I have been playing Heroes of the Storm for the last couple of hours. I think it is a really epic game! As I'm writing this, I'm actually in-game waiting for other players to be matched with me so I can play a quick round.

There were a few things that I thought would bother me (coming from DotA). The lack of item purchases in the game has turned out to be very cool. Instead of buying items, you get to choose "upgrades" to your skills. I like it cause I don't have to return to base or visit a shop just to buy items.

I also like how the game consists of characters from other epic Blizzard titles (World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo). If you've played some of them, you really feel quite at home in Heroes of the Storm.

I think this game is definitely going to stick with me for a while! If you haven't played it, I definitely recommend you get it. Best of all, it is free to play!

Today I discovered the Lenovo K3 Note. It seems to offer great features for a very cheap price and may be well worth getting as it challenges some of the best phones currently offered by HTC, Samsung and OnePlus.

The Lenovo K3 Note was apparently launched to challenge the Meizu M1 Note. I have not really heard of the latter, but the K3 Note appears to also challenge some of the most high-end phones currently available. The K3 Note benches higher than the OnePlus One, Samsung Galalxy S5 and HTC One M8 according to WCCF Tech.

The Lonovo K3 M8 has the following main features:

• Full HD display (1920 x  1080) 
• 5.5 inch screen
• 13 MP back camera, 5 MP front cam, dual-LED flash
• 2 GB RAM
• 16 GM internal storage
• Runs Android 5.0
• And all the other goodies you'd expect from a high-end smartphone 

Best of all, it costs around $160 - $200! Now I don't really need a new phone at this time, but I might just get one of these! To finish off, below is a strange (not sure what else I can call it) video showing how cool you'd look if you owned the Lenovo K3 Note...

As I surfed the web today, I came to realize that much of what we assume to be true is actually not. I don't mean this in a paranoid way, but to some extent we are being lied to in many places. I thought I'd write about some of these things in this post.

Photographs in magazines

This is an easy one that you might have caught on to a long time ago. Most of the photos of people you see in magazines have been retouched ("photoshopped").

You don't only use 10% of your brain 

It is true that there is much of the human brain that we don't know yet. What is sure, is that you use the entire thing. Have you ever heard of a brain tumor that was found in a part of the brain that was not being used? Exactly! Although we don't use our entire brain every second, we do use all of it in a couple of days.

Hair and fingernails don't grow after death

So many people will tell you that it is true for a fact that your hair and fingernails will grow after death. We never have a shortage of experts in the word (or maybe people just like fooling others). For any growth to take place after death, something will have to be alive and nutrients would still have to be digested. Unfortunately when you die, you are dead.... that means all of you.

Going out with wet hair won't make you catch a cold

There has been no scientific proof that wet hair has anything to do with catching a cold. What does make you catch it, is a virus. Being in a low temperature surrounding just makes you more susceptible to the virus. Your hair doesn't really do much else than being wet.

Instead of trying not to catch a cold, what if we wanted to? Actually there are a few proven ways to get it:

1. Catch the stuff people sneeze
2. Touch everything and never wash your hands
3. Stick your nose our
4. Walk barefoot in the cold 
5. Hang out in the city
6. Stress out
7. Stop aging
8. Be human 

It's that easy!!

Bats are not blind

Although they don't have color vision, they still can see pretty well. In fact, they can see much better than humans in the dark. 

There you have it! Some things that you might have thought was true, but is not.

Today a friend dared me to try out League of Legends. I decided to take him up on it and played a few tutorial levels. It seemed fun and very different from DotA (which I am well familiar with). I decided to quickly look up other similar games and perhaps try them out.

At the moment I have Heroes of the Storm, League of Legends and DotA 2 installed on my Qosmio laptop. I will of course not play them all (as I do still  have a life offline), but I think I'd like to get serious about one of them for a while. So I thought I'd share my views on the games so far in this post.

The history of things (kinda)

First of all, these games are considered MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games. The term is pretty self-explanatory. Back in the day, there was a game called Warcraft III. Some guy with a frog name came along and created a mod for Warcraft III that was called Defense of the Ancients (DotA). A lot of people noticed the popularity of DotA (including the guys who made Warcraft III) and started making their own versions. Now we as the players have a few options, which is quite good for us. 

LoL versus DotA 2 versus HotS

I could write a lot about these games and maybe even publish a few books on the topic, but frankly there is no winner between these three games. Each of them has some unique features that makes them fun. I'll quickly summarize what I have noticed so far.

League of Legends

• Nice toony graphics, okay-ish sound effects  
• Many different characters (100+)
• Many competitive players
• Weekly rotation of 10 free heroes

DotA 2

• Great graphics and sound
• Many different characters (100+)
• Many competitive players
• All heroes are free
• Much of the original DotA awesomeness

Heroes of the Storm

• Nice graphics and sound
• Epic Blizzard universe (a lot of characters that are well-known)
• A few different characters (38)
• Teams share XP
• No gold or items to buy in-game
• Weekly rotation of 7 free heroes

I will now play each of these games for a few hours and choose one to continue with for a while. 

Imagine working as you travel from country to country or cafe to cafe. In fact, it seems that quite a number of people are actually living this way, hence the term "Digital Nomad".

Digital Nomads can be anything from freelance writers, artists entrepreneurs, financial traders and more. All of these require only a computer and good internet connection to function. Think about it. You can see the world and experience new things all while working.

A friend introduced me to a website called NomadList, which ranks cities around the world according to certain criteria such as internet speed, temperature, cost, safety, clean air, fun, and friendliness. While writing this post, I quickly did a search on the site for what I currently feel like wanting from my surroundings. I ranked the cities according to:

• Cheap living costs (< $1500 per month)
• Fast internet (> 20mbps)
• Mild temperature (between 16 and 23 degrees Celsius - still a bit cold for me, but yeah...)
• Clean air
• Safe (in terms of crime, scams etc)
• Fun

Here are my top results according to NomadList:

Now I wouldn't really want to live in Russia, but apparently Yekaterinburg (what a name!) is not such a bad place. If I ignore the weather part a little, the best cities are in Sweden, Finland and Denmark.

I guess the digital nomad lifestyle is easier to think about than actually doing, but for those who don't want to stay cooped up for too long at one place - the digital nomad lifestyle might be the answer. Personally, I find the idea quite compelling. Maybe I should try it when I'm done with my master's degree...

I have recently rediscovered that one of the best ways to spend time with my friends is to game with them. Some might say that playing multiplayer games is not spending quality time with other human beings, but I think that is a very uninformed statement.

When I was young (a few million years ago), one of the most fun things that we had to do at home was play PC games together. There were few other activities as enjoyable as "LANning". There were not many co-op games available at that time, but some multiplayer games like Unreal Tournament, Warcraft  and Titan Quest were very addictive.

So last weekend I invited some of my friends over for a LAN. We played Call of Duty: World at War and Left4Dead 2 mostly. It was totally epic! You get to yell at each other, come up with weird strategies and put your reflexes to the test.

Gaming is a great way to spend time with your fellow human beings. It is also a great way of getting some value out of your gaming laptop that you bought about a year ago and never really started using for actual gaming...  

Background

The Outcasts is a role-playing game (RPG) that I developed during my 3rd year at university. It was written in C++ and makes use of the Qt 5 libraries. In short it features a detailed story line, high-quality art, a dynamic GUI system, sound, networking (2 player) and relatively challenging levels that increase in difficulty throughout the game.  

Storyline: Introduction 

One summer day, four students at the North-West University are enjoying their weekend by catching up on all their favorite TV shows. The group decided to order pizza while setting up their computers for some networked gaming. Suddenly the doorbell rings and Claire rushes to the door just to find a disc laying on the doormat. /hmm

The disc contains a video game called “The Outcasts: A Cyber tale”. Without wondering too much about the strange appearance of the game, James and Jacob excitedly install the game on all of the computers and they all get ready to play the cooperative role-playing mode.

Suddenly it is as if the players are sucked into cyberspace and they find themselves in the game world. None of them know where they are, but one thing is certain: monsters are advancing toward each of them. If they have any chance of escaping, they will have to fight their way through these monsters and devise a plan to get back to reality! /nobigdeal

More screenshots

Storyline development

Character selection screen

Combat screenshot

Level selection screen