Gaming
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Saturday, December 2nd, 2006My sweet, sweet Oblivion has betrayed me! I have been getting back into it and was building up a MEGA-PC with which to rule all of Cyrodill. Sadly I just encountered a bug in the game where a certain Shum Go-Yarug died early in the game (he has a tendency to walk off bridges) and thus leave me unable to buy Rosethorn Manor, the coolest house in the game. Sadly because I’m playing on the Xbox 360 there is no fix for this bug short of abandoning 60 hours of gameplay and starting over. BOY AM I PISSED!
I think I’m done with Oblivion for a while - I need to get back to my Final Fantasy III game anyway.
Bikes, broken like me
Monday, November 20th, 2006
I’ve managed to get way behind in my blog posting in the last week or so. Luckily work is not entirely to blame as I’ve managed to take a bit of time for myself. After an 80 hour week last week we managed to sort out all the production issues, and working with our changing requirements to get everything done by the end of the day on Friday.
I spent much of the weekend doing very little. I took a walk on Saturday while the weather was nice (and took the above photo), and spent much of the remainder of the day processing photos and spending quality time with Skype. There is something soothing about sitting in front of my rig and working in Photoshop. Tweak this, adjust that, so much control over my captured slice in time - I am god for that moment.
I spent most of the day on Sunday delving back into Oblivion. I had not played my sweet Oblivion in a while, but after showing my mom the game a few weeks ago I’ve been itching to dive back in. I started another new game and am aiming to do a 100% complete with a single character this time.
“Broken bikes” by sparktography
Yellow on grey
Thursday, October 19th, 2006Fall is here - today was a miserable rainy mess, and nobody knows how to drive. I spent nearly 2 and a half hours in my car today just getting to and from work. Luckily things are going well at work so my overall stress level didn’t get too high. I hate it when I get anxiety attacks from being stuck in traffic for too long.
Now I’m home and have had a chance to relax a little. I downloaded Lumines live from Xbox Live last night and am getting into that game. I really do have to say for the record that the Xbox Live Arcade is pure genius - Microsoft has enabled smaller gaming companies to bring simple fun games directly to consumers. It’s good to see that gaming manufacturers are going back to their roots in some ways and learning that gameplay is as important as graphics and framerates.
Todays picture of the day is a found shot, with minimal leveling in photoshop. it’s simple, but I like it. The color and texture contrast between the leaf and the stones behind it provides balance. I took it while walking outside during my lunchbreak. Luckily it had stopped raining momentarily so I took a 15 minute walk to get all energized for my afternoon.
While I was out I also took this shot, which is also a found shot, but does have a bit more photoshop work than the other one. I really like the texture and slimy feel of the yellow leave against the hard grit of the pavement.
“POTD 10/19/06 - Yellow on Grey” by sparktography
“Wet yellow” by sparktography
DS vs. DS
Sunday, October 15th, 2006Brien and I headed to Costco this afternoon for frozen foodstuffs and a Firewire Hard Drive for iChoad to expand on the internal storage for iTunes. Brien finally got himself a Nintendo DS after months of playing with mine every chance he got.
He got a Black one and of course a Black vs. White photoshoot commenced. The black one looks awesome, but is a total fingerprint magnet. If they had them available in a matte black I would be tempted to switch out myself.
The hard drive I got was the MyBOOK Pro 500GB which features both Firewire 400 and USB 2.0. It also has a second Firewire port and I was able to hook up other firewire drive through it with no problems. Tiger is much happier with the extra drive space now that iTunes has a drive for itself and the system drive has some breathing room.
“POTD 10/15/06 - DS vs. DS” by sparktography
Touch for on
Sunday, October 15th, 2006
I love the little touches Microsoft got right on the out of box experience for the Xbox 360. You can normally turn the console on and off using the wireless controller, and since the controller comes paired with your console out of the box you can start his first boot sequence by turning on his new 360 with the wireless remote.
The only thing that could possibly improve this experience would be if Microsoft started shipping the Play and Charge kit with the 360 and left the battery back in the controller for shipping. If and when the 360 finally gets built in HDMI it could reduce the setup of the set to 2 cables (HDMI and power) and push a button to get going.
A 360 beginning
Sunday, October 15th, 2006Today was a momentous day for my friend Ken - he got himself a shiny new (matte white) Xbox 360! I drove downtown with him to go pick it up and had a chance to snap the below photo of a used copy of Oblivion in a funny case. Somehow the anime just does not seem to go with the content and feel of the game.
After getting Ken home to tear into his new toy he got to try out some of the Xbox Live Arcade online experiences. He is in my camp that Marble Blast Ultra and Geometry Wars are two amazing games and really help round out the platform. I would have insisted Ken get a copy of Oblivion as well, but knowing the kinds of games he is into I think he would have found it difficult to get into.
Afterwards we picked up Brien and headed to Siam on Lake Union for dinner and drinks. Both Ken and Brien started in on the infamous Woodland Park Zoo’s, but Brien decided he was ‘not a fan’ and quit out early. Check out the picture of the day that resulted from our first round of drinks.
Only three days in to my picture of the day campaign and I’m already pleased with the results. I’m ’shooting for coverage’ with my whole life to ensure that I have the right photo at the end of the day. I actually ended up with three pictures that were worthy of being posted online today, and several yesterday. If I keep this up I might start actually using my 2GB of upload a month with flickr again!
Katamari Damacy
Saturday, October 14th, 2006
Joystiq just pointed me at the last installment of an interesting take on video game reviews. I love Katamari Damacy enough that when I read the following I almost fell out of my chair laughing:
Katamari Damacy is expressed as a “male-centric” game and an offshoot of the “mono myth.” It speaks to the oppression of women and of the King of All Cosmos spreading his seed (the stars), while the “phallic” looking Prince continually attempts to impress his father by presenting bigger balls. Is this a feminist critique or repressed homosexuality critique — or are they one in the same? So kidding, calm down!
I think that simple paragraph just made the whole universe make sense. I would even go so far as to say that it brings meaning to life through video games as art.
What?
A picture a day
Friday, October 13th, 2006
I’ve started a new project to take a picture and post it with the POTD tag every single day. I was inspired by some of my favorite artists like Chromasia and this article on Photojojo. After looking at the Photojojo article I’m enthusatic about the project, and just hope I don’t lose steam before a year has passed.
Aside from this new project life has been good. I was sick the first couple of days this week and spent the latter half of the week playing catchup at work. Now that I’m all caught back up and feeling healthy I’m looking forward to a week of catching up on everything in my personal life that got put on hold while I was sick, and getting a chance to relax a bit.
In other news I’m becoming even more and more enthusiastic about Marble Blast Ultra for the Xbox 360. It’s such a simple game, but mastering it is proving quite difficult. There is a lot of finesse that goes into rolling a marble through their twisted little obstacle courses. If you have a 360 and have not yet checked out Marble Blast Ultra go download the demo from the Xbox Live Arcade and give it a whirl!
Connect360
Saturday, October 7th, 2006
I just found the coolest bridge between my Apple iMac and Microsoft Xbox 360. I found some software called Connect360 from Nullriver Software. It’s a simple preference pane that allows any Mac to share it’s photos in iPhoto and music from iTunes with a 360 seamlessly. It’s now possible for both Windows and Mac’s to communicate with the 360 for living room entertainment.
Installation was a breeze: after opening the zip demo from Nullriver’s website I double clicked on the Connect360.prefpane to install the preference pane. After starting the service I was able to select what I want shared and configure transcoding options for any files that the 360 won’t be able to play natively.
I walked into the living room and used my Media Center remote to browse to the media tab on my Xbox 360. My imac showed up and after clicking through an authorization screen I was able to browse my music library and playlists as well as browse through all my photos and albums in iPhoto.
The interface is snappy, and browsing the photo libraries were response. It even increments play counts and last played dates in iTunes when you play music. I have to say that Microsoft keeping media interaction open to developers is a big win. Connect360 supports MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF and AAC Lossless for audio files, and JPEG, RAW, GIF, PNG, BMP and TIFF for photos.
Update: With a photo update Connect360 now supports video as well. Check out the Connect360 website for more information.
If you have both a Mac and an Xbox 360 I suggest checking out the free demo. If you like it it’s $20 to unlock the ability to browse your full library rather than 1,000 items that the demo restricts you to.
Sadly for now Connect360 does not support transferring movies or iTunes store purchased content but hopefully that will be released in a future version. While waiting to check out Apple’s upcoming iTV it’s nice to have a good solution for getting my media from my Mac to my living room.
Technorati Tags: Connect360, Intel iMac, iPhoto, iTunes, Mactel, Media transfer, Xbox 360
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