Comments

March 28, 2005 Timothy Sanders

Yeah - comments are being weird and spitting out an error message. They do appear to be posting. I think the failure is that I'm not getting my "new comment on X" email. Either that or maybe the RSS is borked? I'm looking into it but as far as I can tell you can safely ignore the error message. Please let me know if a comment doesn't post successfully.

PSP Day 4

March 27, 2005 Timothy Sanders

Well, I loves me some PSP. Honestly - Nintendo is screwed in the handheld space. They've been warming over ancient technology for years now, and Sony has them with their pants down. Nintendo's response was to fragment their install base into two different camps and completely screw the pooch on multiplayer. The DS is awkward to hold, and has very few games that are anything other than 2nd class ports. I bought 5 games for the PSP - and every one of them supports wireless multiplayer. Only one tops at 2 players (Lumines) - the next fewest is Untold Legends at 4. I have more multiplayer games for my PSP than my DS, I have more games for my PSP than my DS. How is it that I'm comparing a launch console to a six month old device? Go look at the upcoming release calendar for DS and PSP - honestly what is going on there. The DS is a Virtua Boy. It had better outright be the Revolution's controller or Nintendo is going to orphan it and fast. Mario Party GBA comes out next week. Now, historically I would snap this up for Karin. Ready for the kicker - it doesn't even support multiplayer on the DS - because the DS can't interface with GBA link cables. Nice. So they put one of their strongest multiplayer franchises on the GBA six months after the DS launch so that everyone who traded in a GBA for DS can't play. Smooth. Anyway. The PSP is phenomenal. Can't stress that enough. And if you have a PSP buy Lumines. Great game. In fact, can anybody tell me what other games Tetsuya Mizuguchi has done besides Rez? Based on Rez and now Lumines I would buy his other works on faith. In other news I gave up on hoping Netflix would carry games and subscribed to GameFly. I got Republic Commando (which I haven't even booted yet) and Donkey Kong's Jungle Beat. Jungle Beat is awesome fun - although you have to play it in short doses or your hands really hurt. I was worried it would be too short but it's a good enough party game that I'm going to buy it. If you have a bongo controller I strongly recommend at least renting Jungle Beat. And if you ever have groups for party games I think Jungle Beat would be an awesome game for passing the controller around.

Applecare

March 23, 2005 Timothy Sanders

So yeah, the HD in my laptop is shot. It's still under warranty so Apple is replacing it, but that's 7-10 business days from Monday and then I'll have to reinstall applications and the like. (sigh) I'm not sure what that means for Pic_A_Day in the interim - probably it will be down. In theory I could download the GiMP for Windows and use that to edit pictures, but it's debateable how I feel about that. Tonight is the Snowblind ship party and tomorrow is PSP day! Huzzah for both of those!

Well Crap!

March 21, 2005 Timothy Sanders

So the hard drive in my Powerbook is failing. Grrr. Disk Utility is showing it's S.M.A.R.T. status as "failing" and the "repair disk" option says it can't complete the task. So I guess I'm going to visit the Genius Bar tomorrow. It should still be under warranty - and at least I had enough notice to grab all my files. But I have bad feeling I'm about to have a few days without Kool-Aid. (grumble)

The Lost Entry

March 20, 2005 Timothy Sanders

(So I wrote an entry in the park a week ago Wednesday. That was the day I drove into SF and then the alternator died. Which flowed straight into my birthday party, which then flowed straight into the several days of network redoing and PC construction. I never actually posted that post, but here it is. And Pic_A_Day will have the matching pic) Spring is finally here in the Valley and me and Kool-Aid had to get out of Dodge today anyway. So I'm writing this from John Morgan park in Campbell - which is just freaking gorgeous. The grass has been cut recently, enough that the smell is still in the air. I'm sitting in the shade of this huge tree, looking out over the field. I can't really do much editing work on Playing Cops and Robots - I need the hardcopy for that. So I just started writing something fluffy - something more dialog focused, hopefully something that has more of a sense of humor than my more serious projects. I don't know that anything will come of it - I've been finding that my writing flows better with a plan and this was just entirely random spew from the top of the ever-simmering brain. But it gives me a sense of peace, a connection to the world and the seasons that is too easy to lose in our modern world. And spending the afternoon in a park makes me feel a zillion percent better about missing GDC! (Interuption for phone call - I just got the word from Chuji on the dinner and drinking plans. So I'm not even missing the good part anyway) If you read this blog you should come to my birthday party this weekend (and you should have already gotten an invite - if not give me a holler). I just went by BevMo earlier and I have a trunk-ful of booze and soda. There are periodic things were I feel less like a self-employed creative writer chasing a dream, and more like a slacker slouching around. Having a cart full of booze at 1 PM on Wednesday afternoon is definitely more slacker-feeling than writer-feeling :-) But it should be fun. Tomorrow morning I'll do the grocery run and we should be all set. The weather looks like it should stay nice so we'll have the back yard open as well. Anyway, I'm looking forward to it.