A multifarious collection of developments

So, I broke Photoshop today. It's the first time I've really done something that'll cause it to crash consistently. Which, I suppose, is a testament to the programmers and designers at Adobe. What was the winning formula? Create a 9px brush with 25% spacing, 100% size jitter, 38% scatter, 2 count (plus 10% count jitter), default texture, noise, and smoothing. Do a bunch of quick strokes in a row, and the program will hang. But it can be fixed by taking noise and smoothing off. Anyhoo, I used said brush extraordinaire to do this:



I think it may be one of my best faces/portraits yet. I got the proportions a bit out, he looks a bit more heavy than he should. Also, I didn't quite get the feel of the sharp contrast, it looks like he has a goatee instead of a shadow. You can see the reference here.

In other news, this is why I don't go and buy Need for Speed games right after they come out. I've been trying the... Extended demo, and I'm not exactly sure if it's quite as bad as the reviews suggest. But, it's still a pretty bad game. You can totally tell they put minimal effort into the PC interface - there's not even a cursor. You have to use - and + to switch between one field, and 0 and 9 for another. It's pretty bad. The handling seems VERY arcade-y... Kind of unpredictable, kind of obligatory, kind of... Horrible, really. The customization still feels shallow compared to Underground 2, the rubber-band AI is absolute TRASH, the cops appear from nowhere, and there's a slew of other quirks that make it unenjoyable. It has a bit of charm, it's a bit like Most Wanted which is one of my favourites. But I think it boils down to my affair with Grid. I'm sorry Need for Speed, baby, but I've moved onto other things. Grid's just more pretty and fun. Grid understands me.

And in more other (but fairly related) news, this is why I have and always will preorder any Valve game as soon as I possibly can. Left 4 Dead is really a great game. I was a little let down by the short length and lack of story, but the gameplay is bang-on. The hardest part is getting three other people you know together and finding a dedicated server. But when you do, you are in for a treat. I played for a few hours one night before jumping into bed. It wasn't until then that I actually realized that not only was I sweating, but my hands were shaking. I haven't had that much fun with a multiplayer game in a looooong time. It frustrates me, though, how hard it can be to to get those yokels from FNF to commit to anything. Sigh.

This week Top Gear was awesome (as always), The Office was a really solid episode (much better than last week's), and Heroes was par for the course (which is so-so, sub-par).

Oh, and I found out that GTAIV is coming to Steam. Wooooo! But I think I'll have to hold off a little bit for two reasons. First, the USD/CAD exchange rate has kinda fallen a bit, which means I'll have to pay more (booo!), and as it's a 16GB game and we've already blown our download cap out of the water for the month... I need to wait for December anyways. Oh well.

Annnnd... That's about everything of significance I have to say. Work is getting busy, somethings aren't getting done, yadda yadda. Booked tickets home for Christmas, they cost an arm and a leg... Getting a whole lot of nothing done for Christmas shopping, but I've figured everyone out...

AH! And some good news - The antique headset I was lamenting the loss of seems to be working fine. My cousin oh-so-sneakily turned town the volume while I wasn't looking, and the knob only really works on one channel. My decent Sennheiser set can be sent in for repair under warrantee, but my Logitech gamepad was a gift and as such I'll need to see if I can get a receipt. Yah. That's about it. Mebbe I'll go play some Left 4 Dead now.
-Cril

You know that its true
Its a little bit me, (a little bit me)
And its a little bit you...
Too

Monkees - A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You