Got a friend's G4 iBook fixed, and for payment I swapped my SNES with hers. She doesn't own any cartridges that use the extra connectors, so she'll never notice the difference. Wheee! Now I can play StarFox!
I also picked-up Perfect Dark (N64), Beyond Oasis (Genesis), and Skies Of Arcadia (Dreamcast). Perfect Dark's kinda cool so far, but I've only played the first level; I still need to see how it plays in 16:9 high-resolution with surround sound and two analog controllers. Beyond Oasis is one of my favourite action-RPGs (alongside it's Saturn sequel, Legend Of Oasis), and the best competition SEGA's ever had for Zelda. Skies Of Arcadia is kinda hard to find (and impossible to properly back-up) while apparently being one of the best RPGs in recent memory, so it seemed like a smart buy. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work. It froze during the second battle the first time I played it, and wouldn't even load after restarting. There are some strange markings on the disc's surface, which leads me to believe that the previous owner tried to buff-out the scratches with a CD resurfacer. That's really a shame because Dreamcast GD-ROMs are a touch more sensitive than regular CD-ROMs. Time to see if I can get a refund, or find someone with a Game Doctor (I have a set of Dreamcast-specific resurfacing wheels).
Hey, here's a fun one: I just finished fixing a Windows 2000 machine that had somehow been compromised. The computer itself was set as a restricted site, and because Explorer is used to access the file system as well as the Control Panel, the computer was kinda useless. All scans came-up clean, and I had access to some functions in Safe Mode, but things were pretty far gone. Long story short, I was able to back-up the important data and perform a clean OS installation. Fun.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Friday, November 24, 2006
Burgers and a View
I walked into a Burger King on my way home yesterday and bought three XBOX/XBOX 360 games; no food though. $12.99 + tax later (or $4.99 + tax each), I had copies of Sneak King, PocketBike Racer, and Big Bumpin'. Yeah, Burger King is currently offering cheap XBOX games with the purchase of a value meal. Here's the crazy thing: These games are actually a lot of fun! Sneak King is sort of a stealth action game where players must achieve specific goals that involve sneaking-up on hungry people as that freaky Burger King mascot and giving them food. PocketBike Racer (featuring Brooke Burke) is Mario Kart-esque title that is surprisingly deep, very solid, and a hell of a lot of fun to play. Finally Big Bumpin' is a really creative bumper car game that offers a number of different gameplay styles and challenges. If you have an XBOX or an XBOX 360 the games are definitely worth your time and money.
Also, I'm glad to finally see something like this. It's nice to see a succinct chart that tells me everything I need to know about the different versions of Windows Vista. No longer do I have to trudge through the marketing speak on Microsoft's site, or the over-analytical bullshit on all the other tech sites. From the looks of things, anything under Home Premium is kinda pointless from anything other than a compatibility standpoint, and Business looks to be the best value (especially considering this little tidbit of information). I may have access to a copy of Enterprise in the near future, but that may also include an Ultimate license, so I guess we'll wait and see. I figure I'll be upgrading by summer, at the latest.
Also, I'm glad to finally see something like this. It's nice to see a succinct chart that tells me everything I need to know about the different versions of Windows Vista. No longer do I have to trudge through the marketing speak on Microsoft's site, or the over-analytical bullshit on all the other tech sites. From the looks of things, anything under Home Premium is kinda pointless from anything other than a compatibility standpoint, and Business looks to be the best value (especially considering this little tidbit of information). I may have access to a copy of Enterprise in the near future, but that may also include an Ultimate license, so I guess we'll wait and see. I figure I'll be upgrading by summer, at the latest.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Fucking Grrr...
Looks like the problem is with my SNES. I talked to the guy from the shop who tested my Starfox cartridge, and he had no problems with it. Upon closer inspection, after getting home, one of the connectors in my system is missing. The upside is that it's one of the connectors for the extra set of leads used only by cartridges that employ enhancement chips, so most games will work just fine. The downside is that this means I potentially can't play titles such as Starfox, Yoshi's Island, Pilotwings, Super Mario Kart, Star Ocean, Mega Man X2 and X3, Kirby Super Star, Kirby's Dreamland 3, and Super Mario RPG! I'm not sure which of these cartridges use the extra leads, but they all use enhancement chips, so they're potentially unplayable! Gah!
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
How I roll...
Things are starting to settle in the PC software department for me...
Windows XP (operating system)
AVG Free Edition (antivirus)
Spybot (antispyware)
Firefox 2.0 (web browsing)
Thunderbird (e-mail)
OpenOffice (desktop publishing)
GIMP (image manipulation)
WinRAR (archive management)
BitTorrent (BitTorrent client)
FrostWire (P2P client)
foobar2000 (audio playback)
VLC (video playback)
GEAR PRO (audio and data burning)
Alcohol 120% (disc copying, image burning)
CloneDVD (DVD back-up)
ConvertXtoDVD (DVD creation)
Nine of those programs are completely free, most of them are simple, lightweight, and unobtrusive, and the default configurations for most are more than adequate for the casual user's purposes. Alcohol made the list because it supports a number of formats and options that GEAR does not.
I would, however, like to point-out something about Firefox's default configuration. I've noticed a number of concerns regarding the browser's memory usage since version 1.5 was released. It seems to use an awful lot of RAM for a web browser (I've seen it go over 150MB and stay there on my main PC), especially when considered alongside Internet Explorer 7 and Opera 9. People have made accusations of memory leaks and sloppy code, but the fact of the matter is that it's a design decision intended to help smooth-out the browsing experience. By default, Firefox stores copies of viewed pages for each tab in the system's memory. This practice allows for quicker page-rendering, for example, when you click the 'forward' and 'back' buttons and switch between tabs, but at the cost of requiring more RAM. Thankfully, the Firefox team has made efforts to keep this memory usage from getting out of hand. Firefox bases its overall memory usage for these cached pages on the total amount of physical RAM in the system so that the browser never really bogs-down your system performance. If, however, you're neurotic like I am, and want your Firefox experience to leave a smaller footprint on your system, read this page. Following those instructions, you can reduce (or increase) the amount of RAM used to store the aforementioned data (or just turn off the feature altogether), and even have the browser free large amounts of RAM when minimized. Based on my experience, the performance gains from this memory usage are insignificant, and I appreciate being able to minimize the browser to free resources instead of having to close it. Memory usage after these tweaks now tends to hang around 20~40MB; 2~6MB when minimized.
From the Games department: NHL2K7 was proving to be just too easy on the "Pro" level, so I've restarted my season on "All-Star". I picked-up F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point and Need For Speed: Carbon Collector's Edition. Still working on Project: Snowblind and Need For Speed: Most Wanted though, so they'll have to wait. Picked-up The Legend Of Zelda and Link's Adventure re-issues for GBA on the cheap; about half-way through the first one so far. Finished Astro Boy the first time through (it needs to be played through twice to be finished), but I'm setting it aside to get into Gunstar Super Heroes for now. Found a sealed copy of Rez for PS2 (only domestic version ever released). While it is 'jaggier' than the Dreamcast version, it's not an issue; the game is still a work of art. The increased framerate over the Dreamcast version is also nice, and the slowdown is negligible. If you ever find this game, for either platform, buy it. Also, I heard back from the video game store, and they say Starfox works just fine... Looks like there's a problem with my SNES... Rats.
Oh, hey, I thought these were clever: http://tv.truenuff.com/mac/
Windows XP (operating system)
AVG Free Edition (antivirus)
Spybot (antispyware)
Firefox 2.0 (web browsing)
Thunderbird (e-mail)
OpenOffice (desktop publishing)
GIMP (image manipulation)
WinRAR (archive management)
BitTorrent (BitTorrent client)
FrostWire (P2P client)
foobar2000 (audio playback)
VLC (video playback)
GEAR PRO (audio and data burning)
Alcohol 120% (disc copying, image burning)
CloneDVD (DVD back-up)
ConvertXtoDVD (DVD creation)
Nine of those programs are completely free, most of them are simple, lightweight, and unobtrusive, and the default configurations for most are more than adequate for the casual user's purposes. Alcohol made the list because it supports a number of formats and options that GEAR does not.
I would, however, like to point-out something about Firefox's default configuration. I've noticed a number of concerns regarding the browser's memory usage since version 1.5 was released. It seems to use an awful lot of RAM for a web browser (I've seen it go over 150MB and stay there on my main PC), especially when considered alongside Internet Explorer 7 and Opera 9. People have made accusations of memory leaks and sloppy code, but the fact of the matter is that it's a design decision intended to help smooth-out the browsing experience. By default, Firefox stores copies of viewed pages for each tab in the system's memory. This practice allows for quicker page-rendering, for example, when you click the 'forward' and 'back' buttons and switch between tabs, but at the cost of requiring more RAM. Thankfully, the Firefox team has made efforts to keep this memory usage from getting out of hand. Firefox bases its overall memory usage for these cached pages on the total amount of physical RAM in the system so that the browser never really bogs-down your system performance. If, however, you're neurotic like I am, and want your Firefox experience to leave a smaller footprint on your system, read this page. Following those instructions, you can reduce (or increase) the amount of RAM used to store the aforementioned data (or just turn off the feature altogether), and even have the browser free large amounts of RAM when minimized. Based on my experience, the performance gains from this memory usage are insignificant, and I appreciate being able to minimize the browser to free resources instead of having to close it. Memory usage after these tweaks now tends to hang around 20~40MB; 2~6MB when minimized.
From the Games department: NHL2K7 was proving to be just too easy on the "Pro" level, so I've restarted my season on "All-Star". I picked-up F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point and Need For Speed: Carbon Collector's Edition. Still working on Project: Snowblind and Need For Speed: Most Wanted though, so they'll have to wait. Picked-up The Legend Of Zelda and Link's Adventure re-issues for GBA on the cheap; about half-way through the first one so far. Finished Astro Boy the first time through (it needs to be played through twice to be finished), but I'm setting it aside to get into Gunstar Super Heroes for now. Found a sealed copy of Rez for PS2 (only domestic version ever released). While it is 'jaggier' than the Dreamcast version, it's not an issue; the game is still a work of art. The increased framerate over the Dreamcast version is also nice, and the slowdown is negligible. If you ever find this game, for either platform, buy it. Also, I heard back from the video game store, and they say Starfox works just fine... Looks like there's a problem with my SNES... Rats.
Oh, hey, I thought these were clever: http://tv.truenuff.com/mac/
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Well then, that takes care of that...
I found a used XBOX with a Samsung DVD drive and a three-month warranty for $109 yesterday. It's a little noisy at times (both the DVD drive and the HDD, but they're normal noises based on my PC experience), but all of the disc read errors are gone! It's so nice to enjoy my XBOX games with consistent loading times, audio that doesn't cut-out while the drive makes ominous seek noises, and (so far) no fear of random, progress-threatening crashes! I also picked-up Otogi 2 (XBOX) and NHL '97 (Genesis; classic!) while I was out, as well as Starfox and Starfox 64 the day before. Turns-out the SNES Starfox cartridge doesn't work, so we'll see if they give me a refund, or let me exchange it.
I must make note of just how excited I am about this. The idea of an Oddworld movie just works a little too well in my head. If you've never played through any of the Oddworld games, then all you need to do is a read a synopsis of one and check-out some of the artwork, and you'll start to get the idea. If you'd like to see exactly how well this could work, watch the intro movie to Stranger's Wrath and feel the anticipation :) Speaking of, I'm nearing the end of Stranger's Wrath, and I've throughly enjoyed the experience (especially once I discovered the quicksave feature). This game constantly impresses me with its graphics, gameplay, and storyline/humour. The only knock I have against it is that it can get repetitive if played for too long all at once. It works fantastically, however, as a game you can pick-up for an hour or two a few times a week.
Oh, heh, before I go, my Leafs in NHL2K7 are 20-0-0 this season :) Yes, I'm playing it at the "Pro" level, and no, I'm not using any funny cheats or settings... A number of games have been quite close, production has been spread-out well across the roster, and Raycroft has not been stellar. I've been winning by playing a very physical game (defending Raycroft at all costs) while being exceedingly aggressive on offense (like 40+ SOG per game). The price has been a number of injuries (usually a few days or a couple of weeks at a time; Kubina's out for a few months), but my rookies (Ondrus, White) have really been able to step-up. Also, the shenanigans of those Florida games I mentioned earlier seem to have subsided; it's not perfect, and I guess I'll have to accept that injured players stay in until the end of the game, but it's been a lot of fun for the most part.
I must make note of just how excited I am about this. The idea of an Oddworld movie just works a little too well in my head. If you've never played through any of the Oddworld games, then all you need to do is a read a synopsis of one and check-out some of the artwork, and you'll start to get the idea. If you'd like to see exactly how well this could work, watch the intro movie to Stranger's Wrath and feel the anticipation :) Speaking of, I'm nearing the end of Stranger's Wrath, and I've throughly enjoyed the experience (especially once I discovered the quicksave feature). This game constantly impresses me with its graphics, gameplay, and storyline/humour. The only knock I have against it is that it can get repetitive if played for too long all at once. It works fantastically, however, as a game you can pick-up for an hour or two a few times a week.
Oh, heh, before I go, my Leafs in NHL2K7 are 20-0-0 this season :) Yes, I'm playing it at the "Pro" level, and no, I'm not using any funny cheats or settings... A number of games have been quite close, production has been spread-out well across the roster, and Raycroft has not been stellar. I've been winning by playing a very physical game (defending Raycroft at all costs) while being exceedingly aggressive on offense (like 40+ SOG per game). The price has been a number of injuries (usually a few days or a couple of weeks at a time; Kubina's out for a few months), but my rookies (Ondrus, White) have really been able to step-up. Also, the shenanigans of those Florida games I mentioned earlier seem to have subsided; it's not perfect, and I guess I'll have to accept that injured players stay in until the end of the game, but it's been a lot of fun for the most part.
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