So how else do you get entertainment?

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i read herry pottar once.

oh and once i played sim city!

Homeworld. Lots of Homeworld/Homeworld Cataclysm/Homeworld 2. Also, immoderate amounts of bzFlag, Earth: 2150, Half-Life 2 and Doom 3.

As for books, I'm currently working on Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. I also am half-way through the Aeneid, but I have been half-way through that for about 9 months. It's just not as interesting as The Illiad and The Oddyssey were. For lighter reading, I just reread Carrie. Before that, um, I reread all 7 Dark Tower books. And all 10 Year's Best SF anthologies (or was it 9?). For school, I just finished reading Elie Wiesel's Night. I haven't started Dawn yet. Maybe this weekend. Maybe not... depends on how much Calculus homework I get assigned, and whether or not I go out to see "Serenity" on Friday. :P

And I also have to get this OpenVPN setup working. I can set up a TUN interface quite easily. But every time I try to create a TAP interface, eth0 brings itself down. At first, I thought it was an accident. Then, when doing it locally (as opposed to over ssh), I found that I really can't have eth0 and tap0 up at the same time. Evil. [Sep30,2005] And now TAP works, and I have an ethernet bridge. But broadcasts aren't traversing the bridge and I can't see Windows shares. :(

Over the past week or so I've read:
The Big Over Easy: A Nursery Crime by Jasper Fforde
Eldest (Inheritance, book 2) by Christopher Paolini
Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert

Of those three, I'd probably recommend The Big Over Easy the most. Jasper Fforde writes hilarious books. TBOE is a murder mystery where Detective Investigator Jack Spratt and his sidekick Detective Sergeant Mary Mary investigate the murder of Humperdink "Humpty" Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III. It's very funny.

Eldest is the sequal to Eragon. Christopher Paolini is a young author, currently 21 years old. He began writing Eragon when he graduated from high school at 15. He started writing Eragon and Eldest because he enjoyed reading fantasy novels - and quite frankly, it shows. I find both novels to be highly derivitive, primarily of J.R.R. Tolkien, but also of Anne McCaffrey, George Lucas, and many, many others. They are still enjoyable, but don't expect anything very original.

Marvel 1602 caught my eye while I was browsing amazon.com recently. Neil Gaimon takes many of the Marvel SuperHeros (Nick Fury, Doctor Strange, the X-Men, DareDevil, The Fantastic Four, etc.) and transplants them to A.D. 1602, just as Queen Elizabeth of England is dying. I thought this a very intruiging concept, and bought it. All in all I liked it quite a bit, but I was somewhat disappointd in that I don't think it quite lives up to as good as the concept could have been. Also, do not expect any amount of historical accuracy.

I'm just about to start reading Inside Job by Connie Willis. Connie Willis is probably my favorite living author. She's incredible. Inside Job is her latest book, just published at the end of August. And for some reason amazon.com took forever shipping it, so I only just got it.

For computer games, other than VO I've recently been playing a bit of WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne with my friends. Also this year I've started playing a fair amount of Go, on the Kiseido Go Server using Cgoban2. And I'm always playing nethack off and on. The next game I'm planning on buying is Bonez Adventures, a RPG/Adventure game that I thought the trailer movie looked interesting.

Watching anime, reading Thus Spake Zarathustra. Nietzsche is incredibly boring.

Just got a copy of We Love Katamari.
http://www.1up.com/do/gameOverview?cId=3137090

Whoa, thanks Beolach! I didn't know Jasper Fforde had written anything besides the first 4 Thursday Next books (The fourth has been sitting by my desk at home for a month now- I have little time for reading between hacking on the game, sleep and spending *some* time with my gf).

Books and games I'll be enjoying when I have some free time (when VO kicks some serious ass):

The Jasper Fforde I have left
Society of Mind - Minsky
The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, and Intelligence Evolved from our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans - Stanley I. Greenspan, Stuart G. Shanker
Cory Doctorow's books
Quicksilver and System of the World - Stephenson
Any singularity-related scifi that looks good.

Stuff I might reread:
the Riftwar books by RE Feist.
All Vernor Vinge's books (he's my favorite)
Stephenson, Card, and Adams

The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion (yea, it'll probably be out by then)
Nintendo Revolution - whatever is cool once it's out (I've been waiting for a 6dof controller based system since my first nintendo)

yay another elder scrolls fan!

Clark/Baxter Light of Other Days
Dean Koontz's The Taking
Anything whatsoever by Terry Pratchett

not for the light reader but very enlightening:
Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel
Robin Fox's Pagans and Christians

No cash for many books, but I do have a subscription to Realms of Fantasy magazine, which sates my thirst for fiction for a while. I recently bought the complete HP series so far, for the express purpose of burning the lot that very same night. I don't care one iota for the story, but like I suspected, the HP books burn just fine.

PC Games I basically just dabble in the Ferentus beta. A fantasy MMORPG that looks tons better than Shadowbane, has pretty impressive eye candy (day/night, fog, rain and storms complete with lightning, high grass you can actually hide in), but not much else.

And, of course, the Xbox: Halo 1 & 2, PSO, bunch of others (waiting for Half Life 2 next month). Xbox Live rocks, pure and simple.

I'm also working on my Tyranid, Empire, Dark Eldar and Brettonian armies for Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k. One of each is nearly finished, but like anyone in the hobby knows, you never really finish an army.

Hmmmm, and on top of this I work 40 hours a week... where in Hell do I find the time?

Oh yes, I don't have life :P

lets see...

most recent books... I'm a prolific reader soo i tend to work my way through authors.. :)

recently i've been working on John Ringo and David Weber

John Ringo has a good series about an invasion of earth, nothing earthshatteringly visionary, but well written with a decent amount of humor included to keep the tone light. the books in it are:
Hymn Before Battle
Gust Front
When the Devil Dances
Hells Faire

Weber's "honor Harrington" series was pretty good as well, its a solid space warfare series with well developed political overtones so the action is well grounded. its a Long series tho, not counting the 4 anthologies where he let other authors play in his universe its like, 11 books long.

The series the two collaborated on however was very entertaining for the most part, the 4 books in it are:
March Upcountry
March to the Sea
March to the Stars
We Few

I wasn't as impressed with 'We Few', it just seemed rushed and sub-par to me compared to the other 3.

hmmm, what else.. Recently re-read several Mercede'd Lackey books, namely 'Joust' and 'Alta', in preparation for the new one that i have coming from the library.. hopefully today :)
its an interesting series of books set in a world that resembles ancient egypt with magic and people fighting on dragonback.

as for games i've been replaying some older games lately when i'm not on vendetta, I recently went back and replayed the original "Betrayal at Krondor", I'm always playing a bit of "stronhold" and of course "Dungeon Siege II" takes up a bit of my time, but not as much since i'm playing through it multiplayer with my wife and our schedules dont match very well.
Additionally you will find me online playing a game of Battlefield 1942 every now and then, (vietnam and BF2 just didnt grab me the same way)

I recently picked up a copy of "Desert Rats vs Afrika Corps" for 3 bucks on a bargin bin, its a kinda neat little RTS combat game set in WWII north africa, but the interface is clunky and hard to use well. If you like RTS combat wargames and you can find it for a few bucks its worth picking up, but dont pay more than $5 USD for it. :)

Since I'm now fully concentrating on my exams, not much else. But normally, I play:

Lugaru, Oni, Halo

I watch:
Anime, mostly fansubs. Bleach, Suzuka and GitS 2nd Gig currently got my attention.

I read:

Manga, as much as I can get. And comics, generally, but mostly with a slightly more serious, mature content (not smut, although I don't mind nudity and violence).
running series: Gunnm: Last Order, Vagabond, Gun Slinger Girl, Planetes, Exaxxion, Gipsy, Sillage.

Books... varying. Been reading up on Patrick O'Brian's series about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, and various (german) contemporary and classic authors.

i've been working my way though the wheel of time books by robert jorden so thats taking up most of my reading time at the moment normaly into light sci-fi or fantasy sorts of things.

for other games i play all sorts, just finished devil may cry 3 working though prince of Persia,did mgs:ts and mgs:3 been re-playing final fantasy 7 (i do that a lot actually) soul caliber 1 and 2 ,little bit of teken and mortal combat, even picked up the new dragonball fighter a bit back (not as good as soul caliber in my opinion) so a bit of everything in the game line realy.

.p.s oh yeah i got a copy of vargrant story for the ps1 a bit back as well so i'm playing that (must have missed it coming out when it did)

Re: Spellcast

You might already know this, but since you mentioned David Weber & John Ringo I thought I'd point out that Baen Books (Weber's & Ringo's publishing company) has made the Baen Free Library w/ a number of books available in electronic format for free, including some of Weber's & Ringo's books. Check it out: http://www.baen.com/library/

"Gun Slinger Girl"

W00t! Gunslinger Girl rocks. :-D

oh and i started reading "lies and the lying liars who tell them: a fair and balanced look at the right" it was somewhat funny, but got kinda repetative. havent finished it.

what? play/do anything other than VO?

BLASPHEMY!!! TO THE FURNACE WITH YOU!

>_>

Ou, I read Eragon.
Best thing I can say about it is that it was marginally better than the crud people pile up in the role play forums.

Books currently on my bedside table (or close enough for me to grab them once I've bedded down) include:

The Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuscinski, a fantastic account of this marvellous journalists travels in Africa.

Monstrous Regiment, Pratchett's worst effort so far. The first Pratchett book where I haven't laughed out loud at any point during the reading. Full of recycled material, old, stale metaphors, and recurring character concepts.

Rise of Endymion (sequel to Endymion), by Dan Simmons. This is the finest sci-fi ever written, to my mind. Dan Simmon's original vision, technological creativity, and immersive universe is even more compelling than Paul Anderssons Harvest of Stars (which I also highly recommend). I've yet to read the old Simmons works (Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion), but I have high hopes for them. Simmons is one of the few sci-fi authors with both a persuasive technological vision and the skills of a qualified writer.

And, the few times I have reason to play anything else than VO, I play Homeworld 2, Savage (the only online experience that has ever come close to VO for me), and all Spiderweb Software games. And, yeah, I have a character on a rpg-pvp server in WoW. I've reached lvl 8 in 13 hours time. For those of you fortunate enough to have stayed away from WoW, this is roughly the equivalent to achieving combat licenses 1 in 2 days of constantly playing Vendetta ;-) Meaning: I don't think I'll be playing much Wow any more, ever...

And, to build upon the thread a few posts back, I watch mostly anime (Trigun, Bebop, Escaflowne, Last Exile, Kare Kano, Evangelion, Heat Guy... and yeah, I admit it. I watch Naruto as well. Every thursday. I'm glued to my computer. It's embarrassing, but I'd better announce it here. Sooner or later, people will notice I'm always VO-absent during thursday nights...). I've also just begun watching Firefly, and it is a very pleasant experience. And Family Guy. As much as possible.

Gonna expand this excellent off-topic thread even more, by including what I'm currently listening to:

Skid Row, early stuff [is there anything else? ;-) ]
King's X, everything
I, Mother Earth, all there is
Tori Amos, anything and everything
Marillion, Hogarth era
Ugly Kid Joe, Menace II Sobriety and America's Least Wanted
Type O Negative
Yoko Kanno
Devin Townsend, Ocean Machine, Townsend Band, and Terria.
U2
Wishing Tree
Vai, Sex & Religion
Zeppelin

And when all this stuff fails, I got my band, my voice and my prose and poetry to fall back upon. And yeah, fighting. Must not forget about fighting.

METEOS.