Black Six

Really? I thought Cliffs of Dover was easy. I played it on hard on quickplay after I got stuck in career and four-starred it first try. I agree about the frustrating battles though, and the achievements.

And by 'axe' I of course mean guitar, as any rock fan knows; and by 'guitar' I mean guitar-shaped controller, as anyone who knows me and my complete inability to play any musical instrument can tell you. Anyway, I finally received Guitar Hero III last Wednesday, and have been enjoying it immensely. Having read some things about it previously I started out on Easy so I could get the appropriate Achievements and money from the store (apparently if you beat a song on a higher difficulty you don't get the money for the lower difficulty like you did in GH2). I breezed through that in a night, five-starring everything, with quite a few perfects, no shock there. Next night I started on Medium and was going through with no problems until the first boss battle against Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. On Easy, you can basically use the attack powers as soon as you get them and be guaranteed a win, but on harder difficulties, it turns out, you need to use some strategy and save them up so you can hit him with a bunch one after another. It took me a couple tries before I figured this out. After that though, it was smooth sailing. Five-starred everything except Barracuda and Raining Blood. Then it was onto Hard. There's something about this difficulty, not the orange button anymore, just the crazy things they do that makes it so much harder. I've been able to pass every song so far until the seventh level, where I've gotten stuck now. One thing I noticed is that compared to GH2, GH3 tends to use long streaks of the same note and lots of three note chords on the harder songs rather than making the movements complex. I find it very frustrating. I've bumped it up to Expert now and am starting on the second level, figuring maybe playing on there will help prepare me for level seven on Hard. Oh yeah, I also went back and five-starred those last two Medium songs. As far as the music goes, overall I like it, but I think I like GH2's track list better. There are whole sections of GH3's list that just leave me uninspired, although as a change there are no songs I don't like at all (such as Who Was In My Room Last Night? in GH2), just songs that are bland. Although I wish their rendition of The Devil Went Down to Georgia was better, it could use a lot of help. The master tracks are nice though, the real song instead of covers. I wish they could have done this for more bands, especially ones like Cream and The Who. Overall, I recommend the game if you enjoy rock music and rhythm games, unless you'd rather wait until Rock Band comes out, in which case you may want to save your money.

Epena and Bundalings, if you have an issue with things that happen on the site, you can take it up with me or another Admin. We do not make people 'disappear' for 'talking.' Last time I checked, Mikerahk was still a member of BZPower. As far as changing things go. Some people seem to think that whining and complaining will fix everything, when all it really does is annoy the staff. You want to try to fix things, come up with some ideas and show them to us, we'll be sure to take a look at them and consider their potential merits. Don't believe me? Go back and look at how the Fan-Created Games forum was created this past summer. We listen to calm people who present reasonable arguments. We ban people who spam, flame, and insult us. That seems like it makes sense to me.

So another Friday, and another day I've manged to do a weekly update. Last week was pretty busy. The biggest news of course was the appointment of Tufi Piyufi as a Forum Administrator. Let me congratulate her here again. The other Admins and I had talked about the idea for a bit before finally deciding the extra help would be most useful. We're definitely glad we made the choice after the many years Jen's been helping us out as a staff member here on BZP. In other news, obviously the New Member policy I talked about last week went into implementation, with a few hitches. Unfortunately, to make it so that all new members automatically got put into the new Members group, what we did was actually rename the Members group to New Members and then make a new Members group. This is why everyone who had previously been a member became a New Member after the change. Once you made a post (in a forum where your post count was incremented) the system would see you had more than ten posts and bump you back into the normal Members group. Yes it was a pain for you all, but think of this, there were over 35,000 accounts in the Members group. A whole bunch of them have been posting over the past week, and we've had to approve at least one post of each of those members (more of some who didn't post in one of the right forums). That's a huge load on all the staff. Again, thanks go to Tufi who was a huge part of helping us stay on top of that. We're thinking of ways to speed up the process in the future, so stay tuned to hear about that. And obviously, PMs are back for most members now, as I'm reminded every time I log on and see more messages in my inbox. Oh yeah, and you know how last week I hinted at some changes in the staff, and then how Tufi got promoted? Well, we may or may not be done. You'll see more when we're ready to talk. I think that's about it for the week. All of my non-work and non-BZP time has been filled up by Hellgate: London and Guitar Hero III (plus some Halo 3, of course). All great games I highly recommend if you enjoy those particular genres. As always, I want to hear your feedback, so leave it. Ask questions too, I'll answer them as best I can. Until next week!

It wasn't the amount of spam so much as the content. While there were quite a few topics posted and PMs sent, the fact that these messages contained images that were incredibly disgusting and not appropriate for BZP is what made us decide to take this action.

Since apparently people did like this idea I guess I'll continue with these updates. I would have posted this one earlier but I picked up Hellgate: London this week and it's been sucking up a lot of my time while I haven't been putting out fires on BZP or working. So, this week there were a couple instances of spammers getting onto BZP and posting some very inappropriate images and messages. Fortunately we were able to respond very quickly and ban the members and remove the images and content. Unfortunately this has required us to turn off the Private Messaging system for the past few days. I know it's a pain, but we're working on a way to bring that back to you guys. After I post this I am going to start putting into effect a new policy on BZPower. It's pretty huge and something the other Administrators and I have discussed in the past and finally decided to institute. It's going to be a minor inconvenience to some, and more of a pain for the staff, but it's a burden we're willing to take to help keep BZP safe and family-friendly. I'll update this entry with links to the appropriate topics after they're created. EDIT: The topics have been created. You can read our New Member Policy over in the Reference Desk and discuss it either here or in this topic in General Discussion. On the plus side, we got to promote six new staff members this week, three on the Fact Team and three new Reference Keepers. Our new reference section is going to need lots of updating, especially as 2008 information starts trickling out. We felt this justified a boost in numbers. With any luck there will be some more staff-related announcements soon (not necessarily promotions), so there's something else to look forward too. Ok, I'm going to get to that new policy. Thanks for reading everyone, and as always, I encourage your feedback (although after recent events I have to approve all comments, but that just means you can be sure I'll read them!)!

If you see it as necessary to change your name because the author of a book it's referencing changed one of her characters, that's your own prerogative, as silly as it sounds to me. Some of the other comments in this topic, however, are inappropriate and only go to remind me why we do not allow such discussions in the first place. Entry locked.

Religious discussion is not allowed on BZPower. Entry locked.

Well, no one seemed to like my idea so I guess we'll toss it down the drain. Oh well. In other news, it's amazing sometimes how a few select members think they're being treated unfairly because they don't get Premier Perks. The system is there to reward those who help keep the site running, not to take away from others. That is all. Good night.

I thought I might try something new. As a homage to Bungie.net's Weekly Updates, I thought I might try the same thing. No guarantees that it will be every week or the same day every week, but we'll try. Think of it as an extension of this entry that no one really seemed to care about. Let me know if you guys like the idea or not. Well, right now the forums are offline. We're having some problems with part of the database, so we don't want things to get more messed up in the interim. I know it's a pain, but things can't always work out well. Obviously the biggest news aside from that is the turning off of the PM System. For the past few days PMs have been on and working. But should we experience abuse of the system again, it will be turned off. There's not much that can be done about it, we have plenty of security measures in place, but it's impossible to stop all attempts to access accounts. If you want to keep your account safe I suggest changing your password to something difficult to guess and to change it frequently. In other news, we should have an announcement this week about a slight change in the staff structure. Nothing too big, but it should help with some organizational issues that crop up every now and then. Stay tuned for details. As always there's other interesting stuff in the pipe we can't talk about now. You'll have to wait and see. :X Finally, I'm still wondering if there would be any interest in resurrecting the BZPowercast. I got about zero feedback last time, but you can look at the details here. I want to hear from you! So, that's all for this week. See you next week at the same time in the same place (maybe).

1. Doesn't everyone? 2. Just because I have a spaceship doesn't mean I'm rich. 3. It may have something to do with his favorite song.

Really? I'm intrigued. First off, for those of you that are out of the loop, current Macs can run Windows if you really want to. Second, your laptop's specs are better than this? 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed2GB of PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 memory800MHz frontside bus60-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery (with integrated charge indicator LEDs) providing up to 6 hours of battery lifeBuilt-in AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi wireless networking (based on an IEEE 802.11n draft specification); IEEE 802.11a/b/g compatibleBuilt-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45 connector)NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor with dual-link DVI support 256MB of GDDR3 SDRAM160GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA hard drive8x slot-loading SuperDriveBacklit keyboard with ambient light sensors for automatic adjustment of keyboard illumination and screen brightnessIf it beats that, congratulations, I'm sure you just spent a lot of money on a high end laptop (we're talking $3500+). But I somehow doubt it "rox the sox" off of my MacBook Pro.

Some of the comments in this entry are getting carried away. There are certain things that are and are not appropriate for discussion on BZPower. Politics and religion are the two big ones, along with other controversial issues. As this entry keeps bringing these up, it will be locked.

Monty Python for the win! Personally, I've never had to wear makeup, thankfully. I'll let you have my share of the 'fun' Smeag, because I'm kind like that.

It's going to be a fun weekend. Last week, I had the pleasure of ordering a new laptop. My current one, while only two years old, has been giving me a lot of trouble and has the unfortunate drawback of being unable to easily run Mac OS X. It's battery died this past summer for the second time (first was spring 2006). I considered just buying a replacement battery, but what was the point, chances were it was going to die again. Everyone in my college class was given the same laptop (included in our tuition) and at least half the people I know have had their batteries die. Sounds like a faulty design if you ask me. Anyway, I saw this as an opportunity to get a MacBook Pro. Obviously once you order something like a new computer, you get excited. The past week I was periodically checking the tracking information to see when it would arrive. FedEx informed me that today would be the day. Just in time for the weekend! So I was surprised when yesterday upon returning from work there was a notice on my door saying they had tried to deliver the package but that no one was available to sign for it. I was confused by this, and kind of annoyed, especially since I had already printed out the signature form and was going to put it on my door the next day so they could drop it off while I was working. Upon closer inspection of the notice, however, I discovered another option. I could drive to the FedEx distribution center and pick it up that night. This sounded like an adventure, one that I would record for your reading pleasure! A quick trip to Google Maps later I had an expertly crafted route taking me through various backroads so I could avoid the major highway that was undergoing construction. I hopped in my car and drove off. A short while later (after only one wrong turn) I found myself at the lovely FedEx facility in Mount Olive, New Jersey. Lovely, ain't it? I presented the helpful employee with my notice and identification and a short while later I was in the proud possession of a new MacBook Pro. I brought it out to my car and strapped it in tight for the ride home. Buckle up kids, it's the law. I sped home as fast as local speed limits (and the cars in front of me) would allow. I really wish some people didn't think that 40 MPH means go 33 MPH though... Follow that cab! I managed to make it home nonetheless, and was ready to open the box. Nurse, hand me my scalpel. I ripped and tore my way through the durable cardboard enclosure so I could reach the amazing Mac goodness inside. Or maybe I just took a knife and cut it open, take your pick. Hmm, that doesn't look like a MacBook Pro... Inside the box was – another box! The suspense was building, nearly too much to handle. I could've sworn I rotated this before I uploaded it. Once that box was breached I was finally able to get a look at my new computer. It is a thing of beauty. Look at that shiny laptop. I took it out, plugged it in, and powered it on. *Bong!* And since that moment, there's been no looking back. I've spent the time since then installing various applications, Firefox, Thunderbird, Adium, NetNewsWire, Gimp, Office, Audacity, and many others that I use regularly. It's gonna take a while to set all that up, and then time to sync up some files with my desktop. I also have to get files off of my old laptop. Right now I'm making a VMWare image to use with Fusion, that should be fun. So far it's been a blast. I miss my middle trackpad button for opening links in new tabs and such, but command-clicking works almost as well. I love the two finger-sensing trackpad, makes it easier to right-click and scroll, more than making up for the lack of three buttons. It's got lots of other great features too, the backlit keyboard, sudden motion sensor (there are some fun games that make use of it), and of course, all the wonders of Mac OS X. One thing I don't like it the location of the optical drive. If the laptop is on my lap, the drive if pointing right at my stomach, it makes it hard to get CDs in and out compared to most other laptops I've used that have drives the eject on the side. Still, it's just a little thing. Overall it's a great computer, one I expect to use for many years.

Too bad I have a trump card on your locking. Anyway, since I know a lot of people are probably going to read this, I'd like to just post a quick clarification: BZPower has not been "hacked." The only thing these guys have done is guess the passwords of some members. These individuals have never gained access to BZP's server. If they try to make new accounts, we general delete them before they're even authorized, so the only thing they can do is take over existing ones that they can guess the password of. They pose no threat and are just an annoyance.

This is not at all appropriate. The image has been removed. Entry locked.

I feel the need to make a new entry here, but I'm not entirely sure of what to say. So we'll ramble a bit and see what happens. The Bionicle Reference Center was released this past week, finally. Over the past few months members would tell us how our reference section was out of date or ask what it was Reference Keepers do, and all I could say is that there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. It takes a lot to organize all of that data, especially with key resources like BS01 being offline for most of the time. I'm real proud of Bones for bringing this all together and the rest of our storyline gurus. Now all we have to do is keep it up to date (which you'll probably hear more about soon)! I'm glad the posting of 2008 leaked images have been slowing down. I guess those big warnings at the top of certain forums actually helped, because front page stories and pinned topics didn't seem to be doing it. Just to rehash, there are no official images or information about 2008 Bionicle sets on the internet as of now, anything you see is either a fake or leaked. I have it on good authority that this will be changing soon, and you can expect to see it on BZPower when it does. So let's see, what else... Toaraga has been working out great as our new Blog Leader. He manages to tear himself away from Halo 3 (something I have a hard time doing too) often enough to keep on top of things. It's good sometimes to mix things up a little, give people something new to work on. It's just like how we switched around a lot of the forum assignments recently. Sometimes you get so used to doing the same thing over and over it's like you're caught in a rut – you might start missing things or making mistakes, like people who zone out behind the wheel as they make the same commute day after day after day. So we try to avoid that, because we don't want our car insurance to go up any more than it already has (I'm looking at you, Shilo ). Aside from that, we have some stuff going on behind the curtain that will one day be revealed. In case you haven't noticed, we tend to work fairly slowly. First, because we try to do the best job we can, and second, because most of us are pretty busy and can only dedicate so many hours to BZPower. If only we got paid to do this. We should have a new set review going up this weekend, time-permitting, so that's something to look forward to. As a parting note, I've been starting to listen to some Podcasts a lot recently. Obviously they remind me of the BZPowercast (we were so ahead of our time back then). And of course the next logical thought on that train of progression is to bring it back, as many of you have asked about over the years. Unfortunately it's just another one of those time-consuming things that even if it did get off the ground, would fade and die after a couple of episodes. I'd be worried about coming up with new content for every release, not to mention I'd have to go out and buy a decent microphone (which has been on my shopping list for a while, actually). Well, that was a pretty long parting note, but it's just something I figured I'd toss out there. Let me know what you think!

My condolences. It's always hard to lose someone. My thoughts are with you and your family.

Well, I stuck to my plan, did the middle three levels last night and the last three tonight. All the Skulls (silver and gold) have been collected. Apparently I didn't view all of the Terminals to the end, so I need to go back and finish that up. Then I'll go back to focusing on multiplayer and trying to get better at the game, heh. And Cursive, I'm not saying it's a classic work of literature, but the storyline is definitely better than most other games on the market, especially if you're into it and read the books. At least in my opinion.

I know I said I was going to try to post entries more often, but there's a perfectly good reason why it been a while since my last update: a little game called Halo 3. My last entry was on September 20th and Halo 3 came out on the 25th. In between those dates I was visiting some friends at school and beating Bioshock (great game). Then of course on the night of the 24th I went to my local Electronic Boutique and got on line for the midnight release. It was pretty fun, the store bought pizza and soda for everyone, we turned on the TV at a nearby Verizon FiOS TV kiosk and watched the Titans destroy the Saints, and talked about how we were all looking forward to the game. Midnight came, I got my Legendary Edition and drove home. I had taken the day off of work, so no distractions. I put in the disc, launched the campaign, and started going. Eleven hours later, I finally put the controller down and watched the final cut scene, credits, and the real final cut scene. I was definitely pleased with the game, I had a lot of fun playing through on Heroic, and thought the story was great. It's funny how attached you find yourself to the characters by the third installment, there were definitely some really emotional parts, although I won't spoil anything. Since then, it's been a lot of multiplayer action. Please note that I do not consider myself 'good' by any means. I have my on and off games, and generally try to be a good supporting team player. If you ever want to hit me up on Live, my Gamertag is Black 5ix. I really like most of the new maps, although I've never been a fan of Zanzibar (now Last Resort). High Ground is my favorite, I think, along with Narrows and Isolation. Epitaph is nice too, and Construct, while an interesting idea, usually ends up with players staying on the top level. The Pit is nice, but I only have payed it on 2v2 where it seems too big. Snowbound is well-balanced, but I don't enjoy it for some reason, and Valhalla should be 5v5 or bigger only, I think. 4v4 on that map gets hard because of how spread out things get. I have no real opinion of Sandtrap, as I haven't played a real game on it yet. The Elephant looks fun though. Tonight I went back and played some more campaign, I'm trying to go back and find all the skulls and pick up a couple more Achievements. I'm kind of annoyed though, twice I used the Trip Mine to destroy vehicles and didn't get the associated award, anyone know what's up with that? I got through the first three levels, I think I'll go for the next three tomorrow. So that's where I've been and will be, I think this game is going to keep my attention for quite some time.

So, with the past two RPG contests, a trend has started where members review one another's RPG entries in the official discussion topic. This is great, the feedback goes to improve a lot of entries and results in an overall higher quality of stories for our members to vote on and participate in. On the other hand, it makes the discussion topic very cluttered and makes it hard to see any questions anyone may be asking. So I've been thinking of ways to remedy this; here's what I've come up with so far: Make a third contest topic for Entry Reviews and Feedback. Basically, just take all of the posts in there now and have people make them in a separate topic.Adopt a system similar to the BBC Contests. Members make a topic for their entry, and any and all feedback and reviews can go in there. The member can then post in the entry topic with a link to their entry and it will be added to the list.I have some reservations with the second idea. Doing this suddenly introduces another 30+ topics into the RPG forum, and might push down the current winners' topics as well as the BZPRPG. In addition some members may not know what's going on and try to join and start playing these entries. So, as always guys, I'm interested in seeing what you have to think about these ideas, and if you have any solutions of your own, please share them. Also, if you think the system is fine as it is now, say so, maybe it's just me. Happy RPing!

I enjoyed the inclusion of the song to. I mean, come on, what else are you going to use? The last Harrison Ford movie I saw was Firewall, which was definitely not an Indy-type movie but which did have him in a number of stunts and he seemed fine. I mean, if Bruce Willis can still do Die Hard 4, Ford can do Indy 4. One rumor I heard a while back was that they weren't going to let him use a real whip in the movie (it'd be CG) because it was too dangerous. Apparently Ford almost backed out, but I'm not sure which side conceded in the end, or if it was even true. So I think he's willing to do the action, it's just a matter of if they let him. Nah, the Chief won't die, that's just silly.

The banners are fine.