schlagging.com

Wii would like to play

Posted on April 28th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: games.

So, I got a Wii.

To my fellow Wii owning friends… got friend codes to share in this antiquated online system of Nintendo’s?

My console code: 0395-9521-0906-7940.

I have three games:

• Wii Sports
• Super Smash Brothers Brawl (3480-2981-7351)
• Mario Kart Wii (3308-4994-5586)

0 comments.

Movie and music recommendations

Posted on April 25th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: games, movies, music.

I’m on a total blogging binge right now…

Here are some movies I’ve seen recently that I would recommend:

• Into the Wild - Pretty good story based on true events… I’d like to read the book now. Burning question from this movie - the girl at the trailer park community… would you if you were in his shoes?
• Across the Universe - I’m a Beatles fan, and admittedly I do like the occasional musical. This one is pretty cool. Would be better on weed, I imagine.
• Walk the Line - Johnny Cash = awesome. The end. Also, Reese Witherspoon is ridiculously hot in this movie.
• Event Horizon - Best sci-fi horror movie ever. Yes, better than Jason X. (Yes, that was a joke).

And some music:

• Into the Wild soundtrack - Eddie Vedder acoustic FTW.
• Flobots - Handlebars - I can ride my bike with no handlebars… can you?
• Ludo - Love Me Dead - The video is awesome.

And some games:

• Portal - The cake is a lie
• Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - It’s just fun.

Aaaaand I’m spent.

2 comments.

Mass Effect = Porn?

Posted on January 16th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: games, movies, music, politics.

The “Sex-Box” Race for President

This has got to be one of the most biased, uninformed articles I’ve ever read about video games. Dare I say, this guy is on par with Jack Thompson.

He makes assumptions about a game he has neither played nor seen (Mass Effect = virtual sex game? What??? Where?). He then goes on to berate the gaming industry, which has given this game the equivalent of a movie’s R rating. Why doesn’t he spend the same effort going after the MPAA, then, for their movie rating system. It clearly must be inadequate.

Why don’t these people understand that when it comes down to it, you can’t put this responsibility solely on the sources of our entertainment. They do their part, in placing ratings and warnings on their products. It is down to each individual parent to take the responsibility to watch what their kids are doing and to figure out what their kids are listening to, watching, and playing.

Simple as that.

0 comments.

Got 360? Read this.

Posted on August 14th, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: games.

Over the weekend, I came to the horrible realization that I somehow managed to delete all game saves associated with my gamer tag. (If you’re not into the whole brevity thing, read on. If you are, scroll down to the last paragraph)

At first, I was rather worked up and couldn’t think straight. All of those hours put into Oblivion, Saint’s Row, etc. went down the drain. Granted, I still had my gamer points, but I still wanted to think that the investment I had made in those games could one day be put to use again and I could make further progress.

I haven’t figured out a way to get my saved games back from the 360 hard drive. Chances are, they’ve already been overwritten, so I can probably assume that they’re gone forever and there is no hope.

I have, however, figured out why they disappeared.

A while back, I moved my gamer tag onto a memory unit to bring over to a friend’s place. While there, he unlocked an achievement under my profile. We weren’t connected to the internet, so that fact hadn’t been updated to my online profile.

Since I’m a stickler about that sort of thing, I decided to just recover my gamer profile from Xbox Live and there would be no trace of that unearned achievement. I did just that, and it worked fine.

Some weeks later, however, I popped the memory unit in to copy some other stuff onto it for transit to another friend’s house. To make room for storing stuff, I deleted the copy of my profile that was on the memory unit. When I did this, the 360 behaved very badly.

When you delete a profile, the system goes and deletes all game saves associated with that profile. In some cases, that makes sense. But to me, it makes more sense to ask the user what to do. In this case, it would have been preferred to leave the game saves.

It didn’t matter that the profile being deleted was on a seperate data source. It didn’t matter that there was another duplicate of the profile still existing on the hard drive. The 360 didn’t take any of that into account, and deleted all of my game saves. No proper warning. No listing of files that were about to get the axe. They simply vanished.

In my opinion, this is simply the result of some poor testing on Microsoft’s side.

Moral of the story: If you ever end up with a duplicate of your gamer profile (via recovery from Live, or some other method) - don’t delete the duplicate while the system has access to files you wish to keep! Physically unplug anything you wish to keep, and then delete away.

5 comments.

I hate tangerines!

Posted on May 7th, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: games.

Not really. But it makes for a fun game. Found it via web surfing, and now it’s on schlagging.com for your enjoyment:

http://schlagging.com/fun-and-games/#tangerine

0 comments.

Fun at work

Posted on April 6th, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: games, work, movies.

Today is Good Friday, but for those of us working at U-Haul HRIS, it feels like Christmas. Each of us got brand spanking new 24″ LDC widescreen monitor to play with. Not only will it be great to code with over 200 columns of characters in Visual Studio, it also looks really really nice.

Yes, I did some quick Photoshop work on a high-res Halo 3 screenshot. I think it’s hilarious. Click the thumbnail below to view the whole (very large) image. Note the details on the Warthog…

0 comments.

Pizza Power!

Posted on March 14th, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: games, movies, music, tv.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game from 1989 came out on Xbox Live Arcade today. I was up early this morning and had time to spare, so I downloaded it and played through the first level. It was just like old times - I can see myself having a lot of fun with that game all over again.

Playing the game reminded me of the Ninja Turtles music I used to listen to as a kid. Yeah, that’s right - I had a cassette tape with songs about pizza and fighting The Shredder. I still have vague memories of the happy day that my parents made a special stop at Pizza Hut to buy me the tape. That $4.99 purchase was money well spent, as I didn’t listen to any other music for probably about a year. My mom will probably say it was longer, as the tape became permanently lodged in her Ford Tempo’s tape player.

I just had to hear it again, so after a quick google search, I found a site with mp3’s made from the tape! I started playing them in iTunes, and noticed that there is some background noise and occasional clicking from the tape player, but who am I to complain? For the most part, the quality is good enough.

I surprised myself this morning when I started singing along to the lyrics, as if it were 1990 all over again.

Click here to visit MIKEYSTMNT.COM and download them for yourself!

And yes, I am excited for the movie that comes out next Friday. I’m not expecting it to be great, but it looks like they’ve captured the spirit of the Turtles I know and love.

3 comments.

Hypothermia: not all it’s hyped up to be!

Posted on February 3rd, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: games, motorcycle.

Okay, so last night/this morning I did probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.

Last night I rode my motorcycle down to Tucson for a Halo LAN party with Fred. Yeah yeah, I know. Whatever, it’s my sorta thing, and I had a lot of fun.

Anyway, I had planned on riding back after playing a few hours. And I did. At 2:30 am.

For those of you who aren’t aware, it gets awfully cold in the middle of the desert at that time of night from December-February. Like freezing cold.

I kinda ignored this little fact when I made my plans, and I didn’t realize how bad it really was. Like.. really bad. It must have been in the 30’s when I was riding from Tucson to Phoenix. It took me probably over two hours.

Why would it take so long? Because I kept making stops to try and warm myself up. My hands got so numb that they started to hurt and eventually I couldn’t feel them. My legs were losing feeling and shivering like crazy unless I rode in a certain position.

Every time I pulled over - be it at a truck stop or rest stop - I found walking to be awkward because of how numb my legs had gotten. When I stopped at truck stops, I would get a coffee and sit for 15+ minutes trying to thaw out a bit before continuing on. At the rest stop between T-town and PHX, I must have used the hot air dryer for 5-10 minutes on my hands and legs.

When I’d start getting really cold and start to lose feeling, I’d just start yelling like a crazy man, trying to get the adrenaline pumping. Which I think I was successful in doing. That’s really what got me through it.

I got home, drew a warm bath, sat in it for a while, got out, and started shivering even harder than I was before the bath. My teeth were chattering beyond control. I was honestly kinda scared. I looked up hypothermia on wikipedia, and I definitely was experiencing phase one hypothermia, with a bit of phase two on the way.

I laid down in bed with some blankets on and eventually warmed up enough to get comfortable and fall asleep.

I still feel kinda funny now, but I’m fine.

The moral of the story? I’m an idiot. But I have learned my lesson. Hypothermia is not what it’s hyped up to be!

Yes. I know. That makes no sense. That’s all I could come up with though right now in my current state.

2 comments.

Leeroy Jenkins!

Posted on December 6th, 2006 by Josh.
Categories: youtube, games.

Spike TV has actually done something to make me laugh. It’s been a while since they’ve been able to entertain me. The UFC Shamrock “fight” doesn’t count.

Anyway, they’ve got some commercials going for their gaming awards show (which in itself is a travesty, but that’s a whole other topic). The commercials are based on the now infamous Leeroy Jenkins, of World of Warcraft fame. For the ignorant, klicken Sie hier.

Here are their commercials:

There should be a Leeroy Jenkins holiday, where we all get to act out our Leeroy Jenkins fantasies. Well, those of us nerdy enough to have them, at least.

0 comments.

Some changes

Posted on December 1st, 2006 by Josh.
Categories: site news, games, books, movies, music.

Once again, I’ve messed with the layout and design of my blog. I threw out that old one, because it was kind of annoying, and didn’t play well with the lesser browser (IE).

I’ve opted (for now) to just pick one of the default templates, and play around with the new Blogger Beta functionality before going any further.

It’s neat - you can create widgets to drag and drop into place on the page. Very intuitive.

I’ve also ditched my book/music/movie recommendations, opting instead to relay those from time to time by posting an entry. Speaking of which, here’s one now!

The latest cause of thumb blisters

• Guitar Hero II (Playstation 2) - Along with a revamped and much more fun multiplayer mode, GHII comes with a whole new set of songs. Among my favorites at the moment are Jessica (The Allman Brothers Band), Psychobilly Freakout (The Reverend Horton Heat), YYZ (Rush), Beast and the Harlot (Avenged Sevenfold), and Hangar 18 (Megadeth). I’m still not ready for hard or expert difficulty, but I’m getting pretty good at medium.
   
   
   
   
   

• WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2007 (Xbox 360) - If you know me, you know I’ve been hooked on pro wrestling since ninety-deuce. That’s not even a lie. I started watching back in the days of Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart and Razor Ramon. I stuck with ‘em even after I learned what the word choreographed means. And to this day, I get to play some fun games that try to emulate the madness seen a couple times a week on TV and in arenas around the world. The SvR game engine has been maturing over the years, and is finally becoming one that I truly enjoy. Gone are the days of ridiculous collision detection and endless button mashing. There is still a degree of button mashing, but it is a lot more manageable than it once was - with momentum shifts and well timed reversals taking a key spot in the gameplay. It’s not everyone’s cup o’ tea, but it is definitely mine.

My nose has been buried in..

• Survivor (Chuck Palahuniuk) - A month or so ago, I decided to get back into reading. Reading in my library (err.. bathroom), during lunch breaks, in bed before falling asleep.. To get me back into the swing of things, I decided I’d give Palahniuk a try. Quite a few friends have been into his work for a while, and the only one I knew - Fight Clubs - I am a big fan of. So I started there. The movie did a very good job of translating the style of the book, in my opinion. Didn’t get a whole lot out of it, but it was good. I moved on to another of his books, Survivor, and found it to have a similarly strange setup. A man is on a plane by himself, and said plane will eventually run out of fuel and lead to his death. In the meantime, he’ll be quite happy to recount his life and why he is on the plane into the “black box”. I enjoyed many aspects of the book. It won’t go down as a favorite, but it was worth my time.
   
• JPod (Douglas Coupland) - At Micah’s suggestion, I picked this book up at the store a couple weeks ago. Video game designers in an office setting. Eccentric personalities. Strange happenings in the life of the main character. Lots of programming (and other) references. So far.. so good. As Micah said, it’s right up my alley.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Recent viewings

• Nothing as of late. I should go to the theaters more often.

Latest on the iPod

• The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me (Brand New) - Brand New is back with their junior album, and they are still rocking - inspired lyrics and clever melodies prevail. I found myself taking in their latest effort in much the same way I took in their second album, Deja Entendu. Upon my first listen, I wasn’t sure what to think. I was sort of indifferent, maybe didn’t like the sound. But a couple more and it quickly became a favorite. From the ever so catchy Sewing Season (Yeah) to Micah’s favorite, Jesus (or just track 3, as he calls it) - they do not fail to deliver with dreary and artful sounds, with a little bit of the screaming mixed in. I think it’s pretty well done, overall. Highly recommended.

2 comments.

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