Beware of ranting...

I guess the title is something of a misleading statement....i dont really want to rant. Its just been one of those days. Hell, its been 2 of those days.

Ive been doing the podcasting thing....well, again, thats a misleading statement. Ive done 1 episode....and its done pretty well. Every day im gaining listeners. I have been lucky enough to get a guest host for my first show who did a great job, and then spent a week working to get a guest host for this weeks show. Not only did i get 1, but i got 2....and 2 guys that do a podcast that i really enjoy. So i get everything together, we set up last night to record...and after recording about 2 hours of great stuff, i was really pumped. I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water before starting to edit it, and when i came back and found the audio file imported into garageband...

...

....

The audio file didnt have any of their audio. All it had was me talking. Again, thats not really true. It had part of their audio, until skype cut out the first time, and the audio capture program i use lost the input feed. Suck. I felt this HUGE sinking feeling in my stomach. Luckily, the guys i worked with have been pretty understanding, and i think well re-record tomorrow night. So theres that.

Now, im making a rule. After all the complaining i did about Crowe and travel and whatnot, (as you may have noticed) I havent said where my new job is, what im doing, etc. Not only am i going to keep that out of here as much as possible, but im not going to rant about work on here either. I could do it, and have endless stories. Alas...i wont. Lets just say today was not a good day. /sigh.

Bears news.....while i havent talked on here much about it(because ive had a good outlet on bears.mysportsradio.com) Im happy with the releasing of hutchinson and putting orton as a starter. Best chance to win right now. Lets see how thursday goes.

tell your friends...tell your family...tell strangers on the street....www.gamecastonline.com



Peace out, yall.

Picture Of The Day

Google Talk

Google released their beta of an Instant Messaging program today, called Google Talk. It definately looks interesting, but very very beta.


Check it out at http://talk.google.com

It Is Nice To See Sony Do Something Right...

I posted on this topic last week, complaining about the group XP change that was pushed live with SWG (after only 16 hours of testing, i found out from the galaxy report). Here is a statement they put out yesterday.

Dear Star Wars Galaxies Players,

On behalf of the entire LucasArts and SOE SWG team, we wanted to take this opportunity to apologize for a recent change we made regarding group experience (XP) rates. With Publish 22, we attempted to fix an unintended game play mechanic that we introduced with the Combat Upgrade earlier this year. Specifically, we wanted to correct a large divergence between the rate at which experience (XP) could be earned in a solo setting versus a group setting. After this change hit live, we were presented with a mountain of feedback describing how this change had a major negative impact on your enjoyment of the game. We want to let you know that we hear you and we value your feedback. You were right: we made a mistake on this one and we reversed out the change because of that feedback. We continue to learn from experience and pledge to improve our process for bringing you timely updates to Star Wars Galaxies. Thank you for your understanding and we look forward to seeing you in the game!

Sincerely, Julio Torres Producer, Star Wars Galaxies LucasArts Todd Fiala Director of Development, Austin Studio Sony Online Entertainment


Thats a step in the right direction...now lets fix those bugs!

1337 FTW

W00T - Ch3k 1t 0ut!

Reason #95843853 why I will not play SWG anymore...

The following came from a posting by Tiggs on the official Star Wars Galaxies forums:

Publish 22 Experience Changes

Experience is now divided among group members, rather than every group member receiving full credit for the kill.

A larger group experience bonus was implemented, to ensure that grouping is still optimal: although experience earned per kill is less, a group of players is still able to earn experience over time at a much faster rate than a solo player.

For example:

If you solo a creature then you get 6000 experience.
If I solo a creature then I get 6000 experience.
If we group and kill two creatures together, then we get 3000 experience per creature each (6000xp total), plus an additional bonus amount of experience because we are grouped (and two of us together can kill those two creatures more quickly than we could have solo'd one each).


That is EXACTLY how World of Warcraft does it. Every change that is being made to the game is mimicing WoW. The new CH changes where you get skills from pets and teach them to other pets, exactly the same as the hunter system on WoW. The new quests, new content, all very much like WoW. Whats the major difference?

BUGS. Its all broken. None of it ever works! If i want to play WoW, ill play WoW, which I'm doing. This ever popular seek to make SWG - "WoW In Space" is making me so mad.


/rant off

Interesting Chart

Here is a link to a site that has a pie chart showing marketshare for MMORPG's. The data has not been updated since june, so it doesnt reflect World Of Warcraft taking the top spot since they opened subscriptions to China and Singapore. Last count from blizzard is that they hit 3.5 million subscribers after making WoW available in China. Pretty incredible.

My suprise is that lineage 1 and 2 take up about 40% of the market. I havent heard much about it, let alone that it was that huge.

Its also good to see that Ultima Online has a decent share of the 2ndary market, seeing as how that game came out when i was in highschool. Incredible.

MMOG Chart

DMB + WMA = BS

Im suprised that it took so long for this to catch some national attention, especially since Stand Up came out earlier in the spring, however, the fact that the official Stand Up website instructs those who want to put the album on an ipod must rip the songs, burn a CD, then re-rip it, essentially stripping the tracks of all DRM. This has been a big loophole for Apple's DRM since the music store launched, and while i know DMB will catch some flak for being the one to vocally support it, i think it is a fair request to have iTunes "support" WMA format. I think they should still sell songs and use the AAC format as their standard, since to me it sounds better, has more options for information(album art, chapter tracks, etc).

Who knows, read the article below for more information.


Dave Matthews Band Offers Copy Protection Circumvention; Asks Apple to Support WMA || iPodObserver

The Flasbacks Are Too Hard To Handle...

I knew it must be too good to be true, having a fully healthy bears 1st team for the first time since last september....and now Rex Grossman is out for another year. They say 3-4 months, but thats essentially the season.

I dont even know what to say now....on monday, i heard that he wasnt even touched by the defense, and then on a hit like this...pop goes the ankle. I feel bad for Rex, but now coaches have to wonder...is Rex too weak to handle the NFL? He was a great QB in college, but the NFL is a different bird. Hits are harder, guys are bigger, etc...

Chad Hutchinson didnt blow me or opponents away last year....who knows what will happen. My opinion? Time for mgmt to get ready to fork over some big bucks for a known veteran QB who still has years in him, not like Chandler, Kordell Stewart, etc...but someone with some gusto. This is just really dissapointing, especially seeing as how this is the first time in over 6 years where i can see every game of the season, since im back in chicago. I just wanted to hide on friday night. Now, we bring in Jeff Blake....i dont even know what to say about that....its another older unproven QB, who doesnt bring much to the team. In addidion to his questionable athleticism, hes also got a huge attitude problem. This is not looking good....

In other news, i must have had sympathy pains for Rex, because the foot where i tore a tendon in my ankle in the spring has been re-aggrivated again. I have a lovely limp, and look like a complete idiot. Hopefully it heals up soon....not 3-4 months....

Look for nerd room updates this week. I'm thinking of making a full page dedicated to it, since there have been some MAJOR updates to it since moving here to chicago. 5 systems, new networking hardware, new flat panel for my gaming machine...itll be interesting. You cant forget the new cat bed for lil' callie...thats her new pride and joy.

Other than that, not alot of excitement. News that a friend of mine from Crowe is coming to my current employer is exciting, Mike Ricci...he and i get along great, and i like hanging out with him, hes a good kid. Ive been using a new program(to me at least) called Skype to talk to JMan and some other people alot lately. Its an IP Telephony program that is honestly clearer than my cell phone or vonage system. The only downside is that if you have a slow machine or limited bandwidth, you can run into some problems(like we had last night) in sound artifacts and the like. However, on a decent machine with decent bandwidth, it sounds great. Alot better than teamspeak, very little delay and easy to use.

JMan and i hope to get our first podcast recorded and up this week, weve run into some time snags and still are trying to get our recording options straightened out. It hopefully should be interesting once its done.

Hope you all are doing well!

*shrieks like a girl*

So, my new boss was having a rough time with some work the past few weeks, so in jest, i offered here the services of a squishy school bus i had that you squeeze to reduce stress.


I guess she got so stressed out...she broke the bus. BROKE. THE. BUS.


Should i be worried? Am I next? Poor squishy bus....we barely knew ye....

Gamecast Online

Well, lately, I've fallen in love with podcasts. They are a real source of news, ideas, etc...but mostly entertainment. I got JMan hooked on them too, so he and i are going to start doing a podcast about Gaming, Technology, Nerdy stuff, etc...should be fun.

The website is up, www.gamecastonline.com and soon we will have our first episode up. Keep an eye on here and on the gamecast site for news on the episode releases! If you dont know what podcasting is, check out the following link Podcasting


Welcome to Gamecast Online!

Welcome Home

Space Shuttle Discovery Lands Safely

TGIF

And with a whimper...this week comes to a close. Have a good weekend blog readers!

Its About Time

Welcome to the military, Raptors. The F/A-22 are now officially in active service.

Anyone up for a trip to langley AFB? /me Wants to see them...

Langley offers mix of new, old aircraft

ITS BEEN FOUND

THE BEST SITE ON THE INTERWEBTERNET

Creative Is First?

Creative has actually come out with a pretty cool product. Their new Zen Vision product is a "Portable Media Player", which is an mp3 player, photo viewer, and also plays video in different formats, divx and xvid being 2 popular codecs, plus wmv. I have to say, this looks really attractive, and i hope apple, who is rumored to be working on a video ipod will learn from this device. Apple, who has a history of being proprietary at times could forseeably only support quicktime with a version of their media player, and that for me would be a deal breaker, since ive been encoding alot of TV episodes to divx because of its quality and compression.

Id love to be able to watch episodes of TV i recorded on my elgato EyeTV and exported to divx while riding the train in the morning, and if apple doesnt support a variety of codecs and formats with theirs, im afraid it will be doomed to failure. ( i know, people said that when this version ipod wouldnt support WMA)

While listening to MacCast (a podcast) today, i heard the video ipod being compared to the Sony Watchman, and i dont think thats the case. The difference now is that there is a HUGE reliance on computers for music, movies and pictures. People would love to take that on the road, and they will be cheaper than a dvd player or a laptop. Also, with the PSP movie format, it proves to show that there is a market for portable movies. I cant wait to see what happens with this...but if there is no alternative from apple soon, i might nab this thing up in a few months.

Zen Vision

Here I Come To Save The Daaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy!

First the switch to Intel Processors, now a 2 button mouse. Or is it?

Apple released their new mouse today, and while it will be called a 2 button mouse, the truth is quite different. Its a 1 button mouse, with sensors on both sides, acting like a 2 button mouse. It also has a 360 degree scroll ball, touch sensitive buttons, and works with both mac and PC. I gotta say, while i never liked apple mice before, i think i need to get one of these. maybe 2...one for my G5, one for my Gaming machine....

Check it out on the link below....


Apple - Mighty Mouse

First Impressions - Part 2

So - i need to add to the post regarding windows vista.

Thanks to the folks over on a great site, www.pronetworks.org, i was able to get Vista up and running. Ends up, there is a common installation bug with Vista Beta 1 that will have this sort of thing happen for some video cards. Started up in safe mode, installed the latest detonators from Nvidia, and she was good to go.

All in all, i guess im not that impressed with what ive seen. Im not saying its bad, but its not the "Next generation OS" that people had been promised from MS. I know that they keep paring off features so that is can come out in a timely manner, but it ends up that this is a prettier XP, with some new features. Not a total rebuild of the OS. Granted, this is still just Beta 1, but after messing with it for about an hour, I dont see anything that makes me go "wow" like ive done with each Mac OS release since 10.2.

The new interface is pretty, its alot more like OS X, the Aero glass theme is nice, and the window transparency is as well. The new backup program looks to be a nice feature, but as of right now, it doesnt let you do anything else besides backup to CD or DVD. Im a huge believer in network backups, and until it has a feature to backup to a share, i wont use it.

IE 7 = Firefox 1.0 Whoopidee doo. It has a search bar for MSN search, tabbed browsing, and some added security features. Ill keep using Safari and Firefox. Firefox was actually the first application i installed.

Unlike most people, i like the subtraction of the "my" prefix from everything. I think it gives it a more professional look. I also like the redefined explorer windows with the dropdown bars that let you instantly navigate to any folder on the machine. I think that navigation feature is a great addition, even if OS X has had it since panther.

The search technology isnt as inclusive as Spotlight is on Tiger, I dont think, and its somewhat archaeic right now. The options arent very user friendly, from my perspective. Dollars for Doughnuts, ill stick with google desktop search until this gets a little easier to configure.

While MS is still touting that Vista will have features that will require you to restart/shutdown your computer less, i dont see that. The times ive tried using the hibernate/sleep functions have crashed the machine. Beta, I know, I know, but ive never gotten sleep to work right on PC's, im hoping it gets it right with this iteration.

Networking wise, im finding that my 2 shared drives mounted on other machines will randomly unmount. Thats especially bad when im trying to watch divx rips of old seaQuest episodes on my mac. Not good at all. Ill have to figure out what that issue is.


Ill post some screens soon, but as of right now, its a prettier XP. Maybe with more testing, well see. Leave some Vista feedback in the comment section.