The Ramblings of a Grumpy Adolescent

This post has been sitting in my mental in-pile for a over a week now and will now seem long over due. Last Friday, the 8th of February a great event in the world of gaming occurred, LANdersonshatch II. You see we were given the day off college due to the fact that open evening was the night before and it gave the teachers the chance to have a lie in. So in the early hours of Friday morning whilst partaking in some Halo 3, an idea was formed. This was the second LAN party event to be held by my good friend Josh, AKA Andersonshatch. (Although the first event didn’t actually have a name and last weeks event didn’t even have a name until we were in Browne’s car on the way to Josh’s.)

The day started off with a huge revelation to me…
My bag is designed for LAN parties.
The dimension of my bag almost exactly equal the dimensions of an Xbox360 + accessories (Power brick included), this meant I had enough room for all my essential gaming bits, yet my Xbox360 was safe and snug. When we initially arrived at Josh’s house it was just me, him and Browne there. I have been to Josh’s many times now, but each time I go it is more and more apparent that his house is a geek’s paradise and is the ideal place to host a LAN party. Gaming commenced with Gears of War and while Browne and Josh played in the living room I was in the cinema/gaming room and we kept in tough with each other via phones that Josh had set up for conference call, whilst having music played into both rooms from Josh’s computer.

After I P0wn3d on Gears we went into Josh’s beautiful garden and partook in some trampolining, this was actually my first time on a trampoline which I didn’t think was that big of a deal but Josh and Matt clearly did. After mucking about on the trampoline for a while and breaking every safety regulation for use on the trampoline, the Babb-mobile showed up containing both Babbage himself and Twatwell (Complete with packed lunch prepaired by his girlfriend). With the arrival of these two we got on to doing what we do best, playing Halo. However as a consequence of us doing this we have to put up with what Maxwell doing what he does best, being a complete and utter twat.

For the next few hours time was spent trampolining, getting my arse handed by Browne on guitar hero, trampolining, Babb enraging my girlfriend, trampolining and the epic last level of Halo:CE oh yes and eating pizza. Maxwell most likely regretted moaning about the bit of meat that had fallen on to his slice of pizza due to the mocking from us that pursued about every vegetable on our slices of pizza. Then it came time for Maxwell to leave and this was met with rejoicing and merriment. That sounds a bit harsh but the best parts of the evening did all happen after he departed.

The hilarity really started when Josh introduced us to the speech recognition system on his laptop. At first we were amazed by this brilliant piece of technology, then we realised it can’t understand jack-shit. So we just talked away at it and saw what interesting sentences it could make up. It seems to have particular problems with the word “Batman”, Browne has a particularly dodgy looking video of me after half an hour or so on the laptop. Then after Babb and myself were prohibited from the use of the speech recognition system, we went on to play Crysis across 2 laptops. While seeing the amazing graphics of Crysis on Josh’s laptop and some, erm, interesting graphics on Browne’s Josh was bestowed with an idea; Laptop + Crysis + VGA cable + 50″ Plasma HDTV = Sheer Awesomeness

Amazingly purty is all I have to say on the matter. We finished off the evening rather lazily watching Browne play through portal and gulp down Penguins. Then we journeyed home playing music loudly in Browne’s car just to stop him falling asleep. For a LAN party very little gaming actually occurred but regardless it was one of the greatest days I have had, I eagerly anticipate LANdersonshatch III.

P.S. BTW Babb Laura says she is going too punch you next time she sees you, be careful my friend.