Of Weight Loss

Last year I lost 30 lbs in a two month span (Jan to March), it was easy to lose the weight, but keeping it off proved a little harder. I started out just eating healthier in January and soon followed it up with regular trips to the gym. Crystal got a membership at the YMCA and started working out with me on a regular schedule. By mid summer I was still going to the gym and started slacking a bit on my diet. The weight was staying off for the most part though.

The fall brought some gym slumps and eventually a bad back/hip episode that put me out of commission for rest of autumn and all of the winter. By the time I weighed in this month a year to date from my original start I was at a total of 5 lbs lost for 2007. Not anything to get upset about because I still ended up at a net lose, but I started so promisingly only to flounder in the end.

This year will hopefully be different, I am down 4 lbs in the past week and down a total of 13 lbs in 3 weeks since I started. We are going to the gym 3-4 times a week and our diet is back to homemade healthy meals instead of 6 nights a week at Moes and Five Guys. My bike has been hurting for five months now and needs some serious love in the front wheel and stem department. The plan is to fix up my bike and keep up with riding at least four times a month or more. Wish us luck.

Site Watch
101 cookbooks is a site I have featured and mentioned on this blog and my old one on numerous occasions. It is worth mentioning in the context of todays post because a lot of the meals I have been cooking for our diet come from Heidi Swanson's blog. They are always healthy and sometimes quick to make. Here a few of the ones I have tried and had success with...

Lively Up Yourself Lentil Soup
Five Minute Tomato Sauce
Egg Salad Sandwich
Black Pepper and Lime Oven Fries
Lori's Skillet Smashed Potatoes

Kurosawa & Ouendan (Homebrewed Part 3)

Akira Kurosawa's films are considered classics, I watched my first (Rashômon) in a history of film course in college. One of my favorite anime series is based off his film The Seven Samurai and is appropriately named Samurai 7. So when I found out that a lot of his films that had passed into the public domain were collected and converted to be viewed on the DS, I jumped at the chance to watch them. I have Ikiru downloaded and loaded on my flash card, but I have yet to watch it. It comes highly recommended from my friends Grant and Erin so hopefully it does not disappoint.

The group that put out Kurosawa's works has also released a bunch of other films and media for the DS. Download at your own risk though as I can not guarantee they are in the public domain like I linked on the Kurosawa films. You may want to consider converting your own DVDs down to a portable size (.dpg) instead with this guide.

Update: The webmaster of moonbooks.net left a comment on this post letting me know that all of their content is in the public domain. That is great news!

Over the weekend I picked up Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2. It is the sequel to the Japaneses origin of Elite Beat Agents. While the menus can be a bit a confusing, unless you read Japanese, they are simple enough to experiment with and figure out in under 2-3 minutes. The actual game play is the real meat and potatoes though. It is a touch screen rhythm game that is synced with a variety of Japanese pop music (J-pop). The story behind the Ouendan is an agency of male cheerleaders who dress in uniform (see above) and assist people in tough situations by cheering for them to different songs. If you fail at the rhythm game then the people you are helping fail as well. Only in Japan!

Site Watch
The Escapist had a great series on gadgets last week. One of the articles that struck me as interesting was on nomadic (homeless) life with just a DS. It makes reference to bunch of great homebrew apps with in an unfamiliar context.

LAN fatigue

LAN parties are like the modern equivalent of poker nights. Actually that only holds true in an alternative universe where poker did not make a resurgence in the past five years. Honestly ESPN who watches cards on TV. In any case it is a geek night out with the guys. Get together 10, 1000 or more of your closest friends or perfect strangers, have them BYOC (bring your own computer) and game the night away. Our venue has always been a garage, but I have attended LANs in office buildings and warehouses before. Any space with electricity will do really.

I am a part of a local group (RIC Gamers) that for a long time was putting on LANs once a month. It became a part of my regular routine, one Saturday a month I would pack up my PC in the afternoon, drive out to the site and return home around 1amish full of gaming goodness. This past Saturday was the first Richmond Gamer's LAN I have attended in over a year. It was good to get back into the LAN party swing, but my body was not prepared for 7 hours of pizza and headphones though.

I spent Sunday laid up watching football and playing with my DS. My computer stayed off for the day save for a new hard drive install. I will attend the next LAN night, but only after the memories of the last have faded away, like tattoos and bike racing.

Site Watch
The Chort is blogging now, he is a good friend from NYC who I have been gaming with for a little more than six years. He is the hardcore WoW player in my life. He has been a member of a top 5s team in BG9, was a healer for Aurora, the #1 horde guild (2nd overall) in the US and is currently a healer in the 64th overall guild in the US. Expect some good WoW postings if he can keep up with the project in between raids.

Web Based MMOing

Talk about a niche market. The web based MMO is home to more games than you swing a cat at. I have sampled the fare on three occasions (Tribal Wars, OGame and Slavehack) and been left wanting. There is an itch that is just waiting for a big player to come in and scratch it. The issue lies with the lack of cooperate play. People play MMO's to play with their friends. Plain and simple, get that right and you could have a huge success on your hands.

Slavehack was my first dip in the pool and also the game that had the most potential. However my friends and I got in on the ground floor and essentially beat the game before we could appreciate the rest of the building going up around us. It has been developed and refined into what is probably the best game in the genre to date now, but I am hesitant to go back.

OGame and Tribe Wars (I'm currently playing TW) are very similar in game play, but differ in theme. OGame = Space and Tribe Wars = Medieval. They are both RTS games that are just stretched and placed in a persistent world. Players start with a base village and build up towns and armies. I say stretched because were upgrading your barracks in a traditional RTS might take a matter of seconds, it can take hours in a web based MMO. The goal is to become the most powerful entity in the land. The start is very micro, building up resources and farming the weaker players in your immediate vicinity. The end game becomes macro in a big way, you join a guild and start to wage war against other large guilds.

Conceptually that sounds like a lot of fun, the issue is with the lack of cooperative play with friends though. Joining the same server does not mean you will ever get to play with each other. If you join late you could be placed on the opposite side of the map (it is random). Even if you built up fast and caught or even eclipsed your friend you are still too far away to play with each other.

Site Watch
The COD4 mod tools came out on Friday, which means custom maps and mods coming soon. If you want to take a dip in that pool Infinity Ward has a great wiki up to help you get started. Good list of tutorials at MODSonline too.

Format Wars Follow Up

The Anti WoW

I was not a big fan of massive multiplayer online games before I fell victim to WoW. I think I mentioned previously that I had a brief experience with Star War Galaxies. I had also tried out City of Heroes for month as well and left in frustration. Needless to say I had a sour taste for the genre before getting into the WoW beta in October of 2004. I was bowled over by Blizzards master piece, they took all of the fun elements of SWG and COH, cut the fat and polished to a fine gloss.

The experience wore thin though, prompting my departure five times in the last three plus years. Not any thing I would directly attribute to the game, but it is designed to become even more of a time sink once you reach the highest level (if you let it). Progression raiding can take up to 6-7 days a week, maintenance raiding 2-4 and that doesn't include farming for materials and repair cash. The pvp was fun, but became redundant. Hence my most recent retirement.

So what does it take to get a hardened MMO rookie to try another MMO? I'm shooting at 1 for 3 at this point so I'll say it takes a lot. The Agency is the first game to have such potential. It is the casual MMO that Blizzard tricks new WoW players in to thinking they are playing. It is anti WoW. Relying on action style game play with a RPG twist. The premise being two factions that coexist in an action movie style world. There is U.N.I.T.E which is your classic bond style organization, super slick, nondescript covert action in a tux. ParaGON is the polar opposite, mercenaries with big explosions and a cigar clenched tightly in their teeth.

It can be both a FPS and third person platformer and the graphics ring of The Incredibles and Team Fortress 2 (No One Lives Forever as well). If done right the game could be a smash to play and for SOE's coffers. I have a few concerns though...

1. SOE's track required includes so many missed opportunities that it is hard to count, Everquest was their last and only successful game.

2. Similar to Huxley's lofty goals, The Agency is attempting to conquer new fronter by melding multiple game types and genres. There has not been a game to accomplish what they are attempting and the biggest title in the space (WoW) is just a refinement of an already proven model.

3. The game is being developed by Sony and as such it is coming out for the PC and PS3. It is not unreasonable to project red headed step child support for the PC, even though the PS3's market is limited.

In any case watch some developer walk throughs and some of the other trailers and see how cool it is for yourself. I will be here on the bandwagon, fingers crossed and playing my DS till we see if it can live up to its hype.

Bee Log Birthday!

A year ago today I had just started playing Burning Crusade and also came up with plan to pay for a Day of Defeat and vent server. The plan was this blog or rather this blog was an experiment to see if the plan would work on a larger scale. The plan was to create a network of blogs amongst my friends and trade ad clicks to make each other money. The amount of money collected by each blog would be low, but the collective would have enough when pooled for server payments every month. The experiment quickly fell apart when this test blog got over ad clicked by those testing it. The ad company quickly realized what was going on and shut it down (the ads, not the blog).

This blog was birthed in sin. A strange thing happened after the ad revenue dried up though, I kept writing. Writing was never my strong suit. Most of college was spent half assing it for assignments the night before. Any attempt at actual trying to write felt forced and a bit Jane Austenish. After college was over my writing slipped to forum post and emails. Until my failed attempt at an internet scam turned me into a blogger. I enjoy writing like I could never imagine. I think blogging is a bit like writing in a journal, but a journal that is pasted on the side of your house three times a week. It is voyeuristic in nature, but I'm not naive to the small size of my audience. It is hard to describe, but undeniably fun.

After writing for two months I quit WoW and the blog went dark. Missing both writing and WoW I started up both again in May and shortly there after started up a second blog. The second blog was more of a personal journal as opposed to the video game (mostly WoW) musings of this one. I wrote a combined three times a week between the two for 6 months. Last month I finally decided to shut down the other blog to focus all my attention here.

My goal for the second year of this blog and 2008 is three post a week (posting 5 times this week was hard). I have already started to expand the scope of the post here and that trend will only continue. Expect more on cooking, cycling and vacation post. If I get back into WoW it may go back to a single topic for while, but the plan is just to write about my interest at the time. Hopefully my family and friends (my primary audience) can make there way here and be less confused about where I am writing.

Site Watch
Mehtul is blogging again...go read!

Thank You,
Adam

Format Wars

The high definition disk format war sucks. Blu Ray vs HD DvD makes me toss and turn in bed at night. Every time a netflix dvd arrives in the mail I cringe at the old formats short comings in an HD world. Even with upscaling. I hate that my cable HD channels look better than any DvD I put in. Even with HDMI cables.

The scales seem to be tipping towards Blu Ray (as seen above), but unless the major studios aligned with HD DvD are willing to switch then that is neither here nor there. It is either 100% compatible or it isn't. There are rumors and speculation about studios switching, but unless they actually have I will keep my nose out of it. Both formats are essentially the same, which leads me to think that alternatives have a big opportunity in the space.

The major alternative that has caught my attention is HD content delivered via streaming devices. Off hand Xbox live and iTunes come to mind, but there many more players players fighting for your television time. I think it is a safe assumption to say that HD disk won't be the smash hit that DvD was when replacing VHS. If anything once the format war is settled in 1-2 years they (Blu Ray) will make a modest profit and end up competing primarily with streaming media.

Site Watch
Over the years I have become a bit of a vocab geek. If I hear I new word I get excited and either ask the user or get the web and go hunting for origins and definitions. Definr has be come my go to in recent weeks for quick definitions. It is web 2.0ish in name and function and does everything I want it to do. The auto suggestion upon each letter added is the coolest feature and often helps me discover new words.

To Pokémon (Homebrewed Part 2)

I am loath to admit my fall for the children's marketing giant, Pokémon. I can't yet determine if this is an after Christmas gaming slump or if I really do like the game. In any case I have played about 10 hours of Pokémon Pearl and can't wait to play more. It is essentially a generic Japanese role playing game (JRPG if you will) of old, except your party is a bunch of pokémon in poké balls. Come across a wild pokémon or trainer and you battle out for cash and experience points.

This affection for "catchin 'em all" was driven by my new DS homebrew love. I have skipped playing Call of Duty 4 and World of Warcraft for going on three nights to play with and organize my applications, roms and music on my little friend. If this keeps up I will most likely ditch my DS fat for a lite. Even with the rumors of a smaller, brighter and more efficient DS on the way (DS lite lite?).

To follow up on my homebrew experience on Monday, I have knowledge and wisdom to share...

First, don't get a M3 Simply or a R4 Revolution, well that is a bit of an overstatement. They are perfect for running applications, roms and media, but there are better options. The M3 Real and the CycloDS Evolution have the same functionality, but support both micro SD and micro SDHC cards in larger formats. This means that in theory you could have up to 32 Gb of space (currently the biggest is 8Gb SDHC) to work with in your homebrew cart. The card I got (M3 simply) and the R4 have a max capacity of 2Gb. If you don't plan to get a 4Gb or 8Gb micro SD card (they get expensive) then any of them will work.

Second, follow a guide if there is one available. I was lost for must of my discovery before my purchase and the installation afterward. I have since come across some great guides on GBAtemp.net that would have been great for starting to understand the DS homebrew scene. Any information in the guides below should apply to most homebrew carts on the market.

- Sub Forums by product - discussion on each of the homebrew cart options.

- M3 Simply & R4DS Guide - if you recall they are the same hardware with different firmware.

- FAQ:R4DS and M3 Simply - Quick and useful FAQ.

- DLDI Guide - a bit more complex, but worth a look for application use (organizers, browsers, etc).

Third, shop around. I picked up my M3 Simply from Real Hot Stuff, but there are loads of online shops that sell them for varying prices and shipping charges. I was inpatient and bought my 2Gb micro SD from best buy for $34. A lot of the sites that sell homebrew carts, sell micro SD cards bundled or separately for a lot cheaper. You can go to a ton of other sites to find them as well. They are used in cameras and cell phones primarily so they are everywhere.

Site Watch
DS-Scene and GBAtemp are the two best DS homebrew news sites I have come across so far. I'd give the node to DS-Scene for application downloads (much better organized) and to GBAtemp for their forums (much more informative).

Lentils and Arena

I kept my nose clean from WoW for two weeks following my cold turkey break. What can I say I'm a softy for arena coverage and call of duty is a great game, but only compelling enough if my friends are playing. I haven't reactivated just yet, but I have till the 22nd of this month to make that decision. For now I will try and get on an active 2v2 and 5v5 team and try and convince my 3v3 teammates (Warlock, Ele Shaman, Mage) from last season to be more active.

I am also unguilded for the time being and will be on the search for a pvp guild to up my prospects. Spamming the trade chat for prospective teams just seems like playing darts with a blindfold on. Ice veins is the cat's ass by the way. Couple it with bloodlust and I have a sub one second polymorph at my disposal.

So that covers the arena, what about the lentils?

Crystal and I are back on a healthy eating kick for our 2008 weight loss goals. This means trying out health and tasty new recipes. Which always leads me back to 101 cookbooks, my favorite cooking blog on the interslice. On my most recent trip I decided to give the lentil soup recipe a go. It was filling in its smell and taste was quick cook for a cold night. Next time I will chop the kale up finer, but this one is going in the permanent cook book.

Site Watch
SK Gaming has a newish global arena ranking site up that is worth a look for sure. Check out the player ranking to see an all in calculation of who the best players in the world are.

Homebrewed

This weekend brought with it many a revelation, one of which was my new found love of the DS. I have owned my DS for going on three years now and I have never held it on the pedestal that the media, critics and other owners have. I just don't have a lot of use for a portable gaming device. I don't have a long, hands-free commute to work. I own two "next gen" consoles and a gaming ready computer. So what is the point of hand held gaming out side of a trip to the loo.

That was before I discovered homebrew. Well actually not discovered, because I have always been aware of it. It would better be described as, I finally took a real interest early last week in homebrew. If you are unfamiliar with homebrew it is user created content for video game systems that expand upon the systems limited and intended original use. What that boils down to is I can have an organizer very similar to the functions of a PDA on my DS. That and hundreds of other possibilities.

I picked up a M3DS Simply (see last paragraph) which arrived Friday night and had a 2Gb micro SD card in it by Saturday afternoon. By Sunday I had the organizer and media player (mp3 and video) installed and to be honest I have only scratched the surface. There are tons of useful little applications available, but also a thriving indie game development community. There are also tasty morsels to look forward to in the future.

I will be spending the next week trying out different applications and hopefully have a report on my successes and failures up soon. Also a quick note in reference to the M3 Simply. Don't buy it! Get the R4DS Revolution instead, it is the same exact hardware as the M3, but the group that makes it is still updating the firmware. The M3 team seems to have stopped making firmware updates so the community has started hacking new R4 firmware releases to work with the M3. Save yourself the trouble and get a R4.

Out with the new

In with the Mario Galaxy! Mass Effect bid our household adieu on Friday night and I can't say I'm sorry to see it go. Galaxy is the polar opposite to Effect, it is all fun game play with no story and no need for a story quite frankly. It is the spiritual successor to M64 that Sunshine could never be. Break free from your water nozzle powered jet pack and embrace 3D platforming with twisted gravity and innovation around every sphere.

Galaxy is another first party feather in Nintendo's cap, that shows how good the Wii can be when done right and how bad third parties really are. System crisis aside this is by far the best game for the console since Wii Sports. One could make the argument that either A. It doesn't really need the Wiimote or B. It could be even better on a Gamecube controller. Either way it is just plain fun to play.

While there are a ton different planets that offer different game play styles the core mechanics are very similar to M64. Except that gravity and small spherical and sometimes not so spherical planets and bodies are brought in to play. Jumping from one bodies gravitational pull to another's is a fluid and at times treacherous affair. It eventually becomes intuitive though (roughly 20 minutes) and allows for some real wow moments. The single player game on its own has enough draw and appeal to sell widely and then there is the coop.

Like 2D Sonic games of the past Galaxy integrates a casual coop aptly named "Co-Star Mode". A second player, wiimote in hand, can join in at any time during the single player experience to enhance said experience. The second player has a number of functions, but the main task they handle is collecting star bits for extra lives and to spend on bonus planets. They can also assist with jumping higher and holding enemies/objects. It is the quintessential Tails experience, assist if you want or take a break while player one continues on. It is the cream cheese frosting on an already deliciously moist cake.

I Heart Story...

But not in the face of bad game play!

Absent from my Wreck Awards for 2007 was a "Game I was most disappointed in" award. I finished Assassin's Creed about three weeks ago and I have started Mass Effect twice since then. What I took away from each game was incredible story mixed with redundant and sometimes unfair game play. Overall Assassin's Creed seems to be the better of the pair, but it felt like I was fighting the developers of both titles to have a fun time.

Mass Effect frustrates me to no end in its game play (gun play and vehicle mechanics), but charms the pants off me in its story and writing. After the brief love affair that I had with KOTOR and the slap in the face that was KOTOR2 I was anticipating a lot form mass effect. The combat seems like it wasn't tested by anyone. For bugs yes, but what about fun? It has a cover system like a lot of games these days, but no Gears style cover button. It is a balancing act with the thumb stick to try and stay on a wall and try to lock on to targets. The enemy AI likes to charge my position all the time and one shot melee attack me or eat enough bullets to make superman hang a poster of them in his room. The frustrations only continue from there and can best be described in the following example.

On the first side mission I took, I was to travel to a planet and investigate a distress signal in a mine. I land on the planet and struggle with the vehicle controls for a few minutes, but finally made my way to the mine. I navigate the empty mine via way points and get to the source of the signal. Oh no its a trap! Some space pirate tricked me a left an armed nuke in the mine. A button press mini game pops up to disarm the nuke and I do. Upon exit of the mine I am at a higher elevation than where I entered. Waiting for me at my vehicle where four of the space pirate's goons (I guess they were confident that I would defuse the bomb). From the high point I am at I can not target them with my pistol. So I try to run down the hill to get in range only to be gunned down before I can even target them, let alone fire on them. They have sniper/assault rifles and I have a pistol.

So load it up again and try something new right? Wrong, the games auto save last ticked when I touched down on the planet, not when I finished the mini game and sat through a load scene to get outside again. So I had retread the same ten minutes of driving, empty cave searching, replay the mini game and pop up high above the same band of goons. This time I saved right away. My AI partners both had sniper rifles/assault rifles so why not them duke it out AI to AI. They both die after exchanging fire for a solid five minutes of me just ducking out of the way. Reload rinse, repeat and I got the same result. So clearly I wouldn't be able to take them head on. So upon the next load I just started running down the mountain in the opposite direction and circled back using my vehicle as cover and eventually got in it.

At this point I could have thrown it in reverse and used the menu system to get back to the ship. There are space pirates on the loose though and they just kicked my ass through four load screens. I have an ultra advanced armored space car with machine guns and missiles, advantage Wreck, end of story, there will be hell to pay! Except my vehicle drives like cream cheese on jello and the pirates small arms cut through its armor like a hot knife through butter. I had to ditch my vehicle behind cover for ten minutes while it self repaired to full. I finally dropped all the pirates and got out to collect one useless weapon and a piece of armor as my reward.

I turned off my 360 and did not load the game up again for three weeks. I started a new character who can use all weapon types and I am trying to start over. Playing through the three hours I had already been through again is painful, but I am willing to give the game a little more time. If my suffering continues though I will most likely sell it and pick up Mario Galaxy with the cash.

Wreck Awards 2007

So everyone else does it...why not me!

Game of the Year: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
I didn't think that a first person shooter could surprise me with it's story telling mechanics any more. What I mean by that is how the story is told as opposed to the actual story. Writers can always drum up a new twist that the player won't see coming, but new ways to tell that story are few and far between. The opening credit sequence in Call of Duty 4 is amazing, while I don't want to spoil it I will say that is places you in a role you have never played before. COD4 is my game of the year for 2007, but I can see myself spending a ton of time 2008 with it as well.
Runners Up: Portal and Bioshock

Game I should have played: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
I don't own a PS3 and I don't think I will be picking one up for the foreseeable future. So out of all the games that came out this year only two PS3 exclusives sparked my interest. Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction looked cool, but my past experiences with R&C titles has been less than impressive. Uncharted is the only game that came out for the PS3 that made me thirst for three console redundancy. Maybe a high quality Jak and Daxter and/or Metal Gear game will convince me to pick up a PS3 in 2008.
Runner Up: Super Mario Galaxy

Movie of the Year: Juno
Juno was a surprise and half for me this year and was not even on my movie radar until a week before the end of 2007. I caught the trailer for the film on the apple trailers site and was hooked. I showed it to Crystal and pulled a switch-a-roo the Saturday before Christmas. It is funny, witty and in the end endearing. I now have the hots for Ellen Page and Michael Cera!
Runner Up: Knocked Up

Movie I should have seen: No Country for Old Men
I heart the Cohen Brothers, but some how I missed what would have probably been my favorite movie this year. Hope fully I will get a chance to see it in the theaters before I am relegated to an upscaled DVD. On that note someone figure out the HD disk format war soon!
Runner Up: Eastern Promises

Album of the Year: Rob Sonic - Sabotage Gigante
I got the pleasure of discovering this artist live this year when I went to DC to see Aesop Rock and Blockhead. I was blown away by Rob Sonic's performance with Aesop and picked up his newly released album Sabotage Gigante. It is a little more traditional than what I usually listen too in terms of hip hop, but you definitely wouldn't confuse it with the terrible rap you hear on MTV.
Runner Up: Avett Brothers - Emotionalism