Forty years ago today, two men preformed a world first.  Two men, Neil Armstrong and Ed “Buzz” Aldrin, were the first people to land on the moon.  On this day, forty years later, I would like to show my respect to  these two men and the hundred others who helped to get them there.  They brought a dream alive, and gave hope to millions of Americans when they needed it most.  It was a major feat in human engineering and even more so in human will.  We set a goal and we achieved it.

Launch

Landing

Return

And experience the whole trip at:

We Choose the Moon

            My name is Barry Shimel, I was an employee of Food Lion until I severed my employment and walked out on my employer.  The enclosed letter explains my reasons for leaving the Food Lion family.  I hope my words help spread some light on the events and actions that have taken place at Food Lion #0297, Staples Mill Rd, Richmond, VA.

             This letter has been received by 35 local Food Lion stores, the President of Food Lion, Food Lion’s Human Resources Department, and the four local news stations for Richmond Va.

             If you have any questions, I can be reached on my mobile phone at (703) ***-****.  Or by e-mail at korerat@comcast.net.

             Thank you for your time.

             Barry L Shimel Jr.

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Some long time readers of my site(s) may remember a post I made last year about the Star Wars Galaxies Emulator.  It’s almost a year later, and I am going to write again about this project.  First off, if you’re not familiar with it, Star Wars Galaxies is a game created by Sony Online Entertainment.  I could go on to tell you all the messy details, but I’ll cut it short and say they screwed up the whole game with an ‘upgrade’.  Then ‘fixed’ it with another when they lost a large chunk of their players.  But you can find all the detail with a quick search.

SWG subscribers drop, twice.

Shortly after the release of Everquest II(also from SOE), the SWG developers began to feel that their game wasn’t good enough.  Or it wasn’t another clone of the other MMO’s on the market.  Therefor they set forth to improve the combat, on the 27Th of April 2005(first red circle in graph).  Seeing the drop in subscribers, they quickly try to improve upon the game even more, on the 15Th of November 2005(second red circle).  From there the numbers continued to drop to around 100k right around 2008.

SWG isn't even in the running for shares.

These days the MMO realm is conquered by one game, World of Warcraft.  Every MMO that comes out today is soly trying to beat the beast that is WOW, but none even come close.  What I find funny about this pie chart, is that SWG doesn’t even have a large enough of a player base, or active subscriptions, to be listed in it.  I personally believe that the system that was found in SWG prior to it’s ‘upgrades’, was the best system around.  And had they not tried to tinker with it, it would have been a strong runner in the battle of MMO tyrants.

But the main point at hand here, is the Star Wars Galaxies Emulator Project, or SWGEmu for short.  There mission statement as taken from their website states:

The mission of SWGEmu is three fold:

A) To develop and maintain a community code base of a vanilla** release of a Star Wars Galaxies Server, circa Publish 14.1 for use of anyone who wishes to use it.

B) To deploy a server (Sun Crusher) that embraces vanilla, yet builds upon it, and strives to show the community a server which has the potential that we all believed SWG had, but never got the chance to show during it’s short life span.

C) Most important of all, is to bring back to life the game which people grew to love with such a passion.

** Vanilla refers to an exact replica of SWG live servers at a given moment in time.

They have plans for a beta server to be up and running for final tests, and many believe this will be in just a few short months.  Their progress has greatly increased in the last few months, that it’s not far fetched to believe that they could be completed with the project before 2010.  Last week they moved their main database to a better server, to better prepare for for the release of SunCrusher, what will become their official SWGEmu server.

These past couple of weeks, I have gone back to look around at their progress, and once again was astounded at the amount of work they have done.  Remembering that these people are fans of a once loved and lost game, and take their own time without any financial gain, to rebuild their lost game.  Not just for themselves, but for all of us.  And even though they are facing some new issues with their recent server transfer, the humbled fans do not complain, but wait quietly, knowing that when this project is complete, it will have been worth the wait, and then some.

*Charts courtesy of mmogchart.com

Well now that I spent well over five hours redesigning this site, I feel compelled to post something.  Even though I haven’t a clue as to what.  I’m still trying to figure out what it is I want to do.  I’m not planning my next ‘Bargain Bin’ yet, although I do have a few ideas.  I keep coming back to the possibility of a new webcomic, the same idea keeps coming up.  I really want to try some new editing ideas, but I need to learn a lot more, mostly machinima stuff.  Above it all, I have this nagging desireto play KotOR.  I did have a lot of fun building this, I almost feel like changing it again just so I can rewrite all the code and just have fun making it work.

I’ve found myself in a rut.  I currently own over 100 games for PC, and I can’t find one to play.  I’ve stared at my Steam list over and over, installed and uninstalled many games.  Flipped through my catalog of hard copies, and nothing.  I’ve looked over the Steam Store, browsed; Best Buy, NewEgg, and GameStop, and found nothing.  I’m in a gamers rut.

Even as I write this, I feel a small urge to play Quake 4.  I grab the discs, go to install it, get asked for the CD key…  It’s on the box, in a bag, in the shed, in the back yard.  And I have no desire to go and get it.  And by this point even the urge to play Quake 4 is fading.  I need something new.

Let’s look at the steam list: (continue reading…)