Some people call me the space cowboy

Last week-ish I picked up Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare (for the 360) – it has been recommended by several people, but I have put it off. Having a bit of extra time for gaming I decided to pick it up. I can tell you that it is quite amazing. COD4 is a first person shooter put in the “near future”. Most of the fighting takes place in Russia / middle east. I’m playing on the “normal” difficulty level and having a great time. I’m about 90% through the single player game. I think it is safe to say it is just about the “lushest” video game I have every played – you really feel like you are in the middle of a warzone. While you have allies fighting along side you, don’t can’t do anything to control them. It is interesting that both the allies and the enemies talk and often have useful things to say (especially the allies). They will give you information on objectives, where to find enemies, where to look for sniper fire, etc. While the single player game isn’t terribly long (less that 10 hours, I imagine) it is very densely packed. The missions are a really good length and there are ample checkpoints, so if you happen to get killed you don’t have to replay too much. COD4 is easily a 5 stars (out of 5) game. If you like first person shooters, forget Halo, get COD4. Then get Orange Box.

In a different genre, I gave into the madness (after reading all the 5-star and 10/10 reviews) and picked up Grand Theft Auto IV – at the local Gamestop “midnight launch event”, no less. Calling it an “event” is a bit of a misnomer – “events” generally have something more to offer than “standing in line behind a fat twenty-something with terrible body oder” and all the chimnies that surrounded me — I felt like the only non-smoker at the event (although there were a few of us, we were generally difficult to see). The number of people was pretty impressive. I got into line about 11:15pm. When I got in line there were probably around 100 people in front of me and by the time I got to the door (took about 40 minutes)  the line behind me was just as long, if not longer.

I have Having put in 1.05 evenings into the game (I played the “intro” or “first mission” the first night before going to bed) I would say the game is impressive. Initially, I was a bit disappointed with the graphics – it is sort of an odd style. It looks almost photorealistic, but just “not right”. But, if you look at it as “cell-shaded” graphics, the game takes on a very specific art style that is actually quite cool. It looks espeically nice at night. I have done around 10 missions so far and they have all been fun. Two of these missions involve dates. The second date, I took her to a bar and then drove her home – the “drunk” driving was difficult and amusing, but we made it back to her place safely where I unlocked the “warm coffee” achievement.

Does the game deserve the 5-stars and 10/10’s it is getting? I’ll let you know after I have played more.

House guests gone bye-bye

We had friends from out of town visit, they came for a hair over a week. The missus did a lot of tour-guiding, everybody had a good time – lots of sight seeing but lots of visiting and catching up, too.

I finished God of War: Chains of Olympus (for PSP) – I mentioned before, but it was a really good game; worth the praise it is getting. I mentioned before I picked up God of War II (for PS2) and have been playing that. I also decided to get God of War (also PS2) so I could play that first. It is fun playing all of them at about the same time, you can really see the progression (and differences) with control and graphics, although the style and feel seems largely the same in all three games, there are noticeable control differences. The graphics, given the fact these are PS2 and PSP games, are really amazing – they wouldn’t (generally) pass for Xbox 360 or PS3 graphics, but are really pretty impressive none the less. The gameplay is absolutely top notch. If you have a PS2 and haven’t played these (honestly, I am probably the only one with a PS2 who hadn’t played them) you should pick them up.

Might as well Jump(cut)

If you’ve been following my blog, you probably know I am a fan of Flickr.com – it is a excellent way for us to share our pictures with friends and family. I recently took a set of pictures that I wanted to animate, flipbook style, but I had two obstacles to overcome. The first obstacle was that I didn’t take the pictures using a tripod, I just took them trying to keep the camera in pretty much the same place. Doing this will make for a jerky result. In fact, I knew this would be the case. While I was taking the pictures I was trying to decide how to solve the problem. Sure, it can be done manually using [name of your favorite image editing program here] but it is a tedious process. After a lot of searching I discovered Adobe Photoshop CS3 has built in tools for automatically aligning images.

The process is actually pretty simple. First, I resized the images (using Picasa) to a more manageable 600×800 using Picasa’s Export functionality. From within Photoshop select File | Scripts | Load Files Into Stacks… to import all of the pictures into individual layers in a single picture, making sure to select Attempt to Automatically Align Images (note that this can be a slow process). Then, select File | Scripts | Export Layers to Files to export the layers into individual, better aligned JPEG files (in a new directory).

After I had better aligned images, I uploaded the images to JumpCut.com and made a flipbook out of them. I set each frame to 0.35 seconds. The final result looks kind of cool. During the alignment process the image distorts just a touch giving somewhat odd angles to the various pictures, but the portrait being drawn stays relatively still which gives the flipbook a neat effect.

Back from the dead! Going to Prom

Tekserve revived my iPod! I got a call from them that same afternoon that it was ready to pick up, same day service. This was definitely worth the $50 – I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Tekserve for others who need iPod repairs (who live near NYC).

We are doing the tour guide for some friends who are visiting this week (and last weekend). We’ve done the usual stuff (Central Park, 5th Ave, Times Square, etc.) and they have a lot more planned during this week. On Saturday night we went to see the off Broadway show Awesome 80’s Prom. It is a “show” set up like, well, an 80’s Prom Night. There is a lot of dancing (oddly to 1980’s music) but between songs the cast puts on a show, mostly related to the crowning of the Prom King and Prom Queen. We had a really good time. Predictably, I took lots of pictures – it is a very interactive show and they really encourage participation and picture taking.

A good friend, gone sick

My iPod, which I’ve had for about two and a half years, became ill this week. Its headphone jack is somewhat broken, it only plays out of one side unless you press on the connector. Needless to say, this left me somewhat despondent. Originally I thought (hoped) the problem was with my headphones, but no – it’s the iPod. I’ve used it nearly every day since I got it, I am rarely without it. We have enjoyed many books, many podcasts, and lots of music together. The thought of “putting it down” made me sad. I bought “Applecare” (extended warranty) when I purchased it, but sadly that expired December 1, 2007. After a bit of thinking on the problem I remembered that Tekserve (a local Apple specialty store) does iPod (and Apple computer) repairs so I took it to them this morning. They charge $50 to repair the headphone jack, but assuming that works I’ll have my good friend back and for a more reasonable price than buying a new iPod. Hopefully it will be repaired by tonight or tomorrow. There are mail order (internet) places that repair iPods (and at least one other local place), but I think (hope) this was the best bet.

We’re well into season 3 of Boston Legal. Continues to be amazing. You added it to your Netflix queue, right?

We watched all of Breaking Bad (only 7 episodes in season 1, it appears) and it is another show that is really worth watching. The story is of a high school science teacher (played by Bryan Cranston, the father from Malcolm in the Middle) who learns he has terminal lung cancer. Saddled with debts and a controlling wife, he decides what anybody else in his situation would decide – to start cooking meth to support his family after he passes on. The writing is really smart and the story are very imaginative (and believable, in an odd way). Really worth checking out.

I have finished most of The Orange Box, I just need to play some more Team Fortress 2. I have gotten “most” of the (non-TF2) achievements. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: every game in The Orange Box is an unadulterated gem. Period. End of story.

I’m also playing (and almost finished with) God of War: Chains of Olympus on the PSP. GOW:PSP is an astoundingly good game. My only complaint about it is it seems to slightly overuse “Quick Time Events“, but otherwise it is the most perfect “console” game on a “handheld” device I have ever played – the graphics, sound, control all feel like you are playing a console game without compromise. I am now interested in dusting off the old PS2 and going back and playing the earlier God of War games. It really is that good.

Having finished Orange Box, I started Halo3. It is “good” so far, but I still contend that Half-Life is a better series of games than Halo. I am playing Halo3 on “Heroic” (which is the middle difficulty) and I am left feeling master chief needs to “Man Up” or go buy some new armor. Maybe it is just the difficult setting, or maybe I am a sub-par gamer, but he can’t take hardly ANY damage before he dies. Just a few shots and he is dead. Silliness.

A touch ‘o gaming

I did get my 360 back last week. Sadly, it has a different serial number so I am having to go through tech support to get my XBLA games working correctly again. This is a total PITA, but life goes on. Maybe in a month or two the aggravating 360 DRM issue will be behind me again.

I picked up RezHD and N+ from XBLA. both amazing games. RezHD is an amazing trace / psychedelic shooter. N+ is a platformer, somewhat in the style of Jumpman but much fancier – very simple graphics but the focus is 100% gameplay. N+ is based on the flash-based game N.

For my commute time, I picked up God of War Chains of Olympus for the PSP. I haven’t played any of the God of War games (PS2 games) but I keep hearing how amazing they are, so it seemed like a good time to try one.

I played more Portal (from The Orange Box), I now have “most” of the achievements. Portal is easily, in my opinion, one the top five games of 2007 and when bundled with the Half-Life 2 series and Team Fortress 2, you just can’t go wrong with Orange Box. I plan to get back into Half Life Episode One this weekend.

The Appeal

Both the missus and I just finished the latest John Grisham Book The Appeal. I have classically been a huge Grisham fan – I discovered him shortly after The Firm was published and avidly read all of the books as they came out, usually getting the hardback on day one… I enjoyed A Time to Kill, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker and on and on. When he sidetracked from legal-fiction to non-legal fiction I tried them but they didn’t grab me. When I saw The Appeal was a return to legal-fiction I had high hopes we was returning to his earlier style. The Appeal started great, had a fantastic premise and the story telling was going great. The characters were relatively well developed and all interesting. Then it just fell flat, heck it just ended. Bam. This book has the most let-down ending I have experienced in years. No “moral”. No “redemption”. For a book I was so greatly enjoying for the first 95%, I had a strong suspicion when I saw how little was left in the book (given the current state of the story) that the ending was going to train wreck. Still, I saw several options he could have taken to recover the story but he chose none of them. The ending just left me feeling cheated. While I can see what he was going for, exposing current issues with corruption, big business, and election manipulation, there are many ways he could have ended the story better, in my opinion. I’ll think twice before reading another book from an author who used to be one of my favorites. Call this a “dissenting opinion”.

Do you like… stuff?

The 360 comes back from it’s hospital stay tomorrow, woot! If it really does arrive tomorrow, the time from the initial phone call will have been 29 days. The time from when I actually mailed it will have been 21 days. The shipment to the Microsoft repair facility took a week, so total total time from them receiving the box to me getting it back will be 14 days, which isn’t too bad (and right at their estimation — they said 2 – 3 weeks). While shipping to them was slow UPS ground service, the return service is Fedex 2nd day, which makes me a bit happier.

The missus and I are totally wrapped up in Boston Legal. We’re more than half way through season two and I don’t see us stopping until we are completely caught up. What an amazing show. In some ways I am sad we haven’t been watching since the beginning, but in some ways I am glad we get this concentrated viewing where we can watch two or three back to back whenever we want. I just can’t say enough great things about this show. To continue our James Spader-athon we got Less Than Zero from Netflix – just as depressing as I remembered (and wow, Robert Downey Jr. was YOUNG in that movie). The book is even more depressing, if I remember right (both are good, though).

Two weekends ago the missus and I went to see Jumper – it wasn’t terrible but about what you’d expect. It had a really interesting premise and decent effects and visuals but the acting was not fabulous and the overall story lacked that “certain something” – but seriously, did you expect more? We also saw Definitely, Maybe which had a nice story, was well cast and acted. Worth seeing. I enjoyed seeing the “love story”-movie told with a different twist.

In preparation for the Oscars, this last weekend we watched Michael Clayton and American Gangster, both were very good — probably “must sees” for most people. we had already seen No Country For Old Men and I was so pleased to see the Coen Brothers just sweep up at the Oscars – I’ve been a huge Coen Brothers fine since Raising Arizona and it’s great to see them getting the respect and attention they really deserve. It was also great to see Juno get so many nods – Juno was one of my favorite 2007 movies.