First sight of the infamous pyramid of the Louvre. Unfortunately, at 20.00 - all matches over, ESWC closing down for day 1.

Pictures of Paris, the location and the personalities of the ESWC 2005 event. The focus is on UT2004 players, but there are many Quake 3 players thrown in as well. Enjoy.

All done. 93 pictures out of a total of 260. Some are dark, apologies for that.

With the second group stage for UT2004 being finished yesterday, and the bronze final already having been played, there remained only one match in my and TheRogue's game of main interest. We were determined not to miss the final between winz and Falcon, and set our alarms to 8.30 again, in time to make it to the event, check up on the day's events and reserve ourselves some good front(ish) row seats.

Unfortunately, with the final being played out at 11.00 CET, a lot of people failed to show up, and the stage area was only about half filled. Even some of the UT players failed to show up after what we later learned was something of an event-filled night. More on that later. The final turned into something of a formality in the first map, as winz crushed his opponent convincingly on Rankin with a 16-2 score, thanks to dominating aim and several headshots.

Ironic, Falcon's pick, looked to be more of a tight match as the Austrian took the first frag and set winz running for a good 3-4 minutes in the start. From a situation of complete and utter maplock, the tables turned when Falcon was faked out at the lifts and winz popped back down, landing a full-on flak ball. Falcon only had seconds to wonder what had happened as the young French player attacked viciously, hitting 2 more full primaries and finishing the job with some flak ball splash damage. Falcon fell behind by 3 frags as winz took the chance and scored a set of respawn frags.

The game took a turn when Falcon managed to sneak into control after a few minutes of hanging on by his fingernails, and with a double-stack situation he took on winz head-to-head to pull in closer. With minutes between each frag, winz looked like he might lose the game, but the aAa duo started exchanging frags to raise the score to a 7-5 situation in favour of winz. With less than a minute left, Falcon scored a crucial, crucial frag, leaving him with 20 seconds left to chase down winz and force an overtime. He headed straight to the 50 armour, the most common spawn point on the map, but winz got lucky, spawning in the upper corridors instead, where he waited the last seconds, shield gun in hand, to take the game and the €6000 that accompanied it.

The winner of the day was one that no one of our ESR experts had predicted, but the aAa wonderchild showed the world exactly what he was capable of with an immaculate run through the tournament. However, with the UT2004 community losing ground everyday in the major tournaments in the e-sports world, and occupying a very low-key position in this ESWC, winz will likely not be able to prove that he is not just a one-hit wonder. With such a well-run tournament, thanks in large part to the punctual and cooperative players, one must wonder if other tournament organizers will consider the game. The full placings for the game can be found on the front page, but the top four were winz, Falcon, Lauke and devilmc respectively.

After the final, we headed down to the press room, where there was a very noticeable lack of computers. After an interview with the players, which TheRogue and I tried to record (but failed miserably at - I blame the shitty audio quality on cassettes), the CS second group stage was drawn nearly completely randomly. Teams from the same group couldn't play each other, but one has to question why ESWC didn't seed group winners and 2nd placers. The result was some very lopsided groups, with one group containing a red-hot mouz, coL, NiP and constant surprisers x6tence, while another contained 2 Russian teams and 2 Danish teams, the level of which proved to be rather low. The draw surely screwed up many people's top 4 predictions, as 3 of the strongest teams in the tournament were forced to play against each other.

From CS, and after posting some coverage, I moved on to watch some Quake 3, the only other interesting action game that was being played. We saw toxic come from behind and beat everyone's favourite Russian Cooller with 2 maps to 1 (cooller quote of the day: "ztn is map where need some brain"). After that, fox raped St_Germain, and then we were off to lunch. After coming back, I chilled at the iTG stand while TheRogue went and exhausted himself trying to get UT2004 demos to work, then watched the Lauke vs. Falcon game at normal speed (even Ironic...). Over at the iTG stand, Carmac was interviewing the UT top 3 players, and forcing everyone to say "I love the GGL." Apparently, the GGL will release an official ESWC movie, where the content will consist entirely of video clips of everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) saying "I love the GGL" in various poses, places and positions (like on top of Carmac's shoulder, as winz did).

The UNOFFICIAL GGL video will consist of some amazingly great footage shot by zulg, who apparently won't come back to gaming even if a UT game gets picked for the World Tour. =( The funniest so far is a scene where Lauke tests out his potential as a petty thief if his whole pro-gaming dream doesn't pay as well as it should. To leave some suspense, let's just say the face of the employee who first witnessed the theft caused the whole UT crew to burst out into hysterical laughter.

In the hours that followed, most players started leaving, and TheRogue left to astz's hotel, where they played poker for most of the evening. The people that stayed were mainly Quakers, who stayed to follow the two matches that remained, Socrates vs. Jibo and fox vs. Cooller, both of which would solve who advanced from their group. The latter ended up stretching out as fox contested the dm13 game because of a bug in the early minutes where a full-on rocket failed to register on Cooller. Did it affect the outcome, maybe, but fox should have asked for a restart straight away, not kept it as a potential ace up his sleeve. On the decider, dm6, fox was forced to submit to Cooller's shaft, which made it impossible for the Swede to come into a shaft battle without having double the Russian's health. In the other match, Socrates ended up beating Jibo convincingly on hub (Jibo quote of the day: "birthdays all night long") to advance with fellow Team USA player czm.

After the Q3, only CS was having a stage match between wNv and mouz, but with the auditorium packed to the brim with at least 1500 spectators, and mouz steamrolling the Chinese players, I decided to pack up and leave. No one I knew remained, so my goodbyes were short, and I returned to my room where I wrote this on TheRogue's borrowed laptop. On Friday, Q3 will basically be played to the end, perhaps with the final on Saturday (I'm not altogether sure), but otherwise, there will only be CS and WarCraft, neither of which interest me to any great extent. Officially, that is. Inofficially, there will be the UT2004 2on2 event, which should be lots of fun, especially if TheRogue and I participate - I've always wanted to see a 2on2 end with scores in the 3 digits for one team.

If the tournament ends early, I'll try to get some tourism done, as I've yet to venture outside the Carrousel du Louvre properly, and since this is my first and last visit to Paris in a while, I should try to see some of the sights of the city. Hopefully, I won't be forced to go it alone, as that's somewhat of a drag. If tourism fails, I'll try to catch a game of poker or something with the UT players, but as of now, I haven't got much planned. Tomorrow I'll be posting more, until then au revoir.

After missing yesterday completely and arriving in time to see astz, rmzs, forset1, ODEE and TheRogue stepping out of the Louvre, we settled down at a pub and got fundamentally ripped off for a pint of beer. astz and rmzs were pissed off at getting eliminated in the first group stage and as ODEE, Rogue and I left to get settled into our hotel, they went off to find a place with cheap beer so they could get pissed.

Today, we woke up early to get to the event on time, and after lining up to get my media pass, I entered into the underground space where time seems to stand still while people are playing matches all around. ODEE stuck around to watch hypno nearly make it through the second group stage but get screwed by mapwins, then he left for home, where London was shocked by explosions in the subway.

After that, the single-elimination matches in the UT tournament were played, seeing Falcon and winz come out victorious in a particularily impressive display of aAa power. In the only stage match I've watched today, fox proved that he is, indeed, all rail against Jibo on T4, where I was convinced I was watching a UT match, and hub, where +zoom seemed to be all the rage. The stage matches were pulled off exceptionally well, all credits to the director, who made sure that there was variety and that the emotions and skill of the players were emphasized. Short of slow-mo replays, this is the best spectator experience e-sports has to offer.

The press area isn't amazing, but it does have a large number of "journalists", most of whom are playing Q3 or WC3. Even in the press room, UT2004 is discriminated against. Which is another thing that's annoyed Rogue and me all day - Q3 is still having its first stage groups played out, while UT will have its bronze final later on tonight.

In Q3, Cooller and czm have been dominant, and fox has been all rail, taking a win in his group. Haven't really been following, might force THERAILMCCOY to haul his Irish ass in here and write some sort of an overview of it. Speaking of which, read my fucking UT2004 overview - spent a long time writing it.

That is all for now, might be back with a match report of the bronze final. Need to do my gallery as well, have 90 pictures taken, of which 70 usable, and need to make space for tomorrow's pictures. We'll see.

The new UT2004 TDM frag movie from Electry, the maker of Short Circuit has now been released. Featuring the best quality possible in UT2004 and in-game sounds, the movie showcases frags from clan critical.

With a touch of humour and some original editing, the movie is a clean whole that belongs in every UT player's collection.

When do you stop being the old you and become the new you? How much change is needed to say that you've changed? When has a person truly changed?

It's been said that people never change. I've begun to discover that this may not necessarily be true. I've changed - I don't dress like I did, I don't have the same friends that I did, I've nearly stopped spending time on some things I used to love. I've forgotten old loves, got new ones, lost old friends, but gained new ones. Is the me of today the same as the me of yesterday?

But does it really matter? Are who you are today necessarily linked in any way to who you will be tomorrow, let alone who you were yesterday? I've personally abandoned a lot of things, replaced them with others, but as far as I'm concerned I'm still me. However, many of my friends may not be of the same opinion. Have you ever observed a person change so radically that you could look at them and not recognize them for the person they used to be?

Life is filled with changes, and one of the difficulties of life is learning to cope with them. But are there changes that just can't be overcome, can't be dealt with - can you change yourself without noticing and wake up in the morning to a face so foreign to you that you scare yourself? How much is too much?

For the past week I've gone to school for 8 hours, come home, worked for 8 hours on finishing up the equivalent of my coursework projects in chemistry, physics, economics and maths. Everyday. This is my second-last week of school, and since I've been a lazy fuck the past year, this is also the week when I try to squeeze two years' work into one week so I don't flunk the program before I even take the exams.

The question that keeps popping into my head is why? Why have I spent the last 2 years taking the road less taken, working 3 times as hard as most people in the Finnish school system, doing 6 subjects instead of 3? Will it be worth it? The question really applies to everything in life - why is anything worth doing? What possible difference can that extra bit of effort you make to meet a deadline that someone sitting in a plush office in Geneva has set for the 100,000 students studying in this program in 118 countries?

The past 2 years are a blur, and the most significant thing I will remember about school is getting out of it. I don't remember the classes, I don't remember the material, I don't really care about my grades because I'm convinced that never do I want to get stuck in anything that will leave a 2-year smudge on my memory. There is nothing redeeming about the IB program, and very little of anything else actually produces any sort of overwhelming sense of well-being for me. To quote Office Space: "If I had a million dollars, I'd do nothing. Absolutely nothing."

There's the off-chance that I won't get stuck doing something absolutely horrible for the rest of my life, but even if I did make, say, e-sports my career, I'd be turning a great hobby into a shit job. Nothing is as glamorous as it seems on the surface, so why bother trying?

The root of the problem (outside of me being completely braindead from spending the past 8 hours typing out statistics, experimental results and conclusions) lies in that none of this, none of these "achievements" by which we measure our lives really affect it in any way. Your middle school grades are forgotten as soon as you get into high school. Your high school grades are forgotten in Uni, and your degree is overwhelmed soon enough by the "Past work experience:" box on your CV.

None of what you accomplish today has any real meaning tomorrow - why bother?

This isn't just rhetorical, if someone can answer my 29 questions with good reasons, this will be much appreciated once I get some sleep and OD on caffeine.

I recently checked my iM's for the past week or two and realized that half of them were about reply's from a certain someone called Jamerio. Hi there!

Now I then checked a couple of the posts that I had links to in my Inbox and noticed that they were all, almost without fail, nearly half a page long or more. I then proceeded to read through these posts, and found mainly inflammatory remarks and total bullshit.

This isn't the first time I'm addressing this issue, but I don't want an ESR with Jamerio. I just don't. It's no fun for anyone when the most random posts about picmips turn into pissing contests between games and nationalities. I've brought up the issue with other admins who have told me to ignore him or remove anything that doesn't follow the guidelines.

The thing is, none of it breaks any guidelines apart from the one saying you shouldn't post if your IQ is lower than your body weight, so I came to a crossroads. I've never Ignored anyone before. Never. I want this site to be good as it is, not by removing parts of it I dislike, and that's why pressing the "Ignore this user" link is difficult to accept.

Why can't admins remove such a plague on the site? Why doesn't anybody do anything? Hell, I don't know, but I do know that me ignoring Jamerio permanently can do nothing but improve this site, so that's what I am doing as of now. I didn't do it earlier because I wanted to try to convince people to remove him from everyone's sight, not just from mine, but unfortunately that hasn't happened.

Perhaps I just liked the occasional flamewar, but now I realize that it has a negative effect on everyone, not just me and Jamerio, so I gotta do what I gotta do.

So goodbye Jamerio, you Welsh cocksucker, you won't be missed.

A month or two ago a female friend of mine suggested that I get a make over of sorts, completely renew my wardrobe and get a new hair cut and in general make myself more visually appealing. I thought about it for a week, and then decided that my look, which I've had for the past 5 years or so wasn't particularily dear to me, nor was it working out for me. I didn't like myself, and I figured that there was nothing to lose in becoming more fashionable.

So we went shopping, got a new haircut complete with gel and all, bought some long-sleeved t-shirts to go under my extensive wardrobe of black t-shirts and a pair of faded jeans. After an hour, I couldn't have recognized myself given only a picture of the old me and the new me. I was hesitant on the first day of school, because I'm not usually the centre of attention and I figured that such a drastic change in my appearance was bound to attract a lot of snide remarks or pats on the back.

It did and it didn't. I got a few snide remarks, but most people took one look, was shocked that I had changed, and then accepted my choice to be part of the mainstream as the only real choice that could be made. After the first week, the thrill of change had worn off even on me and yet again didn't really care what others thought, but still spent some more time on making sure my clothes matched and my hair didn't look stupid.

However, this brought me something of a revelation that may sound obvious to everyone who hasn't "drastically" changed themselves in one go - looks actually mean very, very little. How you dress does not matter on any higher level than the first impression - you are, and will probably remain, the same as you were before, but now you'll be spending more time and more money trying to maintain or improve on how you look. Putting in zero effort into how you dress is not only more economical, but also less vain and means that you dress as you, not a fashion ideal.

At home I still wear the same old clothes I always did, but when with friends, or in the public eye in general, I dress as others expect me to in light of my new change. Will I change back to my old self because of this duality? Probably not, but the whole incident has brought me some more insight into how much crap fashion magazines are full of. New clothes do not and cannot change the person wearing them, and others will most likely not notice what you wear after the first time you wear it.

Dressing well is not equal to living well.

Sorry, no before and after pictures yet.

A must-see movie for all frag video fans, Forever 2 combines fantastic frags with crisp, clean quality and sets a new standard for synchronization with the music.

The frags are provided by a huge cast of 63 largely unknown Brazilian Quake 3 players, with the only exception being a brief (but quickly ended) appearance from CPL Rio champion reef. The movie is complete with a large variety of great frags and Vecchi's exceptional editing really makes this movie an essential part of any enthusiast's collection.

During the past couple of weeks, a lot of things have happened, and because I'm awful at organizing things on the fly, I'll make a list, and perhaps it'll work out OK that way. Here goes:

1. I finished my end-of-year exams, thus moving into the summer holidays (\o/) and being able to slack off a lot. I got 39 (3x6's and 3x7's) total points out of 42 possible. I was satisfied, as all subjects were as expected.

2. I realized I'm not over the girl I should have been over already - obviously. To add insult to injury, I was then around her for the following 3 days a lot (think same jacuzzi for 3 hours (with 5 other girls, mind you)), and then she left for England for 5 weeks on an English course. Right now I lack closure. I tried to make myself forget it, but I haven't, and I hate it. Why does male-female social interaction (;)) have to be so difficult?

3. I expanded my music collection by a lot. New artists include Static-X, Metallica, Coldplay, Oasis, Godsmack, Nirvana and Enya(!). That's what too much free time does. Currently pissed off at missing the Metallica concert in Finland last week.

4. I watched the whole LotR trilogy through yesterday! 9 hours of movie goodness. The films are just fantastic - unlike The Day After Tomorrow, the effects don't make the film, they just help to move a fantastic plot along (thank you thank you thank you Tolkien). Probably gained some weight during that, much candy, soft drinks, chips and other junk food was consumed!

5. I reached 666 posts on ESR. Totally insignificant, but oh-so plusworthy! Hooray, I'm evil!

Thank the gods for lists, now that that's done, I can tell you all that I'm meeting all 15 of my clanmates this weekend at one of the guys' summer houses. A booze-filled weekend of fun and games (without games). And thus my pointless journal of pointlessness draws to yet another end.

I'm bored - I hate this limbo between disappointment at losing the girl and the joy of getting the girl - there's nothing to feel, it's just "Oh, well, that's dandy".

666!