Okay okay, I know I’ve been neglecting you guys. But I finally got my copy of Final Fantasy XI, so isn’t that sort of a good excuse? :s

I’m at 24:30 hours of gameplay and still nowhere. I’m a Hume Black Mage, level 7, sucking in battle and even worse at crafting. My girlfriend however, bought the game aswell after seeing me playing and after 13 hours she’s level 8 (almost 9) with her Elvaan Warrior. And she’s kicking ass :(

The game is great though, although maybe a bit too dangerous. Just this weekend we spent all our time in Vana’diel and almost forgot to eat on Sunday evening. Also, progressing in the game takes time. Don’t expect to be doing anything useful when playing for an hour or so. Leveling up, quests etc can take hours (took me 10 hours to go up one level last Sunday :(). Plus the fact that you can’t pause and that you’re playing with other real people, doesn’t allow you to walk away when you want. When you’re out in the field battling monsters you just can’t leave everyone behind. And logging out whenever you want isn’t possible either. It takes 30 seconds of healing time without getting hit, which requires you to be at a safe spot… kind of to not let you cheat and log out immediatly in the middle of a tough battle. So you’ll be travelling another 15 minutes back to town if you’re too low level like us to go any further ;)

Crafting is another fun time killing hobby you can enjoy in the world of Final Fantasy XI. It just costs you crystals and items. Combining the right ones can create more expensive items, or can cause you to lose it all. I gave it a shot last night, causing me to lose all my 4000 Gil I saved up. Now I’m at 100, but I’m hoping the Japanese will buy some of my stuff today (I managed to create some small items with my craft afterall), so when I log in I’ll have some cash again!

Another great thing about the game (and I heard this about many other MMORPGs) is the fact that the people on the servers are really friendly. This one guy (think his name was Hexpak, sorry if I got it wrong) showed me around town for 3 hours (!!!) because I didn’t have a clue where to buy what etc. He helped me in some battles, gave me some cash etc. Phylny (I know I’m writing this wrong but damn it I even have problems with my own in-game nick ;)) helped out aswell, and Silenteye sent me money for no reason. You’ll get healed by any White Mage that passes you and he’ll even throw in a Protect and Shield. Nothing asked in return! It’s even better than real life! (Now you’re scaring me sic :P)

Anyway, as you can see, I’m crazy about the game. Hope it doesn’t start interfering with my real life though ;) but oh well, atleast when I’m in-game I’m spending less real money! :P

So if anyone feels like joining, we’re at Windurst on the Carbuncle server. Look for Suibhne and Aislynn ;)

It arrived… at the shop… a week too late. But it did! . So my gf is picking it up tonight!

It’s been a while since I was looking this much forward to a game though. I checked the damn gameshop sites every hour for any news on arrival, checked forums, read articles on what job/race to choose, … I think I’m already addicted to Final Fantasy XI and I haven’t even started yet.

Anyhoo, let’s hope it doesn’t suck now ;) Off to Vana’diel!

.. in a couple of hours. DAMN WORK! (although happy to have it to pay my FFXI ;))

Two weeks ago, Sven and I decided to buy a bonsai tree. So we went to some garden centres and found ourselfs one. The tree’s a from chinese origine. It’s a ‘Sagaretia Theezans’ and in winter there should grow nice little flowers on.
So, as you already know probably, it’s not very easy to keep a bonsai tree alife! Our little tree needs to be fed with special bonsai firtilizer one time in two weeks in summer and one time a month in winter. The sand should never… be dry, so you have to water it very often. Then, when the sagaretia is in his growing period, you have to shape the tree and cut off the bigger branches. Of course, you have to be very patient when shaping trees because it still are living plants.
Often, the first time people try to keep a bonsai, it dies… So did Sven’s first tree. In fact, that was very strange. His tree went trough four seasons in one month and that for like a year. The leaves got four colours a month, from green to yellow to brown. Probably, the reason herefor was that it’s standing place was above the heating. This time, I’m in control of the tree. I hope it will last longer than a year. If anyone has some good advice… go ahead and comment ;)

I don’t know much about designers, but Philippe Starck, well, him I know. We already got one of his Fossil watch, the Samsonite handbag (for the girl) but although we have a nice growing Alessi collection at home, we haven’t got any Starck-Alessi stuff yet (as far as I know). Enough on the wishlist though :P

And even though I like my Apple single button mouse, I must say I’m quite interested in trying out the new Microsoft mouse, designed by… Philippe Starck! It’s sad he chose Bill above Steve and sort of weird since Apple together with Sony are the leaders in design electronic equipment, but still, it looks kinky! So if you don’t know what to get me for Xmas, here’s an idea!

There’s another hype from the USA heading our way, something I didn’t think possible in our little country. But seeing the fascist and Bush-like direction this place has taken since a couple of years now, I’m not surprised. I’ll never laugh at America again… this place is turning into USA junior.

The biggest party in Belgium, “het Vlaams Blok” or Flemish Block, has discovered videogames and decided to give their opinion. They want to restrict access to violent games for younger and unstable people, and in some cases, ban some games completely. They want shops to do a check on the person buying the game before handing it over, so you can expect doing a little psychological test next time you head out to your local gameshop.

One example that always comes up in these discussions is the game Postal, on which De Winter says that pissing on gays is not a nice thing to do. Pissing on Jewish graves (which is a sport Vlaams Blok members are quite good at, and “pissing” is meant literally here) however, is A-OK.

I guess this is part of their new plan getting even more voters, as there are many “parents” that will completely agree with this. Knowing this anti-violent games opinion is coming from the most aggressive, violent and unstable party in this region is quite funny. But restricting unstable people from playing these games might not be a bad thing, since a couple of months ago a VB member shot a couple of people, one beated his wife and last week a member attacked someone with a bottle and broke it on his head.

Better not buy those evil videogames anymore, or they’ll piss on you too and set you on fire. Welcome to the midevil times! This country is going to hell :(

Okay, today I got proof that or

A. Anyone who reads this site never clicks on anything.
B. You people are evil and don’t notify me of bugs.

I don’t know which answer I’d prefer best, but thanks to uninvited an obvious bug (not a single archive page got displayed correctly) was found. I don’t know how I never noticed it, I guess I changed something at some point, forgot to check etc etc.

Anyway, a perfect time to tell you people that things are clickable here! We have our small young archive at the right, The Dig at the top and links to other great sites somewhere at the bottom right. So make yourself useful and use that mouse what it’s made for! :D

Weblogs are getting more popular everyday. Although they exist since ages, these times they are all over the place. It’s gone that far that our team at work decided to put up our own blog! Reason? Well, to inform you all on our latest yeti sports hi-scores, local dodge ball events and other crap we can think of ;) Be sure to check it out at SCT Seriously (a basic of French, Dutch and English are required ;))

Anyone who ever played Final Fantasy Tactics should check out this comic, hilareous :D

Although the new iMac looks great, we are too poor to own such a beautiful machine. So we did like anybody else would do, buy a pc and use the evil MS OS.

I thought I’d never go back, but the girlfriend’s pc was as good as dead and a replacement was needed quickly. Seeing as we’d have no other choice than to buy a new pc and no mac, and the fact that Half-Life 2 is going to go gold sometime soon, we built one to last a while.

The new baby is a 3Ghz Pentium with an ATI 9800 Pro videocard (which is not the latest, but who pays 500 euros for a videocard? .. oh that’s right, you Denis ;)). It plays Doom 3 fine and should run any other game smooth aswell. I guess Office, Photoshop etc will run without a prob ;), just a pitty all these games and tools need the Windows OS to work.

Which reminds me of that stupid Matrix spoof by Microsoft, on how easy it is to work with Windows and its easy driver system (compared to Linux). Nothing if further from the truth. Installing Windows takes ages (as always), needing 100 updates, seperate driver installs (unless you’re happy with the crappy default Microsoft ones) and some more work to look good (whoever designed the default XP look should be shot). Plug & Play is a hoax.

An Apple however, takes just a couple of button presses to get installed AND works/looks great default! I know that’s because a Mac is assembled by Apple and isn’t filled with random hardware like a pc, but still, this gives Apple a great advantage. Easy install, ease of use, etc.

So yes, we bought a pc, we chose the cheap solution and now we’re stuck with Windows XP. But we try to look at the bright side, because we might be enjoying Half-Life 2 after all :D (and there’s no need to get that ugly Xbox anymore!;))

I guess all of you have heard of Gmail, (which still sounds gay if you ask me) a new webmail service, offered by Google. This service gives you 1 Gigabyte of mail space, so no more spam filtering (you got space!), no more problems with big attachment (you got space!) and no worries about mails getting lost because of no space (… ‘cos you got space!).

Anyway, it’s still beta, so you won’t get your hands on it soon, since the only way to get an account now is through an invite by someone who has. It’s come that far that people are selling the invites on ebay, some begging on forums etc.

Good news is, we got our hands on an account thanks to kurisu (site temporary down due dns problems i think but check back later ;)) and we have a few invites left! So if interested, give me a mail and I’ll do some random shuffle and give a couple of lucky bastards some… that is if anybody cares anyway ;)