9/30/2006 Change, Change, Everywhere is a Change

There is an obvious change to the side menu on the left. I did it for two reason: 1. To increase load time of the site and 2. more importantly because I lost the origional images I used to create the other buttons, plus this is easier to make new ones. Not only that, but I also fixed a problem that happened in Internet Explorer that unless you allowed the content, the images wouldn't change when you put the mouse over them. Internet Exporer has become a real big pain to code for.

I downloaded two new demos on the XBox Live Marketplace, F.E.A.R. and Sonic The Hedgehog. I have F.E.A.R. for the PC and I really hope they work on the XBox version because as of the demo, it doesn't live up to it's PC form. I had a lot of glitches when jumping and the physics in general. It's also a little difficult to lean, aim, and move at the same time. The aiming is also a little different while leaning that makes it hard to hit a target. But other than that, the game was still the great game that made it popular on the PC. Then the new Sonic demo has an awesome CG movie with wonderful water effects. But as soon as I played the game, I died within ten seconds. Not because the gameplay is difficult, but because the camera control. Sonic games before like the ones on the Dreamcast have had a really good camera angels that were static. But this one seems to not be static, and often times doesn't follow and so you begin running with the camera a foot from your face, not allowing you to see anything. And with a game as fast as Sonic, you can't have the camera all of a sudden be in the front.

Bow chicka bow wow, Red Vs. Blue Season 5 has been released to sponsors and will be released to the public Monday. I am very excited for the new season. I love this show, me and my buddies have spent hours quoting the it. But enough yammering, that's all I have for you today. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.



9/27/2006 Watch out Starcraft, Here comes Halo Wars

Many people seem to have misunderstood Bungie. Bungie stated after the Halo 3 trailor that this was the last Halo in the series, and as I predicted, it is not the end of the franchise. In fact, a company called Ensemble Studios is taking Halo back to it's roots one might say. Halo actually started out as a RTS (Real Time Strategy) on the Mac (Bungie used to develop a lot for those things) but then was picked up by Microsoft, moved to a console, and after much toying around, became a FPS (First Person Shooter). And as I said Ensemble Studios is taking Halo back to it's roots, and if you haven't caught on, Halo Wars is a new RTS game from Ensemble Studios. Click here to watch the video trailor here on the site, BUT I really suggest going to HaloWars.com and download the HD version as it is so much better, it just sucks if you don't have high bandwidth and low patience as the video is 88 MB.


There was also a bunch of other news from Microsoft today such as 1080P support (heads up, it may not be full 1080P), Doom coming to XBox Live Marketplace, Peter Jackson hooking up with Bungie themselves to make "a completely new and origional" chapter in the Halo series (furthur proving I was right about Halo 3 ending that story, not the series), a new Banjo-Kazooie game, and the HD-DVD is coming to stores mid-November for the price of $199.99 and for a limited time will include Peter Jackson's King Kong on HD-DVD as well as a XBox 360 Universal Media Remote. Try saying all that in one breath. There was some other news for XBox, but I touched the all big ones.

And that is it for today, I will write later, probably Friday. Maybe I will use the new script I have been working with, if you want to see what the script does, visit the All Wii Need To Know, The Date again and scroll over the three Wii Sports images.



9/25/2006 First Look at Bioshock and a 160 Megapixel Camera

This video is about a week old, but I also haven't updated in a while because I haven't really been home for almost four days. I was in Laramie visiting a friend over the weekend and it was a much needed break from work, school, and just the day to day life. I will be going to Laramie quite a bit more probably, but that's a whole other story. I would like to thank my friends Marcus and William once again for letting me stay at their place.

But onto the Bioshock. The game that was known very little about now has a video that not only talks about how you will be playing the game but also shows off the beautiful Unreal 3 engine at work. IGN.com has a high-res version here, they also have a low-res version if you have limited bandwidth.

Digital Cameras make me mad simply because they have the capability to raise megapixles and zoom and still keep the price low, but instead they either give you a little zoom with low Megapixels, or low zoom with decent Megapixles. Well this camera wasn't built for zoom, it's a Panoramic. But it is a 160 Megapixel camera. Finally someone in the camera industry is pushing capabilities. Sure right now it's $36,000 and isn't target to a mother who wants pictures of her kid's birthday, but this will help push the industry which brings us, the consumer, better products and a lower cost in the future.

Camera specs:
Width: 495mm, height: 175mm, depth: 95mm
Weight: 2.8 kg
Megapixels: 160
Transfer Method: Gigabit Ethernet
File Formats: Raw (16-bit), Tiff (48-bit), Jpeg (24-bit), bmp
File Size: Raw=307MB, Uncompressed Tiff=922MB
Size of Image: 7,500 x 21,250 pixels (60mm x 170mm)
Exposure Range: from 1/20'000 sec
Dynamic Range: 1:2,600 (11 f-stops)
Time for 6x17 Image: 1 second at full speed/resolution







9/21/2006 Microsoft Screwed Up, and Link Get Mirrored

Well two days ago, September 19th, the XBox Live Vision was suppose to be released with a free game. Well two days later many people still can't find it any at any store, not because it's sold out, because they never arrived. And the people who were able to pick one up often times are actually missing the free game that comes with it. And my question is, can people complain any more? Not only about this, because I could understand some people getting upset, expecially the ones who bought it expecting a game to be inside and nothing is there. But I am talking more than just Live Vision, I am also talking about the latest news about Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii. Quick history lesson, Link from Zelda has always been a left hander. He swings the sword with his left, and blocks with his right. Because Nintendo watched people at E3 and almost everyone was swinging the sword with the right, they decided to mirror the game for the Wii so that Link will now swing with his right hand.

I am not the biggest fan of Zelda, there can only be one of those, but I do consider myself to be a major fan of the franchise. And to be perfectly honest, I am not sure I would have even noticed if I was swinging left or right handed. The only time this will effect you is if you pick up a Gamecube strategy guide for the Wii version, or visa versa, but even then all you have to do is replace "turn left" with "turn right". And if you want to read a bunch of whinners, visit XBox.com's forums, biggest bunch of whinners if I ever saw one. That's all I saw there tonight was people complaining about anything and everything they could possible think of.

But anyways, enough of me complaining (notice the irony), if you did get a Vision without the free game, there is a high possiblity sense this was a common thing that it will become a free download on the XBox Live Marketplace, now cheer up. And if you are one of the ones that couldn't get one, well think of it this way, they probably had all the ones they had shipped out to your city brought back in order to get you that free game that some how wan't put it. So either way be patient. And to anyone who is deeply upset about Link being a right hander in the Wii version, GET A LIFE. Go actually talk to a girl... they won't bite unless you ask.



9/18/2006 EB Learns From Mistake

I meant to talk about this last Saturday, but some stuff came up for work and so that didn't happen. Many of you who got your XBox 360 from EB Games probably pre-ordered and were promised a system come launch date. Well Microsoft didn't push out the number of consoles as they promised all the stores and so their stock went way down and many people were left with a console they owned but couldn't get a hold of. Well after the announcement of the date I thought I would go pre-order right away so I would be at the top of the list this time, and I was denied. Seems they have learned their lesson and are not taking pre-order on the console until they have received official word from Nintendo on how many they are receiving. But if you really want a game and are affraid they will sell out of those, you can pre-order those, just hope you get a console because come launch date and you just have games, that won't do you much good. I will let you know as soon as I find out when you can pre-order yours.



9/15/2006 All Wii Need To Know, the Date

Want to know the price and release date of the Wii? Want to hear all new announcements including new features, a bundled game, as well about the Virtual Console? Well read on for all of that, and maybe more, aaawwwww.

It just seems that the video game industry seems to love me; Halo 2 was launched on my birthday, last year the XBox 360 was released on November 22nd, and this year F.E.A.R. (for XBox 360), Gears of War, and the new announcement of the Nintendo Wii, all in November. So when does the new system come out? November 19th is when this wonderful piece of hardware will be hitting store shelves. That's just over two months for those of you who don't know your months very well, so you might want to go pre-order. Now I am going to be a jerk and make you go to another page to read about all the other information I had listed in the first paragraph, so go read All Wii Need To Know, the Date.

On a fun note, I found this awesome video about the Wii, it's Mac style video. This movie is rated PG-13 by the Punkster812 Movie Ratings Making Upers of America. I will stop talking and let you watch:




9/13/2006 Wii, I Mean They, Promised

Nintendo is promising this Friday, September 15th, that Nintendo of Europe will be doing a big announcement. Who knows, this just might be the launch date and price. Here is the quote from Nintendo, bold and everything.
On Friday, September 15, Nintendo will host a huge invite-only event in London. The subject: Wii.

Hundreds of invitations have been sent out to European press, to join us on this momentous occasion. While that unfortunately means the general public isn't able to attend, it doesn't mean you have to miss out on the biggest Nintendo news of the year.

On Friday we'll have full coverage of the Wii event right here, so you can find out the official word straight from the source as soon as it's made public.

What's it all about? Well, you'll just have to wait and see. But as the text on the invitation card teasingly states:

All of you will be excited, intrigued and interested in what we have to show you.

This is an event you must not miss. Wii promise.
And there is evidence that the announcement will be soon because of just recently on Nintendo of America's web site, there was a job posting for packing up the Wii.
It's an exciting time to be a part of Nintendo's team! Millions of eager fans are eagerly anticipating the launch of our revolutionary new console, Wii. As a Production Agent Trainee, you'll be on the front-lines--working tirelessly to ensure they don't leave stores empty handed this holiday season.
And to close today's post, I would like to say good bye to the file sharing program eDonkey. Not that it was very big or anything, but I had used it, with very disappointing results I might add. It seems that eDonkey has agreed to pay $30 million dollars to the music industry in order to prevent going to court for copyright infringement, AND DO NOT GO TO EDONKEY.COM BECAUSE THEY WILL LOG YOUR IP ADDRESS.



9/11/2006 TMNT Heroes in a Half Shell, Turtle Power

The new Ninja Turtle movie is coming out March of next year and is title TMNT IV. The movie is done completely in CG and follows the look and feel of the newer TMNT cartoons on Fox then it does the origional cartoon. I haven't done any research really into what this movie is about, like who and why they are fighting, but feel free to go watch the trailor at WB's official web site for the movie, TMNT movie trailor. Quick heads up, you will have to have the latest version of Quicktime.

GamesIndustry.biz is saying that retailers have been reporting that the stand alone HD-DVD player for the XBox 360 will be £199 in the UK, which roughly $370. There will also be a bundle pack which will be offered for £375-400 ($700-750) and the PS3 is predicted to be around £428 ($800). Retailers have also said that the player will come with two HD-DVD's bundled inside. I personally don't know if I am ready to move to HD-DVD just quite yet, with movies still a little expensive, and there being such a small selection at most stores for movies, I am not sure I want to spend $400 to watch a few good looking videos.



9/3/2006 My Right Arm

I will start off by talking about Enchanted Arms, I will talk about my first impressions on the game. After that I will talk about some cool up coming CD releases, and I will finish this post off with a good ol' beta download that programmers and gamers will both enjoy.

If you are a Final Fantasy fan but refuse to buy a Playstation (*I just raised my hand*) then you can finally rejoice because Enchanted Arms has come to fill your turn based RPG stomachs on the XBox 360. In fact, if you were to just glance at the first couple hours of the game, you might mistake it for Final Fantasy VIII (thats eight for those of you who don't know your Roman numerals). The art style is similar and the environment is farelly close. But then it does take a different spin and goes off into a good direction. One thing that Enchanted Arms brings to the tables is is more strategy when it comes to battle. The grid base battle ground at first sounded weird to me, but makes you think a little more and makes you want to learn more about your enemies to take the least amount of damage while still laying it to them. Your attacks only have certain distance that they can hit, and so does your enemy, so you must keep your party seperate while staying close enough to actually hit them. You can also use a strong player as protection by hiding the weak character behind someone with high HP and will cause a great decrease in damage to the player in the back. If you are a turned based RPG fan, I would say go pick this game up.

In the Punk Rock music world, two albums that are coming out caught my eye today when I was over at Interpunk.com within the next two weeks. The first is Strike Anywhere's new CD coming out the 5th called Dead FM with 14 new songs. If you haven't heard Strike Anywhere before, they are along the lines of older Rise Against and mid Anti-Flag. Then the other band is Sugarcult with their new CD Lights Out due out the 12th with 12 new songs. You can listen to three of the new Sugarcult songs over at their website Sugarcult.com and head here to download a song from Strike Anywhere. Or for MySpace.com-ers you can check out two songs from both new CD's, Sugarcult and Strike Anywhere.

And for all the programmers and gamers out there you can now download the beta of XNA, Microsofts developing tool to make cross platform games for PC and XBox 360. A little more detail of the software from last time I posted about it, you can develop games for the PC for free, and for the XBox 360 if you purchase a XNA Creaters Club subscription. More info as well as the download can be downloaded here.



Cause I don't care where I belong no more. What we share or not I will ignore.
And I won't waste my time fitting in. Cause I don't think contrast is a sin. - Millencolin