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July Video Games Report
Lucky reader, you get (at least) two posts today! Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (4 hrs) – I finally started playing Ass:Rev nearly 7 months after I got it as a gift. I’d been putting off playing it because it’s a lot easier for me to play computer games at night than it is to play with…
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Microsoft and Sour Grapes with XBONE DRM
In a lot of ways I really don’t care what happens in the video game console world. In the last 2-3 years I have rediscovered computer gaming. Actually, to be more accurate, game publishers have rediscovered computer gaming. I remember in my youth when the best of the best games came out for computers and…
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Returning to Universal Studios
The last time I went to Universal Studios Orlando was nearly 20 years ago for Rock the Universe 1999. It was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done – enjoying the park by day with all my close friends and then a series of concerts at night. Despite getting soaked by the night-time…
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New York Times allows judgement to be clouded by jealousy?
I came across this story back in May, but things appear to be at a stand-still. Essentially, The New York Times came up with an awesome new way to tell stories on the web and when someone figured out how to duplicate it, they sued. Let me start by saying that one awesome thing about…
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May 2013 Video Games Report
During the month of May I continued to try and completed story-based games in my library. Quantum Conundrum (3 hrs) – I started playing the game early this year. I really, really enjoy this game, but the imprecision of the moves really bugs me. I’ve been playing it with a keyboard and mouse, does anyone…
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Bitcoin Roundup
Boing Boing pointed me to a few Bitcoin articles and then there was another one on Ars on 6 May. I’d be pretty surprised if you haven’t heard about Bitcoin; it’s been all over the news because of the crazy bubble the Bitcoin exchange rate was having recently. But, just in case, Bitcoin is a…
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San Francisco Trip Day 4
After confirming with Danielle that her family didn’t want breakfast, I went out for breakfast and saw the above mustachioed car. They’re for a service called Lyft that uses regular people as cab drivers. More about that here. The first time I learned about the way taxis are regulated was when I was at Cornell.…
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Using Digikam from the Point of View of Lightroom User
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I’ve been into photography since I was five years old. That’s when I got my first Kodak Instamatic camera and started shooting photos and creating photo albums. I have about ten photo albums, with most of them coming from when I got to high school and could really…
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First Playthrough of Mass Effect (Part 3)
Last time I blogged about Mass Effect, I had just finished up with a planet where a plant was controlling everyone. After that I did my first real tour of my ship to go talk to all the people who had joined my crew. I got to sneak up on Ash talking to her sister…
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Comics Review: New X-Men, Batman, Inc, X-Men: Legacy
Morrison at his BEST! New X-Men Ultimate Collection # 1 – Book 1 Holy cow! That’s not strong enough, that volume requires some high level “Whoa!” and “DID YOUO SEE THAT?” and all kinds of profanity (if you happen to condone such tings) to describe what a ride it was to read Morrison’s take on…
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How Video Games Grew Up When I Wasn’t Looking
There was a time when I loved video games. I subscribed to EGM and EGM2. I trolled the nascent World Wide Web looking for video game news. I read IGN religiously. The most powerful systems out there were the Nintendo 64 and the Playstation. Then I discovered girls and dropped the subscriptions. Most of the…
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KDE: Strength in Abstraction
I have not yet tried out Gnome Shell or Ubuntu Unity, but the biggest complaint most people level against them is that our desktops are being tablet-ified. Sure, there need to be new, innovative interfaces for tablets and phones, but that’s no reason to abandon the desktop. Sure, perhaps the average Joe (or Jane) will…
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Testing out KDE’s Activities
Now that KDE 4.6 has finally landed in Fedora (KDE 4.6.1, to be precise) I can properly test activities. I spoke before of how I planned to use them back in this post. So let’s see how well it works in practice. I think for my first activity, I will setup an activity for programming…
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Finishing Assassin’s Creed 2 and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
Back at the beginning of January, I compared the first and second installments in the Assassin’s Creed main line of games. A couple weeks ago I finished up Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, a continuation of Desmond and Ezio’s stories. I don’t have too much more to add to what I wrote about the second game…
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Assassin’s Creed vs Assassin’s Creed II
Because I rarely play games when they first come out, I had the occasion to play Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed II back-to-back. As I’ve mentioned before ( near the end of the post ) getting to experience sequels one after another can yield some benefits over waiting years in between. (Plus, in the case…