Minor Moonshine Upgrades
Thursday March 12th 2009

I took a PTO day today to work on my mental health. That, and I needed to spend some time putzing with my home puters. I have not performed any significant upgrades to Moonshine for quite some time now. In the last few months Moony has become somewhat cranky. Team Fortress 2 would reboot during game load, and other games would simply hang afer 10 minutes. Since I feel it is still not in my best interest to spend the buckazoids on a full system upgrade, I went the el-cheap-o route and simply upgraded the part most likely causing my headaches. The Video card. After scanning the net for some deals, I stumbled on a clearance of GeForce 9800 GT cards over at Best Buy. They were going for a mere $100 bucks! Not bad at all.

After upgrading, here are the latest benchmarks, with comparisons to the last 2 generations.

Snowboarding 101
Saturday February 28th 2009

Look at me go, at a snails pace, OK, well a snail would lap me. This video was from my 1st day attempts. Big thanks to Eric for the lessons.

Christmas Photo Gallery
Friday January 16th 2009

Today I posted our Christmas photos. These are from various parties and events strewn throughout the Holiday season.

Enter the iPhone
Sunday January 11th 2009

On January 1st 2009 my 2 year contract with Qwest finally expired. It has been no big secret around the Newman household that I have been absolutely drooling over the iPhone 3G since it's release a year ago. To complicate things a bit, MacWorld was on Monday January 5th. There was a rumor that Apple might release new models again this year. The rumormongers out there suggested that there either could be a smaller Nano version, or a more feature rich Pro version. Well, neither came to pass. Fine by me, the current model suits my needs just fine. So off to Best Buy I go to pick up my new gadget. (note: BBuy because of Reward Zone points, same price as Apple store)

I could not be happier with the iPhone. It meets and in some areas even exceeds my expectations.

Some of the sweet things I can now do from anywhere:

• Browse the interwebs. My old phone could do this, but no where near as fast and fully featured.
• Play games, big surprise I would look for a device that also had 3d gaming abilities.
• Music, I don't have a large music collection, but I see that changing. Also, Pandora Radio on the road friggen rules.
• Movies, book tickets, modify my neflix queue, watch trailers, get Rotten Tomatoes scores. Slick!
• Monitor my calorie intake and exercise via the LiveStrong app.
• Never get lost again with Google maps and GPS.
• Facebook updates and Photo uploading
  
• and so much more

Recent Hardware Upgrades
Tuesday January 6th 2009

In the last 6 months I've done a few hardware upgrades to Garfield. The My Computers page has been updated to reflect that. Mostly because computer parts are so friggen cheap now. I was able to get a new mobo, RAM, and CPU for 300 bucks.

I also cleaned up that page a bit to better show the progression of hardware upgrades. The log area of each system will from this point on show incremental upgrades as well as full system upgrades. Incremental upgrades will get a "dot" release, while full upgrades will change the main version number.

While I am here I'll use this time to editorialise a bit on PC hardware upgrades. As shown on the puters page, I have not performed a major upgrade on Moonshine since 2005. That is a new record. I've never had a system go such a length of time between versions before. One reason is that releases of PC games I am interested in has slowed. Another reason is that I have switched most of my game purchases back to consoles. Finally, I still feel that when I built Moonshine, I built it so bleeding edge, that the hardware was a bit ahead of its time. Whatever the case I don't feel the need to upgrade Moonshine any time soon. There still are no PC game releases coming soon that (A.) interest me, (B.) Moony can't run. Granted, having said all of that. Diablo III is possibly coming much later this year... maybe. I will re-evaluate upgrades if needed at that time.

The Year in Review
Tuesday December 2nd 2008

Looking back it has been an incredibly busy year for us. There certainly were less major events, however, that did not stop us from filling the year up with great small things. Like the old, axium, The small things matter. I put together a small photo gallery which summarizes the following events: (The events that have their own gallery have been linked.)

• Disney Trip
• Summer Cabin Fun
• home remodels (basement, and upstairs bath)
• La Crosse trip
• Fair Fun (State Fair, and Ren Fest)
• Jen and Brian's wedding
• WineConf
• CodeWeavers gets an arcade cabinet

Hasta La Vista Phatty!
Friday July 11th 2008

This winter was particularly bad for me and my jelly belly. After all that work a few years back loosing weight, I managed to put a good chunk of it back on. This just won't do. Instead of falling back to Seattle Sutton, I decided to strike out on my own and go the tried and true route.
  Step 1.) EAT LESS
  Step 2.) EXERCISE
I know, DOI.. right? Anyway, once you get in the groove and stop being a lazy F'r, "You can do it!".

Two things helped me get my move and groove on. First off, I bought some spanky new blades. The K2 Moto Extreme. These are a great set of wheels. The front 2 wheels, are 90mm, and the read 2 are 100mm. This gives what K2 calls an "aggressive" stance. Whatever that means. For me I find these are the perfect blades to handle all the bumps, cracks, twigs, and curbs of outdoor blading around the lake. I no longer fear tripping over things as much as I used to.

The second addtition was Wii Fit.This gizmo is simply a white wireless board that you stand on and do various workouts, and yoga poses. The "game" that comes with it is more or less a simple virtual instructor that guides you throuh the routines. It keeps track of your progress and offers suggestions and tips. Pretty nice package and easy to use. I managed to maintain a daily workout habit on the Wii for over a month straight.

After all this, I have again lost 25lbs! Nice. Not only that but, I feel much better overall. It seems corny to say, but I think the Yoga poses have really helped my flexability and balance.

I still have much more work to do. Even with all my progress I'm still obese according to the game. I need to loose about 15 more pounds to get my BMI under 30. If you put any stock into BMI. Honestly, all I care about is getting rid of my muffin top looking beer gut. Not that I'm going to stop drinking beer, aww hell no!

Welcome to the Dog Pound
Friday May 9th 2008

Karen sent this out as an email, it is too good of a story to not include here:

DisneyWorld Vacation 2008
Sunday February 17th 2008

Now this is how you get away from a frozen Minnesota winter. Growing increasingly tired of -10F temperatures we hopped on a jet to sunny Florida. We enjoyed temps 70F+ above what we normally have here.

Pictures from the holiday are available here.

The last time we were down to Orlando, FL was exactly 8 years ago. It amazes me how much has changed in those 8 years. Marriage, owning a house, getting a dog. Disney has not changed much in those 8 years. Sure there has been more than a few Disney and Pixar movies released in that time. There was only several major new rides and attractions. The biggest being the Mt. Everest roller-coaster at Animal Planet. At Disney Hollywood they added a live car stunt show. Speaking of Disney Hollywood it was renamed from Disney MGM just last month. We were surprised by that change, but as we thought about it, the MGM name just does not have any impact anymore. Epcot saw the addition of the Soaring ride, and updates to "The Seas" using Finding Nemo as the theme now. Magic Kingdom mostly only had aesthetic updates using new characters to some old favorite rides. The last time we were down, I missed out on several attractions. The Indiana Jones show was shut down, and Pirates of the Caribbean was getting updated. Both of those were new to me as I didn't get to experience them before. Being a HUGE Indiana Jones fan I was on the edge of my seat during that show. Cool Stuff indeed.

The other difference I experienced, was in the area of our personal technology. Back in 2000, cell phones were not very commonplace yet. We are so used to them now, but I remember that we didn't want to get separated back then. Now we can just call and find each other easily. The other change was digital cameras. Now we can take hundreds of photos quickly and easily. For Christmas I bought Karen a new Cannon SD-1000 cam. This was the perfect cam for this trip. Small and easy to whip out for fast photos. Not only that, but it was very capable at video. I took a crap-ton of video. Coming very close to filling our 2 gigabyte flash card. I even took a video of the entire Mt. Everest ride, holding the cam out as we rode. I hope to edit something together and upload it to YouTube soon.

I've always been a big fan of Disney. I can't recommend enough going to DisneyWorld if you are big kid like me.

Website Upgrades
Thursday January 17th 2008

Upgrades on sonic today. I switched to PHP5 from PHP4. Made the appropriate changes to the website code. A few months ago, I already upgraded the OS to Debian Etch. That made the transition much easier. I also made some code tweaks to the website. For example I am now using memcached for session management. This reduces the load on the DB server as sessions are now stored in RAM. I also reworked the database class to only open connections to the DB if there are queries being made. Some of the subpages of this site don't need to open a connection. This should also reduce load on MySQL. Exciting!

I learned today that one of my all time favorite NES games Bionic Commando is getting a remake. It will appear on Xbox Live in the spring. I'll be looking forward to that one. I'm also curious to see how the fully 3d sequel turns out.

Holiday Cheer, Games, and Dog Scare
Saturday January 12th 2008

Another holiday season has come and gone. Not that I am going to complain. I for one am a pretty big fan of the holidays. Saying that it is a crazy busy time of the year for us is a massive understatement. I didn't have much downtime in the month of December. Like I said, no complaints. I love it. Big thanks and much love to our family and friends that we spent time with over the Festivus `for the rest of us`.

Our annual Winter/B-Day party was another huge success. Thanks in part to Rock Band. Almost everyone was giving the game a try. It is amazing to me how mainstream games have become. Party games such as this really allow anyone to get into the fun. This is what gaming was supposed to be about.

Speaking of gaming: After Christmas passed, I still had the rest of the week off of work. This gave me plenty of time work work my way through my new games. The first was Call of Duty 4. Awesome game. Those Infinity Ward guys really know how to put together a visual marvel, but still give you plenty of action at the same time. The only downside was the length. The game was over much to fast. What was there was above expectations. The second game was Mass Effect. This gas was much more satisfying in amount of time to completion. I had expected this game to take me a month or more to finish. Well guess what, I managed to finish the main quest in only 3 days. Granted it still took me 14 hours, but I never thought I'd finish it so fast. You can blame the games amazing graphics and story to prevent me from putting it down. It gave me flashbacks of Knights of the Old Republic from time to time. That really is not such a bad thing.

Getting off games now...

We had a little accident over New Years . My Brother-In-Laws dog Bailey was attacked by a Pit Bull mix at the dog park. Apparently this animal felt the need to take a chunk out of Bailey's side. The skin was ripped open, but thankfully the chest cavity was not punctured. After a mad rush to the University of Minnesota Pet Hospital, Bailey was stitched up by the excellent veterinarians there. He was made to wear a clear plastic head cone so he would not attempt to pull out or lick his stitches. Poor dog. I am now happy to report that he is doing much better. We expect him to be his normal happy self soon.

Rock Band ROCKS!
Sunday December 2nd 2007

I picked up Guitar Hero II back in the late spring of this year. It has been a hit and we love jamming out on the little plastic toy guitars. Yeah, it looks silly, but it is worth looking we-todd-did for the entertainment and laughs it provides. For as much fun as GH was, Rock Band doubles maybe even triples the pure joy of rocking out. RB adds a drum kit and a mic. So now you get to play the entire band. When you have 4 (or more) people over playing the experience is (in lack of a better word) orgasmic.

Europe Vacation Part Deux
Thursday November 15th 2007

I have (finally) uploaded the photo album for our Zurich/England trip. We spent the first part of our vacation in Zurich, Switzerland. I was there to attend WineConf 2007. It was being held at the Google offices this year. Big kudos go out to the blokes and Google who organized this for us. I do have to say that they have some pretty nice digs. Last I checked, my office at CodeWeavers did not have a freezer full of single serve Ben & Jerry's ice cream. I need to submit a request for that some time. After the conf was over we had time to explore the city. Zurich is another fine example public transportation. There was a tram system that made getting around the city a breeze. Why can't we do this better here in the US?

After Zurich we spend the rest of our trip in England at our good friend Rob and Gemma's flat in Southampton. More time for me to check out the pubs and have some of my personal favorite Steak and Ale pies. Mmmmmm gravy! I always hear that the food in England is not so hot, but I for one love it. I even got into some fish and chips action, good stuff. The pubs are so full of atmosphere. The Cowheards pub in Southampton had fireplaces and smelled of the burning wood. Such an old world feel that is not easily reproduced. Big thanks to our hosts! We had an excellent time. I look forward to doing it again.

Back Home
Now that I am back home I've been settling back into my old routines. The theme of 2007 has been so far "What Diet?". I've put on some pounds this year. I expect that is because I feel back in love with junk food, and being a couch potato. That and a total lack of exercise has put on some more of that old truffle shuffle. I'll get it off, but I'm just not going to worry about it until after the Holidays. No point in trying to go diet crazy during the months of Festivus.

I had problems with Comcast this last month. My Internet connection was dropping too often. When there is no internet I feel like grabbing a pitchfork and torch and forming a mob to raid the Comcast offices. Instead of that brilliant idea, I simply called them to complain. Not as original, but effective none the less. Turns out my cable modem is outdated and starting to malfunction. I ended up buying my own. Since I was changing all my home networking anyway, I went ahead and built my own firewall/nat on Linux instead of using the old LinkSys hardware router I've had for 7 years. I'm much happier with this setup.

YouTube'ing
Check this out:
Yeah, we sometimes do work at our office, but not that day.

TV Upgrade Time
Thursday September 20th 2007

It was time to replace the old rear projection CRT HDTV. I really liked that TV, but as of late, it's flaws became more and more apparent. The main issue is that for gaming the picture is simply not at clean and clear as what you see on a modern LCD. For movies it still held up well.

The new set is a Samsung 40" LCD that is capable of 1080p resolution. That is 1920x1080 in longhand. The contrast ratio is a bright 10,000:1. Since I have a dark basement, I had to turn the brightness down a bit from the default settings.

I made some minor tweaks to the website. I made my Xbox Live badge more visable. I also added a Twitter sidebar. I update this via Google Talk. So it comes in handy for quick status updates that don't really need a full blog entry. I will try to twitter more often than my average blog time.

Lastly, I beat BioShock. It took me less than a month. That is really good for me these days. I seldom find time to finish an entire game anymore, unless it is an exceptional experience. BioShock was that and more.

Less than 5 days until the release of Halo 3. That should be interesting. I have my copy pre-ordered. Do you?

ArcadePC
Tuesday September 11th 2007

I finally built one! This has been a todo of mine since forever. Well, in actuality the full goal was to build a ArcadePC upright video game cabinet. But, this is a good 1st step. Part of me would rather sit on the couch, and the other part of me wants that feeling of standing at a machine. It is still sometimes crazy to imagine I can literally fit thousands of old games in this one box. The kid in me just drools at the thought. Best of all, no standing in lines with a sweaty handful of quarters trying to get access to the best game in the 'cade.

The ArcadePC is a basically microATX desktop PC case with a video card capable of svideo output. It runs Ubuntu Linux as the OS. It is configured to boot directly to the Wah!Cade front end with custom skins. Currently I have the following emulators on it: MAME (Arcade), MESS (NES and Atari 2600), ZSNES (Super NES), dGen (Sega Genesis), and Daphne (Dragon's Lair).

The PC itself is not much to speak of, it is:

• Antec Minuet 300 microATX slim case
  
• Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHz
• 512 meg of RAM
• 40 gig IDE hard drive
• nVidia GeForce 5200 AGP (low profile)
  
• Sound Blaster Audigy LS (low profile)
  

Summer Time
Friday August 17th 2007

There are crap-loads of updates to the site today. I've been meaning to post the following news weeks ago, but as per usual I was far too tied up in being a lazy sloth. It has been a busy year.

Back in May we completely remodeled our kitchen. We ripped it down to the bare walls, and in some cases even further. It was by far the biggest home improvement project we have undertaken to date. I've learned quite a bit through this entire process. For one thing, contractors are a pain in the ass. A necessary evil none the less. Most of our new cabinetry came from Ikea. We shopped around until we decided we liked the look and the quality of the parts. I have photo-documented the entire ordeal. Overall I could not be more pleased with how it all turned out.

Next on the list is our fantastic voyage to Canada. This whole thing started when Rob, our good pal from England, wanted to come over for a 10 day visit. We were trying to decide what to do while he was here. The plan was, hey, none of us have actually driven to Canada before. Why not give that a try! We took Interstate 35 north from the cities and took highway 61 up the Lake Superior lake front from Duluth. Our first overnight rest stop was in Grand Marais. From there we drove to Thunder Bay, were we stayed two nights in the fabulous accomdations in a Days Inn. While we were in town, we found a variety of things to do out of doors. We chartered a 90 minute sail boat cruise around the harbor. We walked accross Canada's longest suspension bridges. This one was particularly difficult for me as I'm not a big fan of falling to my squishy death. I'm glad we did it. The rest of the stops were at various national parks and waterfalls.

We are just past the half-way point for the year. There is so much more to do yet this year. Coming up in a week is the Minnesota State Fair. I'm always a big fan of that. Can't get enough of that Vitamin G.

360 Repaired and Game Updates
Friday July 20th 2007

Finally got my 360 back from MS. That only took an entire month! They did not even fix my old 360. They simply sent me a new-ish one as a replacement. Looking at the label on the new 360 I see that is was manufactured in June of 2006. So it's not brand spanking new. I hope they at least replaced the heat sinks in this one with the new ones I've been hearing about. I guess I'll find out after some marathon gaming sessions.

I wasted some time last week watching the E3 coverage on G4. E3 is the Electronic Entertainment Expo. It is the big summer trade show for the video game industry. They basically lay out all the games that should be out for the following holiday season. As usual 75% of the games released in a year come out during the Christmas months. G4 does an okay job with the coverage. At least I recorded the entire expo on the DVR. That allowed me to fast forward through games I couldn't give a flying fart about.

Most upcoming games I'm looking forward to, are all coming out on the 360. The PS3 is still in for a world of hurt. Here is the short list:

• Halo 3
• Bioshock
• Mass Effect
• Grand Theft Auto 4
• Assassin's Creed

RROD!
Thursday June 21st 2007

My Xbox 360 has given me the dreaded red ring of death (RROD). The red ring of death is when you turn your 360 on and instead of the normal logo on your tv, you are greated with 3 blinking red lights on the front of the 360. The cause of the red lights is unknown to anyone outside of Microsoft. It basically means your source of game goodness is trashed and needs to be replaced. Crap. I called up jolly MS on the phone and was told since my system was out of warranty, I would need to cough up $140 bucks of hard earned bread to get my system fixed. Double crap. I've only had my 360 for little over a year now. I'm not alone here. Many others are having the same problems as me. Even the guy at the UPS store told me he sees plenty of the 360 coffin (the so called box you get to ship your dead xbox back to MS in). Various polls around the net have some people reporting returns of three or more times. How this defect rate is not making bigger news around the net amazes me. If anything, MS is a ninja at keeping this a secret.

Oh well, I have my Wii to keep my company for the next few weeks as I wait for my 360 to return. At least I was able to complete the main quest line in Oblivion before it croaked. In fact, that is probably what did it in. Because of that game I was putting more hours on the 360. The problems are most likely heat related as longer play times cause the system to run very hot.

Blah Blah Blah...
Thursday May 17th 2007

Hi there!
Where the h-e-double hockey sticks have you been!?

It has been busy around home base here. We have quite a-lot going on lately. I'll cover that in future posts as we complete the goals we set out for this summer. OOoooo, so secretive he is. MMMmmmm.

What I have accomplished lately was adding a RSS feed to this page. You can now grab my blog with your favorite feed reamer.. err... I mean reader. RSS Use the link here in your favorite RSS reader. I prefer the very slick Google Reader.

Things at CodeWeavers have been going very well. Our Mac product is doing nicely. I'm quite pleased with how well things have turned out this last year. We still have plenty of work cut out for us.

I recently signed Kirby up for his own page at Dogster. You can see his page here. Dogster is like MySpace, but for Dogs. If your dog wants to be a pup-pal with the Kirbster, feel free to do so.

Cannon S3 IS
Friday March 30th 2007

Spring is almost here. Finally, cabin fever is almost over. My butt and gut have grown over the winter. Since our big Seattle Sutton extravaganza this is the most weight I've put on. Somewhere around 15 lbs over the winter. Yikes! I'm looking forward to getting back outside around the lake on the blades. Speaking of blading, I took Kirby out for a small run with the blades. We had one awesome day last week where it got up to 80F. Kirby was a little afraid of the blades. He kept up with me, but he made sure he was not going to get very close to the wheels. A few more times of going out should hopefully cure him of that.

We picked up a Cannon S3 IS from Newegg this week. This camera is a decent upgrade from our Cannon A80. Specs are: 6.0 megapixel, 12x optical zoom, Digic III chip, image stabilization, and ISO 800 support. The S3 lays somewhere between a digital SLR and a point and shoot. The lens is much better than the A80 for example, but you can't change lenses like you can say on a Rebel SLR. This is about as much camera as I think I need. So most of our gallery pictures from this point on should be from this camera. The deal from Newegg was nice, they threw in a 1 gig SD card, a camera bag, and a tripod.

Check out my Twitter blog. Twitter basically is a mini-blog that you update in real time. I have my IM configured so I can simply IM that blog directly. Major blog updates I will still make to this site. But what I'm currently up to from minute to minute can be found there.

Last weekend I put in some good time on the Xbox 360. I managed to finish off three games over the weekend. Gears of War, Condemned: Criminal Origins, and Tomb Raider Legend. I started playing Oblivion as well. I am still not sure if I will get back into World of Warcraft anytime soon.

Back to the fun!

Website Redesign
Monday February 26th 2007

A new theme! Today I "got'er did" the theme for this site. It is the same layout basically, just with a slightly different look. I also updated the pictures used for the random photo on the home page. I grabbed a few of my favorites from various albums. The old images were almost 10 years old. I don't think I look that different, but I agree, they did need an update.

This weekend we were hit by a large snowstorm. I didn't take an exact measurement, but I would say there is about 14 inches of snow. A perfect chance to test out our new snowblower. Okay, not new new, but new to us. I added a few photos for your viewing pleasure.

MAME
Tuesday February 20th 2007

MAME the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. I found myself regaining interest in this venerable emulator again. It's been so long since I updated my MAME environment that most of my roms where invalid and had to be updated. MAME is up to version .112 right now, the last version I was using was .85. What got me interested in MAME again was there is a new build for linux called sdlmame. Finally a build for Linux that can actually run well. Sorry, but old xmame was just crap. I could never get it configured to run as well as Mame32 on Windows.

The downside of the Linux build is there is no GUI like in Mame32. Fortunately there are plenty of Front-Ends available. The one I found is called Wah!Cade. This is by far the best front end I've tested so far. So very customizable. Best of all, it is all controled via your joystick. It is really designed to be run from an arcade cabinet. As you see in the screenshot here, I made my own custom 1680x1050 widescreen layout for it. Wah!Cade also supports separate layouts for each emulator. I hit a button on my joystick and change to the SNES and Genesis game lists. Very very slick!

Someday the true goal is to build a stand up MAME arcade cabinet. For now, I'm happy using my X-Arcade joystick. I'm currently researching what is needed to build a cabinet. I'll post more in the future as I get closer to this goal.

The PS3 still sits un-used right now. Not exactly the best $600 I've ever spent. I really don't think anything much will happen with the PS3 this year. I've also been so wrapped up with MAME stuff lately that I have not logged into World of Warcraft in over 2 weeks. I think I needed a break from that addiction anyway.

I just noticed this is my 52nd blog post. Umm.. woo! ...or something. This means the code to jump to the next page of blog posts finally kicks in. The limit being 50 posts per page. Heh, only 2 - 3 more years until the next page is complete.

PS3
Saturday February 10th 2007

Lots of stuff to post today. This really should be like 4 separate posts, but hey, it's my dang site. Shut yer trap! First off. Welcome to the New Year, only a month late. All I can say is wow! Is it really 2007 already? I was still just getting used to 2006. It still had that new year smell.

Christmas was excellent as always. We had another successful "Newman Holiday Extravaganza". Big BIG thanks go out to everyone that stopped by for some winter cheer. The surprise HIT at this years party was the Nintendo Wii. Friends and neighbors hooted and hollered while rounds of Wii Sports Tennis and Bowling were played. It was amazing to witness.

In January, my good friend Rob came over from England for a week. Just in time to catch our best snow of the year. Up to this point, we hardly had any to speak of. We all went downhill inner-tubing at this hill in Wisconsin. The hill had a tow rope, so you could just grab on and not have to walk up the hill. Being pulled up was almost as fun as sliding down. I had many flashbacks of Calvin and Hobbes flying sleds of of hills. The snow was really coming down that night. Fresh powder and tubes == many face washes. My beard had icicles hanging off of it by the end of the night.

Speaking of icicles, it has been butt cold out the last week. We are talking temps dropping below -15F, with windchill reaching -30F. Colder than a Witches titty for certain. I guess we still can get a real Winter here in MN.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade was finally released this month. Finally I can level up my main character Splortch from level 60 to level 70. Granted, I only just made level 60 a few months ago. Some have been waiting to level up 60s for over a year. Contain your aggro kids. I also joined a new guild back in early December. Keel Haul. They are a great group. Thanks Dana and Deb. You pirates rock! Yaaar!

Lastly, I broke down and bought a PS3. At this point they are in stock everywhere. Hard to believe only two months ago these things were going for up to $2500 on eBay. I thought the regular price of $600 was high. Ouch! To get the PS3 I finally cashed in the pocket lint money I have been hanging onto for the last 10 years. I had about 50lbs of silver coin that I took to the bank and had just enough to get the PS3. At the moment there really are no good games for the PS3. I'm thinking of the PS3 as more of a media center system than a game system these days. I have no idea how the war between HD-DVD and PS3 will turn out. So having both the HD-DVD add-on for the 360 and the PS3 will allow me to not worry about which will win this stupid format war and just buy the movies I want to see in HD. It will be a long time until downloadable movies reach the quality of the HD disks. I'm not sure Sony will recover in the game market. I only see 2 game coming on the PS3 that interest me in the next year. Metal Gear Solid 4, and Rachet and Clank. At this point I feel the 360 is winning the next-generation (now current generation) battle. Microsoft is putting forth a good effort, and the 360 is really a fantastic all around gaming system. The PS3 has a lot of catching up to do.

Wii Mii
Tuesday November 28th 2006

Check us out! This is Karen and I in Mii form. Aren't we just adorable? Well, at least Karen is. Sorry about the bad quality photo. It is the best I can do with my Cannon pointed at my TV in low light with a flash. You can actually just have fun creating Mii people for everyone you know. The best part is that everyone you create will appear in Wii sports as opposing players or background fans.

I've been playing with my Wii for the last few days and the more I use it the more I enjoy it. Getting off my arse to stand and play some active games is just good times in the making. The only downer is that I have been unable to find a second Wiimote. So Kitten and I just take turns with Wii Sports and Excite Truck. There has not even been any stamping of the feet or crying or anything.

Wii
Sunday November 26th 2006

After my third attempt at waiting in line at Best Buy I finally manged to snatch up a Wii for myself. As Stimpy would say, "Happy Happy Joy Joy!". My first attempt was last Sunday on the launch day. I was under the impression there would be enough consoles to go around so I only arrived 20 min prior to store opening. Needless to say, I underestimated demand. The Best Buy employees already handed out tickets before I even got there. No dice. Next I thought I would camp out on Black Friday starting at 3:30 am to get a Wii. WRONG! No consoles that day. According to a Best Buy yellow shirt they were holding the shiny white Wii back until Sunday. FRICK! Well, Sunday it is then. This time I was not going to hold back, I arrived at the gates the the blue devil at 6:20 am. Store opening would be at 10 am. It was going to be a long cold wait, but at least I met some nice and interesting people in line. I was number 11 in line. YES. At 9 am an Angel with a yellow ticket name badge handed my golden, err blue, ticket. Finally!

My Wii Launch Lineup:

• Wii Sports
• Excite Truck
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Level 60!
Saturday November 25th 2006

I did it! After 14 days of game play I have attained the max level in World of Warcraft with my Dwarf Hunter. W00t!

O.K. Now what?

Website Updates A-Go-Go
Sunday October 22nd 2006

Updates! Small updates to report on the site. The My Computers page is updated with my latest addtions and modifications. One, I've upgraded my display to a 22" Widescreen LCD (sweet!). Two, CodeWeavers replaced my crappy Toshiba Laptop with a shiny black MacBook. Awww yeah. Actually, the MacBook I had with me on the trip to the UK, but this is the first chance I've had to mention it.

Game DB Updates:

• World of Warcraft
• Splinter Cell: Double Agent

I am still playing loads of WoW these days. In fact my may character Splortch is up to level 52. I may just make level 60 before the expansion hits. But, I'm not getting my hopes up, nor will go out of my way to grind my way. I'll try to keep my playtime to normal limits.

Back on the new LCD monitor. Starting with World of Warcraft, I will be taking screenshots at the new preferred resolution of 1680x1050. This gets my PC gaming close to HDTV res 1080i (1920x1080). Though, I still think games look better on the PC versus the Xbox 360.

Welcome home Kirby!
Saturday October 7th 2006

That's right.
We adopted a new member of our family today. Kirby was rescued by Homeward Bound Dog Rescue of Minnesota. We found the website while doing puppy research online. They bring the dogs to Petco stores each Saturday. This is just a great way to play with and see many different breads if you are unsure of what works for you. We had some ideas, but until you go and see the dogs you may be surprised at which ones grow on you.

Kirby is a mix of Sheltie (Shetland Sheepdog) and Welsh Corgie. He is about 10 months old. Their best guess is that he was born around February. He is just a bundle of fun.

I started a Kirby Photo Gallery. I will probably update it from time to time, with new pics.

Tally Ho!
Monday September 25th 2006

We are back from our trip to jolly ol' England. Karen and I left from Minneapolis airport September 14th on Northwest Air for a 8 hour non-stop flight to London Gatwick airport. Our good friend Rob was our host for this trip. He picked us up and drove us to his home town of Reading. We stayed our week long trip with him and his Mum. I just gotta say 'Thanks' to them for being so great. We had a fantastic time. The first weekend was work related. WineConf 2006 was being held at the University of Reading. Rob was also the bloke who organized WineConf this year. Good job mate! After WineConf we took a day trip to London. We rode the train from Reading to Paddington Station. From Paddington we took the London Underground. I was particularly impressed by how extensive this subway system was. Talk about good public transportation. Something our city here needs to work on. In London we walked the Thames, rode the London Eye, and many other sites. See our Photo Gallery for a visual tour. "Look kids! Big Ben, Parliament!".

A few days later we drove down from Reading to Portsmouth. This city is a port town. So if you are into boats, big and small, this is worth checking out. I'm a sucker for the salty sea air. We checked out 3 historic ships from Her Majesty's Royal Navy. The H.M.S. Warrior, and the H.M.S. Victory. Both are just beyond impressive. I just wanted to run around on the decks for hours yelling "Batten down the mizzen mast!, Hoist that Dog from the Yardarm! YAAARRR!".

Most people don't come back from the U.K. talking about the food, but I will. MMmmmmmm. Guy food. Since we spent a good chunk of time tasting quality Ales at pubs, we also partook in some great pub food. Bangers and Mash, Toad in the Hole, Sticky Toffee Pudding, and who can resist the traditional English Breakfast - Meat, meat, potatoes, meat, oh yeah, and a fried egg. Damn tasty!

I look forward to our next trip.

Summer Slump
Saturday July 1st 2006

Not much going on right now. Just the usual work, eat, sleep routine. Something I really need to break out of. Need to get out and do some travel other than our regular summer trips to the Cabin. We did take a drive down to Rochester, MN and went on a 3 hour bike ride down there. That was a good time. I needed a good bike ride since I've lapsed on my exercise a bit. I have not been out on my blades in over two weeks, bad Newman!

At CodeWeavers we recently started to get World of Warcraft running on Linux. So natually we all got accounts and started playing. This may or may not prove to be a good idea. Time will tell. In the meantime I am having a good time getting sucked back into an MMORPG. I have not played one since my days of Ultima Online back in 1998 or so. I've created two characters on the Aerie Peak server if you want to look for me. A Dwarf hunter called "Splortch" and a Dark Elf hunter called "Dracowulf". I'll try to get some screenshots up sometime.

Oh, and you haven't done so already, check out the demo for Prey. It's really f'd up in a good way. I played through the demo about 4 times already. Twice on my PC, and once on the 360. I even installed the demo in Linux using CrossOver and it worked perfectly. Though, if you get even a little bit motion sick playing FPS games this one will really churn your guts. I've never had that problem. A big thumbs up from me. Now I just need to decide if I'd rather play it on the PC or the 360. I'm leaning twords PC.

Enjoy the summer, and like me, try to get out of basement a bit. Mmmmkay?.

Camping, Newman does not Camp! Does he?
Monday May 22nd 2006

Added a new photo gallery: Lake Superior Camping Trip

I went on a weekend car camping trip with my brother in-law Eric, and his good friend Matt. We stayed at a small campsite just north of Two Harbors, MN. About an hour or so north of Duluth. The goal was to simply get away for the weekend and possibly get some good photos. It was a great time. We actualy had some good weather save for the few hours of rain on Saturday morning. MMmmmm bacon log!

PC Hardware Weekend
Monday May 15th 2006

It was a PC hardware weekend. After a week of drooling over the next generation of console hardware at e3, it seems ironic that I would spend the weekend upgrading and rebuilding my older PCs.

First task: Upgrade Sonic. The website should be more responsive now. I notice the biggest speed difference on the GameDB with entries that have more the one large screenshot. Since the shots are dynaically resized that takes some CPU horsepower.

Second Task: I planned on simply upgrading the hard drive in Clank. I wanted to copy over the data on the fat32 partion of the 2.5 gig HDD over to a newer 30 gig HDD. But the bios would not see a drive bigger than 8 gig. I found what I thought was a compatible bios update. The version number matched what was imprinted on the mainboard. It did not take. In fact it ended up "bricking" the motherboard. It no longer would even boot. Doh! So since I have the leftover P3 from Sonic, I used that and re-installed Win98se from scratch on the 30 gig HDD. I copied over the save games from the old HDD. I then spent the rest of the weekend re-installing games. The upside is that Clank now runs more games than it did before. The older DOS games that freak out due to the speed of the P3 are now run on Garfield through DOSbox instead. I mainly want Clank for older Win9x era games that are 3dfx only titles and pre DirectX 8.

The reason it takes me so dang long to reinstall games is that I have to tweak and test each one after installing them. I usually will play through the first level to make sure they are running fine. It helps that I keep an archive of all the old game patches on Sonic as some are getting hard to find these days. I also keep a collection of all my old save game files. I have learned far too often when upgrading not to keep the save games.

e3 thoughts
Saturday May 13th 2006

Another e3 came and went and once again I did not get to go. Someday I will.

It is official. The name of the Revolution is the Wii. It was the highlight of this years e3 by a long shot. I think Nintendo has the right idea. The wii-mote, the revolutionary controller for the Wii, will usher in a new era of gaming. I disagree with the big N on HD graphics however. The Wii will only support a maximum of 480p. A far cry from the 1080i I can get now on the 360. At least it is widescreen. For the record, I am genuinely excited to try out the Wii (all puns aside).

Ahh the PS3. Wow, how the mighty have fallen. During last years e3 I was looking forward to the latest powerhouse from Sony. No longer. It just does not offer anything over the 360 from my point of view. The only thing it has going for it are the 1st party games from Sony and other exclusive titles you cannot get anywhere else. And the PRICE, holy schnikees Batman! $499 for the stripped down model, and $599 for the REAL model. For that price you can get both the 360 and the Wii. I think Sony for the fist time since the PS1 launch has an uphill battle. I am not rooting for them this time around. The Wii is my master now. Don't even get me started on how crappy it is of them to be half-assed and slap some motion detecting into the old PS2 gamepad to look current. That and they dropped force feedback, big mistake.

Sin Episodes: Emergence was released this week. It is available on Steam as a download only. The plan is they will release 9 chapters at each only 20 bucks. Episodic gaming, I guess we will see how this idea of game distribution turns out. I do like the idea of cheaper games. It just depends on how much game play I can get out of each episode. So far I like it.

Weight Loss, Before and After
Tuesday May 2nd 2006

Not much going on. It is so nice for spring to finally be here at least. I've been ramping back up on the diet and exercize plan. I've lost about 15 lbs in the last month or so. I finally accomplished one of my longstanding goals: to rollerblade from my house all the way around lake Calhoun and back. Following the Grand Rounds trails it took me about 3 hours to do this. 1 1/2 hour each way. Got a nice blister on my foot by the end of it, but it was well worth it. Though I didn't plan ahead and bring some water with me. I had assumed the city would have the drinking fountains on by now. Think again! So called up my good friend Jen and had her bring me a buck so I could buy a bottle of water at the park.

Here is a Before/After picture of my weight loss progress. I'm not done yet. But I am pretty proud of what I have accomplished up to this point. The before was taken in 2003 during our trip to San Francisco. I weighed in at close to 290 at that point. In the after picture, I weigh in at 205. The secret: diet and exercize.

Karen spend the last week and two weekends down in Florida helping her Great Aunt move to MN. This left me home alone to bachelor it. My luck that it pretty much rained the entire time. Gave me plenty of time to play on the Xbox 360 at any rate. I had a deal through GameSpy to get a free month of GameFly rentals so I used that to rent King Kong. Played that from beginning to end in a few days. The rest of the time I spent playing Burnout online with some pretty cool people I met online. Heya Spartan!

Wiiiiiiiiiii! Nintendo decided to name the next-get console coming this fall the Wii. Uhhh, OK. Up to this point every had been referring it by the development codename Revolution. Most of us gamers felt that was a perfectly fine name and the big N should keep it as the final. There is speculation going around the net that this is a big ruse and the real name will be released at E3. Guess we will just have to wait and see.

I am starting to think this website needs a new face. That randomized picture you see of me in the corner is about 8 years old. Not that my face has changed all that much since then. I simply am no longer a fan of this design. It was always ment to be cheesy. I think I just need a different level of cheese. We will see what the next few weeks bring me in the shape of ideas.

Catching Up
Tuesday March 28th 2006

This year is shaping up to be the year of catching up. Catching up on bills, weight loss, old movies, and games. We currently don't have plans for much travel or big additions to our home. The current plan is to Just take it easy and play catch-up on all the tasks we started already.

For example, when it comes to games, I have a bad habit of buying a game and not finishing it. Usually because something "newer and shinier" came along. I have shelves full of unbeaten games. PC games are the worst for me. I'll start a game, then because of a system crash, hardware upgrade, or whatnot I'll loose the save game. I rarely feel like starting a game over from scratch once a save game is lost.

To start a new trend, I finally took up Zelda: Wind Waker after a 3 year hiatus. I know this because the last save game on the memory card was dated 2003. Ooops! I spent the last few weekends picking up where I left off and finishing the game. Just last night while waiting for Karen to come home I beat the game. Small goal, but accomplishing any goals you set for yourself, even small ones, are good thing.

It's been slow for any new game releases that jump out at me. Something I am actually quite happy about for a change. The only game I picked up this month was for the 360: Burnout Revenge. So far I like it. It is funny how much I did look forward to HD games. Now that they are here, they feel like the way games are supposed to be. The impact has not been as dramatic as the jump from the SNES to the Nintendo 64. I don't think we will ever see a dramatic jump like that ever again. At least not until we can jack ourselves into the Matrix.

On the 360 I have been spending time making new friends via Xbox live. There is just something inherently cool about chatting with other gamers with the headset while playing online. Two weeks ago I took a sick day *ahem* and spent the day playing Burnout Revenge online. I met a varied group of gamers. Everyone from the hyper-active 13 year olds, to the 50 year old grandma gamer. It was an amazing experience and makes the world feel just the slightest bit smaller. Now, If I could just avoid the "headset hair dent".

Clatto Verata Nicto.

Enter the Xbox 360
Monday January 23rd 2006

Finally got my 360. I was all set to wait it out. I was going to sit on my hands until one of the local Best Buys had it in stock. In a moment of weakness and upon sighting a good deal on eBay, I clicked the "Buy it Now" button. Granted it still cost me around 100 bucks more not including shipping.

This does bring back memories of the PS2 launch back in 2001. I ended up getting the PS2 on eBay as well. Déjà Vu.

My initial impressions are a solid level of jubilation and satisfaction. I cannot express how impressive it is to manipulate the wireless joystick. There has been uncountable times where I have been reaching ultimate gaming bliss and then someone (not naming names) trips over my controller wire, ending said bliss with the death of my avatar. That, thankfully, is a thing of the past. Also worth mentioning is Xbox Live. Now, that is not new, but it is certainly improved. The ability to stream in demos and trailers is a feat that I have previously enjoyed as a PC gamer, never before on a console. In a word. Nice!

I picked up two games to go with the system:

• Call of Duty 2
• Dead or Alive 4

At first I will be spending more time just experimenting and checking out demos. Once the dust has settled, I'll get into the above games more thoroughly. I will say that the Xbox arcade has the possibility of sucking up some hours with its promise of retro-goodness. I checked out Geometry Wars and I can say it is a unique mish-mash of old-school with modern eye candy. In my short play time with it I've managed to pass 100,000 points. Still, no where near the best scores of 12 million that I keep hearing about.

A few complaints while I am here. White! Why in the name of Zeus does everything have to be iPod white these days. The 360 sticks out of my entertainment center like a sore thumb. At least the faceplate can be changed. I'll try to keep my eyes open for a black faceplate. My opinion will always be that tech gadgets look better in black. I just hope this thing won't turn yellowish in 10 years like my old Apple IIc has. Lastly, Microsoft please update the dashboard so I can queue downloads and possibly do other things while downloading.

End of Line.

I Ski
Monday January 16th 2006

AHHH! Get off the Ski slopes! Newman is on the loose!

Festivus 2005
Friday January 6th 2006

Tis the end of another Festivus season. There will be no complaints from me. I'm always a big fan of the Holidays. Even though by Dec 15th I've about had enough of the vexatious music. The highlight of this years holiday was not the gifties, it was the getting together. There was plenty of together-getting to be had. See the following photo album additions:

1. Christmas
2. Jayden's 3rd B-Day

If I had to pick a cool gift though. It would have to be my new mini Mini! The in-laws picked me up a sweet little number. A RC Mini Cooper. Hah, makes me smile every time I look at it. How can you not think Minis are not the coolest cars ever. The mini Mini has the following features: 3 speeds (slow, fast, and "Watch OUT!"), working head/tail lights, horn, car alarm, and a detailed interior. To go along with the Mini themed Holiday, Karen picked me up a stuffed Pug. It's name is Nigel to match the big Mini. He also wears a collar that reads "Mini Mini Mini" and so on.

This year, I scrounged up enough loose change from the couch cushions to get Karen a new Mac. Her old 400Mhz G4 was just not cutting the proverbial mustard anymore. In it's place is a shiny tiny new Mac Mini. 1.4GHz with 1 Giggers of RAM. I pretty much maxed out what Apple would throw into a Mini. It's a sweet little box. If I wasn't such a hardcore PC user I'd want one for me.

Still no Xbox 360. I'm now holding out for a game that really interests me. None of the launch titles really grab my heart-strings. Never mind the fact that you still can't walk into any electronics store and pick one off of the shelf. There is just no way that I will be forking our the current eBay rates which are currently double retail price. No thank you! As Karen says: "You have enough games." To which I reply: "Never!"

I finally got around to swapping out the HDD on Sonic. Sonic used to have 3 hard drives. 2x 4 Gig IDE drives, and a 20 Gig SCSI drive. It was just a mess. After I did some upgrades on Moonshine awhile ago. I had an extra 120 Gig IDE drive laying around. I spent a good few hours moving the entire Debian install from the 3 drives to the new drive. Now there is much more room to breathe on our crappy home file server. Is that not the most exciting thing you have read today?

P-A-R-T-Y, Why? Cause, I gotta!
Monday December 19th 2005

Happy B-Day to me! Another year, another PARTY. Click that link (if you have not already) to see the pics of our annual Newman winter extravaganza. Good times! I'd like to thank everyone for coming. It's always the guests that make the party worth having.

Actually my b-day is tomorrow. But, who is keeping track anyway. Only a few more days to the big Holiday. Merry Christmas, God bless us, everyone.

Burnout 3: Takedown has seen more action than any other console game in my collection. Everytime I have the buds over, this is the title we play. If you don't have it (or the newer sequel, Burnout: Revenge), you are really missing out. Speaking of Xbox games. I still don't have a Xbox 360 if you are keeping track. They are sold out everywhere!

360 ist heir!
Wednesday November 23rd 2005

Xbox 360 was released yesterday. As expected the lines were crazy! I feel a bit left out not being there, but at the same time happy I avoided the crazyness. Am I wishy-washy or what?

Tomorrow we stuff ourselves. Revenge of the Turkey! He's going down... all the way to China-Town.

Countdown to 360
Wednesday November 16th 2005

Only 5 days and 13 hours until the launch of the Xbox 360. I always get excited for the release of new game systems. The 360 looks to provide that especially sugary sweet gaming nectar of the gods. HDTV has been my ambrosia as of late. The 360 will be the first out of the gate to provide full the 1080i support my Mitsubishi 42" TV desires. At first I was very worried if the 360 would even provide 1080i support. Most of what you read is that the 360 will offer 720p. After some deep digging, I found that it does upscale 720p games to 1080i. Nice! On top of that, Xbox 1 generation games will all be running at 720p or 1080i. This means I can play Halo 2 at HiDef. Now that is what I am talking about!

Did I pre-order? NO. I am going to wait until after the holidays. YES, that will be very hard to do. I'm already obsessing a bit about the 360. I know I will get one eventually. But, I tend to be a bit impatient with these things sometimes. I need to conserve my money right now to pay for the Christmas gifts that I plan on giving. It is always better to give, right? I reward myself all year long. During November and December there is no better time to give back. Just call me Santa Newman!

Today I'm posting my Xbox Live gamertag. If you want to find me on Xbox Live: look for my gamertag LaXDragon. No, it does not mean Laxative Dragon. Can you even imagine how messy a Dragon on Ex-Lax would be? Uhhh ish! Not a pleasant thought.

Also of note: Today provided the first snowfall of the year. It was only about an inch, but that qualifies. Butt cold outside today. The Mini handled the chilly 20F Minnesota air just fine.

November Website Update
Wednesday November 2nd 2005

November already. Hmmmm....

Anyway... I added a few new games to the GameDB. Quake 4 and FEAR. Just the games I tweaked my system for. Speaking of tweak. I ran into an issue with the Dual Core CPU. Apparently WinXP has a bug on Dual Core CPUs. I noticed it when playing Battlefield 2 for more than 2 hours. After that it would get choppy and start dropping the connection. Only a reboot would fix it. Installing the hotfix and the AMD Dual Core CPU driver update fixed it. One the same note, nVidia updated the GeForce driver last week. That update boosted performance slightly. Always nice to get a free performance boost.

Yahoo really ticked me off this week. It all started when I got a email from them saying my account had been deleted for violating their "Terms of Service". It did not bother to tell my WHY or WHAT I did. I tried emailing them, but as you would expect, that is just a black hole. I even went as far as calling them. The lady on the phone, while very nice, just gave me the run around telling me that she can't do anything. She just gave me a different email to get more help. That email was also promptly filed to /dev/null. Finally tonight I got another automated email from Yahoo telling me my account will be reactivated for 10 days to fix the violation. At least this time it told me what that was. Apparently I have a GeoCities website that I created 4 years ago. That website was a redirect to this site. That is not allowed by their TOS. I'm still a bit ticked, just less than before. They could have warned me instead of just locking me out. I totally forgot that website even existed. It certainly was not being used. I really did not want to loose my Yahoo account. I've had it since 1998. That and Karen and I chat over Yahoo instant messenger during the day at work.

I noticed I dropped off the first page of Google search results again. Maybe I'm not mentioning my name is Jeremy Newman enough.

The Mini Wine Tour
Sunday October 2nd 2005

We went on a little wine tour with our local Mini owners group. Good times. A total of 37 Mini Coopers and one classic Mini went from Edina, MN to a Winery (Chateau St. Croix) outside of Taylors Falls. We did get quite a few looks from bystanders as our group rolled through town. I'd like to thank every everyone we met for such a wonderful time. Good people.

Video Card Benchmarks 2005
Friday September 30th 2005

Just did some minor tweaks to Moonshine. The tweaks should fix the bad FPS I was getting in Battlefield 2.

Slow goings
Wednesday September 28th 2005

Nothing been going on much for that last few months. Just the usual work and play. Not that I mean to complain about it.

I've recenly been hooked on FireFly. Strange thing, I never heard of it back when it aired in 2002 on Fox. For me, that is highly unusual. I'm usually on top of "geekish" things such as a new Sci-Fi series. I had some friends over last weekend to watch DVD 1 of the set. The very next day, I went out and picked up the DVD collection for myself. I have a goal to get through all the episodes before I see the movie Serenity this Friday. Seems like a plan.

Once again the new video game shopping season is upon us. At this time of year we start to see games and hardware dumped upon us for the Christmas shopping season. This year is extra special because of the upcoming Xbox 360 release on November 22nd. I did have a pre-order going at EBgames.com of the Xbox 360 deluxe package. But, I canceled that due to the fact it was bundling games and options I did not really care for. Now, you can no longer pre-order systems anymore. *Sigh*. I may need to wait till early next year to get the 360. I have a funny feeling they are going to be sold out everywhere. The other problem is there is two different packages. The Xbox 360 Core package (green box), and the Xbox 360 regular package (white box). The core package does not include the hard drive. Granted it's 100 bucks cheaper, but the hard drive is a must. You can't play old Xbox games without it. That and internet downloads are impossible to fit on a 64 meg memory card. Then there is the launch titles. The only games that catch my eye so far are "Perfect Dark Zero", and "Dead or Alive 4". Still, the launch line up is better than what the PS2 had back in 2000.

Enter the MINI!
Monday July 11th 2005

Updates woo-hoo! First off... I GOT MY MINI,

I have been taking it on the first maiden voyages this evening. I still need a bit of practice using a stick shift. It's been 10 years since my last attempt at that. It's coming back easier than I expected. The Mini drives very well. It is like they say. It's a bit like a go-kart, just a whole much more comfortable. A very different world from what I had been driving previous. I'll upload more pics soon. I still need to stop back at the dealership and have the bonnet stripes installed. Once that is done, the look will be complete. I will then take some more pics.

I also finally uploaded the Cabin Photos of '05. Take a gander if you like. It is mostly us just being, well... us. You can bear witness to my first ever attempts at waterskiing. I was missing out all these years. I had a great time, and plan to attempt it again.

Battlefield 2
Tuesday July 5th 2005

Just in case you need to find me in Battlefield 2 click here.

June Update
Monday June 27th 2005

Ouch. My legs hurt. This last weekend we spent at the cabin. I attempted to water ski again for the second time. This time was slightly more sucessful. I was able to go almost completly accross the lake without falling down. As soon as we rounded the corner for another lap, I took a nice face plant into the water. If that wasn't enough, and me being so very athletic, I gave another go at wind surfing. It was windy enough to be sure. I was much more agile in this particular sport.

With it raining today again, and my poor poor legs being what they were, Rob and I played some more rounds of Battlefield 2. I'm really getting into this game. I always was a big fan of Battlefield 1942. I appreciate this new sequel even more so. We usually play as a squad and make our rounds to each capture point via whatever vehicle will get us there fast, usually jeeps. I tend to prefer the Special Forces class of character. It is exciting to run up behind tanks, plant some C4, then run away pushing the detonate remote button. BOOM!

On the downside, I can't run the game at full detail. Even with the recently upgraded Moonshine I'm finding myself running at 1152x864 with the lighting settings at medium. Oh heaven forbid I can't run a game at all high detail settings. It seems in order to do so would require a fairly huge jump in rendering prowess.

Summertime Ramblings
Tuesday June 14th 2005

Some summer this is turning out to be. It has been much too rainy for my tastes. I kid with Rob and tell him he must have brought the London weather with him. I still manage to get out and blade whenever I can. I really hope that this gets over with by the time my Mini shows up. Speaking of which, I just checked on the status and it is now floating across the pond. It should be here by July 13th or so. Every day I have to drive that Corsica has been pure torture.

I recently made some small upgrades to Moonshine. I switched out the ATI Radeon card for a eVGA GeForce 6800. I recently read in an article about how you can unlock the 6800 non GT/Ultra card. Normally the 6800 only ships with 12 pipelines enabled. It also by default has one of its vertex shaders turned off. With RivaTuner 15.5 you can unlock the 4 extra pipelines and vertex shader. The only risk you can run by doing this is some possible graphical glitches if the pipelines are defective. I was able to pick this card up from NewEgg for around 200 bucks, and sold my old card to a friend for 100 bucks. So in the end it was a very cheap upgrade. This doubled the rendering performance of my system. I used to get just under 2000 in the benchmark 3Dmark2005. Now I get about 3800. It took my FPS in Half-Life (@1280x1024x32 no/AA trilenear) from 72 fps to 120 fps. I should be able to run the game decently now with 4x AA turned on. Though I usually don't.

I finally finished DOOM 3 last weekend. I sat down and dedicated about 2.5 hours of non-stop gameplay to finish off Hell and the rest of the levels. My first save game was from August of last year. I guess I got distracted with Half-Life 2 once it came out shortly after DOOM 3 did. Post-Mortem: I still like HL2 better than DOOM 3. Still, DOOM 3 is a marvelous game. I'll finish off my reviews about both DOOM 3 and HL2 in the GameDB soon.

Lastly, I finally moved this blog into a database table. It used to be kept in a static template file. The benefits are that I can now post entries from anywhere. This maybe should allow me to post more often. I don't want to get anyones hopes up though. Heh.

Getting a Mini Cooper!
Thursday May 26th 2005

I am finally over my jet lag. It figures I would get a head cold as soon as I get back to jolly Minnesota. That and since I've been back all it has done is rain rain RAIN! I managed to get out and rollerblade only twice in that time. Gotta get back into my groove.

Mini! That's right, I am finally giving my old P.O.S. Chevy Corsica the boot! I'm not much of a car guy, so I was able to bear driving my wife's old Corsica for the last two years while we got our house settled. I hate that car. My old Beretta was in such bad shape that the Corsica was a better car of the two. So I donated the Beretta to charity and grinned and bared driving the white beast. Lesson: You don't pick crap cars, they pick you!

Unfortunately I have to wait about 7 weeks from now till I actually get my Mini. I had to custom order the one I wanted from the factory as the dealer didn't have exactly what I wanted in stock. It will be a loooong wait. We can just stare at this picture till then right? Nah, that'd be pretty psycho even for me. I opted for the hyper blue metallic paint, with a black roof, and black mirrors. There will be black bonnet stripes on the hood as well. The one add-on I wasn't willing to go without is the moon roof. And thankfully it's HUGE! I also added the 16" 5 spoke performance tires. Karen is never big on tires, but the guy in me could't allow going with the stock tires. Sacrilege! I actually have something other than the usual games and tech on the brain. Don't worry, I won't go all nuts and add British Union Jack flags everywhere now.