Sorry guys, but the world isn’t ending quite yet.

Someone pointed me in the direction of this article (DigitalJournal) which, if you can’t be 250px-Operation_Upshot-Knothole_-_Badger_001bothered to read the whole thing, basically states that archaeologists have found another Mayan calendar. Not surprisingly, the “new” one (actually older than the big prophecy one) gives us at least another few thousand years to live, or put in layman’s terms – long enough for it to become a SEP (Someone Else’s Problem).

What really stands out from the article is not the new calendar as such, but how humanity has gone from having hopes for the future to what can almost be called a craving for it all to end. In the last few hundred years, and increasingly more so in the last 20 years, “prophecies of doom” have been circulating. Wave after wave of predictions for a cataclysmic event has embedded itself into society.

Has the world really become such a bleak place that a large percentage of the population would rather see it all scrubbed clean than to strive for tomorrow? Anyway, this is probably the second-last post from me for the year – I might still do my Game of the Year awards before January  if time permits (and if everything doesn’t go BOOM tomorrow of course). If not, have a great end to 2012 and I’ll see you in 2013!

Dev page up!

Some changes are taking place. Inspired by Notch’s page, I’ve decided to publish some glimpses on the projects I’m working on. These will fall under “The World of b0b” as seen on the new menu above.The old “TFB” link has been removed, as they now have their own site and forum.

I’m still doing game reviews on the main page – at the moment the biggest news being that Minecraft has gone out of Beta and now carries a Version 1.0.0 tag! I’ve been playing it non-stop for the last few days and am loving the new balance, features and server stability. Your character feels less vulnerable these days, giving you a better chance to survive a night out in the rain.

In other news: I had a tape about 15 years ago. It was “The Simpsons Sing the Blues”. For the last 2 days one of the songs, every single word of a song that I haven’t heard in 15 years, has been stuck in my head. That and the theme to “The Fresh Prince”. Ugh…

Oh, and my awesomely cool Nintendo wallet has arrived! It’s awesomely awesome!

Adventures in Nethack

Basically I’ve gone utterly off 90% of the games that I own, and pretty much not looking forward to anything that’s on the shelves or coming out in the near future. The only thing that gives me a glimmer of hope at this point is Diablo 3, and that’s been set back by another few months again.

So I’ve returned to an old nightmare – Nethack. It’s one of those games that looks utterly simple on the surface yet has so many ways to kill you, so many different items, so many different ways to play that no two games ever pan out the same. I have to admit that I’ve not ever been any good at it. I’ve never ascended, I’ve never seen the Amulet of Yendor. I’ve never even gotten past the Oracle or Dwarf Town. This time is going to be different – and here’s my story:

I started off as a Chaotic Human Barbarian. I figured this would give me the biggest chance of survival. Things were pretty standard at first, with me only finding a Lawful altar and a fountain on level 2. Much to my surprise though, quaffing from the fountain gave me a Djinn, a friendly one at that. One wish later and I had a greased silver Dragon Scale Armor, albeit only +0. This would be my fighting chance! Bravely I ventured forth, clearing level 3 with ease. Sadly my wand of detect hidden doors failed to find the entrance to the Dwarf Mines, but I did manage to find a hidden vault. I let the guard escort me out, but I took note of it for the future. As soon as I find a pickaxe that gold is mine! Considering my axe is corroded, the gold will come in handy when the shop finishes taking inventory.

I descended to level 4, where a swarm of Hill Orcs made quick work of my kitten. With no time to mourn, I retreated to a tunnel and tried to take them one at a time. One of the Hill Orcs happened to have a wand of digging though, wreaking havoc on the room I had entered from. I dispatched of the Orcs (finding a cloak of invisibility in the process) and continued exploring – just to find the ghost of a previous adventurer – more specifically the highest level adventurer I’ve had. I kicked that ghost till he begged for mercy. Now I’m sitting with all his inventory, and boy was he a hoarder. Now to carry everything back up to level 2 to check for cursed items and then equip myself further, and give my hitpoints a time to regenerate.

Part 2 to follow!

In other news: My WoW account that’s been dormant for almost a year got hacked… No idea how – I’ve ignored every email from Blizzard or the hackers pretending to be Blizzard, I didn’t even have WoW on a hard drive that was plugged into my machine. Anyway, got notified about it on Facebook, quickly changed my RealID password, downloaded the MASSIVE patches and logged in. Damage wasn’t too bad, I didn’t have much to start with. The bot did leave me with a ton of ore and much more gold than what I started with, and a 30 day timecard loaded so I didn’t bother reporting it. Right after this, Blizzard sends me a “Hey, we’ve missed you, here’s 7 days free playtime” email, which turned out to be legit.

This was last week. How much have I played? A total of 7 minutes. Yup, the drug has worn off, it’s out of my system. I’m no longer driven by the WoWmachine.

It’s Not Me, It’s You.

“Honey, we need to have a talk.

“You know how it seems like I’ve been avoiding you? Well, I sort of have. This is the part where I’m supposed to say that it’s not your fault, that it’s me, but that would be a lie. You see, you’ve changed. Not in a bad way, just in such a drastic way that I don’t feel comfortable with us anymore. I get home, sit down, and stare at you, unsure what to do. I don’t know you well enough anymore for it to be satisfying. I just sit there, hopelessly lost.

“Of course some nights it’s just not possible to communicate with you at all, or you’ll cut me off halfway through doing something and just leave me stranded. So I might have strayed. I might have fooled around with others. But it’s just because I didn’t feel like I was getting the affection I deserved from you.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling it off. I just think we shouldn’t be exclusive anymore. I’ll still spend a night here and there with you, but I can’t dedicate my life to you anymore. Maybe once we spend some casual time together and get to know each other afresh we can reconsider our relationship.

“World of Warcraft, I’m sorry honey.

(Basically I’m just fed up with 4.0. It’s given me nothing but grief and until it improves, and I WILL give it a second chance, I just don’t feel like putting the effort into it anymore. I’ll still do some raids and dungeons, but I’ll probably spend more time alting and relearning the game, though it’s more likely that I’ll be busy finishing my AWESOME castle in Minecraft.)