Beyond the Red Line

Yes, another Battlestar Galactica related post. But I must show you what I’ve recently discovered by accident.

I was a huge fan of Microsoft’s Freelancer Space Sim, Arcarde, Trade… whatever.. game. It had some really nice graphics, smooth gameplay, a good story and so on. But it was released 4 years ago. Some weeks ago, I thought I want to play something like that again, but with better graphics and maybe a better multiplayer part. On my search I came across some titles like “Dark Star One” or “Spaceforce 2″ and some others. DSO had some good critics but also many that told they prefer to stick with the 3 year older Freelancer. “Spaceforce 2″ came out this June and a Demo was released at the beginning of this month. I tried it out. Most of the graphics were great, but for example the textures for the planets were really blurry, for a modern game I had expected much more. Also the cutscenes and the english audio was really terrible, I felt like I was seeing a freeware game from 1997.

And then… suddenly during this week (I wasn’t looking any longer after this stuff) I accidently came across “Beyond the Red Line”. I really can’t remember how I found it but it is the most promissing candidate right now. There was once a game called “Freespace” and a succesor called “Freespace 2″. Later the game’s engine has been made open source and since then the Freespace community has enhanced it with many nice features to keep it on the level of modern games.

“Beyond the Red Line” is not only a modification of that open source version, it is a stand alone game (you don’t need “Freespace”) and it is freeware. It is playing in the universe of the famous Battlestar Galactica series. So you can fly arround with the legendary Viper MkII and Viper MkVII, also the Raptors and Cylon Raiders are avaiable. Here are some screenshots:

Beyond the Red Line Beyond the Red Line

The developer released a first demo some weeks ago at the official site www.game-warden.com/bsg/ which is already very playable and makes a lot of fun (especially if you know the series). They plan to release a new demo soon. I think the screenshorts are not the newest as I’ve got a much better graphic on my pc.

Beyond the Red Line Beyond the Red Line

So what are you waiting for? Go to the official site and download the demo.

No Good

“The Prodigy” – They were once my favorite band. They caught my attention with their third album “The Fat of the Land” (TFoTL), since then I was hooked. Later I also bought their two previous albums “Music for the jillted Generation” and “Experience”. But after the release of TFoTL in 1997 they haven’t brought out any new stuff until 2004 (well, there was a Remix CD and a Single, but not a real album).

I wasn’t really awaiting their new work… actually I cannot tell you right now if I have bought “Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned”, so it either hasn’t made a huge impression on me or the release of the single “Baby’s Got A Temper” has ruined it for me. TFoTL was such a huge success, that it was really hard to produce something better or at least close as good.

This morning as I was browsing through YouTube, I came accross one of my all time favorites from “The Prodigy”. One of the finest Techno/Big Beat (or whatever it is called) of the 90s.

Nice to have – FreeMind

Let’s start with a new series about different useful tools, well at least I think they are useful for me ;-) . Today in the showcase: “FreeMind”.

Have you ever needed to make a mind map, maybe after a brain storming session in the office? I’m sure you know the commercial tool MindManager. FreeMind is a free alternative under the GPL. It is avaiable for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux as it has been written with Java. All you need is a installed Java RE (> 1.4). It’s very easy to use and it misses no features. The export functions are impressive. You can even export an interactive mind map to flash and place it on your website.

FreeMind

Different languages like English, French, Italian or German are already build in. You can download the program at the official homepage. I suggest you install the latest beta version (0.9.0 (Beta 9)), I had no problems with this version.

Road trip in California

At the end of July two friends and I will fly to the USA, LAX if you want to have it exactly. We will stay there three weeks and have planned to make a round trip. Hopefully we will see various interesting places on our way and at the stops like Las Vegas, Grand Canyon or San Diego.

Here is a not so detailed overview of our route:

ca round trip map

According to Yahoo! Maps (the tool that created this map) we will have to travel nearly 2200 miles. We are currently reservating hotels or motels at some of the more important places, where it could be difficult to find one when we will be already there.

More informations will follow… someday ;-)

stick figures

I like stick figure animations. They sure take a lot of time to produce but in most cases it’s worth it. Here is a great example:

… crazy and awesome. Check out this stick figure “trailer” for the upcoming spiderman 4 on my favorite dutch website skoften.net

real heroes

As I recently discovered, humans aren’t that different to animals as we always think we would be. Have a look at this guy.

don’t try this at home

Really incredible, (I hope it’s a fake) who could survive that? Or who would do that? Let’s now switch to the very intelligent counterpart from the animal world. Hmmmm… tasty:

finger licking good

In case you wonder about the blog’s tagline…

I’m sure you’ve heard of the old trashy “Battlestar Galactica” series. About 3-4 years ago it was kind of renewed. The american SciFi channel made a total new show using the basic elements of the old show and mixing it with modern thematics, special effects and it is more focused on drama than on science fiction – in fact, space battles, tech talk and such stuff is there but very limited and I’m very glad of that.

If you didn’t like the old show you should give the new one a chance as it is very different. Even for the not so SciFi freaks (like me ;-) ) it is great to watch.

So back to the main topic… in the series they are often using the words “frak” or “fraking”, instead of the words “fuck” etc., I’m not sure why they did this (they did this already in the old BG), maybe for bypassing censorship but it’s really funny to hear them use those words in nearly every situation. Here a clip showing all the usage in season 1:

Re: Hello World

I closed down (no I moved it) my self-made side and starting with a fresh new one – again. I already had such a WordPress installation once, but never used it really, now I want to stay with it.

Another blog – why? Yes there are thousands of blogs out there, but maybe you find something interesting here and I hope you enjoy your stay. I will write about random things that interests me, like my hobbies, photography for example, or if I see some funny video/image I want to share, maybe from time to time things that go on in my life.. but not the to private ones ;-)

Why in english? Because I’m so international.. my father is from Germany, my mother from Austria, I was born in Switzerland… but that’s not the real reason. I just want to “attract” a larger audience :-)