Not a lot going on lately. This weekend Annette and I went to the Gateway store and baught her a new computer. It's pretty nice and it was only $800. But then we got it home and it had issues starting up. Of course this didn't make Annette very happy and I was a little sad about that. She had issues w/ her previous computer and I knew she didn't want to have to deal with another bad one. So I tried to help, reinstalled the OS, and it all worked out. Now she's sailing away on it, which is good.

Went to Cheapo on Sunday and got a TRS-80 CD. Eric had the MP3s at work and I liked it so I thought I'd get it. Not as many great song on the CD as I'd hope but the first two tracks are excellent. It was really a music weekend, with Annette and I both downloading/ripping music. My CD ripping is about half done at this point. Well, half of my CD's, still have all of Annette's to do, and she may have more CD's than I have. And now that she has a new PC, it'll be easier to network it with my Mac, so we should be able to share a lot easier.

The other cool thing is that I'm getting a copy of Reason soon. I played with the demo a bit and it's a really cool app. Does basically everything I'd want it to. Luckly when Tony and Dave came up a couple years ago Tony braught his drum machine and we played with it, so I was pretty familiar with that part of the interface. I'm looking forward to actually creating some music for a change, even if it sucks. I think it'll be pretty fun. At the very least I can share w/ Dave and maybe we can bounce some ideas off each other.

Gonna be heading to Door County in a couple days. I have a week off work and I'm looking forward to it very much. I know Annette needs a vacation, I don't think things are going well for her at work. So I want to try to make it as good of a vacation as possible. I think we both need some R&R, even if it's only for a week.

Several things...

Purchased my first song off iTunes. The Urge - Take Away. That song was on the major label debut of theirs, but I actually got the indie version of it before they signed w/ the label, so for whatever reason that song wasn't on the indie version I have. I always wanted that song but didn't want to fork over the dough for one track, but now I can!

iTunes just rocks for finding music. I can't wait until the indie labels start uploading their music. Should be sweet. Speaking of, I've been re-ripping all my CD's to AAC format since it's much better than MP3 and is a smaller file size. Of course that takes forever when you have like 400 CD's. Luckly w/ the upgrade in the G4 it's much faster than when I did it w/ my G3 (about 5x faster actually). Also found Acquisition, a sweet Gnutella P2P client for the Mac. Sooo much better than Limewire, et al. All this new software I'm finding is great!

Speaking of new software, Safari 1.0 came out today so that's another browser we need to test too, which is good, because the thing rocks. The standards support is awesome, and it so damn fast. So far I'm really happy with it. Oh, and Apple released something else today. G5 anyone? Drool... I'm not even going to talk about it, just go read about it and let your mouth drop. Damn that thing is awesome. Combine that with the new Panther (OS 10.3) that Apple showed off today and you have one sweet machine. Can't wait for Panther either, especially now that I have OS X at home. Mmmm...

Just got done cutting my hair as well. Since I haven't done that since January, I had a bit to chop. Actually it doesn't look much shorter than it was before even though I cut half of it off. But I feel about 10 lbs lighter, not that I need to get any lighter, but still.

Back to ripping CD's...

Aparently Apple has been so busy trying to squash rumors about their new PowerMac that they forgot to check themselves. I guess someone accidentally posted info on the new G5 (aparently to be announced monday). Here they are:

1.6GHz, 1.8GHz, or Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 Processors
Up to 1 GHz processor bus
Up to 8GB of DDR SDRAM
Fast Serial ATA hard drives
AGP 8x Pro3 PCI or PCI-X expansion slots
One FW800, two FW400 ports
Bluetooth & Airport Extreme ready
Optical and analog audio in and out

Uh, I can't even imagine. Dual 2Ghz 64-bit processors w/ a 1Ghz bus, 8GB of RAM and Serial ATA HD's?!?!?! That's like, so fast I don't even want to know. Either way, somone's getting their ass fired today over at Apple.

Speaking of computer upgrades, I upgraded the G4 last night. It's pimp now. I swapped out the DVD drive and put in a CD-RW so I could burn stuff. Then I added a 120GB HD for all my Roms and music. Took out the old video card and added an ATI 8500 card. And lastly took out the 400mhz CPU and added a 1.1Ghz CPU accelerator card in it. It's damn fast now!!

Seems to be holding up pretty good, especailly since I actually overclocked the accelerator (it's a 1Ghz model). The only real issue I have so far is that my HD must have a small wobble to it, because it seems to hum on and off, sorta like how a oscillating fan sounds. It's very faint tho, but once I notice it, it's slightly annoying. I think I'll swap positions of the drives and put the louder one below the other. That might dampen the sound (it also has more screws to hold it in place, so maybe that's it). But whatever, computers are supposed to make noise.

Also, I upgraded the video card in my G3 to an ATI 7000, which has TV out. I've now hooked it up to my TV and can play any of my emu's on the TV. It's pretty sweet. The only issue is I wish I had S-Video, as the composite isn't always the greatest picture, but it works alright. I might hook up my old systems to do a side by side comparison of how they look. Either way it's pretty cool.

So, Josh's wedding was pretty fun. We rented a car, a Chevy Impala, and headed out to Flint. Took us 13 hours to get there, mainly because traffic in Chicago was really horrible. The wedding itself was nice, simple, though it was a Catholic wedding, so it dragged on for a bit, which I hate. I wasn't sure about how fun the reception would be, but once the night got going on it got pretty good. Once everyone was good and tanked that is.

I didn't really get to talk to Josh's wife Lisa at all, but I did meet his fraternity buddies and they all seemed nice. We played a bunch of foos with them. They also had some pinball machines at the hotel which was cool, I haven't played pinball in a while.

It was good to see Ellingson, Gino and Rick again as well. Haven't seen Ellingson in a long time, but he's the same as ever. His wife is having a baby, due in winter sometime. The other big thing is that Gino and Ann Kingzinger are getting married, much to everyone's surprise. That's pretty cool.

Talked a bit w/ the Mueller's, and it's the same old stuff. Talked to Jason for a while and heard about his experiences in Hong Kong, where he's been living for 5 years. Sounds pretty cool. I've always wanted to go there. Not sure I could put up w/ the flight though.

Flint itself wasn't as bad as some people said, but it was very industrial. Most of MI seemed that way. Lots of run down shit. Gary, IN, as I've heard is a hole. All rusted out factories and steel mills. It's interesting seeing other states because they're all slightly different. There seem to be a lot of trees in MI, and the ditches are really shallow. They also have their stoplights hanging rather than on poles, with these wierd lightbox signs. And of course the highway signs are slightly different as they are in all states. Little stuff like that always throws me off.

The ride home was faster, 11 1/2 hours. Mainly because there wasn't as much traffic in Chicago, so dropping Phlappes off was much faster. Overall it was good, but I'm beat. I need a good long sleep. ;)

So I downloaded the trailer of Half Life 2 yesterday. For the most part I was impressed. It's cleary way ahead of its time in terms of physics and what you can do in a game. The graphics were quite stunning as well.

However, I also think this game opens up a small can of worms. Because it strives to be as real as possible, I think it's even more obvious now that there are areas where it's not "real" at all. This is because you get used to seeing thing react a certain way, like reality. There are certain improv things you can do, like using a radiator for a shield, but there will come a time in the game where you won't be able to do something you think up and then the illusion will be ruined.

Older games don't have this problem. When you've got crappy graphics a lot of it is based on story and suspension of disbelief. But when you make things as real as possible it's very easy to break that suspension just by making something not as real as it could be.

I have the same problem w/ movies. I could watch, say, Fantasia and be enjoyed, even though it's a cartoon w/ no basis in reality. But when I watched the newest Matrix, I kept seeing the CGI human figures and it pulled me out of the movie. I just couldn't believe those were "real" humans because, well, they looked fake.

And I think that's going to be the issue moving forward with some games. The more real you get, the more you notice little things that aren't quite real enough. These things tend to bother me. Perhaps that's why I like those crazy wacky Japanese games, because they're so based in non-reality that you forget all of that and just do what you're suppsed to, have fun.

I heard the new Metallica song on the radio today, St. Anger. That has got to be one of the worst songs I've ever heard. I honestly don't know WTF they're doing. I mean I know they haven't put a decent album out in over 10 years, but my god are they horrible. It's almost embarrasing. Good news tho is 311 comes out w/ their new CD on July 22. So hopefully that one is good.

I was able to take my old Mac G4 from work to home. I figure I'll use it until they ever need it again (which I don't really see happening actually), and delay buying a new Mac for a while to save some dough. I've been thinking of maybe overclocking it, and getting an accelorator card for it. If I did that it'd be just like owning a brand new Mac. We'll see. The bios needs updating so it's a small project in itself at this point.

I talked to my buddy Rob last night as well. Aparently he got a job at Black Ops, the company he used to work for and is not just a developer but also a game designer now, which is cool. He's been working on the latest X-Files game. I asked him if he had a chance to go to E3 and he said he went on Thurs (opening day) and left at 1:00. He said everything at the show was just horrible. Based on reactions I've seen online, that seems to be the general consensious. Although he did say there was one game he didn't get to see at the show but saw after that he was impressed by, Half Life 2. He thought that it could be one of the best games to come out in a *long* time. I have yet to see the footage of it, but I think I may just do that today.

Been a while. I got my camera last night, didn't have much time to play but so far it's really nice. I'm impressed w/ it. Now I just need to sell my old one.

Annette and I decided to rent a car for our trip to MI. We're stopping in Chicago to pick up my friend Phlappes, so that should help pay for it a bit and make the car ride a little nicer. I'm still dreading the drive though. 12 hours one way.

I was hoping my friend Tony would go, but I guess he's not. I gave him a call the other night and we caught up on stuff. Need to do that more often. I also heard the my buddy Rob isn't going to the wedding, which sucks, cuz I wanted to see him. Oh well there's always Christmas.

I beat Wario Ware. Awesome game. Everyone should get it. I gave up on Zelda though. It's just bugging me, too much of a chore. Gameboy Player comes out in a couple weeks so that should be cool.

I'm sure there's more to talk about but I can't remember anything worthwhile.