Geek Swagger.
Archive for March, 2009
Unboxing of the Resident Evil 5 Collector’s Edition
Mar 10th
Looking to save some cash in these tough economic times? There's no better way than by letting other people drop the cash for a collector's edition. When they do an unboxing of the game, you can watch the video and it's just like you're there with them! In this video one of the hosts of the Joystiq Podcast, Justin McElroy, goes through all of the cool kit you'll be receiving if you've preordered RE5's $90 bundle. Me personally? I went for the standard edition, but after watching this video I feel a little envious!
The Buffalo Bills sign Terrell Owens
Mar 7th
As a Buffalo Bills fan my entire life I have to say, this kind of makes me happy. I know he's been a cancer to all of the teams he's gone to, but our team has no big egos to compete with him. Many people are concerned about head coach Dick Jauron being a softy, and so if we can get TO out there to call some people out for their bad play it might change some players' approach to the game.
Most importantly, with Lee Evans and Terrell Owens as our #1 and #2 wide receivers, we're a total threat in the passing game. Now if the Bills can just supplement the defense throughout the rest of free agency and in the draft they might actually make the playoffs for the first time in 9 years! Honestly though, if nothing else it'll bring some much-needed attention to my favorite small market team. If he causes drama big deal, at least we'll be featured on ESPN a little more often. =)
Source:
Watchmen
Mar 7th
So I literally just got home from seeing Watchmen and I figured it'd be best to put my thoughts down now. The movie is one of the best representations of a book or comic series that I've ever seen. In order to justify that they take their time with it and it clocks in at just under 3 hours including previews and such, but they utilize the time well. Some of the most interesting aspects of the original comic to me were the historical elements behind the Watchmen group, and from the beginning the movie does its best to describe as much of that back-story as you need. The only negative about that is if you're unfamiliar with the story it might seem to skip around a lot.
I suppose my only other criticism about the movie would be that it spends a lot of time focusing on the setup, the backstory, the "why," and less attention is paid to the "what." Some of the bigger setpieces in the graphic novel seem to fly by in the movie, but that's more than likely just a result of the different narration formats. When reading a comic or novel it might take you a whole day before you get through one plot line and in a movie it's forced down to 20 minutes.
Rorschach, my favorite character in Watchmen, was executed perfectly. In fact, the actor () even looks like him almost identically. They take their time and slowly develop his character by letting bits of pieces of his past and "prior work" slip, and by the end I think that even without reading Watchmen you'd get a good idea about Rorschach on the whole. As always it's really difficult to write about the plot much without heading into spoiler territory, so if it seems as though I'm dancing around the main subject here it's because I am. Just know that the characters in the movie are faithfully developed to their full potential, as was with the graphic novel (particularly Rorshach and The Comedian).
It's not a movie I'd recommend taking your kids to see, at all. There's a reason they gave it an R rating - plenty of violence which nearly ushers a Saw movie to mind, and so when I noticed that there were a couple of kids in the audience I couldn't help but cringe a bit. It's a superhero movie, yes, but not like you've probably seen before. It's gritty, realistic, and fantastic. If you have any interest at all in the work of Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, From Hell) and especially if you've read and enjoyed Watchmen, I'd say you have to go see the movie.
In fact you probably already have, so I hope it was well-received.
Laptop shopping
Mar 5th
It's become painfully obviously lately that I need a new laptop. The ol' black macbook (with a Core Duo, not even Core 2) isn't cutting it anymore. I'd also like something with a 15"+ screen. So, check out the Macbook Pro, right? Not so much. They're expensive!
I've done some looking around lately and my two most viable options are the Sony Vaio FW and the Dell Studio XPS 16. The Dell has better components (DDR3 RAM, RGBLED display) but costs a few hundred more than the Vaio. Despite all of that the lowest end Macbook Pro costs several hundred more than either of them. The biggest problem is that I like the looks of the Pro more than any laptop on the market, but that really isn't worth the extra $500 considering I'd be sacrificing a faster CPU and bigger default HDD.
So honestly I'm kind of stuck. I've found that I mostly use my MacBook for work stuff and therefore I'm running Windows on it 90% of the time, so going with a PC laptop seems the best route. Still, none of them seem perfect. From what I've heard the Vaio has really loud mouse buttons and a less-than-desireable trackpad. The Dell is...well, a Dell. It's got a leather accent on it which treads the thin line between cheesy and classy. It's also covered in glossy black finish which would indicate to me that it's a magnet for fingerprints, even moreso than my black matte macbook.
What's a geek to do! Any suggestions?
Your PlayStation 3 trophies are now available online
Mar 4th
Sony has put their users' trophies online at last (think Xbox 360 gamerscore/achievements), so you can see what you've unlocked. Â I'm hoping this leads to something similar to a gamercard down the road, but for now just having this nice interface to browse all of the trophies I've unlocked so far is pretty handy. Â All you have to do is login with your PSN credentials at and click the trophies tab.
From there it gives you a quick overview of all of the trophies you have (see mine below), and lets you drill down on a game-by-game basis to get more detailed info. Â Pretty cool!
Apple updates!
Mar 4th
Yesterday Apple updated a bunch of products. Most were just hardware updates (CPU speed bumps, graphics card updates, more RAM etc.) and there are so many to mention that I'll just have to refer you to or if you want to see the nitty-gritty details. Just know that if you were in the market for an iMac, Mac Pro or Mac Mini now's probably the time to take the plunge. I'm just happy because the iMac wasn't significantly updated, no aesthetic redesign or anything, so I'm still pleased with my 24" 3.06ghz iMac from last July.
What I did find interesting was a lesser-noted addition to Apple's product line: the new wired wireless keyboard. It's basically a wired version of of their wireless keyboard which means that it's shrunken down and has no number pad. To me this is pretty odd. The justification of forgoing a number pad on my wireless keyboard was that it was exactly that: wireless. Who's going to buy the same keyboard but now it has a wire and no numpad? Dunno, like I said, it just seems goofy to me.
What most excites me about these updates is what wasn't updated. This smacks of "clearing the road for WWDC" to me. With these updates they can get all of their spec-bumps out of the way and save the flashy stuff for WWDC. After all, announcing a new iMac that looks just like the old iMac but is slightly faster doesn't really excite audiences at a keynote. Instead they can roll out the new version of the iPhone, which I'm hotly anticipating. We might even see something a little more over-the-top like the iTablet everyone's talking about these days. Honestly though, if at WWDC they just spend a whole 2 hours talking about a new rev of the iPhone and how cool all of its new features are, I'll be happy.
If you think about it, the iPhone is the perfect product for WWDC. At a developers conference you should talk about what developers are developing for, right? Increasingly that's the iPhone. How many millions of applications have been downloaded from the App Store? Sure, standard desktop applications are still important but iPhone apps are the new hotness right now.
No ink on my fingers
Mar 1st
The big story this week in the tech world has been the collapse of a few big-name newspapers. There's no question that a lot of the more traditional forms of media have been hurting lately, and it seems the recession has really been the final nail for many of the sources. Given the cost of ink and paper, plus the cost of actually delivering a physical copy of a paper, it's just not feasible for many news outlets to put out a regular edition of their publication anymore.
I guess the question is, what's next? Many people are pointing to devices like Amazon's Kindle as the wave of the future when it comes to literature. It's easy on the environment, and most importantly much cheaper for publications. I heard somewhere that it would be cheaper for the New York Times to purchase a Kindle for every single one of their subscribers rather than continue to produce and deliver their paper. The only problem is that these devices aren't exactly accessible to normal consumers. The recently debuted Kindle 2 costs $359.00. That's a pretty big investment if you're just trying to get a few paper subscriptions a week. You get better deals on those subscriptions (as well as books) but it takes a lot of book purchases to justify the Kindle's price tag.
This switch doesn't really bother me, but I don't really ever read newspapers. I think with the internet and technologies like RSS, news has to become much more targeted. Rather than reading a newspaper I just catch RSS feeds from some of my favorite website on the internet, and none of those sites even have to do with world news. If something big is going down I'll usually hear about it from a site like Twitter or even from a news network on TV. Otherwise, I just stick to the tech and gaming news that I want to read on a daily basis. Again, this is another one of the generational conflicts. I understand that people who grew up before me are more accustomed to reading newspapers and the act of doing so becomes a bit of a tradition. Still, I'm not about to lose any sleep over the death of Rocky Mountain News.
My most anticipated title of the year is…
Mar 1st
...a remake of a 7 year old game that will probably be nothing more than a budget arcade title to most. That's right, Battlefield 1943 is a game I've been calling for since Battlefield 2142 came out. Its developer, DICE, has put out Battlefield games in pretty much every era possible. World War 2, Vietnam, the modern era with Battlefield 2 and even the future with 2142. So, what's left? Time to start all over!
Battlefield 1942 was easily my favorite game of the series. It might have something to do with the newness of the game at the time, but being able to get a huge (relatively speaking) group of people on a map with separate character classes and vehicles was extremely fun. I liked all of the games that followed but I'm most partial to the WW2-era arsenal, and since the guns and vehicles are the most important part of the game that means quite a bit.
The new game is titled Battlefield 1943 and is under development in the Frostbite engine. It'll launch for PC, Xbox Live Arcade and PSN. I'm almost certain I'll stick with the PC version though. Here's the trailer:
