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I really am. The amount of excitment I’m feeling is weird.
Not in a long time have I been involved in so many different area’s and posibilities that have gotten me this excited.

The last time I was like this was when GreentubeLAN broke free of Monash, and sitting down with Craig, Paulo, Mike, and Nick, working out where we were going to go, and what we were going to do.
It was amazing, and my head was buzzing, so many things to try out, so many things to do, so many posibilities.

We were doing something not just for our selfs, but this was something for the community, we were bringing something back to the Frankston area which hadn’t existed in over 4 years. We were doing this, but not just in any old way, we were adding new things, and conforming it to our vision of how a LAN should be fun.
As all the parts came together, the excitement that was in me just grew and grew. You can ask Craig and Nick, they had constant MSN and face-to-face conversations with me where I’d rattle off like Dave does in his lectures. I understand why Dave does those ramblings, its because he loves what he is talking about, and gets exicted about what it is hes doing.
Thats how I felt then.

Its how I feel now.

We have our IE project. At first we were all fairly quiet about it, after the meeting last Wednesday, but this week, I’ve had the chance to think over just what it was we are doing, what it is we are going to strive to achieve.
And to be quite honst, when (there is no if) we pull this off, its going to be absolutly amazing.
Its a huge task. The technical side of it, is not that great, but what the project is, what it will be, and what it will grow and hopefuly flurish into will be absolutly amazing.
But at the same time its scary, this project, its either going to go from strength to strength once its released, or its going to fall flat on its face and disapear.
Its something students and young people have been crying out for, for ages. Its something non-profit organisations are desperate for. Its going to be big. Really big.

It seems like a huge task, a really big task, but I honstly think we can pull it off. I have that confidence in my team. They all seem a little aprehensive at the size of this task, but every single one of this is extreamly smart from what they have shown me. Smarter than me, more into their given tasks than I could ever hope. I have alot of respect for them, and I BELIEVE in them. I can see it in my mind, every single one of them at the end of the year beaming at what we have achieved.
The challange is going to be giving them the confidence.
Tai and Cade are both aprehensive about what they can do. What Tai has shown me, and what he just speaks of casualy just drips of knowlage and brains, yet he wont acnowlage those skills himself. I’ve worked with Cade before, last year on a group assignment in Network Administration, its how we met, I know hes extreamly smart, I know hes extreamly brainy, and I know the work he does is top notch, his looks are decieving, that guy is smarter than he looks, someone who should be looked out for, and handles himself better than anyone in the group when you step back and have a good hard look at it.

There I am, rambling again.

This project, I can’t wait to see it come to life, to try all these ideas that are scribbled all over my notepad about it. Theres so many different parts to it, so much to do, so little time, but I want to get it done as quickly as I can just to see it.
We had a meeting today, going voer what needs to be done, setting objectives and goals, both short and long term.

I didn’t shutup, I kept walking around, talking, going over things, re-enforcing things. I’m sure the others are going to write blogs stating how much of a idiot I am, and that I should learn when to shutup.
Sorry guys, I know I got carried away, but this project really excites me, and I really really really can’t wait to get started on it, its going to be truly amazing, the whole idea of the Good Works, and Student Projects through Understandascope.
The idea of what this project will achieve, I really can’t understand why universities havn’t latched onto it yet, its going to be amazing, its going to affect the way students choose their Uni and course. Its going to change the way people apply for jobs.

There is going to be University students with realy industry experience in almost every field imaginable.

I’m bloody excited about it.

And, its not just the IE project that has me excited.
This year I decided to do Game Technology as a “relaxing” subject, and its opened my eyes very wide. I’ve always done more than just play games, I’ve always had to figure out how they work, and how to modify them. I’ve messed around with technologys from Additive/Subtractive CSG world building, to writing my own BSP Tree methods, basic scripting, both in 2D and 3D worlds.
Now, after a conversation with a friend, we are looking at the posibility of a new gaming technology that hasn’t been thaught of, or spoken about before.
I’m more than happy to post about it here, because quite frankly, I don’t really have the technical knowlage to make a fully working game/system for it, so hopefuly some developer finds this post and steals this idea, because I really think its the exciting that it should be stolen from me and developed by someone who knows what they are doing.
Its the idea of a MMORTS, or a ‘World Conflict’ system. The idea of a website, where palyers chose where they want to “invade”, and it launches a RTS game, based on the area/country with your armys / base and fight for the area.
Imagine having an entire map of the WORLD, and specific areas as the conflict zones.
Its something thats never been done, because it hasn’t been posible.
Why hasn’t it been posible? Web technology hasn’t existed to support it before.
PHP, Java, and ASP.NET now make this posible, so I’m researching it heavily.

Ok, enough rambling, I’m off.

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I posted this on my IE blog, I figured it was worth posting here, just for the last part. I really hope someone with more skill can devlope something like that.

Ok, now heres my post about the past Saturday.

Mike came and picked me and Luke up at around 7am, and we headed strait to the petrol station, where he filled up, and got ice for the esky.
I personaly started to get Nick and Luke signing the release forms that would be needed later on for us to actualy play.

After that we headed off to pickup Jason, and then finaly back onto thompson’s road, all the the tunes provided by, Public Enemy, The Beach Boys, Sontana, and others.
Just as we are about to get the Clyde road turn off, we get a call.
Steve has taken Gavin into Cranbourne insted of Berwick.
So after talking them around, we decide to pull over (on Lyll Rd), and wait for them to turn up.

So gavin pulls in behind us, and Mike does two loops of the round-about as we get upto the field.
We both accedently go too far, before doubling back and parking.

Greetings are exchanged with Even, our refree for the day, and I start collecting money nad making sure forms are being signed.
As we are doing this, the other guys start to show up, DD and his mates, and Zac & Andie.

Now started the games.

First game up was Team Deathmatch.
We started down at the bottom of the hill, with Alpha starting up high.
The initial stratergy was for Nick, Gav, and Jason to go to the right, strait towards them, me and Luke to the left, and Mike and Steve snipping from the rock.
That fell apart, and ended up being Nick, Steve and Gav covering each other, Mike doing the lone snipping with Luke spotting, and me and Jason advancing down the middle.
This worked brilliantly, Me and Jason managed to take down Zac, DD, Andrew, and Dean quite a few times without taking many hits ourselfs.

The next mission was general elimination.
On Bravo squad, Mike was the “General” and I was the “Lieutenant”, on DD’s team, Nick was the “General” and the “Lieutenant” was DD.
This match, started off with Nick, Gav, Steve, and Luke advancing, and me and Mike hanging back.
Steven advanced REALLY far down the field, and I spent a good part of the initialy covering Steve.
Eventauly, me and Mike switched positions, and I started moving Luke, Gav, Nick and Jason up, and we eventaualy made the first kill of the game!
We ended up drawing that game, and its the one thats made me decide to get some perscription sunglasses due to the sun.

After this was the Single flag CTF game.
I will freely brag about this. My team played brilliantly and won the game using an extream amount of skill, and the use of my stratergy initialy.
The stratergy was: Sniper team hang back, assult team RUSH forward, but NOT get the flag.
It worked.
We got to the flag first. But held back. Dean came running through, and was instantly hit by… 6 shots (only lost one life tho), basicly everyone except Gavin hit him.
This happened quite a few more times.
As the round wore on, Mike, Gav, and Jason moved up, and we started making our own, very sucsessfull, runs with the flag.

Eventualy we killed everyone on Alpha and got the flag into the base. With, as far as I know, only one loss of life on our team (Nick).

I’m very proud of Bravo Squad.

After this, we did ViP on the same field.
I moved half our force DOWN the mountian away from the actual game, then BACK UP the other side, it worked, we got VERY close to the enemy base, then we got pinned down.
Me and Luke fought hard, but eventualy went down, at one point I was laying down on my stomach firing, and Luke was physicly standing over me (haivng twice the amount of fire going forwards.
I got the teams respawn, and went strait back to our teams base, where Mike and Jason were in trouble (Gavin was out), before I knew it, I was out again (being shot down by no fewer than 3 people), and as I was walking away, saw Jason come RUNNING down the hill, trying to get away from basicly, the entire of what was left of Alpha Squad.

last game was Assult and Defence.

Wow, what a game that was.
Bravo started off on assult, I sent Nick CHARGING strait ahead, Mike and Jason to the left flank, and Steve and Gav comming in from the rear.
Me and Luke came up after Nick, we whiped the floor, basicly taking everyone down.
Except one.
Dean had decided to climb up a chimny, the only thing Even had failed to mention in his ‘do-not-do’ talk.
We spent a good 15 minutes hunting Dean, and just could not find him.

Evan still gave us the 5 minutes + 1 anyway (so 6 minutes).

Now it was our turn to defend.

We started off with everyone on the line at the edge of our area, well everyone except Nick and Steve, who were guarding the rear.

4 minutes we held Alpha back, and then one of them broke through. We fell within 60 seconds of that .

After that was a quick FFA, which was alot of photos taken by me.

Photos can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24790064@N08/sets/72157604130173561/

I’ve also got a fair bit of video footage which I plan on uploading once its been cut down.

Just a quick updat eto let you all know that the GFX comparision is still comming, just a little bug of Voodoo2’s not liking Windows Vista, this is being worked around, so don’t worry! Its comming!

Uni has been slow, with the IE project starting, and being thrown into a 6 person group, that I have to head, and also being given one of the hardest projects posible.
Scary stuff.

This weekend is going to be the first time we have all been to laser skirmish. It should be really good fun. I really can’t wait.
Pop a laser in DD’s arse!

Thats all for now!