Pigs (three diffrent ones)

So with the recent demise of HD-DVD as a viable High Definition physical video format I've been kicking around the idea of making the jump to Blu-Ray and all of it's glory. This thought was helped when my brother bought a PS3. And since he is not a game one can only assume that he bought it for Blu-Ray movies. And over the course of the last month or so as I've mulled this decision over in one form or another I kept hearing about how integrated the PS3 was and all of the other normal chest thumping when the users of one particular technology smell blood and indecision in the water.

I honestly had not been bombarded with so many reasons as to why the PS3 was superior to every other platform out there since Jr. High when Donny Witt and I used to spend hours on end taunting each other as to which was the greater the 16-bit system Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis. Hey when your 13 these things make a difference. And just for the record the Super Nintendo still kicks the Sega Genesis's little white butt!!!1!11!!0ne

However I digress, so through some weird combination of coworkers, an alignment of stars, and a promise to not hack or break anything I have been loaned a PS3.

Que jaw dropping... for those of you keeping track the last time I owned a Sony system willingly was 1996 when I bought the then state of the art Sony Play-station using money from my job at Albertson's. I had sold it within a year and bought a N64 which I still have to this day. I do have a PS2 that my brother gave to me, however I have not hooked it up and have made no attempt to. In the ten years since I sold that first Play-station I've bought two other Nintendo systems and when I've played them I've enjoyed them immensely. Key phrase "when I play them". I'm a PC gamer and I hold a special place in my game playing heart for all things Nintendo as I've often stated here I don't care much about games other then are they fun? And my general experince with Nintendo games is I often find them to be immensely fun!

So what gives with the change of heart? First off, at $400 the PS3 is a bargain of Blu-Ray player right now and will be BD 2.0 compliant when that spec comes out. And since Blu-Ray is a Sony format you know damn well that any future profiles will be supported by the PS3. Second it's backwards compatible with that gianormous library of PS2 games and more then a few are sure to classics when we look back on them in 10 or 15 years (classics in the way I see "Super Metroid" and "The Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past" as great games of my youth). Finally all of the new gaming platforms support some sort of link to your PC so you can play movies, show pictures, and stream music to your living room (sorry Windows only apparently Mac/Linux et all don't want to support or just don't care to support anything that would make their platforms accessible to the box in the living room (yes Tivo does run a Linux Kernel, but it's heavily modified and we will get to why that is not a media platform in a bit)).

So for the past 5 days I've been playing with a PS3...

It's more fun then I expected so it's got that running for it. The downloadable games from the Play-station Network makes ALOT of sense and I do I really like it. Even if the selection is somewhat limited at the current time. Hooking up with my home network was no worse an experince then the Wii or the Tivo was. It's a good media server for the front room of the house and I could see me streaming things to the PS3 with out to much of a stretch of the imagination. The games were "OK" I had a couple loaded onto the Hard Drive (Teken 5 being the closest thing to a "A" title and unless your a 12 to 18 y/o male a fighting game won't hold your interest for long). Teken has held up suprisingly well over the last decade or so and I have to give the the developers credit it's still the fighter to beat. "Call of Duty4" was a abysmal experince.... the game looked good, but I've never liked FPS type games on a console with the loan exception being the "Metroid" games. I'm a PC gamer first and foremost and "COD4" on the PS3 reminded me of why this is in spades.

So what finally turned me completely off to the PS3? My cable provider! One of the big points of the PS3 is that you can stream music and videos off of it onto your PSP over the wireless network in your home or the internet! And the PSP can play Tivo To Go files too! Imagine my utter dismay when I was presented with the following screen.



And this is true for about 85% of the shows on my Tivo, there doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason other then for some obscure reason Cox sees fit to set the copy protection flag on certain programs. Ultimately this what led me away from the PS3/PSP combo more on principle then problems with technology. Since if you look on current TIVO and PSP advertising they each tout how you can transfer tv shows from your Tivo to your PSP! This killed it for me right here.

That and after watching "300" on Blu-Ray I could not tell a difference in picture quality, but the sound did seem improved. Not enough of a reason to switch physical media formats. But enough to give me faith that Apple may be onto something with the Apple Tv.

Good night and good luck.

Wind w/ Fire!

So I've been dicking around with my Linux server this weekend...

It's pissing me off.

That is all I will write about Linux... needless to say the thought of lighting several DVD's on fire to exercise my Linux frustrations is really appealing to me right now.

While dicking around with said Linux box I wandered back to the ole website of long ago (rollingskull.com) which really didn't come into existence until I moved down to Phoenix but for all intents and purposes it's the same damn sight I had when I was in Kingman and doing this with Frontpage and Geo-cities.

I got to reading the old posts and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed opening up the old semi-journal to random emails from readers (all 3.2 of you). I got to thinking that I should do something like that again... then I thought if Curtis AND my brother both have a blog then there really is no point.

So while my install of CentOS 5 died for the 5th time in a row I was thinking...

Maybe what I should is something along the lines of that post card site where people mail their post cards in anonymously... it's sometimes a riot other times really sad and typically it's both on the same day.

So maybe I should open this thing up to a anonymous emails of whatever? (Thanks to Eve who reminded me it's postsecret.com is what I was thinking of)

I like the idea... and it gives you (all 3.2 of you) a little bit of interactive opportunity.

So here are the rules (I know always rules)

1. Send the email anonymously.... ideally from a one time use site it's up to you how you want to do it. If your to lazy to do that and send me an email from your regular address that kind of defeats the purpose doesn't it?

2. Send the email to cignus20 at hotmail dot com use the subject line "Wind w/ Fire!"

3. I will post received emails (if I get any at all) up here...

If you don't like the rules you don't have to email.

The shape of things to come...

Driving home from work I saw a interesting sight. It was a repo truck for other cars and the license plate was "UBWALKN". Great just what the world needs repo guys with a sense of humor. Next thing you know there will be bloggers out there talking about things like the license plate they saw on the drive home from work... oh wait....

So yeah.... about that those bloggers great people eh?


Ok time to move on. So with my moving from a Dell PDA back to Palm I'm once again free from the tryanny of Outlook (at home). I also have a PDA for sell if anyone is interested. Actually for the record just about everything I have is for sale. That is just the kind of guy that I am.

Anyway I'm free from Outlook since I'm only syncing my calendar with the Treo and can do that with Palm Desktop. Sweet I finally have a thrown free all of my bonds from the Windows Platform!

OH look a shackle with a large lock that's got alot of gum in the key hole... oh yes gaming my Achilles heal.

/sigh

I have considered going back to Thunderbird but honestly I just don't like it's interface very much and I find it's database system to be more susceptible to corruption then Outlook. I know Mr. Open Source likes a Microsoft product. Yeah I know let me turn in my geek cred badge at the door.

Then again when your into Linux you run into these type of things all of the time. You know the idealouges who want to a "perfect open source system" and the cold harsh reality of "the business world"

Hmmm maybe I need to find a woman who apperciates the term "free as in beer or free as in speech"

WWJBD?

Today is a day of pondering, today was full of those questions that you always ask your self but they never make it past the formative stage to the fully vocal stage. Normally the questions I pose get squashed by the higher learning centers of our brains. I'm happy to report that I've neutralized the higher processing centers of my brain to bring you these droppings... I hope you are happy.


OK first up... automatic paper towel dispensers. Yes these lowly devices that bring you drying goodness after you have finished doing your doing your business. I find these to be odd contraptions they give you half as much material that you need to use to properly dry yourself and make you wait 30 seconds for the next bit of paper. Granted your time and amount dispensed will vary depending on which Mexican restaurant or hospital you are at. I mean honestly whats the point? I think other then driving certain people up the wall these devices have no real function.

Also in the interest of full disclosure this particular issue was brought to my frontal lobes by a consultant at work who I found reads the pile of crap known as this blog. John Smith (not his real name) this one is for you.

Ok next question... I ordered a LINUX fish from Thinkgeek, so this thing weighs damn near nothing but it comes in a box that looks like the one to the left. Now there is nothing special about this box other then it contained my LINUX fish and alot of packaging material. So my question is this why couldn't the fine folks at thinkgeek just ship me my damned fish via a padded envelope? Is it really that hard?

Also in case you were worried that I would be putting the LINUX fish on the back of my truck. Don't worry I might be a geek but even I have my limits. I would like to get laid again sometime in this decade.

Does Eve (the woman not the game) watch "Digging for the truth" with Josh Binswanger with the same disdain that I watch most computer and technology shows?

How could the Charges lose they have the LT!

Will the Cardinals ever come in at .500?

Will the Suns ever win a championship?

Hey look my beer.