New Games Now

Recently, we've gotten new games here. Several of them. I'll begin listing them off. First, we've gotten Oblivion for the ps3, and my brother now has morrowind for his PC. I have been playing quite a bit of minecraft, which is quite fun (More about that on Wednesday). I haven't played Star Sonata much lately, but that's because of minecraft. Those are the main games, but there will be more eventually.

Long time no post

It really has been a while since my last post. Lots of stuff to say, prolly gonna space it a bit, rather than make one big megapost.

First: Star Sonata fail...

I got the Earthfore Cruiser, and was trying to capture another Space Blue Gamma.... I ran out of energy just in time for 2 basils and a Sawtooth to show up, and I had no full-tracking weapons... Died, lost 4 of my DWO drones, now I'm Fleet Commander class. I still have a gamma, and got a basil a while ago (as well as the energy, a recent change made them impossible to get).

Second: School.

My school has restarted full-force, and I had forgotten how rough the first week can be, but that's handled now.

Third: Blogging plans

I'll be blogging once every other day or so, as a part of school, now.

Star Sonata, hard schoolwork, and it's Lunchtime

Okay, this has been one of my better days, for sure. I do have 2 reports due at the end of the week, I do have 2 tests to correct, but it's been a good day. So without further distraction: updates!

In Star Sonata, I am very close to owning my own Basil! All I need to do is get a certain commodity to Handel's Cove, and I'm set. Kinda. I'm still going to need help capturing a Basil, since to capure it you need to kill it with a radiation weapon, and the basil take 1/5 the normal damage from those... But a captured Basil is better than a built one, because captured ones come with 3 items that are actually impossible to get anywhere else. They come with 2 inbuilt weapons and an inbuilt exterminator. These weapons are nice, because one slows downs enemies, and the other sticks these annoying parasites to them, causing extra damage over time. Both of these weapons have epic range because of the Basils' radar and energy, which give a 30% boost to range when equipped together. This ship is also Tech level 15, meaning it can use decent drones. Still no DWO drones, but decent ones. I am also saving up for an Earth Force Cruiser, a tech 16 capital ship with good stats. This will be a big leap for me, because that can use DWO drones, and a nice aura generator the engineer class gets, which doubles the energy bank of all allies nearby. I'm hoping to get it within the week, but it's half a billion credits, so that ma be hard.

My school has been getting a little harder lately. Primarily because I now have 2 reports to write, which are due at the end of the week. One of these reports is 6 pages long, and I have 1 1/2 pages done. The other is shorter, so I'm focusing on the big one first.

Goodbye for now, it's 11 and I haven't eaten since 6. I'll post again tomorrow, perhaps with pictures, about my new Basil, I will have it by then. Bye!

My day so far

I've had better days (weekends) and worse days (3 tests and a report), but all in all, I've had a pretty good day today. I had an early morning PE class, in which we played capture the flag, and although we got beaten in less then a minute in the first two rounds, the teams got evened out pretty darn fast. We still lost, but we had fun. Once I got home, I got back to school, which also went fast, and now I'm down to just a little cleanup in the family room, then I can play (I hope). Today I started watching "freeman's mind", an awesome machinima about the game half-life 1 just search for the name on youtube to find it. I'm planning to watch more before I start my videogaming. I want to play some Garry's Mod today, because I just got a (rather large) addon called "neuro planes" which adds AI controlled aircraft that you can spawn. I'm gonna have so much fun with the C-130, trying to shoot it down while leaning the controls. Might make a nice video while I'm at it, but don't get your hopes up too much, I still need to find a screen recorder.

My dog, Jasper, just walked into my room with a new toy. Now he's giving me the cute face. His new toy is fire hose (just like the last two he shredded) with a tennis ball attached to it using some rope. Jasper likes to share his old toys with our neighbor's dog, Bear. Bear is a very big dog, but still a puppy, although not big enough to get his head over the wall without jumping. When I look at the neighbor's yard, I can see Jasper's shredded firehose toy lying on the porch, now being used by Bear. I need to get to my chores now, family room to clean and sweeop, MAYBE a bathroom to tidy today, and hopefully a bit of gaming after that. Bye!

On Star Sonata failiure and candle-making

Okay, so I really messed up on Star Sonata. I forgot that my Leviathan could take about 1/4 of the damage my Pax Celestica could take, and wound up dying, twice. First, I went into Absolution and set my DWO drones in a really bad spot, then had to run and got killed. Then I did a low level DG (dungeon galaxy) and forgot that the boss of this one is a Sawtooth. A Sawtooth is able to can lock up your turning with it's laser. I died before my DWO drones could kill it. I wound up losing 2 of my 3 Mzungu mining defenders, and a lot of other things. I later traded my last MMD for Command and Control drone. which is a tech level 10, engineer class-only drone that gives a good buff to you and your teammates. I have also gotten remote control 15, and, with help from a teammate, captured a Space Blue Gamma, a really cool ship. I have spent a lot of time in the thing recently, and will probably use it more, until I get a T16+ combat ship.

I have also been trying to make candles IRL, but every time I start to cool it so it will be ready, the thing gets a nice, big crater in the middle, where the wax shrunk. I would like it if someone would tell me how to avoid this when making a candle in a metal votive mould.

My Star Sonata Teammate is Epic

Hey there, sorry its been so long since my last post, but I'm still here!

I was playing Star Sonata yesterday, and while I was emptying a galaxy for the second time, trying to find some Seraphs, my teammate randomly chose to give me 5 drones of 2 types, out of nowhere. These aren't cheap drones either. I'm talking 2 death-warmed-over (DWO) drones (75 million credits each) and 3 Mzungu mining defenders (MMD) (100 million credits each!!!), for a total of 450 million credits. At the moment, I'm doing quite well. But, to me, 100 million credits is a lot of money. So, 450 million credits worth of drones is a big deal. DWO drones are really powerful. The 2 of them can do more damage than 3 Acme combat drones.

To find more information about DWO drones or MMD drones, check out the drones page on the Star Sonata wiki for all stats. I used CTRL-F and typed "DWO drone," or "defender drone" to find them.

The MMDs run out of power for their weapons pretty fast, and they die really fast too. But, they do good damage, and most things are not resistant to their weapon. My class is Engineer, so at this point I can lay 5 drones, where most people can lay 3. My drones are also stronger than other people's drones. The only thing that I need to work on is my ship. I have piloting tech 17 (skill level), which means I can use ships up to tech level 17. Tech level 16 drones cannot be use in a ship that's tech level 15 or lower. So, the only ship I can use for my Acmes and DWOs is a Leviathan.

The Leviathan, or "Levi" for short is NOT a combat ship. It is a MERCHANT ship. But when backed up by 5 high-powered drones, its shortcomings are less of an issue; although they never quite dissapear. Two advantages of using the Leviathan, are their massive hull space and it's size. The hull space, after loading WITH all my drones and gear, I still have about 4,000 hull space left, which is a massive amout for a combat ship. It's size is 150, which you can equip one solar panel for approxiamately every 10 size. So the leviathan can have 15 solar panels. I still have gear to buy, like 3 more DWO drones and a better shield. But I feel, it's a pretty good ship. My only quarrel is the speed, even with a speed-boosting bouquet augmenter (For those of you who play the game, this is not from Rosemaries, it's from Basils).

I'll keep posting stuff about my Star Sonata gaming from time to time.

Have a nice day!

Solar Energy

Solar energy is the light and heat that reaches the Earth's surface from the Sun. The amount that reaches the Earth's surface is enormous. In 2002, enough solar energy was absorbed by the oceans and land masses in two hours to keep up with our energy needs for a whole year.The problem is, we aren't able to harvest all that, let alone store it. At the moment, most solar panels get about 5-18% efficiency, meaning 95-82% is lost as heat. Thi sounds like a lot, and it is, but that 5-18% is is still a fair bit of energy. Research into more efficient methods is being done by a number of companies. An older technology called luminescent solar concentration is being worked on and it is predicted that after research is done, it will have an efficiency of about 30%.

Here are some pros and cons of solar power

Pros:
        Inexpensive
        No waste products
        Doesn't require a special facility
        Can be used just about anywhere

Cons:
        Generates no power at night
        Delicate
        Not very efficient (yet)