I played the game (Several years ago), I would never have dared to play on anything above 'Beginner' in any game. Damn the 'Beginner' modes now, they're too easy.

A few weeks ago, I borrowed, played, and finished COD:MW (First one), and hated it. I loved the graphics though. And the Nuclear 'splosion. :3

But multiplayer was too damned slow. Give me Quake 3, Doom, or UT2004 over COD for online play anyday.

All this talk about the modern FPS reminds me that I ought to try Serious Sam (The first game), Team Fortress 2 (Not gonna happen on my internet at the moment), and also Hexen 2. Might get them on Steam sometime. Not sure 'bout Hexen, but that's probably on GoG.

In other genres, such as strategy, Civilization IV has been my choice. Specifically Civ IV with the Beyond the Sword expansion. A lot of people I know (Read: Everybody I know IRL who plays videogames) cannot grasp nor get into the Civ games. Me, I love the hidden complexity. Also, Nuking people is fun.

I try not to play Civ too often though, because even a normal game tends to demand a whole night to play. I don't even want to think about those poor lost souls who innocently clicked on 'Marathon' or 'Epic' back in 2007… may they return soon to the land of 'GET THE FUCK OFF THE COMPUTER YOU LAZY BASTARD'. ;_;

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 is another strategy game that I love . Especially when playing against other people. :3

Unfortunately, because I have the only copy amongst my friends/family, and because of my aversion to cracks, I have to play against the PC. Making Starcraft and Warcraft 3 my choices of RTS for multiplayer.

Minecraft deserves a sub-genre of it's own, simple labeled 'Super Sandbox'. As with all Minecrafters, I have bouts of loving the game and times I nearly forget about it. Recently, I've been using my PC to host a local server for my LAN network, with Bukkit, Runecraft, Spellcraft, Vault, Cheesemod (Yes, I use it Kabob. It's nice :3), iConomy, and who-knows what else. I also play on my server locally, when disconnected from the network, because I love the Runecraft waypoint system. Oh, and the instant hippie-huts <3

My dad, whom I 'introduced' to Minecraft last month, has become a pro railway-engineer, usually laying down lines that travel all over a more or less 5KM square area in-game. He's figured out tons of tricks, and now he's got Railcraft; what have I begun?

In other news, because nobody whitelisted me yet, I've been forced to play Minecraft SMP on other servers. Such as ones from YYG. And I have to admit, some of them are awesome :3

Not that I can spend much time on SMP these days. Heh.

Other games I've been spending valuable time with include the Battle Network series, some of the Starforce games, GoldenEye 007 (N64 version), Rune Factory 3, Radiant Historia, Final Fantasy IV, Riviera: The promised land, and Super Robot Taisen L.

Speaking of games

Dunno if you've heard about Freddie Wong (freddiew on Youtube). I've been subscribed to him since 2010. He's a highly skilled video producer, and editor, and you'd be doing yourself a favor to see some of his work.

Also, he's recently teamed up with a bunch of other awesome producers to create Video Game High School, a running series that they're releasing weekly, with a full cast of actors and a great script.

Take a look here

I won't spoil it, but just watch the damned thing already :3

On the subject of friendship

DISCLAIMER: Ignore this stuff, or at least don't take it seriously. I miss a lot of my old friends, 'cept at 4AM, when I'm being boss.

Fear not, no ponies in sight. This is a dead-serious discussion that has been circulating among my family recently.

The idea of friendship is flawed, and has been completely changed in recent years thanks to none other than Mr Mark Zuckerburg. But online 'friends' aside, what of those in real life? Well, 'true' friendship is technically a mutual relationship where both parties seek nothing but companionship, and neither party seek to gain unfairly from the other party.

And of course, we humans being the pretentious bunch of scheming bastards we tend to be, cannot achieve that.

Do we even require friends? No. We require human contact, unless we are anthrophobes, in order to stay sane and on-top of our social skills. You can get to know some of these contacts, they become acquaintance in most cases; people you can say hello to in passing, have a chat with, and perhaps even converse with on a highly personal level about your problems; but friends? Really?

Anyway, even though I detest Facebook, I'm definitely going to buy those e-ink 'Like' stickers, so I can slap them on peoples backs when they're not looking. [/trololol][/tangent]

OK bronies, come out with all your valuable wisdom garnered from nearly two years of watching your show.

This isn't such a large wall…

I'm running out of things to write about without falling back into pure ramble. It's already 'late' (AKA: I'm damned tired), and that affects my writing in a negative (AKA: Entertaining) way.

G'night.