Hamachi

Over the summer, some of we a-town thugs discovered the joy of Hamachi, a fully-featured VPN emulator (basically a local LAN emulator that works over the net). It's fully encrypted and secure for professional purposes, but it's seamless and easy as hell to use. We used it mostly for playing Warcraft3 online without having to use Battle.net, but I think that it'll be even more useful now that we're geographically spread out again. Not only is it good for Windows filesharing and the like, but it'll make life easier for organizing a random game night, perhaps with Defcon (see the post below) for people who are interested in that. Anyway, set yourself up with Hamachi and use the info below to join in on the fun:

Join existing network
Network: atown
Password: ssb

When you first sign on, you'll likely not see anyone online. That's OK, really. The network is just there for when we want it.

When it rains, it pours

Life at the start of the semester was a big dry spell for nearly everything: social activity, schoolwork, music.

Now I'm a month in and I'm damn near flooded. Gay junior high drama came at me in one big wave of messes with people, and once I got over all that I realized just how much I had to get done by November, none of which I had started on.

Oh, and the LSAT is on Saturday. But I'm not losing sleep because of that.

I am losing sleep because I now have 4 sheets of paper taped to my wall with ghetto masking tape, all describing the various things I have to get done to get into law school, into JET, start on my thesis and get some things going for the Texas Gaming Association.

4 sheets of paper on my wall, because my head naturally couldn't fit it, but neither could my purpose-built schedule book.

The good news out of all this is that I've finally gotten my hands on a couple new albums. And some more pop culture.

Olive's sophomore release Trickle actually happened a couple years ago, but I was never able to get my grubby little mitts on it until now. It's like Olive's first album, but better. It's more atmospheric, more orchestral, more electronic, but still smooth and British. Highly recommended. This is what follow-up albums are supposed to be, guys.

Also, I might have plugged this guy before, but Lupe Fiasco is where new hip-hop's at. I've been listening to the album advance for about a month, but the retail album finally dropped last week, and it's even better for having a few more good tracks. Lupe's young, great with rhymes, realer than Kanye could ever dream of being, devoutly Muslim, and under the business wing of Jay-Z himself. This guy's going places. If you only get one song, grab "Daydream," which is a brilliant rail against the bling and bitches of commercial rap. But really, you want the rest of the album. You want this Chicago-born-and-bred wisdom.

And I've finally found the time to start gaming again! I'm on a PC binge in anticipation of the Wii, coming out just before Thanksgiving. Here's what I'm playing:

CS:Source: Duh.
Uplink: The guys who made Darwinia basically made a game about computer hacking. And it's hacking just like you see in Hollywood movies, from the hilariously unreal interfaces to the ease with which a few keystrokes can make massive, percussive changes. Yet it's still an interesting challenge. $10 on Steam, and it's a steal. Oh, and the system requirements are super-low, so it works on my laptop and I can scare people who look at my screen when I travel.
Defcon: By the same guys as the above game. In this one, what they did for computer hacking, they do for Global Thermonuclear War - ya know, the game from WarGames. That's really all I have to say about it. Also $10 on Steam (if you buy this week, $15 post-release), and I've played for about 2 minutes and I know it's an instant classic. Grab this one.