The big news this week, at least on the personal side of things, was the release of the Fortress Forever. I have been waiting for it for so long, and so far I’ve played a little over 6 hours.

I didn’t realize it until Monday the 10th, but the mumbler has returned! Art has returned from China with his lovely bride. I was heartbroken while he was gone, and not only didn’t I get his emails and blog updates, but his server was down, so I couldn’t even look at his blogs at all.

Art always refers to me on his blog as “MBM” for “my buddy mike”. I even have my own tag on his blog. One of his blogs is called “Incoherent Mumbling“, also accessible from www.mumblr.com, so I decided that I am going to start referring to him as “the mumbler”. At least sometimes.

Also it turns out that while I was goofing off all weekend, Phil from Thought Sparks has been busy launching his new blog, Tech Fires. Read his announcement for yourself. Phil’s been churning out some really great tutorials lately, so I’m really interested to see what he puts on his new site.

I’m also really interested in one of his widgets, it points to BlogRush. Looks like a syndication widget that gets you syndicated on other blogs as well. Looks pretty neat, I’ll have to go check it out.

In Tech News, one of the bigger stories this week has been the release of the iPhone software unlock, which I think I have covered enough for the week.

Also, last weekend I realized that football season has started again! What was I doing to miss that? I’m not a huge football fan, and as a matter of fact, last year was the first year that I watched more than the Super Bowl in about a decade.

If your curious, I’m a Denver fan, since I lived here for about a decade now, I should probably root for the local team. I also cheer for the Patriots, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh.

I also made a few minor changes to the blog, I added my Pownce feed, the MyBlogLog widget, and also some more adsense ads.

I’m looking forward to a more productive week, thanks to all of my readers, and to everyone who commented on the posts this week or provided me with valuable feedback.

Remember, you can reach me on Pownce, if you are on it, as well as my blog log or on email. My email address is “mike” at this domain name (port16.com). Feel free to drop me any thoughts or comments. 

Posted in Pownce, The Mumbler, FPS, Foretress Forever, Hacks, BlogNewsandUpdates 3 Comments »

Here is the download link from File Planet - The file is about 555M. If you don’t want to register with File Planet, use one of these ids.

Fortress Forever is a Half Life 2 Mod, for Team Fortress Play. Now, if you are pretty new to first person shooters, Team Fortress is, in my opinion, the best game modification in the history of time.

Players choose a “class” of player, such as sniper, medic, etc. Each class has strengths and weaknesses, and every player usually has their own preference.

The game play is usually a capture the flag scenario, with some players defending their base, while others attack the enemy’s base.

The team with the highest score wins. If there is no score, or a tie, usually the team with the highest number of kills wins.

Half Life 2, Episode 2 is supposed to include the much waited for Team Fortress 2, which will look more like a cartoon than the original’s dark and gritty feel. Personally I think I’ll like Fortress Forever better, since I am such a big fan of the original.

Right now I am waiting on File Planet’s FTP servers, and I think I am going to be waiting for awhile.

If I am ever able to download it, I would love to play it tonight. I would be willing to bet that the servers will be just crammed for at least a few days.

Update: The wait wasn’t too bad. But don’t try to refresh that window, or you’ll end up starting over.

References:

Fortress Forever Site

Posted in Team Fortress, Half Life 2, FPS, Foretress Forever, Games 4 Comments »