I did some summer cleaning on the website today. I decided to try a new color scheme for a change. I have been unable to find any other good free wordpress themes that fit Virtual Kingdoms, so this is how it will stay(for a while at least). There was also some pruning done on old outdated parts of the website. The About page has been updated to tell a little of VK’s history. And I removed the adsense block, if you really miss it, I might put it back. 
Send a note if you encounter any problems or dead links.
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I recently learned about a new free/open source action/arcade game. Its called Leges Motus. It was a class project at Brown University, which after the semester was then liberated. Their site has a good one sentence description: “Leges Motus, the open-source 2D team-based tactical shooter set in zero-gravity.” Gameplay is very reminiscent of a certain game played in a well known science fiction novel. The only problem is that there is no AI. So being a team based game with no one else to play with on the servers has a distinct disadvantage. But this is a great warm up game that you could play at LAN parties. It’s quite entertaining to learn how to navigate your character in zero g, trying to get to the enemy’s gate. I would suggest rounding up a few friends and trying it out. I enjoyed the map “big” which is a huge empty room where one can practice flying using the recoil of your blaster(a little like the American Astronaut Edward White with the zip gun). Ever since returning from the Yellowstone trip I have been considering getting more into photography. To be specific, I have been looking into investing in a digital SLR camera. I have a Canon Powershot A530 and have been really impressed with its quality. This particular camera (while on, with lens extended) had a high speed encounter with a stationary object. The lens barrel got pushed off the track and looked quite unusable. But with some considerable force the lens barrel was pulled out to its proper position. And I haven’t had a problem with it since other then sometimes the protective lens shutters do not not open all the way. But that’s a lot better than I thought it was going to be. Or the guy at the camera store who told me it was quite broken and would cost less too buy a new one then to fix it. So With my experience I decided to stick with Canon. I headed off to Cnet and Canon’s official website to see what’s currently being offered. I looked at the various models, checking reviews and prices on Amazon. I have pretty much narrowed down my search to the Canon Digital Rebel XSi 12.2 MP Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens.   So after finding a SLR camera you need to find what lenses you want. About the only thing I knew about lenses was that I wanted to get a telephoto so I could take some bird and wildlife photos. A very helpful site has been Photo Notes’ Beginners FAQ Before reading that guide I only thought about zoom as the almost useless 4x, 10x numbers that point and shoot commercials talk about. Apparently what’s important is the focal length. So after learning more about the type of lens I want, the searching began. The two best review sites that I found are The Digital Picture and Photozone’s Lens Reviews. I also searched through a myriad of different photography forums deliberating over which telephoto to get. I have been amazed to see how current the information is. It seems most google links to forums seem to be old forgotten topics. But most that I looked at were written in either April, May or June. This largely has to do with the fact that one of the lens I was looking at is a brand new lens, but I still find it interesting. So the two telephoto lenses that I have been looking at are the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS Lens So that leaves me on the last step: Trying to rationalize spending that much money. Unless someone wants to give me a free $2000 Amazon gift certificate. Too bad photography is so expensive. But it has been fascinating to learn about it anyway. For instance bokeh is the artful blurring of the background in a shot. Which expensive lens are good at. And I had a good laugh looking at insanely expensive lenses like the EF 1200mm f/5.6 L USM which weighs 36 pounds and goes for $120,000 used. Lately I have been taking a break from learning ruby and working on my game. I beat the campaigns for Warcraft 3 Frozen throne and Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. Though I cheated on the last Warcraft scenario. The population limit really gets to me. They wanted to focus on squad battles, but the battles are often so chaotic you sometimes have no idea whats happening anyway. In the last level you can only have a population of 100 and they have 2 – 3 sides with a 100 each. With stronger units then I can build. Perfect recipe for a fun level. It just got a little irritating by the end with both story lines being predictable and redundant. Warcraft’s was slighter better though. I mean in Supcom the Aeon princess sacrifices herself at the end of the original campaign and at the end of the expansion. I am very glad to hear Square Enix is working with Gas Powered Games on Supreme Commander 2. It sounds like the story should be vastly improved. Apparently a lot of work has been done on optimization as well, so it will hopefully actually work on regular systems. Personally I think it should be considered a bug when it runs really slow on a Core 2 Quad 2.4 ghz machine with 6 gigs of RAM.
Last Weekend I went to Yellowstone with the Family. I uploaded some of the pictures to my Picasa albums.
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and the 
I still don’t know which one I want. I’m leaning towards the more expensive 70-300mm IS right now to get the extra reach for bird pictures. But at $250 dollars more for an extra 50mm is a hard decision. 
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