Upgrades

This Week: Record breaking Halo 3, Bonds HR ball branded

Gaming News

Halo 3, the most anticipated game for the Xbox 360, had a worldwide release Tuesday (9/25). Here in the US, it had $170 million in sales, beating both Spiderman 3 and the last Harry Potter book for the title of highest grossing launch item in the entertainment history.

Sports News

Barry Bonds record breaking Home Run ball (#756) will be sent to MLB Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY with a branded asterisk on it, as was decided by 47% of the 10 million people that have voted. I personally voted to shoot it into space.

The New York Yankees clinched a spot in the playoffs, while the New York Mets have been floundering and allowed the Phillies to tie them for first place in the NL East division. Everyone thought the Yankees are done in June when they were vying for last place in their division. Its more surprising that the Mets came out of the gate at rocket speed and now are limping, with huge doubts that they can even make the playoffs.

Entertainment News

Kiefer Sutherland, better known as Jack Bauer by 24 fans, was arrested for DUI earlier this week. Fox should offer limo rides to their stars after their parties, which was supposedly where Kiefer got a few drinks. Haven't anyone learn from Paris Hilton's "one drink" incident which resulted in her 3 weeks jail time earlier this year?

What's more interesting to 24 fans (yes, I'm one of them), is the resurrection of Tony Almeida (played by Carlos Bernard). Although he wasn't assassinated like President Palmer, most fans wrote him off as the show is known for killing off a good amount of the casts each season.

DigitalLife 2005 is so hot!!!!

Wow, DigitalLife is the best tech show I have been to all my life. Being in NYC, we get crappy shows over here. I been to PC Expo (TechxNY) from the 2001 (right after the buble burst) to 2003. The shows really, really, were total garbage. The last one I went to, the one in 03, was so bad, that I vowed to never go to PC Expo again. Let me give a explain why:

2001 PC Expo

It was ok, definitely a much quieter crowd w/ less than upbeat feel to it. There were some new tech, just not very energetic.

2002 PC Expo

This is the year my friend danny went in w/ a full suit expecting to get interviews for tech jobs. But guess what, the market was so bad at that time, no one from the hiring company showed up. It was just a bunch of empty desks. We thought at first that they might come in later, but we were there the whole day, and no one showed up. If you thought this was bad, check out next year.

2003 PC Expo

This is the worse year. First, the size of the exhibit is cut in 1/2. Then when you notice what the other 1/2 was about, you would get really pissed (especially if you a tech geek looking for a tech job back then). The other 1/2 of the exhibition is all about outsourcing. You see all these tiny booths w/ indians (from india, not native americans) trying to sell their resources to possible recruiters for american companies (not that there were that many). That's when I got so pissed that I swear to myself I will never go to a PC Expo again.

2004 Comdex

This was ok. Brought back a lot of what was good in 2001 PC Expo. But it was still very business oriented. Kinda dull.

Now, I been to all these trade shows in NYC, and I never thought there would be one that has the energy, the entertainment, and the hot booth babes that the West Coast gets w/ CES and E3 every single year. Until Now...

DigitalLife is the bomb. It's freaking crazy fun!!! They had tons of games to play. They had the Xbox 360 on demo. That console is so cool I definitely have to get one. I can't wait. There were tons of FPS tourneys. I am not all that interested in that cuz I suck in CounterStrike or Halo but it was cool just to see some of best gamers duke it out. They are really freaking quick. Well, not as quick as the Dance Dance Revolution gamers. Those kids (they are really young) can fly on those dance pads. Unbelievable. I seen it when those games first came out in the arcades. But multiply that by 10x and you get the feeling of how many crazy dancing gamers were there.

Then they have the celebs. Wow. I was suppose to go to the show on Saturday, but I overslept (really overslept, woke up like 2ish PM). They have tons of celebs there. Jessica Alba and Carmen Electra on Saturday. I can't believe I missed out that bad. Well, I coulda gone on Saturday, but I didn't feel like being disappointed, having been to so many crappy shows before. Also, my friend said his friend went on Friday, and he said it sucks. He was so wrong!!!

I wished I was a little more prepared for the show. I didn't charged my camera. WELL, I thought I did, because I left it on the dock. The problem is it has been on the dock for like a month already. So the stupid camera wasn't charge. I am so glad my friend Gabe brought his brother's camera. We didn't take a ton of pics, but the pics that I took are totally worth it. This is the first show that I been to that have so many booth babes. They are all so cute and so hot! I also took a picture with Robert Heron from PC Mag and DigitalLifeTV. He used to be on TechTV back before they were took over and swallowed by G4. Well, he's not as hot as the booth babes, but its cool to hang out w/ TV personalities.

Anyway, I put my pics of the show on Flickr. Check them out here.

Well, if you are too lazy, here's a sneak peek.

www.flickr.com

FFX and gaming

Ever since I graduated college, I have never been able to beat a video game. I played Omnimusha 3, James Bond, Star Ocean III, MGS 3, and several others. But I have never been able to spend the time to beat any of them. The obvious reason is work. I never really worked when I was going to school, so I had plenty of time to play video games. But ever since I started working full time in my first job, I spend less and less time on video games. Up til recently, my PS2 and my GameCube had a layer of dust on them.

But now, my friend Rob got me back into playing Final Fantasy X. I had that game since around the time I was modding my PS2. But I spend more time modding the console than actually playing any of the games. He said he got to the end but didn't beat the game. He said he will start all over, so we can track who gets further.

Last year, we brought WoW, thought we could create a huge guild with all our friends. But that went down the drain several months later cuz we just don't spend the time needed to play the game. My cousin Allen and my friends Jimmy and Kenneth still plays though. They are on different servers, which is my biggest gripe about the game. Once you created a character on one server, you can't port them to another server. I am not sure if you can do it now, but I know you can't when I cancelled my account couple of months ago. Anyway, my friends and my cousin are now high level characters at lvl 60+. It seems like they have a lot of fun when they go questing on those 8 hours sessions. But I remember hearing a stat somewhere where it takes about 2 months of playing 8 hours a day to get to level 60. That's like working a full time job. Nope, sorry. I can't do it. 1 fulltime job is enough for me. I don't need another. Especially one that doesn't pay diddly.

Well, anyway, back to FFX. The story is pretty good so far. But I don't feel as drawn to the characters early on like I did with the prequels. FF II and FF VII are the best in terms of story. FF II might be too cliche, but it was really good at that point in time. It was the first RPG I played so that might also be a reason why I like it so much. The graphics has come a long way in FFX since FF II. But I think only with the PS3 will we see realtime graphics that looks as good as the pre-rendered stuff. But then again, Sony has been revising down the specs of the PS3 on a near weekly basis. Let's just hope they don't scale it down to the point of the Xbox 360 before they release it.

Hmm, I went off on a tangent again. I am up to the part where they first introduce Seymour. Rob saids he's one of the bad guys in the game that you have to fight like 6 times. I swear he looks so much like Sepiroth from FF VII. Sepiroth is still the most memorable baddie in my book in the Final Fantasy series. I wonder if Seymour is as bad.

To cap all this off, here is a list of all the Final Fantasy games I beat.

FF I

FF II (IV)

FF V

FF VI (III)

FF VII

FF VIII

So the PS3 is better...

So from the demos that both Sony and MS showed for their perspective consoles, it was pretty obvious who had the better graphics. PS3 totally dominated. All their demos were so realistic you wonder which are pre-rendered and which are realtime. The best one they had was the intro to Killzone (Killzone 3 I think, as K1 and K2 were on the PS2). It was unbelievable to watch. The gfx were on par w/ that crappy but visually intriguing movie, FF: The Spirit Within. Can't wait to see how the game plays.

On the Xbox 360, none of the games were as jaw-dropping as the PS3. Some games, like DOA 4, looks like something that can be done w/ Xbox 1. That's quite disappointing. The optimists and the xbox fans would say that Xbox developers are concentrating on making games instead of making demos like PS3 developers. But right now, the Xbox 360 is certainly underwhelming.

Which is better, Xbox 360 or PS3?

So here are the specs of the Xbox 360 and the PS3 (Source: IGN). The specs are very similar to me in both systems. Both CPUs are running at 3.2Ghz and both systems have about 512MB of RAM (actually Xbox has an 10 extra MB for framebuffering).

While PS3 has a PowerPC central core in the CPU w/ 7 more "mini" processors, forming "The Cell" CPU, the Xbox 360 has a triple core CPU each capable of running 2 threads simultaneously. To me, the Xbox 360 processor sounds more powerful because Intel and AMD have only recently started making dual core CPUs. The Cell architecture is more of a marketing term for Sony to sell their idea rather than reality.

As for Blue-Ray, it's really not a necessity for a gaming machine. PC games right now run at resolutions higher than HD and yet can fit all the codes and texture maps into 1 or 2 CDs. A DVD has more than enough space. I really wonder what Sony wants to do with the Blue-Ray format. HD video? Unless they are still thinking of using MPEG2, there is no reason for it. HD compressed with the MPEG4 codec or similar codec should work just as well.

I guess I am sounding Xbox bias to some people. But then again, so are a lot of the business analysts. Many of them think that the Xbox 360 will overtake the PS3 in terms of market share sometime at the end of this decade. It will be very interesting to see.

World Of Warcraft Macros

To some, this is borderline cheating. To others, It's just a way to improve on the interface of the game. I fall in the 2nd category.

What is a macro? A macro is a script that automatically performs a set of commands. In WoW, a macro can do set of things in 1 step that would otherwise take 3 or more steps to complete.

Here's a list of websites that I found that talk about Macros programming if you are interested. Please post in comments if you find other sites about Macros programming.

http://members.tripod.com/reaster0/index.htm

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-hunter&T=11748&P=1

Xbox Dash problems/modding PS2 and GC

I screwed up my Xbox dash, now I can't get into it. I am getting the error 13 msg. But I can still play games w/ it. I guess ultimately I have to buy a solder mod chip and mod the damn thing.

I also found out recently that both the PS2 and Gamecube can also be soft-modded to play backups. Both are much easier to accomplish w/o problems like the Xbox (clock loop, etc.). The PS2 mod being the easiest, just drop in a swap magic CD, and take it out and it's ready to boot backups. This is very much like how the Dreamcast had it when they first start making backups available.

The Gamecube mod is much more interesting, and from the sound of it, still isn't as complicated or problematic as the Xbox mod. The Gamecube mod basically requires PSO and the broadband adapter. The first thing is to "initialize" the mem card by storing a hack base on the PSO character profile on the card. The hack allows the GC to talk to the PC, because it is tricked into thinking the PC is a PSO game server. Once the communication path is established, the server(PC) can send code to trick the GC to swapping a disc. This is where you put in a GC game and it will start copying that game to the PC. Once the game is backed up, it is ready to be retrieve from the PC to and "streamed" to the GC.

The only minor problems w/ the GC mod is that the games are stuck on the PC, which means the PC has to be on, and some of the video playback can have hiccups due to the nature of the streaming.