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When Call of Duty:World at War was released earlier this year, I eagerly went down to JB Hifi and bought it.  Initially, I found the multiplayer quite daunting, as I’d started it late (though I bought the game the day it was released).  So, all the players were much higher ranks, with “better” weapons, skills etc.  As of this article, I’m still not at Rank 65, much less thinking about prestiging.

Because I’d previously played CoD4:MW (Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare) to death last year (and ended up selling it in disgust due to the inaction by Infinity Ward towards fixing the ranking up bug), I quickly settled into my usual style of play for these games, being a sniper.

Many games passed, whilst I put up with and adjusted my game style to the horrible Springfield w/ scope – terrible weapon with a terrible scope.  I moved away from sniping (because I was too slow at sniping with the Springfield, and the maps are too small), I started using what I deem to be CQB weapons (the Thompson (which I love…), and the other rifles and MG’s).  Of course, because my style of play is as a sniper, I’m no good at CQB, and would often get smashed in the scoring.

Eventually, I ranked up enough to unlock the Russian Mosin-Nagant, and found it to be quite nice, and _then_ unlocked the scope for it.  Godly weapon! Back to sniping I went, even on relatively small maps.

A thought crossed my mind – how about I unlock the scope for the M1 Garand?  In the game, the Garand is a painful semi-auto, because of the stripper clip, and it’s weak power.  However, unlock the scope, and I found I could one-shot kill people across the map easily, and accurately to boot!

The Garand contributed to my slinking away into a corner to snipe away all game.  The end result, lots of games where I’d shot 4 rounds for 4 kills with zero deaths…

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September 7th, 2009 | Tags: CoD4 | Category: Rant | Leave a comment

Jerilderie 2009 has been staged for another year, and I didn’t do too badly this time around, finishing 26th out of 65 competitors.  I had some great backup from Joe Wurts, Steve Keep, Nick Chabrel, and Brian Hamilton, who all provided awesome and lasting advice.

Along with a great crew, I was flying a great glider, the NAN Models Xplorer, imported by Dave Pratley.  The Xplorer is a 3.5m F3J/TD fully moulded carbon/kevlar/fibreglass glider, which can be acquired from Dave in various colour schemes.  Extended tips are available.

The Xplorer is renowned for light air floating.  My Xplorer truly revelled in the Jerilderie air, and I regularly achieved 9:58 or better, with inside 2m spots.  I had two “bad” flights where we didn’t pick the air correctly, and I flew the X into crap air, and suffered.

Over the 5 days of flying, I only flew my F3B Icon a couple of times, and even then only during the Friday practice day.  I flew the Xplorer over all 8 rounds of the competition proper, and during several fun fly days back in Sydney recently.  I’m in total awe of the floatiness, and flat glide, that the X achieves.  With a setup fine-tuned by Steve Keep, the landing approaches are slow and predictable. A great glider, and a worthy addition to my quiver of gliders, very much beginning to replace the Icons.

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July 7th, 2009 | Tags: Icon, Jerilderie, xplorer | Category: Competitions, Gliding Events, Reviews | Leave a comment

A few weeks back, I witnessed a disgraceful piece of flying by a pilot in a full-sized aircraft – they decided to fly low and slow diagonally across the HSL field right into what I believed was the same patch of air that we were thermalling away in.  Because I couldn’t ignore this aircraft, I had to take my eyes off my own, and within a few seconds, lost an awesome glider.

When I looked away from my plane at the slow moving aircraft directly overhead, my eyes reacquired one of the other gliders flying in the same manner as my fingers were working my transmitter.  It just so happened that Fred had the same intentions as I did, and was flying slit-s turns to warn the pilot that there were model aircraft around him.  When Fred decided his glider was clear, he straightened up and flew upwind towards a lake.  I was flying his plane too, and my heart sank as I realised that I didn’t have control of it (believing it was mine, of course).

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April 15th, 2009 | Tags: Icon | Category: Gliding | Leave a comment

Yesterday, I took ownership of the most popular website covering the Australian ice hockey scene, HockeyPulse.  I’m absolutely thrilled and excited to take ownership, and hope that I can expand on the fantastic work to date by Rowan.

This site had been running for a number of years, and gaining in popularity because it was the only site catering to the rather close knit ice hockey community.  The previous owner (Rowan) decided to sell Hockey Pulse, because he couldn’t maintain the site due to other work and life commitments. As time slowly marched on, it became apparent that HockeyPulse wasn’t going to be sold in time, and thus, I decided to step up.

For me, it’s a commitment for the long haul, as it’s both a financial investment, and a hobby – it’s my opportunity to interact with the ice hockey fraternity more.  Because Ice Hockey in Australia is so small (and so unknown), the more information we can put out there, the more popular the sport will become.  Popularity, branding, sponsorship, exposure to the greater population, and I think ice hockey will expand in Australia

It’s a big step for me, as I never thought I’d be investing money into a website, but the opportunity to do so couldn’t be passed up.  One big benefit to me will be the branding aspects – I have a ready-made logo for branding my ice hockey photos.

Where do I plan to be in a few years time?  I’d love to provide some quality sponsorship to state and national teams.

If you’re interested in everything ice hockey, head on over to HockeyPulse.

March 15th, 2009 | Tags: hockeypulse, Ice Hockey | Category: General News, Ice Hockey | Leave a comment

I’ve been playing with the new Macbook Pro now for about two weeks, and am really growing to love it, and Mac OSX.  I took it to work on the first day, and everyone oogled over it, wanted to touch it, play with it, and all thought that it was the Macbook Air, even though the white writing on the bottom of the screen said “Macbook Pro”.

After about an hour or so, I’d managed to connect it to the network at work using a Telstra NextG Expresscard modem.  Of course, the security guys were saying “have you got antivirus on that? Want a firewall on that?”.  Umm, no…

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February 26th, 2009 | Category: Rant | Comments Off

I attended the Armidale Sailplane Expo 2009 over the Australia Day long weekend recently.  To sum up the weekend:

• I flew quite nicely, and quite consistently in the Open Class Thermal Duration.
• My Pulsar 3200 also flew well in the Limited Electric Glider event.  The guys discovered a problem with the motor battery during the weekend, Peter Pine swapped it with a known-good battery, and the plane climbed amazingly!  My 18+ second motor runs were reduced to <13 seconds.
• My White Icon F3B didn’t want to fly – I kept having problems with the wiring harness, and now need to replace the harness entirely.  She just didn’t want to leave the ground it seemed…
• I’m going to wear appropriate clothes for flying before I leave home.  I left home on the Friday wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and packed my long pants and shirts in my bag.  By the end of the day, my arms and legs were beetroot red, and for the rest of the weekend (and the rest of this week), I’ve been suffering from the after effects of severe sunburn. So, no shorts, and no t-shirts!
• My repairs to the yellow Icon F3J have so far held up to the rigours.
• The Super Ava flew in anger for the first time on the weekend, and I managed to speck it, and get a 10 minute flight.  The conditions were just right for the glider.

Alas, no trophies this time around…

January 30th, 2009 | Category: General News | Comments Off