Oh no... Godzilla!!!

This is so VERY cool.

I'm very much looking forward to this next movie. I've been following it for a while now, and they have definitely pulled out all the stops.

They even have GINO (The Godzilla from the Tri-Star American Godzilla movie... stands for Godzilla In Name Only) in it... in CG! fighting Gojira himself.

WAAAAYYY cool.

GO GO KAIJU!

.ungawa

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Tip of the Day...

Old Bay Seasoning sprinkled liberally on leftover turkey white meat is actually pretty darn good.

.ungawa

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Happy Thanksgiving!

May you get stuffed on way too much food and be surrounded by friends and/or family. =)

Posting this now as by the time I remember, I'll probably be in a food coma.

.ungawa

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Is that vampire for...

scary-ass-asian-dude-that-can-probably-kick-my-ass?

Since the WoW servers are having some... issues this eve and I'd already finished HL2... I figured I'd install Bloodlines.

Picking a Malky was *SUCH* the right choice.

So even though there are some glitches here and there with the game (minor stuff, but makes it look less polished then HL2) the amount of shear research that these guys did into the White Wolf WoD is insane... and it shows.

I must say though, their lip-synch technology is pretty damn good... very fabulous. Great voice-over work, too.

'scuse me... need to go try to find the other daughter of Janus... So far... I'm in love with Jeanette, without a doubt. Yummy.

.ungawa

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I have something to say to Valve...

Hi!

Great game.. Half-life 2.

I'd just like to say "f'off" though for the ending.

Great story... sucky way to end it. You don't need any help in getting people to want a Half-Life 3. Might as well have painted someone sticking their tongue out and pulling down their eyelid going "nyah" while you were at it. =)

Have a nice day!

.ungawa

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Some chat on the Nintendo DS

My thoughts on it in IRC:

[22:08] {Wookiee|Away} got my DS
[22:08] {Wookiee|Away} going to try it out for a few minutes with the super mario DS
[22:08] {Wookiee|Away} i must say that at first blush I am totally underwhelmed by how it it looks... a very drab gray.
[22:13] {Wookiee|Away} well super mario DS supports single-card download play... so i'll be trying that soon..
[22:13] {Wookiee|Away} got some people I know that should be getting DS's...
[23:06] {Wookiee|Away} well.. not bad.
[23:07] {Wookiee|Away} you start out being able to play mario or yoshi.. so picked yoshi... using the touch screen for an analog stick is interesting.. but actually works.
[23:07] {Wookiee|Away} the thing on the wrist strap for the thumb to act as a stylus is nice.
[23:07] {Wookiee|Away} they've got a bunch of mini-games in the cartridge too..
[23:07] {Wookiee|Away} and a vs. mode, which I havn't read up on yet.
[23:08] {Wookiee|Away} it's neat having the touch screen be the map of the zone you're in too.
[23:08] {Wookiee|Away} and boy my handwriting sucks.
[23:08] {Wookiee|Away} tried the picto chat out... wow.. terrible handwriting.
[23:10] {Wookiee|Away} nice little touch.. if you don't have it on auto-boot to game cart.. you can have a ds cart and a gba cart in at the same time..a nd then choose which one to boot from.
[23:10] {Wookiee|Away} the DS carts are TINY, too... they are like memory for a digital camera.

So it's... interesting, to say the least.

.ungawa

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Half-Life 2

If you didn't see the little snippit at the bottom of my MX 1000 Uber Mouse of Doom review... well, I think Half-Life 2 is awesome.

It's fun.

The story is quite compelling.

It's fun.

I really can enjoy the graphics in it more then I could in Doom 3, even though Doom 3 is a technically superior game engine... that extra bit that Carmack pushed for just ends up be negligable to me.

Plus.. btw.. did I say it was fun yet?

I don't think i've talked to anyone that didn't describe, with massive amounts of glee, the fun that they had with the airboat once they got the add-on for it attached.

I don't think I've seen Skull the Troll ever have that much glee... even if he was surrounded with all the Pokemon he ever wanted.

And that's a lot of Glee.

P.S. Thanks to Valve for making sure to compile in fun.dll, too many companies are forgeting that crucial part.

.ungawa

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The MX1000 LASER MOUSE!!!

I picked this thing up the other day.

You know how they say that your choice of input devices really helps your experience with something?

Well sweet monkey jesus this thing kicks some *SERIOUS* arse!

Granted I switched up from one of the original Microsoft optical mice... the left mouse button finally gave out. Musta been all that Diablo 1 and 2...

...but I digress... I can feel how much more precise this thing is. It's incredible.

Plus... i love the fact that it's cordless. Makes moving it around, especially in Half-Life 2*** sooooo nice.

Plus the fact that the basestation is also the recharger is a very nice engineering choice. Heck... it's not like you need to recharge it that often... it came with 2 bars (out of 3) of a charge out of the box. I havn't seen it drop a bar yet. This thing lasts a LONG time.

Now I just need to get one at work.

Granted... $80 might be a bit much for some people to swallow for a mouse. But seeing as how my previous "expensive" mouse lasted me a few years... I don't have a problem with that. Especially with how good this one is.

.ungawa

***Btw... Half-Life 2 kicks some serious ass. A buncha Wookiee howls and stuff. 'Nuff said.

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That's Incredible!

Best. Movie. Ever.

Well... at least best movie I saw tonight. =)

The Incredibles was just amazing on so many levels...

One one hand I was totally digging it for the super-hero fanboy in me. I was liking the characters, and the storyline, etc. Wow... The Fantastic Four movie has it's work cut out for it in regards to showing stretching super heros on screen.

On the other hand I was totally geeking out as the level of CG and the raw technology that it took to make that movie. There were times (many times) that I forgot I was watching a CG film. Now... I will admit that the shape of the main characters kept bringing that back in focus (And I didn't mind that), but when it was just environments or action sequences with vehicles.. wow.

Plus.. omg... their hair sim is just insane. The cloth sim was awesome too.. but it's pixar.. their cloth sim has BEEN awesome. The hair sim... especially when the hair was wet... wow... just... wow.

The voice acting was above par, too. The Man was great as Frozone... all of the characters did awesome jobs... was great to hear Holly Hunter doing something too... I think she's an underutilized actress.

The Incredibles gets.. uh... 4 Wookiee Growls!

...or something.

.ungawa

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Steam is now a fully armed and operational battle distribution service!

Well, at least something like that...

Let's see if you can figure out why... Check here first.

Do you see it?

Added backup game files feature (right click on game)

That's the one feature that, I felt, Steam was missing to really be something I could use comfortably.

Yes, I'm one of "those people" that has been waiting while I've had an encrypted copy of Half-Life 2 on my hard drive to play it. But there's always been that little voice in the back of my head going "but what if something blows up?". Well you can just re-install steam and re-download it.

Unlike iTunes, Steam doesn't limit how many machines you can install it on to gain access to your games. So I've got it at work and at home. It works well.

But now, I can make physical backups of the games... whereas before I couldn't. That way I don't have to worry about spending all the downloading time if anything blows up.

It's a fairly nice process, too. Right click on any of the installed and fully updated games and choose the "Backup Game files..." option. It doesn't matter which game you choose to do this as you are soon presented with a list of all of the games that you can backup.

Choose which game(s) you wish to backup and it'll tell you the disk space required to back them up. Next option is where you want to back them up too. By default steam has a backup directory already in its structure, and since the mini-app lets you open that folder directly when you're done, no reason not to use it.

You then get to choose a name for the backupfile and then you pick your file size. I think this is really clever. You can pick CD [640 MB] or DVD [4.7 GB] as your options. Yeah they only give you the default base CD and DVD options (I mean come on.. who only uses 640 MB CD's anymore?) but it's still nice. If you choose the CD option and backup more then about a gig it'll show 2+ CD's (As it compresses the data while creating the backup).

Once it starts it'll give you an ETA of how long it takes. Doing a full backup of all my current files takes about 5 minutes.

Once the backup is completed, you can click on a button to open the backup directory where you will find a main .exe file (and extra .dat files if it needed to span CD's) that's named whatever you chose. Running this .exe file will bring up a dialog showing you which Steam games are backed up, and allows you to re-install them effectively.

Very, very cool. One of the first things I'm going to do when HL2 is "released" is backup that sucker... Of course that's probably after I play it for a few hours first. =)

.ungawa

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It's crap like this that baffles me...

Clicky to read...

It's not the ad that gets me... they've been using stupid ideas like that for years... It's the connotations behind it all... and the fact that the "Street scene" calls that specific act that phrase.

It's just... baffling...

Or maybe that's just that I feel jipped for all that I've read, etc... =P

.ungawa

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The Wookiee is back in the hizouse...

So for those of you that were aware of the fact that I was feeling under the weather for about a month I can openly say now that I'm back at full strength it seems...

...literally!

Up at the co-lo yesterday I was able to heft servers around by myself again, as opposed to mostly needing Andrew to do the hefting as of 2+ weeks ago.

Doc says it was just some virus that I was hit with that just totally sapped my strength and had me exhausted... What a way for a Wookiee to suffer, neh?

Nothing like a weak wookiee to make things totally depressive... People expect me to be able to heft around large, bulky, heavy objects... that's what I just sorta do!

So i'm happy to be back and operating at full strength again... always gives me a good feeling to heft around the servers by myself.

I hold the whole world in my hands! =P

And with that horrible pun... I think it's almost time for sushi again... mmmm... sushi.

.ungawa

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Amazing, pain is actually good for you...

Go read this.

Amazing. After reading that article I can see how pain definitely is used as a way to tell you when things aren't quite working the way they should... or that you shouldn't do certain things.

I can't even imagine what it would be like going through life not being able to feel any physical pain at all.

I mean... from the sounds of it... she'll never feel the pain of cramps, of stubbed toe, of a migraine. Wow. That's just scary.

.ungawa

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