I'm Blue, updated Tuesdays and Fridays without fail.

It's All About the Alexander Hamilton and two George Washington's per hour
June 10, 2003

So yeah. Sorry about Friday... as the man said, it was a double-whammy of "eep, parents here, too busy moving" and "what the fuck is wrong with this god-be-dammed tablet pen?!" You get the idea. I'm sorry about the delay - not the mention the ghettoness of the comic (I told Josiah I should've put on makeup before that shot... not even running the photo through a watercolor filter saved me from looking hideous. I don't look that bad usually, honest) - but it honestly couldn't be helped. Many apologies all the same, though.

You may or may not have heard about all of the brouhaha (hey, I like that word) regarding the changes in the Cafepress user agreement, but whether you have or not, it is affecting yours truly very severely. I have two options currently: keep open my Cafepress account and pay $25 a MONTH to keep my stores open (because they are under the usual sale amount that C.P. requires)... not really an option, to be frank... or I could instantly shut down my stores and be subject to a fee for doing so. There is, however, a third option, which depends entirely on you folks. You could go to my stores - the W00T line, the Mongoose line, and the Gamers Unite line - pick out something you want, and buy it. That's it. It can be ANYTHING - shirt, hat, undies, mug, mousepad, sticker, whatever - just something you think would be cool to own. I have until July 1 (when the new contract goes into effect) to get as many people as I can to buy nifty Blue stuff, and after that, we see what will happen. I know people haven't been buying many things in the past from my stores, but I really like to have them open, and offer cool things to the public. I'm just like that.

I hate to bug you guys about this - I really do dislike it, honestly - but if you could help, I'd really appreciate it. I may in the future actually set up with a donation system, but I won't go all crazy-go-nuts about that just yet. Hell, I don't even know if you people want something like a forum, which my beloved Web Guy would easily be able to dig up. I don't hear nearly enough from you sometimes, or I at least imagine that I don't. Then again, as they say, beggars can't be choosers, and I enjoy the few pieces of mail I get very greatly. But yeah. Enough nattering on.

Speaking of my Web Guy Josiah, I'm wondering if he'll favor us with a little speech about Uplink, this game he seems absolutely stuck on. It seems nifty - not my type of game perhaps, but indeed nifty nonetheless - and he's been glued to it whenever he's not in class or can wriggle out of my clutches (admittedly, I keep yelling at him to help me organize this or hang that... I can't help it, we're in a new place, and I like to settle in as quickly as possible). I myself have a few games to get started on - newly-purchased old-skool favorites such as Planescape: Torment (I've actually never played this before... hey, I had no money, what can I say?) and the first Dark Cloud for the PS2 - and later I plan to get myself a copy of Sly Cooper for the PS2. Yeah... Annie likee that game. But I digress.

Well, time for me to run, but keep it real, take care, and the stuffness. Woo.

This Is the World We Wanted,
Annie "Blue" C

You'll get the message by the time I'm through
- Garbage
"I'm Only Happy When It Rains"

So yeah...Uplink. After mucking around and watching a few intro scenes to "Enter the Matrix" (the game for PS2 and PCs), I read a reference to "Uplink", so I thought I would give it a try. Well, on the most part, it's a 'you get a computer, use the software you buy to hack other computers'. You can do crazy upgrades to your machine, including being able to see how far they've traced your ass back again, being able to crack passwords, encryption, and a bunch of other cool stuff. Completely unrealistic, but enjoyable nontheless. My current machine: 600 ghz, 256 gigaquads of memory (really 1 terrabyte), and every piece of software that is acquireable. Rock. In a short while I'm going to decide whether I should upgrade to a machine that runs at 1600 ghz (max) and half as much memory, or if I should stick with what I got. We'll see.

About the only thing I haven't figured out yet is how to hack lans. I've hit the forums, and they describe bouncing off of a machine in a company, and immediately connecting to another machine in that company (preferably mainframe). In doing so, I should be able to use the lan viewer upgrade I purchased in order to see the other machines, hack them, and get file listings (it's also how you end up beating the game).

One thing that I just realized...I've only tried to hack one lan, the 'really bad guy' lan that killed the top agent in the plot. That's just not cool if you ask me. They offered me money to destroy a machine with a virus. The company that owned the machine offered me more NOT to, and to send a copy of the virus to them...I did. HAH! Then the company with the virus threatened me...no one does that. So I hacked them, gave them their own virus (on their mainframe *grin*), hacked the global criminal database and gave convictions to their sysadmin and CEO, then put warrants out for their arrest. Yeah, I'm an asshole like that. *laugh* I have a feeling that you weren't supposed to infect the bad people's mainframe. Ah well. Could be worse I suppose. Maybe I'll have to restart the game. Who knows?

In any case...If you want to pick up a copy, it's $29.95 online for Windows, Mac and Linux at http://www.introversion.co.uk/. The demo is available for free, 3 megs for Windows or Linux, and 6.5 megs on Mac. Give it a try. You don't get to go too far in the Demo, but it'll give you a taste.

Oh, and I REALLY LOVE their software installation...a fucking self-extracting zip file. If you extract it into a folder and run the uplink executable, that's the game. Where else do you get such no-nonsense software installation for PCs?
- web guy Josiah