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The end of The Abyss as we know it.

Jun11

Obscure and unusual title, I know, but it might mean something to friends of mine.

Long story somewhat short, back when I was living in a place by myself with my very own broadband connection to myself, I chose to acquire a modem with Wifi.
Since then (and this is over two devices) I’ve used the SSID The Abyss.

I kept that SSID alive as I moved through a few places, just for convenience really.
Hell, my Netgear DG834G has held up nicely, so no need to replace it.

When I moved in to the house I’m currently in, their was an Apple Airport in place, however I couldn’t be bothered trying to use it due to the highly complicated password I could never remember even if I wanted to.
So out came The Abyss, disabling pretty much all features and using it as a dumb hotspot enabled switch.

A few years later and the housemate chooses to upgrade the puny Airport to an Ubiquiti Unifi, a product of some seriously greater capability.
No sponsoring or anything involved, but seriously Ubiquiti make some nice hardware.
They’re æsthetically pleasing as well, but no idea how the plastic handles long-term UV exposure.

Seriously we’ve got full house coverage of all devices, right down to passing through double brick walls for anywhere on the property.
I don’t have much in the way of AC devices, but my Ns and Gs are more than happy with it.

And so, after logging in all my smart devices and desktop PC to the Unifi’s SSID, I finally unplugged The Abyss and put it to rest.

Maybe in time I shall revive The Abyss for common usage, but if I do, it’ll probably be hosted on some wonderful Ubiquiti based hardware that doesn’t feel like a relic from last decade.

Maybe, just maybe.

AmK.

CenoLAN – The Saga begins!

Jun2

And so, another trip around the sun, and a birthday LAN for me.

This first day is a fairly quiet affair, with four of us so far.

Up until recently we’ve been playing Hexen 2 – Portal of Praevus.
My housemate, Pendragon, has been uttering sounds of extreme glee as he butchers furniture and other forms of wood products. I have a feeling he’s unleashing years of woodworking fury.
My beardymate Will, well he drowned in the toilet. He did this after I asked if he’d like to jump in the toilet.
Gyix has meanwhile been trying to kill the rest of us.
They’re all doing horrible things with sheep.

More will be posted as more games happen, but soon the pizza of day one will arrive.

*Edit 1*
Well we attempted a few things after pizza and garlic bread.
First was Blood, which launched successfully, however I forgot to turn on the monsters and we turned it in a Bloodbath.
We tried SWP for Shadow Warrior, but due to a combination of a firewall, and me dying, the game kinda died.
Duke 3d using eduke, well two of the four launched successfully.

*Edit 2*
Day 2 arrived, a bunch of my friends turned up like Wolfmother, tOrN, Sorrowborn.
Added to this was Pendragon’s best mate, Kaput.
All in all 8 of us, the perfect number that I’d aimed at.

A few things were tried, like me working to get a Doomsday server launching for shenanigans, which of course failed as the damned thing wouldn’t launch, and for some crazy reason the creator doesn’t want to use Listen servers.
So I abandoned it.

Brutal Doom 64, though, was surprisingly easy through the use of Doomseeker.
We all managed to get in there and die a lot of times.

Food was ordered, Dominos for day 2 as Pizza hut was day 1.
I acquired some chicken orb type things, they were delicious.

We tried out a project we called DTA, I think it was Dawn of Tiberium, but well it didn’t scale nicely, and the T100 really didn’t like it.
Also, it’s probably problematic when I spawn with nuclear silos and an AI helper who wants to take my units for a ride.

An attempt was made for Quake using UQE, problem being that setting up a listen server for 5+ players just wasn’t easy. It’s 4 out of the box, but you want more you need to command line it.

Eventually we jumped back over to Blood, in episode 6, and watched the friendly fire begin, we even managed to get past the aqueduct level with minimal casualties (and by minimal I mean mostly accidents).

As the evening wore on, and the consumption of Dick ended, tOrN and Wolfmother headed off back over to the dark side of the city (it’s a strange country over there, it’s like there are no trees and no civilisation beyond broadband internet).
The Manager (beardymate Will) and I settled down to some green apple vodka.

Day 3, remaining was pretty much Sorrowborn, Pendragon and myself.
It was much more relaxed, some food, some shopping at a surprisingly rare EB sale, and some watching of anime and stuff.

A good end to a good weekend.

10/10, would Doom again.

Garlic Bread LAN v17 – Return of the Domino

Aug24

So it’s another one of those times of year again (well it happens like 4 times a year) where LANslide open up registrations for yet another jam-packed and bound to be amazeballs event.

First, let’s get the important business out of the way, I want you to go here.
This of course lets you register and get in early.

Now that you’ve all gone and registered for the event (if you haven’t, then why not? you should totally register) you should now be poised to have a great time.

The crazy people who organise and run these events keep coming up with new, and old, ways to get people engaged and interacting.
I mean last time we had ghetto pass the parcel. There was also pass the GPU box, but all those boxes contained was disappointment.

We’ve had Gangbeasts tournaments, which is serious business.
I mean come on, do you risk coming near me? I will kill us all, as many of us as possible while falling to my death, taking you with me.
Then contrasting with that, Street Fighter V.

Doughnuts on strings? many have attempted to eat them.

Watermelon consumption? It happened, it was messy, we all had a great time.

Seriously though, if you’re available, you should come and join us.
There may even be garlic bread.

AmK