There's no place like home!

    I've been back to work almost a month, and I think (knock on wood) that my leg is gradually improving. It doesn't swell nearly as much as it did the first week and the pain is a great deal less. I certainly hope the trend continues, as it's going to be a tough month with all the stuff going on at the HQ. As this blog posts, I'll be rocketing eagerly back North to take care of business at home...

    Today is the 1st of August, after the first Roman Emperor Augustus. Augustus was the nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar, mentioned back on The Ides of March edition of The Vent. Tho Julius Caesar got multi-stabbed despite thrice refusing a kingly crown, Augustus, originally called Octavius Caesar, became a king in all but name, setting the stage for a buttload of Caesars, Czars, and Kaisers to come. Augustus is a particular favorite of mine, as he was portrayed in PBS's 1976 Masterpiece Theatre series I, Claudius by one of my all time favorite actors, Brian Blessed. Brian Blessed is known for playing bigger-than-life characters - from the fictional Richard IV from The Black Adder to the hawkman Prince Vultan in 1980's Flash Gordon.
    August is also the month of the 'dog days', and I'm bracing myself to endure my work days up North during the rest of this global-warming summer. My flat is a second story apartment - really a converted bedroom in a house converted to apartments. The heat rises like crazy and turns the efficiency apartment into a convection oven.
    Today's featured vid is an MW2 Free-for-All on Overgrown by LegitGamingUnion. The follow-up vid is a collection of Top 5 killstreaks by OpTicJ. Moving on...

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 gets CTF back plus hardcore mosh pit on Xbox Live. PS3 and PC players have to wait a week or so.

• Medal of Honor: Not just a poor man's Modern Warfare 2Bad Company 2 or . No, that would be Blacklight: Tango Down. ;-) 
• Medal of Honor Limited Edition gets you into Battlefield 3 PS3 beta. 'Course that's only if the beta comes out within 12 months of MoH's release. Wowie.
• StarCraft II review: PCMag.
• GamesRadar's Ten Little Things We Already Love about StarCraft II.
• Lest we forget, Ars Technica reminds us: StarCraft II: Why the lack of LAN play still matters.
• Metro 2033 'Ranger Pack' DLC due next week on PC and Xbox Live. Meanwhile, you can save 25% on Direct2Drive's downloadable version of Metro 2033.
• Kokugamer sez: Ice-T: 'The Medal of Honor beta sucks'. 
• Game-on-Net interviews Cliffy B.
• Blues News reports that Novalogic has some of their classic FPS games for Windows, downloadable for cheap. As a huge fan of the original Delta Force and its sequels, I enjoyed playing the single player missions a lot, despite the sometimes problematic AI. Voxels rule!
• Merch: Left 4 Dead 2 tank statue heavy, expensive.

• Mars rover Spirit may never awaken from deep sleep mode.
• The formation of a lightning bolt.
• Humans can 'mind-meld', too.
• UK Army gets iPad for artillery.
• Proof of concept Android rootkit demonstrated. 
• Average cellphone user's monthly data bandwidth is 145 mb. Doesn't specifiy how many rootkits are in that.
• The science of baseball.
• Resident Evil: Afterlife poster is all 3D with flying shards of glass, luscious Milla.

This...

 

looks much better than

this:

Yikes. The zombies have already won!