Apple meet Steam
The first part of this posts’ title is a passing reference to my blog a couple of days ago about the Pens predicament a game 7 against the Canadiens. Unfortunately they couldn’t win on the night on home and were soundly beaten by a motivated Montreal side. I haven’t watched the game but know enough from the reports that the best side won out on the night.
As for the latter, well, the logo should give that away as last night Steam arrived on the Mac. One of the many negatives people cite against Macs is the lack of gaming support. While not strictly true there’s no denying that there’s a lack of class A titles for the Apple platform. That however has changed to a certain degree with Steam on the Mac top titles like Half-Life 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead and many other Valve titles will, eventually, be ported to be played natively on OSX. What’s even better news is that, until the 23rd, Valve are giving away Portal… for free!
I’m really excited about this as I can now play HL2 on my Mac, once they’ve done the port, but also pick up new titles with ease. One of my favourite games, Football Manager, is a Steam title so another rather cool reason to be happy as these days I much prefer digital copies as opposed to physical media as to be honest, the house I live in is cramped as it is without adding more stuff! It must be said though that while this will decrease the relevance of the old “there’s naff all games for the Mac” argument it doesn’t completely kill it off. There’s plenty of titles out there that still won’t see the light of day on a Mac for various reasons but perhaps Valve’s move will help to increase the number of top titles appearing on the Mac.
All or nothing now!
The Final Showdown
Tuesday, 05.11.2010 / 12:43 AM / 2010 Stanley Cup Playoffs Coverage
By Sam Kasan
MONTREAL – The race to four has become a race to one.
After six highly competitive, tight games between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Montreal Canadiens in their conference semifinals series, both teams find themselves landlocked in a 3-3 tie.
And now one game is left to decide the fate of both franchises, as a winner-takes-all Game 7 will be played Wednesday night at 7 p.m. at Mellon Arena to determine which team will earn a berth in the Eastern Conference Finals.
via The Final Showdown – 2010 Stanley Cup Playoffs Coverage.
Another year and another Stanley Cup run for the Penguins. After reaching the final the last two years, both against Detroit, and winning it last year I guess you can say I was expecting a repeat performance. While it is still likely that we might win Montreal have certainly put up a fight. I’ve only caught 3 games of the six played so far in the series but one thing’s for sure the goalie, Jaroslav Halak, is the main reason the series is tied 3-3. The other reason is that, until last night, Sydney Crosby hadn’t scored a goal in the series!
I’m still hopeful for tomorrow nights game. With Syd now on the board I could very much see him turn up in a big way in game 7. The other advantage is that we have home ice so I fully expect the Igloo to be rocking come game time. If I can I’ll stay up and watch it but at the very least I’ll record and watch the next day. One thing’s for sure though and that is I’ll go to be Wednesday night with my fingers crossed as Montreal ain’t going to roll over.XX
Ahh the thwack of cork on willow.
So yesterday I played my first full game of the new cricket season for Bradley Stoke. It was for the Sunday Friendly XI and we were away to Lisvane CC. While not glorious weather for cricket we did have a dry day with occasional breakouts of sunshine. The ground however was lovely and is probably the best ground I’ve played on since I joined BSCC. I know the picture doesn’t show it but it was your archetypal ground; small white fencing surrounded the ground, lovely outfield and a rope boundary. It was also situated at the back of an industrial estate and next to a golf course so was lovely and quiet too.
As for the game itself we batted first and set a total of 269 runs off the forty overs for only 4 wickets. One of our batsmen got a century with two others getting a knock of 50+. After a lovely tea we went out to field knowing as long as we fielded well we should win. I opened the bowling and managed to post figures of 6 overs,1 maiden, 3 wickets for 16 runs on our teams way to winning by 140 runs as Lisvane posted a total of 129-8 off forty overs. I’m really happy with my start to the season and hope I can keep it up as my goal for the season is to average more than a wicket per game. While I know there’ll be games where I won’t take any wickets or just the one here’s hoping they’ll be few and far between.
Posted in Cricket, Sports
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Tagged Cricket, Sport
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Yay for viusal aids!
So after weeks of posturing, live TV debates and canvassing the UK has ended up with a hung Parliament. In all honesty this is nothing strange for a democratic country so all the ho-ha is slightly over dramatic (as is the picture I chose). However it seems that everyone knew this would be the outcome before we did.
The markets had speculated and prepared for it and the polls up to and including the exit poll were pointing to it as well. What will be interesting to see now is who will form a coalition with whom. You’d imagine that Labour and Lib Dem would form a coalition as the Lib Dems came about as a fork away from Labour. However some believe the Conservatives will be able to woo the Lib Dems into backing them. Personally I’m not sure, if anything the Lib Dems will be disappointed with their performance considering all the positive press Nick Clegg got after the first TV debate. If anything I predict that while we’ll get a coalition for a while it will likely lead to another General Election sooner rather than later.
It sounds strange to say this but I’m actually quite excited to see where this goes. What will be the major concern for the coalition if we get one. Will it be electoral reform in preparation for another election or will they continue to concentrate on the economy and sort that before moving forward with anything else? I’m hoping the latter as, right now, we need to make sure we come out of this recession before making plans and I’m hopeful that is the way this will go. It’ll also be interesting to see who does form a coalition and, if rumour is to be believed, will it be Labour and Lib Dem but only if Brown resigns? I doubt we’ll hear much if anything till after the weekend so for now we’ll just have to put up with the press making all sorts of claims especially the Murdoch lead press. In the end though I think any coalition will be fragile and we’ll end up going to the polls again.
Don't drop it!
This is just a quick blog post to let any regular readers know that this blog is moving. No, not domain, just servers. For the last couple years I’ve been running Fluffles.com and pntaylor.net on two separate gridservers hosted by Media Temple. While the package is relatively cheap ($20/mnth) over a year that adds up. So today I asked the question whether I can host both sites on one account/server and the answer was, yes, yes I could.
I probably should have done this ages ago as neither domain gets many hits nor passes lots of data so I rarely get anywhere near the allowance I get (1TB/mnth). So I figure the best option is to put them both on the same server and save myself some cash. I’ll be doing this over the next few days in which time, if you happen across my site, you may find it unavailable. Don’t panic! I’m hoping the move will be seamless and I have a lovely guide to follow which should be foolproof. Still, there’s every chance I could mess it all up and end up with a lot of work to bring it back to life so I guess I’m just asking you all to bear with. With any luck though, come Thursday, this site will be hosted on the same server as Fluffles and I can close the other off. In the mean time please cross your fingers!
Posted in Website
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Tagged Migration, Website
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