Vent?

Driving

I’ve complained about driving before, I know that, but still it confounds me. Not the actual process of driving, anybody can learn to drive (well, arguably), but moreso what it does to people. Again, I’m prone to generalising, but driving is power and it seems to go to a lot of people’s heads.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a lead foot and I like to make the car move. If you’ve been in a car with me, then you know I will occasionally do something stupid — if it’s safe. And… sometimes when it’s not, but in those cases by accident, and I’ll be the first to admit I’m an idiot… But some people — shit, MOST people — think that the fact they have a licence and a car means that they are the bomb-friggin-diggety and GODs of driving. But why is that?

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Let the ranting begin

The Olympics have come to an end. Again. As they do. I get so into it — and it’s just so in your face — that when it’s over, I’m left feeling a little spent. Part of me is happy because now I can rest and I have more time to play games after work (as well as just more time in general), but a little part of me is sad, because I really enjoying watching the various sporting masters and cheering for my side. However, I think there’s more to like about the Olympics than just the sports and the competition.

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The winds of change…

Yeah, things are happening. I’ve made decisions, and these will be put into place as of right now. You may have noticed that recently I have not been posting as often, nor as enthusiastically as I used to. There are many reasons for this, but it all comes down to the fact that I fell into the blogger’s folly.

What is that, pray tell? Lofty dreams and irrational choices, my friends. I started this blog as a means to voice my opinion — to write about whatever comes to mind and to have some sort of effect on the people that come to read it. But as I moved on, I thought I could be much more, I thought I could take on the big guys. But you know what? In the end, there are millions of blogs, many of which last all of a week and then fizzle out.

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Too many game shows spoils the… something

Germany’s turn. It’s been around a while, but never got the coverage untl recently. There are other shows around the world as well, but until the last few years, it was only E3 and the Tokyo Game Show that really had gamer blood pumping.

Then E3 got popular. Game sites started liveblogging (which some writers are really bad at doing — there’s an art to it, and only some can do it well); streaming or hosted conferences became a way to generate more visitors, and so the coverage started to come thick and fast. Gamers are generally pretty hungry for news as it is, so conferences are a great way to get some extra traffic, or at least prolong the individual visits. So the writers begun to branch out, seek more news. The Leipzig conference is getting as much coverage as E3 as a result… and it’s only a month later. What more news can there be?

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EA Conference

I can understand the hullaballoo surrounding the games conferences — at least for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo themselves. The can present all that is coming out on their systems and do their things, so on, so forth, whatever.

But the larger developers comng out with a conference? OK, to be honest, I understand. They need to show what they are doing, try to get the gaming world excited. But it’s just not that interesting. There were a couple of presentations during E3, but I didn’t even read them, because I thought they would be mega mega super lame. And there are no regrets.

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Weekend woes

The world is a funny place. First you have a busy weekend and are pretty rooted after a full-on Saturday of stuff. Then, you finally get some time to whip out your notebook because you realise you didn’t post anything, and you find that the servers are down and you can’t. So you fiddle with stuff and you read the news. You play a few games and fiddle with other stuff. Try the site again. Still down, probably some bastard nerd with some crappy code rooted the servers — not much you can do, it’s free web hosting and you’re a nerd too.

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Cooliris: Try it out now!

Mihoko has come across a new little app that plugs in to your browser and provides a new way to search.  One of the many new visual search engines, Cooliris gets a lot of things right.

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Greg & Hoko update

It’s been a while since I posted about what’s going down in my life, so I thought I’d pop a quick note in here.

All is going about as well as it could, but we aren’t going to be parents yet — still working on that. Fingers crossed. We are comfortable in our little home and have settled in well, but with visitors coming in October (you know who you are - my birthday will probably be Saturday 4th, so make sure those days are free and you are in Melbourne, punks), we need to empty out the ’store-all-of-our-crap’ room and make it a guest room!

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Rachet & Clank PSN game is huge

And by huge I mean absolutely gigantic one million. The first of the Ratchet & Clank episodes is due out next week, at least in the States, and tips the scales at a massive 2.4Gb. That’s just… massively enormous. For a game that supposedly only takes 4-5 hours to complete, that’s just friggin amazing.

What that means is — this game is gonna look GREAT. And probably soung great, and play great. I want. But that just makes it another game I will have to download overnight. Stupid download limits and peak hours starting at 1pm. LAME!

Fallout 3 coming to Oz

Yay! It’s coming! As it always should have been. Australia is one of the worst countries when it comes to molly-coddling people. If the powers that be could wrap us all in bubblewrap, then I’m pretty sure they would. Jerks.

Anyway, it looks like Bethesda just sweet-talked the classification dudes (technical term), because from what Kotaku is reporting, it seems they allowed it because it was ‘in context’. Nice job.

Warhawk getting a decent update

I bought Warhawk. I played all of 2 hours, and haven’t played since. Sure, it feels like a waste of money, and until now, it has been, but don’t think that’s because it’s a bad game. It’s mainly because it’s a hardcore game for hardcore players, and I’m not hardcore.

I like games that give you a chance to learn offline before making you fight it out online. This is part of the brilliance of Halo 3 — you can play through the game offline, then go online and get your ass handed to you, but at least get a few frags under your belt. Warhawk is online only, and the entry point is a headache, looking more like a spreadsheet than a forum for entertainment. Then suddenly you are thrust into the game, where you are immediately schooled by the much more experienced hardcore players. Repeatedly. And the controls take a whole lot of getting used to… Sigh. But it looks like that might be changing soon. Good.

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Acer Gemstone Blue 8920g

OK, I’ve had this PC for long enough now to know what I like and what I don’t like, so I decided to write up a quick little review of it… I gave a quick overview a little while back, when I first got it, but let’s go over it again quickly, eh?

Overview: 18.4″ Full HD widescreen LCD screen, full qwerty keyboard with a numeric keypad and Cinedash Media Controls (also comes with Media Player Remote Control), Core 2 Duo running at 2.4GHz, 3 GB RAM, NVidia GeForce 9500 GS with 512mb dedicated, and up to 712mb shared system memory, 320GB HDD, Blu-Ray Combo drive, Bluetooth, ethernet connection, wireless capabilities, integrated TV card (comes with TV tuner), webcam, microphone (also comes with Bluetooth wireless VoIP phone), 4x USB ports, card reader, fingerprint reader, 5.1 Dolby Home Theater Surround Sound (with Tuba bass)… Oh, and fairly sexy design. So what’s it like?

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Playstation Home to start expanded Beta

You may be aware that Playstation Home is entering an ‘expanded closed beta’ at the end of this month for the US, but what about the rest of us? Well, I can’t be certain about Australia, but Edge is reporting that Europe will also be entering an expanded beta period at the end of August as well. I’m hoping we can jump on that bandwagon.

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