Diablo III: Release Date!

Been waiting for Diablo III? I have! Diablo II was a really fun game, and since seeing some of the in game footage… I’ve been looking forward to find out the release date.

There seems to be a rumour going around that the game is to be released on Christmas eve. I imagine if this happened, there would be a huge rush of people trying to get it before christmas day. This leaves me wondering if it could be true. Of course, it might be released on platforms such as steam aswell, who allow you to buy the game as a digital download – no waiting in line for the last copy there, just a download… Although if that does happen, you might want to follow the guide to downloading from Steam that I have in my post about Crash Course. The servers will probably be hit pretty hard.

Here’s what the article I found had to say:

Blizzard Entertainment’s upcoming dungeon destroyer Diablo III is said to be coming on December 24 according to a rumour on the website kaputik.com where Associates working on a Diablo 3 game design have supplied the following information.

The online beta multiplayer trial version is currently set for an 11th September release.

The final version is to be released before Christmas – 24th December 2009.

The rumored specs for the PC and Mac:

PC:
Operating System: Windows XP/ Vista
Processor: 1.4GHz or higher CPU.
RAM: 1Gb or more.
Video: 128Mb video card Dx9
Hard Drive Space: 4-8GB

Mac:
Operating System: MacOS X 10.3 (Panther) or better.
Processor:1.6GHz or higher.
RAM: 1Gb or higher, DDR RAM recommended.
Video: 128mb ATI or NVIDIA vid

Diablo III

Get your christmas hampers and turkeys ready a day early, christmas is coming early!

Of course… this is just a rumor, so don’t get too excited yet… Although I am getting my hopes up!

A Guide to Commenting on Facebook

Someone has just updated their status on Facebook. Perhaps it’s a friend, or maybe your girlfriend? It might be a relative… or perhaps your boss! The question is, should you leave a comment on their status? What should you say? Are you allowed to say something you shouldn’t?

For centuries, these questions have plagued our minds (I’m thinking a Facebook page scrawled into a rock in the middle of 10 cavemen).

Well, today I offer you the solution to all your Facebook problems. Behold the Facebook flow chart of how to comment:

Follow the flow chart!

Thanks to Brendan. Source can be found here.

WTF?! Wisconsin Tourism Federation!

I found this article yesterday on a travel forum I frequent and I can’t help but post it here, it’s worth a cheap laugh at least!

Here’s an extract from the article:

The body charged with attracting more visitors to the midwestern state will now be known as the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin (TFW), in an attempt to put a stop to the jokes.

It seems that the federation was unaware of – or unconcerned by – the modern meaning of WTF until its acronym featured on a blog that compiles unfortunate corporate logos earlier this year.

Commenters wondered whether an expression of foul-mouthed astonishment was the best way of boosting tourism to a state that would not be an obvious choice for most holidaymakers.

The federation, a coalition of local trade bodies, has now amended its website to reflect the more anodyne name, which has been changed for the first time since it was founded in 1979.

The website also features the group’s new TFW logo, complete with squashed text to find room for the extra word “of”.

This entertained me, especially the bit about squashing the word federation. Poor guys! But hey… At least the re-brand might have attracted some sort of viral marketing, although I think it would have been awesome to have kept ‘WTF?’

‘I’m off on holiday, I’ve booked the flight, the car hire and the flights! I’m off to Wisconsin.’

‘What inspired you to go there?

‘WTF!’

‘Wha-?’

They should have changed their name to Federation for Tourism of Wisconsin, in my opinion. FTW?

Left 4 Dead: Crash Course

What is your take on the new Left 4 Dead campaign?

Bonus: 50% off Left 4 Dead!

Crash Course. 50% off of Left 4 Dead

Yesterday the new Left 4 Dead campaign was released, the campaign is basically a tie between the end of the No Mercy campaign (the hospital roof) and the beginning of the Death Toll campaign (the tunnel full of car wrecks).

Something that does bother me though, is that the rescue vehicle at the end of Crash Course is nowhere to be seen in Death Toll, not even at the very start if you look behind you. Just a bunch of wrecked cars and fallen trees. Perhaps I missed something though.

Crash Course was the first DLC which costed anything, the survival mode update being the first free one. Crash Course is free on the PC, and costs 560 MS points on the Xbox 360 (although it was first put on Xbox Live for 800 points – this was a mistake).

First off, I’d like to tackle something which is not really to do with the campaign… But something a lot of people might have been annoyed at last night.

Steam.

If you were one of the… I am going to assume millions of people who were downloading the new content, you’ll have had the problem where it got stuck on download starting, or updating. This is simply because of the strain on the servers in your region. My solution was to goto settings and set my region as a random country. For example, I used Thailand and my download was done a few minutes later. The connection might drop now and again, but you’ll have a high kb/s at least. To change this , goto File -> Settings -> Download tab -> Download region drop down menu.

Onto the campaign. I only had a go at Normal difficulty last night because I didn’t have much time. I think that overall, the campaign is pretty cool looking. It is a lot less linear than the previous campaigns, which gives the awesome potential of getting lost. This leads on to me thinking that the map is very focused on Versus mode. I can’t imagine it being extremely fun in 4 player mode, except for maybe the panic event at the very end. You’ll see why, I don’t want to ruin it quite yet.

Playing yesterday, I had two tanks and two witches (and this was just on the first level) – I’m not sure if this was just me being unlucky with the director or if it’s meant to be this way, but this gives ample opportunity to drag people onto witches and get a go at playing the tank. I’ve always enjoyed servers that give more than one tank on random levels. Interestingly, one of my witches was the in back of a truck… The bots still managed to alert her and get incapacitated though, a far cry from the AI that was talked about when Left 4 Dead was still in the making.

When it comes to playing this on versus, I haven’t tried yet because the people I usually play with weren’t online. But from what I’ve seen in single player – it looks promising. There were twisting roads everywhere, roads leading back onto each other and plenty of buses and cars to hide behind. I also saw about 2 or 3 cars with alarms on the first level – I’m sure they’ll lead to many a zombie horde raining on you after accidentally shooting one. Not to leave out the survivors, there was also a massive amount of weapon caches sprawled about the map and a lot of petrol cans and barrels. Just don’t let the bots near them… Unless you like dying in fire.

I’ll probably try out Versus later and see if there’s anything new to write about, still waiting for a Left 4 Dead I can use with my mobile broadband!

Oh, and remember: Don’t get into a helicopter with a zombie pilot.

Gatwick Trains Travel to the Moon and Back!

Gatwick transit service between the North and Sound end have been stopped to allow a 45m upgrade.

The old inter-terminal system was installed at the airport in 1987

The trains have apparently done 2.5 million miles but are closed down for the next 10 months, I’d usually say that it’s time to get a car rental, but luckily they are being replaced with buses for the duration of the upgrade.

The trip on the buses, however, will take at least 20 minutes longer, and the airport has advised customers to make time to allow it.

The upgrade and new service is expected to start running in about 8 to 10 months (around May or July) and fully finished and opened in around 11 months (August).

What I find most interested are the statistics given to the old trains, bearing in mind that the only distance they travelled were the 2 minute ride between both terminals.

Since it was installed in 1987 (that’s about 22 years) the transit has:

• Used around 600 tyres
• 16,000 power pick-up shoes
• The car doors have opened and closed in the region of 3.8 million times
• Covered 2.5 million miles, which is equivalent to:
  • 100 times around the Earth
  • Five return trips to the moon

Thanks to BBC News for the information.

Prototype Lag Fix

Moved to Prototype Lag Fix

Awesome Mario Wallpapers

Ah, the Internet. I’ve been surfing around for things to post and found way too much. Old and new. From a couple winning free car hire at their wedding, to weird goat-men being born (I liked this one, but he died ).

Finally I settled on linking these Mario wallpapers, because to be honest, they’re pretty awesome.

I actually found these on Digg, although I don’t use it very much anymore – I probably should because it has a lot of fun things. Clicking stumble has become my way to find interesting stuff.

A couple I pulled from the site to give you a quick example:

You can find the rest here. Enjoy!

Orange iPhone Deal

Something which I only found out today (was this announced before today? I didn’t see it either way) is Orange will now be aloud to sell the iPhone in the UK, making the deal non-exclusive to 02.

Here’s the info from the article I was reading:

Orange has announced that the rumours are indeed true: it will start selling the Apple iPhone with its mobile phone deals later this year. Until now, O2 has had the exclusive official rights to sell the iPhone in the UK.

Details are yet to emerge tariffs, pricing, launch date and availability, but it is known that both the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS are part of the deal. It will be available through Orange direct outlets, as well as some high street partners.

It’s good news for Orange broadband fans, as the device is one of the best out there for getting online – although it’s still a far cry from using a laptop, netbook or PC. But best of all, customers on Orange mobile phone contracts can get themselves free fixed-line broadband. The internet service provider also does a large range of mobile broadband deals, both contract and pay as you go.

I see this as very good news, the more networks which are able to sell the phone, the better. Hopefully it will start to drive the prices down. The question remains though, is which company do you prefer to buy from? Will it come down to past customer support? Which has better tarrifs? Maybe which has the better mobile broadband?

Share My Playlists

Here’s a little something I forgot to mention. I actually didn’t find this online because I didn’t bother to search for anything like it, rather someone I was talking to about Spotify suggested I should check it out.

If you have Spotify, you might have noticed you can share links to songs, which was great for showing friends songs over messaging etc.

However Share My Playlist.com is sort of a pooled resource for exploring music, people make playlists, sign up and then share their playlist with a simple link. It’s a great way to find new music, especially something you might have not listened to otherwise. The site also features some social networking tools – such as blogging, commenting and rating playlists.

If you’re interesting in taking a look, the website is here and their Twitter is here.

Personally I haven’t added a playlist yet because I’m always adding to mine, too much music! My playlist is already sitting about 350ish, all sync’d to iPhone offline too!

Another interesting place to pick up playlists is Drowned in Sound (twitter), they make a playlist every friday to check out, which has some pretty good songs. Nice Friday afternoon gift!

Dublin Theatre Festival

Thought I’d stick this up here, since it looked like a really cool offer. I was searching around for banks (trying to set up a savings account… really need to start watching my money!) and found this:

Direct from the deserts of Rajasthan, the festival is delighted to welcome the most colourful, joyous and inspiring show likely to be seen this year.

Staged by the acclaimed Indian director Roysten Abel to spectacular effect, over 40 Indian musicians and singers from three generations, present a highly theatrical evening of traditional Indian gypsy music. The Manganiyars, a community of travelling Muslim musicians, traditionally sang before the kings of Rajasthan; and in this unique show, they weave together their deeply rooted and complex history in a rousing array of choreography, song and rhythm, building to a breathtaking climactic finale.

The Manganiyar Seduction was originally created for the opening of the 2006 Delhi Film Festival and has since been taking the world by storm. Don’t miss this chance to see a unique production from one of the world’s most intriguing culture’s in this magical and life-affirming show.

They were giving out tickets to this, so I thought that looked kinda cool. It looks like they’ve already finished giving them away though -  No idea if they’ll give out more tickets for the same thing (or different things),  but it might be worth keeping an eye on.

There’s another one here that is offering discounted prices.