Zune: First Impressions

As any of my friends will quickly attest, I have no self-control when it comes to buying gadgets. I picked up a Zune (brown, of course...) at EB Games today, and so far my impressions are very good. In no particular order:

• General look and feel: About as big as a first generation iPod, but doesn't feel as heavy, and I really like the fingerprint-resistant rubbery-feeling case. The brown color seems to be a love it/hate it kind of thing, and I'm on the 'love it' side. Go Earth tones!!


• Screen: Big, colorful, and crisp. One reason the Zune is so large is that the screen is as large as it is.


• Controls: Simple and easy to use. I keep expecting the center control pad to turn like an iPod's, but it's just an up/down/left/right button. (Think of the d-pad on almost any modern videogame console's controller) A touch less quick to move around long lists, but still works well.


• Menus: Similar to Window's Media Center menus. Very nice looking and easy to move around in. Definitely a strong point.


• Zune Marketplace: Not as feature-rich as iTunes, but what it has works well. Very similar to Urge if you have used that. I really love that you don't have to specify what your search string is for. It QUICKLY searches their entire library and shows how many matches found in artist, album, or song title, and THEN you can choose which of those search result sets you want to see. I anticipate that video downloads will come VERY soon (since they'll be on the XBox Live Marketplace soon), and I hope podcasts aren't far behind. But, for now you have to take it on faith that those will arrive in the future.


• Radio: works well. Nice to have as an option, but not a big deal for me.


• Wireless: I'm not too excited by 'share your songs with a friend' stuff. I'm hoping they get future enhancements to allow syncing and/or song downloads direct to your zune via wireless in the future. I see this more as a feature that shows much promise for future enhancements rather than something I'll use much now.


• Sound quality: Excellent.


• Synchronizing: Here's a big win for me: it's easy, trouble-free (so far), and above all it is FAST. It's easily as fast as my iPod in synchronizing, if not a touch faster. Since I'm a huge fan of subscription services, I do LOTS of new song synchronizing every day, and not having to live with the Plays-For-Sure slower-than-coral-growth speeds feels like a gift from the gods.


• Battery life: tbd

I'll post a week later or so and let you know if my very positive first impressions hold up.

Giving Del.icio.us a try

I'm looking for an easy cross-browser way to manage all my favorites, so I thought I'd give deli.cio.us a try. I'm not too happy it seems like a two-click process (click on the del.icio.us icon on my IE toolbar, THEN click on my favorite), but if it works well in terms of easily tracking work and home related links by category then that may not be much of an issue. We'll see....

Poor Pluto....I'm still gonna call you a planet!

After a week of contentious public and private debate, a small cluster of astronomers has voted to demote Pluto from its planetary status.

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Astronomers Relegate Pluto to Dwarf Status

Evidently small clusters of astronomers can suck harder than a black hole.

:-(

Work From Home

As part of my employer's disaster recovery plans, we had a 'work from home' day where a large number of employee's used VPN to connect to the company network and work from home.

It was wonderful!  Here's hoping they decide to save costs in the future by having us share cubes and work from home part of every week.  It would be great!

Perhaps if i cater to my laziness?

So, I'm still too lazy to blog on a regular basis.  I read about Flock today, which makes it supremely easy to cut and paste from a page and make a post about it.  I'll try to post about various games etc that I'm involved with to see if I can make a more concerted effort to actually post on at least an every-2-or-3 day basis.  We'll see!

Here's a web snippet I highlighted on their page, right-clicked, chose the 'Blog This' option, then typed this post and they handled getting it posted to Blogger, because I'm even too supremely lazy to actually log in to make a post.

Flock — The web browser for you and your friends

technorati tags:Flock, laziness

Now reading: Last Call, by Tim Powers

A mix of magic, mysticism and Las Vegas. It gets off to a strong start, and so far is a perfect summer read. It's one of those books that makes you feel that magic is just underneath the surface or around the corner of everyday life. It's a bit like a mix between a Dan Simmons horror novel and a Charles de Lint fantasy novel. I recommend it!

Fun Night at the Red Sox

Russ & I went with our friends Scott & Judi to the Red Sox game vs. the Nationals last night (which happened to be my birthday...) We ate at Bangkok Blue first (although Thai Basil is still my favorite Thai restaurant in the Copley Square area), and had a very good dinner.

The game itself quickly turned into a blowout, but that was fine as we had a chance to catch up and chat for most of it.

Thanks Scott & Judi for such a wonderful night!!

The Shape of Things

Okay, so I didn't post last night, but at least I'm posting the next day. We went to see 'The Shape of Things' at the (relatively) new Arsenal center for the performing arts in Watertown. I wasn't too fond of it. There were some choices they made in how they did the piece that I'm not sure were the best, but even more importantly I'm not overly fond of the play itself. Overall their production was fine, but I didn't really enjoy it at any point, other than a few moments here and there.

The movie version is available in Comcast's "On Demand" area, and I watched the first 15 minutes or so of it. It affirmed my sense that there were certain choices made in the particular production we saw that I thought weakened it (Evelyn needed to be more the artsy/quirky/creative type, and not just very pretty. Adam was likeable but overly tic-ridden and twitchy, and didn't show enough of a change in personality (just a decrease in the tics/twitches) over the course of the play.) But, watching the movie confirmed that I'm still not fond of the story itself, even when done by its writer.

Maybe this time?

Okay, so this and my other blog have been idle for quite some time. I'm starting yet another attempt to resurrect them and actually post on a regular basis. I'll start with this one, my general 'whatever I feel like indulgently rambling on about' blog. I don't have anything specific to post about at the moment, but am just making a post to put the thought in my head.

I've recently been seeing/hearing/reading about things that I thought would fuel a good blog post, but was just too frickin' lazy (as usual) to do anything about it. So, here I go again, with another attempt.

Russ and I are going to see a play tonight in Watertown, MA. Afterwards we're going to a nearby Best Buy to see if they have a cheap 1080p TV (don't laugh, Westinghouse actually has a couple!) that may be worth buying. I'll try to follow through with a post or two tonight....

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Disappointment

I wasn't hoping for anything great, but after seeing the Chronicles of Narnia the other day I was definitely disappointed. With the exception of the youngest, the child actors were stiff and their characters not particularly likeable.

***SPOILER ALERT***: The following few points about why I was disappointed give away some of the plot, so those who haven't seen it yet may not want to continue reading....

Too many events felt arbitrary, from when and how the wardrobe served as a gateway to Narnia vs. just a wardrobe, to what "laws" the magic of Narnia operated under, to the "prophecy" of the children's role in defeating the witch. Aslan the lion "sacrifices" himself to save one of the children, but we later find out it was more of a lawyer-ly technicality rather than true sacrifice: he knew that the way the "deep magic" of Narnia worked would let him be reborn rather than be truly dead when he 'gave his life' earlier.

We also had the odd intrusion of Santa (!!!) into the movie, and to top it all off he serves as a sort of arms dealer for the kids, handing them weapons and other goodies to triumph in battle later.

The children seemed to be led by the nose through the whole adventure rather than truly showing intelligence, fortitude, or creativity. Things just seemed to constantly happen "Deus Ex Machina", which I suppose shouldn't be surprising given C.S. Lewis' intent to make this all a metaphor for Christianity.

The special effects were mostly good, and some of the Narnian creatures such as the beavers and Tumnus were likeable, and Tilda Swinton certainly did show more energy than anyone else as the witch. Liam Neeson's voicing of Aslan was soporific. He was gorgeously animated, but felt more like a kindly uncle than a strong, spiritual, charismatic leader.

Having said all this, I have a feeling I would have liked this movie much more as a kid, and imagine that most children would greatly enjoy it. But, I'm uncomfortable at the movie's attitude of violence as the only way to defeat your enemies. The Lord of the Rings certainly had its share of violence too, but the character of Gollum (amongst others) brought some interesting moral ambiguity into the mix, but Narnia is all black and white, with nothing but death being the way to handle your foes.

When not gaming: In Search of Lost Time

While gaming takes up lots of my leisure time, it's not the only thing I've been doing lately. I also decided to read the latest translation-series for Proust's "In Search of Lost Time". I'd ready about two-thirds of it using the old translation, but never got all the way through. By turns brilliant, funny, tedious, challenging and absorbing, I certainly can understand why many consider it the finest novel of the 20th century. (Not to mention one of the longest....)

A UK publisher had coordinated having several people translate the various volumes of the novel, and 4 of the 6 have been released in the U.S. by Penguin. I've just started reading them with "Swann's Way". So far I'm enjoying the new translation quite a bit. It seems clearer, more energetic, and less archaic and dated.

I'm off to read some more..... :-D

Games I'm playing right now....

I'm on an MMORPG kick on my PC while I wait for Oblivion to come out for the 360. Right now I'm playing:

Horizons: They have a special cheap rate going so I signed up to play this a bit more. I had played it when it first came out about 2 years ago, and thought it had lots of good points, but wasn't quite there yet. They've had some time to improve things a bit, so given the price of it I decided to give it another whirl. We'll see how it goes...

Irth Online: A new MMORPG made by a local company. It has lots of rough spots, but also some good strengths: A large world, communicative and hard-working dev team, lots of crafting choices, skill-based rather than level-based advancement, and graphics that are awkward and crude one moment, and gorgeous the next.

Settlers of Ganareth (prelude to Dark & Light): Lots and lots of bugs, not much content at all, but has a framework with lots of potential. A gigantic world with beautiful scenery (but very hardware demanding to see it at its finest), and an ambitious set of features that, if they deliver on most of them, will make for a fun and involving game that is rich in both PvP, exploration, and crafting activities. They seem to be making steady improvements, but I will take a wait-and-see attitude on how many of its promised features it'll actually implement.

So, between these three games I'm kept quite busy. We'll see which one captures the most of time over the next couple weeks.

Brokeback Mountain

Just saw this today, and was a puddle by the end of it. An absolutely wonderful movie. As many critics have pointed out, it is far more universal in its theme than just a 'gay cowboy movie'. It shows how not following our heart, in this case because of societal pressure to behave in narrowly-defined ways, can lead to great pain, not only for ourselves but for those around us. Everything from the cinematography to the direction and the performances are wonderful.

I was expecting a good movie given the praise, and knowing Ang Lee directed it, but I was surprised at how much this movie got to me. It's going to resonate for a long time.

Hardwood games: Pulling in non-gamers to the 360?

Earlier this week I noticed that Hardwood Hearts, Spades, and Backgammon were available via the XBox 360 Marketplace, and at $5 each I decided to get Hearts and Backgammon, as I love both games.

After troubleshooting my chat functionality not working (I had to solve it by putting my 360 in the DMZ for my router) I had a blast with the games. The graphics are basic, but well-done, and it's fun to be able to have a casual game of cards or Backgammon and be chatting via XBox Live. You can also send 'Fooms', which are little animations, from your in-game icon to your own or another players to express pleasure/displeasure or whatever with a recent move of theirs. I also like that you can kick off a game of Hearts with 3 computer-controlled players, and other people can step in and take over one of the computer players whenever they want.

While playing Hearts, I was chatting with a couple people who were not the primary purchasers/users of the 360, but their spouse was, and they were playing after seeing these games and then becoming interested. I wonder if Microsoft has found a way to slowly pull in people who were infrequent or non-gamers with these games? It is a very different experience to play one of these vs. running through Perfect Dark or some other game. Much more casual, social, and laid back.

I know I've been playing these more than my 'real' games, and it seems more and more people who normally aren't into the whole videogame arena may be pulled in more by these sorts of easy-to-pick-up and casual social games.

Keep an eye out for 'Twilight Sky', especially in a game of Hearts somewhere!

XBox 360 & Media Center: Success at Last!

Well, after a few hours of struggle I got my 360 working well with my Media Center laptop! Steps taken:

1. Upgrade video driver to v77.79. This was much harder than I anticipated because nVidia refuses to support laptop cards such as the Go5700 (which I have) and said that it is up to the manufacturers. Toshiba, of course, dropped the ball on this one and hasn't supplied any update past June 2004. So, I found this great site Laptopvideo2go which provides modified .inf files so we laptop users can use the latest nVidia drivers. Shame to both NVidia and Toshiba (moreso to Toshiba) for leaving their users in the lurch, and kudos to the people at laptopvideo2go!

2. I finally found a useful article on Microsoft's site describing how to fix the issue I had (corrupt or missing component in my media center installation) at this link.

3. Per that article, I re-installed the .net framework 1.1 sp1 update.

4. Then I re-installed Media Center 2005 Rollup 2

5. Then I re-installed the XBox media center extender and re-setup the connection between the 360 and my laptop.

And....it all works! So now I just have to hook my laptop up to my cable box and I'm good to go on using my XBox and it's connections to the TV and stereo to watch TV, record programs, listen to all the MP3s on my laptop, etc etc..

First impressions are that it is all working quite well, although the timelag between remote control commands and actually performing them is noticeable. (That makes sense though, since it has to go from the xbox over the network to the PC then via the IR controller to the cable box.)

So, everything's configured and running smoothly. See you around on XBox Live! Feel free to send a 'hello' message to Twilight Sky if you get a chance.

XBox 360: No luck with Media Center

I tried getting my XBox 360 to work with my Media Center PC yesterday afternoon, but I've given up for the moment. I have a Toshiba Qosmio laptop (an F15-AV201 to be exact) running Media Center 2005. I did the necessary download and installation on the PC, and was able to get the 360 and PC to 'see' each other over our wireless network after taking the 8-digit code the 360 gave me and entering it at the appropriate time during the installation on the PC.

The 360 was able to display the familiar media center menu, but gave a frustratingly generic 'Video Error' when trying to view live TV. I also discovered that the problem extended further than just with the 360 integration....my laptop itself now cannot show video! Media Center gives an error message and then crashes. It then tries to create and send an error report, but the processes never successfully finished sending the error report. So, not only do I have no integration, but my laptop's TV playing capabilities are broken.

I had created a system restore point before beginning the whole process, so I can easily rollback if I want to, but since I almost never use the Media Center capabilities as it is, I won't bother for now.

I didn't have much luck researching the issues yet, but will keep trying.

Overall, I'm still having a great time playing Kameo, Bejewelled, and Hexic. Once I'm done with Kameo I'll be concentrating on Condemned and finish that off, and then probably will end up getting Perfect Dark Zero to run through the single-player campaign, and then play co-op with my friend Scott over XBox Live. He'll be trying out Kameo too when I'm done with it, and if he likes it and gets a copy we'll be playing that co-op too. (I have a feeling once he sees the graphics and gameplay of it, he'll be getting a copy, even though this particular genre isn't his first choice....)

Dark & Light: It's not ALL about the 360

The 360 hasn't quite taken over my whole gaming life yet! I'm a fan of MMORPGs, and the PC is still the platform of choice for that genre.

Of the MMORPG's due out in the next half year or so, I'm most interested in Dark & Light, a game being created by a small French company. They have some interesting and ambitious design ideas such as having only one large instance of their world that can host up to 100,000 people at once. (At least, that's their goal.) In addition the geographic area itself will be enormous, and they are looking to create very rich alternatives to combat, with lots of things to do for crafters, traders, etc.. The game will also provide plenty of opportunities for PVP and faction vs. faction activities.

Another new approach they're taking is to offer a slowly-increasing subset of the final game's feature set starting December 8th that will be open to the public. It is pretty much an open beta, but they're branding it 'Settlers of Ganareth', and seem to be putting alot of thought into making it a fun gaming experience on its own right, without requiring people to go through the usual beta formalities.

They're also letting people pre-purchase a limited number of keys to Dark & Light that will give all sorts of in-game perks. At the time of this post lots of people were trying to get in to purchase those, so their site may be slow right now. (Essentially it's the beta for their billing procedures!) But, you do not have to do this to participate in SoG starting on December 8th, so you may just want to wait a couple days before trying to check things out.

Things running smoothly...

I've been seeing some newsbuzz around problems with 360s. So far, aside from the one freeze-up I experienced while updating my Bejewelled from trial to full version, everything has been smooth-as-silk for me.

I'll keep my fingers crossed, but, so far so good!

Condemned: Criminal Origins: First thoughts

This is the second of two games I got for the 360, and it's a great example of how strong graphics and gaming muscle alone don't make for a compelling gaming experience. Don't get me wrong: the graphics and sound are solid, rivaling those of current generation PC shooters, but the already repetitive gameplay and confined game environments (that I've encountered so far) keep it from being something special.

It's less about gunplay as your typical first-person shooter, and more centered around brutal, visceral melee combat. Wandering through the rundown, junk-ridden settings feels stereotypical and uninspired, but the game nevertheless builds some moments of strong tension due to the well-implemented audio and detailed graphics.

The experience of fighting the others in the game is disturbingly well done, but I did find myself getting into a groove, with each combat playing out very similarly to the last. I haven't played this much yet, so there probably are some twists and turns to come.

The 'forensic' portions of the game are only window-dressing so far, used as a way to advance the plot. There's no real thought involved with it...you are told to pull out some tool, you do so by hitting the X button, then just move your view window around slightly to focus in on whatever glows brightly and send the evidence off to your research partner, who will then contact you via cellphone to advance the plot.

Overall, I'm still enjoying myself playing this, but it does show how next-gen audio and graphics do not suffice in making a great gameplay experience. I'll post more when done (or near done), and let you know if Condemned shows more varied moves later on in the game.

Kameo: First thoughts

Kameo has gorgeous graphics, and shows the 360 off to good effect. In the past I've called Russ over to see some new game with good graphics, and he's not too impressed. But, when he saw me playing Kameo he seemed quite impressed with the graphics of the game. Since he's quite the curmudgeon when it comes to games, this is high praise indeed.

The gameplay is smooth, and so far is reminiscent of a smaller-scale Zelda-style game. It's quite linear so far, and I agree with other reviews that criticized it's overly-difficult beginning being followed by a simple tutorial. After this odd choice in game flow, it improves, and I'm having a blast playing it.

I'll post more after a few more hours of time with it, but in the meantime I think it's safe to enthusiastically recommend this to those who like Zelda and/or platform-style games. It's also a strong introduction to what the 360 is capable of doing.