Today I woke up, had a cup of coffee and opened Facebook and saw this post about a game called Broke Protocol. Usually I dismiss new games as I'm not that much into gaming as I used to years ago, but the words "sandbox" and "free" drew my attention. Last time I talked about gaming on this blog was when I reviewed State of Decay in 2013 (by the way - a sequel to that is being made) and for some reason I thought of trying the game and documenting my first minutes on it here. 

Broke Protocol is an online city life roleplaying game. It's free, low-poly and commonly described as a 'GTA clone'. Players can and are encouraged to host their own servers and the game is currently on Steam Greenlight.

I downloaded the client linked in the official website, extracted it to my Program Files folder, forced anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering through NVIDIA Inspector and started it.

The game's simple start menu.

At the time of this post, the game is on version 0.622, released on 7th May 2017. The settings are pretty straight-forward. I changed the resolution to 1920×1080 fullscreen, disabled fog and bloom and left occlusion on.

The server list annoyingly has no filters and loads the furthest servers first for some reason (all of them marked with a ping of 500). After a few seconds letting it load, I joined a French server with a nice ping and about 30 players.

Upon joining, I was met with a login screen and a character creator. As expected, character customisation is still basic, but still a nice feature nonetheless which hopefully will be expanded in the future. Soon after I was on the streets of Broke Protocol.

The chaotic streets of Broke Protocol.

It didn't take me long of walking around to find some chaos. Players killing other players, fighting and robbing NPCs, traffic jams, cops going berserk. Pretty much what you would expect in a Grand Theft Auto game, albeit in a Unturned-like world. 

NPCs are distinguished from players because of their calm walking on the sidewalks. Once engaged in a fight, they pull out a random melee weapon and fight back. 

Yes, that's a baseball bat that I'm wielding while fighting a player.

When anything on this game dies, it drops a briefcase with all of its item. That also means when you die, you lose everything except your clothes. You will need to get used to being literally stabbed in the back by another player while you are vulnerable picking up stuff from a briefcase. 

By default, interactions in the game are done with the middle mouse button pressed down. It's used to open the inventory, pick up briefcases and also...

I've got some bad news for you, Conan.

...intimidate NPCs. I found it amusing that every time I instructed an NPC to put their hands up and be robbed, they obliged, even though I had no weapons on me and in exchange I got pistols from some of them. Why fight and risk dying when you can just force them to praise you like some sort of God? 

At this point I noticed the game had a GTA-esque wanted level system, as seen by the stars at the top of the minimap. 

Murdering low-poly people near the beach. Delightful!

The stars increased with the crimes and not long after I had the po-po after me. I chose the crime life in the game, but some players preferred paying to be cops at the local police station. Besides weapons and money, the NPC I murdered above had cocaine. This game has drugs, awesome! And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I used to spend many hours on a Multi Theft Auto server (that's a GTA San Andreas multiplayer mod) producing and dealing drugs. 

Being high on coke on this game gets you an extremely blurry vision and that's about it.

 Obviously I had to try some. There's no animation while consuming drugs, just an immediate effect which resulted in blurry vision for about 20 seconds as I walked around running away on foot from some cop. 

I explored the world and visited a fast-food restaurant not-so-creatively named "BURGERS". Not long after, the server initiated what seems the only event the game currently has: Battle Royale.

Come on everyone, hit that F1 button.

Players are asked to vote and once initiated, the objective is to kill everyone as the area you can roam in gets smaller and smaller. Unfortunately my health was not replenished upon entering and I had no more ammo, so I couldn't do much on foot. What to do next? Simple, let's get a vehicle!

It's possible to be a passenger on any NPC car, but where's the fun in that? I stole a car and had my first driving experience in this game. It wasn't too bad - driving is done with ASWD and camera movement with the mouse, just like it's supposed to be. I'm looking at you, Borderlands (who the hell thought driving with the mouse would be a good idea...?).

Who needs weapons when you can simply run people over?

 The last minutes of my first Broke Protocol experience were spent driving around running players and NPCs over. Traffic got stuck in an intersection as players gathered there to kill and loot each other. The game has VOIP so I could hear some people talking with their microphones as they engaged in battle. Ah, the joys of PC gaming, when you can hear Russian kids screaming at each other!

On its current state, I doubt any one will actually consider this a game to get addicted to and spend countless hours on. Nonetheless, it can be fun and useful to kill some time. I recommend everyone to give it a try and perhaps consider voting for it to be greenlit. It has lots of potential, so who knows what the future holds for this game?

The final months of 2016 are extremely blurry in my memory, almost as if they didn't happen, at all.

I've always been interested in the various available drugs, how people react to them and how society views them. My personal self-imposed limit are the hardest drugs as I couldn't care less about heroin and crack cocaine. Cannabis is obviously a personal favourite, psychedelics are a goal in the future and benzos... well, these are best off left in the past, which brings me to this post.
      

A few years ago I tried oxazepam and diazepam recreationally, both of which are benzos distributed as pills. The relaxation was nice but not convincing enough, plus the risks of dependency and withdrawal didn't keep me on them for long.
      

Then came codeine and tramadol, both of which are opioids. I had to do cold water extractions as I only had pills with paracetemol also included. This is the closest I'll ever get to opiates and I'm not going back, as although the numb and chill effect was nice, the infamous "opiate itch" that came the mornings after was extremely annoying. And once again, the risk of dependency and withdrawals. Fuck that, seriously.

        
At the end of last year I got my hands on a big supply of alprazolam, more commonly known by its trade name of Xanax. It's without a doubt the most well known benzo, used to treat anxiety. But it also has a somewhat of a recreational side, glorified by depressed white rappers such as the $uicideboy$, and shunned by others such as Bones.
    
I spent most of November experimenting with different doses, times of the day and activities. As expected, in general, it made me more relaxed and somewhat more confident, nothing much. Until I drank alcohol whilst under the effects of Xanax... yeap, that's what fucked me up.
        
Alprazolam on its own already had its effects on my memory as I could feel the days passing by faster since I couldn't quite remember most of them, but when I drank alcohol under the influence, no matter how little... everything changed. I became the closest I could to a zombie. Whoever you are, reading this, I'll let you know right now: do not drink any alcohol after, whilst or before taking Xanax. You will regret it. With the politically correct warning written, allow me to tell you how things went downhill.

   

           

The first time my body experienced a high dosage of Xanax and alcohol was not planned. My tolerance grew quickly and I usually took between 5 and 10 mg on the morning on some days. One of these days after college classes, my friends decided to go chill and have a few beers. This is where my memory goes dark, I remember sipping on some beer (I don't even like alcohol that much) and then waking up at home, in my bed room with a half-eaten piece of bread next to my computer. What happened between these two moments was later explained to me by my friends.

Apparently, besides the general fucked up look, slurred speech and saying nonsense, I urinated on a spider web in some corner screaming for the spider to die, randomly crossed the street sprinting and nearly got run over, started random chats with people on social networks, answered my phone and blabbered nonsense... A family member picked me up and to this day still thinks I was just extremely drunk, although I was told I didn't even drink much. It's quite frightening looking back at all the things that could go wrong, the worse part being I couldn't remember anything, no matter how hard I tried. 

From what I can remember, that was the only time I mixed both. The first 5 words of the last sentence is the big problem, though... who knows what else happened as I continued taking Xanax regularly up until December. It fucked up my memory and perception of things big time. There are simply days and moments which I will never remember. Drinking to forget doesn't work; however, drinking and taking pills... you'll forget and probably regret. 

The last time I used alprazolam recreationally was in February, and I intend on keeping that as the last time. The effects on short- and long-term memory are simply not worth it just for the simple effects it had, which I wouldn't even call a "high". So yeah, I'll stick with the good old green for the time being before diving into the world of hallucinogens.  

Today is the 1st day of the 4th month of 2017. Alternatively known as April Fools' Day.

I was reminded of the existence of this blog while updating my Steam profile and noticed I haven't posted anything in nearly 2 years. Well, up until now.

Initially this was intended to be a stupid edgy blog where I posted whatever I felt like and specialised in memes related to the UnrealSoftware.de community.

What has changed regarding my attitude towards this blog? Nothing much. I expect to keep the randomness, ease a bit on the edginess as I'm not 14 any more (seeing as I started posting in 2012) and perhaps add a more personal touch the blog (not like anyone cares).

What about me? Well, I've been studying my first year of Tourism in the University of the Azores and I'm turning 19 in three months. I spent 4 days relaxing in Lisbon last week and hopefully by May I'm back there.

I would say I've been getting lazier – thing is: I've always been a lazy piece of shit. If I could spend my days sparking up joints filled with medium-quality 'pollen' hashish with tobacco in my bedroom I would. I haven't been doing exactly that, but I'd be lying if I said my life hasn't been something similar. And I don't mind.

10 months have passed since my last post. Time flies... which brings me to this post. Fans of hard dance music have probably heard about tekstyle and jumpstyle. They are like "cousins" to the more popular hardstyle and hardcore, and nowadays the tracks on these genres are usually categorised under the label "tek/jump", which leads people to think they are the same... no, they aren't.

Why is the title "Tekstyle is not jumpstyle" and not the other way around or simply "Tekstyle and jumpstyle aren't the same"? I chose it to be that way because tekstyle is recent and a genre that branched off of jumpstyle, and some people don't realise that and think that jumpstyle simply changed its name. Speaking of which, let's talk about jumpstyle, the music genre, not the dance.

The jumper silhouette commonly associated with jumpstyle.

Wikipedia describes jumpstyle better than I ever could, so here it goes:

Jumpstyle music is an offspring of tech-trance, hardstyle, gabber and mákina. Its tempo is usually between 140 and 150 BPM. However, it cannot be seen as merely a slowed down version of gabber. It is characterized by a 909 kick drum used in a four on the floor beat. It also has influences from hard house and electro house. 

Ok, so now you know what makes a track jumpstyle. But a definition isn't enough, right? Because how are you supposed to know how a 909 kick drum sounds like without hearing it? Here, I'll give you something to listen to. I guess it's also some shameless self-advertising... I made this mix last year containing what I consider "jumpstyle classics". As I'm writing this, it's the most viewed video on my YouTube channel. I never expected it to go that far!

As you can see by the thumbnail, I used the jumper silhouette. You will find it on almost all jumpstyle videos on YouTube, with or without the "jumping is not a crime" text. I won't go deep on that matter because Know Your Meme explains the origins of this image here: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jumping-is-not-a-crime.

Jumpstyle was popular on Europe, specially in Belgium and the Netherlands, and I guess it reached its peak on 2007-2008. Some artists that contributed to this genre are: Vorwerk (yes, that guy that is known to be a ghost producer behind many house tracks!), Ruthless, Patrick Jumpen, Dark-E, Jeckyll & Hyde (aka Ruthless & Vorwerk, are the main reason jumpstyle got popular in Holland), DJ Francois, Coone (nowadays produces solely hardstyle), Lethal MG and DJ Greg C.

In the 2010s jumpstyle got totally replaced with tekstyle. It usually maintains the uptempo mood of its predecessor, but now with a more aggressive and sometimes exaggerated faster kick. It is usually closer to hardstyle and electro house than jumpstyle. You can instantly spot a tekstyle track when it has a climax like this (skip to 2:40):

Dr. Rude is one of the biggest names in the tekstyle scene, although recently he is more focused on hardstyle and "freestyle". Another name in the scene that needs to be mentioned is Mark With a K. His tekstyle track "Music Is My Alibi" has gained over 2 and a half million views. Woah. It actually sounds nothing like jumpstyle or tekstyle, it just seems a nice hardstyle track with those vocals and melody but then, at 1:44... yeap, tek fuckin style right there.

I could go on and on about this genre, but I think you got what I meant and I would probably end up diverging from the initial subject. So yeah, tekstyle is not jumpstyle. You can say it's an evolved form of jumpstyle, I'd rather say it's just another branch in the vast hard dance music "genre tree", because personally, jumpstyle just sounds a lot better. :)

For the hardstyle fans out there, tekstyle is to jumpstyle what hardstyle is to early hardstyle and hardtrance. You will hear jumpstyle in "flashback sets" (the best ones in Reverze IMO!) and fitted in regular tekstyle sets for the sake of nostalgia, and it will easily stand out from its "tekky" counterpart.

Lightnings used to be the hottest natural occurring thing on Planet Earth, until a man by the name Lee Smith caused the most painful and hottest burn (possibly 90000001 ºC) by the following wise words: "Im only kidding its a great tattoo , send my condolences to the 4 year old that done it".

Link to comment section: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hardstyle.hardcore/612902995459006

If you call someone a sandnigger on the comments of a random Facebook page, expect them to inexplicably reply back implying you are a nigger yourself (even though you are white as fuck, since you don't go out of your house to catch sunlight), Starting All Words With Capital Letter. Oh, did I mention all of them have "Mohammed" in their names? Yeah, they do.

I noticed that for some shitty reason this blog's domain (SomewhereDownTheLane dot tk) stopped working and to register it again I would have to pay for it. Yeah, right.
So I went browsing for another free domain provider with no ads. I remembered of co.cc (which is dead since November 2012, time passes so quickly doesn't it?) and that is was blocked by Google, and since I got fuckillions of views due to people searching on Google for "Toaster Steve", I needed a good alive alternative.
So yeah, as you can see, I found it. The blog is now accessible at SomewhereDownTheLane.co.vu.

And speaking of visits, when I opened the blog dashboard to post this I noticed it had exactly 8000 views.

Here's some blog stats.

Everyone has heard about 4chan, right? There's many views towards it, some view it as simply a message board full of categories (/b/ - Random being the most popular one by far), others as a monstrous horrible site full of CP and gore. Regardless of what you think it is, it does have some epic and fucked up shit going on in it.

From my time browsing its most popular board, /b/ (although I was more at /asp/ in the past few months), I've witnessed lots of cool stuff. I could list that "stuff" but I think my definition of "cool" diverges from most other people's.
One thing is for sure: there's tons of attention whores there.

So many guys saying they're going to suicide and that, according to 4chan slang, is called "being an hero", but usually nothing happens and all we get is an hour-long livestream of them saying they're going to suicide but never doing anything.

Then, 30th November 2013 came and something happened: we found ourselves an hero. The guy who would become a legend. The one who was crowned Emperor of /b/. His name is  DAKOTA J. MOORE, but he is graciously known by everyone as Toaster Steve, Stephen Toaster or simply Da Toaster.

It spread all over the news, under various titles, but the most common one was something like "4chan user attempted suicide by setting himself on fire".

Below is a list of *some* websites with news about it:
(notice they are "major" news sites, just to show you this isn't fake or a scam)

The original post by Toaster Steve himself.

• DailyMail.co.uk - Young man stages horrifying online suicide attempt by trying to burn himself to death as 200 4Chan viewers egged him on
• Know Your Meme - 4chan User's Suicide Attempt
• The Daily Dot - 4chan user sets himself on fire in livestreamed suicide attempt
• The Independent- 4Chan suicide attempt: 200 people watch live stream of young man trying to set himself on fire, encouraging 'Stephen' to take his own life

Notice the emphasis the news give to the "200 people encouraging" him to suicide. Well, I saw the chat and there were tons of whiteknight fags that were trying to prevent him...

Video

Below is the link to the 40 minute livestream of Toaster Steve and his suicide attempt.
► http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=334_1385864004
At the start of the video, and actually most of it, is Steve interacting with the stream viewers, drinking vodka and taking pills and preparing his room for what was about to come. More towards the end, he goes under the bed while his whole dorm room is on fire. As the fire started consuming his bed, brave Steve typed "#imdead #omgimonfire", and "I’m fuck3d".
At the end of the video, you can see firemen pulling Stephen out of the bed.

The thread

The original thread plus pics of how the stream was going is shown below. Good way to actually see what was happening.

Is he dead?

Nope. Apparently he survived, despite his brave attempts to end it all.

According to the Guelph Mercury [Toaster Steve is from the University of Guelph], the victim was rushed to hospital with 'serious but non life-threatening injuries' caused by smoke inhalation.Two staff members were also taken to hospital but were later released. 120 students were evacuated and 42 remain out of their rooms as the investigation continues.They are now being put up in temporary accommodation.

- Mail Online

---

So there you have it, some fresh and hot news straight from the toaster!
Thank you Toaster Steve for this moment of internet glory.