Monthly Archives: January 2007

Archive, Games

MMORPG Fever – Guild Wars – Nightfall Campaign

Almost one week since my last post, so
what happened ?About 1 year ago I build a gaming PC, and the only game I
did play was X3 –
Reunion, well meanwhile getting a bit bored of it, or didn’t
play anything else at all, I decided to enter world of MMORPG
(Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games).

Having played Neverwinter Nights a certain time ago, which was a
offline role playing game, I searched for a transition game to
enter the “for myself mysterious” world of online gaming.

And there I found Guild Wars – Nightfall, usually online role playing
games do charge a monthly fee for gaming and storing your data,
while Guild Wars gaming is for free. And the best thing is, the
latest add-on Nightfall, is a complete standalone game, which
further can be played “online”, but without the need to build
guilds with other online-players. An ideal transition for
“single-players” to get into guild playing.
gwn-scr028-lrggwn-scr038-lrg
So within the last 4 days of gaming (yeah right not one complete
week), I’ve already reached level 13 as a
derwish/elemental-magician.
Here are some screenshots
of the Guild Wars World.
gwn-scr043-lrggwn-scr050-lrg
It also has its own wiki in
english and german.
Guild Wars Screenshot 055Guild Wars Screenshot 062
So, what’s next ?

Just in a few days the “non-game-based” MMO-World SecondLife will be released
for the german
market, as it becomes more and more hype recently, I’ll
certainly give it a try, but as of now, I still can’t get the
“sense” of SecondLife other than making virtual/or_real money in a
virtual world without any aims/targets.

May the magic power be with you, and your guild !
Kobaan.

Archive, Games

MMORPG Fever – Guild Wars – Nightfall Campaign

Almost one week since my last post, so
what happened ?About 1 year ago I build a gaming PC, and the only game I
did play was X3 –
Reunion, well meanwhile getting a bit bored of it, or didn’t
play anything else at all, I decided to enter world of MMORPG
(Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games).

Having played Neverwinter Nights a certain time ago, which was a
offline role playing game, I searched for a transition game to
enter the “for myself mysterious” world of online gaming.

And there I found Guild Wars – Nightfall, usually online role playing
games do charge a monthly fee for gaming and storing your data,
while Guild Wars gaming is for free. And the best thing is, the
latest add-on Nightfall, is a complete standalone game, which
further can be played “online”, but without the need to build
guilds with other online-players. An ideal transition for
“single-players” to get into guild playing.
gwn-scr028-lrggwn-scr038-lrg
So within the last 4 days of gaming (yeah right not one complete
week), I’ve already reached level 13 as a
derwish/elemental-magician.
Here are some screenshots
of the Guild Wars World.
gwn-scr043-lrggwn-scr050-lrg
It also has its own wiki in
english and german.
Guild Wars Screenshot 055Guild Wars Screenshot 062
So, what’s next ?

Just in a few days the “non-game-based” MMO-World SecondLife will be released
for the german
market, as it becomes more and more hype recently, I’ll
certainly give it a try, but as of now, I still can’t get the
“sense” of SecondLife other than making virtual/or_real money in a
virtual world without any aims/targets.

May the magic power be with you, and your guild !
Kobaan.

Archive

RapidWeaver Theme Wrangling

Getting bored of the old “Autumn-Fall”
RapidWeaver theme, and further getting told by my
friends over and over again, that it looked like grandma’s
paperwall, I finally invested some time searching for new a theme
for my site.
header_bg
Not easy to find themes for free, and those which are usually
destroy some of my blog formattings, or do have other
difficulties.
Well, as you can see I finally ended up with an already shipped
default-theme “Medieval”, which I pimped a little bit to get some
more space in the blog section, and further the heading color is
changed.
Since I’m not yet completely happy with the result, as I’m missing
this piece of art here:
sidebar_top
it’s likely possible that I’ll tuned it a bit more within the next
days.
Stay tuned.Kobaan.

Archive

RapidWeaver Theme Wrangling

Getting bored of the old “Autumn-Fall”
RapidWeaver theme, and further getting told by my
friends over and over again, that it looked like grandma’s
paperwall, I finally invested some time searching for new a theme
for my site.
header_bg
Not easy to find themes for free, and those which are usually
destroy some of my blog formattings, or do have other
difficulties.
Well, as you can see I finally ended up with an already shipped
default-theme “Medieval”, which I pimped a little bit to get some
more space in the blog section, and further the heading color is
changed.
Since I’m not yet completely happy with the result, as I’m missing
this piece of art here:
sidebar_top
it’s likely possible that I’ll tuned it a bit more within the next
days.
Stay tuned.Kobaan.

Archive

Permalinks Rollout

A friend of mine (Hi Marcus) gave me
the valuable hint to not use auto-magically hashed blog URLs
created by my blogging software, but instead use customized
perma-links, the help search engines like google, to better index
and categorize my blog-entries.The times where search engines were driven by keywords in the page
headers are all over, meanwhile it’s most
important to have meaningful keywords in your page-title and/or
your page-URL. Unfortunately Rapidweaver‘s
blogging module does not yet support per blog entry page titles, at
least I didn’t find out yet if it should work already.

Thanks to Marcus.
If you want to check it out, he has a great site about the Dominikanische Republik and
its small town El Limon. And there’s lots of delicious recipes
there.

Archive, Japan

Dining – Ninja Style

Having seen a few adventure
restaurants already in Tokyo by myself, there now opened a ninja
theme adventure restaurant in New York.
It is called Ninja
New York, everything is built like a small village and ninjas
appear and disappear silently as you select your menu. But, see for
yourself:
As for a comparison you can take a look at some picture on the
website of The
Lock Up in Tokyo where you’re getting arrested by attractive
police office girls in uniform, and where you can mix your own
cocktails in chemistry vitro glasses.

Or for the more video type of you, check out Tokyo’s Alcatraz
(Prison-Hospital) adventure restaurant:If you’re interested into more of the ninja stuff, be sure to take
a stop here: http://askaninja.com Winking

Archive

iPhone papercraft

MacWorld San Francisco 2007 Keynote
was great as expected, although much of the long time awaited
smaller things didn’t show up yet.At least Apple TV is now ready to be pre-ordered, and finally the
iPhone became reality. If you didn’t see anything yet, it is a must
to visit Apple’s
iPhone site and walk through all the quicktime videos or even the
now published keynote livestream.
paper iPhone sideviewpaper iPhone frontview
Now for the fun stuff. For those of you, who have kids, or the
completely desperate guy – who can’t wait any longer (Hi Alex,
Reyk, Gerd…) to have the new iPhone in their own hands – here’s a
guide how to build your own paper-craft iPhone. Winking

paper iPhone openfoldedpaper iPhone bottom
(Please, excuse the red color shift in my pictures, as my laser
printer is missing cyan toner at the moment.)
iPhone papercraft
A bigger version of the paper-craft cut template can be downloaded here. Feel
free to modify with your own iPhone front-cover.
Also the measurements are not completely true for now, see the
apple spec page for exact measurements to scale your image to the
printer.

Have fun, Winking
Kobaan.

Archive

iPhone papercraft

MacWorld San Francisco 2007 Keynote
was great as expected, although much of the long time awaited
smaller things didn’t show up yet.

At least Apple TV is now ready to be pre-ordered, and finally the
iPhone became reality. If you didn’t see anything yet, it is a must
to visit Apple’s
iPhone site and walk through all the quicktime videos or even the
now published keynote livestream.
paper iPhone sideviewpaper iPhone frontview
Now for the fun stuff. For those of you, who have kids, or the
completely desperate guy – who can’t wait any longer (Hi Alex,
Reyk, Gerd…) to have the new iPhone in their own hands – here’s a
guide how to build your own paper-craft iPhone. Winking

paper iPhone openfoldedpaper iPhone bottom
(Please, excuse the red color shift in my pictures, as my laser
printer is missing cyan toner at the moment.)
iPhone papercraft
A bigger version of the paper-craft cut template can be downloaded here. Feel
free to modify with your own iPhone front-cover.
Also the measurements are not completely true for now, see the
apple spec page for exact measurements to scale your image to the
printer.

Have fun, Winking
Kobaan.

Archive

Waiting for Keynote 2007

Only a few hours left until MacWorld
2007 Keynote in San Francisco.
check the live event coverage here:
http://www.macrumorslive.comHere’s a list of the expected announcements:

Category: Devices

– iPhone like iPod nano + touchscreen wheel
– iPhone Pro like iPod Video with Blackberry like features
– iPod nano with doubled capacity
– iTV as previously announced, a settop-box to beam iTunes and
maybe more to your TV

Category: Computers

– MacMini with Core2Duo processors and a bundled version with
keyboard/mouse + 17″ Cinema Display
– MacPro with improved memory and maybe dual-quad cores ?
– reveal 600Mbps Airport Extreme already working inside a few
devices ?

Category: Online Services

– .Mac Account with increased storage capacity up to 50GB for iDisk
and TimeMachine usage
– Own domain names and eMail addresses

Category: Software

iLife 07 Package:
– iPhoto + Google maps integration and GPS tagging features
– iWeb faster updates/websyncs + .Mac statistics plugin

iWork 07 Package:
– Pages improved
– Keynote improved
– standalone Spreadsheet added

Leopard Mac OS 10.5:
– release end of january 2007
– faster user interface
– new sreensavers
– TimeMachine (backup and archiving)
– CoreAnimation (GUI library)
– Spaces (workplace switcher)
– iChat with screencasting, video feature and videoeffects
– Dashboard onTheFly (iFly?) Widgets / easy and completely new
DashCode
– Spotlight with network functions
– Finder instant previewing
– 64bit support for the entire system
– ZFS filesystem, but not as system filesystem
– Mail pretty messages using templates
– iCal CalDAV share/publish calendars via Internet
– VoiceOver fluent, new better voice including japanese and chinese
language support
– Quicktime subtitle support

…lets hope that at least some of this widely rumored stuff will
become true…

Archive

Waiting for Keynote 2007

Only a few hours left until MacWorld
2007 Keynote in San Francisco.
check the live event coverage here:
http://www.macrumorslive.com

Here’s a list of the expected announcements:

Category: Devices

– iPhone like iPod nano + touchscreen wheel
– iPhone Pro like iPod Video with Blackberry like features
– iPod nano with doubled capacity
– iTV as previously announced, a settop-box to beam iTunes and
maybe more to your TV

Category: Computers

– MacMini with Core2Duo processors and a bundled version with
keyboard/mouse + 17″ Cinema Display
– MacPro with improved memory and maybe dual-quad cores ?
– reveal 600Mbps Airport Extreme already working inside a few
devices ?

Category: Online Services

– .Mac Account with increased storage capacity up to 50GB for iDisk
and TimeMachine usage
– Own domain names and eMail addresses

Category: Software

iLife 07 Package:
– iPhoto + Google maps integration and GPS tagging features
– iWeb faster updates/websyncs + .Mac statistics plugin

iWork 07 Package:
– Pages improved
– Keynote improved
– standalone Spreadsheet added

Leopard Mac OS 10.5:
– release end of january 2007
– faster user interface
– new sreensavers
– TimeMachine (backup and archiving)
– CoreAnimation (GUI library)
– Spaces (workplace switcher)
– iChat with screencasting, video feature and videoeffects
– Dashboard onTheFly (iFly?) Widgets / easy and completely new
DashCode
– Spotlight with network functions
– Finder instant previewing
– 64bit support for the entire system
– ZFS filesystem, but not as system filesystem
– Mail pretty messages using templates
– iCal CalDAV share/publish calendars via Internet
– VoiceOver fluent, new better voice including japanese and chinese
language support
– Quicktime subtitle support

…lets hope that at least some of this widely rumored stuff will
become true…