JACKPOT!
What cats dream about.
Two Angry Camels in a Car
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZIsdXHlJUw]
03.16.09Will it grow?
Well I said after we got back from Hawaii that I wanted to plant a palm tree out front. Turns out that it’s possible… but not too realistic. Well for a few weeks now Wal-Mart has had these palm plants sitting for sale for $12 and I’ve been tempted but convinced myself to walk past ’em. I mean sure it’s just $12, but then you have to buy a pot and soil. All a gamble because knowing my track record, I’m going to just kill the thing anyway!
But Andrea has been encouraging me to just buy it the last couple times, so we hauled that thing home on my lap in her Mustang! I’m sure that was a sight to behold. So there she is. Hopefully it can get enough light and I’ll keep it wet. We’ll see if it grows or if it dies!
03.10.09A look back: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Well it has been quite some time since my last re-review. Yet somehow the gap is somewhat appropriate considering the drought of good games leading up to this title. Infact to get to the next truly memorable game you have to go all the way back to Top Gear Rally, or GoldenEye 007 both released over a year earlier! Doesn’t seem like a long time, but when you’re young, have lots of free time, and have played all your games to death it feels like years!
All that time leaves little else to do but anticipate the next big thing, which in this case was the first ever 3-D Zelda game. By now the internet was picking up steam and the hype machine was in full force. N64.com had recently become the new IGN64.com, predecessor to IGN.com as it is today. There was no shortage of information, screen shots, first hand impressions… you name it. And the word was this could possibly be the greatest game yet made, perhaps even ever to be made. Depending on who you ask, it has still yet to be surpassed.
To sum things up, if you own a Nintendo 64 you must own Zelda. It’s that simple. And if you don’t own the system, Zelda is reason enough to make your purchase — right now.
-Matt Casamassina (IGN64.com)
Limited edition gold cartridge.
So here I am. I’m desperate for a really great game. I’m hyped. And I’m broke! Unfortunately I didn’t have the cash to throw down and reserve a copy and get the gold cartridge by the deadline. But I saved and saved, and played my hand. I showed up at Wal-Mart at 6:00 AM on release day to see if I could weasel in and get an extra gold cartridge. My first attempt was thwarted. They informed me I could by a regular copy, but the gold ones were folks that pre-ordered. (I KNEW THAT!) I asked what I had to do to get my hands on one. The guy at the counter looked around and said in a more discrete tone, “We’re going to hold all the pre-orders for two weeks… After that they go on the shelf. If you come in first thing two weeks from today, and if there’s any left… you can buy one.” I gave him a nod of understanding and with a great amount of restraint, walked out of the store without the game.
Two weeks later, I’m up at 4:30 AM. Get around and ready for the 30 minute trip to Dodge City to hopefully claim my game. No matter what I’m leaving the store with Ocarina of Time, gold or otherwise. I could only hope it was with the collector’s edition that I had put my self through an additional two weeks of torture for. So I arrive around 5:30 AM just incase there was a line… Yeah right. I was possibly the ONLY customer in the store. Night shift was still cleaning up empty stock boxes, so I milled around looking at the electronics section waiting for anybody to show up who might have a clue what was going on. Right around 6:00 somebody walked up to one of the registers and they were carrying a cardboard box about 2/3 full of N64 games. Quickly I approach them and ask if those are the Zelda games getting ready to go on the shelf. “Yes they are.” Moments later the cash is exchanged and I’m heading out of the store with a plastic bag, a shiny gold box and a big grin on my face. It is mine!
I remember getting back in the car and actually SHOUTING for joy! Super geeky I know, but it’s one of those moments you look forward to for so long that when it finally gets there, you feel like you’ve just been dreaming about it the whole time, but now all of a sudden it’s real. You can hold it in your hands as if it were conjured from your thoughts and pulled into reality. Re-thinking this experience really reminds me of why I was so into gaming then, and why the N64 holds such a nostalgic appeal for me. In those days there was nothing better than “release day” of the game you’ve been looking forward to for so long.
Wow, over 700 words and I still haven’t said anything about actually playing the game!
Eleven years later I’m picking the game up again. Although this time it’s in a somewhat different fashion than the previous games I’ve gone back and played. I chose to play from the Ocarina of Time/Master Quest Gamecube Disc. The advantage being I was able to get progressive scan for sharper graphics. But I also had to use a Gamecube controller, which takes some getting used to compared to the N64 controller for this game. So I cheated a little bit, but all in all, the experience was almost as fantastic as it was the first time around!
It has been so long since I played this game. Partly because you have to have a decent chunk of time to devote to it to actually get anything accomplished. For this reason I probably haven’t played the game in almost 8 years. I have forgotten so much about this game, the little nuances, puzzles and side stories were all waiting to be re-discovered. This ends up making this one of the most powerful revisits yet and by and large the reason it has taken so long to write this installment. Once I picked Ocarina of Time up, I haven’t been able to put it down!
Other than some dated graphics (which have aged surprisingly well) this game could easily pass even today as a true example of great gameplay. It’d didn’t hit me right away, as much of the beginning of the game is still quite familiar… but as I progressed past the first hour or so, the whole game really started to open up for me as I found my self back in 1998 all over again, wondering where to go next, and how to beat the current boss.
And oh the boss battles! I remember the sheer sense of scale that you felt when that door locked behind you and you were faced with some terrifying bohemouth that you appeared to have no hope of beating. Taking down a giant flame breathing lizard when you’re only 4ft. tall makes the victory that much more sweet. I was constantly surprised how often these bosses and dungeons had me at my wit’s end wondering how the heck I beat it. I mean, I KNOW I can do it! I DID it once already! Curse my memory for not being able to pull the solution from the depths of my brain. But even more… relish the ambiguity as it gives me the opportunity to relive the rush of putting the pieces together for the first time. If only I could be so lucky as to not remember any of my games!
Screwed.
As I played through the game, the story didn’t seem as significant as I remember. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good story, but it’s not the glue that holds the game together. Rarely is there a cinema sequence that lasts longer than a minute. But the scenes that are there are powerful and succinct. Rather than deluge you with information and plot lines (a la Final Fantasy) they primarily serve to point you towards your next destination but also often evoke feelings of duty, courage, and help provide a purpose to powering through what can be some very frustrating quests.
The heart of this game, as it is with all Zelda games is the gameplay, getting new tools and thinking up ingenious ways of using them to accomplish your task. This is adventure in its purest form. For instance you find yourself in a room with a locked door… one torch is lit, one is not. You’ve been here before, and what you did was pull out a branch and light it on fire using it to carry the flame to the unlit torch which in turn would unlock the door. Of course that was when you were a kid… BEFORE you traveled through time. Now you don’t have any timber so what do you do? After a few seconds of hard thought you step to the side, pull out your bow and arrow and fire through the flame to the unlit torch and as your arrow strikes, the second torch comes to life… the door unlocks, and you press ahead to see what challenge could possibly await you on the other side. Little moments like these bring a smile to your face, and they happen literally ALL THE TIME in this game.
If that all isn’t enough, the game just completely immerses you in the environment. Wonder what’s over that hill, or behind that building? Well guess what, you can go find out. You might need a horse or a hookshot, but odds are if you can see it, you can get close enough to really check it out. Come to find out there can be whole worlds hidden behind places you’ve walked past dozens of times. While sometimes sparse by today’s standards, the world still feels very much alive. Not just in the sense that there’s people living in towns and villages, but that the landscape changes over time. And with the time travel feature, things you do in the past are reflected in the future… sometimes you find out what you did after you supposedly already did it and realize you’d better go back and do it! Whoa! Mind blown!
Ocarina of Time also has one of my all time favorite video game moments of all time. After you’ve beaten all the temples, awakened every sage and you’re finally ready to battle the great Gannondorf, you arrive at his castle. You fight your way through one final mini dungeon climaxed by a long winding stair case. At the base you faintly hear an organ playing. As you ascend the music grows louder and louder, more maddening with each and every step… Well just watch. (Skip to about 1:45 — Spoilers obviously)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI1CFx1oric]
Just a fantastic game from start to finish. I always enjoyed it, but I think I appreciate it even more after the second time through. This game just flat delivers where 95% of other games don’t. Titles like this are why I’m a Nintendo fan. You don’t need a fancy sound system or TV to enjoy this game. Just some free time and the love of adventure. It may not be a perfect game, but it’s about as good as any game will ever get. And that earns it a 10/10 in my book.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuGTSVReLEI]
03.4.09Bringing another old photo to life.
Someone on Oldspower.com posted some old pictures of dealerships from back in the day. Kinda cool to see all these cars that are “classics” now just sitting on the lot as brand new cars. But the old Black and White leaves so much to the imagination.
Original
After a night with nothing else to do.
A freakin’ podcast!
Here’s a new one! Believe it or don’t. If you don’t believe it click the link below. This is a special collaboration between biebsworld.com and this place. It’s hosted on a new server, so if you have trouble accessing it please comment and I’ll see what is up.
Topics:
- Piratebay.org trial
- Net Nutrality
- Content Providers
- Randomness
Pixlr
Quite a few of the pictures here are run through a Photoshop wringer before they get uploaded. Most of the time it’s just cropping something, or making adjustments to try to make up for my crappy picture taking. Now there’s a great website out there that has all the basic functionality of Photoshop. It’s free. And you don’t need to install anything, so you can use it on any computer with internet access.
Here’s a quick example of some editing that took just a couple minutes.
First pick the image you want to edit. You can either load a picture off your hard drive, or use the URL of any image on the web. I used a picture from my Picasa gallery, but you could also use an image you found in a Google image search as well.
Here's what you see once your image is loaded.
You can easily crop images, or adjust levels to make up for bad lighting.
Cell phones don't take the best pictures.
While not as powerful as Photoshop by any means, there are a few more advanced tools you can have fun with!
Now she looks more psycho than she actually is.
So there ya go. Head over to the site and piddle around with it, and have some fun!
02.25.09Mini Gwen
She follows me wherever I go!
Well I’ve been stock piling gold in Guild Wars for a few months now and finally got enough to buy one. But apparently I had enough a long time ago, as the mini Gwens are going for about half what I thought the were!
There’s really no point to the mini pets other than to show them off. Some are more rare than others and this one happens to be one of the harder to find ones. It has appeal to me, because it harkens back to the early days of Guild Wars when I first started playing. You meet Gwen in the first area and she follows you around oblivious to all the enemies attacking you. Somewhat comical.
So now I need to figure out what the heck I’m going to do next in this game!
02.24.09Haven’t posted lately…
So I decided it’s about time to post about SOMETHING!
Honestly, there’s really not much to report on. Things are plugging along as usual, and to be honest that’s how I like it. No news is good news right?
I built a little directional Wi-Fi antenna that was posted on Lifehacker.com For some paper and tin foil that I already had laying around the house the return on investment is well worth it. We ditched our old router for this one a while back and it made a big improvement. But we’d still lose the connection once in a while. But since I added this, I’m getting 95% – 100% signal strength to our server in the living room! Not bad!
I’m plugging along on my next N64 re-review. I don’t really want to say what game I’m working on, but to at least half the folks that read my blog here, probably know. I will say that so far after all these years, the game has been compelling enough for me to want to beat it again before posting about it. A true testament to how great the game is.
I remember being a kid and loving and living for winter. All the snow, it was so pretty and so fun. But I’ll be honest, I’m ready for spring. And this has been quite the mild winter even! I’m excited to get out and work on the cars. We’re looking to repaint Andrea’s car next month, and I need to get my front end rebuilt on mine. I am looking forward to getting some flowers planted out front. And maybe even some grass to grow in the back yard! But I’m trying to stay realistic here!
I think Andrea and I have found ourselves a nice church that we both like. An interesting story… The first day we went apparently they had a “guest pastor”. All well and good, except the guy ended up SCREAMING at the congregation for the whole sermon. Truly one of those “fire and brimstone” preachers. It was an…. intersting experience. For example, part of his sermon included talking about a young guy he wittnessed to and later that week got in a car crash with (and I quote) “brains all over the car” and he sure hoped that boy had taken Jesus as his savior. Now don’t get me wrong. I agree with him in message…. but that’s a little more graphic than I go for on my Sunday mornings. The regular preacher seems like a real nice guy. He’s a little charasmatic at times too, but he seems a lot more sincere about it. Make it more tolerable I suppose. For now we’re going to keep attending, and someday soon we might chat with them about membership.
I do know it’s nice to be going again though. I was really involved in church back when I was in school in Ingalls. But I think I got in over my head. I was leading the youth group there, and even preaching sermons when the pastor was gone one Sundays. Shoot I was only 16 or 17 at the time. And it seemed like the church always kept asking me to do more and more. To be honest my memory is kinda vague as to how it happened, but over a short time, I just sort of got frustrated, burned out, and fell away. Getting back into it has been harder than I ever imagined. But now that we’re going, it’s so much easier! I don’t know about Andrea, but it’s a refreshing feeling.
That’s about it.
02.19.09Well shucks.
For the first time in the 4 years I’ve owned it, my car left me stranded. It’s mostly my fault though. It was about 18 this morning when I went out to start the car. Pumped the pedal twice and it fired right up like always. Instead of letting it warm up like I should, I let it idle high for about 15 seconds and kicked it down and headed over to the My Town stores to do some computer work. That is only about four blocks away from the house, so the car still didn’t have time to get warmed up.
I go in and work for about 45 minutes and come out to leave, pump it twice again, and it starts, but stumbles. Pump it a couple more times to try to keep it going but it dies. In trying to start it again I pump it AGAIN and now it won’t start at all, just turn over. Pop the hood and you can REALLY smell the gas. Flooded. Damn. I let it sit for about 10 minutes, but she still won’t start. Took the cover off the air cleaner and there’s liquid gasoline on the choke plates on the top of the carb. That’s REAL flooded.
So I got a ride to work and will go try to start it again over lunch. That should be enough time for the gas to evaporate. As long as I didn’t kill the battery with all the cranking! Lesson learned. Should have let it warm up.