Saturday, November 27, 2004
This afternoon we went to the Christmas parade in downtown Austin. I'll be posting some of the pictures, but here are a couple that stand out...
Only in America - A Humvee with candy canes
Only in Texas - Texas Longhorns cheerleader... and Britney lookalike
Only in America - A Humvee with candy canes
Only in Texas - Texas Longhorns cheerleader... and Britney lookalike
EverQuest II has stolen my life
I was never a big fan of role playing games. The old Dungeons and Dragons thing never really did it for me and I never understood the apparent frenzy that surrounded games like Morrowind and Everquest, but recently that all changed.
First there was Fable on the Xbox. A friend of mine is really into these kind of games. He'd finished Morrowind and was starting out on Fable and saying how neat it was. I'd known about this game since it was called Project Ego and was interested in it primarily because I knew Peter Molyneux makes neat games (Populous, Black & White) though I'd never played them. And of course, he's also British.
I persevered, and 15 hours after starting it, I finished it. The first story-based game I finished. Ever.
Wow - that was fun!
I was talking about Fable with a guy called Sarwar who is a developer on the Dell Factory Outlet (refurbished Dell systems) application, and he mentioned he was a beta tester for EverQuest II and was saying how cool it was. I checked it out online and it certainly looked the part...
A few weeks ago it came out, and... well... its stolen my life. What I like about it is that unlike Fable, which is Xbox Live Aware (meaning it can tell you if your friends are online... and thats about it... wuppdy-do), EverQuest II is a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game), and as such you are playing alongside real people. My wife always used to complain that computer games were a waste of time, but at least with this one I can explain that its a social experience! And the depth and sheer size of the environments is truly stunning. Plus with my recently beefed up system, it looks amazing. Its the little touches, like having grass move as you walk through it.
If you're also an EverQuest II player, look out for me. I play on the "Innothule" (good) server as a character called Grimgit who is currently a Level 12 Crusader.
First there was Fable on the Xbox. A friend of mine is really into these kind of games. He'd finished Morrowind and was starting out on Fable and saying how neat it was. I'd known about this game since it was called Project Ego and was interested in it primarily because I knew Peter Molyneux makes neat games (Populous, Black & White) though I'd never played them. And of course, he's also British.
I persevered, and 15 hours after starting it, I finished it. The first story-based game I finished. Ever.
Wow - that was fun!
I was talking about Fable with a guy called Sarwar who is a developer on the Dell Factory Outlet (refurbished Dell systems) application, and he mentioned he was a beta tester for EverQuest II and was saying how cool it was. I checked it out online and it certainly looked the part...
A few weeks ago it came out, and... well... its stolen my life. What I like about it is that unlike Fable, which is Xbox Live Aware (meaning it can tell you if your friends are online... and thats about it... wuppdy-do), EverQuest II is a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game), and as such you are playing alongside real people. My wife always used to complain that computer games were a waste of time, but at least with this one I can explain that its a social experience! And the depth and sheer size of the environments is truly stunning. Plus with my recently beefed up system, it looks amazing. Its the little touches, like having grass move as you walk through it.
If you're also an EverQuest II player, look out for me. I play on the "Innothule" (good) server as a character called Grimgit who is currently a Level 12 Crusader.
Sunday, November 07, 2004
November was supposed to be "Air Miles Month", as I had a monstrous 3 week tour of Asia all arranged, going to India, Japan, China and back to India.
That being the case, I thought it was time to replace my iPod. The 2G I have has a battery that doesn't hold charge (aka. "battery memory"). When Apple finally announced the iPod Photo I knew that was the one I wanted (15 hour battery life - good for the plane!), so in went the order.
And then most of my trips got cancelled. Now I have one week to India.
Still, the iPod Photo is pretty neat. I like that I can take my iPhoto library with me, and its neat that the album art from iTunes gets copied over. Its a pity it doesn't do cube transitions (which would have been a very Apple-y thing to do), but this is a minor gripe. I was going through the rumors on MacRumors before the iPod Photo was announced, and this came up as a wish/hope... so I'd actually made a mockup of it, but it was not to be.
My only real criticism is the screen, which is looks black unless the backlight is on (kiss that battery life goodbye), so unlike the old one where you could read the screen when docked, this one you pretty much can't. To make matters worse, you can change the backlight setting to "Off", various numbers of seconds, or "Always on". I would really like to see "Always on when powered". Still it seems like that could be fixed in software, so all may not be lost.
On the flipside, the use of color does help the Calendar and Contacts application. It would be nice if the Contacts app could sync peoples pictures from the Address Book, but that may be an Address Book limitation as much as anything else.
Overall, very happy, highly recommended.
That being the case, I thought it was time to replace my iPod. The 2G I have has a battery that doesn't hold charge (aka. "battery memory"). When Apple finally announced the iPod Photo I knew that was the one I wanted (15 hour battery life - good for the plane!), so in went the order.
And then most of my trips got cancelled. Now I have one week to India.
Still, the iPod Photo is pretty neat. I like that I can take my iPhoto library with me, and its neat that the album art from iTunes gets copied over. Its a pity it doesn't do cube transitions (which would have been a very Apple-y thing to do), but this is a minor gripe. I was going through the rumors on MacRumors before the iPod Photo was announced, and this came up as a wish/hope... so I'd actually made a mockup of it, but it was not to be.
My only real criticism is the screen, which is looks black unless the backlight is on (kiss that battery life goodbye), so unlike the old one where you could read the screen when docked, this one you pretty much can't. To make matters worse, you can change the backlight setting to "Off", various numbers of seconds, or "Always on". I would really like to see "Always on when powered". Still it seems like that could be fixed in software, so all may not be lost.
On the flipside, the use of color does help the Calendar and Contacts application. It would be nice if the Contacts app could sync peoples pictures from the Address Book, but that may be an Address Book limitation as much as anything else.
Overall, very happy, highly recommended.
