So, I Now Have a PS3

Eventually, I knew this would happen; eventually, I knew there would be a line crossed from which the temptation could not be overcome; eventually, I knew that I would find myself owning one of Sony’s most love-hate debated toys, the convexoconvex-shaped obsidian-black PS3.  I have the 40GB model, which means I was also treated to a comp of Spiderman 3 (THWIPP!) on Blu-Ray and I got a single sixaxis controller, but that was about it.

My first thought was something like “damn this hog is heavy” when I compare it to the Wii, which is about the size and weight of 3 DVD cases stacked together.  Granted, the Wii isn’t the biggest badass in gaming over the last year+ and it isn’t the most highly rated fun machine in the universe … oh wait, yeah it is.  Ok so granted, the Wii doesn’t advertise 1080p graphics and Blu-Ray playback, but my dissertation on the Wii is a different post.  The point is, the PS3 is a big bitch, and she’s got a fat ass to go with it; must be a Georgia girl.

Of course I had to have a game with it to justify taking it out of the box.  My game of choice - Rock Band.  As the proud owner of GH3 on Wii, and a prior owner of GH2 and GH2 80’s encore both on PS2, I have to admit that I’m pretty sold on the GH line of games except for the coming title that is GH:Aerosmith.  While I believe Joe Perry is one of the iconic music figures of the last 30 years, there are a zillion people who don’t think so and the target audience for GH:Aerosmith is going to be the 30+ crowd since today’s heavy gamers aren’t old enough to truly respect Aerosmith’s heyday.  Anyway, second sidebar finished.  I got Rock Band.  I love it. 

Most people who are experience GH players will say Rock Band is “too easy” in its guitar parts.  What I’ve played of the guitar sets, comparing the “Hard” level difficulty on both games, I am inclined to agree that GH3 is “harder” than Rock Band at the end of the game.  I haven’t played through Rock Band on “Expert” with the guitar yet so I don’t know how it stacks up.  HOWEVER, that is where the comparisons effectively end.  In every other way - from character creation to online play to downloadable music (I’m biased here b/c of GH3 on Wii and RB on PS3) to just the overall soundtrack of the game - RB is hands down better than GH3.  Plus, if I get bored of “Green Grass and High Tides Forever” on expert, I can always plug in the microphone and sing while I play for an added challenge that GH3 could never provide.  My only knock on Rock Band is that there should be a tour mode available for the bass guitar parts - bass is pretty fun in RB.

Back to the PS3 itself.  I found the “home” menu a little unwieldy, honestly.  Sure it has all of the options, but the fishbone layout is nearly awful and some features aren’t where I’d expect them to be in their main menu categories.  The sixaxis controller, regardless of the palindrome, is actually pretty nice once it gets a full charge - I learned that I could just charge it off of my PC instead of leaving the PS3 on for years, so that helped.  My one other knock on the PS3 overall is that it doesn’t have a standby mode.  It is either fully on or fully off with no happy medium.  But that is where the Wii smokes it with its messaging protocol/feature.  My blue Wii lights are flashing right now, even.

What I need in order to make the PS3 a mainstay at home - some family titles like stuff I could do with my boys.  Assassin’s Creed doesn’t quite cut it, neither does COD4, Heavenly Sword or GTA4, though those titles would be great for me by myself.  The EA sports line just won’t ever make it at my house because, except for Tiger Woods’ golf games, their sports games blow.  The other thing that needs to happen here is that Sony needs to branch out and stop reaching into only the heaviest gamer genres with their titles.  They could certainly take a lesson from Nintendo on this one.  But, now that the Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD (HHD DVVDD BVD for those in the know) battle is officially over, it looks like PS3 sales are going to have a leg to stand on, finally.

Who will win? IE8 vs Firefox 3

As a disclaimer, this discussion will probably not be technical enough to satisfy the extremely passionate readers who have an opinion on one side or another.  Further, the release cycles aren’t exactly in sync - as of this writing, IE8 has a developer-focused beta 1 available, while Mozilla is nearer release with Firefox 3 now in beta 4.

I’ve had IE8’s beta1 for around a week now.  What really turns me on to IE8 is that the development team at MS is really trying to produce a next-gen browser capable of supporting standards for things like CSS 2.1 and HTML5.  MS touts IE8 as a release aimed at creating and promoting interoperability - of course we have learned that we cannot place much trust in MS press releases about how good their products are going to be or even which features they will ultimately contain.  In this case, however, I believe MS has some must-deliver goods on the table and the ultimate fate of IE’s viability hangs in the balance with this release.

Despite being the de facto browser for millions of PC users that know no better, it’s the developers who are writing these new, rich Internet multimedia technologies that are going to swing the pendulum one way or the other with IE8.  If Joe User gets random crashes and badly rendered stuff in IE8, but gold-plated mastery in Firefox, then Joe is probably going to convert.  The same is true for the converse - where people find Firefox to suck they will usually go with IE (I mean Windows users).

One interesting addition in IE8 that I want to see is the WebSlices feature.  In my beta1 I’ve gotten it to work once but it was on static text in a page that holds little value.  The point of webslices are to serve as mini-feeds that web services can implement/call and provide info back to the user without requiring the user to be in that webspace to do it.  I love this function; I want to see it work first, though, before I start throwing myself at it.

But what about Firefox 3?  First of all, unlike IE8, the Firefox project has their product requirements document publicly available on the Mozilla wiki.  Some of the interesting features I pulled from the requirements document myself:

• Integrate with Vista Parental Controls
• Revised download manager
• Support for Linux ATK (accessibility)
• Several security improvements

I guess what I mean to say is that, it’s not a rewrite-style release like IE8, so the list of features isn’t going to include a bunch of grandiose “make the Internet cooler” type requirements.  The honest truth is that IE8 is trying to catch up with and arguably surpass the capabilities of Firefox.  While Firefox does have CSS issues from time to time - especially on sites that were written specifically for IE5.5 or IE6 - its version 2 evolved from feedback about what people wanted in IE but were less likely to “get”.

Ultimately, one of these browsers will prevail.  For completely unrelated reasons, I’m going to say that Firefox is the real winner regardless of IE8’s potential successes.  Corporate America is slowly moving its desktop users away from MS platforms and onto either Macs or Linux distributions (semantics at this level).  I personally would like nothing more than to convert my laptop from Windows XP SP2 to something like K/Ubuntu or Fedora.  In the Linux space, Firefox pretty much reigns though the flavors of browsing technology begin to vary vastly into personal preference when dealing with higher computer literacy percentages; the point there is that there’s no home for IE on Linux, and little welcome for it on Mac.

How Computer-Savvy is Your Mate

If you’re reading this post, you can at least wield a mouse and keyboard enough to search for something on Google or your favorite search engine, or you can navigate wordpress fairly well.  How about your significant other?  I’ve devised a quick little quiz to bring out the true nature of your mate’s overall computer skills.  You may play along if you wish.

1. What is the commonly-used name for these compressed file types?
a.  .zip
b.  .rar
c.  .tar.gz

2.  Which one of these isn’t a popular GNU/Linux distribution?
a.  Fedora
b.  Slackware
c.  Xubuntu
d.  Leftish

3.  Which one of these is not a web browser?
a. Concerto
b. Flock
c. Opera
d. SeaMonkey

4.  Which one of these is not a common PC input type?
a.  RJ-45
b.  RG-11
c.  RCA
d.  SATA

5.  Which of these protocols operates at the fastest speed?
a.  USB 2.0
b.  DS-3
c.  Firewire
d.  ATA

 

How did you do?

Nintendo’s Wii Protective Covers Not too Shabby

As a Wii owner I was privy to the offer of protective covers for my Wii remotes that Nintendo recently posted.  Under their agreement, they are including the covers in all new Wii console packaging and therefore those of us who already own a Wii are not being short-changed by the offer.  It’s a nice touch though it will cost them millions all in the realm of improving the safety for the user and providing some durability for the remote itself.

I got my covers yesterday; though I only own 2 Wii remotes I obviously got the max available during the offer, which was 4.  They’re pretty nice, actually; in fact, they are so nice that I consider them to be the second generation of protective covering for Wii remotes.  Initially we’ve been rimjobbed by glorified skins that do nothing more than keep the original remote clean and perhaps make a house full of kids’ remotes easier to identify.  This new, Nintendo-issued cover is much more than that.  It offers grip assistance, a protective “plug” for the nunchuk port, and it provides air-pocket cushioning on the front half of the remote where the delicate work is housed inside (and also to provide some protection from projectile remotes being launched at much costlier television screens).

What is my rating for the new protective covers?  On a 1-10 scale they are an 8.8.  I wish you didn’t have to remove nearly the whole thing to change batteries, and I wish there was a grip assisting cover for the nunchuk, which there is not.

Who has these that cares to comment?

Technorati Tags: Wii , gaming , Nintendo

HP:DH Audiobook for your iPod

Let’s face it, sooner or later the gestapo of Apple will be offering Jim Dale’s recorded version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for purchase and download via iTunes (an anagram of nutsie, btw).  But, even if that’s all well and good for convenience sake, why would you buy it from them?  Why would I download a set of DRM-encrusted m4b iPod-specific files when I can get the actual discs from any major retailer either online or in-store for 1)cheaper, probably and 2)more flexible? 

It’s certainly not rocket science to take the MP3 or AAC discs and convert them to nutsie’s format, thanks to freeware and shareware programs out there on web sites like freeipodsoftware.  I personally use the MP3 to iPod Audiobook Converter, and haven’t had any problems with the newest iTunes and current iPod firmware.  The only note worth mention is that the files need to be kept under about 4-5 hours runtime each, or you may have trouble getting your iPod into sleep mode.

Technical capability aside, nutsie doesn’t offer US customers the option to purchase the Stephen Fry reading of the UK book editions.  Jim Dale does a good job, but the UK readings are actually my preference, and they’re widely available - if you can’t find it at Target or a retailer, Britain’s Amazon has it.  I doubt nutsie, who thrives so heavily on targeted marketing, will ever come to grips with that.  Hell, I can’t even buy Japanese music from Japan via nutsie, but I can certainly get it from other outlets.  I went as far as to set up a proxy in Tokyo to get to the actual Japanese nutsie store online and just check it out. off topic, sorry.

So, who out there is planning to or has already dumped HP:DH audiobooks onto their iPod, even before the nutsie store has it for sale?

Is Windows Live Writer what YOU blog in?

I guess I’m a little behind the technology curve when it comes to blogging utilities ~ I don’t really have a problem with Firefox and the stock WordPress editor, but evidently the people who do that are now in the minority and a plurality of folks are using WLW for their blog posts.  So, I decided to give it a go; and this post is being drafted in WLW.

I guess the download and setup is simple enough, and it seems to integrate with WordPress well enough, so the fact that I travel a good bit might make it easier to blog on the go.

If you’re experienced with WLW, or you refuse to use it for some reason, please leave a comment or so and mention your thoughts and/or experiences.

I’m in the Comcast SDV trial! Woot?

As an employee I’ve been asked to participate in the field trials for switched digital video; I got my official notification in the mail today. Those who know me know very well that I’m a test engineer by profession, so I’m actually excited about being part of the beta, but at the same time, I do want to be able to watch TV at certain times of the day, and if I don’t have a signal because of a provisioning problem, me and big brother are going to have to tangle.

So, the obvious question: wtf is and what is the importance of switched digital video? I’ll try to keep my answer simple. Switched Digital Video, or SDV, is an evolution in how cable television operators provide a tv signal from a headend to a customer. It dedicates an amount of bandwidth to the household rather than doing bandwidth-sharing which is a common source of issues like interference in hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) architectures. What it boils down to is that the customer only takes the bandwidth that their tuned channels need, and that savings in bandwidth allows the cable provider to route additional services in the line — like high-speed internet or other data applications — as well and provide a virtually unlimited number of channels to the customer.

I know that Time Warner cable was pretty aggressive out of the box with implementing SDV. Comcast is starting field trials here in Denver in May and I don’t know when a public release/rollout would take place after that, but I’m excited to see it happening.