MSNBC – Video games that get lost in translation

Nice article on the differences between Japanese and North American gaming cultures. Thanks to Grebby for sharing the link!

So yeah, I’ve been just ever-so-slightly addicted to World of Warcraft for the past few weeks. I play it at night, I play it before work in the morning, I play it all weekend long…

So no posts. In fact I play it so much that I gave up on writing about it, even! Gillain got ‘locked’ though so his journal had to end.

Anyway, I’m going to try to be better and at least get some blog entries going again….

Drink to this

If you say so, doc!

GAAAAAA!

So it snowed in December. A nice healthy storm. Then hardly a flake after that though the winter was so cold that in February some of that snow still lingered.

Now tomorrow, the Ides of March. Time for crocuses to peep out of the earth and early birds to be twittering around getting ready for nesting right?

WRONG!

If you haven’t heard, the Northeast is supposed to get
a significant amount of SNOW tomorrow!!!

What is up with that!!??

So I got out of work at 10:30 tonight. I was packing up to go off to a weekend of relaxation at about 6 pm when someone came over and said the site was blowing up. I looked, and sure enough it was. Worse was, I couldn’t connect to the server to see what the heck was going on. The ssh daemon had died. Performance got worse and worse until finally no pages were being generated. And blah blah blah.

The details aren’t germane.

But as I went through this some part of my brain was watching me go through the stages of a tech emergency: Continue reading “Work”

As you can see, we’re in a bit of a transition state just now. Moving to WordPress, the follow-on to the b2 software we had been running (listen to me with the “we” stuff as though there were more than just me here).

I think I’ve got all the data imported, though I’ve dropped all comments since 90% of them were porn spam and I don’t have the time or patience to clean it all up.

Tonight I’ll start working on look and feel…

Comments now need to be approved, so if you leave a comment and it doesn’t show up right away, that’s why. Down the road I hope to figure a way to make comment appear immediately for friends, but have to be moderated for strangers (just to keep the spammers away).

I don’t know where this hit of gaming goodness came from. I mean, its February, not December. E3 is still a ways off. Its supposed to be a quiet time for gaming, and yet there are SO MANY great games laying around my house.

I spend a LOT of time this weekend playing Champions of Norrath on the PS2 (exclusively on the PS2). Its a fairly basic hack & slasher a la Diablo or the console versions of Baldur’s Gate. I enjoy this type of game on the PC, but I love ’em on the console. Kicked back on the couch, a bottle of Woodchuck Amber close at hand, the home theater system lending power to every slash of the sword…it’s just a wonderfully visceral experience. I played a bit online with a friend, and that worked well too, once I took my router out of the loop. Its nice to see the PS2 getting some online cooperative love.

Besides CoN, the Unreal Tournament 2004 demo was out this weekend (you can get it for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux). Good lord, what fun. I’ve always preferred Unreal to Quake, and UT was one of my favorite and longest lasting games. UT 2003 was good, but this version really breaks loose. There’s a new game mode called Onslaught that has teams having to control linked nodes in an attempt to assault the opposing base. These nodes act as ideal choke points and really keep the action pumping. And the even bigger change is the addition of vehicles, both land and air. Finally a game that makes Halo seem dated. I loved this demo so much that I already pre-ordered the Special Edition.

But wait, there’s more! I’ve also been sucked into Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town for the GBA (though I play it on the excellent Game Boy Player accessory for the Gamecube. This isn’t a new game, but I was just turned on to it. Yeah, its a farming sim…but its incredibly addictive.

And still NFL Street and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles await my attention. The first is a really fun arcade football game that I really enjoy. FFCC though, I’m still deciding on. Its another action-RPG but I’m not sure the single player game will hold my attention.

Anyway, even with all this gaming I found time to watch a whole bunch of A&E’s Horatio Hornblower movies. I loved the HH books, and I’m loving the movies, too. I bought all 8 at Christmas, and watched the last 5 or so this weekend. Very nicely done and highly recommended.

Thank goodness for 3 day weekends, eh? Of course, I still wasn’t ready to come back to work…. 🙂

So last night I was watching an old Nova program called Mars: Dead or Alive. It originally aired, I believe, on Jan. 5th, but my Tivo is majorly backlogged.

Anyway, it’d been a pretty crappy day at work (big surprise) and I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. Then I learn, from this program, that the programmers working on the Rover AI software didn’t have it finished in time for launch. Instead, they had to finish it up while the vehicle was en route to Mars, and uploaded it via radio signal. Now, the software to handle the flight and landing was all done..this was just ‘on the ground’ stuff. But still, can you imagine the pressure? Knowing that you have to finish this project in the alloted time, and can only test (presumably) on a simulator? If you don’t get you code fixed in time, the mission ends up a failure. Sheesh!

After hearing that, I stopped feeling sorry for myself. Heh.

In other news, I’m at the 95% mark in that infernal Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time game. So close…but the farther I get, the harder it gets. I know reviews have complained the game is too easy, but I’m the first to admit my twitch gaming skills are pretty weak. This has been a real challenge for me.

As for this site, I’m looking at some new blog software that will, I hope, give me more features that I’d like to include. I actually thought about writing something from scratch…then I had a rare moment of honesty with myself and admitted I’d never finish such an undertaking…

Three and a half months since my last post here. Man, the place is dusty…again.

Consistency has never been one of my strengths, but undaunted, I’m ready to try this again.

I suppose my first project should be to get a more robust blogging package. I read other blogs and drool over the cool features. b2, as far as I can tell, isn’t being developed anymore (though in all honesty I haven’t checked lately).

There’s no point in trying to recap the last few months right now. But to bring things up to speed, I’m currently playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time on the XBox. I’m intending to play Horizons on the PC, though I never seem to get around to actually logging in. I’m re-reading O’Brian’s Master and Commander after seeing the great film adaptation (and I’m enjoying it much more this time around…I guess I’m getting a bit more patient with age). I’ve been watching A&E’s Hortatio Hornblower movies (bought the collection at Christmas) and…I guess that’s about it.

Very much looking forward to Champions of Norrath on the PS2, btw…