X Minus One

Countdown for blast-off. X Minus 5, 4, 3, 2, X Minus 1, Fire. From the far horizons of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space. These are stories of the future. Adventures in which you will live in a million could-be years on a thousand maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Corporation in cooperation with Galaxy Magazine presents . . . . X Minus One ...

November 7, 2007 · 1 min · 188 words · Tipa

The Commandments of Blogging

Are there any? Are there things you should do (or not do) in your blog? Darren over at Common Sense Gamer was inspired to write about that after getting a random email asking for him to link to a new blog. And then he asked if there were any other rules. Ten minutes later, I looked up from the tome I was writing on his site and said to myself, hey, isn’t one of those rules to post a SHORT comment on someone else’s blog, and then explain in more depth on your own? ...

November 6, 2007 · 4 min · 710 words · Tipa

PS3 vs Xbox 360... when did the PS3 become the better buy?

Because the PS3 is, as everyone is fully aware, incredibly more expensive than the Xbox 360, when I went to buy my “Rock Band”-playing system over the weekend, I chose the Xbox to save some money. I got home and found I didn’t have a wireless adapter to connect it to my home wireless LAN. I had just assumed that, like the PSP, Wii and Nintendo DS I owned, that it would be built in. This is 2007, right? ...

November 6, 2007 · 2 min · 363 words · Tipa

Rock Band: Naming my fake band.

We got a little closer to being the most famous fake cover band in our living room yesterday when we finally bought an Xbox 360 so we could run Rock Band when it comes out in a couple of weeks (and, we also pre-ordered the game itself). Right up to the end, we weren’t sure if we were going to go with the Xbox or the PS3. I was kinda leaning toward the PS3 when I saw a nice demo of Ratchet and Clank at the store, but their ending of support for PS2 compatibility on their cheaper models sealed the deal. So we became a PS2/Xbox 360 family (and the Wii went into a box until I can get one of those switchers running. Ever since we got Hot Shots Tennis for the PS2, we haven’t touched the Wii). ...

November 4, 2007 · 3 min · 522 words · Tipa

SUWT #12

Shut Up, We’re Talking! #12 is up. I had the pleasure of being part of it, along with Grimwell (SOE EQ2 Community Manager) and Tom-Tom from Gamer’s Mind. Thanks, Darren, for being such an awesome host! Darren really knows how to keep the discussion going and moving to interesting places. I was positive I’d have nothing to say :P

October 30, 2007 · 1 min · 59 words · Tipa

The Weighted Companion Cube is your only friend.

I was thinking… ya know, I’d like to do some fan art with Portal’s Weighted Companion Cube, but I couldn’t find a model of one that worked with a modeler I could afford – i.e., a free one. So I did my own from scratch with the Persistence of Vision ray tracer. I haven’t put in any textures yet… but I think it came out rather well for an hour’s work. ...

October 30, 2007 · 1 min · 95 words · Tipa

Portal.

Can I have my life back, please? Yes, you can buy just Portal, through Steam. My advice? DON’T. Not if you have somewhere to be. (omg what a great puzzle game…) I’m on level 17/19. 15 was awful. 16 had nice guns talking in cute voices…

October 29, 2007 · 1 min · 46 words · Tipa

GH3 FTW

We gathered at midnight well, 11pm, to get our hands on Guitar Hero 3. Actually. I’m not sure how I ended up there, then. It’s not as if GH3 won’t be all over every store but, when we were in Gamespot this morning getting .hack/G.U. 2 for my son, I somehow walked out of there with a receipt for GH3 and a promise to be there that night – tonight – to pick it up. ...

October 28, 2007 · 2 min · 390 words · Tipa

CompUSA vs Best Buy

My son’s laptop started shutting off for no reason last week. For a guy who spends as much time online as he does, that’s a tragedy. And a tragedy for me, too – because I could just see how repairing the laptop could cost more than the laptop was worth, and nothing bugs me as much as throwing away good stuff just because it costs too much to fix. Well, random shutdowns sounded to me like overheating – except that it booted up fine with a Linux Live CD. I opened it up – but not all the way, unfortunately – and everything seemed to be in order with the memory, hard drive and stuff. I ran Memtest86+, the memory tester for x86 architectures, and everything checked out. But when we tried to get into Windows – phwap, black screen of nothingness. ...

October 22, 2007 · 2 min · 376 words · Tipa

Music my sister might like...

So every month or so, my sister comes in from New York. I meet her at the train station in New Haven, we spend the night at my apartment and then she and her daughter and I and my son all pile in the VW and head to New Hamster Hampshire to visit our stepmother and any other relatives who forgot to be away that weekend. Music’s always a problem. She doesn’t like Radiohead, Jeff Beck, Sneaker Pimps, Portishead, etc – my music. And I don’t generally like her music. ...

October 12, 2007 · 2 min · 266 words · Tipa