LANCOZA Blog

No sooner had I announced my return, than I disapeared again. It's all a bit of a haze, but all I remember is long days and late nights and not much else.

 Part of it was some much needed rest and relaxation but for the rest I was still working behind the scenes to get the new site up and running.

I did manage to sneak in two movies, the much hyped Avatar . It was the first 3D movie that I watched and it was phenomenal. Try not to buy into the hype or other people's opinions and go and judge for yourself, James Cameron really is a master story teller.

 I also watched Sherlock Holmes because it was done by Guy Richie , I was not expecting a classic rendition of the books. It is essentially Guy Ritchie's take on Sherlock Holmes including the signature slow-mo fight sequences. Purists of the genre may be disapointed.

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. My other life has taken over for a bit but I have managed to wrestle my way back.

 As a special treat, have a look at the Iron Man 2 trailer . Iron Man was not one of my favourite comic book series but the movie is definitely my favourite adaptation.

 Scarlett Johansson + sexy robotic exo-skeleton. I think that I need to change my pants now ... 

I have been looking for a complete solution for my multi-media centre requirements for quite some time. The original problem was in finding a device that could accomodate the plethora of media types that exist in the wild. With the mainstreaming of HD television's , HD media has become far more prevalent and with it the MKV container.

The other problem was in connecting the device to my Home Theatre system without too many wires snaking across the floor. I received a Eureka media player as a present and it works very well but it does not have a network connection which is a serious weakness and it cannot play MKV files.

My ideal media player was the Mvix with its network connection although it too cannot play MKV files. The price is prohibitive and I could never really justify the purchase. With the WD TV Live , my world has been rocked. It can play the full gamut of media types - including MKV, it accomodates any USB drive and has a network connection. In addition it has a Full-HD 1080p output and can connect to a USB wireless adapter so that there is not need for a network cable snaking across the lounge. It is also priced at about half the cost of an MVix which really seals the deal for me.

If I am very good, perhaps Santa will drop one off at my house this year - who knows ...

When it came to choosing between a Sony PSP or Nintendo DS, I decided on the PSP because of its bigger screen. The DS is great, especially because of the touch screen but the screen size itself was a deal breaker.

With the new DSi LL, things have become alot more interesting. PSP GO's smaller and the DSi goes LL , the bigger screens makes the DSi far more enticing. Although I really can't justify the purchase seeing as my Xbox gets all the attention and my PSP is gathering dust behind my television.

 If you want an even bigger screen for your DSi, this guy can help.

But as it turns out, a really cool toy . Not worth the price that they charge for it, so if you are keen on the Modern Warfare 2 Night Vision Edition, you should wait until it gets a nice fat discount - which I think will happen soon.

The only limited edition accessories that I am interested in are figurines or something practical , like a steel lunchbox .

As it turns out, the majority of my friends list are in hiding from the Live Ban-Police . If you play on Live occasionally, have a preference for first person shooters and like killing zombies then look me up. My Live tag is Hotshot es

I did not plan on upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 but when my network manager crashed and took 9.04 with it, I had no choice. I figured that upgrading to 9.10 would be as much work as re-installing/repairing 9.04

As it turns out, my 9.10 upgrade did not go very smoothly and that may or may not have been related to the power failure that dropped my box shortly before completion. I resumed the upgrade, manually installed the Microsoft TTF fonts and all was well.

I have not had much time to play with 9.10, 23h30 is way past my bedtime. If the spirit moves me, I may do some fiddling later this week, else I may get to sleep alot earlier.

Microsoft has started a wave of bannings on Xbox Live. The only reason given is for a violation of their Terms of Use .

There is alot of speculation about the timing and reasoning behind the bans, but from what I can tell if you have done a firmware mod to your Xbox, then you are a likely candidate. So far I know of 2 locals who have been banned, both have firmware modded Xbox's.

I had some free time this weekend and wanted kill some Zombies but no one in my friends list was online. I tried to join a random game in Call of Duty and Gears 2 but I could not find a single gane.

In my desperation I fired up the demo of Battlefield 1943 and ran around aimlessly with eight other deperate souls for a few mintes before I threw in the towel. All in all a very sad night on Live. My goal now is to expand my friend list quite dramatically beyond 'real' friends and to focus on finding 'cyber' friends. I mostly play Call of Duty and Gears 2, I also don't have any of the addon map packs, so I think that the prospective pool is quite limited.

It looks like Tycho from Penny Arcade was right when he said that the PC-gamer demographic is not the core segment of the video game market. The latest news from Infinity Ward is that the PC multi-player mode has been reduced to 18 players from 32 in the original game.

Added to the fact that there will be no dedicated game servers, it really looks like the twilight of PC gaming as a platform distinct from console gaming. Is this a good thing? I have long since stopped using my PC as a  gaming platform. My 360 is currently the only platform that I game on if you discount my dusty PSP. With the convenient, multiplayer games afforded by Live, I really don't miss anything about PC gaming, especially the routine hardware upgrades that gaming PCs required. I will accept the 'degraded' controls and graphics in favour of a more accessible gaming experience.

But why does it feel like a part of me died...