Photoshop

Hello again everyone!  In school, I have been taking a Photoshop course, it is actually a lot easier than I was expecting; once you get to know the UI (use interface) the control scheme is very dynamic and supportive of quick color and brush changes.  The “layers” feature is very good too, for those of you who do not have Photoshop, it is a tool which allows you to superimpose multiple pictures onto each other.  For example, of you painted a background of a picture you could draw the people or scenery on a different layer; this is useful because changes to the image are applied ONLY to the layer selected, so if you did not like your scenery then you could simply delete the scenery layer and keep the background. I have been fooling around in PSE (photo shop elements) and I thought that you guys might like to see the results of my fiddling. Look around the blog for the picture of trees, see below for a screen shoot of PSE’s UI.

Hello

Hi everyone this is my first post! Something I wanted to post and  tell everyone about, is a great pc turn based 4X strategy game called Galactic Civilizations II.  I have had it for a while and I enjoy playing it very much.  Basically you take control of one of several major interstellar civilizations, you start in a “galaxy”  that could contain anywhere from a dozen to several hundred solar systems.  The size of the map and many other factors are determined by you before starting the game.  You start with 1 planet and you must expand and eventually take control of the galaxy (you compete with 1-9 ai controlled races), you may do so through military might, gaining a greater understanding of the universe and “ascending” by technological research, culturally converting the galaxy, or forming alliances with all of the other major races.  During the game you will design and build unique star-ships which you gain “parts” for by research,  colonize planets, manage your interstellar government & economy; and form diplomatic and trade relations with other races/species(aliens).

I wanted to tell you about this because it is rather old, so many of you may not have heard of it.  It is about 8 years old, but it has 3D graphics and multi-threaded AI, a feature which many newer games do not possess.

Currently GalCivII and an indie game called Minecraft seem to be what I have been playing lately.  Have any of you played either of these games, and if so what did you think?

-H-