Video Games
Due to financial constraints and the upcoming transition to college where I'll have less desk space to work with, I've decided that I'll be selling off two of my three video game consoles. I've been debating for awhile which ones to let go of. My options are:
The PS2. This one isn't doing a whole lot, and I've already finished all of the games I have for it. I don't use the DVD or CD player on it either. However, new games are still coming out on the PS2, meaning that I can continue to play some...
As I had mentioned earlier, I bought a hi-definition VGA transcoder box, so that I could effectively gain the ability to view true HD signals on my computer monitor without actually having to dump $500 on an HDTV. At the moment I only have 480p-capable hardware, but for $50 I'd say it was a good investment to be able to do 720p and 1080i in the future.
I took a gamble and bought a no-name "Hi-BOX" off eBay for a couple of reasons. The Hi-BOX was $15 cheaper than Neoya's X2VGA 2.0 and Vdigi's VD-Z3. The X2VGA simply doubles 480i's sync...
It seems that I've become a bit lax with the blog. Plenty's happened over the past week and a half, though I honestly haven't had the motivation to write any entries lately.
I finished Halo 2 a bit over a week ago. Obviously, Halo 2 is a sequel - and that dismayed me somewhat at first. There have been many attempted game series that couldn't survive a sequel, let alone two or three, notable exceptions including the classics (Mario, Zelda, StarFox, and so forth). Halo 2, impressively, managed to get things right in this regard.
One of the first things you'll notice...
So, for the next two months I have an Xbox on loan from a friend. Provided I don't damage it, I can keep it free of charge until June, otherwise I owe him $50.
I seriously can't believe I'm saying this, but Sony actually has a better design than their competitors for once. The Xbox takes up more floor space than a laptop and stands as high as a Gamecube in the process. The PS2, meanwhile, packs even more components (or in this case, space for components, as the PS2 doesn't ship with a hard drive but includes an internal drive...
As some of you may be aware, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl for the Nintendo Wii received a good deal of hype prior to its heavily-delayed launch. Nintendo employed just about everything from radio announcements to billboards to ads at the movie theater to introduce Brawl to the general public. Not that this was unmerited, of course: the Super Smash Brothers franchise constitutes by far the largest portion of Nintendo's console multiplayer market. The game released this Monday, and I got a chance to play it earlier today.
I briefly gave Brawl a try using a Wiimote controller, but soon found this...
I now have reason to believe that the problem with my laptop this time around isn't a flat-out defective mainboard. Rather, it seems that the DC input jack came loose from the back of the unit: it'll provide power if the plug is held in at an angle. I find it interesting that this very thing happened to my old HP laptop twice before I settled on buying a considerably more durable port replicator to remedy the issue.
For now, I still haven't got a clue whether or not I should be trusting the machine to work any further. I'm...
Last year on December 23rd around 3:30 PM I began playing Twilight Princess. I finished the main storyline sometine in the afternoon on December 29th. Of course, no Legend of Zelda is complete without working one's way through the numerous sidequests available: weapon upgrades, improved abilities, new items, and so forth. I'll be honest: while I've completed the storyline to five Zelda games, I've never once managed to finish every single sidequest.
I figured that in my boredom, it might not be so bad an idea to actually finish an entire Zelda. That entailed obtaining every single item and weapon upgrade,...