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Richy's Random Ramblings

Game: Ant Wars

January 8, 2003
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[Ant]Ok since finding this game via Quanta, I’ve been playings Ant Wars for several hours(around 3 hours last night and 3 hours so far tonight) and I quite enjoy it (no I don’t, I just play games I really hate for hours on end 🙂 ).

It’s a bit like Sim City – but with Ants. You start off with around a dozen ants, and then you’ve got to hunt for food, enlarge the nest or hatch more ants. Only thing is – you can only select one “action” to do at a time. Sometimes the ants will act on their own initiative and enlarge the nest slightly or discover some food – but you’ve got to guide them.
And, like Sim City, you have disasters. Instead of Earthquakes, you have Buster the Bully with his magnifying glass burning the ants, or he’s starting an ant-farm and needs some specimens – you’ve also got floods (lots of rain), “monster attacks” (birds) and other things to look out for. You also get the chance to fight with other ants – don’t be lulled into thinking you win the fights against enemy ants everytime, they do win occasionally so check the odds (I didn’t and one of my colony’s was wiped out).
It’s hard to get to a population of 3,000 ants, and it’s extremely difficult to maintain it at the 5,000 level – but it is achievable (at least in the short term). This game, unlike many of the others I have mentioned here, just needs a standard web browser – no plugins (Flash or Java) required. However, because of that fact – every move you make is sent back to the remote server so it is slow… Perhaps if the designers of the game had made it into a Java applet, it would be even more addictive!

Blog: 200th Post

January 8, 2003
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[200th post]63days (2months and 2days) since starting this blog, I have now reached entry number 200 (this one!). Woo! Go me! 🙂 It took me 31 days to reach post 100 – so I’m currently blogging at the rate of 100 entries every 31 days – and, I work it out that by the time this blog is a year old I would have made 1,100 entries. Wow. I was actually hoping I could have hit the 200th post mark at the end of 2002, but, alas, it wasn’t to be.

Neil, on the other hand, takes around 45 days to do 100 entries – so I should, in theory, overtake him at some point…

A few boring statistics follow (mainly so I can look back in X number of units time and think “ahhh….”).

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Game: Battleships

January 7, 2003
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[Battleships]Did you, like me, ever play Battleships when you were younger? You know – the game where each player would draw a grid on some paper (or have some ‘squared paper’ already at hand), mark where you wanted your ships – and then have to guess where the other player put theirs?

If so, you can now play Battleships on the internet. Complete with stereo sounds, status reports and good graphics – this game helps recreate the enjoyment I used to get. I don’t know how the programmers have designed the computer player’s artificial intelligence: but it’s beaten me once or twice! My highest score so far has been 3980 – surly you lot can do better. Can’t you?

Weekly Wrap-up: Breakfast Club

January 7, 2003
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[Lutterworth Grammar]After last week’s “Weekly Wrapup” and the encouragement given by the good looking Meredith ( 😉 ), I’ve decided to do this week’s “Weekly Wrapup which is about “the breakfast club” and high school.

Before I commence though, I’ll have to admit that I’m a Brit and over here we tend to do things and name things properly. We have pre-school (which is also known as “playschool”, and increasing by the American term, kindergarten), followed by primary school (ages 5-11), then secondary school (ages 11-14), and then high school (also known as ‘tertiary school’, which serves ages 14-16). Those years (with the exception of playschool/pre-school) are compulsory education – meaning that every child has to be educated to those standards. At the end of high school, we have to pass our GCSE examinations (General Certificate of Secondary Education) and then we are given the choice whether to go to college to study for ‘A levels’ (16 to 18) and then on to University.

Anyway – on with the questions!

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Friday Group Therapy: Friends

January 7, 2003
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[Leather Couch]Late again, but it’s time for my Friday Group Therapy – this time about Friends (and, no, not that strange American sitcom with the same name). My answers to this weeks questions are, in my own words, slightly “below par” – but I’m allowed an off post/day/week/month/year/decade aren’t I? 🙂

  1. Describe what you consider to be a true friend?
    To me, a true friend is some one that is ‘there’ for you out of choice – if you need a shoulder to cry on, someone to just talk to, and someone you enjoy being around. Quite a tall order really! A good example that I’ve recently come across has been in the Robin Cook book “Vector” where the character Laurie breaks up with her “could soon be fiancee” and goes back to her friend’s – Jack – place to stay the night and just for a cuddle and talk. Good friends should be able to talk to each other about just about anything, yet still not try to force the other to agree with their opinions.

    Sometimes the chemistry between two really good friends can be so strong that it may be mistaken as love – and not just between the parties involved. Others may see two people spending lots of time together and really enjoying each others company and that could just be true friendship.

  2. Are you still close with friends from 10 years ago?
    No, not really. Hang on – let me remember what I was actually doing 10 years ago… (fx: Richy thinks back: 2002-10=1992, therefore I was 12 years old and just leaving primary school). I can remember a few friends from that time, but I’ve not been in contact with them for ages.
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