Wii Snooze

zzzzz…

It wasn’t until a few days ago that I realized that the Wii U is being released in the USA this Sunday. It sneaked up on me the same way like Thanksgiving did. But whereas I am excited about spending time with family and watching football and eating good food and shopping and a long weekend away from the office, I have virtually zero interest in the Wii U.

I was interested in the system after the Wii U’s debut at Nintendo’s E3 2011 press conference. Like the Wii, it promises to provide new ways to play games. I even wrote an article discussing the similarities between it and the 3DS for original-gamer.com. This year’s Nintendo press conference, however, completely let the air out of that balloon. All I saw was Mario, a bunch of recent releases, and one or two mildly interesting games. One of which was Lego City Undercover, which should say something.

While I didn’t get a Wii at launch, I did find the idea interesting and ultimately purchased one once some interesting games came out for it. This time around, though, Nintendo is going to have to do better than dragging out yet another Mario or Zelda game.

My apathy towards the Wii U leaves me feeling a little sad: Part of me is wondering if Nintendo has jumped the shark, but that’s a discussion for a future time.

Android, Apple, BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, Tablets, TECH

In Defense of Apple

Despite owning a 24-inch iMac, I’m not a terribly big fan of Apple, OS X or even iTunes. Its a fine machine, I just find OS X clunky. That iMac still runs Snow Leopard, and boots into Windows 7 these days. Indeed, I seldom find myself venturing into OS X unless I have to.

The iPad was one of the tablets I was considering when I was shopping for one earlier this year. I decided not to get one because it (indeed, all 10-inch tablets) ended up being too large to type on comfortably, and the price was more than I was willing to pay. I ended up with a Acer Iconia TAB 100, which is a pretty good device, but its relatively short battery life (5 hours) combined with a lack of charging options (AC charger or nothing) have kept it from getting extended use.

Enter the iPad mini. It almost sounds like a slam dunk: it does everything its big brother does, is smaller, has great battery life, and is less expensive. Of course, ‘less expensive’ does not mean ‘cheap.’ Nevertheless, I am contemplating one, because for all the griping I do about Apple, I must admit that there are quite a few things they do right:

They make quality stuff: My iMac is about three and a half years old and it still works as well as it did when I first got it. The iPad mini may be pricey, but then again, its not made out of plastic, either.
Their stuff works together: Since Apple makes their own hardware, OS, and software, the integration between everything is pretty seamless.
They know when to say ‘no mas’: As I mentioned before, Apple has no problem ending support for old software; it’s a habit that many companies would do well to imitate.
They actually upgrade their software: Apple is good about updating OS X and iOS fairly regularly, and those updates are available to most users. With Android devices, you are left at the tender mercies of your manufacturer, or even worse, your cell phone carrier.

Finally, as an iTunes publisher, I’m married to Apple whether I like it or not. So why not take that final step?

ANIMATION, TECH, Videogames, WHATS GOING ON, Wreck-It Ralph

I’M GONNA WATCH IT!

You Can Fix It!

I’ve been hyped up for Wreck-It Ralph ever since I saw the first trailer. While Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was a fun ride, it was more geared toward the NES kids that are just a hair younger than I am. Tron and Reboot gave us a look into the ‘world inside the computer’ but Wreck-It Ralph is a love letter to the arcade games many of us dropped numerous quarters into back in the 70s and 80s.

The story centers on the titular Wreck-It Ralph, a “bad guy” from a fictional early 1980s arcade game who has grown tired of playing that role for the last 30 years. He attends group sessions with other bad guys including such heavyweights as Zangief from Street Fighter, Kano from Mortal Kombat, Neff from Altered Beast and even Clyde (the orange ghost) from Pac-Man. In an effort to become a hero he jumps into other games, eventually putting the arcade in jeopardy.

Disney has even gone through the trouble of making fictional posters, TV commercials and even real “Fix-It Felix Jr.” arcade machines. I can’t wait, because the movie just feels right based on what I’ve seen in the trailers. Those of us old enough to remember when arcade games were video games should probably watch this movie, it looks to be a fun one.

CAMPING, CONS, FOOD, FURRY, JUST SAYING, Oklacon, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH

Oklacon 2012 Journal #1: Off the Grid

Furries under the stars!

Oklacon is just a few days away, and I am in the process of getting things ready: making a list of equipment to bring, topping off stuff with fuel, getting warmer clothing out of storage, making sure I have plenty of batteries, and so on and so forth. In viewing various posts here and there I had heard of something called ‘cell phone hill’ so on a hunch, I decided to check Sprint’s coverage.

Yikes. It looks as if I’m going to be outside of Sprint’s coverage area, so I’m going to be roaming, which probably means no data. Now, I presume that no data means no internets, and I find myself just a little bit apprehensive at the thought of really being ‘off the grid.’ As you may guess, I’m one of those people that is always checking my smartphone or laptop for e-mails or Facebook posts or tweets or comments on my blogs (like this one!) and so on and so forth.

While the thought of not having access to the tubes is a little bit scary (I think I may have a problem), on the other hand, its something else I can take a vacation from, and it’ll probably do me some good…I hope!

Books, Computers, CREATIVE, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Seven Super-Short Sci-Fi Stories, TECH, Writing

Mac Musings

Buy me now!

I own a 24-inch iMac. I bought it when I had some extra money on my hands and I wanted to see how ‘the other half’ lived. I’d also had a Gateway crap out on me after just three years. The iMac came with Leopard, which I obediently upgraded to Snow Leopard, and I haven’t upgraded OS X since. Yeah, I know, I’m a terrible iPerson for not shelling out the cash for Lion or Mountain Lion or Griffin or Hydra or whatever their next update is going to be called, but I have no desire to. I appreciate that OS X is probably wonderful for people that ‘aren’t into computers,’ but I am not one of those people.

In addition to Snow Leopard, my iMac boots into Windows 7. To further add insult to injury, I keep a Windows XP virtual machine handy in OS X for when I need to do ‘real’ computer work, because OS X just doesn’t do it for me.

I cut my teeth on MS-DOS 3.1 and remember futzing around with AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS in order to play Wing Commander. I remember making a 3.5” bootable floppy with a batch file I wrote called Kenny on it for those inevitable times when I would have to reformat my PC after poking at Windows 98 too many times with a sharp stick. Plug n’ Play started out as Plug and Pray and we all wondered why we had to reboot our machines after changing the lousy screen resolution. The Unix lab at the University was for Computer Science majors only and the servers had monitors that were as big as my TV set back home. I remember the sysadmin telling us to clean out our core dumps when the drives filled up, and one guy being labeled “The JPEG King” because his directory was full of megabytes (yes, MEGABYTES) of porn, which was promptly deleted by the sysadmin.

Good times, and yes, I mean that seriously. For folks like me, part of the fun of owning a computer is goofing around with it and watching what happens. I don’t do that much anymore, partially because Windows 7 is pretty darn good, and partially because I’d rather be putting words together instead of spending hours under the virtual hood of my PC.

I completed the final text draft of my next e-book “Seven Super-Short Sci-Fi Stories” a few days ago, and all that remained for me to do was take those words, squash them into an e-book, and upload it to the iBookstore for all to see and buy. Of course, uploading it into the iBookstore would mean I would have to boot into OS X and send the .epub file to them using Apples super-special uploader program (iTunes Producer) because it, of course, its OS X only.

The first time I had tried to do so for “The Rules of Tech Support,” I encountered a problem with the .epub file I was trying to send. The file worked just fine in Kindle, worked just fine on Nook and even passed ePub validation, but it just wasn’t good enough for Apple.

Luckily, Apple technical support helped me make my file Apple-friendly and all was well. I was a little miffed to find out that the problem was that one line was missing from a specific file. This time, I knew that I had to add that one line before trying to send the file to Apple. I added the line, recreated the file, and waited for the upload to complete so I could start waiting for someone at Apple to bless it and put it up for sale.

The second time, for “One Sheet Stories” the process went without a hitch, so I was baffled, because this time I got a different error. Crap.

I sent an error report to Apple, but I knew from previous experience that I was going to have to wait until at least until the next day to get a response. To Apple’s credit, I always get a response within 24 hours whenever I send error reports, but I wanted my book uploaded now. On a hunch, I fired up the aforementioned Windows XP virtual machine, did the exact same thing I did in OS X. I resent the file and was rewarded with success.

While I was happy to have accomplished my goal, I was irked that OS X had failed me where Windows had handled the task with aplomb. Sadly, if I wish to continue publishing e-books onto the iBookstore, I will need to keep the iMac, but like any good geek, I will always have a backup Windows machine handy.

FURRY, ORIGINAL-GAMER.COM, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, Videogames, WHATS GOING ON

An Editor’s Tail

You MUST play this game.

I am the Editor/Voice Guy of Original-Gamer.com and I all but handed in my resignation two weeks ago. I had become burned out having spent the last two years and change reviewing games, editing and writing articles about games, voicing over videos about games, going to game-related events, and actually having to PLAY a bunch of games. Video games had become work, and I had become sick of them to the point where even the Wii U announcement during E3 had failed to excite me. What little joy I could muster from videogames came from playing 3DS titles. Mighty Switch Force and Final Fantasy Theatrhythm were two recent titles that I had actually enjoyed.

I wanted videogames to be fun again, and so I told OG that I was done. That was it. Game Over. No mas. Bueno, bye. I would wrap up the games that were currently on my plate and be completely done with the site. I reconsidered it over the San Japan weekend and decided that I would stick around, but would no longer review games. This is part of a greater desire to cut back on ‘side projects’ so that I could concentrate on my writing.

I was happy to be getting a break from videogames. I only had one or two more to finish before clearing my plate of everything that I ‘had’ to play and then I could get back to playing games that I wanted to play. One evening while chatting, OG mentioned Dust: An Elysian Tail (or simply Dust). He said that he was enjoying it and that I probably would like it, too.

At first, I wasn’t sure that he was being serious. OG and I know each other well enough to mess with each other and I thought he was being all “you’ll like it because ITS FURRY LIKE YOU HURR HURR.” But no, he said: “it is pretty damn good, and it looks amazing,” which is pretty high praise, especially coming from him. I read up on the game, got excited, went to Ye Olde Electronics Store for a Microsoft-moon-money card and downloaded it the next day. I was curious to see if it was really as good as he had made it out to be.

It was. My socks were completely knocked off. I cannot remember the last time I have been blown away by a game like this, but I should mention that yeah, I have missed out on a lot of excellent games these past two years. Nearly every moment of Dust has been a joy to play so far: I have been laughing at the dialogue, gritting my teeth as I fight my way through enemies, marveling at the game’s beautiful world as I explore it and enjoying the story.

I think Dust has restored some of my faith in gaming. Its not that I’ve been playing nothing but bad games as part of my role at Original-Gamer. Far from it,. I have played games that were fun and that earned high scores for being fun, but they haven’t crossed that line from ‘this is fun’ to ‘this is AMAZING’ the way that Dust has.

Except for being (as far as I know) one of the few mainstream ‘furry’ games to emphasize its story, Dust really isn’t anything new. It is a 2D hack-and-slash ‘Metroid-vania’ game with RPG elements. That said, everything in Dust that I have seen so far has been executed very well: the art, animation and music combine to make a beautiful game to see and hear, the voiceovers have been very well done, the gameplay makes me feel like the mighty warrior that Dust is supposed to be, and the story is starting to suck me in.

At a time when everything seems to be recycled, rehashed or rebooted, it makes me feel good to know that a game can still come out of nowhere and move me the way Dust has. I haven’t finished it yet, but from what I have played so far, I can only hope that Dust ends up being only the first of many Elysian tales that I get to enjoy.

CAMPING, CREATIVE, JUST SAYING, RANDOM STOPS, TECH, WHATS GOING ON, WORDS, Writing

Camping Journal #1: (Semi) Roughing It

Lined paper! WHEE!

I took a camping trip recently and while I admittedly spent way too much time on my phone updating my Facebook status, I also bought along some paper to keep a written journal. As I’m pretty sure folks don’t want to decipher my awful handwriting, I’m transcribing them. Enjoy!

July 12, 2012: 5:13 pm, at work

-enthusiastic-

I’ve made my list, checked it twice and I’m heading out camping tomorrow for the first time in years. I used to love going to Lake Corpus Christi with my folks, family and friends Back In the Day, but this time I’m going alone.

I suppose that’s the downside of having a bunch of nerds for friends. I’m looking forward to it, though, and maybe sometime in the near future I’ll bring some friends along.

-ES

BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

Worst. Spammer. EVAR.

Spam. If you’ve been on the Internets for more than say, a few minutes or have ever had an e-mail account, you should hate it in all its forms. One particularly odious form of spam is blog spam, where people will post comments on blogs that serve no purpose other than to try to direct you to some skeevy website of questionable repute.

While Askimet is pretty darn good at catching spam comments, one occasionally slips through the net and has to be sent to Binary Hell the old-fashioned way. I thought this one was HILARIOUS. Click the picture to see the derp in all its glory.

I think you’re supposed to only post ONE of these…

BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

Facebook Ads are Funny

I don't want to go tto school with Grant, he's creepy!

I don't want to return to school with Grant, he's creepy!

I obviously read the ad wrong, but hey, at least I read the ad.

Booze? Well, that explains how Wall Street lost all that money

I don’t know what they’re selling but what were they THINKING?

Sick? Wild? I'll stick to Pac-Man

I still can’t get used to the word ‘sick’ being used in a good context.

JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH

In Defense of “Old Media”

Someone still loves you, radio!

I usually make my weekly run to the grocery store sometime during the weekend, which is probably not the smartest thing to do because everyone else does the same thing. Of course, life often gets in the way of that plan and I end up going on Monday instead, which is also annoying because it means I have to burn precious after-work-before-bed time. As I am one of those oddball men that actually likes to shop, it really isn’t that big of a deal because I can easily spend an entire hour at HEB buying groceries for the week. It also isn’t unusual for me to show up with a list of five items and leave with twenty…I’m thinking the two are related somehow.

In any event, it was time to go to the grocery store again, but this Monday introduced a new wrinkle: the Spurs were playing and it was an important game. Like most folks, I don’t pay much attention to basketball until the playoffs arrive, and the Spurs had lost two in a row and so they were in a ‘must-win situation.’ While I would have loved to just sit and watch the game, I had groceries to buy and laundry to do after that, so I made my list, checked it twice, and headed out the door.

Now I have a problem: I can’t keep tabs on the game while I am in the store. I do have a smartphone, though, so I figured I would open up a web browser and keep tabs on the game via a sports website. At the time I left my apartment, it was a close game and waiting for the browser to reload and update the score was agonizing. It then occurred to me that for all the 4G-dual-core-Flash-touchscreen-whiz-bang technology my smartphone had, I would have been better off with a cheap transistor radio tuned to a local sports station. Much to my chagrin, the last update came fifteen seconds before the game ended, and I ended up having to visit a different website to get the final score because the page stopped updating.

As great and wonderful as the Internet is, radio and television (aka “the old media”) still outdo the ‘net by leaps and bounds when it comes to things that are happening live. I am certain many of us remember refreshing our browsers at work every few minutes on 9/11, only to be stuck with pages that loaded slowly, or not at all. Meanwhile, at the same time TV and radio stations were providing a steady stream of information that kept going independent of how many viewers were watching. Sure, it wasn’t all ‘interactive’ and ‘social’ and all those things we expect nowadays, but when something is happening right now, give me a radio or a TV set anyday.

Eduardo Soliz

IT Guy, short story author, podcaster, and furry!

Category Archives: TECH