Happy Easter!
Filed in Twitter, Video, blog, March 23, 2008, 11:59 amHappy Easter you all! Here is a video to celebrate the holiday … Enjoy!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCrGnd3ljqA[/youtube]
Thanks Kent Nichols
My Xbox 360 can blog?
Filed in Gaming, blog, March 18, 2008, 12:56 am
Yes its true! My Xbox 360 speaks to me and it does so with vigor and humor. It even makes me sad when I don’t play it every day. This is made possible by a fun little website called 360Voice.com The site basically uses your gamertag on Xbox Live to create an automatic blog per day, based on your activity. The automated system is written very well you would swear someone is at the keyboard writing these each day. I have not seen a repeated phrase yet. These automated blogs are what the site creators call Blogjects, which are basically “objects that write “blogs” about their interactions with the world and other devices just like humans write about their interactions with the world and other people.”
Whenever you play a game on Xbox Live, at the end of the day 360 Voice will make an entry in your blog similar to this:
I thought curs0r just wanted to listen to music or watch a DVD. Turns out he was there to game. With a gamer score of 2,403, I should have known that was the case. He rallied Call of Duty 4, and then the lightweight went to bed. Freakin’ wuss.
When you don’t play any games that day 360Voice will say something like this and make you feel like you ripped out its soul:
curs0r, there are 86,400 seconds in a day and you couldn’t find a few to spend with me? Lame.
If you add some friends to your watchlist you can also get some entries like this added to your daily blog:
It is probably better that curs0r didn’t play yesterday… it gives BlexBox360 an opportunity to add to that 3,320 gamerscore and increase the lead… Booooo!
If you want to see more of my blog on 360Voice click here. Oh and when you see the entries about Tetris Splash and Uno, that’s my wife. I wouldn’t play that crap. :)
Freemium games: Quake Live and Battlefield Heroes
Filed in Gaming, Internet, blog, March 6, 2008, 3:35 am
What are “Freemium” games you ask? Freemium stands for “free-to-play premium games” based on their most popular titles in order to attract new audiences and open new revenue advertising revenue streams. Games like this have been limited in the past to flash or 2D games. Implementing games such as these in the FPS market is a new venture and two of the biggest franchises are taking a stab at it: Id Software with their Quake and Doom franchises and Dice the makers of Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, and Battlefield 2042.
Id Software is building Quake Live from the widely popular Quake III Arena engine and Dice is building Battlefield Heroes, a brand new “cartoon shooter” similar to the cell-shaded Team Fortress 2 from Valve. Both games will be offering a totally free to play, web based experience that is targeting a broader audience then their typical games which appealed more to the hardcore gamers of the world. This is becoming a popular trend now for gaming with the advent of the Nintendo Wii and more gamers opting to play console games over PC games due to the stringent PC specs required to run the latest FPS games. These games are hoping to capitalize on the idea of the FPS experience without the need for the top of the line PC.
California Dreaming
Filed in blog, March 2, 2008, 6:57 pm
Sorry for the delay in posts. I have been busy with work and also out of town in California for work and visiting relatives. I had to go to Corona, California for a software installation for work and some of my relatives live in Corona as well. My sister recently moved there as well to start find a job. Perfect opportunity.
California is a beautiful place but I its a little too rich for my blood. While I was there I took my sister and two cousins to go to Hollywood to go star gazing at the Oscars but we got there too late. By the time we got to the red carpet area, the show had already started :( I did get some nice pics of the red carpet area and some of the sites. You can see my pics on my Flickr page. We did get to stop by the World’s Famous Pink’s Hot Dogs that my cousins were raving about.
I think the reason they are famous is because of their hour long wait and this was after 3PM! The hot dog was good but I think anything would be if you had to wait that long. At least I can say I went, right. It was good to see my relatives that I hadn’t seem in many years.
Conan vs John Stewart vs Stephen Colbert!
Filed in News, TV, Video, blog, February 18, 2008, 7:58 pm
One of my buddies at work was talking about this sketch that played on Conan so I had to look it up on YouTube and I have to say that this is one you can’t miss.
This all started as a mock feud over who ‘made’ Mike Huckabee. They all say they are responsible for his success and begin voicing their opinions on why they started Mike Huckabee. Check out the YouTube video below. If you can’t watch the video or don’t want to watch the 8 minute long masterpiece sketch.
I have written down a play-by-play for your viewing pleasure. Just hover your mouse over the black boxes below. Watch the video if you don’t want to be spoiled.
YouTube Link
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=GvG8jDOpQrA[/youtube]
Videodrome Weekend
Filed in Gaming, Video, blog, February 11, 2008, 2:08 am
Videodrome… I guess that is every weekend for me but especially this weekend. I am just like Maxx Renn from the movie I am on an “endless search for new material with which to titillate viewers.” By the way, you should check out this movie if you haven’t seen it already. It is definitely very trippy even for these modern times. I don’t have alot of original material for your eyeballs today but I do have some good finds video-wise from around the net. A little bit of gaming, WTF?, WoW, as well as a few for the kiddies.
Zero Punctuation - This one is for the gamers out there. This reviewer is one of the most irreverent, potty-mouthed, bastard of a reviewer I have ever heard but…I love it! His name is Yahtzee, who is a british-born Australian game reviewer. I would describe his style of reviews as part Micro Machine Man, stick figure graphics, sarcasm, and vulgar. Here are three of the games I have he reviewed lately: Call of Duty 4, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed. Check him out, at the very least you will be entertained.
F**k Planet Earth - This one might not be safe for work but you could get by watching it at work with some headphones. This is a parody of the Planet Earth series on Discovery. That is all I am going to say and no you didn’t have to see the show to get it.
Skateboarding Explosions in SloMo - Well if you have ever seen slomotion skateboarding videos before then this is just like those videos plus some TnT! If you liked that video here is another one of the same caliber: Invisible Skating.
10 of Geekiest Home Theater setups - Here are a list of some sweet home theater setups based on scifi, movies, TV shows, etc. Basically if you have money to blow, you too can have your theater look like the batcave, Egypt, the enterprise, the death star, whatever you desire.
The Guild - This is a little gem of a show I found while scouring youtube. It is a comedy about the lives of some WoW Guild members and their lives online and off. Each character has unique traits that set them apart. The show was recently featured on the LA Times. Here is their official website as well.
….Ohh I lied no kiddy videos here :)
Super Bowl Weekend 2008
Filed in TV, Twitter, Video, blog, February 4, 2008, 2:41 am
What better way to categorize this weekend. Saturday was pretty much a wash with me staying in working on some chores around the house. Sunday was the big day of course! Sarah and I went over to a friend’s house to watch the game. He recently bought a new house and got married. Congrats Rick and Michelle if you are reading this!
I don’t typically get into the whole Super Bowl thing but in my never ending search to find kewl things on the interweb I came across Jeremiah Zwyang’s TwitterBowl experiment. You can click on the link for all the details but basically Jeremiah setup a twitter account to log people’s responses to the SuperBowl ads giving each commercial a 1-5 star rating. I thought this was a great way to pass the time while watching the game. If you want to see what I rated for the commercials check out my twitter site. I was pretty consistent on my voting right up till the half-time show. Its pretty hard to text and watch at the same time even when you have a full Qwerty keyboard and small Asian hands. Tom Petty was boring and I started socializing more than texting. For a recap of Jeremiah’s TwitterBowl check out this link.
Here are some of my observations from 2008’s Super Bowl Ads:
Car Ads this year:
Audi,GMC,Lexus,Ford,Hyundai,Toyota (All crap Except for Audi with the Godfather reference and Toyota with the Badgers.)
Movie Ads this year:
The worst ads at the superbowl:
The most creative Ads:
Poor use of Celebrities:
Good use of Celebrities
By the way if you missed any of the Super Bowl Ads, AOL Sports has all of them. Check out the one’s you missed. Oh and for widescreen commercials, check out Hulu.
Down to make the Clowns Frown
Filed in Comics, blog, January 29, 2008, 1:43 pmMark at hateisfun.com is at it again, continuing on with the “Attack of the clowns” theme he started back in Strip 54. Here is Strip 56.
Weekend Recap (January 26 & 27, 2008)
Filed in Internet, Video, blog, January 27, 2008, 11:53 pmThis was another fun-filled weekend of staying in. I did have some friends come over Friday night and we played a little Xbox 360 and Trivial Pursuit (the DVD version) . We got bored of answering the card questions and started only playing the video questions which are usually only meant for the pie pieces.
On Saturday and some of Sunday I caught up with my usual places on the web and watched some video podcasts as well. Here is a list of the internet jewels I found along the way. Most of these are videos so sorry to those at work (my office blocks streaming video, something about losing productivity).
First we have the latest episode of Diggnation Episode 134 “Dreaming of the SuperBowl” Is it me or are they less funny when they are not drunk? During this episode, Kevin mentioned how he hated some of the features about youtube like its crappy compression and talked about another service he liked called Vimeo which he left had some good content plus HD video. I checked it out and found a killer video someone took in Japan showing 3 areas at night sped up.
Which brings me to my next video which is part of a series called landscapeHD. If you want to see it in HD click this link.
LandscapeHD from LandscapeHD on Vimeo.
Saturday evening was also the Season 2 Opener of Torchwood on BBC America. First of all if you are a fan of the Dr Who series then you will love Torchwood. Man of you will recognize Captain Jack Harkness who popped in and out of the Dr Who series. Episode 1 entitled “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” is a good summary of the episode. This did have alot of kissing both guy-on-girl, and guy-on-guy. The “bang bang” part stems from the fast pace the characters are reintroduced to us and well as the quick return of Captain Jack Harkness, who mysteriously disappeared at end of Season 1. Special Guest star is James Marsters, who you might recognize as Spike from the Buffy series. Very good episode indeed. For a more in depth review of the episode check out Newsday.com’s review.
The last thing is this awesome demonstration of what 4 days, a video camera, alot of running, and some green screen can accomplish. This is a behind the scenes look at a video shoot for a BBC2 TV show called Time Watch:Bloody Omaha. Theses 4 videographers were able to capture the look and feel of the battle of Normandy on a shoe string budget with the four of them taking video on the beach and alot of green screen. Once you see the result you will be blown away. Here is the article and here is the video.
