January 2008 Archives

herrdoktor writes:

"This has got to be one of the best moments in my gaming history.
For anyone who wasn't there, this is what happened in a nutshell on Dustbowl stage 2:
- we were blue.
- we capped the first point.
- we had trouble capping the second point.
- this was because we were all spies, and all disguised as pyros.
- so inept2 suggests that we all go engineer, build sentries, and wait for the enemies to come.
- cuz, you know, they'll get curious and wonder where we all were.
- so we all built sentries and dispensers and teleporters in a row.
- word must've spread to the red team, cuz more and more headed for our guns!
- at one point, a blue heavy showed up and Dignan says something like, "hey, there's a heavy... our team is all engineers."
- so this blue heavy sits there for a beat, then plants sentries on EVERYTHING.
- we rebuild, and inept2 suggests that someone should spy up and cap their point.
- so I go as a spy, cloak past most of their team who're just outside sentry range.
- recharge just before their 2nd cap point, hear a pyro and engineer still there.
- teammates type stuff to lure the rest of the team over or something, cuz it gets quiet where I'm at.
- I type something like "SOMEONE REPAIR MY" to make em think I'm an engineer, too, in case someone only counted x-1 engineers.
- cloak up, walk out, see no one and sap the lone sentry and cap the point.

AND THE TEAM GOES WILD.
This writeup doesn't do the round justice. It was just incredible. With less than 30 seconds left, the whole red team is on our side of the map, everyone's an engineer with guns and dispensers and teleporters up, and a spy just kinda walks up and casually takes the point!

We were laughing so damn hard, and well into the next round. I'm still laughing now thinking about it. I can only imagine what must've been happening on the red team. I suppose that the first clue as to what's going on is that their engineer noticed his or her gun being sapped. Then PANDEMONIUM!

YEEEEHAAAAA!"

A friend of mine pointed out to me that a lot of comments people leave on this here site have a difficult time posting. The truth of the matter is that I get a ton of spam that inundates the site, so its really hard to catch the legitimate ones... I made a few changes and am allowing only authenticated commenters to leave notes on my entries. So now, you'll have to get a TypeKey account and login if you wanna comment; don't worry, it's a painless process!

My apologies to all those who have tried to leave comments! I hope to hear from more of you again soon!

i recall some years back a photoblog entry that my bro wrote entitled "on tonal range." i never really read it, not that i would understand it anyway since his english skill is about a bazillion points higher than mine... but curiosity got the best of me as i was futzing around in photoshop, and figured out how to get the most out of my photos.

i am, by no means, a photographer, and will never claim to be. but i am particular about how things look, and so i make somewhat of an effort to fix something if something can be fixed. its a shame that among the millions and millions of digital cameras that are out there, only a very few percentage of them actually get the most out of the photos they snap. forget composition, and forget even content. but just a minor effort in changing contrast, tonal range, or saturation to give more depth to a photo.



take the image above for example. it was taken with a simple point and shoot, but the original image looks dry and washed out. a simple change using the 'curves' tool in photoshop makes the photo look richer and, well... better. just becareful not to wash out details at the extremes... in this case, the details of the clouds are lost because the range on the lighter tones were cut short. hey, i'm still learning too!

november 1st, 2007 09:30:16 am

ahhh... my beloved planet hollywood! you gave me so much money!