A while back, while staying dangerously close to a dam in Australia, I briefly recollect having a notion for some reason or other that an earthquake was destined for the area known as Baja in the US.  How, I pieced this together exactly I do not recall, probably from local media and a basic understanding of some of the recent "natural" tradgedies that have happened over the last few years.  To cut a long story short that brief piece of insight seemed to be correct judging by another newsreport i saw yesterday.  I am glad that there was no real damadge.  There are currently several areas on the globe on high alert for this type of activity, but really, the main news companies seem to be fairly accurate on reporting it. 

One good thing I noticed on the news today, is that for once, scientists are in agreement about the fact that extreme weather patterns are now considered to be the norm and not the exception in many areas of the world.  This doesn't really make life any easier knowing this.  The only thing i can think that may curb the problem, is rations on carbon emissions, but implementing this, would prove difficult.

So tonight, I played a game called Limbo which is a tiny game only about 90 megs.  Really this game is stunning.  It came out in 2010 apparently.  It is all in black and white and plays like something that was released on the demoscene.  It has bags of character and was released on xbox also.  For such a small file it is a great game and very artistic.  I keep going back to it and can't wait for the sequel to be released.

A few weeks have passed now, and I have been playing games on the laptop with the newest Deus Ex Human Revolution which runs ok, but pushes this machine to the limit.  It is pretty good, whether i'll manage to complete it is another story as i keep going back to GTA San Andreas despite it being released in 2005, that game is huge, like absolute massive of a game.  I have not completed it yet and am on mission 67 of 100.  They reckon it clocks in at 45 to 50 hours of gameplay, which would sound correct.  Some missions are a dog, and i have skipped past them, but the majority are worth playing through.  I tried the new GTA, but it really is not as good as San Andreas.  I might come back to it, but to finish SA first would be a good step.

So after a few weeks of tinkering around with my new laptop, a few things I can say.  The onboard intel HD3000 graphics chip is actually quite a capable mid range gaming chip compared to some of the older gma chips that came onboard with earlier laptops.  The processor speed of 2.3ghz dual core along with the HD3000 graphics make it quite a capable gaming laptop.  Some other titles I have been playing flawlessly are the epic racing game called Grid, which thankfully a friend let me borrow an analog controller to do it justice.  Along with Half Life 2, Call of Duty 5 etc, GTA San Andreas runs full with everything ramped.  I would like to try Crysis on it and some of the newer titles.  I would estimate these would probably run at 20fps and probably still be playable on this computer.  The samsung laptop is turning out to be better than i thought.  I tried converting a 1 hour film to .mkv format which took roughly 30minutes, which is an improvement on the hour it took on my previous laptop.

Another title i have been playing recently is called Grid.  It's pretty hard on the keyboard and really warrants buying a joypad but it's a great game nonetheless and still playable.

Well after months of playing games that i got left behind at the time, titles like Half Life 2, Doom 3, Call of Duty 4 etc, these are all superb games. I think the best if probably Half Life 2, but that's no surprise. The call of duty series is just awesome and really has came a long way.