I pretty much think that Bethesda has nailed the Fallout universe, and the feeling of desolation, desperation, and depraved insane violence even better than Interplay.  I am in no way stating that Fallout 3 is better than 1 or 2, but they definitely put alot of love into this game, and it shows.  I’ll get into this more in another post, but I am about 10 hours in, and really having alot of fun.  I’ve barely touched the main quest, because there’s so much to explore / do in the world.

My main character is a small arms / lockpick / speech spec, and honestly I’m having problems taking down enemies.  It could be my horrible arsenal at the moment.  I started another character tonight for the heck of it, a melee / medicine / repair beatdown machine, and while I get peppered with bullets left and right, if I can get in melee range of things I can kill them fairly quickly with just a baseball bat.  I also went in completely the opposite direction of my other character from the start, and have run into some pretty interesting new things.  I think the most interesting so far **********OMG SPOILERS NOOO********* was coming across Vault 112, manned by a droid telling me to get into one of the sleep pods inside.  Coming into the chamber, there was about 12 pods in a huge circle, each holding people.  I jumped into a open pod, and transported myself into a version of the 1950′s, complete with semi-black and white visuals and quests given out by a little girl to do evil things to the residents of this town, such as break up a marriage, and make a boy cry.  I don’t really know where this is all going, I think I sort of skipped a few things going here, but it’s interesting to say the least.

Oh, and RadScorpions suck.

Keep in mind, Chris is technology retarded, and spent about 2 grand on this thing.  Seem like overkill?

Yamaha AW2400 24 Track Digital Recorder

This thing is gigantic, that’s for sure.  Of course, he also forgot to give me a manual on how to actually, you know, work this thing.  I went online and found a PDF of the manual, and just barely have started to learn basic fuctions.  About all I can say so far is, it’s so much easier to pull up Audacity and hit record than use this.  I have yet to even figure out how to actually record anything.  This is going real well.

Manual

Mozilla Minefield

Keep in mind this is a Pre-Alpha build, but from reports this has the fastest javascript of any browser yet, faster than even Google Chrome.  It will also install itself separately from Firefox.

“Holmes did not participate in today’s practice. He reportedly will face a misdemeanor charge of marijuana possession after having his vehicle stopped Thursday by police. Officers reportedly found three marijuana-filled cigars in Holmes’s vehicle.”

“At this point we’ve chosen to name him as inactive,” Tomlin said, according to the Post-Gazette. “His situation has created somewhat of a distraction and we want to minimize that as much as we can and remain focused on the task at hand.”

Holmes, star rookie receiver of the Pittsburgh Steelers, let's himself go after a long game.

I don’t think I need to say much more!

Hi, my name is Max Starks, I am a 7 million dollar BACKUP NFL player. Suck it.

This post isn’t really pointing the finger at Max Starks.  Heck, if a team came to me and offered me 7 million dollars to sit on my butt and maybe play a couple NFL games, I’d jump at the opportunity.   Max Starks was drafted in 2004 and started the 2005 season for the Pittsburgh Steelers as a Right Tackle.  Keep in mind, this was the year they won the super bowl.  In 2007, he lost his starting job to Willie Colon, a rookie playing guard at the time who the team wanted to transition into the right tackle position, because Starks wasn’t panning out.  In 2008, he was given the transition tag and paid 6.85 million dollars to play a backup role.

Who in their right mind pays players this much money to sit around?  Heck, Charlie Batch, the Steelers backup QB, only is paid somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 million a year.  This isn’t really the fault of Starks, any real person would jump at that kind of money.

Left - Mike Tomlin, head coach. Right - Dan Rooney, owner.

I’m not even sure if either of these 2 are at fault, but I’m feeling generous.  Whoever evaluated Starks at that kind of money is a complete moron that deserves to be fired.  Mike Tomlin, if you are paying a backup that kind of money, don’t you think you’d be trying to START him instead of letting him sit on the bench?  Last I looked, Starks is dead last on the offensive line depth chart, and hasn’t even kept himself in great shape to even contribute.  Whoever is in the front office paying this man’s paycheck needs to be canned.

I knew thee well. Sob.

Just when i was about to make a post about how I love this console, it has to go and die.  Yep, the dreaded Red Ring of Death.  I knew something was up when it would barely chug through 10 minutes of Fable 2 without hard locking completely.  It was a launch version of the 360, so I guess in a way I should feel lucky it’s lasted this long.  Time to either fight with Microsoft over repairs or just go buy another and be done with it.

Agile 3000 - Grado SR60 Headphones - PodXT

This is a modest setup that I use to record most everything I do, save any acoustic parts.  Years ago, getting a mixer / amp / monitors / RTR tapes / etc would have cost you tens of thousands of dollars.  Brand new, this all cost me about $750 and you could probably do much better / cheaper now.

I will say that no small setup like this can give you exactly the tone and feel of playing through a real amp in person, but it makes a great portable studio and practice setup.  Plug the USB from the PODXT into your computer, and you have access to thousands of user created sounds and rigs, and play along with any music on your computer with any selected models.  Want to record?  Fire up Audacity, a great free multitrack recording program, and get your ideas down pretty quickly and easily.

I find myself using the PODXT more than my traditional amp setup more and more each day.  I would take playing through my amp (Vox Valvetronix AD60 VTX w/ foot controller board) almost any day over playing through the POD, but for ease of use and sheer amount of sounds possible, something like the POD is hard to beat.  The Grado SR60 headphones are probably hands down the best open aural headphones I’ve ever used, if you need a semi-audiophile of phones that won’t break the bank in the least, you need to get these.  They are easy to drive and very versatile.  You can use these for just about anything, I use them for recording / listening to music / gaming.

The Agile line of guitars is one of those hidden gems that most people don’t know about.  Rondomusic.com, the only vendor of this line besides ebay, has an extremely large selection of just about any type of guitar you could want, at very reasonable prices.  The Agile line is supposedly manufactured off of the same line as Gibson, only no Gibson name to inflate the price.  As such, they can afford to put very high end parts on these guitars without having to charge an arm and a leg.

Like the Wii launch, I couldn’t find any place to purchase this thing, so like a moron (common theme), I purchased ANOTHER horribly expensive (yes, moron) bundle from Gamestop.com.  At least this one didn’t come with 200 useless games, but it also seemed to come with very little in the way of extras.  Console, controller, cords, and 1 game.  Not much room for bundling I guess with the gigantic box that it came in.

Yes, I know this joke is old. I still find it funny.

I have mostly used the PS3 to….well…let me think.

1.  Attempt to play movies.  The PS3 is actually a very capable DVD/Blu Ray player.  Too bad with HDMI issues and lack of upscaling unless you are using HDMI, it is no better than a $50 DVD player.

2.  Attempt to play games.  My system came with Resistance, which I will admit I had alot of fun with.  It was made by the same people that made Ratchet and Clank, a game series I am greatly fond of.  Resistance ended up being slightly generic as far as FPS games go, but the atmosphere and selection of weapons was great.  I have only purchased 1 other game for this system so far, and what do you know?  It’s Ratchet and Clank:Future.  Now this is a game that truly showcases what this system can do.

3.  Attempt to look like an oversized mailbox.  Did I mention this thing is huge?

It's hard to see in this photo, but the PS3 is about 4x the size, if not more, than the Wii. Too bad it's not 4x as super awesome.

So for $600, I purchased a death star that rarely plays games and even more rarely plays movies.  The lack of great software for this platform is atrocious, considering this was supposed to be the most powerful and greatest console yet.  I know that it takes a long time to harness the power of these next gen consoles, but the lack of software is evident in sales, as the PS3 is lagging behind the XBOX360 and Wii worldwide.  With Sony bleeding money left and right into this thing, somebody had better come up with some games, and fast.

I think I’ll stick with my PS2 for now.