Tonight's Sunday Night Slog is special, because the computer which has been the core of my projects for the past three years up and died last week. Last Sunday, my G5 tower started to act up. And die. I got to spend most of the last week troubleshooting and fretting rather than writing or, heaven forbid, sitting around and having a good time. This is particularly troubling as my Apple hardware is traditionally pretty sturdy. As far as I know, the Apple II+ at my parents' house still boots. The Macintosh IIsi I had worked fine for its seven years, ultimately getting traded in for a G3 tower (which is still here and still boots), and seven years, later, I got a G5 tower.
Which freaking died in less than four years. Very disappointing.
My iPod's FM transmitter broke the other week. (I kinda cracked it open and enhanced the antenna in 2005, and it just snapped off a few weeks ago.) So it's been fuzzy driving around, and I was more than a little surprised to see an iPod FM adapter at Target in their cheapo gift area for ten bucks. I bought it and early quick tests seem that it's actually just fine. Interesting. I'll post more later, I want to know if I should hate it or not yet.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Star Wars Comic Pack Figures Wave 4 Video
I really like this one. I'm using a Playmobil potted plant to act as "forest". At some point I need to actually try making something like this that isn't an ad.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Target Revises Scanners
While on my travels today, I am going through different cities and made a fun discovery for toy fans-- Target now has updated price scanners. There are two models you may have seen-- one with a tiny LCD screen, and another with a larger screen and number buttons 0-9. The latter allows you to punch in various codes to check the stockroom.
A new third version has shown up, and here's the kicker-- the screen is positively huge, and it lets you search for things. Like, I can punch in "Transformers" and it will show me every DPCI with Transformers stuck to it. No joke. I was trying to find the as-of-yet unseen Transformers Combiner gift sets, but was not able to do so-- but you will be able to find Hasbro Wolverine toys and some other stuff I haven't yet seen talked up much.
So this holiday season, be on the lookout for this. Given how much data is leaked via DPCI, like new names and new secret products, I can't imagine a greater gift to the toy collector and rabid consumer this holiday season. Thanks, Target, for reminding me why you get more foot traffic from me than other plastic retailers. (And "thanks" for having those very expensive exclusives showing up today.)
A new third version has shown up, and here's the kicker-- the screen is positively huge, and it lets you search for things. Like, I can punch in "Transformers" and it will show me every DPCI with Transformers stuck to it. No joke. I was trying to find the as-of-yet unseen Transformers Combiner gift sets, but was not able to do so-- but you will be able to find Hasbro Wolverine toys and some other stuff I haven't yet seen talked up much.
So this holiday season, be on the lookout for this. Given how much data is leaked via DPCI, like new names and new secret products, I can't imagine a greater gift to the toy collector and rabid consumer this holiday season. Thanks, Target, for reminding me why you get more foot traffic from me than other plastic retailers. (And "thanks" for having those very expensive exclusives showing up today.)
Monday, November 17, 2008
Fire
LA is presently on fire. This is one reason I'm looking forward to going out of town for a few days. I just got 16bit.com and GalacticHunter.com update for the night, and it isn't even midnight yet. Aside from the fact that I feel and smell awful due to the burning, I'm pretty happy about this.
My various buzzings-around online have resulted in something interesting-- it's entirely possible there will be two Target-exclusive Black Friday or post-Black Friday Transformers 25th Anniversary sets. (Knowing Target, this means they'll be out by the first week of December.) That, or they're 2009 items, but it's looking like it's a 2008 rush job. Being a sucker, I'll likely get them if the price is right (it's 4 $7 toys and a $10 toy per box, so I'd shell out $30 without too much complaining. But in this market, that's unlikely.)
But yeah, we went out and about today because it was unpleasant at home, so going out didn't seem like too big a hazard. For November, the 90-ish weather isn't entirely unexpected but the overall feel in the air right now is not unlike staying up for two straight days while someone dumps sand in your eyes. And that's before you stop to consider the parade of misery that's going on just miles up the road.
As you can see, my priorities are in the right place with blog postings about toys meant for small children and the horrors of losing one's home in a fire. I don't personally know anyone who has been evacuated but I know a couple of people that are likely in miserable places, and so far they seem to be OK. It really is astonishing how awful it seems to get at least one or two times a year here with just the fires alone.
My various buzzings-around online have resulted in something interesting-- it's entirely possible there will be two Target-exclusive Black Friday or post-Black Friday Transformers 25th Anniversary sets. (Knowing Target, this means they'll be out by the first week of December.) That, or they're 2009 items, but it's looking like it's a 2008 rush job. Being a sucker, I'll likely get them if the price is right (it's 4 $7 toys and a $10 toy per box, so I'd shell out $30 without too much complaining. But in this market, that's unlikely.)
But yeah, we went out and about today because it was unpleasant at home, so going out didn't seem like too big a hazard. For November, the 90-ish weather isn't entirely unexpected but the overall feel in the air right now is not unlike staying up for two straight days while someone dumps sand in your eyes. And that's before you stop to consider the parade of misery that's going on just miles up the road.
As you can see, my priorities are in the right place with blog postings about toys meant for small children and the horrors of losing one's home in a fire. I don't personally know anyone who has been evacuated but I know a couple of people that are likely in miserable places, and so far they seem to be OK. It really is astonishing how awful it seems to get at least one or two times a year here with just the fires alone.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Star Wars Ecliptic Evader TIE Fighter
The latest video I made for work. Oh, those rascally giants, always knocking things over...
Friday, October 31, 2008
Star Trek Tribble Toy Video
I've been REALLY bad about posting these... or anything. But since nobody reads...
Diamond Select sent my employer a prototype, meaning I got to play with it. I'm not entirely convinced the electronics in it were final, but it's a pretty sizable ball of fluff with a switch that allows you to select "off", "purr," and "ZOMG KLINGONZ". The actual toy is due out in 2009, so this one seems to have been lacking any tags or what have you-- but it's pretty slick, and significantly larger than any other Tribble toy I've had the chance to see in person.
Diamond Select sent my employer a prototype, meaning I got to play with it. I'm not entirely convinced the electronics in it were final, but it's a pretty sizable ball of fluff with a switch that allows you to select "off", "purr," and "ZOMG KLINGONZ". The actual toy is due out in 2009, so this one seems to have been lacking any tags or what have you-- but it's pretty slick, and significantly larger than any other Tribble toy I've had the chance to see in person.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Lost & Found: Console RPG Love
I hate RPGs. Let me back up a little bit-- I used to love RPGs, along with every other holier-than-thou gamer who, in high school, turned up their noses at anyone who bought the original PlayStation for Madden and not Final Fantasy VII. Clearly, the unwashed masses were missing out on the greatest thing ever.
Flash forward a few years later and well, it seemed the genre was getting boring-- and it was spilling over into another favored genre, the adventure game. (Or "action RPG," if you will, and I won't.) Final Fantasy VIII I played through to the end twice without seeing the ending-- damn that last boss/my not having enough magic. Final Fantasy IX, I loved, and Final Fantasy X was more or less tossed on the "play later" pile for a couple of years. (And XI could suck it thanks to its monthly fee.) FFX was the last RPG I bought (not counting GameBoy Advance ports of NES and Super NES games, of course) and later the new Zelda for Wii slammed the coffin shut on adventure games for a while, too. (As neither Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time, nor Twilight Princess held on to me long enough to beat it.) Obviously, I was flushing money down a toilet.
Last week I scored a $15 copy of Lost Odyssey, and so far I'm liking it. It feels more like a Final Fantasy than VIII or X, in both the good and the bad ways. It's deeply flawed and as a storytelling medium, a little scatterbrained. Yet it's actually making me want to play it for reasons I can't quite figure out yet. As I approach what I presume is the end of the first disc (of four), the real story has yet to be revealed. The first combat takes place when the game starts, and the next is over two hours later. There's a lot of background and introduction, and the title is highly indulgent. Let me explain how, and this falls under the schizo storytelling I mentioned before. (And yes, I know this game came out months ago, but you're reading this still so blah.)
In Final Fantasy I-IX, the story was told with text-- there was little or no recorded dialogue in the game. X introduced limited dialogue for many of the major events, and that's exactly what we have here. Some of the story is told with the standard text windows-- like in the 8-, 16-, and 32-bit games. Some is like on whatever the Playstation 2 was. And the weird thing is that more still is told in the forms of these "dreams" you have to unlock-- the main character's life is told in flashbacks, which are actually short stories. Really, they come off as more or less parables or novels, in that they involve the main character and "a man" or "some guy" and no other named people. I don't know if I like it, but it's an interesting way to eat up game time and extend the narrative with nearly no extra storage space being wasted-- and since it's on 4 DVDs, there's a lot of storage space, much of which likely being wasted.
A significant portion of the game so far is cut scenes. I've probably watched 60% of the play time, as there is a lot of story being crammed down my throat. In old generations, this sort of time would be spent wandering an overworld and leveling up, something this game seems to discourage. It really wants you to advance the plot, and as such, random battles aren't always easily available to you. As of yet. Like I said, I'm on disc 1 here.
Despite being from Mistwalker (founded by ex-Square, ex-FF people) this game is more Final Fantasy than Final Fantasy. A mysterious brooding hero with memory problems? Line-up combat with limited animation? A bizarre system of learning new abilities? Chicks with bare midriffs everywhere and a queen with a thong of sorts? It's all here. Heck, there's even a sequence when you get stuck in a dungeon and have to escape-- if ever there is a Square drinking game, this should be one of the main components. That and "..." as dialogue, which this game has as well.
With the advent of the downloadable arcade game, I've figured that game value can more or less be quantified thusly: $0.25 for about 10 minutes of fun is basically fair. With lots of getting my ass handed to me by the first boss, I've probably clocked in about 8 hours, and paid $15 for the game on ye olde clearance rack. This means I'm extremely close to getting my money's worth, which is fantastic. I'm told by reviewers that the entire game is 50-70 hours, and I'm currently going to shoot for it. I said the same thing about Twilight Princess last year and haven't touched it since, so who knows. Wish me luck, as now I'm going back and forth between Lost Odyssey and Mega Man 9 and I gotta beat something soon.
Flash forward a few years later and well, it seemed the genre was getting boring-- and it was spilling over into another favored genre, the adventure game. (Or "action RPG," if you will, and I won't.) Final Fantasy VIII I played through to the end twice without seeing the ending-- damn that last boss/my not having enough magic. Final Fantasy IX, I loved, and Final Fantasy X was more or less tossed on the "play later" pile for a couple of years. (And XI could suck it thanks to its monthly fee.) FFX was the last RPG I bought (not counting GameBoy Advance ports of NES and Super NES games, of course) and later the new Zelda for Wii slammed the coffin shut on adventure games for a while, too. (As neither Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time, nor Twilight Princess held on to me long enough to beat it.) Obviously, I was flushing money down a toilet.
Last week I scored a $15 copy of Lost Odyssey, and so far I'm liking it. It feels more like a Final Fantasy than VIII or X, in both the good and the bad ways. It's deeply flawed and as a storytelling medium, a little scatterbrained. Yet it's actually making me want to play it for reasons I can't quite figure out yet. As I approach what I presume is the end of the first disc (of four), the real story has yet to be revealed. The first combat takes place when the game starts, and the next is over two hours later. There's a lot of background and introduction, and the title is highly indulgent. Let me explain how, and this falls under the schizo storytelling I mentioned before. (And yes, I know this game came out months ago, but you're reading this still so blah.)
In Final Fantasy I-IX, the story was told with text-- there was little or no recorded dialogue in the game. X introduced limited dialogue for many of the major events, and that's exactly what we have here. Some of the story is told with the standard text windows-- like in the 8-, 16-, and 32-bit games. Some is like on whatever the Playstation 2 was. And the weird thing is that more still is told in the forms of these "dreams" you have to unlock-- the main character's life is told in flashbacks, which are actually short stories. Really, they come off as more or less parables or novels, in that they involve the main character and "a man" or "some guy" and no other named people. I don't know if I like it, but it's an interesting way to eat up game time and extend the narrative with nearly no extra storage space being wasted-- and since it's on 4 DVDs, there's a lot of storage space, much of which likely being wasted.
A significant portion of the game so far is cut scenes. I've probably watched 60% of the play time, as there is a lot of story being crammed down my throat. In old generations, this sort of time would be spent wandering an overworld and leveling up, something this game seems to discourage. It really wants you to advance the plot, and as such, random battles aren't always easily available to you. As of yet. Like I said, I'm on disc 1 here.
Despite being from Mistwalker (founded by ex-Square, ex-FF people) this game is more Final Fantasy than Final Fantasy. A mysterious brooding hero with memory problems? Line-up combat with limited animation? A bizarre system of learning new abilities? Chicks with bare midriffs everywhere and a queen with a thong of sorts? It's all here. Heck, there's even a sequence when you get stuck in a dungeon and have to escape-- if ever there is a Square drinking game, this should be one of the main components. That and "..." as dialogue, which this game has as well.
With the advent of the downloadable arcade game, I've figured that game value can more or less be quantified thusly: $0.25 for about 10 minutes of fun is basically fair. With lots of getting my ass handed to me by the first boss, I've probably clocked in about 8 hours, and paid $15 for the game on ye olde clearance rack. This means I'm extremely close to getting my money's worth, which is fantastic. I'm told by reviewers that the entire game is 50-70 hours, and I'm currently going to shoot for it. I said the same thing about Twilight Princess last year and haven't touched it since, so who knows. Wish me luck, as now I'm going back and forth between Lost Odyssey and Mega Man 9 and I gotta beat something soon.
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