Went to play pool for brunch like we do every Sunday and took the chance to re-take a picture I tried last weekend. Only with much better results since I have a better grasp on what I am doing with the settings. (Click for big)
Break shot with the following settings:
Nikon D3000, F/22, 20 Sec Exposure, ISO-100, No Flash, 35mm Focal Length. Minor tweaks in Adobe CS2.
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Yeah, it’s been about a month since my last post and the reason that it’s been forever since a post is because I had some major changes in my life. Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad. I found my self looking for some new experiences on the job front and a few friends of mine that work downtown had the best opportunity for me. As of the end of September I am now a Senior Functional Analyst working for, yet another, agency in lovely downtown DC. I am in charge of designing, building, and maintaining a lab environment for a number of different applications. It’s a huge responsibility and a big advancement for my career. It’s also an ass load of more work and because of it my free time has started to dwindle. I am really hoping to continue posting, but it may not be once a week like I had been trying to do before.
So to catch you up on some of the various gadgets and games in the life of Steve, a number of games have hit my shelves in the last month. Shortly after DragonCon an eagerly anticipated game was released. Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions! I am a huge Spidey fan so this was a must for me. I hope to write up a full review on it soon (even though I know it’s kind of late for it). I also picked up Halo Reach. Believe it or not, I have not yet finished the campaign! I have been playing co-op with my friend Lee and haven’t wanted to spoil it. Lastly, just today I downloaded Comic Jumper from the XBLA.
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For gadgets I have only one real big toy purchase but it’s something that has been a long time coming. I picked up a Nikon D3000 DSLR camera. Many many years ago I used to be rally into photography. I was the primary photographer for my school newspaper and yearbook, and that was back before digital! I have always loved photography and have been yearning to get a decent SLR. The D3000 is purely an entry level DSLR camera and that works fine for me. Since it’s been a good 20 years since I did any work with F-stops and aperture I am just fine with having the camera hold my hand a little. I am very very pleased with it and have been having a blast taking pictures of damn near everything. It even got me to update my gallery linked here on the site (over there in the right hand side of the screen).
So until next time….
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Back in later 2009 a new device was released by a company called FitBit Inc. The Fitbit is an accelerometer that clips to your clothing to track steps/distance/calories. This is not your ordinary pedometer either. Given that it is using a full accelerometer, the data that the device gathers is much greater than just simple steps. It measures full movement and the degree of the movement in level of activity. This is how it gives a more accurate count of calories burned than your average pedometer.
So why did I need this? Well, since I have been working out more to get into shape prior to DragonCon, I decided that I really wanted to know more data about what I was doing. This device gives me all the data I need to track how my daily routine is helping/hindering my workout. The data from the device gets uploaded to the FitBit website and displayed in a way that’s easy to read. Also included on the website is the ability to track your intake. You can add foods that you are eating to keep tabs on your caloric intake in comparison with what you are burning. There is also sections where you can track your activities, and weight, etc. Pretty much every health aspect of your daily routine can me tracked to aid you in your goals.
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I picked up the FitBit just before DragonCon, mostly because I was curious of how much walking I would be doing at the con (which was a lot), but after using it for that full week, and seeing all the data, I was sold and decided to keep going with it to help me loose a few pounds and trim up. The food section is probably the scariest part of the site, since now I know what all goes into everything I have been eating. It has helped me regulate my daily intake, mostly by making me aware of how many calories are in each and every little snack that I would happen to munch on through the day. I have a simple plan to follow, just make sure that I am burning more calories through the day than I am eating. Since my average burn for a normal day seems to be around 2600 Calories (dependant on the day), I set my goal of Caloric intake to be around 2000. You would be surprised how little that is!! For example, did you know that your standard Snickers bar has 280 calories? Your McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder (with cheese) has 733 Calories with 394 of that from Fat!
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I have been using the FitBit for almost a month now and have been more than happy with the results. I am down to 184 now with a goal of 180 and have been feeling great. I also have been using it to track my sleeping patterns. When you put the FitBit into sleep monitoring mode it tracks all of your movement and will tell you when you were most at rest. Click on the various charts in this post to see larger versions, or check out my FitBit profile at http://www.fitbit.com/user/22DGWN
If you are doing the healthy thing, I highly suggest looking into it. Oh, and there is one downside….the cost. Currently the FitBit sells for $99. But Trust me, it’s worth it!
Well, I am back from DragonCon and getting back into the swing of things. The Con was great but I didn’t do some of the more Blog type stuff that I had wanted to. That’s not to say that I didn’t do more than enough to cover the whole con but I had planned on getting an interview about games with a few of the the folks there, and there just wasn’t time. The biggest takeaway is of course that there were a bazillion people there! Ok, not really, but there were certainly more people than I had ever seen before at a Con. One thing that kind of bugged me a bit was the in-accessibility of some of the stars. Now, don’t read that the wrong way, I am certainly not expecting some big name stars to be at our beck and call, but when I read that certain names are on the guest list, only to find out that they are only doing limited appearances, ala, 1 panel, maybe a private autograph session, it’s a little sad. I had really wanted to meet Paul Dini, but when I went to the Artist’s area he was nowhere to be found. Apparently the Info desk there was well versed in the answer to “Where’s Paul Dini?” From what we learned, Paul was only doing a few panels and had no table.
Such was also the case with one of my Favorite Mythbusters! Adam Savage was at the con but only did limited Autograph sessions (and with so many people there, the lines were impossible) and even my favorite part of any Savage sighting is the #adamincognito game he plays. Adam is an avid costumer so DragonCon is a great place for him. He will sometimes dress up in Costume and encourage people to find him. Unfortunately, the con was 5 hotels large with between 30-50,000 people there. With no location tweeted it was nigh on impossible to change encounter him. For this one though I blame the lack of Signal that happens when you get that many people in a small area all with smart phones.
(Deep Breath) Ok, now that all my bitching and moaning is over. What I did get to do at the con was great. Sarah and I took about 6 costumes each and got to wear most all of them. I got to meet a lot of the stars I planned on seeing, and of course the visiting with friends and drinking. All in all, a great con. Pictures can be found in my gallery.
Now, to get back into my rigorous gaming habit! Reach comes out next week so I have only a few more days to finish up with Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions. All I can say so far is that it’s apparent that there will never be a Spider-Man game where the camera isn’t completely hosed while wall crawling.
Hey all, it’s time for another rousing round of What are you Playing! The last few weeks have been mostly occupied by me procrastinating getting things ready for DragonCon. In just 2 small weeks I will be living it up in Atlanta rubbing elbows with some of the best costumers and sci-fi geeks on the planet. I am also really excited about the Guest list this year. So excited that I have been trying to think up questions that would be game related that I could ask some of our favorite celebrities. Info that I would bring back and post here on the site. So I put it to you, there is a huge guest list over on the website Http://www.dragoncon.org. If there is anyone in particular that you would like to know what their gaming habits are, or any questions you think I should toss out there. I plan on using my phones voice recorder to grab some sound bites from the folks there. Please feel free to drop questions you want asked into the comments. (P.S. Apparently, Paul Dini, the writer for the Batman Arkham games will be there, you KNOW I am going to be talking to him!)
As for what I am actually playing…. I finished up Crackdown 2, I bought another new Xbox 360S to replace the E-73 Error-ed out one downstairs so the Rock Band setup is back to normal. I am hoping to knock out Alan Wakes “The Signal” here soon, but mostly just getting stuff ready for vacation. What are YOU playing?
I know it’s been a while since I picked up this game but there has bee a ton going on. It does help that I keep playing it and thinking “Man, I really need to write up the review”. As a kid we always liked to play various board game. I always kind of feared the nights where we would play RISK though because of the massive involvement of the game. A good RISK game could last for hours of hours, and when it’s done there is so much clean up. Not to mention the RISK of stepping on one of those like roman numerals in the middle of the night. Once again, the Xbox steps in to simplify the board game genre and add a little spice to it at the same time.
RISK Factions brings all the fun of territorial control and conquering that the original game had but with no clean up, simplified scoring and much faster game play. The “Factions” portion of the game come in assigning different cartoon characters to the colors of Risk. Black becomes Zombies, Red for Robots, Yellow for Cats, Green for Humans, and Blue for Yeti’s. The Single player campaign takes you through the story about how these characters interact, but mostly it’s there to provide a little more eye candy for the grueling dice rolling game play. They have also added a form of “Fast attack” where the rolls are all done in the back ground and you keep attacking until someone wins.
For those purists who don’t want any taint on their precious game, they preserved the original game play in a “Classic” mode that includes the original cards and structure. Honestly, I tried to play this way once, and it seemed slow. I much enjoyed the newer style better. The turns are faster, the scoring is much easier, and when you are done, no clean up. This is one of the best family board game ports on the arcade and I highly recommend it! I give it an VIII out of X
Well, last night the rest of the family was out doing what they do on a Wed. Night which left me to putz around the house and do my own thing. Since they were all out I figured it was a good time to work on the network issue I had been having. To recap, I recently bought a Belkin Play dual band wireless N router for the house. It was much more powerful than my netgear wireless G router so it would cover the whole house. Now I do a lot of odd things on my network. I love to stream movies and music to the xbox or ps3 from my pc, I also picked up the software package PlayOn from Media Mall to stream Hulu and YouTube to the consoles as well. Ever since hooking up the Belkin, all that stopped. So last night poured over the settings inside and out, tested every scenario and flipped every switch. Nothing worked.
I googled the heck out of my situation and found a few posts about how the Belkin routers block the DLNA media streaming protocol. But nothing on how to fix that. So, off I went to the Belkin support site. Still no mention of blocking the DLNA protocol, except that the router itself will stream using DLNA, but only directly from the router. I tried to “Chat with a support representative” only to learn that they had no clue what DLNA was and was fixated on the ports of the xbox and the ip of my PC, even though I explained what the issue was. I gave the person (assuming it was even a human) 10 min to explain before I scrap the router and buy something else, she couldn’t even explain what DLNA was.
Needless to say, I then set out to Best Buy and purchased a new Netgear Wireless N Rangemax router. 10 minutes later my whole network was up and I was streaming again with no issues. Because of this, I will never buy another Belkin product again. Be Warned!
p.s. I am in training all this week (if you hadn’t seen the twitters) so reviews for Limbo and Risk will be put next week.
It’s that time again to run down what you are playing! I am slowly but surely working up a review of the XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) game Risk Factions, which I managed to finish the campaign on. The nice thing about it is that it’s such a great Family game that we find ourselves playing it as a group all the time. Also mixed in lately has been Crackdown 2. Initial impressions of CD 2 are not that great. I just get the feeling like it’s too much all at once and it’s REALLY hard to focus on the ga…oooo Agility orb!
The latest add in to the library has been the XBLA game Limbo. This came out for the Summer of Arcade promo that Xbox does every year. The game is a hell of a lot like Braid, and if you haven’t played Braid you need to go check it out. Both are side scrolling puzzle platformers that will twist your brain in loops. I love it! Review for Limbo will be after Risk and Crackdown 2 will probably be a while still. Don’t forget that the first DLC for Alan Wake is out now, The Signal. My copy of Alan Wake is out on loan right now so I will be getting to that as soon as it comes back.
Outside of that, the workouts are going great, I can already feel a difference and only 36 days left before DragonCon! I am hoping to maybe squeeze out an interview with one or two celeb’s to see their take on gaming. And with that I leave you with the amazing Music video from the Guild: GAME ON!
I have been thinking of trying to get a weekly post up of what I am playing and maybe put it out to see what you guys are playing as well. I have seen a lot of sites do this to get a good discussion going and maybe get some ideas about a game I wouldn’t normally pick up. So, seeing as how I am the only one here, I’ll go first.
The past week or two I have been working on some house type stuff and reconfiguring things on my network. After picking up the new Xbox 360S (I traded in my old 20gb Xbox) I decided to upgrade my router to a Wireless N to use the new Xbox’s N device. I bought the Belkin Play Dual Band Wireless N router and replaced my crappy Netgear G. Long story made short, I can’t stream media from my PC to the xbox anymore and have no idea why. While I am not a hard core network guy, I still know my way around a subnet and have spent the past 2 weeks tweaking and such to figure this out. It’s kind of a pain.
Outside of that I have been playing some Lego Harry Potter with Sarah. It’s one of those games where we pretty much only play together. I believe we are towards the end of Book 3 right now. the Quick review on it, it’s a Lego game. Same basic premise and humor. That’s not a bad thing, because I love the Lego games. Aside from that I have picked up Risk: Factions from the Xbox Live Arcade. They found a way to really make a Risk game fun for everyone! We have played as a family, as well as through the solo campaign. Enjoyable all around. May have more of a full review on it up soon.
In the life department, I also picked up an Elliptical machine and am using it to get back into some sort of shape that’s not “round”. My hope is to turn some of this belly fat into muscle in time for DragonCon at the beginning of September. We’ll See, as of this morning I was at 192lb. My target is Around 175lb but I would be happy with a strong 180-185lbs. The goal is not so much loss but re-distribution. Wish me luck!
After many hours and many times of screaming “No, not that way!!” and “Damnit I DID hit X” I have finished playing through Heavy Rain, the thriller mystery exclusive for the Playstation 3. It took a little longer than I had originally planned due to some frustration with the control scheme and the ever impeding life thing I have going on (I really should do something about that).
Heavy Rain takes us through the story/mystery of the Origami Killer as if affects a family, the detectives searching, and the journalist reporting on it. Unlike some of the other games of this genre, you get to play as each different character to get their point of view on the story, and ultimately drive the story to a unique ending tailored to your actions. This is one of the story points that really makes Heavy Rain stand out. It’s a cleverly disguised “Choose Your Own Adventure” story where, depending on what choices you made, you may get a completely different ending than someone else. Because of the nature of the story, I hesitate to mention any plot line specifics for fear of spoiling it. Instead we will jump to the likes and dislikes.
Likes:
Great Story – Seems like most of the games I have really gotten into as of late have been driven by a good solid story. Heavy Rain really takes the murder mystery story to a whole new level with the different ways you can drive it, including multiple different outcomes. I have said many times that story is really key to a good game so I won’t spend time on this one. The story was good.
Detailed Graphics – The detail that goes into the characters and settings in Heavy Rain is amazing (in some places). If you get the chance I highly suggest checking out some of the bonus videos on the disk that show the actors that portrayed the characters in the game. The fact that they were able to make the in game faces match so perfectly was astounding.
Innovative control scheme – Heavy Rain really takes immerse control to the extreme where you can interact with so many things and each action is meticulous in it’s implementation. The use of the Six Axis to perform tasks like sliding a door, opening a cupboard, or turning a nob worked really well…..for the first 10 min (Continued Bellow).
Multiple perspectives – As the story played out you get to jump from Ethan (The Father), to Madison (The Journalist), to Norman (The Agent), and to Scott (The P.I.). Because of this it almost felt like you were following four different stories, but they all tied together in an amazing way and it was genius to see the same story from all of the different views.
Solid voice acting – None of the voice acting really felt forced like we have seen in other games. Most of the conversation seems to flow naturally and fit the mood of the game very well. The behind the scenes videos showing how they auditioned some of the actors was a great touch. I love watching voice actors perform.
Dislikes:
Suspension of Disbelief – This stemmed from one of the first scenes in the game, hopefully not much of a spoiler, where Ethan looses track of his son in a mall. He can see him only about 30 feet in front of him but the mall is crowded and it’s hard to catch up, even though you are calling out to your son, he blatantly ignores you for the full 20 min you are chasing him (right behind him BTW). The people in the mall actually move in front of you so it makes it even more difficult to catch up. Also, you can’t run so you are doing this at a walking pace. There were quite a few times in the game where I felt that the “fourth wall” was broken due to something completely unbelievable.
Graphic Glitches – So as nice and detailed as the graphics were, there were still quite a few graphics glitches that really took it from a simple glitch to a full blown annoyance. Things like fabric, the clothes they would put on or take off looked horrible. Like they could stand up on their own. Walking around the rooms made your character look like a strung out marionette. It just seemed that in free walk mode the characters had no fluid motion.
Innovative control scheme – So after the first 10 minutes the control scheme starts to really be tedius and aggravating. For example, at one point I needed to walk over to the fridge, tap the analog stick to the left to open the fridge door, tap up to grab the orange juice, shake the controller to shake the juice, tap up again to drink the juice, tap down to put the juice back and tap right to close the fridge. Now count that. That’s 6 button/stick commands to do a simple act of drinking juice. Between each command there is a pause in gameplay so I can issue the next command. Towards the end of the game it wasn’t quite as bad since you aren’t really searching anymore.
For the most part, I didn’t hate the game. The story kept me going and the way the game played out for me was good for how I played it. I really wish that the dislikes didn’t detract from the game as much as they did because it would have made it that much better. As it was I feel like I spent 20 minutes of every hour playing just doing the control gimmicks and tedious button mashing. Overall I enjoyed playing it and would give it a Solid 7 Origami Cranes out of 10.
