Category: People

It’s Official… Avalanche is Out of the NXL

I guess it’s official now, Avalanche is out of the NXL and will concentrate on NPPL.

After considerable thought I, Ed Poorman team owner of St Louis Avalanche, have decided to no longer compete in the NXL. In a time when the costs are ever increasing for teams to participate and attend both the PSP/NXL and NPPL, the time has come to make this decision and concentrate on just one league. Although Avalanche would love to compete in the NXL the cost just out weights the rewards. As owner of the team I could not handle all the extra expenses when sponsorship dollars have decreased this season. All the players of Avalanche have done their best to help raise revenue by holding clinics, but it is still not enough to be able to attend both leagues. The entry fee alone for the NXL costs the team $6000.00 per event. That breaks down to $1200.00 per match or $40.00 per minute unless you make Sunday. The team has chosen to concentrate all of its funds, efforts and focus on the NPPL Super 7 format, hopefully this will allow Avalanche to become a top 3 team in both the Pro and Semi-Pro divisions. Avalanche wishes only the best to the league and the teams who continue to compete in the NXL.

Ed Poorman

Player A. Lulz All Around.

So a new company (Player A) came out (of the closet) last week, and it’s backed by the the super badass, I’m so freaking hardcore, and not gay, Markus Nielsen.

LOL. Check out my grillz, homie. You know I be representin’, foo

Anyways, it’s one of those “OMG! You’re such a badass motherfucker if you buy our shit.” company (see Hybrid, and all the other copy cat ones) that brings nothing creative or interesting to the table. Also, you’ll be the most original and creative motherfucker ever if you buy their mass produced crap.

OMG Look. I’m flicking you off. I’m hardcore!!!111!2.

Their profile page, hilarious. They really believe that. Their shirts, hilariously bad. Cheat? Great verb on a shirt. You know why you usually put a subject in a sentence? To know who the hell is it’s referring to. Who’s cheating? You? Me? That guy over there? The little kid playing pokemon in the corner? Or you have the wiping hits shirt. They tried to be all cool motherfuckers on the front, with their whole cheating agenda, but pussied out on the back.

OMG! High Voltage. This is so dangerous. You must think I’m the master of all things hardcore now.

The girlfriend doesn’t disappoint on fail. Nice 10 second photoshop job with the awesome impact font. And awesome girl silhouette with a star on her vajayjay, so we think about her vajayjay and all the great vajayjay we’re going to get with this ultimate badass shirt.

Lulz. Get it? It’s a reference to Nike’s slogan (do they still even use it?). No one has ever done that before. Isn’t it clever? LOL

No. You want to know what a real hardcore Aussie does? He drives 90 mph (150 km/h in crazy Aussie speak) with 10 pounds of pot in the trunk and 2 plants in the backseat, with a loaded .22 in the back, which he used for shooting kangaroos from his car whilst driving, all while masturbating and filming it. That’s hardcore. Lame shirts aren’t.

PSP Officially Changes ROF

sm-psp-new-logo.gifI thought it was official before, but not according to Keely.

The PSP has officially changed the ROF from 15 (technically 15.4) balls per second down to 13.33 BPS.

It’s actually one ball every 75 milliseconds, which does translate into 13 1/3 BPS (75 * 40 / 3 = 25 * 40 = 1000 ~ 1), but it’s actually too fast for 13.33 BPS (75 * 13.33 = 999.75 < 1000 therefore, it's too fast). But that assumes that all the shots are consistent, which there are often possibilities where that isn't the case. The PSP rules also state that only a maximum of 3 shots per trigger pull can be fired. Here's the time over 1 pull if the firing is consistent: pull = fire + 75 ms + fire + 75 ms + fire + 75 ms = 225 ms (assuming the time firing takes is consistent and negligible) Another case, let's say a ball takes a bit to load, say an extra 20 ms (don't argue, my loader is super fast, so that's not going to happen, whatever, shit happens): pull = fire + 75 ms + 20 ms (slow ball loading) + fire + 75 ms + fire + 75 ms = 245 ms (assuming the same as above) You just got jipped out of 20 ms. For that time period,you just shot ~12.24 BPS. Let's say the same thing happens, but the board software is able to compensate for those few milliseconds (it's totally feasible for the software to be able to do this): pull = fire + 75 ms + 20 ms (slow ball loading) + fire + 55 ms + fire + 75 ms = 225 ms (same assumptions) Now, you just shot 13 1/3 (about 13.33) BPS, which is what the general rules state, but you would actually receive a gross penalty for more than one shot in a 65 ms time span. So, the rules are actually, you may shoot 1 ball every 75 ms, not 13.33 BPS.

Also, in order to truly determine if the rate of fire is 13.33 or under (actually, 13 1/3) is to measure the gun over a 3 second time span (1/3 shots take some work to measure) and see if it shoots 40 shots or less over that time period with at least 14 (or 13) trigger pulls (13 1/3 pulls technically. If it the measurement didn’t start exactly when the first trigger pull occurred but after it but the first shot was counted as time 0, it could be done in 13 since the shot(s) from the previous trigger pull would run into the time period i.e. the 1 shot from the previous trigger pull plus the 39 from the subsequent 13 pulls). Now, of course, they aren’t going to measure it that way, since it’s a waste of paint and time, and probably seems a tad complicated. They’re going to measure it using a simplistic representation of it, as in, you need 75 ms between shots, because it’s easier and can represent 13.33 BPS (really, 13 1/3), but it’s not always true, as shown in the case above.

Am I saying their 75 ms between shots is bad? No, I’m just saying that saying it’s not 13.33 BPS (again, 13 1/3). It can be, but it’s not always. The rules should only state the 75 ms rule, not 13.33 BPS.

As a side note, I’m wondering how boards calculate their shots.

Does it use multi-threading, like a thread for each function (trigger monitoring, eye monitoring, rate of fire, etc.) or is it more of a when an event occurs, check the sensors then fire. I think I’m going to write a python script to demonstrate this.

Update:
Wrote previous mentioned python scripts, get them here, http://nothingoutoftheordinary.com/2008/01/10/paintball-board-software-types/

Bea Youngs Covering The NXL Via Blog

PICT2506

Bea Youngs is going to cover the NXL on BeaYoungs.com. She’s going to be covering NXL matches, so I assume she’ll post something like, team x beat team y XX to YY points, and maybe, if something interesting happens, she’ll mention that. It might be entertaining for a bit.

Though, of course, I have to critique everything.

First, only half of the links really work. Want to read the comments of a post? Click the ‘Read More’ image. Nothing else will get you there. Then visited links will have strike-through through them, which just seems stupid.

It doesn’t really look too bad, except that the header takes up nearly all of the view port at the beginning, so you’ll be scrolling a lot to read anything.

But most the annoying part is that there is no RSS feed, or at least one I could find. The CMS has RSS feed support, so why aren’t you using it? If you do, I’ll guarantee you’ll have at least one subscriber.

Anyways, this isn’t the best way to do it at all. First, in order to update, you have to have a computer with internet access, unless you have nice smart phone. So updates are probably not going to be that frequent.

What you’re doing, or at least what I think you’re trying to do, is micro-blog, sending short messages about your status and what’s going on using something like Twitter which will allow you to update via text messages. You can now update whenever and wherever.

Now, if anyone wants to actually do micro-blogging with Twitter (or a clone), let me know. I’ll gladly write about it and promote it.

If you’re wondering, they’re using ExpressionEngine, which I’ve never really heard of, though it’s pretty obvious I haven’t been missing anything. WordPress is a much better choice.