Kevin's Musings

I went to reboot WinXP last night and got a boot error message that HAL.DLL was missing. I was very suspicious but booted to a recovery console, restored the missing file, and then booted up. I then noticed that a number of the computer management plugins (Admin Tools / Computer Management) where also missing, not to mention that I had to reinstall most of the drivers and re-activate Windows. Very strange. I am not sure what caused this. A virus seems like the most likely culprit, but I did a scan and didn’t come up with anything (a few files that were suspicious, but nothing that seems would cause this problem). Very odd. I haven’t reinstalled yet, but I probably will. I did take the time to try the latest Vista beta (on a different hard drive). It seems to mostly work for me except for my Audigy 2 NX (USB, external sound card). Not sure if I will stick with Vista or just re-install WinXP (Media Center Edition).

Also, on a sad note, my Xbox 360 (7 months old) has been acting up for the last few days. Starting earlier this week it was freezing during gameplay on occasion. As the week progressed the freezing got more and more frequent. I talked to M$ support and they were something less than helpful (and really hard to hear and understand to boot). Yesterday it started sometimes having the “3 Red LEDs of Death”. It would start up sometimes, but not usually. Tonight it doesn’t come up at ALL. I called M$ support again and discovered the 360 only has a 90 day warranty, so it will cost me $140 plus shipping to McAllen, TX to get it fixed. After that I can get a 1 or a 2 year extended warranty which I will probably do (so it doesn’t break again in 7 more months). Dang. Doing some reading suggests 360s are breaking left and right. On the plus side, it seems the hard drive is fine 🙂 Luckily I just finished Splinter Cell Double Agent and haven’t gotten TOO far into GRAW — I guess I will take a week or so off from GRAW and Lumines.
I saw Saw III today. It was fun, pretty well done. It has been a pretty good series, although the first one was clearly the best. If you haven’t seen the others you should skip it. If you enjoyed the others you will enjoy this one too, probably.

I recently attended an event where I got some hands on time (two hours) with the PS3. It was very nice that this event was crowd controlled – you had to sign-up in advance and they limited the number of sign-ups to a very reasonable number. I showed up a few minutes ahead of my time, got checked in, and they let is in right at the scheduled time.

The setup was probably 20 or so PS3s playing various (mostly) launch titles. I got hands on time with most of the games that interested me. As I said, the size of the crowd was just about right, you could walk up to any game and either sit down and play or watch somebody play for a few minutes and then sit down and play. The only game where there was ever really a wait was (predictably) Resistance: Fall of Man. My impressions:

Resistance: Fall of Man: This is, I think, the major PS3 title. I suspect it will be compared head-to-head with Gears of War on the Xbox 360. The game looked really, really nice, but, I though the control on the right analog stick was set WAY too sensitive. I was watching somebody before I played and they were having a heck of a time aiming and I figured they just hadn’t played console FPS games. Sadly, I also found it was VERY difficult to be accurate. I tried to find a sensitivity setting but the only option was to Invert the Y axis. Overall this does look to be a solid game.

Call of Duty 3: I didn’t sit down and play this but I watched it for a while. I didn’t play more than the demo of Call of Duty 2, but, I have a good idea what it looked like. I didn’t personally see much difference graphically from Call of Duty 2. I suspect it will look identical to the 360 version. At one point it used the motion detection on the controller to shake a guy off of you, kinda hokey looking.

Full Auto 2: Battlelines: I watched this being played for a while. Not really my kind of game but it looked nice. But, it wasn’t the best looking racing game at the event.

Need For Speed Carbon: I played this for a few minutes. Control was pretty good, graphics were very shiny, but shinier than PGR3? Hard for me to say, but, I would guess they aren’t “better” graphics. It did look nice. But, again, it wasn’t the best looking racing game at the event.

Motor Storm: This was, in my opinion, the stand out game at the event. I almost didn’t look at it because I am not a huge racing game fan (short of the SSX games). The game looks phenomenal and plays great. The vehicles each handle differently and appropriately and you can really feel the weight of the vehicle and the variations in the track as you play. This was just a really fun game to both play and watch.

MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE: I watched this game for a few minutes, but, didn’t get around to playing it. It is coming out for every platform under the sun, so, I decided to check it out later. I didn’t see anything in the game that would make it “more special” on the PS3. This isn’t a launch title, but, wow it did look great. It crashed once and had a few minor frame rate issues, but, wow.

Sonic the Hedgehog: I have played the demo of this on the 360. I was underwhelmed with it on the 360 and I was underwhelmed with it on the PS3. The graphics are good but not spectacular. Control was not that great. Oh well, maybe the next Sonic game will get it right. This was the game I saw people having the most trouble controlling.

Tony Hawk’s Project 8: This game looks good, but, I have this same demo on the 360 and it looked and played just like the 360 version. The Nail the Trick stuff in Project 8 is kind of neat, but, I am just not sure how much farther they can take the Tony Hawk franchise… Anyway, I played for a little bit and came back later and watched some others play. What I didn’t know when I was playing was that you can use the motion sensitive controller to serve the function of the left stick, or just for balance, or (lots of options). I watched people playing the game this way and seemed to do pretty well. I am interested in seeing if it gets used or is just a gimmick. I am even more interested in seeing out the Tony Hawk game on the Wii turns out.

Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom: Played this for 10 or 15 minutes. It was fun, looked nice, but, didn’t feel especially “next gen”. The graphics were good, but, I wouldn’t call them “great”. Gameplay was fun, control worked well.

Genji: Days of the Blade: This game looked nice, but, to me it looked a lot like Ninety-Nine Nights on the 360. Seemed a little like Dark Kingdom but more slashy. I probably should have played it but it didn’t really grab me.

All in all it was a lot of fun. I am still not buying a PS3 anytime soon. Happily, I only saw one crash. Sadly, I only saw two games use the motion sensitive controller (and only one REALLY using it). What I am most sad about is the lack of rumble in the controller. So many games use rumble effectively now that when it isn’t there it feels like something is missing.

Had a great pre-Halloween weekend. Spent some time with my wife’s brother Bob playing (who was visiting few a couple days from Alaska) Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (GRAW) on the Xbox 360. We had a lot of fun – several hours doing cooperative campaign play. I introduced him to Splinter Cell, we’ll see if I have made a fan or not 🙂

We went to a Halloween party dressed as doctors (apparently a pretty popular costume). The party was at our son’s girlfriend’s sister’s apartment. Our son and his girlfriend live in Albuquerque, NM but her sister lives here in NYC. I think everybody had a great time – nice people.

Did the usual Sunday evening games with folks from our apartments – we are developing quite the group of regular players – nine folks this evening. We again played a card game named Bohnanza (the “bean” game) — we have played it before and really enjoy it each time. It does get a little crazy with nine people, though.

Deb and I are both continuing to hone our Lumines Live skills (on the Xbox 360) and we are both definitely improving. It is a fun, very addictive game. This evening I got over 31,000 points – a huge improvement over even a couple days ago. I am sure in no time I will do even better. I was so happy to finally get the first Achievement in the game by reaching 20,000 points.

We went to see The Prestige. Written, directed (etc.) by Christopher Nolan, the same guy who did Memento and Batman Begins. It was incredibly solid. Very well done. It had a lot more flavor from Memento than Batman Begins (no surprise). Great story, good casting and acting. We saw where it was going before it got there, but, that didn’t take away from the movie. Really fun. We also saw The Illusionist recently — somewhat similar in theme, but, Prestige was hands down better.

I have been planing Splinter Cell Double Agent. It is a lot of fun. The Splinter Cell series is easily one of my favorite game series and this one hasn’t let me down. I would say it is harder than the previous games, but, that may be because I am trying really hard to get all (or most) of the objectives (including never tripping any alarms), so, that adds to the overall difficulty level. If you haven’t played any of them and have a PC or an Xbox (or a 360) go get the original game and try it out. Playing Splinter Cell is different from lots of other games, though, you have to be quiet and stealthy – you cannot run and gun through the levels.

I also started playing Lumines Live! on Xbox 360 Live Arcade. It is a falling pieces puzzle game, somewhat like Tetris. Originally Lumines was released for the PSP and has quite a following there. It is a very fun, addictive game, but I haven’t quite nailed the strategy yet (I am getting better, though). I would say it is a pick up and play that anybody could try, but, it may be a touch fast from the outset for the absolutely casual gamer. I’ll have the wife play it some more and report back on this 🙂

Ever have a bunch of image files (JPG or BMP) and want to use them as your computers wallpaper (not screensaver, wallpaper). And you wanted them to randomly change on a regular interval? I did. So I wrote a program that does just that. Give it a try. Send me your feedback (to kevin at dorffweb dot com).

• Installer: WallpaperScramber-Setup.exe (108k)
• Requirements: .NET Framework 2.0 (big… but you may already have it)

In case you wonder that kind of thing, it was written in C# using Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition. I created the setup file using EclipseNSIS.

I found the most amazing flash animation of a woman being drawn from the inside out, starting with the bone structure and ending up fully clothed. This has to be seen and shared.

Click to view A Woman From the Inside Out

I had a fun filled weekend. On Saturday, the missus helped out with the Open House New York event they held at our apartment complex while I went to see two movies, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and Jackass 2. Both movies were sequels (or, well, a prequel and a sequel, I guess). Texas was pretty well done – I didn’t have any specific complaints about it – it is what it is. It is a pretty decent example of the kind of movie that it is, but, Hostel and The Devil’s Rejects (the best, in my opinion, of the recent horror films) did it better. Jackass 2 was exactly what I expected. It was funny, but, the original was funnier and tighter. It felt like they were trying harder in 2, but, it was still a fun 90 minutes watching people be idiots and do stupid stuff.

On a somewhat more cerebral note, Deb and I went with two friends to see the filming of two episodes of Celebrity Jeopardy at Radio City Music Hall. They will be airing in mid-November (20th and 21st, maybe?). The two shows starred (a) James Denton, Bebe Neuwirth, and Neil Patrick Harris and (b) Michael McKean, Margaret Spellings, and Hill Harper. I won’t give anything away about the content of the shows, but, the general format for the afternoon was

• Rehearsal show, no Alex Trebek but instead mock-hosted by Jimmy McGuire while the three celebrities played a partial game to make sure there were no technical issues, they knew how to use the buzzers, etc.
• They film the actual show (with Alex, of course). During most commercial breaks Alex would take questions from the audience. During one break Alex takes pictures with the celebrities (for the celebrities, not for us). The limit the applause to just “Double Jeopardy” and at breaks (but not coming back from all breaks). They are very strict about no talking while the game is being played and threaten to stop the show if anyone is heard speaking answers out loud (even whispering) during game play – this didn’t happen.
• After the first episode was shot, there was an hour or more while there was a press conference held. We couldn’t see this occurring because the curtain was drawn. There was absolutely nothing to do during this time but to just sit. They should have shown some Jeopardy episodes on the big screens, or SOMETHING. The hour plus between the tapings was downright boring. Oh well.
• Rehearsal for the second show.
• Second show, format exactly the same as the first. There was a brief period of technical problems, but, otherwise it ran just like the first show.

One interesting thing happened during one of the commercial breaks… Alex had flubbed two of the questions. They had the audience be quiet and he re-read them after a bit of coaching. It wasn’t on camera, just the audio to be edited in later. I had always kind of wondered how he always nailed the long words in some of the questions. I had guessed it might be helped with editing, now I have seen it. Not surprising, just interesting to see. The other thing I had always wondered was his opinion on the hilarious Saturday Night Jeopardy sketches – somebody in the audience asked the question and he responded that he wished they made more, he loved them.

I recently heard about the upcoming Apple iTV device… the idea is slick. This is a wireless (or wired, your choice) box so you can stream music, video, and pictures from your PC, presumably from your iTunes library. This, combined with Apple’s iTunes music and video store is almost the device that could change the way we rent movies, watch television programs, etc. What is missing? Support for older televisions (I don’t see SVideo or Composite video out) and, more importantly, it is missing low cost, digitally downloaded movie rentals (like downloadable Netflix) — I have to think that by the time this thing rolls out Apple will have a partnership with Netflix or Blockbuster to rent movies. Also, instead of buying a single episode of Lost for $2, you should be able to rent it the season for a month for $5 or $10. Just how many times do I plan to re-watch a season of any TV show? If I want to watch it over and over and over I will go buy the DVDs which, undoubtedly, have better picture and sound quality, extras, etc.

Sure, if you run Xbox Media Center you can do most of this, but, it isn’t trivial to setup, it isn’t natively wireless, and it doesn’t have the backing of anything like iTunes music and video store, downloadable movie/tv show rentals, etc.

So, is there another possible competitor? I think Nintendo’s Wii could easily perform all the functionality of the Apple iTV. Apple (or Netflix, or Blockbuster?)  should really team up with Nintendo to provide virtual movie/tv show rental that you can playback on the Wii. Sure, it might need an app that runs on the PC, but, the Wii already has wireless networking, it already has a wireless remote control, it already has the hardware to play the video (on any kind of TV) and enough horsepower to decode the compressed video. It seems like a match made in heaven. Plus, it will be inexpensive and play some really great games. The only real problem with the Wii is the lack of hard drive which would limit its capability to download movies directly to the device.
Could the Xbox 360 do this same thing? Sure it could — and probably even better because it does have a hard drive, faster processor, etc., but, the 360 costs twice as much as a Wii, especially if you get one with the hard drive, add wireless, add a friendlier remote control, etc. In the end you would probably pay nearly three times what you would have to pay to do it on the Wii.

You might ask: Where is the PS3 in all of this? I don’t really care. PS3’s won’t really see any market share until at least mid-2007 and won’t be reasonably priced (ie, competitive with even the Xbox360) until around 2008, so, unless Blueray becomes the definite winner within the next couple months, I am completely ignoring the PS3. It is way too expensive and there are no games that interest me on the platform at this time.

Google Reader has released a major UI update. While my fingers are really used to the old version, I love the new interface and will learn the new shortcut keys soon enough. They changed things pretty much exactly how I would have. I really like it a lot.

We went to a sneak preview of the indie movie Shortbus last night. We enjoyed it, found it to be well done and though provoking, but, this is a movie that is definitely not for everyone. While the movie is arguably not really about sex but instead about relationships, there is a lot of sex and nudity, chock full of overt homosexual (and heterosexual) situations. If this doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, you should definitely skip it. We had no idea what the content of the movie was going to be and we weren’t offended (we’re pretty hard to offend), but, we can see how many people would have justifiably walked out within the first few minutes. The screening took place on the NYU campus. The audience was probably about as optimal — they generally seemed to enjoy the movie. I only noticed one person walk out and that was well over half way through the movie.

We returned yesterday from our Caribbean cruise on the Crown Princess. We had a great time. I will write up a full review (or post a link to one) in a day or so. We have a bunch of pics posted on Flickr and a few short videos posted on YouTube.