by Matt | Sep 21, 2004 | Imported Entry
Sorry for being negligent in my updating. This thing called FABLE happened and I haven’t peeled myself away from the TV in a few days. It’s solid. I’m almost all the way through, playing as a hero, and I can’t wait to play it a second and possibly third time as both an evil guy and/or a middle of the road theif. Sure, it’s not your typical “go anywhere, do anything game”, it’s not a MMORPG or anything. The quests are more or less confined to set paths and there’s little in terms of “exploration”. So what. It’s the choices that give it replay value. Do you save the villager from the deamon or do you help slice him to bits. Do you save your money and buy the things you need or do you wait until dark, bribe a gaurd to take a break, then steal EVERYTHING from a weapon shop. We’re talking depth here people.
Great game. On Matts scale it gets a solid 8 out of 10. 10 being Half-Life and immortal “will be talked about for years” status and 1 being Diakatana or any Star Trek licenced game.
Speaking of things to review, Lauren and I caught Sky Captain over the weekend. Interesting movie. Not great, but worth the $5 matinee price. I really give the film makers credit for trying something different. At every turn I saw camera angles and style I recognized strait out of old black and white classics. Soft focus, muted colors, etc. The story, errr, B+. Not new or ground breaking, but I really don’t think that’s what they were going for anyway. I liked the look of the film and I firmly believe that if the film makers gets his hands on a killer story for his next movie, it’ll be fantastic. Enjoyable though, just sit back and take it all in, and try to ignore Gwyneth Paltrow.
Let’s see, what else is new. Oh, the new Less Than Jake, Flogging Molly, DJ Tiesto and GreenDay albums are solid.
LTJ’s “B is for B-sides” is just that. A bunch of B quality B-sides. Still enjoyable for the LTJ fan but not quite blockbuster, gold record material.
The new Flogging Molly is a fun time as well. But that’s completely a “Matt only” kind of thing. I like these guys. A lot. They’re probably the single band on the planet that has more fun on stage than just about anybody. If you’ve ever gotten really drunk at an Irish bar in Boston and started singing along to old time drinking songs you’re probably the type of person to really dig these guys. If not, well, then have another drink and see how you feel. 🙂
GreenDay. Hmm. The new album “American Idiot” continues the bands move into a style all their own. There are quite a few solid tracks on this one and like all GreenDay albums, it had me singing along in about two or three listens. And the track “Wake Me When September Ends” is the perfect type of ballad to always remember those terrible events of 9/11 and make sure we never forget why we’re free and what we should be fighting for. “St. Jimmy” and “American Idiot” also have me screaming along at the top of my lungs. Good stuff.
Tiesto. Damn. He’s just kickin’ ass and taking names isn’t he?. Wow is all I can say. Wow.
On a more personal note, I just got back from a day long seminar about wedding photography. I learned a lot, mostly about client-photographer relationships, how to sell yourself, how to make people more comfortable, and little tid bits and tricks the speaker had learned throughout his career. One of the major points was to never stop learning, always change your style. Never be afraid to learn something new, even if it is from someone younger and “hipper”. Put your pride away. Because the new kid on the block may be good at what HE does, but if you can learn the technique, YOU can be good at both what he does and what you do. And that makes you all the more valuable.
It was a good talk. It was presented by the PPGH (professional photographers guild of Houston). A group I should be a member off but haven’t filled out the paperwork yet. Pauls said he’ll sponsor my membership.
Lastly, I just wanted to mention how I can’t wait to be back up in New Hampshire. I’m excited to see everybody again. It’s a shame that I’ll only be there for a few days. My family is all getting together on Sunday, so that leaves Friday night and Saturday that I can hang out with you guys, unless of course someone wants to take off a day from work. But I wouldn’t ask you guys to do that. I think we’re going to go into Boston on Monday though, so if anyone’s up for that, let me know. I can’t wait. Not to get sentimental or anything, but I miss you guys. It’s tough to be in a place without close friends, and it’s hard to make new ones. Sorry, I digress.
Ok, I should go. My extra long, 36” IDE cables came from NewEgg today. I’m going to finally move my CD drives up to the top bays of my tower. I ended up buying a new computer desk, the kind where the tower sits in the middle, and of course my CD drives are perfectly 6″ to low to be useful. We’ll fix that! Where’s my screw driver.
Later guys. Matt out.
Now Playing : Green Day – St. Jimmy
by Matt | Sep 11, 2004 | Imported Entry
As the great man Lewis Black said, “if it weren’t for my horse”. These kinds of statements boggle the mind. You have to either laugh at them or they’ll make your head explode.
I’ve got two of them for you.
The first was said not 10 feet away from me by a pageant contestant. Not that I’ve ever considered pageant people to be smart… or even slightly educated… but this was a new low. Let me share this little nugget with you:
After a conversation about children…
Make-up Artist: “Yeah, I have a 2 year old, we’ve put her in Montessori school, do you know what that is?
Pageant Moron:”Yeah of course, I went to a Catholic school too…”
I had to leave the room.
Our second genius of the day award goes out to Jeremy Lavine of Period 3 from some random link on the web. A link in our Battlefield team’s forums lead to this page. You can read it for yourselves but I think an excerpt or two is necessary:
“One of the things they have names for is for people who go fishing, go fishing to make a living. If we had a word for this kind of people that word would be “fisherman”. But we don’t.”
When you stand near trees, THEY WILL BE KNOCKED DOWN BY LIGHTNING AND YOU WILL BE KILLED BY LIGHTNING! There is no escape. Lightning will knock down the trees and knock down your soul. Trees are tall.
Oh boy. It occurs to me that these people will eventually have jobs of some sort. I figure that it’ll be really hard to get a decent cup of coffee in a few years. Hopefully they won’t breed.
by Matt | Sep 1, 2004 | Imported Entry
Arrangements have gone forward for my grandfather. He requested that there not be a service or anything so there won’t be anything official. He was cremated yesterday along with his masonic apron, his drum sticks (he was an accomplished drum player) and his custom carved cane. His ashes will be separated and placed at a small memorial behind my grandmothers church in Saugus as well as at the Perry family plot in Maine. Everyone is handling it as well as can be expected. Personally, I don’t deal well with death and I’d just like to not talk about it. That said, something about mentioning it is actually therapeutic. Go figure.
So, other topics.
Widgets. (Damn Matt, transition topics often?). I like’em. I’m putting the four most popular engines through their pases to see what I like best. Of course Mac users will recognize the term widgets from the always popular Mac program Konfabulator. Windows users will get their hands on The K soon. Not soon enough for me however. I’m currently running Samurize, AveDesk, Kapsules and Desktop X. As far as my money is concerned AveDesk and Kapsules are winning. Kaps are so super simple in terms of use and setup. I was running in a 5 minutes. Compare that to the 30+ minutes it took my to hand configure Samurize scripts. AveDesk I like because of it’s flexibility. It can really do just about anything and theres a fairly large number of people trying to develop for it. Add to that the fact that you can use ObjectDock, YzDock and MobyDock plugins THROUGH AveDesk and it’s usefulness just tripled.
So… who wants to write some widgets with me? I’ve got a laundry list of simple things I think could be useful and yet no one has developed yet. First up would be a BF1942 server watcher. How many of those things did we have for CS? How hard could it be to simply get the player list and scores. Hell, they’re listed on ServerSpy, AllSeeingEye AND GameSpy thingies. How hard could it be to grab some text from a website or a java-script? You tell me.
Oh well. Hey, I know I’ve mentioned this to Chip, but for any of my other PC Gaming buddies, if you’d like to give Battlefield a spin and you’d like an experienced “tour guide”, just let me know. There’s so many nuances to that game that it’s scary. For example, if you’re an Engineer class and you have land-mines, you can be running toward something, hit the “lay prone” button which will cause you to jump and slide forward on your stomach, and essentially “kick the mine” forward underneath things… like a tank for example. Since the mine is under the tank you obviously can’t see it. You’ve just “booby-trapped” that tank. The next enemy to hop in it will be toast as soon as they pull forward. That’s just one of the oh so fun things YOU can see on Matt’s Wild Battlefield Adventure Safari. Tickets on sale now!
by Matt | Aug 30, 2004 | Imported Entry
I don’t really know what to say. We all knew it was coming. Frank L Perry, my grandfather, passed away last night. There isn’t going to be a service or anything, and everyone tells me not to come home. I don’t really know what to think. All I know is that I was listening to DropKick and their version of “Amazing Grace” came on and I burst into tears. I guess that pretty much sums it up.
by Matt | Aug 26, 2004 | Imported Entry
Seriously guys, I’m freaking out. I think I might have gotten some bad Claritin or something. It feels like I’m on X only without the “happy” part. I’m hyper, sweaty, jumpy, etc. I’m drinking water like crazy. A Claritin was the only thing I’ve taken in the past 24 hours. I’m actually surprised I’m typing in complete sentences. I’m so throwing out that box when I get home. It feels like I’ve had 2 or 3 Red Bulls back to back. My pulse isn’t racing though, so thats good. I just feel, well, hyper. I also didn’t sleep last night. I got maybe 20 minutes total. Maybe I’m so tired that I’m “punchy”. Who knows. It feels weird whatever it is. I’m going to go make myself a nice cup of Earl Gray now…
by Matt | Aug 24, 2004 | Imported Entry
I got FRAPS working perfectly last night. Sweet program.
Also, there’s a BF42 mod for BF:Vietnam. Very nifty indeed.
Speaking of which, I have a match tonight.
I’m hungry.
Garden State was fantastic. Lauren and I saw it last night. Enjoyed it.
I’ve become obsessed with my desktop wallpaper. I think it’s set to rotate at 2 minute intervals. That’s probably not healthy.
Later.
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