counting the hours
As the day approaches, i’m getting much more anxious.
I can feel myself starting to twitch, my feet crying out for me to stop already, even though I haven’t started.
Depriving myself of sleep, day after day, just to put on that shirt.
Being with like-minded friends and cohorts, who I get to see once, maybe twice a year.
What do I speak of? PAX of course!
If you’re going, see you there! But this time in Boston! New England baby!
Seriously, i’m excited. And I get to see a cousin of mine who lives out there. But I also feel like i’m going home. I haven’t been back to New England in years, and can’t wait.
-j
kinecting a beta tester
I’m a week late, so shoot me. :p
For those that have seen my twitter posts before or that have been over to our place, have seen that we’ve got a Kinect
But since its been out now for a few weeks, i’m more than free to talk about my thoughts.
Up until I got it a week before PAX, I was a bit skeptical. Things said about lag, motion capture, and it being a novelty, all sort of actually pushed me away from it since something like this really hadn’t worked in the past with other platforms.
But after hooking it up and playing around with it, I was hooked. Meg sat and watched the first few times, not really all that interested in it since she had her Wii. But after getting her to play around with Kinect Adventure’s (which comes with the retail Kinect), Kinect Joy Ride
Rewinding a bit.
Setup was not all that hard, and maybe a bit exciting for me considering i’m a techno-geek, once I figured out a small issue since I didn’t read the instructions fully. Since I had the original Halo 360 console, I had to use the splitter that comes in the box to power the Kinect sensor, but if you have one of the new 360 Slims, it will be powered directly from the console.
After turning it on, doing some updates, and trying several times to get through the setup (remember that not reading the instructions part above?), I found that you must have the sensor’s USB connector plugged INTO the back of the 360, not the front ports. And it cannot go through a USB hub either. This is due to the amount of information transmitted back and forth and hub’s split the time between ports, this goes for the 2 front one’s as well. They’re not on a dedicated bus. But I got it up and running.
The tutorial does say 6-8 feet of distance, but I found that 8-10 feet was the sweet spot. Being at 6 feet caused the sensor to miss some things. This required us to move the couch back and the coffee table out of the way and moving one lamp for better lighting, but once that was done, things were good.
Joyride was the first game I played and it was alot of fun. Sports had some fun things in it, but it seemed a bit Wii-ish in characteristics. And when Adventure’s finally came around, I had so much fun playing it that I did not heed the warning about taking breaks. I suffered the next day with muscle’s I didn’t even remember having being rather sore. And during this time, I really saw no lag to speak of, the motion detecting at times was a little rough though. This required a quick recalibration since the sensor would be vibrated out of position a little from our ‘spongy’ floors. But overall the experience overall was enjoyable.
The voice recognition works surprisingly well and is a real convience to use when pausing a movie, sports viewing in the ESPN blade, or launching something. One thing, it doesn’t distinguish between players voices, so this might be a nuisance if too many people are calling out different commands while playing around. The one feature that is missing that they had talked about at E3 was the Xbox on/off. This was left out during development. And from an interview on Major Nelson’s podcast with Alex Kipman, he stated that would require the 360 and sensor to be using some power at all times, so it was opted to be left out.
The automatic sign-in works a majority of the time. Where I’ve done the Kinect ID 4 times or so, Meg’s only done it once or twice, and it shows. 90% of the time it recognizes me as long as the light is decent, and signs me in. But Meg has only about a 25% success rate. It does state though the more you do the connect ID in various lighting or time of day conditions, the more success it will have.
Overall, Meg and I really like it. I don’t see how it would work with FPS’s though, but with adventure and party games, its going to be great. This is actually a great product to get the whole family involved. It has something for everyone and gets you off the couch. And the friends and family that we have come over have enjoyed it themselves as well. A few even now owning it themselves. I can see our Wii now sitting unused except for the Netflix streaming on the TV in the bedroom.
On my brothers. At last contact, both are doing well despite the conditions and pick up in fighting over there. But the packages my family has been sending have been helping. I also ran across this back a month ago: 
That’s my one brother, 1stSgt Jonathan Wyble. He was injured not to long ago in an IED explosion, and thankfully only received minor wounds and a stage 3 concussion.
Now back to trying to get rid of this damn cold. So until next time, be well.
wow…
Its been a very busy month for me, not with just work, but with other things as well. Having two brothers in Afghanistan is a mindful, but more on that in another post.
This post was more to just vent and show how pathetically stupid customer support for the gaming industry really is (there are some exceptions).
So as I had previously posted, Brett is wanting to play Mafia II, but is unable to get it installed since he doesn’t have internet access except for email. Steam was absolutely of no help saying over and over ‘He will need to connect to the internet at a cafe or such to do it then.’ HELLO?!?! HE’S IN A GODDAMN WAR ZONE!!
And then there’s 2k Games.
Here’s my original email to them:
From: thejaxx@gmail.com
Date: 20/10/2010 02:50:37
To: usa@take2support.com
Subject: Hello, My brother who is currently serving in Afghanistan just received Mafia IName: David Wyble
Email: thejaxx@gmail.com
Platform: PC
Game: Mafia IIQuestion: Hello, My brother who is currently serving in Afghanistan just received Mafia II and emailed me with a problem. He can’t install it on his laptop due to no internet connectivity. Unfortunately they do not have internet access over there except for email through the Dept of Defense system and therefore cannot install the game. He still has approx 7 months left and asked me to help him out. If you want to email him directly with some suggestions or a way to help him out, his contact info is as follows: GySgt Brett Wyble – ************** Or please reply to me with something that may help. Thank you much.
Pretty clear I would think.
Well, three weeks later… Yes, three weeks, I get this response:
Dear David,
Before we look into your problem we require more information on the system you are running the game on. The best way to gives us this information is to attach your Direct X information to an email.
To do this – Start menu > Run > type DXDIAG > click Ok, this will then load the Direct X diagnostic tool. Once this has been done click on Save information and save the Text file on your PC.
Now reply to this email with the file attached and we will look into the problem and be back in touch as soon as possible.
Kind regards,
MattTechnical Support
I have no words to describe my utter astonishment.
pax is dead … long live pax
So it was that time again this year. And god am I sore. PAX:Prime has come and gone.
Not much I can say about it that hasn’t already been published somewhere else, except to reiterate just how damn awesome this convention is. Getting see people I only talk with online, play games with, and occasionally speak with, is well worth the vacation time, the pain endured, and the bittersweetness of parting ways for another year.
But this time, it won’t be a year. Least for me it won’t, because I will be going to PAX:East. Yay!
So this year I was a Silver Assistant (Thanks PRD for giving me this chance <3). This entails me working closely with several exhibitors and helping out others and attendee's in the expo hall. All of my exhibitors were just friggin fantastic and I would like to thank each one:
Rooster Teeth: Gus, Geoff, Bernie, and the rest of you, thanks for gifts and not killing me for checking on you guys occasionally to make sure you were alright. You’ve been a barrel of laughs ever since I found you folks at my original PAX and look forward to the future.
Mega64: Rocco, Derrick, Shawn and Eric. You guys just plain out rock. And no, I didn’t forget Garrett, you sir, are just one crazy mofo. Thanks for being gentle with a first year SA and for the DVD’s. Look forward to the video you shot on the floor. And my wife loves you guys for helping her win one of the DSi’s.
Sweet Kitty: Thank you for the Yan Yan, the cookies, and the laughs. Meg thanks you for the Totoro pin, she gets the biggest grin on her face when I mention it. See you in the store soon!
Open Chord LLC: You’ve made me want to actually learn to play guitar now. The product you have developed is great and I would LOVE to get one. I had a blast the two times I actually had the time to play and know I will again soon. Good luck and hope to see you next PAX!
Fugazo: Frobots looks like its going to do well, I know we will be getting it as soon as it shows up on WiiWare. Hope to see more from you folks going forwards!
Art Institute of Seattle: Your video blew my mind. You have some very talented students and I just know I will see some of their work in future games.
A few things I am looking forward to from the show: The Old Republic, Kinect, Windows 7 Phone, Portal 2 (OMFG, hurry it up!!! :p ), Duke Nukem Forever (no joke, its coming, though it would of been classic if they would of said ‘psych!’ heh), Halo: Reach, TRON, and a few other items i’m missing.
I would also like to thank the folks that manned the Plantronics booth for their appreciation and understanding while I helped get their setup issue’s taken care of. It was a pleasure talking with you! And Lars, if you happen to somehow find this, if you guys get a headset that cups the ears, you’ve got a customer right here! Fell in love with my Voyager Pro the moment I bought it and have no doubt your headset would do the same.
And to Chinny Chuang of Zalman, pleasure helping you out and thanks for the smiles, they helped relieve the stress of the crowds.
And lastly, to my fellow Enforcers, we did it again. ELand kept us all alive! Love the hell out of you guys and see you all in the trenches again at PAX:East. And if I forgot anyone, my apologies, tired and it wasn’t intentional.
*UPDATE* I just realized that I owe a big thanks to SpyderZ, Zalvinar, and Ailadinya for their input and support for my first time in this position. Thank you so much.
this and that
My weekend, how I need it. Have had a flair up so haven’t been sleeping to well and trying to get through work each day. Hopefully the massage therapy I had today will help out.
Been watching the Olympics the past two weeks and even though they have been real good when you can watch them, I’m very dissapointed with NBC on their coverage. It was almost impossible to go on the net without having some site or other spoiling an outcome since the west coast gets the replay 6+ hours later. What happened to the days where they showed the Olympics all day long? Not this 3-5pm then 8-12. So many missed things I would’ve of liked to have watched.
Then we have the moronic wanna-be politicians in Olympia who basically said to all the residents of this state ‘You people are stupid. You have NO idea what you need, what you want, and what we do. The will of the people doesn’t exist here. So STFU.’ But I won’t get started on that.
Anywho, enough of my bitching.
Movie: Avatar
I had went and seen this Kenny and then again with Meg when I finally convinced her to go. Overall the movie was visually fantastic. There was much left to be desired with the storyline. To me, it seemed like Dancing With Wolves in space. But me, being who I am, will buy it when it comes out.
DVD: 
This is another amazing piece of work from the folks at Pixar. It’s interesting that we have come in our culture to a point when so many recently made animated films teach us more about life than many real-action movies designed for that very purpose do. “Up” is no exception. The jaded cynicism that so many filmmakers refuse to let go of has no place here. Instead we have yet another simple, positive tale that makes the most of “the little things” and by so doing achieves excellence.
I will not talk about what happens, but will tell you the first 10 minutes of the film unfolds with a beautiful story and ends with heartache. After this point, the rest of the movie is cleverly humorous, whimsical, and lots of fun to watch. If you have not seen it, I highly suggest it. And if you plan on getting it for your children, I would suggest watching it with them in case they have questions about certain subjects (nothing bad, just lessons of life).
Video Game: Mass Effect 2
In my opinion, this game was alot better then the original. And the original was damn good.
The combat system has been revamped. Graphics notched up a bit. And storyline a bit more intense.
There are some key places where ME2 trumps ME1, and where they do, they turned a great experience into an excellent experience. Don’t get me wrong, you do not want to miss out on the expierence ME1 provides. The whole Mass Effect experience will be compromised if you play these games out of order, as the ME1 decisions do have a substantial effect on your in game experience, if you do not import your saved character.
My only complaint that I can think about right now is the mining. It does get rather monotonous, having actually dozed off a few times during this. But over all, this game is a must buy!
When cometh the day we lowly ones, Through quiet reflection and great dedication, Master the art of karate, Lo! we shall rise up And then we’ll make the bugger’s eyes water.
Mmmmmm…..
Marshmellows…
Just finished up with a homemade batch and they taste sooooo good. I love cooking and didn’t ever think of making these myself. Thanks to Cali over at GeekBrief.tv for the recipe. If you are of the mind to make some, here is the link. Its a two parter, so make sure you watch both. And she has the recipe in the comments section as well.
Other then that, this week hasn’t been much of anything. Back’s been a little sore and missed my massage therapy appt over the weekend due to the insurance companies idiocy.
Saw Avatar with my buddy Kenny. Visual pr0n. Story was so-so.
And went to The Airlock again Sunday and Weds night. I knew I missed playing Battletech, but never realized how much. And I CAN’T wait until Red Planet shows up again, need some Martian Football!!!
If you love the Mechwarrior series and/or played tabletop Battletech, GO CHECK IT OUT! They have most all the basic mechs and even 400+ variants. This is what you have:
I will be there again this Saturday night with some the Enforcers from PAX. So say hi. And if you go another night, tell UglyMan (the owner) you heard about it from me. I don’t get any kickbacks or such, but its nice to let him know where he’s getting customers from.
“Kerensky’s people have returned. They are the Clans.”
what are the chances….
of finding out that one of your beloved past times would have not just one, but two opportunities pop up in a week?
Battletech
First, I find out from The Dark Overlord of a new series called Dead Mech by up and coming Jake Bible. Just think of Battletech with Zombies (two of my favorite things!) piloting. You must give it a listen if you like either of those.
There are 7 episodes so far. I will be honest, during the first episode, I was about to stop my Zune because the looped desert wind sound that was being used was quite distracting and getting a bit annoying, but i’m glad I didn’t.
Secondly!
I used to be a Virtual World Addict back in the haydays. I had amassed over 750+ missions and was on my way to my first Order of Burton when it closed. Quite a bit of money I tell you.
Anyhow, I went to VW’s website to just reminisce when I saw something about a possible shop opening up in the Seattle area. That’s when I ended up finding The Airlock. Newly opened. What are the chances?!
They’re running the Tesla two pods with the Firestorm software. Different from what I played on but from what was explained to me, there are about 500 mechs to choose from and the coolant loops and generator load balancing was removed from the game, stuff never in the game or books themselves. And alot of the old players love the new game.
Their located in Kirkland, Wa at 12093 124th Ave NE by Laughs Comedy Club.
Now, if only they get some Martian Football going soon, i’d be in heaven (and the poor house).
How many hangings under the red moon
mmmmm…..
Things have slowed down. Back isn’t hurting as much anymore. And getting back to regular duties at work. Yay!
So Christmas was great this year. Had alot of fun doing the shopping, but the credit card bills starting to roll in now. What ya gonna do?
One thing that showed me it would be a good one was the tree. Meg has had a fake tree for awhile, and we’ve been using it for the past four years and I told her I wanted a real one. After some back and forth on the issue, we got one!
But I ended up with some new clothing, Patriots throw blanket, The Hangover BD, District 9 BD, Left 4 Dead 2, Assassin’s Creed 2 (bought with one the gift cards), Borderlands, DJ Hero (don’t laugh, its fun), & Dragon Age: Origins. And this awesome homemade snuggie that’s alot bigger and warmer then the crappy one’s you get on tv. I’m happy.
Meg. Well, two words. Spoiled rotten. I only have to say two of the things she received, laptop and Kindle. Guess being an only child has its advantages. :p
Upcoming: Cake in concert this weekend!
Have a safe and happy New Year!
help thy fellow PAXonian
I don’t usually pass things like this along that often, but this one hits semi close to home.
A fellow compatriot of mine, Lori, who is an Enforcer (some know what this is, for others Please read this), was diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder known as APS and may possibly have lupus. Because of this, she will have to have one of her legs removed.
Lori, along with her husband, have opened there house multiple times to us Enforcers to just hang out, play games, talk, or be rowdy. And we are now helping give back in what ever way we can to help these two friends of ours out.
Another Enforcer and friend of mine, who goes by the name of Liger, is hand making her own version of the LiveStrong bracelet. Please visit her site and take a look, and please purchase one if you can afford it.
calling all gamers
PAX has opened the pre-reg on their site. 3 day pass is 50 bucks if you order it before Sept 3. They are recommending do it quickly, cause if the growth holds the same as the last few years, they will probably sell out this year.
So go go go!
