You can see photos of Vette Lustipants and her companion on Vette's blogspace. The link is in "5 Star Bloggers".

Vette and hill cat in the icy peaks

Here are some more pix from Vette's solo adventuring today. Betweeen sorties there were some opportunities to have fun with new friends at the street dance. Down a few pints of ale and off come the clothes!

Anybody want to buy a gargoyle skull? I bagged it myself!

(See link to official Guild Wars site in my "Tech & References" list.)

Went into Guild Wars for the final beta test weekend. I found a new friend called "Aeiri Heart", who showed me some of the ways of battle in the game! This was fun, kind of like Neverwinter Nights, but more beautiful graphics....The characters are not blocky and angular, and the scenery is gorgeous everywhere you look, so much so that you can just go for a walk and enjoy the fantasy landscapes and architecture. Don't forget to bring a virtual camera!

The game accomodates many more players than any I've seen before,  and there is no subscription fee! This is a game where you go adventuring together, instead of running around killing each other or hacking everything in sight. Some players do wield swords while others cast spells, which tend to be pretty displays of sparks and swirls and smoke.

more on this later... I must go to bed now...(Aeiri, are you surprised? I don't look very much like "Vette Lustipants", I think....You'll need a hotmail account to be able to comment on my blogspace.)

Later......more: About 2/3 of us in the game last night were appearing as female characters! Now, you can be sure that 95% or more of the people at the keyboards were young males, and probably 3 of the remaining 5% were middle-aged males. I can't speak for the others of course, but as for myself, I prefer a female character. What is in front of you more than anything else in the game is the backside of yourself, and I'm not that fond of watching a male butt for hours at a time. So...                                                                             

This is me, as "Vette Lustipants".                                 

This is a tribute to my brother, Wonder Warthog, who survived a heart attack Monday night.

I am glad beyond words that this generous soul is still in this world to explore it with me!

Check out his blogpage, "Lookit!" (in my 5 Star Bloggers" list), and see what a technophile with quirky tastes can discover on the internet to amuse himself and you......

Who wants to play "Guild Wars"" with me when the game is released? (April 19th)

I will be appearing as "Vette Lustipants" which is the name I used in "Neverwinter Nights".

Neverwinter Nights is the online translation of Dungeons and Dragons, wherein you adventure with whatever hardy band of rogues you can find, facing dangers galore...

I expect Guild Wars to be similar, but with better graphics and customizable characters..

See comments for a link to Guild Wars.

Zen and Signa showed theirs, so here's mine...

I have an idea for a unique videogame called "In the Garden".

Jesus is praying in the garden, when along comes a line of marching Roman soldiers, "Whump-whump-whump".

Peter whips out his sword and starts hacking ears and body parts off the soldiers. The game has one player as Peter and the other is Jesus, and Jesus tries to heal the soldiers faster than Peter can hack 'em up. The one with the best score wins!

Soldier:"Thanks for fixing my ear!"

Jesus:"You're welcome."

Soldier:"What?"

Jesus: ("Hehehe..."')

I like the way the enemies explode into bloody fragments, a rack of ribs, even a flaming skull bouncing across the floor when you hit 'em with the rocket gun! (That's called "fragging")

 I like the way they fly backwards when you unload the shotgun on 'em.

I like playing capture the flag because if my side wins it feels good, and being on a team means I get to win sometimes. The younger players are too quick for me one-on-one.

I enjoy the unique names people give themselves, and I have fun making up battle names for myself.

Other shooter games are fun too, but the gameplay in Quake 3 is frantic and does not require as much strategizing as in shooters like Tribes. When I'm done, I may be soaked in perspiration from the intensity.

I like that...

Wonder Warthog has given me a new graphics card for my computer, a BFG GeForce 6800 overclocked, with 256 Mb of onboard memory. This thing rox! My motherboard and CPU are not the latest, but Halflife 2 is fabulous with the new card, and my framerates in Quake 3 are outtasight!

The alien head badge on my rig has also taken on a more predatory look, due to the weird blue glow that comes from the card and the extra LED fan I added.

You should all be so lucky as to have "the Hog of Steel" for a brother!

Battle names for online multiplayer shooter games should generally be intimidating, and if they are for a female character, should be sexy as well. I like my own names to be humorous, so they may be of the nature of puns.

My brother often plays as "Wonder Warthog", a superhero from Gilbert Shelton's comics. The "Hog of Steel" appeared in the 1970s in "Car-Toons" magazine, "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers", and in his own comics. His mild-mannered alter ego is Philbert Desenex, a reporter for the newspaper in Muthalode City. His nemesis is the incalcitrant "Masked Meanie". When Wonder Warthog is online, I sometimes join him and play as Philbert or perhaps as "Mediocre Warthog".

Recently, my brother has violated the above guidelines for battle names, choosing to play as "Misleader Bush", which is neither sexy nor awe-inspiring. It does however have the virtue of making a statement. I haven't heard anybody objecting to it so far....

My brother has also called himself "Ballpeen" and "Ima Pseudonym".

There is a group in Yahoo called "The Vogons" which was a clan I started for playing Tribes2. We had about 15 members at one point, though it never amounted to much in online clashes. That was the year of the attack on the towers in New York. I'll never forget the time a few days later when one of the players in a battle session revealed that his father died in one of the towers. We were all so sorry and speechless...

Here are some battle names I haven't used. You're welcome to pick from these for your own use.

Marine Corpse, Monryn Marilo, Innocent Bystander, Balzafire, YoushallnotPass, ThudThud, Tinker Belch, Gloria Estebomb, Angel of No Mercy, NostreDumbass, Miss Ogyny, Mike Rocephalus, Necro Phil, Auntie Maim, Isotope Feeny, Priestess of Mortality, Whack Woman, Fraggicidal Maniac, Nym Foe, Cat Ballou, Wrongway Willie, Gypsy the Acid Queen, El Kabong, Miss Conception, Joan O'Vark, Sheila Blades, Pickle of Doom, Eyepluck, Thermonuclear Bob, Lou S'Fur, Puttigator, Gail Force, Excretapoo, TT Zop, Essen Em, "Hoots" Gibson, Grunt Runt, Anne Thrax, Thunderdolt, Brave Spleen, Uranus Burns, Col. Stubtoe, Pippi Dropstocking, Anne Tagonist, Oilcan Harry.

More: Fritz O'Schenic, Slowen Stupyd, your target, Angel of NoMercy, Tits Malloy, Willie Duit, Gabby Haze, Roy Ragers, Death Chex (a cereal killer), Razor Flakes, Cherry Bombs, Sugar Grenades (more cereal killers), Toehack, Captain Zlog (from the opening sequence of Star Trek), Warbitch, Annie Oakley, Bungalow Bill, Maxwell McHammer, Akk Akk, ZZ Bottom, Scrumio Sogentli, Jepper D, Flatnose, Dirtweenie, Rhea Diculous, uhmm...

The Esso Bee,  Recalcit Runt, eh...You think of some, and add them as comments.