What looked like it might start off as just another evening of me doing nothing but watching TV culminated in playing Bioshock 2, Borderlands, and finishing reading The Lightning Thief. For the former two, probably minor overall progress made, but at least I played them some. In the case of the latter, I ended up really enjoying the book, and it will be interesting to see if the movie is as faithful to the book as the first two Harry Potter movies were to their source material. Once I see the movie, I’m likely to start the second book in that series since they’re only $7 on my Kindle, and otherwise it won’t get used for anything in the near future aside from shelf decoration.
I seem to have laid out my plans for this weekend quite well (movie, and I have no other plans aside from playing games), so hopefully it won’t go by too fast before next week comes. The last thing I want is a short weekend, especially when I have stuff I want to get done. Unfortunately three day weekends are in short supply until Memorial Day, and I’m turning that into like a 9 day weekend, so effectively it’ll be until the 4th of July or something.
Personal - Seattle
So, I’ve been reading The Lightning Thief on my Kindle, but I’m not going to take it to work me. However, Amazon realized that I wouldn’t be the only person like this, so they made a Kindle iPhone app that syncs the location I’m at in the book, so I can read at home, pick up right were I left off whenever I have some time to kill at work (like during lunch since I eat quite quickly), and then when I get back home, my device is up to date with however far I read on my phone. The closed ecosystem of the Kindle may start to get to me if Amazon’s competitors (including, alas, the iPadTampon) come out with some awesome new features that don’t make their way into the Kindle software, but for now, I’m happy to play in Amazon’s garden.
I did squeeze some Bioshock 2 time in this afternoon, making slow (but measurable) progress. I’m not really sure if having it on the 360 will hurt or help in this regard between now and when I finish (whenever that might be). One benefit of PC games is that it’s much less “effort” (although I use that term quite loosely) to start playing, especially since I spend so much time on the computer anyway. On the flip side, dual monitors means that while playing it’s extremely easy to keep getting distracted, so at least for a game like Bioshock without much downtime, the 360 helps clear out those other attention wanting things.
Personal - Seattle
After seeing the movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I wanted to read the book. I got about two chapters into it before I thought to myself, “Wow, I just saw this in movie form. This isn’t that exciting.” Since the first two Harry Potter movies were some of my favorites and the director for those just had a very Harry Potter-inspired book to movie adaptation come out last weekend. I decided that hey, maybe it wouldn’t be a horrible idea to download the book on my Kindle, read it (since the book is always supposed to be better), and then go see the movie to see how they stacked up. I’m about halfway through the book so far, making a weekend movie trip seem quite possible.
I haven’t been making any additional progress in Bioshock 2 which is slightly disheartening, but I just have to decide if TV or video games are more important at night during the week. So far, TV has been winning, but aside from Monday (and Thursday), it really shouldn’t be. After all, on the scale of passive to active activities, playing video games may not rank up there with being a professional football player, but it’s infinitely more active than leaving the TV on the same channel for hours at a time and glancing over whenever the show is on instead of a commercial.
Personal - Seattle
The mobile world was shocked last year with Palm’s radically new webOS; this year the award goes to Microsoft for the new version of Windows Phone. Microsoft tends to be all about backwards compatibility, but Windows Phone 7 Series takes a cue from the Zune HD playbook, uses a radically new interface, and puts Microsoft square back in the phone race. Will it be able to take on the iPhone immediately? Of course not, and I don’t think anyone at Microsoft is expecting that. However, as the Bing strategy shows, make something that’s more compelling that the competition, and watch the victory gradually happen.
The Olympics meant no Chuck tonight (and the internet took the excitement out of watching the events since I knew what the results were), and it’ll be two more weeks before it returns. To continue to beat the horse, not only do I not get to watch the Olympics live, but it’s also messing up my weekly TV schedule. NBC, you wonder why you’re having a viewer problem? Let me just say that this doesn’t help.
Personal - Seattle
Alright, Assassin’s Creed, you made me go through one too many difficult fights (even though it was like the next to last one). You shall be relegated to the “almost but not quite completed” pile along with FFX, Metroid Prime, and probably countless other games in my lifetime that I’ve reached that stage before moving onto the next one. Actually, come to think of it, most games I’ve probably given up far before that point.
I started Bioshock 2 as my next game (because let’s face it, out of the stack, it’s the one at the top of my list by far), so we’ll see how progress in that goes. The optimist in me says I can beat it by the end of next weekend. The realist says maybe by the end of April I’ll have moved onto a different game (whether through victory or demotion). I’ll probably hold onto Spirit Tracks until my return trip to Dallas around Memorial Day; it just seems like it’d be a good week long game to keep me occupied, and that means I can spend my free time here on non-portable games.
Personal - Seattle
Ok, NBC, apparently we’re going to be playing this three hour tape delay all throughout the Olympics? You’ll show football games at the same time throughout all time zones, but the Olympics are too “special” to do that with? I’m slowly learning that people on the West Coast get screwed over when it comes to TV broadcasts, even though ironically so much of what’s on TV is made in this time zone.
In the world of “pointless restrictions Apple places on your media devices”, I was trying to put the teaser trailer video for Radical on my iPhone since the iTunes podcast feed is not live. (No, don’t worry, my desktop is still happily Apple-free – my Macbook still has the duty of all my iPhone syncing duties.) As it turns out, iTunes won’t do it because the video file is too big, and apparently resizing it on the computer or just letting the phone downsize it is way too difficult. Thanks for trying, Apple, but I’ll take my Zune HD that I can happy throw whatever resolution video I want at it, and it will “just work”. Perhaps Apple needs to look into that phrase some?
Personal - Seattle
Back in 2008 I didn’t really watch any of the Bejing Olympics opening ceremony, but I think it was on in the background at least part of the time. By the time it was broadcast in the US, it wasn’t live anyway, but then again very little of the Olympics were that year (aside from swimming). This year, however, the Olympics are happening about 120 miles from where I live, yet the opening ceremony isn’t even shown live here. Doing so in primetime would screw over the Eastern Time Zone, so the time zone that just happens to be hosting it gets a three hour tape delay. Logical, you decide, but I could have seen something live, driven back to my apartment, and seen it again on TV.
There are quite a few movies I could go see this weekend, and depending on how bored I am, I might just do so. Of course, any time spent going to see a movie takes time away from being able to play games, so I have to balance the two against each other. Now, I guess you could argue that I could go to the movies and play my DS or PSP sitting in the back row, but the games I have to work through are mainly 360 games. That actually reminds me, I still haven’t beaten Zelda: Spirit Tracks, so maybe this hybrid idea isn’t so bad at all…
Personal - Seattle
Last winter, Seattle had the big snowstorm to deal with that basically shut down everything around here (or so I’ve heard). This year, apparently Dallas and the East Coast gets this treatment while Vancouver would love nothing more than a huge snowstorm right now (well, maybe not too big). I’m not going to go as far to say that I’m jealous of the snow that Dallas is getting (even though it would mean no school for me tomorrow, UTD is closed), but you don’t really often see the amount of snow that has been falling in the past 24 hours in Dallas.
I’ll be closing out the week with one of my very full days, but all that means is that it’ll feel like the weekend comes even closer. If I have one goal for this weekend, it’s going to be to finally beat Assassin’s Creed so I can start working on the nine games (all 360) stacked up on my table, ranging from Bioshock 2 to Modern Warfare 2 to Fallout 3 to Oblivion (don’t worry, it’s the 4th in a series). The past month and a half have not been kind at all to my backlog of games.
Personal - Seattle
I have no idea what I did to get so tired today (I sat, sat, walked about 4 blocks to go get lunch, then sat x 4 more times), but I’m making this post now because I don’t plan on being up late enough to post anywhere around my normal time. Gamefest was fun, but there would be no reason for me to go back tomorrow. It was very much a MS specific GDC type event that didn’t have much to show off in terms of demos, but it was interesting to get a look at the “behind the scenes” world of what developers/producers care about when designing a game. For being free, it’s definitely something that I’d consider doing again next year, but PAX will remain the game convention at the top of my priority list.
So, I guess tomorrow is Monday and Friday will be Friday (doesn’t sound that special, but trust me, it is) in my second shortened week. I have to wonder if a 3-1-2-1 system would be better in the long run; no typical periods of two days off in a row, but you’re never more than three days away from another day off. Personally, I think I’ll stick with the current system for the time being and just enjoy some 2-1-2-2 weeks (like this one :) ) as they come.
Personal - Seattle
I’m not sure if you want to call it a company, a studio, or what, but the “group” behind The Heretic (Edgeworks Entertainment) announced a new series on their 5th anniversary today. Alexander and Meghan, both living in LA, are doing Edgeworks’ first live action series, Radical. Rather than be on the crew as I was for The Heretic (because let’s face it, Seattle and LA aren’t that close to each other), I guess you could say that I’ve been helping out with the site some, assisting Alexander in moving everything over to Site5 and also dealing with the random PHP and database problems, but I’m pretty much just a spectator this time around.
It’s sort of nice to not even be thinking about work tomorrow since I have GameFest to go to. It’ll be pretty much an all day event, so I’ll be leaving around 7:30 in the morning and won’t get back until probably around that at night. I really don’t know much of what to expect, so I’m assuming that it will be PAX-like with a greater emphasis on the various sessions instead of the expo floor. I’ll let you know tomorrow night if this assumption was correct or not.
Personal - Seattle