Gadgets
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Saturday night I attended the Destructiod NARP (No Apparent Reason Party). First Destructoid, for which I was not familiar with prior is a community for hard core gamers. The primary reason I went was to meet Robert of Infinity Ward. I was led to believe there’d be good IW SWAG. Unfortunately the RockStar guys clearly one-up’d infinity ward. There was GTA4 stuff everywhere, multiple Tee’s for just about everyone as well as stickers and what not.
The prize for the COD tournament was a signed Infinity Ward poster. (whoopie)…
I understand this was Desctructoid’s first event. Overall as a party goes it was pretty good. There was a good group of folks playing Rock Band, a game I still don’t ‘get’. Clearly sucking and looking stupid at Karaoke isn’t enough. At least with Rock Band you get to share the shame with 3 other people playing guitar and drums. Some of the ‘bands’ were OK, at least they can push the buttons, but the singing, well, I should probably just stop here.
There was another station set up for people to play smash brothers. Which to me was about as lame as it gets. If I had shelled out $50 for that game I’d have to hurt someone.
There was a pre-release showing of a Ninja game. Imagine the sword fighting of the Lord of the Rings PS3 games or Prince of Persia, mixed with the run around task based game Assassins Creed, only not as good and you’ve got this game. I’ll certainly pass on that release.
The COD tourney was somewhat of a joke. Very unorganized, and I’m sorry to say, you need sound to play that game. That wasn’t possible hooked up to the big screens above the bar.
This review may sound negative and perhaps it is. But the party was a blast and I’m sure it will only be better next time.
Wh00t!
Written by datapoohbah on June 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Gadgets and Games and The Truth Hurts.
After looking around this seemed to be the only Turbo controller that I could find for the PS3.
Why would you want this? What’s wrong with the 6 Axis?
Two reasons.
- Six Axis controllers are $50, they seem to last about 3-4 months if you use them hard as I do. The analog sticks go to hell, become less responsive and it becomes almost impossible to use the L3-R3 buttons underneath them.
- Some games really benefit from turbo, think Call of Duty, where your single shot weapons are now full auto’s.
The instructions for this thing were weak as most cheap over seas electronics are. But it is straight forward enough. The feel of the control is somewhat crappy. It’s a low end unit. The turbo functions work as advertised, but the analog sticks are crap. It often gets confused if you’re trying to move and run (using the left analog stick but also pushing it down to activate the L3 button, while looking around (using the right analog stick). You might do a 180, you might end up looking at the sky. Results are unpredictable.
It feels like the analog sticks are accelerated and non-linear. This blows when you need to make small critical adjustments (like sniping).
It has a switch with 3 settings for the analog stick movement, but none are good, medium is jacked up, fast is too fast, and slow is too slow. Even working with in game adjustments I couldn’t find a setting that was even close the the accuracy and quality of the Six-Axis.
Game controls are certainly subjective. The ergos are OK, it’s the mechanics of this thing that are jacked up.
It also burns a USB port because you have to use their dongle. Since the PS3 has built in bluetooth why hasn’t anyone reverse engineered how to make replacement controller that just uses that? Why do I need another dongle?
It also eats batteries. It burned through fully charged AA’s in 9 hours not the 400 hours indicated in the manual.
So if you are looking at this, you might want to pass.
Written by datapoohbah on April 4th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Commentary and Gadgets and Games and The Truth Hurts.
I just received this nice bit of news from Sony..
PLAYSTATION(R)Network
-----------------------------------------------------------
Dear Customer
We have recently discovered the possibility of unauthorized access to
personal information on the PLAYSTATION(R)Store through PCs, a content
download service of the PLAYSTATION(R)Network.
Protection of personal data is Sony Computer Entertainment's highest
priority. Please be assured that we have taken immediate measures to
rectify this issue and system security has been restored.
Although very unlikely, it is possible that your password to sign in to
the PLAYSTATION(R)Network may have been changed through unauthorized
access, making it possible to view users’ personal information and/or
use the Wallet for the PLAYSTATION(R)Store. PLAYSTATION(R)Network accounts
do not display entire credit card numbers, so any unauthorized access to
your PLAYSTATION(R)Network account is very unlikely to compromise your
credit card number.
We have investigated the extent of any unauthorized access and possible
alteration of passwords that could have occurred before corrective
measures were taken, and are sending out emails directly to those
customers who may have been affected by this incident.
Written by datapoohbah on March 26th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Gadgets and Games and IT.
Much to my dismay, the love affair I’ve had with X1, my all-out favorite for desktop search, has come to an end.
Why? It’s certainly not because I’ve found something better, no.
It’s because it’s simply stopped working. Others have given up on it a long time ago, but it has stayed and remained my favorite.
Nothing else give you the speed and flexibility. Results as you type, etc.
Crashes with the products have become more prevalent, though usually work-around able, they were becoming more than I could stand. I checked for an update, and there was a ‘minor’ release. I tried to upgrade to that. Tried simple upgrade, and full-reinstalls. It works, it indexes my files, and my Mozilla email but for some reason it won’t touch my Outlook anymore. The prior version had stopped updating per the schedule, but I could still manually update the index from time to time, which I had done.
But now, nadda, nothing, zilch. No Outlook/Exchange indexing to be had. Spending more than an hour screwing with it negates all benefit, so it’s now gone.
I’m now on the hunt for the best tool for my needs. No, Windows desktop search isn’t it. While it works, it’s slow and clunky.
I’ve just re-installed Google Desktop. It’s claming it will take another 10 hours of idle time to finish the initial index. We’ll see how that goes.
My biggest need is searching emails. I get too damn many. When it’s time to fill out an expense report I want to be able to search for $49.95 to find the email receipt for that software I purchased a month ago. I want to be able to easily pull up all emails from *@domain.com fast and easy. X1 used to give me that.
Outlook search folders work fine if you’re in no hurry but I usually am.
If you have tip for a good email indexing product, post it in the comments.
Written by datapoohbah on April 15th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Commentary and Gadgets and IT and Utilities.
I guess since I didn’t drink the kool-aid, I don’t get it.
$300 buys you, a slim Mac Mini. You provide your own cables to hook it to your TV.
That TV must be a wide-screen tv (HiDef). You then download content via another real computer somewhere via iTunes, then push that to the AppleTV.
(OK so that part should be easy).
It requires HiDef, but you don’t get to watch anything in high-def, as what iTunes delivers isn’t. Yeah, that makes sense. I get it, it looks good sitting in your entertainment center, has pretty menus and all but the actual video looks like crap.
Where do I sign up?
Written by datapoohbah on March 23rd, 2007 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Gadgets and The Truth Hurts.
Oh what a POS this is.
Of course I didn’t read any reviews, and it’s a damn good thing I didn’t drop $60 for this. Instead I only burned $8 by renting it.
Games for kids on the PS3 are few and far between and I had somewhat been looking forward to this games release. I’ve never been a big Sonic fan, but sans anything else how bad could it be?
It’s so bad Sony and Sega should pay me for even screwing with it. Hell, on one of the game sites it only ranked a 4.2 and that’s is extremely generous.
This game is a half baked, half assed, very rushed game.
Ugh, there’s not much else to say. Don’t waste your time or money on this. Sony should be embarrassed that this is even on the market.
The Sonic page on gamespot
Written by datapoohbah on February 3rd, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Gadgets and Games and The Truth Hurts.
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