blog
A small post
12/11/2006
Only about a week and a half left until I'm leaving Rochester. Or 10 work days I guess. It's funny how fast this 8 months went by. It started extremely slow but things picked up in the summer when I got my bike and was able to go out and see everything the city had and get some exercise in too. It made my days go by a lot faster. Then in early fall things just flew by. It feels like yesterday it was October. A lot of that has to do with being used to my job now I suppose. As well as meeting some cool people to keep me company.
Justin let me borrow the newest Evanescence CD from him yesterday after I kept hearing it in his car and thought it was pretty good. I like it better than the first Evanescence CD. I don't really have a specific reason why, it just sounds better. I've only listened to it one time through though.
I should probably head off to bed.
Justin let me borrow the newest Evanescence CD from him yesterday after I kept hearing it in his car and thought it was pretty good. I like it better than the first Evanescence CD. I don't really have a specific reason why, it just sounds better. I've only listened to it one time through though.
I should probably head off to bed.
Static electricity and other fun topics
11/05/2006
So I finally decide to post something and Blogger is down for maintenance, what's up with that. So I'm writing this post in CoffeeCup HTML Editor, which is pretty handy by the way, although I mostly use it for syntax highlighting.
Every time I get out of my car I get shocked as soon as I go to touch the door. Sometimes, I'll avoid touching the door when I get out to open my garage at the apartment and then when I go to put the key in the garage it gets me there. I can't avoid it! I don't know if it's my car that does it or something that I wear. Either way it's been doing it for a long time. One of my jackets does it too when I take it off or put it on, but that's to be expected for a jacket. At work when I take it off I cautiously put my hand near my metal drawers and wait to see the huge spark it causes. It's actually kind of fun except for the fact it stings.
Windows Media Player 11 was just released recently and I am very impressed with it. I've never been a fan of Windows Media Player but this latest version is pretty nice. It now has this pretty slick black look to it and everything in your "library" is represented by its album art. So when you search through your music you see all of the album art. It's very cool. There is also a feature which allows you to stream music, photos, and video to your XBox 360. This existed before but you couldn't stream video unless you had Windows Media Center Edition. Well now it looks like you can stream videos without having it, but from what I've experienced so far it only work on very select codecs. So no DivX, AVI, and I tried MPEG-2 which doesn't even work. XBox is supposed to support MPEG-2 so I bet it's WMP11 that is blocking it.
I bought F.E.A.R. for the XBox 360 last week, I believe I mentioned it in a previous post probably a month or so ago. It's a first person shooter like Halo but there is also a paranormal twist to the game. There are people who just appear out of nowhere who will disappear into thin air after staring at you or they will tell you some part of the cryptic story and then leave you. The main person seems to be this little girl in a red dress. She's very creepy, see for yourself:
Um.. yeah, creepy. The game is meant to be scary and it's pretty good at doing it. Occasionally you'll just be walking down a path and you'll hear a sudden creepy sound and see something disgusting on the screen. It catches you off guard, it's fun.
Gears of War comes out next week which is supposed to be XBox's killer holiday game. It looks pretty sweet so hopefully it is. I played the Rainbow Six: Vegas demo too and that game is looking awesome as well. There are too many good games coming out.
Speaking of good games, Burger King is releasing three of their own XBox/XBox 360 games this November. Pretty crazy huh? They are $3.99 with a value meal purchase I believe. I'm sure they are pretty horrible games but they will be worth $4 a piece just to laugh at them. The XBox 360 has these "achievement" points you can earn by doing certain things in games and then people can view them online. Well these Burger King games will have them too, so it will be hilarious to lookup your friend online and see he got 20 points for doing something in "Sneak King". Check out a screen shot of the game, it's so funny!
In one of the games, Sneak King, you have to sneak up on hungry citizens who are starving for Burger King and surprise them with a sandwich. You are judged on your technique and surprise factor I believe. How ridiculously funny does that sound?
Every time I get out of my car I get shocked as soon as I go to touch the door. Sometimes, I'll avoid touching the door when I get out to open my garage at the apartment and then when I go to put the key in the garage it gets me there. I can't avoid it! I don't know if it's my car that does it or something that I wear. Either way it's been doing it for a long time. One of my jackets does it too when I take it off or put it on, but that's to be expected for a jacket. At work when I take it off I cautiously put my hand near my metal drawers and wait to see the huge spark it causes. It's actually kind of fun except for the fact it stings.
Windows Media Player 11 was just released recently and I am very impressed with it. I've never been a fan of Windows Media Player but this latest version is pretty nice. It now has this pretty slick black look to it and everything in your "library" is represented by its album art. So when you search through your music you see all of the album art. It's very cool. There is also a feature which allows you to stream music, photos, and video to your XBox 360. This existed before but you couldn't stream video unless you had Windows Media Center Edition. Well now it looks like you can stream videos without having it, but from what I've experienced so far it only work on very select codecs. So no DivX, AVI, and I tried MPEG-2 which doesn't even work. XBox is supposed to support MPEG-2 so I bet it's WMP11 that is blocking it.
I bought F.E.A.R. for the XBox 360 last week, I believe I mentioned it in a previous post probably a month or so ago. It's a first person shooter like Halo but there is also a paranormal twist to the game. There are people who just appear out of nowhere who will disappear into thin air after staring at you or they will tell you some part of the cryptic story and then leave you. The main person seems to be this little girl in a red dress. She's very creepy, see for yourself:
Um.. yeah, creepy. The game is meant to be scary and it's pretty good at doing it. Occasionally you'll just be walking down a path and you'll hear a sudden creepy sound and see something disgusting on the screen. It catches you off guard, it's fun.
Gears of War comes out next week which is supposed to be XBox's killer holiday game. It looks pretty sweet so hopefully it is. I played the Rainbow Six: Vegas demo too and that game is looking awesome as well. There are too many good games coming out.
Speaking of good games, Burger King is releasing three of their own XBox/XBox 360 games this November. Pretty crazy huh? They are $3.99 with a value meal purchase I believe. I'm sure they are pretty horrible games but they will be worth $4 a piece just to laugh at them. The XBox 360 has these "achievement" points you can earn by doing certain things in games and then people can view them online. Well these Burger King games will have them too, so it will be hilarious to lookup your friend online and see he got 20 points for doing something in "Sneak King". Check out a screen shot of the game, it's so funny!
In one of the games, Sneak King, you have to sneak up on hungry citizens who are starving for Burger King and surprise them with a sandwich. You are judged on your technique and surprise factor I believe. How ridiculously funny does that sound?
Labels: gears of war, music, xbox 360
Nerd stuff
10/01/2006
The Killers are releasing their newest CD this week, I believe. Hopefully it's as good as their last one. I hope it's a bit longer though, their last CD is way too short.
I downloaded a demo of the game Lego Star Wars II for XBox 360 the other day and thought it was one of the most hilarioius and unique games I had ever played. The demo features one of the levels in the game, the Mos Eisley Spaceport. After spending a good deal of time playing the demo and reading about the game, I decided to get it. Apparently there are many different hidden doorways and interesting puzzles to solve during the game, which will keep me playing it for a while. There are also TONS of characters. While there is little difference between some of them, it's still cool how there are so many. The coolest part of this game is how it follows the story lines of each of the older Star Wars movies. You are treated with entertaining cut scenes between episodes which give the basic run down of what is happening. The characters do not talk but the developers gave them a very good sense of humor instead. Combining the unique style of Legos with Star Wars and humor is a winning combination.
Since I've already made a geek out of myself this post, I'll just continue to do so. I also downloaded the demo of the new Sonic the Hedgehog game for XBox 360. I had heard it had some camera angle issues, which pretty much every 3D Sonic game has had so I didn't think too much of it. Well let me say that the demo is HORRIBLE. Maybe I'm just not playing the game how it was intended, but the level is extremely poorly designed. If you don't do exactly what is asked of you at a certain point you will most certainly die. This wouldn't be a big problem to me except that you can't even see what you're about to do because the camera angle is so bad all the time. Sega has a LOT of work to do before getting this game to the point where it doesn't suck. Graphically it looks pretty good, but there is a lot to do still to fix the gameplay.
The third demo I tried this weekend was called F.E.A.R. It stands for first encounter something something. This game has a lot of potential. It's a first person shooter but the controls are really sensitive. So much that I had to turn the sensitivity WAY down so I could even aim my character in the right direction. It's really cool when you fight enemies in this game though. They jump over obstacles, hide behind stuff, and they die very dramatically. There is also a feature similar to bullet time, like The Matrix. The demo starts like a game where you just are against some military group but then it freaks you out by having these ghostly characters appear and disappear at unexpected times. For example, you start going down a ladder and turn around and there's a little girl in a red dress looking right at you and then she suddenly disappears. The weirdest part is when you are suddenly in a hallway where the ceiling appears to be a pool of blood and as you walk down the hall weird stuff happens and the little girl appears and disappears again. Messed up game.
I downloaded a demo of the game Lego Star Wars II for XBox 360 the other day and thought it was one of the most hilarioius and unique games I had ever played. The demo features one of the levels in the game, the Mos Eisley Spaceport. After spending a good deal of time playing the demo and reading about the game, I decided to get it. Apparently there are many different hidden doorways and interesting puzzles to solve during the game, which will keep me playing it for a while. There are also TONS of characters. While there is little difference between some of them, it's still cool how there are so many. The coolest part of this game is how it follows the story lines of each of the older Star Wars movies. You are treated with entertaining cut scenes between episodes which give the basic run down of what is happening. The characters do not talk but the developers gave them a very good sense of humor instead. Combining the unique style of Legos with Star Wars and humor is a winning combination.Since I've already made a geek out of myself this post, I'll just continue to do so. I also downloaded the demo of the new Sonic the Hedgehog game for XBox 360. I had heard it had some camera angle issues, which pretty much every 3D Sonic game has had so I didn't think too much of it. Well let me say that the demo is HORRIBLE. Maybe I'm just not playing the game how it was intended, but the level is extremely poorly designed. If you don't do exactly what is asked of you at a certain point you will most certainly die. This wouldn't be a big problem to me except that you can't even see what you're about to do because the camera angle is so bad all the time. Sega has a LOT of work to do before getting this game to the point where it doesn't suck. Graphically it looks pretty good, but there is a lot to do still to fix the gameplay.
The third demo I tried this weekend was called F.E.A.R. It stands for first encounter something something. This game has a lot of potential. It's a first person shooter but the controls are really sensitive. So much that I had to turn the sensitivity WAY down so I could even aim my character in the right direction. It's really cool when you fight enemies in this game though. They jump over obstacles, hide behind stuff, and they die very dramatically. There is also a feature similar to bullet time, like The Matrix. The demo starts like a game where you just are against some military group but then it freaks you out by having these ghostly characters appear and disappear at unexpected times. For example, you start going down a ladder and turn around and there's a little girl in a red dress looking right at you and then she suddenly disappears. The weirdest part is when you are suddenly in a hallway where the ceiling appears to be a pool of blood and as you walk down the hall weird stuff happens and the little girl appears and disappears again. Messed up game.