Celebrityscraps

So it’s done!

Here’s the new Celebrityscraps site. I was fed up of not being able to upgrade plugins and generally tweak the site cos it was hosted on free wordpress so I finally got a new web server package and did it!

Please all feel free to send in advice and recommendations for new improvements!

Today is Mickey Mouse’s 80th birthday and he’s looking pretty good for his age!

The Walt Disney Company celebrates his birth as November 18, 1928 upon the release of Steamboat Willie. The anthropomorphic mouse has evolved from being simply a character in animated cartoons and comic strips to become one of the most recognizable symbols in the world. Mickey is currently the main character in the Disney Channel’s Playhouse Disney series “The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.”

So from Celebrityscraps… Happy Birthday Mickey!!!

As of midnight tonight the new Warcraft expansion “The Wrath of the Lich King” goes live and millions of players all over the globe will embark on playing the latest installment of Blizzards long awaited sequel to their last expansion for the World of Warcraft.

It may surprise you to know that If you walk through a crowded town centre the statistics predict that you will never be more than 10 feet away from a World of Warcraft (WoW) player…. that’s quite a scary stat too!
I used to play this game regularly and am at a point now where I only dabble for a few hours a week. I have friends who have racked up over A YEAR in time spent in front of their screen playing WoW! While this is not uncommon around the globe I’m surprised that Blizzard Entertainment are not doing anything to tackle the problem of Warcraft addiction…. and it is an addiction.

I still play the game but the fact is I only do it to maintain the social aspect which I like. In truth the game is pointless. The only fun I have in it now is within the conversations with the players. I’m not really having any fun anymore playing the game cos it’s become repetitive, a constant goal of more epics… no real achievements, plenty of purple gear but nothing really gained…. and to make matters worse the new expansion negates all progress you’ve made by raising the bar to level 80 and rendering all your hard earned gear obsolete. I’ll play the new expansion cos it’ll be fun to explore the new aspects of the game they have introduced… but once I’m lvl 80 I can imagine i’ll not play much.

The real fact is Blizzard need to face up to the issue that they are destroying peoples lives by not setting play limits on the game. There are groups everywhere for people who have lost everything through WoW addiction. Check out a few:

http://www.wowdetox.com/

Yahoo.com WOW Widows

http://gamingsucks.com/

Here’s a vid to help people quit too! - How to Quit Playing WoW!

Remember peeps… everything in moderation!

Well I promised a review when it came out, but have been very busy so apologies. I’ve now managed to squeeze a reasonable amount of gaming time in on the side and I have to say that Fallout 3 is a masterpiece.

The stats system lends itself to the original two games, enabling you to create a diversely skilled and seemingly unique character. There are also multiple ways to solve each quest so you get to play the game the way you want.

The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, or VATS, plays an important part in the fighting phases of the game. While using VATS, real-time combat is paused creating a combat system that the Bethesda developers have described as a hybrid between turn-based and real-time combat. Various actions cost action points, limiting the actions of each combatant during a turn, and both the player and enemies can target specific body areas for attacks to inflict specific injuries. The game features a new health and radiation system as well. The player can measure an object’s radioactivity and gauge the effect it will have on the character.

Another cool thing is that firearms wear out over time (they are over 200years old since manufacture!): as a weapon degenerates, its rate of fire slows and it loses accuracy. However, worn out firearms can be used to repair a similar weapon, or to make more reliable and powerful weapons. Weapon schematics can also be found and used to create various devices such as the Rock-it Launcher, created by combining a vacuum cleaner, leaf blower, fire-hose nozzle, and a conductor, that can fire various items such as lunchboxes and stuffed animals, or the Bottlecap Mine, made out of a lunchbox, cherry bomb, sensor module, and bottle caps. Along with equipping various weapons, the player can also utilize different armors and clothing that may have effects that can alter various skills. For example, a pair of mechanic’s coveralls may boost the player’s repair skill while it is worn. Armor and clothing come in two main parts for the head and body, allowing a player to wear different combinations of hats and armor. Also, a player’s inventory has a specified weight limit, preventing a player from carrying too many items. Some items like weapon ammo have no weight, due to the developer not wishing to bog down inventory management.

The karma system is an important feature in the game-play. The player’s actions, including conversation and combat choices affect the player’s status in the game world; a player who makes good choices will be received more positively by NPCs, and a player that makes bad choices will have the opposite reaction. Extremes of karma also have other effects: a high karma leads to the player being attacked by bounty hunters, and for random NPCs to give the player gifts in thanks of their service. Crimes can also be committed by a player, and whichever faction or group that is harmed by a crime will be fully aware of the player’s action. Other factions that were not affected by the crime will not be aware of it, and since a town is usually its own faction, news of a crime committed in one town will not spread to another. Factions can range in size and boundaries, however, and may not be restricted to a single area. The game world itself is similar in size to that of Oblivion, which has a 16 square mile game world.

The fact you have such a huuuge amount of area to explore and the 100 hours plus in game-play and quests means you won’t get bored of Fallout 3 any time soon!

Everyone who prides them selves of knowing a bit about film will have seen Jurassic Park. It was one of the first films to use realistic CG to create creatures and we all know the tale of how the dinosaurs were cloned.

Mosquitoes feed on Dino blood - fly gets stuck in amber - amber fossilises - 45 million years later human takes Dino blood from amber encased fly and clones Dino.

Well now in the real world the same technique has been used to make beer using a strain of yeast from 45 million years ago!

The company is called the Fossil Brewing Co. and their site says the process went a bit like this:

“Dr. Raul Cano, using amber obtained from locations around the world (including Burma, Central and North America), isolated and revived a bacterium, which had lain dormant in the gut of an encased bee for approximately 40 million years (Science 268, pp. 1060-1064, 1995). During his research, Dr. Cano, periodically working with Mr. Lambert, isolated a few yeast strains that resembled modern Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In other words, they are similar to the yeast we use every day for brewing and baking, except the newly discovered yeasts were much further back in the evolutionary chain. Essentially, Dr. Cano isolated the long lost ancestors of modern brewing yeast.”

They are not shipping the beer outside of their suppliers yet, but I’ve been added to their mailing list so as soon as it’s possible I’ll be treating myself to a glass of Fred Flinstone’s favourite lager…. or close enough!

I’ll let Chris’s description on his website save me the bother of introducing him, although if you work in social media he should need no introduction: “Chris Brogan is a ten year veteran of using social media and technology to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals. Chris speaks, blogs, writes articles, and makes media of all kinds at http://www.chrisbrogan.com/, a blog in the top 20 of the Advertising Age Power150, and in the top 100 on Technorati. ” …. there.. done.. dusted, and for anyone who hasn’t heard of him…. *he knows what he’s on about*

For all of you who want to extra insight from a clever mind into the world of social media I suggest you check out Chris’s site as it’s full of useful information for everyone.

I was recently having an email conversation with Laura Roeder, a social media and blogging strategist based in Los Angeles regarding Chris’s site, and how people who have heard of him don’t always realise how ‘in the know’ he is until they hit his site.

It was defiantly that way for me so I suggest that you all check out his site: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/

Apologies for the late posting of this… my week has been frantic.

My exploits at the MCM ranged a bit further than chin-wagging with the boys and girls from Heroes. I also got a chance to check out the Q&A for a new series called Demons and chat with Michael Hogan (Colonal Tigh) from Battlestar Galactica (article coming soon).

Demons is a contemporary spin on the legacy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, set above and beneath the streets of modern-day London. Philip Glenister stars in the new six-part drama series, and plays Rupert Galvin, a larger-than-life American with a tragic past and a zero-tolerance policy to the rabble of mythical “half-life” entities that exist all around us.

Galvin enters into the life of his teenage god-son, Luke (Christian Cooke – Echo Beach, Robin Hood), whose father died in mysterious circumstances 15 years before, little does Luke know what will be thrust upon him. There are supernatural forces at work and it is Luke’s destiny, as the last descendent of the Van Helsing line, to smite the half-lives that stalk our streets.

The Q&A was interesting but didn’t really tell me any more than I already knew from the wikipedia articles. I did gather though that we will be seeing a few “proper” vampires in the show and the writers “might” (which is producer-talk for WILL) be putting Dracula in the show but not in the first series.

One thing that does echo as similar is the “teenager with an elder guide having a destiny thrust upon them” theme….. sound familiar…. Yes that’s cos they did the EXACT same thing in Buffy the Vampire Slayer!!!

Whilst the concept may not be entirely new, the fomula is one that is prooven to work… so based on that I’m going to reserve judgement until I’ve seen a few episodes.

Also: I have a signed pic of the production crew and cast of Demons which will be going out on Celebrityscraps Xmas givaway!