Our first child, Ava Lee, was born on 3/28/07. I know that most parents think that they have cute kids, but some… um… don’t. To that end, I will make a disclaimer that you might not think so, but I think she’s adorable! Albiet a tad disgruntled.
Feel free to take a look at more pictures on flickr:
Recently, Blizzard released a website, the Armory, that gives users access to character information ranging from what profession skills they have to what they are currently wearing. This is an ability that Rupture had recently made available through it’s service.
So, what are the differences between these two services? There are a few that are quite noticable, let’s take a look at the Armory first. The obvious advantages are that Blizzard is providing the data, so it’s going to be accurate and clean (versus other sources that might not be so trust-worthy). The most notable advantage is easily that the data is being pulled directly from their servers, so no add-ons are necessary. The downside to using the Armory is the lack of information. Sure, it has overall profession numbers (i.e.: “175 of 250″) but no specifics like what patterns that character has learned. It also does not show a character’s inventory, which to come players might prove to be a good thing.
Rupture on the other hand, does show things like what patterns a character has learned and what items they have in their bag and bank! It also allows for user interaction such as uploading images, befriending characters or leaving comments on other character and player profiles. It’s a lot more like Facebook or (/cringe) MySpace in those ways. The disadvantages are that you do have to install an executable which has two functions. The first is to upload gathered data to update the website, the second is actually a really neat chat client. It uses Jabber multi-user chat so one can use iChat or Meebo to talk with friends on the Rupture network. This executable also installs an add-on, the one that gathers the data about your characters as you play. Further, the executable even keeps the add-on up to date, so you never even have to touch it! So that part can be viewed as both a negative and possitive.
Overall, if Blizzard wants to stay competitive, they will have to implement some sort of user interaction (like being able to have a page for each player where the player can choose whether or not to claim all of their characters on a page. Meaning, they could claim all of the characters that other players know belong to that player, but if there is one or two that the player plays in secret, they don’t have to claim them on the player page. Uploading images seems to be a must to be so that proud players can show off their hard work. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, if Blizzard were to expand on the amount of data that was shown for each character and gave some sort of chat interface into the game (like guild chat only or the like), then they would be WAY ahead of the game.
Once upon a time, when one called a company’s automated phone service to get to a representative, one might hear “for Spanish, press 2″ spoken in Spanish, presented in a very non-intrusive way. If nothing was pressed, the greeting proceeded.
Recently, I’ve noticed multiple companies following a new trend. Instead of offering Spanish so those who speak it could go through the menu in Spanish (which I think is a great service), now I am told to “press 1 for English.”
Many might think I’m overreacting, but I refuse to press 1 to do business in not only my native tongue, but the native tongue of the country in which that company does it’s business! If I went to Germany, I would most certainly not expect to contact a company only to hear that German speakers had to press a button to proceed in German. That would be stupid! So why must we? Spanish is not equal to English in the United States regarding which is the first language, it is a second language.
I must clarify something. I love the spoken language. In fact, I had considered minoring in linguistics in college at one point. I think they are a beautiful part of our world culture. I would never wish for the absence of Spanish, even in the culture of the United States. All I’m saying is, don’t encourage companies who seem to think it should equal with English here in the US.
To that end, I would encourage you to not “press 1 for English” when prompted. Just hang on, let it repeat it once or twice, then it should continue through the menu. That is unless you enjoy pressing 1, in which case, go for it! 
JoyTech, a company in the UK, has released a few retarded interesting suppliments for the Wii. The one I would like to make fun of the most My favorite is the Sports Pack.
With this fun new product, you really can get in the game. For those of you who have played Tennis on the Wii: Have you ever been playing and said to yourself “I sure wish this Wii controller looked more like a over-sized sewing needle right about now.” Na, me neither.
The Wii remotes have small groves along the sides of the controller length-wise, blatantly alluding to the future plans to provide some sort of a rechargeable functionality to the controller. What? Haven’t spent enough time with your Wii to notice this yet?
With a new feature like this on the way, we won’t have to deal with batteries anymore. This is of course the type of feature that the Xbox 360 uses with great success. So, in addition to your $60 controllers (three purchased by you), you now have to spend an undoubted $20+ for each bringing the cost of each controller up from $20 to $30 on past consoles to $80!! Come on, Nintendo. You’re right up there with the rest of them now!! Oh, and how much will a cradle for all four controllers cost? $40? Grrr…
Either way, it would be a great feature to have. I hate to admit it, but as much as it would pain me, I would most likely get it. Darn me!
As many of you know, I have been following Fantasy Flight Games for a few years now. They make incredibly high quality products (not that the games are always affordable) and produce some well-known titles such as the Warcraft and World of Warcraft board games.
After speaking with their web developer regarding an expired “coming in september” message on the World of Warcraft : Shadows of War (expansion) page, I was informed that the “upcoming” portion of the site is the one they update. So I have been looking at this page for a few weeks now. Just today I noticed an upcoming product about which I am very excited.
This is yet another title by Blizzard Entertainment which has taken the gaming world by storm in it’s time. This PC/Mac game can still be found on shelves in most game stores despite it’s April of 1998 launch date.
Sadly, they have released no further information save for that of the anticipated release date of Summer of 2007. I’m sort of curious as to what “Expected at FFG” means too. Does this mean that it will be completed by this date but not in stores until later, or is this just a poor choice of words?
My sister sent this to me. I found it to be quite interesting. So far, it has been viewed 3110590 times at the time of this writing. Also, it has 4/5 stars from 523 ratings. Not bad. This is incredibly short but worth watching.
Now, watch it once more. To me, the ability to play it a second time was comforting to the degree of realizing that it is not too late after all. This took away some of the depression (the same depression that the Left Behind series inspired) and provided an immense amount of hope and encouragement to do something about it!
If you don’t know what this is all about, you may want to check this out.
I just called Fantasy Flight Games to see if they had any further information on when the game will be released other than “Coming in September.”
They unfortunately did.
Looks like it will realisticly be arriving in stores and homes around the third week of October. That was a sad thing to hear, considering how long we’ve been waiting for it thus far. I almost would have prefered that they not announce this until a month away, just releasing press news about it instead of an entire product preview page. Looks like we had best settle in I suppose. At least we have the expansion’s manual available for reading already!
Have you ever noticed that where life and death are concerned, a thing might give life whereas something else might bring death. You don’t often see a thing “giving death” or “bringing life,” save for a doctor bringing life into the world.
Sorry? Oh, you were looking for a point to my rambling? I don’t mean to let you down, but you won’t find one here today.
The next supposed “leader” of the up-coming (and partially already here *looks at Xbox 360) generation of gaming consoles, Sony’s PS3, has had a rough couple of days. Yesterday, an article on The Inquirer claimed that the graphics processor (RSX or ‘Reality Synthesizer’) was downgraded to be 10% of it’s original processing power.
This news seems to produce a few emotions in a very specific order when heard: First, “dang, that sucks, it’s not going to be as good now,” followed by either “ya know, it actually won’t affect me since I’m not buying one anyway, so nevermind.” Or if you are buying one “hmm, actually, this means it will cost me less money, so that’s cool.” I know I went through this, followed by “maybe after I buy my Wii, I’ll be able to get a PS3 a year or two after release when it’s gone down a tad (”a tad” equaling around $250-300) in price.”
After the news that Red Steel is upgrading their control schema to include real motion sword fighting, my entire Wii-life flashed before my eyes as dollar after dollar was passed to various stores in exchange for that oh so sweet Wii fix. Late nights of caffine and barely waking up in time for work the next day. Oh yeah, re-living my early 20’s… Thank you Nintendo for ruining my life!!
The worst part? Even after realizing all of that, I’m still getting a Wii. ;p
