Spore: What is it?

There's been talk about a new game out, brought to the computer gaming world by Electronic Arts and Maxis called Spore. The game allows you to create not just a character, like many other online games have you do, but the entire society and planet of the race that character comes from. You build one creature, and watch it grow, and evolve, and create a society.

You can expand in the universe as well, allowing yourself to meet other players and interact with them right away.

I downloaded the trial for the creature creator, and trust me, that alone is hours of entertainment to see what different creature types you can create.

Check the game out, if it's anything like the trial for the creator, and just as much fun, then it's completely worth it. And while you're at it, take a gander at my creations.



And, to see some of these little guys in action, just take a look at this.



Until next time...

...keep 'em flyin'!

Buildin'

One of the joys of gaming happens to be the building that comes along with it. In many games, you can create your own content, and add a bit of your own flavour to the world you play a game in. One such game is Neverwinter Nights from Bioware. Based on the pen and paper game, Dungeons and Dragons, Neverwinter Nights is set in a fantasy world. There is a single player campaign, plus you can go online to find what are called persistent worlds. These are servers that are constantly up, and constantly maintained. I currently play on one called Legacy of the North. It's a nice server with a decent population of players.

And I am on the building team.

I take a bit of pride in the things I build. Each thing that is added to the server is seen by the players, and I can sit back and say "hey, I made that, and people really like it." So it is true with the current area I finished. I like making social areas where players can gather to just talk. And I've currently finished a halfling village. Think of the Shire from Lord of the Rings. Filled with little people, it's a fun little place to go and have fun.

For me, building happens to be a relaxing past time, and an enjoyable hobby. It's a digital way of making model railroads and villages.

Until I find the one ring...

...keep 'em flyin'.

Pimp My Laptop

Okay, I'm on vacation. But I'm on vacation in Saskatoon. Which means a little quality time for me and my stuff. I have my camera, my laptop, and recently acquired some new stuff on Friday when I came into town. Let's face it, I needed a new pair of shoes and I found a stylish pair that works for casual wear or even formal wear.

Next, time to pimp my laptop.

My first goal was to actually go out and pick up a book to put my music CD's into. Which I did find. One that holds 320 CDs. Yes, I have more than that, but I digress. While shopping for such a find, I also remembered I needed a laptop cooling base. I managed to find one at OTV, called the Notepal by Cool Master. Comes with dual fans and USB connection. My laptop will now be much cooler.

And, cooler still with the gelpic I managed to find.

Made by 3M, this easy adhesive picture adds an amount of flare and style to said laptop. Yes, I like my tech-geek stuff, and I like it to stand out a bit. In Outlook, this will definitely stand out. There are other gelmats, so as time goes on, I may change things up a bit. We'll have to see.

Until next time...

Keep 'em flyin'.

Guild Wars Dance Party

The fun with videos continues. Except this time, I've started posting it up on YouTube. I decided to take a few of my characters from Guild Wars and do a compilation dance routine with them, just to show off their moves. The game itself is fun, and one I'd recommend for anyone who wants to get involved in an MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game for the uninitiated). The biggest selling point is the fact that it doesn't cost a monthly fee.

The new machine

I completely forgot about this update until last night's lunar eclipse. I was getting ready to take photos of the lunar eclipse and looked up at my computer. "Hey," I thought. "My new 'puter gets a photo op." So, I snapped a quick pic of it. The machine is a major step up for me. With an Athlon 5000 processor and 4 gig of RAM, the machine came standard with a 160 gig SATA drive. I had purchased another hard drive, and that one was added to this machine, giving me 410 gig of space. Because I was going to be working with very high graphics, whether that be in Illustrator, Photoshop or any gaming (such as Neverwinter Nights which is seen on the monitor) an nVidia card was added, one from the 8500 series. That was a major step, because my old machine had only an 80 gig hard drive, 2 gig of RAM and a GeForce 7600.

What surprised me when I bought the machine, was what else it came with. I wasn't expecting a set of decent speakers, nor was I expecting a new keyboard and mouse. All of that for a $700.00 price tag. That was nice. (Enter shameless plug here) I have purchased most of my computer equipment and my camera from the local computer shop, Thorstad Computers, and they've really treated me well, so I have no complaints about going there again and again. Service was actually better than Futureshop. Are you paying attention, Big Box Store?

Until next time...

...keep 'em flyin'!

Can't anything go right?!?!

I'm taking in positive thinking. Really, I am. Because yesterday I was happy. Got a new harddrive for my computer. 250 gig. Wow! The thoughts of days gone by came back. How am I going to fill this thing? In truth, I know how. I work in graphics and a lot of my images can be huge in file size. This drive, though, would be good to put all of my artwork and writing on and ease some pressure off of my 80 gig.

Or so I thought.

Simple situation. Thinking back, I should have started the backup first.

I set the jumpers so the drives would act as master/slave. All good. Checked the bios, there they were. Nice. Began the boot process. For the next three hours. And I began to realize, my 80 gig decided now was a good time to start dying. So, there I was. The sudden realization that four years worth of artwork and writing, was now lost. Gone into the void that takes computer equipment. No hard copies, no backups. Shame on me.

Not all of it was lost, fortunately. I have a good number of backups on my laptop, not 100% of it, but a good amount of it. But there were some projects that took a great deal of time in creating that I would have to start all over again. The pain of thinking about that began settling in. Along with a mix of emotions. Anger, worry, fear. At the point where I think I was going to start to cry, I realized that now might be a good time for that upgrade I had always thought about getting. My computer was three years old, after all. I was pushing it pretty hard, and I had always thought that I should start planning a new system. I'd build something that would be able to stick around for a few years.

That got pushed up to this morning. I walked to the local computer store, and told them what I needed a new system to do, and what I wanted a new system to do. It has to be able to run Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign. It has to have a decent amount of space. DVD burner. And it has to be able to handle a good number of games. Granted, a lot of those games are older, but they'll rip along nicely with the new system I have planned. I remember playing Neverwinter Nights on an Athlon 600. I can't wait to see it on an Athlon 5000. Duo core, 2.7 gig processing power. Complete with a GeForce video card that will make my old one look like a Sunday driver doing 25 on the freeway.

And, there is a good chance I can recover my backups off the old drive. It's not completely dead. It just won't boot. Here's hoping.

So yes, I am looking at a lot of positives. I have my laptop. I have a roof over my head. I have food. I have electricity. I have my job. And spring is not that far away. Life is starting to look a lot better when I take those things into perspective. And when I read funny captioned cat pictures.

moar funny pictures

Until next time...

...Keep 'em flyin'.

Editing images... online

Wow! A friend of mine showed me a very cool online utility for editing and manipulating photos. And one of the great things, it's free to join. Editing, sharing and posting photos has become a very important part of the Internet culture. Relatives that live thousands of miles apart can keep in touch easily through blogs, places like MySpace or FaceBook and even share photos through sites like PhotoBucket.

Well, this new online utility means that anyone who doesn't have a powerful photo manipulation program like Photoshop, or doesn't have the patience to learn it (it can be rather imposing to the neophyte user), this online utility is great. Picnik is a place to save, edit, sharpen, correct or even just have fun with photos and images, as can be seen with what I've created.


Give it a try. I'm sure you'll be impressed.

Until next time...

Keep 'em flyin'.

Criminal hijinx

Seems a theft occurred at a Vancouver business earlier in the week.

Criminals walked into a build late at night, and walked out, just as easily, with several laptops and iMacs. What's really great is what happened next.

I'll leave the name of the business out of my blog, but you can check more of the detailed information here, which also has incriminating security video and photos.

The crime in a nutshell: computers were stolen from a Vancouver business. Criminals entered easily into the building and six minutes later, easily left. Both, there were two, completely oblivious to the fact the front doors were under security video. At that point, you think it would end there. But no, it doesn't.

It would also seem that this Vancouver company has a Flickr page. What's Flickr? Flickr is a website where any digital photo can be uploaded easily from you computer. This is especially easy when you have a webcam. Many iMacs have built in webcams, and come with iPhoto and Photobooth software preinstalled.

Anyway, back to the crime.

Whether these laptops and iMacs were sold is unknown. But whoever ended up using the laptop, decided it would be really, really cool to take pictures of himself using the built in webcam. And then, proceeded to upload them to the company's Flickr page. For shots of the incriminating photos, click here. You can also see the lovely mugshot of the individual above.

Whether or not this guy is the criminal has not been determined by Vancouver police. But, it is quite obvious that this guy loves his tattoos. It is also quite obvious that there is no such thing as a criminal mastermind. Especially after walking in front of a security camera, allowing it to record your face, using/selling said computers to take photos and upload them to the original company's photo page online.

As one poster in the thread had mentioned...

"The funniest part is that he had to name the picture and then click a button that says "upload" in order for it to show up here. It's not totally automatic."

Crminal hijinx will ensue.

Until next time...

Keep 'em flyin'.

Computer Wars

Got into a rather large discussion with some people about the virtues of operating systems and computer platforms. There are the two big ones, of course. PC based Windows(insert flavour here) and Mac computers. There are some facts which can be dished out for the use of both, and there can be some facts dished out about the users of both.

Radical Mac/Windows lovers hate the opposing OS. For example, a Windows loyalist will swear up and down that Windows is far superior to Mac. The situation is the same the other way as well. I used to be in the camp of Mac-never-going-to-use. And then I got my current job, as a graphic designer and production manager with The Outlook. Now, I can see the ease and functionality of a Mac.

Granted, this is after going to the current iMac's that we use. I do not ever recommend using legacy software on Mac X OS. You need the Classic install and running two operating systems at the same time, even if one is in the background, just spells disaster.

At home, I still use Windows. I have a desktop and a laptop that both run Windows XP Pro. Just out of curiosity, I checked to see if I could install an upgrade to Windows Vista, the shiny new operating system released by Microsoft.

The results came back, after using Microsoft's system scanner and it reported that I could run a low end version of the OS. Meaning, I could run Vista, and pretty much nothing else. No applications, no programs, nothing. I couldn't even watch a DVD from my DVD Rom drive. That's on my desktop, I didn't scan my laptop.

There is another thing that shys me away from getting on the Vista bandwagon. It took me a while to give into XP as well, so this isn't new. I don't think I could afford the price tag that Vista comes with. I'm not sure how much it costs, but if it's like any past Windows versions, it won't come cheap.

However, having said that, you can be pretty sure that getting a Mac won't be cheap either. an iMac averages around $2800 Canadian with all the bells and whistles.

One thing I did notice with Windows Vista. It looks like Microsoft is trying to build a Windows OS that is a clone of the Mac X OS.

No matter what happens, I shall still use Mac at work, and I shall still use Windows at home.

Until the first Mac Windows OS is created...

Keep 'em flyin'.