Geek Swagger.
Life
Back at it
Jan 8th
Well it's been a long awesome Winter break and unfortunately I neglected the blog for a couple weeks so it's time to start back up. Hope everyone had a great holiday, I certainly did. I got to spend a lot of time with friends and family and basically, just relax. Over the break my gaming repertoire was increased and now my Xbox 360 is sitting next to a . I've been wanting a PS3 for a while so to finally have one is pretty sweet. Because I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about my gaming habits I figured I'd blog a bit about my experiences setting up and using the PS3. I've read and seen a lot about the process and a lot of the time it seems that people thought it was difficult. I disagree. There are some problems but overall getting the PS3 up and running was smooth sailing.
There is, of course, the usual stuff - power connector, ethernet adapter, video hookups. In this case there is a bit of a problem. For some reason (despite including a player and also being advertised as an HD games and media machine) the PS3 only comes with . The 360 at least comes with which, looking back on it, is pretty nice. One thing the PS3 does have that the 360 premium bundle didn't at the time I bought one is an HDMI port. So the day after Christmas I picked up an HDMI cable and now my PS3 is running in true HD. It looks great. If for this reason alone, that is to say if the PS3 wasn't a Blu-Ray player, it would be my default machine for watching movies and the like. I can tell even on normal DVDs that the quality is much improved. The Blu-Ray player is nice, I only have one movie (Spiderman 3 - it came with the PS3) so I can't really give my full opinion yet. It's definitely better looking than your standard DVD but it's not an unbelievable boost in quality from what I can tell so far. I only watched about 15 minutes of Spiderman though so I could be wrong. I need to sit down and watch the whole thing sometime. I also signed up for Blu-Ray's deal they're offering with the purchase of a new Blu-Ray player. All you have to do is clip the UPC barcode off of your player's box, select the 5 movies you want from the ones they offer, and mail the form with receipt and UPC into them. I'm sure the turnaround for the free discs is slow but hey, you can't argue with free.
As part of the intial setup for the PS3 you're asked to setup an initial user for the PS3 itself (much like setting up a user in your computer's operating system when you first install it) plus it checks to see if you have an internet connection and, if so, lets you sign up for Sony's . PSN is their online offering that's similar to the Xbox 360's . You can play online, download games and movies, and manage a friends list. Oh by the way, it's also free. I went ahead and signed up for it right away and again, the process was smooth. When signing up you're basically accessing a web page from the PS3 so it's identical to filling out a form online. You can connect a keyboard and mouse to the PS3's USB ports and fill it out or just use the controller. The PS3 uses a nice auto-complete feature for which guesses what you're trying to type. So, for instance, if I enter "Pla" there's a list to the right of the on-screen keyboard with suggestions of which word I'm actually trying to enter. One of them might be "Playstation," so I go click on that and it's entered for me. This system is faster than the 360's data entry so I was pretty pleased. Next you charge up the controller with the (again this trumps the 360's controller which takes batteries, or is charged automatically with a separate $20 charging cable.
On to the games. I only have one so far but it's pretty great. is probably the platformer of the year for good reason. The other games in the Ratchet series have always been good so the fact that Tools of Destruction delivers is no surprise. I've also tried some demos for other games (, , ) and I think Uncharted: Drake's Fortune will be my next purchase. It's a really great game that hasn't been getting much hype. I also need to pick up an online game, probably (which comes with a headset for online play). So those are probably my next purchase. Overall the experience has been nice, and it almost reminds me of an Apple product in ways that things sort of just work. When I first booted my PS3 it had already detected my network media share so I was able to listen to tunes while I was getting everything going. That plus it's a beast of a machine with a large capacity default hard drive and very few of these proprietary costs like you get with the 360. Especially considering that for about a week and a half around Christmas for some unexplained reason, the service (and the console, practically) was unusable for this amount of time because a service that - all of that made the PS3 look like a good addition to my rig.
Now Playing:
, , ,
Giving Thanks
Nov 22nd
Alright so it's Thursday and a post is due...the only problem is today happens to be Thanksgiving. For that reason I just wanted to say that I hope you're all having a good one. I like Thanksgiving because it's the last holiday before the Christmas blitz where you get to chill with family for no other reason than to enjoy their company and appreciate what you've got. Of course right after Thanksgiving the holiday season is in full swing, but to me on Thanksgiving you can avoid all of that. Food, family, and friends. Hard to top that.
So stop reading this and go eat some turkey! Also, if you're going to brave the crowds tomorrow on I hope you get some incredible deals. That's never been something I was too into but that doesn't mean I don't respect those who are. I think I'm more of a kind of guy. =)
Now Playing:
,
The new Buy Knives Online is live!
Sep 18th
I was having dinner with my brother and sister in law for her Birthday when he mentioned that the new Buy Knives Online site is live. I posted previously about some work I did on it, so now that it's live I'd really appreciate it if you'd check it out. The site has a ton of outdoors goods so if you know a hunter, fisherman, or even just someone who collects knives send them the URL and let me know what they think.
What I did for the new site was populate the product database with the 1000+ products that Buy Knives Online offers. It was a lot of work but I managed to finish it up in a week and I'm just glad I was able to contribute. The site is backed by an e-commerce package that I really like. It's basically just a CMS tailored to e-commerce specifically, and it was easy to work with. I can only hope that the site is very successful and my brother gets a ton of business - he's definitely worked hard enough to deserve it.
So like I said, if you have a spare moment, hit up the site and check some of the products out. The URL is and it's also in my link section to the right. Let's see if we can't bolster some traffic and start things off right. =)
Currently Listening To:
Currently Playing: , ,
The truth revealed.
Aug 26th
So, halfway through last week I posted an extremely quick post containing a screenshot of my Photoshop's situation at the time. Last week I worked really hard (from about the 17th of August to the 24th) on populating a database with products for a new website my brother is launching in early September. I say new website, but it's really a second revision of a current website he has for an online business he runs. The site is and you can hit it up in the links bar to the right. I worked pretty hard to get all of the products ready for the new revision (almost 1100 in a week), and I hope it's very successful.
Anyways, if you get a chance to give it a look I'd really appreciate it. I'll probably make a related post when the new site launches as well, so stay tuned.
In other news, classes at Pitt-Bradford start up again tomorrow. Man this summer went quick. I'm looking forward to getting back in the classroom though. If you're a Pitt-Brad student post a comment! Even if you're just a college student in general, gearing back up to head to campus go ahead a post what you're looking forward to this semester.
I apologize for the lack of updates in the past week but now you know why that had to be. Now I'll get back to posting a couple times a week hopefully. =)
Currently Listening To: (streaming live on Stickam/Ustream)
Currently Playing:
Screenshots from a mad man?
Aug 21st
Hit the thumbnail to see the full version. What could I possibly be up to? Let's just say I've been extremely busy this week. I finished up a little early tonight so I figured I'd just post this real quick since I've been neglecting the blog. More info to come. Hopefully sometime Saturday. Now I'm going to go open up my Bioshock LE box and wish I had time to play the game. =(
John McClane is the master of the universe.
Jul 22nd
This is going to be a sort of follow-up post to the one I made about Microsoft's announcement of the extended warranty for Xbox 360s that fail with the error.
Let me start out by saying that shortly after this announcement, actually right after E3 finished up, as Master Chief of the Xbox (see what I did there?) to go work for Electronic Art's division. At first I didn't really think that the warranty had anything to do with Moore's resignation (that is to say I was sure that he wasn't forced to resign as a result of it) but now I'm starting to think a little differently. Maybe he took a little heat for the high Xbox 360 failure rate and the 1.5 billion dollars it's going to take to fix the problem.
The biggest reason for my change in heart is the fact that, weeks before the warranty announcement and Moore resignation, Robbie Bach (President of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division) . It seems that these events (the warranty and Moore's departure) may have been known to Microsoft weeks in advance. Sounds like someone might have been doing a little insider trading, eh? I'm not accusing anyone of anything and it could have been just coincidence and I'm completely wrong, but let's just say that Bach wasn't known to sell Microsoft stock very often. Very peculiar.
In other news, I saw this past week and I have to say - surprisingly enough - I really enjoyed it. I liked the other movies because they're classic action movies and this one doesn't disappoint (techobabble aside). I've come to the conclusion that John McClane is the toughest man ever conceived. All of the things you've heard about are actually true about John McClane, and still don't even begin to adequately describe his awesomeness.
Finally, expect an E3 sum-up post from me eventually, it really is overdue. There are that you can hit to find a lot of the post-mortem about how things went but I want to talk about what I'm interested in personally.
Currently Listening To:
Currently Playing: , ,
Ocean’s Thirteen
Jun 16th
So I saw this weekend.
Let me first say how letdown I was by the second. The , and the second one was too drama-filled an hokey. I won't spoil anything (although if you haven't seen that movie by now you probably never will) but basically in Oceans 12 they straight up waste a good 45 minutes of your time. They show you a huge heist and then show you why none of what you just watched mattered.
I remember being very excited for 12 and let's just say .
Thirteen improved a lot by getting back to the original's formula. They need to pull of the heist and you see the process from planning to execution. There's some over-the-top bits sure but they don't wander far from the heist itself which is nice. It's also nice that they went back to a casino setting...in the second they had to steal some or whatever which I thought was pretty lame.
Anyways, go check it out if you get a chance. This wasn't a very good review at all but I just wanted to say that it was pretty good. Much better than the second.
NP: (I know...I can't believe it either!)
*edit* - This left-align garbage really needs to go.
Busy, Busy, Busy…
May 10th
I was sitting here at work with everything I needed to get done finished and 10 minutes to kill and figured I'd throw up a quick post. I haven't even really thought to blog in the past week or so, seems like I've been really busy lately. Needless to say I'm looking forward to the weekend quite a bit.
I found out yesterday that I might have a new job opportunity, which I'm pumped for. Other than that I just have to keep plugging away at UPB. I've been able to add a lot to the site in just the 2 weeks since classes finished, I'm hoping to get a lot done over the course of this summer.
Hope anyone reading this is doing well!
Beating A Caffeine “Addiction”
Apr 25th
Not too long ago I decided to give up caffeine. I used to drink a ton of pop. I'd also have coffee pretty frequently, but the main source of my caffeine intake was definitely from pop...Pepsi and Mountain Dew primarily. The reason I decided to give it up stemmed from a sleep problem I was having at the time. I figured drinking a 24 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew at 10 at night probably wasn't helping the matter. Not only that, but whenever I would go without any sort of caffeinated beverage for any length of time I'd get pretty brutal migraines. After a while I sort of got tired being so dependent on a substance so I figured it was time to give it up.
So I did.
My method was pretty basic...I just stopped consuming any pop, coffee, or anything else with caffeine in it cold-turkey. I've often heard people say that a caffeine addiction was really tough to beat and I honestly have to say that it wasn't. I started out by replacing my coffee/pop (which were, at the time, my primary drinks) with flavored water and juice. Flavored water most of the time is flavored with Asparatame which also isn't good for you so after a couple weeks I got rid of that as well, instead drinking regular tap water. I still have juice or milk every now and then but right now I mostly drink water...anywhere from 2 to 4 bottles a day.
I just wanted to share that because I had heard people complaining about trying to overcome caffeine (especially because we finished Lent not too long ago) and my experience was really pretty easy. So if you're thinking about giving up pop, coffee, or any other caffeine-filled drink don't be too concerned. I'm sure you can beat the addiction.
